For freedom, for equality

Greek students revolt!

RevolutionAM — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:27:19 EDT

And by Greek students I mean the ones in Greece, not the Beta house.

85% of Academic Departments Occupied by Students in Greece [indymedia]

   First the Chileans now the Greek! What a splendid summer this is turning out to be.

    Greece's Constitution (may or may not be the one that Eisenhower told the Greek Ambassador to "fuck") guarantees free, public education. Such niceties of the Greek system include
- free textbooks, a total absence of Administration departments,
- difficulty for outside police to enter campus grounds unless specifically invited,
- ease of transfer to different universities depending on hardship,
- and the fact that every single university in Greek is public and free.

    The Greek government has set up a panel of "experts" to recommend changes to the current system. Big surprise, all the niceties just described, and more, have been recommended to get the chopping block.

    If there's anything the young Greek left knows how to do, it's mobilize. Here's a map (current as of the 20th) of the campuses that have student occupations. The latest updates are available at the Athens Indymedia. Here's an interesting piece linking the proposed changes with pressures from the economy.

Leftist kooks!

RevolutionAM — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:19:51 EDT

    One of the advantages of living in D.C. is that you're around a whole bunch of crazy radicals. One of the disadvantages of living in D.C. is that you're around a whole bunch of crazy radicals. Specifically, ones that want to sell you stuff. Even more specifically, ones that want to sell you newspapers.

    Friday when I went home from work, I ran into not one, not two, but THREE sects trying to get me to buy their rags: the ISO (International Socialist Organization), MIM (Maoist International Movement - you don't see them out much anymore) and the inimitable Lyndon LaRouche organization.

    When are these people going to realize that selling newspapers isn't going to start a revolution? (LaRouche doesn't want revolution... though I'm not really sure what he wants at this point, other than intercontinental railroads) Especially when the articles are full of exclamation points, respellings of "America" as "Amerikkka" (seriously, MIMNotes must do a find/replace function on their entire paper), and rhetoric that's dusty and covered in cobwebs from the 1920s.

    I recently asked an ISO member point blank what exactly the "revolutionary" point was about selling papers. He told me that primarily it was a way to spread awareness and engage people in conversation. "By charging a dollar for some newsprint?" I asked, incredulously. He replied that it helps keep people informed, that it helps "build the movement." Wow. I asked him that if they, as Trotskyists, feel it's the "proletariat" that need to be organized and led, why the hell are they selling their papers in middle to upper class areas of town? He shrugged and said "this is where I was assigned."

    Even more incredulous were the LaRouchers, who, inbetween exhortations to go to his website to see his next live online speech, told me that his ideas were really considered in Congress, and that a number of recent bills that passed were originally LaRouche ideas. Wowie!

Remember kiddies: avoid cultish dogma, even (especially?) secular cultish dogma.

The REVOLT of the Penguins in Chile (student power and stuff)

RevolutionAM — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 09:26:48 EDT

Now this is what I call student power!

CHILE HAS been overrun by high school students whose mass protests have forced the government to drop planned cuts in education spending.

Called "penguins" because of their suit-and-tie uniforms, the students have shaken the foundations of the rigid Chilean social structure, inherited from the bloody dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Now, the government of President Michelle Bachelet of the Socialist Party, which took office earlier this year, has been forced to retreat.

The last six weeks in Chile have been marked by a strike of over 1 million students; the occupation of up to 1,000 high schools and most of the country's universities; and weekly, sometimes daily, marches.

The movement has also persevered in street battles against Chile's sophisticated repression machine--complete with carabineros (the national police) clad in riot gear and tanks firing water cannons that shoot a mixture of water and tear acid. Students, some as young as 13, fought back with sticks, stones and Molotov cocktails.

The struggle began as a defensive fight--stopping the Bachelet government proposals last March for an increase in the cost of the University Entry Exam (PSU) and a restriction on student transportation passes to two trips per day.

Look at that! in a society as socially rigid as Chile, still just coming-to after the decades of Pinochet, and the students can mobilize and do something like this. And the great thing is it shows the fundamental power of democratic structures:

The ACES is composed of two delegates from each school, and it elects a committee of 34 representatives to negotiate with the government. The democratic character of the ACES has meant active participation of students at the occupations--and made the movement difficult to derail, despite the youth organization of Bachelet's own party being one of the main forces leading it.

The march of the penguins has brought behind it broad layers of Chilean society, including university students, various sections of the working class and most parents. According to opinion polls, 87 percent of the population supports the students.

I guess the closest thing we've seen to this here in the States recently was the wave of walkouts at scores of SoCal schools this spring over the immigration issue. The student mobilization also showcases the power and importance youth can play on the national stage given the opportunity:

The 15-, 16- and 17-year-old students who lead this movement have become a phenomenon in Chile, embarrassing senators on live televised debates, infuriating news anchors and treating government ministers like kids who don't get it.

[Entire article here]

Open your umbrella BEFORE the weather gets bad

RevolutionAM — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 15:49:25 EDT

     Marc Loi brought up a good point about the splintering of the progressive campus sphere into small individual issue groups.

     One solution to the issue/identity politics blues is the progressive umbrella organization. Done well, I've seen umbrella groups work great on campuses, especially where liberals are not the majority.

     At my undergrad, we had 5 different clubs, doing different things, and there was at least a 60% membership overlap between the groups. We'd get done with one meeting and tell each other "see you in the next room in 15 minutes!" It was ridiculous, and not a very good use of time.

There are two kinds of umbrella groups you can form:

1) It's less of an umbrella, and more of a hub. All the issue groups do actions on their own, and members from the different groups meet bi-weekly to discuss what everyone is doing, and figure out ways other groups can act in solidarity. The advantage of this is group autonomy and flexibility (and perhaps budgetary independence, depending on how your campus is run). Independent groups can also execute more radical actions without the approval of a larger group of people.

2) It's definitely an umbrella, people are members of the group, and subgroups/committees are formed around different issues. This means that actions done by a subgroup would generally come before a vote of the whole. The advantage of this is there's much more obligation on the part of other members to join in the action, and people can join the larger group without committing to one or two particular issues. If the issues are linked to the group (as well as funding), this also gives an added incentive for people to come to the meetings and get involved with what other groups are doing. The disadvantage is subgroups have less leeway to do actions that the group as a whole does not approve of. This can be a good or a bad thing, depending on the action and on which side of the controversy you're on.

Of course, an umbrella group is only going to be as successful as its members make it. What are YOUR experiences with issue/coalition activism on your campus?

Campus Progress Rocks the Mike

RevolutionAM — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 15:44:49 EDT

     I went with a good friend to Campus Progress' "Spoken Word: A Vehicle for Progressive Change" last night at their D.C. office.

It was glorious.

     I'm a veteran of my old local spoken word scene back in PA, but I'd been woefully performance-poetry-free for more than a year since I moved to D.C. and the rigors of a soul-deadening law school education came a-knockin. This event certainly got my creative juices flowing again. The event featured the verbal stylings of Al Letson, Aya de Leon, Harlym 125, and Kelly Ken-Yie Tsai. They all had a very unique style to their poetry.
     Al Letson had several very personal poems, including one about his daughter, entitled "Venus."
     For Aya de Leon, she spoke of feminism and foreign policy wrapped into one when she performed a heartwrenching poem about the U.S. colonial island of Vieques, anthropomorphized into a young girl with an abusive step-father. She also performed a biting and hilarious poem extolling the sexiness of "the sensitive man."
     Harlym 125, a Brandeis University Dean during the day (we were all surprised), had the audience on the edge of their seats (and standing) with his explosive poems on both his personal life in Harlem and larger issues of race and class in American society.
     Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai (a.k.a. Yellowgurl) was in top form last night, her most memorable poem being one about Hurricane Katrina, originally commissioned for a relief fundraiser. She also reflected on her childhood Chinese language lesson books, and the perfect, idealized chinese children illustrated therein, in her poem "Little Red Books."
     Several friends and I were hoping there would be an open mic afterward, but no such luck, which is a shame, because I know there were many local performance poets in the audience; if anything gets you in the mood to go up and perform, it's seeing others do the same. I hope for future events Campus Progress will be more participatory in its planning, but for the main event, CP really came through (CP staff took photos and video, and I hope both will be on the site soon). These performers are at the top of their games, and I was beyond impressed.

     Now here comes your job: Help these poets out! Invite one (or all of them!) to your campus, and get as much stipend from student government as you can. It's hard to make ends meet as an artist of any stripe in our economy, and we each have a responsibility to support the arts whenever we can. Here's their contact info:

Al Letson's website
Aya de Leon's website
Harlym 125's bio & contact info
Kelly Ken-Yie Tsai's website

An 'Inconvenient Truth' about beltway environmentalism

RevolutionAM — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 01:49:39 EDT

     I just watched An Inconvenient Truth tonight at a free "sneak peek" organized by Co-op America, Campus Progress and a few other progressive groups at D.C.'s E Street Theatre. The film was fantastically done, and enlightened me on several points about global warming that I wasn't aware of before. Good times. I encourage you all to see it.
     Then there was a little organized discussion afterward, which consisted mostly of several people from various progressive and enviro-friendly organizations talking up front about "how you can help" stop global warming.
     So then they opened it up to discussion, and I commented about how concerned I was that all the "solutions" being offered were really anti-social in nature. Things like "you can fill out this form on the website to send a message to ExxonMobil" and calling our congresspeople, and the upteen ways of saying "vote with your pocketbook:" save the environment by buying things! It was the same old song and dance of telling us consumers "buy certain things, and ask the powers that be to behave more nicely, and you're an exemplary activist." I said that over the past 50 years, as global temperatures have risen, organic communities have also decayed: if we fix the latter, it suddenly becomes much easier to fix the former. Socially atomized people are by definition can't act consciously in unison with others around them, which is exactly what must be done to help bring us all back from the brink.
     I told them that we all need to become more creative about our answers to the endless "well what can I do about it?" questions than using the same individualized and isolated actions used by the very system that gave us global warming in the first place. (Especially the one guy who works at a Solar Power PR firm: "we're selling green power like Coke or McDonalds!" What a stupendous analogy!) The panelists didn't really scramble to respond to me, and just let this one woman talk about how telling people to go see this movie is a social act, and can help create community. These were very much people thinking inside the political box (could you tell?). Though I can't really be surprised at the general inside-the-beltway thought processes, as we were after all, inside the beltway.

     So afterward I was talking to an older couple who it turns out are really active in the National Initiative for Democracy and former Senator Mike Gravel's Democratic Presidential run*. We had a lovely chat on the metro and we both exchanged ideas to look into. Such an encounter would not have happened had we all just left after the movie, which made me think: wouldn't it be fantastic to have movie theaters that set aside a place and some time after the movie, like in an adjoining room, where people could just go in and talk about what they just saw? Sure, it wouldn't be useful for movies like Legally Blonde 3, but for non-fluff films and documentaries I think it could be invaluable. Think of how fascinating it would be to join a post-movie discussion after every V for Vendetta showing, or even after a flick like Saw. It would turn what is otherwise the passive act -- sitting in front of a forty-foot screen -- into an engaging and socially rewarding event.

*Please don't construe this as an endorsement of either ni4d or Mike Gravel. Or of a hypothetical Legally Blonde 3, for that matter.

Viva Castro?

RevolutionAM — Fri, 26 May 2006 14:01:16 EDT

     I'm curious what this community thinks about Fidel Castro, in strategic terms. I always find myself a little uncomfortable when Castro speaks out against the Iraq occupation, or U.S. influence in Latin America. Is the enemy of my enemy my friend? Personally for me, no fucking way. It's exactly that kind of mindset ("hey, if the conservatives hate him, he must be doing something right!") that enabled the power-hungry wack-job Leninists in Cuba (the PCC) to gain so much power in the first place. Cuban progressives and radicals saw the PCC leadership as speaking out against Machado and Batista; many voices on the left were wary of criticizing other critics, fearing it would hurt the cause.

     Another more graphic example is the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. The CIA funds, trains and foments violent religious reactionaries to set them loose on the Soviets, and then are surprised when all of a sudden the U.S. is the "great satan."

     However, the main point of this post is to see what you all think. I'll just leave with this: resist the urge to defend Castro just because conservatives are the ones most often criticizing him. If anything, liberals and progressives should be the more outspoken opponents of his broken regime.

Whole Foods, Hemp, Thriftstores, and the Folly of Lifestyle Activism

RevolutionAM — Wed, 24 May 2006 00:54:15 EDT

(disclaimer 1: I know that I too am guilty of a lot of what I am railing against in the following paragraphs... but I'm working on it.)
(disclaimer 2: Most of this criticism is aimed at those activists who envision or promote an alternative societal/economic organization, though it might be useful for Mainline Liberals to read too.)

     I've been musing over the "lifestyle" activism that I've been seeing more and more of (and granted, have at times taken part in). And by lifestyle activism I don't mean simply wearing Amnesty pins or drinking fair trade coffee - it's when people are judged by how well their lifestyle conforms with external political/economic ends that it becomes a real problem. I know so many people who cringe or ridicule a fellow activist who happens to be wearing Nike footwear, or even watches American Idol (because it's owned by FOX). By striving for ideological purity and eliminating any potential "hypocrisy" from every aspect of our lives, I fear we activists have lost sight of what is truly important - building the movement(s). By paying attention to every single thing we purchase, every book/magazine we read, and every conversation we have, we have lost sight of larger goals, and better uses of our time.

     It's fantastic that you buy clothing and furniture from thrift shops. Good for you. But the fact that you do so does not a) make you a better activist, nor b) absolve you of greater responsibilities to the causes you are using your money to indicate solidarity with.

     Being an activist does not mean just buying fair trade coffee at Starbucks - or buying anything for that matter. I don't have much respect for the activist who wears hemp clothing, eats organic food and drives a hybrid but whose activism does not extend much further than her/his checkbook.