1. The era of the United States as a “the world’s only superpower” is ending.
   The United States economy has not been this bad since the Great Depression. The rulers of the US hoped to retain global power militarily, through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the country’s raw economic superiority slipped. But these wars cannot be won: opposition among the occupied populations, and growing dissent within the military, prevent any victory on US terms even as the death toll climbs.


2. Beginning during the 1970s, manufacturing stalled, while government and investors focused on the financial sector: banks, real estate, and insurance.
   Increasing competition, strong unions, and victories of the Black freedom movement had begun to limit the profits made by US corporations and threaten the power of the ruling class. In response, employers shifted good-paying manufacturing jobs overseas and to nonunionized areas of the USA. As wages stagnated, and workers' purchasing power declined, workers maintained a precarious hold on our livelihood through working longer hours, sending more household members to work, and buying extensively on credit. The globalization of US capitalism and growth of credit both fueled the financial sector, which provided fluid economic resources that could be quickly moved and re-invested – unlike a physical investment such as a factory or railroad.


3. In 2008, years of government policies favoring the rich provoked instability and sparked collapse of major Wall Street institutions.
   As the cost of the basic necessities went up, and wages failed to cover them, workers' inability to buy, buy, buy became a major problem for investors. To counter this, the Federal Reserve (through which the government regulates availability of credit) set interest rates at 0% for several years in a row, encouraging large amounts of debt-financed spending at by poor and rich alike. Much of this easy credit was poured into new homes, which many mistakenly saw as ‘safe’ or ‘foolproof.’ The hyped-up demand for houses drove their price far beyond the actual value anyone would realistically pay for them. Holders of expensive and sometimes outright fraudulent sub-prime mortgages quickly found themselves unable to meet the payments, and defaulted on their loans. Communities targeted for deceptive, manipulative “sub-prime” mortgages – especially African Americans – were hit hardest with historic losses of wealth.


4. Deregulation and corporate greed made a bad situation worse.
   The collapse in the housing market bankrupted the massive mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. The companies were charted by congress as privately owned banks with special access to credit through the United States Treasury; they were developed under FDR’s administration in part to address the housing crisis of the Great Depression and provide access to affordable housing for some Americans. The collapse and government take-over of these institutions shows us just how serious this current crisis has become. That Great Depression of the 1930s was produced by dynamics similar to those operating today, and ended partially through government regulation of investment. But these regulations were stripped away in the 1980s and 90s to buy big corporations more time during those decades’ economic scares. Freed from oversight, investment bankers created new ways of cheating the market and spread the risk of this “safe” mortgage debt throughout the global economy. As uncertainty spread, banks and firms operating with high levels of debt were suddenly unable to borrow the amounts they needed to stay afloat. At the most basic level, banks collapsed by lending money they didn't really have.


5. Wall Street's collapse reveals not only corruption and shortsightedness, but problems that are a basic part of the capitalist system.
   Corrupt bankers and bad government policy didn’t create this crisis; they just handled it in the worst possible way. The capitalist system requires permanent growth in profits to stay afloat. But low-paid and unemployed workers cannot buy enough to keep companies profitable. Of course, from the other end, a highly paid, fully employed work force also saps profits. The president's recent speech to the nation addressing the crisis showed the bind that investors and the politicians that work for them are in; first he praised an economic policy that allowed Americans to “get easy credit” and purchase homes “sometimes for the first time,” and then lamented the “domino effect” this created throughout the economy. Of course Bush and congressional Democrats and Republicans alike have always favored the same thing, whether they call it “smaller government” or “privatization.” Each of these policies really represent the transfer of public assets and funds-- which belong to all of us--directly into the hands of corporations and investors in their constant (and just as constantly failing) attempt to increase their own wealth. Bush, long devoted to “free enterprise” and “smaller government” now calls for “dramatic government action" in the form of the largest direct transfer of tax-payer dollars into private hands in history. Because this crisis was ultimately caused by the market, no market-based “solution” - whether “Buy American” or “support small business” or “stronger regulation” can provide a long term fix to the real problem!


6. There is no money for schools, housing, health care, Katrina relief, or public works jobs – but when the rich are in trouble, $700 billion appears.
   A spokeswoman for the US Treasury admitted that $700 billion was simply a made up figure, to signal that the government had the bankers’ backs – on behalf of taxpayers. This bank robbery in reverse shows once again that the resources for government assistance exist. But assistance for whom? We must be clear that, far from right-wing cries of “socialism,” this sudden intervention is really indented to temporarily stabilize the whole corporate profit system. A government controlled by corporations will never willingly bail out those who really need assistance. This $700 billion could provide completely free health care for all, paid parental leave for overworked parents, free quality childcare and education, clean and safe city parks and communities of subsidized housing, job training and infrastructure for rural areas screwed by vanishing mines, factories and farms, and countless other "utopian" needs that are ignored as congress feeds the fire on Wall Street with our money.


7. We need strong social movements that fight for a relief and a clear vision of ending capitalism altogether.
   As we protest the bailout, demands to address the immediate needs of women, workers, communities of color, young people and students, LGBTQ people, and the environment must be put on the table. Individuals, households and communities already marginalized by the system will face even greater downward pressures. Identifying the real links between these types of oppression and exploitation in order to rebuild a grassroots “movement of movements” is urgent. As we build these movements, we have to be ready to point out the incompatibility of capitalism and human needs. Activists in different social justice movements, community organizations, or revolutionary groups who already share a post-capitalist vision must work together to get these views their broadest possible hearing.


8. Capitalism will not collapse - it has to be overthrown.
   From previous crises, like the Great Depression, we see that capitalism constantly strangles itself - but it also has an amazing flexibility for recovery (especially by engineering a government rescue plan!) The system will not end itself; on the contrary, like weeds growing after a forest fire, destructive crises and war just open up space for new capitalist growth and bigger upward transfers of wealth. But for the sake of humanity and the planet, society cannot continue to be based on profit. The bursting of the “miracle” financial system shows the continued relevance of real, productive work in society. Imagining a world without pinstripe suited men shifting around large numbers on a computer screen is easy - but who can imagine a world without people working to produce food, clothes, shelter and other necessities; to teach and provide health care; to transport things from one place to another? Revolutionary socialists, including those in Solidarity, see the possibility of a different kind of world because of this basic contradiction. The majority of people in society have no stake in continuing the status quo - and also, if united, have the power to overthrow the small minority that profits off our backs.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR ME?

1. Fuel and food prices will continue to rise. Protests against rising food prices have already broken out in countries around the world, as millions are pushed further into poverty and hunger.
   Previously low energy prices and favorable exchange rates for the dollar made it cheap to import food into the US. Now, rising fuel costs seem likely to continue as American global power declines; not only will food prices increase even more, our car culture and suburban geography, with spread-out single family homes and miles of highway is becoming too expensive to maintain. Gas prices are making all that driving--and even heating our homes--increasingly unaffordable.


2. What about the housing market for renters?
   Renters also face uncertainty as some rental properties are foreclosed on. Meanwhile, rent in the cities most impacted by soaring housing prices also increased dramatically over the last decade, and so far, have failed to return to pre-bubble rates.


3. If the credit system freezes up, businesses will have difficulty expanding, causing unemployment and uncertainty to climb.
   At the same time regular people will also have decreased access to credit, forcing us to live off of wages that are quickly shrinking relative to the cost of the things we need to get by.


4. This economic turmoil will likely decrease the already sharply declining value of the dollar.
   This is due to both the government bailout, which introduces much more dollars into the economy, decreasing their value, as well as the falling confidence in the economic strength of the United States globally. The United States is has trillions of dollars of debt to Japan, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil. Any government bailout will be financed by even more credit from other governments.
]]> http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1902 2008-09-21T19:02:53-05:00 2008-09-23T10:58:38-05:00 Kate G
It has been a dramatic moment on Wall Street; first Bear-Sterns and then Lehman Bros. went bankrupt. ]]>
It has been a dramatic moment on Wall Street; first Bear-Sterns and then Lehman Bros. went bankrupt. Then insurance giant AIG was 'rescued' by the US Treasury and now, $700 billion in bailouts are proposed for the rest of banks that are teetering on the edge of collapse.

As one major US financial concern after another succumbs to the burst of the housing bubble, I have had a hard time understanding the crisis by reading the mainstream press alone. To me, the articles in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have, at best, conveyed a sense of importance and urgency about these financial failures while pinning hopes for economic recovery on ever-increasing tax-payer generosity.

To try and get a clearer look at what all the drama is about, I had to search elsewhere. Below are some of the best analysis and commentary I found, with the help of friends and comrades. Please post additions in the comments!

• Doug Henwood in the Left Business Observer: Reflections on the current crisis
• Reflections on the current crisis, Part 2
• The Monthly Review: July 2007 Notes from the Editors
• Democracy Now!: Fed Bailout of Bear Stearns First of its Kind Since Great Depression

And of course, the ongoing coverage in Against the Current:

• Naomi Prins: The Sub-Prime Market Crisis
• Bob Brenner: Devastating Crisis Unfolds
• Jack Rasmus: A New Phase of Economic Crisis
]]> http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1552 2008-06-05T09:00:16-05:00 2008-06-05T11:44:29-05:00 Kate G
the boys say, "unless you've been living under a rock" you know that the gay marriage ban in California was overturned last week. Here in my home state, marriage has snuck in under what CNN called a "loophole," a hole looped by my all-time favorite, Governor Patterson, that orders state functionaries to honor MA and CA marriages here in NY, regardless of our own locally segregationist marriage policies. ]]>
the boys say, "unless you've been living under a rock" you know that the gay marriage ban in California was overturned last week. Here in my home state, marriage has snuck in under what CNN called a "loophole," a hole looped by my all-time favorite, Governor Patterson, that orders state functionaries to honor MA and CA marriages here in NY, regardless of our own locally segregationist marriage policies.

Perhaps it is too soon to say, but it looks like the days of orientation-segregated marriage are numbered.


What's Next? Marrying Dogs?" To tell you the truth, it makes me a little nervous. I don't like marriage, and to be honest, its not entirely transparent why. Back when I was straight, I limited my engagement with this institution to the city's back-of-the-bus vehicle for gay partnership, because, really, what kind of person buys into segregated institutions, on purpose, from a position of privilege? Plus, I didn't--and don't--think rights like health care, pensions, living wages, education, free movement across borders, living wages, and parental rights (etc) should be allocated on the basis of people's love lives.

Well, that and the consumer-fest of wedding showers and the specter of adult women playing candy-penis-based games at bachelorette parties make my skin crawl. I suspect I won't like it any better when the tradition is "transformed" into "pin the boobies on the (other) bride", and vulva cookies instead of penis Popsicles. I love looking at naked people, but truly hate going to strip clubs. Particularly with (my) blood relatives. Gay strip clubs seems likely to only make that kind of scene more awkward.

I don't like going to church. I hate posing for pictures, and I despise matching dresses, except in the context of vintage Motown. And, any open bar that I have to pay for seems to entirely defeat the purpose.

It appears that marriage, or at least weddings, just may not be for me.

I could just live an let live, and leave it at that. But, Mattilda has been arguing high and low that the evolution of gay marriage as the number-one demand of the movement was a strategic mistake and an example of the worst kind of right-wing, assimilationist politics. This argument strikes me as essentially correct; universal health care would have been a better demand to focus on in the early nineties. If the queer lib movement had done that, the 2008 elections might be somewhat different, and have more actual political content.

Mattilda makes a good case, but not one that tells us much about gay marriage, the issue at hand; things didn't go her way a decade and a half ago, so here we are.

Where is that again?

A lot of people are worried that gay marriage will fatally maim "gay culture," further stigmatizing things like hook-ups, sex work and public sex while undermining the political economy of kinky subcultures and all-night dance clubs. If that happens, it will make me sad, but not in an intensely personal sense; I'd feel the kind of dread one might experience as their favorite island paradise is transformed into a hell of matching condos, but not the kind of identity crisis inspired by losing ones physical or spiritual home.

That's because my preferred mode of sex and romance looks, on the surface, a lot like traditional, monogamous, boring-old marriage. I can take or leave public sex, promiscuity and kink, but I really like partnership, and the intensity and interdependence of two. I like to be someone's special someone. I like being proud of my partner, becoming part of a family, commitment, cooking dinner and spooning. I realize these good-for-me things are not necessarily tied to monogamy or pair-bonding, much less to marriage. I'm just pointing out the resemblance to popular, romantic view...

Which makes it seem like I'm nitpicking on this marriage issue. As my mother constantly asks me, while I mercilessly dissect every latest piece of potentially hopeful news, "Why can't [I] just be happy?"

Because, thats why. I think underneath my sense of ambivalence, lies a serious flaw in the "new," supposedly gender-neutral marriage. Namely, the new institution will still be segregated. Inherently so. Expanding marriage is expanding social inequality. I hate that.

Honestly, I wouldn't really miss house music, if it didn't make it into the brave new world. And if we think about "gay culture" in those terms, the the ill-effects of gay marriage seem to mostly affect the boys; the political economy of public dyke culture has long been comparatively tenuous at best.

But, if we look deeper, we can see that gay marriage may, in fact, undermine core feminist principles, reinforcing ideas of domesticity and adulthood that feminists have been battling since domesticity was invented. This expansion of marriage will segregate the gay world in a way that the straight world has long been segregated, dividing us into 'single' and 'married.' It will expand the reach of a social logic into a sphere once carved out to oppose it, further legitimizing a series of social assumptions that make people's lives worse, and whch stigmatize the majority of us that don't meet the marriage--and parenthood-- norm. For example:

"Single people would rather be married/are social failures"; Gays "bachelors" and single women have long been stigmatized as lonely, mentally disturbed, socially unsuitable and sexually dangerous. We are cat ladies and pathetic men with tiny dogs. Sex In the City may signal a decade-long extension for women on the marriage imperative, but it's by no means an amnesty. Everybody wound up hitched, in the end, right?

It's okay. Don't tell me how the movie turns out. I don't want to know. I'm just afraid that adding the choice of gay marriage to the pre fixe menu of adulthood options will only make this worse.

"Single people would rather be married to one person:" The fight for gay marriage makes it hard to talk about families based on mutually supportive romantic relationships between more than two people. When even Dan Savage can't come out and say that he has your back, you know you are being thrown under the bus of socio-sexual normativity.

"Single people are social children": Surely I'm not the only one who has faced demotion to the "kids table" upon finding myself single or arriving at family events partner-free? Only to have someone ask when I'll be "settling down?" More marriage will make us even weirder at Thanksgiving, glaring enviously as our married lesbian cousins are offered more wine, while the singles smile and convince small children to stop throwing soft food.

"Reproduction and parenthood truly gives life meaning--especially for women": Opponents of gay marriage have been making the rounds arguing idiotically that gay marriage is wrong because children deserve two parents. Personally, I think children deserve at least four parents, but that is another post.

My point here is that these right-wing asswipes assume that the purpose of marriage is to create infrastructure for childbearing and parenthood. One walk around Park Slope and I quickly begin to worry that gay marriage aficionados disagree only in the details.

I think children can be great, but I hate to reinforce the idea that having children is the highest purpose that women--or other adults--have in life. Writing books, doing fantastic plumbing, making art, teaching, being a great friend, aunt or conversationalist also strike me as worthy goals.

Gay parenting, at least in part, also depends particularly heavily on a social structure that systematically separates children in oppressed nations (domestically and internationally) from their families. My thoughts on adoption are much longer than we have time for here, and in no way amount to a blanket condemnation, but it is worth worrying about the degree to which increased heteronormativity among the gay upper-crust can create "demand" in a market for human babies. To the extent that this happens, its a great example of how the heteronormative "success" of some is dependent on the normative failure of others, particularly poor women.

"Friends are nice, but not very important": We all have priorities. But state-and-culture sanctioned marriage vastly elevates a single relationship above all other relationships we have in life. Fidelity and honesty are the least common denominator for human decency in the context of marriage, but fucking over ones friends is much less stigmatized in society at large that cheating on a spouse. When you "break up" with a friend, few will ask "what happened!?!" or offer condolences. Its my opinion that we'd all be happier with rich social lives filled with significant relationships. Straight culture doesn't have much time for that perspective; will the gays go the same sad way after marriage?

"Extended family is nice, but not very important"; Marriage has, at various times and places, operated as a kind of treaty between extended families and clans, but in our world reflects the formation of an autonomous, nuclear unit. Stigma against, for example, single mothers, discounts the value of supportive extended family networks and is usually based in the belief that there is one, and only one, right way to go--two parents and one or two kids.

For queer people, "family" can mean a non-biologically based version of this extended family model. As the gay version of the nuclear family becomes more socially valued and--likely--more popular, can both models co-exist?

If not, I know which side I'm on.

"Working class and poor people, and Black people are not responsible or successful"; Related to the assumptions above, its already the case that the straight ideal of marriage and the nuclear family is heavily class-biased and much more difficult to attain and maintain under economic duress; for example, in situations where where workers are forced to migrate long distances away from their families, in circumstances where large percentages of a community are in prison, or where unemployment is high. These days, all over the world, we are talking about a lot of people.

Failure to meet these family/marriage norms used to be something that queer people shared with this majority, helping, I think, to contribute to a left queer and liberal gay political spectrum; what will happen (has been happening?) to queer politics as the elite minority of gay people get hitched, fit in, and lose any vestigial sense of connection to other oppressed people?

Sorry. That was rhetorical question.

In any case, you can play this game at home. There are many more oppressive and divisive assumptions that marriage--even gay marriage--help to reinforce. Feel free to contribute--I live for participatory rants. In the mean time, I'll wrap this over-long post up by suggesting that this kind of (il)logic has always been oppressively applied to gays in the straight world, and to some extent even within the queer sphere. But gay marriage further entrenches this normative logic in a realm where it was once seriously contested. Part of me is glad that it looks like people who want to get married will now be able to, but, as a woman who, in all likelihood will never be a mother, and a human who hopes for liberation not just for the elite, these developments also make me feel a little like dressing up in a sequined mini and heading out for fabulous karaoke rendition of Nowhere to Run. ]]> http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1371 2008-04-08T13:03:42-05:00 2008-04-10T09:46:59-05:00 Kate G
I didn't want all the burgeoning Solidarity bloggers or our loyal fans to miss the Carnival of Socialism up at stroppyblog. The previous Carnival was here--definitely worth a look. You should also note that there is an upcoming Carnival of Socialism to which you can and should submit your best work! Do so at Practically Insurgent.
]]>
I didn't want all the burgeoning Solidarity bloggers or our loyal fans to miss the Carnival of Socialism up at stroppyblog. The previous Carnival was here--definitely worth a look. You should also note that there is an upcoming Carnival of Socialism to which you can and should submit your best work! Do so at Practically Insurgent.


The socialist blogosphere is only one small part of the blogworld-o-leftwing-radical/progressive-politics. You might also want to check out the feminist blogosphere; an exciting world of cultural commentary, analysis from a variety of feminist perspectives and thrilling flame wars.

You can check out the latest Carnival of Feminists here.

Other than that some of my personal favorites are:

Capitalism Bad, Tree Pretty.

Angry Black Bitch

La Chola

Illka Damen

PunkAssBlog

Some of the most popular feminist blogs:

Pandagon

Feministe

Alas a Blog

Feministing

Bitch PHD

There are also a lot of great anti-racist blogs. The most recent Erase Racism carnival is here, while submissions to the next carnival can be posted here .

Other great blogs are below; I hope by now its obvious that some of the best feminist bloggers are socialists,while some of the best blogs on race are feminist blogs, too,etc. Assignments to one or another post have been made largely in service to providing you with bite-size chunks rather than aimed at a strict taxonomy of the radical/progressive blogosphere.

Racialicious

My Private Casbah

Zuky

Angry Asian Man

Double Consciousness

Afro-Netizen

Colorlines Blog

Racism Ain't Over



For those who lurk on lefty blogs--who are your favorite socialist bloggers? What are their best posts? Anybody have anonymous friend's blogs we should know about?

I'll be waiting with baited breath for your juiciest links. ]]> http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1372 2008-02-27T12:19:21-06:00 2008-02-28T12:47:25-06:00 Kate G
Susan Faludi, author of Backlash and Stiffed, has with her latest offering, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9-11 America, drawn upon her previous insights into the causes and consequences of the anti-feminist backlash of the last three decades and applied them to period following the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
]]>
Susan Faludi, author of Backlash and Stiffed, has with her latest offering, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9-11 America, drawn upon her previous insights into the causes and consequences of the anti-feminist backlash of the last three decades and applied them to period following the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

While many reviews have been positive, Faludi’s reception in the nation’s leading newspapers lends support to her central thesis, that 9-11 set the stage for a kind of media and cultural regression toward vulgar gendered archetypes of heroic, protective men and retiring, weak women. Faludi herself maybe the latest example of the tendency she documents among our nation’s leading arbiters of opinion and culture to come down hard on women who refuse to conform to the role of passive victim, or stick to the script which justifies war, torture and occupation.

In Terror Dream, Fauldi notes that outspoken women who questioned the drive to nationalism and war were attacked for there supposed lack of intelligence an feminine decency: Katha Pollit of The Nation, Susan Sontag, and Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Kinsolver were all subject to over-the-top and widespread condemnation for what were, in retrospect, fairly mild statements of hesitation. The worst of Faludi’s reviews reprise this theme; according to Mitchko Kakatuni in the New York Times, Faludi’s effort is not only “sloppily reasoned” but gives feminism a “bad name” and is “one of the more nonsensical volumes published about the aftermath of 9-11;”no small feat in a field which includes the resurrection of Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and Niall Fergueson’s Empire.

In fact, the book is not nearly as bad as that. The Terror Dream is impressive in the scope of its documentation of our recent past and in its historical reach. For most readers, the account offers reminders of recent events too easily forgotten, and serves as a primer on a part of American history too often overlooked.

First, Faludi documents the media’s post 9-11 more general campaign to re-domesticate American women apparently otherwise “gone wild”, listing in detail the countless lifestyle, entertainment and even news pieces which extol the virtues of pregnancy, passivity, marriage, motherhood and dependence for women. She homes in on the particular theme of women in need of male rescue—a la The Jessica Lynch Story—linking it to a long tradition of anxious American myth-making, and finding its source on the western frontier, in “captivity narratives” by and about women captured during the long brutal wars of conquest against Native American land and peoples.

During this historical section, Faludi convincingly argues that the myth of feminine passivity on the frontier had to be constructed through a preference for narratives which emphasized captives whose strategies for deliverance relied on Christian humility, physical passivity, and sexual purity. Tales in which captives instead opted for marriage and assimilation into Native American communities, or at the other extreme, those in which women resorted to violent self-defense, fell by the cultural wayside.

It is this latter narrative trajectory which is Faludi’s primary foil for the now mainstream, anti-feminist, rescue narrative. Hannah Duston is Faludi’s anti-hero; a Puritan woman who, abandoned by her husband during an attack on their homestead, escaped her kidnappers through effective, if bloody, use of a hatchet. Her exclusion from America’s foundational frontier myth is symbolized, for Faludi, by the sad state and physical isolation of the one statue raised in her honor.

It is at this juncture that Faludi’s feminism fails to live up to the full potential of its anti-war sensibilities. It is the implicit argument of the book—and its marketing machine—that the anti-feminist backlash following 9-11 helped to ensnare American in our ongoing, ill-advised Iraqi adventure. But, sadly, Faludi’s vision is trapped in the dream it documents; the ongoing war and occupation in Iraq, Iraqis, and even their historical Native American counterparts on the frontier, barely make an appearance in the central analysis of The Terror Dream, existing largely as set pieces whose function is to provoke the racist sexual anxieties of white men past and present.

Given Faludi’s resurrection of Hannah Duston’s cartoonishly violent femininity as an antidote to our collective Terror, one is left to wonder about possible exit strategies from the dreamscape. Duston’s closest modern-day corollary has to be Hillary Clinton’s brand of hard-nosed, pro-war, competence. While her campaign, and Duston’s, may represent a particular brand of Annie-get-your-gun feminism, it offers little hope for the women and men, soldiers and civilians still embroiled in the ongoing horror that is U.S. policy in the Middle East.

One is left wishing that Faludi’s capacity to recognize dreams was a finely tuned to utopia as is to nightmare. Readers may want to approach this book with the intent to expand on Faludi’s limited historical imagination, and with the goal of rethinking America’s past, present and future in ways more open to peaceful possibilities and to American visions not rooted in imperial violence.

]]> http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1351 2008-01-24T00:15:28-06:00 2008-01-25T00:58:39-06:00 Kate G

Alice: "uh, by working."

Kate G: "Working? Seriously? They don't give you the day off?" ]]>

Alice: "uh, by working."

Kate G: "Working? Seriously? They don't give you the day off?"

Alice: "Well, yeah. I could have taken it off, but it would just come out of my 'paid time off'. I only get twelve days, and I'm pretty much out. I thought about calling in sick, but that would have just been PTO, too. But I did think about calling in. Does that count?"



I don't think Alice is the only one. I went out to a club Sunday night, expecting a "second Saturday" full of dancing, flirting, drinking and fun on the part of folks happy to have an extra day to devote to the business of being human. Instead, I found an empty dance floor and a playlist that sounded just as tired-out as all the people who stayed away in deference to their work schedules.

Its a shame. The fight to get MLK day as a national holiday, led by labor unions, was a long one, only fully realized in all 50 states in 2000. Since then, my anecdotal evidence suggests that bosses have been increasingly free to decide that it isn't so important after all. To me, its the opposite of what MLK's legacy is all about. I, for one, was hoping for a different kind of rememberance.

Maybe it's because we're so worn down by working that MLK day reflections this year weren't all they could have been. Maybe that explains how our politicians and can get away with "honoring" Dr. King by deemphasizing his legacy and importance of the freedom struggle in the the south.

Maybe its why liberals and conservatives, newspapers, schools and churches are free to remember King as an advocate for a "color-blindness" divorced from the realities of racism, oppression and murderous U.S. foreign policy that continue to plague us.

Whatever the reason, it really is a shame. King died standing up for Black workers' (and all workers') rights to dignity and respect-- for the basic human right not to be worked literally to death.
MLK died wanting to be remembered as a fighter for racial justice, for our rights to have our basic needs for food, housing and shelter met, for the right to access to our own humanity, and as an opponent of senseless death and destruction on a global scale.

Dr. King put it this way:

"If any of you are around when I have to meet my day,” King told the congregation of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church on February 4, 1968, two months before his assassination, “I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize — that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards — that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked.”

Thankfully, before I went to sleep, I ran across a few who've managed to honor King the way he would have wanted, and my real purpose here was to share them with you. The quote above was borrowed from Alas a blog.

More thoughts on King's radical legacy:

• Democracy Now!
• La Chola
• At Dartmouth
• Zuky
• Forlackofbetterwords
• Martin Luther King Jr.



]]> http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1320 2008-01-09T13:27:05-06:00 2008-01-09T16:29:07-06:00 Kate G
Last summer, I traveled to South Africa to do some academic research related to health care. To keep myself busy and record my experience, I kept up a private blog for family and friends. Now that Solidarity has its own weblog(!), I'm sharing some of these old posts. I intend to follow up with some more current analysis on South Africa and the themes my trip got me thinking about. This post, is a description of my experience at the SANPAD conference in Durban on June 26th-30th, 2007. For the last two days, I’ve been attending the SANPAD poverty conference here in Durban. It’s an interesting collection of socialist and other radical intellectuals and more traditional NGO and government types. The first day of the conference was interrupted by protests of dozens of ‘poors’ demanding to be able to confront the deputy mayor, one of the conference’s opening speakers over issues of 1) closure of the Durban port to individual fisherman, 2)police harassment of street vendors 3) sanitation, electricity and water in the informal settlements. ]]>
Last summer, I traveled to South Africa to do some academic research related to health care. To keep myself busy and record my experience, I kept up a private blog for family and friends. Now that Solidarity has its own weblog(!), I'm sharing some of these old posts. I intend to follow up with some more current analysis on South Africa and the themes my trip got me thinking about. This post, is a description of my experience at the SANPAD conference in Durban on June 26th-30th, 2007. For the last two days, I’ve been attending the SANPAD poverty conference here in Durban. It’s an interesting collection of socialist and other radical intellectuals and more traditional NGO and government types. The first day of the conference was interrupted by protests of dozens of ‘poors’ demanding to be able to confront the deputy mayor, one of the conference’s opening speakers over issues of 1) closure of the Durban port to individual fisherman, 2)police harassment of street vendors 3) sanitation, electricity and water in the informal settlements.

Inside, we had a cultural show with a smoke machine and a multiracial rainbow doing contemporary dance based in Zulu “tradition”; outside were toyi-toying, chanting, sarcastic poors. I decided to leave the conference room and go to where the real action was, outside. Some of the conference organizers tried to tell me I couldn’t leave the conference room–“I didn’t want to go out there”, according to them. I argued that the meeting room didn’t have a bathroom and that it was an emergency. After seven minutes of arguing, the lady relented and released me out into the demo. I tried to hold the door open, but she was bigger than me.

Ashwin Desai, whose book I previously reviewed, was a conference organizer and the mediator between the protesters and the event. Among the demonstration leaders were individuals recognizable from his book. He got flustered (and told someone to “fuck off”), but did get the deputy mayor to come out to be shouted at. Dozens of police arrived, called by the manager of the posh Elangeni hotel, and stood around while Desai tried to convince them that the thing could be negotiated without military interference.

At first I thought it was a bit embarrassing – Desai should have just invited his friends to dinner! Today I realized that 20% of the protest is here at the conference for free, still causing trouble. What the protest did was set the terms of the rest of the week, and force the policy people to deal first and foremost with the complaints of real, live, loud, inconvenient, thoughtful, angry poor people. ]]> http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1318 2008-01-07T12:54:10-06:00 2008-01-07T13:30:06-06:00 Kate G
Last summer, I traveled to South Africa to do some academic research related to health care. To keep myself busy and record my experience, I kept up a private blog for family and friends. Now that Solidarity has its own weblog(!), I'm sharing some of these old posts. I intend to follow up with some more current analysis on South Africa and the themes my trip got me thinking about. This first post is a book review...
]]>
Last summer, I traveled to South Africa to do some academic research related to health care. To keep myself busy and record my experience, I kept up a private blog for family and friends. Now that Solidarity has its own weblog(!), I'm sharing some of these old posts. I intend to follow up with some more current analysis on South Africa and the themes my trip got me thinking about. This first post is a book review...

Ashwin Desai
We Are the Poors, by South African activist, journalist, and teacher Ashwin Desai, is a book I’ve been meaning to read for some time. These days, it amounts to a concise recent history of anti-privatization social movements in South Africa. Much of the action centers on neighborhoods and townships in and around Durban.

The thesis of the book is that the revolution of the anti-apartheid movement remains incomplete to the extent that it has failed to secure basic economic rights for the poor majority of the nation, and that the politics of black empowerment represented by the ANC and the growth of a black elite is “superficial,” in that inequality and the misery of the poor, black majority has grown under the post apartheid government. The book’s hope is that new social movements rooted in poor (multiracial) communities and aimed at fighting water privatization and electricity cutoffs can be the engine of a new cycle of resistance to neoliberal economic policies both in South Africa and around the world. Desai frequently refers to (Robben Island veteran and anti-globalization movement elder) Dennis Brutus’ formulation of ongoing global racial and economic inequality as a kind of “Global Apartheid.”

In this book, the most important political statement of the new movement is its uncompromising view of the ANC, along with its two rival parties, as the main enemies of “the poors.’ The second key factor is a movement ethos which rejects tired and limiting organizational forms of the old left-wing parties and structures.

Equally important for Desai is the non-racial–yet anti-racist–character of the new movements. He begins his tale in Chatsworth, an area which began its life as an apartheid-era enforced reserve for the large Indian minority of KZN. The story begins when long-time ANC activist Fatima Meer visited in an attempt to counteract the region’s “culture of nonpayment” which encouraged residents to avoid their water and electricity bills. She also intended to combat racism by convincing poor Indians to vote for the black-led government incumbents, rather than their white party challengers.

A sociologist by trade, Meer, quickly noticed that the “culture of nonpayment” was a fantasy of the ruling party—nonpayment was actually the result of un- and under-employment, which at the time was at 45% for the nation, and is obviously higher in areas like Chatsworth. (The news tonight pointed out that for young workers, unemployment in South Africa is at 70%). When ANC leaders ignored Meer’s concerns, she converted her group, the CCG, into a support organization for poor people fighting cutoffs, evictions, and forced removals—all problems which helped to spark the anti-apartheid movement in its early days and throughout.

The climax of the story occurs at the posh new Durban conference center in 2001, just days before 9-11, during the World Conference on Racism (WCAR). By this time the Chatsworth community group has joined forces with poor people facing similar problems from Umlazi (Durban’s largest black township), Soweto, Mpumalanga, Tafelsig, Jo’burg, and elsewhere.

Objecting to what they see as ANC hypocrisy in acting as the global representative and broker of racial justice, they form the Durban Social Forum (DSF) and set up a counter-summit for the worlds poor and active, and hold a 20,000 person march against the Conference, the largest, then, since apartheid days. The story moves quickly and provides a lot of compelling detail, personal stories, and some good gossip (for instance, U.S. activist-turned-scholar Angela Davis marched with the ANC, not the DSF, that weekend.)

Its well worth reading for anyone interested in South African politics, or for anyone who is simply interested in the possibilities for social movements and social transformation in our time. The book, in that it squarely points the finger at the ANC as a sell-out leadership of politicians (say it with a sneer) who got to sit out the hard stuff in exile, does us a favor in trying to think through the nature of the oppression of South Africa’s poor, and by extension that of the world’s poor majority. If not these crushing economic policies, what could and should the ANC have done over the last decade plus instead? What would that have looked like? What, exactly, is possible?

The downside of the book is one which afflicts much movement analysis and reporting; the book’s optimism-by-design leaves the 2007 reader wondering what has happened to these vibrant movements. Though they continue to exist and to resist cutoffs and evictions, they seem not to have dramatically increased in scale in the last six years, (although, demonstrations and strikes are on the upswing) nor have they impeded the privatization of basic resources in South Africa. This question implies no condemnation of the organizing or the activists; I just wonder if Desai still holds out the kind of hope expressed in this book. ]]>