redFlags

Developing a Power Analysis

Review by Chris Crass

What is the current state of capitalism in the global political economy? How are our campaigns for racial, economic, and gender justice impacted by neoliberalism and imperialism? What will it take to build a movement in such despondent and challenging times?

Four grassroots organizers from POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) stepped up to the challenge of answering these questions for their own organization. They wrote this book to share their analysis with the movement. Coming from their experience as organizers in a multi-racial membership organization of low-income tenants and workers in San Francisco they engaged in study and wrote this book by and for activists and organizers around the country.

Kenya: World Social Forum Diary

by Jordan Flaherty

Nairobi, Kenya — This week, tens of thousands of people, representing nearly every nation and people, are gathered to strategize, debate and struggle for solutions to worldwide problems of injustice and inequality. For the first time, the World Social Forum has come to Nairobi, Kenya. The global conference is situated in a massive sports complex neighboring the slum of Korogocho, where tens of thousands of Kenyans live in abject poverty, a vivid demonstration of the themes discussed at the Forum, and a contrast to the wealth of many of the conference participants from the so-called “developed world.”

Antiwar and looking ahead: What's it going to take?

Perennial grumbling about another trek to DC, a "cattle drive" as it's said, has become endemic among not only among people who look down on political activism with a too cool for school shtick, but from the very folks who put in the leg work to make these DC mobilizations a success.

Coming down from New York with World Can't Wait, we had a different plan. Instead of just showing up at the national mall to wander through the crowds and catch-up with old friends, we rolled deep to spread the plain-fact message that so long as Bush remains in office, the war will continue and expand. Impeachment is the means to check Bush's so-far unchallenged power and decisively repudiate the torture, secrecy and war-without-end. We only expected to bring a couple of buses, but the demand was so overwhelming that we ended up bringing down five. Once in DC, we met up by 4th and Madison with scores of other activists to get out the Call, put impeachment on the table and "organize the unorganized."

Educate your parents

I can't believe I just saw this.

Support Reporter Sarah Olson, Subpoenaed in Court Martial of Ehren Watada

ALERT: Defend The Press is asking the US Army to drop its subpoena of Sarah Olson, an independent print and radio journalist based in Oakland, California,  in the court martial of Iraq war resister Lieutenant Ehren Watada.  Olson interviewed Watada in May 2006,  and in June he announced he would not go to war in Iraq, challenging its legality.   Watada's Army court martial begins February 5, 2007, at Fort Lewis, Washington. || Read full alert

State in Disunity: Raise the political stakes on Jan. 27, Impeach Bush for War Crimes

Speaking for my own self, Bush looked weak during his State of the Union and Nancy Pelosi looked like a bobble-head when she jumped to applaud Bush's comment about "crossing the aisle." She was the first one to applaud. Guess who's going which way? Jim Webb gave the rebuttal. "God Bless America." Talk about code words.

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After millions voted against this war in the last election, George Bush has a dramatic and risky plan to escalate and expand the conflict. Bush speaks of war for a generation, torture is legally codified. The Democrats talk about partial withdrawls somewhere down the line. That's not the orders going out to the military in this illegal, imperialist war.

"Spreading the war to Africa and Iran, while normalizing surveillance, torture and a culture of fear – the world can’t wait two more years for an election that may not even stop them. There is no way an administration that has committed war crimes should remain in office.

"We don’t need a new consensus: we need to drive this man out of power. We must repudiate everything Bush stands for. Join World Can’t Wait in Washington, DC to raise the concrete, possible and necessary goal for 2007: Impeach Bush for War Crimes!

"Get in touch now to find out about buses to DC, and how you can help put impeachment on the table... or turn it over!"

Purchase bus tickets from NYC | phone: 866-973-4463
email: info@worldcantwait.org | Download flyer 

The January 27 protest is sponsored by United For Peace & Justice with the slogan: "March on Washington to end the war."

Ward Churchill: Canary in the mine of academic freedom

Ward Churchill isn't just some controversy that flashed over the newswires last year. He's a real human being, a teacher, a soldier against holocaust denial in America and one of the few writers who took the time to explain "why they hate us." He's also a tenured professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado. Backed by powerful right-wing forces nationally, the campus administration is seeking to revoke his post for the tumerity to document empire.

Churchill is a showman as anyone who's ever seen him speak can testify. Sometimes he lets his own arguments get the best of him. But on this one, there's no mistake. Churchill isn't being purged for ettiquette. It's about a little matter of what America is. Churchill is ferocious in his exposure of America's hidden holocaust and imperial genesis. He has little patience for collegiality in the face of white supremacy.

Do academics have the right to question empire? To document its abuses? To challenge the youth on the ethics of Eichmann? Are professors bound to tow the party line in supposed "times of national crisis"?

For his courage to not shut up, we should all support Ward Churchill's right to teach, share his analysis and refuse a right-wing witchhunt through college campuses. If Churchill is fired, the chill will set in on campus. Turmoil would not be inappropriate, public solidarity is in order.

On the link, there's an Open Letter from Concerned Academics. If you're on campus, get involved or at least lend your name.

Capitalism, Revisionism & Revolution: Avakian's "Three Alternative Worlds"

The Bob Avakian Show continues full steam. In the latest edition of Revolution, the publication of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, they've printed a transcript of a talk that opens up the question of agency and socialism. What is, after all the difference between a social-welfare state and socialism as the dictatorship of the proletariat?

For the generations coming up with no living memory of 20th Century socialism and reared on the (neo-Conservative) end of history narrative, it's worth digging into how revolutionary communism developed in opposition to the welfare/police state model of "socialism" that was unfortunately not just a cariacture.

It's not just the ruling class and its courtiers that want to equate revisionism and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, it's also every shade of opportunist you can imagine. Anything that turns the specter of the future into the ghost of the past...

"...the rights of the people cannot be reduced to the right to have a job and earn an income, as basic as that is. There is the question of are we really going to transform society so that in every respect, not only economically but socially, politically, ideologically, and culturally, it really is superior to capitalist society. A society that not only meets the needs of the masses of people, but really is characterized increasingly by the conscious expression and initiative of the masses of people."

Anyone with links to other leaders discussing this kind of vision, I'm all ears.

Workers Party of Belgium: Pageantry, Parliaments & Uncle Joe

By way of Jimmy Higgins from Fire on the Mountain, this report about the recent growth of the Workers Party of Belgium (PTB) is interesting on a few counts. The PTB has been the center of international gatherings to re-form the international communist movement on the conflation of revisionism and Marxism-Leninism, promoting left Stalinism against MLM. At the same time, they have grown from the "biggest of the small parties" to the "smallest of the big" in the Belgian parliament and local electoral lists. Running a high-profile campaign in her district and of mixed immigrant/European family, Miss Brussels Halima Chehaima came in second promoting the PTB platform. Cuts a better profile than Uncle Joe, but what of this program they run, what of their international profile, of shop stewards vs. tribunes of the people? What of syncretism vs. synthesis?

Maybe this is a good time to have a discussion about the Old Synthesis.

The full report is here on the link.

CPN-M Enters Parliament

From left, Nepalese newly-appointed Maoist parliamentarians: Matrika Yadav, Dina Nath Sharma, Dev Gurung, and Krishna Bahadur Mahara take oath as Members of Parliament in Kathmandu. (AFP/Devendra Man Singh)

CPN-M Enters Parliament
from A World to Win News Service
dated 15 January 2007

A new interim parliament has been formed in Nepal, with about a quarter of its members named by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). On 15 January, the old parliament in the Singha Durbar (House of Representatives) unanimously voted to adopt an interim constitution and then automatically dissolved. The first session of the new parliament convened that evening to swear in the old and new MPs. A second session scheduled for 17 January is to ratify the interim constitution, which is to serve as the country’s legal framework until constituent elections are held in June to decide the future system of government, including the issue of keeping or getting rid of the monarchy. The interim constitution makes the prime minister the head of state, instead of the king, who no longer has even a ceremonial role but retains his crown. It also removes the declaration in the former constitution that Nepal is a Hindu state. The new parliament is expected to choose a new government in February after the disarmament process is complete, the media reported.

The new single-chamber legislature includes 330 members. All were in the old parliament dissolved by the king, except for the CPN(M) delegation. Of the 83 new MPs, 28 are women, 12 are Dalits (formerly known as “Untouchables”), 22 are from indigenous ethnic groups (janajatis), and 21 from the terai, the lowlands bordering India, also long oppressed by the central Nepali state. Krishna Bahudur Mahara heads the CPN(M) delegation.