From: Fight Back! News
Gainesville, FL - The Coalition to End the Meal Limits NOW scored a major victory for homeless and poor people’s rights here, Aug. 25, as the city commission unanimously voted to change the controversial meal limit ordinance imposed since 2008. The ordinance, which limited how many hungry people Saint Francis House could feed to 130 a day, was changed to allow everyone meals during a three-hour period. The poor and hungry will no longer be turned away from Saint Francis House while plenty of food remains simply because 130 people ate before them.
Around 50 protesters gathered outside city hall to make their voices heard. They chanted, “Same story every time, being homeless is not a crime” and held large signs reading “Food is a right” and “Feed everyone.”
The Coalition to End the Meal Limits NOW is a grassroots organization made up of various student and labor activist groups. The meal limit ordinance was part of the reason why the National Coalition for the Homeless ranked Gainesville as the fifth meanest city for homeless people in the nation.
It wasn't until the Coalition to End the Meal Limits NOW was formed did the idea of repealing the ordinance take shape. Richard Blake from Gainesville Area Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) called the repeal a “victory for the working poor” adding that “the city commission had no choice but to listen to the Coalition.”
Showing posts with label Poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poverty. Show all posts
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
40 Years of Fighting Prison Slavery
By Judy Greenspan
Oakland, Calif.
Published Aug 14, 2011 10:28 PM
The revolutionary movements abroad for national liberation and the rebellions in major urban cities in this country in the 1960s inspired a revolutionary development within the prisoners’ movement that rocked the foundations of the most repressive apparatus of the state. California’s Pelican Bay prisoners are continuing that struggle today.
This summer is the 40th anniversary of the 1971 assassination of George Jackson, a revolutionary Black leader of the struggles of California prisoners and also of the Attica Rebellion, a massive protest against the dehumanization and torture of prisoners in a New York state prison. These two events inspired the growth of the prisoners’ rights movement.
Prison authorities reacted with the proliferation of security housing units — a 23-hour-a-day lockdown for prisoners who dare to challenge the torture and brutality of the inhumane prison system.
George Jackson & the Soledad Brothers
“I could be killed tomorrow but there ... would be two to three hundred people to take my place,” said George Jackson. (Interviews with Karen Wald, May 16 and June 29, 1971)
Jackson was serving a one-year-to-life sentence in the California prisons for stealing $70 from a gas station in Los Angeles. He spent much of his time inside reading the texts of revolutionary leaders, including Mao Zedong, Kwame Nkrumah, Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap. He patiently explained his revolutionary thoughts to other prisoners.
On Jan. 13, 1970, prison guards fired into the prison yard at Soledad Prison after a fistfight broke out, killing three Black prisoners. A group of prisoners organized a hunger strike demanding justice. Three days later, the guards were exonerated in court, and within a half-hour of the court ruling, a guard was beaten and thrown from a yard tower to his death.
Jackson and two other prisoners, Fleeta Drumgo and John W. Clutchette, were charged with first-degree murder. The three men became known as the Soledad Brothers. Their case gave rise to a broad movement of support on behalf of Jackson and the other prisoners.
Six months later, when George Jackson was being brought into the Marin County Courthouse with a group of prisoners, his younger brother, Jonathan Jackson, was killed, along with two prisoners and a judge, after engineering a failed attempt to force the freedom of the Soledad Brothers.
George Jackson was assassinated by prison guards on Aug. 21, 1971, shortly after being brought to San Quentin’s Adjustment Center maximum-security unit. Prison officials claimed Jackson had a pistol hidden in his Afro.
By this time, Jackson was a “marked man.” He had already written and published “Soledad Brother,” dedicated to his brother Jonathan, which was a scathing indictment of the racist prison system. The book was widely read both inside and outside the prisons.
Jackson had fought off his attackers and opened the unit’s cell doors, freeing 26 prisoners. This uprising lasted less than 30 minutes when Jackson was shot in the back by prison guards. Six prisoners charged with participating in this uprising became known as the San Quentin Six.
Attica Rebellion in September
Jackson’s assassination ignited a wave of protests inside and outside prisons. A large hunger strike at New York state’s Attica Prison precipitated a wave of anger and organizing that led to the prisoner uprising and takeover of that prison on Sept. 9, 1971, by more than 1,000 prisoners.
“We are men, we are not beasts, and we do not intend to be beaten or driven as such. ... What was happening here is but the sound or the fury of those who are oppressed,” said L.D. Barkley, one of the leaders of the Attica rebellion, as he introduced the list of demands.
The Attica Manifesto of demands included an immediate end to the pitting of one race against another by the prison administration, an end to the racial discrimination against Brown and Black prisoners by the parole board, the right to union membership and higher wages while working in the prison, and an end to the segregation of prisoners from the mainline population because of their political beliefs.
A People’s Central Committee of Black, Puerto Rican, Native and white prisoners was formed during the Attica Rebellion. Prisoners invited a group of observers to come to the prison to witness the prison takeover and to negotiate on their behalf with the prison administration. Tom Soto, a leader of Workers World Party and a founder of the Prisoners Solidarity Committee, received such an invitation and went to Attica. Moving testimonies by this united group of prisoners were heard around the world.
Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, true to his ruling-class heritage, refused to negotiate and instead unleashed a brutal and barbarous assault by an army of police, sheriffs and National Guard that killed 43 people and wounded more than 150. Frank ‘Big Black’ Smith, a leader of the rebellion who lived, called the attack, “cold-blooded premeditated murder.”
Pelican Bay hunger strike
This year’s heroic hunger strike by prisoners in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit against the torture of these isolation chambers has also inspired a rebirth of protests by prisoners and their supporters outside.
This three-week strike, which began July 1, took a tremendous toll on the health and welfare of these incredibly courageous prisoners, who were joined in solidarity hunger strikes by thousands of other prisoners, former prisoners and family members throughout California and around the country. The prisoners’ demands were simple: stop the torture of the lockdown units, stop indefinite SHU terms, and allow prisoners more visitation, adequate nutrition and access to mail and phone privileges.
The strike ended on July 20 when the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation agreed to “accede to a few small requests immediately ... in support of their assurance that all of our issues will receive real attention,” according to a statement issued by Short Corridor Collective, a representative of the Pelican Bay hunger strike leaders.
California SHU prisoners have issued an alert that they may be forced to resume their protest because CDCR is not moving to remedy even the smallest of their grievances. Family members, former prisoner organizers and other supporters are mobilizing to attend a California State Assembly Public Safety Committee hearing about the prisoners’ demands on Aug. 23 at the state Capitol.
In 1942, the revered revolutionary leader of the Vietnamese struggle against colonialism, Ho Chi Minh, wrote in his prison diary, “When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out.”
This year we remember the slogans: “Attica is all of us!” “Long live the spirit of George and Jonathan Jackson!” “Stop the torture at Pelican Bay and all lockdown prisons!”
Some information for this article came from the CD “Prisons on Fire: George Jackson, Attica & Black Liberation,” produced by Anita Johnson and Claude Marks in 2001 and available from Freedom Archives.
Oakland, Calif.
Published Aug 14, 2011 10:28 PM
The revolutionary movements abroad for national liberation and the rebellions in major urban cities in this country in the 1960s inspired a revolutionary development within the prisoners’ movement that rocked the foundations of the most repressive apparatus of the state. California’s Pelican Bay prisoners are continuing that struggle today.
This summer is the 40th anniversary of the 1971 assassination of George Jackson, a revolutionary Black leader of the struggles of California prisoners and also of the Attica Rebellion, a massive protest against the dehumanization and torture of prisoners in a New York state prison. These two events inspired the growth of the prisoners’ rights movement.
Prison authorities reacted with the proliferation of security housing units — a 23-hour-a-day lockdown for prisoners who dare to challenge the torture and brutality of the inhumane prison system.
George Jackson & the Soledad Brothers
“I could be killed tomorrow but there ... would be two to three hundred people to take my place,” said George Jackson. (Interviews with Karen Wald, May 16 and June 29, 1971)
Jackson was serving a one-year-to-life sentence in the California prisons for stealing $70 from a gas station in Los Angeles. He spent much of his time inside reading the texts of revolutionary leaders, including Mao Zedong, Kwame Nkrumah, Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap. He patiently explained his revolutionary thoughts to other prisoners.
On Jan. 13, 1970, prison guards fired into the prison yard at Soledad Prison after a fistfight broke out, killing three Black prisoners. A group of prisoners organized a hunger strike demanding justice. Three days later, the guards were exonerated in court, and within a half-hour of the court ruling, a guard was beaten and thrown from a yard tower to his death.
Jackson and two other prisoners, Fleeta Drumgo and John W. Clutchette, were charged with first-degree murder. The three men became known as the Soledad Brothers. Their case gave rise to a broad movement of support on behalf of Jackson and the other prisoners.
Six months later, when George Jackson was being brought into the Marin County Courthouse with a group of prisoners, his younger brother, Jonathan Jackson, was killed, along with two prisoners and a judge, after engineering a failed attempt to force the freedom of the Soledad Brothers.
George Jackson was assassinated by prison guards on Aug. 21, 1971, shortly after being brought to San Quentin’s Adjustment Center maximum-security unit. Prison officials claimed Jackson had a pistol hidden in his Afro.
By this time, Jackson was a “marked man.” He had already written and published “Soledad Brother,” dedicated to his brother Jonathan, which was a scathing indictment of the racist prison system. The book was widely read both inside and outside the prisons.
Jackson had fought off his attackers and opened the unit’s cell doors, freeing 26 prisoners. This uprising lasted less than 30 minutes when Jackson was shot in the back by prison guards. Six prisoners charged with participating in this uprising became known as the San Quentin Six.
Attica Rebellion in September
Jackson’s assassination ignited a wave of protests inside and outside prisons. A large hunger strike at New York state’s Attica Prison precipitated a wave of anger and organizing that led to the prisoner uprising and takeover of that prison on Sept. 9, 1971, by more than 1,000 prisoners.
“We are men, we are not beasts, and we do not intend to be beaten or driven as such. ... What was happening here is but the sound or the fury of those who are oppressed,” said L.D. Barkley, one of the leaders of the Attica rebellion, as he introduced the list of demands.
The Attica Manifesto of demands included an immediate end to the pitting of one race against another by the prison administration, an end to the racial discrimination against Brown and Black prisoners by the parole board, the right to union membership and higher wages while working in the prison, and an end to the segregation of prisoners from the mainline population because of their political beliefs.
A People’s Central Committee of Black, Puerto Rican, Native and white prisoners was formed during the Attica Rebellion. Prisoners invited a group of observers to come to the prison to witness the prison takeover and to negotiate on their behalf with the prison administration. Tom Soto, a leader of Workers World Party and a founder of the Prisoners Solidarity Committee, received such an invitation and went to Attica. Moving testimonies by this united group of prisoners were heard around the world.
Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, true to his ruling-class heritage, refused to negotiate and instead unleashed a brutal and barbarous assault by an army of police, sheriffs and National Guard that killed 43 people and wounded more than 150. Frank ‘Big Black’ Smith, a leader of the rebellion who lived, called the attack, “cold-blooded premeditated murder.”
Pelican Bay hunger strike
This year’s heroic hunger strike by prisoners in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit against the torture of these isolation chambers has also inspired a rebirth of protests by prisoners and their supporters outside.
This three-week strike, which began July 1, took a tremendous toll on the health and welfare of these incredibly courageous prisoners, who were joined in solidarity hunger strikes by thousands of other prisoners, former prisoners and family members throughout California and around the country. The prisoners’ demands were simple: stop the torture of the lockdown units, stop indefinite SHU terms, and allow prisoners more visitation, adequate nutrition and access to mail and phone privileges.
The strike ended on July 20 when the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation agreed to “accede to a few small requests immediately ... in support of their assurance that all of our issues will receive real attention,” according to a statement issued by Short Corridor Collective, a representative of the Pelican Bay hunger strike leaders.
California SHU prisoners have issued an alert that they may be forced to resume their protest because CDCR is not moving to remedy even the smallest of their grievances. Family members, former prisoner organizers and other supporters are mobilizing to attend a California State Assembly Public Safety Committee hearing about the prisoners’ demands on Aug. 23 at the state Capitol.
In 1942, the revered revolutionary leader of the Vietnamese struggle against colonialism, Ho Chi Minh, wrote in his prison diary, “When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out.”
This year we remember the slogans: “Attica is all of us!” “Long live the spirit of George and Jonathan Jackson!” “Stop the torture at Pelican Bay and all lockdown prisons!”
Some information for this article came from the CD “Prisons on Fire: George Jackson, Attica & Black Liberation,” produced by Anita Johnson and Claude Marks in 2001 and available from Freedom Archives.
Monday, August 8, 2011
End the wars! Tax the rich!
Commentary by Masao Suzuki
August 7, 2011
From: Fight Back!
San José, CA - The recent federal debt limit deal passed by the House and Senate and signed into law by president Obama promises at least $2.1 trillion in spending cuts and lower interest payments over the next ten years. This deal did not include any savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or from restoring higher taxes for the rich. It was a victory for the Tea Party-backed Republicans and benefits the rich and Wall Street. At the same time programs serving poor and working people will be the target for cuts and the deal opens the door for cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost more than $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. The Bush tax cuts for the rich will cost about $600 billion dollars over the same period of time. Ending the wars and restoring the taxes on the rich would save more than $2 trillion, and, including savings from lower interest payments, would save about $2.6 trillion, more than the recent debt limit deal.
Let’s be clear. The real issue is not the deficit, it is about keeping taxes low for the rich and continuing to fund our present and future wars, while cutting programs that serve poor and working people. Social Security and Medicare did not cause the federal debt. In fact ever since the FICA payroll tax that pays for Social Security and Medicare was raised in the 1980s, these two programs have run surpluses and have helped to pay for the wars and tax cuts for the rich.
Half of all workers have no private pension plans, so Social Security is their only guarantee of income security when they retire. For more than a quarter of seniors who are lower-income, Social Security provides over 90% of their retirement income. About 40% of seniors have no private health insurance, and would suffer the most from any cuts in the Medicare.
Unfortunately, the fact is that the vast majority of politicians in Washington D.C. are more beholden to Wall Street and/or the Tea Party than they are to the interests of poor and working people and seniors. What is needed to be build a mass movement for economic justice that can unite workers, both union and non-union, and oppressed nationality communities, especially African Americans, Chicanos, and Latinos, who have the least income and wealth are who are hit hardest by cuts in government services. Students and youth and seniors are especially vulnerable to these cuts. We need to demand that the politicians bring our troops home now, end the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and protect Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs.
End the Wars!
Tax the Rich!
No cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other programs for poor and working people!
August 7, 2011
From: Fight Back!
San José, CA - The recent federal debt limit deal passed by the House and Senate and signed into law by president Obama promises at least $2.1 trillion in spending cuts and lower interest payments over the next ten years. This deal did not include any savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or from restoring higher taxes for the rich. It was a victory for the Tea Party-backed Republicans and benefits the rich and Wall Street. At the same time programs serving poor and working people will be the target for cuts and the deal opens the door for cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost more than $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. The Bush tax cuts for the rich will cost about $600 billion dollars over the same period of time. Ending the wars and restoring the taxes on the rich would save more than $2 trillion, and, including savings from lower interest payments, would save about $2.6 trillion, more than the recent debt limit deal.
Let’s be clear. The real issue is not the deficit, it is about keeping taxes low for the rich and continuing to fund our present and future wars, while cutting programs that serve poor and working people. Social Security and Medicare did not cause the federal debt. In fact ever since the FICA payroll tax that pays for Social Security and Medicare was raised in the 1980s, these two programs have run surpluses and have helped to pay for the wars and tax cuts for the rich.
Half of all workers have no private pension plans, so Social Security is their only guarantee of income security when they retire. For more than a quarter of seniors who are lower-income, Social Security provides over 90% of their retirement income. About 40% of seniors have no private health insurance, and would suffer the most from any cuts in the Medicare.
Unfortunately, the fact is that the vast majority of politicians in Washington D.C. are more beholden to Wall Street and/or the Tea Party than they are to the interests of poor and working people and seniors. What is needed to be build a mass movement for economic justice that can unite workers, both union and non-union, and oppressed nationality communities, especially African Americans, Chicanos, and Latinos, who have the least income and wealth are who are hit hardest by cuts in government services. Students and youth and seniors are especially vulnerable to these cuts. We need to demand that the politicians bring our troops home now, end the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and protect Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs.
End the Wars!
Tax the Rich!
No cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other programs for poor and working people!
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Capitalism and Self-Esteem: The Psychology of Oppression
By Caleb T. Maupin
A new breakthrough in modern psychology has been discovered by the mainstream voices of modern finance capital: “Youth like themselves too much!”
At first, I figured this was only a talking point of the far right-wing. For example, Sarah Palin’s book contains a section about how the bad performers on “American Idol” are victims of a “self-esteem movement” that never allowed them to see how bad they were.
Glenn Beck’s rant at the Conservative Political Actions Conference (CPAC) included a tirade against how “every kid gets trophy, no matter what.” The rant also included him stating that his abandoning of drug use was because he was “allowed to fail” in order to see how the drugs weren’t helping him.
But then, I saw the liberal economist Amy Chua, with her new autobiographical memoir, in which she dubbs herself a “Tiger Mom” mouthing such things as well, and getting praise from Bill Maher, a figure who now is attempting to call himself a “socialist.”
A False Talking Point
What is the essence of this new, non-research based psychological argument, being thundered from the various pulpits of capitalist punditry, as if it is the undisputable truth?
It is this:
The means of punishment, “correction”, and other hardships facing youth, have been greatly reduced. The result is that young people have no desire to achieve, because they have never been confronted with punishment or disapproval from parents, educators, and society.
The reality of this generation points to the opposite.
One of the number one illegally used drugs on college campuses is Adderol. Adderol, it should be noted, does not induce a “high.” Adderol, marketed as a prescription drug for ADD and ADHD, is used in order to enable its users to spend days without sleep. It is used by college students to stay up for days prior to tests and examinations.
This is hardly a lack of “desire to achieve.”
In the public schools, youth face all kinds of opportunities to fail. They have a standardized test nearly every year, which their teachers, whose jobs depend on the results, are happy to work them up into a panic over.
This allegedly overly self-loving generation has produced numerous instances of murder-suicide such as Columbine and Virginia Tech. Do people crack and begin randomly murdering their peers at rates historically unheard of because they love themselves far too much? Is mass murder a side effect of overconfidence and lack of pressure?
Compared to the rest of the western world, the U.S. is far “ahead” in terms of means of punishment and other methods of making youth feel like they have failed.
20 U.S. states still allow teachers to legally beat students with wooden boards.
Additionally, not a single U.S. state has ever dared infringe on parents ability to do so, and statistics show that something like 80% of U.S. parents are frequently hitting their children as punishment. This is far more constant reminder of failure than any other “western” country. (http://www.corpun.com)
Are child beatings on a scale unheard of in the rest of the western world a cause of increased confidence?
If youth have too much self-esteem, why are they prescribed anti-depressant drugs at a rate higher than any generation prior?
How much “self-esteem” do the millions of youth, higher than any generation before, locked up in prison feel? The reality of daily strip searches, confiscation of personal property, exposure to rape and constant brutality by guards, and lengthy periods in solitary confinement is hardly the kind of thing that creates “self-esteem.”
I wonder if walking through a metal detector on your way to “learn” each morning is conducive to self-esteem? Or what about having police officers, who the ACLU reports frequently “curse at students” and “confiscate lunches”, is conducive to thinking one has no need to advance and is “special.”
The Psychology of Resistance
It seems very apparent what this capitalist war on self-esteem is rooted in.
As capitalism is in a global meltdown, a world of low-wage jobs, poverty, and a huge police state is being cemented as what has been dubbed: “the new normal.”
All across the world, in places like Spain, Britain, Greece, etc. it is the youth who are on the vanguard of the fight against these conditions.
Youth everywhere are saying what was said by generations before who refused to be sent to Vietnam, or took over their factories in Sit-Down strikes, or filled streets with barricades and red flags. They are saying loudly “we deserve better than this!”
Saying such a thing requires self-esteem. It requires the basic knowledge that the conditions created by modern capitalism are unworthy of any human being, themselves included. It requires knowledge that in fact, you have value, and are not deserving of a lifetime of unemployment, misery, and such.
So, naturally, the powers that be have pointed their cites at the evil of “self-esteem.” To achieve their goals, universal self-hatred must be accepted, and built-in to the psychology of every working class victim of their system.
So, this gives revolutionaries a new, psychological task. It is Communists who now must take up the banner of reminding the workers of the world, youth most definitely included, that this world of prisons, unemployment, police, endless wars, and other horrors is not something they must accept.
It is something that is built into the capitalist system. But because we are humans, with dignity and value, we are most definitely “entitled” to something. We are entitled to overthrow it!
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Two Sides Of U.S. Latin American Policy: Colombia & Ecuador
By Berta Joubert-Ceci
Published Apr 17, 2011 9:11 PM
The U.S. government’s façade that it is a champion of democracy and respectful of other countries’ sovereignty has once again been torn away by Washington’s recent treatment of two distinct governments in two Latin American countries: Colombia and Ecuador.
On April 6 President Barack Obama, praising Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, reached a deal to push through the anti-worker Free Trade Agreement between the two countries. The pact has been stalled due to Colombia’s horrible record of crimes against unionists.
A day earlier, the U.S. State Department refused to apologize or even explain a letter attacking Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa written by the U.S. ambassador in that country and exposed through Wikileaks.
FTA with Colombia attacks working people
Reversing his previous position demanding union rights in Colombia before accepting FTA approval, President Obama issued the “Action Plan Related to Labor Rights” on April 6. According to the press release, this FTA “will expand U.S. goods exports alone by more than $1.1 billion and give key U.S. goods and services duty-free access in sectors from manufacturing to agriculture. It will increase U.S. GDP by $2.5 billion and support thousands of additional U.S. jobs.” (www.whitehouse.gov)
The website includes a fact sheet and the steps that the Colombian government will supposedly take to ensure the safety of unionized workers. It establishes quick deadlines for many tasks geared to protect workers and prosecute crimes, which should be finished by this summer. It sounds good, but has no provision for enforcement.
The Colombian Unitary Confederation of Workers and the Colombian Confederation of Workers issued a joint declaration opposing the deal based on the lack of enforcement and the complete disregard of the unions’ involvement. The two union groups consider the crimes that the U.S.-allied state has committed against its people too immense and horrific to quickly pass a deal without addressing them in a serious way.
The declaration reads in part: “It is a free trade agreement that will have few impacts in the generation of new productive activities and services in Colombia, and on the other hand, puts at risk of destruction a considerable number of companies. In terms of employment, the FTA will not generate new jobs, because those generated in some sectors will be lost in others.
“It’s a free trade agreement with a country that has been and continues to suffer from a great humanitarian tragedy, which has meant the death of hundreds of thousands of people, the disappearance of more than 40,000, the displacement of about 4 million and the usurpation of more than 12 million acres of productive land.
“Colombia has suffered the most serious anti-union violence occurring throughout the world; from 1986 to the present day, 2,861 trade unionists have been killed and more than 11,000 acts of violence against trade unionists have been committed. The previous year, 52 unionists were killed, during this year four, and 20 during the government of President Santos.
“We are convinced that the action plan agreed between Presidents Obama and Santos will not contribute to substantially improve this picture of systematic violations of fundamental human rights. Promises are insufficient. ... What is required are concrete, durable and verifiable facts.”
In the U.S., the United Steelworkers, the Teamsters and the Service Employees unions have issued statements opposing the trade plan and supporting their Colombian sisters and brothers.
Who is Santos?
Since the current president of Colombia has been portrayed as a “democratic,” “just” and “peaceful” person, especially compared with his paramilitary predecessor Alvaro Uribe, it is important to set the record straight.
First and foremost we should point out that Santos, a graduate of U.S. and British universities and a member of the Colombian oligarchy who took office in August, was Uribe’s loyal Minister of Defense from 2006 to 2009 and was thus responsible for heinous crimes. Among them, the infamous case of the “false positives.” These were civilians, many of them youth, assassinated by the Colombian armed forces, who were later called “guerrillas killed in combat.”
According to an article by Hernando Calvo Ospina, a Colombian journalist exiled in France, “When Santos arrived at the Ministry, in July 2006, there were 274 cases of ‘false positives.’ The following year, it climbed to the top: 505 murdered.” (Le Monde Diplomatique en español, March 2011)
Santos was also responsible for the bombing of the FARC encampment on the border of Ecuador that killed Commander Raul Reyes and 24 other people, including four Mexican and one Ecuadorian student.
During his presidency, Santos continues the close relationship with Washington, particularly in military matters. He has committed Colombian military counterinsurgent units to the U.S. war against Afghanistan and has sent the Colombian military to train armies in other U.S.-allied countries in Latin America.
In Colombia Santos continues Uribe’s criminal policies, only under a different name. Uribe called the violent anti-insurgency military campaign responsible for thousands of murders of unionists, peasants, Indigenous people, journalists and other social activists “Democratic Security.” Santos renamed it “Democratic Prosperity.”
Now Santos says the murderous paramilitaries no longer exist and what’s left is just a “criminal gang” they call BACRIM.
Why the U.S./Colombia FTA now?
Despite the many “democratic” justifications both governments expound, they are in reality pursuing the deal to benefit their financial interests at the expense of working people in both countries who are already suffering from the economic crisis.
Resistance to the trade pact, however, is palpable in Colombia and in the U.S. On April 7, there were successful demonstrations in Colombia where different sectors, including unions, students, retired workers, teachers, small business owners and broad social movements, came together to oppose the neoliberal plan.
U.S. ambassador in Ecuador refuses explanation
On April 5, U.S. Ambassador in Ecuador Heather Hodges refused to give any explanation to Rafael Correa’s government regarding a cable Wikileaks revealed. In that cable Hodges wrote that there was widespread corruption within Ecuadorean police and that President Correa had appointed a former police commander, knowing he was corrupt. (Telesur)
Ecuadorian Foreign Affairs Minister Ricardo Patiño demanded an explanation. Hodges replied only that the cables had been stolen and neither she nor Washington had anything to say.
“Considering the response insufficient and unsatisfactory, the government of Ecuador decided to consider Hodges as a persona non grata and asked her to leave the country in the shortest possible time.” (andes.info.ec, April 5)
On April 7 the Obama administration, instead of responding to Correa’s request for an explanation, expelled the Ecuadorian ambassador.
President Correa has held several interviews and radio talks on this issue. Correa said that although he did not personally know former Police Chief Jaime Hurtado, this officer will, in due time, “have to defend his honor.” Correa also said that Hurtado was probably attacked “because Hurtado was the one who helped disband the [police] units that were financed by the CIA and were paid by the U.S. embassy.” (andes.info.ec, April 7)
Correa described Hodges’ behavior as shameful, stating that “in Latin America at least, colonialism was finished and what they will encounter in Ecuador is dignity and sovereignty.”
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Published Apr 17, 2011 9:11 PM
The U.S. government’s façade that it is a champion of democracy and respectful of other countries’ sovereignty has once again been torn away by Washington’s recent treatment of two distinct governments in two Latin American countries: Colombia and Ecuador.
On April 6 President Barack Obama, praising Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, reached a deal to push through the anti-worker Free Trade Agreement between the two countries. The pact has been stalled due to Colombia’s horrible record of crimes against unionists.
A day earlier, the U.S. State Department refused to apologize or even explain a letter attacking Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa written by the U.S. ambassador in that country and exposed through Wikileaks.
FTA with Colombia attacks working people
Reversing his previous position demanding union rights in Colombia before accepting FTA approval, President Obama issued the “Action Plan Related to Labor Rights” on April 6. According to the press release, this FTA “will expand U.S. goods exports alone by more than $1.1 billion and give key U.S. goods and services duty-free access in sectors from manufacturing to agriculture. It will increase U.S. GDP by $2.5 billion and support thousands of additional U.S. jobs.” (www.whitehouse.gov)
The website includes a fact sheet and the steps that the Colombian government will supposedly take to ensure the safety of unionized workers. It establishes quick deadlines for many tasks geared to protect workers and prosecute crimes, which should be finished by this summer. It sounds good, but has no provision for enforcement.
The Colombian Unitary Confederation of Workers and the Colombian Confederation of Workers issued a joint declaration opposing the deal based on the lack of enforcement and the complete disregard of the unions’ involvement. The two union groups consider the crimes that the U.S.-allied state has committed against its people too immense and horrific to quickly pass a deal without addressing them in a serious way.
The declaration reads in part: “It is a free trade agreement that will have few impacts in the generation of new productive activities and services in Colombia, and on the other hand, puts at risk of destruction a considerable number of companies. In terms of employment, the FTA will not generate new jobs, because those generated in some sectors will be lost in others.
“It’s a free trade agreement with a country that has been and continues to suffer from a great humanitarian tragedy, which has meant the death of hundreds of thousands of people, the disappearance of more than 40,000, the displacement of about 4 million and the usurpation of more than 12 million acres of productive land.
“Colombia has suffered the most serious anti-union violence occurring throughout the world; from 1986 to the present day, 2,861 trade unionists have been killed and more than 11,000 acts of violence against trade unionists have been committed. The previous year, 52 unionists were killed, during this year four, and 20 during the government of President Santos.
“We are convinced that the action plan agreed between Presidents Obama and Santos will not contribute to substantially improve this picture of systematic violations of fundamental human rights. Promises are insufficient. ... What is required are concrete, durable and verifiable facts.”
In the U.S., the United Steelworkers, the Teamsters and the Service Employees unions have issued statements opposing the trade plan and supporting their Colombian sisters and brothers.
Who is Santos?
Since the current president of Colombia has been portrayed as a “democratic,” “just” and “peaceful” person, especially compared with his paramilitary predecessor Alvaro Uribe, it is important to set the record straight.
First and foremost we should point out that Santos, a graduate of U.S. and British universities and a member of the Colombian oligarchy who took office in August, was Uribe’s loyal Minister of Defense from 2006 to 2009 and was thus responsible for heinous crimes. Among them, the infamous case of the “false positives.” These were civilians, many of them youth, assassinated by the Colombian armed forces, who were later called “guerrillas killed in combat.”
According to an article by Hernando Calvo Ospina, a Colombian journalist exiled in France, “When Santos arrived at the Ministry, in July 2006, there were 274 cases of ‘false positives.’ The following year, it climbed to the top: 505 murdered.” (Le Monde Diplomatique en español, March 2011)
Santos was also responsible for the bombing of the FARC encampment on the border of Ecuador that killed Commander Raul Reyes and 24 other people, including four Mexican and one Ecuadorian student.
During his presidency, Santos continues the close relationship with Washington, particularly in military matters. He has committed Colombian military counterinsurgent units to the U.S. war against Afghanistan and has sent the Colombian military to train armies in other U.S.-allied countries in Latin America.
In Colombia Santos continues Uribe’s criminal policies, only under a different name. Uribe called the violent anti-insurgency military campaign responsible for thousands of murders of unionists, peasants, Indigenous people, journalists and other social activists “Democratic Security.” Santos renamed it “Democratic Prosperity.”
Now Santos says the murderous paramilitaries no longer exist and what’s left is just a “criminal gang” they call BACRIM.
Why the U.S./Colombia FTA now?
Despite the many “democratic” justifications both governments expound, they are in reality pursuing the deal to benefit their financial interests at the expense of working people in both countries who are already suffering from the economic crisis.
Resistance to the trade pact, however, is palpable in Colombia and in the U.S. On April 7, there were successful demonstrations in Colombia where different sectors, including unions, students, retired workers, teachers, small business owners and broad social movements, came together to oppose the neoliberal plan.
U.S. ambassador in Ecuador refuses explanation
On April 5, U.S. Ambassador in Ecuador Heather Hodges refused to give any explanation to Rafael Correa’s government regarding a cable Wikileaks revealed. In that cable Hodges wrote that there was widespread corruption within Ecuadorean police and that President Correa had appointed a former police commander, knowing he was corrupt. (Telesur)
Ecuadorian Foreign Affairs Minister Ricardo Patiño demanded an explanation. Hodges replied only that the cables had been stolen and neither she nor Washington had anything to say.
“Considering the response insufficient and unsatisfactory, the government of Ecuador decided to consider Hodges as a persona non grata and asked her to leave the country in the shortest possible time.” (andes.info.ec, April 5)
On April 7 the Obama administration, instead of responding to Correa’s request for an explanation, expelled the Ecuadorian ambassador.
President Correa has held several interviews and radio talks on this issue. Correa said that although he did not personally know former Police Chief Jaime Hurtado, this officer will, in due time, “have to defend his honor.” Correa also said that Hurtado was probably attacked “because Hurtado was the one who helped disband the [police] units that were financed by the CIA and were paid by the U.S. embassy.” (andes.info.ec, April 7)
Correa described Hodges’ behavior as shameful, stating that “in Latin America at least, colonialism was finished and what they will encounter in Ecuador is dignity and sovereignty.”
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Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Lenin's Lecture on the 1905 Revolution
From: Marxist Internet Archive
These words of Lenin are very important in light of recent events in Wisconsin, Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere. It reflects on the role revolutionaries in uprisings.
My young friends and comrades,
Today is the twelfth anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”, which is rightly regarded as the beginning of the Russian revolution.
Thousands of workers—not Social-Democrats, but loyal God-fearing subjects—led by the priest Gapon, streamed from all parts of the capital to its centre, to the square in front of the Winter Palace, to submit a petition to the tsar. The workers carried icons. In a letter to the tsar, their then leader, Gapon, had guaranteed his personal safety and asked him to appear before the people.
Troops were called out. Uhlans and Cossacks attacked the crowd with drawn swords. They fired on the unarmed workers, who on their bended knees implored the Cossacks to allow them to go to the tsar. Over one thousand were killed and over two thousand wounded on that day, according to police reports. The indignation of the workers was indescribable.
Such is the general picture of January 22, 1905—“Bloody Sunday”.
That you may understand more clearly the historic significance of this event, I shall quote a few passages from the workers’ petition. It begins with the following words:
“We workers, inhabitants of St. Petersburg, have come to Thee. We are unfortunate, reviled slaves, weighed down by despotism and tyranny. Our patience exhausted, we ceased work and begged our masters to give us only that without which life is a torment. But this was refused; to the employers everything seemed unlawful. We are here, many thou sands of us. Like the whole of the Russian people, we have no human rights whatever. Owing to the deeds of Thy officials we have become slaves.”
The petition contains the following demands: amnesty, civil liberties, fair wages, gradual transfer of the land to the people, convocation of a constituent assembly on the basis of universal and equal suffrage. It ends with the following words:
“Sire, do not refuse aid to Thy people! Demolish the wall that separates Thee from Thy people. Order and promise that our requests will be granted, and Thou wilt make Russia happy; if not, we are ready to die on this very spot. We have only two roads: freedom and happiness, or the grave.”
Reading it now, this petition of uneducated, illiterate workers, led by a patriarchal priest, creates a strange impression. Involuntarily one compares this naïve petition with the present peace resolutions of the social-pacifists, the would-be socialists who in reality are bourgeois phrase-mongers. The unenlightened workers of pre-revolutionary Russia did not know that the tsar was the head of the ruling class, the class, namely, of big landowners, already bound by a thousand ties with the big bourgeoisie and prepared to defend their monopoly, privileges and profits by every means of violence. The social-pacifists of today, who pretend to be “highly educated” people—no joking—do not realise that it is just as foolish to expect a “democratic” peace from bourgeois governments that are waging an imperialist predatory war, as it was to believe that peaceful petitions would induce the bloody tsar to grant democratic reforms.
Nevertheless, there is a great difference between the two—the present-day social-pacifists are, to a large extent, hypocrites, who strive by gentle admonitions to divert the people from the revolutionary struggle, whereas the uneducated workers in pre-revolutionary Russia proved by their deeds that they were straightforward people awakened to political consciousness for the first time.
It is in this awakening of tremendous masses of the people to political consciousness and revolutionary struggle that the historic significance of January 22, 1905 lies.
“There is not yet a revolutionary people in Russia,” wrote Mr. Pyotr Struve, then leader of the Russian liberals and publisher abroad of an illegal, uncensored organ, two days before “Bloody Sunday”. The idea that an illiterate peasant country could produce a revolutionary people seemed utterly absurd to this “highly educated”, supercilious and extremely stupid leader of the bourgeois reformists. So deep was the conviction of the reformists of those days—as of the reformists of today—that, a real revolution was impossible!
Prior to January 22 (or January 9, old style), 1905, the revolutionary party of Russia consisted of a small group of people, and the reformists of those days (exactly like the reformists of today) derisively called us a “sect”. Several hundred revolutionary organisers, several thousand members of local organisations, half a dozen revolutionary papers appearing not more frequently than once a month, published mainly abroad and smuggled into Russia with incredible difficulty and at the cost of many sacrifices—such were the revolutionary parties in Russia, and the revolutionary Social-Democracy in particular, prior to January 22, 1905. This circumstance gave the narrow-minded and overbearing reformists formal justification for their claim that there was not yet a revolutionary people in Russia.
Within a few months, however, the picture changed completely. The hundreds of revolutionary Social-Democrats “suddenly” grew into thousands; the thousands became the leaders of between two arid three million proletarians. The proletarian struggle produced widespread ferment, often revolutionary movements among the peasant masses, fifty to a hundred million strong; the peasant movement had its reverberations in the army and led to soldiers’ revolts, to armed clashes between one section of the army and another. In this manner a colossal country, with a population of 130,000,000, went into the revolution; in this way, dormant Russia was transformed into a Russia of a revolutionary proletariat and a revolutionary people.
It is necessary to study this transformation, understand why it was possible, its methods and ways, so to speak.
The principal factor in this transformation was the mass strike. The peculiarity of the Russian revolution is that it was a bourgeois-democratic revolution in its social content, but a proletarian revolution in its methods of struggle. It was a bourgeois-democratic revolution since its immediate aim, which it could achieve directly and with its own forces, was a democratic republic, the eight-hour day and confiscation of the immense estates of the nobility—all the measures the French bourgeois revolution in 1792–93 had almost completely achieved.
At the same time, the Russian revolution was also a proletarian revolution, not only in the sense that the proletariat was the leading force, the vanguard of the movement, but also in the sense that a specifically proletarian weapon of struggle—the strike—was the principal means of bringing the masses into motion and the most characteristic phenomenon in the wave-like rise of decisive events.
The Russian revolution was the first, though certainly not the last, great revolution in history in which the mass political strike played an extraordinarily important part. It may even be said that the events of the Russian revolution and the sequence of its political forms cannot be understood without a study of the strike statistics to disclose the basis of these events and this sequence of forms.
I know perfectly well that dry statistics are hardly suit able in a lecture and are likely to bore the hearer. Nevertheless, I cannot refrain from quoting a few figures, in order that you may be able to appreciate the real objective basis of the whole movement. The average annual number of strikers in Russia during the ten years preceding the revolution was 43,000, which means 430,000 for the decade. In January 1905, the first month of the revolution, the number of strikers was 440,000. In other words, there were more strikers in one month than in the whole of the preceding decade!
In no capitalist country in the world, not even in the most advanced countries like England, the United States of America, or Germany, has there been anything to match the tremendous Russian strike movement of 1905. The total number of strikers was 2,800,000, more than two times the number of factory workers in the country! This, of course, does not prove that the urban factory workers of Russia were more educated, or stronger, or more adapted to the struggle than their brothers in Western Europe. The very opposite is true.
But it does show how great the dormant energy of the proletariat can be. It shows that in a revolutionary epoch—I say this without the slightest exaggeration, on the basis of the most accurate data of Russian history—the proletariat can generate fighting energy a hundred times greater than in ordinary, peaceful times. It shows that up to 1905 mankind did not yet know what a great, what a tremendous exertion of effort the proletariat is, and will be, capable of in a fight for really great aims, and one waged in a really revolutionary manner!
The history of the Russian revolution shows that it was the vanguard, the finest elements of the wage-workers, that fought with the greatest tenacity and the greatest devotion. The larger the mills and factories involved, the more stubborn were the strikes, and the more often did they recur during the year. The bigger the city, the more important was the part the proletariat played in the struggle. Three big cities, St. Petersburg, Riga and Warsaw, which have the largest and most class-conscious working-class element, show an immeasurably greater number of strikers, in relation to all workers, than any other city, and, of course, much greater than the rural districts.[1]
In Russia—as probably in other capitalist countries—the metalworkers represent the vanguard of the proletariat. In this connection we note the following instructive fact: taking all industries, the number of persons involved in strikes in 1905 was 160 per hundred workers employed, but in the metal industry the number was 320 per hundred! It is estimated that in consequence of the 1905 strikes every Russian factory worker lost an average of ten rubles in wages—approximately 26 francs at the pre-war rate of exchange—sacrificing this money, as it were, for the sake of the struggle. But if we take the metalworkers, we find that the loss in wages was three times as great! The finest elements of the working class marched in the forefront, giving leadership to the hesitant, rousing the dormant and encouraging the weak.
A distinctive feature was the manner in which economic strikes were interwoven with political strikes during the revolution. There can be no doubt that only this very close link-up of the two forms of strike gave the movement its great power. The broad masses of the exploited could not have been drawn into the revolutionary movement had they not been given daily examples of how the wage-workers in the various industries were forcing the capitalists to grant immediate, direct improvements in their conditions. This struggle imbued the masses of the Russian people with a new spirit. Only then did the old serf-ridden, sluggish, patriarchal, pious and obedient Russia cast out the old Adam; only then did the Russian people obtain a really democratic and really revolutionary education.
When the bourgeois gentry and their uncritical echoers, the social-reformists, talk priggishly about the “education” of the masses, they usually mean something schoolmasterly, pedantic, something that demoralises the masses and instils in them bourgeois prejudices.
The real education of the masses can never be separated from their independent political, and especially revolutionary, struggle. Only struggle educates the exploited class. Only struggle discloses to it the magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will. That is why even reactionaries bad to admit that the year 1905, the year of struggle, the “mad year”, definitely buried patriarchal Russia.
Let us examine more closely the relation, in the 1905 strike struggles, between the metalworkers and the textile workers. The metalworkers are the best paid, the most class-conscious and best educated proletarians: the textile workers, who in 1905 were two and a half times more numerous than the metalworkers, are the most backward and the worst paid body of workers in Russia, and in very many cases have not yet definitely severed connections with their peasant kinsmen in the village. This brings us to a very important circumstance.
Throughout the whole of 1905, the metalworkers strikes show a preponderance of political over economic strikes, though this preponderance was far greater toward the end of the year than at the beginning. Among the textile workers, on the other hand, we observe an overwhelming preponderance of economic strikes at the beginning of 1905, and it is only at the end of the year that we get a preponderance of political strikes. From this it follows quite obviously that the economic struggle, the struggle for immediate and direct improvement of conditions, is alone capable of rousing the most backward strata of the exploited masses, gives them a real education and transforms them—during a revolutionary period—into an army of political fighters within the space of a few months.
Of course, for this to happen, it was necessary for the vanguard of the workers not to regard the class struggle as a struggle in the interests of a thin upper stratum—a conception the reformists all too often try to instil—but for the proletariat to come forward as the real vanguard of the majority of the exploited and draw that majority into the struggle, as was the case in Russia in 1905, and as must be, and certainly will be, the case in the impending proletarian revolution in Europe.[2]
The beginning of 1905 brought the first great wave of strikes that swept the entire country. As early as the spring of that year we see the rise of the first big, not only economic, but also political peasant movement in Russia. The importance of this historical turning-point will be appreciated if it is borne in mind that the Russian peasantry was liberated from the severest form of serfdom only in 1861, that the majority of the peasants are illiterate, that they live in indescribable poverty, oppressed by the landlords, deluded by the priests and isolated from each other by vast distances and an almost complete absence of roads.
Russia witnessed the first revolutionary movement against tsarism in 1825, a movement represented almost exclusively by noblemen. Thereafter and up to 1881, when Alexander II was assassinated by the terrorists, the movement was led by middle-class intellectuals. They displayed supreme self-sacrifice and astonished the whole world by the heroism of their terrorist methods of struggle. Their sacrifices were certainly not in vain. They doubtlessly contributed—directly or indirectly—to the subsequent revolutionary education of the Russian people. But they did not, and could not, achieve their immediate aim of generating a people’s revolution.
That was achieved only by the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. Only the waves of mass strikes that swept over the whole country, strikes connected with the severe lessons of the imperialist Russo-Japanese War, roused the broad masses of peasants from their lethargy. The word “striker” acquired an entirely new meaning among the peasants: it signified a rebel, a revolutionary, a term previously expressed by the word “student”. But the “student” belonged to the middle class, to the “learned”, to the “gentry”, and was therefore alien to the people. The “striker”, on the other hand, was of the people; he belonged to the exploited class. Deported from St. Petersburg, he often returned to the village where he told his fellow-villagers of the conflagration which was spreading to all the cities and would destroy both the capitalists and the nobility. A new type appeared in the Russian village—the class-conscious young peasant. He associated with “strikers”, he read newspapers, he told the peasants about events in the cities, explained to his fellow-villagers the meaning of political demands, and urged them to fight the landowning nobility, the priests and the government officials.
The peasants would gather in groups to discuss their conditions, and gradually they were drawn into the struggle. Large crowds attacked the big estates, set fire to the manor-houses and appropriated supplies, seized grain and other foodstuffs, killed policemen and demanded transfer to the people of the huge estates.
In the spring of 1905, the peasant movement was only just beginning, involving only a minority, approximately one-seventh, of the uyezds.
But the combination of the proletarian mass strikes in the cities with the peasant movement in the rural areas was sufficient to shake the “firmest” and last prop of tsarism. I refer to the army.
There began a series of mutinies in the navy and the army. During the revolution, every fresh wave of strikes and of the peasant movement was accompanied by mutinies in all parts of Russia. The most well-known of these is the mutiny on the Black Sea cruiser Prince Potemkin, which was seized by the mutineers and took part in the revolution in Odessa. After the defeat of the revolution and unsuccessful attempts to seize other ports (Feodosia in the Crimea, for instance), it surrendered to the Rumanian authorities in Constantsa.
Permit me to relate in detail one small episode of the Black Sea mutiny in order to give you a concrete picture of events at the peak of the movement.
“Gatherings of revolutionary workers and sailors were being organised more and more frequently. Since servicemen were not allowed to attend workers’ meetings, large crowds of workers came to military meetings. They came in thousands. The idea of joint action found a lively response. Delegates were elected from the companies where political understanding among the men was higher.
“The military authorities thereupon decided to take action. Some of the officers tried to deliver ‘patriotic’ speeches at the meetings but failed dismally: the sailors, who were accustomed to debating, put their officers to shameful flight. In view of this, it was decided to prohibit meetings altogether. On the morning of November 24, 1905, a company of sailors, in full combat kit, was posted at the gates of the naval bar racks. Rear-Admiral Pisarevsky gave the order in a loud voice: ‘No one is to leave the barracks! Shoot anyone who disobeys!’ A sailor named Petrov, of the company that had been given that order, stepped forth from the ranks,load ed his rifle in the view of all,and with one shot killed Captain Stein of the Belostok Regiment, and with another wounded Rear-Admiral Pisarevsky. ‘Arrest him!’ one of the officers shouted. No one budged. Petrov threw down his rifle, exclaiming: ‘Why don’t you move? Take me!’ He was arrested. The sailors, who rushed from every side, angrily demanded his release, declaring that they vouched for him. Excitement ran high.
“‘Petrov, the shot was an accident, wasn’t it?’ asked one of the officers, trying to find a way out of the situation.
“‘What do you mean, an accident? I stepped forward, loaded and took aim. Is that an accident?’
“‘They demand your release....’
“And Petrov was released. The sailors, however, were not content with that; all officers on duty were arrested, disarmed, and locked up at headquarters.... Sailor delegates, about forty in number, conferred the whole night. The decision was to release the officers, but not to permit them to enter the barracks again.”
This small incident clearly shows you how events developed in most of the mutinies. The revolutionary ferment among the people could not but spread to the armed forces. It is indicative that the leaders of the movement came from those elements in the army and the navy who had been recruited mainly from among the industrial workers and of whom more technical training was required, for instance, the sappers. The broad masses, however, were still too naïve, their mood was too passive, too good-natured, too Christian. They flared up rather quickly; any instance of injustice, excessively harsh treatment by the officers, bad food, etc., could lead to revolt. But what they lacked was persistence, a clear perception of aim, a clear understanding that only the most vigorous continuation of the armed struggle, only a victory over all the military and civil authorities, only the overthrow of the government and the seizure of power throughout the country could guarantee the success of the revolution.
The broad masses of sailors and soldiers were easily roused to revolt. But with equal light-heartedness they foolishly released arrested officers. They allowed the officers to pacify them by promises and persuasion: in this way the officers gained precious time, brought in reinforcements, broke the strength of the rebels, and then followed the most brutal suppression of the movement and the execution of its leaders.
A comparison of these 1905 mutinies with the Decembrist uprising of 1825 is particularly interesting. In 1825 the leaders of the political movement were almost exclusively officers, and officers drawn from the nobility. They had become infected, through contact, with the democratic ideas of Europe during the Napoleonic wars. The mass of the soldiers, who at that time were still serfs, remained passive.
The history of 1905 presents a totally different picture. With few exceptions, the mood of the officers was either bourgeois-liberal, reformist, or frankly counter-revolutionary. The workers and peasants in military uniform were the soul of the mutinies. The movement spread to all sections of the people, and for the first time in Russia’s history involved the majority of the exploited. But what it lacked was, on the one hand, persistence and determination among the masses—they were too much afflicted with the malady of trustfulness—and, on the other, organisation of revolutionary Social-Democratic workers in military uniform—they lacked the ability to take the leadership into their own hands, march at the head of the revolutionary army and launch an offensive against the government.
I might remark, incidentally, that these two shortcomings will—more slowly, perhaps, than we would like, but surely—be eliminated not only by the general development of capitalism, but also by the present war...[3]
At any rate, the history of the Russian revolution, like the history of the Paris Commune of 1871, teaches us the incontrovertible lesson that militarism can never and under no circumstances be defeated and destroyed, except by a victorious struggle of one section of the national army against the other section. It is not sufficient simply to denounce, revile and “repudiate” militarism, to criticise and prove that it is harmful; it is foolish peacefully to refuse to perform military service. The task is to keep the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat tense and train its best elements, not only in a general way, hut concretely, so that when popular ferment reaches the highest pitch, they will put themselves at the head of the revolutionary army.
The day-to-day experience of any capitalist country teaches us the same lesson. Every “minor” crisis that such a country experiences discloses to us in miniature the elements, the rudiments, of the battles that will inevitably take place on a large scale during a big crisis. What else, for instance, is a strike if not a minor crisis of capitalist society? Was not the Prussian Minister for Internal Affairs, Herr von Puttkammer, right when he coined the famous phrase: “In every strike there lurks the hydra of revolution”? Does not the calling out of troops during strikes in all, even the most peaceful, the most “democratic”—save the mark—capitalist countries show how things will shape out in a really big crisis?
But to return to the history of the Russian revolution.
I have tried to show you how the workers’ strikes stirred up the whole country and the broadest, most backward strata of the exploited, how the peasant movement began, and how it was accompanied by mutiny in the armed forces.
The movement reached its zenith in the autumn of 1905. On August 19 (6), the tsar issued a manifesto on the introduction of popular representation. The so-called Bulygin Duma was to be created oil the basis of a suffrage embracing a ridiculously small number of voters, and this peculiar “parliament” was to have no legislative powers whatever, only advisory, consultative powers!
The bourgeoisie, the liberals, the opportunists were ready to grasp with both hands this “gift” of the frightened tsar. Like all reformists, our reformists of 1905 could not understand that historic situations arise when reforms, and particularly promises of reforms, pursue only one aim: to allay the unrest of the people, force the revolutionary class to cease, or at least slacken, its struggle.
The Russian revolutionary Social-Democracy was well aware of the real nature of this grant of an illusory constitution in August 1905. That is why, without a moment’s hesitation, it issued the slogans: “Down with the advisory Duma! Boycott the Duma! Down with the tsarist government! Continue the revolutionary struggle to overthrow it! Not the tsar, but a provisional revolutionary government must convene Russia’s first real, popular representative assembly!”
History proved that the revolutionary Social-Democrats were right, for the Bulygin Duma was never convened. It was swept away by the revolutionary storm before it could be convened. And this storm forced the tsar to promulgate a new electoral law, which provided for a considerable increase in the number of voters, and to recognise the legislative character of the Duma.[4]
October and December 1905 marked the highest point in the rising tide of the Russian revolution. All the well-springs of the people’s revolutionary strength flowed in a wider stream than ever before. The number of strikers—which in January 1905, as I have already told you, was 440,000—reached over half a million in October 1905 (in a single month!). To this number, which applies only to factory workers, must be added several hundred thousand railway workers, postal and telegraph employees, etc.
The general railway strike stopped all rail traffic and paralysed the power of the government in the most effective manner. The doors of the universities were flung wide open, and the lecture halls, which in peace time were used solely to befuddle youthful minds with pedantic professorial wisdom and to turn the students into docile servants of the bourgeoisie and tsarism, now became the scene of public meetings at which thousands of workers, artisans and office workers openly and freely discussed political issues.
Freedom of the press was won. The censorship was simply ignored. No publisher dared send the obligatory censor copy to the authorities, and the authorities did not dare take any measure against this. For the first time in Russian history, revolutionary newspapers appeared freely in St. Petersburg and other towns. In St. Petersburg alone, three Social-Democratic daily papers were published, with circulations ranging from 50,000 to 100,000.
The proletariat, marched at the head of the movement. It set out to win the eight-hour day by revolutionary action. “An Eight-Hour Day and Arms!” was the fighting slogan of the St. Petersburg proletariat. That the fate of the revolution could, and would, be decided only by armed struggle was becoming obvious to an ever-increasing mass of workers.
In the fire of battle, a peculiar mass organisation was formed, the famous Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, comprising delegates from all factories. In several cities these Soviets of Workers’ Deputies began more and more to play the part of a provisional revolutionary government, the part of organs and leaders of the uprising. Attempts were made to organise Soviets of Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Deputies and to combine them with the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.
For a time several cities in Russia became something in the nature of small local “republics”. The government authorities were deposed and the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies actually functioned as the new government. Unfortunately, these periods were all too brief, the “victories” were too weak, too isolated.
The peasant movement in the autumn of 1905 reached still greater dimensions. Over one-third of all the uyezds were affected by the so-called “peasant disorders” and regular peasant uprisings. The peasants burned down no less than two thousand estates and distributed among themselves the food stocks of which the predatory nobility had robbed the people.
Unfortunately, this work was not thorough enough! Unfortunately, the peasants destroyed only one-fifteenth of the total number of landed estates, only one-fifteenth part of what they should have destroyed in order to wipe the shame of large feudal landownership from the face of the Russian earth. Unfortunately, the peasants were too scattered, too isolated from each other in their actions; they were not organised enough, not aggressive enough, and therein lies one of the fundamental reasons for the defeat of the revolution.
A movement for national liberation flared up among the oppressed peoples of Russia. Over one-half, almost three-fifths (to be exact, 57 per cent) of the population of Russia is subject to national oppression; they are not even free to use their native language, they are forcibly Russified. The Moslems, for instance, who number tens of millions, were quick to organise a Moslem League—this was a time of rapid growth of all manner of organisations.
The following instance will give the audience, particularly the youth, an example of how at that time the movement for national liberation in Russia rose in conjunction with the labour movement.
In December 1905, Polish children in hundreds of schools burned all Russian books, pictures and portraits of the tsar, and attacked and drove out the Russian teachers and their Russian schoolfellows, shouting: “Get out! Go back to Russia!” The Polish secondary school pupils put forward, among others, the following demands: (1) all secondary schools must be under the control of a Soviet of Workers’ Deputies; (2) joint pupils’ and workers’ meetings to be held in school premises; (3) secondary school pupils to be allowed to wear red blouses as a token of adherence to the future proletarian republic.
The higher the tide of the movement rose, the more vigorously and decisively did the reaction arm itself to fight the revolution. The Russian Revolution of 1905 confirmed the truth of what Karl Kautsky wrote in 1902 in his book Social Revolution (he was still, incidentally, a revolutionary Marxist and not, as at present, a champion of social-patriotism and opportunism). This is what he wrote:
“...The impending revolution ... will be less like a spontaneous uprising against the government and more like a protracted civil war.”
That is how it was, and undoubtedly that is how it will be in the coming European revolution!
Tsarism vented its hatred particularly upon the Jews. On the one hand, the Jews furnished a particularly high percentage (compared with the total Jewish population) of leaders of the revolutionary movement. And now, too, it should be noted to the credit of the Jews, they furnish a relatively high percentage of internationalists, compared with other nations. On the other hand, tsarism adroitly exploited the basest anti-Jewish prejudices of the most ignorant strata of the population in order to organise, if not to lead directly, pogroms—over 4,000 were killed and more than 10,000 mutilated in 100 towns. These atrocious massacres of peaceful Jews, their wives and children roused disgust throughout the civilised world. I have in mind, of course, the disgust of the truly democratic elements of the civilised world, and these are exclusively the socialist workers, the proletarians.
Even in the freest, even in the republican countries of Western Europe, the bourgeoisie manages very well to combine its hypocritical phrases about “Russian atrocities” with the most shameless financial transactions, particularly with financial support of tsarism and imperialist exploitation of Russia through export of capital, etc.
The climax of the 1905 Revolution came in the December uprising in Moscow. For nine days a small number of rebels, of organised and armed workers—there were not more than eight thousand—fought against the tsar’s government, which dared not trust the Moscow garrison. In fact, it had to keep it locked up, and was able to quell the rebellion only by bringing in the Semenovsky Regiment from St. Petersburg.
The bourgeoisie likes to describe the Moscow uprising as something artificial, and to treat it with ridicule. For instance, in German so-called “scientific” literature, Herr Professor Max Weber, in his lengthy survey of Russia’s political development, refers to the Moscow uprising as a “putsch”. “The Lenin group,” says this “highly learned” Herr Professor, “and a section of the Socialist-Revolutionaries had long prepared for this senseless uprising.”
To properly assess this piece of professorial wisdom of the cowardly bourgeoisie, one need only recall the strike statistics. In January 1905, only 123,000 were involved in purely political strikes, in October the figure was 330,000, and in December the maximum was reached—370,000 taking part in purely political strikes in a single month! Let us recall, too, the progress of the revolution, the peasant and soldier uprisings, and we shall see that the bourgeois “scientific” view of the December uprising is not only absurd. It is a subterfuge resorted to by the representatives of the cowardly bourgeoisie, which sees in the proletariat its most dangerous class enemy.
In reality, the inexorable trend of the Russian revolution was towards an armed, decisive battle between the tsarist government and the vanguard of the class-conscious proletariat.
I have already pointed out, in my previous remarks, wherein lay the weakness of the Russian revolution that led to its temporary defeat.
The suppression of the December uprising marked the beginning of the ebb of the revolution. But in this period, too, extremely interesting moments are to be observed. Suffice it to recall that twice the foremost militant elements of the working class tried to check the retreat of the revolution and to prepare a new offensive.
But my time has nearly expired, and I do not want to abuse the patience of my audience. I think, however, that I have outlined the most important aspects of the revolution—its class character, its driving forces and its methods of struggle—as fully as so big a subject can be dealt with in a brief lecture.[5]
A few brief remarks concerning the world significance of the Russian revolution.
Geographically, economically and historically, Russia belongs not only to Europe, but also to Asia. That is why the Russian revolution succeeded not only in finally awakening Europe’s biggest and most backward country and in creating a revolutionary people led by a revolutionary proletariat.
It achieved more than that. The Russian revolution engendered a movement throughout the whole of Asia. The revolutions in Turkey, Persia and China prove that the mighty uprising of 1905 left a deep imprint, and that its influence, expressed in the forward movement of hundreds and hundreds of millions, is ineradicable.
In an indirect way, the Russian revolution influenced also the countries of the West. One must not forget that news of the tsar’s constitutional manifesto, on reaching Vienna on October 30, 1905, played a decisive part in the final victory of universal suffrage in Austria.
A telegram bearing the news was placed on the speaker’s rostrum at the Congress of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party just as Comrade Ellenbogen—at that time he was not yet a social-patriot, but a comrade—was delivering his report on the political strike. The discussion was immediately adjourned. “Our place is in the streets!”—was the cry that resounded through the hall where the delegates of the Austrian Social-Democracy were assembled. And the following days witnessed the biggest street demonstrations in Vienna and barricades in Prague. The battle for universal suffrage in Austria was won.
We very often meet West-Europeans who talk of the Russian revolution as if events, the course and methods of struggle in that backward country have very little resemblance to West-European patterns, and, therefore, can hardly have any practical significance.
Nothing could be more erroneous.
The forms and occasions for the impending battles in the coming European revolution will doubtlessly differ in many respects from the forms of the Russian revolution.
Nevertheless, the Russian revolution—precisely because of its proletarian character, in that particular sense of which I have spoken—is the prologue to the coming European revolution. Undoubtedly, this coming revolution can only be a proletarian revolution, and in an oven more profound sense of the word: a proletarian, socialist revolution also in its content. This coming revolution will show to an even greater degree, on the one hand, that only stern battles, only civil wars, can free humanity from the yoke of capital, and, on the other hand, that only class-conscious proletarians can and will give leadership to the vast majority of the exploited.
We must not be deceived by the present grave-like stillness in Europe. Europe is pregnant with revolution. The monstrous horrors of the imperialist war, the suffering caused by the high cost of living everywhere engender a revolutionary mood; and the ruling classes, the bourgeoisie, and its servitors, the governments, are more and more moving into a blind alley from which they can never extricate themselves without tremendous upheavals.
Just as in Russia in 1905, a popular uprising against the tsarist government began under the leadership of the proletariat with the aim of achieving a democratic republic, so, in Europe, the coming years, precisely because of this predatory war, will lead to popular uprisings under the leadership of the proletariat against the power of finance capital, against the big banks, against the capitalists; and these upheavals cannot end otherwise than with the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, with the victory of socialism.
We of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution. But I can, I believe, express the confident hope that the youth which is working so splendidly in the socialist movement of Switzerland, and of the whole world, will be fortunate enough not only to fight, but also to win, in the coming proletarian revolution.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Throughout Wisconsin: People's Rebellion Grows
By Martha Grevatt
Madison, Wis.
Published Mar 9, 2011 3:59 PM
The movement to stop Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s “budget repair bill” continues to draw mass support nationally and internationally. The resistance has blossomed into a statewide people’s rebellion with rallies, demonstrations, candlelight vigils and other protest actions all focused on “kill the bill.”
A mass rally at the state Capitol in Madison March 5 drew 50,000 people, according to the state AFL-CIO. Even the police estimated 30,000 to 40,000 participated. On March 6 thousands also protested at the Capitol.
Again, it was the solid opposition to the bill’s language stripping public workers of virtually all collective bargaining rights that brought out tens of thousands of union members. They came from all over Wisconsin as well as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, Ohio, the Dakotas and other states.
All the public sector unions turned out. Together they represent hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin’s teachers, health care providers, firefighters, janitors, office workers, transit workers and more. Students, who sparked the people’s rebellion by occupying the state Capitol Feb. 15, were again out in force from K-12 and higher education on March 5 and 6.
The Amalgamated Transit Union chose March 5 to mobilize with buses and carpools coming from around the Midwest. Private sector workers were there in solidarity, with large contingents from the Teamsters, Laborers and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Members of the Pipefitters, Plumbers, Sheet Metal Workers, Bricklayers, Carpenters, Steamfitters, Boilermakers, Electricians, Steelworkers and United Auto Workers unions also participated. All were united in an understanding of the classic union slogan — which appeared on many homemade signs — “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
There were many indicators of overwhelming working-class and popular support for the fight against both union busting and the draconian cuts in social services Walker has proposed. Doctors, sporting lab coats and stethoscopes, marched to defend their low-income patients who stand to lose health care coverage if Walker cuts state-funded “Badgercare.” The Sierra Club carried signs against the bill, which will weaken recycling programs.
Arriving in the morning and marching for hours before the rally officially began, a multinational group of middle and high school students from Racine, Wis., roused everyone with the popular chant: “This is what democracy looks like.”
Homemade signs blasted Walker for his servile relationship — exposed by the now-famous prank phone call — with the wealthy Koch brothers, who are major financial backers of the Tea Party. The governor was lampooned as a “Koch [pronounced “coke”] addict.”
On March 6 the National Association of Letter Carriers, sponsors of that day’s rally, turned out hundreds of members to “deliver” a message of solidarity. NALC Branch 214 in San Francisco had passed unanimously on March 2 a resolution titled “Support the Initiative for a General Strike in Wisconsin — and Prepare for Nationally Coordinated Solidarity Job Actions.” The resolution was in solidarity with one passed in February by the South Central Federation of Labor based in Madison.
The Associated Press reported March 6 that 700 Walker supporters, rallying at the Alliant Energy building in Madison, were met by “hundreds” of protesters. At the state Capitol rally — which drew many thousands despite the anti-right-wing protest — it was announced that 1,000 protesters were outside the Alliant building while fewer than 100 Walker supporters were counted inside in a room with a 400-person maximum capacity.
Earlier, on March 3, National Nurses United led a march of thousands in Madison demanding that the bill be killed entirely and that there be no more cuts for workers.
Grassroots organizing statewide
Before and during the big rallies in the capital March 5 and 6, Walker was on a statewide bus “tour” sponsored by the Tea Party-linked group Americans for Prosperity. In small to medium-size towns across the state, there was opposition at every stop, beginning on March 3 when the tour started, with protests numbering anywhere from 250 to 1,300 people from Milwaukee to La Crosse.
On March 2, in an action sponsored by Students for a Democratic Society; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; and the Milwaukee Graduate Assistants Association/American Federation of Teachers, hundreds of students at the University of Milwaukee walked out of class as part of the National Day of Action to Defend Public Education and also in opposition to the “budget repair bill.” Earlier in the week, students from SDS and other organizations occupied the theater building at UW-Milwaukee in protest against education cuts and the bill.
Poor and working people in Wisconsin have also been targeting Koch-owned industries throughout the state. Expressing outrage at Walker’s union-busting bill, Rev. Jesse Jackson led a cheering crowd of more than 600, the majority African Americans, at the Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church in Milwaukee March 4.
A major rally organized by the Wisconsin AFL-CIO is scheduled for March 12. State mobilizing for this includes farmers who will drive their tractors to Madison. The day before students from Milwaukee’s Riverside High School and other schools will begin an 80-mile walk to Madison at 6 a.m., which is scheduled to arrive at the Capitol the next day for the rally.
The atmosphere in Madison is one of determination and unity, with signs of support in the windows of shops, restaurants and cafes. The blackboard in Ian’s Pizza lists all the many countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas whose people ordered pizza for the students and workers who took part in the occupation. Donations are coming in from all 50 U.S. states. Solidarity statements are pouring in to local unions, federations, students and community organizations.
What’s the next step? Discussions include reoccupying the Capitol building and/or a general strike. Many groups, including Bail Out the People Movement, got a good reception to leaflets supporting the latter. At the March 6 rally, state president of the Firefighters union Mahlon Mitchell — who participated in the 18-day Capitol occupation — got the crowd motivated with the chant: “You go, we go!”
For updates and information, go to www.wisaflcio.org, www.wisaflcio.typepad.com and www.bailoutpeople.org.
Bryan G. Pfeifer contributed to this article.
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Madison, Wis.
Published Mar 9, 2011 3:59 PM
The movement to stop Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s “budget repair bill” continues to draw mass support nationally and internationally. The resistance has blossomed into a statewide people’s rebellion with rallies, demonstrations, candlelight vigils and other protest actions all focused on “kill the bill.”
A mass rally at the state Capitol in Madison March 5 drew 50,000 people, according to the state AFL-CIO. Even the police estimated 30,000 to 40,000 participated. On March 6 thousands also protested at the Capitol.
Again, it was the solid opposition to the bill’s language stripping public workers of virtually all collective bargaining rights that brought out tens of thousands of union members. They came from all over Wisconsin as well as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, Ohio, the Dakotas and other states.
All the public sector unions turned out. Together they represent hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin’s teachers, health care providers, firefighters, janitors, office workers, transit workers and more. Students, who sparked the people’s rebellion by occupying the state Capitol Feb. 15, were again out in force from K-12 and higher education on March 5 and 6.
The Amalgamated Transit Union chose March 5 to mobilize with buses and carpools coming from around the Midwest. Private sector workers were there in solidarity, with large contingents from the Teamsters, Laborers and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Members of the Pipefitters, Plumbers, Sheet Metal Workers, Bricklayers, Carpenters, Steamfitters, Boilermakers, Electricians, Steelworkers and United Auto Workers unions also participated. All were united in an understanding of the classic union slogan — which appeared on many homemade signs — “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
There were many indicators of overwhelming working-class and popular support for the fight against both union busting and the draconian cuts in social services Walker has proposed. Doctors, sporting lab coats and stethoscopes, marched to defend their low-income patients who stand to lose health care coverage if Walker cuts state-funded “Badgercare.” The Sierra Club carried signs against the bill, which will weaken recycling programs.
Arriving in the morning and marching for hours before the rally officially began, a multinational group of middle and high school students from Racine, Wis., roused everyone with the popular chant: “This is what democracy looks like.”
Homemade signs blasted Walker for his servile relationship — exposed by the now-famous prank phone call — with the wealthy Koch brothers, who are major financial backers of the Tea Party. The governor was lampooned as a “Koch [pronounced “coke”] addict.”
On March 6 the National Association of Letter Carriers, sponsors of that day’s rally, turned out hundreds of members to “deliver” a message of solidarity. NALC Branch 214 in San Francisco had passed unanimously on March 2 a resolution titled “Support the Initiative for a General Strike in Wisconsin — and Prepare for Nationally Coordinated Solidarity Job Actions.” The resolution was in solidarity with one passed in February by the South Central Federation of Labor based in Madison.
The Associated Press reported March 6 that 700 Walker supporters, rallying at the Alliant Energy building in Madison, were met by “hundreds” of protesters. At the state Capitol rally — which drew many thousands despite the anti-right-wing protest — it was announced that 1,000 protesters were outside the Alliant building while fewer than 100 Walker supporters were counted inside in a room with a 400-person maximum capacity.
Earlier, on March 3, National Nurses United led a march of thousands in Madison demanding that the bill be killed entirely and that there be no more cuts for workers.
Grassroots organizing statewide
Before and during the big rallies in the capital March 5 and 6, Walker was on a statewide bus “tour” sponsored by the Tea Party-linked group Americans for Prosperity. In small to medium-size towns across the state, there was opposition at every stop, beginning on March 3 when the tour started, with protests numbering anywhere from 250 to 1,300 people from Milwaukee to La Crosse.
On March 2, in an action sponsored by Students for a Democratic Society; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; and the Milwaukee Graduate Assistants Association/American Federation of Teachers, hundreds of students at the University of Milwaukee walked out of class as part of the National Day of Action to Defend Public Education and also in opposition to the “budget repair bill.” Earlier in the week, students from SDS and other organizations occupied the theater building at UW-Milwaukee in protest against education cuts and the bill.
Poor and working people in Wisconsin have also been targeting Koch-owned industries throughout the state. Expressing outrage at Walker’s union-busting bill, Rev. Jesse Jackson led a cheering crowd of more than 600, the majority African Americans, at the Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church in Milwaukee March 4.
A major rally organized by the Wisconsin AFL-CIO is scheduled for March 12. State mobilizing for this includes farmers who will drive their tractors to Madison. The day before students from Milwaukee’s Riverside High School and other schools will begin an 80-mile walk to Madison at 6 a.m., which is scheduled to arrive at the Capitol the next day for the rally.
The atmosphere in Madison is one of determination and unity, with signs of support in the windows of shops, restaurants and cafes. The blackboard in Ian’s Pizza lists all the many countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas whose people ordered pizza for the students and workers who took part in the occupation. Donations are coming in from all 50 U.S. states. Solidarity statements are pouring in to local unions, federations, students and community organizations.
What’s the next step? Discussions include reoccupying the Capitol building and/or a general strike. Many groups, including Bail Out the People Movement, got a good reception to leaflets supporting the latter. At the March 6 rally, state president of the Firefighters union Mahlon Mitchell — who participated in the 18-day Capitol occupation — got the crowd motivated with the chant: “You go, we go!”
For updates and information, go to www.wisaflcio.org, www.wisaflcio.typepad.com and www.bailoutpeople.org.
Bryan G. Pfeifer contributed to this article.
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Wisconsin: School for Labor's Future
By David Sole
Published Mar 5, 2011 9:52 AM
Editor’s note: The writer is a municipal worker, longtime union activist and past president of United Auto Workers Local 2334 in Detroit. He was in Madison, Wis., Feb. 19-21, with a solidarity delegation from Detroit and Chicago.
The struggle now unfolding in Wisconsin will go down in history as the beginning of the long delayed fightback of the U.S. working class. Union and progressive activists have been scanning the horizon for decades, really since the “Reagan revolution,” for signs of a labor resurgence against concessions, unemployment and union busting. Not a few have given in to demoralization, convinced that the working class of this country would not be able to rise to its feet. It has taken only a few days for the workers and students of Wisconsin to prove them wrong.
History has repeatedly shown that repression breeds resistance and that many important fights arose from the working class defending itself. In Wisconsin the cocky Gov. Scott Walker, egged on by his Tea Party cronies, went way beyond demands for concessions from public workers to propose ending any real collective bargaining rights for these 175,000 workers.
It may be that Walker overreached himself in his right-wing enthusiasm. It is more likely that the Wall Street corporate bosses and bankers, to whom Wisconsin and other states and municipalities are beholden to the tune of billions upon billions of dollars in loans, gave orders for this new phase of the attack on workers and their organizations. It is certainly no coincidence that bills with almost identical language are being introduced and discussed in other states at the same time.
Now tens of thousands of workers are in motion. They are meeting, discussing, marching, rallying and striking in unprecedented numbers to defend their collective bargaining rights. Special notice must be taken of the students, both in colleges and high schools, who took the advanced position of seizing, occupying and holding the state Capitol building in Madison. Their energy and enthusiasm are impressive. Their commitment to the struggle for union rights and against cuts to education has fired up the student movement across the U.S.
It can be said, with no exaggeration, that the United States has not seen anything like this mobilization since the 1930s or 1940s. Certainly there have been strikes, large and often bitter. There have been mass marches, like Solidarity Day that labor called in 1981 against PATCO union busting. But they are nothing in scope and depth like the developments in Wisconsin.
One can find many things missing in the Wisconsin struggle. The students lack organization and experience. The union leaders also have little experience to lean on to counter this plan to destroy the unions wholesale. This is inevitable after such a long hiatus in open class warfare. It is only in the struggle that this experience will be gained. New organizations and greater consciousness will emerge as the struggle continues.
‘Necessary cutbacks’ or general strike?
More attention must be paid to exposing the lie that “cutbacks are necessary.” It needs to be pointed out that there is plenty of money to cover the big deficits in municipal, state and the federal budgets. The profits of the corporations and banks are at a record high — tax them. Interest to the banks is draining the public treasuries — put a freeze on debt service payments. The Pentagon budget and imperialist wars abroad add up to over a trillion dollars a year — slash it. Not a penny has to come from the workers or from critical social service programs.
The Feb. 21 resolution by the Wisconsin South Central Federation of Labor — representing about 45,000 workers in six counties — for a general strike represents a new stage in the struggle. Even during the vicious union-busting attack on the Detroit newspaper strikers in 1995, the Metro-Detroit AFL-CIO central labor council rejected a motion from the floor to have all local unions “vote to authorize a general strike if the council decides it necessary.” The reason given at the time was that “it has never happened in U.S. history.” The fact is that U.S. labor history records many general strikes, like those in Seattle in 1919 and San Francisco in 1934. But union leaders in an era of relative labor peace often shrink from the thought of all-out class warfare.
A general strike would require education and preparation. It would be foolish to think that a mass across-the-board walkout would happen or succeed by just issuing the call. The Wisconsin resolution specified that education begin in all locals on the function of and preparation for a general strike. Serious and careful work in every local union must now begin.
The public, especially the students, must be informed and organized, too. The unions must have a plan — and let the public know — for emergency services. And union leaders and members must be ready for the inevitable attack from the government. Some of the media are already giving dire warnings against a general strike, citing the hated Taft-Hartley Act. It will be incumbent upon national union leaders to gather support and prepare action to show solidarity with the Wisconsin workers in the face of certain government retaliation.
Whatever the outcome of the battle of Wisconsin, the labor movement will never be the same. The growing resentment against all the many attacks on workers, the cutbacks in social services, the racism and oppression permeating society are making a massive fightback necessary and inevitable throughout the United States. Wisconsin workers and students have shown the way.
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Published Mar 5, 2011 9:52 AM
Editor’s note: The writer is a municipal worker, longtime union activist and past president of United Auto Workers Local 2334 in Detroit. He was in Madison, Wis., Feb. 19-21, with a solidarity delegation from Detroit and Chicago.
The struggle now unfolding in Wisconsin will go down in history as the beginning of the long delayed fightback of the U.S. working class. Union and progressive activists have been scanning the horizon for decades, really since the “Reagan revolution,” for signs of a labor resurgence against concessions, unemployment and union busting. Not a few have given in to demoralization, convinced that the working class of this country would not be able to rise to its feet. It has taken only a few days for the workers and students of Wisconsin to prove them wrong.
History has repeatedly shown that repression breeds resistance and that many important fights arose from the working class defending itself. In Wisconsin the cocky Gov. Scott Walker, egged on by his Tea Party cronies, went way beyond demands for concessions from public workers to propose ending any real collective bargaining rights for these 175,000 workers.
It may be that Walker overreached himself in his right-wing enthusiasm. It is more likely that the Wall Street corporate bosses and bankers, to whom Wisconsin and other states and municipalities are beholden to the tune of billions upon billions of dollars in loans, gave orders for this new phase of the attack on workers and their organizations. It is certainly no coincidence that bills with almost identical language are being introduced and discussed in other states at the same time.
Now tens of thousands of workers are in motion. They are meeting, discussing, marching, rallying and striking in unprecedented numbers to defend their collective bargaining rights. Special notice must be taken of the students, both in colleges and high schools, who took the advanced position of seizing, occupying and holding the state Capitol building in Madison. Their energy and enthusiasm are impressive. Their commitment to the struggle for union rights and against cuts to education has fired up the student movement across the U.S.
It can be said, with no exaggeration, that the United States has not seen anything like this mobilization since the 1930s or 1940s. Certainly there have been strikes, large and often bitter. There have been mass marches, like Solidarity Day that labor called in 1981 against PATCO union busting. But they are nothing in scope and depth like the developments in Wisconsin.
One can find many things missing in the Wisconsin struggle. The students lack organization and experience. The union leaders also have little experience to lean on to counter this plan to destroy the unions wholesale. This is inevitable after such a long hiatus in open class warfare. It is only in the struggle that this experience will be gained. New organizations and greater consciousness will emerge as the struggle continues.
‘Necessary cutbacks’ or general strike?
More attention must be paid to exposing the lie that “cutbacks are necessary.” It needs to be pointed out that there is plenty of money to cover the big deficits in municipal, state and the federal budgets. The profits of the corporations and banks are at a record high — tax them. Interest to the banks is draining the public treasuries — put a freeze on debt service payments. The Pentagon budget and imperialist wars abroad add up to over a trillion dollars a year — slash it. Not a penny has to come from the workers or from critical social service programs.
The Feb. 21 resolution by the Wisconsin South Central Federation of Labor — representing about 45,000 workers in six counties — for a general strike represents a new stage in the struggle. Even during the vicious union-busting attack on the Detroit newspaper strikers in 1995, the Metro-Detroit AFL-CIO central labor council rejected a motion from the floor to have all local unions “vote to authorize a general strike if the council decides it necessary.” The reason given at the time was that “it has never happened in U.S. history.” The fact is that U.S. labor history records many general strikes, like those in Seattle in 1919 and San Francisco in 1934. But union leaders in an era of relative labor peace often shrink from the thought of all-out class warfare.
A general strike would require education and preparation. It would be foolish to think that a mass across-the-board walkout would happen or succeed by just issuing the call. The Wisconsin resolution specified that education begin in all locals on the function of and preparation for a general strike. Serious and careful work in every local union must now begin.
The public, especially the students, must be informed and organized, too. The unions must have a plan — and let the public know — for emergency services. And union leaders and members must be ready for the inevitable attack from the government. Some of the media are already giving dire warnings against a general strike, citing the hated Taft-Hartley Act. It will be incumbent upon national union leaders to gather support and prepare action to show solidarity with the Wisconsin workers in the face of certain government retaliation.
Whatever the outcome of the battle of Wisconsin, the labor movement will never be the same. The growing resentment against all the many attacks on workers, the cutbacks in social services, the racism and oppression permeating society are making a massive fightback necessary and inevitable throughout the United States. Wisconsin workers and students have shown the way.
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Cleveland Prison Emergency Summit Meets
By Sharon Danann
Cleveland
Published Mar 5, 2011 9:16 AM
The Black Studies Department of Cleveland State University hosted a groundbreaking “Prison Emergency Summit” on Feb. 26. Activists, students and other interested individuals from the Ohio cities of Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo and Youngstown, as well as Pittsburgh, attended the gathering.
The all-day conference gave serious attention to the deliberate injustices practiced by the incarceration industry and the impending crisis due to worsening conditions under prison privatization. A highlight was the screening of the important new documentary, “Dark Little Secret,” which is about the prison-industrial complex.
News was given on the continuing mistreatment of alleged leaders of the vast prisoner strike in Georgia last December. However, there was encouraging news, too, of the indictment of seven guards in connection with the death of one prisoner and the injuries of many, related to the strike. An excellent presentation brought into focus the role of the 13th Amendment in perpetuating slavery.
Imam Siddique Abdullah Hasan, one of the recently victorious Lucasville hunger strikers, spoke to the gathering by cell phone. In addition, messages were read from several of the prisoners who participated in the uprising at the Lucasville prison. It was also announced that Jason Campbell, a Native American prisoner at Ohio State Penitentiary, began a hunger strike on Feb. 27 to protest the denial of his right to practice his religion.
The Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network and the New Black Panther Party-Cleveland Link coordinated the conference. The Cleveland Anarchist Black Cross and the Joaquin Hicks Real People Movement helped with its planning. Many other organizations supported the effort with information tables, donations, performers, volunteers and speakers.
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Hail the heroes of Liberation Square
Feb. 4 — The battle in Cairo’s massive central square to oust the dictator and U.S. stooge Hosni Mubarak will go down in history as a pivotal moment, whatever its outcome.
The masses in Tahrir (Liberation) Square - now known among the fighters as Martyrs’ Square — gave the counterrevolutionary thugs of a dying regime blow for blow, pushed them back and held the square, thus achieving both a military and political victory. They were fully aware of the crucial political importance of holding the square for the people. This was a victory for the masses of Egyptian people, the people of the Middle East as a whole, and the workers and oppressed of the world.
The Mubarak regime made a brutal attempt to reverse the powerful momentum of the uprising after millions of people had come out for the “million person march” all over the country on Tuesday. What was purported to be the largest demonstration in the history of Cairo gathered in Tahrir Square.
Key to the Mubarak regime’s desperate attempt to regain its position was the drive to sweep the demonstrators away by force and violence and take the square for the counterrevolution. In addition to aiming for the political symbolism of retaking the square from the popular anti-government forces, the goal was to sow terror and fear among the population.
Thanks to the thousands of defenders who risked life and limb for two days, the regime failed on both counts. The defense of the square on Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 2 and 3, cleared the way for the enormous outpouring on Friday, the “Day of Departure,” and allowed the struggle to regain its forward momentum.
Undoubtedly, the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and Wall Street all watched the heroic defense in and around the square with great apprehension as they saw Mubarak’s thugs beaten back. This must have accelerated the efforts of the imperialist ruling class to pressure Mubarak to get out.
The defense of the square was a glorious example of rapid self-organization by the people. Thousands of demonstrators vowed to remain in the square until Mubarak and his regime were gone. They were suddenly confronted by thousands of plainclothes police, Ministry of the Interior spies and employees, members of the ruling party and miscellaneous hired thugs. There are 1.5 million police and 3 million members of the ruling party.
These dregs of Egyptian society had been brought in by buses and vans by the regime to a staging area near the square. At 2:15 p.m. they were given the signal to charge. The military, which at first held them back, let them in to go on a rampage. Wielding pipes, chains, rubber hoses, knives, clubs with nails in them, and guns, and hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails, they charged the unarmed demonstrators.
Within a short time the demonstrators set up defense barricades of metal sheets, iron fences, overturned cars, boards and anything else that could serve as a shield and a barrier. Groups were organized to defend different points and to set up checkpoints around and leading to the square.
The sidewalks were chopped up to make rocks to throw. Bottles were brought from everywhere to make Molotov cocktails. An unnamed Al Jazeera online producer was on the scene and reported from a checkpoint into the square: “Rocks were stacked in piles around the streets and Molotov cocktail bottles sat next to one another near a tree — a revolutionary armory.” Food and other supplies were brought in and distributed. A steady drumming kept up morale.
The reporter spoke with Hossan Eid al-Sharqawy, the leader at the checkpoint. “Hosni Mubarak kills his own people,” he said. “If I die here tonight, you will tell my story.”
That explains how the mood and the slogans changed in the square from “We’re going to stay in the square” to “We’re going to die in the square.”
As the battle became fierce, casualties mounted on both sides. Hundreds of demonstrators received head wounds, stab wounds and broken bones. Many suffered gunshot wounds. Before dawn on Thursday, the government thugs opened fire. The number of deaths in the square was reported as 10 to 15, but was probably much greater.
Makeshift field hospitals were set up in alleyways. One mosque was turned into a field hospital. Volunteer doctors poured into the square to help the wounded while demonstrators assisted. “Mubarak told them to kill us,” said Osama Hilal, a doctor who was treating the wounded at a makeshift triage center. “He thinks he will succeed to make all the people get out of the square. But we will not leave.” (Washington Post, Feb. 2)
The defenders captured 350 of the counterrevolutionary forces. The office of a travel agency was transformed into a holding center for the captured thugs. They were handcuffed with plastic twists. Police and Ministry of Interior identity cards as well as National Democratic Party cards were taken and shown to the press. They were then turned over to the army.
The bravery, determination, creativity and resourcefulness of the unarmed masses on-the-spot military organizing to beat back this vicious surprise attack shows what potential there is for much wider and broader mass efforts. They will be needed to drive out the old regime, which is backed by U.S. imperialism and all the imperialist powers, which want to hold the reins of Egyptian society, by hook or by crook.
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Workers World Party Respondes to State of the Union Address
Obama evades the crisis
Published Jan 26, 2011 5:12 PM
The 25 million to 30 million unemployed and underemployed workers in the U.S. who might have listened to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address could not have found a single word in it to relieve them of their plight. The same can be said for the millions facing foreclosure as well as the 47 million people officially living in poverty.
What they did hear was a call for lowering the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years. Obama also proposed a five-year freeze on domestic spending in order to make “painful cuts.” He alluded to cuts in Medicaid and Medicare to solve the deficit problem. He glorified the Race to the Top program, which is a blueprint for privatizing the educational system and undermining teachers’ unions.
Obama dangled visions of future jobs based upon future plans to develop high-speed railways, high-speed Internet, biomedical technology, and more research and development, but there was not one word about a concrete jobs program or any other form of relief for the masses whose suffering is growing.
The president conjured up the era after 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first space satellite. The Eisenhower administration, the Pentagon and the ruling class went into a complete panic over the prospect of falling behind the socialist USSR in technology. What followed was a massive investment in U.S. education, especially in the sciences and math. It was subsidized by the government and led to the beginning of the scientific-technological revolution.
Obama cited the present situation, pointing to China, which now has the world’s longest high-speed rail network and the world’s most powerful computer, and other countries that have also adapted to the new technological era, to the detriment of the U.S. He basically blamed China, India and other countries for the jobs crisis here. He called this “our Sputnik moment” and put forward visions of a new scientific-technological revolution to meet the challenge to U.S. business and to create jobs. He wants to “make America the best place on Earth to do business.”
But early in his speech he inadvertently contradicted his fundamental argument. He reminded the audience that once upon a time workers here could get good jobs with good benefits for life. Then he brutally reminded the workers that “the rules have changed.” Technology has transformed the situation. “Steel mills that once needed 1,000 workers can now do the same work with 100.”
In other words, the scientific-technological revolution of the past has led to a vast speedup in productivity and a similar reduction in the needs of capital for labor. This is what is behind the present jobless recovery, the massive unemployment and the economic crisis of capitalism.
Obama’s plans to invest in high-speed rail, high-speed Internet, green energy, etc., are all technology-intensive industries that cannot put the tens of millions back to work. The advance of technology is what is leading capitalism toward an impasse and further crises.
The bosses are still sitting on $2 trillion in cash because of capitalist overproduction, money they refuse to invest in production because they can’t make profit without a market for their goods. Neither Obama nor the ruling class has any answer to this fundamental contradiction. Only the struggle of the working class to get rid of capitalism can overcome this long-term crisis for the workers.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Michael Parenti on the Class Nature of the "Mafia" Myth
The Mafia and Me: Reflections on Being Italian
By Michael Parenti
Michael Parenti’s recent books include: "The Face of Imperialism" (Paradigm, April 2011); "God and His Demons"; (Prometheus, 2010); "Democracy for the Few" 9th ed. (Wadsworth, 2010); "Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader" (City Lights, 2007). For further information, visit: www.MichaelParenti.org.
Like many others of Italian-American heritage, I experienced some discomfort when in 1951 Senator Estes Kefauver, a Democrat from Tennessee, launched his highly publicized investigation into the organized rackets, uncovering scores of thugs with Italian surnames. Subsequent decades produced an endless parade of such rogues whose mugs were repeatedly splashed across the print and broadcast media.
I must admit that when it came to names, the mafia operatives really had them: Lucky Luciano, Scarface Al Capone, Sammy the Bull Gravano, Joey Bananas Bonanno, Crazy Joey Gallo, Jimmy the Weasel Fratianno, Sonny Red Indelicato, and Sonny Black Napolitano.
One could go on with Joey Kneecap Santorielli, Johnny Bingo Bosco, Itchy Fingers Zambino, Big Paulie Castellano,and Lupo the Wolf Saietta. Also Johnny Blind Man Biaggio, Vinny Gorgeous Basciano, and Fredo the Plumber Giardino.
Finally, none of us will ever forget Anthony Chicken F**ker Bastoni (don’t ask).
Then there were the dons who needed no monikers. Their unadorned Christian names struck sufficient terror in the hearts of their “clients,” such notables as Frank Costello, Vito Genovese [no relation to the historian Eugene Genovese], and Carlo Gambino.
Listed in the crime reports was one mafia boss from Philadelphia named Angelo Bruno. The name caught my eye. I knew something about him. Years earlier in Washington D.C., I had a conversation with a good friend of mine, Michael Maggio. Michael was a political progressive, an award-winning, nationally recognized lawyer dedicated to fighting for social justice.
He devoted much energy in struggling for the rights of immigrants who were fleeing from the U.S.-sponsored counterinsurgency in Central America. Michael was a highly regarded humanitarian who stood up to the Washington autocrats. On one occasion he publicly compared the Immigration and Naturalization Service to “Dante's rings of hell.”
Along with being a fighter for the downtrodden and a genuinely nice person, Michael was one of the best Italian cooks I ever met. He could produce platters of the finest Southern Italian meals, as delizioso as anything my grandmother or my father created.
One day in the mid-1980s, as I sat with him in his Washington office, Maggio revealed to me that Angelo Bruno, the Philadelphia mafia don, was his uncle. He went on to say that Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather, the best-selling novel that was made into a smash-hit movie, had modeled his lead character Don Corleone after Angelo Bruno.
Michael claimed (accurately) that his Uncle Angelo had refused to deal in narcotics and sex trafficking, just like Don Corleone in the movie. For awhile Bruno also displayed an ability to keep the peace within the Philadelphia mafia. But because he was unwilling to enter the lucrative narcotics racket, he was blasted into a premature grave by some of the hungry younger guns who wanted a piece of that action.
“If there was ever such a thing as a nice mafia boss,” Michael Maggio ventured, “it was my Uncle Angelo.” Well, there is no such thing as a nice mafia boss once you look at their operations on the ground. In The Godfather movie Don Corleone is just magically prosperous. We don’t hear about the crimes he commits in order to live in the style to which he had grown accustomed.
In the real world Angelo Bruno—even if he eschewed narcotics and sex trafficking—was up to his ears in gambling, bootlegging, hijacking, loan sharking, and the protection racket. He tried to keep the peace but when he had to come down hard in order to collect, he did. All this said, when I came across Bruno’s name in the official crime listings, his designated nickname was The Gentle Don.
Michael would have liked that. Too bad he never lived to hear his uncle so benignly described. Although Michael kept himself in good shape, he tragically died in 2008 at the age of sixty, at the height of his valiant but very taxing career as a fighter for friendless political refugees.
One might wish that the media gave more attention to the courageous struggles for social justice waged by Italian Americans like Michael Maggio, and a little less exposure to the mafia dons, be they “gentle” or not.
Let’s go back to the aftermath of the Kefauver hearings. America, O America, God’s glorious but ever besieged country, was in the grip of an organized crime network that threatened to destroy the very fabric of our society, or so we were repeatedly alerted. In fact, what the mafia bosses stole from the public was a pittance compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars that Corporate America regularly plundered from workers, consumers, small investors, and taxpayers.
This went largely unnoticed in all the hoopla. That Congress actually attempted to confront the mafiosi was proof enough that these hoodlums were men of limited power. They did not sit on the governing boards of corporations, banks, investment houses, foundations, universities, museums, and churches as do the “captains of industry and finance.” They could not buy Capitol Hill, the way the big corporations and financiers have repeatedly done.
Unlike the boardroom plunderers, the mafiosi did not occupy high positions in Washington or on Wall Street. They didn’t cavort with the top White House decision-makers and Pentagon contract fixers with their million-dollar kickbacks and mysterious billion-dollar budgetary evaporations.
The mafia dons did not relax or play golf with the paladins of wealth as did Dirty Dickie Cheney, or Georgie the Blood Sucker Bush, or Slick Willie Clinton, or Barack Legs Obama, or Bernie Two-Faced Madoff, or Jack Casino Abramoff, or Andy Fasthands Fastow or Ken the Weasel Lay.
Now that’s organized crime: the policymakers, not the bookmakers; the banksters, not the gangsters.
The uneducated mafia thugs never did get near the real money. As already noted, they had to content themselves with small-time scams, numbers rackets, loan sharking, cargo thefts, extortion—even pathetic exploits like busting open parking meters for the coins. If they had a corrupting influence on public officials, it was usually at the local level and in a limited sphere.
Besides being small-time, these few hundred villains composed but a tiny sliver of an Italian American population estimated at over fifteen million people, but this datum was lost in all the media hype. In the American psyche, the thugs became representative of the many millions of Italian Americans who were and still are predictably, accurately, and fruitlessly described as decent, hardworking, law-abiding citizens.
This phrase repeated again and again like a desperate mantra—decent, hardworking, law-abiding citizens—was no match for the romanticized Hollywood makeover given to Don Corleone, who makes you an offer you can’t refuse and who along with Tony Soprano implants himself in the public imagination as a rough, tough, but basically decent and even loveable patriarch.
Years ago I was being interviewed for a teaching job at an east coast university. The interview was being conducted by the president and the dean of the school. The three of us got into a discussion about the sociology of the family. I mentioned that the family for many ethnic groups and low-income people in general functioned as a unit of survival, for instance, the Italians.
Ah yes, the Italians, chimed the president and the dean, suddenly keenly aware of my ethnic background. The two of them immediately launched into a discussion about Italians, referring not to the rich Italian American historical and sociological literature—of which they were ignorant--but to the movie The Godfather! In almost sentimental singsong fashion, they went on about how closely knit the gangster family was and how important such loyalty was for the risky ventures pursued.
Uh no, I tried to say, um, excuse me, those are not the Italians I’m referring to. For me the conversation was not going well. But they persisted. Having seen the movie, they could speak with expert confidence. They even took kindly care not to mention the numerous brutal murders and assaults that must have composed the more stressful side of my Italian family life as they imagined it.
I found myself thinking that I might just slip out into the parking lot and slash their tires—if only to give some real-life confirmation to the pictures in their heads.
More recently, I was sitting with a group of friends who were discussing the difficulties encountered when naming ethnic groups. Should people from Latin America be called Latinos or Hispanics or Latin Americans? And should people of African heritage be called African American or black or mixed race?
At one point I interjected: “People of my ethnic group are still trying to get labeled Italian American [pause] instead of mafiosi.” It got some sympathetic laughs.
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