Archive for the 'Organizing' Category

Noam Chomsky Speaks to Occupy Boston:

by Editors @ Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011. Filed under Economic Democracy, Global Justice, Organizing, Unemployment, Youth

If We Want a Chance at a Decent Future, the

Movement Here and Around the World Must Grow

By Noam Chomsky
SolidarityEconomy.net via AlterNet.org

Nov 1, 2011 - It's a little hard to give a Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture at an Occupy meeting. There are mixed feelings that go along with it. First of all, regret that Howard is not here to take part and invigorate it in his particular way, something that would have been the dream of his life, and secondly, excitement that the dream is actually being fulfilled. It’s a dream for which he laid a lot of the groundwork. It would have been the fulfillment of a dream for him to be here with you.

The Occupy movement really is an exciting development. In fact, it's spectacular. It's unprecedented; there's never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations that are being established at these remarkable events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead -- because victories don't come quickly-- this could turn out to be a very significant moment in American history.

The fact that the demonstrations are unprecedented is quite appropriate. It is an unprecedented era -- not just this moment -- but actually since the 1970s. The 1970s began a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society with ups and downs. But the general progress was toward wealth and industrialization and development -- even in dark and hope -- there was a pretty constant expectation that it's going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.

I'm just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s, although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that we're going to get out of it, even among unemployed people. It'll get better. There was a militant labor movement organizing, CIO was organizing. It was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are very frightening to the business world. You could see it in the business press at the time. A sit-down strike was just a step before taking over the factory and running it yourself. Also, the New Deal legislations were beginning to come under popular pressure. There was just a sense that somehow we're going to get out of it.

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OWS: Tactics in Search of Strategy

by Editors @ Tuesday, October 25th, 2011. Filed under Marxism, New Left, Organizing, Urban Problems, Wall Street, Youth

How to deal with the police is a point of dispute between Social Democratic Anarchists and Communist Anarchists (photo: Thomas Good/NLN, Creative Commons)

'Social Democratic Anarchists',

'Communist Anarchists' and the

Occupy Wall Street Movement

By Left Eye on Books

SolidarityEconomy.net via lefteyeonbooks.com

Oct 23, 2011 - A division exists within the leaderless communities at the heart of the Occupy protests. I would describe this as a split between Social Democratic Anarchists and Communist Anarchists.

I use these two terms provocatively, knowing that most of those I refer to would not describe themselves as either. Neither the terms Social Democrat or Communist are especially popular in the U.S., and the latter is often associated with small left-wing sects that those I describe as Communist Anarchists have a low opinion of.

It also lately seems that the term “anarchist” is becoming unfashionable again. The terms are meant to indicate both continuity and rupture with the historical left. Since 1917, Social Democracy and Communism referred to two different paths of change. Social Democrats believed in reforming capitalism, so that its benefits would be shared more equitably. Communists believed in overthrowing capitalism. Both created disciplined, bureaucratic organizations to achieve their goals. Both believed attaining state power was crucial, either through elections — usually the path of Social Democrats — or armed struggle — more associated with Communists. Although they often vituperatively denounced each other, they could sometimes work together, as was the case in the 1930s in the U.S., when New Deal reformers, who closely resembled Social Democrats, were strengthened by the organizing efforts of Communists.

Today, we see similar splits, in the U.S. and all over the world, in the context of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and related movements.  Some — undoubtedly the majority of participants in the U.S. — wish to reform capitalism. Others would like to destroy capitalism.

However, in two crucial respects the participants in the movement–reformers and revolutionaries alike — differ from the old left. They all eschew bureaucratic forms of organization in favor of leaderless modes of organizing. And they all believe that building power from below is more important than strategizing about how to attain and exercise state power. That is why I describe them as “anarchists”, even if they might not adopt that label themselves. Over the next five to ten years, some of these movements may develop electoral wings, but it is difficult to imagine them attaching to these wings the same lofty hopes and dreams that characterized the old left.

So how do these divisions play out in the current movement?

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‘Obama’s a Cool President, But…’

by Editors @ Tuesday, October 11th, 2011. Filed under Financial Crisis, Organizing, Unemployment, Wall Street, Youth

Occupy Wall Street Protesters

Are Fed Up With Both Parties

SolidarityEconomy.net via AP

NEW YORK, Oct 6 2011 -- Their chief target is Wall Street, but many of the demonstrators in New York and across the U.S. also are thoroughly disgusted with Washington, blaming politicians of both major parties for policies they say protect corporate America at the expense of the middle class.

"At this point I don't see any difference between George Bush and Obama. The middle class is a lot worse than when Obama was elected," said John Penley, an unemployed legal worker from Brooklyn.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, which began last month with a small number of young people pitching a tent in front of the New York Stock Exchange, has expanded nationally and drawn a wide variety of activists, including union members and laid-off workers. Demonstrators marched Thursday in Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and Anchorage, Alaska, carrying signs with slogans such as "Get money out of politics" and "I can't afford a lobbyist."

The protests are in some ways the liberal flip side of the tea party movement, which was launched in 2009 in a populist reaction against the bank and auto bailouts and the $787 billion economic stimulus plan.

But while tea party activists eventually became a crucial part of the Republican coalition, the Occupy Wall Street protesters are cutting President Barack Obama little slack. They say Obama failed to crack down on the banks after the 2008 mortgage meltdown and financial crisis.

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Solidarity Economy and South Africa’s ‘Red October’ Campaign

by Editors @ Monday, October 3rd, 2011. Filed under Africa, Economic Democracy, Labor Movement, Marxism, Organizing, Solidarity Economy
Speech by SACP General Secretary Cde Blade Nzimande at the Launch of the Red October Campaign, October 2 2011:

Together Let Us Build Working

Class Power in our Communities:

The 2011 Launch of the

SACP Red October Campaign

We are in that time of the year when the SACP launches its popular Red October Campaign. Our Red October Campaign is inspired and seeks to take forward the spirit and the victories of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia - ushering in the first workers' government in the 20th century.

The Red October campaign has been an important platform in building and strengthening the SACP over the last 11 years. Through our Red October Campaign we have built an SACP that is closer to the workers and the poor of our country. Through this campaign we say to the workers and the poor of our country, take up struggles to change your lives for the better and be the masters of your own destinies. It is only the workers and the poor themselves, in struggle and in solidarity with all other progressive forces that will consolidate and deepen our national democratic revolution, and advance the struggle for socialism in our country.

Through these campaigns we have also exposed the failures of the capitalist system to address the needs of the overwhelming majority of our people, and particularly also the failures of the neo-liberal macro-economic policies pursued since 1996. Our Red October Campaign has also been an important organising tool to recruit more and more members to the SACP. The Red October Campaign has also been an important platform for the ideological development of SACP members, and generally to conscientise and mobilise the workers and the poor to be the makers of their own history.

Since its launch twelve years ago, the Red October Campaign has been an important campaigning platform led by the SACP, and has notched some important victories, including:

a. the roll out of banking services to the poor via Umzansi account

b. the transformation of the financial sector as a whole

c. The passage of the Co-operatives and Co-operative Banks legislation

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Street Heat Against Finance Capital

by Editors @ Tuesday, September 20th, 2011. Filed under Economic Democracy, Financial Crisis, Organizing, Unemployment

The Wall Street Occupation:

A Sleep-In Protest in the Shadow of Power

By Manny Jalonschi
SolidarityEconomy.net via NYC Indypendent

Sept 19, 2011 - Surrounded by the headquarters of some of the world’s most powerful financial players, over two thousand protesters converged on Wall Street this Saturday. By the end of the second day, those occupying Liberty Park, formerly known as Zuccotti Park on Broadway and Liberty St., had settled in, partially helped by pizza, hot chocolate and blankets paid for and delivered by their supporters in New York City and across the country.

The Wall Street occupation began on Sept. 17 after months of planning and encouragement by Adbusters, who originally called for the occupation in response to a corporate-controlled political system that is no longer serving the needs of the majority of its people. They were soon joined by the hacktivist organization Anonymous in calling for a general people’s assembly. While the meetings leading up to the protest focused on dozens of smaller goals, Saturday morning, in the dozen or so people’s assemblies that broke down in Zuccotti Park now renamed Liberty Square, the protesters identified their key goals as liberating America from the death-grip of finance and creating a sustainable, just future for every member of the country. Specifics ranged from a progressive tax system, ending the wars and creating universal healthcare to more localized solutions like supporting and participating in a variety of worker owned cooperatives.

The protest began around noon in Bowling Green Park with approximately 3,000 people filing in from various ad hoc rallies across the Financial District — including a crowd that swarmed around the Wall Street Bull earlier in the day. The crowd then began marching towards 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza. While the group’s original goal had been to occupy the sidewalk in front of the building, the area was cordoned off and surrounded by more than 40 police cars and 80 police officers. Instead, the crowd, which had decreased to less than 2,000 by 3 p.m., marched to Zuccotti Park on the Corner of Liberty St. and Broadway.

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Unmask the Banksters, Build the Power of Workers

by Editors @ Saturday, March 5th, 2011. Filed under Financial Crisis, Marxism, Organizing

Is This Really the End of Neoliberalism?

By DAVID HARVEY
SolidarityEconomy.Net via Counterpunch

Does this crisis signal the end of neo-liberalism? My answer is that it depends what you mean by neo-liberalism. My interpretation is that it’s a class project, masked by a lot of neo-liberal rhetoric about individual freedom, liberty, personal responsibility, privatisation and the free market. These were means, however, towards the restoration and consolidation of class power, and that neo-liberal project has been fairly successful.

One of the basic principles that was set up in the 1970s was that state power should protect financial institutions at all costs. This is the principle that was worked out in New York City crisis in the mid-1970s, and was first defined internationally when Mexico threatened to go bankrupt in 1982. This would have destroyed the New York investment banks, so the US Treasury and the IMF combined to bail Mexico out. But in so doing they mandated austerity for the Mexican population. In other words they protected the banks and destroyed the people, and this has been the standard practice in the IMF ever since. The current bailout is the same old story, one more time, except bigger.

What happened in the US was that 8 men gave us a 3 page document which pointed a gun at everybody and said ‘give us $700 billion or else’. This to me was like a financial coup, against the government and the population of the US. Which means you’re not going to come out of this crisis with a crisis of the capitalist class; you’re going to come out of this with a far greater consolidation of the capitalist class than there has been in the past. We’re going to end up with four or five major banking institutions in the United States and nothing else.

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Radical History Dept: To the Barricades! Then and Now…

by Editors @ Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011. Filed under Labor Movement, Organizing

The Barricades Then; the Uprisings Now

February 21, 2011

By Peter Monaghan

SolidarityEconomy.net via Chronicle of Higher Education

In the 15th to 19th centuries, when Europeans rebelled against their rulers, they frequently heaped up barrels, paving stones, and any other handy objects to create immovable masses in city streets.

Such defensive and tactical structures went together so readily, so cooperatively, that it seemed the insurrectionists were acting on instinct.

In a new book, The Insurgent Barricade (University of California Press), Mark Traugott relates the history of “the most striking embodiment” of the revolutionary spirit of the times. And it is the dissemination of “barricade consciousness” that most interests the scholar, a professor of history and sociology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. The barricades show, he writes, how people choose and symbolize the way they voice their discontent and collective hopes.

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CyberAllies In North Africa: Not the Main Force, But Still a Powerful Tool

by Editors @ Monday, January 31st, 2011. Filed under Media, Middle East, Organizing

 

How Social Media Accelerated the Uprising in Egypt

By E.B. Boyd

SolidarityEconomy.net via Fast Company

There’s been some backlash in the last few days against the idea that either Tunisia or Egypt were brought on by Twitter or a “Facebook Revolution.” And certainly, it takes a lot more than the 21st century version of a communication system to persuade people to take to the streets and risk harm, imprisonment, or death.

But that doesn’t mean social media didn’t play a role. It did. Given the magnitude of grievances in each country, revolt would almost certainly have come eventually. But social media simply made it come faster. It did so by playing a role in three main dynamics:

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Unblocking Censors: With Will and Skill, There’s A Way

by Editors @ Sunday, January 30th, 2011. Filed under Censorship, Organizing

 

Get Internet Access When

Your Government Shuts It Down

Does your government have an Internet kill-switch? Read our guide to Guerrilla Networking and be prepared for when the lines get cut.

By Patrick Miller, David Daw

SolidarityEconomy.net via PC World -Jan 28

These days, no popular movement goes without an Internet presence of some kind, whether it's organizing on Facebook or spreading the word through Twitter. And as we've seen in Egypt, that means that your Internet connection can be the first to go. Whether you're trying to check in with your family, contact your friends, or simply spread the word, here are a few ways to build some basic network connectivity when you can't rely on your cellular or landline Internet connections.

Do-It-Yourself Internet With Ad-Hoc Wi-Fi   

Even if you've managed to find an Internet connection for yourself, it won't be that helpful in reaching out to your fellow locals if they can't get online to find you.

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Class Struggle in Tunisian Cyberspace Helps Mass Revolt

by Editors @ Sunday, January 16th, 2011. Filed under Africa, Organizing, Youth

Tweeting Tyrants Out of Tunisia:

The Global Internet at Its Best

Solidarityeconomy.net via Wired Magazine


Even yesterday, it would have been too much to say that blogger, tweeters, Facebook users, Anonymous and Wikileaks had “brought down” the Tunisian government, but with today’s news that the country’s president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has fled the country, it becomes a more plausible claim to make.

Of course there was more to such demonstrations than some new technology. An individual act of desperation set off the last month of rioting, as a college-educated young man set himself on fire after police confiscated his unlicensed fruit and vegetable cart. Tunisia’s high unemployment rate, rampant corruption and rising food prices added to the anger at Ben Ali’s 20-plus-year rule.

People risked their lives in the street, with some getting a bullet for their troubles, but the internet played a significant role in organizing these protests and in disseminating news and pictures of them to the world.

After the worst unrest in his reign, Ben Ali this week promised not to run for “election” again and to give the country a free press and the right to assemble. He fired his cabinet. It wasn’t enough. Protestors sensed weakness, and today they forced Ben Ali from Tunisia. He fled ignominiously with his family for any state that would have him.

Here’s a guide to the part of this battle fought in cyberspace over the last month.

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Taunton, Mass: Worker and Local Government Alliance vs Low-Road Capital

by Editors @ Thursday, December 16th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, Globalization, Organizing

UE and Taunton, Mass. Set Own Course

in Fight Against Job Outsourcing

By Roger Bybee
SolidarityEconomy.net via ZNet

Dec. 14, 2010 - The American economy increasingly functions like a high-tech machine that efficiently plunders money from the vast majority of citizens and shoots a jetstream of the cash upward into the bank accounts of the richest 1%. At the same instant, it sends family-supporting jobs zooming off to Mexico, China, India and other low-wage sites.

The Republican landslide, enabled by a weak job-creation strategy coming from the White House, might lead you to think that a majority buys into the notion of letting the economic machine run on, continuing to chew up lives and communities.

However, a growing number of restless and desperate Americans in places like Taunton, Mass., a factory town of 50,000 hard-hit by unemployment, are showing that they understand how disastrously the machine works for them.

They increasingly realize that they must fight to save every endangered job and do battle to preserve decent pay, benefits and union representation.

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Shared Coops: Spreading and Controlling the Wealth at the Grassroots

by Editors @ Monday, August 16th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, High Road Economics, Organizing

A Different Kind of Ownership Society

Innovative strategies for cooperative local ownership

make it possible for prosperity to be shared as well as sustainable.

Wind turbines at dawn, photo by Brent Danley
Photo by Brent Danley.

By Marjorie Kelly and Shanna Ratner

solidarityeconomy.net via Yes! Magazine

Aug. 3 2010 - Drive across southern Minnesota near the city of Luverne, and you’ll see clusters of wind turbines poking up through the cornfields. Climb into one of these sleek, gleaming, white towers, and you’ll find sophisticated computer controls monitoring dozens of factors every moment (wind speed, pressure on the blades, and so on). Yet the way the turbines are funded and owned is just as innovative as the technology that runs them.

These wind developments were created by Minwind Energy, a limited liability company that is structured as a cooperative. Back when only corn was harvested in these fields, Minwind invited hundreds of local residents to make investments of $5,000 apiece, eventually raising $4 million to fund the turbines. In return, the residents became owners of the project—alongside the farmers on whose land the turbines stand.

With a policy that no individual can own more than 15 percent, the ownership design is aimed at spreading wealth widely and keeping it rooted locally. According to the Government Accountability Office, keeping a project like Minwind locally owned means that local communities get three times more economic benefit than if the project had absentee owners. Rather than flowing to Wall Street investors or major companies, the dollars generated by these wind farms will flow first through local communities, going to pay local workers, local investors, and local suppliers of all kinds. Wealth stays local.

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Worker Coops Are Growing as a Survival Tool for Tough Times

by Editors @ Tuesday, August 10th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, Organizing

Worker-Owned Cooperatives:

The Work We Do is the Solution

From grocery stores and bakeries to bike shops and day care centers, worker-owned cooperatives are gaining popularity across the country. Unlike the profit-at-any-cost capitalist model, co-ops put people and the community first, and are democratically run and collectively-owned, allowing all workers to participate and benefit equally.

According to Go.Coop, "more often than you probably realize, co-ops play a vital part of your everyday life." More than 47,000 co-ops in the U.S. serve 130 million people or 43 percent of the population. There are more than 3,000 farmer-owned cooperatives in the U.S. Almost 10,000 credit unions provide financial services to approximately 84 million members. Nearly 1,000 rural electric co-ops operate more than half of the nation's electric distribution lines and provide electricity to more than 37 million people. Food co-ops have been innovators in the areas of unit pricing, consumer protection, organic and bulk foods, and nutritional labeling. More than 50,000 families in the U.S. use cooperative day care centers, giving co-ops a crucial role in the care of children.

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Envisioning the Future, Fanning the Flames

by Editors @ Tuesday, July 13th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, Marxism, Organizing

15,000 Attend Detroit Social Forum:

High-Energy Gathering Fires Up

A New Generation of Activists in

U.S. Left and Social Movements

By Carl Davidson

Keep On Keepin' On!

When 15,000 vibrant and politically engaged people gather in one spot for five days and organize themselves into more than 1000 workshops, dozens of major plenaries and late night parties across five major cultural hot spots, no one article can claim to give a full account and get away with it.

But an event on that scale livened up Detroit, Michigan during the week of June 22-26 at the US Social Forum, when Cobo Hall and several nearby universities were buzzing with thousands of people trying to shape a new world.

I won’t even try to capture it all. I’ll just affirm the common conviction that it was a major happening on the left and a huge success, an inspiration and an affirmation of hope that progress is being made towards a better future. Then I’ll humbly offer my take on it. We’ll start with some highlights and, for those who aren’t familiar with the Social Forum movement, offer a few explanations.

The Forum started on June 22 with a massive march of thousands through the streets of a devastated and de-industrialized Detroit. “I’ve never seen anything like this, in Detroit or anywhere,” said Forum participant and Detroit resident Charnika Jett. “The sense of joy, support, and determination on the part of the people here, both Detroiters and visitors, is just incredible.”

“What an amazing day!” said Allison Flether Acosta of Jobs with Justice. “We held an orientation session for local coalition folks early in the day, then joined the march with the other members of the Inter-Alliance Dialogue and more than 10,000 people for a lively march through downtown! We ended at Cobo Hall, and then convened for the opening ceremonies.”

New entry of the Trade Unions

One important new addition to the young crowd in the streets was the participation of organized labor. According to the AFL-CIO News Blog, “Newly elected UAW President Bob King joined Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO President Saundra Williams; Al Garrett, president of AFSCME District Council 25; and Armando Robles, UE Local 1110 president, in leading a march and rally through the streets of Detroit. Chanting ‘Full and Fair Employment Now!’ and ‘Money for Jobs, Not for Banks!’ Participants demanded Congress address the pressing jobs emergency.”

The opening events, unfortunately, were either ignored or strangely spun by the mass media. “This ain’t no Tea Party,’ said Noel Finley, in a scarce account in the Detroit News, somewhat awed by the sight of it all. “The forum is a hootenanny of pinkos, environuts, peaceniks, Luddites, old hippies, Robin Hoods and urban hunters and gatherers.” Indeed it was, with even more variety. And the diverse crowds and meetings grew stronger as the week unfolded. To make sense of it all, some history and background is in order:

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The Mosaic Left: Making Alliances With and Beyond the Unions

by Editors @ Wednesday, May 26th, 2010. Filed under Financial Crisis, Labor Movement, Organizing

Contradictions of the Mosaic Left:

Perspectives for Protests within the Crisis

 

25. Mai 2010

By Florian Becker & Christina Kaindl
http://www.zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/

 

'There is no question that immediate economic crises can in themselves not bring about fundamental changes; they can only prepare more favorable ground for the diffusion of certain approaches for thinking through, posing and solving, the questions that are decisive for the whole further development of the life of the state. ' – Antonio Gramsci, Analysis of the Situation: Relations of Force. Prison Notebooks, 13th Notebook, § 17

 

When the public became aware of the economic crisis through the collapse of some of the big banks in the Fall of 2008, it took a while before the left and social movements took up the challenge of posing fundamental questions, of shifting “the further development of the life of the state” (Gramsci). Neoliberalism’s legitimation was undermined; still, the question of whether capitalism itself was in crisis was more typically discussed in bourgeois Sunday supplements than in influential groundbreaking strategy papers of the left and social movements.

The left was caught by surprise by the scale of the crisis, and its initial silence shows that analyses, policies and politics were hardly conceived in such a way that its own concepts could become practicable [=wirklich] (or even germane).

Left critique was strong where it addressed the manifestations of the crisis of the neoliberal model of politics and socialization, and stood on the side of the excluded and the surplus population [der Überflüssigen]. There was a lively and forceful critique of the social costs of neoliberalism. In 2003, a (fragile) anti-neoliberal bloc could be organized, in which left wings of trade-unions, anti-Hartz IV protests, the global-justice movement, critical intellectuals and the party Die LINKE formulated – despite all the differences between them – a critique of neoliberalism with a common direction.

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