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Transformation

How Unions Can Lay The Ground For The Next Upsurge

October 18, 2020 Mark Meinster, Labor Notes. , , ,
As shown by authors like Dan Clawson in his 2003 book The Next Upsurge, unions tend to grow in spurts, as part of working-class uprisings that pose a deep challenge to the powers that be. The upsurges in the private sector from 1934 to 1939, when the CIO organized industry-wide, with sitdowns when necessary, and the AFL tried to catch up, and in the public sector from 1962 to 1972, when a wave of illegal strikes established the right to bargain, were rooted in militant worker action. The system began to lose legitimacy and workers got a sense of their collective power. Similar dynamics played out during the 1897-1904 upsurge in the U.S.

Doubt Is A Treacherous Path

October 2, 2020 Jonathan Cook. , , ,
What I think of as the cynical left are once again berating the progressive critical left, myself included, for failing to write what they want written about Covid-19. I take this as a kind of unintended compliment: that they think we can write about their concerns better than they can themselves. But even if I wished to write someone else’s argument rather than my own, it would still be difficult to know for sure what the cynical left wants from progressive writers: that we pronounce the pandemic fake, or that we declare the danger from it overblown, or that we denounce mask-wearing as an infringement on personal liberty, or that we argue lockdown is a prelude to George Orwell’s 1984. Or maybe all of these.

Throw Sand In The Gears Of The Machine

September 26, 2020 Caitlin Johnstone. , , ,
Humanity will continue along its self-destructive trajectory until the masses use the power of their numbers to force real change. Humanity will not use the power of its numbers to force real change as long as it’s being successfully propagandized not to do so. The oligarchic propaganda machine is therefore the primary barrier to our transition from our self-destructive patterns into a healthy collaborative relationship with each other and with our ecosystem. So throw sand in the gears of the machine. If enough of us throw enough sand, we can cause the whole thing to break down.

Massive Uprisings Confront White Supremacy

June 25, 2020 Marjorie Cohn, Jurist. , , ,
On May 25, a Minneapolis police officer tortured George Floyd to death in what his brother, Philonise Floyd, called “a modern-day lynching in broad daylight.” Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in all 50 states and Washington D.C.; the anti-racist uprisings continue.  Why do a majority of people in this country now support the Movement for Black Lives? Why have calls to defund and abolish the police entered the mainstream discourse? Why are people risking the deadly coronavirus to join the protests? And why are we seeing what may be the broadest popular movement in the history of the United States?   More than 400 years after the first Africans were kidnapped, forcibly brought to this country and enslaved, White supremacy continues to infect our society.

To Police Of Good Conscience: These Protests Are For You Too

June 13, 2020 Lucas Johnson, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
To the police of good conscience: What if all this demonstrating was also for you? What if the pain you are feeling right now — the pain of feeling misunderstood and mischaracterized — is connected to the same pain expressed by protesters in the streets of Minneapolis, Atlanta, Louisville and hundreds of other cities steeped in grief? You understand that suspicion of theft or fraud doesn’t justify murder and whatever legal battles will unfold won’t change the morality of that fact. I know the protest chants and the opinion articles don’t cover it all. It’s a hard job and the criticism doesn’t always speak to the nuances, or the aches and pains deep in the crevices of your lives.

The Future Is Public

May 27, 2020 the Transnational Institute. , , ,
Resistance to privatisation has turned into a powerful force for change. (Re)municipalisation refers to the reclaiming of public ownership of services as well as the creation of new public services. In recent years, our research has identified more than 1,400 successful (re)municipalisation cases involving more than 2,400 cities in 58 countries around the world. But this book is about more than just numbers. It shows that public services are more important than ever in the face of the climate catastrophe, mounting inequalities, and growing political unrest. Together, civil society organisations, trade unions, and local authorities are crafting new templates for how to expand democratic public ownership to all levels of society and opening up new routes to community-led and climate conscious public services.

Group Hopes To See New Economy Emerge Based On Hawaiian Values

May 26, 2020 By Dan Nakaso, Star-Advertiser. , , ,
A new group that wants to reboot Hawaii’s tourist-based economy in the era of the new coronavirus announced a four-step plan Tuesday to come up with ideas by August based on Native Hawaiian cultural values. The ‘Aina Aloha Economic Futures Declaration, which was sent to Gov. David Ige, is the first part of an effort to create a different island economy based on centuries of island-based values. The declaration was authored by 14 members of the community who want “to reboot the entire operating system of our economy,” said Kamanamaikalani Beamer, associate professor of the University of Hawaii’s Center for Hawaiian Studies. So far, the overall concept has been endorsed by more than 550 individuals and organizations. A new island economy needs to be based on values “that have sustained life in these islands for centuries,” Beamer said.

The Light At The End

May 21, 2020 Nafeez Ahmed, Yes Magazine. , , , ,
Within just a few weeks—faster than the blink of an eye in geological time—a tiny, microscopic entity brought the global monolith of human civilization, the captains of industry, the might of the world’s militaries, the financial juggernauts of money and manufacturing, to their knees. According to the likely, but still uncertain theory, the novel coronavirus behind the disease named COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) whipsawed its way across East China, from wet markets in Wuhan, before becoming a global pandemic. Within months, two million people worldwide were confirmed infected—with tens of millions estimated to be the real number—and over 150,000 had died. As everyday life ground to a halt amid social lockdowns designed to reduce the impact on flailing health care facilities, so too did the global economy.

To Fight Neoliberalism In Cities, Planners Must Work With Activists

May 15, 2020 Rachel Bondra, Rabble.ca. , , ,
I was surprised, in my first week of class as a graduate student in urban planning, to hear the death knell of my chosen field. In an unco-ordinated move, each of my professors at CUNY Hunter College had assigned Thomas J. Campanella's essay "Jane Jacobs and the Death and Life of American Planning." In the essay, Campanella describes urban planning as a trivial profession that is mired in bureaucratic procedure and lacks disciplinary identity, authority and visionary capacity. One reason for this, say some contributors to Transformative Planning: Radical Alternatives to Neoliberal Urbanism, is that, as a profession, urban planning has too long been focused on creating products (i.e. housing and roads) rather than imagining cities as places that might sustain humans and the environment.

The Established Order Has Never Been Weaker

May 13, 2020 By Cam Fenton, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
All around the globe, governments are starting to move forward with reopening plans that lift some degree of COVID-19 social distancing. With that comes talk of recovery and rebuilding. While some of the attention is on green stimulus and a range of progressive demands for just and equitable recoveries, the only way we can win any such advances is through movements that are prepared to take on the fight. Before the COVID-19 crisis began, the world was — by and large — governed by a neoliberal common sense with its roots in Reagan- and Thatcher-era politics. The same leaders who upheld that order are still in power and, with a few notable exceptions, most of them are seeing increases in their approval numbers through this crisis.  In Europe, Germany’s Angela Merkel has a soaring approval rating of 78 percent, Italy’s Giuseppe Conte is at 71 percent and France’s Emmanuel Macron is up 14 points.

What History Can Tell Us About Today’s Coronavirus Pandemic

May 1, 2020 Veronika Hachenbroch, Spiegel.de. , , ,
All too often, this is the fate of Cassandra. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the U.S., explained the situation graphically in 2006:  If you live in the Caribbean, climate scientists will tell you that a hurricane is inevitably going to come. They cannot tell you the date, and they cannot tell you how powerful the hurricane is going to be, but it is very important that you prepare for it. It is exactly the same with a pandemic. But what did we do? Following a brief phase of anxiety after SARS and avian influenza, we forgot all about the pandemic threat! So now we don't have common pandemic policies in the European Union, the World Health Organization is underfunded, and we are lacking hospital surge capacities.

Out Of The Coronavirus Tragedy May Come Hope Of A More Just Society

April 26, 2020 Michael D. Higgins, SocialEurope.eu. , , ,
The global loss of life and disruption to our daily lives resulting from the coronavirus pandemic is unprecedented in living memory. We have learned through tragedy that we have a shared, globalised vulnerability common to all humanity. We are learning how we, as a matter of urgency, must make changes to improve resilience in a range of essential areas: employment, healthcare, housing. We have been forced to recognise our dependence on our public-sector frontline workers, and the state’s broader role in mitigating this crisis and saving lives. The coronavirus has magnified the scale of our existing social crises and has proved, if ever proof were required, how government can act decisively when the will is there.

The Pandemic Is An Opportunity For Major Change

April 22, 2020 George Lakey, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
The pandemic is many things for many people. For a lot of activists, it offers both frustration and opportunity. It’s frustrating not to be able to stage a sit-in or picket line. The opportunity, though, is the shake-up in politics and society: History shows many examples of when a convulsive historic event altered conditions in such a way as to promote positive change. That happened with the Great Depression in the United States and World War II in the U.K. Both societies took a leap forward in terms of progressive social, economic and cultural change. It’s not that anyone would wish for the shake-up, given its enormous pain and suffering. But massive history-making events don’t ask our opinion. They are what they are. The question is, what do we make of them? In Christopher Fry’s anti-war play, “A Sleep of Prisoners,” a character says, “Affairs are now soul size.”

COVID-19 Chronicles: How The World Will Change After The Coronavirus

April 7, 2020 Frank Barat, Popular Resistance , ,
COVID-19 Chronicles are a series of interviews and conversations with personalities, analysts, doctors, thinkers, activists and politicians on the meaning of the coronavirus crisis and its impacts on the world’s politics. Eventually, we will get past the virus. But will we get past the problems the virus has identified? How will the world change? A line in history is being drawn by COVID-19, how will the post-COVID world be different from pre-COVID. The interviews are conducted by Frank Barat. He is an activist, journalist, and producer. He has worked on books with Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, Ken Loach. His latest with Angela Davis "Freedom is a Constant struggle" is out now. 

Israel’s Settler Railway Could Be Going Nowhere Fast

May 28, 2019 Ali Abunimah, Electronicintifada.net , , ,
Trade unions and human rights organizations in France are celebrating as a victory the withdrawal of train manufacturer Alstom from the Jerusalem light rail. Meanwhile, it has also been confirmed that a Greek-led consortium failed to submit a bid. France’s Alstom confirmed to media last week that it had dropped plans to bid on the extension of the Israeli railway that links settlements in the West Bank to each other and to Jerusalem. Israel’s construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is a war crime.
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