Venezuelan women dedicate this March 8 to President Chavez
In Venezuela this March 8, International Women’s Day will be dedicated to President Hugo Chavez, who in his 14 years in office fought for justice for women and created laws and missions for their benefit.
The Minister for Women and Gender Equality, Nancy Perez, said that “We here in Venezuela tell the world that we dedicate this day to our commander Hugo Chavez, because he gave us many days.”
The official recalled that the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution gave hope to the people. Therefore, “We will never forget and most importantly, we will not let you down.”
The laws promulgated for the benefit of women during his tenure include the Organic Law on the Right of Women to a Life Free of Violence, Equal Opportunities, Responsible Parenthood, Promotion and Protection of Breastfeeding and the Labor Law for workers.
On March 8, 2009, President Chavez created the Ministry for Women and Gender Equality, as an institution to protect and defend the rights of the women, according to international treaties and agreements.
Rising Profits, Sinking Planet: Socialist Solutions to the Climate Crisis
Featuring Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism (Haymarket Books, 2010) and Amity Paye, contributor to Occupying Wall Street (Haymarket Books, 2011)
Filmed in Boston, MA, 15 Dec 2012.
Salvador Allende and Che Guevara
What Greece’s SYRIZA stands for
June 6, 20121. Creation of a shield to protect society against the crisis:
— Not a single citizen without a guaranteed minimum income or unemployment benefit, medical care, social protection, housing, and access to all services of public utilities.
— Protection of and relief measures for indebted households.
— Price controls and price reductions, VAT reduction, and abolition of VAT on basic-need goods.2. Disposal of the debt burden
The national debt is first and foremost a product of class relations, and is inhumane in its very essence. It is produced by the tax evasion of the wealthy, the looting of public funds, and the exorbitant procurement of military weapons and equipment.
We are asking immediately for:
— A moratorium on debt servicing.
— Negotiations for debt cancellation, with provisions for the protection of social insurance funds and small savers. This will be pursued by exploiting any available means, such as audit control and suspension of payments.
— Regulation of the remaining debt to include provisions for economic development and employment.
— European regulations on the debt of European states.
— Radical changes to the European Central Bank’s role.
— Prohibition of speculative banking products.
— A pan-European tax on wealth, financial transactions, and profits.3. Income redistribution, taxation of wealth and elimination of unnecessary expenses:
— Reorganization and consolidation of tax collection mechanisms.
— Taxation of fortunes over 1 million euros and large-scale revenues.
— Gradual increase, up to 45 percent, of the tax on the distributed profits of corporations (SA).
— Taxation of financial transactions.
— Special taxation on consumption of luxury goods.
— Removal of tax exemptions for ship owners and the Greek Orthodox Church.
— Lifting of confidentiality for banking and merchant transactions, and pursuit of those who evade taxes and social insurance contributions.
— Banning of transactions carried out through offshore companies.
— Pursuit of new financial resources through efficient absorption of European funds, through claims on the payment of German World War II reparations and occupation loan, and finally via steep reductions in military expenses.4. Productive social and environmental reconstruction:
— Nationalization/socialization of banks, and their integration into a public banking system under social and workers’ control, in order to serve developmental purposes. The scandalous recapitalization of the banks must stop immediately.
— Nationalization of all public enterprises of strategic importance that have been privatized so far. Administration of public enterprises based on transparency, social control and democratic planning. Support for the provision of Public Goods.
— Protection and consolidation of co-operatives and SMEs in the social sector.
— Ecological transformation in development of energy production, manufacturing, tourism and agriculture. These reforms will prioritize nutritional abundance and fulfillment of social needs.
— Development of scientific research and productive specialization.5. Stable employment with decent wages and social insurance:
The constant degradation of labor rights, coupled with embarrassing wage levels, does not attract investment, development or employment. Instead, we are calling for:
— Well-paid, well-regulated and insured employment.
— Immediate reconstitution of the minimum wage and reconstitution of real wages within three years.
— Immediate reconstitution of collective labor agreements.
— Instigation of powerful control mechanisms that will protect employment.
— Systematic opposition of lay-offs and the deregulation of labour relations.6. Deepening democracy: Democratic political and social rights for all:
There is a democratic deficit in the country. Greece is gradually being transformed into an authoritarian police state. We are calling for:
— The restoration of popular sovereignty and an upgrade of parliamentary power within the political system:
— Creation of a proportional electoral system
— Separation of powers
— Revocation of ministerial immunity
— Abolishment of economic privileges for MPs— Real decentralization to create local government with sound resources and expanded jurisdiction.
— The introduction of direct democracy and institutions of self-management under workers’ and social control at all levels.
— Measures against political and economic corruption.
— The solidification of democratic, political, and trade union rights.
— The enhancement of women’s and youths’ rights in the family, in employment, and in public administration.
— Immigration reforms:— Speeding up the asylum process
— Abolition of Dublin II regulations and granting of travel papers to immigrants
— Social inclusion of immigrants and equal rights protection— Democratic reforms to public administration with the active participation of civil servants.
— The demilitarization and democratization of the Police and the Coast Guard. Disbandment of special forces.7. Restoration of a strong welfare state:
Anti-insurance laws, the shutdown of social services, and the steep fall in social expenditures under the Memorandum have turned Greece into a country where social injustice reigns. We are in need of:
— An immediate rescue of the pension system, to include tripartite financing and the gradual consolidation of separate pension fund portfolios into one public, universal system of social insurance.
— A raise in unemployment benefits until the substitution rate reaches 80% of the wage. No unemployed person is to be left without unemployment benefits.
— The introduction of a guaranteed minimum income.
— A unified system of comprehensive social protection covering the vulnerable social strata.8. Health is a public good and a social right:
Health care is to be provided for free and will be financed through a Public Health System. Immediate measures include:
— Support and upgrades for hospitals. Upgrade of health infrastructures of the Social Insurance Institute (IKA). Development of an integrated system of first-level medical care.
— Covering the needs of medical treatment in both personnel and equipment, in part by stopping layoffs.
— Open and cost-free access to medical treatment for all residents in the country.
— Free pharmaceutical treatment and medical examinations for low-income pensioners, the unemployed, students, and those suffering from chronic diseases.9. Protection of public education, research, culture and sports from the Memorandum’s policies:
With regards to education, we are calling for:
— Consolidation of universal, public, and free education, including coverage of its urgent needs in infrastructure and personnel at all three levels.
— Compulsory 14-year unified education.
— Revocation of the Diamantopoulou Law.
— Assurance of self-government for Universities.
— Preservation of the academic and public character of Universities.10. An independent foreign policy committed to the promotion of peace:
The capitulation of our foreign policy to the desires of the U.S. and the powerful states of the European Union endangers the country’s independence, peace, and security. We propose:
— A multi-dimensional and peace-seeking foreign policy.
— Disengagement from NATO and closure of foreign military bases on Greek soil.
— Termination of military cooperation with Israel.
— Aiding the Cypriot people in the reunification of the island.Furthermore, on the basis of international law and the principle of peaceful conflict resolution, we will pursue improvements in Greek-Turkish relations, a solution to the problem of FYROM’s official name, and the specification of Greece’s Exclusive Economic Zone.
Anarcho-capitalist, an individual that has no knowledge on what capitalism is.
China: Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth
By Deirdre Griswold
How many times have we been told that the U.S. is an “open” society and the media are “free”?
Usually such claims are made when criticizing other countries for not being “open,” especially countries that don’t follow Washington’s agenda.
If you live in the United States and depend on the supposedly “free” and “open” commercial media for information, you would without a doubt believe that the Chinese government massacred “hundreds, perhaps thousands” of students in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. That phrase has been repeated tens of thousands of times by the media of this country.
But it’s a myth. Furthermore, the U.S. government knows it’s a myth. And all the major media know it too. But they refuse to correct the record because of the basic hostility of the U.S. imperialist ruling class to China.
Valentina Tereshkova, first woman (and civilian) in Space in 1963. After 1969, she became a prominent member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and is now 74 years of age, with a monument on Cosmonauts Alley in Moscow.
(So poorly worded
I am so tired I will rewrite this tomorrow but I wanted to post this because she’s just fabulous)
(Source: sovietico)
A big caveat. This does not mean that privileged leftists get to erase the oppression of non privileged ones. Someone calling you on your privilege doesn’t equal infighting.
After our adventures in the occupied highschool, we went to a nearby cafe, drank amazing coffee with rum in it, and made a new friend, the proprietor of the cafe, a man called Eddy. The quote above comes from him.
Eddy sat down with us and talked to us about all kinds of things - being an activist before and during the Allende government, the horrors of the Pinochet coup and its aftermath, including being tortured by them for being a dissident, and the continuous negative effects of Pinochet’s economic and social policies on Chile today.
He talked about the horrible inequality that exists in Chile today - corporations and mining companies are incredibly wealthy, but the labour movement was pretty much destroyed under Pinochet and hasn’t really recovered. The GDP of the country is pretty high, but the overall standard of living is much lower than in Argentina, for example. There’s pretty high levels of poverty, particularly for the Indigenous populations, for whom land rights and access to education are very important issues. The government has a pretty high federal reserve, but instead of spending it on infrastructure, education and other important things in Chile, it’s being loaned to European countries to prop up their struggling economies.
When I was small, my mother was involved with a group of Chilean refugees who were anti-Pinochet, and I remember learning about the disappearances at a very early age. Because of this, I expected that there would be a much more anti-Pinochet presence in Chile, but it’s been pretty minimal. The wealthy part of the population seem to still be very in favour of him, and all the 11/9/73 memorial stuff was in the form of subversive protests, which I wasn’t really expecting. Eddy told us that a lot of people don’t care about the crimes against humanity that the Pinochet regime perpetrated, because some people managed to become very wealthy.
Eddy talked to us about the recent student protests, as well, which he was very in favour of. He told us that last month, there was a protest in the Plaza Brasil and the carabineros let off a lot of teargas bombs, which made everyone in the neighbourhood sick afterwards. He told us that the parents of students who are occupying the universities are sometimes losing their jobs because of what their kids are doing.
This made me incredibly thankful to live in a country with a strong labour movement. Having the right to organise, to not lose your job because of the political affiliation or actions of your family members, to be able to fight for decent conditions that mean class is not entrenched - these are valuable rights that I think a lot of people take for granted.
It was maybe one of the most interesting conversations I’ve ever had in my life, and I’m incredibly grateful that he took the time to talk to us about a piece of history that we don’t hear a lot about in Australia. I’m also very grateful to be in Chile at a time when there’s so much political action taking place, and I’m very sad that this isn’t getting a lot of attention from the Anglosphere media. I think people assume that all of Chile’s problems ended when Pinochet left power, but it’s very much not the case.
I hope that when I am Eddy’s age, I am still passionate about equality for all people, regardless of nationality or gender or sexual orientation etc. He is an amazing man, and he also makes the best coffee we’ve had in Santiago so far.
Thank you, Eddy.
Love Julia.
(via newworldgrandtour)
Thanks so much for this Julia! It is really interesting to read and also quite sad. Really do wish the Western media would talk about this more.
(via stinkysister)Lucy Parsons: "More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters"
The strongest argument that can be made as to why all radical activists should study the life and works of Lucy Parsons is that the FBI wants you to know nothing about her.
Lucy Parsons died in 1942, at the age of 89, in a house-fire in Chicago — the city in which she lived most of her life. The ashes had hardly cooled before the Chicago police raided the remains of her home, confiscated all 3,000 volumes of literature and writings on “sex, socialism, and anarchy,” which constituted her personal library, and turned it over to the FBI. Tragically, and despite her comrades’ repeated inquiries, this treasure trove of revolutionary material was never again to see the light of day.
Indeed, the Chicago police had ample reason to want to bury Parsons’ legacy as quickly as possible. In their own words, she was “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” For virtually the entirety of the last 40 years of her life, the Chicago police tried to bar her from making any public speeches, and routinely arrested her for the ‘crime’ of handing out revolutionary pamphlets on the street. Famed labor historian Studs Terkel even noted how rare of a privilege it was to hear Parsons address a large audience in her later years, owing to the constant police harassment.
Overlooked by History
Partially because so much of her own writings were ‘disappeared’ by the government, and partially because she was a revolutionary woman of color speaking out against the injustices of a capitalist society run by white men, Lucy Parsons is one of the least known of the major figures in the history of revolutionary socialism in the U.S. Much like her long-time comrades and friends, Eugene Debs, William “Big Bill” Haywood, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Lucy Parsons made a tremendous contribution to the birth of America’s turn-of-the-century, revolutionary working-class movement; a movement which continues to this day to shape the character of class struggle and revolutionary politics in this country.
Historian Robin Kelley argues that Lucy Parsons was not only “the most prominent black woman radical of the late nineteenth century,” but was also “one of the brightest lights in the history of revolutionary socialism.” Historian John McClendon writes that she is notable for being the “first black activist to associate with the revolutionary left in America.”
More often than not, however, if Lucy Parsons is mentioned as an historical figure, she is noted merely as the “wife of Albert Parsons,” a man who had gained international notoriety after he was executed in 1887 by the state of Illinois for his revolutionary activities.
Unfortunately, this slight extends beyond solely ‘mainstream’ historians, including supposedly left-wing intellectuals as well. For instance, in the 1960s, the feminist editors of Radcliffe College’s three-volume work, Notable American Women, decided to leave Parsons out of their study on the grounds that she was “largely propelled by her husband’s fate” and was a “pathetic figure, living in the past and crying injustice” after her husband’s execution.
Even contemporaries of Lucy Parsons, such as the popular anarchist-feminist Emma Goldman (with whom Lucy Parsons became a life-long political opponent), accused Parsons of being an otherwise unimportant opportunist who simply rode upon the cape of her husband’s martyrdom, describing her as nothing more than one of those wives of “anarchists who marry women who are millions of miles removed from their ideas.”
None of this, however, is to diminish the historical importance of Albert Parsons and the events leading up to his execution; and while it is true that Lucy Parsons spent much of her life addressing the crime that was her husband’s murder at the hands of the capitalist state, nonetheless, her political activity and impact on history extend far beyond the scope of that single tragedy. In fact, the work that she lent her energies to in the years following Albert’s execution are of equal (if not greater) importance than anything he had been able to add to the fight for workers’ emancipation in the course of a life that was sadly cut short.
The roots of sexual assault
How can we achieve a world without rape or any form of sexual violence? Elizabeth Schulte explains what socialists have to say about the question.
… Violence against women is the outcome of a class society that has, for hundreds of years, been maintained in part by the material inequality between men and women, and by the furthering of sexist ideas that divide men and women.
Sexist ideology encourages men to view women as less than their equals. The conditions that working-class women endure—lower wages, inferior health insurance, an added burden of labor in the home—carries no benefit for working-class men. But the illusion is created for at least some men that they are better off than women. In this context, sexist ideas—that women are intellectually inferior or that they are simply sex objects to please men—will gain a hearing among some men, and play a powerful role in further dividing men and women.
Under capitalism, everything that can be transformed into a commodity is transformed into a commodity—including sex and women’s bodies. This process warps the sexual interactions between men and women under capitalism, and our ability to be fulfilled as sexual people.
It is little surprise that in a society that places so little value on working-class women’s lives, some men might not view a woman’s consent as necessary for sex.
A total transformation of society is needed, where the priorities of the powerful few at the top are replaced by the needs of the majority of the population, and where the complete liberation of men and women is the goal, and every resource of society is devoted toward fulfilling that goal.
With these conditions in place, one can imagine a world free of sexism, rape and sexual violence. Frederick Engels, who showed how the roots of women’s oppression lay in the traditional family in his book the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, concluded:
What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear.
But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences.
When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual—and that will be the end of it.
