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August 20, 2013 - Grassroots to grassroots, rank and file to rank and file: that's the idea behind the coast-to-coast Summer of Solidarity Tour that touched down in Detroit, its third city, yesterday.

The dozen road warriors, mostly Steelworker veterans of tough battles with nasty companies, brought their anti-corporate moxie to a 200-person demo against foreclosures and evictions, organized by Detroit Eviction Defense.

Singling out Bank of America as "Detroit's #1 Loan Shark," the marchers also aimed their ire at Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, who proclaimed Detroit bankrupt last month.

In the evening, a music and poetry slam featured both local artists and tour member Anne Feeney. In each city the tour is combining cultural events with its more raucous aid to local fights. They plan a total of 32 actions in 17 days, ending Labor Day in Los Angeles. The theme is "fighting austerity," said Stephen Lech of Metropolis, Illinois. "Worker rights are civil rights," said Michael O'Brien of Sudbury, Ontario, citing the expansive range of issues the tour will address.

Today the tour accompanies a caravan of 40 Detroiters to Chicago, where they'll attempt to confront Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac at their regional office. In May officials had promised to come to Detroit to listen to evicted homeowners' grievances-but chickened out, citing negative comments on Facebook.

In Madison, they'll join with United Students Against Sweatshops to pressure the new chancellor of the University of Wisconsin to sign the Bangladesh Safety Accord for college apparel, and do an educational event for the central labor council. In Oakland, Portland, and Missoula, Montana they'll add their voices to contract campaign actions. In the Twin Cities the issue will be foreclosures again, with a major action against Wells Fargo.

For the dates of the remaining eight cities on the tour, look here: http://summerofsolidarity.org/

August 22, 2013 - As the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington approaches, Dr. Martin Luther King's "dream" remains unfulfilled. Great progress has been made against racial discrimination, but Dr. King's call for economic justice remains unanswered. In the 50 years since King at the Lincoln Memorial called attention to the "promissory note" to people of color that had come back marked "insufficient funds," America has still not made good on that note.

King understood that a full employment economy is a prerequisite for economic justice. That goal seems more distant now than 50 years ago. A renewed movement demanding full employment is now more crucial than ever in the face of the growing chorus of conservative ideologues, academics and Beltway pundits that says we should settle for a "new normal" of historically high unemployment.

In one of his most quoted speeches, his August 16, 1967 address, "Where Do We Go From Here?," King made the full-employment demand explicit.

    "...Our emphasis must be twofold: We must create full employment, or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available."

Incredibly, when King made that speech, the national unemployment rate was under 4 percent. Flash forward to today: July represented the 56th consecutive month that the nation's unemployment rate was above 7 percent. Unemployment among African Americans has averaged above 13 percent this year, and is above 9 percent among Latinos. At our current rate of job creation, it would take another seven years to get the national unemployment rate down to 5 percent, where it was at the end of 2007. No one is even talking about achieving a 4 percent unemployment rate, which in the 1970s and 1980s was the definition of "full employment."

This is a human catastrophe and a moral outrage, but increasingly the Washington establishment greets it with a collective shrug. We are told that the forces of globalization are inexorable, that the days of even modestly-skilled workers being able to obtain jobs that pay enough to support a family and build wealth are long gone, and that it is folly to use government as a tool to put people to work.

Conservatives have never hid their antipathy for a little-appreciated but critically important law, pushed through Congress by the late Sen. Hubert Humphrey and the pioneering Congressional Black Caucus member Rep. Augustus Hawkins, that requires the Federal Reserve to consider the impact of monetary policy on unemployment as well as on inflation. While the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act falls short of requiring specific actions to keep unemployment low, it requires the Fed to publicly account for the impact of its actions on people looking for work.

That law only came into being as a result of sustained campaigning by the Black Caucus, civil rights leaders and other progressives.

One of the veterans of that fight, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., now has a bill before Congress, "The Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Training Act," which would translate the vision of the earlier Humphrey-Hawkins bill, and what King articulated in his speeches, into concrete policy.

The bill would put people to work in a broad range of full-time public- and nonprofit-sector jobs, and would also provide robust funding for job-training and workforce-development programs. Conyers would pay for the program through a transaction tax on Wall Street stock trades. But it could also be paid for by eliminating tax breaks to multinational corporations, such as tax incentives that encourage multinationals to move jobs overseas.

It is astounding that only 42 members of the House have co-sponsored this bill. If nothing else, the essential principle of full employment should be a rallying point for any member, or any party, seeking to be viewed as standing on the side of financially struggling individuals and families - and against those who pay fealty to "job creators" while devaluing workers.

But, as Frederick Douglass said and as King demonstrated, power concedes nothing without a demand, and even our erstwhile allies in Congress will not take up the rallying cry of full employment without a movement demanding that they do so.

One thing is clear: The 20 million people who are either unemployed or working part-time because they cannot find full-time work need no lectures about the fierce urgency of now when it comes to making jobs a top priority. Yet Washington is gearing up for a budget showdown with the conservative Republican House majority demanding another round of job-killing spending cuts.

Continuing the federal spending sequester will cost the economy an estimated 900,000 jobs over the next 13 months, according to a July Congressional Budget Office memo. It will also cripple the country's ability to address the continuing injustice of an African-American unemployment rate that remains double that of whites.

The 1963 March on Washington was a march for both jobs and justice. Now, on its 50th anniversary, renewing the fight for full employment remains one of the most important ways we can honor Dr. King's dream....(Click title for more)

July 31, 2011 - Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination. 

Young Americans-even more so than older Americans-appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it. A 2010 Gallup poll asked Americans "Do you think the Social Security system will be able to pay you a benefit when you retire?" Among 18- to 34-years-olds, 76 percent of them said no. Yet despite their lack of confidence in the availability of Social Security for them, few have demanded it be shored up by more fairly payroll-taxing the wealthy; most appear resigned to having more money deducted from their paychecks for Social Security, even though they don't believe it will be around to benefit them.

How exactly has American society subdued young Americans?

1. Student-Loan Debt. Large debt-and the fear it creates-is a pacifying force. There was no tuition at the City University of New York when I attended one of its colleges in the 1970s, a time when tuition at many U.S. public universities was so affordable that it was easy to get a B.A. and even a graduate degree without accruing any student-loan debt. While those days are gone in the United States, public universities continue to be free in the Arab world and are either free or with very low fees in many countries throughout the world. The millions of young Iranians who risked getting shot to protest their disputed 2009 presidential election, the millions of young Egyptians who risked their lives earlier this year to eliminate Mubarak, and the millions of young Americans who demonstrated against the Vietnam War all had in common the absence of pacifying huge student-loan debt.

Today in the United States, two-thirds of graduating seniors at four-year colleges have student-loan debt, including over 62 percent of public university graduates. While average undergraduate debt is close to $25,000, I increasingly talk to college graduates with closer to $100,000 in student-loan debt. During the time in one's life when it should be easiest to resist authority because one does not yet have family responsibilities, many young people worry about the cost of bucking authority, losing their job, and being unable to pay an ever-increasing debt. In a vicious cycle, student debt has a subduing effect on activism, and political passivity makes it more likely that students will accept such debt as a natural part of life.

2. Psychopathologizing and Medicating Noncompliance. In 1955, Erich Fromm, the then widely respected anti-authoritarian leftist psychoanalyst, wrote, "Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man." Fromm died in 1980, the same year that an increasingly authoritarian America elected Ronald Reagan president, and an increasingly authoritarian American Psychiatric Association added to their diagnostic bible (then the DSM-III) disruptive mental disorders for children and teenagers such as the increasingly popular "oppositional defiant disorder" (ODD). The official symptoms of ODD include "often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules," "often argues with adults," and "often deliberately does things to annoy other people."

Many of America's greatest activists including Saul Alinsky (1909-1972), the legendary organizer and author of Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals, would today certainly be diagnosed with ODD and other disruptive disorders. Recalling his childhood, Alinsky said, "I never thought of walking on the grass until I saw a sign saying 'Keep off the grass.' Then I would stomp all over it." Heavily tranquilizing antipsychotic drugs (e.g. Zyprexa and Risperdal) are now the highest grossing class of medication in the United States ($16 billion in 2010); a major reason for this, according to theJournal of the American Medical Association in 2010, is that many children receiving antipsychotic drugs have nonpsychotic diagnoses such as ODD or some other disruptive disorder (this especially true of Medicaid-covered pediatric patients). ...(Click title for more)

SYRIZA in Greece: The Great Social
and Political Movement of Subversion

1 The Conference of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) is a continuity and a breakthrough in its course, which started in 2000, continued with its official founding in 2004, and was sealed when it took on the historic responsibility to deliver the Greek people from the catastrophic neoliberal memoranda policies that have turned our country into a debt colony and led its creative, social, and productive forces to marginalization.

2 SYRIZA has been established as a unified, democratic, multi-tendency, mass party of the contemporary Left for the strengthening of an already powerful popular movement of subversion with the aim of cancelling the memoranda, erasing most of the debt and implementing a program of social and productive reconstruction. This alternative radical social and political plan - which will express and be based on the alliance between the working and popular classes, on the one hand, and the middle classes of the town and the countryside, on the other, and which will be structured by the needs of and give voice to the large groups of the socially, economically, and educationally excluded - will lead to the Government of the Left and will support it when it is in power.

3 The global structural crisis of capitalism, after decades of profit accumulation and huge redistribution of wealth and power in favor of capital, affects this or that way every country and every aspect of social life. This overaccumulation crisis is mainly characterized by inflation of the financial sector, based on the unimpeded circulation of money, which leads to the submission of the political personnel to financial power, the instrumentalization and commercialization of knowledge and information, and the biopolitical operation of the system. We are living what is called "the shock doctrine," which means an attack to such an extent and scale that resistance seems weak or there is even no time for it to appear. Extreme austerity policies, shrinking and precarious employment, privatization of public goods and companies, destruction of large part of the productive forces, dramatic reduction in the welfare state, weakening of democratic institutions, strengthening of repression and emergency powers were all employed to maintain capital dominance and global profitability. The unemployment rate is at about 30 per cent, exceeding 60 per cent among young people, while the economic emigration of young scientists is increasing dangerously.  Globalized capital continues to exhaust its profitability margins in "Third World" countries, where local wars are raging and huge migration flows are created.

4 Europe is involved in the whirlwind of the global capitalist crisis that affects the popular classes, with greater severity in the countries of the South and in the former so-called socialist countries. The raison d'être of a United Europe to the benefit of its people is disappearing from the horizon. The euro is being treated mostly as a vehicle of German policy, deepening inequalities between countries and between classes, while Asian models are applied in European societies in favor of capital. The future of the Euro zone as well as of the European Union itself is becoming more and more precarious. An undeclared world war is under way with the major currencies trying to gain more advantageous positions. The policy of austerity and recession corrodes the bonds between European countries, strengthens euroscepticism and anti-Europeanism, heightens nationalist tensions and facilitates the resurgence of fascism.

5 In Greece, very harsh measures that lead large parts of the population to a humanitarian crisis are implemented by the troika of the European Union, IMF and European Central Bank, with Germany playing a dominant role in the European strategy. National resources, public goods and companies are put under privatization/sell-off. Production collapses, tens of thousands of small and medium-sized companies close down, public services dismantle, the welfare state is constantly shrinking, and large parts of the population are deprived of health, education, pension, and social security.

6 Against this attack of capital there are movements of resistance developing on a global level. In Greece a large popular current of struggles for subversion has been giving its battle against memoranda and debt in mass terms, in squares, in the workplace, in neighbourhoods, in towns and in the countryside, reconstituting old social movements and creating new ones. We should refer emblematically to the great strikes and demonstrations of workers, the movement of the 'indignant,' the movement in Skouries [against the mining of gold] and in Keratea [against the opening of a landfill], in Evros [against the building of immigrant detention centers and fence], in the movements against special property tax and against paying tolls, in the antifascist movement and the movement in defense of ERT [the national broadcaster].

It is important to also refer to the great movement of solidarity that is developing throughout the country. Under the slogan "no-one's alone in the crisis" and on an equal basis - everyone offers according to their ability and receives according to their needs - multiform structures and solidarity networks are created. These networks respond to the issues of food, health, and generally immediate basic needs. Next to this movement and often in cooperation, we see the development of a "movement against intermediaries" that supports producers who offer their products at low prices and at the same time consumers who buy these controlled products inexpensively.

The movements in our country meet up with the massive and militant movements and the popular uprisings in the countries of Southern Europe, especially in Spain and Portugal, which create a reasonable potential of ruptures in the Europe of capital and neoliberalism. As the crisis has taken global dimensions, resistance is multiplying on an international level. Struggles in Greece also meet up with the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, the uprisings in the Arab world with the characteristic example of the Egyptian people and the Left that continue to struggle for democracy and social justice, as well as the movement of the Turkish people, who massively and militantly questioned social injustices and the antidemocratic administration of Tayyip Erdogan. Movements of resistance against class inequalities and in defense of human dignity are developing all over the world, typical example of which is the uprising in Brazil against inequality and provocative waste of money on large projects....(Click title for more)

August 13, 2013 - A new made-for-television documentary series aims to unpack the history of the labor movement in the United States in five one-hour episodes to combat anti-union propaganda at a time when union power is waning and collective-bargaining rights are under attack across the nation.

Legendary folk singer and activist Pete Seeger will help narrate the new series "Strength in Union," which tackles the history of the U.S. labor movement from its origins in the early Industrial Revolution to its historic struggles in incidents ranging from the battle with the Pinkertons, the Haymarket Riot in Chicago, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory strike and fire, the Taft-Hartley Act, Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers in the '80s, and on to some of today's most important labor issues, including free-trade agreements and the effects of globalization on American unions.

"[Labor] is both in a time of crisis and in a time of rebirth, and I think most of the important labor leaders realize that and they're really looking for new ways to move into the future and new ways to deal with changes like globalization," says the series' director, Caesar Pink.

Pink grew up in a small, rural town in central Pennsylvania where the steel-mill was one of the primary employers and most of the jobs were union. But as wages began to stagnate and the factories closed down, people began to see little hope for a better future. An array of social problems like alcoholism and domestic abuse flooded the town.

Caesar says that right-wing propaganda has turned many people in his town anti-union. His interests in how labor relations and media propaganda affected his hometown are part of what originally motivated him to work on the "Strength in Union" project.

The series will feature interviews with labor leaders such as Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steel Workers; Lawrence Hanley, president of the American Transportation Workers; Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union; and Daniel Walkowitz, author and New York University labor historian.

The series also hopes to weave in intersecting issues like race relations, women's rights and the ups and downs of the U.S. economy throughout its examination of the history of the U.S. labor movement. The series will also look at the larger forces and motives behind anti-union campaigns of the past as well as the present.

"We hope that the film will make people see what a heroic role union members played throughout American history in giving us the things we take for granted, whether it's safety on the job, wages, weekends, all of those things," Pink said.

"Strength in Union" also will tackle the future of the labor movement by researching the off-shoring and outsourcing of jobs and how that issue has played a role in the decline of today's labor unions as well as new possible paths for unions in an expanding and changing world.

The series is being produced by the Arete Living Arts Foundation and likely will air on PBS after post-production wraps up. Shooting is expected to be finished by the end of the year.

"I hope this will kind of push back against the right-wing propaganda that's really affecting people, especially in rural areas of America," Pink said. ...(Click title for more)

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Better yet, beome a sustainer at $20 per month, and we'll send you a copy of Jack O'Dell's new book, 'Climbing Jacobs Ladder,' drawing on the lessons of the movement in the South in the 1950s and 1960s.

Solidarity, Carl Davidson, CCDS