Revisionism

Is That All You Got? Georgia Organizations Were Ready For Black Voter Purge By The GOP

October 13, 2018 By Jason Johnson, Theroot.com Resist! Electoral Politics, Georgia, Revisionism

“For YEARS I’ve been trying to get people to give a shit about ‘Exact Match,’ before the day after the voter-registration deadline,” says a Georgia Democratic campaign staffer, who wished to remain anonymous. The exasperation in their voice is obvious. Exact Match is the gentrified name for Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s anti-black voting apparatus, which he’s wielded with such efficiency that Jeff Sessions is jealous. Even though Kemp is in a close election with Democrat Stacey Abrams for the governor’s mansion in Georgia, he’s still allowed to oversee the election as secretary of state (Abrams’ camp just called for Kemp to resign as secretary of state).

A Progressive Platform To Take Back Chicago In 2019

October 9, 2018 By Carlos Ramirez-Rosa and Rossana Rodriguez, Inthesetimes.com Create! Chicago, Electoral Politics, Revisionism, Voting

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to not seek a third term has sent the city’s political and business communities into a speculative frenzy. While Chicago’s financial elite is preoccupied with the potential threat to business as usual, politicians and activists across the city are asking who should run—and who can win. But for progressives who want to see fundamental change in Chicago, Emanuel’s exit must spark something bigger than the campaign of any individual mayoral candidate—it must inspire the people of Chicago to transform our city from the bottom up. When previous mayor Richard M. Daley announced his retirement in 2010, the air was filled with talk of a non-machine candidate shaking up the status quo.

A Texas Yard Sign Depicted A GOP Elephant With Its Trunk Up A Girl’s Skirt. Police Seized It.

October 9, 2018 Kristine Phillips, Texastribune.org Resist! Electoral Politics, Party Politics, Revisionism

At some point during Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s testimony last week, Marion Stanford grabbed a piece of wooden paneling, some paint and the $5 brushes she had purchased a while back. She brought the items back to her living room, where she had been glued to the television watching the drama unfold in the Senate that day. She had heard Christine Blasey Ford tell senators that Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, was the boy who sexually assaulted her 36 years ago, when they were both in high school. And as she listened to Kavanaugh’s forceful denial and defense of himself, Stanford began to paint.

Teamsters Union Defies “No” Vote, Declares UPS Contract Ratified

October 8, 2018 Will Morrow, Wsws.org Resist! Class Struggle, Revisionism, Unions, Workers Rights and Jobs

On Friday, UPS workers voted to reject a sellout contract backed by the Teamsters union and UPS management. The union, however, has announced that it considers the contract ratified and will seek to impose it in the face of mass opposition. The ballot results were released last night, with 50,248 workers (54.7 percent) voting against and 42,356 (45.74 percent) in favor. Workers at the subsidiary UPS Freight voted by 62 percent against a separate contract. Both votes follow the “no” vote by 1,300 UPS airline mechanics in Louisville, Kentucky on Wednesday, meaning all three of the Teamsters’ contracts have been defeated. The Teamsters is citing an anti-democratic clause in its constitution that provides it with virtually unchallengeable authority against the workers.

Breaking With Wall Street: L.A. Puts It To The Voters

October 6, 2018 Ellen Brown, Ellenbrown.com Create! Electoral Politics, Revisionism, Wall Street

Wall Street owns the country. That was the opening line of a fiery speech by populist leader Mary Ellen Lease in 1890. Franklin Roosevelt said it again in a letter to Colonel House in 1933, and Sen. Dick Durbin was still saying it in 2009. “The banks – hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created – are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill,” Durbin said in an interview. “And they frankly own the place.” Wall Street banks triggered a credit crisis in 2008-09 that wiped out over $19 trillion in household wealth, turned some 10 million families out of their homes, and cost almost 9 million jobs in the US alone; yet the banks were bailed out without penalty, while defrauded homebuyers were left without recourse or compensation.

In North Carolina, Co-Ops Are Building A More Democratic Economy

October 2, 2018 By Junior Walters, Facingsouth.org Create! Cooperatives, New Economy, North Carolina, Revisionism

Nestled at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains in western North Carolina, Morganton may seem like an unlikely place to find a large Mayan community. But since the 1980s, the Burke County city of almost 17,000 people, over 75 percent of them white and 12 percent black, is home to a growing Latino community, including Mayan immigrants from Guatemala. Like other immigrants before them, the Maya came to Morganton in search of economic opportunity. Many found work at the local Case Farms chicken processing plant but grew dissatisfied over low wages, poor working conditions, and unsuccessful labor organizing efforts. Searching for a better way to make a living, some have found it in cooperative economics.

Democratic Socialism And Political Power

October 1, 2018 Rob Urie, Counterpunch.org Strategize! Democratic Socialism, Politics, Revisionism

Occasionally a phrase supports a wide range of political posturing while bearing little determinable relationship to actionable politics. ‘Income inequality’ is one of these phrases. Few using it are communists, a politics that recognizes concentrated economic power as both cause and effect in the skewed distribution of income and wealth. And the entire point of capitalism is the concentration of these that functions as (circular) proof of the social utility created by capitalists. As corollary to American democracy, the phrase ignores centuries of evidence that political power is determined by economic power. Of current relevance is its place in the programs of Democratic Socialism, a rebranding of New Deal type social welfare programs that proponents (I am one) apparently intend to fit into existing American political economy.

A Glimmer Of Hope In Brazil

September 26, 2018 Bryan McCann, Dissentmagazine.org Educate! Brazil, Democracy, Electoral Politics, Revisionism

Renata Souza, candidate for Rio de Janeiro State Chamber of Deputies from Brazil’s Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), knows she has big shoes to fill and a difficult path to walk. Souza was the chief of staff—and a close friend—to Marielle Franco, the Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman gunned down in a drive-by shooting in March 2018. In the wake of Franco’s assassination, Souza pledged to run for office herself, to carry on Franco’s commitment to fighting for the rights of Rio’s disenfranchised—particularly the poor and predominantly black residents of the city’s favelas, for women of color more generally, and for LGBT citizens, especially those from poor communities. These positions make Souza vulnerable to the same backlash, vitriol...

Net Neutrality Activists Plan To Educate Millions Of Voters About Candidate Stances Ahead Of Midterms

September 26, 2018 Staff, Fightforthefuture.org Resist! Electoral Politics, Net Neutrality, Reform, Revisionism

Kicking off on National Voter Registration Day, one of the most prominent open Internet advocacy groups, Fight for the Future, has launched Vote For Net Neutrality, an explosive campaign that seeks to educate millions of people about where Senate and House candidates stand on restoring net neutrality ahead of the midterm elections, enlisting the entire Internet in the mission of pressuring incumbent lawmakers who are facing tight races to do the right thing or face the Internet’s wrath on election day. The campaign makes use of cutting edge mobile technology, including a chatbot flow that allows Internet users to register to vote, sign up for voting reminders, and find out where candidates in their area stand on net neutrality, all from their phones using SMS messages.

The Labour Party’s Inclusive Ownership Fund Is a Good Idea

September 25, 2018 Matt Bruenig, Peoplespolicyproject.org Create! Labor Party, New Economy, Revisionism, United Kingdom (UK)

John McDonnell of the UK Labour Party just unveiled a policy that would require large corporations to gradually place 10 percent of their equity into an Inclusive Ownership Fund (IOF) owned by workers. The IOF is a form of funds socialism similar to the 1980s Meidner plan in Sweden and the social wealth fund proposal published by People’s Policy Project last month. Under the plan, companies with more than 250 workers would be required to create an IOF for their company and grant that fund 1 percent of their shares every year. Once an IOF reaches a 10 percent equity stake, the annual share grants would stop. Workers would be able to vote as shareholders in proportion to the shares held in the IOF and would receive dividends from their ownership just like any other shareholder.

The Crackdown On Sanctuary Cities Gives Birth To ‘Freedom Cities’

September 22, 2018 By Adam Edelman, Nbcnews.com Create! Class Struggle, Deportations, Immigration, Repression, Revisionism, Sanctuary Movement

Advocates for undocumented immigrants believe they've found a new — and legal — way to skirt deportation efforts. If Attorney General Jeff Sessions is waging war to dismantle sanctuary cities, imagine how he feels about "freedom cities." Austin, Texas, became the latest major city to declare itself a "freedom city" in June, when the city council passed resolutions instructing the city's police officers to arrest fewer people for minor crimes like possessing a small amount of marijuana and driving without a valid license, as well as taking steps to protect undocumented immigrants. "Freedom city policies are basically an expansion of the old sanctuary city policies," said Austin Council member Greg Casar, who helped write the resolutions. "They pick up where sanctuary policies were cut off."

The Best Way To Eradicate Poverty: Welfare Not Jobs

September 19, 2018 Matt Bruenig, Peoplespolicyproject.org Educate! Labor, New Economy, Poverty, Revisionism, Social Welfare

The Census released its income, poverty, and health insurance data last week (ASEC, SPM). Among other things, the data allows us to see who was in poverty and therefore gives us good insights about how to eradicate poverty. In this post, I detail what I think these insights are using my own calculations of the 2017 microdata. Below is the overall poverty rate broken down by market income and disposable income. “Market income” refers to all income received from labor earnings and capital ownership. “Disposable income” refers to each person’s final income and takes into consideration taxes paid and government benefits received. For both figures, I use the poverty line of the Supplemental Poverty Metric. In 2017, the market poverty rate was 25 percent. The poverty rate when counting disposable income was 13.9 percent.

Political Fragmentation On The Homefront

September 19, 2018 Lawrence Davidson, Tothepointanalyses.com Educate! Electoral Politics, Revisionism

September 17, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - The United States is politically fragmenting. It would seem that the various cultural and ideological stresses impacting the nation are destabilizing the country’s two traditional political parties. At this point in the fragmentation process we can identify four political groupings. They are (1) those of Democratic Party persuasion—and it should be noted that the Democrats are being stressed by contesting interpretations of just what the party stands for; (2) those of continuing Republican Party persuasion, which by now really represents a small “rump” party of Trump supporters; (3) the independents now bolstered by what once was the “moderate” multitude of the Republican Party as well as a growing number of ex-Democrats on the disaffected left; and (4) the mass of apolitical Americans who have always been alienated from politics and usually do not vote.

Retrospectives Of The Financial Crisis Are Leaving Out The Most Important Part—Its Victims

September 17, 2018 David Dayen, Inthesetimes.com Educate! Capitalism, Crisis, Finance, Revisionism

Because I’m a masochist, I’ve read as many retrospectives as I could about the 10th anniversary of the fateful failure of Lehman Brothers, the emblematic event of the financial crisis. And I can’t help but notice a gaping hole in the narratives. I’ve heard from Lew Ranieri, the Salomon Brothers trader who invented the mortgage bond in the 1980s, and now regrets it. I’ve heard bailout architects Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, and Tim Geithner justify their beliefs in doing whatever it took to save the banks. I’ve endured you-are-there narratives about bankers and policymakers racing to rescue the financial system. Wonks, pundits, and reporters have all offered thoughts on the crisis’ origins, the response, and its ultimate meaning. It seems the only people not consulted for their perspective were those most powerfully affected by the crisis’ impact...

The Constitutional Turn: Liberty And The Cooperative State

September 15, 2018 By Dan Hind, Thenextsystem.org Create! Cooperatives, Revisionism

The English-speaking left has long tended to neglect questions of constitutional design. The dominant Labourist and Social Democratic currents (including American left-liberalism) have focused on securing material benefits for the working class through the institutions of the existing state. The junior, but still influential, revolutionary Marxist tradition treats the state as a fortification to be stormed. Big government alternates uneasily with the withering away of the state.1 But there is more to the left than fiscal redistribution or revolution. In what follows I argue for making the state a site for radical reform. The aim is to flesh out an account of a possible socialist commonwealth that takes full account of its political dimension—the extent to which national economies are produced and reproduced by the state.

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