New York State is in the midst of a 9 billion dollar budget gap, and unlike the federal government which can simply sell its debt to china, all states must balance their budget. Naturally the politicians, who gave billions to the banks and corporate executives who arrived at the white house in private jets, decided to place the debt on the backs of the working people of New York. As if cutting student metrocards, which provide public school students necessary free public transportation to school, wasn't enough: now millions of working people will get kicked out of their homes. Because of a $45 million dollar deficeit, New York will revoke Section 8 rental vouchers. Section 8 is a low income rental assistance program that endless New Yorkers rely on to make it hand-to-mouth every month working tough jobs and making the city work. Unfortunately the corrupt capitalism government fails to realize that the people of new york city need the section 8 program since they are more concerned with an economic recovery that somehow leaves out the vast majority of people with unemployment hovering at 10%. The New York Housing Authority tells people in section 8 to move into public housing complexes, but fails to realize that public housing complexes are overcrowded with waiting lists for years.
A couple years ago I laid back on my ex's coach as she answered calls for her parents private house in the bronx that had an empty apartment and a "FOR RENT" sign out front. Every minute of the day someone called, and every caller was looking for a lanlord accepting section 8.
The fact that the same politicians who gave billions of tax dollars to bankers and executives, are now suggesting cuts on social programs indicates that capitalism as an economic system is a broken gamble.
Tuesday, April 6
Sunday, February 28
Greek Philosophy and the Development of Modern Western Society
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle’s struggle was one to save humanity if you really think about it. While the Sophists thought they were smart and cunning for their discovery of a fundamental truth, Their discovery would lead humanity down the path of greed, capitalism, war, and deceit. That truth is essentially that if you take immoral and deceitful steps in life, they can benefit you. The most blaring example is of a politician who lies to his constituency in order to win their following and then use that to proceed his actual hidden agenda. For example George Bush using 9/11 as a means to start wars, and a reason to lie to the public at large, or Ancient Athenian politicians deceiving the masses for their own selfish purpose. The most classic definition of justice can be traced back to the moment when Socrates publicly criticized corrupt politicians despite the consequences for history to admire, and Plato’s idea that the city must have egalitarianism between specializations of labor. But the greatest injustice occurred when Socrates was put to death. It is a metaphor for triumph of sophist immorality in humanity, despite the gentle trickle of Socrates revolutionary ideas down through his students.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were all philosopher of a respective time period who saw the influence of the sophists on society, and those who created vice and sin, and attempted to warn society against such self-destructive practices. Socrates focused on rewards in the afterlife, Plato on rewards in the current life, and Aristotle was more concerned with happiness and health. Yet despite their differences like Marx, Lenin, and Mao, they all share the same fundamental ideology. For the Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle it was this belief that society could be run by moral good rather than rampant addiction to power, wealth, and pleasure that leaves us feeling empty inside.
The Sophists on the other hand, sought rampant power, wealth, and pleasure and their beliefs have had unimaginable influence on the modern world. As they executed Socrates; only Plato’s student was left to teach other free thinkers in society the truth about being moral. This represents how social justice movements throughout history have always been underground struggling against corrupt oppressors. Socrates’ death paved the way for absolute control of the hierarchy in western society by those who put morals aside and get the job done with a iron fist. When taking office George Bush had sought to invade Iraq in order to open up the state-owned oil company to him and his buddy Cheney’s oil company Halliburton. When terrorists attacked the country however, he cleverly deceived Americans into blaming the middle east as a whole allowing him the breathing space to begin war maneuvers against Iraq. That’s the result of injustice created by the execution of Socrates. If Socrates had never died such leaders would not exsist.
Plato’s city in interesting because it stress egalitarianism between leaders, workers, and soldiers in terms of material goods, and this redistribution of goods based on what makes the most logical sense to attain general happiness of the society as a whole has been the struggle of revolutionaries since the day of Plato. Plato’s city illustrated in a very basic way that there was a way to avoid divisions within a populace, make everyone happy, keep specialization of labor, do away with poverty, and have a happy functioning society. This is a key ancient definition of justice.
In summary, the Sophists triumphed over moral Greek philosophers through their deceiving and cunning use of power. Their whole demeanor may represent what is unjust in society today. Although originally deceiving for goals, they end up only in search of power, wealth, and pleasure. Socrates and his followers faced death and persecution for warning all of western society of the dangers that unmoral sophism would bring, and now we are left with a crumbling capitalist economy, global war of terror, and people dying due to the lack of infrastructure their country has been left with due to the rampant greed of lying filthy rich capitalist politicians all over the world.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were all philosopher of a respective time period who saw the influence of the sophists on society, and those who created vice and sin, and attempted to warn society against such self-destructive practices. Socrates focused on rewards in the afterlife, Plato on rewards in the current life, and Aristotle was more concerned with happiness and health. Yet despite their differences like Marx, Lenin, and Mao, they all share the same fundamental ideology. For the Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle it was this belief that society could be run by moral good rather than rampant addiction to power, wealth, and pleasure that leaves us feeling empty inside.
The Sophists on the other hand, sought rampant power, wealth, and pleasure and their beliefs have had unimaginable influence on the modern world. As they executed Socrates; only Plato’s student was left to teach other free thinkers in society the truth about being moral. This represents how social justice movements throughout history have always been underground struggling against corrupt oppressors. Socrates’ death paved the way for absolute control of the hierarchy in western society by those who put morals aside and get the job done with a iron fist. When taking office George Bush had sought to invade Iraq in order to open up the state-owned oil company to him and his buddy Cheney’s oil company Halliburton. When terrorists attacked the country however, he cleverly deceived Americans into blaming the middle east as a whole allowing him the breathing space to begin war maneuvers against Iraq. That’s the result of injustice created by the execution of Socrates. If Socrates had never died such leaders would not exsist.
Plato’s city in interesting because it stress egalitarianism between leaders, workers, and soldiers in terms of material goods, and this redistribution of goods based on what makes the most logical sense to attain general happiness of the society as a whole has been the struggle of revolutionaries since the day of Plato. Plato’s city illustrated in a very basic way that there was a way to avoid divisions within a populace, make everyone happy, keep specialization of labor, do away with poverty, and have a happy functioning society. This is a key ancient definition of justice.
In summary, the Sophists triumphed over moral Greek philosophers through their deceiving and cunning use of power. Their whole demeanor may represent what is unjust in society today. Although originally deceiving for goals, they end up only in search of power, wealth, and pleasure. Socrates and his followers faced death and persecution for warning all of western society of the dangers that unmoral sophism would bring, and now we are left with a crumbling capitalist economy, global war of terror, and people dying due to the lack of infrastructure their country has been left with due to the rampant greed of lying filthy rich capitalist politicians all over the world.
Saturday, February 27
2 Interesting Poems about City Life
My Struggle
Born In The Gutter, A baby who never muttered
I Only Yelled. Now I'm All Grown and all alone
But through my fighting and my writing I become a clone
immortalized in words and ideas of Freedom and Dreams that we demand
as the judge glares down at your cuffed hands on the stand or when the doctor says no to treatment when your hearts bleeding and wallets sleeping
So in wrath I took class, but never believed words of an ass
or the curse of the madman elephant whose war was hellbent
on destroying the community and youth to who my mind stayed true
Our Generation made of strong heroes
Born from the Ashes of Ground Zero
Our potential reveal in the first Black Presidential
Going Back to My Past, All I can ask
Is If Gods up there, He Love me and let me stay blessed
So cops give me no stress, my clothes fresh, and live life enjoying what's best; a college knowledge to solve global problems
Urban Legend
When I was locked up
A kid on chalk and no luck
Forwarned me not to write on the prison wall
And since the day I’ve avoided Jail all-in-all
It may be an Urban Legend forged in heaven by dread bredren
Or a jynx as old as the great sphinx but me thinks god protected me from a broken legacy.
Oppressors fail to realize the crime in their lives
They lock men up millions on average
Because in New York a man is no less than an animal savage
You come to me seeking wisdom and peace
Water, bread, success, and something to eat
Lady Liberty… on your lovely island
Don’t you see the youth of America is crying?
Our Life is haunted by the jailhouse frying and injection
This is the Section 8 legend…
Born In The Gutter, A baby who never muttered
I Only Yelled. Now I'm All Grown and all alone
But through my fighting and my writing I become a clone
immortalized in words and ideas of Freedom and Dreams that we demand
as the judge glares down at your cuffed hands on the stand or when the doctor says no to treatment when your hearts bleeding and wallets sleeping
So in wrath I took class, but never believed words of an ass
or the curse of the madman elephant whose war was hellbent
on destroying the community and youth to who my mind stayed true
Our Generation made of strong heroes
Born from the Ashes of Ground Zero
Our potential reveal in the first Black Presidential
Going Back to My Past, All I can ask
Is If Gods up there, He Love me and let me stay blessed
So cops give me no stress, my clothes fresh, and live life enjoying what's best; a college knowledge to solve global problems
Urban Legend
When I was locked up
A kid on chalk and no luck
Forwarned me not to write on the prison wall
And since the day I’ve avoided Jail all-in-all
It may be an Urban Legend forged in heaven by dread bredren
Or a jynx as old as the great sphinx but me thinks god protected me from a broken legacy.
Oppressors fail to realize the crime in their lives
They lock men up millions on average
Because in New York a man is no less than an animal savage
You come to me seeking wisdom and peace
Water, bread, success, and something to eat
Lady Liberty… on your lovely island
Don’t you see the youth of America is crying?
Our Life is haunted by the jailhouse frying and injection
This is the Section 8 legend…
Two interesting HS Journalism Articles: Obama's Continuation of Bush's Programs? and The Anger at the MTA taking away NYC Student Metro Cards
The War on the Middle East is Draining America
The War in Iraq and Afghanistan is in its ninth year, and most students can barely remember a time when America wasn’t at war. A recent random-selection school poll cleary indicates that over 80% of students say we need to pull out, and over 50% of the general public disapproves of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan according the Washington Post. Yet President Obama, pushed by republicans and weak democrats in congress, recently increased troops in Afghanistan contrary to the overwhelmingly strong public opinion against the war.
The argument in the mainstream media is that the wars have become wars of necessity for the safety of America, but this brings to question, when will we be able to stop fighting? The arguments and motives of keeping US forces in the Middle East are similar to those of US forces in Vietnam in the 1960s. Albeit, the US army was a draft army in Vietnam, students still are rightfully wary and tired of the endless wars.
David Simantove(’11) said “I want us to pull out, but it’s tough to see an end to it.” This kind of sentiment is supported by the fact that the US in the midst of the greatest recession since the great depression.
When Common Sense interviewed and surveyed students about how the recession has effected their family, students were quick to express their concerns. Rebecca Smith (’10) told Common Sense Newspaper, “My father lost his job and now he doesn’t pay child support anymore.” Similarly Emma Wilde (’12) responded that, “My uncle and my cousins have lost their jobs in this recession.”
A cash-strapped federal and state government has voted to cut social services like student metro cards, yet bailout bank executives whose incompetence helped lead to the recession, and continue to fund the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Resident Economics teacher Mr. Evans expressed serious concern, “…If anything, the war drains resources. We already have an unpaid $2 trillion debt to this war.”
And that’s only Iraq. Many students claim that they don’t know as much as they should, don’t care, or that we should stay in Afghanistan because its “the good fight.” The reality is that the wars are connected, and have similar consequences of draining resources, killing soldiers and civilians, and creating anger that leads local Iraqis and Afghanis to join insurgencies. Freshman Kate Mallary (’13) added, “ I think more money should be put into the schools, so many countries have tried in Afghanistan and failed, so we’re just dumping money over there.”
Although troops report not having adequate body armor, and complain that they are paid less then privately contracted mercenaries like those of the recently indicted blackwater corporation accused of massacring scores of innocent Iraqis, Obama insists on the necessity of continuing a war with significant opposition on the home front.
Despite the fact that US bombings have destroyed infrastructure in both countries leading native people to join terrorist insurgencies in response, and despite the fact that the US army is relying on recruits promised college education and a chance at the American dream in impoverished areas, politicians insists that it is in the interest and safety of America.
The interest and safety in America right now really relies on restoring economic faith. While economists claim the economy has already recovered while enjoying lavish vacations in 5-star hotels, Americans on the street know that the 10% unemployment rate indicates that its only over for the rich, and just beginning for the poor.
Instead of creating public works programs, building public housing, and improving schools and job placement programs in inner-city communities, Obama has instead chosen to continue the policies of his predecessor, the president with one of the lowest approval ratings in history.
As troop and civilians death tolls rise daily, it appears the only solution to ending the war lies not in the hands of the government, but soldiers, students, and people who mount a public outcry against the war. It was the public pressure from yearly protests in big cities across the country in the war that led our politicians to draft the “timeline” for pulling out of Iraq. It’s up to Americans to keep them accountable, and push for an end to the draining war in Afghanistan.
Say Good-Bye To Your Student Metrocard, But Hello to Resistance
In December, the MTA announced a plan to snatch student full-fare metrocards from out of the hands of over half a million students who use them on a daily basis. The plan will entail the distribution of half-fare metrocards next semester and then entirely getting rid of the metrocard program by 2011.
Although the situation appears bleak, student from Bronx Science to Boys & Girls have begun organizing against what they call an encroachment of a hard fought for right. Junior Ian Turley said, "It is a moral mockery to be forced to spend money for free education." This sentiment was echoed by both lowerclassmen and upperclassmen here at HSAS. Senior Melissa Olivo quickly stated, "I hate it. I hope the MTA headquarters explode." Sentiments like these are alarming to government which intends to keep schools running efficiently, despite the anger of students, and the threat and blackmailing tactics of the MTA in order to secure further fare hikes or funding. Resident Economist and Commodities Trader Arnold Mansdorf stated that the blackmailing tactic of the MTA is, “political football… They’ll never do it. How do the expect families of two to four kids to pay 10 to 14 dollars a day?” This highlights dissent from not only poor students, but suburban teachers, and all stratas of society.
Last month, a student protest in front of MTA headquarters on 42nd street attracted approximately a 1000 students from the 5 boroughs, fiery speakers talked about mass civil disobedience and storming the headquarters, but the protest remained peaceful and suprisingly well organized.
Most troubling about the situation is the vow by students, who can't afford the $2,500 cost of transportation to-and-from school for one year, to simply not go to school anymore. Despite the fact that the government was able to provide banks with billions of dollars in the infamous bank bailouts started under Bush, the government claims its pockets are empty when it comes to money for jobs and education or the people whom the government is supposed to represent. Senior Kadacia stated that, "It'll take a toll on my mom, and they should cut something else." In fact a recent survey indicates that over 90% of students agree with this, they just feel too isolated to actually take action to protect their metro cards
Bloomburg's maitenance of a sizable police force, larger then the original invading force of Afghanistan, has continued guliani's policy and created heavy strain on the city economically and socially.
Aside from the murder of citizens like Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell, Officers have drained the city of money for social programs, and put it towards the overpolicing of urban communities. When questioned whether Officer Castro believed that cutting the police force and funding school metrocards would be a good idea, he responded, "that's not good we gotta keep the crime down." But the Bronx has the one of the highest dropout rates, most arrests, and intrusive searches by police of students with a high rate of racial profiling.
These police officers will be paid to arrest students as they jump turnstyles and refuse to pay court summons as they attempt to get to school.
Senior David Greenblatt and other concerned students have begun organizing against the metrocard cut by collecting expired metrocards from last semester with messages to the board of education. Although a small step, only through greater student activism will the MTA begin to pay attention to the demands of students.
The War in Iraq and Afghanistan is in its ninth year, and most students can barely remember a time when America wasn’t at war. A recent random-selection school poll cleary indicates that over 80% of students say we need to pull out, and over 50% of the general public disapproves of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan according the Washington Post. Yet President Obama, pushed by republicans and weak democrats in congress, recently increased troops in Afghanistan contrary to the overwhelmingly strong public opinion against the war.
The argument in the mainstream media is that the wars have become wars of necessity for the safety of America, but this brings to question, when will we be able to stop fighting? The arguments and motives of keeping US forces in the Middle East are similar to those of US forces in Vietnam in the 1960s. Albeit, the US army was a draft army in Vietnam, students still are rightfully wary and tired of the endless wars.
David Simantove(’11) said “I want us to pull out, but it’s tough to see an end to it.” This kind of sentiment is supported by the fact that the US in the midst of the greatest recession since the great depression.
When Common Sense interviewed and surveyed students about how the recession has effected their family, students were quick to express their concerns. Rebecca Smith (’10) told Common Sense Newspaper, “My father lost his job and now he doesn’t pay child support anymore.” Similarly Emma Wilde (’12) responded that, “My uncle and my cousins have lost their jobs in this recession.”
A cash-strapped federal and state government has voted to cut social services like student metro cards, yet bailout bank executives whose incompetence helped lead to the recession, and continue to fund the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Resident Economics teacher Mr. Evans expressed serious concern, “…If anything, the war drains resources. We already have an unpaid $2 trillion debt to this war.”
And that’s only Iraq. Many students claim that they don’t know as much as they should, don’t care, or that we should stay in Afghanistan because its “the good fight.” The reality is that the wars are connected, and have similar consequences of draining resources, killing soldiers and civilians, and creating anger that leads local Iraqis and Afghanis to join insurgencies. Freshman Kate Mallary (’13) added, “ I think more money should be put into the schools, so many countries have tried in Afghanistan and failed, so we’re just dumping money over there.”
Although troops report not having adequate body armor, and complain that they are paid less then privately contracted mercenaries like those of the recently indicted blackwater corporation accused of massacring scores of innocent Iraqis, Obama insists on the necessity of continuing a war with significant opposition on the home front.
Despite the fact that US bombings have destroyed infrastructure in both countries leading native people to join terrorist insurgencies in response, and despite the fact that the US army is relying on recruits promised college education and a chance at the American dream in impoverished areas, politicians insists that it is in the interest and safety of America.
The interest and safety in America right now really relies on restoring economic faith. While economists claim the economy has already recovered while enjoying lavish vacations in 5-star hotels, Americans on the street know that the 10% unemployment rate indicates that its only over for the rich, and just beginning for the poor.
Instead of creating public works programs, building public housing, and improving schools and job placement programs in inner-city communities, Obama has instead chosen to continue the policies of his predecessor, the president with one of the lowest approval ratings in history.
As troop and civilians death tolls rise daily, it appears the only solution to ending the war lies not in the hands of the government, but soldiers, students, and people who mount a public outcry against the war. It was the public pressure from yearly protests in big cities across the country in the war that led our politicians to draft the “timeline” for pulling out of Iraq. It’s up to Americans to keep them accountable, and push for an end to the draining war in Afghanistan.
Say Good-Bye To Your Student Metrocard, But Hello to Resistance
In December, the MTA announced a plan to snatch student full-fare metrocards from out of the hands of over half a million students who use them on a daily basis. The plan will entail the distribution of half-fare metrocards next semester and then entirely getting rid of the metrocard program by 2011.
Although the situation appears bleak, student from Bronx Science to Boys & Girls have begun organizing against what they call an encroachment of a hard fought for right. Junior Ian Turley said, "It is a moral mockery to be forced to spend money for free education." This sentiment was echoed by both lowerclassmen and upperclassmen here at HSAS. Senior Melissa Olivo quickly stated, "I hate it. I hope the MTA headquarters explode." Sentiments like these are alarming to government which intends to keep schools running efficiently, despite the anger of students, and the threat and blackmailing tactics of the MTA in order to secure further fare hikes or funding. Resident Economist and Commodities Trader Arnold Mansdorf stated that the blackmailing tactic of the MTA is, “political football… They’ll never do it. How do the expect families of two to four kids to pay 10 to 14 dollars a day?” This highlights dissent from not only poor students, but suburban teachers, and all stratas of society.
Last month, a student protest in front of MTA headquarters on 42nd street attracted approximately a 1000 students from the 5 boroughs, fiery speakers talked about mass civil disobedience and storming the headquarters, but the protest remained peaceful and suprisingly well organized.
Most troubling about the situation is the vow by students, who can't afford the $2,500 cost of transportation to-and-from school for one year, to simply not go to school anymore. Despite the fact that the government was able to provide banks with billions of dollars in the infamous bank bailouts started under Bush, the government claims its pockets are empty when it comes to money for jobs and education or the people whom the government is supposed to represent. Senior Kadacia stated that, "It'll take a toll on my mom, and they should cut something else." In fact a recent survey indicates that over 90% of students agree with this, they just feel too isolated to actually take action to protect their metro cards
Bloomburg's maitenance of a sizable police force, larger then the original invading force of Afghanistan, has continued guliani's policy and created heavy strain on the city economically and socially.
Aside from the murder of citizens like Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell, Officers have drained the city of money for social programs, and put it towards the overpolicing of urban communities. When questioned whether Officer Castro believed that cutting the police force and funding school metrocards would be a good idea, he responded, "that's not good we gotta keep the crime down." But the Bronx has the one of the highest dropout rates, most arrests, and intrusive searches by police of students with a high rate of racial profiling.
These police officers will be paid to arrest students as they jump turnstyles and refuse to pay court summons as they attempt to get to school.
Senior David Greenblatt and other concerned students have begun organizing against the metrocard cut by collecting expired metrocards from last semester with messages to the board of education. Although a small step, only through greater student activism will the MTA begin to pay attention to the demands of students.
Spend Just One Night...
Spend Just One Night...
Dark of the night leads to light in the park. I stare at the lone souls on the barren snow covered cold. They make homage to the snow and blow it everywhere. This is my block, my park, and my night of dark. All those who lurk here hold no fear, Selling in the wrong place results in your face smashed. Cash made on Marcy, Cash made is larcency for many. The blunt cold holds no prisoners, it starves you and carves you into a new man. Just one night in the cold mista mayor, just one night in the blizzard player. That's all we ask before you tell us the poor are lazy, and the homeless are crazy. These streets are amazing to the outta towner, which is why im trying not to be a downer, but spend just one night on em. Spend just one night under those street lights.
The economy sunk, kids flunk, moms lack of pay leaves the food situation outta luck. soleless shoes smell like skunk, and broken boots are in cahoots with socks of cloth that lack being waterproof. Days like these no please, so as a teen i lived on selling anti-government trees, but as a kid we lived off that government cheeese, so in places like these its pretty hard to dream, spend just one night, and you'll be cooking up schemes...
O Spend Just One night mista mayor, Just one night with us, those of us who now ride in the back of the bus. Those of us who lust for just a fraction of your pizza crust. Spend one night with us, and ill trust, youll see that public housing bill thru. You're eyes will be covered in black&blue, and your wallet left empty as Aldei the Truancy School.
Spend Just One Night and fly kites with us on project roofs, Aloof from the truth, will politicians ever understand those of us who think like John Wilkes Booth? Desperation plagues not this nation, but this city, a type of gritty you just can't understand unless you move to this land of skidrows and addicts for blow gilded with riches and paid cop snitches
Spend Just One Night with us on these streets
Dark of the night leads to light in the park. I stare at the lone souls on the barren snow covered cold. They make homage to the snow and blow it everywhere. This is my block, my park, and my night of dark. All those who lurk here hold no fear, Selling in the wrong place results in your face smashed. Cash made on Marcy, Cash made is larcency for many. The blunt cold holds no prisoners, it starves you and carves you into a new man. Just one night in the cold mista mayor, just one night in the blizzard player. That's all we ask before you tell us the poor are lazy, and the homeless are crazy. These streets are amazing to the outta towner, which is why im trying not to be a downer, but spend just one night on em. Spend just one night under those street lights.
The economy sunk, kids flunk, moms lack of pay leaves the food situation outta luck. soleless shoes smell like skunk, and broken boots are in cahoots with socks of cloth that lack being waterproof. Days like these no please, so as a teen i lived on selling anti-government trees, but as a kid we lived off that government cheeese, so in places like these its pretty hard to dream, spend just one night, and you'll be cooking up schemes...
O Spend Just One night mista mayor, Just one night with us, those of us who now ride in the back of the bus. Those of us who lust for just a fraction of your pizza crust. Spend one night with us, and ill trust, youll see that public housing bill thru. You're eyes will be covered in black&blue, and your wallet left empty as Aldei the Truancy School.
Spend Just One Night and fly kites with us on project roofs, Aloof from the truth, will politicians ever understand those of us who think like John Wilkes Booth? Desperation plagues not this nation, but this city, a type of gritty you just can't understand unless you move to this land of skidrows and addicts for blow gilded with riches and paid cop snitches
Spend Just One Night with us on these streets
The Story of Students X, Y, and Z
The following short story is based on real & recent events in a Bronx High School. The events highlight the infamous power of the capitalist state to suppress free speach through a variety of techniques. Of course the state, school officials, and police are not allowed to openly state in public that these students were persecuted for their beliefs in socialism and progress, at the same time , it was clear to all students who paid attention that the inventive techniques of suppressing the students are merely the state using different methods to accomplish the goals of a fascist state, through covert means.
High School X is just your average Bloomberg-era high school. After years of failing schools and cesspools of hopeless gang violence, and teenage pregnancy, the Board of Education and Bloomberg started splitting up large schools into smaller environments which "supposedly" would focus on students, and create a better situation for the youth. In reality, the small schools drained resources and good students from the big schools. This created horrid enviroments in the big schools resulting in their closure and replacement with charter schools, and schools that could be run with profit in mind.
So what does High School X have to do with it? High School X is is a small trailer filled with the best students from not only the bronx, but all NYC. Thus we are nationally ranked at 19 by US new & world report.
On our first days of global history and american history we learned about the suppression of free speech in the USSR and China. But never could we imagine that we would learn America is no different.
It all started freshman year. two students name Student X and Student Y, concerned by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, interested by economics of socialism, and fascinated with American politics, decided to create a political action club to get students involved in social justice and liberal politics. The club was first called the "revolution club." School officials did not originally respond in overt anger or violence against students, but started talking to the freshmen and explaining to them the bureacracy and impracticality of the club. After blackmailing teachers for their job, the club could not start as it could not find a faculty advisor.
Sophmore year, radical students again attempted to create a similiar political club. This time under the name of "Act Now to Stop War and End Racism." Again the administration denied the students requests, but took a more seriously concerned approach. This time they threatened the students claiming that running the club could involve in a impeachment and suspension in school, if they proceeded.
Oddly, a wealthy conservative student was granted permission to start a club with conservative political leanings and an agenda of teaching students moderate views on the issues. His club was called "Political Action Club", yet its lack of getting anybody involved in anything at all made it a sham.
Junior year, the all-city school enacted two new troubling policies. One which would accumulate points and convert them into detentions and suspensions for every minute late to school despite having students who travel 2 to 3 hour commutes on unreliable MTA trains. Meanwhile wealthier students who paid upto $5000 to ride the bronx science school buses to school were given excuses, and allowed to make up missed 1st period exams/quizzes. Second, the school started kicking out students who failed classes, rather than offer than a path to make up their credits on campus. This tore apart classes, and was used as an excuse to toss struggling students to the curb and encourage them to drop out.
As a result Student X decided to run for student representitive. Student X ran on a platform of reversing the aggressive school policies of the above paragraph. When he put up posters, the school tore them down, and threatened him multiple times with suspension and explusion on the grounds of "insubordination." Insubordination is essentially the legal grounds master and slave.
Student Y posted stickers on campus for a 3rd party candidate in the 2008 election named Gloria La Riva, and was forced to pay hundreds of dollars in summons for his expression of free speech, while major party candidates were given space in school, and their position on issues were taught in class.
Senior year. Student X arrived in school a minute late after a 2 hour commute from brooklyn, and was barred from an examination. Later he causually speaks to his peers in revolutionary whispers. A teacher approaches, and student X casually mentions that the schools unfair policy of subordinating students and barring students from taking tests, kicking students out who are struggling, and suppressing free speech is what creates drug dealers and schools shooters and drop outs. As a result of this statement, student X is placed in a suspension center.
The suspension center works as a re-education center. While some students are in there for fights with cops, others are in there due to political statements. The trailer is gaurded by armed officers, metal detectors, and there is no way out of the barred windowed orange trailer. On all the walls it says "learn how to speak with authority, learn how to speak with police" and "teachers" walked in educating us on the functions of the american government, our rights, and the great american democracy. When Student X asked why he was there the teacher responded, "Because your a radical and people like you need to be cleaned up."
After a week Student X went AWOL from re-education camp and found a civil liberties lawyer. After months of a long hard fight, the board of education cleaned the record of Student X realizing the danger of the decision they had just made: They had violated the very first amendment of the constitution, and locked someone up for it.
Meanwhile...
Student Z is witnessing all this from a neutral perspective. All his life he has seen struggle and strife accross the street from the poverty of the Mott Haven Projects. Suddenly he finds his calling in a sea of injustice. He writes a poem critiquing how bloomberg is "planting a million trees" in a place like Mott haven, when trees won't do anything for hood. He writes about the uncoincidential moments of life and how one must seize the day at every moment. He writes and writes creatively.
Student Z then shows the poem to the school as a gift for the yearbook, however, the schools recognizes the radicalized nature of the poem.
Days later worried Student X attempts to make contact with Student Z... Student Z sends him a video.."To all those classes in school... let this be my message... I bet .. I bet you have never seen me in hospital robes like these.. Well let me tell you how I got here. I wrote a poem as a gift to the school to show them my creativity and free thinking... and look where I ended up." Student Z had been placed in a Pysch Ward for his beliefs, but his close friends knew better, and Student X knew better for sure.
The Story you have just read is true. Students X, Y, and Z are real people who have been politically persecuted for their belief in socialism. The school has subversively used the mechanisms of the state to suppress free speech, and free thinking in school zones, and brainwash a future generation of robots for the white collar workplace. If you are at all angered by the story you have just read show it to concerned friends and family, media, and whoever. We need help because we the students feel targetted and unsafe to speak our minds.
High School X is just your average Bloomberg-era high school. After years of failing schools and cesspools of hopeless gang violence, and teenage pregnancy, the Board of Education and Bloomberg started splitting up large schools into smaller environments which "supposedly" would focus on students, and create a better situation for the youth. In reality, the small schools drained resources and good students from the big schools. This created horrid enviroments in the big schools resulting in their closure and replacement with charter schools, and schools that could be run with profit in mind.
So what does High School X have to do with it? High School X is is a small trailer filled with the best students from not only the bronx, but all NYC. Thus we are nationally ranked at 19 by US new & world report.
On our first days of global history and american history we learned about the suppression of free speech in the USSR and China. But never could we imagine that we would learn America is no different.
It all started freshman year. two students name Student X and Student Y, concerned by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, interested by economics of socialism, and fascinated with American politics, decided to create a political action club to get students involved in social justice and liberal politics. The club was first called the "revolution club." School officials did not originally respond in overt anger or violence against students, but started talking to the freshmen and explaining to them the bureacracy and impracticality of the club. After blackmailing teachers for their job, the club could not start as it could not find a faculty advisor.
Sophmore year, radical students again attempted to create a similiar political club. This time under the name of "Act Now to Stop War and End Racism." Again the administration denied the students requests, but took a more seriously concerned approach. This time they threatened the students claiming that running the club could involve in a impeachment and suspension in school, if they proceeded.
Oddly, a wealthy conservative student was granted permission to start a club with conservative political leanings and an agenda of teaching students moderate views on the issues. His club was called "Political Action Club", yet its lack of getting anybody involved in anything at all made it a sham.
Junior year, the all-city school enacted two new troubling policies. One which would accumulate points and convert them into detentions and suspensions for every minute late to school despite having students who travel 2 to 3 hour commutes on unreliable MTA trains. Meanwhile wealthier students who paid upto $5000 to ride the bronx science school buses to school were given excuses, and allowed to make up missed 1st period exams/quizzes. Second, the school started kicking out students who failed classes, rather than offer than a path to make up their credits on campus. This tore apart classes, and was used as an excuse to toss struggling students to the curb and encourage them to drop out.
As a result Student X decided to run for student representitive. Student X ran on a platform of reversing the aggressive school policies of the above paragraph. When he put up posters, the school tore them down, and threatened him multiple times with suspension and explusion on the grounds of "insubordination." Insubordination is essentially the legal grounds master and slave.
Student Y posted stickers on campus for a 3rd party candidate in the 2008 election named Gloria La Riva, and was forced to pay hundreds of dollars in summons for his expression of free speech, while major party candidates were given space in school, and their position on issues were taught in class.
Senior year. Student X arrived in school a minute late after a 2 hour commute from brooklyn, and was barred from an examination. Later he causually speaks to his peers in revolutionary whispers. A teacher approaches, and student X casually mentions that the schools unfair policy of subordinating students and barring students from taking tests, kicking students out who are struggling, and suppressing free speech is what creates drug dealers and schools shooters and drop outs. As a result of this statement, student X is placed in a suspension center.
The suspension center works as a re-education center. While some students are in there for fights with cops, others are in there due to political statements. The trailer is gaurded by armed officers, metal detectors, and there is no way out of the barred windowed orange trailer. On all the walls it says "learn how to speak with authority, learn how to speak with police" and "teachers" walked in educating us on the functions of the american government, our rights, and the great american democracy. When Student X asked why he was there the teacher responded, "Because your a radical and people like you need to be cleaned up."
After a week Student X went AWOL from re-education camp and found a civil liberties lawyer. After months of a long hard fight, the board of education cleaned the record of Student X realizing the danger of the decision they had just made: They had violated the very first amendment of the constitution, and locked someone up for it.
Meanwhile...
Student Z is witnessing all this from a neutral perspective. All his life he has seen struggle and strife accross the street from the poverty of the Mott Haven Projects. Suddenly he finds his calling in a sea of injustice. He writes a poem critiquing how bloomberg is "planting a million trees" in a place like Mott haven, when trees won't do anything for hood. He writes about the uncoincidential moments of life and how one must seize the day at every moment. He writes and writes creatively.
Student Z then shows the poem to the school as a gift for the yearbook, however, the schools recognizes the radicalized nature of the poem.
Days later worried Student X attempts to make contact with Student Z... Student Z sends him a video.."To all those classes in school... let this be my message... I bet .. I bet you have never seen me in hospital robes like these.. Well let me tell you how I got here. I wrote a poem as a gift to the school to show them my creativity and free thinking... and look where I ended up." Student Z had been placed in a Pysch Ward for his beliefs, but his close friends knew better, and Student X knew better for sure.
The Story you have just read is true. Students X, Y, and Z are real people who have been politically persecuted for their belief in socialism. The school has subversively used the mechanisms of the state to suppress free speech, and free thinking in school zones, and brainwash a future generation of robots for the white collar workplace. If you are at all angered by the story you have just read show it to concerned friends and family, media, and whoever. We need help because we the students feel targetted and unsafe to speak our minds.
Back Again: New Life Lessons Bring this Blog New Meaning
Hello all, I have recently taken an all to long hiatus from my writings, but that time is up. Blog writing is a stress reliever, a means of communicating your ideas to the world, and a means of self-improvement in your own writing. What has been the cause of my hiatus? Well... my beliefs in socialism and liberation have caused many problems in my pursuit of my education. America's intolerance of ideas that threaten the very foundation of our society brought me many troubles so for a while, I took time off and focused on beating the failed public education system, and attempting to create a future for my self.
With my acceptance to Stony Brook, one of the best state universities in the world and one of the best writing/journalism programs, I feel it is time to return to one of my callings in life of writing. The new RRR! blog will continue to contain social polemics of the past, but will now also include urban poetry and short stories as well. These stories will be in the line of socialism, as the experiences recounted have led many New York City Dwellers onto the path of socialism.
With my acceptance to Stony Brook, one of the best state universities in the world and one of the best writing/journalism programs, I feel it is time to return to one of my callings in life of writing. The new RRR! blog will continue to contain social polemics of the past, but will now also include urban poetry and short stories as well. These stories will be in the line of socialism, as the experiences recounted have led many New York City Dwellers onto the path of socialism.
Monday, June 15
American History: Part 2-20th century
The Gilded age saw laissez-faire capitalism evolve to its fullest and most ruthless form in the name of industrialization. Workers worked in miserable factory conditions with no labor rights and no fair wages . When workers unionized the government and bosses attempted to suppress them with the army, national guard, police, and private detective agencies like Pinkerton Detective Agency. This continued into the 20th century thanks to the stubbornness of the government and industrial bosses in granting workers any rights at all from the start of militant union in the early 1860s until the early 1900s when progressivism forced the government to make some reforms to appease the militant strikes that rocked the country conducted by the Industrial Workers of the World Union, the Western Federation of Miners, and other militant unions.
During WWI, the government coerced unions into waiving their rights to strike in the name of the war and better working conditions. IWW recognized the supposed improved conditions as a fallacy and striked anyway while unions like the American Federation of Labor, an elitist “skilled” labor-only movement, sold out and gave into government controls which have kept this organization stagnant even til this day. The split in the labor movement gave the government room to attack.
Government response to the peak of union radicalism and strength in the form of IWW was to raid their headquarters in all over the country in the name of national security and arrest their leaders in what became known as the Palmer Raids. Nevertheless, union struggles pushed the government to pass trust busting laws under President Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft. Because of the struggles of the labor movement, corporations do not have as great a power to hustle working people not only in terms of worker’s wages, but also in terms of collaborating to keep prices high as well as out-right lie in advertisement.
After subduing radicalism in the labor movement, the 1920s was a period of conservatism and gilded prosperity for investors. Capitalism thrived like never before for about nine years, bringing untold wealth to the already wealthy. Then one day in 1929 the pyramid scheme collapsed and millions ended up jobless all because of unregulated gambling on wall street. Suddenly the people had power to change things again and during the thirties America brought its self near socialism in order to avoid the end of the capitalist system. Not only did Communists align with liberals and liberals with unions and anarchists in a big united coalition against fascism worldwide, but the president of the United States was forced to expand the role of the government to something that finally served the people setting up pubic works projects, social security for the elderly, medical care for the poor, and other greatly needed reforms to once again calm the people from social revolution.
Textbooks declare that the end of the great depression was due to the industrial expansion of the economy during WWII. What this meant was that only by building on the industry of death, the armed forces, could the broken system return to some sort normal economic situation. Part of the reason for the depressions length was that FDR, despite being more progressive then his predecessors, was still in the historic role of presidency and didn’t feel comfortable with spending to much on the people. So in 1936, ignoring signs of recovery in areas where the government was setting up social programs, FDR cut New Deal programs and the economy again slumped and then slowly revived itself until the war when FDR introduced the Second New Deal.
WWII was a tragic war in which millions of young working people were drafted up, sent of to war and killed, same as 3 decades earlier. The common argument is that it was necessary to destroy fascism. The truth was that the bosses and the government did not care to much about fascism, rather they didn’t mind it as long as it didn’t clash with the United States and its allies. They let it spread untouched to Spain despite the heroic struggle the Spanish people put up. They let it spread to Czechslovakia, Austria, Ethiopia, etc. Businessmen like Ford for example even sold trucks to Franco’s fascist forces in Spain, because in the end profit is more important than supporting democratic forces. The U.S. regained its economic confidence by sustaining little damage on the homefront and coming out on top, but the lives it cost will never be forgotten, and the men and women who volunteered in the Lincoln Brigade to fight in Spain, the very first battle against fascism, those who would not put up with America’s blind eye to fascism, must never be forgotten even if they are often ignored.
After the War, presidents Truman and Eisenhower presided over a national purge led by Senator McCarthy. The purge, often called “McCarthyism” or “The Red Scare (pt. 2),” aimed at squashing dissent and promoting conformity in the new age of planned suburban life. The Smith Act along with countless state laws curbed peoples right to advocate anti-government ideas or hold anti-government political meetings. With every passing generation came new wisdom and a group known as “the beats” , with roots in the Lost generation of writers and artists of WWI and perhaps even the militant labor movement of the thirties, introduced Americans to new ways of thinking. At the same time the resistance by black people to jim crow in the south was slowly gaining strength as the opportunity to win rights in the name of countering soviet propaganda which blankly pointed to how racist capitalism really was to the revolutionary movements of Africa and Latin America like the African National Congress in South Africa and the July 26th Movement in Cuba. Although the movement started peaceful and patriotic, after brutal police beat downs, being sprayed with hoses, and murder of civil rights activists the movement realized that only through militant struggle could freedom be won. The whole culture of the 1950s was one of conformity, and consumerism despite lies of America being the “land of individualism. Bosses set up “company unions” and encouraged people to buy cheap conformed suburban housing. In Levittown, the first suburb, the peverted ideal American dream community meant no black people were allowed to live there. All this would culminate into an explosion in the 1960s.
in the 1960s, with the civil rights movement slowly gaining militancy and strength, and the ideas of the beats and third world revolutionaries like Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh catching on with students, the result was an explosive situation which saw the beginning of the modern day culture war present today. During the 1960s the country saw clear polarization not just between labor and bosses, but between social progress and conservative stagnation. People revolted in Watts and other cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. coincidently when he started radicalizing and speaking against the war, and also when police brutality had become too much for the people to accept. The government conducted the Warren Commission and declared a war on poverty to try to calm the revolutionary situation. The Black Panther Party, a militant black revolutionary organization forced the government to expand welfare when they opened community breakfest programs and took active roles in the forgotten urban neighborhoods all over the country. The chance for revclution slipped because each act of protest was each militant but isolated, or widespread but to peaceful. A Machine with one part broken can easily be fixed, but if all the parts break at once, only then will you get a new one.
The momentum of the movement of the 1960s against the war, abuses on civil & woman’s rights, and for greater democracy slowed due to the governments relentless will to crush the anti-war and black power movements, and with the Black Panther Party, in particular, the government viciously infiltrated and tore the movement to shreds by turning activist groups against one another as well as the members within them. COINTELPRO succeeded in planting big brother agents in positions of power that allowed them to derail the party into oblivion. The program was titled COINTELPRO, and it was the blatant suppression of free speech and a continuation of the legacy of the oppression that is inherent to any centralized top-down state.
The big event that represents the tyranny of government was of course Watergate. The Scandal which brought down President Nixon by revealing his participation in wiretapping of his electoral opponents through a break-in, and the subsequent effort to cover up the crime. Also revealed but hushed , was the workings of the American system of “democracy,” where American Airlines, 3M, Good Year, and Milk corporations made campaign donations in exchange for favorable policy on the part of the government. After it all collapsed and corruption exposed to the highest levels, congressmen and senators pushed Nixon bow out gracefully taking all the blame for a system that allowed him to commit crime in the name of “national security.” In exchange, Nixon would not be charged, and his cronies, take Erlichman and Kissinger for example, would face light charges of small fines and suspended prison time, or get off scott-free and be allowed to even stay in the White House. The result was that mechanisms for the perversion of democracy stayed, while one man took the fall. It would set the precedent that criminal doings once you were in the position of presidency, you had special privledge that ordinary citizens did not and that was the problem. It would lead to the Iran-Contra Scandal of the 80s and all kinds of presidential scandals that are now often cut short before they reach the highest office.
Foreign Policy in the 1970s to 1980s reflected the collapse of people’s movements. As the percentage of eligible voters dropped to about 50% in the 70s, moral-less neo-colonialism continued with Ford’s continued aid to South Vietnam in order to secure grounds for “oil exploration and tourism” as one congressman put it. After the North quickly toppled the southern puppet regime in 1975, Carter would refuse to aid Vietnam in its reconstruction despite the thousands of tons of bombs the US dropped on Vietnamese civilians, the napalm, the pellet-bombs, and village massacres like that of My Lai. Albeit, Carter was an Obama. He tried to bring re-inspire people in their country after the democratic lies with Vietnam and the Republican lies with regards to Watergate.
Reagan and the republicans would frame Carter as destroying American standing in the world after decades of US policy in support of an unpopular dictator, the shah, backfired and resulted in 52 US embassy employees being taken hostage. It wasn’t Carters fault, in fact it was more the fault of conservatives like Reagan who would advocate nonsensical anti-democratic support of pro-business dictators from Chile to Nicaragua and Afghanistan. However, Reagan would benefit and and usher in an era of neo-conservatism using this tactic of fear that would be used by conservatives until this day.
The Reagan-Bush era marked cuts in social welfare, curbs on free speech, and cuts on taxes for the wealthy. When air traffic controllers striked against Reagan’s conservative anti-union policies, he issued a decree to dimiss all of them. This action was a historic because it marked the reversal of presidents acting neutral in labor disputes. It was the tiannamen square of the American union. Reagan’s environmental policy helped establish the current carelessness of the government towards environmental degradation. He allowed businesses to decide their own environmental policy no matter how detrmimental. Reagan’s importance to the modern capitalist class is unique because his administration saw the thorough regression of gains made by people’s movements. Where Carter put solar panels on the White House, Reagan demolished them. Where a disease prevention program saving millions of lives could have been set up up, Reagan built a $1.5 Billion submarine for launching nukes en masse.
All of American History has been a struggle between working people, students, and the American people against a handful of wealthy planters, industrial robber barons, and reckless wall street investors. Today, Americans have been left jobless and homeless or without a loved one due to circus games of executives and investors in the housing industry and the war for oil in Iraq started by the politicians who represent the companies that contribute to their campaign, not the people who their supposed to represent. Capitalism makes profit come before democracy. It is why foreign policy has been skewed to support vicious dictators like Pinochet, Noriega, Batista, and the Somozas and why slavery and Jim Crow segregation haunts our history. It is why strikes were crushed, and students disenfranchised from elections and even the right to free speech today in my very own school. American History has, and will have until a social revolution occurs, a path of conflict between rulers and the people because no matter who is put in charge, the nature of the state is one born from racist slavery and free market capitalism. These foundations cannot be completely reformed from the state because they helped develop and bring the ruling class of the U.S to what it is today. History in our schools has been taught in a incoherent and “patriotically” blemished manner that causes many students to lose interest. While the telling of history has become more democratic in recent years due to the internets creation of a global community, and the end of the cold war opening up third way voices, there is still a long way to go before people understand the truth in history; the crimes not just the glories. This will inspire people to then act to change things in the today.
Works Cited
"About the Smith Act Trials." Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois. 2 June 2009. The Smith Acts severely inhibited American Democracy during the McCarthy era. This is the story.
D. Roosevelt, Franklin. "On the Purposes and Foundations of the Recovery Program - July 24,." Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. 24 July 1931. 2 June 2009. FDR's address in favor of social programs and explanation of them. I used the address in connecting FDRs role in saving the US economy with appeasing people through social welfare programs
"Economic Indicators during the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression (III). | The Economic Populist." The Economic Populist . 8 June 2009.
Graphs illustrate the effect of the cuts in social programs on the economy during New Deal.
"Index of US Foreign Policy Documents." University of Wisconsin Digital Collections. 2 June 2009
Loewen, James W.. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Touchstone, 2007. Resource; similar to A People's History
Martin, Joseph Plumb. Private Yankee Doodle. Harrisburg: Eastern Acorn Press, 1998. Story of a young farmer's enlistment during revolution
New York Community Media Alliance. "Voices That Must Be Heard: Divide and Conquer: Clintons exploit Black-Latino tensions - New York Community Media Alliance." New York Community Media Alliance. 7 June 2009
Sitkoff, Harvard. The Struggle for Black Equality: 25th-Anniversary Edition. New York: Hill And Wang, 2008. Covers struggle of black people to win their rights starting with slavery and reconstruction. instrumental in discussion of civil rights movement
Weigley, Russell F.. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973. In depth exploration of American War History, particularly useful with Civil War, Revolutionary War, and WWII
Zinn, Howard. People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.). New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005. Explores popular movements and government abuses throughout American History. Useful throughout paper
During WWI, the government coerced unions into waiving their rights to strike in the name of the war and better working conditions. IWW recognized the supposed improved conditions as a fallacy and striked anyway while unions like the American Federation of Labor, an elitist “skilled” labor-only movement, sold out and gave into government controls which have kept this organization stagnant even til this day. The split in the labor movement gave the government room to attack.
Government response to the peak of union radicalism and strength in the form of IWW was to raid their headquarters in all over the country in the name of national security and arrest their leaders in what became known as the Palmer Raids. Nevertheless, union struggles pushed the government to pass trust busting laws under President Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft. Because of the struggles of the labor movement, corporations do not have as great a power to hustle working people not only in terms of worker’s wages, but also in terms of collaborating to keep prices high as well as out-right lie in advertisement.
After subduing radicalism in the labor movement, the 1920s was a period of conservatism and gilded prosperity for investors. Capitalism thrived like never before for about nine years, bringing untold wealth to the already wealthy. Then one day in 1929 the pyramid scheme collapsed and millions ended up jobless all because of unregulated gambling on wall street. Suddenly the people had power to change things again and during the thirties America brought its self near socialism in order to avoid the end of the capitalist system. Not only did Communists align with liberals and liberals with unions and anarchists in a big united coalition against fascism worldwide, but the president of the United States was forced to expand the role of the government to something that finally served the people setting up pubic works projects, social security for the elderly, medical care for the poor, and other greatly needed reforms to once again calm the people from social revolution.
Textbooks declare that the end of the great depression was due to the industrial expansion of the economy during WWII. What this meant was that only by building on the industry of death, the armed forces, could the broken system return to some sort normal economic situation. Part of the reason for the depressions length was that FDR, despite being more progressive then his predecessors, was still in the historic role of presidency and didn’t feel comfortable with spending to much on the people. So in 1936, ignoring signs of recovery in areas where the government was setting up social programs, FDR cut New Deal programs and the economy again slumped and then slowly revived itself until the war when FDR introduced the Second New Deal.
WWII was a tragic war in which millions of young working people were drafted up, sent of to war and killed, same as 3 decades earlier. The common argument is that it was necessary to destroy fascism. The truth was that the bosses and the government did not care to much about fascism, rather they didn’t mind it as long as it didn’t clash with the United States and its allies. They let it spread untouched to Spain despite the heroic struggle the Spanish people put up. They let it spread to Czechslovakia, Austria, Ethiopia, etc. Businessmen like Ford for example even sold trucks to Franco’s fascist forces in Spain, because in the end profit is more important than supporting democratic forces. The U.S. regained its economic confidence by sustaining little damage on the homefront and coming out on top, but the lives it cost will never be forgotten, and the men and women who volunteered in the Lincoln Brigade to fight in Spain, the very first battle against fascism, those who would not put up with America’s blind eye to fascism, must never be forgotten even if they are often ignored.
After the War, presidents Truman and Eisenhower presided over a national purge led by Senator McCarthy. The purge, often called “McCarthyism” or “The Red Scare (pt. 2),” aimed at squashing dissent and promoting conformity in the new age of planned suburban life. The Smith Act along with countless state laws curbed peoples right to advocate anti-government ideas or hold anti-government political meetings. With every passing generation came new wisdom and a group known as “the beats” , with roots in the Lost generation of writers and artists of WWI and perhaps even the militant labor movement of the thirties, introduced Americans to new ways of thinking. At the same time the resistance by black people to jim crow in the south was slowly gaining strength as the opportunity to win rights in the name of countering soviet propaganda which blankly pointed to how racist capitalism really was to the revolutionary movements of Africa and Latin America like the African National Congress in South Africa and the July 26th Movement in Cuba. Although the movement started peaceful and patriotic, after brutal police beat downs, being sprayed with hoses, and murder of civil rights activists the movement realized that only through militant struggle could freedom be won. The whole culture of the 1950s was one of conformity, and consumerism despite lies of America being the “land of individualism. Bosses set up “company unions” and encouraged people to buy cheap conformed suburban housing. In Levittown, the first suburb, the peverted ideal American dream community meant no black people were allowed to live there. All this would culminate into an explosion in the 1960s.
in the 1960s, with the civil rights movement slowly gaining militancy and strength, and the ideas of the beats and third world revolutionaries like Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh catching on with students, the result was an explosive situation which saw the beginning of the modern day culture war present today. During the 1960s the country saw clear polarization not just between labor and bosses, but between social progress and conservative stagnation. People revolted in Watts and other cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. coincidently when he started radicalizing and speaking against the war, and also when police brutality had become too much for the people to accept. The government conducted the Warren Commission and declared a war on poverty to try to calm the revolutionary situation. The Black Panther Party, a militant black revolutionary organization forced the government to expand welfare when they opened community breakfest programs and took active roles in the forgotten urban neighborhoods all over the country. The chance for revclution slipped because each act of protest was each militant but isolated, or widespread but to peaceful. A Machine with one part broken can easily be fixed, but if all the parts break at once, only then will you get a new one.
The momentum of the movement of the 1960s against the war, abuses on civil & woman’s rights, and for greater democracy slowed due to the governments relentless will to crush the anti-war and black power movements, and with the Black Panther Party, in particular, the government viciously infiltrated and tore the movement to shreds by turning activist groups against one another as well as the members within them. COINTELPRO succeeded in planting big brother agents in positions of power that allowed them to derail the party into oblivion. The program was titled COINTELPRO, and it was the blatant suppression of free speech and a continuation of the legacy of the oppression that is inherent to any centralized top-down state.
The big event that represents the tyranny of government was of course Watergate. The Scandal which brought down President Nixon by revealing his participation in wiretapping of his electoral opponents through a break-in, and the subsequent effort to cover up the crime. Also revealed but hushed , was the workings of the American system of “democracy,” where American Airlines, 3M, Good Year, and Milk corporations made campaign donations in exchange for favorable policy on the part of the government. After it all collapsed and corruption exposed to the highest levels, congressmen and senators pushed Nixon bow out gracefully taking all the blame for a system that allowed him to commit crime in the name of “national security.” In exchange, Nixon would not be charged, and his cronies, take Erlichman and Kissinger for example, would face light charges of small fines and suspended prison time, or get off scott-free and be allowed to even stay in the White House. The result was that mechanisms for the perversion of democracy stayed, while one man took the fall. It would set the precedent that criminal doings once you were in the position of presidency, you had special privledge that ordinary citizens did not and that was the problem. It would lead to the Iran-Contra Scandal of the 80s and all kinds of presidential scandals that are now often cut short before they reach the highest office.
Foreign Policy in the 1970s to 1980s reflected the collapse of people’s movements. As the percentage of eligible voters dropped to about 50% in the 70s, moral-less neo-colonialism continued with Ford’s continued aid to South Vietnam in order to secure grounds for “oil exploration and tourism” as one congressman put it. After the North quickly toppled the southern puppet regime in 1975, Carter would refuse to aid Vietnam in its reconstruction despite the thousands of tons of bombs the US dropped on Vietnamese civilians, the napalm, the pellet-bombs, and village massacres like that of My Lai. Albeit, Carter was an Obama. He tried to bring re-inspire people in their country after the democratic lies with Vietnam and the Republican lies with regards to Watergate.
Reagan and the republicans would frame Carter as destroying American standing in the world after decades of US policy in support of an unpopular dictator, the shah, backfired and resulted in 52 US embassy employees being taken hostage. It wasn’t Carters fault, in fact it was more the fault of conservatives like Reagan who would advocate nonsensical anti-democratic support of pro-business dictators from Chile to Nicaragua and Afghanistan. However, Reagan would benefit and and usher in an era of neo-conservatism using this tactic of fear that would be used by conservatives until this day.
The Reagan-Bush era marked cuts in social welfare, curbs on free speech, and cuts on taxes for the wealthy. When air traffic controllers striked against Reagan’s conservative anti-union policies, he issued a decree to dimiss all of them. This action was a historic because it marked the reversal of presidents acting neutral in labor disputes. It was the tiannamen square of the American union. Reagan’s environmental policy helped establish the current carelessness of the government towards environmental degradation. He allowed businesses to decide their own environmental policy no matter how detrmimental. Reagan’s importance to the modern capitalist class is unique because his administration saw the thorough regression of gains made by people’s movements. Where Carter put solar panels on the White House, Reagan demolished them. Where a disease prevention program saving millions of lives could have been set up up, Reagan built a $1.5 Billion submarine for launching nukes en masse.
All of American History has been a struggle between working people, students, and the American people against a handful of wealthy planters, industrial robber barons, and reckless wall street investors. Today, Americans have been left jobless and homeless or without a loved one due to circus games of executives and investors in the housing industry and the war for oil in Iraq started by the politicians who represent the companies that contribute to their campaign, not the people who their supposed to represent. Capitalism makes profit come before democracy. It is why foreign policy has been skewed to support vicious dictators like Pinochet, Noriega, Batista, and the Somozas and why slavery and Jim Crow segregation haunts our history. It is why strikes were crushed, and students disenfranchised from elections and even the right to free speech today in my very own school. American History has, and will have until a social revolution occurs, a path of conflict between rulers and the people because no matter who is put in charge, the nature of the state is one born from racist slavery and free market capitalism. These foundations cannot be completely reformed from the state because they helped develop and bring the ruling class of the U.S to what it is today. History in our schools has been taught in a incoherent and “patriotically” blemished manner that causes many students to lose interest. While the telling of history has become more democratic in recent years due to the internets creation of a global community, and the end of the cold war opening up third way voices, there is still a long way to go before people understand the truth in history; the crimes not just the glories. This will inspire people to then act to change things in the today.
Works Cited
"About the Smith Act Trials." Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois. 2 June 2009
D. Roosevelt, Franklin. "On the Purposes and Foundations of the Recovery Program - July 24,." Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. 24 July 1931. 2 June 2009
"Economic Indicators during the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression (III). | The Economic Populist." The Economic Populist . 8 June 2009
Graphs illustrate the effect of the cuts in social programs on the economy during New Deal.
"Index of US Foreign Policy Documents." University of Wisconsin Digital Collections. 2 June 2009
Loewen, James W.. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Touchstone, 2007. Resource; similar to A People's History
Martin, Joseph Plumb. Private Yankee Doodle. Harrisburg: Eastern Acorn Press, 1998. Story of a young farmer's enlistment during revolution
New York Community Media Alliance. "Voices That Must Be Heard: Divide and Conquer: Clintons exploit Black-Latino tensions - New York Community Media Alliance." New York Community Media Alliance. 7 June 2009
Sitkoff, Harvard. The Struggle for Black Equality: 25th-Anniversary Edition. New York: Hill And Wang, 2008. Covers struggle of black people to win their rights starting with slavery and reconstruction. instrumental in discussion of civil rights movement
Weigley, Russell F.. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973. In depth exploration of American War History, particularly useful with Civil War, Revolutionary War, and WWII
Zinn, Howard. People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.). New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005. Explores popular movements and government abuses throughout American History. Useful throughout paper
Wednesday, May 27
American History: The People vs. The Tyrants (Part I pre-20th century)
Been busy lately and haven't had much time to blog but this right here is my thesis on the entire Span of U.S. History. Its a rough draft in the making for my AP US class. I'll put sources up later in part II where I cover the twentieth century in more detail. This is sort of just the preamble. I decided to start at the revolution in order to show how the roots of the capitalist sham were rotten to begin with, and remain that way today despite the gains made by people through centuries of heroic struggle.
When one studies American History in depth, no matter what period, the events that have taken place only make sense when analyzed through a lens of the rich landowners fighting a war against the common American citizen. From the inception of the revolutionary war where the planters hijacked the struggle of farmers and workers discontent with oppressive colonialism, until the crackdowns on unions and “red subversives,” and the tyranny of reaganomics; America’s story has been one of ordinary people struggling for human rights against their all powerful “representatives.”
The revolutionary war was a war with its roots in the working people. Ordinary people who wanted the right to free speech written in stone due to their proud tradition of self-governance that emerged due to the impossibility of royal rule three thousand miles from Britain. Blacksmiths, farmers, young field hands some as young as fourteen or fifteen took up arms and organized in the Sons and Daughters of Liberty to rid America of royal tyranny. Yet it was the planters, lawyers, and wealthy merchants who took up command positions and argued in the continental congress. The rural and urban poor who fought and died in the war went unremembered and unpaid, while the wealthy planters who had remained behind the lines of combat rung in all the praise Washington, Jefferson, and Madison probably didn’t fire a bullet yet they took the glory and fame. This theme would remain a constant in American History from this point onwards.
You see the progress we’ve made to bring us to the point in history we are today, having recently elected a black president and having won certain rights like union laws and important civil rights, is only due to the struggles of movements of people against tyrannical government. Throughout the antebellum period and the period of “Jacksonian Democracy” supposed “grand” reforms were made to make the United States more democratic like abolishing property ownership as a requirement for your right to vote. Jackson was forced to take these steps in order to appease farmers like those who nearly overthrew the government in the Whiskey and Shay’s Rebellion. It still however left black people disenfranchised which led to the civil war.
The Civil War was essentially a contest between Northern Industrialists who realized slavery was not profitable because it left half the country to be content with the backward plantation economy unchanged since the slavery’s beginnings, and southern plantation owners who figured why even pay for the people’s labor? Lincoln was not a real abolitionist and the emancipation proclamation only came because of the pressure abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown had shown, as well as the support of blacks in fighting for the union and paralyzing the southern economy by fleeing to northern lines. Government approved text books like McGrawHill American History A Survey frames the rioters against the New York Draft as throroughly racist. The reality is that these were working people who didn’t want to die in a rich mans war. Of course many who participated were racist and blamed blacks for the draft, but this was because the divide and conquer tactics of the ruling class makes the masses fear each other and hate each other based on race, ethnicity, religion, or whatever they find convenient to use in order to super-exploit a group a make higher profits as they had done for hundreds of years with black people and now do today with Mexican and Latin American people.
Reconstruction after the civil war gave the north power over the south and so in the name of “taking it too the south”, progressive reforms were passed giving blacks voting rights, civil rights, and power like never before. Yet the rulers ended this experiment quickly because in the end, the lives of those who died in battle fighting against slavery didn’t matter to much when compared to a new era of focusing on industrializing and exploiting working people like never before.
The Gilded age saw laissez-faire capitalism evolve to its fullest and most ruthless form in the name of industrialization. Workers worked in miserable factory conditions with no labor rights and no fair wages. When workers unionized the government and bosses attempted to suppress them with the army, national guard, police, and private detective agencies like Pinkerton Detective Agency. This continued into the 20th century thanks to the stubbornness of the government and industrial bosses in granting workers any rights at all from the start of militant union in the early 1860s until the early 1900s when progressivism forced the government to make some reforms to appease the militant strikes that rocked the country conducted by the Industrial Workers of the World Union, the Western Federation of Miners, and other militant unions.
To be Cont'd
When one studies American History in depth, no matter what period, the events that have taken place only make sense when analyzed through a lens of the rich landowners fighting a war against the common American citizen. From the inception of the revolutionary war where the planters hijacked the struggle of farmers and workers discontent with oppressive colonialism, until the crackdowns on unions and “red subversives,” and the tyranny of reaganomics; America’s story has been one of ordinary people struggling for human rights against their all powerful “representatives.”
The revolutionary war was a war with its roots in the working people. Ordinary people who wanted the right to free speech written in stone due to their proud tradition of self-governance that emerged due to the impossibility of royal rule three thousand miles from Britain. Blacksmiths, farmers, young field hands some as young as fourteen or fifteen took up arms and organized in the Sons and Daughters of Liberty to rid America of royal tyranny. Yet it was the planters, lawyers, and wealthy merchants who took up command positions and argued in the continental congress. The rural and urban poor who fought and died in the war went unremembered and unpaid, while the wealthy planters who had remained behind the lines of combat rung in all the praise Washington, Jefferson, and Madison probably didn’t fire a bullet yet they took the glory and fame. This theme would remain a constant in American History from this point onwards.
You see the progress we’ve made to bring us to the point in history we are today, having recently elected a black president and having won certain rights like union laws and important civil rights, is only due to the struggles of movements of people against tyrannical government. Throughout the antebellum period and the period of “Jacksonian Democracy” supposed “grand” reforms were made to make the United States more democratic like abolishing property ownership as a requirement for your right to vote. Jackson was forced to take these steps in order to appease farmers like those who nearly overthrew the government in the Whiskey and Shay’s Rebellion. It still however left black people disenfranchised which led to the civil war.
The Civil War was essentially a contest between Northern Industrialists who realized slavery was not profitable because it left half the country to be content with the backward plantation economy unchanged since the slavery’s beginnings, and southern plantation owners who figured why even pay for the people’s labor? Lincoln was not a real abolitionist and the emancipation proclamation only came because of the pressure abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown had shown, as well as the support of blacks in fighting for the union and paralyzing the southern economy by fleeing to northern lines. Government approved text books like McGrawHill American History A Survey frames the rioters against the New York Draft as throroughly racist. The reality is that these were working people who didn’t want to die in a rich mans war. Of course many who participated were racist and blamed blacks for the draft, but this was because the divide and conquer tactics of the ruling class makes the masses fear each other and hate each other based on race, ethnicity, religion, or whatever they find convenient to use in order to super-exploit a group a make higher profits as they had done for hundreds of years with black people and now do today with Mexican and Latin American people.
Reconstruction after the civil war gave the north power over the south and so in the name of “taking it too the south”, progressive reforms were passed giving blacks voting rights, civil rights, and power like never before. Yet the rulers ended this experiment quickly because in the end, the lives of those who died in battle fighting against slavery didn’t matter to much when compared to a new era of focusing on industrializing and exploiting working people like never before.
The Gilded age saw laissez-faire capitalism evolve to its fullest and most ruthless form in the name of industrialization. Workers worked in miserable factory conditions with no labor rights and no fair wages. When workers unionized the government and bosses attempted to suppress them with the army, national guard, police, and private detective agencies like Pinkerton Detective Agency. This continued into the 20th century thanks to the stubbornness of the government and industrial bosses in granting workers any rights at all from the start of militant union in the early 1860s until the early 1900s when progressivism forced the government to make some reforms to appease the militant strikes that rocked the country conducted by the Industrial Workers of the World Union, the Western Federation of Miners, and other militant unions.
To be Cont'd
Monday, April 13
The Crisis in Higher education
The education system in the US is in crisis. In New York there have been three campus occupations since the new year. Most recently, on April 10th, New School students occupied a building and were gassed and beaten by police in a brutal raid.
The occupations were indeed crushed however the courage the students had in coming together and standing up against injustices in American colleges has created a buzz. College education has become increasingly unaffordable, public schools are underfunded due to the two prolonged wars the US is fighting, and more and more students each year are looking to attend university and each year student take heavy loans just to be able to afford these expensive institutions. Others are sucked into the military just so they can afford their education.
The issue is that education is NOT a tool for recruitment, it is NOT a exclusive club where students do not know where their money is going and board members pocket large profits, education is NOT the stifled conformed atmosphere that its essential commidification has turned it into. Education is a right and should be not bought and sold.
conservatives have attacked professors who think freely in the mainstream media and published books encouraging the witchhunt of radical professors. The atmosphere of a prison has been created in place of what is supposed to be the most important time of one's life. Until education is completely free and universal, students will continue to organize and resist no matter how severe the police repression or adminstrative consequences
Sunday, April 12
Boom, Bust, Broken... Time for Revolution not just change
I'm kinda a History buff. Last year I got the highest possible score on the Advanced Placement Global History test earning college credits and this year I plan on accomplishing the same in the Ap American History exam. American History, as conformed, distorted, and packed with outright lies, as it is in the American public school system, still reveals lots about the nature of the capitalist system when you are learned in revolutionary marxist thought.
My teacher is having complete review sheets for the entire American history experience and as I have lost my textbook, I am forced to google terms that have slipped my mind. googling the panic of 1819, America's first homegrown recession, I typed
"panic of" and then sat their enjoying the utter stupidity of our system. Every few years since 1819, at least once per decade, our economy does what it is doing now. It has panic where millions lose their homes, lives, jobs, personal fortunes, and are forced to start up from scratch after the fuckheads in charge figure out how to put a big enough band-aid on the shotgun wound that is capitalist economics.
I am convinced capitalism is broken. Only a crackhead could think otherwise as the boom and bust cycle that has existed since the days of scalped natives and whipped slaves all the way up til today, the age of ponzi scheme crooks and greedy bankers. It is not logical, it is inefficient, leads to hunger, leads to homelessness, unemployment, and the destruction of our enviroment.
It is time for nationalization, it is time for economic planning. Not economic planning for bankers and bosses, but within our own communities and for hard working people so we can keep our homes, jobs, and lives. Humans and lives are not chips and coins to be gambled with at a casino we are intelligent so why the fuck do we stick with this system?
The bailouts, which AIG has shown, do not work as an economic band-aid could be used to provide public works projects & jobs, fund a healthcare system, or build a universal university system so youth like me have a future. Perhaps the bailouts, as inefficient and draining of the American people as they are, will save the economy this time, as they have before. But I can promise you if they do, I'll be writing this same post soon after when we again are all crying about the next economic meltdown.
My teacher is having complete review sheets for the entire American history experience and as I have lost my textbook, I am forced to google terms that have slipped my mind. googling the panic of 1819, America's first homegrown recession, I typed
"panic of" and then sat their enjoying the utter stupidity of our system. Every few years since 1819, at least once per decade, our economy does what it is doing now. It has panic where millions lose their homes, lives, jobs, personal fortunes, and are forced to start up from scratch after the fuckheads in charge figure out how to put a big enough band-aid on the shotgun wound that is capitalist economics.
I am convinced capitalism is broken. Only a crackhead could think otherwise as the boom and bust cycle that has existed since the days of scalped natives and whipped slaves all the way up til today, the age of ponzi scheme crooks and greedy bankers. It is not logical, it is inefficient, leads to hunger, leads to homelessness, unemployment, and the destruction of our enviroment.
It is time for nationalization, it is time for economic planning. Not economic planning for bankers and bosses, but within our own communities and for hard working people so we can keep our homes, jobs, and lives. Humans and lives are not chips and coins to be gambled with at a casino we are intelligent so why the fuck do we stick with this system?
The bailouts, which AIG has shown, do not work as an economic band-aid could be used to provide public works projects & jobs, fund a healthcare system, or build a universal university system so youth like me have a future. Perhaps the bailouts, as inefficient and draining of the American people as they are, will save the economy this time, as they have before. But I can promise you if they do, I'll be writing this same post soon after when we again are all crying about the next economic meltdown.
Sunday, February 24
Who Rules America
A substantial number of Americans, some two-thirds, view the government as being "run by a few big interests looking out for themselves." The results of the University of Michigan's poll raises an important question, one which cannot be easily dismissed by pundits who try to cast an illusion of American democracy; a nation ruled "by the people for the people". Just who rules America? In his class relations study, Michael Zweig found that the majority of Americans are in the working class. So It should come as no surprise that 60% of Americans feel alienated from economic and political decision making when, as Zweig estimates, it makes up 60 percent of the U.S. workforce.
Modern capitalistic society is characterized by three main classes: an elite and small capitalistic class who own and manage large income-producing properties; i.e., corporations, banks, real estate and agri-businesses, a large working class who do not have their own means of earning a livelihood and must sell their labor power to earn an income, and a middle class of professionals, entrepreneurs, and managers that reside between the two. So just who rules America? Who are the "big interests looking out for themselves? They are as G. William Domhoff states are "the owners and managers of large income-producing properties; i.e., corporations, banks, and agri-businesses, along with the the managers and experts they hire".
The Social Upper Class
Michael Useem in The Inner Circle states, "The upper class consists of the social network of established wealthy families whose status is preeminent , whose culture and identity are distinct, and whose membership is closed to nearly all but those of proper descent". Generally speaking, wealth can be defined as the ownership of marketable assets such as stocks, bonds, and real estate. Income is the amount of wages, dividends and interest paid out to an individual yearly. The people commanding the greatest wealth and highest income are part of the upper class. The .5 to 1 percent of the population that makes up the upper class is also the .5 to 1 percent who owned 39.7 percent of the financial wealth in 2001.
The upper class has it's own exclusive social institutions which include private schools, summer resorts and retreats, and social clubs and gatherings. Large and well known Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and Standford are heavily populated and favored by the upper class in receiving distinctive education. As a result, social clubs also play a unique role in differentiating members of the upper class from other members of society. Membership into these clubs can range from a few to tens of thousands of dollars, as well as being subject to a rigorous screening process. The Links in New York, Pacific Union in San Francisco, Chicago Club in Chicago and the infamous Bohemian Club in San Francisco are a few social clubs with a high concentration of members from the corporate community. The 25 largest industrials have one or more directors as members in one or more of these clubs. Highlighting how the upper class is closely interwined with the corporate community.
The Corporate Community
The nationwide upper class is not only a social class but a economic class deeply rooted in the corporate community. G. William Domhoff states, "Several studies show that those 15-20% of corporate directors who sit on two or more boards, who are called the "inner circle" of the corporate directorate, unite 80-90% of the largest corporations in the United States into a well-connected "corporate community". Chase Manhattan Bank has 45 such connections to other corporations and financial institutions, Wells Fargo Bank has 41 and General Motors 33.
Exxon, the world's largest oil company, contains a large concentration of "interlocking directors". For example, according to Endgame, James R Houghton is not only on the board on Exxon, but is also Chairman and CEO of Corning Inc, on the boards of MetLife, Inc, Corning Museum of Glass, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pierpont Morgan Library, Harvard Corporation, member of Business Council and Council on Foreign Relations.
This highlights the fact that despite competition among the corporate community, there exists cohesion due to their opposition to the liberal labor coalition, anti-corporation and anti-globalization activists, leftists and environmentalists, which derives from their common goals and values and pursuit of profit.
The Policy Formation Network
The corporate community and upper class are supplemented by a wide range of nonprofit organizations such as think tanks, foundations, and policy discussion forums, which itself forms a policy formation network. These institutions play a critical role in creating debates over public policy and in shaping public opinion. The corporate community and upper class have the ability to dominate these organizations due to the fact they were founded by members of the upper class and are funded by large corporations. The Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation are the most highly influential of foundations. Brookings Institute, The American Enterprise, Business Council, Business Roundtable and the Urban Institute are a few of the more important think tanks and policy groups. In fact, the Business Roundtable was highly influential on the corporate community victory of NAFTA. Policy discussion groups bring together directors, managers, government officials and other wealthy or influential people to discuss local and international issues, as well as political, social and economic issues. These groups frame the debate and set the terms for new economic, foreign and other policies.
So Who Rules America?
Despite competition among the corporate community and threats of hostile takeovers, there exists a cohesion rooted in a strong class consciousness which derives from profit motives and capitalist class interests. "Through open and direct involvement in policy planning, through participation in political campaigns and elections, and through appointments to key decision-making positions in government" the upper class are able to rule America and influence decisions affecting the bottom 80% of the population. This power stems from their great concentration of wealth which is derived from ownership and control of large income proudcing corporations. As Domhoff states allowing corporate leaders to "invest money where and when they choose; expand, close, or move their factories and offices at a moment's notice; and hire, promote, and fire employees as they see fit. These powers give them a direct influence over the great majority of Americans, who are dependent upon wages and salaries for their incomes. They also give the corporate rich indirect influence over elected and appointed officials, for the growth and stability of a city, state, or the country as a whole can be jeopardized by a lack of business confidence in government."
Suggested Reading:
Who Rules America by G. William Domhoff
The Inner Circle: Large Corporations and the Rise of Political Activity in the U.S. and U.K. by Michael Useem
The Founding Fortunes: An Anatomy of the Super-Rich Families in America. by Michael Allen
Top Down Policymaking by Thomas Rye
The Power Elite. C Wright Mills
Democracy for the Few Michael Parenti
-blackstone
Modern capitalistic society is characterized by three main classes: an elite and small capitalistic class who own and manage large income-producing properties; i.e., corporations, banks, real estate and agri-businesses, a large working class who do not have their own means of earning a livelihood and must sell their labor power to earn an income, and a middle class of professionals, entrepreneurs, and managers that reside between the two. So just who rules America? Who are the "big interests looking out for themselves? They are as G. William Domhoff states are "the owners and managers of large income-producing properties; i.e., corporations, banks, and agri-businesses, along with the the managers and experts they hire".
The Social Upper Class
Michael Useem in The Inner Circle states, "The upper class consists of the social network of established wealthy families whose status is preeminent , whose culture and identity are distinct, and whose membership is closed to nearly all but those of proper descent". Generally speaking, wealth can be defined as the ownership of marketable assets such as stocks, bonds, and real estate. Income is the amount of wages, dividends and interest paid out to an individual yearly. The people commanding the greatest wealth and highest income are part of the upper class. The .5 to 1 percent of the population that makes up the upper class is also the .5 to 1 percent who owned 39.7 percent of the financial wealth in 2001.
| Financial Wealth | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Top 1 percent | Next 19 percent | Bottom 80 percent | |
| 1983 | 42.9% | 48.4% | 8.7% |
| 1989 | 46.9% | 46.5% | 6.6% |
| 1992 | 45.6% | 46.7% | 7.7% |
| 1995 | 47.2% | 45.9% | 7.0% |
| 1998 | 47.3% | 43.6% | 9.1% |
| 2001 | 39.7% | 51.5% | 8.8% |
The upper class has it's own exclusive social institutions which include private schools, summer resorts and retreats, and social clubs and gatherings. Large and well known Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and Standford are heavily populated and favored by the upper class in receiving distinctive education. As a result, social clubs also play a unique role in differentiating members of the upper class from other members of society. Membership into these clubs can range from a few to tens of thousands of dollars, as well as being subject to a rigorous screening process. The Links in New York, Pacific Union in San Francisco, Chicago Club in Chicago and the infamous Bohemian Club in San Francisco are a few social clubs with a high concentration of members from the corporate community. The 25 largest industrials have one or more directors as members in one or more of these clubs. Highlighting how the upper class is closely interwined with the corporate community.
The Corporate Community
The nationwide upper class is not only a social class but a economic class deeply rooted in the corporate community. G. William Domhoff states, "Several studies show that those 15-20% of corporate directors who sit on two or more boards, who are called the "inner circle" of the corporate directorate, unite 80-90% of the largest corporations in the United States into a well-connected "corporate community". Chase Manhattan Bank has 45 such connections to other corporations and financial institutions, Wells Fargo Bank has 41 and General Motors 33.
Exxon, the world's largest oil company, contains a large concentration of "interlocking directors". For example, according to Endgame, James R Houghton is not only on the board on Exxon, but is also Chairman and CEO of Corning Inc, on the boards of MetLife, Inc, Corning Museum of Glass, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pierpont Morgan Library, Harvard Corporation, member of Business Council and Council on Foreign Relations.
This highlights the fact that despite competition among the corporate community, there exists cohesion due to their opposition to the liberal labor coalition, anti-corporation and anti-globalization activists, leftists and environmentalists, which derives from their common goals and values and pursuit of profit.
The Policy Formation Network
The corporate community and upper class are supplemented by a wide range of nonprofit organizations such as think tanks, foundations, and policy discussion forums, which itself forms a policy formation network. These institutions play a critical role in creating debates over public policy and in shaping public opinion. The corporate community and upper class have the ability to dominate these organizations due to the fact they were founded by members of the upper class and are funded by large corporations. The Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation are the most highly influential of foundations. Brookings Institute, The American Enterprise, Business Council, Business Roundtable and the Urban Institute are a few of the more important think tanks and policy groups. In fact, the Business Roundtable was highly influential on the corporate community victory of NAFTA. Policy discussion groups bring together directors, managers, government officials and other wealthy or influential people to discuss local and international issues, as well as political, social and economic issues. These groups frame the debate and set the terms for new economic, foreign and other policies.
So Who Rules America?
Despite competition among the corporate community and threats of hostile takeovers, there exists a cohesion rooted in a strong class consciousness which derives from profit motives and capitalist class interests. "Through open and direct involvement in policy planning, through participation in political campaigns and elections, and through appointments to key decision-making positions in government" the upper class are able to rule America and influence decisions affecting the bottom 80% of the population. This power stems from their great concentration of wealth which is derived from ownership and control of large income proudcing corporations. As Domhoff states allowing corporate leaders to "invest money where and when they choose; expand, close, or move their factories and offices at a moment's notice; and hire, promote, and fire employees as they see fit. These powers give them a direct influence over the great majority of Americans, who are dependent upon wages and salaries for their incomes. They also give the corporate rich indirect influence over elected and appointed officials, for the growth and stability of a city, state, or the country as a whole can be jeopardized by a lack of business confidence in government."
Suggested Reading:
Who Rules America by G. William Domhoff
The Inner Circle: Large Corporations and the Rise of Political Activity in the U.S. and U.K. by Michael Useem
The Founding Fortunes: An Anatomy of the Super-Rich Families in America. by Michael Allen
Top Down Policymaking by Thomas Rye
The Power Elite. C Wright Mills
Democracy for the Few Michael Parenti
-blackstone
Sunday, January 13
The State vs Black America
What is the State?
The state refers to the legislature -parliamentary control- an the familiar state organs - the courts, the army, police, and the wide of administrative services. Also included in the state is public education, policy-making organizations and such state organs that control the economy, such as the national banks. According to Karl Marx, it is the"centralized State power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature...[and]parliamentary control.. the national power of capital over labor, a public forced organized for social enslavement". Peter Kropotkin claims, "The State..includes the existence of a power situated above society, but also of a territorial concentration as well as the concentration in the hands of a few of many functions in the life of societies..A whole mechanism of legislation and of policing has to be developed in order to subject some classes to the domination of others". The power vested in it, places the state above and alienated from society, serving the interests of the upper class. It is a structured hierarchy objectively at the service of the top layer of the bourgeoisie or upper class.
The state therefore serves two purposes. One as it's role as an coercive and repressive institution. Which, the police and military being the forefront of those operations. The other role is the organizing of bourgeois democracy: through the combination of certain institutions, laws and policies.
As a capitalist state, the state functions to repress worker's power and pursue interests of the upper class and maintain social harmony. As a racist state, the state functions to repress black power, black organization and movements which can cause social upheaval to the detriment of the power elite, which is for the most part white male.
Legislature, Judiciary and the Prison Industrial Complex
Blacks represent 13 percent of the population, but comprised 35 percent of drug arrests, 55 percent of drug convictions, 74 percent of drug prisoners and 50 percent of those waiting on death row. Prosecutors sought the death penalty 70 percent of the time when an African American killed a White person, but only 19 percent of the time when it was reversed. Another telling statistic is the fact that blacks constitute 13 percent of the population, but were 67 percent of the juveniles in adult courts and 77 percent of the juveniles in adult prisons. In the Jena 6 case, Mychal Bell was originally charged with attempted murder, which was later brought down to aggravated second degree battery, with the "dangerous weapon" used in the attack was argued to be his shoes. After legal maneuvering, rallies, appeals to have him free on bail, Bell was subsequently sent back to juvenile detention for "violating his probation".
Under the infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws it was a 5-year minimum sentence for possessing 500g of powdered cocaine, while the amount of crack needed for a five year sentence is only five grams, a 100:1 ratio. Being that crack cocaine was a cheaper drug to produce and buy, it was popular in the urban ghetto. Which in turn caused Blacks to represent 84 percent of crack cocaine convictions.
The Police and Military
The fact that Blacks comprised 17 percent of drivers on the state of Maryland highway, but 70 percent of drivers stopped by police is a powerful example of racial profiling and repressive tactics utilized by the Police on Black America, and Black males in particular. Police brutality, is a term used to describe the excessive use of physical force, assault, verbal attacks, and threats by police officers and other law enforcement officers, and is a term well understood in Black America. There exist numerous documented cases of the police's function as a coercive and repressive institution through the usage of police brutality.
On Halloween (2007) Rayshawn Moreno and other teens on hit an unmarked police car with an egg. The Officer grabbed Rashaywn into the cop car, where he was taken to a secluded, remote area, stripped of his clothes, beaten by the officers and left for dead. While, Sean Bell died in a hail of 50 bullets fired by undercover police officers after hitting an unmarked police car. Likewise, Amadou Diallo, died from the 19 of 41 bullets fired at him because cops mistook his wallet for a gun. In March 1991, Rodney King was brutalized by 3 cops as 23 other officers wached as he was beaten with batons and shocked with stun guns.
Police brutality, in some cases, especially in regards to the urban riots of the 60's, have had to rely on the coercive and repressive functions of the military to quell social upheaval. For example, a patrolmans' attack on Marquetet Frye in Los Angeles led to the Watts Riots. The conflict resulted not only in 34 deaths and $40 million in damage, but also the National Guard being called to control the riots.
Conclusion
This was just a brief example of how a few apparatuses of the state are used in a coercive and repressive way against Black America. It highlighted, legislation specifically targeting black men in the urban ghetto, in the form of Rockefeller Drug Laws. Which resulted in a explosion of inmate population and added to the disproportionate number of African Americans incarcerated. It showed many cases of recent police brutality and harassment centered in the Black Community, which has a psychological effect on it's residents. It also, showed how when the police cannot contain urban unrest, the military(our troops?) are ready to contain the rebellions.
There are many other state organs, such as policy forming organizations, that play a role in the repression of rights of Black America and it's continual exploitation. More also can be said of public education and it's role of perpetuating the cycle of violence in poverty in the black community. For example, 40 percent of African American males are illiterate and research indicates that illiteracy is the biggest predictor of crime, 90 percent of African-American male inmates are illiterate.
All in all, the evidence makes a compelling case that the state is not only against workers, but disproportionately against blacks more so than whites.
The state refers to the legislature -parliamentary control- an the familiar state organs - the courts, the army, police, and the wide of administrative services. Also included in the state is public education, policy-making organizations and such state organs that control the economy, such as the national banks. According to Karl Marx, it is the"centralized State power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature...[and]parliamentary control.. the national power of capital over labor, a public forced organized for social enslavement". Peter Kropotkin claims, "The State..includes the existence of a power situated above society, but also of a territorial concentration as well as the concentration in the hands of a few of many functions in the life of societies..A whole mechanism of legislation and of policing has to be developed in order to subject some classes to the domination of others". The power vested in it, places the state above and alienated from society, serving the interests of the upper class. It is a structured hierarchy objectively at the service of the top layer of the bourgeoisie or upper class.
The state therefore serves two purposes. One as it's role as an coercive and repressive institution. Which, the police and military being the forefront of those operations. The other role is the organizing of bourgeois democracy: through the combination of certain institutions, laws and policies.
As a capitalist state, the state functions to repress worker's power and pursue interests of the upper class and maintain social harmony. As a racist state, the state functions to repress black power, black organization and movements which can cause social upheaval to the detriment of the power elite, which is for the most part white male.
Legislature, Judiciary and the Prison Industrial Complex
Blacks represent 13 percent of the population, but comprised 35 percent of drug arrests, 55 percent of drug convictions, 74 percent of drug prisoners and 50 percent of those waiting on death row. Prosecutors sought the death penalty 70 percent of the time when an African American killed a White person, but only 19 percent of the time when it was reversed. Another telling statistic is the fact that blacks constitute 13 percent of the population, but were 67 percent of the juveniles in adult courts and 77 percent of the juveniles in adult prisons. In the Jena 6 case, Mychal Bell was originally charged with attempted murder, which was later brought down to aggravated second degree battery, with the "dangerous weapon" used in the attack was argued to be his shoes. After legal maneuvering, rallies, appeals to have him free on bail, Bell was subsequently sent back to juvenile detention for "violating his probation".
Under the infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws it was a 5-year minimum sentence for possessing 500g of powdered cocaine, while the amount of crack needed for a five year sentence is only five grams, a 100:1 ratio. Being that crack cocaine was a cheaper drug to produce and buy, it was popular in the urban ghetto. Which in turn caused Blacks to represent 84 percent of crack cocaine convictions.
The Police and Military
The fact that Blacks comprised 17 percent of drivers on the state of Maryland highway, but 70 percent of drivers stopped by police is a powerful example of racial profiling and repressive tactics utilized by the Police on Black America, and Black males in particular. Police brutality, is a term used to describe the excessive use of physical force, assault, verbal attacks, and threats by police officers and other law enforcement officers, and is a term well understood in Black America. There exist numerous documented cases of the police's function as a coercive and repressive institution through the usage of police brutality.
On Halloween (2007) Rayshawn Moreno and other teens on hit an unmarked police car with an egg. The Officer grabbed Rashaywn into the cop car, where he was taken to a secluded, remote area, stripped of his clothes, beaten by the officers and left for dead. While, Sean Bell died in a hail of 50 bullets fired by undercover police officers after hitting an unmarked police car. Likewise, Amadou Diallo, died from the 19 of 41 bullets fired at him because cops mistook his wallet for a gun. In March 1991, Rodney King was brutalized by 3 cops as 23 other officers wached as he was beaten with batons and shocked with stun guns.
Police brutality, in some cases, especially in regards to the urban riots of the 60's, have had to rely on the coercive and repressive functions of the military to quell social upheaval. For example, a patrolmans' attack on Marquetet Frye in Los Angeles led to the Watts Riots. The conflict resulted not only in 34 deaths and $40 million in damage, but also the National Guard being called to control the riots.
Conclusion
This was just a brief example of how a few apparatuses of the state are used in a coercive and repressive way against Black America. It highlighted, legislation specifically targeting black men in the urban ghetto, in the form of Rockefeller Drug Laws. Which resulted in a explosion of inmate population and added to the disproportionate number of African Americans incarcerated. It showed many cases of recent police brutality and harassment centered in the Black Community, which has a psychological effect on it's residents. It also, showed how when the police cannot contain urban unrest, the military(our troops?) are ready to contain the rebellions.
There are many other state organs, such as policy forming organizations, that play a role in the repression of rights of Black America and it's continual exploitation. More also can be said of public education and it's role of perpetuating the cycle of violence in poverty in the black community. For example, 40 percent of African American males are illiterate and research indicates that illiteracy is the biggest predictor of crime, 90 percent of African-American male inmates are illiterate.
All in all, the evidence makes a compelling case that the state is not only against workers, but disproportionately against blacks more so than whites.
Monday, December 31
Stop the War - Protest the RNC - Sep 1, 2008 - St. Paul, MN
2007 is winding down and we are heading into 2008. The U.S. occupation of Iraq continues on, and the Bush administration threatens Iran. The anti-war movement did some good and important things in 2007. But 2008, an election year, can be a year the anti-war movement can really burst out on the national stage on a scale that hasn't yet happened. The Republican and Democratic candidates are all for continuing the U.S. war and occupation in some form. The only thing close to exceptions are Libertarian / Republican Ron Paul, who is absolutely nuts on other major issues, and Dennis Kucinich, who has exactly zero chance of winning the Democratic nomination, and so far has been unable to even move the other candidates' rhetoric to the left, letalone their action. The left and the anti-war movement are presented with a pretty clear situation - the vast majority of the people in the U.S. want the war to end, and none of the ruling class's hand-picked "viable" candidate from either party is calling for the war to end. We have an opportunity this year like very few other times in recent years to see the radicalization of broad numbers of people in the U.S. if we can step up and be serious about organizing spaces, activities and organizations that people can join and get involved with. 2008 could be a year for dramatic growth of the anti-war movement and the left. It won't be easy - the mass media and the electoral game will be pulling people in the opposite direction. The logic will be to "quiet down" and subsume the anti-war movement behind the eventual Democratic nominee (likely Hillary, the most pro-war of all of them) in the interest of beating the Republicans. And it's a powerful pull, because the Bush administration has been particularly odious. Different forces on the left will make different decisions about whether to support one or the other capitalist party candidates, a Green candidate (which could be Cynthia McKinney - a possibly interesting option for the anti-war movement), or to oppose them all. That remains to be seen.
But if we want to see the anti-war movement make gains this year, the bottom line that we must all unite on is the need to continue to build the anti-war movement in the streets to move the entire debate to the left and force all the politicians to respond. We need to turn up the pressure this year, not duck and cover.
Two big nodal points in that effort are the protests at the Republican and Democratic Conventions this summer/fall. In late August, the Democratic Convention will be happening in Denver, Colorado. The Recreate 68 coalition there is organizing to protest the DNC. Those protests will be important, since the Democrats will not be nominating a candidate who calls for immediate withdrawl of U.S. troops. So protesting them to demand immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops will be important.
Then, from September 1-4, 2008, the Republicans will hold their convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. While some folks on the left seem to be arguing that the main focus of our protests should be the Democrats this year, I think this is incorrect. The Republicans control the executive branch of government and are principally responsible for the occupation of Iraq and a possible attack on Iran, as well as a list of crimes on other issues so long that I don't even know where to start. And millions and millions of people correctly despise Bush and the Republicans for it. The Republicans will also be nominating a candidate who will continue the war. They must be protested, and in a big and powerful way.
Our movement can and will channel that massive outrage that people feel into the biggest street protests that Minnesota has ever seen. Unluckily for the Republicans, the anti-war movement in Minnesota is strong and well-organized. Groups like the Anti-War Committee, Women Against Military Madness and others have been doing amazing work for years. And when people heard that the RNC would be held in Minnesota, the anti-war movement and the left sprung into action right away.
The Protest RNC 2008 coalition has been building a broad-based movement to protest the RNC. Part of this effort is the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, which is planning for a massive march on the first day of the RNC, September 1, 2008. The goal is for this march to be as big as possible - tens of thousands, maybe more. On the first day of the RNC 2004 in New York City, 500,000 people marched against the Republicans and against the war. St. Paul is not NYC, but the Twin Cities are generally progressive, and the vast majority of people who live here are against the Republicans and against the war. We just have to figure out how to get a big chunk of them into the streets on September 1, 2008. There will also be tends of thousands of people coming from around the Midwest and the rest of the country.
For the anarchist-inclined out there, you may also want to hook up with the RNC Welcoming Committee, an anarchist grouping that is planning their own series of actions against the RNC. The various forces in the Minnesota left are working together to overshadow the Republicans during their convention, in front of the eyes of the world. We will not be divided between "good" and "bad" protesters, or whatever else the powers-that-be are trying to come up with to divide the movement and diminish the crowds. A very good article, Unlikely as it might seem, mainstream media lies, was recently written by Jess Sundin from the Anti-War Committee, in response to the police and mass media's first real attempt to divide protesters. This kind of principled solidarity is key to having a big, diverse and effective movement.
Organizers are encouraging everyone to come to Minnesota to protest the RNC, no matter where you live. The first day of the RNC, September 1, is Labor Day, so for many people it's a 3-day weekend. Come enjoy your 3-day weekend in scenic and beautiful Minnesota! Especially if you're in the Midwest, start planning now to bring busses, carloads, trains full of people.
The planning for the march on the first day of the RNC has already begun, and the Protest RNC 2008 coalition has been fighting with the city for months already to get permits in place to march in front of the Xcel Center where the convention will take place, which of course the government is coming up with every excuse possible not to grant. That struggle continues, but the march on September 1, 2008 will be happening regardless of how long St. Paul's bureaucrats dawdle. Start making plans to come.
And everyone is encouraged to come help plan the protests. There will be a national organizing conference for that purpose on February 9-10, 2008 at the University of Minnesota. Check out the info about it here, and register online for the conference here.
Lets make 2008 a year that will be remembered for decades to come for the anti-war movement and the left in the U.S.
Tuesday, December 11
National Intelligence Estimate on Iranian nuclear weapons: intelligence failure?
Last week it was revealed that a national intelligence estimate compiled by the country's 16 intelligence agencies, released in July, found that Iran had ceased efforts to produce nuclear weapons in 2003. Of course, the rhetoric that had been coming from the Bush regime did not match this estimate. Warnings of an Iranian nuclear threat have streamed from the regime right up untilthis past week. In fact, the regime still insist that Iran poses a significant threat to US national security. These claims have fueled endless amounts of fear mongering on the part of the mass media and others such as the religious right about the perceived threat Iran posses to the US, Israel and even western civilization as a whole.
Without hestitation the conservative hardliners were out in full force to attempt to deny this revelation. Reportedly Dick Cheney attempted to block the release of the report, claiming that it cannot be valid. This is the same man who still insist stock piles of weapons of mass destruction are still present in Iraq.
In their twisted world, where reality is seemingly always blinded by ideology, conservatives have come to believe that the dilemna in this episode, just as in the justification to invade Iraq, is that the intelligence did not refelct the claims made by the Bush regime, therefore the intelligence was flawed, it was an "intelligence failure." How could Bush and friends be wrong after all? Of course, all rational people know that the dilemna is the fact that the regime knowingly made claims that ran contary to what intelligence actually revealed to be true, in order to further their militant agenda.
Once again, we have seen that the Bush regime is willing to decieve not only the citizens of the US, but the world in order to pursue its objectives. Nor has the regiem relented in its rhetoric and push against the "Iranian nuclear threat." Condoleeza Rice was in Europe this week in attempt to muster support for new sanctions against Iran, despite the revelation that Iran had actually stopped its nuclear weapons four years ago! This time around the world must take a stand and not allow these hard line ideolouges to decive the world in order to push their agenda.
Saturday, December 8
Venezuela's Referendum Results and the Struggle for Socialism
The Following is a presentation which I wrote for a Party for Socialism and Liberation Branch Meeting digging into the reasons why the December 2nd reforms failed in Venezuela, and what it means for the movement; and intensification of the tightening of the struggle for socialism
On December 2nd, Venezuela’s bolivarian revolution faced its first real setback since the US backed counter-revolutionary coup of 2002. 69 constitutional reforms proposed by Chavez in order to solidify the revolution in Venezuela further were defeated by barely more than 1% of the vote. The next day as results of the referendum hit the press, Chavez boldy conceded defeat, “for now”, promising that the struggle was far from over and Venezuela would continue on the road to socialism.
Venezuela’s bolivarian revolution has been a process which began back in 1989 with the Caracazo where the people took to the streets rebelling against neoliberal reforms which had stripped them of basic social services. The uprising was suppressed, but the impoverished living conditions of the vast majority of people in Venezuela as a result of the neo-liberal reforms did not stop, thus the struggle for change would continue. In 1992, Chavez and the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement led a military uprising which was defeated. Chavez was then imprisoned however he became a national hero when he appreared on air after he was captured to tell the revolutionary forces to stand down... “for now.” While in prison people started organizing in their communities and neighborhoods in support of Chavez throughout the country. When he was finally released Chavez had massive support and decided to run for president in 1998. Chavez didn’t win the election because he had the most money and corporate funding as past Venezuelan presidents had, but because of his intense popular support. Since the revolution has achieved state power and consolidated itself more and more there have been massive gains for the working class from healthcare and housing in the barrios, to free university education for working class students and communal councils that empower the people. But with every inch gained by the working class, the old ruling class has fought back
In the old Venezuela, the capitalist class had complete control. This means that the US and European oil barrons and a few wealthy landowning families had complete control of Venezuela, its economy, and its oil wealth leaving the millions and millions of Venezuelans who actually produced the wealth living in dire impoverished conditions. A class with that much power is not going to give up without a fight. The loss of the Referendum is due to a variety of reasons but it stems from this class struggle between the working class, the vast majoirty of society, and the capitalist class, and in every fight or struggle, even the best fighter will take a hit. Venezuela’s revolution is no different, and socialist revolutions in the past from Russia to Cuba and China to Korea have been no different.
With this is mind, its easier to really understand why the referendum lost so narrowly. The first major reason goes back to what Russian Revolutionary Vladmir Lenin stated a little over a century ago. In order for the working class to make a revolution, it needs a party to unite itself. This party needs to lead the people to taking power and in order to do so, it naturally needs experience. In Venezuela, the “vanguard party” as Lenin called it, is the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The party is brand new, forged out of the leftist parties which backed the bolivarian revolution and out of the struggle that defines Venezuela today. When the party was formed, corporate media all over the world was alarmed calling the formation a totalitarian move and other nonsense. The reality was that they were scared of the people uniting under one party and of the left uniting, for them, it could only spell trouble. Yet some of the groups which had supported Chavez decided to go down a road of opportunism. They took this opportunity to publicize themselves by breaking off with the movement and attempting to split the left for their own ends. Groups like Podemos campaigned for the “No” vote to the referendum under the banner of 21st century socialism, confusing supporters of the bolivarian revolution. This as well as General Baduels’ defection to the opposition make up the “fifth column” of the Venezuelan Revolution. They are liberal elements which as the struggle sharpens are begining to fade out. They’re the careerists, the bureacrats, and the liberals and they’re presence has been crushing to the Chavista movement. It is this segment of the movement which has held back socialism and the referendum’s failure should be an awakening to Venezuelans who want to see real change. It was Fifth column bureacrats who failed to organized succesful pro-si campaigns in communities and districts all over Venezuela while the opposition went door-to-door threatening working class Venezuelans and claiming the government would take their car, house, and children away if the reform was passed.
This leads to the Second major reason the referendum failed. It wasn’t just that the non-revolutionary wing of the movement and party essentially worked against the reforms confusing people by claiming to be for socialism but in fact aiding capitalis, it was the vicious campaign of the ruling class against campaign. In Venezuela there have been alot of gains for the people but the bourgeoisie still control the media. Newspapers throughout Venezuela ran editorials which spread disinformation on the nature of the reforms and ads which made outrageous claims showing supposedly Cuban butcher shops which were empty and claiming that this was Venezuela’s future if the reforms were approved. Bourgeois democracy is all based on money and corporate investment. While the Si campaign was funded grassroots from the people, the no campaign was funded by corporations, oil barrons, landlords, and business federations. A few days before referendum Venezuela uncovered CIA documents in support of the No campaign which advocated a campaign of destablization to stop the reforms. With the backing of the corporations and US imperialism the “No” campaign was able to get its message out far easier than the “Si” campaign based in the support of the working class in the barrios which have gained so much from the revolution. Thus the reality is that until capitalism is fully overthrown, there can be no real democracy just democracy of the rich.
The failure of the reforms simply serves as a reminder that socialism cannot be built just through the ballot box, it comes from the streets, from popular struggle. In Venezuela the bourgeois still have power and until they are fully expropriated and the people gain control of everything for their benefit and use, they will continue to spread their misinformation and lies. Through their wild campaign of deeming Chavez a “dictator” they scared some 2.5 million voters who had voted for Chavez and Socialism in the past away from the voting booth. The opposition gained only a small number of votes, a fraction which led them to barely win, it was the misinformation spread on individual reforms of the 69 proposed and the failure of the Bolivarian movement to respond to these lies because of the opportunist wing of the movement and their sabotage which led to the defeat.
In short, the loss of the referendum will be wake up call for the revolutionaries in Venezuela, people who have seen the benefits of the revolution and want to see it defended and progressed will now tighten up, they will correct the mistakes pointed out, and the struggle in Venezuela will only intensify. The reality is that the people are on the side of the revolution. Over 5 million people have signed to the PSUV, now its time for the PSUV to step up and lead this revolution. Revolutionaries in Venezuela will now turn to more intense struggle to defend the revolution and advance it so that Venezuela can finally be free from US imperialism.
On December 2nd, Venezuela’s bolivarian revolution faced its first real setback since the US backed counter-revolutionary coup of 2002. 69 constitutional reforms proposed by Chavez in order to solidify the revolution in Venezuela further were defeated by barely more than 1% of the vote. The next day as results of the referendum hit the press, Chavez boldy conceded defeat, “for now”, promising that the struggle was far from over and Venezuela would continue on the road to socialism.
Venezuela’s bolivarian revolution has been a process which began back in 1989 with the Caracazo where the people took to the streets rebelling against neoliberal reforms which had stripped them of basic social services. The uprising was suppressed, but the impoverished living conditions of the vast majority of people in Venezuela as a result of the neo-liberal reforms did not stop, thus the struggle for change would continue. In 1992, Chavez and the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement led a military uprising which was defeated. Chavez was then imprisoned however he became a national hero when he appreared on air after he was captured to tell the revolutionary forces to stand down... “for now.” While in prison people started organizing in their communities and neighborhoods in support of Chavez throughout the country. When he was finally released Chavez had massive support and decided to run for president in 1998. Chavez didn’t win the election because he had the most money and corporate funding as past Venezuelan presidents had, but because of his intense popular support. Since the revolution has achieved state power and consolidated itself more and more there have been massive gains for the working class from healthcare and housing in the barrios, to free university education for working class students and communal councils that empower the people. But with every inch gained by the working class, the old ruling class has fought back
In the old Venezuela, the capitalist class had complete control. This means that the US and European oil barrons and a few wealthy landowning families had complete control of Venezuela, its economy, and its oil wealth leaving the millions and millions of Venezuelans who actually produced the wealth living in dire impoverished conditions. A class with that much power is not going to give up without a fight. The loss of the Referendum is due to a variety of reasons but it stems from this class struggle between the working class, the vast majoirty of society, and the capitalist class, and in every fight or struggle, even the best fighter will take a hit. Venezuela’s revolution is no different, and socialist revolutions in the past from Russia to Cuba and China to Korea have been no different.
With this is mind, its easier to really understand why the referendum lost so narrowly. The first major reason goes back to what Russian Revolutionary Vladmir Lenin stated a little over a century ago. In order for the working class to make a revolution, it needs a party to unite itself. This party needs to lead the people to taking power and in order to do so, it naturally needs experience. In Venezuela, the “vanguard party” as Lenin called it, is the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The party is brand new, forged out of the leftist parties which backed the bolivarian revolution and out of the struggle that defines Venezuela today. When the party was formed, corporate media all over the world was alarmed calling the formation a totalitarian move and other nonsense. The reality was that they were scared of the people uniting under one party and of the left uniting, for them, it could only spell trouble. Yet some of the groups which had supported Chavez decided to go down a road of opportunism. They took this opportunity to publicize themselves by breaking off with the movement and attempting to split the left for their own ends. Groups like Podemos campaigned for the “No” vote to the referendum under the banner of 21st century socialism, confusing supporters of the bolivarian revolution. This as well as General Baduels’ defection to the opposition make up the “fifth column” of the Venezuelan Revolution. They are liberal elements which as the struggle sharpens are begining to fade out. They’re the careerists, the bureacrats, and the liberals and they’re presence has been crushing to the Chavista movement. It is this segment of the movement which has held back socialism and the referendum’s failure should be an awakening to Venezuelans who want to see real change. It was Fifth column bureacrats who failed to organized succesful pro-si campaigns in communities and districts all over Venezuela while the opposition went door-to-door threatening working class Venezuelans and claiming the government would take their car, house, and children away if the reform was passed.
This leads to the Second major reason the referendum failed. It wasn’t just that the non-revolutionary wing of the movement and party essentially worked against the reforms confusing people by claiming to be for socialism but in fact aiding capitalis, it was the vicious campaign of the ruling class against campaign. In Venezuela there have been alot of gains for the people but the bourgeoisie still control the media. Newspapers throughout Venezuela ran editorials which spread disinformation on the nature of the reforms and ads which made outrageous claims showing supposedly Cuban butcher shops which were empty and claiming that this was Venezuela’s future if the reforms were approved. Bourgeois democracy is all based on money and corporate investment. While the Si campaign was funded grassroots from the people, the no campaign was funded by corporations, oil barrons, landlords, and business federations. A few days before referendum Venezuela uncovered CIA documents in support of the No campaign which advocated a campaign of destablization to stop the reforms. With the backing of the corporations and US imperialism the “No” campaign was able to get its message out far easier than the “Si” campaign based in the support of the working class in the barrios which have gained so much from the revolution. Thus the reality is that until capitalism is fully overthrown, there can be no real democracy just democracy of the rich.
The failure of the reforms simply serves as a reminder that socialism cannot be built just through the ballot box, it comes from the streets, from popular struggle. In Venezuela the bourgeois still have power and until they are fully expropriated and the people gain control of everything for their benefit and use, they will continue to spread their misinformation and lies. Through their wild campaign of deeming Chavez a “dictator” they scared some 2.5 million voters who had voted for Chavez and Socialism in the past away from the voting booth. The opposition gained only a small number of votes, a fraction which led them to barely win, it was the misinformation spread on individual reforms of the 69 proposed and the failure of the Bolivarian movement to respond to these lies because of the opportunist wing of the movement and their sabotage which led to the defeat.
In short, the loss of the referendum will be wake up call for the revolutionaries in Venezuela, people who have seen the benefits of the revolution and want to see it defended and progressed will now tighten up, they will correct the mistakes pointed out, and the struggle in Venezuela will only intensify. The reality is that the people are on the side of the revolution. Over 5 million people have signed to the PSUV, now its time for the PSUV to step up and lead this revolution. Revolutionaries in Venezuela will now turn to more intense struggle to defend the revolution and advance it so that Venezuela can finally be free from US imperialism.
Tuesday, December 4
Remembering Our Revolutionary Heroes: Fred Hampton
Rise! Resist! Revolt! will begin to run monthly pieces on different revolutionary figures in history, their accomplishments for the people, and their meaning for people in the struggle today. The first installment of "Remembering Our Revolutionary Heroes" will be about Fred Hampton in honor of the 40th anniversarry of his murder today, December 4th.
December Fourth is a day of great loss as well as a day to pay respect to a great revolutionary leader; Fred Hampton. On this day Forty years ago Fred Hampton was murdered in a rain of bullets by Chicago police who kicked down his door. Hampton didn't resist, he didn't even have time too because the cops were there to kill him.
How things went down
Hampton had taught a political education on the evening of December third. Him and his fellow panthers retired to his apartment after, as was customary. At 4:45 in the morning, The police busted down the door. firing automatic rounds throughout the house. The following transcript was heard by Hamptons comrade who was "sleeping" when the raid happened.
"That's Fred Hampton."
"Is he dead?... Bring him out."
"He's barely alive; he'll make it."
(Two Gun Shots)
"He's good and dead now."
The Next day the pigs claimed they had taken out a "extremely vicious" cell of the BPP. They were later praised for their "bravery" (killing unarmed people while they sleep takes courage of course) and their "restraint". Soon however the truth leaked out it was found that police had fired 98 shots while the panthers fired 1.
Why it matters today
The important lesson from the murder of Fred Hampton is that contrary to whatever the capitalists may say about this country being a "democracy" with "free speach", Fred Hampton is one of the most blatant examples of how this is no democracy, it is a dictatorship of the ruling capitalist class which brutally suppresses people who really speak up and challenge things and gain a following.
Revolutionaries and progressive people need to recognize this, and take security precautions so that in a future revolutionary situation, we do not make the same mistakes of allowing the police to know our location and kick down our doors at will.
Fred Hampton and the Movement
Fred Hampton, represented one of the leaders of the Black Panther Party who was in it until the end. When he was martyred he was a primiere leader in the party. This was important because it was largely due to him, and others like him, that the most successful revolutionary vanguard in US history was built. Fred Hampton understood Revolution
December Fourth is a day of great loss as well as a day to pay respect to a great revolutionary leader; Fred Hampton. On this day Forty years ago Fred Hampton was murdered in a rain of bullets by Chicago police who kicked down his door. Hampton didn't resist, he didn't even have time too because the cops were there to kill him.
How things went down
Hampton had taught a political education on the evening of December third. Him and his fellow panthers retired to his apartment after, as was customary. At 4:45 in the morning, The police busted down the door. firing automatic rounds throughout the house. The following transcript was heard by Hamptons comrade who was "sleeping" when the raid happened.
"That's Fred Hampton."
"Is he dead?... Bring him out."
"He's barely alive; he'll make it."
(Two Gun Shots)
"He's good and dead now."
The Next day the pigs claimed they had taken out a "extremely vicious" cell of the BPP. They were later praised for their "bravery" (killing unarmed people while they sleep takes courage of course) and their "restraint". Soon however the truth leaked out it was found that police had fired 98 shots while the panthers fired 1.
Why it matters today
The important lesson from the murder of Fred Hampton is that contrary to whatever the capitalists may say about this country being a "democracy" with "free speach", Fred Hampton is one of the most blatant examples of how this is no democracy, it is a dictatorship of the ruling capitalist class which brutally suppresses people who really speak up and challenge things and gain a following.
Revolutionaries and progressive people need to recognize this, and take security precautions so that in a future revolutionary situation, we do not make the same mistakes of allowing the police to know our location and kick down our doors at will.
Fred Hampton and the Movement
Fred Hampton, represented one of the leaders of the Black Panther Party who was in it until the end. When he was martyred he was a primiere leader in the party. This was important because it was largely due to him, and others like him, that the most successful revolutionary vanguard in US history was built. Fred Hampton understood Revolution
A lot of people get the word revolution mixed up and they think revolutions a bad word. Revolution is nothing but like having a sore on your body and then you put something on that sore to cure that infection. And Im telling you that were living in an infectious society right now. Im telling you that were living in a sick society. And anybody that endorses integrating into this sick society before its cleaned up is a man whos committing a crime against the people.He also understood community organizing and appealing to the people's needs. Because of this, him and his fellow cadre were able to build a fighting party which was armed, educated, and providing for the masses. The importance of Fred Hampton to Revolutionaries today is immense as his example is one for everyone trying to build a movement in the "belly of the beast" to build on and learn from.
Giving the means to an end (of capitalism)
Greetings comrades! This is ahab writing to you directly from the belly of the beast! In this day and age dissension has never been more evident, class awareness and the idea of revolution is as prominent as its ever been, maybe even more so as we deal with our modern day hitler and his gestapo. The purpose of me writing to you is to raise awareness and prepare you for the future. We are the working class, the working men, woman and children of the world. We are the blood that pumps through the economic and social body, we are the heart and soul of it. It is up to us to change our lives and the future lives of our children.
None of us know when revolution will spring, but preparing yourself for it is a necessary task. Not just physically and mentally, but socially, we need to prepare ourselves. We are in the technological age, information about anything is at our finger tips, and spreading information is just as easy as finding it. Our culture, especially the youth, is seriously misinformed, as we know, about a lot of things socialist, communist and anarchist. The only way to raise insurrection is to inform the public of their exploitation and the evils of capitalism, to reveal it's true nature. We all know this is not an easy task, everyone has different opinions and, thanx to history class, communism and anarchism have been portrayed as evil and murderous, and anyone tied to either ideology is sold as barbaric and nieve. But do not fear comrades, because just as marx said "The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles" so, as we know, near the end people will realize for themselves the atrocities of the capitalist machine. So either through bloody or democratic revolution, our dream of utopia will one day be realized.
BUT
In the instance of bloody and violent revolution (which personally I see is the only way capitalism can and will fall) I want to introduce to you the D.I.Y. culture, a long tradition of commies and anarcho's alike. During the revolution you will need to know how to take care of yourself and others, either with first aid or weapons knowledge, its essential to the survival of guerilla's to know how to fight, kill and survive. So amongst other things I want to share educational knowledge of how to survive in an urban combat environment. That is why I joined this multi-blogger blog. We are the product of our environment, and we can change that environment to whatever we want.
So First lets start with something easy. My personal favorite and the weapon of choice of rioters, the molotov cocktail.
The molotov cocktail is a simple yet effective tool against ground troops and light vehicles, its method of preperation is simple and is as follows:
1 glass bottle or lightbulb
1 rag
1 part gasoline
1 part motor oil
-OR-
1 glass bottle or lightbulb
1 rag
1 part gasoline
1 part roofing tar
melted wax
Now like I said, this and any other recipe for disaster I share is for EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY! They are dangerous and WILL GET YOU IN TROUBLE! So save it for when you need it ;).
Thats it for me today, I've spent enough time on here and am going outdoors lol peace and remember LIVE ABOVE THE LAW.
Some cool sites to check out:
My Blog
http://positivedissension.blogspot.com/
RevolutionaryLeft.com
http://revleft.com/
Instructables
http://www.instructables.com/home
Also in memory of Fred Hampton, my favorite video of him:
None of us know when revolution will spring, but preparing yourself for it is a necessary task. Not just physically and mentally, but socially, we need to prepare ourselves. We are in the technological age, information about anything is at our finger tips, and spreading information is just as easy as finding it. Our culture, especially the youth, is seriously misinformed, as we know, about a lot of things socialist, communist and anarchist. The only way to raise insurrection is to inform the public of their exploitation and the evils of capitalism, to reveal it's true nature. We all know this is not an easy task, everyone has different opinions and, thanx to history class, communism and anarchism have been portrayed as evil and murderous, and anyone tied to either ideology is sold as barbaric and nieve. But do not fear comrades, because just as marx said "The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles" so, as we know, near the end people will realize for themselves the atrocities of the capitalist machine. So either through bloody or democratic revolution, our dream of utopia will one day be realized.
BUT
In the instance of bloody and violent revolution (which personally I see is the only way capitalism can and will fall) I want to introduce to you the D.I.Y. culture, a long tradition of commies and anarcho's alike. During the revolution you will need to know how to take care of yourself and others, either with first aid or weapons knowledge, its essential to the survival of guerilla's to know how to fight, kill and survive. So amongst other things I want to share educational knowledge of how to survive in an urban combat environment. That is why I joined this multi-blogger blog. We are the product of our environment, and we can change that environment to whatever we want.
So First lets start with something easy. My personal favorite and the weapon of choice of rioters, the molotov cocktail.
The molotov cocktail is a simple yet effective tool against ground troops and light vehicles, its method of preperation is simple and is as follows:
1 glass bottle or lightbulb
1 rag
1 part gasoline
1 part motor oil
-OR-
1 glass bottle or lightbulb
1 rag
1 part gasoline
1 part roofing tar
melted wax
Now like I said, this and any other recipe for disaster I share is for EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY! They are dangerous and WILL GET YOU IN TROUBLE! So save it for when you need it ;).
Thats it for me today, I've spent enough time on here and am going outdoors lol peace and remember LIVE ABOVE THE LAW.
Some cool sites to check out:
My Blog
http://positivedissension.blogspot.com/
RevolutionaryLeft.com
http://revleft.com/
Instructables
http://www.instructables.com/home
Also in memory of Fred Hampton, my favorite video of him:
Monday, November 26
Call for a December 4 Day of Blogging Inspired by Fred Hampton
This is my first post here at Rise! Resist! Revolt! blog. I go by the web-name of Left Spot, for the unoriginal reason that I do a blog called Left Spot blog. I would like to thank LeftyHenry for inviting me in as a participant on Rise! Resist! Revolt!. I see it as a good experiment in grouping together a number of bloggers from the Marxist-Leninist milieu of the blogosphere.
Over the past couple of years there have been a number of blogs started by Marxist-Leninist or Maoist bloggers. Unfortunately almost none of the bloggers have been able to maintain a steady stream of new content on as much of a regular basis as we would like. I'm still doing Left Spot blog, but it seems like a good thing to also participate in this multi-blogger blog to see if through 'collectivization' we can get more regular content churning out and inspire each other to write more and better things.
That idea flows nicely into the actual content of this post. Having a multi-blogger blog is one great way to make us more than the sum of our parts within the blogosphere. Another way is to have a group of bloggers all write about a similar theme at the same time. This creates a dialogue across blogs that gives a broader reach than any individual blogger would have. So in that spirit, I am putting forward this call to write and post something inspired by Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton on December 4, the day he was assassinated in 1969. Read on for details, and leave a comment if you plan to participate. Thanks! --Left Spot
On December 4, 1969, Chicago Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton was assassinated as part of the U.S. government's campaign to neutralize the Black Panthers' growing revolutionary influence. Hampton was one of the most dynamic and politically on-point leaders in the Black Panther Party. His death was a huge loss to the BPP, to the Black Liberation Movement, the communist movement and to the revolutionary movement overall in the U.S. Since December 4 is approaching, I'd like to propose that bloggers who are interested should take that day to write and post something inspired by the legacy of Fred Hampton.
It could be something about the politics and legacy of the Black Panther Party; something about Fred Hampton specifically; something about the history or the current state of the Black Liberation Movement or the revolutionary movement in the U.S. in general; Something about how the Black Panthers tried to apply Marxist-Leninist or Maoist politics to the conditions in the U.S. and take out revolutionary politics around mass issues in a way the masses would understand and embrace, etc. Or just make up your own topic.
Almost a year ago (seemingly eons ago in internet-time) way back in January 2007, there was an interesting attempt to have a Blog Against White Supremacy Day on Martin Luther King Day. About 12 or 13 leftist bloggers participated in that and some good and interesting things were written.
I've always been frustrated that Fred Hampton is not better known and that the date of his assassination isn't more widely recognized or commemorated. I don't anticipate that there will be tons of participants in this blogging day, but if even just a few people write something, I think it will be a successful contribution toward the popularizing of Fred Hampton and his outstanding revolutionary spirit.
If you plan to participate, leave a comment here to let folks know.
Over the past couple of years there have been a number of blogs started by Marxist-Leninist or Maoist bloggers. Unfortunately almost none of the bloggers have been able to maintain a steady stream of new content on as much of a regular basis as we would like. I'm still doing Left Spot blog, but it seems like a good thing to also participate in this multi-blogger blog to see if through 'collectivization' we can get more regular content churning out and inspire each other to write more and better things.
That idea flows nicely into the actual content of this post. Having a multi-blogger blog is one great way to make us more than the sum of our parts within the blogosphere. Another way is to have a group of bloggers all write about a similar theme at the same time. This creates a dialogue across blogs that gives a broader reach than any individual blogger would have. So in that spirit, I am putting forward this call to write and post something inspired by Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton on December 4, the day he was assassinated in 1969. Read on for details, and leave a comment if you plan to participate. Thanks! --Left Spot
On December 4, 1969, Chicago Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton was assassinated as part of the U.S. government's campaign to neutralize the Black Panthers' growing revolutionary influence. Hampton was one of the most dynamic and politically on-point leaders in the Black Panther Party. His death was a huge loss to the BPP, to the Black Liberation Movement, the communist movement and to the revolutionary movement overall in the U.S. Since December 4 is approaching, I'd like to propose that bloggers who are interested should take that day to write and post something inspired by the legacy of Fred Hampton.It could be something about the politics and legacy of the Black Panther Party; something about Fred Hampton specifically; something about the history or the current state of the Black Liberation Movement or the revolutionary movement in the U.S. in general; Something about how the Black Panthers tried to apply Marxist-Leninist or Maoist politics to the conditions in the U.S. and take out revolutionary politics around mass issues in a way the masses would understand and embrace, etc. Or just make up your own topic.
Almost a year ago (seemingly eons ago in internet-time) way back in January 2007, there was an interesting attempt to have a Blog Against White Supremacy Day on Martin Luther King Day. About 12 or 13 leftist bloggers participated in that and some good and interesting things were written.
I've always been frustrated that Fred Hampton is not better known and that the date of his assassination isn't more widely recognized or commemorated. I don't anticipate that there will be tons of participants in this blogging day, but if even just a few people write something, I think it will be a successful contribution toward the popularizing of Fred Hampton and his outstanding revolutionary spirit.
If you plan to participate, leave a comment here to let folks know.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
