Tidbits - Jan. 24, 2019 - Reader Comments: Time for Federal Workers to Get Sick; LA Teachers Win!; MLK's Radical Internationalism; Attacks on the Women’s March; Zionism; Palestine; Angela Davis; Bernie Sanders; and more...
Re: It’s Time for Federal Workers to Get Sick (IV WORDS; Mike Glick; Faye Tardiff; Darlene Hanlon; Eric Johnson)
Mexico Will Pay -- cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz
Re: Billionaires vs. LA Schools (Jenny Hampton)
Re: Smaller Classes, New Community Schools in Tentative Deal to End the LAUSD Teachers' Strike (Diane Laison)
Re: Dr. King's Radical Internationalism is More Important Than Ever (Laura Lynch)
Re: Martin Luther King Jr. Was More Radical Than We Remember (Al Young; Barbara Lukeman; Mark Gillespie)
Re: Attacks on the Women’s March Expose Race and Class Bias Among White Jews and Progressives (Joy Schulman; Leonard J. Lehrman)
Re: Our Approach to Zionism (Fred Jerome; Joseph Kaye; Susan Vago Webb; Disraelly Gutierrez Jaime; The Progressive Caucus of Mid Michigan)
Re: Time to Break the Silence on Palestine (Francine Podenski; Enrique Pizarro Hernández; William Leffingwell; Damian du Plessis; Rosemary Morales Urbina)
Re: The Philosophical Roots of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 70 Percent Tax Plan (Maria Angeles Zavala)
Re: The Scott Warren Case is Part of a Crackdown on Aid to Migrants (David Pearce; Rose Ferris; David Frazer)
Re: Portside Readers Respond: Angela Davis and Birmingham; Confronting Right Wing Attacks Against Women of Color in our Movement (Kathleen Jones Orington; Zackari Daoust Santoro; CJ Bergstrom; Linda Prinzivalli)
Open Letter to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Rebecca Fadil)
Re: ‘We Will Not Be Bullied into Silence’: Over 350 Scholars and Civil Rights Movement Veterans Speak Out in Support of Palestinian Rights and Angela Davis (Dr. Victor Rodriguez; Miguel Tamargo)
Re: Let’s Talk Bernie 2020 - Should Bernie Sanders be the Left's presidential candidate in 2020? (Our Revolution; Dieter Sauerwald)
Re: EPA Criminal Action Against Polluters Hits 30-Year Low (Dean Kratchmer)
Re: Rosa and Karl - 100th Anniversary (B Fearn; Staughton Lynd; Mary C. Heller)
Re: Why the Working Class Matters (Dave Armishaw; Carlos-Antonio Pérez; Scott Marsden)
Re: Why Hollywood Sucks: They Don’t Make More Movies Like ‘Vice’ (Scott Banks)
An Open Letter to Our Comrades in the UK About Brexit (Bill Shortell)
Wright State University Faculty on Strike (Randi Weingarten)
Resources:
The Social Power of Music (Smithsonian Folk Ways Recordings)
Announcements:
Student Activist Applications Available for 2019/20 (Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund) - Deadline is April 1, 2019
People's History: America's Untold Stories Workshop - Haldeon, NJ - February 27 (American Labor Museum)
A Wall in the Holy City? Join the All Eyes on Jerusalem Delegation to Palestine/Israel - Apply by March 15 (Eyewitness Palestine)
National Mobilization to Oppose NATO, War and Racism - Washington, DC - March 30
International Peace Movement Building Conference - Washington, DC - April 2
Re: It’s Time for Federal Workers to Get Sick
The people have power. They should use it. #EndTheShutdown #WheresMitch
IV WORDS
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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SICK OUT! SICK OUT! SICK OUT!
Mike Glick
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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You need something like the Winnipeg 1919 general strike
Faye Tardiff
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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It will take something like this.
Darlene Hanlon
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Just because [crooked] businessman Trump was in the habit of stiffing contractors, doesn't mean Federal workers need to put up with that sh't. Take a knee and send Trump into a fit!
Eric Johnson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Mexico Will Pay -- cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz
Lalo Alcaraz
January 18, 2019
Re: Billionaires vs. LA Schools
It's surprising and scary to find out that the ultra rich are so far along in their plans to destroy the public school system.
I really hope you can fight back and keep the right to free education for all.
Jenny Hampton
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Smaller Classes, New Community Schools in Tentative Deal to End the LAUSD Teachers' Strike
Education and unions - we can't do without either of them!
Diane Laison
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Dr. King's Radical Internationalism is More Important Than Ever
It was Dr. King’s radical shift towards internationalism, anti-capitalism, and anti-imperialism that frightened those in power by challenging their ability to use alternate methods of control in the post-civil rights era. Revered around the world for his leadership in the Civil Rights Movement, by the end of his life Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had also radically expanded his political focus to an analysis that included sharp opposition to “international militarism, racism, imperialism and an unworkable capitalism that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.”
Laura Lynch
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Martin Luther King Jr. Was More Radical Than We Remember
King was a staunch antiwar activist and spoke firmly against U.S. militarism in the Vietnam War. In an April 1967 speech called “Beyond Vietnam,” King called the war “madness.” This was a deeply radical and polarizing opinion in a moment when protests of the war had begun erupting across the country in New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. In no uncertain terms, King articulated his opposition to the war in Vietnam, saying, “I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”
Al Young
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Incredible article of MLK's true depth of understanding.
Barbara Lukeman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Funny thing... if you keep seeing cops and others beating the shit out of your people and jailing them without charge on a regular basis, if you see little church girls getting blown up, you see your coworkers beaten and murdered in the dead of night, you are spat upon and screamed at continually, well that just might put you in a bad mood. He was amazingly restrained considering all that.
Mark Gillespie
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Attacks on the Women’s March Expose Race and Class Bias Among White Jews and Progressives
I wrote this note on Facebook about a month ago, but I want to repeat, and supplement, to support Jacobson's point. I find the Jewish women who succeeded in splitting the NYC march very distressing. I grew up in an orthodox Jewish family in Newark, NJ. Born in 1950, I was hitting my teenage years when the Civil Rights movement was waging. Influenced by that, and my personal experience of a deteriorating school, as it became a majority Black school, changed me forever. It was easy for me to support the Civil Rights movement: I was morally moved, and viewed it in my self interest as being part of a religion that was historically persecuted.
Something that was clear to me at age 13, which somehow does not seem clear to these objecting young Jewish women today, is that though Jews had centuries of persecution in Europe, culminating in the holocaust, the grouping that has endured centuries of persecution in the United States is African-Americans. Their enslavement began in 1619 and legally lasted for 250 years. A whole ideology of Black inferiority was created to justify it, and that ideology supported Jim Crow after the Civil War and is still alive and well today. In Germany, activities and speech condoning Hitler are outlawed. But here statues of Slave owners and Confederate soldiers are still in the Public Square, and many authorities resist them being taken down.
Without a doubt Trump's election has elevated anti-Semitism and is responsible for an increase of attacks on Jews and the Pittsburgh Synagogue horror. It is not productive to rate oppressions, but anyone can see that Muslim bans, and stepped up deportations in Middle Eastern and Mexican communities, along with condoning police abuse and killing young men in the African American community is affecting thousand of families; and Trump's personal history, abortion policies and the Supreme Court hearings is turning the clock back on the women's movement.
Why with all this suffering going on around us would a person's attendance at a Farrakhan rally be center stage? Its counter productive and takes our eyes off the goals of our resistance. Though I am a long time anti-racist activist, and have supported equality and affirmative action for many years, I learned a new term this year. That term is "White Fragility". It is what happens when person of color tells a white person that what they did or said was offensive to them. Instead of the white person listening to what the person is saying, or apologizing, for being offensive, they turn the subject to themselves being upset for being attacked. Their emotional upset dominates the interaction causing the original action or speech to be unanalyzed and made invisible. I fear that what happened in the women's march planning was "Jewish Fragility", and it served the same negative role ie as a distraction from the main point---our main point building resistance to Trump. There is a term in Civil Rights legislation called immutable characteristics. It means you suffer discrimination from things about yourself that you cannot change. Being African-American, in the United States, is an immutable characteristic that you cannot change; being a woman is also an immutable characteristic. White people, white men especially are given the most freedom in this society. No African-American man or any woman would have dared get as angry as Brett Kavanaugh.
A 1967 article by James Baldwin stated, clearly, that Black anti-Semitism is no more than Black anti-whiteness in response to decades of negative encounters and mistreatment. The racial discrimination in Trump buildings in the 1970's; and the present eviction rate and extortion in Jared Kushner's run down apartments in Maryland, bring on this response. Let's not get caught up in the response that has no power behind it. Let's fight for the end of systemic mistreatment of African Americans, immigrants, and women endorsed by state power, and made so much worse by the election of Trump
Joy Schulman
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The Rewire article on the women's marches is interesting, but in quoting an article from Haaretz, referencing a 1967 passage by James Baldwin, it attributes said article to "Emma Goldman," when in fact - as the link shows - the author is "Emma Goldberg"!
Emma Goldman died in 1940, though of course her words still live on. June 27, 2019 will be the 150th anniversary (sesquicentennial) of her birth - the same day as the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. Will one commemoration eclipse the other? Hope not! Emma was not a proponent of rights for homosexuals per se, but she certainly fought for reproductive freedom, serving prison terms for her convictions: Anarchism, Birth Control, and Conscription Resistance. See http://ljlehrman.artists-in-residence.com/EG.html.
Leonard J. Lehrman
See also Einstein's comments*
[*see Einstein on Israel and Zionism]
Fred Jerome
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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An excellent analysis! I would only add the class dynamic, which is missing. Zionism is a bourgeois-nationalist ideology -- a fact that is disguised by its settler-colonial character, that is, it seems to benefit all layers of Jewish society. But Zionism is not really about that tiny stretch of the land of Palestine. It is about a Greater Israel. It is about expansionism, similar to the US conquest of its West, in which the Arabs play the role of "Indians." It is not the anti-Zionists who threaten the Jewish people; it is Zionism which bears the seed of the ultimate destruction of another Holocaust -- this time in the Mideast.
Joseph Kaye
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What is unclear to me is: Are they suggesting that Israel as a state should not exist?
Susan Vago Webb
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Through study and action, through deep relationship with Palestinians fighting for their own liberation, and through our own understanding of Jewish safety and self determination, we have come to see that Zionism was a false and failed answer to the desperately real question many of our ancestors faced of how to protect Jewish lives from murderous antisemitism in Europe.
Disraelly Gutierrez Jaime
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Best write up on Jewish/Palestinian Solidarity I’ve seen.
The Progressive Caucus of Mid Michigan
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Time to Break the Silence on Palestine
Seems every time I speak out I am accused of being anti-Semitic
Francine Podenski
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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US intervention in Vietnam was a very big mistake with thousands of young americans as war casualties. US did worst, what they criticized or judged France was doing wrong in Indochina ( Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia)
US must discontinue supporting Israel aggression against Palestine. They could be repeating Vietnam.
Enrique Pizarro Hernández
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Palestine is, believe it or not, a little more complicated. Vietnam was a case of America believing what it wanted to believe about a case lasting less than a century. Palestine involves millennials.
William Leffingwell
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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The forced dispossession of the indigenous Arab population in Palestine, as well as the continuing illegal occupation of an increasing amount of their land has all occurred within the last century. Not to even mention the militarily maintained oppression & subjugation of the Palestinians on their land. Not complicated in terms of international law, social justice or basic human rights.
Damian du Plessis
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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I have visited Palestine and the people are held hostage in their own country. It's very sad.
Rosemary Morales Urbina
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The Philosophical Roots of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 70 Percent Tax Plan
When the USA has turned into a society for the millionaires the vision of going back to a fair state of affairs seems like communism. But if the USA continues on this path the middle class will be no longer exist as a great buffer for peaceful society. The millionaires are richer but as a whole they don’t give back to society when it is impoverishing the great majority of citizens.
Maria Angeles Zavala
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The Scott Warren Case is Part of a Crackdown on Aid to Migrants
That’s ridiculous ! Have we lost our humanity ?
David Pearce
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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it’s been looking that way for a while. Who would rip children from their parents and put them into cages
Rose Ferris
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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A year ago, two undocumented Central American immigrants who crossed into Arizona from Mexico found themselves in especially dire straits. The two immigrants, Kristen Perez-Villanueva and Jose Arnaldo Sacaria-Goday, had dropped their backpacks containing food and water while being chased by U.S. Border Patrol agents.
Their journey into Pima County, on the Arizona side of the border, was high risk. More than 2,100 bodies of undocumented immigrants, many of them never identified, have been found there since 2001, according to the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office. But like many other immigrants fleeing violence and desperation, they were willing to chance the brutal desert terrain.
After walking about forty miles through the southern Arizona desert, the two immigrants finally reached the small town of Ajo, where they were taken to “The Barn.” This is a building in town used by No More Deaths, Ajo Samaritans, and several other humanitarian aid organizations that provide border crossers with water and food.
The Barn, however, is where their journey came to an end. Border Patrol agents arrested Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday, along with No More Deaths activist Scott Warren, who is accused of providing them with food, water, bedding, and clothes over three days. Charged with harboring undocumented immigrants, as well as conspiracy to transport and harbor them, Warren faces a maximum of twenty years in prison.
David Frazer
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Who is making these decisions for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute?
Kathleen Jones Orington
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Not sure - but given that the Board’s Chair, Vice-chair & Secretary all resigned in protest of this decision it is likely that future decisions will be even more in this vein as the dissenting voices are now gone from the board.
Zackari Daoust Santoro
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Even with me too movement, this is so blatantly racist and masochistic.
CJ Bergstrom
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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She deserves to be honored, this is blatant racist crap.
Linda Prinzivalli
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Open Letter to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
I had long planned to take my 12 year old daughter to Birmingham this weekend, Martin Luther King weekend, to visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Plane tickets have been purchased, hotel reservations made, and parental ideas generated around how best to leverage this teachable moment in sharing with her the darkness of our country’s history along with the hopefulness of what is possible through grass roots activism. It was also an opportunity to introduce my daughter to Angela Davis, a strong feminist, writer, scholar, and activist who would have been receiving the Fred Shuttlesworth human rights award next month. Angela Davis is special to us because among her many accomplishments and contributions, she has also chosen to be a courageous voice for Palestinian Human Rights.
In the midst of planning and preparation for our trip I was shocked to learn that the Institute had rescinded Davis’s award and canceled the gala ceremony in her honor. This posed a significant problem for us because my daughter’s father is Palestinian-American and her grandfather’s family was expelled from his home in Palestine when the state of Israel was created in 1948. My daughter has visited Palestine several times and knows well the experience of check points and segregation of separate buses and roads for Palestinians and Israelis.
When I presented my daughter with our dilemma and asked her what we should do— without hesitation she said, “we can’t go.” She’s right. We won’t be visiting your Institute this weekend. We are very disappointed. We’ll make use of what the city has to offer, we’ll visit the 16th Street Baptist Church and Dynamite Hill. And we’ll take heart in the City Council’s statement in support of Angela Davis, realizing that the Institute’s decision does not reflect the sentiment of the city of Birmingham.
Sadly, the Civil Rights Institute’s decision to rescind Angela Davis’s award parallels the very circumstance that Martin Luther King warned against in his 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail when speaking about the “white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice.” It’s painful to see the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute take the position of the white moderate, “who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice,” where its leadership acted cautiously instead of courageously. I can’t imagine Fred Shuttlesworth approving of this decision and I can’t imagine this is how the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute wants to be remembered.
Angela Davis’s support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement was cited as a reason for rescinding the award. Davis’s support of this non-violent movement, which protests and seeks to end Israel’s 52 year occupation of Palestine, is a constitutionally protected 1st amendment right. This movement was mobilized by Palestinian civil society only after decades of failed peace plans, confiscation of Palestinian land, demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes, and the influx of hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers into that expropriated land. It strikes me as odd that a consumer’s decision to boycott an Israeli product be considered unjustly singling out Israel. In fact, Israel receives $3.8 billion in US tax payer supported military aid every year. While it is certainly true that other countries are guilty of human rights violations, these countries do not have the financial, military and diplomatic support from the world’s foremost superpower. It’s difficult to see how the BDS movement is unfair when it is the government of Israel that occupies a uniquely privileged position in the extent of US support that it receives – seemingly without regard to its policies or actions vis-à-vis the nearly 5 million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, and the nearly 2 million Palestinians living as second-class citizens in Israel itself. I’m sorry to see the Institute succumb to the bullying that the pro-Israeli government community effectively uses to control the narrative around Israel and Palestine.
Rebecca Fadil,
Charlottesville, Virginia
She will not be silenced!
Dr. Victor Rodriguez
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"We may not all agree on the best way forward in the Middle East but we do share Dr. Davis’ view that the Israeli Occupation is wrong, and that the repressive, discriminatory and often violent policies of the Israeli government vis-à-vis the Palestinian population are wrong and indefensible. This is not a stance against the Jewish people, as is sometimes erroneously suggested, and as evidenced by the increasing number of Jewish people who are a part of the movement for Palestinian rights. Rather it is a stance against the policies of the Israeli government, and our own government’s immoral support of those policies. This is one of the fundamental human rights issues of our time, and we will not be bullied into silence on it."
Miguel Tamargo
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Let’s Talk Bernie 2020 - Should Bernie Sanders be the Left's presidential candidate in 2020?
Next Steps for Run, Bernie, Run
Here are a few opportunities to get involved right away:
- Join our Weekend of Action on January 26 and 27 — Our Revolution has teamed up with Organizing for Bernie to bring progressives together across the country. We are organizing community events with the goal of asking new folks to step up and get involved in the political revolution.
- Volunteer from home and join the Our Revolution Texting Team — thousands of volunteers across the country are texting our supporters and urging them to sign our Run, Bernie, Run petition. You can get into the action right now by signing up to join the team (all while wearing your pajamas!).
- Sign up to join your local Our Revolution group — we have more than 600 local groups in all 50 states! Check out our group map and find the local group closest to you.
What we accomplish in the next few weeks could determine whether Bernie decides to run. Let’s show Bernie that the grassroots will have his back!
In solidarity,
The Team at Our Revolution
PO Box 66208
Washington, DC, 20035
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A very short comment to this issue:
If the republican counterpart would be a charismatic one in his/her forties then it would be an issue. But Trump in his seventieth too and therefore it should be no issue. And the other democratic prospective aspirants are no teenagers too.
But I think another project could the best thinkable democratic candidate - Bernie Sanders - help a lot: To start the bid from the very first moment on with a running mate female and coloured. What a pity when/that Michelle Obama is not ready to be that.
Dieter Sauerwald,
longterm unionist of Germany
Re: EPA Criminal Action Against Polluters Hits 30-Year Low
This is what corruption looks like
Dean Kratchmer
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Rosa and Karl - 100th Anniversary
"over fifty million dead and much of Europe in ruins." Fifty million has got to be a low estimate. Try Wikipedia for 85 million plus there are millions of associated deaths that should be included. Let's not minimize wars horrors.
B Fearn
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When Rosa learned that Karl had agreed to an immediate attempt to seize power, as I understand it she said: "Karl, how could you?" There had been no agreement then that he would take this position. He was like the crazies here in the United States in 1970 and today who think that revolution is at hand. I object, in her name, to linking Rosa and Karl without making this clear.
Staughton Lynd
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Liebknecht and Luxembourg were betrayed by Social Democrats and murdered by fascist thugs, 100 years ago.
Mary C. Heller
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Why the Working Class Matters
(posting on Portside Culture)
Well worth a careful read. He mentions the decreasing distinction between traditional professional and vocational work distinctions, which I've written about.
Dave Armishaw
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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They matter because they are the majority and the principal source of wealth in a nation.
Carlos-Antonio Pérez
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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We need to bring all the voices who are in opposition to our current political, cultural and economic system (neoliberalism) to fight the good fight.
Scott Marsden
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Why Hollywood Sucks: They Don’t Make More Movies Like ‘Vice’
(posting on Portside Culture)
I watched this movie and found it fascinating. I felt no empathy whatsoever for the main characters.
Scott Banks
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
An Open Letter to Our Comrades in the UK About Brexit
Back in the 70’s and 80’s, when I was an aspiring trade union activist, I made a half dozen pilgrimages to the UK to learn shop floor militancy from their union leaders, and socialism from the Labor Party. They were very pleased to meet a Yank who knew their value, and I found deep inspiration.
Over the years, I’ve lost touch with my contacts over there.Also, the British Labor Party faded to a shadow of its former self, buckling under the relentless pressure of Neo-liberalism. Now, to my joy, I see “Labour” reviving in its birthplace, and I’m especially pleased to watch them beginning to reject the idiocy of Brexit.
So, I’m asking Portside to print this letter, sort of the equivalent of putting a note in bottle, and tossing it into the Gulf Stream.Maybe a few comrades over there will see it… REJECT BREXIT! This sad, last ditch effort to revive British Imperialism is the worst example of the Devolution movement that is splitting the international working class all over Europe, and oddly, finds some echoes in the left over here. 40 years ago, my British mentors were anti-EU. They thought the working class was too weak to resist the greater combination of international finance that a united Europe represented, and that joining what they then called the Common Market would undermine their hard-won standard of living. Adding to that suspicion was the stupid way the British open-market government of that period embraced the free movement of workers throughout the continent. Their counterparts in France and Germany sensed the political danger, and insisted on a slower, phased-in implementation.
VOTE AGAIN!
A REVIVED, NEWLY INTERNATIONALIST Labour, under the brilliant leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and his youthful backers, will, I hope, step back from the brink of Brexit, and infuse the EU with their New Socialism.I understand how delicate an effort this is, and appreciate the cautious approach that Labour is taking, but it will be a good day for international socialism, when the Brits have a second referendum, and, now wiser, go back to Europe with a resolve. So, from a grateful supporter across the drink: “Good on ya’,mates!” I’m confident you’ll do the right thing.
Bill Shortell, retired Machinist. Democratic Party activist
Wright State University Faculty on Strike
Letter of Support from AFT President Randi Weingarten
January 23, 2019
Rudy Fichtenbaum, President
American Association of University Professors
1133 Nineteenth St., NW, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20036
Rudy:
On behalf of the 1.7 million member American Federation of Teachers, I am writing to express our wholehearted support for the Wright State University faculty and its chapter of the American Association of University Professors in your strike for a fair contract and the teaching and learning environment your students deserve. You are striking for nothing less than the future of your students, academic freedom and your university.
Defending academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas on campus has always been a core value for the AFT and our higher education members in particular. The threats to academic freedom and educational quality are numerous, spawned by the growing number of faculty members being forced to work off the tenure track. And shared governance is another one of our values; it is democracy in action, ensuring that academic decisions are made for academic-not political, commercial or bureaucratic-reasons.
Your university is attempting to impose a contract on faculty that takes direct aim at all these principles, and we stand with you in your fight against it.
This imposition would unquestionably shift Wright away from full-time, tenure-track faculty to an underpaid and under-supported contingent instructional workforce lacking due process and the freedom to teach. The imposed contract would disable shared governance, allowing the university to exercise unilateral powers on issues such as faculty workloads and merit pay. Add in skyrocketing healthcare costs for employees, and the result of this contract will be a teaching force at Wright that is silenced, stretched thin, stripped of time for scholarly research, and desperately struggling to earn a living and afford healthcare.
Life under such a contract will not enable you to give your students the kind of high-quality education they come to this university hoping to find. It will not attract topnotch faculty and staff to Wright University. It will not leave even a shred of the academic freedom and love of learning that define higher education and make such an education valuable.
Faculty have offered significant financial concessions to ameliorate a financial crisis at the university that you did nothing to cause. You have endured 24 months of obstructionism, with the university stonewalling your continued attempts to negotiate, and it has chosen to impose a contract rather than come back to the bargaining table. You have waited to strike until striking was truly your last resort.
The AFT and our member from coast to coast stand with you. We applaud your courage and your dedication to doing what's best for your students and your university. We stand with you in your fight to protect the essential principles that lie at the heart of a quality higher education.
Sincerely,
Randi Weingarten
President
cc: Martin Kich, President, Wright State University AAUP
Julie Schmid, Executive Director, AAUP
Alyssa Picard, AFT Higher Ed
The Social Power of Music (Smithsonian Folk Ways Recordings)
From parties to protests to prayer, music is a powerful catalyst for celebration, for change, and for a sense of community. Through making music together, we become bigger than ourselves. Whether singing with our families and friends or with thousands of strangers in an arena, music transforms lives, engages individuals, and connects local and global communities. The Social Power of Music chronicles the vivid, impassioned, and myriad ways in which music binds, incites, memorializes, and moves groups of people. This richly illustrated 124-page book, with 80+ tracks on 4 CDs, invites listeners into musical practices, episodes, and movements throughout the U.S. and beyond. These songs of struggle, devotion, celebration, and migration remind us that music has the potential to change our world.
This is a pre-order item that will ship on or around release date of February 22, 2019.
Album Info:
CATALOG NUMBER - SFW40231
LABEL/COLLECTION - Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
GENRE(S) - Struggle & Protest
COUNTRY(S) - Algeria; Angola; Argentina; Brazil; Chile; Congo-Brazzaville; Denmark; Dominican Republic; France; Greece; Indonesia; Italy; Korea, South; Lebanon; Mexico; Nicaragua; Poland; Puerto Rico; Republic of Kosovo; Scotland; South Africa; Thailand; Turkey; United Kingdom; United States; Vietnam
Order here.
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund - Student Activist Applications Available for 2019/20
Our online application for academic scholarships up to $15,000 is available for student activists who are organizing for social change and building progressive movements on campus and in community. Please direct students working for peace and justice to: www.davisputter.org
Deadline is April 1, 2019
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund
P.O. Box 7307
New York, NY 10116
The Museum cordially invites educators and the general public to attend a workshop entitled People's History: America's Untold Stories to be held on Wednesday, February 27th, 2019. Educators who attend will receive a Professional Development Certificate.
The People's History: America's Untold Stories workshop will be held at the Museum from 9:30AM-2:30PM, with a luncheon served at midday. Workshop plans includes a presentation entitled "Women Workers and Ladies Garments" about the immigrant women of the International Ladies Garment Workers's Union (ILGWU) by Keith Danish, Esq., an educator, lecturer and labor historian and "Women in Jazz" by Dr. Louis A. Iozzi, scholar, educator, musician and author.
The registration fee of $25. for Museum members provides for admittance for the full day program, which includes lunch, teachers' presentation and teaching materials for grades 4-12. The registration fee for non-members is $30. In addition, tours of the Museum will be offered and the exhibit Working Class New York by Dakota Santiago will be on view.
For and agenda, further information and to receive a registration form by mail, fax, or email, please call the Museum at (973) 595-7953 or email labormuseum@gmail.com.
Donald Trump recently pointed to Israel's wall in Palestine as a model for the wall he wants to build between the United States and Mexico. But what are the effects of Israel's wall on the communities it impacts?
Join Eyewitness Palestine for an unforgettable journey for justice with Palestinian and Israeli peace-builders. The application deadline for the All Eyes on Jerusalem Delegation is March 15, 2019!
One year after the controversial decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, this delegation includes a special focus on the city holy to three religious communities.
This delegation includes a special focus on the deeply divided city of Jerusalem. Join us to take a special in depth look at the situation in Jerusalem including the effects of displacement and gentrification, and the activism of local communities.
As with all Eyewitness Palestine delegations, you will visit other areas in Palestine/Israel, meet Palestinians and Israelis working for peace and justice, and tour important historical sites.
Eyewitness Palestine has organized 66 delegations to Palestine/Israel since 2001. Join us on this journey of discovery and solidarity.
There's only one way to truly understand the realities of Palestine/Israel - through the eyes of those who live there.
Learn how to join the delegation, access financial aid, and how we'll support your advocacy after this life-changing experience.
SIGN UP - click here.
Eyewitness Palestine
PO Box 73798
Washington, DC 20056-3798
866.936.1650
National Mobilization to Oppose NATO, War and Racism - Washington, DC - March 30
International Peace Movement Building Conference - Washington, DC - April 2
Midst more crises than we can count, and as we move into an increasingly confrontational and uncertain period in the wake of the Post-Cold War era, we are excited to announce an international peace movement building conference, April 2 in Washington, D.C.
The conference, featuring critical U.S., Russian, European and U.S. analysts and activists, will be held two days before NATO audaciously celebrates its 70th anniversary on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination and his “Beyond Vietnam” speech.
April 2 – Washington, D.C.
St. Stephen & the Incarnational Episcopal Church
1525 Newton St., N.W.
Washington, DC
Confirmed speakers include:
- Medea Benjamin - Code Pink
- Phyllis Bennis - Institute for Policy Studies
- Reiner Braun - International Peace Bureau (Berlin)
- Joseph Gerson - Campaign for Peace Disarmament and Common Security
- Peter Kuznick - American University
- Kevin Martin - Peace Action
- Anna Ochkina - Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (Moscow)
- David Swanson - World Beyond War
Invitations pending to additional European and Global South movement leaders.
Topics include:
- NATO: 70 Years of Militarism & A 21st Century Global Alliance
- Driving Forces of the New Era of Confrontation: U.S., NATO & Russia – Imperial, Authoritarian & Economic
- Overcoming Martin Luther King, Jr’s Triple Evils
- Preventing War Against Iran
- New Nuclear Arms Races & Nuclear Disarmament Initiatives
- A Unified & Independent European Union Military
- Women and Resistance
- Moving the Money from the Military to Addressing Human Needs
Initiated by: No to NATO/No to War International Network, Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security; International Peace Bureau; Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and World Beyond War
For more information see www.no-to-nato.org E-mail: JGerson80@gmail - Phone: 617-661-6134