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
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
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
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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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.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.
Vote for the Greater Good, Not the Lesser Evil!
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" JohnsonFor 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.
Originally published in the September/October issue of Socialist Viewpoint
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 here10. 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 |
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