People Before Profit blog

Clinton and Trump point America in two very different directions

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 11:41:00 +0000

Today, California and New Jersey will be the last big states to have primaries. (Residents in the District of Columbia vote in a week.) Bernie Sanders vows to make the case to superdelegates that he is the best choice to take on Donald Trump, as he has every right to do, particularly if he wins California.

The media has already dubbed Hillary Clinton the presumptive nominee. No matter how California turns out, she will have won more votes, more pledged delegates, and more primaries. Superdelegates will not overturn the choice of the voters unless the former secretary of state's email scandal gets much worse. We are headed into a race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Most attention is focused on their personalities. The polls show that Americans feel unfavorably toward both of them. Trump calls Clinton "crooked" and has already begun a campaign of personal insult and slur. Clinton calls Trump "unfit temperamentally" for the job and has highlighted his changing ideas and lack of policy expertise. Trump wants to be seen as a strong outsider. Clinton wants to be perceived as experienced and responsible.

But this election is less a choice about personality than about direction, less about individuals than about movements. Trump presents himself as an insurgent in the Republican Party, but he carries that party's right-wing agenda. He thinks climate change is a myth. He's for massive tax cuts on the wealthy, and for more spending on the military. He has embraced the GOP's race-baiting politics and carted them to new lows. He has no program for dealing with inequality. He's built his campaign by pushing off against Hispanics, Muslims, women, environmentalists, and African-Americans. He pledges to tear up the Iran nuclear deal, which would add tensions to the most volatile region of the world.

Trump sounds refreshing in his skepticism about America's failed trade policies and about its interventions across the world. But his answers - that he'd cut a better deal - are postures, not policy.

Clinton, in contrast, offers herself as an experienced reformer who will build on the progress made over the last years, not reverse it. She'll push for strengthening the Voting Rights Act, comprehensive immigration reform, equal pay for women, and a stronger effort to address climate change. She'll defend progress made on choice, gay rights, civil rights, and the environment. She favors lifting the minimum wage and empowering workers to organize. She celebrates the Iran deal and the Paris agreement on climate.

Trump is far more a Caesar than a movement candidate. But he will be supported by and pressed by the conservative movements that drive the Republican right - the Tea Party, the Gun Lobby and the anti-choice, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, and anti-black reactions.

Clinton is far more an establishment than a movement candidate. But she will be supported by and pressed by the civil rights, women's, environmental, LGBT, union, Latino, pro-democracy, and anti-Wall Street movements. Sanders was right to run in the Democratic primaries because that is where the reform movement energy gets expressed.

The choice in direction is clear. Activists have to decide whether it is preferable to fight against a leader supported and pushed by the right - even if it means supporting a candidate they deem less progressive - or to deny their vote to both nominees.

We know the cost of dismay and the power of hope. In 1960, John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon by 112,000 votes, the margin of our hope. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon by 800,000 votes, the margin of our despair. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won in large part because of Democratic Party divisions over Jimmy Carter. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first African-American president on the basis of our hope.

We're headed into a negative campaign fixated on personal insult and negative attacks. But we're making a choice about direction. And we should not forget that.

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.

The Champ’s greatest battle: The fight for peace

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 13:26:00 +0000

As Americans we are a people wrapped up in sports. Young, old, Black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, straight and gay - most of us think sports at some point on almost every given day. So when we heard this weekend about the death of Muhammad Ali, we thought about those iconic fights in which the Champ bested Frazier and Forman.

All of us agree, as we were reminded this weekend by all the on and offline media, that Ali was the greatest fighter ever to have come upon the world scene. The same media that is all too complacent in pushing the narrative that Black people are criminals had no difficulty this weekend in praising a Black athlete. Somehow in our love of sports and violence, Black athletes can escape the harsh treatment the media gives to Black people who fight for justice and sometimes get a bit loud when they do so.

I would like to take this opportunity to put in a word for what I think was the Champ's greatest fight - his unremitting, relentless fight for Peace.

That fight and the taking of that fight into the realm of politics, is a fight they haven't talked as much about on TV this weekend. They focused more on aspects of the Champ that, in the eyes of the powers that be, made him an "acceptable" hero. The Champ shadow boxing with President Bush or before him President Reagan were two of those "acceptable" scenes which to my mind were two of countless attempts by the ruling class to make a real people's hero safer.

When I was 17 years old, a year before I could be drafted to go to fight in Vietnam, I heard the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak in New York. King had said it was time to break his silence on the war, a move many cautioned him against. "Keep civil rights and peace separate," they said. "It's President Johnson's war and he is a friend of civil rights." But King said he could be silent no more and he actually quoted the Champ who had beaten all well known personalities, including Dr. King, in coming out against the war: King quoted Ali who had declared: "We are all - Black, brown and poor whites - victims of the same system of oppression."

As a teenager thinking about a war into which older teenagers were being sent to die, I was inspired by Ali's act of resistance and by his willingness to face imprisonment for his action. Far greater men then me, in their time, were inspired by the Champ. Nelson Mandela reportedly said whenever he was about to lose hope during his long years of imprisonment in South Africa he that thought of Muhammad Ali.

I am a long time member of the CPUSA. One of the things about my party's history that makes me proudest is its role in "the fight for peace." Many say "fighting" for peace is a contradiction. Muhammad Ali showed, however, that a fight is precisely what it takes to win the peace. The iconic, tough, fighting athlete showed the country and the world what it is that real fighters do. They fight for peace.

Over the past weekend they aired many of Ali's "tough guys" quotes: "I'm the greatest," "I'm so bad I make medicine sick," "I sent a stone to the hospital," etc. etc.

His greatest "tough guy" quote was not aired as much however. It was a quote that won Ali the enmity of the right wing, the press and unfortunately even too many liberals. It was the quote that got him suspended for three years from boxing. Dave Zirin mentioned it in his article in the Nation. I repeat it here:

"Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights. No, I'm not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters over the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand will cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it now and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn't have to draft me, I'd join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I'll go to jail. We've been in jail 400 years."

Even in the context of today's events this was a powerful statement. Ali brought together the struggles for peace and the fight for justice on the domestic front. Up until that speech, the civil rights movements and the peace movements, both growing rapidly on the American scene, were separate from one another. The conventional wisdom, even in liberal circles, was that you didn't mix civil rights with anti-war work. Even today we'd be better off if the presidential candidates challenging the right wing would, as did Ali, do more to make this connection.

But in his day Ali was a pioneer in the effort to join together the two then-separate movements. The Champ played a key role in uniting those movements thereby strengthening both.

It had a profound effect on us teenagers in those days Here was the strong, powerful and clever sports hero of the day, just a few years our senior, the fighting Champ taking on a second fight - this one outside the boxing ring. He took this second fight to the halls of power. He did it on behalf of his Black brothers and sisters who were dying in larger numbers than anyone else in Vietnam and dying from lack of opportunity in cities here at home. He did it in behalf of the rest of us too - everyone else victimized in any way by an oppressive system. What he did in waging that fight for peace will make him live forever.

Photo: In this March 29, 1967, file photo, heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, center left, and Dr. Martin Luther King speak to reporters. | AP

Is punishing Hillary worth a potential Trump presidency?

Fri, 03 Jun 2016 15:31:00 +0000

Did you know that "some of the smartest progressives" out there are going to be pulling the lever for Donald Trump this November? Are you one of them?

Like these savvy progressives, do you hate Hillary Clinton so much that you're starting to think the short-term pain of a Trump presidency might just be "an acceptable cost" so long as we can inflict a little punishment on the Democratic Party for its many sins and neoliberal betrayals of the past few decades?

At least some on the left are thinking this way, according to a new op-ed in Politico Magazine from Yves Smith, publisher of the Naked Capitalism blog. (Smith also happens to be known as Susan Webber, a principal in the management consulting firm Aurora Advisors, in the offline world.)

Smith says that "the highly educated, high-income, finance-literate" readers of her website, which has become one of the go-to places for hard-hitting critiques of the dark and seamy corners of finance, are so fed up with the unequal and crushing economic status quo of the Clinton and Obama presidencies that they are willing to wager it all. (Somehow the eight-year neoconservative-dominated reign of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney has fallen out of this story, but we'll let that slide for now.)

These folks are ready to put everything on the line for the sake of blocking Hillary from ever setting foot inside the White House again. They want Bernie, Smith tells us, and if they can't have him, then they are willing to risk four years of Republican rule under Trump.

If you identify with the Left and have political discussions with others of such an ideological persuasion, you've probably encountered some version of this kind of argument lately. When prominent peace activist Medea Benjamin took the stage inside a packed gymnasium at the Left Forum conference in New York May 20, she asked for a show of hands: who among the hundreds gathered, she asked, has worked or voted for Bernie Sanders? Nearly all hands went up. Plan to vote for Hillary Clinton? A "very small sprinkling" of hands went up, which Benjamin noted. Who would vote for the Green Party's Dr. Jill Stein? A majority of hands went up. This was the same crowd that had just cheered advocacy journalist Chris Hedges when he said that the Left ought to abandon the Democratic Party and "free ourselves from the insidious mantra of the least worst" because "our two-party duopoly, while it has [sic] a different rhetoric, serves the same centers of power."

Who would suffer the first casualties?

Pretty words. But here's the problem with these kinds of arguments: only certain sets of people can afford to make them.

The "smartest progressives" that Smith referred to, for instance, are, demographically, a small segment of the broad center-left coalition of forces currently supporting one or the other of the Democratic candidates. They're an even tinier portion of the American population as a whole. In Smith's own words, they are "disproportionately graduate-school educated, older, male, and high income." We won't question Smith's assessment of who her readership is. She certainly knows her crowd and likely has a good handle on which way the political winds are blowing for them.

As for the conference-goers at the Left Forum, based on our observations, they were disproportionately older middle-aged or elderly activists, lifers in the movements for socialism, against war, and for saving the environment. A few younger-looking activists were also present, though not as vocal as their elders in scrapping for a fight. It seemed to matter little to them that the votes they might drain from the Dems could end up helping Trump.

In other words, though they may not be Trumpvangelicals (as journalist and longtime observer of the Right Sarah Posner calls the core Trump base), Smith's group of male fifty-somethings with money and college degrees or the Left Forum's battle-hardened veteran activists are willing to gamble that Trump can't be all that bad, or at least not bad enough to justify letting Hillary have a go at things.

While neither of these groups has built the mass base of political power that it would take to sway a national election, they are using every platform they can to denounce Clinton as the establishment candidate and urge others to vote another way. As Yves Smith, Chris Hedges, and Medea Benjamin point out, their arguments can be compelling.

But those who denounce Clinton and urge a vote for Trump are consigning others to be the first to run at the Right's machine guns. They can take this position because the future that is on the line, for the most part, isn't theirs. They aren't the ones who will suffer first or disproportionately when a Trump presidency begins.

President Donald J. Trump

Trump will triple the number of ICE agents, creating a force that will further terrorize immigrant communities who already face daily the fear that they will lose their livelihoods or be separated from their families at a moment's notice. His agents will round up and imprison as many as they can find of the 11 million undocumented people living in the U.S. He will eliminate federally-run Medicaid, forcing millions of poor people and people with disabilities to rely on state-level services, which in many states are under-resourced and in some states are nonexistent. Reproductive health services for women, already hard to come by in many localities, would become even fewer and farther between. Mosques would come under heavy surveillance, intensifying an already-charged atmosphere of fear and intimidation for Muslims. If he couldn't completely undo the Iran deal, he would certainly damage it as much as he could, which would set a reckless precedent for any future negotiations to stop nuclear proliferation. All of these measures are either explicitly listed on Trump's campaign website, or have been suggested by Trump himself.

It is likely that we will soon get a preview of such events. When Trump is confirmed in July at the Republican National Convention as the GOP nominee, the sort of political violence that has marred his rallies, in which people of color have reported being physically attacked, may escalate. Will those on the Left who plan to withdraw their support for the Democratic Party - which is the primary counterforce to the Republicans - also stand by as Latinos, Muslims, African Americans, and others are assaulted?

Progressives and those on the Left must think hard about who would really make the biggest initial sacrifices in the event of a Trump victory. With his tacit approval of white nationalists' assaults on our most vulnerable communities, Trump has already poisoned our national political conversation. We cannot pretend otherwise.

As Yves Smith's readers say, it is probably the case that Hillary Clinton, as her campaign is currently configured, doesn't "deserve" to inherit Sanders' supporters. Her campaign has tried at various points to weasel away from making the leftward shift that would make it truly representative of the Democratic Party base. Her ties to Wall Street and Walmart remain strong. All this is true.

Thinking strategically

But in politics - especially for people who should be paying attention to the bigger questions of long-term strategy and are serious about making change - purity of principle isn't enough. It can't be. It is necessary to mix in a little more pragmatism with our ideological fervor. Our votes and our activism cannot hinge solely on the supposedly "principled" concern of which candidate "deserves" our support.

Do poor people deserve the cuts that will come their way under a Trump presidency? Do people of color deserve to be on the receiving end of a spike of racism and violence that will be legitimated by the rhetoric spewing from a Trump White House? Do immigrants deserve to face the prospects of permanent family separation and deportation? Do women deserve to be "punished" when they seek out reproductive health services? Do young people deserve to see their future continuously mortgaged by an every-increasing burden of debt?

Furthermore, this game of "punishing" the Democratic Party for the sins of the Clintons (and believe us, we know they are many) is really an oversimplification of what the Democratic Party is and who it represents. It also totally ignores the diversity of constituencies that will become targets once the GOP controls all branches of the federal government.

If such an outcome occurs, Muslims, Latinos and African Americans won't be the only ones who are harmed. They'll just be the first ones. Once Trump has successfully used Islamophobia, xenophobia and white supremacy to divide Americans against one another, there will be no constituency strong enough to defend our best social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the U.S. Postal Service against him and the rest of the Republicans in Congress who have for decades been trying to eliminate them.

Taking a chance on Trump, whether by voting for him or simply siphoning votes away from Clinton, might inflict some punishment on a few hundred Democratic politicians in the DNC. It might deny Hillary Clinton some votes that she doesn't "deserve." But is that small goal really worth gambling America's future?

Photo: Donald Trump supporter pulls the hair of a young immigrant woman at a rally. Credit: Twitter / Jassiel Perez (@fl_dreamer)

Trump is not the champion of blue-collar workers

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 14:21:00 +0000

There's a disturbing trend emerging from the endless news coverage of Trump's ascent to the top of the Republican ticket: More and more, the media is painting Donald Trump as a candidate supported by working people, in particular "blue-collar" workers.

The labor movement isn't fooled by Trump's tough talk, because his record as a businessman and a quick glimpse at the statements he's made to voters make it clear where his allegiances are.

When the Midtown Manhattan site for Trump Tower was demolished (in preparation for its construction), Trump exploited foreign workers who were paid as little as $4 a day, and even offered vodka as payment. And he's not just importing cheap labor, he's exporting it. Nearly all of his 'Donald J. Trump' clothing line is made overseas, and before he decided to be a politician, he claimed outsourcing "creates jobs in the long run."

In Oregon, where we've seen tens of thousands of jobs lost due to offshoring, we know Trump is once again blowing hot air. Trump has made his views on wages clear. Last November he told voters: "Taxes too high, wages too high. We're not going to be able to compete against the world." How can anyone who works for a living support a candidate who thinks our wages are too high?

Trump does not side with working people when it comes to our right to stand together and form unions. His company has run an aggressive anti-union campaign against the employees in his Las Vegas hotel, where alleged incidents include physical assault, verbal abuse, intimidation, and threats by management. Complaints with the National Labor Relations Board are ongoing.

Last December, hundreds of workers at his hotel in Las Vegas voted to form a union and were certified in March. Since then, Trump's company has refused to honor the results of the election and to negotiate a first contract with the workers.

It should come as no surprise that Trump is outspoken in favor of so-called "right to work" laws which diminish the ability of working people to negotiate together. He's praised Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's attacks against unions and has said he prefers to build new properties without union contracts.

Trump is a man who consistently puts the profits of himself over the prosperity of the people whose work creates his wealth. If he treats the people working for him with such little respect, imagine the kind of short-sighted policies he'll push for as president.

We have work to do to keep Trump out of the White House. I believe in a country where immigrants have a pathway to citizenship, where women are paid and treated equally, and where workers can stand together, without fear and harassment, to join unions.

We're going to hear a lot of rhetoric over the next few months as the November election draws close. I hope that you consider the facts when you vote for president: Trump says he wants to make American great again, but for working people? Clearly, it's not working people.

Tom Chamberlain is Oregon AFL-CIO president. This column first appeared in the Northwest Labor Press. Used by permission.

Photo: SEIU

Celebrating Spanish Civil War veteran and lifelong activist Delmer Berg

Fri, 27 May 2016 10:36:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. - The life of the longest-surviving member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade - the 2,800 Americans who helped fight the emerging fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s - was celebrated May 21 by friends and family from around northern California.

Esley Delmer Daniel Berg - known to all as Del - was over 100 years old at the time of his death on Feb. 28, 2016.

A lifelong political activist and leader, Del grew up in a poor farm worker family. In his early 20s, alarmed by the rise of fascist forces in Europe, he joined the Americans who traveled to Spain as part of the 40,000-strong International Brigades, to help Spanish anti-fascist fighters in their struggle against soon-to-be dictator Francisco Franco and his German and Italian fascist backers.

Though their mission ultimately failed, the "Lincolns" - sometimes called "premature anti-fascists" - have been celebrated ever since for their courage and dedication. Some 800 of the Lincolns died in Spain, and many of the survivors became among the most distinguished fighters in the U.S. military in World War II.

Returning to California in 1939, Berg later served with the U.S. Army in the Pacific before returning to life as a farm worker.

Del Berg's multifaceted life - always fully engaged in people's struggles for economic and social justice - inspired the speakers at his memorial celebration.

Among the many organizations he joined or supported was the Communist Party USA, which he joined in 1943, after returning from Army service. Northern California Communist Party chair Juan Lόpez said Berg "served with distinction" for years, as a member of the leadership collective, making the grueling trip to the Bay Area from his home in the Sierra foothills despite his age.

"At meetings, he would listen intently to anything that was being discussed," Lόpez said. "When it came his turn to speak, he would tell you exactly what he thought - but his insightful views were founded on solid, often personal, experience in the struggles of the day."

Nadya Williams, who MC'd the program, also cited Berg's active membership in a broad spectrum of peace and social justice organizations, including Veterans for Peace, the United Farm Workers, the Mexican American Political Association, the California Democratic Party, the California Alliance of Retired Americans, and the NAACP, where he was elected vice president of his local chapter. Berg was also active in the anti-Vietnam War and anti-nuclear weapons movements, and women's rights struggles as well.

John Veen, who traveled with his wife, Vickie, from their home in Fresno, Calif., told how Berg reached out from his Sierra foothills home to people in different parts of the Central Valley. "He was always talking about the need to bring together the Mexican American community, the African American community and the labor movement in general," Veen said.

Though Berg participated in events organized by the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, his mind was always focused in the present. "He wanted to talk about, what are we going to do now, John? What little, or not so little, thing can we do right now, to move forward? He was always giving me names and phone numbers of people in my area, and he wanted me to contact them."

Nor were all of Berg's activities political. Veen told of visiting Berg's beautiful home up in the foothills, which he had built himself decades earlier, after retiring. Berg described how he blasted the foundation, including the time he accidently launched a big boulder into a neighboring area - fortunately with no known ill effects. Another time, a boulder that refused to move became an integral part of Berg's study, known to family and friends as "the cave."

"Another thing about Del - he danced!" Veen told the crowd. "Raise your hand if you'd be surprised to know there was a dance club, and Del was elected president!" No hands were raised.

When the mic was opened to friends in attendance, several told how Del Berg would always maintain that he wasn't a "learned" person, and was very modest about his knowledge. But they emphasized the depth and clarity of his thinking, and his broad and thoughtful approach to every issue.

Berg also maintained an extensive correspondence with activists in the U.S. and internationally - all handwritten in an extremely neat script since he didn't use a typewriter.

After listening intently to the remembrances by his father's friends and comrades, son Ernst Berg added his own memories. "As it is with fathers and sons, sometimes you don't have good communications. Unfortunately, that was the case for us. But seeing how much you all care, I can talk about my father's personal life. He lived a long time because of a healthy environment and a dedication to the betterment of the human race."

Ernst Berg called his father's home in Columbia "an amazing achievement" - telling how his father had poured cement for the road, and brought up a giant crane to move boulders. "I don't know where he got a crane, but he did. A crane and a dump truck."

A full afternoon of tributes and memories included a video of Del Berg's life, put together by People's World social media editor Chauncey Robinson, and remarks by friends including PW writer Henry Millstein, who interviewed Berg in 2014, University of California at Chico Professor Char Prieto, who read the poem she wrote for Berg's 100th birthday, and others.

The celebration of Del Berg's life was held at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, and was co-sponsored by the library, peoplesworld.org, the Northern California Communist Party, and Veterans for Peace.

Photo: ecorepublicano.es

Obama must recommit to eliminating nuclear arms in Hiroshima

Thu, 26 May 2016 13:31:00 +0000

On May 27, President Obama will become the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, where at the end of World War II the U.S. became the first and only country to drop an atomic bomb. The president will use the occasion to revive attention on the need to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

Immediately, critics assailed the president for going on an "apology tour." The White House sought to calm the furor, assuring reporters that the president would not use the word "sorry."

"We said that this is not about issuing an apology," Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters on Thursday.

Why not apologize? The president will visit the 30-acre Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, located directly under the spot where the bomb exploded, with a museum displaying the charred belongings of the 100,000 people who perished, as everything with one mile of the bomb blast was entirely wiped out. The short inscription on the park's memorial arch reads, in part: "We shall not repeat the evil."

The United States, thankfully, is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in wartime. We dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki even as Japan was on the verge of surrender. That the bomb was dropped reflected the savagery of that war - from the secret attack on Pearl Harbor to the horrid battles in Okinawa and elsewhere. Massive firebombing had already devastated Tokyo, in the single most destructive bombing attack in history. Some scholars believe President Harry S. Truman made the decision less to bring Japan to its knees than to put the world - and particularly the Russians - on notice of America's power. But you don't have to see the bombing as criminal to agree that this evil must not be repeated - and to apologize that it should ever have been unleashed on humans in the first place.

But as Elton John sang, "Sorry seems to be the hardest word to say." Rhodes, Obama's much publicized deputy national security advisor for "strategic communications," says that the president "will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II" but will instead "offer a forward-looking vision focused on our shared future."

The visit returns the president to the solemn pledge he made in Prague soon after coming to office. He reaffirmed "America's commitment to a world without nuclear weapons," arguing that their very existence posed a threat that they might once more be used. He pledged to make their elimination - complete and general nuclear disarmament - not just a wistful dream, but a central goal of our national security policy.

Under Obama, there has been some progress towards that goal. The 2010 START agreement with Russia limited the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to fewer than 2,000. The role of nuclear weapons in U.S. military strategy was reduced. The historic 2015 agreement with Iran - which has already resulted in Iran's surrender of nearly all of its nuclear material - gave new life to nonproliferation efforts. Obama helped organize pressure that succeeded in reducing the dispersal of bomb-grade nuclear fuel.

But now informed observers argue that the risks of a nuclear disaster are getting worse. Tensions are rising with both Russia and China, with the U.S. deploying forces near their borders. Nuclear stockpiles contain more than 15,000 warheads. As many as 1,000 remain on hair-trigger alert. U.S. security strategy still claims the right to use nuclear weapons first, a dangerous and dumb refusal to limit their use to actual deterrence. The U.S. just activated an anti-ballistic missile system in Romania that the Russians say violates the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Agreement. President Obama has signed off on a modernization of both nuclear weapons and their delivery systems with a projected cost of $1 trillion over three decades that could very likely to trigger a new arms race.

"As the only nation ever to use nuclear weapons," President Obama has argued, "the United States has a moral obligation to continue to lead the way in eliminating them." With or without an apology, he should use the occasion of visiting Hiroshima to once more recommit to that goal, so that no one will ever again be victims of that evil.

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

Photo: In this Sept. 8, 1945 file photo, an allied correspondent stands in the rubble in front of the shell of a building that once was a movie theater in Hiroshima, Japan. | Stanley Troutman/AP

Don’t panic yet: 2016 Democratic primary resembles 2008

Thu, 26 May 2016 10:17:00 +0000

Many GOP elected officials, Republican National Committee members, and conservative newspaper and journal writers vowed not to support real estate mogul Donald Trump when he announced his candidacy last June. However, one needs a scorecard, or maybe a Jumbotron, to keep track of which of these "leaders" has caved in and now back him. It is further evidence of the GOP's character and its continual drift toward the extreme right.

On the Democratic side, the fact that the contest between Secretary Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders continues has dismayed quite a few liberals and some voices on the left, in social movements, among elected officials, and in the media. However, as bad as it may seem to many, we are either even with, or actually ahead of the game on building unity when compared to 2008.

This was all captured in a segment entitled, "What the 2008 Democratic primary looked like at this moment," on All In with Chris Hayes last Friday (May 20). Guest host Steve Kornacki delivered very helpful reminders of the primary battle eight years ago.

In late May 2008, then-Senator Clinton wrote a letter to superdelegates asking for their support despite the near-certainty that she would have fewer pledged delegates going into the convention. Why? She argued that polls demonstrated she would be a better opponent against Senator John McCain. In a speech as late as May 28, 2008, former President Bill Clinton continued to argue that Senator Clinton was the better general election choice.

The same month she made the ghastly point that she should stay in, since in 1968, the frontrunner, Senator Robert Kennedy, was assassinated in June of that year's race. Clinton apologized, but vowed to stay in the race until the convention. She reminded audiences that some did not want her to enter the race in the first place. And indeed, not until two days after the media declared then-Senator Obama the winner after the two last primaries, Montana and South Dakota on June 3, did Senator Clinton suspend her campaign and endorse Obama.

Fast forward to the present. Senator Sanders is trying to woo superdelegates. He's pointing to his greater lead in national polls over Trump compared to Clinton's. And likewise, he vows to stay in the race until the Democratic convention in Philadelphia. Remarkably similar - despite the outcry that what is going on now is unique.

However bruising the contest seems to be this year, organizations and individuals for equality and greater democracy could be considered ahead of the pace. In May 2008, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll, 60 percent of Clinton's supporters said they were willing to vote for Barack Obama if he became the nominee. In May of this year, 72 percent of Sanders' supporters told the same polling outfit that they would vote for Secretary Clinton against Trump.

Moreover, the Democratic National Committee, fully aware of the critical importance of Sanders' voters, has offered an olive branch via a significant minority of seats on the Platform Committee for the convention-Sanders supporters will have five seats, compared to Clinton's six, while four will be filled by DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Sanders has named Dr. Cornel West, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Native American activist Deborah Parker, Arab American Institute head and DNC member James Zogby, and author and environmentalist Bill McKibben as his representatives in the platform drafting process. Sanders has also changed some of his tone regarding Clinton, albeit perhaps unevenly so far.

Counteracting the danger presented by the Republican Party will require the broadest, most inclusive unity of the working class and all progressive social reform movements. A Republican victory for the presidency would mean the continuation of a right-wing Supreme Court for years into the future. Controlling both houses of Congress and the White House would result in massive setbacks to our labor movement, African-American and Latino equality, and all social movements seeking greater democracy: women's equality, youth, LGBT, seniors, the disabled, peace, environment, housing...you name it.

Careful analysis of the electoral college map, from the very conservative RedState to the moderate liberal Juan Williams leads to very hopeful outcomes for progressives.

The last thing we should be however, especially this early, is overconfident. Nonetheless, as Kornacki said Friday, according to the May polling numbers, "You can't say it's worse now than it was in 2008, even if it doesn't feel that way."

So there is no reason to panic yet.

Photo: Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama appear together at a unity rally on October 20, 2008 in Orlando, Florida. | John Raoux / AP

Socialism or capitalism: A life-or-death difference

Wed, 25 May 2016 13:07:00 +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 not capitalism. And the difference between the two may very well be a matter of life or death.

Our very survival is now threatened under capitalism by the poisoning of the Earth and climate change. The danger of nuclear weapons grows greater with never-ending wars. Socialism, however, can save the human species from extinction.

What is it about socialism that is so different from capitalism? Let's start with the differences in the basic economic systems that are the underpinning of human societies. I like Rick Nagin's summary of the essence of capitalism offered earlier in this series. But in his definition, I would change "workers" to "working people," so as to include family farmers, mom-and-pop storekeepers, etc. They too are exploited by capitalists even though they are not wage workers. So I would say: "The essence of capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of the working people who create the wealth."

As Nagin explains, the capitalist drive for maximum profits is built into capitalism. It is insatiable. It knows no limits except the ones that organized workers and their allies can win through class struggle and political action. It was the unlimited drive for profits that made U.S. slavery worse than anything in the past - because it was tied to capitalism and the banks' unlimited drive for profits.

Denmark has been mentioned by Sanders as an example of the socialism he believes in. I wish our unions were strong enough to make gains like those won in Denmark. We are working on it, but even in Denmark, labor's gains are in danger of being rolled back as long as it remains a capitalist country. With the key sectors of its economy privately-owned, Denmark is still a capitalist country.

Having gains rolled back is a bitter experience. Personally, I'm tired of fighting for the same things again and again. Take Social Security. I fought for that when I was in high school in 1933. And now they want to privatize it! Or take the minimum wage. I had a summer job in 1933. FDR's new National Industrial Recovery Act changed my rate of pay from 15 cents an hour to 25 cents. (The minimum wage had to be reinstated in 1935 because the Supreme Court had thrown it out.) That 25 cents would be worth well over $20 today had the minimum wage been tied to cost of living. There are so many ways that capitalism takes back our gains. We are now fighting hard for just $15.

What is it about socialism that makes it so different from capitalism and could save us from climate change and nuclear extinction? Let's look at the underpinning of society again, the economy. In a socialist economy, the key sectors are socially-owned instead of privately-owned by a few capitalists. Social ownership can take different forms including nationalized property, cooperatives, and collectives. Small business can also contribute to a socialist economy.

Social ownership eliminates private profits - that's the main thing. For key sectors of a socialist economy, there is no profit motive, no putting profits before people. Without the profit motive, the great reservoir of human talent can be harnessed to stop climate change and pollution. Without the profit motive, there is no drive for war and all nuclear weapons could be eliminated. That is the big life-or-death difference between socialism and capitalism.

Without private profit, the purpose of production is to supply the needs of working families. That's assuming that the socially-owned enterprises are democratically operated, of course. But that's a big "if."

I also agree with Nagin that the class struggle will continue under socialism. That is especially true if capitalism still rules in other countries. Also, it will take a big struggle to maintain democratic operation of the new socialist government and the socialized enterprises.

The fight to expand democracy must continue under socialism to wipe out the remnants of racism; sexism; language, religious, and nationality prejudices; and corruption of leaders. But the results, in terms of expanding the enjoyment of culture and human solidarity, are well worth the struggle.

Besides, there is no alternative. If the drive for profits is not checked and ended, the human race may not survive.

Beatrice Lumpkin is a long time labor activist with laundry workers, steelworkers, and teachers. As a math professor at Malcolm X College in Chicago, she fought to restore the contributions of people of color to the educational curriculum. She has served as a multicultural consultant to textbook publishers and to public schools in Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Portland, OR.

Should Sanders take it all the way to the convention?

Wed, 25 May 2016 10:31:00 +0000

A good friend of many years wrote to me last week arguing that Hillary Clinton has the lion's share of the responsibility to unify the Democratic Party. Hillary, he said, must substantively reach out to Bernie in both words and practical deeds soon if she has any hope of getting elected.

I agreed with him, but I also see the process of how that has to happen a little bit differently. I would argue that it is imperative that both sides - Sanders as well as Clinton - show a spirit of compromise and accent their common battle against Trump, not hostility toward each other. Hillary should soon make meaningful concessions to Bernie, but Bernie and his supporters should realize that they can't expect all of their demands to be met either. They too have to bend.

Let's not forget that Bernie, notwithstanding all the claims and protests of his supporters, was the loser in this contest. Hillary was the winner - in both votes cast and delegates won.

The best scenario, as I see it, would be for Bernie to give up his run for the nomination after the last vote is cast on June 14 in the D.C. primary. At that time, he can (and should) continue to press his case on other issues - the party platform, convention rules, delegate seating, his role, and so on. But to continue his campaign for the nomination all the way up to the convention in late July, however, strikes me as a dangerous roll of the dice.

Trump could easily be the big winner, while Hillary and the American people could be the biggest losers. In that event, Bernie and his movement wouldn't escape without paying a heavy price too. Their image and reputation would be badly tarnished. Much of the good will, enthusiasm, and promise that his candidacy generated could vanish in a flash. To brush off this possibility, as some do, is either naive or irresponsible.

Not everyone agrees, which comes as no surprise. In fact, a considerable number of his supporters say that Sanders should stay in the nomination hunt all the way to Philadelphia. Turn it into a floor fight at the convention, they argue. Any exit before then, they claim, would undercut his leverage on other matters being deliberated, not to mention any chance of securing the nomination. O'Lord, this too is misguided, in fact badly so.

To begin with, Hillary, barring something unforeseen, has a lock on the nomination. It is dreaming to think that Bernie has a viable pathway at this point. Admittedly, dreams have a place in politics, but only if they have some basis in reality. This one doesn't. It's pure fantasy.

Furthermore, the reality - not the dream - is that Bernie could drop out tomorrow and he would still have plenty of leverage at the convention on everything, except for who carries the presidential timber for the Democratic Party this fall. Again, that has been decided for all practical purposes.

Contrary to what some of Bernie's boosters contend, his leverage doesn't rest mainly on his delegate count. It stems largely from the legions of enthusiastic voters who supported him in the primaries and whose support Hillary needs this fall if she is to beat Trump. And no one knows this better than Clinton herself.

Finally, a refusal to concede the nomination to Hillary prior to the convention could go very badly. It is the wrong fight to pick. Other fights are far more important. It will cause not creative tensions (which are part of any broad, diverse, and dynamic coalition), but sharp and lasting divisions at the convention, which will help no one - not Hillary, not Bernie, not their supporters, not the effort to defeat Trump, not the struggles to come in the years ahead.

Imagine what it will look like to tens of millions of TV viewers watching the convention (and what the implications will be for popular struggles going forward), if Bernie's largely white and youthful delegates are at loggerheads with Hilary's Black, Latino, women, and trade union delegates over who the standard bearer will be. While the movement around Bernie is an incredible breath of fresh air and cause for optimism about the future, its potential will be realized only if it is able to build a "durable alliance" with the main class and social constituencies that are at the core of any transformational movement that has the capacity to effect a "new burst" of freedom, equality, economic security, ecological sustainability, and peace.

Right now most of those forces are attached to Clinton's campaign, not Sanders' movement. But that fact - especially as it applies to African-American and other people of color - seems to receive little attention from Bernie and his supporters. The energy, boldness, and imagination of youth, it goes without saying, is vital to the success of any movement and livable future, but it can't substitute for the power, experience, and understanding of a broad multi-racial, male and female, working class-based people's coalition.

One final thought of this wordy reply: uniting their two divergent streams of voters against Trump is the main strategic challenge as Bernie, Hillary, and their respective camps approach the convention. My guess is that Bernie, Hillary, and the vast majority of their supporters are disposed toward unity, albeit not arrived at in a formal way, but rather in the course of a give-and-take debate, with a dollop or two of tension, and a good measure of creativity and compromise. Of course, everybody isn't of that mind.

On the one hand, overly-zealous supporters of Clinton in the top (and lower) circles of the Democratic Party are inclined to freeze out rather than welcome Bernie and his delegates to the convention. And, on the other hand, the main organizing principle of too many of Bernie's supporters is to turn up the temperature no matter what the circumstances or challenges. Politics for them is about nothing but militant and righteous talk devoid of any consideration of the larger dynamics, balance of power, and dangers of this moment.

Hopefully though, the tone, agenda, deliberations, and outcome of the convention will not depend on either of these two groups, but rather on what the two candidates - Hillary and Bernie - and the rest of their supporters do and say.

Hillary, if she is smart, will tip her hat and extend a hand to Bernie long before they meet in Philadelphia. And Bernie, if he's serious about advancing a progressive agenda, will respond accordingly.

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

Photo: Scene from the floor of the Nevada Democratic Party State Convention in Las Vegas. May 14, 2016. | AP

The electoral college, the two-party trap, and the presidential election

Fri, 20 May 2016 14:00:00 +0000

trap - noun \ 'trap \ a position or situation from which it is difficult or impossible to escape.

Just Monday, Ohio Governor and failed candidate for the Republican Party nomination, John Kasich, ruled out the possibility of running for president as a third party candidate. He was asked to do so by forces associated with the Never Trump movement. "A third-party candidacy would be viewed as kind of a silly thing," he said.

Several months prior, former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, after a more serious examination of a similar run, also ruled it out. After examining the data, he was convinced that he could "win a number of diverse states -- but not enough to win the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to win the presidency," he wrote in his own publication.

He further explained that his unsuccessful run would have led to its opposite goal: "there is a good chance that my candidacy could lead to the election of Donald Trump or Senator Ted Cruz. That is not a risk I can take in good conscience." Why? Because, he continued, no candidate would win a majority of electoral votes, and when that happens, the House of Representatives decides (with each state having one vote). The Republican majority would "certainly" vote for the Republican nominee, Bloomberg concluded.

Congress has determined the winner in Bloomberg's scenario in only two elections: 1800 (Thomas Jefferson) and 1824 (John Quincy Adams). (It also decided the outcome in 1876, but that is a much more complicated story.)

More typically, third-party candidacies do not throw the election to the House but instead help the candidate at the opposite end of the political spectrum. Nearly every country that uses our system, formally called the single-member district plurality system, has just two major political parties. Third parties running in presidential elections rarely win more than a percent or two. In any given state, if the number of these votes is insignificant, nothing changes; but if it is significant, the opposite party benefits. And "significance" can be a small figure, because we really don't have one national presidential election but rather 50 state elections-whoever wins the most votes in a given state wins all of that state's electoral votes.

Ralph Nader, running in 2000, took so many votes away from Al Gore in Florida that the state's results were razor thin. So thin that, when combined with the problem of ambiguously recorded ballots, a recount was ordered, though it was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court, thus allowing George W. Bush to win that state and hence the national election. Nader didn't mind; he wanted to punish the Democrats and his campaign intentionally went to Florida in the last days of that election to increase their own vote total.

Today, the Republican Party and the Never Trump movement face this dilemma. Take a "reasonable" Republican and run him or her as a third party, and sure enough, the Democratic Party nominee probably wins much more easily than in a typical two-candidate election. Not an issue in solidly Republican states (like Texas) or solidly Democratic states (like California), but a major issue in the so-called battleground states.

G. William Domhoff, professor of psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, provides us with the classic case when a two-party system became a multi-party system. It was Belgium, in the 1890s. The country's Socialist Party was becoming a major force while its Liberal Party was in serious decline. The Catholic Party, the strongest party, changed the electoral laws instead of facing the Socialist Party head to head, for that country, like ours, required only a plurality of votes (the most, not the majority) to win elections. Meaning, if the Liberal Party won a few votes, but the Socialists won more than the Catholic Party, the new leftwing party would have swept the parliament elections.

As long as we have our two-party system, the winner of our elections will be either the Democratic or the Republican party. It is a reality that some, usually on the Left, would like to disappear, but wishful thinking has never led to political victory. If the case of Belgium of yesteryear holds true, the system will not be changed by either one or both of the two major parties until either or both fear a takeover by an insurgent party.

In this regard, supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont) should take heed: either the Republicans or the Democrats will win the presidency. Whoever wins will appoint one or two, maybe even three Supreme Court justices. Not just that: on the coattails of every presidential victory is often a change in the U.S. Senate or the House. Some of the more sober Republicans (a decreasing breed) fear this the most-a Trump candidacy might result in the GOP losing the presidency, the Supreme Court, probably the U.S. Senate, and by a long-shot, the House. Everyone who opposes the Republicans and all that they stand for can either be part of their defeat, or they can sit on the sidelines, complain that the choices aren't good enough, and the far right will be escape maximum damage.

I exercised my democratic right to participate in the Sanders campaign. I was with the petitioners in the South Bronx in January, distributing literature while they gathered signatures to put him on the ballot. I shortchanged my sleep, waking up an hour or two early, in order to distribute his literature in my congressional district after he was on the ballot. I canvassed housing projects, targeting likely Sanders voters, to mobilize them for the primaries. And I think the strong Sanders showing helped move Secretary Hillary Clinton to more populist positions, undermined the lunacy of the Republican candidacies, and provided a fresh critique of our complicated electoral process.

However, it will soon be time to face the reality of the two-party general election. I am willing to enter the reality of our system and help elect Secretary Clinton, the likely nominee. Our country has a raving lunatic as her opponent; sitting this one out, or wasting it on a third-party ticket, especially in "purple" states, will have the opposite effect.

Photo: TheAnchorOnline.org

America must renew its infrastructure or face decline

Fri, 20 May 2016 10:47:00 +0000

America is literally falling apart. In Flint, children were poisoned by the lead contamination of the water. In Washington, the subway system is plagued by fires and delays. Arlington Memorial Bridge - which connects the North to the South, the Capitol to Arlington National Cemetery - may have to be closed soon. Kennedy's eternal flame may burn forever, but the bridge is on its last legs.

The American Society of Civil Engineers released a report last week once more warning the country of a massive investment deficit - an estimated $1.4 trillion shortfall over the next ten years - coming on top of years of underfunding and neglect.

This isn't a matter of money. The Obama administration has announced it plans to spend over $1 trillion to build a new generation of nuclear weapons and the planes, missiles, and submarines that deliver them. These are weapons that can never be used. We have spent over $2 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to date, with the final costs estimated at $4 to $6 trillion. The war in Afghanistan - an impoverished country where we have no strategic interest - is already the longest in our history and continuing.

We have the money. U.S. corporations stash trillions abroad to avoid paying taxes. If they paid what they owe - now estimated to be $700 billion - it would provide a down payment on rebuilding America. The federal tax on gasoline - dedicated to paying for infrastructure - has not been raised since 1993, even though gas prices have plummeted.

Interest rates on U.S. bonds are now so low that the Treasury could issue Rebuild America bonds, put people to work to rebuild the country - and the growth and increased productivity that results would generate revenues to repay the bonds. Even establishment economists like Lawrence Summers argue that the program would literally pay for itself. And it would respond to the pleas of the bastion of economic conservatism - the International Monetary Fund - that is pleading with the U.S. and other advanced countries to expand public investment to forestall a return to recession. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the U.S. will suffer a stunning $4 trillion in lost GDP by 2025 from the costs of decaying tunnels, railways, waterways, and other basic infrastructure. It will cost us more to decay than it would to rebuild.

But Washington is frozen. The Republican Congress rejects President Obama's modest plans for infrastructure investment, though they are supported by a massive coalition that includes the conservative Chamber of Commerce as well as the AFL-CIO. All three presidential candidates call for expanding investment in infrastructure (although only Bernie Sanders comes close to meeting the shortfall that the civil engineers warn about). But it will require a wave election - a sweeping rebuke to the obstructionist Republican Congress - for anything to happen.

This is how great nations decline. Investments that are essential to any modern civilized nation - from schools and bridges to electric grids and clean water systems - are neglected. Money is squandered on foreign adventures or lost to the tax evasions of corporations and the rich. Private speculators profit from privatizing public services. We build the most modern and powerful military in the world but are ever more crippled by decaying services that we depend on every day.

Politics as usual won't change this. It will change only if people rise up and hold their politicians accountable. How many bridges must collapse or children must be poisoned or businesses must be shuttered before that happens?

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

Photo: A portion of Interstate 10 in California collapsed after heavy rain, July 2015. | Nick Ut/AP

What’s the point of the Panama Papers?

Thu, 19 May 2016 14:05:00 +0000

We don't' know how much attention it's gotten outside the New York-Washington corridor or banking circles, but the recent revelations of the "Panama Papers" illuminate the seamy, secretive, skewed side of international business as never before.

To review, the Panama Papers are a trove of 11.5 million documents, leaked out of the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca which made a specialty of setting up dummy companies in overseas "tax haven" countries such as Panama and the British Virgin Islands so individuals, firms, and even universities could stash away billions of dollars in cash.

Participants in 40 years of such shenanigans ran the gamut from virtually every single big U.S. financial institution - Wachovia, Merrill Lynch, you name it - to half the prominent politicians in Pakistan, Iceland's prime minister and his wife, the father of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the king of Saudi Arabia and members of Russian leader Vladimir Putin's inner circle. By the way, the uproar is enough that Iceland's PM is now its former PM.

They weren't the only ones: The papers also showed dummy companies established by the heavyweight Democratic Party law and lobbying firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld and by at least two universities: Georgia Tech and New York University's medical school.

And, says Huffington Post, Donald Trump.

But here's the point of the Panama Papers. What those corporations, universities, law firms and more did may have been seamy, smarmy and unethical. But it's legal.

As the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which spent more than a year combing through the Panama Papers, notes: ""There are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. We do not intend to suggest or imply that any persons have broken the law or otherwise acted improperly."

However, the tax laws not only of the countries that hosted the dummy companies but of the countries that housed the entities and individuals that set them up, do suggest improprieties. The Panama Papers, in short, are part of the global influence-peddling that the 1 percent enjoy.

One surprise in the Panama Papers: how few U.S. names there are. Aside from Trump, there aren't many individuals here that used the dummy firms overseas to evade U.S. taxes. But there's a reason for that. They don't need to go overseas.

We have our own tax havens right here at home. They're the states that let companies and individuals set up dummy companies to hide income: South Dakota, Nevada, Delaware and Wyoming. Mossack Fonseca even helped some clients set up dummy Nevada companies.

That tells us something. The 1 percent have so successfully taken over the U.S. tax code and milked it and manipulated it that they've hidden billions of dollars right here at home. And when they do so to escape taxes, guess who pays? Right: you and me.

So here's the point of the Panama Papers, as far as we're concerned. If, when and ever someone proposes overhauling the arcane, byzantine, convoluted monstrosity that is the current tax code, a prime objective must be to tax all earned income, regardless of what type it is, where it was earned or where it is stashed.

Social Security payments, railroad retirement funds, workers' pensions, no not these. Everything else - and we mean everything, be it interest, dividends, capital gains, stock options, whatever - yes. It's time to end the saga of the Panama Papers, and of those U.S. states that aid and abet similar favors for the rich and the corrupt. And who aid and abet Donald Trump.

Photo: Tony Pecinovsky/PW

Opium of the masses? Religion and 21st century socialism

Wed, 18 May 2016 11:46:00 +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.

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering."

How's that for a neat dialectical summation? It's almost a Buddhist koan, a seeming paradox that points to a larger truth. Well, you shouldn't be surprised. It's from Karl Marx himself, the - dare I say it? - high priest of dialectics and historical materialism. He then goes on to say, in words that will likely be more familiar:

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

Marxists (and don't forget Marx claimed he was not a Marxist!) have forever interpreted that last phrase as if he were depicting 19th-century Chinese opium dens (supplied by British commercial and colonial interests, natch). It's important to remember that opium in the 19th century - as in the 21st - was a commonly used medical substance for pain relief, not necessarily and not only the addiction that led to a person's disengagement from life and struggle.

It would be cruel indeed to ignore the sentence that precedes "opium." Religion can provide context, comfort, and hope in a world that, at least up to now, cannot provide all the conditions for decent and contented life. We cannot grind people into the dirt and then propose to take away from them their meager crutch of understanding.

Ah, but that's where we have to introduce socialist ideology, you say, to bring consciousness to the masses. To replace foolish superstition with real knowledge of the workings of the material world. Education! Science! Actually, Marx beat you to that part, but more poetically and with a larger appreciation for the process and the stages by which such transformation might occur. He goes on in the next breath to say:

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."

At many critical junctures in history, religious expression has exerted a powerful influence in advancing the human condition. The Bible exhorts us time and again to "remember the stranger for you were once slaves in Egypt." The egalitarian message of Jesus has animated millions of believers. The Protestant Reformation unleashed the vast creative forces of modernity and skeptical thinking that accompanied the passing of feudalism and the rise of capitalism.

In modern times, the Civil Rights movement recruited untold numbers of churchgoers and believers and lifted up dynamic preachers of the Word to national prominence. Their inherent "criticism of religion" - the religion not only of the KKK but also of the complacent mainstream - surely was the embryo of a new form of life out of that "vale of tears."

We cannot speak only of Western religious traditions, of course. In many indigenous cultures, there is not even a fine line between "religion" and culture. In our country, Native beliefs about the unity and continuity of all life and natural forms sit at the heart of their environmental concerns; many non-Natives have come to appreciate and adopt that point of view. We would be ill-advised to erase such "religious" convictions from our "socialist" program.

Today, faith-based groups in churches, synagogues, and mosques vigorously address issues of labor, racism, civil rights, the environment, women's and LGBTQ rights, foreign policy, militarism, and other concerns affecting legislation, public policy, and popular consciousness. It is unfair in the extreme to paint all of religion with the right-wing brush that some sects - perceived as ever more bizarre - have earned with their backward policies on women, reproductive rights, LGBTQ issues, creationism, etc.

If socialism is the evolving practice of the most humane and effective solutions to human and environmental problems in the people's ongoing "demand for their real happiness," then clearly religious folk can have a say in that evolution. Transition is always uneven, sometimes lagging, sometimes bounding ahead, and not everyone, whether religious or not, can be at a single evolutionary point at the same moment.

In different times and places, and among certain demographic communities, perhaps socialist thinking will wholly supplant religious "illusions," but we cannot expect sustained success at this project in a most uncertain world. We must have some appreciation for differences in the broader coalition building socialist consciousness. After all, even on the nonreligious left we have always had serious differences of views. We must show some humility on this point, and even contrition. The "socialism" we have seen in the world has often fallen woefully short of the "real happiness" of which Marx speaks.

There cannot be many socialist movements in the world today that are avowedly, militantly atheist. Those days are over.

I was on a peace activist trip to the USSR in 1980 with Quakers, pacifists, ministers and church people, anarchists, socialists of one variety or another, and Communist Party members as well. We made a point of visiting churches and synagogues, speaking as frankly as we could with their leaders, and attending religious services in several cities. Atheism may have been the declared policy of the state, but by no means was religion outlawed or invisible. Its reach was controlled, however, and often believers were charged with other crimes (such as "Zionism" for wanting to study Hebrew). For the most part churches simply had to be self-supporting. Other socialist societies today have active churches - in Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, China - for those who are interested. (Perhaps North Korea would be an exception; I'm not sure what the situation is there, but they certainly do not appreciate Western proselytizing.)

We have to admit that the socialist countries generally had a poor record on civil liberties, including freedom of religion. While various external and internal circumstances - the transition from, in some cases, virtual feudalism to 20th-century socialism, and above all, of course, the relentless hostility of imperialism - undoubtedly played a role in this, these did not completely explain the repressiveness which became, finally, a significant factor in the collapse of socialism. Socialists today will not follow their example.

However, we cannot leave it at that. Many of the things people worry about in life which once required the "opium" of their "illusions" - such as joblessness, poverty, illiteracy, illness and poor healthcare, racial and religious prejudice, inadequate housing, war, crime, and environmental degradation - were indeed greatly minimized in the socialist world. So whether by formal decree, or by the withdrawal of public support for state-approved religion, or by natural attrition, the status of religion did decline, as people's material needs were being fulfilled in real life.

This is indeed what we see in the advanced nations of Western Europe today, which are very largely secular societies, because many of them are social democratic, if not actually socialist. By any measure their "real happiness" far surpasses what we see in the United States, for example, which continues its path toward gross inequality of wealth and of opportunity.

Yet even here the percentage of "nones" - those who profess no religion - grows year by year, especially among young people. In part, this must be a factor of education, urbanization, intermarriage, greater acceptance of women's and LGBTQ rights, and a revulsion against the reactionary stance some faith groups have assumed.

There will never be a socialist or communist Utopia. In fact, the term contradicts itself, because Utopia means no place. For the foreseeable future, even under socialism, there will be a desire and a need for some people to seek religious expression and comfort, and the movement we are part of must embrace them fully.

Throughout the course of humanity, from the prehistoric era to the present, people have questioned their place in the cosmos, in the world, in the tapestry of time. They have asked why some people must suffer in pain while others step carefree into their future, and no socialism can ever fully provide the answers they seek. We can no sooner banish the appeal of "illusions" than dismiss our need to create new art and new stories to entertain, to comfort, to heal, to inspire.

Eric A. Gordon, PhD, has written off and on for People's World and its antecedents since the late 1970s. He is presently the chair of the Religion Commission of the Communist Party. He worked professionally in the Jewish community for many years and continues to participate in Los Angeles-area interfaith programs. He is a certified secular Jewish leader and a humanist.

Fifty years out of college and finally (almost) normal

Tue, 17 May 2016 17:29:00 +0000

Over the weekend of June 2-5 I'll be attending my Yale Class of 1966 50^th reunion in New Haven, Conn. These occasions are an opportunity to take stock, refresh old friendships and perhaps create some new ones, remember some classmates we've lost, and most important, see who still has any hair left!

This will be only my second attendance at a Yale reunion. Ten years ago, in 2006, I attended our 40^th and I approached that with some trepidation. I'd been a moody "pre-gay" (and pre-Stonewall) adolescent who didn't enjoy a lot of warm friendships at college - these had not been my best and brightest years! But the biblical 40 years (of wandering in the desert of real life) had passed, and I couldn't help noting from the alumni journal that there were already by then fewer class notes preceding ours than after ours! I had always resisted going back to a reunion because I never followed the "Goldman Sachs" model of success in life, and wondered how I'd measure up to my classmates. But hey, 40 years out, are people judging any more? And don't I have my own life achievements to be proud of?

Aside from several specific alumni class-related programs, one of the lectures open to the whole Yale community that year was an assessment of the George W. Bush presidency (2001-2009) by Prof. Gaddis Smith, who bent over backwards to put the most charitable spin on Dubya's régime. His basic thesis was that the Bush doctrine was to spread democracy around the world. In the Q&A I openly challenged him. I didn't agree that was Bush's doctrine at all: For starters, how about stolen elections here at home? His presidency was rather all about the wholesale transfer of wealth from the bottom and middle up to the topmost 1 percent of Americans. Upon which the audience burst into a cacophony of wild applause mixed with hoots and catcalls (the latter from the 1-percenters in the crowd, no doubt). I reveled in playing my usual provocative role in such a toney milieu. For the rest of the weekend strangers stopped me on the street to congratulate me for telling the truth about George III.

The 2006 elections that November seemed to vindicate my opinion of Mr. Bush (Class of 1968), resulting in a sweeping Democratic victory: They captured the House, the Senate, and a majority of governorships and state legislatures from the Republicans. That's what Americans thought of the Bush doctrine.

The class survey

With that personal coup of self-confidence behind me I now face 2016 and my 50^th with greater ease. Our class went all out this year to produce a two-volume magnum opus that arrived on my doorstep a few days ago. Volume I features a series of essays by prominent members of our class comparing the world today with the one we graduated into in 1966. Our most distinguished class member (by some standards) is Secretary of State John Kerry, whose substantial appreciation of "America and the World, Then and Now" conspicuously omits both his stint in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War and his courageous leadership of Vietnam Veterans Against the War upon his return. "On campus," he writes magisterially, "we debated the rights and wrongs of war even as we weighed our post-gradation choices." I was one of those who debated Kerry often in those years, and made the choice to demonstrate against the war in the first national action in Washington, D.C., on April 17, 1965. If Kerry had listened to me his life would have taken a very different turn! There's a long section of memoirs about "National Service," as so many of our classmates wound up in Vietnam or government work; 36 percent of our class served in the military.

Volume I also includes an 11-page summary of findings from a class survey in which 369 respondents participated - over a third of our surviving class members (about 160 have died). Volume II is mostly the class directory, in which I openly discussed aspects of my personal life I would never have dreamed in 1966 that I would be making public. Anyone who reads my essay will find out that I joined the Communist Party in 2009, am feelin' the Bern, and now write for People's World.

Focusing on the class survey, if I felt kind of freakish for a healthy portion of my life, it appears that the Yale alumni pool has in great part caught up with me. "Forty-eight percent say they consider themselves Democrats, 23 percent consider themselves Republicans, and 26 percent consider themselves independent. Thirty-five percent say that in their adult lives they have moved to the left, while 20 percent say they have moved to the right. In the 2012 election 67 percent voted for Obama and 32 percent for Romney." Interestingly, our parents' politics leaned pretty much the other way: 48 percent GOP and 34 percent Democratic.

In assessing who was the best U.S. president since 1960, Reagan got the single most votes (102 out of 356), but was followed by Clinton, Obama, Johnson and Kennedy. The total of Democrats was 229, with only 127 for the Republicans. Prof. Gaddis Smith's lover-boy "W" received exactly one vote, ranking him at 0.3 percent. In the survey asking if "President Obama is doing a good job," my class responded with 57 percent agreement, significantly surpassing national polling.

Sixty-nine percent did not believe that "current U.S. immigration trends pose a threat to traditional American values." I suspect that the general worldliness of my college-educated generation - travel and living abroad, experience in the corporate and professional world, intermarriage - has contributed to this positive view of immigrants in our society. Greater exposure to the world has also greatly reduced participation in religious activity for most of us: Religion is "very" important to only 20 percent of us.

On the big wedge issues the results are even more dramatically consistent with my views:

Pro-choice on abortion: 83 percent

Same-gender marriage: 85 percent

Stricter gun laws: 84 percent

Limits on amounts spent in federal elections: 84 percent

Limits on amounts spent on political campaigns by corporations and unions: 88 percent.

"Seventy-three percent feel the increase in the earth's temperature has primarily resulted from pollution caused by human activities," yet only 35 percent worry about it. Possibly because at our age we won't be suffering its effects for too much longer!

Only 4 percent of our class never married. On that scale I am still pretty abnormal. I'm also in the minority (13 percent) who have gained "a lot more than" 10 pounds over my graduation weight - but I'll bet dollars to donuts a lot of folks didn't answer that question! And I'm among the 24 percent who wear a necktie as seldom as a couple of times a month (in my case almost exclusively when I perform civil marriages for Los Angeles County, which is, I admit, kind of weird for a guy who never got hitched).

Thanks to Greg Weiss, who edited the class survey, I realize once again that old piece of wisdom, that so often the great conflicts that tear countries and generations apart do soften over time as other issues come to the fore, memories (like hairlines) recede, and we gain the perspective of grace on our lives. Oh, yes, I still nurture a few old grudges in life, but overall I'm pretty OK with how my life has turned out. Though when I get onto that campus again I swear I'm going to find out who was that one classmate who voted for "W" as best president!

Photo: Bingham Hall, Yale University, New Haven, Conn., where the author lived freshman year.

Free speech, or safe spaces? Don't make students choose

Tue, 17 May 2016 17:07:00 +0000

Near the beginning of April at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, students found themselves facing an onslaught of racially targeted hate speech throughout campus. It began with a series of disturbing events: first, on April 5^th, anti-immigrant, pro-Trump messages appeared, chalked out on the sidewalk in front of the Latino/a Studies Department. Statements such as "They have to go back #Trump" and "Build a Wall" caused shock and outrage among the campus Latinx community.

The university, however, said that the comments were protected under "freedom of speech" and that they encouraged political discourse. That same week, a letter from Interim Provost Edward Feser and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Renee Romano was issued. The letter stated: "The best recourse to speech with which we disagree is more speech: Speech that clearly articulates a stronger and better argued point of view. Speech that represents the values we hold most dear. Speech that builds connections and shared understanding." Ironically, this sentiment came from the same collective of administrators that fired Steven Salaita in August of 2014, the Palestinian-American professor who was promised a position at UIUC, until he tweeted criticisms of the Israeli government that some perceived as anti-Semitic comments. The Salaita case raises serious questions as to how school administrators determine the type of "valued" discourse" that is recognized and protected by the First Amendment on college campuses.

Rhetoric can cause harm

These aren't trivial issues. One could argue that the administration's apathy towards the type of clear discriminatory rhetoric shown in the chalked messages at UIUC opened the floodgates to the events that followed; anti-feminist chalk in front of the Women's Resource Center, the creation of several anti-black Facebook groups that targeted black student activists, and eventually the spray painting of swastikas on buildings across campus. All these acts took place before the end of the spring semester. By the time the administration decided to follow up April 29 with a second letter "condemning" the actions, much damage had been done.

There is no question that racism has evolved and shifted since the days of legal slavery, repackaging itself into a much more modern structural shape. While it still occasionally manifests blatantly, as it did on the Illinois campus, we no longer regularly witness the level of large-scale, overt segregation that once was. Students, however, now cope with implicit undertones of bigotry from their classmates that are expressed in all sorts of subtle ways. Because of this subtlety, there are some that would claim that Millennials are a generation of entitled and "over sensitive whiners," that resort to the need for safe spaces to escape the reality of real world obstacles.

The media in particular has made it a point to express its outrage at being excluded from what activists refer to as 'safe spaces.' A safe space, according to the Wikipedia definition, implies a "certain license to speak and act freely, form collective strength, and generate strategies for resistance. It is a means rather than an end and not only a physical space but also a space created by the coming together of [individuals] searching for community." The original concept stemmed from the Women's Liberation Movement of the late 1960s and early 70s. The first physical safe spaces were largely influenced by the LGBTQ community and the Queer bar scene. Since then, safe spaces have become a powerful tool for mobilization and a place of refuge for marginalized people.

Late last year the media invaded Mizzou's [University of Missouri's nickname] campus following a slew of racist incidents that led to the eventual resignation of then-University President Tim Wolfe. It was reported that several journalists were, sometimes aggressively, forced out of designated 'safe areas' set up by students. Many activists have tense relationships with existing news outlets, as mainstream media has spent years demonizing the righteous, but sometimes unruly, demonstrations that characterize social justice movements. Protesters often see their words taken out of context, or images used against them, and many would rather avoid conversing with media all together. This led to quite a number of outlets voicing outrage and disapproval, with platforms, such as The Atlantic, publishing articles on the "weaponization" of safe spaces. Some even went so far as to accuse activists of hindering the progressive movements through censorship. But without some restrictions on hate speech on campus, or refuge for those who are its targets, things can escalate quickly.

Both concepts have leftist roots

The 'free speech' vs. 'safe space' binary is where the lines get blurry. There is an underlying assumption that neither can thrive while the other survives - but the origins of both stem from movements for social justice and against capitalism. When examining the long history of free speech in the United States, it becomes apparent that a number of restrictive censorship legislations were specifically constructed to hinder radical movements. The Sedition Act of 1918 targeted anarchists, socialists, and other left-wing activists who opposed U.S. participation in World War I. It made it a crime to "willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of the Government of the United States" or to "willfully urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of the production" of the things "necessary or essential to the prosecution of the war."

Similarly, the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (Smith Act), made it illegal for anyone in the United States to advocate, abet, or teach the desirability of overthrowing the government. It was strategically enacted as an excuse to indict 215 people who were alleged communists, anarchists, and fascists. The Smith Act also helped to build the hysteria around the Red Scare. Given the fact that encroachments on free speech have historically targeted the left, it is understandable why even progressives today find themselves eager to denounce any method of 'censorship.'

As a reporter, the critical relevance of free speech is not something I take lightly. However, as a Queer, disabled, Latinx, womyn who has had to navigate predominantly white institutions for most of her life, I also hold the value of safe spaces in the utmost regard. During my undergraduate years, I spent a majority of my time studying at "La Casa," the Latino cultural center on my campus. Though the center was created as a place of refuge for many Latinx students, it also held a rich history of struggle . La Casa was founded in 1970 by Latinx students and faculty who protested for the right to have a sanctuary that they could call their own. The cultural center was a result of demonstrations and conflict with administrators on campus who did not understand the necessity of creating these spaces for students of color.

During my time in undergraduate school, I witnessed professors openly use alienating terms such as "illegals," and encountered numerous students who have donned black face at costume parties. I repeatedly saw brown men profiled by the campus police and spoke to women who were sexually assaulted by trusted friends. At the end of the day there was one place where I knew, without hesitation, that I could escape to with my frustrations and tears: La Casa.

Northwestern University's President, Morton Schapiro, wrote a controversial open letter addressing the topic recently, stating that everyone deserved a safe space. It was a response to an incident where black students declined to extend an invite to white students who wanted to join a discussion they were having at the NU cafeteria. "Those black students had every right to enjoy their lunches in peace. There are plenty of times and places to engage in uncomfortable learning, but that wasn't one of them. The white students, while well-meaning, didn't have the right to unilaterally decide when uncomfortable learning would take place." The idea that people of color must foster environments of 'open dialogue' at all times and appease to the needs of their white peers is an extension of a post-colonial mindset. It is not simply a call for civil discourse, but a demand that any marginalized individual be able to decouple themselves from their personal experiences so as to better educate the public. It is a process that requires people of color not only to politicize, or render abstract, their personalized identity, but then be accountable for-or take care of- the feelings of their white peers. It is a conversation that, unless navigated with exact precision, leads to further validate the existence of white supremacist power structures.

CNN News Anchor Don Lemon once said of the matter: "If you're afraid of having your feelings hurt, don't leave your house." What Lemon vocalized is an echo of the common argument against safe spaces as representing a denial of the real world. It fails to acknowledge, however, the problematic message surrounding this statement; the notion that students can only escape the animosity and bigotry of the world by locking themselves away. After all, when a person gets robbed, society does not expect them never to go out again, we hold each other accountable for catching the thief. Similarly, Lemon shifts the blame from a racist or homophobic system back to the victims of systemic racism and oppression. This takes away the critical component of accountability, focusing attention on the behavior of marginalized students, instead of addressing what social constructs and pressures have led them to require safe sanctuaries.

Campuses should foster refuge and openness

While some have argued for the importance of preserving free speech over safe spaces, both derive from a shared fight against discrimination and right wing extremism. They were meant to grow side by side, but have since been pitched against one another and misconstrued to allow room for hate speech. Despite the ongoing struggle to make room for both civil discourse and safe spaces, students continue to navigate the grey areas of 'free" and open dialogue. One thing remains clear however, so long as acts of bigotry continue to unfold across college campuses around the country, institutions have a duty to provide the asylum that marginalized youth require to survive.

The time I spent at La Casa was only one example of the way in which a life can be drastically shaped by an environment that provides both nurture and refuge. Student activists around the globe have shown that organizations such as BYP 100, Assata's Daughters, Black and Pink, and others have utilized safe spaces as a means for progressive action. Now we, as citizens, must continue to challenge the problematic constructs in society that have driven young activists to seek sanctuary, and furthermore, provide them with the room to create their own revolutionary movements.

Photo: Students cheer while listening to protesters, following the announcement that Tim Wolfe, the president of the University of Missouri System, would resign for responding poorly to campus racism. Jeff Roberson | AP

“Measures of despair”: Chicago desperate for action on violence and poverty

Mon, 16 May 2016 10:37:00 +0000

Chicago, America's third largest city, is plagued by violence and poverty, made worse by racial and class divisions. A poll just released by the Kaiser Foundation and the New York Times depicts a city that is losing faith in its basic public institutions, from the police to the mayor's office. The vast majority think the city is on the wrong track, with the greatest unity found in their unfavorable opinion about the job Mayor Rahm Emanuel is doing.

Chicago has nearly equal numbers of black, Hispanic, and white residents, but they live largely in separate sides of town and in separate realities. African-Americans and Latinos are far unhappier with basic aspects of their neighborhoods, from parks to public schools. Crime and violence is the biggest issue for all Chicagoans, but while 41 percent of blacks think their neighborhoods are not safe or not too safe, only 17 percent of whites share their fears. In the wake of the Laquan McDonald shooting - where a teenager was shot 16 times and killed by a white Chicago policeman, Chicagoans believe the police are biased, unaccountable, and badly in need of reform.

On the poverty-ridden south and west sides of town, parents fear for the young. Among African-Americans, overwhelming majorities worry that it is likely or very likely that a young person in their neighborhood will end up in a gang (75 percent), abuse alcohol or drugs (83 percent), go to jail (81 percent), or be a victim of violence (86 percent). These are measures of despair.

The Kaiser/NYT poll only documents what we already knew. It details the "whereas." Any statement of action begins with the whereas - whereas this is true, and this is true - detailing the conditions that demand action.

What is missing in Chicago isn't evidence of the whereas, it is the plan for the "therefore." Whereas these conditions are unjust and unsustainable, therefore we will take the following actions. On police reform, Chicago is beginning to see the first stirrings of reform, although nothing close to the comprehensive reforms demanded by the mayor's own independent commission.

But on violence, crime, jobs, housing, public schools, parks, trash removal, violence, and drugs, there is no plan for action, no "therefore" to address the wretched whereas. In Chicago, 60 percent of whites think their neighborhood is a good or excellent place to raise children. Seventy percent of blacks think their neighborhood is only fair or poor (nearly half - 44 percent - say poor). More than two-thirds would rather live somewhere else.

Blacks and Latinos in Chicago believe that the mayor does not care about people like them. While a majority of whites believe he cares, nearly two-thirds of blacks think he does not. The lack of action is assumed to express a lack of concern.

Look across the country at our major cities: Chicago is not alone. The problems of racial isolation, entrenched poverty, bad schools and lousy services, dangerous streets, guns and drugs plague many of our cities. The "therefore" ought to be a national initiative, driving state and local activity, on jobs and urban development. But Washington is dysfunctional, with even minor reforms held hostage by the obstructionist Congress. President Obama has chosen not to put this high on his priorities. And the rich and entrenched interests that dominate our politics continue to ignore the misery.

But a whereas without a therefore isn't a stable reality. Trapped people with no hope are like dry kindling, susceptible to any spark. If the powerful don't leave people with hope, people will express their despair. Real action - a serious plan for reform with the resources needed to provide it - is long past due.

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

Grand Old Woman of U.S. Communism: Mother Bloor and Iowa farmers

Wed, 11 May 2016 14:46:00 +0000

Ella Reeve Bloor (1862-1951), or "Mother Bloor" as she is known to history, is famous in labor circles for her work as an investigator of child labor, as a socialist organizer, and as a founding member of the Communist Party. She even worked with Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, to help gather data to expose the meatpacking industry. Perhaps unknown to many though, she was also a key figure in the farmer's struggle in Iowa during The Great Depression.

In the 1930s, the country was consumed by economic famine. The Corn-Belt state of Iowa, part of "the breadbasket of the world," was no exception. Across the state, many homes and farms were foreclosed by the banks, leaving farmers and their families broke, hungry, and angered by their daily conditions.

In his review of Lowell Dyson's authoritative history of Communist organizing in the countryside, Red Harvest: The Communist Party and American Farmers, Maurice Isserman wrote that beginning in the 1920s, "the Communists made determined, if sporadic, efforts to extend their influence past city limits."

Bloor, who earned the nickname "Mother" in the 1930s, was a part of these efforts. She served on the Central Committee of the CPUSA from 1932-48, years when the party was at the height of its influence. She and her son, Harold Ware, and fellow CPUSA member Lem Harris set out to organize farmers and workers in the Hawkeye State, forming an alliance with a group known as the Farmer's Holiday Organization (FHO).

As recounted by Iowa historian George Mills in his book A Judge and a Rope, and Other Stories of Bygone Iowa, the FHO "was at the heart of the protest movement and was out in front in clashes around the farm belt."

Bloor set up an office in Sioux City, as well as a temporary outfit in Le Mars, with the hope of uniting the unemployed of the cities with destitute farmers in the countryside. She organized countless meetings with workers, farmers, and others sympathetic to their plight.

She played a major role in the Milk Strike of 1932, also known as "The Great Milk Wars of Sioux City." Farmers protested the low wages they were paid by stopping cars from delivering milk to markets to demonstrate how valuable their labor was to the rest of the community. If the trucks or cars did not turn around, the dairy deliveries were dumped by picketers.

That year, Iowa Farmers' Union president Milo Reno, a co-founder of the FHO, issued an "ultimatum" to the "other groups of society," to borrow Reno's phrase:

"If you continue to confiscate our property and demand we feed your stomachs and clothe your bodies, we will refuse to function. We don't ask people to make implements, cloth, or houses at the price of degradation, bankruptcy, dissolution, and despair."

In response to the situation facing the farmers, Bloor and the FHO organized highway picketing in Sioux City, Iowa, to stop food from being delivered to the market for thirty days or "until the cost of production had been obtained," as Reno said in his ultimatum.

While some disagreed with the tactic of dumping milk as a sign of protest, viewing it as wasteful, many people agreed that the protesters' frustration was warranted.

State officials at the time blamed "Communist subversives" for the "instances of violence in northwest Iowa." This view was shared by Governor Clyde L. Herring, state Attorney General Edward L. O'Connor, and Major General Park Findley of the National Guard, who referred to Sioux City as "a hotbed of Communistic activity."

One time, the Iowa National Guard raided Mother Bloor's Sioux City office, seizing literature and whatever else they saw fit to confiscate. According to George Mills, "One circular urged a farm march on the Statehouse in Des Moines and also accused President Roosevelt and Governor Herring of being tools of the big bankers."

The struggle of America's farmworkers was one that she continued to dedicate her attention to in the 1930s - not only Iowa, but also Montana, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.

As a home-grown revolutionary throughout her life, Bloor was variously a member of the Social Democracy of America, the Socialist Labor Party, the Socialist Party USA, and finally the CPUSA. After Iowa, just as before, the rest of Mother Bloor's years were dedicated to workers' struggles and other progressive causes.

In 1937, Life magazine called her "the grand old woman of the U.S. Communist Party."

CPUSA member Elizabeth Gurley Flynn characterized the late organizer and revolutionary in the following manner:

"We love and honor this extraordinary American woman as a symbol of the militant American farmer and working class, of the forward sweep of women in the class struggle and in our Party, as an example to young and old of what an American Bolshevik should be."

Photo: Main photo: Protesting farmers block the roads leading to markets in Sioux City, Iowa in 1932. Wessels Living History Farm Inset: Mother Bloor speaking in Loup City, Nebraska on June 14, 1934 at a demonstration in support of local women chicken processors. Nebraska State Historical Society

Left Strategy 2016: A narrow defeat of Trump's racism is not enough

Wed, 11 May 2016 14:23:00 +0000

Donald Trump's Indiana victory and now unstoppable march toward the Republican presidential nomination underscores the defining feature of this year's general election. Linda Burnham's Notes on the Election cut to the chase:

"Straight up racism and xenophobia have moved from the margins into the center of the GOP presidential campaign; they are used as a rallying cry to attract discontented voters; and white racial solidarity is exposed as the anchor and heart of right-wing politics in the U.S. across the spectrum, from ordinary conservatism to rabid white supremacy."

A victory for the GOP nominee would likely mean right-wing control of all branches of the federal government (combined with the 31 governorships and state legislatures they already control). It would deal a huge blow to progressive policies, social movements, and all of the 99%.

At the same time, divisions within the GOP; revulsion at GOP bigotry and crudeness by an apparent majority of the U.S. people; and the surge of progressive energy that runs from Occupy through the Bernie Sanders campaign, Black Lives Matter, Fight for $15, and other social movements means there are good prospects to defeat the right.

In fact, there is a reasonable chance of an anti-Trump landslide and the possibility of a roll back of GOP strength in both houses of Congress and numerous state governments. Although the far right has reached the height of its power in recent decades, it is also extremely vulnerable to counter-attack and division.

The perilous consequences of a Trump presidency should be a wake-up call for the left. The possibility of dealing the racist right a major blow should energize and excite us.

Underlying demographic and economic trends

The stakes are especially high because this year's election landscape is not some kind of one-off fluke. Rather, deep shifts in U.S. demographics, economics and politics are making themselves felt and producing a potential turning-point moment.

Since 1980 a conservative bloc using racism as its cutting edge has been hegemonic in U.S. politics. Obama winning the White House - and the "Obama Coalition" that put him there - reflected substantial demographic change, especially the rising proportion of people of color within the U.S. population and electorate.

The Obama wins also reflected a decline in U.S. global power and the futility of Washington's wars, an increasingly crisis-ridden neoliberal economic model, and the growing disaffection of younger voters and single women from the Republican Party. Obama's election and re-election prevented the total domination of the GOP-anchored conservative bloc and put on the agenda the possibility of an alternative governing bloc and policy mix.

But the GOP's entrenched power in Congress; the inconsistency of an Obama administration still hostage to neoliberal economics and key elements of the "war on terror," and the weakness of the progressive movement and the left meant that (with a few exceptions) political and policy stalemate was the main characteristic of the last eight years. Yet the underlying trends - in particular racial demographic change and an economy that produced rising inequality and decimation of whole sectors of the working class - kept shifting the underlying terrain.

Some voices within the GOP argued for adjusting their agenda and message to somewhat accommodate new realities. They called for addressing the rising political weight of people of color via immigration reform and a new appeal to Latino voters. They spoke to economic discontent with various 'reformi-con' proposals.

But what happened instead was an explosion of right-wing racist populism. Reacting to underlying trends and driven crazy by the election and re-election of the first Black President, millions of hard-pressed whites rallied first to the banner of the Tea Party and then to a skilled racist, sexist, and authoritarian demagogue. And the other Republican hopefuls either echoed his message or avoided challenging it on anything but stylistic or personality grounds, or offered claims that Trump was not a "true conservative."

This motion has produced the central drama and pivot of the 2016 election:

Will the conservative bloc be able to regain full control of the federal government and extend its hegemony via resort to naked racism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, and thuggery? Or will this extremist effort to counter underlying trends fail, throwing the right onto the defensive and perhaps into crisis, registering a majoritarian rejection of appeals to racism and averting an administration likely to be disastrous for workers and all the oppressed both within the U.S. and around the world?

Can a decisive right-wing defeat build on the momentum from the Sanders insurgency, Black Lives Matter, and other movements toward making anti-racism and anti-Wall Street politics central to a new progressive bloc rooted in the country's "new majority"?

Can a landslide repudiation of the biggest threat to democracy most of us have seen in our lifetimes open the door for this bloc to gain enough unity and strength to influence the development of a new governing coalition?

The left has a role to play in this drama. If it effectively takes on that role, we can expand our influence, numbers, and cohesion; we can learn a great deal, and take steps toward formulating and implementing a long-term strategy toward power. (Bill Fletcher makes a compelling case here for why an electoral component is a crucial to such a strategy, arguing that to counter the threat from right-wing populism it is urgent to get key elements of it in place immediately.)

Central goal and message: crush the racist right

At this point, Trump is clearly an underdog in November, regardless of whether his opponent is Bernie Sanders or, far more likely, Hillary Clinton. Yet Trump's ability to overwhelm the extremely well-funded anti-Trump forces in the Republican primaries underscores why it would be a grave mistake to underestimate his political skills or base. Moreover, if there are ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks leading up to the election that are not met with a powerful anti-war progressive response, he could become even more dangerous.

And this is crucial: A narrow defeat for Trump is not enough. The progressive potential in this election can only be realized if (1) the indictment of GOP racism is kept central to the national political debate (attempts to push it to the background are already well underway); and (2) the right is not just defeated but crushed at the ballot box and in public opinion. Street protests, messaging that reaches millions and yes, mobilizing votes for the Democratic nominee, are all required to accomplish this.

A landslide against the right can reverberate on every level. Besides changing the balance among elected officials, it can demoralize and marginalize the most thuggish racists and scare every district attorney or police commissioner who coddles such perpetrators.

In addition to making an immediate difference in the lives of millions, thrashing the right is the immediate step needed to open a path toward more democracy (ending racist voter suppression for starters) and the reconstruction of an inclusive working class-based movement. It could demoralize and further divide the far right against itself and its elite conservative allies and intensify the disarray within the Republican Party.

Every progressive has something important to contribute to achieving this goal. And if all progressives pitch in, there will be a valuable cross-fertilization of ideas and experiences between activists who have participated in electoral politics and those who have avoided it. (That cross-fertilization was a valuable feature of the 1980s Rainbow Coalition in its best moments.)

Organizing around a 'crush the racist right' message also provides the best springboard for linking activists who have been immersed in Bernie Sanders' exciting campaign and those who have deep roots in the non-corporate sectors of the pro-Hillary camp - the Latino and Black communities first and foremost - thus breaking down some of the racial divisions that have cropped up during the primary campaign. The union-based formation called for by Peter Olney could be an especially useful ongoing structure to enable different sectors to consolidate ties beyond their "silos."

Trying to shape the prism through which the country views the stakes in this election may push many of us out of comfort zones and strongholds. In my reading of past experiences, when faced with an extreme right-wing threat, the left does not grow mainly by stressing its critique of the more backward elements who, for their own reasons, are opposed to the most blatant racists.

Rather, even when we are forced to fight on electoral terrain not of our choosing, the main determinant of left growth is whether or not we are at the forefront of calling out the flag-bearers of white supremacy and contributing maximally to their defeat.

This approach means neither prettifying nor demonizing Hillary Clinton. This election is not mainly about Hillary. It's about whether or not the conservative bloc, with racism at its core, will renew its lease on hegemony or be thrown back.

Further, it is not too early to begin thinking about how progressive momentum can be sustained beyond November 7. In 2008, conservative leaders formulated a plan to undermine Obama's presidency within hours of the election results coming in, while too much of the left was content with savoring a milestone for the country. No matter who wins on Election Day 2016, the consequences will be dire if anything similar happens this time around.

If Trump wins, the mobilization of across-the-board opposition will need to begin immediately. And if the right is beaten by whatever margin, change in our direction will take place only via a multi-level battle plan. An immediate challenge will be to push for maximum results in areas where there is the greatest possibility for progressive headway (immigration reform, curbing racist police abuse, rolling back mass incarceration, raising the minimum wage, addressing climate change, and so on) while gearing up for all-out confrontation with an incoming administration on the life-and-death issues where Hillary is most backward (foreign policy, war and peace, blank check support for Israel, coddling the 1%).

Undoubtedly, the approach suggested here will encounter resistance from many on the left, since we all share the goal of a political revolution against an establishment of which Hillary is certainly a part.

But getting a perspective rooted in an assessment of underlying trends and their political manifestations may help prepare us for how hard and protracted the struggle for basic change is, and how uncomfortable alliances and compromises are necessary on this bumpy, unmapped road. Obviously there will be disagreement and sharp debate. But if our differences can move from the level of internet flame wars and name calling to substantive contention over what social forces are in motion and what the left can do to move from the margins to the heart of mass politics, it may benefit us all.

Max Elbaum has been a racial justice and peace activist since the 1960s. He is the former editor of CrossRoads magazine and the author of "Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che" (Verso, 2002). He has also written for The Nation, Radical History Review, The Guardian, and the Encyclopedia of the American Left. This commentary originally appeared on Portside.

Photo: Donald Trump gives a thumbs up after the Republican primary debate in Houston, February 25. The Associated Press

Socialism: Only practical hope, not narrow fantasies, need apply

Wed, 11 May 2016 12:10:00 +0000

People's World Series on Socialism

The 2016 presidential elections have put the word "socialism" center stage in American politics. This is thanks in part to the enthusiasm behind presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who is a self-proclaimed democratic socialist. Since Sanders burst onto the mainstream political scene with his talk of creating a culture that was not just "based on the worship of money," but where the middle class and working families receive a "fair deal," the conversation around just what socialism is and how much better it might be in relation to our current system (capitalism) has increased. This is especially true among young people, or those considered to be millennials. A recent poll conducted by Harvard University asked young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 if they supported capitalism. The poll found that 51 percent of the participants did not support the economic status quo. 33 percent were even willing to go a step further and said they support socialism.

As someone who identifies as a communist, this poll was music to my ears. It gave me hope that the emerging generation - my own generation - was closer to understanding that capitalism is a system built on exploitation and greed that needs to be done away with in favor of a system that does not exploit a majority of the population. While 33 percent is a pretty impressive number, it's still not a majority. Over half of the millennials polled were ready to drop capitalism, but only about two-thirds of these were ready to embrace socialism. Another third didn't know what system should replace capitalism.

With polls such as this, and the enthusiasm behind Sanders' "political revolution," it's obvious that a good amount of people are tired of the status quo. Yet, those same people may be conflicted on whether there is a real concrete alternative to what we have now. I mean, socialism sounds nice and all, and capitalism has one too many problems, but is socialism really practical? Can it do away with the contradictions found under capitalism?

I'd like to believe that the ONLY way socialism can actually flourish is if it is as practical as possible. Meaning, it tackles all the ills of capitalism and seeks to rectify them. Socialism can't be treated like a fantasy one turns to when capitalism 'gets them down,' but rather as a step towards something more productive than capitalism. It takes work. It takes understanding. It takes time. In an age of instant information, instant gratification, and Instagram, this may not be something people want to hear.

Capitalism is an economic system in which a country's wealth, resources, and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the people who create them. Under capitalism, exploitation is the central operating principle of the whole economic system; it's how those who own the wealth make all their profits. Exploitation and greed are not exceptions to the rule, but rather serve as regular staples in this system. Under capitalism, there are sections of the population that have been, and continue to be, super-exploited and disenfranchised based on race and/or gender. This is how they divide us and keep the 99 percent fragmented.

If socialism is to practically address the ills of capitalism, then it has to address all of the ways in which capitalism has exploited working people.

Back in the 1980s, Soviet author V.G. Afanasyev, in his book Historical Materialism, said socialism was defined by the "domination of public ownership of the means of production and the absence of exploitation." "Socialism," he said, "forever abolishes...all forms of social, national, and racial oppression." It's a nice enough definition, but it doesn't really provide much guidance on how all of that might come to pass when we look at things from the perspective of the United States in the 21^st century. It can't really be as simple as property ownership. And capitalism's problems go beyond exploiting workers or not giving fair wages. It embeds certain ideals, such as dog-eat-dog competition, racism, and sexism, which serve to make working people police themselves and perpetuate the system. People don't exist in a vacuum separate and apart from a system, even if they aren't the ones in control of it.

What does that mean? It means that, even if we were to change over to socialism as an economic and political system tomorrow, a lot of the population would still carry with them the toxic capitalist mindset of today. It would be doomed from the outset if the people and the leadership weren't taking a comprehensive approach to combat and unlearn the "lessons" taught by the capitalist system. It's not just economic or political. It's also moral.

A socialist system would dig deep to understand the ways in which racism and sexism don't just go away because power changes hands.

A socialist system would work to undo the decades of disenfranchisement African-Americans have suffered under capitalism - from the slave system and the failure of Radical Reconstruction, to the damage done by the legacy of Jim Crow segregation. Not to mention the problematic prison industrial complex that has a disproportionate amount of black Americans currently serving time in it. The ramifications of this oppression won't go away simply by wage increases alone.

A socialist system would work to combat the "lessons" of rape culture that capitalism continues to implement that aim at normalizing sexism and violence and oppression against women.

From my perspective as an African-American woman, any kind of socialism that isn't actively working to combat racism and sexism isn't being practical at all, not to mention realistic. Injustices tied to race, gender, and sexual identity and orientation are not back-burner topics that will disappear with the change of an economic system.

A socialist system needs to be one that takes a holistic approach to the human condition under capitalism, and seeks to help in the process of healing working people from years of trying to survive in a system that only wanted to define them by the profit they could provide for another. Those battle scars won't go away just because "class" is no longer an issue.

Socialism is a step on the path to true freedom from these ills. As Karl Marx, who had a thing or two to say about socialism and communism, wrote in the third volume of Capital: "[F]reedom...cannot consist of anything else but of the fact that socialized man, the associated producers, regulate their interchange with nature rationally, bring it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by some blind power." Marx explained that once people - acting together - have secured the ability to regulate a system of production where there is no longer any exploitation, then they can begin to truly live. Then would begin the true "development of human power," as he put it, "the true realm of freedom." I couldn't agree more.

Overall, a socialist system would look like a people at work, beginning the journey towards true liberation from exploitation. Towards a life where work and wages alone don't define who they are or what they're worth. Where, as time passes, the shackles of the toxicity that is capitalism are taken off because true democracy is at work - the people are in control and the government is an actual representation of that, and acts accordingly. A socialist system would look like concrete hope and movement - with measurable goals - towards a better tomorrow.

Chauncey K. Robinson is the social media editor for People's World and a member of the National Board of the Communist Party. She is a graduate of San Francisco State University and an occasional playwright and theatre director.

Sawant is wrong on Trump versus Clinton

Tue, 10 May 2016 15:24:00 +0000

An interesting debate on Democracy Now recently pitted Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant against former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn. Both are supporters of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, but differ on what to do if the Democratic Party nominates Hillary Clinton. Sawant advocates not supporting Clinton in the general election, while McGinn says it is obligatory for progressives to do just that. My own response comes partly from two areas of political activism in which I have been most involved in recent years: Immigrant workers' rights, and international peace and solidarity issues. I have written on Trump's foreign policy proposals before, and will do so again shortly.

On the immigration issue, I think the "Bernie or bust" stance taken in this interview by Sawant is harmful and dangerous, in spite of Hillary Clinton's manifest flaws.

The fact is that between the very last primary election (District of Columbia, June 14) and the November general election there are only four and a half months. In that time, the idea that some viable third force to the left of the Democratic Party could come out of nowhere and actually win the White House is unrealistic. Sanders got as far as he did because he won over, not just independents, but also millions of people who are simply not going to abandon the Democratic Party for a third party under foreseeable circumstances. Also, the idea of Bernie Sanders running as an independent and actually winning in November is just as unrealistic, and not only because he himself has said he will support Clinton if she is the Democratic Party nominee. If he did so, the political base of supporters which got him this far would probably split between Clinton and his independent candidacy, a development from which only Trump would benefit. So third parties and a Bernie Sanders independent campaign would be protest candidacies only, and, given the well-known defects of our electoral system, would likely throw the election to Trump.

Dangerous and ugly part of Trump's demagoguery

There are those who think there would be no difference between a Clinton presidency and a Trump presidency. This is implicit in Sawant's argument. In my opinion, these people are dangerously wrong.

Working with immigrants is how I cut my political teeth, so to speak, so I simply can't forget about that most dangerous and ugly part of Trump's demagoguery: His vicious attacks against Latino immigrants and Muslims. Recall that Trump has promised to create a special force to round up undocumented immigrants all over the country and deport them. He has made this the centerpiece of his right wing populist demagoguery. Already, as a result of his incendiary, racist lies about "Mexicans", he has created a dangerous atmosphere not only for undocumented immigrants but for the whole Latino population of the United States, including citizens born here. The same is true for his poisonous anti-Muslim rhetoric. Cases are beginning to surface of law abiding immigrants and Latino and Muslim people, as well as African-Americans being verbally and even physically attacked by people who associate themselves with Trumpism. Should Trump win the presidency, such cases will mount exponentially, and immigrants, Latinos and Muslims will not be able to turn to federal government agencies to defend their civil rights. Trump has also threatened to fund his "wall" by seizing the money undocumented immigrants earn by working themselves half to death in this country, and which they send to their poor relatives in Mexico and other countries. This is unimaginably cruel as well as dangerous.

Many of the immigrants Trump would attack live in mixed families, in which the breadwinner may be undocumented, the spouse a legal resident and the children born in the United States and thus citizens of this country. So Trump would have to either deport U.S. citizens along with their undocumented immigrant relatives, or split up families, deporting, often, the breadwinner and leaving the spouse and children in the United States. But Trump also promises to somehow revoke the citizenship of U.S. born children of undocumented immigrants, even though this citizenship is guaranteed to all persons born in the United States by the 14^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Some other Republican politicians want to end this birthright citizenship for people born here in the future, but Trump even wants to do this retroactively, i.e. so that people who are now citizens but whose parents were undocumented would actually lose their citizenship. It is questionable whether Trump would be able to do this as it would really trash the 14^th Amendment and convert millions of people in this country into stateless persons with no rights at all, but remember that as president, Trump is likely to have the opportunity to appoint several new justices to the Supreme Court. Who knows how Trump appointed justices would "re-interpret" the 14^th Amendment.

Both Sanders and Clinton have promised not only to continue but to expand the DACA and DAPA programs created by President Obama via executive orders. These programs, which give temporary relief from deportation to about 5 million undocumented people, are currently hanging by a thread as we await the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in response to a lawsuit brought by 26 Republican state attorneys-general as to their legality. Sanders and Clinton have also both promised to work for immigration reform legislation that would legalize the great majority of the 10 to 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States -legislation that has heretofore been impossible mostly because of Republican bigotry, intransigence and hyper-partisanship. Trump would not only not promote such legislation, he would veto it if Congress passed it.

To allow Trump to win the presidency for the sake of making a political point amounts, therefore, to throwing millions of immigrants and minority group members under the bus. Rather than being a high-minded stance, a principled position on the electoral issue, it is quite unthinking and could have cruel repercussions.

U.S. foreign policy and international relations

A second issue that is of great concern to me is that of U.S. foreign policy and international relations.

In that area we find the sharpest differences between the two remaining Democratic Party candidates. More than any other recent major party candidate for president, Sanders has shown a willingness to break with the traditions of aggressive interventionism in other sovereign nations. He has clashed sharply and publicly with Clinton on the issue, for example of Henry Kissinger's international policies, and has been more willing than most U.S. politicians to call for fair treatment for the Palestinian people. Though both Sanders and Clinton have said they will continue with President Obama's initiative on ending the U.S. opening to Cuba, Clinton has also attacked Sanders for his earlier positive statements about Cuba, claiming falsely that Cuba's government "disappears" people. In fact, the Latin American governments that are known for "disappearing" people are those that people like Kissinger have supported over the years. Looking at Clinton's record as U.S, Secretary of State, starting with her help in consolidating the Honduras coup of June 2009, then moving toward the "Asian Pivot" and adding the issues of Libya, Ukraine, Syria and other things, we have to conclude that she would, as president, not only govern on foreign policy issues to the right of Sanders, but to the right of Obama, who has been, according to some accounts, more cautious on such issues. So if the election were between Clinton and Sanders, we on the left should all be pushing for Sanders as hard as we can.

But we have been, and will continue to do so right up to the Democratic Convention. The question raised by Sawant's statements in the Democracy Now program are not about that, but about what to do if the Democratic Party candidate in November ends up being Clinton-it is already clear that Trump will be the Republican candidate.

Is it really the case that Trump would be no worse than Clinton on foreign policy issues, and might even be better? After all, Trump has also said that he is okay with the Cuba and Iran policies of the Obama administration "but we should have made a better deal", and that he would be able to make arrangements with Russia and China? Did not Trump also question the usefulness of NATO, and oppose the Transpacific Partnership?

A glance at Trump's overall orientation shows that it does not bode well for U.S. foreign policy and for the interests of the world's 7.4 billion inhabitants.

First of all, the belligerent and sometimes violent tone Trump takes toward other nations and peoples should serve as a warning sign as to what his actual policies are likely to be. His bashing of Mexicans, Muslims and foreign countries in general, and claiming that the Obama administration has been "weak" and has allowed China, Mexico and other countries to rob us blind, while Muslims are invading us for the purpose of perpetrating acts of terrorism on our soil, does not suggest that a Trump presidency would promote peace and understanding between the United States and other nations. One of the things the world sorely needs is for multinational institutions like the United Nations, but Trump has been attacking that body much more fiercely than he has been attacking NATO, most recently because of UN efforts to deal with the Israel-Palestine issue.

And Trump's opposition to the Transpacific Partnership is for the wrong reasons. Whereas Sanders and others see the TPP as endangering poor workers and farmers in poor countries while also undercutting workers in the United States and benefiting only transnational corporations, Trump sees it as an assault on the United States by those same poor countries. Trump and his allies and supporters blame the poorer countries for "stealing our jobs", which happens to fit in nicely with Trump's diatribes against Mexican immigrants. This lets corporations, including U.S based ones, completely off the hook for situations that they and their political enablers have created and continue to profit by. This is political poison which anybody claiming to be progressive must firmly and actively oppose.

If Clinton ends up as president, it will be necessary to find new ways to oppose foreign policy positions that we will not like at all. But a Trump presidency would likely be much worse on this and every other issue. Also, foreign policy and domestic policy are not hermetically sealed off from one another. For example, a Trump presidency, especially if backed by continued Republican domination of Congress, would be very bad news for organized labor just at the point when major union leadership has been taking a more active and progressive role on foreign policy issues, such as Honduras. Under such circumstances, to weaken organized labor is to reinforce right wing tendencies on foreign policy.

If Clinton wins the presidency, we on the left will have to be more creative and more energetic in fighting for the things we want, not only in foreign affairs but other things as well.

If Trump wins, we will be thrown on the defensive as the real potential for mass based fascism confronts us, here in the greatest military power in the world, with Trump having his finger on the nuclear button. Unless we are gluttons for punishment, our options are clear.