Against the Current

Published bimonthly since 1986, AGAINST THE CURRENT is a Solidarity-sponsored analytical journal for the broad revolutionary left. The March/April issue features the Educational Crisis in California and the Unfolding Fightback with articles by students and workers in the University of California system. For International Women's Day there are reviews on gender, sexuality and liberation by Catherine Sameh, Chloe Tribich and Kate Flynn. Other articles include Malik Miah on Obama Forgets the Black Community, Michael Steven Smith on Lost Liberties in the Age of Obama and Kim Moody on the Crisis and Potential in Labor's Wars and coverage on Honduras and Gaza.
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International Viewpoint is the monthly English-language magazine of the Fourth International. IV is a window to radical alternatives world-wide, carrying reports, analysis and debates from all corners of the globe. Correspondents in over 50 countries report on popular struggles, and the debates that are shaping the left of tomorrow.

Put a Socialist in the Senate!

LaBotz, Buckeye Socialist, Senate 2010

Dan La Botz, a 64-year old Cincinnati school teacher, has filed petitions with the Ohio Secretary of State to become the candidate of the Socialist Party for the U.S. Senate. La Botz, who needed 500 signatures to get on the Socialist Party primary ballot, filed petitions with approximately 1,200 signatures on Thursday, Feb. 18. La Botz, a long time labor and social movement activist, is the candidate of the Socialist Party of Ohio which is the state organization of the Socialist Party USA.

Read more...
Keep up with the campaign!"
DanLaBotz.com

Buttons to Build the Movement

Order these eye-catching buttons to spread the demand for social and economic justice. If you don't have paypal, email us!


Reads Bail out People, not Wall Street!. Around the edge, these 2 1/8" buttons read "Free Health Care," "Defend Public Services," "Living Wage Jobs," "Free Higher Education," "Troops Home Now," "Rebuild the Gulf Coast," and "Affordable Housing."

Bright orange 1 1/2" buttons boldly demand: "Bring the Troops Home Now!" Wear one everywhere to start a conversation about why US occupation can never be a force for liberation, and people's needs should come before the massive military budget.

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Produced during the massive immigrant rights demonstrations of 2006, these 2 1/8" buttons read, in Spanish and English: ¡exigimos Paz, Legalización, y Trabajos para Todos! we demand Peace, Legalization, and Jobs for All!

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Videos from Solidarity's Educational Conference

November 14-15 in New York City, Solidarity held a successful conference featuring engaging talks on a number of topics. Click here to view these videos from "Their Crisis, Our Movements"

- Crisis of Capitalism, Challenge to the Movements (David McNally, New Socialist Group)
- The New Imperialism and The Global Fightback (Vivek Chibber, Christy Thornton, Jonah McCallister-Erickson)
- The State of Resistance in Communities & the Workplace (Normahiram Perez, Steve Downs, Penelope Duggan)
- Race and National Liberation Under Obama (Glen Ford, Lalit Clarkston)

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Solidarity depends on the generous contributions of its friends and allies to continue its work. Please consider giving!

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Blocked Reform: Obama After 200 Days

The Obama presidency, contrary to the hopes of many, has not produced a big political space for the left, let alone “a seat at the table.” Most visibly, it has been the right wing that succeeded in seizing the initiative, in some truly grotesque ways that have thrown a real light on the deep paranoia and straight-up white racism that persists in this society, and on the ways it can be opportunistically pandered to and manipulated.
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Regroupment & Refoundation of a U.S. Left

As part of the preparation for our 2008 Convention, members of SOLIDARITY have begun a political document describing some perspectives for socialist renewal in the twenty-first century. We welcome responses to this initial draft of the document. Some of the themes here have also been developed in Solidarity's Founding Statement and our 1997 pamphlet, “Socialist Organization Today.”

— Introduction
— Social Movements over the Last Two Decades
— Regroupment, Refounding and the Arc of Resistance
— Refounding a New Left: Next Generations & Their Experiences
— The Tasks and Possibilities of a U.S. Refounded Left
— Refounding the Left: Taking Our Past Into Our Future

New Pamphlet: Hell on Wheels

New from Solidarity! Long time transit worker activist Steve Downs has written a pamphlet charting the twenty year story of New Directions, a rank and file caucus in New York City's transit union that he helped build and develop - including the challenges of keeping the rank and file democracy movement alive after New Directions won control of the local.

Read an interview on Zmag.org
Read a review and order your copy today!

From Abortion Rights to Reproductive Justice

New from Solidarity's Feminist Commission, this leaflet responds to the right wing attack on reproductive freedom and argues that the movement must go beyond "pro-choice" to true reproductive justice. This socialist and anti-racist feminist agenda would take up issues such as access to health and child care, forced sterilization, and the division of "productive" and "reproductive" labor.
Download the pamphlet...

Howard Zinn, presente!

Submitted by Isaac on January 27, 2010 - 8:58pm

Howard Zinn died today at age 87. Through a half-century of activism, and many written works including the seminal People's History of the United States, he took the side of the marginalized and oppressed, lifting up the voices of -- and marching alongside -- those who fought injustice dished out by the heroes of official histories.

Howard Zinn

As the son of working-class immigrants and shipbuilder, Zinn championed labor organizing. A World War II veteran, his experiences in Europe led to a pacifist, anti-war stance and sympathy with the working class soldiers on the front line of rich men's wars. His time spent as an instructor at Spelman, a historically Black women's college in Atlanta, put him amidst the most militant wing of the early Civil Rights struggles in the South. In Boston in the 1960s he worked tirelessly with the surging movement against the genocidal American war in Vietnam - including a 1968 visit to Hanoi.

His career as a professor was consistently that of an activist, and as a historian he remained a public and engaged intellectual until the end. He was a fixture at anti-war and other progressive demonstrations and speaking events, and had just completed a project of putting a recent work, Voices of a People's History, into dramatized readings of social movement leaders and forgotten historical actors alike (the filmed version, The People Speak, should be out on DVD soon.) This focus on public, accessible history was typical: other recent works included comic book and children's adaptations.

Above all, he never hid the intention that his People's History would not be a dispassionate move its readers into action and protest. I was one of them. Thanks, Howard.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

You can read A People's History of the United States online.

"The People Speak" torrent download

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on January 27, 2010 - 9:19pm.

FYI "The People Speak" can be downloaded on the bittorrent tracker One Big Torrent: http://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/7499/Howard-Zinn--The-People-Speak-20091213-COMMERCIAL-FREE

Howard Zinn Is Dead

Submitted by RED DAVE (not verified) on January 28, 2010 - 7:21am.

A great loss to the cause of the People:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn"

Zinn's Masterpiece:

People's History of the United States - wikipedia summary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_United_States"]

People's History of the United States - Complete Online
Text

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html"

Zinn on how he wanted to be remembered

Submitted by Isaac on January 28, 2010 - 5:22pm.
Q. What do you want to be remembered for? If I want to be remembered for anything, it's for introducing a different way of thinking about the world, about war, about human rights, about equality, for getting more and more people to think that way, and also for getting more people to realize that power, which rests so far in the hands of people with wealth and guns, ultimately rests on people themselves, and they can use it, and at certain points in history they have used it: Black people in the South used it; people in the women's movement used it; people in the anti-war movement used it; people in other countries who have overthrown tyrannies have used it. What I want to be remembered as is somebody who gave people a feeling of hope and power that they didn't have before.

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