Necessity and virtue: Has the left abandoned the goal of national social change?

The passage of Proposition 1 and the setback for same sex marriage in Maine has provoked an important conclusion for many LGBT activists and allies: the movement is at a turning point where national action for LGBT equality is the order of the day.  The absurdity of watching states adopt and recognize same sex marriage, only to have these gains erased by popular referendum – as if fundamental civil rights for a minority could be voted away by the majority – is having a transformative effect on consciousness.  The dozens of struggles being waged at the local level around the country, and especially the fight over same sex marriage rights, has made the formerly impossible appear not only possible but necessary.

This change in consciousness within one important social movement also reflects a breakthrough in a broader sense as well, and it is no coincidence that it comes as Americans are also struggling  with the transformation of the national health care system.  In the 1980’s, the so-called Reagan Revolution opened an all-out attack on the rights of working and oppressed people and in general on the gains of the 60’s and 70’s.  As this reactionary trend gained momentum, social movements for change became more and more a rearguard action, defending earlier gains on a state by state and community by community basis.  Victories, too, tended to be local.

Despite changes in administrations from Republican to Democrat and back again, for more than three decades the progressive movements were in retreat both practically and psychologically.  National campaigns such as the anti-war movement seemed to have little or no impact even when they successfully mobilized hundreds of thousands of people.   For many of us, the United States looked more and more like a patchwork of regions and states.  While the LGBT movement might win same sex marriage in Massachusetts, Kansas politicians were busy trying to keep the teaching of evolution out of public schools.  New Haven, Connecticut might become a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants but in Jena, Louisiana, a local district attorney was railroading African-American youth into lengthy jail sentences for a schoolyard fight.

In such a climate it is not too surprising that for many activists focusing energy making or defending local gains became not only a necessity but a virtue. . . and even a fetish.  We have seen community non-profits mobilize militantly to challenge poverty and racism to effect neighborhood change while deliberately stifling any discussion of the broader government policies that created the problem.  We have seen activists seemingly unable to grasp the concept of national solutions – single payer national health care, nationalization of the failing auto industry, a national moratorium on bankruptcies and home foreclosures – because of what is now a deeply bred fear of big government that rivals that of many conservatives.  And the despair many of us feel over the successful attacks on reproductive rights of women in some right-wing dominated states has astonishingly not galvanized into a consensus that abortion rights must be protected at the federal level.

The emergence of the discussions about national health care reform and also, increasingly, about federal recognition of LGBT rights are reviving a long-discarded idea that progressive social change should not be limited to the places where progressives can guarantee a majority.  And why should it?  Social movements rarely mobilize the majority of the population or wait for a national consensus to make their demands heard.  If there is a discussion and debate that is much-needed on the left in the U.S., it is this one: as the internet supposedly makes our world smaller, have we abandoned the idea of national social change?

Filed under: Community organizing, Fighting oppression

April 3 March on Wall Street

Angry New Yorkers urge gov’t to care more about people _English_Xinhua

Filed under: Community organizing, Economic crisis

Marching on Wall St. to Fulfill King’s Dream: A Jobs Program

By New York City Council Member Charles Barron and Chris Silvera, Secretary-Treasurer, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 808; past President of the Teamsters National Black Caucus

We will be amongst the many speakers at the “Bail Out People, Not Banks” rally on Wall St. on Friday, April 3.

On Friday morning, just a few hours before the Wall St. rally, the bureau of labor statistics is going to announce that another two-thirds of a million workers got laid off in March.

This is one of the reasons why we intend to use the time allotted us to speak, to call for the creation of a massive jobs program. We are going to call it the “Fulfill King’s Dream Jobs Program” in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

We have four reasons for associating King’s name with the jobs program. The first reason is that April 4 will mark the 41st anniversary of Dr. King’s martyrdom. The second reason is that King devoted the final months of his life to launching a movement for the right of all to either a job or an income.

King saw the struggle for the right to a job or an income as nothing less than the second phase of the civil rights movement. Securing a job at a living wage for all was the central demand of the poor people’s campaign that King initiated in late 1967.

The third reason is that at no time in our lifetime has the need for the massive jobs program that King dreamed about been more urgently needed. Depression-level layoffs and home foreclosures are populating new tent cities from coast to coast. Whole families are living under bridges and in parks on the outskirts of cities.

The real unemployment rate, if you count those who want full-time jobs but can only find part-time or temporary work, is upwards of 15 percent. Everyone from the World Bank to the National Urban League says that the jobless rate is only going to get worse.

The latest “State of Black America” report, issued by the National Urban League, confirms what everyone already knows. While very few, regardless of race and gender, are not harmed or threatened by the biggest worldwide economic collapse since the 1930s, it is the Black and Latin@ communities that are the most devastated by the crisis–especially Black and Latin@ youth. Jail is not the jobs program for young people that King dreamed about; it is his and should be our worst nightmare.

The unemployment crisis demands a real jobs program, something equal to the size and scope of the Work Projects Administration created by Congress in 1935 to put millions of jobless people to work.

In its first year the WPA created more than 3.4 million jobs (the equivalent of about 10 million jobs today). Under the WPA, workers were paid the prevailing wage in the industry or vocation they worked in.

The stimulus legislation passed by Congress in February may help ease the suffering of some, but it’s not going to reverse or even halt the soaring jobless rate. There is no jobs program currently in effect or even under serious consideration by the government that comes even close to the seriousness and size of the WPA.

Where do we get the money for such a jobs program? When the government is prepared to pump trillions of dollars into the banking system, the question is not where will the money come from, but rather what need should it be devoted to. The $200 billion that the government has given AIG alone could have created anywhere between 3 to 4 million jobs that pay a living wage.

There is another important point that makes the WPA jobs program relevant to today’s crisis. The WPA should have started at an earlier stage of the U.S. and global depression 75 years ago. However, the government delayed putting a serious jobs program in place until it was painfully clear that waiting for the banks to be fixed before putting the jobless back to work was a huge mistake. We must not make the same mistake again.

We don’t think King believed that meeting the needs of the poor and the unemployed must be contingent upon the solvency of JP Morgan Chase, Citicorp, Bank Of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, etc.; or contingent on the power of these big banks to turn the economy on and off depending on what makes them richer.

The belief that until the banks are fixed, there can be no jobs, no economy and nothing but layoffs, evictions, cutbacks, fare hikes, tuition increases, etc., is not some commandment decreed by heaven; it’s a rule made down here on Earth to protect the interest of the few against that of the many.

We refuse to accept the rules that say that the only good way to do things is the way that makes rich capitalists happy and leaves the rest of us at their mercy. Such rules must be changed. The only certain thing is that nothing will change unless people demand it.

Here’s our fourth reason for naming the jobs program after Dr. King. The election of an African-American president is without a doubt the realization of a part of King’s dream. But a president is not a substitute for a mass movement for social justice.

King knew that the captains of industry were not going to suddenly wake up one morning believing that the cause of economic and social justice was superior to their profit motive and thus create good paying jobs for the poor. King knew that it would take a mass social movement to get the job done.

It is a mistake–and a dangerous one–for those of us who are still rejoicing over how we made history last November to simply sit on the sidelines and wait to see how things turn out, instead of raising hell. King served the interests of the downtrodden and oppressed. Obama must serve all sides. To the extent that Obama wants to do things that directly bail out poor and working people, don’t forget that there are powerful people in Washington and on Wall St. who are dedicated to stopping him. Those powerful people will prevail unless they see and hear the angry masses marching in the streets below their ivory towers.

The popular outrage over the bailout of the banks is a precious and powerful force. It should not–it must not–be wasted. Let’s focus that anger into the struggle for the things that we need.

We’ll be on Wall St. on Friday, April 3 demanding that the unemployed be bailed out with a real jobs program. We invite you to join us.

Filed under: Community organizing, Economic crisis, Labor solidarity

Larry Hales from Bail Out the People Movement in Hartford on April 1

Larry Hales of Recreate 68 tells off Denver police at DNC

On Wednesday, April 1 at 6pm, Please join us for an informal conversation with Larry Hales.

Larry Hales is a community activist and fighter. While living in Denver, Larry was one of the founders of Colorado United Communities Against Police Brutality, and an organizer of the Recreate 68 Coalition, organized to protest last year’s Democratic National Convention.

In November 2007, Denver police broke into Hales’ house and arrested him on false charges arising from his giving shelter to a victim of police brutality who was out on parole. Months later and after a strong people’s campaign, the charges against Larry were finally dropped. Presently, Larry Hales is an organizer for the Bail Out the People Movement and the youth group Fight Imperialism Stand Together (F.I.S.T.), and a contributing editor with Workers World newspaper.

This meeting is intended as a conversation with Larry and local activists about the development of the Bail Out the People Movement nationally, the economic crisis, and the tasks ahead.  The meeting will be held at the Hartford Metropolitan Community Church, 155 Wyllys Street, Hartford.

(Hartford MCC is located on the campus of Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, in the Parish House).

Filed under: Community organizing, Economic crisis, Fighting oppression

Banks rob us again: People’s Bailout calls for protest

If it weren’t so deadly, it would read like a cheesy comedy sketch.  You know the one I’m talking about: man is confronted by incompetent crook who fumbles and drops his gun . . . man hands the gun back to the crook, who thanks him and then proceeds to hold him up.

That’s the routine that is unfolding in Connecticut and all over the country, as the same banks that receive millions or billions of dollars in the taxpayer-funded TARP bailout go about their business of foreclosing on peoples’ homes.

The first attempt to rob working people of their money didn’t entirely go off as planned.  Selling people mortgages for houses they couldn’t possibly afford at interest rates that were out of sight, these banks got so greedy that they bit off more than even they could manage to chew up.  The result was a real estate market overload, triggering a credit crisis triggering a system-wide economic crisis.

Based largely on the bankers’ desperate pleas that the world as we know it would come crashing down unless the government did something, the feds came up with TARP, the Troubled Assets Relief Program.  In other words, a bail out.  Several Connecticut banks received millions of dollars under TARP, while the major players such as Bank of America and Citigroup got tens of billions in taxpayer funds to keep them afloat after their first botched robbery.

Turns out that handing them back their gun wasn’t such a good idea.  Take a look at the lists of residential homes in the Hartford area that are in foreclosure or whose homeowners are in “preforeclosure” because they are behind on their mortgage payments.  While the bailed out banks aren’t the only ones holding a gun to homeowners’ heads, you will definitely see BoA, Citi, Webster, CB&T and other TARP’s banks on those lists.  Is this why we bailed them out?  So they could rob us again?

Foreclosures don’t just hurt the individual or family that is forced to surrender their home.  Neighborhoods with high foreclosure rates will also suffer declining property values as well as a declining quality of life as homes are left vacant, overgrown and uncared for.

And there is the additional wrinkle in many communities such as Hartford, that foreclosures on multi-family properties are leading to banks not only tossing out the homeowner, but going on to evict the tenants as well — even if they have paid their rent faithfully.  In the current economic crisis, foreclosures and evictions are especially traumatic for the victims and bad for everyone in the community.

That’s why the People’s Bailout Connecticut decided to focus its first action on Connecticut’s TARP’d banks.  On Friday, March 6 at 4pm, PBC is calling on everyone who is angry about the banks’ second round of robberies to gather at the Memorial Arch at Bushnell Park for a march and protest aimed directed against the banks.  Protesters will make their way up to CityPlace, headquarters of Webster Bank, to Statehouse Square, whose banking tenants include CB&T, and then across the street to the Bank of America for a 5pm rally.

At each stop, speakers will address the duplicity and criminality of the TARP’d banks, who are using our money to throw us out of our homes.  The corporations and the banks got bailed out – and even as you read this, plans are emerging for a second set of bank bailouts – but working class people are drowning.  Even the Obama stimulus package and the mortgage package are not going to save the homes of millions of Americans, and they will do nothing for renters facing evictions.

So what does the PBC propose?  Like the name says: a bailout for the people, not the bankers, starting with a two year moratorium on ALL residential mortgages and evictions.  If this were a hurricane, the government would take emergency action to keep people safe . . . the PBC says that in this economic emergency, Governor Rell should use her emergency powers to keep people in their homes by ordering the suspension of all foreclosure and eviction proceedings.

Those of us who are directly affected by foreclosures and evictions, and those of us who want to preserve our communities and the families in them, should turn out on Friday, March 6 to be a part of this protest.  It is the first small step in building a movement that can put the needs of working and poor people ahead of the banks and corporations.

Filed under: Community organizing, Economic crisis, Housing rights

Davos economic summit: “Pity the bankers”

On Monday, 80,000 workers lost their jobs. There isn’t a working class community in the United States – indeed, in the world – that doesn’t feel the sense of risk to jobs, homes and families created by the global economic crisis.  Yesterday saw yet another horrific murder-suicide by a man and woman who killed themselves and their five young children because they were distraught after being fired from their jobs.

So it would be expected that the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland would discuss the crisis.  But reflecting the fact that this is an annual conference that draws the corporate and political bigshots of world capitalism, their take on the crisis is a little bit different from yours and mine.  In his opening remarks to the conference,Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, expressed his deep concern for one group affected by the crisis:

“Those people, and there are many of those here, have the feeling they are standing at a cliff and they may fall over at any moment.”

Was he talking about people who were layed off on Monday?  The long-term unemployed who have given up looking for work?  Those who are losing their homes to foreclosures and evictions?  The growing number of homeless?  Not exactly . . .

Mr. Schwab was expressing his concern for the bankers who caused the financial crisis. He went on to express the view that it was important that this truly world-class group of con artists, swindlers and criminals be welcomed to the table as big business set about finding “solutions” to the economic crisis.

Not surprisingly, no one at the event felt compelled to point out to Mr. Schwab how much more of a cliff-hanger it is to not know if you can feed your family than to not know if you can afford this year’s Jaguar.  Nor does it appear that the conference will take up the question of how to keep people from losing their jobs and their homes.

In the midst of the most severe global economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930’s, there will be many similar conferences of corporate leaders and their cronies happening at the local and national and international level.  All will have one thing on the agenda: How does big business save its skin?

Working class people can take one genuine lesson from this.  The people who caused this crisis, who take our jobs and homes, who keep us from getting healthcare and sending our kids to college and retiring with dignity, are sitting down to figure out what to do next.  And we’re not going to find their answers – mainly throwing more of us under the bus – very much to our liking.  Isn’t it time that we began to meet and discuss our response to the crisis: what working class people need and how to get it?

Here in the Hartford area one opportunity for such a meeting will take place on Saturday, February 7, from 1-4pm at Hartford City Hall.  That’s where people will gather for a Community Meeting for a People’s Bailout.  The afternoon will be a speakout and strategy meeting, looking at the impact of the economic crisis on us, our families and our communities and what we can and must do to fight back to survive.  The goal is to build a grassroots movement putting our needs first, for a change.

Filed under: Community organizing, Economic crisis

It’s time to build a movement for a people’s bailout!

In November and December, a small group of activists from the Hartford area met to discuss the economic crisis, the ways that it would affect working people and poor people in our communities, and how we should respond.

Though small, the meetings were significant because participants recognized the current situation as an emergency that demands an urgent response.  In those meetings and the informal discussions that followed some of us quickly moved from a discussion to an immediate plan of action.

The People’s Economic Justice Coalition

We have taken the name People’s Economic Justice Coalition and have agreed to the following 5 Core Organizing Principles:

1. We will develop an agenda and strategy driven by the community members most directly impacted by the economic crisis.

2. We will seek to be flexible and mobile enough to respond to a variety of attacks on working class people in the Hartford area.

3. We will demand the impossible, that is, everything that members of our class need to survive, even when it is considered outrageous or “off-the-table” by reformist politics.

4. We will be a politically independent voice.

5. Solidarity with all Oppressed Peoples: An Injury to One is an Injury
to All!

A Community Meeting for a People’s Bailout

Consistent with the 5 Core Principles, we have adopted a plan of action for the next six week period that is focused on two events.

1.  A press conference to coincide with Governor Rell’s budget announcement on Wednesday, February 3.  The purpose of the press conference will be to expose Rell’s budget, which forces working people and poor people to carry the burden of the economic crisis, the recession, and the budget deficit; to call for an emergency budget in which there are no cutbacks or lay-offs; and to demand a progressive income tax that shifts the burden to the wealthy and the corporations.

2.  A Community Meeting for a People’s Bailout on Saturday, February 7, from 1pm-4pm (location to be announced).  This will be a public meeting and speak-out for working people and poor people from all over the Hartford area.  It will be a chance for people to voice their worry, frustration and anger about the economic crisis and talk about what needs to change in order for all of us to survive the crisis.  This speak-out will lay the groundwork for the program and demands of our campaign for a people’s budget.

Getting out the word

Our work from now to February is to get the word out all over the Hartford area about the Community Meeting for a People’s Bailout.  We determined to begin this campaign at First Night Hartford, an even that brings thousands of working people from all over the region together.  We will follow up at other events throughout January, with a special emphasis on January 17-20, at which many people will be celebrating the Martin Luther King Day holiday and the presidential inauguration.

Build a movement for a people’s bailout!

We feel that the creation of the People’s Economic Justice Coalition is an exciting development because it will bring a new perspective into the discussion of the economic crisis.  Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that either working people must roll over for the politicians and be thankful for whatever scraps they throw to us, or  that we must wait until the new administration rides in to save us with federal legislation.  We are determined to take matters into our own hands, put the interests of the working class first, and demand emergency measures that recognize and protect those interests.

The Wall Street bankers and mortgage companies demanded – and got – billions of dollars by promising that the system would scream to a halt unless they got bailed out.  Now it is our turn and it is our right and responsibility to say the same: Bail out the people or we will bring the system to a grinding stop!

Filed under: Community organizing, Economic crisis

. . . and fighting and winning against foreclosures in Detroit

One of the first organizations to begin to fight the flood of foreclosures and evictions was formed in Detroit – not coincidentally one of several “ground zeros” for working class people losing their homes.

The Moratorium NOW Coalition Against Foreclosures and Evictions recently intervened in the cases of Lorene Parker and Belva Davis, fighting and winning against the banks. Connecticut activists take note – please!

Filed under: Community organizing, Economic crisis

NYT: Bail Out the People activist, protesting fare hikes, tries to throw shoe at NY Transit Chief

For more information:Bail Out the People Movement

At M.T.A. Hearing, Another Shoe Almost Dropped

By William Neuman

A protester, Stephen A. Millies, was removed from a Metropolitan Transportation Authority board meeting after threatening to hurl a shoe
at Elliot G. Sander, the authority’s chief executive. (Photo: Ruby Washington/The New York Times)

Updated, 2:24 p.m. | One transit rider was so infuriated on Wednesday by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s decision to slash service and raise fares that he tried to follow the example set by Muntader al-Zaidi, the 29-year-old Iraqi journalist who hurled two shoes at President Bush on Sunday.

The rider, Stephen A. Millies, who identified himself as an Amtrak worker with the Bail Out the People
campaign, was one of about two dozen people who addressed the
authority’s board during a public speaking period at the start of the
Midtown meeting where the budget vote was held.

“This budget ought to be thrown in the garbage can,” Mr. Millies said. He railed against the fare increase and for good measure spoke out against home foreclosures. Then, referring to the M.T.A.’s chief executive, who was
sitting about 15 feet away, he shouted: “Where is Elliot Sander? You made $300,000 last year!”

According to a witness, Mr. Millies then slipped off one of his
shoes and began to bend down to pick it up, saying “this shoe is for
you.” Authority police officers immediately swarmed around Mr. Millies
and hustled him out of the board room and onto an elevator, where he
could be heard shouting “I didn’t do anything.” Moments later he was
seen in handcuffs, being escorted from the building.

The authority said that Mr. Millies, 54, of Jackson Heights, Queens,
was given a summons for disorderly conduct and released. A spokesman
for the authority, Jeremy Soffin, said that Mr. Millies wore a size 10½
shoe made by the Red Wing company.

Bill Morange, the authority’s security director, was standing beside
the speaker’s podium and was one of the first to grab Mr. Millies. He
said the shoes looked like boat shoes or topsiders.

“You can say anything you want,” Mr. Morange said. “Just don’t throw your shoes.”

Filed under: Community organizing, Economic crisis

Statement from New School student occupation in NYC

[Posted below is a statement issued last night by a group of students who have occupied one of the buildings of the New School in NYC.  Following on the heels of the Republic Windows & Doors occupation in Chicago, this is an exciting development as people again take matters into their own hands to demand change.]

An Open Letter: Come Occupy a Building with Us…Now

Dear Friends,

We are writing to you from the inside of the New School Graduate Faculty Building on 65 5th Ave. We are occupying it. Right now. Literally.
Students of the New School University, along with our partners from other universities and groups – like NYU, Hunter College, City College of NY, CUNY Graduate Center, and Borough of Manhattan Community College, have organically risen up to demand the resignation of President Bob Kerrey, Executive Vice President James Murtha, and Board Member/torturer Robert B. Millard (he multi-tasks). We have come together to prevent our study spaces from being flattened by corporate bulldozers, to have a say in who runs this school, to demand that the money we spend on this institution be used to facilitate the creation of a better society, not to build bigger buildings or invest in companies that make war. We have come here not only to make demands, but also to live them. Our presence makes it clear that this school is ours, and yours, if you are with us.

The outside doors have been closed now, so we can’t exactly invite you in…sorry… We know you wanted a piece of the action, but we’ll be around for quite some time. Join us at 7 AM tomorrow when the doors open again, or come now to stand outside with a sign in solidarity. You are cordially invited to join us in any way you can. We are not going anywhere. In the meantime, check out our Web site: www.newschoolinexile.com. We have all night to make things interesting, and the website will continue to be updated. Stay tuned for the musical pieces, doctoral dissertations, and creative finger-paintings that seem to be the natural result of 150 students locked into a building together for a night.

We are here, making decisions collectively, doing teach-ins, listening to music, studying, singing. We’ve got an upright bassist, guitarists and vocalists (If anyone can volunteer a drum-set we’ll be well on our way…). We’ll be here until this university changes, or until the party gets boring (but it doesn’t seem likely that will happen). We’re not going anywhere. We hope to see you soon, and if you really can’t wait a few hours – what the hell – occupy your own universities or work spaces.

Come use your voice to declare loudly that this school and this world are yours. Come use your mind to think up a better world. Come use your body to create it, one all-nighter in the university cafeteria at a time. Come stand in solidarity with the students, faculty, and staff of this university. Come to write letters of support to the people of the village of Thanh Phong whose parents were murdered by the current President of the New School during his service in Vietnam. Come join the struggle with the people of Iraq who are being tortured and killed by a company funded by this university and represented on the New School Board of Trustees. Come here to join the uprisings and outpouring of passionate resistance currently taking place all over this country, and all over the worlds – from factory workers in Chicago to students in Greece. Come for yourself. Come for all of us.

In solidarity,
The New School in Exile

Filed under: Community organizing, Economic crisis