The Harbinger

A Look Back on Hugo Chavez

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 15:42:00 -0400

Featured in this week’s Harbinger!

The Need for a Student Union

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 15:36:00 -0400

By The Student Union of Michigan

The past few decades have seen a dramatic shift in our university and universities around the country. Once widely accessible to the people of our state, University of Michigan tuition has gradually risen beyond the reach of many incomes. This forces deserving students to either search elsewhere for their education or take on thousands of dollars of debt. This trend has many causes and consequences, but for students there is one solution: student power.
    One of the two primary driving forces behind tuition inflation has been the austerity politics being enacted across the developed world. We are told by legislators that our society has over reached itself and that there is not enough money to invest in education or social programs. Meanwhile, we see these same legislators conjuring up billions of dollars to bail out the banks, to subsidize oil companies, or to occupy foreign countries. Fundamentally, this is not a question of the wealth of our society, but its priorities. The wealthy, who have accumulated unprecedented riches throughout the last 30 years, are not particularly interested in financing education; indeed, many of them make millions of dollars financing student loans. So they have pushed to shift the burden of educational costs from society to the individual.
    Coinciding with this trend has been a transformation in the way that public universities are administered and run. Rather than being drawn from the teaching core of the university, modern administrators are increasingly drawn from a business or corporate background. It is little wonder, then, that modern public universities increasingly resemble corporations rather than institutions of higher learning. Tuition rates are raised to ensure a steady stream of revenue; money is invested in construction projects to compete for more lucrative out-of-state students; and the prestige of the university is placed above its accessibility. As a result, there has been a precipitous decline in low-income and minority student attendance and a steady drop in in-state enrollment. To reward themselves for their efforts, U of M administrators have raised their own pay 22% over the past three years.
    The university has argued that sharp tuition hikes are necessary because of the steep decline in state funding. While this is in part true, it does not tell the whole story. Yes, the University has lost a large amount of money because of state de-funding, and a large part of the tuition increases have been used to compensate for that. However, this model assumes that university costs must remain the same even in times of crisis. Again, it becomes an issue of priorities. Should we expand the administrative class or ensure a more affordable education? Should we raise money for construction projects or tuition scholarships? In short, it becomes an issue of prestige vs. accessible education.
    So what role do we as students play in this decision making process, which has such a huge influence on our lives? None.
    Here at the university, students have virtually no say in any decisions made on campus: be it setting tuition, deciding which corporations are allowed on campus, or in general where our money goes. It is from this lack of voice that the need for student power and a student union arises. As it is now, each student struggle must slowly build up a sufficient size to confront the administration. The University is not bound to take our concerns seriously and currently, does so largely just to avoid negative publicity.
    What we need on campus is a mass organization to fight, not just for a single cause, but for the voice of students. This fall, we founded the Student Union of Michigan (SUM) with the intention of building this movement. Through the struggle for student rights we can win not only a more affordable and accessible education, but a campus that actually reflects the will of students.
If interested in joining SUM, please email us at:
studentunionofmichigan@gmail

thepeoplesrecord: Blockaders have locked themselves to tanker...

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 02:35:38 -0500

thepeoplesrecord:

Blockaders have locked themselves to tanker trucks outside of the Valero Refinery in Houston, TX.

Every day dozens of trucks like these invade the neighborhood with dangerous oil stocks and chemicals. Adding insult to injury, Valero plans to further threaten the health and safety of its neighbors by bringing tar sands from KXL into this community…The Blockade is sending a message: “Enough is Enough! No Tar Sands— Not Now, Not Ever!”

thepeoplesrecord: The Gaza death toll has reached 111,...

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 02:26:38 -0500

thepeoplesrecord:

The Gaza death toll has reached 111, including 27 children, since Israel launched more than 1,350 Operation Pillar of Defense aerial and sea attacks on November 14. More than 900 have been injured.

The Israel death toll stands at three people. More than 60 have been injured by rockets fired from Gaza.

Quebec Students and Chicago Teachers Resist Austerity

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:43:04 -0400

This week, unions won remarkable victories in Chicago and Quebec against the right-wing agenda of gutting public education. In Quebec, the right-wing provincial government had imposed a huge increase in university tuition, almost doubling it. This prompted student unions to organize massive months-long strikes which ultimately brought down the province government. In response to this pressure, the new Parti Québécois government immediately repealed the tuition increase.

In Chicago, the Democrat mayor Rahm Emanuel has been attacking public education and the Chicago Teachers Union since taking office, attempting to extract extra unpaid work from teachers, privatize schools, increase class sizes, strip schools of libraries, art and music programs and further expand standardized testing. After fruitless negotiations, 90% of the Chicago Teachers Union voted to strike. Enjoying massive public support, the strike was a success; the teachers forced major concessions from the mayor and his school board.

The significance of these victories goes well beyond their immediate results. Since the 1970s, the neoliberal agenda of privatizing and cutting public services, turning education (and everything else) into a commodity to be purchased by those who can afford it, disavowing any notion of a ‘social contract’ and maximizing profits by holding down wages and attacking unions has been dominant worldwide. Spearheaded by Reagan and Thatcher, this doctrine has been accepted without question by liberal politicians as well. Consider Rahm Emanuel, who went from being a key figure in the Obama White House to mayor of Chicago and immediately gave his full support to billionare-backed school privatization plans, standardized testing systems of the kind the Republicans imposed under George W. Bush, and in one of his first meetings with the CTU president, told her “Fuck you, Lewis!”

These strikes were among the first to meet these right-wing initiatives head-on and defeat them. It is no coincidence that they were organized by militant unions operating in a far more democratic way than old-guard corporatist unions like the UAW, which have lost nearly every fight they’ve been in for decades. In Quebec, the radical CLASSE student federation took a leading role, rejecting the government’s argument that financial realities meant that tuition hikes were necessary and framing the struggle as part of a more comprehensive rejection of the neoliberal program. The streets of Montréal were filled with 400,000 protesters, not only students but ordinary people wearing the symbol of the red felt square in solidarity. This mass mobilization succeeded in forcing the Liberal party out of office.

The Chicago strike followed a similar trajectory; after the union leadership failed to resist the imposition of school closures and privatizations, a radical teachers’ union caucus formed to take a more activist approach. After working successfully with communities to stop individual school closures, they won union leadership elections in 2010 and gained widespread support for the strike.

These successes show that the agenda of austerity, cuts and price hikes can be fought, but only by grassroots, militant labor organization and by framing specific struggles as part of a broader social context. Here in the US, the Chicago strike should be a clear reminder that voting for Democrats will never be sufficient if we want to live in a civilized society. Rahm and Romney might both disagree, but everyone is entitled to excellent, free public education as a basic human right. We just have to fight for it.

With Massive Power Comes Massive Rates of Incarceration: Police power and “Stop and Search”

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 09:34:00 -0400

By Liana Kallman

Though we, the people may like to pretend that it is we the people who make the decisions in our country, the implementation of our laws is in the hands of a select minority: the police. This means that the way a police officer chooses to understand and enforce the law is a key part of how our country is governed. This may sound like an overstatement of the job description of a police officer, but it really is the police force which chooses and defines how our laws are enforced or ignored. For this reason, the police are among the many groups that are to blame for the injustices perpetuated by our justice system, most notably the phenomenon of the mass incarceration of men of color.

    This perversion of justice arises directly from the selective implementation of “stop and search” or “stop and frisk” policies. In the fourth amendment to the Constitution, civilians are granted “the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause…” The controversy lies in the interpretation of ‘probable cause’ for a search or seizure. While the Supreme Court did address the interpretation of this ambiguous phrase in the case United States v. Brignoni-Ponce (1975) by ruling that race can be used as a factor in deciding whether to stop and search or frisk an individual, the court left it up to the police to determine just how significant a factor. Judging by the statistics for stops and frisks in New York City last year, race is more than just a factor that goes along with “suspicious activity.” It is the deciding factor. Despite the fact that black and Hispanic people make up less than half of the population in New York City, eighty seven percent of all stops were performed on minorities. In fact, there were more stops performed on young black men in 2011 than actual young black men living in the city. Similar statistics can be found across the country; For example, in Volusia County, Florida only 5% of the drivers are minorities yet eighty percent of all stops and searches are performed on minorities. These statistics show an enormous racial bias in the way stop and searches are executed, leaving no doubt that racism against young men of color is a defining feature of our criminal justice system.
    Looking at these statistics, it is abundantly clear that stop and search is a racist policy, which is enough to call for its reform, if not complete reversal. However, there is the additional question of whether it is shown to be an effective method of fighting crime. In thirty six percent of cases, officers failed to cite an acceptable reason for stopping individuals. In only one point nine percent of all stops and searches was a weapon recovered and only 5.4% of stops in a 5-year period resulted in an arrest.
    These statistics are enough to leave anyone wondering why the New York Police Department, and other police departments across this country continue to perform so many stops and searches under such blatantly racist pretenses. Why is this policy allowed to continue?

There are a few different explanations that are tied to the mass incarceration of men of color. The implementation of this policy alienates the black community from the justice system (that is supposed to offer them protection) by building upon the media’s portrayal of black men as violent criminals, and reinforcing this notion on the ground. This makes it easier for our society to continually and disproportionately imprison this demographic for committing the same crimes as white teenagers in a business that generates 3 billion dollars a year for the top private prison companies, with 3 million dollar benefits granted to the top officers of these corporations.
Since racism as a tool for fighting crime is so ingrained in these policies, it is no wonder that, in many cities across the nation, three out of four black men are incarcerated at some point in their lives and that around 80 % of black men have criminal records, and can legally be discriminated against in terms of voting rights, access to housing, federal assistance, and private and public employment opportunities. We must fight to end this policy of mass incarceration, a fight that begins with the repeal of the ineffective and overtly racist policy of “stop and search.”

We Fight the Same Fight: Women’s rights at home and abroad

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 14:30:53 -0400

Recently, news has come from Iran that seventy-seven programs offered in thirty-six Iranian public universities have suddenly been closed to female students. The majority of these programs are in mathematics, health and physical sciences and other high tech fields, and women represented seventy percent of university enrollment in these programs (they represent sixty-six percent of all university students nation wide). In its response to the situation, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) points out it has taken American women three hundred and fifty years for enrollment in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields to reach parity with men, largely due to institutional and cultural bias. The AAUW fears that this will have a disastrous impact on Iranian women’s pursuit of STEM research.
    Ellen, the SSU member who brought our attention to this article, had an initial response of “Whoa, I’m glad I don’t live in a country that subjugates women like that,” but immediately followed that up with an “Oy, hang on a minute…” Western women are fortunate to enjoy the same legal status as men in western countries, but women must still confront challenges that men don’t need to address in their daily lives. When we think about the plight of women in places like Iran, do we really have anything to complain about?
    Famous atheist Christopher Hitchens ridiculed the story of sexual harassment in an elevator during an atheist conference written by Rebecca Watson. In an attempt at satire, Hitchens penned a letter from “Rebecca Watson” to our Middle Eastern sisters: “Stop whining will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and…yawn…don’t tell me again, I know you aren’t allowed to drive a car, and can’t leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you’ll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.”
    American women do enjoy certain legal freedoms which our sisters in some Middle East countries do not. We are indeed allowed to drive cars, we can leave the house unaccompanied and we can take part in STEM fields.
    However, how many “woman driver” jokes did the average person, man or woman, grow up with? I certainly recall driving 2 accident-free hours to my grandfather’s house the day I got my driver’s license, backing in to his narrow garage stall without hitting anything, and still getting an ear full of “crazy woman driver” jokes from the old man who rented a room from him. “Why couldn’t Helen Keller drive?” Let me just say that if the punchline of that joke does not involve the fact that she was blind and lived in a time before automobiles were commonly available to the general public, the joke teller is looking to get cock-punched, even if he is 75 years old.
    A woman in America going out alone at night, for some, is tantamount to her begging to be assaulted- and that’s before we even get to what she decides to wear or drink, which apparently make all the difference between “legitimate rape” and all the other kinds of sex, all of which are immoral for women no matter the circumstances.
    Moving on to academia, the majority of STEM fields’ top ranks of professors and committee members are male. Despite the enlightened attitudes and noble intent of these gentlemen, studies have shown that when males are overrepresented in committees, the recipients of their awards are also disproportionately male. In perhaps the most interesting personal story of institutionalized sexism, an established female professor of neuroscience at Stanford underwent gender reassignment surgery and has continued his career. He is poised to make unique observations about how women are treated relative to men in the sciences- at one point, he overheard colleagues who knew his recent work but not him personally talking about how “Ben Barres gave a great talk today…his work is much better than his sister’s.”
    According to a study from the RAND Corporation on gender bias in federal grant funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), female grant applicants received only sixty-three percent of the funding that male applicants received, adjusted for population size. They were also underrepresented among the recipients of the largest grants from the NIH.
    Additionally, a 2010 study from the Tilberg Institute for Behavioral Economics Research found that evidence of a name change in a female applicant’s publication history, such as taking the name of her husband after marriage, costs her hundreds of thousands of dollars in lifetime earnings and makes her look “less intelligent, more emotional, less competent, and less ambitious in comparison with a woman who kept her own name.” Anecdoctally, I have heard from several female professors and principal investigators that even worse than a name change in a woman’s publication history is the knowledge of impending motherhood. Despite pregnancy non-discrimination acts, bearing children is seen to be an enormous drain on a scientist’s productivity and any interruptions in a constant stream of publications from a female PI’s lab after a pregnancy is an enormous black mark on her career.
    Yes, we are allowed to do many things with our lives which not all women in the world are able to do. One day, however, those rights will come to all women. And when they do, American women will have ensured that the precedent for full equality has been set. When they are allowed to go into physics or bioengineering again in their home country, or even drive a car or walk around unescorted, we will already have fought for respect on the road, sexual freedom, freedom from sexualization, and equal pay. Our criticisms of the treatment of women in western nations does not belittle their struggle, and nor does their degree of inequality trivialize ours- they are part of the same struggle.

Jesus Christ: Super Socialist

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 10:37:00 -0400

By Ellen Nelson

      “America’s war on religion.” Religious conservatives, it seems, are using this term increasingly often. What exactly does it mean? Is the government shutting down churches? Are religious people being denied their rights as Americans? Are they prosecuted for praying? The answer to these questions is, of course, no; the “war on religion” that is being talked about so much, especially now that the election is in plain sight, is a much more enigmatic issue. First, we must determine what religion exactly is in this war. Who feels attacked and why? In the case of “America’s war on religion,” conservative Christians feel that their religious liberties are being taken away by legislation that allows homosexual people to serve in the military (and in some states, receive marriage equality), allows women to have contraception available to them in their healthcare plans and does not allow for religious teachings or practices within public schools. Despite what is known about social justice, women’s health, and the separation of church and state in our modern society, these Christians have a point; the old testament of the Bible, the scripture of Christianity, mentions the wrong in homosexuality, and that people should ‘be fruitful and multiply’ and teach the word of God everywhere. But is this all that there is to Christianity? What exactly is at stake in this war?
      According to Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, a Christian is someone who is “of, pertaining to, believing in, or belonging to the religion based on the teachings of Jesus Christ.” So people who say that they are Christians follow the teachings of Jesus. Just what would those teachings be? Let’s take a brief, objective look at the life and message of the historical Jesus. Whether one believes he was the true Son of God or not, he was indeed a real person, confirmed by scholars, who had some important things to say.
      Although there are discrepancies between the four gospels of the life of Jesus, certain teachings ring through to scholars as what was accurately said and done. We know for a fact that, above all else, Jesus wanted people to love their neighbors and enemies, that he had no tolerance for rich people and believed that religion and politics should not be mixed up with one another.   In the Gospel of Mark, chapter ten, Jesus makes his feelings toward the wealthy quite clear, when a rich man asks him what he must do to go to heaven: “’You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor…Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’”
      This sentiment is also expressed in several ways in Jesus’ famous Beatitudes, in the Gospel of Luke: “Blessed are you who are poor…Blessed are you when people hate you…Woe to you who are rich.” Jesus also seriously reprimands people who are judgmental of others in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged…You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” When asked whether or not people should pay taxes to the government, Jesus, looking at the face of Caesar upon the Roman coin, says, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s…”
      At the end of his career, Jesus performed one major action that ended up sealing his fate of crucifixion, known as the Cleansing of The Temple. In Jesus’ time, politics and religion were very much intertwined. High religious authorities had much political power and, more often than not, used it in very corrupt ways. There was a popular practice of sacrificing animals to God in the temple. These animals were bought in the temple, but only with the temple’s currency. As a result, the temple was littered with greedy salesmen and moneychangers, what Jesus refers to in the Gospel of John as a ‘marketplace.’ On his trip to Jerusalem for Passover, Jesus acts out against this, overturning the sales tables and loudly reprimanding everyone for bringing commerce into a place of religion. From that point on, “the chief priests and scribes…kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him…” His call for religious reform threatened their political power.
      During his last supper with his disciples before his death, Jesus gives a new commandment to his followers: “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
These highlights from the life and teachings of Jesus draw a portrait of the person he avidly opposed, a logical ‘enemy’ in the “war on religion”: wealthy; judgmental; a person who questions the paying of taxes to an institution against their religion; someone who insists on the meshing of religion and politics; someone who does not care for all souls equally. Sounds like a familiar type of person in modern American society….
      The feeding of the 5,000 is a story from the ministry of Jesus that is perhaps the most poignant illustration of what his real political affiliations would be today. After he has amassed a giant crowd of people wanting to hear his teachings, he and his disciples need to figure out how to feed them. In the Gospel of John, a boy who shares a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish ignites a wave of solidarity among the people; because he shared, everyone in the crowd who was able, shared too, and everyone was fed, with food to spare. This feat was only accomplished with the cooperation of everyone, and would not have been nearly as effective if it had been solely up to the disciples to use what little money they had to go and attempt to buy the food themselves. Throughout his life, Jesus devoted everything he had to spreading his healing, his non-judgmental support and his message of sharing for equality.
      Today, we would know him as a socialist. He never once mentioned that it was okay to hate gay people and he never said a word about contraception. So, considering that Christians are defined as followers of Christ, it makes absolutely no sense that these issues are the key points for America’s “war on religion.” Shouldn’t people be upset that in this nation, within the capitalist system we have devised, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, discrimination is rampant and healthcare is too expensive for the majority of us? Especially when we know that the resources are available, they are just given to a very select few? If there ever was a “war on religion,” particularly Christianity, it certainly exists in the United States today, but not as it is made out to be. It is about time for these ‘religious warriors’ to stop using the Bible as a vessel for discrimination and take a good hard look at the facts, at who they really are and what they really follow.

Why Be Involved?

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 13:55:35 -0400

     A surge of questions likely flows through people’s minds when they are handed a radical zine such as this one. The primary one: why? Why are you handing me this? Why should a student at the University of Michigan become involved? I am sure you have at least some inkling that things in this country are not as they should be. Even from just the occasional news story, it’s easy to see that our society is far from the “American Dream.” However, the wide array of societal problems can often seem alien to us here on campus. Here at Michigan, haven’t we “made it”? Aren’t we, “the leaders and the best” on our way to a bright future?
     The short answer to these questions is no. Our futures, not just as students but as people, are threatened- to a degree perhaps unparalleled in the past 40 years. Both within the university and outside of it, young people face issues that challenge our right to a better future. However, while we face these great challenges we retain the right and responsibility to fight back.
    To start with, let’s look at a few of the problems that confront us as students at Michigan. For many of us, a basic challenge is the ever-rising cost of tuition. Each year, the cost of being a Wolverine rises hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. In the past twenty years, in-state tuition has more than tripled (adjusted for inflation), moving education beyond the grasp of many and forcing most of us to take on crippling debt. To ensure that the University of Michigan, and college in general, remains affordable, something needs to be done to change this pattern of oppressive costs.

    In addition to financial accessibility, our university and society also severely struggle with issues of ethnic and racial inequality. Underrepresented minority enrollment at our university remains hovering around a mere ten percent of the student body. A combination of racist laws and an administration focused more on prestige than accessibility has resulted in an increasingly homogenous student body. In addition to daily racism, many minorities in America face an oppressive, fearful state apparatus, more interested in imprisoning than educating them. The constant surveillance of the Arab-American community, racial profiling, the war on drugs and anti-immigrant hysteria are just a few of the patently racist tactics employed by the state to limit the opportunities of our brothers and sisters.
    Layered upon this ethnic inequality is the subservient role women are placed in within our society. Today, there are more women than ever graduating with upper level degrees; yet, unequal pay, sexual harassment and a culture of rape remain a painful reality for women in this country. Meanwhile, the Republican Party continuously threatens to take away women’s control of their own bodies. The University is not immune to this oppression. Too often here on campus sexual assault goes unreported, the victims blamed or the culprits unpunished. The increase in assaults over the past few years reflects not only a few individuals, but a culture that objectifies and dehumanizes women.
    Looking beyond the university, the prospect of graduation hardly seems liberating either. Burdened with the debts of college, we see before us a faltering job market, with declining benefits. Of the class of 2010 only fifty six percent found a job within the first year and of those who got jobs, only about half were jobs that required a degree. This means that for many of us, graduation means little more than a transition to a service industry job with no benefits and no utilization of our degrees. Even for those lucky few who do manage to obtain one of the few “good jobs,” stagnant wages and slashed benefits mean they will be working harder for less.
    This is all to say nothing of US foreign and domestic policy, notably the consequences of the war on terror, the expanded use of drone warfare and the increasingly rapid degradation of the environment. This year, we saw one of the driest summers on record with almost sixty percent of the country in a state of drought. This had a severe impact on the US harvest, it is predicted that over the next year this will cause food prices to rise across the globe, likely provoking a food crisis among the most impoverished nations. The effects of climate change are no longer a specter upon the horizon but are everyday more apparent. Yet, our government refuses to make any binding steps towards halting the climate crisis. While the wealthy talk of the supremacy of economic growth, the people of the world are gradually awakening to the truth that there are no jobs on a dead planet.
    So why should we as Michigan students be involved in activism?
    If none of what has been laid out here has connected with you; if the daily reports of oppression, exploitation, climate change and death leave you unfazed; if you feel that you stand removed from the problems that confront our university, our nation, and our world; then, I admit there is little more I can do to convince you. Perhaps you really will somehow escape the effects of all these problems and live a life of elite privilege. But for the rest of you, I invite you to join in the struggle for solutions.
    While I have spoken mostly of the challenges before us, I want to emphasize that we face not only a period of great adversity but of great opportunity. At Michigan, we are often encouraged to view ourselves as “leaders,” but true leaders are those that empower others, those that can build up communities, rather than just themselves. Instead of using our privileged position here at the university to scramble for the last crumbs of a rotten buffet, let us leverage all of our education and all our resources in the struggle for a just future.
    This is not to say that our little zine or socialist group will change the world- we are but a small part of a vast struggle. We do not pretend that we alone hold the truth or demand that you join our particular group; we hope only that you stand up and begin to help in the building of a better world.

New Issue of The Harbinger printing now

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 13:45:26 -0400

New Issue of The Harbinger printing now

"Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and..."

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 02:05:06 -0400

“Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Keep in mind that, much sooner than later, the great avenues will again be opened through which will pass free men to construct a better society. Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!”

- President Salvador Allende’s farewell speech, 11 September 1973. (via maxineanwaar)

"Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of a party – however..."

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:34:16 -0400

“Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of a party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter. Not because of the fanaticism of “justice”, but rather because all that is instructive, wholesome, and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effects cease to work when “freedom” becomes a privilege.”

- Rosa Luxemburg (via sushigoat)

thepeoplesrecord: Spanish workers take over farm land to...

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 17:31:28 -0400

thepeoplesrecord:

Spanish workers take over farm land to protest the horribly nonsensical consequences of capitalism

August 2012

Outmaneuvering the police, hundreds of jobless farmworkers charged through a hole in a fence and turned the manicured gardens of a vacant estate here in Spain’s agricultural heartland into a lively fairground of protest this week. Men more accustomed to working in the fields lounged in the shade beside a pink palace, picnicked on paella and spent a night relaxing. Some even took a dip in the pool.

“We’re here to denounce a social class who leaves such places to waste,” said Diego Cañamero, the leader of the Andalusian Union of Workers, addressing the demonstrators who had occupied the property, the Palacio de Moratalla. For all of the estate’s grandeur, the owner, the Duke of Segorbe, lives in Andalusia’s capital, Seville, about 60 miles away.

The occupation was a demonstration of the class conflicts that simmer amid complaints about austerity andjoblessness in Spain. Such protests have gathered pace in this farm region in Spain’s south in recent weeks, adding a volatile dimension to the country’s economic downturn. They have also pointed to a deeper anger about the shape of Spain’s economy and democracy.

The resentment here over land that has been left uncultivated at a time of deepening recession and record joblessness reaches beyond local politicians and landowners to European Union bureaucrats. Agricultural subsidies are criticized by many here as favoring landed interests, paying them not to grow crops when nearly a third of the work force in Andalusia is unemployed.

Source

5 Days in Ohio: The National Student Power Convergence

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 20:29:00 -0400

       I’m unsure of how to describe the 2012 National Student Power Convergence. As I try to encapsulate the five vivid days I spent in Columbus I find myself writing long, rambling paragraphs. Yet each attempt at prose appears too trite or crude to describe the intense feelings of solidarity and love that I have emerged with. After 5 days of almost non-stop debate, discussion and learning I can only begin to describe some of my thoughts from the conference. I must also admit I am a painter and a revolutionary far more than a writer. With more time and distance I’m sure my thoughts will develop further, but for now I just want to try to lay down some general ideas.
      I decided to attend the convergence without any extreme conviction. Several years of student activism had moderated my once lofty expectations of grandiose student projects; and while I agreed with the aim of the convergence, I was skeptical of what the results would be. However as the conference opened I gradually realized something dramatically different was happening. Somewhere around my 10th complex political discussion my earlier skepticism began to collapse. I found myself surround by 200 of the greatest and most passionate youth organizers I have ever met. Furthermore instead of embracing the individualized narrow solutions endorsed by mainstream liberalism, the vast majority of us saw and understood the connections between our different struggles, and targeted capitalism as our common enemy.
   Beyond political discussion it was as though many of the rules that normally govern our interactions had fallen away, people engaged with one another without effort: making new friends, volunteering to help cook, clean, and generally assist the conference almost without a second thought. On a large scale I experienced what I had before found only in smaller communities: solidarity.

    The conference didn’t seem so much like a group of different ecological, labor, education, civil rights and LGBTQ activists interacting; but rather of one vast group of revolutionaries, some specializing in one aspect of the struggle, others in another, all unified by a common purpose and learning from each other. The effect of this sense of common cause was incredible. While I have long academically connected the many separate struggles against our common oppressors, here for the first time I really had the opportunity to work closely with people from a huge variety of backgrounds.
      The diversity of perspectives made the creation of democratic spaces an important feature of the convergence. A huge part of this process was the need for each of us to identify and check our individual privilege; being a white, strait, male this meant that I had to make a significant shift in the way I approached large group conversations. Instead of constantly talking, I started to work on limiting my verbal contributions until others had had their say, allowing new voices to join the conversation. Often the insights I had were voiced by other comrades, who added further perspectives. While at times I found this process personally frustrating, in general it created a more equitable and open space for conversation, ultimately engaging more people in the issues being discussed. I realize that to some people these are not particularly striking revelations, but I think many privileged people, myself included, often don’t consider the dynamics of the spaces they are fostering.

However, a movement is not created simply creating “free spaces.” Indeed one of the main things the 60’s taught us was that merely working to craft an alternative culture does not fundamentally challenge the authority of the current one. Even if we succeed in creating a utopian free space, if this space remains separate and alienated from the general population, it will remain fundamentally un-revolutionary. How then to create a revolutionary mass movement? As time progressed this seemed to become the main issue of the convergence. The keynote speaker, Joshua Russel, opened the event speaking of the need for activism to rise beyond the narrow purview of the enlightened few, and we spent the next several days grappling with how to make that objective a reality.
Before I say anything more, I want to make clear that these were my impressions and personal conclusions, I do not and cannot speak for all of my comrades. That being said many ideas were publicly proposed, varying in their scope and aim, but over the course of the convergence several concepts seemed to coalesce. Among the people I talked to we seemed generally agreed that, whether you supported them electorally or not, the democrats were not working in the interests of students or the population as a whole. The experience of Obama has left us with few illusions about the true nature of the two party system and its role in our oppression. However, many of my discussions and trainings at the convergence also reemphasized the importance that material gains have toward building a movement. It is not enough for a group to theorize about tomorrow if they are unable or unwilling to help fight for better lives today. Nothing radicalizes people like organizing and feeling they have the ability to control their lives. Our movement should be a combination of the theory and action, for without one the other is crippled.
This means making concrete demands of the system, first for particular policies and then for structural changes, that challenge the hegemony of the capitalist class. We should not allow our vision to become limited, one struggle should build into another, progressively making stronger and stronger demands that question the assumptions of our society. For example, what begins as an anti-foreclosure petitioning expands into direct action to keep people in their homes, both of which then build into a general questioning of a system that has allowed there to be more empty homes than homeless people. The central goal of any campaign should be to build the power and consciousness of communities to challenge the system. Tactics, be they peaceful or not, should be dictated by the situation and whether they work to build our movement’s power, not by ideological preference.
So where do I/we go from here? At the convergence, Some of the most powerful and inspiring lessons came from the students of CLASSE in Quebec, YoSoy132 in Mexico, and the Student Union movement in Puerto Rico. In these organizations, students are building and operating powerful Unions to make demands, both from their universities and their societies. In general, here in the United States our level of organization lags far behind our comrades in these other countries. I believe that many convergence attendees, myself included, are now returning to our campuses planning to change that. Mass student organizations have long been the realm of powerless “Student Governments.” After discussions with other activists and with the representatives of CLASSE and YoSoy132 I think it’s time for us to take serious steps to take back control of our Universities. In short I believe we need a Union. Both at school and in our communities, our greatest strength is in our numbers, but without organization and radicalization, this strength is lost.
Building a Student Union will not be an easy fight. From my own interactions with the University of Michigan’s administration I know they are deeply dedicated to the neo-liberal projects of corporatization and privatization. Despite this a Union built around college accessibility could have broad support among students. The prohibitive cost of education is perhaps the largest single issue that could unify the student population; drawing support not only from traditional activist circles but also from large segments of the campus at large. To combat the formidable forces alined against us, we need to build connections between previously isolated groups communities and organize.
These are far from definitive points; and as I said above, I’ll likely have more responses as I gain some distance and continue to exchange ideas with other organizers and activists. I left Columbus on Wednesday, carrying with me the memory of 5 days of beauty, struggle, love, and radicalism. In those few days we as a movement learned more and developed faster than in months of school. I am honored to have participated and look forward to building a movement capable of seizing power with comrades across the country.

Solidarity forever.
The Union makes us strong. 

thepeoplesrecord: Breaking: At least 18 killed as South African...

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:52:01 -0400

thepeoplesrecord:

Breaking: At least 18 killed as South African police open fire on thousands of striking miners. Full story

A message from the National Student Power Convergence.We demand...

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 12:28:00 -0400

A message from the National Student Power Convergence.
We demand a future

Red Radical: “It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the...

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 22:38:19 -0400

Red Radical: “It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the...:

redradical:

“It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle…

"Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no..."

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:27:01 -0400

“Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.”

- Mikhail Bakunin, The Red Association (via antistate)

thepeoplesrecord: The Montreal Student Strike has continued to...

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 21:34:07 -0400

thepeoplesrecord:

The Montreal Student Strike has continued to rally in the streets with other locals against austerity measures throughout Quebec. About 15,000 marched throughout Montreal today.

Labor unrest spreads in Egypt's textile sector

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 10:12:13 -0400

Labor unrest spreads in Egypt's textile sector:

Strikes brought a swathe of Egypt’s state textile industry to a halt on Wednesday, workers and a labor activist said, disrupting production of a key export as the country hovers on the brink of a balance of payments crisis.

Around 23,000 employees of Misr Spinning and Weaving, Egypt’s biggest textile company, took their strike into a fourth day and were joined by some 12,000 workers at other state firms, labor activist Hamdy Hussein said.