Tag: Transition

Aug 17 2015

Anti-Capitalist Meetup: The Cooperative Movement vs Capitalist Domination in the Global Economy

By Geminijen

I’ve been running around to various left conferences this spring and summer and everywhere I go the cooperative movement is touted as the potential savior of the global economy. Admittedly, cooperatives are only “a grain of sand on the beach” (to use a summer metaphor)when one views the entire global economy. At this point it is also not clear that the interest in a cooperative economy is not just a desperate hope that something  – anything – can save us from total economic catastrophe as capitalism seems to be in its last throes with levels of inequality that cannot be sustained.

Do cooperatives really have the potential to be a transition to another more fully progressive economic form that can replace capitalism? Or is it – as cooperatives generally have been – a temporary safety valve during depressions which disappear or are assimilated over time or a capitalist reform as capitalism regains its footing (i.e., the mines in England, the paper plants in the Northwest United States, the electric cooperatives in the Southwest United States).

Since the cooperative movement is currently the fastest growing movement for systemic economic change it deserves an overview of what it is and where its going –which I will attempt to do, in a very limited way.

I will briefly comment on the recent changes in the cooperative movement in:

1) Venezuela which has attempted to use coops as part of its transition to socialism;

2) In the Mondragon cooperative network which applies the cooperative principles in the capitalist system;

3) In the United States because it is in the belly of the beast of capitalism and as such has special problems, and

4) In Cuba which is using cooperatives to transition away from a fully socialist economy to a more mixed economy. (I will write a separate article on cooperatives in Asia or Africa as BRIC countries have unique problems, although India has a highly developed cooperative economy and China has the most cooperatives in the world.)

Apr 12 2014

Teaching while transgender

Lumberton, TX Independent School District substitute teacher Laura Jane Klug has been suspended for being transgender.  The school district says they are “looking into the matter”…and that Klug has not been terminated…yet.  Klug is supposed to hear about the resolution of the school board today, after the school board met on Thursday.

Klug substituted for a teacher in a fifth grade class last Thursday, which was the first day she discovered that someone might have “issues”.

Parents of some of the students at the school say, of course, that they don’t have any problems themselves with the teacher being transgender, but that the teacher may be confusing the 11-year-olds who are in her charge.

Within an hour of them being exposed or dealing with this, there’s a few issues here, I think these kids are too young for this issue, so that’s our main focus is, if it happens in older grades, high school, ok but too young for this.

–Roger Bread

Other parents say there has not been an issue before with Klug and they don’t see why it is an issue now…and that they have no problem explaining to their child what a transgendender person is.

My son knows who he is and I don’t think any outside influence is going to change that, I’m more concerned about straight predatory teachers rather than I am someone who lives an alternative private alternate lifestyle, I don’t worry about my son.

–Jammie Marcantel, parent with a pronoun problem

Texas, of course, has no employment protections for transgender people.

Oct 08 2011

A word about our healthcare

Recently the World Professional Association for Transgender Health released new guidelines for transition related medical care and therapeutic assistance for transgender and gender nonconforming people at a health symposium at Emory University in Atlanta.  This is version 7.  Version one was written in 1979 by Dr. Harry Benjamin.  One of the main changes is its title.  Called the Standards Of Care For Gender Identity Disorders in the last version (February, 2001) and all previous versions (1979, 1980, 1981, 1990, and 1998), it is now called the Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People.

The sharp-eyed will notice that they dropped the words “Gender Identity Disorder”.  I can’t claim to have read every word yet, but I have been informed that the word “disorder” has been expunged.  The condition is now referred to as gender dysphoria…which I recall many of us using back in the early 90s (see The Uninvited Dilemma:  a question of gender by Kim Elizabeth Stuart.

My own feelings are not out of line with those of Sebastian and Annika at Autostraddle.

Nov 24 2008

Clemons: McCain & Obama Coordinated on Personnel

Steve Clemons Reports McCain & Obama Camps Coordinated on Building Staff Rosters for Next Government:

“…A senior Obama campaign official shared with The Washington Note that In July 2008, the McCain and Obama camps began to work secretly behind the scenes to assemble large rosters of potential personnel for the administration that only one of the candidates would lead…”

At this point, the story is as Clemons termed it, “A Scoop”, so there hasn’t been verification of this by other sources at this time.

(There’s more):

Apr 28 2008

Combat Vets as Students

The News & Observer has a good report on the returning OIF and OEF Veterans as some transition to Students in Colleges and Universities around the country, reporting on some of the problems they face in that transition from combat soldier to student.


This could have been expanded, as many already have found out as others before you went through the same, to the transition from In-Theater Soldiers to Civilian life not just as Students

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As tens of thousands of veterans of the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq try to collect on their promised college benefits, McKinnon and others are finding that their combat experience complicates the transition from soldier to student.