New York Times: Glenn Beck Leads Religious Rally at Lincoln Memorial

I watched / listened to most of Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally while doing laundry and cleaning the house. The cheesiness of the voice-overs and unevenness of the speeches lend themselves to easy mockery, but the far right's ability to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people in Washington, DC yesterday means that this is no laughing matter.

First, on the media coverage of the event: I'm struck by the extent to which the notion of "politics" is becoming largely incoherent; the NYT reports, with a straight face, that this event was about religion, history, or nationality rather than "politics." While speakers stayed away from the strictly partisan, this event was entirely about articulating and mobilizing a politics, both in the narrow sense (firing up the base for the mid-term elections) and the broad sense (laying out an ideology which can serve cohesive and expressive functions for a politics).

A statement by the Solidarity student working group

An unprecedented assault on public education is underway. State governments are slashing public school and university budgets, while the White House and Congress push school competition, firing teachers and privatization as a “solution” to the crisis of funding. But students and teachers are fighting back—most visibly in California, but also at schools across the nation. The movement will likely grow as more and more states cut education funding. It’s a sign of a vital movement that vibrant debates are occurring over tactics and strategy. As a contribution to these debates, we offer these suggestions to orient the movement.

This report and appeal, sent out by Farooq Tariq from the Labour Party Pakistan gives you some idea of what is occuring in Pakistan. Please respond to the appeal!

On 30 July in Moscow without being presented any charges the activists of anti-facist movement Maxim Solopov and Alexei Gascarov got arrested.  Maxim and Alexei were known as public figures of the growing youth movement against the Nazis’ violence, which in recent years has done much to reveal the ties of state structures police and the ultra-rights in Russia.

Their arrest followed a series of dramatic events which took place in July, around the destruction of forest in Himki near Moscow.  Big business and state bureaucrats having interest in cutting down the forest for realization of the multimillion dollar Moscow-Saint Petersburg highway project, launched an all-out terror campaign against the initiative group consisting of local residents and ecologists.  On 23 July the peaceful camp of protesters was violently assaulted by thugs of private security firms and ultra-right football fans hired by the construction corporation.  The police would not get involved.  During the next week since 26 July the assaults on the protesters continued, while the cutting down of the forest – one of the biggest green zones in the nearest vicinity of Moscow - went on every day too.

At Colombia's request an extraordinary session of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) was convened on July 22 to hear accusations from outgoing president Álvaro Uribe that there are "1,500 guerrillas and dozens of encampments of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) in Venezuela." With both groups labeled "terrorist" organizations by Bogotá and Washington this escalation of tension as Uribe leaves office is a provocation.

Chávez responded by accusing Uribe of using the allegations as a pretext for war. He placed the the Venezuelan armed forces, particularly those 20,000 troops stationed along the Colombian-Venezuelan border, on "maximum alert." The Venezuelan embassy in Bogotá was closed and Colombian diplomats in Caracas were given 72 hours to vacate the country. All this took place in weeks before Juan Manuel Santos will be installed as president of Colombia on August 7.

 Given the March 2008 Colombian Air Force bombing of a FARC encampment in Angostura, Ecuador (1.8 kilometers over the border) that left 26 people dead this was a calculated maneuver. Particularly disturbing is the fact that the operation was conducted by Santos, who was then Uribe's Minister of Defense. The incident revealed the lengths Uribe and Santos were willing to go -- including violating another nation's sovereignty -- in order to destroy FARC.

Last friday there was a march and rally outside the Mets - Diamond Backs game at CitiField in Queens, NYC. The NYPD forced the rally to confine itself to a small pen across the street from the stadium, behind a fence and under a subway platform. As a result, the rally itself was almost totally unnoticeable for fans getting off of the train and going directly into the stadium (let alone if you parked in the lot right next to the stadium); could see or even hear the few hundred people gathered at that spot.

However, dozens of us abandoned the rally point and walked around the plaza outside the stadium passing out flyers about SB1070 along with big signs to hold up during the game (NO SB1070! BOYCOTT ARIZONA!, etc.). This was pretty effective, and i'd bet that almost everyone entering the stadium from the subway at least saw that something was being protested, and that it had something to do with immigration and Arizona. In addition to those efforts, there were about a half-dozen others who had bought tickets to the game and went in with carefully planned direct action. All student activists, mostly from CUNY, four people dropped two big banners off of the stadium, and another two jumped into the field and sprinted across with Mexican flags and t-shirts about SB1070. I didn't even know this was happening until i saw folks later who showed me the press coverage of the protests (see below, including some GREAT full-page photos published in the Daily News on Saturday).

Hundreds of hotel workers, members of UNITE-HERE Local 1, and their supporters confronted the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago today, July 22. In front of this glitzy hotel, some dimwit in management had placed a sign thanking the Hyatt employees for helping them win the Chicago Workplace Excellence Award. Just a few weeks ago, these very same employees walked off the job to protest horrendous working conditions.

Outside in the streets, workers and their supporters were laying their bodies on the line for justice and getting arrested for blocking a major artery. The action was one of 15 across the country today coordinated by Hotel Workers Rising to demand a decent contract with this hotel chain. Today’s demonstrations follow on the heels of coordinated protests in June, when union members and their supporters from other unions, the religious and LGBT communities showed up to shame and denounce the Hyatt chain while its first-ever shareholders meeting was taking place. (Hyatt big-wig Doug Manchester is throwing around big bucks in California to stop gay marriage.)

This article was written by a friend of mine, Michael Steven Smith. He is the co-host of the WBAI radio show "Law and Disorder" and sits on the Board of The Center for Constitutional Rights.

At all times throughout history the ideology of the ruling class is the ruling ideology.--Karl Marx

Lynne Stewart is a friend. She used to practice law in New York City. I still do. I was in the courtroom with my wife Debby the afternoon of July l9th for her re-sentencing. The Judge John Koetl buried her alive. We should have seen it coming when he told her to take all the time she needed at the start when she spoke before the sentence was read. It didn’t matter what she said. He had already written his decision, which he read out loud for to a courtroom packed with supporters. It was well crafted. Bullet proof on appeal. He is smart and cautious.

After about an hour into his pronouncement he came to the buried alive part. He prefaced it by citing the unprecedented 400 letters of support people had sent him, all of which he said he read. He noted Lynne’s three decades of service to the poor and the outcast. He stressed that she is a seventy-year-old breast cancer survivor with high blood pressure and other serious health problems. And then he laid it on her: 120 months.

Howie Hawkins - Green for Governor
Media Release
http://www.howiehawkins.org - http://www.gpny.org

For Immediate Release: July 15, 2010
For More Info: Howie Hawkins, 315 425-1019
Mark Dunlea, 518 860-3725

Hawkins Opposes Increased Jail Time for Lawyer Lynne Stewart, calls it an Attempt to Intimidate Lawyers Representing Unpopular Clients

Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for Governor, harshly condemned the increased jail time ordered for civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart, calling it an affront to the American legal system.

"This is not about Lynne Stewart. This is about any lawyer defending an unpopular client. It undermines our system of legal representation, which is based on an adversarial system where the defendant has the right to confront their accusers. Her increased sentence is an effort to intimidate lawyers who defend controversial clients. Ms. Stewart has an exemplary record as a legal advocate for the poor and the oppressed and should be released from prison. I call upon President Obama to immediately provide her clemency and to put an end to this travesty of justice," said Hawkins, who was arrested last November at a single payer universal health care protest at the Syracuse offices of WellPoint, the largest health insurance conglomerate in the US.