Tidbits - January 8, 2015 - Selma, Police, Palestine, Climate, Sports and more...

Reader Comments - Selma; Civil Rights Tour led by Julian Bond; Ferguson Grand Jury; Police, NYPD, PBA, de Blasio; Women telling their Story; Wealth and Inequality; Sports - A Radical Proposal; BDS, Israel, Palestine, Solidarity; Sony; The Interview; Privatization and Hucksterism; Climate Change, Marx and Nature; Healthcare; Superbugs; the Ukraine; Announcements - The American Labor Movement At A Crossroads; Elections in Greece: Can Syriza Break with Austerity?

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Tidbits - Reader Comments and Announcements - January 8, 2015,Portside

Re: Ten Things You Should Know About Selma Before You See the Film

Similarly with the momentous and successful bus boycott in Montgomery. Rosa Parks was an experienced activist when she refused to give up her seat, & a committee of activist women worked through the night to organize a mass meeting the next morning to push for a boycott. Women were the driving force.

Diane Laison
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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I wonder if they mention the Deacons for Defense or any of the many armed black men and women who ensured the safety of the protesters.

Hugh Briggs
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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A very good look at some facts of the Selma struggle

Jimmy C Hyde
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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The truth wouldn't have made a good movie!!

Garland Daves
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Just in case you are not familiar with the historical context of Selma. This article is excellent.

Ivan Handler
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Selma's Truthful MLK: A Radical Despised by the Establishment

The film has also been criticized for a very inaccurate portrayal of LBJ's position. I guess that's still better than Mississippi Burning which would have had you believe that the FBI were the heroes of the voting rights movement.

Warren Bush
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Civil Rights South Seminar with Julian Bond

There are still a few seats left on the bus for the Civil Rights Tour.

We leave Atlanta March 21 and end in Montgomery on the 27th.

Join me!

Visit the places where civil rights history was made!

Meet the people who made the History!

Take a look at the past Civil Rights South Seminars offered by U.Va. Lifetime Learning. University of Virginia's Professor Emeritus Julian Bond led these seminars to gain a comprehensive appreciation of the American Civil Rights Movement, from its earliest and often unreported days in the mid-1950s, through the more high-profile years that followed. These seminars visited many key sites of the movement.

The 2015 program is being hosted by the University of Virginia College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

For more information, contact Liz Marjollet at International Seminar Design, Inc. by phone at 202-244-1448 or by email at liz.marjollet@isditravel.com.

Re: Ferguson Grand Juror Sues Prosecutor To Lift Gag Order

Thank god SOMEONE is doing something to bring all of these shenanigans to light at last.

Wendee Garton-Molano
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

This is when the internet is at its best!

Karen Altschuler
Posted on Portside's Facebook page


Re: Labor Must Reject Pat Lynch's Bitter Bile

There is nothing about this union that reflects true union values. This union operates more like a racist, sexist guild.

Jenny Kastner
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Please nypd and pba members, how long can my lynch be your leader?

Samgoody Okwuta
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Well stated and written. It will not be well recieved. And we know why, .. Power people can never face the man in the mirror. In this case it is small minded man with a large amount of imagined power. .. and an armed army behind him.

William Winston Jr.
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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May the power of THIS suggestion take root somewhere for everyone.

Marta Solomon
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Patrick Lynch gives union leaders a really bad name. I'm in a union and believe in organized labor's value. Workers deserve to have good representation--it's better for all workers. Lynch undermines all union employees with his vicious rhetoric.

Lauren Russell-Pank
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Pat Lynch is running for re-election of his police union/association and he has resorted to the basest forms of demagoguery. His strident criticism of NYC mayor DiBlasio epitomizes the worst racist stereotyping of too many police officers. He does not "lead" his sister and brothers in the service union towards more restorative justice. He panders to his officers' worst fears and biases.

Most all police officers I know and respect in Cambridge are to a person are far, far better than this. I would hope to think there are many others in the NYPD, LAPD, DCPD, etc. that can equally transcend racializing and sexualizing criminal behavior. Lynch would have us believe that police officers armed with weapons, the power of arrest, and the keys to the jailhouse are somehow reduced to being the helpless victims in a race and class war on the urban streets of America. NONSENSE. We must all realize that the criminalization of Black and Brown men and women must stop NOW!!!!

Larry Aaronson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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It is not just Lynch. It has been cropping up everywhere. Pittsburgh said the same thing.

Gail Seaton Humbert
Posted on Portside's Facebook page


Re: On the NYC Police Killings & the Haymarket Massacre

Interesting and well said article

Bob Wurman

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wise words from my friend Bill Fletcher. Thanks to Portside!

Paul Buhle
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Police Unions and the Challenge of Solidarity

The difference between trade unions and craft unions - guilds goes back a long time.  No real workers union does not only serve the few. The NYPD Police Benevolent League (its name is already suspect) probably goes back to the early days of Tammany Hall when the police force was established to protect the wealthy from the "rabble rousers."  It is certainly not good that these two patrolmen were killed by an unstable person with a gun.  But it does not detract from unstable cops killing people with their guns.  The media circus that followed, combined with the attacks on DeBlassio (every progressive mayor's nightmare)sought and almost succeeded in, pushing the real crime to the back burner. Almost succeeded.  This movement will move forward.  Don't become a cop because you can't think of anything else to do and it's an easy pension.  All you gotta do is kill a black kid.

Claire Carsman

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As a former Transit worker and, member of the TWU I could not
agree more.

Morris Edward

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The NYC police are showing their mayor the same disrespect they show the people they are paid to protect and serve.

Larry Jackson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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We have more people in prison than Stalin ever had in all his Gulags. WE have more people in prison than all the other countries in the world combined. Prisons in America are a Growth Industry and police and prosecutors are facilitated in this by politicians who could not get elected if they did not run on a platform of fear instead of rehabilitation. Its no secret that the majority of those incarcerated are black and young. What can you say when cops say "I was only following orders"

Robert Winokur
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People

This is not such a simple issue, and I share it with others for discussion, together with my comments in the next paragraph. Regardless of how the police were "created" I find the main argument to be overly simplistic and unfortunately blind to some very real issues.

What about the police in a society you might like? The Scandinavian Countries? Cuba? Anywhere? Maybe someday they'll be totally unnecessary, but not today, sorry. They need to be reformed. Frankly, this is often a position taken by whites, even progressive ones, whose "skin privileges" don't recognize the issues of daily life in poor, minority and working class communities.

Mike Glick
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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THANK YOU! Speaking as a working class Black man living in a poor ghetto, I don't have the luxury of being a knee jerk anti poilce radical. I need police to protect myself and my community, which is why I want a reformed police department, free of racism and bias

Gregory A. Butler
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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The Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the only obligation of the police is to enforce the law, and that they have no duty to "protect and serve". Interestingly, they are enforcing laws that are created by the ruling class. But I would say that there has always been some form of policing, it's just that in early times, the ruling classes and the elites did the dirty work themselves. The lord or duke or tribal chief, or what have you, was the cop, judge, jury and executioner, all rolled into one. At some point they decided they would hire someone else to do the dirty work. The Sheriff of Nottingham comes to mind, for one. Modern police forces have evolved out of necessity. It used to be that the upper classes did not give a damn what went on in the lower class world, if they robbed, beat or killed each other as long as they didn't go near the hoi-paloi with any of that nonsense. Now there are different ideas on that.

Debbie Fromer
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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This is shocking even the History Channel got it wrong. They didn't bother to go into details being the history channel. I'll share it with them and let them know they dropped the ball.

Mafu Stophalez
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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The 2nd Amendment grew out of the need for the slave patrollers to have guns more readily available than in the local armories where the slaves might get to them first. Thus the "right" to bear arms in Virginia law meant that the patrollers were obligated to keep their guns and ammo at home. And the precise language of the 2nd Amendment was suggested by the convention in Virginia called to ratify the Constitution. The anti-Federalists wanted to make sure that the Federal government under the new Constitution didn't have the power to dismantle the slave patrols. They were afraid even then that some Yankees wanted to free their slaves.

Robert Alexander
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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What I find unsatisfactory about this is, I was first politicized by the war in Iraq. I traveled to talk to directly to Iraqi refugees. What was clear was absent the state having a monopoly on violence, political minorities and extremists can control the means of violence. We need, I think deep democratization of all sectors of our society, and I think we need democratic public instruments that can lead policing. But I think some of the "Police Departments can't be reformed" stuff is just mystifying. Anything concrete can be transformed with time and power.

Gary Broderick
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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The first police were slave patrols.
Long Live the Spirit of George Jackson!

Rene' Imperato
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Police Departments as we know them today can not be reformed, they must be re-created. The corruption is so pervasive, and officers who are decent and honest individuals, are simply outnumbered, and acquiesce to the demands of extremists in the department. Recent acts of insubordination by NYPD against Mayor De Blasio is a clear example of a police department gone dangerously wrong under the leadership of PBA president Lynch.

Gwendolyn Spicer
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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It also contributes to the ever-growing prison-industrial complex, made possible through a loophole in the 13th Amendment stating that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.", basically allowing involuntary labor or slavery as a form of punishment.

Privatized prisons have started to become increasingly popular within the last two decades, and are very profitable in the stock market trade, and prison labor is a way for cities and local governments to employ cheap (and sometimes free) labor. Arresting poor Black people in the South after the Civil War through Reconstruction was heavily incentivized because of the revenue local governments gained from it. There are several near-exact parallels between the modern day prison-industrial complex and the convict-leasing system that was used through the late 19th to early 20th century.

See: Penal labor in the United States (Wikipedia)

Viraj Sharma
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Though there may be truth to the abuses of police, the premise as stated is false. Police have existed long before nineteeth century capitalism, before there even was an official United States, for the purpose of public safety and law enforcement. An ancestor of mine was a policeman in New Amsterdam (what became NY).

Gus Dusenberry
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Thank you Sam Mitrani,

This is the best analysis of the present police crisis and the opportunity it affords the movement. What we need now is a plan.

After Ferguson and the public execution of Eric Garner by New York City police, a national call needs to be made bringing together activists in order to coordinate strategy and action.

Some are already calling folks together without giving much thought to WHO, WHEN, WHERE and WHAT. Young folks and local people in Ferguson said they are fed up with elders of the civil rights establishment helicoptering in, holding press conferences, then leaving nothing behind. Locals, especially young people, will hear and work with those elders who are currently actively organizing, like Dr. William Barber the Moral Movement leader in North Carolina. Rev. Barber understands that young people shall lead.

The current Southern outbreak of young black men being found hanged, and quickly declared suicides, like Lennon Lacy in Bladenboro, NC, along with this national upsurge in police violence, is a continuation of paddy roller terror during slavery. *Slave* patrollers, organized groups of white men who monitored and enforced discipline upon black slaves, paved the way for the ever-present threat of lynching during the Jim Crow era. Various levels of government are now pretending to want better relations between cops and community, but they really don't.  War on poor and working class Americans, especially people of color, has a long and violent history. Capitalism, and its global twin imperialism, requires cheap labor for their super-profits.  Terror during slavery meant that violence was mercilessly applied to the few to intimidate the many.  The KKK lynched and castrated strong uppity black men during the Jim Crow era - a lesson to the many. Dr. King and SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, during the Second Reconstruction, challenged lynch terror by going to the worst areas, like Mississippi.  Consequently the fear of lynching was removed for a few decades - a major achievement of the struggle.

With the radical redistribution of wealth upward to the one percent, terror, to keep the downtrodden in their place, once again became necessary. Police and Para-military groups today do the dirty work of the gentle super-rich.  Police in New York City demonstrated in recent days that they can make nice, but power resides in their potential for unrestrained violence.

Generations of black men have been forced to treat police as unpredictable swaying cobras.  When that happens, the main work of the police is done. Only occasionally must they kill unarmed black men and women. White males in this country can't conceive of being forced, on pain of death, to "act" in the presence of cops as black men do. Young black men, short of taking their lives in their hands, must walk properly, speak properly, hold their eyes properly and especially they must hold their hands properly and in plain sight.  Put men in this humble straightjacket long enough and viola', a docile humble prole, content to toil at low pay and low esteem for life, is produced.

To ask police to investigate themselves is, on the face of it, stupid.  For District Attorneys to be responsible for bringing charges against brutal cop is stupid.  It's that way for a reason and we can change it with vast, prolonged effort.  That will be done and it will be a meaningful reform, but only a reform.  Lasting change has to be a revolutionary one - attacking evil at its root, not constantly hacking at the oligarchy's leaves and branches. Ms Ella Baker said it is about more than a hamburger, teaching us SNCC kids that the answer was deep social and economic change aimed at replacing capitalism and imperialism.  This new upsurge, this growing mass movement, may, even at this late date save the earth with a new and truly democratic form of human global community.

Look for a call soon for a national coming together, like the forming of SNCC a half-century ago.

Rise up!

Bob Zellner,
Wilson, NC.

Re: Listen up, Women Are Telling Their Story Now

This an excellent and encouraging article.!

Natalie Turner
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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A long read, but a good one.

Lyba Spring Sexual Health Education and Consulting Services
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Another great piece by Rebecca Solnit.

Amy Gottlieb
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Joseph Stiglitz: Economics Has to Come to Terms With Wealth and Income Inequality

Portside has a great piece with Joseph Stiglitz discussing many of the issues at the heart of The End of Poverty? movie and our sequel, To End Poverty!

The End of Poverty?
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
 

Re: January 2, 1920: Anti-Radical Raids Across the Country, the First Red Scare

Thanks, great piece.  But the first Red Scare was after Haymarket, 1886.

Jon Weissman

Re: A Radical Proposal: Cities Should Buy Teams Not Stadiums

We should have strictly amateur sports, as in Ireland, this was how the NFL and NBA were at their beginnings, before television made athletes multimillionaires.

And yes, local cities should own the teams!

Martin Pereira

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Pittsburgh Penguins received more than 750 million public arena subsidy.

Carl Redwood
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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All the more reason that the Teams be owned by the citizens and not Rich Corporations, especially when so much tax payer monies are spent funding these teams and their fancy stadiums!!!

Henry N Lawrence III
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Good structural reform campaign. Green Bay Packers a case in point.

Carl Davidson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Denver Broncos, Colorado Avs, Colorado Rockies, represent & presente! Also, admire my current Governor, John Hickenlooper, for sticking with Denver and the Front Range against Invesco. That having been said, having cities buying teams, not stadiums seems a little too much "Panem et Circenses" to me at this point.

Matt Hardwick
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Exactly right, the right wing is always blowing off steam if we help the poor, but what about when we make millionaires richer, like George W. Let them buy their own damn stadiums, they are the ones who profit by it!

Roger Punswick
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Like Green Bay Packers?

Patrisha Dean
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Cities probably should buy both the team and the stadium. However they should never subsidize either the team nor the stadium use for professional sports teams (there might be some subsidy for other uses if they are compatible with the professional sports team use of the stadium)).

Too often we fail to make the clear distinction in governmental functions (exemplified here) between : 1) subsidy of positive externality resources (such as education or waste handling); and 2) public operation of common resources (such as specialized stadiums that will never be provided in a competitive market manner).

Robert Burns
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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The Saints saw this way back in 1973, when the new Louisiana Constitution was being drafted. There's a provision in the Louisiana Constitution that explicitly prohibits the state or any political subdivision from having any ownership interest in a sports franchise.

Graydon Wilson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: 2014: Wage Stagnation Puts Squeeze on Working Families

Isn't it time we stopped taking official figures on the cost of living as gospel -- It is obvious from one's daily experience that those statistics are grossly understated -- which is, among other things, a key way of cheating those on Social Security, whose checks are supposedly aligned to the cost of living.

Joseph Kaye

Re: The Amazing Things BDS Movement Achieved in 2014

Thanks for putting together this great summary! I just wanted to let you know that one of the links is incorrect - in the December section the part that says "US student workers' union becomes first US labor union to back BDS" is actually linked to the article about the UCLA divestment resolution which is also linked in the November section (a related but different campaign). I think the correct link would be this one:
http://www.bdsmovement.net/2014/us-student-workers-union-becomes-first-…

Thanks!
Alex Holmstrom-Smith
Chair, UAW 2865 at UCLA
Member, UAW BDS Caucus

[Moderator's Note: Many thanks for alerting us. We got the link from the original source. We have made the correction on our website, and also have notified the BDS Movement website.]

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Just a timeline of the many victories the Palestine solidarity movement achieved in the past year. Some small, some very big, but they all mattered.

Doug Viehmeyer
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Sometimes the challenges overwhelm us. We must always look for victories to sustain us.

Linda Turner
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Amazing achievement? Hardly. More like a significant nuisance.

The past year saw increased demonizaion of "liberal Zionists" and occasional support from BDS's useful idiots. In the meantime, Bibi & Co. announce development provocations across the green line. Israel's political centrists, who will vote three months from now, may be much more concerned about Israel's estrangement from western governments than about BDS.

See this story in the New Yorker

Itzhak Epstein
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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The Palestinians are living under colonial occupation. It is a brutal and racist regime and they have every right to resist it using whatever means are at their disposal. Our responsibility is to stand in solidarity with their just struggle.

Christopher Gunderson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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My comment? Isreli children must be safe. Palestinian children must be safe. That's the sum of it. Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Quakers, and others are way ahead of my denomination in seriously weighing what divestment means. Still, we're looking to the boycott / divestment /sanctions option to move toward ensuring that "Israeli children must be safe; Palestinian children must be safe." Something must change to end the terrorizing of both sides by both sides.

see Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East (UUJME) home page.

Rich Uspel
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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As a Presbyterian, proud of my church for taking the moral path.

Casey James Aldridge
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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I supported Israel for many years. But the past two decades have seen Israel turn into the brutes they have accused their enemies of being throughout history. They are still using leverage with the U S for our tax dollars as they take land not theirs and build an army with U S financing to annialate innocent people. They make no attempt to live in peace and have turned into a brutal occupying force against a virtually unarmed people. So they have lost my support until they want to show they are capable of being humane and caring to their fellow man.

Gayle Neville Muskus
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: After Cuba, Obama Can Make History by Recognizing Palestine

Powerful article. Palestine should be recognized.

Jack Eggleston
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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I wish this could happen, but it can't.

The Cuba Lobby is ensconced in a single political party: the Israel Lobby, however, is way too deeply ingrained in both parties for any Federal elected to openly stand against it. As far as US Middle Eastern foreign policy goes, it has been effectively made in Tel Aviv for many years.

The Palestinians have it right: to the US government, Palestinian lives don't matter. The US government is as much an enemy government to them as is the Zionist regime.

Matt Owen
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Actually, the problem is that both republicans and democrats support Israel. It is one of the few things they agree on. It would be much better if we Americans worked for peace instead of supporting one side or the other. As long as we favor Israel, we cannot be a force for peace.

Ken Logsdon
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Recognizing Palestine is not the answer. It's nothing more than a symbolic gesture. Israel will continue to control all aspects of life in Palestine until the U.S. says enough and the zionist state is no longer. Zionism means racism and ethnic cleansing. Until we deal with the foundation of the problem, we are merely placing bandaids on a bleeding wound.

David Alpert
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Not until "Palestine" recognizes Israel's right to exist

Jim Maynard
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: After 13 Years U.S. Leaves Afghanistan A Dangerous Place

Misleading in many ways.  For starters, the US isn't leaving  Afghanistan any more than it really "left" it's (fractious) client regime in  Iraq.

Tom Gogan

Re: Sony; The Interview; Racism; Hollywood, Media Regurgitate Government Claims

Great series of articles debunking the Sony/Interview claptrap posted by portside.

The problem is that the poison has already been administered, helped along by Obama's chiding of Sony for hesitating; it was clearly part of administration policy all along to perpetrate this tasteless outrage.  The process of demonizing DPRK (North Korea) did not start with Sony.  The action film "Olympus Has Fallen" (2013) starring (surprise!) Morgan Freeman, has North Koreans invading the White House and holding the President hostage.  Virtuous Americans are able to put an end to this (after a good deal of violence and destruction) and the President is saved amidst flag waving speeches about democracy and freedom.  Freeman, a great actor, should be ashamed to take part in this.

That neither "The Interview" nor "Olympus Has Fallen" have gotten good reviews is beside the point.  There is an obvious trend towards establishing The DPRK as a rogue state led by madmen, whereas there has never been one North Korean soldier on foreign soil, and no North Korean invasion or meddling in any other country.  Perhaps the rogue state label should be pinned elsewhere.

There is. of course, a simmering civil war which still exists, tempered only by mutually agreed precarious cease-fire.

The current wave of demonizing propaganda that these films represent is a very dangerous development.  The US is officially at war with the DPRK (North Korea) and has refused to sign a peace treaty with them.  Most of the American people do not know this, but North Koreans are reminded of it daily, not only by their government, but by the quality of their life, adversely affected by an almost universal boycott organized and enforced by the United States administration.  North Koreans are apprehensive; we should be too.

Dave Ecklein

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Why hasn't someone raised the possibility that the bru-ha-ha was instigated by some press agent(s) who realized the value of grabbing a month's worth of headline news and put Sony's name on the lips of a potential audience.

Eleanor Walden
Berkeley, CA

Re: Innovations or Hucksterism? Three Little-Known Infrastructure Privatization Problems

A very thoughtfully detailed discussion of this important long-term issue!

Alfred Rose
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: The Climate for 2015: Everything's Coming Together While Everything Falls Apart

As for the prospects for the battle to save our planet . . . as Ursula LeGuin has put it, as overwhelming as the odds may seem, "We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings."

And as Portside comments, "We are skilled at assuming things cannot change and that we, the people, do not have the power to change them. Yet our country and our world have always been changing, are in the midst of great and terrible changes, and are occasionally changed through the power of the popular will and idealistic movements. The changing climate now demands that we summon up the energy to leave behind the Age of Fossil Fuel (and maybe some portion of the Age of Capitalism as well)."

Personally, I would take the "maybe" and "some portion of" out of the last sentence

Kipp Dawson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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WOW ! I have many questions regarding this article . Too numerous to list . I would have to spend the afternoon on this tablet . But its too nice out to do . I would say that the French Revolution was an overall failure , it led to obedience to the state which is WRONG ! Although the American Revolution hasn't led to perfection , it's still the best so far . Lots of room for improvement . Regarding windmills and solar panels etc. has only led to more crony capitalism t

Gerry Paquette
Posted on Portside's Facebook page


Re: Marx and Nature - A Red and Green Perspective

how marx perceived the horrors of capitalism we are witnessing today and the necessity of a socialist perspective to address the ecocide resulting from the destruction of the natural world by capitalism...

Gillespie Love
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Why Did Swiss Voters Reject Single-Payer Healthcare?

Good explanation.

Carl Finamore
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Very well written.

Kathy Burns
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: The Coming Cost of Superbugs: 10 Million Deaths Per Year

It's a pity that the important article you posted on antibiotic resistant bacteria didn't mention steps that must be taken to stop the creation and spread of these superbugs

1. Stop the mistaken treatment by MD's of colds and other viruses with antibiotics. They only work on bacterial infections, which are rare in the upper respiratory system. All they are doing is building resistance to antibiotics.

2. Prohibit the livestock industry from putting antibiotics in the feed. This practice is to fatten the herds faster, not to prevent disease. They linger in the meat, get into our drinking water, and spread immunity in the bacteria world.

We need a chart showing the annual growth in deaths from superbugs.

Bill Shortell


Re: Social Protest Rising in Ukraine as Government Approves Harsh Austerity Budget

Yeah, well that shoe is dropping. If people don't like having their standard of living shoved into the sewer, and speak out against it, wait for the other shoe. That will be the strong arm boys who did the first coup, and now they will be used to drive the demonstrators from the streets. And they won't be very nice about it, Nazis are like that, you know?

Jack Radey
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: The plot to overhaul No Child Left Behind
(posting on Portside Labor)

For illumination on this issue, I recommend that one read More Than A Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing, published in 2014 and edited by Jesse Hagopian.

Michelle Jacobsen
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

The American Labor Movement At A Crossroads - Washington, DC - Jan. 15

NEW THINKING, NEW ORGANIZING, NEW STRATEGIES
January 15, 2015, 9:00 am to 5:30 pm
Check-in & Coffee: 8:30-9:00 am
Reception 5:30-6:30 pm
555 New Jersey Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20001

Panels include:
"New Forms of Labor Organizing & Organization"
"Building Labor-Community Alliances"
"Rethinking Collective Bargaining and Union Representation"
"Workers Rights and Collective Power"

Confirmed speakers:

  • Paul Booth, AFSCME
  • Catherine Fisk, University of California, Irvine School of Law
  • Tefere Gebre, AFL-CIO
  • Sarita Gupta, Jobs With Justice
  • Sara Horowitz, Freelancers Union
  • Gerry Hudson, SEIU
  • Rick Kahlenberg, Century Foundation
  • Joe McCartin, Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor
  • Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect
  • Karen Nussbaum, Working America
  • Mary Cathryn Ricker, AFT
  • David Rolf, Workers Lab, SEIU 775
  • Sejal Parikh, Working Washington
  • Dan Schlademan, Our Walmart, UFCW
  • Jessica Smith, AFT
  • Saket Soni, National Guestworker Alliance
  • Randi Weingarten, AFT
  • Richard Yeselson

For more information go to: www.shankerinstitute.org/labor-conference/ or contact Vicki Thomas at vthomas@ashankerinst.org with any questions.

ELECTIONS IN GREECE: CAN SYRIZA BREAK WITH AUSTERITY? - New York - Jan. 15

Thursday, January 15, 6:30pm

Rosa Lusemburg Stiftung -New York office
275 Madison Ave., Suite 2114
(entrance on 40th Street)

On January 25, Greece is going to elect a new parliament. After years of austerity policies, the country is in a state of deep crisis and despair. The banks have been "saved" from losses, but after years of precipitous economic decline, the Greek people continue to suffer tremendously. It has become clear that Greece will not be able to cope with this crisis alone. Yet the powers behind austerity, in particular the Central and Northern European countries led by German chancellor Angela Merkel, continue to impose a disastrous policy on Greece.

The upcoming elections, however, may turn out to be a challenge for the "Troika" of the IMF, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank: Leading in the polls is the Coalition of the Radical Left, better known by its abbreviation SYRIZA. What would a SYRIZA government do if the party wins the elections? How are other European governments going to react? And how can we of the international left organize and mobilize in support of a potential SYRIZA government?

At this event, we want to analyze austerity policies in Greece within the broader European context. Speakers will be Natassa Romanou of SYRIZA and Andreas Günther of Germany's Left Party.

The event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP here.

SYRIZA and the GREEK ELECTIONS - A Discussion - New York - Jan. 18

A Discussion with Michalis Spourdalakis

Founding member of SYRIZA and a Political Science Professor at The University of Athens

Sunday, January 18 at 6:00pm

Kefalos Society of America
20-41 Steinway Street
Astoria NY 11105

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