Óró Sé do Bheatha 'Bhaile - Irish Anti-Imperialist Anthem From 1740s

English Translation:

Oh-ro You're welcome home,
Oh-ro You're welcome home,
Oh-ro You're welcome home...
Now that summer's coming!

Welcome oh woman who was so afflicted,
It was our ruin that you were in bondage,
Our fine land in the possession of thieves...
And you sold to the foreigners!

Chorus

Gráinne O'Malley is coming over the sea,
Armed warriors along with her as her guard,
They are Gaels, not French nor Spanish...
And they will rout the foreigners!

Chorus

May it please the King of Miracles that we might see,
Although we may live for a week once after,
Gráinne Mhaol and a thousand warriors...
Dispersing the foreigners!

Michigan Teachers Vote to Unionize

By Salvatore Cipriano and Jordan Nicholson
Detroit

In a time of vicious attacks throughout the United States on students, teachers and working people’s unions alike, the teachers of an unlikely school, a small charter school outside of Detroit, have taken their rights into their own hands and have become unionized. The teachers at Arts Academy in the Woods in Frasier, Mich., with a vote of 20 to 1, approved their union in a teachers’ meeting, making the Michigan Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff Union (Michigan ACTS), the working representative of their school. Michigan ACTS is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers Michigan.

The school, with only 276 students currently in attendance, has been in existence for 10 years. Despite massive attacks on arts education and creative studies in public education around the U.S., the Arts Academy in the Woods balances academics and artistic learning, and is home to a number of specialized art departments such as Guitar and Bass Guitar at all levels, Jazz Band, 2D and 3D Art, Vocal Arts, a large dance program, and Image Design.

However, in the last four years the Drama and Orchestra departments have been cut and the teachers have been forced to take large pay cuts. Eric Higgley, a teacher at the school, spoke to Workers World about the teachers’ move for unionization. “We can all have a voice in making the school better for the students that attend,” he said.

Arts Academy is the second charter school in Michigan to unionize and is overall only a small section of the 14 percent of unionized charter schools.

The writers are 2011 graduates of the Arts Academy in the Woods and founding members of Detroit FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together), a revolutionary youth organization.

John Parker: "Pushing Forward The Class Struggle"

Excerpts taken from a talk given by John Parker, of the Los Angeles Workers World branch, at the Workers World Party National Conference in New York City on Oct. 8-9.

California is waging a war on the working class and is targeting public sector unions, blaming them for the economic crisis because they “greedily” want to hold on to decent health care and don’t want to lose a month’s pay. Also, they’re targeted because these workers don’t want the children and elderly whom they serve to be denied health services or educational opportunities that could provide them with more of a chance of surviving in a state whose Black unemployment rate has climbed to more than 19 percent.

Gov. Jerry Brown can’t find a budget that cuts deeply enough into the working class, especially hitting public sector workers, and which puts further regressive taxes on workers, not corporations, not the rich.

Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa’s budget proposals didn’t even hint at going after the richest, the corporations, not even the oil companies. He didn’t mention the upside-down tax structure that allows California’s richest to pay less tax than the poorest.

Studies show that if the richest families paid the same proportion of taxes as the bottom 50 percent, $490 billion would be generated nationally. California’s figure would be $40 billion. It would cover the $28 billion budget gap and would erase Los Angeles’ $1 billion budget deficit that’s mostly being squeezed from public sector workers.

By going after the richest families’ tax loopholes and balancing out the unfair effects of regressive taxes, there would be enough money to end all budget cuts and fund a real jobs program. California could generate $10 billion by requiring the highly profitable oil companies to pay an oil extraction tax that every other state collects. Interest payments could be withheld from the banks that ripped everyone off, and that are still stealing homes and profiting off that theft, while getting government bailouts.

There is no reason for the cutbacks.

This isn’t just about winning the fight over budget deficits. If it were won, it would only be a temporary victory if a fundamental reason for the shortfalls — the capitalist crisis of overproduction — were not addressed by exposing what this system really looks like. Capitalism doesn’t need a major overhaul; it needs to be replaced by socialism.

We need to break through the view, even held by some who oppose the budget cuts, that capitalism must be saved.

The ruling class aims to divide the workers and is scapegoating immigrants and Black youth in California, criminalizing and incarcerating many. The reality that prisoners face is little known.

Let’s enumerate the strengths of our class: As witnessed by the courageous Pelican Bay prisoners who began a hunger strike to protest torture and horrific conditions, many of our class are fed up and starting a new era of fightback in California. This motion is affecting the many who are in progressive, anti-war, union, national liberation, women’s, lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, queer and student organizations.

This new fightback is shown in the gigantic anti-war marches after Sept. 11, by the one-and-a-half million immigrants and their supporters who joined the 2006 boycott, and by the many rallies against bank bailouts, corporate greed and foreclosures throughout California. The number of those willing to fight for change is great, and it is growing.

Our party has earned the confidence of the most active and militant organizations representing these ranks. We can be key in unifying these forces to create an unconquerable force ready to go on the offensive and wage real class warfare.

Our challenge in California is to help unify and win activists to this movement. Many are new to politics and activism. We must make sure they aren’t railroaded into supporting Ron Paul, to settle for the Democratic Party, or to cave in to nonstruggle, apathy and demoralization.

Our party and our closest allies in California have too much experience in the struggle and are too strong to allow that to happen. Our strength is already shown in motion around the country,

We’re in the California Wall Street occupations. Our Marxist, pro-struggle literature is getting a tremendous response. We’ll make the most of this new era of class struggle and bring it as far as it can go — and then build on that.

The overwhelming strength and courage our class possesses against the ruling class is exemplified by Troy Davis. On his way to death, he could have focused on himself, but he said we must not stop fighting until victory is won.

OWS Gets Mayor To Back Off, Expands Struggle

By John Catalinotto
New York
Published Oct 20, 2011 10:10 PM

The first confrontation between the Occupation Wall Street demonstrators and billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York cops ended in victory for OWS in the early morning hours of Friday, Oct. 14.

A wave of euphoria swept the 2,000 people filling Zuccotti Park when word came shortly before 7 a.m. that the park’s owners had withdrawn their request that the square be cleaned — the pretext for pushing out the protesters.

The truth was that public support for the OWS protest had flooded the mayor’s office starting the day before. Phone calls and emails came in from the general population; City Council members defended OWS; and organized labor protested any planned repression.

By Thursday evening, unemployed people, anti-war organizations, and community and Marxist groups had all been spreading the message to gather at Zuccotti Park to help prevent the removal. The AFL-CIO sent an unprecedented email to its mailing list with this message in the subject line: “Go to Wall Street, NOW.”

OWS stands strong

What this massive public support showed was that the attempt to isolate the protesters had failed. But would those in this new movement be willing to stand their ground in the park as the police moved in for arrests?

Between 5 and 6:30 a.m. on Friday morning, said Larry Holmes, the number of people in the park tripled. “The mood grew more determined even as the organizers had legal advisers warn the crowd that anyone who stayed would face a high probability of being arrested.

“One guy next to me was saying, ‘I can’t stay. I have to go to work.’ Then when they asked people to raise their hands if they would risk arrest, he raised his, saying, ‘F—k it! I’m staying.’ They had crossed a line.”

Holmes of the Bail Out the People Movement and others quoted here were speaking at a discussion of the OWS events held that night at the Solidarity Center in Manhattan.

Confronted with massive public support and the determination of the demonstrators, the mayor and his advisers decided — for the moment — to back off. OWS had won its first important victory.

Demonstrators holding the brooms and mops they had used to preemptively clean Zuccotti Park during the night then took off to march to Wall Street, which was the place they really wanted to clean up.

OWS ‘stole my heart’

Jen Waller, an activist and singer in her early 20s who had been staying and sleeping at Zuccotti Park most of the prior two weeks, described how this youthful movement that seemed to “spring out of nowhere” had won her over: “The more time I spent down there, the more it really stole my heart. And then I just couldn’t stay away.”

The youth of the United States “have been miseducated” politically and what problems this new movement sometimes expresses stem from its “not being really anti-imperialist” at this moment, said Waller. But, she added, “I honestly never thought that something like this would happen in my lifetime, much less right now when I’m here in the city. Every time I’m down in the park I feel that the vast majority of people there are committed to revolutionary change.”

The more experienced left, according to Waller, can help the development of this movement by bringing a clear political analysis — such as a sharp anti-war position or by explaining the role of the police in repressing communities of color — but leaving the “process” in the hands of the participants. “The organized left needs OWS and the young people in OWS need the left.”

Waller thought that proof of the movement going in the right direction came when OWS picked up slogans against the Afghanistan war and in solidarity with oppressed youth against police repression.

Growing more progressive

Tony Murphy, an experienced organizer in his 40s, seconded Waller’s assessment, saying that the morning’s events were “a real people’s victory,” but that such a victory “means the enemy regroups so they can come back later.”

What is Occupy Wall Street, Murphy asked. “OWS is rapidly changing, becoming more progressive all the time.” The official leadership doesn’t want to raise specific demands, “but the entire political space the demonstrations are occupying won’t let them stay in that place.” He described how during a march against police brutality the OWS leadership first insisted on a silent march, yet the marchers insisted on chanting and yelling at Police Plaza. The leaders first refused to endorse an anti-war march but then publicized and supported it.

Whatever conservatism is present “is being overtaken by the economic crisis that is driving this phenomenon and making it spread to so many cities.” On Oct. 13, for example, OWS “joined forces with a group in Brooklyn that disrupted a foreclosure” on housing.

The movement, said Murphy, “is consolidating a new culture of resistance.” We should make our participation more consistent, assert our political perspective with, for example, word of the People’s Assembly on Nov. 5 in the Bronx, and “see if we can influence the people coming around or sitting on the sidelines asking, ‘Is this for me?’ Our answer is ‘Yes.’”

Larry Hales: Letter to the Occupy Wall Street Movement

Letter to the Occupy Wall Street Movement
Published Oct 19, 2011 10:37 PM

These are hard times. There doesn’t appear to be any respite coming soon. The political atmosphere has shifted in response to the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression. This crisis, because of how the changes in technology, communication and production have made the world smaller, is global in its impact.

Corporations and financial institutions on Wall Street have become profitable again. Their profits were made possible by the more than $16 trillion in tax money doled out to them by Washington and because they have shed millions of jobs, ripped up workers’ contracts, forced concessions down the workers’ throats and because they make those left with a job work harder and produce more in less time.

There are cutbacks at every level of government — cuts to education, health care, housing, federal nutrition programs and other vital social services. Government workers are being laid off and their collective bargaining rights curtailed in places like Wisconsin — the birthplace of public sector unions — and in Ohio, Michigan and Indiana to name a few states.

These are hard times, confusing times, where, no matter which political party the heads of government at the local, state and federal level answer to, the common program is for cutbacks, cutbacks, cutbacks for the workers and the poor and tax breaks, subsidies and bailouts for the corporations and the rich.

But times change. The political atmosphere shifts in response to real events. It has once again. The Occupy Wall Street movement, like the uprising in Wisconsin earlier in the year but on a grander and broader scale, has awakened youth and students, labor — all sectors.

It has grown from seeds planted by the conditions of accelerating poverty, joblessness, disenfranchisement and frustration with a political system that favors the wealthy elite. Perhaps this movement’s greatest achievement to date is that it has opened up new, broad, vitally needed political space.

It rose suddenly and brazenly, goaded on by threats and intimidation. It shows no sign of waning. This movement has captured the imagination of people the world over who have been waiting, hoping that the roots lurking just under the soil will push upward.

But where does it go from here?

The United States was created from the destruction of the societies and the way of life of the original inhabitants of the North American continent. The wealth of the country stemmed from this destruction of the lives of Indigenous peoples, the enslavement of Africans, the seizure of half of Mexico, the colonization of the land of sovereign nations such as Puerto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines, the corporate grab of the Western Hemisphere.

Indigenous people, the descendants of African slaves, the offspring of the people from the northern half of Mexico, the people of Puerto Rico continue to live in the United States and suffer the effects of centuries of genocide, slavery, land theft and racist policies that have been pervasive throughout U.S. history.

Drawn into the U.S. are people who left their homelands because of war — be it the war in Iraq that has raged for eight years; the war in Afghanistan that has persisted for ten; the wars more than one generation ago in Vietnam and Korea — or economic warfare imposed on their countries through the so-called North American Free Trade Act, structural adjustments or austerity — all emanating from Wall Street.

We, the overwhelming majority, comprise the working class. It is a multinational class that speaks many languages, has many different cultures, customs, beliefs and religions.

For the movement to grow, it has to accept the peculiar history of the development of the U.S. What we all want is an equal, just society with an equitable distribution of wealth, one where people are not exploited and where young people are not thrust into Wall Street’s wars for profit and plunder.

But that society does not yet exist.

A broad movement must be multinational, in solidarity with all people and their issues, against racist repression, sexism, homophobia, and in support of the struggles of people who suffer disproportionately under this oppressive system.

While in general the conditions heaped upon all of our class are bad, Black, Latinos/as, Indigenous people and other people of color suffer higher rates of unemployment, poverty, lack of access to health care, in addition to regular oppression and repression.

The attacks against immigrant workers, the raids and deportations, the attacks against Muslims and the attacks against Black people — be they in the form of police brutality, incarceration or police occupation of communities of color — must all be seen as attacks against a sector of the working class.

As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Unity and solidarity are needed.

Any grouping that seeks to scapegoat immigrants, Muslims, people of color is no friend of the working class. It is instead doing the bidding of Wall Street by attacking the most dispossessed, most disenfranchised. Any opportunists who think that demagogy against Wall Street that serves a racist, sexist or homophobic perspective must be given no quarter. Our class is diverse and we must always be aware of its diversity.

This movement will grow and can be transformative. We will learn what works and what doesn’t. We will learn lessons from our mistakes and our victories, and we will march forward.

An Injury to One Is an Injury to All!

All Power to the People!

Larry Hales
Oct. 19

Hales is an organizer of the national student struggle against austerity; an Occupy Wall Street, anti-police brutality and anti-war activist and a member of Workers World Party.

Florida Graduate Employees and SDS Rally Against Student Fees

By Fernando Figueroa

From: Fight Back! News

Gainesville, FL - The Graduate Assistants Union (GAU) and allies from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) rallied against student fees leveled upon graduate students at the University of Florida, Aug. 16. Volunteers began by leafleting and talking to teaching assistant employees about the importance of banding together and fighting for the union that provides them with healthcare and pay stipends. Many graduate students are surprised to learn that without the union, fees would go up every year like other campuses. Now the GAU union hopes to eliminate the fees, making graduate school more affordable for everyone. Most graduate student employees understand how poorly the administration treats them, despite teaching almost 50% of all undergraduate courses.

Halfway through the University's orientation for new teaching assistant employees, GAU Chief Steward Jose Soto and volunteers from SDS delivered an in-depth presentation about the importance of the GAU's current campaign – eliminating all student fees for graduate students and providing more accessible education. Hundreds of students and teaching assistant employees began chanting “No more fees!” in spite of university administrators sitting uncomfortably in the front row of the assembly room. “Workers at Wal-Mart and McDonald's don’t pay to work there, so why do employees at UF pay to work here?” Soto asked. During the next break period, many students signed up to be union members at the GAU table.

Then at a GAU lunch outside the assembly hall a spontaneous rally came together. The GAU’s Jose Soto delivered an empowering speech urging teaching assistant employees to fight for the elimination of student fees. Richard Blake, a member of Gainesville SDS, said, “It's great to rally with the graduate employees who teach our classes and educate people about the benefits that a union brings to their workplace.” SDS will continue to lead the fight for education rights, for accessible education and support the struggles of working people for better pay, benefits, and a good quality of life.

White Supremacist Principal Runs Catholic High School in the Bronx

From: NY Daily News

A firebrand educator with ties to a white supremacist group is running a Bronx Catholic school where most of the students are black and Latino, the Daily News has learned.

Frank Borzellieri, 48, was quietly promoted to principal of Our Lady of Mount Carmel School two years ago - despite a history of controversial writings and campaigns, including a push to ban a biography on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

In 2004, Borzellieri wrote the book "Don't Take It Personally: Race, Immigration, Crime and Other Heresies," in which he declares "diversity is a weakness" and says the rising black and Hispanic populations in America will lead to the "New Dark Age."

He has also written frequently for the white supremacist publication American Renaissance, with which he is still "intimately involved," the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center says.

Borzellieri declined comment.

Mount Carmel pastor, the Rev. Eric Rapaglia, said he knew of Borzellieri's views, but didn't "see any cause for concern" when he hired him to run the 200-student elementary school.

"I knew of him from my last parish," he said. "Do I agree with all of it? No. But I think much of it is valuable and logical and reasonable.

"A lot of his ideas would actually benefit minorities," he added.

Borzellieri, who unsuccessfully ran for state Assembly in 1994 and City Council in 1997, previously made headlines as a school board member in District 24 in Queens, where he lives.

During his board tenure, from 1993 to 2002, he tried to:


# Ban literature he labeled "anti-American" from school libraries. His targets included books on different races and culture, and a biography of King.


# Remove an openly gay teacher and gay-rights activist from the classroom at Public School 199 in Sunnyside, and ban school employees from making any references to homosexuality.


# Introduce a resolution calling for students to be taught that U.S. culture is superior.

Borzellieri's views rankled teachers at St. Barnabas School in Woodlawn, Bronx, where he taught English from 2006 to 2009.

"You can't have someone with those beliefs or who writes that kind of stuff working at a Catholic school," said Annemarie Zagaglia, principal of St. Barnabas School during Borzellieri's time there.

When Rapaglia was the pastor of St. Barnabas, Zagaglia warned him that teachers had legitimate concerns about Borzellieri. She said Rapaglia "dismissed the whole thing, and that was the end of that."

Rapaglia became pastor of Mount Carmel - in Fordham, Bronx - in 2009 and hired Borzellieri as principal that year.

A former teacher at St. Barnabas said she alerted the Archdiocese of New York in 2007 that students had complained Borzellieri was using them as "research" for his books, but the teacher never got a response.

Archdiocese spokesman Joe Zwilling said there is no record of a complaint against Borzellieri, but said the matter is under review.

Zwilling added that sweeping changes in hiring parish principals went into effect in 2009 - right after Borzellieri got the gig.

"Previously, pastors had great leeway and discretion in the hiring of principals," Zwilling said. "That practice usually worked well, but we saw room for improvement."

Parents of students at Mount Carmel voiced concern after the Daily News informed them of Borzellieri's past.

"I've heard kids say they don't like him," said one mother, a Jamaican immigrant. "I was wondering where the heck he came from. He shouldn't be teaching here. He could look at kids differently because they're black. It's not fair."

1917: Women of the 'Death Batallion'

Women Soldiers in the Bolshevik Revolution

From: Six Red Months in Russia by Louise Bryant

NO other feature of the great war ever caught the public fancy like the Death Battalion, composed of Russian women. I heard so much about them before I left America that it was one of the first things I investigated when I got to Russia. In six months I saw them go through a curious development which divided them into two bitter hostile camps. Their leader, Leona Botchkarova, was severely beaten and had to be taken to a hospital. Hurt, uncomprehending, she declared: "I do not want to be associated with women! I do not trust them!" If she had been a thinker as well as a fighter she would have known that sex had little to do with the matter. Class struggle permeated everything and it hurled the women's regiments into the maelstrom with everything else.

Near Smolny Institute there was a recruiting station. It was here that I made my first friends among the women soldiers. A short dumpy little girl with cropped black hair stood awkwardly holding a big gun with a long bayonet. She regarded me belligerently.

"Stoi! What do you want?" she queried. I decided she must be the guard and explained my mission.

Inside were half a dozen girls sitting on stools in the hallway. They were arrayed in the strangest attire; one had on dancing slippers and a frivolous waist; another high-heeled French shoes, and still another wore brown buttoned shoes and green stockings--the only universal note was short hair and men's trousers.

They looked like the chorus of a comic opera in various stages of make-up. They all began to talk to me at once, as is the Russian custom. "Who are you?" "Are you English or American?" "Are you going to join the regiment?"

A very intelligent and lovely girl by the name of Vera, who was in charge that day, came out and invited me into her office. I often went back after that and had lunch with her. She was well read and spoke live languages. The only thing I didn't like about her was that she loved to salute so much that she kept doing it all the time, and as she was the superior officer, she couldn't very well salute any one else but me. This I found very droll after coming from France, where war correspondents are not treated like commanders-in-chief.

Vera explained about the variety of shoes. She said that they had ordered boots, but had never heard any further word. There was a very good reason, which I found out afterwards; there was no leather. The only women soldiers that ever did get boots or overcoats or anything else they needed were the first recruits to the Death Battalion. All the others were "just waiting" as every one does in Russia.

It was the Death Battalion that book part in the last Russian offensive. There were two hundred and fifty in the battle; six were killed and thirty wounded. That was their last and only battle, except for the girls who were brought to the Winter Palace the day that it fell. And they surrendered before a single one was wounded.

I gathered these statistics very carefully and have compared them with the statistics gathered by reliable persons. I took great pains because I could not believe them when I first got them. I had been led to believe that the movement was much larger. In all Russia less than three thousand were gathered into the recruiting stations. It is interesting to note that many more have since taken part in the Red Guard Army.

Women in Russia have always fought in the army. In my opinion the principal reason for the failure of the woman's regiment was segregation. There will always be fighting women in Russia, but they will fight side by side with men and not as a sex. Botchkarova herself fought several gears before she organised the Death Battalion at the instigation of Kerensky and Rodzianko.

When the Soviet formally took over the government the women soldiers were given two months' leave. The majority were ordered home and told to put on female attire because they were considered enemies of the revolution. There was a good deal of misunderstanding on both sides.

I came across a peculiar case. I had heard a rumour that some of the girls had been mistreated the night the Winter Palace fell. I didn't believe it, but I wanted to assure myself. After a great deal of searching around I found that one girl really had been hurt and had been in a hospital. And another girl had committed suicide because she was "disappointed in her ideals." I got the address of the girl who had been sick and went round to see her.

She lived with another girl in one of the great barnlike unused buildings so common in Petrograd. Kira Volakettnova was her name. She was a dressmaker and had always been very poor. The building had a court with snow piled high in the centre. Garbage and filth of all sorts were thrown on top of the snow.

I knocked a long time at the front door; nobody answered. I found the back door wide open and went in. Hearing a noise in one of the rooms, I called out but received no reply. I opened the door and a lot of startled chickens ran in every direction. I searched all over that floor with no result, and finally went to the second floor. There in a tiny room I found Kira and her friend, Anna Shub. Anna was seventeen and came from Moghilev.

I asked Kira to explain how she was hurt.

"Well, that night when the Bolsheviki took the Winter Palace and told us to go home, a few of us were very angry and we got into an argument," she said.

"We were arguing with soldiers of the Pavlovsk regiment. A very big soldier and I had a terrible fight. We screamed at each other and finally he got so mad that he pushed me and I fell out of the window. Then he ran downstairs and all the other soldiers ran downstairs.... The big soldier cried like a baby because he had hurt me and he carried me all the way to the hospital and came to see me every day."

"And how do you live now?" I said. "How do you manage to get enough to eat?"

Anna Shub answered my question. "Why, the Red Guard," she said, blushing a little, "have been dividing their bread with us, and yesterday," she went on proudly, "they brought us six pieces of wood, and so we have been warm all day."

"Have you forgiven the Bolsheviki for disarming you?" I asked Kira.

Anna Shub broke in and asked excitedly: "Why should we forgive them? It is they who should forgive us. We are working girls and traitors have been trying to persuade us to fight our own people. We were fooled and we almost did it."

"How was that?" I asked.

Anna reached under her cot and took out a pasteboard box. The contents of that and what she had on her back was all that she had in the world besides a sick sparrow. The sick sparrow she had picked up on the street half frozen. Now it hopped about the room looking for crumbs and picking at spots on the floor. Anna opened the box and took out some folded papers. Two were small posters like those pasted daily on the buildings on the streets of Petrograd. "Read them," she said. They were written in the usual extravagant and colourful language of Russian bulletins. I give a free translation:

"Come with us in the name of your fallen heroes I Come with us and dry the tears and heal the wounds of Russia. Protect her with your lives.

"Wake up and see clear, you who are selling the heads of your children to the Germans. Soon, very soon, you will prefer to face ten German bayonets to one tigress. We pour out our maledictions upon you. Enough words! It is time to take up arms. Only with a storm of fire will we sweep the enemy off Russian soil. Only with bayonets will we attain a permanent peace. Forward against the enemy! We go to die with you."

After I finished reading Anna went on with her story.

"I left home," she said. "I left everything because I thought the poor soldiers of Russia were tired after fighting so many years, and I thought we ought to help them. When I arrived in Petrograd I began to see the truth; we were supposed to be shaming the soldiers."

Tears welled in her eyes. "I felt as if I myself could die of shame. I didn't know what to do. And then, just before the Winter Palace fell, one of the aristocrats of the Death Battalion came in and asked us to go down and join the Cossacks to fight the revolution."

"I am a Jew," said Anna, "and I come from within the Pale. Liberty is dearer than life to me. And I ... I was actually asked to do this thing!"

"I used to talk to the people in the bread-line," she went on, "about the Bolsheviki, and they said they were not bad people, and that they were our friends. When you go back to America," she said eagerly, as if every one would know about her unfortunate conduct, "tell them I am a woman soldier, and I fight only imperialistic invaders."

Anna and Kira had virtually no clothes at all. They had thin summer clothing, pieced out with all sorts of rag-tags they had managed to gather together, and they didn't know where to get their next meal. I offered them money and clothes. At first they both wept and refused and then they were quite happy in accepting.

A few nights before I left Petrograd I stopped at one of the huge military hospitals, where women soldiers were working. The Bolsheviki had secured them places so that they could get enough to eat.... That very day I hall seen two begging at one of the stations. I found that the girls had already gone home for the night. Following vague directions I walked up a dark street for about a quarter of a mile. The little house where they stayed stood in the middle of a deserted garden, snow-covered and desolate.

I went through an open door that sagged down on a broken hinge, and felt my way along the hall until I saw a shaft of light. I knocked and entered. Inside the little room was a peasant, his wife, their baby, the store, the bed and a highly pungent odour of cooking cabbage.

At the next door I had better success. This time it was a large room containing ten girls and ten beds, a long bench and a Russian stove. They were delighted to have company, especially from "so far away." We sat down on the bench and talked most of the night. Their stories were much the same as Anna's.

"We are girls from little towns," said one. "Some of us came with our parents' blessing, but most of us came with their curses. We were all moved by a high resolve to die for the revolution.

"How unhappy we have been! Everywhere we have been misunderstood. We expected to be honoured, to be treated as heroes, but always we were treated with scorn. On the streets we were insulted. At night men knocked at our barracks and cried out blasphemies. Most of us never got within miles of the front. The soldiers thought we were militarists and enemies of the revolution, and at last they disbanded us and took our arms away."

Another girl began to talk.

"That night," she said, "all of us thought of suicide; there was nothing left. We had no clothes and nowhere to go; life was unbearable. Some of us wanted to appeal to the Bolsheviki, to have a conference with them and explain our purpose. We wanted them to know that we would go to the front and fight for them or for any party. Our aim was to save Russia. But when we suggested that there were members of our battalion who objected and tried to get us to go down and join the Cossacks. We were horrified. We understood then how we had been misled. Of course we would not go...."

"Thirteen went," cried one of the girls.

"But they were aristocrats," answered the first speaker in great contempt.

They were violent in their denunciation of Botchkarova. "She calls us cowards," they said, "but it is she who runs away. It is she who abandons her country, who believes neither in Russian women nor Russian men. .. ."

It was just about the time that the negotiations were broken off at Brest-Litovsk and the possibility of the German advance was in everybody's mouth. I asked them if they would offer their services to the Soviet government in that case. They replied unanimously that they would.

"And how about you?" said one. "Will you fight with us?"

I said that I would. The idea pleased them very much. I was on my way home when the advance began and could not keep my word. But perhaps there will still be opportunity. Russia will be at war with Germany until the present German government is overthrown, and in that struggle for freedom of the Russian people I offer my services unreservedly.

It was almost dawn when I bid the women soldiers farewell. One of them walked a little way with me into the night. It was painfully cold.

"Be sure to come back," she urged sweetly as we shook hands.

"I give you my word of honour," I said, feeling terribly solemn. I looked down and suddenly I realised that her feet were bare. ...

When I think back now she personifies Russia to me, Russia hungry and cold and barefoot--forgetting it all--planning new battles, new roads to freedom.

Public Education Struggles Rooted in Anti-Racist Legacy

By Stephen Millies
Published Jul 14, 2011 10:45 PM

The right to education is under attack across the United States.

The American Association of School Administrators estimated “227,000 education jobs are on the chopping block for the 2011-2012 school year.”

College has become even more expensive. Since 2007 the University of Arizona’s tuition has doubled. It has increased by 40 percent at the University of California since the 2008-2009 school year. Racist Georgia politicians have prohibited undocumented immigrants from attending state colleges.

Taking advantage of Hurricane Katrina, and the horrible damage caused in New Orleans, government officials have privatized most schools there and turned them into charter schools.

The wealthy and powerful have declared war on public education. Billionaires aim to privatize schools under the name of “education reform.” Teachers are their first target.

One “education reformer” is Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who according to Forbes magazine is worth $56 billion. That’s almost twice the gross domestic product of Ghana’s 24.8 million people.

William Henry Gates III attended Seattle’s private Lakeside School with a tiny pupil-to-teacher ratio. But he doesn’t think class sizes of 35 students or more are a problem. Gates urged school administrations to “[identify] the top 25 percent of teachers and [ask] them to take on four or five more students.” (Washington Post, Feb. 28)

This is just like factory owners demanding employees operate more machines or hospital administrators ordering nurses to care for more patients. Bosses always push workers to produce more at less pay. Teachers are workers, too.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation spent $373 million on education in 2009; $73 million was for “advocacy.” This “advocacy” was really anti-union propaganda and lobbying. It helped finance “Teach Plus,” which got supposedly rank-and-file teachers to testify in Indiana and other states in favor of eliminating union protection as a way to stop layoffs — a lose-lose proposition. (New York Times, May 21)

Abolitionists fought for public schools

The struggle for public education in the U.S. was linked to the struggle against slavery.

It was a death penalty offense in most Southern states to teach enslaved people to read and write. The slave masters viewed literacy as dangerous as handing out weapons on a plantation.

Horace Mann was an abolitionist congressperson from Massachusetts who is often credited with establishing the state’s public school system.

The Horace Mann School in the wealthy Riverdale section of the Bronx defames this anti-slavery leader’s memory by charging yearly tuition of $37,275. Real education reform means fighting for South Bronx students to attend this exclusive prep school.

Thaddeus Stevens fought almost single- handedly in the 1830s to defend and build Pennsylvania public schools. Racists still hate him for his support in Congress for Black freedom during the Civil War and Reconstruction. As Ways and Means Committee chairperson, he demanded arms and the right to vote for enslaved people. He also urged the break-up of plantations and giving the land to formerly enslaved people and poor whites.

Black struggle for schools in U.S.

Black people had to fight for centuries to get into U.S. schools. When the African Free School was established in 1787, it may have been the first free school in New York not tied to a church. Three formerly enslaved people opened the first school for Black students in Washington, D.C., in 1807.

Racists attacked northern Black schools. In 1833, racists in Canterbury, Conn., tried to burn a school for African Americans. Two years later, a white mob used oxen to drag a Black school into a swamp outside Canaan, N.H.

By the start of the Civil War, there were 32,692 African-American students enrolled across the country. Black churches had formed Wilberforce University in Ohio, explains Lerone Bennett Jr. in his historic work, “Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America.”

Formerly enslaved individuals built schools and hoped that teachers would come. Black parents in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore struggled to establish high schools named after the great poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Among the Black institutions founded was Langston College in Oklahoma. It was named after John Mercer Langston, who was Ohio’s first African-American lawyer and Virginia’s first Black congressperson. He was Langston Hughes’ great-uncle.

How can this history mean anything to Gates? Microsoft has a record of discriminatory hiring practices. It took a civil rights lawsuit to reveal that just 2.6 percent of Microsoft’s 21,429 employees in 1999 were African American. (http://www.faceintel.com/relatedclassactions.htm)

Billionaires need skilled workers, but they’re afraid of poor and working people who get an education. Their attitude is like that of Prussian serf-owner “Frederick the Great” more than 200 years ago, “If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one would remain in the ranks.”

Education in socialist Cuba

Colonial regimes are among the worst examples. After 300 years of Dutch rule in the early 1900s, there were just 70 college graduates in Indonesia.

“Illiterates with the right attitude to manual employment are preferable to products of the schools,” declared Kenya’s British rulers in 1949, when three Kenyan high schools admitted only 100 African students annually.

Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba was barred from college and forced to take correspondence courses. His assassination on Jan. 17, 1961, was ordered by President Dwight Eisenhower. (Guardian, Aug. 20, 2000)

The Russian and Chinese Revolutions, and the liberation struggles that swept the planet, finally opened up some school doors. African students were allowed to attend U.S. colleges in hopes they wouldn’t enroll in Patrice Lumumba University in the socialist Soviet Union.

The first battle of the Cuban Revolution was to wipe out illiteracy. Conrado Benítez García, a Black teacher, was lynched by CIA-backed counterrevolutionaries for teaching peasants to read and write.

After the Soviet Union’s overthrow in 1991, Cuba lost most of its foreign trade. Despite this tremendous economic blow, not a single Cuban school was closed. Cuba saved its schools because of socialist economic planning. Today its Latin American School of Medicine trains thousands of doctors from around the world, including from poor U.S. communities.

Cuba has what we need.

Workers, Youth Resist Banker Assault

By John Catalinotto
Published Jun 22, 2011 10:18 PM

Workers and young people in Greece held a general strike and mass demonstrations June 15 to put up the strongest resistance so far to the relentless offensive by European bankers and billionaires against the working class on that continent. In Spain, too, more than a half million took to the streets on June 19.

Greece’s left-wing labor confederation PAME held the third general strike of 2011 on June 15, protesting the government’s newest plans to cut another 6.4 billion euros from the already existing austerity budget. PAME, which marched in 67 cities, represents about half the organized workers and has led the workers’ struggle against the Troika.

Strikers encircled the presidential mansion, the premier’s office and Parliament to stop the representatives from reaching the building to open debate on Prime Minister George Papandreou’s new cuts.

A movement something like the one that recently occupied the central squares of cities in Spain was also in the streets with less clear political demands but still opposed to austerity. Communist Party (KKE) representatives left the debate in parliament to join the demonstration.

PAME Secretariat Member Alekos Arvanitidis told the crowd in Sytagma Square, “We refuse to recognize any debt.” (www.kke.gr, June 16)

The PASOK regime, led by Papandreou, announced a shuffle of positions in the cabinet that same day, presenting it as a change. Though it showed the government felt mass pressure, the change was barely cosmetic.

The next day, the KKE held demonstrations in cities across Greece to show its complete lack of confidence in the government, to expose the “change” as meaningless and to insist that the working class had the right to refuse any sacrifice to help solve the bankers’ debt crisis.

KKE Secretary General Aleka Papariga told the thousands rallying in Athens, “We must highlight what the business groups, monopolies, the EU and NATO owe to the people as do the bourgeois parties of ND and PASOK ... the people must not pay anything. The people must with their own hands take back what they are owed and what belongs to them.” (www.kke.gr, June 17)

Banks wage class war against workers

The corporate media misrepresents the European capitalist offensive as an effort to discipline countries that allegedly “spend beyond their means” on social services and thus defend the common European currency.

It is true there is a financial and economic crisis that has brought massive unemployment. But the “austerity measures” are the major European — and U.S. — banks’ strategy not to end unemployment but to collect payments on public loans and assure profits for finance capital. To do this, the European bankers have three instruments: the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank. Popular organizations fighting to defend the social programs call these three bodies “The Troika.”

The Troika has threatened the governments on Europe’s economic periphery — Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Iceland especially — that it will withhold loans unless the governments severely cut social programs.

The Troika is a threat first and foremost to the working class but also to the very sovereignty of the countries it moves in on. It imposes austerity. It forces privatization of state-owned industry. The Troika serves banks located mainly in France and Germany, the dominant imperialist powers in the Eurozone.

Last year’s austerity program in Greece did nothing to resolve the debt crisis and only increased the unemployment rate, now officially at more than 16 percent. Spain’s is 21 percent.

This bankers’ attack in Europe has similarities to the one against U.S. cities and states, where local public budgets are being cut to the bone while money is used first to pay banks for bonds. In both places, the bosses and bankers are aggressively waging class struggle through an austerity program that makes the workers pay the costs to bail out the banks.

The attack is also similar to the Structural Adjustment Programs that the IMF and World Bank imposed on countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia during the 1980s and 1990s after financial crises that hit hardest outside the imperialist centers of the U.S., Western Europe and Japan. These programs often threw the most vulnerable sectors of the indebted societies into hunger and misery.

In Europe, this offensive is most brutal in the periphery, and the resistance too is strongest there, right now in Greece and Spain.

Hundreds of thousands march in Spain

Somewhere between a half-million and a million people demonstrated in more than 50 cities in the Spanish state, in every region, on June 19 to oppose the regime in office and its version of austerity and to demand a future for the youth.

Starting May 15, a youthful movement including many young workers and unemployed — along with anyone who wanted to struggle — grew up outside the major unions and parliamentary political parties. The role of the union leadership in Spain differs from that in Greece. After one general strike last September, the leaders of the two major union confederations in the Spanish state made an agreement with the government and have deserted the struggle.

Disgusted with nearly all political leaders and distrustful of most union leadership, young people — who face official unemployment of about 45 percent — occupied the main squares of dozens of cities, staying there in many cases for three to four weeks. Participants made organizational decisions in popular assemblies held in these squares. Their final meetings called for massive mobilizations on June 19, with demands that added up to “Let the rich pay for their crisis,” “No cuts to pensions” and “We want a future.”

Six separate marches came from different neighborhoods in Madrid to gather for a massive rally in Neptune Square. Marches also joined to fill Plaza Catalunya in Barcelona, and there are reports that another 80,000 people marched in Valencia. Significant protests also took place in Gijon in Asturias, Bilbao and Donastia in the Basque Country, Seville in Andalucia, Vigo and Coruña in Galicia — to name a few. (diagonalperiodico.net, June 20)

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!

Mass youth revolt shakes Spain

By Ben Carroll
Published May 25, 2011 3:44 PM

Drawing inspiration from the fighting spirit and determination of Tahrir Square and the peoples of Egypt, Tunisia and the Middle East, the peoples of Spain took the struggle against capitalist austerity, mass unemployment and the conditions of the economic crisis to a new level this past week.

Demonstrations and occupations of city plazas erupted across the Spanish state beginning on May 15 and, as of May 23, show no signs of faltering.

On May 15, a week before regional and local elections were to take place, protests started up in cities throughout the country against the government’s austerity program and mass unemployment, as well as to demand a number of democratic reforms of the political system.

The officially reported unemployment rate sits at a staggering 21.3 percent, the highest in Europe. For young people, the statistics are even worse, as 45 percent of people aged 18 to 25 are unemployed. The situation for youth is so dire that they are referred to as the “youth without a future” or “the lost generation.” Many have begun referring to themselves as “los indignados” (those who are “fed up”).

Tens of thousands were in the streets that day. Following the demonstration in Madrid, young people and workers took over and began an around-the-clock occupation of the central plaza there, the Puerta del Sol. This bold action inspired numerous other occupations of plazas in major cities throughout the country; people demonstrated in more than 166 cities during the week. At least 10 occupations of city squares were also being reported in Italy, and there was a protest outside the Spanish Embassy in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.

While the capitalist-owned press has heavily focused on the role of social media in these demonstrations — and it is undeniable that those sites have been an important tool among many used by organizers — it is the objective conditions of the capitalist crisis, the austerity measures and anger over the bank bailouts that have driven masses of young people and workers into the streets throughout the Spanish state, from Galicia to the Basque Country to Catalonia, as well as in the capital city.

“I’m here against the system, against everything, the banks, the government, the Popular Party, unemployment. You name it. Nothing works,” journalism student Sabina Ortega told the Christian Science Monitor (May 20). “It’s against a two-party system. And my goal is to feel represented. I want politicians to know they are not listening. I’ll stay here as long as I have to.”

Despite a ban imposed on the occupations by the Spanish government on May 20, two days ahead of the scheduled elections, tens of thousands of people in Puerta del Sol and elsewhere around the country defied these orders and continued to hold the encampments. Some plan to stay until the following weekend.

Aerial photos of the Puerta del Sol in Madrid show a number of large banners that were raised in the square. One of the most prominent reads, “La crisis es el capitalismo” (“The crisis is capitalism”). Tents and other structures — offering medical, legal and food services — have been established and demonstrators have constituted various assemblies to carry out the many tasks required to maintain the occupation and to vote on different political objectives.

Many of the different communist parties and organizations active in the Spanish state have issued statements of support for the wave of occupations, dubbed the 15-M (May 15) movement, and have been active participants in these demonstrations. They view their main tasks as helping to develop and deepen the working-class consciousness of the protests and to unite the various sectors that are in motion against the capitalist austerity in order to open a broader, worker-led political struggle against the Spanish state and the two ruling parties — the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) and the People’s Party (PP).

Spain in context

In the elections held May 22, the governing PSOE was dealt a defeat by the PP, even in strongholds the self-styled socialists have held since the end of Franco’s fascist dictatorial rule in the mid-1970s, at which time a number of democratic reforms were introduced.

Despite what its name might suggest, the PSOE is a historically social democratic party that currently occupies a position similar to the one the Democratic Party holds here in the U.S. At its congress back in 1979, the PSOE renounced Marxism and the revolutionary struggle of the working class and is now one of the two main capitalist parties in the country.

The other, the People’s Party (PP), is a right-wing party formed in 1989 as a result of the merger of various reactionary parties. Many in the leadership of the PP have connections going back to the Franco regime, with some even having served under him during the fascist rule over the country from 1940 to 1975.

Spain has the world’s twelfth-largest economy. Spain also has the European Union’s third-largest budget deficit and may, like Ireland, Greece and Portugal, be forced to accept a devastating IMF austerity package if it cannot satisfy the banks with its own austerity measures soon.

Within the Galician, Basque and Catalonian regions of the Spanish state there are movements for national self-determination.

Of the three main countrywide trade union federations, only one, the CGT, has continued to wage an open struggle against the state around the austerity programs. The other two federations — the UGT and the Workers’ Commissions (CCOO) — granted concessions to the PSOE government following the country’s first general strike in more than 10 years last Sept. 29 and agreed to stop future mass actions of workers. Most regional unions in the Basque Country, however, support the workers’ struggles.

Capitalism to blame

Although the current demonstrations began one week prior to elections, this revolt is directed not merely against one capitalist party or the other, but is an uprising against the miserable conditions that have been forced upon young people and workers by capitalism and the global crisis, which is now four years old.

The workers, the unemployed and the young people of the Spanish state are following the heroic example of the peoples of Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere throughout North Africa and the Middle East as they take their destiny into their own hands and fight back.

The May 22 elections came and went, but the occupation shows no signs of giving up. Organizers have continued to hold the encampments in Madrid and elsewhere throughout the country and have set May 28 as another major day of demonstrations.
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.

Boycott campaign gathers momentum

By Dianne Mathiowetz
Atlanta
Published May 27, 2011 11:55 AM

Immigrant rights activists in Georgia have stepped up their visibility campaign against discriminatory legislation, particularly HB 87, an Arizona copycat law that legalizes racial profiling.

Scheduled to take effect July 1, the law empowers local police throughout the state to arrest and detain anyone not carrying proof of legal residency. It also requires employers to use the federal E-Verify system before hiring a worker. HB 87 also criminalizes anyone transporting an undocumented person.

Several Georgia counties are already involved in the 287(g) program, which authorizes local law agencies to enforce immigration policies. Thousands of undocumented workers from around the world have been deported from Georgia in recent years for minor traffic offenses under this program.

Corrections Corporation of America operates several for-profit prisons in Georgia. It has been revealed that its lobbyists played a major role in writing Arizona’s SB 1070, and similar charges are being made about its influence on the Georgia legislation.

On May 7, Georgia Students for Public Higher Education conducted a banner drop focusing on another anti-immigrant piece of legislation at the commencement ceremonies of Georgia State University, held at the mammoth Georgia Dome. This act bars undocumented students from attending the top five schools in the university system, no matter their qualifications.

The next weekend a large rally was held in Gainesville, Ga., the home of several of the most anti-immigrant Georgia politicians, including Gov. Nathan Deal. It was organized by students at Gainesville State College and a number of community and faith-based groups from this rural county.

On May 15, banners opposing HB 87 were dropped during the Civil Rights baseball game played at Turner Field in Atlanta, where Grammy-winning musician Carlos Santana publicly denounced the legislation.

Hundreds of women and children marched in downtown Atlanta on May 22 to protest the implementation of HB 87. Organized by the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, the mothers’ protest is part of a series of public rallies and actions building to a day of “No work” on July 1.

A national campaign to boycott Georgia is gathering momentum, with the AFL-CIO announcing it will not schedule any conferences in the state as long as HB 87 is law.
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.

Student, Labor, Community Unite, Confront Wall Street and Austerity

By Caleb T. Maupin
New York
Published May 23, 2011 9:11 PM

A broad coalition of teachers, students, labor and community organizations showed a high level of militancy as 20,000 protesters took to the narrow streets of New York’s financial district to oppose cuts in education and other social programs. New York City’s organized labor turned out in force for the May 12 action.

The United Federation of Teachers, representing all the teachers in New York City’s public schools, had some 6,000 members in the streets to oppose billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed layoffs and cutbacks. Other unions that mobilized included Transport Workers Union Local 100, Service Employees Local 32BJ, Communication Workers from both Verizon and the public sector, as well as New York Nurses United. A number of labor leaders spoke during a rally, along with City Council member Charles Barron.

The unions collaborated with the New York Coalition Against Budget Cuts, which mobilized thousands of students and people from community groups. The NYCABC organized a march from City Hall to Wall Street March 24, in which the largest component was youths and students.

Larry Hales, a key organizer of the March 24 action, told Workers World, “The massive outpouring on May 12 had its roots in the success of the ‘Day of Rage’ held on March 24. That action inspired many rank-and-file union members, who pressured their union leaders to call and endorse the next large action of forces opposed to massive cuts in public services.”

Community, student groups fired up

Community organizations were there. Parent associations and tenant organizations marched, as did the Coalition for the Homeless. Contingents from local childcare centers, which also face cuts, joined the march. Hostos Community College faculty and students, along with part-time faculty and Professional Staff Congress members participated.

Thousands of high school students were encouraged by their teachers to participate, and they joined them in the streets to defend their education against cutbacks and privatization.

Some sections of the march emphasized opposition to the massive spending on war. Others loudly opposed cuts in AIDS research and treatment. A large contingent raised the demand for a national health insurance plan.

The march stepped off at 4:30 p.m., and despite the efforts of the police, the marchers were soon out in the streets. As the march continued, traffic and business halted as the many thousands of people wound their way through lower Manhattan to Wall Street, the center of world finance capital.

Slogans proclaimed “Make the banks pay!” and “Solve the budget crisis: End the wars, tax the rich!” Chants of “Tax the rich!” and “F**k Wall Street!” were heard by all.

Employees of Wall Street firms gathered around windows and looked down at the massive crowd of working-class people demanding justice.

When the march reached Water Street, police attempted to disperse the march and return to “business as usual” on a Thursday afternoon by pushing a contingent of youth. But when they suddenly moved to arrest two youth in the street, the crowd poured into the street, physically preventing the arrests, amid roars of “Let them go! Let them go!”

Soon, several hundred youth took the corner of Water and Wall streets, chanting “Whose streets? Our streets!” The police pushed to clear the streets, using orange nets and metal barricades. The crowd pushed back.

Police shoved the faces of the young people with their hands, and struck youth who were pinned between the crowd and the nets. Despite this brutality, the confrontation continued, strengthened by the huge numbers of youth who were intent on carrying out an “occupation,” despite calls from more moderate march organizers to pull back.

The cops were attempting to defend the “private property” of Wall Street against students and youth who face cutbacks, unemployment and an insecure economic future. The standoff between the youth and the cops lasted 45 minutes. Some youths attempted to appeal to the police with chants used in Wisconsin, such as “Your job is next!” More radical sections chanted, “Wall Street thugs! Wall Street thugs!” Truckloads of police and metal barricades were used in the attempt to retake control of the area.

In other parts of lower Manhattan, police attempted to prevent people from joining the protest by blocking off entrances to march areas. Lucy Pagoada, a teacher and UFT member, told Workers World, “The police were giving people false directions, and not letting people get anywhere near the march. They had the streets blocked off.”

Most participants in the action could see that sentiment for a popular uprising against the capitalist drive to impose austerity on working and oppressed people was widespread. The desire for a more militant resistance movement exists not only among radical forces, but among countless youth who face extreme economic hardship caused by the current crisis.

Given the strength of the May 12 action, some organizers suspect that this summer will see an escalation of the struggle. On one side are labor, students and community organizations. On the other is the capitalist class, which seeks to strip away anything close to a decent life in this time of economic crisis.

Larry Hales and G. Dunkel 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.

New York march demands good contract, education

By Workers World New York bureau
Published May 15, 2011 10:37 PM

>A picket line of university faculty, staff and students outside City Hall on May 5 was boisterous and militant. Seven hundred protesters then marched from City Hall to a rally at Borough of Manhattan Community College, where they spoke truth and bitterness about conditions at the City University of New York.

The state cut CUNY funding by $107 million this year and billionaire Mayor Bloomberg wants to cut $63 million more. These recent cuts and years of underfunding guarantee overcrowded classrooms, fewer full-time faculty positions, less time for student mentoring and guidance, abuse of hard-working but underpaid adjuncts, and reliance on tuition instead of public investment. Meanwhile, wealthy New Yorkers are scheduled to receive $5 billion in tax breaks.

At an opening rally in City Hall Park, Professional Staff Congress President Barbara Bowen told other protesters, “We’re rallying to puncture the myth of economic austerity, used by Albany and City Hall to justify massive budget cuts. If we let politicians continue to say ‘we’re broke’ with one side of their mouth while they promise tax breaks for the rich with the other, millions of ordinary New Yorkers will pay the price.” The PSC represents faculty and staff at CUNY, which is jointly funded by the state and city of New York.

Angry, Unemployed Youth & Police Have "Shoving Match" on Wall Street

A Drummer's Voice Carries...

One of the groups adding spirit and militancy to the May Day march from Union Square to Foley Square in New York City were the young drummers with the Workers World Party contingent marching just ahead of its banner. Chants were backed by and timed with drumbeats, everything from “The people united” to calls for “legalization” to demands to end the imperialist wars.

One of the group’s coordinators, Bronx high-schooler Dinae Anderson, told WW that she found the experience “amazing. People are tired of the mess Obama made deporting a million immigrants and treating them like they were bad people. Workers should all be equal and united. We want to be united and equal and make noise.”

Manhattan resident Aya thought the contingent was “fantastic. Drumming and people chanting captures the attention of pedestrians, so that everything you shout is heard and we are listened to. The drums connect with the people. They stop to listen. I have no voice left now, but I was listened to earlier.”

— Report and photo by John Catalinotto

Reflection: Trying To Talk To A Tea Partier

When I was a high school student in the year 2004, I sat next to a young woman in Math Class who was a devoted member of the Apostolic Church, a branch of fundamentalist christianity. One day, as we were waiting to be educated, she informed me that she would never drink alcohol, even when she was 21 and legally allowed because all who drank alcohol would "go to hell."

I asked, mistakenly, "Didn't Jesus turn water into wine?"

She responded: "It wasn't wine, it was simply grape juice."

I said "If the Bible is the literal word of God, why would he be so confusing?"

She then began to sob.

The math teacher than gave me a detention for "making fun of her religion."

That was in a small town in rural Ohio.

However, things haven't changed that much. Below is my recent conversation with an old college friend via facebook. This 'friend' has recently been proclaiming herself to be a supporter of the Tea Party Movement.

As this movement is currently abolishing the right to collective bargaining, seeking to destroy medicare and social security, and doing things I am fully aware she disagrees with, I simply wanted to discuss it with her.

The following conversation ensued.

Erich Fromm's work "Fear of Freedom" seems highly relevant. This friend was unwilling to go beyond reciting a few slogans, as she supports a very violent and extreme political movement.

It is one thing to have political opinions. It is quite another to go about spouting talking points, and then accuse anyone who wishes to engage with you of bullying.

The reason the right-wing is so strong in the U.S., is because there are millions of children who grow up home schooled, never exposed to leftist political thought, and terribly, terribly afraid of engaging with it, because all their life they have been taught it is "Satan."

If every time I was confronted with Anti-Communism I simply accused the Anti-Communist of "bullying me", I would be laughed at.

However, in rightist discourse, any exposure to leftist views is "persecution" for the right-wing. That is why the call to purge college campuses of "radical professors", and the demand for mandatory prayer in public schools has so much merit.

You can see how ----- accuses me of "violating her rights" by trying to engage with her about why she supports the Tea Party movement.

To her, any questioning of her beliefs or comments that force her to reconsider them is "oppression."

-Caleb T. Maupin

-------





-------,

You mentioned that you oppose government spending, and that this is why you support the Tea Party.

This does not logically add up.

Less than %1 of the budget goes to help poor people with welfare.

The military budget is a huge part of government spending. Why don't you go and protest Obama's new war in Libya and Bush's Iraq and Afghanistan things? They Cost a lot of money.

The U.S. has thousands of troops in other countries, just sitting there.

There is a whole fleet of navy ships patrolling Latin America to intimidate the people there who are embracing socialism.

The U.S. also has AFRICOM in Africa, with troops threatened governments there.

The U.S. gives billions to the government of Uganda where they are trying to implement the death penalty for gay people.

Where is the Tea Party on all of this?

Legalizing drugs would end 90% of the money spent on prisons. (Though, this is mostly at the state level.)

The federal highway system is the biggest waste of money ever. We used to have trains all across the U.S., but the oil companies bought the railroads, tore them up, and then bribed congress to build highways.

Let's build high-speed rails.

Let's end subsidies for oil companies and banks.

These are all things the Tea Party doesn't focus on.

The Tea Party focuses on a racist lie, that the "debt" and "spending" is all just going to poor people who "don't want to work."

This is just objectively not true.

Right now, all across Ohio, teachers are being laid off by a Tea Party governor who hates "spending" on education.

Even though my parents and I have paid into social security our entire lives, now the "Tea Party" wants to take that away.

Under the guise of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Ron Paul's "Free Market" non-sense, they are creating a slave labor capitalism for the rich.

The Tea Party doesn't represent you.

You don't have to be a Communist/Socialist to see this.

These people are looking to destroy the future of our generation.

Don't be duped.

-Caleb




Hey Caleb,
I must ask a favor. Let me make my own political decisions. I'm moving toward Libertarianism faster than you can say Karl Marx, and I came to that conclusion of my own ability. I do my own research and find my own reasons. I appreciate that you are so resplendent in your political knowledge, but please do not attempt to administer to me any longer. Thank you.
Yours,
-----



------,

If you are making your own political decisions, why can't you defend them?

If I am so dead wrong, why can't you refute my points.

I'm not telling you what to do. I am simply begging you to look at certain facts.

Why can you simply not engage with me?

Being a human being is about struggling to find truth. Perhaps I am wrong. Tell me why.

If you really believe in what you are saying, you'll have reasons for it, and furthermore you'll want to win me to those reasons.

Politics is not a dinner party.

You've happily reminded me on numerous occasions about the reality of Hitler's regime.

Would it be correct for someone in 1933 to say "I support Hitler."

And then when you told them about the horrors of his so-called "National Socialism" to just say:

"------, I make my own decisions."

Politics, especially in a Democratic system where people have the ability to vote and exercise free speech, has serious consequences.

I personally have always been fascinated by politics, because I want to be on the side of right in the world.

I think my politics are right.

You think I am wrong.

Let's engage.

Let's struggle to find the truth.

This is not religion where its a matter of faith. These matters affect everyone's daily lives.

"Let me make my own political decisions."

That is what I want you to do!

I don't think you are currently doing that.

The fact you are resisting discussion beyond repeating a few cliches that don't even make sense shows you aren't making your own decisions.

Christians are always happy to witness to me on the street about why I should give my life to Jesus.

Anarchists are always willing to engage me about the need for a "stateless world."

Many of the libertarians I have known in the past are happy to tell what they believe.

But you can only toss me cliches and words.

You are full of compassion and concern for others.

You are a supporter of Lesbian and Gay People's Human Rights.

You cannot even tell me what the "socialist values" I allegedly believe in are!

How can you say you are making "your own decisions."

I don't want to make any decisions for you.

I just don't want fear of struggling for truth to allow you to blindly support things you clearly disagree with.



Caleb, what you don't understand is that I don't wish to engage with you. I find debating with you pointless, boring and anachronistic. Perhaps in high school I might have wished to listen to you and debate, but what you don't understand is that as an adult I'm flexing my right to my beliefs.
Your constant inability to let me be in the political field has led me to the decision that you and I can no longer remain in any type of contact. You cannot understand that I do not want a debate and deliberately attempt to engage me by spitting phrases meant to inflame my sense of anarchy, which I assure you, is low and sparks few embers. After this message, any contact from you will no longer reach me. I wish to be left alone politically, and I hope you may understand that.
Take care, and good luck trying to get others to see your points.