People Before Profit blog

Time to act: Last chance to free Leonard Peltier

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 14:21:00 +0000

When I first got active in the labor and social justice movements some 35 years ago, there were a few slogans that seemed omnipresent: "Free Nelson Mandela"; "Free Mumia Abu Jamal"; "Free Leonard Peltier and all political prisoners".

Mandela eventually won his freedom. Victims of the FBI's infamous and secret COINTELPRO program were also released, such as Black Panther Eddie Conway, who after 44 years was eventually freed. Abu Jamal still languishes in jail, but he and the lawyers and broad grassroots movement working to free him have succeeded in getting the death penalty sentence commuted.

But time is running out for American Indian Movement activist Peltier. It is a now or never moment to win his freedom. That's why he and supporters have filed a petition for clemency with President Barack Obama. In a moving and eloquent letter, marking the 41^st anniversary of the tragic firefight that led to the deaths of two FBI agents, Ronald Williams and Jack Coler, AIM activist Joe Stuntz and the eventual imprisonment of Peltier, he wrote of his "great remorse" for lives lost and the grieving of loved ones. He also wrote this sobering sentence, "I believe that this President is my last hope for freedom, and I will surely die here if I am not released by January 20, 2017."

Peltier is not in good health. He suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, and a heart condition. He has maintained his innocence for four decades. President Obama, who has taken important initiatives regarding Native American rights and sovereignty, is Peltier's "last hope."

Writing a letter of support for Peltier in June 23 edition of The New York Review of Books, Martin Garbus and Rose Styron put the push for clemency in the larger context of justice for Native people.

"The clemency petition is not about Leonard's guilt or innocence-it is about all of the issues that Leonard Peltier has come to represent during four decades in prison, including, among other things, the historic injustices against Native Americans; the distrust between Native American communities and federal law enforcement agencies; the poverty and polarized conditions on Pine Ridge Reservation in the 1970s, which were exacerbated, in part, by an ineffective federal response; the ensuing violence that drove Pine Ridge to become the scene of many murders of Native Americans; and the circumstances that led up to and followed the June 26, 1975, shootout, in which two young FBI agents and one young American Indian lost their lives," they wrote.

As we go into the July 4^th weekend, take a moment to send a letter to President Obama, voicing your support for freedom and justice for Peltier: http://www.freepeltiernow.org.

Photo: AP

Cooperation and conflict: An uneasy, but necessary tension

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 12:41:00 +0000

"We do have to defeat Trump, but we don't have to do it in the way the Democratic establishment wants us to," Becky Bond, senior Sanders advisor, told People's Summit conference-goers, according to Newsweek.

I have a problem with this statement. But I wouldn't give it more than a moment's attention had not others on social media referenced it as some kind of new and penetrating idea and practice. It isn't. In fact, it is simplistic and, if taken too seriously by too many, even dangerous. Here's why:

First of all, educating and mobilizing voters independently of the Democratic Party isn't an original idea. The labor movement, communities of color, women, environmentalists, gay rights activists, and many more have been doing it for some time. But they don't consider it a badge of honor that distinguishes them from "run-of-the-mill" Democrats. Nor do they turn it into a rationale that closes the door to collaboration with the Democratic Party. In the election and reelection campaigns of President Obama, for example, we saw this independence-collaborative dynamic on display, and to very good effect. And, this fall I expect we will see more of the same, as these same social organizations and social forces mobilize independently and jointly for Hillary and other Democrats down the ticket.

Second, the notion of a "Democratic establishment" can be very misleading, if it isn't qualified. But Bond doesn't do this here. Nor does Bernie Sanders in most of his speeches. In their rendering, the Democratic Party is corrupt, awash in corporate money, and in the pocket of Wall Street. But what goes unsaid, or comes in as a minor note, is that the Democratic Party also embodies different political currents, not simply a neoliberal one. In Congress - especially the House - many of its representatives and caucuses take consistently progressive (anti-neoliberal) positions on a broad range of issues. Much the same could be said about many grassroots Democrats. Nor from what Bond and Sanders say would anyone realize that the Democratic Party possesses a broad base of social power - labor, people of color, women, etc. - that the Sanders' campaign, notwithstanding its many positive features, never made substantive inroads into. Indeed, any effort to "Crush Trump" in November, not to mention rein in the billionaires, banks, and global corporations in the years ahead, will take a coalition that includes these same social and political forces in its leadership as well as its base who for now and the foreseeable future operate loosely under the umbrella of the Democratic Party. Thus, these sweeping assertions, even if they capture an important aspect of reality, can mislead people at the strategic and tactical level at this stage of struggle. And again, this takes on special significance since neither Bernie's movement nor the left generally are constructed broadly enough to defeat Trump in the near term or erect a new model of political and economic governance in the longer term, thereby making broad alliances with people and organizations who don't share identical political views and loyalties necessary. Only a very clumsy, gendered, and racialized representation of the working class can give any credence to the claim that "workers" are in Sanders' camp.

Finally, drawing hard and fast lines between Bernie and his supporters on the one hand and the "Democratic Party Establishment" on the other, as Bond did in the above statement, is problematic on the eve of the Democratic Party convention. Along with pressing positions on matters of rules and platform, the repertoire of Sanders and Clinton supporters at this point of the election process should also include - in fact give accent to - cooperation, compromise, and the search for common ground. After all, the primaries are in the rear view mirror and what should command everyone's attention is the defeat of Trump and his GOP gang. Nothing will change the political dynamics of the country and open up the wellsprings of democracy more than a landslide victory over Trump in November. If there is a "Date with Destiny" for the American people, it isn't today or when Democratic Party delegates gather in Philadelphia. It is on Election Day, Nov. 8, 2016, when the fate of the country will hang in balance. Everything else pales in significance and should be subordinated to making that day a dawn for a "new burst of freedom."

Little, if anything, is to be gained by pushing one's agenda to the point where one side wins a "victory," but at the cost of an irreparable breach in the very coalition that is the only guarantee of a resounding defeat of Trump and his enablers. We should be mindful that in any forward looking coalition that avows high hopes and big dreams - and we need such coalitions in a world that is increasingly unstable, crisis ridden, interdependent, and unjust - cooperation and conflict will exist in an uneasy, but necessary tension. Expecting to get one's way in every instance in coalitions of a broad and diverse character is at once a fool's errand and a poor formula to guide the complicated and contradictory process of alliance formation and social change. Our nation's history provides ample proof of this proposition. Let's hope that this tension finds a positive resolution in the present moment. There is no reason why supporters of Hillary and Bernie can't - to employ a familiar saying - "walk and chew gum at same time." Tens of millions are counting on it.

Photo: Lynne Sladky | AP

Reader’s correspondence: Reply to Libretti on inequality

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 11:15:00 +0000

I read Professor Libretti's syllabus on inequality myths in the United States and found myself heartily agreeing with his reading list (see "Widening wealth gap exposes America's cultural commitment to inequality," People's World, June 27, 2016).

However, while agreeing with Libretti's placing of the myth of meritocracy on the reading list, I strongly disagree with his interpretation of that myth.

Like Libretti, I believe that the U.S. is a lot less of a meritocracy than myth would have it. However, he then goes on to attack meritocracy theoretically, which I think is a big mistake.

Libretti argues that doctors, custodians, lawyers, postal workers, politicians, cashiers, bankers, and fast food workers all perform socially necessary labor. While that certainly is true, it is also quite misleading. Doctors, lawyers, politicians, and bankers all add more social value to society than do custodians, postal workers, and fast food workers.

This concept is important for any Marxist analysis of society. You and I may not be very happy about the contributions of most lawyers, politicians, and bankers to society, but the society as a whole has decided their value, through the market. Granted, the market has distortions (there may be just a wee bit too many lawyers in our country), but in general, the majority of U.S. citizens, residents, and visitors have determined the prices these professionals receive for their work. Again, by voting through the market.

Some readers may reply that the capitalist system is completely rigged and that the market does not function as classical economists would have us believe. Yes, I understand that, but in the big picture, again, with significant distortions, the market determines the price each of us receive for our labor. And, more importantly, the whole foundation of Marxist economics is based on the classical interpretation of how supply and demand work.

The classic example is the professional athlete. Many of my left-wing friends bemoan the high salaries that, say, professional baseball players receive. But if we were to lower their salaries, we would only be benefiting the owners of their team who would reap greater profits without doing any of the work. For it is the baseball players we pay to see, not the owners sitting in their luxury suites. It is the baseball players who generate almost all of the social value of professional baseball. If you think professional baseball players receive too much money, then don't go to baseball games and don't watch baseball on television. And convince your friends and coworkers to do likewise. Also, remember that the poor baseball player, no matter how well paid for his services, only receives a portion of the social value he adds to society. The owner, who does little or no work, skims off a huge portion of what the player contributes to society for him or herself in the form of profits.

Even under socialism, doctors and lawyers (I am not so sure about politicians and bankers) will receive higher salaries than custodians, postal workers, cashiers, and fast food workers. Lenin talked about the importance of differentiating wages between skilled and unskilled workers. While under socialism there might not be a market economy (although some socialists have argued for having one; see the great debate in the book Market Socialism - The Debate Among Socialists, edited by Bertell Ollman), it will still be important to pay skilled workers more than unskilled workers.

Even in a fully planned socialist economy we would want to do this for two reasons. First, we want to give workers in the socialist economy an incentive to work hard and to have something to strive for. By creating higher salaries for skilled workers, we give all workers something to strive for, namely, a promotion to a higher-paying job. Second, the more highly skilled workers in a socialist economy make sacrifices to learn their skills, giving up time they could be working and earning money to attend school and learn their skill. This second point is only compounded in a capitalist society where workers give up their time AND boatloads of money to attend school.

The problem in U.S. society is not so much that highly skilled workers earn too much money but more that unskilled workers earn far too little. This is compounded by the extreme weakness of the U.S. safety net provided to low-income individuals. I think doctors, lawyers, politicians, and bankers who come upon their earnings honestly, should be paid more than less-skilled workers. At the same time, all of us, doctors, postal workers, lawyers, and custodians, must fight to increase wages for less-skilled workers and increase the strength of our safety net.

Open source socialism: Harnessing innovation for progressive change

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 10:02:00 +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.

In his November 2015 speech on the idea of democratic socialism, Senator Bernie Sanders linked government policies with his definition of that concept at least 11 times. He listed a Medicare-for-all program, legal protections for workers (e.g. improved minimum wage at $15), free public university education, the government's responsibility to create a full-employment economy, serious campaign finance reform, voting rights protections, and a fair and progressive tax system in his definition.

These demands are essential to a just society, both in their specifics and in the general concept. They are vital to improving the situation of the working class and strengthening its ability to participate more fully in the economic and political life of the country.

Cycles of investment and innovation

More needs to be said about the connection between those policies and socialism, however. In his book, Postcapitalism, economics journalist Paul Mason (following Marx) argues that capitalism moves through cycles of investment and innovation, high profits with growth and prosperity, falling rates of profits and crisis, and stagnation. The latter events are followed by worker protest, state intervention, global crises, and then finally a major adaption in which new technology, new business models, new social relations, and new finance capital is harnessed to the next cycle. It is important to think of this theory of cycles not as a rigid sequential model, but rather as an abstraction that helps to explain the development and adaptability of capitalism. It explains why capitalism in 2015 isn't identical to capitalism in 1815.

If this cycle theory holds, the 2008 recession signaled the crisis stage of capitalism followed by massive state intervention in the operations of banks and other major multinational finance-driven industries (like auto) along with "stimulus packages" promoting job growth. By contrast with state intervention in the 1930s and 1940s, the current moment is missing in significant ways the shift in the class balance of forces that the Great Depression introduced. In the 1930s, the limited state alliance with the labor movement resulted in about 35 percent of all U.S. workers in labor unions by the mid-1950s, a minimum wage in today's dollars that was close to $11 per hour, a new system of retirement savings, and more. Even radical economists say that those reforms pioneered "the golden age of capitalism."

Indeed, that particular cycle of capitalism saw a new Keynesian ideological regime that would last until the logic of neoliberalism-a logic of the unfettered movement of capital, suppressed wages, privatization of or elimination of public services, and financialization-held sway with the election of Reagan in 1980. By way of an historical example, I want to briefly tell the story of William M. Glenn, a Grand Rapids, Michigan resident who played no small role in building more democratic socialism in that city.

In 1977, Glenn, the African American founder and leader of a community advocacy organization called Young and Old United, applied to the Department of Community Development for a $200,000 federal grant to build low-income housing for seniors in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. Glenn argued that racially-integrated housing located near the cultural life of the city was vital for seniors who lived primarily on their Social Security or disability income. He cited a distinct lack of care by private owners as well as government agencies for the buildings already set aside for poor senior citizens.

Glenn, who was born in 1903, had participated in the struggle to desegregate the city's public facilities, had been a leader in the UAW in the 1940s and 1950s, and had been harassed by federal and state authorities for his membership in the Communist Party in the 1950s. Now, he refused to retire peacefully. Since the 1960s, he had worked to advocate for the rights and needs of seniors, especially on the issue of providing quality, affordable housing. One document in his archived papers held at the Grand Rapids Public Library notes that his leadership in the struggle for affordable housing led to the creation of almost 1000 units of new low-income housing in the city since 1966.

Glenn's activism saw him appointed to the Mayor's Committee on Central Area Housing in the early 1970s. Discussions in the committee, which included prominent business, labor, and community leaders, centered on how to mobilize resources from multiple sources to build new low-income housing. After the passage of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, Glenn took the opportunity to leverage newly available federal dollars for low-income housing for seniors. By 1977, after a brief period of foot-dragging by the state, authorities were prepared to okay Glenn's project. The following year, the Ransom Avenue Development Corporation was created as a non-profit organization that applied for and won a federal grant. The contract between it and a local general contractor shows the entire project cost over $4 million. The facility today admits seniors over 62 years of age eligible for federal housing subsidies.

The project flowed from attempts at improved municipal planning, community need, and tireless activism rather than financial speculation or fabricated consumer demand (like most capitalist investments). It produced both profits for builders and social good for city residents. Glenn understood this one action to be part of a larger struggle for affordable housing. His papers include numerous organizational documents, working papers, and surveys and studies of racially-motivated redlining in cities across the state of Michigan, of ongoing activism by organizations to expand housing options, and analysis of how federal dollars for housing projects had been distributed unfairly to advantage already privileged communities in the city of Grand Rapids and elsewhere.

In addition to those positive results, the kinds of reforms Glenn fought for played a significant role in introducing the next cycle of capitalism: the shift from crisis and stagnation to a return to innovation and growth and prosperity. Marx observed this phenomenon in the 1860s and Paul Mason has observed it again recently. Indeed, if Mason's interpretation of Marx's cycles of capitalism concept are correct, a realistic reading of Glenn's work might suggest how it (in combination with broader social forces operating in the housing and finance sectors locally and nationally) harnessed political activism to the project of the freeing-up of capital investments that helped open the latest stage of neoliberal capitalism.

My point is not that Glenn should have spent his retired years in less rigorous pursuits in order to watch capitalism collapse. Instead, I argue that those social democratic reforms both aid the working class in its struggle for survival and open the possibility for its empowerment. For example, Glenn wasn't a trained expert on law, economics, or the details of corporate or government bureaucratic machinery that operate in the housing sector. He had to learn all of that through struggle and experience-perhaps from his youth in legal battles against segregation, his leadership in the labor movement, or the day-to-day work of building a just housing movement. That body of knowledge, unfortunately, may have passed with him.

Struggle opens new possibilities

To this mix of democratic socialist reform, both Marx and Mason add that the potential for innovation and the working-class struggle for democracy, power, and rights create new opportunities for much deeper transformations than simply grinding it out at the same dysfunctional wheel. Instead of living with the cycle and always fighting effects, Marx urged in an 1865 speech to the International Workingmen's Association, the working-class movement had to learn to fight and transform systemic causes.

In his study of the shift from feudalism to capitalism in England, Marx documented the emergence of new technologies, the rise of a new class with investment-hungry wealth that had grown outside of the aristocracy, increasing global intrigues and expropriations, along with the break-down of traditional modes of work and social relationships (like serfdom) that enabled the formation of a new system-capitalism. Essentially, Marx argues in Capital that small quantitative social changes added up to force a qualitative systemic transformation.

If that mathematical metaphor is to hold for capitalism in the present, what are the quantitative changes necessary to create that qualitative transformation? The example of William Glenn's initiative to leverage public resources to build low-income senior housing is a model of the democratic socialist concept advanced by Sen. Sanders. Wedded to that, however, might be concepts and patterns built into neoliberalism already.

New information-based technology has altered basic work patterns in the neoliberal era. Increasingly automated production and telecommuting are business strategies designed to increase production and reduce labor costs-to improve the margin of profit. They link ideologically with concepts like "maker culture" or "design thinking," which are hot trends in some university departments that are increasingly concerned about whether or not traditional humanities degrees prepare students for the 21st century professional workplace. A knowledge-based economy demands workers be flexible and adaptable, university promotional materials now say.

But, Mason notes, this situation produces a contradiction not easily overcome. Value (and thus profit) can only be produced by labor. Mason speculates, "If a machine lasts forever, it transfers a near-zero amount of labor value to the product, from here to eternity, and the value of each product is thus reduced." In addition to the rise of the machines, the new period is increasingly reliant on information and knowledge as a factor of production. With this in mind, Mason observes another vital contradiction. Capitalist economics demands the use of intellectual property rights to protect an individual capitalist's proprietary knowledge from being stolen. But in this modern era of information saturation (think of how Napster, though short-lived, permanently transformed the music industry), intellectual property rights has proven to be a severe constraint on innovation, culture, and standards of living. Think of the public reaction to "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli's decision to raise the price of Daraprim over 5000 percent; further still, think about whether or not there would have been a similar reaction in a society without social media.

Open source knowledge production on a small scale (think of how the things Glenn learned to do in his lifetime might have been preserved in digital form) or on a large scale (think of the kind of technological infrastructure needed to build a movement of fair housing social movements) very well could alter how we think about socialist concepts like economic planning or collaborative production. The impulse for large-scale, government-led democratic socialist reforms linked to an educational, cultural, and productive shift in innovation could produce the quantitative changes to qualitative transformation Marx counted on. What seems to be missing from a message like Sen. Sanders', though, are outlines for those institutional and non-institutional spaces where individual and collective innovation and creativity aren't cynically harnessed for profit margins, but rather for big, dynamic social changes.

Joel Wendland is a professor in the Liberal Studies Department at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. For many years, he was the editor of Political Affairs magazine and is the author of the recent book, The Collectivity of Life: Spaces of Social Mobility and the Individualism Myth.

What Hillary Clinton should learn from Brexit

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:38:00 +0000

Brexit - the stunning British vote to leave the European Union - is a clear and dramatic rebuke of the country's political and economic elites. A majority voted to leave even though the heads of the United Kingdom's two major parties, more than a thousand corporate and bank CEOs, legions of economists, the leaders of Europe and the United States, and the heads of the international financial organizations all warned of dire consequences if they did not vote to remain.

For Americans, one question is whether this result has implications for the 2016 presidential campaign. Political sea changes tend to cross national boundaries. Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 tracked the rise of Margaret Thatcher to power in Great Britain. Bill Clinton's New Democrats were mirrored by Tony Blair's New Labour Party. So does Brexit presage the rise of Donald Trump in the United States?

The Leave campaign slogan - "Take back control" - is mirrored by Trump's "Make America great again." The same economic insecurities, the sense of the system being rigged, the racial fears and the anger at immigrants that fueled the Leave campaign have elevated Trump's candidacy. Like Trump, the Leave campaign expressed its scorn for experts and politicians. Like Trump, the campaign told a clear story to voters about how they got in the fix they are in, and who is to blame.

In Britain, the vote divided along the lines of education, class and age. The better educated, more affluent and younger voted to stay. The less educated, less affluent and older voted to get out. Those campaigning to leave made appeals based on sovereignty, race and nativism. They campaigned against unaccountable bureaucrats and disdainful elites who rigged the system against working people. What surprised pollsters was the strong turnout by non-college educated, older working people, who lined up to register their discontent.

There is a clear warning here for Hillary Clinton. She is the quintessential establishment candidate, having been in Washington for the last 25 years. She has presented herself as a continuation of the Obama years. Her experience and expertise are universally acknowledged. But she is the candidate of the status quo at a time when people are looking for change.

Our political and economic elites tend to be in denial. They profit from globalization, take pride in the exercise of American power abroad, live in affluent communities, and often are closer to their international peers than to their poorer neighbors. They don't see the America that has been ravaged by our ruinous trade policies. They avoid the killing streets of our impoverished urban neighborhoods. They were shaken by the Great Recession but largely have recovered. They don't see that most Americans have lost ground over the course of this century. They simply don't understand the scope of their failure to make this system work for working people - for the majority of Americans.

The Brexit vote showed that it is not enough to scorn the lies, exaggerations and divisive racial appeals of a demagogue. The Remain vote in Britain was explicitly a status quo vote - the EU isn't great, it seemed to say, but it is what we've got and our elites and experts say change would be catastrophic. But when people feel that the elites have failed them, that the system has been rigged to favor the few, that things are getting worse, not better, the invocation of authority in defense of the status quo loses force. People want to know what you will do to make things better. You've got to be able to tell a more convincing story that explains how we got where we are, who is to blame and what can be done about it. This is a lesson that Clinton surely understands.

The Brexit vote also reveals the comparative strength of the Democratic coalition here in the United States. Young people in Britain voted overwhelmingly against leaving; young people here will not vote for Trump. Minorities and immigrants - a much smaller portion of the population in Britain - voted against leaving; minorities here will not vote for Trump's racist politics. The question is only whether the young and minorities will turn out in large numbers or whether, uninspired, they will stay home in large numbers. Turning them out also requires a campaign that gives them hope for a change, not simply a promise of more of the same.

Brexit is a warning. There will be a reckoning. A divisive demagogue like Trump can profit in such times, but the politics of inclusion can beat the politics of division - but only by offering people a new deal that gives them hope.

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: British Prime Minister David Cameron meets with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in London in 2012. (U.S. Embassy in the United Kingdom)

Pat Summitt, 64: Gender pioneer

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 11:24:00 +0000

Watching ESPN coverage of Pat Summitt, who died last night at 64. Summit, if you don't know, was the legendary and beloved women's basketball coach at the University of Tennessee. It is hard to overstate her impact on women's basketball and everyone who came in touch with her.

She was, as sport's commentator Dan Levetar said this morning, a gender pioneer. No one, not even John Wooden the revered coach of UCLA's men's basketball team, stood as tall as her in the profession of college basketball.

Wooden, nicked named the Wizard of Westwood, created teams for the ages, but Summitt's hand - albeit with an assist from the passage of Title 9 - was nearly singular in bringing women's basketball out of the shadows and turning into a sport that commanded national attention. No one did more to make the playground and the gym into a welcoming space where young girls and women honed their basketball skills, fiercely competed, and grew in confidence and so many other ways.

Time won't easily erase her legacy.

Photo: Receiving Freedom Medal from President Obama last year.

Dreaming of Brexit

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 10:27:00 +0000

Globalization of capitalism and markets is an objective force that has no respect for nations, or any other barrier to commerce. The League of Nations, the United Nations, the bilateral and multilateral governmental and corporate infrastructures established by arms and diplomatic treaties and trade agreements since the Second World War - all trace the history of the world's efforts to peacefully resolve the spiraling contradictions of the past century. They are also a timeline of steps taken to prevent the alternative: wars - whether of an economic, commercial, martial, revolutionary, or terroristic nature.

I love Karl Marx's classic not-out-of-date-yet description of this process:

"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

By "objective" I mean, for example, that nearly every life decision you make is shaped by a good, a service, or a property you want to buy or want the money (the universal commodity) to buy. The hammer shapes the hand. The opportunities that determine life for the majority of the world's peoples are necessarily shaped by opportunities arising or declining in global markets.

It is not possible - socially - to refuse to participate in globalization without paying an ever-increasing tariff, with interest! Over the years, the expansion of trade in goods, capital, labor, and services has generated tremendous wealth. But the gains from that trade, with few exceptions, have not been shared with working families. For giant multinational corporations, the "global" world is a world with few cops and lots of hiding places for ill-gotten treasure. If current trends continue, they will succeed eventually in reducing corporate taxes to zero all over the world by leveraging their control of investment dollars to nations with favorable (meaning always lower) tax rates.

In the U.S., we have see this in the sustained attacks, initiated under Reagan, by the ruling corporate faction on the New Deal and Great Society social contracts - contracts which strove towards equity, if not equality. The result is a growing paralysis in the politics of the center, a steady decline in labor's share of wealth relative to capital, the rise of both fascist and socialist movements, and sharply heightened tensions at many of the class, race, gender, nationality, and religion crossroads of the emerging global society.

Brexit is no way out

Brexit is the stupid way of adapting, of rejecting the rip-offs most workers end up getting from globalization. It will lead to further poverty and unemployment. But then from another perspective, perhaps it doesn't seem so stupid, if there really is no other way to loudly say NO. People will join the available shout, no matter who initiated it. The wolf that bites off its own paw to escape a trap: If he had had fingers he might have found a way to release the trap, but only teeth were available. Still, we end up with a weakened and crippled wolf.

Here is a political thought experiment. Imagine you are in a conversation, back in 2001, with Donald Rumsfeld (secretary of Defense under Bush II and one of the architects of the Iraq war).

"Don," you say, "Tell me why we're going to war in Iraq again."

Rummy says, "We can't fix the Middle East unless we seize some real estate and wield a much bigger stick in the whole area. It's a great adventure!"

"What would you say, Don, if I predicted the European Union being swallowed whole by the refugee migration and chaos from your 'adventure'?"

"Baloney," says Don.

The problem is that Rumsfeld is not the only one who would have said "baloney" to that prediction.

Capital has moved all over the world. Wherever it goes, labor follows. All nations will become multinational. Every global crisis can and will become a national crisis. Brexit was, in a critical way, a result of the tidal migration from the catastrophe of the Middle East which has now very likely swallowed the EU whole. Just as Donald Trump swallowed the Republican Party whole.

More socialism, more internationalism

The current wave of global resistance to this legacy of globalization will continue until an international adjustment, or adjustments, capable of managing the currently unregulated globalization imbalances can emerge. Austerity is the doomed 'global' policy response of the most reactionary corporations and billionaires who have been the core backers of the Republican Party since at least Reagan. As institutions and associated economies fail, armies formal and informal will come to the fore.

More socialism, more equality, and more internationalism would be the enlightened policy response. This is a response that calls, primarily, for a change in direction on inequality and austerity.

But, in the end, globalization (hopefully in overall more equitable forms) will, I wager, be stronger, and nations will be weaker, as the wisdom which generations only seem to gain from loss of blood, once again accrues to the victors.

While so far I've focused on the objective factors, it's worth mentioning a near and dear subjective one. I count three great campaigns, and leaders, of the Left in the United States in the post-WWII era: Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson, and Bernie Sanders. They merit the designation great because they: a) put millions of folks in the street; or b) got millions of votes - on the elementary programs of higher incomes, greater equality, and peace.

All these campaigns were and are fully consistent with a socialist direction, but also entirely free of sectarian dogma. Had the same been possible to say for organized Left formations in the U.S., a more favorable ground of struggle might have been achieved before this looming collision of global forces, combined with destructive environmental "externalities," crashes upon us.

Dr. King proved poor people can be mobilized into powerful, disciplined formations for equality. Jesse Jackson proved it was possible for peace, jobs, and equality positions to have wide, multi-racial electoral appeal, especially among labor. Bernie Sanders proved it was possible to govern in this society along consistent democratic socialist principles in the 1980s in Vermont - and took 12 million votes 35 years later explaining it to the nation.

Globalization is unstoppable. Even war will only cause a pause. But its shape, boundaries, and direction are all subject to initiative.

Internationalism, jobs, equality, peace - it works everywhere. Dump the dogma. Keep it simple. Keep it scientific. Focus on the money on the table. Do a Bernie. Say what you mean, and mean what you say.

Photo: Paul Floyd/Flickr

Widening wealth gap exposes America’s cultural commitment to inequality

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 13:02:00 +0000

I believe these truths to be self-evident: America is committed to inequality.

I teach literature. I study stories, so I'm going to identify a few of the most prominent stories we tell ourselves, the stories that not only accommodate us to inequality but also inspire our love of it. That's right: Americans love inequality, and if we really do want to create a society premised on the value of equality, we must first confront this love, this addiction. You know what they say: the first step is admitting you have a problem.

So, here's the reading list.

Mythologies of meritocracy

The story of meritocracy goes like this: On the basis of their talents, abilities, and efforts, people deserve more or less access to social resources in the form of housing, medical care, educational access, food, clothing, etc.

Even in the context of discussions of income inequality, few people question why a doctor, lawyer, politician, or banker earns a higher salary than a custodian, postal worker, grocery store cashier, fast food worker, social worker, or teacher. On the whole, Americans tend to accept income inequality in this regard and even to see it as just; that is, we have come to see meritocracy as a feature, even a hallmark, of a free and egalitarian society - even though in reality it enables and justifies gross inequality.

In short, the story goes, people get what they deserve. This belief in meritocracy thus enables us to justify poverty, people not having access to proper health care, not being able to afford college, not being able to afford food or housing, and so forth. With their thinking shaped by this framework, it has just come to make sense to most Americans, even if we are all performing socially necessary labor that makes all of our lives possible, that some people on the basis of what they do deserve to live in nicer neighborhoods, own larger houses, eat healthier foods, have access to better education, and drive better cars.

If we really want to address income inequality, we at least need to ponder the extent to which our ingrained cultural beliefs condition us to justify and embrace it; otherwise, how can we ever hope to change a system that our core cultural beliefs endorse and uphold? As any psychotherapist will tell you, it's pretty difficult to change a behavior if one doesn't address and transform the underlying core belief.

Climbing the ladder to success and other tales of upward mobility

Another dominant cultural narrative we love to both tell and hear is that of upward mobility, the rags-to-riches story. The harder and longer the climb, the more we tend to love the story and to proclaim, "Only in America."

How often, though, do you ever hear people lament, upon hearing such a story, that someone had to live in the deplorable conditions and depths at the bottom of that hill, that such inequality exists in the first place? We tend as a culture to celebrate the success and ignore the fact that people are contending with unequal starting lines. Thus, the beloved and powerful narrative of upward mobility actually legitimates inequality. As long as we believe people can escape the inferior conditions of deprivation in which they are living, somehow we are basically OK with inequality - indeed, we celebrate it.

Speaking in Selma on March 6, 2015, President Barack Obama framed his ideal of justice in terms of this narrative of upward mobility, asserting to his audience, "We can make sure every person willing to work has the dignity of a job, and a fair wage, and a real voice, and sturdier rungs on that ladder into the middle class."

Whether you agree this is a just society or not, what I am suggesting is that we implicitly endorse economic inequality with the concept of upward class mobility. At the very moment we speak of a middle class, a notion that automatically implies at least one class above and another below, we are talking about an unequal society.

We might decide that some inequality is desirable, but we at least have to get clear on the objective. Saying we want equality and then engaging in behaviors sure to generate inequality is either a fool's errand or a dishonest pursuit.

We are skilled in our culture in looking inequality in the face and denying it, or worse, calling it equality.

Nicholas Fitz, for example, recently reported in Scientific American, "According to Pew Research, most Americans believe the economic system unfairly favors the wealthy, but 60 percent believe that most people can make it if they're willing to work hard. Senator Marco Rubio says that America has 'never been a nation of haves and have nots. We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves, of people who have made it and people who will make it.' Sure, we love a good rags-to-riches story, but perhaps we tolerate such inequality because we think these stories happen more than they actually do."

It's not hard to see that even saying we are a country of "haves" and "soon-to-haves" bespeaks at once the recognition of and the wish to deny the reality of inequality.

Equality of opportunity - the novel

Another powerful story we love to tell ourselves is that equality means equality of opportunity. The political discourse in vogue these days doesn't like to speak about inequality but instead focuses on the opportunity gap. Transforming the issue of equality into one of opportunity is, perhaps, even more damaging to the debate over income inequality than the upward mobility narrative. Through such a distortion, inequality becomes normalized at both the beginning and end. It doesn't acknowledge or see as important the unequal starting lines people face, and it endorses inequality of outcome. That is, we accept the outcomes of economic inequality - and thus inequities in political and social power - with the justification that everyone had an equal opportunity to succeed or fail.

Thus, the "equal opportunity" narrative basically gives license in our culture for some to seize opportunity to achieve wealth and therefore power over others. It is a version of the meritocracy fable: you get what you deserve. If you can't feed your kids, that's your fault; the situation is just, as everyone had a chance.

We need to recognize the reality of our world. It is true, in some sense, that anybody can make it. We see inspiring success stories all the time. But it is equally true that while anybody can make it, the system doesn't allow that everybody can. That is, even if everybody earned advanced degrees, someone will still have to do the necessary work of picking the cabbages, cleaning the floors, stocking shelves at the store, driving trucks. Everybody can't be a lawyer or doctor, as we have a whole range of socially necessary labor that has to be done to make our lives possible.

We have to ask ourselves why someone doing socially necessary labor and spending the work week doing it to enable all of our lives should somehow be valued less or have less access to social resources. To repeat, we shouldn't be requiring people to constantly acquire new skills in an effort to increase the supposed "value" of their work or to maintain access to social services; we should be reconsidering the way we value the work people do to make our lives possible.

The great American hero: The rugged individual

This issue brings me to last of the dominant cultural narratives I want to discuss: American individualism. This one relates to and really underpins all the others. We accommodate ourselves to and accept a society whose internal dynamics of necessity generate inequality because we comprehend the world through the lens of individual success or failure. That is, when we look at the world through an individualist lens, we think about people's success and failure as bearing a direct relation to their talents, abilities, and efforts. It has nothing to do with the system.

As I mentioned, when we look at our world and recognize that it's true anybody can make it, but that the system doesn't allow for everybody to make it, then we might assess inequality in our world differently. Our meritocratic narrative might fall away if we see that our system necessarily generates inequality, that it's not a result of people's lack of ability, will, or effort.

Looking beyond the individual and thinking systemically, though, really strains and pushes back against a powerful thought tendency in our culture. As an example, consider a 2014 study done by the Harvard Business School titled An Economy Doing Half Its Job. The study points out that while large and midsize businesses had been performing strongly coming out of the Great Recession, "middle-class and working-class citizens [were] struggling." This "divergence," the study argues, is "unsustainable," underscoring corporate America's self-interest in improving the overall standard of living in the United States, warning, "Businesses cannot thrive for long while their communities languish."

What we see is that the study initially identifies the problem as a systemic one - the economy is doing only half its job. Interestingly though, the study cannot sustain the initial systemic focus that seems to guide it - and that the title suggests - but rather retreats into a focus on the individual. While seeing as futile any policy to "redistribute gains," Harvard's optimism rests in a call to "invest and set policies to make Americans so productive that they can command higher wages even in the face of these dynamics [of globalization and technological change]."

In short, the study calls for more of the same, accepting the basic framework of an unequal class society and simply asking people to increase their value within the current framework of the capitalist marketplace. Not for a second does it seriously entertain the option of redistributing wealth and re-thinking our basic standards of fairness, equity, and value. The onus is put on individuals to somehow improve their lives in a system that the study already indicated is only half-working. Why not think about the system as the problem? Again, everybody can't simply get new jobs because. Someone still needs to pick those cabbages and get the basic work of the world done to make all of our lives possible.

What if instead of asking people to increase their value, we transformed the way we value people and their work?

We need to think about what we mean by equality and if we really want an equal society or are content with the inequality we currently accept and even celebrate. If we decide as a culture we do want a genuinely equal society, do we need to transform our system or can we simply change our individual behaviors in some way or adopt a new set values in the current system? How do we relate a concept of fairness with the value of equality?

Why are we all driving Cadillacs in our dreams?

Above I raised the question of what it is that we really want when it comes to achieving, or not, equality in our world. In short, the question is about what we dream for and aspire to as a culture and a people, and how the desires informing our dreams and aspirations guide our political and social behaviors.

The way we define the "American Dream" no doubt plays a major role in disarming our ability to imagine equality. As a culture, the "American Dream" is always talked about not just in terms of individual achievement, but frequently in terms of individual acquisition and ownership. Typically, the rendering of the American Dream is dominated by images of individuals working hard, owning a home, and creating a better material life for their children.

This rendering of the dream, if you think about, is really divorced from the larger ideals we purport to hold as a collective, as a nation. Why is it we are not conditioned to dream about a world in which people aren't hungry, in which people are housed, in which all are educated, in which people have democratic rights and a voice in how political decisions impacting their lives are made, in which people enjoy equality?

One key precursor to meaningful social change will be transforming the content of our collective national dream so it connects to and comprehends our noblest and largest social ideals, most prominently the overarching ideal of equality. While in her song "Royals" pop-star phenom Lorde sings about "driving Cadillacs in our dreams," we need instead to sing about living free and equal in our dreams.

Let us begin now as a community to consider our ideals together and figure out how to realize them. Let's develop a culture of collective problem-solving.

Tim Libretti is a professor of English. This article is based on the keynote address he delivered at the recent launch of the Northeastern Illinois University College of Arts and Sciences' Economic Inequality Initiative.

Photo: 1959 Cadillac tailfin. | Christer Johannson

Brexit, Trump, and the choices we actually have

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 13:49:00 +0000

It can be an interesting intellectual exercise to consider what would actually be best for our country, or another country, or for working class people. Plotting an ideal path to the future is not a waste of time, after all we need a vision to fight for, but neither is it a way to develop sound strategy.

The Brexit vote shows the pitfalls of acting as if we had ideal choices rather than real ones.

There are good reasons for Britains to distrust the European Union. The EU has unelected leaders who manage economies in the interests of transnational capital. It is a system operated on neoliberal principles, aiming for high rates of profit for the few. If the choice in the UK had been between staying in the EU as is or fighting for policies which would actually help the working class, that would have been a good vote to have.

But that is not what was on the table. The Brexit vote, no matter what the proponents (mostly right-wing) or opponents said in their PR campaigns, was for staying in the EU as is, or exiting and leaving the British economy still in the hands of the British ruling class. That was the real choice on the table, and pretending otherwise because we wish there was a better choice is foolish.

The old politics isn't working anymore

There is a right-wing danger growing in the world. The reality is that the old ways of governing (in the interests of the super-wealthy) are no longer working the way they used to. This leaves a vacuum that the ultra-right is happy to rush into.

The danger of the Trump campaign is not just the dire possibility that he will win the election (though that is dire, for many reasons), it is that he is encouraging, energizing, and providing an impetus for organizing for the most racist, nationalistic, isolationist, militarist sectors of the body politic. Even if Trump is defeated (a much-to-be-worked for outcome), this renewed fascist movement will be a greater and more poisonous part of U.S. politics for years to come.

The old ways of governing are breaking down before our eyes. The shibboleths of the past are not convincing large numbers to let the rulers keep ruling in the old way.

And there is not yet a decisive left alternative. There are signs of change on the left too, new attempts to organize a popular alternative to the old politics. SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Morena in Mexico, and the Sanders campaign in the U.S. all can give us hope for left policies that will actually benefit workers and poor people. But they are not yet sufficiently powerful to implement those policies. Where they have won elections, these new forces struggle with the existing power structure, sometimes with some success, other times with at least temporary set-backs.

So the old politics isn't working anymore in many places in the world, the left alternatives are not yet strong enough, and right-wing fanatics are eager to exploit this opening to grow their retrograde movements. These forces are encouraged by the Brexit vote, and governments already governed by right-wing parties in some parts of Europe will step up their efforts to impose austerity on workers in their countries, no matter that the impacts on millions of people will be vicious and inhumane.

The choice here in America

In the U.S., our choice is not between a right-wing looney (Trump) and a real left alternative like Sanders, no matter how hard many of us worked for him. It is the choice, baldly stated, between a slightly more progressive business-as-usual on the one hand, and a growing threat of fascism on the other. Those who pretend we have some other choice, at the present moment, are deluding themselves.

Of course we need to work for real alternatives, and there is hope. The Sanders campaign exposed a widespread hunger for positive alternatives to business as usual. Many tens of millions were ready to contribute, vote, attend rallies, and campaign for Sanders, and many more were offered hope for a real change.

But no matter how committed we are to Sanders' program, that is not the real choice before the working class and people of the U.S.

At issue is not just whether or not Trump personally is a fascist, or whether he will be able to instantaneously impose fascist policies, but about the momentum of the ultra-right movement. Cheney was and is pretty fascist, but it was not just about him and his desires, it was also about the limitations we were able to place on his policies.

We were not strong enough, despite massive demonstrations, to stop the Iraq War, the torture, the budget cuts for all people-centered programs, but we were able to wage struggles against those policies and wage them in a partially democratic space, and success in defeating the continuation of those policies and worse by McCain and Romney. That was the real choice before us then.

Any negative consequences from Britain's exit from the EU will just be another excuse for more austerity, in Europe and here at home. Right-wing politicians who are not quite the loose cannons that Trump is, like Paul Ryan, will see an opportunity to excuse their demands to cut programs, defund food stamps, raise the retirement age for Social Security even more, raise the age of eligibility for Medicare, and the increased unrest around the world will be a justification for simultaneously increasing the military budget.

There are real reasons for Europeans to distrust the EU, just as there are real reasons to at least distrust Clinton. It is very likely that we will have to wage a peace campaign against continued military adventurism, especially in the Middle East. It is very likely that Clinton will propose some positive reforms that will be killed by Republican opposition-and she can placate some on the left without serious risk to her Wall Street supporters. Clinton will not represent a break with standard operating procedure for the ruling class.

Trump's election, however, would mean a break, and not a positive one. The success of the nationalistic Brexit campaign should show that pretending we have better alternatives than are actually on the table is a guarantee of massively negative consequences. The danger of a Trump victory is real, and we have to realize the consequences for workers and poor people.

We should not encourage illusions about Clinton, but we should be partisan to the movements which are campaigning for her. Unions, civil rights organizations of many kinds, women, and many others will rally against the Trump danger, and we need to be with them in this struggle.

Watch over the next few months whether or not the ultra-right in the UK, in Europe, and in the U.S. is energized by this vote and the success of the nationalistic, isolationist campaign. Watch whether or not right-wing politicians of all stripes will use the negative consequences for the world economy as an excuse for more austerity and hostility to immigrants, poor people, and rejection of any left alternative policies.

Voting for Clinton is not a strategy for fundamentally changing the direction of our country, but it is a vote against the growing danger of fascism. That's worth it.

Photo: lelibrepenseur.org/

#NoBillNoBreak –25 hours of history

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 10:34:00 +0000

I was on Twitter on Wednesday morning, June 22, when I saw People's World correspondent and fellow Twitter user Chauncey Robinson tweet the most tantalizing heads up I've ever read over my first cup of coffee:

#LRT: What's happening on the House floor right now is pretty awesome and needed. #news #guncontrol #gunlaws #politics

The "Conscience of the Congress," civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis, had delivered a moving and mic-dropping speech on the inability of Congress to act on any bill dealing with gun control in the face of the Orlando massacre, where 49 people were brutally gunned-down in the worst single-shooter mass killing in modern history.

And after that speech, the Representatives sat down and refused to move.

The GOP House leadership countered by simply shutting off the cameras to CSPAN, the usual feed displaying the actions of government to the public. Communications went dark.

Then, I saw a couple of tweets by late-night satirist Samantha Bee, from her show Full Frontal's Twitter account:

Full Frontal ‏@FullFrontalSamB Jun 22

.@ScottPetersSD We love what you're doing. Could you please hand the phone to someone under thirty? #NoBillNoBreak

.@ScottPetersSD Haha but for real though... we want to watch.

I checked out the hashtag #NoBillNoBreak, and discovered what several other people were also about to discover: Rep. Scott Peters had downloaded the video application Periscope onto his cellphone on the advice of one of his staffers and was taking his maiden voyage in a historical first: the first Member of Congress to ever live-stream the occupation of the House floor by himself and his colleagues.

CSPAN, a normally bland outlet that simply broadcasts the routine workings of our government, was also unflappable in the face of a now minor obstacle of GOP censorship: they broadcast the feed from Rep. Peters' phone videos. And, as more Members of Congress deployed their phones to record video via Periscope and Facebook Live, the media and the public watched in jaw-dropped amazement as the most unusual 25 hours in Congressional history unfolded.

My phone fired off notifications from Facebook and Periscope about every five minutes, signal flares from a body of people angered by a crisis of GOP gridlock and apathy: House Democrats testified passionately about the devastating violence and destruction of gun violence in their communities and on their own lives. Millions watched. Social media users, political junkies, celebrities, and opinion leaders tweeted and re-tweeted commentary the whole day and into the night.

Hundreds of people drove to D.C. to stand outside the House to show support. My own union, the American Federation of Teachers, turned out members to join the crowds- a searing reminder of the deep wounds of school shootings and children lost to gun violence. I wanted to be there too.

Representatives rushed in from meetings and distant locations to join their colleagues. Senators got word of the action and arrived in solidarity, some bearing snacks and beverages. Since I couldn't be there, I looked for sign of my own Rep. , Jackie Speier, only to discover from her Facebook page that she was understandably at the side of her brother who was awaiting cancer surgery. That night however, she boarded a red-eye flight to Washington to give her own testimony, stopping at home first for an artifact that she had never shown in public.

In 1978, as a young Congressional aide to Rep. Leo J. Ryan of my family's district, she had flown with a delegation to investigate growing concerns over a settlement called Jonestown, in Guyana, which had originated in California around the charismatic leader Jim Jones, before moving to South America. The Congressional delegation had underestimated the ugly paranoia that had reached a tipping point in Jones and his deputies, and were surprised by armed men in trucks from the encampment on the tarmac as they were preparing to return home.

Jackie Speier was shot along with Rep. Ryan, managing to live with 5 bullets in her body for 24 hours while lying next to the body of the assassinated Congressman.

In the House, Speier raised up a glassine bag. It contained a dumdum bullet. It was one of the bullets that had eventually worked its way to the surface of her body after the shooting, "Five bullets ripped through my body. I can't begin to tell you what that is like. I can tell you what it's like to live with a disfigured body the rest of your life. I can tell you that this dumdum and my disfigured body are things that remind me each and every day why what do here now is so important."

Later that night on Chris Hayes' news show, All In, Speier said that the action of herself and her colleagues reflected the public desire for action, and that the Orlando massacre and the cruel "business as usual" reaction from Congress represented a tipping point and a call to action.

Congress reconvenes after the July 4^th holiday, with the potential to face a new terrain. Various pundits on the left, right, and center have assessed the promise and drawbacks of the proposed bills, the meaning of the action, and whether this action really signified a sea change in politics.

The continuing engagement of the mass movement is reflected in this action of Congressional disruption- as representatives begin to recognize enough support from their constituents to take such a bold action.

Gun control reform now has mass bipartisan support in a multi-class, multi-racial coalition, encompassing the grassroots, unions, and a majority of regular folks from both Democrats and Republicans-as well as the will of an activated Democratic congress manifesting the support of this coalition, going so far as to stage the unexpected improvisational protest of a usually powerless Congressional minority.

A broad coalition of this kind can be the wedge to be driven into right-wing obstructionism. Let's not allow this opportunity be overshadowed by cynicism, instead let's take advantage of the dynamic opportunity presented.

Photo: video snapshot

The House sit-in wasn’t dumb or great, it was a beginning

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 14:56:00 +0000

Led by Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), members of the House of Representatives Progressive Caucus Wednesday staged an unprecedented act of civil disobedience by sitting down on the House floor and refusing to participate in the scheduled legislative agenda of the day. The image of lawmakers taking such direct action evoked the sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement and Lewis's own history as one of its leaders.

As the day went on, sympathetic members of the Senate Democratic caucus came over with food and expressions of solidarity. They ended their action in the wee hours of the morning Thursday. While the sit-in was not illegal, members don't have the right to do it according to the House procedural rules.

The proximal reason for their action, in response to public outcry at the June 12 gunning down of 49 people at an Orlando LGBTQ nightclub, was to force a vote on what Gawker editor in chief Alex Pareene has already correctly called a "bad, stupid" bill. The measure would restrict those on the government's secret "no-fly list," who have been flagged for investigation and are not allowed to board airplanes, from legally purchasing guns. Journalist Marcy Wheeler tweeted that the "no-fly-no-buy" list would require further investment in the secret court system that created the ever-expanding no-fly list in the first place, which is a court that lacks the legitimacy of public transparency or official checks and balances. What is more, it would double down on the implicit bias of the no-fly list, which manages to dragnet just about everybody but in practical terms results in further singling out Muslims, dark-skinned immigrants, and poor people for suspicion and legal trouble.

Worst of all, writes Wheeler, it would not prevent many of the worst mass shootings: "This amendment would deprive Muslims simply investigated (possibly even just off a hostile allegation) for possibly engaging in too much anti-American speech of guns, but would not keep guns away from anti-government or anti-choice activists advocating violence."

Some Muslims and activists of color have remarked that it is telling that the Democrats chose to sit-in for a bill that would throw the civil liberties of already-marginalized communities under the proverbial bus.

But, others argue, we must look beyond the proximal reason for the sit-in and evaluate it in terms of its potential for breaking the blockade that the NRA and other industry lobby groups have placed on Congress. The NRA is a powerful enemy of gun control in all its forms, including the no-fly-no-buy list. Its lobbying operation includes not only an effective chief lobbyist and monetary donations to campaigns, but also a highly organized rank and file membership who are willing to mobilize to demand that their Congressmembers kill all regulation and background check measures. Such is the blockading power of the NRA that the Centers for Disease Control has refrained from even conducting public health studies on gun violence because of the actual threat from Congress to cut its funding.

The NRA is not the only industry-based lobby that makes a lot of money by killing regulatory legislation. It just happens to be one of the best-organized and oldest. To the extent that this week's sit-in disrupts the usual daily Beltway business of stopping laws from being made, it will cause shocks to ripple through the banking, weapons manufacturing, fossil fuels, big agricultural, and tobacco industries (to name a few). But, one sit-in will not be effective enough to do this.

There's big money in gridlock

How did the business of blocking regulations on industry come to be so large and so influential? Despite its periodic infighting and factionalism, the Right has come back together each time around the campfire of its deregulatory agenda. Deregulation is the prime directive given to conservative lawmakers by the captains of industry who sponsor their political careers and who give them lucrative positions after they leave electoral politics.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, who throughout yesterday's sit-in refused the progressives' demand for a vote on the no-fly-no-buy list, is one of the darlings of this part of the conservative movement along with Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy in the House, and Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz (among others) in the Senate. They have learned how to break the gears of the legislative branch of government. Refusal to compromise on any portion of their corporate donors' deregulatory agenda is now the hallmark of their approach to politics, not an anomaly special to the gun issue. The current blockade in the Senate against the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court is a good example of how this continuing strategy works for the Right. Until yesterday, it must be noted, the Democrats have followed every procedural rule and allowed the Right to continue to block bill after bill.

So the progressives' sit-in, while it may contain the kernel of a strategy, is only the first in what would have to be a series of tactical maneuvers designed to force the Right to break its blockade against any corporate regulation. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), who was presiding over the chamber, and Ryan ordering aides to dive for the House television cameras as soon as the sit-in started is one indication that this opening gambit could eventually lead to an effective strategy.

Don't look to the Dems for change

But do the Democrats have the stomach for such a protracted campaign? They, too, have a vested interest in the continued profits of the industries in their home districts. Oil, natural gas, banking, weapons manufacturing, and other industries also look to Democrats to stand aside and let the lobbyists dictate the terms. No matter how exciting it may be to see one's Congressmember sitting in on the House floor, they are not the ones who will be in a position to make Congress start to pass laws again.

That leaves it up to the rest of us.

John Lewis was brilliant to lead his fellow representatives in this bit of political theater, not because it will immediately break the NRA's chokehold on gun regulation, but because it reminds us of what we as regular citizens need to do. Business as usual does need to stop; but the political objectives also have to be clear.

Puente, the Phoenix, Ariz.-based grassroots immigrants' rights organization, took to Facebook yesterday to urge its community to prioritize "militancy of politics" over "militancy of tactics"; in other words, those in working class, poor communities, and communities of color must first identify the political ends they want to achieve-and then organize for them. The sit-in is a sobering reminder that even the most progressive members of Congress cannot serve as a proxy for organized mass movements. Elected officials are already doing what they can do, but they are part of a system that has been manipulated to serve the goals of industry. Their efforts can only ever be a beginning.

Photo: "I am sitting in the well of the House of Representatives with Civil Rights hero, Congressman John Lewis, and dozens of other House Democrats who call on Speaker Ryan to call a vote on common sense gun safety legislation before we leave on break. Our chant is 'No Bill, No Break!'" Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Facebook

Time for the NRA’s members to step up

Wed, 22 Jun 2016 12:46:00 +0000

Another mass shooting happens in Orlando and all the predictable responses emerge. "Ban assault weapons." "If someone had been armed, they could have stopped it."

Some of these responses are worthwhile and some are nonsense. I'm not going to rehash them. There will be plenty of people doing that over the next few days or weeks, with the usual results: not much.

Let's try something new. Let's ask the NRA to step up.

I don't mean the leadership. That won't happen. Take executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre: in office for 25 years, earning around $970,000 per year as of the 2010 IRS filing.

He just might have a vested interest in appealing to the crowd that pays his salary, rather than approaching this situation with compassion and common sense. Fear-mongering is very good business.

So when I say "the NRA," I mean the millions of regular members. Lots of them sport the bumper sticker that says "I am the NRA." That's right, you are. You're the ones we need the most right now, not LaPierre or board members such as Motor City Madman Ted Nugent.

I have a suggestion for you, the members of the NRA. But first, let me establish some credibility here. I am a gun owner, somewhere between the person who owns one gun for personal protection and a real collector. I'd rather not publicly advertise how many I own, but it's more than a few. Handguns, rifles, shotguns. I handload ammo for about ten different calibers. I've worked part-time as a range safety officer and salesperson at my local range. I like to hunt. It's nothing for me to put 1,000 rounds down-range in an average month (I keep stats.) I have a concealed carry license. I've shot an elephant gun (not at an elephant, I was helping a custom builder sight it in at the range.) My favorite pistol is the Browning Hi-Power. My favorite revolver is the .44 Special. My favorite shotgun is a 16 gauge L.C. Smith side-by-side (belonged to my great-grandfather.) And I own an AR-15, because it's very accurate, ammunition is readily and inexpensively available, and I never tire of the recoil as I do with some larger calibers.

I'm not currently a member of the NRA, although I have been, for many years.

So here are my suggestions for you, the NRA rank and file:

1. Stop listening to that blowhard, LaPierre. We should have gotten rid of him after the "jackbooted thugs" comment back in 1995. He's making huge money, preying on your fears. Who knows if he even believes half of that nonsense, so long as it keeps the money - your money - rolling in.

2. We already have background checks for all sales through an FFL (federally licensed firearms dealer, for the non-gunnies in the crowd.) Why not background checks for all sales? Go to an FFL, pay a small fee, the proprietor runs a check, it's done. I sure don't want to risk selling a firearm to a criminal or someone with a disqualifying mental condition, do you? Here in North Carolina, and I believe we're not the only ones, if you have a concealed carry license, you don't have to have a background check.

3. We have to take training to get a concealed carry license. It's a great idea. I learned a lot. Why not have training for any firearms owner? It would make that argument about the meaning of "well-regulated militia" carry a lot more weight, wouldn't it?

4. It's not enough to point out how many millions of us don't use guns for crime. It doesn't erase the slaughter caused by those who do. We have to accept this ghastly truth.

5. Stop with all the rumor-mongering already. For instance, so many of you started stockpiling everything even remotely firearms-related when Obama was elected president, prices skyrocketed on guns, most ammunition became scarce or unavailable (including the lowly .22LR), and even primers were almost impossible to find. And yet over seven years have gone by, and Obama hasn't taken a single gun from any of us. If you don't feel foolish by now, you must be living in fantasy land.

None of these suggestions involve registration, confiscation, or banning a specific class of arms. They take what many are already doing to the next step, that's all.

I know, from years of being around fellow "gun nuts," that the overwhelming majority of us are good, decent people. Educated. Hard-working. Reliable neighbors. Community-minded. The average scared-of-guns sort of person doesn't know that we live right next door because they feel perfectly safe around us.

Words can no longer convey the desolation I feel over the innocent people being lost to this violence. I'd like to say more, but I just don't know how.

If we don't come up with ways to try to reduce these heart-wrenching tragedies like Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and the Pulse shooting, eventually people who don't know the first thing about us or our guns will do it for us. It's not enough to express our grief over the senseless loss and chant "More guns, less crime." I've said that myself. Now, I've had to stop and look for better solutions, because it rings more and more hollow with every drop of blood. Sooner or later, sooner rather than later, that blood will be on our hands if we keep on selfishly doing nothing.

Photo: Several shooters at the Media Day at the Range event held the day before the 2009 SHOT Show held in Orlando, FL. Photo by TAC6 Media. | (CC)

Socialism: A once-in-10,000-years opportunity

Wed, 22 Jun 2016 11:42:00 +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.

The long transition of human society from capitalism to socialism is (and will be) the most profound change in human society in over 10,000 years. No other economic transformation, not even the rise of capitalism, can compare.

The reason is simple, yet also exceedingly complex.

It is simple because for the first time since the earliest of human societies, in the last century and a half people have finally started to practically work toward a social order not based on exploitation. That is, they've actually pragmatically started the work of transitioning toward a society in which a tiny elite will no longer have the power to use for its own benefit the labor power of the vast, usually impoverished producing classes. Given how long humans have been around, it was really bound to happen eventually. That's the simple part.

The complex part comes once we start looking at the nuts and bolts of how to achieve such a task. After many millennia in power, those at the top can't be expected to just surrender their position.

To understand how we got to the point where human society could even begin to imagine (and actually try to achieve) this goal, a short diversion into history is necessary.

Ours is a history of class domination

For the greater part of the 200,000 years since the appearance of homo sapiens, scholars have drawn a picture of societies often described as "primitive communism." These were social orders where people lived in small groups (most often labelled tribes or clans) in a way where the work and the means of production were shared in common. There was what we would consider to be an extremely low level of technology, necessitating constant movement to find food and water.

At some point, approximately 10,000 years ago, social conditions changed. As a result of population growth, technological advance, and the end of the last Ice Age, there was the development of settled agriculture, the domestication of animals, and the rise of towns. Among these momentous changes came the rise of classes - a split between a majority who worked and a small privileged few who lived off the labor of that majority.

Over time, the system of shared economic relations was, for the most part, obliterated. The new systems of class society took many forms. Over the millennia, we have seen the division of society into two main classes: landlord/tenant, master/slave, lord/serf, and bourgeois/worker, among many other variations.

For thousands of years, any idea of economic and social equality became a distant dream that vanished every morning when people got up and went to work. In its place, cultural and political systems reinforced the belief that social division and all of its baggage - poverty, war, racism, male supremacy, and human aggression - were part of the "natural" order of things.

People of course never gave up the struggle for a better life, though. History is full of heroic efforts by oppressed people to make their existence meaningful and more tolerable. As Marx and Engels observed, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

Therefore, in each transition of human society - from primitive production to slave-based production, to feudal, to capitalist and all the arrangements that came one after another - one master class replaced another. Until now.

No more masters

In 1848, The Communist Manifesto outlined in a scientific manner the inner workings of class-based societies and offered a framework by which the working class and its allies could overthrow the system of exploitation and build a new society without classes - a communist society. Indeed, since that time a "specter" has been haunting not only Europe, but the entire world.

The complexity of the struggle to achieve such a goal comes from the exceedingly complicated nature of human society. In the nearly 170 years since the publication of that small pamphlet, millions of dedicated people have worked ceaselessly in the movements inspired by it, sometimes at the cost of their lives, to bring about the changes necessary to end class-based societies forever.

But at the same time, the exploiters - be they finance capitalists, slaveowners, landlords, or foreign imperialists - have made every effort to divide, confuse, and weaken the people's movements.

For they see the writing on the wall. They know that the genie is out of the bottle and that they have every advantage to lose. When the working class gains political and economic power, the ill-gotten wealth, power, and influence of the exploiters will disappear. The domination of one class by another, a feature of human society for 10,000 years, will become a thing of the past.

Vladimir Lenin called this change a "lengthy process," and made no guess as to how long it would take. We are still probably only at its earliest stages. The road ahead will be arduous, with setbacks and diversions. What is vital, however, is that the people of our country and our planet stand together united with this goal: the 10,000-year era of exploitation that has gone before must be ended and a new society based on equality, justice, and peace should be our vision.

David Cavendish is a retired teacher and has been active in the union movement, the peace movement (nine years in an anti-Iraq/Afghanistan War vigil), and other progressive political activities. He is a longtime contributor to People's World.

Billionaire Trump fleeces workers, small businesses

Tue, 21 Jun 2016 13:51:00 +0000

Using corporate practices favored by Wall Street, Donald Trump made himself billions while swindling and bankrupting untold numbers of hourly workers and small businesses.

In recounting his "deal-making" experience, Trump says the important thing is that he made a buck, that he came out rich. He ignores the father of five who lost his business when a Trump casino didn't pay for cabinets. He discounts the minimum wage workers that a Trump resort cheated out of hundreds of dollars of overtime.

And that, Trump says, is how he'd run the country. Trump said that as president he'd treat the nation's creditors the way he did the creditors in his repeated business bankruptcies, forcing them to accept pennies on the dollar owed.

Somebody loses. But it's never billionaire Trump. When Americans elect a president, they want a leader who will look out for the little guy, not take advantage of him. Exploiting the little guy - and everybody else - to make a buck for himself is Donald Trump's M.O. That's not presidential.

The terrible tale of Trump casinos in Atlantic City illustrates his relationship with money, workers and small business. His casino companies went to bankruptcy court four times. Tradesmen, small businesses and creditors weren't paid. But Trump made out like a bandit. And he's mighty proud of it.

"Atlantic City fueled a lot of growth for me," he boasts. "The money I took out of there was incredible."

He told the New York Times repeatedly that it wasn't the bankruptcies that mattered; what was really important was that Donald Trump made a lot of money.

What he said is true: He prospered on the backs of botched casino projects. Even as his three Atlantic City casinos failed, a New York Times investigation found Trump shifted personal debts to the casino companies and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments.

At one point in 1990, as the Trump empire in Atlantic City neared collapse and Trump was failing to pay his debts to small businesses, Trump's lenders made him sell his airline and his yacht. And they put him on a budget for personal and household expenses. It was $450,000. A month.

Still, Trump repeats: "The money I took out of there was incredible." The stock and bond holders in his bankrupt casino corporations can't make the same brag. They lost $1.5 billion.

The small businessmen and women who Trump fleeced after they completed their work in his casinos aren't bragging either.

Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey's casino regulator in the early 1990s during Trump's time there, told the New York Times, of Trump, "He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn't pay them. So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn't, 'Sorry to see you go,' It was, 'How fast can you get the hell out of here?'"

Beth Rosser's father was among those unpaid contractors. His company, Triad Building Supplies, nearly collapsed when the Trump Taj Mahal went into bankruptcy. He waited three years for what Trump owed him and then got only 30 cents on the dollar.

"Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father," Rosser told the New York Times. "He had no regard for the thousands of men and women who worked on these projects," she said.

Her father's company was one of 253 subcontractors that performed work like installing walls, plumbing and lighting at the Taj Mahal, mom and pop shops that Trump failed to pay $69.5 million, according to an audit in casino commission records.

The vice president of another one of those companies, Marty Rosenberg of Atlantic Plate Glass, told USA Today that Trump was offering the small businessmen less than a third of what he owed them. Trump's breach of contract and the long wait for any kind of payment cost some of these tradesmen their companies, everything they'd built up in their lives.

But not Donald Trump. "The money I took out of there was incredible," he bragged to the New York Times.

It wasn't just the casinos. Pillage is Trump's business model. Trump has been embroiled in hundreds of lawsuits for refusal to pay contractors and workers at his projects across the country.

Trump's Doral golf resort in Florida, for example, denied payment to two painting contractors. It finally settled one claim. But it owes Juan Carlos Enriquez, owner of The Paint Spot, $30,000. Enriquez sued and won. When Trump still didn't pay, the judge ordered foreclosure of the resort.

Trump's attorneys, of course, filed a motion to delay the sale. So Enriquez still hasn't been paid. That's what it's like when a small businessman challenges billionaire Trump.

Occasionally, the little guys defeat the Goliath, though. Forty-eight servers at Trump's Miami golf resort won a suit against him last month for failing to pay overtime. The settlements averaged $800 for each worker.

USA Today found similar cases at Trump facilities in California and New York where hourly workers, bartenders and wait staff sued. The workers allege violations ranging from Trump supervisors refusing breaks to management denying servers their tips.

Trump has no qualms about cheating professionals either. A real estate broker, Rana Williams, sued him in 2013 alleging that he shorted her $735,212 in commissions. She told USA Today the cheat was "based on nothing more than whimsy." They settled in 2015. In her deposition, Williams, who had worked with Trump over two decades, said it wasn't the first time he denied her or others their contracted rate.

Americans expect their president to protect their jobs, their savings, their futures. Donald Trump's business track record shows he has no experience with all that. And no interest in it. He's always been in business to make even more billions for himself, no matter who got hurt. It's the same with the presidency. He's not in the race to make America great. He's in it to make Donald Trump feel great.

Steelworkers President Leo Gerard heads one of the nation's most politically active and largest industrial unions.

Photo: Protest outside of the Trump Hotel in Washington, March 21, as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump spoke inside. Jose Luis Magana | AP

Envisioning a modern, democratic, peaceful, and green socialism

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 10:12:00 +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 21^st century, and how we might get there. Other articles in the series can be found here.

(Socialism) is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call (socialism) the real movement, which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.

-- Karl Marx, in The German Ideology

The historic presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders has tapped the smoldering resentments of millions toward Wall Street domination of politics, extreme wealth inequality, widespread economic insecurity, and institutionalized racism and sexism. Sanders has also stimulated a wide-ranging discussion about what he calls "democratic socialism" and the need for a "people's revolution."

From the Cold War until now, the American people have been denied the right to discuss socialism in the public arena. But these discussions have now forced their way to the surface. The idea of socialism is something that must be thought of in ways different from the formulas we on the left may have relied upon in the past.

Era of transition

A revolutionary reorganization of society to one that is people-centered, democratic, peaceful, and in harmony with nature is necessary if humanity is to survive and flower. Some hold the view that social revolution will be precipitated by a general strike or an implosion of the economy. The old ruling class will be overthrown and the working class will hoist the red flag.

In my view, a socialist revolution is not an episodic event, nor is it inevitable. It is the product of a complex and contested process, a transition orchestrated by real people consciously and creatively shaping their conditions of existence to make their lives more livable, secure, enjoyable, and meaningful.

Its realization will span an era of multiple stages of radical systemic, economic, political, social, and cultural change that addresses urgent and concrete needs. And it will certainly be an ongoing process. No one can predict exactly how this process will unfold or what the new society will ultimately look like. One thing is certain though - there are no blueprints for either. The process differs in each country depending on its unique set of circumstances, challenges, histories, and traditions.

Socialism in waves

So long as classes and class exploitation and oppression have existed, a struggle for freedom has been waged. Socialism is the modern expression of this age-old quest by humanity. I like to envision the historic realization of socialism as a series of epic waves, characterized by ebbs and flows, advances and defeats. It's a history of great achievements, but also mistakes, errors, misjudgments, setbacks, and even experiences that go counter to the moral and humanistic ethos of socialism.

The first wave featured utopian socialist communities, which during the 19th century numbered in the hundreds in the U.S. They were founded on religious and moral convictions in response to the dehumanizing effects of class society and religious persecution.

A second wave encompassed 20th century socialism, born during the stormy era of war and revolution beginning in 1917. Economic backwardness, militarization in response to foreign intervention, devastation from WWII, and the Cold War arms race, compounded by undeveloped democratic institutions, determined the trajectory of those societies.

They were characterized by centrally-planned economies and total state ownership of the means of production. Among the great achievements were rapid industrialization, elimination of illiteracy, universal health care and education. But there were also democratic shortcomings, including constitutionally-enshrined one-party rule, political repression, lack of an independent press, and dogmatic approaches to ideology. These flaws, though not the sole explanations, contributed to their failure.

A third wave is unfolding today in a totally new historical context: post-collapse of 20th century socialism, the deepening crisis of late capitalism, extreme wealth inequality, the displacement of millions of workers through automation, and an ecological crisis that threatens mankind's very survival.

Surviving socialist-oriented states, drawing on the lessons of the failure of the USSR and Eastern European socialist-oriented societies, abandoned the old models and adopted mixed economies and, in some cases, economic decentralization.

In other countries, particularly Central and South America, left coalitions that include socialists and communists have rejected armed struggle. Some have been elected to head up or as part of governing coalitions and are attempting to institute economic, social, and democratic reforms.

In Europe, mass socialist and left-led anti-austerity movements like Syriza, Podemos, and left united fronts are also contesting for power electorally. Socialists and the left comprise the majority in the British Labour Party now, as well as a substantial part of the Democratic Party.

Majorities make change

Majorities make lasting change. People gain a deeper consciousness, including socialist consciousness, in the course of greater participation in the struggle for immediate and longer-term radical economic, political, and social change.

The contours and features of a democratic eco-socialist society are and will be determined by the American people, with the diverse multi-racial working class at the core. Its daily struggle, including at the center of a future governing coalition, will be the dominant force shaping every aspect of politics, culture, and life.

The American people can draw on a rich history of struggle that has expanded democratic horizons and helped shape our thinking on the values of a future society. That history includes the American War for Independence and the Bill of Rights; the defeat of slavery; the Civil Rights Movement and struggles for racial equality; movements for labor, suffragette, and women's equality; free speech; LGTBQIA equality; disability rights; immigrant rights; and climate justice movements.

It is being shaped today in the fight against right-wing extremism and its domination of the government at all levels and the judiciary, along with its ideology of hate in the 2016 elections. The organizations, movements and activists making up the broad and diverse anti-extreme right coalition will be at the center of an even broader and more diverse future coalition of socialist forces.

Democracy equals socialism

The revolutionary process unleashes the creative energy of millions through a wide variety of forms of mass protest, including mass non-violent action, in the battle for ideas and in the cultural sphere.

These forms of action are dialectically connected with voting and mobilization in the election arena, which will be greatly democratized as millions more become engaged. This includes repealing and removing voter suppression laws, Citizen's United, and the introduction of proportional representation.

It must result in the election of labor-led coalitions and ordinary working people to office at every level. The breadth and depth of these coalitions and their degree of political consciousness will determine the extent of their ability to institute reforms that not only curb the power of the capitalist class but simultaneously put the country on a socialist-oriented path, the eventual disappearance of classes and the emergence of self-government.

Humanism and non-violent action

This socialist vision and the transition path toward it must be imbued with the highest ethical and humanistic values. In this sense, the transition shapes the end - the values that guide the movement will be those that guide the new society.

The movement leading the transition and new society must be deeply democratic, as well as broadly collaborative and inclusive. It must place the actual physical, intellectual, and spiritual needs of people and nature above all else.

Throughout the 20th century until today, vast change has been won through non-violent action, utilizing all forms of protest and the electoral arena. But still some say don't be naïve. They argue the U.S. has the most violent ruling class in history, and that this class won't concede power peacefully. The people will have to defend themselves and violence will become inevitable.

To be sure, ruling class violence is always a possibility. But to say that it is inevitable is wrong. Just as wrong is to insist nothing can be done to limit or prevent it. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement met violence not with pacifism, but with greater non-violent action, mobilizing ever-larger numbers of people motivated by a higher moral calling. It exposed the immorality of the segregationists, crumbled their resistance, and brought about a civil rights revolution that, although incomplete, transformed our nation. Let that be our guide.

Crisis of nature, crisis of capitalism

The climate and ecological crisis is a crisis for humanity. It is also a crisis for capitalism and its ability to address the inevitable havoc of actual climate change and and adapt to a fully sustainable model. To save our planet though, humanity can't wait on a global transition to socialism. Profound and radical changes in our economy and society must begin today if the Earth is to avert the worst of the destruction.

Sections of the capitalist class are alarmed over the prospect of major disruptions of the market economy and are pushing for a transition to renewable energy sources. But that transition to a sustainable economy means imposing greater national regulation on the "market system," including of externalities and liquidation of the fossil fuel industry.

Ultimately it means transferring all natural resources and the energy production sector to public ownership managed under democratic authority. It means a radical reallocation of social expenditures needed to rebuild the nation's infrastructure from coast to coast, retrofitting for conservation, and converting to renewables.

It means a guaranteed wage and retraining for new jobs for all those who are displaced during a just transition or whose jobs have been eliminated due to automation (although here more far reaching reforms are needed like a shorter work week with no cut in pay). It means allocating necessary resources to adapt to the inevitable changes wrought by global warming, including extreme weather events, coastal flooding, relocating entire communities, building massive infrastructure works, overcoming drought, and deforestation.

The immense resources needed can only come through a redistribution of society's wealth, which will require a conscious and determined struggle against the capitalist class. The battle will be over who pays for it: the ruling circles or the working class and people?

A similar redistribution struggle will be fought to ensure a $15/hour minimum wage or a living wage, universal health care, and free college tuition.

This will be part of the process of developing mechanisms for directing social investment and imposing further restrictions on capital and the anarchy of the market economy. This implies the need to raise Earth consciousness and intertwine it with class, racial, and gender consciousness.

To again quote Marx, socialism is "the real movement that abolishes the present state of things." Building the movements of today, including defeating the danger of right-wing extremism in the 2016 elections, is a revolutionary act and a crucial part of the actual long-term realization of a uniquely American, modern, people-centered, democratic, peaceful, and green socialism.

John Bachtell is the National Chair of the Communist Party. Previously he was Illinois organizer for the party, and is active in labor, peace, and justice struggles. He grew up in Ohio and currently lives in Chicago.

Amtrak across America: A hemisphere through moving windows

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 09:44:00 +0000

ABOARD THE SOUTHWEST CHIEF - I've driven cross-country a couple of times and found it a memorable adventure. But at my age I don't look forward to long-distance driving any more. I had a conference to attend in Chicago, then a reunion in New Haven, and decided: This is my moment for Amtrak across America. One-way to the Windy City set me back only $138. I opted against the sleeping car accommodation: It was more expensive and I know I don't sleep well on clattering trains.

My seat mate was Alva, an African-American woman, retired from her career with the LAX airport police. Alva was traveling with two relatives to a niece's high school graduation in West Virginia; they still had another train ride ahead of them after Chicago. After some days with the family, they plan to make the same three-day trip back to L.A.

Along the route that the Chief takes on its way out of L.A., we passed through industrial suburbs where the detritus of a metropolis piles up alongside the tracks. We saw half-completed construction sites, stacks of abandoned lumber and tile, beaten-up boxcars off on side tracks, and piles of refuse. Ramshackle houses and trailer parks dotted the horizon. Either window you peered out of, it was the other side of the tracks. There's a fellow named Potemkin that Amtrak might consult with about making the scenery a little more scenic. But it's a real slice of America, decay and dilapidation almost everywhere you look.

The biggest town you hit east of L.A. is San Bernardino, home of the American big-box economy. Warehouses burst at the seams with Chinese goods recently offloaded at Los Angeles - America's largest port - that will soon appear on retail shelves. From the train you see those vast acres of warehouses, whose workers - as well as the truck drivers who drive the containers from the ships to the distribution centers - are among the lowest-paid in the country. They'll soon be on track toward $15 an hour thanks to the California state legislature.

Nighttime across Arizona

In the Sightseer Lounge that first night, after the last of California had slipped by, I met Clifton, who was on his way to see a girlfriend in Bentonville, Ark., home of Walmart. Clifton runs a successful company that circulates petitions for state initiatives around the country, verifying signatures, and if the signer is not a registered voter, well, he can take care of that on the spot. He's a born salesman, very agreeable. If someone he approaches disagrees with the initiative, he'll say, "Yeah, no way that should pass, dude." And if the signer likes the initiative, it's "Hey, this shoulda been the law years ago, right?" He, too, likes the gentle pace of train travel.

From the lighted coach you barely see anything out in the dark. But suddenly there will be an outcropping of light - the street lamps delineating a town, or some corporate endeavor all lit up like day, with visible plumes of smoke. A 24-hour working mine site, perhaps? What else could be so industrial at this hour?

At 4:30 Wednesday morning, I'm still hanging out in the café car when we pull in to Flagstaff, Ariz., which at an elevation of 7000 feet sits adjacent to the largest contiguous Ponderosa pine forest in North America. I had passed through here once before on a road trip and remembered its resort-town feel and its clean air.

At 5:00 a.m. a train attendant walks through the car and sees me writing these notes. "Doing your homework?" she asks cheerily. (The train employees are all unionized.)

The plastic water cups in the café car say, "Rail Consumes Less Energy Than Cars or Air Travel." Possibly some people take trains for that reason. You'd think a conscious Congress would make more of that point and make Amtrak better countrywide.

As it is, though, Amtrak loses money. Only freight is profitable. Amtrak takes a loss on most of its passenger routes, but by federal law it must be maintained. If my map-reading skills are accurate, there are only two states in the Lower 48 (Wyoming and South Dakota) which have absolutely no Amtrak service.

The profitable lines are on the East Coast, especially the Northeast Corridor routes used by commuters. The other route that makes money is the Auto Train, which leaves from Lorton, Va., 25 miles south of Washington, D.C., and ends in Sanford, Fla., near Orlando, allowing folks to avoid the tedious drive south toward their Florida vacation.

There are some family groups traveling together, a couple with three or four children. It's slower traveling this way, but airfares can really add up for so many people. If you don't have to be anywhere in a hurry, this is measurably cheaper. And for the kids, this might be their great adventure for the year.

For much of the route the Southwest Chief mimics the old Route 66, which is often visible a few hundred feet from us. It still bears a good deal of local traffic and in some places it has been modernized into stretches of Interstate. At our best speed we can travel about 90 miles an hour, but then a curve looms up ahead, or an incline, and our progress slows. I've been on bullet trains in Japan, and Amtrak is a sorry comparison. Our old mule lurches along; my penmanship suffers. I've concluded that the flatter the terrain, the more rattle on the rail, but I couldn't prove it.

We're in the high desert now, eastern Arizona heading toward Winslow, a town made famous in a 1972 song by the Eagles. A park, statue and mural commemorate the tune here, and I wonder if a good optional feature on Amtrak might be a soundtrack. The guy across the aisle looks at the dusty shacks on the outskirts of town and says, "Looks like Mexico." Pulling away from the station I see something truly imaginative I wish I had had time to experience up close: A maze, possibly a quarter of an acre in area, devised from waist-high bales of hay. Just past it, a large solar installation, of which we'll see several en route, but not nearly enough to power a nation.

Indian country

We've moved into New Mexico, Navajo country, with grazing horses. I see motels and teepee rooms. With the time change (Arizona doesn't subscribe to Daylight Saving Time) almost immediately the landscape changes. Tall mesas, stone formations - cliffs, pinnacles, erosive columns, sudden sinkholes, rocky flat-tops capped by curls of wind-resistant shrubs and stunted trees, flat stream beds with a bare trickle of muddy water at their bottom reflecting the low morning sun.

We ease into Gallup and sit in the station for several minutes. It's a center for Indian trading emporia. At the window I copy down the names of some of them: "Zuni Fetishes Direct," and "Richardson's: A Great Place to Pawn." About noontime we pull in to Albuquerque, where Native sellers line the tracks with tables of their wares - jewelry, blankets, hats, dolls.

East of Lamy, N.M., the soil becomes red. The pines, the deep gullies and the low rocky hills tell us that we are now passing through the southern end of the Rocky Mountains. We see the snow-covered peaks of northern New Mexico, some of them rising to 12,000 feet, in the distance. At a highway exit not far from us as we rumble on to Las Vegas, N.M., a pickup truck has parked on a promontory so that it is visible to travelers coming along Route 66 from either direction. From a pole mounted on the cab the U.S. and Confederate flags are flying.

A couple have boarded at Albuquerque: Alan is a tour guide for a hotel in the area. He reminds us that right here, in the Sangre de Cristo range at the Glorieta Pass on the Santa Fe Trail, the 1862 "Gettysburg of the West" battle was fought. Here the Confederates won the day, but the Union forces were able to discover where the rebels were hiding their arms, and the U.S. Army destroyed their camp. The Confederates' dream of expanding into the Southwest was ended at this site. Historical reenactments take place here at Pecos National Park. So that explains the Confederate flag.

This area has a colorful history. Famous gunmen such as Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, and Buffalo Bill Cody are the stuff of lore in these parts. Many of them were unsavory chaps, but at least some of the time they strove to clean up the armed gangs that were protecting the big landowners. In those days Lew Wallace was the governor of New Mexico (still a territory then). If that name sounds faintly familiar, it's because he wrote the classic novel Ben Hur.

We're still just about the gunslingin'est country in the world. But a handy old six-shooter seems mighty quaint today compared to the ubiquity of kids with handguns and hateful killers with AR-15s.

At the summit

This stretch of the route in northeast New Mexico is the most mountainous and beautiful of the trip, with the cleanest, clearest, greenest vistas, curvy tracks and surprising sights at each turn. Thanks to the sharp-eyed young woman next to me in the observation car, I saw wild antelope out grazing in the fields. We're at the apogee of our journey, and we've hit it just as the shadows begin to lengthen, geological details start to blur, and evening turns to night.

I take my only true meal in the dining car, and it's only now that I'm really conscious of the train climbing uphill. As the train descends into the Great Plains that roll out from eastern Colorado, we pass through the town of Trinidad, Colo., once famous as the place where most of America's sex-change operations took place. We do Kansas in the dark of our second night.

In the verdant Midwest

When we see daylight again, we are arriving in Kansas City, Mo., ready to tackle our final three states. The rich farmlands of Missouri are worlds away from the last-seen Western landscape, and signal our entry into the Missouri and Mississippi River valleys. The states are smaller here and not so square. We cross the Mississippi at Fort Madison, Iowa, home of the state's maximum security prison for men. The last remaining double swing-span bridge on the Mississippi, the top level for cars and the lower level for our train, stretches 270 feet over this broad watercourse that perhaps more than any other single feature defines the character of the North American continent. Like the railroad, the Mississippi -- with its long tributary rivers -- is a major artery of transportation that American settlers used to build up the country.

Our first stop in Illinois is Galesburg, home of poet and historian Carl Sandburg, and an important stop on the Underground Railroad. There will soon be a National Railroad Hall of Fame established here. From now on, our sights are set on Chicago. The farms and rural towns slowly yield to the suburban lifestyle, and then inexorably to the densely populated outskirts of the great city. Union Station!

Resuming my Amtrek

After three days in Chicago, I resume my Amtrek across the continent. I'm told the trip to New York City's Penn Station is grueling and circuitous, but I've made this much of an investment so far and might as well complete the journey. This leg of the trip cost me $85 - or $223 total coast-to-coast.

The Lake Shore Limited departs Chicago's Union Station at 9:30 pm. A 20-year-old Latino college student from Texas I had met en route to Chicago, a major in urban and transportation studies, turned out to be a passionate train buff. He advised me to be sure to take a seat on the right side of the train going to New York.

At that hour of night not much was to be seen out of any window. At dawn's early light we pulled into Cleveland, having missed Indiana entirely and then two-thirds of Ohio in the dark. The train hugs the southern shore of Lake Erie all the way from Toledo to Buffalo, passing through Erie, Pa., along the way, but not so close that you can see the lake from your window. It's a steady, rhythmic alternation between urban railroad stations and the farmland countryside in between.

Once we passed Buffalo I understood why the Amtrak aficionado told me to sit on the right. Now inland heading east across New York State, there outside my window lay a body of water - the Erie Canal. For a while it looked like a distinct channel with firmly chiseled walls, but then it vanished into woods, marshlands and pools that might or might not have been remnants of the canal. And then the channel would reappear. Echoes of this storied piece of 19th-century construction streamed into my brain. I could almost see the barges floating by heaped with raw materials being shipped from the Western lands over to the manufacturing cities of the East.

As the conductors blared out the names of the stations - Cleveland, Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany - I had a strange sensation of having traveled this route before, but when? How long ago? Then it hit me: This was the route, but in reverse, that the Abraham Lincoln funeral train had taken, along this same Lake Shore route, from Washington to Philadelphia to New York, then up to Poughkeepsie, Albany, Cleveland, Chicago, and then to his final stop in Springfield, Ill. How many times had I listened to composer Earl Robinson and librettist Millard Lampell's magnificent mournful oratorio The Lonesome Train? - "a lonesome train on a lonesome track, seven coaches painted black, a slow train, a quiet train, carrying Lincoln home again." In sleepless Syracuse I dreamed our nation reversing course, back, back in time to April 1865 before that fateful night at Ford's Theatre. What a different land we might be living in today had Lincoln lived.

Watching for signs of the canal kept me occupied until Albany. After that point the barges entered the Hudson River and floated down to New York City. From Albany onward I was on familiar old territory, being a New Englander myself and having often traveled this stretch of rail down the eastern shore of the lordly Hudson, past West Point, past Croton and Beacon where Pete Seeger lived, and into Pennsylvania Station.

Amtrak seals a citizen's mystical union with the land, this great wide continent with its tragic, violent, sometimes heroic history that hums from every mile of laid steel. How do people regard this embattled, conflicted place that we call our United States? Does every square inch of it scream its monetizing potential? Is it a place to own and dominate? Or can we instead conjure visions of balance and joy for all, an Eden we restore to health and sanity? These are the musings of an American traversing the country over three rocking, rolling days in May across four time zones from sea to shining sea.

Go to sleep, you weary hobo.
Watch the towns go drifting by.
Can't you hear the rails a-singin'?
That's the hobo's lullaby.

Photo: The Mississippi River south of Fort Madison, Iowa, from an Amtrak train window. | Eric A. Gordon/PW

The Bernie movement moves on

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 10:18:00 +0000

The night before the California and New Jersey primaries, the Associated Press declared Hillary Clint to be the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. The vote tallies that came in the next day seemed to confirm that prediction.

Leave aside the fact that journalists are supposed to report the news, not make it. Leave aside the fact that not all the votes have been tallied, and won't be for weeks. Leave aside that there have been numerous law suits filled over alleged irregularities - vote fixing, in plain language - some of which will no doubt be found valid.

Leave all that aside, and one thing still remains clear: Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic Party's nominee. None of those "leaving asides" is going to change it at this point in the process.

Sanders supporters are faced with a dilemma. Having had a chance to support a real progressive, it's not going to be easy for many of them to switch gears.

It would have been great if Bernie, the first avowedly socialist candidate in decades, could win the election, but that was always secondary. Bernie Sanders himself has been clear about that. The real prize lies, not in gaining the presidency, but in building a movement, and he is/we are doing that.

The ultra-right would love it if we go off on tangents because we are disappointed in getting so far without getting Bernie into the White House. This isn't the time for that. As much as I don't like to do this, I'm going to hold my nose and vote for HRC, because there is no other choice if we are going to defeat the rise of Caesarism represented by Donald Trump.

There may be some of us, in places like California, where Trump is so unlikely to win the general vote that they can afford the luxury of staying home, voting Green, or some other choice. We are not so lucky here in North Carolina. The fascist right tendency is so strong here that we have to do some unpleasant things to ward it off, like voting for a neoliberal hawkish friend of Big Money. <shudder/>

When Bernie said that on her worst day, Clinton's better than any Republican nominee, he was right. Yeah, if she's elected, we're gonna see a lot of those worst days. But I lived through Nixon, Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George I and II, so I reckon I can live through Clinton II. I don't feel so optimistic about Drumpf.

Politics is no place for purity. Small gains are good if that's all we can get. We rarely get big victories, which is awesome when it happens, every 50 years or so. Averting disaster, such as a Trump presidency, is not so good but damn sure necessary.

Read the history of the Spanish Republic's fight against Franco if you want to know what heart-wrenching defeat is like. Or research the collapse of the Left in America after the Reagan years, the Paris Commune of 1871, or Che Guevara's Bolivian insurrection. This is a little setback compared to those.

Time to put on our big boy/big girl shoes and fight the Right for real. This isn't a parlor game.

Photo: Bernie Sanders salutes his crowd of supporters at a rally at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum on May 27, 2016. | Damian Dovarganes/AP

After Orlando, LGBTQ movement grieves

Mon, 13 Jun 2016 15:50:00 +0000

Around the globe, rainbow flags fly at half-mast today. The LGBTQ community lost 49 of our own at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando this weekend. Dozens more are still fighting to survive in hospital. For gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender persons - for queers of whatever variety - what happened in Florida was not so much of a wake-up call, but rather a reminder.

It was a reminder that acceptance and equality are not something given, but something fought for, and sometimes died for.

It was a reminder - as if any were needed - that even with the gains we've made, there will still be pushback, resistance, and even violence. It was a reminder that winning marriage equality or doing away with 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' were not the end of our road. It was a reminder that not even in our own refuges are we safe from the intolerance and hatred that morally corrupt politicians and extremist voices (of whatever religious, ideological, or political bent) encourage in the society around us.

It was also, however, a reminder to each and every one of us that we are all a part of something much bigger than ourselves. In cities and towns across America and around the world Sunday evening, tens of thousands of LGBTQ folks and allies came together for candlelight vigils, for remembrance ceremonies, and marches.

Mourning

We gathered first of all to mourn those who were lost. With HIV/AIDS, hate crimes, transphobic attacks, and all the rest, mourning is something that those of us in the LGBT community have become all too accustomed to. Like other groups who have had violence visited upon them - Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, immigrants, women - mourning has become part of our collective identity.

But we also gathered to show that we will not be intimidated. We won't go back into our closets. We will not stop being who we are. We will not stop being proud. We will not stop celebrating. We will not stop fighting. And perhaps most of all, we will not stop loving.

As I held hands with my partner in a Toronto park among thousands of other community members and allies last night, I felt the sadness of course, but I also felt the energy that only comes from being part of a collective. The goosebumps and shivering you get when abstract notions like solidarity and unity become physically palpable.

It came from speeches like that of Ontario's first lesbian premier Kathleen Wynne, who started the event with the single statement: "Homophobia cannot be fought with Islamophobia." Her words were a warning not only to avoid engaging in a religious blame game, but to also not allow the LGBTQ community to be cynically used as a weapon by leaders who probably dislike us as much as they the dislike the Muslims they want us to hate.

It came also from the words of El-Farouk Khaki, founder of an LGBTQ-friendly mosque, who told the crowd, paraphrasing the old Industrial Workers of the World slogan, "An injury to an LGBT person is an injury to all of us."

A friend of mine, Albert Harris, lives in Orlando and lost a number of friends at Pulse. Talking with him this morning, he spoke about the fear that the attack has resurrected for us. As he said, it once again highlights "the stigma of being LGBTQ," and reminds us of the need to be vigilant. "Anything can happen, even going out has to be met with more caution. It can pass over time, but the thought remains. Especially when someone we know was lost just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Anger

The stigma is something all of us in the community have known. Sometimes after you've been out of the closet for years, you can almost forget about it. Orlando of course brings it back. It will show up in small ways. A reluctance to give your loved one a quick kiss when you meet up or part ways out in public. A sudden awareness and a worry at the moment when your partner holds your hand as you walk down the sidewalk. The forceful weight of self-censorship when visiting family or going into your workplace. The sense that we might have to once more put on the masks that we thought we had long packed away.

This fear, combined with so many other things, also arouses for us a sense of righteous anger. Anger over divisive legislation concerning what toilet someone can use. Over fake controversies about how wedding cakes for gays are somehow a threat to religious liberty. Anger over politicians who tweet out Bible verses implying that gays had this coming and others who will block any moves to reform gun laws. Over religious extremists who hang gay men and throw them from buildings. Over governments that say we should all be executed simply for the act of loving someone.

Anger over the fact that the gay men of Orlando are legally barred from donating the blood that could save the lives of their brothers and sisters who were shot. Anger over the fact that a gay club - one of the few places where we can go to feel safe being ourselves and spending time with the ones we love - has been violated.

Anger that a young man's last communication with his mother is a text message saying, "I'm gonna die."

Action

It's the kind of anger that inspires you to action.

As I left the park last night, I kissed my partner on the cheek. I was thankful - for the love we have found with one another. But also thankful to be part of a great movement of humanity. A movement that has revolutionized society since it first broke onto the stage of history at Stonewall 47 years ago this month.

If it did nothing else, Orlando reminds us that we still have work to do. And if the mass vigils, demonstrations, and shows of solidarity are an indicator, we've got a lot of friends in the fight.

As we march in Pride parades and demonstrations this month - and as we cast our ballots in November - let's remember that Orlando happened to all of us.

“Fight for peace and justice”: Mike Alexander’s final request

Mon, 13 Jun 2016 13:19:00 +0000

Mike Alexander, Steelworker, union and community activist, and leader of the local branch of the Communist Party, died at his home at the age of 65 in Youngstown, Ohio on June 3, following a four month battle with pancreatic cancer. He is survived by Diane, his wife of 33 years, his daughter, Dr. Amy M. Hochadel, an international urban economic development planner in London, England, and his son, Saker, a middle school teacher in Columbus, Ohio.

The family greeted hundreds of friends and co-workers at a local funeral chapel and reception on June 8. The people came to offer support and share their grief at the passing of someone who had done so much for their community; someone who loved life and radiated warmth, friendship, and human solidarity to all who knew him.

Symbolizing his zest for life, Mike's bright red Mazda Miata sport convertible complete with a golf bag and clubs was parked in front of the entrance.

The walls of the chapel were adorned with pictures of Mike enjoying his family at home and on vacations or taking part in demonstrations. Posted on one wall was the obituary he wrote himself that was published in the Youngstown Vindicator. It stated that he was "a steadfast and passionate activist in the struggle for peace, justice, and the working class, and was a proud, lifelong member of the Communist Party USA."

On a table below were copies of Volume One of Capital by Karl Marx and "Working Class USA" by Gus Hall, the former General Secretary of the Party, who led the 1937 Little Steel Strike to establish the Steelworkers union in nearby Warren and Niles. Also on the table was a book in Arabic entitled Bejjeh, the name of the village in Lebanon, his parents were from.

Mike felt particularly close to the Party's longtime National Chairman Henry Winston and Winston was the middle name he gave his son.

Mike worked in the open hearth at U.S. Steel from his late teens until the mill closed in 1980. He then worked as a union organizer and staff representative for SEIU and AFSCME before getting a job as a laborer and surveyor with the Mahoning County Engineer's Office, where he was a member of Teamsters Local 407 for 20 years until retirement in 2012. He represented the local as a delegate to the Youngstown Labor Council.

In a 2004 presentation to the Socialist Scholars Conference, Mike recalled that in 1969, he "was completely radicalized by the Vietnam War," and "flunked the mental test" given by the draft board, "tore up all the papers" he got and sent them back with "not a very nice letter" and "that's the last I heard from them."

He soon joined the Communist Party and became a leader of the party's Joe Dallet club, named after a Youngstown resident who died fighting against fascism in 1937 as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.

Mike got active in the Mahoning Valley Coalition for Peace and Justice and was key to mobilizing thousands of protesters in demonstrations against the Gulf War in downtown Youngstown. He also worked with the Youngstown Arab community center in the fight to end Israeli occupation and establish a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza.

Mike was active in local progressive Democratic Party politics.

Comradeship and solidarity pervaded the reception where a poem by Langston Hughes was read, a toast was offered, and a recording off Billy Bragg's version of The Internationale was played.

According to the obituary, although he loved to travel, Mike "had the most fun when he was hanging out with his buddies, drinking beer and wine, eating good food, listening to great music, and talking (loudly) about politics, especially when all these came together on a warm summer night, whether downtown or at a cottage on Lake Erie."

"The family has asked that in lieu of prayers or flowers, donations be made to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, www.pancan.org, and Mike would request that we all get off our butts and fight for peace and justice."

Coming up short on places to live

Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:05:00 +0000

My wife Susan and I just returned from a long stay in Kaua'i, Hawaii's northernmost large island and one of the state's five counties. Often called the Garden Isle for its verdant mountains, rich floral palette and sparse population, it's gentrifying rapidly - with more hotel projects, more homes and more cars, all moving faster.

While we were there the local newspaper announced a major grant for affordable housing. The state will receive three million dollars, and half of it will go to tiny Kaua'i. The money comes from the Housing and Urban Development Department's National Housing Trust Fund, and it is designated for families earning less than 30 percent of the area's median income. To be able to afford rent on a two-bedroom apartment in Kaua'i means earning at least $23.50 an hour, more than twice the minimum wage.

I was happy for Kaua'i, so when I returned home, I wanted to know what California received.

Turns out that the HUD Fund provides a grant to each state on the basis of a formula. Our share is $10 million. So Hawaii, with about 1.5 million people, will receive a little less than a third of what California gets, with a population over 20 times larger.

Now $10 million is nothing to sneer at, but it wouldn't even begin to fill the affordable housing deficit in Los Angeles. Zillow, the apartment rental website, reported that in the second quarter of 2015, renters in our region paid 48.9 percent of their incomes for housing. That's up from 35.6 percent that tenants paid between 1985 and 2000, and a higher percentage of income than renters paid in New York. According to a UCLA study quoted in the Los Angeles Business Journal, since 2000, housing prices in Los Angeles have risen four times faster than incomes.

For the desperately poor, housing costs take even more of their income. Adam Murray, executive director of the Inner City Law Center, says almost 290,000 people here spent 90 percent of their incomes on rent. That puts a lot of households on the edge of homelessness. But it's not a story confined to Southern California. Across the country not a single county provides enough affordable rental units to meet the demand.

The shortage of affordable rental housing can be traced directly to the 1980s when the federal government sharply curtailed domestic spending. For affordable housing, the funds were already inadequate. Despite the pastiche of programs and tax credits that Congress glued together over the decades since, support for housing remains inadequate and overly complicated.

The local money dried up in California as well. Governor Brown dissolved Redevelopment Agencies, which in many cities like Los Angeles and Santa Monica provided major funding for worker housing. Since then he has vetoed the legislative efforts to replace those resources, and affordable housing seems not to top his priority list.

Meanwhile a little-known state law threatens renters across the state. The Ellis Act allows a landlord to remove units from the rental market or demolish an apartment building and replace it. Either way, tenants lose housing they can afford. Units replaced by something else, like a commercial building, vanish, or the new apartments, no longer under rent control, cost more than the old tenants can afford. In Santa Monica, with only 27,000 units, 2000 have disappeared since 1985, according to the Rent Control Board, and all the new apartments built in the city are exempt from any rent regulation. In Los Angeles 143,000 units that were affordable to families earning less than $44,000 a year in 2000 have disappeared. Los Angeles needs to build 5300 affordable apartments each year to keep up with demand, but since 2006 averages about 1100.

That's not enough. As Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, told the Los Angeles Times, "The people who make Los Angeles run - such as the hotel workers, the service workers, the teachers and the bus drivers and the regular working people - are being run out of Los Angeles."

Whether on an island or here, the question remains: How much do we value the labor, the lives, and the families of people who have to work 92 hours a week at minimum-wage jobs to rent a one-bedroom apartment in California? Shouldn't they have a decent place to live?

Rev. Jim Conn is the founding minister of the Church in Ocean Park and served on the Santa Monica City Council and as that city's mayor. He helped found Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Los Angeles, and was its second chair, and was a founder of Santa Monica's renter's rights campaign.

Reprinted by permission of the author and Capital & Main.

Photo: Wikimedia (CC)