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Lessons from Wisconsin – Why M1GS?

Published on April 7, 2012 by in 15M, Articles/Essays, Greece Crisis, Occupy Oakland, Occupy Together, Occupy Wall Street, Plutocracy, Worker Struggles
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A year ago, the original 21st century “Occupy” occurred in the United States – at the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. Scott Walker, Tea Party, Koch-funded governor sought to eliminate collective bargaining of public workers. The unions erupted, thousands stormed the building and did not leave for two weeks. Even the Democrats in the state legislature fought this one as all of them fled Wisconsin to prevent a quorum for the vote. This constant protest materialised at the heels of the Egyptian Revolution to oust Mubarak. “We are Egypt” was the cry from the streets.

I arrived in Madison in early March on the Union dollar. The physical all day occupation was over, but a presence of resistance continued to exist within and outside the building. Hundreds were still gathered, singing, chanting, speaking. Outside hundreds marched around the Capitol. The spirit was alive; people were angry, the air was electric with hope and despair.

A little over a week later, Governor Walker decided it was time to by-pass the problem of quorum by removing the financial part of the bill which would allow it to pass without the Democrats. Clearly the contention was never about how to balance the budget in Wisconsin – it was how to demolish even the glimmer of a labor movement in the United States. Us, union organizers, were holed up in offices for most of our two week stay. We were asked to make phone calls in an attempt to build a database of all the union members since the bill could possibly bar the Union’s access to the workers at the workplaces. It was surreal, the week before the bill passed, the Union took the talent of organizers and used it for routine phonebanking. We were all perplexed and talked about need for a more radical approach. Yet the message from the Unions was recall. Recall those damn Republicans – they are the ones fucking shit up; look at the Democrats, they are on our side – they risk their lives by evading the vote. During the day, liberal reformism flowed in our dialogue; at night, pockets of resistance sprung up in darkly lit bars. We talked about the General Strike. We talked about the thousands in the streets and how to continue to mobilize the working class, how to build a better world, how capitalism was to blame. It was a beautiful time; though the dialogue of radical action was couched in a reactionary setting, it inspired us all.

The night Walker decided to sign the bill into law without the Democrats, we were called into a special emergency meeting from the upstairs rooms. The mood was grim, lips were set in thin lines, eyebrows were burrowed. We were told to go to the Capitol immediately – the bill was about to be signed. I and two of my comrades rushed into our car and sped through Madison. Hundreds followed us and spilled into the Capitol, defying the guards that surrounded the building. The bill was signed, while we shouted “Shame” outside the closed doors. Chants of the General Strike sprung up as well, but the Union members around us looked hesitant and stayed quiet, while others raised their fists in the air and professed their will to shut the system down.

I stayed that night at the Capitol. The mood was resigned, yet energetic. The fight was not over; this was only the beginning. Through most of the night, the Capitol was filled. Rumors of dispersal circulated, but the police forces did nothing. On the ground floor in the middle, people collected to speak-out, to sing, to chant, to dance. The music, the sounds never stopped; I fell asleep to them on the cold marble floor of the Capitol in a communal sleeping bag.

In the days that followed, calls for a General Strike continued. There were hesitations, but the narrative lived. It was in the propaganda, it was in the writing on the walls. Saturday promised to be a day of mass action. Over 100,000 were expected in Madison; a mass tractorade was planned; the air was ripe with people on the streets. People that had never taken the streets, that had never participated in any mass movement gathered in droves around the Capitol. Saturday had the potential to be the beginning of something amazing. Cold saturated the clear air, snow thinly covered the ground, and voices reverberated in angry chants. How dare Governor Walker do this? How dare Governor Walker take away our hard-fought rights?

At least 150,000 showed up that Saturday. Revolt, defiance, frustration coated the spirit of the people. It dissipated throughout the day as the Union bosses took the energy, took the anger, and directed it straight to the ballot box. “We must recall the Republicans, we must recall Walker!” the Union bosses bellowed from their podiums. The General Strike was not mentioned; the idea of the General Strike crawled through the underground tunnels of radicals in Madison, but the reformist Unions dominated the dialogue. As the day proceeded, it got colder and my mood dipped. I had seen this one too many times – the working class did not know their own power and the Unions refused to facilitate that power, rather wanted to ensure the status quo. To the ballot boxes is the rallying cry of the Union; to the streets…. who cries for that?

A year later, we are preparing for May 1st, 2012: the General Strike. The first May Day, the first International Workers’ Day since the Occupy movement emerged. M1GS is now a rallying cry. To the streets is the call of a decentralised, inspired, radicalized group of people. As May 1st approaches, so does November 6th, and we must keep that in mind. We must keep our focus on the streets, not on the ballot boxes. Something beautiful could have happened in Madison. Instead the people of Wisconsin continue to wait to recall Governor Walker.

We need to learn from this. We need to stand up against not only the forces on the Right, but also the ones on the supposed Left. Unions, as organizations of workers, have accomplished a lot, but in this time rife with revolution we need to ensure that they do not disempower our call for a General Strike. The Unions are reformist institutions, theorists like Gramsci have written extensively on this; they can be a great asset to the revolution but they can also be one of its greatest threats. The ruling elite, the Koch brothers, the Waltons, the Dick Cheneys of the world would like nothing better than for Occupy to fit into the liberal narrative of representative democracy. We need to ensure that we don’t slip into that narrative. We need to take the streets. We need to disrupt the status quo. It can’t be business as usual on May 1st, and it can’t be business as usual on May 2nd, or 3rd… and especially not on November 6th. M1GS… expect us.

Originally written and posted at Resist, Occupy, Produce.

 
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Can Campaign Finance Reform Save Us?

Published on April 3, 2012 by in Community Submitted News

“As Americans read about the flood of private money that is going into the current presidential campaign, most can’t help but shake their heads in disgust about how our democracy functions.
”With all the talk about changing Washington, voters are shrewd enough to understand that if contributors give this much money to the candidates in both parties, there is little chance that Washington will be much different in 2013.”

This is how Princeton University Professor of history and public affairs, Julian Zelizer, began his latest commentary for CNN, It took a scandal to get real campaign finance reform.

His article is one of the first in a new series put out by CNN, “money in politics,” which focusses entirely on issues surrounding campaign finance reform.

The new series highlights what the Occupy protests have already shown: Americans’ concern with money’s influence over government has reached a fevered pitch – calls for “campaign finance reform,” and for government to “get the money out” of politics, even topped New York City General Assembly’s top two ”national chants” for the movement.

The theme has been a focal point of recent protests to such an extent, in fact, that even Florida’s Representative Ted Deutch and Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico have felt there is some justification for introducing constitutional amendments to curb corporate influence over government.

But what exactly are the proposed “campaign finance reforms,” and are they policies we should take seriously?

Details of the reforms:

Campaign finance reformers scored their first major victory in 1972 with the passage of the Federal Elections Campaign Act, or FECA, which required candidates to disclose sources of campaign contributions and expenditures, put caps on the amount of “hard money” individuals could donate to a campaign, and also created, for the first time a public financing system for politicians to opt into.

Since its passage, reform advocates have attempted to push these regulations further. In addition to those already on the books, they propose a hodgepodge of new restrictions and laws to limit the influence of special interest groups, corporations and wealthy donors.

The new proposals have ranged from creating a “matching system,” where government literally “matches” the small contributions of citizens (theoretically “doubling” their influence and apparently making them more competitive with bigger donors), all the way to Yale Law School professors Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres‘ proposal for an election system where citizens vote with a fixed number of dollars for which candidate should be funded the most.

Perhaps the most successful current reform effort in the states, however, is the “clean money” system, which has been in place in Arizona and Maine since 2000.

The system, like FECA, gives candidates who have reached certain signature and donation requirements a fixed amount of state funding for their campaign, should they choose to opt into it. That money then constitutes the bulk of what they will be allowed to spend on their campaign.

The jury is out, however, on whether the “clean money” reforms in these states have achieved significant, or even noteworthy, results for voters. Research on whether the system has decreased incumbency or private financial influence over elections has been mostly negative (studies to date suggest they haven’t), as have been studies on whether or not “clean money” legislation has increased voter participation (the data again points towards no).

While there may certainly be a case that despite its initial setbacks, campaign finance reform could decrease incumbency rates in government, perhaps the question we should be asking is not – as Julian Zelizer asked in his commentary for CNN – “how can we enact comprehensive campaign finance reform” – but instead, “why should we care?”

People don’t presumably want campaign finance reforms enacted simply to reduce incumbency rates. Neither, presumably, do they want reform just for the sake of increasing voter participation. At the heart of their efforts is a belief that by increasing the degree to which government represents the people, we will have increased the degree to which government passes legislation in their interests.

It may be worth asking, then, whether or not the state is capable of representing us to begin with.

The answer, by any objective measure, is a resounding no. Whether maintaining massively unpopular occupations in the Middle East, enacting draconian austerity measures, or regularly passing national budgets which contradict it’s citizens’ own espoused priorities, government has a piss poor record of representing the public.

Of course, this isn’t to say that government is incapable of passing legislation which benefits us; clearly they can, and have. But in the rare event that political decisions actually do wind up benefitting us, it’s normally incidental. And so, for example, when healthcare reform was passed by the Obama administration, millions more American’s wound up with healthcare coverage – but only because the insurance companies won a major victory in the healthcare mandate.

Numerous observers have commented on this tendency in the past. To the author and anarchist, Emile Pouget, political reforms were best understood “[as] a consequence of amendments made to the system of production.” By this he meant that the pace and nature of reform is ultimately dictated by the needs of the economy – that capital sets limits on the state’s decisions, and government is forced to operate within those confines.

Campaign finance reformers don’t recognize these limits. They assume that the state is simply a repository of influence, in which different groups – lobbyists, special interests, citizens – vie for attention.

But this view “isolates the state from its social environment,” notes author John Halloway. ”[It] attributes to the state an autonomy of action that it just does not have. In reality, what the state does is limited and shaped by the fact that it exists as just one node in a web of social relations.”

Ultimately, campaign finance reform cannot insulate government from the pressures inherent in governing a capitalist country. Government policy is not simply “pro-business” or “anti worker” because businesses have extra access to our elected officials. They benefit the wealthy because without pro-business legislation, the capitalist economy would simply fail, and their roles as governors with it.

For the full, original article, feel free to visit: thetrialbyfire.org

 
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On the Occupation and Vanguardism

Published on March 15, 2012 by in Anarchism, Articles/Essays, Occupy Together, Occupy Wall Street, Plutocracy

Jeremy Kessler responds to Reihan Salam:

Over at National Review Online, my friend Reihan Salam has a post up critiquing my recent piece on Occupy Wall Street. In it, Reihan suggests that the Occupation is a familiar caricature of an American left-wing movement, spearheaded by a vanguard of college-educated elites and backed by the power of relatively privileged, and economically poisonous, public sector unions. In doing so, I think he misunderstands both the composition and the politics of the Occupation, and my claims about them.

First, in terms of composition, I don’t think I suggested—and I would not concede—that the core of the Occupation is a “relatively small collection of radicalized women and men, many of whom feel as though they should enjoy higher status by virtue of their cultural capital, sensibilities, and credentials.” There are a lot of people down at Zuccotti Park who are neither college-educated nor members of public sectors unions. The fact that 99 percent—or some large portion—of the nation is not currently occupying Wall Street does not indicate that a credentialed elite is.

Second, Reihan appears to misread the Occupation’s politics or at least my rendering of them. The politics of the Occupation, whose sincerity I have so far seen little reason to doubt, is explicitly opposed to vanguardism. While a vanguard first seeks to seize power and only then to convert the majority to its cause, the Occupation admits that it will not have power until the majority stands with it. It is the Occupation’s rejection of vanguardism that leads to the tactical challenges that my piece seeks to address. Reihan’s critique, on the other hand, proceeds by assuming that the Occupation—or my rendering of it—depends on a vanguard in classic Leninist fashion. Here I think Reihan may be trying to fit my acknowledgement that the Occupation has not yet secured the participation of a majority of the nation into a standard right-wing paradigm that assumes the elitism of leftist movements.

Putting these two misunderstandings aside, Reihan is correct that my piece looks forward to a broader base of support that would include unionized public employees and college-educated elites. His post helpfully raises two worries about the inclusion of these groups in the Occupation:

1. Are these groups (public sector unions, college-educated elites) inimical to the supposed ideology of the Occupation?

2. Will these groups intentionally co-opt the Occupation?

As for Question One, while I do share some of Reihan’s concerns both about public sector unions—particularly the police and their involvement in what he calls the “carceral state”—and about college-educated elites, the participation of these groups does not contradict the meaning and the goals of the Occupation. In a political economy characterized by extensive deregulation and de-unionization, it is true that the remaining public sector unions do exert undue influence on certain sectors of our political and economic decision-making. The left-wing answer to this problem, however, is more unionization, not demonization of the extant unions. Reihan is obviously not going to be impressed with the left-wing answer.

As for college-educated elites, there is no doubt that we can be annoying and do exert an undue influence on our national political culture. Indeed, I would go further and say that the inability of the Democratic Party to identify and promote leaders who do not hail from elite backgrounds is a serious political and moral problem. That said, Reihan’s teasing discussion of NYU and New School students reads more like conservative boilerplate than careful sociological analysis. I would also wager that Reihan has no data to back up his implication that most of the residents of the Park are, in fact, NYU and New School students. Finally, even if many in the Park are students of one kind or another, this fact should not embarrass the Occupation. In relatively affluent countries, students historically have been the bearers of political and economic change because they have the time to organize themselves and protest injustice. One of the most distasteful aspects of the right-wing imaginary—whether “libertarian” or “conservative”—is its contempt for the relative leisure that allows the young to be politically active.

Turning to Question Two, what if the public sector unions and the left-wing intellectuals —their forgivable faults aside—are truly aiming to co-opt the Occupation, leveraging whatever political power the movement might have in order to exploit the hardworking masses? My response to this worry comes in two parts.

First, I note that such co-option would be very sad. At Zuccotti Park, the daily General Assembly—in which thousands of men and women of a variety of classes, races, sexual orientations, and degrees of educational attainment participate in deliberative, direct-democratic decision-making—is a sight to behold. Conservatives who scoff at what’s going on down there should really check it out. Putting politics aside, as a simple model of human organization, the General Assembly—the decisional center of the Occupation—is ethically inspiring. For such a process to dissipate into the familiar byways of late-20th-century Democratic politics would be unfortunate.

Second, and happily, I do not think nefarious co-option of the Occupation by self-interested unions and educated elites is the most likely outcome of the movement. Of course, the Occupation will have growing pains, and its current organizational structure is fragile. How the movement will respond to increasing numbers remains to be seen, and any broad-based political coalition will always be troubled by internal competition. Those caveats aside, I believe—and the Occupation is premised upon such a belief—that the grounds for real economic solidarity between diverse sectors of the population currently exist.

To be sure, not all Americans are equally oppressed by the system of chronic personal insecurity that our political and financial institutions have established. Students with lower debt burdens are better off than students with higher debt burdens, public employees in strong unions are better off than private employees in weak unions who are better off than non-unionized labor who are better off than undocumented workers; whites are better off than blacks; the old are better off than the young. But for all of these groups, the vampiric rhetoric of austerity recently embraced by both the Republican Congress and the Obama White House was a wake-up call. A system that had already placed tens of millions of lives in a perpetual state of limbo announced that it would resolve their insecurity by destroying them. In doing so, that system acknowledged what its own political, financial, and media leaders had been admitting for some months—that it had become institutionally incapable of responding to economic crisis. The Occupation— in its zeal for new organizational forms, rejection of vanguardism, and appeal to the widest variety of American citizens, the moral majority of the nation —is an obvious response to the obvious political, economic, and moral bankruptcy of the current regime.

Yes, the Occupation will change as more traditional actors associate themselves with it. Yes, it will get more complicated, less pure. But if the Occupation persists, it will alter the national conversation by creating precisely what Reihan calls “a new kind of polarization,” based upon an increasing consciousness of shared suffering. This consciousness could provide the foundations of inter-class solidarity, revealing the overlapping interests of, say, older unskilled workers and younger, relatively low-paid tech workers (members of Reihan’s “credentialed professionals”).

There is a stern discourse, popular today with both the honest right and the dishonest center, that sees the Occupation’s critique of the prevailing system as nothing more than whining. But true maturity lies in the recognition of mutual suffering and the decision to overcome it through collective action. Herein lies the method of the Enlightenment, the best legacy of the West, which both the right and the center purport to represent. The right and the center understand that there is something dangerous about suffering, and call it shameful in order to suppress it. By being honest about the shared suffering we are currently experiencing, the Occupation increasingly will make available left-wing policy options to those who successfully ride the ups and downs of political fashion.

What might those policies be? The usual suspects: redistribution, regulation, cancellation of debts, potential nationalization. Now, Reihan may simply see all of these left-wing policies as the poisoned fruits of union and university self-interestedness (or, more generally, as economically ruinous). But that is a much larger debate, one that has little to do with the Occupation itself.

If Reihan is truly anxious about the seizure of the Occupation by spoiled private university students and bloated prison guards, he should come down to Liberty Street and lend a hand. If he’s right about the winter-resistant magic of synthetic fibers, the moral majority will be around for a while.

 
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Marxist-Humanism’s concept of ‘Subject’

Published on March 13, 2012 by in Articles/Essays, Marx, Theory

Editor’s Note: In early years of the 1970s leading up to the completion of her book, PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION: FROM HEGEL TO SARTRE AND FROM MARX TO MAO, Raya Dunayevskaya engaged young revolutionaries in the ideas presented in that work. An example is a Jan. 15, 1971 letter, excerpted here, to young members of News and Letters Committees. Her discussion of the connection between subjects of revolt and philosophy speaks to concerns presented in our “Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives” (See pp. 1, 5-8). The original can be found in Supplement to THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION, 14110-11. Footnotes are by the editors.

First, let me take up the question of language. [No word] is more important than Subject. Whether we mean by that the Movement, or a specific group like News and Letters Committees; whether we mean the workers or a single revolutionary; whether we mean women’s liberation, Blacks, Indians, “organization,” it is clear that “Subject” is the one that is responsible for both theory and practice. Therefore, we must not say “Subject must unite with its theory”; it is the subject who unites, or fails to unite, theory and practice. In a word, the preposition “with” is wrong.

Perhaps part of the looseness of expression is due to my stressing how crucial theory is, that, as you put it, quoting me, “Philosophy is itself revolutionary.” Yes, because the whole point of philosophy, of dialectics – both its point of departure and point of return – is Freedom. The trouble with philosophers, whether they were only thinking of Utopia, the Future, or of Thought as their special province, was that they limited the concept of freedom. That is why Marx says (It is the very first quotation one meets even before turning to a single page of text in MARXISM AND FREEDOM) that “Freedom is so much the essence of man that even its opponents realize it….No man fights freedom; he fights at most the freedom of others.”

Marx “took advantage” of this nature of man, and therefore his thought, the striving for freedom, and said of Hegel’s dialectics – THE greatest philosophy produced by bourgeois philosophy – that what we must do is “realize it” for by realizing this talk and thought of freedom we will HAVE it, be whole man. But under no circumstances does “philosophy is itself revolutionary” mean it will realize itself. Only living men and women can do that. In a word, it is no substitute for “Subject” any more than history is a substitute, for history, too, means MASSES making it.

Now then, for us…the great breakthrough came back in 1953 when we discovered in [Hegel’s] Absolute Idea, a movement FROM PRACTICE not only to revolution, but to theory, to philosophy of liberation. I find that the Existentialists, on their part, and the Maoists, on theirs, never stop talking about being, existence, doing, practice – but the very last word they understand is Practice, for they are under the delusion that when they practice theory, that is practice, that is activity. That is, when they “bring” it to the masses, and all the masses have to do is be smart enough to see it and accept it, then all will be heaven on earth. What I’ve been saying, at least since 1953, is the exact opposite, that practice is masses practicing and their practice is not only the doing of deeds but the thinking of thoughts.

THEREFORE, the two kinds of subjectivity (the note on which I ended the second edition of Marxism and Freedom, hoping thereby to indicate what I mean to do in PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION)[1] was NOT ONLY a stress on proletarian Subject vs. Maoist or petty-bourgeois subject BUT to show that in the proletarian Subject, in subjectivITY, we include man as thought as well as man as being, AND THOUGHT, PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERATION, THE ABSOLUTE IDEA [BROKEN DOWN] FOR OUR AGE IS ITSELF A FORCE FOR REVOLUTION.

It is a development. A very critical and high stage of development, but a development rather than break, as was the case in 1953 from Johnsonism[2] or state-capitalism[3] sans philosophy.

Of course, Marxist-Humanism is itself “subjectivity”; this is what we learned ever since the trips to Africa [in 1962] and to Japan [in 1965] showed that even revolutionaries closest to us, and even masses, great masses in revolt, will not take from our shoulders, our task, working out this dialectic of liberation, BOTH philosophically in the book [PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION] AND practically in our everyday activities.[4]

Of course, it is a task of very great historic dimensions. But do you know anyone else engaged in it? Of course, it is hard labor and blows the mind, especially of the youth, who are first getting used to the idea that they are REVOLUTIONARIES, have broken with their past both as petty-bourgeois milieu and parents [and must now] begin measuring themselves against history’s Gargantuan dimensions. I do not doubt, however, that we can become the catalyst for the revolutionaries who have had all the breaks from the past, but did not think that first then they must create new theoretical foundations as well instead of having found them ready-made, if not in the bite-size Maoist quotations, then at least as Marx did it. But he did it in 1843-1883, and we live in 1971, and while it remains our foundation, none can do for this age what only this age can do for itself….

Take Marx’s period. Great as the First International was, it was “organized.” Therefore for the NEW FORM OF WORKERS’ RULE – which no genius, not even Marx, no human being, nor God for that matter, can see before it actually occurs – Marx had to keep plodding along, theoretically in CAPITAL, practically, in the First International, until the workers upsurged in the Paris Commune [in 1871]. Then he not only embraced it, as revolutionaries would, but made it the departure even of his theory. It clarified the “fetishism of commodities” not just in the manner in which he had already worked it out theoretically – capitalist exploitation of labor and its reification into a thing – but its opposite, the NEW FORM, the UNIVERSAL form of how the workers mean to rid themselves of the fetishism by [the] creation of the Paris Commune.

The same came to be with Lenin – the Soviets were the new form for his age. He was well prepared to see it and create the slogan “All Power to the Soviets” BECAUSE, theoretically, he had already worked out a new universal – “to a man.” BUT IT WASN’T ONLY HIS UNDERSTANDING AND RETURN TO HEGEL THAT HELPED HIM: IT WAS THAT, TO BEGIN WITH, HE WAS ALWAYS A PRACTICING REVOLUTIONARY. So, insofar as the latter was concerned, were his Bolshevik colleagues. They all opposed the “April Thesis” and thought he had been too long an émigré to “understand Russian realities.” BUT THE REVOLUTION SWEPT THEM ALONG. WHEN THE, REVOLUTION IS AT A HALT AND YOU HAVE S T A T E P O W E R, you (that is the Stalinists) follow a very different path. But it isn’t only because they didn’t “understand” Hegel; it is because of the OBJECTIVE compulsion from the existing state surrounded by world capitalism, etc. Read more…

 
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A Few Words About “Solidarity”

Published on March 12, 2012 by in Articles/Essays, People of Color

If you’re telling me solidarity means to forget my discomfort and experiences with privileged folk, or that privileged folk have a right to speak over the experiences of marginalized ones, or have just as much say in their marginalization, then I’m not interested in solidarity.

If you’re telling me solidarity means to forget my culture, my identity, what makes who I am because it is “divisive” (read-challenging, foreign, hard to swallow, strange, uncomfortable), then I’m not interested in solidarity.

I know so many leftists and progressives that get uncomfortable and try to belittle what they just call “identity politics”. Even though I understand and agree with many critiques of it, there is no throwing it away or dismissing it as a whole.

I’ve been told some really DISGUSTING things by those alleged intelligent, progressive folk who just don’t want to be challenged or check their privilege. They can’t see how important ID politics are to seeing how each person is oppressed or marginalized in any given point or situation in their lives. Our personal history DOES matter. How even if we didn’t ask for the privileges or oppressions that we have, they DO mean something in terms of our places in oppressive systems and what we can or cannot say on them.

We can simultaneously have solidarity while recognizing privilege and oppression, while confirming and recognizing people’s identities, and letting those things dictate actions a group takes together. It does not mean “DIVIDE THE MOVEMENT BY COLOR/RACIAL/GENDER/ABILITY/CLASS POSITION/etc” (though people wanting and needing safe spaces or to have movements based on their marginalization is COMPLETELY OK AND NO ONE WITH PRIVILEGE HAS A RIGHT TO SPIT ON OR QUESTION THAT). It means “RECOGNIZE people’s differences mean something in terms of their experiences and how they’ve been oppressed by different systems.” That way, you can better pinpoint and address the ways people have been hurt.

To erase those differences means to turn everyone into a default mode, that being of a straight, cis, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle class white man. That is NOT an identity I can relate to in the least, so how does that work?

- Briana Urena-Ravelo, Lebanese Poppy Seed

 
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Tenants Union: Fight Your Landlord and Win

Published on March 10, 2012 by in Articles/Essays, Community Organizing, Housing
Housing for All

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.”

- Frederick Douglass

Decent housing should be an absolute right for all people. But, we continue to live in a world that homelessness, evictions of the poor, and degrading housing conditions are all too common. At the same time, we see abandoned housing left to rot. This should convince us that our housing problems come not from a lack of resources, but from a poor distribution of those resources. As is the problem with so many facets of our lives, housing is organized for private profit and not for people’s common needs. The only way for us to change these problems is to organize together and demand it. But, who do we organize and how? And, who is the enemy?

Who is the landlord?
For most working class people, owning our home isn’t a possibility and we’re often forced into a housing market with large landlords. Just as often, the tenants and the landlords have conflicting sets of interests. While we’re simply trying to hold onto a basic necessity of life, landlords hope to gain a profit from us. Sadly, the interests of the landlords are usually dominant, thanks to a system of legal and government support rarely enjoyed by tenants.

Supposedly, we have a choice. We can live wherever we’d like – if we can afford it. So the “choice” offered to those of us that live in or near poverty is between a variety of bad housing situations and homelessness. This is obviously not a choice, but a threat. Where can you go to leave an unfair housing market? Our life experiences repeatedly tell us: “You will take whatever horrible standards your income can afford, or you will have nothing.”

Not all working class people are renters and many in poor cities, have managed to buy their own home. While at times, we may rent out a room or floor of our house, we generally have more in common with tenants than the large landlords. Homeowners are very often tenants themselves of the largest of landlords – the banks. Even if the mortgage has been paid, working class homeowners occupy a very small and isolated part of the housing market, where much larger landlords have real control. These homeowners may be in a more comfortable immediate position. But, they’re also in a very precarious situation and could easily lose their home in any number of ways.

On the other hand large landlords own apartment buildings or dozens of houses throughout the city. They use our basic need for housing as a tool to create profits, often massive, for themselves. Their interest is to make the greatest possible profit for themselves. That means keeping repairs to a minimum and charging as much rent as they believe they can.

Having little power individually, renters are often on the losing end of this conflict. Homelessness, evictions, and poor living standards are clear signs of our current weak position.

Tenant Power
The beauty of our situation, is that collectively we have far greater power than our landlords. Our rent is the source of their wealth. For them to continue their life of luxury without work they need us to continue living in their apartments, continue paying their rent, and keep accepting the living conditions that they choose for us. Our landlords are absolutely reliant upon us. They rely on the hope that we will never understand our true strength.

The power of the working class has the same limits in the struggle for decent and affordable housing as it does in the workplace – it’s collective. When we struggle alone in isolation the landlord has nearly absolute power. Our power is only real power when we get together with others in similar situations and organize for justice. Read more…

 
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Between Barbarisms: The Arab Spring, Marx, and the Idea of Revolution – by Greg Burris

Published on March 9, 2012 by in Articles/Essays, Egypt, Marx, Plutocracy, Tahrir Square, Theory

An assessment of the Arab Spring half a year later, in light of (1) the “clash of barbarisms” between the U.S. and Al Qaeda, (2) Marx’s concept of revolution, and (3) the possibilities for a revolutionary future – Editors

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dominant Western paradigm for interpreting international conflict underwent something of a transformation. No longer seen as a death match between capitalist “freedom” and communist “slavery,” international conflict instead came to be understood by many as stemming from cultural differences. That is, the world was seen as being enveloped by a “clash of civilizations.” With the intellectual backing of influential academics in the West like Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, this worldview has served as a new bunker mentality, especially in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.[1] According to this view, the United States is not at war because of its policies. Rather, what is under siege is Western culture itself, the barbarians mercilessly pounding at the gates.[2]

From its outset, the notion of a clash of civilizations encountered critics on the Left—thinkers like Edward Said who dismissed it as nothing more than a foolish delusion, as “a gimmick like ‘The War of the Worlds.’”[3] More recently, Gilbert Achcar turned this infamous thesis completely on its head, suggesting that what we have before us in the age of the global “War on Terror” is not a clash of civilizations, but rather a clash of barbarisms—the barbarism of the strong (the United States and its military, the transnational capitalist class, and the neoliberal agenda) versus the barbarism of the weak (reactionary theocrats and fundamentalist terrorists).[4] Thus, the world is not ensconced in a battle between primordially opposed civilizations, a kind of tribal feud gone global. Rather, a war is being waged between the oppressors in power and the underdog oppressors out of power, between the warmongers in Washington and their equally reactionary adversaries abroad. Meanwhile, the rest of humanity is held hostage, standing on the sidelines and serving only as innocent casualties as the deadly doppelgangers remained locked in their perpetual war of attrition. Obama and Osama, then, share more in common than a mere similarity in name. They represent mirror images of each other, two sides of the same atrocious coin—one symbolizing the barbarism of the strong and the other, though dead, symbolizing the barbarism of the weak. The major difference between them is just one of killing power. It is the difference suggested in Saint Augustine’s lesson of the pirate and the emperor; while the former simply molests the sea, the latter molests the whole world.[5]

But neither of these paradigms is sufficient to make sense of the Arab Spring. While one may still detect lingering traces of the old antagonism at play—i.e., the clash of barbarisms in Libya between NATO and the forces of the late Muammar Qaddafi—the Arab Spring is operating at an entirely different level. It is as if the “silent majority”—to borrow a rather clumsy phrase popularized by an even clumsier president—has come together in acts of sustained, collective rebellion throughout the region to oppose the twin barbarisms of our age. Thus, the Arab Spring came as a surprise not only to the dictators in power but also to the old guard—Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. The protests that have swept across North Africa and the Middle East, from the Maghreb to Mesopotamia and beyond, are not the collective expression of the barbarian hordes venting their rage and fury against the symbols of civilized stability, law, and order. Rather, quite the opposite is true. The mass upheavals represent a kind of people’s spring cleaning, an attempt to oust the barbarians from their tyrannical seats of power—the Ben Alis and Mubaraks, the Qaddafis and Assads, the neoliberal dictators and totalitarian thugs. Thus, the barbarians are not at the gates; they are already in them. Read more…

 
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Egypt: Textile Workers Call for Revolutionary Democracy

Published on March 8, 2012 by in Egypt, Plutocracy, Tahrir Square, Uncategorized, Worker Struggles
Tahrir Square

A letter from the Revolutionary Association of Textile Workers to the revolutionaries on the barricades in Tahrir Square, Alexandria and Suez
Original Arabic here

29 November 2011

Eleven days behind the barricades in the squares of Egypt is proof that the revolutionaries have reclaimed revolutionary legitimacy in seventeen provinces. Yet although the revolutionaries have offered themselves as martyrs in the squares as sacrifices for freedom, equality and justice, they have offered their wounded, and lost more than 11,000 to the military’s prisons, we have still not reaped the harvest of our struggle.

Now, after ten months where we’ve seen the remnants of the old system simply recycled, and opportunistic attempts by the political forces with religious authority to ignore the revolutionary legitimacy of the masses in the squares, ten months where the blood of the martyrs has irrigated the pavements anew, now they are fabricating and falsifying the democracy we fought for. They are signing the revolution’s death certificate at the ballot boxes because they know that their path to power can only pass through the blood of the martyrs and the injured. It is therefore down to the revolutionaries in the squares to propose an alternative to the bloodstained democracy which the military council and its allies among the political forces with religious authority have decided upon.

The return of the masses to the squares has inspired experiences among the revolutionary forces of the students, workers, peasants, professionals and the marginalized which we must build on to create the new form of democracy that we must defend.

The military council and its allies in the corridors of power and the political parties are preparing a parliament to extend their presence and legitimacy. Now is the time for the masses in the squares to create forms of popular revolutionary democracy in Tahrir, Alexandria, Suez, Mansoura and Sohag. We must develop new, legitimate revolutionary forms of democratic representation from the streets and therefore we must create popular revolutionary councils in the public squares by:

  1. A public vote by the tens of thousands on the barricades in Tahrir Square to create the first popular revolutionary council by choosing 100 revolutionaries from within the square to express the goals and demands of revolutionary legitimacy
  2. The Popular Revolutionary Council must form elected committees which shall take all their decisions by voting.
  3. The Revolutionary Council shall inform the Military Council of the decisions it has taken via the media
  4. Popular Revolutionary Councils must be formed in the public squares in Alexandria and Suez after Tahrir, and they must co-ordinate in order to achieve the goals of the people’s revolution.

The Popular Revolutionary Councils are the most mature form of the democratic expression of the people’s aspiration for justice, equality and freedom. They represent revolutionary legitimacy against the ‘legitimacy’ of Mubarak, his council and of his allies.

We propose to you the election of a Popular Revolutionary Council in the public squares because we support the revolution with all our strength, and as an association of workers in spinning and weaving which was formed after the revolution we will join in support and solidarity with all your democratic decisions through sit-ins, partial strikes and even a general strike because of our confidence in you.

Victory to the revolution!
Glory to the Martyrs!

Revolutionary Association of Textile Workers

via MENA Solidarity Network

 
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IN DEPTH: Greece and the Financial Crisis [Videos]

Published on March 8, 2012 by in Greece Crisis, video

On February 12, 2012, tens of thousands of Greek citizens assembled across the country to protest a fresh round of austerity cuts being debated in parliament and austerity measures demanded by partner countries in the European Union. Watch these videos for a first hand view.

 

 
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Building a Solidarity Network by SealSol

Published on March 6, 2012 by in Anarchism, Articles/Essays, Community Organizing, Plutocracy, Worker Struggles
Seattle Solidarity Network

A guide to building a successful solidarity network along the lines of the Seattle Solidarity Network, written by two SeaSol organisers, in text and PDF pamphlet format.

by Cold B and T Barnacle

Contents:

Introduction ~ Defining the scope ~ Prerequisites ~ Starting Fights ~
Demands ~ Strategy ~ A Taxonomy of Tactics ~ Meetings ~ Mobilizing ~
Structure and organizing capacity ~ Inside organizing

Introduction

In which we describe this article’s intended purpose and audience.

The Seattle Solidarity Network (or “SeaSol” for short) is a small but growing workers’ and tenants’ mutual support organization that fights for specific demands using collective direct action. Founded in late 2007 by members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), SeaSol is directly democratic, is all-volunteer, has no central authority, and has no regular source of funding except small individual donations. We have successfully defeated a wide variety of employer and landlord abuses, including wage theft, slumlord neglect, deposit theft, outrageous fees, and predatory lawsuits.

We’ve gotten a lot of inquiries in the past several months from folks in other cities wanting to start something like SeaSol where they live. Our mission in this article is to describe, for the benefit of those trying to build something similar, our experience of what it took to get SeaSol started and to keep it growing.

Please note: we are writing as individuals, and not in the name of the organization.

Defining the scope

In which we discuss the challenges of defining the scope of a solidarity network project in its early days.

The first step in starting an organization is to decide what it’s for. When starting SeaSol, we made a point of defining the scope of it very broadly, and this has proved to be one of its greatest strengths. Last month we were fighting a housing agency over towing fees. Today we are fighting a restaurant owner over unpaid wages. Next month we might be up against a bank, an insurance company, or a school administration. Read more…

 
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