Against the Current
Published bimonthly since 1986, AGAINST THE CURRENT is a Solidarity-sponsored analytical journal for the broad revolutionary left. The Sept./Oct. issue features Malik Miah on How Race Fuels the Rightist Agenda, Kit Adam Wainer on Obama's Race to the Top vs. Teacher Unions and Susan Spronk and Jeffery R. Webber interviewing Venezuelan activists Gonzalo Gómez, Stalin Pérez Borges and Luis Primo on the processes of deepening the revolution. Coverage of The Mexican Revolution at 100 continues, featuring an interview with Adolpho Gilly and articles by Dan La Botz, James D. Cockcroft, Heather Dasner Monk, Fred Rosen and Scott Campbell.
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.
Read more...Keep up with the campaign!
Campaign website- DanLaBotz.com
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!
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
- A Great Variety of Morbid Symptoms, Seen in the Reflecting Pool Yesterday
by John B. Cannon posted on 08/31/10
- Education in the Crosshairs: Thoughts on the New Student Movement
by Nick posted on 08/13/10
- Don't Just Snap, Organize... Let's "Slater" together!
by La Botz for Senate posted on 08/12/10
- Pakistan: Over 20 million people affected by the flood
by Dianne posted on 08/11/10
- Stop police harassment of anti-facists in Russia!
by Isaac posted on 08/8/10
- As Santos Becomes Colombian President, U.S. Bases and Tensions Remain
by Dianne posted on 08/5/10
- Immigrant Rights Protest at Mets Game - Exciting organizing!
by Nate posted on 08/2/10
- Enough Is Enough... We’re Human Beings
by Joanna posted on 07/23/10
- The Sentencing of Lynne Stewart
by Dianne posted on 07/21/10
- NY Governor candidate Howie Hawkins Opposes Increased Jail Time for Lawyer Lynne Stewart
by Howie Hawkins posted on 07/19/10
from the Webzine
- Closets
12 hours 34 min ago - Closets
13 hours 15 min ago - Article Review
1 day 10 hours ago - you did a wonderful job.
2 days 10 hours ago - Douceur.
1 week 8 hours ago - abortion& disabled people
1 week 2 days ago - Sending money to Pakistan within next month
1 week 3 days ago - The reason the ad doesn't say
1 week 3 days ago - Stalinist Slsnders...
2 weeks 3 days ago - Santos charges course; U.S. and Rightwing outfoxed
2 weeks 5 days ago
Barbara Zeluck Presente!
Our comrade Barbara Zeluck died June 5, 2010. She was a lifelong socialist and founding member of Solidarity. Barbara had a long and active life, unwavering in her support for radical social change and movements that she felt were dedicated to mobilizing the working class and raising class consciousness. She always believed that a better world was possible. Read More...
One Year of Obama and the Democrats’ Debacle
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...
Anti-abortion Terrorism Can Be Prevented
By Cyril Mychalejko
Philly IMC
The assassination of Dr. George Tiller last month by anti-abortion extremist Scott Roeder set off a fiery debate about the potential culpability of the anti-choice movement and whether this heinous act could have been prevented.
This is an uncomfortable conversation to have. It's a conversation that will offend some people. But it is one we must continue to have in order to ensure that we create the conditions that will inhibit similar violent acts from happening in the future.
In March 2005 the The Congressional Quarterly (CQ) published an article about how the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush refused to list right-wing domestic terrorist groups, such as the anti-abortion group Army of God, on a list of threats to our nation's security. Back in 1993 Army of God member Rachelle "Shelley" Shannon shot Dr. Tiller twice in an unsuccessful assassination attempt. The group's website currently has statements approving of the recent murder on its George Tiller "Baby Killer" link page.
“If for some reason the government no longer considers them a threat, I think they will regret that,” Mike German, a 16-year undercover agent for the FBI who spent most of his career infiltrating radical right-wing groups told CQ.
We now know that German's words were prophetic. Rather than using federal and state law enforcement agencies to spy on or infiltrate anti-war Quakers in Florida and anti-death penalty activists in Baltimore, President Bush should have committed his resources on domestic terrorists committed to violence - not pacifists. Hopefully Republicans and conservatives who didn't learn the lesson then, and who just a few months ago scoffed at and criticized the recent Homeland Security report "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," will finally face the facts and put the public's interests over narrow ideological ones.
Now one might accuse me of using an extremist organization or individual to tar an entire movement. But more "mainstream" anti-abortion advocates such as Fox's Bill O'Reilly, who repeatedly told viewers that Tiller is running a "death mill" and compared him to a Nazi, and former Senator Rick Santorum, who writing in The Philadelphia Inquirer accused President Obama of "infanticide" and of "justifying the killing of newborn babies," use the same imagery and demagoguery as The Army of God terrorists.
While reigning in irresponsible and incendiary hate speech is one step that the "Pro-Life" movement needs to take, and calling for and supporting the monitoring and investigation of right-wing terrorists and terrorist groups, the government needs to enforce the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act.
Returning to ideologically driven policy, according to journalist Daphne Eviatar writing in The Washington Independent, "under the Bush administration, criminal enforcement of the federal law designed to protect abortion providers and clinics had declined by more than 75 percent over the last eight years."
Tiller's alleged killer, Scott Roeder, was actually videotaped vandalizing a clinic both a week and day before the murder. The FBI was informed, but Roeder was never picked up. This reveals an institutional bias that abortion providers face - something that effects local and national law enforcement agencies.
“Often local police won’t enforce the local laws against trespassing,” Cathleen Mahoney, the former federal prosecutor, told Eviatar. “It’s politically charged and local police want to stay out of it.”
I hope that Philadelphia Mayor Michale Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey will make our city the gold standard when it comes to enforcing the FACE Act. They should both read these words that President Bill Clinton spoke when he signed the FACE Act into law in 1994:
“No person seeking medical care, no physician providing that care should have to endure harassments or threats or obstruction or intimidation or even murder from vigilantes who take the law into their own hands because they think they know what the law ought to be.”
Post new comment