The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: More Excerpts from Part 9

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some more excerpts from Part 9 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“What does it mean to organize around racism and imperialism in specific struggles? In the high schools (and colleges) at this time, it means putting forth a mass line to close down the schools, rather than to reform them, so that they can serve the people. The reason for this line is not that under capitalism the schools cannot serve the people, and therefore it is silly or illusory to demand that. Rather, it is that kids are ready for the full scope of militant struggle, and already demonstrate a consciousness of imperialism…To tell a kid in New York that imperialism tracks him and thereby oppresses him is often small potatoes compared to his consciousness that imperialism oppresses him by jailing him…And even where high school kids are not yet engaged in such sharp struggle, it is crucial not to build consciousness only around specific issues such as tracking or ROTC or racist teachers, but to use these issues to build toward the general consciousness that the schools should be shut down. It may be important to present a conception of what schools should or could be like (this would include the abolition of the distinction between mental and physical work), but not offer this total conception as really possible to fight for in any way but through revolution.

“A mass line to close down the schools or colleges does not contradict demands for open admissions to college or any other good reform demand. Agitational demands for impossible, but reasonable, reforms are a good way to make a revolutionary point. The demand for open admissions by asserting the alternative to the present (school) system exposes its fundamental nature—that it is racist, class-based, and closed—pointing to the only possible solution to the present situation: `Shut it down!’ The impossibility of real open admissions—all black and brown people admitted, no flunk-out, full scholarship, under present conditions—is the best reason (that the schools show no possibility for real reform) to shut the schools down. We should not throw away the pieces of victories we gain from these struggles, for any kind of more open admissions means that the school is closer to closing down (it costs the schools more, there are more militant blacks and browns making more and more fundamental demands on the schools, and so on). Thus our line in the schools, in terms of pushing any good reforms, should be `Open them up and shut them down!’

“The spread of black caucuses in the shops and other workplaces throughout the country is an extension of the black liberation struggle. These groups have raised and will continue to raise anti-racist issues to white workers in a sharper fashion than any whites ever have or could raise them. Blacks leading struggles against racism made the issue unavoidable, as the black student movement leadership did for white students. At the same time these black groups have led fights which traditional trade-union leaders have consistently refused to lead—fights against speed-ups and for safety (issues which have become considerably more serious in the last few years), forcing white workers, particularly the more oppressed, to choose in another way between allegiance to the white mother country and black leadership. As white mother country radicals we should try to be in shops, hospitals, and companies where there are black caucuses, perhaps organizing solidarity groups, but at any rate pushing the importance of the black liberation struggle to whites, handing out Free Huey literature, bringing guys out to Panther rallies, and so on. Just one white guy could play a crucial role in countering UAW counter-insurgency.

“We also need to relate to workplaces where there is no black motion but where there are still many young white workers. In the shops the crisis in imperialism has come down around speed-up, safety, and wage squeeze—due to higher taxes and increased inflation, with the possibility of wage-price controls being instituted.

“We must relate this exploitation back to imperialism. The best way to do this is probably not caucuses in the shops, but to take guys to citywide demonstrations, Newsreels, even the latest administration building [sit-in], to make the Movement concrete to them and involve them in it. Further, we can affect consciousness and pick up people through agitational work at plants, train stops, etc.,…, handing out leaflets about the war, the Panthers, the companies’ holdings overseas or relations to defense industry, etc….” (end of second section of excerpts from part 9)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

65th Anniversary of D-Day: An Alternative View

June 6, 2009 marks the 65th anniversary of D-Day. The Russian Version of the Second World War book, which Graham Lyons edited, presented an alternative version of what actually happened 65 years ago in Western Europe:

“In June 1944, when it had become obvious that the Soviet Union was capable of defeating Hitler’s Germany with her forces alone, England and the USA opened the Second Front.

“On 6 June the Allied forces, commanded by General Eisenhower, landed in Normandy (Northern France). The Anglo-American forces…advanced into the heart of France…

“…The Germans had diverted only 60 divisions to the Western front, while the Hitler command maintained 259 divisions and brigades on the Soviet-German front…”

According to The French Resistance: 1940 to 1944 by Frida Knight, during the days and weeks after D-Day in France, “towns and villages” in Normandy were “mercilessly bombed by the Allied planes;” and around the city of Caen, “the Allied Command ordered air-raids almost as cruel as those on Germany.” As a result, according to the same book, “hundreds died and thousands lost their homes;” and “when the Canadian division finally entered and `liberated’ Caen there was little left of the town” and “the population had declined from 32,000 to 12,000.”

The French Resistance book also asserted that “in Le Havre, the last Normandy town to be freed, where 1,500 tons of high explosives were dropped in two hours, there were between 2,000 and 3,000 dead, while 35,000 were completely bombed out of 10,500 homes;” and “it is now recognized but not always admitted that had the Allies understood the role of the French Resistance and incorporated its forces into their plans there would have been no need for the raids with their tolls of tragedy and harvest of bitterness…”

U.S. military casualties on D-Day included 1,465 killed, 3,184 wounded and 1,929 missing, according to The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan.

(Downtown 6/8/94)

Latino Worker Jobless Rate Under Obama Regime: 12.7 Percent

The official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Latino workers in the United States jumped from 11.3 percent to 12.7 percent between April 2009 and May 2009 under the Democratic Obama Regime, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for white male workers also increased from 8.5 percent to 9 percent between April 2009 and May 2009.

For all U.S. male workers over 16 years-of-age, the officially “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate increased from 10 percent to 10.5 percent between April 2009 and May 2009.

For all U.S. workers, the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate increased from 8.9 percent to 9.4 percent between April 2009 and May 2009.

The official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for African-American female workers over 20 years-of-age also increased from 10.5 percent to 11.1 percent between April 2009 and May 2009; and the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all African-American workers increased from 14.4 percent to 14.7 percent during this same period.

The official “seasonally adjusted” rate for all African-American male workers over 20 years-of age was still 16.8 percent in May 2009.

The official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for African-American youth between 16 and 19 years-of-age increased from 33.5 percent to 40.1 percent between April 2009 and May 2009, while the “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Hispanic or Latino youth increased from 26.5 percent to 31 percent during this same period. The official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for white youth between 16 and 19 years-of-age also increased from 18.8 percent to 21.1 percent between April 2009 and May 2009.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ June 5, 2009 press release:

“…Employment fell by 345,000 in May…Steep job losses continued in manufacturing...

“The number of unemployed persons increased by 787,000 to 14.5 million in May…

“The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 268,000 over the month…

“…The employment-population ratio, at 59.7 percent, continued to trend down…

“Manufacturing employment fell by 156,000 in May…Three durable goods industries—motor vehicles and parts (-30,000), machinery (-26,000), and fabricated metal products (-19,000)—accounted for about half of the overall decline in factory employment…Mining shed 11,000 jobs in May…

“Employment in construction decreased by 59,000 in May…In May, employment fell in nonresidential specialty trade contractors (-30,000) and in residential construction of buildings (-11,000)…

“Retail trade employment was down by 18,000 in May…Employment in wholesale trade fell by 22,000 over the month…

“Financial activities employment continued to decrease in May (-30,000). Securities lost 10,000 jobs and real estate lost 9,000…Employment in information decreased by 24,000 in May… “

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: Excerpts from Part 9

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some excerpts from Part 9 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“How do we reach youth; what kinds of struggles do we build; how do we make a revolution? What we have tried to lay out so far is the political content of the consciousness which we want to extend and develop as a mass consciousness…Yet we are faced with a situation in which almost all of the people whose interests are served by these goals, and who should be, or even are, sympathetic to revolution, neither understand the specific tasks involved in making a revolution nor participate in accomplishing them. On the whole, people don’t join revolutions just because revolutionaries tell them to. The oppression of the system affects people in particular ways, and the development of political consciousness and participation begins with particular problems, which turn into issues and struggles. We must transform people’s everyday problems, and the issues and struggles growing out of them, into revolutionary consciousness, active and conscious opposition to racism and imperialism.

“This is directly counter posed to assuming that struggles around immediate issues will lead naturally over time to struggle against imperialism…This error is classical economism…

“On the one hand, if we, as revolutionaries are capable of understanding the necessity to smash imperialism and build socialism, then the masses of people who we want to fight along with us are capable of that understanding. On the other hand, people are brainwashed and at present don’t understand it; if revolution is not raised at every opportunity, then how can we expect people to see it in their interests, or to undertake the burdens of revolution? We need to make it clear from the very beginning that we are about revolution…

“In every case, our aim is to raise anti-imperialist and anti-racist consciousness and tie the struggles of working-class youth (and all working people) to the struggles of Third World people, rather than merely joining fights to improve material conditions, even though these fights are certainly justified. This is not to say that we don’t take immediate fights seriously, or fight hard in them, but that we are always up front with our politics, knowing that people in the course of struggle are open to a class line, ready to move beyond narrow self-interest.

“…What we must stress is the systematic nature of oppression and the way in which a single manifestation of imperialism makes clear its fundamental nature. At Columbia it was not the Gym, in particular, which was important in the struggle, but the way in which the Gym represented, to the people of Harlem and Columbia, Columbia’s imperialist invasion of the black colony. ..And the Richmond Oil Strike was exciting because the militant fight for improvement of material conditions was part and parcel of an attack on international monopoly capital. The numbers and militancy of people mobilized for these struggles has consistently surprised the left, and pointed to the potential power of a class-conscious mass movement…

“The masses will fight for socialism when they understand that reform fights, fights for improvement of material conditions, cannot be won under imperialism. With this understanding, revolutionaries should never put forth a line which fosters the illusion that imperialism will grant significant reforms. We must engage in struggles forthrightly as revolutionaries, so that it will be clear to anyone we help to win gains that the revolution rather than imperialism is responsible for them. This is one of the strengths of the Black Panther Party Breakfast for Children Program…Probably the American Friends Service Committee serves more children breakfast, but it is the symbolic value of the program in demonstrating what socialism will do for people which makes the Black Panther Program worthwhile.” (end of first section of excerpts from part 9)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: More Excerpts from Part 8

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some more excerpts from Part 8 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“The contradictions of decaying imperialism fall hardest on youth in four distinct areas—the schools, jobs,…the army, and the…courts. (A) In jail-like schools, kids are fed a mish-mash of racist, male chauvinist, anti-working class…lies while being channeled into job and career paths set up according to the priorities of monopoly capital. At the same time, the State is becoming increasingly incapable of providing enough money to keep the schools going at all. (B) Youth unemployment is three times average unemployment. As more jobs are threatened by automation or the collapse of specific industries, unions act to secure jobs for those already employed. New people in the labor market can’t find jobs, job stability is undermined (also because of increasing speed-up and more intolerable safety conditions) and people are less and less going to work in the same shop for 40 years. And, of course, when they do find jobs, young people get the worst ones and have the least seniority. (C) There are…soldiers under thirty who are…forced to police the world, kill and be killed in wars of imperialist domination. And (D) as a `youth problem’ develops out of this, the…courts enforce curfews, set up pot busts, keep people off the streets, and repress any youth motion whatsoever.

“In all of this, it is not that life in America is toughest for youth or that they are the most oppressed. Rather, it is that young people are hurt directly—and severely—by imperialism. And, in being less tightly tied to the system, they are more `pushed’ to join the black liberation struggle against US imperialism. Among young people there is less of a material base for racism—they have no seniority, have not spent 20 years securing a skilled job (the white monopoly of which is increasingly challenged by the black liberation movement), and aren’t just about to pay off a 25-year mortgage on a house…

“While these contradictions of imperialism fall hard on all youth, they fall hardest on the youth of the most oppressed (least privileged) sections of the working class. Clearly these youth have the greatest material base for struggle. They are the ones who most often…get the worst jobs if they get any, who are most abused by the various institutions of social control, from the army to decaying schools, to the…courts….They are the people whom we can reach who at this stage are most ready to engage in militant revolutionary struggle.

“The point of the revolutionary youth movement strategy is to move from a predominant student elite base to more oppressed (less privileged) working-class youth as a way of deepening and expanding the revolutionary youth movement…This is part of a strategy to reach the entire working class to engage in struggle against imperialism; moving from more privileged sections of white working-class youth to more oppressed sections to the entire working class as a whole, including importantly what has classically been called the industrial proletariat…

“The above arguments make it clear that it is both important and possible to reach young people wherever they are—not only in the shops, but also in the schools, in the army and in the streets—so as to recruit them to fight on the side of the oppressed peoples of the world…” (end of second section of part 8 excerpts)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: Excerpts from Part 8

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some excerpts from the first section of Part 8 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

"In terms of the above analysis, most young people in the US are part of the working class. Although not yet employed, young people whose parents sell their labor power for wages, and more important who themselves expect to do the same in the future—or go into the army or be unemployed—are undeniably members of the working class. Most kids are well aware of what class they are in, even though they may not be very scientific about it. So our analysis assumes from the beginning that youth struggles are, by and large, working-class struggles. But why the focus now on the struggles of working-class youth rather than on the working class as a whole?

“…At this stage, we see working-class youth as those most open to a revolutionary movement which sides with the struggles of Third World people; the following is an attempt to explain a strategic focus on youth for SDS.

“In general, young people have less stake in a society (no family,…etc.), are more open to new ideas (they have not been brainwashed for so long or so well), and are therefore more able and willing to move in a revolutionary direction. Specifically in America, young people have grown up experiencing the crises in imperialism…This crisis in imperialism affects all parts of the society. America has had to militarize to protect and expand its empire…Further, the huge defense expenditures—required for the defense of the empire and at the same time a way of making increasing profits for the defense industries—have gone hand in hand with the urban crisis around welfare, the hospitals, the schools, housing, air and water pollution. The State cannot provide the services it has been forced to assume responsibility for, and needs to increase taxes and to pay its growing debts while it cuts services…The private sector of the economy can’t provide jobs, particularly unskilled jobs. The expansion of the defense and education industries by the State since World War II is in part an attempt to pick up the slack, though the inability to provide decent wages and working conditions for `public’ jobs is more and more a problem.

“As imperialism struggles to hold together this decaying social fabric, it inevitably resorts to brute force and authoritarian ideology. People, especially young people, more and more find themselves in the iron grip of authoritarian institutions…The anti-authoritarianism which characterizes the youth rebellion turns into…a refusal to be socialized into American society. Kids used to try to beat the system from inside the army or from inside the schools; now they desert from the army…

“The crisis in imperialism has brought about a breakdown in bourgeois social forms, culture and ideology. The family falls apart, kids leave home, women begin to break out of traditional `female’ and `mother’ roles. There develops a `generation gap’ and a `youth problem.’ Our heroes are no longer struggling businessmen, and we also begin to reject the ideal career of the professional…We reject the elitist, technocratic bullshit that tells us only experts can rule…Chuck Berry, Elvis, the Temptations brought us closer to the `people’s culture’ of Black America. The racist response to the civil rights movement revealed the depth of racism in America, as well as the impossibility of real change through American institutions. And the war against Vietnam is not `the heroic war against the Nazis’; it’s the big lie, with napalm burning through everything we had heard this country stood for. Kids begin to ask questions: Where is the Free World?...

“The breakdown in bourgeois culture and concomitant anti-authoritarianism is fed by the crisis in imperialism, but also in turn feeds that crisis, exacerbates it so that people no longer merely want the plastic ‘50s restored, but glimpse an alternative (like inside the Columbia buildings) and begin to fight for it. We don’t want teachers to be more kindly cops…” (end of first section of part 8 excerpts)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

GM: From Bail-Out To Bankruptcy In 2009

(In December 2008, a short time before the "U.S. Corporate Welfare State" used billions of dollars in public funds to help bail-out the General Motors [GM] corporate executives and their insitutional stockholders by investing in GM's worthless stock under the pretext of "preventing GM from going bankrupt and laying off UAW workers", I posted the following reference to GM's previous corporate welfare grants):

If GM, Ford and Chrysler end up getting a big corporate welfare grant from the “U.S. Corporate Welfare State” before they begin their new wave of 2009 layoffs of UAW members, it won’t be the first corporate welfare grant that the Big Three ever received. As Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman noted in the 1996 edition of their book Take The Rich Off Welfare, in the 1990s the U.S. government gave “GM, Ford and Chrysler—whose combined 1994 profits were almost $14 billion--$333 million a year to develop more fuel-efficient cars;” yet “at the same time, the Big Three” propagandized “in favor of watered-down fuel-efficiency standards.” During the 1990s, Ford, GM and Chrysler also “each used accelerated depreciation to defer a billion dollars in tax payments,” according to the Take The Rich Off Welfare book.

The same book also recalled:

“The extent to which automobiles dominate our lives didn’t just happen by accident—at least part of it was the result of a criminal conspiracy. Back in the early 1930s, most people living in cities got around on electric streetcars. Concerned that this wasn’t the kind of environment in which they could sell a lot of buses, General Motors, using a series of front companies, began buying up streetcar systems, tearing out the tracks, buying buses from itself and then selling the new, polluting bus systems back to the cities—usually with contracts that prohibited purchases of `any new equipment using fuel or means of propulsion other than gas.’ Sometimes the contracts required that the new owners buy all their replacement buses from GM.

“…In 1949—after these companies had destroyed more than 100 streetcar systems in more than 45 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Oakland, Baltimore, St. Louis and Salt Lake City—GM, Chevron and Firestone were convicted of a criminal conspiracy to restrain trade…”

With regard to the most recent corporate welfare grant to the Big Three proposal, UAW Local 2334 President David Sole in Detroit recently wrote the following:

“Handing more money to the same auto bosses who got us into this mess won’t solve the problems the auto industry faces.

“…They will continue to try to eliminate jobs and cut wages and benefits. Their only concern is maximizing profits, which is what led them to concentrate on making SUVs and trucks domestically, while shipping production of fuel-efficient cars overseas…

“Since the auto bosses have brought the companies to the brink of ruin, the workers, their unions and the communities in which these factories are situated must assert their right to run the plants and replace the bloated, short-sighted executives and the big shareholders who kept them at the helm.

“Worker-community control of the Big Three is the only solution. Under worker-community control the demand for government funds to rebuild and retool the plants to make energy-efficient cars and mass transit equipment could rally wide support.”

(I also indicated in a December 2008 post why the Big Media Monopoly may have been pushing for having the "U.S. Corporate Welfare State" invest so much public tax money in an automobile corporation whose executives were driving the firm into bankruptcy, despite these GM executives' past record of business mismanagement and wasteful expenditures on executive salaries and advertising).

One reason the Big Media conglomerates in the United States might have wanted to see the Big Three transnational automobile companies get a big corporate welfare grant from the U.S. government is that GM, Daimler-Chrysler and Ford have, historically, been among the top buyers of advertising in the U.S. corporate media world. In 1999, for example, GM spent over $2.9 billion on advertising and was the Number 1 advertiser in the United States. That same year, the Number 3 advertiser in the U.S. was Daimler-Chrysler, which spent over $1.5 billion on advertising. And in 1999, Ford spent over $1.1 billion on advertising and was the Number 5 advertiser in the United States.

In 2007, GM spent over $3 billion on advertising and was the Number 4 advertiser in the U.S., while Ford spent over $2.5 billion on advertising and was the Number 6 advertiser in the United States. In addition, over $1.7 billion was spent on advertising by Chrysler, which was the Number 14 advertiser in the United States, according to Advertising Age magazine’s chart for 2007.