(September 19, 2016) Capital is global. Capitalism is global, controlled by a cabal of international billionaires, wealthier and more powerful than any class in history, like even Louis XVI. Our movement – the movement for societies that value humans above things, human well-being above individual profit – is currently fragmented by nationality and within our nations. The only thing that can defeat the ruling class and end its rapacious exploitation of the environment and our own labor is an international movement. Let’s keep it simple, what we can all agree on: End all wars. […]
Author: henryhitz
Revolutionary Teaching
(September 12, 2016) There are several reasons that I am encouraging young Berniecrats to become teachers in the public school system. One, there’s a teacher shortage, so it’s not a difficult job to get. My advice is to skip the education schools and see if you can get an internship that will train you on the job. Second, teaching is reasonably well-paid, at least compared to barista or Whole Foods jobs, with good benefits. It certainly should be much better paid for all the work and training involved, but you can live well on a teacher’s salary, and there are […]
Transitions
I want to take a break from electoral politics for a while. I want to spend time promoting my book, White Knight or how one man came tobelieve that he was the one who caused the San Francisco City Hall killings andthe Jonestown Massacre (it’s a comedy) as I am shamelessly doing right now. I want to work on my memoir called Schools of Thought My 65 years in education. I want to enjoy my retirement. One of the things I’ve re-discovered in the process of the Sanders campaign is how little power is actually being scrabbled over. The primary […]
Building the Revolutionary Movement
I went to the Our Revolution in our neighborhood last week and I’m glad that someone is working on the down-ticket races – but that’s not for me. Electoral politics is only half the struggle, if that. The real struggle is at our work-places, in our schools, and in our communities. For all the talk about the 99%, it’s really the working class we’re talking about (which includes the middle class), those of us who work for a living. The only real power we have is in our labor, in the threat of withholding our labor. Michael Moore says the […]
Our Revolution
Bernie’s new organization, Our Revolution, is set to launch on Wednesday, August 24. I don’t know what he has in mind. From searching the web, it would seem that the primary purpose of the organization will be to elect progressives to Congress, a worthy goal for sure. But I would hope that each chapter of the organization would be able to set its own goals. My district, for instance, already has the most progressive member of Congress, Barbara Lee, representing us. Where we might focus is locally, supporting progressivism in the city of Oakland, the mayor of which seems to […]
The need for flexibility
We have a new predicament that requires new flexible thinking in strategy and tactics: the apparent implosion of Trump’s campaign and more importantly, the defection of many Republicans to Clinton. This new alignment will shift the Democratic Party sharply to the right. It’s clear that, since and even at the convention, the Clinton campaign has written off the progressives. This could indeed, as many have been saying, create an opening for a third party. But Trump may well come back and find his groove. His response to the 50 National Security types who signed the letter attacking him was brilliant: […]
Revolution and the National Security State
The enemy is capitalism, the system. It isn’t Trump, it isn’t Hillary. Capitalism has reached a desperate phase in its development: imminent collapse. Now I know people like me have been predicting the collapse of capitalism for 150 years. But one day, we’ll be right. The essential characteristic of this phase of collapse is perpetual warfare. One way to look at it is that the capitalist system collapsed in 1929. The only thing that resuscitated it was rise of the Nazis and World War II. Since then, in case you hadn’t noticed, the U. S. A. never demobilized, for the […]
Is it a Green moment?
I have spent the last several weeks arguing against Bernie or Bust and Demexit because my understanding of Bernie’s strategy from the beginning was to transform (take over) the Democratic Party, the largest organization of any kind in the country. But, after the convention, I’m softening my stance. It’s possible that this is a Green Party moment. I’m willing to admit that I don’t know what the best strategy to pursue is right now. I’d like to humbly suggest that maybe none of us know, and it’s okay and healthy to disagree on strategy going forward. I do know that […]
Coalition Against Trump Racism
The next phase of our struggle is to defeat Trump ideologically, not just politically. A vote for Trump is a vote for racism. Racism is the foundational principle of the United States of America. The country was forged in genocide and vicious racial oppression. White supremacy has been the modus operandi of the U. S. since the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving Massacre. In the early 1600s, black and white indentured servants worked side by side in relative equality. In 1676, a landowner named Nathaniel Bacon led a rebellion in Virginia that included both Black and white indentured servants and slaves, essentially (and […]
The United Front II
The United Front has been the primary mechanism of leftists to gain power for the last century. Where would China be today if it weren’t for Mao uniting with Chang-kai Shek to defeat the Japanese? Struggle with, struggle against, is the time honored principle. One of the main attractions of the united front for leftists is it puts us in contact with what we used to call “the center,” the people who haven’t heard much about our program and strategy. In this way, we build the left; beats all hell out of talking to ourselves. A united front is what […]