We would like to introduce you to the Advance the Struggle Free Education newsletter, an agitational tool we use at various campuses across the Bay to connect with school workers and students interested in engaging around the conditions and struggles of the education sector.
We welcome any feedback and encourage our friends and supporters to spread these widely!
Here is our first edition:
Even leftists and revolutionary minded people who are critical of Bernie Sanders have put forward the idea that, despite his limitations and the problems with his politics, he’s still defending the public sector mor
e so than other presidential candidates. However, this position fails to take into account Sanders’s position on standardized testing, punitive measures against public school teachers, and the fact that he has in various ways supported both Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Obama’s Race To The Top education policies. We present the Class Struggle Education Workers leaflet critiquing Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s positions on public education because it concisely presents the problems with their positions. Click image for newsletter.
Posted in Debates, Flyers, News Analysis, US Labor
Oakland, CA – On September 4th, 2014 at 14th & Broadway, a key site for the Oscar Grant rebellions and Occupy Oakland, fast-food workers and organizers were arrested after rallying and protesting for $15 an hour and demanding unionization of their workplaces. This was part of a national day of action. This day of action was the 7th strike since this campaign started in Chicago 2012 by SEIU and other political forces, with 150 similar protests taking place in major urban cities. Through polls and other media forms, the public has shown serious support for higher wages in the fast food industry, thus opening the possibility of a public and political campaign to organize fast-food workers. Consequently, in the 1 year and 10 months since its inauguration — this effort has generated notable worker actions with repression mostly kept in check. Working off of the Fair Labor Standard Act of 1938, the campaign utilizes many legal avenues and creates favorable conditions to breathe class struggle life into the fast food workplace, potentially opening windows for thousands of these workers to be armed with a ‘politics of struggle’ in the workplace. The combination of advocating unionization of the low-wage workplace through direct action, and publicly fighting for a higher wage can be a functional framework for getting working class struggle off the ground. Not surprising, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour has been a position generating national momentum. These positive developments still face the politics of the campaign and its organizations. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is a central political force of the campaign, and in short has built a movement set on union expansion that subordinates the potential working class power in the workplace. Continue reading
We are pleased to announce another great event at La Peña Cultural Center (3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA) sponsored by Advance the Struggle and La Peña 2nd Generation. On Tuesday, May 13th at 6:30pm we will be hosting an event featuring Eli Friedman on contemporary Chinese class struggle. Please come through and continue supporting these informative events! Details and flier below:
Worker Resistance and Capitalist Development in China: a Discussion with Eli Friedman.
What sorts of possibilities and limits exist for proletarian politics in China? Over the past several years, migrant worker unrest has gone from defensive to offensive and we have witnessed the emergence of new political and social demands. These changes must be understood within the context of rapidly evolving political and economic conditions – especially the central state’s attempt to “rebalance” the economy.
Eli Friedman (assistant professor of International and Compartaive Labor at Cornell University, and author of the forthcoming book “Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Post-Socialist China) will draw on examples of recent wildcat strikes and other protests by migrant workers to illustrate these dynamics.
This is a FREE event sponsored by:
Advance the Struggle & La Pena 2nd Generation
Click image for full color flier!
Here is a video from the China in Revolt panel, sponsored by Jacobin, that Eli participated in.
China in Revolt: A Labor Community Roundtable from Jacobin on Vimeo.
What follows is a critique of the West Oakland Specific Plan – WOSP – which the city of Oakland hopes will help in “developing” West Oakland and is attempting to pass in the coming weeks. We offer this critique and brief thoughts on strategy in order to support the ongoing work of combatting displacement and gentrification that has been hitting the Bay Area for a long time. Please add comments, questions, and critiques in the comment section in the spirit of deepening our collective discussion of anti-displacement analysis and strategy.
Advertisement for Public Release of WOSP in Feb. 2014
Snapshot of the State and Capital in the Bay Area
If the Bay Area’s economy was compared to every other national economy in the world, it would be the 19th largest. The Bay has the highest GDP per capita in the entire United States, and even outpaces London and Singapore. It captures 40% of the entire flow of venture capital in the US (p11), which constitutes a higher amount of capital than that captured during the dot.com boom. While the Bay accounts for only 2.4% of the total jobs in the US, it has 12% of the computer & electronics manufacturing, 10.3% of software development, and 8.3% of internet related jobs (p13.) Seven of the top 10 social media companies are here – Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, Linkedin, Zynga, and Yelp. In short, the Bay is home to one of the highest concentrations of capital in the world and mapping out the composition of capital is key for us to situate ourselves as we continue to engage in class combat. (Footnote #1)
The regional state is well aware of its place within the world economy. Over the past years, city politicians from the greater Bay Area have come together to generate a 30 year strategy about how to restructure the region’s housing, employment, and transportation structures. Plan Bay Area (PBA) was developed by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) to carry out the tasks of determining how the state can support and facilitate the accumulation of capital throughout the region. In order to grease the wheels of the local capitalist economy, the PBA aims to redevelop housing and transit throughout the Bay; New units are set to be built, new transportation “hubs” developed, and both of these projects are to be coordinated across single cities and the bay area as a whole.
PBA aims to align the various metropolitan areas of the Bay in their development of housing to match projected increases in employment. Internet, computer and electronics manufacturing, along with professional, scientific and technical services are accounting for some of the largest contributors to job creation here. PBA states that between early 2011 and late 2013 the Bay Area added more than 200,000 jobs, an increase of 7.5 percent that is well above the state’s average of 4.5%. PBA is projecting that this area will continue to outpace the rest of California and the US in its share of job growth due to the heavy concentration of tech related industries which forms part of the economic base of Bay Area political economy. (Footnote#2)
West Oakland Specific Plan – One Part of Capital/State’s Total Plan
We find ourselves in a city that’s clearly at the crosshairs of the system’s plans for intentional development and displacement: highly concentrated capital in the Bay Area and projections of millions of jobs being created in the next 10 years; a strategic plan by city politicians across the Bay to house these new high wage workers within its multiple cities; and the ongoing displacement of low wage workers and unemployed people. This is the situation Oakland Mayor Jean Quan references when she states that she’s seeking to bring in 10,000 new residents to Oakland while saying nothing about keeping long term residents and working class people in Oakland. Continue reading
Students from the Ad-Hoc Committee protesting war criminal Petreaus. Photo Credit: NYMag
We in Advance the Struggle write to express solidarity with the Ad-Hoc Committee Against the Militarization of CUNY (City University of New York), including members of the CUNY 6, who were brutally assaulted and arrested for protesting CUNY’s hiring of war criminal David Petraeus, along with the Liberate CUNY Front and the students suspended for defending the Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur student and community center. These comrades have not only exposed and resisted the increasing militarization of educational institutions in New York, but across the US. As we have seen here in California with the appointment of former director of deportation Janet Napolitano as President of the University of California system, and “anti-terrorism expert” Arthur Tyler as Chancellor of City College of San Francisco, this is a disturbing trend that must be stopped.
The repression faced by our friends and comrades in New York is the same type of repression faced here in California by university students up and down the West Coast. From Davis to Irvine and back up to Berkeley, students have organized against imperialist occupations in solidarity with Palestinian people, fought deportations, mobilized against fee increases and budget cuts; only to face direct repression by the UCPD, as well as legal attacks by UC administrators for speaking out and taking direct action against the likes of Zionists and many other forces of U.S. imperialism that get co-signed by the University of California system. All tactics used by the state and administration to silence resistance to these policies.
While ties between the imperialist war machine and American universities is nothing new, the ruling class’ ‘securitization’ of the university is a troubling shift in structure and function highlighting a changing terrain of struggle. ‘Securitization‘ in this sense means both the increased repressiveness of the university through its integration and collaboration with the capitalist state and the increased role of debt and financial markets in the life of the university. In the age of violent austerity that strips state universities of any public or democratic character; students are forced to take out higher loans to finance their education, which the university business managers then sell to Wall Street investors.
This shift in the role of university education highlights a changing terrain of struggle, making it important to defend and reclaim spaces where we can take a break from the grueling demands of competitive and isolating workloads, and as a place where we can form a community of resistance against the university system – which remains part and parcel of capitalist exploitation.
Mass mobilization to defend the Morales/Shakur social center. Photo cred: http://realworldnews.tumblr.com/
This resistance must continue and expand at sites of production, reproduction, circulation and in the streets to fight a system that glorifies and hires war criminals, torture apologists and deportation lackeys whose policies have killed, tortured, and destroyed millions of lives throughout the world; the same system forcing austerity cuts that destroy quality affordable public education and other social services for many working class and oppressed peoples.
Therefore, Advance the Struggle expresses full solidarity with our comrades in New York and around the world, who struggle against the advancement of US security and imperial military interests.
Drop all charges against the CUNY 6!
Drop the charges against Taffy and Khalil!
Petraeus and Napolitano off our campuses now!
Liberate CUNY and all campuses!
For united proletarian action against capitalism and imperialism!
Another Black youth murdered in cold blood, and the murderer, according to the courts, is not guilty! The case of Trayvon Martin is an example of what America is composed of, the racism that deeply penetrates its veins, and the state that overseas its process. Trayvon Martin was vilified by the courts as a thug, and its murderer was defended as a noble citizen. How many Black and Latino youth have to be victims of such violence? When will we build a movement so powerful that can challenge such violence? When will the working class be organized to shutdown the system when such racist violence occurs? These are the critical questions of the day. We have experienced the Rodney King movement, the movement around the murder of Sean Bell, Kimani Gray, Kenneth Harding, and Oscar Grant. Yet these murders continue unchallenged.
Our strategy against such murders shall be, in the short term, organizing militant protests when such verdicts are executed and organize the working class in the long term as preparation for such moments. Only until the working class, located in strategic industries, that shutdowns components of the system, will we see a viable movement challenging the system. In the Oscar Grant movement we experienced a wave of rebellions on January 7th, and January 14th, 2009, as well as ILWU local 10 shutting down the port on October 23rd, 2010. The combination of street rebellions and shutting down industry are effective tactics against the state. The state, a concentration of power, will not take anything seriously, until there is a force that challenges such power ascends in the field of political battle. Our history of struggles against police brutality has been paralyzed between disorganized bursts of anger coupled with nonprofit lead forces that channel anger back into the system.
We need a militant organized movement of the working class who utilizes its position in society against state supported racist violence. The racist nature of American society will never be challenged until the working class begins to shutdown the system as a political response. A political organization with such explicit aims is needed to accomplish such tasks. Now is the time to organize for justice.
Come support the rally occurring Monday, July 15, 2013 at 14th and Broadway in Downtown Oakland.
For the past week, I’ve been glued to the television screen watching as much as I can of the George Zimmerman trial. Accused of second-degree murder, the state of Florida is prosecuting Zimmerman for racially profiling and then shooting to death African-American seventeen-year old Trayvon Martin. Since those reading this will surely be acquainted with this infamous and racially-charged event, I will only briefly recount the happenings of that fateful night.
On the night of February 26th, 2012, Trayvon Martin was on his way back to his dad’s home in a gated town home community in Sanford, Florida, in the central part of the state. Carrying a bag of skittles candy, a can of Arizona iced tea, and wearing a hoodie on that rainy night, Trayvon Martin was walking through Zimmerman’s neighborhood as the latter followed him in his car, suspicious of the young man because of the color of his skin and due to a series of robberies committed in his area in the previous months. The prosecution holds that Zimmerman needlessly followed and then provoked Trayvon into a scuffle that ended in the teen’s death at the hands of Zimmerman’s pistol from point-blank range. The defense has an easier road to follow; while the state must prove beyond reasonable doubt to the jury (9 women, 8 of which are white) that Zimmerman murdered Trayvon with “malice” and “ill will”, all the defense team has to do is sow enough doubt in the case against their client and uphold Zimmerman’s theory of self-defense. They’ve done this with some success. They’ve poked holes and sought to deligitimize every prosecution witness from Trayvon’s friend Rachel Jeantel, who was on the phone with Trayvon during the initial stage of his confrontation with Zimmerman, to the Sanford police investigator of the crime, and the medical examiner who diagnosed Zimmerman’s head injuries as essentially insignificant.
The trial in itself is fascinating in the way in which the opposing sides meticulously scrutinize every detail of the situation to reinforce their story. The media outlets broadcasting the trial routinely take breaks in which commentators of various backgrounds chime in and give their viewpoints on how the case is proceeding and usually betray their sympathies for the defense or prosecution. The entire spectacle is fixated on the whether George Zimmerman legitimately feared for his life due to Trayvon Martin’s aggression and employed his self-defense right to “meet force with force” (as the Florida self-defense law dubbed “Stand Your Ground” Zimmerman claims to have based his killing on states.). The defense seeks to build up Zimmerman as an honest and trustworthy American who fell upon an unfortunate situation that required the use of lethal force. Several of the defense’s 18 witnesses know Zimmerman personally and went on and on about his concern for his community, his work with small children, etc., all in an attempt to influence the jury’s perspective on Zimmerman. This strategy, for the defense, implies framing Trayvon as just another street thug, a good-for-nothing criminal who asked for what he got. They’ve honed in on his tattoos as an example of that, although when Trayvon’s mother took the stand she told the defense lawyer Mark O’Mara during her cross-examination that those tattoos were in honor of her and his grandmother. The defense rejects any accusations of racism against their client as they employ typical stereotypes of Black men to slander Trayvon’s legacy and justify his death.
Posted in News Analysis, Raw Reflections
Tagged George Zimmerman, oscar grant, Police Brutality, race, racism, Trayvon Martin
The world’s eyes are on the ongoing struggle in Turkey, where the people of Turkey are fighting against the repressive state and the capitalist development that it has undertaken. While the dynamics on the ground are very complex and are rapidly developing, the massive demonstrations, strikes, and street battles have opened up new revolutionary potentials within Turkey. This has inspired people throughout the world to struggle against the capitalist system and the repressive state. With that being said, we endorse and repost a solidarity statement below. For more information, and to sign the statement you can go here.
Photo Credit: Aljazeera
Red salutes to the working class of Turkey! Selam, yaratana! As internationalists and revolutionaries, we pledge our undying solidarity the working class of Turkey and its allies in its struggle against the Justice and Development Party government (AKP). We are honored to greet you 50 years after the death of your great socialist poet, Nazim Hikmet on this day of June 3rd, 2013.
We watch with horror as you and your allies are gassed, beaten, shot at, and arrested by the brutal police forces of Erdogan and his authoritarian government. We are impressed and humbled by your commitment to fight this repression, particularly the workers of KESK and Hava-Is in their strikes against the capitalist state. We hope that more workers will follow your lead and example and help spread the Taksim movement to every corner of Turkey and beyond. Only a worker’s movement has the ability to bring the powers that exist to its knees in a way that no other class can.
Solidarity to the Turkish metal workers, who faced repression last November in Bursa and continue their struggle against the yellow trade unionists and other anti-labor pawns. Solidarity to the brave students of Middle East Technical University, who were savagely attacked by the police in December of last year. Solidarity to the youth of Turkey who have been arrested and called “plunderers” and “extremists”—your brave actions will not be forgotten. Solidarity to all those workers and their allies who are now beginning to come together to fight against their capitalist oppressors. We hope for your victory and urge you to be wary of those who come in the name of “help”.
May the fire of TEKEL continue to set your enemies ablaze in these difficult, but necessary times.
YAŞASIN GENEL GREV!
Posted in News Analysis, Resistance News
Tagged class struggle, internationalism, OccupyGezi, solidarity, Turkey
A common practice in our internal meetings is for a comrade to prepare a report on current events and present it in a 10 or 15 minute agenda point. This post was prepared from the report made in our last meeting.
Five IWW organizers were fired from Chicago-Lake Liquors in Minneapolis after a large group of workers there delivered a set of demands for higher wages to the bosses. They have held 2 informational pickets and are distributing fliers to customers in an attempt to get their jobs back. On May 4th, 2013, they held a hard picket and turned away ninety per cent of customers despite attempts by security and management to break the picket. There will be another big picket on the 24th of May. This seems to be the best possible way to deal with a situation of salts getting fired, short of a strike of the remaining workers or an occupation of the workplace.
Well-known Russian anti-fascist, Alexey Gaskarov, was arrested April 28th, just days before he was set to lead large protests. He is a member of the Coordination Council of Russian Opposition. The arrest came just days before he was going to be the head of a leftist, anti-fascist, block at protests marking the one year anniversary of the very large demonstrations last year against electoral fraud, which were violently repressed by the police. This is important in light of the large growth of fascist groups in Russia in recent years.
On April 25th, about 3000 anarchists marched in solidarity to Athens Indymedia and 98 FM that have been censored by the Greek State since April 11th. Six of the arrested protestors were charged with offending the Greek national flag by replacing it with the red and black flag of anarchism. The State censorship was carried out under the banner of combating terrorism, when in fact this censorship is simply an attack on independent media that has served as a center for organizing actions against the capitalist agenda in Greece. These protests are important because there have not been many large mobilizations against state censorship of the internet and media such as this one.
Hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike in Bangladesh on April 26th following the collapse of a garment factory there that claimed the lives of 1127 workers, making it the largest industrial disaster since the Bhopal incident. The plant’s workers were evacuated after cracks in the building were discovered, but then managers ordered them back to work the next day. Then the building collapsed with everyone inside. The building was owned by Sohel Rana, leader of the local Jubo League, the youth wing of the ruling Awami League political party. This suggests a close relationship between the bureaucracy of the state and the worst aspects of capitalism in Dhaka. Hundreds of thousands of workers protested and struck following the collapse, forcing factory bosses to declare a day’s holiday. Factories that tried to operate the day following the collapse were attacked by striking workers. Protesters smashed windows and destroyed cars at the headquarters of the main manufacturers’ association, demanding justice. A coalition of 18 parties led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party called for general strikes on May 2nd, following large protests and strikes on International Workers Day. It is problematic that a political party based on religion and nationalism is leading this co-optation of the workers struggle. Communists should support the development of internationalist, Marxist, revolutionary parties in Bangladesh that can lead a struggle for the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the abolition of the wage system. In recent years there has been a rising tide of worker militancy in Bangladesh where groups like the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity have faced brutal repression as they try unionize some of the 3.6 million garment workers employed in Bangladesh’s 5,000 garment factories. Research suggests that their average wages of 38$ US per month are not enough to provide adequate nutrition for even the one worker who receives them, let alone a whole family. Communists over seas should attempt to connect with embryonic workers organizations in Bangladesh to develop unity around an internationalist communist program, and find ways to materially support each other’s struggles.
Workers in England have been hit with a new bedroom tax and a cut in the council tax rebate. The Huddersfield Anarchist League made front page news after they had a protest at the town hall on the 21st of March, demanding answers from Labour party officials about whether the local Labour Council would haul people through the courts and evict people as a result of the policies. The policies mean that people on the dole (welfare) would have to pay 270 pounds sterling more per year, from the council tax rebate cuts alone. The bedroom tax has reduced the housing benefit for people with vacant rooms by an average of 23 $ US per week (1200$/year), driving some people to despair. In April, the Huddersfield group staged a protest in a Barclays bank. The bank manager set off the alarm and police came. Protesters staged an impromptu rally outside and had a positive response from the public, who actively participated in de-arresting two protesters that were targeted by the police during the rally. This shows some resonance in the working class for the program of this anarchist group. These worsening attacks on the working class highlight the need for organization that unites serious revolutionaries around the world to abolish the capitalist dictatorship that forces us to sell our labor as a commodity. The dispossession of workers from the means of subsistence by state protected private property forces us to sell our labor to capitalists in order to afford the necessities of life and alienates us from decisions about production, preventing us from rationally addressing issues such as disease, homelessness, starvation, or anthropogenic climate change.
In South Africa, the new Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) is winning over membership in the platinum and coal mining sectors. Senzeni Zokwana, the head of the Communist Party (CP), called the union a group of, “vigilantes and liars”. He also accused the AMCU of business unionism, saying that the AMCU president Joseph Mathunjwa owned five companies (the crowd greeted this assertion with shock and disbelief). Basically, the CP and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) feel threatened by the new union and don’t like its critical stance towards the ANC. The CP leader said that the NUM needs to serve its members more effectively to combat the new union. This is likely empty rhetoric, but it could indicate that the AMCU is pushing the NUM and CP to the left in some way. The growing AMCU just took a blow with the murder of the regional organizer of Amcu in the Rustenburg platinum belt who was shot 4 times in the back at a tavern on May 12th. He was just about to testify at the Marikana Commission of Inquiry about the massacre of 44 striking miners by police forces last year.
There will be a wildcat strike in South Africa by the Amplats miners on Monday May 20th by the same miners that struck for 2 months at the end of last year. These latest strikes are a response to the announcement of the layoff (retrenchment) of 14,000 workers made by Amplats in January, which was revised down to 6,000 after outrage from COSATU and the NUM. A leading member of the workers’ committee, Evans Ramokga, explained that the workers had been promised wage increases following their strike at the end of last year, but instead of wage increases they were greeted in January with news of these layoffs.
In Morelia, Mexico, on May 16th, students training to become teachers returned to the State four state police officers that they had held captive for 11 days. This returning of the officers was a precondition for the state to enter into negotiations with the students regarding their demands for the opening up of 1200 new teaching jobs. The students blocked streets on the 29th of April and took control of many buses and vehicles. They took the food and other necessities from the trucks and distributed them to the people. Apparently, the buses are being used by the students to transport themselves to the capital of the State. It seems that the buses were taken by the students from “la escuela normal indígena de Cherán”. Some of the issues that are decried in the pronouncement of the Organización de Normales Oficiales del Estado de Michoacán, which is a leading force to some extent in these protests and actions, are the following: reforms to the curriculum of the normal schools; the elimination of the telebachilleratos (a radio and TV educational program); and the current situation of diminution of matriculation in the universities due to the imposition of a new CENEVAL exam.
In their analysis the educational reforms are actually economic, labor, and political attacks whose only goal is the privatization of education. The curricular reform in the normal schools that the State wants to impose in 2012 completes the cycle of reforms that they have been imposing over the last 9 years.
This rough translation of some of the pronouncement gives an idea of their politics: (We reject the study plans based in competitions with competitive and productivist focuses, because they impede the harmonious development of education, and in their place we pose formative projects of teachers, that surge from the social necessities based in the linking of theory and practice, the discovery and construction of knowledge by way of creating climates of constant critique of inequality, strengthening capacities, abilities, skills and values of the human being needed to live with plenitude, coexistence…)
There were protests of about 10,000 people on the 15th of May against the education reforms that had a contingent of 200 electrical workers (who have been militant in recent years) and other workers joining the protest in solidarity. The protests were in the Zocalo in DF (Mexico City) and went towards the installations of Televisa Chapultepec where dozens of police formed lines against the protesters.
On the same day as the protests, the president had a big celebration of the primary school teachers of Mexico where he met with Juan Díaz de la Torre, president of the teachers union (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, SNTE) and 400 other teachers in attendance. That their union leader would meet with the president as such is a slap in the face to the movement against the educational reforms.
There were also strikes in the education sector in Spain, supported by Juventudes Socialistas de Martos among others, against “(the most conservative education reform that has been given in Europe)”. The reforms want to: segregate schools from a young age based on performance; eliminate Educación para la Ciudadanía which is a political / values education component in high schools that was created by the ‘socialist’ government of Rodriguez Zapatero; permit gender segregation in the classroom; and give greater emphasis to religion in education.
There has been a general strike in Bolivia for 10 days with the miners, teachers, health workers and factory workers at the head, with road blockages across the country. The strike is against the law of Pensions of the government of Evo Morales. The law, La Ley de Pensiones 065, requires workers to pay 97% of their rent, bosses to pay 3% and the government to pay nothing. Workers criticize the law because it would require the workers to be practically the sole financier of their pensions, which would come out to only 70% of the monthly salary they received while working. The law would also maintain 100% of salary pensions for military and police officers, a policy remaining from the Banzer dictatorship. Pensions in Bolivia currently range from 21$ to 29$ per month. 4,000 mine workers from Huanuni were at the head of the protests in the Plaza Murillo. The Church has called for the workers and government to end their ‘intransigence’ and come to some settlement, failing to clearly support the workers’ demands. Socialists from the Liga Obrera Revolucionaria-Cuarta Internacional are calling for the formation of a national strike committee to ensure the democratic participation of all the participating sectors and organizations in deciding how to overcome any obstacles to victory.
Posted in News Analysis, Resistance News, Uncategorized
What follows is an email that a comrade wrote to members of a political listserv that he is a part of. We offer it here due to the timely nature of the intervention around the way that we talk about Thatcher and her death.
Witch Side Are You On?
I dont intend to attack anyone for their word choice, but would like to raise a little bit of consciousness on this word choice of calling Thatcher a “witch” as a form of insult.
Margaret thatcher was the opposite of a witch. By referring to thatcher as a witch, one denigrates the real witches of the late middle ages (and other women whose independence was 
slandered by patriarchy as witchcraft) whose genocide (witch hunts) was intimately bound up with the subjugation of the new proletariat and colonizing missions.
The witch hunts culminated in a triumph for the bourgeoisie, in the form of a division of labor at the heart of which was a stark divide between productive labor and reproductive (domestic) labor. Workers outside of the home (predominantly men, but women too) were waged slaves whose productivity was under-valued through the fetishism of commodities (money hiding the unequal exchange of equivalents). Workers inside the home (exclusively women) were not paid at all, the most extreme fetish (illusion) this new capitalist order would produce. At the heart of this illusion that women’s domestic/reproductive work did not merit a wage, was the false belief that women are genetically prone to do this work for free as loving mothers and loyal wives. Male wage earners were given a position, imposed on them and enforced by law, of domestic overseer with all the tools of coercion they might need, from the right to rape to the right to beat “their” wives who regarded as dependents on the man. Thus the male proletariat was coopted by the bourgeoisie in a scheme to keep the total wage bill of that class half of what it should have been. In this sense, all of us male proletarians have a duty to honor our sisters as pillars of the class at every available opportunity. Part of that is learning the history of women as workers inside and outside the home. That history includes the heroic chapter of witches’ resistance to capitalism at the very dawn of its existence. [the book Caliban and the Witch is a good place to start – click here here here here and here for links to that courtesy of some good people in Seattle.]
Margaret thatcher was a traitor to her gender. Witches were the most loyal members not only of their gender but also of a far reaching pan-european anti-capitalist/anti-patriarchy movement from the 1300s-1700s, that is, during the period of capitalism’s maturation as a world system.
Death to Thatcherism!
Long live women’s liberation and proletarian revolution!
Posted in News Analysis, Raw Reflections
By Comrade Read
As college sports fans gear up for the culmination of the annual march madness NCAA division 1 men’s basketball tournament, this year to be decided at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, we offer two articles by Dave Zirin on the hyper-exploitation of top flight college athletes. The article paints the 
NCAA as a good ol’ boys network with corporate sponsorship, making millions, if not billions, off the labor of student athletes.
Last week, Kevin Ware of the Louisville Cardinals, suffered one the most horrific injuries I’ve ever seen on a basketball court. It was so shocking that CBS executives ordered the network to stop replaying the footage as Kevin received emergency care. How much will Mr. Ware receive for this game where he fractured his tibia in half to the point it was left dangling off the end of his knee? Nothing, not one penny, unless you’re like the good ol’ boys who feel that the scholarship he receives is “enough”. With no income and very little time to find a part time job, these unpaid student workers often resort to taking money and benefits from boosters and fans of the school they play for.
Click this link for more context on the injury of Kevin Ware.
Terelle Pryor, formerly of Ohio State, now a quarterback for the Oakland Raiders – exchanged some sports equipment and jerseys, his own property unless you ask the NCAA, for some tatoo work. And because this happened while he was still working for Ohio State, he was kicked off the team and forced to give up his scholarship. For Terelle, who was planning on entering the NFL draft, this wasn’t overly devastating, but for the Ohio State football team he left behind, they were forced to deal with NCAA sanctions which put them out of contention for a national championship for a specified length of time.
That is the nature of the cartel formerly known as the NCAA. It is high time for these student workers/athletes to have an organization that represents their interest as students who work and generate profits for their University and this cartel (NCAA). Just like Graduate School Assistants (GSA) in the University of California recently organized under the United Auto Workers Union (UAW), student athletes need to unionize in order to demand proper compensation and benefits for their labor. Until this a reality, its safe to say the plantation will definitely be returning to Atlanta this weekend and every sports weekend of major NCAA sports. Tune in, and check out the link to the article below for more context on this “wicked” (Desmond Howard quote) and hyper-exploitative system.
http://www.thenation.com/article/173307/ncaa-poster-boy-corruption-and-exploitation?page=0,0
Posted in Analysis/Theory, Culture, News Analysis
Tagged basketball, final four, ncaa, plantation, sports
The video copied below shows goods from a closed down shop being thrown into a dumpster, while a crowd of people get pushed back from a line of cops as they try to pick up the goods in order to use them.
A lot of our well-intentioned friends and comrades think that individuals can be convinced to “do the right thing.” The idea that politicians, bosses, and cops are neutral agents that can be talked into supporting workers, unemployed people, and communities of color in our struggles to live is prevalent among many well meaning comrades.
But the reality that radicals understand – those who see the root of society as the problem – is that society is not just composed of many individuals. It’s composed of individuals who are tied together in webs of social relationships.
The two overarching forms of social organization that dominate our lives are those of the capitalist system and the state apparatus.
In basic terms, the capitalist system thrives on the commodification of everything – by assigning everything an exchange value that takes precedence over any given item’s usefulness. It doesn’t matter if the food, clothing and other useful items laying in front of you could help your family out; what matters is that they’re private property, items to be exchanged or dealt with through the market, and not available for just “anyone” to use. As the police in this video state, if people were to take what they needed from the pile of goods that were set to be thrown in the dumpster, it might “cause a riot.”
This is where the state comes in. The repressive side of the state is composed of the courts, prisons and police. Their main function in a capitalist system is to enforce capitalist laws – laws that protect private property and enforce the exchange of commodities on the market. Whether or not an individual cop is a “good person,” the police force as an institution compels all individuals in its ranks to enforce capitalist order or be driven out. Their job, as evidenced in this video, includes forcing people to keep the capitalist system running by keeping us in order – forcing us to work, day in and day out – and not allowing us access to the means of life if we don’t have money to exchange for what we need.
This video is just one example of the logic of capital and the state playing out in ways that continue degrading the lives of working class people.
Posted in News Analysis
Justice for Oscar Grant: A Lost Opportunity?
As austerity is forced on us and the welfare state is eroded, the state has become almost a solely disciplinary force; one that’s focus is to terrorize and police the predominately black and brown surplus populations of the city in order to ensure the smooth functioning necessary for capital accumulation. With this in mind, struggles around police violence in communities of color will increase in number and importance. We have written extensively about these experiences and the lessons we have drawn from them, and would encourage others to check it out.
The following is a brief reportback from Will, a member of FNT who witnessed two of the last three nights of protests in East Flatbush following the police killing of 16-year old Kimani “Kiki” Gray.
The “outside agitators” are back!
The legend of the outside agitator has returned. Clowns like city councilman Jumanee Williams and the leadership of Occupy the Hood are fueling the myth that last night’s rebellions was led / caused by white people or outside agitators. I was there at last night’s rebellion, and let me tell you: there were fewer then 10 white people involved in a rebellion of hundreds of young Black militants. Last night was led by young Black militants. Period.
In Advance the Struggle’s Notes on ILWU Local 4 Lockout, it argued that an orientation toward Asian longshore is necessary in order to challenge the PNGHA and United Grain capitalist attack on ILWU. We are pleased to announce that Japanese National Railway union, Doro Chiba, has now entered the battlefield, organizing international solidarity for the longshore workers. They are mobilizing against Mitsui- United Grain, Friday March 15th. The Bay Area Transport Workers Solidarity Committee (TWSC) is supporting this international day of action, with a rally in San Francisco, Friday March 15th, 4:30PM at 1 Montgomery and Market.
Doro-Chiba asks ILWU members three questions, “Is our protest action against the Mitsui HQ meaningful for your current struggle? If so, what is your opinion about the optimal moment of our action? What are the most important demands?” These questions should be answered by the rank and file of the ILWU to generate a worker resistance with an internationalist perspective. The ILWU officialdom on the other hand is doing the opposite; they are channeling frustration against Japanese capital, or foreign companies that treat American workers badly. Organizing on an internationalist basis, with Japanese and other Asian labor organizations, is the first step to undercutting their anti-foreigner, xenophobic politics that the ILWU beaucracy is promoting.
All out for March 15! Now that San Francisco is organizing a solidarity rally on March 15th in conjunction with Doro Chiba, we call on labor solidarity activists to do the same in San Diego, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and Hawaii. The more the international solidarity develops contributing to the defense and support of ILWU local 4 rank and file, the more we can demonstrate the working class is in motion against the capitalist attacks that seek to destroy the power of unions, hollowing them out to pave the way for unchecked capitalist profit.
Several hundred ILWU members and supporters marched to Mitsui-United Grain’s Vancouver headquarters on March 8, 2013.
International Day Of Action
Stop Mitsui Union Busting and Concessionary Contracts
Fight the Lockout of ILWU by United Grain in the Port of Vancouver, Washington
Friday March 15, 4:30PM @ 1 Montgomery/Market Sts., SF
On March 15, 2013 there will be international actions and protests against the union busting lockout of ILWU Local 4 members by the Mitsui-owned company United Grain in the Port Of Vancouver, Washington.
Since the concessionary contract at EGT in Longview, Washington, other grain handlers have imposed a similar contract in NW grain ports after longshore workers voted 94% to reject it. The contract eliminated the union hiring hall, imposed a 12 hour day and allowed the replacement of union members if they stopped work for health and safety reasons. The other anti-union grain monopoly Cargill/Temco signed a separate agreement which includes many of these draconian measures which is being heralded by union officials as a “victory” because, they say, Cargill is American-owned. Longshore workers in Portland, the West Coast’s largest grain port, voted that concessionary contract down.
ADVANCE THE STRUGGLE 
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