Class Struggle

..more.

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Co-ops for system change

While some worker co-ops are started by workers looking to improve their pay and working conditions, others are employing the collaborative model as a way to push for a just transition. 

Yuill Herbert is one of the founders of Sustainability Solutions Group (SSG), a worker co-op that advises municipalities and institutions on their climate transition. SSG recently finished writing Toronto’s Climate Action Plan, which lays out a strategy for the city to achieve net zero emissions by 2040. 

“This was a vision for a future that doesn’t involve oil and gas,” said Herbert. “You can really see people thinking about their future in a pretty profoundly different way.”

In 2001, when Herbert and four of his friends were brainstorming the consultancy that would become SSG, they weren’t interested in creating a company fixated on profit margins or a non-profit beholden to grants and benevolent donors. They wanted a business model that would enable them to push for systemic change at the scale of the climate crisis. As soon as they discovered the worker co-op model, they knew it was for them. 

When SSG was founded, it involved five worker-owners, including Herbert. Today, SSG has more than 20 worker-owners, about 10 employees on their way to becoming owners, and two new offices in the United States and Chile.

“I think co-ops are a mechanism to fight inequality and also build resilience and ensure that there’s a social purpose in the enterprises that are facilitating the energy transition,” Herbert explains.

As the climate crisis worsens, the Liberal government has pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050—in part by investing in retrofitting homes and transitioning oil and gas workers to cleaner energy sectors. 

Corcoran of the Canadian Worker Co-op Federation says that if the Liberals are serious about addressing the climate crisis and guaranteeing stable, well-paid jobs, the just transition needs to invest in worker co-operatives. 

“The nature of democratic employee ownership means that the people who are affected by the decisions in their environment are the ones making them,” Corcoran says. “Without that, you’re always going to be at risk.”....

..i've started watching this video. it's 2hrs long so it will take me a few days to complete. i am interested in the topic of moving forward. and what these folks  have to say on the subject. 

Socialist Register 2022, Session 4: The Direction Forward

Contributors to the 2022 volume of Socialist Register discuss “Lessons from the Corbyn Project” (James Schneider, Hilary Wainwright), “American Workers and the Left” (Sam Gindin) and “The Evolution of Race under Neoliberalism” (Adolph and Touré Reed). Moderated by Greg Albo.

The War on Youth in the Age of Fascist Politics

Youth Under Siege 

One of the most important registers in measuring the democratic health of a society can be found in how it treats its youth. By any current standard, which includes the quality of public schools to laws that protect the health and well-being of young people, the United States is failing miserably. Youth, especially youth of color, are not only viewed as a liability, much of their behavior is also being increasingly criminalized.  When young people are relentlessly and ruthlessly subject to forces that commodify them, criminalize, punish them, and deem them unworthy of receiving a critical and meaningful education, it bodes ill for the nation as a whole.  Of course, this attack on youth is not new.

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The Disappearing Social

The Gilded Age and its current mix of fascist politics is back with big profits for the ultra- rich and large financial institutions and increasing impoverishment and misery for the middle and working classes. In addition, manufactured ignorance, political illiteracy, and religious fundamentalism have cornered the market on populist rage, providing support for a country in which, as Robert Reich points out, “the very richest people get all the economic gains [and] routinely bribe politicians” to cut their taxes and establish policies that eliminate public goods.[6] It gets worse. Everywhere we look, the current Republican Party with its dedication to white supremacy and fascist politics are using their authority and power to undermine the social contract and the quality of justice, if not life itself, for a range of youth increasingly marginalized from the scripts of power. Shamelessly and without apology, the political and corporate elites use their unchecked power to dismantle public services, denigrate public goods such as schools, infrastructure, health care services, and public transportation. Medical pandemics are now accelerated through political and moral pandemics that prioritize capital over human needs, meaningful health care, and matters of social justice.[7]

Meanwhile, the neoliberal social order embraces the ruthless and punishing values of economic Darwinism and a survival-of-the-fittest ethic. In doing so, the major political parties reward the mega banks, ultra-large financial industries, the defense establishment, and big business as their chief beneficiaries.  Regardless of the consequences to the wider public good, including children, the obsessive quest for short-term profits by the apostles of neoliberalism is only matched by an aggressive effort on the part of the ruling financial and political elites to privatize public services, deregulate the financial industry, and depoliticize the public realm in order to replace a market economy with a market society.[8].....

Peter Kalmus: ‘As a species, we’re on autopilot, not making the right decisions’

The Nasa data scientist explains why inaction on the climate crisis pushed him to chain himself to an LA bank – and why trusting in the ‘people in charge’ is so dangerous

Last month a Nasa data scientist, Peter Kalmus, chained himself to the entrance doors of the JP Morgan Chase building in Los Angeles. A video of a short speech he gave about global heating before he was arrested was shared multiple times on social media. In the clip, voice faltering, he told the public: “I’m here because scientists are not being listened to … we are going to lose everything and we are not joking.” He spoke to the Observer in a personal capacity.

What drove you to nonviolent protest?
It’s this mounting feeling that I need to do more. I have a sense of desperation, because of the wide gulf between what the science says society needs to do and how it feels like everything is heading in the opposite direction. World leaders and people not understanding that we’re in an emergency.

Then the question comes to me, if I’m sitting with the science every day, and I want to protect my kids and young people and non-humans, what do I do? I’ve been on this 16-year journey trying to answer that question, and civil disobedience seemed like something good to try. I’m ashamed to say that it took me this long.

Do you think more scientists should be talking directly to the public about how they feel?
Oh, absolutely. Because we’re not just brains in a vat, we’re humans. The reason oceanologists, ecologists and climate scientists are studying these living systems is because they deeply love them and care about them. Uniformly, across the board, they’re all seeing these massive declines and they’re seeing these systems dying in front of their eyes. I know they’re feeling strong emotions.

Civil disobedience has been far more effective at communicating urgency than anything else I’ve tried.....

..more from above.

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Redesign hierarchical structures imported from capitalism and colonialism

While Cook underlines the importance of racialized women like herself taking on leadership roles within existing union structures, she does not believe that simply inserting women into the existing colonial, patriarchal structures will eliminate sexism and racism in labour. “I don’t think that’s going to change the system,” she says, just as “hiring Black cops doesn’t change police brutality or racism in the police force.”

Cook proposes that trade unionists go further to fight oppression by transforming their hierarchical decision-making structures. “Our structures of president, vice-president – these just continue to emulate the patriarchy,” she observes, and they often attract people who want “to lead for the power in and of itself.” Cook believes that starting at the local level, trade unionists should adopt “more fluid leadership models and more non-hierarchical” structures. In addition to distributing power more democratically, another advantage of these models, Cook says, is that they support the work–life balance that trade unionists need to be able to fulfill other roles such as that of caregiver. If power is shared more broadly, she notes, people can step back from the work more easily.

Writing for Briarpatch in March 2020, Jon Milton points to Montreal’s Syndicat des travailleuses et travailleurs en intervention communautaire (STTIC), a union that represents workers at a number of the city’s community organizations, as an example of a local working to democratize its decision-making structures in the same spirit as Cook proposes. While they are legally members of the STTIC, the current local leadership are also members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and are experimenting with a variety of the IWW’s more radical approaches. These include holding open meetings six times a year as opposed to once a year, as well as ensuring that all rank-and-file members have access to union trainings. The local also opened its bargaining mobilization committee to all members, a change that leaders say better represented members and brought more diversity to the local’s pressure tactics. STTIC leaders explain that the local’s more participatory, combative, and democratic approach has not only strengthened members’ ability to defend their rights in the workplace, but also bolstered their ability to win better working conditions during negotiations.

Cook suggests that such transformations in decision-making structures require trade unionists to develop the skills to truly work by consensus. She points out that coming to a consensus can involve some members of a decision-making group simply accepting that they can live with a decision, as opposed to being convinced to arrive at complete, unreserved agreement. Having worked by consensus in the steward network at a Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) child care local, Besharah adds that since this approach focuses on maintaining and building relationships within the local, it can also be useful in preventing major conflicts from arising.

Valuing reproductive labour

“I’ve always valued motherhood,” says Cook, who is a mother of three. Speaking to me on the phone from the sidelines of her child’s soccer game, she explains that while she is a committed trade unionist, for caregivers such as herself, being a labour activist is “not our only role.” She sees Dolores Huerta, the renowned leader of the United Farm Workers, as a model for trade unionists who are also parents. Talking about Huerta’s work to co-found the National Farm Workers Association with Cesar Chavez, Cook notes, “She raised a family of seven and was out there [...] fighting for her people.”

Cook says her own union workplace reproduces the patriarchal, capitalist attitude that devalues both paid and unpaid reproductive labour, such as caring for children and elders, cooking, and cleaning. This essential labour is generally only seen as an impediment to staff’s ability to travel frequently and work on weekends. “It wasn’t that long ago that there were only male negotiators,” Cook says. Even now, she continues, “you’ll find that [women negotiators are] mostly either women who don’t have children or whose children have grown up.” While this is the current way the work is done, “that’s not the way it has to be designed,” Cook says.

One way that design is being challenged, Cook notes, is that in recent years, men have taken more responsibility for their dependents, with some reorganizing their work schedules or refusing to travel on weeks when they have custody of their children, for example....

..brilliant!!!!

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Involve children and youth directly

Child care policies are one concrete way that unions can value reproductive labour and trade unionists’ roles beyond the workplace. This can be taken even further by recognizing children and youth as active members of the labour movement. Although they may not pay dues or clock in to the workplace, children and youth directly benefit when their caregivers have living wages, parental and sick leave, healthy and safe workplaces, and child care benefits – all things that workers have won and continue to defend by organizing in unions. Children and youth are also future members of the paid workforce; by providing spaces and resources for them, labour can help young people understand the importance and history of unions and the rights of workers and all oppressed people. This strengthens the labour movement, no matter what side of the bargaining table the children end up on once they join the paid workforce.

Join thousands of leftwing activists and authors in Chicago to share lessons from history, learn about socialist and abolitionist ideas and organizing, discuss current struggles, and debate current issues on the left. Link

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Indigenous Leader Arrested in Ecuador Amid Nationwide Strike

Indigenous-led protests in Ecuador have intensified after the police arrested Leonidas Iza, the head of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, the country’s largest Indigenous organization. Iza’s arrest on Tuesday came a day after he helped launch a nationwide strike to protest Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso’s economic policies and rising fuel prices. Iza spoke out on Monday prior to his arrest.

Leonidas Iza: “Yes, indeed, we had to resort to resistance, because the national government has deepened — or, rather, continued with — the policies of former President Lenín Moreno, putting in place more and more policies of death, which don’t allow us to sustain our small economies.”

..latest breach video

Ep9: Corporate bonanza from higher prices | Canadians feeling conspiratorial | Breach turns one

More & more Canadians are having trouble putting food on their plates– why are some finding solace in bizarre extremist narratives, rather than organizing to hold the real culprits accountable? Host Donya Ziaee talks with economist Jim Stanford about runaway corporate profits, and our panel discusses a new poll showing the mainstreaming of racist conspiracy theories. But first, we've got some celebrating to do: it's the one year anniversary of The Breach!

As speculation lights up cannabis industry, workers are unionizing

“I could see the till: I was making more money than the owners of the shop.”

Last year James was working at a mom-and-pop cannabis dispensary in Hamilton as a “budtender”—a customer service worker responsible for educating customers about a plethora of strains and products and keeping the shop running.

“A mixture of being a pharmacist and a sommelier,” was how one worker described the job. “You need to have this incredible understanding—we’re giving technically unofficial, psychoactive health advice.” 

James’ employers knew almost nothing about cannabis—or retail. Nor did it seem they wanted to learn.

The dispensary’s owners were part of a rush that attracted billions in investment following the passage of the 2018 Cannabis Act, which legalized recreational marijuana use in Canada. 

But the collapse James foresaw in his cannabis shop’s cash register became undeniable even to the owners by the winter. He was laid off a week before Christmas, by email.

“I can’t say I was surprised,” James told The Breach. “In a way I was relieved.” After only two months selling strains, the stress of working for a failing business had already begun to wear on him.

Like thousands of cannabis workers across Canada, James was rattled by cannabis’s drastic boom-and-bust cycle: years of blinding growth and optimism, regardless of business fundamentals or owner experience—followed by stunning collapse. 

Adding to pressure on budtenders is consistently low pay, often only a dollar or two more than minimum wage. 

In response to the poor pay and rollercoaster economics, retail weed workers have started organizing—and over the past two years, they’ve led successful union drives that have the potential to reshape how the industry is run and who benefits.....

..very good politics!

Participatory Economics: What, Why, How

There may be one thing in the world that most of humanity agrees on. When considering the state of present-day institutions of economy, polity, community, and kinship relations, people broadly agree that most everything: is in crisis, does not serve the majority of humanity, and is destructive to the conditions for sustaining life on Earth as we know it. This is no longer a radical position. We live in a time when this knowledge is simply part of our consciousness. Why, then, do we tend to lack vision? We know what we don’t want, but what do we want?

Perhaps, those of us who seek a better world are merely heeding the cautions of our intellectual lamas, resisting overprescribed blueprints for future society as unknowable at best, and authoritarian at worst. But perhaps, we are also using this wisdom as a crutch because we are afraid to look ahead into the void and even contemplate that we can fundamentally change the world.

Why Vision?

We call out society’s wrongs, respond to the urgent and dire issues of now, survive and fight in the present. To be fair, keeping heads above water, struggling against a rough sea of suffering, can be a task that leaves little untapped. Even those who would support the struggle for a better world often succumb to mental and emotional exhaustion before they ever lend their voice or lift a finger, let alone allow hope to set fire to their hearts so that inaction is no longer possible. The scope of it all suffocates initiative. Without vision, real, viable, attainable, inspiring vision, a trajectory that offers escape from capitalism’s suicide march, we mistake tactics for strategy, fight from one battle to the next, and too often fail to see a clear path ahead. We wither from fatigue, squabble, and generally fail to inspire massively and deeply for our cause.

Anti-capitalists sorely need to conceive and share a worthy post-capitalist vision to overcome cynicism, to share strategic orientation, to guide practice and experimentation, and to retain commitment against serious opposition. We need to engage in discussion about where we want to go, why we want to get there, and how we might carve a path. Vision is for running toward something when it is insufficient to just run away.

The following essay is a brief introduction to Participatory Economics: what it is, why it matters, and how it is attainable. A useful first step to envision features of life beyond capitalism is to share some guiding values. Here, we propose five: self-management, equity, solidarity, diversity, and sustainability. To institutionalize these values, we propose five features that establish a framework, or scaffolding, for a post capitalist economy: a commons of productive resources, self-management via participatory councils, equitable remuneration norms, balanced work, and allocation via participatory planning. We touch upon wider implications, and propose strategy to help align practice with theory and context. We hope this highly summarized presentation will help engender further interest and questions about the merits and attainability of participatory economics, while it also demonstrates that a worthy vision is necessary, urgent, and deserving of attention and action.

Self Management

For decision making, we propose all people should have a say over decisions in proportion to the degree in which they are affected. Sometimes majority rule can do an excellent job. Other times, consensus can do better. Sometimes we may need more deliberation, other times less. Sometimes, a single person should overwhelmingly decide. Other times, a highly affected group should decide, though respecting encompassing decisions made by larger groups.

The point is, while different deliberation and voting methods may best approximate self-management in different situations, the overarching norm always applies. No person deserves more say due to being male, female, trans, gay, straight, or having a different economic position, cultural affiliation, or political role. We all deserve to have proportionate say about what affects us.

The most typical criticism of advocating proportionate say emphasizes that some people can make better decisions. It claims that to benefit from their greater insights we should give them greater say.

But is that wise? Self-management itself has social and personal benefits, including mutual respect, solidarity, and participation. These exist even in cases where self-management might yield less insightful choices than allotting greater say to better decision makers. The consistent act of participatory self-management across society benefits society’s development.

Second, for each of us to express our own personal preference is warranted by the simple fact that we each know best what we want. Self-management doesn’t eliminate expert insights. I should decide whether I will undergo a medical treatment, but only after a doctor tells me my condition and the treatment’s implications. Medical expertise should inform my decision. But my doctor shouldn’t decide for me. My preferences matter. My will matters.

Self-management should respect and utilize all expert knowledge, but we should not elevate experts to have disproportionate say in choices that affect others. With that in mind, as our first guiding value, we propose that economic institutions should deliver decision-making input to each actor in proportion as they are affected.

But can the way we produce, consume, and allocate actually accomplish all that, and still arrive at excellent decisions? Can economic decision making avoid elevating a few to rule? Must it consign most to obey? To attain self-management, we must answer these questions.

Equity

What is fair regarding benefits and costs? Philosophers debate. Constituencies battle. Let’s strip it down and consider the situation anew. We know that society produces outputs which require effort and convey benefits. The equity question becomes: how should we apportion society’s social product among its population?

Suppose we could tally up all the benefits and debits from producing and consuming that each person enjoys or endures, individually and socially. We might then ask, why should one person have a better mix of benefits minus debits than other people? Why shouldn’t all people have a fair share of burdens to shoulder and in turn, enjoy a fair share of benefits?

For economic involvement, this inclination implies that we should each receive consumption rights to enjoy a share of the social product in accord with the duration we work, the intensity of our work, and the onerousness we endure, while doing socially valued labor – unless, of course, we can’t work. In that case, this view implies that we should, nonetheless, get a full share, plus socially supported medical care and other similarly regarded collective benefits.

Remunerating this way treats everyone the same. If you work productively longer, harder, or in worse conditions, you get more. If you work productively less long, less hard, or in better conditions, you get less. Neither race, gender, talent, nor birthright, much less bargaining power or property ownership, enters the calculation.

Everyone who works contributes to producing social benefits. Everyone who consumes receives items from the social product. Taken together, shouldn’t our total of production and consumption comparably reward us all?.....

Uprooting Canada: A review of ‘Capitalism & Dispossession’

July 1, 2022, marks one year since communities across Canada started cancelling their regular Canada Day celebrations to mourn and reflect on the legacies of Canada’s Indian Residential School (IRS) system. The cancellations started after a series of media reports announced that the remains of hundreds of Indigenous children had been found at former IRS sites across Canada. Thousands of confirmed and unmarked graves have been found since then, and communities are still finding more.

This prompted a series of apologies from political and religious leaders who perpetuate the same legacies of injustice, like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government opposing the rights of Indigenous youth in court. According to Dr. Cindy Blackstock, Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, three times as many Indigenous children are in state care now compared to the height of the residential school period. While Canadian politicians talk about residential schools as a dark chapter of the past, the legacies of the IRS system still shape the Canadian economy and its politics today. Far from being discrete failures by colonisers, atrocities like the IRS system have been fundamental to Canada all along.

Activists and researchers bring ideas like this into sharp focus in the recently released Capitalism & Dispossession: Corporate Canada at Home and Abroad, an edited anthology by David P. Thomas and Veldon Coburn. This collection presents case studies of colonial atrocities that are not incidental failures of Canadian capitalism, but are coordinated operations vital to the functioning of Canada. The case studies show that to respond to these injustices effectively we need to account for the ways that they are integral to the Canadian state and its capitalist economy.

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The roots of colonialism

The fact that Canada is built on the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples is becoming more commonly recognised, but it can still be hard to accept and understand. The case studies in Capitalism & Dispossession expose the roots of Canadian dispossession using concepts like Karl Marx’s theory of ‘primitive accumulation’ and David Harvey’s theory of ‘accumulation by dispossession’. The book uses these concepts to analyse and draw useful lessons from key struggles against colonialism.

These lessons become clearer in the links between different case studies. Ingrid Waldron’s chapter about the Alton Gas project and Veldon Coburn’s chapter about Grassy Narrows show how business leaders profit from using Indigenous homelands as disposal sites for industrial production. Rebecca Hall explains why Canadian mining executives rely on oppression and violence against Indigenous women in her chapter about fly-in/fly-out mining projects, and Dawn Hoogeveen and Russell Myers Ross describe what can happen when Indigenous communities resist colonialism in their chapter about the Tsilhqot’in Nation and their victory against Taseko Mines. These cases reveal the foundations of colonialism and its intersecting

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Uprooting Canada

The fact that these injustices are integral to Canada does not mean they cannot be defeated, but to defeat all of them will require putting an end to Canada itself. To stop colonialism entirely we have to completely dismantle Canadian capitalism and replace it with democratic alternatives. In their chapter about Canadian banks in Latin America and the Caribbean, Tyler Shipley and Thomas write that socialist alternatives are so threatening to Canadian capitalism that, despite their popularity among the people, Canadian business and political leaders undertake violent extremist measures to try to subvert them. Where Canadian imperialism has failed, like in the case of public banking in Costa Rica, communities overcome violence and oppression through mutual support and democratic practices. 

To vanquish Canada’s legacies of injustice we have to reckon with Canadian nationalism. Using Antonio Gramsci’s theory of ‘cultural hegemony‘, Capitalism & Dispossession explains how Canadian nationalism is used to either conceal or justify Canada’s reliance on dispossession. For instance, in her chapter about the corporate capture of the Canadian government, Sakura Saunders writes about how capitalist schemes like ‘corporate social responsibility’ are used to give Canada a benevolent façade but ultimately do more harm than good. To promote anti-colonial alternatives more effectively, more people have to be able to analyse and discuss the contradictions of Canada.

This is one reason why Indigenous cultural resurgence is so important. In their chapter about land use planning, Aedan Alderson talks about the potential for Indigenous communities to overcome colonial rule and successfully fight for all land back. By refuting the colonial politics of recognition, Alderson says, Indigenous Peoples can re-democratise land use in colonised regions using ideas from our own cultural traditions as well as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) Calls to Action......

..this is from jun and written by john clarke. it's not behind a pay wall but you must create an account to read it in full. also the word campism may well be up for debate but the position itself i share. i post just a bit of clarke's position.  

When My Enemy’s Enemy Is Not My Friend

As I write this article,the US-led imperialist bloc’s lengthy standoff with its Russian rival has escalated into a brutal invasion of Ukraine by the Putin regime. It is impossible to know how the situation will have developed by the time this goes to print, but it is quite certain that one general observation will remain entirely valid: geopolitical rivalry between the still dominant US imperial power and those that threaten its place, constitutes a dreadfully dangerous expression of the multifaceted crisis of global capitalism—one that threatens far bloodier results than the present invasion.

It is now obvious that the unfolding confrontation with the Putin regime is but one expression of this international rivalry, and not even its main element at that. Russia, after all, is very much in second place as a threat to US hegemony. It is China, of course, that is its main foe, and the contest with Putin over Ukraine is but a side show by comparison to the potential for conflict with the leading rival. Given the pervasive nature and enormous significance of this dangerous international confrontation, the question of how the Left balances an effective anti-imperialist approach with a principled application of international working class solidarity is of no small significance.

For this reason, it is vital to draw a line between just such a principled internationalism on the one hand, and an opposing perspective, often referred to as “campism,” that considers the world to be divided between a bloc of countries aligned with the US-led imperialist powers and a supposedly anti-imperialist camp centered in the Global South. As I shall attempt to show, the great danger with this approach is that geopolitical rivalry is put ahead of working class struggle, and that forms of popular resistance within the countries that make up this second camp are viewed with suspicion, if not open hostility.

I live in Canada, an imperialist junior partner of the US, and I am mindful of the need and the duty to respond as vigorously as possible to the belligerent intentions of “our” ruling class. The Trudeau government is certainly playing its part in this regard, standing firm with its allies; it had sternly warned Putin that Canada would impose “severe costs” on Russia before the present invasion was unleashed. Still, I firmly believe that a determined challenge to the pursuit of rivalry by the Canadian state can and must be taken up without embracing the distorted geopolitical fixation that underlies the campist outlook.

MY ENEMY’S ENEMY…

Campism has a deep history on the Left; it developed out of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution. For the first few years following the revolution, as the new workers’ state hung on under appallingly difficult conditions, wide sections of the international working class movement were filled with a strong (and fully justified) desire to stay the hand of the imperialist powers that were desperate to crush this vital beachhead of international revolution. Historic struggles were taken up, such as the Black Sea Mutiny of 1919, in which French sailors defied efforts to attack the workers’ republic. However, as the bureaucratic degeneration of Soviet society intensified, and the theory of “socialism in one country” took hold, the initiatives and priorities of the international communist movement became ever more focused on the overriding objective of preserving the Soviet Union. From the disastrous absurdities of the Third Period, through to the unprincipled capitulations associated with the Popular Front, the class struggle in each country was tragically subordinated to the pragmatic foreign policy twists and turns of the Stalinist Soviet leadership.

This readiness to put international revolutionary objectives behind the preservation of an increasingly dubious “socialist homeland,” inflicted a disastrous level of political disorientation and miseducation on generations of socialists, and the impact of this is still very much with us today. Then, in the period after World War II, the development of the campist perspective was taken further in a different context, as the communist movement split, and Maoism and “Third Worldism” came into play.

quote:

Before exploring further the dangers of campism, in the context of intensified global rivalry, let’s to set out a couple of basic perspectives with regard to a healthy internationalism. I put forward two simple, but I think, very useful guiding principles. The first of these is to keep firmly in mind that the campists take hold of a very substantial grain of truth when they focus their attention on the outstandingly malevolent power of US imperialism. Thus, the old adage that “the main enemy is at home” has a great amount of validity to it. Secondly, however, in order to avoid this very unfortunate trap of putting “the camp ahead of the class,” we should be ready to support the struggles of workers and oppressed peoples in every part of the earth, even when they are taken up against governments the State Department would like to overthrow. So, the second consideration is that we need to understand very clearly that the enemy of my enemy can (and almost always does) fall well short of being my friend....

The First Principle of Union Organizing: Spontaneity Isn’t Enough -  Sam Gindin

quote:

Spontaneity vs. Organizing

Even if we conclude that both spontaneous initiatives from below and organizing are crucial to overcoming the working class’s collective weakness, it is vital to have a clearer notion of the distinction between them.

A friend recently told me of growing up admiring Rosa Parks as a stubborn, moral black woman who, when confronted by racism on the public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, setting off a chain reaction that highlighted the condition of blacks in the southern US. A comforting story. But the truth, of course, was that this was not an example of spontaneity. Parks was a longtime activist against segregation and had been trained at the Highlander Center (which Martin Luther King also attended at various times). She was carefully chosen to carry out her role, as was Montgomery as the site of the challenge, and she moved on to become a supporter of Black Power.

Spontaneity and organization are not simply two sides of a common project. Spontaneity references actions taken by decentralized groups of well-intentioned individuals. It confidently presumes that the decentralized actions can, over time, add up to achieving the results intended. Organizing references not just actions, but a process for developing the sustained collective power to achieve goals. It problematizes spontaneity.

What we face is simply too difficult and complex to leave to largely uncoordinated preparations and actions. Spontaneity will not inevitably, or even likely, lead to success unless it is part of a process of building, sustaining, and applying independent power.

As well, organizing brings specific skills, methods, strategies, and the systemization of accumulated experiences, including spontaneous actions, to the task at hand. Spontaneous actions may of course include elements of this, but it would hardly be “spontaneous” if it rigorously applied the broader panoply of actions and processes.

The best organizing processes look to mediate spontaneity and incorporate initiatives from below into their overall approach. Spontaneous initiatives from below are assets to nurture and make more effective. Organizing is the methodology of systematically doing this, of going beyond protest to actually win.

Brooks seems to be reaching for such an integration of organizing and spontaneity. But in rightly looking to correct the failures of traditional organizing, he leans too heavily on spontaneous actions and vague triggering events as the focal point. As he puts it: “Triggering events are radicalizing and can give birth to all-new organizational structures.” It is within this frame that he assesses the organizing at Starbucks and Amazon.....

..i believe what has changed is that that the power we have at the local level re: organizing should never be subordinate to politicians. 

What is behind the largest protests in Panama in years?

Thousands of Panamanian protesters have taken to the streets in recent weeks to demand the government put a stop to rising inflation and corruption.

President Laurentino Cortizo recently announced measures to cut fuel costs and put a cap on the price of basic food items – but protesters said they were not enough and promised to continue demonstrating.

Why is Panama having protests and what are the protesters’ demands?

• The latest protests come as Panama battles an inflation rate of 4.2 percent in May; unemployment numbers of about 10 percent; and an increase in fuel costs of almost 50 percent since January.
• Teachers were the first group to demonstrate at the start of July but they have since been joined by other groups, including construction workers, students and members of Indigenous groups.
• Initially, the protesters called for the freezing and reduction of fuel prices, a price cap on food and an increase in the budget for education, but the demands have since widened to include a national negotiation to address political corruption and discuss larger political reforms.
• “The current situation in Panama is unbelievable,” Janireth Dominguez, who studies medicine, told Al Jazeera.
• “There are no medical supplies, there are salary cuts, and there is no work. There is no money to pay the doctors,” she said. “As a student, the future worries me a lot.”

What has been the impact?

• In the central province of Veraguas, protesters blocked the Pan-American highway affecting the access of goods to the Panama Canal from other Central American countries. The highway is the route through which 80 percent of Panama’s fruits and vegetables are transported.
• Economists warn the demonstrations have cost the country millions of dollars in losses and are leading to shortages of fuel and food. On Monday, most of the stalls at Panama’s main produce market closed early because of a lack of fruits and vegetables.
• “Everything is stuck; few things arrive,” Roberto Villarreal, a seller, told Al Jazeera. “A little tomato, onions, peppers, or carrots and potatoes. And usually, we can only sell 30 percent or so of what arrives. The rest is already ruined for being blocked for days.....

..i place this piece here instead of a climate thread because it calls for a system change. 

Paper Straws Are Not Enough. Only “System Change” Can Halt Climate Crisis, Says George Monbiot

quote:

GEORGE MONBIOT: Sure. So, what we’re saying to people, as environmentalists, is, look, we’re facing the greatest existential crisis that humanity has ever faced. We’re facing the potential collapse of our life support systems, a domino effect as one Earth system pulls down the others until basically the habitable space on the planet collapses into a completely different equilibrium state for which we did not evolve. So this is like the biggest of all existential crises which humanity has ever faced, and we’re seeing now. In response, we want you not to use so many plastic bags, and to replace your cotton buds which have got plastic shafts with ones with paper shafts, and stop using plastic straws.

I mean, it sounds ridiculous when I say it like this, but this is genuinely what a large portion of the environmental movement has been doing, and calling for the most micro possible solutions to the most macro possible problem. And what happens when you do that is, you know, far from making it easier to make change, and far from telling people, “Look, there’s something easy you can do, so you can buy into this; it’s a very low threshold for getting engaged,” they just turn people off altogether, because, number one, people say, “Well, they can’t be serious. Obviously, it can’t be that much of a problem if the solutions are so tiny. So this isn’t something I need to worry about.” And those who have got a bit more knowledge of it, well, they must feel like they’re being taken for idiots. Like, you know, how can that solve anything? How is that going to fix the issue?

But, unfortunately, this micro-consumerist bullocks is the dominant narrative within the media, but also within a lot of environment organizations. And when you approach those organizations and say, “Look, this isn’t going to cut it. You know, these small incremental changes you’re calling for” — even sort of slightly bigger ones than the ones I’ve mentioned — “you know, they’re in no way commensurate with the scale of the crisis we face.” And they say, “Well, we can’t get too far ahead of the membership. And we don’t want to frighten people, and we don’t want to provoke a fight with the government. And, you know, we’ve got to reach people where they are.” And frankly, their theory of change is just wrong. Incremental change can never develop the transformation which is required in situations like this — in fact, probably in any situation. It just does not deliver.

The only thing that delivers quickly and effectively is system change. And while we have been messing about with these ridiculous micro-solutions, the radical right has instituted a global insurgency and has achieved system change. It’s tearing down democracy. It’s tearing down equality before the law. It’s tearing down basic rights, human rights, tearing down regulations, tearing down tax, ripping down everything and changing the system to suit billionaires, to suit oligarchs, to suit predatory corporations. While we’ve been saying, “Oh, yes, we’re a bit — you know, we’re not — a bit worried about asking for too much,” they’ve said, “We’re going to have the lot.” And they’re succeeding. So, what they’ve proved is that you can do system change — unfortunately, you know, proved it in all the most horrible ways. And our timidity, our failure to demand that system change has been a big part of the reason why we are stuck where we are and why there’s been almost no effective measures to address this greatest of all crises.

And, you know, some of us know exactly what we want. You know, we want what I call “private sufficiency, public luxury,” where we have our own domain, our own small domain at home, where we’ve got our own home and we’ve got the necessities that we need in that home, but if we want luxury, we should pursue it in the public domain, because there’s just simply not enough physical or ecological space for everyone to pursue private luxury. You know, if everyone has a private jet and a supercar, that’s the planet gone, in hours. You know, we’d just burn through everything if that were the case. If everyone in London had their own swimming pool and their own tennis court and their own art collection, London would have to be as big as England in order to accommodate that. England would be the size of Europe. Where would everyone else live? It’s just impossible.

You know, this whole idea that we can all become millionaires is impossible for two reasons. One, some people are super rich because other people are super poor, and that extreme wealth depends on exploitation. But secondly, there’s just not enough planetary space to permit that. But there is enough space for everyone to have public luxury — public swimming pools and public tennis courts and a public health service and public transport. And that creates space for people rather than taking it away. And because we’re sharing those resources, the impact per capita is much, much smaller. So, that’s one part of it.

We need doughnut economics, Kate Raworth’s approach, where we say, you know, we live within planetary boundaries but above the welfare boundary, so that everyone has a good life without rupturing Earth systems. We need Jeremy Lent’s approach towards an ecological civilization. And we need participatory democracy, building on the ideas of Murray Bookchin and the practice of places like Porto Alegre in Brazil and Reykjavík in Iceland and Taiwan, where there’s great examples of how we can take back our politics and run them ourselves. So, some of us are very clear about the system change we want to see, but very few of us are actually prepared to call for that system change. And that has been our great failing.....

..i'm not sure i'll succeed but i'm working on getting a copy of this paper. 

One Year After Lamport Stadium

quote:

What is perhaps most commonly discussed about the eviction at Lamport Stadium Park is the outright cruelty that the City of Toronto and its police force unleashed against unhoused people and their supporters. But what appears to be missing from the conversation, a year after the media frenzy ignited by the evictions – and what may indeed provide a modicum of hope to those of us who shun state violence – is the transformational role that community resistance played on that day, and what we can learn from Lamport as organizers.

A summer of escalating resistance

The now-defunct citywide Encampment Support Network (ESN) was formed in the early pandemic as a response to the city’s refusal to provide basic aid to encampment residents in a crisis. It comprised five neighbourhood committees: Scadding, Moss Park, Little Norway Park/Cherry Beach, Trinity Bellwoods, and our group in Parkdale, which remains active and in a process of transition. In the course of doing daily outreach to their local encampment, members built deep relationships of solidarity with residents, which laid the foundation for collective struggle.

The July 2021 eviction of Lamport Stadium wasn’t the first time the City of Toronto had tried to clear residents out of that space. Two months earlier, the city had made Lamport the site of its first attempted clearing of a major encampment that year – an attempt that failed after around 150 community supporters flooded into the park, escalating a routine operation into a situation unmanageable for the city. This win made the value of collective resistance more tangible to residents than any conversation ever could. They knew that the city would likely return to Lamport with greater force, and we spent the following weeks scouting from the parking lot of the nearby St. Felix Centre respite site, running through scenarios and packs of inexpensive cigarettes. Residents talked about their bigger dreams – a large field where anyone could stay; a building that could facilitate the social relationships they relied on in the park, instead of severing them. Not just what they needed to live, but to live well.

quote:

After police cleared residents and their belongings out of the park’s largely undefended north camp, violently arresting an encampment leader they’d been surveilling for months, they retreated to the community centre to develop a plan for the south. By that time, hundreds of supporters had gathered outside the fence, and police reacted with horses and pepper spray. Drones hovered overhead, as they’d continue to do all day. Many people reported that their phones seemed like they’d been blocked from sending and receiving images and video. 

Supporters breached the fence twice throughout the day, which dramatically increased the number of people inside its perimeter. After several hours spent surrounding dwellings in the June heat, distributing food, drinks, battery packs, and cigarettes that had been tossed over the fence, hundreds of supporters were told to leave the encampment voluntarily. Police had disclosed to ESN’s police liaisons their intention to violently move in on the south camp, saying that they’d allow residents and a selection of ESN members to remain in the camp to pack their belongings on the condition that the rest of the supporters leave. After some back and forth, the crowd largely complied, which left a handful of people inside, including Indigenous supporters who were tending a ceremonial fire. Soon afterwards, dozens of officers assembled in formation and advanced on the few supporters who remained. The cops trampled the ceremonial fire and assaulted people who tried to surround it, shoving people toward a narrow opening in the fence. In the process, three supporters were arrested and a resident who had been making arrangements to pack up was forced out of the encampment without her belongings. One resident who had been given some additional time to pack was arrested the next day when she tried to scale the fence to retrieve her remaining effects.

Despite public backlash, the city used its police to ramp up state violence and make sure its goal of zero encampments would be met – at whatever cost ($2 million just in the summer of 2021, to be exact).

The city clearly intended its second attempt to evict Lamport to be its last. Its plan incorporated learnings from its failures at previous encampment clearings – but we’d been taking notes too. The city conducted an eviction at Alexandra Park the day prior to returning to Lamport, in an attempt to exhaust supporters and limit our ability to respond. Unlike at Bellwoods, where security forces started erecting fencing only at 9 AM, which allowed many more people – including media – to witness and document the day’s events, at Lamport they began setting up fencing at 6 AM. Anticipating this attempt to exclude the media, we called a press conference for 7 AM. Security forces used metal strapping instead of plastic zip ties to join fencing panels, to ensure those would be harder to breach. They barricaded alleyways and strategically positioned the perimeter to block an entire street, making it more difficult for the public to witness the acts of brutality that would follow.

The ESN organizers responding that day had internalized lessons from previous encampment evictions. After Trinity Bellwoods, supporters understood that we were resisting the violence of displacement itself; we understood that despite claims from city workers and police, our presence wasn’t the cause of that displacement, and standing down would not prevent it. We knew the options for residents outside the fence were grim, and that the encampment itself was merely a symptom of a broader, if less visible, crisis. 

The Lamport Stadium encampment was destroyed that day. The city trashed residents’ dwellings and belongings. Some residents were shuffled away to the adjacent respite centre, while several others were left sleeping on the ground in front of it. A month later, a resident died of an overdose, alone in an alleyway that was walking distance from Lamport. He was discovered by another Lamport resident several hours afterwards. Some of the community members who had showed up to support encampment residents lost their jobs, or had to take extended leave because of the injuries and trauma they sustained that day.....

..there is so much more to the story if you click on the link. 

..a book was written re: a course taught by chomsky and waterstone in arizona. following is a 1 hr 20min video discussion.    

The Consequences of Capitalism with Noam Chomsky

Consequences of Capitalism, a new book by Noam Chomsky and Marv Waterstone, exposes the deep, often unseen connections between neoliberal 'common sense' and structural power. In making these linkages, the will show how the current hegemony keeps social justice movements divided and marginalized. And, most importantly, we see how we can fight to overcome these divisions. Is there an alternative to capitalism? Chomsky and Waterstone will chart a critical map for a more just and sustainable society.