Economics

Black-Led Credit Union: ‘Most Important Work’ To Drive Economic Vitality

August 18, 2017 Camille Erickson, www.tcdailyplanet.net Create! Black Capitalism, Black Nationalism, Credit Unions, Economics, Minneapolis, New Economy

By Camille Erickson for TC Daily Planet - “We can’t keep using the bodies of youth as the only tool for resistance,” Me’Lea Connelly, executive director of the Association of Black Economic Power (ABEP) said, “we need something else.” In the wake of the killing of Jamar Clark on Nov. 15, 2015 and the ensuing Fourth Precinct occupation, followed less than a year later by the killing of Philando Castile on July 6, 2016, Connelly recalled a drive for a concerted effort with movement organizers to diversify tactics of resistance against police brutality. A meeting was called, and after hours of conversation with a cross section of community, the group voted to create Minnesota’s only Black-led financial institution in North Minneapolis. A symbiotic relationship exists between ABEP and Blexit. Connelly described Blexit as the incubator and nest where ideas put forth by the community are percolated. ABEP puts them into action. The ABEP Executive Committee composed of – Connelly, Brett Grant, Ron Harris, Amber Jones, Danielle Mkali, Felicia Perry and Y. Elaine Rasmussen – are leading the effort to build the foundations of the credit union while still remaining deeply grounded in the conceptions of resistance movement.

The Slow Death Of American Freedom

July 26, 2017 Scott Gilmore, www.macleans.ca Educate! Economics, Freedom

By Scott Gilmore for Mcleans - Francis Scott Key, the man who named the United States “the land of the free and the home of the brave”, owned six slaves. Granted, this was extremely common in the early 1800s. But Key, a public prosecutor, actually worked very hard to maintain slavery in America. When a Quaker wrote in an abolitionist newspaper “There is neither mercy nor justice” for African Americans in Washington, Key indicted him for trying to “vilify the good name” of the ruling class. He argued that even a public discussion of abolishing slavery was “wickedness”. The “land of the free” was a gross exaggeration. Nonetheless the phrase caught on. Throughout the last 200 years, Americans have viewed their homeland as a bastion of personal liberty. The Pilgrims, the Boston Tea Party, the Wild West, Wall Street—every thread in the national story is spun from tales of independence, of individual freedom and opportunity. But, over the years, and quietly, America has fallen behind the rest of the world, and without even noticing, its citizens have become much less free in comparison. The annual “Human Freedom Index”, a joint publication of the Fraser Institute, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom and the Cato Institute, considers 79 different indicators of personal and economic freedom.

A Clarion Call For Our Country’s Pillars To Demand Justice

July 14, 2017 Ralph Nader, www.blog.nader.org Resist! Economics, Justice, Politics

By Ralph Nader for The Nader Page - Given the retrograde pits inhabited by our ruling politicians and the avaricious over-reach of myopic big-business bosses, the self-described pillars of our society must step up to reverse the decline of our country. Here is my advice to each pillar: Step up, lawyers and judges of America. You have no less to lose than our Constitutional observances and equal justice under law. A few years ago, brave Pakistani lawyers marched in the streets in open protest against dictatorial strictures. As you witness affronts to justice such as entrenched secrecy, legal procedures used to obstruct judicial justice, repeal of health and safety protections and the curtailment of civil liberties and access to legal aid, you must become vigorous first responders and exclaim: Stop! A just society must be defended by the courts and the officers of the court – the attorneys. Step up, religious leaders, who see yourselves as custodians of spiritual and compassionate values. Recall your heroic forebears who led non-violent civil disobedience during the repression of civil rights in the Nineteen Sixties – as with the leadership of the late greats Martin Luther King Jr. and William Sloane Coffin. Champion the Golden Rule for those who don’t believe that ‘he who has the gold, rules.’

Staten Island Climate March Links Economics And Environmental Issues

May 3, 2017 Thomas Altfather Good, www.wordpress.com Resist! Climate Change, Economics, New York (NY)

By Thomas Altfather Good for National Writers Union - STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — April 29, 2017. On a unseasonably warm Saturday hundreds of Islanders assembled in Staten Island’s Midland Beach, a coastal community ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, to demand Climate Justice from the Trump Administration — linking economic and environmental issues. Workers from several local unions – including CWA Local 1102 and IBEW Local 3 – peace and environmental activists, and members of immigrant rights organizations gathered on Staten Island’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt boardwalk on Saturday. The protesters rallied and marched to demand climate justice from a president who appears to spend more time lounging in Mar-a-Lago and holding victory rallies than addressing pressing issues in a meaningful way. Organized by two local advocacy organizations, Sustainable Staten Island and Move Forward Staten Island, with a broad coalition of labor unions, immigration rights groups, environmental justice, social justice and other community organizations from throughout New York City, the event was timed to coinicide with climate marches held in other cities.

US Has Regressed To Developing Nation Status, MIT Economist Warns

April 26, 2017 Chloe Farand, www.independent.co.uk Educate! Economics, MIT

By Chloe Farand for Independent - Peter Temin says 80 per cent of the population is burdened with debt and anxious about job security. America is regressing to have the economic and political structure of a developing nation, an MIT economist has warned. Peter Temin says the world's’ largest economy has roads and bridges that look more like those in Thailand and Venezuela than those in parts of Europe. In his new book, “The Vanishing Middle Class", reviewed by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Mr Temin says the fracture of US society is leading the middle class to disappear. The economist describes a two-track economy with on the one hand 20 per cent of the population that is educated and enjoys good jobs and supportive social networks. On the other hand, the remaining 80 per cent, he said, are part of the US’ low-wage sector, where the world of possibility has shrunk and people are burdened with debts and anxious about job security. Mr Temin used a model, which was created by Nobel Prize winner Arthur Lewis and designed to understand developing nations, to describe how far inequalities have progressed in the US.

The End Of Capitalism Has Begun

February 28, 2017 Paul Mason, www.theguardian.com Educate! Capitalism, Economics

By Paul Mason for The Guardian - The red flags and marching songs of Syriza during the Greek crisis, plus the expectation that the banks would be nationalised, revived briefly a 20th-century dream: the forced destruction of the market from above. For much of the 20th century this was how the left conceived the first stage of an economy beyond capitalism. The force would be applied by the working class, either at the ballot box or on the barricades. The lever would be the state. The opportunity would come through frequent episodes of economic collapse. Instead over the past 25 years it has been the left’s project that has collapsed. The market destroyed the plan; individualism replaced collectivism and solidarity; the hugely expanded workforce of the world looks like a “proletariat”, but no longer thinks or behaves as it once did. If you lived through all this, and disliked capitalism, it was traumatic.

Class And Trumponomics

December 10, 2016 Staff, www.anticap.wordpress.com Educate! Class, Donald Trump, Economics

By Staff of Anti Cap - President-elect Donald Trump has inherited an economy that is as divided as the electorate. The question is, what will that economy look like if and when Trump’s right-wing national-populist promises and post-election proposals are enacted? As I have shown in the three installments of the first part of this series, “Class Before Trumponomics” (here, here, and here), over the course of recent decades and continuing through the crash and recovery, the class nature of the U.S. economy was transformed in dramatic fashion. Capital was able to pump more surplus out of U.S. workers and, through the combined processes of financialization

Trumponomics: It’s Not All Crazy

November 18, 2016 Dean Baker, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Donald Trump, Economics

By Dean Baker for Counter Punch - It looks like we will have to get used to the idea of Donald Trump being president for the next four years. In his campaign he pushed many outlandish proposals, like banning Muslim immigrants and deporting 11 million immigrants without documentation. We will have to do whatever we can to block such flagrantly inhumane measures. There are many other items on his campaign agenda and that of the Republican leadership that will have to be resisted, but at least one part of his agenda could actually offer real gains.

A Women’s Economic Agenda For The Next President

November 2, 2016 Elise Gould, www.epi.org Create! Economic inequality, Economics, President, presidential elections, Women

By Elise Gould for EPI - Progress on closing the gap between men’s and women’s wages in the U.S. economy has been glacially slow in recent decades—and gender wage parity has become a top priority for those committed to ensuring the economic security of American women. This priority is absolutely essential. No matter how you cut it, the gender wage gap is real and it matters (link to paper). That said, pay parity cannot be the only goal for those looking to improve the economic lot of American women.

Oil Refinery Merger In California Underscores Risks Of Petro-Economy Nationwide

October 5, 2016 Daniel Ross, www.truth-out.org Educate! California, Economics, Oil

By Daniel Ross for Truthout - In a region known for being among the worst nationally for its air quality, plans are marching briskly forward on a proposed integration project that will combine operations at two sprawling oil refineries near Southern California's Long Beach area, expanding it into the single largest oil refinery by far on the nation's West Coast. The merger threatens to introduce additional toxins, such as benzene and sulfur gases, into a community that is already suffering from unnaturally high rates of asthma, cancer and other ailments, warn experts.

East Pittsburgh Creates Path For Sustainable Economic & Green Community

August 25, 2016 Pamela Boyce Simms, www.geo.coop Create! Economics, Pittsburgh, Sustainability

By Pamela Boyce Simms for Grassroots Economic Organizing - The cast of characters assembled on vacant lots in Larimer, an East Pittsburgh neighborhood. A fiery community champion, the barons of the local political machine, real estate wizards behind the curtain, well-meaning outsider technical allies, residents (some savvy, others, unfortunate sheep), and a homegrown wolf on the prowl among them, were all there. The players who animate urban revitalization, renewal, or gentrification, by any name, are familiar.

Lessons In Viking Economics

July 20, 2016 Chuck Collins, www.inequality.org Educate! Economics

By Chuck Collins for Inequality.org - For those concerned about reducing inequality, the “Nordic model” is often celebrated as an alternative to U.S. escalating inequality. The Nordic countries –Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland – typically have considerably less income and wealthy inequality, thanks to both robust social safety nets and progressive taxation. They also top indexes of industrialized countries measuring quality of life indicators such as longevity, health, work-life balance, and vacations.

US-Led Economic War, Not Socialism, Is Tearing Venezuela Apart

July 14, 2016 Caleb T. Maupin, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Economics, Socialism, Venezuela

By Caleb T. Maupin for Mint Press News - WASHINGTON — (ANALYSIS) The political and economic crisis facing Venezuela is being endlessly pointed to as proof of the superiority of the free market. Images and portrayals of Venezuelans rioting in the streets over high food costs, empty grocery stores, medicine shortages, and overflowing garbage bins are the headlines, and the reporting points to socialism as the cause.

Unions: Direct Or Indirect Action

February 29, 2016 Dennis Gravey, www.hamptoninstitution.org Strategize! Economics, Workers Rights and Jobs

By Dennis Gravey for The Hampton Institute - It is very possible that in the next few years millions of American workers could win significant wage increases through minimum wage legislation, and do so without militant strikes or building their capacity for shop-floor direct action. For those of us fighting for significant wage increases this is great news, but for those of us fighting for an overthrow of capitalism, this should be very worrisome. Central to this tension is a strategic question, namely, Shall unionists prioritize direct or indirect action? If we aim for revolution, we must choose the former?

Harmful Economic Policy Poisoned Flint Before Lead Did

February 23, 2016 Lori Hansen Riegle, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Contamination, Economics, Flint, Policy, Water

By Lori Hansen Riegle for The Huffington Post - The national spotlight is on Flint, Michigan as it struggles with a contaminated public water system that has been poisoning its people over the past two years. This happened because a state emergency manager appointed by Governor Rick Snyder ordered a change in the water supply to save money for the cash-strapped city. As the full scope of this avoidable human and economic crisis in Flint becomes clearer -- one must ask how such an iconic and historically vibrant American city -- could have been plunged into such extreme jeopardy?

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