Leading Public Intellectuals And Activists Noam Chomsky and Robin D.G. Kelley On Speaking Truth to Power And Holding the Government Fully Accountable For Its Domestic And Foreign Policy Decisions--Or Lack Thereof

All,

One of the major leading public intellectuals and activists in this country who, as I previously said about Noam Chomsky, "consistently and eloquently speaks truth to power and has the intellectual, moral, and political honesty, integrity, courage, and commitment that it takes to reveal at all times and under all circumstances what is really happening in this society and clearly identify exactly who and what is responsible for it--and most importantly WHY" is the always dynamic courageous and brilliantly effective Robin D.G. Kelley who never fails to go straight to the very essence of what is wrong in this society and puts forward the kind of clarity, discipline, compassion, and KNOWLEDGE that is essential to addressing and ultimately solving these immense social, economic, and political problems. What follows is a video of an interview by Laura Flaunders of GritTV with Dr. Kelley on what Ferguson actually represents for all of us--and especially the national black population. Thanks as always are due to Dr. Kelley who understands that speaking truth to power and acting on that consciousness requires something much more from all of us than merely "sympathizing" with the constant victims of injustice and oppression...

Kofi

DR. ROBIN D.G. KELLEY

Robin D. G. Kelley on Ferguson:
We asked Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley about the upcoming grand jury decision in Ferguson. It isn't just about Mike Brown - it is about an endemic system, he says.

VIDEO OF INTERVIEW:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0mYrn7TjIU

http://truth-out.org/news/item/27901-noam-chomsky-talks-us-militarism-and-capitalism-at-home-and-abroad

All,

The great and always inspiring Noam Chomsky, one of the very few public intellectuals left in the United States who consistently and eloquently speaks truth to power and has the intellectual, moral, and political honesty, integrity, courage, clarity, and commitment that it takes to reveal at all times and under all circumstances what is really happening in this society and clearly identify exactly who and what is responsible for it--and most importantly WHY.  Astonishingly, Chomsky turned 86 on sunday December 7 and as usual he puts most people five and six decades younger than he is to shame. I think we are very fortunate to still have him in a society that is becoming increasingly bereft of people in the public sphere who will unapologetically TELL THE TRUTH no matter what. As always, thank you Noam…

Kofi

Noam Chomsky discusses the recent climate agreement between the US and China, the rise of the Islamic State and the movement in Ferguson against racism and police violence. (Screen grab via GRITtv)

Noam Chomsky Talks US Militarism and Capitalism, at Home and Abroad
Tuesday, 09 December 2014
By Laura Flanders, Truthout | Interview

[Noam Chomsky discusses the recent climate agreement between the US and China, the rise of ISIL, and the the movement in Ferguson against racism and police violence. Chomsky is the author of more than a hundred books and the subject of several films about his ideas. He is a political theorist and philosopher who has dissected the contradictions of US empire and inspired several generations of activists. This episode also features a special report on successful worker organizing among low-wage workers in New York City.]

VIDEO OF INTERVIEW:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5meC4Z61qGg


 
In Syria and Iraq, the "US sledgehammer" of war is having its usual effect says professor and author Noam Chomsky in his latest appearance on "The Laura Flanders Show":

"The US bombings are, in the usual and predictable way, eliciting anger from the civilians that were under attack. They don't like ISIS. They hate it, but they don't want to be attacked by American bombs."

Atrocities that US media hail as great victories; a US "war on terror" that's the best imaginable recruiting tool for terrorists. The "official" story of today's foreign policy is as upside-down as the mythology around the founding values of the United States itself.

From the policing of slavery, to the policing of Ferguson, Chomsky has a knack for seeing through the propaganda to turn reality back right-side up. And he asks the critical questions: like, why does it take him 90 minutes longer today to travel by train from Boston to New York than it did in 1970? What else could have been done with the money that was spent on crooked banks?

All that and a discussion of worker-owned cooperatives, some answers to viewers' questions, and Chomsky's take on the US-China emissions deal:

"Notice that this is a US-China agreement. It could turn out that this is going to undercut the international agreements, and it's not impossible that that was the purpose."

This conversation was recorded November 14 in New York City.

Laura Flanders: President Obama chose the 10th anniversary of the (2004) Battle of Fallujah to announce the doubling of the US troop presence in Iraq. Some of those troops are going back to Anbar Province where Fallujah is situated. People talk about the crisis posed by ISIS, and [the West's] lack of good options. Is this how you see it?

Noam Chomsky: It's interesting to look at it carefully. Fallujah, first of all, was one of the worst atrocities of the 21st century. The Iraq war itself was the worst crime of the 21st century, easily. Fallujah was probably the worst war crime carried out during that war.

Seven thousand Marines attacked Fallujah, probably killed everyone who was there. They called them insurgents - whatever that means. On the first day of the invasion of Fallujah, The New York Times had a front page photograph of Marines breaking into the general hospital, which is a war crime, and throwing all the patients and doctors on the floor and shackling them. It was hailed as a triumph.

When the high command was asked why they broke into the hospital, they said it was a propaganda center for the insurgents. [They said that the hospital] was releasing casualty figures, and therefore it's legitimate to carry out a major war crime.

Apparently pretty exotic weapons were used there, and there's evidence, which international agencies don't want to look at, of high levels of cancer and other effects of maybe depleted uranium, maybe something else.

It's a major atrocity, but it's hailed here as a victory. The only way it is referred to now is as a tragedy because the Marines fought so hard to liberate Fallujah, and now ISIS is in control of it.

So what would you do if you were president?

First of all ISIS is a monstrosity. There isn't a conceivable way of dealing with it. It's kind of hard to imagine following the law (I say that cautiously because it's such an outrageous idea), but there are laws, and we're bound by them. The [US] Constitution requires that we adhere to them; of course we never do.

One of them is the UN Charter. A way of dealing with ISIS following the law would be to approach the UN Security Council and request that they declare a threat to peace, which of course they would do, and organize a way to respond to it. And then follow the will of the international community. Out of that there might come a reasonable response.

The unilateral US response - mainly to hit everything with a sledgehammer - makes absolutely no sense. The correspondent who's followed this most closely and has been right all along, Patrick Cockburn, simply describes it as an Alice in Wonderland strategy.

The major ground forces that are fighting ISIS are apparently the [Kurdistan Workers' Party] PKK and its allies in Syria. They're barred because we call them a terrorist group, so they're under attack. Our ally, Turkey, attacks them and we bar them support.

But they're apparently the ones who saved the Yazidis and blocked the ISIS attack on Iraqi Kurdistan. They're out. The major regional state that could confront ISIS is Iran. In fact, they could probably wipe them out. And they're influential in Iraq. In fact, [they're] the victors of the Iraq war. They're out for ideological reasons.

A more complex case, which Patrick Cockburn has actually talked about, is what to do with Assad. That has all kinds of complexities, but anyway they're out.

And the sledgehammer has its usual effect. The US bombings are, in the usual and predictable way, eliciting anger from the civilians that were under attack. They don't like ISIS. They hate it, but they don't want to be attacked by American bombs.

There was very interesting insight into this in The New York Times, maybe a week ago. The lead article should have had the headline: "The United States declares itself to be the world's leading terrorist state and is proud of it." That was the content of the article, but of course it didn't have that headline. But it was very revealing. Also, the lack of response to it.

The lead story was a report of a CIA study that had just come out on US intervention and the study was concerned with when they worked and when they didn't work and why. They quoted Obama saying that he commissioned some such studies. He was kind of disappointed they didn't work so much. Then you take a look at the examples, first paragraph of the story, three examples: Cuba, Angola, Nicaragua. Each one a major terrorist war carried out by the United States, not even ambiguous.

So here we take three major terrorist wars with horrible consequences; we investigate: Did they work? Didn't they work? We're disappointed that they didn't work. And the president says we have better ways. Again, the headline should be: "Yes, we declare ourselves to be the world's  leading terrorist state. We're proud of it."

It goes to a much bigger question. You talk often about the conventional wisdom being reality on its head. That goes back to the founding story of the United States.

It sure does.

Can you talk about the principles on which this country is supposedly founded versus the ones you think it might actually be founded on? I've been reading Edward Baptist's extraordinary book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.

Well, take Baptist's book and compare it with The New York Times this morning. There's a description in The New York Times of the horrible treatment of the Yazidi by ISIS. Now go back to Baptist's book. That's what he's describing. He's describing the treatment of the slaves for half of American history, and in fact it continues. And it's almost identical. That's the way they were treated.

It's not just kind of bad people in Georgia; Boston financiers were involved in it. They didn't say they were in favor of slavery but they were happy to become wealthy by exporting commodities that were produced by the leading resource of the 19th century, which was cotton. Cotton was kind of like oil.

So, the oil - the cotton gets exported and they make a ton of money and the banks, they have enough money to import. The country grows and becomes rich, and in fact as Baptist says, the economy was built on the backs of African slaves.

So is capitalism - RECD as you call it - real existing capitalist democracy - in the United States. Is it redeemable, reformable?

Well, this is a good illustration of how remote our system is from capitalism. It's hard to think of any greater violation of capitalist and market principles than slavery. But the country was based on two basic commitments: one, slavery, which was, as Baptist points out, was all the source, pretty much the source of the growing economy, including the industrial economy. The other is the extermination of the indigenous population by state power. What's that got to do with capitalism?

In effect, it goes right to the present. If you have an iPhone and you take a look at the components in it, practically all of them were developed through the state sector, government funding, research and development, often for decades.

Public sector. We paid for it.

Yeah, we paid for it. And notice there is a principle of capitalism. Say we imagine we're in a capitalist society. And you invest money in something, and it's a risky investment, and you keep investing in it for decades. And finally, something comes out that makes a profit - well, in a capitalist society you're supposed to get the profit. That's not what happens here.

If I'm the US taxpayer . . .

You pay for decades, usually under the pretext that the Russians are coming or something. You're paying for the kind of research and development and creative work that yields the IT revolution, computers, the internet, your iPhone, all the rest of it. Do you get anything back?

I haven't noticed it.

It goes to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

But, we work a lot with people these days who are interested in trying to develop work around co-ops and cooperative regions of solidarity economics. Is that hopeless?

No, I think that makes sense. In fact, there are interesting things happening. The person who's done the most writing about this is Gar Alperovitz, and it's interesting work. Throughout the northern Middle West, like in northern Ohio, there is a spread of work around enterprises - not huge but not small either - which could be the basis of a different kind of society. And notice that these could be substantial if there was enough popular support.

So, go back a couple of years - Obama virtually nationalized the auto industry. It was collapsing, so it had to be kind of built up by the taxpayers. So he took over most of the auto industry. There were a few possibilities. One possibility, of course, was the one that was followed. Bail out the owners, bail out the banks, give it back to the same people, or other people with different faces but essentially the same roles in society, and have it continue to produce what it had always been producing - automobiles. There was another possibility.

Give it to the work force. Subsidize them to develop and have it produce what we need. What do we need? I can give you a personal example.

My wife and I came to New York by train from Boston. The train took only an hour and a half longer than when I took it in 1950 for the first time. Either it was standing still or it was going slower than the trucks on the Connecticut Turnpike.

There isn't a country in the world where this happens. And that's just a symbol of the country. This is the richest country in the world that has incomparable advantages and it's just falling apart.

Were you encouraged by the news that was hailed as a breakthrough of the US-China accord around emissions, for the first time China committing to cap emissions?

Look, it's better than nothing, but it doesn't really amount to much. And it has potential dangers that we'd better keep our eye on. Notice that this is a US-China agreement. It could turn out that this is going to undercut the international agreements, and it's not impossible that that was the purpose.

When we talk about Chinese emissions, remember they're our emissions. China manufactures, say, your iPad, and there is pollution, but that's for the American markets. So, it's a mixed story.

Well, so that goes to the questions that we received from our Facebook friends. We invited them to pose questions for Professor Chomsky and they posed very many. They fell into several camps: How did we get into this mess? How would you describe this mess? And how do we get out of this mess? I think at the "how do you describe this mess?" situation.

One quick question in particular, was "How do you assess the strengths and weaknesses of the US movements for social justice, and how would you advise we try to maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses?"

The labor movement has traditionally been in the forefront of progressive social change, and for that reason and others it's under severe attack. Partly it's the fault of labor bureaucrats, but partly it's just fierce attack from the business world, which pretty much runs the country.

And by now the labor movement is a shadow of what it once was. It could come back. There have been earlier periods of American history when the labor movement was destroyed - 1920s, it was partially wiped out, 1930s it rose again, so it could happen.

But with the labor movement seriously weakened and independent political parties almost gone, there's a lack of, a fundamental lack of, continuity in activist politics.

So everything starts from - as if nothing ever happened before. So, if you take Occupy, which was important but it came out of nowhere, no institutional memory, no recollection of the history. Not even remembering how to run a demonstration. You know, all of this kind of institutional memory is gone. There's a lot of activism, but it's very separated.

One of the things that I spend a lot of time doing is just giving talks around the country. And one of the major positive contributions is it just brings people together in the same community. People may be doing the same thing in different neighborhoods and don't know each other. And that extends across the country. What's happening here nobody knows about there. That's a serious weakness.

One of the other questions we had from our Facebook page was from people asking about the prospects for a movement growing out of the conflict in Ferguson and the role of police and the militarization of police in our society. Do you see any prospects for a broad anti-racist social justice movement coming out of that mobilization?

There are prospects, but it's going to be very hard. This is a very racist society. I mean it's pretty shocking. What has happened in the last, roughly 30 years, with regard to African-Americans, actually is very similar to what Baptist describes in the late 19th century. Remember what happened - the constitutional amendments during and after the Civil War were supposed to free African-American slaves.

It did something for about 10 years then there was a North-South compact, which essentially granted the former slave-owning states the right to do whatever they wanted. And what they did was criminalize black life in all kinds of ways. That created a kind of a slave force.

In fact, one of the most interesting books on it [is] Douglas Blackmon's Slavery by Another Name. It threw mostly black males, but also women, into jail where they became a perfect labor force, much better than slaves. If you're a slave owner you have to keep your capital alive. If the state does it for you, it's terrific. No strikes, no disobedience, the perfect labor force.

A lot of the American Industrial Revolution in the late 19th, early 20th century, is based on that. And that actually pretty much lasted until World War II when there was a need for what's called free labor in the war industry. After that came about two decades in which African-Americans had kind of a shot at entering this society. A black worker could get a job at an auto plant; the unions were still functioning; maybe he could buy a small house and send his kid to college or something.

By the 1970s or '80s, it's going back to criminalization of black life. It's called the drug war, which is a racist war. Ronald Reagan was an extreme racist and denied it. And the whole drug war is designed, from policing up to eventual release from prison to make it impossible, for the black male community, and more and more women and more and more Hispanics, to be part of the society.

If you look at American history, the first slaves came in 1619, and that's half a millennium. There have been about three or four decades in which African-Americans had a limited degree of freedom, not entirely, but at least some.

And of course, for black elites there are some privileges, but I'm talking about the mass of the population, which has been re-criminalized and also turned into a slave labor force (prison labor for example). This is American history. To break out of that is no small trick.

If you take a look at the elections, say the last election, in many ways it's a civil war. The red states are the confederacy. That extent is a little bit beyond, but that's pretty much what it is. This is a real battle. These two founding crimes, slavery and extermination of the indigenous population, are very much with us. Take a look at Indian reservations today. It's not a pretty sight.

People could talk a lot about what to do, but I do have to ask you one other important question that came out of Democracy Now! yesterday. I don't know whether you heard, but rumors were spread of unseemly behavior by yourself at summer camp with Amy Goodman's father.

I read it. I didn't read - somebody sent it to me.

Russell Brand, the British actor/comedian wants to know, did you bite Amy Goodman's father's ear?

I'm afraid not. He was a friend. We were campers at a camp, and we were in the same bunk. And we were friends, and we knew each other for a couple of years but never got as close as biting his ear I'm afraid.

So, to be clear, not to put too fine a point on it, but this whole question of Chomsky cannibalism . . .

Not true. Sorry. It's a nice story.

But maybe 'chompers' isn't bad.

Yea, it sounds good.

Pretty good.

But we were friends.

What do you think of Russell Brand?

Actually, I don't know much about popular culture.

Sounds like he should pay you a visit.

Actually, Amy's father was one of the best quarter milers in camp. I don't know if he knew that.

And were you a runner?

No, no. I stayed and watched.

Noam, thank you so much. It's great to have you.

Noam Chomsky's latest book is Masters of Mankind: Essays and Lectures, 1969-2013, from Haymarket Books. Watch his interview in full on "The Laura Flanders Show," now seen every week on TeleSUR English and starting this month, on KCET/Link TV. Find out more at GRITtv.org.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

Laura Flanders

Best-selling author and broadcaster Laura Flanders is the "strong local economies" fellow at Yes! Magazine and a contributing writer to The Nation. She hosts "The Laura Flanders Show" on GRITtv, an independent source for in-depth interviews with forward thinking people. Sign up to receive the latest at GRITtv.org or facebook.com/grittv. On Twitter, she's @GRITlaura.

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http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27912-a-brutal-torture-report-but-no-accountability
 

A Brutal "Torture Report," but No Accountability
Tuesday, 09 December 2014
By Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report

President George W. Bush and CIA Director George Tenet stand on the agency's seal at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, March 20, 2001. In more than 500 pages, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s summary, released on Tuesday, paints a devastating picture of a CIA ill-equipped to take on the task of questioning al Qaeda suspects, bungled the job and then misrepresented the results. (Photo: David Burnett / Pool via The New  York Times)

The long-awaited "torture report" released today by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the CIA's top secret, post-9/11 torture program is certainly brutal, and the Obama administration does not deny that. The administration is, however, refusing to hold anyone publicly accountable.

Yes, it's brutal. Some detainees were placed in "ice water baths" and at least five were subjected to "rectal feeding without documented medical necessity." Detainees were forced to stand on injured limbs and kept awake for up to 180 hours, "at times with their hands shackled above their heads." CIA torturers threatened to kill one detainee's mother and sexually abuse another's.

In one notorious torture facility, where untrained CIA officers tortured prisoners before President George W. Bush even authorized the formal "enhanced" interrogation program, detainees were shackled in isolated cells in complete darkness amidst constant noise, with only a bucket to collect human waste. They were forced to walk around naked and shackled. The chief of interrogations described this facility as a "dungeon." Another official likened the facility itself to a torture device. In 2002, a detainee who was held partially naked reportedly froze to death there.

"The Bush administration's torture program and the Obama administration's long battle to keep the truth from coming out are among the most shameful chapters in our nation's history," said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "Will we make excuses and try to defend the indefensible? Or will we finally acknowledge that our nation crossed a terrible line, and start talking about accountability?"

The political accusations are also damning. The report claims the CIA repeatedly gave inaccurate information about the program to the Justice Department, which had given the agency legal permission to use torture. (The Justice Department never attempted to independently verify the CIA's information on the program.) The CIA impeded oversight of the program in Congress, at the White House and by its own inspector general, and the agency provided policy makers with inaccurate claims to justify the program's effectiveness.

In the end, the report states, the program was not effective. The committee's analysis of the CIA's supposed "counterterrorism successes" resulting from the program found no actual relationship between intelligence gathered through torture and thwarted terrorist attacks.

Former top Bush administration officials are already brushing the report aside as a partisan attack, and former Vice President Dick Cheney even told The New York Times that it was "the right thing to do, and if I had to do it over again, I would do it."

President Obama, who banned the program in 2009, is taking a more even-handed approach to the fallout from the report. In a statement released today, the president called the interrogation program "troubling" and said it "did significant damage to America's standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners."

Still, his administration has made it clear that no one from the intelligence community will be held responsible, at least not in public.

"While we recognize that there are strong emotions raised by the release of this report, the one thing that we want to also be clear is that the men and woman who continue to protect this country have the respect of this government and the American people," said one senior administration official, referring to the US intelligence community. He spoke to reporters on background and asked not to be named.

Both the CIA and the Obama administration admit that "serious mistakes" were made, especially during the early days of the torture program, but the Justice Department decided not to prosecute anyone connected to the program in the CIA and Bush administration after closing two criminal investigations into the program long before the torture report was released.

On Tuesday, senior Obama administration officials would not comment on the Justice Department's decision, and would not say whether or not a single employee of the CIA had lost their job over the program.

"All of this activity predates this administration," said one senior official, who also spoke to reporters on background. "I think as a matter of practice, particularly with our intelligence community, agencies do not publicly discuss certain activities that are classified."

The officials echoed the CIA's own response to the report, saying 9/11 posed a serious challenge to the US intelligence community, and the CIA was not prepared to take on an unprecedented program of detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects.

Despite the findings of the report, the CIA also claims that valuable intelligence was gleaned through torture, and senior Obama administration officials are backing the agency's position that there is no way to know if other interrogation techniques could have had the same results.

"We can not know . . . what other interrogation methods may have [yielded]," said a senior official.

Other interrogation methods may not have yielded a decade-old controversy over brutal cruelty that has caused an embarrassing disruption in US diplomatic relations with countries across the world. If anyone has taken the fall for this embarrassment, it has happened behind closed doors.

The report is publicly available here.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

Mike Ludwig

Mike Ludwig is a Truthout reporter. Follow Mike on Twitter @ludwig_mike.

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Cornel West Interviewed by the Real News Program About the 50th Anniversary of the March On Washington and the Obama Administration

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10625

Cornel West Says Civil Rights Leaders Have Failed The Movement

In an exclusive interview with The Real News, Cornel West argues civil rights leaders have failed to hold president Obama accountable - August 27, 2013

Bio

Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. He is the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. He has taught at Union Theological Seminary, Yale, Harvard and the University of Paris. He has written 19 books and edited 13 books. He is best known for his classic Race Matters, Democracy Matters, and his new memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. He appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, Colbert Report, CNN and C-Span as well as on his dear Brother, Tavis Smiley’s PBS TV Show. He can be heard weekly with Tavis Smiley on "Smiley & West", the national public radio program distributed by Public Radio International (PRI).

Transcript

OSCAR LEÓN, TRNN PRODUCER: On August 23, tens of thousands of people rallied at the National Mall to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which drew a quarter million people to the nation's capital and was a key moment in the civil rights movement. The Real News' Jaisal Noor spoke to Dr. Cornel West after the march.

CORNEL WEST, PHILOSOPHER, ACTIVIST, AND AUTHOR: We had very low quality leadership today on the stage. We saw bona fide apologists for the Obama administration. There was no serious talk about Wall Street. There was no serious talk about the new Jim Crow, no serious talk about drones, no serious talk about the U.S. security state, no serious talk about the massive surveillance state. It was about just voters' rights and maybe some vague reference to jobs. Martin Luther King Jr. turns over in his grave. He turns over in his grave.

JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: Did you take part in the march today? Why or why not?

WEST: Well, no, no, no, no. My spirits are with the people, but I wanted to make sure I heard every word of the speakers, because I've got to be on television later on and I want to make sure I have a sense of all the different voices. But, unfortunately, the rich prophetic and progressive voices of the past and present were pushed completely to the margin and we ended up with voices of those on the Obama plantation.

NOOR: What you mean by that?

WEST: Those who are wedded to Obama won't say a critical word about the Obama administration and won't say a critical word about the shortcomings [incompr.] of the White House and executive branch.

NOOR: Now, I was there for the beginning of the march and I heard a lot of references to drones, mass incarceration, prison-industrial complex, but no words on how to address those problems and what hasn't been done to address those problems.

WEST: I didn't hear a reference to any of those issues from the major speakers. So you heard it early on?

NOOR: Yeah.

WEST: Oh, but that's good news, then. That's very good. I didn't hear one word for what was projected for the American people. You had to be at the march to hear--what was it? Two-minute presentation?

NOOR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so at the--so what did the march 50 years ago mean as far as economic justice, racial justice, civil rights? What did the civil rights movement mean for public education, for housing? And 50 years later, are those same messages still [incompr.]

WEST: Well, 50 years ago we were dealing with an American terrorism call Jim Crow, and you had a social movement that was expanding, you had a social movement that was intensifying, and you had Martin King, A. Philip Randolph, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, and other voices emerging. Today you have a black leadership that is captive and deferential to the Obama administration that has most visible presence. You've got voices on the side--Glen Ford, Bruce Dixon, and others. But for the most part it is so tied to the Obama administration, we cannot get any truth-telling. Not at all.

NOOR: Now, I interviewed about ten people at the march [incompr.] people that had taken part in the march in '63, and they were there, and they themselves were not willing to be critical of the current administration. But [crosstalk]
WEST: That's the whole atmosphere.

NOOR: --show lack of leadership [crosstalk]

WEST: Absolutely. An atmosphere has been created that is so protective that people can't be free to speak their minds, to speak in the name of justice when the Obama administration falls short, as with drones, the captivity to Wall Street, silence on new Jim Crow, and so on.

NOOR: And why is it important that the leadership of this march address those issues that were like you said. He didn't mention Wall Street [crosstalk]

WEST: Those are the major issues of our day. Those are the issues of the American empire. Those are the issues that the world itself is looking for leaders and black leaders to speak to.

NOOR: And the fact that Al Sharpton, the National Action Network, they ran this march, they give out the press credentials--talk about his position on things like housing, on public education. He supported Race to the Top.

WEST: No. I mean, you know, he's my dear brother, but he is a bona fide house negro on the Obama plantation, and that's how house negroes behave. They don't want to hear the truth of the underside of their boss. It's just a fact.
NOOR: So one of the key components of the civil rights movement was fighting for civil rights and public education for everybody. Now--.

WEST: This brother right here would talk about public education.

NOOR: Well, I'll have to talk to you after that.

WEST: Interview this brother. Interview--he got something to say. Absolutely.

NOOR: So Dr. King believed in a universal public education [crosstalk]

WEST: Yes, he did.

NOOR: --everybody. Obama has endorsed Race to the Top competition, charter schools--great schools for some people, but not for everybody. Al Sharpton has endorsed that. So talk about the significance of that and the fact that voices that support public education for everybody, voices that support teachers unions, which were a huge part of the civil rights movement--. Dr. King--someone told me today Dr. King died fighting against the privatization of unions. So talk about [incompr.]

WEST: Well, he died fighting with sanitation workers to try to promote their dignity and that they have access to a living wage. But no, as I said before, I mean, unfortunately, brother Al Sharpton has fallen lockstep with the Obama administration. And when you're on the plantation, you don't oppose the master in the big house. It's just a fact.
So it's not just private education. Stop-and-frisk was the same way. This brother and I had to get arrested a year before they got the green light from the White House to fight stop-and-frisk because the mayor of New York City is such a close friend of the president.

NOOR: Now, you were part of the movement that put stop-and-frisk on the map.

WEST: Well, this brother here called it. We called it together. Yeah.

NOOR: You were part of that movement that got stop-and-frisk addressed by the media, this huge public reaction [incompr.] months after your arrest and others' arrests. It got addressed. And this movement rose and it get talked about. You had--I looked at this on Google News--50 mentions of stop-and-frisk three years before the arrests that you took part in, thousands of mentions afterwards. And public opinion turned against it. Public opinion was for stop-and-frisk before. It's against it now. You have--the judge ruled against stop-and-frisk. New York City has now passed the Community Safety Act, which bans racial profiling. Yet Obama has suggested that Ray Kelly be promoted [crosstalk] security. But talk about the significance of that [crosstalk]

WEST: No, Ray Kelly is the poster child for racial profiling in America. Barack Obama said, he's outstanding; his values are my values. So you can see the hypocrisy of calling, on the one hand, a critique--.

NOOR: What's your reaction to that? Yeah.

WEST: My reaction to it is outrage, 'cause I don't like hypocrisy. He talked about racial profiling in his own case in regard to his brother Trayvon Martin. Then he calls to appoint somebody who is the poster child for racial profiling to head homeland security. So it's ridiculous.

The Crucial Coalition Of Immigrants and African Americans in the Pivotal Struggle of Labor Vs. Capital in the United States Today

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/14540-charging-through-the-archway-of-history-immigrants-and-african-americans-unite-to-transform-the-face-of-labor-and-the-power-of-community

All,

There is a wonderful and endlessly profound proverb from the historical depths of the inspiring and extraordinary African American collective experience in the United Hates and it has been passed down in countless intimate conversations and liberatory gatherings and blues and rhythm and blues and gospel and Jazz songs and it goes like this:  "No matter what happens always remember that GOOD NEWS IS COMING so you better be ready to receive and embrace it when it gets here."  The article below conjures up yet another shining dynamic example of this boundless and eternal truth--and like always the news comes NOT A MINUTE TOO SOON.  Can I get a witness?   YES!!

Kofi

"Politics is an activity," C.L.R. James famously said. "It is not a lecture room where the people are supposed to listen to all the government has done for them. The more active the people are, the more active the government can be."

Charging Through the Archway of History: Immigrants and African-Americans Unite to Transform the Face of Labor and the Power of Community
Saturday, 16 February 2013
By Paul Ortiz, Truthout | Op-Ed

 

Francisco Martinez, 17, protests policies of President Barack Obama that have deported record numbers of Latinos, during a protest outside President Obama's campaign headquarters, at One Prudential Plaza in Chicago, August 16, 2011. (Photo: Peter Hoffman / The New York Times)

A budding coalition of immigrants and African-Americans - modeled on the outstanding community- and labor-organizing example of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 - is potentially the largest progressive force in America - one capable of transforming the trajectory of US history.

"I was taught that justice wears a blindfold, so as not to be able to distinguish between the colors, and thus makes everyone equal in the eyes of the law. I propose we remove the blindfold from the eyes of Lady Justice, so that for the first time she can really see what's happening and check out where the truth lies and the lies hide. That would be a start. Viva the children of all colors! Punto!"

- Piri Thomas, Down These Mean Streets

Part I: A Tale of Two Speeches

Why did President Obama travel to Las Vegas to make a speech on immigration? Las Vegas is a union town. The city is the home of one most powerful unions in the Americas, an organization built and led largely by Latina, African-American and Asian-American women who work as maids, housekeepers and food service workers on the Las Vegas Strip and beyond.

Many of the rank-and-file members of the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union Local 226 are single mothers, and without their support Obama would not be President of the United States. The president understands this and herein lays the symbolic power of his speech, as well as the transformations in American life that it reveals. The new president of Local 226 is the brilliant organizer Geoconda Arguello-Kline. She was a picket captain during the epic Frontier Hotel Strike (1991-1998) where not a single one of the 550 hotel workers crossed the picket line. The strike "showed us all what unity and perseverance are," she recalled. Arguello-Kline originally hails from Managua, Nicaragua and is a former hotel housekeeper.

Black and white photograph of Hattie Canty marching with other women during a union strike.

In the 1990s, Local 226 became the fastest-growing private sector union in the United States. It was led by the legendary African-American unionist Hattie Canty, who migrated to Las Vegas from rural Alabama. In contrast to the AFL-CIO's George Meany, who bragged that he had never been on a picket line, Canty was one of the greatest strike leaders in US history. Her patient leadership helped knit together a labor union made up of members from 84 nations. "Coming from Alabama," Canty observed, "this seemed like the civil rights struggle ... the labor movement and the civil rights movement, you cannot separate the two of them."

Whether they hail from Alabama, Thailand, Central America or someplace else, the members of Local 226 represent the future promise of the Americas. This is not about demographics; it is about corazón (heart), the willingness to struggle together and the courage to challenge corporate America when others have surrendered.

The place where a president chooses to deliver a major address is important. In 1980, Ronald Reagan traveled to Neshoba County, Mississippi - the least unionized state in the country - to make a speech on "states' rights." He was trying to build a base of white southern support pursuant to the 1980 Presidential Election.

He gave his speech a few miles away from the place where three civil rights activists had been murdered in 1964. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were killed by people who held the doctrine of "states rights" to be a sacred part of their Confederate heritage. While Reagan may have been ignorant of the civil rights movement, he was well aware of the role that the Republican Party's "Southern Strategy" played in his electoral chances. The goal was to play upon white pride and to undermine the Democratic Party in the South. In the short term, it worked.

Analysts are saying that the re-election of Obama may signal the end of the Reagan Era.

But elections decide nothing. The zombie-like grip that policies implemented by cohorts of Reagan/Ayn Rand acolytes will only be broken by collective action. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the United Farm Workers did not wait for John F. Kennedy or Lyndon B. Johnson to do for them what they could do for themselves. Freedom schools, strikes, boycotts and voter registration campaigns were engines of social change in the 1960s and yes, they were sometimes timed to push Washington, DC to action.

The 2006 General Strike of Latinos on International Workers' Day made the election of Barack Obama possible. The mass walkouts demonstrated the ability of Latinos to shut the economy down in defense of social justice and equality. It taught us that the real strength in our communities is in our custodians, manual laborers and service workers - not in our intellectuals, executives or experts who garner corporate endorsements for interpreting "Latin culture" for Madison Avenue. In the 1960s, we learned, much to our surprise, that the future of Latino aspirations rested on the creative energies of farm workers. In turn, the Grape Boycott awakened and trained a new generation of young community organizers who went on to play pivotal roles in rebuilding progressive politics through vehicles such as the Rainbow Coalition, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, and finally, the "Obama ground game."

The general strike signaled a renaissance of working-class culture in the US that we have yet to fully understand. It reminded the nation that politics is not the property of the rich; it occurs on soccer fields, in union halls, in churches and in tiendas where immigrant workers gather to share information on the latest activities of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the neighborhood. In both 2008 and 2012, a significant amount of the electoral ground game hinged on the energy of local labor councils in canvassing, multi-lingual phone-banking and other outreach activities. Many of these activists had been rejuvenated by, or even earned their organizers' stripes, during International Workers' Day, 2006. In south Florida, an epicenter of the General Strike, Latinos were a decisive part of Election Day. According to Gihan Perera, "In Homestead, undocumented workers who couldn't even vote pitched in with a mariachi band and barbecue," to encourage thousands of African-Americans, Latinos, and progressive whites to stay in line and vote. Black and brown power made the difference in Florida.

"Politics is an activity," C.L.R. James famously said. "It is not a lecture room where the people are supposed to listen to all the government has done for them. The more active the people are, the more active the government can be." Nearly 300,000 Latinos, African-Americans, and Asian-American workers joined unions in the months leading up to the general election. Even the mainstream media noted that strike activity increased significantly around the time of the election campaign. "The number of union-related work stoppages involving more than 1,000 workers, which reached an all-time low of just five in 2009, rose to 13 this year as of October. And unions aren't done yet," reported the Los Angeles Times.

People are on the move.

I believe the president's Las Vegas speech is a microcosm of a larger movement that may create an expansion of democracy. Everything hinges on the next act of this drama. If a US president is pushed by grassroots pressure to create an opening for social change to occur and he engages in flowery rhetoric to facilitate the process, one doesn't pause at the archway of history to criticize the rhetoric: One charges through the damn door.

African-Americans did not wait in 1863 to see if Abraham Lincoln was serious about the Emancipation Proclamation. A quarter of a million of them enlisted in the US Army in order to drive the Confederate States of America into oblivion.

Is President Obama deeply committed to immigration reform? That's the wrong question to ask. We know that he promised Helen Chavez, the widow of United Farm Workers' co-founder César Chávez, to "do something" about the issue. A better question to ask is: What are we willing to do to welcome millions of struggling workers into our polity? Immigrants traveled to the United States from all over the world during the past two decades and contributed to one of the greatest economic booms in history. They are the solution to an aging Baby Boom generation; they are replenishing tax coffers and they are bringing much-needed changes to our archaic, monolingual culture. What will we do to make them fully empowered citizens of the republic?

Immigrant energy is contributing to a revival of progressive American political culture. It finds its echoes in the heroic DREAMista activists (who have pushed the federal government hard on immigration reform), the Florida Dream Defenders, who organized in the wake of the murder of Trayvon Martin, as well as the Occupy insurgencies. All of these initiatives are part of the rising tide of new social movements that we must nurture, support and sustain.

In a recent newspaper poll taken in the college town of Gainesville, Florida, where I live, 62 percent of the respondents voted against the premise that people "currently in the US illegally" should have a path to citizenship. This is going to be a battle.

Part II:  A New Century

Tens of millions of immigrants with lineages from Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East voted in significant majorities to re-elect Barack Obama. The choices that first- and second-generation immigrant voters made in this election may signal a turning point in American history. In line with their early 20th century predecessors, these voters could have settled for the tragic bargain of whiteness that Toni Morrison has so eloquently critiqued. In her essay, "On the Backs of Blacks," Morrison observed that, "In race talk, the move into mainstream America always means buying into the notion of American blacks as the real aliens. Whatever the ethnicity or nationality of the immigrant, his nemesis is understood to be African-Americans."

The phenomenon of "whiteness," as scholars call it, meant the country's newcomers often alienated themselves from the democratic legacies of the anti-slavery movement as well as from freedom fighters such as Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells Barnett and Mary McCleod Bethune, in favor of assimilation to Jim Crow/Juan Crow segregation before the 1950s.

Scholars have long been predicting a massive "turn towards whiteness" among late-20th century immigrants, but it has not happened yet. In fact, we may have broken the old curse. Recent immigrants, such as those who have become members of Local 226 in Las Vegas, are increasingly aligning their politics, trade union membership and their ballots with African-Americans. In the run-up to the 2012 Presidential Election, everyone who had access to radio, television or the internet understood that 90 percent of African-Americans were going to be voting for Obama. As novelist Ishmael Reed observed in Going Too Far: Essays About America's Nervous Breakdown:

"Though progressives still cling to a fantasy to which they've been attached since at least the 1920s - that class determines one's status in American society - to millions of whites, we are all underclass. Notice how images hostile to the president show him as an underclass hoodlum, or associate him with food stamps, or fast foods like KFC, or an email circulated by a candidate for governor of New York, a pimp and his wife a whore."

It isn't as if newer generations of immigrants are completely immune to the virus of racism (and frankly, many of us brought racist attitudes from our mother countries). However, the ballots have been counted: Latinos, Asian-Americans and Americans of Middle Eastern descent rejected two solid years of race-baiting, heavy petting and courting from the Republican Party to stand in solidarity with the black electorate.

In Florida, we were given innumerable opportunities to assimilate to this country's older, miserable norms on race, to "become white" so to speak. Mitt Romney's boosters bombarded our airwaves with racial propaganda. We were warned via the notorious "Chinese Professor" video spot of an imminent Asian takeover of the US should Obama win re-election. We were encouraged to believe that African-Americans were lazy, but this is always a hard sell given slavery, and a century of the Jim Crow labor system. The fact that one cannot travel from one side of this country to the other without relying on black and brown workers to handle one's baggage, prepare one's meals or to clean up one's mess makes the "minorities need to work harder and lift themselves up by their bootstraps" argument ridiculous and insulting.

Other "softer" versions of racism or national discrimination were trotted out. A few days before Election Day, Sen. Marco Rubio bungled a play for the Latino vote by telling a Florida audience that people had fled "corrupt" countries to find freedom in the US only to discover to their dismay that Obama was plotting to import these same policies here. Rubio helpfully clarified that he was referring to Mexico and Latin America as the corrupt places in question. Rubio's gaffe illustrates a fundamental reason why the Republican Party stumbles with Latino voters: Most Mexican-Americans have a nuanced understanding of our mother country. We understand its shortcomings, but we also take pride in the accomplishments of the early 19th century Mexican War of Independence, and the fact that the abolition of slavery in Mexico preceded abolition in the United States by approximately four decades. Most of us also know that the United States invaded Mexico in order to expand slavery, steal land and rob resources from Native Americans. So, which country is more corrupt? Until the GOP drops its devotion to American Exceptionalism, the idea that the United States is as pure as the driven snow, and all other countries are lacking in the character department, the party will continue to shrink in relevance.

Hailing from Africa, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the great centers of world population, this may be the most remarkable cohort of immigrants that has ever journeyed to the United States. They believe in hard work and self-help, but because of the places they come from and the traditions they pay homage to, many of them deeply believe in tenets of equality, social democracy and mutual aid.

Of course, these are just the kind of overarching generalizations that social critics rightly distrust, but I would argue that generations of anti-colonial struggles, experiences with post-colonial letdowns and an abiding distrust of the Washington Consensus make this generation of world citizens more worldly wise than their storied Ellis Island ancestors.

For example, more than a few recent immigrants from the Korean peninsula are importing militant trade union practices to the US, and they have a direct knowledge of the mischief that IMF-style policies wreak on workers. Highland Maya bring organizing experiences with Liberation Theology from Guatemala, and Mexican migrants are steeped in the egalitarian (if unrealized) traditions of the Mexican Revolution.

These cohorts of immigrants are less likely to grasp at the straw of racism that so many of their predecessors did because they arrive with a much more critical understanding of US society and a greater capacity to change the world without exploiting others.

What all of this might mean in political terms is not yet quite clear. However, one thing is certain. If community organizers allow this incipient coalition - potentially the largest progressive force in US history - to slip away, we are missing the opportunity that only comes once in a generation to change the trajectory of American politics.
Culinary Workers Union Local 226 presents us with an outstanding model of community and labor organizing. This is a union where members stay active, and this energy drew President Obama to Las Vegas.

Many of the people who are rank-and-file activists of Local 226 are dishwashers, fry cooks and maids. They labor in what is known in Las Vegas parlance at "the back of the house," an apt metaphor for the position of the American working class since the 1980s. With women such as Canty, the union's founder, and Arguello-Kline, its new president, these workers have moved to the forefront of social change. They marched by the thousands in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s holiday last month with banners reading "Labor Rights Are Civil Rights," even as they organized another picket against an unfair employer in the Vegas Strip.

Arguello-Kline and Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, appeared on local television immediately following Obama's speech on immigration. Both vowed to mobilize members of the house of labor to support immigration reform. The waiting is over. It is now possible to imagine a new social movement where labor organizing, mariachi music and MLK celebrations become integral to the rejuvenation of this nation. It's time to get busy.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.




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The Case For President Obama's Re-Election From the Left: A Collection Of Critical Assessments and Evaluations

All,

The following series of critical assessments and analyses of the need to re-elect President Barack Obama on November 6, 2012  is by a very distinguished and veteran group of progressive/leftist activists, scholars, public intellectuals, and social critics that appeared as part of a special issue of The Nation magazine dated October 22, 2012 entitled "Why Obama?"  The format is that of a panel of these writers who respond in varying ways to a lead essay by Deepak  Bhargava of that same title.

Kofi

  

http://www.thenation.com/article/170309/why-obama

Why Obama?
by Deepak Bhargava
October 2, 2012

The Nation     

This article appeared in the October 22, 2012 edition of The Nation.

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally in Denver, Colorado October 4, 2012. Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
 
Much—perhaps too much—has been said about the president and the shortcomings and accomplishments of his administration over the past four years. The record is more mixed than either his cheerleaders or fiercest critics would like to admit.
 
On the positive side, under this administration we achieved healthcare reform that will provide coverage to 35 million uninsured people; a Recovery Act that represents the largest expansion of anti-poverty programs in more than forty years; financial reform; student loan reform; the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell”; the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; landmark executive action to protect more than 1 million immigrant youths from deportation; and an end to the war in Iraq.

On the downside, there were the failures to hold Wall Street accountable for crashing the economy; to do right by millions of homeowners facing foreclosure; to reverse the erosion of civil liberties in the “war on terror”; to halt an alarming increase in deportations; and to take bold action on climate change. Perhaps greatest of all was the failure to convey a compelling alternative to market fundamentalism—an ideology that, notwithstanding its disastrous track record, continues to dominate policy-making and the public dialogue at all levels.

Progressives may evaluate the success of Obama’s first term differently depending on how much weight they assign to each of these issues. But however we judge the past four years, it is crucial that we lean into this election without ambivalence, knowing that while an Obama victory will not solve all or even most of our problems, defeat will be catastrophic for the progressive agenda and movement.

We confront a conservative movement that is apocalyptic in its worldview and revolutionary in its aspirations. It is not an exaggeration to say that this movement wants to roll back the great progressive gains of the twentieth century—from voting rights to women’s rights, from basic regulations on corporate behavior to progressive taxation, from the great pillars of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to the basic rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively. After the emergence of the Tea Party, the 2010 elections, the extreme Paul Ryan budget proposal and the 2011 state legislative sessions (which featured voter suppression, nativism, attacks on reproductive rights and vicious anti-unionism), there can be no doubting the seriousness or the ferocity of our opponents. It is also important to note the deep racialized underpinnings of this movement, which seeks to entrench the power of an older, wealthier white constituency and prevent an emerging majority of color from finding its voice. The battles over the role and size of government, taxes, the safety net, immigration and voter suppression have become proxies for this underlying demographic tension. Should Obama lose this election, we can expect a ruthless effort to dismantle the social contract—including efforts to use state power to decimate sources of resistance by further restricting the franchise, destroying unions and attacking any remaining centers of power for communities of color and workers. All of this was clear even before, in a leaked video, Mitt Romney made plain his contempt for nearly half of the American people.

Immediately after the election, we will face one of the most important social policy debates of our generation. Before the end of this year, President Obama and Congress must confront the so-called fiscal cliff—the deep automatic cuts in defense and domestic spending that have been mandated by the last debt deal unless a new budget framework can be reached. This discussion of mounting debts and deficits will take place as the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire, setting the stage for a clash of ideologies from which the victor will enjoy the spoils for years to come. Winning the elections does not guarantee a progressive outcome to this debate—far from it—but losing certainly means that the dark politics of austerity will dominate the country, resulting in misery on a scale we can’t now imagine.

So the elections—not just for the presidency but for Congress and statehouses across the country—are job one. But we know winning those elections is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a revival of progressive politics. What’s next? In the period following the election, progressives must remain engaged and mobilized. Given the looming fiscal debate, we need to step up with an alternative to austerity that emphasizes three points:

§ We face a jobs crisis. Creating millions of new jobs—by investing in infrastructure, the green economy, care jobs and, yes, the public sector—is not just a matter of reducing human suffering; it is essential to laying the foundation for long-term fiscal stability and shared prosperity. As progressives, we cannot buy into the “deficit first” frame. There is no winning if we do not begin to redefine the problem and break the elite consensus.

§ We need to protect and strengthen Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other critical programs, particularly those serving the most vulnerable people. It has become conventional wisdom that we must “reform” entitlements—which is code for reducing benefits and raising the retirement age, since “we” are all living longer anyway, aren’t we? This is nonsense. As Paul Krugman has put it: “the people who really depend on Social Security, those in the bottom half of the distribution, aren’t living much longer. So you’re going to tell janitors to work until they’re 70 because lawyers are living longer than ever.” Simple measures such as lifting the cap on the payroll tax threshold would guarantee solvency for Social Security for more than seventy-five years and allow us to finance more generous benefits for low-income beneficiaries.

§ To invest in job creation and preserve our social contract, we need to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

This agenda is not in the mainstream of the Beltway discussion. But we won’t break the austerity consensus without, well, breaking from it! We must shift the frame of the debate to the left without fear or apology.

One great lesson of Obama’s first term was that we made progress when we pushed, and we stalled out when we waited and watched. The LGBT and immigrant rights movements challenged both Republicans and Democrats and achieved significant policy wins. Healthcare reform would never have made it over the finish line without relentless pressure from the grassroots on moderate Democrats. Only robust campaigns operating independently of both parties have a chance at putting jobs, foreclosures, immigration reform and climate change on the agenda.

This is especially urgent in the case of racial justice. The real unemployment rate for African-Americans is now above 22 percent, including part-time workers who want full-time jobs and those who gave up looking altogether. That’s nearly twice the rate that white workers face, and it amounts to a catastrophic depression in cities like Cleveland, Detroit and Buffalo. People of color have seen a generation of progress in building wealth wiped out by the recession. Median white wealth is now nearly $100,000, compared with under $5,000 for blacks and Latinos. Whatever the real or perceived constraints on the president’s ability to engage the confluence of race, poverty and economics, those constraints do not apply to us.

It is also critical that we push for an agenda to strengthen democracy in 2013 to combat the growing power of organized money. Measures to strengthen unions, expand the franchise and provide a path to citizenship for immigrants are not just good public policies; they also empower working people. The right used its takeover of state governments to shrink democracy, as in Wisconsin, which passed harsh anti-union and voter suppression laws. If and when we have a chance to use power to expand democracy, whether through immigration reform or executive actions to strengthen unions or enforce voting rights, we must do so—not just because these measures are important in themselves but because they are levers that can push the other changes we seek.

If 2008 was a time for the audacity of hope, the years ahead are a time for sobriety, determination, patience and resilience. The problems we face are deep enough that there will be no quick fix. The most important question for progressives is how to build a movement for economic justice—a people’s movement that can topple the elite austerity consensus and overcome the massive money and energized conservative movement on the other side. The real crises facing the country are barely being discussed inside the Beltway, and rarely are the solutions proposed commensurate with the problems at hand: more than 106 million people—one in three Americans—are facing material hardship (defined as living under 200 percent of the poverty line); 20 million are living in extreme poverty; 12.5 million are officially unemployed; and wages and working conditions are in decline for a majority of Americans. The new framework for shared prosperity developed by Jacob Hacker and Nate Loewentheil, endorsed by a broad swath of labor, community and civil rights groups, spells out an alternative to austerity with the capacity to address these crises—but only an organized constituency can give such ideas life.

Part of the task before us is to build a deep alliance of movement forces—labor, community, women, faith, civil rights, immigrants and others—behind a broad social vision. No part of the movement has the resources or strategic capacity to solve its problems by itself. The other part of the task is to reach out to Americans who do not already agree with us, or who perhaps haven’t heard from us. An insular left that deludes itself into thinking we are stronger than we are, that talks mainly to itself and is not constantly creating new on-ramps to participation, will fail dismally to meet the challenges of this historic moment.

This recruitment challenge presents some hurdles for progressives. Most Americans hold complicated and sometimes contradictory views about the economy, but there has been a turn away from public solutions and toward private ones. As Ronald Brownstein observed in National Journal earlier this year: “One theme consistently winding through the polls is the emergence of what could be called a ‘reluctant self-reliance,’ as Americans look increasingly to reconstruct economic security from their own efforts, in part because they don’t trust outside institutions to provide it for them. The surveys suggest that the battered economy has crystallized a gestating crisis of confidence in virtually all of the nation’s public and private leadership class—from elected officials to the captains of business and labor. Taken together, the results render a stark judgment: At a time when they believe they are navigating much more turbulent economic waters than earlier generations, most Americans feel they are paddling alone.”

Those changes in perspective, together with the attack on and decline of unions—where habits of community, reciprocity and collective action have historically been nourished—mean that we face a very steep climb in making the case for public, collective action. We will have to experiment with new ways of building power and giving voice to working people. Such experiments are, in fact, already under way in diverse settings around the country. What they have in common is reconstructing the role of paid organizers, putting volunteers front and center, aligning people behind deeply meaningful visions instead of short-term issue transactions, and combining deep education and relationship building with creative action. There is nothing new about any of these methods—they have powered all the great movements that have changed America—but we must recommit ourselves to them. The patient work of movement building lacks the seductive power of many of the strategies in vogue among progressives, but there is no substitute for it—and there is a huge appetite for it in working-class communities across the country.

Perhaps the most resonant line of President Obama’s Democratic National Convention speech was when he said, “So you see, the election four years ago wasn’t about me. It was about you.” If we ever thought that an Obama presidency would by itself produce dramatic change, we are wiser in 2012. Our progressive history is a history of getting our hope fix from movements, not just from individuals. The extraordinary example of Brazil—which has defied world trends, lifted 40 million people out of poverty, reduced inequality and passed major affirmative action legislation—demonstrates the power of social movements today. Over many years, Brazilian leaders aligned key movement sectors around a transformative vision, focused on recruiting the unorganized, engaged in politics and changed a country. There are signs of movement right here at home—in senior centers in Akron, in housing projects in Charlotte and churches in Phoenix, where ordinary people are coming together to talk about how we got into this mess, what it has meant to them and the people they love, and what we can do to get out of it. They are working tirelessly in this election because they know just how much it matters, but they are clear-eyed about the organizing work that must continue after election day. That’s change we can believe in.

About the Author

Deepak Bhargava is Director of the Campaign for Community Change.

Replies:
 

Dorian T. Warren: “Go for the Jugular”
Frances Fox Piven and Lorraine C. Minnite: “Movements Need Politicians—and Vice Versa”
Saket Soni: “We Need More than a New President”
Bill Fletcher Jr.: “Defeat the Reactionary White Elite”
Tom Hayden: “Obama’s Legacy is Our Leverage”
Ai-Jen Poo: “A Politics of Love”
Robert L. Borosage: “Re-elect Obama—But Reject His Austerity”
Ilyse Hogue: “Time to Rewire”

http://www.thenation.com/article/170308/go-jugular

 
Go for the Jugular
Dorian T. Warren
October 2, 2012  

This article appeared in the October 22, 2012 edition of The Nation.

An Occupy Albany protester speaks to participants in a May Day march in Albany, N.Y., on Tuesday, May 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

 
 
I agree with Deepak Bhargava that President Obama’s record “is more mixed” than critics and admirers admit, that progressives must refocus our attention on Congress and statehouse elections, and that elections are a “necessary but not sufficient condition for a revival of progressive politics.”
 
While Bhargava is right that we need to build a “deep alliance of movement forces” to pursue and win on a progressive agenda, we also need to become more hard-nosed, strategic and indeed ruthless in our effort to weaken the legitimacy and power of the right. Much as conservatives went for our collective jugular after the 2010 midterm elections by targeting the public sector labor movement, we must be willing to go for theirs—regardless of how much more money and power they might have.

What would a principled attack strategy look like? It must proceed on at least three tracks: ideological, organizational and structural. On all three, the Occupy movement has been a spark in jump-starting such a national campaign.

Ideologically, we need to put forward an alternative economic narrative—and demand that our elected officials embrace it, too—that powerfully counters market fundamentalism and trickle-down economics. One way to do this is to be relentless and repetitive about identifying the “Bush-Romney economy” as the exemplar of right-wing economics and remind people how that worked out for them in the last decade—followed by our alternative vision of shared prosperity and economic justice.

Organizationally, we should draw on the momentum from Occupy and target the 1 percent. I don’t mean merely rhetorically or even symbolically, but institutionally. By targeting the 1 percent, I mean the billionaires, corporations and oligarchs who fund hundreds of political organizations, affect thousands of communities and control millions of jobs. But we should go for the organizational jugular as the right has gone after public sector unions. One idea suggested to me by economist Suresh Naidu is to attack corporate political groups on anti-trust grounds. A serious political and legal campaign to protect voters (and consumers) from political collusion as well as business monopolies and anti-competitive concerted action in the political sphere might be waged against the Chamber of Commerce and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Besides attacking these corporate political cartels, we could develop campaigns to identify the “small group of supervillains” who exert outsize economic and political power over all of us and hold them accountable for the injustices from which they profit, as veteran labor strategist Stephen Lerner argues.

Structurally, we must reclaim our democracy. We’ve been playing defense in dozens of states against the right’s coordinated campaign of voter suppression. If they really want a fight around voting and inclusion in the polity, let’s give them one. How about launching a true campaign for voter justice that dilutes the influence of their aging and numerically decreasing electorate? Let’s start with a robust debate about mandatory voting—which already exists in many rich democracies—and then make declaring election day a national holiday with same-day registration our compromise position. This would immediately reduce the power of the right’s core electorate and usher in Senator Lindsey Graham’s worst nightmare: a progressive majority that outnumbers the “angry white guys,” not enough of whom exist to keep the right “in business for the long term.” Combine that with a campaign for a constitutional amendment to ban corporate money from politics once and for all.

Each of these three tracks worked to bring our first Gilded Age to an end and usher in the New Deal. It’s time to pick up the fight to end this second Gilded Age and usher in a New Deal for the twenty-first century.

http://www.thenation.com/article/170299/re-elect-obama-reject-his-austerity

 
Re-elect Obama—but Reject His Austerity
Robert L. Borosage
October 2, 2012 
 
This article appeared in the October 22, 2012 edition of The Nation.

Students cheer as President Barack Obama makes a point during campaign stop on the campus of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo., on Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2012. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski) 

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. endorsed John Kennedy over Richard Nixon in 1960, it wasn’t because Kennedy was a powerful champion of civil rights, but because he represented the better option. Deepak Bhargava is right to ground his case for “lean[ing] into this election without ambivalence” on the threat posed by a victory by Romney and the moneyed right. And he correctly argues for building an independent movement that is ready to challenge the “elite austerity consensus” after the election. The tension between those two positions is demonstrated by what Bhargava intimates but does not say: in the fundamental struggle over the “dark politics of austerity,” a re-elected President Obama will likely lead the wrong side.

Bhargava’s fair-minded list of triumphs and disappointments from Obama’s first term omits the greatest calamity: the president turned toward austerity—and gave us Simpson-Bowles—in the midst of mass unemployment, rising poverty and declining wages. He joined the “elite consensus” on austerity early and has shown that he’s ready to put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid “on the table.” He has touted his budget for cutting domestic spending to levels not seen since Eisenhower. And though he’s been bold in advocating increased taxes on the wealthy, his is a very modest version of progressive tax reform, returning top-end taxes to their Clinton-era levels and insisting that billionaires shouldn’t pay a lower rate than their secretaries. It’s a stark contrast to the trickle-down offerings of Romney/Ryan, but for addressing the nation’s needs, it isn’t even close.

The fight over austerity will be defining. To turn now to getting our books in order is to accept the current levels of joblessness, poverty and insecurity as the new normal. That is simply unacceptable. To focus on deficit reduction and not on how to revive an economy that works for working people is an ignoble retreat for a reform president.

Here, the successes of the movements for gay and immigrant rights or the fight over healthcare offer little precedent. And the coming struggle won’t be similar to the citizens’ lobbying effort for the public option within the president’s health reforms. This struggle requires a citizen mobilization that upends the “table” at which the president sits and demands bold action on jobs.

Here the president will not only be a reluctant warrior; he’ll be wearing the wrong jersey. A win by Romney in November would be catastrophic, but Obama’s victory will not be the triumph of hope; it will be the defeat of fear. The president increasingly defines himself as separate, if not antagonistic, to the movement he inspired. In 2008, it was “Yes, we can.” In 2012, “The election four years ago wasn’t about me. It was about you.” This is, as Bhargava notes, “resonant” but not for the reasons he suggests. After November, progressives will fight the next determining battle not only without the president, but also most likely against him. And the movement he helped inspire will succeed only if it moves far beyond the limits of his politics and policies.

Robert L. Borosage is president of the Institute for America's Future.

http://www.thenation.com/article/170303/defeat-reactionary-white-elite?rel=emailNation#

Defeat the Reactionary White Elite
Bill Fletcher Jr.
October 2, 2012 

This article appeared in the October 22, 2012 edition of The Nation.

President Barack Obama, followed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, walks to the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, April 17, 2012. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

 
The 2012 election is not really about Obama or Obama’s record. As Deepak Bhargava points out, there is a debate over the president’s record, and there is much that we on the left can and should critique. Yet what has been unfolding before our eyes is a referendum on the changing demographics of the United States and whether any redistribution of wealth will even be considered in the ruling circles of Washington.

The Republicans have built on a white revanchism located among the racists and the fearful within white America. These voters not only despise the idea of an African-American serving as president of what they believe to be a white republic; they are terrified that the demographics of the country are changing in favor of people of color. For this reason, calls to boycott the election or turn toward third-party candidates miss what is going on. The right wishes to perpetrate a massive disenfranchisement in its desperate effort to preserve the rule of a reactionary white elite.

Although I will be voting for Obama on November 6, it would be incorrect to view the president as anything approaching a savior. At best, his re-election provides some breathing room—but as we have seen in the past four years, irrespective of his speeches, Obama remains the head of a global empire, and that empire has interests that are antithetical to the mass of humanity, including the mass of humanity within the borders of the United States.

Thus we are brought to the question of what posture to take after November 6, should Obama be re-elected. While I agree with much of what Deepak raises, I do not believe the agenda he outlines is sufficient. We on the left side of the aisle seem to abhor the fight for power unless (a) we are speaking in either the long-term or utopian sense; or (b) we surrender ourselves to liberalism. A very different approach must be taken. Not only must mass pressure be exerted immediately on a new Obama administration—as opposed to allowing a grace period, as occurred in 2008—but there needs to be a reorganization among progressives that has as its object securing power for working people in several key metropolitan areas as a jumping-off point for a larger national project. This means building a combination of mass electoral alliances that seek to win office on a platform of insisting on structural reforms, and mass movements for social and economic justice, whether in workplaces or communities.

The left needs to organize itself—politically and structurally—in such a way that its various tendencies can flourish, but also so that it can build a majoritarian bloc in which one can see the contours of a very different, progressive United States.

http://www.thenation.com/article/170307/movements-need-politicians-and-vice-versa  

Movements Need Politicians—and Vice Versa
by Frances Fox Piven and Lorraine C. Minnite 

October 2, 2012

 

A protest against "Money and politics" near the venue for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina September 2, 2012. Reuters/Adrees Latif
 

The familiar question of whether we work on electoral politics or on movement politics is fraught with emotion and argument about whether movement or electoral politics is more effective for the left. We think it is the wrong question. Both are needed, and without both, neither is effective.

In historical fact, movement politics and electoral politics are continuously intertwined. The fundamental dynamic is triggered when politicians have to deal with voter blocs composed of the same people to whom movements direct their appeals. We can see this dynamic on both the right and the left. The Tea Party picked up steam when Republicans eager for re-election began to repeat its slogans. So did the labor movement of the 1930s gain momentum from Franklin Roosevelt’s rhetorical appeals to the “common man,” just as the civil rights movement was energized by Lyndon Johnson’s echo of the movement refrain “We shall overcome.” When politicians echo a movement’s demands, they signal a degree of vulnerability to its constituency, and the movement gains traction.

It’s also worth remembering that when politicians are dependent on electoral blocs that are also movement constituencies, they will often hesitate to use the full arsenal of the state’s repressive capacities against movement actions and may even make uncertain efforts to protect movements—as when Robert Kennedy, as attorney general, grudgingly tried to protect the Freedom Riders.

Moreover, movements make gains when an electoral regime is forced to offer concessions to heal the widening rifts that the movement is causing in its electoral base. The demonstrations and marches against the beginning of the war in Iraq are often cited as a measure of the impotence of movement politics. We think rather that the problem was that the antiwar movement did not speak to an antiwar voter bloc that Bush and the Republicans depended on, so they could simply ignore the protests. By contrast, a smaller immigrant rights movement has pressured Barack Obama, who depends on Latino votes, to use presidential authority to void the deportation of undocumented youth. Similarly, looking to LGBT voters, Obama responded to the gay rights movement’s demands, ordering the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and reversing his position on gay marriage. And in one of the environmental movement’s most important recent victories, Obama denied a permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline after activists staged months of mass nonviolent civil disobedience in front of the White House.

This is why the diverse protests we call Occupy need a Democratic victory in 2012: not because Democrats on their own will magically implement the movement’s agenda, but because Democrats depend on some of the same constituencies that the movement represents and to whom it directs its appeals. The overlap creates space for movements to grow and thrive. They win policy reform to the degree that they are able to leverage these electoral opportunities. Progressive hopes for a bolder second Obama term thus depend on the vigor of the Occupy movement and the degree to which it sparks activism and defiance among the other great movements for social justice that have always been important in American politics.

To be clear, we don’t think Occupy activists should drop their work on foreclosures or student debt or worker rights in favor of joining the election campaign by knocking on doors or staffing the phone banks or whatever. After all, not only is it unlikely that many Occupy activists, disgusted as they are by the hypocrisy and corruption of electoral politics, would do so, but their movement work is actually a contribution to the campaign. Think of the impact of Occupy on the national discussion, with its slogans about Wall Street and the 99 percent, along with its encampments and general assemblies and twinkling fingers! It has made extreme inequality an issue no one can ignore. Even the Republicans are campaigning as the party of jobs and economic recovery.

http://www.thenation.com/article/170302/obamas-legacy-our-leverage?page=full

Obama's Legacy Is Our Leverage

by Tom Hayden 

October 2, 2012

This article appeared in the October 22, 2012 edition of The Nation.

“He’s made history. Now he has to think about legacy.” This analysis of Barack Obama came during a recent conversation I had with Representative Bennie Thompson, who joined the civil rights movement in Mississippi back in a time when no one was talking about a black president.
 
Was Obama’s victory perhaps the high point of his historic contribution, opening the doors of diversity to others? For Thompson and millions of others, the answer is no. Independent progressive movements will be needed to compel Obama to act. Progressive achievements may occur where the demands of movements converge with Obama’s need for a legacy.

The need to expand democracy is essential in its own right, but also for Obama’s re-election and legacy. California has just adopted same-day registration, for example, while right-wing politicians seek to suppress the vote and hollow out the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Beyond protecting the franchise, the main target for progressive reform is the Citizens United decision, with Obama encouraging a constitutional amendment to reverse it. What progressives can do is organize state by state against Citizens United, delegitimize the authority of a partisan Republican Supreme Court, push the president for two progressive appointees, and educate a new generation of Thurgood Marshalls to attack the undemocratic notions that money is speech and corporations are people.

A re-elected Obama will plunge immediately into a maelstrom of debate on deficit reduction and taxes. If he wins, the voter mandate will be to raise taxes on the rich and preserve Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. If Obama and the Democrats don’t find ways to defend that mandate, the possibility of leaving a positive legacy will be damaged at the beginning of the second term, perhaps even stillborn. Obama can also rely on a voter mandate to embrace the Stiglitz-Reich-Krugman school of economic thinking and support a “Robin Hood” tax on Wall Street transactions (as he once did before being smothered by his economic advisers).

From day one, Obama will need to use the bully pulpit and his executive powers if he wants a legacy of restoring progress toward reversing global warming. Given Beltway realities, progress is likely to be driven at the state and community levels in places like California, with supportive rhetoric and regulatory blessings from Obama.

Before November or shortly after, Obama’s legacy may be shaped by an Israeli attack on Iran, drawing America into regional war. Fifty-nine percent of Americans oppose joining Israel in going to war with Iran, and 70 percent oppose a unilateral US attack. Obama should rely on that mandate to navigate away from the brink and toward UN recognition of a Palestinian state.

Obama will have to pull back 68,000 American troops from Afghanistan by 2014 or break a fundamental pledge. And if he doesn’t want a legacy of restoring Richard Nixon’s imperial presidency (and provoking Muslim rage by his drone attacks), the former constitutional lawyer will have to engage in a serious revision of the 1973 War Powers Act. He also needs to embrace an FDR “good neighbor” policy toward Latin America—including Cuba—or face diplomatic isolation from our nearest neighbors.

Finally, Obama needs to resume the quest begun in his Columbia student days to freeze and reverse the nuclear arms race, the greatest threat to humanity alongside global warming. The United States has 5,113 nuclear warheads, which will cost $352 billion to maintain and “upgrade” over the next ten years. Obama’s opening to Russia, which Romney opposes, is merely an initial step in the process. Public opinion, inert since the 1980s nuclear freeze movement, will have to be reawakened, partly with his leadership.

A movement perspective always differs from a governing one, and in the best of times the two interact productively. Most progressives I meet believe the challenge is clear: get Obama’s back through November, then get in his face. But legacy might be the critical factor in focusing the president’s agenda in a second term.

http://www.thenation.com/article/170324/climate-obama-needs-another-four-years

For the Climate, Obama Needs Another Four Years 

by Michael Brune

October 3, 2012

Voting is vital, but it’s not the only thing that matters.
 
Two dates are critical to the direction of our nation on environmental and energy policy. The first is November 6, when a failure to reelect President Obama would signal a retreat from recent progress made on protecting citizens from polluters. Mitt Romney’s contempt for society’s most vulnerable members and his close ties to billionaire polluters would undermine the safeguards against mercury, soot and carbon pollution that we’ve won during the past four years.

In addition to letting the EPA do its job, Barack Obama has been the strongest supporter of renewable energy ever to occupy the White House. He championed the Recovery Act, which was the single largest investment in clean and renewable energy in our nation’s history and helped create tens of thousands of new jobs. Wind power has doubled during the past four years; solar has quintupled.

Mitt Romney has attacked those clean energy investments and would revert to policies that prioritize fossil fuels.

Although presidents have bemoaned our dependence on oil for decades, Obama is the first to do something significant about it—two rounds of stronger vehicle fuel-efficiency standards will double the mileage we get from cars and trucks and create 570,000 new jobs across America by 2030. Once implemented, these fuel-efficiency standards alone will cut US carbon pollution by 10 percent. Romney opposed these standards and instead favors more drilling in the Arctic, offshore and on our public lands.

Despite the failure to pass a climate bill, President Obama acknowledges the seriousness of the climate crisis and has done something about it. US emissions are down; oil and coal consumption are at levels not seen in decades.

Romney, in contrast, has joked about climate change and believes the United States should increase its use of the dirtiest and most climate-polluting fossil fuels.

Just as important as November 6, however, is November 7. That is when we must inspire the president as he inspired us. We must both challenge and support the president to deliver on the promise of a clean-energy future. Regardless of how the Democrats fare in Congress, a second-term Obama administration will have many opportunities to leave a lasting environmental legacy. For starters, it can:

• Finish the job it has started on cleaning up power plant pollution, including carbon and mercury pollution from new sources, coal ash, and cross-state air pollution.

• Protect our public lands by prioritizing conservation and public recreation over dangerous oil and gas drilling, fracking, and oil shale development.

• Preserve the power of the Clean Water Act and end mountaintop-removal mining in Appalachia by enforcing the act.

• Get us closer to the goal of moving beyond oil by doubling the fuel efficiency of heavy trucks (as was done with cars in the first term) and rejecting the Keystone pipeline permit.

So, although the choice is clear, winning this election will only mark the beginning of meeting the challenges we face as a nation. It will be up to all of us—and President Obama—to make the next four years count.

http://www.thenation.com/article/170298/time-rewire

Time to Rewire

by Ilyse Hogue

October 2, 2012

 
Twelve years ago, as a different presidential election approached, I was frustrated. I graduated from college and grad school in the mid-’90s and entered a robust job market, even in my chosen field of nonprofit advocacy. I faced few challenges paying off the loans I had taken to cover the portion of my tuition that my parents couldn’t pick up. Still, the world looked—and was—unjust. The wave of unchecked free trade sweeping the globe was wreaking havoc on the manufacturing base here at home and human rights abroad. Privatization of natural resources was the buzzword of the day, and the ecological projections felt downright apocalyptic. I wondered whether there was anything besides cosmetic differences between candidates Bush and Gore.

Twelve years, two wars, one financial crisis, 15 million underwater homes, trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy, and a social safety net hanging by a thread have disabused me of that notion: what’s cosmetic to one relatively privileged white girl is life-changing for the tens of millions living in poverty.

Deepak Bhargava lays out the imperative to lean into this election and keep an eye on post-election movement building. His basic premise is inarguable: things will get a whole lot worse if there’s a Republican takeover. But it is also worth considering how, in addition to the devastating material impact of a Romney presidency, a GOP victory robs us of the oxygen required to grow deeper and broader roots for the progressive movement.

This may seem counterintuitive, since surges in participation are often most visible in times of opposition, but the strength and numbers required to elect majorities are different from those needed to rewire policies and priorities. The latter requires us to innovate, to invest in multi-tiered organizing, and to shift our culture to embrace power—all of which would become virtually impossible under a Romney presidency.

An emphasis on innovation is our best bet to secure the necessary breakthroughs in organizing. Experimental online organizing drove the electoral wins of the last decade. Maybe the next breakthrough will come from merging advocacy and service to help people in distress and strengthen incentives for participation. Or maybe from programs that prioritize horizontal relationships and the elevation of community leaders. Or maybe from putting pressure on less visible actors like ALEC. Whatever that next breakthrough is, we won’t find it if our imagination is tied up in defense.

Victory feeds progressive momentum and participation. Strategically picking and winning offensive fights will not only help the folks who need it most; it will set the stage for continued progress. From the Dream Act to marriage equality, early success came in the states. Opportunities at the state level are looming—including a real chance for clean elections in New York—and acting on them requires the breathing room a Democratic presidency offers.

For the long game, progressives have to learn to embrace power. Winning deep concessions requires not only outside pressure but deep ideological connections with officeholders. Progressives, long wary of the way power corrupts, are often reluctant candidates. But those connections are far more assured when we elect our own. Our candidates will be more viable if we have time and money to invest in training them and strengthening their campaigns.

We still have our work cut out for us if Obama wins a second term. What we’re fighting for now is the opportunity to do that work.

http://www.thenation.com/article/170301/politics-love?page=full

A Politics of Love

by Ai-jen Poo | 

October 2, 2012

An Occupy Wall Street demonstrator raises her hands painted with hearts during what protest organizers called a "Day of Action" in New York November 17, 2011. Reuters/Mike Segar
 
Building on Deepak Bhargava’s points [1], I would offer that there is a broader base for an economic justice movement than ever before. Despite political polarization, just below the surface, more and more Americans are feeling deep pain around their jobs, homes, health, security and future opportunities. From immigrant domestic workers and their families in California, to aging white boomers in deindustrialized Pennsylvania, to African-American teachers in Alabama and young veterans in Iowa, there is a continuum of anxiety and suffering that connects us. Regardless of election outcomes, this may be the greatest opportunity for us to unite in generations. To seize the opportunity, we must pay attention to the connective tissue needed to build and hold a broad movement together.

We must create a culture that welcomes people from all walks of life and creates opportunities for everyone to participate meaningfully. And that starts right now. As Deepak points out, there are dire issues that we will face immediately after the election, namely the so-called fiscal cliff, a defining budget fight that could cost us important infrastructure and many of the social services on which our communities depend. If we can communicate what’s at stake and how this moment affects each of us, we have the potential to achieve broad engagement. We should be organizing as many actions as possible to take place immediately after the election.

We need to embrace the direct-action spirit of the Occupy movement, and we need to broaden that spirit by offering the millions of people who are hurting ways to connect and participate. We should claim the significant voter protection, registration and mobilization work that was done to promote democratic participation in this election cycle. We can embrace the many ways in which people are coming together already to support one another and meet their communities’ growing needs.

We need to engage in massive efforts to change the culture, both within and beyond our movements. We need to engage in politics from a place of love and care; we must challenge the tendency toward individualism and self-interest that has dominated our politics for several decades. We need to reaffirm our humanity and spirit, emphasizing the importance of building emotional connections between people in local communities and identifying where interests overlap across constituencies. We need to come together to write a new story for our changing nation, one that places equity, care and human connection at its center.

When we do all of those things, we adopt a more powerful stance with which to face the future. And once we have reached a space expansive enough to see them, we will recognize that we already have many of the solutions we need.

PLUS AN ENDORSEMENT OF PRESIDENT OBAMA FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/barack-obama-for-president.html?pagewanted=all

EDITORIAL

Barack Obama for Re-Election 
October 27, 2012
New York Times


The economy is slowly recovering from the 2008 meltdown, and the country could suffer another recession if the wrong policies take hold. The United States is embroiled in unstable regions that could easily explode into full-blown disaster. An ideological assault from the right has started to undermine the vital health reform law passed in 2010. Those forces are eroding women’s access to health care, and their right to control their lives. Nearly 50 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act,  all Americans’ rights are cheapened by the right wing’s determination to deny marriage benefits to a selected group of us.   Astonishingly, even the very right to vote is being challenged.
That is the context for the Nov. 6 election, and as stark as it is, the choice is just as clear.

President Obama has shown a firm commitment to using government to help foster growth. He has formed sensible budget policies that are not dedicated to protecting the powerful, and has worked to save the social safety net to protect the powerless. Mr. Obama has impressive achievements despite the implacable wall of refusal erected by Congressional Republicans so intent on stopping him that they risked pushing the nation into depression, held its credit rating hostage, and hobbled economic recovery.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has gotten this far with a guile that allows him to say whatever he thinks an audience wants to hear. But he has tied himself to the ultraconservative forces that control the Republican Party and embraced their policies, including reckless budget cuts and 30-year-old, discredited trickle-down ideas. Voters may still be confused about Mr. Romney’s true identity, but they know the Republican Party, and a Romney administration would reflect its agenda. Mr. Romney’s choice of Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate says volumes about that.

We have criticized individual policy choices that Mr. Obama has made over the last four years, and have been impatient with his unwillingness to throw himself into the political fight. But he has shaken off the hesitancy that cost him the first debate, and he approaches the election clearly ready for the partisan battles that would follow his victory.

We are confident he would challenge the Republicans in the “fiscal cliff” battle even if it meant calling their bluff, letting the Bush tax cuts expire and forcing them to confront the budget sequester they created. Electing Mr. Romney would eliminate any hope of deficit reduction that included increased revenues.

In the poisonous atmosphere of this campaign, it may be easy to overlook Mr. Obama’s many important achievements, including carrying out the economic stimulus, saving the auto industry, improving fuel efficiency standards, and making two very fine Supreme Court appointments.

Health Care

Mr. Obama has achieved the most sweeping health care reforms since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The reform law takes a big step toward universal health coverage, a final piece in the social contract.

It was astonishing that Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress were able to get a bill past the Republican opposition. But the Republicans’ propagandistic distortions of the new law helped them wrest back control of the House, and they are determined now to repeal the law.

That would eliminate the many benefits the reform has already brought: allowing children under 26 to stay on their parents’ policies; lower drug costs for people on Medicare who are heavy users of prescription drugs; free immunizations, mammograms and contraceptives; a ban on lifetime limits on insurance payments. Insurance companies cannot deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Starting in 2014, insurers must accept all applicants. Once fully in effect, the new law would start to control health care costs.

Mr. Romney has no plan for covering the uninsured beyond his callous assumption that they will use emergency rooms. He wants to use voucher programs to shift more Medicare costs to beneficiaries and block grants to shift more Medicaid costs to the states.

The Economy

Mr. Obama prevented another Great Depression. The economy was cratering when he took office in January 2009. By that June it was growing, and it has been ever since (although at a rate that disappoints everyone), thanks in large part to interventions Mr. Obama championed, like the $840 billion stimulus bill. Republicans say it failed, but it created and preserved 2.5 million jobs and prevented unemployment from reaching 12 percent. Poverty would have been much worse without the billions spent on Medicaid, food stamps and jobless benefits.

Last year, Mr. Obama introduced a jobs plan that included spending on school renovations, repair projects for roads and bridges, aid to states, and more. It was stymied by Republicans. Contrary to Mr. Romney’s claims, Mr. Obama has done good things for small businesses — like pushing through more tax write-offs for new equipment and temporary tax cuts for hiring the unemployed.

The Dodd-Frank financial regulation was an important milestone. It is still a work in progress, but it established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, initiated reform of the derivatives market, and imposed higher capital requirements for banks. Mr. Romney wants to repeal it.

If re-elected, Mr. Obama would be in position to shape the “grand bargain” that could finally combine stimulus like the jobs bill with long-term deficit reduction that includes letting the high-end Bush-era tax cuts expire. Stimulus should come first, and deficit reduction as the economy strengthens. Mr. Obama has not been as aggressive as we would have liked in addressing the housing crisis, but he has increased efforts in refinancing and loan modifications.

Mr. Romney’s economic plan, as much as we know about it, is regressive, relying on big tax cuts and deregulation. That kind of plan was not the answer after the financial crisis, and it will not create broad prosperity.

Foreign Affairs

Mr. Obama and his administration have been resolute in attacking Al Qaeda’s leadership, including the killing of Osama bin Laden. He has ended the war in Iraq. Mr. Romney, however, has said he would have insisted on leaving thousands of American soldiers there. He has surrounded himself with Bush administration neocons who helped to engineer the Iraq war, and adopted their militaristic talk in a way that makes a Romney administration’s foreign policies a frightening prospect.

Mr. Obama negotiated a much tougher regime of multilateral economic sanctions on Iran. Mr. Romney likes to say the president was ineffective on Iran, but at the final debate he agreed with Mr. Obama’s policies. Mr. Obama deserves credit for his handling of the Arab Spring. The killing goes on in Syria, but the administration is working to identify and support moderate insurgent forces there. At the last debate, Mr. Romney talked about funneling arms through Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are funneling arms to jihadist groups.

Mr. Obama gathered international backing for airstrikes during the Libyan uprising, and kept American military forces in a background role. It was smart policy.

In the broadest terms, he introduced a measure of military restraint after the Bush years and helped repair America’s badly damaged reputation in many countries from the low levels to which it had sunk by 2008.

The Supreme Court

The future of the nation’s highest court hangs in the balance in this election — and along with it, reproductive freedom for American women and voting rights for all, to name just two issues. Whoever is president after the election will make at least one appointment to the court, and many more to federal appeals courts and district courts.

Mr. Obama, who appointed the impressive Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, understands how severely damaging conservative activism has been in areas like campaign spending. He would appoint justices and judges who understand that landmarks of equality like the Voting Rights Act must be defended against the steady attack from the right.

Mr. Romney’s campaign Web site says he will “nominate judges in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito,” among the most conservative justices in the past 75 years. There is no doubt that he would appoint justices who would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Civil Rights

The extraordinary fact of Mr. Obama’s 2008 election did not usher in a new post-racial era. In fact, the steady undercurrent of racism in national politics is truly disturbing. Mr. Obama, however, has reversed Bush administration policies that chipped away at minorities’ voting rights and has fought laws, like the ones in Arizona, that seek to turn undocumented immigrants into a class of criminals.

The military’s odious “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule was finally legislated out of existence, under the Obama administration’s leadership. There are still big hurdles to equality to be brought down, including the Defense of Marriage Act, the outrageous federal law that undermines the rights of gay men and lesbians, even in states that recognize those rights.

Though it took Mr. Obama some time to do it, he overcame his hesitation about same-sex marriage and declared his support. That support has helped spur marriage-equality movements around the country. His Justice Department has also stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act against constitutional challenges.

Mr. Romney opposes same-sex marriage and supports the federal act, which not only denies federal benefits and recognition to same-sex couples but allows states to ignore marriages made in other states. His campaign declared that Mr. Romney would not object if states also banned adoption by same-sex couples and restricted their rights to hospital visitation and other privileges.

Mr. Romney has been careful to avoid the efforts of some Republicans to criminalize abortion even in the case of women who had been raped, including by family members. He says he is not opposed to contraception, but he has promised to deny federal money to Planned Parenthood, on which millions of women depend for family planning.

For these and many other reasons, we enthusiastically endorse President Barack Obama for a second term, and express the hope that his victory will be accompanied by a new Congress willing to work for policies that Americans need.