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Published bimonthly since 1986, AGAINST THE CURRENT is a Solidarity-sponsored analytical journal for the broad revolutionary left. The January/February 2012 issue features fourteen articles on the Occupy movement, its strategies, and actions in a number of U.S. cities. ATC’s Black History feature: Paul Ortiz on C.L.R. James’ Visionary Legacy and Derrick Morrison reviews a study of the least-known slave uprising. Hisham H. Ahmed writes about the Arab Spring, the West and Political Islam and ATC interviews Atef Said on Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution. Additional reviews by Bruce Levine, Kathlene McDonald, Susan Dirr and Tessa Echeverria and Michael Löwy. Subscribe today!
I'd be interested in seeing a 5 days 13 hours
The Socialist Party has not folded 5 days 19 hours
The Obama administration and the Poor 1 week 1 day
YES! yes! YES! 2 weeks 3 days
Thank you for writing this. 2 weeks 3 days
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International Viewpoint is the monthly English-language magazine of the Fourth International. IV is a window to radical alternatives world-wide, carrying reports, analysis and debates from all corners of the globe. Correspondents in over 50 countries report on popular struggles, and the debates that are shaping the left of tomorrow.
02/12/12 01:51
Since the beginning of the Greek public debt crisis three different demands have been put forward by the left and the workers' movement: either to restructure (and so reduce), to audit or to cancel the debt. This is not just a matter of slogans, but it also implies different political strategies. OKDE-Spartakos, as well as ANTARSYA, despite its contradictions, have opted for the third choice.
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IV445 - February 2012
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Greece,
Debt
02/10/12 02:15
On February 1, 2012, Robert Fisk ended his article in the British daily newspaper “The Independent” as follows: “But there is one unasked question. Just suppose the regime [of Bashar al-Assad] did survive. Over what kind of Syria would it rule?” In other words, the revolt has reached a point of no return.
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IV445 - February 2012
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Syria,
Arab Revolutions
02/9/12 10:04
"Prosecute the Cabal!" With millions of on strike and crowds singing Solidarity Forever, Occupy Nigeria has shut down the most populous country in Africa. Here in New York, the diaspora is rallying in support as well, and on Saturday, Jan. 14, I went to the second rally at the Nigerian Embassy and the UN this week. Though big labor actions might be more common in Nigerian than in the US, folks are saying this one feels different. Maybe it's the wave of protest against neoliberalism around the world in 2011, maybe it's the corruption—facilitated by neoliberal deregulation — or maybe it's the high unemployment rates (over 40% among young workers), maybe it's that oil is so central to the economy; or maybe it's all of this together.
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IV445 - February 2012
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Nigeria,
Trade unions,
Global Justice
Order these eye-catching buttons to spread the demand for social and economic justice. If you don't have paypal, email us!
Reads Bail out People, not Wall Street!. Around the edge, these 2 1/8" buttons read "Free Health Care," "Defend Public Services," "Living Wage Jobs," "Free Higher Education," "Troops Home Now," "Rebuild the Gulf Coast," and "Affordable Housing."
Brown and black buttons demand: "Bring all the Troops Home Now!" Wear one everywhere to start a conversation about why US occupation can never be a force for liberation, and people's needs should come before the massive military budget.
These 2 1/8" buttons read, in Spanish and English: ¡Alto a las deporaciones - Legalización para todos! Stop the deportations - Legalization for all!
Obama's election & "activist resurgence" Cleveland experience
I am a member of the local Ohio Moratorium Now on Foreclosures Evictions and Utility Shut-offs, which was formed in Cleveland last November. It was formed after some bank demos and successful anti-foreclosure public forums organized by independent activists and WWP members. [Their party has a national campaign going on foreclosures.]
All this is preamble to the point I wanted to make: Obama's election has had a completely stultifying effect on local activism of any kind here in Cleveland.
Actually most local activism ground to a halt at about the same time Obama gave his election night victory speech. A recent book tour by Cindy Sheehan was the first even in eight months where activists in the area have "emerged" like groundhogs to sniff the air.
For more background on local moratorium work in Cleveland, this is a small article I wrote earlier this year:
http://monthlyreview.org/mrzine/rothermel090309.html
I would have to say that these are the "continuing lessons" since then:
1. Those who came to the organizing meetings [on foreclosure work] stopped coming and stopped reaching out to bring others. (Other than the solid core of me, another indy communist I work and study with here locally, the Workers World Party cadre, and a few of their student contacts at Baldwin Wallace college in nearby Berea.)
2. The people from the local anti-police brutality group and the New Black Panther Party have done nothing in the last half year except a very successful "ring around the Justice Center (cop HQ)" on MLK Day, which would have been double the size if most activists hadn't been on buses on the way to Washington DC for the inauguration.
3. Precious little political activity in the last 6 months at all, quite apart from foreclosure work. I have been calling it the "Obama Doldrums" but that is really just a subjective take on a bigger process. People are beat down and our class is not organizing any fightback, even around plant closures. There was 1 demo at a Chrysler plant south of here two months ago, built by rank and filers and the local's officials, but acheived no echo in local politics and got no other "non-union" activists from anti-war and human rights work to attend.
4. Foreclosure work: when it was going along, it mainly took the form of about 20 of us showing up in solidarity with contacts at their hearings, picket lines for their cases at courthouses, and planning pickets at the homes; the bailiffs never materialized or the courts gave them more time. The courts were clearly on a learning curve about how to head off a lot of mass actions by "giving a little" episodically.
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Thanks for this very useful analysis. I live in Cleveland, Ohio. Just to let you know where I am coming from: I am a former member of the U.S. SWP, though not officially a member of any party right now.
Jay Rothermel
jayroth6@cox.net