Carl Davidson’s Sessions at the Left Forum in NYC, June 7-9, Pace University

LEFT FORUM SESSIONS

WITH CARL DAVIDSON and his related groups—the Online University of the Left, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and the Solidarity Economy Network

11 Talking Points on 21st Century Socialism
Session 3     E326     Sat 03:40pm - 05:20pm

A Slide Show presentation by Carl Davidson on the core features of socialism in today's world, followed by responses and discussion. Issues will include technology, human rights, the role of markets, mixed economies and strategic allies.

Sponsoring Journal:
Online University of the Left

Speakers: Carl Davidson, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism; David Schwartzman, DC Statehood Green Party; Dario Cankovic, Northstar.org   

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Shift Change: potential and limits of worker cooperatives in building a sustainable future
Session 4     W615     Sat 05:30pm - 07:10pm

In SHIFT CHANGE, a new documentary that visits coops in the US and Mondragon, worker owners share some practical challenges of a democratic workplace, and how coops can help build a more just and sustainable society. Clips from the film will be shown, with comments from panelists, and discussion involving workshop participants about broad issues of economic democracy and a more ecological future.

Panelists include:
Gar Alperovitz, author, What Then Must We Do;
Carl Davidson, Solidarity Economy Network
Mark Dworkin & Melissa Young, filmmakers

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Left Third Party Organizing: Challenges and Opportunities
Session 6     W211     Sun 12:00pm - 01:50pm

In an age of two-party domination and neoliberal hegemony, what opportunities exist for left electoral politics through third party campaigns? Why and when should leftists focus on third party campaigns, as opposed to Democratic Party primaries? Where should the left focus its electoral resources, and how might it overcome division? Should third-party politics be thought of in terms of consciousness-raising, or is the left in a position to affect public policy by taking power?

Sponsoring Journal:
The North Star
Seamus Whelan, Socialist Alternative
Tim Horras, Philly Socialists        
Carl Davidson, CCDS       
Ursula Rozum, Green Party

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Camus: Resistance, Rebellion, and Writing

Albert Camus's dispatches on the Algerian crisis appear in English for the first time

By George Scialabba

Bookforum, April/May 2013

“People expect too much of writers,” Albert Camus lamented in the late 1950s. At the time Camus was writing, the Algerian rebellion had grown into a full-scale guerrilla war for independence, and while his initial sympathy for the uprising led the French Right and the French Algerian settlers to denounce him as a traitor, he also came in for frequent polemical attacks from the French Left for not energetically and unequivocally supporting the insurgents. Criticism also came from the Algerian militants themselves. Frantz Fanon, the best-known Algerian writer, derided him as a “sweet sister.” Sartre, formerly his close friend, mocked Camus’s “beautiful soul.”

Camus’s complaint does him credit. He agonized over his political pronouncements in a way that the more brilliant, mercurial, doctrinaire Sartre never had to. In 1957, as the war ground on and positions hardened on both sides, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Despairing of the Algerian situation but determined to answer his critics and, with the prestige of the Nobel behind him, make one final effort for peace and reconciliation, Camus assembled a short collection of his writings about Algeria, which was published in 1958. It appears now in English for the first time, ably translated by Arthur Goldhammer.

Algerian Chronicles spans two decades. In 1939, when Camus was a young journalist in Algeria—where he was born in 1913, to impoverished and barely literate working-class parents—a severe drought struck the region of Kabylia. Camus traveled there to report on it, and was horrified. He wrote a series of vivid and powerful dispatches, with which Algerian Chronicles begins.

Read more!

‘Django Unchained’ in Context…

Spaghetti Communism? The Politics of the Italian Western

Sept 1, 2011 - If Westerns allegorize a mythical space of gradual resolution and order, the western all'italiana explodes the American dream of stabilizing prosperity with excessive violence and explicit anti-colonial themes. Benjamin Noys argues for a deeper analysis of an intensely political cinematic genre

By Benjamin Noys
Mute Magazine

Cleaning up the Whole World

Gilberto Perez remarks that 'the Western doesn't just tell violent stories, it tells stories about the meaning, the management of violence, the establishment of social order and political authority'.1 Perez elsewhere concedes that the Western runs 'a gamut of political persuasions',2but is keen to emphasise that in the classical American Western this 'management of violence' takes the form of a 'vital dialectic'3 in which is synthesised a 'civilized violence'.4 Serving his deliberately provocative re-imagination of the 'frontier' as equivocal site of liberty, Perez regards the Western as the romance of the birth of a new political order through the, often literal, marriage of East and West, in which violence plays the role of a 'vanishing mediator'. Such an argument hardly seems to hold for the Italian Western of the 1960s and 1970s, often known affectionately or derogatorily as 'Spaghetti Westerns', in which the excessive hyper-violence associated with the form makes it difficult to see how it might be pressed into service for a 'vital dialectic' of 'civilised violence'. The very excess of the violence on display, as well as its displacement from the 'mythological' place of America, fragments any dialectical sublation of violence within a national or political order.

This suggests a very different 'political persuasion', and very different questions concerning the 'management of violence'. In fact, objections to Spaghetti Westerns, often by critics enamoured of classic American Westerns (or 'Hamburger Westerns'5, in Christopher Frayling's mischievous suggestion), were usually founded on their 'excess' of violence. Philip French, writing in 1972, describes a filmography of continental Westerns as 'to me read[ing] like a brochure for a season in hell.'6A surprisingly apposite comment as we will see. Spaghetti Westerns, in fact, constructed a form of violence that carried a rather different and more intense charge. Franco Nero, who played the eponymous 'Django' in the seminal Spaghetti Western, remarked:

Spaghetti Westerns were for a certain kind of audience - the workers, I think. Mainly workers, boys... yes, all kinds of workers - and the workers they fantasize a lot, and they would like to go to the boss in the office and be the hero and say 'Sir, from today, something's going to happen.' And then - bam, bam! they want to clean up the whole world.7

A rather extreme example of the refusal of work, although if one considers the strategies and intensity of conflict in Italy between 1968-1977 - 'Our Comrade P.38' as one anonymous tract had it - 'clean[ing] up the whole world', gains a prescient resonance.8

This is reinforced by Johanna Isaacson's argument that the genre films of the late '60s and '70s belong to a 'moment when it was taken for granted that genre film was political to the bone, reflecting the subjectivity, anger and tastes of a radicalized proletarian sensibility.'9The question of violence, in terms of audience, turns here on sensibility: bourgeois or proletarian? The Spaghetti Western is, I would argue, exactly the archetypal film form of this moment, to quote Isaacson again, 'appealing to both [the] proletarian desire for spectacle and for representations of political repression.'10Although this schema of divided sensibility is too simplistic, not least in its supposition of a unified 'proletarian sensibility', it draws attention to the 'class' charge of violence emergent in these films. While this often takes overtly and unequivocally political forms, as we will see, what I want to focus on here are a small number of films that take their 'representations of political repression' into the realms of what Gail Day, in a very different context, has identified as a 'left-oriented nihilism'.11 These are Sergio Corbucci's Django (1966) and The Big Silence (1969) (also known as The Great Silence), and Guilio Questi's gothic horror Spaghetti Western Django Kill! / If You Live Shoot (1967). Produced and shown on the cusp of the eruption of the most militant workers' movement in Europe, these films display a striking nihilist politics that internalises and prefigures the experience of defeat.

Popular Excessive Violence

First, some context: between 400 and 450 Italian westerns were made, according to Christopher Frayling, in the period from 1963 to the mid-1970s.12 The most familiar are obviously the works of Sergio Leone, who broke out from the 'ghetto' of popular filmmaking into the category of auteur. The 'other Sergio' - Sergio Corbucci (1927-1990) - is perhaps a more representative figure of the cycle, especially with his work Django. It should be noted that although Spaghetti Westerns are often regarded as hyper-violent works, a large number were 'guns and gadgets' Westerns, heavily indebted to the Bond movies and with a comic streak, such as the charming Sabata (1969), starring Lee Van Cleef complete with four-barrelled derringer.

Broadly to characterise the whole 'cycle' of Italian Westerns, we can borrow Philip French's comment on post-Wild Bunch American Westerns:

At a social level the movies are reflecting current concerns and anxieties; from a commercial point of view a profitable subject is being exploited that seems to go down well at the box office; viewed aesthetically, the cycle of movies is offering a cumulative series of variations upon an established theme.13

In terms of the aesthetic 'variations' it is worth noting that many of the instances that seem most singular to the Italian Western, especially of masochistic violence, in fact occurred previously in American Westerns or in the immediate source material for Spaghetti Westerns: Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961). Yojimbo, its plot almost certainly derived from Dashiell Hammett's novels The Glass Key (1931) and Red Harvest (1929) (Hammett was an anti-fascist who joined the American Communist Party in 1937, pleaded the Fifth in a case linked to the communist witch hunts in 1951, served time in prison for contempt of court, and was later blacklisted), literally set the pattern of the lone hero playing off two gangs against each other to their mutual destruction, and also the tendency to quasi-homosocial or homoerotic torture scenes.

So, we are talking here of what Christopher Frayling calls 'formula cinema', but at the same time we have to recognise that this was an intensely political genre cinema.14 Obviously, as I've just noted, its source material is broadly left-wing, with Hammett's account of corruption and collusion linking to the general 'populist' politics of the Western (although we should well note, as Philip French does, the limits of that 'politics': 'the Western is ill-equipped to confront complex political issues in a direct fashion. The genre belongs to the American populist tradition which sees all politics and politicians as corrupt and fraudulent'.15) Also, to court the 'intentional fallacy', many of the directors and writers of these films were men, and yes men, of the left; either communists or sympathisers often energised by the emergent struggles of the 1960s, especially the Cuban revolution and the struggle of the Vietnamese against the Americans.

In the extensive debate on the politics of the possibilities of 'popular' film versus more Brechtian and modernist strategies of alienation that took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it may be surprising now to realise that Spaghetti Westerns played a key role. Pierre Baudry, writing in Cahiers du Cinema during its most haut-Marxist period, noted, in 1971, the shifting and recurring patterns of these genre films, especially in their exploration of the dynamics of colonialism and revolution through moving from the 'Gringo'/Bandit pairing to the 'Gringo'/Mexican revolutionary pairing. Ultimately he found wanting this 'commercial' cinema, preferring the austere path that was to be taken by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin's Brechtian critique of the Western, Vent D'Est (1970).

In fact, much of the political discussion of the Spaghetti Western has focused on these 'pairing' films, which contain obvious reflections on Vietnam, as well as Italy's own situation. The best of these is probably A Bullet for the General (1967), which was scripted partly by Franco Solinas, who was also responsible for writing The Battle of Algiers (1966), and for the script for what we could consider as the finest film on this theme of coloniser/colonised pairings: Queimada / Burn! (1969), which were both directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. Solinas' impeccable political credentials, his deliberate decision to work in the popular medium of the Western as a political act, and his sophisticated inclusion of Fanonian themes, all make the politics of these films striking and evident. What I am concerned with are films with a rather less direct politics, a politics in which the excess of violence is not placed in a 'revolutionary' or anti-colonial context, but operates in a more 'free-floating' and ambiguous form.

Epic Nihilism

Key to my analysis is the conjugation of 'epic nihilism', derived from Badiou's analysis in The Century where he remarks: 'may your force be nihilistic, but your form epic.'16 We can find this conjunction already encoded in the Ur-work of the Spaghetti Western genre: Sergio Corbucci's Django. Here, the epic form of the Western is, literally, dragged through the mud - in its striking opening sequence in which Django drags a coffin through the mud; a coffin, as we later find out, that contains the machine gun with which he will exterminate his adversaries. The town at the centre of the usual plot of playing off rival gangs is bathed in mud, and the film ends in a gunfight in a cemetery in which Django, with smashed hands, painfully and finally manages to shoot his chief tormentors after mounting his gun on a grave cross. It is not difficult to identify the mud as an allegory of the practico-inert, with Django becoming mired in the inertia that seems to afflict the supposedly decisive Spaghetti Western hero.17

This is reflected in the constant delay of revenge which affects Django, and many of the other heroes of these films. Once they become involved in double-crossing the competing gangs, these heroes persistently fail to act and as a result are usually tortured before exacting 'final' revenge. The films themselves, despite their bursts of hyper-violent action, are also tortured in their following of this repetitive path of delay and finally action. Of course, we could make the usual references to Hamlet, or to psychoanalytic explanations based on the displacement of murderous desires, but it strikes me how these films also mimic the affective texture of the working day. Django's own 'mechanical' killing, carried out with the Gatling gun, is over promptly, but seems to leave him as mere 'appendage' of the machine (to use Marx's phrase). The freelance 'labour' of the gunfighter is filled with longueurs, in a state of a kind of proto-precarity awaiting a new contract, or failing to execute a supposedly personal and pressing desire. What we have here is a strange tempo of labour that retards and confines action to sporadic outbursts of 'acting out', which appears to require the extremities of torture to 'activate'. Even the recurrent trope of the usually deliberately inflicted injury to the hero's gun hand, which can be found in Django and other films, seems to have the echo of the industrial accident. Despite the 'hopeful' ending of Django, in which the hero escapes with his life, his time as a gunslinger is presumably over.

In fact I wonder if these films do not take place in the 'factory-universe' described by Maurice Blanchot.18 This is a space of infinite repetition, excess, and the vacancy of Being. The deliberately hellish towns which our heroes tarry in figure this space. As Blanchot puts it, of the factory:

There is no more outside - you think you're getting out? You're not getting out. Night, day, there's no difference, and you have to know that retirement at sixty and death at seventy will not liberate you. Great lengths of time, the flash of an instant - both are equally lost.19

The factory is the space of infinite excess, of 'the infinite in pieces', figured in the broken and ruptural spaces through which the Spaghetti Western hero drifts, or becomes mired.20 These enclosed towns are not the wide open plains or vistas of monument valley, or even Almería, but have no more outside; are circles of hell (a metaphor literalised by Clint Eastwood in his post-Spaghetti Western High Plains Drifter (1973), as his hero has the town road sign painted red and renamed 'Hell').

Interminable Inertia

In Corbucci's later The Big Silence it will be snow that performs a similar function of signifying this inertial time. These two films by Corbucci are, to borrow Maurice Blanchot's phrase, 'condensed around thick living substances, which are at once over-abundantly active and of an interminable inertia.'21 We can take this as a certain coagulation of living labour in dead labour, and dead time, in which the performance of virtuosity is only ever fleeting, and forever punished. The 'production line' of killing runs on receding amounts of living labour, as value production is mechanised into the machine gun. Taking this motif of inertia to the extreme, The Big Silence also takes the usual taciturn Western hero to the limit, with the character of 'Silence' (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant), who is mute due to mutilation by bounty hunters (or 'bounty killers' as the film usually prefers) when he was a child. Again, we have the tempo of freelance labour, as Silence intervenes in a small-scale war between the 'bounty killers', who 'operate according to the law', in pursuing the former townspeople and farmers who have been driven into banditry by the actions of Pollicutt, the banker and Justice of the Peace.

This political fable, which follows closely the usual script of political populism - good people driven to 'social banditry' by a corrupt law - is complicated by the film's own seeming lack of faith in this story. Silence works for money, but works, again, in a lackadaisical and intermittent fashion. In contrast, the leading bounty killer Tigrero (an excellent performance by Klaus Kinski), is a model of sadistic efficiency: killing in the most expedient fashion, loading his dead victims onto the stage, and assiduously collecting his 'reward' (with a cut going to the banker Pollicutt). Upbraided by the new sheriff, Tigrero remarks: 'Every business has its own risks and rules'. Later, after having got the drop on the sheriff, who has lectured him on justice replacing violence, Tigrero kills him and remarks the only law is 'survival of the fittest': Homo homini lupus, although, as Tigrero notes to his friends 'when are wolves afraid of wolves?'

Of course the true destruction of this fable of populism, and proof of the power of the 'representation of political repression', is the film's ending. The comedic sheriff character is drowned in a frozen river when Tigrero shoots out the ice from under him to ensure an 'accidental' death. The town's prostitute matron, who had a touchingly comic and halting relationship with the sheriff, is shot by Tigrero after he has baited her with news of the sheriff's death. Although the sheriff had planned to feed the 'bandits' pending an amnesty this plan now turns into a fatal trap as Tigrero's men capture them when they come for the food. Silence, his hands ruined in a fight, and his female companion, wife of one of the men he is avenging, are gunned down by Tigrero after Silence refuses to flee and chooses instead to fight. As a result the 'bandits', tied-up in the saloon, are massacred. The 'civilising vital dialectic' of violence is broken, but, as Tigrero says, 'all according to the law'. He and the bounty killers plan to return to collect their now considerable bounties, as the distinction of law-making and law-preserving violence is broken through the 'law' of original accumulation that pays for the necessary violence required at all points.

Foul Gold

These thematics reach their baroque extreme in Guilio Questi's Django Kill!. Questi was not interested in making a Western. Instead, when offered such a project he took the opportunity to make a more personal film that dealt with his experiences as an anti-fascist partisan: 'I wanted to recount all of the things, the cruelty, the comradeship with friends, the death, all the experiences I had of war, in combat, in the mountains.'22 The result is a work of convulsive and violent beauty. If Jansco's The Round-Up (1965) is a film of the balletic choreography of physical repression, Django Kill! is a film of violence, sexual and physical, as carnivalesque, and the non-sequiturs of repressive desublimation.

It begins with the hand of the central character, the stranger (played by Tomas Milian), emerging from a grave to a surprisingly jaunty Western tune. In a series of bizarrely edited flashbacks (at one point a body appears to roll uphill in a reverse of the actual shot), we learn he was betrayed by a gang of outlaws led by the racist Oaks after their successful robbery of a gold shipment. Rescued by highly unlikely mystical-hippy 'Indians', who smelt his share of the gold into bullets, the stranger determines to take revenge on the gang.

The outlaws, meanwhile, have arrived in quite the most disturbing town, which makes Dogville look like a good choice for a holiday, and is known by the Indians as 'the unhappy place'. Riding in they see a naked boy playing with himself, a girl twisting the hair of a playmate, a man retching, a young girl under the boot of 'uncle Max', a woman threatening to bite her husband, and a crippled hedgehog (!). Soon recognised by the townspeople, the outlaws are killed in a carnivalesque episode of 'civilising' violence; complete with beatings, hangings, stringing-up bodies, drowning, and close-up head shot executions. Arriving in time to find Oaks holed up in a store and fighting for his life, the stranger agrees to take $500 for killing him. Confronting Oaks, who remarks, 'you've come back from hell', they engage in a quasi-comedic shoot out. Oaks is left bullet-ridden but still alive. A local criminal boss Zorro (or Sorro - the dubbing is unclear) realises gold is at stake and wants Oaks alive for interrogation. Digging the bullets out of him (the 'doctor' remarks 'you won't feel a thing' to the groaning and screaming of Oaks), 'honest citizens' tear him apart when they realise these are gold bullets.

Structured by the 'factional' pattern, with the hero moving between them, we have three 'groups' in the town. The barman Tembler, initially in alliance with the Alderman, but who later split over the gold, creating the 'faction' of Alderman and his mad wife, and finally Zorro, with his black clad and often open-shirted gang, which, Questi points out somewhat redundantly, as fascisti. The stranger stays with each of these groupings in the course of the film, moving from Tembler's saloon to Zorro's hacienda, then to Alderman's domestic gothic. In each case these surrogate families are constructed through an hysterical and excessive sexuality: at Tembler's, his son Evan's violent rejection/desire for his father's mistress, Flory, is expressed by his slashing her clothes; at Zorro's, a now kidnapped Evan, being used to extract the gold from Tembler, is sexually-abused, off screen, by Zorro's gang, who have been taught by Zorro to 'enjoy good things'. Evan commits suicide in the morning and, in one of the more sinister remarks in a remarkably sinister film, Zorro says 'He didn't want to be a man... a man who can take on responsibilities, a man who does what he must and accepts it.' Finally, at the Alderman's house the stranger is seduced by the Alderman's deranged wife who, in full Bertha Mason mode, will later burn the house down.

These 'sexual' exchanges are mirrored in the film's use of the stolen gold as the 'object' that inscribes a lack and excess, equivalent to the structuralist mana, the dummy hand, Othello's handkerchief, Poe's purloined letter; the empty object that 'circulates' in the structure, and everywhere brings death and passes through death and corpses. Seized in the massacre of the soldiers guarding the shipment, then the execution of the 'disposable' members of the gang, the smelting of the gold bullets from the share interned with the stranger, the 'liberation' of the rest of the shipment through the killing of the bandits, the literal extraction of the gold torn from the still-living flesh of Oaks, the gold which then leads to Evan's sexual abuse and suicide, which is stashed in his coffin, and finally the half share that melts in the fire set by Alderman's mad wife and encases him as a living gold corpse.

The gold has the function of motivational value but, if not quite converted into the Freudian equivalent of excrement, has the levelling, if not nihilist, function of equivalence through death and the 'abusability' of bodies. To use one of Marx's favourite quotes from Shakespeare's Timon of Athens:

Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold? No, gods, I am no idle votarist: roots, you clear heavens! Thus much of this will make black white; foul, fair; Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant.

The 'common whore of mankind' is, precisely, the 'quilting point' (le point de capiton) of sexual and social violence, to use the Lacanian term.23 Gold functions in Django Kill! as the 'floating signifier' par excellence, it is the term that unifies the ideological field and texture of the film's universe. At the same time, within that universe, we see demonstrated the excess violence implicit in this ideological structure that is usually concealed by the seeming 'neutrality' of money as 'general equivalent'. In Marx's terms gold is rendered as the 'visible God', but the 'alienated capacity of mankind', in Marx's words, has no possibility of return or recovery.24

Unbroken Inward Rebellion

What we have in these works is the displacement of the epic towards Badiou's inscription of an 'epic nihilism' that is inflected by the passion for the real. That 'passion' is not simply the revolutionary passion, but rather the 'passion' of the everyday brutality and enmity of capitalism. In Engels' memorable characterisation, from the Condition of the Working Class in England:

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another, such injury that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live - forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence - knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.25

The Spaghetti Western, in its political guise, gives form to this violence as literal murder - deriving from the explicit violence of original accumulation a figuration of inexplicit everyday violence.

This experience was raw in an Italy that had witnessed large scale internal migration from the rural South to the newly industrialising North during the 1950s and 1960s. The influx of young male workers, no doubt the viewers Franco Nero had in mind, experienced both a 'late' form of 'primitive' or better, 'original accumulation', and the immersion in the new inertial world of factory labour. The Spaghetti Western, probably inadvertently, mediates this experience that binds together these experiences - displacement, the rural, inertial labour, and the precarious violence that composes the 'rule of (capitalist) law'.

The excess of the Spaghetti Western's violence reveals the violence encrypted in labour: in the subsumption of living labour, the pumping out of value, and the replacement of living labour with dead labour. This 'epic' takes a tragic form; Marx remarks in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts: 'Wages are determined by the fierce struggle between capitalist and worker. The capitalist inevitably wins.'26 The Spaghetti Western is the film of defiance in the face of an awareness of the experience of defeat unfolding through militancy and the acceleration of armed struggle.27 This is a radicalised proletarian sensibility that is not simply a joyous celebration of violence against the bosses, though it is that, but also awareness of the logic of repression, and resistance to the epic tone of prophesying or fantasising victory, and denying defeat, that took hold in certain factions of the movement, armed and otherwise, of the 1970s.

This epic nihilism, given a more elegiac tone in Peckinpah's work, now seems to figure the crisis of labour, a long drawn out defeat, the de-energising of nihilism into the superfluity of labour. In fact, we might revise or question the projective fantasies that could attach to such a sensibility, and see instead something more austere in that excess, a registration of historical defeat in advance that depends on the incorporation of such defeats at the bodily level.

Engels recognised that the violence of the capitalist class resulted in a counter violence:

There is, therefore, no cause for surprise if the workers, treated as brutes, actually become such; or if they can maintain their consciousness of manhood only by cherishing the most glowing hatred, the most unbroken inward rebellion against the bourgeoisie in power.28

His prophesy was that communism would mitigate and civilise this violence, providing it with its dialectic. The communist aim to do away with class antagonisms displaced it from embracing a bloody war of classes: 'In proportion, as the proletariat absorbs socialistic and communistic elements, will the revolution diminish in bloodshed, revenge, and savagery.'29

The Spaghetti Western, in the instances I've traced, does not seem so sanguine about this dialectic, and in fact aligns the experience of hatred and nihilism in the experience of defeat that is everyday experience. Lacking faith in the victory of proletarian violence over the technological and politically inflated violence of the capitalist state and capitalist economy it resonates in registering an antagonism, but is less hopeful that the solution to the riddle of history can be achieved.

Benjamin Noys <b.noys@chi.ac.uk> is a theorist living in Bognor Regis. His most recent book is The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. His blog is http://leniency.blogspot.com

Footnotes

1 Gilberto Perez, 'House of Miscegenation', review of Hollywood Westerns and American Myth, by Robert Pippin, London Review of Books, 32 no.22, 2010, pp.23-26, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n22/gilberto-perez/house-of-miscegenation.

2 Gilberto Perez, The Material Ghost: Films and their Medium, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, p.241.

3 Ibid., p.247.

4 Ibid., p.234.

5 Christopher Frayling, Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone, London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1998, p.xix.

6 Philip French, Westerns, London: Secker & Warburg/The British Film Institute, 1977, p.9.

7 In Frayling, op. cit., p.xi.

8 Anon., 'Let's Do Justice to Our Comrade P.38', in Italy: Autonomia, Post-Political Politics, Sylvere Lotringer and Christian Marazzi (Eds.), Semiotext(e) III.3, 1980, pp.120-121.

9 Johanna Isaacson, 'You Just Tarried with the Wrong Mexican: Machete and the Aesthetic Politics of Negation', Lana Turner Journal Blog, 2010, http://www.lanaturnerjournal.com/online/49-film/135-you-just-tarried-wit...

10 Ibid.

11 Gail Day, Dialectical Passions: Negation in Postwar Art Theory, New York: Columbia University Press, 2011, p.3.

12 Frayling, op. cit., p.x.

13 French, Westerns, p.43.

14 Frayling, Spaghetti Westerns, p.xxi-xxii.

15 French, op. cit., p.43.

16 Alain Badiou, The Century, trans., with commentary and notes, Alberto Toscano, Cambridge, UK, and Malden, MA: Polity, 2007, p.85.

17 The 'practico-inert' is a term coined by Jean-Paul Sartre in Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), defined as a field of activity, which, despite being the outcome of a successful struggle by some group, has ceased to be responsive to that group's needs. Bureaucracy is the classic example of a 'practico-inert'. From http://www.marxists.org

18 Maurice Blanchot, ''Factory-Excess', or Infinity in Pieces', in Political Writings, 1953-1993, trans. and intro. Zakir Paul, foreword Kevin Hart, New York: Fordham University Press, 2010, pp.131-132.

19 Ibid., p.131.

20 Ibid., p.132.

21 Maurice Blanchot, Lautréamont and Sade, trans. Stuart Kendall and Michele Kendall, Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 2004, p.68.

22 In Alex Cox, 10,000 Ways to Die, Harpenden: Kamera Books, 2009, p.143.

23 Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, London: Verso, 1989, p.87.

24 Karl Marx, Early Writings, intro. Lucio Colletti, trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975, p.377.

25 Friedrich Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England, 1844, Chp.7, Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/....

26 Karl Marx, op. cit., p.282. 27 I owe this point to Giovanni Tiso. 28 Engels, op. cit., Chp.7. 29 Engels, op. cit., Chp.13.

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Debates, the ‘Yellow Peril,’ and Tibet

Tibetans celebrating emancipation of serfs.

By Carl Davidson

I get turned off when the Presidential ‘Debates' hit on the topic of China. Some worthwhile points  may be made about trade relations, but I’m informed enough to know there’s more than one side to that story. The US has done more than its share of ‘dumping’ and other unequal and unfair economic dealings with the world far more and far longer than China.

What really worries me, however, is the lurking and old ‘Yellow Peril’ chauvinism seeking into the working class. It’s mainly a diversion to mask real problems with government policy at home. It’s not China’s fault, for instance, that the U.S. lacks a decent industrial policy.

But harsh anti-China views also emerge in left and progressive circles, often around the question of Tibet. It’s a complicated issue in some way, and in other ways, not complicated at all, at leas on a few things. Following are some items from a discussion on Facebook:

CarlD: Folks, Tibet is part of China. Whether you consider that true or false, right or wrong, anything else is a non-starter.

Same for the other 50 or so minority nationalities within its borders. Even the Dalai Lama holds to regional autonomy, not separation or independence.

Within that context, there is a just battle vs Han chauvinism, and gains can be made on it. But given China's relatively recent history, where the imperialist powers of the West sought to divide it up and carve out their own privileged sections, the Brits and French in Shanghai, the Brits in Hong Kong and elsewhere, the Germans with their chunk, and so on--there is simply no way China will tolerate even the slightest suggestion of separation.

The Opium Wars are a too bitter memory, one often forgotten here, but not in China.

Al-Quaeda is making an effort among to Uighurs and and other Muslim nationalities in China's far West, and China rightly moves to smash them. To their credit, they have also punished Han settlers for anti-Muslim pogroms in the area.

China, because of its history of being both an Empire AND subject to colonialism itself, never accepted the Comintern's approach to self-determination. They won't even let the Vatican have the decisive say on who gets to be a Chinese Catholic bishop. It holds to regional autonomy internally, and relatively strict non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries.

I think they would be wise to make a deal with this Dalai Lama, and there are some currents in the leadership who seem to think so as well. But simple demanding 'Free Tibet' will only put you in a camp with many half-hidden and unsavory allies--and I don't mean the Tibetans themselves.

Jay: Some years ago I had some experience with the "Free Tibet" people in my area, and in answer to the question "where else is that coming from," at that time it was two-fold. One camp consisted of countercultural Tibetan Buddhism adherents and supporters of the Dalai Lama, and the other camp was composed of right-wing anti-Communists. These two camps seemed to get along relatively easily. Now, "Free Tibet" may be more racist in nature, since I haven't been in contact with any of these folks in a while, I don't know.

I've also been to Tibet, and as a result, I must be one of Carl's "non-starters." There is no question but that the Tibetans are an ethnically, linguistically, and culturally distinct people. Tibet is not part of China.

However, it may be politically impossible at this point in history to make Tibet independent from China, which is a problem faced by a number of ethnically-distinct or indigenous populations, such as the Hawaiians.

CarlD: I agree that Tibetans are a distinct nationality--in every way but one: politically. In that respect, they have been 'part of China' going back a very long time. And given their strategic position in the Himalayas, their only access to the outside world is through China or India, with a degree of dependence either way. Each for their own reasons, the Nazis, the Brits, the Indians and the CIA have all tried to dislodge them from China to one degree or another, to no avail. Genuine regional autonomy within China, included respect for Tibetan Buddhism's efforts to maintain itself, is the only practical and reasonable way to go, IMHO.

Casey: The Tibetans disagree with your view of their nationality as part of China, Carl. Seems to me it's up to them, not you. But the position you outline, regional autonomy within China with respect for cultural identity, is HHDL and the government in exile's, position. No one is saying "Free Tibet" now except young Tibetan activists. The objection to the destruction of Tibetan cultural identity comes from respect for Tibetan culture and identity, Roxanne. It's not about race. I don't know where you find hatred in this issue. Can you identify a source? I don't see any in the Friends of Tibet, and HHDL has consistently preached and practice forgiveness. As does the leading Tibetan in Arizona, Garchen Rinpoche, who was a political prisoner for 20 years, still crippled from being tortured in prison. Both of you are quick to point out and critique the same issues as they exist in in capitalist countries while defending them in China. Perhaps it is Marxist romanticism. I can't see any other reason.

CarlD: Casey, I've seen human thigh bones of prisoners in Tibet's feudal prisons and torture chambers made into flutes by the monks of the old theocracy. The old Tibet was no Shangri-la for the Tibetans. It's connection with China goes back to the 7th Century, until the Brits and Indians broke it away temporarily. With the victory of the Chinese revolution, the Chinese reasserted control, and assisted Tibetan serfs in 'standing up.' Many crimes were committed by the Han vs the Tibetans, especially during the 'cultural revolution,' when Red Guards were smashing everything Buddhist or Confucian all across China, including Tibet. Whether a new and more just Tibet emerges remains to be seen. I think it can, and as a student of Zen myself, I certainly hope so. But I also think it will remain 'part of China.'

This is only a small opening to a long discussion. Feel free to offer your own views…

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Beaver County and the ‘Cracker’ Debate

Potential site for major new ‘cracker’ plant near Monaca in Beaver County, PA

By Carl Davidson

Our county was was hit hard and early by globalization and the export of jobs. Our towns were largely formed around mills, and when the mills were closed in the 1980s, the towns were stressed to the extreme. Many workers moved away or retired, and those remaining in the towns themselves were largely poor and Black with few options.

Now with the new natural gas boom creating by dubious and dangerous deep underground ‘fracking’ explosions, Shell Oil wants to build a new 'ethylene cracker’ plant that turns natural gas into plastics. Fewer than 1000 people would work in the new $1.2 billion facility, but 10,000 people would be hired over five years to build it, and perhaps another 7000 more for new plastic manufacturing plants draw to be created alongside it.

For the county, it means two things. First, a complete turnaround for employment and new small business and new orders for the tube mill still running. Second, since hundreds of new ‘fracking’ gas wells would be needed to feed the ‘cracker,’ there is serious danger to the county’s water supply and many other health and environmental issues.

So we have a big ongoing debate. Are you for or against the ‘cracker.’ Are you opposed to fracking? Or do you just want to tax and regulate it? And what about clean and green energy?

Natural beauty of our townships soon to be ‘fracked.’

The issue keeps coming up in various forums, including our Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Committee page on Facebook. I had posted some pictures to it showing the natural beauty of our area, which led some to say it could all be ruined by the ‘cracker’. Here’s my brief reply:

'Beauty' looks one way out in the townships. But in the deindustrialized mill towns along the rivers, you see something else--the impact of joblessness is not so pretty. You have to view these things strategically, meaning the whole, not just the part, the future, not just the present, and who are the key engines of change as your allies, if not the unemployed and underemployed. In order to unite the many to defeat the few, you have to find ways to unite people who disagree on many things--no easy task, but it's demanded of us.

Query to me: Why haven't jobs come to Beaver County? The skilled left the area for better jobs and now the perfect storm. I do not know the percentages of skilled or college grads or even people who only have a high school diploma or just a GED in Beaver County.

CarlD: The lack of opportunity means we already have exported a good number of our youth, or at least those with options and prospects. We are demographically now one of the oldest counties, if not the oldest, even though we still have many distressed young people among us, under-employed and unemployed. We have the means to create skills--BCCC, Robert Morris, Geneva and Penn State Beaver--and we have done so.

But I know younger folks in my own family, educated, who have moved away for lack of new industry. For those remaining, the fracking jobs, the trucker jobs related to it and the construction jobs related to the 'cracker' are viewed by them as a Godsend, or potentially so.

Our task is first, to defend clean water, and second figure out a positive way to deal with this developing industry. I doubt that it's going to be stopped, but it can be modified and a share of the profits from it can be diverted toward green renewables in the longer run. The devil is in the details, of course, but I don't think we do well simply to avoid those details with an abolitionist stance not likely to get very far and likely to separate us from real friends. Even people working at building a 'cracker' have an interest in clean water…

Don’t look for this debate to be resolved easily. The opinion and suggestion box is now open! Feel free to comment.

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Occupy Pittsburgh Teach-In: Feb 4

From Occupy Wall St. to Occupy the Hood:

Building Power for the 99%

 

Saturday, Feb 4, 2012

Start: 02/04/2012 12:00 pm
End: 02/04/2012 5:30 pm

Will be held at Community Empowerment Association Training & Culture Center, 7120 Kelly St. in Homewood (accessible by the 67, 69, 71C, and all East Busway (P) buses - www.portauthority.org)

Join Occupy Pittsburgh for our second teach-in, organized by the Occupy the Hood, People of Color and Education Work Groups.

We hope to bring together the social and economic justice community in Pittsburgh, from all neighborhoods, acitivist concentrations, backgrounds, life circumstances and political viewpoints. By speaking together and sharing experiences and insight, we hope to strengthen the community that the Occupy has caused to take shape - in all our diversity of experience.

12 Noon: Lunch

!2:30 pm: Opening Plenary: From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy the Hood:  Building Power for the 99%

Speakers: Helen Gerhardt & Carl Redwood, facilitators: Guillermo Perez

Two Rounds of Workshops

1:45-3:15 p.m. - workshop session #1
3:15-3:30 p.m. - break
3:30-5:00 p.m. - workshop session #2
5:00-5:30 p.m. - group debrief

There will be at least 10 workshops.  Half will be presented by the Occupy the Hood/People of Color Work Group and half by the Education Work Group

 

Workshop Session #1 (1:45-3:15)

1. Who are the 99%?

(facilitator: Nicholas Rushin)

This is a discussion about the workings of class, oppression and exploitation through a materialist and historical perspective.  We are the 99% fighting against the 1%, but how do the 1% and the 99% get to be the 1% and 99%?  Where does wealth come from and who creates it?  How does class affect political struggles?  And how is class different and similar to other forms of oppression like sex and race?

2. The Disparity & Education of Black Students

(facilitator: Vickki Ayanna Jones)
This workshop will recognize, develop & repair the damage that has been done to our children in the educational system & Black people in general.

3. Healthcare for the 99%: Ending Race-Based, Class-Based, All-for-Profit Care

(panelists: Scott Tyson, Physician, PUSH/ Healthcare4ALLPA; Ed Cloonan, Save Our Community Hospitals & Western Pennsylvania coalition for Single Payer; Sandra Fox, Western PA Coalition for Single Payer; Residents from Braddock and surrounding areas, Footage from Tony Buba, Save Our Community Hospitals)

This workshop will consist of film footage and a panel of speakers who will tell the story of how UPMC created race- and class-based barriers to health care with its demolition of Braddock Hospital and building of a surplus hospital for Monroeville. Speakers will also discuss how and why they fought back, from street theatre to a civil rights lawsuit. What are the roots of this problem in U.S. healthcare and what would alternative system look like?

4. Impact of Mass Incarceration

(facilitator: Khalid Raheem, president/CEO of the National Council for Urban Peace and Justice; Steering Committee member of the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Persons Movement; member of Occupy the Hood Pitstburgh)

This workshop will explore the prison industrial complex as it pertains to mass incarceration of black males.

5. Gentrification and Our Right to the City

(facilitator: Carl Redwood)

This workshop will share information about the Right to the City Alliance organizing against gentrification using an urban human rights framework. The workshop will explore the forces behind gentrification and provide historical context for the issues we face. Through discussion we will examine how gentrification has impacted our neighborhoods and help us begin to look beyond our current reality to envision the rights we are fighting for. 

5. Bringing Occupy Pittsburgh to the Neighborhoods: Outreach Strategies and Initiatives

(NAMES, DESCRIPTION To Come)

Workshop Session #2 (3:30-5:00)

1. "Why Dismantle and Not Reform?" The Call of Occupy the Hood Pittsburgh

(facilitators: J.O. Yejide KMT & Bekezela Mguni)

This workshop will discuss why the Occupy movement needs radical approaches to change vs. reform of the current economic system in order to meet the needs of people of color and to ensure an equitable and humane future for all.

2. What are the Alternatives to Corporate Power?

(PANELISTS - Jackie Smith, Carl Davidson, etc)

So far the Occupy movement has helped draw public attention to what we're against, but what are the alternatives? This workshop will invite organizers from the region to present ideas that have been developed and tested in communities around the world to show that another world is possible. We will explore publicly-owned banks, community-supported agriculture; community currencies and barter systems; Davidson will present on the Mondragon co-operatives in Spain, and other forms of what is known as the "solidarity economy." Finally, campaigns that are working to counter corporate power to make room for community-based economic initiatives will be discussed.

3, Organizing within Marginalized Communities

(faciliators: Calvin Skinner & Kyndall Mason)

A workshop dedicated to successful strategies to do organizational outreach in marginalized communities with an emphasis on outreach to African-American and members of the LGBT communities.

4. Organized Labor & Occupy: Waging Class War on Two Fronts

(facilitators: Paul Le Blanc & Guillermo Perez)

Thanks to the Occupy movement, the issue of income and wealth disparity in the U.S. and the damage it's doing to our democracy are now front and center in the national discourse. Since its inception the Occupy movement has received considerable support from organizations affiliated with another national movement, organized labor. In this workshop we hope to engage union and Occupy activists in a discussion of how these two movements diverge and intersect and the ways we can work together to advance a common agenda.

5. Economic Disparities: Occupying Solutions for Black Communities

(Nazura Asaseyeduru)

This workshop will challenge the power structure of banks & government as it pertains to economic disparities for People of Color. Thus, participants will look at solutions in which Black communities have to be creative, innovative & self-determining.

Sponsors: Occupy the Hood (PghOccupythehood@riseup.net or call 412-244- 0298) &Occupy Pittsburgh (occupypittsburgh.org) and it'sPeople of Color & Education Working Groups

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Coalition-Building 101 - Liberals and the Left

What's Required 

for Left-Liberal 

Alliances and 

Mass Movements

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On


Even though it was a call for a center-left coalition of sorts, Harold Meyerson's  Jan. 6 Washington Post article, run on Portside, pressed all my hot buttons.

The title alone, with its question-begging blind spot, 'Without a movement, progressives can't aid Obama's agenda,' set me off: there's substantive parts of "Obama's agenda", such as the current Afghan war escalation, that are outright reactionary and not deserving of 'aid' from anyone, least of all progressives. In fact, we need to be mobilizing against them.

Meyerson is probably speaking for more than himself.  I'd guess he's fairly typical of a good number of Beltway liberals who have been wringing their hands recently over their inability to get more grassroots passion stirred up and into the streets over a range of measures that are part of the White House agenda.

So when he started describing how FDR enjoyed critical support from a powerful labor movement and a significant left in the Communist and Socialist Parties, and lamenting that Obama lacks something similar, I just shook my head and groaned. Since the end of World War Two, these guys have been doing everything in their power to disparage, dismiss, distrust and otherwise sow disdain for the socialist left. To our credit, we gave tit for tat over the years, and persisted in keeping a relevant left alive, as best as we could,  and kept ourselves fully engaged in the building of mass and progressive movements.

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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!

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...


------------------------------------------------------------
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 and more big-time pols are breaking with Bush and the war every day, but I'm not holding my breath for Daley.

It's a form of struggle--an alliance aimed at neutralization--and an effort to bring the antiwar sentiment in Daley's base to bear on him and those like him.

That's the short and direct explanation.

And the point isn't even Daley as one individual, but developing a basic policy to utterly isolate, divide and defeat the warmakers.

In a shorthand formula, the strategic line is unite the progressive forces, win over the middle forces, divide the camp of the adversaries, isolate the worst of the lot, and crush them one by one via by encirclement, by capturing all possible institutions, step by step, fighting, failing, fighting again, until we win.

The tactical line that goes with it is to wage struggle on just grounds, to our advantage and with restraint.

In this case, 'just grounds' is opposing an unjust war, with the majority reflected in the resolutions and referendums passed. 'To our advantage' means asking mayors to appear under our 'Out Now' banner, with tens of thousands assembled. 'With restraint' means we take the high road of a proper invitation.

Does it have risks?

Of course, what fight doesn't?

Will it work to our advantage? We'll see.

But none of YOU and answering MY question: How in the world do expect to end this war, sooner rather than later, without building alliances with the moderate center, both at the top and at the base. Tell me how the left can do it by itself?

If you think this perspective of mine comes from being wishy-washy on Daley and his ilk, you're dead wrong. It comes from forming a very hard core, and having been trained in the work of the united front by some very wise people, in order to be extremely determined to do what it takes to win some very important battles, and come out stronger to win more in the future.

It's serious business for serious people, and, I'll admit, not everyone's cup of tea. But I don't think we can win without it, or something similar along the same lines, but even better.

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Wednesday, 26 September 2007
by Lev


Let's see. About 70% of the U.S. populations in polls have said they're against the Iraq war, which means that according to Carl's definition the United States, is an "anti-war" nation, so using Carl's criteria for inviting speakers we therefore should request that George Bush "represent" the nation by speaking at the rally.

The above example just illustrates that the stated reason for inviting Daley is a crass rationalization. Daley, who has done his best to wreck every City Council resolution against the war. Daley, who has sucked up as much federal militarization of the schools and Dept of Homeland Security moneys as he can.

The reason for inviting Daley has nothing to do with his ever making even the mildest anti-war gesture. It has everything to do with the long-standing political alliances of some of the Oct. 27th organizers -- anti-war principles be damned.

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Tuesday, 25 September 2007
by don't you mean popular front


I thought united front was where everybody brings their own convictions and is not forced to subsume them to a larger 'unity' line, whereas in popular front you toe the line on the main slogan and shut the fuck up about your own differences. I think you mean 'popular' front, Carl...

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Tuesday, 25 September 2007
by moderate center?


By moderate center, do you mean ordinary folks, who uniformly oppose the war? Because they're already down with this program. Or do you mean labor bureaucrats and Dem/Repub politicians, who will always put their own political expediency before the aspirations of their rank and file and district constituencies? Seems to me you're going after the 'leadership' instead of focusing on the base, and in selling out the position that ordinary people want to embrace, ending up with nothing -- no additional mobilized base to pressure the 'leaders', and a 'leadership' that remains as unaccountable and indifferent to popular opinion as always.



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Wednesday, 26 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


Well, 'moderate center,' your understanding of both the united front and the popular front leaves much to be desired.

And 'shut the fuck up' isn't good for any of them, popular front, united front or counter-hegemonic bloc. Rather, it's a matter of exercising both independence and initiative in whatever alliances you form, and doing it in a way that helps you win the goal. Read Mao on the topic if you like, or Troung Chinh for a more nuanced analysis.

Here's the bottom line: On one hand, the communists are always a minority, even under socialism. On the other hand, history is made by the masses in their millions, most of whom are not communists, leftists, or what have you, at least at any given time.

Individuals from among the masses, of course, can become communists all the time, if they work at it a bit. I and many friends and comrades are examples of that; there's nothing special about us.

But relating to people as they actually are, means you always have to work with, and unite with, people who disagree with you, largely or smally, both at the base and among the leaders of the base. You can't just unite 'from below' or 'from above', because in life, the two are interconnected.

While the base is always most important, as both the motive force and visionaries of change, the others are important, too, both as an opening to the base, and, in some cases, in their own right.

So by 'moderate center,' I mean both the working-class and middle class women who hate the war, but are also fans of Hillary or any number of mainstream pastors, or even the Pope, as well as the leaders of their organizations they look to.

(Yes, there are a good number of working-class women who hold even the Pope in some esteem. We can go up Milwaukee Avenue and knock on a few doors to find out, if you like.)

We have a war to stop, and we can't do it alone, with just leftists.

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Wednesday, 26 September 2007
by harry's ghost


Well, you gotta hand it to Carl. I haven't seen such painful contortions in print since seeing this image of the great illusionist himself, Harry Houdini ( http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=90093&rendTypeId=4 )

In his latest update on the Oct. 27 Mobilization website, Davidson writes: "In addition to music, the following speakers will be invited: Mayor Richard Daley, Senator Richard Durbin, Senator Barack Obama from Illinois. (Acknowledging that two city council resolutions and the antiwar ballot referendum in the last election put both this City and State solidly in the 'Out Now' camp, and they will be asked to speak to and represent the views of the antiwar majority.)"

Then he writes "Finally, all presidential candidates and their campaigns, critical of the war and ready to bring it to a rapid end, are encouraged to lend their support and the participation of their activists, but without a commitment to inviting any of them to speak. We are nonpartisan and non-endorsing."

But wait a minute, isn't Barack Obama running for President? Mayor Daley has endorsed him. Dick Durbin is one of his biggest campaign boosters.

Presto. Obama campaign rally on Oct. 27. Spread the word. Harry would be proud.



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Wednesday, 26 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


It never ceases to amaze me how little about politics, of any sort, our far left 'politicos' have a handle on.

I'll take the Houdini charge as a backed handed compliment, meaning a degree of skill in dealing with complicated situations.

Obama and Durbin are being invited as the top politicians of a state that voted well over 50 percent against the war, and asked to speak to it.

I think it very unlikely that Obama accepts. His team seems to want only audiences they can control, and where they control the message. Here we control the message: Stop the War Now, Bring ALL Our Troops Home' and the related slogans. If he does, so much the better, because in helps us more than it helps him. If he doesn't, we can still appeal to his supporters that they are welcome, and we set no obstacles.

Durbin, on the other hand, might actually show. He's made a few moves in our direction recently.

Now consider that you're in an alliance, a new one, with a number of major African American churches on the South and West Sides, who are renting buses to bring their people, and they tell you they think it quite important that these two Senators at least be invited, because THEIR base considers it important.

For me and the rest of our committee, it's a no brainer, especially since the main politics of the day are ours, not the Senators.

But in our old coalitions, it would be unthinkable. But that get's to the whole point being debated here, doesn't it?

So we're not seen as unduly partial to Obama, we invite all campaigns critical of the war, opposing Bush and want to bring it to a rapid end, not to speak, but to take part, sent up their tables, and mobilize their volunteers.

The difference between us is that we would see this as a major breakthrough, getting the liberal center to take part in an 'Out Now' rally, where, I suspect from the tone here, you would see it as a horrible setback.

Am I wrong?

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Wednesday, 26 September 2007
by What about Stroger


Why can't we invite Stroger, who's on record as being anti-war, to encourage him to push through an anti-war resolution in the County Board?

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Wednesday, 26 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


Everyone is invited to take part who opposes the war and will march under our main banner.

Stroger's welcome to join our 'Healthcare, Not Warfare' contingent, or our 'Cities for Peace' contingent of elected officials.

And we do encourage the County Board to pass a resolution against the war. If he got that through, someone might even propose him as a speaker. If you want Stroger to speak for that sector, get a group from that sector to join, and then propose him to the program committee.

But for now, no one has. We have far better proposals of people to speak on health care, from the African American community, and from among elected officials.

So enough already. Move on the serious matters.

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Ooops.
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Wednesday, 26 September 2007
by LOL


"Durbin, on the other hand, might actually show. He's made a few moves in our direction recently."

Funny how breaking developments get in the way of the best laid plans. Sen. Dick Durbin just voted for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment on Iran which Sen. Webb accurately describes as "Cheney’s fondest pipedream " [ http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/79522/index.php ]

How's that for serious?

You know how to pick em, Carl.

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Thursday, 27 September 2007
by Fred M


Once again the fearless leadership is touting their once or twice a year, holy days of obligation. Don't do anything the whole rest of the year, show up Oct. 27, and absolve yourself of the quilt you feel for doing "Nothing" the other 364 days. Ain't going to change shit!

The sad thing is old farts like davidson lived through the Vietnam era and learned nothing. Perhaps because of their years of rubbing elbows with scum like Daley, obomber and durbin, connections to the machine are something not to to be sacrificed. Note davidson's buddies voting on the Iran Resolution this week. Agree with Fuck the Democraps, shout down these phony pigs if they speak at this nearly worthless event.

It is nearly worthless because on a Sat. how many people will actually see it? Most people don't watch the news on weekends. Will the capitalist media give it coverage? How much? Will they give pro-war assholes equal time? It won't be in the Sunday papers. If a few thousand people are downtown that day and the overwhelming number of people in this area don't find out about it, was it really worthwhile?

But worse, there is this terrible illusion, fostered by the fearless leaders, that Oct. 27 will make a difference. Feb. 15, 2003, over 15 million people saying no to war, didn't stop it. What are the leaders screaming about the u. s. attack on Iran? Or is that O. K. because Hilldog, obomber amd the$400 haircut support it. People have to be challenged to do something every week, not once or twice a year. A rally for the other pro-war party next month is not the way to end the wretched wars.

We ended the VietNam war with a mass movement. Not these one or two time a year things. You know movements exist because everyday, people see signs of them and everyday people can do "Something" to sustain or build that Movement. What does the awesome coalition for Oct. 27, offer those thousands, gathered , to do next week, next month, or anytime. Go to their stupid meeting. Where the leaders thump their chests and say how much they are against the war and how much they support impeaching "w" (not going to happen).

My suggestion is getting out on the streets every week. Hold a sign. Bang a drum, scream a little and talk to total strangers about doing more on the street kinds of things. This is how people have always changed things. When was the time you saw a peace button, anti-war shirt or hat, sign in a window or bumper sticker. During Vietnam you couldn't go more than a few blocks in most of this city without seeing one or more anti-war statements. That was a Movement. Until we see Things against the war everywhere, everyday it will not end.

STAND UP AGAINST WAR

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Thursday, 27 September 2007
by Fred M


Got cut off the net, Back. Sorry about the typos at the end of my last post, older people don't always do well under time pressure. Try to keep it short.

Out here on the northwest side there is an explosion of people wearing camouflage pants. An obvious homage to the military. If you are going to fight endless wars for Big Business, people have to honor the goons who will do the fighting. During the VietNam war we didn't love the military. Now days some people claiming to be anti-war, say they love the military more than the republicraps. Hay obermer loves the military soo much, he wants 90 billion more to expand it when he gets elected. Peace candidate, No Way!

There are a number of anti-war weekly events. See the New World calendar under weekly/ongoing events. Please join one of them. We all need help.

Our group is Northside Peace Gathering, started Sept. 2, 2003. Just began our fifth year, Sat Sept. 29 is Gathering #270. The great thing about our events is 270 mini-demos and not one meeting. That is the way it used to be. Yes most people in this country are against the war, but only because they see it as going badly. They are not against war, Only wars that the u. s. is not winning. During VietNam there developed a Movement that opposed not only that War but all wars. Some of us are still around trying to raise hell. But unfortunately too many got suckered into supporting the other war party. We don't!

Let's just look at a few numbers. 269 demos at 2 hours. At a minimum of 1500 sightenings per gathering, that means, we have been seen over 400,00 times! A total of less than a hundred individuals have joined us but nearing half a million people have seen us at least once. We are sure similar numbers can be stated by other weekly events. They do have lots of power but even more if the numbers are larger. Which would be more powerful a dozen protests in neighborhoods of a couple hundred or one downtown? Let's get out on the streets, wear a button put up a sign. Spray paint a wall. But if you want to end these wars, do something in public or on the public every week!

Northside Peace Gathering
every Sat. 2-4 pm
Three Cornered Island of Peace
Milwaukee, Logan and Kedzie Aves.

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Thursday, 27 September 2007
by Carl Davidson


I see you guys every Saturday in my hood, 'Fred M', and always wave or give thumbs up. A few times, I've stopped for a while.

Bless your hearts for doing it, but believe me, it's going to take a lot more.

Organization is our main weapon, organization that can manifest, to use a fancy term, as counter-hegemonic popular power on a large scale.

You folks have organized 200 or so over the years, maybe a dozen at any given time, to stand on a given corner with signs and flyers. Good, that's a start. It beats idle cafe or barroom chatter by a mile.

But we have a military to organize from within, an electorate to transform with new insurgencies, streets, courts and jails to fill, and candidates, officials and presidents to take down, so long as the persist in this war. And put others in their places who will end the war.

We have to more to bring this to a far larger scale, sooner rather than later.

As for Durbin, I was referring to his half-step change of position on war funding, not his position on Iran, which simply stinks.

Let's just get on with it. Build a new organization in a new neighborhood. Bring them to Oct 27 if you like, or any other antiwar event if you don't.


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Friday, 28 September 2007
by Fred M


Had Countdown with Keith Obermann on last night and there it was. Obomber, Hilldog and the $400 haircut all said they did not think troops would be out of Iraq by 2011 if they got elected. Always said there was next to no difference between the dems and repubs, but that debate proved it. The three top democratic candidates for president agreed with shithead butch, they support troops in Iraq for many years to come!

So do we just forgive them and blindly vote for the other war party. I say fucking no! If I am not at Northside Peace Gathering on Oct. 27, when the fucking pro-capitalist democrapic politicians get up to lie, once again, to people, you will hear a few of us yelling at the creepy assholes. Hope others will join us.

Zapata said, "A strong people needs no leaders". This is the problem in this country. Instead of independent, strong willed, free thinking individuals this country is made up of scared, juvenile-acting, spineless sheep. That includes most anti-war people. They hide behind organizations, afraid to act on their own. A Movement is made up of individuals and the character of those individuals will determine the nature of that movement.

In this country not only are most people weak-willed but also selfish as all hell. Hurray for Me and Fuck everyone else, is the official motto of this damn country. And the real sad thing is these terrible traits, selfishness and sheepishness, have become much more widespread over the last 30 years. Most people don't give a damn about anything but themselves. Always said this is why most people don't protest the fucking war. But it is also why almost no one will give us a hard time about us opposing it. The overwhelming majority of people do not care enough either way to say anything in public about the most important issue of our day.

So 35 years later, we are protesting an evil, wretched war, in a country, were most people lack any moral compass. Saw a great bumpersticker a few months ago,"If You Are Not Angry, You are Not Paying Attention". Really don't have an answer on what it will take to give people in this country a backbone or a sense of what is right and wrong. But know it will take a profound change in the way most amerikkkans think. That is what some of us have been doing for decades, with few people bothering to even listen much less agree.

Christianity is a mass movement. But would it exist solely based upon a few people planning the easter and christmas bullshit and the silent obedient masses going the these event. No! That movement exists because things go on every day, every hour, every minute. The anti-war Movement to be successful must be every day, hour and minute. Complete preoccupation with events (1 or 2 a year) organized by a few is not the answer. As I said before if lots of people go to the thing on Oct. 27 and feel good about themselves and do nothing for the next 10 or 12 months, not only was that event meaningless, it was counter-productive. Finally, once again, What are the fearless leaders organizing the thing next month offering the people attending to do anytime soon? Some people coming out of the thing next month will fell empowered and good, unless they are offered something else to do, that sense of success and good felling will be wasted. Add something about that on the other post, soon.

END OF ROUND ONE Read more!