Notes on an Orientation to the Obama Presidency , February 26, 2009, By Linda Burnham

Source: Portside
Linda Burnham's ZSpace Page

The election of Obama, while enthusiastically embraced by most of the left, has also occasioned some disorientation and confusion.

Some have become so used to confronting the dismal electoral choice between the lesser of two evils that they couldn't figure out how to relate to a political figure who held out the possibility of substantive change in a positive direction.

Others are so used to all-out, full-throated opposition to every administration that they wonder whether and how to alter their stance.

Still others sat out the election, for a variety of political and organizational reasons, and were taken by surprise at how wide and deep ran the current for change.

Now there's an active conversation on the left about what can be expected of an Obama administration and what the orientation of the left should be towards it.

There are two conflicting views on this:

First, that Obama represents a substantial, principally positive political shift and that, while the left should criticize and resist policies that pull away from the interests of working people, its main orientation should be to actively engage with the political motion that's underway.

Second, that Obama is, in essence, just another steward of capitalism, more attractive than most, but not an agent of fundamental change. He should be regarded with caution and is bound to disappoint. The basic orientation is to criticize every move the administration makes and to remain disengaged from mainstream politics.

It is possible to grant that Obama is a steward of capitalism while also maintaining that his election has opened up the potential for substantive reform in the interests of working people and that his election to office is a democratic win worthy of being fiercely defended.

Obama is clear - and we should be too - about what he was elected to do. The bottom line of his job description has become increasingly evident as the economic crisis deepens. Obama's job is to salvage and stabilize the U.S. capitalist system and to perform whatever triage is necessary to restore the core institutions of finance and industry to profitability.

Obama's second bottom line is also clear to him - and should also be to us: to salvage the reputation of the U.S. in the world; repair the international ties shredded by eight years of cowboy unilateralism; and adjust U.S. positioning on the world stage on the basis of a rational assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the changed and changing centers of global political, economic and military power - rather than on the basis of a simple-minded ideological commitment to unchallenged world dominance.

Obama has been on the job for only a month but has not wasted a moment in going after his double bottom line with gusto, panache and high intelligence. In point of fact, the capitalists of the world - or at least the U.S. branch - ought to be building altars to the man and lighting candles. They have chosen an uncommonly steady hand to pull their sizzling fat from the fire.

For some on the left this is the beginning and the end of the story. Having established conclusively that Obama's fundamental task is to govern in the interests of capital, there's no point in adjusting one's stance, regardless of how skillful and popular he may be. For the anti-capitalist left that is grounded in Trotskyism, anarcho-horizontalism, or various forms of third-party-as-a-point-of-principleism, the only change worthy of the name is change that hits directly at the kneecaps of capitalism and cripples it decisively. All else is trifling with minor reforms or, even worse, capitulating to the power elite. From this point of view the stance towards Obama is self-evident:

criticize relentlessly, disabuse others of their presidential infatuation, and denounce anything that remotely smacks of mainstream politics. Though this may seem an extreme and marginal point of view, it has a surprising degree of currency in many quarters.

The effective-steward-of-capitalism is only one part of the Obama story. Obama did what the center would not do and what a fragmented and debilitated left could not do. He broke the death grip of the reactionary right by inspiring and mobilizing millions as agents of change. If Obama doesn't manage to do even one more progressive thing over the course of the next four years, he has already opened up far more promising political terrain.

His campaign:

- Revealed the contours, composition and potential of a broad democratic coalition, demographically grounded in the (overlapping) constituencies of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, youth across the racial groups, LGBT voters, unionized workers, urban professionals, and women of color and single white women, and in the sectors of organized labor, peace, civil rights, civil liberties, feminism, and environmentalism. Obama did not create this broadly democratic electoral coalition single-handedly or out of whole cloth, but he did move it from latency to potency and from dispirited, amorphous and unorganized to goal oriented, enthusiastic and organized;

- Busted up the Republican's southern strategy, the foundation of their rule for most of the last forty years, and the Democrat's ignominious concession to this legacy of slavery;

- Wrenched the Democratic Party out of the clammy grip of Clintonian centrism. (Although he himself often leads from the center, Obama's center is a couple of notches to the left of the Clinton administration's triangulation strategies); and

- Rescued political dialogue from its monopolization by hate-filled, xenophobic, ultra- nationalistic ideologues.

This is not change of the anti-capitalist variety, but certainly it is change of major consequence.

If the criterion is that the only change to be supported is that which strikes a decisive blow at capital, then the gap between where we are now and the realignment it would take to strike such a blow is completely and perpetually unbridgeable.

A better set of criteria, in light of the weakness of the left and the decades of hyper-conservatism we are only now exiting, is change that: creates substantially better conditions for working people; broadens the scope of democratic rights for sectors of the population whose rights have been abrogated; limits the prerogatives of capital; constrains runaway militarism and perpetual war; takes seriously the prospect of environmental collapse; and creates better conditions for struggle. This is the potential for change that Obama's presidency has generated. This is the democratic opening. It is potential that will only be realized and maximized if the left and progressives step up and stay engaged.

These are also the criteria to keep in mind as the Obama presidency unfolds, rather than flipping out over every appointment and policy move he makes. Far better to de-link from the 24-hour news cycle that feeds on micro-maneuvers, stop making definitive judgments based on parsing the language of every pronouncement, and keep our eyes on the broader contours of change.

Besides the sectors of the anti-capitalist left that are stranded on Dogma Beach, there are those who see the tide running high but are still watching from the safety of the shore, hesitant to get in the water. There are those who have been so long alienated from mainstream political processes and so disgusted with both political parties and all branches of government that their default response is instinctive distrust. They view Obama's presidency through the lens of anticipatory disillusionment. Their basic orientation is to analyze the administration's every move with the goal of concluding, 'See, we told you so. Obama's gonna burn you. You're gonna be disappointed.' This is a mindset for jilted lovers, not political activists. Let us grant without argument that, from the vantage point of the left, there are many disappointments in store.

This is easy enough to predict based not only on Obama's own politics but also on the alignment of forces and institutions in which he is embedded. And so what? We can survive disappointment over this or that policy or concession as long as we are making headway on the broader criteria above.

There are also those who stayed on the shoreline during the campaign because they are wedded to localism as a matter of preference, principle or habit. Others were lodged in organizational forms that, for structural, political or legal reasons, could not articulate with the motion and structures of the presidential campaign. These are complicated issues, bound up as they are with questions of resources and patterns of philanthropy But for those who missed interacting with the motion of millions against the right, against the white racial monopoly on the executive branch, and for substantive change, their absence should, at the very least, prompt a serious examination of political orientation and organizational form.

Finally, there are those who are struggling to negotiate the existential shoals of a commitment to anti-capitalist politics in a period when the system is manifestly dying but not nearly at death's door (and there have been all too many chronicles of that death foretold); major alternative systems have only recently collapsed or capitulated; and the vision, values and program that might bind together an anti-capitalist left and win broad support are still frustratingly obscure. There's no remedy for this dilemma except to live in the times we're in meeting the challenges we've been given and making the most of every opportunity, rather than anticipating capital's demise or pining for a past beyond recovery.

In this period, then, the left has three tasks.

Our first job is to defend the democratic opening. This is a job we share with broader progressive forces and with centrists. Obama won big and retains the favorable regard of a sizeable majority. And meanwhile the Republican Party is in glorious disarray. But in no way should we take this situation for granted. The new administration faces daunting challenges and outright crises on every front. And while the right is disoriented and weakened, it has not and will not leave the playing field. The principal players and institutions of the right are, at this very moment, plotting how to undermine the administration, challenge every initiative that moves in the direction of democracy, progress and peace, and regroup to seize control, once again, of the state apparatus.

Defense of the democratic opening means many things and ought to be the subject for discussion and strategizing on the left. But in practical terms, first and foremost, it means consolidating and extending the electoral alliance that made the opening possible. Any work that strengthens and broadens the voter engagement of the constituencies and sectors that secured Obama's election is work that defends the democratic opening. This kind of voter education, registration and mobilization work can be done in conjunction with an extremely broad range of local campaigns and initiatives. And anything that hastens the demise of the southern strategy, builds on the wins in Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia (along with the significant southwestern shifts in New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada), and challenges structural barriers to voter participation (e.g., felony disfranchisement, voter ID laws) is critical. All this is another way of saying that the electoral arena is an essential site of struggle for left and progressive forces in a way it has not been in at least 20 years. And this work, in which we have unity of purpose with the centrists, is vital to widening the Democratic majority in the 2010 congressional races, winning a filibuster-proof Senate majority, ensuring the successful re-election of Obama in 2012, and shaping both the parameters of viable Democratic candidates in 2016 and the outcome of that election.

Our second job is to contribute to building more united, effective, combative and influential progressive popular movements. This places the highest premium on strengthening and extending our ties with broader progressive forces, both inside and outside the Democratic Party, with an eye towards building long- term relationships and alliances among individuals, organizations and sectors. Anything that thickens and enriches the relationships among left and progressive actors in labor, religious institutions, policy think tanks, grassroots organizations, academia etc. is to be supported in the interests of strengthening the capacity of the left-progressive alliance to influence policy, to encourage and shore up whatever progressive inclinations might emerge from within the administration, and to resist administration tendencies to accommodation and capitulation to center-right forces. At this early stage of Obama's tenure it is already evident what some of the most vital left- progressive alliance building ought to focus on. In foreign policy, on war and militarism in general and on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, Iran and non-proliferation in particular. In domestic policy, on health care and on solutions to the economic crisis that hold the financial sector accountable for reckless and predatory practices while addressing the particular vulnerabilities of working people, the poor, women, immigrants and communities of color. And, at the intersection of global and domestic policy, on oil dependency and global warming. All that enhances our capacity to constructively engage in debating and influencing policy on these issues is to the good. All that obstructs or distracts is highly problematic.

We've exited a period of collective psychic depression only to enter one of global economic depression. Each day, as the institutions of finance capital collapse, the corruption, greed and mismanagement of the nation's economic system are further revealed. Broad sectors of the population have been shocked into a more skeptical and critical stance towards capitalism, and the need for some measure of structural change wins near- universal acceptance. The clash of rising expectations (encouraged by the hope and change themes of the Obama campaign) and a sinking economy will likely spark new levels and forms of popular resistance. In this political environment, alliance building will be complicated, messy and filled with political tensions and tactical differences. It is imperative nonetheless.

Our third job, and perhaps the trickiest, is to build the left. First let it be said that unless we are able to demonstrate a genuine commitment and growing capacity to take on the first two jobs, the third is a non-starter, and a prescription for political isolation. In other words, defending the democratic opening in conjunction with the center and building long-term relationships between the anti-capitalist left and broad progressive sectors in the context of the struggle over administration policy must be understood as critical tasks in their own right, not simply as arenas in which to advance an independent left line or to recruit new adherents to an anti- capitalist perspective. Realizing the progressive potential of the Obama win requires the most committed involvement with the twists and turns of politics on the most pressing issues on the administration's agenda. This same engagement is critical to rebuilding the left, a long-term process that can be advanced significantly in the context of Obama's presidency if, and only if, the left can skillfully manage the relationship and distinction between its own interests, dynamics and challenges and those of broader political forces. Why is this the case? On the tell no lies front, the left is more isolated and fragmented than it has been in forty years. Truly fine work is being done by leftists in every region of the country and on every social issue. But the left qua left is barely breathing. This is not the place to go into the historical (world historical and U.S. historical), ideological, theoretical and organizational reasons why this is so. But let us, at the very least, frankly acknowledge that it is so. The current political alignment provides an opportunity to break out of isolation, marginalization and the habits of self- marginalization accumulated during the neo-conservative ascendancy. It provides the opportunity to initiate and/or strengthen substantive relationships with political actors in government, in the Democratic Party, and in independent sectors, as well as within the left itself - relationships to be built upon long after the Obama presidency has come to an end. It provides the opportunity to accumulate lessons about political actors, alignments and centers of power likewise relevant well beyond this administration. And it provides the opportunity for the immersion of the leaders, members and constituencies of left formations in a highly accelerated, real world poli-sci class.

In these circumstances, among our biggest challenges is how to attend to building the capacity of the left without succumbing to the siren songs of dogma, the old addictions of premature platform erection, or the self- limiting pleasures of building parties in miniature. For the anti-capitalist left, this is a period of experimentation. There is no roadmap; there are no recipes. Those organizational forms and initiatives that enable us to synthesize experience, share lessons and develop broad orientations and approaches to seriously undertaking our first two tasks should be encouraged. Those that would entrap us in the hermetic enclosures of doctrinal belief should be avoided at all cost.

The Obama presidency is a rare confluence of individuals and events. There is no way to predict how things will unfold over the next 4-8 years. But this much we can foresee: if the opportunity at hand is mangled or missed, the takeaway for the left will be deepened isolation and fragmentation. If, on the other hand, the left engages with this political opening skillfully and creatively, it will emerge as a broader, more vibrant force on the U.S. political spectrum, better able to confront whatever the post-Obama world will bring.



Linda Burnham is co-founder of the Women of Color Resource Center (WCRC) and was its Executive Director for 18 years. Burnham has been working on racial justice and peace issues since the 1960s and on women- of-color issues since the early 1970s, and has published numerous articles on African-American women, African-American politics, and feminist theory in a wide range of periodicals and anthologies. In 2005 Burnham was nominated as one of 1000 Peace Women for the Nobel Peace Prize. Burnham is a frequent featured speaker on college campuses and to community groups, addressing issues of women's rights, racial justice, human rights and peace. Burnham's writing and organizing are part of a lifelong inquiry into the dynamic, often perilous intersections of race, class and gender.

Paul L Street Speech at "Funk the War[s]" rally 28/03/09

Say NO to the Nurse Ratchet Know-it-All Obotomists/Fight the Rich, Not Their Wars
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by Paul Street (notes) Yesterday at 23:34

(Excerpts from a freezing speech I gave in in Iowa City (IC) right before the Radical Cheerleaders rocked the IC Ped Mall at a "Funk the War[s]" rally this afternoon):

...We need to situate the new administration in the world of power as it is, not the world of power as so many us wish it to be....

...A lot of us are starting to figure out that Status QuObama was hired by the corporate and military establishment to (among other things) put us all to sleep on the left.

Its about time. Its like this guy Scott Horton said on Antiwar.com a few weeks back: “those who bought into the slogans ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ last fall should have read the fine print. We were warned.”

...The message from the new Washington regime and from the dominant corporate media that sold him to us is very clear. Our instructions are to calm down. Stand down. Chill out. Be cool. We are supposed to understand that our anger is dangerous and dysfunctional. Our "populust rage" is making things worse. If you want decent and democratic policies like single payer national health insurance, union organizing rights, public control of the financial system, the removal of Wall Street perpetrators, the prosecution of war crimes, the slashing of the bloated Pentagon budget, a real peace dividend...…if you want all these things and are ready to fight for them beyond the supervision of your corporate and political masters, then you are a suitable case for psychiatric treatment .You are threat to civilized decency. You are too “emotional” and too “angry.” You are not being “helpful.” You need to be quiet so that the new supposedly non-ideological system-coordinators -- so that unmitigated corporate assholes like Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner --- can “get things done.”

You are the Jack Nicholson character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. You need Nurse Ratchet to give you a tranquilizer and schedule you for a nice corporate-neoliberal Obama Lobotomy - an Obotomy.

Just ask some of these know-it-all fake-progressive whipped-dog professors and writers around here in Iowa City. They'll lecture you to death about it, justifying their own stupidity and laziness and co-optation and cowardice along the way. The Obotomy is very popular around here, especially in the professorial class....

Tell them to keep that pathetic power-worshipping bullshit over in the faculty lounge. Tell them you will not be tranquilized, mesmerized. and Obotomized. Tell them you are not cool with fauxBama's determination to maintain a 1$trillion dollar-a-year Pentagon budget that maintains more than 760 bases located across more than 130 countries, an empire that account for half the military spending in the world – all in the name of something they call "defense."

....Sorry, I am not kosher, I am not down, and I am not cool with the bipartisan Empire spending hundreds of billions of dollars on illegal wars of colonial invasion while more than 40 million Americans live in poverty and while tent cities containing thousands of homeless families are springing up across this country. I am not cool with “my” government funneling trillions of dollars to Wall Street while 50 million Americans lack basic health coverage and while millions of disadvantaged U.S. citizens lack minimally adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, and social respect.

...I am not cool with historic handouts of taxpayer money from Bush and now from Obama to corporate tycoons and so-called “defense” contractors while schools go under-funded, while millions more Americans are foreclosed and pushed into destitution and while workers and unions and the environment go under-protected.

... please remember three things. First, the White House was made to be marched on no matter what the color of its inhabitants. Second, don’t let all these whipped-dog pseudo-liberal Nurse Ratchet know-it-alls around here get you down. It’s time to get your "populist rage on" like never before. Third, you must connect your opposition to militarism to your struggle for social justice and economic equality. You don’t have to choose between fighting the wars and fighting fore economic justice. Empire and Inequality are two sides of the same coin of oppression at home and abroad.

Fight the rich, not their wars.

Inside El Barrio: A Bottom Up View of Neighborhood Life in Castro’s Cuba, by Henry Louis Taylor

Surprising view of Cuban neighborhoods

http://www.buffalo.edu/ubreporter/2009_03_25/cuba_book

Henry Louis Taylor’s book offers new insights into the neighborhood-based participatory democracy that helped support the Castro regime while other socialist countries were collapsing in the late 1980s.

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Published: March 25, 2009

A new book based on 15 years of research in Cuba describes two Cubas—one for Cubans, one for outsiders—that co-exist but do not mix, and explains how the Cuban culture we do not see was critical in sustaining the Castro regime while other socialist countries collapsed.

“Inside El Barrio: A Bottom Up View of Neighborhood Life in Castro’s Cuba” (Kumarian Press, 2009) by Henry Louis Taylor, professor of urban and regional planning in the School of Architecture and Planning, charts the legacy of the last 15 years of Fidel Castro’s Cuba through the lens of Cuban household life and offers new insights into the bottom-up, neighborhood-based participatory democracy that helped support Castro’s regime.

Because he knew many Cubans well and could pass for Cuban himself, Taylor was able to conduct extensive research in Havana neighborhoods during the final and most complex era in Castro’s dictatorship: Periodo Especial (the special period), during which Castro called upon the masses to prepare for a sustained period of hard times.

In his research, Taylor found two Cubas: one, the simplified, one-dimensional Cuba that many people “discover” through tourism or from the writings of anti-Castro political propagandists.

“The other,” Taylor says, “is a more complex and multi-dimensional Cuba, where people live in a highly stable and deeply organized society and exercise considerable control over the development of neighborhoods (el barrios) and communities that are imbued with participatory democracy, reciprocity, collaboration and cosmopolitanism.”

It is this Cuba that continues to sustain the government, despite severe economic hardship, Taylor says. “No iron wall exists between these two Cubas,” he explains, “but people rarely get insight into the world inside el barrio.” It is that aspect of Cuban life that the book explores.

Taylor spent a great deal of time visiting Havana’s neighborhoods between 1989 and 2006, a period marked by the abrupt collapse of the Soviet Bloc that plunged Cuba into economic catastrophe marked by unprecedented financial hardship, a marked increase in social tension and the emigration of thousands.

“One of the most important things I learned is that it takes time before most Cubans will befriend you, speak to you in frank terms and carry you into their world. Without this frankness, it is easy for a foreigner to be misled, misinterpret conversations and/or form false impressions,” Taylor says.

“I learned the importance of neighborhoods in shaping everyday life and culture, and found that the social networks and neighborhoods—so important to the way the socialist system operates on the ground in Cuba—were critical in sustaining the Castro regime while other socialist countries were collapsing in the late ’80s.”

In 1989, when the Soviet Union and the East European Community Bloc collapsed, Cuba was plunged into a catastrophic economic crisis that spawned unprecedented hardship and generated great social tensions.

Taylor points out that, despite this, Cuban society did not collapse and there were no demands for regime change and a resurrection of capitalism. “Not only did the Castro regime survive,” he says, “but the bearded one remained as defiant as ever. I wanted to understand why and sought the answer by examining everyday life and culture in the poorest neighborhoods.”

“What I discovered is that the Cubans developed a strong system of community development, which was informed by a strategy of building communities that were highly developed social units that must function in an efficient and effective manner in order to produce desirable social outcomes,” Taylor says.

To make this happen, he says the government encouraged the development of participatory democracy inside the neighborhoods to unleash the creative powers of residents and to make them partners in the quest to recover from the economic crisis.

“The result,” he says, “is that Cuban neighborhoods are hyper-stable and hyper-organized communities where ordinary residents exercise considerable control over neighborhood life and culture, albeit in an environment of scarcity.”

Taylor’s entrée into Cuba was a summer study abroad program operated by UB for many years and a master’s degree program run by UB and the University of Havana.

“Because of our academic status, the government gave us the freedom to visit any institution or organization we desired,” Taylor says. “These things, in addition to traditional research, gave me a unique view into the society and how it operates. Moreover, to gain deeper insight into the ways that ordinary Cubans see their society, my research team conducted 398 household interviews.”

Some Thoughts on Geithner's Latest Bank Rescue Plan: Why Wall Street Cheers and the People Should Worry

By Jim Genova

http://paeditorsblog.blogspot.com/

On Monday 23 March 2009, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner unveiled the latest and most expansive bank rescue plan to date since the global financial crisis began to deepen in August 2007. Billed as a "public-private partnership" to take toxic assets off the balance sheets of major banks (such as JP Morgan, CitiGroup, and Bank of America), the plan involves three programs that could rise to a staggering $2 trillion in public money put at risk to bailout private financial institutions that have run the world economy into the ground. It also involves lending from the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), which is charged with safeguarding depositors in U.S. banks. The knee-jerk reaction on Wall Street was overwhelmingly positive with the major indices surging six to seven percent on Monday. Outside the halls of the major financial firms, however, there may be cause for concern.

As the New York Times noted Tuesday 24 March 2009 in its front page story on Geithner's plan, the program "offers private investors vast amounts of cheap, tax-payer supported financing for every dollar they put up of their own money." Put another way, the New York Times described the plan as the "Treasury and the Federal Reserve ... offering at least a tablespoon of financial sugar for every teaspoon of risk that investors agree to swallow."

The first component of the plan involves the FDIC taking on a pool of bad home loans (mortgages in default or at risk of default) and auctioning them to the highest bidders. If the bank values them at $100 and the highest bid is $84, then the FDIC steps in to provide $72 in financing, the private investor puts up $6 and the Treasury (you and me) puts up $6. This amounts to a 6-1 leverage for the private investor - they get six dollars for every dollar they put up. The private investor then manages the assets, seeking to sell them off. Thus, with only $6 of capital risked, the private investor gets all the control, while the $78 of public money secures virtually no say in the asset management. If the assets decline in value or re-gain toxic status a result of a deepening of the economic crisis, the investor is only out the original $6 they put up. The public eats the losses.

The second part of the plan involves taking mortgage-backed securities and other risky assets off banks' balance sheets, hiring asset managers that raise $100 in private financing to purchase the assets, then gets matching funds from the treasury ($100) and a further $200 loan from the Treasury Department (2-1 leverage for the private investor). The asset manager controls the purchased instruments and shares the returns with the government (assuming there are any). If the assets revert to "toxic" status, then the investor loses their original investment, but is not on the hook for the treasury loan or the Treasury's outright investment. In other words, all the risk is - once again - taken on by the public (you and me).

Geithner was careful to insist that there will not be any restrictions on compensation for those participating in the plans, attempting to avoid the "stigma" now attached to the Troubled Asset Relief Plan (TARP) or the recent firestorm over exorbitant bonuses paid to executives at American International Group (AIG), recipients of huge bailouts from the TARP and outright government grants. Bill Gross, Chairman of Pimco (the world's largest bond dealer) and a participant in the new program, described it as a "win-win-win policy" and told the New York Times that he was "'intrigued by the potential double-digit returns' that it offered."

As it stands, the plan amounts to a huge (probably the largest on record) transfer of public money to private hands, the very hands that have driven the global economy into crisis. This is a scenario that Naomi Klein describes in her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In that well-researched and powerfully-argued study, Klein writes that a cornerstone of neo-liberal ideology as propagated by Milton Friedman and implemented by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was to either take advantage of or bring about major catastrophes to radically restructure the economic system by way of transferring huge amounts of public money into private hands. This usually involves seizing the opportunity of a major political upheaval, economic crisis, or natural disaster in order to push through programs that otherwise would meet massive public opposition. By the time the initial shock has worn off, the economic rules of the game have been fundamentally altered and the laws on the books designed to protect the people from catastrophe and the avarice of greedy capitalists have been changed or eliminated. This is what came to be known as the "Shock Therapy" program imposed on the former Soviet Union and the former People's Democracies of Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s (among many other countries pummelled by the scorched-earth campaign of neo-liberalism across the globe in the 1980s and 1990s). It is no wonder that Wall Street reacted so euphorically to the details of Geithner's plan.

As Sam Webb, National Chair of the Communist Party of the USA, eloquently noted in his address to the Party's National Committee on 21 March 2009, this is not a "socialist moment," however, it is a time when the idea of socialism (and the term itself) is being widely discussed. Wall Street celebrated Monday because many major financial firms believed that the Geithner Plan took "bank nationalization" off the table as a government response to the economic crisis. However, all it has done is massively expand the scope and amount of government give-aways to the very institutions responsible for the current mess. It has not taken bank nationalization off the table. It has made the discussion of socialism as an alternative to the current failed system more urgent than ever.

LET GEORGE GALLOWAY SPEAK IN CANADA! March 25, 2009

LET GEORGE GALLOWAY SPEAK IN CANADA!
March 25, 2009 - YCL-LJC CEC

The Harper Conservative government has again brought down its heel on
freedom of speech.

Democratic Canadians have to reverse this decision. By banning British
MP George Galloway, minister Jason Kenney and the Harper Conservatives
are attacking the very liberties they hypocritically claim to defend
in Afghanistan. Even the corporate media has condemned this (although
they are really saying to Harper ‘don’t silence him, trust us to do
that job’).

Since when has terrorism meant donating a fire engine, twelve
ambulances, a fishing boat, trucks full of medicine, blankets, shoes
and children’s toys? Who is next – the Red Cross (or Red Crescent)?

The Palestinians live under a state of siege and occupation. (Last
week, Israel simply drove into the West Bank and arrested several
elected Hamas parliamentarians!) This announcement comes in a period
of intensifying clamp-downs against broad public discussion of
Canada’s bloody imperialist foreign policy, especially the dirty,
racist war in Afghanistan and the Canada’s support of the Israeli
apartheid government’s occupation in Palestine.

Take the deportation of the US Iraq war resisters – this week Kimberly
Rivera; or the cut backs to public funding for the Canadian Arab
Federation’s immigrant community services not because of any policy
violation, but a political statement by an unfunded part of the
organization. High school and university communities have been under
attack for Palestinian solidarity work. Immigrant workers without full
documentation have been targeted through Immigration Enforcement
raids, harassment outside women’s shelters, and rising deportations
(and today the Minister equates the UN’s announcement of a 30%
increase in refugee claims with abuse of the system! The nerve!).

In all of these heavy-handed measures Jason Kenney, Minister of
Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, comes forward as the
government’s un-muzzled pit bull terrier.

The Young Communist League expresses our condemnation of the Harper
Conservative government and minister Kenney: reverse the decision,
apologize, and drop the “Terrorist lists” which criminalize legitimate
peoples movements. We stand with all democratic Canadians who are
outraged by this development, and call upon the youth to join the
rapidly growing vocal opposition to this attack on freedom of speech.

Mr. Harper – your attempt to silence the Canadian people will fail.

Young Communist League of Canada - Ligue de la jeunesse communiste du Canada.
290A Danforth Ave,
Toronto ON M4K 1N6
CANADA
Office: 416-469-2446

Action Alerts Working people didn't cause this crisis... and we won't pay for it! Unite and fight to defend our jobs, services and rights! - CPC

http://www.communist-party.ca/news/Statements/2009/Crisis%202009.pdf
Maybe you work in the Alberta oil patch, or an auto plant
in southern Ontario, or a call centre in New Brunswick.
You could be a forestry worker, a bank teller, or a university
teaching assistant. Wherever you live, your future is on the line as
the global economic crisis sweeps across Canada, and layoffs and
shutdowns spread like a wildfire. You could already be one of the
1.3 million Canadians ‘officially’ unemployed, or one of the millions
who survive on part-time, temporary, low wage jobs. Perhaps you are
among the two-thirds of jobless workers who aren’t eligible to collect
benefits from the EI fund built up from your pay deductions.
And the crisis is just beginning. At least 50 million workers will lose
their jobs across the world this year. Production has dropped by up to
fifty percent in some countries, and food shortages are spreading. A
real global economic recovery could be years away. Who created this
mess? Who should pay for the crisis? What policies can help working people
instead of the rich?

So who’s responsible?

It would be easy to pin the blame for the economic meltdown on a
few greedy individuals. It’s true that a handful of global billionaires
and gigantic transnational corporations have artificially inflated and
manipulated the values of real estate, high tech, stocks, commodities,
even national currencies. “Bubble capitalism” has reaped enormous
fortunes for the ultra-rich, while billions of working people and the
poor ended up deeper in debt.

The neoliberal policies of right-wing governments made matters
worse, through privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, and
social program cuts. They claimed these neoliberal policies would
increase everyone’s wealth. Instead, the gap between the rich and
working people has widened to staggering proportions, and labour &
democratic rights are under increasing attack. Capitalism always heads towards crises. Individual capitalists and corporations, competing for higher profits,
seek to maximize their return on investment by cutting labour costs;
this process always cuts spending power, leaving working people
without the necessary income to purchase the goods and service we
produce. Throughout history, this cycle results in frequent economic
crashes, followed by recoveries. Every time, workers pay the price,
while the bosses end up getting richer.

Are we really in the same boat?

We are told that “everyone’s in the same boat” during this economic
depression. Maybe if it’s the Titanic – the wealthy have plenty of
lifeboats while most of us are locked below decks. In Canada, as in
most countries, the first response by pro-capitalist governments was
to “bail out” corporations facing financial ruin – the same corporations
which reaped record profits for years, at the expense of taxpayers
and workers. While millions of working people lose their jobs, homes,
and pensions, fat cat CEOs still get huge bonuses and bloated salaries.
The Tory budget introduced in late January hands billions of dollars
to corporate shareholders, while most working people laid off by these
companies can’t even collect EI. Same boat, all right!

What should be done?

Instead of making workers pay for the crisis through wage cuts and
unemployment, those who have enjoyed billions in profits must pay.
We need to unite and fight for an emergency program to protect jobs
and incomes for working people, and put Canada back to work. Such
an anti-crisis plan should include measures to:
! expand EI to cover all workers for the full duration of
unemployment, with benefits at 90% of former earnings;
! protect and expand manufacturing industries on the basis of a
comprehensive industrial policy, and introduce plant closure
legislation;
! place a moratorium on evictions and mortgage foreclosures
and utility cut-offs due to unemployment;
! increase the minimum wage to $15/hr., increase pensions and take
other steps to raise incomes and stimulate domestic consumption;
! take emergency action to improve the social and economic
conditions of Aboriginal peoples;
! invest in a massive public construction program to build
affordable social housing, rebuild Canada’s infrastructure, and protect
the environment;
! shift the tax burden from working people onto the corporations
and the wealthy;
! The richest 10% of Canadian families with children
earn over 80 times more than the poorest 10% of families,
who earn less than $10,000 per year on average.
! Canadian households used to save about 20% of
their after-tax income. Today, the savings rate averages
zero, and personal debt is at an all-time high.
! About 2.2 million Canadian workers (16% of the total,
including 19% of women workers and 12% of men) had
jobs in 2005 that paid less than $10 an hour. Thirteen per
cent of all jobs in Canada pay less than $8 an hour.
! Corporate profits as a percent of GDP rose from less
than 5% in 1992 to historic highs of over 14% by 2005, and
remain at this record level.
! Total annual operating profits of corporations in
Canada rose from $40 billion in 1992, hitting the $100 billion
mark by 1997, $150 billion by 2003, and up to $216 billion in
2008.
! Corporate taxes as a percentage of total profits have
fallen from the 35-40% range during the late 1980s, down to
less than 25% in recent years.
! After adjustments for inflation, wages for full-time
Canadian workers were virtually stagnant from 1992 to 2005,
at about $730 per week.
! Workers’ share in the overall “economic pie” has
declined sharply, from 68% in 1992 to 61% by 2005.
Meanwhile, the share going to profits rose from 22% up to
33%.
Data from Statistics Canada and the
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
120,000 Irish workers fill the streets
of Dublin – Feb. 21, 2009
These figures don’t lie!

! expand Medicare and universal social programs, invest in
education and cut tuition, introduce a universally accessible
affordable system of quality public child care; and
! immediately withdraw from the disastrous war of occupation
in Afghanistan and cut military spending by 50%.
These immediate anti-crisis measures should be strengthened by
more transformative steps, including:
! nationalize the big banks, insurance and other financial
institutions and place them under public, democratic control;
! nationalize the energy industry to guarantee domestic supply
and to provide the material basis to rebuild Canadian industry
and create hundreds of thousands of jobs, especially in renewable
energy and mass transit;
! place the “Big Three” automakers under public ownership
and democratic control, and build a small, fuel-efficient, affordable
and environmentally sustainable Canadian car;
! immediately withdraw from NAFTA, and adopt a
diversified, multilateral trade policy based on mutual benefit; and
! introduce a liveable, guaranteed annual income (GAI), and
a shorter work week with no loss in take-home pay.
Such a plan would move our country in a fundamentally new
direction, by placing the needs of working people and our environment
before corporate greed, establishing a foreign policy based on peace
and disarmament, and reversing the erosion of our sovereignty.
How can we achieve these goals?
We can’t move in this direction by meekly accepting pay cuts and
job losses – that’s the lesson from the last “great depression”. We
need a massive campaign to block the Tory-corporate attack and to
demand pro-people alternatives. Instead of summit meetings with
corporate leaders, we need people’s summits, bringing together the
organized labour movement, Aboriginal peoples, youth and students,
women, farmers, seniors and all democratic forces engaged in the
struggle for peace, the environment and equality rights, to unite and
fight back at this crucial moment.
We need to build a real People’s Coalition, in the streets and
communities and at the electoral level, to curb the power of the
corporations and resolve the crisis in the interests of working people.
The Communist Party of Canada, the party that led the crucial
working class struggles during the ‘dirty 30s’, pledges to do
everything in our power to help build and win such struggles. We
urge you to take up these issues in your unions, your workplaces
and schools, your communities. If you agree with our proposals,
contact us today. Join and build the party that combines today’s
urgent fightback with the vision of a socialist future, one in which
unemployment, hunger, exploitation, oppression, war and
environmental degradation will be ended forever!
-----------------------------------------
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Workers of all lands, unite!
1 • PEOPLE’S VOICE • FEBRUARY 15-28, 2009