Class Struggle

The 1%’s Mind Games: Psychology Gone Bad

April 25, 2018 Roy Eidelson, Royeidelson.com Strategize! Class Struggle, Psychology

While millions of Americans grasp for lifelines amid the unforgiving currents of extreme inequality, multi-millionaires and billionaires comfortably ride the waves and add to their enormous wealth and power. The contrast is jarring to be sure, but it persists nonetheless because self-interested representatives of the 1% have become masters at using manipulative psychological appeals — I call them “mind games” — to defuse and misdirect our outrage. And when they succeed, we regrettably lose our bearings about what’s happening, what’s right, what’s possible, and what we must do. Exploring this phenomenon as a psychologist, my research has led me to a focus on five concerns that are particularly influential in our daily lives: namely, issues of vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority and helplessness.

Arizona Teachers Vote To Strike

April 21, 2018 Jerry White, Wsws.org Resist! Arizona, Class Struggle, Labor, Strikes, Teachers

Teachers in the southwestern US state of Arizona have overwhelmingly voted to strike to demand improved wages for educators and support staff, and restore more than $1 billion in school funding cuts over the last decade. At a press conference Thursday night, officials from the Arizona Education Association (AEA) announced that 78 percent of the 57,000 educators who cast ballots over the last three days voted for strike action. According to Noah Karvelis, an elementary school teacher and one of the leaders of the Arizona Educators United (AEU) Facebook group, teachers will continue to hold “walk-in” protests at their schools next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then walk out in a statewide strike next Thursday. The powerful strike vote takes place after statewide strikes in West Virginia and Oklahoma, a one-day strike in Jersey City, New Jersey, and sickouts and protests in Kentucky, Florida and many other states.

Transportation Strikes, University Protests Continue To Shake France

April 19, 2018 Staff, France24.com Resist! Class Struggle, France, Higher Education, Strikes, Student Protests, Transportation

To Macron’s dismay, the popular movements show no signs of slowing down. The Air France tussle over salaries is separate from the larger and politically more significant stand-off between Macron’s centrist, business-friendly government and the public sector trade unions fighting its reform plans. Rail unions are particularly up in arms over proposed reforms that they say would reduce job security. Students have been blocking several public universities over Macron’s plan to introduce more selective applications. There is a general atmosphere of social discontent against Macron’s reforms, including protests and strikes by civil servants, energy workers and garbage collectors. Recently, Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire admitted that, while he couldn’t produce numbers, it was clear that the strikes were impacting growth.

International Day Of Campesino Struggle Marked In Latin America

April 18, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net Organize! Class Struggle, History, Latin America

Every year, on April 17, social movements and Campesinos commemorate the International Day of Campesino Struggle to honor the 19 campesinos of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement murdered by Brazilian military in the northern state of Para on April 17, 1996 during a protest to demand their right to land. Struggle against the concentration of land in the hands of a few large landowners, a colonial legacy, has been marked in Latin America’s struggle for independence, nation-state building and its present. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Latin America has the most unequal distribution of land in the world. A 2016 Oxfam report on the issue showed that 1 percent of productive land estates hold over half of the total arable land. That means 1 percent concentrates more land than the other 99 percent.

Teacher Rebellion: Class Dismissed

April 18, 2018 By Steve Fraser, Tomdispatch.com Resist! Books, Class Struggle, Rebellion, Teachers

Are teachers professionals, proletarians, or both? One symptom of our pathological denial of class realities is that we are accustomed to thinking of teachers as “middle class.” Certainly, their professional bona fides should entitle them to that social station. After all, middle class is the part of the social geography that we imagine as the aspirational homing grounds for good citizens of every sort, a place so all-embracing that it effaces signs of rank, order, and power. The middle class is that class so universal that it’s really no class at all. School teachers, however, have always been working-class stiffs. For a long time, they were also mainly women who would have instantly recognized the insecurities, struggles to get by, and low public esteem that plague today’s embattled teachers.

Thirty-Five Years Of Comintern Publishing: A Balancesheet

April 16, 2018 John Riddell, Socialistproject.ca Educate! Class Struggle, Communism, History

I objected that I had no background in academic research and publishing. Waters and Sheppard countered that given my grasp of history in that period, my knowledge of the three main translation languages, and my experience as a socialist activist attempting to implement the Comintern’s ideas, I was the obvious choice. I accepted the challenge and took charge of the project. It has taken a good deal more than a decade. Along the way, Pathfinder has been replaced as publisher by Historical Materialism Book Series and Haymarket Books. Nine documentary books have now gone to press, totaling 6,500 pages, and another is in preparation. (See list of volumes below.) More than 100 collaborators have helped in various ways to produce them.

Hundreds Of Oklahoma Teachers Angry At Union

April 14, 2018 By Alexia Fernández Campbell, Vox.com Resist! Class Struggle, Oklahoma, Teachers, Unions

On Thursday afternoon, Oklahoma’s largest educators association announced an end to the nine-day walkout, saying lawmakers “won’t budge an inch.” The group said that it would take the $479 million in extra school funding educators got from lawmakers before the strike — a fraction of the $3.3 billion they had demanded — and that members would return to work. “I call on our community members to continue supporting these educators as they walk back into the classroom. We want as much support from them after the walkout as they received during the walkout,” Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, said during a press conference. The OEA framed the walkout as a victory that ended with millions of dollars more in school funding. Priest said that most of OEA’s members wanted to resume classes.

Poor People’s Campaign Gears Up For Mother’s Day Launch

April 13, 2018 By Sarah Anderson, Inequality.org Resist! Class Struggle, Mothers, Poor People's Campaign

I am not speaking about the poor. I am not speaking for the poor. I am the poor.” Claudia De la Cruz was speaking at an April 10 press briefing in Washington, D.C. on behalf of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Inspired by a similar 1968 initiative led by Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders, the campaign aims to lift up the voices of people like De la Cruz who’ve been most affected by our country’s persistent poverty. A descendant of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, De la Cruz was born in the South Bronx, the poorest Congressional district in the country. Median household income there is about $26,000, compared to $116,000 for the wealthiest district, which straddles Virginia’s northern suburbs. She’s a member of the national steering committee of the Poor People’s Campaign and one of the state organizers for the New York City area.

Amid School Closures, Puerto Rico’s Teachers Fight Privatization

April 9, 2018 By Emily Wells, Truthdig.com Educate! Class Struggle, Privatization, Puerto Rico, Schools, Teachers

Puerto Rico’s Department of Education announced Thursday it will close 283 schools this summer after a sharp drop in enrollment, thought to be partly a result of displacement of families after Hurricane Maria. However, many teachers in the island’s school system say the issue might be more complicated and believe the system’s recent acceptance of charter schools and voucher programs could be contributing to the deprioritizing of public schools. The Associated Press reports that Puerto Rico is currently operating 1,100 public schools with 319,000 enrolled students. Puerto Rico’s Education Secretary Julia Keleher said of the closings, “We know it’s a difficult and painful process. For this reason, we’ve done it in the most sensible way, taking in consideration all the elements that could impact the daily lives of some families and the school communities in general. …

Shifting Systems With Nonviolent Strategy

April 6, 2018 By Rivera Sun, Transcend.org Strategize! Class Struggle, Nonviolence

The secret to successful nonviolent struggle lies in understanding strategy and systems. All systems require participation and resources to survive. Deny those things, and the system will wither away … or concede to meet your demands. Strategy can be that simple. Cut off the water and the plants will die. Block all other exits and the rabbit will come out the hole in front of you. Surround the castle and cut off the food supply and the people will surrender – or starve. Give Archimedes a lever long enough (and a pivot upon which to place it) and he can move the world. If workers can sustain a strike and keep out scabs then the business owner must raise wages – or lose productivity. If all investors divest from fossil fuels then the industry has no capital with which to continue operating. If everyone boycotts palm oil then there’s no profit in clear-cutting the rainforest.

Strikes By Railway Workers And Aircrews Paralyze France

April 5, 2018 Staff, Wsws.org Resist! Class Struggle, France, Strikes, Transportation

Seventy-seven percent of the train drivers and 69 percent of the inspectors were on strike. As a result, seven out of eight long-distance trains [TGVs], four out of five regional trains and two out of three local trains were canceled. The SNCF expects train cancellations to remain high on Wednesday. In the next three months, the railroad workers want to continue their labor struggle. The strike will alternate between two days of strike action and three days of work. Air France had to cancel around one third of the long distance and medium distance flights because of the strike, and half of the domestic flights were canceled. More strikes are planned for the 10th and 11th of April. While the strike at Air France is focused on higher wages, railroad workers are directly engaged in a power struggle with President Macron's government.

Thousands Of Teachers And Staff On Strike Across Oklahoma And Kentucky, Arizona Might Be Next

April 4, 2018 By Ashley Curtin, Nationofchange.org Resist! Arizona, Class Struggle, Kentucky, Labor, Oklahoma, Strikes, Teachers, Unions

Schools shut down on Monday as thousands of teachers and staff in Oklahoma walked out to protest the low wages, benefit cuts and lack of school funding. Leading up to the planned strike, Oklahoma educators gave lawmakers an opportunity to pass a bill that met their demands, but could only come up with a $447 million compromise to the $3.3 billion requested by the teachers, Vox reported. The bill, which would have given teachers a $6,100 raise, support staff a $1,250 raise and $50 million in education funding, was going to come in part from raising taxes on oil production, diesel fuel and cigarettes, but the deal was rejected by the Oklahoma Education Associate, the group negotiating on the educators behalf.

Purple Bullying, Ten Years Later: SEIU Trustees Trample Membership Rights

April 4, 2018 By Steve Early, Mronline.org Resist! Class Struggle, Labor, SEIU, Strikes, Unions

In Chicago this coming weekend, 2,500 rank-and-file activists, from the U.S. and abroad, will be meeting under the banner of Labor Notes to celebrate the revival of union militancy, including recent strike victories like the West Virginia teachers’ walk-out. This conference—nineteenth of its sort since 1981—will be the largest gathering ever hosted by the now Brooklyn-based labor education project. Labor Notes staff train shop stewards and local officers, promote cross-union networks, and publish books and newsletters about union democracy and reform. As Labor Notes co-founder, socialist Kim Moody explained to Jacobin readers several years ago, “the emphasis has always been on building power in the workplace” and “undermining the conservative consciousness produced by bureaucratic unionism”

Wildcat Sickouts Hit Kentucky As Teachers’ Struggle Spreads

April 3, 2018 Will Morrow, Wsws.org Resist! Class Struggle, Education, Labor, Teachers, Unions

Thousands of teachers in Kentucky staged wildcat sickouts Friday, closing schools in 29 counties. The protests were in opposition to a bill passed by state legislators Thursday night that includes a sweeping assault on teachers’ pensions. The eruption in Kentucky is part of an expanding wave of strikes and protests by educators across the United States and internationally. Oklahoma teachers will hold a statewide strike this Monday to demand wage and school funding increases, while teachers in Arizona are calling for walkouts in the wake of the nine-day February-March strike by 30,000 West Virginia teachers and school employees. The struggles by teachers are developing in opposition to the trade unions, which have suppressed the class struggle and enforced funding cuts by both parties for three decades.

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