This is going to be an action packed weekend in DC and around the nation. On Friday, there will be protests of Yoo. On Saturday, there will be a massive antiwar demonstration (there will also be demonstrations in Philly, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and South Dakota, among other places). On Sunday, there will be a large march for immigration reform. And there will be other related events around the country, along with the small protests and events that happen all the time.
So join me below the fold to see how you can effect change this weekend.
In a recent diary by Cassiodorus, one point of his in particular struck me:
Thus the comparison between the Great Depression and the current Great Recession falls flat, because the popular upheavals of the 1930s are only in evidence today among the least helpful segments of the population. This of course is a major reason why we can expect no FDR-like President to save us from the...economic collapse...
...During the 1930s...intellectual figures such as John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Kenneth Burke, and Richard Wright were actual socialists and not just mere liberals offering occasional plugs for John Kerry.
Another prominent socialist, albeit a bit later than the Depression, was Albert Einstein. He was an all around brilliant man, someone whom I admire greatly. And he wisely said this, although today it would probably be considered way too radical for anyone respectable to utter:
There are many people who lament the end of the '60s and complain about today's self-absorbed, materialistic youth. Now, I'm a teenager, and I can tell you that there's a grain of truth (maybe a boulder...) to those complaints, but there's also a vibrant political culture among those of us whippersnappers who do care.
Well, we all know Dylan, Lennon, and Young. But what about Francis, Folds, and Morello? If you take a look at the music scene today, it's apparent that there are a lot of young people who care. There's currently a lot of music in the same spirit, if not the same style, as the classics of protest music.
This week marks 50 years since the Greensboro, NC, sit-ins, the historic protest which launched the Black Freedom Struggle in this country onto a new trajectory. We are seeing a lot of celebration of the courage of the four students who first sat down at the Woolworth's lunch counter and of the chain reaction it set off.
I posted such a tribute here my own self two days back. In the course of refreshing my fading memory, via Google, to complete that piece, I found another facet of the Greensboro story. It's one I had never come across, and one that will, I think, resonate with anyone who has spent much time in the activist trenches.
Many of us know the story of how four students on February 1 became dozens and, by February 4, hundreds, as students across North Carolina and the South girded to emulate them and launch the wave of struggles that finally killed Jim Crow.
The other side of the story has to do with the five months it took to crack the management at Woolworth's and S.H. Kress and the rest of the Greensboro power structure.
The multiplication of protesters in that first week is now at the heart of the legend. But that level of activity was hard to sustain, especially as the students' demands remained unmet and white hostility grew more intense.
Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil remained part of the organizing core from Day One. McCain recalls:
What people won't talk (about), what people don't like to remember is that the success of that movement in Greensboro is probably attributed to no more than eight or 10 people. I can say this: when the television cameras stopped rolling and we didn't have eight or 10 reporters left, the folk left. I mean, there were just a very faithful few. McNeil and I can't count the nights and evenings that we literally cried because we couldn't get people to help us staff a picket line.
I don't know about you, but I can recall lulls in more than one campaign for justice when fatigue, frustration, setbacks and doubt had me in tears. When it happens again, and it will, I hope I remember to draw on this part of the lesson of Greensboro, not the audacity and the courage of the students, but the dogged persistence of the core they built.
Many of you are familiar with the Iraq Moratorium. Some of the discussion that led to its formation took place here and at Daily Kos in early 2007 and its launch on September 15, 2007 was well recorded here. Diaries since have covered it, and blogosphere luminaries like Meteor Blades and One Pissed Off Liberal have repeatedly given it play.
The idea is simple, and captured in our pledge:
I hereby commit that, on the Third Friday and/or Third Weekend of every month, I will take some action by myself or with others to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Early last year, the tiny all-volunteer committee that helps coordinate this effort made two changes reflected in the wording above. We added the Third Weekend at the request of some of the many longstanding anti-war vigils that take place on Saturdays and Sundays, and we added the war in Afghanistan.
At that time we decided to keep the name Iraq Moratorium because of its name recognition and because we feared that Iraq was falling off the media's radar and out of public consciousness entirely.
Looking back, we feel that this was a mistake. Iraq has in fact faded in this country's awareness, despite the 120,000 troops still stationed there, not to mention the similar number of "private contractors" our tax dollars are paying for. Meanwhile, the administration is in the early stages of its second escalation in Afghanistan in less than a year, and the death toll there is rising inexorably--troops, insurgents and Afghani civilians alike--which has placed the occupation there center stage.
The Moratorium committee's feeling is that the name should be changed to the War Moratorium, but we ask your input because, as mentioned above, the shoestring operation that keeps the Moratorium going consists of a handful of us. Your views will be a welcome contribution to our decision-making.
This is not the place for a summation of the 2,500 plus events that have taken place in observance of the Moratorium so far, nor for a plea for volunteers to help us build it, especially on the Internet and in older forms of media. Both of those will be forthcoming in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, please check out the website and remember the Moratorium slogan:
I have recently been calling for a large social movement (or, more realistically, an expansion of the social movements for justice already in existence) and here are a few ways we can all get started on being part of this movement.
(Included: Cindy Sheehan's thoughts on recent events and a list of upcoming action events you can get involved with.)
A few words on how I got here, old, tired and sick, but truckin' on. About my focus on tactics, not just tactics in-themselves, but how they are developed.
I was a 60's kid, brought up white lower-middle-class, believing in the American dream, freedom of speech, civil rights, truth and beauty. In 1964, I supported both Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King. How's that? Got to college, and along with millions of others, found out that the American dream was a lie. War in Vietnam was an obscenity. Michigan State University had nothing to do with either truth or beauty. Got active.
Sitting in to support three groovy professors who had been fired at the behest of the Mothers Against Degeneracy. The Akers Hall Kiss-in (hundreds of people kissing in the lounge because they were told they couldn't. The war. Always the war. Marched, did wild in the streets. Saw it crushed. Friends with broken bones, in jail. Dead. The George McGovern campaign in 1972 picked up the pieces and sold them cheap. I was shattered, broken. Emotionally and political numb.
Since today is my Father's birthday, I thought I'd share a brief story about one of his experiences 40 years ago, and how learning about this experience contributed to my perspective today.
On November 15, 1969, my Father was in Washington DC for what is still the single largest anti-war protest in American history to date -- the second Moratorium against the Vietnam War, in which it has been estimated that between 250,000 and 750,000 citizens arrived to demonstrate in the nation's capital. As a lieutenant commander in the United States Public Health Service, my Father was volunteering on site at a medical van as part of an emergency response team. He helped treat several patients who were suffering from burns and injuries when police tear gassed a group of demonstrators who protested violently later on during the day. In fact, he even suffered eye burns of his own from the tear gas, simply by being in the vicinity where police and demonstrators clashed.
It's about time for a substantial anti-war movement to start in this country - and with Obama probably announcing an escalation of 34,000 troops to Afghanistan (in addition to the 20,000 he already sent), there is no better time than now. A leading anti-war organization, World Can't Wait, is holding protests around the nation.
Throughout next week, there will be protests in (this list will probably include more cities by the time the protests start - and you can always organize a protest yourself!):
I just got in from protesting the war during rush hour. I live by a busy intersection, so I can just walk out and get a fairly good audience with the people driving to work. I stood on the sidewalk right next to the road from 7:30 to 9:00 with a big sign that had a peace sign on one side and "The war is not worth it" on the other. I plan to do it again at quitting time today. And then I am going to do the morning and afternoon rush hours ever day until Obama makes his announcement next week. We the citizens can help set the frame for Obama's announcement. We should demonstrate resistance before he has even said anything, so the backlash will be even greater when he tells us he's sending more troops.
So I hope others will join me and make up a sign, very legible from a distance, and protest where they live. You don't need a big group to protest. A single sign can remind people of the war. All you need is a big audience. High-traffic intersections are excellent. So please, for the Iraqis and Afghans, make a sign and protest. If you wait around for the big organized protests, you will have waited too long. This is something you have to do on your own. Protesting with a small group of friends is fun too.
And if you're already doing it, keep up the good work!
I will not stand still for a surge in Afghanistan. I am going to take action against it. Americans hardly remember they are at war. I am going to be there to remind them. I invite you to do something similar in your hometown.
On the day after Thanksgiving, I am going to go to downtown Chicago, probably around Macy's, and hold an good-size antiwar sign so all the shoppers can see it. One side will be a big, visible peace sign; the other side will just say "Stop Your Wars."
I see this time in Obama's administration as a crucial turning point in Americans' perceptions of the president. Americans are about to see that Obama is oriented toward continuing the war. It is especially important during this time that Americans be allowed to see first-hand that there are citizens who, maybe just like them, disagree with Obama's position toward escalating troops.
And it is true generally that most Americans tend to forget we are even at war at all. I think those of us who do remember have the responsibility of reminding everyone else who has forgotten. We cannot rely on the media to do it. So that really is all I want to do, remind Americans, as they enjoy their holidays with their own families, that they are still killing other people's families. I just don't feel it's fair for Americans to be able to forget the kinds of activities they are involved in.
So I invite anyone who strongly opposes escalation in Afghanistan to seek out the shopping district in your area, find a visible location, and demonstrate against the US wars on the day after Thanksgiving. Lots of shoppers will be out, so lots of people will see you and think about our wars. This is a very useful time. I hope other people will join me and make the best of it.
If not you in your town, then who?
And if my way of doing things isn't right for you, figure out another way to remind people we are at war. It is up to you. The media won't do it.
In case you're unaware, there is currently a bill in the Pennsylvania state legislature to establish a statewide single-payer (that's something close to Medicare for all) system. Governor Rendell has pledged to sign it if it gets to his desk, and there are currently 35 co-sponsors in the House - including 4 Republicans - and 9 co-sponsors in the Senate. That's out of a Senate of 50 and a House of 203.
This Friday, the 30th, there will be a protest at a Blue Cross/Blue Shield building in Philadelphia in support of single payer, and in my state of Pennsylvania this will have particular significance because of how close we are to real health care reform.
IMPORTANT: If you can't make it to the protest, but live in Pennsylvania, please contact your state legislators and/or the media to either thank them for their support or to urge them to support these bills (SB 400 and HB 1660). You can do that here.
So, I've seen some comments here and elsewhere (DKos) that mock the people calling out and protesting against the crooked GOP agenda of Lindsey Graham (and the Elitist pro-Establishment interests that he represents).
But you all should be rooting for the protesters here, and not accepting the U.S. Media line that the status-quo GOP agenda is somehow to be perceived as less "extreme".
For it is the well heeled LindseyGraham-GeorgeBush-RushLimbaugh Republicans who are the fascists, the Human Torture enthusiasts, the buddies of the Wall Street crooks, the racists, and the War Mongering World Empire murderers -- not the people shouting out in protest at Lindsey Graham.
The protesters of Lindsey Graham, who Graham himself decries for calling Bush a "War Criminal" (which of course he is), are largely Libertarians and old-school Constitutional Republicans that disapprove of the GOP War and Wall Street agenda.
After months of unresolved bargaining a strike began on July 13th at the Sudbury mine in northern Ontario, Canada, after employers Vale Inco refused to alter its original demands for concessions. United Steel Workers union members (USW Local 6500) in Sudbury and Port Colburne in Ontario and Voisey Bay in Labrador responded by voting 85% in favor of strike action.
The strike affects 3,073 employees at Vale's integrated mining, milling, smelting and refining operations in Sudbury, 116 employees at the Port Colborne refinery and over 200 at Voisey Bay. The concessions demanded by the company include a drastic change in pension benefits for new hires (the pension Fund is $725 million in deficit), changes to seniority rights and a cap on the "Nickel Bonus". "This bonus was negotiated in earlier years to allow the company to benefit from relatively lower wages when nickel prices were depressed and workers to benefit when the price was high. Nickel bonuses - once used to placate underpaid unionised workers - in recent years suddenly paid off 'big'
Because everyone is a fucking pro, and they all have answers for questions, you know? -Elliott Smith
I used to hate the sound of screaming children. I mean really abhor it-the whining, the melodrama, the horrendous sense of entitled malediction-so much so that the slightest hint of temper bursting forth from an exploding id would make my soul pucker with vitriol. These days however, I'm finding more and more that I can tune it out-and let me tell you all, that's a glorious feeling. I can only assume that I've ascended to some wondrous alternate plane of nirvana, where nothing but the blissfully innocuous sounds of vapid contentment drift past at a pleasant volume. You know, kind of how VH-1 used to be when Sting was king. Yeah, some people get the big chills-but not me, dude. I bathe daily in a warm mist of numb muck so nutritious, so womb-like, that I've begun to hear everything as if it's pumped through a primo reverb tank.
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
