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Radical Ideas for Radical Change
August 29, 2014
In This Issue
Full Employment
Climate and Mass Protest
No 'Calm' in Ferguson
Black Twitter
Sanders and Elections
Chicago's Socialist
Obama and the NeoCons
Unique Labor Victory
'New' Dylan Tunes
Film: 'Night Will Fall'
FERLINGHETTI: A REBIRTH OF WONDER
FERLINGHETTI on Stage:
A REBIRTH OF WONDER

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Hating the 'Middle Class,' Why Socialists Run in Elections, Strategy and Tactics Slide Slow, Class and Privilege, the Green New Deal ...and other Short Posts on Tumblr by Carl Davidson

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 Revolutionary Youth and the New Working Class: The Praxis Papers, the Port Authority Statement, the RYM Documents and other Lost Writings of SDS  

 

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'They're Bankrupting Us!'
& 20 Other Myths about Unions
Tina at AFL-CIO

New Book by Bill Fletcher, Jr. 

By Randy Shannon, CCDS

 

 

 "Everyone has the right to work, to free of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."

- United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948

I. Introduction

The "Great Recession" that began in 2007 has caused the greatest percent of job losses since the Great Depression of 1929. This crisis is the end of an era of unrestrained 'neo-liberal' capitalism that became public policy during the Reagan administration. The crisis marks a new level of instability with the growth of a global financial elite that targeted US workers and our trade unions after World War II.

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Capitalism may well collapse under its own excesses, but what would one propose to replace it? Margaret Thatcher's mantra was TINA...There Is No Alternative. David Schweickart's vision of "Economic Democracy" proposes a serious alternative. Even more fundamentally, it opens the door to thinking about alternatives. His may or may not turn out to be the definitive "successor system," but he is a leader in breaking out of the box.
 
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Fill the Streets in New York City Sept 21


As Obama Settles on Nonbinding Treaty,
'Only a Big Movement' Can Take on Global Warming


Interview with Bill McKibben
By Democracy Now

As international climate scientists warn runaway greenhouse gas emissions could cause "severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts," the Obama administration is abandoning attempts to have Congress agree to a legally binding international climate deal.

The New York Times reports U.S. negotiators are crafting a proposal that would not require congressional approval and instead would seek pledges from countries to cut emissions on a voluntary basis. This comes as a new U.N. report warns climate change could become "irreversible" if greenhouse gas emissions go unchecked. If global warming is to be adequately contained, it says, at least three-quarters of known fossil fuel reserves must remain in the ground.

We speak to 350.org founder Bill McKibben about why his hopes for taking on global warming lie not in President Obama's approach, but rather in events like the upcoming People's Climate March in New York City, which could mark the largest rally for climate action ever. "The Obama administration, which likes to poke fun at recalcitrant congressmen, hasn't been willing to really endure much in the way of political pain itself in order to slow things down," McKibben says. "The rest of the world can see that. The only way we'll change any of these equations here or elsewhere is by building a big movement - that's why September 21 in New York is such an important day." Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: President Obama is reportedly seeking a nonbinding climate accord in lieu of a binding global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The New York Times reports U.S. negotiators are crafting a proposal that would not require congressional approval and instead would seek pledges from countries to cut emissions on a voluntary basis. Earlier this year, Obama voiced his frustration with members of Congress who refuse to accept the reality of climate change .

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: In some parts of the country, weather-related disasters like droughts and fires and storms and floods are going to get harsher, and they're going to get costlier. Today's Congress, though, is full of folks who stubbornly and automatically reject the scientific evidence about climate change. They will tell you it is a hoax or a fad. One member of Congress actually says the world is cooling.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, a new draft of a United Nations report warns climate change could become "irreversible" if greenhouse gas emissions go unchecked. The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by media outlets, says human-driven warming has already fueled extreme heat and torrential rains, as temperatures have risen 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since pre-industrial times. While the report says it could still be possible to cap warming at the globally agreed-upon limit of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, it warns a continued rise in emissions could eventually cause an 8-degree Fahrenheit rise. That could prompt mass extinction of plants and animals and catastrophic floods. If global warming is to be adequately contained, the report says, at least three-quarters of known fossil fuel reserves must remain in the ground.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The new report comes as activists are gearing up for what might be the largest rally for climate action ever, the People's Climate March on September 21st. Organizers are hoping more than 100,000 people will take to the streets of New York City. More than 700 groups have endorsed the historic event, including 20 labor unions. The rally is scheduled to take place two days before global leaders convene at the Climate Summit at the United Nations headquarters.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for all that and more, we're joined now by Democracy Now! video stream by Bill McKibben, co-founder, director of 350.org, author of many books, including Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

Bil, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you talk about the latest U.N. report and then what President Obama, at least according to The New York Times in this major front-page piece, is planning to do?

BILL McKIBBEN: Sure. The new U.N. report is more of the same. In a sense, it's the scientific community, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, telling us what they've been telling us now for two decades, that global warming is out of control and the biggest threat that human beings have ever faced. They're using what was described as blunter, more forceful language. At this point, you know, short of self-immolation in Times Square, there's really not much more that the scientific community could be doing to warn us. Our early warning systems have functioned, you know? The alarm has gone off. All our satellites and sensors and supercomputers have produced the information that we need to know. The question is: Will we act on it?

And the answer so far is no. It's been no in Congress, that's for sure. Nothing is going to move through Congress, and there's no hope of a treaty that would get ratified by two-thirds of the Senate. That's the complication at the moment in international negotiations. We can't reach any kind of binding treaty. Everyone's known this. The Times story about the new Obama approach is pretty much old news. Everybody's known for years that there's not going to be a treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate. And everyone's been looking for some kind of workaround.

The workaround would involve some kind of different, voluntary commitments by different countries, but done publicly so one could keep track of them. If this all sounds a little dubious to you, it will sound even more dubious to all the countries that are, you know, watching themselves disappear beneath the waves, so on and so forth, as global warming accelerates. The real question, though, is less the form of the agreement than the content. And here's where we'll find out, in the next few months, whether the Obama administration is actually serious or not. ...(Click title for more)


By Anne Meador

DC Media Group

Aug 27, 2014 - If you believe mainstream media, Ferguson turned a corner Tuesday night. The riots are settling down, and justice in the form of US Attorney General Eric Holder arrived on Wednesday.

"As Tension Eases on Ferguson's Streets, Focus Turns to Investigation," reads the New York Times headline.

"No teargas used in relatively calm nighttime protests," says the Guardian.

"No bullets, no teargas mark 'turning point' in Ferguson," proclaims MSNBC.

These major media outlets, among others, parroted Missouri police captain Ron Johnson's talking point from his late-night press conference, that an alleged de-escalation of conflict marks a "turning point."

Peaceful, rationale people-with the aid of law enforcement-are winning out over "the agitators, the criminals," who are "embedded" in their midst.

Following another shooting of an African-American man on Tuesday by police not far from Ferguson, this assertion is nothing short of Orwellian. It is intended to pacify the citizens of Ferguson and justify the violence inflicted on them.

Relative Calm

There is a new standard for peace on the streets: the absence of teargas, bullets, or flash grenades. But demonstrators have been calm throughout; it's the police and National Guard who have been violent. By some twisted logic, law enforcement has acted virtuously by not deploying all its weapons of war, just some of them. Thus Ron Johnson congratulates himself, and the press gives a gracious nod of approval.

Never mind that arresting 47 protestors when supposedly only a few of them were criminals and agitators makes no sense.

Never mind that nearly every mainstream media outlet got it wrong when reporting the facts on the ground.

If you have become immune to the sight of armored vehicles and assault weapons, you could call it calm. But many reporters must have packed up and gone home early Tuesday night. Because a little after midnight, the shit hit the fan.

A Single Water Bottle

"In all my life I have never been so terrified," writes Rosa Clemente.

She relates a harrowing story about how she and several others "were chased like animals by the cops."

    I saw them raising their batons and getting in formation. As I was finishing talking to Trymaine, we saw a water bottle, plastic water bottle being thrown, people kind of looked up, turned back to what they were doing talking etc....and the next thing police came at us like charging bulls, weapons drawn, screaming, causing mass confusion "leave the area now!" "Don't move!"

They were pursued, surrounded and ordered to lie down. "We were told if we did not stop moving we would be shot. We complied."

For most of the evening, hundreds of heavily armed police and National Guard warned demonstrators to stay on the sidewalk, even though the street was blocked off and there was no traffic. "They need to keep moving. If they don't move, take them to jail," Missouri State Troopers said.

Chief Johnson alleges that when glass bottles and urine were thrown at law enforcement, they were forced to "take action."

But many reports from independent journalists contradict Johnson. Some report more than one projectile thrown at police, but it was only a single plastic bottle that set them off. Kevin Gosztola of Firedoglake maintains that about 12:15am, "As far as press could tell, a single water bottle was thrown by a protester." On his Facebook page, Gosztola says, "A water bottle was tossed or thrown. That's it."...(Click title for more)

By Terrell Jermaine Starr
Alternet.org
 
August 22, 2014 - #BlackTwitter has always been that special place in the Twitterverse where African Americans have congregated to discuss issues germane to the black experience, but recent events in Ferguson, Mo., have solidified it as something more: a vital 24-hour news source.

After unarmed 18-year-olf Michael Brown was shot dead by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9, national media began to parachute in to the St. Louis suburb. Right behind them (or some would argue ahead of them), black bloggers and activists were online, critiquing the stories and tweets [3] of reporters on the ground for cultural accuracy. In any story involving a black young person killed by a white one, the subject of race tends to lead the narrative.

Many critics believed from the onset that media coverage of the unrest--esepcially the looting that followed--unfairly described the residents' grievances. Nikole Hannah-Jones at ESSENCE wrote [4] that initial coverage of the rioting overshawdowed the fact that a teenager's life was taken.

"As a journalist, I get it," she wrote. "The images of the rioting were gripping. But coverage of the riots should not overshadow the cause of the riots. The real story has taken a backseat to the sensational. A young Black man lost his life in a confrontation with police under very controversial circumstances. Ferguson is policed by a nearly all-White police force [5]. This context has been missing in too many of these stories. And in the eyes of many people commenting on social media, this type of reporting has rendered the destruction of property more important than the destruction of Black life."

To counter that narrative, one Twitter user and activist who goes by the handle "@Awkward_Duck" tweeted a photo [6] of young men (pictured above) in Ferguson protecting a store from looters with the caption, "What the news won't show you is protestors standing in front of stores, hands up, blocking looters from getting in. #ferguson [7]."[8] [9]

After several media outlets used photos from Brown's Facebook page showing him posed in a less than diginified matter, African Americans on Twitter started the hashtag "#IfTheyGunnedMeDown [10]." Users combined photos of themselves in one image--one photo of themselves dressed in college graduation wear, for example, and the other of themselves flashing what could be percieved as gang signs or some other pose that could be percieved as negative. Some of the captions read,"#IfTheyGunnedMeDown which pic would they use?" or, pictured below, "#IfTheyGunnedMeDown they would probably use the pic on the left before I changed and grew up #flashbackfriday."

One of the tweets was shared as many as 22,000 times. Other were retweeted thousands of times as well.

The story behind the hastag would eventually make it on the front cover of the New York Times [11].

Kimberly C. Ellis, Ph.D, American and Africana Studies Scholar and Public Intellectual who is completing a book titled "The Bombastic Brilliance of Black Twitter [12]," told AlterNet that the hastag played a very influential role in how the media covered Ferguson after it began trending.

"That set the precursor for the media and they had to think about how they were going to present Mike Brown," Ellis said, who goes by the handle "@drgoddess [13]" on Twitter. "I honestly believe that #IfTheyGunnedMeDown prevented mainstream media from doing their usual lazy presentation on black youth in particular and black people in general."...(Click title for more)


ELECTIONS: The US Senator from Vermont is touring the country to capture the pulse of populist sentiment and to see whether or not hunger exists for a real 'political revolution'


By Jon Queally
Common Dreams

Aug 28, 2014 - The Independent U.S. Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders has a hunch about the American electorate, but he says the only way to be sure is to go out and meet them.

It's called the 'Fight For Economic Justice Tour,' but it's really what the self-identified Social Democrat described earlier this year as his attempt to travel the country in order to guage the country's hunger for a grassroots 'political revolution'-couched in a possible presidential bid-to challenge the economic inequality and corporate malfeasance that have severly wounded the nation's democary and are strangling its promise of shared prosperity.

Sanders was in Raleigh, North Carolina on Wednesday night to receive an award from the American Legion, but what many understood as a political stop designed as a prelude towards a possible presidential run in 2016. On Thursday the senator is scheduled for a town hall event in Columbia, South Carolina and after that, an event in Jackson, Mississippi on Friday.

"I want confirmation of what I believe is true....  that all over this country-in so-called Red States and in so-called Blue States-people are profoundly disgusted about what is happening and that they want real change." -Sen. Bernie Sanders

Earlier this week, Sanders confirmed that he will also be making upcoming visits to both Iowa and New Hampshire-two political bellwether states-and he has spent the last several months making it clear that he is "strongly considering" a possible primary challenge to the expected Democratic Party frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

So what's the purpose of all this travel?

"This is about seeing whether ordinary people are prepared to stand up and fight and create a political revolution in the sense of what we have not seen in a very long time," Sanders declared on Wednesday.

In an interview with the Charlotte Observer on Wednesday, Sanders stated his position that economic inequality and the everyday suffering of ordinary people is at the core of his thinking on the country's current situation. "The main issue that I have is that in America today the middle-class is disappearing while the gap between rich and poor is growing wider," he said. "We need more people in politics working for ordinary people and not just the top 1 percent." ...(Click title for more)
Let's Put a Socialist on the Chicago City Council
Jorge Mujica, socialist candidate for 25th ward alderman, ballot petitioning press conference
Jorge Mujica, socialist candidate for 25th ward alderman, ballot press conference


McCain in Syria, meeting with ISIS and other 'Rebels' he wanted Obama to arm against Assad.

By Robert Parry

Consortium News

Aug 21, 2014 - President Barack Obama's foreign policy has been disjointed and even incoherent because he has - since taking office in 2009 - pursued conflicting strategies, mixing his own penchant for less belligerent "realism" with Official Washington's dominant tough-guy ideologies of neoconservatism and its close cousin, "liberal interventionism."

What this has meant is that Obama often has acted at cross-purposes, inclined to cooperate with sometimes adversaries like Russia on pragmatic solutions to thorny foreign crises, such as Syria's chemical weapons and Iran's nuclear program, but other times stoking these and other crises by following neocon demands that he adopt aggressive tactics against Russia, Syria, Iran and other "enemies."

So, we have Obama covertly arming Syrian rebels, many of whom were interchangeable with Islamic jihadists, but then sending the U.S. military back into Iraq to fight some of these same extremists who spilled back into Iraq, the country where they got their start after President George W. Bush's neocon-inspired invasion.

We also have Obama spending years ratcheting up sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program - despite Iran's repeated offers to accept limits that would guarantee no military applications - and now finding that he needs Iran's help to broker political changes in Iraq.

And, we have Obama needing Russia's assistance to resolve the crises with Syria, Iraq and Iran but letting his foreign policy team alienate Russian President Vladimir Putin by stoking a confrontation over a U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine, which has seen the U.S. State Department weaving a false narrative that blames Putin for instigating the conflict when he was clearly reacting to provocations from the West. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Powerful Group Think on Ukraine."http://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/18/the-powerful-group-think-on-ukraine/ [1]]

But at the core of Obama's muddled foreign policy is his unwillingness to challenge the prime sources of Middle Eastern instability, traditional U.S. "allies": Israel and Saudi Arabia. Those two countries feed the violence across the region, Israel through its brutality toward the Palestinians - providing a recruiting bonanza for Islamic extremists - and Saudi Arabia via its covert funding for jihadists.

However, because Israel and Saudi Arabia get a pass on much of what they do - and Israel in particular wields extraordinary influence over the U.S. political/media process - Obama has typically tried to finesse the chaos that these "allies" wreak.

Here is also where the neocons and the "liberal interventionists" come into the picture. They demand that Obama react to "humanitarian" crises in disfavored countries, especially those on Israel's "regime change" list, like Iran and Syria....(Click title for more)

Not Your Usual Labor Battle: Workers Win the Return of a 'High Road' Boss and Oust His 'Low Road' Cousin


By Deirdre Fulton
Common Dreams via Portside

Aug 28, 2014 - Bringing to a close a summer-long supermarket standoff, a deal was reached late Wednesday to sell the majority stake of family-owned, New England-based Market Basket to Arthur T. Demoulas for over $1.5 billion. The resolution was seen as a victory for employees and customers who had been engaged in an epic boycott [1] of the grocery chain with stores in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.

"Effective immediately, Arthur T. Demoulas is returning to Market Basket with day-to-day operational authority of the company," Market Basket shareholders said in a statement issued around 11:15 p.m. on Wednesday. "All Associates are welcome back to work with the former management team to restore the Company back to normal operations."

At wearemarketbasket.com [2], an anonymous blogger declared victory: "Details are emerging as we write this but we wanted to let the world know that we have emerged from this crisis victorious! The STAKEHOLDERS have helped to Save Market Basket and in doing so, we have made history. Associates, vendors and most importantly, CUSTOMERS carried the banner for a company that is so much more than simply a company, but is rather an integral piece of every community it serves."

The post continued:

    Tonight we raise a glass to Artie T and each other as we have achieved the most improbable of upsets. Tomorrow we go to work and never, in the history of people going to work, will so many people be so happy to punch the clock.

Arthur T. was was fired in June by a board of directors controlled by his cousin Arthur S. Demoulas, with whom he'd had a decades-long feud. The cousins had very different management styles. "Artie T." is seen as worker-friendly and people-focused. Forbes notes [3]: "Arthur T.'s mantra 'we're in the people business first and the grocery business second' earned him a fervent loyalty. The company's generous pension plan means many retire with a nest egg of over $1 million, alongside above-market wages and regular bonuses. Meanwhile, cousin Arthur S. and his sisters are seen as motivated only by a desire for bigger and bigger cash dividends, the latest of which was a $300 million dividend paid out as soon as their side of the family gained control of the board last summer."

Wednesday's deal means that employees and customers got what they wanted: the reinstatement of Artie T....(Click title for more)


Fun, freewheeling jam will appear on anticipated box set compiling all of Dylan's legendary late-Sixties recordings
. Click Photo for sample tune.

By Nick Murray
Rolling Stone

Aug 26, 2014 - Nearly 50 years ago, Bob Dylan and the group that would become known as the Band moved to West Saugerties, New York, holing up in a house dubbed Big Pink and creating some of the most legendary recordings in rock history. Countless bootlegs and one overdubbed 1975 double-LP later, those recordings are finally receiving an official release, compiled on The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11, out November 4th on Legacy Recordings.

Compiled with help from Band member Garth Hudson and restored by producer Jan Haust, the collection combines what's being described as "every salvageable recording from the tapes, including recently discovered early gems recorded in the 'Red Room' of Dylan's home in upstate New York." These recordings were sequenced according to Hudson's numbering system and moves from country songs written by artists like Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Harlan Howard to Curtis Mayfield R&B, traditional rearrangements and plenty of originals.

Below, stream an alternate take of the original "Odds and Ends" (a more subdued version of which appears on 1975's The Basement Tapes LP) that appears on both the six-disc The Basement Tapes Complete and the two-disc The Basement Tapes Raw, a slimmed-down collection of highlights.

In his 1968 Basement Tapes cover story, Rolling Stone founder and editor Jann S. Wenner broke a Dylan and the Band demo down track-by-track, eventually concluding, "Even though he used one of the finest rock & roll bands ever assembled on the Highway 61 album, here he works with his own band, for the first time. Dylan brings that instinctual feel for rock & roll to his voice for the first time. If this were ever to be released, it would be a classic." ...(Click title for more)

The untold history of the documentary 'German Concentration Camps Factual Survey' is revealed in this powerful, must-see documentary.


By Alissa Simon
Variety

Aug. 27, 2014 - As the WWII tide turned in their direction in 1944-45, the Allied forces had more than military liberation on their minds: They wanted to win the propaganda war as well, to forever discredit Nazism in Germany and around the world. Commissioned by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, shot by combat and newsreel cameramen accompanying troops as they liberated occupied Europe, and supervised by a remarkable team, the film "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey" was intended to be their weapon. But politics prevented the pic's completion and distribution, as recounted in British helmer Andre Singer's powerful, must-see documentary "Night Must Fall," which chronicles the untold story of the film's history.

Providing important context, "Night Will Fall" is premiering in conjunction with the release of the restored "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey," which arrives 70 years after its inception, and after four years of labor by Britain's Imperial War Museums. The restored "Camps" made its debut at the 2014 Berlinale, where "Night" screened as a work-in-progress.

Although the two works complement one another, "Night" definitely works as a solo piece, and of the two films, it is the one most likely to be widely presented. Clearly a work of passion and scholarship, it is both time capsule and teaching tool. Its title comes from the epigraph to "Camps": that the world needs to learn the lesson that the film teaches, or night will fall.

"Night" not only conveys the almost unbelievable atrocities captured by the Russian, American and British camera teams and photographers, but also highlights the dedication of the team determined to document and disseminate this evidence and the changing policies of those in charge of postwar reconstruction. Singer makes use of graphic, disturbing excerpts from "Camps," other archival footage and moving eyewitness testimony from camp survivors and liberators.

Singer also clarifies the historical record concerning the earlier film. Although Alfred Hitchcock is credited as director of "Camps," he was involved with the project for only a month. As shown here, the true force behind the pic was producer Sidney Bernstein, who, via his position at Britain's Ministry of Information, assembled a small but expert crew, including editors Peter Tanner and Stewart McAllister, and writers Colin Wills and Richard Crossman. He sought Hitchcock's help in putting the film together; according to Bernstein, Hitchcock planned and outlined the film, and was keen to show the close relationship between the camps and the local communities, thereby illustrating that local people must have been aware of their presence and, as such, should share some of the culpability.

As reams of footage arrived from the field, the editors scrambled to log and view it. Among the most unique perspectives that "Night Will Fall" provides is that of the men shooting the material and those on the home front who were cutting it. Several cameramen describe how they had to disassociate themselves from what they were filming, while one editor describes footage from Dachau, seen in negative, as "the most appalling hell possible." Singer includes some of this rare white-on-black negative footage as well as 16mm color footage shot by the Americans. ...(Click title for more)
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Solidarity, Carl Davidson, CCDS