www.socialistcurrents.org

will feature our blog as our home page.  Information about our organization will be found in drop-down menus, also on the home page.  This is a big step for SDUSA and I hope you’ll find the new site much more inviting and interesting.

I believe that all the subscription data has transferred properly, so you should not have to resubscribe to the new site.  I will contact anyone directly if there is a problem.

thanks,
Rick

Glenn

The Social Democrats USA in line with its anti totalitarian heritage as articulated by such leaders as Max Shachtman supports the  military actions of NATO which led to  the establishment and enforcement of the current no fly zone over Libya. We further support NATO actions to target the Qaddafi led military forces on the ground in support of the Free Forces of Libya’s democratic revolution. We call on the United States and the rest of the world to follow the example of France and recognize the Libyan National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya thus permitting  the council  to use Libyan monetary reserves to purchase the military arms and training that it needs to bring the revolution to a successful conclusion. The Social Democrats USA also calls upon the United States and the rest of the world community to support the Libyan people in their struggle for freedom by providing them with both military weapons and training.  In line with the principle that the struggle for the liberations of nations must come from the active struggles of those peoples, the Social Democrat USA does not support the introduction of Western ground forces into Libyan struggle. We see our support of the no fly zone and of the provision of arms and training to Libyan revolutionary forces as enabling the self liberation of the Libyan people.

Michael and Rick tabling in Buffalo

The first event was the annual awards dinner for the Coalition for Economic Justice.  It was held at the Convention Center in Buffalo on Friday evening.  As its name implies, the CEJ is a coalition of labor unions, community groups, and public officials who are dedicated to raising the standard of living in Buffalo by reducing the outsourcing of good paying jobs to other countries and by raising the wages of typically low paying jobs.  During the past year CEJ succeeded in getting a living wage ordinance passed in Buffalo and organizing janitors at HSBC Bank (a large institution that owns a high rise office tower and a sports arena).  It’s now moving on to new challenges.  The affair was heavily attended by local union leaders, and politicians who are seeking election this week. The SD was represented by local Buffalo member and YSD chair, Michael Mottern, and me, National Co-Chair Rick D’Loss, who drove up from Pittsburgh for the event.  Michael did a beautiful job of organizing our participation, and the table as well. It was impressive!  We made good contacts and enjoyed ourselves in the process.

Dr. Ragheb speaks at the Carnegie Shul

And then on Sunday afternoon, SDUSA co-sponsored a speaking engagement at Congregation Ahavath Achim in Carnegie, PA, near Pittsburgh.  About 40 attendees listened to Dr. Youssef Ragheb talk about his personal experiences growing up in Cairo and protesting the Nasser government in 1968.  Then he compared his experiences with the recent revolution.  He said that the government security force in Egypt has about 1.4 million police, and everyone lives in fear.  A person can disappear for simply saying the wrong thing in public.  But he shared with us an encounter that he had last year that demonstrated that things had changed. He was visiting Egypt on vacation and talked with a waiter at his hotel.  The young man had a masters degree in engineering but unfortunately was waiting tables in order to make a living.  He was extremely frustrated about his job prospects and not afraid to say so, even though a co-worker warned him to keep quiet.  ”Egypt is a pot that is ready to boil over”, the waiter said.  True enough, on January 25 of this year, a million people walked into the streets knowing very well that they could be shot by the police.

What was the difference that made this revolution successful?  ”Electronic media”, said Dr. Ragheb.  ”In 1968, I smuggled a book called The Founding Fathers past Egyptian security outside the library of the American University by wrapping it with the cover of a medical text book.  Today, young people can get everything they need directly from the internet.  The government is ignorant of all of this— they are censoring TV and radio”.  In a story that is now well known, Google executive Wael Ghonim created a Facebook page to broadcast atrocities being committed by Egyptian security forces.  He was arrested and beaten.  His captors repeatedly asked him for the password to Youtube, even though he told them that you don’t need a password to look at Youtube.  Anyone can see it!  But they beat him repeatedly until he made up a password and gave it to them.  ”The authorities are old men who don’t really understand any modern technology.  They don’t even understand the power of cell phones, let alone the internet”, said Dr. Ragheb.  ”Yes, it will take time for the revolutionaries to establish parties and democratic systems, but they have a lot of support.  The U.N. has programs to teach democracy in emerging countries and is already training Egyptians right now. And I can tell you, these young people are more aware than you think.  They know who Thomas Jefferson is”.

Listening intently to a question from the audience

The audience was also impressed with Dr. Ragheb’s knowledge of Egypt’s neighboring countries as well.  ”Libya will not be sorted out for another 5 years.  It is a different story than Egypt. Libya was once 3 different countries divided along tribal lines.  What you are seeing right now is a civil war between these tribes. NATO would have had better advised to intervene in Syria instead of Libya. Syria’s revolutionaries will not be successful in the short term without outside help.  The Syrian people are not ready like the Egyptians were.  Assad will be able to put them back in their place by force.” Dr. Ragheb caused a buzz in the room when he predicted that the next successful revolution will be in Saudi Arabia.  And furthermore, he predicted that women, not men, will lead that revolution!  The timeline?  ”Less than 3 years”, he stated confidently.  He said we should all pay attention to how the Saudi government panicked during the Egyptian revolution and started handing out lots of money to the people for no particular reason.  ”What NONE of these governments understand is that the people want Karama  كرامة , personal dignity, and you can’t buy that”.  The image below is from a common banner that was carried in Medan El Tahrir (Liberty Square) in Cairo.  The large black type reads Karama.  Underneath, it reads, “dignity to the citizen is dignity to the nation”.

Karama, dignity

Regarding Israel, I, and I believe others, were surprised by Dr. Ragheb’s tone. Because he had already explained that the revolution in Egypt was about internal problems in Egypt, I expected him to be neutral or ambivalent about Israel.  Instead, he referred to Israel as the “stem cell of democracy” in the Middle East.  ”Young people in Egypt know about Israel.  They know that there are a lot of tech companies doing business in Israel.  They know that Israelis have education and good jobs.  They know that Israelis have a life style that is much freer than their own.  And they want that.”  Consequently, he predicted that there will be no problem with the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty.  If anything, he anticipates more cooperation, not less.

Rick and Youssef after the program

As with the Buffalo event, SDUSA had a display table at the Ragheb program.  While many of the attendees know me personally, most didn’t know of my position in SDUSA.  So this event provided an opportunity for me to promote the SD and to answer their questions.

Social Democrats USA has a list of principles (see our website), and a list of goals as well, but all of them can be boiled down to two main themes: support organized labor and support democracy at home and abroad.  After this weekend, I am thinking that maybe even these two themes could be boiled down to one—karama.

To see our statement on Egypt, see the blog entry for Feb 7 on this site.

This month also happens to be the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.  It was on April 12, 1861, that General Beauregard ordered his troops to fire cannons against Fort Sumter.  And so began the war to preserve the Union. That’s how President Lincoln viewed the war, as a fight to preserve the Union. He stated clearly that if some states were allowed to secede when they so chose, others would follow for their own reasons and the United States of America would cease to exist.  This war would be the test of whether or not the USA would endure.  Of course, what is not stated so obviously is that the issue over which the Confederacy and Union were willing to go to war was slavery, or more specifically, the spread of slavery to the western states.  At the time of the Civil War, black slaves numbered 4 million in the South.  They were both property and currency.  Slaves were tangible and measurable wealth.  But mostly, they were free labor.  They were the living machines that cultivated cotton and food crops.  They supplied cheap raw materials to fuel Northern manufacturing and textile operations.  The South was not about to give up such a valuable resource without a fight.

It would be easy for us Northerners to take the haughty position that we were so offended by slavery  that we were willing fight and die for its abolition, but that would not be true.  While it is true that slavery was illegal in the North, many northerners were ambivalent  about the plight of southern slaves.  The war between the states was initially popular, but quickly lost support as casualties mounted and, frankly, many northerners would have consented to a Confederate spin-off.  After all, Northerners would have continued to do business with the Confederacy after secession, while at the same time still proclaiming a higher moral standard for the Union states.  This attitude is actually still prevalent today in that many people abhor the thought of sweatshops in America, but are perfectly willing to buy goods from sweatshops in Mexico… which brings me to my next point.

The outcome of the Civil War is well known.  The North won.  Or did it?  True, the Union was preserved and slavery was abolished, but the underlying attitude behind slavery did disappear.  The labor union movement that was so prevalent in the North a hundred years ago, never really took hold in the South.  This meant that most of the good jobs were up north.  This caused southern workers to migrate north, looking for those good jobs.  However, that trend reversed about 30 years ago and jobs began heading back south.  The lack of unions in the South yields a lower cost of labor and more profits for the owners.   Companies found this appealing and moved operations south.  Workers followed.  The grand concept that workers should have some “say so” in their workplace was left laying derelict amongst the rusted ruins of northern steel mills and auto factories.  The only things that have kept the South from returnng to out and out slavery are federal mandates from DoJ, DoL, and OSHA. Those federal agencies have provided some measure of worker rights. But federal mandates on the treatment of workers are still being challenged by conservative states that clamor for “states rights”.  These federal policies were offensive to the Confederate states in the 1800s and are still offensive to them today.  These states want to treat workers according to “local” standards.   And with more and more companies moving their operations south, it looks like the South is now winning. So, as it turns out, the war never really ended after all.

I have always believed, and I still maintain, that America peaked in the 1950s. Those times that we refer to as “Happy Days” were a time of increasing college education and home ownership, good salaries and pensions, and shiny new super highways.  What has followed is steady decline.  College is a “maybe”, home ownership is no longer part of the American dream, and pensions are things your parents had.  America’s companies are now run by finance people instead of production people.  Success is measured only according to shareholder value. Corporate executives live in isolated compounds and their life’s goal is only to acquire wealth.  No longer do company heads see themselves as heroes in the community; I’m not sure that they even recognize the existence of community.  And this shallow philosophy about the purpose of business trickles down, impacting how supervisors manage their workers and causing workers to be cynical about their role.

I’ll leave you with one of my pet peeves.  When I first started my working career, my company had a department called “Personnel”.  But little did I know that there was a move afoot to do away with this department and replace it with a department called “Human Resources”.  It was a trend that was sweeping the country.  No longer would companies consist of people, they would be a collection of human resources.  Companies would acquire, utilize, measure, reallocate, and dispose of human resources in the same way that they would utilize equipment, property, and capital resources.  A brilliant advancement in world of business!  I’m visualizing one of those corporate motivational posters showing a Southern slave auction with the slaveholder saying with a determined business look, “our people are our greatest asset”.

In case you’re new to some of the terminology, the French Socialist Party is a democratic socialist party and therefore is occupying the same place on the political spectrum as the German Social Democratic Party.  Here at SDUSA, we consider the terms “social democrat” and “democratic socialist” to be the same thing.

In France, the Parti Socialiste took 39% of the vote in regional elections. The UMP collected only half that many with 20% of the total. Actually, the big story yesterday was that the National Front (which would equate to our Tea Party) got 12% of the vote, stealing votes away from the UMP. The Socialists are now well set for next year’s upcoming presidential election.

In Germany, a coalition of the Social Democrats and the Greens unseated the Christian Democrats in Baden-Württemberg. This is particularly painful for the CDU because they have held this state for 59 years!  And it’s a big day for the Greens, who gathered 24% of the vote and just barely edged out SPD who got 23%.  It looks like this will be the first time that the Greens will get to head a state government in Germany.  The coalition of Greens and Social Dems did well in other German states also.

Perhaps the Social Democrat-Green partnership is something we should consider here in the U.S.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.

—Frederick Douglass, 1857

When U.S. students and Honduran workers scored an impressive win over Nike earlier last year, what they had to overcome in their struggle was nothing less than the debasement of political and human rights reportage, where workers’ struggles are addressed as “corporate responsibility” issues and the fight for a livable wage hardly appears. In the mid-1990s, firms discovered that they could only “manage” their supply chain insofar as perceptions of it could be controlled—that is, what the world sees. There are two other key points about the supply chain: You cannot inject justice into it or extract the exploitation from it.

For workers, the rise of outsourcing in many industries is the biggest foundation-shaking change in capitalism since the Industrial Revolution; assembly-line workers now toil for two groups of shareholders: those of the ultimate bosses—the buyers (the big brands)—and the contractors. Some of these contractors have become quite big themselves. The CEO of shoe-maker Yue Yuen, Tsai Chi Jui, recently joined the ranks of billionaires. In the same year, a mere product endorser, Tiger Woods, became a billionaire.

How did university students achieve a string of victories for Latin American workers? United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) has assisted more than 4,000 college-logo garment workers in Honduras and the Dominican Republic by deploying grassroots pressure tactics and carefully crafted appeals to university administrators. Even in the midst of a global economic downturn, diligent research combined with determined activism on the part of the wronged workers forced Russell Athletic to reopen a factory that was closed to thwart unionization. It produced an agreement between Nike and the CGT union of Honduras to pay restitution to 2,100 workers illegally denied severance benefits when two suppliers for the shoe giant closed abruptly last year. In addition, the students’ persistence in seeking ethical alternatives has led the largest brand selling to bookstores, Knights Apparel, to pay more than triple the Dominican Republic’s minimum wage to hundreds of workers. Merchandise from the Alta Gracia factory is already on 140 campuses.

The research to monitor compliance with “codes of conduct” for factories was carried out by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC; launched by the USAS in 1999) and funded by 123 universities, based on a percentage of university-licensed apparel sales. While the codes include language about “freedom of association” and collective bargaining—specific trade union protections—the Russell case was the first in nearly a decade of activism that delivered meaningful redress when the Jerzees de Honduras plant was shuttered as collective bargaining talks were under way. For 14 months starting in early 2008, USAS teams in North America and Great Britain convinced administrators at 110 schools to stop purchasing from Russell Athletic. College bookstores are the company’s largest revenue source. In late 2009, the Jerzees de Honduras factory was reopened and Russell has pledged not to oppose unionization at seven other factories it owns and operates nearby.

In contrast to the Russell production strategy, the vast majority of apparel is produced in contract factories. The Nike “severance” case has chipped away at what the students see as the chief impediment to enforceable accountability: the arm’s-length relationship between buyer and supplier. Indeed, the 15–20 campaigns of WRC/USAS carried out prior to this case may be described as triage, wherein the brand (e.g., Champion, Adidas) is pressured to induce a contract factory to rehire a few protest leaders or pay some compensation—in no case leading to a robust bargaining relationship. When Nike agreed to make up nearly all of the $2.2 million in arrears left by its suppliers Vision Tex and Hugger de Honduras, an important precedent was established.

‘Street Heat’ and Importuning Administrators

The WRC has built up years of goodwill with university officials tasked with sorting out concerns over bookstore sourcing questions. Regular meetings and reasonable demands for intervention placed the monitoring body in a good position to raise the ante. But the campaign work had to come from the student pressure group—USAS—a loosely structured body that had acted more as an information clearinghouse until the recent struggles.

When USAS hired Rod Palmquist as International Campaigns Coordinator, they found a tireless agitator who recognized the power of students in the milieu of an inexorably corporatizing campus life. As a leader of a student group at the University of Washington called the Fair Trade Coffee Coalition, Rod helped lead one of United Students for Fair Trade’s most successful campus campaigns in support of fair trade-certified products, convincing the Tully’s Coffee Corporation to convert all of its espresso blends to fair trade nationwide.

This is not to say that USAS’s national leadership was stuck in neutral for a decade. Activities aimed at helping campus chapters address a WRC-driven agenda produced some gains, but when Palmquist launched a relentless campaign with one corporation in the crosshairs, student power was increased immeasurably. What he calls “the biggest university boycott since the anti-apartheid movement” brought justice to the Russell workers and built momentum for a run at Nike, the world’s number-one purveyor of the notion that workers’ exploitation can be addressed with corporate social responsibility policies emanating from corporate headquarters in Oregon.

As union leader A. Phillip Randolph said, “At the banquet table of life there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take and you take what you can hold. And you can’t hold anything without power. And power comes from organization.”

Jeff Ballinger has been active in the anti-sweatshop movement for over 20 years.  He founded and directed Press for Change, a consumer-information NGO that monitored worker rights issues in Asia.  Jeff is a past Executive Director of Social Democrats USA.

The fulfillment of this plan in addition to the total subjection of workers will also have the additional benefit from the perspective of the Republican Right of radically reducing the ability of unions to support the Democratic Party in future election campaigns. Given the new political environment caused by the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision last year to allow unlimited campaign spending by corporations it is vitally important that the American Labor movement retain its ability to balance this influence with its own.

Advocates for ending most of the rights of public workers  to collectively bargain with state and local governments argue that real sacrifices must be made to balance state budgets. This is true. However why  we ask is it  that the workers who provide for the education, safety, and general needs of the public and the safety net  for the poor must make the  lion share of the sacrifices? These individuals will  respond that ordinary non public workers have it very bad and that public workers should have it equally as bad. They also attempt to portray public employees as living off the public trough and as having plush undeserving comfortable lives, thus attempting to excite  envy and  rage of the non unionized work force. What  public employee unions have done under collective bargaining laws has been  to provide their members with  decent income, pension, and health insurance benefits.
 
The arguments for ending the collective bargaining rights of public employees of Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker, Ohio’s  Governor John Kasich, and Co.  are based on lies. The first lie is that public employee are  over paid. Based on their age and educational levels – about half of public employees are university graduates – public workers  make some what less in total benefits i.e. wages, pensions, and health benefits than  workers in the private sector in the same age and educational categories. Thus public employees are not over compensated. The second lie is  that the collective bargaining rights of public employees need to be gutted in order to balance state and local government budgets.  The fact is that the recent budget deficits in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania were caused by the Wall Street induced recession of 2008. We have to wonder why the Wall Street bankers and investment firms which in fact did cause the recession are not being required by the Teapartyers and Right wing Republicans to make any sacrifices? Why are only public employees  being scapegoated? The hypocrisy of Walker, Kasich and their like minded compatriots  is obvious. The other major cause of the current crisis in state budgets has been  the systematic gutting of state systems of taxation by Republican Party dominated governments. In both Ohio and Wisconsin the  taxes of corporations and the very rich has in recent years been radically reduced  by right wing governments. For example in Ohio about  $2 billion dollars, a quarter  of the state’s $8 billion dollar two year deficit, has been caused by the Republican inspired cuts in both income and corporate taxes in 2005. 
 
A final point which shows up the lies of the  enemies of labor is  that  over the past years public employees in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio  have been taking significant cuts in their total wage retirement and benefit packages. During the recent crisis in Wisconsin, public employee unions have already conceded that they will accept most of Governor Walker’s proposed  cuts to their livelihoods. What they will not accept is the complete abrogation of their human right to bargain collectively and thus to be co-decision makers regarding their own economic futures. What they will not accept is a future in which management makes all of the decisions  regarding  their future work lifes and economic livelihoods.
 
Collective Bargaining is a relatively abstract phrase. It is easy for people to misunderstand its meaning. What it means is that workers have a right to bargain with management regarding the basic issues of their lifes at the workplace. It allows them to have some degree of power over their future incomes, health benefits and working conditions. Collective bargaining ends the complete dictatorship  that management generally has over workers. What the attempt to end collective bargaining by right wing governments in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states means is that workers are going to be led back  to a full condition of wage slavery. Workers in these states will not accept this reintroduction of servitude without a furious struggle. The Social Democrats USA intends to be with the unions and workers in this struggle.
 
Glenn

Glenn
 
Members of the Social Democrats USA have celebrated the fall of Hosni Mubarak and rejoice that the democratic revolution in Egypt is continuing forward.  However our concern for what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa does not end in Egypt. The Social Democrats USA support fully the democratic aspirations and actions of the peoples of Libya, Bahrain. Yemen, Algeria, and other nations in which people are rebelling against repressive regimes to gain democratic and human rights.

Beyond wanting to go on record in support the struggles of the peoples of these nations, we also want to call upon the Obama administration to do what it  effectively can to support the process of liberation. The SDUSA is well aware that the United States has real vital interests in the Middle East and North Africa that need to be pursued. Many right wing propagandists such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have used the existence of these arguments to argue that the United State must support the dictators in their struggles to repress their own peoples. To support this argument they argue that Moslems are in some way intrinsically unfit for democratic governments, thus fit only to be slaves. The Social Democrats USA reject such an idea completely.

The SDUSA recognizes that all currently practiced religions are a complex mix of traditions which have elements that can be used to repress or liberate people. We believe that those same elements of both repression and liberation are just as present within Islam as in Judaism and Christianity. Therefore we believe that the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa will be able to develop democratic societies in which the better elements of Islam may be able to play a significant and positive role.

Again we are aware that the development of democratic republics in the Middle East and North Africa will make the process of American diplomacy in the region  more complex and  difficult than is presently the case. However we believe that in the long run democracy will stabilize these societies and strengthen  peace between nations in this part of the world.

photo by Bernadette Kazmarski

One of my assignments as borough councilman is to hold a seat on the board of our local public library.  It is a duty I sought out not only because of my belief in the importance of libraries, but also because of my fond memories of spending time in this special place as a youngster.  Our library, the Andrew Carnegie Free Library and Music Hall, is also an architectural masterpiece that contains one of the nation’s most intact Civil War Veterans Posts.  And it contains a 500 seat music hall that is a replica of Carnegie Hall in New York.  But I digress.

Last week, at a year end gathering for library supporters, we received a summary of the annual report.  Circulation is up, i.e., more people are checking out more books.  The public access computers are being used more extensively than ever.  More kids are coming to the library.  After school hours are very busy.  Those are trends that you might expect to see.  But aside from those anticipated outcomes, there are others that you might not expect.  One thing in particular struck me because I haven’t seen it since I was a kid— people are going to the library to read the newspaper.  Do you remember when you were young and there were always newspapers skewered on wooden poles resting is a special rack?  Well, they’re making a comeback.  People are making financial cutbacks that are affecting every part of their life.  They may have cut off internet service to their house or apartment.  They may have shut off the paper delivery.  They have stopped buying books.  And another activity that’s been noticed in the library this year: families stopping in on Friday afternoons to check out videos to take home because they can no longer afford to take the kids to the movies or they’ve cut their TV service to the minimum.

I guess it’s a good news, bad news story.  Making lemonade out of lemons.  Less TV means more reading.  Going to the library means more socializing, and maybe even a little exercise getting there.  The abundant personal wealth of the previous three decades allowed people to build their own personal libraries at home, and now our wealth contraction is pushing us back out into the public domain.  Fortunately, our library has been able to step up to the needs of citizens that are being pinched.  We are doing this in spite of state cutbacks.  In fact, we (Borough Council) voted to increase local funding for the library in 2011.  I know I’m preaching to the choir, but public libraries are one of the cornerstones of our freedom.  They must be preserved and maintained so that everyone has free access.