Special Issue: Ending the New Jim Crow

The Hudson Valley Radical Special Issue
Ending the New Jim Crow in the Hudson Valley

Contents
1. A Personal Note
2. End Mass Incarceration: Restructure the Criminal Justice System
3. The People Fight Back: Comments Against Jail Expansion from Poughkeepsie Middle Schoolers, Janet Bosco, Sam Busselle, and Mark Marinoff

A Personal Note

by Schuyler Kempton (10-23-12)

When I went to my first meeting of the End the New Jim Crow Action Network, I had essentially no connection with the issues that I was dealing with. As a white "middle class" kid, I couldn't say that I had any connection to the issues of mass incarceration aside from an academic understanding that it was wrong, and a revolutionary perspective that led me to understand that this fight was part of a larger struggle for total liberation.

However, the effects of the prison industrial system have recently hit home to some extent. A friend of my mother's who I have spent time with in the past was accused last month of a crime and was subsequently thrown into the Dutchess County Jail. I do not know whether he is guilty or innocent. However, I do know that he was locked up for a month without trial because he couldn't post a $5,000 bail and had no place to stay regardless. Furthermore, I know that he suffers from bi-polar disorder and that at some point during his stay in jail, he attempted to commit suicide out of desperation, or perhaps, due to a chemical imbalance left untreated while in jail.

Yesterday, all charges against him were dropped and he was transfered today to Rockland County Psychiatric Center. While his transfer to a mental health center is long overdue, he has expressed disdain at the facilities overall, claiming that it's "worse than jail." When asked whether he is getting the treatment he needs, he responded by saying that his medications have been completely altered from his usual routine.

I don't include this as a sob story or as an attempt to justify my opposition to the criminal justice system. The man I mentioned is white, and was not imprisoned for anything related to a drug crime. However, this one example has highlighted for me the brutal nature of the jail system, and I understand that what is brutal for whites must be murderous for people of color.

Throughout this issue are statements writen by the people of our area opposing the jail proposal presented by the Criminal Justice Council. A common thread throughout these indictments, whether they are from Poughkeepsie Middle Schoolers or ex-members of the Criminal Justice Council, is the complete and utter bankruptcy of priorities that leads our lawmakers to, among other obsenities, kick the homeless out of shelters in the name of discouraging government reliance while we imprison hundreds on a daily basis rather than providing job training and social services.

In the following article, in which we reprint End the New Jim Crow Action Network (ENAJN)'s statement at the public hearing on jail expansion, we outline our fundemental opposition to the jail proposal.

This opposition is complete and non-negotiable. Recently our County Executive has unveiled a plan to construct 200 "Pods," or cells, as an extension of the current jail facility. This is also is a plan which we absolutely and unequivicolly oppose. It is now up to us to organize against it.

I hope that this publication will inspire those who read it to take a stand against our racist, inhumane criminal justice system and all proposals for jail expansion.

We say, loud and clear: End Mass Incarceration! End the War on Drugs!
and
END THE NEW JIM CROW!

END MASS INCARCERATION: Restructure Our Criminal Justice System

This statement was read at the October 15th public hearing on the Criminal Justice Council's Criminal Justice System Needs Assessment, which called for the creation of a new, 500-650 cell jail in Dutchess County.

The statement was written by the End the New Jim Crow Action Network (ENJAN), an organization founded to fight the racist criminal justice system in America and the mass incarceration of people of color.

ENJAN meets every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month at the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library, 29 North Hamilton Street, Poughkeepsie NY. 
Visit Endthenewjimcrow.blogspot.com to learn more about ENJAN

This photo, of Pam Krimsky reading the final section of ENJAN's statement at the public hearing on jail expansion, appeared on the front page of the Poughkeepsie Journal above the heading "Jail Plan Gets Dissent." The article,  plus the full video of the public hearing can be found here

The End the New Jim Crow Action Network (ENJAN) fundamentally opposes Dutchess County’s plans to construct a 500-650 bed jail (at a cost of from $150-200 million not including interest on the bonds).

Our opposition stems from our study of the system of mass incarceration in this country, which over the last 30 years has used the criminal justice system to re-establish a racial caste system along the lines of the notorious Old Jim Crow laws. In a county where African Americans make up 12% of the population, we take issue with the fact that over 50% of the local jail population is African American. The absolute failure of the “War on Drugs” has caused a disproportionate increase of poor people and people of color in its jails and prisons.

Moreover, we oppose county priorities that devote more resources to incarcerating its residents than in providing them with decent education, affordable health care, and safe housing. Many of the people in jails and prisons are individuals with high needs who suffer from drug and alcohol addictions or other mental health issues, lack education, face a cycle of homelessness and poverty. We thus oppose policies that value incarcerating people over healing them.

A recent report “Dutchess County Criminal Justice Council – Criminal Justice System Assessment” to be presented to the County at a public forum on October 15th states the following:

• A “substantial restructuring of our local criminal justice system is required”
• We must “use more incentives (carrots) than sanctions (sticks)”; and,
• We must “deliver services in natural environments whenever possible.”

Unfortunately, the report makes no attempt to estimate how substantial restructuring will reduce the need for jail cells. Even more regrettably, the lawmakers in our county have shown no willingness to seriously address an ‘evidence-based’ restructuring initiative that tackles larger issues of injustice, such as putting an end to racial disparities in arrest, arraignment and sentencing policies that criminalize behaviors—all of which treat our neighbors as disposable human beings.

Lawmakers in our county have failed to address the fundamental flaw of the criminal justice system in our county and in our country: that a few wealthy, white individuals profit off of the incarceration of the working black masses. We, the End the New Jim Crow Action Network, have agreed upon a 10-Point Program to dismantle the racist criminal justice system as it is currently constituted and replace it with a system built on the philosophy of healing rather than punishing so that the imprisoned may one day be free:

-Alternative Housing for women, youth, and those with mental illness

-Alternative housing for the 80% inmates who have not gone to trial

-The immediate hiring of additional workers to handle processing

-Effective rehabilitation for all non-violent substance abusers. Treat substance abuse as an illness, not a crime!

-Alternative housing for all individuals serving time for a drug charge connected with a violent offense to ensure that their drug addiction is dealt with

-The immediate creation of a 24-hour mental health crisis center and increased funding for existing mental health clinics and programs

-The elimination of all charges resulting from the legal process to ensure that all of those accused of crimes are able to defend themselves in court rather than simply serving

their sentence in jail

-End the racist War on Drugs, the system which has resulted in the mass incarceration of Black, Latino, and low-income people

-Finally, we call on the county to fully fund all existing social programs and introduce new programs to enable our community to grow and break the cycle of poverty, drug-addiction, and incarceration:

*Introduce a ‘housing-first’ strategy for the chronically mentally ill, homeless, alcoholics and drug addicts to prevent recidivism

*Implement a comprehensive system of re-entry programs for men and women to prevent recidivism similar to the Brooklyn ‘Com Alert program

*Provide jobs, job training, employment counseling and housing for individuals returning to the community who want to work

*Implement programs similar to Father Young’s program in Albany to cut recidivism.

*Introduce and reintroduce prevention programs for youth:

-Embrace “Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Coalition”

-Restore BOCES GED program in DC Jail

-Restore Project Return to keep youth with families

-Restore Mediation center programs for juvenile delinquency prevention for troubled teens

-Restore Cornell 4H & greenteen programs

-Restore Youth Mentoring/Job Training/Placement at the Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce

-Youth programs at DC Arts Council, Mill Street Loft, Literacy Connections

*Implement all the recommendations from the Justice Policy Institute

The End the New Jim Crow Action Network represents the emergence of a new, militant movement in our area to confront mass incarceration head on. We are a coalition with a diverse representation in our community that is prepared to fight for the demands we have presented tonight. We will no longer tolerate lies and misinformation. We will no longer be silenced as people make profits off of the imprisonment of their fellow humans. We are not afraid to enter this struggle and we are most certainly not afraid to win it. Our people are rising. We are awake.

The People Fight Back: Poughkeepsie Middle Schoolers Against Jail Expansion

These comments were written by children in Mary Ellen Iatropoulos' Media Literacy class at Poughkeepsie Middle School and send via e-mail to the Dutchess Criminal Justice Council and members of the Dutchess County Legislature.

Dear members of the Dutchess Criminal Justice Council and Dutchess County Legislators,

My name is Mary Ellen Iatropoulos, and as part of my job I teach media literacy to middle-school age students at Poughkeepsie Day School. On Tuesday, October 16th, we inspected the front page of the Poughkeepsie Journal to analyze the state of our community based on what constituted front page news. Recall the front page stories that day regarded: dissent about the proposed jail expansion, Mayor Tkazik's proposed privatization of city sanitation services, and the MTA's proposed fair hike.

What follows are typed versions of written responses from impassioned and engaged young minds. They may not be old enough to vote, but they are old enough to be affected by decisions their governments make, and they are old enough to have strong opinion about what they read in the paper. I know they felt empowered by the idea that the Council and county legislators would read what they have to say. Thank you for being open to receiving their comments.

Here are the typed versions of the youth comments:

Instead of building a new prison that will cost more then 100 million dollars in taxpayer money, I believe you should lower the recidivism by instituting a "parent behind bars" to discourage people from going back to jail and costing more money. The crime rate will not change because of a new jail. Don't build something when you are cutting sanitation programs. - Milo

They should save up for the jail and make the jail like in 2014 when they balanced their budget. They should pay for the trash and open up good things like the YMCA that would probably put down crime rates -- Xavier

I think that to make jail be 2 million dollars is a bad idea because that'll make the people in Poughkeepsie broke. Making people become broke isn't going to help Poughkeepsie in any way. Making jail bigger is like saying there are a lot of people - Maddie

Why would you buy a big new jail when you can't pay for garbage pickup? Spend your money wisely. Spend it on important stuff - Hannah

I think that we should spend money on preventing crime instead of building a new building full of criminals -- Anonymous

Why do you really want a jail? Why do you want to put these people in jail here? A jail is unnecessary. Are you sure you want all of our trash piling up on our streets. The criminals can go somewhere else for now. You don't have that much money. Think! Think about the environment. Some people can't afford it and you can't either. If you build it, your going to arrest more people, then your going to want another. So no jail please. We don't like our trash. From Adrienne

Dear Marc Molinaro,
I think that it is not right to spend money on jail when we can't even pay for the trash. The jail we may need to have but we can still have one but not that much money. The trash for the people who don't have enough money for paying for it will have to just let it sit there which that will be just gross. So please take some consideration to my opinion. - Claire

I think it is stupid because if we can't afford trash pickup. -- Anonymous

Dear Marc Molinaro,
I have a question for you. Why would we want to pay $200 million for a new jail, rather than have the town pick up trash? If the city is so "broke" why are you paying for this? Okay, so I may not live in Dutchess County, but that doesn't mean your citizens should suffer! This is unfair and you should reconsider where you're putting your money! ---- Anonymous

Absolutely ridiculous. Why should I pay for a jail by paying for my trash to be picked up? $200,000,000 jail? Wow, I thought we were broke, but I guess we have $200 million on deck. We need to think of something else. - Yosef

Why would Dutchess County want to make a 200 million dollar jail when, one, we're broke, and two, your making us pay for trash, three, if you make a bigger jail what if its not making it worth the money. Then we would have paid over rated taxes for nothing. So my complaint is, don't take away our money to make something for your benefit to make money that's only for you and we will only get like 5% of that back - by Alexander

USE THE JAIL MONEY FOR GARBAGE PICKUP! It is a terrible idea, if you need a jail don't build the most expensive jail you can. We need trash pickup as well! - Grace

Since Rhinebeck has the same crime amount. We should spend the money on smarter cops since Poughkeepsie has more arrests that are sometimes false ones, less arrests would mean we would need less jail space and then we could use some of that $200 million to take out trash as well as get better cops - Anonymous

Hi. Here are my thoughts about the new jail. If we're saying that we're pour, why are we paying for a $200 million for a jail? Your saying, no more free trashman drivers to pick up your trash, and you need to pay more to ride a train, and were going to spend $200 MILLION?!?!?!?!?!?!

Not right. - Anonymous

I don't understand why if we don't have enough money to have our garbage then why are we building a $200 million dollar jail?
- Anonymous

Why do we need to cater to bad people? I know criminals are people but still. We need to help the people that work hard like commuters, not the people that caused. Anyway a lot of times people get arrested when it is not their fault. So that is your reason of overcrowding. - Anonymous

If you have so much money, why not use it for picking up trash? Take more money, from more people, that's JANK! - Anonymous

Hello Mark,
I don't think it's a good idea to make a jail. Mainly because it costs 200 million $$$$. Also we have to pay for our trash? What's up with that? I say we spend 200 million dollars on something else. - Anonymous

You should pick up all the trash before you make anything. They should buy a $200 million robot that can pick up trash AND scan to see if the guy is the person they need. - Anonymous

Why do we use our money to build a jail when it could go towards our trash? - Anonymous

Don't build the jail. It's really bad idea. Clean up the trash. Don't build a bigger jail. You don't need it. I thought we were poor. - Anonymous

If we are so poor that we can't afford trash pickup, we couldn't afford a jail! Jails are useful only when we arrest the right people; we arrest innocent people and waste taxpayer money. - Anonymous

Don't build the jail. The state has no money to do this. - Anonymous

The People Fight Back: Janet Bosco

This speech was read at the public hearing on jail expansion, October 15, 2012

I am a concerned citizen of the Hudson Valley and would like to express my thoughts and feelings regarding the building of a new jail in Poughkeepsie. I am appalled that schools are being closed, Big Brothers Big Sisters programs are being eliminated and the Homeless Shelter will be charging $10.00 a night after 60 days at the same time that officials are planning to build a jail in Dutchess County! Two questions burn in my soul! First, will this jail eventually be filled with at risk youth who could have benefited from Big Brothers Big Sisters programs, homeless people in need of shelter, as well as students who have dropped out of school due to needs not being met in an overcrowded and under funded school system? Second, where is the money coming from for this penal institution?

I strongly oppose a jail and prefer to see money invested in vital social programs where people are treated with dignity and helped to reach their potential. I believe that a proactive focus rather than a punitive one has been proven to be more successful in creating and empowering citizens to be productive members of our society.

Sincerely,
Janet Bosco
Ulster County Citizen
Retired School Teacher
Member of ENJAN

The People Fight Back: Sam Busselle

This piece was written for inclusion in this publication

In an article in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Wednesday, October 17th, the Chair of the Legislature states “the county cannot borrow money to fund alternatives to incarceration.” (The county CAN borrow money to fund a $126 million jail!)
We are in a sorry state of affairs when the solution is all about money and not about the human lives that are being wasted when they are caught up in the criminal justice system that disproportionately targets the poor and minorities. A substantial restructuring of the entire system – that has been recommended by the Criminal Justice Council in a Needs Assessment - allows the county to make real progressive step toward changing the emphasis. Alternatives to incarceration stand a greater chance of improving a person’s likelihood for success than six months in jail.

The People Fight Back: Mark Marinoff

This speech was read at the public hearing on jail expansion, October 15, 2012

Dutchess County Officials are poised to spend between 1 and 2 million of our tax payer dollars to build a new jail with greater capacity, in hopes its use will reclaim its cost in 15 yrs. Meanwhile, elementary schools have been closed, funding has ended for the 'one on one' mentorship program 'Big Brothers Big Sisters', as well as the Youth Bureau's 'Project Return', which offered anti-bullying, anger management and conflict resolution training to thousands of young county residents; And these are the very types of services that keep people out of the criminal justice system!

I understand the current jail is overcrowded to the point where approximately 300 inmates are being housed outside the county at great expense, and, I may add, with undue hardship for their families. However, as cited in the council's assessment, there are evidence based and cost effective alternatives not only to incarceration, but to reduce jail time and recidivism. Some of these alternatives could be implemented quickly and with few additional funds, certainly much quicker and cheaper than constructing a new jail.

Furthermore, this new, larger jail will demand a rather perverse incentive for officials to keep it filled, for surely the reelection possibilities are dim for any official that signs a massive tax payer spending bill for a state of the art facility that is underutilized.

If our officials continue to refuse to implement their own cited strategies to end mass incarceration now, the need for ever more jail space, and calls for the tax payer to bear the monetary burden, will continue without end. I would like to conclude by encouraging the council, the audience and members of mediation to look into any one of the growing number of investigations taking place throughout our nation into the perverse business of profiting from mass incarceration. For anyone with internet access, just Google ‘for profit prisons’.

About End the New Jim Crow Action Network (ENJAN)

ENJAN meets at 6:00 pm every second and fourth Wednesday at the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library, Family Partnership Center, 29 N Hamilton St, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601. (845) 452-6088 x 3343
Visit ENJAN online at Endthenewjimcrow.blogspot.com

The End the New Jim Crow Action Network! (ENJAN, pronounced “engine”) is a group of Hudson Valley residents working locally to end the era of mass incarceration in this country. With more than 2 million people currently in prisons and jails, and over 5 million people on probation and parole, the United States has steadily imprisoned or detained more of its citizens than any other country in the world. This expansion of the criminal justice system disproportionately targets African Americans and Hispanics, transforming the policy of mass incarceration into a racial caste system that robs our fellow citizens of their basic dignity and humanity by treating them as disposable beings. In Dutchess County alone, African Americans account for more than half of all those sentenced each year, despite constituting merely 10% of our population.

What We Stand For

-An end to the wasteful and failed “War on Drugs,” which has filled prisons with non-violent offenders.

-An end to unaccountable private “for-profit” prisons nationwide.

-An end to jail expansion in Dutchess County and all new prisons nationwide.

-An end to discriminatory sentencing.

-An end to Stop-and-Frisk and other forms of racial profiling.

-An end to the excessive use of force and other forms of police brutality.

-Full restoration of all civil rights, including voting rights, regardless of a person’s prior convictions.

-Full funding for programs that assist those being released from incarceration.

-A shift from forms of punishment that breed a cycle of poverty and delinquency to more restorative and rehabilitative approaches to crime, including a massive reinvestment in education and job creation.

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Toward Democracy, Equality, and Workers' Power!

Issue #14: October 6-13, 2012

The Hudson Valley Radical, Issue #14 (October 6-13, 2012)

MAN SHOT BY COP IN NEWBURGH
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR WILLIAM "CURLY" BAYNES

According to the Times Herald-Record, on Thursday, October 4^th, William C. Baynes, driving a 1993 black Lexus, was pulled over by state police trooper David B. Ruderfer. Minutes later, Ruderfer fired a shot that hit Baynes in his abdomen. He was rushed by ambulance to St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving.

Since writing that initial report, the Times Herald Record published an article intented to reveal Baynes' "violent past," to paint a picture of a dangerous man who had engaged in previous confrontations with the police. According to the Record, Baynes was an “old school fighter.” Mentioned only in passing was Baynes’ assertion that the police had thrown his head into a brick wall and clubbed him during a past confrontation. Mentioned only in passing was the fact that Baynes hadn’t had a violent offense pinned on him in 20 years. Mentioned only in passing was the fact that Baynes had spent much of that last 20 years languishing in prison for non-violent drug offenses. Baynes had served his time as a pawn in the Establishment’s War On Drugs, that elaborate game they play to distract from waging a real War on Poverty.

Ironically, it was not for burglary of drugs that Baynes died, but from what might have been simply a traffic violation.

Alternatively, Baynes could very well have been stopped for suspected drug possession, although it was clear in the aftermath that Baynes had no drugs. However, Ruderfer, the cop who shot Baynes, had previously been awarded a medal for busting a man with 117 pounds of pot. According to an article in the Daily Freeman, Ruderfer had pulled a car over for swerving in and out of his lane when he noticed several air freshener and a bottle of carpet freshener, according to an article in the Daily Freeman. This alerted him to the possibility that the driver was attempting to mask the smell of drugs. On this occasion, he was correct, and was rewarded by the Police Department with a medal, and by the Daily Freeman with a nice write-up in his local newspaper.

This would be entirely separate from the case of Baynes’shooting, except that Baynes also had an air freshener in his car, along with previous drug convictions. It is conceivable that Baynes was stopped for drug that he didn’t have and fought back in anger and at being accused once again, of even having to think about being send back into the Criminal Injustice system for a crime he didn’t commit. And because Baynes, a 51 year old man, fought back, Ruderfer, a cop 20 years his junior, felt it was nessesary to pull the trigger and end a life.

Many who have heard this story in the past several days have been inclined to side with the cops. They have assumed that the police never fire unless they must. They have shown “no sympathy” for Banes because he was “a career criminal.” They have expressed remorse at what the poor cop must have felt as he was forced to fight a big, scary man. Finally, this same crowd has expressed their supreme confidence in the investigation currently underway BY THE POLICE regarding the shooting.

This is a classic case of “which side are you on?” Many reactionaries will side with the cops and accuse those of us who question them as being whiners, of having no real idea of what we’re talking about. But that’s not true. No, we weren’t there at the scene of the crime (and by crime I am referring to the shooting), but we know that the epidemic of police brutality has reached unconscionable levels. No, we were not there at the scene of the shooting, but the majority of those internet commentators chiming in on this event have never been brutalized by the police in their lives. They have never been stopped and frisked. They have never been accused of a crime they are innocent of. They have never had their neighborhoods swarming with police acting as an occupying army. It is very likely that William C. Baynes is a person of color, as the press would almost certainly have never treated a white person as poorly as they have treated him. If this is true, than Baynes’ life would have been a world away from that of most snide commentators discussing the matter.

For those of us who have taken the side of the victim in this case, we must act swiftly to ensure justice. The investigation of David Ruderfer is underway now, but an investigation of police murder run by the police is no more valid than an investigation of Al Pacin’s tax evasion run by the Mafia. In short, it’s likely to be bullshit. That is, unless we put pressure on the Police. Unless we demand that Ruderfer is fired and properly investigated for criminal charges. This work must be begun now.

Furthermore, we must demand civilian review boards for all police departments in our area as a firs systemic step toward ending police brutality in our area and across the country. Yet, this process of ending police brutality and truly eradicating the engrained, systemic racism in this country will not end until capitalism, the system which promoted all hatred and division through its philosophy of elite domination, is toppled once and for all.

It is through our work to see justice for William C. Baynes and end police brutality that we struggle to end capitalism and capitalist oppression as a whole. Out of seeking justice for the injury of one do we win justice for the injuries of all. Onward!

As a first step, join us every 2^nd and 4^thWednesday @6:00 PM for meetings of the End the New Jim Crow Action Network (ENJAN) at the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library, Family Partnership Center, 29 North Hamilton Street Poughkeepsie NY. Here, we will tackle the issue of police brutality and continue to fight against jail expansion and mass incarceration in this mid-Hudson area.

Times Herald Record Initial Report on the Baynes shooting: http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121005/NEWS/121009850/-1/WAP

Times Herald Record piece on Baynes’ “Violent Past”: http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121006/NEWS/210060314/0/COMM011A

Daily Freeman piece on Ruderfer’s 2011 Award: http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2011/05/01/news/doc4dbcb0462fle3407703486.txt?viewmode=default

Solidarity with Wal-Mart Workers on Strike

A statement by Students for Durham-López 2012

For the first time in Wal-Mart's 50-year history, workers in multiple stores are on strike. Students for Durham-López 2012 strongly supports the Wal-Mart workers and encourage all members of the working class to stand in solidarity with their striking comrades.

Every time we rise up, the working class better understands its own power. Because we create the capitalists' wealth with our labor, we have the power
to strike and withhold that labor. Should we organize successfully, we have the power to, through a General Strike in all industries, shut down the capitalist system. Following this, we will return to a democratic workplace where each of us has a say in our labor, and the wealth that we produce is distributed equitably.

That's what radical democracy looks like. That's what socialism looks like. And that is what we work toward.

Like Students for Durham-López 2012 on Facebook

Electoral Roulette: The 1% Can't Lose

by Linda Averill. Originally published in the October-November edition of the Freedom Socialist Newspaper.

While Mitt Romney and Barack Obama joust for the White House, the U.S. economy limps along, teetering between “recovery” and another downturn.

With competition for global markets and resources at a white heat, CEOs are watching the 2012 election impatiently. As Fortune magazine’s Sept. 3 cover blared, “Hey, Washington: Enough already!” The authors say neither candidate is talking about needed “hard choices” — like “fixing” Medicare by restricting end-of-life care and levying surcharges on “smokers and the ultra-fat.”

So each contender is working hard to convince Corporate America that he is the turnaround guy, while using fear to appeal to ordinary voters. For Romney, it’s fear of those who are poor and need society’s help; for Obama, fear of Romney; for both, fear of foreign threats.

The Standard and Poor’s 500 are hedging their bets, throwing money to both parties, as they usually do — and for good reason. Bipartisanship delivers the goods for the ruling class.

For example, by the time George W. Bush left office, he had signed 460 laws passed by a Democratic Congress, including the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. In 2009, when Obama took over, he defended the bailout against public furor and extended Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. Busy saving capitalism, his promises to labor withered on the vine, including the Employee Free Choice Act to reduce management sabotage of union drives.

With either Romney or Obama, the basic agenda of the bosses is safe. And what they are after this time around is austerity on steroids.

What bosses want.

Four years of wage cuts, bank bailouts, and stimulus funding have transferred millions in wealth from the working class to the already rich. But as the Great Recession lingers, the 1 percent can’t stop now.

Everything working people have won is fair game, though methods of attack vary. To take one case, Republican Paul Ryan is a fan of privatizing Medicare by forcing it to compete in a health insurance “marketplace.” Democrat Obama’s preference, to starve Medicare through “efficiencies” of $716 billion, would lead less directly to a similar result. Funding cuts would force service cutbacks and fee hikes, opening the door for private industry to profit by filling gaps in care.

Mail delivery, schools, mass transit, garbage pickup: privatizers want it all.

Other goals are outlined by the Business Roundtable, a kind of Fortune 500 executive committee. Its policy aims include more free trade, rollback of government regulations for everything from clean water to consumer safety, and energy development — drilling on public lands and fracking. To keep world markets open to U.S. businesses, they push for more carrot (foreign aid) and more stick (war spending). They want foreign “guest workers” and a U.S. labor force with lower wages, fewer benefits, and scarcer pensions.

From Wall Street, pressure is mounting to balance the federal budget. The chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, Mark Zandi, is one of many who warn of a “catastrophic fiscal crisis” if action isn’t taken.

The blueprint for reducing the deficit and freeing up tax dollars for lucrative contracts and debt interest payments is provided by Obama’s bipartisan Simpson-Bowles committee. Cuts of $4 trillion in 10 years would be achieved primarily by slashing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Other proposals would raise the retirement age, hike Medicare premiums, and shrink the federal labor force by 10 percent.

In 2011, a firestorm of protest forced Congress to blink, and the Simpson-Bowles plans went on hold. But, as Obama pal, teachers’ union foe, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says, the two parties will “work it out because they have to.” The bosses see only one way to save their bottom lines: empty the pockets of the masses.

Implementing super-austerity will require political carnage as well — stripping away more civil liberties and attempting to make unions a historical footnote.

Spending money to make money.

To advance this anti-working-class program, the corporate elite pays for the electoral shell game, ensuring that their interests are covered no matter which of the two parties wins.

This election, as of July, Obama led in contributions from individuals, with $348 million, mostly from large donors. Romney had taken in $192 million. The big contributors include Boeing, which wants lucrative Pentagon and Homeland Security contracts, and American Crystal Sugar, which has locked out its unionized workforce since May.

Walmart, Exxon, and Goldman Sachs favor Republicans and their shameless defense of Big Oil, union-busters, and banksters. Microsoft likes Obama’s ability to open new markets in Panama, Colombia, and South Korea. Labor-hater William Koch loves Romney. Tax-evader George Kaiser is betting on Obama.

But neither party has the working class sewn up. And so Super PACs, bankrolled by crooks like Dick Cheney, are flooding the airwaves with propaganda. TV ads and media talking heads are working overtime to persuade unconvinced voters that deficit reduction is the burning issue and that shredding the safety net is the only solution. The PACs are a pre-emptive strike aimed at the bosses’ worst nightmare — a militant mass movement challenging their rule. Heaven help the ruling class should Wisconsin meet Occupy and birth a movement that fights for anti-capitalist solutions to the economic crisis.

What bosses fear.

The wild card is not who wins at the ballot box, but whether a radical movement develops in the streets and workplaces. This is what Greece has taught the world.

Glimmerings of such a movement are surfacing more often, from Chicago, where teachers struck to defend public education, to Washington state, where longshore workers threatened to blockade scab ships in a fight against a union-busting grain consortium.

As attacks on workers and the poor intensify, so will resistance. What’s urgent is the cultivation of leaders and organizations to give direction to protest and sustain it. And that’s what the Durham-López write-in campaign is all about: raising working-class solutions in the sprint for the White House while helping to develop working-class muscles in the marathon for fundamental change.

Contact Linda Averill at AvLinda587@gmail.com.

Learn more about the "Un-Millionaire" Durham-López Presidential Campaign at VoteSocialism.com

The Maimed

Chris Hedges gave this talk Sunday, October 7th in New York at a protest denouncing the 11th annversary of war in Afghanistan. The event, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, was led by Veterans for Peace. This article was originally posted on Truthdig.org

Note: On the 14th of October, there was a great discussion at Occupy Poughkeepsie around CrimethInc.'s criticism of Hedges' non-violent approach. As a socialist, I agree with CrimethInc. that we have a right to self-defense. However, I also believe that we must direct our anger toward taking down the capitalist system as a whole. At the end of the day, it's mass struggle, not violence carried out by a small elite, that will win the class struggle. Anyway, here's Hedges, with a powerful speech regardless of where you fall on this issue:

Many of us who are here carry within us death. The smell of decayed and bloated corpses. The cries of the wounded. The shrieks of children. The sound of gunfire. The deafening blasts. The fear. The stench of cordite. The humiliation that comes when you surrender to terror and beg for life. The loss of comrades and friends. And then the aftermath. The long alienation. The numbness. The nightmares. The lack of sleep. The inability to connect to all living things, even to those we love the most. The regret. The repugnant lies mouthed around us about honor and heroism and glory. The absurdity. The waste. The futility.

It is only the maimed that finally know war. And we are the maimed. We are the broken and the lame. We ask for forgiveness. We seek redemption. We carry on our backs this awful cross of death, for the essence of war is death, and the weight of it digs into our shoulders and eats away at our souls. We drag it through life, up hills and down hills, along the roads, into the most intimate recesses of our lives. It never leaves us. Those who know us best know that there is something unspeakable and evil many of us harbor within us. This evil is intimate. It is personal. We do not speak its name. It is the evil of things done and things left undone. It is the evil of war.

We do not speak of war. War is captured only in the long, vacant stares, in the silences, in the trembling fingers, in the memories most of us keep buried deep within us, in the tears.

It is impossible to portray war. Narratives, even anti-war narratives, make the irrational rational. They make the incomprehensible comprehensible. They make the illogical logical. They make the despicable beautiful. All words and images, all discussions, all films, all evocations of war, good or bad, are an obscenity. There is nothing to say. There are only the scars and wounds. These we carry within us. These we cannot articulate. The horror. The horror.

War gives to its killers a God-like power to take life. And there are those here tonight that have felt and exercised that power. They turned other human beings into objects. And in that process of killing they became objects, machines, instruments of death, war’s victimizers and war’s victims. And they do not want to be machines again.

We wander through life with the deadness of war within us. There is no escape. There is no peace. We know an awful truth, an existential truth. War exposed the lies of patriotism and collective virtue of the nation that our churches, our schools, our press, our movies, our books, our government told us about ourselves, about who we were. And we see through these illusions. But those who speak this truth are cast out. Ghosts. Strangers in a strange land.

Who are our brothers and sisters? Who is our family? Whom have we become? We have become those whom we once despised and killed. We have become the enemy. Our mother is the mother grieving over her murdered child, and we murdered this child, in a mud-walled village of Afghanistan or a sand-filled cemetery in Fallujah. Our father is the father lying on a pallet in a hut, paralyzed by the blast from an iron fragmentation bomb. Our sister lives in poverty in a refugee camp outside Kabul, widowed, desperately poor, raising her children alone. Our brother, yes, our brother, is in the Taliban and the Iraqi insurgency and al-Qaida. And he has an automatic rifle. And he kills. And he is becoming us. War is always the same plague. It imparts the same deadly virus. It teaches us to deny another’s humanity, worth, being, and to kill and be killed.

There are days we wish we were whole. We wish we could put down this cross. We envy those who, in their innocence, believe in the innate goodness of America and the righteousness of war and celebrate what we know is despicable. And sometimes it makes us wish for death, for the peace of it. But we know too the awful truth, as James Baldwin wrote, that “people who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” And we would rather be maimed and broken and in pain than be a monster, and some of us, once, were monsters.

I cannot heal you. You will never be healed. I cannot take away your wounds, visible and invisible. I cannot promise that it will be better. I cannot impart to you the cheerful and childish optimism that is the curse of America. I can only tell you to stand up, to pick up your cross, to keep moving. I can only tell you that you must always defy the forces that eat away at you, at the nation—this plague of war.

"Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

A long ways from home
A long ways from home"

Towering about us are banks and other financial institutions that profit from war. War, for some, is a business. And across this country lies a labyrinth of military industries that produce nothing but instruments of death. And some of us once served these forces. It is death we defy, not our own death, but the vast enterprise of death. The dark, primeval lusts for power and personal wealth, the hypermasculine language of war and patriotism, are used to justify the slaughter of the weak and the innocent and mock justice. ... And we will not use these words of war.

We cannot flee from evil. Some of us have tried through drink and drugs and self-destructiveness. Evil is always with us. It is because we know evil, our own evil, that we do not let go, do not surrender. It is because we know evil that we resist. It is because we know violence that we are nonviolent. And we know that it is not about us; war taught us that. It is about the other, lying by the side of the road. It is about reaching down in defiance of creeds and oaths, in defiance of religion and nationality, and lifting our enemy up. All acts of healing and love—and the defiance of war is an affirmation of love—allow us to shout out to the vast powers of the universe that, however broken we are, we are not yet helpless, however much we despair we are not yet without hope, however weak we may feel, we will always, always, always resist. And it is in this act of resistance that we find our salvation.

EXTRA:

Originally posted at SocialistWorker.org

Crisis and resistance intensify in Europe

Spain has become a new focal point in the struggle against austerity and neoliberalism in Europe. Jonah Birch and Alan Maass look at the backdrop to the struggle.

October 16, 2012

Spanish riot police attacking a protester in Madrid outside the parliament building

THE ECONOMIC crisis wracking Europe--particularly the countries concentrated in the south that have borne the brunt of a catastrophic debt crisis--is producing dramatic new confrontations between governments and financial officials intent on imposing further austerity and masses of working people.

The growing tensions are shaking the foundations of the Eurozone--the 17 countries that use the euro as their currency--and the European Union, with implications that will be felt around the world.
The international media's spotlight has fallen recently on the Spanish state, where a wave of anti-austerity protests have been met with harsh repression by riot police, leading to street battles in Madrid, Barcelona and other cities. The latest demonstrations come in the wake of strike action and militant protests by miners from the Asturias region against threatened job cuts, which likewise ended in battles with police.

On October 7, tens of thousands of workers flooded the center of Madrid for the largest of more than 50 union-backed demonstrations in cities across the country. The main union federations are threatening a general strike if the government doesn't retreat from its latest plan for an additional 13 billion euros in cuts.

The conservative government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy claims to speak for a "silent majority" of people in Spain who favor his policies, but opinion polls show the opposite: One recent survey published in El Pais reported that 77 percent of people back the anti-austerity demonstrations against the government and 90 percent expect them to grow in the future.

The other media focal point has been Greece, the epicenter of the European crisis. At the end of September, the two main union federations, representing public- and private-sector workers, organized another general strike that brought the country to a standstill. This was the latest in a series of general strikes over the past two years--but the first to take place since a new government came to power led by the center-right New Democracy after elections last spring.

Subsequently, protesters in Athens mobilized for demonstrations against visits by representatives of the so-called "troika"--the alliance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Central Bank and European Union (EU)--who were meeting with government officials to check on the progress in implementing 11.5 billion euros worth of new cuts in exchange for access to new funds to bail out the Greece's financial system.

A few days later, demonstrators gave the same treatment to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who came to Athens to express her support for the coalition government led by New Democracy's Antonis Samaras.

Meanwhile, in Portugal, the government was forced to rescind an unpopular plan for a 7 percent hike in taxes to pay for the country's social security system. This proposal was likewise designed to meet the terms of a 78 billion euro bailout from the EU and IMF. Facing widespread opposition, government officials announced they would alter course, though without dropping their plan to sharply reduce the country's debt.

Though with less fanfare than Spain and Greece, opposition to Portugal's push for extensive spending cuts and other austerity measures has escalated sharply. In late September tens of thousands poured into Lisbon's Praca do Comercio in response to calls by union leaders to protest the government. In the days afterward, transportation workers launched a series of job actions that caused major disruptions throughout the country.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

SIGNS OF upheaval have been common for many months in the countries that are suffering the most because of the debt crisis--the so-called PIIGS, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain.
But protest against austerity is spreading across the region. In France--which, under former President Nicolas Sarkozy, was the chief collaborator with Germany's Merkel in demanding harsh neoliberal measures in the indebted countries--some 80,000 people marched in Paris after the government publicized its plan to balance the budget by 2017.
The government was only elected a few short months ago, when the Socialist Party rode enormous popular anger at Sarkozy to a crushing victory in both presidential and parliamentary elections. But President François Hollande and Jean-Marc Ayrault of the Socialists have been plagued by the country's growing economic difficulties, which include a rash of layoffs and reports that the French economy is stagnating.

Hollande and Ayrault also had to quash a potential legislative revolt by lawmakers allied with the Socialist-led coalition government. The dissenters have been objecting to the terms of a new constitutional treaty for Europe, agreed to by representatives of the continent's ruling classes earlier this year, which stiffens penalties for governments that allow their annual fiscal deficits to rise above 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) or their total debt to creep past 60 percent of GDP.
With Sarkozy drummed out of the presidency, Merkel now stands alone as the chief symbol of the agenda that Europe's ruling class is driving through amid a continuing economic crisis--driving down working class living standards with cuts and regressive taxes in order to assure the profits of the bankers and business executives.

Germany is the dominant power in Europe, and Merkel's center-right coalition government has therefore gotten its way in requiring Eurozone member states that need financial bailouts as a result of the crisis to impose austerity--not only drastic cuts in government spending to reduce deficits and debt, but far-reaching neoliberal "structural reforms," ranging from privatization to laws curbing labor rights.

In other words, the German state under Merkel has been able to blackmail indebted governments in Europe's southern tier into pushing through plans for deregulation and the extensive privatization of extensive state-owned assets, along with rolling back social welfare protections. Capitalists throughout Europe have been the beneficiaries--but since Germany capital has had a dominant role since the creation of the Eurozone, it benefits most of all.

Therefore, Merkel's stance hasn't been unique among the various quarters of Germany's political establishment. Her views on how to respond to the Europe-wide crisis differ only minimally from those of leading figures in Germany's main opposition party, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). In fact, to run against Merkel for chancellor in elections next year, the SPD recently selected a prominent advocate of pro-business policies, Peer Steinbrück--who served as Merkel's finance minister until 2009, as the austerity drive was getting underway.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THIS CONSENSUS reflects the position of the German ruling class in the debate among European elites over how to save the euro in the face of the debt crisis.

Since its introduction in 1999, the euro has been immensely beneficial to European capital. This in large part because of the neoliberal and anti-democratic character of the Eurozone---something it shares with other institutions that compose the foundations of European unity, such as the EU--which has ensured that the interests of capitalists are favored over those of workers.

For instance, the Stability and Growth Pact, agreed to by EU members states as monetary union was being established, required governments to carry out spending cuts and neoliberal reforms in order to join the Eurozone--this gave neoliberal political leaders as useful weapon to bludgeon their opponents in national governments across the region.

Likewise, the European Central Bank (ECB) was set up in a manner that guaranteed control over monetary policy for unelected elites committed to preventing any increase in inflation--which would hurt the interest of global investors--no matter what the costs in terms of jobs and wage stagnation.
The euro has therefore played an important role in weakening the bargaining position of labor, reinforcing the trend toward greater inequality and facilitating neoliberal restructuring across the continent.

Even so, the Eurozone could still be torn apart if a country like Greece defaults, despite--or, in many ways, because of--the savage austerity measures imposed with the supposed justification that they will fix the financial crisis. The great fear is that the failure by one state, say Greece, to pay back its creditors would lead to a cascading wave of bankruptcies in the financial sector, which would put further pressures on other countries suffering from indebtedness--leading, perhaps, to a default by Italy, the third-largest economy in the Eurozone, and to a catastrophic financial crisis.

The response of European officials, led by the Germans, has been to put together a series of stopgap measures to head off default--while demanding harsh cuts and neoliberal "reforms" in return.
Over the summer, some officials--like Mario Draghi, head of the ECB--seemed to suggest they would be open to easing the austerity drive to save the euro. But there has been little action to back up the rhetoric. Instead, the last few months have seen only continued maneuvering over the terms of a proposal for a common banking union and endless debates about whether the ECB should buy up bonds issued by governments in Europe's weakest economies--which theoretically would have the effect of reducing borrowing costs and, thus, the need for more bailouts.

Generally, German officials have been more conservative in their attitude toward these disputes than their counterparts in France and elsewhere--again, reflecting the interests of their national ruling class. But the differences among European leaders shouldn't overshadow the fact that capitalist classes across the region have been unified in their commitment to a Europe that is anti-democratic and anti-working-class to the core.

That's why there hasn't been any real dissent within the EU or ECB about the need for austerity, despite the utter failure of this approach to stem the crisis.

On the contrary, the latest evidence makes it clear that austerity is only worsening the Europe's economic disaster. Official statistics show that unemployment in the 17 countries of the Eurozone now stands at 11.4 percent, the highest level since the common currency was introduced in 1999. And this figure surely underestimates the real level of joblessness--millions of workers, for example, have given up looking for a job out of despair at ever finding one.

In Greece and Spain, about one in four people actively searching for work are without a job. Young people have been bit the hardest by the deteriorating labor market conditions: Across Europe, youth unemployment stands at around 22 percent according to official figures; in Greece and Spain, the jobless rate for youth has shot past 50 percent.

Meanwhile, reports during the past several months make it clear that many of Europe's most important economies are falling deeper into recession. Overall GDP statistics for the region have been negative for the past year, meaning that economic output has actually declined.

The economies of the weaker Eurozone members will contract even further for at least the next year, according to newly published findings by government and independent economists. And even in the stronger economies, there is pessimism about economic growth through the end of the year and beyond--in France, official estimates for GDP were lowered to a meager 0.2 percent increase.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

AMONG THE countries that have suffered the worst from the Eurozone crisis, the Spanish state has today moved to center stage. That is because of both the aggressive drive of the right-wing Popular Party (PP) government of Mariano Rajoy to implement even deeper austerity measures and so the growing opposition to him.

Rajoy aims to cut around 65 billion euros from the budget over the next two-and-a-half years. At the end of September, government officials announced the latest round of austerity proposals, which include cuts in pensions and a continuing freeze on public-sector wages (which already have not increased in several years. Rajoy's government has also promised further "reforms" in labor law and social welfare programs, along with liberalization of the energy and telecommunications sectors, and more.

Yet even as the cuts get deeper, the Spanish state's economy continues to deteriorate. New data show that employers are shedding workers at a frightening rate--service sector employment was particularly hard hit during the last year. In late September, the findings of a "stress test" on the country's banks were released--and showed that they would need a total of 59.3 billion euros to recapitalize.

Though Rajoy has been coy about it, the likelihood of Spain heading down the road that Greece has traveled--of successive bailouts by the troika, conditioned on successive rounds of austerity--is greater than ever.

But the austerity drive has also fueled growing battles between the government and those hit the hardest by its measures.

Last year, the movement of the "indignados" (literally meaning "the indignants") swept across the country with mainly youth-led occupations of plazas and central squares to protest the lack of democracy in the country's governing institutions and the absence of opportunities caused by the economic crisis. The indignados helped to inspire a similar "movement of the squares" in Greece--and, later, Occupy Wall Street.

The mobilizations against the government in recent weeks exhibit the same spirit. The government has reacted with increasing levels of violence and repression. Protest marches are regularly met with tear gas and mass arrests--activists have been detained for nothing more than parading around with signs calling on the public to surround the parliament building.

Another factor here is how the austerity drive has fed escalating tensions between the central Spanish state and regional governments--notably the government of Catalonia, which by itself has an economy larger than Portugal's. Catalonia has a long history of nationalist sentiment, which was strengthened by the policies of the Franco dictatorship that ruled Spain from the end of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s until the mid-1970s. Under Franco, the use of Catalan national symbols and
even the Catalan language was banned.

The combination of austerity and cuts in central government funds for regional governments has spurred calls for greater Catalan self-determination, even with a center-right government in power in Catalan. Attendance at a September 11 demonstration in favor of self-determination in Barcelona was estimated 1 million people or more. The regional parliament passed a measure calling for a referendum on self-determination, but the central government insists this is invalid.
The Spanish state's refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of a Catalan referendum is particularly disgusting given the long history of repression suffered under Franco. Indeed, the same type of individuals and forces that suppressed Catalan self-determination under the dictatorship are leading the charge today.

In September, Col. Francisco Alaman compared the crisis to 1936 and vowed to crush Catalan nationalists. "Independence for Catalonia?" Alaman said. "Over my dead body. Spain is not Yugoslavia or Belgium. Even if the lion is sleeping, don't provoke the lion, because he will show the ferocity proven over centuries."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE DIRECTION in Europe is clear: toward a deepening crisis and continuing austerity measures--and a mass resistance, growing in size, activity and militancy.

In countries like Greece and Spain, popular fury has reached such a crescendo that it has partially overcome the fears whipped up by the political and media establishment that rejecting austerity will lead automatically to bankruptcy and being kicked out of the Eurozone, with economic instability and isolation from global markets the result.

In Greece, the Radical Coalition of the Left, or SYRIZA, presented an alternative vision in the country's two elections last spring--of a united government of the left that renounces the agreements with the troika and rolls back the laws imposed at their command--and it came within a few percentage points of winning each time.

On the other hand, the troika's blackmail can still be effective. In the Netherlands, the left-wing Socialist Party was leading in opinion polls before September parliamentary elections on a program of rejecting social welfare cuts and other pro-business reforms, but it ended up finishing behind the more pliant center-left Labor Party.

Turning the widespread anger at austerity and authoritarianism into effective political action will require larger forces among the left and the labor movement to break with their traditional subservience to parties of the center-left that have become integrated into the project of neoliberalism. All too often, unions and other organizations representing the working class and the poor continue to provide electoral support to such parties.

But in country after country, social-democratic parties have helped lead the way toward market liberalization. As a consequence, they are even more discredited than their center-right counterparts in some countries--like Spain, where the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, which ran the government until late last year, has even lower approval ratings than Rajoy's PP.

There is another challenge looming for the left in Europe--the rise of a far right that feeds off the bitterness and despair felt by millions as they face relentless crisis and austerity.
The threat of the fascist right is particularly acute in Greece, where the Nazi Golden Dawn party entered parliament with 18 representatives after elections last June--and which would come in third place, ahead of the main center-left party PASOK, if new elections were held now.

Golden Dawn has fed on the circumstances of crisis and austerity that are tearing apart Greek society. The fascists oppose the troika's austerity measures as a "foreign" imposition, and they have stepped into the vacuum caused by the collapsing Greek state to provide basic services and aid for those in need--but only if they can prove their national identity as Greeks.

This exposes the real aim of Golden Dawn--to scapegoat Greece's large immigrant population as the source of the crisis. Groups of Golden Dawn members patrol the streets in the name of "stopping crime"--and carry out attacks on anyone who can't prove they are Greek citizens. These Nazis have supporters among the police in Greece, who have been known to encourage people reporting crimes to take their problems to Golden Dawn.

Golden Dawn is clearly more than a parliamentary force. Like Hitler and the Nazis in Germany, their leaders and members are more concerned with the battle to dominate the streets, as this report in Britain's Guardian makes clear:

"We feel disgusted in the parliament," said Nikos Mihaloliakos in a speech to his followers on August 25. "If they want us to, we can abandon it at any given moment and take to the streets. There, they shall see what the Golden Dawn is really about, they will see what battle means, they will see what struggle means, they will see what bayonets sharpened every night mean."
Holding torches, they shouted "Blood, honor, Golden Dawn"--a direct translation from the German "Blut und Ehre," the motto once carried by the Nazi SA. "It's you who are our Storm Detachments (Sturmabteilung). Let them come after you!" he continued, in his usual Nazi-inspired terms. Singing their official hymn "Raise the flags high"--again, a direct translation of the Nazi storm troopers' hymn "Die fachne hoch"--young men and women call for open, violent conflict both with the state and with any opponents on the ground.

The far right has been able to grow in other countries, too--a frightening reminder of the fact of history that economic and social crises provide opportunities for the right to grow, as well as the left.
But the Greece where Golden Dawn is spreading its influence is also the Greece of general strikes, massive protests, occupations of the squares and the radical organization SYRIZA. The Spain where Col. Alaman threatens to crush Catalan nationalists is also the Spain of a growing left-wing upheaval that is uniting miners and other workers with a radicalizing youth movement.

The challenge for the left in Europe is to present an alternative to crisis and austerity--not only in the day-to-day struggles against cutbacks and anti-worker attacks, but with a vision for a different kind of society, based on justice and democracy.

Thanks for reading! Again, be sure to join us for upcoming meetings of the End the New Jim Crow Action Network (ENJAN) every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month @6:00 PM at the Sadie Petersom Delaney African Roots Library, Family Partership Center 29 North Hamilton Street, Poughkeepsie NY.

We've got an uphill climb ahead of us, but for the first time in a long time, we have a committed group of activists struggling against mass incarceration, and for a better world.

Toward Democracy, Equality, and Workers' Power!

Issue #13: September 29-October 5

The Hudson Valley Radical             9/29/2012-10/5/2012
Local Action, International Solidarity

Contents
1. Election '12- The Most Effective Vote is a Protest Vote
2. Innocent but Wearing Guilty Clothes
3. Charlie's Letters: What They Won't Print
4. The Two Souls of Socialism: Chapter 10
5. Read On...and Take Action!

Petition of the Week: Sign the Postal Reform Petition of 2012, an independent effort to save the postal service. Print out the PDF, sign your name, and mail it to the president!

Election '12- The Most Effective Vote is a Protest Vote: Write in Stephen Durham for President and Christina López for Vice-President

Originally published in the October-November 2012 issue of the Freedom Socialist. Visit VoteSocialism.com for more on the Durham-López 2012 Presidential Campaign.

Vote for the Greater Good, Not the Lesser Evil!

 

Barack Obama spent $730 million to claim the White House in 2008, and it’s projected that this year’s winner will spend more than a billion. As it turns out, however, it only takes about $40,000 to run an energetic, inspiring, effective presidential write-in campaign to protest this rigged electoral system and give people the chance to cast a bold, positive vote.

It’s a question of goals. Is your ambition to achieve the White House at any cost so you can become the CEO of world imperialism, slashing budgets at home and dropping bombs abroad? Or is your ambition to take part in the struggles of workers and young people across the country, lay the groundwork for future united fronts, and spread the idea that there is an alternative to the misery-inducing profit system?

For Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) candidates Stephen Durham for president and Christina López for vice president, it’s the latter. Since launching their “un-millionaire campaign” in January, they have made good progress toward their goals. In the final stretch, they will continue to persuade people — including those who have turned their backs on the ballot box in disgust — to vote on Nov. 6 for an action plan tailored to what working people really need and for candidates with the principles and experience to deliver.

A working-class platform and team.

Durham and López are ideally suited to represent the multiracial FSP and its socialist feminist program.

Radicalized during the 1960s, Durham, 65, is a white gay rights pioneer with a 20-year history as a union militant in the hotel trades. He serves as FSP organizer for the New York City branch, headquartered in Harlem, a position he previously held in Los Angeles. Fluent in three languages, he is a frequent FSP representative internationally, especially in Latin America.

Chicana Christina López, 44, born and raised in Arizona, is now the president of the Seattle chapter of Radical Women (RW), FSP’s sister organization. With a union background in both the private and public sectors, she is a determined champion for immigrant rights and one of the leaders of a sustained feminist fight against budget cuts in Washington state.

Together, Durham and López have decades of experience organizing for the rights of everyone from tenants to political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Lynne Stewart, and Bradley Manning. They are grounded in the liberation fights of women, people of color, immigrants, LGBT people, people with disabilities, and all those who are oppressed and marginalized.

For five years now, workers and the poor have been paying for an economic crisis they did not cause. The essence of the FSP campaign is to say, ¡no mas!

The platform calls for dismantling the Pentagon and taxing big business in order to provide the proper funds for education, medical care, and other human needs. It stands for ending unemployment with a massive program of new public jobs; nationalizing banks and key industries under the management of workers’ committees; canceling student and consumer debt; establishing authoritative, elected civilian review boards over the police; unrestricted reproductive rights; expanding mass transit and making it free for the good of people and the planet; and much more to improve the lives of those who must work for a paycheck to survive. (Click here to read the full platform.)

Temperature check: West Coast whistle stops.

That’s the platform Durham, López, and their supporters have been taking around the country, from anti-NATO protests and teacher picket lines in Chicago to small farm towns in Washington state and Occupy Poughkeepsie’s base in upstate New York.

It’s also the program that the FSP team ran on in their quest for the nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party (PFP), supported by an enthusiastic band of volunteers. PFP is a California-based electoral coalition with a socialist and feminist program.

At PFP’s nominating convention in Los Angeles the first weekend in August, celebrity won out over political integrity. Durham placed second to comedian and newly minted socialist Roseanne Barr, who turned to PFP only after losing the Green Party nod, which she had sought on a “reform capitalism” platform.

Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) candidate Peta Lindsay helped Barr cinch the Peace and Freedom spot by dropping out and throwing PSL’s support to Barr minutes before voting began. This effectively prevented any of the serious socialist candidates from getting the nomination. (See VoteSocialism.com for more.)

A month later, Barr’s vice-presidential partner, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, withdrew from the ticket, citing political differences and frustration with Barr’s failure to actively campaign or contribute money to the effort. (It was too late for Sheehan to drop out officially, so she will still be on the ballot.)

Meanwhile, FSP candidates López and Durham dusted off their traveling shoes and went back on the road with Campaign Manager Doug Barnes, traveling north from Los Angeles through San Francisco and Sacramento up to Seattle. Making their journey in a borrowed station wagon, they joined union picket lines, leafleted shoppers at big-box stores, and met with supporters including new endorser Suzanne Brooks, a popular and respected writer for outlets like the online Black Commentator.

In Portland, Ore., they discussed education issues with teachers, and Durham spoke on “Wanted: a solution to the unemployment crisis that does the job.”

Once in Washington, more speaking engagements followed, and the two candidates toured the state. They explored issues and put forward their ideas with migrant farm workers, activists against anti-immigrant checkpoints, small-business owners in rural communities, and many others, taping radio interviews on the fly and getting good coverage in local newspapers.

López is campaigning and speaking at several schools in New York and New Jersey in September, and the team looks forward to more campus opportunities in October.

The candidates report finding everyday people receptive to their message. Durham gives as just one example a woman in Ellensburg, Wash., who described herself as a “dyed-in-the-wool Republican,” but told him, “I will read what you have to say because we sure do need change.” López draws the conclusion: “People are not only ready for change, they are looking for direction.”

The two see their campaign not as an end, but as a beginning. They are committed to using what they have learned and the new connections they have made to strengthen the movements for justice and liberation — including the movement for international socialism.

Turn Election Day into an Independence Day.

Millions of people in the U.S. want presidential candidates who really mean it when they say they will end war, create jobs, raise living standards, and guarantee basic rights. Millions are also quite aware that no candidate backed by Wall Street will deliver these things. But they are trapped on the “lesser evil” merry-go-round, trying to figure out every four years who will do not the most good, but the least harm.

It’s way past time to exit the circus. The most meaningful action that workers and the oppressed can take this electoral season is to lodge a protest, to say I am voting for what I want and need.

Vote for Stephen Durham and Christina López on Nov. 6!

Innocent but Wearing Guilty Clothes

by Lorenzo "Cat" Johnson
Originally published in the September/October issue of Socialist Viewpoint
 

 For sixteen-and-a-half years, I fought with every breath in my body to prove my innocence. On October 5, 2011, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals vacated my life sentence on the grounds of “Insufficient Evidence,” which is equal to a not guilty verdict, barring a retrial. The prosecution quickly filed for Re-argument, which was denied. Under the appeal issue on which my conviction was overturned, I was eligible for immediate release. The Prosecution only had one appeal left—that would be to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court only reviews two percent of the cases that come across their desk in the whole United States, so chances of the prosecution being heard was almost impossible.

On January 16, 2012 I had a bail hearing in Federal Court in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. At this hearing, I had people testify to my character and my freedom. The hearing went great. On January 18, 2012 I was finally released from Pennsylvania DOC for a crime I never had anything to do with. Finally, I got a chance to rid myself of these clothes that didn’t belong to me. My legal team met me outside the prison. We drove directly to Philadelphia where the rest of my legal team awaited my arrival. When we arrived, we all met in a huge conference room with at least thirty people in it. My brother and friend came from New York. We all celebrated for a couple hours, and then I headed home, finally, back to New York with my brother and friend.

Soon as we hit New York I started clothes shopping. After that, headed to see the family. In February my friends threw me a welcome home party. It took me by surprise how much love and support I had after all this time. I went and got my license and got a car, which I needed for the job I started working at. It was like I never left. I started doing speaking engagements about wrongful convictions. My first two were at Widener University. My Lead attorney and his wife taught Law there. It was a great experience. I also started speaking at local Community Centers for the youth every other week.
Finally, I was putting my life back together. I met someone that I use to correspond with, Jeffrey Deskovic. Jeffrey had also done sixteen years for a crime he never committed. Jeffrey opened his own Justice Foundation, and helped me with a lot of re-entry things. We became best friends. Between working, speaking engagements and enjoying life, it seemed there weren’t enough hours in the day. I met a lot of others who were exonerated and famous attorneys whom I read about while in prison. Only now, I was there and had my own story to tell. I made a lot of contacts through traveling in these circles, met a lot of good people who shared my misfortune (wrongfully convicted).

May 29, 2012, is a day I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I was at work when I got a call from my Lead attorney. I couldn’t understand him because he was literally crying. What I did hear however was, “The United States Supreme Court granted the prosecution Cert. Petition and reinstated your conviction. Without allowing briefs or oral arguments all at one time Per Curiam.” It hit me like a ton of bricks. Once my attorney got himself together, he went on to say he never saw anything like this happen before. It was unheard of. As our conversation continued, he let me know that they were going to want me to turn myself in eventually, so I should enjoy my freedom while they tried to keep me free until Re-arguments.

I left work and went to my new legal advocates, The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice offices. Once I got there, I begun calling family and friends informing them what had taken place. While doing that, my New York attorneys were on the phones with my Pennsylvania attorneys trying to come to grips with what had taken place. I was completely numb, as if I were dreaming. My worst nightmare was coming back to haunt me, when I thought it was all over. My lady and my cousin came and picked me up. For the next couple weeks I worked hard trying to make sure when I did go back, it would be for a short stay.

I spent my remaining time with family and friends. This was a very emotional time in my life. I had to make some important decisions. Me, and my new legal team from New York, traveled to Philadelphia to meet my legal team there. This was also very emotional, we are very close and this was the first time they’d seen me in months; we always called each other. I can’t discuss what we spoke about due to my pending appeal. I can say that I feel very confident in my chances with this group of people. My time came June 14, 2012 when I turned myself in to SCI Camp Hill at 2:00 P.M. and to, once again, fight to clear myself.

Write to:

Lorenzo “CAT” Johnson #DF1036

SCI Mahonoy

301 Morea Road

Frackville, PA 17432


Charlie's Letters: What They Won't Print

Note: This is the first in a series of letters to the editors of local newspapers that were deemed ill fit to print.
This letter, by Dutchess County's Charlie Davenport discusses Republican legislators' insistance on continued budget cuts while refusing to tax the rich. Maybe if we had a workers' party taking a stand in local politics, they would put up a stronger fight than the Democrats ever could, or ever would.

Sept. 27, 2012
Dear Editor:

Most residents of Dutchess County would stop to pick up a hundred dollar bill if they found it lying at their feet on the ground.

The exceptions to this obvious action would be County Executive Molinaro and the Republican controlled Dutchess County Legislature.

Democratic Legislators have submitted resolutions to the Dutchess County Board of Legislators in a timely fashion, that would have saved the residents of Dutchess County millions (that’s correct--millions) of dollars.

These resolutions concern insurance for local government workers, prescription drug savings for
Dutchess county employees and retirees, and a plan to save local homeowners $250 in home heating fuel costs this winter.

These proposals are based on programs that are successfully in place in counties, cities, and towns in New York State, and have saved the taxpayers of these communities huge sums of money. Last November, in fact, the Dutchess County Association of Supervisors and Mayors unanimously voted to endorse the idea of a similar municipal health insurance program for our county.

This is money lying on the ground, just waiting for some reasonably alert person to pass by and pick it up.

Incredibly, our esteemed Republican legislators did not even want to consider these proposals, which would have clearly benefited the citizens of Dutchess county, savings millions of public dollars and leaving cash in the pockets of thousands of individual residents. They were not on the agenda for the County Legislature Committee Day for (mere) discussion on Thursday Sept. 6

In the meantime, youth programs, education programs, Senior Citizens programs, consumer programs, the health department water lab, the Duchess County Human Rights Commission, and other social programs, have been cut or eliminated by Dutchess County, undoubtedly in the name of "fiscal responsibility".

Any one out there who wants to run for County Legislator next year? Special qualifications or training are not needed; if you know enough to pick up money you find on the sidewalk, you will do a better job than the current group of Republican legislators. In the words of the Irish poet Roy Keane, this current group of Republicans “couldn’t find a glass of beer in a brewery.”

Sincerely,

Charles Davenport 845-790-1640

The Two Souls of Socialism: Chapter 10

Here, we reprint the 10th and final chapter of Hal Draper's classic socialist pamphlet "The Two Souls of Socialism." You can read the entire text here
 

10. Which Side Are You On?

From the point of view of intellectuals who have a choice of roles to play in the social struggle, the perspective of Socialism-from-Below has historically had little appeal. Even within the framework of the socialist movement it has had few consistent exponents and not many inconsistent ones. Outside the socialist movement, naturally, the standard line is that such ideas are visionary, impractical, unrealistic, “utopian”; idealistic perhaps but quixotic. The mass of people are congenitally stupid, corrupt, apathetic and generally hopeless; and progressive change must come from Superior People rather like (as it happens) the intellectual expressing these sentiments. This is translated theoretically into an Iron Law of Oligarchy or a tinny law of elitism, in one way or another involving a crude theory of inevitability – the inevitability of change-from-above-only.

Without presuming to review in a few words the arguments pro and con for this pervasive view, we can note the social role it plays, as the self-justificatory rite of the elitist. In “normal” times when the masses are not moving, the theory simply requires pointing with scorn, while the whole history of revolution and social upheaval is simply dismissed as obsolete. But the recurrence of revolutionary upheavals and social disturbances, defined precisely by the intrusion onto the historical stage of previous inactive masses and characteristic of periods when basic social change is on the agenda, is just as “normal” in history as the intervening periods of conservatism. When the elitist theorist therefore has to abandon the posture of the scientific observer who is merely predicting that the mass of people will always continue quiescent, when he is faced with the opposite reality of a revolutionary mass threatening to subvert the structure of power, he is typically not behindhand in switching over to an entirely different track: denouncing mass intervention from below as evil in itself.

The fact is that the choice between Socialism-from-Above and Socialism-from-Below is, for the intellectual, basically a moral choice, whereas for the working masses who have no social alternative it is a matter of necessity. The intellectual may have the option of “joining the Establishment” where the worker does not; the same option holds also for labor leaders, who, as they rise out of their class, likewise confront a choice that did not exist before. The pressure of conformity to the mores of the ruling class, the pressure for bourgeoisification, is stronger in proportion as personal and organizational ties with the ranks below become weak. It is not hard for an intellectual or bureaucratized official to convince himself that permeation of and adaptation to the existing power is the smart way to do it, when (as it happens) it also permits sharing in the perquisites of influence and affluence.

It is an ironic fact, therefore, that the “Iron Law of Oligarchy” is iron-clad mainly for the intellectual elements from whom it arises. As a social stratum (i.e., apart from exceptional individuals) intellectuals have never been known to rise against established power in anything like the way that the modern working class has done time and again through its relatively brief history. Functioning typically as the ideological flunkies of the established rulers of society, the brain-worker sector of the non-propertied middle classes is yet, at the same time, moved to discontent and disgruntlement by the relationship. Like many another servant, this Admirable Crichton thinks, “I am a better man than my master, and if things were different we would see who should bend the knee.” More than ever in our day, when the credit of the capitalist system is disintegrating throughout the world, he easily dreams of a form of society in which he can come into his own, in which the Brain and not Hands or Moneybags would dictate; in which he and his similars would be released from the pressure of Property through the elimination of capitalism, and released from the pressure of the more numerous masses through the elimination of democracy.

Nor does he have to dream very far, for existing versions of such a society seem to be before his eyes, in the Eastern collectivisms. Even if he rejects these versions, for various reasons including the Cold War, he can theorize his own version of a “good” kind of bureaucratic collectivism, to be called “Meritocracy” or “managerialism” or “Industrialism” or what-have-you, in the U.S.; or “African Socialism” in Ghana and “Arab Socialism” in Cairo; or various other kinds of socialism in other parts of the world.

The nature of the choice between Socialism-from-Above and Socialism-from-Below stands out most starkly in connection with a question on which there is a considerable measure of agreement among liberal, social-democratic and Stalinoid intellectuals today. This is the alleged inevitability of authoritarian dictatorships (benevolent despotisms) in the newly developing states of Africa and Asia particularly – e.g. Nkrumah, Nasser, Sukarno, et al. – dictatorships which crush independent trade unions as well as all political opposition and organize to maximize the exploitation of labor, in order to extract from the hides of the working masses sufficient capital to hasten industrialization at the tempo which the new rulers desire. Thus to an unprecented degree, “progressive” circles which once would have protested injustice anywhere have become automatic apologists for any authoritarianism which is considered non-capitalist.

Apart from the economic-determinist rationale usually given for this position, there are two aspects of the question which illuminate what is broadly at stake:

1. The economic argument for dictatorship, purporting to prove the necessity of breakneck industrialization, is undoubtedly very weighty for the new bureaucratic rulers – who meanwhile do not stint their own revenue and aggrandizement – but it is incapable of persuading the worker at the bottom of the heap that he and his family must bow to super-exploitation and super-sweating for some generations ahead, for the sake of a quick accumulation of capital. (In fact, this is why breakneck industrialization requires dictatorial controls.)

The economic-determinist argument is the rationalization of a ruling class viewpoint; it makes human sense only from a ruling-class viewpoint, which of course is always identified with the needs of “society.” It makes equally good sense that the workers at the bottom of the heap must move to fight this super-exploitation to defend their elementary human dignity and wellbeing. So was it also during the capitalist Industrial Revolution, when the “newly developing states” were in Europe.

It is not a question simply of some technical-economic argument but of sides in a class struggle. The question is: Which side are you on?

2. It is argued that the mass of people in these countries are too backward to control the society and its government; and this is no doubt true, not only there. But what follows? How does a people or a class become fit to rule in their own name?
Only by fighting to do so. Only by waging their struggle against oppression – oppression by those who tell them they are unfit to govern. Only by fighting for democratic power do they educate themselves and raise themselves up to the level of being able to wield that power. There has never been any other way for any class.

Although we have been considering a particular line of apologia, the two points which emerged do in fact apply all over the world, in every country, advanced or developing, capitalist or Stalinist. When the demonstrations and boycotts of the Southern Negroes threatened to embarrass President Johnson as he faced an election, the question was: which side are you on? When the Hungarian people erupted in revolt against the Russian occupier, the question was: which side are you on? When the Algerian people fought for liberation against the “socialist” government of Guy Mollet, the question was: which side are you on? When Cuba was invaded by Washington’s puppets, the question was: which side are you on? and when the Cuban trade unions are taken over by the commissars of the dictatorship, the question is also: which side are you on?

Since the beginning of society, there has been no end of theories “proving” that tyranny is inevitable and that freedom-in-democracy is impossible; there is no more convenient ideology for a ruling class and its intellectual flunkies. These are self-fulfilling predictions, since they remain true only as long as they are taken to be true. In the last analysis, the only way of proving them false is in the struggle itself. That struggle from below has never been stopped by the theories from above, and it has changed the world time and again. To choose any of the forms of Socialism-from-Above is to look back to the old world, to the “old crap.” To choose the road of Socialism-from-Below is to affirm the beginning of a new world.

Read On...and Take Action!


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Activists assemble outside of the Dutchess County Office Building in protest of jail expansion. This photo and the accompanying story appeared on the front page for the latest issue of Northern Dutchess News