Democracy

Community Guards: Self-Protection And Peoples’ Autonomy

October 16, 2021 Progressive International. Create! Colombia, Community Safety, Democracy, Indigenous culture

An interview with the guard leaders of the Peasant, Cimarrona and Indigenous communities about the processes they have implemented since the beginning of the National Strike in Colombia. For them, self-justice goes beyond exercising authority; it means protecting their territory and the lives of those who inhabit their lands. The National Popular Assembly (NPA) that took place on July 17–19 at the University of Valle, in Cali, was systematically targeted and sabotaged by public forces. But, the intervention of the Cimarrona, Indigenous and farmer community guards and the front-line protesters guaranteed a safe and peaceful space for the meeting. "Police officers know how to treat others as police officers, a guerrilla as a guerrilla, and the paramilitary as the paramilitary," said Manuel Correa, "(...) they each have their own ideology, but they are far removed from the cosmovision of the black people."

Cuban Intelligence Chief Says ‘US Government Preparing Final Blow’

October 13, 2021 W. T. Whitney Jr., People's World. Educate! Cuba, Democracy, Revolution, US Imperialism

Fabián Escalante helped establish Cuba’s state security services. He headed Cuba’s Department of State Security from 1976 to 1996, served as vice minister of the Interior Ministry, and after 1993 led the Cuban Security Studies Center. His views on threats from the U.S. government and on protecting Cuba’s Revolution carry weight. Writing Sept. 23 on Cuba’s Pupila Insomne website, Escalante notes that “the internal counterrevolution is reorganizing its forces and is on the offensive.” They were “calling for a ‘national strike’ for October 11…to secure the ‘liberation of political prisoners.’” He insists that, afterwards, “a group of ‘activists,’ presumably counterrevolutionaries,” will be seeking authorization from Havana municipal authorities “for a peaceful march against ‘violence’ in November.”

Green Mountain Spinnery And Flat Iron Cooperative

October 5, 2021 Ebony Gustave, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Cooperatives, Democracy, New Economy, Worker Rights

Green Mountain Spinnery is a 40 year old cooperative based in rural Vermont. They mill high quality yarns made in the U.S., support regional sheep farming, and develop ways of producing natural fibers that are environmentally friendly. Flat Iron Cafe is a cooperatively owned coffee shop based in Vermont. They are still in the developmental stages but intend to create a model that integrates coffee, community driven events, and supports local food entrepreneurs within the space. In this episode I speak with worker-owner Larisa Demos about the inspiration behind Green Mountain Spinnery and Flat Iron’s development. Initially this interview was just going to be about The Spinnery but I decided to ask Larisa to share a bit about a new co-op she is helping to develop.

It’s Time To Democratize City Budgets

October 4, 2021 Editors, In These Times. Create! Cities, City Budget, Democracy, Participatory budgeting

Porto Alegre’s famous PB experiment put the city’s budget in the hands of its citizens (and included a sophisticated process to ensure broad participation), but more usually, PB has been implemented to make decisions within just a single agency or a local district. And unless robust outreach is built into the process, PB can become the domain of neighborhood busybodies already adept at advocating for themselves through local politics. That could be why it’s not better known! But PB does have benefits regardless. It’s one way to include people unable to vote in a decision-making process, such as undocumented immigrants and teens. And research shows PB increases voter engagement during formal elections. The process also lifts the veil on public finances, even if just to show how unequal they are.

Chile Is Taking The Final Steps Of Dismantling Dictatorship

October 3, 2021 Ariel Dorfman, Institute for Policy Studies. Create! Chile, Democracy, Pinochet, US coup

The Institute for Policy Studies holds this program every year at the site of the 1976 assassination of IPS colleagues Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Letelier was a former Chilean ambassador to the United States and Moffitt was a 25-year-old IPS development associate. A virtual human rights awards program in their names will be held on October 13.

Indigenous Peoples In Mexico Defend Their Right To Water

September 18, 2021 Emilio Godoy, Inter Press News. Create! Democracy, Mexico, Water

Lerma/Coyotepec, Mexico - In the San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan Otomí indigenous community, in the state of Mexico –adjacent to the country’s capital–, access to water has been based on collective work. “Public services come from collective work. What we have done is based on tequio (free compulsory work in benefit of the community), cooperation. The community has always taken care of the forests and water,” Aurora Allende, a member of the sector’s Drinking Water System, told IPS. In San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan, a town of 18,000 people in the municipality of Lerma – about 60 kilometres west of Mexico City – some 10 autonomous community water management groups are responsible for the water supply in their areas. The first community system emerged in 1960 to meet local needs.

On Contact: Inverted Totalitarianism

September 12, 2021 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report Chris Hedges, Democracy, Sheldon Wolin, Totalitarianism

In his books ‘Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism’ and ‘Politics and Vision’, a massive survey of Western political thought that his former student Cornel West calls “magisterial,” Wolin lays bare the causes behind the decline of American empire and the rise of a new and terrifying configuration of corporate power he calls “inverted totalitarianism.” Wolin throughout his scholarship charted the steady devolution of American democracy and in his last book, ‘Democracy Incorporated’, wrote: “One cannot point to any national institution[s] that can accurately be described as democratic, surely not in the highly managed, money-saturated elections, the lobby-infested Congress, the imperial presidency, the class-biased judicial and penal system, or, least of all, the media.”

How Can America Wake Up From Its Post-9/11 Nightmare?

September 10, 2021 Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Popular Resistance. Educate! 9/11, Afghanistan War, Democracy, Wars and Militarism

Looking back on it now, the 1990s were an age of innocence for America. The Cold War was over and our leaders promised us a “peace dividend.” There was no TSA to make us take off our shoes at airports (how many bombs have they found in those billions of shoes?). The government could not tap a U.S. phone or read private emails without a warrant from a judge. And the national debt was only $5 trillion - compared with over $28 trillion today. We have been told that the criminal attacks of September 11, 2001 “changed everything.” But what really changed everything was the U.S. government’s disastrous response to them. That response was not preordained or inevitable, but the result of decisions and choices made by politicians, bureaucrats and generals who fueled and exploited our fears, unleashed wars of reprehensible vengeance and built a secretive security state, all thinly disguised behind Orwellian myths of American greatness.

On Remembering Stanley Aronowitz

August 27, 2021 Steve Early, New Politics. Organize! Democracy, Labor Unions, popular power, Worker Rights and Jobs

Brother Stanley Aronowitz was always ahead of the curve, with his criticism of the shortcomings of old labor and his envisioning of “a new workers movement” that might replace it. During the 1960s, campus radicals turned to him, as a former factory worker and staff member of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers, for advice about the student left’s much debated and then still pending “turn toward the working class.” Late in life, while well embedded in academia, he remained a teacher union activist and successful reform caucus member. In a series of incisive books like False Promises, Working-Class Hero, and From the Ashes of the Old, Stanley always took “slumbering mainstream unions” to task for their lack of militancy, diversity, internal democracy, and progressive politics.

Mexico: Indigenous Communities Take Over Water-Bottling Plant

August 10, 2021 Tamara Pearson, Green Left. Resist! Democracy, Indigenous Resistance, Mexico, Workers

For four months, Indigenous and local communities in Mexico have managed to blockade and shut down the Bonafont plant in Cuanala in Puebla state. Bonafont is a bottled water brand owned by Danone, a Paris-based food corporation. With large rocks blocking the main entrance, as well as tents, a cooking station and more, the communities have used their permanent blockade as a space to hold workshops, forums and cultural events. But on Sunday, August 1, they decided it was time to take over the plant and put it to better use. They called a public meeting with state authorities and Bonafont owners for Sunday, August 8. No officials showed up. After putting the government and corporations on trial, with members of each community testifying to the abuse of land and water in their area, the 21 communities then entered the huge water-bottling plant and took it over on Sunday.

At A Convention Like No Other, Teamster Challengers Turn A Corner

July 15, 2021 Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes. Organize! Democracy, Teamsters, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

This was a Teamsters convention like no other—and not just because it was held online, avoiding the usual Las Vegas spectacle where a few brave reformers run a gauntlet of booing red-vested delegates. Even in person, the 2021 convention wouldn’t have gone down that way. The opposition slate didn’t just squeak past the 5 percent of delegates required to get on the ballot, as it often has before. This time it pulled half the votes—reflecting a power shift in the union. All 1.3 million Teamsters have the right to vote on their top officers. Now that the slates are nominated, members will be mailed a ballot on October 4; votes will be counted November 15. At the convention, members of the durable reform movement Teamsters for a Democratic Union and their allies achieved constitutional amendments they’ve been seeking for decades.

What Mike Gravel Meant

June 28, 2021 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. Educate! Democracy, Media, Mike Gravel, Politics

I first met Sen. Mike Gravel in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York in early 2006 after a mutual friend told me Gravel was contemplating running for president. Our Waldorf breakfast lasted four hours. I was surprised that such an American politician existed. He seemed to lack the expected self-importance. More incredibly, I agreed with him on every point of public policy–foreign and domestic. Having been a reporter for decades–I was a correspondent for The Boston Globe at the time–I’d surpassed the average citizen’s cynicism about people in government. But here was a former United States senator questioning the most fundamental and seemingly unshakeable myths that underpin a brutal status-quo.

Democracy Dies At The Washington Post Editorial Board

June 19, 2021 Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. Educate! Democracy, Jeff Bezos, Media, Washington Post

Washington — The Washington Post’s glaring conflicts of interest have of late once again been the subject of scrutiny online, thanks to a new article denouncing a supposed attempt to “soak” billionaires in taxes. Written by star columnist Megan McArdle — who previously argued that Walmart’s wages are too high, that there is nothing wrong with Google’s monopoly, and that the Grenfell Fire was a price worth paying for cheaper buildings — the article claimed that Americans have such class envy that the government would “destroy [billionaires’] fortunes so that the rest of us don’t have to look at them.” Notably, the Post chose to illustrate it with a picture of its owner, Jeff Bezos, making it seem as if it was directly defending his power and wealth, something they have been accused of on more than one occasion.

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