Green Party and Class Politics

Dave Marlow blogs:

Fellow blogger Renegade Eye put it best: “I don’t believe the Green Party is the alternative party formation, since it lacks a program and class basis.” The Green Party is incapable of leading a successful workers revolution, at least in its current manifestation, because of its inherent ties to reformism and its separation from class struggle. They are not a genuine proletarian party and so any progress achieved through the Green Party will be limited to the confines of a non-revolutionary framework.

Racial Makeup, Neighborhoods, and White Fear

Macon D blogs:

What C was feeling, without quite realizing what it was, was a collective white fear of and disdain for the neighborhood and, especially, for the people living there. This common white attitude toward largely non-white neighborhoods was pressuring her in ways that she hadn’t realized were really about race, and racism.

Freedom and Labor in Latina/o USA

Profe, of LatinoLikeMe.com, blogs on democracy, freedom, and labor:

It is through this process of analysis that I make sense of the daily experiences of immigrant labor in this nation. When I say this, I do not only mean undocumented labor. The Southern Poverty Law Center provides a beautifully-detailed report on legal guestworker programs in place in the United States. “Close to Slavery” is a reminder of the brutal ways a government’s protection of the “rights” of an elite group of business interests–in the name of free market capitalism–sacrifices the humanity of hundreds of thousands of others.

Poor White Folk and Poor Black Folk

Malik blogs:

I think the analogy of the house negro and the field negro is better applied to the relationship between poor Black folks and poor white folks than to the relationship between poor Black folks and “Black conservatives”. Poor white folks are the ultimate house negros. They are only marginally better off than poor Black folks (the “overwhelming advantage” is a well-maintained illusion), but because they inhabit the same psychological house as their rich white masters, and get a few extra favors, they wholly identify with their masters. Think about it.

Revolution?

PudgyIndian blogs:

The good news is, “Americans get to keep their guns.” The bad news is, Americans point their guns at their fellow poor instead of the wealthy who are truly the ones “stealing their jobs” and creating suffering world wide so they can have more wealth.

Feminism and Whites

Ashley blogs on Linda Hirshman’s article in the Washington Post:

Part of what we do, when we struggle to take an intersectional approach, is try to challenge the automatic “normalcy” that our culture has given those in dominant groups. By locating middle-class white women at the center of her vision of what constitutes “women,” Hirshman is utterly missing the point of intersectionality. Including (or making central) people who are not white, middle-class women in our vision of what constitutes an end to patriarchy is not the same as excluding white, middle-class women from our vision. It is simply moving them from the place of automatic privilege and centrality our culture has given them in relation to other groups of women, which allows us to understand oppression in a more realistic way. Even if we’re willing to grant Hirshman the point that feminism should only worry about those women who constitute a “majority” of women, white, middle-class women are NOT THE MAJORITY OF WOMEN.

The Making of a ‘White Working Class’

Lenin blogs:

It is far from obvious why class should be colour-coded. We can see how ‘race’ has been contiguous with strata within classes, so that the lowest wages and the least skilled occupations are dispensed to non-white members of the working class. We can also see how class is often construed as a kind of ethnicity, and how ethnic designations often overlap with economic positions. But the question of why there should ever be an identity such as a ‘white working class’ is clearly a social psychological one.

Race & Class in Ethical Consumption & Sustainability Movements

At the blog Vegans of Color, Johanna quotes a new anthology to be edited by Breeze Harper:

Rarely, if ever, has the status quo of these movements written about how [white] racialized consciousness and class status impact their philosophies and advocacy of animal rights, veganism, fair trade, ecosustainable living, etc., in the USA. Deeper investigations by academic scholars have found that collectively, this “privileged” demographic tends to view their ethics as “colorblind”, thereby passively discouraging reflections on white and class privilege within alternative food movements (Slocum 2006) and animal rights activism (Nagra 2003; Poldervaart 2001). Consequently, academic scholars such as Dr. Rachel Slocum feel that rather than fostering equality, “alternative food practice reproduces white privilege in American society”.

Ad she states:

The discouragement about reflections on white & class privilege has definitely been more than just “passive” from readers of this blog at times, especially lately, although obviously the passive discouragement is a big player as well. As one of my favorite LiveJournal icons says, “White privilege: you’re soaking in it.”

Die Linkspartei Under Attack From Media

Mick Hall writes:

The growth in working class support for Germany’s Die Linkspartei, [The Left Party] as expressed in recent regional election results and national opinion polls has clearly rattled Capital and its gofers in the Bundestag and media. This time in an attempt to halt the party’s rising popularity, reactionary forces have been rifling through the dustbin of history and dug up an old story about Gregor Gysi, one of the Left Party most charismatic leaders, who at one time was a member of East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party. [SED]

Unsurprisingly, as all of these parties have suffered at the ballot box due to the rise of the Left Party, politicians from the Christian Union parties, the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the FDP have called for for the head of Gregor Gysi by demanding that he should submit his resignation from national political leadership.

Cry the Beloved Country, Again…

Ridwan, a South African blogger, blogs on the recent violence against immigrants in his country:

I know all the rationalizations for why gangs of South Africans are attacking migrants of the streets of our country. I know the deplorable conditions that are hardly hidden by the delusional capitalist flash of the ‘new’ era.

But I am not willing to make excuses for the barbaric murders (22 killed), beatings, and violent intimidation of poor migrants who live among us. They are simply wrong and immoral.

Letter From the Mahalla Detainees

Hossam blogs on the latest of the Mahalla detainees in Egypt. Over the past two years strikes have been cripling the Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak; these strikes have been lead by the workers in Mahalla, Egypt, the industrial center for Egypt. Of those strikers and protesters three prominent leaders have been arrested due to their actions during the April 6th strikes. They recently released a letter:

A week has passed on our hunger strike and we are extremely weak. We are appealing to you as the last and only resort for all who have suffered injustice in Egypt.

We would like in the beginning to correct certain information which has reached the press about our (the three of us) having been transferred to the prison hospital as a result of our hunger strike.

The truth is that we are still in prison after the administration refused to call an ambulance to take us to hospital, and as a result of the inability of Karim el-Beheiry and Tareq Amin to stand on their feet - as a result of their extreme weakness. Instead, a “nurse” was summoned to examine Karim, whose condition has seriously deteriorated.

We would like to know the reason why we remain in detention. We will continue the hunger strike until we either die or receive this information.

…

Signed
Kamal El-Fayyoumy, Tareq Amin, Karim El-Beheiry
Detained workers from Mahalla
Borg el-Arab Prison
Wing 22, Cell 5

TOXIC SLUDGE IS GOOD (enough for black folk)…

Francis L. Holland blogs about a recent article he read from the Associated Press:

Although whites would have us believe that AIDS could NOT have been started by whites and that the Tuskegee Experiment could never happen again,

BALTIMORE - Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients.

…

It galls me. It galls me that the major news institutions can make federal cases out of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s prophetic indignation at a nation whose policies undervalue and marginalize whole populaces, and reduce it to the rantings of a mad man, when in our own backyard our own government is conducting more experimentation on its citizens!

[Hat Tip: the field negro]

Race and Class

Atlasien at APA for Progress, writes:

Rachel from Rachelstavern.com asks, “Why does “Working Class” mean white in our political discourse?” Once I thought about the question some more, I realized that she was right, and “white working class” is a symbolic redundancy. Class is kept neatly separate from race. In national media, when do we ever hear about the black or Latino working class? And the Asian-American working class is perhaps the most invisible of all.

Hero from Egypt

Roobing blogs:

If your hero is Justin Timberlake or Santa Claus, Madonna or the Tooth Fairy… or any such legend or fluff merchant you’re wrong. Your hero is actually Hossam el-Hamalawy, currently reporting the uprising in Egypt, led by the textile workers of Mahalla.

Hossam reports:

The Textile Workers’ League activists Kamal el-Fayoumi and Kareem el-Beheiri, as well as a number of the Mahalla detainees, are currently undergoing interrogation at the Tanta Prosecutor’s Office. I have a report from an activist, which I couldn’t confirm yet, that Kareem was subject to severe beatings in police custody. The activist I spoke with said he heard this from one of the recently released detainees. We should know soon whether Kareem and the others were abused in custody or not when the lawyers who are attending the interrogation come out…

…

For continuous updates on the detainees, please follow Tadamon, April 6th Strike, Abna2Masr and the HMLC blogs, especially as reports are coming out that those ordered by the prosecutor to be released in Alexandria and Mansoura, remain in police custody… Shehab Ismail also called me from NYC yesterday to say his sister Sarah who had been detained earlier in Cairo was still in police custody despite a release order…

In Search of Ramrajya

V Ramaswamy writes a four part series on Muslims and Hindus in India and his own experiences as a community and grassroots organizer. Below is an excerpt from part I. Ramaswamy wrote this post for Blogbharti’s Spotlight Series.

It was only in the aftermath of 6 December 1992 that I came alive to the question of Muslims in India. I was an atheist, and a left-oriented social activist working on issues of urban poverty, low-income housing, slums and squatters. Riots had hit Calcutta too, with Muslim bastis being torched in Tangra in east Calcutta and in Metiabruz in the west. This was the first time in my life that I knew communal riots in my city. The enforced stay at home when Calcutta was under curfew in the days following 6 December 1992, led to an enforced engagement with this question, the Muslim question, something I had hardly thought about earlier. Afterwards, my friend, photographer Achinto, and I went to Tangra. The people from the burnt out slum were sheltered in the municipal slaughterhouse. I will never forget that sight, a vision of hell.

Part II, Part III.

Economic Stimulus For Whom?

Yolanda asks:

Can someone please explain why this thing was called an “economic stimulus package?” Economic stimulus for whom, I ask you? And why all the emphasis on short-term boosts from the retail sector? How the hell does shopping for more useless crap lead to any kind of economic recovery (if that is indeed the intent)?

Victim Blame

Beta Candy blogs:

As ignorant as it is to blame crime victims for getting themselves into this position, we do this because it’s convenient. They’re at hand, whereas the perpetrator might not be, and we want to separate ourselves from them (”Oh! So if I never wear a whorish skirt like she did, I’ll never be raped! Yay!”). And even when the perpetrator is at hand, we’re more scared of him or her than we are of the victim. Safer to blame the victim, and after all, it’s all about whatever makes us feel better, right?

Sartre’s Godless Philosophy and those of the Bourgeoisie

Lenin, of Lenin’s Tomb, blogs about Sartre and atheistic, or non-theistic, philosophy:

The trouble with the professional atheists or anti-theists these days is, apart from everything else that is bad and reductionist and ridiculous in what they write, that their apparently passionate commitment comes too cheap. It doesn’t require that they give anything up, change anything about themselves, or challenge anything fundamental about the society. They don’t have to engage in any analysis deeper than that which finds religious doctrine to be literally false, philosophically shallow, socially repressive and politically dangerous. Big deal. It never seems to have occurred to them that there might be more radical consequences of the absence centre of ontology than that you should support the teaching of evolution, not kill people for God, and support the right of knocked up teenagers to have abortions. Actually, there is nothing there but the regurgitation of bourgeois wisdom and morality, both of which are pretty contemptible.

Who Are the Real Thugs?

The blogger for the blog Oil Wars posts an essay on the recent university demonstrations in Venezuela:

The anti-Chavez protesters shot one of the young workers in the back three times killing him instantly. That is right, the supposedly peacefull anti-Chavez protesters, you know the ones the international press tell us go around with their hands peacefully held up in the air, had guns and were willing to use them to shoot people. Here you can see some of the video of the young man’s relatives and co-workers discussing this outrageous and murderous event.

Of course, those not in Venezuela can be forgiven if they haven’t heard about these events - they barely rate an article in the international press.

So the international press largely ignores it. The opposition controlled press in Venezuela slanders the man saying he was a criminal trying to rob the protesters.

Originally linked by Renegade Eye.

Calm Like a Bomb

Arjun Sen, of the blog Rantings of a Gaged Journalist, writes about how the poor in India are a ticking time bomb ready to lash out against the authorities:

That is why even in Left-ruled West Bengal the so-called communists make sure that the administration and the law enforcement agencies protect the interests of the rich rather than the poor, and, to do so, resort to even murder, if necessary. Can you imagine living in a state where the police go about murdering an ordinary law abiding citizen simply because he has gone against the desires of someone who is not just a rich fatso but also has a criminal record to boot? So, a poor law abiding citizen is murdered by the police a few days after his marriage because his rich and criminal father-in-law wanted the police to do so.

Originally linked by Kuffir at Blog Bharti.

Congressional Black Caucus Week

The blogger for What About Our Daughters writes:

I don’t usually do politics, but when I was in DC a few days ago, everybody kept asking me is I was staying for CBC Week. I was like Um NO! They were disappointed. Apparently CBC Week is like the Super Bowl of the Black Elite Establishment inhaling drank and vittles from corporate America, oh yeah and they have workshops too! The theme this year was “Unleashing Our Power!” Honey, don’t I KNOW it.

Well some Black bloggers have a WHOLE LOT to say about the CBC and the Annual Legislative Conference so I did a little research…

Private Lives, Proper Relations: Regulating Black Intamacy

The blogger at Feminist Review posts a book review on the book Private Lives, Proper Relations:

Why is contemporary African American literature — particularly that produced by black women — continually concerned with issues of respectability and propriety? Her first book, Private Lives, Proper Relations, Candace M. Jenkins looks at how African American writers express the political consequences of intimacy for the susceptible black subject. Jenkins argues that this fascination grew from recurrent beliefs about African American sexuality, and that it expresses a basic aspect of the racial self: an often unexpressed link between the intimate and the political in black culture.

Where’s Sharpton’s Outrage

Fellow Blog and the Bullet editor Yolanda posts:

Al Sharpton has called August 7th as a “Day of Outrage” against offensive rap music lyrics. Meanwhile, neither the good reverend or any other prominent “civil rights leader” have uttered one word about a horrific sexual assault against a Black woman and her twelve-year-old son by other Black people in the Black community. In response, blogger-activist Gina McCauley lets us know what’s up.

With Gina McCauley blogging about a recent rape in a Florida housing project:

Relocate them. Raze the place to the ground and let it serve as a monument that the great social experiment of packing a bunch of poor folks on top of each other and then abandoning them is a FAILURE. The public policy folks got this one WRONG. Start over, but don’t let these people continue to live like this. If they don’t have the initiative or wherewithal to claw themselves out out of hell, then the nation must give them a push, but we can’t sit back and accept these conditions in America or anywhere else on the planet for that matter. Some of the current residents understand that Hell on Earth is no HOME at all.

Where’s Sharpton’s Outrage

Fellow Blog and the Bullet editor Yolanda posts:

Al Sharpton has called August 7th as a “Day of Outrage” against offensive rap music lyrics. Meanwhile, neither the good reverend or any other prominent “civil rights leader” have uttered one word about a horrific sexual assault against a Black woman and her twelve-year-old son by other Black people in the Black community. In response, blogger-activist Gina McCauley lets us know what’s up.

With Gina McCauley blogging about a recent rape in a Florida housing project:

Relocate them. Raze the place to the ground and let it serve as a monument that the great social experiment of packing a bunch of poor folks on top of each other and then abandoning them is a FAILURE. The public policy folks got this one WRONG. Start over, but don’t let these people continue to live like this. If they don’t have the initiative or wherewithal to claw themselves out out of hell, then the nation must give them a push, but we can’t sit back and accept these conditions in America or anywhere else on the planet for that matter. Some of the current residents understand that Hell on Earth is no HOME at all.

The Death of Chandrashekhar and Indian Socialist Politics

Bhupinder writes:

Socialist politics, dominated now by such ‘bleeding heart socialists’ like Amar Singh and caste centered politicians like Mulayam, Laloo and BJP’s friends like Nitish Kumar and George Fernandes, has now come to practically a dead end. Acharya Narendra Dev is now a forgotten man altogether. Human Rights and civil liberties organizations that grew in the days of the Emergency are the only reminders of JP. Lohia’s ghost continues to haunt in the form of caste politics (not necessarily bad, but I don’t suppose even Lohia would have conceived of caste politics as an end in itself.)