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.
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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!
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)
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- 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
11 hours 38 min ago - Closets
12 hours 19 min ago - Article Review
1 day 9 hours ago - you did a wonderful job.
2 days 9 hours ago - Douceur.
1 week 7 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.
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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.”
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...
Queer Vows, Pros and Cons
Is there a relationship between homosexual liberation and socialism? That's an unfashionably utopian question, but I pose it because it's entirely conceivable that we will one day live miserably in a thoroughly ravaged world in which lesbians and gay men can marry and serve openly in the army and that's it. --Tony Kushner, "A Socialism of the Skin (Liberation, Honey!)" from Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness
MY BEGINNING WITH this quote might lead you to believe I'm against queers getting hitched or serving Uncle Sam. No, I support our right to both. But I do so while steeped in the dilemmas such institutions raise for radicals, with lots of reservations and questions about how loudly or quietly to demand our rights to them.
Same-sex marriage is so much at the forefront of the news these days, you'd think everyone was doing it. Bill Clinton, in his ongoing display of spinelessness, says he would sign a bill denying federal recognition to same-sex marriages if Congress passed it. The "Defense of Marriage" act, co-sponsored by Bob Dole would define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and would deny federal pension, health and other benefits to same-sex couples. It would also absolve any state from recognizing a same-sex marriage performed in any other.
Given the rapid opposition to same-sex marriage by not only the right, but by Clinton and other social liberals, it's hard not to passionately defend and fight for it. It's another good opportunity to expose the conservatism behind the Clinton administration and the close links between the Democrats and the Republicans on so many issues. But how central to the struggle for gay, lesbian, bisexual and trasngendered liberation should the fight for same-sex marriage be?
I love the aesthetic of queer marriage, perhaps more than any other part of it. There is no act more clothed in heterosexual imagery than a wedding, except maybe figure skating. (The image of queers together on ice gives me the same thrill!) Two butch dykes in lace, or one or both in tuxes. Whatever the pairing, the campy, gender-bending picture of two girls or two boys earnestly marching down the isle, exchanging vows and rings, and kissing passionately in front of all exposes the whole institution, even while embracing it. Maybe I'd be more excited about queers in the military if we queered the view there.
And more than just visually appearing, there are real material benefits to getting married. That's why a good many lefties still do it. But does queer marriage in and of itself challenge the nature of such a patriarchal institution that, one, is not working for half the straight couples that enter it, and two, has been extremely detrimental to women. If we fight for our right to something most radicals have found pretty loathsome, without envisioning and valuing alternatives to it, are we simply adjust to oppression? As Kushner says, "capitalism, after all, can absorb a lot."
On the other hand, equality ain't liberation, honey, but it's important nonetheless. We fight for the right to jobs, as horrible as so many of them are. We should fight for queer marriage, as problematic an institution as it is. But let's say, in the same breath, that we want decent and fulfilling jobs, a sustainable and democratic way of organizing our economy, and yes, a much shorter work week.
Let's argue for the same kind of material and emotional support for nonmarried gay or straight couples, for single people, and for extended and nontraditionally configured families -- queer or not. Let's read and reread Tony Kushner's brilliant essay against gay conservatism and for a liberatory socialism. Let's begin (and never stop) talking about what kind of radically transformed society we are working for, and not settle for a few reforms here and there.
ATC 63, July-August 1996
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