Revolution

‘¡Las Sandinistas!’: A Revolution Remembered

November 29, 2018 Mark Read, Indypendent.org Educate! History, Revolution, Sandinista

Las Sandinistas, a new feature-length documentary film that examines the Nicaraguan revolution of the 1980’s, arrives in theaters at a critical political juncture in which crises in Central America are once again center stage. Refugees streaming northward toward the U.S. border flee violence while the president calls them animals and sends army troops to meet them, threatening to shoot unarmed civilians. At such a moment, a film like this can offer a much-needed refresher course on the history and consequences of U.S. intervention in the hemisphere, helping us better understand the root causes that push those refugees to flee in the first place.

‘Everything For Everyone’ Brings Cooperative Revolution To Life

November 18, 2018 Matt Stannard, Occupy.com. Create! Capitalism, Cooperatives, New Economy, Revolution

The most striking secret of emergent radical economic structures like worker ownership is that they aren’t radical at all. They’re not even new. As Jessica Gordon Nembhard has chronicled in the case of African-American cooperative economic structures over the past 300 years, and as John Curl encyclopedically laid out for U.S. history as a whole, material cooperation, either in opposition to capitalism or quietly alongside it, is an integral part of the American narrative. It’s a history that free market think tanks and corporate propagandists don’t want us to know.

Meet Haiti’s Founding Father, Whose Black Revolution Was Too Radical For Thomas Jefferson

September 18, 2018 Julia Gaffield, Theconversation.com Educate! Haiti, History, Revolution, Slavery

Crowds cheered as local lawmakers on August 18 unveiled a street sign showing that Rogers Avenue in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn would now be called Jean-Jacques Dessalines Boulevard, after a Haitian slave turned revolutionary general. When Dessalines declared Haiti’s independence from France in 1804 after a 13-year slave uprising and civil war, he became the Americas’ first black head of state. Supporting the French colonial perspective, leaders across the Americas and Europe immediately demonized Dessalines. Even in the United States, itself newly independent from Britain, newspapers recounted horrific stories of the final years of the Haitian Revolution, a war for independence that took the lives of some 50,000 French soldiers and over 100,000 black and mixed-race Haitians.

Ferguson Activist Says: “We Need More Than Change, We Need Revolution”

September 1, 2018 Lamont Lilly, Truthout.org Resist! Activists, Ferguson, Racism, Revolution

“When the cameras left, everybody forgot,” says Missouri-based Black radical organizer Tory Russell, talking about how quickly national attention turned away from Ferguson following the murder of Michael Brown by a police officer four years ago. But, he adds, activists in St. Louis and Ferguson “sure as hell haven’t forgotten” and have continued to push for justice and accountability since the murder. In this exclusive interview, Russell, co-founder of the St. Louis-based grassroots organization Hands Up United and co-creator of its community service initiative Books and Breakfast, offers an update on the ongoing efforts of Michael Brown’s family and other racial justice activists in the Ferguson/St. Louis area.

Rebel Cities 9: Iceland’s Slow-Burning Digital Democratic Revolution

July 30, 2018 Steve Rushton, Occupy.com Create! Class Struggle, Iceland, Revisionism, Revolution

For the last decade, Iceland has been a subject of democracy folklore. The country is often neglected due to its size and location, but when it receives attention it is almost mythologized. One reason for this is that the people there, from the bottom up, are innovating with digital democratic experiments. The folk are co-creating the law. Icelanders to their credit have twice peacefully ousted governments; they are world leaders in transparency laws and digital freedom; and through referendum the nation decided not to bail out its failed banks. Through a crowd-sourced Constitution, Iceland showed a pathway for 21st Century democratic renewal, although successive politicians blocked the final destination. In addition, the Pirate Party of Iceland, a new direct democracy party, has often polled highest yet has not made it into government.

The Texas Counter-Revolution Of 1836

July 10, 2018 By Richard D. Vogel, Mronline.org Educate! Colonialism, History, Nationalism, Revolution, Texas

Leaders on both the Anglo and the Mexican sides of the conflict in northern Mexico knew that the future of slavery was the issue at hand. Stephen F. Austin, the Missouri expatriate who arranged for Anglo immigration to Mexico in 1821, encouraged migration from the U.S. with generous land grants for heads of households, their wives, and children. Simultaneously he, himself a slave owner, promoted the extension of slavery from the southern U.S. into Coahuila y Tejas by granting 80 additional acres for every slave that immigrants brought with them.

Feminism And Revolution: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

July 4, 2018 Julie Matthaei, Greattransition.org Strategize! New Economy, Revolution, Women

Since the stirring of “second wave” feminism a half century ago, the movement has become progressively more inclusive and systemic. Early on, Marxist-feminists argued that true women’s liberation required transcending both patriarchy and capitalism, and thus a politics at once feminist and anti-classist was essential. Soon, they, too, were challenged to broaden their theory and practice to acknowledge oppressions arising from race, nationality, sexual orientation, and other sources of identity and social location. Addressing this challenge gave birth to a solidarity politics within feminism rooted in intersectionality and manifest both within the movement and in its relationship with other movements. Importantly, this new politics offers ways for individuals to engage in radical social change now by creating new practices and institutions in the solidarity economy.

Will AI Jobs Revolution Bring About Human Revolt, Too?

December 22, 2017 Kentaro Toyama, theconversation.com Educate! Labor, Revolt, Revolution, Robots

But the job apocalypse might have a silver lining. The Luddites of the 1800s were unsuccessful for a number of reasons: They were politically marginal. They were not well-organized. They misdiagnosed the problem as being either about the technology or their employers. And, at least in some tellings, they had little public support. In contrast, those involved in a white-collar movement would have strong ties to influential people. They would organize effectively. They would understand the larger problem as an imperfect economic system whose pathologies technology merely amplifies. And, they would have the rhetorical skills to draw the sympathy of the public – who are likely to be themselves jobless, too.

Huge Human Inequality Study Hints Revolution Is In Store For U.S.

November 30, 2017 Yasmin Tayag, inverse.com Educate! Class Struggle, Inequality, New Economy, Revolution

By Yasmin Tayag for Inverse Science - There’s a common thread tying together the most disruptive revolutions of human history, and it has some scientists worried about the United States. In those revolutions, conflict largely boiled down to pervasive economic inequality. On Wednesday, a study in Nature, showing how and when those first divisions between rich and poor began, suggests not only that history has always repeated itself but also that it’s bound to do so again — and perhaps sooner than we think. In the largest study of its kind, a team of scientists from Washington State University and 13 other institutions examined the factors leading to economic inequality throughout all of human history and noticed some worrying trends. Using a well-established score of inequality called the Gini coefficient, which gives perfect, egalitarian societies a score of 0 and high-inequality societies a 1, they showed that civilization tends to move toward inequality as some people gain the means to make others relatively poor — and employ it. Coupled with what researchers already know about inequality leading to social instability, the study does not bode well for the state of the world today. “We could be concerned in the United States, that if Ginis get too high, we could be inviting revolution, or we could be inviting state collapse. There’s only a few things that are going to decrease our Ginis dramatically,” said Tim Kohler, Ph.D., the study’s lead author and a professor of archaeology and evolutionary anthropology in a statement.

A Century Ago, The Working Class Redefined Peace

November 10, 2017 Liz Payne, morningstaronline.co.uk Educate! History, Labor, Revolution, Soviet Union, Workers Rights and Jobs

By Liz Payne for Morning Star - TODAY marks a very special centenary within our celebrations marking the events of the great October socialist revolution in Russia in 1917, one which is of crucial significance in respect of our struggles against the devastation brought about by imperialism and its catastrophic interventions and wars in our own time. On November 8 1917, the day following the establishment of the workers’ and peasants’ government, the second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies in Petrograd, which now had state power, issued its “Decree on Peace.” So fundamental was the ending of the inter-imperialist first world war to the future of the peoples of Russia and the peoples of all belligerent countries that it was articulated as a first priority of the first workers’ state in the first 24 hours of its existence. The issuing of the decree was supremely revolutionary and the initial act of internationalism of the workers’ government. For the first time in the history of the world, the will of workers, soldiers and peasants with state power in their hands was being expressed in respect of the resolution of conflict and the rights of peoples. By means of the decree, the true character of imperialist war and the nature of peace as defined by the working class were plainly set out, thus demonstrating the inherent link between the struggle for peace and that for socialism.

The Revolt That Shook The World

October 22, 2017 Pete Dolack, www.indypendent.org Strategize! Democracy, Revolution, Socialism

By Pete Dolack for The Indypendent. History does not travel in a straight line. I won’t argue against that sentence being a cliché. Yet it is still true. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be still debating the meaning of Russia’s 1917 October Revolution on its centenary, and more than a quarter-century after its demise. Neither the Bolsheviks nor any other party played a direct role in the February revolution that toppled Tsar Nicholas II, for the leaders of those organizations were in exile abroad or in Siberia or in jail. Nonetheless, the tireless work of activists laid the groundwork. The Bolsheviks were a minority even among the active workers of Russia’s cities then...

Venezuela’s Fragile Revolution: From Chávez To Maduro

October 11, 2017 Steve Ellner, www.theindigenousamericans.com Educate! Politics, Revolution, Venezuela

By Steve Ellner for Venezuela Analysis - The Venezuelan experience of nearly two decades of radicalization, extreme social and political polarization, and right-wing insurgence offers valuable lessons for the left. The country’s current crisis should be an occasion for constructive debate around the struggles, successes, and failures of the Bolivarian Revolution. By pinpointing strategic errors–especially in the context of unrelenting hostility by powerful forces on the right–Chavismo’s supporters and sympathizers can offer a corrective to the sweeping condemnations of the government of Nicolás Maduro now coming from both right and left. This article thus has two aims: to shed light on the major lessons of the years of Chavista rule, and to put some of the government’s more questionable actions in their proper historical and political context. The common perception of the Chavista leadership as incompetent administrators who disdain democracy ignores the complexity of achieving socialism through democratic means, a process whose dangers and demands have shaped the government’s decisions, for better and worse. Only by reckoning with that complexity can we understand both Venezuela’s current situation and its turbulent recent history.

World Premiere: In The Shadow Of The Revolution

October 11, 2017 Staff, www.caracaschronicles.com Educate! Bolivia, Film, Propaganda, Revolution

By Staff of The Caracas Chronicles - Caracas Chronicles is proud to be the venue chosen by long-time friend and much-appreciated copy-editor Clifton Ross, and his colleague J.Arturo Albarrán, to premiere their latest film project, In the Shadow of the Revolution. The authors hope this timely work will challenge the Bolivarian government’s narrative about itself and the opposition through interviews with Left social movement activists, journalists, academics and intellectuals. Through this latest collaboration, Albarrán and Ross hope to reach an international public that has been subject to a bombardment of propaganda from the Bolivarian government. You’d be surprised how many people still buy into chavismo propaganda, and the narrative in which a popular, Left-wing government that brought great benefits to a nation is under attack by imperialists and a right-wing “fascist” opposition. The film disputes that line and offers a much-needed alternative view from the perspective of social movements and a democratic left. That this narrative comes in the voice of the very supporters that chavismo claimed to champion, now disillusioned and oppressed, is what really lends this film its powerful authenticity.

Radical White Workers During The Last Revolution

September 13, 2017 Richard Moser, www.counterpunch.org Strategize! New Economy, Radicals, Revolution, White People, Workers

By Richard Moser for Counter Punch - During the 1960s and 1970s, radical activists set out to organize the white working class. They linked the pursuit of working class interest and economic democracy with anti-racist organizing. They discovered, and helped others realize, that white supremacy and racism are not a friend to white people but one of the main obstacles to fulfilling our own destiny as a free people. The context was the last revolution. The civil rights, black power, feminist, student movements and community organizing set the stage for working class whites to make important contributions to the democracy movements of the time. While these efforts were initiated by various groups, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), radicalized working class youth, and the Black Panthers, they all eventually depended on the leadership of working class communities. The organizers had been deeply radicalized by the social upheavals of the time. Yet, their own working class backgrounds often placed them on the margins of the New Left. But the activists knew the white working class had enormous untapped potential. The movement to stop the War in Vietnam, fight the bosses, and win the battle against racism needed the hard work and political vision that everyday working people could help provide.

Talking About A Revolution

August 11, 2017 Jim Naureckas, www.otherwords.org Strategize! Climate Change, Corporate Media, Revolution

By Jim Naureckas for Other Words - Saving people and the planet means upending virtually every kind of business — starting with the media. It’s long been clear that if we want to avoid catastrophic climate disruption on a scale that threatens human civilization, we need to leave vast amounts of fossil fuels in the ground. Environmental writer Bill McKibben pointed out the math in a crucial 2012 article for Rolling Stone: To avoid disaster, 80 percent of the carbon already discovered by private and state-owned energy companies has to be left alone — to be treated as useless rock. The problem is, the energy companies are some of the richest, most powerful entities on Earth. Corporations are designed to act like organisms with a single goal: maximizing profits. And the fossil fuel industry’s future profits — roughly 80 percent of them — depend on extracting that carbon and burning it, climate and civilization be damned. They’ve been using and will continue to use their vast influence to thwart any effort to avert that disaster. Does humanity have the collective power to tell the current owners of carbon deposits that they don’t have the right to take them out of the ground and sell them as fuel? That the companies simply don’t own those assets anymore?

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