I’m coming out of retirement to resume leadership of Oakland Parents Together (OPT) mostly because it needs my time and resource for a while longer, but also because we have a new political reality which gives organizing Black and Latino parents a new urgency. It is likely, that the right-wing hegemony of the Federal government will move fast. They have two years to implement their privatization agenda. We can expect the privatization of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, food stamps, and welfare in the first year. A return to stop and search and plant-evidence policing with no accountabiliby. […]
Winter in America
It seems like the whole pre- and post- election discussion have been about personalities. We should be talking about the system. The name of the system is Capitalism, and virtually no one is challenging it – except Black Lives Matter and allied groups. Bernie did not oppose it nor did he challenge its most egregious aspect, imperialism. The problem is that Capitalism is collapsing. It has reached the zenith of its centuries of growth, but it has now penetrated the farthest reaches of the globe. Capitalism can only survive by continually expanding, and it’s reached its limit. As the system […]
Everybody Knows
Trying to decide which of the late Leonard Cohen song titles I should use to title this week’s blog. I used “Democracy is Coming the USA” when Bernie was surging, and it wouldn’t be accurate now, except maybe long term. “You Want it Darker” would certainly apply. I’ll go with “Everybody Knows.” Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That’s how it goes Everybody knows Even though we […]
After the Election
Last week I slogged into the fray to argue with Bernie or Bust/Jill Stein folks about why they should vote the Democratic ticket. I’m not going to reiterate the argument. Not surprisingly, I took a lot of shit from the ex-Bernie new-Greens. It didn’t bother me, I was ready for it. Probably lost about 30 of my 5000 friends. Boo-hoo. This week I want to talk about how we rebuild the unity we’re going to need going forward, no matter what happens. We need to unite around a series of demands no matter who is elected. Here would be my […]
Day of the Dead
I am currently in Mexico, where I now live about a third of the time. It is Day of the Dead weekend, and I will be dressing up as Catrina, the well-dressed skeleton, a tradition that dates back to a revolutionary cartoonist, Jose Guadalupe Posada. His depictions were largely satirical of the bourgeoisie, dressed in finery but dead inside. People gather at the cemeteries on the actual Day of the Dead, which is November 1. In the town where I live, San Miguel de Allende, the main cemetery is divided into a Mexican section and an American section – the […]
Global Solidarity Day
It can’t be that hard to have the world the way 99% of the people want it, peaceful, healthy, and fair. Maybe we’re overthinking this. Maybe we’re trying too hard using all these convoluted obsolete structures to make change. Sometimes you just got to throw sh*t against the wall and see what sticks. So here’s this weeks: A petition. Simple enough: Capital is global. Capitalism is global. It’s time for the people, the 99.9% to unite and go global. We the people of the world make the following demands to the rulers of all countries and corporations in the […]
The Black Panther Party and Democratic Centralism
In 1965, I was on an early anti Vietnam War march that started in Berkeley and attempted to march through Oakland to the Army Induction Center. Allen Ginsberg was there, Paul Krassner. We were met at the Oakland border by a phalanx of Oakland Police in riot gear. In Oakland at that time, the first amendment didn’t apply. Along comes the Black Panther Party, now celebrating its 50th Anniversary. There’s a conference I would love to attend, but I’m in Mexico again where I live now about a third of the time. But I hope they resurrect the party in […]
After the Election
(October 10, 2016) I think it’s safe now to start planning for what happens beyond the election. It seems likely that Hillary will win. She might even have a supportive congress, which would open her up to considerable pressure to abide by the platform that she and Bernie worked out. We should think about where to focus our efforts. Criminal justice reform would be my number one. Reduce the prison population by half in the next 3 years. Pardon all the nonviolent drug convicts. Force her to deliver to the Black community what she so generously promised. To move in […]
Voting Strategically
(October 3, 2016) “Voting your conscience” is a bourgeois individualist concept, to use old words. True though: the bourgeoisie is the ruling class. Capitalism is their thing and supremacy of the individual is their ideology. I don’t mean to make you feel bad, but voting is a tactical decision within an electoral strategy. And strategy is a plan to achieve…what? That’s the big question. What do we want? I know what I want. I want a society that values the well-being of people and of the planet above its individualism, it’s profit. I support these three demands: End all wars […]
What if Trump Wins?
(September 26, 2916) What if Trump wins? Since foreign policy really isn’t in the hands of the elected government but in the hands of the national security state (NSS), we probably don’t have to worry too much about Trump leading us into war: a major faction of the NSS wants to invade Syria anyway and will most likely do so regardless of who is elected. This will escalate conflict with Russia, but the U. S. military is stronger enough than both Russia’s and China’s that a major war is unlikely for the next five years or so. As China builds […]