Seven? Eight? Ten?

Who's counting?
Certainly not Aaron Sorkin.

Sidebar:
✓ Was Bobby Seale really bound and gagged in court? Did the anti-war activists actually dress up in police uniforms? We break down Aaron Sorkin’s new movie: What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in The Trial of the Chicago 7 by Matthew Dessem (Slate)

✓ Sorkin’s film plays fast and loose with characters and facts, but he got one thing right: Retrying the Chicago Seven by Todd Gitlin (American Prospect)

✓ The Chicago 8 Trial, Revisited by John Kendall Hawkins (CounterPunch)

 

Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go

It should be the active position of the left that, though the Democrats have dealt the country a bum deal over the last half century, progressives are going to go all out to defeat Donald Trump. But in doing so they shouldn't lie about Joe Biden and corporate Democrats. On the contrary, this is an opportunity for the Working Families Party, DSA, and anyone else organizing against the duopoly to raise consciousness, recruit new members, and fill their coffers. Trying to paint Biden as an acceptable nominee won't work; disgruntled voters will see right through it. But his election can be sold as a necessary first step on the way to a living wage, universal health care, fair taxes and economic security.

After November

Win or lose the presidency in 2020 election, the Democrats are failing as a political party. They're headed for the same encyclopedia entry as the Whigs.

Getting rid of Trump is essential, but it is only a first step. After Nov, we have to come to grips with the reality that the Democratic Party's allegiance to corporate power is unshakable. New forms of political action are necessary. New organizations have to be created to represent working people and the middle class. As much as possible, Sanders' "revolution" must be formalized. There are models for what might happen next: from the militant labor action of the sort that created the vibrant middle class, the civil rights movement and the Mobilization Against the War to the Occupy Movement, the Women's March and the children's fight for gun control

Whether Joe Biden wins or Donald Trump does, we can't return to the neoliberal governance that made Trump possible in the first place. Trump may be gone but the need for universal health care, the housing catastrophe, decaying infrastructure, failing welfare state, endless war and climate change will still be with us. On their own, corporate Democrats cannot be counted on to do anything about any of it. It's up to us.

Not Us, You

So when, as is likely, the nomination is stolen from him at the Democratic
Convention, will Bernie Sanders 1) concede as he did in 2016 and try

to get the "us" in his campaign slogan to fall in line behind Joe Biden or Michael Bloomberg or whatever member of the kleptocracy the Democratic poobahs have chosen as designated hitman (which millions of "us" will probably perceive as a betrayal); 2) lead his delegates out of the convention to continue the fight in the streets; 3) declare the Democratic Party null and void and conduct an independent campaign; 4) convert his campaign into an independent political movement to organize the people to take on the political class; or 5) use his political organization as the starting place to create a new progressive party to take on the parties of the center and the right in 2022 and beyond?

The Party’s Over: Bernie’s Last Dance With the Dems by Jim Kavanaugh (CounterPunch)

Should there be an independent left outside of the Democratic Party?

"The Democratic Party is now the full-throated proponent of neoliberal austerity at home, aggressive militarism abroad, and the ubiquitous national security state. Democrats gave landslide approvals to a record high war budget and renewal of the Patriot Act, while Pelosi’s 'pay-go' act doomed prospects for future progressive legislation. The last Democratic president’s deportations, drone strikes, wars in seven countries, multi-trillion-dollar upgrading of the US’s nuclear war fighting capacity, multi-trillion-dollar quantitative easing gift to finance capitalists, extension of the tax cut for the rich, and so forth also rise – giving credit where credit is due – to the level of catastrophe."

The rest of the story:
✓ The Imminent Threat of Trump and the Value of Progressive Third Parties by Roger Harris (CounterPunch)
✓ An Open Letter to the Green Party for 2020 by Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Fletcher, Leslie Cagan, Ron Daniels, Kathy Kelly, Norman Solomon, Cynthia Peters and Michael Albert (TruthDig)
✓ The Green Party Is Not the Democrats’ Problem by Howie Hawkins (CounterPunch)

quote unquote: Dorothy Day

“People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.” -- Dorothy Day

What is Justice?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at the 2019 Women's March in New York City.

Carpe Diem

"One of the most important movements that made its presence felt this year was the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. The campaign seeks to achieve the vision of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King to unite the working class of the US, bridging historical divisions to combat systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, and the war economy and militarism."

Veteran organizer Willie Baptist reflects on the historical importance of this moment in the US and across the world, and the need to take strategic, coordinated action. We can’t miss this moment: Willie Baptist (People's Dispatch)

quote unquote: Arundhati Roy

“The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.” -- Arundhati Roy

Resource: Worker Writers

Worker Writers, an institute founded and directed by poet Mark Nowak, organizes and facilitates poetry workshops with global trade unions, workers’ centers, and other progressive labor organizations. These workshops create a space for participants to re-imagine their working lives, nurture new literary voices directly from the global working class, and produce new tactics and imagine new futures for working class social change.

Worker Writers has run workshops with organizations as varied as Domestic Workers United in New York City, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa in Port Elizabeth and Pretoria, Justice for Domestic Workers in London, and the Indonesian Migrant Workers Union in Amsterdam and The Hague. For the past four years, Worker Writers has facilitated annual workshops for the PEN World Voices Festival.

Other links:
PEN American Center
Organization for Undocumented Workers
The Working-Class Studies Association supports scholarship, teaching and activism related to working-class life and cultures.

Organize!

Today is the birthday of Joe Hill (Oct. 7, 1879 – Nov. 19, 1915), a Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

Read one of his songs (http://bit.ly/OfUQq9) and an online bio from KUED: http://bit.ly/WCghIT Artwork by Carlos Cortez, more info: http://bit.ly/OfUQq9

David McReynolds 1929-2018

R.I.P.:
✓ David McReynolds: Peace Movement Titan Is Gone by Chuck Fager (A Friendly Letter).
✓ David McReynolds, socialist, photographer, and lifetime WRL member, passes at 88 by Ed Hedemann (War Resistors League).
✓ David McReynolds:Socialist Peacemaker by Paul Buhle (Nonviolent Activist).
✓ A socialist presidential candidate — no, not that one — looks back by Joseph Mulkerin (The Villager).

Ron Dellums, R.I.P.

A Real News interview with Robert Scheer, editor of Truthdig, discussing Congressman Ron Dellums, who died recently of cancer. He was elected in 1971 to represent California's 13th District and was an unrelenting warrior for peace and civil rights. He launched Vietnam war crimes investigations, stood with the Black Panthers, and he was singled out by Nelson Mandela as being integral in the US for helping to end apartheid.

Youth is irrepressible

Palestinian youth performing the Palestinian Dabkeh on the border under the close watch of Israeli snipers.

Party poopers

“Nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties.” -- Alexander Hamilton, 1787

While at present political parties are practical mechanisms for the expression of political intentions, for average citizens allegiance to party -- partisanship -- is self-defeating.

It was the existence of independent concentrations of power and influence, especially labor unions, national associations (such as the NAACP) and, on the local level, social clubs, that gave ordinary people muscle in the long struggle for economic and social justice.

Restoring such organizations must be part of any long-term reform of our democracy.

“If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.” -- Thomas Jefferson, 1789

When you hear the word "reform"...

...reach for your gun.

The most pointed irony of the DCCC/DNC interventions in California, specifically, is that here the party leadership is being hoist on its

Drew Shebeman—Tribune Media

own petard. They colluded in a "reform" effort led by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to lock insurgents and independents out of general elections by limiting the final contestants to the top two vote getters in open primaries, assuming they would be the establishment picks from each party. Now the party bosses are forced to intervene to protect their pre-washed, pre-shrunk, pre-approved, corporate-friendly choices from an army of progressive challengers and angry Democratic voters.

"The approach is laced with peril for a party divided over matters of ideology and political strategy, and increasingly dominated by activists who tend to resent what they see as meddling from Washington. A Democratic effort to undercut a liberal insurgent in a Houston-area congressional primary in March stirred an outcry on the left and may have inadvertently helped drive support to that candidate, Laura Moser, who qualified for the runoff election next month."

The same thing is happening across CA where the party establishment's chronic distrust of voters is leading them to make the same mistakes that have cost them countless seats in local, state and congressional races (not to mention Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton) since the 1990s.

The rest of the story:
✓ Fearing Chaos, National Democrats Plunge Into Midterm Primary Fights by Alexander Burns (New York Times).
✓ Democrats consider attacking their own California candidates to win back Congress by Emily Cadei (Sacramento Bee).

Reading list:
✓ Unintended consequences of California’s open primary by Martin Wiskol (Orange County Register).
✓ California GOP should embrace open primary system: Orange County Register editorial 2017/10/22.
✓ The political parties would like voters to kill California's top-two primary system in 2018 by John Myers (Los Angeles Times).
✓ The defining characteristic of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for too many years has been its well-honed ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: Texas Progressive Laura Moser Is Beating Democratic Insiders by John Nichols (The Nation).
✓ While this article is mostly true, it would be fairer to say that, after 30 years of Democratic missteps, the chickens came home to roost during Obama's stay in office: The Democratic Party Got Crushed During The Obama Presidency. Here's Why by Mara Kiasson (NPR).
✓ Instead of campaigning on issues that reform-minded voters care about, the DCCC is going after a GOP “culture of corruption.” Once again, elect us because we're not them. It worked then. But not since. Will it work now?: Democrats Look To Their Successful 2006 Messaging In Bid To Retake The House by Amanda Terkel (Huffington Post).

Extra credit:
✓ Maybe they can hire the lawyers who won the Citizens United case: DNC Lawyers Argue ‘Primary Rigging’ Is Protected by 1st Amendment (Liberty Headlines).

On Hanging Together

Some claim I'm a pessimist.

Not true.

I'm an optimist.

Things always turn out worse than I predict.

This is a post from 2015, titled "Block the Kochs":

When Dylan sang "Your old road is rapidly agin'/Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand/For the times they are a-changin'," he was sending out a warning to the establishment of the day, the old order, the holders of the reins of authority, the guardians of business-as-usual.

And the times changed all right, just not the way he predicted. Now, it is we the people who need to heed the warning. The counter-revolution is nearly over. The oligarchs' final victory is around the next turn of the road. Despite the valiant resistance of individuals all over the planet, there are still too few willing to lend a hand. Difficult as it will be, we have to find the way to collective action.

"We must all hang together," Franklin said, "or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

2015 seems like a long time ago.

Must read: If MLK were alive today, his words would threaten most of those who now sing his praises

A radical man deeply hated and held in contempt is recast as if he was a universally loved moderate.

"The major threat of Martin Luther King Jr to us is a spiritual and moral one. King’s courageous and compassionate example shatters the dominant neoliberal soul-craft of smartness, money and bombs.

His grand fight against poverty, militarism, materialism and racism undercuts the superficial lip service and pretentious posturing of so-called progressives as well as the candid contempt and proud prejudices of genuine reactionaries. King was neither perfect nor pure in his prophetic witness – but he was the real thing in sharp contrast to the market-driven semblances and simulacra of our day.

"In this brief celebratory moment of King’s life and death we should be highly suspicious of those who sing his praises yet refuse to pay the cost of embodying King’s strong indictment of the US empire, capitalism and racism in their own lives."

Martin Luther King Jr was a radical. We must not sterilize his legacy by Cornel West (Guardian).

Must read: The Left ascendant

"With his primary election victory last week, Illinois Congressman Dan Lipinski -- a Blue Dog and cultural conservative -- won the first major 2018 battle between the Democratic Party's establishment and progressive wings. But don't be confused about what it means. The war is already over, and the establishment lost.

"Even though only two states have actually voted so far this primary election season -- Texas, a red-state redoubt, and Illinois, a blue-state stronghold -- the battle for supremacy this primary season is all but complete. In state after state, the left is proving to be the animating force in Democratic primaries, producing a surge of candidates who are forcefully driving the party toward a more liberal orientation on nearly every issue.

"These candidates are running on an agenda that moves the party beyond its recent comfort zone and toward single-payer health care, stricter gun control, a $15 minimum wage, more expansive LGBT rights and greater protections for immigrants. In the surest sign of the reoriented issue landscape, they're joined by some of the most prominent prospects in the 2020 Democratic presidential field -- Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris among them -- who are embracing the same agenda."

The rest of the story:
Forget about Conor Lamb and Dan Lipinski. The progressive wing has already beaten the establishment in 2018: How the Bernie Wing Won the Democratic Primaries by Charlie Mahtesuian (Politico).