[After Saturday's post about May Day 2009, I'm still thinking about the lessons, and plan to post on it again. In the meantime, I am turning the floor over to my friend Michael Leonardi, a child of Toledo, Ohio, who is now making his home, his living and his family in the Calabrian town of Tortora. Understandably, as the photo of the May Day banner and red flags flying over Tortora (above) indicate.]
May Day Reflections from Tortora, Calabria, Italy...
On May Day we reflected on the American Imperial Crusades, starting from the genocide of the first inhabitants or indigenous peoples of North America (holocausts denied and forgotten) and continuing through world wars 1 and 2 (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), Vietnam, Korea, Yugoslavia, Mesopotamia, Gaza, the war on the poor, the exploitation of Central and South America, Africa, and Asia. The continuing scapegoating and exploitation of the workers of the world, as the capitalist class continues to wreak havoc on our global ecosystems and spread its cancerous poisons.
Toledo, my home town, is one of the most cancerous cities in the western world thanks to the legacy of the automotive industry, Chrysler et. al., thanks also to corrupt city governments and profit-making enterprises like the Envirosafe hazardous waste dump and the Davis-Besse and Fermi 2 Nuclear plants that have contaminated the land, air and water of the Lake Erie Basin and the Great Black Swamp for decades. Today these stories were shared in Italy where similar stories transpire.On May Day we pondered how Chrysler will come out of bankruptcy through a merger with Italy's Fiat, but only if labor costs are slashed and the UAW agrees to pay cuts reducing their workers' salaries to those of their Asian and German domestic counterparts. Of course healthcare costs for workers are too much of a burden for Chrysler and Fiat, whose multi-millionaire bosses can't remain competitive with a workforce that has so many entitlements. Reducing labor costs to those of the German and Asian automakers is only fair, we are told. At least they aren't expecting the UAW workers to work for wages equivalent to those of Mexican, Chinese, or Italian workers, slave wages indeed!
Twenty-seven acres of wetlands on Toledo's highly toxic Ottawa River and a residential neighborhood were destroyed for the promise of over 4,000 great-paying jobs at the Chrysler (and then Daimler/Chrysler and then Chrysler again) Jeep assembly plant that opened in 2001, where gas-guzzling SUV's called Liberty (parts made in China) were put together. The four thousand jobs became less than 2,500 within a year and great-paying seems to always become less and less. The Jeep plant, along with all of Chrysler's plants, is now closed until the UAW caves into their new Italian boss. When Chrysler became Daimler/Chrysler it was heralded as the largest trans-Atlantic corporate merger in history. It should be remembered that Chrysler Chairman Robert Eaton alone took in $3.7 million in cash, $66.2 million in stock and a severance payment of $24.4 million, as American tax dollars are now offered by President Obama to help the ailing Chrysler/Fiat merger come to fruition.
On May Day we thought about the tens and tens of millions killed off by a mafia run global economic system that continues to dupe the masses with smiling faces talking of prosperity for all and democracy? This, when democracy and an absurd sadomasochistic idea of freedom, exist only for those that wield the reins of power and not for the masses struggling ever more vigorously to survive on our once livable planet. In Calabria we live in the home of l'ndrangheta, the world's most powerful mafia that motors the filth that spews from Wall Street, the global drug trade, and manipulates the friendly faces of fascism in the White House and Capitol Hill, whether black, white or brown -- all bought and sold on the capitalist block.
May Day was eliminated in the USA to sever its ties from the international celebration of workers and movement for a better future for us all. Today in Italy we protested and reflected on a global economic system run amok, on our local mafias that have their tentacles reaching around the globe and on our toxic rivers and seas. We contemplated and refuted, with millions around the world, the renewal of fascism here and the world over.
We thought about the immigrants dying in the waters as they attempt to reach Europe's shores by way of the Italian island of Lampedusa. They flock here from the dire situations in their countries where the USA, Europe and Israel profit from the expropriation of their resources and labor. They come here in hopes of finding larger crumbs falling from the G8's plates. We remembered the workers killed on their jobs as they worked in unsafe conditions due to corporate cutbacks or for criminal bosses cutting costs for profit. We lamented the blind ignorance of the bloodied masses who eagerly follow their media masters, but celebrated our international solidarity with people around the world who hope of weaving the Green and the Red for a livable future for our children and children's children.
May 3, 2009
Mo' May Day
Happy Birthday Pete!
In a few hours I'm going to the Pete Seeger 90th birthday concert, courtesy Lee and Alice (pbut). In my early teens, some who know me now will be surprised to learn, I was a folky. These days, not so much.
But I am proud to say, I have never once stopped defending Pete Seeger from criticisms aesthetic and political. His instrument is not and never was his voice, nor even his banjo. It was his audience. And he played his audience so brilliantly because he genuinely loved them and trusted them to help make his music, their music.
His politics? About the worst you could say about him is that he was a mush-minded humanist, but dammit, he was our mush-minded humanist. And that would a half-truth at best. It was from him that I first heard the song "I Hate The Capitalist System" by Sarah Ogan, who was active in the Harlan County coal-mining struggles in the '30s (the strike in which Florence Reece wrote "Which Side Are You On?" the song in the video above). And possibly his best instrumental composition for banjo, save only the incomparable "Goofing Off Suite," is his arrangement of the Chinese People's Liberation Army's "Three Rules of Discipline and the Eight Rules of Attention."
Here is a video that brings all these points together. It's one of his greatest compositions, a hymn to optimism of the will and the continuity of the struggle called "Quite Early Morning." It was recorded within the last couple of years in Beacon, NY, and Pete's voice, as he's been telling us for years, is shot. It's freezing cold in the venue where they are taping this. Besides whoever's behind the camera, there are two people in front of him, bundled up on metal folding chairs, and damned if he doesn't get them to chime in on the chorus.
Many happy returns, Pete...
May 2, 2009
May Day’s New Roots
I had a thought-provoking May Day.
It started on teh Intertubes. The social networking space called Facebook, or at least the small self-created corner of it where I rattle around, was awash in May Day greetings, forwardings and comments. I clicked the li’l thumbs-up button to register my approval of every one that came my way. Literally dozens of my Facebook friends chipped in on the theme.
Some included snatches of poetry, verses to The Internationale, embedded YouTube videos or links to articles on the holiday, like this and others at Kasama and some Rowland Keshena Robinson posted at By Any Means Necessary.
Meanwhile, on Leftist Trainspotters, an oddball internet group for people whose hobby is following left organizations around the world (especially small and peculiar ones), the estimable David Walters, of the Marxist Internet Archives, encouraged everyone to report in on their local International Workers Day activities.
Thus prodded, I headed out to check out two rival May Day rallies called in downtown Manhattan yesterday afternoon. I can’t claim that it was altogether a heartening or uplifting trip.
Two Rallies
The first rally, at Union Square, was sponsored by the May 1st Coalition, an outfit in which—how shall I put this delicately?—members of the Workers World Party seemed to play quite the central role. The theme was very much about immigration—the largest visible contingent was day laborers from NJ, Los Jornaleros de Freehold and a big sign at the front read: Dear President Obama,
There were maybe 200 people there at 2:00, two hours into the event, spread across a largish plaza. At least four self-styled socialist groups had tables and were attempting to distribute their press to each other’s cadres. A friend reports that the crowd grew somewhat larger and developed a clear immigrant majority by the time a short late afternoon march took place in the rain.
100 Days have passed.
We need fair and humane immigration reform now.
[signed] May 1 Coalition
The second rally was at the same time, maybe seven or eight blocks to the north at Madison Square. With around 600 people present when I was there, it was overwhelmingly made up of immigrant workers, mainly Latina/o, mostly from non-union, CBO-type organizations, the largest contingents those of Make the Road by Walking and La Union.
There were a score of staffers and members of SEIU Local 32 BJ, some teachers and other public sector workers, and I spotted Ed Ott from the NYC Central Labor Council. To be fair, early afternoon on a Friday isn’t the easiest time to draw out the employed. A clump of strikers from the nearly seven months old picket line at the Stella D’Oro Bakery were also there. Not much identifiably socialist presence.
All of this has prompted a few thoughts on where May Day is at today and how we got here.
The Revival of May Day
We are in the second distinct stage in the revival of May Day. May Day was once the central holiday of working class revolutionaries in this country, before it was broken by McCarthyism and the subsequent all-but-total collapse of the Communist Party during the ‘50s and ‘60s.
The first stage came in the 1970s, and drew on the huge layers of advanced fighters thrown forward by the decade of upheaval we call The Sixties. The main organized forms this revival first took were marches and rallies sponsored by left groups, especially those of the New Communist Movement. These tended to be very militant and Red in flavor, and were almost invariably held by a single organization and its supporters. With the collapse of the NCM by the early ‘80s it seemed likely that May Day would vanish again.
But veterans of those organizations and other radical and labor activists kept it alive. In some places May Day became an annual event observed with rallies and concerts, if not parades. The radical press invariably carried articles on the history. In a few areas, unions and other people’s organizations which had come under left leadership since the start of this first stage started taking part in or holding May 1 observances.
The Revival Leaps Ahead
The second stage in the revival of May Day came with the great levantamiento that shook this country so profoundly during the Spring of 2006, when millions of immigrant workers struck to protest anti-immigrant attacks and demand justice. May 1, 2006, was the largest single day of protest during the whole upsurge.
As the Freedom Road/El Camino De La Libertad statement this May Day correctly highlighted, the result is that the essential character of May Day is now that of an immigrant holiday. More particularly, it is an immigrant workers' holiday. This is hardly surprising. Immigrants to the US, especially the undocumented ones, are workers, and they know that they are workers. Further, they come from countries (pretty much anyplace else in the world) where May Day is the working class holiday, whether the tame equivalent of our Labor Day or the occasion for launching or escalating campaigns against the employers and the government.
At the same time, the native-born base for May Day has grown as well. Its history as a proletarian holiday, a socialist holiday, a holiday born in the class struggle right here in the US, has been spotlighted by the likes of Howard Zinn—and by the thousands of teachers and professors who have drawn on that understanding in their work with young people over the last 30-plus years.
New Roots As Change Unfolds
This renewed revival has left May Day more deeply rooted than it has been in well over half a century. I don’t want to get ahead of myself here. It’s still on the radar of a very small section of the population in this country. On the other hand, it is no longer the property of what Marta Harnecker calls the “party left,” but is more broadly recognized and embraced as an intrinsic part of radical culture in the US.
And, by me, that’s a very hopeful thing at a time when, as a Rasmussen poll recently reported:Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.
This pro-socialist tide (strongest among the young, incidentally) has little to do with anything we’ve done and everything with the palpable failures of capitalism and with the yahoos who are out there denouncing anything faintly progressive or egalitarian as “socialism.”
May Day in many ways embodies our broad vision and our hopes for humanity and can surely be one door that the folks polled by Rasmussen walk through toward revolutionary socialism.
April 30, 2009
For May Day and Immigrant Workers
In the '70s, a layer of young revolutionaries and communists emerging from the great social upheavals of previous decade set out to revive May Day, International Workers Day, here in its nation of origin. Marches, rallies, celebrations and other events sank new roots for the holiday.
However, as an excellent May Day editorial by Freedom Road points out, it was the great immigrant levantamiento of earlier this decade that really reclaimed May Day for the working class here. No surprise--since Germans and other Europeans fled the repression of the revolutions of 1848, immigrants from around the world have been the sparkplug of militant struggle and revolutionary movement in the class here again and again.
Now, as the editorial points out, the deepening depression has reactionaries scapegoating and attacking immigrants, just as they have in similar crises in the past. One of this country's finest songwriters, Tom Russell, has an answer for them.
April 22, 2009
The People's Organization for Progress visits Harriet Tubman home & gravesite
Like most popular versions of oft-repeated stories, we are all familiar with Harriet Tubman's role as an Underground Railroad "conductor"; shepherding over 300 runaways to freedom in the north and (after the Fugitive Slave Act) to Canada. And like most "legendary" tales, the more complicated real story gets lost in what we might describe as the children's version.
Yes, while still a teenager, Harriet Tubman (then known as Araminta Ross) got in the way of a slavecatcher chasing a runaway and was hit over the head with a scale-weight while the other slave escaped. Tubman suffered from epilepsy for the rest of her life as a result. And yes, Harriet Tubman escaped bondage in Maryland and followed Polaris (the North Star) to her freedom in Philadelphia where she became active wth the Underground Railroad and abolitionist movement. But this is the same Harriet Tubman who later in life became active in the women's suffrage movement, turned her home in Auburn, NY into one of the first Homes for the Aged in the U.S. This is the same Harriet Tubman who, after being denied her military pension for service during the Civil War, built the John Brown Hospital for Disabled Military Veterans on her property.
Yes, Harriet Tubman led hundreds of captives north on the Underground Railroad, but she also guided many hundreds more while working as a "spy" for the U.S. Army. On one mission, she was put in command of three patrol boats for an expedition up the Combahee River, assaulting plantations and freeing more than 700 slaves along the way. She and her troops were responsible for guiding the boats around "torpedoes" (river mines) to burn the plantations and escape with former slaves who swam out to the boats. Tubman's tactical brilliance and strategic sagacity later led to the liberation and capture of Jacksonville, Florida.
While John Brown was the first to give Tubman the title "General" (during the planning phase of the failed Harper's Ferry Raid, which she'd supported and intended to lead until succumbing to an epileptic seizure), this was no mere honorific. Her war-time experience as the only woman to ever command regular U.S. troops in combat (to this day), proves that she deserves the rank. Even though the U.S. government refused to grant her military pension (she collected a widow's pension from the Army after her second husband, Nelson Davis, who she'd met leading the Combahee River Raid, passed on), newspapers of the period make her role as a military leader clear. Following the Civil War, Tubman's main efforts shifted to the Women's Suffrage movement and various humanitarian activities.As regular Fire on the Mountain readers know, the People's Organization for Progress is an activist organization working for social change within the African-American community of northern New Jersey. My colleague and FotM founder, Jimmy Higgins, and I have frequent posted articles about POP's campaign to keep public hospitals open (see "POP Says Save Our Hospitals" and "Save Our Hospitals—Muhlenberg Defense Moves to Trenton", plus additional stories) the ongoing anti-war activism during which POP built the largest peace and justice coalition in NJ history (see "Black-Led March in NJ" and "Black NJ Organizes Against the War, and many others) as well as many additional postings about POP marches, rallies and forums. It is unusual for the People's Organization for Progress to run bus trips, other than to demonstrations, because we are primarily an activist organization, building struggles in the Black community. Nonetheless, the visit to Harriet Tubman's home and gravesite was both educational and transformational for the many members and friends who accompanied us. POP hopes to return to Auburn, NY again to share this experience with others (for additional pictures from this trip see Harriet Tubman Davis home & gravesite.)
It is only by knowing and understanding our past that we can change the present and our children's future…
March 26, 2009
Is Afghanistan Strategic?
One of the first points in the fine new Freedom Road statement released on the occasion of the 6th anniversary of the occupation of Iraq is the interesting assertion that Afghanistan is less about the strategic interests of US imperialism than about bourgeois politics here at home:
The war in Afghanistan is not mainly about oil or gas pipelines nor, at this point, is it principally about al Qaeda. If the war there were central to US ruling class interests, the George Bush administration would not have low-balled it for eight years. If Afghanistan were a central strategic focus, the Bush 41 and Clinton administrations wouldn’t have completely ignored it from the Soviet defeat there in 1989 right through to 9/11/01.I just ran across an interesting confirmation of that assertion, in an Agence France-Presse article tellingly entitled "West lowers sights in Afghanistan":
Afghanistan is a pawn in the game of US domestic politics. Obama ran on Bush’s failure to keep his promise to capture Bin Laden, and in his statements during the campaign and since has repeatedly made his own pledge―Victory in Afghanistan. Yet no one in the administration can say what that would look like and it is acknowledged that so far there exists neither an overall strategic plan, clear goals nor an exit strategy.
"We are lowering our ambitions," a senior French official admitted to AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The Americans are now looking for a way out, they no longer regard Afghanistan as strategic. It'll take two to five years, but we're in a logic of disengagement."They want out because they are losing (as the FRSO/OSCL statement points out) and there's no way to "win" by practically any definition of the word, and because the real strategic problems for the US in the region remain Iraq, Iran and Pakistan.
I won't insult FotM readers by explaining why this does not mean that anti-war activists can breathe a sigh of relief and turn our attention to other issues. Let us rather take up the call made in the recent--and eloquent--open letter of IVAW, MFSO and VFP to the peace movement (available here):
We ask all those who have stood with us in the past to stay faithful to the cause.Read more!
March 25, 2009
Indigenous Struggles: Learning From Canada
[As FotM is partly responsible for this article, it's a pleasure to post it here. It arose from conversations between Rowland Keshena Robinson of the By Any Means Necessary blog, and Jimmy Higgins, on line and then on the phone. Rowland, a prolific young radical now based at the University of Waterloo in Canada, raised the question of why the Canadian left--socialist and anarchist--is so much more advanced in line and practice on issues relating to the First Nations, than those of immediately to Canada's south. Jimmy and Rowland came up with the idea of posting links to some of the best stuff from Canada for those in the US. Rowland's first shot was a large compendium of links to articles from The New Socialist, published by the New Socialist group. That got whittled down to five key articles presented here, with an introductory commentary by Rowland. He modestly did not include any of his own writings on the subject but you can find links to them here.]
After posting my big long list of readings yesterday on this subject, reader Jimmy Higgins commented, wondering if I could whittle it down in anyway to a “Top 5″ of sorts. I have obliged, and so here is my top 5 must-reads about the current wave of native struggles in Canada. I have tried to cover a wide range of issues about Indian resistance in Canada, including: armed resistance to colonialism (warrior societies, AIM, NYM); the current state of the struggle for native self-determination, especially as it pertains to the new “politics of recognition; the gulf that currently exists between native activists and socialists and revolutionaries who come from the Stalinian traditions and the idea of socialism from above; the rising tide of native feminists, who are fighting not just patriarchy in their own traditional communities, but in wider Canadian society; and finally a look at how native traditions actually came to influence Marx’s thought near the end of his life, and how socialist activists can show solidarity with the current phase of radical indigenism. Four of the articles are from Issue # 58, which was a special edition of the current resurgence of militant native struggles, while the fifth article comes the latest issue, # 63. I have also given a quick descriptive paragraph next to each article.
From New Socialist Issue # 58, September/October 2006
* What Are Warrior Societies? by Taiaiake Alfred and Lana Lowe - This article looks at the rise of the modern Indian warrior societies in Canada and the United States, with a particular focus on the Mohawk Warrior Society, which was on of the first and became a clear model for others to follow. The article also contrasts the rise of the warrior societies, which took place in the traditional, reserve based Indian communities, with the rise at the same time of the American Indian Movement, and other, later groups like the Native Youth Movement, which began, and remained as, groupings of urban based Indians. Taiaiake Alfred is Kanien’kehaka and a professor in the Indigenous Governance Programs at the University of Victoria. Lana Lowe is a member of the Fort Nelson Dene First Nation and works with indigenous peoples in Central America.
* Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Recognition by Glen Coulthard - This article examines the current mainstream of Indian-Canadian relations, which is often cloaked in the vocabulary of “recognition”. The author of this article employees the work of anti-colonial revolutionary and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon to challenge the idea that the colonial relationship between indigenous peoples and the Canadian state can be transformed via a politics of “recognition”. He takes the “politics of recognition” to refer to the now expansive range of recognition-based models of liberal pluralism that seek to “reconcile” indigenous claims to nationhood with Crown sovereignty by accommodating indigenous identities in some form of renewed relationship with (and within) the Canadian state. In other words, rather than leading to true self-determination, the “politics of recognition” is just recreating the current colonial state of affairs in Canada. Glen Coulthard is a Dene activist and PhD student in political theory at the University of Victoria. He teaches in the Indigenous Governance Programs.
* Socialism From Below and Indigenous Peoples by Deborah Simmons - This article examines the fact that during the peak of the Red Power movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many newly radicalised Indian people became interested in exploring various theories of revolution and socialist organisation but that by the mid 1970s however, many of these same activists had become hostile to socialism, advocating a separate path to liberation rooted in indigenous traditions. This article takes a critical stance with regards to the relationship between indigenous peoples and the tradition of socialism from above advocated by the various pro-China and pro-Soviet parties in Canada. The author also tackles the problem of Stalinian socialists who argue that Indian peoples’ struggles for self-determination are the actual problem and that they must assimilate into Canadian society. While I may not agree with everything that is said in the article (such as the reference to Ward Churchill’s book “Marxism and Native Americans), I think overall this article is a good look at why Indians do not identify often with the mainstream of North American socialist thought. Deborah Simmons has recently returned to live and work in the Northwest Territories. She is a member of the New Socialist Group.
* Indigenous Feminism Without Apology by Andrea Smith - This article examines the often heard claim that Native women aren’t feminists. Those in native communities who make this claim feel that supposedly, feminism is not needed because Indian women were treated with respect prior to colonization, thus, any Indian woman who calls herself a feminist is condemned as being “white.” However, this article looks at how many community-based activists are now describing themselves as “feminists without apology.” They are argue that feminism is actually an indigenous concept that has been co-opted by white women. The fact that Native societies were egalitarian 500 years ago has not stopped women from being abused now, and since Indian women are the women most likely to be killed by domestic violence, it is an issue now more than ever. This article poses the question, “when we talk about survival of our nations, who are we including?” This article asserts that these Indian feminists are challenging not only patriarchy within native communities, but also white supremacy and colonialism within mainstream white feminism. That is, they’re challenging why it is that white women get to define what feminism is. Andrea Smith is Cherokee and a professor of Native American Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and co-founder of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence and the Boarding School Healing Project.
From New Socialist Issue # 63, 2008
* Indigenous Traditions in Freedom by Deborah Simmons [requires downloading]- The main thrust of this article is how native traditions, especially those of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, came to influence the work of Marx in his later years, especially on one of his final pieces of writing known as the Ethnographic Notebooks. The article also looks at the history of indigenous resistance to colonialism and capitalism within Canada, and how modern socialists can best show their solidarity with current native struggles for land and dignity. Finally, this article also looks at the rise of modern forms of radical indigenism in North America, in particular the new Wasáse movement, which is inspired by the work and theories of Taiaiake Alfred.
