A problem with any argument that we have to back Obama to stop the Republicans, that he's moving our way finally, that we need to vote strategically, etc., is that the working people have had it with him and most cannot be brought back. If the alternative presented is between Corporate Democrats or Fascist Republicans, sooner or later - probably sooner - enough will be sufficiently disappointed or angry enough with their phony champions to join in punishing them not just by staying home but even by voting for the Republican.
The other side of the coin is that we have a huge historic opportunity and challenge in front of us, one which most activists somehow seem to have missed.
The working people are in a very different mood and at a much higher level of consciousness than I have ever seen in my lifetime, but deeply cynical about the possibility of change through the ballot box. Exhibit A for most of them: Obama, who has disappointed them terribly. We need a voice and a leader who will use the election to put forward a new vision that we can rally around. Nothing, by the way, will do more to get folks out to vote for progressive Congressional candidates. Failure to grab the initiative now could have disastrous consequences. Our biggest obstacle is the failure of progressives to grasp this reality.
The labor/populist candidate for the Dem nomination for governor in Mass in 2010, Grace Ross, running in the primary against Deval Patrick, a Black corporatist incumbent, reached 27% in a Rasmussen poll of likely voters in a matchup with the Republican and Independent candidates - even though only 51% reported knowing enough about her to express an opinion. Signatures were easy to collect; Ross failed to get enough to get on the ballot because activists didn't see her as having a chance and wouldn't turn out to collect them!
The best line I found for getting a signature for Ross: "She can't deliver on these things for us by herself. You should know that if we put her on the ballot we're picking a fight and choosing her to lead us in that fight." If they looked like a working person, black brown or white, Yankee or immigrant, young or old, big city or small town, that usually got their signature!
Five or ten years ago folks would have run the other way from that line, because that was exactly what they were afraid of! Now apparently they're ready. If we fail to rise to the occasion by offering an authentic populist leader to challenge Obama it will be at our mortal peril
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Mayor O'Brien steps down for personal reasons
Joe O'Brien has been a good mayor, a friend to many parts of our community, an open door and a breath of fresh air. On the issue I am most involved with - stopping the foreclosures and keeping people in their homes - he has been a friend and supporter. I agree with Clive that "... his decision not to seek re-election as mayor is a blow to the city." I fear that my own being too busy with other struggles and issues - such as making a living - to help with his reelection campaign may in some small way have contributed to his decision.
Clive also writes "Despite his advocacy for those 'living at the margin,' Mr. O’Brien also understood that helping them should not come at the expense of other residents." Joe's own experience with trying to juggle the mayor's seven-days 60-hour-a-week job and a challenging experience with fatherhood on $35k illustrates a deeper truth: lots of us are struggling to get by, struggling with issues of survival and holding our families together. This is not just a problem that is "over there" in Great Brook Valley, not just an immigrant problem or a "minority" problem.
A politics that deals with this, that supports us all, has to include reaching out to all those on the margins of our city. Our struggles are theirs too, and a politics that includes them is one that makes us more powerful, not less.
Joe's genius is that he understands this. Putting him in the Mayor's office was a win for all the regular people of Worcester. His personal decision to step down, discarding the gains of our past efforts, was a defeat for us all, whether he intended that or not. But we should not let our disappointment blind us to our need to keep his voice on the City Council.
That one person's decision to step down could so impact the work and interests of so many highlights the need for a different kind of politics, one that is not about candidates and personalities.
Clive also writes "Despite his advocacy for those 'living at the margin,' Mr. O’Brien also understood that helping them should not come at the expense of other residents." Joe's own experience with trying to juggle the mayor's seven-days 60-hour-a-week job and a challenging experience with fatherhood on $35k illustrates a deeper truth: lots of us are struggling to get by, struggling with issues of survival and holding our families together. This is not just a problem that is "over there" in Great Brook Valley, not just an immigrant problem or a "minority" problem.
A politics that deals with this, that supports us all, has to include reaching out to all those on the margins of our city. Our struggles are theirs too, and a politics that includes them is one that makes us more powerful, not less.
Joe's genius is that he understands this. Putting him in the Mayor's office was a win for all the regular people of Worcester. His personal decision to step down, discarding the gains of our past efforts, was a defeat for us all, whether he intended that or not. But we should not let our disappointment blind us to our need to keep his voice on the City Council.
That one person's decision to step down could so impact the work and interests of so many highlights the need for a different kind of politics, one that is not about candidates and personalities.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Dear John Kerry,
My response to a letter from Sen. Kerry to PDA asking for our support around his (very weak) Afghanistan proposal, and appealing to us to see him as the young Lieutenant who became the voice of the Vietnam Vets against the war:
************************
Sen. Kerry,
My hasty and rude comment on your letter to PDA failed to honor your willingness to reach out to us. Please allow me a second chance to respond.
The heart of your letter is a discussion of the problems of decreasing the US commitment to Afghanistan and establishing a stable government while protecting US interests and still defeating the enemies of the US. The underlying unspoken assumptions are that "we" have some right to be there, "we" have some claim to be able to "build" their nation, "we" have lessons to teach in good government and democracy, and "we" have a right to go into other people's countries to kill "our" enemies.
These assumptions come in two flavors: unapologetic Republican and nuanced sugar-coated Democratic. Missing from both is the question: what do you mean by "we"?
Your "we", if I'm not mistaken, is the folks you move among, see every day on Capital Hill, mingle with socially and on business, the folks who come to you for favors and whom you go to for money ... the ruling class and political class and corporate folks who constitute your world and pay for your campaigns. But that's not all of who you are.
You appeal to the connection you have with us from your experience as a leader of the Vietnam veterans. Some of us are old enough to remember that and revere you for the part you played - a part you carried forward into your first years in the Senate around Iran/Contra. I would suggest that it also marked a unique episode in the life of a young man who had been groomed and educated for a life among the powerful and wealthy - an experience of intense involvement with the regular folk of America - the grunts - to the point where you shared our anger and earned leadership as one of us.
As your constituent I read your emails, and have been deeply disappointed by your positions, your framing of issues and your lack of passion for the interests of regular folk. Now, when we are in such distress and our security and very survival needs are under relentless attack, and we need so badly for something different to happen, they have become painful to read. But if there were a way you could somehow reconnect with the passion and anger of young Lt. Kerry, there is an urgent need for someone "on the inside" of the system to come over to us, throw their support to our movements and give expression to our demands for a "new deal" and fresh start - to a Monopoly game that has reached the end and that only a few winners still want to keep going.
The way Roosevelt did in the '30's in a time much like this one.
The need for someone to play this role is urgent. I canvass my neighbors every year around one campaign or another - including several of yours way back when - and I can tell you that the level of bitterness, anger and disillusionment of regular folk with the political and economic system is becoming explosive. When it breaks it will be a lot like Greece, only more chaotic, because our labor movement is so weakened and we lack national leaders who are known and trusted by the millions.
I'm not sure how you would do this. You've drifted pretty deep into the rarified world of the elite. But Lt. Kerry is still there inside you somewhere. Perhaps you could tell everyone you're checking into a rehab hospital, and instead disguise yourself as an unemployed Vet and just start traveling around asking a lot of questions and doing a lot of listening - until you really start seeing the world through our eyes again and feeling our pain and anger as your own, the way you did in '72.
It won't be easy. It would involve incurring the anger and even hatred of many people in your life - perhaps most of your fellow Senators, the members of your clubs, your wife's family, your fellow Bonesmen. It could even be dangerous. Many of them still hate Roosevelt, as I'm sure you've noticed. But you might find an answer in it to the question of why you were put here on this Earth.
Hope that helps.
************************
Sen. Kerry,
My hasty and rude comment on your letter to PDA failed to honor your willingness to reach out to us. Please allow me a second chance to respond.
The heart of your letter is a discussion of the problems of decreasing the US commitment to Afghanistan and establishing a stable government while protecting US interests and still defeating the enemies of the US. The underlying unspoken assumptions are that "we" have some right to be there, "we" have some claim to be able to "build" their nation, "we" have lessons to teach in good government and democracy, and "we" have a right to go into other people's countries to kill "our" enemies.
These assumptions come in two flavors: unapologetic Republican and nuanced sugar-coated Democratic. Missing from both is the question: what do you mean by "we"?
Your "we", if I'm not mistaken, is the folks you move among, see every day on Capital Hill, mingle with socially and on business, the folks who come to you for favors and whom you go to for money ... the ruling class and political class and corporate folks who constitute your world and pay for your campaigns. But that's not all of who you are.
You appeal to the connection you have with us from your experience as a leader of the Vietnam veterans. Some of us are old enough to remember that and revere you for the part you played - a part you carried forward into your first years in the Senate around Iran/Contra. I would suggest that it also marked a unique episode in the life of a young man who had been groomed and educated for a life among the powerful and wealthy - an experience of intense involvement with the regular folk of America - the grunts - to the point where you shared our anger and earned leadership as one of us.
As your constituent I read your emails, and have been deeply disappointed by your positions, your framing of issues and your lack of passion for the interests of regular folk. Now, when we are in such distress and our security and very survival needs are under relentless attack, and we need so badly for something different to happen, they have become painful to read. But if there were a way you could somehow reconnect with the passion and anger of young Lt. Kerry, there is an urgent need for someone "on the inside" of the system to come over to us, throw their support to our movements and give expression to our demands for a "new deal" and fresh start - to a Monopoly game that has reached the end and that only a few winners still want to keep going.
The way Roosevelt did in the '30's in a time much like this one.
The need for someone to play this role is urgent. I canvass my neighbors every year around one campaign or another - including several of yours way back when - and I can tell you that the level of bitterness, anger and disillusionment of regular folk with the political and economic system is becoming explosive. When it breaks it will be a lot like Greece, only more chaotic, because our labor movement is so weakened and we lack national leaders who are known and trusted by the millions.
I'm not sure how you would do this. You've drifted pretty deep into the rarified world of the elite. But Lt. Kerry is still there inside you somewhere. Perhaps you could tell everyone you're checking into a rehab hospital, and instead disguise yourself as an unemployed Vet and just start traveling around asking a lot of questions and doing a lot of listening - until you really start seeing the world through our eyes again and feeling our pain and anger as your own, the way you did in '72.
It won't be easy. It would involve incurring the anger and even hatred of many people in your life - perhaps most of your fellow Senators, the members of your clubs, your wife's family, your fellow Bonesmen. It could even be dangerous. Many of them still hate Roosevelt, as I'm sure you've noticed. But you might find an answer in it to the question of why you were put here on this Earth.
Hope that helps.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Puerto Rico Status Referendum
[The article in the T&G on Obama's statement about the Puerto Rico status referendum] fails to bring out what a dangerous setup this referendum would be.
In the first step voters will be asked if they are satisfied with Puerto Rico's current colonial status. There are many reasons why a voter might vote "No", not all of which have to do with wanting Statehood or Independence. If the No's win, the second stage will be an up or down vote on Statehood vs. Independence.
At this point Statehood becomes a slam-dunk winner, because after 500 years as first a Spanish and then a US colony, and with an independence movement that is semi-dormant, Puerto Rico is not prepared, economically or politically, to take on being an independent country.
If Congress then votes to make Puerto Rico a State, the stage would be set for a new disaster. Those Puerto Ricans who have struggled passionately for independence, and whose parents and grandparents, and forbearers going back ten generations, have fought for it, will not give up their dream, no matter how hopeless it may then seem. But now they would be secessionists, traitors to a country they never accepted as their own.
This is a snare that has been set for the Puerto Rican people. Beware!
In the first step voters will be asked if they are satisfied with Puerto Rico's current colonial status. There are many reasons why a voter might vote "No", not all of which have to do with wanting Statehood or Independence. If the No's win, the second stage will be an up or down vote on Statehood vs. Independence.
At this point Statehood becomes a slam-dunk winner, because after 500 years as first a Spanish and then a US colony, and with an independence movement that is semi-dormant, Puerto Rico is not prepared, economically or politically, to take on being an independent country.
If Congress then votes to make Puerto Rico a State, the stage would be set for a new disaster. Those Puerto Ricans who have struggled passionately for independence, and whose parents and grandparents, and forbearers going back ten generations, have fought for it, will not give up their dream, no matter how hopeless it may then seem. But now they would be secessionists, traitors to a country they never accepted as their own.
This is a snare that has been set for the Puerto Rican people. Beware!
Friday, June 3, 2011
Saudi Women Drivers
In response to the call for a day of solidarity with the right of Saudi women to drive, and the commentators who dismissed it as trivial:
.........
Not the most urgent issue, no more urgent perhaps than the right to ride in the front of the bus or drink from the same fountain, but important anyway. An egregious little symbol of Saudi tyranny and backwardness, and an affront to women everywhere.
Saudi Arabia is the heart of reaction in the Arab world, a land of freedom for no one but wealthy men, of less than none for the migrant workers and their children and grand children and great grandchildren who make up more than half the population. A land where corruption disguised as tradition is the system, fanatic priests are the judges and terror is the law. A land which funds the spread of a violent, backward, twisted, anti-female distortion of Islam around the world, which sponsored the mujahadeen led by Usama Bin Laden who waged war in Afghanistan by killing the doctors and teachers and burning health clinics and schools. The land which provided most of the 9/11 terrorists (the patsies, anyway) from among the addled children of its idle rich.
The land which sent its army into neighboring Bahrein to crush and murder the demonstrators who were overthrowing that tyranny, which imprisons and tortures doctors for daring to treat wounded demonstrators.
All freedom-loving people everywhere are watching Saudi Arabia, hoping and wondering when it's going to blow, and this issue is a toe in the door. A little pen-light shining into a filthy closet. Maybe even a spark in the powder-house.
.........
Not the most urgent issue, no more urgent perhaps than the right to ride in the front of the bus or drink from the same fountain, but important anyway. An egregious little symbol of Saudi tyranny and backwardness, and an affront to women everywhere.
Saudi Arabia is the heart of reaction in the Arab world, a land of freedom for no one but wealthy men, of less than none for the migrant workers and their children and grand children and great grandchildren who make up more than half the population. A land where corruption disguised as tradition is the system, fanatic priests are the judges and terror is the law. A land which funds the spread of a violent, backward, twisted, anti-female distortion of Islam around the world, which sponsored the mujahadeen led by Usama Bin Laden who waged war in Afghanistan by killing the doctors and teachers and burning health clinics and schools. The land which provided most of the 9/11 terrorists (the patsies, anyway) from among the addled children of its idle rich.
The land which sent its army into neighboring Bahrein to crush and murder the demonstrators who were overthrowing that tyranny, which imprisons and tortures doctors for daring to treat wounded demonstrators.
All freedom-loving people everywhere are watching Saudi Arabia, hoping and wondering when it's going to blow, and this issue is a toe in the door. A little pen-light shining into a filthy closet. Maybe even a spark in the powder-house.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Why I'm leaving CREDO
I find it ironic and unacceptable that my wireless provider, CREDO Mobile, which uses non-union carrier Sprint, is waging a public pressure campaign against the merger of ATT and T-Mobile. CREDO claims to be the voice of progressives, uses a share of its profits and a share of its revenues to support progressive causes and sponsors internet-based pressure campaigns around progressive issues.
A look at the causes to which CREDO donates its subscribers' money does not show much that involves the rights of working people as such. Last year, CREDO members helped raise $2,780,439 for "groups working to change the world." While much of this money went to causes I applaud, only a small proportion of the 49 groups funded last year were openly pro-union and none had supporting labor or working people as central to their purposes.
While I detest the anti-labor political contributions of AT&T, recent events have forced me to face the fact that "progressives" who don't support labor won't be with us in the crunch. And I have had to ask the question: what kind of a progressive outfit is it that doesn't support union rights and chooses to buy non-union?
I've been struggling with this - but my path is clear now. It's not about choosing union rights over women's rights or defense of the constitution or peace or fair elections or any of the other causes CREDO supports. This is not a salad bar where we get to pick some of this and some of that and weigh one against the other. This is not a trade-off between this good and that one. It is a fundamental choice of whose side we're on.
I'm giving up my CREDO phone and signing up with AT&T. A bit of my money will end up with the CWA and I trust them more than CREDO to use it well.
A look at the causes to which CREDO donates its subscribers' money does not show much that involves the rights of working people as such. Last year, CREDO members helped raise $2,780,439 for "groups working to change the world." While much of this money went to causes I applaud, only a small proportion of the 49 groups funded last year were openly pro-union and none had supporting labor or working people as central to their purposes.
While I detest the anti-labor political contributions of AT&T, recent events have forced me to face the fact that "progressives" who don't support labor won't be with us in the crunch. And I have had to ask the question: what kind of a progressive outfit is it that doesn't support union rights and chooses to buy non-union?
I've been struggling with this - but my path is clear now. It's not about choosing union rights over women's rights or defense of the constitution or peace or fair elections or any of the other causes CREDO supports. This is not a salad bar where we get to pick some of this and some of that and weigh one against the other. This is not a trade-off between this good and that one. It is a fundamental choice of whose side we're on.
I'm giving up my CREDO phone and signing up with AT&T. A bit of my money will end up with the CWA and I trust them more than CREDO to use it well.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Comment on Clive's Column on Foreclosure
The woman in question is a neighbor of mine, a hard-working professional and a mother, who has been struggling to keep her home and renegotiate the terms of her mortgage for over a year. Like more than half the people who have bought homes in Worcester during the past ten years, she is "underwater", owing more than the current market value of her house, which severely limited her options.
The notice that was posted on her door and then mailed to her came just days after the auction. It was illegal, untrue - and terrifying. It is part of a pattern in this city of emptying buildings very rapidly after a foreclosure. Just weeks after an auction most of the owners and most of the tenants are gone. By law the banks are required to keep the tenants in foreclosed buildings on as tenants of the bank, but they scare or drive them away anyway.
And then ... the banks seal up the building and leave it standing empty to rot. Don't ask me why they do it, it doesn't make sense from any normal business perspective, but that's what they do!
This is not the world of Jimmy Stewart, although we still have wonderful local credit unions and banks that play fair and deserve our support. The mega-banks helped set up this crisis and the housing bubble that underlies it, made a fortune lending and on the side betting against the loans they were making, and are trying to stick us with the bill. In the process they triggered a world financial collapse that is starting to look more and more like a depression. And then they collected nearly a trillion dollars of our money to bail themselves out - which they paid back by borrowing many trillions at near zero interest to buy Fed notes at over 4%. Now they are trying to stick millions of their victims, like my neighbor, with the bill.
So what is the sense of trying to blame her for this? Some folk, it seems, just like kicking people when they're down.
But guess what? She's not staying down, she's fighting back now!
The notice that was posted on her door and then mailed to her came just days after the auction. It was illegal, untrue - and terrifying. It is part of a pattern in this city of emptying buildings very rapidly after a foreclosure. Just weeks after an auction most of the owners and most of the tenants are gone. By law the banks are required to keep the tenants in foreclosed buildings on as tenants of the bank, but they scare or drive them away anyway.
And then ... the banks seal up the building and leave it standing empty to rot. Don't ask me why they do it, it doesn't make sense from any normal business perspective, but that's what they do!
This is not the world of Jimmy Stewart, although we still have wonderful local credit unions and banks that play fair and deserve our support. The mega-banks helped set up this crisis and the housing bubble that underlies it, made a fortune lending and on the side betting against the loans they were making, and are trying to stick us with the bill. In the process they triggered a world financial collapse that is starting to look more and more like a depression. And then they collected nearly a trillion dollars of our money to bail themselves out - which they paid back by borrowing many trillions at near zero interest to buy Fed notes at over 4%. Now they are trying to stick millions of their victims, like my neighbor, with the bill.
So what is the sense of trying to blame her for this? Some folk, it seems, just like kicking people when they're down.
But guess what? She's not staying down, she's fighting back now!
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