Rebkeh
Rebkeh's JournalWhy the Labor Movement Must Join the Anti-Racist Struggle To Make Black Lives Matter
Here's a link to one of my posts in GD this morning,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027749969
in case you have trashed General Discussion.
Seven-in-a-Row Sanders Celebrates 'Momentum' After Double-Digit Wyoming Win
Seven-in-a-Row Sanders Celebrates 'Momentum' After Double-Digit Wyoming WinAs New York looms, senator from Vermont looks to keep momentum going
Nadia Prupis, staff writer
Apr 9, 2016
A possible record turnout was expected in Wyoming on Saturday as voters caucused in the U.S. presidential election, with 14 pledged delegates and four superdelegates available for Democratic rivals Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.The numbers are not likely to determine the race one way or another, but the Sanders campaign is hoping a win in the state will keep up the momentum he built winning a handful of recent primariesincluding a critical contest in Wisconsin last Tuesday.
Winning the Cowboy State would give Sanders his eighth win in a row, just in time for the high-profile New York primary and upcoming debate with Clinton.
Read in full, includes video:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/09/seven-row-sanders-celebrates-momentum-after-double-digit-wyoming-win
Actually, Bernie Sanders Does Have a Clear Plan for How to Break Up Too-Big-to-Fail Banks
Actually, Bernie Sanders Does Have a Clear Plan for How to Break Up Too-Big-to-Fail BanksApr 6, 2016
Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams
:snip:
Sanders told the Daily News, How you go about [breaking up the dangerously large institutions] is having legislation passed, or giving the authority to the secretary of treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail, later adding that itd be the banks decision how they want to reconfigure themselves.
You would determine is that, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. And then you have the secretary of treasury and some people who know a lot about this, making that determination. If the determination is that Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail, yes, they will be broken up, he said.
Read in full:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/in_fact_sanders_has_a_very_clear_plan_20160406
Why the Labor Movement Must Join the Anti-Racist Struggle To Make Black Lives Matter[
Cross posted from:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027749969
There's so much goodness in this article that I couldn't decide on which excerpts to share in DU. Be sure to read it in full:
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/19038/unions-labor-black-lives-matter-anti-racist-racial-justice
Why the Labor Movement Must Join the Anti-Racist Struggle To Make Black Lives Matter
ANDREW TILLETT-SAKS
APR 6, 2016
If American labor is going to reverse its declining fortunes, it must begin with attacking American racism.
Racism is the lynchpin that holds corporate America togetheras well as the shoals upon which American labor has sunk for centuries. Racism in Americapast and present, from the colonial to the Trump eradivides workers so to prevent an effective united front. The American labor movement must seize the opportunity presented by the current upsurge and put its institutional support behind the anti-racist movement. It is more than a moral matter. Organized Labors very existence depends on itno American worker movement will succeed so long as racism remains rampant in America.
Activists in the labor movement must recognize that the question of which must take priority, anti-racist or labor struggle, is a false one. The two are inextricably intertwined and mutually dependent. The labor movement will never succeed without fighting and eradicating racism. Likewise, we cannot eliminate racism without eliminating the material inequality upon which it feeds. Racism is not a mere idea floating in the cultural clouds; it is an ideology rooted in and dependent on material inequality along racial lines. In the question of ending racism and economic inequality in America it is not one or the other, but both or none.
snip
Second, unions have an unparalleled ability to reach white workers for anti-racist political education. Beyond the sheer number of white workers in unions ranks, there is no better context than labor struggle to convince workers from different backgrounds of their common bonds.
Unions should directly engage their white members through education on the anti-worker function of racism. Union leaders will meet internal resistance to committing time and resources to anti-racist struggle, but internal battles on this issue are necessary and will lead to the tough conversations members need to have.
But the crux is that unions must mobilize all of their resources and energy in the anti-racist struggle. It cant just be a symbolic bit. Unions cannot understand anti-racism as merely solidarity work; anti-racism must be understood as a union issue itself.
Why the Labor Movement Must Join the Anti-Racist Struggle To Make Black Lives Matter
There's so much goodness in this article that I couldn't decide on which excerpts to share in DU. Be sure to read it in full:
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/19038/unions-labor-black-lives-matter-anti-racist-racial-justice
Why the Labor Movement Must Join the Anti-Racist Struggle To Make Black Lives Matter
ANDREW TILLETT-SAKS
APR 6, 2016
If American labor is going to reverse its declining fortunes, it must begin with attacking American racism.
Racism is the lynchpin that holds corporate America togetheras well as the shoals upon which American labor has sunk for centuries. Racism in Americapast and present, from the colonial to the Trump eradivides workers so to prevent an effective united front. The American labor movement must seize the opportunity presented by the current upsurge and put its institutional support behind the anti-racist movement. It is more than a moral matter. Organized Labors very existence depends on itno American worker movement will succeed so long as racism remains rampant in America.
Activists in the labor movement must recognize that the question of which must take priority, anti-racist or labor struggle, is a false one. The two are inextricably intertwined and mutually dependent. The labor movement will never succeed without fighting and eradicating racism. Likewise, we cannot eliminate racism without eliminating the material inequality upon which it feeds. Racism is not a mere idea floating in the cultural clouds; it is an ideology rooted in and dependent on material inequality along racial lines. In the question of ending racism and economic inequality in America it is not one or the other, but both or none.
snip
Second, unions have an unparalleled ability to reach white workers for anti-racist political education. Beyond the sheer number of white workers in unions ranks, there is no better context than labor struggle to convince workers from different backgrounds of their common bonds.
Unions should directly engage their white members through education on the anti-worker function of racism. Union leaders will meet internal resistance to committing time and resources to anti-racist struggle, but internal battles on this issue are necessary and will lead to the tough conversations members need to have.
But the crux is that unions must mobilize all of their resources and energy in the anti-racist struggle. It cant just be a symbolic bit. Unions cannot understand anti-racism as merely solidarity work; anti-racism must be understood as a union issue itself.
No Blues for Bernie in L.A., Where Sanders Backers Are Still Making Happy Music
No Blues for Bernie in L.A., Where Sanders Backers Are Still Making Happy MusicApr 7, 2016
Bill Boyarsky
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/no_blues_for_bernie_in_la_where_sanders_backers_20160407
snip
There was an upbeat determinationinstead of the pessimism reflected in news stories and analysesat this Sanders rally, in Pan Pacific Park in Los Angeles Fairfax district. Basketball was being played at nearby courts, but the Sanders supporters werent there for recreation.
snip
This process is being repeated throughout the nation for Democrats and Republicans, following rules so complicatedand generally so rigged against outsiders and newcomersthat only experts can understand them. At this stage of the game, the most valuable players are those who understand the twists and turns. If Sanders manages to deny Clinton enough delegates on the first ballot, a contested convention would be thrust into a delegate-by-delegate fight, and victory would go to the smartest, toughest and best organized. That is why Fishers presentation was so important.
snip
Such efforts are why the obituaries being written about the Sanders campaign are so premature.
Have you all seen this nonsense?
How did I not know about this? All I can say is, WTF?
The Real Scandal of Clinton State Department: Wage Suppression in Haiti
By Carolyn Hyppolite - April 6, 2016
In an island with a population of 6 million, 300,000 children perform unpaid labor because their parents are simply too poor to care of them. Thus, they are given to families slightly better off than themselves where they work in an unregulated market for food and shelter. These vulnerable children are the face of Haitian poverty.
:snip:
:snip:
From January 2008 to April 2015, about 86,800 jobs (or 39%) in the U.S. apparel manufacturing sector had disappeared. These jobs continue to be shipped abroad because free trade deals have made it lucrative for companies to outsource jobs to places where labor is cheap but to sell goods to places where consumer prices are high.
A State Department invested in the interest of ordinary Americans would have told the garment manufacturers if they dont like Haitis new minimum wage laws, they can bring the 25,000 jobs back to the United States. Instead, Clinton took steps to maintain the very conditions that make outsourcing so attractive to corporations.
Who does our government work for? Who will Hillary Clinton work for?
http://progressivearmy.com/2016/04/06/the-real-scandal-of-clinton-state-department-wage-suppression-in-haiti/
Help me find a quote by Robert Reich
I know he said it but I cannot remember where I read it.
It went something like:
Bernie would be a good President for the country we should have but the other would be a good president for the country we do have...
I wanted to put it with this picture. If anyone can whip up a meme or just help me find the source I'd appreciate it. Thanks
https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=643&q=want+change+want+to+change&oq=want+change+want+to+change&gs_l=img.3...1660.5018.0.5129.26.13.0.12.0.0.219.1491.9j3j1.13.0....0...1ac.1.64.img..1.12.1404.vl9iFVIRHDo#imgrc=_
Both Clinton and Sanders Are Qualified—but Only Sanders Calls for Political Revolution
Both Clinton and Sanders Are Qualifiedbut Only Sanders Calls for Political RevolutionThat's why The Nation still thinks primary voters should turn out for Sanders.
By the Editors
APRIL 8, 2016
http://www.thenation.com/article/both-clinton-and-sanders-are-qualified-but-only-sanders-calls-for-political-revolution/
:snip:
Rory Fanning, Talking to the Young in a World That Will Never Truly Be "Postwar
Tomgram: Rory Fanning, Talking to the Young in a World That Will Never Truly Be "Postwar"April 7, 2016.
:snip:
The Wars in Our Schools
An Ex-Army Ranger Finds a New Mission
By Rory Fanning
Early each New Years Day I head for Lake Michigan with a handful of friends. We look for a quiet stretch of what, only six months earlier, was warm Chicago beach. Then we trudge through knee-deep snow in bathing suits and, fighting wind gusts and hangovers. Sooner or later, we arrive where the snowpack meets the shore and boot through a thick crust of lake ice, yelling and swearing as we dive into near-freezing water.
It took me a while to begin to understand why I do this every year, or for that matter why for the last decade since I left the military Ive continued to inflict other types of pain on myself with such unnerving regularity.
:snip:
Ive never played, I respond. Does it include kids who scream when their mothers and fathers are killed? Do a lot of civilians die?
Not really, he says uncomfortably.
Well, then its not realistic. Besides, you can turn off a video game. You cant turn off war.
A quiet settles over the room that even a lame joke of mine cant break. Finally, after a silence, one of the kids suddenly says, Ive never heard anything like this before.
What I feel is the other side of that response. That first experience of mine talking to Americas future cannon fodder confirms my assumption that, not surprisingly, the recruiters in our schools arent telling the young anything that might make them think twice about the glories of military life.
I leave that school with an incredible sense of calm, something I havent felt since my time began in Afghanistan. I tell myself I want to speak to classrooms at least once a week.
:snip
:snip:
Youll bring too much tension to our school, one teacher tells me with regret. Most of my kids need the military if they plan on going to college, I hear from another who says he cant invite me to his school anyway. But most of my requests simply go out into the void unanswered. Or promises to invite me go unfulfilled. Who, after all, wants to make waves or extracurricular trouble when teachers are already under fierce attack from Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his unelected school board?
I understand and yet, in a world without a draft, JROTCs school-to-military pipeline is a lifeline for Washingtons permanent war across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa. Its unending conflicts are only possible because kids like those I've talked to in the few classrooms Ive visited continue to volunteer. The politicians and the school boards, time and again, claim their school systems are broke. No money for books, teachers salaries and pensions, healthy lunches, etc...
And yet, in 2015, the U.S. government spent $598 billion on the military, more than half of its total discretionary budget, and nearly 10 times what it spent on education. In 2015, we also learned that the Pentagon continues to pour what, it is estimated, will in the end be $1.4 trillion into a fleet of fighter planes that may never work as advertised. Imagine the school system we would have in this country if teachers were compensated as well as weapons contractors. Confronting the attacks on education in the U.S. should also mean, in part, trying to interrupt that school-to-military pipeline in places like Chicago. Its hard to fight endless trillion-dollar wars if kids arent enlisting.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176125/tomgram%3A_rory_fanning,_talking_to_the_young_in_a_world_that_will_never_truly_be_%22postwar%22/
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Member since: Sat Oct 17, 2015, 10:59 AM
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