Against the Current
Published bimonthly since 1986, AGAINST THE CURRENT is a Solidarity-sponsored analytical journal for the broad revolutionary left. The Sept./Oct. issue features Malik Miah on How Race Fuels the Rightist Agenda, Kit Adam Wainer on Obama's Race to the Top vs. Teacher Unions and Susan Spronk and Jeffery R. Webber interviewing Venezuelan activists Gonzalo Gómez, Stalin Pérez Borges and Luis Primo on the processes of deepening the revolution. Coverage of The Mexican Revolution at 100 continues, featuring an interview with Adolpho Gilly and articles by Dan La Botz, James D. Cockcroft, Heather Dasner Monk, Fred Rosen and Scott Campbell.
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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!
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!
Campaign website- DanLaBotz.com
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."
Brown and black buttons demand: "Bring all 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.
These 2 1/8" buttons read, in Spanish and English: ¡Alto a las deporaciones - Legalización para todos! Stop the deportations - Legalization for all!
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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- A Great Variety of Morbid Symptoms, Seen in the Reflecting Pool Yesterday
by John B. Cannon posted on 08/31/10
- Education in the Crosshairs: Thoughts on the New Student Movement
by Nick posted on 08/13/10
- Don't Just Snap, Organize... Let's "Slater" together!
by La Botz for Senate posted on 08/12/10
- Pakistan: Over 20 million people affected by the flood
by Dianne posted on 08/11/10
- Stop police harassment of anti-facists in Russia!
by Isaac posted on 08/8/10
- As Santos Becomes Colombian President, U.S. Bases and Tensions Remain
by Dianne posted on 08/5/10
- Immigrant Rights Protest at Mets Game - Exciting organizing!
by Nate posted on 08/2/10
- Enough Is Enough... We’re Human Beings
by Joanna posted on 07/23/10
- The Sentencing of Lynne Stewart
by Dianne posted on 07/21/10
- NY Governor candidate Howie Hawkins Opposes Increased Jail Time for Lawyer Lynne Stewart
by Howie Hawkins posted on 07/19/10
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Barbara Zeluck Presente!
Our comrade Barbara Zeluck died June 5, 2010. She was a lifelong socialist and founding member of Solidarity. Barbara had a long and active life, unwavering in her support for radical social change and movements that she felt were dedicated to mobilizing the working class and raising class consciousness. She always believed that a better world was possible. Read More...
One Year of Obama and the Democrats’ Debacle
Last fall, in the discussion that produced our analysis of “Obama After 200 Days,” we said it would be premature to speak of a “crisis” for the administration. A year after the euphoric 2009 inauguration, it no longer looks premature. People who looked to Obama and the Democrats for leadership are bitterly disappointed, and a very peculiar brand of rightwing politics has seized the initiative.
Read more...
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.”
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.orgRead 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...
Limousines for the rich, swim lessons for the poor
Many of the global criticisms of last month's Climate Change talks in Copenhagen have sarcastically noted that not much more than hot air emerged from the meeting . It turns out that's true. The largesse of the 15,000 delegates and "world leaders" dumped the equivalent of 41,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Why? Among other things, more than 1,200 gas guzzling limousines were ordered to chauffeur politicians around.
The Solomon Islands: Global Warming's Atlantis?
For a sense of the scale, over half a million Solomon Islanders produce about 3,000 tons of carbon dioxide weekly. It takes the 100,000 residents of Tonga four months to produce the amount of extra CO2 emitted in Copenhagen that week.
Island nations like these face total submersion beneath the rising Pacific waters without drastic cuts in carbon emissions.
It's not an island, but densely populated Bangladesh is considered to be at the front line of climate change, an issue that's a matter of life and death there. Bangladesh is one of the Earth's poorest nations per capita, and around half the country is mere feet above sea level. Already, an estimated 20 million people have relocated due to the impact of climate change!
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Three centuries ago, Jonathan Swift invented the satirical essay with "A Modest Proposal." Poverty in Ireland, he offered, might be overcome with a simple solution: selling the children for food would reduce population and provide some extra income to struggling parents. Not to be outdone, the United Nations children's agency has unfurled a project teaching Bangladeshi children to swim:
“What we are doing now is that we are pre-empting a situation for five to seven years down the road,” said UNICEF Representative in Bangladesh Carel de Rooy. “This is very relevant for Bangladesh; some estimates are that if the sea levels were to rise over the next century by one metre, a third of Bangladesh could come under water.”
So far 35,000 kids have gotten training. They've got a long way to go: 162 million people live in Bangladesh. But the country produces just 0.27 tons of carbon emissions per capita each year - by far the lowest of any large country.
These kinds of horrifying figures are driven home by a slogan I like from the international (and internationalist) climate change movement: People are not Pollution. This succinct argument targets the real issue, against the misinformation that "overpopulation" is the root problem of climate change and of the general ecological crisis facing humanity. (Taken to is morbid logical conclusions, this belief would have millions of corpses in Earth's poorest areas to supposedly "Save the Earth.") No!
I'm not a fan of the overall politics of the Earth Liberation Front, which ironically overlap with the same kinds of anti-people sentiments I argued against above, but their slogan "The Earth is not dying it is being killed and the killers have names and addresses..." hits at another important truth - one anxiously covered by defenders of capitalism. The unprecedented warming of the planet over the past century was not an unavoidable accident of "human development" but the result of an economic system (and the rich who hold its reins) that puts "economic growth" above the survival of people and of nature. Rolling Stone published a good expose on some of the Climate Killers - who are also people killers, as seen above.
The same capitalism that has under-developed places like Bangladesh has over-developed the capacity of the industrialized "Global North" (under the direction of these killers) to poison the air and water. To save Polynesia, the Ganges river delta and other low-lying areas of the planet, drastic cuts in emissions are needed over the next decade - and the responsibility lies firmly at the feet of those countries which have historically emitted the most.
Meanwhile, many organizations at the forefront of climate justice in the Global South explicitly reject the industrial and agricultural development of their regions on the pattern modeled by imperialism. The future of much of humanity and of the planet is linked - and fighting for an ecologically planned socialism is our great task for this century.
global warming
Why should the left uncritically accept the catastrophist anthropogenic global warming theory as more than educated speculation? What is the level of climate sensitivity? Without agreement on (or better still, proof of) that, how can one predict disaster for anyone?
Let's not forget Lysenko.
What's progressive about climate change denial?
The honest truth is that the left tends to have at least a minimal ability to follow the money. The few scientists who claim that anthropogenic climate change is "educated speculation" are as blatantly corporate financed as the doctors who claimed that smoking isn't related to lung cancer. Climate change denial is an industry paid for by corporations who stand to benefit in the short term from long-term environmental degradation. It stands opposed to the hard facts that greenhouse gas accumulations have gone up precipitously because of human activity, and are impacting climate in blatant ways.
It's not exactly news that capitalism is harmful to the environment. Marx was very critical of the impact of industry on the air and soil. When there's a broad consensus of actually credible scientists that this has taken a particular form, and the dollar signs are all but visible on the opposing opinions, the role of the left becomes to understand and fight back.
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