People Before Profit blog

Faith in service to worker justice

Fri, 30 May 2014 14:28:00 +0000

Rabbi Jonathan D. Klein, Executive Director of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice-Los Angeles (CLUE-LA), spoke on May 22 at their annual Giants of Justice breakfast in Los Angeles. To introduce his remarks to 500 CLUE-LA friends, activists, and supporters, he showed a video of President Lyndon Johnson. (Eric A. Gordon edited his talk for publication.)

Notice the date stamp? Fifty years ago today, President Johnson shared his vision for creating a Great Society. Within his next four-plus years in office, this country witnessed a sweeping progressive agenda second only to Roosevelt's New Deal: Medicare, Medicaid, Project Head Start, Upward Bound, Social Security expansion, the Teacher Corps, the 1964 Civil Rights Act; in 1965 the Voting Rights Act, the Immigration and Nationality Services Act, the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act, and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities; in 1966 the Child Nutrition Act, and the Endangered Species Preservation Act; in 1967 the establishment of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (NPR), cultural centers, the expansion of transit policy and capacity by establishing the Department of Transportation; in 1968 the Truth-in-Lending Act. The list goes on and on.

That era of bold federal leadership, of vision and a focus on "the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit," as Johnson said, seems so far away. Whatever happened to Johnson's Great Society, when workers were protected, and we could dream of fixing the world?

While Johnson's Great Society sounds almost unimaginable today, CLUE-LA's Just and Sacred Society is being built right now. We seek justice in this city, and we pray. President Johnson asked if we will "join in the battle, to give every citizen the full equality, which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin," and we say, "Amen!" "Yes!" "Sí se puede!"

CLUE combines a Jewish Commandment, a Christian Calling, a Unitarian Lighting of the Chalice, a UCC God Still Speaking, a Catholic Mass in the Streets - a hammer of justice, a bell of freedom, a song about love. It is our duty to imagine a Just and Sacred Society - not just hollow rhetorical promises of doing good, but a close, open-hearted examination of the ills of society and a strategic, thoughtful, active, day-in-day-out, in-the-trenches response, working in collaboration with earnest partners in this city; not dualistic, simplistic, sloganistic or impulsive activism, but a heartfelt response, not standing idly by the blood of our neighbors, like David carrying a slingshot in one hand, a harp in the other.

Our nonviolence is more powerful than the hoses in Mississippi, than corporate financing of government officials. We shall overcome some day, because we seek not just a just society, but a sacred one, in which connectedness and love and a holistic relationship with the planet and its inhabitants triumph. We still believe.

CLUE-LA has been busy creating that Just and Sacred Society:

Over 20 carwashes host union carwasheros without fear of retaliation!
The TRUST Act brought millions of Californians out of the shadows!
Long Beach hotel workers earn a living wage!
Loyola Marymount, Cal Lutheran, La Verne, Whittier and Pomona College food service workers are safe and thriving!
Walmart workers know we've got their backs!
Toll truck drivers are safe, and many more are on their way to safety!
People will soon be able to get all the way to Century City with mass transit!

Our work is bountiful, meaningful, creative, and a blessing. We are wherever people are invested in turning a rich society into a Great Society, into a Just and Sacred Society. The day is short and the task great, but CLUE-LA is the premier organization to roll up its sleeves, identify what's broken, and apply elbow grease for justice!

President Johnson asked the nation, "Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?" I ask you, "Will you join in the battle to build a Just and Sacred Society, in which all are treated with the inherent respect befitting anyone created in the Divine Image?

And will you pause to remind yourself why we fight? Why do we seek justice in our city? Because this is a beautiful, fantastic, interconnected planet with a rainbow of people, plants, and possibilities!

CLUE-LA organizes people of faith to support workers in their struggle for a living wage, health benefits, respect and a voice in their workplace. It partners with community organizations, elected officials and the labor movement to ensure support for working people and their families, and to establish worker-friendly public policy. CLUE-LA also endorses immigration reform and restorative justice as important measures to lift people out of poverty.

Photo: CLUE-LA Facebook page.

Working class roots are a precious legacy

Wed, 28 May 2014 15:32:00 +0000

When my grandfather packed up his family to move cross-state in pursuit of employment, he could hardly have imagined what the future would hold for them. It was the early 1970s, and good-paying jobs were scarce in southeastern Ohio. With hopeful prospects, the O'Neils left the foothills of Appalachia, hills they had inhabited for generations, and moved to the Detroit area. Grandpa knew the value of a good name, honest labor, and solidarity - something he learned from his parents who possessed little else besides these. In this new environment, Grandpa was able to provide a better lifestyle for his family than he received from his coal-mining father, and everyone who knew him associated our family name with hard work and integrity.

I am writing this from the café of my private college, miles away from Detroit, where I have been reflecting on my academic career and preparing mentally for an approaching graduation. I will soon enter the job market and begin a decades-long adventure as one of the educated working class. The opportunities ahead of me are far grander than any my grandfather could have imagined for himself, but they would be impossible without the foundation he began laying for me over 40 years ago, a foundation rested squarely on working class values.

"You're an O'Neil - that should mean something to people," my grandpa told me once, when as a little boy I was caught in a fib. He went on: "When they think about you, they should think about the good you stand for."

There were always economic ups and downs for our family, but the one thing that remained constant was his integrity. People knew that he would stand up for what was right; he let them see that a good name has no connection to a bank account. In fact, he was always reasonably suspicious of those who attempted to let their money build their reputation. Rich or poor, doing what is right is what matters most and it should be the hallmark of any human being, regardless of class.

To my grandfather, what is right, what matters most, is that which is equitable to all and builds solidarity among the working class. Grandpa knew his share of strikes, and many of them hit at very inconvenient times for himself and the family. Even when the strike came at a low point economically, my grandpa stood with his fellow workers and demanded that their voice be heard. Sometimes their demands were met. Sometimes they were not. But success did not necessarily depend on whether or not the bosses caved and threw the workers a bone once in a while. He measured it by how unified the voice of the workers became, how willing they were to form bonds of solidarity that could not be broken by the attempts of union-busters.

To be working class, especially in the time of my grandparents and their parents, was to possess nothing but what was inscribed in your character. They carried their most precious possessions around with them everywhere they went - and they shared them generously through genuine smiles and helping hands. By such strong solidarity, they lived the motto "An injury to one is an injury to all." My working class ancestors didn't need education, banks, or institutions running the show; they had each other and they had themselves, the only place they could assuredly place their trust.

I am not descended from bankers, Wall Street moguls, or CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Surrounded by their grandchildren, I sit here in my college café and whisper words of gratitude for my distinct heritage. It is impossible for me to be ashamed of descending from Appalachian coal miners. Far from it! I am proud of the work they did. I glow at the thought of being bred from those whose toil built the heartland of America. These men and women understood what life was about, they understood what it meant to stand for something - something that is more powerful than all the gold of the capitalists.

Photo: Amy CC 2.0

Meet author Victor Grossman at the Left Forum.

Tue, 27 May 2014 18:21:00 +0000

Meet Victor Grossman in New York City at the People's World table at the Left Forum, May 30 - June 1, at CUNY.

Grossman writes from Berlin, and many of his articles have been published on Peoplesworld.org. Some of his recent articles include

German Left party tackles the tough issues at its congress

Germany's Ukraine policy aims for the impossible

Low wage workers on the move in Germany too

At the People's World table, Grossman will be autographing copies of his book, "Crossing the River: A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany."

For more information on the Left Forum 2014, visit their website or Facebook page.

Mr. Grossman will participate in a panel on alternative media and political activism at the forum, Saturday May 31 from 10 a.m. till noon. More information on the panel here.

Photo: Victor Grossman visiting Buchenwald. Wikimedia Commons.

Florida communists have a "great convention"

Fri, 23 May 2014 14:07:00 +0000

ORLANDO, Fla. - The Communist Party USA, Florida District, a party with a growing presence within the Sunshine State's progressive movement, held its convention here recently. This was the first such gathering in the state since 2006.

The party here has steadily built relationships with the various forces that make up the people's movement, and has picked up younger members who have helped spur the growth of active party clubs in central Florida and Tampa, with more being organized in other parts of Florida.

The Florida convention was one of many such events that have taken place around the country in the run-up to the CPUSA's 30^th National Convention in Chicago, June 13-15.

Delegates to the Orlando convention elected a new Florida district committee, the party's leadership body here, and also elected delegates to the national convention.

The Florida convention included workshops on racism and organizing skills, such as relationship building and fundraising. Discussion periods allowed for lively exchanges of viewpoints on issues facing the party and the people's movement.

Convention guests included Jarvis Tyner, CPUSA national vice chair, who spoke on the future of the party and 21^st century socialism and also gave a presentation on Marxism.

Tyner warned that "very backward and very dangerous reactionary forces" pose a threat to the gains that have been won over the last several decades by organized labor, immigrants, people of color and other progressive forces.

"They want to take us back politically, economically, psychologically before the civil rights revolution, to negate all that was won," said Tyner. "They want to crush and eliminate the U.S. labor movement. They are not playing." He continued, "We're going to have to put up quite a fight to make sure that it doesn't happen."

"They want to smash the immigrant rights movement. They see the 12 million immigrants in this country literally as criminals who ought to be pushed out," said Tyner. "As they say, make it so bad for them, that they will 'self-deport.'"

"They want to turn back to the days of Jim Crow elections where we don't have the right to vote," he said. "They have already, through the policies of mass incarceration, removed millions of people of color from the voting rolls."

"This is the battle that we face, and this is why we have pursued a policy that the main thing we have to do now is defeat the right wing," Tyner said, to lay the groundwork for the people's movement to build progressive change in the U.S.

CPUSA members in Florida participate in every facet of these struggles, working for social justice and to push back the ultra-right and its standard-bearers in the state - Republican Gov. Rick Scott and the state legislature, which the GOP has controlled since 1996. Republicans, at the behest of big business, right-wing religious fundamentalists and other forces, have pursued an agenda of cuts to social services and education, passage of Florida's infamous "stand your ground" law, tax breaks for corporations, and hostility to worker rights, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, reproductive rights, immigrants, the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion.

Struggles against racism, sexism, "stand your ground" and against attacks on reproductive rights are important to Camila Valenzuela, 24, who has been a member of the CPUSA for three years.

Valenzuela's mother is also a communist - "the black sheep" of a conservative, Catholic family, says Valenzuela. Her mother was a child in Chile when the democratically elected government of socialist President Salvador Allende was overthrown in a bloody 1973 coup organized by Gen. Augusto Pinochet with the backing of the U.S. She eventually became a teacher before coming to the U.S.

Although this background "sparked" something in Camila, and gave her knowledge and understanding of socialism, it didn't mean that she, too, was destined to become a communist, she said. Instead it was her own personal experiences that led Valenzuela to become actively involved in building democracy and socialism through the Communist Party USA.

"It was seeing my struggles, and how they aligned with my mom's struggles, and with the ideas of Marx and Lenin," said Valenzuela, who works to build membership in Florida for the Young Communist League, a CPUSA-sponsored group for teenagers and young adults.

"I enjoyed the convention very much," said Dave Reid, who became a member of the CPUSA in 1944 when he was 16 years old. "I admire the leadership and the participation of the people, and I would say it was a great big plus for our party."

"I've been exploited all my life" by capitalism, said Reid, a retired union member who grew up an orphan in a foster home on Long island and whose first job as a teenager was harvesting vegetables.

"I was always thinking about the injustices that were around me all the time, and the unfairness," he said. "I was very conscious of the fact that I was an orphan."

Meeting members of the CPUSA and being exposed to the party's ideas and literature, including, at the time, the Daily Worker (predecessor to today's People's World), and learning about the USSR, said Reid, helped crystallize his resolve to struggle for a better world for working people, which he still does as a member of the CPUSA's Tampa Bay Club.

Patrick Foote, 24, has been a member of the CPUSA for a year, and says that one of the most important areas of struggle for him is advancing the right of workers to organize.

"I believe that capitalism, inevitably, is going to be the death of our species. Economic anarchy will only harm over time," he said, noting the effects of the profit system on the environment and indigenous peoples.

"Building socialism to me is building a plan to feed everyone, house everyone, clothe everyone, and have everyone have a voice" in how society is run, Foote said.

Photo: via Joshua Leclair

Who is to blame for the crisis at the VA?

Thu, 22 May 2014 16:38:00 +0000

Once again the American people are being treated to a disgusting display of hypocrisy. This time health care for our veterans is the political football that is being used by the right-wing politicians and the right-wing media.

Fox News, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell and others are suddenly concerned about alleged cooking of the books at Veterans Administration hospitals - trying to make it look like wait times for vets in need of care are shorter than they actually are

They've coupled their "concern" with demands that Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki resign and with new attacks on the "incompetent" Obama administration, which they accuse of reneging on its commitment to good care for veterans.

U.S. Senate Republicans blocked legislation 11 weeks ago that would have expanded federal health care and education programs for veterans. Mitch McConnell and his gang on Capitol Hill said that $24 billion cost of the expansion of care for veterans would bust the budget. Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama didn't even mention veterans in his speech opposing the bill. "We can't be spending more money when the ink isn't even dry on our last spending bill," he said.

Neither of these gentlemen, nor Fox news, nor any of the others most outraged by the problems at the VA were at all concerned, however about budget busting or dry ink when they systematically approved spending bills for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that we now know totaled more than $6 trillion dollars. The spend fest in Afghanistan continues today.

And it was then-General Shinseki, by the way, who put his career on the line by defying then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by telling the truth about how the war in Iraq was going to fail. Shinseki said it would take several times the number of troops the Bush administration was contemplating especially if the U.S. was going to take responsibility for seeing to it that Iraqis would receive food, water and essential services after the U.S. invasion. It took courage for Shinseki to tell the truth especially since the Bush administration had just forced the retirement of Admiral William Fallon, then the head of U.S. Central Command for saying we were overextending ourselves with the overseas wars.

The right-wing lawmakers ignored the warnings and went ahead with the war anyway - caring nothing about what would happen to the people of Iraq (estimates are that up to a million were killed) or to the U.S. troops during and after the war.

The truth is the VA was not equipped to deal with the aftermath of two multi-trillion dollar land wars. To deal with the aftermath properly the agency has to be modernized and beefed up and given far more, not fewer resources.

Despite this reality, however, the Obama administration has actually presided over some improvements in the process for getting veterans into the health system and then getting them to be seen. Old paper files have been replaced with a modern computerized system.

The problem is that as a result of these wars there is a whole new generation of veterans in need of care. Because of advances in battlefield medicine in recent years more vets return home with wounds and disabilities, both physical and mental. Even though the total number of veterans is, in the 21^st century, going down, the number seeking and needing care is rising due to the Iraq and Afghanistan debacles.

The VA has tried to meet some of these needs with new outpatient clinics and a program to reduce homelessness among vets that the agency runs has actually contributed to a reduction in homelessness among vets by 24 percent.

None of this is to diminish the importance of clearing up the problems at the VA. Anything it takes, up to and including performance hearings, investigations and even dismissal needs to be considered. All of these must be done, of course, with strict regard for the rights of workers at the agency - workers who are known, by the way, for delivering excellent care to those who are actually in the hospitals or clinics run by the VA.

We cannot trust, however, most of the Republican lawmakers and their backers in the media who are yelling about this the loudest. The huge rise in the need for services for veterans over the last period and the resulting increased workloads for VA staff are the direct result of the horrible wars these same people were so willing to support.

Photo: Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki, center, and President Barack Obama, right, attend a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., Nov. 11, 2013. Wikimedia Commons.

Want a better world? Get on board with the new labor movement

Wed, 21 May 2014 13:59:00 +0000

Social change, and especially deep-going social change in a progressive, left and socialist direction doesn't just "happen." It requires, first of all, real, active, and politically far-seeing social movements on the ground.

And the labor movement -- energized, growing, membership-driven, and class and democratic minded -- is an essential cornerstone of those social movements.

Not everyone in the left and progressive community is of this mind. Some assign the labor movement no part in the process of change; some a bit part; others include labor as just one in a list of political actors.

Some greet the new initiatives and new possibilities in the labor movement with faint praise or cynicism. Contrast the reception on the left to Occupy as compared to last year's groundbreaking AFL-CIO convention! It was gaga in one case and largely ho-hum in the other.

This doesn't make any sense.

Labor in particular and the multi-racial, female-male, young and old, native born and immigrant, gay and straight, abled and disabled, working class in general are change agents. When organized, united, and equipped with a class and democratic vision, the working class and its organized sector possess transformative power -- that is, the capacity, especially when allied to other social movements, to radically and democratically realign politics, economics, culture, and popular thinking.

Of course, labor isn't anywhere close to being a transformative actor at this moment. In fact, union membership is at its lowest level since World War II. Unions are on the defensive. The internal and external barriers to reconstituting a vibrant and growing labor movement are formidable, and the left in labor, while growing, is still small in numbers.

Now if this were the entire story, it would be a "bummer." But it isn't. The story is still unfolding and it includes a significant grouping of labor leaders and activists (some who are not yet, but hoping to be soon, union members) whose aim is to break out of this defensive shell, reshape labor's understanding of itself and its role in society, organize and welcome millions of new members into the family, and turn the tables on the corporate class and especially its right-wing supporters in the corridors of political power.

To name a few of its most important initiatives:

Organizing low-wage workers;
Reaching out to new allies and social movements;
Drawing people of color and women into leadership positions;
Welcoming immigrants into the labor movement;
Locking arms with brothers and sisters in other countries;
Ramping up labor's independent role in the political/electoral process.

These initiatives (and the new mentality that accompanies them) aren't yet the dominant template in the labor movement. But this developing culture of solidarity, struggle, and innovation is gaining momentum - and challenging an old culture of class adaptation, deeply embedded inertia and bureaucratic ways, and conservative, protective, and narrowly job-focused modes of thinking and acting.

In the early 1930s, labor was in a similar fix. I'm sure many at the time, including its friends, entertained doubts about its future. But by the mid-30s, new trends in the working class movement - advocating new policies, slogans, and "outside the box" thinking and organization - caught the imagination of millions of unorganized workers, especially in the basic manufacturing sector. And out of that process - thanks to a new labor organization, the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO), the actions (spontaneous and organized) and unity of millions, and a growing Communist Party and left - came a revitalized labor movement on a broad scale. And that, in turn, became the power base for a far broader people's coalition that was at the heart of the political, economic, and cultural transformations that swept our country in that tumultuous decade.

All analogies suffer, and this is one is no different. But I believe that, much like the 1930s, the growth and consolidation of today's new trends in labor can have a similar trajectory.

Of particular importance to this process is the organization of the vast pool -- tens of millions -- of low-wage workers in big-box, fast-food, retail and service industries - sometimes called "non-traditional" or "alt-labor." These workers, if organized, will bring energy, ideas, fighting spirit, connections to their communities, and, of course, numerical strength into the existing labor movement much like the workers in auto, steel, mining, electrical, rubber, etc. did in the 1930s.

Many of them are people of color, women, immigrants, and youth who are also fighting for racial, gender, and immigrant justice and possess close ties to the vast pool of unemployed.

This campaign will extend labor's organizational presence and reach geographically too - in rural towns, suburbs, and exurbs, red states, and the South and parts of the "heartland."

Some might argue that these sections of the working class don't have the same structural economic power that mass production workers had in the 1930s, but strategic power doesn't simply rest on location in the productive apparatus.

It is built in other ways as well. In fact, ultimately, strategic power is politically constituted. It rests on self-organization and bold initiative, broad, deep, and many-sided unity, independent political action and expansive alliances, a burst of anti-capitalist thinking, and an active left and Communist Party.

No matter how one looks at it, the organization of this massive grouping of the working class - call it "alt-labor," "non-traditional" or what you will - is a big deal, and not only for the labor movement. The challenge for every democratic, progressive, and radical minded person and organization is to get on board the train.

It is leaving the station!

Photo: Workers and supporters rally for a $15 hourly wage at the Rock n' Roll McDonald's in Chicago, May 15, 2014, part of a global day of fast-food worker "Fight for 15" actions. Earchiel Johnson/PW

Chris Christie’s hero

Mon, 19 May 2014 13:39:00 +0000

In spite of his schoolyard bully personality and miserable record as governor of New Jersey, which today leads the nation in foreclosures and has seen real living standards for the majority of its residents decline, Chris Christie's propaganda handlers continue to portray him as a "moderate Republican," an alternative to the misnamed "tea party" ultra-rightists. Since they keep on saying that over and over again, there may be some who believe it.

At the end of the article I have noted Christie's praise for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in a recent Time Magazine issue devoted to what they call the "100 most influential people in the world" - a huge exaggeration, to say the least.

Below, in Christie's own words, one can see what he really stands for. His praise of Walker, the Koch-owned governor of Wisconsin, shows his true political colors.

By the way, Christie's commentary on Walker is as accurate as Walker's self-congratulatory statements. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - which supported Walker in 2010 and opposed his recall in 2012 (which Christie calls a "re-election") - has listed Wisconsin's economic outlook as 49th in the country, using a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

It has also called upon Walker, who is running for re-election this year, to make good on his promises of jobs. And polls in the state (which is much more of a swing state than New Jersey) show him in a virtual heat for re-election with his most likely Democratic opponent. Like Christie in New Jersey, Walker rejected federal support for a high speed rail link between Milwaukee and Madison to the tune of 870 million and has rejected federal support for the Affordable Care Act.

Christie would have done pretty much what Walker, a stand in for the Koch Brothers has done, if he had the Republican majority that Walker has had in the state legislature. And, if the New Jersey state Democratic party had supported Barbara Buono in the way that the Wisconsin state Democratic party is rallying behind Walker's opponent, New Jersey, a stronger liberal labor state than Wisconsin, might not be moving forward in terms of economic and social policy, instead of being mired in government deadlock and the Christie corruption of the Bridgegate scandal.

Photo: AP

The biker and the reverend: How I learned history at work

Fri, 16 May 2014 17:33:00 +0000

Editors' note: Join John Dick, recipient of the National Association of Letter Carriers' humanitarian of the year award, and Roscoe Woods, president of Local 480-481 of the American Postal Workers Union for an online conversation/Q&A session on the fight to save the U.S. post office, Tuesday, May 20, 8 p.m., here.

The iconic image stares at me every day from under the plastic glass of my workspace. Black and white, stark and strangely menacing, the photogenic subjects strike the viewer's eyes with a hypnotic effect. A tall blonde with golden Nordic braids stands to one side of a pair of men with their backs turned to the camera. Between the men stands a diminutive brunette with a bag of peanuts in one hand and a locked chastity belt surrounding her pelvis. But these women are not the focus of this framed shot. It is the words sewn into the backs of the Levi vests these men are baring to the camera: OUTLAWS. This snapshot of 1968 biker Americana is not resting under my glass because of its undeniable, intrinsic coolness factor. One of the dudes, the ruffian front and center adorned with chains and long hair, is Moses. He was my father.

I show this photo off at work a lot. I like to see the reactions of folks to the grimy reality of biker life in the 1960s.

James saw it one day and it started a chain of events that neither one of us could imagine. Kinda like "six degrees of separation," but maybe more like just two. I have seen the T-shirts that say, "Life is good." I say "Life is weird, and weird is good." Let me tell you about James.

First time I see James at work he is leaning on a broom. Leaning on that broom and holding court. You know, telling a long story. One of the first things I remember him saying to me was, "Don't let this broom I got in my hand fool you. It's only a prop." Another was, "My name is James. Don't call me Jim, or Jimmy, and definitely don't call me Jimbo. Last guy that called me Jimbo got socked." I always called him James, and we developed quite a repertoire. Funny thing was, I thought he was white. Only slightly darker than me, I figured he was Italian or maybe Mediterranean. One day I see him with a "Million Man March" shirt on. Too embarrassed to ask him myself, I ask a fellow black coworker about James and that shirt. "He's a brother, man." I must have looked dumfounded. "You know African American, if that makes you feel better." I just spoke with James today and we still laugh about that moment of ascertainment.

So this one day James points at the picture and says to me, "You know, I grew up in Highland Park. Some of these biker dudes used to hang around the neighborhood. One guy had a house on the corner of Chandler and Brush. He was a real badass and kind of ran the neighborhood. We were just a bunch of snot-nosed kids but we hung out at the store across the street and watched all the action." I point to the photo under the glass. My finger taps my father's back. "You were watching my Pops." Our small worlds collided while our jaws dropped.

One day at work I called my father, and James had a chance to speak with him about the old days. That was pretty cool for both of them. As James and I talked, over the next few months, he caught on about my politics and my interest in the history of labor unionism, the civil rights struggles, and how the two were intertwined. He began to tell me about this relative of his, his grandfather, who was famous in the Detroit civil rights movement and labor history. "He was right in the middle of it, I am telling you, Dr. King used to come into town and stay at his house. My grandfather was Reverend Charles A. Hill." Just as when James was a young man staring in wonder at the biker action at the corner of Chandler and Brush, I, as an adult, have pondered in amazement at the great deeds of Reverend Hill.

The Rev. Charles A. Hill was born in Detroit in 1893 to Mary Hill, a German American woman, and Edward Hill, an African-American dentist. This multi-racial birth was not accepted well in the times of the 1890s and created difficulties for the family. Charles spent some years of his childhood in an orphanage but eventually graduated from three colleges. He became an ordained minister and took over as pastor of Hartford Avenue Baptist Church in 1920. The church had 35 members at that time. By 1945, the church grew to well over 1,000 members and became one of the largest African American churches in Detroit.

Hill was a man of enormous conviction. His leadership was a blending of political, personal, and pastoral. Rev. Hill was enormously pro-labor and he made his opinions heard loud and clear. During the United Auto Workers' Ford organizing campaign in the late 1930s and very early 1940s, Hill made his church available for union meetings. "If they met in a union hall," Hill explained, "then some of the spies from Ford would take down their automobile license numbers and they lost their jobs. By holding the meeting in a church, it would be difficult for them to prove that we were discussing union matters." UAW Local 600 was actually organized at the church.

Rev. Hill's active roles in promoting union organizing led him to be a leader in the civil rights struggles of the times as well. He preached evangelical liberalism: the belief that the liberation of the black worker was tied to the unionism movement. From the pulpit his message was a radical one for the times; he tied unionism to the Christian belief. He opened his church to such nonconformists as W.E.B. Dubois, and at a time when no one else had the courage to do so, he allowed Paul Robeson to sing in the church. He was the first African American to run for Detroit City Council. He was active in marches and demonstrations to increase public housing and job opportunities for the African American community of Detroit. In 1942 he was elected president of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP.

At times, he paid a price for his convictions. The Detroit "Red Squad," a part of the Criminal Intelligence Bureau, spied on him and kept a series of secret files on him. J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hounded him and many of the activists in the church. James, Hill's grandson, tells the story of the last house that Rev. Hill lived in on West Grand Boulevard. The FBI would come by the house when there were guests and take license plate numbers of the cars. If you worked for the city, county, or state government it was a certainty that you would lose your job. Rev. Hill was subpoenaed before the House Committee on Un-American Activities because of his advocacies.

Despite all the public and personal attacks on his character, Hill and his wife, Georgia, were very highly regarded among family, friends, and community. The Hills, married in 1919, raised eight children together. One, James Wesley Hill, is my friend's father. Rev. Hill continued to be the pastor of Hartford Avenue (now Hartford Memorial) Baptist Church until his retirement in 1968. Rev. Charles A. Hill passed away in 1970.

(To learn more about Rev. Hill's involvement in the labor movement, read Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit, by Professor Angela D. Dillard, director of the Residential College at the University of Michigan. The book also focuses on two other ministers active in the movement: Rev. Lewis Bradford, who opened a shelter for the homeless in downtown Detroit, and Rev. Claude Williams, who worked with union members to bring the message of social and economic justice into the factories.)

Thank you, James for sharing the stories of your grandfather with me. He is an inspiration for us to keep on loving those around us and to keep fighting for social justice.

Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist - keep loving, keep fighting.

Photo: The Rev. Charles A. Hill. Detroit African American History Project/Walter Reuther Library, Wayne State University

Connecticut Communist Party adopts Economic Bill of Rights

Fri, 16 May 2014 16:01:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn.-Messages from labor and community leaders, participation by young people, and adoption of a Connecticut Economic Bill of Rights highlighted the lively and powerful convention of the Connecticut district of the Communist Party on May Day weekend.

"It's time to turn up the heat," said Rev. Scott Marks, recognizing the YCL and New Elm City Dream youth group who have been marching to end violence with the theme "Jobs for Youth - Jobs for All." The demands that the youth have brought forward have been adopted as top priorities by the New Haven Board of Alders on which union members and their allies hold a super majority.

Jennifer Graham and Jackie Marks, high school students representing New Elm City Dream on the mayor's planning committee to rebuild the Q House youth center, got loud applause when they explained, "We wanted to bring the violence down. We marched and campaigned for the Q House."

Local 34 Unite Here president Laurie Kennington, Alderwoman Evette Hamilton and Hartford City Council Minority Leader (Working Families Party) Larry Deutsch also appreciated the Communist Party for always being there for working people.

The multi-racial and multi-generational gathering took stock of the last four years and discussed how to win living wage jobs and other gains to improve the lives of working people, unemployed and youth.

"People are talking everywhere about how the system is broken. They're looking for answers," said Joelle Fishman, who chairs the Communist Party in Connecticut. "They see in the Communist Party an organization that is part of the working class, part of them. It's a big responsibility."

She said Connecticut has bucked national trends in elections because of labor's grassroots organizing on issues and fielding union members as candidates. This has resulted in the ability to expand the right of workers to organize, take major steps towards protecting the rights and safety of immigrants, and increased protections on the job. It has also made the state a target of extreme right-wing organizations that are spending huge sums to try and recapture the governor's seat and Congress in November's elections.

Participants cheered as the story was told of how 4,300 low-wage women home child care workers, mostly African American and Latino, won the right to collective bargaining at the state legislature. Once Governor Malloy signed the bill into law, the workers chose SEIU to represent them and successfully negotiated their first union contract.

Highlighting that and other Connecticut "firsts" including paid sick days, raising the minimum wage, same day and on-line voter registration, drivers license and in-state tuition for immigrants, and a Futures Commission study for economic conversion, Fishman decried the fact that Connecticut is also first in income inequality. She called for immediate steps to make Connecticut first in ending inequality, such as taxing the incomes of the top 1% at a higher rate equal to the rate the 99% pay.

Delegates old and new embraced a culture of organizing has led to steady growth of the Communist Party and YCL. After hearing presentations from the North Main club in Hartford which is known for holding the civilian review board accountable for police conduct, and the Newhall club in New Haven which is organizing door-to-door on the issue of jobs, the convention broke down into small groups to discuss how the work of their clubs makes a difference in their communities and why the Communist Party is needed to give people a voice and a vision.

"We wake up the neighborhood to act when there's a problem," said one group emphasizing use of the People's World in the community to get out the news from a working-class point of view.

"You are active in your community, which is what you should be doing," said national vice chair Libero Della Piana, who added that the national convention will provide a venue to share experiences from around the country and to hear from international guests. Placing the struggles in a bigger perspective, he warned of the dangers of extreme right-wing voter suppression and big spending to try and gain control of Congress and state offices in 2014.

The convention adopted a Connecticut Economic Bill of Rights that proclaims a living wage job with the right to a union, housing, health care, education and a peaceful, sustainable environment are basic human rights. While stating "fully ending inequality needs socialism," the document details immediate local and national demands to tax the rich and move money from military spending to infrastructure repair and people's needs.

The convention also adopted a resolution encouraging voter education and participation in voter registration and voter turnout efforts for November's election. A delegation of 25 was elected to represent the state at the 30^th national convention in Chicago next month.

"The Connecticut YCL youth are incredible," said Lisa Bergmann who co-chaired the convention and is an organizer for the YCL nationally. They march, they chair meetings and recruit new youth to join them. They are making a qualitative difference in the lives of youth in Connecticut and inspiring the whole movement."

Following the convention, a People's World May Day tribute to Pete Seeger and Amiri Baraka was held upstairs in the sanctuary of the First and Summerfield Methodist Church, site of countless union rallies and mobilizations. The public event featured folk music, rhythm and blues, spoken word, Latin American New Song and a slide show of May Day Around the World.

Photo: Connecticut Communist Party convention was held in New Haven on May Day weekend. Art Perlo

CPUSA sends protest letter to President Obama on Ukraine

Fri, 16 May 2014 12:52:00 +0000

The following is a letter of protest to President Barack Obama from the Communist Party USA regarding the political and violent attacks in the Ukraine by the Right Sector against the Communist Party of the Ukraine, the Ukrainian Jewish communities and other minorities and progressives.

May 14, 2014

Dear President Barack Obama,

We write to you because of our grave concern over recent events in the Ukraine. On May 2, reports state, 1,000 extreme right-wing thugs attacked their fellow Ukrainian citizens in Odessa, setting fire to a union hall to which many had fled. At least 40 people perished in the blaze. A few days later on May 6, members of parliament from the Communist Party of the Ukraine - a party that had won 32 seats in Ukraine's Rada (federal parliament) in the 2012 election - were banned from the legislative chamber, according to news reports. Under the leadership of the Right Sector, the drive to outlaw the Communist Party and "communist ideology" is underway with a push for legislation that would implement such anti-democratic measures.

This comes on the heels of anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish Ukrainians and synagogues, attacks on other minorities, and attacks on the central office of the Communist Party in Kiev, which was ransacked and burned, and on regional Communist leaders and activists. The list of outrages could go on.

U.S. policy in the Ukraine purports to uphold democracy, yet reports in the German publication Bild indicate that FBI and CIA operatives are active with Ukrainian "security" forces, including these far right wing forces. How is it democratic to purge a legitimately elected party from parliament? How is it democratic to violently target Communists and others in the Ukraine who disagree with the direction of the right-wing-led acting government? Besides violating the basic premise of national sovereignty, U.S. policy is aiding and abetting the most violent and reactionary forces to grab power all in the name of fighting the Russians.

The United States has its own sordid anti-democratic history of banning the Communist Party and conducting witch hunts against Communists and any person suspected of holding left-wing and progressive political views. During the Cold War McCarthy era people went to jail for the simple act of thinking these thoughts - in the legal terminology it was called "conspiracy to teach." The persecution of left and progressive people during this period has been widely considered a deep stain on the democratic ideals of freedom of speech and freedom of association.

The Communist Party of the Ukraine is a legitimate political party that represents a constituency in that country. The chair of the party is a candidate for president in the U.S.-supported May 25 elections. The party advocates for keeping the Ukraine's territorial integrity through "the widest possible dialogue between all political forces" and offers a program of "federalization and increase[ing] the powers" of the country's regional governments as a way to end the current crisis and move forward. The Communist Party of the Ukraine also opposes the "oppressive role of foreign intervention" that includes Russia as well as the United States and any other outside actor.

We urge that your administration take immediate steps to communicate to the Right Sector, Svoboda and their allies that their violent and anti-democratic actions will not be supported by the United States. In fact, the United States government, and individual U.S. politicians and officials, should cease to associate themselves with such elements.

The Communist Party USA, in numerous statements and articles, has said that the overall present U.S. policy in Ukraine is detrimental to the interests of the peoples of Ukraine, Russia and Europe, as well as the United States, as this policy has increased instability and violence that could very easily spiral out of control. The current policy and anti-Russia narrative is reminiscent of the Cold War. We recognize and oppose Putin's strong-arm tactics in the dispute over Crimea and appeals to reactionary nationalism, but the onus of rectifying this dangerous situation remains on your administration. Russia responded to a provocative policy hatched and executed in Washington, namely the encirclement of the country's western borders by NATO.

The atrocious incident in Odessa was a predictable result of this policy of turning a blind eye to the active fascist presence in Ukraine. The Communist Party USA expresses its outrage at this incident and its solidarity with the families and friends of the victims of this atrocity.

The CPUSA will continue to work for peace in the Ukraine and express its total solidarity with the Communist Party of the Ukraine, with the Ukrainian Jewish community and with all others who are endangered by the extremist upsurge.

On behalf of the National Board of the CPUSA,

Sam Webb

CPUSA chair

Photo: This map shows the results of the Communist Party of Ukraine in the 2012 elections. (Wikipedia)

Reader voices: Night shift at McDonald’s, grease burns, minimum wage

Thu, 15 May 2014 11:23:00 +0000

I have a personally strong attachment and support for the efforts of fast food workers to increase wages because I have worked in the fast food industry myself for two years. I can say it is an exhausting, very underpaying industry to work in.

I worked full time at McDonald's on the night shift, working over a 400+ degree stove, sweating like a dog, spilling boiling grease on various parts of my body, burning my hands and arms frequently, and often being pressured to work more than eight hours a day - but never overtime. That's what they do: they work you as much they can but never to the point of paying you overtime. They are so cheap. They only paid me minimum wage for all that.

And my coworkers weren't much better off. One was a single mother making only $9 an hour. She would work all night and then have to go home to take care of her daughter and take her to school. She had very little time for sleep in her day.

It was a franchise restaurant and the owner was the most hawkish penny-pincher I've ever seen. He once scolded me very loudly in front of everyone at the store because I accidentally broke some egg yolks on the stove.

A $15 minimum wage for fast food workers is a wonderful idea and I absolutely support it.

Photo: Supporting fast food workers' "Fight for 15" on May Day in Chicago, May 1, 2014. Earchiel Johnson/PW

25 hedge fund managers make more than all kindergarten teachers in America

Mon, 12 May 2014 11:37:00 +0000

Just 25 individuals make more than twice as much as all kindergarten teachers in America.

Think about that for just a minute. That is a vivid picture of how crazy inequality has gotten in America and just how dysfunctional our economy has become.

A new book by economist Thomas Piketty has caused quite a storm in the economics profession because he has gone deep into the numbers to show that the fantastically wealthy have not "earned" their money but have inherited it. That means we have become the kind of economically decadent society that values inherited wealth over work. Piketty calls this "patrimonial capitalism." It is the kind of decadent and socially destructive economy that emerges when capitalism is allowed to run free of regulation, unharnessed and unfettered for the common good and whole economies function only for the benefit of the very few at the very top.

Think awhile about what this means for America and the dreams and struggles of the people who built this country, fought its wars, suffered and sacrificed for what we are losing today.

We pay twice as high a percentage of taxes on our payroll checks than they do on their capital income. We starve our schools to lower their taxes. We allow them to invest in work in the countries with the lowest wages and most vulnerable workers often driving their wages even lower. They are not job creators. They are job stealers. And these elite of the financial elite aren't satisfied and they never will be.

These elite of the financial elite want to use their wealth to completely take over our politics and turn democracy into plutocracy or oligarchy.

This is the real internal challenge to America.

Next time a tea bagger gives you his line of crap, ask him if the Koch Brothers are paying him to do their work. The Koch Boys sure ain't workin.

To read more by Stewart Acuff, visit his blog at stewartacuff.com.

Photo: CC/Wikipedia

Attack on Kansas Jewish centers: Should you care?

Fri, 09 May 2014 14:48:00 +0000

Racism and anti-Semitism are two parts of the same "divide and conquer" strategy that the American right wing is using in an attempt to maintain political and economic control. By blaming people of color and Jews for the country's problems, organizations like the tea party and others on the right take the focus off the 1 percent. Promotion of bigotry during President Obama's terms has served not only to block pro-worker legislation, but also to create dissention between groups of people who are natural allies in the struggle for justice.

On April 13,we were reminded that extremists who hate Muslims, African Americans, immigrants, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and other oppressed groups also hate Jews. On the eve of the Passover holiday, F. Glenn Miller entered two Jewish Community Centers near Kansas City and killed three people, who he mistakenly thought were Jewish. A video, taken by KMBC local TV news, showed Miller shouting "Heil Hitler" from the back of a police cruiser following the crime. Miller is the former "grand dragon" and founder of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Miller's organization was disbanded in the mid 1980s, when Miller was convicted of "operating an illegal paramilitary organization and using intimidation tactics against African Americans," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which filed the lawsuit against him.

The Passover holiday, and indeed much of the Jewish tradition, is about liberation from oppression and building a better world. In the Passover story, the Jews have been working as slaves under the Egyptian Pharaoh for thousands of years when they are led out of Egypt by Moses. The holiday calls on Jews to re-commit themselves to pursuing alliances with people who are being mistreated in our society today, and to work towards equality for all. The aspects of Judaism that call for racial unity and the pursuit of a just world particularly defy white supremacists. Perhaps that is why Miller chose the days around Passover in particular for his deadly attack. Or perhaps it was to salute Hitler on his birthday, which was April 20.

A quotation from Miller on the Southern Poverty Law Center's website, taken from a "2010 Senate radio ad," illustrates the way that hatred towards Jews and hatred towards people of color, whom Miller calls "mud people," are two central tenets of white supremacist philosophy:

"White men have become the biggest cowards ever to walk the earth," Miller says in the ad. "The world has never witnessed such yellow cowards. We've sat back and allowed the Jews to take over our government, our banks, and our media. We've allowed tens of millions of mud people to invade our country, steal our jobs and our women, and destroy our children's futures. America is no longer ours. America belongs to the Jews who rule it and to the mud people who multiply in it."

Since the election of President Barack Obama, and as the country's racial composition becomes more mixed, white supremacist organizations have used philosophies like the ones described above to encourage expanded hate activities. A white nationalist website called "Stormfront" has inspired nearly 100 hate crime deaths over the last five years, also according to Southern Poverty Law Center staff. These included deaths at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, and killing of three police officers in Pittsburgh. Recent hate crimes have affected even politically progressive areas like New York City. The Jackie Robinson Memorial Statue at Coney Island was vandalized with racist slurs last summer, and this past weekend an ex-police officer was charged with spray painting swastikas and anti-Semitic hate speech in multiple places throughout Borough Park, Brooklyn, a predominantly Jewish Orthodox community.

Some with close ties to the GOP and the tea party, such as Jeffrey Boykin, executive vice president of the Family Research Council, have been caught making racist comments about President Obama and spreading anti-Semitism in the same breath. Following a panel at the National Security Action Summit in March, Boykin was heard stating that "the Jews are the cause of all the problems of the world," and that President Obama is an apologist for al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the upcoming election season, we can expect the tea party and other right-wing extremists to continue their promotion of racism and anti-Semitism as part of their "divide and conquer" strategy. Blaming "rich, powerful Jews" or "lazy" people of color for the country's economic woes will likely continue as two familiar currents in right-wing rhetoric, especially in this moment when the Republican Party fears it is losing support.

The proliferation of racism and anti-Semitism hurts all working people. These prejudices are used to divert attention from:

The billions of dollars that could be made available for the country's needs through taxing the 1 percent.
Union-busting and the promotion of "right to work" anti-union legislation that is being coordinated in multiple governor races across the country.
The progress for the working class that has been achieved by President Obama and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
The whites, African Americans, Latinos, Jews, Asian Americans, Native Americans and others who are standing together for working people's needs, including Social Security, the Affordable Care Act, ending student debt, immigration reform, union rights, and more.

Denouncing racism and anti-Semitism will be necessary in the upcoming election season, if working Americans are to be successful in winning a progressive Congress that puts their needs first.

Photo: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, second from right, participating in the famous civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on March 21, 1965. First row, from far left: John Lewis, an unidentified nun, Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Bunche, Abraham Heschel, Fred Shuttlesworth. Second row: Visible behind (and between) Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Bunche is Rabbi Maurice Davis. Wikipedia

A minimum program for a progressive majority

Thu, 08 May 2014 12:45:00 +0000

Here's a suggestion for minimum program for a progressive majority. This is a framework of principles that left forces could use to unite majorities in competitive battles at, primarily, the local and state levels. It does not spell out local demands. The idea is to define the framework of what it takes to change direction for working people. It envisions that shift as a list of reforms, but ones requiring a revolutionary shift in class relations to achieve. Reader comments are welcome.

Minimum program of democracy for working people

1. Health care, education, and retirement are human rights. Useful employment is both a right and a duty.

2. Economic policy, including trade policy and financial regulation, should not only strive to maximize employment and minimize inflation, but also strive to insure the incomes of working people rise in proportion to the wealth they create.

3. Corporations are NOT persons. Their direct influence on elections should be minimized if not completely prohibited. Corporate and labor law reform must be implemented with appropriate employee and public (including environmental) representation at highest levels.

4. Equality of opportunity. Invest in the abilities of the people. Strive to tell the truth about, and repair, past injustice.

5. Equality before the law. Patterns of judicial accommodation to racism and other forms of social inequality must be reversed.

6. Steady expansion of demilitarized public goods and services as social wealth permits.

7. Support for global governance tools to address global inequality (including taxing global corporations and billionaires).

8. Acceptance of global multipolarity (that is, rejection of "unipolarity," or imperialism) as a framework for achieving a more stable, governable, peaceful, and livable world.

9. Reshape market forces to meet pressing public needs. Market forces directly affect the wealth and lives of most Americans. Thus they are also inherently powerful political forces, which no political party can ignore. However there are notable examples in U.S. history where these forces were mastered, and reshaped and restructured to address urgent public needs. It was no accident that vast new opportunities for market goods and services were made possible by the government-led restructurings during and following the Civil War, and World Wars I and II.

It is time for a new example, removing the obstacles to broader democracy, wider economic opportunity and shared prosperity.

In designing such transformative public policies, disinterested science is an ever more important and critical tool, especially as new global public spaces are created and sustained by advanced technology.

In energy, in manufacturing, in infrastructure, in housing, in finance, in food, there are urgent and unmet transformative needs that cannot be corrected without asserting more scientific, and thus, more public, direction over these resources, at least until they are restructured in a manner compatible with balanced, equitable, environmentally sustainable growth.

Notes and definitions

1. A minimum democratic program for working people of all professions, occupations and trades defines a set of principles and policies that correspond to a necessary historical shift in relations between social and economic classes - a shift toward greater empowerment of working people in all spheres of life, and a significant relative loss of empowerment for corporate and billionaire interests.

2. The word "necessary" is important. A necessary shift is one that, without which, social, economic and political institutions based on truly outmoded class, racial, ethnic, gender and national relations will irreversibly decay and fail, and must be replaced or restored by a new coalition of forces. A minimum demand, or principle, is necessary when its absence robs the democratic movement and coalition of the strength and allies required to prevail against its adversaries.

3. Both the Civil War era and the Depression/World War II era dramatically demonstrate past necessary shifts in American history. In the Civil War era, the classes of slaveowner and enslaved were abolished, as incompatible with the further development of industrialization and commerce in a democratic republic.

In the Depression/World War II, the huge investment in working class human capital and broad democratic political and economic empowerment combined to dramatically reject the Gilded Age domination of the financial and industrial elites, and to instead vastly expand upon the Progressive Era with Social Security, unemployment insurance, universal education, veterans' benefits and enhanced union rights. The civil rights, women's, gay and lesbian, and immigrant movements, the fights for Medicaid, Medicare, and children's health coverage all arose in waves out of the worldwide democratic upheaval spurred by the massive defeat of fascism symbolized by the Axis powers, and the subsequent defeat of colonialism. Even the Affordable Care Act is part of the unfinished business of that upheaval.

4. Certain sections of capital - of multinational big businesses and billionaires - have allied with very anti-democratic and plutocratic forces to accumulate vastly disproportionate wealth, institutional power, and privilege at the price of the destruction of the rights, safety, health and welfare of the rest of society.

5. Many have thought, or hoped, that the famed "balance of powers" protections of United States constitutional law could somehow escape the old truth that concentrated wealth leads to concentrated power leads to concentrated wealth.... However, the behavior of the U..S economy and politics since the financial crisis in 2008 confirms economist Thomas Piketty's conclusion that "natural" market forces under capitalism powerfully tend toward greater inequality and more corrupt institutions; and that partial or complete revolutionary measures may be required merely to reverse course. This is another way to define what is in, and not in, the minimum program: What are the minimum governing principles and policies required to reverse course on inequality, democracy, and worker income?

6. Multinational energy, natural resources, agribusiness, real estate, defense and aligned financial corporations, and the billionaire interests that control them, constitute the principal forces with a stranglehold on the Republican Party, some Democrats, and key institutions: the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, the State and Defense Department establishments. Further, globalization in financial services, supply chains, and information and transportation infrastructures has enabled these corporations and billionaires to move their wealth virtually lawlessly across the globe, seeking both the greatest returns, and providing the safest havens from government regulation or taxation by any nation.

7. A "multipolar" framework for weighing national and international interests is a necessary step for turning away from imperial, unipolar views on security. Recognizing the reality of multipolarism, of the end of the George Bush "neocon" fantasy of a "new [U.S.-dominated] world order" following the collapse of the USSR, is required to move toward the structures, institutions and fraternal relations that can make shared security and cooperative environmental, labor and trade regulation workable. In other words: away from imperialism and toward internationalism. Recent modest efforts in this direction by Obama, and the stiff resistance they have met from some powerful quarters, is proof enough that the change in direction globally will be a complex and contradictory process.

8. Some constraints on the "reverse course" party, coalition, movement:

* The democratic revolution will be as complete as it can be under our current system of commodity relations when wealth is proportional to merit/labor; and when working class organizations and interests can compete politically, in proportion to their strength, unity and values, for leadership of society. Not before. (These are basically unfulfilled bourgeois rights.)

* The "reverse course" program does not abolish capitalism but does seek to better manage and optimize outcomes in both competitive markets and public goods and services. It does not target functioning markets, but moves resolutely to assert public interests where there are market failures.

* The "reverse course" must alter the legal status of corporations, including a larger public and employee role and increased responsibility for stewardship of resources. The fulfillment of the democratic revolution in the U.S. in this era - the building of "a more perfect union" - is about a different coalition of class forces gaining the leadership of government, the state, and key economic institutions.

* In general the extent and intensity and forms of public intervention should be guided primarily by the overall requirements of growth, sustainability, and equity and the broadest democratic unity of the people.

* The environmental challenges of human-caused global warming will impose serious economic and security threats to both progress and democracy.

* Alternatives to market-driven growth and development will emerge but can only become dominant as the division of labor, capital and resources based on commodities recedes, and the domain of public goods, services and intangibles expands. This must be the result, not of ideological conviction, but of enlightened inquiry and experience. The right to advocate and scientifically test these alternatives free from narrow perspectives of profit-driven firms is a key feature of advanced democracy.

9. Consider a table top that has a shifting shape, surface, and distribution of weight. How many legs does it need? For example: I see most workers not held directly hostage by their employer or family as a centering trunk leg. Nationally and racially oppressed peoples, women, youth, seniors, intellectuals and artists, scientists, knowledge workers, most small business forces and larger firms and corporations in as many of the innovative and productive sections of capital as possible - all of these provide the other legs. The minimum program has to equal a better life, a real increase in franchise and empowerment, and light to a sustainable future for all these forces.

10. Evaluating these alliances down to essential principles and values - the legs of the table - must weight these forces appropriately,

11, The minimum program is a list of reforms - but it is revolutionary to the extent that the reforms require a change in class relations and leadership of institutions to realize.

12. By concentrating on the fulfillment of bourgeois rights, on the expansion of entitlements and the achievement of equity (from each according ot their ability, to each according to their work), the minimum program enables the true approach to what Karl Marx called socialism, or, the first stage of communist society. But the true name, and destiny, of that society that an advanced democracy will build and create we cannot know, other than it will signify an evolutionary step as profound as any our species has experienced, or dreamt.

13. The impact of working class empowerment in society will be immense and complex and multidimensional. In order for it to have real political and social legs, it must have and develop some very strong moral currents with respect to leadership. Values and character are the handles most people look to first at when deciding whether to trust or not trust political leadership. The struggles of the modern working class for survival and justice shape those values. They are, or certainly include:

* Simplicity and modesty - Seek the rise of the working class, and not to rise above it.
* Peace and conflict resolution before conflict.
* Integrity - strive to know, learn, and speak the truth. Give your word carefully. Keep it.
* Community and solidarity - we are our own protection. Take care of each other.
* Equality.
* Stewardship of the earth, its life, and property of the people.

Photo: Wisconsin workers take over state Capitol in Madison, Feb. 18, 2011. Teresa Albano/PW

We remember Rubin Hurricane Carter

Tue, 06 May 2014 12:03:00 +0000

On April 20, boxer Rubin Hurricane Carter died at age 76 of prostate cancer. Various newspapers and other media outlets did commentaries on the unjust hardships visited upon this man by the racist criminal justice system that is the cancer of our society.

To them it was just a news story, the personification of yet another racist persecution of an innocent Black person.

Brother Carter's struggle was our struggle, what they did to him they did to us because racism is the common thread that twines our lives together and the struggle against it is what gives meaning, character and substance to our existence as a people. Also this is why we remember what we remember.

We remember a ten-year-old African-American child defending himself against an adult, white male pedophile who tried to kill him. Yet it was the child who was punished.

We remember a racist cop who would go to any length, including lying and fabricating evidence to imprison Rubin Hurricane Carter. Our brother was a victim of a police crime; he was framed and railroaded by corrupt, criminal cops and prosecutors who advanced their political careers on the backs of Black people.

We remember a mass movement, which we were a part of, demanding brother Carter's freedom. And we remember a young African America from Brooklyn, NY and some white Canadians joining the fight and staying the course in spite of efforts by the police to terrorize and even murder them.

We remember that day of jubilee when Rubin Hurricane Carter was finally set free after 22 years of imprisonment, torment and torture and how he continued with undaunted courage to fight for others who have been victims of racist frame-ups.

On November 7, 1985, federal Judge Sarokin handed down his decision to free Rubin Hurricane Carter, stating that "The extensive record clearly demonstrates that [the] petitioners' convictions were predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure." The state continued to appeal Sarokin's decision-all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court - until February 1988, when a Passaic County New Jersey state judge formally dismissed the 1966 indictments of Carter and co-defendant John Artis and finally ended the 22-year long saga.

I saw the movie [The Hurricane, 1999, starring Denzel Washington] but I didn't need to see the movie and I read the book ["Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom"] but I didn't need to read the book because my life, and the lives of millions of Black men, women and children is the same as Rubin Hurricane Carter.

The exception is this: most of us who are unjustly imprisoned don't get out and that is the book that needs to be written.

Hurricane spent most of his life after prison championing the cause of the wrongfully convicted, but each time he spoke against the system the system responded with even more wrongful convictions.

The prison population is increasing at such a rapid rate because the racist criminal justice system is buttressed by every level of government in order to feed the worse form of capitalist greed since the days of chattel slavery.

And most tragically we remember the criminal cops, prosecutors and politicians responsible for our late brother Rubin spending most of his life in jail were never brought to justice for their crimes. Rubin sowed the wind so look for us in the whirlwind.

Frank Chapman is Education Director and member of the executive committee of the Chicago Alliance Against Racial and Political Oppression.

Photo: Rubin Carter in 2011. Wikimedia Commons.

Reframing the disability rights philosophy

Fri, 02 May 2014 17:08:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS, Mo. - There are rumblings here of something new within the disability rights community. A small but influential group is examining the philosophy, which has driven the disability rights movement since the early to mid-seventies.

We are taking a long-hard look at the movement and asking, "How can we move this forward? How can we push our community forward into a mass culture, while strengthening and broadening the Independent Living philosophy, which is the underpinning fabric of our movement?"

For those outside the Independent Living movement, our philosophy is pretty simple: People with disabilities deserve to live, work and play independently in the community of their choice. With proper support, people with disabilities can and will reach our full potential and be able to integrate fully into society.

While this is generally positive, and while Independent Living has propelled us to new heights in the last 40-some-odd years, more work needs to be done.

Even though we have made some great strides as a community, people with disabilities still represent a minority, disenfranchised group.

We are least likely to finish high school. And even less likely to get a bachelor's degree or advanced training of any type.

Additionally, statistics show that people with disabilities are less likely to be married or be in civil unions. And we have few leadership roles in our various communities. We deal with high rates of unemployment and are generally less engaged politically.

Yet there is an Independent Living Center in every state in the union, if not more than one. They offer a variety of services meant to enable the individual to live the dream, whatever that means to her or him.

In St. Louis, community members with disabilities - both connected to Independent Living Centers and not - have begun to see a problem in the extreme individualism that our Movement proclaims, as it is primarily about the individual, and largely seeks individual solutions. The basic premise negates our larger vision of community.

I would argue independence as a term represents an isolated, self-propulsion, lacking context. Independence defined as such doesn't really exist, though. We cannot as individuals move forward without community and/or systems of support.

So in response to this realization, we have begun to frame the discussion around the Independent Living philosophy in a new light. We have begun to organize outside of the traditional disability rights institutions - institutions supported and funded by the Independent Living movement.

Instead, we meet around kitchen tables, in living rooms and community centers. We are beginning to engage in cross disability issues. And we engage folks from the labor, environmental and gender rights groups.

People with disabilities exist in all subcultures. We are people of color. We are women. We identify as queer. In order to succeed, to integrate, to be seen, we must understand our struggle as part of a larger political context connecting all of these other struggles. This is the perspective we now add to the Independent Living movement.

Here we are saying - maybe for the first time - "We can address a multiplicity of issues only if we galvanize as a community - as black, white, gay, straight, young, old and people with disabilities."

As disability rights activists, we are returning to the power of community building. We are solidifying organizations and building infrastructure. We are inviting more and more people to take part in the discussion. Consider this your invitation.

Photo: "Disabled and Proud" at the Disability Capitol Action Day in Sacramento, Calif., May 26, 2010. (PW/Gail Ryall)

Transit union activity under attack in Queens, N.Y.

Fri, 02 May 2014 17:00:00 +0000

I have written previously about the attack on union activists by managers of New York's MTA, specifically about the attacks on the vice chair of the union section at the Woodside shop, Israel Roman, and the targeting and harassment of others.

Now direct attacks have been made on this writer. On March 28, by order of John Santamaria, a top manager at the Woodside facility of the New York City Transit Authority, I was summarily removed from the job I had performed for 12 years and was assigned to a new job with a sharp reduction in pay. What happened was that Steve Krajewski and Peter Stratos waited until the end of my workday, actually after 12 midnight, in the early minutes of March 28. Ironically, the charges made by Santamaria against me involve technical issues but nobody at the Woodside facility has any technical competence at all. A few, like Santamaria, may have certain paper credentials that impress people who have no technical knowledge. Of course a fight-back against this outrage is being organized on several fronts and this action is very likely to cause nothing but difficulty and expense for the Transit Authority.

Although Santamaria is not very smart he is not incapable of doing damage. Union vice chair Roman was suspended on completely false charges against which he was not even given the opportunity to defend himself. I myself was demoted on the most flimsy of pretexts - all under the direction of this Santamaria.

The problems at the MTA's Woodside electronics shop run deep. Krajewski is only a symptom. The whole operation is on life support. The only thing keeping it alive is the nearly complete lack of accountability. There is so much messed up at the Woodside facility that justice cannot be done within the present constraints. A more thorough exposition of the many problems at the facility will have to await a future article.

The situation at the Woodside facility - bad though it may be - might have even a broader and darker side. It may be an indication of a system-wide drive against union activists and leaders that goes much deeper than a few brutal and ignorant bosses who might just be puppets, under the direction and control of more secretive and sinister forces. As of yet these forces, whoever they may be, leave Santamaria, Krajewski and underlings like Archie Bogosian and Peter Stratos to suffer the consequences.

Upper management has known for some time about the problems at this location, both the technical problems and the problems in human relations. They should have been aware that Santamaria and Krajewski are acting on their own without any authorization.

Can nothing be done to resolve this? It's time for somebody in authority to disavow the entire situation, and it's time for the public to ask them what their decision is. Either that, or they must take responsibility for their actions and admit that they tacitly endorse the present situation. Those involved in carrying it out should bear in mind that the excuse "I was just following orders" did not work for the henchmen of the Nazis.

I think it's now up to union members and friends in the broader progressive, pro-labor community to pitch in on this. All justice-minded people must make the MTA publicly disavow the actions of lower level managers, or get them to admit that they own this and make sure they suffer the consequences along with Santamaria, Krajewski and their underlings for ignoring and suppressing the rights of workers.

Interested parties and make their comments to:

Central Electronics Shop, NYCTA

33-33 54^th St.

Woodside, NY

Phone: 718-533-2727

Carmen Bianco

President MTA-NYCT

2 Broadway

New York, NY 10004

Phone: 212-668-8470

Thomas Prendergast

President and CEO, MTA

347 Madison Ave.

New York, NY 10017

Phone: 212-878-7000

CPUSA celebrates May Day with #ImagineSocialism

Thu, 01 May 2014 16:17:00 +0000

The Communist Party USA salutes the working people of all nations on this May Day, International Workers' Day.

On this May Day, the working people of our world confront immense tasks. Powerful corporate interests, and the governments which serve them are on the offensive against the working class and its allies, imposing austerity measures, privatizing public services and slashing social programs that were created by decades of working class struggle and on which many lives depend.

In the United States, right wing lawmakers slash food stamps for the millions who are unable to properly feed their families,

The assault on workers is accompanied by an assault on the environment. Big oil companies and others continue to destroy our planet, depleting essential resources while increasing global warming and putting the future of humanity in peril, in their insatiable drive for profits.

The offensive of capital also is bringing very great dangers to world peace. From Venezuela to the Middle East to Ukraine, the drive for profits is behind the stoking of international conflicts, with an increased danger of war.

But the workers of the United States and the world, along with their allies, are up to the tasks with which this dire situation presents them. Unity in the struggle can curb and finally end the power of the forces of big capital that act with such disregard for the vast majority of the human race and for the planet itself. We will build a socialist future!

The Communist Party USA, on the occasion of its 95th anniversary, salutes the working people of all nations on this Mayday, and calls for:

An end to exploitation.
An end to racism, national chauvinism and anti-immigrant oppression.
An end to the exploitation of women, youth and LGBT people.
Freedom for the Cuban 5, and an end to U.S. persecution of socialist Cuba, Venezuela and all other nations which are struggling for their liberation.
Full protection of the natural environment.
An end to war and the peaceful resolution of all national conflicts.

CPUSA website

Photo: May Day, New York City 2010. PeoplesWorld

Below is the video of the May Day video chat about Socialism in the USA as part of our Convention Discussion period.

#ImagineSocialism: Join the May 1 Google Hangout