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 4th, 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.
MAN SHOT BY COP IN NEWBURGH
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR WILLIAM "CURLY" BAYNES
According to the Times Herald-Record, on Thursday, October 4th, 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 2nd and 4thWednesday @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/
Times Herald Record piece on Baynes’ “Violent Past”: http://www.recordonline.com/
Daily Freeman piece on Ruderfer’s 2011 Award: http://www.dailyfreeman.com/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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:
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 buildingTHE 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."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.
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.
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!
No comments:
Post a Comment