CA Statewide Student Walkout!!

3.5 Million Strong Can't Be Wrong!!!

Host:	CA Statewide Student Walkout
Type:	Causes - Rally
Network:	Global

Date:	Thursday, March 4, 2010
Time:	10:00am - 8:00pm
Location:	Up & down the Golden State!

Description

Listen up all you 3.5 Million California College Students! We're going to take our education back! There's strength in numbers and with all of us concentrating our rallying might on March 4th, 2010 we will be making some very serious national news. The date has gotten significant publicity already and will be a great day for local action!

Come out all you students, and bring the teachers too. All you moms, dads, cousins, sisters, business owners, politicians, alumni, activists, artists, media types- $1 spent on education = $3 out! That is good business. California's got to lift itself up by the bootstraps, and climb out of this hole. EDUCATION IS THE MEANS TO THAT END!

Each event is up to each individual school. The UC's have organized it as 'March Forth on March Fourth', and many of them will be going to LA or Sacramento (Even though the Legislature is not in session).

Region 6 of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges chose to piggy-back efforts to this date as a day for local action. The primary objective is to rally against continuing budget cuts, in cooperation with UC & CSU counterparts throughout the state. We've got the support of many different parties from all of the above. There's strength in numbers and California's educational system needs all the strength it can get.

I cannot stress enough to concentrate on the END and not the means. The primary focus is mobilizing California's (3.5 Million+) student population to speak up on this SINGLE DAY leading up to the March 22nd March in March at the capitol in Sacramento.

Other major statewide advocacy dates:

February 16-20- Save Our Schools (S.O.S.) Week:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=36405127443#/event.php?eid=203019673432&ref=ts

February 20- Educational Stimulus Jam:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=192212664756#/event.php?eid=197724657121&index=1

March 22- March in March:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=36405127443#/event.php?eid=186572474039&ref=ts

Boom-Boom Giwalsky

Lucky for me I work with nurses. The nurses at my job are friendly, funny and serious about their job. They stand up for their clients and they stand up for themselves at the same time which is difficult in social services field. Because often times they visit their clients at home it is an opportunity for them to care for their patients without the boss looking over their shoulder and give more holistic treatment to their patients. A great example is Mandy Giwalsky. All of 64 years of age she walked into the treatment center I work at the first day with a 3 inch crucifix around her neck and thick Bostonian accent. An addition that didn't quite fit with the tattooed refomed gangta drug abuse counselors. Not to mention our clients many of whom have lived much of their lives locked up for stealing radios, sex work or bank robberies to support their habit.



Mandy Giwalsky told me about her walks to the store with a patient who may have only a few t-cells left and talks about the sunset. She says a lot of their illness comes from being lonely so I want to show them the beauty in life, not just sit around and fill out some fuckin paperwork, whats that about she says ?! She stole the show at our Halloween party with her boxing gloves and old fashioned helmet. She was Boom Boom Gilwalsky kicking her feet in the air and shadow boxing through the halls.



Today I asked her some other women's health questions. She said for so long FDA approved drugs were only done with male subjects and now the brilliant idea is woman and men's bodies are not the same. She said, " This is the same shit we have been talkin about for years." I said, She said, " The problem is more than just the healthcare system. Im tellin yeah Julia we need a revolution and I'll be on the front lines! Because this is getting ridiculous. I'm tellin yeah Julia we need a revolution!" I was floored. I have never seen her eyes get so intense her chest went from white to pink. Just then I got a phone call from a client and the conversation stopped. Later in the break room we talked about it some more. I told her I was for a revolution to and i talked to her about Cuba's healthcare system. I told her Cuba is not a perfect system but because companies are not running the countries healthcare the people are treated better and the workers live better too. We need a system working people control. The feeling of solidarity and trust was inspiring.

Capitalism is a cancer which needs a radical mastectomy. It works against the nature instinct humans have to take care of one another. Capitalism is a parasite on humanity it makes people go to war, to lie for profit, to sleep on the street when there homes up the block, to deny medicine when it is in the cabinet. Capitalism like any other malignant tumor needs a revolution to sever it from humanity. Revolution isn't violence its a life saving proceedure.

Chicago discussion, against liberalism, for a Working Peoples' Party.

There is a bit of a discussion on a Chicago list about liberalism and a possible alternative to the Democrats. Below is my contribution.

Sean writes:

The central issue here is not liberalism. It is class. We need a Working Peoples Party. The capitalist class have two mass parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, the working class has none. So the bosses have political monopoly. We need to start to build the mass Party of the Working Class. We have the resources to start building this right away. The first obstacle we have to get over are the pessimists and the left sectarians amongst ourselves on the left. In the Chicago area alone there are hundreds of activists in and not in different groups and others who would be active if they saw a non sectarian alternative. Let us try to bring these people together and work towards an activist coalition which in turn would work towards building a Working Peoples Party. Let us draw up a fighting program and method of struggle which would take up specific struggles and link these to the electoral struggles. On this basis run a Working Peoples Party candidate against Daley and select a few city councilors if we have the resources and use these races to get our alternative out there and begin to build an alternative, a mass Working Peoples Party.

If there is not agreement to have a socialist program for this Party then it would still take the movement forward as long as takes on the bosses offensive. This means having a program that rejects all cuts in wages, services and conditions, a program which stands for $15.00 an hour minimum wage or $5.00 an hour increase whichever is the greater for all, a program which stands for free education for all to all levels and free health care for all at the point of use. It also means a program that fights racism and sexism as crimes against humanity and as weapons of the capitalist class to divide and rule the working class. And it means a program against the wars and occupations of the US corporations abroad. The objective of these are to defend the property and power of the US corporations abroad.

But it would not only be what we stand for, it would also be how we fight for it. We should fight for this program through mass direct action, occupations, street actions, organizing the unorganized and from these develop electoral struggle. Lobbying would be out. Mass action to make sure that there is no business as usual for the bosses when they attack every aspect of our lives. We should have a method of struggle which bases itself amongst working class people by building Hand of our Homes and Schools Committees in the neighborhoods and Hands of our Jobs, Wages, Benefits and Rights Committees in the workplaces. We should have a method of struggle that takes up the false policies of the union leaders which sees them cooperate with the bosses in the workplace through the so called team concept and in the political arena with the Democrats. We should organize Committees of action in the unions to fight for this program. We need to have a Party which commits itself to an independent movement of the working class, independent organizationally and independent politically.

There are significant resources of the left in this area and throughout the US. Left sectarianism prevents these forces working together on the fundamental issue of building an alternative to the Democrats and the Republicans. We must examine our own behavior to see to what extent it is an obstacle in building a working class alternative. We must openly identify left sectarianism and campaign against it as a method which damages the working class movement. Against left sectarianism, this must be one of our slogans as we struggle against the bosses and their wars and their system, if we do not struggle against left sectarianism this will be an obstacle to our struggle against the bosses and their profit addicted capitalist system.

Please check our blog, See the blog address below for much information on the Californian student struggle.

Sean.

Visit us at:
http://www.weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com
http://laborsmilitantvoice.org

With cash and crucifix in hand, the new colonialists descend on Africa. Doing gods work is good work.

The hedge fund managers, private equity kings, in other words, the folks that steal all our money, are on a mission; they are leasing huge tracts of land in Africa for crop production.   Business Week* reports that Morgan Stanley, and other moneylenders are investing in African agricultural land.  In the first six months of this year, private equity funds "lined up more than $2 billion to invest in farmland.."  The magazine reports that thousands of investors attended Global AgInvesting 2009 in New York last June.  "It's a mad scramble for African farmland right now" says one organizer.   With a little western technology crops can be fertilized and profits made, investors are told in order to whet their appetites.

Former commodities trader, Phillippe Heilberg runs an investment company and has leased one million acres in Sudan.  Helberg's last stint was with AIG, the worlds largest insurance company bailed out by the US taxpayer.  He plans to grow rice, wheat and other crops "for export" says BW.   There you go; exporting food in the middle of a famine area-------isn't freedom swell?

Not giving a damn about Africa after plundering it for centuries, the neo-colonialists are back.  Rather than having to outright steal the land from its inhabitants, these guys lease it through government bureaucrats whose palms are greased by the multi-nationals.

One of the filthiest characters is Calvin Burgess.  He is president of Dominion farms which is based in Oklahoma.  He's just leased 17,000 acres in Kenya near Lake Victoria.  He became interested in Kenya through a member of his church who frequented the country on "charitable trips."  I once met one of these missionaries while waiting for a flight at O'Hare.  She said she was going to Tanzania to teach.  I knew she was going there to bamboozle the locals with her religious tales because she looked so happy.  When she finally admitted she was doing some Christianizing there too I commented, "I think the Africans have had enough Christianity over the last 400 years, don't you?"  That ended that conversation.

Calvin Burgess is also on a godly mission.  He is investing in crop growing because he just loves to do good, put people to work and feed them. "God has plans for people's lives and I thought that maybe this was part of his plan for me." he says.  Burgess has even erected a huge cross alongside his facility and has preached in a local church.  But he was not well received, "Burgess came in to my church and claimed that we didn't know Christ well enough and we should do it right to prosper" said one local. 

Burgess has built a reservoir and a dam and has been accused of polluting the water supply and making animals sick with their fertilizers, much like they do in the US.  An independent soil and water study warned the locals not to drink water from the river as the presence of dieldrin was found.  Dieldrin is a chemical ingredient found in some pesticides and was banned in the US in 1987. Burgess denies using it naturally.  So perhaps it was just god's plan for the Africans and he didn't tell Burgess about it.  No matter; either him, his god, or both of them are murderers.

The venture has displaced local subsistent farmers who are deathly worried that the intent is to drive them off land that they considered theirs and in to Nairobi to find work.  The arrogant Burgess claims that the farms around "his comany's property" (His company's property??) are nothing more than "unproductive gardens." and that there was "no one there" before Dominion came.  Isn't this what they said about America? Don't the Zionists say it about Israel/Palestine?  Burgess claims he is there to help of course.  But isn't this a familiar scene?  How similar to the driving off of peasants from the land in England, Ireland, India, and tribal communities in North and South America; this is what capital does, and Burgess' Christianity has been along all the way.

Pesticide poisoning, homelessness, elimination of their means of subsitence, this is what Burgess and his hypocritical religious views bring the local people whose land he is stealing.  How the words of Marx ring true, written so many years ago, he says of the capitalist class:
"The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere." 
And:

"It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image." 

Who can argue with that!

Burgess' company, Dominion farms is part of a larger outfit, the Dominion Group that is involved in real estate development and manufacturing according to Business Week; it also ran private prisons in Colorado and throughout the US. It appears that Burgess' god has many different plans for him on his road to riches, for feeding Africans is not what is behind the surge in leasing agricultural land in Africa by commodity traders and speculators like Burgess and  Morgan Stanley.  Their investment in Africa is another sickening episode in Capitalism's destruction of our social and natural environment in its rapacious quest for profit. In what field of production (or speculation) they employ capital is incidental.  That's what capitalism is.  To quote Marx again:
“A schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation.”

Where's the Mau Mau when you need them?

* BW: 12-7-09 Land Rush in Africa

The Dead. A Living. For Some.

Before my recent prospects for a return to construction, I had made a job application to work with a guy I know, we'll call him Pete.

Pete is an employee at a local Cemetery. He is in charge of transportation. He needed help carrying bodies. And he'd heard I was looking for work.

He must've noticed the weariness in my eye, "It's not backbreaking work, Rob, if that's what you're worried about. These days we just slide them over onto a gurney." Well, it wasn't the lifting that worried me.

Pete clarified that the people he deals with are the living ones, "that's who we help out, the families and the friends." He added, as if I may have thought otherwise, "the dead are dead."

Well, that was over a month ago and I never heard back from Pete, even though he acted like I'd for sure got the job. So when I spotted him yesterday at a birthday party I pulled up a chair next to him. "Yeah back in November we were swamped with work and then the weather got better and there was hardly enough work to go around." At first I wasn't totally sure what we were talking about here. I slowly revealed my own naivety, "you mean the death rate declines when the weather gets better?"

Now Pete began talking to me like I was one of those people who knows nothing about the dead, "The weather's a big factor. A big factor. The holidays are too." Responding to my raised eyebrows, he added, "People really hang on for Christmas, and then its downhill for them all."

In a way, Pete was simply confirming what I'd always known. Christmas was essentially a time of great hope and disappointment.

Pete tugged on his brother's arm and introduced me, "Hey this is the socialist guy I told you about." Pete was once a union printer before those jobs disappeared and he took up his work with the dead. The two brothers went on to tell me how their dad was an Auto worker. "He worked at General Motors in Fremont and before that at Fischer Body on 98th Street (Oakland). He used to bring the Militant (a socialist newspaper) home from work." Wow, now that surprised me!

We stared down at our drinks. "Yeah well, with this cold front coming on right now, plus the holidays, we're gonna get real busy in the coming weeks. January is always our busiest season." He paused and looked at the two of us with a grin that was almost undetectable, "I get up in the morning, look out the window and if I see rain, I know it's going to be a good day!"

A good day for some.

US capitalism, corrupt hypocritical system.

The US government, its corporate leaders, its military, they swagger and plunder and wage war around the world under the flag of democracy and anti corruption. Recently they have been particularly aggressive in their lecturing of African countries about corruption. There is of course a lot of corruption in these countries, but we have to ask who is corrupting them. It is mostly the huge corporations of the advanced capitalist world buying the political rulers of these countries. This is the main basis of the corruption. But the big corporations not only corrupt other countries. They also corrupt their own so-called democracies. We have argued on this blog that US capitalism is utterly corrupt and its democracy is very limited to say the least. We maintain this position.

The corruption in the US system comes basically in two forms. One is the corruption of the actual structure of the electoral system. Every state has the same number of senators whether it is the huge California or the tiny Utah. In other words there is not one person one vote in the US. Votes are not of equal value. The vote for the Senate of a person in Utah is worth much more than a person in California. This affects the election of the President because the electoral college which elects the President is based on a variant of this system also. Votes for President and vice President are not of equal value. This is a fundamental corruption at the heart of the US electoral system. There is not one person one vote. The system was set up like this to reduce as much as possible the voting power of the urban working class and increase the voting power of the rural population. This fundamental corruption at the heart of the US electoral system is a class question. The small rural states have more mainly farming property owners. The large urban states have more mainly working class people.

But the corruption in the US does not end there. As soon as a representative arrives in Washington they are descended on by swarms of people who bribe them, who buy their vote. These utterly corrupt and degenerate scum are called lobbyists. They are in Washington to bribe the representatives in the interests of the corporations. Because of the anger about this corruption the so-called representatives set up rules which they claim restrained this bribery. They are a farce. And naturally so. After all they are being set up by the very people who are being bribed.

Trips abroad and staying in fancy hotels are a very common way of bribing the politicians. The recent rules have pretended to act on this. Well not exactly as you can imagine. Lobbyists themselves are not allowed to pay for trips but their corporate clients can pay!!! But the lobbyist was working for the corporate client in the first place and is still working for the corporate client. Non profit organizations are being set up as never before and these then bribe the politicians on behalf of the lobbyists on behalf of the corporations.

One politician recently received a paid trip to Germany with his spouse. This was paid for by a non profit group called the International Management and Development Institute. Since 2005 this outfit has paid for 34 trips to Europe for members of congress and their staff members. The cost has been $400,000. This is a $400,000 bribe. The trips were largely financed by companies such as Deutsche Bank and Lufthansa. Like International Management there is another similar outfit called Franklin Center for Global Policy Exchange, such bland innocent names. These outfits exist only to sponsor trips for members of Congress that is to bribe and corrupt.

The top travelers by cost of all trips since 2007 were Senator Lugar Republican Indiana ($82,226) and Lloyd Doggett, Democrat ($81,637) Texas. Anytime you hear a politician speak ask yourself if you know how much money he or she has been given in campaign contributions and bribes by whatever corporation is involved in the topic about which he or she is talking.

This corruption of the US political system is well known. There are many jokes. The devil came to Washington and met the politicians. He offered to have them all elected again to their seats if they sold him, the devil is always a man, their souls. They all looked at the devil for a while in puzzlement, and then one of them spoke. "But what is the catch."

I will not go into the campaign contributions here. But hundreds of millions are put up to control and bribe and censor the politicians as they run for office. And the mass media which is owned by the same bribers make sure that what is said and campaigned for is within the bounds of their capitalist system.

Our position is simple. All lobbying should be made illegal. The lot of them banned from Washington and all state capitals and cities. Bribing, that is lobbying, politicians is as much a felony as armed robbery. This is a reasonable position, why should those with big money be able to determine the policies of the country, keep themselves the tiny minority in obscene wealth and the majority in insecurity, debt and poverty. This is not democracy this is corruption. And as to campign contributions. These should be banned from all corporations, only individuals could make campaign contributions and then these should be capped at the level of the average industrial wage. Unrestricted campaign contributions are not in the interest of the working class or a genuine democratic working of society.

Some will say this will hurt the workers movement as the trade unions also make major contributions and hire lobbyists. The labor movement leadership in their pro capitalist way of working adopt the capitalist way of politics. This puts them and the working class at a big disadvantage. The labor movement can mobilize tens and tens of millions on the streets, in the workplaces, it can build a mass political party with a genuine active mass base in every workplace and neighborhood and educational establishment. We the working class have the power to build a mass political movement, unlike the capitalist class we do not need to hire lobbyist bribers and con artists. By adopting this policy not only would we be playing to our strength and forcing the capitalists and bosses to play to their weakness, but we would be the champions of real democracy and a non corrupt society. You cannot have capitalism without corruption. You cannot have real democracy and an end to corruption as long as you have capitalism.

Of course as we fight for this we need to keep one thing in mind. If the capitalists think they are going to loose the battle on the electoral field and a genuine working class party will come to power and move to change things in the interests of the working class it will move if it can to use military measures to hold onto its power. So as we expose the corruption and anti democracy of capitalism, as we explain and fight for the real democracy that only the working class can establish, we must also explain and prepare for the military reaction that capitalism will try to use if its power is threatened.

Sean.

Global capital has a setback as Japan Post stays public.

The collapse of the US economic model (privatize everything) has claimed yet another victim. This is good news though.  The Japanese government has passed a law freezing the privatization of Japan post, one of the largest financial institutions in the world. Caught up in the frenzy to copy the US model, Japan's previous government and investors around the globe, wanted to hand over the service to the private sector.  But a lot has happened in the last two years; they are very dismayed at the reversal.

Japan's new government and prime minister Yukio Hatayama have already fired the private banker that headed Japan Post and replaced him with a finance ministry official.  Japan Post's services are extensive and reach every community.  It's services include banking and insurance and is a lifeline to many older people in rural areas. The intent, says the Wall Street Journal, is "..to focus on insulating households from market forces."  and to "guarantee postal and financial services nationwide." 

Japan Post has 24, 532 post offices nationwide and the government wants to use them as "vehicles for a more active government social policy."  You can imagine the horror investors and the Goldman Sachs crowd feel when they hear government officials say, "Japan Post has outlets across Japan including in mountains and Islands. We could use them as bases for elderly care or places to pay out pensions." Isn't that shocking?

Speculators and other crooks have been eyeing state postal services around the world and pushing for them to be privatized.  They want the market to work its magic. Part of that magic is no service for out of the way areas, small communities and such.  Then there will be the extra charges for insurance and banking services, which are included with Japan Post at the moment. 

Just as the private sector fears the introduction of any public service, even a public insurance company for health care as suggested in the US, they fear they will not be able to provide the same services that Japan Post provides, and they're correct.  they know that once instituted, people don't let go of social services very easily. This is unfair competition say the swindlers.

Global capitalism is concerned as this is an attack on their precious market.  AFLAC, the insurance company, gets 70% of its global revenue by selling cancer insurance in japan; it doesn't want the state interfering in its private business.

Laughingly, the privatizers claim it will create inefficiencies as some, possibly rural, post offices will lose money.  So what!  It's inefficient for someone to not be able to get on a bus or mail a letter.  The Journal puts it plainly, "Private financial institutions fear reduced access to household savings currently locked up in the postal savings system.."

Straight from the horses mouth. This is the crux of the matter, they want to get their hands on people's savings.  Those savings have been used throughout for investment in infrastructure, construction spending and huge public works projects, keeping people working  Contrast that to the trillions of dollars of taxpayer money we have given or pledged to the crooks that caused the present economic crisis.  The $750 billion in TARP money is just one example.  And what about the $175 billion we gave to eleven banks that then paid $33 billion in bonuses to their employees (not the cashier you see on Friday), a sum that could have wiped out California's deficit with $10 billion left over.

Global financial houses want those savings but not for social spending.  They want it for currency trading, market speculation, buying property and art. They want to gamble with it.

Make no bones about it; this reversal is a considerable shock to global capitalism and a result of the ongoing historic crisis of capitalism itself.