We have allowed the uninformed and ignorant to define what Mexican American Studies is. Every time I discuss the subject I feel as frustrated as a scientist trying to explain science to a creationist. No matter how well you know the field those who do not want to believe will distort your words to fit their preconceptions and belief system.

No Rainbow Over Tucson

Mexican American Studies: 

a Pedagogy Not Sociology

by RODOLFO ACUÑA

We have allowed the uninformed and ignorant to define what Mexican American Studies is. Every time I discuss the subject I feel as frustrated as a scientist trying to explain science to a creationist. No matter how well you know the field those who do not want to believe will distort your words to fit their preconceptions and belief system.

As I have explained, MAS or Chicana/o Studies is not sociology. MAS has courses in sociology that examine the MAS corpus of knowledge but MAS does not belong to the field of sociology.  If it were just sociology, it could be reduced to one or two courses on race.

MAS is a strategy that incorporates multi-disciplines. The truth be told, if the academy had cared about Latinos, which are the second largest Spanish-speaking nation in the world, it would have hired specialists to explore the role of Mexican Americans and other Latinos in the United States.

If this had happened Latino courses would be integrated organically within departments. But consequent to the racism in higher education this field of study has been ignored. Even today, most academic departments do not offer a single MAS or Latino course or employ a single Latino faculty member.

Incredible but most schools of education have not developed courses on how to teach or counsel Latino students. This is criminal since I would not expect, no matter how good she is, an optometrist to perform open heart surgery.

How to teach Mexican American students was the motive for establishing CHS.

The record of its accomplishments speaks to its importance:

In 1968 only about fifty Mexican Americans nationally had doctorates; today there are thousands. Truth be told, MAS developed despite the academy.

The dramatic surge in the study of Mexicans in the United States and Mexico surged because of Chicana.o studies.

Before December 31, 1970, not a single dissertation had been written under the category “Chicano.” By 2010 870 dissertations were recorded under this heading. Under “Mexican American” 82 dissertations had been written before 1971, and 2,824 after that date. For “Latinos” the record shows 6 before 1971 and 2,887 after.

Mexican scholarship also benefitted from Chicana/o studies. I found 660 in the Proquest data bank before 1971; after 9,078. The number of books and journal articles on Chicano and Latinos also exploded.

It is improbable that this would have happened without Chicana/o student militancy.

Despite this impressive growth, there is still confusion as to why MAS was developed and why it is necessary. Repeating myself, MAS was an outgrowth of the education reform movement that wanted to stem the horrendous dropout rate among Mexican American children.

Reformers advocated a course of study designed to train more teachers on how to teach Latino children as well as encouraging research on their contributions to the United States. The best available research concludes that a student who has a poor self-image has difficulty learning. The dominate research also shows that Mexican Americans have a negative self-image due in part to the American education system.

Today this research has been almost totally erased; however, the hypothesis has not been disproved.

MAS took these studies into account and designed courses on how to motivate students to acquire skills for success in school and life.

An additional component, which has been as of late ignored, is these courses prepare educators to teach Mexican American children. It teaches methods and the content courses on how to teach Mexican Americans as well as all students to appreciate the importance of Latinos to our society.

How others look at students is very important to the students’ educational success.

With time the pedagogical function of Chicana/o studies has been obfuscated and today most professors want to forget it. Even at California State University Northridge, the largest Chicana/o Studies departments in the country, most professors know their discipline but few know the department’s course of study or its pedagogical mission.

There has been a failure to communicate this message although the curriculum has defined the department’s growth.

The Tucson Unified School District’s MAS program has yielded important lessons. Its primary strength is that it molded a team of teachers committed to how to teach all students and found the key on how to motivate high risk Latino youth.

While the course of study remains important, the hub around which the Tucson program revolves is its team of teachers.

TUSD’s MAS program began in 1997 in response to a court mandate. The recently fired Sean Arce was one of the co-founders of the program and he molded the group into a team. While the teachers specialize in different disciplines, they have almost daily interaction with each other and discuss how to more effectively teach students. Lessons in the Mexican historical and cultural experience are then applied to the American experience.

As of 2010, MAS co-sponsored twelve “Annual Institutes for Transformative Education Conferences” in which prominent educators made presentations for four days to MAS and other teachers. Sean and his team kept the mission to teach focused and they built upon this new knowledge.

I attended two conferences at which I met educators such as Pedro Noguera of New York University, Sherry Marx of Utah State University, Angela Valenzuela of the University of Texas Austin and David Stovall of the University of Illinois at Chicago – College of Education. It was instructive to learn about different theories and pedagogies that are currently being used.

I spoke to various MAS teachers that included white Americans.  Their enthusiasm was contagious.

It was all the more impressive because it was on the advent of HB 2281 that was proposing the elimination of the program making claims that were simply mendacious. Since then the program and the teachers have gone through a living hell.

They have been libeled as un-American, subversive and the livelihood of their families attacked. Without any funds and limited national exposure, the team, the students and the community have fought back.

Struggle destroys lesser beings, but it also helps create legends. The best in the Mexican American community surfaced in this struggle in the persona of Sean Arce. He did not take a deal, he did not sell out, and he fought back, jeopardizing his home and family.

But much more than Sean is at stake. Some have say, “Well if we win in court at least we will still have the program.” My response is that then it won’t be MAS but just another program to teach Mexicans and others to learn how to dance the jarabe tapatio.

Removing a person like Sean is like taking the heart out of the program. It is reducing the program to the Tin Woodman of the “Wizard of Oz” who asked: “Do you suppose Oz could give me a heart?”

If wishes could come true I would send Superintendent John Pedicone and his gaggle of thugs to the Oz; like the Strawman, the Oz could give them brain: “It must be inconvenient to be made of flesh, for you must sleep, and eat and drink. However, you have brains, and it is worth a lot of bother to be able to think properly.”

Apparently the Arizona cabal has neither brains nor a heart.

What Tucson had will be very difficult to replicate. The Pedicones and the Huppenthals will be condemned by history, but this means little because we cannot travel back to the future.

The whole affair leaves me feeling how I felt the first time I read the Chicano poet, Abelardo who wrote:

“Stupid America, remember that chicanito

flunking math and English

he is the Picasso

of your western states but he will die

with one thousand masterpieces

hanging only from his mind.”

Tucson has lost its heart, we are left with the Tin Woodman who has no heart, and there is no rainbow in the horizon.

RODOLFO ACUÑA, a professor emeritus at California State University Northridge, has published 20 books and over 200 public and scholarly articles. He is the founding chair of the first Chicano Studies Dept which today offers 166 sections per semester in Chicano Studies. His history book Occupied America has been banned in Arizona. In solidarity with Mexican Americans in Tucson, he has organized fundraisers and support groups to ground zero and written over two dozen articles exposing efforts there to nullify the U.S. Constitution. 

If the Greek Left Can Terrify the Eurocrats, What’s with the US Left and Obama?

If the Greek Left Can Terrify the Eurocrats, 

What’s with the US Left and Obama?

by ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Regard the Greek political landscape and how dramatically it has changed from last November. On November 2, 2011,  Greek  prime minister George Papandreou flew to Cannes before a G20 meeting and received one of the most humiliating rebuffs in European history since Pope Gregory VII left  Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV shivering in the snow. (Actually that fracas ended well for Henry, badly for Gregory, which people often forget.)

Papandreou went to Cannes to moot his referendum aimed at coercing the Greeks to back the austerity program being imposed on their country. It was a tactic, not a bad one. Sarkozy and Merkel received Papandreou with insults and derision and sent him and his referendum packing. Papandreou’s colleagues in PASOK picked up the hint, and not long thereafter Papandreou’s political career was over.

Now move forward to May. There were new elections. This time there was a left coalition, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) filling the void left by the utterly discredited PASOK. It had capable leaders like Alexis Tsipras.

In the election PASOK a party that has been in power longer than any other party in recent Greek history scored 13.20 per cent, its lowest score since 1974. New Democracy – rightist – did not manage to gain from the fall of PASOK, also had its worst electoral result (18.85 per cent) and saw the splinter ‘Independent Greeks’ party reaching more than 10 per cent. The total of all pro-austerity parties was less than 42 per cent, a clear evidence of the rejection of neoliberal policies.

Syriza was in second position with 16.78 per cent (the last time the Left had such a position was in 1958) and total percentage of the Left (Syriza, Communist Party and Anti-capitalist Left) was at almost 27 per cent, which is the largest electoral presence of the Left in modern Greek history.

Note that Tsipras and his Syriza colleagues have confined themselves to one substantive aim. They pledge to strike down the November 2011 agreement which locked Greece in banker-forged handcuffs of austerity. They don’t want to leave the Eurozone or challenge the EU. Tsipras says rather emolliently:

“Greece is a link in a chain. If it breaks it is not just the link that is broken but the whole chain. What people have to understand is that the Greek crisis concerns not just Greece but all European people so a common European solution has to be found.

“The public debt crisis is hitting the south of Europe but it will soon hit central Europe. People have to realise that their own country could be threatened.

“We are here to explain to people in Europe that we have nothing against them. We are fighting the battle in Greece not just for the Greek people but for people in France, Germany and all European countries." 

“I am not here to blackmail, I am here to mobilize,” he said. 

“Greece gave humanity democracy and today the Greek people will bring democracy back to Europe.”

This is not the kind of talk a European banker likes to hear, particularly from a man who after this coming Sunday, may be negotiating a coalition in which he could be the next leader.  Already in May the arrogant tones of the bankers modulated. The mere fact of a substantive left threat affected them greatly and they saw that a pose of constructive listening to Greeks might be more productive than hammering the table.

Sunday’s elections will see whether this Left challenge to the bankers can be sustained. Syriza is playing a delicate game. Greeks don’t actually want the huge upheavals of default, leaving the Eurozone. So Syriza, assuming it has any coercive power, will have to be very artful in its efforts to maneuver the bankers to less monstrous austerities.

I’m sure CounterPunchers will have anticipated the moral of this story. Obama treats the left just as Sarkozy and Merkel treated Papandreou, with contempt. There is no reason to do otherwise. And I am not treating this as an opportunity for a last-minute rallying call for the left to muster in some electorally crucial state to menace Obama.

I took my stand on this issue in November 2010, just as George Soros had called for a candidate of the left to prepare himself for a race against the dismal Obama. I wrote:

My view is that we have a champion in the wings and one whom I am sure George Soros would be only too happy to support. In fact he’s a candidate who could rally not only Soros but the Koch brothers to his cause.

This champion of the left with sound appeal to the populist or libertarian right was felled on November 2, and he should rise again before his reputation fades. His name is Russ Feingold, currently a Democrat and the junior senator from Wisconsin.

Why would he be running? Unlike Teddy Kennedy challenging Jimmy Carter in 1979, Feingold would have a swift answer. To fight against the Republicans and the White House in defense of the causes he has publicly supported across a lifetime. He has opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His was the single Senate vote against the Patriot Act; his was a consistent vote against the constitutional abuses of both the Bush and Obama administrations. He opposed NAFTA and the bank bailouts. He is for economic justice and full employment. He is the implacable foe of corporate control of the electoral process. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in January was aimed in part at his landmark campaign finance reform bill. 

The left must abandon the doomed ritual of squeaking timid reproaches to Obama, only to have the counselors at Obama’s elbow contemptuously dismiss them, as did Rahm Emanuel, who correctly divined their near-zero capacity for effective challenge. Two more years of the same downward slide, courtesy of bipartisanship and “working together”?

All we can do in our humiliating prostration, is wish the Greek left the best of luck.

Alexander Cockburn can be reached at 

alexandercockburn@asis.com

Even through our survival techniques have been superior, in the face of brutal psychological and physical violence against us, we are now at the crossroads. We face the challenge of preserving some of the traditions of the Black family, developed by our ancestors, who fought so hard against racism and white supremacy in this country.

The Black Family as the Foundation Worrill’s World -- By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill, PhD BC Columnist

Since the early 1900’s, Black and white scholars have written much on the Black family. When one examines the card catalogue of any library in America they will find volumes of books, articles and newspaper clippings discussing some aspect of Black family life. What we need in the African-American community is a framework to examine and solve the problems of Black family life on our own terms. The capturing of African people, who were placed in chattel slavery in North America, has left some devastating scars on the most basic unit of any group - the family. There is no question that the family has been that unit that provides the basic foundation for any group of people to survive and develop. The family has been that unit that provides the basic foundation for any group of people to survive and develop Families constitute grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and in-laws. Sometimes families extend beyond blood relatives to those persons we bring into our families for whatever reason. Families function in the context of their racial and ethnic identity. This identity is shaped by the historical and external forces of a given society. Although the problems of the Black family appear to be very complex on the one hand, on the other, the problem is very simple: First of all, African people who were captured and introduced into the western hemisphere as property and commodities were removed from their land and institutional arrangements of African life. Second, this process of white takeover of Black life, through the most brutal form of oppression - the slave trade and the eventual enslavement of African people on the plantations of North America - has been a back-breaking experience for our people. It is the strategy of the white supremacy system to place so much pressure on us that we give up our fight fo rindependence and freedom Even through our survival techniques have been superior, in the face of brutal psychological and physical violence against us, we are now at the crossroads. We face the challenge of preserving some of the traditions of the Black family, developed by our ancestors, who fought so hard against racism and white supremacy in this country. This must be done, in part, through the continuing African Centered Education Movement. As our renowned ancestor and deep thinker, Dr. Jacob H. Carruthers, explained, African Centered Education should focus on the following: 1.                Advocates that restoring the historical truth about Africa is the priority for African thinkers (including Africans in the Diaspora). 2.                Holds that there is a distinct universal African World View which should be the foundation for all African intellectual development. 3.                Involves the massive education or rather re-education of the African people of the world from an African perspective in the interest of African people and directed by African thinkers. This is a necessary pre-condition for the freedom of the African mind and subsequently African liberation. We must not abandon family life. It is the basis for our survival and development. It is the strategy of the white supremacy system to place so much pressure on us that we give up our fight for independence and freedom. When the family unit begins to wither away, we must rise to the occasion and fight to keep its basic elements alive in our communities. It is the duty of all Black people to understand that we are faced with a genocidal set of circumstances in America. Look around our communities and what do we /you see? We witness the absence of that fighting family spirit among us that has been so much a part of Black family life. The family is the support mechanism for all that we do and it is a sacred institution that we must preserve and protect on our own terms. BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is the National Chairman Emeritus of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Click here to contact Dr. Worrill.

Ordinary people will be repeatedly betrayed by Democrats and Republicans alike, for that is the nature of the corporate-controlled U.S. political system

The Movement Pimps:
Blaming Republicans for Being Republicans
Keeping it Real -- By Larry Pinkney
BC Editorial Board

 

 

“What better way to enslave a man than to give him the vote and tell him he’s free.”

-Albert Camus

“Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.”

-Lucy Parsons

As the economic and social contradictions of the corporate controlled U.S. political system deepen, the terrible pain of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people is, and will continue, to concomitantly increase.

Even so, there are those so-called ‘progressives’ and/or ‘leftists’ who are making a comfortable living from the very pain of everyday people. Many of these pundits write, push, and sell their seemingly endless stream of books - books in which we ordinary people are given their allegedly profound observations - which observations our common sense and daily suffering have already made abundantly clear to us. These people are the ‘movement pimps.’ They pontificate from positions of privilege. No names need to be mentioned as it is not difficult to extrapolate as to who they are.

They know full well that the Democrats and Republicans are simply two sides of exactly the same dirty, filthy systemic coin

These are the people who always stop just short of calling for absolute and unequivocal systemic change. They are, in real terms, wedded to the system, not its abolition. In these increasingly perilous and horrendous times for everyday people; these individuals are, as the expression goes, ‘having their cake and eating it too’ at the expense of ordinary folks and the people’s movement that they claim to support.

These individuals are adroit at distracting everyday people by pointing out certain injustices of this political system while invariably finding a way to avoid naming, for example, the leaders of both the Democrats and the Republicans for the culprit foxes and wolves that they actually are. These ‘movement pimps’ are in fact the fifth column of the so-called ‘Democratic’ Party.

These pontificating pundits unceasingly blame the Republican Party wolves for being what they are - wolves! Yet, they neglect to consistently and vigorously expose the Democratic Party foxes for being what they are - foxes! These pundits play on the pain and frustration of ordinary people. Thus, their name - ‘movement pimps.’ They know full well that the Democrats and Republicans are simply two sides of exactly thesame dirty, filthy systemic coin.

Blaming the Republicans for being Republicans is tantamount to accusingly blaming a tarantula for painfully biting you. That’s what tarantulas do! No surprise there. And that’s also precisely what the Democrats do, but they almost always first apply a bit of numbing Novocain on their hapless victims - before painfully biting the hell out of them. These ‘movement pimps’ are well aware of this euphemistic reality, and they play it for all it’s worth. They are cynical political opportunists.

A recent example of the afore-described scenario was the recent Scott Walker electoral recall debacle in the state of Wisconsin, U.S.A.

Wisconsin - Can You Hear Me Now?!

Both the Democratic and Republican Party leadership are terrified of a genuine groundswell people’s movement. Why? Because they cannot control such a movement, and such a movement would insist upon actualized accountability from them. Heaven forbid!!!

What occurred in Wisconsin should be viewed as neither a defeat nor a victory. Rather, it should be viewed and understood as an important object lesson for and by everyday people.

The leadership of the Democratic Party deliberately and cynically sacrificed the everyday struggling people, who had worked so hard for it in Wisconsin, to the Republican machine. It was no mere coincidence that Barack Obama did not bother to go to, and vigorously support, the groundswell of ordinary people in that state. Why should he? After all, he and the DNC (Democratic National Committee) had bigger fish to fry, which did not include the needs, pains, hopes, and aspirations of the everyday people. Moreover, a groundswell of hard working grassroots organizers are too unruly to manipulate and control - so off with their heads! It was, in a sense, Wisconsin’s own ‘Jeremiah Wright moment.’ Betrayal, lies, and more betrayal.

Additionally, the leadership (or more accurately misleadership) of the unions in Wisconsin were overwhelmingly beholden to the Democratic Party, not to their rank and file membership. Long before ‘election’ day arrived in Wisconsin, the political dice had been cast and the game had been rigged - so off with the heads of the ordinary, everyday people!

Ordinary people will be repeatedly betrayed by Democrats and Republicans alike, for that is the nature of the corporate-controlled U.S. political system

There is no sacrifice too great - of and by the ordinary people - when it comes to the fulfilling the power whims of the leadership of both the Democrats and Republicans. This is the well-honed politics of cynicism in the United States, and the ‘movement pimps’ who are blaming the Republicans for what occurred in Wisconsin are full of nonsense. What occurred in Wisconsin was simply par for the course in the ongoing cynical con game of Democratic and Republican Party electoral politics, not only in Wisconsin, but nationwide.

Lessons Learned

It should be crystal clear that everyday ordinary people will be repeatedly betrayed in less than a heartbeat by Democrats and Republicans alike, for that is the nature and structure of the corporate-controlled U.S. political system.

Mr. ‘hope and change’- predator drone missile-NDAA-’Kill List’ Barack Obama, will not serve or save the everyday ordinary people of this nation and neither will Mitt ‘the glitch’ Romney, or any other systemic politician. Only everyday people can do this. We must begin by recognizing that this system must be totally changed in favor of ordinary people. Do not be distracted or swayed by the ‘movement pimps’ and pundits, for they, too, are making quite a comfortable living from the pain, suffering, and misery of the people.

We must look to the collective creative abilities of us ordinary, struggling, everyday people. Yes, of ourselves, and to each other. This is not a Hollywood movie. This is real life, and the struggle is, and will be, long and hard, full of obstacles and challenges. Yet, for ourselves, our posterity, and our precious Mother Earth - we must carry on, and we shall ultimately succeed!

Remember: Each one, reach one. Each on,e teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers! Onward!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

There will never be a better time for the ‘internal improvements’ that we need to make - rebuilding roads, bridges, mass transit, sewers, fast trains, airports, retrofitting public buildings, building up renewable energy and more.

Obama’s Response to the Jobs Crisis is Still Too Lame
Left Margin -- By Carl Bloice
BC Editorial Board

Quite often, media reports and commentaries about the rising tide of unemployment - especially amongst young people - in other parts of the world are accompanied by warning of dire consequences if the trend continues. Images of major social protests and even acts of violence are evoked. Take, for instance, Europe. The highest youth jobless rates on the continent are reported to be 50.5 percent in Spain, 51 percent inGreece and over 30 percent in Ireland, Italy, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Portugal.

Sometimes this situation is described as a ticking time bomb, sometimes not. In Greece where “young bear the harshest burden of the economic crisis,” wrote Randall Fuller in the New York Times last week, “they do so with a mix of denial, frantic exuberance and a debilitating sense of the absurd.”

We repeat figures as if this were the natural order of things

As I read those words, I sat back and wondered what could be said of the response in the African American communities where jobless rates for young people have been just as high for decades.

The seasonally adjusted jobless rate for African Americans between 16 and 19 years old now stands at 35.5 percent, up from about 27 percent when the crisis began five years ago. What’s more, the youth jobless rate in some inner city communities is about 50 percent and has been for some time.

Economist Dean Baker points out that “By demographic group, the worst story is among black men and black teens. The former has an EPOP [employment-to-population ratio] that is 6.5 percentage points below its pre-recession level. Black teens have an EPOP of 15.5 percent, down 9.0 percentage points from the 2006 level. The EPOP for black women is down 3.7 percentage points from its pre-recession level, but has risen 3.2 percentage points from lows hit last summer.”

We repeat figures such as these regularly, and often perfunctorily, as if this were the natural order of things. The alarm bells being set off over the number of young people out of work in Europe should remind us it is not.

Living at home with one’s parents because they cannot afford live elsewhere - or living in the streets - is nothing new for millions of African American and Latino youth.

Lay off austerity, which is only exacerbating the problem, and act now to stimulate their economies

“The recent developments are indeed a disaster and you might also call the situation a political scandal,” writes Henning Meyer in Social Europe Journal May 22. “How is it possible that more than one in five young people in Europe have no job and so many more are working in precarious circumstances?” How often is such a question raised around here?

“We cannot afford a lost generation in Europe,” concluded Meyer. “We must tackle and solve the problem now!”

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., the richest and most powerful nation on the planet, the prospects for a solution remain remote.

“Everyone is talking jobs but saying nothing,” wrote Robert Borosage, president of the Institute for America’s Future, recently. “The inadequate recovery is sputtering and no one is doing anything.” “In the phony war on unemployment, no one has picked up a gun. We’re going through the motions, waiting for the misery to ratchet up, the cities to blow and corporate profits to tank before getting serious.”

“But if Republicans have nothing to say about jobs, neither do Democrats,” continuedBorosage. “They are terrified by polls that say voters are concerned about deficits. So every jobs program has to be ‘paid for’ - and, almost by definition, small. Obama issues a ‘to do list’ for Congress that even his aides have a hard time pretending to be excited about.”

However, the President does have a job plan. It’s hardly up to the challenge facing us but it’s a start. The problem is, after presenting it a few months ago, it dropped pretty much out of sight. Last week he brought it up again at a press briefing and in the process, created a muddle. It’s one thing to blame the Republicans for refusing to act on the jobs crisis (what else is new?) and another to inform the nation of the seriousness of the situation and rally the people for action, something he and the Administration appear loathe to do.

The question is not simply whether or not new jobs are being produced. In a capitalist economy jobs are constantly being created, sometimes in large numbers. The question is whether enough are coming on line to meet the population increase and make up for the positions lost due to things like technological innovation or the effects of globalization. If not, there will be more people without jobs. When the President says that the policies being pursued by his Republican opponents would only increase the discrepancy, he has a point. And yes, the situation in Europe exerts a somewhat negative effect on the economic prospects here. But to say, as he did last week, that “the private sector is doing fine” at creating jobs is just plain wrong.

The President later appeared to backtrack somewhat, saying, “I think if you look at what I said this morning, what I’ve been saying consistently over the last year, we’ve actually seen some good momentum in the private sector.” “There’s been 4.3 million jobs created, 800,000 this year alone, record corporate profits.” He added: “And so that has not been the biggest drag on the economy.” It causes one to wonder just who is advising the President these days and why he continues to avoid the advice of the “Keynesians” who have left the White House inner circle or those who were never invited in.

There will never be a better time for the ‘internal improvements’ that we need to make

But it’s going to take more than the President’s current plan to really meet the jobs crisis. Proposals for meaningful action do exist. For one thing, as Borosage notes, current low interest rates “offer the U.S. a remarkable opportunity to rebuild the country. There will never be a better time for the ‘internal improvements’ that we need to make - rebuilding roads, bridges, mass transit, sewers, fast trains, airports, retrofitting public buildings, building up renewable energy and more.”

Liberal economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman have been calling for such a step for years now, but to no avail.

The International Labor Organization says almost 75 million, or 12.6% of the young people across the globe were jobless lasts year, an increase of over than 4 million since the current economic crisis began. Dr. Ekkehard Ernst, head of the ILO’sEmployment Trends Unit, has called upon governments to lay off austerity, which is only exacerbating the problem, and act now to stimulate their economies. “What is quite obvious with youth unemployment rates of over 50 per cent in these countries is the first thing that needs to be done is get jobs back … and that can only be done if you stimulate the economy, for instance through infrastructure programs, which are very job rich,” he said.

The group Our Time - Standing Up for Young Americans is circulating an online petition addressed to President Obama and Governor Romney that reads:

“Our country needs nurses, teachers, disaster relief, park restoration, infrastructure repair, and more. Yet 1 in 2 young Americans are currently jobless or underemployed.

“A generation is a terrible thing to waste. Pledge to create one million new public service positions by expanding programs such as AmeriCorps, CitiYear, Habitat for Humanity, Teach for America, and others so we can rebuild our country now.”

“The only question is how deep the crisis must go and how crippling the pain must be before action is taken,” says Borosage.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. Click here to contact Mr. Bloice.

 

The official Democratic Party in the USA does not have any new ideas of how to challenge the billionaires in the midst of the capitalist depression: From the outset of the Wisconsin struggles, the national leadership of the Democratic Party was alarmed by the radicalization of the workers. There were other forms of protests across the Nation and by September the control of public spaces by workers and their sympathizers had grown into the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

The Wisconsin Recall Vote: Another Wakeup Call for the Left in the United States of America Emancipation from Mental Slavery By Dr. Horace Campbell, PhD BC Editorial Board

On Tuesday June 5, there was a recall election to remove Scott Walker, the Republican Governor of the State of Wisconsin. Walker had won the election as Governor in November 2010 when a racist populist formation called the Tea Party mobilized millions to oppose the ideas of a new multi-racial USA based on social and economic justice. Within a few weeks after becoming the Governor, Scott Walker exposed the deep conservatism of this Tea Party Movement with the attacks on the conditions of working peoples through what was termed ‘austerity’ measures which meant cutting back on the rights of workers. When the real target of these measures was revealed to be an outright assault on the democratic rights of working peoples, especially the right to collective bargaining by unionized state employees, there was open rebellion. This rebellion took inspiration from the uprisings in Egypt and brought international attention to the working people’s struggles in the United States. There were many paths before the workers in how to respond to the program of the Governor. Out of these possible paths, continuous worker education drives, General strike, continuous protests, building multi-racial alliances, opposing privatization, organizing across the USA for a new system, the leaders of this movement choose the path of pushing for a recall election. This push required 540,208 signatures and by January 2012, the movement for recall had garnered close to 1 million signatures. We will argue that the very nature of the campaign to focus on elections acted as a tool for the demobilization of the working poor in Wisconsin and placed the struggle on the terrain that would favor the monied classes in this recall. The official Democratic Party in the USA does not have any new ideas of how to challenge the billionaires in the midst of the capitalist depression The opponent of Scott Walker for the Democratic Party was the Mayor of Milwaukee,Tom Barrett. Barrett is the mayor of a city with over 50 per cent unemployment among peoples of African descent. The policies of Barrett were not fundamentally different from Scott Walker and pointed to the reality that the official Democratic Party in the USA does not have any new ideas of how to challenge the billionaires in the midst of the capitalist depression. The media and President Obama have cried that Scott Walker out spent Tom Barrett 8 to one, spending US 45.9 million dollars in this recall election. However, while this focus on money is one indication of the corruption of the electoral system in the United States, the more profound question lies in the task of building a new movement for the poor and oppressed in the midst of this prolonged crisis of capitalism. The vote was another wake up call for those who want social justice. At the start of the month of June we were alerted in Egypt to the fact that the electoral process was rigged against real and fundamental changes. This week, the Wisconsin recall vote acted as another teaching moment to alert progressives internationally that while elections can be a platform for struggles, this cannot be the only platform. Wisconsin and the history of social struggles in the United States Wisconsin is a medium size Midwestern state in the United States with a population of 5.7 million persons. This was the land of differing native peoples whose land was occupied and settled by colonizers who made this territory a state of the United States in 1848. It is a state with a rich history. This is a history of populism and labor activism and at the same time that state that produced the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Cold War demagogue. Currently, the House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is the flag bearer for conservatism from this state at the national level and the Chairperson of the Republican Party, Reince Priebus, comes from this state. The history of dispossession of the First Nation Peoples stands as a permanent statement against the idea of ‘progressivism’ that has been registered as part of the history of this state. Yet, in many respects this state can be distinguished from others by the long traditions of the trade union militancy since the 19th century. Worker protests and unionization had registered in this state over the past one hundred years and in the period of deindustrialization, the most militant section of the working class has been the public sector unions, that is those employed as teachers, police officers, firefighters and state employees. During the height of the industrialization of theUnited States, there were numerous trade unions in Wisconsin in the building trades, construction, logging, steel, brewing and in the auto industry. In this period Wisconsinwas at the top of those states with unionized workers with over 25 per cent of the working class unionized. This level of working class organization registered a decent standard of living for workers. However, over the past thirty years there have been constant attacks against workers and other oppressed groups. From the period that Ronald Reagan launched the attack against air control operators in the PATCO strike in the early eighties; the Trade Union Movement in the USA had been challenged. Bill Fletcher in the Book, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice, A new direct [Paperback] had identified the limitations of the old forms of trade union organizing, especially with the major demographic changes in the US population. Neither the Left nor the traditional trade union centers are prepared to analyze the history of whiteness and the choke hold over the working classes in the United States. Conservatives have not been shy to exploit this division among the working peoples of the United States and the populist racism of the Tea Party was one wake up call for the white Left. Instead of calling out the racism of the Tea Party, the white Left tiptoed around the clear racist propaganda and tactics of this wedge among working peoples. The grassroots must build structures that are stronger than the money and the media Scott Walker was elected Governor in the wave of racism that had gained momentum from sections of the population that argued that Barack Obama was not a US citizen. These were called Birthers. It was a movement supported by billionaires such as the Koch brothers who were taken aback by the multi-racial alliance that had elected Barack Obama. The Democratic Party never rose to the challenge and in fact played around with the conservatism of this movement until the Congressional Elections of November 2010 placed the Tea Party representatives in key positions across the country. In states such as Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, there were legislators and Governors who set out to roll back the rights of workers and the rights of the poor. In every one of these states the attack on the poor and black came before the attack on the organized workers. The neo-liberal ideas about the privatization of education, the privatization of prisons and rolling back entitlements of the poor were supported by a servile media that wanted to demobilize the working peoples. There was no sector of the society that escaped the heightened racism in the society. Probably, the sector that was most affected by this racism was the youth. Police brutality, stop and search, the stigmatization of youths of color and the open racist ideas came in the period of Tea Party insurgency. The killing of Trayvon Martin was only one public indication of the new wave of racism when Barack Obama was the President. Governor Scott Walker entered the office in January 2011 and within one month he placed legislation before the legislature to roll back the rights to collective bargaining by public sector employees. Prior to his election in 2010 tens of thousands of voters had turned out in 2008 to vote for a new direction in US politics, but after the election, there were no forces to keep this population mobilized. Into this vacuum stepped Walker and other Tea Party Governors across the United States. These state leaders gave subsidies to ‘investors’ while passing legislation to take away the democratic rights of workers. In Michigan, there was one Governor who even wanted to take away the right to vote. Scott Walker was among the boldest of these new Tea Party leaders and he proposed legislation to drastically cut the social wage of workers. The legislative agenda of Scott Walker was justified under the need for ‘austerity’ in the midst of the capitalist depression. While supporting the bail out of over US 1 billion to the banks and financiers who supported his campaign, Governor Walker proposed a bill where public sector workers would face an average cut in income of 7% through reductions to their pensions and health care. The bill would abolish collective bargaining rights for public sector workers over anything other than pay. Pay increases would be capped to the rise in the Consumer Price Index, so public sector workers could only bargain against pay cuts and not for pay raises. Immediately, worker protests erupted in Wisconsin. Drawing inspiration from the Egyptian uprisings, the public sector workers occupied the state capitol and dramatically signaled a new stage in the struggles for social justice in the United States. This occupation was beamed around the world as tens of thousands of workers came out in the Wisconsin cold to oppose Scott Walker. The most promising aspect of this opposition by the workers was the fact that the coercive sectors of the state, police and fire fighters, supported the strike. Teachers, students and university staff across the country came out in full force and the teaching Assistants at the Universityof Wisconsin built the web platforms to internationalize the struggles. Demobilization and recall From the outset of the Wisconsin struggles, the national leadership of the Democratic Party was alarmed by the radicalization of the workers. There were other forms of protests across the Nation and by September the control of public spaces by workers and their sympathizers had grown into the Occupy Wall Street Movement. This Occupy Movement built on the forms of mobilization of people in public spaces and inspired a new level of consciousness in the United States about the domination of the society by the oligarchy in identifying them as the one per cent. Economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, who had served the neo-liberal agenda of Bill Clinton, joined in the opposition to big capital and wrote long articles on this one per cent,” Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.” The future of the struggles against capitalism cannot be decided by electoral struggles Stiglitz joined into a discourse on ‘inequality’ as one aspect of the liberal agenda to weaken the understanding of the importance of class struggles in the capitalist crisis. Michael Moore had made an important intervention in the making of the documentary, Capitalism: A Live Story. In this documentary, Moore had called for the arrest and imprisonment of the bankers. Workers across the United States were caught between two messages, one of inequality and the other of class struggle. It was from the oppressed Africans and radical environmentalists where there was a more robust call for a new system. The media worked overtime to discredit the radical ideas arising in response to the crisis. It was the work of big capital to support the Scott Walker initiatives while seeming to be on the side of the workers. The choices before the working people were stark; there was either going to be a prolonged struggle or the capitalists and their representatives would impose austerity measures to weaken the working classes. General Strike or recall The intellectual climate set by the media and the official Democratic Party minimized the importance of measures such as Occupation, General Strikes or prolonged periods of worker education as to the real depth of the crisis of capitalism. In Wisconsin, there was a debate on whether there should be a General Strike by the workers. This discussion of the General Strike had gained momentum in the face of the clear strategy of Scott Walker to destroy Public Sector Workers and their capacity for organizing. If the leaders of the AFL-CIO and the state workers’ union, AFSCME, had read the book of Bill Fletcher, they would have been better prepared to understand that there had to be new tactics to oppose Walker and the anti-worker sentiments sweeping the society. Instead, these trade union leaders offered compromise after compromise. They offered to implement all the cuts demanded by Walker, provided he maintained the automatic dues check-off, the source of their own salaries, and preserved a role for them in negotiating the reductions in the income and benefits of their members. The Democratic Party and the Union Bureaucracy were aghast at the discussions on the General Strike and focused attention on garnering signatures for a recall of Governor Scott Walker. While there was some education involved in the process of gathering the more than one million signatures for this recall, the process itself limited the scope for cascading activities by workers and boxed the movement into an electoral struggle. The same austerity that was being promoted at the state level by Scott Walker was being discussed in the back rooms at City hall by Tom Barrett This demobilization through elections was deepened when the Democratic Party chose Tom Barrett as the candidate to oppose Scott Walker. Barrett is the mayor ofMilwaukee, the largest urban center in the state and had stood in the election in 2010 against Walker. The fact that the Democratic Party and the Trade Union Bureaucracy decided to go with Barrett was one more indication of how far removed the top brass of the party were from the concerns of the poor. Milwaukee had gained national notoriety for the oppression of poor blacks. The school system in Milwaukee is among the most racist in the nation and the rate of unemployment among blacks is as high as 50 per cent. Police brutality and the rates of incarceration among blacks and Latinos would have indicated that there would be no enthusiasm among the poor for the Governorship of Tom Barrett. Moreover, the same austerity that was being promoted at the state level by Scott Walker was being discussed in the back rooms at City hall by Tom Barrett. His nomination was a sure sign that there would be no massive ground operation in the black and brown communities. The recall results Within one hour of the closing of the polls on June 5, it was clear that the Democratic Party and the Trade Union leadership had miscalculated. Scott Walker won the recall election with 53.1 per cent of the votes. Barrett received 46 per cent of the votes. This was the same margin that Walker had defeated Barrett in the 2010 elections. Immediately when the results were declared, the Trade Union leaders and the Democratic Party decried the role of Big Money in elections in the United States. TheNew York Times reported that Walker had spent over US $45 million dollars with 70 per cent of the funds coming from outside Wisconsin. The ‘progressives’ continue to point to the role of the Supreme Court Judgment on Citizens United to decry the role of billionaires in financing elections. Others in the media called the Wisconsinelections a dry run for the presidential elections in November between Romney and Obama. Progressive forces across the United States are debating the elections and it is from the ranks of those who call themselves socialists where there is the most sophisticated analysis. Even this analysis from socialist elements excludes the role of Barrett and his relationship to Black people in Milwaukee. The recall election serves as a wakeup call for progressives. The future of the struggles against capitalism cannot be decided by electoral struggles. Electoral struggles are one of the many forms of mobilization, but with the billions of dollars available from the moniedclasses to mobilize the media, it will be necessary to clarify new forms of struggles that will ensure the steady and continuous mobilization of the working class. At the time of the Civil War in the United States, Karl Marx had noted that ‘labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin when in the black it is branded.’ Today, public sector workers cannot gain democratic rights when these are the social forces at the forefront of the prison industrial complex. The struggles against capitalism will be heightened by this recall defeat. Barack Obama and the Democratic Party cannot decry the power of the monied classes when the policies of the present government have been to bail out the banks and the monied classes. These forces are using the bail out money to consolidate political power in the United States. I will agree with those progressive forces who noted that the grassroots worked for Barack Obama in 2008. In 2012, the progressive and grassroots have to fashion new tools to work for themselves to defeat Romney and the Republicans. The grassroots must build structures that are stronger than the money and the media. In the process of building these structures, they will be able to hold any politician accountable. The Wisconsin Recall election is an eye opener about the present balance of forces. The Left will have to decide if they are equal to the challenge. BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Dr. Horace Campbell, PhD, is Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University inSyracuse New York. He is the author of Barack Obama and Twenty-first Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA,and a contributing author to African Awakening: The Emerging revolutions. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Department of International Relations at TsinghuaUniversity, Beijing, China. His website is horacecampbell.net. Click here to contact Dr. Campbell.