New Media We Recommend
Below is a list of new materials that we have read/watched in recent weeks. The comments are not a “review” of the material, instead sort of an endorsement of ideas and investigations that can provide solid analysis and even inspiration in the struggle for change. All these items are available at The Bloom Collective, so check them out and stimulate your mind.
Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, by Christian Parenti – Perhaps the most urgent issue of our day is global warming. It is urgent for many people because of the small window of opportunity we may have to stop the trend towards warming the planet beyond a level that would be inhabitable by people. However, an often over looked reason why global warming is so urgent is that it is contributing right now to increased violence and militarism around the world. This is the thesis of Christian Parenti’s new book Tropic of Chaos. Parenti documents on a continent by continent basis how global warming is resulting in increased violence and in some cases significant military conflicts. In addition, Parenti points out how even US military planners are factoring in the ecological and social costs of global warming for their future plans, which will rely heavily on counter-insurgency measures and targeted at increasingly civilian populations most affected by climate change. A disturbing but important book for those concerned about the future of humanity.
Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics, by Paul Street and Anthony DiMaggio – Most books and commentary on the Tea Party are usually presented through a partisan lens. What is refreshing about Street and DiMaggio’s book is that it not only deconstructs the so-called Tea Party movement in the US, they juxtapose it with the original Tea Party to show how disconnected those involved with the current manifestation are from historical reality. In addition, the authors demonstrate that the Tea Party in many ways was purely a media creation along with major funding from wealthy reactionary sectors of American capitalism. Besides the well documented dissection of this so-called modern movement, the book frames the Tea Party within the boundaries of current political debate in the US demonstrating that there is no real populist movement from wither the Right or the Left and that the Tea Party (like MoveOn) is intrinsically part of the two party system and not representative of grassroots political opposition. An important book to read before the 2012 election madness.
Queer (In)justice: The Criminalizing of LGBT People in the United States, by Joey Morgol, Andrea Ritchie and Kay Whitlock – Over the past 6 months while doing research for the People’s History of the LGBTQ community Project in Grand Rapids we have learned some amazing things. The fight for LGBTQ equality is still going on today, but the emphasis might not be where it should be. This book by 3 authors/activists demonstrates that one of the most pressing issues for the LGBTQ community is how Queers are criminalized within the US “criminal justice” system. The authors make a compelling argument about how the LGBTQ is targeted by law enforcement and how the legal system still criminalizes people who challenge heterosexual norms. Queer (In)justice is essential reading for anyone fighting for LGBTQ equality and it challenges the current priorities of many of the mainstream LGBT organizations across the country which are focused on marriage equality and city ordinances.
Freedom Riders (DVD) – This recent PBS documentary is based on the book with the same title, Freedom Riders, by Raymond Arsenault. The documentary focuses on the 1961 effort by the national civil rights group the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), where Black and White citizens would ride Greyhound buses through the Deep South in order to expose the racial inequality that was institutional. Freedom Riders is a powerful testimony of the courage and risk that people were willing to take for racial justice that includes interviews by participants in the Freedom Rides as well as solid archival footage from that campaign. The film is a powerful tool both for investigating civil rights history in the US and the effectiveness of certain tactics within the strategy for racial equality. Highly recommended.
Confronting Back to School commercial madness
We are two weeks away from when K – 12 classes begin in Michigan and one thing worth thinking about is the amount of commercialism that children will be exposed to.
Last year the local group Stop Targeting Our Kids (STOK) produced a 3 – page informational sheet on commercialism in schools, particularly with the back to school theme. The information sheet points out that schools have become a favorite place for commercial messages.
In the last decade companies have been spending millions of dollars to find ways to target children while they are in school, through ad placement on the walls and book covers, fast food franchises getting cafeteria contracts and corporate created “educational materials” that are often sent to schools for free.
One example in recent years of corporate educational material that is sent to thousands of schools across the country was a coal industry produced curriculum document on the “benefits” of coal. Fortunately through the efforts of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood that coal-industry sponsored material is no longer being distributed in schools.
In fact, the Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC) also recent won another victory by getting one of the largest supplemental teacher material entities, Scholastic, to reducing the amount of corporate educational material they distribute.
According to a Media Release by CCFC:
“For years, Scholastic has produced teaching materials for corporate clients like Shell, Disney, and Nestle. In May, after a campaign led by CCFC, Rethinking Schools, and environmental groups, Scholastic pulled biased materials paid for by the coal industry. It was an important decision, but it didn’t go far enough. That’s why we asked you for help convincing Scholastic to stop distributing all corporate- and industry-sponsored teaching materials in schools.
We would prefer, of course, that Scholastic end all corporate sponsorships. But this is a huge step. Starting this fall, children will be exposed to significantly less corporate marketing in their classrooms. Already, Scholastic has agreed to end its partnership with SunnyD to promote sugar-laden beverages in elementary schools, and materials produced for corporations like DreamWorks, Disney, Shell, and Playmobile have been removed from Scholastic’s website for teachers. And Scholastic’s capitulation sends an important message to other companies working to subvert learning through the commercialization of teaching materials.”
This is certainly encouraging news and speaks to the importance of organizing for change. If you as a parent, student or educator in the West Michigan area are concerned about the commercialism in the schools you can contact STOK for more information.
Update on One Kent local government consolidation proposal
It has been a month since we last reported on the One Kent Coalition proposal to consolidate local government into one unit.
The One Kent Coalition is made up of area powerbrokers such as Dick & Betsy DeVos, Peter Seechia and David Frey, just to name a few. Ever since they first made public their proposal this group has come under scrutiny since there has been a lack of transparency and concerns about their motives.
The One Kent Coalition has generally stated that they want to make the area government more consolidated to be efficient, but more importantly they want to become more of an economic force in the country. However, a memo was revealed in March, which demonstrated other motives.
The memo from the group demonstrates two things. First, it shows that they want the issue to be on the ballot as soon as possible, which means less public dialogue. Second, the memo shows that the kind of government consolidation they are proposing would undermine public employee unions.
However, the local government consolidation group has not met in over a month because both the county and city government are frustrated with the One Kent Coalition group. Grand Rapids City Commissioner Bliss sent me a message saying that the county government is doing its own investigation of the issue and the Grand Rapids City government is actually working to oppose the draft legislation that the One Kent Coalition has drafted.
The draft is 38 pages long and is by no means easy to read. The draft legislation is calling for this new metropolitan government to be run by a CEO, a Chief Executive Officer, who would have executive power and would be elected by the public. There would also be a metropolitan commission who would adopt ordinances and budgets and be given legislative powers.
We will continue to watch this issue and report on the legislation once it is introduced at the state level. However, one thing that this process should tell us is that people with economic and political power don’t care about what the public thinks and will do whatever they can to keep their actions hidden from us no matter what.
GRIID Classes for Fall 2011
Starting in late September, GRIID will be offering two classes that will emphasize both education and action.
One class is a revised version of one we offered last year, Radical Sustainability. The new version will use the book Deep Green Resistance and include an investigation into our food, transportation and energy system. The class will also provide an opportunity for the participants to collectively develop a regional sustainability plan for West Michigan.
The other class is a first-time offering called Organizing for Change. In this class we will look at how to organizing, process, group dynamics, the use of tactics and how to develop a strategy. There is no text for this class, but we will be using lots of online materials, some resources from Project South and a look at numerous case studies for organizing in the US and around the world. The class will also do a power analysis of West Michigan.
Unlike in previous classes, these two classes will be 8 – weeks long, with the Radical Sustainability class on Mondays starting September 26 and the Organizing for Change class on Wednesdays starting September 28. Both classes will run from 7 – 9PM in the community rooms at Steepletown Ministries – 671 Davis NW in Grand Rapids.
Each class is $20 dollars, which does not include the cost of the book for the Radical Sustainability class.
For more information or to sign up contact either Jeff Smith jsmith@griid.org or Mike Saunders outobol@gmail.com.
MLive and the Obama visit to Holland
For the last 12 years GRIID has been monitoring the local news media and providing some news analysis of both issues and individual stories. An MLive article on the speech President Obama gave on Thursday at the Holland-based Johnson Controls is a perfect example of journalism as stenography.
As a matter of clarification, journalism as stenography is when reporters either just quote or summarize the claims made by someone without verifying the claims. Verification is particularly important when reporting on power, such as when the US President is the subject of story. In fact, being a watchdog of power and verifying claims made are both basic principles of journalism.
In looking at the August 11 MLive story, we see that nearly the first half of the article is devoted to pointing out that President Obama was upset with Congress and partisan politics. This first quote that reporter Ursula Zerilli cites from the President was, “There is nothing wrong with this country; there is something wrong with our politics.”
While there could be lots of debate about what is wrong with politics in the US, there are some fundamental problems with the US that would contradict the President’s claim that there is nothing wrong with this country. There are millions of people who are unemployed and underemployed in the US; right now in the US there are roughly 634,000 homeless people; the US has the highest number of people in prison – 2.3 million; the average salary of a CEO is 344 times that of the average worker in the US; and the US spends more on the military and war than all other social programs combined.
The MLive reporter then cites the President making claims that the US credit rating could have been downgraded, where he again blames Congress. However, there have been plenty of astute observations that would also include the White House in the category of blame on the “debt ceiling” issue.
After additional comments that blamed Congress and partisan politics, the MLive reporter then said that the President wants to see “Made in America” stamps on products worldwide and young people driving American-made vehicles.
The MLive reporter could easily have asked if this was the case why would the President support trade policies that will result in more US based jobs being sent to other countries. The irony of this is that Johnson Controls, the very place that the President was making such a comment, has sent over 1,000 jobs out of the US since the passage of NAFTA.
As to the issue of the President wanting to see young people driving American-made vehicles, a competent reporter could ask why the White House used the bailout of the Big Three automakers as an opportunity to allow more auto-manufacturing jobs to be sent to countries like Mexico and China?
Next the MLive reporter says, “Obama and automakers agreed earlier this month to pegging overall fuel economy standards at 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.” Unfortunately, this claim is only part of the story. What the President omitted and what the MLive reporter did not verify was that this new fuel standard will only be implemented in cars made starting in 2017 and not include any existing cars now in use or those sold before 2017.
The article then concludes with comments from the President about Johnson Controls and what the new electric car battery plant will mean for Michigan’s economy. The reporter does state that the factory received $168.5 million in state tax incentives and $299 million in federal grant funds to develop the electric car battery production.
Again, the reporter provides no history of Johnson Control’s outsourcing of jobs from West Michigan, nor the fact that the company has recently filed a lawsuit seeking to divorce itself from the French company Saft.
When the President of the US or anyone else that holds political or economic power is the focus of a news story, it is absolutely essential that local reporters practice good journalism. Failure to provide the public with critical analysis of those in power will most certainly result in a less informed and less engaged citizenry.
The Verizon Strike as the Next Wisconsin
This article by Mark Engler is re-posted from Dissent Magazine
The picket lines are up. This past weekend 45,000 Verizon workers on the East Coast, represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), went on strike. The cause of the strike was the company’s attempts to win massive concessions from the unions. Verizon argued that the employees should give up gains they had won over many years of struggle and negotiation in previous contract fights.
As the Wall Street Journal put it, “Verizon Communications Inc. is seeking some of the biggest concessions in years from its unions.” Demands include the weakening of health-care benefits, cuts in pensions, reduced job security, and elimination of paid holidays such as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. This despite the fact that the company reported billions in profit last year, and that, in the words of New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse, “Verizon’s top five executives received a total of $258 million in compensation, including stock options, over the last four years.” The unions argue that Verizon has made some $20 billion in profit in the same time period, and Citizens for Tax Justice has pointed out that the company has done so while paying little to nothing in corporate income taxes.
Without a doubt, this is a conflict of national significance. As Bob Master, CWA District 1 legislative and political director, explained Wednesday in a conference call with supporters,
This is an enormously profitable company, which we believe is trying to take advantage of an anti-union environment and, in a sense, to replicate at a giant private-sector corporation what the governors of Ohio, New Jersey, and Wisconsin have been trying to do to the public sector. Our members feel very strongly that we need to draw a line here.
The parallel to Wisconsin is apt for several reasons. First, like the Republican elected officials in their attacks on unionized schoolteachers and other public employees, Verizon is taking aim at one of the last bastions of the American middle class. As a main strategy in its public relations, the company is trying to stoke resentment about the fact that the CWA and IBEW workers actually have living-wage jobs. It is hoping that “I don’t have a pension, why should they” logic will carry the day.
Accordingly, on Wednesday Verizon took out a full-page ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer suggesting that a typical employee makes $80,600 in annual pay and $42,000 in benefits. The union disputes this claim, contending that salaries are generally in the $60,000 to $77,000 range, and that benefits are less costly than the company would suggest. But, regardless, the debate over numbers misses some critical questions: What’s wrong with workers sharing in the profits of a healthy corporation? Isn’t that the way our economy is supposed to work?
(On a side note, it’s always a treat when companies plead poverty at the negotiating table and then turn around and spend big bucks on media spots, anti-union consultants, and pricey PR firms—but that’s another story.)
The fate of 45,000 middle-class jobs is a big deal for all of America. Last month, the entire U.S. economy had a net gain of only 117,000 jobs. Not only is that for the whole country, it represents a pretty decent month given the numbers from the past year. Furthermore, almost all of the new jobs now being created are low-wage. Given these realities—and the fact that concentrating all wealth in the hands of the rich is a very bad strategy for creating the kind of demand the economy needs to rebound—what happens to the Verizon workers is a matter of broad public concern.
Bob Master is right that Verizon’s aggressive bargaining stance, like Governor Scott Walker’s public-sector power grab, is the product of a political climate in which corporate interests feel they can do whatever they want to working people, and employees will have no recourse. The Verizon strike is unfortunately akin to Wisconsin in that it is a defensive battle—an effort to stop tragic rollbacks in previously established standards of fair employment.
The background for the contract dispute is that Verizon is now making most of its profits from its wireless services. While a small number of wireless technicians are involved in the strike, that part of the company is mostly non-union. In an ideal world, CWA and IBEW would be able to “bargain to organize,” balancing any concessions at the negotiating table for current union members with agreements that the company will remain truly neutral and allow workers at Verizon Wireless to make their own decision about whether or not to unionize. But this is not an ideal world. Like in Wisconsin, labor and its allies face a difficult fight merely to stave off the worst of a rabidly anti-union assault.
That said, there is a case for hope. The mass protests in Madison earlier this year gave some cause for optimism that a new type of energetic, broad-based, community-labor mobilization might become a lasting force in that state’s politics—and become a model for movements in other parts of the country. Wisconsinites’ success this week in recalling some Republican State Senators (although not as many as hoped) suggested that the struggle will be a long one, but that progressive efforts could have some real legs.
As for the strike, all those who have been wondering when working America will be fed up enough to finally stand up and fight should not sit this one out. If the Verizon strike becomes a rallying point in this country for a movement against runaway corporate power and for a fairer economy, it could have much broader implications than what contract terms are ultimately hammered out for those now walking the picket lines. That these workers are not rolling over in the face of company insistence on concessions is important and courageous. And they deserve widespread support.
***
Those on the East Coast can find a picket line to visit here.
Supporters all over the country will soon be able to “adopt a Verizon Wireless store” in their area and help to organize pickets at that location.
Finally, without even leaving your computer, you can sign the petition in support of the 45,000 CWA and IBEW workers on strike.
What is Planet of the Apes in a World without Black Power?
This article by Josh MacPhee is re-posted from Just Seeds.
I must admit, I ran out to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes the day it came out. I’ve been a life long fan of Planet of the Apes, but I honestly can’t remember what initially drew me to the movies as a teenager. Maybe it was the Philip K. Dick-like pretzel of time travel and alternate reality shifts, maybe it was simply the irresistible combination of science fiction and old-school primitive fantasy with loin clothes and sword fights (a la Conan), but I’ve had a deep affection for the whole thing ever since. It’s amazing to me that a 1963 French sci-fi book originally translated as Monkey Planet could turn into 7 feature films, a TV series, an animated cartoon, dozens of spin-off serial novels and comic books, as well as lines of toys and other merchandise tie-ins.
It wasn’t until I went back and watched all the films again later that I realized what makes them so interesting and compelling is not the hokey special effects (yeah, yeah, I know they were miles ahead of their time…) or Charlton Heston’s terrible acting, but the strange Hollywood channeling of white fear about Black Power.
Think about it, Planet of the Apes is a world run by violent, rage-filled, and seemingly irrational dark-skinned apes (clearly men in ape costumes), who have created a slave trade of (almost entirely) white humans, who are not simply silenced by their oppression, but ignorant, brutal, and literally mute, unable to speak! Apparently Black people in power leads to white people becoming completely stupid. I suppose in some ways that prediction has come true. Obama being elected—hardly Black Power!—has created an army of white nut jobs babbling incoherently about birth certificates.
The new film, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, has some thrilling chase/fight scenes and impressive CGI, the acting isn’t terrible, and the plot is serviceable—in general I’d classify it as a mildly successful action film. But this isn’t supposed to be a generic action film, it’s supposed to be Planet of the Apes. Given that, the film seems to entirely miss the point. What was so powerful about the original Rise (titled Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and released in 1972) was the fact that it was a combination slave revolt and prison riot in “apeface!” Conquest, and possibly even all the original films, would never have been made if the largely non-violent Civil Rights Movement hadn’t shifted towards Black Power in the late ’60s, national liberation struggles in the form of the Black Panthers and Brown Berets, and eventually by the early ’70s into small-scale guerilla warfare via the Black Liberation Army. Check out the similarities between the cover of Stokely Carmichael’s 1971 book Stokely Speaks, and the intro credits to the Planet of the Apes 1974 TV series:
The original Planet of the Apes film was an astounding channeling of the sublimated (and sometimes not so sublimated) white fears of what would happen in a world run by Black people. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes was a reenactment of the race riots that swept across the U.S. throughout the 60s, and a strange brew of both celebration and denouncement of the prison riots that were taking over headlines, especially the Attica Rebellion of the previous year. I can only assume that by the time Conquest was filmed, the producers understood that a large part of the appeal of the franchise was its visceral articulation of white fear (of Black Power, miscegenation, emasculation), so they pushed it up a notch, creating a U.S. where primates truly are slaves—servants to humans with no free will. The opening credits of the film run on top of large groups of men dressed as gorillas and chimps walking while standing up, wearing red and green jumpsuits (respectively), and being corralled and threatened by armed, uniformed guards.
It is impossible to not read race, and the 1970s rise of the prison industry, into this. The rest of the film is an acting out of the apes coming to consciousness, rebellion, and eventual insurrection against their masters. Their revolt against the corporation that trains them to be good slaves is filmed just like a prison riot, and at one point a white guard actually bullwhips the black apes.
The larger revolt is certainly intended to evoke the urban riots of the ’60s in places like Detroit, Cleveland, and Watts. The apes are shown as intelligent and crafty, using advanced military planning to outwit the humans, as rioters often do (witness the past weeks’ revolt in the UK). If this wasn’t a clear enough indication for the audience that this film was about race (and full of references to the more political end of Blaxploitation films, like The Spook that Sat by the Door), the inclusion of a Black human character for whom the ape uprising causes both an identity crisis and an ethical dilemma—both terribly over-acted—throws the whole thing over the top.
The final insurrection/guerilla warfare scenes are potent not only because they echo the historical moment they were filmed, but they fulfill the promise of all revolutionary moments, that it is the oppressed that will liberate themselves. This is pop culture riffing off of Frantz Fanon, and it’s damn exciting. In a span of five short years Planet of the Apes went from a strangely racist science fiction thriller to an embodiment of Black Liberation.
The new Rise of the Planet of the Apes is anemic in comparison. After a single showdown with humanity (or at least with the San Francisco police force) the apes will rise, but not so much of their own doing. Their initial jump from simple chimps to an extremely intelligent column of primates is due to a human-developed virus tested on chimpanzees that smartens the apes, but also happens to kill off humans. In some ways this speaks to the contemporary fear of biology gone wild (a la dozens of zombie movies), but also sends some pretty confusing messages about the ethics of vs. the necessity of animal testing. (If this virus hadn’t been tested on primates, wouldn’t humans have just died anyway? Seems to me like an argument for more stringent testing protocols rather than animal rights.)
The race subtext has been completely, but only half-heartedly, replaced with this sub-plot of medical ethics, and the connected concern for animal welfare. One scene, where the main scientist/protagonist (played by James Franco) visits his bio-engineered chimp Ceasar in a poorly run and brutal primate facility, looks to be an almost shot for shot fictional remake of a similar scene in the recent documentary Project Nim. (In the above two images, the top one is from Rise, the bottom from Project Nim) We are made to feel for Ceasar and the other apes, but even with advanced CGI gorillas and baboons acting increasingly human, the animal rights narrative is no where near as compelling as the racial overlay in the original. While animal rights are becoming a larger narrative, they still pale in comparison to the reality of racial inequalities in our society. To call the eventual ape escape and victory against the humans in Rise a story about the ethics of animal treatment would be far-fetched. Such high morals are ill-fitting on 2011 CGI apes, just as they are on most actors in contemporary Hollywood movies.
But race is not entirely absent from Rise, it simply doesn’t seem to matter—on the surface at least. Franco’s character falls for and eventually partners with a South Asian veterinarian (who may also be the only female character in the film, if I recall correctly, and is played by Freida Pinto of Slumdog Millionaire fame), and his boss is a greedy, high-powered CEO who is both the main bad guy in the film, and also happens to be Black. So I suppose in forty years some things have changed, miscegenation with hot women of color is no longer taboo, but Black people in power is still the fastest way to end of us all.
This Day in Resistance History: Flying the Black Flag
On August 12, 1883, the first anarchist newspaper to be called “The Black Flag” (Le Drapeau Noir) was launched in France by French anarchist and feminist Louise Michel. The newspaper, as well as the use of the flag, had two purposes: to remind people of the workers’ battle and deaths in the Canut Insurrections of 1831-1834, and to stir support for another wave of worker resistance more than fifty years later.
The black flag as a symbol of anarchy had originated in Lyon, where silk workers used it during a series of revolts. Despite the French Revolution and the attempt to eradicate the elite from France, by 1830, the capitalists had the economy under an iron grip again. In Lyon, the major industry was silk weaving. The canuts, or silk crafters, owned their own looms and hired their own assistants. Women as well as men were employed, and apprentices lived in the homes of the canuts. Workshops cooperated with each other to meet order demands and set salaries for their workers.
But this collective system had been overtaken by la grande fabrique: a group of bankers, wealthy landowners, and silk traders. They set the prices for the final product, often forcing the canuts and their shops to work long hours for less and less pay. Finally, in 1831, the situation reached a breaking point during an economic downturn.
On November 22, 1831, workers across Lyon captured a fortress used as a police barracks and military base. They successfully fought off French infantry with stolen weapons, although the soldiers and police managed to kill or wound 600 workers. After capturing the fortress, the canuts raised a black flag over the building. It stood, they explained, for their rejection of a government that had inflicted misery and ignored their pleas for justice. This moment in history has held meaning for the French working class ever since.
Canuts then occupied the entire city of Lyon. King Louis-Philippe sent an army of 20,000 to retake the city. The town was placed under military rule with charges being brought against only 11 of the canuts; the King had ordered there be no executions and minimal disruption to the silk trade. But la grande fabrique still held sway. The economy in France improved, but capitalists decided that the workers’ wages were still too high. Initial attempts to lower them triggered massive strikes and worker resistance.
By 1833, conditions for workers worsened, even though the capitalists were taking in more money than ever before. Wishing to boost their profits even higher, la grande fabrique members appealed directly to the King and the government. The Count d’Argout, the Interior Minister, wrote that the canuts were living in “fabulous prosperity” and were grossly overpaid. The government ordered a further reduction in wages.
The result was a second battle between workers and the army in February of 1834, and this time over 10,000 canuts and their workers were subjected to lengthy prison sentences or deportation. The workers would not give up. On the day that the trial started, another wave of fighting broke out. “The Bloody Week” had started. The black flag of the workers, who had rejected their government and its right to control their craft, was raised again, this time over both Lyon and three neighboring towns.
Although the silk workers’ uprisings ended up failure, anarchist beliefs formed during this 19th Century resistance took root. They inspired the organizers of the Paris Commune of 1871. Louise Michel fought on the barricades during those battles. She was arrested, and told the jury, “If you are not cowards, then kill me!” Instead, she was deported to Canada, where she organized natives there to fight against France’s imperialist policies. When she returned to France, she continued her organizing and social justice work for the rest of her life.
By 1883, unemployment reached record heights across France and particularly in Paris. Michel launched her newspaper so she could detail information about worker resistance efforts. She also reminded readers of the role that the government had played in lowering raises and increasing poverty levels among the working class for half a century.
Michel personally raised a black flag over Paris in 1883 during general strikes that she helped organize to protest state control of wages on behalf of the wealthy elite. She took a black petticoat that she owned, cut it up and sewed it into a flag which she waved as a rallying point for workers during the fighting and protests. Due to Michel’s effective information campaign via Le Drapeau Noir, workers across France and especially in Lyon launched insurrections in solidarity with the Parisian workers.
Today, Lyon’s black flag, which stands for no flag—the complete rejection of nation-states and their corrupting power—has become an important symbol worldwide. As Louise Michel wrote in Le Drapeau Noir, “The black flag, with layers of blood upon it from those who wanted to live by working or die by fighting, frightens those who want to live off the work of others.”
Corporate Funding of Urban League, NAACP & Civil Rights Orgs Has Turned Into Corporate Leadership
(This article by Bruce Dixon is re-posted from Black Agenda Report)
“Not only is Bill Gates a cousin,” gushed academic Henry Louis Gates at the Urban League convention in Boston last week, “Bill Gates a brother.” Bill Gates, of course, is the founder of Microsoft, and one of the wealthiest men on earth. Invited to deliver the keynote address at the National Urban League’s annual meeting in Boston last week, the billionaire lectured the assembled on education and poverty, although Gates is not qualified to teach an hour in any classroom in the land, and has certainly never been poor.
Bill Gates has never been a friend of black people anyplace on earth. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a large investor in Monsanto, the company that invented genetic engineering, actually creates hunger on the African continent and undermines the food security of African nations by pushing genetically modified crops upon reluctant African farmers and their governments. If African farmers can be locked into planting patented crop varieties, instead of planting and saving their own seed as they have the last ten thousand years, they will be obliged to buy the expensive and environmentally destructive pesticides these frankenfood crops require, along with paying yearly license fees.
Inside the US, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been a key player in the drive to privatize public education. Gates Foundation staff helped write the guidelines for the Obama Administration’s Race To The Top program, under which states and school districts, in order to receive any federal education funds at all, had to hire consultants, often from the same Gates Foundation to write the detailed plans for closing thousands of neighborhood public schools, implementing high stakes testing and turning teachers into the cowed, insecure and casual WalMart style workforce preferred by private, often for profit charter school operators.
So how did the National Urban League become the mouthpiece and cheering section for corporate experiments on black school children at home and the hijacking of the global food system in Africa? The answer is that like the NAACP, the National Committee on Black Civic Participation, the National Council of LaRza, the National Conference of Black State Legislators and even the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the Urban League is now and has for some time past been completely dependent on corporate donations to keep going. Those that pay the bills, call the shots.
This is the new model of African American leadership – a leadership that covets, courts, kowtows and accomodates to power rather than speaking truth to it. This is why whenever the interests of ordinary black people conflict with those of corporate America, a great number of our well-funded black misleaders will inevitably side with their corporate sugar daddies rather than their constituents. It’s why the Congressional Black Caucus and Operation PUSH assisted in foisting subprime mortgages on countless black families, and why the NAACP speedily forgave the predatory loan practices Wells Fargo and Bank of America. It’s why Sharpton, the NAACP and the Urban League all endorsed the merger of AT&T with T-Mobile and Comcast’s swallowing of NBC.
It’s time to turn the page on the venerable civil rights organizations, whose model of corporate funding has allowed them to be utterly taken over by corporate interests and used against us at every opportunity. It’s time for something completely different.
(This article by Evan Bush is re-posted from iwatchnews.org.)
All but one member of a government advisory panel weighing the safety of one of the most contentious forms of energy development, known as fracking, have financial ties to the natural gas industry, scientists and some environmental groups are asserting. The scientists called for the ouster of its chairman, former CIA director John Deutch, who sits on the boards of two energy-related companies.
The group, which reports to Energy Secretary Seven Chu, is concluding that development of shale gas can be done safely provided that companies fully disclose the chemicals used in fracturing liquids, and that they face monitoring of their activities and rigorous standards for emissions of airborne contaminants.
While the Energy Department doesn’t regulate natural gas production, the Environmental Protection Agency is still months from reaching conclusions in its own study, and the panel is leaving largely unaddressed the most sensitive issue of toxic chemicals that may make their way into drinking water supplies, opponents of fracking fear the Energy panel’s recommendation can give a boost to the industry.
The committee, formed in May, was tasked to review fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, in which gas companies pump sand, water and chemicals into wells drilled into the ground to break up the earth below in order to release and then capture natural gas. Critics say fracking could be tainting groundwater, killing wildlife and, as iWatchNews has reported , giving off methane gas that contributes to global warming.
Earlier this year, in his State of the Union address, President Obama endorsed natural gas as part of the solution to feed the nation’s energy needs, and then sought to have the advice from the Energy Department panel.
In a letter to Chu , 28 scientists complained that the committee, formally known as the Natural Gas Subcommittee of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, “appears to be performing advocacy-based science and seems to have already concluded that hydraulic fracturing is safe.” The scientists ask Chu to replace Deutch “with a person with no financial ties to the natural gas and oil industry,” as well as add “independent members” to the committee.
An environmental group, the Environmental Working Group, previously objected to the advisory group’s makeup, saying Deutch received more than $1.4 million from energy companies Schumberger and Cheniere Energy between 2006 and 2009.
Other members of the committee said to have current financial ties to the natural gas and oil industry are Stephen Holditch, Kathleen McGinty, Susan Tierney, Daniel Yergin and Mark Zoback. The scientists said their “conflicts of interest make it appear that the subcommittee is designed to serve industry at taxpayer expense rather than serving President Obama and the public with credible advice.”
Energy Department spokesperson Tiffany Edwards defended the committee’s composition, saying it is “balanced” and that each member has experience and expertise, including technical and practical knowledge. “Some have said that the panel is too weighted toward industry, while others say it is too weighted towards environmentalists. We think we got it just right, and having a diversity of perspectives will only strengthen the final product.”
Industry representatives often serve on government advisory boards, including the one that advises Energy Department Secretary Chu. As iWatch News has reported , Chu’s advisory board on energy policy includes one of the president’s big campaign fundraisers, a venture capitalist who has invested in companies receiving seed money from the Energy Department.
A 1972 federal law, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, requires only that advisory committees be “fairly balanced.” There are an estimated 900 formal advisory groups scattered across the government, comprising some 65,000 committee members who counsel more than 55 agencies, according to a 2008 Government Accountability Office report . By advising agencies such as the EPA, FDA and Energy Department, members of the advisory committees can influence standards for food safety, environmental protection and energy use.
The role of advisory committees can be more important than it might seem. Industry players or technical experts with a vested interest in agency decisions gain access to regulators and a platform to advance arguments in Congress. Sometimes, agencies have faced legal challenges for ignoring the recommendations of advisory committees.
While the Obama White House has advertised efforts to minimize the direct influence of registered lobbyists, efforts at a crackdown have been soft. Last year, Obama appeared to call for an end to the membership of lobbyists on advisory committees – in the form of an announcement on a White House blog by Norm Eisen, then the president’s special ethics counsel. Lobbyists and executives from Boeing, International Paper Co., IBM and 13 other companies and trade organizations quickly complained – and threatened to circumvent the requirement by having their lobbyists simply stop registering.
“There are financial ties with the industry” on the fracking advisory panel, said Kyle Ash, a lobbyist for the environmental group Greenpeace. “The administration said they weren’t going to have special interests.”
The letter seeking Deutch’s ouster was signed by 28 scientists, including researchers and professors at the University of California, Cornell and Penn State.
While the Energy Department weighs its views on fracking, the EPA has undertaken a study on groundwater quality, due to be finished late next year. Among environmentalists’ concerns: The Energy Department’s advisory panel could influence the issue before that study is made public.
“We’re concerned their findings could undercut the Environmental Protection Agency’s findings, which have taken a lot more time and have been a lot more rigorous,” said Leann Brown, spokesperson for the Environmental Working Group.
In 2009, the Department of Energy predicted that shale gas, the kind of gas that fracking produces, would account for 20 percent of the United States total energy consumption in 2020.
In Pennsylvania, according to a study for the American Petroleum Institute, drilling in the Marcellus shale region, which is one of the most prominent in the country, has risen substantially over the past five years. In 2005, just three wells were drilled. In 2009, that number rose to 710.
