Desperately seeking Obama
By Sunera Thobani, from Rabble, January 2, 2009

The New Year has begun with Muslims around the world being taught a lesson in the crudity of racial equations: 400 Palestinian lives equal six Israeli lives.

Reeling from having learnt that over a million Iraqi and Afghan lives equal 3,000 American lives, the logic of this racial mathematics is certainly no new thing. After all, the first U.S. Constitution engaged in just such calculations of human worth, and Katrina demonstrated their ongoing effects. But the lesson has the power to shock every time: the images of Palestinian bodies being pulled out of the rubble in Gaza that flood news reports are unbearable to witness.

Surely the lesson cannot be lost on President-elect Barack Obama. That such violence can be waged on so defenseless a population with the support of the Bush Administration is unconscionable. That Obama chooses to remain silent is nothing short of cowardice.

Afghans to Obama: End the Occupation -- An interview with an Afghan women's rights activist
By Sonali Kolhatkar, from Z-Net, November 30, 2008.

President Elect Barack Obama wants to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan. But the US/NATO occupation is less popular than ever. Eman, an Afghan woman's rights activist with RAWA tells Uprising host, Sonali Kolhatkar, that Obama must end the occupation. RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, is the oldest women's political organization in Afghanistan, struggling non-violently against foreign occupations and religious fundamentalism for more than 30 years.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Many on the American left are celebrating the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the US. But while he has pledged to end the Iraq war, he has also promised to increase troops in Afghanistan. What is your opinion of Barack Obama and his stated policy on Afghanistan?

Dan Crow

Precarious employment is one of the hallmarks of what is euphemistically called “the new economy.” It has deep roots in the university sector. Recent decades have seen a move away from full-time secure jobs for academic workers, toward reliance on part-time, contingent, relatively low wage jobs. As a cost-savings measure, and as a way to provide flexibility in operations, universities rely on part-time teaching staff to increasing degrees. In some instances, more than half of all undergraduate teaching in Canada (but also in university systems across Europe) is done by part-timers.

Contingent academic workers, numbering in the tens of thousands in Ontario alone, find themselves in a situation where they have to apply for their jobs as often as every four months, with no guarantee that the work they rely on will be offered. Many have found themselves in this situation for more than 20 years, with an increasingly large cohort joining them each year, proving that there is indeed company in misery. Furthermore, despite the fact that many contingent academic workers have nominally high hourly wages, many live in poverty because of limits on the ability to work. For example, academic work is primarily seasonal work, with very little offered in the spring and summer months.

From Zapagringo-- http://zapagringo.blogspot.com/2008/11/revolution-evolution-in-21st-century.html

I really hope that you find some way to to read the piece below, Grace Lee Boggs' new introduction to "Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century" penned by her and the late James Boggs in the late 1970s. Sit here and read it, or cut and paste and print it out... whichever you choose, please consider ordering the 2008 re-print, which has been re-titled "Revolution and Evolution in the Twenty First Century", at the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership's on-line bookstore here. That might be the most convenient way to read this intro - and certainly the one that most supports those whose labor has created this powerful work :-)

Celebrate People's History and Build Popular Power on January 20, 2009

We call on all anarchists, horizontalists, autonomists, anti-capitalists, anti-authoritarians, and others organizing a world from below to bring our best creative spirits to the project of a "Celebrate People's History and Build Popular Power" bloc on January 20, 2009, in Washington, DC -- or in your hometown, if you can't make it.

As people striving toward a nonhierarchical society, yes, we can -- and should -- be rigorously critical of Barack Obama. It goes without saying that we want a world without presidents; we want worlds of our own constituting via directly democratic structures, not states. But not all heads of state are alike, and if we fail to recognize both the historical meaning and power of this particular moment, we will ensure our own irrelevance.

We can -- and should -- also be in critical solidarity with people who have been violently marginalized, who see in the Obama campaign the possibility of their own agency. The inauguration affords a unique space for us to stand with a diverse group of activists inspired by Obama, many new to political organizing, even as we maintain our views on the limits of change from above.

by Sherry Wolf

In the wake of Barack Obama's historic victory, a false and reactionary narrative has emerged that blames Black voters for the gay marriage ban that passed by a 52 to 48 percent margin in California.

While Florida and Arizona also passed same-sex marriage bans, the vote for Prop 8 in the politically progressive state of California is widely attributed to the enormous surge of Black voters, 70 percent of whom approved the ban reversing the state's May 2008 Supreme Court decision allowing lesbians and gays to marry. The exit polls showed that 53 percent of Latinos voted for the ban, as well as around 49 percent of white voters.

The state's Black population, however, is 6.2 percent, and it accounted for 10 percent of the overall vote. In other words, blaming African Americans for the referendum's passage ignores 90 percent of the vote.

It also ignores recent history. To judge from social research, had there been an unapologetically pro-civil rights campaign, there was the prospect of a different outcome.

The most comprehensive study of Black attitudes toward homosexuality, which combines 31 national surveys from 1973 to 2000, came to a fascinating conclusion. Georgia State University researchers found that "Blacks appear to be more likely than whites both to see homosexuality as wrong and to favor gay-rights laws."

David Graeber, Interactivist

We seem to have reached an impasse. Capitalism as we know it appears to be coming apart. But as financial institutions stagger and crumble, there is no obvious alternative. Organized resistance appears scattered and incoherent; the global justice movement a shadow of its former self. There is good reason to believe that, in a generation or so, capitalism will no longer exist: for the simple reason that it’s impossible to maintain an engine of perpetual growth forever on a finite planet. Faced with the prospect, the knee-jerk reaction—even of “progressives”—is, often, fear, to cling to capitalism because they simply can’t imagine an alternative that wouldn’t be even worse.

The first question we should be asking is: How did this happen? Is it normal for human beings to be unable to imagine what a better world would even be like?

Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance: Zach is Back
By Lorenzo Wolff, from CounterPunch, November 14, 2008.

Zach De la Rocha and Jon Theodore have made an album that’s so good it hurts. In fact let me rephrase that. They’ve made an album that’s good enough to hurt. You can feel the pain and anger in every note, every sound, every breath.

Sonically, One Day As A Lion is not a departure from Theodore or De La Rocha’s previous projects. Theodore’s drums could just as well fit into a later Mars Volta album and Zach De La Rocha sounds like he could still be singing for Rage Against the Machine. This is not a criticism, but rather a compliment. It’s an incredible feat that 8 years after Rage Against the Machine, Zach De La Rocha is still has the gift of being brutally truthful and genuinely angry. Theodore has managed to stay fresh conceptually and, if anything, has cultivated the driving energy of his earlier work. One factor that is brand new is De La Rocha’s synth playing. His long, sustained, distorted tones compliment his vocals perfectly, giving the record a foundation that makes Theodore’s syncopation and odd time signatures possible.

A Statement from Solidarity

MILLIONS OF AMERICANS see the election of Barack Obama as a referendum on white supremacy and today we join in their celebration. The racist campaigns launched against Obama, conducted sometimes in coded language and other times in inflammatory accusations, turned out to be amazingly unsuccessful. Yet the 2008 election also represents a dual reality that is important for socialists and activists for peace and social justice to grasp.

For tens of millions of Black Americans, seeing a United States president-elect who’s Black – and even more important, for their children to see a Black president – is a huge symbolic stride towards full citizenship and liberation. Perhaps no event since that legendary night in 1938, when Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling, has there been such a magic moment of celebration for the Black community; only in this case they weren’t simply spectators but participants in the victory.

President Obama: Change the world can believe in?
by Sunera Thobani, from Rabble, November 3, 2008.

As the widely anticipated election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States grows closer, the priorities that will shape the early days of his Administration require critical attention.

With the banking system still in crisis and financial markets on a volatile rollercoaster, the pressure will be great for a President Obama to focus on domestic issues. But the new Administration will also be saddled with the increasingly unpopular War on Terror. How will Obama deliver on his promise of change to Americans, as well as those around the world who have greeted his candidacy with such enthusiasm?

The election campaigns have demonstrated Americans are more concerned about their houses, retirement savings, jobs, healthcare and education than they are about international issues, and Obama has successfully distanced himself from the deregulation promoted by the Bush Administration. But it will be critical for Obama to likewise detach his Administration from the disastrous Bush foreign policy.

Three steps could signal a clear break with the past: ending the Afghan war, closing down Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and prosecuting war crimes.