Reply to comment

Against the Current

Published bimonthly since 1986, AGAINST THE CURRENT is a Solidarity-sponsored analytical journal for the broad revolutionary left. The March/April issue features the Educational Crisis in California and the Unfolding Fightback with articles by students and workers in the University of California system. For International Women's Day there are reviews on gender, sexuality and liberation by Catherine Sameh, Chloe Tribich and Kate Flynn. Other articles include Malik Miah on Obama Forgets the Black Community, Michael Steven Smith on Lost Liberties in the Age of Obama and Kim Moody on the Crisis and Potential in Labor's Wars and coverage on Honduras and Gaza.
See the latest issue...
View the archives...
Subscribe!
Write a letter to the editor...

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.

Put a Socialist in the Senate!

Dan La Botz, a 64-year old Cincinnati school teacher, has filed petitions with the Ohio Secretary of State to become the candidate of the Socialist Party for the U.S. Senate. La Botz, who needed 500 signatures to get on the Socialist Party primary ballot, filed petitions with approximately 1,200 signatures on Thursday, Feb. 18. La Botz, a long time labor and social movement activist, is the candidate of the Socialist Party of Ohio which is the state organization of the Socialist Party USA.

Buttons to Build the Movement

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."

Bright orange 1 1/2" buttons boldly demand: "Bring 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.

Produced during the massive immigrant rights demonstrations of 2006, these 2 1/8" buttons read, in Spanish and English: ¡exigimos Paz, Legalización, y Trabajos para Todos! we demand Peace, Legalization, and Jobs for All!

Videos from Solidarity's Educational Conference

November 14-15 in New York City, Solidarity held a successful conference featuring engaging talks on a number of topics. Click here to view these videos from "Their Crisis, Our Movements"

- Crisis of Capitalism, Challenge to the Movements (David McNally, New Socialist Group)
- The New Imperialism and The Global Fightback (Vivek Chibber, Christy Thornton, Jonah McCallister-Erickson)
- The State of Resistance in Communities & the Workplace (Normahiram Perez, Steve Downs, Penelope Duggan)
- Race and National Liberation Under Obama (Glen Ford, Lalit Clarkston)

Donate

Solidarity depends on the generous contributions of its friends and allies to continue its work. Please consider giving!

User login

Second Annual Convention of Labor Campaign for Single Payer, March 5-7, 2010
by Milton posted on 03/13/10
Trail of Dreams, bound for DC, passes through Georgia
by Tim S posted on 03/12/10
Chicago immigrant youth are Undocumented and Unafraid
by Isaac posted on 03/11/10
Women's Day March in San Antonio Says “Ya Basta” to Abusive Treatment of Workers
by Chris posted on 03/10/10
Tres resolutivos del Congreso Mundial de la IV internacional sobre México
by International Viewpoint posted on 03/9/10
Disability and socialism
by Chloe posted on 03/9/10
Pakistan: Women workers march in Lahore to observe International Women Day
by International Viewpoint posted on 03/8/10
Salt of the Earth, Classic of Feminist Cinema [Full Video]
by Isaac posted on 03/8/10
Solidarity with Haiti!
by International Viewpoint posted on 03/7/10
How many gender problems can you count?
by Chloe posted on 03/7/10

Regroupment & Refoundation of a U.S. Left

As part of the preparation for our 2008 Convention, members of SOLIDARITY have begun a political document describing some perspectives for socialist renewal in the twenty-first century. We welcome responses to this initial draft of the document. Some of the themes here have also been developed in Solidarity's Founding Statement and our 1997 pamphlet, “Socialist Organization Today.”

— Introduction
— Social Movements over the Last Two Decades
— Regroupment, Refounding and the Arc of Resistance
— Refounding a New Left: Next Generations & Their Experiences
— The Tasks and Possibilities of a U.S. Refounded Left
— Refounding the Left: Taking Our Past Into Our Future

New Pamphlet: Hell on Wheels

New from Solidarity! Long time transit worker activist Steve Downs has written a pamphlet charting the twenty year story of New Directions, a rank and file caucus in New York City's transit union that he helped build and develop - including the challenges of keeping the rank and file democracy movement alive after New Directions won control of the local.

Read an interview on Zmag.org
Read a review and order your copy today!

From Abortion Rights to Reproductive Justice

New from Solidarity's Feminist Commission, this leaflet responds to the right wing attack on reproductive freedom and argues that the movement must go beyond "pro-choice" to true reproductive justice. This socialist and anti-racist feminist agenda would take up issues such as access to health and child care, forced sterilization, and the division of "productive" and "reproductive" labor.
Download the pamphlet...

Limousines for the rich, swim lessons for the poor

Submitted by Isaac on February 6, 2010 - 5:17pm

Many of the global criticisms of last month's Climate Change talks in Copenhagen have sarcastically noted that not much more than hot air emerged from the meeting . It turns out that's true. The largesse of the 15,000 delegates and "world leaders" dumped the equivalent of 41,000 tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Why? Among other things, more than 1,200 gas guzzling limousines were ordered to chauffeur politicians around.

The Solomon Islands: Global Warming's Atlantis?

For a sense of the scale, over half a million Solomon Islanders produce about 3,000 tons of carbon dioxide weekly. It takes the 100,000 residents of Tonga four months to produce the amount of extra CO₂ emitted in Copenhagen that week.

Island nations like these face total submersion beneath the rising Pacific waters without drastic cuts in carbon emissions.

It's not an island, but densely populated Bangladesh is considered to be at the front line of climate change, an issue that's a matter of life and death there. Bangladesh is one of the Earth's poorest nations per capita, and around half the country is mere feet above sea level. Already, an estimated 20 million people have relocated due to the impact of climate change!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Three centuries ago, Jonathan Swift invented the satirical essay with "A Modest Proposal." Poverty in Ireland, he offered, might be overcome with a simple solution: selling the children for food would reduce population and provide some extra income to struggling parents. Not to be outdone, the United Nations children's agency has unfurled a project teaching Bangladeshi children to swim:

“What we are doing now is that we are pre-empting a situation for five to seven years down the road,” said UNICEF Representative in Bangladesh Carel de Rooy. “This is very relevant for Bangladesh; some estimates are that if the sea levels were to rise over the next century by one metre, a third of Bangladesh could come under water.”

So far 35,000 kids have gotten training. They've got a long way to go: 162 million people live in Bangladesh. But the country produces just 0.27 tons of carbon emissions per capita each year - by far the lowest of any large country.

These kinds of horrifying figures are driven home by a slogan I like from the international (and internationalist) climate change movement: People are not Pollution. This succinct argument targets the real issue, against the misinformation that "overpopulation" is the root problem of climate change and of the general ecological crisis facing humanity. (Taken to is morbid logical conclusions, this belief would have millions of corpses in Earth's poorest areas to supposedly "Save the Earth.") No!

I'm not a fan of the overall politics of the Earth Liberation Front, which ironically overlap with the same kinds of anti-people sentiments I argued against above, but their slogan "The Earth is not dying it is being killed and the killers have names and addresses..." hits at another important truth - one anxiously covered by defenders of capitalism. The unprecedented warming of the planet over the past century was not an unavoidable accident of "human development" but the result of an economic system (and the rich who hold its reins) that puts "economic growth" above the survival of people and of nature. Rolling Stone published a good expose on some of the Climate Killers - who are also people killers, as seen above.

The same capitalism that has under-developed places like Bangladesh has over-developed the capacity of the industrialized "Global North" (under the direction of these killers) to poison the air and water. To save Polynesia, the Ganges river delta and other low-lying areas of the planet, drastic cuts in emissions are needed over the next decade - and the responsibility lies firmly at the feet of those countries which have historically emitted the most.

Meanwhile, many organizations at the forefront of climate justice in the Global South explicitly reject the industrial and agricultural development of their regions on the pattern modeled by imperialism. The future of much of humanity and of the planet is linked - and fighting for an ecologically planned socialism is our great task for this century.

Isaac's blog