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Record 46.2 Million Americans Live in Poverty

Record 46.2 Million Americans Live in Poverty, Census Bureau Says

"At the same time, analysts say other factors understate the real
level of poverty in the U.S. Many more young adults have stayed or
moved back home because they can’t find jobs, and others have doubled
up with friends and relatives. Moreover, experts agree that the
poverty thresholds, designed in the early 1960s, doesn’t capture
people’s spending and living needs in today’s economy."

Los Angeles Times
September 13, 2011
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/09/record-462-million-americans-in-poverty-census-bureau-says.html


Record 46.2 Million Americans Live in Poverty, Census Bureau Says

by Don Lee

High joblessness and the weak economic recovery pushed the ranks of
the poor in the U.S. to 46.2 million in 2010 -- the fourth straight
increase and the largest number of people living in poverty since
record-keeping began 52 years ago, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

The share of all people in the U.S. who fell below the poverty line
rose to 15.1% last year from 14.3% in 2009. That matched the poverty
rate reached in 1993 before falling steadily to 11.3% in 2000. Since
then the poverty rate has risen, accelerating after the recession
began in late 2007, and is now approaching levels not seen since
Lyndon B. Johnson launched the War on Poverty in 1965.

Last year the share of children under 18 living in poverty jumped to
22%, from 20.7% the previous year.

The Census Bureau’s report also showed an increase in the number of
people without healthcare coverage rose to 49.9 million last year from
49 million in 2009, though the percentage of uninsured was
statistically unchanged. And there was a further erosion of incomes at
the middle of the middle class.

Inflation-adjusted median household income in the U.S. fell 2.3% in
2010 from a year ago, to $49,445.

Taken together, the data all point to the severe and widespread
financial strains of a nation in the throes of an economic crisis. And
the report, coming shortly after President Obama’s proposed package of
$447 billion in tax cuts and spending to revive job growth and the
recovery, is almost certain to intensify the debate over the
government’s role in helping the poor and unemployed at a time of
budget deficits and painful cutbacks in public services. Extended
federal unemployment benefits, for example, helped some people rise
above the poverty line.

Analysts had widely expected the poverty rate for last year to edge
higher, given that the nation’s unemployment rate averaged 9.6% in
2010 compared with 9.3% the previous year. The latest jobless figure,
for August, was 9.1%.

By the Census Bureau’s latest measure, the poverty threshold last year
was an income of $11,139 for one person and $22,314 for a family of
four.

The government’s official poverty rate doesn’t count food-stamp
benefits and low-income tax credits as income. If those programs,
which totaled about $150 billion last year, were included, many more
people would have been counted as being above the poverty line.

At the same time, analysts say other factors understate the real level
of poverty in the U.S. Many more young adults have stayed or moved
back home because they can’t find jobs, and others have doubled up
with friends and relatives. Moreover, experts agree that the poverty
thresholds, designed in the early 1960s, doesn’t capture people’s
spending and living needs in today’s economy.

***

Census: US Poverty Rate Swells to Nearly 1 in 6

The Associated Press via Google News
September 13, 2011
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gFaWVNgKNKz6TVHRLhSJVGLvOosQ?docId=d10a4a8cc0d147b2a2ccab1a4d9b7b22


Census: US Poverty Rate Swells to Nearly 1 in 6

by Hope Yen

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of the nation's poor swelled to nearly 1
in 6 people last year, reaching a new high as long-term unemployment
woes left millions of Americans struggling and out of work. The number
of uninsured edged up to 49.9 million, the biggest in over two
decades.

The Census Bureau's annual report released Tuesday offers a snapshot
of the economic well-being of U.S. households for 2010, when
joblessness hovered above 9 percent for a second year. It comes at a
politically sensitive time for President Barack Obama, who has
acknowledged in the midst of a re-election fight that the unemployment
rate could persist at high levels through next year.

The overall poverty rate climbed to 15.1 percent, or 46.2 million, up
from 14.3 percent in 2009.

Reflecting the lingering impact of the recession, the U.S. poverty
rate from 2007-2010 has now risen faster than any three-year period
since the early 1980s, when a crippling energy crisis amid government
cutbacks contributed to inflation, spiraling interest rates and
unemployment.

Measured by total numbers, the 46 million now living in poverty is the
largest on record dating back to when the census began tracking
poverty in 1959. Based on percentages, it tied the poverty level in
1993 and was the highest since 1983.

Broken down by state, Mississippi had the highest share of poor
people, at 22.7 percent, according to rough calculations by the Census
Bureau. It was followed by Louisiana, the District of Columbia,
Georgia, New Mexico and Arizona. On the other end of the scale, New
Hampshire had the lowest share, at 6.6 percent.

The share of Americans without health coverage rose from 16.1 percent
to 16.3 percent — or 49.9 million people — after the Census Bureau
made revisions to numbers of the uninsured. That is due mostly because
of continued losses of employer-provided health insurance in the
weakened economy.

Congress passed a health overhaul last year to address rising numbers
of the uninsured. While the main provisions don't take effect until
2014, one aspect taking effect in late 2010 allowed young adults 26
and younger to be covered under their parents' health insurance.

Brett O'Hara, chief of the Health and Disability Statistics branch at
the Census Bureau, noted that the uninsured rate declined — from 29.3
percent to 27.2 percent — for adults ages 18 to 24 compared to some
other age groups.

The median — or midpoint — household income was $49,445, down 2.3
percent from 2009.

Bruce Meyer, a public policy professor at the University of Chicago,
cautioned that the worst may yet to come in poverty levels, citing in
part continued rising demand for food stamps this year as well as
"staggeringly high" numbers in those unemployed for more than 26
weeks. He noted that more than 6 million people now represent the
so-called long-term unemployed, who are more likely to fall into
poverty, accounting for than two out of five currently out of work.

Other census findings:

* Poverty rose among all race and ethnic groups except Asians. The
number of Hispanics in poverty increased from 25.3 percent to 26.6
percent; for blacks it increased from 25.8 percent to 27.4 percent,
and Asians it was flat at 12.1 percent. The number of whites in
poverty rose from 9.4 percent to 9.9 percent.

* Child poverty rose from 20.7 percent to 22 percent.

* Poverty among people 65 and older was statistically unchanged at 9
percent, after hitting a record low of 8.9 percent in 2009.

***

Rate of Poverty in U.S. Is Highest Since 1993, Census Says

The New York Times
September 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/14census.html


Rate of Poverty in U.S. Is Highest Since 1993, Census Says

by Sabrina Tavernise

WASHINGTON — The portion of Americans living in poverty last year rose
to the highest level since 1993, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday,
fresh evidence that the sluggish economic recovery has done nothing
for the country’s poorest citizens.

And in new evidence of economic distress among the middle class, real
median household incomes declined by 2.3 percent in 2010 from the
previous year, to $49,400.

An additional 2.6 million people slipped below the poverty line in
2010, census officials said, making 56.2 million people in poverty in
the United States, the highest number in the 52 years the Census
Bureau has been tracking it, said Trudi Renwick, chief of the Poverty
Statistic Branch at the Census Bureau. That represented 15.1 percent
of the country.

The poverty line in 2010 was at $22,113 for a family of four.

“The figures we are releasing today are important,” said Robert
Groves, the director of the Census Bureau. “They tell us how changing
economic conditions have impacted Americans and their families.”

According to the Census figures, the median annual income for a male
full-time, year-round worker in 2010 — $47,715 — was virtually
unchanged from its level in 1973, when the level was $49,065, in 2010
dollars.

“That’s not about the poor and unemployed, that’s full time, year
round,” said Sheldon Danziger, professor of public policy at the
University of Michigan. Particularly hard hit, Professor Danziger
said, have been those who do not have college degrees. “The median,
full-time male worker has made no progress on average.”

The youngest members of households — those ages 15 to 24 — lost out
the most, with their median income dropping by 9 percent. The
recession continued to push Americans to double up in households with
friends and relatives, especially those aged 25 to 34, a group that
experienced a 25 percent rise in the period between 2007, when the
recession began and 2011. Of that group, 45.3 percent were living
below the poverty line, when their parents incomes were not taken into
account.

A Civil Society Strategy

Reposted from:http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/543.php#continue

Steve D'Arcy

What happened to the North American Left? Why is it that, even now, when capitalism seems so obviously unappealing, unsustainable and unfair, the Left cannot mount a more serious challenge to the Right or its grim austerity agenda?

Indeed, what happened to the Left's former ability to mobilize huge numbers into powerful social movements, to inspire working-class people with appealing visions of post-capitalist alternatives, and to strike fear into the hearts of elites who once worried that the Left posed a credible threat to their power and privilege?

If we are serious about figuring all this out, and reversing this trajectory, we have to be willing to take some responsibility for our predicament. We can't just blame the ‘propaganda’ circulated by the corporate media, the repressive role of the police and the courts, or the way electoral systems are stacked against our efforts to promote social and environmental justice and political and economic democracy. The news media, the police, and state institutions have always waged a determined struggle against the Left; but the Left used to be able to overcome these obstacles and make real gains, building powerful mass movements that sometimes racked up real victories. Above all, the Left was once able to claim the allegiance of huge numbers of people, but at least in North America this is no longer the case.
The Left's Role in Its Own Decline

My questions here can all be boiled down to this: What has the Left done, or failed to do, that might have hastened or exacerbated its own decline, and what can we do today to help turn things around?

There is, of course, a conventional answer to these questions. Some people on the broad Left, and almost everyone on the Right, would say that the Left's historic error was to articulate a political vision (‘socialism’) that strayed too far from capitalism. Its supposed aim to introduce democratic and egalitarian economic planning, they say, made socialism unable to handle the overwhelming demands of information-processing that arise in a complex modern society. Only market regulation and profit-motivated investment decisions can handle these demands, according to this view.

But I would argue that the real story is almost the exact opposite of this more familiar one. The real-world experiments in ‘socialism’ during the 20th century did not fail because the distance that separated them from capitalism grew too great, making them unworkable. On the contrary, they failed because the proximity between those efforts and capitalism made these ‘socialisms’ – Stalinism and social democracy – too difficult to distinguish from the capitalist system that they were supposed to replace. These supposedly socialist political projects actually embraced most of capitalism's worst features: its bureaucratic mode of governance, its technocratic approach to designing and implementing public policy, its hierarchical and authoritarian norms of workplace organization, its Realpolitik patterns of international relations, its cultural celebration of productivity and growth as ends in themselves, and its elitist understanding of who is best suited to exercise political power and spearhead social change.

At the heart of the problem was the Left's often uncritical embrace of one of the most oppressive, disempowering and alienating institutions that most working-class people ever have the misfortune to interact with in their lives: the modern state. At some point, the Left dropped its former aim of encouraging the ‘self-emancipation’ of working people, and replaced it with an aim that to most people seems like its opposite: technocratic ‘public administration’ by state agencies.

This shift, from the anti-statist ‘community-based socialism’ that dominated the early Marxist, Owenite, Guild-socialist, syndicalist and anarchist Left in the 19th and early-20th centuries, was replaced in the years after the First World War by the two most influential forms of ‘socialism’ in the 20th century: statist command planning, typified by the USSR, and Keynesian welfare state expansionism, typified by European social democracy.

In the course of this fateful shift, the Left gave up almost entirely on the emancipatory promise of liberation from alienation, exploitation and bureaucratic administration that had once been its stock in trade – a promise which had only a few decades earlier led European radicals to embrace the bold ‘smash the state’ ethos of the Paris Commune. In place of this earlier promise of sweeping social reconstruction based on popular self-organization from below, the post-WWI public-administration Left now promised two things: ‘development’ and ‘rising living standards.’ For a while, both Stalinism and social democracy seemed able to deliver on these promises. Later, notably during the structural crisis of Keynesian demand-management capitalism in the mid-1970s and the stagnation crisis in Eastern Europe during the 1980s, these promises began to ring hollow.

But the more fundamental problem wasn't that the Left could no longer deliver on its promises. The problem was that it was making the wrong promises altogether. The ideal of a community-based, egalitarian and participatory economic democracy that had once inspired millions had been replaced with an unappealing vision of a regime of public administration and economic management – whether Stalinist or social-democratic – that delivered ‘benefits’ to a passive, alienated, but well-fed populace.

This ‘administrative’ (or ‘coordinatorist’) vision of a post-capitalist world is not utopian or unattainable. But why would anyone be inspired to struggle for it? This, I believe, is the question that the Left must address if it is to revitalize its project and recapture the allegiance of people who have learned to associate the radical Left with government bureaucracy and alienating public administration.
A Left That No Longer Identifies With The State

Having made this fateful wrong turn so long ago, what can the Left do today to set a new course, to restore the viability and the appeal of its project?

What the Left needs above all is to rupture its identification with the capitalist state. Government is not an actual or potential ally of the Left against Big Business. In part this is because, especially in this neoliberal epoch, government is in fact already an arm of Big Business. But more importantly, it is because the bureaucratic structures of the capitalist state are incapable in principle of serving as a vehicle for the self-liberation of people who aspire not to be administered by a welfare-maximizing state apparatus, but to participate in the democratic self-organization of their own workplaces and communities. What is needed, in short, is a reassertion of the classical leftist ideal of a community-based socialism, a socialism of popular self-organization and horizontal democracy, not one of public sector maximalism.

In part, that means replacing the utilitarian and technocratic images of a post-capitalist social order with more appealing images of radically democratic forms of community-based egalitarian economic democracy. But, in more immediately practical terms, it means a strategic reorientation of the Left: a turn away from the habit of engaging primarily with state institutions (parliaments, regulatory agencies and the welfare state), toward engaging primarily with grassroots, community-based forms of popular self-organization.
A Civil Society Strategy

The Left, in other words, must turn its attention back toward civil society: union locals, cooperatives, social movement organizations, mutual aid projects, popular assemblies, and other community associations. These expressions of grassroots democracy and popular self-organization – operating independently of both the market economy and the state – offer the Left the crucial benefit that they do not replicate the alienating and disempowering character of corporations and governments (although the Left is unfortunately overpopulated with bureaucratic and staff-led union and NGO apparatuses that today emulate the administrative systems of elite institutions). Instead, these grassroots civil society organizations embody the ‘every cook can govern’ spirit of the classical (pre-WWI) Left.

When the Left does engage with the state, as it sometimes must, its default demand should be to transfer power from corporations and the state to civil society. Such a civil society strategy is arguably already implicit in the notion of a community-based socialism. For example, whereas a statist strategy would demand that the government's budget adopt welfare-maximizing priorities, a civil society strategy would demand that budgeting power be ceded to a grassroots participatory budgeting process, centrally involving open public assemblies. Whereas a statist strategy would demand ‘public housing’ owned and operated by the state, a civil society strategy would demand that state funds be used to establish democratically self-governing non-profit housing cooperatives, collectively owned by their members. And whereas a statist strategy would demand ‘nationalizing’ banks as ‘public enterprises,’ a civil society strategy would demand that banks be dismantled and reconstructed as genuinely democratic and member-controlled financial cooperatives (‘credit unions’), operating in the public interest. This transfer of power and control from corporations and governments to civil society associations should be seen as the main aim of the Left. From this point of view, ‘winning’ for the Left means replacing the power and prerogatives of corporations and governments with empowered participatory self-governing associations within civil society.
How We Resist Neoliberalism

There is no doubt that a civil society strategy for the Left raises a number of difficult questions. Above all, it poses a very serious set of questions about how the radical Left should fight back against neoliberalism, notably in its contemporary guise of the ‘austerity’ agenda. Given that neoliberalism's primary policy aspiration is to privatize public services, and to replace public administration (the ‘public sector’ economy) with market regulation (the ‘private sector’ economy), shouldn't the Left be defending the state (the public sector) against neoliberal privatization?

For better or for worse, what the Left needs in addressing this question is nuance. We have to be able to distinguish between (for example) transferring control of a public housing complex to a private landlord (‘privatization’), in pursuit of the corporate/neoliberal agenda, and transferring control of that same public housing complex to the residents themselves (‘cooperative conversion’), under pressure from grassroots popular mobilization. If we refuse to make this distinction, either by celebrating privatization as a victory against the state or by vilifying cooperative conversion as if it were itself a type of privatization, we fall into one of two familiar traps: the temptation to see the state as the main enemy, letting corporations disastrously off the hook, or (more likely among leftists) the temptation to align ourselves politically with the ill-fated project of ‘public administration socialism,’ in which the Left plays the role of supporting the capitalist state as a bulwark against corporate power.

This is at the heart of the Left's historic failure to champion freedom and democracy against not only their corporate enemies, but their bureaucratic-statist enemies, as well. Once taking this path, the Left quickly finds itself defending the state against the negative experience of it that so pervades the lives of poor and working-class people, even to the point of championing the increase of taxes on workers as ‘progressive’ because it supports the state.

The Left, or at least the radical Left, needs to remember that its project by definition demands that sweeping social reorganization and reconstruction from below be entertained and where possible carried out. Sometimes, this means tactically defending public services, run on a non-profit basis by the state, against the immediate threat of profit-motivated privatization, which we rightly oppose as a step in the wrong direction altogether. But ultimately, the Left must aim higher than state-administration: the Left must aim to replace both the profit-motivated private sector economy and the bureaucratically administered public sector economy, in favor of a community-based, democratic and egalitarian post-capitalist economic democracy. This means that we must admit the obvious: that publicly owned enterprises and public services offered by the capitalist welfare state do not meet this standard by any stretch of the imagination. Our project demands a civil society strategy, not a statist one. What we fight for is not a bigger, more expansive state, but more democratic and egalitarian forms of grassroots popular self-organization: a more participatory and community-based set of economic and political institutions, controlled from below by working people themselves.

Above all, a civil society strategy is necessary because our world needs a Left that can inspire hope, not just for a more productive and well-administered society, but for a freer, more democratic, less alienating society, controlled directly by its members, as opposed to being controlled by administrators, supposedly acting in the public interest. This ideal of a ‘community-based socialism’ was a vision that once united the entire radical Left – Marxists and anarchists, guild socialists and Owenites, syndicalists and council communists – and I think there is reason to hope that it could some day do so again. •

Steve D'Arcy is a climate justice and economic democracy organizer in London, Ontario, Canada. He can be reached at steve.darcy@gmail.com. This article appeared as part of Rabble's “Reinventing democracy, reclaiming the commons” series

Banks Again Depress US Economy

There is a basic lesson about capitalist (in)efficiency in this sad story.



by Rick Wolff

Banks are once again depressing the broader US economy. Its all collateral damage as they take care of their own business, making money and shoring up their balance sheets. This time the issue for them is how profitably to dispose of their accumulated homes acquired when they foreclosed on delinquent mortgages. They are selling those houses very cheaply, discounted well below prices for comparable properties, thereby depressing the housing prices for everyone across the nation. According to RealtyTrac, the online marketer of foreclosed properties, foreclosures
accounted for 28% of all existing home sales in the first quarter of 2011. This weakens the so-called “recovery” and helps explain why the US housing market has already turned down again.

Here is the economic problem. When banks take homes because the owners cannot pay back the money borrowed to buy the homes, the banks have a problem. First, they now own an asset whose price is falling in most markets. Second, owning a home incurs expenses (maintenance, insurance, property taxes) the bank will need to pay. Third, banks make money by lending at interest, not by owning real estate; they must convert foreclosed homes into cash they can then lend.

Under the law, when a lender forecloses on a home owner, the lender can sell the home. The lender takes the proceeds up to the amount owed on that home. The lender must return to the foreclosed homeowner whatever portion of those proceeds exceeds what was owed to the bank. This creates a perverse incentive with bad social consequences.

To see the problem, suppose a bank has foreclosed on a home worth, say, $200,000 in today’s real estate market, that carries an outstanding mortgage balance of $150,000. If the bank puts the home on the market for $200,000, it may take months of waiting for the house to sell (incurring expenses for the bank). The bank can instead decide to speed the sale by offering the house at a discount from its actual market value, say, $175,000. At that price, the bank can still pay itself back the outstanding $150,000 owed on the house. It is the foreclosed homeowner who loses out by getting only $25,000 instead of the $50,000 if the home had sold for the full $ 200,000. It is also the broad housing market whose prices drop generally because of banks selling foreclosed properties at discounted cheaper prices.

According to RealtyTrac, the average US price charged on foreclosed homes when they are sold is 35% less than the price of a comparable, non-foreclosed home. In some states it is much higher: 53% in New York and 50% in Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin.

The key point here is that normal, profit-maximizing business for the banks is once again bad for the larger economy. Before 2008, banks' profit-driven speculations in asset-backed securities, credit default swaps, etc. provoked the great crash and crisis of that year. Afterwards, bailout money poured by the government into banks was kept to help the banks recover rather than lent to US businesses and individuals to help them recover. Now, banks are taking care of their mortgage foreclosure business in a way that again damages the larger economy as they pursue their self-interest. Moreover, Realty-Trac estimates that it will take three years to sell off the inventory of foreclosed homes. That promises a long downward pressure on the US economy directly undercutting hopes for a broad-based recovery.

There is a basic lesson about capitalist (in)efficiency in this sad story. How convenient for the status quo that so few voices raise the obvious question: should we allow national economy recovery to be sabotaged in these ways?

from Rick Wolff's Blog

Urge Mayors to Demand War $$$ Home Now!

The SPCT has voted to support this effort (thanks to everyone who replied yesterday in such a timely fashion).

If you have a moment, please copy this letter and send it to your mayor if you live in a somewhat large city (such as Hartford, West Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, Stamford, Waterbury, etc..). If you live in a smaller town, you can still send it to the mayor of your closest city or to the mayor of the city you work in. Please share this with friends and family to do the same!

Thanks everyone.

In Solidarity,

Todd

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

Dear Mayor Segarra,

As Hartford’s Mayor, you well know how the reverberations of the economic crisis are being felt here and across the country. Layoffs and budget cuts to healthcare, education and other vital services have plunged cities across the nation into very difficult times.
Communities cannot afford the continuing diversion of monies to endless wars, militarism and death. Our nation is projected to spend more than $126 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars that the majority of Americans no longer support.
In many cities, crime and violence are on the rise; yet community leaders cannot appeal to gangs to stop violence in the streets while our country continues to be an ongoing purveyor of violence across the globe.


As the Mayor of Hartford, the first capital city to pass a City Council resolution to Bring Our War Dollars Home for the vital needs of our citizens, you are well positioned to lead other mayors toward a progressive vision of what our US cities could again become when resources return to them.
During the Conference of Mayors 73rd Annual Meeting, June 17-21 in Baltimore, a draft resolution will be submitted for review, Calling on Congress to Redirect Military Spending to Domestic Priorities. This resolution supports the speedy ending of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and calls on the U.S. Congress to redirect war dollars to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid state and local governments, and develop a new economy based on renewable, sustainable energy. (The text of the resolution has been modified since it was first publicized and is included below.)


We urge you to sign on and register your support for: a foreign policy guided by diplomacy and a federal budget focused on rebuilding America. Can we add your name to this growing list of visionary mayor-leaders who have co-sponsored the Resolution?

Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles
Carolyn Peterson, Ithaca
Dave Norris, Charlottesville
David Coss, Santa Fe
John Duran, West Hollywood, CA
Gayle McLaughlin, Richmond, CA
Bob Kiss, Burlington, VT
R.T. Rybak, Minneapolis
Frank Ortis, Pembroke Pines, FL
Matthew Ryan, Binghamton
Paul Wiehl, Athens, OH
Brenda Lawrence, Southfield, Michigan
Joy Cooper, Hallandale Beach, FL
Joseph C. O'Brien, Worcester, MA
Paul Soglin, Madison, Wisconsin
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Baltimore
David L. Konick, Rock Mills, VA
Joanne Twomey, Biddeford, Maine

Democracy in the Streets: Madison Mobilizes to Defeat the Anti-Labor Wisconsin Governor

by Omar Mohamad, Socialist Party of South Central Wisconsin and Billy Wharton, co-chair Socialist Party USA

The mass protests led by public employees unions in Madison, Wisconsin have been presented by some mainstream commentators as a labor’s last stand. They are not. They are a spark, a spark with the potential to create a new protest movement capable of revitalizing our unions, radicalizing student organizing and creating a space for democratic socialist politics. As socialists, we stand steadfastly in solidarity with this protest movement. We pledge to support the immediate goal of blocking Governor Scott Walker’s reactionary and draconian anti-union legislation and the longer-term project of building a serious left-wing political movement in the US.

Walker’s proposal to strip workers of collective bargaining rights is an extreme example of the budget cutting strategies being prepared by state and local officials throughout the country. More than 31 states are in the process of implementing deep cuts to basic public services. The local budgetary situations have been made worse by the ending of Federal stimulus funds. Much like at the Federal level, most of these states have, for decades, refused to properly tax their richest residents and corporations. In the case of Wisconsin, corporate tax rates have not been increased since 1972 and a myriad of loopholes and tax credits allow these companies to
further evade taxation.

But the budget cuts are not about the fiscal balancing of budgets. They are, instead, an ideological attack on the rights of working people, on the opportunities for public university students and on the public programs that millions of people rely on. Gov. Walker and the other politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, have refused to cover deficits by spending from reserve funds or increasing taxation on the rich and corporations. This is a political choice, driven by free market ideology, to defend the wealth of the elite at the expense of the vast majority of people in our society.

As socialists, we understand that public employees are not the problem. Their work helps to enhance the public good. The problem that is gripping all of American society is that 5% of the population controls 85% of the productive wealth and this 5% has no intention of returning this wealth to those who produced it. As a result, politicians will violate any democratic right – union rights, civil rights and economic rights – that threatens this wealth. Walker demonstrated just how far he would go by putting the National Guard on notice in the event of mass unrest.

No wonder then that the protesters in Madison compared the Governor to the deposed dictator of Egypt Hosni Mubarak. This comparison is not only because the protesters see a bit of Walker in Mubarak, but more importantly, they see themselves in the massive street protests that gripped Egypt and in the occupation of Tahrir Square. And what great lessons to learn from this brave movement that faced down the police and forced a dictator out. The fighting spirit of Tahrir Square represents a global wave of unrest in which people are exercising and demanding their democratic rights. Democracy, in Cairo or Madison, is about more than elections. It is about creating a society based on economic democracy – where working people who create the wealth can claim that wealth.

Democratic socialism offers the best hope to make the aspirations of these protests real. We believe that society can best be run through direct democracy – where people have a direct say in how the society runs. Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Legislature should not be the ones determining how the budget is crafted. A system of participatory budgeting in which those who will be affected by the budget are given a direct decision making voice in how the funds are spent would be the most democratic and efficient process possible. Here, the true will of all those people mobilizing to stop Walker would be heard.

Until we are able to build the political will to create such a democratic structure, the political focus must be placed on taxing the rich and corporations to cover the immediate budget deficit in Wisconsin. In the short term, this will mean employing all possible forms of civil disobedience and non-compliance on our worksites, our schools and in our communities. Simply put, if a small group of politicians attempts to strip us of our rights in the service of protecting the wealth of the elite, we are more than justified in using all of the social power we can muster to bring the society to a stand still.

The Socialist Party USA has initiated a national campaign to fight against budget cuts and the attack on public workers. We are calling on all of our members and our supporters to join local campaigns to defend jobs, education, and services. As socialists, we bring with us a firm conviction about taxing the rich and a vision of a democratically run society in which people regain control of their lives from the logic of the market, from the workings of capitalism and from the elite 5% who benefit from our labor, while offering little in return.

Solidarity with the Madison Protests!
Kill the Anti-Union Bill!
Defeat the Anti-Labor Walker!

Support Students Right to Organize in CT

Good Morning Everyone,

I’m writing to share some important information about the right of students to organize as well as to ask those who support this right to take action in CT.

There is currently a bill in the Labor and Public Employees Committee of the CT legislature that modifies the language of the existing labor relations bill. The proposed modifications expressly define graduate student teaching assistants
and research assistants as “emplpoyees” with the “right to collectively bargain.” Keep in mind that the wording of the current law does not prevent students from doing so(it does not even mention them.

The bill to which I’m referring can be viewed here:

http://search.cga.state.ct.us/dtsearch_lpa.asp?cmd=getdoc&DocId=8498&Index=I%3a\zindex\2011&HitCount=6&hits=182+1d1+1d8+1dd+20a+22c+&hc=1904&req=university&Item=36

Please take a few minutes today or Wednesday to send an email or call the following
state senators on the Labor and Public Employees Committee to express your support for S.B. No. 937.

If you are really excited about this you may even go one step further and attend a public hearing on it this Thursday

In these times of budget slashing and union-busting (see Wisconson)we need to take every victory we can for the working class majority.


Labor and Public Employees Committee Members:

Sen Edith G. Prague
1-800-842-1420
http://www.senatedems.ct.gov/Prague-mailform.html

ZEKE ZALASKI
1.800.842.8267
Zeke.Zalaski@cga.ct.gov

Senator Gomes
1-800-842-1420
http://www.senatedems.ct.gov/Gomes-mailform.html

EZEQUIEL SANTIAGO
Ezequiel.Santiago@cga.ct.gov
1.800.842.8267

Guglielmo, Anthony
Anthony.Guglielmo@cga.ct.gov
(800) 842-1421

Rigby, John B.
800-842-1423
http://reprigby.com/contact-me

Aman, William
800-842-1423
http://repaman.com/?page_id=7

Esposito, Louis P.
1.860.240.8500
Lou.Esposito@cga.ct.gov

Hewett, Ernest
860.240.8585
Ernest.Hewett@cga.ct.gov

Kiner, David W.
(860) 240-8585
David.Kiner@cga.ct.gov

Miner, Craig A.
800-842-1423
http://repminer.com/?page_id=7


Here are the details for the public hearing on Thursday

PUBLIC HEARING AGENDA
Thursday, February 17, 2011
2:00 PM in Room 2A of the LOB (Legislative Office Building)

I. COMMITTEE BILLS FOR REVIEW

1. S.B. No. 736 (COMM) AN ACT CONCERNING A SURETY BOND GUARANTEE PROGRAM FOR EMERGING CONTRACTORS. (LAB)

2. S.B. No. 935 (RAISED) AN ACT CONCERNING ELIMINATION OF STATE FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE FOR COMPANIES THAT REDUCE RETIREMENT BENEFITS.

3. S.B. No. 937 (RAISED) AN ACT CONCERNING THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE FOR CERTAIN STATE EMPLOYEES AND GRADUATE ASSISTANTS AT STATE UNIVERSITIES.

http://search.cga.state.ct.us/dtsearch_lpa.asp?cmd=getdoc&DocId=8498&Index=I%3a\zindex\2011&HitCount=6&hits=182+1d1+1d8+1dd+20a+22c+&hc=1904&req=university&Item=36

4. H.B. No. 5464 (COMM) AN ACT CONCERNING STATE EMPLOYEES AND VIOLENCE AND BULLYING IN THE WORKPLACE. (LAB)

5. H.B. No. 6328 (RAISED) AN ACT CONCERNING TIMETABLES FOR MUNICIPAL BINDING ARBITRATION.

6. H.B. No. 6329 (RAISED) AN ACT CONCERNING THE MAINTENANCE OF HEALTH INSURANCE FOR SPOUSES AND DEPENDENTS OF CERTAIN DECEASED POLICE OFFICERS AND FIREFIGHTERS

SPCT Joins QLF to Protest Discrimination in Middletown

The SPCT was proud to stand tall with the members of QLF and the Middletown LGBTQ community to demand amends from the owner of the Middletown coffee shop, Javapalooza. The owner has developed a reputation for using hateful speech and harassing workers and customers alike. On Sunday, Jan 30th, approximately 75 supporters showed up in Middletown to conduct a teach-in inside the coffee shop and set up a picket line outside to inform the general public about the incident and our demands for amends from the owner. The protest was well received by the patrons and general public on the street.

You can read more about this event and the groups involved at:

http://queerliberationfront.us/2011/01/20/know-your-rights-direct-action-teach-in-at-site-of-anti-queer-assault-in-middletown-ct-jan-30th-noon/

and

http://queerartist.wordpress.com/

The Socialist Party of CT denounces all forms of discrimination and stands in solidarity with any group that feels that they're being unfairly treated due to their physical, mental, religious, sexual or other attributes.

"This Earth is for everyone. That is the demand." -Eugene Debs

Petition for a Connecticut State Economic-Conversion Commission

Petition for a Connecticut State Economic-Conversion Commission

1. A significant amount of Connecticut industry relies on contracts from the Department of Defense for weapons systems. Often the jobs held in weapons factories are well-paid, union jobs with good benefits. Yet the number of these jobs in CT is declining.

2. Studies have shown that the for a given amount of money fewer jobs are created in the capital-intensive weapons industries than in education, health care, and other occupations with equally high wages and benefits.

Therefore, we the undersigned, in order to save existing high-skilled jobs, to generate more and retain a highly skilled workforce call for the Connecticut General Assembly to create an Economic Conversion Commission.

This Commission would be charged to research how Connecticut can transition from dependency on the production of weapons of war to a state that leads the nation and world in producing the green economy of the future: It would research alternatives to employment in manufacturing weapons in favor of products that our current highly-skilled workforce can fabricate using both existing and new plants, products that enhance our national security and well being, enhance our quality of life and ensure a sustainable economy. The Commission would be charged to find employment opportunities in areas of true national security such as education, health care, mass transit, renewable energy products and environmental protection, and to press for enactment of its proposals in our state.

We call for such a Commission to be composed of representatives among others of state legislators, academics, labor including those in the weapons industries, peace, environmental and business organizations.

Name-Printed Signature Address email
1.__________________________________________________________________________________
2.__________________________________________________________________________________
3.__________________________________________________________________________________
4.__________________________________________________________________________________
5.__________________________________________________________________________________
6.__________________________________________________________________________________
7.__________________________________________________________________________________
8.__________________________________________________________________________________
9.__________________________________________________________________________________
10._________________________________________________________________________________

Please return this petition to: Joe Wasserman, 87 Shadow Lane, West Hartford CT 06110, or Miriam Kurland, 269 Wormwood Hill Rd, Mansfield Center, CT 06250, or Greater New Haven Peace Council, PO Box 3105, New Haven, CT 06515

Socialist Response to the State of the Union

Obama Out of Touch with the American People

by Billy Wharton, co-chair, Socialist Party USA

Tonight’s State of the Union speech revealed just how far out of touch President Barack Obama is from the reality of working people in America. What a distance from the White House to the unemployment line. From the Rose Garden to the food pantry.

Tonight’s State of the Union sent the message one final time that the Obama presidency was and is designed to protect the privileges accrued by the richest 5% in society. Obama lived up to the characterization of him as a “hedge-fund Democrat,” a politician assigned the task of deflecting the real demands of the American people for a society and economy based on solidarity, peace and justice.

A Call for More Corporate Globalization
The President’s focus on “out competing” other countries, such as China and India, is a thinly veiled attempt to appeal to national patriotism made in order to disguise his desire to continue policies of corporate globalization. China and India are not the problem.

The problem is that people in the US are forced to live inside of an economy where the richest 5% of the population control 85% of the wealth. As a result, Obama’s claim to be creating a “more competitive America” doesn’t mean creating good living wage jobs for working people. Instead, it means continuing the same policies that are tailored to protect the wealth accumulated by the rich.

Democratic socialists have an alternative. Instead of playing to the business community, we need to get serious about creating a comprehensive plan for a full employment economy. This can be done through emergency measures, such as the creation of a National Jobs Program and through more long-term efforts, such as the funding of a democratically operated system of worker owned and managed cooperatives.

A commitment to full employment would put people to work immediately, thereby, relieving the skyrocketing unemployment and underemployment. The Cooperative Program would shift the national economy away from the financial and service sectors and toward manufacturing and production.

This democratically run economy would also provide a challenge to undemocratic capitalist organizations, such as the banks and multinational corporations. Once Americans experience democracy on their workplaces, a democratic socialist system of jobs creation will become a preferred choice for millions.

Americans do not need Bill Clinton “I feel your pain” platitudes. The Obama speech was full of them. We need jobs - good jobs that will allow us to feed our families and live lives free of the uncertainties of crisis economics. If the private sector won’t provide this, the public sector must be developed. Think of how much better we would be today if the public money that was poured in the banking system would have gone to create a full employment economy. Democratic socialism offers this alternative.

Obama’s Wars
On foreign policy, Obama claimed “that America's moral example must always shine for all who yearn for freedom, justice, and dignity.” However, he failed to make any mention in his speech of his continued operation of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo stands as a gross violation of international human rights. Closing this illegal detention center was a key claim made by candidate Obama during the 2008 election run. Today, even after signing an executive order in January 2009 to close Guantanamo within a year, it remains open and sends the message to the world that America is willing to violate human rights on a global scale.

In addition, not only has Obama continued Bush’s wars, he has lately taken to adopting Bush’s rhetoric. President Obama stated that, “We have also taken the fight to al Qaeda and their allies abroad.” In fact, what the Obama administration has done is re-enforce military occupations while extending the war into Pakistan through the use of drone bombings.

Just two days prior to the State of the Union Speech, the American military unleashed a drone attack in Pakistan that killed more than a dozen people and inspired a 10,000 person anti-drone march in that region. This was one of more than 400 attacks that have produced more than 1,500 casualties since 2008. Many of these people were innocent villagers summarily executed by a machine directed from the center of the empire.

It is time now for Americans themselves to put an end to American militarism. We can do this immediately by building a powerful protest movement to end the wars and occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. And we can do more. We can develop a movement that puts the demand to cut the military budget by 50% at the forefront. To take the money used on war and the military and put it to work to create a better society for all.

This is the promise of socialism – a world based on peaceful co-existence in which global solidarity becomes the basis of human relations.

An Austerity President
Near the end of his speech Obama proposed cuts to the Federal budget including pay freezes and cuts to public programs. The President provided qualified support to the Deficit Commission who recommended sharp cuts to the budget “the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it - in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes.” He pledged to carry out spending cuts on “…anything we cannot afford.”

However, these cuts are exactly the wrong direction for the country to be headed in. Austerity at any level of government should be resisted. Cutting Federal spending will have a spiraling effect on state and local governments who are already engaged in budget cutting. Federal support is the only thing preventing even deeper cuts on the local level. The Federal government should be strengthening these local budgets not forcing more cuts.

And there is one source that can be tapped into to fund not only local budgeting, but the creation of an array of necessary social survival programs. Simply put, the rich must pay. Over the past 30 years, America has experienced a class revolution in which the richest 5% of the country has monopolized an astounding amount of resources.

As socialists, we believe that Federal policy should be moving toward a truly progressive Federal income tax structure that targets the wealth accumulated by the super rich. This would allow the US to create a truly excellent education system – one that is free of charge from pre-K to graduate school. These funds could be used to make a green transition for industry by creating a publicly administered energy policy. And, the deep taxation of the rich could revitalize the country’s ailing transportation system by building a super-fast national train line, by creating a green jobs program for the infrastructure and by aggressively substituting clean energy forms for our current dependence on fossil fuels.

Budget cuts will not get us there. Appeasing the top 5% won’t do it. And trying to manage polluting industries through cap and trade will do little to stem the tide of global warming. Only a bold economic plan based on the principles of democratic socialism can create a truly democratic society that puts people back in control of their own lives.

What it will take
If Obama’s speech does anything, it marks the path that we need to travel as people interested in creating a free and democratic society. We cannot lobby our way to such a society. Voting for the lesser evil won’t work. And continuing to get by on less while bankers, corporate executives and other members of the elite enrich themselves is no longer tolerable.

To create a full employment economy, to end the war and shift toward a peace policy and to create a progressive income tax system, we need a democratic revolution. We need people all over this country to awaken from their long political slumber and realize that working people have to power to make history. Our demands for jobs, peace and freedom can begin among small circles of people and grow into a mass movement. We can move from tiny to victorious and now, more than ever, is the time for action.

Check out the Socialist Party USA
http://www.socialistparty-usa.org/

Protesting Koch Brothers, but the Problem is Capitalism.

http://www.alternet.org/story/149546/angry_progressive_coalition_to_protest_billionaire_gathering_hosted_by_koch_brothers,_major_tea_party_funders

I just read the piece linked to above by Don Hazen at AlterNet. The title was:
"Angry Progressive Coalition to Protest Billionaire Gathering Hosted by
Koch Brothers, Major Tea Party Funders,"
and in short, it said that "progressives are planning a huge event to raise awareness about the Kochs and their billionaire cronies, and peacefully marching to give an alternative to their hard-right agenda."

I'm all for protesting these individuals and highlighting the actions of any who are engaging in such socially reckless behavior, but I would like to take this opportunity to point out the structural nature of this "Koch Brothers" problem.

Blaming greedy individuals can be somewhat satisfying when one feels powerless to change things, but even if the Koch brothers were to magically disappear tomorrow, the class relations that give rise to the "role" that they play is still in place. As Marx so brilliantly pointed out, the "coercive laws of competition" will lead any individual in the role of the capitalist to behave in such a manner. Even the nicest man or woman in the world is coerced into working in their personal class interest (seeking maximum profit) once they occupy the role of capitalist; otherwise they won't remain a capitalist for very long. The bottom line is always the bottom line and if you are not working toward this end the shareholders will give you the boot and replace you with someone who will.

The economic incentive is always there for capitalists to behave in whatever manner furthers their insatiable appetite for profit, which is why economic and social reforms are always under attack. The problem is even more complex because the capitalist not only has the incentive to destroy democratic measures to protect workers and the environment, but he/she has the monetary means to actually do so. This effectively makes democracy an empty word in a capitalist economic system.

So long as capitalist relations continue exist, a tremendously conscious and politically active working class is required just to maintain any form of civilization that does not slip into barbarism. This is the job of socialists; to provide a political alternative and a framework within which a movement to engage in this necessary class struggle can be carried out as well as to highlight the structural nature of our problems. While the hearts of our progressive and "liberal" brothers and sisters are in the right place, little will change until they realize that only fundamental (radical) changes to the political/economic system can eliminate the coercive social relations that create "Kochs" and foster so much inequality and violence.

"The Bravest Man I Ever Met" by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

The bravest man I ever met
by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Pageant magazine

June 1965

Last December, 2000 Americans gathered at New York's Hotel Astor to celebrate the 80th birthday of Norman Thomas. I could not be present because I had to go to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. But before I enplaned for Norway, I take the following message to be sent to America's foremost Socialist:

"I can think of no man who has done more than you to inspire the vision of a society free of injustice and exploitation. While some would adjust to the status quo, you urged struggle. While some would corrupt struggle with violence or undemocratic perversions, you have stood firmly for the integrity of ends and means. Your example has ennobled and dignified the fight for freedom, and all that we hear of the Great Society seems only an echo of your prophetic eloquence. Your pursuit of racial and economic democracy at home, and of sanity and peace in the world, has been awesome in scope. It is with deep admiration and indebtedness that I carry the inspiration of your life to Oslo."

Truly, the life of Norman Thomas has been one of deep commitment to the betterment of all humanity. In 1928, the year before I was born, he waged the first of six campaigns as the Socialist Party's candidate for President of the United States. A decade earlier, as a preacher, he fought gallantly, if unsuccessfully, against American involvement in World War I. Both then and now he has raised aloft the banner of civil liberties, civil rights, labor's right to organize, and has played a significant role in so many diverse areas of activity that newspapers all over the land have termed him "America's conscience."

There are those who call Norman Thomas a failure because he has never been elected to office. One of his severest critics is Thomas himself. When asked what he had accomplished in his life, the white-haired Socialist leader replied:

"I suppose it is an achievement to live to my age and feel that one has kept the faith, or tried to. It is an achievement to have had a part, even if it was a minor part, in some of the things that have been accomplished in the field of civil liberty, in the field of better race relations, and the rest of it. It is something of an achievement, I think, to keep the idea of socialism before a rather indifferent or even hostile public. That's the kind of achievement that I would have to my credit, if any. As the world counts achievement, I have not got much."

But the world disagrees. The Washington Post, echoed by scores of other newspapers, called Thomas "among the most influential individuals in 20th century politics" and added: "We join great numbers of his fellow Americans in congratulating the country on having him as a leader at large."

During our historic March on Washington in the summer of 1963, when 250,000 Negro and white Americans joined together in an outpouring of fellowship and brotherly cooperation for a world of freedom and equality, a little Negro boy listened near the Washington Monument to an eloquent orator.

Turning to his father, he asked: "Who is that man?"

Came the inevitable answer: "That's Norman Thomas. He was for us before any other white folks were."

His concern for racial equality flows naturally from his heritage. His father and both grandparents were Presbyterian ministers. His maternal grandfather Stephen Mattoon was not only an abolitionist but went south to Charlotte, North Carolina after the Civil War and became the founder and first president of a college for Negroes, then named Biddle College, but now called Johnson C. Smith University. Emma Mattoon, Norman's mother, was a girl of about 12 when the family moved to Charlotte. She remembered vividly how the other white girls in the area ostracized her and her sister because their father, a Northerner, taught "niggers."

Thomas, of course, was actively opposed to racial discrimination. In 1921, when he edited a pacifist magazine, The World Tomorrow, he wrote (and this perhaps indicates how far we are from those days):

"Northern industrial centers may seem by comparison desirable to the southern Negroes who emigrate to them. But they are very poor sort of earthly paradise, as The World Tomorrow can testify. This thought has been brought home to the magazine by and experience of its own we are obliged to move to new offices at 108 Lexington Avenue, New York City, and the reason is this-- but the owners of the building demanded of us signature of a lease forbidding the employment of any Negro. We should have refused such a demand on principle, but in addition we are proud of the fact that one of the most faithful of our office staff is a Negro woman. That her race should be discriminated against in more than one office building in New York City as a practical denial of the fundamental principles of brotherhood and Christianity."

And in 1933, when labor, farm, unemployed, Socialist and liberal groups joined together in a New Continental Congress in Washington, D.C., to lobby for a decent deal for America's depressed millions, Thomas was instrumental in dealing a blow to Jim Crow. Most of the New York delegates were originally housed in the Cairo Hotel. In his book Norman Thomas: A Biography (Norton), Harry Fleischman relates that when the hotel barred Floria Pinkney, a Negro delegate, hundreds of the delegates marched to the hotel in the body, canceled their reservations, and demanded return of the money they had paid in advance. Thomas was their spokesman. When the hotel refused to return the money, Thomas arranged with lawyers to bring suit, whereupon the hotel agreed to return the money.

Thomas also worked hand-in-hand with our most illustrious Negro labor leader, A. Philip Randolph, in speaking at organizing meetings of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, in fighting for permanent Federal Fair Employment Practices executive orders and laws, and in helping to abolish discrimination in the nation's armed forces.

But his concern for civil rights is only one facet of Thomas's life that has aroused my admiration and that of many of his fellow Americans, black and white. Describing the Socialist leader's career, Dr. John Haynes Holmes recalled the words of the prophet Isaiah:

For Zion's sake I will not hold my peace,

and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest,

Until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness,

And the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.

Upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, have I set watchmen,

Who shall never hold their peace, day and night,

Go through, go through the gates;

Prepare ye the way of the people.

The role of watchman on the tower has never been an easy calling. Who stands upon the wall stands alone. And the man's arms can weary of lifting a standard for the people. There is no rest in it, nor worldly success, nor choice. Yet his courageous championship of exhausted sharecroppers in the South, of persecuted Japanese Americans in World War II, of conscientious objectors in federal prisons, of exploited hospital workers in northern settings, of Mississippi Negroes fighting for the right to vote, his lifelong campaign for economic and social democracy, and his unceasing drive for the maximum international cooperation for peace with justice have endeared him to millions around the globe. He has proved that there is something truly glorious human being forever engaged in the pursuit of justice and equality. He is one of the bravest men I ever met.

"So long as Norman Thomas is alive and capable of standing before a public forum," stated dramatist Morton Wishengrad, "those who are alienated and excluded are not entirely mute. One man articulate in the service of so many. It is beyond socialism, beyond political system, and beyond economic doctrine."

The overriding passion of Thomas's life has been the pursuit of peace-- not the deadly apathy of appeasement or submission to tyranny but the insistence that the resolution of differences must be transferred from the dreadful realm of military force to economic and ideological conflict and, ultimately, international long and cooperation. He has put that philosophy practically-- maximum isolation from war, maximum cooperation for peace.

His quest for peace started during World War I when he came to the conviction that Christianity and war were in complete opposition, that "you cannot conquer war by war, cast out Satan by Satan, or do the enormous evil of war that good may come." Thomas was so passionate speaker even then that his intense convictions drew forth strong responses from his audiences.

After talking February 1917 at Wesleyan University's Y.M.C.A., its president, Fred Stevens, who had been in the U.S. Army for six years, was much impressed by Thomas's remarks. He was scheduled to address the entire student body at a University preparedness rally. The chairman arose and said: "Wesleyan is fortunate in having an Army officer in its midst who has agreed to drill our volunteers and teach them military tactics. I give you Fred Stevens." Stevens got up and told his startled audience: "I'm sorry, fellows. I can't do it. I heard Norman Thomas last night. I'm a pacifist now."

Through that war, and between wars, and into the next war, Thomas proclaimed that ethical imperative: Thou shalt not kill. When it was popular to do so and when it was dangerous to do so, he kept insisting that war is an evil that men can make-- and that only men can cure.

This message the dynamic Socialist leader has taken to his country and to the world in every form that human energy and eloquence allow. A score of books that have reached people all over the world reveals some of their content in their titles: Is Conscience the Crime?; War-- No Profit, No Glory, No Need; Appeal to the Nations; The Prerequisites For Peace. It is been the basis for rallying the American people in times of crisis in organizations from the American Union against Militarism at the time of World War I to the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and Turn toward Peace today (two organizations in which I am happy to work with him).

Peace has been the theme of countless hundreds of broadcasts over radio and, later, TV networks over a period of 40 years. Peace has been included in conferences on the economic and other practical aspects of universal disarmament under effective international inspection, which have drawn Senators and scholars as well as representatives of voluntary agencies. The search for peace has taken Thomas across the American continent year after year, speaking to small groups and large. And pieces taken him across the world to conferences with leaders of nations and with the prototype of that international fellowship of free men whose vision he has helped to create.

Thomas, a Presbyterian minister, found his interest in socialism stimulated by the antiwar declaration of the Socialist Party in 1917. He wrote Morris Hillquit, one of the declaration's authors, to offer help in Hillquit's New York mayoralty campaign: "The hope for the future lies in a new social and economic order which demands the abolition of the capitalist system. War itself is only the most horrible and dramatic of the many evil fruits of our present organized system of explication and the philosophy of life which exalts competition instead of cooperation." When Thomas joined the Socialist Party in 1918, it was with certain reservations: "Perhaps to certain members of the Party my socialism would not be of the most orthodox variety. As you know I have a profound fear of the undue exaltation of the State and the profound faith that the new world we desire must depend upon freedom and fellowship rather than upon any sort of coercion whatsoever. I am interested in political parties only to the extent in which they may be serviceable in advancing certain ideals and in winning liberty for men and women."

Even before becoming a Socialist, Thomas displayed a lack of orthodoxy in nonconformity when he coupled his support of women's suffrage with an expressed doubt that women would vote any more wisely than men. While maintaining that women had just as much right to be wrong as men, Thomas annoyed those suffragettes who argued passionately, "When women get the vote, war will be ended for all time."

In the dark days before the New Deal, when the open shop prevailed and unions were weak and poor, the Socialist leader was a familiar figure to workers in scores of strikes. Thomas could be found, noted David Dubinsky, president of the Ladies International Garment Workers' Union, "In each and every strike on the picket lines and in the hall meetings. We found him when we could not raise money to supply food, sandwiches, or literature for our strikers. We found him championing every battle for free speech, for free assemblage."

Before I was in kindergarten, America was in the throes of a desperate depression, with the Wall Street crash followed by the grim misery of rapidly growing mass unemployment. In the 1932 presidential campaign, Thomas, as the Socialist presidential nominee, called for socialization of the nation's major industries and natural resources, but his major stress was on immediate programs to ameliorate the tragic effects of the depression and to lead to economic recovery. The platform called for a $10 billion federal program of public works and unemployment relief plus laws to acquire land, buildings, and equipment to put the unemployed to work producing food, fuel, clothing, and homes for their own use. The platform also urged:

*Compulsory insurance against unemployment.

*Employment agencies free to the public.

*Old-age pensions for men and women 60 years old.

*Abolition of child labor.

*The six-hour day, five-day week with no wage reductions.

*Aid to farmers and homeowners against foreclosures of their mortgages.

*Health insurance and maternity insurance.

*Adequate minimum wage laws.

Neither the Republican nor Democratic platforms showed any comparable understanding of the nation's needs in a time of crisis. It is to Franklin D Roosevelt's credit that, when elected, he did not hesitate to use many of Thomas's planks to build his New Deal.

I have remarked upon Thomas's suspicion of orthodoxy, but in one respect accepted orthodox Socialist views on race. The Socialist Party had no special plank on the problem of the Negro. It assumed that abolishing capitalism would automatically mean equality for the Negro. Thomas did not find out how inadequate this approach was until the W.P.A. (Works Progress Administration) came upon the scene. While in Birmingham, Alabama, on a speaking tour, Thomas was told by a white Socialist who was on W.P.A. that he had asked his fellow white workers if they would prefer getting $5 a day if Negroes were paid the same wage, or only $4 a day, with Negroes getting only $3.50. Overwhelmingly, he told Thomas, a preferred less money so long as it was more the Negroes were given! This failure to understand the deeply rooted psychological bases of racism contributed to the Socialist failure to win massive Negro support.

It is been my good fortune to work with Norman Thomas not only for world peace and for racial equality but for fair treatment of all of the world's minorities and for social justice everywhere. Several years ago, when the Soviet Union sentenced more than 120 persons -- most of them Jews-- to death for "economic" crimes, we joined with Dr. Linus Pauling, Dr. Henry Steele Commager, and Dr. William Ernest Hocking in initiating a petition signed by more than 200 prominent Americans urging the Soviet Union to abandon such a practice.

When the U.S.S.R. formally abolished the death penalty some years ago, it boasted that it "was leaving the capitalistic countries behind and was moving toward a more liberal, enlightened Communist society." When the death penalty was invoked in the United States, particularly in the case of convicted Soviet spies, many anti-Communists, running the gamut from Pope Pius XII two Norman Thomas and myself, inveighed against such death sentences.

By reverting to capital punishment, the Khrushchev regime abandoned any propaganda advantages it had boasted. Boris Nikiforov, head of the Criminal Law Department of the U.S.S.R. Institute of Jurisprudence, attempted to whitewash the Soviet death penalty by claiming that state property is "sacred and inviolable" and deliver appropriates state property "encroaches on the basic principle of life of Soviet society." To that argument, we joined former Sen. Herbert Lehman when he aptly replied: "Property rights are no less important in the private economy than in a Communist economy. But one of the chief glories of a sane society is that it places human rights and human life on a higher and more sacred plane than property rights." Incidentally, the "economic" crimes for which the Russians imposed the death penalty included currency speculation and black marketing. One man was doomed for running a private cosmetics business. Three others were condemned to death for selling low-grade apples at top prices.

One of Norman Thomas's most endearing qualities has been his ability to hate the sin but love the sinner. While recognizing that people are influenced by their economic and social backgrounds, notice that they are often capable of rising above narrow self- or class-interest. He has often been critical of leaders in high places, but he is been scrupulous in giving credit where credit is due, a circumstance that has appealed to Presidents and hosts of other public officials. And, in a time when apathy and indifference have characterized much of mankind, one of his outstanding attributes has been his capacity for indignation at any injustice, which led Roger Baldwin to call Thomas "a civil liberties agency all by himself, with an acute sense of timing and publicity."

Nor is Thomas a dissenter just for the sake of dissent. "The secret of a good life," he once wrote, "is to have the right loyalties and to hold them in the right scale of values. The value of dissent and dissenters is to make us reappraise those values with supreme concerning for the truth.… Rebellion per se is not a virtue. If it were, we would have some heroes on very low levels."

At Thomas's 80th birthday party, one of the greetings read:

"I understand the moment of truth has arrived and you are confessing another birthday. In your instance this should be easy because you remain eternally young of heart and young of spirit. As one of your older friends, I wish to join in wishing you not only a happy birthday but continued good health. Your life has been dedicated to the practice and ideals of democracy. It is also been a life of courage in the battle against all forms of totalitarianism. With equal vigor and determination you have challenged the evil forces both of fascism and communism-- never flinching or retreating, always advocating the cause of freedom and social justice. America is a better land because of you, your life, your work, your deeds."

Signing that greeting was Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. Other greetings came from present or former prime ministers, Supreme Court judges, Senators, Congressmen, and leaders of all of America's political parties.

Yet America has never fully utilized Thomas's great abilities. He has been a marvelous unofficial ambassador-at-large to our friends in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Would it not make sense to make him our official representative to the United Nations?

Protest FBI Attacks on Free Speech! 1/25 in Hartford and New Haven

A CALL FOR DEMONSTRATIONS IN DEFENSE OF THE 9 NEWLY SUBPOENAED ACTIVISTS TO APPEAR BEFORE A GRAND JURY!

CALL OFF THE GRAND JURY!

END THE ISSUANCE OF SUBPOENAS AND GRAND JURY INVESTIGATIONS OF ANTI-WAR ACTIVISTS!

NO FBI/DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE INTIMIDATION OF THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT!

DEFEND FREE SPEECH!


Regional Demos:

Tuesday, Jan 25th - 5:00pm
Demonstrate at the Hartford Federal Building!
450 Main St. Hartford, CT

Tuesday, Jan 25th - 5:00pm
Demonstrate at the New Haven FBI Building!
600 State St. New Haven, CT

In September 2010 the FBI carried out a series of raids of the homes of fourteen anti-war activists. They issued subpoenas to them to appear before a grand jury investigating their ties to “Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” a charge the FBI suggests is justified because some of them were engaged in international solidarity work in Palestine and Colombia. They seized computers, videos, cell phones, financial records, and drawings made by their children. These activists were guilty of no crime, but were instead the victims of the governments attempt to harass and silence the anti-war movement.

Demonstrations against the raids and the grand jury proceedings were organized by activists in over sixty cities around the country, alongside a spirited national call-in campaign.

The subpoenas to appear before grand juries were served to the fourteen activists but were later withdrawn when all fourteen asserted their 5th Amendment rights and refused to appear in court.

In November, however, three Twin Cities anti-war and international solidarity activists. Tracy Molm, Anh Pham, and Sarah Martin, who were amongst the 24 activists originally served subpoenas, received word from the U.S. Attorney’s Office that that their subpoenas to appear before a grand jury have been reactivated.

And the dragnet against the anti-war and international solidarity movement is widening, with even more activists facing state department harassment and grand jury repression.

Just last month 9 Palestine solidarity activists and Palestinian-American community organizers were served subpoenas to appear before a Chicago grand jury on January 25th .

We in CT stand opposed to this assault on our free speech and right to organize without harassment against US military intervention abroad. Our demonstrations in over sixty cities in the wake of the FBI raids was a powerful response to government repression of the anti-war movement. This time we have to show the government that was not a one time response but the beginning of a vigorous campaign by the movement to defend our own. We must respond and grow this response dramatically as our very right to function politically in opposition to US wars is at stake.

We join the national call for a day of action to stop the FBI and Grand Jury repression on January 25th by demonstrating at the Federal Building in Hartford and the FBI office in New Haven.


We demand:
**End the grand jury proceedings against anti-war activists!
**Stop the repression against anti-war and international solidarity activists!

**Immediately return all confiscated materials: computers, cell
phones, papers, documents, etc.

In Solidarity,

CT United for Peace Organizing Committee
Act Now to Stop War and End Racism/CT
Council on American-Islamic Relations
Socialist Party of Connecticut (SPUSA)

2011: Calling Time on Capitalism

2011: Calling Time on Capitalism

First appeared in the Guardian: Comment is Free America
by Richard Wolff.
Published on January 1, 2011

Recent decades have seen a massive redistribution of wealth, imposing the cost of successive crises on the poorest. Enough!
Workers' protest at the New Fabris factory, France, 2009
An employee of the New Fabris factory, in Chatellerault, central France, walks next to a fire in front of the plant, in 2009, after 366 laid-off workers occupied the factory and threatened to blow it up unless they receive a bigger pay-off. 'We want a bonus' is written on the wall in the background. Photograph: Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images


The end of 2010 brought renewed Washington rhetoric, media hype and academic me-too declarations about the US economy "recovering". We've heard them before since the crisis hit in 2007. They always proved wrong.

But recovery noises are useful for some. Republicans claim that government should do less since recovery is underway (of course, for them, government action is always counterproductive). Likewise, Republicans and many centrist Democrats claim that income redistribution policies are no longer needed because recovery means growth, which means everyone gets a bigger piece of an expanding economic pie. Recovery hype also helps the Obama administration to claim that its policies succeeded.

Yet, this is more fantasy than reality. After all, the nearly 20% of the US labour force that became unemployed or underemployed in 2009 remains so as we enter 2011. No recovery there. Worse still, a quarter of those who found work since the crisis began only got temp jobs without benefits. Second, foreclosure actions by banks – including those who got most of the government's bailouts – continue to eject millions from their homes. No recovery there, either (except for the bigger banks).

Third, consider why the Federal Reserve decided last month to create another $600bn of new money, and why Congress and the president agreed in December on an additional fiscal stimulus (extending Bush's tax cuts, reducing social security withholding for 2011, etc). They took those steps because all the previous bailouts, monetary easing, tax cuts and government fiscal stimulus expenditures had failed to end this crisis. Those immune to hype recognise that more of the same policies that failed before might do so again.

More importantly, the recovery noise distracts from a more basic failure of our economic system: its fundamental instability. Recurring "downturns" – which neither private nor government actions have ever managed to prevent – impose massive costs on society. They plunge millions of effective, productive workers into unemployment and resulting personal, family and community disasters. Governments tap the collective purses of their nations chiefly to rescue just those private capitalists who were major contributors to the crisis and whose wealth insulates them from the crisis' worst effects.

Then, governments turn on their people to impose austerities (cutbacks in social programmes, social security, etc) needed to restore government budgets busted by that rescue's huge costs. Like someone convicted of murdering his parents who demands leniency as an orphan, corporate America demands conservative government and austerity on the grounds of excessive budget deficits. Mainstream media and politicians take those corporate demands seriously, reminding us who controls whom.

The last half-century suggests a very different analysis of the crisis and a correspondingly different response for 2011. Since the early 1970s, workers' wage increases came to an end, their benefits and job security shrank and government supports for average people came under conservative attack. These increasing burdens were justified as absolutely necessary to enable more investment and, therefore, greater economic growth. A bigger economic pie would then provide more for everyone including workers.

In fact, growth in the US and Europe steadily slowed over those years (see graph below by University of Rome Professor Pasquale Tridico):

Average growth of GDP per capita in US and Europe, 1961-2009. Source: Eurostat

Average growth of GDP per capita in US and Europe, 1961-2009. Source: Eurostat

While workers' conditions deteriorated, capitalist surpluses and profits soared and stock markets boomed. Income and wealth were redistributed from poor and middle to the rich. But the promised results never materialised: neither more investment, nor greater economic growth. As the graph shows, growth actually slowed and then the whole system imploded into a catastrophic crisis.

Today's recovery noises accompany government actions that will repeat in 2011 more of the bailouts, monetary easing and fiscal stimuli that have proved insufficient since 2007. None of those actions dare to question, let alone address, how capitalism redistributed income and wealth in the decades leading to the crisis or how that redistribution contributed to the crisis.

The recovery being planned and hyped aims at a return to the US economy before it crashed. However, that capitalism was like a train hurtling toward the stone wall of crisis. To return to a pre-crisis capitalism risks resuming our places on a similar train heading for a similar crash.

Republican and Democratic politicians alike dare not link this crisis to an economic system that has never stopped producing those "downturns" that regularly cost so many millions of jobs, wasted resources, lost outputs and injured lives. For them, the economic system is beyond questioning. They bow before the unspoken taboo: never criticise the system upon which your careers depend.

Thus, this crisis and its burdens will continue until capitalists see sufficiently attractive opportunities for profit to resume investing and hiring people in the US as well as elsewhere. The freedoms of US capitalists to gain immense government supports as needed, and yet to invest only when, where and how they can maximise their private profits are paramount: the first obligations of government. The freedoms from want and insecurity for the US people remain a distant second priority – until mass political action changes that.

In good times, as in bad, capitalism is a system that places a small minority of people with one set of goals (profits, disproportionally high incomes, dominant political power, etc) in the positions to receive and distribute enormous wealth. Those people include the boards of directors that gather the net revenues of business into their hands and decide, together with the major shareholders in those businesses, how to distribute that wealth. Not surprisingly, they use it to achieve their goals and to make sure government secures their positions.

No Keynesian monetary or fiscal policies address, let alone change, how that system works and who uses its wealth to what ends. No reforms or regulations passed or even proposed under Obama would do that either. To avoid the instability of capitalism and its huge social costs requires changing the system. That remains the basic issue for a new year and a new generation. Will they break today's version of a dangerous old taboo: never question the existing system?

Article first appeared in The Guardian, guardian.co.uk, Comment is Free America, Saturday 1 January 2011