Prairie Praxis

2008-09-12T15:14:00.001-07:00

When Sec. of State John Gale certified the anti-affirmative action petition called the Nebraska "Civil Rights" Initiative, he validated 136,000 signatures. 112,000 were necessary to get on the ballot, NCRI turned in 170,000. Nebraskans United has now launched a lawsuit challenging another 40,000 signatures, saying that they too were gathered fraudulently.

Doug Tietz, the YAFer from Michigan and head of both the failed Oklahoma CRI and soon-to-fail NCRI, had his obligatory statements about desperation and last-hour actions:

Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative executive director Doug Tietz dismissed the lawsuit as a last-ditch effort aimed at stifling voters’ voices.

“This is eleventh-hour. This is 11:59 p.m. is what it is,” Tietz said.

Yea, Doug, we get it. You've pitched this line and the ones about sports several times any time the Journal-Star asks you for a comment. Cut the pullstring out of your back and think of something original to say for once. By now your "11:59pm" has lasted over two months.

Another thing:

Tietz has repeatedly said all signature-gatherers were properly trained.

“We set up a training program to make sure they did it right,” he said.

Which of course is why they hired practiced fraudsters from National Ballot Access, renowned for their carefully done and lawful strategies to collect signatures.

The Happiest Place on Earth?

2008-08-27T23:14:00.000-07:00

One of the great shames of American society is that the place claiming to be "The Happiest Place on Earth" treats its employees like crap. Disney is hastily fighting against criticism of its labor policies and against the unionization of their theme parks.

One way Disney undermines the union process is by relying heavily on cheap student labor. Every year Disney recruiters canvass colleges across the country to get several thousand student workers to come work for 6 months at their theme park. These "interns" often end up doing menial labor like concessions or ticket sales. A unionized worker at Disney can make about $11/hour doing these jobs, where a student "intern" doing the same job would make only $6.25/hour and is docked $79/week for housing.

Disney workers, members of nearby communities, and student activists took to the streets two weeks ago to protest Disney. At about 5:30pm they successfully shut the gates to the theme park, before being arrested for civil disobedience. (Video is here in three parts: 1, 2, 3) The arrested included such Disney icons as Peter Pan, Snow White, and Mickey Mouse.

This is just the beginning. Because Disney fans out across the country recruiting people, so too must it's opposition. And that's where we come in. Students this year will be standing up and saying no to poor wages, no to scabbing, no to union-busting. They will say yes to solidarity, yes to respect, yes to democracy. Splat That Rat Disney!

Above: The loyalty Disney really expects from it's workers.

Adventures in politicking

2008-08-24T22:30:00.000-07:00

Today was the annual Big Red Welcome street fair at UNL. All kinds of groups, from military recruiters, local and not-so-local businesses, and every student organization on campus come out to the event to set up a table, distribute fliers, pamphlets, and recruit new members or customers. Our chapter of Nebraskans For Peace was there, of course, alongside Amnesty International, Students United for Nebraska, and Progressive Student Coalition.

We did the usual stuff, but also used large printouts of articles on things we did last year, including the September die-in at the Husker-USC football game and the SUN protest against Ward Connerly when he spoke in March. The last bit sparked a conversation with a group of white men a bit younger than myself. They were evenly split on the question of affirmative action, which Ward Connerly is attempting to end in Nebraska. Finally one of them suggested "Why don't the just remove the question of race from job applications? Wouldn't that solved work discrimination?" Not really, and certainly not at the face-to-face interview stage. I argued that this wouldn't have much effect and cited a study done a few years ago showing people with white-sounding names (Joe, Robert, James... or Alex) were 50% more likely to receive a callback for an application than people with a black sounding name. I used the example Teniqua, just off the top of my head. The guy kind of snorted at the absurd sound and said...

"Why don't they just name their kids normal names then?"

Wow. Really? I kind of looked at him with an "are you fucking kidding me?" face. I've never been confronted with such a blatant in-your-face example of white privilege (the idea that "normal" means whiteness) and indifference to other people such as that.

2008: The Year Nebraska Matters?

2008-08-20T02:18:00.000-07:00

Having a little fun with electoral college calculators, I discovered one particular way the fight for a single Nebraskan electoral vote could change the election:

(The website takes you to the actual calculator, for the easier-to-use map click here.)

Considering the nonpartisan polls done so far, this calculation would be especially generous to McCain in places like Nevada, Ohio, and New Hampshire. He's got a reasonable chance at Virginia, Indiana, and Missouri. Florida's recent polling has regularly put the state in McCain's pile, but the enormous lead in new Democratic registered voters (many of them youth) could upset the polls.

If in fact all of Nebraska's electoral votes go red, the election is a tie and the president is then decided by the newly elected House of Representatives in January (vice president by the Senate). If, however, Omaha (CD 2) goes blue then it would be 270-268 in Obama's favor.

Not just in bad taste, but factually wrong too

2008-08-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

Currently this image is running on the side of the Objective Conservative blog:

The problem is... it's entirely wrong.

That is Manadel al-Jamadi. He died during a brutal interrogation, thirty minutes of what is known as "Palestinian hanging." His interrogators didn't even know he was dead, choosing instead to believe al-Jamadi was "playing possum," until they attempted to reposition him. He's better known from these photos:

Manadel should serve as a textbook example of why we believe in legal rights. Picked up in the aftermath of a bombing in Iraq there was nothing ever presented, before his being picked up or afterwards during the investigation of his death, that linked him to the bombing or the Iraqi resistance. He never had a court where he could profess his innocence and never had a lawyer to do so either. Yet he was killed, needlessly.

We already know the excuse, though. A few bad apples, "shit happens" as Rumsfeld once said. But the evidence points to a more systemic pattern of abuse. Sy Hersh who broke the story with an investigative report in 2004 also detailed the existence of a systemic operation of prison interrogation abuse program called Copper Green. A book released in 2007 showed that torture was still occurring at Abu Ghraib fully a year after the photographs were released. That means it not only continued after General Taguba's internal investigation (prior the media publicity), but long after media publicity.

Al-Jamadi was only one of the more famous victims of Abu Ghraib, there are certainly several other deaths not only at Abu Ghraib but other American prison camps as well. Statements and primary source documents attest to other deaths happening and should be investigated. In the meantime, right-wingers should consider not denying the fact that the torture at Abu Ghraib was painful, humiliating, illegal, and deadly.

Students For Obama

2008-08-16T18:51:00.000-07:00

One of the things I've really noticed this month is how many of my friends and acquaintances not finished with college are taking the semester off or taking the bare minimum of hours so that they can be involved in political work.

It isn't entirely new, of course. Twenty-thousand youth went "Clean for Gene" in 1968 and canvassed New Hampshire in the middle of winter to promote Eugene McCarthy for president, sometimes sleeping on couches or floors and for meager pay. During the 1970 student strike where UNL students took over the ROTC building, one of several demands made was that students should have a week or two off school before election day in order to help campaigns and canvassing (this would have replaced the Thanksgiving holiday in the school year).

But I have two guys I knew in high school, now poli sci majors at Wayne State College, canvassing Joplin, Missouri, from now until November. They're taking the semester off. Two other friends in Lincoln are going to work for Nebraska Matters, one of them significantly reducing his course load for the semester. Several other people I know not quite as well are also getting involved with various campaigns. It seems there's real momentum building, especially among youth, for a large progressive turnout this fall.

Do I take the blue pill or the red?

2008-08-08T01:50:00.000-07:00

Journal-Star article on the Beijing Olympics and UNL members of the Chinese Students & Scholars Association. UNL's CSSA is the group which put on the wonderful (and no doubt completely spontaneous with it's quality visuals) propaganda display in the spring. The display featured criticisms of Western media "bias" against China including reproductions of photos from viral pro-China youtube videos (of the "aha! conspiracy proven! repent and see the light!"-style - see also), and little factoids on all the benevolent things the Chinese government has done for the Tibetans.

Anyways,

Jared Li of Chengdu said China was taking measures such as limiting driving and moving some people to make way for the new stadium so the country could present its best image to the world.

Moving some people indeed! Amnesty International reports:

Housing rights activists detained and imprisoned
Beijing-based housing rights activist, Ye Guozhu, continues to serve a four-year sentence after he applied for permission to hold a demonstration about forced
evictions in Beijing. Amnesty International continues to call for his immediate and unconditional release, and remains concerned for his safety following reports that he
has been tortured in prison. The Chinese authorities have failed to either confirm or deny these reports, but official sources have confirmed that he was receiving treatment for ‘hypertension’. They have also confirmed that he was held in Chaobai prison and due for release on 26 July 2008.

Ye Guozhu’s son, Ye Mingjun and brother, Ye Guoqiang were also detained on 29 September 2007 on suspicion of ‘inciting subversion’ after they engaged in a public protest against forced evictions reportedly carried out to clear space for Olympics-related construction. The police also searched Ye Guoqiang’s home, confiscating 26 documents he had written and two computers. Ye Mingjun was released on bail on 30 October 2007, but warned not to speak to the media as this could have a ‘negative impact’ on his situation and that of his father. Ye Guoqiang was released on bail on 9 January 2008, but on condition that he did not contact anyone overseas or continue with his petitioning activities.

Wang Ling, an associate of Ye Guozhu, who had also engaged in public campaigning activities after she lost her property as a result of Olympics-related construction, has recently been assigned to 15 months ‘Re-education through Labour’. [See below for further details]

Fremont revives the "sundown town" model

2008-07-11T21:58:00.000-07:00

This page describes a Sundown town. The councilman's proposal may not explicitly say "teh Mexicans" in it, but I doubt many people will look twice at a Canadian immigrant's occupancy license. The actual effect of the proposal, as it stands now without hiring punishments, will be very much like the sundown towns which allowed black day laborers in town as long as they didn't stay.

Proposed ban on illegal immigrants stirs uproar in Fremont
BY CINDY GONZALEZ AND JUDITH NYGREN
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITERS

A proposed law aimed at banishing illegal immigrants from Fremont, Neb., would require every renter —whether they were born in the United States or immigrated here — to obtain an occupancy license through the city.

The proposal has sparked an outcry among advocates for Latinos. Nebraska Appleseed attorney Norm Pflanz said he is confident that many Fremont citizens will join in opposition once they understand the full impact of the ordinance — on their lives as well as those of immigrants.

Fremont's is the first city council in the state to propose an ordinance that would ban harboring and renting to illegal immigrants. Lawmakers in other U.S. localities have introduced similar initiatives, often later struck down by the courts, according to national immigration groups.

Bob Warner, the longtime councilman who sponsored Fremont's proposal, said he did so because residents were "sick and tired" of what he said was the federal government's lax enforcement of immigration laws.

He said Fremont residents want their own immigration laws.

"I'll fight to the dying end to do what they want," Warner said. "I don't know why everybody is making a mountain out of something that is very simple."

The proposal that went to the council for a public hearing this week calls for all renters to fill out an application verifying their legal right to be in the United States. The applications would be submitted to local police for verification, and an occupancy license would be issued.

Every person occupying a rented home or apartment would have to hold an occupancy license at a cost of $5 each. A new license would be needed every time a resident relocated to a different rental unit.

Providing false information on the application would subject the license holder to a fine of up to $500. Those who occupied a rental unit without a valid license would be subject to the same fine.

Landlords would have to see the license before renting a unit. The ordinance, however, does not stipulate a penalty for landlords who fail to comply.

The Nebraska Mexican-American Commission issued a statement on Thursday saying it was disappointed with "racial and anti-immigrant remarks" made at the Fremont council meeting. Tuesday was the first opportunity for the public to speak about the ordinance.

Angel Freytez, commission spokesman, said some opponents of the ban left the meeting early because they felt there was inadequate security. One opponent of the ordinance later broke into tears because of the "hateful" statements, said Freytez, who called the behavior at the meeting "shameful."

"Instead of raising the level of dialogue over the immigration issue," Freytez said, "they are degrading it."

Pflanz, the Appleseed attorney, said some people in the audience of Latino and Asian descent overheard remarks aimed at them: "There's an illegal. There's an illegal."

"The atmosphere was very hostile to anyone who wanted to oppose the ordinance," Pflanz said.

When he and others in his group rose to leave the council chambers during a 10-minute break, a police officer approached, Pflanz recalled. "He said, 'I think I'm going to escort your group to your cars.' "

While Pflanz wouldn't say whether he thought the escort was necessary, he said he "was most grateful" for the service.

Said Councilman Warner: "Does it get out of hand? Absolutely."

However, he said, the anger and raised voices simply reflected the frustration felt by many of his constituents.

Mary Marsh, another council member, said she did not sense uneasiness or feel there was a threatening atmosphere at the meeting.

"People expressed their opinions," she said. "That is a given right in the United States of America."

Marsh was among five of eight council members who earlier had directed the city attorney to draft the ordinance. She said she was undecided how she would vote in August but thought the community should have a say on how the town handles illegal immigration.

Fremont officials said no single local event or trend sparked the proposed ordinance.

Rather, Warner said, the frustration he and others had already felt increased after a committee of the Nebraska Legislature prevented full debate on an anti-illegal immigration proposal supported by Gov. Dave Heineman.

The legislation would have required verification of immigration status for anyone seeking state benefits. Blocking that discussion compounded irritation with the federal government over what some see as ineffective enforcement efforts.

The current draft of the Fremont ordinance does not include a ban on hiring, but Warner said he wants that included — along with penalties for renting to and harboring illegal immigrants.

Fremont — with a population around 25,000, about 30 minutes west of Omaha — includes a Hormel Foods pork processing plant that relies on immigrant labor.

Warner, a member of the council for 20 years, said he can't go to church, a restaurant or a keno parlor without someone approaching him and saying, "'By God, this stuff has got to stop.'"

Fremont Mayor Donald Edwards said his main concern is that the city enact a law that can withstand legal challenge and is enforceable.

Pflanz expressed hope that church leaders, advocates and "the everyday" people of Fremont will make their voices heard before the council takes up the issue again. Tuesday's discussion "did not reflect well on Fremont, and it didn't reflect well on the vast majority of people in Fremont" who want to live in an inclusive community, he said.

These are the types of statements you get...

2008-07-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

...from people that don't read anything by Leftists ever.

Now let’s focus specifically on Albright. On May 11, 1996 this woman was asked by a television interviewer for "60 Minutes" whether she was troubled by the fact that Clinton-supported sanctions had resulted in the death of 500,000 Iraqi children. "It's a hard choice," she replied, "but we think it's worth it."

Leftists should keep Albright's response in mind when they wail about civilian casualties as a consequence of Bush's war in Iraq. Iraq Body Count keeps track of these casualties, and they are less than one-fifth the number of innocent civilians (mostly children) killed in the aftermath of sanctions.

"Yeah, you Leftists never criticized those sanctions or that statement or anything about Clinton's foreign policy, didya? Well, DIDYA?!"

The statement is actually fairly well known among leftists and liberals with some interest in foreign policy. So when Albright joined the Obama team recently several of us groaned. Bringing in someone with "has killed Iraqis" experience on their resume (not uncommon in Washington after the last 20 years) isn't exactly "change we can believe in." The statement is fairly regularly criticized by people like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ed Herman I believe, and several lesser-well-known writers for places like The Progressive and Z Magazine. So when I saw D'Souza's comment I was a little dumbfounded. Perhaps he meant "liberal interventionists" when he said "Leftists," but that's his call.

Here's Chomsky:

Let's begin with Iraq. The only serious question about the sanctions is whether they're simply terrible crimes or whether they are literally genocidal, as charged by those who have the most intimate acquaintance with the situation, in particular the coordinator of the United Nations programs, Denis Halliday, a highly respected UN official who resigned under protest because he was being compelled to carry out what he called "genocidal acts," as did his successor Hans von Sponeck. It's agreed on all sides that the effect of the sanctions has been to strengthen Saddam Hussein and to devastate the population-and yet we must continue-with that recognition. There is no serious disagreement that these are the consequences.

There are justifications offered, and they merit careful attention - they tell us a good deal about ourselves, I think. The simplest line of argument to justify the sanctions was presented by the Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. You'll recall, I'm sure, that she was asked on national television a couple years ago about how she felt about the fact that she had killed half a million Iraqi children. She didn't deny the factual allegation. She agreed that it was, as she put it, "a high price," but said, "we think it's worth it". That was the end of the discussion. That's the important fact, and it's very enlightening to see the reaction. The comment is hers; the reaction is ours. Looking at the reaction we learn about ourselves.

"He loved liberty..."

2008-07-09T13:50:00.000-07:00

That's the strange way the late Senator Jesse Helms was eulogized over at Objective Conservative. Helms' racism was glossed over as simply something "liberals" said about him, something one need barely mention before tossing it down the memory hole. Now that's what they mean by objective! But it's worth recounting just exactly what this man did for freedom and equality. The father of that "stalwart defender of liberty" beat a black woman mercilessly in the streets of North Carolina. Rather than dissociate with such brutal racism, that "stalwart defender of liberty" worked for several segregationist campaigns in the South and continued to denounce the black freedom movement, then continued the bigotry in the 80s against homosexuals. That "stalwart defender of liberty" helped elect a president who illegally funded murderous right-wing gangs in Latin America (a rampage from which many countries are only now beginning to recover) by selling weapons to official enemy states.

More fitting eulogies to the late Senator can be found at Freedom Road and (in a more juvenile humor vein) at Sadly, No!

Checkin' my emails

2008-07-08T20:22:00.000-07:00

Sent to me via the New SDS listserv New Left Cafe:

Robert Pardun : In Support of Barack

Robert Pardun, back in the day.

And the words that are used for to get the ship confused will not be understood as they are spoken...
And like Pharaoh's tribe they’ll be drowned in the tide and like Goliath they’ll be conquered.

Money doesn’t talk it swears. Propaganda all is phony

Bob Dylan

Why we need Barack Obama now
By Robert Pardun / The Rag Blog / July 8, 2008

[Robert Pardun -- an activist in Austin in the sixties and a contributor to the underground paper, The Rag -- was a national officer of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). He is the author of Prairie Radical : A Journey Through the Sixties. Robert now lives in the mountains near Santa Cruz, California.]

This is to express my solidarity with those of us out there working for the election of Barack Obama. I have seen many election cycles come and go and in general what we learned during the sixties is still true today—those with money use government for their own private ends. The Bush Administration has been the most blatant I can remember in taking from the poor and giving to the rich. One has only to look at the war in Afghanistan and Iraq to see this. With the money spent to occupy and then militarily control those two countries we could have rebuilt every school, every bridge, and every road in the United States. In addition we could have universal health care for everyone and funded research in alternative energy sources. In the movie “The Graduate” Dustin Hoffman is told that the wave of the future was in plastics. Today it is in batteries.

About ten years ago I read about a survey of attitudes of the American people concerning work, war, family and the like. The conclusion was that there is within America a sizable contingent of people who maintain the attitudes of the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s. These people make up a substantial part of Obama’s support and many are actively involved in his campaign. These are people who send in the checks for fifteen or twenty dollars and who sit behind card tables at the local grocery store encouraging people to vote. They are us and a new generation that learned from us.

During the sixties we wondered why defacto slavery still existed in parts of the South even though the Civil War had been fought a hundred years before. Culture changes slowly as new ideas become commonly accepted. Obama represents the ideals of the sixties even though he wasn’t there, and the younger generations like Obama because he represents a different way of looking at the world.

Is Obama a revolutionary? Hardly! If he was you would never have heard of him. Besides we are not in a revolutionary period. But he does stand for a more open government and that is important. We have a much better chance of getting the draconian drug laws changed with Obama. The drug war is known to have been a campaign gimmick of Nixon targeted at the black liberation movement and the anti-war movement. We should concentrate on repealing those laws. We used to say that we needed to work to stop the seventh war from now. Well we’ve already passed that point but with a President who is willing to think about alternatives we stand a chance of stopping the automatic reflex of attacking what we don’t like first and talking about it later. In addition we must change the way the government treats the people it “puts in harm’s way.” The treatment of veterans is absolutely scandalous and must be changed.

This election is the third in my lifetime in which I thought the democratic candidate might actually make a difference. After wondering why anyone would say that he smoked marijuana but didn’t inhale I voted for Clinton. With Obama we stand a change of actually changing things for the benefit of the people. Instead of taking the people’s money and using it to benefit the military-industrial complex we could actually use it to better the condition of the people who work hard to keep body and soul together.

2008-07-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

A small piece on Steve Larrick, Green Party candidate for 1st Congressional District (Eastern Nebraska minus Omaha) and all-around cool dude, ran in the Journal-Star today. Check it out.

Pot calls kettle white.... supremacist.

2008-07-02T21:16:00.000-07:00

A Local View column today argues against affirmative action, stating:

In Nebraska, the biggest groups of minority students are Asian, black and Latino students. It is widely known that Asian students excel without preferential treatment. Therefore Latino and black students are left. To suggest that those racial groups need preferential treatment in order to compete is an arrogant position of white supremacists.

It's one thing to argue - as Clarence Thomas and others do - that affirmative action is paternalistic. It's quite another to call it white supremacist, especially when white supremacist groups have been outspokenly opposed to affirmative action for the last 40-50 years. Oh, but it gets much more twisted! The writer, Mr. Krynsky, is the local chapter leader of the Minutemen; a group with well-known ties to extreme right and racist groups and individuals.* According to Anti-Defamation League archives on extremist protests, Nebraska Minuteman held the protest at the Mexican Consulate in Omaha last year, where white supremacists were out in open display.

Something else a bit bizarre is this statement:

The United States became a world superpower without affirmative action. Actually, now we are in decline. This process approximately corresponds with the duration of affirmative action. Is this a coincidence?

Well if it isn't coincidence then the implication is that letting blacks and women participate fully in society as human beings destroyed America's superpower status. Stating such nonsense outright would look like... well, racist nonsense. Points for originality I guess, I hadn't ever heard the line that affirmative action destroyed America.

*Minutemen split over a year ago into two sides, between Chris Simcox (with Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, MCDC) and Jim Gilchrist (Minuteman Project). Simcox's MCDC, of which Nebraska Minuteman is a part, is perhaps the more racist of the two factions to emerge. This, of course, is a little like saying one lake's water is wetter than another.

Carl Oglesby, "Ravens in the Storm"

2008-06-29T21:46:00.000-07:00

"It isn't the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it's the troubles that cause the rebels."

Carl Oglesby was elected to be president of Students for a Democratic Society at the 1965 convention, only a short time after he'd heard of SDS and a shorter time since he'd joined. He went on to serve various other elected positions in the group before he left for other things. As many of the SDS "Old Guard" have done, he recently published a memoir of his experiences in SDS and in the Sixties, titled "Ravens in the Storm." It's a fairly easy, short read. Nothing really disappoints or excites, but Oglesby includes a couple of reminisces of remarkable conversations with Bernadine Dorhn. These really served, to me, to show the striking tension between the moderate/liberal/left-of-center side of SDS and the side which outright rejected liberalism and anything associated with it (and went on to build bombs, "pick up the gun," etc). Ultimately Oglesby was put on trial by Dorhn and other leaders of the late SDS for his moderate-liberal views and his organizing strategy of converting centrists over to the cause, then essentially kicked out. The book is really remarkable in showing one man's disappointment with the way an organization (and some of his friends) turned out after he put so much effort into it.

Fivethiryeight.com

2008-06-27T21:41:00.000-07:00

Usually I go to electoral-vote.com to read about the presidential election polls. However I just today discovered this site, which seems to blow past EV by miles.

Dick Flacks' (non)review of the Tom Hayden Reader

2008-06-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

From Znet:

Our passion and our action, this pragmatism says, should be guided by our experience, rather than ideological doctrine, theory or concealed thirst for power. Here, Tom suggests, are some ways to make our experience useful for making change:

Take institutional claims seriously and see if they are practiced by those in power.

Challenge elites to live up to their claims, to justify their actions.

Oppose structures of authority that block ordinary people from, in the language of Port Huron, "participating in the decisions that affect their lives."

Try to figure out, by observation of relevant cases, by experimentation, by dialogue, how social empowerment and participatory democracy can be made real.

It is through such ongoing efforts to organize from below, to win voice for the voiceless, to de-legitimize elites, that fundamental change happens. And, he teaches, whether or not transformation is possible, that struggling for democratic voice and empowerment is the essence of practical strategies by which ordinary people can advance their interests.

More heat than light

2008-06-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

My letter to the Journal-Star raised the ire of Mr. Harbison today, which is about the closest thing you can get to red-hunting in Nebraska. Jerry Rubin was right, we've all got a little subpoenas envy.

On his blog he links to a post of mine, a copy/paste of a Journal-Star article, on cross-x.com - this is a popular online forum for high school and college National Forensics League debaters and judges, I participated in high school debate and judged in college. His link declares I am "posing as a Revolutionary" because my username there is "Red and Black Revolution!" I'll explain why my positions are not exactly the same as when I took the username several years ago, but for reasons of convenience I've never bothered to change my username there.

I should elaborate, as of course Mr. Harbison cannot. In high school your political education is very embryonic and the controversy-phobic education system does little in the way of positive effort to help matters. While I would not describe (at least not any longer) myself as anarcho-communist I do hold leftist positions that emphasize decentralization and less hierarchy, more communal and democratic ownership of capital. At the time of taking that username, which by the way is based on an Irish anarcho-socialist magazine, there were fights over the explicitly arbitrary rules and authority of my parents, as well as the general lack of a real political education or knowledge of political history. Without knowledge of nuance and past mistakes its much easier to go into hyperbole and start talking about revolution in a kind of campy and chic sense. Having now studied the history of the left and gaining more knowledge and experience in politics and history, I am a bit more tempered, stoic, pluralist (where revolutionaries have no place for opposing views), and knowledgeable. I'd call it a more Tom Hayden style position, but Harbison would just call Hayden a damned commie.

Harbison goes on to imply I might be some sort of gang leader, I guess.

Who would stop the biggest, baddest people from accumulating private property in the absense of a state? Alex thinks he and his friends will be bigger and badder.

I don't even know how that leap was made, but it's Superman-esque. I don't think I've ever taken the position that we need to block people from acquiring private property. But for some Cold Warriors the War never really ended, better dead than red and all that.

There use to be pretty great thinkers, for example Murray Rothbard (see his article "Liberty and the New Left") and Carl Oglesby (see recent interview in Reason magazine), who instead of bickering over whether anarcho-socialists were or were not going to beat capitalists over the head or send them to gulags "come the revolution," recognized that leftists had a viable interest in freedom and worked to build a libertarian and New Left alliance. Now we just have the "libertarians" like Harbison who support the Iraq War and all other crazy nonsense that works against freedom.

It is to laugh, of course; spoiled middle class kids from Lincoln Nebraska should be forced to live in the heart of a big city before they're allowed to bleat their idiotic thoughts on society.

Speak of the devil (idiotic thoughts):
1) I'm from Norfolk, not Lincoln.
2) I'm not sure how "spoiled" and "middle class" I could be, considering my dad was an electrician and my mother worked a series of odd jobs (McDonalds, 7/11, etc.). For much of my life my mother has had health problems, taking a great deal of the family's financial resources. We spent Thanksgiving one year in the hospital as my mother had a pacemaker put in. When my dad was unable to work following a leg injury the company denied workman's comp, claiming he had hurt it playing softball. We were not only forced onto food stamps for a time, but my dad was never employed in Norfolk again. He ended up commuting to a Lincoln job (a 2 hour drive each way) for much of my high school years. And both are, as is becoming more common across America, getting into their "retirement years" without any prospect for retirement.
3) I'm uncertain living in the heart of a big city would change my mind. I'm not exactly afraid of all the scary black people like Harbison, who lives in Hallam (whatever cornfield that's in), seems. Further, while of course recognizing it is probably not causal, the coincidence between urban centers and liberals is rather higher than Harbison's remark might imply.

In short, shove it Harbison.

With his post today and his attack on Mark Weddleton last week Harbison has shown that, with some effort, just about any hairbrained bitter conservative professor can use The Mighty Google to dig up petty dirt on people who write things he doesn't like. It's entertaining, for now, but eventually will wear thin.

Above: Dr. Harbison exploring new Google wilderness reserves to tap for dirt drilling.

Edit: I neglected Mr. Harbisons negligible comment on the Journal-Star page.

" " Petitioners have not only called friends of mine derogatory and bigoted names but, without provocation, have threatened to call the police for harassment and stalking."

What were your friends doing, Alex. Maybe acting as 'Petition blockers'?

Does it matter what they were doing? Petition blocking is a legal and just method of educating potential signers about what they are signing, because petitioners often lie about what they're pushing. The NCRI petitioners have made all sorts of wild claims, as they've done in other states for similar petitions, that the petition will "save" or "help" affirmative action, that it'll prevent special privileges like free college from going to illegal immigrants, etc.

The petitioners have repeatedly attempted to make up laws, harass, and intimidate petition educators, because they have an obvious financial incentive to do so. Regarding the derogatory names: one petitioner called a friend of mine a "communist" and "illegal immigrant" - neither true. Another petitioner called another friend of mine a "faggot" and "homosexual" and told him to go "wave your rainbow flag." None of this behavior is justified by the fact that my friends are educating people about the petition, and none of this behavior is exclusive to educators - as I've heard people from Grand Island and Norfolk say the same thing, these petitioners are mean, nasty, human beings unless you sign their petition.

Reading some blogs...

2008-06-07T18:30:00.000-07:00

This is how a right-wing blog talks about the despicable ad released by the so-called American "Civil Rights" Institute in support of an effort (their effort) to end affirmative action in Nebraksa.

Some things that deserve disputing...

[...]Ward Connerly, described by the Omaha World-Herald as 'a California businessman and affirmative action foe." Of course, the Omaha World-Herald reporter, Martha Stoddard, either in ignorance or by choice, fails to mention that Connerly is a former California Regent and a black man who successfully helped pass a similar initiative in California and in several other states.

Never underestimate someone's ability to read political bias into the media. The World-Herald gave an accurate description of Connerly, a glorification of his previous successes is unnecessary and a distraction from the issue of their article (the ad).

The article also mentions a good friend and conservative, David Kramer who has apparently become a spokesman for Nebraskans United which is apparently "the" group opposed to the initiative.

Not to split hairs but it is "the" coalition of groups and individuals... Nebraskans United is the leading organization opposing the affirmative action ban, if Mr. McPherson knows of another he can not only challenge NU's claim to being the leader but he can also inform the rest of us as to who exactly is.

Clearly, the ad is in bad taste and poorly represents the thrust of the Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative. Chalk one up for Kramer and his group--the financial supporters of which I haven't checked out but can certainly speculate on, but won't.

Nebraskans United has, like the NCRI, disclosed its contributions as the law requires they do (click schedules A and B for contributors). These reports are publicly available, but nevertheless Mr. McPherson chose instead to imply shadowy motives and connections on Nebraskans United.

It's a handy trick, let's see if we can find another use for it. Like, what if I said, "[...]Mr. McPherson - who got a bunch of money from some place I can wildly speculate about, but won't." It's almost as though an invisible asterix is contained in the sentence, leading one to the unstated thought that he probably sells dope to school children.

[Kramer] and [Nebraskans United], along with the editorial page of the Omaha World-Herald, use equally bad taste and scare tactics in their tirades about the inappropriateness of dollars from outside the state funding the initiative and the destruction such an initiative will reap upon our fair state.

Yea, but examples be damned! Nebraskans United has made a point about the fact that where all of their money comes from Nebraskans, 99% of the NCRI's money has come from California and the vulture-fund millionaire from New York mentioned in my previous post. That's not a scare tactic, it's making the point that we want politics to be local, grassroots, and representative of the people here who should have the opportunity to decide their own government and laws collectively without influence from hundreds of miles away. Nebraska has become a target for well-funded right-wing special interest groups like Club for Growth and ACRI who think a few hundred thousand can buy them a slot on our ballots. Nebraskans have had the sense to reject them in 2006 when Club for Growth and others attempted to force a disastrous state spending lid on us, I have faith they'll do so again this year. And thanks to Senator Shimek's LB 39 we won't have to deal with the flood of petitioners engaging in questionable and downright illegal practices again in the future.

Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther King both wanted color blind societies where a person was judge not by the color of his/her skin or by their gender or by anything other than then character and ability.

HA! Mr. McPherson is right - that Reagan and Dr. King agreed - but in the wrong way. Both in fact agreed that affirmative action was a just and necessary solution to the history of racial discrimination in this country.

Ronald Reagan, 1974:

Time and experience have shown that laws and edicts of non-discrimination are not enough. Justice demands that each and every citizen consciously adopt and accentuate a real and personal commitment to affirmative action so as to make equal opportunity a reality.

(For the sake of later argumentative continuity, I understand Reagan later probably opposed affirmative action - I mention this Reagan quote only in jest. I'd never take, and would never want to take, the position that Reagan was some sort of major affirmative action advocate.)

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963, Why We Can't Wait:

Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic.

Dr. King went on, in the same book, to enumerate a massive compensatory justice program not only including affirmative action for ethnic minorities but also for poor whites, which he modeled off of the GI Bill of Rights (an affirmative action program if there ever was one!) and which he called the Bill of Rights of the Disadvantaged. It's a common mistake, nowadays bordering on malevolent ignorance of Dr. King's actual ideas and positions, to take that one line, that one quote, about the content of character from the I Have A Dream speech and think just because of that one sentence Dr. King would oppose affirmative action. Please for the sake of honest debate on the issue, cut it the fuck out already!

In the eye of the beholder, I guess

2008-06-07T17:44:00.000-07:00

Our real good friend, the red-baiting professor Gerard Harbison, wrote a letter to the Journal Star which was published today.

Funds for political cause

I was disturbed to read that the University of Nebraska Foundation is contributing $25,000 in an effort to defeat the Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative.

The alumni and donors who contributed these dollars to the university foundation doubtless thought their donations would be used to help academics, libraries, education or scholarship; they had no idea the money would instead be used to bankroll a political cause they may well disagree with.

How ironic, indeed, if their contributions have the effect of keeping their own children or grandchildren out of certain programs at UNL!

Gerard S. Harbison, Hallam

He says he's "disgusted" by the fact that the Foundation would donate to an effort defending a University policy, but I seem to recall a time when Harbison was explicitly defending the funding of the NCRI from what many would consider a much more odious source.

Vulture funds, disgusting.

2008-05-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

Some stupid shit about a scarf.

My comment was not approved for publication on the Journal-Star, as were others' posts including some originally published then deleted. The Journal-Star apparently believes your ideas are invalid if they state the truth in some controversial or impolite manner, e.g. "Jesus Christ, people, it's a fucking scarf" and "God damn, this is stupid." I went further to mention that these scarves are sold at US military shops overseas, where British and American soldiers buy them because they prevent sunburn to your neck and keep sand out of your nose and mouth. Then I added that we do not consider articles associated with domestic terrorists and murderers to be symbols of the murders themselves. One could only imagine the devastation to Adidas if the hoodie of Ted Kaczynski were forever associated with mail bombs, or the impact on Christianity if the Bible were associated with "pro-life" abortion clinic bombers. But for foreigners this garbage is par for course. It would be a "New Orientalism" if it weren't so old and thuggish.

Progressives for Obama

2008-05-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

Woohoo! Sixties SDSers Carl Davidson and Tom Hayden support Barack Obama (I promise to never link to that website without exceptional reason, by the way).

Carl Davidson at the 2006 SDS National Convention - a photo which I notice the ostensibly pro-property rights World Net Daily is using without attribution to Thomas Good (Next Left Notes). Update: attribution has been added since the publication of this post.

Much of my digital history project focused on Carl Davidson and the way he brought SDS to UNL's campus and spurred activism on a variety of issues for the year he was here. He left UNL after participating in the Meredith March and being elected National Vice President of SDS. Check it out here. You can read the essay that got Davidson elected here: "Toward a Student Syndicalist Movement, or University Reform Revisited."

Are you now or have you ever been...?

2008-05-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

Some right-wing blog sez:

Today, on Capital Hill, two veterans of investigations into Communist influence on the U.S. political process will hold a briefing to release two new explosive reports on Barack Obama’s ties with extreme anti-American elements, including agents of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA. The reports will shed important new light on Barack Obama’s mysterious past.

Are they fucking serious? I mean, aside from the whole deal with Moscow not being the freaking Communist International anymore, it's apparently become official that conservatives in this country are going to do anything and everything - including excavating the rotten corpse of Joe McCarthy - to slander Barack Obama this year.

I'm sure a lot of my lefty friends reading this are thinking, in the back of their minds, "IF ONLY IT WERE TRUE!"

2008-05-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

I've been slacking on updating this, what with finishing classes for the semester and moving into a new apartment. Now that things are kinda settling down and getting more regular (including summer NFP meetings!) I'll be a little more vigilant about this sort of stuff.

Anyways...

So Walmart over the last few years has really wanted to launch itself into the financial world through the creation of an in-store bank. Thanks to grassroots pressure on politicians and the regulatory apparatus of the state, that didn't happen. They succeeded in Mexico, where the results have so far been the predictable disaster for poor people, and they will no doubt attempt it again here.

In the meantime, what Walmart has done is launch a hodge-podge of means to get around the whole issue of not getting their bank. First they actually got an in-store bank, a branch of First National, so that customers could do their banking there. Then, they ripped out the "Family Fun Centers" (these were arcade game areas near checkouts in order to get screaming kids out of the way) and replaced them with the "Walmart Money Center." WMC does a number of things one might normally do at a bank, such as payroll check cashing, but not really any more than Walmart was already doing (before, checkout registers would cash payroll checks - if there was enough cash in the till).

With the creation of pre-paid debit/credit cards they've gone to a whole other level in this endeavor. These are cards you buy at the store, for a charge of ~$9, then load between $100 or several thousand dollars - a restriction stipulates it must be paid either cash or with debit card. But what you're buying is simply a temporary card, they have to send you the actual card itself. And then there's a million charges for everything you do with it:

Standard Fees
One-time Temporary Card Issuance Fee at Wal-Mart store $8.94
Reload Personalized Card at Wal-Mart (No Check Cashing) $4.64
Reload Personalized Card at Wal-Mart (Check Cashing) $0.00
Reload Personalized Card at Green Dot Location (other than Wal-Mart store) Varies by Retailer
Additional Personalized Card Fee $8.94
ATM Cash Transaction – Domestic $1.95
ATM Cash Transaction - International $3.50
ATM Balance Inquiry $0.75
POS Cash Back $0.00
Wal-Mart POS Balance Inquiry $0.00
IVR (Automatic Telephone System) Balance Inquiry $0.00
Monthly Maintenance Fee $4.94
Operator Assisted Call $2.00
Teller Cash Transaction $3.50
Lost/Stolen Replacement Personalized Card $8.94
Paper Periodic Statement Fee $2.00
PIN Debit Purchase $0.00
Signature Debit Purchase $0.00
Stop Payment Order Fee (see section 7) $5.00
Negative Balance Fee $0.00
Rush Delivery of Personalized Card $19.95
Foreign Transactions (see section 19) 2%

Good lord. Walmart is a money vampire, draining you and your communities of economic sustenance. These are the sort of exploitive charges you find at a Bank of America or Payday Advance.

They're hitting the streets

2008-05-08T20:54:00.000-07:00

We're getting reports that NCRI petition-gatherers have been spotted at various points around the city. Some people are spontaneously choosing to watch these guys and urge potential signatories to "decline to sign" - in fact one of them, a friend of mine, was almost arrested today for "harassment," but let go because the charge wouldn't stick. The goal probably wasn't to arrest him, sometimes police will harass activists to scare them and others in line. Some day in the future we'll have to seriously deal with that sort of unethical manipulation by the cops.

Anyways, petitioners have been spotted at these places:
UNL Campus - at least 4 over the last month, 3 of them this week.
Walmart (north)- at least 4 in the last three weeks, 3 of them this week.
County Courthouse - at least 1 this week.
Target (48th street) - at least 1 this week.

So the message is clear, they are going to ramp things up for the next 2 months and we better watch out. Grab some "decline to sign" cards and help urge people to not support this petition, funded by out-of-state blood money from vulture funds.

Anti-affirmative action effort is 0-2

2008-05-04T19:41:00.000-07:00

The attempt this year to ban affirmative action programs in five states (Oklahoma, Missouri, Colorado, Nebraska, and Arizona) has proven rough and it's getting rougher. The petition was withdrawn in Oklahoma under severe allegations of fraudulent petition-gathering. That was a minor victory, but enough to give us hope. The petition effort in Colorado has had numerous allegations but they have not withdrawn the petition yet. We also are hearing reports of troubles in Arizona collecting enough signatures.

Word going around is today they also failed in Missouri. Over the last few weeks they had attempted an awesome push to gather signatures, including paying people in Michigan $1000/week to come to Missouri and help gather signatures and even getting help from groups with well-known racist and neo-Nazi tendencies such as the Minutemen. Despite that huge effort, despite all the money, despite every organizational advantage, not enough people signed the petition to put it on Missouri's ballot.

What the hell does that mean? All of these states were targeted for their steadfast conservative voting record - yet they cannot gain enough signatures to even get on the ballots. That could be one hell of a strong signal about where this country is going politically this year.

The effort in Nebraska does not have to turn in their signatures until July 4th. What happened in Missouri could also happen here, possibly with a vendetta after (hopefully) losing the ballot effort in the other four states and certainly with many resources freed up for their advantage. Watch out.

Update:

“Here in Nebraska, we’re going to go full tilt,” he said. “We’re gung-ho. We’re going to give it everything we’ve got.”

Looks like Marc "I don't care where the money comes from!" Schniederjans is out for blood. Of course given the lack-luster attempts to gather signatures in this state so far, the NCRI's attempt to go "gung-ho" might be as invigorating as a documentary movie by Ben Stein.

Like chickens, pies also come home to roost

2008-04-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

Hell yeah!

SDS hunger strike ends

2008-04-25T22:36:00.001-07:00

SDSers at the University of Florida went on a hunger strike two weeks ago, demanding that their university spend their money in a socially responsible and ethical manner. After 14 days without food, the group resumed eating without any of their demands met.

More information as it becomes available.

Iowa City activist arrested

2008-04-22T23:21:00.000-07:00

At the CAN conference over the weekend I had the opportunity to meet David Goodner. Though I did not have a chance to talk with him at any length, his skills as an organizer and his articulate speech and argument during the conference speeches and workshops impressed me a great deal.

It is in that vein that leaves me sad to hear he was arrested just days later. Two posts from his blog at the Des Moines Register:
Iowa House rolls back women's rights, Goodner goes to jail.
Citizens have no constitutional obligation to allow hate groups to speak freely.

More: Women have been terminating unwanted pregnancies for thousands of years.

Updates as they become available.

CAN Conference Reportback

2008-04-19T20:42:00.000-07:00

Some happenings at the Campus Antiwar Network Midwest conference:
We arrived a little late (around 9:30pm) to find a pretty amazing bar scene downtown on Dubuque street in Iowa City. Not only are the food places open real late, but they actually have cabs waiting nearby for anybody who may happen to need one. And they have super-cabs. I'm sure there's a more specialized name for them, but basically it's a cab somewhat like a Volkswagen but with many more seats in the back.

CAN and SDS have a hell of a lot of energy and enthusiasm. You can't quite tell a CAN or SDS member just by looking at them, but you get a kind of feeling like "hey, this fella's a cool cat." We partied at The Mill (totally unlike Lincoln's "The Mill") until around 1 or 1:30am. We crashed at this Lutheran ministry - nice couches, but nobody seemed to be there except us.

Saturday, we arrived at MacBride Hall a little early. I worked on my project on my laptop, which made some guy come over and say "I've never seen a revolutionary who uses Windows." Fantastic. One of the things I find kind of weird is the chic revolutionaries. People who wear Che or Mao shirts (and there were some of them at the CAN conference), and talk like we're in some kind of revolutionary situation right now. It's become sorta campy, to the point that a lot of my lefty activist friends in Nebraska poke fun at this sort of stuff.

There were four periods of workshops. I tried to attend workshops that would be relevant and helpful to what we're doing in Nebraska. At 11am I attended "2008 Elections: How Should the Peace Movement Relate to the 2008 Elections?" A person formerly from the Obama campaign, a Green Party spokeswoman, and a CAN person all spoke. There was much debate - with a general consensus on one thing: we're all pessimistic about Obama's willingness to end the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and reduce the military/industrial machine.

The second period I attended "Lessons of the 1960s." I'll admit, that was kinda for me, but in fairness the other options ("The Military-Industrial Complex" "Sociologists in a Time of War" and "Artivism") didn't seem particularly new or useful to our purpose. Lessons of the 60s was the most attended of this period. Originally Frederick Jones was to speak about the Weather Underground Organization. He never showed, for better or worse. A man who writes for Socialist Review and was active in SDS back in the mid-60s (and participated in Czechago '68, not as an SDSer) spoke instead. He emphasized base-building and mass movements (he barely went into Weatherman, which I actually thought was a good move - who needs those old sectarians and their tired old left hat?), and then emphasized the model of SNCC, the "beloved community." The question and answer period followed. Unfortunately people became fixated on the mention of the Weather Underground, with the result that much of the debate was about something vaguely called "direct action" and something called "base building." These terms didn't mean anything substantive, not the way they were thrown around like Iraqi dogs. Some people talked about something called "The Weather Model," whatever that means - Weather was making their shit up as they went along. They had no coherent plan, just moral condemnation and some crap about "solidarity" with Third World struggles and internally colonized peoples. A lady running for Congress with the Socialist Workers Party announced their presence at the convention and made some immediately forgetful statements about the need for a militant labor movement. A kid stood up and declared that we, in that room, were the "vanguard of the antiwar movement." Ick. Gag. It got so bad I was ready to storm out of the room. But I held out, finally the speaker gave some powerful closing remarks (and responses to the debate). I leave the room, breathing the cleanest air I can remember. Ahhhhh....

The next workshop I attended was "Counter-Recruitment." This was, by far, the most down-to-earth level-headed workshop I've attended in my life. We had two CAN guys, one from NEIU who had been involved in a major successful campaign to drive recruiters off campus. We discussed tactics, where to get literature, ways of getting information out of the government, discussed the role of faculty and administrators (eerily reminiscent of the way Carl Davidson would discuss them back in the mid-60s). I learned a lot from this one, and I hope we can figure out some way to get similar results. Two major things: 1) couple the counter-recruitment drive with a divestment drive. Get your university's dollars (YOUR DOLLARS!) out of the Department of Offense. 2) Follow up a successful counter-military recruitment campaign with a campaign to knock corporate recruiters and war profiteers off campus.

In the final workshop, most conference attendees went to the RNC Welcoming Committee workshop. We've decided to use our resources more locally, so we're probably not going to the RNC this year. I attended the "Chapter Building" workshop, which was a pretty good discussion about different ways to attract new recruits, retain members, get people involved. Much of the statements and conclusions reached were things we had already concluded in UNL-NFP. For example, building personal connections and friendships with new members. Others weren't quite as up to things as we are, one person asked what "tabling" was, another wanted to know how we ran meetings. I think the discussion helped them a lot, we'll see.

The night ended with a series of speeches, one a CAN activist, an Arab woman, and a very enthusiastic writer from ZNet. We attended the second RNC Welcoming Committee workshop this morning, which was about what one would expect, and then headed back home. Overall a great conference, and I hope to emulate some of the best aspects when we hold our Nebraska activist conference in September.

A New Left/Progressive's Filmography

2008-04-16T20:58:00.000-07:00

Ok - what I'd like to do with this is create one post with a collection of most films that would generally interest New Leftists, progressives, liberals, etc. Got a suggestion? Put it in comments. As I discover new films, I'll edit this post. I'll keep a link on the right side of the blog for ease of access. Categories will be alphabetical, while films will be alphabetical within their categories (or will be sometime), an asterix indicating that I own a copy. Short descriptions of the films if possible. In the future I'd like to attempt something similar for books or music, but that of course is a much larger task.

American Indian Movement
Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee

Berkeley/Free Speech Movement
Berkeley in the 60s

Black Panthers
A Huey P. Newton Story
Passin' It On: The Black Panthers' Search for Justice
The Murder of Fred Hampton
What We Want, What We Believe: The Black Panther Party Library

Black Power
Finally Got the News: the Detroit League of Revolutionary Black Workers/Revolutionary Union Movement (1970)
The Spook Who Sat By The Door

Capitalism
The Corporation
Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices

Civil Rights Movement
Brother Outside: Bayard Rustin

Environment
Who Killed the Electric Car

Globalization
*This is What Democracy Looks Like - about Battle of Seattle, 1999

Healthcare
Sicko

Hurricane Katrina
When The Levees Broke

Iraq War
No End in Sight
Iraq For Sale
Why We Fight
Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War
The Ground Truth

Law and Order/Police Repression/Cointelpro
Chicago 10 - about the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests, resulting trial.
Disturbing the Universe - about radical lawyer William Kunstler (upcoming)
The Murder of Fred Hampton
The U.S. v. John Lennon
Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties

Media
Control Room - about Arab media outlet Al-Jazeera
Outfoxed - Robert Greenwald's film about Rupert Murdoch and Fox News Channel

Miscellaneous (multiple categories)
American Revolution 2 - covers Chicago '68, Black Panthers of Chicago, and Young Patriots

Noam Chomsky
*Distorted Morality: America's War on Terror?
*Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media
Imperial Grand Strategy: The Conquest of Iraq and the Assault on Democracy

SDS
*Rebels With A Cause - oral history by SDSers
Columbia Revolt 1968

Vietnam War
*Sir No Sir!

Violent Revolution
The Weather Underground (2004)
*Guerrilla: The Taking of Patti Hearst

Politeness is killing us

2008-04-13T21:25:00.001-07:00

One thing I just don't understand about our political system is how statements which are true, and things which we should talk about now more than ever, become so-called gaffes which we hush down and demand apologies for. The recent bit about Barack Obama and working-class bitterness are just one example. Obama said:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

It's entirely true, and I think borne out by evidence both from our own personal experiences and the social sciences, that with the loss of jobs people will feel bitterness at a system which is not dedicated to helping them. It's also true that some of them will misplace that anger. Others will seek solstice in other activities and interests. Rather than apologize for this remark, Obama should seek to capitalize on it. Articulate just how that system fails to help them, and will continue to fail helping them without a massive national political effort to readjust the priorities of the national budget (away from militarization) and the national economy (towards people, not profit). As Obama gave an amazing speech in the midst of the Jeremiah Wright "scandal" (the biggest contrived guilt-by-association bullshit until this more recent "gaffe"), Obama could take the opportunity to give a historic speech on poverty and class in our society. With any luck, even if it does nothing else, such a speech might make Sean "class war" Hannity's head finally explode.

Another bit I fail to understand is how "polite" protest and demonstrators are supposed to be. I've heard many recent statements, from friends, from a couple professors, from politicians worldwide, to not boycott the Olympics. They say the Olympics are an international event which is supposed to bring us together, not to be politicized. I find such a thought horrifying, disgusting, shameful, and especially ignorant. Tell the people of Darfur and Tibet, suffering under the brutal perpetration or enabling of the Chinese government, about this international fraternal bonding. Tell them to not use every means at their disposal to publicize their suffering and end the unjustice. You can tell them when Team Tibet and Team Darfur arrive at the games, how about that.

One wonders, had there even been a boycott of the 1936 Munich Olympics (over, say, the exclusion of opposition parties in Nazi Germany, or the murder of political opponents), whether such people would still be calling on us to set aside politics for the games.

This is a worrying tendency among contemporary American liberals, to neutralize protest before it's even begun!!! They ask you to be polite; don't rock the boat, don't protest military recruiters just doing their job, don't say fuck (FUCK!), don't spray graffiti, don't be loud, and on and on. They ask you to do your protest during certain times in certain places, where people won't give a shit, away from the meeting places of those in power so they don't have to see, don't have to hear, the demands. Most infuriatingly, to me at least, is they say "Be like King, be like Gandhi!" Like King and Gandhi are the only examples of successful grassroots movements? I much rather like the Alinsky approach, your movement should approach things tactically, and strategically, to find out what works, what doesn't in a pragmatic style. For example, in order to desegregate seating in a local arts theater he threatened to hold a huge dinner before going to the theater. Everyone who attended would get beans, only beans, and then cause a huge stink in the place. Alinsky never had to actually carry it out, the threat was so noxious the city leaders caved. King himself understood that those in power rarely give up their privileges willingly, without significant public pressure. Escalating your tactics increases the pressure immensely. If you only ask politely - and those in power know you will only go that far, never farther - they'll pretend to listen, kindly boot your ass out the door, and carry on about their daily business as usual.

The Ink and the Quill (Be Afraid)

2008-04-12T01:11:00.000-07:00

New music from Anti-Flag

Also: I've added two more articles to the Documents on New SDS section. One describes the refounding of SDS in 2006 by Pat Korte, Al Haber (founder of the original SDS in 1960), Tom Good (from Next Left Notes) and others. The other is a statement written by Korte for the 2006 SDS Convention, explaining the reasoning behind that restart.

More organizing

2008-04-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

My carpool for the CAN Midwest conference in Iowa City is filling up quickly. I've still got at least one seat left in the van, so contact me if you want in. A Creighton SDSer has offered her car for an Omaha carpool if we need more seats.

It's going to be big! CAN organizers are expecting between 200-300 people. They need confirmations so they can arrange housing. They also need to know if you have any special needs or preferences (smoking/nonsmoking, etc.). I'm really excited to see the RNC Welcoming Committee and Norman Finkelstein, an outspoken critic of Israeli policies in Palestine, speak.

Everyone is welcome to come see Rebels With A Cause when we arrive back on Sunday. We'll be showing it at the Union Auditorium, 7pm. It's a documentary and oral history of SDS, including Carl Davidson who was a grad student and founder of UNL's SDS chapter in 1965-1966. I'll be giving a short talk, sort of introducing the movie and talking about the rebirth of SDS, and then we'll start the film. People are welcome to ask questions about these things, or maybe even plan some actions, after the film.

Ben Nelson: We break it, they buy it!

2008-04-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

Nelson: Iraq should pay for reconstruction
By DON WALTON / Lincoln Journal Star
Monday, Apr 07, 2008 - 02:54:41 pm CDT

If Iraq is required to pay for its own reconstruction, that could be the impetus that triggers political, security and economic progress, Sen. Ben Nelson said Monday.

“It is time to end the cycle of dependency and the era of blank checks from the United States,” Nelson told an Omaha news conference monitored by telephone.

Yeah, those Iraqi welfare queens get all the breaks. If they had to pay for the bombs, guns, and mercenaries killing their children they might think twice about resisting American occupation!

I've got an alternative idea, how about every single person who lobbied for the war, voted for the war, and continues to vote for funding the war, they can all collectively carry the financial burden rather than the American taxpayer. We'll find out just how hawkish you are when it's your money on the line.

Wait just a goddamned minute there...

2008-04-07T08:09:00.000-07:00

An Associated Press article reprinted in today's Omaha World-Herald says:

Fears of genocide after Iraq pullout
Baghdad (AP) -- The United States is no closer to achieving its goals in Iraq than it was a year ago, but a quick military withdrawal could lead to massive chaos and even genocide, says a report released Sunday by a U.S. think tank.

The nonpartisan U.S. Institute report was written by advisers to the Iraq Study Group, a panel mandated by Congress to offer recommendations on U.S. policy in Iraq in 2006.

The report cited security improvements in Iraq since the buildup of U.S. forces in 2007, but credited factors outside U.S. control, such as help from mostly Sunni fighters who turned against al-Qaida, as well as a truce by a Shiite militias [sic].

"The U.S. is no closer to being able to leave Iraq than it was a year ago," the report concluded. "Lasting political development could take five to 10 years of full, unconditional U.S. commitment to Iraq."

Surely a "nonpartisan" and "nongovernmental" group like the "U.S. Institute of Peace" is just giving their honest opinion about the matter. Well, not so much as one might like. The AP article is correct to note the USIP was instrumental in helping create the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group but fails to note some crucial things about the ISG. Primarily, despite being shrouded in a veil of bipartisanship it was not bipartisan in a meaningful sense. Instead of having both pro and anti Iraq War partisans - something which may have brought much needed discussion about the real dearth of options regarding the war - it went for the typical Republican/Democratic bipartisanship. Leadership from the two parties need not disagree necessarily with the basic foundations of US foreign policy, however, and that was the case with Baker-Hamilton. The 10 members of the group, five Republicans and five Democrats, established a certain boundary over which discussion about "options" could occur. These limits were generally, though not always explicitly, between staying in Iraq until "the job was done" (whatever that means) and leaving a smaller force to deal only with al-Qaida in Iraq and other foreign fighters (the non-ironic use of such a phrase by Iraq's largest foreign fighting force -the US- tells a lot about the assumptions the group made). The hearings themselves were conducted using mostly your typical Washington foreign policy insiders for testimony, including Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, John McCain, Madeline Albright [who once said "it's worth it" in answer to a question about the half million children who died from Iraq sanctions in the mid-90s, sanctions the UN labeled genocide], and others. And the ISG has had the impact it hoped, where even the "antiwar" candidate Barack Obama has endorsed the Baker-Hamilton report and continues to argue for implementation of the ISG recommendations.

Further, the AP article fails to fully appreciate the link this "NGO" has with the government. USIP was created by an act of Congress, it's board members are nominated by the President before being evaluated by Congress, and it's significant funding comes from the Federal government for all sorts of peacekeeping/conflict resolution projects ranging from mild reports such as the one reported all the way to actually training Iraqi government employees (vested interest? Noooooo.....). President Bush actually had anti-Muslim extremist Daniel Pipes on the board of USIP through a recess appointment for some time. It should come as no surprise then that this "Institute of Peace" parrots the established line on Iraq.

Campus Antiwar Network Midwest Conference

2008-04-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

In the next 6-8 months the Midwest student antiwar movement will be taking a deep look at itself, reevaluating its position, its strengths and weaknesses, and reformulating tactics. Nebraskans for Peace is holding it's annual conference in Omaha April 12th, focusing mostly on Stratcom (the military command and air base) but also including workshops on campus organizing and countering military recruitment. In September UNL-Nebraskans for Peace/SDS with other campus progressive groups are holding our own Midwest activist training workshop.

The big one, though, the one everyone from NFP, SDS, CAN, and an alphabet soup of other organizations, are talking about is the conference in Iowa City, April 18-20. I will be bringing a few people from Nebraska (from Lincoln, Norfolk, and Omaha), and we'll be meeting with a member of Detroit SDS who is originally from Omaha.

Their War, Our World:
Building a Student Resistance
Campus Antiwar Network
Midwest Regional Conference
April 18-20th in Iowa City, Iowa

The bloody and unjust U.S. occupations continue while the majority opposes them. Veterans speak out against the war and the media is silent. It's time to get together and organize a strong student antiwar movement!

Students from campuses across the Midwest will be convening to share their organizing experiences. Together, through workshops and plenaries, we'll try to address some of the issues facing the antiwar movement today, educating ourselves, as well as combining efforts to create long and short-term strategies to end the war.

Saturday April 19

Talks on: Why We Say Troops Out Now and the Aims of the War on Terror

Workshops include: The Cost of the War, Lessons of the 1960s, Afghanistan: The 'Good' War?, Military-Industrial Complex, The Government of Iraq, Racism against Arabs and Muslims, Counter-Recruitment, The RNC 2008 Protest (featuring the RNC Welcoming Committee), Direct Action, Election 2008, Media Skillz, and Campus-based Chapter Building.

Sunday, April 20

Put the War on Trial!

Members of the Campus Antiwar Network and Iraq Veterans Against the War will bring our case against the war, from it's foundation to its execution.

Registration is $10 with a sliding scale. No one will be turned away due to a lack of funds.

Ideally, all these conferences will somewhat solidify a very loose collection of activists in various locales around the Midwest. We can begin to make these personal connections and friendships that will last, we can begin more coordinating, wide-ranging, and successful campaigns to change the politics of America's heartland.

Fighting for diversity

2008-03-31T23:05:00.001-07:00

The UNL-Nebraskans for Peace banquet on Saturday was a huge success. We had four really great speakers. Lela Shanks, a lifelong civil rights activist, made a speech which everyone agreed was outstanding. With the tickets, art auction, and private donations we managed to raise $1500 for Students United for Nebraska (SUN). SUN was created as a coalition of UNL student groups to defend affirmative action from the Ward Connerly Initiative, they will use the money for outreach and education on affirmative action throughout the state.

Some photos

Set up - after setting out the dishes, making some paper cranes.

Sarah, the president of NFP last year and the originator of the annual fundraising banquet idea, selling some tickets.

Ricky, president of NFP, giving some introductory remarks.

Then Ricky dismissed tables to eat. Above you can see Patrick, our adviser, and Dick Hargesheimer, the man who gave so much courageous time and effort to the anti-death penalty campaign this year with Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty.

Patrick Jones gave the first speech, giving an overall history of affirmative action. Patrick emphasized both that, historically, a lot of racial preference policies have benefited white, male, heterosexuals. He also made sure to emphasize the need to seek a just society where poor blacks and poor whites don't have to compete for these jobs or university admissions, we need to seek a just society where opportunities are available for all.

Anna Shavers described the legal history of affirmative action and other cases involving black freedom.

Lela Shanks gave an amazing speech emphasizing human rights and human dignity.

Jose Soto gave a very emphatic speech, emphasizing the odds we face in our struggle all the way to November.

Afterwards, we attempted to get the art to the people who had won their art auction (we were mostly successful), cleaned up the place, and had some fun at a local bar called Yia-Yias. Above you can see most of this year's active NFP membership (only a couple were unable to attend).

We can't wait to do next year's banquet. Optimistically, one might even aim to double the amount of money raised. The only problem is seeing which issues are contemporary next spring, and which need the money for a clear program of activism.

All these photos were taken by Amanda.

There's a Change Gonna Come

2008-03-27T12:40:00.000-07:00

It seems like the student movement really is building, at least in a basic state. Students United for Nebraska, a UNL group to combat the so-called "Nebraska" "Civil Rights" Initiative, was created just in the last two months. It's a coalition of most of the active progressive groups on campus. UNL-Nebraskans for Peace joined, at the urging of another student and myself, the Students for a Democratic Society. Other SDS chapters are starting to be built at NECC in Norfolk and at Creighton.

I would like to thank the national SDS organization, even with it's loose structure. Their Welcoming Committee is actively engaging everyone who signs up as a member or a chapter on the SDS website, which is a very basic form of getting people involved. I think it'll prove successful and key to the building of SDS nationwide. We are throwing ideas back and forth on how to increase actions in Nebraska, and one idea, in a very preliminary state, would be to drive around and meet students at the various colleges and high schools in the state, make those personal connections that can get people involved. We don't have any experience doing this, so we'll give it a shot.

Some Iraq and some death penalty news

2008-03-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
Oh, and Dick "The Dick" Cheney reminds us... "So?"

Other shit.

On a happier note, my digital history project is coming along well. It'll be finished around the first week of May.

A tyrrannizing caricature of the past

2008-03-25T06:22:00.000-07:00

This was almost a perfect article about a New SDS activist, appearing in the New York Times a couple days ago. While it describes New SDS in a good light, it does so at the expense of furthering the good protester/bad protester narrative that creeps up so often in media by accusing Sixties SDS of being violent and irrational. What it ignores is that the Columbia strike grew because the school was building a segregated gym in a park near a predominantly black community, then answered early demands for integrating it by offering to allow black people a back door entrance - Gym Crow, as the protesters called it. When change was not forthcoming, of course protests escalated, as did the administration's response when it unleashed the cops on the protesters. Ultimately the protesters were successful in getting the plans for the gym eliminated.

Let's get on with it!!!

2008-03-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

Daniel Ellsberg was at UNL last semester, when he gave an amazing speech on the duties of citizens to expose government wrongdoing. He's famous for himself exposing the Pentagon Papers, documents which detailed the US war against Vietnam. Ellsberg has also been very active in the new antiwar movement, calling for whistleblowers to come forth and expose the Bush administration. But he's also willing to put his own freedom on the line in this fight. Last week during protests on the 5th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, Ellsberg and others performed a die-in that blocked traffic for some time before being arrested. He gave a powerful speech which deserves to be widely reprinted.

[These were my remarks to several hundred activists and supporters participating in a die-in in downtown San Francisco at noon today, March 19, 2008, on the fifth anniversary of the launching of shock and awe in Iraq. All those blocking traffic–surprisingly, for a couple of hours, before we were all arrested–were handcuffed, booked and released some hours later for a later court date. I chose to paraphrase, in part, a statement to the court I had heard my older son Robert make in Colorado thirty years ago this spring, when we were on trial for blocking the railroad tracks leading to the Rocky Flats Nuclear Production Plant in 1978.]

On this fifth anniversary of an ongoing American crime against the peace, it is well to remember the 40th anniversary–four days ago, this last Sunday–of an American war crime in a hamlet named My Lai. On March 16, 1968, American soldiers–as brave as any fighting now in Iraq–obeyed blatantly illegal orders to gun down 504 Vietnamese civilians, nearly all women, children and infants.

The war in Iraq is a My Lai writ large: on a scale of a thousand. The best estimate of the number of civilians killed in this war, as of last year, is 1.2 million. Not all of those, by any means, have been killed by Americans. Many have been murdered by Iraqis; but American airpower has killed a very high proportion of those civilians, along with indiscriminate ground fire; and it was an American decision that unleashed this slaughter five years ago. 1.2 million people. That corresponds to a My Lai a day, every day, for six and a half years. That’s longer than this war has yet lasted, but not nearly as long as it will probably last.

The Republican candidate for president has projected an occupation of fifty to a hundred years. That could very well prove to be realistic. Of the two Democratic candidates, neither one has been willing to commit–even to an intention–to have every American soldier out of Iraq by the end of her or his first term: five years from now. That is unacceptable. But that situation will not change unless the American people demand that it change. We must demand that our representatives in Congress–as Representative Barbara Lee and others have proposed in resolutions that have not reached the floor for a vote– cut off the funding for any American presence in Iraq, including enduring bases, except for purpose of withdrawal over a period of months. We must demand that a candidate who wants our support and our votes commit to that same goal.

The people lying in the street here [as I began these remarks, people had begun lying down in a die-in in the middle of the intersection of Market and Montgomery Streets in downtown San Francisco, in front of the office of Senator Diane Feinstein] symbolize both the nearly four thousand American dead and the more than a million Iraqis who have died in the war. But they also express, with our bodies, our lives, that this war is continuing, as it began, without our consent.

By lying here– obstructing for moments or hours business as usual–fifty of us, a hundred, a thousand across the country, do not have the power to end this war. But we are trying to show that we as a people–if we have the will and determination–do have that power: the power to change ourselves and history. We as a people have the power to end this war. And that is what we must do.

Let’s get on with it.

[At this point my wife Patricia and I joined more than sixty others stopping traffic by lying in the intersection, awaiting arrest.]

Electoral politics

2008-03-23T21:52:00.000-07:00

There was a huge debate a couple weeks ago on the Midwest SDS listserv over whether SDS or it's individual activists should really be engaging in the election campaign or voting this year. I'll have more to say later, including an upcoming article in Whooping Crane, but suffice it to say I'm incredibly depressed by the hostility of so many activists to one of the few democratic processes we actually have.

I really detest what I have come to call the Tweedledum-Tweedledee Analysis. That's the argument that no matter who you elect from either party it'll be the same old crap. There are differences between candidates. They might seem small from your national or internationalist or activist-strategy perspective, but to the people who are actually impacted by these policies they make a huge difference. History isn't a science with controlled experiments (as Noam Chomsky seems to use it) but it provides us with some examples where we can speculate about different outcomes. Would we be in Iraq or continue to ignore global warming and deregulate industry with a President Gore? Would we have pulled out of Kyoto and the ABM treaty then? To the people these policies impact - which is really everybody in the world - these differences matter. For some they can mean life or death, for a lot of Iraqis the election and reelection of Bush has meant death.

I believe the individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner was the first to develop the idea of voting as a means of self-defense. That's exactly how I view it. I'm entirely comfortable voting for the lesser of two evils if it means less suffering happens as a result. Voting is morally a consequentialist choice, and refusing to vote for the lesser evil inherently aids a worse evil into office. That isn't an endorsement of either the candidate or the system, it's an allegiance which lasts about as long as it takes to mark a ballot.

Something minor I was thinking about

2008-03-12T22:06:00.000-07:00

Be realistic and do the impossible, because if we don't do the impossible, we face the unthinkable.
Murray Bookchin, writer, educator. Attributed.

This appears in the book The Quotable Rebel: Political Quotations for Dangerous Times, edited by Teishan Latner. I mine this book for works by lesser-known progressive/left activists when I can't think of any book I really want to get. It actually sounds like the Bookchin quote is a cross between one of the slogans of the French General Strike of 1968 and the ending of the Port Huron Statement.

Port Huron Statement: "As students, for a democratic society, we are committed to stimulating this kind of social movement, this kind of vision and program is campus and community across the country. If we appear to seek the unattainable, it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable."

May '68 Slogans: Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible. (Be realistic, demand the impossible.)

Hmmm....

Serj Tankian, Sky Is Over

2008-03-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

Serj Tankian is one of the few people that can write poetry I like. He also writes music that I really like. Here's a video from his album "Elect the Dead."

Behind closes eyes lie
The minds ready to awaken you,
Are you at war with land
And all of it's creatures,
Your not-so-gentle persuasion
Has been known to wreck economies
Of countries, of empires, the sky is over,
Don't you want to hold me baby,
Disappointed, going crazy...

Serj is creating a video for each song on the album, usually emphasizing some social wrong(s) such as poverty, war, and environmental destruction. Skyisover.net for example is advertised at the end of the music video, and the website has a list of links to environmental groups' websites.

The video he made for Saving Us is stunning.

NCRI's Harbison gives non sequitur response in defense of his corrupt funding

2008-03-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Remember how the so-called Nebraska "Civil Rights" Initiative, the plan to ban affirmative action for women and ethnic minorities, got all of it's funding to date from a corrupt businessman who exploits Third World debt? Gerard Harbison, who seems to spend much of his work time online lest he miss a chance to attack liberals, responded to New Nebraska Network about the charge. Well, "responded" might be giving the post too much credit...

Distressed debt
Actually, a small fraction of Elliott Associates' business comes from sovereign distressed debt. Elliott aren't even mentioned in the Wikipedia article on distressed securities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

There are other hedge funds that do a lot more distressed debt trading. One such is the Fortress Investment Group, John Edwards' former employer. Edwards reportedly still has 16 million dollars worth of Fortress shares.

Whom did you endorse for President, Kyle?

That's the problem with sanctimony. It so often comes around to bite you from behind.
by: Gerard Harbison @ Sat Mar 08, 2008 at 15:22:02 PM CST

Ah yes, the tried and true tactic of "hey, look over there!" Harbison, however, is in a more unique position than a random Edwards supporter to influence the money. Harbison knows Marc Schneiderjans, the NCRI treasurer (or so I've heard). The two are working together on the campaign and Harbison could easily ask him to return the donation. Of course, as this blood money is the sole publicly disclosed contribution to the NCRI thus far, it might put them in some financial straits.

Kyle responds...

Harbison really should be ashamed of himself attempting so pathetic a defense of the disgusting and unethical practices of Singer and his Elliott Associates, the investment firm he founded over 30 years ago. The best excuse he can come up with for accepting $50,000 from this toxic source is the fact that only hundreds of millions of dollars in Singer's multi-billion dollar fund comes from ripping off third world countries and manipulating debt forgiveness programs that are supposed to help the starving and poverty-stricken.

Again, we see the true ugliness behind those attempting to end affirmative action in public employment and education. In making the above defense, Harbison has embarrassed himself and the cause he serves. If either he or the so-called Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative had any decency whatsoever, they would send Singer's dirty money back to New York City and leave this issue to be decided by the people of Nebraska.

Update: Harbison responds again. This time he straight up defends vulture funds, saying it's a "vital part" of the economy, while of course demeaning liberals, and that it forced the corrupt government of Peru to pay up. Of course this ignores a vital fact of Third World debt: often it's the corrupt leaders who take the loans for personal profit, and the nation's taxpayers are forced to fork over the repayment. This is the case with Indonesia, where the Suharto family holds roughly the same amount of wealth as the nation's debt, and I imagine that's the case with the Peru loan. Third World debt should be collected from the corrupt leaders, in power or not, or the debt should be forgiven if it "must" stay a collective debt on the nation. Letting those leaders make off with the money and suing the nation's taxpayers for repayment is equivalent to wealth redistribution from the poor to the rich.

Chicago 10

2008-03-10T11:33:00.000-07:00

This looks to be an amazing movie.

Bonus: Bobby Seale arguing with Judge Hoffman

Not just naming the system, but breaking it too.

2008-03-07T00:00:00.001-08:00

Since McCain has sealed the deal for the Republican nomination, I think it's appropriate to recall his appearance on Bill OReilly's show last year. Bill expresses outrage that something called "the far left" wants to break down the "white, Christian, male power structure" of which he and McCain are a part, and McCain proceeds to agree with OReilly's assumption that this is a bad thing.

We gotta fight the powers that be.

Anti-Affirmative Action Petition Funded By Corrupt New York Billionaire

2008-03-06T19:21:00.001-08:00

Kyle Michaelis did an excellent piece on the funding behind the so-called Nebraska "Civil Rights" Initiative. Turns out it's a New York billionaire who makes profit off of Third World debt, and now has it out for domestic minorities.

When Ward Connerly spoke here at UNL, a friend of mine and activist with Students United for Nebraska (SUN), asked Connerly up front, "Can you name any credible civil rights organizations that support you?" Connerly dismissed the question by saying credibility was debatable. Well, we still don't know if any legit civil rights organizations support him, but we know full well this exploitive asshole backs the measure.

Ignorance only thinks there's bliss

2008-03-05T15:33:00.000-08:00

Sadly, No! has a post about a Washington Post chat with Charlotte Allen. One particularly not insightful comment:

Charlotte Allen: I said Katrina was the best thing to happen to New Orleans because it finally opportunity to a huge number of New Orleans residents living in passive dependency on welfare to get out of New Orleans and change their lives for the better.

I spent a week in the South over holiday break, helping to build sheds and tear down ruined homes in Waveland, Mississippi. After that we toured the devastated parishes of New Orleans. People who have not gone down there to see the damage, to participate in the reconstruction effort, are incredibly unaware of what the situation is at the present time. Most of the homes are still devastated, a lot of families have not moved back. Some businesses have already said they won't come back (Six Flags, some Walmarts, etc.). Many businesses that have come back are laying people off, or outright folding. Suicide rates are at an all-time high, while exorbitant rent, uncooperative FEMA and MEMA, a lack of jobs, and policies prohibiting return frustrate the lives of the those still carrying on.

Comments like these, they should be unbelievable. Instead they're the norm. And it is because Katrina is beginning to recede into memory for most people that the money for further reconstruction is drying up. Ignorance is going to perpetuate the tragedy and the injustice that residents of southern Louisiana and Mississippi have had to endure.

Ron Jacobs, "The Way the Wind Blew"

2008-03-04T12:02:00.000-08:00

In the breakup of SDS in 1969, one faction called the Weatherman, and eventually the Weather Underground Organization, viewed the time as right for a white revolutionary fighting force. It was to be allied with the ethnic nationalist struggles within America and the NLF in Vietnam. But despite being a major factor and a major change in post-SDS New Left, it's story is surprisingly little heard. When it was recently revealed that Barack Obama once went to a house party of former Weather revolutionaries Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, most people, even on the left, had no idea what Weather even was. I myself have read very little on the subject (only Berger's book which I'll mention again below) and so I've begun learning a little more about them.

The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground is a surprisingly weak book for it's topic. I read through it over a period of 3 days, it's fairly short. But what amazed me were a few things.

1) Although it mentions important Weather documents (e.g. "You don't need a weatherman," "New Morning, Changing Weather," etc.), it rarely quotes from these.
2) The description of the final SDS Convention in 1969 is bland and sparse. It is entirely the opposite of the description in Dan Berger's book, which is exciting and specific, almost hour by hour.
3) There's no f%^king conclusion. The final chapter simply describes the East/West Coast split, the surrender of various Weather leadership, the Brinks robbery, and ends. There's no discussion of why Weather failed to achieve its goals, what the importance of WUO is to today's Leftist politics, there's nothing.

For people wanting to know more about the revolutionary aspects of the late Sixties and early Seventies, Dan Berger's "Outlaws of America" is a much better book.

Digital History project

2008-03-03T21:59:00.000-08:00

One of my assignments for class this semester, and really the only major assignment this semester, is that I have to create an interesting historical website about some aspect of UNL's history. I've chosen the student/peace movement of the Sixties/Seventies for my topic. The response of my professor, some students, and my friends has been very encouraging and enthusiastic.

Last week, however, we were told to narrow it down to an argument. I suggested my thesis could be a refutation of the "good Sixties/bad Sixties" narrative, the likes of which is expressed in works by former SDS president Todd Gitlin (who seems to have a cottage publishing industry of anything and everything related to the political aspects of the Sixties). Rather than being an "anarchistic" turn for SDS, the election of Prairie Power to SDS leadership around 1965 was a natural course for the New Left to take. UNL, as one of many Prairie Power campuses (Carl Davidson was a grad student 65-66), could be a microcosm of this argument.

But the response to that particular idea was mixed, and I think implicitly negative. Kinda like seeing someone go "ick!" but also trying to hide it. So, I guess in the interest of the reader, I'll change the narrowed focus to something else.

Right now I am thinking of making it a sort of "history from the bottom up." The story of the antiwar movement is still very much a story of the leadership, for example MLK's opposition to Vietnam or the many books written by former national SDS officers (Hayden, Gitlin, Pardun, and on and on), or they focus on the mishaps and violence of the more hierarchical and attention-taking organizations of the movement (books on SLA, Panthers, WUO, etc.). So I'll attempt to find out as much as possible about the local activists and students who put these events together. It's important to know this history, these were people just like you and me, dealing with the same issues and similar shit that we do.

Introductory note

2008-03-02T23:02:00.000-08:00

Something serious is happening in this country and in this state. You see progressive and leftist movements taking action across the nation on a variety of issues. Nebraska, while certainly a conservative state, is seeing it's share of this just like any other. That means it's the duty of Nebraskan leftists to take the necessary action to help make Nebraska a more free, fair, just, and nonviolent society.

For the foreseeable future I hope to continue working with and building the Students United for Nebraska, Nebraskans for Peace, and Students for a Democratic Society. Posting various ramblings, thoughts, arguments, and writings on this blog will, I hope, allow me and any prospective readers to better understand the situation we find ourselves in, and help change the state, permanently, for the better.

The immediate goals of New Left organizing in Nebraska include these:
-defending affirmative action from Ward Connerly and the so-called Nebraska "Civil Rights" Initiative
-abolishing the death penalty
-stepping up counterrecruitment and antiwar efforts

More long-term goals include:
-the building of New Left organizations in the state, including building up the UNL Nebraskans for Peace and the Northeast Nebraska Students for a Democratic Society. Something we should consider: establishing a Lincoln-wide SDS (I'd like to call it Star City SDS or something, it's a little less bland) composed of all the area schools.
-the expansion of alternative media projects such as Nebraskan New Left blogs, the Whooping Crane, and LUNK radio.
-educating Nebraskans about racism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry and discrimination.

NFP-UNL will vote on whether to become a chapter of SDS this Wednesday. For the summer I'd like to attempt creation of Star City SDS.