Green Jobs and Class Struggle:

Why the Blue-Green Alliance
Matters to the Socialist Left

[Prepared as a Memo for the Working Class Studies Association Conference, June 6-8 2009, at the University of Pittsburgh.]

By Carl Davidson
SolidarityEconomy.net


1. One of the more important progressive measures launched in the first 100 days of the Obama administration is the Green Jobs Initiative within the broader Economic Recovery Act. There is substantial money allocated to it, and the appointee brought on to shepherd its development, Van Jones, is one of the few Obama appointees clearly from the left. Green Jobs is also a product of the Blue-Green Alliance, a joint effort by labor unions and environmental groups, which have funded advocacy for the program for years.

2. There are two aspects to Green Jobs, the immediate and the structural. The immediate has to do with bringing living-wage employment with a future to those who need it most, the unemployed and under-employed youth of the inner city. The structural has to do with Green Jobs being part of a larger effort to shift the country's energy system from one based on burning carbon and uranium to one based on sustainable renewables-solar, wind, wave, hydro and geothermal. All these require major upgrading of the country's infrastructure and a retooling of its manufacturing for more advanced products and production. Both aspects require a new Green industrial policy, alongside an erosion of the country's traditional military-industrial policy and more recent neoliberal market fundamentalism.

3. The neoliberal diehards in the House and Senate GOP, together with the rightwing populism stirred up by the Fox-Limbaugh-Hannity media reactionaries, are preparing an all-out attack of Green Jobs on several fronts. First, they attack the whole concept that there is any urgency to anything Green. In their view, global warming and climate change is simply a leftwing hoax used as a cover to attack the free market and promote government planning, leading to socialism. Second, they attack it as affirmative action for people of color, supposedly masking moral failure and public schools as the real reason for the problems of the inner city. Third, they are preparing a red-baiting campaign against Van Jones in particular, as part of a wider effort to red-bait Obama and deny the legitimacy of his election.

4. Green Jobs will require more than White House and Congressional Democrat support in order to survive this resistance and counter-attack. Getting a program adopted by Congress is only the first step on a long road to its deployment. Community and youth organizations, environmental group and the trade unions are facing the task of launching a social movement to see to it that Green Jobs is not gutted, delayed or otherwise sabotaged.

5. Green Jobs can be undermined indirectly as well. The program ultimately has to be deployed locally, and pass through state, county and city governments and their hangers-on. Left to their own inclinations, funds for Green Jobs may be diverted to parks or highway projects that shore up existing government worker payrolls with little new employment of those most in need. Alternately, new construction can be turned over to firms importing non-union labor, or using labor at minimum wage rather than living wage standards. Only local coalitions mobilized with some clout at the base can prevent this, and the ball is in the court of the left to organize them.

6. Green Jobs is a natural for the left to build coalitions of diversity in working-class and low-income communities. Start with organizations close to those who need green jobs most-inner city youth service agencies, neighborhood churches and their youth groups, sports groups-then approach others needed to make a collaborative work, such as trade union apprenticeship programs, community college trade skills teachers, local home building or remodeling companies looking for new projects. With this assembled, find the local political incumbents, especially at the state level, ready to go to bat for your project. Connect with Green For All, Van Jones' group, if its in a major city near you, for advice.

7. The left has its own approach to bring to the Green Jobs table, apart from being a catalytic organizer. Green Jobs can be implemented in a 'low road' way, by giving funds to contractors who hire youth at minimum wage, who in turn winterize a few public buildings, bypass the unions and dump the youth when it's over. Obviously, this is to be avoided. But there's a high road, solidarity economy approach that builds a stakeholder collaborative of businesses, unions, credit unions and school, with a strategic view of a lasting green construction worker cooperative as an outcome, together with higher-tech career paths through community college partnership with high-tech green firms. The solidarity economy, in turn, serves as a way to educate concretely about the prospects for a socialist future.

8. Green Jobs is a product of a long and complex series of working-class and youth struggles. One part reaches back to the global justice battles in the streets of Seattle more than a decade ago. The unions joined this to battle NAFTA, and the youth came out of green and global justice concerns. Both found themselves on the same sides of the barricades battling police in the streets-'Teamsters and Turtles Forever!' was a spontaneous slogan. Some in the Steelworkers Union and the Sierra Club took it further, and in a paradigm shift, began to see each other as natural allies rather than natural adversaries. The tons of steel and 19,000 machined parts in every wind turbine had to be manufactured and assembled somewhere, after all. This was formally put together and funded as the Blue-Green Alliance. The other component came from the anger of inner city youth facing jails and police harassment and brutality. Demanding jobs for youth was not new and often ignored, but when Van Jones in Oakland put out 'Green Jobs, Not Jails' to put kids to work insulating buildings and installing solar panels, he suddenly had people listening in a new way. There is more to the story, but this is the heart of it, an organic development from class struggle, labor-community alliances and youth insurgency. There will be more battles, but with this energy to build on, the prospects are very bright.


[Carl Davidson is webmaster for SolidarityEconomy.net, a national committee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and a coordinating committee member of the US Solidarity Economy Network. Together with Jerry Harris, he is author of 'Cyber-Radicalism: A New Left for a Global Age, available at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker If you like this article, use the PayPal button to give support. Email him at carld717@gmail.com ]
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100 Days: Obama's Mixed Report Card

Photo: Rightwing poster vs Obama

Obama’s First 100 Days:
The Situation and
Tasks of the Left

By Carl Davidson
SolidarityEconomy.Net

Asking for a Report Card on Obama’s first 100 days is easy enough—as long as your don’t take it too seriously.

First figure out the vantage point from which you want to grade him. Women’s Rights and Green Jobs people will measure him differently than, say, the peace movement. Then measure him with a combination of his campaign promises and how he contrasts with McCain or Bush.

This approach will easily give him a C+ or even a B, but it doesn’t tell us much other than it was a good idea to vote for him. But this is not what matters most.For the left, the wars matter most, and on these he gets a D-. He’s just barely better than Bush in Iraq, and doing worse in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If he doesn’t seize one of his caveats and reverse course, this will destroy his presidency.

On the financial crisis, he gets a C-. First, because he’s got something going that can help, such as green jobs and high speed rail, while still clinging to what makes matters worse, such as bailing out ‘nonbank banks’ and backing anti-single-payer health care scams.

On his appointments, I’m somewhat satisfied because he did what I thought he would: realign the ruling class into an anti-NeoCon bloc. Dick Cheney’s attacks and a House GOP in 100 percent opposition is the evidence of that. We got Solis and Van Jones, while all the rest is the center and center-right of the power elites.

This gets to my main point. The most important question is not what Obama’s done in 100 days, but what are we doing, ‘we’ meaning the American left. In an important way, Obama’s picks accurately reflect the relation of political forces in the country. If we, the socialists, had gotten more, it wouldn’t be because we had the clout to deserve it, especially since more than half of the socialist groups flat out opposed him.

We are not going to get anything at the top that we haven’t already won and consolidated at the base. Obama has given us a new ball game, but the ball is in our court. We have to build the serious organizations, both socialist groups and much wider coalitions and popular fronts, which can make both him and the Congress do what needs to be done. Whining and carping doesn’t help one bit. Right now, what we need is a lot of organizers bent on uniting the left and progressive forces, winning over the middle, and isolating and defeating our neoliberal and rightwing populist adversaries.
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21st Century Socialism: What It Is, Why We Need It

Eleven Talking Points
On 21st Century Socialism

By Carl Davidson

SolidarityEconomy.net

May 1, 2009

The current discussion around socialism in left and progressive circles in the U.S. needs to be placed in a more substantive arena. This is an effort to do so. I take note in advance of the criticism that the following eleven working hypotheses are rather dry and formal. But in light of the faux ‘socialisms’ bandied about in the headlines and sound bytes of the mass media in the wake of the financial crisis, especially the absurd claim in the media of rightwing populism that the Obama administration is Marxist and socialist, I felt something a little more rigorous might be helpful. Obviously, criticism and commentary is invited.

1. Socialism’s fundamental building blocks are already present in US society. The means of production, for the most part, are fully developed and in fact are stagnating under the political domination of finance capital. The US labor force, again for the most part, is highly skilled at all levels of production, management, marketing, and finance. The kernels of socialist organization are also scattered across the landscape in cooperatives, socially organized human services, and centralized and widespread mass means of many-to-many communication and supply/demand data management. Many earlier attempts at socialism did not have these advantages.

2. Socialism is first of all a democratic political system where the interests and organizations of the working class and its allies have attained and hold the preponderance of political power, and thus play the critical leading role in society. It is still a class society, but one in a protracted transition, over hundreds of years, to a future classless society where exploiting class privileges are abolished and classes and class distinctions generally wither away, both nationally and globally. So socialism will have classes for some time, including some capitalists, because it will be a mixed economy, with both public and private ownership, even as the balance shifts over time. Family farmers and small proprietors will both exist and flourish alongside cooperatives. Innovative 'high road' entrepreneurial privately-held firms will compete with publically-own firms, and encouraged to create new wealth within an environmentally regulated and progressively taxed system. Past efforts to build socialism have suffered from aggravated conflict between and among popular classes and lack of emphasis on building wide unity among the people.

3. Socialism at the base is a transitional economic system anchored in the social mode of production brought into being by capitalist development over several centuries. Its economic system is necessarily mixed, and makes use of markets, especially in goods and services, which are regulated, especially regarding the environment. But capital markets and wage-labor markets can be sharply restricted and even abolished in due time. Markets are a function of scarcity, and all economies of any scale in a time of scarcity have them, even if they are disguised as 'black' or 'tiered' markets. In addition to regulated markets, socialism will also feature planning, especially on the macro level of infrastructure development, in investment of public assets and funds, and other arenas where markets have failed. Planning will especially be required to face the challenges of uneven development and harsh inequalities on a global scale, as well as the challenge of moving from a carbon and uranium based energy system to one based on renewable green energy sources. The socialisms of the last century fell or stagnated due to failure to develop the proper interplay between plans and markets.

4. Socialism will be anchored in public and worker ownership of the main productive forces and natural resources. This can be achieved by various means: a) buying out major failing corporations at penny stock status, then leasing them back to the unions and having the workers in each firm—one worker, one vote—run them, b) workers directly taking ownership and control over failed and abandoned factories, c) eminent domain seizures of resources and factories, with compensation, otherwise required for the public good, and d) public funding for startups of worker-owned cooperative businesses. Socialism will also require public ownership of most finance capital institutions, including bringing the Federal Reserve under the Treasury Department and federal ownership. Lease payments from publically owned firms will go into a public investment fund, which will in turn lend money to community and worker owned banks and credit unions. A stock market will still exist for remaining publically traded firms and investments abroad, but will be strictly controlled. A stock transfer tax will be implemented. Gambling in derivatives will be outlawed. Fair trade agreements with other countries will be on a bilateral basis for mutual benefit.

5. Socialism will require democracy in the workplace of public firms and encourage it in all places of work. Workers have the right to independent unions to protect their social and daily interests, in addition to their rights as worker-owners in the governance of their firms. In addition to direct democracy at the plant level, the organizations of the working class also participate in the wider public planning process and thus democratically shape the direction of ongoing development on the macro level as well. Under socialism the government will also serve as the employer-of-last-resort. Minimum living-wage jobs will be provided for all who want to work. Socialism is committed to genuine full employment. Every citizen will have a genuine right to work.

6. Socialism will largely be gained by the working class and it allies winning the battle for democracy in politics and civil society at large, especially taking down the structures and backward laws of class, gender and racial privilege. Women have equal rights with men, and minority nationalities have equal rights with the majority. It also defends equal rights and self-determination among all nations across the globe; no nation can itself be fully free when it oppresses another. Socialism will encourage public citizenship and mass participation at every level, with open information systems, public education and transparency in its procedures. It will need a true multiparty system, with fusion voting, proportional representation and instant runoff. Given the size and diversity of our country, it is highly unlikely that any single party could adequately represent all popular interests; working class and progressive organizations will need to form common fronts. All trends are guaranteed the right to speak, organize, petition and stand for election. With public financing as an option, socialism can restrict the role of wealth in elections, moving away from a system, in effect, of “one dollar, one vote” and toward a system more reflective of “one person, one vote.” These are the structural measures that can allow the majority of the people, especially the working class and its allies, to secure the political leadership of government and instruments of the state by democratic means, unless these are sabotaged by reaction. Some socialisms of the past used only limited formal democracy or simply used administrative means to implement goals, with the failure of both the goals and the overall projects. Americans are not likely to be interested in systems with elections where only one party runs and no one can lose.

7. Socialism will be a state power, specifically a democratic political order with a representative government. But the government and state components of the current order, corrupted with the thousand threads connecting it to old ruling class, will have to be broken up and replaced with new ones that are transparent, honest and serve the majority of the people. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights can still be the initial basic organizing principle for a socialist government and state. The democratic rights it has gained over the years will be protected and enhanced. Government will also be needed to organize and finance the social development benefitting the people and the environment already mentioned; but the state power behind the law will be required to compel the honest use of resources and to protect people from criminal elements, individual and organized. Forces who try to overturn and reverse the new socialist government illegally and in violation of the Constitution will not be able to do so; they will be broken up and brought to justice. Our society will need a state power for some time to come, even as its form changes. Still, government power has limits; under socialism sovereignty resides in the people themselves, and the powers of any government are necessarily restricted and subordinate to the universal and natural rights of all humankind. Attempts to ignore or reject these principles have severely harmed socialist governments and movements in the past.

8. Socialism will be a society in harmony with the natural environment, understanding that all economies are subsets of the eco-system and ignore it at their peril. In its economics, there are no such things as “externalities” to be pushed off downstream or to future generations. The nature of pending planetary disasters necessitates a high level of planning. We need to redesign communities, promote healthier foods, and rebuild sustainable agriculture—all on a global scale with high design, but on a human scale with mass participation of communities in diverse localities. Socialism will treasure and preserve the diversity of nature’s bounty and end the practice of genetic modification to control the human food supply. We need growth, but intelligent growth in quality and wider knowledge with a lighter environmental footprint. A socialism that simply reproduces the wasteful expansion of an earlier capitalism creates more problems than it solves.

9. Socialism values equality, and will be a society of far greater equality of opportunity, and far less economic inequality. In addition to equal rights before the law, all citizens and residents will have equitable access to a “universal toolbox” of paid-up free public education for all who want to learn, for as far as they want and are able to go; universal public pre-school care; a minimum income, as a social wage, for all who create value, whether in a workplace or otherwise; our notions of socially useful work, activity that creates value, has to be expanded beyond market definitions. Parents raising children, students learning skills, elders educating and passing traditions to younger generations--all these create value that society can in turn reward. Universal single-payer health care with retirement benefits at the level of a living wage is critical to start. Since everyone has access to employment, the existing welfare system can be abolished; individuals will be free to choose the career path and level of income targets they desire, or not. There are no handouts for those able to work, but there are also no irrational barriers to achievement.

10. Socialism is a society where religion can be freely practiced, or not, and no religion is given any special advantages over any other. Religious freedom remains a fundamental tenant of socialism, but naturally neither its practitioners nor anyone else can deny anyone the benefits and protection of civil and criminal law, especially to women and children.

11. Socialism will require an institution of armed forces. Their mission will be to defend the people and secure their interests against any enemies and help in times of natural disasters. It will not be their task to expand markets abroad and defend the property abroad of the exploiting classes. Soldiers will be allowed to organize and petition for the redress of grievances. Armed forces also include local police, under community control, as well as a greatly reduced prison system, based on the principle of restorative justice, and mainly for the protection of society from individuals inflicted with violent pathologies and criminal practices. Non-violent conflict resolution and community-based rehabilitation will be encouraged, but the need for some coercive means will remain for some time.



[Carl Davidson is webmaster for SolidarityEconomy.net, a national committee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and a coordinating committee member of the US Solidarity Economy Network. Together with Jerry Harris, he is author of 'Cyber-Radicalism: A New Left for a Global Age, available at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker If you like this article, go to 'Keep On Keepin' On at http://carldavidson.blogspot.com and make use of the PayPal button. Email him at carld717@gmail.com ]

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Left Forum 2009 - High Energy, Colorful Mosaic

Left 'Turning Points':
Exploring New Ideas,
Seeking Common Ground

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

New York City's annual 'Left Forum' this year was a solid success. Under the theme "Turning Points, it drew more than 2000 participants to Pace University April 17-19, to take part in some 200 panels featuring around 600 speakers.

For something on this scale, I won't even pretend to give a comprehensive overview. No one person can. Instead, in what follows, you'll get my personal diary-like account as I wove my way through the crowds, met up with old and new friends, and faced a dizzying array of choices every time a new round of panels were set to start.

Pace University was an oddly appropriate place for the forum, located next to City Hall in New York City's financial district. The artifacts of the two major crises shaping our last decade were in your face. Wall Street, den of the derivative speculators, was a few blocks away; and you could tour 'Ground Zero,' the site of the destroyed WTC Twin Towers, with less than a 10 minute walk. Pace had a memorial plaque on its grounds for its own faculty, staff and students that perished on 9/11.

I arrived a few hours before the opening plenary. The New York City Labor Left Project, a grouping of socialist and communist trade unionists from several left organizations, set up a small early-bird session with Bill Fletcher, Jr, former AFL-CIO Education Director, co-author of "Solidarity Divided: The Crisis of Organized Labor,' and a founder of Progressives for Obama. About 25 people showed up, from half-a-dozen unions.
This was important. Most events like the Left Forum over the years, this one included, have been a "gathering of the tribes" of the left intelligentsia, serving as both common ground for every trend to talk with each other, and a trade fair of sorts, where left groups and publishers display their wares. Labor activists usually are notable by their absence, so this panel, even though small, was a step forward.

Fletcher hit hard on the need for an organized left in the union movement. He used some example from the early 1930s to explain that he didn't mean just the more militant and left-leaning staffers, but a socialist and communist left that brought a wider political perspective and array of tactics than what was likely to emerge within the trade unions themselves. "People often talk about the great achievements of the 1930s,' he said, "but they often fail to mention and take into account, even among themselves, the political forces that helped bring them about, political forces that were later pushed out." A lively discussion followed, covering everything from the current 'Civil Wars' in labor, to the failure to mobilize adequately around the economic crisis.

The Fletcher talk ran late, so by the time we made it to the auditorium for the opening plenary, it was completely packed, not even standing room. Luckily, the forum organizers had an extra side hall with a giant screen and speakers. That room quickly filled, too.

The first speech was the best, in my book. Richard Wolf, from the Economics Dept at the New School for Social Research, laid out a lucid and high-level Marxist explanation of the current crisis, but spanning 150 years of capitalist development in the U.S. His most important point: the U.S. working class was able to maintain its living standard over the past 30 years only by adding women to the work force, working longer hours, and going deep into debt. By the same token, U.S. capital survived on the speculative bubbles rooted in that debt. Now the wreckage is in front of us, and it's way past time to put socialism on the table.

While Wolf was clear and forceful, Adolph Reed, political science at the University of Pennsylvania, who followed him, was opaque and hesitant. He seemed to argue that because the left lacked institutional strength in the labor movement, and because that strength was not in the cards anytime soon, just about anything anyone did was going to be co-opted by neoliberalism, especially by what he termed 'the fetishism of electoral politics.' In a time of hope, he offered "politically correct" gloom and pessimism.

Arlie Hochschild, sociology from UC Berkeley, stressed that the left needed to get over it 'mistrust of government, which she suggested was borrowed from Ronald Reagan. It was groundwork to convince people to work for social-democratic state-centric solutions, but it didn't go over too well with this crowd. Katjia Kipping from Die Linke, the Left Party in Germany, did better. Faced with 'class warfare from the top down,' she outlined her party's stand in parliament of refusing to have the working class pay for the crisis, to bloc its further development with "anti-cyclical reforms," and to tie them all together with a more strategic campaign for worker control and ownership of the economy.

Walden Bello from the Philippines was the final speaker, but unfortunately, I had to miss him. I had a more important engagement with my young grandson and two daughters, who live in New York City, at a nearby restaurant. First things first!

Saturday promised to be jam-packed, and I was on two panels myself. I arrived earlier than usual because City Hall Park in across the street from Pace, and my grandson, along with all the other Little Leaguers, with their new team uniforms, were preparing for an early-morning season-opening parade. I couldn't miss this, so I had my morning coffee in the park, meeting other proud parents and grandparents.

But Pace was open by 9am, and batches of people wrestled with boxes and carts filled with books, getting their displays up on time. I studied the program, and picked 'The Trend of Chinese Marxism in the 21st Century." Where else would I have the opportunity to listen to three Chinese philosophy professors from Fudan University, having travelled half way around the globe to get here? Since the presenters weren't comfortable with their English skills, the presentations were read to us by a young Chinese woman. The key point: because China was now a transitional society with a socialist market economy, and problems arising from capitalist modernization, it needed some 'Western Marxism" to battle backward trends and keep it on the socialist path. The discussion was difficult, with translation back and forth, but still very lively.

I had to quickly get to the next panel, since I was on it, and there was only about five minutes between sessions. "Building a Progressive Majority and Advancing a Vision of Socialism" was the title, and it was pulled together by my group, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and chaired by Pat Fry, an SEIU staffer. I led off by presenting Van Jones's program for Green Jobs for inner city youth, but framing it as a larger structural reform project that could, if done right, unite a progressive majority and help get us out of the current crisis. At the same time, we had to unite a militant minority around socialist tasks, so I offered the solidarity economy movement and its projects as practical examples of cooperative forms that could, within the capitalist present, point to a socialist future.

Carl Bloice from Black Commentator followed, with a warning that the problems of inter-imperialist rivalry still existed in a multipolar world, as did the problem of militarism and the need for disarmament as a path to greater global equity. He also stressed the need for popular resistance to Obama's Afghan-Pakistan escalation. Renee Carter, a physician from Virginia and CCDS NCC member, described some to the practical organizational work in the South, including a recent conference in Charleston, SC. "It showed people are very hungry for socialist ideas and groups like ours."

Mark Solomon, CCDS Co-Chair, presented a very practical organizational model for organizing the progressive majority, based on the Majority Alliance Project in Boston, which was pulling together dozens of existing organizations "to work wholistically" on a range of project where progressive majorities exist-such as ending the wars and green jobs. At the same time, they worked to take issues with large minority support, such as Palestine self-determination or gay marriage, and develop new ways of thinking to get them to become majorities. Critical to both sets of work was building wider alliances with the labor, youth and community forces that emerged as activists in the Obama campaign.

Our session filled the room with about 40 or more people, most of whom knew little about us. They learned more in the discussion, which covered a lot of bases, from rightwing populism to community base-building, and we got everyone's email address. Other groups did likewise throughout the conference, revealing one of the stronger points of the Left Forum: providing a venue for organization building.

Lunchtime was for networking. While my fellow panelists took off with some folks from the French Communist Party, I decided to spend some time with a young and very sharp organizer from New Jersey, doing some significant organizing with the Obama volunteer bases in the inner city.

Next up was a panel dubiously titled "Obama and the Politics of Hype," pulled together by Lauren Langman, an old friend and sociology professor at Loyola in Chicago. I didn't no what to expect, and Langman got double-booked, so he made a quick speech and left, turning over the chair to Tom Ponniah of Harvard. It was in a large room, and many people, mainly young, kept pouring in until we had about 100. Besides me, Laura Flanders of Grit TV made up the remaining panel.

Flanders was very good, outlining the strengths and weakness of both Obama and the left, with an emphasis on new media, of which she is a rising star. I took the view that the real "politics of hype" around Obama came from conservative talk radio and rightwing populism. My examples were very concrete, arising from the campaign work we did in Beaver County, Western PA, exposing the hype of the right on a daily tit-for-tat basis. Some of the participants would have none of it, however, and wanted to lash out against Obama for almost everything. One even accused him of declaring racism was over, and that he was the key enabler of Black oppression.

I couldn't let that stand, and fired back that she needed to read Obama's Philadelphia speech, and that Obama, his family and his base were under racist fire from the far right, and part of our task was to defend him and expose them on those matters, even as we opposed him on the wars. Several members of the Revolutionary Communist Party went ballistic over that, and the battle was on. I think Flanders and I, together with the chair, did a fairly good job. But the polemics served as a microcosm for an overall division at the forum, which I'd make an educated guess as divided with one-third being critical supporters of Obama, one third see him as the main enemy, and the rest in between somewhere, still making up their minds.

After all that excitement, my next pick was a little more subdued. Titled "The Challenge of Rightwing Populism in Northern Core Capitalist Countries," it was presented by two academics from York University in Canada. One was German, Ingar Solty; the other Canadian, Sam Putjina. Solty gave an overview of the various "National Front" parties in the European countries, while Putjina unfolded a sociological study tracking the rise of rightwing populism with the decline of trade union membership. He made a pretty good case, but the dozen or so people in the room saw the matter as more complex, a had an interesting discussion, pulling in matters of identity and religion.

My panel picks had all served as preparation for the big evening session. "The Obama Campaign and Presidency: Lessons for the Left" was the theme, and it featured Stanley Aronowitz, CUNY; Frances Fox Piven, CUNY; Barbara Epstein, UC Santa Cruz; and Gihan Perera, Right to the City Alliance; with Bill Fletcher as moderator.

Fletcher ran the panel in an interesting way. Rather than have them each deliver a speech, he decide to "interview" them, as if it were a news show. They were to answer, and also comment on each other's answers. He started by asking them if they though there was "a movement" around the Obama election, or whether it was just a slightly more jazzed-up mass campaign. All four of the academics hedged their bets on that one, and gave convoluted answers. (My opinion was that there was definitely a mass movement, several in fact, and some of the movement is still around). The community organizer, Perera, said he didn't know how they were using terms, but he called it "an electoral riot," meaning a mass insurgency from below.

This set some of the dynamic-the academics making points rather removed from grassroots struggles, even when lucid, as was Frances Scott Piven. Then Perera, as counterpoint, making substantive comments anchored in mass struggle. At one point, Fletcher asked whether they had voted or worked for Obama. All had done so, with the exception of Aronowitz.

Once questions and comments were opened to the floor, things got a little livelier. The RCP, clearly noticeable in their uniformed red-on-black T-Shirts, launched the calls for "revolution," pretty much denouncing the panel and challenged Fletcher to a debate to boot. He firmly said "No," and kept charge of the session. At one point, after some outbursts, he announced that the hallway was available to anyone who wanted to debate the RCP, but this discussion would continue.

Pro-Obama and anti-Obama is something of an oversimplification. Those opposed to Obama mainly stressed issues, and saw Afghanistan and foreign policy as decisive, together with the fact that he was for capitalism, and working with former neoliberals to rescue Wall Street. Anything positive in Obama's efforts was just blowing smoke.

Those who had voted for Obama mainly stressed organizing opportunities, new allies at the base, and the opening of political space for more protracted efforts. They supported Obama's measures that were right, and opposed those that weren't. In that sense, the debate was never really engaged. People talked past each other.

One feature of the Left Forum is the '"after parties." There were several; I was invited to one held by the Socialist Party, and another at the Brecht Forum. It had been a long day, so I settled for a late dinner with the organizers of the "Politics of Hype" panel at a nearby bar.

Sunday is usually a light, wrap up day at weekend conferences. I was surprised the next morning to see the place packed once again.

To start the morning off, I picked "In Praise of Socialist Planning" to attend. It featured a good friend, David Schweickart, author of "After Capitalism" and a leading theorist of Marxism and worker-controlled market socialism. The other speakers were Bertell Ollman, an expert on Marxism from New York University and a decidedly anti-market socialist, and Raymond Lotta, from the RCP and self-described as a Maoist political economist. The session was chaired by Anwar Shaikh from the New School.

Schweickart led off with a condensed outline of his theories, and how they related to both classical Marxism and today's conditions. He favored planning, but not of the old anti-market, centralized Five-Year-Plan type. He was for macro planning where markets failed, but favored moving the decisions downward. He mainly argued for public control of social investment funds, and deploying these locally as a form of democratic planning. Ollman was a little more abstract, describing the creative potential unleashed by revolution. Interestingly, he conceded Schweickart was right about Marx and the market, and that classes and the market would be around for a post-revolutionary period. He simply asserted that this would only last about two years! Ray Lotta basically asserted the primacy of revolutionary politics at every step of the way, and declared there was no need for 'technical economic blueprints." In that sense, everything was a plan determined by the constant mobilization of the masses, who consciousness could trump economic backwardness-a classic "voluntarist" deviation from Marxism, and one Mao was prone to at various times as well.

I moved on to another smaller session, about a dozen people, where the topic was "The Green New Deal." It had an interesting lineup: Victor Wallis from the theoretical journal, Socialism and Democracy; Mario Candeais, from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation; and Freider Otto Wolf, from the Free University in Berlin, and one of the original German Greens. Wallis gave a succinct explanation of the old FDR New Deal, and described the character so far of the current one. It was positive, but whether it, or anything, would resolve the crisis was still open. I was a bit taken aback by Candeais. He attacked the Green New Deal because it included more "infinite economic growth," which he saw as civilization-destroying. Wolf answered him, supporting the Green New Deal as a "Red-Green Project," one that worked best with transitional demands of structural reform take could open a path to socialism.

Needless to say, I became an immediate fan of Wolf, but decided to cross swords with Candeais on his opposition to "infinite growth." I argued we needed infinite growth, especially in high design technologies and the growth of knowledge, and that these were critical to both a green and socialist future. In this way, economies could grow in sustainable ways, however large they became. He simply wouldn't accept my framework, and clung to a vision of growth as accumulating garbage heaps. We had to agree to disagree.

The last panel was one where I was the chair, "Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet." Our panelists were Pasqualino Columbaro of the Global Economic Alternatives Network, Maliha Safri of the Center for Popular Economics, and Peter Ranis, Political Science, CUNY. We had the final 3-5pm slot Sunday afternoon, and I didn't expect much. I was surprised when about 30 people showed up, so I quickly passed the sheet and got everyone's emails, a critical task for organizers these days.

The purpose of our panel was to introduce activists to the concept of a solidarity economy, which is still relatively new in the U.S. Columbaro described many of the principles, and the various organizations, together with a good description of the Emilia-Romano region of Italy, where hundred of thousands of workers are involved in thousands of interconnected cooperative enterprises. Safri gave an overview of the US Solidarity Economy Network, and the achievements of some of the groups in it, ranging from food coops and credit unions, to worker coops and public schools like the Austin Polytechnical Academy in Chicago, focused on high tech manufacturing with a worker-ownership component to the school's outlook. Ranis stressed the importance of connections with trade unions, and getting them to partner in joint collaboratives, and put the capital in union pension funds and banks to good use.

Most of the discussion here was more in the form of questions than debate, with the participants wanting to learn more. I pointed out that the solidarity economy was value-centered, but than so were all schools of political economy-Marxism's core value was the emancipation of the working class, the economics taught in school had private accumulation of wealth as the core value, while the green economy was focused on sustainability and harmony with the environment. In the solidarity economy, obviously, the values of solidarity and mutual aid are at the center.

Since I had an eight-hour drive back to Western PA, I had to leave and miss the final plenary. Too bad for me, since I was told later that one of the speakers had quoted from a paper of mine negatively, where I made the point that if we were going to move forward as a more dynamic and broader left, within a wider progressive majority, we had to make a decisive break with a semi-anarchist and ultraleft mindset. I would have loved to debate the point since, from just my experience at the Left Forum, I though my case was fairly evident, to those who cared to think it over in some detail. A clear majority of groups calling themselves socialist and communist in our country, not even mentioning the anarchists, had solidly opposed Obama and his movement every step of the way, and as far as I could see, it hadn't helped them one bit. Those who had engaged that movement in a positive way, however, were making some solid advances. Maybe next year, we can revisit the topic, hopefully with a little more clarity and, also hopefully, from positions in the class, anti-imperialist and democratic struggles that are a little further down the pike.

[Carl Davidson is webmaster for 'Progressives for Obama' and SolidarityEconomy.net, a national committee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and a coordinating committee member of the US Solidarity Economy Network. Together with Jerry Harris, he is author of 'Cyber-Radicalism: A New Left for a Global Age, available at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker If you like this article, go to 'Keep On Keepin' On at http://carldavidson.blogspot.com and make use of the PayPal button. Email him at carld717@gmail.com ]

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Green Jobs Meets the Solidarity Economy

Green Jobs Meets the Solidarity Economy:
A Dynamic Duo for Changing the World

A Review of 'Green Collar Economy:
How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems'
By Van Jones, Harper-Collins, 2008

By Carl Davidson
SolidarityEconomy.Net

It's time to link the newly insurgent U.S. Green Jobs movement with the worldwide efforts for the solidarity economy. Both are answering the call to fight the deepening global recession, and both face common adversaries in the failed 'race to the bottom,' environment-be-damned policies of global neoliberalism.

That's the imperative facing left-progressive organizers with connections to these two important grassroots movements. It's even more important in the wake of the appointment of a key leader of one of these movements, Van Jones of 'Green For All', to a top environmental and urban policy post in the Obama administration.

Jones is a founder of an urban-based campaign focused on low-income young people, multinational and multicultural, that first developed as a progressive response to police repression, gang killings and all-round "criminalization of youth." He saw the exclusion of this sector of the population from living-wage work and other opportunities as a key cause of the violence and destruction. Putting young people to work at low-to-medium skill levels retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency seemed like a no-brainer, so the demand for 'Green Jobs, Not Jails' was raised.

The slogan found deep resonance as it spread across the country. Its all-round implications were spelled out in Jones' widely acclaimed book, "The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems." It spells out a string of ingenious, interconnected programs aimed at resolving the savage inequalities of structural unemployment and the global dangers of climate change rooted in carbon-based energies systems.


"Let's be clear," says Jones in the opening pages of his book, "The main piece of technology in the green economy is a caulk gun. Hundreds of thousands of green collar jobs will be weatherizing and energy-retrofitting every building in the United States."

He doesn't leave the matter there, but makes use of this picture to point out what's "shovel ready," to use the lingo of debate around stimulus spending. Green jobs span the entire range of occupations, with a special focus on high-tech manufacturing in emerging alternative energy industries.

"Green Collar Economy" was instantly a powerful voice in policy circles. It gained a wider and deeper significance in light of the financial crises that hit the fan soon after it reached the bookstores. Just as the voter revolt against Wall Street helped lift Obama to the Oval Office, so too was Van Jones's urban policy monograph raised into a "What Is To Be Done" manifesto for deep structural reforms capable of busting the onset of a major depression.

"The best answer to our ecological crisis also responds to our socio-economic crisis," Jones explains. "The surest path to safe streets and peaceful communities are not more police and prisons, but ecologically sound economic development. And that same path can lead us to a new green economy."

How does it connect with the solidarity economy? This parallel movement with even earlier roots is widely known throughout the Global South, especially Latin America, as well as Europe and Quebec. It has been comprised of a range of projects where social capital is partnered with worker, community, consumer and peasant cooperative ownership structures. These were designed to fight back against the economic devastation wrought by neoliberal IMF-imposed "solutions" that left people without a safety net or means of survival. People turned to each other at the grassroots in common efforts, hence the term 'solidarity economy.'

Both the solidarity economy and the green economy are "value centered" schools of economic thought. They are in the classical tradition of political economy, which in turn is rooted in moral philosophy. They are not simply descriptive of supposedly objective economic processes, but are prescriptive. At full throttle, they are organizing principles for shaping the future, locally and globally, via local organization and mass mobilization. For its part, the solidarity economy stresses the values of cooperation and mutual aid, especially in governance structures of productive, consumer or financial units. The green economy emphasizes ongoing sustainability and harmony between people and the eco-system of which they are a part.

The solidarity economy is about how people relate to each other, while the green economy is about how people relate to their wider environment. Naturally, there is considerable overlap between the two. Both see the current order as destructive of people and planet, and are working to turn things around.

"Equal protection of all people, equal opportunity for all people, and reverence for all creation."--these are what Jones terms the "three pillars" of the new green global economy.

Neither economic vision is monolithic. Both schools of thought span a range of views, some of which are in contention. In the Green Jobs movement, for instance, there are debates on nuclear power and "clean coal," and what role, if any, these might have in a low-carbon future. In the solidarity economy movement, there are discussions on the place of markets and government, and whether cooperative structures can use either or both to their advantage. There is also debate over the importance of "high road" allies within the business community, "high road" meaning traditional business structures that bring wider community and environmental responsibility into their business plans, rather than simply short-term shareholder profit.

Where Van Jones' approach to both the green and solidarity economies most compels our attention is that he starts where the need is greatest, the millions of unemployed and underemployed inner city youth. The structural crises of neoliberal capitalism has long ravaged this sector of our society through deindustrialization, environmental racism and a wrecking ball approach to schools in favor of more prisons. To borrow from Marx, these young people are bound with radical chains, and when they break them with the tools suggested in 'Green Collar Economy,' they free not only themselves, but the rest of us are set in a positive direction as well.

"The green economy," Jones explains, reflecting on Hurricane Katrina, "should not be just about reclaiming thrown-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities. It should not be just about recycling materials to give things a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance. Formerly incarcerated people deserve a second shot at life-and all obstacles to their being able to find that second chance in the green sector should be removed. Also, our urban youth deserve the opportunity to be part of something promising."

Jones is a strategic thinker who gives definite answers to the question, "Who are our friends, who are our adversaries?" He narrows the target to speculative capital with roots in carbon-based energy industries and the militarism needed to secure their supplies. He seeks close allies in the wider working class of all nationalities, especially in the Blue-Green Alliance formed on the core partnership of the United Steelworkers with the Sierra Club. He also looks for allies among faith communities, environmentalists in the suburbs and rural populations suffering at the hands of anti-ecological agribusiness, offering a vision of wind farms and solar arrays for sustainable rural development. He sees the importance of cutting back defense spending and opposing unjust wars abroad.

Finally, he holds out a hand to green businesses in alternative energies, the current and future manufacturers of clean power:

"Our success and survival as a species are largely and directly tied to the new eco-entrepreneurs-and the success and survival of their enterprises. Since almost all of the needed eco-technologies are likely to come from the private sector, civic leaders and voters should do all that can be done to help green business leaders succeed."

Jones is not talking just about mom and pop operations here, but an important and growing sector of productive capital. These will range from small upstarts to T Boone Pickens-type investors wanting to create giant wind farms and large coastal arrays of wave generators, along with the manufacturing firms that build their equipment. Some on the left who want to see a clean renewable energy future will have to make adjustments in their "anti-corporate" strategies if they want to pursue this goal effectively with these high-road allies. Dan Swinney of the Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council explains his current project, the Chicago Green Manufacturing Network, as a case in point:

"CMRC is working with the Cleveland-based Great Lakes Wind Network/WireNET and the City of Chicago in building the capacity of local manufacturing companies to become the supply chain for the explosive wind turbine industry. Illinois and other states currently have ambitious Renewable Energy Portfolios that create a huge market for wind turbine companies and others in the renewable energy field. Currently the components for these companies are principally made by European and Asian suppliers. We will rise to the challenge of building the capacity of local companies to supply the high quality components for wind turbines and other renewable energy companies. This will be a means to diversify the markets for some of the 12,000 manufacturing companies in our region and an opportunity to create hundreds if not thousands of new permanent, full-time jobs in manufacturing."

But Green Collar Economy's core mass base remains a united Black and Latino community in close alliance with organized labor, the same engine of change that put Obama in the White House. And by asserting the interests and needs of that base, the green jobs and infrastructure proposals in Obama's stimulus package serve to drive the entire recovery effort in a progressive direction.

"We want to build a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty," says Jones, 'We want this green wave to lift all boats…In the wake of Katrina, we reject the idea of 'free market' evacuation plans. Families should not be left behind to drown because they lack a functioning car or credit card…In an age of floods, we reject the ideology that says we must let our neighbors 'sink or swim'."

The nature of the Green New Deal's adversaries--the carbon-based energy speculators and the military industries defending them--is the key reason Jones' strategy requires a massive mobilized base. The structural reforms needed to dislodge and displace them are going to require a great deal of popular power from below. The petroleum-coal industrial nexus alone is subsidized to the tune of $1 trillion annually, according to Congressman Robert Kennedy Jr. in his foreword to Jones' book. Some are outright opposed to any "New Deal," green or otherwise, as the GOP in Congress reveal with their votes against the Recovery Act. The Green Jobs components were often cited by the right as "pork" or "the road to socialism." Others want to destroy the Green New Deal from within, via "greenwashing." These are politicians who take their lead from some corporations that have become skilled at changing their ads to "green" but continue producing toxics and other waste from the polluter's agenda.

Jones singles out Newt Gingrich, the GOP's neoliberal-in-chief, as particularly devious: "He has skillfully used rising fuel prices to stoke public support for climate-destroying measures…Their new tactic is to spread confusion about the real solutions by deliberately blurring distinctions between themselves and the champions of genuine answers." Jones has to take the battle into the government and electoral arenas. The resources of state power are required to bring the green economy to scale, even if it requires a gut-wrenching struggle with polluters who have a good number of politicians on their payrolls and with revenue streams long fused to the public trough.

The solidarity economy faces these battles as well. For the most part, it overlaps with the green economy at the grassroots. Its mission can be summarized as generating new wealth in a green way, but with a worker-community ownership or control component built into a project's agenda from the start. As a major finance capitalist and former oilman who wants to invest in wind farms in a major way, T Boone Pickens is clearly part of the green economy, but not part of the solidarity economy. A wind farm on an Indian reservation cooperatively owned by the tribe and employing its members and selling power both locally and regionally would be very much part of the solidarity economy.

But the picture is more complex. "Stakeholder" solutions are not quite as clear-cut. For instance, GAMESA, a Spanish high-tech firm and a leading European manufacturer of wind turbines, recently opened a plant in Bucks County, PA. To do so, it formed stakeholder partnerships with the county and state governments, getting tax allowances and land-use easements to refit and old closed steel mill. The United Steel Workers union was brought in as a partner: 1000 new union jobs were created, hiring many of the unemployed steelworkers. The "solidarity" here is between high-road capital, the USW, local government and the unemployed of the area, but it's a stretch for some who might want to reserve 'solidarity' strictly to cooperative ownership structures.

The stakeholder solidarity offers practical flexibility in the wider struggle to bring both movements to scale. Cooperative structures that evolve out of deeper structural reforms have the quality of altering the relations of power in production and local governance. Even if on a small scale, they can point to a future of wider economic democracy, acting as a bridge to new socialist relations.

In any case, a powerful high-road alliance opens the door to those on its left wing who want to take it farther. Van Jones himself has no problem with either form; his book celebrates the stakeholder green jobs alliances implemented by the Green Party mayor of Richmond, CA, as well as the Green Worker Cooperatives in building salvaging businesses in the South Bronx, NY.

At one point in his book, Jones uses a metaphor of two ships to sum up the current crossroads facing the American people, the Amistad and the Titanic. The latter carried the wealthy elite indulging in idle pleasures, and a proletarian crew labored below in an unsound structure. The former had been taken over by insurgent slaves, taken to safe harbor, but still lacked wider resources for the crew's future. The folly of reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic has long been a metaphor for doomed tinkering at reforms in a closed system. The Amistad, however, offers a more open future. Those familiar with the story know it involves further complex struggles, with new allies, high born and low, against a dying system. But it offers hope and change, both of which are in high regard these days.

[Carl Davidson is a member of the coordinating committee of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network, and a national committee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and currently webmaster for 'Progressives for Obama.' He is co-author of 'CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age,' and co-editor of 'Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet,' both available at http://lulu.com/stores/changemaker. If you like this article, go to http://progressivesforobama.net and make use of the PayPal button.]

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Steelworkers Meet Hip-Hoppers and Tree-Huggers

Photo: Van Jones at
Green Jobs 2009

Blue-Green Insurgency
Gets Fired Up at the
DC Green Jobs Conference

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

When you walk into a large and stately Washington, DC hotel lobby and find it teeming with thousands of smiling, buzzing people-half in labor union jackets and ball caps, the other half dressed in 30-something hip-hop causal-you know some special is happening.

This was the lively, energized scene for three cold wintry days this Feb 4-6 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, as nearly 3000 activists and organizers gathered for the "Good Jobs, Green Jobs" National Conference. The gathering was convened by more than 100 organizations, representing every major trade union and every major environmental group in the country, among others.

It's called the "blue-green alliance," the core of which is the United Steel Workers and the Sierra Club, which jointly launched the "Green Jobs" movement nationally at a conference in Pittsburgh, PA a year ago. The turnout this year is triple in size and highly energized by both the victory of President Barack Obama and the looming onset of an economic crisis unmatched in scope since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In addition to the steelworkers, the building trades were well represented, and the green groups spanned a wide range of concerns, for toxics to alternative energy to climate change. Also notable was the participation of a contingent of "high road" corporations rooted in the growing "green economy." Gamesa, a major Spanish firm specializing in wind turbines, and Piper Jaffray, a large paper company focused on recycled paper products, are two examples.

But a critical new dimension was added by Green For All, an organization rooted among inner city youth, and headed up by Van Jones. Jones is the author of "The Green Collar Economy" and an inspirational voice for a rising generation of multinational, multicultural insurgent youth.

The conference started off with 'Advocacy Day,' with a well-organized deployment of buses and team leaders that took hundreds of participants to Capitol Hill, and got them headed in the direction of the offices of their respective Senators and Representatives. With remarkable serendipity, the Senate was deadlocked that same day over details of the Obama stimulus package, with the GOP Right trying to gut many of the Green Jobs components as "wasteful," while seeking tax cuts and bailouts for the rich. The voices and pressure from the conference activists come not have been timelier.

"A trickle has become a torrent,' said plenary speaker Margie Alt from Environment America the next morning, comparing their present efforts with the organizing and direct action campaign of the civil rights movement of the early 1960s. There are two paths in repowering America with clean energy, she explained. "One would have us chase short-term profits; the other has us moving on new public transit and plug-in hybrid cars, built in the USA and powered by the sun and the wind. Only the second puts us back to work. It means that when the clean energy revolution is done right, when each does their part, all benefit."

Alt warmed up the session for Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO's Secretary-Treasurer and a former leader of the United Mine Workers. Trumka was a hero to millions in the Obama campaign for the no-nonsense way he took on the question of racism in rallying trade union organizers to win over white workers to vote for a Black candidate in the Appalachian areas.

"What a year!" Trumka proclaimed as he took the podium, referring not only to the election, but the Blue-Green Alliance's growth since Pittsburgh. "It's brought forward all the issues of race and class, and there's no going back. Good ideas and loud voices are desperately needed. In the mines, we were often told, jobs or the environment was the choice. But now we know the truth. It's not one or the other; it's both or neither. So get over it! This blue-green alliance isn't going away. We're in this together for the long haul."

Trumka had warm praise for Obama, but a sharp rebuke for the GOP Right. "All they can do is say, No!-No to fair trade, no to the Employee Free Choice Act, no to protecting the environment, no to domestic investment in new manufacturing. In the face of this, we have no guarantees; we'll get nothing here without a fight."

One topic discussed across many panels and workshop was the theme of the conference, "What is a Green Job?" and "What is a 'Good Job'?" The later was easily defined: a good job was a union job, a living wage with decent benefits. Green jobs were viewed from a number of angles. Trumka defined it as every job that contributes to a low-carbon future. Nuclear power and 'clean coal' efforts might come under that, but would be opposed by a good number in the coalition. There was no effort, moreover, to enforce unanimity on the point; debate and discussion would continue. There was wide agreement, however, on the Green jobs most in reach of unemployed youth: solar panel installations, 'winterizing' older housing stock to Green standards, urban agriculture plans, and expansion of mass transit.

The conference planners stressed the issue in a booklet distributed to all attendees, entitled "High Road or Low Road? Job Quality in the New Economy." It was aimed at Green corporations trying to do things on the cheap, paying workers at near the minimum wage. Terence O'Sullivan, president of the Laborer's International Union, exposed the problem:

"We did a survey of every job currently being called 'Green' by employers, and found the majority of them didn't pay enough to support a family of two." There was no sustainability, he suggested, without the working class itself being sustained. Borrowing from Henry Ford, he said, "Every worker building a Green product should be able to afford a plug-in hybrid car. It's very possible to build green, pay union wages, and still make a profit. There's no caring for the Earth that doesn't also include caring for the people on it."

Labor, government and business could be partners, O'Sullivan explained further, so long as the focus was "good jobs, at a living wage and the prevailing wage." The dynamic union leader, whose union represents some 500,000 building trades workers, stressed that "low road businesses and policies must not be rewarded….This fight isn't over; it's just started. The Republicans can't lead us anywhere; they couldn't find the supposed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and today they can't find even a trace of the first half of $700 billion given to the banks on Wall Street." To tremendous applause, he concluded by saying "No retreat, no surrender!" and that a "workers revolution" had to be paired with the "green revolution."

The conference participants got to speak their minds in the nearly 50 workshops spread over the three days. These covered a wide range on topics, from prison re-entry and green jobs to high road capital strategies for new wealth creation in a green economy. Everywhere, however, there was the common theme of expanding employment and guarding the environment.

In a workshop on capital strategies, for instance, about 100 people discussed methods for investing in a green economy. One case in point was Ontario's Algoma Steel, one of the largest worker-owned coops in North America, now thriving after a worker buyout assisted by venture capital and government funds. Fred Richmond, USW International Vice President, presented the example of his union's cooperation with Gamesa, a Spanish firm specializing in building wind turbines. One mill has been recently reopened in Bucks County in Eastern Pennsylvania, and another is underway in Western PA, creating 1000 new USW jobs. The ensuing demand for structural steel for the turbines has directly meant 250 steelworker jobs in Northwest Indiana.

Another workshop of 200 people went deeply into the energy policy of the state of Colorado, which now has the target of 20 percent 'clean energy' consumption set by the state legislature. Discussion focused on the transformation of two isolated minorities, green militants and labor unions, in a traditionally GOP-dominated 'Red' state. By coming to see each other as allies rather than adversaries, they were able to reframe common issues and win majorities. Said one presenter: "When you explain to farmers how the royalties from a wind turbine in their county can pay their local school budget and lower their taxes, and bring some new jobs as well, you have their attention. That's what we did, and as you know, Colorado turned 'Blue' in the last election, with the blue-green alliance playing a key role."

James Hoffa of the Teamsters also spoke to the blue-green alliance and how it started in the streets of Seattle in the massive street battles of "Teamsters and Turtles" on one side, and the World Trade Organization and the police on the other. "You learn who your friends are," he declared, 'and you learn a few things in the process. We originally supported drilling in ANWAR. I'd like to announce to you today that we no longer do."

Some of the most powerful presentations came on the last day. First up was Winona LaDuke, member of the Ojibwe (Chippewa) Tribe living in the White Earth Indian Reservation in Minnesota. She was the Vice Presidential Candidate with Ralph Nader on the Green Party ticket in 2000, but endorsed John Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008.

After greeting the crowd in her traditional language, LaDuke proclaimed with a smile, "I must admit it's a treat to come here from Minnesota to the home of the Great Black Father!" which brought down the house.

But she quickly turned serious, and the need to break with a petroleum-centered economy. "We can't build a society based on conquest. We are addicted, and like addicts, we hang out with dealers and do bad stuff. Our people lived in a green economy on this continent for nearly 30,000 years, and knew how to live within their means." She also took aim at the nuclear industry, noting that two-thirds of uranium was mined on Indian lands, and all of the proposals of where to store hazardous nuclear waste were Indian lands as well. "In what was the largest uranium mine in New Mexico, they've now build three prisons. How's that for a future?" For a Green solution, she pointed out that Indian lands were also "the windiest and sunniest' places in the country, and welcomed wind turbines and solar collectors, "but we want local ownership and control" as part of the package.

Fred Richmond of the steelworkers took the platform next and declared to the several thousand now present, "Feel the spirit of our sister, Winona LaDuke! Feel her passion for this land, as opposed to those global corporations with no loyalty to anyone apart from themselves!"

Richmond went on to give a history of how the blue-green alliance started and evolved, beginning with the USW and the Sierra Club. "We both came to understand that we cannot get good jobs without a clean environment, and that we can't get a clean environment without good jobs. We both needed unconventional allies to fight the low road's worldwide race to the bottom." Speaking about decades of fathers and grandfathers killed and poisoned in the mills, he ended with "We need to take our planet back!"

Now it was time for Green For All, which fired everyone up with the Hip-Hop video, "Green Anthem 1," (available on YouTube) a powerful portrayal of the entry of multicultural youth into the mix of "unconventional" but very natural allies. It brought Van Jones to the stage.

"We started this because we were tired of going to funerals," Jones began. "We were tired of police killing kids, and kids killing kids." These were rooted in the oppression of the inner city's joblessness and hopelessness, he explained and described initial work with the Ella Baker Center to fight for home repair and cleanup jobs, and called it "Green Jobs, Not Jails." Later the concept deepened into major structural reforms described in his book, "The Green Collar Economy."

"This is a profound movement that goes deeper than installing solar panels," Jones went on. This is showing the world a new America…. But no change can come in one day. We have to work every day. We have to change the economy, not just with green proposals, but with solidarity back in the center of it. We have to move democracy from the ballot box to the workplace. We are the human family coming back to itself. Think long and hard on this question: in the final hour, who are we? Who are we on this planet? Are we a swarm of locusts, devouring everything? Or are we honeybees, building together and adding to life?"

"This is our world historic moment, am I right, brother steelworkers?" Jones said gesturing to Richmond. "I'm not working for a lot of grants and awards on a dead planet….The clean energy movement can't be stopped, and labor is the pillar of the whole pro-democracy movement we need." To the Green For All youth, Jones added, "You are Ground Zero in this fight. To green the planet, we must green the city, and there's no greening the city without greening the ghetto. This is a movement that let's you rise!

Jones was adamant on the need to organize and mobilize at the base, to go back to the union halls and neighborhoods, and speak to all those not yet involved. He was warmly supportive of Obama, and the need to back him up. "But there will be times to push him, and times to be a few steps in front on him."

The question of war and militarism was brought front and center by Rev. Lenox Yearwood, who followed Jones. Yearwood is president of the Hip-Hop Caucus and a minister who serves as an ambassador for the hip-hop generation. Formerly an Air Force officer and chaplain, he raised a ruckus when he delivered a sermon to the Joint Chiefs of Staff entitled, "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" and was further radicalized by the events around Hurricane Katrina. Trying to enter a Capitol Hill hearing featuring General Petraeus, he was arrested and severely beaten.

""No War, No Warming!' is a slogan that has to link our struggles," said Yearwood. "I recall the words of our departed brother, Damu Smith, asking me if my job was to keep to myself, or fight for my people. This is our generation's lunch-counter moment. One hundred years from now, not of us in this room will be here; but we have to make sure the planet will still be inhabitable for our children and grandchildren. Organize everywhere, mobilize everyone, and lift up all! Power to the people!"

It was a fitting summation of the spirit of the conference participants. Their next task was clear enough: to take the nature of the unity and the wide alliances in the room at this national gathering, and replicate them at the grassroots in every state and major city in the country.

[Carl Davidson writes for "Beaver County Blue," a website anchored in Western Pennsylvania. He is also a steering committee member of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network (http://ussen.org) and a national committee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (http://cc-ds.org), as well as webmaster for 'Progressives for Obama' If you like this article, go to the http://progressivesforobama.net and make use of the PayPal button.]
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Aliquippa Labor Battle Heats Up

Photo: Debi Davidson, RN and SEIU Member

SEIU Workers
Stage Sit-In
to Demand Justice,
Unpaid Wages

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Aliquippa, PA, January 26, 2009–Seven labor activists—four Registered Nurses, a union secretary and two priests—staged an occupation of the medical library in the Commonwealth Medical Center in Aliquippa, PA to demand backpay for employees who lost their jobs when the hospital closed in December. After several hours, the seven were escorted off the property by officers arriving in six police cars.

The group entered the hospital just after noon while 100 workers and community supporters rallied in the bitter cold outside. “It’ll be an even colder day in hell before we roll over and play dead,” Michelle Bachelor, a nurse at the hospital, told the crowd. Along with some fired 250 workers, she was furious at having two weeks pay taken away, especially while the Pittsburgh bankruptcy court awarded payments to CMC executives and security personnel. “We want justice, now!” was the reply from the rally. Dozens of purple SEIU Local 1199 signs were held high against a background of black-and-gold jackets and caps in the colors of the Pittsburgh Steelers, which have become the dress code in throughout Western Pennsylvania.

“Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho! Give Us Our Pay, or We Won’t Go!” the crowd chanted as their delegation headed into the building, which was still open to a handful of hospital executives although it no longer serves the public. After about an hour of discussion, the delegation proclaimed they weren’t leaving, whether it took hours, over night or several days, until they got ‘proof’ their paychecks had been cut. ‘We’re not going anywhere, even though some of them in here don’t quite get that yet,’ was the message passed out to the rally.

“We simply want what’s owed to us,’ said Debi Davidson, an RN with 30 years in the hospital. “What they’ve done is outrageous and unfair, paying themselves and leaving us with nothing.” The CEO and other CMC and Bridge Finance officials still refused to be nailed down on when checks might be cut.

“Did you work those two weeks before Christmas?” asked Kathy Marino, another RN at the hospital, speaking at the rally. “Where you serving the community when they fired you? Did they pay themselves? Are they still billing the clients?” “Yes!” was the loud reply to each question, as she concluded that an injustice had been done to all of them.

Last week, a busload of the workers traveled to the Chicago Headquarters of Bridge Finance, which now holds CMC’s property. While protesting outside the Sears Tower, they were joined by workers from Republic Windows–the United Electrical union militants who had captured the country’s spotlight last month when they occupied their Chicago factory, also demanding payments due them. SEIU supporters from Chicago also turned out in force. Bridge Finance refused to meet or negotiate.

The workers have wide support in Aliquippa, a distressed steel town with a long history of militant labor battles. The hospital, formerly Aliquippa Community Hospital, was a gift to the residents of Beaver County from the United Steel Workers Local 1211. The hospital fell on hard times as the entire upper Ohio Valley was gutted by plant closings in the 1980s.

“Labor deserves a just wage,” declared Father Joseph Kleppner, of St Francis Cabrini Parish in Center Township, adding that when wages are denied, “we have slavery indeed.” Father Kleppner was joined in the day’s activities by Father Jack O’Malley, long active in local labor struggles. Kleppner and O’Malley both took part in the sit-in. “I’m not here for politics,’ concluded Father Kleppner. ‘This is a deeply moral question, a matter of doing what’s right, not only by the workers, but the entire community.’

Political solidarity was also at hand. “On behalf of the Beaver County Commissioners, and everyone in Beaver County” declared Joe Spivak, a local Democratic Party leader, “I want you to know that we are behind you. You have our full support, and then some, 110 percent!” Spivak went on to explain that not only were the workers due their wages, but that the county commissioners were doing all they could to find new parties that could purchase and re-open the medical facility. “This is a decent facility, and you are some of the best workers in the world. We can’t lose it.’ Pennsylvania’s 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America, a political group among the supporters of the 1199 workers, have been working for the passage of HR 676 which would make public stimulus funds available to open and operate the facility and others like it.

Solidarity from other sections of labor was also present. Bob Schmetzer from IBEW Local 712 offered his support, as did Frank Snyder of the PA AFL-CIO. Even though there are national tensions between his federation and SEIU’s ‘Change to Win’ alliance, Snyder declared, ‘You have the full support of AFL-CIO unions across the state. We’re going to win this. This is part of the change we expected when we worked for Obama, and now we’re going to see some of it coming from below.’

Even the Aliquippa police at the edge of the rally were sympathetic. One worker spoke to an officer, saying, ‘Sorry we dragged you out in this cold.’ ‘No problem,’ he replied. ‘We’re with you. We work with the nurses and the staff here all the time, from one emergency to the next. They’re terrific. You got a raw deal. Hell, I was born in this hospital!’ Later in the day, however the official assaignment of the police trumped their sympathy, as they took the sit-down people out. But no one was arrested.

The events at the hospital were a step toward a show of strength at the bankruptcy court in downtown Pittsburgh January 27 at 8:30 am, where the workers will demand that the court reconsider the earlier ruling that took their pay away.

[To lend support, sign the SEIU online petition at
http://seiuaction.org/campaign/commonwealth]
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No Shame: Hospital Workers Robbed in Court

Photo: Fired-up hospital workers talk with their union chief, Neil Bisno, at rally.

Injustice in Aliquippa:
New Labor Battle
Over Hospital Shutdown

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Hundreds of fired hospital workers are awakening the historic spirit of class struggle in Beaver County, as they confront an effort by heath industry financiers and a bankruptcy court to steal their wages after destroying their jobs.

That was the message made loud and clear at a rally of over 100 Commonwealth Medical Center workers and their allies at the Serbian Club on a snowy afternoon, January 9, in Aliquippa, Pa. The members of SEIU Local 1199 are organizing for further action at the US Bankruptcy court in downtown Pittsburgh on Jan.27, as well as at the offices of Bridge Finance Group in Chicago.

On Dec. 31 the bankruptcy court excluded some 250 workers from receiving their last two weeks wages and, at the same time, allowed a payout for executive salaries and 'critical employees,' like outside security firms. Not only were workers stripped of their jobs two weeks before Christmas, they were also stripped of paychecks due them for work performed, and health insurance and any benefits coming from the WARN Act for layoffs without advance notice.

'They had the nerve to pay the bosses who created the mess, running the hospital into the ground, but not the workers who kept it alive,' said Neil Bisno, president of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania. "It is a travesty, and an outrage, and we won't stand for it."

Photo: Closed Hospital

One reason for the sharp rebuke of the court is the nature of both Aliquippa and its hospital. Commonwealth Medical Center took over Aliquippa Community Hospital only a year ago, when the nonprofit health care provider was in dire financial straits. The hospital was initially a gift to the Aliquippa area from Local 1211 of the United Steelworkers of America, one of the larger and more militant locals during the heyday of the steel industry in the upper Ohio Valley. It always provided decent care for working families throughout Beaver County's South Side. But when capital and jobs were sent overseas to low wage countries in the 1980s, the mills were shut down, leaving the area with large numbers of low-income unemployed with few resources. The hospital continued to provide services, but fell on hard times itself.

"The workers are due their wages, and Aliquippa is due justice," said Rev. Donald Green, who opened the rally, representing Jobs with Justice, the nationwide labor-community coalition network. "We're tired of being abandoned, stressed even further in our severely distressed neighborhoods."

One by one, hospital workers, mostly women, took the microphone and told their stories. "This was a great hardship for my family,' said Erin Bradovich, 'We shouldn't have to fight like this for what's rightfully ours. We survived this Christmas because I have a very large family, and that's what you are. I'm proud to have SEIU standing here with us."

Sharon Smith, another worker, denounced Commonwealth Medical bitterly: "They broke all their promises; we're supposed to survive now on what 'trickles down,' well why can't they survive on what 'trickles up?"

Johnny Tilman, Director of Quality at CMC, a worker there, but not in the union, said "Aliquippa is working-class family, and they betrayed us. We put our hearts into this work, and what did they do for us? Nothing."

Every worker focused on the plight of the wider community, as well as their own difficulties. Joe Spanik, a Beaver County Commissioner with deep roots in the area's labor movement, declared: "More than 30,000 people have depended on this hospital in this part of the county. The other nearby hospitals are across the river, and everyone here knows the state of our infrastructure. What happens if the bridge is closed and there's an emergency? We didn't have to be here, in this situation, but how can you justify paying those who broke this system by stealing the wages of those who kept in going? We won't justify it, and this is not over yet."

As the workers cheered Spanik, Bisno reminded them, "This is one of the reasons why it's important to elect people from the labor movement to public office." This SEIU leader then invited several other local politicians or their representatives to speak, calling them his 'political ammunition.'

"I'm here to show my support," said Rob Matzie, State Rep. (D). from the 16th District, which includes Aliquippa. "First of all, it needs to be said that this hospital's problems were in no way the fault of the caregivers, no way. Next, this goes deeper than Democrats and Republicans, this goes to what's right and what's wrong, and those who made these decisions are simply wrong." Representatives from the offices on Congressman Jason Altmire (D-4th CD), US Senator Bob Casey, and GOP State Rep Jim Christiana (15th District) also made supportive statements.

National AFL-CIO State Director for PA, Frank Synder, linked several threads of the rally together. He noted the presence of representatives of several unions at the rally, and their unity:

"We understand the labor movement here in Beaver County. We know why treating these workers unfairly is wrong. It's not just that this hospital was a gift to the county from the steelworkers, that unlike these hospital owners, they wanted to give something back. It's not that workers elsewhere don't share our problems. It's that in an important way, it all started here, in 1937, when the steelworkers took J&L steel all the way to the Supreme Court, and finally won, boosting the organizing of unions everywhere. That was our gift to the whole country. So the 13 million AFL-CIO members across the country, and the one million across the state, we'll stand with you. We've got your back. We have to turn this around."

At the close of the rally, Neil Bisno summed up the tasks ahead in four points: first, to carry on the legal battle to win for the workers what's due to them; second, to continue the publicity campaign to mobilize public pressure; third, to support the immediate needs of the workers, seeking benefits and new employment.
"But fourth and last, we want to see a rebirth. This is a fine facility, and it's needed. There has to be a way to reopen health care services here. We just have to find it."

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The Bumpy Road Ahead

New Tasks of the
Left Following
Obama's Victory


By Carl Davidson
Progressives for Obama

American progressives have won a major victory in helping to defeat John McCain and placing Barack Obama in the White House. The far right has been broadly rebuffed, the neoconservative war hawks displaced, and the diehard advocates of neoliberal political economy are in thorough disarray. Of great importance, one long-standing crown jewel of white supremacy, the whites-only sign on the Oval Office, has been tossed into the dustbin of history.

The depth of the historical victory was revealed in the jubilation of millions who spontaneously gathered in downtowns and public spaces across the country, as the media networks called Obama the winner. When President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama took the platform in Chicago to deliver his powerful but sobering victory speech, hundreds of millions-Black, Latino, Asian, Native-American and white, men and women, young and old, literally danced in the streets and wept with joy, celebrating an achievement of a dramatic milestone in a 400-year struggle, and anticipating a new period of hope and possibility.

Now a new period of struggle begins, but on a higher plane. An emerging progressive majority will be confronted with many challenges and obstacles not seen for decades. Left and progressive organizers face difficult, uncharted terrain, a bumpy road. But much more interesting problems are before us, with solutions, should they be achieved, promising much greater gains and rewards. for the America of popular democracy.

To consciously build on the gains of this electoral victory, it's important to seek clarity. We need an accurate assessment of strengths and weaknesses--our own, as well as those of our allies and our adversaries.

The Obama campaign, formal and informal, was a wide undertaking. It united progressive forces, won over middle forces, then isolated and divided the right. It massed the votes and resources required the win a clear majority of the popular vote and a decisive majority of Electoral College votes.

At the base, beginning with the antiwar youth and peace activists, Obama awakened, organized, mobilized and deployed an incredible and innovative force of what grew into an army of more than three million volunteers. At the top, he realigned a powerful sector of the ruling class into an anti-NeoCon, anti-ultraright bloc. In between, he expanded the electorate and won clear majorities in every major demographic bloc of voters, save for whites generally; but even there, he reduced McCain's spread to single digits, and among younger white voters and women voters, he won large majorities.

Understanding the New Alliance

It is important to understand the self-interests and expectations of this new multiclass alliance. If we get it wrong, we will run into the ditch and get bogged down, whether on the right or 'left' side of that bumpy road, full of potholes and twists and turns.

The Obama alliance is not 'Clintonism in blackface' or 'JFK in Sepia', as some have chauvinistically tagged it. Nor is it 'imperialism with a human face,' as if imperialism hasn't always had human faces. All these make the mistake of looking backward, Hillary Clinton's mistake of trying to frame the present and future in the terms of the past.

The Obama team at the top is comprised of global capital's representatives in the U.S as well as U.S. multinational capitalists, and these two overlap but are not the same. It is a faction of imperialism, and there is no need for us to prettify it, deny it or cover it up in any way. The important thing to see is that it is neither neoliberalism nor the old corporate liberalism. Obama is carving out a new niche for himself, a work in progress still within the bounds of capitalism, but a 'high road' industrial policy capitalism that is less state-centric and more market-based in its approach, more Green, more high tech, more third wave and participatory, less politics-as-consumerism and more 'public citizen' and education focused. In short, it's capitalism for a multipolar world and the 21st century.

The unreconstructed neoliberalism and old corporate liberalism, however, are still very much in play. The former is in disarray, largely due to the financial crisis, but the latter is working overtime to join the Obama team and secure its institutional positions of power, from White House staff positions to the behind-the-scenes efforts on Wall Street to direct the huge cash flows of the Bail-Out in their favor.

How the Obama Alliance won:
Values, Technology and Social Movements

The Obama alliance is an emerging, historic counter-hegemonic bloc, still contending both with its pre-election adversaries and within itself. It has taken the White House and strengthened its majority in Congress, but the fight is not over. To define the victorious coalition simply by the class forces at the top is the error of reductionism that fails to shine a light on the path ahead.

What is a hegemonic bloc? Most power elites maintain their rule using more than armed force. They use a range of tools to maintain hegemony, or dominance, which are 'softer,' meaning they are political and cultural instruments as well as economic and military. They seek a social base in the population, and draw them into partnership and coalitions through intermediate civil institutions. Keeping this bloc together requires a degree of compromise and concession, even if it ultimately relies on force. The blocs are historic; they develop over time, are shaped by the times, and also have limited duration. When external and internal crises disrupt and lead them to stagnation, a new 'counter-hegemonic' bloc takes shape, with a different alignment of economic interests and social forces, to challenge it and take its place. These ideas were first developed by the Italian communist and labor leader, Antonio Gramsci, and taken up again in the 1960s by the German New Left leader, Rudi Dutschke. They are helpful, especially in nonrevolutionary conditions, in understanding both how our adversaries maintain their power, as well as the strategy and tactics needed to replace them, eventually by winning a new socialist and popular democratic order.

As a new historic bloc, the Obama alliance contains several major and minor poles. It is composed of several class forces, a complex social base and many social movements which have emerged and engaged in the electoral struggle. There is both class struggle and other forms of struggle within it. There are sharp differences on military policy, on Israel-Palestine, on healthcare and the bailout. From the outside, there are also serious and sustained struggles against it. And some forces will move both inside and outside the bloc, as circumstances warrant or change. It is important to be clear on what the main forces and components are, and their path to unity. It's also important to understand the relation and balance of forces, and how one is not likely to win at the top what one has not consolidated and won at the base, nor is failure in one or another battle always cause for a strategic break.

Obama obviously started with his local coalition in Chicago-the Black community, 'Lakefront liberals' from the corporate world, and a sector of labor, mainly service workers. The initial new force in the winning nationwide alliance was called out by Obama's early opposition to the Iraq war, and his participation in two mass rallies against it, one before it began and other after the war was underway. This both awakened and inspired a large layer of young antiwar activists, some active for the first time, to join his effort to win the Iowa primary. The fact that he had publicly opposed the war before it had begun distinguished him from Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, his chief opponents. These young people also contributed to the innovative nature of his organization, combining grassroots community organizing with the many-to-many mass communication tools of internet-based social networking and fundraising. Many had some earlier experience organizing and participating in the World Social Forum in Atlanta 2007, which energized nearly 10,000 young activists. Those who came forward put their energy and innovation to good use. Had Obama not won Iowa, it is not likely we would be talking about him today.


The Iowa victory quickly produced another major advance. Up until then, most African-American voters favored Hillary Clinton, and were dubious of a Black candidate's chances. But Iowa is one of the 'whitest' states in the country, and Obama's win there changed their minds. In short order, Obama gained wide unity in Black communities across the country, inspiring even more young people, more multinational and more 'Hip-Hop,' to emerge as a force. Black women in their churches and Black workers in their unions joined with the already-engaged younger Black professionals who were seeking a new voice for their generation. The internet-based fundraising was bringing in unheard-of amounts of money in small donations. A wing of trade unions most responsive to Black members came over, setting the stage for Obama's next challenge, winning the Democratic primaries overall against Hillary Clinton.

Defeating Clinton and the corporate liberals backing her was not easy. Hillary's main weakness was her inability to win the antiwar movement. Obama had mainly won the youth and Blacks, and through them, many young women and many Black women, but he had tough challenges. Clinton still rallied much of the liberal base and the traditional women's movement. But it was not enough, nor was she able to deal with all the new grassroots money flowing his way. Her last reserve was the labor movement, most of which was still supporting her. She tried to keep it with a fatal error: playing the 'white worker' card in a racist way against Obama. It only moved more progressives to Obama, plus won him wider support in other communities of color, who saw the move for what it was. Even with her remaining base in a sector of the women's movement and a large chunk of organized labor, after a fierce fight, he narrowly but clearly defeated her.

Now it was Obama versus McCain, and the Republicans were in the weaker position. Some think McCain made a mistake picking Sarah Palin as his VP choice, but actually it was his smarter and stronger card. To defeat Obama, he had to both energize the GOP core rightwing base, plus win a large majority of the 'white working class.' Palin's proto-fascist rightwing populism was actually his best shot, especially with its unofficial allies in rightwing media. The Fox-Hannity-Limbaugh machine, and its allies in the right blogosphere, escalated their overtly racist, chauvinist, illegal immigrant-baiting, red-baiting, terror-baiting, anti-Black and anti-Muslim bigotry to a ceaseless fever pitch. The aim was to manipulate the significant social base of less-educated, more fundamentalist, lower-income white workers who often seek economic relief through being tied to the military or the prison-industrial complex. They threw everything, from the kitchen sink to the outhouse, at Obama, his family and his movement. They whipped their crowds into violent frenzies. The Secret Service even had to ask them to tone it down, since assassination threats were coming out of the woodwork with each rally like this.

This now put organized labor in the critical position. Even though they represented only a minority of workers generally, they had wider influence, including into the ranks of the white working-class families who were for Clinton, and leaning to McCain. But both national coalitions, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, did the right thing, and in a big way. They knew McCain was their 'clear and present' danger. So they mobilized their resources and members into the streets, especially in the 'white working class' battleground areas in critical electoral states, and among Latino voters in the West. They won a wide majority of union households. They won among women and younger workers, as well as Latinos and other voters of color. Although they still did not get a majority of white working class voters for Obama, they brought the spread down to single digits. In many areas, they did better with Obama than Kerry had done four years earlier. It was enough to put Obama over the top.

There are books to be written about many other aspects and components of the Obama alliance. But these five: insurgent antiwar youth, a united African-American community, Latinos and other communities of color, women with a grasp of the importance of reproductive rights and health care, and organized labor-these form the major elements of the social base of Obama's historic bloc against neoliberalism and the right. Add these to the disgruntled progressive-to-liberal regular Democratic voters in the suburbs and elsewhere, and it brought the era of the conservative right's dominance in the White House and Congress to an end.

The Obama Alliance From Below and Within

The alliance was also diverse in terms of political organization. At the very bottom grassroots, in the final months, there were often four campaigns, overlapping to one degree or another, united to one degree or another, but not the same by a long shot.

First, the local Obama offices were mainly run by the Obama youth, twenty-somethings, many of them young women, who worked their hearts out, 16-hours-a-day, seven days a week, months on end. They were deployed in a vast array of 'neighborhood teams,' with old teams often generating new ones, connected via the social networking of their own blogs, email, cell phones and text messaging. Each team knocked on hundreds, if not thousands of doors, and tracked it all on computers. The full-time leaders were often 'parachuted in' from distant states, skilled mainly in mobilizing others like themselves. But add up dozens, even hundreds of teams in a given county, and you're making a serious difference.

Second, the Black community's campaign was more indigenous, more traditional, more rooted, more deeply proletarian-it made use of the Black church's social committees, tenant groups and civic organizations, who widely united. Many day-to-day efforts were in the hands of older Black women who knew everything about everybody, and had decades of experience in registering and getting out the vote. In some parts of the country, there were other nationalities working this way-Latino, Asian, Native American-and they found the way to make common cause with the African American community, rebuffing GOP efforts to appeal to anti-Black racism or narrow nationalism as a wedge. Some of the older people in these communities learned how to use computers, too, and sent regular contributions to Obama via PayPal in small amounts. But multiply one of these experienced community-based women organizers by 50,000 or 100,000 more just like her in another neighborhood or town, and something new and serious is going on. They always faced scarce resources, and there was friction at times with the Obama youth, who were often mostly white or more of a younger 'Rainbow.' They worked it through, most of the time.

Third, organized labor carried out its campaign in its own way. They had substantial resources for meeting halls, phone banks and the traditional 'swag' of campaigns-window signs, yard signs, buttons, T-shirts, stickers, banners, professionally done multi-colored flyers directly targeted to the top issues of union members and the wider working class. They put it together as an almost industrial operation, well planned with a division of labor. Top leaders of the union came in, called mass meetings, and in many cases, gave fierce no-nonsense speeches about 'getting over' fear of Black candidates and asserting the need to vote their members' interests. The central offices produced walking maps of union member households and registered voter households, political district by political district, broken down right to how many people were needed for each door-knocking team to cover each district or neighborhood. They printed maps with driving directions. They had tally sheets for interviewing each voter, boxes to check, to be scanned and read by machines when turned in. Hundreds of member-volunteers from that ranks came to each hall, raffles were held for free gas cards, and when you got back and turned in your tallies, free hot dogs and pizza. Sometimes busloads and car caravans went to other nearby states, to more 'battleground' areas. They often shared their halls with the Obama kids, and tried not to duplicate efforts. It was powerful to see, and it worked. There's nothing to replace a pair of union members standing on the porches of other working-class families, talking things over.

Fourth, the actual ongoing structures of the local Democratic Party did things their way. In many cases, the local regular Democratic leaders were very good, and took part personally in all three of elements of the campaign described above. But frequently, there was no 'mass' to the local Democratic organization. The mass member groups of the old Democratic Party were just history. (It was a problem, but also an opening for new independent mass progressive groups, like Progressive Democrats of America, to grow). Each incumbent, moreover, had their own staff and core of donors and loyalists, lawyers and media consultants, and guarded their own turf. Some were Obama enthusiasts, some more low-key, but more than a few avoided any responsibility to win Hillary voters to Obama. They capitulated to 'Democrats for McCain' elements in their base, elements who worked informally with the GOP right. This latter group was called 'the top of the ticket problem.' They worked their campaigns as independent operations, but avoided identification with the 'top of the ticket' or those working locally for it.

The Core Message of Change

While all four of these sub-campaigns were united by the central message and 'change' theme from the top, each also carried out the 'change' message in its own way. One issue linking at least three of them, save for a few 'Blue Dog' incumbents, was the need for a rapid end to the war. From Obama's personal appearances on down, whenever a speaker forcefully made this point to a crowd, it got the loudest applause, if not a standing ovation.

The people in these crowds constitute a new component of the antiwar movement. It needs to be understood, however, that they have a different character than the traditional left-led antiwar rallies. Demands to end the war here are deeply connected with supporting our troops, getting them home and out of harm's way, supporting veterans across the board, expressions of patriotism, and a view of the war as an offense to patriotism. They hate the waste of lives of people from families they know; and they hate the waste of resources and huge amounts of money. Ending the war is stressed as the way to lower taxes and revive the economy by spending for projects at home, People will denounce oil barons, but you'll hear very little put in terms of anti-imperialism or solidarity with various other liberations struggles around the world. 'We were lied to getting us into this', and 'we have our problems to solve here'-that's the underlying themes and watchwords. There are a few incumbents who will take positions to the right of Obama on the war, trying to stake out various nuanced and longer 'exit strategy' processes, or who just don't mention the war at all. But at the base, most just want to troops rapidly and safely out, while a few cling to the right's calls for 'victory.' But there's not much in the middle.

The other components of 'change' at the base are, first and foremost, new jobs and new industries. People are especially motivated by practical plans for Green Jobs in alternative energies and major infrastructural repair, health care for everyone, schools and support for students, and debt relief and other protections of their economic security in the face of the Wall Street crash. In fact, the Wall Street crash was the major factor in many older voters rejecting McCain and going for Obama. Regarding health care, many unions and local government bodies are signing on to HR 676, Single-Payer health care, but some will accept many other things, wisely or not, as a step in that direction or an improvement over the current setup.

The Nature of Rising Hegemonic Blocs

Within the Obama historic bloc, there are at least four contending trends regarding 'change' and political economy-two major and two minor. The two major ones come mainly from the top, while the two minor ones come from below.

At the top, the Obama White House will be pulled in two directions. The first is the 'tinkering at the top' approach of traditional corporate liberal capitalism, mostly concerned with securing the major banks by covering their debts and reducing the deficit through 'shared austerity' cutbacks. The emphasis will be on greater government-imposed efficiencies in entitlement programs, tax reform and adjustments in global trade agreements. Some of their favored programs, like pressing businesses to provide more 401K plans for employees, may be set aside because of the stock market' volatility.

The second direction is Obama's own often-asserted 'High Road' green industrial policy capitalism, which wants to restrict and punish pure speculation in the 'Casino Economy' in favor of targeted government investment in massive infrastructure and research, encouraging the growth of new industries with 'Green Jobs' in alternative energy sectors. Since resources are not infinite, there will be a major tension and competition for funds between two rival sectors--a new green industrial-education policy sector and an old hydrocarbon-military-industrial sector. It's a key task of the left and progressive movements to add their forces to uniting with and building up the former, while opposing and weakening the grip of the latter. This is the 'High Road' vs. 'Low Road' strategy widely discussed in progressive think tanks and policy circles.

From below, Obama is being presented with a plethora of redistributionist 'New New Deal' plans, including Rep Dennis Kucinich's 16 Points, to Sen. Bernie Sanders 4 Points, to the Institute for Policy Studies 'Progressive Majority' plan. One outlier 'Buy Out, Not Bail Out' proposal, David Schweickart's Economic Democracy option, goes beyond redistributionism, and proposes deep structural reforms of public ownership in the equity of financial firms in exchange for the bailout, in turn directing capital into community investment banks to build worker-controlled options within the new wealth creation firms of green industries.

From the other side, the unreconstructed rightwing neoliberals will be out of positions of executive power but not without positions of influence. Centered among the House GOP and allied with the rightwing media populists and anti-global nationalists, with Lou Dobbs as a spokesman, they will remain a powerful opposition force. They are likely to try to sabotage Obama, as best as they can without their own mass base, suffering from the crisis, turning against them. This was the role they played in the rightist opposition to the corporate liberal bailout plans stirred up by the far right Human Events journalists.

The key point here is shaping the exact nature of what Obama unfolds as 'change.' What will bring about any progressive reform and protect 'Main Street' and the 'Middle Class' against 'Wall Street' is still open and not fully formed. In fact, it will be a focus of intense struggle both internally at the top and on the part of mass social movements defending and advancing their interests from below. Class struggle will unfold within the bloc, to be sure.

The Bankruptcy of the Ultraleft

This is where the questions facing the left and an account of its tasks become critical. What is our role? Who are our friends and allies? Who are our adversaries, of various sorts? What is our left platform within broader proposals for growing and uniting a progressive majority? What is our strategy, tactics and orientation for moving forward? All these need to be re-examined in this dynamic and new situation.

We have to start by acknowledging the real crisis across the entire socialist left for some time. While some progress and innovation has been made by some in recent years, no one is surging ahead with major growth and breakthroughs. What this election, its outcome, its battles and ebb and flow, and the engagement of the masses, has especially done is reveal the utter bankruptcy of almost the entire anti-Obama Trotskyist, anarchist and Maoist left, save for a few groupings and some individuals. The crisis was not nearly as deep among the wider left-those hundreds of thousands working among trade union activists, community organizers and our country's intellectual community, but often not identified with a given socialist group or anarchist project. Whatever their problems, most of them understood this election and what to do, even if their efforts were limited. They 'got it right', even if they lacked the organizational means to advance the socialist project.

But among those belonging to organized socialist and anarchist groups with enough resources to put out their views, most got it dead wrong. On the election, only the CCDS (Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, cc-ds.org, ) the Communist Party USA, cpusa.org, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO, freedomroad.org) got it mostly right, mainly because they have some grasp on the importance of racism, elections and mass democracy. But we know these three groups, even if well situated, are rather small and not growing in any major way. Next was DSA which at least saw the importance of defeating McCain and backing Obama, even though they only managed to put out a rather wimpy pro-forma statement without once mentioning race. The other 10-to-15 groups, with the larger majority of organized US socialists, communists and Marxists in them, failed miserably, whatever the subjective feelings and views of their individual members. Besides broadsides against Obama and those backing him, they had nothing new or relevant to say, and some of them didn't bother to say anything, especially among the anarchists. Go to the sixty or more Indymedia sites, and you hardly see anything useful said besides macho bluster and shit-talk against the few pro-voting-for-Obama postings put up.

This is the face of this crisis: While there was an upsurge of millions of Obama volunteers in one of the most critical elections in our history, a true milestone, which was combined with direct engagement from a united Black community and the best elements of labor, from precisely the sectors all of them have been claiming to try to reach for decades, and almost all they could was bark at them: 'You're deluded!' You're Obamaniacs! 'You're wrong!' 'Obama is a capitalist!' 'Don't Drink the Kool-Aid! Obama is the more dangerous warmonger because he's the new 'Uncle Tom' Black face of imperialism!'

If the question of the day was immediate working-class mass action on seizing power from the capitalist class, for reform vs. revolution, socialism or capitalism NOW, they might have had a point. But it's not. Even with the financial crisis, it's not even close. Besides getting troops out of this or that country, they don't even have a package of demands or structural reforms worthy of the name being put forward. Worse of all, they don't think any distinction between revolutionary and non-revolutionary conditions is all that important. What that means, in turn, is that it's almost impossible for them, as groups and as a trend, to correct their course.

It's not a matter of being critical of Obama. Everyone engaged in his movement had criticisms and alternate positions of all sorts. Some made them public, some did not-but all these did so in a way designed to help him win, not to take him down, to add votes to his totals, not to subtract them.

As mentioned, the wider left, the left that defines itself as more than liberal but not necessarily socialist, did relatively well. These are the union-based organizers, community organizers, campus organizers, and the readers of Portside, The Nation, Black Commentator, Huffington Post and DailyKOS. For the most part, they were fully engaged for Obama in this election. Comparing the online commentary in these media voices and outlets with that of the Indymedia anarchists and the socialist papers of the far left was as revealing as the difference between noon and midnight.

We have to break decisively with this ultra-left, semi-anarchist perspective. While the hard core of this trend is small, it reach is wider than some might think. It's not a matter of purges; it's a matter of emancipating the minds of many on the radical left from old dogma. There's no way forward under these new conditions if we don't. We have to break with it not only in our own ranks, the groups working with 'Progressives for Obama', where it's not that influential, but across all the mass democratic organizations of the wider social movements as well. We have to spotlight it, stand up to it, isolate it and defeat it. It's not that we are demanding a split. The split has already taken place over the past two years, in real life and in actual battles. Many of us, for instance, stood up to the rightwing media's racist attacks on Obama, his family and his movement; others from this corner of the left added fuel to the fascists' fires and fanned the flames. We are sharply divided. We are as far apart in practice as we can be. What we have to do is acknowledge it, sum up its lessons, and warn others of its dangers, and try to unite all who can be united on a new path forward.

Charting Our Path Forward

So what is our path? Again, we start by getting clarity on where we are. We were in an alliance with Obama and the forces and movements that brought him to power against the NeoCon neoliberals and the far right. If we assess things accurately, we'll see that we are still in this alliance, although its nature is changing. We are part of a new emerging counter-hegemonic bloc in our country, an historic multiclass alliance. The Obama forces at the top are in turn linked to the multipolar, multilateralist sector of global capital. A new bloc on this higher, global level is both trying to consolidate its power against its rivals and maintain a degree of both unity and struggle among the contenting poles and centers of power within it. Our task is to grow the strength of the left, the working class, and broader communities allies within it, to secure strong points, and to win, step by step, the 'long march through the institutions' until we emerge with a new counter-hegemonic bloc of our own, in an entirely different period.

From the beginning, the Obama alliance brought together left-progressive forces, along with moderate center and center-right forces, from the grass roots level through middle-layer institutions to the top. No one or even two of these voting blocs was enough to win alone. It took the entire coalition to win-and driving out any one part of it may have made defeat far more likely and risky. We were part of a left-progressive pole in a broader sub-bloc comprised of social movements, primarily antiwar youth, minority nationality communities and organized labor. While we were the most numerous of the blocs, we were not necessarily the most powerful.

A political pole or sub-bloc's power in electoral campaigns is a combination of three things-first, an organized platform of ideas appropriate to solving the problems of the day that, second, is in turn embodied in organized grassroots voters and, third, those organizations have readily available amounts of organized money. We can take part in an alliance without some or even all of these things, but we shouldn't then expect much clout.

Let's look at each of these three elements from the perspective of left-progressive activists.

What was our platform? First, we stressed an end to the war in Iraq and a prevention of wider wars, even if Obama talked of going into Afghanistan in a bigger way. Second, we were demanding 'Healthcare Not Warfare,' and in many cases, pressing HR 676 Single-Payer even if Obama opposed it. Third, we stressed Green Jobs and New Schools, and Obama eventually pushed these in a big way. Fourth, we stressed Alternative Energies over dirty coal, offshore oil and unsafe nuke plants, even if Obama waffled. Fifth, we wanted Expanded Democracy and Fair Elections, and Obama pressed voter registration and early voting in a big way.

The Obama volunteers in the official campaign often couldn't put things out exactly like this. Their messaging was more controlled from the center. But nothing stopped either organized labor or independent forces like PDA, MDS or other local groups connected to 'Progressives for Obama' from exercising our 'independence and initiative within the broader front.' We simply did what we thought best, but in a way that still maintained solid unity among local allies.

The Importance of Independent Mass Democracy

How did we organize voters? Many progressives simply worked through the local Obama campaign, registering and identifying voters with the neighbor teams. This was fine, especially if you spent some time in a mutual education process with the young staffers. But some of us were looking for something more independent and lasting. So we joined with groups like PDA, or set up 'voters for peace' groupings based on local coalitions, or worked through union locals. The idea was for the information gained--voter lists, donor lists, volunteers lists, contacts and such-to remain in the hands of the new grassroots formations, to grow them in size and scope, so as to help further struggles down the road.

To be sure, our influence, compared to the incredibly sophisticated, well-funded and innovative Obama campaign, was relatively minor. That didn't matter so much; what was important was that we weren't simply a tail on the Democratic machinery, but that we were building our own independent strength for the future. In nearly every major city, independent blogs or clusters of blogs went up to serve as a public face and organizing hubs of these grassroots forces. Case in point: The local Obama offices are now all closed, but our local groups or coalitions have doubled or tripled in size, we now have news blogs getting thousands of hits, and our efforts are ongoing and more connected with labor and community allies.

How did we raise money? To be frank, we didn't raise that much independently. This is a fault, not a virtue. Some groups in the African-American community went into the T-shirt and button business, making a range of campaign items, selling them to raise stipends, gas money and donations to Obama, then turning some over to make more T-shirts and buttons, and so on. In some places, we relied a good deal on the resources supplied at local union halls-meeting space, phones, and printed materials. 'Progressives for Obama' kept itself alive from a few initial startup donations from individuals, then from its two blogs and listservs on the Internet via PayPal in small amounts.

But to return to our platform of issues and demands, the key underlying principle was segmenting the business community into productive versus speculative capital, rather than asserting an all-round anti-capitalist or anti-corporate perspective. We want to see mills reopened with new companies we can support that would make wind turbines via Green Jobs, while we oppose the Casino gamblers on Wall Street or insurance company parasites blocking universal health care. People can and will denounce every sort of corporate crime or outrage to make a point. But when it came to the platform of reforms for uses of our taxes dollars, we were much more focused on what kind of businesses we wanted to see grow, and how we wanted them to relate to their workers and surrounding communities. This approach did very well in getting many rank-and-file workers to take us seriously, especially in areas where many people suffer more from the lack of business than its presence.

The main point is that we now have mass democratic organization anchored in many communities, workplaces and schools, and that they have a basis to expand. PDA is a good example. Starting with only a few dozen people in 2004 with an 'inside-outside' independent view of dealing and working with Democrats, they have grown to some 150,000 people scattered across the country in every major city, with most of that growth taking place in the context of the last campaign to defeat the GOP and McCain. At the Democratic convention, together with The Nation magazine, PDA delivered a week-long series of panels and workshops that drew thousands of activists and hundreds of delegates, establishing itself as the 'Progressive Central' mobilizing and organizing pole for the week in Denver. Many PDA local chapters mobilized members that became the backbone of the Obama campaign offices, as well as boosting local labor mobilizations. The PDA chapters built their credibility by advocating Healthcare Not Warfare and backing local progressive candidates down the ticket. They helped unite progressives within the various trends of the Obama campaign with local unity events.

On a smaller scale, Movement for a Democratic Society groups did well, too Austin, Texas is a great example, where they combined with 'The Rag' blog, which is now getting over 25,000 hits a month. On campuses, where the New SDS was able to make a break with anarchism and relate to the Obama youth, they also report successes and growth.

The Critical Priority of Organization
and the Relative Importance of Socialist Tasks

What the heart of this says is that for left-to-progressive activists, organization-building trumps movement-building in this period. The movements are very wide and diverse, and in front of our noses. But the current wave has just peaked, and will now ebb a bit. In situations like this, it's more important than ever to consolidate the gains of mass struggle, including electoral struggle, into lasting organizations, either expanding earlier ones or building new ones. The same goes for coalition-building of local clusters of organizations, then networking them across the country, horizontally and vertically, via the internet. We need organizers now, more so than activists and agitators.

What about the 'socialism' part of the socialist left? Up to this point, I've mainly addressed the mass democratic tasks we share in common with the non-socialist left and progressive activists generally. Fortunately or unfortunately the Wall Street financial crisis combined with the right wing's red baiting of Obama as a 'Marxist' and 'socialist' has given the 'S' word far wider circulation and interest than it's had in decades. Unfortunately, in the mass media, it's mainly discussed in a one-dimensional, cartoonish way as 'socialism for the rich' or 'sharing the wealth.'

No matter. This expanded media buzz serves to underscore the main aspect of our socialist tasks in today's conditions. Our work here is mainly that of education, theoretical work, and the development of program and policy options. We need our own think tanks and networks of study groups developing our policies and platforms for deep structural reforms that serve as transitional levers to a new socialism. Before we can fight for it, we better have a fairly clear idea of what it is in this country in today's world-both among ourselves and the wider circles of the best left and progressive organizers with whom we want to share this learning process and socialist project.

It is a good time, however, to expand this work in a serious way. One small example: in the context of the initial wave of reaction to the Wall Street crash, and the first round of progressive proposals to deal with it, 'Progressives for Obama' asked David Schweickart, one of our country's foremost proponents of socialist theory, to write up his take on it. He wrote not only his account of why the crisis happened, but also briefly contrasted today's capitalism and its downturn and crash with the socialist alternative. His own 'successor system theory' of Economic Democracy, however, is designed to be a bridge to socialist options. If we, the public, are to buy up the bad debt of failed banks and firms, why not demand equity in the stock and public seats on the board, or buy them out entirely. Instead of simply paying off debt and providing the wherewithal for big bonuses and Golden Parachutes, why not do more than simply restrict or forbid this? Why not use these now-public resources to launch local community-owned investment banks to partner with labor and local government and entrepreneurs to build the new worker-owned factories of green industries and alternative energies?

These are excellent take-off points. Schweickart's article was widely circulated as an authoritative piece, commented on across the political spectrum. In several cities, leftists in and around the Obama campaign even set up study groups to go over it. This shouldn't be exaggerated, but it does show the possibilities and frames our socialist tasks more accurately.

Both Immediate and Transitional Programs

But the more pressing task for us as part of the left is sharply and concretely outlining our immediate and transitional programs and their platforms. The immediate program of demands, like Kucinich's 16 Points, are basically redistributionist programs aimed at taking wealth from above and spreading it around below. Given the vast inequalities of our society, that is both pressing and desirable. As a stimulus, it also spurs the generation of new wealth. The transitional program of deep structural reform, like Schweickart's Economic Democracy, takes public resources to generate new wealth, but in a way that alters power relations in favor of the working class and broader public.

Some of the best proposals and projects on the table combine both of these. The Apollo Alliance, where steelworkers and environmentalists come together, put forward a range of recession-busting programs. Van Jones' Green Jobs programs for inner city youth do the same, as does HR 676 Single-Payer health care. The Blue-Green Alliance is still another.

Our task is to put flesh on these in a way that melds with our local conditions. We start by uniting antiwar Obama youth, community and labor locally, then build outwards and upwards from there. We start with an understanding of the critical role of a united African-American community, the most consistent defenders and fighters for a progressive agenda in the country, especially when it works in alliance with Latinos and other minority nationalities. We also grasp the significance of women and labor, and the overall intersection of race, gender and class in defining our policies, seeking out allies, and setting priorities. We design a package of critical local reforms, whether in rebuilding Ohio River locks and dams, constructing high-speed rail in California, or delivering single-payer healthcare everywhere. Then we make the fights for these a centerpiece to unite the entire area, win over all the public officials that we can, and then, in turn, take it to an Obama administration, demanding an end to the war and war making, in order to fund it and make it happen. It's really the only way out of this mess.

Our great victory in this election, finally, is that efforts and programs like this won't fall on deaf ears. The challenge to Obama is that to get it done, he has to end the war, avoid wider wars and cut the military budget in a major way. If he does, he can be a great president. If he doesn't, he'll have hell to pay.

Summary

Here are the key points, once again:

1. We have won a major victory, now consolidate its gains.

2. Start where you are, and build mass democratic grassroots groups bringing together the best local activists from the Obama campaign and others like it.

3. Build a coalition with local partners in labor, campus and community groups that did the same.

4. Start local left-progressive blogs to have a public face, and link it to others.

5. Develop a program of deep structural reform and immediate needs for your area, and take it upward and outward through the elected officials and government bodies, all the way to the top.

6. Break decisively with the ultraleft mindset, in order to deepen and broaden left-progressive unity.

7. Prepare the ground for mass mobilization to end the war this spring, and to prevent wider war. Link this battle to the economy. Green Jobs over War Jobs, New Schools, Not More Prisons, HealthCare Not Warfare, Peace and Prosperity, Not War, Greed and Crisis. You get the idea.

8. Study socialism seriously, the version for today, and bring it to bear in developing policy and uniting the most advanced fighters for the whole, not just the part, and for the future, not just the present.


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Making Pennsylvania Blue: Labor and Hard Battles

Photo: Overflow Voters at Raccoon VFD

Making History
at the Raccoon
VFD Polling Place


By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

There was a lot more to working the polls in this historic election than checking signatures and passing out palm cards.

It was glorious Fall day at the semi-rural fire-hall-turned-voting-center in Raccoon Township, Beaver County, Western PA. I arrived early, but the hall was packed. Most people were in good spirits. Long-time neighbors chatted, older folks marveled at the uncommon turnout among younger voters, and parents worried about fretful children. The main buzz was about one thing: whether they were for Obama or against him, everyone knew they were about to make history.

“I’ve never seen such a turnout,” said Marion Prasjner, president of the local Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees Chapter 2020. Prasjner is eighty years old and very savvy. He’s with PDA and an Obama supporter.

The machines were working fine, the judges were polite, and both poll watchers and judges efficiently assisted the confused and the infirm. My main task of the day became building our independent group, the PA 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America, and its new website, Beaver County Blue. Our flyer was designed to hand to voters who had finished, rather than overwhelming them on their arrival.

Outside the hall were signs for Obama and every local Democratic candidate. For some reason, no McCain-Palin signs were in sight. I put up an ‘AFL-CIO for Obama-Biden’ sign. There were three women ‘passers’ with literature, and two older guys who, if they were in Chicago, would be precinct captains, but here they were greeters. All were Democrats, until later in the day, when one Republican showed up.

This part of the county went for Hillary in the Democratic primary. While I was nearly certain that this time we would take Pennsylvania overall, I was nervous. Raccoon is 99 percent white-construction workers, service workers, teachers, retirees, and a few farm families and small business people. Usually, on local matters, it goes two-to-one Democratic. But ‘Democrats for McCain’ signs had been popping up in the last week, and last-minute rightwing messaging with bigoted attacks on Obama was intense. We knew we would make gains, but by how much, and with whom?

You could sense the divisions in peoples’ faces and demeanor. Grim people with stony silence or nasty comments were for McCain They either refused leaflets or handed them back. Smiles and chit-chat usually meant a Democrat.

I watched Ralph Hysong, my neighbor, greet nearly everyone. He’s got Obama signs all over his yard, plus one he made himself demanding ‘Clean, Honest Government.’ He used to own part of a gas station, and was on a first-name basis with half the people coming in. Ralph turned out to be a fourth cousin of mine and picked out voters I’m probably related to. “There weren’t many families here back in the 1700s,” I said, “and they inter-married and we’re nearly all related. I’m even my own fifth cousin!” This got a big laugh, and one woman reminded us that we’re all family in God’s eyes. “And, the scientists tell us we all have that common Grandmother from Africa,” I replied. “Yes!” said another woman, “That’s still another reason to go for Obama, he’s family!”

The chatter stayed interesting. “Who’s Obama most remind you of?” yelled out Andy Mihalic, a retired steelworker in his eighties, who was keeping our coffeepot full. I had an idea of where he was going. “JFK,” I called back. “You got it right!” replied Andy. I knew there was deep affection for JFK around here, deserved or not. Andy went on: “And do you know why? Because he’s got VISION! Just like JFK wanted to go to the Moon, Obama has a vision on new mills making all the stuff for alternative energy! Don’t worry about color or any of that stuff, the man’s got vision!”

My supply of Beaver County Blue flyers was starting to get depleted. People were curious, wanting to stay in touch beyond election day. Some ask for extras for their workplaces.

Andy Mihalic talked about the Jones and Laughlin steel mills, now defunct. I told him my grandfather and cousin both died there, crushed by cranes, and that I’d always supported the union, especially the fight for safety. “Safety?” he said. “Let me tell you, even with the safety rules, there’s nothing safe about making steel.” He told hair-raising stories of daily risk and brutality.

I asked him his views on why the mills closed. “Environmental protection,” he replied. “Don’t get me wrong. When you make steel, you make some of the most poisonous, dangerous crap there is. You’ve got to protect the community against it. But it costs money, and the new foreign mills ignored all this to make steel cheap, just dumped poison every where.” It’s a political problem, according to Andy. “We need Fair Trade to even the playing field, but these Wall Street guys don’t give a shit. McCain? What does he know? All he says is that’s he’s a vet. Big deal, I’m a vet. Hell, around here, we’re all vets. Hopefully, Obama will be different.”

Leave it to a class-conscious worker to break things down and clear things up for you. I know a little about mills, but I learned even more from Andy this afternoon. In addition to Fair Trade and finding an end to the war, we’re united on Green industrial policy. I also remind him that Obama’s voting record on vets is much better than McCain’s, a point he didn’t know.

By late afternoon, workers started streaming in-a group of bikers, pickups, nurses from the hospital, parents with carloads of kids. The parking lot filled and the waiting line surged. A few candidates showed up to check the tallies. It was a new record turnout, over 75 percent.

A local preacher arrived. His congregation bustles with charity programs that distribute free food to the elderly and folks in need. Last Saturday, over 100 vehicles were at his church to help get out the food baskets. It was his kids and his church youth group who got him to take a good look at Obama. The biggest barrier to our country’s progress, he feels, is racial division. “I figure Obama can help us get over it,” he added.

At the end of the day, Pennsylvania overall went for Obama, even if we only came very close here in Raccoon. About 52 percent of the township went for McCain, 48 percent for Obama. About half of the Hillary voters went our way, more than doubling the number of Obama voters from those we had in the primary. Some split off to McCain and others just avoided ‘the top of the ticket.’

We made solid progress, but our work is still cut out. Union mobilization, the antiwar youth turnout and African American unity, are all part of what kept Pennsylvania ‘Blue’ and helped put Obama in the White House. Now we have to orient our alliance toward ‘change from below’ to make sure our candidate delivers.

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SteelBlitz: AFL-CIO and Steelers in Western PA

Photo: Kyle Jones, Beaver Falls Obama Fan

Steelers and
Steelworkers
Go All Out For
Obama in Western PA

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Organized labor has set its sights on winning Beaver County and all of Western Pennsylvania for Barack Obama. They see victory in this battleground "swing state" as critical to the entire election nationwide, and are pulling out their big guns, all stops and every other available advantage to "Git 'er done."

That's the message made loud and clear by the visit of AFL-CIO chief John Sweeny to the IBEW Local 712 Hall here in Vanport, Pa this Saturday morning, October 25.

Sweeny's visit kicked off an all-day effort, and was teamed with a joint visit of United Steelworker union top officials and pro-Obama Pittsburgh Steelers players for a rally at the same hall later in the afternoon. In between, the unions deployed over 2200 rank-and-file union members to knock of the doors of some 31,000 union family homes across the state in a single afternoon, an effort that will get even more earnest in the next ten days.



I arrived early in a grey drizzle of a morning, unlike the glorious fall days of the last month of Saturday 'Labor Walks.' Media work was my task for the day, and I made sure a New York Times reporter quickly met all the local union officials and pro-union local candidates. While I'm getting wired on black coffee and a jelly donut, Bob Schmetzer, a local IBEW official, hands me one of his home-made flyers.

"Here, whaddya think of this?" he says. "I got it off the Internet." It's one of the now-classic pieces bouncing around exposing the undercurrent of unstated white supremacy in the campaign, using role reversal. "What if John McCain graduated and the top of his class at Harvard, and Obama came in at the bottom of his class with the record of a goof-off? What do you think Fox and the rightwing talk shows would be doing with that?" It gives a dozen more examples, using irony and good humor to make a very serious point.

"Terrific," I tell Bob, "We have to get people thinking about things like this. It arms them against the right." He agrees, and works the hall, pulling over one after another of his key guys, giving each of them the leaflet, going over it with them. He's thinking ahead, educating his troops, knowing that this battle's more than just dollars and cents.

Sweeny's arrival is low-key. He's escorted in by a young union staff woman, Yael Foa, assigned by the AFL-CIO to work with us in Beaver County. She's talented and tireless, but stands to the side with a beaming smile as Sweeny greets each union member as if he or she were family. Wearing his union jacket and cap, white hair and the trace Irish lilt in his voice, he's soft-spoken and warm with everyone, and gets the same in return. People like and respect him.

But on the platform he's a firebrand. "You're the reason Obama is out in front in Pennsylvania. Make no mistake; each of you here is very important. Of all the things that we do-mailings, advertisements, phone banking-there's nothing more effective or more persuasive than what you're doing today, a personal visit from one union brother or sister to another. Beaver County is the key to Western PA, Western PA is the key to Pennsylvania-and without Pennsylvania, there's no way McCain can win!'

Sweeney closes by pushing the entire ticket, from Obama at the top to Vince Biancucci and Dennis Rousseau, both local guys with a union history, for state reps at the base. He stresses the AFL-CIO's core message once again: No more nonsense about privatizing Social Security and putting it into the stock market, no more notions of taxing health care benefits, extend health care to everyone, no more nonsense about de-regulation of banking and Wall Street. They've made a huge mess, and we need a New Deal and a new leadership to turn things around. Obama is the most pro-labor candidate we've ever seen, so shift into high gear and let's make him our president.

Naturally, Sweeny gets a warm, standing ovation. Everyone is appropriately fired up, puts on 'Steelworkers for Obama' T-Shirts and like, and hits the streets in the nearby mill towns, as well as the back roads in the semi-rural township hills and hollows, for the next four hours.

While this is a key area, it's only one small part of organized labor's effort in this campaign. Aside from millions of dollars spent on print and other media pushing 'Green Jobs', health care, and the right of unions to organize, both the AFL-CIO unions and 'Change to Win' unions like SEIU, are making a common front, working together on this election. On this weekend alone, over 250,000 union volunteers across the country are on the streets, going door-to-door. Busloads from 'safe areas' like New York City spend weekends in the rural Pennsylvania Poconos, or working-class neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Car caravans from Chicago work the factory towns of Indiana, Kentucky and Western Ohio. There's nothing quite like seeing it in motion: "Awesome!" as the Obama volunteer young people put it, although they've done some pretty awesome things themselves more than once.

The sun starts breaking through the clouds at mid-afternoon. I get back to the union hall after a stint at the nearby Court House for our weekly Beaver County Peace Links vigil, for over five years running, with our 'Bring the Troops Home Now! banner and 'Honk for Peace!' signs. The union parking lot is filling up, with more than when we started.

The reason? It's 'Steel Blitz for Barack' time. That means a bus is about to arrive carrying Dan Rooney, owner emeritus of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Edmond Nelson, former Steelers star defensive lineman, United Steelworkers (USW) International President Leo W. Gerard and other union officials and players.

Outsiders might not get it, but in an area where 'Steelerism' comes close to being a state religion, THIS IS A BIG DEAL. Dozens of young, mostly white kids, boys and girls, are bundled up against the wind, plastering each others coats, front and back, with 'Union Voters for Obama' and 'Steelers for Obama' stickers, clutching autograph books, waiting for their heroes to get there.

Inside, Billy George, head of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, is warming up a packed hall, standing room only. George is from the tough McDonald Heights neighborhood of nearby Aliquippa, PA, home of the shut-down Jones and Laughlin Steel, once the largest steel mill in the world. He was with USW Local 1211, a powerful and militant local in its day.

'What time is it?' he yells into the mike, right off the bat. 'UNION TIME!' the room yells back, no prompting needed. The Steelers are going to win their division, he predicts, then the Steelers are going to the Superbowl, and 'who will be the President to greet and open the Superbowl?" 'BARACK OBAMA!' comes back, instantly and loudly.

George turns serious and talks labor history, educating the younger people and getting knowing nods from the older workers. He reminds us of the fierce battles of the Steelworkers Organizing Committee in the 1930s, the violence and the arrests, at the historical marker at the old plant gate in downtown Aliquippa, marking the 1937 Supreme Court decision made in the case of the Aliquippa workers, the decision under FDR that broke the back of reaction, and allowed nationwide union organization to spread and the FDR New Deal to accelerate.

"Social Security came out of this," George explains. "Our right to organize came out of this. These are the most important things we've ever won, and now McCain and the Republicans want to 'privatize' it or take it back. Can you imagine if they put your social security in the stock market? No way, no way we'll let them. I know everyone here agrees with me, but I want four full shifts out of each and every one of you in the next ten days. Get this message out to your neighbors, relatives, and everyone else around here that knows better, or ought to."

Next up is Leo Girard, the Canadian-born international president of the United Steelworkers. Even with his north-of-the-border accent, he know the exact language of this group today.

"We've been getting the shaft," he says, "but this is our time, we're going to turn it completely around. We've never had a candidate like Barack Obama. After the thank-you's and standard lines, Girard asks the workers here to follow a thought experiment with him.

Imagine a candidate born to wealth and privilege of the high officer class. Follow him as he fritters away his studies. Recognize and respect his service, but when he gets back, he dumps his first wife and marries into brewery millions. He goes to Congress with the goal of letting the banks run wild, and voting against the unions 85 percent of the time. He's so wealthy, he doesn't even know how many homes he has.

Now imagine, Girard goes on, a candidate with a single mother, who works hard, but leaves him mainly with Kansas grandparents to raise him. They sacrifice everything to get him an education. He gets to Harvard, top of his class. Wall Street is offering hundreds of thousands of dollars just for sign-up bonuses, but what does he do? He decides to give something back. He works for a church group on the South Side of Chicago, with the unemployed laid-off workers, many of them steelworkers, helping them get retrained, helping them find a future.

"The Republicans want to talk about character," Girard shouts out. "What does this tell you about it? What does this tell you about the difference between these two men? I listened to rightwing radio yesterday, making fun of Obama for going to visit his dying grandmother, the woman who gave everything to see him succeed. He set aside the time to see her while she could still hear his voice, and they mock it."

"McCain and the Republicans have been running around like 'Robin Hood in Reverse,' then dump all this slime on Obama and us, and we're supposed to shut up and like it?," he asks. "No, take the measure of these two men. Take then measure of which one stands with family as we know it, take the measure of which one can benefit the working class that we're part of. Obama is going to be a great president, and we're going to put him there.

By this time there's not a dry eye in the house, and Rooney takes the mike to add to his admiration of Obama. But the most powerful applause comes for linebacker Edmond Nelson, a huge African American man who dwarfs everyone else on the platform.

"I'm for Barack Obama because I hate this war in Iraq," he shouts out as his opening line. "I hate this war because of the lies told us about 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' to drag us into it. I'm for Obama because I hate what's been done to our soldiers and the people of Iraq.

These lines get the strongest applause of the afternoon.

But Nelson closes with "I'm for Barack Obama because I want to see people who look like me get a fair shake and a decent chance in this society." Again, powerful applause from a group that's over 90 percent blue-collar white workers, but still a group that knows exactly what he means.

As the lines are being organized so the youngsters, and many older people too, can line up to get their Steeler autographs, one of the AFLCIO chiefs gets order in the room. "One last speaker, one of the most important. She's going to tell you what to do."

Up comes Kyra Ricci, a petite twenty-something starkly contrasting when every previous speaker, with a terrific smile, but a "listen up now" sense of command. The Obama youth insurgency is "in the house", too, and she lays out the tasks of the final days, and has her people with their sign-up clipboards stationed so they won't be gotten by without a commitment.

It's the perfect counterpoint to end the day. Three powerful movements are coming together here-organized labor, the African American fight for justice and a new antiwar youth insurgency. Given the sense of class-conscious solidarity and unity in the hall, it's hard to see how McCain and the GOP can stop them. But it's also clear that an Obama White House, in calling for partners for 'change from below,' will also face forces that will not be easily deflected or denied.

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Obama 2008: Everything Counts: A 'To Do' List

Photo: Over 100,000 in St Louis

Approach the
Election as an
Organizer, Not
Just as a Voter

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On!

It's the home stretch everyone, the last two weeks.

Don't pay too much attention to the polls, even if they're on our side at the moment. They change like the weather.

At this stage, the 'ground game' is what counts most, and believe me, it counts a lot.

So this is a direct appeal to each and every one of you. Get fully engaged. Everything counts in these final days.

Approach the election as an organizer, not just as a voter. Keep lists of names, make new friends, meet new groups. We'll need them to bring pressure on the White House no matter who is in it.

Here's the key tasks: GOTV, PTV, CTV

--Get out the vote. Just because people registered, doesn't mean they go to the polls. This is especially true with youth. Organize 'early voting' parties. Make a list of your 'pluses'--pro-Obama votes--and 'run them' all day, checking them off as they vote. Drag out the slackers. Everything counts.

--Protect the vote. Yes, they do nasty things in some polling places. Volunteer as a poll watcher, or election-day judge. Take a training. Do it. Judges even get paid for the day. Make sure the tally in your precinct matches the tally actually turned in at the election board. Raise a stink if it doesn't. Also, the GOP is already doing 'Depress the Vote' tactics by spreading false information and sending intimidation teams to early voting sites, harassing people. Organize a 'counter-intimidation team.' Face them down, non-violently but resolutely. It works.

--Claim the vote. If and when we win, let the local incumbents know. If many cases, they didn't do that much. Tell them you'll stay organized for the long term, and not just on elections, but tell them they better stop the damned war, and a lot more. Exercise your newly gained 'clout.' You've earned it.

Just remember, like our candidate asserts, change comes from below, and sprint all the way to the line and through the ribbon.

Carl Davidson
'Progressives for Obama'

To see more or make a contribution, go to:
http://progressivesforobama.net

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Send an email with 'Subscribe' in the title to:

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Exposing the Fox Smear Machine Locally

Photo: Acorn protest against toxic lenders

The Phoney War
Against ACORN
and Voter Fraud


By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

If you want an idea of how the Fox-Limbaugh-Hannity media machine and its phony war on ACORN reaches the local level, and how to fight it, here's some recent examples of me going back-and-forth in the on-line commentary pages our our local paper, the Beaver County Times.

As these papers go, the Times has a relatively large circulation and does a decent job with covering local news, but adding some national stuff as well. It's politics are a mixed bag of fiscal conservatism, pragmatism on local development, and liberalism on most social issues, often with a working class angle. You can say most anything on the site, just don't use cuss words, and your posts are rigidly kept to 200 words or less. So it's good training for snappy comebacks.

In any case, two regulars start off with jabs at Obama and ACORN recently. Some people use their real names, some use 'handles':


'Ridiculous' wrote on Oct 10, 2008: "Now we find that the dead are registering to vote in many states. I'm not quite sure how the dead will be voting, but since Obama and ACORN have managed to get them to register to vote, I'm sure they can manage some additional type of miracle! Actually the dead have been voting in Chicago for years.....Even CNN Gets it on the voter fraud taking place on the left.' Then 'JimL' adds: "You're right. Obama was trained under the Daley's too. He well understands the meaning of those votes. What was it they found in Ohio, 10 registrations with same name but listing different birth dates and addresses but similar signatures? Go ACORN."

So I come back with:

CarlDavidson wrote on Oct 13: " You're dead wrong on ACORN and voter fraud.

In most states, ACORN is required by law to turn in ALL voter forms they have that are signed. ACORN itself tries to catch the bad ones, bundles them, labels them as suspect, and turns them in. They catch over 90 percent of them, but in many states, they're not allowed to just toss them.

Thousands of people are hired by ACORN to do voter reg, and they're paid by the hour. Those caught cheating are promptly fired.

It's as if a department store with many employees catches a worker shoplifting, gathers the evidence, call the cops, and then the Store get charged with a crime.

Besides, it's only 'voter fraud' when someone actually tries to vote under a registration not their own. In almost every precinct in the country with pollwatchers from both parties and independent judges, this is much harder these days. Your signature has to match the one on the registration card.

Recognize this for what it is, Red Meat the GOP is throwing out to rile up their base that fears low-income Blacks. "

But my opponents still don't get it, and up the ante:

'finnegan' wrote on Oct 13, 2008: " ACORN needs to be torn apart and every registration that is questionable should be thrown out. Incomplete information any questionable registration that cannot be determined to be truthful!! If anything because NOBAMA worked so closely with this organization we surely don't want a repeat of Florida in the last election...Yes thats right, nothing wrong with Acorn, that's why they are being investigated in 16 states so far! Forget that they registered the same person in Ohio 70 times using a variety of names or that the dead are also registering. LOL, If someone came up and hit some of you guys in the face with the actual ballots of fraud you wOULD still cry NOT SO NO FRAUD HERE!! ".."

So I reply:

"Finnegan, ACORN is a mass membership organization of some 400,000+ low-to-middle income people, mainly African Americans.

Exactly how do you propose 'tearing it apart?'

The mortage loans it won for its members remain some of the safest and best around, and ACORN was in the streets opposing predatory lending and toxic loans when most of you never heard of them, and McCain and crew were for even more de-regulation.

ACORN itself, as is required, bundles suspicious voter apps as just that, and turns them in, as required. Then Karl Rove uses a lot of smoke and mirrors to blame ACORN and Blacks for the credit crisis, then the Talk Radio dittoheads listening to Limbaugh's and Hannity's lies turn into a bunch of snookered and suckered lemmings.

Amazing.

Don't you realize these sources, to use a kind term, are far right, proto-fascist 'infotainment' and not news? Do you bother to use factcheck.org or any reliable source to look deeper?

Time to wake up, things are getting serious. The people you're attacking are your best allies against the real criminals at the top with fountain pens, not six-guns.

Stop McCain, Stop the War, Vote Obama 2008!'"

Now 'Finnegan's wavering a little, but not much:

"Not so sure about those great loans that ACORN obtained seems like many of them weren't so great after all. It was 70 registrations with the same name (of course they paid the street person 1.00 per registration and threw a few cigarettes at him for these registrations) I also know they registered Mickey Mouse in Florida. Yea Carl, ACORN is just a great asset to America. Go McCain/Palin!! "

And so it goes. I'm not sure this applies to my debate partners 'Ridiculous' and 'Finnegan' here, but for some I've met, it doesn't matter if you present them with facts showing they've got it wrong. They stic to it anyway, because the particular lie is only a story that's a cover for something else, a hard-held belief that most Blacks are lazy, shiftless, thiefs, too uppity and don't know their place. but now we have new terms for all these: 'elitist,' ACORN, voter fraud, secret Muslim, Arab, terrorist and 'not one of us.'

I guess it's a sign of progress that those holding to the old stuff have to hide it. There's several hundred regular posters using this local site, and several thousand read them every day. check to see if your local paper or home town paper allows something similar, and join in. Clearly, the struggle continues and these are valuable forums . Keep On, Keepin' On!

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'Time to Give the Black Guy a Chance'

Photo: Obama Signs on Rural Street in Raccoon


Tide Is Turning
For Obama In
Beaver County, PA

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

About twenty of us are gathering early Saturday morning at the IBEW Hall, 'Labor Central,' in Vanport, Beaver County, Western PA. Today it's a team of electrical workers, steelworkers, SEIU service workers and a few activists with the 4th CD PDA, Progressive Democrats of America.

We're walking streets, lanes and backwoods roads to hit every union household in the area. The goal today? Voter ID. Make sure every list is correct, find every registered union family voter, find out where they stand, and then, Voter ED, give them our pitch and materials on why Obama-Biden is their best shot to defend their interests in 2008-'Green Jobs,' ending the war, defending health care.

The press calls our turf a critical battleground for the hearts, mind and votes of 'the white worker,' which it is, with McCain-Palin sliding down, but still at 51 percent today. But you wouldn't know Obama had a problem by looking at our team today. They're a hard-muscled crew, ball caps and blue jeans, but 'Vote Obama 2008' emblazoned on T-shirts, hats and buttons galore. The rightwing's bigotry is reaching a fever pitch, but these workers are making it very clear where they stand.



I enter the hall with a reporter from a major Portuguese paper, Expresso, that I'm helping out. The European press is also following this election more intently than any in a long time, and he's neither the first nor the last from Europe to visit us. I introduce him to Bob Schmetzer, one of the IBEW officials, who tells him what the unions are doing. Then he meets our PA State Rep, Vince Biancucci, who's doing the walks with us today. He and Vince trade stories about workers in Italy.

Leaving him to his business, I gather up flyers I'll need for the day. Most are aimed straight at the economic crisis and pocketbook issues. Schmetzer pulled together a good one of McCain's lousy record on veterans, well documented. There's a stack of a new one, full color, with nice pictures, with text: Obama wears a flag pin, puts his hand on his heart saying the Pledge, is a Christian who goes to church, was sworn in on the Bible, not the Koran, that was another Black guy from Minnesota, and so on.

There's a grey-bearded electrical worker who looks like a six foot six version of Kenny Rodgers reading it, too. "Whaddya think," He asks? A nice-looking job, I say, but it's pitiful that we have to put things like this out. "My thought exactly," he replies, "but we still got to answer and defeat this crap."

The union staff gets us organized into smaller teams and on our way. We're working north of the Ohio today. I'm headed for Beaver Falls, an old merchant center and industrial town on the Beaver River, known mainly these days as the home of Joe Namath, the football star. At the end of the Reagan era the Babcock and Wilcox tubular mill closed and dismissed over 5,000 workers in Beaver Falls. It's hard times, like everywhere else around here. Six of us, in teams of two, work a low-to-middle income working-class neighborhood on the north side of town, with Black and white workers on the same streets, not always that common in some places.

My first door is a Black construction worker, who tells me, "We're solid for Obama, and everyone in the house is registered, but go see the guy a couple doors down." He does want a yard sign, though, so we put one up for him. This is clearly the Obama base, or at least one major sector.

The guy a few houses down is a 57-year-old white worker, very friendly. "I'm going with Obama and the Democrats, no two ways about it." He tells us he's just registered, never voted before in his life, but the stakes are too high this time, and the conservatives have to be put out.

We keep working the street, but run into Randy and Tina Shannon of PDA at the corner. I get another sheet of names, and we swap stories.

"People are starting to use the 'O' word," says Tina. "Before, they'd just say, 'I'm voting Democrat.' Now they're saying, 'I'm for Obama and the Democrats, and give you an earful.' I think that's a shift."

"I was just up on 'The Heights,' says Randy, meaning the neighborhood on the surrounding hill. "I had one elderly lady for McCain, but I warned her, 'You're on Medicare, aren't you? If McCain has his way, you'll see it cut back.' Didn't help with her, but I ran into another lady who must have been almost ninety. 'McCain? No way, you know where he can go.' Let's just say her comments weren't appropriate for print, but she's determined to vote for Obama. I had just one guy telling me he was only going to vote for the local Democrats."

That's called the 'top of the ticket' problem, and it's a point of contention between the unions' approach, which is to work for everyone, and a few local incumbents shying away from taking a clear leadership stand to win over Clinton and McCain-leaning older Democrats.

"Most important all day," Randy added, "was one steelworker I met, who said: 'It's time to give the Black guy a chance,' and you could tell from the way he said it that he'd thought on it for some time, and probably not alone. They're seeing their pension funds shrink, their jobs lost or cut back, and they want to turn them all out."

We turn in our sheets by lunchtime and share more stories. The PDA folks are lining up people to buy tickets for a PDA 'Dinner and a Movie' night out, Nov. 1, in Monaca, PA, featuring the documentary film 'UnCounted', which will expand people's horizons on electoral problems, and help build for the next round of battles around single-payer health care and stopping the war.

Everyone agrees the tide is turning, but a lot can still happen, for better or worse. No one wants to coast. My township, Raccoon, went 30 percent for Obama in the primary, with the bulk going for Hillary. Most voters there are Democrats, and they'll break three ways-for Obama, for McCain and for 'staying home.' Getting enough to get past 50 percent was always possible, but with the Wall Street crash, it's now clearly in sight.

The Palin right's attacks on Obama as a 'terrorist' are backfiring among many as a devious diversion. Some we talk to cling to the 'Secret Muslim' stories, no matter how clearly the lies are exposed. The reason soon becomes crystal clear: they don't let go of it not because they believe it, but because it's the new way to say they won't vote for a Black candidate. That's simply a reactionary political stand, and has nothing to do with the facts.

But the grip of the right is weakening. Obama-Biden signs are going up everywhere in the white areas. When the right takes them down, more go back up. One guy down the road took a four by eight sheet of plywood, and painted it dark blue, with the Obama 08 Symbol in the middle, and leaned it against his house, as if to say, 'Let see you try to take this one down!'

After lunch we head over the Court House in Beaver. Every Saturday for more than five years now, our PDA and Beaver County Peace Links groups are out there with 'Honk for Peace' and 'Healthcare Not Warfare' signs, together with a big 'Bring the Troops Home Now' banner. We can walk and chew gum at the same time, working to end the war and defeat McCain. Today the cars are honking like we're in Times Square. It's another good sign that change is coming.

[If you like this article and others here, lend a hand by hitting the PayPal button on either http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com or http://progressivesforobama.net We'll put it to good use.]

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The Neoliberals Don't Have a Clue

Will Cutting
Taxes Really
Create Jobs Here?

By Carl Davidson

Every morning I take a look at Townhall.com to see what's on the minds of conservatives and the far right.

This morning, Lawrence Kudlow, host of CNBC’s “Kudlow & Company,” as well as a columnist and economics editor for National Review Online, was warning McCain to stick to jobs and growth in the debates, and set aside the 'guilt by association' attacks. He says:

"The financial crisis and economic downturn clearly have buried Sen. McCain in recent weeks. Some of McCain's supporters think he can turn the page on the economy Tuesday night and instead attack Obama on character and qualifications. That doesn't seem realistic.

" The recession economy and the financial crunch are front and center. Folks are asking: Can I get a loan? Will I have a job? Can I keep my house? Unfortunately, Sen. McCain's message overemphasizes government spending cuts, almost to the exclusion of stimulative and expansive tax cuts. This just doesn't seem like the right time for a government spending freeze, at least to the exclusion of other pro-growth policy levers. Sounds like too much root canal. More like Bob Dole than Ronald Reagan."

This shows he's on Planet Earth at least, but I posted a short reply, asking him 'Create Jobs Where? Here's the text:



Cutting taxes may indeed give corporations or venture capitalist more funds to invest in job creation, but what makes you think they would use it to create jobs HERE, and in areas where they're needed HERE, rather than for a higher return in, say, Malaysia?

As the neoliberals who gutted the mills here in Western PA put it, 'our job is to make money, not steel,' so they left us in the lurch to take their newly acquired funds and went off speculating in oil futures.

Creating jobs HERE requires green industrial policy with government guiding investment with both carrot and stick, and Obama is the only one talking up that program. Nice try, but no cigar. We've all learned a thing or two about markets, and to work well, they need an intelligent hand, as well as an invisible one. Read more!

Denver Diaries: Six Days of Organizing at the DNC

Day One - Getting Organized

We Push the
Basics of Organizing
In DNC's Denver



By Carl Davidson
Progressive for Obama

http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com

(Use the Paypal button there to help out)

I rolled into Denver about 3:30pm and Saturday, August 23 after a 1500 mile drive from Beaver County, Pa. A last minute safety issue had be leaving my truck camper "Progressives for Obama" mobile office in the shop, so I made do, loading tents, table chairs, mobile internet setup and everything else needed to survive for a week into the trusty little Madza.

The sky was threatening rain as I passed by 'Tent State" in the City of Cuernavaca Park. Hundred of tents, but no people. So I moved on to one of our first events, at the Cameron Methodist church in South Denver.

Tom Hayden is holding forth to about 100 people, going over all the upsides and downsides of the campaign. The crowd is most peace and justice activists, a few Democratic local officials, and young people, some skeptical of electoral politics. Tom is is good form, and explains the importance of the sheet going around you people to give their names and emails to our efforts, It get filled. His main points:


--The future is open. Take nothing for granted; everything we can do counts. Obama could lose it, especially due to the closeted racists who will used and excuse to depress his vote, plus those pushing his own centrism toward positions that demobilize his most active base.

And here is the rest of it.

--We can counter this through finding our issues, highlighting them—McCain's threatening resurrect ion of the draft, McCain's own corruption and elitism, and pressing both the campaign and the mainstream media to run with them.


--The most important task for us is to expand the electorate in the next six weeks. Several people note that they know many young activists who talk all the time bout the campaign.. "If you do nothing else," I say to the crowd, get them registered, and most important, get them to the polls. Keep a list. Don't take it for granted they will go, plus you need the list to press what will hopefully be and Obama White house in 2009."


Our message is well received. Everyone "gets it" that there's no contradiction betweem working the campaign, building the movements around our issues, and building the strength of our own grassroots organizations.

Next some is a house party and barbeque for progressive media activist organized by Laura Flanders. She had the brilliant idea of going on Craig's List and renting a house for a week. Her crew of young women bloggers, filmmakers, newspaper editors has a headquarters, and we walk in to a table full on six laptops with everyone writing and postng away. I make lost of new contact and meet old friends. We talk for hours over hot dogs and hamburgers in the back yard on ho to improve progressive media—TV shows, KPFK, In These Times and many more.

Give the darkenig sky and the emptiness of 'Tent State,' I hook up with Leslie Cagan and Judith LeBlanc of UFPJ, who found a gracious Quaker family, Eric Wright and Judy Danielson, in the city to house us. UFPJ has boxes of flyers promoting the 'Million Doors for Peace' campaign, where a coalition of a dozen groups will all doorknock on Sept 20, getting signatures on petitions, building new email lists -- all the work of basebuilding for an expanded movement. Their aim? Get the flyers in the hands of everyone in town and sign on the organizers. Quite a feat, and a good intervention for a group required by tax laws not to endorse and party or candidate.

When we show up at our hosts, a group from 'Military Families Speak Out' show up, with former Colonel Ann Wright with Vets for Peace, featuring 'Arrest Bush' T-Shirts and giving us a report on the city's extravaganza, with free food, fireworks and free rides in the amusement park for the mainstream media. I'm cynical things about Nero and 'Bread and Circuses,' but it's a political convention, after all, and far goofier things will go on around it. For now, we're working out a plan to cover some of the demos tomorrow.

-----

Day Two - Expanding Our Outreach

Debating Obama, Issues, Building Our Outreach

By Carl Davidson
Progressives for Obama

http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com

Just before 9am we're head down Colfax though old Denver, reminding me of Kerouac's descriptions in 'On The Road', seedy bars, strip joints, greasy spoons and the like. Our first stop is the Capitol rounds, where the 'Recreate 68' group is preparing its march. They have only about 500, and clearly aren't going to cause a major ruckus.

We head for 'Tent State,' but the police super-control to the streets drives us nuts with their blockades and blocked off streets. We finally find a way in, and start setting up Right away the security team tells us 'No stakes' for the tents. Seems the cops think they're weapons. My tent requires stakes, so I use them anyway to get it up, then pull most of them out. Takes us longer, but we get it done, and get our signup sheets and books out. The tent is crucial because of the heat and sunburn.

The final touch is our 'Progressives for Obama' sign out the tent and our Obama yard sign. This crowd has a lot of anarchist-minded youth and Green types, and we're the only explicitly Obama tent among about 50 tents.

Right away the key tension arises. A couple of kids with green hair say 'Obama? Progressives? What do they have to do which each other?' Then thirty seconds later, a Black teenager on his skateboard, headed for the local skate park 50 yards away, slows down, reads our stuff, then give us a fist salute, asserting loudly, 'Obama Rules!'

I explore the grounds. The most powerful table and display by far are Iraq Vets Against the War. About 30 are there, earnestly engaged is all kinds of discussions, with each other and passersby. Military Families Speak Out are there, with AFSC. The 'Boots on the Ground display is going up near the entrance. I talk with the young organizers of Tent State. They're putting up a 'Resurrection City Free University' teaching classes all week. Thousand of youth are lining up for free tickets to the 'Rage Against the Machine' concert.

We're sharing our setup with UFPJ, so we take their leaflets on the 'Million Doorknocks for Peace' for base-building on Oct. 20 to everyone standing in lines for tickets. The kids 'get it' and snatch them up.

Then Medea Benjamin shows up with Code Pink's filming making crew. She wants an interview and asks good questions about how the left can pressure Obama. "Stand firm against the war in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan,' I conclude, 'then go out a register large number of new young voters and get them to the polls, but with your own groups. Politicians pay attention to organized voters. I do several more radio, TV and press interviews throughout the day.

Tom Hayden comes by with some friends, as does Leslie Cagan. We try to figure out what happened with the first march. 'No more than 1000,' says Leslie. 't
They got to the Pepsi Center and a few tried to push further, bust didn't do very well. Tom taks to the cops to see want they know. No major problems or arrests was the answer.

The Alliance for Real Democracy stages its marches in the afternoon from Tent State. They head to downtown Denver, but break up into four smaller groups of 100 or so, and basically engage passersby and Convention delegates into friendly discussions. "Almost every delegate I met was completely against the war,' reported one. They return in batches, in high spirits, although everyone wishes they had greater numbers.

I stayed behind to secure the site while talking to people. Two local Chicano guys stop by. 'Do I really think Obama will stop the war?, one asks. 'I think he's our best shot,' I reply, but you never win anything at the top you haven't organized from below. He nods agreement. "How's your Mayor?,' I ask, knowing he's a progressive Latino. 'He's OK, but you know politicians. But what's your goal here?" I tell him I'm trying to build organizations, independent, grassroots, they we can network, some we're have something to pressure the White House on the war no matter who's in it. ' I like that,' he says. 'I have some time. I can volunteer to help out. Really. Have your folks here call me' He writes down his number and info, as I thank him.

By 5pm we hut down the tent and get ready to head to the big welcoming party at the Progressive Democratic of America/ the Nation church they taken over for a week. They having dozens of panels and workshops every day for the delegates and activists on key topics.

About 500 pack the church, all in high spirits. PDA is new and had grown rapidly in four years. Several Colorado candidates speak, as do many top figures-Jim Hightower, John Nichols, Lynn Woolsey, Norm Solomon. Tom Hayden did a powerful job stressing linking the economy and the war, and that they had not only to aim their fire at the GOP right, but at some of the center Democrats doing their work for them. He not only fired everyone up; he also had everone offer up their e-mails for 'Progressives for Obama' to widen out outreach. Not bad for a day's work.

-----

Day Three - New Media

Getting Inside The DNC Gated Communities

By Carl Davidson
Progressive for Obama

http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com

Today I started off heading for the Progressive Democrats of America/The Nation sessions at the 16th and Sherman church downtown. The theme is 'Healthcare not Warfare'-the fight for single payer, with Tim Carpenter firing up the crown and Congressman John Conyers getting into a terrific speech.

But I get pulled aside by an old friend who offers an opportunity to get inside the highly secured Pepsi Center-dubbed 'the Can' locally-for an upscale lunch with progressive writers and editors. The affair is funded by Media Matters, a relatively well-heeled media monitor and fact checker operation that is very useful. I'll spare you the detail of how we got tickets, but my friend said, 'Hey, we're both progressive writers, we got books out, let's go for it."

So we're off to 'the Can,' and find a decent place to park close by. Then we head through various mazes, bridges and chained linked enclosures, meeting up with checkers at various points, flashing our stuff and getting waved through.

At one checkpoint I run into Todd Gitlin, the writer and sociologist as well as an old SDS friend, who's headed to the same event. We catch up quickly, and in turns out he's chairing the meeting. Once we get past the final check, and up the elevator, I'm in air-conditioned splendor, compared to the sweltering previous day at 'Tent State' eating beans out of a can with lukewarm water from a fountain. Now I've got a wonderful buffet, waiters, and fancy starched and folded napkins in the water glasses.

Attendees are top writers and editors from the New Yorker and the Nation, influential academics like Cass Sunstein and Samantha Power, multimedia people and donors.

The goal of the meeting is very worthy. It's launching a new enterprise, the Progressive Book Club, designed to counter the Conservative Book Club, influential on the right and elsewhere as well.

Gitlin opens the discussion with a challenging question: Is the era of conservative right dominance over? This brings a range of responses showing that the book club is only the tip of the iceberg. The broader agenda is creating and/or building a new progressive cultural and progressive infrastructure for a new politics for the 21st century.

I chime in by noting that in my study of the right over the years, that the brightest of them actually used some of Antonio Gramci's notions of working in cultural and civil society to counter a perceived hegemonism, even if a decadent one, of the liberalism of the late 1960s. It's way past time for us to oppose their 'running it in reverse' and turning it around to build real popular democracy.

Others add to this, and soon we're off discussing whether there really are new progressive solutions out there to the whole range of political, economic and cultural concerns. There's no consensus on that point, but everyone is fired up on the initial concern. All agree it was a good meeting, and new contacts and projects are tosse around as we bring it to a close.

Now that I'm well fed, hydrated and cooled off, I head back to our radical makeshift tent city along the Platte River. Fighting a stiff breeze, I get the 'Progressives for Obama' tent in order and its signs and literature out. I'm open for business.

Soon enough about five young anarchists and radicals show up, some complete in black clothing and bandanas. They're not too hip on voting for anyone, let along Obama, but one figures out that I'm the author of the 1966 'Toward a Student Syndicalist Movement' paper, and the discussion gets far ranging and lively-ranging from Zen, to Beat poets, and election tactics in 1968 and 1972.

Then one kid whips out something looking like a Blackberry and makes a call. "Here, let's do an interview for our radio show." He presses a few buttons, then tells me, 'just pretend it's a mike, and speak into it as I ask you questions." It goes on for 15 minutes, and I lay out our approach, while he adds questions with his spin.

It's a good interview. "Give me your card. We'll have it on the air and one the net in a few days, and I'll let you know where to find it on the dial or how to I-Pod it."

As one of the authors of 'Cyber-Radicalism: A New Left for a Global Age,' I feel like a proud parent. The younger crew here have picked up on things we merely talked about in the future tense, and they now are making them part of their daily lives.

------


Day Four - Arrests, Debates, Alliances

Exposing Rove, The 'Big Tent', Beat Poets, Vets And Denver Streets

By Carl Davidson
Progressives for Obama

I start the morning by heading straight for the church hosting the week-long series of panels organized by Progressive Democrats of America and The Nation magazine. It's quickly turned into an intellectual headquarters and meeting place for leftists and progressives working the election in various ways, inside and outside the Obama campaign and the Democratic party.

A large crowd is gathering early. The buzz is all about the 100 or so young people busted and dispersed the night before by encirclement by an overwhelming police force combined with tear gas. Most of the city's citizens, let alone those just here for the DNC events, are more than tired of the massive police presence on what seems like every other corner. Add to it traffic foul-ups caused by blocked streets and triple cordons around critical spots, and the most common unifying words you hear are 'unnecessary', 'police state,' and 'overkill.'

I'll wait for the dust to settle for a fuller assessment of the bust. The deeper question is why the radical youth turnout was far less than anyone's expectations-despite a myriad of other well-attended progressive happenings around town. There are probably less than 4000 at the outside, not counting the 17,000 plus locals who signed up for the ticket lottery for 'Rage Against the Machine.

But it still needs to be said, off the bat, that the radical bunch last night had fallen into some serious 'Custerism', as in General George Custer. In planning their action, they billed it, quite openly, as an effort to crash and disrupt a Dem fundraising party at one of the hotels. But they had very few allies for such an endeavor, and were vastly outnumbered by the rather well-informed cops with all their new 'Homeland Security' toys. Needless to say, the only thing that got disrupted was their own project and a little nighttime street traffic.

Back to the opening session at the church.

It began with a fascinating and disturbing speech by Don Siegelman, Alabama's Democratic governor (1999-2003), who was defeated in 2004 by Karl Rove and friends having him indicted on false charges a month before the election, then tried and convicted in rigged trials, haul off to a maximum security prison-"Alabama's worse," he says-where he is locked up in solitary for nine months. He's finally released only after nearly 50 states attorneys general sign an appeal to a higher court not dominated by Rove cronies, where everything is dismissed.

It's a fabulous introduction to the next speaker, Greg Palast, author of 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.' He not only exposed the fascist machinations of Rove, he went on to offer an excellent exposure of election-stealing in general. His advice? Get ourselves well-trained so we can 'steal our votes back' and get an honest count.

Next is an 'Out of Iraq' dialog between Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) and Tom Hayden. Mc Dermott was an early opponent of the war, and offers insider advice of how to bring pressure to bear on your Congressman. Hayden expands on his remarks from the day before on how the left-progressives need to take issues like McCain's recent suggestions for a return to the military draft, and press it publicly in a way for the Obama campaign to take it further, to further isolate and expose McCain. Otherwise, he suggests, Obama could lose, since things are very tight.

Hayden has also been passing around sign-up sheets for Progressive for Obama's email group at every appearance. I keep an eye on the sheets, gather them up, and this morning we get another 250 or so.

At the break I decide it's time to hit the streets of Denver.

I want to check out 'The Big Tent', a site near the Pepsi center equipped for 1000 bloggers. It's literally a circus tent over a parking lot, but next to a complex of high-tech 501C3 organizations. Google is a sponsor, as are other third wave firms, and there's some serious money here-plus as a long-time 'cyberMarxist,' I want to be up on these things.

But I decide to walk the distance and take in the sights. Right off the bat, I run into dueling demos and bullhorns. Side by side are the 'Christian' theocrats denouncing abortion, gays and a long list of other violations of the Book of Leviticus, along with the 'World Can't Wait' kids with signs like 'Support Life, Smash Christian Fascism.' Both the local and tourists seem amused, and are snapping photos with their cell phones.

Further along I run into dozens of local African American button and T-Shirt sellers, all doing a brisk business with the widest variety of Obama mottos and slogans I have ever seen. Both DNC delegates and local Black workers seem to be the main customers.

Then comes a contingent of a dozen youth, dressed in black with bandanas, each carrying their own Red Flag, chanting, 'Revolution, the Only Solution! The looks range from bored to quizzical to amused-and the cell phone are snapping pictures again.

Finally I hit the 'Big Tent,' get credential and go inside. Google is offering free ice-cold smoothies in eight flavors-plus they have a machine that will put a free recharge on you cell phone or Blackberry batteries. And inside, indeed, are about 1000 bloggers working away on tables with free WiFi hookups. The implications for the future have my head spinning.

But rather than wait in line, I head for the nearest Starbucks for a large iced coffee, a favored addiction. I see two women, one whose face is familiar, so I wave her over to share the last remaining table. It turns out she's the Beat poet, Anne Waldman, old friend of Allen Ginsburg and now a professor of poetics at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetry at Naropa University, up in the mountains not too far away. We have a great time discussing Kerouac's sojourns in Denver, and she leaves me with a recording of her own poems. How's that for serendipity!

As evening arrives, I get a call offering passes to a skybox in Coors Field rented by the Council for a Livable World and VETPAC. It's aim is to offer support and interviews with about six Congressional candidates who are both Iraq vets and supporters of Obama. So I go and talk to several candidates, along with some Military Families Speak Out people. When they get done with shredding McCain's betrayal of recent veterans legislation, there's nothing left. If these guys get their message out, it will help a great deal. It's all very real, down-to-earth and a good end to the day.

-----

Day Five - Rage, Vets, Antiwar

A DNC Victory: For the Iraq Vets And 'Rage Youth'

By Carl Davidson
Progressives for Obama

I start the day early loading leaflets and joining Leslie Cagan, Judith LeBlanc and five other United for Peace and Justice volunteers headed to the Denver Coliseum on the North Side of town before 9:00AM.

We're going to the 'Rage Against the Machine' benefit for Iraq Veterans Against the War, organized by the Tent State kids and their allies, and we're expecting about 10,000 young people. It's a beautiful day-sunny, not too hot, blue skies with a few clouds, and the first range of the Rockies clear on the horizon. The concert is to be followed by a mass march to the Pepsi Center, led by the vets, to press their antiwar demands on the Democrats. Since there's no permit, and the Pepsi Center is restricted with 'protest pens' no one intends to enter, there's a sense of tension in the air.

Our UFPJ leaflet has a simple message: Join us Sept. 20 to knock on a million doors for peace. Get signatures on petitions, get to know your neighbors, get outside your 'comfort zones' into new neighborhoods and help us double the size of our movement with new names, addresses and emails.

Since the lines are long and organized, we quickly get out thousands of flyers. A brief rap, and most people say, 'Oh, this is cool. I can do this.' Some don't want to be bothered, interested only in the bands, and a few kids are rather spaced out early since no intoxicants other than the music are permitted on the grounds.

I get a 'workfare' pass into the concert with terrific seats. This means I'm on the security team for IVAW inside the concert and along the line of march. We get our special chartreuse armbands and blue wristbands, a quick training in nonviolent methods in dealing with problems. Then we're into the cavernous space, with a local Denver band, Flobots, which is decidedly left and high-energy hip-hop. IVAW speakers appear between numbers and keep the politics of the day clear and focused.

They have three demands: 'Out Now,' full benefits for returning vets, and reparations for Iraq. They have no great love for the Democrats who keep voting to fund the war, they're angry with Obama for not taking a harder line, but they see McCain as more dangerous, both to the world and to vets. They want militancy, but they insist on nonviolence for the day, and demand a resolute respect for their leadership and ground rules.

When "Rage" comes on the stage and gets itself and the crowd wound up, one thing becomes crystal clear. If you're interested in radical and democratic social change from below, here is one powerful engine for it. You dismiss, ignore or demoralize the high energy and critical force of these young people at your peril. This is a multiclass, multinational force of youth, and on this day, they are accepting the lead of the working class, even if it's taking the form of the politics, militancy, organization and discipline of the Iraq vets.

The beautiful thing is how well it all worked.

The vets marched in formation with cadence at the front, dozens of them in uniform, some in full dress with a chest full of medals. They wanted us to keep a short space for media behind them, then everyone else another few yards back behind a large banner supporting GI resistance to the war. No breakaways and no nonsense. If arrest situations came up, we had our instructions on how to keep those who didn't want to risk arrest still involved, but out of the immediate reach of the police.

I'd guess that at least two-thirds of the 10,000 Rage fans joined us, then we picked up other youth, a few workers, and even Convention delegates along the way. The banners and signs and costume were colorful, the chants imaginative and militant, and the energy infected everyone, even the crowds of bystanders, many of whom broke into applause.

I had one of the harder jobs, keeping people from breaking the front ranks and jumping the banner. But with the vets leadership, we kept the spirit both upbeat and disciplined. Denver's overkill police presence was everywhere, but everything remained civil. Some even felt some sympathy for them, sweltering on a hot sunny day in their new Black Ninja Turtle outfits, which must have been unbearable.

It was a long march, nearly five miles. One problem was keeping everyone hydrated, but cases of water kept showing up at critical points. The best energy was downtown Denver, with the cheering and applause from Convention delegates. But we all knew there were trouble spots ahead.

Denver's security rules meant you couldn't get closer to the Pepsi center than several hundred yards, and then you were to be put in fenced 'protest pens.'

The vets would have none of it. They hadn't risked their lives, supposedly defending the Constitution, to be treated this way. They were going to march until they were stopped and then we'd seen what would happen. As we got closer to the skirmish line, they stopped several times, and the vets took turns giving heart-rending stories to the press, which, by this time, was everywhere, and driving us nuts trying to keep them to respect our lines and discipline.

At the final stopping point, a decorated Marine told the cops they would get no violence from us, and we expected none from them. The three demands were read to Obama's campaign and the Democratic Party. The vets demanded a response, and were determined to wait for one.

So now we had the problem of keeping thousands of people, encircled by police and barricades, in an upbeat, but patient and calm state of mind.

One young Black kid from Denver of our security team rose to the occasion. He starts doing his raps, and those of others as well. The crowd loves it, especially when he gets on their case for not being too good at 'call and response.' So he starts an on-the-spot workshop on how we can all become better rappers.

Next two young African American women start softly singing an old church-based civil rights song 'Those Who Love Freedom..." The lyrics are simple and lyrical, and soon hundreds are singing it, over and over. For me, powerful memories come up from my days on Freedom Marches in Mississippi, when we sang this same song in the face of the Klan and cops. When I start to sing along, my eyes fill with tears from long-buried emotions. To hell with it, I decide, let the tears flow, and I sing along.

Finally, we get the word. The other side blinked. The Obama campaign's top veterans affairs people ask the Vets to send two reps into the Pepsi center to discuss their demands. Moreover, they want an ongoing series of discussions to make sure all veterans concerns are heard and dealt with. That's enough for IVAW to call a victory, even if a partial one, and work out a way to bring the day to a close. It's decided that we part the crowd down the middle, opening a path. The vets do an about face, march in formation though the crowd, and as they pass, to many cheers, we fall in behind, get back to the downtown area, and go our various ways.

I find a way to get to my car, then back to 'tent city' to secure our display in preparations for leaving. I meet up with my team in a Taco joint, where they, along with some of the new media people working with Laura Flanders, are watching Joe Biden's speech. I'll have to read it tomorrow, because given everything we've been through, right now it seems rather trivial.

-----

Day Six - Making Connections

Why the DNC Is Like Going To High School

By Carl Davidson
Progressives for Obama

http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com

This is my last day in town, and all the talk around the breakfast table is how and where everyone will watch or listen to 'The Speech', Obama's premier performance at Invesco Field. I decide not to waste time hassling long lines or working connections for tickets, since I can watch it on TV in nearby Boulder, where my partner is staying with family.

So I head for the church hosting 'The Nation' and Progressive Democrats of America. On arrival, I've just missed Rev. Jesse Jackson, but Ron Kovic of 'Born on the Fourth of July' fame and early member of Vietnam Vets Against the War is holding forth on his mistreatment at a past GOP convention. He then reports on yesterday's powerful five-mile IVAW and youth march. He did the entire length in his wheelchair. He can't praise the organizers highly enough, acknowledges that Obama did the right thing, but says to keep pushing on. He ends by asserting that we can't let the right have a monopoly on patriotism, so long as we remember we're also 'citizens of the world.' He gets a standing ovation.

I decide to walk the streets again. I want to take it all in, and reflect at little on what major party conventions are all about.

First stop is the lobby at the Sheraton. For a veteran organizer like me, working away on a variety on fronts for 45 years, all I have to do is stand there for 15 minutes and someone I know will show up. Sure enough, someone calls my name, and it's Brian Kettenring from ACORN, now one of their top organizers. I first met him when he was a young student ACORN worker in Chicago. He's been on the West Coast for years, but introduces me to ACORN activists from Pennsylvania, now my base area.

Brian tells me he's headed for ACORN headquarters in DC, where, half-joking, half serious, he tells me he wants them to let him set up a 'Department of Socialism' to discuss 'bigger picture things'. I tell him I've working on just the thing for him, the newly formed 'U.S. Solidarity Economy Network,' with an upcoming conference early in 2009. My trend in SEN is based on David Schweickart's 'After Capitalism' with 'Economic Democracy' as a 'successor system' enroute to a fuller blown socialism. It'll challenge ACORN, but it starts on the ground, where they are. He's very interested, and we decide to stay in touch on it. Plus I now have a new contact in Philly.

So there's lesson number one. Conventions are about horizontal networking. Completely apart from the official goings-on, this stuff happens everywhere. Multiply my short example with Brian by 100, and you get the idea.

From the Sheraton, I take an elevated walkway and run into a building with an inviting, postmodernist display on ecology, energy and related topics. It's aimed at DNC delegates and put up by a high-tech design outfit called 'Partly Sunny: Designs to Change the Forecast. Inside are dozens of displays of green and solar construction materials and firms to build the homes and offices of the future. When a young guide offers to help, I ask 'are any these outfits worker or community coops?' Some are, she answers, and shows me how I can find out more. This gets me thinking that almost all of these firms are what we call 'high road capitalists' and thus some of them possible candidates to pull into our solidarity economy networking.

Now 'Partly Sunny' is just one of thousands of corporate displays, presentations and parties going on all week. While this one is a small, relatively progressive example, all of them, bad guys and good guys, are going all out in the DNC events to draw the country's political class upward and into its orbit of influence.

Thus we have lesson number two. Conventions are about vertical networking and its more aggressive cousin, cooptation. There's a constant influx of newer and younger delegates, candidates, elected officials and party workers to be recruited. If you've been to college, think fraternity and sorority 'Rush Week', and you'll have the right idea.

I head back to the church because I want to catch PDA's summary sessions. Along the way, I run into a dozen people I know wanting to know if I know where they can get tickets (I don't) or telling me about the hoops they went through to get them.

This is lesson three. Conventions are about discovering the pecking orders in the various cliques, and how to turn them to your advantage, for good reasons or otherwise.

So I what do I conclude? Major party conventions are really a lot like high school and the socialization process we all experience in and through them. Learning all the cliques, all the pecking orders, where you can best fit in and suffer least, having a good time in the coolest clubs and extracurricular activities. You know, all the important stuff that goes on everywhere except the classroom. At the DNC, all the important stuff these days goes on everywhere EXCEPT on the convention floor and the 'big night' speeches. These latter events are actually, for better or worse, carefully scripted infomercials mostly far beyond our reach.

A corollary lesson: You can accomplish a lot here, but you better come in with a very clear idea of your core values, your own platform and your strategic orientation. If you don't, you'll wind up being part of someone else's platform and strategy. But if you do, you can make major gains.

PDA is a case in point. As I arrive for the final sessions, Dennis Kucinich is pressing impeachment, whipping out his pocket copy of the Constitution. Next, Steve Cobble, Leslie Cagan, Jaime Raskin (State Senator, Maryland) and Rep Keith Ellison, the Congressman from Minnesota who is also a practicing Muslim, and caused a flurry in the press when he was sworn in using Thomas Jefferson's personal copy of the Koran--all of them are on the platform, ready to follow up and discuss what it means to defend the Constitution and democracy in even broader terms.

Tim Carpenter, PDA's tireless chief organizer and John Nichols of the Nation are setting up the crowd. Tim is explaining how PDA has grown, in just four years, from a few dozen in 2004 to now over 140,000 members all across the country. Mimi Kennedy and Jodie Evans are also there, and add in on how the persistent and audacious pursuit of their 'inside-outside' strategy has succeeded and the turnouts to all the sessions this week shows they've made even greater gains.

PDA, of course, is hardly the only player in the progressive movement. I like much of what they do, and work closely with them back in Beaver County, Pa. But there's also room for improvement and other approaches and organizations, too. My point here is that groups ignoring and avoiding the political events and activities surrounding elections--and you don't have to support any candidate or platform to be engaged in them--are only shooting themselves in the foot.

I'm hardly a believer that basic social change is achieved by elections. But I'm a firm believer that change on this order must proceed THROUGH them, in the long march through all the institutions of our society, building the strongholds we need for the popular power and economic democracy that can take us even farther down the road. With that thought in mind, I'm headed back to Beaver County, Western PA, where I hear Obama and Biden are making a bus tour around the state. It's a very tight race there, and we'll soon see if this helps.

Read more!

Battleground Choice: Lesser Evil or Positive Good?

Photo: Antiwar Action in Chicago

Obama on
the War and
National Security

By Carl Davidson
Progressives for Obama

The broad base of Obama supporters, particularly its insurgent antiwar and youth contingents, are both mobilizing and being mobilized to create a firewall between their candidate and all the forces of 'rightward drift' that could sabotage Obama's candidacy.

Parts of the 'forces of rightward drift' are the attack ads of the GOP and the right that have little to do with Obama's platform. Part comes from the DLC 'Blue Dogs' and the corporate lobbyists who have compromised the party into defeat time and again. But still another part resides in some flawed and conflicted thinking within the positions of the candidate himself.



Nowhere is this more evident than around the question of Iraq and national security. To his everlasting credit, Obama opposed this war before it began. As he has often said, it was an 'unnecessary' war and a 'dumb' war.

But it was also an unjust war, meaning it can only be prolonged with greater injustice. And that also means there is no painless way to bring it to an end, even as we must end it. That illusion is best set aside. Obama has yet to grapple with this in a clear and decisive way.

Most Americans at the grass roots understand, to one degree or another, the need to decisively stop the war, from activists at the left end of the political spectrum to the ordinary voters at the center and center-right. All the complex 'triangulated' caveats are meant for the beltway national security wonks and pundits, not for them. When Obama campaigned in Western Pennsylvania, he drew his longest, loudest standing ovations from working-class crowds-economically progressive, socially conservative--when he asserted, with an authentic voice, that he would end this war in 2009.

That's how Obama will continue to win voters, and how he will win the election. If he does otherwise, he's in trouble.

Here in Western Pennsylvania where I am, the race is very tight. But the key to winning it is expanding the electorate, organizing and mobilizing large numbers of new younger voters, a task which requires the high energy and commitment for a youthful, antiwar base and core of organizers. The DLC option has been to distance Obama, and other candidates, from this core, to 'diss' it and thus demobilize it, at least substantially-all for the sake of appeasing smaller and smaller numbers of 'undecideds' on the center right.

If the DLC option wins out, Obama becomes simply one more in a long historical string of negative 'lesser evils' that stir much less enthusiasm. If they don't, then Obama remains a positive good for peace voters, and many more besides.

That's what's 'at risk' here. Tom Hayden spelled this danger out clearly in his July 4 article, 'Barack, Iraq and Risk,' which, with his permission, I quote considerably here:

"From the beginning, Obama's symbolic 2002 position on Iraq has been very promising, reinforced again and again by his campaign pledge to "end the war" in 2009.

"But that pledge also has been laced with loopholes all along, caveats that the mainstream media and his opponents [excepting Bill Richardson] have ignored or avoided until now. As I pointed out in Ending the War in Iraq [2007], Obama's 2002 speech opposed the coming war with Iraq as "dumb", while avoiding what position he would take once the war was underway. Then he wrote of almost changing his position from anti- to pro-war after a trip to Iraq. He never took as forthright a position as Senator Russ Feingold, among others. Then he adopted the safe, nonpartisan formula of the Baker-Hamilton Study Group, which advocated the withdrawal of combat troops while leaving thousands of American counter-terrorism units, advisers and trainers behind.

"That would mean at least 50,000 Americans, including back up forces, engaged in counter-insurgency after the withdrawal of combat troops, a contradiction the media and Hillary Clinton failed to explore in the primary debates. To his credit, Obama said that these American units would not become caught up in a lengthy sectarian civil war, leaving the question of their role unanswered….
Finally, it has taken the pressure of the general election to raise questions about whether his parsed and lawyerly language is empty of credible meaning. Consider carefully his July 4 statements:

"The first one, promising a "thorough reassessment" of his Iraq position later this summer:

"I've always said that the pace of our withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability" - two conditions that could justify leaving American troops in combat indefinitely. "And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I'm sure I'll have more information and will continue to refine my policies" - another loophole which could allow the war to drag on.

"Then there came the later "clarification":

"Let me be as clear as I can be" [not, "let me be absolutely clear"].

"I intend to end this war." [intention only].

"My first day in office I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war - responsibly, deliberately, but decisively." [ Sounds positive, but "decisively" can mean by military threat in the worst case. And it's pure theatre, borrowed from Clinton, since the plans most likely will be drafted and finalized immediately after the November election.]

"And I have seen no information that contradicts the notion that we can bring our troops out safely at a pace of one or two brigades a month..." [but what if the military commanders on the ground assert that it is too dangerous to pull out those troops?]

"Obama's position, which always left a trail of unasked questions, now plants a seed of doubt, justifiably, among the peace bloc of American voters who harbor a legacy of betrayals beginning with Lyndon Johnson's 1064 pledge of "no wider war" through Richard Nixon's "secret plan for peace" to Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal and the deep complicity of Democrats in the evolution of the Iraq War.

"It is difficult to understand Obama's motivation. Perhaps it is his lifetime success at straddling positions and disarming potential opponents. Perhaps it is a lawyer's training. Perhaps being surrounded by national security advisers who oppose what they call "precipitous withdrawal", and pragmatic Democrats distinctly uncomfortable with their antiwar roots.

"What is clear is that Obama is responsive to pressures from the grass-roots base of a party that is overwhelmingly in favor of a shorter timetable for withdrawal than his, and favoring diplomatic rather than military solutions in Afghanistan and Pakistan. At a time that public interest in the war is receding before economic concerns, it is time for the strongest possible reassertion of voter demands for peace.

"The challenge for the peace and justice movement is to avoid falling into Republican divide-and-conquer traps while maintaining a powerful and independent presence in key electoral states, including Congressional battlegrounds, between now and November. There should be at the least:

"- A demand that Obama talk to legitimate representatives of the peace movement, not simply hawkish national security advisers.

"- A Democratic platform debate and plank that is unequivocal in pledging to end the war and avoid military escalation elsewhere.

"- An energized antiwar voter education campaign that builds towards a clear November peace mandate to end the military occupation and shifr to political and diplomatic approraches.

"- An organizational strategy to widen the base of the antiwar movement through the presidential campaign in preparation for a massive peace mobilization in early 2009.

"Grass-roots people power is the only force that can keep alive the astute sense of pragmatism that led Obama to criticize the coming war in 2002. The stakes are higher now, and the enemies far shrewder, wishing to rip asunder the Obama coalition. The peace movement assumption should be that there is no one in Obama's inner circle of advisers to be counted on, no mainstream columnist to catch his eye with a persuasive column favoring withdrawal. They never have. Only the voice of the peace voters - and the countless activists who have volunteered on his behalf - can command his attention now."

It is important to be clear about what Hayden is saying here. 'Progressives for Obama', of which Hayden is a founder, has understood from the beginning that Obama would be speaking to and from the center of American political life. Obama is not a leftist, anti-imperialist, or even a consistent progressive, a point we have made since the beginning of this project, when we said the upcoming problem of 'rightward drift' was why we were forming this independent pole and network of forces.

That is now being played out. Both the far left and the right, for their own reasons, are doing all they can to drive a wedge between progressive Obama voters and moderate-center Obama voters. How much some in the campaign itself capitulate remains to be seen. In our view, the task of organizing and energizing new and younger voters, expanding the electorate, is more important than making energy-sapping concessions to unlikely breakaways from the conservative camp.

But the fact remains is that it will take both blocs voting for Obama to defeat McCain, and we will work to expand and maintain that broad and necessary unity.

It's well known the Obama has some points of agreement with McCain, such as support for the death penalty. There are more where that one came from. It's also well known that they have sharp differences, such as Roe v Wade and a woman's right to chose. There are also many others. After all, McCain is a Republican conservative and Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate, which is notable, but from a left and progressive perspective, still leaves a lot to be desired.

Keeping a scorecard of either serious matters or less serious 'gotcha' points from statements by the two candidates is fine. But far more important is making an assessment of the deep divisions in our ruling establishment over Iraq, and Iran as well. Then assess how these forces have grouped and regrouped themselves, and finally, what conflicting outcomes they are working for in this election.

Next comes making an assessment of the forces at the base in motion in this campaign, both the new progressive insurgencies and the retrograde trends of racial and religious bigotry. Then you decide who are your friends and who are your adversaries, and you deploy what limited forces you have to strike at the main danger while helping the more progressive forces, as best as you can, prepare for battles beyond the elections and in the streets and all the institutions of civil society.

There is some turmoil right now, but it's not too hard to figure this out and sty on course. You need a clear head, a clear idea of the main task today, and a clear idea of the main danger today. But if you don't, you get tangled up in demobilizing cul-de-sacs. Our slogan to keep a laser-like focus between now and November: Stop McCain, stop the War, Vote Obama 2008. Let's give Obama some heat, and prepare for more in Denver and beyond.

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Battle Plans: Getting 'Clout' with Obama

Photo: Key Issue to Press on Obama

Progressives
And 'Clout’
in Elections

By Carl Davidson
Progressives for Obama


[This is a reply to important questions from David Hamilton (MDS, Austin, TX) posed last week on our ‘Progressives for Obama’ yahoo group email list. -Carl Davidson, webmaster, 'Progressives for Obama, ' http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com]

How do progressives and antiwar voters increase their influence within the Obama campaign?

The place to start is where you are, by working on expanding your own influence among local voters, building or creating new local grassroots groups, and winning these voters to take part in them or be in communication with them in various ways. The rule here is that most politicians, including Obama, pay attention mainly to organized voters and organized money. Since the later isn't our forte, work on the former. Then let the local campaign know what you're doing, cooperate in some ways, but still keep your own independence and initiative.

All the basic ‘How To’ Documents for doing this are posted as the first documents on http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com



The local Obama staffers will often start asking you for "advice" right away. I usually tell them things like, "the better and more detailed line you take for new green industries and new green jobs, the more votes you'll get around here. It you want the more conservative white workers to listen, this is what you need to be saying' or 'the harder and clearer you come out for getting out of Iraq in 2009, no pussy-footing around with smaller groups of troops left behind, the more votes you will get, and the harder we'll work for you.' You have to speak for a group, and you have to frame a position that adds votes for Obama, rather than subtracts votes, or at least adds more than it subtracts, and you have to have something to back it up. Then you have to do it over and over.

Remember, we're not interested in making him into a leftist or anti-imperialist. He has never been either, or claimed to be, and there's no electoral majority for that platform in 2008 in any case. But we are interested in seeing him doing better than he sometimes does in putting together a stronger left-progressive-center coalition vs. the right

I'd also stress the importance of a laser-like focus on our main task, between now and November, Stop McCain, Stop the War. All considerations of wrangling within the campaign, or with friends and allies outside of it, are secondary to that.

One way would be go grow ProgressivesforObama…

Yes, but 'Progressives for Obama' is mainly a national web and media project at this point, with a small but growing grassroots network. We have 10,000 or so visitors and a little under 2000 people who have signed on to our various groups so far, some of them well known and influential. We get reposted and discussed everywhere, with about 50,000 Google hits.

This is only a good start on the national level. It's far from being a major player, save for some of the contributions of some of our more influential figures. More important is what we're developing on the city level. This is usually mainly centered on a local blog or two that becomes a communication center for a local nonpartisan alliance of progressive groups and individuals inside and outside of the local Democratic party and the local Obama campaign (those two are most often different). As we get more of these in more areas and states, and they get networked nationwide, then a great deal more clout flows upward to 'Progressives for Obama.' So grow the base locally to strengthen the national voice, and then we'll feed the political capital we gain back to you to grow the base more, and so on.

But if we get thousands and thousands of people on the list service, we all get thousands of emails every day. And how would that be different from MoveOn?

If you multiplied what we've done by 100,000, you'd get something close to the MoveOn model, minus the fundraising apparatus. Even that is not exactly right, since we want to put far more emphasis on the grassroots base. What 'MoveOn' calls its 'meetups', we want to see our local formations as full-fledged local coalitions and alliances with their local online voice. The more email addresses you can get on our well-moderated listservs, the wider pool you have to draw in the most active individuals and groups.

Do we all go to work for the local Obama campaign?

That's up to you. It's the most immediate way to have daily connections with their volunteers. It's certainly better than doing nothing, and we should have some connection with it in any case, so we each know what's going on. But most important, from our core perspective, is to build organizations of your own that do the work of the campaign, but do it in our own way. For instance, on your tables, you may want to push single-payer 'Health Care not Warfare' petitions. And you want to be sure to keep all the lists gathered and resources gained for yourselves, for our use long after the official campaign has folded up. That's the difference between a liberal approach and a more grassroots, participatory democracy approach. This way, no matter what happens with the campaign, you grow your own strength on the wider playing field of the 2008 campaign.

Can Tom Hayden get inside the organization and bring along friends? We have to maintain a critical perspective, but we also have to be on the inside. Does ProgressivesforObama have contacts inside now?

Hayden has some connections, as do our other signers, but more important is the fact that we have a number of elected and appointed delegates, mostly with Progressive Democrats of America, one of the allied groups at our launching, but also a few who are just 'Progressives for Obama' members who are also delegates. They already have a decent antiwar plank submitted, with about 50 Congressmen signed on, to wage a floor fight. We need more, so if you know local delegates in our camp, or are in a position to get a position, do so right away, and let us know.

We should be very influential because, of all the reasons Obama won the nomination, support from antiwar voters was probably the most crucial. Probably 80% of the voters in the Democratic primaries were against the Iraq War. When the campaign for the Democratic Party nomination began, there were a bunch of men who were all against the Iraq War and there was Hillary Clinton who no one trusted to be against it because of her vote authorizing it and her refusal to renounce that vote. The antiwar forces eventually congealed around Obama and that's the main reason he won. So, the antiwar forces deserve influence and the question is how to we exert and maximize that influence.

You're absolutely right. But there's a big difference between what 'should be' and what is. Representing a mass of atomized individuals, even if they number in the millions in a huge movement, counts for something, but not enough. Then consider that a sizable minority of antiwar groups are hostile to Obama, and elections generally, while others are constrained from any coordination with any candidate by their tax status, and our influence is weaker than it could or should be. The antiwar movement, and especially its affording Obama the venues to define himself as the one with the judgment to oppose the war in the beginning, was critical to his success, especially against Clinton. But we weren't the only factor. The African American community, and the wider youth upsurge, were also powerful. We can claim the former, but not the latter two. So again, the key is to get our voice ORGANIZED at the base, and press for what is due us--on constructive grounds, to our advantage, and with a little restraint. We want him mainly to speak to and for the anti-war majority of the population, not simply as a voice of the antiwar coalitions, which are considerably to the left.

Finally, there's another high priority, and which actually doesn't require that much organization (although more organization is always better). That's defending Obama from right-wing attacks on our issues and positions, especially from the mainstream media.

So, for example, in just the last week the Washington Post ran an editorial trashing Obama for supporting a "precipitous" withdrawal from Iraq, essentially attacking in the person of Obama the views endorsed by a majority of the American people, the majority of Congress, the majority of Iraqis, and the majority of Iraqi parliamentarians. Of course, the WP editors didn't acknowledge these four other groups of people. Then yesterday the WP ran a hit piece attacking Obama for wanting to talk to Iran without preconditions, citing unnamed European officials.

One of our members, Robert Naiman, posted a sharp reply to it via Huffington Post, which was in turn passed on widely. Part of the virtue of doing this is that even if the Obama campaign doesn't appear to notice, it will still have a positive effect - reducing pressure from the right is as good as adding pressure to the left.

I'm sure there are more ways to grow and deploy our political influence. Free free to add your suggestions into the hopper, and we'll grow this memo into a regular handbook.

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Battle Plans: Election Organizing 101

Photo: GOTV Team in Maryland

'How-To' for Leftists and
Progressives Allergic
to the Democratic Party
but Who Want to Back Obama

By Carl Davidson

Start where you are.

I’m assuming a neighborhood-based group. In you are not in a neighborhood based group, then join one or start one, around peace and justice issues.

Most of the people in your group will have little or no experience working an election. That’s OK, they’re going to use this election to train themselves. Also, the people in you group will know bits and pieces about the neighborhood, but not systematically, and most of the neighborhood won’t know them, either. That’s OK too, because you’ll use this election to gain more systematic knowledge, and get yourselves known, too.

Hold a meeting and make a plan. Assign someone to get precinct maps and registered voter lists. Assign someone else to find out how to become a deputy voter registrar, and then have a bunch do it. Have someone become a notary public, if no one is. Have someone else see what it takes to be a pollwatcher and election judge. Assign some people to volunteer for these posts and get trained for them. Have someone else find out who else is doing voter registration in the neighborhood. Check the churches and union halls, and introduce yourselves.




Next, divide up the precincts, and prepare for step one, ‘IDTV,’ identify the vote. You want to find out, on every block, who’s registered and who’s not, who’s against the war and who’s not, and who’s for Obama and who’s not. You make up some flyers with your take on things to take with you. The you TALK TO PEOPLE, call it the ‘mass line’ or whatever, but get outside your comfort zone. In addition to finding like-minded souls to join you, your goal is to divide the people on every block into three–those with you (pluses), those against you (minuses) and those in between (zeros).

Next step, RTV, register the vote. You don’t register everyone this time, but focus on registering the pluses and zeros who are not registered. Never tell anyone you won’t register them, though. Pay attention to younger voters especially. Do this door to door, set up tables, whatever.

Next step, ETV, voter education. Hold a public meeting, invite the new contacts, have speakers run out your view of things, and well as some with other views. Have friendly debates. Sell literature. Recruit to study groups.

Next step, close to election day, GOTV, get out the vote. By now the size of your group should be double or triple in its core. Make calls to all your pluses, then all your zeros, telling them where and when to vote. Make an election day team with ‘watchers,’ ‘runners’ and ‘passers.’ Watchers’ are in the polling place with a list of all your pluses, minuses, and zeros, and check them off as they come in. ‘Runners’ get on the phone or go to the doors on those who haven’t shown up yet, ‘passers’ stand outside the poll with little reminder cards, but mainly to make sure the other side doesn’t intimidate anyone into not voting. ‘Watchers’ are also trained in what to watch for to make sure no one is rigging the count.

Next, PTV, protect the vote. This is for pollwatchers and judges, of which you should have several. They stay with the count to make sure it’s reported properly. Finally, CTV, consolidate the vote. Have a victory party, bring speakers, literature, get new tasks to new members, preparing them for mass action to make sure whoever gets elected stops the war, and so on.

Here’s the point.

Your local group is now much larger. It’s more experienced. The neighborhood knows you. You have new allies in other groups you’ve worked with. You now not only know how to hold demos in the streets, you know how to work elections. Your knowledge of 'the masses' is several levels higher than anything you’ve done before. You’ve created a building block of what could become a component of a mass party of the people. You now don’t just talk about politics, you have something to do politics WITH. And you haven’t even had to have anything to do with local Democrats unless you chose to, and every gain you’ve made belongs to you, not to them.

In brief, you’re far more empowered than before you started–and that’s the whole point. Naturally, this isn’t the only way. Some people may just want to jump into whatever Obama group is at their school, whatever their union is doing, or whatever the local Dems are doing. Those all have something to be said for them, but that’s not the main thing those of us with a more strategic view are advocating.

In any case, doing something is better than doing nothing. At least you’ll have some practice to bring to the table when it comes to summing up experience.

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Report from Beaver County

Mill in Old Aliquippa

Bitterness, Hope
And Obama
In Western PA

By Carl Davidson

When I heard Hillary Clinton and John McCain claiming, against Barack Obama's recent observation, that there was no 'bitterness' among working-class voters in Western Pennsylvania, I burst out laughing, 'they've got to be kidding!'

Unfortunately they weren't, and now the cable news punditry and right-wing talk radio has a new diversionary cause of the week to dump on Obama in lieu of serious discussion of policy and programs.
I'm born and bred in Beaver County, Western PA, which, in 1960, was the most blue-collar county in the entire country-steel, strip mines, and everything related to both. My grandfather died in the mill, Jones & Laughlin Steel, crushed by a crane, and another cousin met the same fate a few decades later. My parents are both in the Pennsylvania Bowlers Hall of Fame (and Barack would do well to stick to basketball!). After a long stint in New York City and Chicago, which were irresistible in my youth, I'm now back home, living in Raccoon Township.

Take it from me. There are a lot of bitter voters in these mill towns and the townships outside them. If they don't express it to the coiffured media, they do to each other. It's easy to see why. The towns are mostly empty, ravaged by deindustrialization. And the brown fields where the mills once stood are so poisoned grass won't even grow. After sitting empty for years, the first new structure to go up not too long ago on one near here was a new prison.





Does this mean it's a clear path for Obama? Not at all, it's a rough climb, full of difficulties. But he's doing better than anyone expected. None of the polls are that trustworthy, because some tell the pollsters the 'right' answer, while others, such as new youth voters with only cell phones, are hard to find. Obama's closing on Clinton, now by a five point spread. The more people see him, the more they like him. But both Democrats run neck-to-neck against McCain in November. This is not a 'safe state' for anyone, anytime.

'White male identity politics' is the unpredictable elephant in the room. I've talked with older blue collar voters who claim John Edwards was their runaway favorite, but are now leaning to John McCain, in spite of their hatred for the war. White workers generally split three ways, roughly proportional, between the three candidates.

Younger working-class voters, male and female, white or Black, are not so caught up in it, and they are Obama's ace-in-the-hole. If his campaign can get them to the polls in droves, he can win it. That's the long and short of it, and if you can get here to help, please do so. Everything counts.

The bitterness runs deep, favors no single candidate, and comes in several varieties. Retired steelworkers here had their pensions stolen by speculative capital, winning only part of them back by hitting the streets. There's also another kind of bitterness in Pennsylvania's demographics. It's now one of the oldest population areas in the country. My young nephews and nieces, even with some local college degrees or courses behind them, have a hard time finding work. Many young people have moved away to Florida or California, leaving older relatives behind.

Here in Raccoon, they're now shutting down the elementary school, claiming 500 pupils doesn't justify the expense to keep it open. It means an hour on the bus for youngsters from a perfectly good school, and, yes, many parents are bitter.

Aliquippa is the nearest town to me, known as home of Mike Ditka and Tony Dorsett. In my youth, it was a bustling blue-collar town of 20,000-some 10,000 workers in the mill, a mixture of Serbs, Italians and African-Americans. Now it's down to 6000, mostly poor and Black. They were the hardest hit of all, lacking the rural family homesteads to fall back on. Now joblessness, crime and addiction take a very bitter toll on the families still there, with nowhere to go.

Does this mean it's all bleak? No, not at all, although Hillary Clinton is just dissembling, or worse, to assert that there's no bitterness, only resilience and hope, in these towns. People here like to pull themselves up independently whenever they can, like the Scots-Irish and Germans who predominated here in the 1800s. Their class solidarity means they'll accept a hand-up, and offer one, too.

But they don't like hand-outs at all, unless you're at death's door, which is why their anti-'Fat Cat' populism also contains antipathy to some features of liberalism. It's also why Obama gets a standing ovation when he tells college students he'll help, but challenges them to give back, with community service work.

This blue-collar populism runs the political gamut-left, center and right. You can get colorful examples in the hot debates in the interactive pages of the online edition of the largest daily paper, the Beaver County Times. Pick any topic or candidate-you'll get fierce denunciations of the rich man's war for oil, combined with warnings against Hillary' 'socialism', claims that Obama's a secret Muslim, and despair that McCain's a clone of Bush.

In this lively public square, Obama or any candidate would do well to discern the main themes. Don't get me wrong. People here are open and friendly. They don't expect you to agree with them, or vice versa. But they do expect authenticity, so when you get out organizing, speak from the heart, and don't put your head higher than anyone else's, and expect the same in return.

At the top of their list is stopping the war now, since it's preventing any solutions to anything else. Next, do something about health care-single payer is best, but either Obama's or Hillary's plan rather than nothing. Then debt relief and fuel prices, although no miracles are expected here.

Finally there's creating new jobs and new wealth. This is probably most important strategically, but people have been spun so many promises, they're cynical, and Obama was right to point it out. Still he should look deeper here, and more often.

What gets people's attention are 'high road' programs like the Apollo Alliance, new 'green' industrial jobs building the infrastructure of energy independence. All those wind turbines and wave generators and whatnot have to be built somewhere, and what blue collar Pennsylvania, white and Black, knows how to do very well is build things that create high value and new wealth.

This is what gets people's attention, not rebates, handouts and McJobs. Obama's a natural on this subject, and he'd best spend less ad money on how's he's not in thrall to lobbyists, and spend more as an advocate of green industrial policy that would give these mill towns real hope for change.

[Carl Davidson is a peace and justice activist, a 'Solidarity Economy' organizer, and webmaster for 'Progressives for Obama' at http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com.]

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Taking the War to the Election

Getting Voter
Guides Out in
Zelienople, PA



By Carl Davidson

Last weekend a handful of us decided to take our message about the war and the election to Zelienople, PA, figuring if we could do it there, we could do it anywhere.

Zelienople, or 'Zelie' as it's affectionately called around here, is one of those hundreds of 'little towns that time forgot' scattered across Pennsylvania. It's tucked away in the rolling hills and hollows bordering Beaver and Butler counties in the Western part of the state on the Connoquenessing Creek. (Say that fast and properly, and you're better than me, and I grew up here!) Population is 4000 or so, mostly working class and 98 percent white. Once rich in iron ore, the businesses now mainly service local farms.

This month all these places are in the national media spotlight as battleground areas in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary April 22.




But Zelie also has a gourmet coffee house called Beechers that serves as a public square, and they invited my brother, Howard Davidson, and his Pittsburgh Songwriters Circle, to perform. They're a mixture of bluegrass and blues artists, and if you got any more grassroots, you'd be down there in the dirt with the grubs.

'Do an antiwar song to give me a hook, and I'll bring some leaflets, voter guides on the war,' I said to him when he invited me to go along. 'No problem, I always do an antiwar song anyway,' he replied.

We get there just as he comes on stage. The place is packed, about 50 people, greying boomers for the most part, but younger families with small children, too. It's standing room only on Friday night in Zelie.

'I'd like to welcome my family,' say Howard at the close of his self-introduction. That's my brother, the peacenik, back there with the stack of leaflets about Obama, all the other candidates and the war.' I wave my clipboard. Everyone smiles, one or two tables cheer.

In all the four acts in the Songwriters Circle, everyone does songs written by themselves, with content plucked from the local air people breathe here, with both their hopes and their troubles. He does a plaintive ballad, 'Bring Him Home,' from the viewpoint of a soldier's wife, followed by a livelier 'Where is Pete Seeger Now That We Need Him.' He ends with a song the circle gave him to write, as an assignment, about 'decisions.' 'Decisions, you know, like on election day. Don't forget my brother back there with his leaflets.'

Next up is the 'Lonesome No More' band doing a terrific bluegrass rag that reminds me of Country Joe and the Fish. A few people are leaving, so I work the door. Howard grabs a stack of our voter guides and works the room, and in five minutes, everyone has one and every table is reading them. He joins the band as their bass player, and I hear a fierce and poignant song about Northern Kentucky, not too far down the Ohio from here.

I get only favorable comments from people going out at the end. 'Thanks for bringing these Obama leaflets,' one lady says, taking some more. 'They're actually nonpartisan,' I explain. 'They simply rate all the candidates on the war, and he does rather well,' 'That's fine,' she relies, 'We'll spread them around here.'

By 10pm it's all over, as the sidewalks roll up early in Zelie. But we got our message out, and a good time was had by all. Now just to keep at it, over and over, every way we can, until we end this horrible war.
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Engaging the Peace Voters

Obama Links
War & Economy
in Beaver County

By Carl Davidson

Senator Barack Obama spoke this morning, March 17, to a full house of 1700 residents of Western Pennsylvania in the athletic 'Dome' of the Beaver County Community College, one of the largest venues in the area.

It was a good day for Obama and Beaver County, both of which are embroiled in the hotly contested presidential primary.

It was also a good day for those of us working on the 'Voter Engagement' project of UFPJ and Peace Action.

When we arrived, the local Obama team had already set up a Voter Registration Table. I approached the guy in charge, a retired member of the local teacher's union, and said we were going to distribute voter guides against the war. "Against the war? You mean against the INVASION, don't you?" and added some colorful terms for President Bush. It set the tone-we were very welcome to get on with our project.

There was a last minute rush to get in, and thorough-going security, and we just made it in time.

Inside, waiting for the speech, we made a point of talking with the reporters from the Beaver County Times, one of whom we had had a relationship with on earlier stories. We discussed the debate on the war in the editorial pages, noted that this was very new for Beaver County, and agreed to talk at length later.

The crowd was obviously self-selected and mostly pro-Obama. But it was still a cross-section of the county's demographics-mostly working class (the young volunteer who opened the day used the term 'working class' like it was the most normal thing in the world, and his crowd did, too), Italian-American, Serbian-American, African American, union jackets and veterans, young and old, men and women.

The youth were lively, multinational and kept trying to get 'the Wave' going in the stands, but the old folks weren't cooperating too well. Still, they got the rhythmic chants going, 'Ba-Rack!, O-Bam-A!, It Can Be Done! It Can Be Done!'

Obama was warmly greeted, and got into his regular speech, but said he would be short. He wanted to field questions. He stressed some economic issues, since the area is a poster child for the ravages of deindustrialization. He knew who he was talking to.

But it was when he condemned the war, and declared he would end it in 2009, that he got his first and loudest ovation, followed by another, when he stressed the need not to abandon veterans on their return. This was clearly an antiwar crowd, from young high school kids to grey-haired Vietnam vets. The economy was important, as was health care, prisons, and education, but Obama himself linked them to the war, and was cheered every time.

We left quickly at the end, to position ourselves outside, with our stacks on Voter Guides. 'Make the Election about Ending the War! Take one and pass them on!' Most people snapped them up, and a few came back for more. A few, mainly African American, were dubious, and wanted to know more. 'It rates all the candidates on the war, and your guy does very well.' That would click, and they would ask for extra copies.

One group of about a dozen students was standing together reading it. We joined in, and got a good number of e-mails on the sign up sheets on our clipboards. One of the kids claimed to be a Republican. Interestingly enough, the sidebar article in the Beaver County Times later in the day was on a student who said he changed his registration to Democrat that morning, so he could get behind Obama.

Make no mistake. McCain is strong here, even if people hate the war. But we had a good day-we got our message out, we formed some positive ties on voter registration, we renewed some ties with the local media, and got a list of new youth contacts we didn't have before. Not bad for a morning's work.

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Fidel's Turning of the Wheel...

Report from Cuba on Fidel's Transition

[Note from CarlD: This is a down-to-earth report on the closing on an era. Fidel has been the leader of Cuba for my entire political life, and the very first demonstration I went to was a 'Hands Off Cuba' vigil of twelve of us at Penn State during the Cuba missile crisis.

Later, representing SDS, I had a chance to meet with Fidel. At the Cultural Congress of Havana in 1968, Dave Dellinger, Tom Hayden and I were whisked away to a safe house, were we sat up with Fidel late into the night, discussing everything under the sun. He wanted to know our opinion of McGovern, Dellinger wanted to know about Che and Regis Debray, Hayden and I asked to start what became the Veceremos Brigade, and Fidel bugged me to explain 'hippies' to him, and I tried my best.

He is a remarkable man, with a photographic memory, wide knowledge and keen insights. Cuba will change after him, though, as brother Raul is already looking into the socialist market economy in China and Vietnam, but will undoubtedly make any reforms 'in the Cuban way.' We should all wish Fidel and Cuba well, and double our voices against the blockcade.]


By Marc PoKempner
Havana, Cuba


Subject: Castro's resignation

I thought you all would be interested in a bit of news from Cuba. I have read some of the US reports and, understandably given the bias, they don't get it right---though they have captured some of it.

There was no "police presence" that I detected whatsoever. Everything was completely normal. The so-called "independent journalists", supported by the US and Journalists Without Borders, have been floating a lot of totally fabricated stories lately about arrests, etc.

So be skeptical of all such sources, and keep in mind that one of the express strategies of the Bush administration is to destabilize Cuba from within. The most ridiculous of these was a report last week by an "independent journalist" that a young student was yanked from his home in Las Tunas after criticizing the government in a meeting at the university. Nothing of the kind ever took place. He stood up in a meeting and voiced some concerns and criticisms in an auditorium in a meeting presided over by Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly. The meeting was taped and broadcast internally to the entire university. Nothing happened to the boy and he appeared on Cuban TV to debunk the story.

The news of Castro's had enormous impact, but also wasn't exactly a surprise. Some people may have thought that Castro would be re-elected, but most people did not given his health. The emotional impact of the announcement before the parlaimentary session next Sunday came mainly from three aspects: 1) it is an historical moment in Cuba---whatever the US media says, Castro is the respected Commander in Chief and loved or revered by the majority of Cubans. Younger Cubans may want change, which is natural, but most have respect for Castro who has shown himself to be a brilliant leader, even if they chafe under some of the overarching controls; 2) he resigned with dignity. Most of the people I spoke to praised the content of the message as fitting of a great leader; 3) there is also sadness, not so much that he is resigning---which was to be expected---but because he was not able to be president when the US finally lifts the blockade. That is, he won't be president residing over the final triumph over the US.

If there was muted response on the street, it is because Castro has been ill for a long time and the resignation was just a matter of time. But also, people have been waiting during this transition period to see what changes and improvements will be made, what direction will the country take now to solve its problems. Since there are no easy answers, it wasn't as if Castro's announcement meant dramatic changes or chaos. So, the response to the announcement was quiet and reflective.

Cubans do want some changes. Life has been hard since the 90s, and I expect there to be some reforms. But no one expects an opening to a free market economy, even if some market mechanisms are introduced and even perhaps some kinds of cooperatives in the service economy (carpentry, construction, plumbing) and perhaps even light, small-scale manufacturing (furniture, clothing, leather goods, etc.).

US policy continues to weigh heavy on Cuba's potential for development. I could write pages about the harshness of the impact. And so there aren't any easy ways leading to dramatic economic improvement (and where in the world today are there such ways). Most Cubans do not expect dramatic improvements, but they do want to see some new strategies and some problems solved.

I do expect that the requirement of "exit permits" will be lifted, but that won't solve most Cubans desire to travel since most countries do not give Cubans visas easily and most Cubans don't have the $ to buy tickets, etc. If and when that control is lifted, I doubt many countries will give asylum so easily to Cubans who use travel as a way to leave Cuba.

I also expect that some of the restrictions on Cubans access to tourist hotels will also be lifted. These restrictions were first adopted to try to stem the explosion of prostitution in the 90s when the economy hit rock bottom. Prostitution has diminished dramatically since the end of the 90s, but there is still a notion of equity that keeps the regulation in place. That is, it is hard to swallow the growing differences in income between those who earn hard currency (artists, musicians, tourism workers who get tips) and those who get money from families abroad. So, seeing these people enter the hotels when ordinary Cubans do not have the funds is problematic in an egalitarian society.

The current generation seems to be willing to accept some deviance from egalitarianism as long as there is social justice. That is, everyone has equal access to health care and education, social services and housing are improved, and everyone has access to work that pays a living wage (i.e., wages have sufficient purchasing power). This cannot be accomplished with a free-market capitalist system. The government must maintain a strong hand in the economy and development of the society.

Next Sunday, the National Assembly will meet and elect the new president of the Council of State, which I assume will be Raul Castro, and the other members of the Council. This will be an important signal of who is in the inner circle of leadership--kind of like the cabinet. Raul will undoubtedly remain Commander in Chief of the armed forces, but there could be a new minister of the armed forces.

Marc PoKempner, photojournalist http://www.pokempner.net ph: 773.525.4567 cel: 773.505.4568 Chicago, Illinois, USA Member: ASMP - American Society of Magazine Photographers

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What Is A Knowlege Worker?

ECONOMISTS STRUGGLE
WITH RUSTY TOOLS
IN TODAY’S WORLD

By Alvin and Heidi Toffler

Economists around the world are belatedly admitting out loud that much of what they have been telling governments, businesses,
investors and students has been increasingly mistaken and misleading.

For some, this is old news, especially for economists themselves,who have long made fun of their errors. Their forecasts are so bad that Robert Reich, an economist and secretary of labor during the Clinton presidency, has suggested that "economic forecasters exist to make astrologers look good."

What is new is their increasing willingness to admit that the tools
they have been using for a century or more – theories and assumptions originally designed for probing smokestack economies – are becoming more and more irrelevant or useless for analyzing today's knowledge-hungry, no-longer-industrial economies.

With the U.S. in the lead, Asian countries racing to catch up and
Europe struggling to keep pace, advanced economies are shifting from
the reliance on Second Wave assembly lines and muscle power to Third
Wave brain power. This transition is typically symbolized by computers,
the Internet, mobile phones, digital production lines, networks,
ad-hocratic organization, heavy investment in research and development
and other knowledge-intensive tools and methods.

Put all these changes together with corresponding changes in
institutional boundaries, and the roles of managers, employees,
consumers and prosumers, and it is evident that we are inventing
something new on the face of the earth – a revolutionary wealth system.

Economists first caught sight of this as far back as 1962 when
Fritz Machlup of Princeton published a prescient book called "The
Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States." It
showed that even then the U.S. economy was becoming more and more
dependent on knowledge.

In the 1960s, the polymathic Kenneth Boulding and a small number of
other economists began showing an interest in the economics of
knowledge. But within their profession these leading minds were
intellectual outriders whose ideas were usually pooh-poohed or ignored.
As a result, even as many economies grew more and more dependent on
knowledge, conventional economists continued to rely on industrial-age
measures, models and notions.

In the 1970s and 1980s, we, along with other futurists and
economists, repeatedly called attention to the growing gap between the
emerging revolutionary economy and the obsolescence of mainstream
economics. Yet little was done to correct the problem.

In consequence, as knowledge – admittedly hard to measure – grew
more and more important, the picture of reality presented to
businesses, governments and key international organizations – right on
down to the World Trade Organization and the U.N. – grew more and more
detached from reality, reaching a point at which the discrepancy could
no longer be ignored.

The gap is now so wide that Business Week recently devoted a
lengthy cover story to it, detailing many of the distortions and
mischaracterizations of trade, unemployment and fiscal and monetary
policy that result from continued reliance on wildly out-of-date
theories and data. Nor is the problem just an American phenomenon.
Similarly poor numbers and models are used by economists in most of the
rest of the world, too.

A key reason why economics has not kept up with the changing
economy is the sheer difficulty of properly defining and measuring
knowledge and knowledge work. Who, for example, is a "knowledge
worker"?

Many estimates about the workforce, present and future, for
example, focus on the most easily quantified employee categories. The
result is a very narrow notion of who is, and who is not, engaged in
knowledge work.

A widely propagated categorization scheme suggests that to be a
knowledge worker one needs to be a scientist or an engineer, a
mathematician, an information technology specialist, a teacher or a
member of one of the professions. The assumption is that if we tally
these up, we have identified the "knowledge labor force." From that, it
is presumed, we can calculate their contribution to gross domestic
product and many other variables.

But this is crude at best and misleading at worst, radically
underestimating the extent of knowledge work in the real economy and
the number of workers doing knowledge work, as we'll see next.

Part 2:

Many economists are belatedly struggling to catch up with the increasing importance of knowledge in advanced economies.

Even among the most sophisticated, the true role of knowledge in
the creation of wealth is still, for the most part, underestimated. And
economists still don't grasp the often-hidden aspects of knowledge
work.

Economists will have to subdivide knowledge into subtypes. Not all
knowledge is the same or has the same potential for creating wealth.
And building a knowledge economy doesn't require that every worker,
today or tomorrow, will need the cognitive or analytic skills of the
proverbial "rocket scientist."

Thus, economists must recognize that even many jobs categorized as
low skill – and therefore not counted in the "knowledge work" category
– have, in fact, a knowledge component. By ignoring that component, the
amount of knowledge work in the economy is radically underestimated.

Car mechanics may still install a new tire or a windshield wiper.
But, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, their work has changed
"from mechanical repair to a high technology job. As a result, these
workers are now usually called 'technicians.' . . . Technicians must
have an increasingly broad base of knowledge about how vehicles'
complex components work and interact, as well as the ability to work
with electronic diagnostic equipment and computer-based reference
materials." What percentage of these jobs consists of knowledge work?

What about farmers? Even the poorest peasants in history have
always needed knowledge about seeds, soil and weather. Today, in the
U.S., various agriculture organizations representing corn, cotton and
soybean growers have teamed up with the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration to teach "precision farming" made possible by data from
satellites and high-flying aircraft.

According to NASA, the farmers learn "where fertilizers are needed
– and where they're not needed. They discover pests – and spray only
infested areas. It's a remarkably 'green' approach to farming."
Precision farmers use GPS receivers, farm equipment with computerized
controllers and other digital equipment. As one farm-equipment dealer
puts it, today "it would help to have a college education just to
figure out the benefits in running the tractors."

Are farmers knowledge workers? Full-time or part-time?

Many other classes of employees also do part-time knowledge work.
Waiters punch orders into a computer, which not only sends instructions
to the kitchen, but provides data useful for purchasing, scheduling and
many other purposes. It has even been suggested that golf caddies are
"a simplified example of a knowledge worker" because "good caddies do
more than carry clubs. . . . A good caddie will give advice to golfers,
such as, 'The wind makes the ninth hole play 15 yards longer."'

If the definition of knowledge work is realistically broadened to
encompass part-time knowledge work, the role of knowledge in the
overall economy becomes far more important than current statistics
suggest.

The extent of knowledge work in advanced economies would be still
further enlarged if economists recognize that there are many
economically essential forms of knowledge. These include tacit
knowledge, personal insight, the ability to care for the ill or elderly
with warmth and gut intelligence, a talent for leadership, persuasive
expression, adaptability, a gift for timing and many other skills that
are primarily social, cultural and psychological. These skills were
seldom required for repetitive tasks on yesterday's assembly line but
are extremely valuable, especially in tomorrow's service sector.

Not all of these carry the same weight or have the same effect on a
company's bottom line or on the national economy, and they are even
harder to define and quantify.

Yet another way of categorizing knowledge work is according to
whether it is being generated, stored, exchanged or transformed. Or by
the different degrees of abstraction required by different jobs – from
data entry all the way up the abstraction ladder to research scientist,
financial "quant" or corporate strategist.

Knowledge workers in the same firm also perform different
functions. Some are good "knowledge importers" – they bring knowledge
from outside the firm, from customers, critics, competitors and others.
They are good gatherers. Others are "knowledge exporters" – they bring
data, information and knowledge to the outside world from inside the
organization. They might be publicists or salespeople, for example.
Others are "knowledge relayers" – they pass data, information and/or
knowledge back and forth within the firm. Still others can be regarded
as "knowledge creators."

Our knowledge about knowledge is so poor that we all – not just
economists – are unprepared for what lies ahead. One forecast that is
reasonably safe is that economists, trying to answer questions like
these, will devote more and more attention to the work being done in a
new branch of their own profession – neuroeconomics, the study of how
the brain itself works when making economic decisions.

With or without help from that quarter, however, until economists
understand all these dimensions of knowledge work, they will continue
to drastically underestimate not only the contribution of knowledge
work to the money economy, but the role it plays in the truly
revolutionary wealth system emerging on the planet.

Read more!

Getting Organized, Getting Engaged:

Independent Antiwar Intervention
in the 2008 Election Campaigns

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin’ On

February 13, 2008

If our peace movement wants to make some far-reaching gains in the 2008 election cycle, it doesn’t have much time to waste. Super Tuesday is over, the remaining campaigns will end in November, and critical events are moving at a rapid pace.

Most important, ending the war in Iraq needs to be a greater part of everyone’s political decisions in 2008 than it is now.

In mid-February, we’re down to four main candidates, plus the Greens—two Republicans who promise to win the war, whatever the cost, even if it takes decades, and two Democrats who promise to end it, with less than desirable timelines and qualifications.

Large numbers of Americans critical of the war have decided to enter this arena in one way or another—but they are not necessarily part of the one million or so who have taken to the streets to date. Most have not. The most obvious is the insurgent wave of youth taking up Barak Obama’s cause, seeing him as their favored instrument to end the war and advance other progressive causes. They may make other choices later, but they have chosen to enter the fray this way, whether anyone else thinks it’s the best way or not.

Yet we, the more seasoned core of the antiwar movement, are not as engaged as we could be. Tom Hayden has elsewhere argued forcefully—‘After Super Tuesday, Time for Peace Movement to Get Off the Sidelines’--on why the peace and justice movements need to deploy more of its forces. At the risk on repeating some of his points, I’ll focus on some of the key ways it can actually be done, although just about any way would be better than doing nothing.

Political Intervention. With all the various ‘plans’ regarding Iraq being floated, it’s important that the peace movement stake out its position, and the one shared by the antiwar majority among the people themselves, of immediate withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq and their return home. Every candidate of every party needs to be directly confronted with this at every public forum. While there are important differences among them, not one of those remaining completely shares this perspective. They are either lagging behind the electorate or opposing it. Those who claim to want to end the war, at whatever level they are contending, need to be openly informed that they only gain support by taking a stronger stand.

Ballot Intervention. We can also directly put issues on the ballot, as well as into the discussion. Near West Citizens for Peace & Justice, for example, put a cutoff of funding for the war on the ballot at its township level in a working-class suburb of Chicago in the recent primary, where it won by 77 percent. Since electoral law varies, this may not be practical in some areas, but wherever it can be done, it’s a great nonpartisan, non-endorsing tool to bring antiwar votes to the polls.

Expanding the Electorate. This is already shaping up to be an historic election with a record-breaking turnout, if for no other reason than the likelihood of the ‘White Guys Only’ sign being taken from the Oval Office. Growing numbers want to be part of that history, and not just watch it. Still, the sharper the differences are drawn with the unabashed defenders of prolonging the war, the greater the potential turnout. But it has to be organized. Some new voters register themselves, but many do not until they are encouraged, especially among young people. The antiwar movement has everything to gain from registering voters in a nonpartisan fashion, so that the contact list with the new voters belong to it, rather than any party. Most states make it easy for volunteer organizations to get new registrations on their own and turn them in. There’s nothing standing in our way but our own lack of initiative.

Shaping and Informing the Electorate. A few years back the average voter was a 60-year-old retired economically liberal but socially conservative blue collar woman in a ‘white’ working-class suburb. But everything changes, especially in times of crisis, and there’s no law of the universe or even demographics that says it has to remain that way. Expanding the electorate comes in many flavors—the promoting more war and injustice crowd certainly works on expanding it in their direction, and there’s no reason we can’t do it our way. Moreover, an electorate more educated on the war—disabused of notions that Iraq caused 9/11 and other such lies and illusions—is more likely to vote rationally on the war, and to make educated selections among the candidates on their own, with an assist from wide distribution of candidate position survey and score cards, candidate night debates, and so on.

Identifying the Antiwar Electorate. Knowing that a majority of the electorate is critical of the war is one thing. It’s quite another to know all the names and addresses of voters in your precinct who are opposed to the war, support the war, or waver in between. The additional information is empowering to those who hold it, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be in the hands of our neighborhood-based peace and justice groups. But you have to do old-fashioned, door-to-door organizing to get it. Fortunately, a voter registration drive in an election cycle is an excellent way to do it. And it’s an additional plus that the same information is more than useful for mass mobilizations and other projects beyond Election Day.

Mobilizing the Electorate. Potential voters who are registered and antiwar but don’t make it to the polls don’t help much. There’s no reason we can’t organize nonpartisan GOTV—Get Out The Vote—events, not only ourselves, but with all our allies among churches, schools and unions. This way the relationships and ties belong to you after the election, not to any party. No one’s campaign reaches far enough into every corner; there’s always work to be done in areas where it’s not crowded but important to us nonetheless. Again, you can get your antiwar voters to the polls without endorsing anyone. They’ll figure out what to do.

Protecting and Securing the Vote. Perhaps I’m biased by my years in Chicago, but, yes, this is crucial to know how to do. Getting all sorts of voters to the polls doesn’t help much if you can’t get a fair and reliable count. There’s lots of justified concern about electronic machines these days, but in the 1980s, I went through an excellent three-hour training on ‘100 things to watch for’ to prevent stealing the vote when all the ballots were paper. (One was to look for long, sharpened fingernails on those handing out ballots. A wink from the precinct captain would get an unfavorable person’s ballot ‘nicked’ for later removal). It’s definitely worthwhile getting a number of people trained and positioned as poll watchers and election judges, for the future as well as the present.

Staking Claim to the Vote. It’s not very convincing to politicians or anyone else for us to claim a positive gain from an election we had nothing to do with, save for cheerleading on the sidelines. But to the degree we can reasonably claim responsibility for favorable results and turnouts in one battle, it enhances our independent ‘clout’ in future battles, inside and outside the electoral arena. It enhances our ability to ‘counter-spin’ the outcomes and post-election battles from those who would marginalize us. Most important, no matter who is elected, the need for an ongoing, independent and election-savvy organization is going to be more needed than ever in the dangerous ‘end game’ to Bush’s disaster in Iraq.

There are different sets of rules for doing all the above, depending on whether your local group or coalition is a 501C3, a 501C4, a straightforward public interest group with a bank account and no tax exempt status, or just an ad-hoc group of volunteers. If you are in doubt as to what can or can’t be done, and have a status that needs defending, consult a lawyer with some experience on the topic. But don’t fall for the claim that you can’t do anything.

There’s a lot that can be done, preferably completely independent of any party or campaign. If your imagination fails, you can always get to the organizations of the candidates or party of your choice, but do it now. You don’t want to tell your grandchildren that you sat on the sidelines in the Election of 2008.

[Carl Davidson is author, together with Marilyn Katz, of ‘Stopping War, Seeking Justice,’ available at lulu.com/changemaker. He was founder and director of Peace and Justice Voters 2004 in Chicago, and a member of the steering committee of United for Peace and Justice. See carldavidson.blogspot.com for more information.]

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Rust to Renewal: Churches & Third Wave Change

Rust to Renewal:
A Case Study of the Religious
Response to Deindustrialization

Joshua D Reichard
Vision Publishing, 2007
180 pp, pb $12.99



Reviewed by Carl Davidson

"Rust to Renewal", as this book’s title implies, is about the decline of American steel towns in the 1970s and 1980s, the responses of their communities—most importantly, their churches—and whether there is still hope for the future in these places.

These are critical topics even in 2008, especially with an economic recession and growing unemployment on the horizon, along with debates over what does or does not constitute a proper ‘stimulus’ to the economy.

Author Joshua Reichard uses Youngstown, Ohio and the surrounding Mahoning River Valley as his case in point; and the story he tells may seem old news to many people still residing there. The Youngstown area, moreover, was only part of a wider region, stretching from Wheeling, W VA, through Pittsburgh, PA to Cleveland, OH. This was the country’s steel heartland, and by the end of the 1980s, some 100,000 steel mill jobs were permanently abolished, with great distress to those concerned..
Back in 1977, on ‘Black Monday,’ after being told repeated lies and given false hopes, thousands of Youngstown area steelworkers were summarily fired. The mills were shut down, and a community lost what it perceived as a decent future.

The workers, however, and their community allies, mainly churches, were hardly passive. During a series of protests, they formed the Ecumenical Coalition, which, together with the local Steelworkers Union, had considerable clout, at least for a time, and they forced the owners into negotiations. To make a long story short, they tried to buy out the failing mill, take it over, reorganize production, and run it themselves. They took the battle all the way to Jimmy Carter’s White House, but abruptly lost, sabotaged mainly by Beltway federal bureaucrats and rival steel bosses.

If you’re looking for a detailed critique of where the Ecumenical Coalition and the steelworkers went wrong, settling old scores, you won’t find it here. But if you think it important that workers and community allies waged a valiant battle, and want to look to the future with some fresh ideas to deal with ongoing problems, this slim volume is a good place to start.

It needs to be said that Reichard has been bitten by the ‘Toffler bug,’ a condition this reviewer shares. He’s read ‘The Third Wave’ by Alvin Toffler, a book published in 1980 but still reading like it was written yesterday about today. Toffler has analyzed modern society from the perspective of the revolution in the means of production wrought by microprocessors, where he posits a ‘second wave’ era of smokestack industry in decline, while a ‘third wave’ society based on high-technology is on the rise. That’s very condensed, but suffice it to say that, according to Toffler, smaller numbers of ‘knowledge workers’ replace larger numbers of unskilled and semi-skilled industrial workers, even in the new high-tech manufacturing firms that survive and thrive in the ‘third wave.’ Reichard explains:

“While the American steel industry lost 350,000 jobs in the 1980s and 1990s, it was simultaneously technologically advanced and more productive. (Youngstown Vindicator, 11/11/2003). Manufacturing productivity was $7634 higher per worker in 1998 than it was in 1979 and nonmanufacturing productivity was $461 per worker lower…” (‘Ohio’s Competitive Advantage’, E. Hill, Cleveland State University, 2001).

Finally, Toffler doesn’t just apply this revolution in the productive forces to the world of work, but broadly, against the entire culture of second-wave civilization.

As a sociologist as well as a faith-based activist, Reichard tries to apply a wide range of Toffler’s hypotheses to the Youngstown case, not only about the old battles, but mainly looking forward. What’s of particular interest is his application of the ‘third wave-second wave’ analytical tools to the city’s churches. Here he breaks some original ground in his discussion of Catholics and main-line Protestants as second wave and in decline, while Protestant evangelicals are third wave, dynamic and rising. Briefly, according to Reichard, looking at evangelicals as simply right wing and opposed to economic and social justice misses the mark, at least in the story of Youngstown and the Rust Belt. He elaborates, quoting J Straub in the March 23, 2006 Monthly Review:

“The left has all but abandoned these places where the factories closed and unions died…a right-wing network of churches and businesses offered exactly what the CIO once did: both short-term material gains for members and a militantly transformative vision of the world.”

Reichard’s perspective contains a number of benchmarks. First, he understands that unions and employees can’t win these battles, or even advance their interests, on their own, isolated from allies. Second, he understands that ‘the church’ is not just buildings and sermons divided up by creed and congregation. It’s the community of the faithful throughout the locality, and that community includes union members and their neighbor’s side-by-side with many others in the community. The church, then, can provide both common ground and a launching pad for broad alliances.

What vision and values hold sway among the community of the faithful thus becomes a matter of critical importance. Digging deeply into this, and trying to provide some guidance, makes up the heart of the book. To see where Reichard’s strengths and weaknesses lie, it helps to take a step back, and raise some broader questions.

Reichard sees a transition to third wave civilization as inevitable; what he wants to do is make it as harmonious and painless to the greatest numbers as possible. That’s fine, but the devil is in the details. Third wave civilization, like those before it, has a range of interests and views, running the gamut from far right to far left. Class struggle still exists, even if it’s manifested in odd and different ways.

In today’s policy discussions, it’s helpful first to segment the business community into two camps, ‘low road’ and ‘high road,’ or roughly, speculative capital vs. productive capital, regardless of their ‘wave’ status. Low roaders are focused only of the quarterly bottom line, are anti-union, and usually don’t care much for the environment, their community or even their customers. They would buy stressed industries to gut them, and then use the proceeds to gamble in derivatives. High roaders make money the old-fashioned way: they produce a quality product for satisfied customers, and reward their workers, and raise their skills and input, so they’ll continue doing the same, and part of the reward is everyone gets to live in a healthy, sustainable environment.

Reichard hints at this distinction early on, when he raises the competing development models of Youngstown, OH versus Allentown, PA. Allentown is the more successful by far, and the quote on the topic cited by the author even uses the ‘high road’ terminology.

“Allentown can be characterized as having adhered to the high road which has involved the transformation of existing companies to make them competitive on a global scale, attracting inward investment of high-skill jobs and the emergence of a strong entrepreneurial sector. Youngstown, on the other hand, has suffered from an inability to develop a coherence approach to attracting inward investment, a lack of entrepreneurship, and the inability of major local employers to transform in ways that benefit the community.’ (‘Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown, S. Safford, MIT, 2004, p. 27)

Reichard really doesn’t elaborate on this, even though it’s critical to where he wants to go. He wants more than worker-run or community-run second wave industries; he wants ethical concerns to be a component of the new and emerging marketplace.

But this is why the ‘high road-low road’ approach is so important. The distinction is drawn exactly by making wider human values central to economic development. Economies, after all, are made up of people, and it would be distorting and self-defeating to push human values out of the picture as some annoying ‘externality.’ ‘High Road’ values are rooted in respect for the environment (economies as subsets of the ecosystem), solidarity, democracy, community citizenship—all these form the core of the ‘solidarity economy’ emerging as a new development model, locally, nationally and globally. Reichard is entering this arena by a different door, as a pastor seeking to meet the economic justice concerns of his flock within the framework of the spiritual mission of the church. To do so, he has to identify and first do battle with a number of theological trends that block the way, rather the competing economic models others have to deal with.

Applying Toffler as a starting point, Reichard’s analysis of Mainline Protestants and Catholics as ‘second wave’ and Evangelicals as ‘third wave’ contains more than a grain of truth, but also has some serious limitations. Most established religions, for instance, rest on a value that reaches back to the ‘first wave,’ to feudalism and even earlier—the value of submission. With the Protestant revolt, the values of self-cultivation, self-salvation, or, to use Reichard’s term, ‘individualistic piety’ began gaining the upper hand over submissiveness. The practice of early Scots-Irish Presbyterians staying on their feet while praying, refusing the ‘papist’ practice of kneeling, comes to mind.

But the mainline churches do largely reflect the corporate structures and hierarchies of smokestack industrialism, even in their ‘collective bargaining’ and ‘electoral’ approaches to gaining any implementation of the social gospel of reform. Likewise, the evangelical movement would be nowhere near as strong as it is today had it ignored the revolutions in mass communications. Radio, television, the internet, computerized direct mail—all these are tightly integrated into the evangelical ministries. They make use of third wave technologies far more than their mainline rivals. Personal salvation, likewise, dovetails neatly with hacker libertarianism.

What’s missing here, however, is a broader picture of third wave religion and spirituality in the U.S. Taken as a whole, third-wave spirituality also has a substantial left or liberal wing in the rise of the New Age. This trend has self-cultivation at its core without the older dualist feudal trappings of a Creation submitting to a Creator. Overlapping with this is the multiculturalist rise of practices in the U.S. of Hinduism, via yoga, and Buddhism, via meditation and the ecological politics of its ‘socially engaged’ trend. The several organized centers of secular humanism also belong in this ‘left wing’ of third wave spirituality.

Reichard doesn’t have to go too far from Youngstown to see this up close. Cleveland’s favorite son (or problem child, depending on your viewpoint) is Congressman Dennis Kucinich, raised a Catholic, but now clearly influenced by the New Age, and a staunch fighter for the rights and concerns of the Rust Belt working class nonetheless.

The reason this is problematic in this context is that Reichard wants to make ‘Transformational Christianity’ the centerpiece of his resolution of tension between second wave and third wave Christians. This may be proper within that realm, but that’s only one sector across the whole range of the culture and religions of the third wave. The ecumenical alliances he projects would do very well to look beyond Christendom for partners.

Reichard uses a number of sociological instruments to explain the possibilities and obstacles to his faith-based coalition building. These are at once very useful and a little distracting; it’s evident that the book started as an academic document, and all the citations sometimes get in the way of easier reading. Suffice it to say that hardly anyone is written off; it’s mainly a matter of finding the right approach to win them over

But getting a keener grasp of today’s solidarity economics would serve his project well. The regional success of tens of thousands of workers taking control and ownership of 200 firms in the Mondragon region of Spain is the obvious place to start, but there are others in North America and elsewhere around the world. Likewise with the political depth and toughness required to build what the Gramscians call the ‘counter-hegemonic alliance.’ This is actually what Reichard is calling for, even if he’s not aware of it, and it would help considerably in not repeating the outcomes of an earlier era.

[Carl Davidson is a veteran activist and writer with the peace and justice movement, and currently working with the US Solidarity Economy Network (www.ussen.org) His daily blog and other links are at http://carldavidson.blogspot.com. This book can be purchased at http://www.rusttorenewal.com/buy.htm
Read more!

Debating Iraq In Blue-Collar America

Beaver County Times

Letters on the War

Painting: 'Night Shift, Aliquippa'

[This is a lightly edited selection of a thread of letters over several recent months debating 'Bring the Troops Home' in the main newspaper of Beaver County, PA. Situated on the border of West Virginia and Ohio, in 1960 it was noted as the most 'blue-collar' county in all of the U.S. It still is in many ways, although now it is the poster child for unstrained globalized deindustrialization. Many of its mill towns are now nearly ghost towns, which has done wonders for the environment, but has taken its toll on the people. As the last letter notes, the County is solidly against the war, but not necessarily for the same reasons as a college town. I have my home base here now, and jump into the debate about a third of the way down --CarlD ]

Bringing the Troops Home

Lonzie Cox - Thursday, December 27, 2007 7:15 AM EST

In March 2006, The Times printed a letter from an officer who was writing from Camp Victory Iraq.  He was writing to express his feelings toward those of us who were against the invasion of Iraq and would go so far as to demonstrate against the resulting war.

He felt that not supporting the war was the same as not supporting the troops.

I responded that the best way to support the troops was to bring them home safely as soon as possible.Last week, I saw a letter to the editor from him and noticed he's back home from Iraq.  Great.  That's all anyone wants - to get the troops home and the war over.

+++ SWV wrote on Dec 27, 2007 8:38 AM:

" We all want the troops home and the war won.  Unfortunately, Iraq is only one battle in the war on terror.  It won't be over for many, many years.  "

+++ Gary Seevers wrote on Dec 27, 2007 8:49 AM:

" I agree!  It's time to bring home the troops!!  The U.S cannot win this war!  Iraq is infested with Muslim terrorists!  It will never end.  If the U.S kills 5,000 terrorists, there will be 5,000 more coming at them!  If the U.S kills bin Laden, someone else just as wicked will take his place.  It's a never ending war!  BRING THEM HOME

+++ LMAO wrote on Dec 27, 2007 9:23 AM:

" Gary Seevers,  go hide from your fears and those you feel you can not beat.  Your defeatist attitude demonstrates why you probably have achieved so little in life.  If it is too hard for you your probably quit and run.  I am guessing your parents made excuses for you everytime things got tuff for you as a kid.  Now and more importantly you have probably created coward children that you probably make excuses for, and teach them it is easier to run and hide from things that are too tuff to take on.  What a baby.  If I was your kid I would be ashamed but fortunately I am not, I simply see you as a coward.  "

+++ Gulf War Vet wrote on Dec 27, 2007 11:52 AM:

" Bring the troops home after crushing the insurgents and organized terrorism?  Absolutely.  Bring them home before that, and the war will come home with them.  "

+++ Ron wrote on Dec 27, 2007 3:17 PM:

" Ok Mr Democrat a little history: WWII FDR (Democratic) began our involvement in that war by attacking Germany, Germany did not attack us, Japan did.  Truman(Democratic) ended that war and began another in Korea.  North Korea never attacked us.
John Kennedy(Democratic) began our involvement in Vietnam, Johnson turned it into an unmanageable mess.  North Vietnam never attacked us.  Clinton(Democratic) began our conflict in Bosnia, Bosnia Never attacked us. Janet Reno(Democratic) spent far more time liberating the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco that the 3rd ID did to take Iraq.  George Bush took less time to liberate two countries that it took Hilary Clinton to find financial records pertaining to her involvement in the Rose Law Firm. So when you want to point fingers,  look in the mirror and the finger is pointed back at you.  "

+++ Tommy S.  wrote on Dec 28, 2007 1:19 AM:
" Bring them home and don't stop there, bring ALL the US troops home from every foreign country and shut down the bases there.  Our involvement overseas gets us into trouble and its bankrupting us.  Our government is too big, too expensive and too dangerous.  "

+++ Rich wrote on Dec 28, 2007 3:29 AM:
" This blog has become infested with deranged Righty cranks since the new format was started.  There were Righty cranks on here before the change for sure, and they were wacky enough, but these new guys seem positively delusional.  By the way Ron, for your info Hitler declared war on America.  Read up on it sometime.  And are you referring to the day that idiot stood on the aircraft carrier and declared "Mission Accomplished" as the day he won the Iraq war?  Shame on you schmuck.  "

+++ James Lucci wrote on Dec 28, 2007 1:05 PM:
" Way to go Cox, keep spouting the party line.  I guess during the Cold War, your motto was better Red and than dead.  We all want to see our troops home but we want them to be victorious.  I believe the surge is in Iraq is working although you don't know it by the media reporting and we need to give Gen Petreous a chance.  I understand that Iran has cut back on the terrorists they were supporting.  I also believe there are troops now returing.  Thepictures I see on local TV when a unit comes home is one of gladness and never have I heard an interviewee say anything bad about the war.  In fact, since the army raised the age limit, I have an acquaintance who is a preacher that has applied for a commission to go to Iraq as a chaplain and his family supports him.  How much longer do you think the Vietnam war last ed thanks to the efforts of Hanoi Jane, Kerry, et al?  "

+++ Digger wrote on Dec 29, 2007 2:52 AM:
" Enlistment in our selective service is way down since the war began.  Our soldiers have not openly disgraced this war because it is their duty to serve our country.  I disagree with the involvement of our troops in this unjustified war declared by a fruitcake who falsified his facts.  I do not see any of you supporting our veteran's claimants demanding full medical benefits for your veteran.  As diligently as you so claim to be why are you not demanding your president & congress issue full medical insurance policies for life to our veterans?  No guts but love the glory as long as you don't have to fight.  I've supported full medical from day one; an excellent savings for any employer to hire a VET.  They are fighting for our freedom; it is the least we can demand our politicians give back.  The fruitcake attempting to show how knowledgeable he was in history: Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt answered the attack with his "a date which will live in infamy" speech and a formal declaration of war.  Germany then declared war on us not us on Germany.  "

+++ Russ wrote on Dec 29, 2007 12:40 PM:

Rich: RE: " This blog has become infested with deranged Righty cranks..." - to you, EVERYONE who doesn't accept every word of yours as Gospel is a neo-Con, Dittohead, etc., even if their only crime is NOT hating Bush as much as you do.  RE: "And are you referring to the day that idiot stood on the aircraft carrier and declared "Mission Accomplished" as the day he won the Iraq war?" - The original mission, driving Saddam from power, WAS accomplished.  The new mission began when al Quaida started the civil war, by blowing up Shiite and Sunni mosques to turn the rival factions against each other.  Neither Bush nor anyone else were prepared for that, which was a big mistake.  RE: " Shame on you schmuck." - I see you haven't lost your flair for name-calling in lieu of actual debating skills.  Happy new year!  "

+++ Carl Davidson wrote on Dec 30, 2007 10:00 AM:
" 'Victory' is Iraq is a delusion, held by Bush and the NeoCons, to justify a war for oil.

The bin Laden crew entered Iraq AFTER us, to torment both the people there and our troops.  The people of Iraq can deal with them, but AFTER we leave.  And we can deal with the criminal enterprise of theocratic terrorism best through global collective security, not endless 'wars on terror' that produce the opposite of their proclaimed aim.

The longer we stay, the worse is will get and the harder we'll fall.  Bush has sold enough lies; don't buy any more.  Bring all the troops home now.  "

+++ Duke wrote on Dec 30, 2007 10:23 PM:
" I laugh at these "patriotic" Republicans waving their Chi-com made American flags saying they support the troops.  If Republicans really do support the troops then they would demand a draft to give those serving a needed break from that hell hole.

But asked why no member of their family is serving, they'll say "but my child has a good job." Yes, in a Republican's eyes, serving in the military has nothing to do with obligation or duty to one's country, but an employment opportunity for the middle class.

Yea, Republicans support the boys over there, but not one would be good enough to date their daughter.  "

+++ Rich wrote on Dec 31, 2007 11:23 AM:
" Russ.  You must have lost track of the sequence of official lies put out by Bush and the Neocons to excuse their pointless, preventable war.  The "Original Mission" as you call it, wasn't specifically to topple Saddam; the original reason they gave for the invasion was that Iraq had WMD's and nuclear materials and had ties to el Qaida, and that there was no alternative but to invade immediately.  It wasn't until after the invasion, when those reasons were found to be untrue and had actually been fabricated by the Bush administration, that they decided the actual reason we invaded was to rescue the Iraqis from a ruthless dictator and to spread democracy. 

That's been pretty much the standard operating procedure of this administration; to lie, then blunder, then lie your way out of the blunder.  If Bushies like you and Ron are going to persist in defending that indefensible buffoon for the damage he's done to this country, at least try to get basic historical facts straight.  And don't complain when you earn only contempt from others for your dogged devotion to the worst president in US history.  Happy New Year.  "

+++ Jonathan wrote on Jan 2, 2008 10:43 AM:
" AMEN Big Dah...The DUMBOCRATS can't accept the fact that the Iraq war is going good and success is being seen.  They will bash Bush for everything under the sun.  This war will go down as one of the biggest successes' this country has ever had.  These dumbocrats won't say 2 cents when their dumbocrat leaders like Onorato [local pol] solves problems by raising taxes instead of controlling spending.  i.e.  drink tax and rental car tax.  Typical liberal policies tax and spend, tax and spend and tax and spend.  Wake up you DUMBOcrats "

+++ Russ wrote on Jan 3, 2008 4:30 PM:
" Rich - I stand by my statement.  The "Original Mission" WAS to topple Saddam.  The RATIONAL behind the mission was the WMD threat, which pretty much everyone agreed was real (including the Clintons, Kerry, Kennedy, Biden, etc.).  France, Russia, the UK and the UN concurred, based on their separate intelligence (are you going to accuse Bush of doctoring THEIR intel too?).  Saddam had WMD, and used them to massacre the Kurds and Iranians.  It was NOT up to us to prove he still had them - IAW the '91 cease-fire terms that HE agreed to, it was up to HIM to prove he'd destroyed them.  Meanwhile, while it's true the Shiites and Sunnis have had bad blood for eons, work on a power and revenue-sharing deal among them and the Kurds was underway until al Qaida successfully ignited the civil war with their bombings (remember when they started, how Sunni and Shiite leaders appealed to followers NOT to react with violence?).  Finally (one more time), people might take your "Daily Kos" opinions more seriously if you'd quit calling everyone who disagrees with you a "Bushie"!  "

+++ Carl Davidson wrote on Jan 3, 2008 6:51 PM:
" Russ, how do you prove you don't have something?

The bottom line is you can't.

'Proof' of a negative is practically impossible, especially if its of a fact, as in 'the WMD could have been taken elsewhere, and hidden anywhere on the planet...and so on, which we've all heard.

Listen to Alan Greenspan if you don't believe me.  This war is about oil, and the strategic control of the proceeds from it.  All the convoluted analysis you present is beside the point.

If it was about going after the perpetrators of 9/11, we'd have a completely different policy focused on the Afghan-Pakistan border region, but our macho bigwigs are rather impotent there, since the Pakistanis have nukes.

No, the invasion of Iraq was a big Neocon diversion, and, thank goodness, most people now see through it.  Bring all our troops home now.  "

+++ Russ wrote on Jan 3, 2008 9:04 PM:
" Carl - Great letter with great points!  You're a far better debater than Rich, who presumes anyone who dares defend Bush is a "Bush lover" (hey, I sometimes defend the Clintons too; does that make me a "Clinton lover"?).  Anyway, I agree with Greenspan's comments, specifically his later ones to clarify the one you cited: it IS largely about oil, and the need to keep control of it from those who hate us.  Imagine if Hugo Chavez were appointed Prime Minister of OPEC, or if al Qaida toppled the Saudi royal family.  We'd be in a world of hurt, and Rich would be blaming Bush (who you'd think was running for re-election, to hear some of these Democratic presidential candidates!).  As for bringing the troops home now, they probably would've been home months ago if al Qaida hadn't started their bombing campaign.  If they were smart they would've laid low until we left, THEN started their rein of terror.  As for the current high oil prices, which even OPEC wants to be lower (more long-term profits for them), we seem to be at the mercy of weasel Commodities speculators.  Cheers!  "

+++ Russ wrote on Jan 3, 2008 9:22 PM:
" Carl - Regarding "proving we don't have something", that's easy.  Russia and the US having been doing it for years, as part of our bilateral dismantling of our nukes and chemical weapons under supervision of inspectors.  All Saddam had to do was cooperate with the UN inspectors and he'd still likely be in power.  Instead he played his stupid shell games, trying to show the Arab world he was still the Big Man there.  He very possibly DID destroy the WMDs (which would've been easy for him to prove), but he still wanted Iran and the other neighbors to fear and respect him (per his alleged confession during his final incarceration).  In the end his bluff cost him his sons' and his own life, and cost us thousands of Coalition military members and untold Iraqi civilian lives.  Still, if al Qaida hadn't thrown their monkey wrench into the works, our troops would pretty much all be home, thousands of lives would've been spared and Iraqi oil revenues would be rebuilding the country (let's NOT get into Halliburton, please!).  Cheers!  "

+++ Carl Davidson wrote on Jan 4, 2008 9:09 AM:
" Russ, you forget that the inspectors concluded there was no evidence of continuing WMDs, and that invasion was unwarranted, Ask Hans Blitz or Scott Ritter, or read their books.

As for al-Qaeda, I think they want us there.  They came in afterwards, to wage 'the war of the flea' against us, using our troops for training, target practice and propaganda purposes.  They don't have much support in Iraq otherwise.  If we leave, the Iraqis themselves will be in a better position to toss them out.

That's why this war has been such a disaster.  It's never had a 'just cause', which means, in the Islamic world at least, a world of 1.2 billion people, the just cause is seen as resisting us, and bin Laden and his crew win that political point, even with any ups and downs on the battlefield.

If you think these guys are losing, just look at Pakistan, and ask what happens if their allies come to power their.  Once that was a remote possibility, now not so remote.

And I'm not the only one making these points.  One former top CIA guy, tossed by Bush, did so in Foreign Affairs recently.  "

+++ Gary wrote on Jan 4, 2008 9:12 AM:
" LMAO, Everyone knows the United States can't win the war in Iraq.  Do you realize how hard it is to go into someone else's land and try to defeat the bad guy?  American soldiers are committing suicide just to escape this misery George W.  Bush has created.  If you think it is bad now..  Just wait until the United States gets involved with Iran.  Then we are heading for a whole new trouble.  And the war would not follow us home if we had tighter boarder security!!!  Start with (A) before you go to (B) "

+++ Rich wrote on Jan 4, 2008 9:16 AM:
" Anyone reading this blog who still wonders if there's any doubt that Bush's invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake should Google the title "Iraq war timeline".  You'll find accounts from a wide variety of news and media sources which all tell the same basic story; that Bush rushed us into an unnecessary, preventable war.  Russ.  You ignore too many hard facts while drawing your revisionist picture of events. 

The UN weapons inspectors said in early March 2003 that they would need a few more months to confirm that Iraq had no WMD's, which would rule out the need for an invasion.  Bush used the absurd excuse that it would be too hot for the troops if we waited until summer to invade.  As for the chaos that ensued post-invasion, it's well known that Bush ignored the General's advice that a much larger US force would be needed.  With no plan by the US in place to consolidate a military victory, Iraq fell into rioting and mob rule.  The idea that everything was coming up roses until el Qaida showed up is ridiculous.  PS.  Anyone who supports or excuses Bush gets my contempt, not a debate.  "

+++ RR wrote on Jan 7, 2008 9:26 AM:
" One of the biggest decisions Bush got right was going on the offense against terrorism.  Every one of the current Republican presidential candidates give Bush credit for going on the offense against terrorists except for Ron Paul who is really a Libertarian.  When terrorists attack the U.S.  they can expect a response.  No President is perfect as there was some mismanagement and not enough troops initially but Bush adjusted and now conditions have improved dramatically in Iraq and our troops will come home victorious.  We have had no further attacks on U.S soil since 911.  The best defense is a good offense and Bush got that right.  "

+++ Russ wrote on Jan 8, 2008 1:19 PM:
" Rich - Anyone can Google "Iraq war timeline" and find revised timelines to support both our viewpoints - just pick and choose.  My position is based on following events in real time, as they happened during my former day job (where I had a vested interest in the outcome).  RE: your comment "Anyone who supports or excuses Bush gets my contempt, not a debate." - Please re-read the Comment Rules below.  This is a DEBATE forum, not a CONTEMPT forum.  I recommend you check three of my favorite far-Left sites, 'Daily Kos', 'Huffington Post' and 'Democratic Underground'.  There you'll find many people like yourself, united by a blinding hatred of Bush that renders them incapable of any objective reasoning.  There's more bile and hatred there than ANYTHING I've ever heard from Limbaugh, Coulter or Savage!  My favorite line from one DU poster: 'Even if (Bush) finds a cure for cancer I'll still hate him!'.  Meanwhile, to CPT Matt - Thanks, and may God be with you and your colleagues!  "

+++ Russ wrote on Jan 8, 2008 1:30 PM:
" Carl - I HAVE read Hans Blix and Scott Ritter, with all their self-contradictions.  I remember being especially baffled by Ritter's abrupt 180-degree reversal, until it was revealed he'd accepted $400,000 in laundered Iraqi 'Oil for Food' money.  It's obvious you and I will always disagree on this topic, but at least we agree we want the troops back ASAP.  The only difference is if we do it "your" way, the terrorists can once again claim the drove us out (as in Lebanon and Somalia), and all our troops would've died in vain.  Let's not give up just yet - I've got too many friends still over there who want to win this thing, without having their hands tied behind their backs by politicians!  "

+++ Rich wrote on Jan 8, 2008 5:09 PM:
" Russ.  Any US president who sends this country into a preventable war deserves to be hated, and should be held accountable for committing such an offense.  Our troops started dying in vain the day Bush sent them into that quagmire with a bad plan, inadequate equipment, and no justifiable reason for being there.  Leaving them there now, still in harms way, doesn't justify anything.  As for your claim of having a position based on actual events, I'd like to know which events those were.  They couldn't include anything about the reasons Bush gave for his blunder, which all turned out to be lies.
Concerning your displeasure with my lack of civility when dealing with people like you...  too bad.  You enable that abomination with your support of his crimes, and deserve the contempt you get.  "

+++ Carl Davidson wrote on Jan 8, 2008 8:46 PM:
" You make my point, Russ, that it's impossible to prove a negative, since you believe even the inspectors can't be trusted, Ritter or Blix.

But you have an assumption that you would do well to question, that our military is omnipotent, ie, it can win any war, any time any place -- so long as it's not stabbed in the back by politicians.

I'm looking at things differently.  Everyone has their limits, including our military.  That's why is important that the politicians use them wisely, in self-defense and for a just cause.  Bush squandered them for an unjust cause that had nothing to do with self-defense, and we're still paying the price.  A positive outcome in Iraq is the Iraqi peoples' national independence and their control of their own wealth, including their oil.  As long as that's not our goal--and it's not, read the oil law we're trying to impose on them--there is no victory to be had.  That's why we need to yank them out now, before it gets worse, and dump the bill on the politicians who really sold us out and stabbed our troops in the back, Bush, the Neocons and their oil buddies.  "

+++ Rich wrote on Jan 8, 2008 10:51 PM:
" Russ.  Thanks for sparing me any more of your disjointed reasoning and cockeyed rationale for condoning Bush's blunder.  You must have applied that same style of thought to your last comment, seeing my comment as somehow proving your point.  Yikes!  Anyhow… FYI.  I did two tours in Vietnam, so you can also spare me the snotty remarks about who did or didn't serve their country.  "

+++ Russ wrote on Jan 9, 2008 9:49 AM:
" Rich - First, I stand corrected.  My apologies, and kudos for your service!  Second, why do you have so much trouble understanding that I've been trying to help you gain some credibility around here, instead of being branded a "troll" (someone who refuses to participate in civilized debate, and engages in name-calling and verbal grenade-tossing instead)?  Also, you consistently call anyone who remotely defends ANYTHING Bush (who I have major issues with, BTW) does a "Bushie" or "Bush Lover". 

Okay - Clinton defied the UN and dragged NATO into Bosnia.  Millions around the globe took to the streets, calling Clinton a tyrant and chanting "Death to America".  Our troops died, and many are still there.  It turns out the "genocide" numbers were WAY overstated, and that the real motivation might have been poll numbers (a "Wag the Dog" scenario).  Yet after some initial skepticism (as with Iraq), I ultimately concluded our going into Bosnia was a "just" cause.  Now, does this make me a "Clinton lover" deserving of your contempt?  Or are all of your opinions affected by your seething hatred of Bush?  "

+++ SSgt Aaron P.  wrote on Jan 9, 2008 7:10 PM:
" I am a Staff Sergeant of Marines and a three time Iraqi War Veteran.  Personal opinions are personal opinions, but I have walked by a war protest in my uniform and.....believe me, they are definitely against the troops.  Most of them are either hippies who miss the 60's or wannabe hippy kids that wish they were born early enough to burn a flag and spit on a troop.  I want us to all come home when the job is over, and judging by my last tour to Western Iraq it will not be too much longer.  Then what will the Democrats cry about when we win?  "

+++ Rich wrote on Jan 9, 2008 9:45 PM:
" To Russ.  No need to apologize to me because I happen to be a veteran.  Any negative feedback I get on here for my caustic approach is deserved.  As far as engaging in a civil discussion with those who still agree with Bush about his war… or anything else about his presidency, there's no point.  We are polarized, period.  There are 70% of us who see him as the worst president in US history and can't stand the sight of him, and the other 30% of you who apparently are blind to reality.  I figure calling names makes sense under these circumstances.

To Staff Sgt Aaron P.  You got it way wrong if you think your welcome home from the Iraq war in any way resembles what Vietnam vets got in the sixties.  I see only praise, gratitude, and positive attitudes from all sides, both pro-war and anti-war, concerning returning troops.  Stop complaining about those who want to see this unnecessary war brought to an end and your fellow Marines returned home safely.  Find out that your real enemies are those who sent you into harm's way for no good reason.
"

+++ Carl Davidson wrote on Jan 12, 2008 8:17 AM:
" To SSgt Aaron: You'll find all sorts of people, including Iraq vets and Vietnam vets, at antiwar protests.  At the last vigil at the Beaver Courthouse, we had 'Vets for Peace' there, but not one hippy, unfortunately, since they're welcome, too.

By the way, no antiwar hippy, or anyone else, ever spit on any returning GI in the 1960s.  It's a right wing myth, an urban legend.  A friend of mine, the national chair of Vietnam Vets vs the War, has offered $500 out of his own pocket to any vet who will tell him when and where he was spat upon.  He's done this countless times on mass media, and never had a taker.  Just think about it--when returning, where did the GIs actually disembark from, and wasn't the first thing they did was to jump into their civvies?

Military families are an important part of this antiwar movement.  They hate the lies even more than the rest of us.  People understand service and sacrifice for a just cause, but for control of oil?  "

+++ AOL wrote on Jan 12, 2008 10:51 PM:
" I have a nephew who is currently serving his 2nd tour in Iraq.  He is a Sergeant for the Army.  He himself has said that this war is a waste.  But is we are going to bring the troops home..  we need to bring them ALL home.  Leaving minimal troops there will be like signing their death warrant.  He has told us stories...  and some are pretty gruesome.  He stated to us several times how him and his army buddies HATE Bush and feel they are fighting a loosing battle.  However he said he will do the job that he was sent there to do.  We are VERY PROUD of our SOLDIER....  I hope they ALL come home...  I feel we are making the Iraqi's madder the longer we stay.  We can stay there for another 100 years and the war will still not have been won.  Come on guys...The Iraq's did not cause 9-11.  Bin Laden did...  he is an Iranian.  So WTF...  Bush is making good on the promise he made to his dad.  Something he couldn't finish himself.  "

+++ Majority rules wrote on Jan 13, 2008 9:42 PM:
" This is not a military state.  The majority of Americans want the troops home now.  Case closed.  "

Read more!

Making the 2008 Elections About the War in Iraq

A Nonpartisan Approach
to Bringing the War into
the 2008 Electoral Process
and Building the Popular
Power to Stop It


I think it's good that United for Peace & Justice is stressing engagement in the 2008 electoral process and working with resistance to the military and recruitment, as well as an ongoing support for mass and direct action.

Many people, however, are perplexed and even discouraged. Some say the Democratic leadership has wimped out, so lobbying or working the electoral arena is 'useless' and 'doesn't work.' Others say we've had one mass mobilization after another, the war goes on, and thus demonstrations 'don't work' either.

But it's just one-sided and wrong to start off saying none of our tactics are working much, and the conditions are too difficult to accomplish much anyway.

No single tactic or protest 'works.' We fight, we fail, we fight again, fail again, fight again, over and over, until we win--and we will. We have a just cause, and if we do our work steadfastly and well, it will prevail.

That's because what does work is the accumulative effect of all our activities, over time and in combination. We are waging a 'war of position' where, step-by-step, we capture institutions and gather strength. In doing so, we are laying the groundwork for a 'war of maneuver', a time when people in their millions erupt decisively and bring the war to a halt.

And don't kid yourself for a moment that we're not listened too or taken note of by the powers that be. They may strike a pose that they don't, but take my word for it: they probably pay more attention to our activities, and take us more seriously, than we do ourselves.

Here's how I'd frame it:

This war ends when three things happen.

The streets are filled and ungovernable, the soldiers and officers won't fight and youth targeted for recruitment won't join up, and when a Democratic Congress cuts off the money.

Now think backwards in time, and then lay the foundations in strategy and tactics on how to get from here to there.

Here's another point I'd stress: How do you measure success in any given battle?

Certainly not by whether the war ends because of it, for the simple reason that no single battle is going to end the war.

You measure success by whether or not you are better organized and have more fighting capacity after the battle than you did before you engaged your adversary. Conversely, is your adversary more isolated, divided and thus weaker than before?

So when we do any of these things--filling the streets, counter-recruitment and GI support, and electing people who will cut off the money and/or defeating those who won't--the main focus is best put on how we build OUR organizational strength. Not only whether we can reach out more broadly and pull more new forces into our camp, but also whether we consolidate our gains and deepen our abilities with new skills and resources.

We are fairly skilled at filling the streets. We are catching up on our work with soldiers and military families. But we are relatively weak on our electoral skills.

So that's what I'm going to focus on here now--not because it's the most important thing for this year--it may or may not be--but because it's where we're weakest, relatively speaking.

It's also important to note that large numbers of the antiwar majority in the country, millions of them, are not activists and are not yet ready to take to the streets. But that doesn't mean they won't do anything. They often will take up other forms of protest. For instance, in Chicago in 2006, 800,000 cast a ballot for 'Out Now', but no more than 25,000 all told have taken part in street actions that were primarily against the war in Iraq.

We can't just lead antiwar activists; we have to develop forms of engagement for non-activist antiwar people as well, especially if we want the ranks of the activists to grow.

To start, we have a major obstacle to overcome. We have been corrupted by decades of ultraleftism toward the electoral process. Because we have a dollarocracy with rotten choices, some people think they have the luxury of avoiding this arena, except, perhaps, at the last moment when on Election Day, when they'll tail after the most liberal option and cast a ballot.

That's EXACTLY what the Democratic Party bigwigs want us to do, and it's exactly wrong.

We have the electoral system history has placed in front of us, not one we'd like to have. But that doesn't mean it can't be structurally reformed. Even if it isn't reformed soon enough, this is still where one of the major battles is, and if you want to wage struggle on that front, you better do it there, and you better build something of your own to do struggle WITH. Otherwise, you might as well go fishing or let the Democratic Leadership Council types eat you for lunch.

How do we do it?

Step One. Start where you are, with our actually existing neighborhood-based, school-based or workplace-based peace and justice groups. If you're not rooted in this way, then step zero-to-one is to form such a group, because without one, your electoral activity is so much cafe chatter.

Step Two. Take stock of the electoral capacity of your group. How many of you have worked an election before? How many of you are deputy registrars or certified poll watchers and election judges? How many of you know where YOUR PRECINCT stands on the war--for, against, and undecided--AND THE VOTERS NAMES AND WHERE THEY LIVE? Most of you probably score low here, which is the point I'm trying to make. Step Two's task is to bring almost everyone in your group up to speed on these skills; mainly by having those who know how to do it train the rest while you're doing the work.

Step Three. Build your lists. You need a list of every registered voter, you then need to survey and "ID" them of where they stand on the war. You need to know where the unregistered voters most favorable to us are, then register them, in the thousands, expanding the electorate in our direction. You need lists of supporters, lists of donors, lists of election activists, or who might become active. These lists and skills then belong to YOU, not the Democrats or any other party or candidate. In my book, the true Leninists, in non-revolutionary times or otherwise, are those who get and grow the lists.

Step Four. At this point, you have something to begin intervening in election campaigns WITH. You have a means to put referendums and initiatives on the ballot, and the means to bring your own voters, especially new ones, out to the polls to vote on these measures. It also means political candidates now have a reason the pay attention to you in a more significant way. Having an important popular and moral message is not enough. Politicians, for the most part, pay more attention to messages that have money or organized voters behind them. Since our money is not that significant, we make it up with voters. When you do so, you begin to amass what's called 'clout,' and the means to deploy it.

Step Five. Who are your friends and allies? We don't win on our issues by ourselves. As Jesse Jackson puts it, we are only one patch in quilt, one stripe in the rainbow. We have to find others, who may have other priorities, but still agree with us on the war, to form a wide nonpartisan alliance, rooted with similar forces at the base, that can focus even more 'clout' into the election season and beyond.

Step Six. With these previous steps in motion, we have much more ability to bring the war into all the campaigns of the two major parties. I would certainly make the presidential campaigns a priority, if for no other reason than that's where the public attention is. We can compel candidates or their spokespeople to address our issue, and to a degree, establish an antiwar pole--candidates' night debates, candidates' score cards, and nonpartisan public forums of various sorts--a pole that has some clout behind it, that can't be easily dismissed. Its nonpartisan nature means ALL candidates claiming to be critical of the war have to pay attention to it, precisely because they don't have it in their hip pocket. In fact, the day you declare yourself for this or that candidate is the day your clout gets severely reduced.

We need to pay attention to Congressional and other races as well, demanding of all candidates that if they won't serve the antiwar majority, then who will? Because if they don't, we'll find someone else to do the job, if not in this round, then the next.

Some of the Democratic strategists like to think we can be ignored because we have nowhere else to go. They couldn't be more wrong, since we can go Green or we can go fishing, and, if we're well organized, we have a measure of how many votes they can lose in the process. As a nonpartisan alliance with our own organizations, our own lists and resources, we can't be put in anyone's back pocket or be taken for granted. They do so at their peril.

Finally, there's very little I've mentioned above that a 501C3 can't do. If you don't agree, then set up a C4 or just an ordinary nonprofit with no tax exemption, to get the job done. In Chicago in 2004, we called our group 'Peace and Justice Voters 2004', and it served us very well, then and for years afterwards, including our ability to put the war itself on the ballot in Illinois, and many other matters.

At the end of this 2008 cycle, whatever happens directly around the war, we will come out of it much stronger, much more politically astute, and with much more enhanced grassroots popular power. Apart from ending the war itself, that's how I would measure success, and to achieve it, we need to set aside all the old ultraleft, semi-anarchist caveats about elections in this country--if you think they're bad now, wait until you get in the thick of them. I won't prettify them, but let's get on with it. It's a challenge, but it's a critical dimension of politics in non-revolutionary times, and it doesn't matter whether you like the task or not. It simply has to be done; there's no getting around it.

Carl Davidson
December 2007

Read more!

Breaking with the 'Left Bloc' Mentality

The Oct. 27 Debates, Round One

Note from CarlD:

What follows is the opening round in a series of sharp debates over how best to organize mass mobilizations against the Iraq war, in this case, the Oct 27 rallies and mass march in Chicago. It starts with a posting on Chicago Indymedia of an article from the People's Weekly World, newspaper of the Communist Party USA, supporting the upcoming events and quoting me as the project's director. Naturally, on Indymedia, it drew criticism from points further to the left, as well as from the anarchist movement. Stay tuned for more later...



"Every elected official, including Mayor Richard M. Daley and state and congressional representatives, will be invited to speak, along with presidential candidates," says Oct.27 Mobilization Committee project director Carl Davidson. "We are nonpartisan, but we're not anti-partisan. We want the program to reflect the range of politics that actually exists on the ground."

To End Iraq War, People Power Organizes
-by Susan Webb, People's Weekly World - Sept. 22, 2007
[ http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/11735/1/391/ ]

Now, Chicago's October 27 Mobilization Committee is working to do just that. The key, said Davidson, the committee's project director, is building new organizations and involving neighborhoods that aren't organized.

For example, he reported recently, "There has been a second meeting of Black churches, community groups and others on the South Side. They are starting with 50 church buses to bring their members to the rallies and back." The broad outreach "will also approach both Orthodox and Black Muslim communities, and should be seen not simply as a Black effort, but as an interfaith network throughout the area," he said.

"The question is, what will the unions do?" he said in a phone interview. Union endorsements are important, but the key is what the unions will do to bring out their members, he said. The committee is counting on labor activists to spur membership involvement.

The Chicago demonstration Oct. 27 is one of several regional actions United for Peace and Justice is organizing around the country to end the Iraq war, under the heading "Peace is possible."

The core of the Chicago mobilizing is focused on the local area, but two peace trains will bring hundreds from St. Louis and Detroit, along with scores of busloads from surrounding states including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio.

Every elected official, including Mayor Richard M. Daley and state and congressional representatives, will be invited to speak, along with presidential candidates. "We are nonpartisan, but we're not anti-partisan," Davidson said. "We want the program to reflect the range of politics that actually exists on the ground."

A poll conducted for FOX News - hardly a liberal-biased organization - indicates that the congressional testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crockett did not change American public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war. The Sept. 11-12 FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll showed 64 percent think the U.S. should pull all troops out of Iraq either immediately or over the next year.

"The president just had the most credible spokesperson he could have had," a congressional aide told the World. "I don't think he got much out of that. The American people aren't buying it."

President Bush's Sept. 13 speech, with the peculiar theme of "return on success," made clearer than ever that he plans to pass the war on to the next administration. The speech drew wide criticism and was seen as unlikely to budge the majority antiwar sentiment.

Calling Bush's remarks a "path to 10 more years of war," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "The American people reject the president's 10-year war in Iraq and want a responsible redeployment to end this war."

Democrats are pressing a variety of measures. Some call for specific withdrawal timetables or funding restrictions. Their supporters say these measures are long overdue and are the only way to change the dynamics in Congress, compel meaningful action and make Republicans take responsibility for the war. Other measures are less binding or involve partial steps but, their advocates say, can draw sufficient Republican votes to make them veto-proof and move toward the U.S. exiting Iraq.

While the Democrats won control of Congress last fall, their majorities are not veto-proof. Senate Democrats in particular are grappling with their razor-thin majority, which gives Republicans the power to block progressive legislation of any kind. And overriding a Bush veto requires a 67-vote Senate supermajority.

The key to breaking the gridlock in Congress is "for us to break our gridlock," Davidson told the World. So far, only the "militant minority" is involved in organized actions, he said. "We have to find a way to enable the antiwar majority to take action. We have to take away every obstacle to them participating. That's what Oct. 27 is all about."

Chicago has 120 neighborhoods, but only 15 have peace and justice groups, Davidson noted. "Even if we organized 40 neighborhood groups, that would be a huge step. That's what gets the politicians' attention. When the antiwar majority is independently organized at the base, then you have popular power. That's what we need."

When people complain about Democrats, he suggested, "Ask them how well their neighborhood is organized."

suewebb @pww.org

Comments

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Anti-War Rally or Democratic Party Rally?
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Friday, 21 September 2007
by Lev


Is this an anti-war event or a Democratic Party campaign rally?

After all, if you're going to invite an "anti-war" presidential candidate who won't take first strike use of nuclear weapons off of the table (Clinton), or an "anti-war" candidate who advocated bombing Iran and invading Pakistan (Obama), why not just round out the picture and invite John McCain too?

Opps, I forgot. This is a DEMOCRATIC Party campaign rally.

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Friday, 21 September 2007
by cliff


where do bush and rice fit in during the kick off speeches? will cheney get 5 minutes or 10?

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Friday, 21 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


This is a nonpartisan antiwar rally, and it's going to be an important one.

But as the article above says, it is not anti-partisan.

Those of you who think everything political reduces to pro-Democratic party or anti-Democratic party, well, you can cling to that if you like, but some of us have a view of strategy and tactics that's a bit more complex, like life itself.

We will have Greens and even elected GOPers who oppose the war, too. And people who don't vote for any of them.

But I'd guess fewer the a third of the speakers will be elected officials of any sort, and I'd bet good money that Daley, even with an invite, will find something else to do that day. Most speakers will be labor, community, faith, and other constituency and issue-oriented activists.

But you're right on the heart of the matter.

This is a left-center coalition, and will have speakers from the left, the liberals and even the center who oppose the war. The whole range, from hard-line anti-imperialists to some who are less steadfast, to say the least.

But they will do it--or not, if they stay away--under the banner, 'Stop the war now, bring all our troops home.'

Everyone is welcome to take part, but this is the basic orientation. I agree it's different. Maybe it will pay off, maybe it won't. We'll see.

I'd also guess that 90 percent of those who show up, who have ever voted, will have voted for a Democrat recently. Perhaps a few for a Green.

Shall we tell those who consider themselves Democrats that they're not welcome? Shall we exclude the PDA chapters that have endorsed, or the antiwar candidates running in the Dem primaries? Or Aldermen who have voted down the war twice?

I think not.

I guarantee you that the busloads coming from the South Side are ordinary folks who regularly vote Democratic, for better or worse. But we are not putting up any unnecessary obstacles or hurdles to their participation.

We suffer from the lack of these people, and others even less 'on the left,' not from too many of them.

Especially if we want to stop this horrible war. The left cannot do it alone.

You don't have to agree with this, or even march with us.

If you don't care for our approach, organize your own. But do something this Fall to stop the war.

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Friday, 21 September 2007
by hmm


Speaking of elected officials, I had the opportunity to attend a Cook County Board press availibity meeting around the cutbacks at County Hospital and heard Cook County Board President Todd Stroger state that Cook County government could pay for quality health care and staff at Cook County if federal dollars weren't being wasted on bankrolling the Iraq war. Clearly Stroger opposes the war as well and wasn't shy about saying so in public.

Are you going to invite him on stage on Oct. 27?
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Friday, 21 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


No, I think we have better speakers on that issue in mind.

But we are organizing a 'Health Care, Not Warfare' contingent of doctors, nurses and all others involved in health care who oppose the war. Stroger is certainly welcome to join its ranks, and help in whatever other way he can. He may have to put up with some criticism from others involved in the health system, but that's only natural.

He's not the first, and not likely the last, public official to assert the war in Iraq is destroying their programs. That's because it's true.

And we have Chicago Faculty for Peace and Justice, Chicago Lawyers and Legal Workers for Peace and Justice, and other similar contingents also in the works.

All are welcome to join in and lend a hand...

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Friday, 21 September 2007
by hmm


Excuse me, but are you implying that internal political considerations might trump inviting a senior black Chicago elected official who has publicly stated his opposition to the war? But inviting Daley -- a politician who has yet to condemn the war and is as corrupt and anti-labor as they come -- is ok? Too bad. This news may be received with some consternation by those African American ministers and others on the South Side who might otherwise be inclined to encourage their congregations to attend.

As for non-partisanship, there's always Ron Paul, who will be in Chicago this week for a campaign rally, opposes the war and is a firm member of the GOP

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Friday, 21 September 2007
by what hypocrisy


Will Forrest Claypool, aka 'Mr. Privatization' and the prince of pinstripe patronage during his tenure as head of the Chicago Park District be invited to speak? And what, pray tell, will you tell the Black ministers you say are organizing on the south side when they find out the beleaguered County Board President -- who they support and think is getting the royal shaft in the press -- is not invited? Why is it OK for Republican elected officials, notorious for their anti-labor positions, to speak and not an anti-war Democrat like Stroger? It'll be a pleasure passing your comments onto the folks on the south side. You've argued they don't share the political sensibilities of the uninvited left. It will be fascinating to see their response when they learn they don't share yours, either.
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Saturday, 22 September 2007
by Lev


'We will have Greens and even elected GOPers who oppose the war, too.'

Yes, very nice Carl, but again, will the Democrats who will undoubtedly be the vast majority of the pols on the stage, be ones who really 'oppose the war'? Richie M. Daley, one of the invitees, has never come out against the war, and has repeatedly used his sock puppet Alderman Balcer in rear-guard actions to torpedo anti-war initiatives in the City Council. He "opposes the war" as much as John McCain ever has (that's irony, boys and girls).

And what about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama? Aside from their boisterous calls for yet more 'pre-emptive' wars, what sort of genuine "opposition" to the Iraq war have they actually demonstrated? Both have voted for EVERY single Bush war appropriation except for the last one. And as for that last one, every serious commentator said that their votes "against" the war funding bill were merely "demonstration votes" made for the benefit of primary voters once they were assured that the measure would pass. So basically, rhetoric aside, they have been staunch supporters of the Iraq war. And by the way, the notion that 60 anti-war Senate votes are necessary to stop funding the Iraq War is nonsense. Forty senators, much less than the Democratic majority, could decide to block any war funding bill if they so chose. But they won't. Watch the Democratic majority crumble once again in the next few weeks over the war funding bill for the next year. Opps, I guess the Oct. 27th "protest" will be a little bit too late to affect that -- how very convenient.

And what about the rest of the Chicago area Congressional delegation, many of whom presumably are among the invitees to address this "anti-war" rally? EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM voted for the last war funding bill. Everyone from Lipinski to Schakowsky.

And so the question remains, what with the "anti-war" notables we've reviewed who already have been invited; why not also invite John McCain to address this "anti-war" rally?

Opps, again I forgot, it's a Democratic Party rally. "Anti-war," aside from rhetoric, has nothing to do with it.

Prepare to be lied to again. It's a farce that the life-blood of the anti-war movement was sucked dry by the 2004 Kerry campaign, the man who said "I voted for the war before I voted against it."

It's a tragedy that those controlling the Oct. 27th action are trying to repeat that dismal history.

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Saturday, 22 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


First of all, 'hmm' and others, all elected officials, including Stroger, are invited to support and take part. But obviously, not all are invited to speak, since there are only 25 slots, and roughly a third, at most, will be for elected officials. And we have elected officials from other states to consider as well.

And don't worry, there will be plenty of representation, of various political views, for the African American South Side and West Side on the platform.

So lighten up, and stop playing this silly game.

It's a left center coalition against the war. And we'll find the best speakers we can for the left, center, and points in between. And you don't build a real left-center coalition by assigning all the speakers' slots to the left, and excluding the center.

So if you want to attack something, attack that orientation. That's the substance of the matter, rather than going after one imaginary speaker or another.

Our starting point was that the last election proved Chicago is an antiwar town and Illinois is an antiwar state, having voted on our main slogan, 'Stop the War Now, Bring All Our Troops Home.' So we'll challenge the city and state's top pols to speak under it and to it, but we're not holding our breath for any particular one of them.

It might not be your cup of tea, but it's the way we're proceeding. The old way, the anti-imperialist bloc against the two parties, has got itself in a cul-de-sac. The truth is that left cannot end this war alone, and we need broader alliances.

Whether we get them in an effective way or not, no one can predict. But we, meaning UFPJ and its allies, are going to give it our best shot. We'll see what happens.

Lend a hand if you want to help make it a success.

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Saturday, 22 September 2007
by m


Actually, Davidson, it's hardly a 'silly' game - but like the response of much of the white center-liberal milieu toward the Jena 6, LA protest -- one that reflects a much deeper problem. Here's a case in point: [ http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2007/09/why-progressive-blogosphere-silence_20.asp ]

As pointed out in an earlier post, both Daley and Stroger are corrupt, grifting Democratic politicians with terrible track records on a number of issues. No doubt about it. Still, your avowed strategy pivots on bringing together the broadest possible sectors and voices together exclusively around the war in Iraq, -- irrespective of their positions on other issues. It's a narrow approach I wouldn't take toward antiwar coalition building, I think the broader public is far more capable of connecting the dots and increasingly fed up with being lied to by those in power - but hey, it's your party.

In this case, one politician opposes the war and links it to the crisis in domestic funding for health care. The other has either dodged the issue of the war or has offered explicit support to the Bush Administration's war drive. Inviting Stroger won't be a winning idea with the SEIU or suburban liberals. But publicly inviting Daley may also piss off those myriad grassroots community groups - many in the African American and Latino communities who have been locked in mortal combat with his regime for years.

So who gets the nod here when it comes inviting local elected officials to speak? Beyond Munoz, Moore, Davis or Schakowsky? Da Mare.

Pretty telling choice.

Then there's Obama -- who was also noticeably absent from the Jena protests, along with every other Democratic Presidential candidate. Along with his stated position in favor of preemptive strike against Iran - now a very real possibility in the weeks ahead if the neocons get their way.

Finally, WTF is an "Orthodox" Muslim? Are you referencing the Nation of Islam (NOI)? Or the various independent mosques anchored in the African American community? Or other Sunna and Shia mosques in the Arab and South Asian communities of Chicago?
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Saturday, 22 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


FYI, 'm', some of our founding meeting members, Terry Davis for one, has been down in Jena for weeks, building the protests there.

We've also had our members turning out to and leafleting almost every anti-brutality and pro-justice gathering in the Black community. We are meeting regularly with church leaders on the South side to bring buses to the Oct 27 events. And 'orthodox' Muslim was a term they used, referring to the non-NOI mosques in the Black community.

But we are approaching all Imams, of whatever nationality, to make this an interfaith effort.

So I don't know what 'white' milieu you're talking about, but we're doing our best to break with some of the past ones we've known.

Finally, it's going to take working with politicians you and I don't care for to stop this damnable war. We can't do it with the left alone, so get used to it, and lend a hand, unless you just want to stand aside and keep on with the 'same 'ole same ole' stuff you've done up till now.

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Saturday, 22 September 2007
by double standard


"Finally, it's going to take working with politicians you and I don't care for to stop this damnable war."

So Daley is OK, and Stroger is not. The white boy is fine, and the black man doesn't pass muster. Are Daley's politics less 'corrupt' than Stroger's? What other litmus test is there here but race?

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Saturday, 22 September 2007
by m


Good news that the Oct. 27 Mobilization been leafleting events in the African American community. Your leaflet advertises your invited guest speakers -- including the Mayor?

I didn't think so.

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Saturday, 22 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


You're being silly, again, 'M'

First, 'Da Mare' hasn't been invited yet, so how could it be on a flyer printed a few weeks back, starting with the Bilikken parade? BTW, Daley probably endorsed that, too, but I doubt if it dampened the turnout.

Second, when he does get his invite, I'm not holding my breath for a positive response.

Third, when he did appear at the immigrant rights rally, and I heard he gave a more than passable speech, a personal breaththrough for him, did it hurt the immigrant rights movement? Did it turn anyone way? I don't think so.

You're making much ado about little--although the general policy of trying to involve elected officials is important. And the trashing of that policy in the M20 coalition disputes is just one reason why a good number of folks were fed up enough to do things differently this time around.

More interesting would be positive responses from Durbin and Obama, who are being supported by our South Side allies, or Edwards, who the Steelworkers are pushing.

I'd be glad to see all three of them on the platform, but I'd guess you wouldn't, even though both Obama and Edward like to use the 'connect the dots' phrase, not that they mean what you mean by it.

Again, if you want to defend or attack something, get to the heart of the matter. Speakers come and go, but a strategic and tactical line on alliances needed to end this war sooner rather than later, endures a lot longer, don't you think?

And is there anyone else out there who wants to jump in on this? 'M' and 'hmm' and I have crossed swords for nearly a decade now. Let's get some new voices here.

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Saturday, 22 September 2007
by what the hell


I have to say I'm flabbergasted by this strategy -- inviting a sitting mayor who arrested more than 800 peaceful antiwar protesters the night the war began, and who spent the next three years doing everything he could to continue to trash our right to free speech and public protest. Maybe, MAYBE I could see it if Daley’s completely reversed his positions, but he hasn't, and he sure hasn't renounced his support for a raft of other Bush polices. What the hell?

Democratic voters across the country are disgusted with the Democratic leadership in Washington for failing to take a strong and serious stand against the war. People are also plenty disgusted locally with the crookedness in ward and city hall politics. How will bringing those same politicians that have been ripping us off and taking us for granted for years build the grassroots movement against the war?

And how the hell can we expect people of color anywhere to take the white liberals organizing this seriously, when we invite a politician like Daley who isn't antiwar, turned a blind eye to police torture when he was state's attorney, has yet to reign in a police force that functions like an occupying army in many of our neighborhoods, and is gentrifying thousands of us out of the city we were born in?

We are in deep shit with this kind of strategy.

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Sunday, 23 September 2007
by Stan Smith


I do not agree with Carl Davidson's orientation, but he makes some good points. (But, Carl, while it is true that Daley gave an ok speak at the anti-immigrant rally, it did give the illusion that he was some sort of reliable ally - and helped to conceal what he was: an opponent forced to give lip-service).

And I do notice that Carl Davidson can sign his name to his articles, while nobody else does. Maybe that in itself says something: the alternative to Carl Davidson's political strategy is nameless and faceless, and consists of faceless people complaining about his UFPJ views but not creating an alternative. Until there is a anti-imperialist alternative to trying to stop Democrats kow-towing to the right, the UFPJ strategy will control the field. After 6 years of the anti-war movement, UFPJ and the Democrats have been pretty discredited. But the anti-imperialist anti-war movement has been discredited by in-fighting, both locally and nationally. It has fractured into little groups bickering with each other over who wants to be No. 1.

After 6 years of war, there is no evidence this is going to change at all. Of all the anti-imperialist anti-war organizations, locally and nationally, I know of none who would disagree with this perspective: I prefer to be No. 1 in my little marginalized corner than be mainstream and not be No. 1.

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Sunday, 23 September 2007
by n.


I was thinking about the same thing about Cuba. The Cuba support movement has fragmented as well...which is why there isn't more support for the Cuban 5 in this town. Stan know whereof he speaks

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Sunday, 23 September 2007
by n.?


More lynch mobs at the workplace?

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Sunday, 23 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


We'll soon see, won't we, 'What the Hell?'

The way things are going, I'd hazard a guess that we'll have a significant increase in African American participation over past events of this type, some of it organized by people you're in agreement with, but quite a few others being organized by people you might be more critical of.

I wouldn't worry about 'Da Mare' if I were you. In the outside chance he does accept and appear under our banner, it would be a shift.

Besides, if we're to bring this war to an end, well need alliances with forces with more crimes on their hands than Daley, for sure. As I keep repeating, the left can't end this war alone, and if you think we can end it, sooner rather than later, by only forming alliances with angels, I'd love to hear you make your case. I'm all ears.

Otherwise, it's time to get serious about serious things.

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Sunday, 23 September 2007
by ?


I don't know which kills me more, the progressive Dem's calling the imperialistic occupation in Iraq "war" or the elected Dem's calling the U.S. service people and mercenaries in Iraq as the "coalition forces."

Ending "this war" is not saying much, again.

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Sunday, 23 September 2007
by carol


"We can't just leave the Middle East. If we leave the Middle East, just let's just forget about the Middle East and just walk away from the Middle East. I don't think anybody wants that."

"What I think we are trying to do, some way, is trying to slowly allow Iraq to take full control of their country," the mayor said. "No one likes war because it's the death of someone's son or daughter, father, mother or son. . . . No one was for the Revolutionary War. . . . Maybe today they would doubt the Civil War - - whether or not slavery was worth fighting for. I think it was."

"I don't think it's a quick fix."

- Chicago Tribune, December, 2005

The mayor's comments came in the wake of a call for an American troop withdrawal by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and followed by one day a speech by Bush defending his Iraq strategy.

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Sunday, 23 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


Well, Anon', 'ending this war' may 'not be saying much' to you, but I'd love to hear you make that case to Iraqi mothers burying there children or US parents burying their sons and daughters.

Set your 'left' blinders aside for a moment, and listen to yourself...Good grief.

And 'carol,' the most important thing in your quote from Daley is the date, '2005'

A lot changes in two years.

I'm not saying he's made any changes, but many of his cohorts have. The mayor of Salt Lake City is leading the Oct 27 mobilizations there, along with a new group, 'Mormons for Equality and Justice,' and many others. Who woulda' thunk it?...

What we have to say to our city elected officials is that we voted, 800,000 of us, by a margin of 81-to-19, to stop this war now. IF YOU WON'T JOIN IN THE LEADERSHIP TO DO IT, AND REPRESENT US, WHO WILL? Because if you won't, we'll have to take you down, and replace you with someone who'll get the job done.

Then put the ball in their court by offering them an opportunity to do so.

Some will pick it up, some won't. Some come to this movement early, some late, and some not at all.

But we should make as much of it happen as we can, for the simple reason that there's a dynamic relationship between these people and their base, and we're primarily interested in moving their base more solidly into our camp.

Learn to play Chess or 'Go' here, rather than checkers...


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Carl, why not demand that the Democratic leadership filibuster war funding bill?
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Sunday, 23 September 2007
by Bob Schwartz


John V. Walsh has challenged UFPJ leaders to demand that the Democrats filibuster the war funding bill when the criminal Bush asks for $2 billions more for carnage.

writes Walsh, "UFPJ has explicitly refused to do this. Why? Because, according to the UFPJ "leadership," their friends on the Hill (read Dems) say it does not have a chance? Of course that could be said of any of the antiwar measures. No, the truth is that the filibuster and the vote that would follow in its wake would expose each and every Dem Senator for what they are. And that is a no-no for the UFPJ leadership which more or less shares a bed with the Dems."

There is one way to push this forward. At FilibusterForPeace.org [ filibusterforpeace.org/ ]

Correction in war funding request. Its $200 billion.

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Sunday, 23 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


Well, I'm one UFPJer in favor of filibusters over the war. And impeachment to boot, starting with Cheney.

I've been a fan of Mike Gravel, former Senator from Alaska, for a long time, especially when he pushed his recent notion of a bill--not a resolution--with four words, 'End The War Now,' to pass into law, thus making the war's continuation illegal and impeachable.

Let the GOP filibuster, he said, and call for cloture every day, so more and more learn who's really killing the troops and the people of Iraq.

But I'm wise enough to know that you don't win at the top what you haven't already won and organized at the base.

So my answer is, if you really want to see these things happen at the top, organize the base. I can name at least 60 Chicago neighborhoods with no peace and justice group, or antiwar group of any sort, despite the fact that a majority in each voted against the war.

I'd say much of our hard core anti-imperialists are a bunch of lazy bones; they can carry on at great length about one analysis or another, but I challenge them to take up these neighborhoods, hold a coffee to call together a core, build some lists and allies, and launch some new groups.

Then we'll have something to do politics WITH.

Otherwise, it's cafe chatter...

If you want some names to get started, come and see me.

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Sunday, 23 September 2007
by ?


Stroger didn't arrest 800 protesters, Daley did. Stroger didn't cover up police torture, Daley did. Stroger opposes the war, Daley has never said so publicly at least. Why wont you answer questions Carl that are put to you, or do you only want to answer the questions you like any politician. Why is Daley OK and not Stroger? Why the white elected official and not the Black elected official?

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Monday, 24 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


Why Daley?

Because Chicago is on record as a 'City for Peace,' one of 301 similar cities.

Its City Council voted overwhelmingly against the invasion before it happened, and by a solid majority against it in the middle. (And Daley made himself not present during those votes.) And the City's electorate voted 81-19 percent for 'out now,' with 800,000 votes, carrying every Ward.

We're asking Daley, (and Obama and Durbin, for that matter) to speak to and represent the City's position, and the position of its voters, not primarily his personal position. If he's moved on the war, so much the better, but we'll put the ball in his court, and see what he does. I'll be surprised if he accepts the offer. But if he does, it'll work mainly to our advantage and to his in a secondary way.

The County Board has taken no position on the war, at least not yet. Stroger is welcome to endorse and help out as an individual, but we have far better speakers on 'Health Care, Not Warfare' in mind.

But since you probably don't want either of them speaking anyway, and are likely to have it that way, why is this such a big deal to you?

As I said earlier, we're going to need alliances with people far worse than Daley to stop this war, unless you think the left can do it--ending the war sooner rather than later--alone. If that's so, make your case.

If not, and you're still confused, my personal advice, not our coalition's, is to dig out some old copies of Gramsci, Mao, Dimitrov and Truong Chinh on the strategy and tactics of the united front, and learn a thing or two. From Truong Chinh, read the section on 'alliances aimed at neutralization.'

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Monday, 24 September 2007
by puhleeze


Give us a break, CD. Your choice of Daley over Stroger was a tactical decision dictated by internal political considerations ( like not alienating the usual North Shore and suburban white liberals who supported Claypool, and SEIU's leadership whom you are courting ) Those considerations clearly trumped your professed strategic outlook -- which should have welcomed a African American politician - albeit a Dem. machine hack -- who has spoken out publicly against the war and has a significant base of electoral support in the Black and Latino communities, including from 22nd Ward Alderman Rick Munoz among others.

As for Daley speaking out on behalf of the City Council resolution, fat chance. That resolution was non-binding, didn't mandate the City of Chicago do anything and no more represents the executive branch of City government - where policy decisions are actually implemented than my Aunt Hattie. (who btw, is available to speak)

My hunch is we'll see the same calculus applied with other figures -- say like the Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Organizing Network whom might make some of your core supporters a little uncomfortable. Prove me wrong. Invite him to speak.

At this point it's pretty clear who your target audience is, and it isn't the majority of this city. But as was said before, it's your party.


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Monday, 24 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


"...was a tactical decision dictated by internal political considerations ( like not alienating the usual North Shore and suburban white liberals who supported Claypool, and SEIU's leadership whom you are courting )"

Really? You have got to be kidding.

Believe me, I was in the room when this decision was made, and absolutely NONE of these considerations were in play.

Besides, SEIU is already on board, no courting required, and they could care less about 'Da Mare.'

Second, 'Northshore liberals,' whoever that is, but if you mean some of the neighborhood-based P&J groups, they didn't care one way or another, or were even dubious about 'Da Mare.'.

Third, Stroger's name never even came up, in any context, although we did mention Maldonado from the Board. Our 'Healthcare, not Warfare' contingent and speakers mentioned were all from mass organizations, and we have some excellent people to choose from.

Our South Side community allies were mainly interested in Durbin and Obama as possibilities, as well as an interfaith alliance including Jews and Muslims. They never mentioned Stroger in any context either.

Daley's came up in the context of Cities for Peace, Chicago as the more powerful among them, and building a contingent of elected city officials from around the region, and the need to involve them all. So we decided to invite him in the same context of all the other cities and majors we would invite, but no one would be holding their breath for a positive reply, although, who knows, we might be surprised.

We also decided to try to get Cardinal George and the Archdiocese on board.

That was the actual discussion. You can fantasize about reading the minds of various individuals all you want, and make up whatever 'theories' or 'explanations' you want, but those plus $2.00 will get you on the CTA.


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Monday, 24 September 2007
by oneofthe800


Maybe Carl can convince Ritchie to announce a settlement of the civil liberties lawsuit underway in favor of those 800 folks who got to see the Mayor's response to the attack on Iraq up close and personal? After his impending change of heart?

As a bonus, maybe Cardinal George can offer mass absolution from the stage to all of us who support choice?

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Monday, 24 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


Naaah, "800," mass absolution only works if you make a sincere 'Act of Contrition.' Check your Baltimore Catechism, if you have one lying around from bygone days. In any case, on that matter, the church should make one.

But 'Holy Mother Church' has also been rather clear in opposing this war. The Cardinal's blessing would spur a great number of new participants and allies from among the faithful.

Say a prayer, make a wish, or do a good new age 'creative visualization' to help such a development along...

But I doubt if Andy's Pope and Cardinal outfits will fill the bill...

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Monday, 24 September 2007
by couple observations


Invited to speak:

>Daley, who has not come out against the war and arrested 800 of us the day the war started.

>Durbin, who has consistently voted to fund the war, although he's been willing to publicly call the war the greatest U.S. mistake 'ever' -- while still bankrolling this mistake.

>Obama, who has yet to retract his assertion that it's okey dokey with him to preemptively bomb Iran.

Not invited to speak:

>Todd Stroger, who's publicly opposed the war and whose political track record is certainly no less stellar than Mr. Daley's.

This, to me, doesn't look like it's just about race, bur rather about more broadly backing certain local political factions over others. If nothing else, that puts the lie to Mr. Davidson's avowed 'big tent' approach to organizing.

That said, there's also no question that the politics of race also play a role here, particularly considering the lovefest some organizers and backers of this action have with County commissioner and uber privatizing libertarian County commissioner Forrest Claypool. Perhaps they should review Claypool's track record as head of the Park District and as Daley's chief of staff before they embrace him as a screaming reformer. By the way, has Claypool been invited to speak? Has he tried to invite himself to speak -- as he has at past local antiwar mobilizations?

Of course, we won't see any strong statements from the stage condemning Israeli human rights violations against Palestinians in the occupied territories, either, despite the critical role this conflict plays in U.S. policy in the region. Why is this issue kicked to the curb? Because that might piss off congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, a 'proud Zionist woman' in her own words, along with many of her supporters -- who are also central players in backing this mobilization under these narrow terms.

Any mention of Palestine as a critical component of the U.S. backed occupation strategy for unruly and unsubmissive non-western peoples might also create some discomfort for people like labor heavyweight Tom Balanoff of SEIU, who joined SEIU International President Andy Stern at an awards ceremony this past February held by the Anti-Defamation League that presented Mr. Balanoff with the Distinguished Community Service Lifetime Achievement Award. [ http://chicagojewishnews.com/forums/calendar.php?c=1&day=2007-2-5&do=getinfo&e=162 ]

Why raise these points? Because it's important to understand that local politics -- including political allegiances and interests that are shaped through the lens of race and ethnic politics right here on the ground -- have an impact on how this event is being organized.

I expect that the 5,000-odd anti-war protesters who come together every year to oppose the war will attend this event, particularly since groups like ANSWER have agreed to participate WITHOUT ghettoizing issues like Palestine.

But will this demonstrate some sort of political 'breakthrough', as Mr. Davidson asserts? Nope. It simply represents an action whose organizers are prepared to ensure that the voices and sensibilities of Zionists and white liberals are not discomfited by the appearance of Black politicians they don't like, or uppity anti-occupation forces like progressive Palestinians who oppose the U.S. bankrolled Israeli oppression of millions of Palestinian people.

Occupation is occupation. Until we stop insulting the intelligence of our base and call out all occupation for what it is -- whether it's Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran or whatever -- people will continue to hold the anti-war leadership and their agenda as suspect as the lying Republocrat leadership that backs our bogus foreign policy.


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Monday, 24 September 2007
by where are we


For those who weren't there, Friday's kickoff for the 10/27 mobilization included NO women speakers. Zero. Nada. It did look like the majority of those who attended and were doing the work were women, however. I hope the Oct. 27 organizers remember that we need to be represented on the stage as speakers, and don't make this kind of mistake again.

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Monday, 24 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


We had several women lined up for the events in Fed Plaza on 9/21, 'where we are'--Ald. Kyle, who got detained on another matter, Linda Beckstrom, Peace Pledge, who attended, but had to leave early. But Catherine Buntin, of the North Suburban Interfaith Peace Initiative, did speak at the press conference--not to mention the three women taking turns chanting the names and ages of the Iraqi dead.

I'm sure we could do better, but 'zero nada' is not quite right.

As for 'couple observations,' I'll wager that Palestine and other matters you point to will be heard from the stages. The difference is that we won't just hear from the left, but from the center and points in between as well. It won't just be an anti-imperialist bloc that's heard, but a wider range of voices and perspectives. That's because we're seeking to mobilize all trends of the antiwar majority, not just the 'anti-imperialist, pro-solidarity with liberation struggles' left sector of that majority.

That's the whole point. We make no apologies for it, because we need to do it to end the war sooner rather than later.

There seems to be no end to the complaints about this in this forum, but none of you have explained how the left is going to accomplish this task on its own, without broader alliances among progressive and middle forces, both at the top and at the base.

Frankly, I don't think you can. But I'm all ears.

Meanwhile, this effort is generating considerable enthusiasm and wide support, here and elsewhere. But we still need all the help we can get, so lend a hand...

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Monday, 24 September 2007
by alliances and comments


In Chicago, "couple observations" misses a key alliance: David Axelrod, the Dems' version of Karl Rove (OK, maybe he can only fill those shoes if he steps into them in conjunction with the equally tiny-footed Rahm Emanuel) and the principle political architect of Barack Obama's runs in 2004 and now, is thisclose to Forrest Claypool, who helped him start his business, AKP Message & Media. Under those terms, and given the allegiances that many of our friends in CAWI have with players in the Democratic party, Mr. Stroger will never, ever be allowed to speak at a venue like this. Carl Davidson's one big tent approach to speakers just doesn't have a tent big enough for Todd.

In addition, while Axelrod may have been successfully trumping against Stroger with the race card for the last 18 months among white liberals, his campaign on behalf of his pal Forrest (who occasionally holds his press conferences in Axelrod's office ... think about the message THAT sends to political beat reporters) is all about political power -- namely Claypool's, in what is shaping up as another run at the Cook County board presidency.

That Mr. Claypool has been no friend to labor over the years has been largely lost on the consciousness of the Anglos that have blindly rushed to support him over the son of John. Then again, how many of these alert ... not ... white people know that Forrest Claypool kept a photo of Ayn Rand in his office during his last run for county board president?

Don't take my word for it, either. See the Sun-Times article by Steve Patterson on March 6, 2006. Note that the other picture in Claypool's office -- that of Martin Luther King Jr. -- hangs there because Claypool apparently thinks Dr. King was some sort of rugged individualist. Perhaps someone should give Forrest a copy of Dr. King's essay, "A New Sense of Direction" (1968), where he calls for mass civil disobedience to advance the cause of racial and economic justice. Note that mass civil disobedience is hardly a solitary venture, a point apparently lost on the staunchly libertarian Forrest, who also opposed County legislation that would have banned cigarette smoking in County businesses because it is, after all, a person's 'choice' (his word, not mine) to smoke, and government should not be making that more difficult, the public health consequences be damned. I suppose that portrait in Forrest's office serves to prove he's not a cracker like some of the folks who reflexively support him.

But I digress. The real issue at hand in this thread is a vigorous disagreement about the best way forward. I'd have more faith in Carl's analysis if his assessment were rooted in fact. He asserts repeatedly that this 'appeal to the center' strategy is bound to bring the minions and stand on its own merits but he forgets an important point. Under his formulation, the mainstream projects he's lined up to support this effort have vastly deeper pockets than the left in this town that has largely shouldered the brunt of the work in organizing previous mass anti-war mobilizations.

So Carl's formulation starts out from jump with a vastly deeper well in which to dip, both financially and in other practical material ways, like large databases of union members and petition signers, for example. Bear in mind that all of us, no matter how lame and insulting to the base we think Carl's frame is, will show up at this action, as well. So they should be expected to pull at least 15,000 people to this action -- the six to nine that show up for annual anniversary mobilizations in Chicago, for example, and who will support virtually any public expression against the war, PLUS the additional 5-15 thousand CAWI should be able to organize via the unions that have signed on and the metro faith projects like AFSC.

I think it also bears noting that for previous mobilizations largely organized by those entirely too democratic anti-imperialist types that so stick in Carl's craw, these sorts of mainstream groups -- including Balanoff's SEIU locals and the AFSC -- have actively boycotted these efforts.

I think the deeper question is this: where would we really be at in terms of mass mobilizations if our friends in projects like AFSC and SEIU would play well with others and support the anti-war actions Carl now wants the rest of us to embrace? We will, Carl, we will, because it's the right thing to do, not because it's being organized in the right way. But who's really sectarian here? Who's really exclusionary? When will we get a flyer with details about this mobilization? When will we get a list of speakers that assuages the concerns that many of have about inclusiveness and diversity?

Or do we have to bring our own speakers and swap them out on stage on the fly?

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Tuesday, 25 September 2007
by DR


Out of curiosity, I scanned the Midwest antiwar links listed on the Oct. 27 webpage, looking for Oct. 27 announcements, but found only several promos for this regional mobilization. What gives?

Apparently to date, Madison organizers have rented two buses, and sold aprox 40 tickets. Milwaukee also has 12 school buses reserved, according to the WNPJ website. Racine reserved a bus, and the Lakeshore has a bus, starting in Green Bay going though Manitowoc and Sheboygan. St. Louis activists are promoting a peace train -- which they've done before for the March anniversary protests in Chicago - but no hard numbers.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul antiwar coalition organizing around the RNC appears to be planning their own Oct. 27 event. And despite the report of a 'trainload from Detroit', nothing has popped on anti-war websites there. Granted, this still may happen in the next three weeks and more organizing might be going on behind the scenes. But it increasingly looks like the Midwest turn out for this action will be far smaller than the organizers originally projected. Indeed, many of the endorsers listed on the Oct. 27 website have yet to advertise it on their home sites.

So do the CAWI organizers still expect tens of thousands to pour into Chicago? Because unless this regional march breaks 20 K or so in Chicago, it can't be reasonably projected as any type of real major advance, no matter what 'qualitative' spin organizers try to put on it.

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Tuesday, 25 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


You certainly do digress...Claypool? His name has never come in a single meeting. We're trying to stop a war, not pick the next county board. You've wandered off to some other ballpark.

Lists of speakers? They haven't been picked yet. We're delegating it around, Telling military families to find their best choices, the unions to find their best, and so on, not only in Chicago, but around the region.

And I even argue that the most important thing is not the numbers, but the organizing drive. Hell, it may snow or rain that day, perish the thought. That's why we're focusing on building news groups and new working relationships that will last beyond Oct 27.

Big bucks? I haven't seen much of it yet, but we'll surely go after it, especially if we're serious enough to want to bring this movement to scale.

The details? Believe me, as soon as we get them, they'll be posted. The Fed Plaza permit was obtained yesterday as the end point, the application is in for the streets and Union Park, but we're wrangling over fees, street blockoffs, and parking for a hundred or so buses.

The basic plan is feeder marches to union park up to noon or so. Rally in Union Park promptly at 1:30pm. Head for Federal Plaza no later than 3pm. Rally at the Plaza 4-6pm. Return to buses along Columbus drive at 6pm. All pending our discussions with the park district and the police, and the moment it's finalized, believe me, it'll be posted everywhere.

Same goes for the speakers. We have to reduce a potential pool of 200 or so down to 25 or so. If you know any great speakers in town, send a suggestion, and we'll put it in the hopper, but at this point, we have no big bucks to bring in outside folks, unless they have their own money.

So far, AFSC promises us a major, prominent Iraqi, whose name I don't have at the moment. That's the only firm commitment.

Yes, it is the right thing to do, and we want the entire range of voices heard--left, progressive, liberal and center-moderate, that want to stop this war now.

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Tuesday, 25 September 2007
by gigo


CD writes "And I even argue that the most important thing is not the numbers, but the organizing drive."

Planning on taking a survey of who attends? Because if you do, you may be in for a big surprise, one that just may compel a serious rethink about some basic political assumptions you've been operating on about how to 'broaden' support for the antiwar movement by titrating the message.

To wit: A few months back, Intellectual Affairs reported on the work of a couple of social scientists who were studying the contemporary antiwar movement. They have been showing up at the national demonstrations over the past several years and - with the help of assistants instructed in a method of random sampling - conducting surveys of the participants. The data so harvested was then coded and fed into a computer, and the responses cross-correlated in order to find any patterns hidden in the data.

The researchers, Heaney and Rojas, have kept on gathering their surveys and crunching their numbers, and they recently presented a new paper on their work at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago. The title, "Coalition Dissolution and Network Dynamics in the American Antiwar Movement," seems straightforward enough - and the abstract explains that their focus was on the rather difficult relationship between United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), the two main coalitions organizing national protests.

The paper delivered at APSA looks at how relations between the two biggest antiwar mesomobilizers have affected participation in the national demonstrations. The differences between ANSWER and UFPJ are in part ideological. The rhetorical style of ANSWER normally runs to denunciations of American imperialism and its running dogs. (I exaggerate, but just barely.) UFPJ is by contrast the "moderate flank" of the antiwar movement, and not prone to tackling all injustice on the planet in the course of one protest. As Heaney and Rojas put it, UFPJ argues that "in order to build the broadest coalition possible, it should focus on the one issue about which the largest number of organizations can agree: ending the war in Iraq."

The groups have a long, complicated history of mutual antagonism that in some ways actually predates even the present organizations. Comparable fault-lines emerged between similar coalitions organizing in 1990 and '91 against the first Gulf War. But UFPJ and ANSWER did manage to mesomobilize together at various points between 2003 and 2005. This honeymoon has been over for a couple of years now, for reasons nobody can quite agree upon - even as public disapproval of president's handling of the war rose from 53 percent in September 2005 (when the UFPJ-ANWER alliance ended) to 58 percent in March 2007.

What this meant for Heaney and Rojas was that they had data from the different phases of the coalitions' relationship. They had gathered surveys from people attending demonstrations that UFPJ and ANSWER organized together, and from people attending demonstrations the groups had scheduled in competition with each other. (They also interviewed leading members of each coalition and gathered material from their listservs.)

The researchers framed a few hypotheses about contrasts that would probably be reflected in their data set.

"We expected that participants in the UFPJ demonstrations would have a stronger connection with mainstream political institutions and a weaker connection to the antiwar movement," they write.

"We expected, given ANSWER's preference for outsider political tactics, that its participants would be more likely to have engaged in civil disobedience in the past, while UFPJ would be more likely to have engaged in civil disobedience in the past."

They also anticipated finding significant demographic differences between each coalition's constituency. "Given the relative prominence of women as leaders in UFPJ," they say, "we expected that it would be more likely to attract women than would ANSWER.

Given that ANSWER explicitly frames its identity as attempting to 'end racism,' we expected that individuals with non-white racial and ethnic backgrounds would be disproportionately drawn to ANSWER. Further, given the relatively radical orientation of ANSWER, we hypothesized that it would more greatly appeal to young people and the working class. In contrast, we expected UFPJ to appeal to individuals with higher incomes and college educations."

These predictions were not, for the most part, all that counterintuitive. And so it is interesting to learn that very few of them squared with the data.

People who showed up at demonstrations under the influence of UFPJ's mesomobilizing framework were "significantly more likely to say they considered themselves to be members of the Democratic Party (54.1 percent) than ANSWER attendees (46.9 percent)." There might be a few Republicans mobilized by either coalition, but most non-Democrats in either case would probably identify as independents or supporters of third parties. And they tended to come for different reasons: "Participants at the ANSWER rally were significantly more likely to cite a policy-specific reason for their attendance (such as stopping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), while participants at the UFPJ rally were more likely to cite a personal reason for their attendance (such as the death of a friend or a family member)."

But in terms of important distinctions, that was really about it. There was no difference in degree of political involvement, or experience with civil disobedience, or previous attendance at antiwar protests. Nor was there a demographic split: "Despite the stereotypes that many people have of the two coalitions," write Rojas and Heaney, "they are equally likely to attract the participation of women and men, whites and non-whites, the young the old, those with and without college degrees, and people from various economic strata."

The paper also considers how the parting of the ways between ANSWER and UFPJ influenced their mesomobilizing capacities - that is, what effect it had on the networks of organizations making up each coalition.

The various spider-webs of organizational interaction did change a bit. ANSWER began to work more closely with another coalition pledged to denouncing American imperialism and its running dogs. United for Peace and Justice came under stronger influence by MoveOn - a group "much more closely allied with the Democratic Party than either UFPJ or ANSWER" and taking "a more conservative approach to ending the war." (Or not ending it, I suppose, though that is a topic for another day.)

The researchers conclude that the conflict between the groups has not really been the zero-sum game one might have expected - if only because public disapproval of the president has won a hearing for each of them.

"To some extent," write Heaney and Rojas, "ANSWER and UFPJ are vying for the attention, energies, and resources of the same supporters. But to a larger extent, both groups are more urgently attempting to reach out to a mass public that has remained largely quiescent throughout the entire U.S.-Iraq conflict....If public opinion were trending in favor of the president, or even remaining stable, the conflict might have been more detrimental to the movement as its base of support shrank."

The entire tome ""Coalition Dissolution and Network Dynamics in the American Antiwar Movement," can be downloaded here as a PDF file
[ http://plaza.ufl.edu/mtheaney/Coalition_Dissolution.pdf ]


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Tuesday, 25 September 2007
by carol


Federal Plaza as the march end point and rally site? Whatever happened to Grant Park?


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Tuesday, 25 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


What happened to Grant Park?

We deferred to the requests of the South Side ministers, bringing quite a few people in buses, who wanted a more comfortable setting, including seating arrangements for the elderly and parents with small children. Also, given the volatility of weather at the end of October, Grant Park might be too muddy and isolating for some.

Daley Plaza is occupied with a Halloween fest, so Fed Plaza will have to do, with the overflow going into blocked off surrounding blocks, where sound with be projected.

Not the best, but it'll work.

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Tuesday, 25 September 2007
by Fuck the Democraps!


If these pro-democrap right wing anti-war(?) leaders manage to get some of their politician friends to speak, let's give them the reception they deserve! "Fuck Dick Daley and His Buddy George Bush". Can not believe on a site that advocates for peace and social justice, some fools are defending hack assholes like Daley and stoger. Fuck the Democrapic party, pro-war, pro-imperialist, pro-military, anti-worker, anti-poor people etc. etc. etc.

The people must end this war by everyday militant opposition. Not once a year feel good events where the supporters of the system that makes war are invited to speak.

Another little scope for the fearless leadership, most people at such events pay little or no attention to the leaders who give their "Pat myself on the Back" speeches.

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Tuesday, 25 September 2007
by when oh when


If prowar Daley is good enough to invite, why not anti-war Stroger, since we're making this a MoveOn Democratic Party rally? When, oh when, will this be answered honestly?

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Tuesday, 25 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


We've answered it honestly, CAG.

If the County Board voted against the war, Stroger might be worthy of an invite the same as Daley's.

But somehow, you can't get your brain to digest this, even though I know you’re plenty smart enough.

So I figure you're just looking for ways to yank our chain, and toot a horn for a speakers platform where's everyone's comfortably part of the same 'left bloc' milieu. Especially since it's a very long shot that Daley would even appear.

But I'll stand on my main point. We're going to need people to the right of Daley, both at the top and at the base, to stop this war. We' can't do it alone, and that's why we're getting outside the old box.


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Tuesday, 25 September 2007
by cag


Carl, please: Daley, who arrested 800 of us, is fine to invite. Stroger, who's publicly denounced the war, isn't. Explain it. If you're being truthful about your big tent strategy, explain it. Just answer a direct question with a direct answer. Explain it.

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Tuesday, 25 September 2007
by speaking of voting


Daley never voted against the war, and his proxy boob 11th ward Ald. Balcer negotiated a pathetically watered down version with Joe Moore -- and still didn't vote for it. So Daley never supported an anti-war ordinance. I'd like to see you answer cag cag's question directly, as well.

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Tuesday, 25 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


Sigh...once again, we're invited the mayors and city councils of every 'City for Peace' in the region, to represent the positions taken by their cities and under our 'Stop the War Now!' banner.

Chicago fits that description quite well. As we all know, Daley neither supported nor endorsed our resolution, but it passed twice anyway, and 800,000 voted for it in the election.

We're well aware of his personal pro-war and waffling-on the-war statements.

That's not the point here.

Our invitation is a challenge to him, as with the other mayors, to represent the antiwar position taken by their city governments and by their electorates. In his case, our challenge, in the form of an invite, puts the ball in his court, and he will rise to it or not.

I'm not taking bets that he will, but I'd love to be wrong. More an