Does MoveOn work for the 99% or the Democrats?
Today, MoveOn.org was calling for 99% Congressional Speak-Out actions, but encouraging people to go to the offices of members of Congress all across the country.
An action was planned today for 1:00 PM at the Federal building in Grand Rapids, with less than 10 people showing up during the time this writer was there. The local MoveOn.org group also was encouraging people to sign an online petition calling on Rep. Amash to support job creation legislation. Part of the petition language reads as follows:
Unemployment remains at 14 million Americans and a stubborn 15% in Michigan. While Rep. Amash and the Republicans refuse to compromise on raising taxes on the 1% and balancing the budget at the cost of Medicare and Social Security, working Americans are slipping further and further into debt. While balancing the budget should be a long-term concern, the needs of the 99% should take precedence in any legislation before Congress.
The language clearly indicates that MoveOn wants to lay the blame for the current unemployment crisis at the feet of Republicans, since as numerous writers have pointed out for years, MoveOn.org is an operative of the Democratic Party.
The MoveOn 99% Congressional Speak-Out text also says, “On December 1, we’ll organize hundreds of “99% Congressional Speak-Outs” at local congressional offices to express our disgust that Washington has done nothing for the struggling majority. We’ll tell Democrats to act like Democrats and fight for Jobs Not Cuts—and we’ll expose the GOP’s all-out effort to give tax breaks to millionaires.”
Again, the bulk of the blame for our economic crisis is laid at the feet of the GOP, which is simply not true. The current financial crisis and economic policies that support the 1% have been a bi-partisan affair.
What is also objectionable about the MoveOn action is that it attempts to co-opt the language of the Occupy Movement by using terms like the 99% and the 1%. Their new add, Be Democrats, also uses the occupy language, but ignores the fact that the occupy movement has been clearly opposed to the bi-partisan support for Wall Street, political corruption and complicity in systemic exploitation. To watch the Be Democrats ad, one gets the impression that Democrats are generally for working class people. The ad spokesperson says that Democrats support welfare policies, which completely ignores the fact that much of the welfare system in the US was gutted under the Clinton administration.
The co-optation of the occupy movement by the Democrats and their operatives like MoveOn is dissected clearly in a recent article by Kevin Zeese, which points out that MoveOn has a history of undermining grassroots efforts for radical change since the beginning of the George W. Bush administration. And lest we forget, MoveOn started as an effort to stop any impeachment proceedings against former President Bill Clinton. Zeese ends his criticism of MoveOn, Rebuild the Dream and the Democrats by stating:
MoveOn and Rebuild the Dream can prove us wrong if they come forward with a non-partisan statement saying they will fight against any elected official, of any party, in any office, who has not lived up to the anti-militarism and anti-corporatist agenda, especially the president.
Until that statement is made Democratic Party operatives and their allied groups should back off the Occupy Movement. You have a different strategy – working inside the Democratic Party, working inside the limits of the corrupt machine while we want to transform American politics.
Get out of our way.
It’s Time to Occupy the FCC
This article by Bruce Dixon is re-posted from Black Agenda Report.
You’d have to look long and hard to find a government agency more transparently devoted to serving greedy corporate interests at the public expense than the Federal Communications Commission. According to the Federal Communications Act of 1934, the FCC is supposed to regulate the broadcast airwaves, telephony, the Internet and cable industries in the public interest. It’s not even a bad joke. For decades, virtually every top level FCC staffer and commissioner has left the through the revolving door that leads straight to lucrative work for the broadcasters, Big Cable, or the telecoms.
Here’s a look at the tiniest tip of the iceberg, the post-FCC careers of its past several chairs.
| FCC Chairman | From | Who they work for now… and who the current one served before this |
| Julius Genachowski | 2009 -present | A former AT&T lobbyist and Clinton White House counsel, helped write the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which gave the internet backbone, built with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to AT&T and other telecoms for pennies on the dollar. |
| Kevin Martin | 2005-2009 | Now works at Patton Boggs, a bipartisan DC lobbying firm that represents telecoms, broadcasters, the recording industry and Big Cable. |
| Michael Powell | 2001-2005 | First appointed to FCC by Clinton in 1997, Powell now heads theNational Cable & Broadcasters Association, the front group for Comcast and the rest of Big Cable |
| William E. Kennard | 1997-2001 | Currently US Ambassador to the European Union, where he insists that Europe privatize its internet backbone and municipal wifi services and let US cellular carriers in to saddle customers with US style multiyear contracts and penalties. |
| Reed Hundt | 1993-1997 | Works for management and private equity firms that represent or own cable companies, broadcasters, the recording industry and blocks of telecom stock. |
The FCC is supposed to manage the broadcast frequencies in the public interest. But it grants the enormous, greedy corporations that own most radio and TV stations monopoly licenses to operate their highly profitable businesses upon the scarce publicly owned spectrum with absolutely no obligations to provide local news, local voices or meaningful public service.
When digital technology increased the number of possible broadcast stations several fold, the FCC never considered offering those frequencies to new women and minority nonprofit broadcasters who would be eager to air the voices and provide the news and public service commercial broadcasters won’t. Incredibly, the FCC gave the new station frequencies to the same old broadcasters, as if they owned them instead of the public! These old TV frequencies are excellent for penetrating walls, and could also be used to deliver municipal broadband to communities, eliminating the digital divide once and for all.
Instead, now that licensees have no use for the frequencies the FCC has begun to permanently privatize them by auctioning them off to telecoms.
The FCC regulates the land line and cell phone industries as well, but not in the public interest. The US has some of the highest cell phone rates in the world, with multiyear contracts and penalties that are illegal in much of the world. In Europe, for example, cell phone customers looking for a better deal can change contracts and companies every month with no penalties or credit checks and keep their existing phones and numbers. The FCC never challenges the arbitrary and deceptive billing practices of phone and cable companies or bothers to educate the public on things like the fact that text message delivery, excluding the cost of billing, costs them absolutely nothing.
In recent years, the FCC has decided that regulating the cable industry was something it just didn’t want to do, and that was that, leaving millions of us at the tender mercies of Big Cable. The FCC has stood aside and refused to challenge dozens of state laws like Pennsylvania’s which ban cities and towns from constructing their own cable, broadband and wifi networks to compete with Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others whose preference for serving only premium customers is the origin of the digital divide.
Fast, cheap and ubiquitous broadband will be as key to community economic development, to people accessing education, medical care, government services and entrepreneurship in the 21st century as paved roads. But the FCC’s preference for private profits over the public good has meant that in the US, where the internet was invented, internet speeds are slower and more expensive than in more than a dozen other countries, and that high speed internet is available to proportionately fewer here than in 12 to 20 other countries, depending on how this is measured.
The FCC has failed to protect network neutrality, the notion doctrine that would forbid Comcast, AT&T and “owners” of the internet from discriminating against or banning outright content, devices or software they don’t like, or favoring some content with faster and more reliable service for a higher price, as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Boost Mobile and other carriers are already doing.
The FCC’s commissioners, staff and advisors are ludicrously out of touch, and seem perfectly happy that way. So when the FCC gave short notice that two commissioners would visit Atlanta this week for three hours on a single day during the evening rush hour, allegedly “to assess the communications needs” of metro Atlanta, they were operating as they normally do. But we also hope they get something they normally don’t, like a rude surprise.
We can’t promise, but we hope, that local residents in Atlanta tomorrow make their voices heard when the FCC shows up, at GA Tech’s auditorium, 250 14th St. NW from 5 to 8 PM.
We hope that local residents will demand that the broadcast frequency privatization auctions be halted.
We expect locals will demand that the frequencies be given to new nonprofit broadcasters — many of them women and minorities who will undertake the missions of serving local communities, gathering and broadcasting local news, showcasing local artists and local voices. Metro Atlanta has five and a half million people, and a single community radio station. It should and can have a dozen fully funded community radio and TV stations.
We imagine that since the commercial broadcasters, according to the 1934 law, do have a public service obligation, hold their broadcast licenses as a public trust, and have made buckets of money for decades, that local residents will demand that all commercial broadcasters and cable operators be forced to pay the costs of the nonprofit community broadcasters.
We imagine that legislators, FCC commissioners, their judge and lobbyist buddies and bosses will all think these sensible and equitable demands are politically beyond the pale and “off the table.” So we can’t ask their permission. They’re not listening anyway. It’s time for us to occupy that table, and demand what we really need —- a media regime, a broadcast regime that serves the needs of the people. It’s time for the people to withdraw their consent from rules that serve the fraction of one percent at the expense of the rest of us.
It’s time to occupy the FCC.
Climate Summit Day Four: Anti-capitalist analysis, Protests against Shell and Occupy COP17
While no real action has taken place with the government representatives in the first few days of the UN Climate Summit, there has been plenty of activity from the grassroots.
The Indigenous Environmental Network spent time protesting at a Shell oil refinery near Durban as heads of state continue to be influenced by Big Oil on the direction of the Climate Summit talks. Africans are well aware of the deadly practices of companies like Shell oil, which has destroyed much of the Ogoni land in Nigeria and was complicit in the deaths of anti-Shell activists.
The Occupy COP17 has also been active in the first few days, hosting forums with speakers from around the world and developing an action plan to confront the Climate Summit leaders. Besides the discussions and planning the Occupy COP 17 group displayed lots of donated art work and even participated in some guerrilla gardening, planting food and flowers near the location where the Summit is being held.
In addition to acts of resistance there have been several new articles, which provide important analysis and give context to the Climate Summit talks.
Longtime South African activist and writer Patrick Bond posted an excerpt from a recent book on Climate Justice on ZNet. The post critiques the African National Congress (ANC) and its role in caving in to the interests of multinational corporations, particularly energy companies who have pillaged South Africa in recent years.
In addition, Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis, has an excellent article on Counter Punch. Williams discusses the current data on global warming based on numerous sources and recent reports and much of that data concludes that global warming is actually worse than was originally projected.
Williams goes on to talk about the lack of any real action from countries like the US and the European Union. These rich countries, in Williams’ assessment, are determined to derail any serious efforts to get an international agreement on carbon emission reduction that would actually make a difference.
Williams concludes his article by arguing that the major reason for the positions taken by the US and the European Union are their adherence to capitalism, which necessitates imperialist policies towards the rest of the world in order to control their energy resources.
In 1991, the Lesbian and Gay Network of West Michigan had begun its campaign to get the City of Grand Rapids to pass an ordinance that would provide anti-discrimination protections for the LGBT community.
The ordinance did not pass until 1994, but for three years people were talking about this issue, organizing and raising awareness.
A Grand Rapids City High student named Gene Sampson hosted a show on the Grand Rapids Cable Access Channel GRTV in 1991, which featured two members of the Lesbian and Gay Network, Dr. Holly Van Scoy and Bryan Ribbens. The other two guests on the show were Bill & Jan Van Oosterhout, who at the time were members of PFLAG – Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
The show is in two parts, where Gene and his guests talk about homophobia, the ordinance campaign and challenging attitudes and stereotypes about the LGBT community.
Both of these videos are now on the Grand Rapids LGBTQ People’s History Project site, thanks to Bryan Ribbens.
The group Unity Michigan has created some rather humorous resources to “help” protect you from being perceived as being LGBT, which could cost you your job in Michigan.
The campaign is definitely funny, but this issue is very serious. However, satire can sometimes be an effect tool of resistance. Here is one of their posters on how men and women can change their appearance so as to not look “gay.”
Here is another posted that provides women interview tips.
Lastly, you don’t want to give any indication that you are LGBT, so use appropriate screen savers so that your co-workers think you are a “real man” or “real woman.”
LGBTQ History Project: Grand Rapids Front Runners & Walkers film
The Grand Rapids LGBTQ People’s History Project has just added some new resources, with particular emphasis on the Grand Rapids Front Runners and Walkers group.
There is a 21-minute documentary done about the group you can now view online (and below) and a booklet that was produced for their 15th year anniversary from 1993 – 2008.
There is also an interview with David Morris, one of the co-founders of Grand Rapids Front Runners and Walkers.
Event this Saturday will present information on the function of a Grand Jury in State Repression
This Saturday, the Bloom Collective is hosting a potluck/discussion on “the political function of a Grand Jury in State Repression, with historic and contemporary examples. The discussion will present Know Your Rights information and ways that we can collectively resist the political use of Grand Juries.”
Considering that several local people have been summoned before a Grand Jury in recent months surrounding the issue of property destruction in the East Hills neighborhood, this discussion might provide people with useful information to Know Their Rights.
Some resources that are worth looking at ahead of time or if you can’t make this discussion can be found at the Grand Jury Resistance Project and this White Paper from the Center for Constitutional Rights.
What do you do when you are summoned before a Grand Jury?
Saturday, December 3
1 – 3:00PM
Bloom Collective
671 Davis, NW Grand Rapids
Dead Afghan Kids Still Not Newsworthy
This article by Peter Hart is re-posted from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.
Back in March, we wondered when U.S. corporate news outlets would find U.S./NATO killing of Afghan kids newsworthy. Back then, it was nine children killed in a March 1 airstrike. This resulted in two network news stories on the evening or morning newscasts, and two brief references on the PBS NewsHour.
On November 25, the New York Times reported–on page 12–that six children were killed in one attack in southern Afghanistan on November 23. This news was, as best I can tell, not reported on ABC, CBS, NBC or the PBS NewsHour.
There were, on the other hand, several pieces about U.S. soldiers eating Thanksgiving dinners.
Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald was one of the few commentators to write about the latest killings. As he observed:
We’re trained simply to accept these incidents as though they carry no meaning: We’re just supposed to chalk them up to regrettable accidents (oops), agree that they don’t compel a cessation to the war, and then get back to the glorious fighting. Every time that happens, this just becomes more normalized, less worthy of notice. It’s just like background noise: Two families of children wiped out by an American missile (yawn: at least we don’t target them on purpose like those evil Terrorists: we just keep killing them year after year after year without meaning to). It’s acceptable to make arguments that American wars should end because they’re costing too much money or American lives or otherwise harming American strategic interests, but piles of corpses of innocent children are something only the shrill, shallow and unSerious–pacifists!–point to as though they have any meaning in terms of what should be done.
Levin introduced legislation that would allow the US government to arrest and indefinitely imprison US citizens is being voted on today
The National Defense Authorization Act bill, which is on the Senate floor now, was drafted in secret and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, and includes this dangerous provision allowing worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial.
According to the ACLU, the Udall amendment would strip sections 1031 and 1032 from the bill and in their place, mandate a process for Congress to use to consider whether any detention legislation is needed. If enacted, sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA would:
1. Explicitly authorize the federal government to indefinitely imprison without charge or trial American citizens and others picked up inside and outside the United States.
2. Mandate military detention of some civilians who would otherwise be outside of military control, including civilians picked up within the United States itself; and
3. Transfer to the Department of Defense core prosecutorial, investigative, law enforcement, penal, and custodial authority and responsibility now held by the Department of Justice.
The ACLU is urging people to contact Senators Levin and Stabenow immediately and tell them to vote yes on the Udall amendment, although it seems pretty clear that Levin is committed to voting for the legislation he proposed.
Climate Summit Day 2: Vandana Shiva, Occupy COP17 and International Food Sovereignty Day
Today the send day of the UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa continues. We are posting here some independent observations and analysis from a variety of sources to counteract the global warming denial that is still pervasive in the US.
ZNet has posted an article by Indian activist and author Vandana Shiva who talks about the failure of the previous climate summits and the Obama administration’s undermining of the Climate Summit in 2009. Shiva also critiques the capitalist premise in constant growth as being inherently unsustainable.
To protect the planet, to prevent climate catastrophe through continued pollution, we will have to continue to work beyond Copenhagen by building Earth Democracy based on principles of justice and sustainability. The struggle for climate justice and trade justice are one struggle, not two. The climate crisis is a result of an economic model based on fossil fuel energy and resource intensive production and consumption systems. The Copenhagen Accord was designed to extend the life of this obsolete model for living on earth. Earth Democracy can help us build another future for the human species – a future in which we recognize we are members of the earth family that protecting the earth and her living processes is part of our species identity and meaning. The polluters of the world united in Copenhagen to prevent a legally binding accord to cut emissions and prevent disastrous climate change. They extended the climate war. Now citizens of the earth must unite to pressurize governments and corporations to obey the laws of the Earth, the laws of Gaia and make climate peace. And for this we will have to be the change we want to see.
The international small farmer movement Via Campesina writes that they will have a presence at the Climate Summit to both expose how agribusiness is one of the main culprits of carbon emissions and how small agriculture can actually cool the planet. Their presence and action is a lead up to International Food Sovereignty Day to Cool down the Earth, which takes place on December 5.
There is also an Occupy COP17 effort using the tag line Climate Justice Not Carbon Markets! The Occupy COP17 plans to posts analysis of the Climate Summit, video and minutes from their general assemblies over the coming days.
Lastly, here is a video interview with Pablo Solon, the Bolivian Ambassador to the US, who was instrumental in organizing the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia last year. Solon says some of the few rays of hope in the climate justice struggle are the Occupy Movement and the Indignados in Spain.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 