The French left hold socialist President Hollande accountable, march through Paris to protest his selling out & becoming an austerity puppet for capitalists Brussels & Berlin
May 6, 2013

At least tens of thousands of far-left protesters have marched through Paris, to vent their anger over economic austerity. Sunday’s demonstration came on the eve of the first anniversary of Francois Hollande’s election as French President.

The crowd were fired up by far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon. “We don’t want the financial sector in power,” he told the crowds.“We do not accept austerity policies that usher in endless suffering for our people, like all others in Europe.”

The protest highlighted fierce opposition on the left to the Socialist president’s market-friendly reforms.- and the loosening of labor rules which makes hiring and firing slightly easier.

“A number of economists, whose thoughts are well regarded, have recently said that this policy of austerity is driving us into the wall. The people of the world are getting poorer and poorer,” said one demonstrator.

France is on the edge of recession and unemployment is at an all time high. Hollande has suffered the sharpest fall in popularity of any president in more than half a century.

Source

The protesters held brooms to symbolize the need to clean the government of it’s dependence on the capitalist financial sector.

April 3, 2013 

From Adbusters (who published the initial call to Occupy Wall Street along similar lines to this, which ended up igniting a sprawling protest movement that spawned scaled-up political consciousness & protest culture. Let’s hope this can catch on!):

Hey all you wild spirits out there,

Here is how the Global Spring begins:

A few lone wolves among us start pasting posters in and around Goldman Sachs HQ at 200 West Street, Manhattan, New York. Groups of two or three turn up and hand out leaflets at their branch office at Maria de Molina 6-5a, Madrid, Spain. People start gathering and having fun outside Goldman’s offices in 50 cities…

Then … on Thursday May 23, when Goldman Sachs holds its annual shareholders meeting at 222 South Main Street, Salt Lake City, Utah, 500 people turn up and solidarity games are held across the world. It gets serious when thousands start playing on September 17 in front of Goldman’s branches in Los Angeles, Toronto, Moscow, London, Buenos Aires, Melbourne, Beijing, Mexico City. The media picks up on this fledgling global revolt…

And, one fine day, the whole thing suddenly catches fire … #GOLDMAN becomes a rallying cry for people everywhere to rise up against the financial fraudsters who have been fucking around with our lives for far too long.

When the moment is ripe, all it takes is a spark.

for the wild, Kono Matsu / kono@adbusters.org Culture Jammers HQ

P.S. Find teammates and Goldman Sachs locations at meetup.com/goldman

Catch up on the gameplay thus far, here.

—

Printable flyers available in many languages on the adbusters site. It seems to be down right now, hopefully due to excessive traffic and not due to problematic government agencies. In the mean time, don’t let that stop the spreading of this idea, reblog now!

Ours is a time of multiple crises generated by global capitalism.  It is a time of global resistance, occupation, and insurgency. It is a time to connect with the ideas of Luxemburg, Trotsky, and Lenin – a critical-minded engagement with revolutionary resources, based on past revolutionary experience, as we consider future action for social change.

New waves of young activists are compelled to become radical– going to the root of today’s problems, demanding a shift of power in society from the super-wealthy 1% to the increasingly hard-pressed 99%.

It will not be a simple thing to win the battle of democracy, to create a world in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. The problems we face have been more than two centuries in the making.  Millions of people, generation after generation, have engaged in revolutionary struggles for basic human rights and dignity – liberty and justice for all, experiencing defeats and victories, learning and passing on an accumulation of lessons for those who would continue the struggle.

Luxemburg, Trotsky and Lenin were among the most perceptive and compelling revolutionaries of the 20^th century. The body of analysis, strategy and tactics to which they contributed was inseparable from the mass struggles of their time.  Critically engaging with their ideas can enrich the thinking and practical activity of those involved in today’s and tomorrow’s struggles for a better world.

A global activist collective – multiple individuals exploring texts on how to understand and change the world, proliferating study groups connecting revolutionary theory with the struggles of today and tomorrow – reaching out to the rest of the 99%, can have a powerful impact for social change. It is time, in the most revolutionary sense, to get political.

Source

Although power-points aren’t exactly the most thrilling or efficient way to present information with text & visuals (I like Tumblr for that, for instance) this is still a pretty cool, creative Marxist project. Click on the source to see their powerpoints and read more about the project.

I’ve posted most of this list before, but I’m happy to share it again, with a few additions.

A list of good leftist/politically-conscious blogs on Tumblr…

Almost exclusively news & conscious politics:

• http://fuckyeahmarxismleninism.tumblr.com
• http://socialistorganizer.tumblr.com/
• http://the-uncensored-she.tumblr.com/
• http://anarcho-queer.tumblr.com/
• http://sans-nuage.tumblr.com/
• http://sinidentidades.tumblr.com/
• http://disciplesofmalcom.tumblr.com
• http://canadian-communist.tumblr.com/
• http://randomactsofchaos.tumblr.com/
• http://amodernmanifesto.tumblr.com/
• http://rebeltranscripts.tumblr.com/
• http://socialismartnature.tumblr.com/
• http://leftskewed.tumblr.com/
• http://cognitivedissonance.tumblr.com
• http://anarchistpeopleofcolor.tumblr.com
• http://dentonsocialists.tumblr.com

 Blend of political & personal:

• http://nitanahkohe.tumblr.com/
• http://socialistexan.tumblr.com
• http://youngbadmanbrown.tumblr.com/
• http://blackraincloud.tumblr.com/
• http://crookedthinking95.tumblr.com
• http://tranqualizer.tumblr.com/
• http://afellowmartian.tumblr.com/
• http://pragnacious.tumblr.com

Movement/fraction/specific-activism focused:

• http://democracyatwork.tumblr.com/
• http://oppression-and-feminism.tumblr.com/
• http://justice4janitors.tumblr.com/
• http://chileanstudentmovement.tumblr.com/ (inactive for a few months now)
• http://wearethe1in3.tumblr.com/  (inactive for quite a bit but could still use submissions & is generally a good idea)

— — —

I know this could be infinitely longer. I know I left some good ones (that I probably follow & read and others that I don’t) out.

This would be a great starting point though if you’re new to tumblr and/or socially-conscious news & politics and want some great blogs to follow to stay informed & learn. These blogs make tumblr a better place. <3

And if I forgot you, I’m sorry. Please add other great blogs in the same vein as these when you reblog. :D

I’m not exactly sure, but I’ll do my best to offer a starting place. 

I really don’t claim to be an expert so if I’m listing these areas and readers out there are like ‘WHAT?! I KNOW SOME GREAT BLOGS ABOUT THAT?!’ just reblog and list them and I will be really appreciative.

1. But in terms of news, I think domestic politics in pretty much all Western countries, and large segments of the Middle East are pretty well documented on Tumblr (and often on this blog). We (The People’s Record) don’t do a near complete enough job covering internal domestic politics in Central America, South America, East & South-East Asia, or Africa.
2. We also don’t do a good enough job covering indigenous issues, throughout the world and particularly in the above mentioned places.
3. In terms of analysis, I personally see a lack in/would like to see more blogs or even get some people writing columns for The People’s Record that:
4. Compare & discuss the differences between various tendencies in revolutionary politics: Trotskyists vs Maoists vs anarcho-syndicalists, etc. Something fair minded and critical of all the tendencies (since none has technically liberated us from capitalism or imperialism or ended colonialism yet). But I think a thoughtful blog or column about that would be really helpful, I’ve been thinking about writing one myself but I’m concerned I would start and then not finish, lol.
5. It would be cool to see a blog just dedicated to co-ops, cooperatively run economies, anarcho-syndicalism and democratic workplaces
6. International news blogs and/or a column representing/covering perspectives of international happenings from non-Western points-of-view. Like, what’s being said about India in the Chilean media, or how is the first female president of South Korea being received across the South-African blogosphere, for instance.
7.  I’d like to see a blog and/or column focused on ‘what capitalism does’ to various aspects of society: like medical care, law enforcement,
8. Lastly, something that dares to speculate/discuss/inspire-discussions about the particular forms a new world might take, how we might alternatively structure society, what could it look like – would we want to get rid of all the concrete as the anarchist chant goes: ‘Whose streets? No streets. Tear down the concrete.’ How would that work? Would we try and build large-scale rails for transportation? How might new technologies be utilized to make a new world more possible, (a tech focused/leftist/radical/revolutionary blog might be really cool) etc?

Add your own to the list, Tumblr. And if anyone wants to write about any of this (or anything along these lines) for The People’s Record in a regular column or even just post about this stuff regularly for us to reblog, send us an email: thepeoplesrec@gmail.com

If we haven’t gotten back to you yet, that’s because we are terrible slackers and not because we don’t want to work with you. We will be catching up on those messages shortly. We’re trying to compile a list so that we can transition into a larger team in the most efficient way possible. 

This video is from about a month ago, so it’s really recent/relevant.

Education activist Brian Jones discusses Real vs. Phony Education Reform and punctures the myth that privatization (charter schools, high-stakes testing, merit pay) will create racial and economic justice for under served communities.

Jones is an elementary school teacher in New York City, a union activist and author, most recently of a chapter in the book Education and Capitalism on The Struggle for Black Education.

If you enjoy this, here is a pretty strong collection of similarly framed articles on the topic of education and fighting to save our school system.

A FEW AMAZING BLOGS…

Almost exclusively news & conscious politics:

• http://fuckyeahmarxismleninism.tumblr.com
• http://socialistorganizer.tumblr.com/
• http://the-uncensored-she.tumblr.com/
• http://anarcho-queer.tumblr.com/
• http://sans-nuage.tumblr.com/
• http://sinidentidades.tumblr.com/
• http://canadian-communist.tumblr.com/
• http://randomactsofchaos.tumblr.com/
• http://rebeltranscripts.tumblr.com/
• http://socialismartnature.tumblr.com/
• http://leftskewed.tumblr.com/

 Blend of political & personal:

• http://nitanahkohe.tumblr.com/
• http://youngbadmanbrown.tumblr.com/
• http://blackraincloud.tumblr.com/
• http://tranqualizer.tumblr.com/
• http://afellowmartian.tumblr.com/
• http://share.biyuti.com/

 Movement/specific-activism focused:

• http://democracyatwork.tumblr.com/
• http://oppression-and-feminism.tumblr.com/
• http://justice4janitors.tumblr.com/
• http://chileanstudentmovement.tumblr.com/ (inactive for a few months now)
• http://wearethe1in3.tumblr.com/  (inactive for quite a bit but could still use submissions & is generally a good idea)

— — —

I know this could be infinitely longer. I know I left some good ones (that I probably follow & read and others that I don’t) out.

This would be a great starting point though if you’re new to tumblr and/or socially-conscious news & politics and want some great blogs to follow to stay informed & learn. These blogs make tumblr a better place. <3

And if I forgot you, I’m sorry. Please add other great blogs in the same vein as these when you reblog. :D

Todd Chrieten: Why I’m still not voting for Obama

October 29, 2012

FOUR YEARS ago, I wrote an article for Socialist Worker titled “Why I’m Not Voting For Obama.” The atmosphere in which President Barack Obama is running for reelection could not be more different from the high hopes and expectations that surrounded his 2008 campaign. But I believe socialists and the left must take the same attitude to this election.

I started my article four years ago by pointing out the disgusting racist attacks on Obama. Unfortunately, these attacks have only gotten worse in the past four years—Romney supporters have even added the slogan “Put the white back in the White House”. This racist backlash is one of the reasons the election is so close.

Romney himself has joined in. For instance, while campaigning in Michigan with his wife last August, Romney stated, “I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born…No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate.”

A Romney victory will embolden the most vile elements in American society, which explains why opinion polls suggest he will get close to 0 percent of the Black vote.

There can be no doubt that Mitt Romney in office will do his damnedest to makes things worse for all workers and poor people, but especially for people of color. The question, though, is this: Does casting a vote for President Obama and the Democratic Party help make things better?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Sometimes Lesser, But Still an Evil

Socialist Worker’s Lance Selfa makes it crystal clear in his book The Democrats: A Critical History that placing faith in the Democratic Party has led to a series of disasters for social movements over the course of the 20th century.

Here are just two examples. Students for a Democratic Society backed President Lyndon Johnson’s reelection campaign in 1964 with the slogan “Half the way with LBJ.” Antiwar activists hoped they would avoid war in Vietnam with Johnson back in the White House. But they ended up with an “ALL the Way” bloodbath when Johnston sent in 600,000 troops. The result was over 50,000 American soldiers killed and 2 million dead in Vietnam and the surrounding region.

In the 1990s, voting for Bill Clinton was presented as the only “realistic” for stopping the Republicans, who in the post-Reagan era clearly stood for an anti-poor, racist, law-and-order, anti-gay, pro-business agenda. As president, Bill Clinton proudly “ended welfare as we know it,” presided over an unprecedented growth in the U.S. prison population, deregulated Wall Street, signed the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act and implemented “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military.

Of course, Republican presidents also have a long list of crimes. But these examples ought to make it clear that Democratic presidents and politicians are, at best, a lesser evil.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But Isn’t This Election Different?

I want to address the rest of this article to readers who may already be highly critical of the Democrats, but who believe there is no choice but to support them as a defensive measure.

For instance, few Chicago teachers believe that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is anything other than an anti-union bully, bent on destroying public education. At the same time, a very large majority of them will vote for President Barack Obama simply because they see no alternative on the national level to Romney.

As noted previously, close to 100 percent of African American voters will support Obama for many of the same reasons—as well as a logical desire to express pride in the first Black president and to defend him from racist attack. And my guess is that a very large majority of the people who took part in an Occupy Wall Street protest over the past year will vote for Obama as well, however reluctantly.

These groups will vote for Obama’s reelection despite his dismal policies that have made their lives worse: from bank bailouts, to the failure to provide help to homeowners facing foreclosure, to the surge in Afghanistan and more.

Radicals who dismiss these pro-Obama people as simply “ignorant” or “brainwashed” are missing the point. Millions of people who want strong unions, real solutions to stop global warming, increased taxes on the rich, etc., will support Obama because they can’t see an alternative.

The reality at this point is that those of us who want to build powerful social movements of workers, students and the oppressed have very limited options on November 6. Casting a protest vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or some other left-wing party is a worthwhile option. But those campaigns have almost no social weight behind them.

In 2000, Ralph Nader and the Green Party received almost 3 million votes and were closely connected to the rising global justice movement. But then, Bush stole the election, the Democrats blamed the Greens and Nader—and the global justice struggle collapsed after September 11.

Several Green Party and independent campaigns managed to put forward an antiwar message in the years that followed, but the unfortunate reality is that some key Green Party leaders abandoned an all-out fight against the Democrats by adopting a “safe state” strategy or other means by which they effectively threw their support to the Democrats. In other cases, Greens simply quit the party and returned to the Democrats, leaving a severely weakened organization in their wake.

I think this only goes to show that if we want to build a radical political alternative to the Democrats, we have to be better prepared.

Many people believe that building an alternative to the Democrats is a waste of time. Former Obama staffer Van Jones typifies this thinking. One particularly infantile version of this argument was put forward recently by writer Rebecca Solnit. She accused a “rancid sector of the far left” of “left-wing voter suppression” because we criticize Obama and other Democrats.

If I were Rahm Emanuel, I would read Solnit’s piece and think, “With enemies like this, who needs friends?”

There are more thoughtful cases being made along the same lines. For example, veteran activists Bill Fletcher Jr. and Carl Davidson stress the danger in a rising racist wave of attacks and argue that, despite Obama’s miserable record as a “corporate liberal,” “we think the matter of a lesser of two evils is a tactical question of simply voting for one candidate to defeat another, rather than a matter of principle. Politics is frequently about the lesser of two evils.”

If Fletcher and Davidson’s formulations are primarily defensive in nature, Bob Wing asserts that an alliance of progressives has a positive opportunity to gain influence within the Democratic Party:

In recent years, progressives have grown more united, more organized, more aggressive and strategically smarter. We are occasionally able to gain initiative (opposition to the war in Iraq, Wisconsin, Occupy), but we have not yet become a consistent and undeniably powerful force in national politics or even within the Democratic Party, two crucial and mutually interconnected tasks…though some on the far left still harbor abstentionist or third party dreams.

While they pitch their arguments in terms of 2012, it’s worth recognizing that this strategy of orienting social movements to work within the Democratic Party is a decades-old approach whose results must be judged in that light.

In that regard, I disagree that our goal should be to become, as Wing puts it, a “powerful force…within the Democratic Party.” In my judgment, history has shown that it is not revolutionaries who qualitatively change the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party that qualitatively changes revolutionaries. One small example is Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. She used to be a communist. Now she directs the police to bludgeon protesters.

Consider the Democrats today, and remember that this is after the challenge of the 1960s and ’70s social movements and Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition. Yet it’s hard to imagine how the Democratic Party as an institution could be more neoliberal, anti-democratic and hostile to grassroots struggle.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But What Do We Do Now?

First, we must look reality in the face. The economic crisis will continue after November 6, and conditions for the majority of the population will continue to deteriorate. We face years of austerity, an increasingly violent state, attacks on civil liberties and civil rights, and a growth of sexist and especially racist ideas and attacks.

Second, at the same time, we are finally seeing a response from our side: the uprising in Wisconsin and the Occupy Wall Street movement last year; the Chicago Teachers Union strike in September; and smaller fights against police brutality, anti-immigrant policies and so on. Our side remains weak, but a new layer of radicals is emerging, and they are asking big questions.

Third, we have a long way to go before we can successfully challenge the two-party system on a national scale. But it remains the case that if the bosses have two parties, we need (at least) one of our own. We need a party that won’t trade principles for votes or bargain away the demands of movements on the streets and on the picket line for a few seats in Congress. We need a party one that sees elections as simply one aspect of a larger strategy for social transformation.

Some people will say that voting for Obama will only take a few minutes—and then we can get on with the job of building a genuine left-wing alternative.

But the Democrats don’t let social movements and unions off the hook so easily. They demand that unions hand over tens of millions of dollars to help Democrats get elected, and that movements demobilize so they don’t embarrass the party.

Mitt Romney is disgusting. But Obama and the Democrats want us to play by the rules of the game determined by the intensity of the capitalist crisis: austerity, poverty, war, repression. Those are rules we have to break, and the sooner we start learning how, the better.

That’s why I’m still not voting for Obama in 2012.

Source

Massive “fill the jails” protest planned in India for July 4th!

July 04, 2012

Around 50,000 party members including his daughter and Rajya Sabha member Kanimozhi will participate in Wednesday’s “fill the jails” protest, said DMK president M. Karunanidhi.

Speaking to reporters onTuesday, he said: “The ‘fill the jails’ protest will be held in a great manner …. we are confident about it. The government is also confident about that.”

He said around 50,000 party members have registered their names to participate in the agitation.

The DMK is planning to go on a statewide ‘Fill the Jails’ protest on Wednesday in a bid to protest against the alleged foisting of cases against its cadres by the ruling AIADMK.

DMK President M Karunanidhi had earlier reminded party cadres to abide by the party’s credo of non-violence during the agitation.

“We have said the agitation will be passive resistance. We have never conducted a violent protest or given it a thought. Party cadres should conduct the agitation in a peaceful manner, following the footsteps of Anna (former Chief Minister CN Annadurai)” he had said.

Source

Here’s what else is happening in the world on July 4th.

Socialist Worker report on Socialism2012 - The People’s Record was there and it was awesome!

July 04, 2012

IMAGE: Jeralynn and Adam Blueford speak out at Socialism 2012 for their son, who was killed by Oakland police (SW)

SOCIALISTS AND activists from around the country and the world—representing the battle against austerity in Greece, to the struggle to defend the Egyptian Revolution, the fight against racist police violence, the Occupy Wall Street movement and much more—came together in Chicago from June 28 to July 1, to share the lessons of the last year and build for the resistance to come.

More than 1,300 people attended the four-day conference sponsored by the Center for Economic Research and Social Change, publishers of Haymarket Books and the International Socialist Review and cosponsored by SocialistWorker.org and its publisher, the International Socialist Organization.

The heart of the Socialism weekend was an electrifying panel discussion on Saturday night highlighing resistance to the racist justice system and featuring, among others, the mothers and fathers of young Black men murdered by police, from New York City to the West Coast. In an emotional meeting, they shared the stories of their loved ones— but also their determination to campaign for justice.

Source - finish the article

Last week in Latin American labor struggles

July 04, 2012

In Argentina

Tens of thousands of workers converged on the Argentinean capital Buenos Aires June 27 to protest government labor policies. The rally took place in the midst of a one-day national strike by the CGT, Argentina’s largest labor federation. The main demands of the protest were the raising of the floor of a recently legislated income tax and expansion of coverage for the universal child allowance.

In Puerto Rico

Workers at Puerto Rico’s Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport struck for 24 hours June 26 to protest the governor’s plan to privatize its operations. The workers are members of the Brotherhood of Port Authority Employees.

The plans, promoted by right-wing governor Luis Fortuño, have been criticized for the secrecy under which they have been negotiated and for the lack of information on how privatization will affect the workforce. The Port Authority claims that privatization is necessary and that no employees will lose their jobs.

Union president Astrid Rosario Ortiz told reporters at the protest that the deterioration of services at the airport was part of a deliberate plan to provide a pretext for the privatization scheme. Ortiz also denounced the Port Authority for irregularities in hiring of management and awarding of contracts.

In Costa Rica

Members of Costa Rica’s High School Teachers’ Association (APSE) joined several hundred employees of the country’s Social Security System, the CCSS or Caja, in a march and protest in downtown San José June 26. The protesters gathered outside the National Children’s Hospital and marched to the Legislative Assembly.

Caja employees called on the government to pay off debts to the agency. The teachers denounced President Laura Chinchilla’s “Plan B” fiscal reform proposals and called for an end to corruption, which has been a salient feature of Chinchilla’s administration. Plan B, according to Inside Costa Rica, “introduced a series of tax changes that included adding more than 90 food items to the taxable list.”

In El Salvador

Employees at border crossing customs houses in El Salvador began a strike on June 26. The strike was called by the Union of Workers of the Ministry of Finance (Sitramha) to demand the payment of a $1,000 bonus (per employee) as stipulated in its contract signed last December, as well as the payments for overtime so far for the first half of the year.

After three days of the strike, the government responded to complaints from the export/import business sector. “At the customs border posts of El Poy, El Amatillo, The Chinamas and The Hachadura, staff of the National Civil Police (PNC) was deployed during the morning to streamline administrative processes and prevent transit through them being further affected,” La Prensa Gráfica reported. “Yesterday at 6:00 p.m., the border at Amatillo had free passage, after the PNC intervened in the process of reviewing documents and goods.”

As of June 30, the strike still held at other customs houses.

Source

(Source: )

SYRIZA and the way forward

June 25, 2012

French Parliamentary Elections Go to Hollande’s Socialists

June 17, 2012

French President Francois Hollande’s Socialists won an absolute parliamentary majority on Sunday, strengthening his hand as he presses Germany to support debt-laden euro zone states hit by austerity cuts and ailing banks.

The Socialist bloc secured between 296 and 320 seats in the parliamentary election runoff, according to reliable projections from a partial vote count, comfortably more than the 289 needed for a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly.

The result means Hollande won’t need to rely on the environmentalist Greens, projected to win 20 seats, or the Communist-dominated Left Front, likely to have just 10 deputies, to pass laws. The centre-left already controls the upper house of parliament, the Senate.

Source

Follow thepeoplesrecord.com for more news on June 17, 2012 for election results in important elections today in Greece, France and Egypt.