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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Against the Current
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.
Read more...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.
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)
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- 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
from the Webzine
- This is Only the Beginning
4 days 7 hours ago - Building North-South Solidarity
4 days 7 hours ago - Final Resolution, in English
4 days 20 hours ago - Response to Erik and Chloe on disability
4 days 20 hours ago - Solidarity's take on the Fifth International
4 days 21 hours ago - Socialists/Disability
5 days 6 hours ago - The FSLN and Solidarity
5 days 7 hours ago - Not facetiously or
6 days 4 hours ago - Please download and submit a single-signer petition for the CDA
6 days 13 hours ago - Crimson Ride Drivers--Update
1 week 1 day ago
Last fall, in the discussion that produced our analysis of “Obama After 200 Days,” we said it would be premature to speak of a “crisis” for the administration. A year after the euphoric 2009 inauguration, it no longer looks premature. People who looked to Obama and the Democrats for leadership are bitterly disappointed, and a very peculiar brand of rightwing politics has seized the initiative.
Read more...
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.”
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.orgRead 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...
Obama's pastor was right
Of course many people supporting him on the left don't expect anything better than opportunism from him; they just hope that deep down that opportunism will be tempered by deeply-held-but-for-practical-reasons-must-be-concealed politics like ... those of Pastor Wright. (Or, they just expect him to be smarter, more eloquent, and less of a cowboy than GWB, to which I can only say, well, if your expectations are that low....) I don't know what to say to that kind of argument. I don't know how we're supposed to build a better politics even at an electoral level in this country if its most eloquent purveyors don't utter nary a peep of it. The comparisons with Jackson drive me crazy, because Jackson, for all his faults, put forth such a politics. Which is the last time that anything other than Third Way Clinton-Blair triangulation has been put out in the Democratic Party. Putting out such a politics would be an integral part of undoing what is still the long-term success of the Reagan Realignment. If Obama is a Kennedy-type, which he might well be, that means precisely nothing. Kennedy's policies were a continuation of Eisenhower's in most senses including Cold War, economic, and social policies. LBJ's Great Society was actually a much more substantive development in social liberalism than anything JFK developed.
I wonder if Pastor Wright would accept a nomination to be Cynthia McKinney's Vice Presidential candidate?
Returning to the more practical sphere: Obama has got to get out of this mindset that he has to reject, denounce, and fire every aide or associate who isn't as pure as the driven snow, and figure out some other way to deflect these punches. Wait, why do I care about that if I don't support him? Hmm. I can't answer that. Maybe the latte liberal who has grown up inside me, wanting to bust out, just can't help it.
Returning to the broader political issue: I wonder if all the right-wingers are right when they say that the anti-US sentiments expressed by Wright (and supposedly Michelle Obama in a famous gaffe) are completely out of tune with where a majority of Americans are at, excepting certain latte liberals? And would that out-of-tune-ness be so jarring as to justify a candidate like Obama running away from these views as fast as he can, or could he, if he were willing, conceivably make a political stand on this ground? Of course they're not completely right; for one thing, us anti-imperialists are over here waving, "Hey, we're still here, and lots of us couldn't give a fuck about a latte." True, but unfortunately not a significant voting bloc.
Secondly, I believe that sentiments combining real patriotism and love of country and people with a deep disgust with a lot of what the US is about exist broadly in Black communities. I don't believe these apparent contradictions are inchoate; in fact, Black culture is probably the best model there is of an "immanent critique" (as opposed to a total critique from anti-imperialists, which might not resonate very broadly at the moment) of US patriotism. I've sometimes thought that Allen Iverson's pride, after a third-place finish at the 2004 Olympics, when most of the media was bellyaching about the fall from "Dream Team" basketball supremacy, might be the model for what a positive post-imperial sense of self for someone from the US could be like, very, very distant though the reality of such a possibility might be.
Third, my experience is that in a lot of immigrant communities, while there is pride associated with success in coming to the US and being able to succeed, more or less, and maybe send something back for the family, this is also balanced often with a fairly realistic and informed sense of what the US is about internationally as well as its internal injustices.
Fourth, it is true that patriotic pride is often tied at the hip to closely defended white privilege among white workers - at least this is one strand. But it is hard to tell, anecdotally, how ubiquitous this strand really is. Would a moderate, sobering critique of the notion that "America is number one" and the US presence on the world stage, combined with an affirmation of a 1940s-Communist-Party-style multiracial-populist Americanism really drive white workers to vote for Reaction? (I'm assuming that this is the best we could hope of any presidential candidate, even a Third-Party candidate with some hope of resonance.) We certainly won't find out this year, because Obama is running scared from the implication that he might represent anything less than red-blooded, gung-ho patriotism. Again, conscious of my tendency to sound like a broken record here, I think Jesse Jackson is the closest we came to discovering where something like such a politics could go. Let's remember that - and this seems to have been lost in the political memories of most 2008 commentators - while Jackson never did particularly well with whatever was the 1988 equivalent of the "latte liberal," he did do quite well with working-class whites in several states, by speaking directly about class-based grievances as well as other issues. (I remember this being the case anecdotally in several states, but I'm not sure how the final votes broke down or whether anyone has ever analyzed the "Bradley effect" broken down by class in this election.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T6-O8GIylQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T6-O8GIylQ
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