redchuck4's blog

Celebrating Teen Pregnancy?

2008-09-05T06:00:19-05:00

For years, I've taught sociology at a community college in New York City. I'm always looking for current examples to illustrate how class, race and gender work in contemporary capitalist socities. Bristol Palin's pregnancy (itself a tribute to the effectiveness of the right's "abstinence education") provides such a good example of the intersection of race, gender and class, I am offering the following extra credit essay question on my final exam:

In a well written, well argued and well reasoned essay-- drawing on sociological concepts and theories we have discussed in class, please answer the following question:

Why is teenage pregnancy and motherhood considered a social pathology when it occurs among poor women and women of color; while it is considered an act of responsibility if you are white and upper middle class and your mother is running for Vice-President of the United States?

All answers must be typewritten, no less than one double-spaced typewritten page, no more than two double-spaced typewritten pages.

Readers of Solidarity's webzine are encouraged to reply with their own thoughts about this paradox!

Anti-War Movement(s)-- Then and Now...

2008-08-17T08:24:11-05:00

Those of us who have organized against the US war and occupation of Iraq are faced with a major paradox. On the one hand, the war is extremely unpopular—most people in the US want their government to withdraw troops from Iraq sooner than later. On the other hand, the level of anti-war organization and mobilization is extremely low. While some of the largest anti-war demonstrations in history marked the run up to the war in the Winter-Spring of 2003, mobilizations since then have been progressively smaller. In September 2007, only 10,000-15,000 people turned out at a national demonstration in Washington, DC, while regional demonstrations that October were significantly smaller than most organizers expected—with fewer than 5,000 turning out in New York City, a center of anti-war sentiment in the US.

How do we explain this paradox, especially when we compare the movement against the war/occupation of Iraq with the anti-Vietnam war movement of 40 years ago? Clearly, there are important similarities between 2008 and 1968. While both wars were very unpopular, a majority of US citizens did not come to support the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam until after 1970—just as most Americans do not support “US out of Iraq now” today. The movements against both wars were divided between different national coalitions, which differed in their relationship to liberal “anti-war” Democrats. Both movements experienced sharp ups and downs in the level of mobilizations, with Presidential election years being low points and periods of US escalation being high points. Despite these similarities, it is clear that the level of organization and mobilization against the US war in Vietnam—even at its lowest ebbs—was significantly higher than against the US war and occupation of Iraq.

Anti-War GIs during the Vietnam War

Two key factors, in my opinion, explain the differences in anti-war organization and struggle against the Vietnam and Iraq wars. The first is the level of US military presence and the status of the US armed forces. During Vietnam, the US fought with a conscript army, there was up to 500,000 GIs on the ground in Vietnam and over 50,000 American soldiers—disproportionately working class and people of color—lost their lives in Vietnam. The draft and US casualties fueled anti-war sentiment and activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. While the draft targeted young people from the working class and communities of color, the threat of being forced to fight in a losing war most viewed as immoral and unjust produced sustained student activism against the war. The high level of casualties—nearly every working class and Black or Latino neighborhood in the US experienced young men coming back in body bags nearly every month after 1967—turned the majority of Americans against the war. The high likelihood of death and injury in a hopeless and pointless war sparked opposition among active duty GIs and veterans. After 1969, disgust with the war in the military made the US army in Vietnam an unreliable fighting force.

Today, the US military in Iraq has deployed, at most, 150,000 volunteer soldiers. Clearly, the growing number of injuries—tens of thousands of soldiers have returned from Iraq missing limbs and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder—has fueled significant opposition to the war. The emergence of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and anti-war organization among active duty military personnel early in the Iraq war and occupation is unprecedented. However, the size of the military force “on the ground” and the relatively low level of casualties is not sustaining the level of revulsion and resistance that existed during Vietnam. While the US military relies on an “economic draft”—poverty and unemployment pushing young men and women into the armed forces—the absence of a draft leaves large sectors of working and middle class youth exempt from the possibilities of being sent to Iraq.

As the low level of casualties and the absence of a draft undercut mass organization and mobilization against the US war and occupation of Iraq, three decades of retreat and defeats on the past of the labor and social movements in the US undermines the emergence of a large “militant minority” that could sustain the movement in its low ebbs. The movement against the US war in Vietnam came in the wake of the victory of the African-American Civil Rights movement—which smashed the “Jim Crow” system of legal segregation and disenfranchisement in the US south. The Black Liberation movement continued, as urban insurrections, black workers struggles and community organizations targeted institutionalized racism. The African-American struggle provided a powerful lived experience of how ordinary people, in the face of tremendous odds, could organize, fight and win—inspiring student and anti-war activism in the 1960s.

The ascending social movement promoted the development of a broad far left that maintained some independence from the Democratic Party and could be a counter-weight to demoralization and disorientation of the anti-Vietnam war movement during its low points. These forces made the anti-war movement a living reality during Vietnam between the semi-annual national and regional mobilizations—fighting the draft, organizing among GIs, veterans, and among people of color.

Today, we are attempting to build a movement against the US war and occupation of Iraq in the midst of over thirty years of defeats. There are no existing social movements that can inspire a significant minority to believe in the power of mass organization and struggle from below. The absence of effective mass movements has resulted in the withering of the far left in the US (and internationally), deepening discouragement among many activists—and making the futile attempt to use the Democratic party to end the war more and more attractive.

The character of the popular opposition to US occupation in Iraq—a reflection of the evolution of the global relationship of forces over the past three decades—also undermines the coherence of a “hard-core” of anti-war activists. In Vietnam, a popular-nationalist movement against imperialism—despite its Stalinist-bureaucratic leadership—inspired a generation of anti-imperialist student and youth radicals, and successfully stalemated US military forces on the ground after 1968. The divided, religious-sectarian resistance in Iraq, that targets both US forces and their Iraqi opponents, is incapable of inspiring an “anti-imperialist” minority or of militarily defeating the US occupation.

Building—or rebuilding—any social movement in the US during a Presidential election year is always difficult. The “presidential” (versus parliamentary) system in the US increases the pressure to “vote realistically”—for one or another “lesser evil”—that exists in all capitalist democracies. The main beneficiary of these pressures has been the pro-corporate, pro-imperialist Democratic Party.

The pressure on social movement activists to pour all their energy into electing whomever the Democrats nominate is even greater this year with the nomination of Barak Obama. Most opponents of the war are attracted to Obama’s anti-war rhetoric. They recognize that a major party’s nomination—and the realistic possibility of the election—of an African-American for President is a tribute to the enduring impact of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1950s and 1960s. While a small minority of radicals and revolutionaries have pointed to Obama’s pro-imperialist, pro-neo-liberal politics, most anti-war activists will not take to the street in order to elect Obama and may be willing to “give him a chance to end the war” if he is elected.

Despite these obstacles, there remains a hard-core of anti-war activists in the US. While most will hold their nose and vote for the Democrat Obama, they have few illusions that a Democratic victory will end the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, or prevent an attack on Iran. They remain committed to fighting for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of US forces from the Middle East whoever occupies the White House or holds the majority in Congress. These activists are maintaining anti-war committees in their neighborhoods and union locals, continuing counter-recruitment activity and building MFSO, IVAW and the new anti-war GI coffeehouses. The success of the IVAW’s Winter Soldier hearings this past Spring was the most visible and important anti-war activity this year. The continued organization and activity of these militants will be central to the revival of the anti-war movement after the next Presidential election.

This reflection also appears in the next issue of NEW SOCIALIST, the publication of Solidarity's Canadian sister organization, the New Socialist Group.

Another Comment on FRSO/OSCL's Which Way is Left?

2008-06-03T13:28:17-05:00

COMMENTS ON FRSO, WHICH WAY IS LEFT?

[This contribution was originally presented to a November 18, 2007 joint meeting of Solidarity, Freedom Road Socialist Organization/OSCL and an independent study group of activists interested in revolutionary organization]

Like most members of Solidarity, I welcome the new pamphlet from the comrades in Freedom Road, Which Way is Left? I agree with the general thrust of the pamphlet. We share much of Freedom Road’s thinking about the need to embrace new ideas and practices—especially developing a non-reductionist understanding of patriarchy and racism/national oppression. I also find important points of unity on the nature of socialism, and on revolutionary organization in the 21st century.

I share Freedom Road’s rejection of bureaucratic, single-party dictatorships as anti-socialist. Socialism—the democratic rule of working people—requires, at the minimum, the possibility of working and oppressed people to form a multiplicity of parties; and freedom of press, speech and assembly for all organizations that do not take up arms against a revolutionary regime.

Solidarity and Freedom Road also share a vision of the socialist organization that we need to build in the US today. Both of our organizations reject “vanguardism”—building small, programmatically pure groupings that pretend they are the nucleus of a mass revolutionary organization.

Both organizations want a process of “left refoundation” or “socialist regroupment” that will build a broad revolutionary organization rooted among activists in the workplaces, oppressed communities, and the anti-war movement. Both Freedom Road and Solidarity want a “multi-tendency” organization—where internal debate and discussion is a source of the organization’s vitality and capacity to act collectively.

I believe that the process of left refoundation/socialist regroupment should proceed along two lines. First, and most important, is common practice. Forces exploring the possibility of building new revolutionary organizations need to see if they can actually work together in real struggles. Such experience is a necessary condition for building trust and respect.

We should seek out ways to work together, in the labor movement (building for the Labor Notes conference this April), building organizations of immigrant workers (especially workers’ centers), supporting struggles of workers of color (like FUREE [Families United for Racial and Economic Equality - based in Brooklyn] organizing among child care providers) and maintaining an independent anti-war movement during the 2008 elections (Iraq Veterans Against the War’s Winter Soldier Investigations scheduled for March 2008 may provide an important opportunity).

The second path toward left refoundation/socialist regroupment is on-going, comradely political discussions. Often the distinctive languages of our different traditions have obscured what we actually agree and disagree about. We need to hammer out a “common political vocabulary” that will allow us to stop talking past one another. Such a process requires patience, commitment, and respect.

I hope that meetings like this here in NY and around the country can begin that process. We also hope to organize other national, jointly organized events in the future.

One of the questions I believe needs to be discussed is the role of reformism in working class and popular struggles. I think we would all agree that reformism is not the same thing as the struggle for reforms. Any revolutionary who rejects struggles for immediate improvements under capitalism — reforms — is doomed to political irrelevance.

In my opinion, what distinguishes revolutionaries and reformists is how they understand the workings of capitalism (theory) and how they organize to win reforms (strategy). For reformists, a neutral state can regulate capitalism to promote both rising profits for capital and social and economic gains for workers and oppressed people. Reformists have traditionally looked to electing progressive politicians (either in independent social-democratic parties or in “progressive” capitalist parties like the US Democrats), and the establishment of legally regulated collective bargaining between employers and unions as the way to win and defend reforms.

Revolutionaries, on the other hand, understand that capitalism makes the class struggle a zero-sum game. Gains for workers come at the expense of capitalist competitiveness and profitability. Reforms are won through militant mass strikes, demonstrations, sit-ins, and the like. Such struggles involve large-scale defiance of the law, and forge ties of active solidarity among working people. When such mass movements decline and capitalists face sharpening competition and falling profits, they roll-back reforms in order to improve the conditions of accumulation.

Clearly, all of us reject reformist theory and strategy. All of us agree that the class struggle is a zero-sum game, and that gains are made through mass struggle.

However, since the mid 1930s, a significant sector of the revolutionary left have advocated long-term strategic alliances with the forces of official reformism— progressive politicians, middle class leaders of communities of color and women’s organizations, and the labor bureaucracy. This “popular front” strategy has, in my view, undermined the ability of revolutionaries to promote mass struggles.

Most working and oppressed people, in period of low level struggle like today, accept reformist ideas. However, in periods of mass struggle, the experience of organizing collectively in the workplace and community, building solidarity with other working people, and confronting the employers and the state can lead broader and broader segments of working and oppressed people to question reformist ideas.

The forces of official reform embrace reformist politics unconditionally because their conditions of life—their job security, incomes, working conditions—do not depend upon mass struggle, but on the preservation of their organizations as organizations.

For these forces mass struggle is risky. While gains might be made, mass confrontations with the state and capital carry with them the possibility of defeat—and the destruction of the institutions which provide the forces of official reformism with their distinctive life-styles.

As a result, these social layers tend to discourage attempts by rank and file activists in workplaces and communities to prepare for struggles that confront capital and the state. Instead, they embrace “safe” methods — electing progressive officials, lobbying, and routine collective bargaining.

The paradox is that reformist strategies can not win or defend reforms. As the forces of official reformism demobilize mass struggle and disorganize networks of activists, they undermine their capacity to win or defend reforms. Especially in periods of increased competition and falling profits, capitalists become more aggressive and the forces of official reformism are unable to resist.

In fact, these forces often embrace austerity, wage cuts, and concessions in the vain hope of forestalling even greater givebacks. We have seen the capitulation of European social-democratic parties and many official Communist parties to neo-liberalism. Mass workers’ organizations in the global south—most notably the Brazilian PT and the South African CP—have undergone a similar evolution. Here in the US, we see the labor bureaucracy engaged in the deadly spiral of concession bargaining.

While short-term coalitions with the forces of official reformism are possible—and in fact unavoidable—long-term strategic alliances with these forces have undermined the revolutionary left’s ability to build struggles for reforms and promote radical and revolutionary consciousness. A new revolutionary left in the US needs to debate and discuss our relationship to the forces of official reformism—in particular the liberal/progressive wing of the Democratic party and the union bureaucracy.

Solidarity advocates independent politics and democratic, “bottom up” organization in the workplace and community. We have consistently argued that participation in the Democratic party has been the graveyard of every social movement of the 20th century—and that social movement activists need to remain independent of the Democrats. As a result, we did not participate in the Jackson campaigns in 1984 and 1988, but have supported independent electoral campaigns such as Nader in 2000 and 2004 (and hopefully a McKinney campaign in 2008).

We also help build rank and file organizations that advocate democracy, solidarity and militancy in the labor movement, and cross-union networks like Labor Notes.

Discussion of the Democratic Party and the official leadership of the unions should be part of the open ended process of left refoundation/socialist regroupment.

Whether or not a common revolutionary organization can be created is not simply a matter of the good will or the effort of existing revolutionary organizations. It will also require the participation of new layers of radical and revolutionary activists—what Freedom Road calls the “social movement left.” The participation of these comrades will both encourage those already in revolutionary organizations to find ways to cooperate in practice and carry on comradely dialogue, and will bring new experiences and perspectives so necessary to any successful process of left refoundation/socialist regroupment.

The color-blind racism of “Law & Order”

2008-02-26T12:50:07-06:00

Confession: I am a major Law & Order (L&O) junkie. I just can’t get enough of new episodes and reruns (including episodes I have seen at least a dozen time) of the original L&O. L&O Criminal Intent comes in a close second (although I have never gotten the hang of L&O Special Victims Unit). As a friend and comrade who shares my obsession put it, “It’s got cops and lawyers — what more can you ask from a mainstream TV show?”

L&O is also an excellent barometer of the drift of mainstream US liberalism to the right over the past twenty years or so. Not surprising given that Dick Wolf, the show’s Executive Producer, has gone from being a close friend of the Clintons to a supporter of the second Bush and the short-lived Presidential campaign of Fred Thompson (who starred as DA Arthur Branch on L&O for two seasons). Whether it has been issues of war, poverty, gender, sexuality or race, L&O has presented the current (and changing) face of US liberalism — wrapped in an hour of some of the most diverting TV aired today.

I was moved to write by the episode of L&O aired on January 23, 2008—Driven. The episode opens with three upper middle class white boys walking through a playground in the rapidly gentrifying, but historically African-American and Latino Upper West Side of Manhattan. Three working class African-American teens harass them and take their basketball. It turns out the three white boys, encouraged by the mother of two of the boys (played by Ally Walker of Profiler fame), return with baseball bats to claim their ball. As they chase one of the black teens toward his home, the black teen’s father — already angered by the prospect of being evicted from his apartment because he cannot afford the rising rents that come with the arrival of the white professionals and managers — shoots one of the white youths and accidentally shoots a nine year old black girl who was playing in the park.

After the multi-racial police detective team (Jessie L. Martin, S. Epatha Merkeson and Jeremy Sisto) spend the first half of the show determining the “facts,” the DA decides to try the father of the black teen and the mother of the bat-wielding white kids together. Their “theory of the case” is that both parents were irresponsible and guilty.

For the representatives of the criminal justice system, the actions of the white middle class mom — encouraging her thuggish sons to arm themselves to retrieve their $30 basket by any means necessary — and the actions of the working class black dad — defending his son from immanent danger — were morally and legally equivalent. In the end, the jury agrees—finding both guilty.

I was floored by this nearly chemically pure representation of liberal, “color-blind” racism. An act of racist violence is equated with black self-defense in color-blind justice system, which puts aside race to find justice. The African-American father’s preoccupation with becoming homeless as a result of gentrification is presented as evidence of his “irresponsibility” and “recklessness.” Real inequalities of wealth and social power — of race and class — disappear before “blind justice” that sees not black and white, not workers and professionals, but “citizens” who appear as equals in “the eyes of the law.”

Color-blind racism is the common sense — the mental road map of lived experience — of institutional racism. Before the victories of the African-American freedom struggles in the 1960s and 1970s, white supremacy was maintained by a combination of legal coercion (“Jim Crow”) in the south, and openly racially discriminatory hiring and housing practices in the north. The civil rights and black power movements effectively smashed legal and open racist discrimination in the north and south.

As we know, the end of legal and open racial discrimination did not end racial inequality in the US (or South Africa either). Today, white supremacy over Blacks, Latinos, and Asians (with the exception of undocumented immigrants) is reproduced through “the dull compulsion of the market” not through law and open racist practices. The historic legacy of racism in employment, education, and home ownership (which is the main way working people accumulate wealth that can be leveraged into college educations for their children) put African-Americans and other people of color at a marked disadvantage in the “race-neutral” competition with whites for economic opportunities and resources. People of color are also at a distinct disadvantage in dealing with the race-neutral justice system. Racist justice no longer has to rely, for the most part, on lynch mobs and open appeals to white racism. “Blind-justice” alone can maintain racial subordination.

While the African-American freedom movement was stronger in the 1960s and 1970s, mainstream liberalism and conservatism was forced to acknowledge that the abolition of legal and open racism was not sufficient to end white supremacy. Some race-conscious policies — in particular limited forms of affirmative action in higher education that helped promote the growth of a new middle class among African-Americans and other people of color — were deemed necessary by both the Democratic and Republican parties.

As the social movements of the 1970s retreated, liberals and conservative in both political parties declared “the end of race.” Race-conscious policies like affirmative action and educational desegregation were “no longer necessary.” Whatever residual inequality existed was the result of cultural differences among different groups. Liberals began to argue that many people of color, especially African-Americans, were mired in a “culture of poverty” which discouraged the characteristics (deferred gratification, rational planning, etc.) that were necessary for success. Bill Clinton used such arguments to justify his welfare reform, claiming that cash assistance for single women encouraged a “culture of dependence.” Put simply, mainstream liberalism increasingly blamed the victims of racism for their own predicament.

Perhaps one of the clearest indications of the triumph of liberal, color-blind racism is the success of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign this year. While the success of his candidacy is a tribute to the enduring achievements of the civil rights movement, Obama is a decidedly “post-racial” politician. Unlike Jesse Jackson who spotlighted growing class, race and gender inequality in his 1984 and 1988 campaigns, which remained mired in the pro-corporate Democratic Party, Obama presents a color-blind vision in his campaign. Not only has he refused to criticize (and in fact supports) the neo-liberal policies of both parties since the 1980s (hence his praise of Ronald Reagan) nor called for immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Iraq, but Obama is silent on affirmative action and desegregation. It is not ironic that the first African-American with a real possibility of gaining the Presidential nomination of a major party, champions a politics that ignores race.