It was with glee that I sat in the Kings County court's jurors' lounge and saw that justice was again creeping slowly after the Bush administration, its nose filled with the essence of Brimstone seeping from under the collar of Atty General Alberto Gonzales. My jaw may have even dropped when I read that it might finally catch up with that wicked toad, Karl Rove.
Patrick Leahy has used strong language, comparing the attorneys scandal to the dark days of Nixon, and this is reason for hope. Still, I can't help but wish that these men had lied about sex, which most Americans seem to care about (we can relate to it, you see), instead of spying on us, because then something might come of it. What if, instead of just approving illegal torture and flouting the Geneva Convention in direct public statements that Gonzales had misbehavedin his bedroom?
I wish that Rove, instead of orchestrating the stealing of three presidential elections, had gotten caught out in the wrong bed.
* * *
After the much anticipated "Fitzmas" following the investigation of the Plame leak, I am only reluctantly optimistic about the notion that justice will ever catch up to these Bushies. It seems likely that despite the 2006 elections we will just continue to read with sick fascination the compilation of crimes at sites such as TPM'smuckraker, along with the detailed accounts of iniquity by such excellent reporters such as Robert Parry, who has a new book out, and Murray Waas, but that nothing will actually result from this knowledge. At least we will know in painful detail about the ongoing, and yet unpunished crimes of an unrepentant political elite. Someone I met on jury-duty told me about the new Comedy Central show L'il Bush and I thought it sounded like the kind of theater that was popular on the streets of France before the revolution: the comedy that you reach for when the people who govern you are completely unaccountable. Although they were royals claiming divine right, and we have "elected" representatives, in what real democracy would a policy developed by a president with a 30% approval rating still manage to surive ?
Friday, July 27, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Pitchfork Festival Round Up, Better Late than Never
Or...sometimes music is more fun in the hot sun.
My big vacation event of the summer was going to the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago on Bastille Day weekend with my friend from that excellent blog, The Pagan Science Monitor.
For those who don't know, Pitchfork is an internet music guide that notoriously sets the snark n' snob standards for hipsters everywhere, and yet remains an invaluable resource for the rest of us. In addition to all that, they now produce a remarkably un-snarky and incredibly cheap annual music festival. I have put my own concert-going cellphone videos on youtube so that everyone can experience just what it's like to be five feet tall at an outdoor rock show on flat ground. The sound is pretty good on these, so enjoy. And all you tall people, perhaps you'll gain a new perspective on the world.
And now...for the run down (including links to videos from people who could actually see the bands).
DAY ONE
On the first day, the fest featured three full album performances sponsored by the concert series All Tomorrow's Parties/ Don't Look Back: Slint performing "Spiderland", GZA performing "Liquid Swords" and Sonic Youth doing their full double-album "Daydream Nation."
Needless to say, it was a fantastic first night of music.
GZA: Although the pitchfork vids on youtube show The 4th Chamber the peak of the GZA show, for me anyway, was their rendition of ODB's "I Like it Raw," a weird epitaph if there ever was one.
Sonic Youth: As you can tell from these assorted videos, Sonic Youth's energy was even more massive than usual.
DAY TWO
The second day my friend and I started off well with locals, Califone,and we seemed to be standing near the band's family members. You can also see a video of theirs here.
After a too-short, but nonetheless blissful 45 minutes of Califone we were a bit indecisive about which bands we wanted to see. We heard the beginning of, but were not that enthused about Battles so we headed over to see Fujiya and Miyagi, where the sound mix was so terrible that we gave up. Instead, we collected our favorite overheard absurdities (coming soon on TPSM?), looked at the fashions on parade, ate some vegan food, drank some beer, all the while listening to an unintentional live mash-up that we dubbed "Fujiya Battles Miyagi" - it surpassed both bands on their own.
On our way to the next stage, I liked what I heard of Professor Murder, but thought I'd see them so easily in NY that I'd rather hear someone else. I wasn't sorry to miss the tedious Iron and Wine. (Jeezus, I ask you, what has happened to the indie scene?) I sort of liked Mastodon, but my friend judged them not authentic metal and I found Clipse unbelievably bad.
However, those mixed experiences were more than made up for by Cat Power's completely gaff-free performance and Yoko Ono's chthonic set with Thurston Moore. For a brief thrill, check this link for someone's clips from both shows. The Cat Power video clip linked above has better sound than most of what I found on Youtube. She did a great performance of Satisfaction but no one on youtube seems to have captured a good video of it with good sound. Here's one with a nice picture and muted sound but you can get the idea of what the song sounded like.
Yoko Ono's show was profound, the beautiful surprise of the day. My friend says that he was not expecting that much of her, but was so affected by the show that he couldn't talk about it without tearing up for two days. I'd seen her live before - in Central Park w/John Zorn and her son, Sean, about twelve years ago when her album Rising came out, so, I thought she would be good, but this show was considerably better than that one. Thurston Moore came out as her special guest for the show-stopping "Mulberry".
Hers was both emotionally rich and far and away the most politically conscious performance of the festival. Given all the negativity directed toward her even from audience members, I thought it was sadly significant that she was the only person at Pitchfork who I heard mention the war. She also is so clearly a feminist performer, and I noticed that the young men in the audience were the ones who did the most mocking. Clearly, they were uncomfortable with the way she rolled out with all that simultaneous power and vulnerability. The young women seemed to being paying more attention. As well they should; she has that witchy energy that I associate with seventies-era feminism and the earnest, bright-eyed experimentalism that seems to have left the avant-garde since the commercialized art scene of the eighties. I felt nostalgic and came home to listen to "Double Fantasy" on vinyl when I got back to NY.
DAY THREE:
The third day, we started with another Chicago band, The Ponys, who rocked up a sweat, then went over to check out Menomena, whose new record I love, but in the live, outdoor setting, they weren't equal to the sweet layered melodies of their studio recordings. Yeah, if you liked that, here's another one.
We spent the rest of the day hanging out near the shady stage. First, we had to visit the Readymade Magazine stand, where people were making their own t-shirts, We then spent the rest of the day at the "Balance stage" listening to three totally enjoyable sets: The very jazzy kids from Ann Arbor,Nomo, the very hilarious Cool Kids from Chicago who referred to themselves as "the Black version of the Beastie Boys" and Canadian rapper extroardinaire: Cadence Weapon, who just wowed us. He was lyrically inventive, his delivery was right on, he hopped up and down and crowd surfed, and to top it off, his crafty DJ, Weez-L turned out to be a young, skinny bearded white kid who liked like he was dressed up as ZZ top for Halloween.
We skipped both hipster favorites Of Montreal & Sea and Cake (who I think I enjoyed listening to while I was waiting in line for the bathroom), to check out the record and poster fairs.
Sadly, in order to see the big hip-hop acts, we missed both Stephen Malkmus, whose set was supposed to be great, and the late-starting Klaxons, who are playing Madison Square Garden w/Bjork the next time they come to this 'burg.
It was worth it, however, as we ended our Pitchfork experience with the ever-righteous De La Soul who cracked many jokes, got the party going, and brought out Prince Paul as a "substitute DJ" on the pretense that Pacemaster Mase had to go to the bathroom.
Three days of hip-hop, rock and even a wild feminist peace-happening later, I headed back to NY where the summer concert season continues...If I can get it together to write about them, I'll tell all y'all about Mavis Staples, The Noisettes, MIA, Eric Bachman, Neko Case and the ever-ready, Hold Steady.
My big vacation event of the summer was going to the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago on Bastille Day weekend with my friend from that excellent blog, The Pagan Science Monitor.
For those who don't know, Pitchfork is an internet music guide that notoriously sets the snark n' snob standards for hipsters everywhere, and yet remains an invaluable resource for the rest of us. In addition to all that, they now produce a remarkably un-snarky and incredibly cheap annual music festival. I have put my own concert-going cellphone videos on youtube so that everyone can experience just what it's like to be five feet tall at an outdoor rock show on flat ground. The sound is pretty good on these, so enjoy. And all you tall people, perhaps you'll gain a new perspective on the world.
And now...for the run down (including links to videos from people who could actually see the bands).
DAY ONE
On the first day, the fest featured three full album performances sponsored by the concert series All Tomorrow's Parties/ Don't Look Back: Slint performing "Spiderland", GZA performing "Liquid Swords" and Sonic Youth doing their full double-album "Daydream Nation."
Needless to say, it was a fantastic first night of music.
GZA: Although the pitchfork vids on youtube show The 4th Chamber the peak of the GZA show, for me anyway, was their rendition of ODB's "I Like it Raw," a weird epitaph if there ever was one.
Sonic Youth: As you can tell from these assorted videos, Sonic Youth's energy was even more massive than usual.
DAY TWO
The second day my friend and I started off well with locals, Califone,and we seemed to be standing near the band's family members. You can also see a video of theirs here.
After a too-short, but nonetheless blissful 45 minutes of Califone we were a bit indecisive about which bands we wanted to see. We heard the beginning of, but were not that enthused about Battles so we headed over to see Fujiya and Miyagi, where the sound mix was so terrible that we gave up. Instead, we collected our favorite overheard absurdities (coming soon on TPSM?), looked at the fashions on parade, ate some vegan food, drank some beer, all the while listening to an unintentional live mash-up that we dubbed "Fujiya Battles Miyagi" - it surpassed both bands on their own.
On our way to the next stage, I liked what I heard of Professor Murder, but thought I'd see them so easily in NY that I'd rather hear someone else. I wasn't sorry to miss the tedious Iron and Wine. (Jeezus, I ask you, what has happened to the indie scene?) I sort of liked Mastodon, but my friend judged them not authentic metal and I found Clipse unbelievably bad.
However, those mixed experiences were more than made up for by Cat Power's completely gaff-free performance and Yoko Ono's chthonic set with Thurston Moore. For a brief thrill, check this link for someone's clips from both shows. The Cat Power video clip linked above has better sound than most of what I found on Youtube. She did a great performance of Satisfaction but no one on youtube seems to have captured a good video of it with good sound. Here's one with a nice picture and muted sound but you can get the idea of what the song sounded like.
Yoko Ono's show was profound, the beautiful surprise of the day. My friend says that he was not expecting that much of her, but was so affected by the show that he couldn't talk about it without tearing up for two days. I'd seen her live before - in Central Park w/John Zorn and her son, Sean, about twelve years ago when her album Rising came out, so, I thought she would be good, but this show was considerably better than that one. Thurston Moore came out as her special guest for the show-stopping "Mulberry".
Hers was both emotionally rich and far and away the most politically conscious performance of the festival. Given all the negativity directed toward her even from audience members, I thought it was sadly significant that she was the only person at Pitchfork who I heard mention the war. She also is so clearly a feminist performer, and I noticed that the young men in the audience were the ones who did the most mocking. Clearly, they were uncomfortable with the way she rolled out with all that simultaneous power and vulnerability. The young women seemed to being paying more attention. As well they should; she has that witchy energy that I associate with seventies-era feminism and the earnest, bright-eyed experimentalism that seems to have left the avant-garde since the commercialized art scene of the eighties. I felt nostalgic and came home to listen to "Double Fantasy" on vinyl when I got back to NY.
DAY THREE:
The third day, we started with another Chicago band, The Ponys, who rocked up a sweat, then went over to check out Menomena, whose new record I love, but in the live, outdoor setting, they weren't equal to the sweet layered melodies of their studio recordings. Yeah, if you liked that, here's another one.
We spent the rest of the day hanging out near the shady stage. First, we had to visit the Readymade Magazine stand, where people were making their own t-shirts, We then spent the rest of the day at the "Balance stage" listening to three totally enjoyable sets: The very jazzy kids from Ann Arbor,Nomo, the very hilarious Cool Kids from Chicago who referred to themselves as "the Black version of the Beastie Boys" and Canadian rapper extroardinaire: Cadence Weapon, who just wowed us. He was lyrically inventive, his delivery was right on, he hopped up and down and crowd surfed, and to top it off, his crafty DJ, Weez-L turned out to be a young, skinny bearded white kid who liked like he was dressed up as ZZ top for Halloween.
We skipped both hipster favorites Of Montreal & Sea and Cake (who I think I enjoyed listening to while I was waiting in line for the bathroom), to check out the record and poster fairs.
Sadly, in order to see the big hip-hop acts, we missed both Stephen Malkmus, whose set was supposed to be great, and the late-starting Klaxons, who are playing Madison Square Garden w/Bjork the next time they come to this 'burg.
It was worth it, however, as we ended our Pitchfork experience with the ever-righteous De La Soul who cracked many jokes, got the party going, and brought out Prince Paul as a "substitute DJ" on the pretense that Pacemaster Mase had to go to the bathroom.
Three days of hip-hop, rock and even a wild feminist peace-happening later, I headed back to NY where the summer concert season continues...If I can get it together to write about them, I'll tell all y'all about Mavis Staples, The Noisettes, MIA, Eric Bachman, Neko Case and the ever-ready, Hold Steady.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
This Just in: "Toxic Sludge is STILL Good for You" - NOT!
Back in 1995, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton of "PR Watch" wrote the book Toxic Sludge is Good For You, exposing the PR industry. Since then, flaks for big corporations are still at it, most recently to NY Times' readers' disgust, in the form of the Hoover Institute's Dr. Henry I. Miller, who was also at the FDA during the first Bush administration, and is considered by PR watch to be one of the "usual suspects" or "junkyard dogs" of science, because of his shilling for industry and promoting right-wing views of scientific research. According to them, Miller,
True to form, his Op-ed piece in last week Times' pooh-poohs the claims of activists who oppose the use of bovine growth hormone, and inspired seven people to write letters to the Times. One of those people was my stepfather, who wrote:
You can find all the letters at here.
Of the letters in the paper responding to that particular Op-Ed piece, only two supported it, and interestingly, the Times identified the authors as 1)vice-president of a biotechnology company and 2)a person who has previously collaborated with Miller on published articles.
Immediately, I wondered if my favorite media watchdogs were on the trail as well. The first thing that came up when I googled Miller's name along with "FAIR" was a Media Matters article about how this same doctor had "diagnosed" Al Gore with "narcissistic personality disorder" in 2004 in the National Review Online. There's another article about Miller and his Op-Ed piece at the website eating liberally.
My step-dad is right - and literally, "on the money." Miller is cynical indeed.
regularly grinds an ax against what he considers the FDA's "extraordinarily burdensome regulations" regarding genetically engineered foods and new drugs. In 1996, Miller also editorialized against the FDA's proposal to regulate tobacco. "The FDA's anti-tobacco initiative . . . has not been without its own costs to American consumers and taxpayers," he stated, describing FDA commissioner David Kessler as "personally consumed by this single issue."
True to form, his Op-ed piece in last week Times' pooh-poohs the claims of activists who oppose the use of bovine growth hormone, and inspired seven people to write letters to the Times. One of those people was my stepfather, who wrote:
To the Editor:
Henry I. Miller argues that we should “embrace” the use of bovine growth hormone (rBST) in order to feed people more cheaply, save the environment and so on. He characterizes opponents of rBST as “cynical,” but I read Dr. Miller’s arguments as cynical.
I have no idea if rBST is safe. But I do know that the dairy industry and its lobbyists do not want to require labeling milk produced with rBST. In fact, they are so intent on reducing information available to consumers that they are lobbying to prevent dairies from labeling their milk as “rBST-free”!
There’s good reason for cynicism. George Entenman
Chapel Hill, N.C., June 29, 2007
You can find all the letters at here.
Of the letters in the paper responding to that particular Op-Ed piece, only two supported it, and interestingly, the Times identified the authors as 1)vice-president of a biotechnology company and 2)a person who has previously collaborated with Miller on published articles.
Immediately, I wondered if my favorite media watchdogs were on the trail as well. The first thing that came up when I googled Miller's name along with "FAIR" was a Media Matters article about how this same doctor had "diagnosed" Al Gore with "narcissistic personality disorder" in 2004 in the National Review Online. There's another article about Miller and his Op-Ed piece at the website eating liberally.
My step-dad is right - and literally, "on the money." Miller is cynical indeed.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Social Forum Part Three
Saturday:
Saturday was the last day of workshops at the Social Forum, and I only went to two of them. My major goal by then was to attend things that I hadn't gotten a chance to do during the rest of the day. One was to go to a hip-hop session; there were several at the conference, but the one I had tried to attend on Friday was restricted to people of color only. The one I chose was called "COINTELPRO to Rapintelpro." While the name suggested government surveillance, the panel's most interesting feature was the inside discussion of "urban radio" marketing that we got from Davey D, an Oakland activist who once worked at AOL/Time Warner and Clear Channel.
The government element in the presentation was the recent NYCLU subpoena of NYPD documentsrelated to the 2004 RNC convention, which revealed that the police had been spying on people as "radical" and "way out" as Alicia Keys and Jay Z, but that was not such new news.
The corporate aspect of the censorship was also chilling. Davey D. talked about the way commercial radio has tried to get audiences to focus on brands (Yo MTV raps; Summerjams, etc) instead of artists, and described what programming directors would say when refusing to play artists such as Talib Kweli on urban radio ("our audience is not intelligent enough for that.") while record companies chose to market him and other political or "conscious" rappers through surfing and skateboarding magazines. The audience for this event was diverse and the conversation, while limited because the people in the front had so much to say, interesting.
** *
I had workshop fatigue and skipped the middle of the day to go to the "solidarity tents" and buy a t-shirt.
Then I headed for a 3:30 workshop by the group that had the buzz of the forum: Right to the City, a national alliance of urban community organizations working against gentrification. The workshop I went to was not the most popular one they did, and started off a little slowly, but became interesting later on. (My friend Alex said that he'd encountered this at another workshop, and thought that the audience of the social forum was such that workshop organizers would have to pitch their discussions past the introductory level in order to maintain interest.) So, for example, when people at this workshop were just talking about the basics of what they did in their groups, and answering questions with rather obvious platitudes, people were leaving. When people started to get into the nitty gritty of leadership development, and then - finally - the relationship of paid staff to membership organizations, it got much more interesting. That last issue in particular led to a dialogue between workshop presenters and audience members, who included people such as members of New York's Picture the Homeless and the fabulous FIERCE.
and that's all for now.
Saturday was the last day of workshops at the Social Forum, and I only went to two of them. My major goal by then was to attend things that I hadn't gotten a chance to do during the rest of the day. One was to go to a hip-hop session; there were several at the conference, but the one I had tried to attend on Friday was restricted to people of color only. The one I chose was called "COINTELPRO to Rapintelpro." While the name suggested government surveillance, the panel's most interesting feature was the inside discussion of "urban radio" marketing that we got from Davey D, an Oakland activist who once worked at AOL/Time Warner and Clear Channel.
The government element in the presentation was the recent NYCLU subpoena of NYPD documentsrelated to the 2004 RNC convention, which revealed that the police had been spying on people as "radical" and "way out" as Alicia Keys and Jay Z, but that was not such new news.
The corporate aspect of the censorship was also chilling. Davey D. talked about the way commercial radio has tried to get audiences to focus on brands (Yo MTV raps; Summerjams, etc) instead of artists, and described what programming directors would say when refusing to play artists such as Talib Kweli on urban radio ("our audience is not intelligent enough for that.") while record companies chose to market him and other political or "conscious" rappers through surfing and skateboarding magazines. The audience for this event was diverse and the conversation, while limited because the people in the front had so much to say, interesting.
** *
I had workshop fatigue and skipped the middle of the day to go to the "solidarity tents" and buy a t-shirt.
Then I headed for a 3:30 workshop by the group that had the buzz of the forum: Right to the City, a national alliance of urban community organizations working against gentrification. The workshop I went to was not the most popular one they did, and started off a little slowly, but became interesting later on. (My friend Alex said that he'd encountered this at another workshop, and thought that the audience of the social forum was such that workshop organizers would have to pitch their discussions past the introductory level in order to maintain interest.) So, for example, when people at this workshop were just talking about the basics of what they did in their groups, and answering questions with rather obvious platitudes, people were leaving. When people started to get into the nitty gritty of leadership development, and then - finally - the relationship of paid staff to membership organizations, it got much more interesting. That last issue in particular led to a dialogue between workshop presenters and audience members, who included people such as members of New York's Picture the Homeless and the fabulous FIERCE.
and that's all for now.
Social Forum Part Two
I've finally caught up on my sleep after four days of workshops in Atlanta, and have more to say about everything. As I said, I'll pick up first with the Friday evening workshop run by Project South (they also have a myspacepage). Project South is an organization that works on "popular education" and their workshop was designed to have us try out their training tools and see if we could take them back to our own organizations. One thing I liked at the outset was that they clearly stated a set of guidelines: the respect for time-limits, a way for people to interrupt by saying "whoa!" when they hear something they are bothered by, and the "step up/step back" rule was explicit (we'll call less on people who talk a lot/more on people who talk less).
The workshop starts with what they call an "Aha" moment. The exercise is to have people talk in small groups about the moment when they first felt themselves to be activists and to then identify the year. Everyone in the room also has a copy of a time-line including events in the history of global capitalism and social movements in the US. Given a smaller group and more time, there would then be a large group discussion about people's aha moments, placing them on the big timeline so that people could see clusters (say around the beginning of the current war, or around the 1960s). In addition to being an interesting demonstration of people's situation in a broader history, it also allows the group leaders to know the experience level of the people in the room.
The rest of the workshop that I attended had to do with how people compare their own vision of what they want the society to look like with what they think the society actually looks like. The group leaders distributed poster boards, tape, markers and little cards with words on them like "money (capital)"; "health care" and "environment," that each group was to put on the board in the order that the society wanted them in. The process of putting the cards on the board was very interesting in my group, which made up primarily of college student activists who had become active around the war in Iraq. Our biggest question was what "the society" meant - the people in power? or the people in general? (the people in power was the answer we got from Project South) When the groups came back to the large group, there was a lot of agreement about how what the values of the powerful were. Then we went to step two - designing the world/US *we* wanted, there was also a lot of agreement - and a lot of interesting creativity. Almost everyone made a circle instead of a line and put "people" in the middle. One group took the word Money (capital), shredded it, and taped the pieces all around the board to show redistribution. I can imagine a version of this workshop might work well in my union. When it shows broad agreement, it helps shoot past petty conflicts, and it also can illuminate reasons for conflicts by highlighting disagreements in a way that doesn't immediately lead to a big argument.
The pictures above are the beginning of the first step: showing society's priorities. The second one shows the end of part two, when small groups shared their vision of a new society with the large group.
The workshop starts with what they call an "Aha" moment. The exercise is to have people talk in small groups about the moment when they first felt themselves to be activists and to then identify the year. Everyone in the room also has a copy of a time-line including events in the history of global capitalism and social movements in the US. Given a smaller group and more time, there would then be a large group discussion about people's aha moments, placing them on the big timeline so that people could see clusters (say around the beginning of the current war, or around the 1960s). In addition to being an interesting demonstration of people's situation in a broader history, it also allows the group leaders to know the experience level of the people in the room.
The rest of the workshop that I attended had to do with how people compare their own vision of what they want the society to look like with what they think the society actually looks like. The group leaders distributed poster boards, tape, markers and little cards with words on them like "money (capital)"; "health care" and "environment," that each group was to put on the board in the order that the society wanted them in. The process of putting the cards on the board was very interesting in my group, which made up primarily of college student activists who had become active around the war in Iraq. Our biggest question was what "the society" meant - the people in power? or the people in general? (the people in power was the answer we got from Project South) When the groups came back to the large group, there was a lot of agreement about how what the values of the powerful were. Then we went to step two - designing the world/US *we* wanted, there was also a lot of agreement - and a lot of interesting creativity. Almost everyone made a circle instead of a line and put "people" in the middle. One group took the word Money (capital), shredded it, and taped the pieces all around the board to show redistribution. I can imagine a version of this workshop might work well in my union. When it shows broad agreement, it helps shoot past petty conflicts, and it also can illuminate reasons for conflicts by highlighting disagreements in a way that doesn't immediately lead to a big argument.
The pictures above are the beginning of the first step: showing society's priorities. The second one shows the end of part two, when small groups shared their vision of a new society with the large group.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
US Social Forum: My First Three Days
I'm writing now from the lobby of a big fancy hotel where I am staying because I am attending the big, but not that fancy, US Social Forum,an event that I had no idea would be as rich as it already has been.
The forum is more than a series of meetings, so even before I boarded the plane from New York City to Atlanta for the forum I was in the forum - without even knowing it. I shared my plane ride with thirty or more members of Community Voices Heard, a New York City low-income organizing group, two professors from Adelphi College who were bringing students, and one of my union brothers from the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY. Since that moment, I've been in one conversation about organizing and activism after another.
Wednesday:
By the time I was contemplating whether or not to go to the forum's opening march, I admit that I was not terribly enthusiastic. It was 90 degrees, I hadn't eaten, and I'd been travelling all day. Nonetheless, I met some Puerto Rican activists in the hotel who were going and decided I should go. We joined up to figure out the rail system and head to the demo. While in the rail station, of course I ran into an acquaintance from seven years ago in Minneapolis - we all exchanged "how d'you dos" and went off to town. By the time we got to the midway point, I left my new acquaintances and went outside to look for food. I thought I was totally lost, but within fifteen minutes, I'd spotted the tail end of the demonstration. I rushed off, joined it and despite my hunger and tiredness, found it to be one of the most spirited and diverse - in terms of race, age, and general demeanor - marches I'd been on in a very long time. It filled me with excitement about the days to come.
Later on in the evening, I ventured to the Civic Center, which was surrounded by "Solidarity Tents" and even a few food vendors. I managed to meet up with the rest of my union friends and get a snack. On my way home from there, I asked a woman outside the train station if she knew of a grocery store nearby. As she was a social forum participant, she offered to take me to a grocery store that was one station away from my hotel on the train system. Being a New Yorker, I had assumed that she meant that we'd get out of the train and find the store right there, but Atlanta is different, and it turned out that, in the spirit of the social forum, Crystal who is from Atlanta, but works with a Seattle group called LELO (Legacy of Equality, Leadership, and Organizing) drove me from the station to a grocery store and back to the metro. Clearly, it was going to be a good couple of days.
Thursday:
Early in the morning, I again chatted away on the buses and trains from my hotel to town with other social forum attendees. There was a guy from Finland with his mother and daughter, and a couple of artist /immigrant rights' activists from Providence.
The first session I went to at 10:30 am was a tiny group, but perhaps because of the size it became a powerful and intimate conversation between the session's "audience" and the organizers of the "Faces of Homelessness" campaign of the Washington, DC based "National Coalition for the Homeless." The panel began with an overview of general conditions of homelessness, causes of homelessness, and the current upswing in hate-crimes against homeless people perpetrated by young people. The main event of the panel were the stories of Joann Jackson and David Pirtle. Jackson, the director of the Faces of Homelessness speakers bureau told the story of growing up in a family that did not value education, which meant that despite being admitted to Howard University in 1965, she wound up working as a janitor after finishing at the top of her highschool class. Fortunately for her, her boss noticed her, promoted her to payroll clerk, and eventually helped her start her own business through a Small business administration loan. Despite her success, she became depressed, fell into alcholism and crack addiction. Although she maintained her business for a time as a "functioning alcholic" she wound up selling it, spending the money on drugs, and ultimately was living on the streets. Today, she lives in an apartment and is a national organizer giving a face to the experience of homelessness. The other speaker, David Pirtle, spoke about many of his experiences as a homeless youth with schizophrenia: sleeping in an abandoned house in Manhattan and waking up one night covered in rats ("I was the warmest thing nearby") and going back to sleep, and living more comfortably on the grounds of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Eventually, he went into a shelter and received psychiatric treatment. He became an activist when the city tried to sell the homeless shelter where he lived to developers who wanted to make it a luxury hotel. Through that action, he said, he became empowered to ultimately get out of the shelter and get his own apartment.
Such stories are not didactic lessons in political strategy, but hearing the stories and talking with these formerly-homeless individuals highlighted the power of our society's hatred of the homeless simply by showing how the reality differs from the stereotype. In addition to that profound work, the workshop organizers talked about their project to have violence against homeless people classified as a hate-crime and about challenging local laws that criminalize homelessness. The media is one source of contempt for the homeless, but the laws directed at homeless (such as those that ban sleeping or lying down in public parks) are a more direct and serious problem - and those laws come from the real-estate developers and others involved in gentrification. Here, I also met to New York activists and exchanged information, in hopes that we could bring the "faces of homelessness" speakers to my school. My first impression of the Social Forum panels would hold true for most of the others: the session involved not just experts preaching to the converted, but became a conversation among a group of committed activists focused on a particular problem.
At 1:00 pm, I made it to the Jobs With Justice discussion and heard about struggles at Allied-Barton in Phildelphia, and Verizon. However, as would happen again, the most interesting speech was from a member of the audiene. Mid-discussion, Larry Newsome a 19 year employee of Blue Diamond almonds, told us about the chemical hazards of that work. Demonstrations and solidarity campaigns were announced, people got up and spoke with passion. It was a wide-ranging talk about union power in general.
At 3:30, I went to a session provocatively titled SAY WHAT?! featuring a dramatic reading of the US government's testimony to the UN human rights commission on their handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in the Gulf Coast region. The panel began with a woman shouting/chanting a poem about the events, telling us how to participate "When you hear THE MAN!" she said, pointing at a man in a suit seated behind the table, "say a lie you say "SAY WHAT?!" When I say, "SAY WHAT" you say "I Want My Human Rights Today!"
The audience went right along with the program, shouting "SAY WHAT!?" Every time one of the dramatic readers of US government testimony read a piece. In addition to the audience's shouted response, members of the group stood up and read prepared statements about what the real conditions were in New Orleans and Mississippi, not only in those first few weeks, but continuing today. Not only was this a unique way to deliver information to the audience, but the group's analysis was sharp and exciting. They asked us whether we, and progressives outside the Gulf have "Katrina Fatigue." They talked about making Katrina a microcosm of the problems of the US. These speakers also discussed environmental racism, the criminalization of the poor in New Orleans, and the continued displacement of Louisianans from the region. The discussion was my first face-to-face encounter with organizers from New Orleans and I could see, after leaving there, that the left in general has much to learn from such organizers...the point is not just "helping" New Orleans, but seeing New Orleans activists as leaders and shapers of an improved US human rights movement fueled with a new sense of urgency. That was certainly the message that this panel meant to give, and I was convinced.
* * *
The evening plenary was also about New Orleans, and featured some of the speakers I had just heard, but also an Ecuadoran activist who had come to New Orleans to work. After describing the horrendous working conditions, withholding of pay, and general disregarding of human rights experienced by Latino immigrants he said, he didn't come to New Orleans to "steal" anyone's job. Rather, he said, we should united "The New Slaves with the Old Slaves." The audience responded with applause of chants of 'Si Se Puede!"
When the floor opened for comments, Mama D(scroll down till you get to 12/06) gave a rather sensational speech which began with her chanting in a deep, slow voice "WE DON'T NEED NO MORE N-----" and included criticisms of non-profit 501-C3 organizations, racism, capitalism in general, and with the defiant comment that she couldn't respect the plenary time-limits on speakers because we needed timet to heal.
* * *
Friday....
I went to three sessions on Friday, although of the first one I tried to go to (about gender in the Palestinian movements), was cancelled. I ran into someone I knew from several years ago, and we chose a nearby session on US war crimes to attend. That turned out to be a session of the Bush Crimes Commission featuring Marjorie Cohn of the National Lawyers Guild, C. Clark Kissinger of the RCP, Dennis Brutus, and Ann Wright. They argued that it's important to get people to talk about the acts of the Bush administration as war crimes, not mistakes. They also believe that the movement to impeach Bush may come back. Although most of what they were saying was familiar to me, Ann Wright, a career army colonel who resigned because of her opposition to the US war in Iraq was quite amazing to hear, and I would love to see a film of her testimony in congress on US war crimes.
* * *
The second session I went to was about the debate between two different alternatives to contemporary globalization. One was global Fair Trade. The other was localized farming. This panel, set up by the grassroots organizing initiative and the Center for Popular Economics, staged a debate between two economists who played the opposing sides, and then featured comments by activists from other perspectives. The audience generally found the local position untenable in its pure form, though nice in principle, citing the problem of calling on denuded, deforested, and pillaged countries to produce locally despite a likely lack of resources. The most interesting speaker on that panel was Omar Freilla of the Greenworker collective in the South Bronx. His local cooperative in the Bronx was born of deep-roots in that communty as well as intensive study of other cooperative endeavors including tiny towns in the Basque country of Spain.
The third (and final) session I went to on Friday was a popular education program run by Project South, who were among the forum's main organizers. I'll say more about it in a separate post, with pictures....later.
I skipped the evening plenary to attend a meeting of Students for a Democratic Society with members of Bob Moses' Algebra project. I had been told that this would be a meeting of students and teachers about anti-war activism, and it wasn't quite that - but it was inspiring to listen to the process as a group of young high school and college activists tried to plan future actions.
And now, readers, it's almost two am, and there are more sessions tomorrow, so I'd better get to bed.
The forum is more than a series of meetings, so even before I boarded the plane from New York City to Atlanta for the forum I was in the forum - without even knowing it. I shared my plane ride with thirty or more members of Community Voices Heard, a New York City low-income organizing group, two professors from Adelphi College who were bringing students, and one of my union brothers from the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY. Since that moment, I've been in one conversation about organizing and activism after another.
Wednesday:
By the time I was contemplating whether or not to go to the forum's opening march, I admit that I was not terribly enthusiastic. It was 90 degrees, I hadn't eaten, and I'd been travelling all day. Nonetheless, I met some Puerto Rican activists in the hotel who were going and decided I should go. We joined up to figure out the rail system and head to the demo. While in the rail station, of course I ran into an acquaintance from seven years ago in Minneapolis - we all exchanged "how d'you dos" and went off to town. By the time we got to the midway point, I left my new acquaintances and went outside to look for food. I thought I was totally lost, but within fifteen minutes, I'd spotted the tail end of the demonstration. I rushed off, joined it and despite my hunger and tiredness, found it to be one of the most spirited and diverse - in terms of race, age, and general demeanor - marches I'd been on in a very long time. It filled me with excitement about the days to come.
Later on in the evening, I ventured to the Civic Center, which was surrounded by "Solidarity Tents" and even a few food vendors. I managed to meet up with the rest of my union friends and get a snack. On my way home from there, I asked a woman outside the train station if she knew of a grocery store nearby. As she was a social forum participant, she offered to take me to a grocery store that was one station away from my hotel on the train system. Being a New Yorker, I had assumed that she meant that we'd get out of the train and find the store right there, but Atlanta is different, and it turned out that, in the spirit of the social forum, Crystal who is from Atlanta, but works with a Seattle group called LELO (Legacy of Equality, Leadership, and Organizing) drove me from the station to a grocery store and back to the metro. Clearly, it was going to be a good couple of days.
Thursday:
Early in the morning, I again chatted away on the buses and trains from my hotel to town with other social forum attendees. There was a guy from Finland with his mother and daughter, and a couple of artist /immigrant rights' activists from Providence.
The first session I went to at 10:30 am was a tiny group, but perhaps because of the size it became a powerful and intimate conversation between the session's "audience" and the organizers of the "Faces of Homelessness" campaign of the Washington, DC based "National Coalition for the Homeless." The panel began with an overview of general conditions of homelessness, causes of homelessness, and the current upswing in hate-crimes against homeless people perpetrated by young people. The main event of the panel were the stories of Joann Jackson and David Pirtle. Jackson, the director of the Faces of Homelessness speakers bureau told the story of growing up in a family that did not value education, which meant that despite being admitted to Howard University in 1965, she wound up working as a janitor after finishing at the top of her highschool class. Fortunately for her, her boss noticed her, promoted her to payroll clerk, and eventually helped her start her own business through a Small business administration loan. Despite her success, she became depressed, fell into alcholism and crack addiction. Although she maintained her business for a time as a "functioning alcholic" she wound up selling it, spending the money on drugs, and ultimately was living on the streets. Today, she lives in an apartment and is a national organizer giving a face to the experience of homelessness. The other speaker, David Pirtle, spoke about many of his experiences as a homeless youth with schizophrenia: sleeping in an abandoned house in Manhattan and waking up one night covered in rats ("I was the warmest thing nearby") and going back to sleep, and living more comfortably on the grounds of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Eventually, he went into a shelter and received psychiatric treatment. He became an activist when the city tried to sell the homeless shelter where he lived to developers who wanted to make it a luxury hotel. Through that action, he said, he became empowered to ultimately get out of the shelter and get his own apartment.
Such stories are not didactic lessons in political strategy, but hearing the stories and talking with these formerly-homeless individuals highlighted the power of our society's hatred of the homeless simply by showing how the reality differs from the stereotype. In addition to that profound work, the workshop organizers talked about their project to have violence against homeless people classified as a hate-crime and about challenging local laws that criminalize homelessness. The media is one source of contempt for the homeless, but the laws directed at homeless (such as those that ban sleeping or lying down in public parks) are a more direct and serious problem - and those laws come from the real-estate developers and others involved in gentrification. Here, I also met to New York activists and exchanged information, in hopes that we could bring the "faces of homelessness" speakers to my school. My first impression of the Social Forum panels would hold true for most of the others: the session involved not just experts preaching to the converted, but became a conversation among a group of committed activists focused on a particular problem.
At 1:00 pm, I made it to the Jobs With Justice discussion and heard about struggles at Allied-Barton in Phildelphia, and Verizon. However, as would happen again, the most interesting speech was from a member of the audiene. Mid-discussion, Larry Newsome a 19 year employee of Blue Diamond almonds, told us about the chemical hazards of that work. Demonstrations and solidarity campaigns were announced, people got up and spoke with passion. It was a wide-ranging talk about union power in general.
At 3:30, I went to a session provocatively titled SAY WHAT?! featuring a dramatic reading of the US government's testimony to the UN human rights commission on their handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in the Gulf Coast region. The panel began with a woman shouting/chanting a poem about the events, telling us how to participate "When you hear THE MAN!" she said, pointing at a man in a suit seated behind the table, "say a lie you say "SAY WHAT?!" When I say, "SAY WHAT" you say "I Want My Human Rights Today!"
The audience went right along with the program, shouting "SAY WHAT!?" Every time one of the dramatic readers of US government testimony read a piece. In addition to the audience's shouted response, members of the group stood up and read prepared statements about what the real conditions were in New Orleans and Mississippi, not only in those first few weeks, but continuing today. Not only was this a unique way to deliver information to the audience, but the group's analysis was sharp and exciting. They asked us whether we, and progressives outside the Gulf have "Katrina Fatigue." They talked about making Katrina a microcosm of the problems of the US. These speakers also discussed environmental racism, the criminalization of the poor in New Orleans, and the continued displacement of Louisianans from the region. The discussion was my first face-to-face encounter with organizers from New Orleans and I could see, after leaving there, that the left in general has much to learn from such organizers...the point is not just "helping" New Orleans, but seeing New Orleans activists as leaders and shapers of an improved US human rights movement fueled with a new sense of urgency. That was certainly the message that this panel meant to give, and I was convinced.
* * *
The evening plenary was also about New Orleans, and featured some of the speakers I had just heard, but also an Ecuadoran activist who had come to New Orleans to work. After describing the horrendous working conditions, withholding of pay, and general disregarding of human rights experienced by Latino immigrants he said, he didn't come to New Orleans to "steal" anyone's job. Rather, he said, we should united "The New Slaves with the Old Slaves." The audience responded with applause of chants of 'Si Se Puede!"
When the floor opened for comments, Mama D(scroll down till you get to 12/06) gave a rather sensational speech which began with her chanting in a deep, slow voice "WE DON'T NEED NO MORE N-----" and included criticisms of non-profit 501-C3 organizations, racism, capitalism in general, and with the defiant comment that she couldn't respect the plenary time-limits on speakers because we needed timet to heal.
* * *
Friday....
I went to three sessions on Friday, although of the first one I tried to go to (about gender in the Palestinian movements), was cancelled. I ran into someone I knew from several years ago, and we chose a nearby session on US war crimes to attend. That turned out to be a session of the Bush Crimes Commission featuring Marjorie Cohn of the National Lawyers Guild, C. Clark Kissinger of the RCP, Dennis Brutus, and Ann Wright. They argued that it's important to get people to talk about the acts of the Bush administration as war crimes, not mistakes. They also believe that the movement to impeach Bush may come back. Although most of what they were saying was familiar to me, Ann Wright, a career army colonel who resigned because of her opposition to the US war in Iraq was quite amazing to hear, and I would love to see a film of her testimony in congress on US war crimes.
* * *
The second session I went to was about the debate between two different alternatives to contemporary globalization. One was global Fair Trade. The other was localized farming. This panel, set up by the grassroots organizing initiative and the Center for Popular Economics, staged a debate between two economists who played the opposing sides, and then featured comments by activists from other perspectives. The audience generally found the local position untenable in its pure form, though nice in principle, citing the problem of calling on denuded, deforested, and pillaged countries to produce locally despite a likely lack of resources. The most interesting speaker on that panel was Omar Freilla of the Greenworker collective in the South Bronx. His local cooperative in the Bronx was born of deep-roots in that communty as well as intensive study of other cooperative endeavors including tiny towns in the Basque country of Spain.
The third (and final) session I went to on Friday was a popular education program run by Project South, who were among the forum's main organizers. I'll say more about it in a separate post, with pictures....later.
I skipped the evening plenary to attend a meeting of Students for a Democratic Society with members of Bob Moses' Algebra project. I had been told that this would be a meeting of students and teachers about anti-war activism, and it wasn't quite that - but it was inspiring to listen to the process as a group of young high school and college activists tried to plan future actions.
And now, readers, it's almost two am, and there are more sessions tomorrow, so I'd better get to bed.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Social Forum Opening March with Pictures
I can't write much this morning because if I want to get a seat at the 10:30 "Right to the City" panel, I've got to leave my hotel in about fifteen minutes. Look below for pictures from the very spirited opening march of the US Social Forum in Atlanta from Wednesday June 27th.
I arrived in Atlanta that afternoon at about 12:30, and for the rest of the day just about everyone I met was also here for the events. I had a little trouble figuring out where everything was, but I was lucky enough to run into the opening march before it ended. As you enjoy the pics imagine the sound: an extraordinarily good drum section, and a blaring hip-hop against patriarchy truck shouting "down with coca cola" "Down with the war" - not to mention the conscious rhymes. Atlanta's business people were gaping on the sidewalks and the Hooters waitresses, in hot-pants came out to cheer and do a kick line. Was it for the "End Patriarchy" message? or the fresh beats?
Who knows, but it made me feel that:
....Another World is Possible; Another US is Necessary!
I arrived in Atlanta that afternoon at about 12:30, and for the rest of the day just about everyone I met was also here for the events. I had a little trouble figuring out where everything was, but I was lucky enough to run into the opening march before it ended. As you enjoy the pics imagine the sound: an extraordinarily good drum section, and a blaring hip-hop against patriarchy truck shouting "down with coca cola" "Down with the war" - not to mention the conscious rhymes. Atlanta's business people were gaping on the sidewalks and the Hooters waitresses, in hot-pants came out to cheer and do a kick line. Was it for the "End Patriarchy" message? or the fresh beats?
Who knows, but it made me feel that:
....Another World is Possible; Another US is Necessary!
Saturday, June 23, 2007
The UCU Boycott of Israeli Universities - Whose Freedom Counts?
Among the issues being misreported in the American media, there are few that have been as befuddling to American progressives as the UCU's decision to discuss a boycott Israeli universities and Hugo Chavez's denial of a broadcasting license to RCTV. Both are represented in the American media as challenges to fundamental liberties cherished by those on the left. Today's entry discusses the boycott. I'm saving Chavez for tomorrow.
* * *
The other night, my union, the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY passed a resolution objecting to the British University and College Union's beginning of discussion of a boycott of Israeli universities. The hour being late, and the US media being what it is, there was very little substantial discussion of the reasons and logic of those who are promoting this boycott, most of which have to do with what actually goes on at these universities. Those supporting this resolution to oppose the UCU boycott proposal were probably reading articles like this one, by Charles Small at 'Inside Higher Ed," which claims that the boycott proposal is motivated by anti-semitism and that it thwarts academic freedom.
Indeed, it did give me pause to think about boycotting academic institutions in particular. When I came home from the meeting, I wanted to know what my favorite Israeli leftist academics had to say about the boycott. I started with Tom Segev, whose works on Israel's history are hardly "extreme" in their orientation. He supported the boycott of Bar Ilan University in 2005, on the basis that the only people who could support that particular university were those backing settlements in Palestinian territory.
Ilan Pappe, a professor at Haifa University, strongly supports the boycott, saying that pressure on his own school was one of the only reasons that he was able to continue teaching there after he defended a student who was charged with libel and stripped of a "research" MA because of his thesis about a massacre of Palestinians.
Avi Shlaim, on the other hand, is against the academic boycott, arguing that it would be polarizing:
I tended to agree with Shlaim before reading the articles about the policies of these schools, but after reading about the lack of academic freedom at the Israeli universities, about their cooperation with the Israeli military and finally their discrimination against Arab students, it seems to me that one can't argue that academic freedom currently exists in those universities. In that case, as the boycott's authors argue, there will be more space for real academic freedom in Israel if people around the world confront the issue of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Israel has long claimed to be unusually democratic and has held itself up as a shining example of democracy in contrast to the Arab regimes of the Middle-East. Its academic institutions are one example used ot bolster this argument. If people knew more information about the scandalous violations of academic freedom - and freedom in general- within these universities, they would be less inclined to support them as bastions of liberalism.
* * *
The other night, my union, the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY passed a resolution objecting to the British University and College Union's beginning of discussion of a boycott of Israeli universities. The hour being late, and the US media being what it is, there was very little substantial discussion of the reasons and logic of those who are promoting this boycott, most of which have to do with what actually goes on at these universities. Those supporting this resolution to oppose the UCU boycott proposal were probably reading articles like this one, by Charles Small at 'Inside Higher Ed," which claims that the boycott proposal is motivated by anti-semitism and that it thwarts academic freedom.
Indeed, it did give me pause to think about boycotting academic institutions in particular. When I came home from the meeting, I wanted to know what my favorite Israeli leftist academics had to say about the boycott. I started with Tom Segev, whose works on Israel's history are hardly "extreme" in their orientation. He supported the boycott of Bar Ilan University in 2005, on the basis that the only people who could support that particular university were those backing settlements in Palestinian territory.
The university's attempts to assert that politics had no place in academia were undermined by Bar-Ilan's embracing of the College of Judea and Samaria, and in the government's decision to upgrade it to a university.
Mr Sharon's education minister, Limor Livnat, said that upgrading the college "is designed to support the settlement vision out of a national interest of the state of Israel". Tom Segev, a renowned Israeli author, said that far from being an attack on Israel, the boycott of Bar-Ilan Uni versity hit the intended target. "The boycott of Bar-Ilan doesn't hurt the state as a whole, but at most, those Israelis who support the perpetuation of the Israeli presence in the territories," he wrote in the newspaper Haaretz.
Ilan Pappe, a professor at Haifa University, strongly supports the boycott, saying that pressure on his own school was one of the only reasons that he was able to continue teaching there after he defended a student who was charged with libel and stripped of a "research" MA because of his thesis about a massacre of Palestinians.
Avi Shlaim, on the other hand, is against the academic boycott, arguing that it would be polarizing:
I'm for a boycott of Israeli goods and against a boycott of Israeli academics. Israel does 40 percent of its trade with the EU and very little of its trade with the US, so EU economic sanctions against Israel would be effective and I'm in favor of them, as well as an arms embargo. Britain to its credit has implemented an embargo on arms sales because Israel has violated the rule it purchased British military equipment. A cultural and academic boycott is an entirely different proposition: that wouldn't hurt the government. On the contrary, it would play into the hands of the government,because the government would say, "You see, there is anti-Semitism, there is hostility towards us as a people. We are all in the same boat, so you should rally behind the flag." Most Israel academics are liberal. Or they used to be anyway. You don't want to discourage them from dialogue and contact.
I tended to agree with Shlaim before reading the articles about the policies of these schools, but after reading about the lack of academic freedom at the Israeli universities, about their cooperation with the Israeli military and finally their discrimination against Arab students, it seems to me that one can't argue that academic freedom currently exists in those universities. In that case, as the boycott's authors argue, there will be more space for real academic freedom in Israel if people around the world confront the issue of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Israel has long claimed to be unusually democratic and has held itself up as a shining example of democracy in contrast to the Arab regimes of the Middle-East. Its academic institutions are one example used ot bolster this argument. If people knew more information about the scandalous violations of academic freedom - and freedom in general- within these universities, they would be less inclined to support them as bastions of liberalism.
Monday, May 28, 2007
War Funding, Democrats and the Next Step
For the past few weeks, I've been aware of, but not closely following the funding bill's passage through congress and to the president. I knew enough to know that the Democrats had finally voted to approve war funds with no withdrawal time-table on Wednesday. You can imagine my scorn then, when on Thursday, as I was walking down 42nd street at lunchtime, someone from the DNC stopped me and asked me for money. I said, I wouldn't give them any money since they hadn't done anything to end the war. "Yes we have!" the man protested. Looking like a crazy person, or just an irate voter, I shook my head and walked away from him, shouting over my shoulder, "you rolled over!"
Maybe others knew exactly how I felt. With hopes in the power of a Democratic congress dashed, the public's perception that support for the Democratic party is the best way to beat Bush may be changing. Markos Moulitsas, a longtime faithful Democrat, has written several entries at Daily Kos
criticizing the recent "capitulation bill." In one, he declares:
David Sirota, who used to be a regular on DNC-friendly Al Franken's Air America show, is calling the Democrats' attempt to spin their vote last week "Orwellian." He was in favor of the "benchmark" funding bill in contrast to what he called the blank checkfor the war that the Republicans and the president wanted (and got).
Meanwhile, Josh Frank's piece on Hillary Clinton's historic hawkishness has been making the internet rounds. On the other side of the political spectrum, Trent Lott's old buddy, Dick Morris is now calling her a hypocrite for responding to the clear demands of voters and changing her vote to oppose the "blank check." I was heartened myself that she and Obama both voted against it, but....I hadn't been following the news very closely over the last few weeks, so I didn't know much more than what they said on NPR about the entire battle.
In all the discussions about linking funding to the achievement of "benchmarks," I did not hear, until I was busy calculating final grades while listening to a week-old Counterspin interview with David Swanson, that the first benchmark is the passage of the infamous "oil law" - a privatization bill promoted by the US administration and opposed by most Iraqis. Truthout's Ann Wright has an article about it today.
I also hadn't heard, in all the talk of Bush's veto and congress's response, that if congress had just let the veto stand, and not brought forth any new legislation, Bush wouldn't have gotten his money for the war. A short comment from FAIR puts it this way:
Finally, John Stauber, whose article on the Democrats and their supporters is the first one I linked to, has this to say about moving forward following this vote.
It's the point that those of us to the left of the Democratic party have been making for a long time. However, I wonder what you think. Has the time come when Americans will join a mass movement to end the war? Or is that just a leftover fantasy based on the experiences of the 60s generation? What is the next step?
Maybe the place to get it all together is Atlanta??
Maybe others knew exactly how I felt. With hopes in the power of a Democratic congress dashed, the public's perception that support for the Democratic party is the best way to beat Bush may be changing. Markos Moulitsas, a longtime faithful Democrat, has written several entries at Daily Kos
criticizing the recent "capitulation bill." In one, he declares:
Democrats have lined up to announce that this isn't the endgame, that this is just the first round. They are promising to keep putting pressure on the administration and using other legislative vehicles to impose withdrawal deadlines and other accountability provisions.
They let us down this time. But the opportunities for them to make amends still exist. If Democrats take advantage of them, as they promise they will, then all might be forgiven. They can prove to us that they in fact know what they are doing, and that they, in fact, do plan on honoring their most sacred promise to the 2006 electorate. And if they don't? Well, no one, not even the most rabid partisans, have an endless supply of patience.
David Sirota, who used to be a regular on DNC-friendly Al Franken's Air America show, is calling the Democrats' attempt to spin their vote last week "Orwellian." He was in favor of the "benchmark" funding bill in contrast to what he called the blank checkfor the war that the Republicans and the president wanted (and got).
Meanwhile, Josh Frank's piece on Hillary Clinton's historic hawkishness has been making the internet rounds. On the other side of the political spectrum, Trent Lott's old buddy, Dick Morris is now calling her a hypocrite for responding to the clear demands of voters and changing her vote to oppose the "blank check." I was heartened myself that she and Obama both voted against it, but....I hadn't been following the news very closely over the last few weeks, so I didn't know much more than what they said on NPR about the entire battle.
In all the discussions about linking funding to the achievement of "benchmarks," I did not hear, until I was busy calculating final grades while listening to a week-old Counterspin interview with David Swanson, that the first benchmark is the passage of the infamous "oil law" - a privatization bill promoted by the US administration and opposed by most Iraqis. Truthout's Ann Wright has an article about it today.
I also hadn't heard, in all the talk of Bush's veto and congress's response, that if congress had just let the veto stand, and not brought forth any new legislation, Bush wouldn't have gotten his money for the war. A short comment from FAIR puts it this way:
In order to force the Bush administration to accept a bill with a withdrawal timeline, the Democratic Congress didn't have to pass the bill over Bush's veto--it just had to make clear that no other Iraq War spending bill would be forthcoming. Democrats may not have wanted to pay the supposed political costs of such a strategy, but news coverage should have made clear that this was a choice, not something forced on them by the lack of a veto-proof majority.
Finally, John Stauber, whose article on the Democrats and their supporters is the first one I linked to, has this to say about moving forward following this vote.
There is an organized anti-war movement in America that is not an adjunct of the Democratic Party. Up until now, it has been weak and divided and unable to organize itself into an effective national movement in its own right. In its place, therefore, MoveOn and its Netroots allies have become identified as the leadership of the anti-war movement. It is vitally important, however, that a genuinely independent anti-war movement organize itself with the ability to speak on its own behalf.
In the 1950s and the 1960s, the civil rights movement was most definitely not an adjunct of the Democratic or Republican Parties. Far from it, it was a grassroots movement that eventually forced both parties to respond to its agenda. Likewise, the movement against the Vietnam War was not aligned with either the Democratic or Republican parties, both of which claimed to have plans for peace while actually pursuing policies that expanded the war.
It's the point that those of us to the left of the Democratic party have been making for a long time. However, I wonder what you think. Has the time come when Americans will join a mass movement to end the war? Or is that just a leftover fantasy based on the experiences of the 60s generation? What is the next step?
Maybe the place to get it all together is Atlanta??
Thursday, May 17, 2007
I bet you thought I was never coming back.
Yes, it's been more than a week since my last post, and all I've managed to do lately is post pictures of my flower garden. Sorry about that. I just don't have the gusto I once had for reading and commenting on internet news articles. I'm hoping that it will come back once classes end. Meanwhile, this is the last day of classes at CUNY, and I am sitting in my house averaging my students' quiz grades, listening to Tony Joe White, and generally "taking care of business." It's that time of year when this blog is a welcome respite from the chorus of excuses and cries of unfairness that come from students who have, in the last week of the course, just figured out that they really should have read the syllabus I handed out on the first day.
Since I last wrote, my union's progressive slate has won an election on my campus, and I've been nominated as my campus's representative on the CUNY-wide contract organizing committee. Perhaps that means I'll try to renew my energy for this blog with academic "labor" news a bit this summer. The latest outrage from CUNY management is that they have decided not to pay adjunct professors for their work during the fifteenth week of classes because they're only "proctoring exams" and not really teaching. The cheapness!
CUNY faculty will be protesting next week at lunch time at all the campuses where this is the case, in what's called the Campaign of Outrage
Here are the picket dates:
Monday, May 21 – Baruch, Vertical Campus, 12 - 1:30 pm.
Tuesday, May 22 – Bronx CC, Language Hall, 12 - 1:30 pm.
Wednesday, May 23 – College of Staten Island, Administration Building 1A, 12 -
1:30 pm.
Thursday, May 24 – Queensborough CC, Administration Building, 12:00 - 1:30 pm.
Thursday, May 31 – Kingsborough CC, Administration Building A, 2:00 - 3:30 pm.
For more information, call PSC Organizer Sue Li at (212) 354-1252
and that's all for now.
Since I last wrote, my union's progressive slate has won an election on my campus, and I've been nominated as my campus's representative on the CUNY-wide contract organizing committee. Perhaps that means I'll try to renew my energy for this blog with academic "labor" news a bit this summer. The latest outrage from CUNY management is that they have decided not to pay adjunct professors for their work during the fifteenth week of classes because they're only "proctoring exams" and not really teaching. The cheapness!
CUNY faculty will be protesting next week at lunch time at all the campuses where this is the case, in what's called the Campaign of Outrage
Here are the picket dates:
Monday, May 21 – Baruch, Vertical Campus, 12 - 1:30 pm.
Tuesday, May 22 – Bronx CC, Language Hall, 12 - 1:30 pm.
Wednesday, May 23 – College of Staten Island, Administration Building 1A, 12 -
1:30 pm.
Thursday, May 24 – Queensborough CC, Administration Building, 12:00 - 1:30 pm.
Thursday, May 31 – Kingsborough CC, Administration Building A, 2:00 - 3:30 pm.
For more information, call PSC Organizer Sue Li at (212) 354-1252
and that's all for now.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
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