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.
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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.

Put a Socialist in the Senate!

LaBotz, Buckeye Socialist, Senate 2010

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.

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Keep up with the campaign!"
DanLaBotz.com

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.

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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!

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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)

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Blocked Reform: Obama After 200 Days

The Obama presidency, contrary to the hopes of many, has not produced a big political space for the left, let alone “a seat at the table.” Most visibly, it has been the right wing that succeeded in seizing the initiative, in some truly grotesque ways that have thrown a real light on the deep paranoia and straight-up white racism that persists in this society, and on the ways it can be opportunistically pandered to and manipulated.
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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
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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.
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Israel at 60: We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

[Published on CounterPunch]This month, Israel is celebrating its 60th anniversary. American Jews will be invited to join in those celebrations. But, in refusing to recognize that its national existence rests on the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland, Israel fails to speak to Jews of conscience. Here is why I cannot join the celebration.

My grandmother, my mother’s mother, was a seamstress. She was known for the loveliness of her embroidery. Before WWI, she had made a career of sewing flowers onto fine silk ball gowns destined to be worn in Vienna’s imperial palace, the Hofburg. Eventually, her hands became too rough for the silk and she was fired. Thereafter, she raised three daughters in a one-room apartment in Vienna’s 2nd district, a Jewish neighborhood nicknamed “die Maztosinsel” (Matzo Island). She supported herself by helping merchants at a nearby open-air food market clean their stalls at the end of the day. In return for her labor she was given the half-rotted food that was no longer good enough for paying customers and, in this way, she was able to feed herself and her daughters. But even in conditions of such dire poverty, she went on sewing and was known for the beauty of the embroidered quilts that covered her daughters. I have always thought of her as my quilt Omi (an affectionate term for grandmother).

As time went on, political danger was added to economic privation. By 1932, Austrians were living under a home-grown fascist regime. My mother was fired from her job, but joined a youth group working to get children out of Austria. Then, in 1938, Hitler’s armies annexed Austria. Soon, Hitler came to visit the newest possession of the Third Reich. On a sleety cold day, the Viennese lined his parade route 10 deep for the 8 hours that his train was delayed, screaming themselves hoarse on “Heil Hitler.” So my mother and her mother knew that they were living in a nation of collaborators.

One day, my mother came home to find her mother having coffee with the Christian lady who lived across the hall. For many years, the two old ladies had shared a bathroom and a water tap at the end of the hall, and whatever food they possessed. Today they were sharing pastry and discussing the occupation. When it came time to leave, my grandmother’s neighbor got up, but instead of going to the door, she walked behind the screen that separated the beds from the rest of the small room. A minute later she emerged with all of my grandmother’s quilts piled in her arms. Without shame or haste or apology she went to the door. There she paused and said to my Omi “Well, the Nazis will take these anyway, and I’ve always wanted them.” And with that, she walked out.

Sometime later, my mother was designated a chaperone on one of the last Kindertransport trains to leave Austria. But, while my mother was able to get to safety, my quilt Omi was denounced to the Nazis by one of her neighbors. She was arrested and shipped to the Warsaw ghetto, which functioned as a holding pen for Auschwitz. And there the trail ends. We have never known exactly how or when she died. Her unmarked death remains the great unhealed sore of my mother’s life in this, her 98th year.

So when Israelis claim to have created the Jewish state in my name, in the name of my quilt Omi, they speak less than the whole truth. They never say “to establish this state we took – and we continue to take - the beautiful embroidered quilts from Palestinians and, worse yet, the water from their land, and the olive trees from their gardens and indeed, the very roof over their heads.” This, too, is Israel. So I must say NO. No, you may not use my name. No, you may not use the name of my quilt Omi. We do not celebrate independence born of others’ ongoing dispossession.

Eve Spangler is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston College and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.