Tidbits - February 9, 2017 - Reader Comments: Resisting a Dictator; Moringa; Free Speech, Hate, Anarchism and Mass Movements; Building Trades and Labor; Working Women; Labor and Climate Convergence; Announcements; and more...

Reader Comments: Resisting a Dictator; Moringa; Free Speech, Hate, Anarchism and Mass Movements; Building Trades and Labor; Working Women; Labor and Climate Convergence; Announcements; and more...

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Tidbits - Reader Comments, Resources and Announcements - February 9, 2017,Portside
Announcements:
 
"among the different types of dissent available (armed insurrection or combining armed and unarmed action), nonviolent resistance has historically been the most effective. Compared with armed struggle, whose romanticized allure obscures its staggering costs, nonviolent resistance has actually been the quickest, least costly, and safest way to struggle. Moreover, civil resistance is recognized as a fundamental human right under international law."
 
3.5% = 11.1 million. Are we there yet? Maybe.
 
Michael Laser 
 
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Doesn't Ms. Chenowith realize the difference between Pinochet who took power in a military coup,  with uncertain popular support and CIA backing, and Trump, who was elected (albeit under strange circumstances) and is supported by a significant section of the population and working class?
 
Paul Leavin
 
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A MUST READ! ORGANIZE!! RESIST!
 
Curtis Muhammad
 
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Pinochet had lost support of his own military. Also U.S. govt. had decided he could be dispensed with. He tried to fix plebiscite, but his  generals would not allow him.  
 
Earl Gilman
 
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Fascinating , but we have been practicing peaceful resistance for decades and Trump is the result of all efforts so far in the US.  The fact that Trump is president should tell you your efforts, our efforts, have failed miserably.  What's the new plan?  I haven't seen it.
 
Victor Smith
 
 
 
 
 
Monday's Portside post - The New Merchants of Death was regrettably cut-off in the middle.
 
The full version of this important article is now up on the Portisde website here. 
 
Moderator
 
 
 
 
 
By Colin Moynihan
February 6, 2017
 
 
Photo: New York Times
 
 
About 20 rabbis affiliated with a liberal Jewish group were arrested on Monday night after blocking the street near the Trump International Hotel and Tower at Columbus Circle in Manhattan to protest an executive order that banned travel to the United States from seven majority-Muslim nations.
 
Although the hotel has been a site of numerous protests since President Trump's election, few, if any, have involved the arrest of a group of clerics.
 
A crowd of about 200 people assembled at 88th Street and Broadway about 7 p.m. and then marched toward the hotel, brandishing signs with messages like "welcome refugees" while hitting drums and tambourines.
 
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the executive director of T'ruah, a rabbinical group that organized the protest, said it was meant to show that many Jews opposed the ban.
 
"We remember our history, and we remember that the borders of this country closed to us in 1924 with very catastrophic consequences during the Holocaust," Rabbi Jacobs said. "We know that some of the language that's being used now to stop Muslims from coming in is the same language that was used to stop Jewish refugees from coming."
 
Read full story here. 
 
 
 
 
 
I think Kaufmann is the greatest, but another "large-scale political action of the '60s" qualifies as "the most influential." I'm thinking of the 1965 Watts 'riots'. These six days changed thinking and behavior in 50 states. It too slipped into obscurity, and now it's seen as just another of a string of urban explosions. It was political in that it ripped through the myth that whites and disempowered blacks accepted the consensus that racial oppression was basically a southern rather than a nationwide problem. Arguably, what led to the decline in the use of the word 'nigger' in common speech by whites was the shame of the MLK assassination AND the threat of unmanageable mass disorder demonstrated so clearly a few years before.
 
The black bloc street trashing last week in Berkeley demonstrate how 'direct action' can be turned into a means of attacking progressive politics while pretending to advance them. When people get destructive en masse, the result is the opposite - but the repression that follows does not discriminate between violent and nonviolent direct action. The distinction when looking at lawbreaking in the name of political goals is whether it achieves positive mass agitation or only negative provocation.
 
Ethan Young
 
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Yes, massive march, combined with civil disobedience, along with congressional lobbying. All levels of mass non-violent protest. We had lots of busloads go from Chicago.
 
Jay Schaffner
 
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I was there. I was also there at the 1967 DC rally against the war, which Norman Mailer wrote about in Armies of the Night. I wrote a few poems about that one. Ah, youth. RESIST!
 
Bill Nevins
 
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I was there for two weeks of the May Day protests. Spent something like 72 hours locked up illegally in courtyard of the D.C. Jail, then the Coliseum, as chronicled in my poetic memoir Road Ghosts.
 
John Roche
 
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So many of us were arrested, they had to drop charges because the District of Columbia couldn't manage to process everyone.
 
Alan Barnes
 
 
 
 
(posting on Portside Culture)
 
 
That story has negative value; people do not need to be told about super-foods but about the way in which capitalists market food for maximum profit and minimum health. Food is of course a left issue and this story is on the wrong side of that.
 
Mark Bittman
 
 
 
 
(posting on Portside Labor)
 
 
Too true. Reminds me of a quote from 1967 (or so) in the Village Voice, by an extremely serious music writer, Robert Christgau. "Why are rock music and the revolution the same? They're both groovy!" Toppling a government takes lots of long term hard work.
 
Michael Adelsheim
 
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Makes some good points
 
Keith Mercer
 
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I look at it this way, outside of WI a few years back, how much talk about general strikes have there been? Of course, "we" recognize certain things for what they are. By the same time, anarcho-syndicalists prolly should be "on it" even in the sense of getting our views out, etc
 
Mike Harris
 
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Thanks to the West Seattle branch of Socialist Alternative, I learned much about the awe-inspiring history of workers' resistance in the US. Ordinary people took extraordinary risks--en masse, in the tens of thousands. Decade after decade. That history does make the current call for a general strike seem a tad flimsy as this article points out.
 
Cielito Pascual
 
 
 
 
 
Sad. It's theater and spectacle. And we allowed him to make us props on his stage, rather than us deploying more creative tactics that would make them props on our stage. This article is a small example of the latter, but he and his ilk won the day. Time to think more, folks. Unleash your imaginations. Suppose, for example, everyone had surrounded Milo silently, with backs turned, and held up signs saying 'This is What fascism Sounds Like!' Or something better. Good advice from another time and place: 'Wage struggle on just grounds, to our advantage and with restraint.'"
 
Carl Davidson
 
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Love your alternative protest of MIlo (& his fellow white supremacists).
 
Lydia Howell
 
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There have always been groups of people, who may or not have been paid, or just wild and bored. People with no agenda other than to disrupt. The people, especially in a public institution, have the right to say NO. This guy has right to speak anywhere he wants.  But to speak against, at the very Public institution that is paying him is scary. To quote "Your nose ends where my nose  begins."  The students had every right to protest under the 1st Amendment.  And thanks for them.
 
Claire Carsman
 
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These organizations should not be legal in the first place. The Supreme Court made a mistake. They need to reinstate the Klan Act and add some to the list.
 
Aleks Osis
 
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It was called the McCarren Act, and the Communists and the IWW anarchists were on it as well. And you want to bring it back?
 
Carl Davidson
 
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No one is easier for the right wing to "play" than the black bloc. They are entirely predictable and unimaginative.
 
Alan Hart
 
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Thousands of people are non violent and a few crazies get the spotlight. It's an old story-whom ever they're working for.
 
Emily Thomas
 
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They wouldn't have been allowed to enter the hall, and the actual neo-Nazi frat boys on UCB campus would've still heard Milo hand out names, pictures, and home addresses of vulnerable people of color, undocumented and trans students
 
Patrick Andrzejczyk
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
"In 1944, an article called "American Fascism" appeared in the New York Times, written by then vice president Henry Wallace. "A fascist," wrote Wallace, "is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends." Wallace predicted that American fascism would only become "really dangerous" if a "purposeful coalition" arose between crony capitalists, "poisoners of public information" and "the KKK type of demagoguery". Those defending the new administration insist it isn't fascism, but Americanism. This, too, was foretold: in 1938, a New York Times reporter warned: "When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled `made in Germany'; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, `Americanism'."
 
Alan Barnes
 
 
 
 
 
It is now clear that Trump is doing something no other President has done in my lifetime, something which even Richard Nixon did not try until he was in real trouble, and that is making the media the enemy. The media is the fourth estate, it is guaranteed freedom under the First Amendment, but Trump has launched a major attack on it for "fake news", and calling it the "opposition party".  In addition he has created his own facts, which his followers - the millions reached by his tweets - will accept as truth.Charges that the media has not covered terror attacks (NOT TRUE), or that there were three to five million illegal vote cast,(NOT TRUE). He is using the White House and the authority of the President to send lies marching across the country.
 
The one unexpected good part of things is that the media is fighting back. Saturday Night Live and the Late Show are mocking Trump and Bannon with bitter (and accurate) attacks such as I have never seen in the past, not against Obama, Clinton, LBJ or even Nixon. This is something we did not see in Germany as Hitler rose. It is reason for hope - that and the mass resistance (which Spicer claims is all paid for - as if anyone could hire the millions who have taken to the street).
 
These are dramatic and exciting times. We have reason to be very afraid, and also very hopeful. Resist, resist!
 
David McReynolds
 
 
 
 
 
We must resist the nomination of Anti-Labor Secretary Andrew Puzder.
 
Recently LAANE reached out to you urging you to call your senators to oppose the nomination of Andrew Puzder for Secretary of Labor. We thank you for taking the time to make these important calls - they are paying off. Puzder's confirmation has been delayed and delayed, and pressure continues to build for him to withdraw his name from consideration.
 
Today we are proud to share our latest op-ed published in The Huffington Post about Puzder's background and why is he is so unqualified for this crucial cabinet position that impacts working families.
 
"Cities and states need to send a strong message to our senators that Puzder is the wrong choice for this role, and they must not vote to confirm him. To lead the Department of Labor, our country needs a leader who will advocate for working families.
 
We need someone who will carry out the responsibility to improve the lives of hardworking Americans, and fight for policies that improve wages, benefits, and workplace safety. We must appoint a leader who uses their authority to protect and defend workers - not misuse their power to reduce existing rights."
 
Read the full op-ed here.
 
In solidarity,
 
Roxana Tynan
LAANE
 
 
 
 
 
 
Important info-thanks. The same issues apply here in Canada.  
 
Joe Grogan
Bolton, Canada
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Taz & Zahra
#GoodMuslimBadMuslim - Episode 23
November 28, 2016
 
 
It all started with a hashtag.
 
Specifically, a hashtag back and forth conversation between Tanzila 'Taz' Ahmed and Zahra Noorbakhsh, all in jest. And then, we decided to make it really real.
 
 
To the Muslim community, we are "bad" Muslims - we listen to music, we don't pray regularly, we date or get married to white men (Zahra), identify as punks and radicals (Taz), we perform and share our lives with comedy and writing. So we are bad. So so bad. 
 
To non-Muslims, we are "good" - we don't drink, we don't do drugs, we are not criminals, we are social justice activists and community leaders. We are successful, published, accomplished. 
 
But then of course, on the flipside, because we are brown Muslims living in a post 9/11 islamophobia funded world, we are also villanized by Western society, too. No matter how you look at it, we are bad Muslims. There's no winning!!!!
 
As Muslim American women, we are walking this fine line between what it means to be good and bad. So really, what does it mean to be a good Muslim, when we as American women are getting mixed messages from all different angles? We've decided to say - fuck it. We'll define what it means to be a good American Muslim ourselves and through our #GoodMuslimBadMuslim podcast. And poke fun at both sides of this margin. We'll create our own narrative how we see fit, and with lots of satire and laughs.]
 
 
 
 
 
Racism reshapes itself like a slime mold. When one form is eradicated, another develops to take its place. Right now the main form of captivity is prison.
 
Sonia Collins
 
    
 
Excellent and thought provoking article! It certainly does lend compassion to the Black Lives Matter movement which, admittedly, I haven't delved into the history about. I think the key to a united country is not just tolerating differences, but understanding them to a point where we can agree that being different is a strength rather than a weakness.
 
Ann Marie Giovacchini
 
 
 
 
 
As a retired worker and union member I so appreciate the leadership of the authors of this article. Here is a practical road map for us as workers and unions to STRENGTHEN and BROADEN an economic justice movement with potential allies while accurately identifying who is with our REAL interests and who is NOT. Realistically this may identify some NOTs within our unions, the Dems and elsewhere. We have the numbers, the collective power and the analysis to push forward REAL justice demands. Listening and learning with Luce and Kern and others, we can KICK SOME ASS as only workers and our allies can!
 
Leanna Noble
 
 
 
 
 
Just goes to show the old saying we had in the labor movement...if the building trades were in Nazi Germany they would have endorsed the concentration camps as long as they were built union.
 
Lincoln Smith
 
 
 
 
 
This article is a touchstone, a very important connection to our working class history and goals.
 
Dan Kane
 
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A complete misreading of what the CIO was all about. Maybe what she means is that AFL-CIO should expel the Trump-collaborating building trades.
 
Tom Wetzel
 
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Remember Nixon's hard hats--buildings trades unionists who acted as storm trooper thugs against anti-war demonstrators.  I still have the scars. Yes, labor should clean house and expel them
 
Stan Nadel
 
 
 
 
(posting on Portside Culture)
 
 
It's quite a good book and I recommend it highly.
 
Don Lawson
 
 
 
 
 
Randy Shaw, Director of the SF Tenderloin Housing Clinic, wrote today in his 'Beyond Chron' blog:  "Progressives Wrong to Bash Warren."  I strongly agree.
 
James E. Vann
 
 
Progressives Wrong to Bash Warren
By Randy Shaw
January 31, 2017
 
 
 
 
On January 28, Sen. Elizabeth Warren rallied crowd at Boston's Logan Airport protesting Trump's Muslim ban
 
Until last week, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warrenwas a beloved progressive icon. Her populist attacks on Donald Trump drew such raves that many progressives pushed for Clinton to make Warren her VP.

Now Warren is being criticized by Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos and other progressives who once backed her for the Vice-Presidency. What changed? She voted to confirm Ben Carson as HUD Secretary. As Kos puts it, “we can’t even get Elizabeth Warren to commit to full resistance.”

Progressive Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown also voted to confirm Carson. He was similarly criticized by the left.

Too Hard on Allies?

Progressive politicians should pay a price when they betray progressive interests. And a lack of accountability has been a problem.  But the attacks against Warren’s vote are far out of proportion.

Consider the favorable comments about Carson following his confirmation hearing made by Diane Yentel, President and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition . Yentel, representing the nation’s leading DC-based housing advocacy group, said that the nominee “has clearly taken the time to begin to understand and come to appreciate the importance of HUD’s programs… Dr. Carson’s commitment to advocate for HUD’s programs within the administration was a positive and welcomed one.”

Warren’s vote is consistent with the NLIHC’s position. She also reasoned that there was no reason to suspect Trump would offer a better HUD nominee, and the alternative could be much worse.  Support for Carson from the nation’s leading DC-based affordable housing advocacy group may explain why there was no national grassroots campaign against Carson’s confirmation as has arisen against Betty De Vos (Education) and Andrew Puzder (Labor).

So while the left was miffed that Warren backed Carson, her vote did not mean that she fails to understand the importance of resistance (she was at Logan Airport over the weekend with a megaphone). Nor that she was not “listening” to the Democratic base.

A poll last week found that Warren could face a tough re-election battle next year. This is not the time for progressives to join Republicans in criticizing a Senator who has been on the right side of every big progressive issue since taking office.

If you like this article, please sign up for Snapshot, Portside's daily summary.

(One summary e-mail a day, you can change anytime, and Portside is always free.)

Too Soft on Allies?

While progressives take a hard line toward their national allies, it is different locally.

For example, last March when the San Francisco Chronicle asked San Francisco Supervisor Norman Yee which sites in his District Seven would be suitable for new homeless centers, Yee said, “I can’t think of any.” Yee had backed a proposal to increase Navigation Centers, but said they were not suitable for his district because “I don’t think it’s appropriate to have it next to a business for families and children.”

If a moderate like Mark Farrell made such a comment, progressives would have torn him apart. They’d condemn Farrell for accepting the placing of homeless centers near businesses for families and children in the low-income SOMA or Tenderloin, but not in his more affluent District 7.

But progressives remained entirely silent. After all, Yee is a “progressive.”

When Jane Kim opposed a soda tax on San Francisco’s November ballot backed by most progressives, progressives backing the measure remained silent or tried to justify her position. The feeling, which I shared, was that Kim’s  solid progressive record did not justify her being attacked for her position on a single issue that was not central to the city’s progressive agenda.

But progressive activists act differently at the national level. Politicians like Barack Obama or Elizabeth Warren are lambasted for any deviation from the progressive line, an approach seen as counterproductive locally.

Progressive politicians must be held accountable to their grassroots progressive base. As I describe it in The Activist’s Handbook, activists need to instill a feeling of “fear and loathing” in many politicians to ensure they do the right thing.

But Elizabeth Warren has proved her progressive mettle time and again. She does not need to be proverbially hit in the head by a two by four to do the right thing.

At a time when the stakes for the nation have never been bigger, Warren deserves our support, not condemnation.

 
[Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco's Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw is the author of four books on activism, including The Activist's Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. His new book is The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco.]
 
 
 
 
 
Bernie Sanders was the best presidential candidate this country has had since Henry Wallace, and, I agree with Julia Mead's parents, had about as much chance of being elected as he did, especially when fighting against a protege of Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy's right-hand man.  Had Huey Long not been assassinated, we might well have seen happen what is happening now, as Sinclair Lewis warned in "It Can't Happen Here."  It IS happening, now. And it's time to fight the fascist takeover with every weapon available.
 
Leonard J. Lehrman
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
With the Women's March on Washington and the hundreds of sister marches, we witnessed what political scientists are calling the largest day of demonstrations in United States history. The marches were an incredible representation of the anger, frustration and pain experienced by so many women, as well as a moment of true global solidarity as people marched in 200 demonstrations outside the US.
 
Here's the thing: we can't let our momentum stop here. We must stay in the fight, and in the streets, to make real progress towards stopping the global epidemic of violence against women. (More on this in Judy Gearhart's latest Huffington Post piece.)
 
Over the past four years, activists across the globe have risen up to demand an end to this epidemic as part of the global One Billion Rising movement, this year under the theme "Solidarity Against the Exploitation of Women. Rise! Disrupt! Connect!"  ILRF is joining with V-Day and One Billion Rising in three weeks of actions in support of working women. Campaign actions kick off on Valentine's Day, February 14th, and continue through International Women's Day on March 8th. We hope you'll join us!
 
Did you know that of the 190 International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions, not a single one is focused on gender-based violence at work? In our activism over the next month, we will lift up the voices and demands of women workers who face sexual harassment, physical violence, poverty wages, and repression of the right to organize at work. We will join their call for a new ILO Convention to raise awareness and strengthen the laws that protect their safety at work. Can we count on you to join us?
 
Here are three things you can do right now:
 
In solidarity,
 
Sarah Newell
Campaigns Associate,
 
 
 
 
(posting on Portside Labor)
 
 
The reality of working for a living today
 
William Friesen
 
 
 
 
 
Read carefully it has important things to say
 
Norma Garcia
 
 
 
 
 
Of course, upon reading this, you will realize that the few 'protections' of the employees are meaningless; if an employee were to indicate in any way that the employer was failing to comply with any such 'protection', the employee could be fired w/out cause. "... there is no longer a presumption that a termination is without "just cause." Therefore, employees now bear the burden of proving that their employment terminations were without "just cause...." As to 'overtime', since the time period is defined as midnight to midnight, an employee could be scheduled 4pm until 8am, work 16 hours without any overtime. This is a formula to treat PR workers the way many US employers treat 'undocumented workers' who know that any complaint will result in immediate dismissal or a phone call to ICE. It is called slavery
 
M Guy Ross
 
 
 
 
 
How did the small country like Vietnam defeat America in 1963 in the Tet offensive (Operation rolling thunder)
 
Sanele Mthethwa
 
 
 
 
 
We are HEAVILY relying on you!!
 
Margo Okazawa-Rey
 
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Can't do my work without you.And boy, are we going to need you for the next four years.
 
Best,
 
Conn Hallinan
 
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Thanks to all of you. You do one hell of a good job!. I recognize a few of the names on your list from times gone by.  Thanks for keepin' on keepin' on! I'm afraid that the fight coming up will be the fight of our lives,  a fight against fascism. BE STRONG!
 
In Solidarity, 
 
Fred Hirsch
 
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Re: Portside Snapshot - February 9, 2017
 
Thank you. Some good reads.
 
Best,
Terris McMahan Grimes
Literacy Evangelist and Author of Smelling Herself: A Novel
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Warsaw 1943 Never Again!
Claude Moller
Silkscreen, 2002
San Francisco, CA
16974
 
 
CSPG's Poster of the Week was produced in response to escalating anti-immigrant sentiments and actions following the horrific crime of September 11, 2001. It used one of the most famous photographs taken during the Holocaust, of Jewish families arrested by Nazi troops and sent to be gassed at Treblinka extermination camp after the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, May 1943. "Never Again!" refers to the statement made by the Soviet general who liberated Auschwitz, January 27, 1945.
 
This poster is frighteningly relevant today because President Trump signed an executive order on January 27, 2017 - Holocaust Remembrance Day - that appears designed to specifically limit the entry of Muslim refugees. This mean-spirited, racist, and probably unconstitutional refugee ban led to chaos and confusion at U.S. borders and at points of entry around the world, and provoked spontaneous demonstrations at airports from Los Angeles (LAX) to New York (JFK), and many other cities including Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Boise, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, and San Francisco.
 
"It's repulsive," said Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a faith-based nonprofit dedicated to resettling refugees in the United States..."It was during the Holocaust that the world shamefully refused to give asylum to Jews and to others who were being murdered or about to be murdered in Nazi Germany," Hetfield added, referring to the US government's decision to turn away European refugees during World War II.
 
Resources:
 
3916 Sepulveda Blvd, Suite 103
Culver City, CA 90230
 
310-397-3100
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
It seems that every day brings dramatic news of two very different kinds: on the one hand Trump's demented rhetoric, along with horrendous initiatives from his administration and its Congressional supporters; but on the other hand, thankfully, absolutely unprecedented mass resistance in every corner of the nation and around the globe. 
 
 
 
 
With blinding speed, the monster in the White House is moving to fulfill his campaign promises with attacks on immigrants, especially refugees, and on Muslims. He has vowed to "utterly destroy" even the meager financial regulations previously in place and roll back all manner of environmental protections. He has shown utter contempt for press freedom and is increasingly playing the role of a dictator under the influence of the sinister white nationalist Steve Bannon. Soon, Medicare, Medicaid, abortion rights and much more will come under siege from Trump's administration. And all this amid a blizzard of mind-boggling "alternative facts." Unbelievably, the government of the United States is becoming part of an international axis of far rightists, xenophobes and authoritarians, leaders and aspiring leaders, including Marine Le Pen, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, Nigel Farage, Viktor Orban, Geert Wilders and a host of other demagogues.
 
We in the Campaign for Peace and Democracy are deeply alarmed by what's coming out of Washington. But at the same time, we are immensely inspired by the willingness of so many people to come out on the streets, to go to the airports, to speak out in militant opposition to the current administration. We urge friends and supporters of the Campaign to actively participate in whatever form of resistance is taking place where they live. Already the gigantic Women's Marches - possibly the biggest demonstrations in U.S. history - as well as the airport uprisings have had an effect. The federal court-issued stay on the travel ban against citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries is a victory, however temporary it may prove to be, that would very likely not have occurred without the pressure of mass action. Likewise, the outpouring of millions of protestors has so far stiffened the spines of many Democratic Party politicians - or at least made it much harder for them to accommodate to Trump.
 
The question now is: where will this resistance go? We believe that it is essential not only to block Trump's reactionary initiatives, but also to move beyond a defense of the status quo and start building for truly progressive change. We hope that out of the present turmoil an organized, independent left, free of all ties to corporate neoliberalism and able to join with democratic social justice and anti-war movements around the world, will finally come together in this country.
 
2808 Broadway, #12
New York, New York 10025
Email: cpd@igc.org
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The climate change issue and our militarized foreign policy are inextricably linked. The Pentagon is the largest single consumer of fossil fuels, contributing 5% of the world's global warming emissions.  Few entire countries use more oil than the Pentagon does.  As Michael Eisenscher has said, there is not such thing as a sustainable planet run by the military-industrial complex.
 
A new organization, The Labor Convergence on Climate, is being launched to bring together labor activists to fight the devastating effects of climate change and to ensure that the transition to a sustainable economy is not done at the expense of workers.
 
At last week's USLAW Steering Committee conference call, we voted to endorse the Mission Statement of the Labor Convergence on Climate (click here to read the full statement.)  Just as USLAW was formed to be the voice of labor within the peace movement and the voice for peace movement, we believe that the Labor Convergence on Climate can be the voice for workers within the climate justice movement and the voice for climate justice within the labor movement.
 
Our Steering Committee is asking all USLAW affiliates to do two things:
 
(1) Ask your union to endorse the Mission Statement of the Labor Convergence on Climate; and
 
(2) Join the conference call on Wednesday, February 15 that will launch the organizing plan for the Labor Convergence on Climate.
 
USLAW Co-Convener John Braxton and I are both on the Steering Committee of the Labor Convergence on Climate.  John will be taking the lead on the climate change work within USLAW.  If you have questions or comments, please contact John at jwbraxton@gmail.com or at 215/796-4933.
 
In Solidarity,
Reece Chenault
National Coordinator, USLAW (U.S. Labor Against the War)
 
1718 M St, NW #153
Washington DC 20036
 
phone: 202-521-5265
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Richard Wormser will screen and discuss his documentary American Reds on: 
 
Tuesday, February 14 (4:00 PM) at the Tamiment Library.
A reception with wine and cheese will follow the discussion. This event is sponsored by the Frederic Ewen Center.
 
Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
70 Washington Square South
10th Floor
New York, NY 10012
 
RSVP: email tamiment.events@nyu.edu with guest name(s) & event title.
 
 
Richard Wormser has written, produced and/or directed over fifty programs for television, foundations, educational institutions, and government. He is the originator, series producer, co-director/writer of a four-part television series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. The series received national acclaim and has won the prestigious Peabody Award for excellence in television programming, three national Emmy nominations, the International Documentary Association Best Series award, Cine Gold Eagle and the Chris Award.
 
Wormser has also written ten books for young adults on social issues including The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Growing Up Muslim, Hoboes: Wandering in America, and Lifers: Learn the Truth at the Expense of our Sorrow. He teaches at Fordham University and the University of New Haven
 
 
Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
70 Washington Square South
10th Floor
New York, NY 10012
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Friday, February 24
2pm-4pm
 
Murphy Institute
25 W. 43 Street, 18 Fl
 
 
 
 
The crises we are facing -- of threats to democracy, to social justice, to community and the environment -- beg us to look at the opportunities crisis creates.
 
In honor of the birthday of W.E.B. Du Bois, a leader and intellectual who authored, among many great works, Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans in 1907, we will explore the stories, struggles, and successes of workers who have taken control and bettered their lives, through the history of economic cooperativism in African-American communities, and ask how we can apply those lessons to contemporary struggles locally and around the globe.
 
Speakers:
  • Jessica Gordon Nembhard is a political economist and Associate Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Africana Studies Department at John Jay College, CUNY; and author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. An affiliate scholar with the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, she is a member of the GEO Collective, as well as the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, the Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy, the Southern Grassroots Economies Project, and the US Solidarity Economy Network.
  • Hon. Roger L. Green, Executive Director of Dubois-Bunche Center on Public Policy, Medgar Evers College, CUNY and the Coalition to Transform Interfaith, served as an elected member of the New York State Assembly from 1981-2005. During his tenure in the State Legislature Green was widely acknowledged as an expert on educational reform and children and family policies. Green served as the Chair of the Committee on Science and Technology, the Committee on Children and Families and the Joint Budget Conference Committee on Human Resources. A longstanding advocate of civil and human rights, Green worked within the legislative process to enact numerous laws that reflected his commitment to these principles.
  • Naceo Giles, is a worker owner with Skedaddle Pest Control in Brooklyn and member of the NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives Leadership Council. He worked in educational opportunity programs after graduating from college, as a counselor at Hofstra University's New Opportunities at Hofstra (NOAH) for two years, Director of the College Achievement Program (CAP) at Wagner College for three years, and Dean for Supportive Services at Colgate University for seven years. He also served as maintenance manager of 3333 Broadway for Riverside Maintenance, supervising a maintenance and security staff for three years. After leaving maintenance work, he served as field manager for Critter Crushers Pest Control for 12 years until the company was sold.
  • Moderator, Dario Azzellini, Murphy Institute visiting scholar, is a political scientist, lecturer at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, writer and filmmaker. He has published several books, essays and documentaries about social movements, privatization of military services, migration and racism, including An Alternative Labour History: Worker Control and Workplace Democracy. His research and writing focuses on social and revolutionary militancy, migration and racism, people's power and self administration, workers control and extensive case studies in Latin America.