People Before Profit blog

Obamacare: Grumbling is not enough

Tue, 26 Nov 2013 16:30:00 +0000

It is amazing how fast momentum can shift in politics. And it usually happens for reasons that could not have been predicted.

Case in point: only a month ago, the reckless shutdown of the federal government left its engineers -- the tea party and the Republican Party -- weakened, and the president and Democrats energized and with the wind at their back.

And beyond Washington, the people's movement in the shutdown's wake was energized too.

But this newly acquired momentum turned out to be far more momentary than most anticipated, myself included. In fact, it lasted only a few days. Why? Because Republicans seized the opportunity provided by the big problems with the rollout of the Affordable Health Care Act. They were all over it, with the help of compliant corporate media.

Literally, overnight the atmosphere changed for the worse. President Obama and Democrats, rather than riding a wave, found themselves on the defensive. And the Republicans' shutdown disaster became a distant memory.

Now, if the health insurance exchanges are running smoothly by the end of the year, as they appear to be in many states, much of the furor will die out. But if they aren't, Obamacare will be turned by the far right into a metaphor for "broken government" and the prospects of unseating Republicans in Congress and statehouses next fall will become problematic.

Which means that grumbling about the problems of the health care rollout heard in some progressive and left circles needs to give way to actively resisting the right wing's campaign to kill Obamacare and regain the initiative leading into the midterm and 2016 elections.

With all its shortcomings, Obamacare is a step in the right direction; it extends health care - a social right - to millions who up to now have none, and partially curbs the power of the health care industry, while its defeat would set back the struggle for health care for all much longer than I would care to think. That's why the far right is fighting it so hard!

Thus, energizing, uniting, and raising the understanding of ever more people to oppose right-wing extremism in every arena of struggle - not least of which is defense of the Affordable Health Care Act - is the order of the day.

Of critical importance in this regard is the fight against racism in its material and ideological forms. Racism was the main vehicle used to bust up the New Deal coalition and fuel the ascendancy of the right wing over the past three or more decades. By the same token, the struggle against it is at the core of building a movement with the ideological, political, and organizational capacity and unity to dislodge the right and usher in an era of deep going progressive, even radical, change.

Photo: A nurse vaccinates a child. Centers for Disease Control/Wikimedia Commons

Iran nuke deal merits support

Tue, 26 Nov 2013 12:29:00 +0000

The last minute nuclear agreement worked out in Geneva on Sunday between Iran and the six-powers group of the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany is an important first step and merits the support of all progressive, peace-minded people. It is a welcome step by our country away from a foreign policy of militarism and confrontation.

According to the deal, Iran will change its current nuclear fuel refinement regime: It will stop enriching uranium over the 5 percent level, will dilute existing stocks of 20 percent enriched uranium back to the 5 percent level, will not install any new centrifuges, and will stop work on the Arak nuclear facility where some fear it may be trying to produce plutonium, another route to atomic weaponry. Iran also agrees to intensified inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In exchange for this, and during the six months in which a permanent deal is sought which will bring Iran into full compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the six-powers will reduce sanctions currently imposed on Iran. This will be worth about $7 billion to Iran, and will consist of permitting Iran to sell more oil on international markets, export metals, chemicals and other items, and have more access to financial and banking mechanisms now crippled by sanctions. Needless to say, no new sanctions will be imposed as long as Iran keeps to the bargain.

By the end of six months, the goal is for Iran and the six-powers to sign a permanent agreement that will permit Iran to produce all the nuclear power required for its own energy generating and medical (e.g. radiotherapy for cancer patients) needs, but not nearly enough to produce atomic weapons.

This is a major positive achievement. But, the deal could fall apart or be sabotaged. It is being openly denounced by Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, by Republican and some Democratic politicians and pundits in the United States, all of whom claim that the Obama administration has betrayed Israel by entering into this agreement. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who see Iran as a dangerous regional rival, are not satisfied with the deal. But beyond the region, countries like India will benefit from the deal, as it makes Iranian oil available to their industries again.

One of the biggest dangers right now is that the deal be sabotaged by the U.S. Congress imposing even more sanctions on Iran. We opposes all sanctions that harm ordinary working people unless there is a liberation movement which explicitly asks for such sanctions, as was the case in the struggle of the people of South Africa against apartheid. The Iranian regime is reactionary and repressive, but no sector of its internal opposition, including the Iranian left, supports sanctions.

If Congress piles on more sanctions, the people of Iran and the whole region will be hurt, and the chance for peace will be greatly set back. We ask, therefore, that our readers contact their congressional representatives to insist that they support the Geneva agreement and the process that will lead to a more complete and permanent settlement.

Furthermore, we deem it rank hypocrisy for nations such as the United States, which has a mind boggling capacity for thermonuclear mayhem, to pressure others while they do little or nothing to reduce their own stockpiles. Negotiations to prevent Iran from producing a bomb should go hand in hand with general nuclear disarmament-and that includes Israel. This will happen only if we organize and speak out to make it happen.

Photo: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, center right, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, center left, shake hands at the United Nations, Nov. 24, in Geneva, Switzerland. Iran struck a historic nuclear deal with the U.S. and five other world powers, in the most significant development between Washington and Tehran in more than three decades of estrangement between the two nations. The agreement commits Iran to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for limited and gradual sanctions relief. Martial Trezzini/Keystone/AP

Determined to make a difference, a tribute to comrade Debbie Bell

Tue, 26 Nov 2013 11:42:00 +0000

Remarks by Jarvis Tyner, executive vice chair of the Communist Party USA, at the meeting of the National Board on November 16, 2013, in New York.

I come before you this morning to make a special point. A tribute to one of the finest comrades in our party. She is a comrade who joined the Communist Party in her teens. She was recruited by Danny Rubin in 1955 and has been an active member of our party for 58 years. I'm talking about comrade Debbie Bell.

Because of her extraordinary contribution to the struggle and the Party, Debbie Amis Bell rose to the leadership of her district and is a long-term member of this body.

I feel a special attachment to Debbie because we were in the youth movement together back in Philadelphia. Actually we both are from West Philadelphia and we share the same birthday July 11^th.

Debbie Bell is the daughter of an African American father and a Jewish mother who married in the 1930's. At that time, just a 30-minute car ride from Philadelphia into the state of Delaware and their marriage would have been null and void and they could have been charged with a crime.

It took courage to do what they did but it also took a high level of political consciousness. Debbie parents; B. D. Amis and Sophie Sinowitz were both seasoned, active members of the CPUSA. They understood and rejected the whole racist ideological underpinnings that rationalized slavery in the past, Jim Crow then and structural racism today.

They fell in love. They understood that a society that fostered lynching, bestial racist violence, (like Henry Winston would always say), a society that fostered racial oppression and Apartheid so that it's capitalist ruling class could make trillions in extra profits was on the wrong side of history. They dedicated their lives to ending racism and the capitalism system that fostered it. Black and white unite and fight was the great battle cry. Sophie and B. D. along with thousands of active U.S. Communist made the difference.

Debbie was the oldest of 5 siblings and they were all raised with the highest conviction to continue the struggle and to make a difference in this world.

After I joined the party in 1961 I had an occasion to visit Debbie's house on Leidy Avenue. When I walked into the house I felt like I had been in that house before and I had. It turned out that when I was a senior in West Philadelphia High my best friend had a huge crush on Debbie's sister and he asked me to come with him to visit her at her house. I don't think Debbie was there -- she may have been away at college -- but B.D. Amis, her father, was there and he welcomed us to his home. Debbie's dad had been active since the 1920's and had worked with Ida B Wells in Chicago, on the Scottsboro and Angelo Herndon cases.

At the time I didn't know much about communism but I had seen the news about Little Rock and the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955. To me it seemed like B. D. knew just about every thing about the struggle. We were very impressed.

Debbie joined the Communist Party at the ripe young age of 17. In April 1960 when Debbie was in a senior in college and already a seasoned communist, the party asked her to attend a student civil rights conference in Raleigh North Carolina as an observer. Debbie eagerly accepted.

She had never been South. And coming from a predominantly white Northeastern College she was very impressed with how well organized and professional this large gathering of mainly African Americans students was. And they got thing done.

The conference turned out to be the founding conference of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Debbie left the conference "with a sense of urgency".

At the time she said, "I was determined to make a difference." And she did, in fact one can say that she made a difference for the rest of her life.

Debbie decided to go south and work for SNCC. Her application was accepted and in March 1963 Debbie headed south. She drove straight through to Atlanta, just stopping for gas.

Working for SNCC, Debbie was based in Atlanta and was involved in the effort to desegregate restaurants in that city. She and a group of organizer would march downtown picking up people along the way and they would go from restaurant to restaurant picketing and sitting in.

In 1964 I travelled south to organize delegates to come to the founding convention in San Francisco of what became the WEB Dubois Clubs of America. I was pretty green, and while I met some wonderful contacts most places I went, it was not easy to get recruits to a "Socialist- oriented youth organization" which is how we defined ourselves. So you can imagine how happy I was to meet my comrade and friend, Debbie in Atlanta. She was a sight for sore eyes! She introduced me to everybody and gave me the political lay of the land.

She told me a story I will never forget. Debbie was picketing arch segregationist Lester Maddox's restaurant that was famous for its fried Chicken. This was the guy who carried an axe handle to use against demonstrators and his was eventually elected Governor of Georgia as an open racist.

Debbie and SNCC had a tactic were they would picket for a while and then suddenly make a mad rush for the door (which was guarded by Atlanta police) to try to stage a sit in and close down the store.

Now, you may not know this, but Debbie was a phys-ed major in college and was in very good physical shape. She was my sister's gym teacher at West Philadelphia High and my sister told me that nobody messed with Miss Amis.

So when Debbie and her crew would come charging at you it would be wise to get out the way.

After several charges at the door, the black cop assigned to protect Lester Maddox's chicken joint had had enough of these charging young people so he goes outside and quietly told them, "look, the next time you'll want to rush the door give me a signal and I'll step out the way." And they did.

This was our comrade Debbie "making a difference."

Some of their pickets brought out the KKK, and they were often arrested and taken off to jail.

In jail it was tough for SNCC youth. It was a hard place to be even though many of the black prisoners really appreciated what these young black and white activists were doing. The jail authorities, guards and inmates were especially vicious against the white young activists who were put in the all white units. In a segregated southern jail life was hell.

Most of the time bail would be posted and they would be out after a day or two. But one time authorities found out the Debbie was on a hunger strike. Fearing that she would be a "bad example" for the other prisoners, she was put in solitary: a room with no bed and no mattress no sink and just a whole in the floor.

She was kept there for 3 days with no contact with anyone but a black trustee who gave her toilet paper, candy, and paper and pencil to write letter to her parents to let them know her situation. The trustee would mail her notes home. When the Party found out about her imprisonment, comrade George Meyers reacted quickly to the grave danger that Debbie faced as a black comrade in a southern Jim Crow jail. George got to Atlanta as fast as he could and bailed Debbie out.

After that experience, Debbie, our brave young comrade, wrote the following, "The experience fortified me. And I continued to demonstrate and work for equality."

Determined to make a difference

After the experience in SNCC Debbie came back to Philadelphia to a hero's welcome. She had experienced some red baiting from one or two in the leadership of SNCC. Most people I met at the SNCC headquarters were very receptive. I made some life long friendship I think because of Debbie's extraordinary courage, discipline and commitment to the struggle. The book "Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC" recounts her experiences.

Debbie came back to Philadelphia and continued to make a difference. As a teacher and class-conscious union member she made the difference. As an active member of the Communist Party. As a member of the party's district board and eventually the Chair of the district, Debbie made a difference. Through the years of fighting to end the Vietnam War, the Black Power days, the struggle to Free Angela, the anti apartheid struggle, the Black Radical Congress days where she was part of the national leadership.

Through all of that up to and including the election of the first African American president, being in that jail in Atlanta 50 years ago politically must seemed like a lifetime away. And it was. Today, Obama did not win the State of Georgia but he won Atlanta. A majority of the voters of that city today voted for an African American for the highest office in the land. Lester Maddox had to role over on that one. We are so thankful for the pioneering work that Debbie and her SNCC colleges did 50 years ago.

Through all of that Debbie Bell made a difference. And our party the struggle has moved forward and is that much stronger and influential because of comrades like Debbie.

Dave and Debbie have raised a wonderful family, two brilliant daughters and four grand children. Every summer Lydia and I drive down to the Jersey shore and join Debbie and Dave and about 100 of their neighbors, family and friends and comrades for a massive down home barbeque. As I mentioned, Debbie and I share the same birthday and so many of the same struggles. She is my comrade and sister.

Dear Debbie, The party is very proud of you! 59 years in the Communist party!

B. D. and Sophie would be so proud of you, and I know I speak for the entire membership; we are all so proud of you. Because you have carried and continue to carry high the freedom banner of our party, the hopes and dreams of the African American people and the working class as whole.

Photo: Debbie Amis Bell

Don Coulter, a fighter’s story

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 12:29:00 +0000

Don Coulter has always been a fighter, didn't know any other way to roll. Don is the president of SOAR (Steelworker's Organization of Active Retirees) in Columbus, Ohio. It was only natural that Don be the leader when steelworker retirees decided to set up a SOAR group a few years ago.

Don had been a griever on the job at Kaiser, later a community organizer then a regional leader for ACORN in Columbus. He's a deacon for his church, part of the APRI group in Columbus and had been a leader as a young man when the civil rights movement had swept the nation. So, when it was announced that there was to be a march in D.C. celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the historic 1963 civil rights march on Washington, the one where Dr. King delivered his famous "I Had a Dream" speech, horses couldn't have kept Don Coulter from being part of it.

Friends said that Don was in his glory at the march, dearly loving every minute. However, as the march began to break up, he suddenly missed a step and just fell like a rock. He was taken to Memorial Hospital in D.C. with a stroke! But this wasn't just any stroke the family was told, this was one that was an absolute death sentence, one in a part of the brain that was 100 percent, absolutely a killer of the type that not a single human had ever had and recovered from.

"We'll make him comfortable," they told the family. "It's all we can do!"

Without being asked, the Steelworker's Union (USW) and SOAR immediately picked up the expenses for the family to come to D.C. and let them know that they'd make sure they'd be able to get him home and taken care of going forward. Moreen, Don's wife, who is a medical professional, his son, Lamar, daughter LaDonna, and brothers all made the trip. They were all staying with Don, hoping, praying, for a miracle, even with all the odds stacked against them.

The doctors came in, met with the whole family, telling them that, while they were doing all they could, they should give up the fight, it was impossible for Don to recover. Later, another doctor came in and pronounced Don deceased, clearing the way for others to remove him so that his organs could be removed (Don is also an organ donor).

However, the family was not ready to give up, no matter what all the experts told them. When the doctors came in to remove him, Don's daughter, LaDonna, stated, "He is NOT dead! He's still breathing!"

Moreen saw that, got up and told the medical staff to leave, that "We've been together too long and I'm not giving him up now!"

Don's family made it clear that it would take a fight to take him and it was one that they did not intend to lose! The upshot is that after they chased folks out of the room, Don rolled over and got up!

There's a lot more I could tell you all, but the bottom line is that Don Coulter is now at a rehab facility north of Columbus, Ohio in the biggest room they've got (because so many folks were coming to visit that the regular rooms just wouldn't hold them). He has begun walking, speaking and is recovering way beyond what anyone thought possible.

This is a wonderful story, a heartwarming one as we prepare for the upcoming holiday season. For regular working folks I think Don's story has even more to tell us. A couple things are clear! First of all, the love of Don's family, especially, is why he is still with us. While some talk about "family values," Moreen and the Coulter family showed us all what that means on a real, human, level.

Second, working folks have been told our whole lives, in millions of different ways that; "There's no use fighting! It's a lost cause, you just can't win!"

Every step that Don Coulter takes on his tough road to recovery, supported by his wife, family, his union and community, tells all the "experts" where they can stick that advice!

Those wanting to send cards, letters of support to Don Coulter and the Coulter family can do so at:

Don Coulter

Heartland

212 Fairview Ave.

Centerburg, Ohio 43011

Kerry declares end of Monroe Doctrine: Is it for real?

Fri, 22 Nov 2013 14:59:00 +0000

In 1897, American humorist Mark Twain, correcting an erroneous news report that he had died, said, "Reports of my death have been exaggerated." Likewise, a recent declaration of the death of the Monroe Doctrine is not borne out by the facts, thus far.

The famous doctrine was declared by President James Monroe on December 2 1823, in the context of the independence wars of the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Central and South America. It basically asserted the new United States had vested interests in the countries of the region, replacing European nations as the dominant powers.

The statement that the Monroe Doctrine is now defunct came from Secretary of State John Kerry, who, speaking to a meeting of the Organization of American States on Nov. 18, is quoted as saying:

"The doctrine that bears (Monroe's) name asserted our authority to step in and oppose the influence of European powers in Latin America ... Today, however, we have made a different choice. The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over."

President Monroe, in his 1823 declaration, said, "[We] declare that we should consider any attempt on [the part of European powers] to extend their system to any part of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and security. With the existing colonies and dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments that have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any light other than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition to the United States".

At the time, the anti-colonial liberation forces in Latin Americas were at first cheered by this. But in there were already storm clouds on the horizon. The United States, at the insistence of Southern slave owners like Monroe, had refused to recognize the independence of Haiti, because it had a Black government formed by rebel slaves. Plans were already being discussed for taking over Cuba, still a Spanish colony at that time. In fact the only major occasion in which the United States employed the threat implied in the Monroe Doctrine to the benefit of a Latin American nation and people was when, after the U.S. Civil War, the U.S. successfully pressured France to withdraw its army from Mexico.

In the late 19^th century, U.S. interventionism in Latin American affairs grew more blatant, with unsuccessful attempts to buy the Dominican Republic, and a self-interested intervention in Cuba's independence war.

In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt, commenting on a crisis that had Germany and other European powers threatening Venezuela because of non-payment of debts, pronounced the "Roosevelt Corollary" of the Monroe Doctrine. Roosevelt "reasoned" that if the United States had to exert itself to stop European intervention in Latin America, it also had the right to intervene in Latin America to prevent actions of Latin American governments that might provoke such European interventions.

Through the first third of the 20^th century, there were multiple U.S. interventions in Latin American countries, leading to vast abuses of rights of their citizens and entrenchment of U.S. corporate interests. Thus the Monroe Doctrine came to be deeply resented regionally, not as a U.S. policy to protect hemispheric neighbors against European imperialism, but as a mainstay of U.S. imperialism.

Some of us were taught in school that the Monroe Doctrine was a great thing and many people in the United States actually think it is part of international law. But throughout Latin America and the Caribbean it is hated as an oppressive mechanism whereby the U.S. claims the unilateral right to limit the national sovereignty of area nations.

Nothing is seen as more clearly epitomizing the negative aspects of the Monroe Doctrine than U.S. hostility to Cuba. Under U.S. laws that have nothing to do with international law (the Trading with the Enemy Act, the Torricelli Act and the Helms-Burton Act), the U.S. still claims the right not only to punish the Cuban people for choosing socialism with trade sanctions, but also to punish other sovereign nations and their citizens for trading with Cuba. In response to the recent 188-to-2 (with three abstentions) vote in the United Nations Security Council condemning U.S. Cuba policy, the U.S. representative declared that the U.S. would keep up the policy until Cuba moved toward capitalism.

But does Kerry's stated demise of the Monroe Doctrine augur a change in U.S. policy toward Cuba? This was asked at a press conference; the official response was vague and convoluted.

One thing is clear: To get a new policy toward Cuba and the hemisphere, we can't rely on bland State Department pronouncements; we have to fight for it.

Image: Newspaper cartoon from 1912 about the Monroe Doctrine. Wikimedia Commons

Senate curbs filibusters in blow against GOP "pirates"

Fri, 22 Nov 2013 14:39:00 +0000

On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Democrats, fed up with endless Republican obstructionism, voted to end filibusters on nearly all presidential nominees. The filibuster rule, as used in recent years, permits the minority party to block any legislation or appointments, for any reason, or no reason at all, by insisting on a supermajority of 61 votes to end debate and move to a vote.

It is interesting to note that, according to Wikipedia, the English term "filibuster" is derived from the Spanish "filibustero," itself deriving originally from the Dutch "vrijbuiter," meaning "privateer, pirate, robber" (also the root of English "freebooter"). The term in its legislative sense was first used by Mississippi Rep. Albert G. Brown in 1853.

The last straw for Democrats came this week, when Republicans refused to fill the bench in the important D.C. federal appeals court. The court has only eight of its statutory 11 justices, but, according to Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, Obama's nominees were rejected on no grounds at all other than that they were Obama appointees.

Hundreds of federal courts lack judges, and federal departments lack permanent leadership, because Republicans have been routinely filibustering Obama's nominees in their effort to reject any authority arising from the fact that the president won the last election, and the one before that. Even if regulatory laws enforcing corporate and public responsibility are passed - which is difficult if not impossible given Republican control of the House - refusing to confirm leadership for agencies is just another way for a minority to nullify a law already enacted.

The vote to restrict the filibuster was a good step, even long overdue, to some younger senators like Ben Cardin of Maryland. However the restriction does nothing to fix the legislative logjam, where longstanding issues with majority support have died from the filibuster: immigration reform, the Employee Free Choice Act, jobs bills, infrastructure improvements, education funding, the Violence Against Women act, and many other progressive reforms. And how many appointments can now get through is in doubt since there are other rules that enable extending debate in addition to the filibuster.

As was demonstrated in the shutdown fiasco, legislative progress in the House is all but doomed by Republican opposition. With this new filibuster reform, the president can at least get a full team in place so that he and federal agencies can move forward with executive action, when possible, when Republicans block his agenda in Congress. An example of such action was this week's National Labor Relations Board ruling citing Walmart for massively violating workers' rights by punishing employees who participate in protests and grievances over wages and working conditions. If Obama and Reid had not forced approval of the appointments to the NLRB last summer in an earlier showdown, the NLRB citation could not have happened.

"That's what Republicans fear," says the New York Times, predicting an even harsher partisan atmosphere in the U.S. Senate in the coming period. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky piously opined, "This is nothing more than a power grab in order to try to advance the Obama administration's regulatory agenda."

However Stewart Acuff, former AFL-CIO organizing director, has a different spin on his blog, saying, "... this is only a first step. The Senate needs to end all filibusters."

The one historical defense of the filibuster, and requiring a supermajority to end it, that makes some sense is that there are times when passing very contentious or divisive legislation needs a decisive majority to be truly enforceable and credible. Just think about a union strike vote over a controversial company contract offer that benefits some, but hurts others. A 51 percent strike vote does not portend a very good outcome in a tough conflict.

But there are other times, such as now, when the plutocrat minority threatens to keep us in permanent depression and servitude, or such as leading up to the Civil War when the slave-owner minority sought to nullify federal government. These are times when an aroused democracy must say yes to majority rule on vital questions that elections have repeatedly decided.

On a deeper level, it is time to ask why democratic reform of our institutions is something to fear. Certainly we have evolved a long way from the dawn of our nation, when the founders, mostly men of privilege, including slaveholders, felt that direct participation of the people, and trust in them as the source of authority, was dangerous. The 99 percent of today have knowledge and wisdom far surpassing the elites of any age, including this one.

Image: From Democracy Means Fair Employment Practices Pamphlet No. 198, CIO Education Department, October 1951. Tobias Higbie CC 2.0

Uncovering the truth about the JFK assassination

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 18:12:00 +0000

It's been 50 years since the shocking murder of President John F. Kennedy. Yet the nation still yearns for the truth of what happened that terrible day in Dallas.

For 50 years the "official" narrative has been based on the Warren Commission assertion that Lee Harvey Oswald, a disgruntled loner, a Marxist, acted alone.

The Warren Commission report

This version is being repeated as part of the current observances and is the subject of new books, television documentaries, articles and remembrances that also include the lie that Oswald was a member of the Communist Party USA. (Not only was he never a member of the party, there is also no indication in his checkered history that he was actually a "Marxist.")

Yet according to an NPR report 75% of the American people think JFK died at the hands of a conspiracy.

A steady stream of citizen investigators and researchers has refused to accept the Warren Commission conclusions.

Upon release, the commission's report was questioned by a chorus of critics including Mark Lane (Rush to Judgment), Harold Weisberg (Whitewash), Sylvia Meagher (Accessories After the Fact), and countless others, along with a skeptical public.

They have battled a powerful cover-up machine, including a CIA-style disinformation campaign employing influential journalists, some with ties to the CIA and other branches of the intelligence community.

The cover-up cited by the researchers includes destroyed evidence (including Kennedy's missing brain), altered and suppressed evidence, corporate media silencing of honest journalists, the killing of dozens of witnesses (and scaring into silence countless others) and the killing of many of the conspirators including some of the gunmen.

Nevertheless, this citizens' movement has poked giant holes in the Warren Commission report (most notably the magic "single bullet theory"), unearthed suppressed evidence and assembled the outlines of an "unofficial" narrative of what occurred, why and who was responsible for the assassination.

Files and evidence now available

In recent times, the body of research has been enriched by the release of U.S. government files in the 1990s and evidence and intelligence information made available from the Soviet Union after the 1991 collapse. One of the best studies of these documents is JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, by James Douglass.

In addition the Cuban government has released evidence it has compiled of CIA and Cuban émigré terrorist plots to overthrow the revolutionary government, including information about suspected participants in the assassination. These were brought together in ZR Rifle: The Plot to kill Kennedy and Castro, by Claudia Furiati.

The evidence suggests that what happened in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, was nothing less than a coup by powerful interests, executed and covered up using organs of the state and a compliant corporate mass media.

This evokes similar episodes in U.S. history including the attempt to organize a fascist veterans march to oust President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, the Bush-Cheney theft of the 2000 election, and most recently the government shutdown engineered by the tea party and right-wing Republicans to undo the results of the 2012 elections.

1960: A time of broad social change

Kennedy was elected president in 1960 in the midst of a broad social change beginning to sweep the country that challenged the fanatical Cold War anti-communist hysteria, Jim Crow segregation and attacks on democratic rights on university campuses. At the same time stormy global developments were challenging U.S. imperialist domination.

Kennedy inherited the Cold War policies of the Eisenhower administration that included a policy of nuclear supremacy, overthrow of the Cuban revolutionary government and deepening military involvement in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

Kennedy held contradictory views on foreign affairs. According to Douglass, while Kennedy's outlook was shaped by the Cold War, his thinking was also deeply affected by his combat experience in World War II and his Catholic faith. Kennedy supported the independence of Algeria and other colonial nations.

Ultra-right domination of the U.S. government

When he became president, Kennedy almost immediately came in conflict with fanatical anti-communist elements that dominated the institutions of government. The military-industrial complex, the national state security apparatus, powerful right-wing business interests, the Mafia, anti-Castro Cubans, pro-segregationists and other power centers all eventually coalesced into a hostile force opposing Kennedy.

Documents show that Kennedy began clashing with the CIA, which by law comprised an autonomous branch within the U.S. government, operating without accountability, and the right-wing military establishment who worked behind Kennedy's back to undermine his policies.

Records show that in 1961, the newly elected president was thrust into a trap orchestrated by the CIA to carry out the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, aimed at overthrowing the new revolutionary government. Kennedy had been assured the Cuban people would welcome the "liberators" and rise up.

While Kennedy went along with the invasion he warned the CIA that he would refuse to provide U.S. troops and air cover. The CIA thought once the invasion began the young president would be forced to respond.

When Kennedy refused to cooperate and the invasion turned into a debacle, the CIA, right-wing generals and anti-Castro Cubans were livid. They never forgave Kennedy for what they considered a traitorous surrender to socialism.

Documents show that Kennedy was equally contemptuous of what he considered efforts to bypass and undermine presidential authority. After the Bay of Pigs, he told one advisor, "I want to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." He quickly fired CIA Director Allen Dulles (who later became a key figure in the Warren Commission), Deputy Director Charles Cabell (brother of Dallas mayor Earle Cabell) and invasion architect Richard Bissell.

At a 1961 meeting of the National Security Council, Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA, Dulles presented a plan for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. Kennedy listened, shook his head and remarked as he left the room, "And we call ourselves the human race." (JFK and the Unspeakable, Chronology)

Kennedy's thinking was especially affected by the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. With the world on the brink of nuclear war, Kennedy refused to cave in to U.S. generals who were exploiting the crisis to provoke an invasion of Cuba and a massive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.

In the end, Kennedy and Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev negotiated a way out. But this experience left an indelible imprint on Kennedy, who, according to files that have been released, concluded the only path forward was through a policy of peaceful co-existence with the Soviet Union and normalization of relations with Cuba.

He deeply distrusted the Joint Chiefs, the intelligence community, State Department and many of his advisers. According to Douglass, this resulted in his opening a secret back channel to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and prior to his death, steps toward a secret dialogue with Fidel Castro.

Kennedy was also heavily influenced by the dying Pope John XXIII and his papal encyclical Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) published in April 1963. Norman Cousins, editor of Saturday Review and a leader of National Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy, the largest peace group at the time, describes in The Improbable Triumvirate how he helped develop a back channel for Kennedy with the Pope and Khrushchev.

Ending the nuclear arms race

Kennedy publicly made a break with the Cold War when he delivered a commencement address at American University on June 10, 1963, known as his "peace speech," which has been largely ignored by commentators. Kennedy called for an end to the nuclear arms race and declared a suspension of atmospheric testing.

By that summer the Kennedy administration successfully negotiated a limited nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union that outlawed atmospheric and underwater nuclear testing. Kennedy bypassed the military brass and opposition in the U.S. Senate, including among his own party. He turned to Cousins to organize an education campaign on the treaty that resulted in a dramatic change in public opinion and its ultimate adoption.

Following the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy had promised Khrushchev that the U.S. would abandon attempts to invade Cuba. However, unknown to Kennedy the CIA continued arming anti-Castro Cuban exiles and carrying out attacks. According to Douglass, when Kennedy learned of the operations, he moved to shut them down and close the training bases.

Vietnam

As Howard Jones writes in Death of a Generation, Kennedy also began having serious doubts about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He was convinced by Sen. Mike Mansfield and others that the U.S. was being drawn into a deepening conflict, which was impossible to win.

He took steps to begin the process of bringing U.S. military forces home, which was to be completed after the 1964 elections. However, U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge secretly refused to carry out his orders.

Plots

According to the researchers, those who ordered and planned Kennedy's murder hoped that by attributing the assassination to a "sympathizer" of Castro, they could provoke an invasion of Cuba and overthrow of the revolutionary government or a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union or both.

The covert CIA program responsible for assassination of foreign leaders (code name ZR Rifle), especially Fidel Castro, and overthrow of the Cuban government, which employed Cuban exiles and the Mafia, was then turned over to the operation to kill Kennedy, the researchers report.

There were at least two and possibly three attempted assassination plots, including one in Chicago in early November (The Echo from Dealey Plaza, by Abraham Bolden). Perhaps it was no accident that the actual assassination occurred in Dallas, whose atmosphere had been poisoned by right-wing, anti-communist and pro-segregationist hysteria including from key figures in the city establishment, as described vividly in the new book Dallas 1963.

The hysteria resulted in the famed "mink coat" riot against then Sen. Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, during the 1960 election campaign, and the mobilization of a hostile crowd to greet UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson two weeks before the assassination, where he was spat on and hit with a sign.

The right-wing atmosphere and links to political officials made it easy for local law enforcement officials to cooperate in the plot.

Oswald and Ruby

Space doesn't permit the full unofficial "people's" narrative from being told here. However, some information about two key figures in the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, is enough to raise big questions about the credibility of the Warren Commission report.

The official history of Oswald rarely tells the full truth about his past.

Oswald joined the U.S. Marines and was assigned to a top-secret radar spying installation at Atsugi Air Force Base in Japan under the supervision of the CIA.

In 1959 he defected to the Soviet Union as part of what Victor Marchetti (CIA and the Cult of Intelligence) believed was a program to send agents there posing as "defectors." Oswald lived and worked in Minsk but apparently was never trusted by the Soviets.

Oswald married a Russian woman, had two children and returned to the U.S. in 1962. He was never prosecuted for his defection and in fact his return was facilitated by the CIA.

Still only 24 years old, Oswald settled in Dallas where he worked for both the CIA and FBI, according to the researchers. The CIA began manipulating him in a way that left a "trail" to set him up as the assassin "patsy", and to especially leave the impression Oswald was a Marxist or connected to a Cuban and Soviet plot.

Oswald was assigned to New Orleans where he got job at a CIA-related company. Working under CIA direction, he established a branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and organized a street provocation that got him on local television.

The Communist Party USA received a number of correspondences from a person who identified himself as Oswald during this time. And one of the first lawyers sought by Oswald after his arrest was CPUSA attorney John Abt (John Abt, Advocate and Activist). But the party regarded Oswald with suspicion and steered clear of him.

The CIA also cooked up an elaborate scenario to make it appear that Oswald visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City to obtain visas to travel to both countries. The CIA evidently was clumsily trying to make it look like Oswald was participating in planning a plot to assassinate Kennedy concocted by the Soviets.

Jack Ruby, who shot and killed Oswald inside Dallas police headquarters (!), was a member of the Chicago Mafia who was sent to Dallas to expand the mob's drug, casino and prostitution markets. In the late 1950s, Ruby was a gunrunner for the CIA to Cuba, where the CIA at the time supplied both Castro and dictator Fulgencio Batista, so as to hedge their bets, according to Douglass. When the revolution triumphed, Ruby supplied guns to the anti-Castro Cubans.

Ruby was integral to numerous aspects of the assassination plot. Eyewitnesses place Ruby in Dealey Plaza, the assassination site, on Nov. 22, including reportedly dropping off a team of assassins at the fence behind the grassy knoll. Ruby is believed to have been assigned to kill Oswald and easily gained access to police headquarters where Oswald was paraded in public twice.

The evidence unearthed by researchers and contradictions in the official story create grave doubts as to whether Oswald even fired a gun. Instead the finger points to trained snipers among the Cuban exiles and Mafia, overseen by CIA agents. Once their job was done, they were most likely whisked out from nearby Red Bird Airfield by airplane (Vendetta: the Kennedys, by Matthew Smith).

Names of those often associated with the assassination, including Richard Helms, David Atlee Phillips, David Sanchez Morales, Frank Sturgis and others, surface again during the 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy and the 1972 Watergate burglary.

The desire to unearth the truth about this crime against democracy still burns 50 years later. In the end, it is interwoven with the broad people's movement to defend and expand our democracy and democratic institutions and to defeat right-wing extremism and corporate power that constantly seeks to undermine it.

Photo: Wanted for Treason." Infamous handbill circulated on November 21, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, one day before John F. Kennedy visited the city and was assassinated. Uncredited on original. Later investigation attributed it to Robert A. Surrey of Johnson Printing Co., Dallas. Wikimedia Commons

View from Dallas: Let’s not forget what JFK did

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 16:16:00 +0000

DALLAS - While the nation at large prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, few cities have a slate of activities to rival that of Dallas. Dealey Plaza in the West End district, a National Historic Landmark and the site of the assassination, has a weeklong schedule of events and tributes to honor the slain 35th president and cultural icon.

Professional commentators seem consumed with pointless exercises of "what if," while the public chooses to remember a legacy defined by the president's youthful charm and glamorous lifestyle, immortalized in film and the tabloid culture that JFK helped to create. When pressed to name Kennedy's signal accomplishment, however, or any accomplishment, most people draw a blank. What, exactly, did Kennedy do with his 34 months in the White House?

He did not write the famous inauguration address, justly regarded as one of the greatest in American history. No one really knows who did, but it was certainly a team of professional speechwriters. Kennedy also did not write his Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, "Profiles in Courage," at least not without substantial help from Theodore Sorensen. While associated with the civil rights movement, it was left to Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas, to bully the Civil Rights Act through a hesitant Congress. In his adherence to Eisenhower's domino theory, Kennedy sent the first U.S. troops into Vietnam, and set the stage for the worst foreign policy debacle in U.S. history. Even his image as a family man, the fairytale of Camelot, has been revealed as a tawdry sham, thanks to well-documented instances of JFK's extramarital "encounters."

For all of Kennedy's iconic status, his complicated legacy makes it difficult for the greater public to measure him according to his actual accomplishments. Kennedy's achievements were not as easily packaged as his good looks or his wife's penchant for Chanel suits. Kennedy's true legacy is more complex.

Of greatest significance, however, is the fact that Kennedy backed away from the racist and ideological lines drawn by his predecessors and rabidly defended by certain segments of the public. In doing so, Kennedy set the stage for the advancements he was unable to accomplish on his own.

After the 1961 Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco failed to earn Fidel Castro's head, Kennedy never again attempted outright acts of warfare to topple the Cuban government. This policy infuriated members of the ultra-right, and this fury was stoked into outright hatred with Kennedy's eventual actions in resolution of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The crisis began when Kennedy's pointless and incorrect remarks about a "missile gap" provoked an arms race with the Soviet Union, which culminated in Khrushchev's deployment of 90 missiles to Cuban bases. For 13 days, the world stood at the edge of a nuclear abyss. Finally, in secret dealings with the Soviets, Kennedy agreed to withdraw missiles from southern Italy and Turkey. In return Khrushchev promptly withdrew the Cuban missiles, and thus began a new period of open communication between the world's two superpowers.

The ultra-right seethed over Kennedy's turn away from the "hard-line'" symbolized in such accomplishments as the Moscow-Washington hotline and the ban on airborne nuclear tests. The far-right campaign of hostility on these moves by Kennedy, combined with a racist campaign against his grudging but finally positive actions on civil rights, contributed to the lowest approval ratings of his presidency: 58% at the time of his assassination. Facing open hatred among racist, ultra-right elements in the South, Kennedy arrived on Nov. 22, 1963 to a city adorned with flyers that labeled him a traitor. Kennedy met with a bullet, and his ambiguities and equivocations as well as the hatred engendered by the positive steps he did take vanished in a haze of martyrdom.

Dallas has commemorated its role in the JFK assassination for over a year, through the Dallas Morning News' "JFK50" campaign and a regular schedule of public events and memorials. What often goes unmentioned is that, at the time of his arrival, JFK was broadly unpopular among the powers that be in this city, to the extent that people in his administration and here in Texas warned against the trip. When Dallas' "JFK50" celebrations hit a fever pitch this November, intelligent observers should recognize that the city of Dallas, and by extension the country at large, celebrate the legacy of JFK, husband of Jackie-O, a pop-culture relic. The accomplishments of President John F. Kennedy, dissenter to the ultra-right, have been lost in the sparkle.

Photo: President John F. Kennedy's motorcade, Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963. Library of Congress

Reader voices: Even for hospital workers, health care is a problem

Tue, 19 Nov 2013 16:20:00 +0000

AUSTIN, Texas (Texas Media Collective) - As a health care professional, taking care of people and helping them comes from my heart and soul. It is what I love to do and truly feel what I was called to do with my life. The place where I work and the people I work with are amazing and I would not hesitate to have them take care of me and my family.

Although health care is an essential piece of our lives, I have this growing fear that, while we work at a great place with great people, the company that owns this great place with great people keeps chipping away at its employees' health care benefits. I don't know where it's going to end.

I keep hearing how the place where we work has received many awards for its excellent service. All this effort to get these awards is important because it makes sure we strive to be the best and show the results of that effort. It would be nice to be compensated for our hard work and awards in the form of better health care benefits instead of parties, lunch boxes, bags, or other trinkets. Being able to voice our opinion on the compensation we get would be great.

I understand health care costs keep rising but in the past five years the health care plan's deductibles have gone up hundreds of dollars, out-of-pocket expenses have gone up also hundreds of dollars, and now even as employees we have to pay an inpatient admission fee each time we are admitted to the very institution where we work.

It seems ridiculous that even as an employee of a health care system we are given these types of insurance plan options.

If you happen to have a serious illness or even are about to become a new parent, the medical bills are going to pile up to make this significant and emotional time in your life even more stressful.

Insurance companies are also in my experience notorious for not filing medical codes right so you usually end up paying more, and by the time you figure it out (if you do) it takes a really long time and a lot of phone calls to get your money back.

I feel like I could go on for hundreds or even thousands of pages and rant about:

how upset I am about increasing insurance costs
how I keep looking at my medical bills from past health problems and worry about how to make the payments
how if a health crisis happens in the future my family and I might be financially ruined
how I thought the Affordable Care Act was going to help keep insurance and medical bills affordable, and
how unfair it is that hospital administration people make so much money yet we are struggling to pay our bills.

All these facts about increasing costs of insurance and health care trouble me ... but you know what?

The bottom line is that I feel this is only a rant and won't go anywhere or make a difference. I don't feel like I have a voice in my health care benefits at all. It feels kind of like you're drowning and no matter how much you struggle to reach the surface you keep getting pulled down.

I love the place I work at, I love the people, and if I didn't get to work where I work and help people it would honestly upset me. I thrive in my work and it shows because I think other people feel that I love being there. I just want to have a voice and be able to choose my health care benefits and make sure my family and I are okay so then I can do what I do best and help others, which is my true life calling.

Photo: PW/Ben Sears

The stakes for workers' rights in 2014

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 17:48:00 +0000

We are in the midst now of nothing less than a full-fledged class war against America's working people. That war was declared more than two years ago by an array of powerful right wing groups including the Chamber of Commerce, the National Manufacturers Association, the Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council, among others.

The people directly firing the shots at the U.S. working class are an array of state lawmakers bought and paid for by these organizations. They are waging an unprecedented attack on basic workers rights, and they only began that attack by going after unions. Their true aim has always been to crush the vast majority of workers in this country, the majority who are not in unions.

Just a few examples from a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute show how the stepped up class warfare of the 1 percent against the 99 percent began and how that warfare continues to intensify:

We all remember the massive attack on collective bargaining rights that began with Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin several years ago.

Since then four states have passed laws either killing or restricting state minimum wage rules.

Four states have lifted restrictions on child labor.

Sixteen states have sharply reduced benefits for the unemployed and/or restricted the groups of people for whom those benefits are available.

States have stripped workers of overtime pay rights, repealed sick leave protection, killed workplace safety laws and even passed laws making it virtually impossible for a worker to sue a boss for race or sex discrimination.

As you read this there are efforts underway to pass laws making it impossible to recover unpaid wages even when those wages have been stolen by employers.

In some states laws are already in effect that forbid cities and counties in those states from establishing higher minimum wages or instituting sick leave benefits that are stronger than those in place in the state as a whole.

The organizations that have paid for this attack on basic worker's rights include business lobbyists like the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. Those two groups are not new tea party formations. They are "as old as the hills," so to speak and they continue to push the war against workers by supporting both "traditional" and "tea party" Republicans and even, at times, certain Democrats.

Then we have the newer groups like the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity. With the help of obedient followers who hold the majority of Supreme Court positions, these organizations have broken new ground for the right wing corporate interests by taking advantage of the law to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into right wing political coffers - often into the coffers of the worst tea party extremists.

Then too there are groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council who make sure that, once in office, the lawmakers bought and paid for by the one percent are supplied with the legislative tools they need to implement the right-wing agenda.

Their goal is to permanently destroy wages, working conditions, legal protections and bargaining power for all workers in this country.

Labor and its allies must and actually are beginning to mount their own push to respond to these attacks on workers. We support this response and urge everyone to give their support too.

Labor and its allies are targeting more state legislative races this year than in any previous "off year " election.

Let all these state lawmakers be warned. The continued attack on the living standards of workers will not be tolerated. Nor will any attempts to weaken Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. Nor will the people tolerate any further threats to hold the nation hostage by shutting down the government.

The round of elections just over earlier this month showed many gains for working people. They are not content to simply lie down in the face of warfare conducted against them. They showed that they will fight back. We all must do everything possible to continue and strengthen that fight in 2014 - to make sure we win this war we never asked for.

Photo: Madison, Wisc., solidarity march. People's World flickr.

Austerity debate remains unresolved after shutdown drama

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 14:08:00 +0000

President Obama-and the American people-won an epic, if primarily tactical, victory over what Washington Post columnist Colbert King has described as the billionaire-funded, neo-Confederate tea party attempt to defund Obamacare, and undermine its most important achievement: taking a major step forward in establishing health care as a universal human right.

Rachel Maddow's elegant chart says it all with respect to the political demands of the ultra right, which was in control of the House Republican Party caucus at least until the very end, when their "let it all fall down" position collapsed.

Yet there was one victory the neo-Confederate Republicans can claim that even the old Confederacy could not: the ability to shutdown the federal government, a symbol of their supreme distaste for both union and democracy.

What is the overarching economic theme of almost all neo-Confederate policy and propaganda? I submit: rolling back and shutting down any and all public goods, institutions and services that transfer wealth from billionaires to the people.

The paymasters of the tea party movement know only too well that rising inequality, and declining living standards for most working people, are rich turf for "wedge" issues of race, abortion, gay rights, etc.

These types of issues serve now, as they have in the past, as useful tools for the billionaires to distract ordinary folks from noticing their pockets being picked of any remaining change.

Hail to Bernie Sanders call to take the message of tea party hypocrisy to its most vulnerable victims: working people in the Southern states, primarily.

Proposals to cut benefits and rights for working people are virtually all efforts to return public wealth to already wealthy private hands.

These forces - the Koch Brothers, for example - view every advance in public goods or services (e.g. health care, "entitlements", etc.) as a sign of Bolshevik Revolution at sunrise.

They are panicking at the mere suggestion of losing proprietary prerogatives, and thus have embraced fascist wrecking tactics solely to preserve the terrible "two Americas" plutocracy that has been evolving rapidly in the wake of the recent depression.

There is a very strong, billionaire argument that the most important indicator for a healthy and growing mixed economy is the median income worker's total compensation.

Is it growing at the same pace as the overall economy? If the answer is yes, that's not necessarily a cure-all for social conflict nor a guarantee of long run stability.

BUT, the most successful era of real and expanding democracy in the history of the United States - from 1935 to 1981 coincides precisely with the decades when median income very closely tracked increases in GNP - due in large part to increased power of workers through both unions and political influence.

Since then, with the exception of a couple of years in the '90s tech boom, median income has been flat or downward ever since Reagan began tearing up the New Deal.

Further, I submit there are only two known, general remedies for working people to redress the terrible inequalities that capitalism in America periodically inflicts upon them.

One is legalizing collective bargaining. Not just legalizing it, indeed, make it mandatory on a grand scale. That would result in the single biggest step the U.S. government could take to reverse inequality, without a single additional piece of legislation.

Unfortunately Reagan and his descendants have made serious progress in the opposite direction on workers bargaining rights and protection across the board.

The other remedy is substantially increased democratic with a small "d" meaning working and middle classes input on the taxation, regulation, empowerment, spending, investment, and industrial policies of government.

To the plutocrats, this is revolutionary democracy designed to reduce if not in some cases extinguish their economic and political power as a distinct social class, just as the restrictions on slave property were viewed by rebellious slave owners.

Perhaps it is true that the paths of democracy are inherently revolutionary, as ever more people and generations empowered by health, resources and education, must continually reinvent it, and society at large as well. So be it.

The deal to end the shutdown postpones the essential economic policy debate of growth vs. debt around the federal budget by 6 months. The weakened political position of the Republicans needs to be fully exploited to by all democratic forces to drive home the victory of a "jobs, growth, and infrastructure investment over reducing debt" policy line.

Until that line is victorious, how can progress on inequality be sustained? Lincoln fired General McClellan after Antietam because he did not pursue Lee's retreating army and destroy it. It may be time now to abandon the "grand bargain" between "two incompatible Americas", and go, again, with the union, the 99%, with a re-united America, seize the engine of democracy in the hands of working people, and shun by all peaceful means the neo-Confederacy as permanently, and as resolutely, as the last Confederacy.

Photo: AFGE Puerto Rico government workers protesting the shutdown. AFGE Facebook page.

1917 Russian Revolution: What the world has lost

Fri, 08 Nov 2013 13:41:00 +0000

It has been 96 years since Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik comrades overthrew the provisional government of the Russian Empire. It has been 22 years since the Soviet Union, the creation of the Bolshevik Revolution, collapsed and broke into pieces, and full-blast, dog-eat-dog capitalism was restored.

We may ask "what has the human race gained? What has it lost?"

From the fall of Soviet and European socialism, it has gained nothing, and it has lost much.

Yes, the old Soviet Union had a lot of problems; its leaders made mistakes, and some even committed crimes. Those of us who are working for socialism should study those carefully; the socialist states would not have collapsed merely from outside pressure.

To understand the points at which different choices might have been made that could have preserved and improved Soviet and Eastern European socialism is a massive task requiring much study and careful scientific analysis. Flip answers not based on such study and analysis should be avoided. I don't read Russian or any of the other languages of the old Soviet Union and do not have access to Soviet government archives or those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. So for me to pontificate on the "reasons Soviet and European socialism collapsed" would be an act of of gross immodesty.

But I follow developments in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America closely, as well as the class struggle here within the United States and in other developed capitalist countries. And on the basis of that, I can state with sad confidence that the collapse of Soviet and Eastern European socialism was a disaster for humanity.

Ideologically, it opened the door for a prolific growth of aggressive and selfish individualism. Numerous political and ideological leaders in the "West" used the demise of socialism to "prove" that human beings are incorrigible. The idea of social solidarity was, and continues to be, ridiculed. Discredited reactionary ideas of people like Ayn Rand took on a new life. "Look out for number one" replaced "look out for your comrades and neighbors." The goal became, not to create a better community for all, but to get more stuff. Those, in the former socialist countries, who object to this are accused in the bourgeois media of being "nostalgic."

The working class, instead of capitalist exploiters, suddenly was being blamed for everything that went wrong. Workers were not exploited enough under socialism, went the refrain. This was soon "remedied" by a horde of instant Russian billionaires.

The supposed non-viability of socialism is used by right-wing politicians in the United States to oppose any effort to improve the lives of ordinary people. This has created new forms of red-baiting, against anybody who tries to achieve modest improvements in the lives of poor and working class people. "That's communism! They tried that in Russia and it was a disaster!"

Working class people in the former socialist states saw an immediate impact on their living standards and on the more intangible aspects of their quality of life. Many, many first hand testimonials have been published about this. Social supports and cultural institutions of high quality were destroyed, abandoned or privatized. Even the old landholding nobility in some European countries came thronging back from exile, demanding that their palaces, castles and estates be returned to them.

The disappearance of the Soviet Union and its allies led to dire situations in poor countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Many of them had been trying to develop their economies with massive aid from the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic and other European socialist states. Thousands of students from poor countries were studying in the universities in the Soviet Union and its socialist partners.

When the Soviet and European socialism collapsed, much of this aid was cut off or sharply reduced. The ideologues of the right in the new Russia tried to portray the countries which the socialist states had been helping as feckless moochers.

This forced poorer countries to go hat in hand to the wealthy capitalist states, to transnational corporations, and to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank for trade agreements and financial help. There were strings attached, namely the acceptance of what came to be called the "neo-liberal" or Washington consensus package: "Free" trade rigged in favor of the wealthy countries and corporations, privatization of public enterprises and services, austerity that deprived the people of jobs and education and health services that are a matter of life or death. And when people in poor countries become restive, there is NATO and "humanitarian intervention."

But we have not yet seen the "end of history". All over the world, the Marxist ideas that inspired the Bolshevik Revolution still animate the struggles of millions. And in Latin America and other places, new forms of struggle for socialism are gaining strength every day.

The hope of a world based on solidarity and progress that was embodied in the Revolution of November 7, 1917 is the same that moves millions today. It will bring victory.

Workers win in Tuesday elections

Wed, 06 Nov 2013 14:07:00 +0000

On Tuesday, Nov. 5 workers and their allies achieved important victories in elections in New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Ohio, Virginia, and New York.

A grassroots effort in New Jersey brought a campaign for a minimum wage increase to a victorious conclusion last night. Some 256 labor, community, religious, civil rights, student, women's, and senior organizations got together to form the victorious Working Families United for New Jersey coalition. Their successful "Raise the Wage Campaign" gives an actual financial lift now to people all over the state of New Jersey who are finding it impossible to make ends meet or to feed their families adequately. This will put pressure on the re-elected governor, Chris Christie, to live up to the people's will during his second term.

In the state of Washington there was another wage increase victory with voters approving a ballot measure to hike the minimum wage for 6,000 low-wage Sea-Tec airport workers to $15 per hour and to provide them with sick pay and other benefits.

In Boston, Massachusetts the people elected the Democrat, Marty Walsh, an active union member, for mayor.

In Cincinnati, Ohio, the voters defeated in a landslide (78 to 2 percent) a city charter amendment that would have ended defined benefit pension plans for newly hired city employees.

In Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat, bested Ken Cuccinelli, the tea party Republican candidate for governor. Virginia is widely regarded as a bellwether state with last night's results not boding well for radical right wing politicians all over the country. Cuccinelli, the defeated climate change denier, has advocated elimination of minimum wage laws, abolishing Social Security and Medicaid, ending all abortion rights and barring a range of sexual activities among consenting adults. The people of Virginia last night threw that agenda into the trashcan where it belongs.

The McAuliffe victory in Virginia was also due in large measure to the massive effort by labor, women, civil rights and allies to turn out a huge vote in northern Virginia, a section of the state hit particularly hard by the recent tea party shutdown of the federal government.

In New York, the voters overwhelmingly rejected 12 years of austerity politics by giving the Democrat, Bill de Blasio, almost 75 percent of the vote, making him the first Democratic mayor of New York City in more than 20 years. The people of the city, in electing de Blasio, took a powerful stand against an array of policies that benefit the 1 percent over the 99 percent. In every one of the five boroughs of the city de Blasio campaigned hard on the themes of ending the wage gap, ending inequality and ending racial profiling known as "stop and frisk." African American, Asian, Latino and white voters overwhelmingly backed him and the progressive agenda he put forward.

Last night's election results showed that voters want good decent-paying jobs, good schools for their kids, health care and a fair share in the wealth they create. Last night's election results were a rejection of the tea party and its shutdown of the federal government.

They must be just the beginning, however, of a massive, concerted approach to the big mid-term elections coming up in 2014. All the people's organizations will have to be mobilized if the candidates who represent the tea party, the extreme right and all the lawmakers doing the bidding of the 1 percent are to be defeated next year. In 2014 we must repeat the experiences of last night, only on a far bigger and better scale.

Photo: Bill de Blasio, seen here with his children. Kathy Willens/AP

Workplace discrimination has no place in America, pass ENDA now

Tue, 05 Nov 2013 13:11:00 +0000

In 2013, it's difficult to believe that in many parts of the country, it's legal to fire workers for their sexual orientation or gender identity. In fact, 52% of the LGBTQ population lives in states that do not prohibit employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Studies show that more than one in five LGBTQ workers report discrimination on the job.

The country has long had national laws that protect workers from being fired based on their race, gender, religion, disability or other characteristics of their identity. But sexual and gender identity have no federal protections in the workplace, and we need to change that.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (S. 815/H.R. 1755), also known as ENDA, is a proposed law that would federally prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression in all 50 states. We in the labor movement affirm everyone should have equal access to workplace rights. ENDA would finally make this a reality for our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.

Throughout our history, the AFL-CIO and its affiliates have been leading advocates against discrimination in the workplace in any shape or form. We were instrumental in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We fought for the Equal Pay Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act-which all prohibit on-the-job discrimination.

The AFL-CIO and Pride At Work believe it is wrong for any employer to discriminate against or fire a worker based on actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. Discrimination in the workplace has no place in the United States.

The AFL-CIO will redouble our support for the passage of ENDA and continue this work until every worker-gay or straight, transgender or not-is treated with dignity and respect on the job. We urge all national and international unions to join in the effort to pass ENDA and to use their influence to sway those members of Congress who will be instrumental in the bill's passage. As we did in 2009, let us commit to doing "all in our power to see that it passes."

America's unions and working families are dedicated to bringing fairness and dignity to the workplace-and will continue this work until every worker is treated with dignity and respect on the job. We wholeheartedly support the passage of ENDA.

Richard Trumka is president of the AFL-CIO, and Darren Phelps is the executive director of Pride At Work.

Reposted from the AFL-CIO NOW blog.