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
12 hours 13 min ago - Closets
12 hours 54 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...
On Hal Draper's Zionism
I WOULD LIKE to add some more information on the book by Hal Draper, Zionism, Israel and the Arabs, which is the source of the excerpt from his 1948 essay “How to Defend Israel” printed in the May/June 2007 issue of ATC.
The website from which you can order the book is www.socialisthistory.org. You can also go to Amazon.com and enter “Draper, Hal” in the search field. Be sure to go to the “books” section first because Amazon lists all kinds of gadgets, toys, etc. on its main search site and there are an amazing number of people named Draper who have stuff on the site. If you go to the Center site, click on “Publications” and then on “Order online,” you will get a complete list of our titles available from Amazon.
The main point of Draper’s book, and this is something that is not usually made much of, is the argument that the key to Israel’s survival and peace with its Arab neighbors is its treatment of the Palestinian remnant who are citizens of Israel. When Draper was writing on this subject in the 1950s and 1960s this minority amounted to ten percent of the Israeli citizenry.
As Draper pointed out, this was approximately the same percentage of the population that African-Americans made up in the United States. Defining Israel as “a Jewish state” was equivalent to defining the U.S. as “a white man’s country.” Today the Palestinian remnant makes up about 20% of the population and is growing.
What makes this “a burning issue of the day” is that the political representatives of the Israeli Arabs in the Knesset have come forward with a proposal which would make Israel formally a bi-national state. The model they have chosen is Belgium.
At a time when, as a result of the Israeli-American putsch which has armed and financed its own puppet government under Mahmoud Abbas in defiance of the democratic vote of the Palestinian people, the two-state solution appears to be dead, this proposal offers a new start.
Interestingly enough Israeli dissidents, notably Uri Avnery, have expressed some interest in this plan. The Israeli government predictably responded by opening a criminal investigation of Azmi Bishara, the leader of the Israeli Arab bloc in the Knesset. He has been interviewed by the authorities twice and, fearing an imminent arrest warrant, chose not to return to Israel from Egypt where he was meeting with Egyptian authorities. He has resigned from the Knesset. Another peace threat is beaten back.
The importance of this Israeli Arab proposal lies in its appeal to basic democratic values — values which are incompatible with “a Jewish state.” The Zionist movement has always claimed that all citizens of the state are equal. But this is not true. Anyone, living anywhere in the world, who can claim by whatever stretch of the imagination to be Jewish, is automatically eligible for Israeli citizenship.
The most bizarre example of this was the relatively recent immigration of Russian Jews. As a result of persecution by the Nazis and the Stalinist state as well as the normal pressures of the modern world, this community was largely assimilated. There was no way that traditional definitions of what it meant to be Jewish, largely derived from religious precepts, could be applied. As a consequence, the Israeli government was forced to use the criterion enacted into law by the Nazis at Nuremberg: Anybody who had at least one Jewish grandparent was eligible for Israeli citizenship.
At the same time, the Israeli courts have held that marriage to an Israeli citizen (for example the marriage of a West Bank Palestinian to an Israeli Arab) did not automatically result in citizenship. (Such couples are not even allowed to live in Israel — ed.) If this kind of constitutional charade that would be impossible under the proposal put forward by the Arab members of the Knesset.
Israel’s right to exist can only be guaranteed in the long run, not by the military support of whatever Great Power finds the existence of an isolated “Jewish state” convenient, but by coming to terms with the legitimate claims of the Arab population — beginning with that growing proportion of its own citizens who are not Jewish.
from ATC 130 (September/October 2007)
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