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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We're All in the Same Boat?

On the Topic of Obama, the

GOP Can't Even Blush Anymore

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On!

If Hollywood gave Oscars for shamelessness, the Republican responses to President Obama's State of the Union speech last night, Jan 24, would have swept the field.

Take Indiana's Gov. Mitch Daniels, who gave the official GOP response:

"No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others," he said. "As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat."

Amazing. One top GOP candidate, Newt Gingrich, is running around the country attacking Obama as the 'Food Stamp President,' while the other, Mitt Romney, whose newly released tax returns show he takes in more in a day than a well-paid worker does in a year, critiques Obama's business skills using a shuttered factory as a stage prop.

Obama, of course, never shut down a single factory, yet that was precisely the business Mitt Romney and his outfit, Bain Capital, was famous for, including shutting down a factory in Florida, where his video message was being recorded.

"All in the same boat" and 'castigating others' indeed. Governor Daniels uttered these words as the state he presides over is currently engaged in a notorious 'right to work for less' battle to strip Indiana's workers on their ability to bargain collectively.

Like many Americans, I watched the President's speech with a critical eye. As he detailed a number of manufacturing and alternative energy industrial policies, I thought, finally, he's giving some voice to his 'inner Keynesian' and forcing a crack in the neoliberal hegemony at the top. I cheered when he took aim at Wall Street and declared, "No more bailouts, no more handouts, and no more cop outs." On the other hand I winced more than once at the glorification of militarism and the defense of Empire-I'm one quick to oppose unjust wars and who has long believed a clean energy/green manufacturing industrial policy needs to trump a military-hydrocarbon industrial policy.

This speech was also Obama in campaign mode. One thing we've learned over the last four years is that his governing mode is not the same thing, and requires much more of us in terms of independent, popular and democratic power at the base to make good things happen.

But one thing is clear. My critical eye has nothing in common with what's coming from the GOP and the far right. The first Saturday of every month, the pickups trucks from the local hills and hollows, growing numbers of them, fill the parking lot of the church on my corner, picking up packages from the food pantry to help make ends meet. In these circumstances and lacking better practical choices, I'll go with the 'Food Stamp' President any day of the week.

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Do They Really Want 'Specific Demands' from the Occupiers?

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

I’m getting fed up with pompous pundits lecturing the ‘Occupy!’ movement for not having a set of specific demands.

A case in point: New York Time financial columnist Joe Nocera quoted at length in a story by Phoebe Mitchell in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on Nov 29.  He was speaking at the Amherst Political Union, a debate club at UMass Amherst.

Nocera starts off with the now usual tipping of the hat to the protestors:

“Nocera believes the anger caused by income inequality, a divisive issue across the country in this prolonged economic downturn, is the fuel for both popular uprisings. ‘If we lived in a country that had a growing economy and where the middle class felt that they could make a good living and had a chance for advancement and a decent life, there would be no tea party or Occupy Wall Street,’ he said.”

But we don’t live in such times, and the more interesting story is that OWS and its trade union allies are displacing the Tea Party, and energizing the progressive grassroots. Nocera, however, makes OWS the target.

“He believes that for the Occupy Movement to be successful, it must frame clear demands that outline a plan for creating jobs and refashioning Wall Street to benefit the entire country and not just a select few wealthy investors. Without a solid plan for moving forward, he said, the Occupy protestors will be continued to be viewed by Wall Street supporters as little more than “a gnat that needs to be flicked from its shoulder blades.”

A ‘gnat’ indeed. In due time, a progressive majority may well come to view our dubious ‘Masters of the Universe’ on Wall St as bothersome gnats to be flicked away.

But to get to the main point, Nocero knows perfectly well that there is any number of short, sweet and to the point sets of demands aimed at Wall Street finance capital and the Congress it works to keep under its thumb. Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO has been hammering away at his six-point jobs program—one point of which is a financial transaction tax of Wall Street as a source of massive new revenues to fund the other five.

The United Steel Worker’s Leo Gerard has been tireless for years working for a new clean energy and green manufacturing industrial policy that could create millions of new jobs and get us out of the crisis in a progressive way.

So what happens when these demands are put forward? With our Wall Street lobbyists working behind the scene, the best politicians money can buy declare them ‘off the table.’ Nocera and others of like mind in punditocracy put the cart before the horse. OWS arose as a result of a long train of abuses, year after year of sensible, rational, progressive demands and programs swept off of Congress’s agenda like so many bread crumbs from a dining table. Not even brought to a vote. OWS and a lot of other people are fed up with being dismissed.

The pundits should watch what they wish for. The demands and packages of structural reforms will be back, much sharper and clearer, and with the ante upped by hundreds of thousands in the streets, as well as millions turning out for the polls. In fact, the solutions have always been there for anyone with ears to hear. We’ll see if our voices are loud enough to crack the ceiling at the top, and let some light shine through.

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‘Street Heat’ vs. Finance Capital and the Right

Solidarity Time: Young People Occupying

Wall Street Are Standing Up for All of Us

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

The actions of thousands of young people in New York City's financial district, simply calling themselves "Occupy Wall Street," is now entering a second week, with many camping out overnight in the area's parks. How long its will continue and whether its numbers will swell is anyone's guess, but the response of the NYPD in arresting and otherwise restricting them is already banging heads with our First Amendment rights to peacefully assemble.

"At Manhattan's Union Square, police tried to corral the demonstrators using orange plastic netting," reports the Sept 25, 2011 Washington Post. "Some of the arrests were filmed and activists posted the videos online. One video appears to show officers using pepper spray on women who already were cordoned off; another shows officers handcuffing a man after pulling him up off the ground, blood trickling down his face."

Most of the youth are students, but many are also unemployed and underemployed young workers. And a small but important grouping of staffers and activists with NYC's trade unions have also made their way downtown to spend a few hours helping out.

The students certainly have a just cause. While the denizens of Wall Street have bailed themselves out and paid themselves huge bonuses with trillions from the public treasury, these young people are saddled with a degree of crushing debt to pay for their educations that would have been unthinkable 40 years ago. If they manage to graduate, they face a financial burden large enough for a home mortgage-all before they start their first full-time jobs, assuming their lucky enough to find one that pays a living wage.

But these youth and students are fighting for more than their own immediate concerns. They have raised a whole range of demands-Medicare for All, defending social security, for passing the various jobs bills in congress, opposing racism and sexism, ending the wars, and abolition of the death penalty in the wake of the recent unjust execution of Troy Davis.

They are the cutting edge of a new popular front against finance capital.

Young rebels often manifest a moral clarity that awakens and prods the rest of us. Through their direct actions, they become a critical force, holding up a mirror for an entire society to take a look at itself, what it has come to, and what choices lay before it. The historic example is the four young African American students that sat at a lunch counter and ordered a cup of coffee in Greensboro, North Carolina back in 1960.

The Wall Street protests are thus a clarion call to the trade unions and everyone concerned with economic and social justice. While the youth are clearly a critical force here, when all is said and done, they are not the main force. That power resides in labor and in the wider communities. It's in the hands of everyone that's part of an emerging progressive majority for peace and prosperity, everyone that wants a U-Turn against the country's current path to more wars and deeper austerity.

It's time to exercise that power and lend a hand with active solidarity. More actions are in the works, including an occupation and encampment on Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC starting Oct. 6, following the 'Rebuild the Dream' DC conference focused on a renewed labor-community coalition for the 2012 election.

It's going to take more than votes to push back the right wing and its Wall Street allies. It's going to take some serious 'street heat' as well.

 

[Carl Davidson is a national co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a national board member of the Solidarity Economy Network, and a member of Steelworker Associates residing in Beaver County, Western PA.

If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button at http://carldavidson.blogspot.com  His books are available at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker]

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Progressive Cynicism and Misplaced White Anger

The Far Right's Two Magic Weapons for 2012

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

If you want a Republican sweep in the 2012 election, follow this simple formula: Keep blaming the White House alone as the main cause of every problem the country faces, and ignore the Tea Party as overblown has-beens.

That's not advice from me. That's from Richard Viguerie, who some might remember as the think-tanker  and skilled pollster of the 1970's New Right that helped usher in Reagan and the era of neoliberal hegemony we've suffered under ever since. That's what he hopes the center and left will do over the next year.

An Aug, 10, 2011 syndicated column by Viguerie reminds us that presidential elections don't require a majority of popular votes, but only a majority of votes in the Electoral College.

"The Aug. 8 Gallup tracking poll shows that Obama is at 50 percent or better approval rating in only 16 states, the majority of which are normally considered Democratic bastions. Those 16 states represent 203 electoral votes of the 270 needed to win the presidency." Then he adds: "Key states, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida that contributed to Obama's 365-to-173 blowout of the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008, are in play at this time. It gets better. The states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, which are now in play, were three of the top states where the tea party wave swept new constitutional conservative members into Congress."

Viguerie goes on to discuss the role of the Tea Party insurgency in Michigan and California among angry white voters. He adds an astute point: if the GOP puts up a 'moderate' like Romney, Obama wins narrowly. But if it plays its 'wild cards' like Bachmann and Perry, the far right's  activist base is energized-and at a time when Obama's strategy is dissing his own left-progressive base for the wimpy and ever-narrowing 'center.'

In short, keep the left inactive, the progressives and the center divided, and the Tea Party energizer bunnies get their 270 electoral votes.

It's not a bad projection for the prospects of a neoliberal alliance with proto-fascists, with the latter in the driver's seat. The alternative view is that the majority of serious Wall St finance capital is circling the wagons around Obama. They're not interested in the wilder instabilities that would be fueled by Bachmann or Perry White House.

Maybe so. Serious money matters in American politics. But the far right has some serious money too, and they can combine it with an army of insurgents.

Therein lays our problem. At the moment, we have no candidate for peace and prosperity at the top of the ticket. But we need candidates of that sort at any level if we are to unite and mobilize a left-progressive base in 2012. We have the negative motivator of a possible Tea Party win, but only if we take them seriously. But we need more than that. We need candidates that will fight positively for what working-class people need, not what Wall Street needs. The People's Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is a good starting point. We'll have some candidates who will back it, but we'll need them placed in the states with clout in electoral votes. We don't have enough at the moment.

Don't expect much help from the Blue Dog and upper crust Democrats. No matter how you slice it, it's going to be a tough fight. So organize your co-workers and neighbors independently, and prepare for some fierce battles.

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Turn the Tables on a Rigged Game

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

Our local conservative newspaper, the Pittsburgh Business Times, carries an instructive story this morning, July 21, 2011, about how to solve our revenue problems, only it fails to make the critical point. So I’ll lend a hand. It says:

“Pennsylvania casinos brought in $81.4 million in tax revenue from table games during the fiscal year that ended last month, according to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. Of that, about $71.3 million went to the state’s general fund and another $10 million went to local municipalities and counties that host the state’s 10 table game casinos.

“The Rivers Casino on the North Shore was responsible for $8 million in state tax revenue and $1.2 million in local payments through its table games operations during the past fiscal year.”

It goes on to break the numbers down even more.

Now I can enjoy a day at the Casino. I recently took my Mom and stepfather, a retired J&L worker, to the Rivers for his 84^th birthday. I hit the nickel slot for $1.50 on my first try, but ended up leaving $5 in the hole.

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