An Encyclopedia of Misses
"Bitch talk slick, ima hafta terminate ya."
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http://www.socialismconference.org/
Today is the last day for the extended early bird registration!
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The Spirit of Resistance Thrives in Occupy Moscow
An Occupy-related group in Moscow has caught international attention for their bravery and wherewithal against a notoriously oppressive Putin administration. A few days ago (May 16) police moved in to disperse a group of activists who were occupying an encampment on Moscow’s Kudrinskaya Square. When police were attempting to detain two of the protesters, a crowd gathered around a police bus and severely damaged it. Police detained more than 30 activists including the leader of the opposition Solidarnost group.
Outrage from the arrests has sparked a new wave of demonstrations among Russian activists, creating occupations that have swelled to the thousands. Laws preventing protesters from doing what many would consider to be normal protest activities (chants, signs, posters, tents, drums, etc.) are being enforced. In the past, Moscow police have broken up unauthorized political rallies with swift and extremely excessive force.
But working class activists are not lying down and allowing Putin to suppress their anger. More than 10,000 Russians of all ages joined a demonstration through a neighborhood near Chistye Prudy on Saturday in a clear bid to test the limits of the law. Moscow painters have voiced plans to conduct a similar stroll over the we.And the working class wherewithal in Russia is paying off big time! On Thursday (May 17) stories reporting wide-spread reaction in the business world to the Occupy Moscow protests were published:
“Investors are fleeing Russia as demonstrators against President Vladimir Putin dig in, exacerbating the impact of Europe’s debt crisis on the country’s markets, money managers from Frankfurt to Moscow said.
Activists who clashed with police before Putin’s May 7 inauguration are protesting non-stop in Moscow, using the Occupy Wall Street movement’s tactics. As the benchmark RTS equity index entered a bear market, Russia-focused equity funds recorded $251 million of outflows in the seven days to May 9, the most this year, while China lost $127 million, India $148 million and Brazil $167 million, EPFR Global data show.”
Resistance in Russia grows in strength and relevance amid increasingly popular and prevalent anti-austerity movements in Europe. The circumstances in Greece are demonstrating to international activists everywhere that in 2012 a different kind of government is possible. We live in the era of revolution: from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Movement to new vibrant anti-austerity movement creating the potential for revolutionary situations in Europe. The world we used to live in does not exist anymore. Things are possible that were not possible before.And that means we ALL have a much heavier responsibility to our societies and to our world to engage in struggle now than ever before (certainly in our life times).
—R.Cunningham
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Walter Who? A Response to Claims that the Occupy Movement is Irrelevant and Dead
We were recently asked by chileanstudentmovement (a great blog, if you aren’t following already, I highly recommend it) about our thoughts on Walter Russel Mead’s article “OWS RIP”. Admittedly, it required a wiki search for me to learn who Walter Russel Mead was. After reading Mead’s wiki page, it is utterly unsurprising that a hawkish, imperialist Democrat (strong supporter of the Iraq war) who works for such publications as the Washington Post, the Economist and the Financial Times would be so enthusiastically against the Occupy Movement.
Unfortunately, in this article Mead not only misses the point, he blatantly misrepresents facts to do so. Almost immediately in the article, Mead claims that the New York Times, a publication widely condemned for its negative, biased, anti-OWS coverage actually is the only thing propping up Occupy coverage. He claims that the movement has remained entirely irrelevant:
“It is not a significant presence on the streets; it is not a significant presence in Democratic Party politics; it is not a significant presence in the national conversation.”
It is difficult for me to accept that even a financial insider pseudo-journalist like Mead believes this nonsense. Surely, anyone who has even glanced at this blog has seen the wide sweeping affects that the Occupy Movement has had on grass roots organizing around this country AND internationally. Protests in countries across the Americas, Europe, Australia, Asia and Africa have evoked the “Occupy” name and implemented the movement’s tactics to pursue their own political interests while maintaining international solidarity. Occupy Russia made the news this week for just that, in fact. NATO protests this week (which we’ve been covering extensively) have been heavily influenced by Occupy organizing. Leftist organizations and conferences (such as the International Socialist Organization and the Socialism 2012 Conference) are reporting unprecedented new numbers of registration and tremendous growth because of an international wave of radicalization that both allowed for the establishment of the Occupy Movement and has gained momentum because of the Occupy Movement. The President, Democrat senators, congressmen and Democrat-focused organizations have adopted the language of the movement in order to appropriate it. Mead even acknowledges this last point but only briefly and only in order to dismiss it as irrelevant and inconsequential.
But Mead’s perpetuation of ignorance isn’t the biggest problem with this article. In fact, he completely misses the point of the Occupy Movement, and in doing so circumvents the conversation that all ruling class intellectuals are terrified to have. The Occupy Movement, (whether it is called that a year from now or has evolved into something entirely different) is a result of the problems created by capitalism in crises. Until those problems go away, there will be Occupy-style grass roots organizing ready to combat them. Any individual movement will go through surges and lulls of activity, and will eventually either evolve or become irrelevant. I have no doubt that what is now the Occupy Movement may be something entirely different in a few years but I also know the impact of three months of Occupy was enough to permanently impact this nation and my life forever.
The Occupy Movement changed my life personally, radicalized my politics and enlightened me to the reality that capitalism must be dismantled and to the idea that I could devote my life to fighting for a better world. I am not alone in this – I have at least half a dozen people in my life (who I knew before the movement) who also radicalized BECAUSE of the Occupy Movement. And there is nothing exceptional about us. The impact of having dozens or hundreds of newly recruited life-long anti-capitalists is immeasurable. Mead also sort-of acknowledges this in his article but again only to reduce it to some right-of-passage, maybe-down-the-line, bullshit. It feeds directly into the propaganda-industrial-complex which Mead is clearly a part of. The fact of the matter is, we won’t even be able to assess the full impact of this (still breathing) movement for decades to come. Mead predicts that this movement is dead but as far as predictions go, Mead has a less-than-clairvoyant history. I couldn’t imagine taking what this man has to say about grass-roots activism seriously.
—R.Cunningham
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Help fund a bus full of socialists in the Texas/Oklahoma area to the largest conference of socialists in the United States. Please help out. We’re trying to bring 56 people and it isn’t cheap or easy.We need to reach as many sympathetic leftists as possible.
During these conferences, people radicalize and prepare for a year of organized work against capitalism. Many people talk about the conference as the reason they decided to dedicate their lives to bringing down capitalism. For that reason, it is incredibly important that we get as many people to the conference as possible. Reblog, share on Facebook and if you feel like making some lucky socialist’s day, donate something please!
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The following are two very different points of view on MoveOn.org’s role in Occupy and their “Spring Training”. This first is from opednews and the second from Mother Jones. I would love to know: what do you guys think?
The OpEdNews article…
With hindsight gained by googling “MoveOn” and “co-opt” after the fact, I can’t claim that nobody tried to warn me. Many websites with left and even liberal politics had said in so many words, “Be wary of this organization called The 99% Spring. It is a Trojan horse for the Democrats.” I just didn’t read that anywhere in a timely fashion. I’ve had a lot of stuff on my plate lately. That’s my excuse. And in my ignorance, I responded to some spam about “nonviolent direct action training” organized by MoveOn and got invited to this 99% Spring thing on April 10 at the Goddard Riverside Community Center in Manhattan. Somebody even called me all the way from San Francisco to make sure I was a sincere seeker on the left and would be attending, along with 120,000 others in training sessions around the country.
Which I did. The meeting was a few blocks from where I live. The spam said it was “inspired by Occupy Wall Street.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was vaguely hoping that whatever The 99% Spring was, it would start a chapter of Occupy Wall Street on the Upper West Side, conveniently near my abode, and agitate for the Democrats and MoveOn to move left.
The first clue that my evening might go otherwise was the sign-up table, where there were a bunch of Obama buttons for sale and one sign-up sheet for the oddly named Community Free Democrats (are they free of community?), which is the local Democratic clubhouse. That killed the “inspired by Occupy Wall Street” vibe right there. No piles of literature from a zillion different groups, as there had been in Zuccotti Park. No animated arguments among Marxists, anarchists, progressives, punks, engaged Buddhists, anti-war libertarians and what have you. Just Obama buttons, which didn’t appear to be selling.
Inside the hall, it looked like an alumni reunion for the 1966 Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade. Almost all the 150 or so people were 55-80 years old. The ones I talked to expressed curiosity about Occupy Wall Street and enthusiasm about “nonviolent direct action” but didn’t have the knees or the ears for full participation in OWS activities in the financial district.
A large man with long wavy hair combed back started the presentation with a stirring call for…the meeting to be off the record. He didn’t want any stories that would violate anyone’s privacy, and if there were any lurking journalists, they weren’t allowed to use any names and they must see him afterwards for further instruction on the ground rules. This struck an even more dysphoric note with the crowd than the Obama buttons.
WTF thought #1: This was a public event ostensibly to convince members of the public to engage in behavior that challenged the legitimacy of government authority in public and might cause angry police to beat the public crap out of them. Why would anyone risk that without trying to get publicity for their cause? Nonviolent direct action that no one knows about is like jerking off. It might make you feel better, but you’re not changing the world.
WTF thought #2: Transparency is the only protection that nonviolent people have against police spies and provocateurs and other infiltrators. Occupy Wall Street does a pretty good job with transparency. An organization claiming to be inspired by OWS but shunning transparency is deeply suspicious.
The MotherJones article…
If you’re one of the millions of people who get emails from MoveOn.org, then you’ve probably heard of the “99% Spring.” Far from another clickable internet petition, it is possibly the largest attempt ever to train people in nonviolent protest techniques. Some Occupy types have criticized the effort as a scheme by Democratic operatives to co-opt their movement. But the reality is probably the opposite: It seems that America’s best-known progressive fundraising organization is now taking its cues from Occupy Wall Street.
I didn’t know what to think of the 99% Spring until I stopped by a three-hour training session—one of more than 900 being held nationwide this week—at a Unitarian church in San Francisco. My presumption was that the 60 or so gray-haired attendees would be interested in supporting Democratic candidates—after all, the event was cosponsored by the Progressive Democrats of San Francisco—but many seemed just as disillusioned with electoral politics as the folks who took over New York City’s Zuccotti Park this past fall. “I believed Obama when he said he would change things and he didn’t, so I quit the Democratic Party,” said one middle-aged MoveOn member who asked that I not use her name. She went on to talk about about how “the deck is stacked” and “voting doesn’t work anymore.” She’d come to the training looking for a new way to get involved.
“It’s clear that the sorts of tactics we’ve engaged in in the past are no longer enough,” Justin Ruben, MoveOn’s Executive Director, wrote in an email to his staff last week, arguing that the growing corporate influence on policy-making has left the group little choice but to take to the streets. In a subsequent interview with Mother Jones, he added, “We know that whoever wins in November, they are still going to be listening more to the 1 percent than to the rest of us because our political system is completely broken. So we don’t have the luxury of not engaging in this kind of action.”
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I found out I was pregnant 3 days after I’d lost my job. I was 19, newly married & already thousands of dollars in debt. No woman should have to choose between poverty or social stigma & shame. I am proud to be 1 in 3!
Damn right!
Reblog. Follow wearethe1in3 (which aims to combat abortion stigma). If you feel comfortable, guidelines for submission here.
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Today - April 13, 2012
The Egyptian people gather for a massive protest in Tahrir square in Cairo. Hundreds of thousands took Cairo’s Tahrir Square denouncing military rule of the country and united to ban Mubarak-era cabinet members including a spy chief from running in the upcoming presidential elections.
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![thepeoplesrecord:
Young, Black and criminalized
The U.S. government’s four-decade-old “war on drugs” has led to the criminalization of a whole generation of Black and Latino youth, writes Eric Ruder.
April 9, 2012
WHILE MILLIONS of people around the country were reacting with horror and outrage to the revelations about Trayvon Martin’s death in Florida, the right-wing media had a different kind of murder in mind [1]: character assassination. When a juicy tidbit from Trayvon’s school records leaked to the press, they thought they had their weapon.
According to reports in the media [2], Trayvon had been staying in Sanford during a suspension from school, after an empty plastic sandwich bag reportedly bearing traces of marijuana was found in his book bag. Trayvon’s school had a so-called “zero tolerance” policy.
When this news of Trayvon’s suspension for “drug possession”—in reality, non-possession—broke, his family angrily denounced the reports and blamed police for leaking the news to discredit their son. “The only comment that I have right now is that they’ve killed my son, and now they’re trying to kill his reputation,” Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s mom, told a swarm of reporters gathered to report on the latest “revelation.”
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly struggled to contain himself. In a March 27 show with Jasmine Rand [3], an attorney representing Trayvon’s family, O’Reilly deployed the usual interview-as-accusation style that he reserves for guests he wants to discredit. “Basically, it’s emerging that Trayvon had some problems,” said O’Reilly. “And the family does object to that.”
“Trayvon was any normal kid in America,” Rand replied, adding that Trayvon’s mother was correct to insist that the grounds for Travyon’s suspension bear absolutely no relevance to his murder. But O’Reilly wasn’t satisfied: “In a case of this magnitude, shouldn’t the public know the history of Trayvon?”
But the only newsworthy aspect of Trayvon’s suspension for non-possession of marijuana is that every mainstream news outlet considered it newsworthy.
If trying marijuana in high school in some way contributed to Trayvon’s death, then millions of American teenagers are at risk—not to mention all the years during which their parents and other post-high-school-age adults should have been deemed “suspicious.”
Nearly 40 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds—about 3.4 million—have used marijuana at least once in their lives, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [4]. Nearly two-thirds of adults between ages 21 and 54 have also tried marijuana at least once. Statistics also show that people of all races use drugs in similar proportions to their numbers in the general population.
Actually, the truly newsworthy outrage—one that escaped the media’s attention—was that a teenager would be suspended for two full weeks, not for possessing marijuana, but for possessing a sandwich bag with alleged traces of marijuana.
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WHAT REALLY deserves attention is the abject failure of the U.S. government’s four-decade-long “war on drugs” in every way but two. Its successes? The demonization of an entire generation of young, Black men—and increasingly Black women, and Latinos as well—and the waste of enormous amounts of society’s resources on building prisons and warehousing prisoners.
Even some high-profile conservative figures are drawing such conclusions, too.
Gary Johnson, the Republican governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, advocates legalization of marijuana and the decriminalization of harder drugs, citing the benefits of decriminalization of heroin in Portugal and Switzerland as models to be emulated. “Over the last 10 years, Portugal has documented a 50 percent decrease in heroin use as a result of having decriminalized heroin,” said Johnson [5].
Even televangelist and media mogul Pat Robertson has since 2010 advocated for the decriminalization of marijuana, returning to the topic on his The 700 Club show on multiple occasions. During a show in early March [6], he said, “California is spending more money on prisons than it’s spending on schools. There’s something wrong about that equation…I think we need to scrub the federal and state codes and take away these criminal penalties…[P]utting people in jail at a huge expense to the population is insanity.”
Finish the Article?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m283io0WvG1r6m2leo1_r1_250.jpg)
Young, Black and criminalized
The U.S. government’s four-decade-old “war on drugs” has led to the criminalization of a whole generation of Black and Latino youth, writes .
April 9, 2012
WHILE MILLIONS of people around the country were reacting with horror and outrage to the revelations about Trayvon Martin’s death in Florida, the right-wing media had a different kind of murder in mind [1]: character assassination. When a juicy tidbit from Trayvon’s school records leaked to the press, they thought they had their weapon.
According to reports in the media [2], Trayvon had been staying in Sanford during a suspension from school, after an empty plastic sandwich bag reportedly bearing traces of marijuana was found in his book bag. Trayvon’s school had a so-called “zero tolerance” policy.
When this news of Trayvon’s suspension for “drug possession”—in reality, non-possession—broke, his family angrily denounced the reports and blamed police for leaking the news to discredit their son. “The only comment that I have right now is that they’ve killed my son, and now they’re trying to kill his reputation,” Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s mom, told a swarm of reporters gathered to report on the latest “revelation.”
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly struggled to contain himself. In a March 27 show with Jasmine Rand [3], an attorney representing Trayvon’s family, O’Reilly deployed the usual interview-as-accusation style that he reserves for guests he wants to discredit. “Basically, it’s emerging that Trayvon had some problems,” said O’Reilly. “And the family does object to that.”
“Trayvon was any normal kid in America,” Rand replied, adding that Trayvon’s mother was correct to insist that the grounds for Travyon’s suspension bear absolutely no relevance to his murder. But O’Reilly wasn’t satisfied: “In a case of this magnitude, shouldn’t the public know the history of Trayvon?”
But the only newsworthy aspect of Trayvon’s suspension for non-possession of marijuana is that every mainstream news outlet considered it newsworthy.
If trying marijuana in high school in some way contributed to Trayvon’s death, then millions of American teenagers are at risk—not to mention all the years during which their parents and other post-high-school-age adults should have been deemed “suspicious.”
Nearly 40 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds—about 3.4 million—have used marijuana at least once in their lives, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [4]. Nearly two-thirds of adults between ages 21 and 54 have also tried marijuana at least once. Statistics also show that people of all races use drugs in similar proportions to their numbers in the general population.
Actually, the truly newsworthy outrage—one that escaped the media’s attention—was that a teenager would be suspended for two full weeks, not for possessing marijuana, but for possessing a sandwich bag with alleged traces of marijuana.
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WHAT REALLY deserves attention is the abject failure of the U.S. government’s four-decade-long “war on drugs” in every way but two. Its successes? The demonization of an entire generation of young, Black men—and increasingly Black women, and Latinos as well—and the waste of enormous amounts of society’s resources on building prisons and warehousing prisoners.
Even some high-profile conservative figures are drawing such conclusions, too.
Gary Johnson, the Republican governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, advocates legalization of marijuana and the decriminalization of harder drugs, citing the benefits of decriminalization of heroin in Portugal and Switzerland as models to be emulated. “Over the last 10 years, Portugal has documented a 50 percent decrease in heroin use as a result of having decriminalized heroin,” said Johnson [5].
Even televangelist and media mogul Pat Robertson has since 2010 advocated for the decriminalization of marijuana, returning to the topic on his The 700 Club show on multiple occasions. During a show in early March [6], he said, “California is spending more money on prisons than it’s spending on schools. There’s something wrong about that equation…I think we need to scrub the federal and state codes and take away these criminal penalties…[P]utting people in jail at a huge expense to the population is insanity.”
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Atheist Activist Becomes Christian After Believers Show Him Compassion
lhiv:
Jeff Schapiro of The Christian Post writes:
A few months ago Patrick Greene was an atheist who was threatening to sue Henderson County, Texas, if the county didn’t remove a Nativity scene from its courthouse lawn. Today he is a believer in Christ who underwent a radical change of heart that was catalyzed by the compassion of one Christian woman.
What a stupid reason to believe something. I bet there are plenty of neo-nazis out there who have shown moments of compassion. That doesn’t mean I’m gonna get a fucking swastika tattoo.
Then… don’t? What’s a smart reason to believe in something? That it’s been proven to be tr… oh wait, that doesn’t ever work.
I’m trying to keep it short as I know you have a limited attention span and inability to process lots of words, but I’d love to hear what brilliant, undeniable, provably valid reason you have to be atheist.
That aside, I’m pretty sure this story was made into a movie?
Dearest LC,
As Billy Shakespeare said ‘brevity is the soul of wit.’ That being said, I appreciate you taking my limited attention span into account.
You’ve asked me two questions and I’ll answer them both. A good reason to believe a claim is if the best, deductively gathered evidence points to that claim being a true one. See, I only want to believe things that are true. Therefore, I put the claims I’m presented with through a rigorous process. If the claim doesn’t meet my standards I don’t accept it as true. That does not mean I assert it is false, but I don’t accept it as true.
My reason for being an atheist is simple: I’ve been presented nor discovered any acceptable evidence of a supernatural power responsible for creating existence. I don’t assert there is no god, just as I don’t assert there is no bigfoot. When I see some bigfoot evidence, I’ll reconsider the claim based on the new evidence. Same for god. That’s what atheism is, LC. I know you don’t accept that definition, although I’m still not sure why, but honestly, tough titties. That’s what it is.
By the way, this “atheist activist” that this article was about was a fucking joke for years in the atheist community. He wanted to sue a guy over a religious bumper sticker.
Here’s a blog post about him from 2008 when he was harassing the entirety of the atheist community.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he was lying about being an atheist the whole time just to get press as a “convert.” I’m almost certain the guy’s mentally unstable, but of course none of that matters. The fact is it’s a stupid reason. You haven’t made a counter argument to that. If a Muslim was nice to you would you suddenly bow toward Mecca? If you can see what a ridiculous scenario that is, surely you can see what an asshole this fella is.
Liberal Christian seems really confused and uneducated.
He/she clearly didn’t put more than five minutes of thought into this. What a joke. And an oxymoron. And a moron.
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ATTENTION OCCUPY DENVER, DENVER RESIDENTS AND COLORADO RADICALS:
The INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST ORGANIZATION is growing and branching out in Colorado and is looking for contacts interested in revolutionary politics, leftist politics or people who just want to know more about socialism.
A new branch has been established in Denver in the last few months, with plans to develop in Ft. Collins and Boulder in the next year. Message me if you’re interested. Followers in the region (and also everywhere else), PLEASE REBLOG.
Also, check out the above flyer. Paul D’Amato is kind of a big deal so you guys should totally come out and hear him talk about the new book “The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx”
Reblog ya’ll.
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The only “war to win all wars” will be a CLASS WAR in which the oppressed international working class rises up and seizes control of society from their oppressors.
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The Scope of the Global Spring
In December 2010, Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi drenched himself in fuel in the middle of Sidi Bouzid’s town square and ignited himself on fire as a traditional form of protest. Eighteen days later, Bouazizi died and four days after that, President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali’s 23-year dictatorship crumbled. More than a year later, Bouazizi’s self-immolation has created a scourge of resistance across all corners of the world.
The people’s epoch of protest has not come easily, but no revolution ever has. Censorship, brutality, arrest and murder have greeted protesters to derail their struggle for liberation. But as last year’s Arab Spring has proved, once the oppressed have lost their fear and tolerance for tyranny, real revolution and change is possible.
An international uprising
Now that the people of the Middle East have paved the way for emancipation, the afflicted working classes across the world are stirring up mass waves of upheaval, each fighting for their own distinct struggles. So far, this Global Spring has activated thousands in nearly every country to take the streets, mobilize and launch an international revolution.
March brought the revitalization of resistance communities all over the world:
- The Socialist Unity Centre of India has reclaimed the streets of New Delhi to rally against unemployment, lack of education opportunities and violence against women and children in India.
- When the Indonesian government announced fuel price hikes of more than 30 percent, thousands invaded Jakarta to protest and were met with tear gas and water cannons.
- On the six-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, protesters reignited the American uprising against capitalism in all areas of the country.
- More than 200,000 Canadian students marched to protest tuition hikes in Montreal and awoke a student movement for accessible education.
- Protesters in the Philippines have marched by the thousands to rally against the U.S. imperialist occupation of their country.
- Portuguese protesters conducted a general strike against austerity measures after a 78-billion euro bailout last year.
- More than 400 people gathered in Moscow after taking the streets to mobilize against state television propaganda programming condemning opposition rallies.
- The Pakistan working class took over a petrol station to oppose power cuts in Lahore.
- The Aysén Social Movement in Chile has made great strides against its government tormentors and has worked to provide the working class with better working conditions, healthcare, education and city infrastructure.
- About 40 people were killed in this week alone in Syria as a continued backlash against the Arab Spring and activist groups. More than 9,000 have been killed in the year-long conflict, but protests and marches have continued.
- Countless marches have sprung up in the United States to assemble against racism in the dozens of protests that fought for justice for murdered teenager Treyvon Martin.
- Jamyang Palden set himself aflame in the town of Rongwo in China to protest the country’s occupation of Tibet where government officials have cut off Internet and international news access. Palden is the 27th person in the last year to self-immolate in protest.
…and this has only been in the month of March.
These are just a few of the communities of resistance that have assembled and organized against their oppressors to continue the legacy of revolution Bouazizi helped spark.
Solidarity in revolution
As the globalization of government and markets has come to be the way of the world, oppressive regimes and capitalist interests have terrorized working classes and distorted countries’ economies. But the working class is using internationalism to their benefit; one country’s struggle has become another’s struggle. This use of solidarity has acted as the fuel to enrage and motivate working class groups to begin their own emancipation. Globalization has forced us to see that revolution cannot just happen in one country; it must be an international effort to crush the oppressive forces of government control, greed, violence and war. Social justice and human rights cannot exist in one country and not in another. This conflagration of dissent is spreading purposefully and will continue a power shift from the oppressive to the oppressed.
Those maintaining the status quo are scared, too. The use of violence against protesters only demonstrates a government’s belief that uprisings can and will eventually topple them to dust. Brutality cannot and has not prevented activists all over the world from continuing their plight for basic human rights.
The Global Spring has arrived, but this is only the beginning of the emancipation of the world’s working class and oppressed.
-G. Razo
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Indonesian students clash with police during protests against planned fuel price hikes on March 27, 2012 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Thousands of Indonesians students in big cities all over the county gathered to protest the governments plans to increase the price of subsidized fuel by 30 percent. The Indonesian parliament is currently debating the fuel hikes which would go into effect March 25, 2012 if approved.
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Let’s Review Racist Murders that Occurred Just in the Last Week, Shall We?
That’s just within the last week. And we’re only paying attention NOW because Trayvon’s murder has gained political traction, forcing the media to cover it. When is it going to be enough? When are we going to get serious about identifying the roots of this problem, examining the system and replacing it with a better one?
Capitalism creates, manipulates and utilizes racism to keep the system in check. This is why I can’t let go of Occupy. This is why I work and hope for a global spring. We can create a better society. We, the working people of the world, have the capacity to control the means of production in society and end the parade of madness, genocide and suffering that is the capitalist system. I see two future histories for Occupy: one is a blip on the historical radar, a paragraph (if that) put into textbooks to teach nice, obedient, capitalist children about how organization in this country can’t really affect change like it did in the 1930s and 1960s. The other is much more interesting. The other is the beginning of the beginning to an international fight-back movement of the working class that, in a tremendous instant can mobilize and transform the entire nation.
If it is within your capability I beg you to join an organization (I recommend the International Socialist Organization) or get involved at Occupy or get involved in some form of fight back on the ground. Both mobilizing in-person and reading the histories and theories of historical movements of resistance is entirely necessary for building a powerful movement! I hope this is coming across as passionate and not condescending, because believe me when I tell you I am DESPERATE for a new world.
-R.Cunningham
![thepeoplesrecord:
Young, Black and criminalized
The U.S. government’s four-decade-old “war on drugs” has led to the criminalization of a whole generation of Black and Latino youth, writes Eric Ruder.
April 9, 2012
WHILE MILLIONS of people around the country were reacting with horror and outrage to the revelations about Trayvon Martin’s death in Florida, the right-wing media had a different kind of murder in mind [1]: character assassination. When a juicy tidbit from Trayvon’s school records leaked to the press, they thought they had their weapon.
According to reports in the media [2], Trayvon had been staying in Sanford during a suspension from school, after an empty plastic sandwich bag reportedly bearing traces of marijuana was found in his book bag. Trayvon’s school had a so-called “zero tolerance” policy.
When this news of Trayvon’s suspension for “drug possession”—in reality, non-possession—broke, his family angrily denounced the reports and blamed police for leaking the news to discredit their son. “The only comment that I have right now is that they’ve killed my son, and now they’re trying to kill his reputation,” Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s mom, told a swarm of reporters gathered to report on the latest “revelation.”
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly struggled to contain himself. In a March 27 show with Jasmine Rand [3], an attorney representing Trayvon’s family, O’Reilly deployed the usual interview-as-accusation style that he reserves for guests he wants to discredit. “Basically, it’s emerging that Trayvon had some problems,” said O’Reilly. “And the family does object to that.”
“Trayvon was any normal kid in America,” Rand replied, adding that Trayvon’s mother was correct to insist that the grounds for Travyon’s suspension bear absolutely no relevance to his murder. But O’Reilly wasn’t satisfied: “In a case of this magnitude, shouldn’t the public know the history of Trayvon?”
But the only newsworthy aspect of Trayvon’s suspension for non-possession of marijuana is that every mainstream news outlet considered it newsworthy.
If trying marijuana in high school in some way contributed to Trayvon’s death, then millions of American teenagers are at risk—not to mention all the years during which their parents and other post-high-school-age adults should have been deemed “suspicious.”
Nearly 40 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds—about 3.4 million—have used marijuana at least once in their lives, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [4]. Nearly two-thirds of adults between ages 21 and 54 have also tried marijuana at least once. Statistics also show that people of all races use drugs in similar proportions to their numbers in the general population.
Actually, the truly newsworthy outrage—one that escaped the media’s attention—was that a teenager would be suspended for two full weeks, not for possessing marijuana, but for possessing a sandwich bag with alleged traces of marijuana.
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WHAT REALLY deserves attention is the abject failure of the U.S. government’s four-decade-long “war on drugs” in every way but two. Its successes? The demonization of an entire generation of young, Black men—and increasingly Black women, and Latinos as well—and the waste of enormous amounts of society’s resources on building prisons and warehousing prisoners.
Even some high-profile conservative figures are drawing such conclusions, too.
Gary Johnson, the Republican governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, advocates legalization of marijuana and the decriminalization of harder drugs, citing the benefits of decriminalization of heroin in Portugal and Switzerland as models to be emulated. “Over the last 10 years, Portugal has documented a 50 percent decrease in heroin use as a result of having decriminalized heroin,” said Johnson [5].
Even televangelist and media mogul Pat Robertson has since 2010 advocated for the decriminalization of marijuana, returning to the topic on his The 700 Club show on multiple occasions. During a show in early March [6], he said, “California is spending more money on prisons than it’s spending on schools. There’s something wrong about that equation…I think we need to scrub the federal and state codes and take away these criminal penalties…[P]utting people in jail at a huge expense to the population is insanity.”
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