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FOCUS: Trump's Opponents Have the Moral High-Ground. Let's Not Squander It |
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Thursday, 05 July 2018 11:51 |
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Abdul-Jabbar writes: "I wake up screaming because I'm afraid Americans are being herded to a place that is not the 'shining city on the hill', but a place without hope - and that we are slowly but inevitably getting used to it, the way a prisoner gets used to a tiny cell."
Now that the media-moral high ground is achieved, it can't be squandered by appearing petty through personal attacks the way Trump does.' (photo: Shutterstock)
Trump's Opponents Have the Moral High-Ground. Let's Not Squander It
By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Guardian UK
05 July 18
As Americans fear losing hope, some have turned to personal attacks on White House figures. That won’t fix the national crisis
 n the 1941 noir potboiler movie I Wake Up Screaming, Betty Grable’s character asks a corrupt cop: “What’s the good of living without hope?” To which he replies, “It can be done.” The movie’s title is how I’ve been feeling lately when I snap awake each morning, grab the newspaper and read what new atrocities Trump has committed against the English language, common decency, and American ideals laid out in the constitution. Acts of corruption, racism, and public lying that have driven other politicians from office in shame are merely the outrage du jour for the Trump administration.
I wake up screaming because I’m afraid Americans are being herded to a place that is not the “shining city on the hill”, but a place without hope – and that we are slowly but inevitably getting used to it, the way a prisoner gets used to a tiny cell.
Many Americans, fearing this erosion of hope, suffer from a national malady of rage, betrayal, and helplessness. In a desperate effort to express their frustration, some people have taken to publicly shaming Trump collaborators and supporters. The Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was booed at Yankee Stadium, the White House spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, was asked to leave a restaurant by the owner, the Trump supporter and Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, was confronted by protesters after she left a movie, and the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, was heckled by protesters while she dined at a Mexican restaurant. And while part of me is pleased to see these morally abusive people confronted by their victims, this is not the best way to achieve the goal of national reform and reclaim our hope for America.
This is not a plea for civility. The country’s leadership has proven itself so arrogant and immune from reason, compassion, and democratic principles that we are way past civility and decorum. Asking people to be civil in these circumstances is like calling starving Oliver Twist rude for asking for more food. Frankly, there’s so much at stake, and the administration is so unresponsive, I’m shocked that there aren’t huge protests and boycotts every day across the country.
How bad is it? A recent bipartisan poll commissioned by the George W Bush Institute, the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center, and Freedom House found that 80% of Americans are either “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the condition of democracy in the US. Half of Americans fear that we are in “real danger of becoming a nondemocratic, authoritarian country”, with 55% believing our democracy is “weak” and 68% worried it’s “getting weaker”. Michael Abramowitz, the president of Freedom House, observes: “There appears to be a crisis in confidence in the functioning of our democracy, and it is not a party-line issue.” These are real Mission: Impossible/James Bond fate-of-the-world type stakes.
Because so many Americans wake up screaming about the declining state of our country, naturally they want to scream at those responsible. The way you’d scream at a parent you just walked in on cheating on your other parent, realizing that this will result in the destruction of your family. Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues captured the spirit of this need to raise our voices when he sang: “Make me wanna holler / The way they do my life.” But our raised voices must do more than release our frustrations – they have to join a growing chorus that effects change.
I’m not against dramatic protests. When Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their gloved fists in the 1968 Olympics, a lot of people, even some black people, were angry at such an audacious display. But many of us felt a lift in our hearts. Martin Luther King’s Selma march, the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, the 1968 protests at the Democratic National Convention – these were bold and daring protests by a few against a mighty majority. And they were effective in inspiring discussions that instigated change.
Those opposing Trump have always had the moral high ground, but right now they also have the media-moral high ground, which means the public perceives them as more moral. This is due to the horrific images of caged children torn from their parents that pushed even some of Trump’s supporters against him. Add to that the US supreme court’s upholding of Trump’s Muslim ban. During a 2015 press conference, Trump stated: “Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” Yet Russia has done more damage to democracy by using hackers to interfere with our elections than either those immigrant families or Muslims. Where is the ban on Russians entering the US? Trump’s focus on punishing people of color, both foreign and domestic, is without moral ground whatsoever.
Now that the media-moral high ground is achieved, it can’t be squandered by appearing petty through personal attacks the way Trump does. The ultimate goal is not to shame his cohorts into changing their ways, because their greed and selfish political ambition bubble-wraps them against shame. Like the inquisitors during the Spanish Inquisition, they believe they are piously clothed in the protective mantle of a higher being: Donald Trump.
They are wrong.
A recent Gallup poll indicates that 62-67% find Trump untrustworthy, unlikable, and unadmirable and believe he has chosen advisers poorly and is incompetent in working with both parties. The problem is that Trump’s Washington isn’t a swamp, it’s a free-flowing sewer.
We can’t let the media discussion become about civility or manners or diners’ rights. We must focus on the policies and the damage they are doing to our country, our rights, and our future. That’s the message that has to be emphasized every single day until the midterm elections drive out his co-conspirators and collaborators. After that, it’s the 2020 elections – when Trump is permanently removed, relegated to the history books as the worst president ever, and the Reign of Terror becomes nothing more than a cautionary tale full of sound and fury – but signifying nothing.
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RSN: FBI Goes Trumpian, Hypes Imaginary Terrorism Threat as Fake News |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Thursday, 05 July 2018 10:43 |
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Boardman writes: "This press feed is well-framed to make readers think the worst - 'al Qaeda' and 'terrorist' and 'Terrorism Task Force.' And all those aliases - that's scary stuff. But what did Pitts actually do? And why only one count? And who else was involved? The details fail to live up to the hype."
Demetrius Nathaniel Pitts, aka Abdur Raheem Rafeeq, aka Salah ad-Deen Osama Waleed, 48, of Maple Heights, Ohio, was charged with one count of attempting to provide material support to al Qaeda. (photo: AP)
FBI Goes Trumpian, Hypes Imaginary Terrorism Threat as Fake News
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
05 July 18
“Protecting our citizens and our nation remains the Justice Department’s top priority,” U.S. Attorney [Justin] Herdman said. “This defendant plotted and scouted locations in downtown Cleveland for an attack on July 4th, when he knew it would be packed with people celebrating our nation’s birthday. We will continue to do all we can to identify, arrest and prosecute those threats while working to keep our communities safe and secure.”
FBI press release, July 2, 2018
 ell, that sounds like pretty good news, doesn’t it? The supposed July 4th attack sounds like it could have been horrendous, right? And your Justice Department saved us all yet again, right? That must be why the Justice Department headlined its press release:
Ohio Man Arrested for Attempting to Assist a Foreign Terrorist Organization With Homeland Attack Plot
Actually, no, that’s not quite what happened. This is fundamentally a big government lie. Actually, it’s a tissue of lies.
The government press release begins with some facts:
Demetrius Nathaniel Pitts, aka Abdur Raheem Rafeeq, aka Salah ad-Deen Osama Waleed, 48, of Maple Heights, Ohio, was charged with one count of attempting to provide material support to al Qaeda, a designated foreign terrorist organization. Pitts was arrested Sunday [July 1] by members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.
This press feed is well-framed to make readers think the worst – “al Qaeda” and “terrorist” and “Terrorism Task Force.” And all those aliases – that’s scary stuff. But what did Pitts actually do? And why only one count? And who else was involved? The details fail to live up to the hype.
Instead of clarifying the arrest, the press release then continues for its next four fat paragraphs with chest-thumping government officials offering bloated, irrelevant, and largely false rhetoric – “the dangerous threat posed by radical Islamic terrorism” and “plans to attack innocent civilians” and “working to keep our communities safe and secure.” This is all good, solid Orwellian language as it avoids lying without actually telling the truth. And it makes one wonder: Good lord, what on earth was Demetrius Pitts up to all by himself? According to the press release:
“Pitts, a U.S. citizen living in Ohio, pledged his allegiance to al-Qaeda, a foreign terrorist organization, and was planning to conduct an attack in Cleveland on Independence Day, the very day we celebrate the freedoms we have in this country,” said Special Agent in Charge [Stephen] Anthony. “The FBI commends the public for reporting individuals that espouse their radical beliefs and/or engage in behavior that threaten the lives of our military personnel and community.”
This is the only – mysterious – reference in the press release to thank “the public for reporting individuals.” And does the FBI now consider it a crime for people to “espouse their radical beliefs”? Isn’t that a radical belief? And does the thanks to informers mean that there was NO independent investigative work? The balance of the press release comprises a summary of a court-filed affidavit that completely supports such a conclusion. Apparently this heroic defense of public safety consisted of someone giving Pitts’s name to the FBI some time ago and the FBI then executing a sting operation bordering on entrapment (or more likely actual entrapment) of a man of less than full competence or significant ability. Not only that, it’s taken the FBI almost two and a half years to instigate Pitts to allegedly criminal action, as the FBI admits (indirectly) in its 31-page affidavit filed by Special Agent Andrew Wilson, a 22-year veteran assigned to the Cleveland Joint Terrorism Task Force:
6. On December 31, 2015, a Facebook profile for ABDUR RAHEEM RAFEEQ (which was ultimately determined to be PITTS) came to the FBI's attention after RAFEEQ sent a private Facebook message to "The Craig Sewing Show," a California-based political commentary program, stating: "Fuck America and there arm[sic] forces. The USA will be destroy. Allahu Akbar."
First of all, this is all Constitutionally-protected free speech. Secondly, no serious terrorist is going to out himself to the Craig Sewing Show. What Pitts probably unwittingly did was to set himself up as a clay pigeon for the FBI to take potshots at. There is a long, shameful pattern of FBI agents manipulating marginal people into imaginary threats to build a bogus arrest record that actually undermines freedom by “defending” it. Who knows how many people rot in jail as “terrorists” only because they were entrapped by the FBI in “plots” that never actually existed as real-world threats? The FBI apparently ignored Pitts for a year until he made another post, on Facebook, according to the FBI affidavit:
7. On January 25, 2017, PITTS used his Facebook account Abdur Raheem Rafeeq (UID 100010669985661) to comment on pictures believed to be from a jihad training camp. PITTS posted, "We as Muslim need to start. Training like this everyday. We need to known how to shoot guns. Throw hand grenades hand to hand combat. How survey out in the woods. Look at the bed blue eyed devils. They teach their little dogs on how to shoot and Hunt. If you fear death. Then don't say you love Islam. The Rasool saw said. We should always be prepared to fight in the name of Allah Akbar. All cowards stay home. Walsalaam. Abdur Raheem sahl Rafeeq. Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar."
The FBI slouched into action, reviewing Pitts’s Facebook account in February 2017 and observing it into June 2018. According to the affidavit, during those 16 months, the FBI believed Pitts was “threatening violence against the United States,” “expressed a desire to recruit people to kill Americans,” and was “willing to conduct a U.S. based attack.” The FBI took no action. Neither did Pitts.
As of early 2018, Demetrius Nathaniel Pitts, 48, an African-American US citizen, had apparently been living a quiet life in Willoughby, Ohio, about 19 miles east of Cleveland on Lake Erie. In May he apparently moved to Maple Heights, about 13 miles south of Cleveland. It’s not clear what he did for work, or whether he was employed. He apparently lived alone. After the FBI arrested Pitts, Diane Stoudemire, his aunt near Cincinnati, expressed bewilderment, even though she hadn’t heard from him in two years:
He's never been a violent person, so that's what I don't understand…. He had had some problems with drugs and everything. He came up without his father, which is my brother, that was killed before Demetrius was born. His mother passed away while Demetrius was in penitentiary, so he's been having such a hard time….
Diane Stoudemire said Pitts lived “on the fringe” of society, but had no idea he’d been living near Cleveland:
We've been worried about him, because I was his favorite aunt. And he used to would come to me, and I haven't heard from Demetrius in a few years…. He was a good person. I never knew him to get in no trouble, like hurting somebody or fighting or anything. Anything he ever done was to himself.
According to the FBI at a July 2 press conference, Pitts has a criminal history that includes felonious assault and aggravated robbery in 1989, when he was 19. He served less than a year before being released on probation. He was arrested in 2006 but charges were dismissed. He was arrested again in 2007, convicted on a theft charge, and placed on probation. He was arrested in 2016 for absconding from probation in 2009.
On June 18, everything started to change from bad to worse for Pitts. That was the day the FBI sent an undercover agent to meet with Pitts in Willoughby and surreptitiously recorded their conversation (excerpted in the FBI affidavit). The conversation is full of violent fantasy to which the FBI agent contributes, but nothing like a plan or even a credible threat emerges. Pitts makes it clear that he has not joined al Qaeda but would take a test to join. The FBI agent suggests a test: “take out a soldier? A US Army soldier?” Pitts responds: “He dead. He dead. He dead. It’s like I said.” Then Pitts seems to back off the idea. They go through a similar loop talking about killing a Marine. Nothing is decided, or even promised. Pitts does not ask the FBI agent to prove he’s from al Qaeda.
On June 22, the FBI agent met with Pitts in Walton Hills and surreptitiously recorded the conversation (excerpted in the affidavit). The FBI agent starts with a pitch that fits an effort at entrapment:
And so that's part of, part of the question. Part of the in and out is understanding what al Qaeda is about and then wanting to know are you willing to, I mean any brother that's gonna be in al Qaeda has to be willing to do all the things that we've already talked about…. That's why I mean, I mean, I mean I'm excited I went back but of course the brothers, they wanna build trust by steps. And they're willing to send a brother out to meet you but we gotta make, we gotta get to that level too. The other thing too is I mean there is, there is risk with all this and that's why we gotta, we gotta start somewhere. I mean I think we are there but I gotta go back and convince…. I mean I think that can happen pretty soon. But-but this is, but I think this is what this is a big thing that was asked of me cause I told him I told him about hey the value in the knife fighting. The possibility of like what we talked about last time. Finding places where we could get in and set up a bomb. I mean if they provide the bomb maker and we find the path in. Then man, dude we can do, I mean you wanna talk about if doing something like that, that from, from, from within, that will shake them more than 9/11 . 9/11 mashallah was amazing.
Pitts doesn’t buy into any this. He volunteers that he been thinking about the 4th of July, but nothing specific. Pitts says: “I'm trying to figure out something that would shake them up on the 4th of July…. See I-I that's why I like chess.” Pitts mentions “a bomb to blow up at the 4th of July parade,” then rejects it because of too many surveillance cameras in the city. The FBI agent abets the “planning” by googling a map of downtown Cleveland. Later the same day, the FBI agent promises to provide Pitts with a bus pass and a cell phone.
On June 25, a second FBI agent posing as “a trusted ‘brother’” met with Pitts in Maple Heights, delivering the bus pass and cell phone.
On June 26, Pitts texted the first FBI agent that he had scouted out downtown Cleveland, as discussed. Pitts said he planned to go to Philadelphia (his hometown) for further surveillance. The FBI agent talked to Pitts on the phone and asked if Pitts was going through with the July 4th plan that other “brothers” were building devices for. The conversation was inconclusive.
On June 27, Pitts met with the second agent posing as a “brother” and turned in his cell phone. The second agent gave Pitts a black flag as a terrorist symbol. Later the same day, Pitts met with the first FBI agent for two and a half hours to discuss “the impending July 4th bombing” (according to the FBI affidavit). Pitts says he’s going to spend the day July 3 casing the surroundings, “We’re just takin’ pictures, takin’ video.” Pitts says he wants to see the explosion on the 4th and the FBI agent says:
You wanna see it - you wanna see that fireball go flying - you wanna see the body parts flying into the sky?... Alright. Well you know what? Like where we were standing when you can overlook the whole lake, off by that - on top of that parking garage, you can get a pretty good view from way up there.
At this point in the affidavit, neither party has specified just what kind of bomb might be used and they’ve discussed a number of possibilities. They have no specific target. The FBI agent seems confused: “Oh, so you’re talking like uh – like uh full car bomb in the whole van.” Pitts, who has no way of knowing about and no connection with any bomb, agrees. The FBI agent says: “Alright. I mean this is a – we’re going from a remote control car bomb to a full size van.” Pitts seems to agree but talks about the remote control toy cars with bombs. This seems to fluster the FBI agent, the conversation wanders, “this is gonna take an adjustment and my plan was for the – well what we kinda – they gonna bring in the bomb guy for us….” They seem to reassure each other that they’re going through with the plan even though they haven’t settled on the plan. Pitts isn’t planning to be involved with the bombing directly:
My part is just to go scope, get the information we need, and bring it back…. See you gotta have Brothers who don't nobody never see. Like I don't wanna meet all the Brothers. No.
The FBI agent agrees to this. Later in the day, Pitts texted the FBI agent that the plan was impossible, too much security. Pitts talks about pushing on, maybe in Philadelphia:
Ahki (brother) I want to do this by myself. I have no reason to live. Since I know Philly very well. All I need from the brother. Is some chicken eggs that go [emojis inserted that appear to be explosions]. I will put my life on the line. This will be done in September labor day. Just help me get there. So ahki you must show me. How to drive again. Now can you do that. You don't need to be in this. Ahki you have a family. So keep your hands clean ahki.
On June 28, on the direction of the first FBI agent, Pitts carried out instructions relating to the imaginary bombing, including searching for a vehicle. Pitts said a purchase would be difficult because he’d have to provide a driver’s license. The FBI agent suggested a strawman purchase. Pitts found several possible vehicles, but bought none.
June 30, the FBI agent “told Pitts that the attack Pitts planned in Cleveland for July 4th was a "go" and that the al Qaeda brothers were happy with Pitts’ plan for Cleveland” (according to the FBI affidavit), even though there was still no clear record of any specific plan. The FBI agent egged Pitts on with false promises of a “large explosion … on behalf of al Qaeda.”
On July 1, the FBI agent met with Pitts in Garfield Heights to learn what plan Pitts had for Philadelphia. Pitts explained he was still planning an attack that he wanted to be bloody. The FBI showed Pitts a “remote control car … [that] contained C-4 explosives and BB’s” rigged by the FBI, a toy that could roll under a police vehicle. Pitts freely speculated on uses for remote control cars as well as a larger bomb that he assumed existed. The meeting ended with his arrest.
On July 2, the Justice Department issued its deceitful press release, claiming to have protected the country from a fearsome terrorist attack, even though the FBI knew that attack was never even close to taking place, and even though the FBI knew Pitts had zero capability of carrying it out on his own. The FBI makes no claim to the contrary, but merely asserts the sort-of-true claim that Pitts “did knowingly attempt to provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization.” The FBI does not acknowledge that the “foreign terrorist organization” was an FBI fiction and that Pitts’s attempt was based on a delusion.
The FBI filings make very clear that no terrorism and no threat of terrorism existed before the FBI decided to pump one up, using a troubled, angry, isolated black man as its pawn to inflate its own institutional ego with fake news. And the news media bought the fake news as presented, uncritically parroting the FBI spin that they stopped an attempted terror attack.
CNN: Man accused of plotting terror attack on July 4th parade in Cleveland
New York Times: Man Arrested in Cleveland Terror Plot After F.B.I. Sting
ABC News: Man accused of planning terrorist attack in Cleveland had San Francisco travel plans
USA Today: FBI: Man who planned attack on Cleveland wanted to give explosive-filled cars to military children
And so it went across the news media, with a presumption of guilt fostered by FBI lies taken at face value. FBI agent Stephen Anthony set the tone for media coverage:
Law enforcement cannot sit back and wait for Mr. Pitts to commit a violent attack…. We don’t have the luxury of hoping an individual decides not do harm someone or get others to act.
This is disingenuous to the point of deceit. This is a totalitarian mindset. Anthony knows full well that Pitts has never committed a terrorist act, that Pitts has never attempted a terrorist act, that Pitts is known to have “planned” a terrorist act only with FBI incitement. The FBI knows it has no evidence that Pitts is even capable of committing a terrorist act. Based on the available evidence, Pitts has done nothing worse than exercise his First Amendment rights in politically incorrect ways, expressing deep anger and hostility toward the US for its endless slaughter or Muslims. What Pitts was incoherently expressing was rage at his own country’s terrorism. For that, his country makes him the terrorist.
That’s not a reality that many Americans can perceive from their 9/11-induced fear bubble (that the FBI cleverly invoked). The hysteria of 9/11 has not abated much. We continue to spend endless millions on terrorism task forces, so of course they’re going to find terrorists even where there are none – that’s their job. And if they can’t find terrorists, they’ll invent them as they did with Demetrius Pitts, who was essentially helpless once the FBI targeted him. His case should bring shame to anyone serious about law enforcement and justice. Instead it has brought on nothing better than official empty strutting and craven media credulity.
As for Demetrius Pitts, he has been serially lynched – first by life, which could happen to anyone. But then he was lynched by an FBI in search of easy prey, next he was lynched by the Justice Department in search of easy praise, and now he is being lynched by news media in search of easy answers. In due course, he will likely be lynched by the court system and then by the prison system.
This case is what societal failure looks like. Police-state tactics can railroad an innocent man and no one questions the police state’s flimsy official story.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theater, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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This 4th of July Marks a Return of Class Struggle in the US! |
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Wednesday, 04 July 2018 13:50 |
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Blosser writes: "As millions throughout the United States celebrate the Fourth of July, or the independence of the United States, it is a good opportunity to celebrate the return of a beautiful tradition that has been mostly missing in the country for the past three decades: class struggle."
New Yorkers demonstrate against Donald Trump's immigration policies. (photo: Getty)
This 4th of July Marks a Return of Class Struggle in the US!
By Michael Blosser, teleSUR
04 July 18
Class struggle is back baby!
 s millions throughout the United States celebrate the Fourth of July, or the independence of the United States, it is a good opportunity to celebrate the return of a beautiful tradition that has been mostly missing in the country for the past three decades: class struggle. The U.S. working class, long abandoned by the neoliberal corporate Democrat party and stigmatized, impoverished, and oppressed by the classist far right-wing nationalistic Republican party, has finally lifted one big long middle figure to the elites and upper class saying “Ya basta” (enough already).
From the tens of thousands of ‘Red for Ed’ teacher’s going on strike, to the first fast food restaurant union in the history of the United States, to Black Lives Matter, to the massive growth of the leftist group Democratic Socialists of America, to the union organizing, clearly class struggle is back and not going anywhere, anytime soon.
"I think what is important for the movement right now is to be building independent political power that is accountable to the people rather than corporate interests and to start strategizing and experimenting with ways to actually democratize society so that when we do take power the left doesn’t merely govern over capitalism but is able to fundamentally transcend it."
-- Charles Allen, DSA organizer
History of Class Struggle in the United States
It might not be well known, but the United States used to be a bastion for leftist thought and for having a radical labor movement. Believe it or not, the 40 hour work week, the weekend, May day and other labor milestones have their origins in the U.S. labor movement. Long before war-criminal and arguably the country’s worst president Ronald Reagan and subsequent neoliberal Democrat and Republican administrations gutted the U.S. labor movement, the labor movement and its leftist political allies were able to bring millions to the streets, have significant electoral power, and enact progressive legislation. What happened?
Let’s explore a little history. Mayday, or international workers day, is recognized in almost every country in the world except the country where it started, the United States. In May 1, 1886, 250,000 workers went on strike in Chicago to demand an 8-hour workday, a demand that was making its ways through the radical labor movement in the United States that from the Chicago stockyards, to the mines of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, to railroad workers, were in open revolt against their corporate masters.
Anarchist labor leaders such as August Spies and Albert R. Parsons heeded the call by the Knights of Labor for a nationwide strike after police had killed several union members protesting for an 8-hour workday, and mobilized more than 50,000 union members to Haymarket square. Police were sent in by their corporate masters to break up the rally and a bomb was thrown into the crowd, killing police officers and civilians. Although the culprit was never found for the bomb, the U.S. government used it as an excuse to brutally purge the labor movement and its radical leaders, sentencing eight anarchist labor leaders to death, regardless of the fact that most of them were not at the tragedy.
Although the percentage of workers belonging to a union in the United States reached its highest number in 1954 at almost 35 percent and with the highest number of union members occurring in 1979 at an estimated 21.0 million, the radical roots of the U.S. labor movement never recovered. The stage was set for the destruction of the labor movement by Ronald Reagan and subsequent neoliberal Republican and Democrat governments by the decision of the biggest US union leaders to adopt a more business-friendly and non-combative approach to regressive US governments and corporations.
With the war on unions and the labor movement continuing with Right to Work laws and the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision preventing unions from forcing members to pay dues the blows continue with the most recent numbers showing that the percentage of U.S. workers belonging to a union in 2017 was 10.7 percent, with the number of union members at 14.8 million. However, hope for the return of the radical labor movement is growing as the massive teacher strikes, growth of the IWW and the DSA sending clear signals that class struggle is back once again.
Teacher Strikes
Teachers, living in traditional ‘Red states’ (states that consistently vote Republican), finally had enough of a neoliberal educational system that cut funds and services for years, leading the teachers in these states to be the lowest paid in the country, and destroying the quality and access of even the most basic education in the United States. Starting in West Virginia, which has a strong radical labor history, thousands of teachers went on strike for weeks until they won a 5 percent pay raise and other demands.
The teachers strikes spread like wildfire, reaching Kentucky, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, and North Carolina. Two common themes in the teacher strikes were that they all happened in traditionally ‘Red’ states, or states that have consistently voted red or conservative Republican in virtually all of their previous local and national elections in the last five decades, and all states that experienced the strikes were ones that had the lowest teachers pay, educational funding and services in the country.
The teacher strikes woke up a working and middle class that was no longer going to sit idly by while politicians and corporations continued to exploit them while sitting on billions of dollars of profit.
Noah Karvelis, one of the teachers and organizers that went on strike in Arizona, indicated that the successful teacher strike in West Virginia was the spark that after decades of teacher exploitation in the state got the teachers in Arizona thinking, “Wait a second. We haven't seen a raise in 10 years. Our kids don't have the textbooks they need. We have 35 kids in our class. We need to do something. It's our turn to get organized,” Karvelis explained in an interview with teleSUR.
IWW/Burgerville Workers Union
Another example of class struggle returning to the United States is with the organizing efforts of the IWW. The IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, or “The Wobblies” is a historical union that although not nearing their peak membership of more than 150,000 active members in the early 20th century, has received a massive surge of interest and membership lately.
This can be mostly attributed to the IWW having a specific anti-capitalist mission statement and a horizontal structure that stresses solidarity between workers, in contrast to the larger and more mainstream AFL-CIO, whose union bosses regularly cut deals with corporate bosses and Democrats. The IWW, though still small in number of active members in comparison to other U.S. unions, have had a more than 262 percent growth of membership between 2006-2016 and the number keeps rising.
The IWW has recently started unionizing previously untouchable corporations such as Starbucks, Whole Foods, Jimmy Johns, and campaign workers. Luis Brennan, an organizer for the IWW, spoke to teleSUR about why their organizing model has seen recent success.
“It's easy to forget that back in the day many workers joined unions because they saw them as vehicles for dramatic transformation of our world away from exploitative and oppressive capitalism and toward a liberatory socialism...With our unique model of welcoming workers in all industries and organizing the worker rather than the workplace under an anti-capitalist banner, we have an opportunity to be a conduit for many young people's political vision to build a more dynamic and powerful labor movement.”
One of the biggest successes of the IWW in recent years was joining the Burgerville Workers Union campaign. Burgerville, a massive fast food chain that is mainly located in the Pacific Northwest in the United States, consistently talked to the media about how well they treated their workers, but consistently paid them poverty wages and employed a bunch of union busting and intimidation tactics throughout the unionizing campaign.
However, after a more than a year-campaign to try to negotiate with the corporation, the Burgerville Workers Union, a union associated with the IWW who also received solidarity from Portland’s local Democratic Socialists of America chapter, took matters into their own hands and became the first fast food union in the history of the United States.
Burgerville Union member Jimmy talked to teleSUR about how solidarity among their fellow workers on the shop floor was essential and how unions are so much more than just wages and benefits.
"Our anti-capitalist leanings mean we see unions as a vehicle for broader social change, and a way of empowering people to make that change in their own lives. I think the labor movement can be a space for regular people to exert tremendous power, in a way that our country hasn’t seen in a long time."
Democratic Socialists of America
Maybe due to the massive popularity of the Bernie Sanders campaign, the fact that Millennials prefer socialism over capitalism, or the fact that we are experiencing the greatest display of wealth inequality in history, and young people in the United States are waking up as the most indebted and underemployed generation and will be the first generation in the U.S. since the Great Depression where their standard of living will be less than their parents. But due to those reasons and many others, in spite of the continuous media propaganda and hegemony condemning socialism, socialism is back and not going anywhere anytime soon.
One example of the growing power of the socialist movement in the United States is the Democratic Socialists of America, a left-wing group that has rapidly become the largest socialist organization in the United States after Trump’s victory with over 40,000 members. As well, it has recently received massive attention with huge legislative victories such as the victory of Alexendria Ocasio Cortez in the New York primary over corporate Democrat Joe Crowley, the victory of Lee Carter in Virginia’s State house of the Republican majority leader, and numerous other local, state, and national victories throughout the United States.
While some on the left have criticized DSA as a slightly more progressive version of the corporate Democrat party, it is the first anti-capitalist party with electoral power in the United States since the time of Eugene Debs, and DSA members and the organization have endorsed the pro-Palestinian boycott movement BDS against the Israeli occupation, have called for the abolition of ICE, and have taken other clear leftist stances such as Medicare for all, support for the Black Lives Matter movement, and has developed key relationships with grassroots orgs and working-class communities.
Charles Allen, an organizer of the Miami chapter of DSA, explains to teleSUR the pull of the group to thousands of people around the United States thus, "there is consensus within the Democratic Socialists of America that capitalism, the socioeconomic system we are currently under, is an immensely exploitative, unequal, and undemocratic socioeconomic system."
He went on to stress that his organization and its members "believe that another world is possible, one where both the economy and society are run democratically for the benefit of all of humanity, rather than the profits of the few. We call this liberatory vision 'democratic socialism'...in order to do so we must build a mass movement that is uncompromisingly democratic, socialist, feminist, anti-racist, internationalist and opposed to all forms of oppression."
A New Way Forward for the US Left?
From the teachers strikes, to the Fight for 15, to Black Lives Matter, to the rapid growth in DSA, from the massive potential of union organizing in IWW, to the massive protests against Trump’s Immigration policy, has the U.S. left finally found new life? One consistent aspect of each of these massive campaigns has been their grassroots and working-class basis, their embrace of a true left-wing discourse, and the solidarity amongst the movements and workers.
Speaking to teleSUR in a recent interview, Cole Dorsey, an IWW organizer says one way forward is by, “continuing to organize with our co-workers and community members, develop a ‘culture of solidarity’ where we come together as a class in mutual aid and collectively fight back, not waiting for any union bosses or politicians approval but acting right now.”
A new way forward, instead of co-opted deradicalized corporate politics from above, seems to be from the left, and from below, with coalitions between progressive grassroots groups and unions and solidarity being essential. Karvelis says, “When you stand united, you can create a change. The teachers in Arizona became tired of waiting on politicians and created change themselves. When your voice is unheard for so long, you must take power into your own hands. And for the teachers of Arizona, and the rest of the working class, that means getting organized.”
“The next step for workers, as it always has been, is to organize and fight!... We can't win unless workers take action and we have a real opportunity to do so today. Everywhere people see that the lives they're living don't work, that they need more and they deserve better. They're ready and even excited to take action, and it's our role as the organized labor movement to support that fire in taking shape, winning real changes, and making important strides to making another world not only possible but a reality!”
-- Luis Brennan, IWW organizer
This Fourth of July, let’s honor the radical legacy of the U.S. Labor movement and the return of class struggle to the United States by getting organized.
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FOCUS: We Need a Financial Transactions Tax Before It's Too Late |
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Wednesday, 04 July 2018 10:45 |
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Taibbi writes: "As the country sits atop a giant debt-bomb, measures are needed to rein in excess speculation."
Wall Street. (photo: Richard Drew/AP/REX/Shutterstock)
We Need a Financial Transactions Tax Before It's Too Late
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
04 July 18
As the country sits atop a giant debt-bomb, measures are needed to rein in excess speculation
 unday’s CNN Money headline was terrifying:
“The $6.3 trillion debt binge: American companies have never owed this much”
Thanks to low interest rates, Trump’s tax cuts and a financial unsafe-sex atmosphere where regulatory oversight is almost nonexistent, companies are borrowing massive amounts and encouraging waves of stock buybacks, sending an already insane market to worrisome new heights.
That $6.3 trillion debt bomb upon which corporate America is sitting is now bigger than any in history, eclipsing even pre-2008 levels. The national “economic miracle” Trump keeps lauding is – like his own financial empire – resting on a bed of borrowed cash.
For more than a year, the soaring stock market – and particularly the seemingly unsustainable performance of tech stocks – has led to whispers of a new speculative bubble.
Maybe it won’t all blow up this time, but it sure feels like we should pump the brakes. This would be a great time, for instance, to reinstate the doomed Glass-Steagall act, whose 85th birthday passed noiselessly late last month. The law curbed speculation for generations by separating commercial and investment banking.
The problem is, the current administration – and a bipartisan group of Senators – are determined to go the other way, having just rolled back more provisions of the already-weak Dodd-Frank Act. Returning to Glass-Steagall, which was designed to prevent banks from over-creating bad loans and pumping them into the economy via investment banking operations, seems like a distant fantasy.
A new approach to reining in speculation is needed, which is why the tiny glimmer of good news from late last week was so welcome.
On June 27th, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) became the first co-sponsor to S. 805, the “Inclusive Prosperity Act of 2017,” originally introduced by Bernie Sanders.
The bill is the American version of a Financial Transactions Tax, a plan to raise revenue and curb speculation by attaching micro-taxes to financial transactions. The E.U. moved toward an FTT plan for 11 Eurozone countries in 2013.
The Sanders camp trumpets the plan as a money-raiser – a way to pay for big-ticket social programming like free college tuition. But it also has a huge safety component.
The Wall Street version of a sin tax, even the tiniest financial transactions surcharge could help rein in greed orgies just enough to keep the economy from exploding. In the past, these micro-taxes have been envisioned as a way to pay for the inevitable bailouts in our increasingly deregulated economy.
But if you really want to know why a financial transactions tax is needed, all you have to do is read Guy Lawson’s Octopus, a crazy story of a master con-man named Sam Israel who ends up being conned by even worse con-men.
The book is significantly about the evils of the financial-ization era, when Wall Street learned it could make bigger and faster profits on financial transactions than it could by nurturing the underlying brick-and-mortar economy.
In the early part of the book, Lawson describes how Israel and his former boss, Fred Graber, used to overwhelm the markets and make easy risk-free cash by using high volumes of transactions to move a stock price. They called this “painting the tape.” As Lawson writes:
The agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland was one of the stocks Graber fooled with relentlessly. To paint the tape on ADM, Graber and Israel would call eight different brokers and put in buy orders simultaneously to run up the price – at a time when Graber was holding lots of the stock ready to sell into a rising market.
The practices Lawson describes took place in the Seventies and Eighties. Even back then, a couple of determined goons with telephones could do a lot of damage. These days, supercomputers can exponentially increase the scale of this breed of skullduggery.
For instance, the Israel-Garber “painting the tape” scheme would today be called “spoofing” or “momentum ignition,” and would invariably involve computers placing massive numbers of buy or sell orders.
In a computer-dominated trading environment, the aim isn’t just to move the stock with your own purchase power. The idea is also to trick other algorithmic traders into mass-dumping or buying their holdings.
Using this technique, a single slick operator can generate huge volumes of transactions often without having much or even any skin in the game.
All of this activity has no real economic purpose, other than to move the “tape” for an instant or two and make some over-moussed Wall Street parasite a bunch of unearned money.
A secondary problem is that even in the rare case that authorities get around to identifying and outlawing things like this, they tend not to be able to really do much in the way of enforcement.
For instance, the Dodd-Frank Act that Trump is so determined to wipe out specifically outlaws spoofing, as authorities (among other things) were responding to the infamous “flash crash” of May 2010. But the line between illegal spoofing and legal “momentum ignition” is “nuanced,” as the Congressional Research Service put it a few years ago. It’s very hard to detect and prove.
There are countless other schemes HFT experts have cooked up over the years, from “order anticipation” to “layering” to modern variants on the old “wire” con from The Sting, in which traders use computers to take advantage of infinitesimal time differences in the reporting of price changes.
The situation is similar to steroid use in sports. Even if authorities had the manpower and the inclination to police the markets properly, they’d still be years behind the innovators.
High-frequency trades currently make up between 50 and 60 percent of all stock transactions in the U.S., which isn’t inherently bad, but it’s not necessarily a positive thing, either. For sure, there’s a ton of economically useless activity buried in that percentage.
A financial transactions tax kills three birds with one stone. It raises money, provides a major disincentive to socially useless volume-based trading and decreases dangerous speculative volatility.
Late last month, CNN polled American feelings about the economy. The network found 66 percent of respondents think current economic conditions are good, while 59 percent think they will still be good a year from now. It’s the second time in a row pollsters found such a gap between current and future expectations:
Those numbers sound pretty good, but combined with a poll taken in November, that 7-point difference between confidence in the current economy versus where people think it will be in a year is something never seen before in nearly two decades of polling. CNN has asked that pair of questions 57 times since 1997, and has found a gap like that only twice — never more than four points, and never in consecutive polls.
After a pair of huge corrections following the dot-com and subprime bubbles, Americans are wary of tumescent stock market numbers. They’re catching on that there’s a difference between growth and gambling.
A financial transactions tax might help incentivize Wall Street to once again emphasize true long-term investment, as opposed to spending all day moving piles of money around. As with Medicare-for-all, it might take a while for Americans to accept an idea already embraced in Europe.
Still, a senator from New York signing on to an idea so universally despised by Wall Street is worth raising an eyebrow or two. Hopefully it leads to something more, perhaps even before it’s too late.
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y friends, this is a dark hour. Intolerance, cruelty, racism, misogyny, xenophobia and environmental destruction have been let loose across the land.
