Well, there's been all kindsa cuts at my alma mater (dropped out twice), UMass Boston, but this one hurts a little more:
UMass-Amherst preparing to abolish Labor Center
Comrade Omar went there for a year after he got fired from HERE (hotel and restaurant employees before they merged with the textile workers to form UNITE-HERE) for refusing to stump for Democrats.
[Another clenched fist salute in memory of Comrade Omar]
Well, there's been all kindsa cuts at my alma mater (dropped out twice), UMass Boston, but this one hurts a little more:
UMass-Amherst preparing to abolish Labor Center
Comrade Omar went there for a year after he got fired from HERE (hotel and restaurant employees before they merged with the textile workers to form UNITE-HERE) for refusing to stump for Democrats.
[Another clenched fist salute in memory of Comrade Omar]
Not surprising. A Labor Center is a bit of an embarrassment to a University that's chasing corporate research dollars.
Maybe not, but still sad. It celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2014, I think, and trained a handful of my comrades and friends. Best (only?) corporate research (that is, researching corporations, not researching for corporations) department in the country.
Don't recall if Richard Wolff had anything to do with it or whether he was just in the Economics Department.
EDIT: Message from one of Comrade Omar's classmates who was in the DSA when I met him. Don't know what he's in know, but he works for some public employees union in Albany. (AFSCME? I forget.)
"They tried the same thing when I went there in 2000. The administration wants schools that bring in the $$$, and the Labor Center isn't one of them. Thanks for the tag. Be sure to call!"
Bread and Roses festival today in Lawrence.
A buddy of mine received their Hall of Fame Award:
Completely unrelated, apparently a town in El Salvador celebrates a volcanic explosion by once a year having a fireball fight:
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This sucks:
Haven't read through the article, just the first paragraph, so maybe it's addressed later on, but it struck me as odd.
Comrade Omar once told me that, given his druthers, he prefers a lockout to a strike because during a lockout the employer, by law, is not allowed to hire scabs.
Guess I should keep reading...
So, it's like a reverse lockout?
So, it's like a reverse lockout?
More like a reverse strike. The company won't let the workers work.
...but I won't (yet anyway).
Came to the realization at Bread and Roses today that, if you keep at it long enough, people know who you are. Couldn't count the number of people, professors, unionists, anti-education privatizers, etc., who came up to me or Mr. Comrade and said something along the lines of "Wow, you guys are everywhere!"
Feels good.
Anyway, not many points, Leftist Bingo-wise. The whole thing was smaller than it usually is, and leftist tables were few and far between (where were the Chairman Bobites?!?), but two oddball entities showed their faces:
African People's Socialist Party USA, or, rather, their front group for white people, the African People's Solidarity Committee
and the
An old guy from the latter approached us and said, "Aren't you guys from CAJE?" which made me bittersweet seeing as how CAJE has been moribund since April or so. Anyway, apparently he had been to one of our movie screenings.
So, it's like a reverse lockout?More like a reverse strike. The company won't let the workers work.
Yeah. That's what a lockout is, a reverse strike.
And, in the "Leftist Squabbles" Category:
The counter-offensive against Ashley Smith
Which is Louis Proyect's defense of Ashley Smith from what he calls the "Baathist amen corner" over Comrade Smith's article that appeared on CounterPunch but was originally published over at Socialistworker.com:
Anti-imperialism and the Syrian Revolution
The only reason that I bring this to your attention is that Comrade Smith used to pick me up in Nashua and give me rides down to Rhode Island during the brief time in my teen years that I was a Cliffite.
Back in those halcyon days, the ISO, like the Mafia, had their New England headquarters in Providence with small satellites in Boston, but, alas, last time I went, turned out the ISO had closed up shop. Don't know about the mafia.
Comrade Smith, I believe, lives in Vermont now.
...The only reason that I bring this to your attention is that Comrade Smith used to pick me up in Nashua and give me rides down to Rhode Island during the brief time in my teen years that I was a Cliffite.
Back in those halcyon days, the ISO, like the Mafia, had their New England headquarters in Providence with small satellites in Boston, but, alas, last time I went, turned out the ISO had closed up shop. Don't know about the mafia.
Now I really want a gritty drama series based on the early union movement here in the U.S.
Sounds good to me.
Finished reading the article above and I think the key to my question was in the last paragraph:
"They cannot be permanently replaced during the lockout, but many feel they are under siege."
So, I'm guessing, the administrators they have filling in are the equivalent of having managers do the job. Glad to see Comrade Omar didn't steer me wrong.
Now I really want a gritty drama series based on the early union movement here in the U.S....The only reason that I bring this to your attention is that Comrade Smith used to pick me up in Nashua and give me rides down to Rhode Island during the brief time in my teen years that I was a Cliffite.
Back in those halcyon days, the ISO, like the Mafia, had their New England headquarters in Providence with small satellites in Boston, but, alas, last time I went, turned out the ISO had closed up shop. Don't know about the mafia.
I propose The Life and Murder of Joe Hill as a start. (Not an actual thing, I made it up right now.)
Yeah. Not that I'd mind an HBO version of F.I.S.T. that much. The movie is one of the three best in Sylvester Stallone's career, in my opinion.
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Our events this month:
Debate: What next for the revolution? The elections and beyond
In which we debate the Berniecrats over at Brand New Congress.
The Communist Manifesto: Weapon of War--A Talk with Historian Doug Greene
In which we finally convinced Maoist-Inclined Independent Red Historian Rival for the Affections of La Principessa (Since Vanquished) to lecture in Lowell.
You can preorder his book, Specters of Communism: Blanqui and Marx here.
(In case I haven't mentioned it before, he took his favorite D&D character's name, "Enaa," as his middle name. As I've had occasion to mention, the Far Left is made up of a bunch of nerds.)
Neat-o video of one of my Leftist Celebrity Heartthrob Comrades (she was the one on the Fox Business show that went viral) spittin' some Black Prophetic Fire about the Attica Anniversary Prison Strike
Mr. Comrade's heading out west for Worcester Pride tomorrow but I think I'm gonna stay in and read A Clash of Kings.
Also got some new records to listen to. Can't wait!!!
Our events this month:
Debate: What next for the revolution? The elections and beyond
In which we debate the Berniecrats over at Brand New Congress.
Now complete with Bernie Vs. Lenin picture!
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Follow up from Comrade Slaad's post:
Students Support LIU Professors in Contract Dispute: “End the Lockout, Negotiate & Let Us Learn”
EDIT: Oh, and a commie article (well, a thumbnail anyway):
“Picket Lines Mean Don’t Cross!”
Knock Out the Lockout at LIU Brooklyn!
From another thread:
Wow, almost right on time.I don't know too much about it, either, just that something like a thousand Native Americans from something like sixty nations across the country have been demonstrating since April (I think), BLM sent a delegation, it's being called the largest Native American demonstration since the showdown with the American Indian Movement in the early seventies, etc., etc.
Based on the responses, I'm guessing the MSM hasn't been covering it, but that will probably change since a judge ordered parts of construction halted earlier today and, according to the headlines, Obama gave a speech about it an hour ago or so.
More of the same:
(Only learned about this from Comrade Greene's FB page. F%$#in' nerd.)
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No Justice, No Peeps!
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Lengthy, wordy meme I saw on Facebook on some Australian Maoist page that I am typing here because I am very bored this Saturday evening (shoulda gone to Worcester):
What Your Leftist Ideology Says About You
COUNCIL COMMUNIST--You and the one other council communist who lives seventeen miles away have decided to form a worker's council, just like your hero, Antonio Gramsci, before he became a tankie.
POST LEFTIST--You don't exist to be understood, which is great, because your vocabulary sounds like a thesaurus achieved consciousness and then just never stopped talking.
ANARCHO-COMMUNIST--Your parents thought you were goth for the longest time because your entire wardrobe is black.
ORTHODOX MARXIST--You're a time traveler from the 1920's because that's the last time your politics were relevant.
TROTSKYIST--You've forgotten what's it like to not campaign for social-democrats. You think the best way to achieve full communism is by voting for liberals, and talking about Kshama Sawant. (Hee hee! at me)
MARXIST-LENINIST--You don't know who fought in Laos but you know they were right and if you disagree, you're a revisionist. You have no more than 30 friends on Facebook, and at least 20 of them you met at CPGB-ML event. (Hee hee! at Limey)
THIRD WORLDISM--You spend your days trying to get across how much you hate Unruhe. You are incredibly edgy. There's a 5% chance you have a Soviet flag in your room and a 95% chance you have either an RAF or Iranian flag in your room.
EGOISM--You fight capitalism every Friday night by going to the bar with your friends. You sit in silence, because all of you know that language is a spook.
MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM--You never leave your house without a copy of the Little Red Book. You're pretty much universally hated, as you're too much of an ultra for Marxist-Leninists and you're too much of a tankie for Anarcho-Communists.
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM--You either like Eugene Debs or you killed Rosa Luxemburg. There's no in between.
HOXHAISM--You are tired of all these bunker jokes, but you're more tired of the terrible internet connection you have from inside your bunker.
LUXEMBURGISM--You either fully appreciate that Luxemburg had an ideology in her own right, or you're wrong and think her entire belief system can be summed up in "I'm not an anarchist and I hate Lenin."
JUCHEIST--You're really into Warhammer 40K, you have a terrible understanding of dialectics, Marxism, and politics in general. You and the Maoist can't stop arguing about quite literally everything.
TITOISM--Everyone seems to have forgotten you exist because you haven't been relevant since 1953. You also happen to be a middle-aged Serbian man.
ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM--You think the Wobblies almost led America to revolution. You either think Big Bill Haywood was the Messiah or you think he betrayed the revolution (the one that was totally going to happen guys). You think Catalonia was the best thing that ever happened and your blog is filled with black and white gifs from the Spanish Civil War. You can't name a single anarchist from that war besides Buenaventura Durruti.
So... how do anarcho capitalists and anarcho communists relate with the anarcho libertarians? Isn't anarchy and communism a direct contradiction?
I saw that on Tumblr, but I still don't recognize a lot of the terms.
I do, but it is only recently that I learned about Max Stirner and thus understand Egoism. I only get the spook joke because of that comic strip with D&D playing philosophers and/or Marx that I occasionally post.
Citizen Moonrunner, I'm no expert on anarchism, but...
...I do have an undead anarchist assassin avatar.
I don't know enough about anarchist theory to know who these anarcho-libertarians you speak of, but if they are Americans and are into markets, they are probably the former.
Back in the day, say, mid-19th century, all the anarchists and the communists hung out in the same bars and at the same picket lines, and "communism" wasn't particularly associated with Marx or his followers, so both groups tended to use the term and they both also tended to interchange it freely with "socialism."
For example, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, usually considered the father of anarchism (even though, as I understand it, he didn't call himself one for long), guy who coined the phrase "Property is theft," was buddies for a couple of years with Marx, but they ended up disagreeing on stuff. Marx waited until Pierre published his opus, The Philosophy of Poverty and Marx wrote a savage critique of it which he called The Poverty of Philosophy and then they ceased being friends thereafter.
For two other examples, leading anarchist theorists Max Stirner and Mikhail Bakunin were in the same philosophers gang/drinking club with Frederick Engels, Die Freien.
I think Mikhail and Fred fought on the barricades together in Baden during the 1848 revolutions, but I might be getting him confused with somebody else (apparently, Richard Wagner was there, too).
Either way, when The International Workingman's Association (also called The First International) was formed, both followers of Marx (then known as "socialists" or, more accurately, "social democrats") and Bakunin coexisted in the same groups, at least until Marx got them all kicked out.
So, my point being, the terms had nebulous and somewhat interchangeable meanings back in the day.
"Anarcho-communism," as I understand it, was a particular school of anarchism founded by a Russian nobleman named Peter Kropotkin in, I believe, the waning years of the 19th century. It relied a lot on the concept of "mutualism," but, to be honest, I don't know much about it.
"Communism" didn't become "Communism as we think of it today" until after the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party changed their name to the Communist Party after they had already pulled of the October Revolution of 1917.
What Comrade Jeff said.
Oh, I should also say that "anarcho-capitalism" was a much later body of thought developed by an Austrian school economist named Murray Rothbard in the mid-20th century and is not accepted as a school of anarchism by any other school of anarchism, even though they are the ones that you will run into most often on the internet.
MARXIST-LENINIST--You don't know who fought in Laos but you know they were right and if you disagree, you're a revisionist. You have no more than 30 friends on Facebook, and at least 20 of them you met at CPGB-ML event. (Hee hee! at Limey)
CPGB-ML?
I used to be in the Anarchist Communist Federation, as did a couple of other local comrades, oddly.
Essentially, 'Communism', in this case, just means collective ownership of the means of production; the Anarchist element means that there's no state (as such), although being Anarchists, everybody has a different idea about how things might actually be organised if/when the revolution happens.
There's a bit of a crossover with the libertarian Marxism/Council Communist/Autonomist side of things; I used to enjoy it when the International Communist Current came along and trolled our events.
There's a member of the ICC on these boards.
MARXIST-LENINIST--You don't know who fought in Laos but you know they were right and if you disagree, you're a revisionist. You have no more than 30 friends on Facebook, and at least 20 of them you met at CPGB-ML event. (Hee hee! at Limey)CPGB-ML?
I used to be in the Anarchist Communist Federation, as did a couple of other local comrades, oddly.
Essentially, 'Communism', in this case, just means collective ownership of the means of production; the Anarchist element means that there's no state (as such), although being Anarchists, everybody has a different idea about how things might actually be organised if/when the revolution happens.
Anarchists not being able to agree on something? No, that can't be‽
The Communist Manifesto: Weapon of War--A Talk with Historian Doug Greene
In which we finally convinced Maoist-Inclined Independent Red Historian Rival for the Affections of La Principessa (Since Vanquished) to lecture in Lowell.
He got published on Red Wedge today. Haven't read it yet, and don't know if I will, but here it is:
Benjamin, Blanqui and the Apocalypse
Tomorrow go with the not-yet-named-kinda-BLM-New-Hampshire folks to protest some school board committee member in Manchester; Thursday I think another stand out against charter schools and then the debate with the Berniecrats on Saturday!
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Anarchists not being able to agree on something? No, that can't be‽
As that meme indicates, we Marxists aren't much better.
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This thread is helping me grok what George Orwell is going on about in "Homage to Catalonia" (the book I'm reading now).
There's a fairly good Ken Loach film that owes a lot to Homage to Catalonia called Land and Freedom in case you want a companion piece.
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This thread is helping me grok what George Orwell is going on about in "Homage to Catalonia" (the book I'm reading now).There's a fairly good Ken Loach film that owes a lot to Homage to Catalonia called Land and Freedom in case you want a companion piece.
It was good, even if he did have an axe to grind.
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It was good, even if he did have an axe to grind.This thread is helping me grok what George Orwell is going on about in "Homage to Catalonia" (the book I'm reading now).There's a fairly good Ken Loach film that owes a lot to Homage to Catalonia called Land and Freedom in case you want a companion piece.
As that meme indicates, we Marxists aren't much better.
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Follow up from Comrade Slaad's post:
Students Support LIU Professors in Contract Dispute: “End the Lockout, Negotiate & Let Us Learn”
EDIT: Oh, and a commie article (well, a thumbnail anyway):
“Picket Lines Mean Don’t Cross!”
Knock Out the Lockout at LIU Brooklyn!
I've been playing phone tag with La Principessa for about a week now, so I don't know any of the details, all I know is she texted me this morning that she couldn't talk this afternoon because she was going to the solidarity demo and when I get back from yelling at the school board committee member in Manchester who didn't want free books about Nelson Mandela and Frederick Douglass because it was pushing a political agenda of "multiculturalism," I find that the lockout is over.
That's my girl!
Well, there's been all kindsa cuts at my alma mater (dropped out twice), UMass Boston, but this one hurts a little more:
UMass-Amherst preparing to abolish Labor Center
Comrade Omar went there for a year after he got fired from HERE (hotel and restaurant employees before they merged with the textile workers to form UNITE-HERE) for refusing to stump for Democrats.
[Another clenched fist salute in memory of Comrade Omar]
More replies to myself with links!
The University of Massachusetts Labor Center has served generations of union activists. Now the administration wants to squeeze it out.
And, finally, before I drift off to dreams of permanent revolution, one more that tickled my fancy:
Includes the resolution of International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, Local 10 to--Break with the Democrats!!!
I love it.
First news story I see:
Sandra Bland's family settles for $1.9M in wrongful death suit
:(
Well, Lone Black Male CAJE Member, who, over the summer seems to have rethought his alliance with the White Privilege Theory Set (but maybe that's just cuz they all decamped to get jobs on the West Roxbury Gravy Train, no, I'm not bitter), says he's going to resuscitate CAJE. We'll see.
He and Comrade Who Was Published in Jacobin attended some confab in Boston about "The Carceral State" and met some Young Abolitionists, so that might come to something.
Also with the Fall Semester opening there is a talk on Monday about something police related, I don't remember exactly because we have a public meeting in Worcester and I can't go.
The following Monday's two-events-at-the-same-time is the second meeting of the LGBTQ+ Lowell Action group that sprung up after Orlando, but they kinda dropped the ball in taking to long, so I think I'll go to the Rock Against Racism event at UML featuring The Kominas a Pakistani-American "Taqwacore" band from Boston (if you're in a band and in you're in Lowell, you say you're from Boston). I think Mr. Comrade's going to MC.
No charter school stand out tonight, but, again, 2 for 1, I didn't realize our debate with the Berniecrats was in the early afternoon; I just promised the Ugandan Princess that I would attend their $15 canvasser training (gets out half an hour before the debate begins) last night!
Oh, yeah, and apparently some jerkwad on the floor above left the sink on all night and there is now water damage all over our office.
[Shakes head]
I better go shower.
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What Your Leftist Ideology Says About You
JUCHEIST--You're really into Warhammer 40K,...
I'd love to know the background for this.
I know that when the Tau race were introduced (blue hairless aliens, sorry, 'Xenos', who assimilated all in their path 'for the Greater Good') there were players out there, who labelled them the 'Commies In Spaaaaace'.
Which was funny, since one of the common accusations made against Communist regimes is that they're inefficient and unwieldy, yet the Tau are the youngest race with boundless enthusiasm and the coolest stuff, and the only race in 40K to actually invent anything, everyone else being nutjob cultists, giant bugs, a stagnant race reliant on former glories, or scavengers who kick other races' junk to make it work.
I couldn't say, it invoked images of armies of a regimented people living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland for me, but I know nothing about Warhammer.
Saw a bunch of photos of Comrade Imani (from La Principessa's Anti-Gentrification group in Brooklyn) out at Standing Rock, but I can't share those, but here's the article that came out of it:
Indigenous Nations unified: ‘No to pipelines! Yes to sovereignty’