Tag: Activism

Listen to Bill Ayers live on WWL Radio Friday, December 9th at 6pm ET!



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When the controversy broke about then Senator Obama having known Bill Ayers, my first thought was “cool, maybe his is one of us.  Since then, it is Obama that has disappointed, not Professor Ayers.

My discussion with him will strive to contemplate, contrast and compare the social movement of the 60’s and 70’s with what is happening now. I think he can, as someone who has been fully immersed in the former shed light on the latter.

Great effort has been taken to marginalize, even demonize and true socialist with any chance of influencing the dialogue in this country. While active in the advancement of progressive education, that that alone is considered too “radical” for the “educational industry” speaks volumes about how far right we have been pushed as a Nation.

Today, this nation is under a far more militant resistance against OWS activists than the anti-war activists of the SDS and WU were… I wonder, how will it survive?

I am thrilled an honored to be able to have a conversation with Bill! I am sure we shall all learn much from him.

Bill Ayers is an American elementary education theorist and a former leader in the movement that opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He is known for his 1960s activism as well as his current work in education reform, curriculum, and instruction. In 1969 he co-founded the Weather Underground. He is a retired professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, formerly holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar

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He has the thick hard fingers of a carpenter, nails short and blunt, yet he can tie a micro-filament knot with the delicacy of a surgeon. Fly fishing season was nearly over, and there was little to do these days but prep for next year. The sound of the phone not ringing was almost palpable over the drone of the local news broadcast at noon. Another idle day, the contractor must had not coughed up the money for the next delivery of materials. His girlfriend had been making noises about him moving in with her and her two very young kids. It felt too soon, but his rent was already two weeks late. The cops beating on those people was depressing as hell; he turned off the news and went outside to rake the last of the fall leaves.

She was an angel. That’s what she like to call her temp job doing in-home care for the elderly. She was getting attached to her clients, and had already gotten in trouble for cleaning one persons house while they slept. “Not in your job description,” she was told. Worse? When she helped that half blind lady write out her checks, she learned that the company was getting over three times her pay an hour for her services. She would love to work for herself, save them money and perhaps make a little more. Things were tight enough, and she was up against enough keeping custody of her two daughters being openly gay. But self-employed meant paying for a LLC license and having to insure herself heavily. Hell, they didn’t have health insurance at home, how could she afford to insure a business? She had no idea what the demonstrations were about, but the pastor at her church said they were anarchists. Sounded scary.

A diary from 2007, cross-posted at Daily Kos and Progressive Blue.

On this holiday there are so many Americans who deserve a moment of our time, the people who fought and died for the simplest benefits in an attempt to end a new form of American slavery. This relentless oppression is nothing new but it does seem to thrive in a country with the bloodiest history of labor of any industrialized nation. The Matewan Journals places the whole present day struggle in perspective.

Those of us at the bottom of the income scale are involved in a war. It is not a war of bullets, mortar shells, bombs and tanks, but it is a war just the same, and people are dying. We didn’t start this war. It is not a war with us but a war on us. We didn’t ask for it, we don’t want it, and if we could we’d sue for peace. It is not a war we can win in any final way, ever. We are outgunned, overmatched, and trapped in a swamp. The enemy controls our food, our shelter, our health, and our livelihoods. He rarely shows pity, breaks every truce within hours, and chips away at us every day as if we were emotionless blocks of ice he is hoping to whittle down until we just melt away.

The only advantage we the workers ever had was our numbers, there are far more of us then them. Most of the other advantages that Americans fought for seem to be gone now.

In the first exciting installment of this series, I complimented PCCC on showing some real boldness. Their pledge, at near 200,000 signers, has signers such that many if not most were former volunteers or contributors for the Obama 2008 campaign.* Real boldness, worthy of the name, has to have the potential to threaten power. (Dennis Rancourt, an activist who has thought and written what constitutes effective activism, is worth reading, e.g., here, where he says, “Truth will not set us free.”.)

Unfortunately, many of PCCC’s actions could not have been effective, and not only did not threaten power, but probably caused snickering by Obama and/or Congress. These are the “Tell X to do Y” petitions, where X is either Obama or Congress.

I find the continued lack of visible, widespread, persistent, peaceful, effective actions by activists to be dismaying, if not depressing. (Please notice that I didn’t use the adjective “massive”. I have argued for a shotgun approach to reaching the public, where the activists can be in groups as small as 2 people. Or even go it alone.) Apparently, for some of us, when thing get tough, they either throw up their hands, or else call for more of the same (such as the “sternly worded letter/email/fax”), or else call for a complete failure of the system – hoping that a new Dark Age will provide a fertile ground for a subsequent Aquarian Age. (Say, now, there’s a plan!).

One would have hoped that political blogs would be a wellspring of encouragement for wider engagement with, and education of, the “unblogged masses”, but that is not the case. E.g., I was following the unfolding Obamacare fiasco, via FDL, and knew very well about Obama’s backstabbing deal with Tauzin, as well as other related healhcare betrayals. But at job where my coworkers were discussing Obamacare, I asked people what they thought about Obama’s deal with Tauzin, and nobody even knew who Tauzin was.

Not good. FDL had essentially no effect on the level of knowledge of most Americans. It’s effects are limited to a small sliver of the American public.

Well, a recent reply (#174) to ‘mymarkx’ in Call Members of Congress and Tell Them if They Cut Social Security, You’re Done With Them has prompted my to share an additional idea for exploiting public spaces, to both educate and develop political muscle. First, my post #174:

(cross-posted at dailykos.com and my.firedoglake.com)

I’ve long been struck by the ineffectiveness of activists in the US, at least when they oppose plutocratic agendas. And I’ve also been dismayed by the continuing failure to organize voters along progressive lines. For some issues, like healthcare, the “progressive” viewpoint is actually mainstream.

It’s clear to me that, while corporatists and banksters have all the democracy-corrupting infrastructure, already in place (think K-Street) that they could possibly desire, progressives do little to create countervailing democracy-enhancing infrastructure. They do not effectively organize, and thus grow their political muscle, at least with respect to specific progressive issues (like healthcare).

The Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is an organization (that I belong to, even though I’ve never been a Democrat) that has a progressive agenda, and that I have praised as “sticking to it’s guns”. I don’t believe that PDA could properly called a member of the “Veal Pen”, though in many respects it behaves as timidly as any veal pen group. (See my comments here, here, and here.)

During the troubles of last weekend, a few people asked why I identified as a transwoman (or trans woman or transsexual woman) and not simply a woman.  Well, the truth is that I do identify as a woman.  Trans is simply a modifier, transsexual is an adjective.  The noun is “woman”.

Then I guess the question becomes, “Why do I add the modifier?”  The question strikes me in a couple of ways.  I wonder if the person is implying that everyone would be so much more comfortable if all the transpeople would just disappear into the closet after transitioning.

The truth is that many do…maybe even most.

But the serious question is,