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Readers' ViewsREAL 'STATE OF THE UNION' AND WORLD AS WE START 2010 Listening to a call-in on TV33, a low-power TV station in Highland Park, Mich., brought to my mind the importance of "Freedom" (from "want"). The caller's "want" was to get due process in recent events that involved property taken and physical assault. He sounded like a person, senior in age, African American, who is working hard for the wants in life. He is not rich, he said, but lawyers have taken thousands of dollars in fees and none have helped him in seeking redress. His parcels of land were in the vicinity of the Ambassador Bridge, where a few years ago the late Michael Jackson, along with a prominent businessman, was interested in building an amusement park. He wanted to know, "Why don't we hold the government accountable? Why don't we use it? We need to get our due as citizens or shut the country down!" Big business provides capital for the means of production, but the income gained by the workers is becoming less and less for more and more labor. We see more and more union-busting all designed to make sure "labor costs" are appreciably less. No matter what end of the see-saw the worker is on, it is not a winning situation for us. The voices of the many are percolating for change. --Ray Robeson, Detroit, Mich Today many are invoking patriotism, God, flag, and country. Do the right-wing Republicans, Democrats, Tea Baggers, et al. really know anything about America? Do they believe in civil rights for all, not just those with money or light skin? The hatred they spit out is not about American values. Do they care about those less fortunate, whether in this country or overseas? Do they believe that part of our greatness lies in our ethnic and religious diversity? Do they show their love for our values when they accuse our President of being a Fascist, Communist, or witch doctor? Does carrying guns to a political event make you a real American? Did these fake patriots learn anything in our schools about U.S. history, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Indians, slavery, the Civil War? The real patriots need to stand up and be counted. --Mark Blair, a Tom Paine Patriot, Chicago I have mixed feelings about the Cease Fire Committee's decision in L.A. to contract with law enforcement. The history of the various police departments for years has been suppression by force based on racism and programs such as "gang injunction" that help to criminalize and imprison mostly Black and Brown youths in their impoverished communities, on a massive scale. On the other hand, if the contract results in widespread intervention by community people who can convince the gang members to stop engaging in drug dealings or violence toward each other, the decision would be beneficial to the whole community. As some youth expressed it, they want a way out of their present situation. What is necessary to understand is that unemployment, poverty and racism cannot be eradicated as long as the capitalist system of production remains. --Basho, Los Angeles The article "NYC Housing Crisis" (December 2009 N&L) reveals the cause underlying the latest rent increases there. It also illuminates the housing crisis in Detroit, where individual home ownership and community pride is going the way of the family farm swallowed up by agribusiness. In my neighborhood, until two years ago vacant houses were quickly purchased and pretty soon you would see signs that the owners were improving them. Now, the streetscape is worse than in the 1980s, the last time government was unable to repair or demolish vacant houses. Eventually, the vacant lots were bought up cheaply by developers who then sold the flimsy new construction at ten times what they had paid for the land. While new homes looked good for a while, no one developed the surrounding communities. Access to public transportation (Mayor Bing has cut bus service, posing huge hardships for people without cars), quality retail stores, and city services have all suffered, but developers made money. The stage is set for a repeat of this pattern in the 21st century. --SVG, Detroit It's looking like the government is going to spend almost a trillion dollars over the next ten years to expand the "business" of health, but not to expand real patient coverage. It's claimed state-mandated health coverage would be tantamount to "socialism." Only "private enterprise" supposedly knows how to do it right. But we do have state-mandated "cost control," The pharmaceutical industry and HMO industry execs are very satisfied, because they helped write the "Reform" bill. It's the perfect legislation to keep the same power structure intact. --Health worker, San Francisco I nominate for the greatest irony of the century: a sitting war president awarded the "Nobel Peace Prize." It's like Orwell's 1984 prediction: "war is peace." --Antiwar activist, California The rise of a "respectable" neo-fascism in Europe is troubling. It was seen in the recent vote in Switzerland to ban minarets on mosques. That proposal was placed on the ballot by the far Right, and passed by 57% of votes even though it was opposed by most mainstream religious and civil organizations. Ironically, most of Switzerland's Muslims are people who escaped "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia and Kosova. --Bosnia freedom supporter, Illinois The Editorial on Pakistan in the December N&L stayed true to its focus on looking at things from the point of view of the subjectivities from below. The obsession in the media about troop levels being sent to Afghanistan is a diversion when the real question in Pakistan is the attack on the civilian population by all the parties: the Taliban, the Pakistani government and the U.S. (Doesn't terrorism there include the drone attacks?) N&L's focus is on the little discussed freedom movements on the ground. The revolutionary perspective is not foreclosed. That's why N&L's coverage is so crucial. --Burmese immigrant, California The earthquake that devastated Haiti was the most powerful to hit the area in 200 years. It was long-feared, but little prepared for by either the U.S. or UN, which have taken responsibility for "peacekeeping." What this has traditionally meant is that the U.S. government wants to think about Haiti as little as possible. Now it is feared that over 100,000 may have perished beneath the collapsed buildings of Port-au-Prince. Up to 3 million people may have been rendered homeless or in need of immediate aid. Haitian-American activist George Wilfrid Smith said "It's good that they are sending relief. I guess it took a disaster to make them pay attention to Haiti, though. The airport there is small, so they're going to have difficulty getting supplies in. Also the roads are messed up and that will make it difficult to deliver them. They're also likely to cancel the upcoming election. It was scheduled in a couple months. But I know they don't want to see Aristide coming back now. They're afraid of a rebellion on top of all the rest of this." --Concerned, Chicago Editor's note: See "Haiti's unnatural disaster" I really liked the Essay on "Childcare and Marx's vision of the future" in the October-November N&L. It was very well written, and I liked the way it put together with Marx the questions of child care, labor and the man/woman relation. I haven't seen any other articles written about the issue this way. --Suzanne Rose, Seattle The suggestion now being floated by more and more government bureaucrats that teacher pay and retention should be based on student test scores is laughable. The focus on standardized "test scores" ignores the fact that we live in a heterogeneous society--one in which a child who lives in a poor, immigrant community plagued with gangs, drug use and many dysfunctional families is "compared" via test scores with a child who lives in the financial lap of luxury at home and at school. --Kindergarten teacher, Illinois This is a National Call for a March 4 Strike and Day of Action to defend public education. California has recently seen a massive movement erupt in defense of public education. Because the layoffs, fee hikes, cuts, and the re-segregation of public education are taking place throughout the country, a nationwide resistance movement is needed. We call on all students, workers, teachers, parents and their organizations and communities across the country. --California Coordinating Committee march4strikeanddayofaction@gmail.com From the Compton Cafeteria riots of 1966 to today, there is still discrimination within our Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender community. For years, people have gotten away with using the "B," not for equal representation but as a credit to fill a quota. There are people who degrade bisexual people as going through a phase. Between the Dyke march, Matthew Shepard march, and Transgender Day of Remembrance, Bisexual people have been forgotten. We have lessened August Provost and Bill Clayton as we have remembered more of Matthew Shepard, Brandon Teena and others. The Bisexual community has their own flag because their voices have finally been heard and respected. Bisexual people will humbly continue to fight any bigotry within our own Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender community. Br. Michael C. Oboza, Straight and Gay Alliance ministry Attorneys within the Cook County State's Attorney's office recently leaked to the Gay Liberation Network that their boss, State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, is planning on not prosecuting Chicago Police Officer Richard Florito, although videos from his own squad car show he committed perjury by falsely charging Gays and other motorists with DUI. Several victims report him yelling homophobic slurs at them during the false arrests. Anyone upset by this latest development is asked to contact Ms. Alvarez to protest her failure to protect LGBTs and others from officers like Florito. Call the Cook County State's Attorney's Office at 312-603-5440 or email them at stateattorney@cookcountygov.com. --Gay Liberation Network, Chicago "AN INTRODUCTION" TO THE COUP RESISTERS, BY HONDURAN FEMINIST JESSICA ISLA I am this body marked by blows
(translated by Laura Mannen) Our thanks to the Freedom Socialist Party for sharing this poem by Honduran feminist and coup resister, Jessica Isla, in their "Revolutionary New Year's greeting for 2010." RELATING PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION There is an important relationship between the Essay by Raha on "Iran: Secularism and social emancipation" and Dunayevskaya's Archives column on "Levi-Strauss and the battle of ideas," both in the December 2009 N&L. Reading them gives a sense of the relation of secularism and "non-meaning": the way Raya is addressing the importance of "meaning" speaks to the Iranians' struggle. Religion is supposed to provide that meaning. Levi-Strauss would laugh at that. It's like a kid who keeps asking "why?"--there's always another "why." Secularism doesn't eliminate the need for meaning. You can get rid of religion and replace it with secularism but you still have to have some meaning for living. You can't just say it's for freedom without giving it some concrete content. Raha's essay goes beyond the usual Left view of religion because it challenges secularism itself. --David M'Oto, California In her Archives writing in the December issue, Dunayevskaya was challenging youth (including especially, I think, in her own organization) to become thought-divers and to themselves challenge all the alternatives to Marx's Marxism. She focused especially on the structuralist Levi-Strauss and his concept of "meaningless" as part of "meaning." What I think she was saying was that if you look at a particular labor demonstration as only about a particular issue, it is just a "thing in itself" that has no other meaning. But if you see it as part of centuries of labor protests, it becomes a universal endeavor toward a new society, and new human relations. She was trying to create a new ground for organization. In my view she was asking the youth to help develop the "Dialectics of Philosophy and Organization" she was working on. --Labor activist, Los Angeles The essay by Raha, his report on the November uprisings, and news reports of continuing mass protests, provide a beacon for all who envision a human society. Iran shows the persistence of the Idea of Freedom. Raha's exposition of the irony of the theocratic state transforming religion into a means of political control is very illuminating--the abortion foes in the U.S. have done the same thing to the proposed healthcare bill by prohibiting private insurance companies who use federal funds from selling abortion coverage. Likewise, the warning against seeking secularism as an end in itself is important--having emerged from the extreme secularism of the Christmas holiday period, I know I want a better society than the secular one we have now! --Reader, New York Raha's Essay presents the problem of Iran in the opposite way from the Left. It's not "who is more anti-imperialist?" but starts with the need to confront counter-revolutionary anti-imperialism. On the basis of a previous revolution 30 years ago, he is asking what happens after? --Writer, California RAYA DUNAVESKAYA CENTENARY, 1910-2010 Your "announcement and an invitation" to help celebrate the Centenary of Raya Dunayevskaya's birth in the last N&L seemed a great opportunity for me to let you know how grateful I am to have met her and Marxist-Humanism. It changed the course of my life by teaching me that Marxism and feminism were not two mutually exclusive philosophies, but that Marxism enriches feminism. Lucky for me, I learned about Marxism through Marxist-Humanism, rather than through some post-Marx Marxists who would have told me how women's liberation has to wait until after the revolution and that women's struggles are a diversion from revolution. --Women's Liberationist, Detroit Raya Dunayevskaya's Marxist-Humanism is unique, in recapturing the philosophic creativity found in Marx and exploring for the first time all the dimensions that opened up. It is philosophy become fully human, embracing real life and history. Philosophy is no elite preserve. There is no mysticism of the State, the Party, or the Genius. There is no mystification of the meaning of "freedom." Instead, the idea of freedom is made so concrete that it points to the future in the struggles of workers, women and all of the oppressed. That is an achievement worth celebrating in this Dunayevskaya Centenary year. --Tim Finnigan, Illinois Greetings to every one of you for your hard work! Freedom will someday be real, but for now all must fight for real freedom. N&L is the only true voice of working people that allows workers to have our own voice! Others want to put the words in the worker's mouth, but N&L allows the workers to speak for themselves. Someday workers may have their own Blue Sheet like at GM at the South Gate Plant in California back in the 1970s. Someday the workers at Wal-Mart may have a real workers' meeting and be able to truly fight for freedom! Maybe 2010 will be when freedom truly begins throughout the world! Freedom Now! --Martin, Southern California If I recall correctly, I ran across N&L about two years ago online when I was doing what I usually spend most of my time online doing, which was researching leftism. I thoroughly enjoy reading the articles I've read in N&L, and it is looking like it is going to be my new publication of choice. It doesn't talk over people's heads, but it doesn't talk down to people, either. It explains theory, which is all too often overlooked in leftist dialogue. I am most interested as of late in the ideas of self-governing socialism, particularly the history of it and the history of its philosophy. I would have supported the Workers' Opposition in Russia rather than Lenin or Trotsky, and I think the fact that the Workers' Opposition was killed by Lenin is the reason the USSR only lived for 70 years. I am ordering a $5 subscription via PayPal. --New Reader, North Carolina Your paper has been extremely informative, especially on the GLBT movement and the healthcare issue. The information allows me to help others look at our government through a new set of eyes. --Prisoner, Huntingdon, Pa. N&L is the most broadly informative political organ I've been privileged to read. Others fall seriously short in explorations of various issues where a critical analysis is needed. Those who are hamstrung in thinking beyond the restructuring of capitalism fail to grasp the idea of freedom that does not submit to an abstraction, be it capitalism or state-capitalism. I think it is because I have not found another organ that is clearly beyond the old path of an elitist attitude, as in the idea of a "party to lead." Most important is N&L's concept of "human power as its own end." --Prisoner, Crescent City, Cal I was amazed and excited to finally find a newspaper that interests me so extremely. It made me thank our wonderful "justice" system for not giving me life, because I see there is a struggle far too big to fight just in here. Another world IS possible. --Prisoner, Ione, Cal. |
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