thebitchencyclopedia:

thepeoplesrecord:

Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans return their medals today at NATO protests.

Follow The People’s Record for more up-to-date NATO news and news on radical demonstrations around the world.

Awesome demonstration. Awesome Blog.

(Source: thepeoplesrecord)

thepeoplesrecord:

The Spirit of Resistance Thrives in Occupy Moscow

An Occupy-related group in Moscow has caught international attention for their bravery and wherewithal against a notoriously oppressive Putin administration. A few days ago (May 16) police moved in to disperse a group of activists who were occupying an encampment on Moscow’s Kudrinskaya Square. When police were attempting to detain two of the protesters, a crowd gathered around a police bus and severely damaged it. Police detained more than 30 activists including the leader of the opposition Solidarnost group.

Outrage from the arrests has sparked a new wave of demonstrations among Russian activists, creating occupations that have swelled to the thousands. Laws preventing protesters from doing what many would consider to be normal protest activities (chants, signs, posters, tents, drums, etc.) are being enforced. In the past, Moscow police have broken up unauthorized political rallies with swift and extremely excessive force.

But working class activists are not lying down and allowing Putin to suppress their anger. More than 10,000 Russians of all ages joined a demonstration through a neighborhood near Chistye Prudy on Saturday in a clear bid to test the limits of the law. Moscow painters have voiced plans to conduct a similar stroll over the we.And the working class wherewithal in Russia is paying off big time! On Thursday (May 17) stories reporting wide-spread reaction in the business world to the Occupy Moscow protests were published:

“Investors are fleeing Russia as demonstrators against President Vladimir Putin dig in, exacerbating the impact of Europe’s debt crisis on the country’s markets, money managers from Frankfurt to Moscow said.

Activists who clashed with police before Putin’s May 7 inauguration are protesting non-stop in Moscow, using the Occupy Wall Street movement’s tactics. As the benchmark RTS equity index entered a bear market, Russia-focused equity funds recorded $251 million of outflows in the seven days to May 9, the most this year, while China lost $127 million, India $148 million and Brazil $167 million, EPFR Global data show.”

Resistance in Russia grows in strength and relevance amid increasingly popular and prevalent anti-austerity movements in Europe. The circumstances in Greece are demonstrating to international activists everywhere that in 2012 a different kind of government is possible. We live in the era of revolution: from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Movement to new vibrant anti-austerity movement creating the potential for revolutionary situations in Europe. The world we used to live in does not exist anymore. Things are possible that were not possible before.And that means we ALL have a much heavier responsibility to our societies and to our world to engage in struggle now than ever before (certainly in our life times).

 

—R.Cunningham

Source, Source and Source

(Source: thepeoplesrecord)

thepeoplesrecord:

Walter Who? A Response to Claims that the Occupy Movement is Irrelevant and Dead

We were recently asked by chileanstudentmovement (a great blog, if you aren’t following already, I highly recommend it) about our thoughts on Walter Russel Mead’s article “OWS RIP”.  Admittedly, it required a wiki search for me to learn who Walter Russel Mead was. After reading Mead’s wiki page, it is utterly unsurprising that a hawkish, imperialist Democrat (strong supporter of the Iraq war) who works for such publications as the Washington Post, the Economist and the Financial Times would be so enthusiastically against the Occupy Movement.

Unfortunately, in this article Mead not only misses the point, he blatantly misrepresents facts to do so. Almost immediately in the article, Mead claims that the New York Times, a publication widely condemned for its negative, biased, anti-OWS coverage actually is the only thing propping up Occupy coverage. He claims that the movement has remained entirely irrelevant:

“It is not a significant presence on the streets; it is not a significant presence in Democratic Party politics; it is not a significant presence in the national conversation.”

It is difficult for me to accept that even a financial insider pseudo-journalist like Mead believes this nonsense. Surely, anyone who has even glanced at this blog has seen the wide sweeping affects that the Occupy Movement has had on grass roots organizing around this country AND internationally. Protests in countries across the Americas, Europe, Australia, Asia and Africa have evoked the “Occupy” name and implemented the movement’s tactics to pursue their own political interests while maintaining international solidarity. Occupy Russia made the news this week for just that, in fact. NATO protests this week (which we’ve been covering extensively) have been heavily influenced by Occupy organizing. Leftist organizations and conferences (such as the International Socialist Organization and the Socialism 2012 Conference) are reporting unprecedented new numbers of registration and tremendous growth because of an international wave of radicalization that both allowed for the establishment of the Occupy Movement and has gained momentum because of the Occupy Movement. The President, Democrat senators, congressmen and Democrat-focused organizations have adopted the language of the movement in order to appropriate it. Mead even acknowledges this last point but only briefly and only in order to dismiss it as irrelevant and inconsequential.

But Mead’s perpetuation of ignorance isn’t the biggest problem with this article. In fact, he completely misses the point of the Occupy Movement, and in doing so circumvents the conversation that all ruling class intellectuals are terrified to have. The Occupy Movement, (whether it is called that a year from now or has evolved into something entirely different) is a result of the problems created by capitalism in crises. Until those problems go away, there will be Occupy-style grass roots organizing ready to combat them. Any individual movement will go through surges and lulls of activity, and will eventually either evolve or become irrelevant. I have no doubt that what is now the Occupy Movement may be something entirely different in a few years but I also know the impact of three months of Occupy was enough to permanently impact this nation and my life forever.

The Occupy Movement changed my life personally, radicalized my politics and enlightened me to the reality that capitalism must be dismantled and to the idea that I could devote my life to fighting for a better world. I am not alone in this – I have at least half a dozen people in my life (who I knew before the movement) who also radicalized BECAUSE of the Occupy Movement. And there is nothing exceptional about us. The impact of having dozens or hundreds of newly recruited life-long anti-capitalists is immeasurable. Mead also sort-of acknowledges this in his article but again only to reduce it to some right-of-passage, maybe-down-the-line, bullshit. It feeds directly into the propaganda-industrial-complex which Mead is clearly a part of. The fact of the matter is, we won’t even be able to assess the full impact of this (still breathing) movement for decades to come. Mead predicts that this movement is dead but as far as predictions go, Mead has a less-than-clairvoyant history. I couldn’t imagine taking what this man has to say about grass-roots activism seriously.

 

—R.Cunningham

(Source: thepeoplesrecord)

thepeoplesrecord:

Help fund a bus full of socialists in the Texas/Oklahoma area to the largest conference of socialists in the United States. Please help out. We’re trying to bring 56 people and it isn’t cheap or easy.We need to reach as many sympathetic leftists as possible.

During these conferences, people radicalize and prepare for a year of organized work against capitalism. Many people talk about the conference as the reason they decided to dedicate their lives to bringing down capitalism. For that reason, it is incredibly important that we get as many people to the conference as possible. Reblog, share on Facebook and if you feel like making some lucky socialist’s day, donate something please!

(Source: thepeoplesrecord)

thepeoplesrecord:

wearethe1in3:

I found out I was pregnant 3 days after I’d lost my job. I was 19, newly married & already thousands of dollars in debt. No woman should have to choose between poverty or social stigma & shame. I am proud to be 1 in 3!

Damn right!

Reblog. Follow wearethe1in3 (which aims to combat abortion stigma). If you feel comfortable, guidelines for submission here.

thepeoplesrecord:

Today -  April 13, 2012 

The Egyptian people gather for a massive protest in Tahrir square in Cairo. Hundreds of thousands took Cairo’s Tahrir Square denouncing military rule of the country and united to ban Mubarak-era cabinet members including a spy chief from running in the upcoming presidential elections.

Source.

Photo: Reuters

(Source: thepeoplesrecord)

thepeoplesrecord:

Young, Black and criminalized

The U.S. government’s four-decade-old “war on drugs” has led to the criminalization of a whole generation of Black and Latino youth, writes Eric Ruder.

April 9, 2012

WHILE MILLIONS of people around the country were reacting with horror and outrage to the revelations about Trayvon Martin’s death in Florida, the right-wing media had a different kind of murder in mind [1]: character assassination. When a juicy tidbit from Trayvon’s school records leaked to the press, they thought they had their weapon.

According to reports in the media [2], Trayvon had been staying in Sanford during a suspension from school, after an empty plastic sandwich bag reportedly bearing traces of marijuana was found in his book bag. Trayvon’s school had a so-called “zero tolerance” policy.

When this news of Trayvon’s suspension for “drug possession”—in reality, non-possession—broke, his family angrily denounced the reports and blamed police for leaking the news to discredit their son. “The only comment that I have right now is that they’ve killed my son, and now they’re trying to kill his reputation,” Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s mom, told a swarm of reporters gathered to report on the latest “revelation.”

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly struggled to contain himself. In a March 27 show with Jasmine Rand [3], an attorney representing Trayvon’s family, O’Reilly deployed the usual interview-as-accusation style that he reserves for guests he wants to discredit. “Basically, it’s emerging that Trayvon had some problems,” said O’Reilly. “And the family does object to that.”

“Trayvon was any normal kid in America,” Rand replied, adding that Trayvon’s mother was correct to insist that the grounds for Travyon’s suspension bear absolutely no relevance to his murder. But O’Reilly wasn’t satisfied: “In a case of this magnitude, shouldn’t the public know the history of Trayvon?”

But the only newsworthy aspect of Trayvon’s suspension for non-possession of marijuana is that every mainstream news outlet considered it newsworthy.

If trying marijuana in high school in some way contributed to Trayvon’s death, then millions of American teenagers are at risk—not to mention all the years during which their parents and other post-high-school-age adults should have been deemed “suspicious.”

Nearly 40 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds—about 3.4 million—have used marijuana at least once in their lives, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [4]. Nearly two-thirds of adults between ages 21 and 54 have also tried marijuana at least once. Statistics also show that people of all races use drugs in similar proportions to their numbers in the general population.

Actually, the truly newsworthy outrage—one that escaped the media’s attention—was that a teenager would be suspended for two full weeks, not for possessing marijuana, but for possessing a sandwich bag with alleged traces of marijuana.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHAT REALLY deserves attention is the abject failure of the U.S. government’s four-decade-long “war on drugs” in every way but two. Its successes? The demonization of an entire generation of young, Black men—and increasingly Black women, and Latinos as well—and the waste of enormous amounts of society’s resources on building prisons and warehousing prisoners.

Even some high-profile conservative figures are drawing such conclusions, too.

Gary Johnson, the Republican governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, advocates legalization of marijuana and the decriminalization of harder drugs, citing the benefits of decriminalization of heroin in Portugal and Switzerland as models to be emulated. “Over the last 10 years, Portugal has documented a 50 percent decrease in heroin use as a result of having decriminalized heroin,” said Johnson [5].

Even televangelist and media mogul Pat Robertson has since 2010 advocated for the decriminalization of marijuana, returning to the topic on his The 700 Club show on multiple occasions. During a show in early March [6], he said, “California is spending more money on prisons than it’s spending on schools. There’s something wrong about that equation…I think we need to scrub the federal and state codes and take away these criminal penalties…[P]utting people in jail at a huge expense to the population is insanity.”

Finish the Article?

(Source: thepeoplesrecord)

thepeoplesrecord:

ATTENTION OCCUPY DENVER, DENVER RESIDENTS AND COLORADO RADICALS:

The INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST ORGANIZATION is growing and branching out in Colorado and is looking for contacts interested in revolutionary politics, leftist politics or people who just want to know more about socialism.

A new branch has been established in Denver in the last few months, with plans to develop in Ft. Collins and Boulder in the next year. Message me if you’re interested. Followers in the region (and also everywhere else), PLEASE REBLOG.

Also, check out the above flyer. Paul D’Amato is kind of a big deal so you guys should totally come out and hear him talk about the new book “The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx”

(Source: thepeoplesrecord)

thepeoplesrecord:

The only “war to win all wars” will be a CLASS WAR in which the oppressed international working class rises up and seizes control of society from their oppressors.

(Source: thepeoplesrecord)