Check out the link and be sure and view all the pictures:

http://inter.kke.gr/News/news2012/2012-05-03-KKE-rally/

DRAFT RESOLUTION

WHEREAS accessible education is a right, not a privilege;

WHEREAS students in Québec are facing $1625 increase in tuition fees that threatens their access to education and will contribute to the increase of tuition fees across the country;

WHEREAS Québec students have launched a mass mobilization against this increase and the Charest Liberal provincial government, rallying some of the largest protests in Canadian history over the past weeks;

WHEREAS Québec students have democratically voted on and organized an ongoing student strike on their campuses with currently over 170,000 students on strike now entering their 70th day;

WHEREAS Québec students are holding almost daily rallies, occupations, and other actions including a rally of over 250 000 on March 22nd and a rally of almost 300 000 on Earth Day that is evidence of the broad support they are receiving from allies and the public;
WHEREAS all the student associations have denounced and condemned violence against people as a tactic of struggle and called for the government to negotiate;

WHEREAS the Québec government is refusing to negotiate in good faith and instead has attempted to break the student`s unity and resolve through court injunctions, openly mocking their campaign, refusing to seriously negotiate, and allowing police violence against the students including gassing protestors, mass arrests, and even blinding one student in the eye with a sound bomb;

BE IT RESOLVED that [name of organization] expresses its solidarity and support with the Québec students and will send a letter of support expressing this decision to the CLASSE, FECQ and the FEUQ [contact information below] and copy this letter to the local media;
BE IT RESOLVED that [name of organization] send a public letter to the Charest Liberal [contact information below] calling for them to negotiate with the students in good faith and discuss the question of tuition and CC [insert names of local MP, MPP/MLA, Mayor, etc];
BE IT RESOLVED that [name of organization] call a public picket on [date] at [location] distributing the solidarity letter of [name of organization] and other information materials;

BE IT RESOLVED that [name of organization] invite a speaker from the Québec students and organize a conference or public meeting in the Fall semester to inform the membership of [name of organization] and strengthen relations between English-speaking Canadian student movement and the Québec student movement.

Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante ( ASSÉ )
ATTN : Jean-Michel Therriault, Secrétaire aux relations externes
externe@asse-solidarite.qc.ca
2065, rue Parthenais, local 383
Montréal, QC
H2K 3T1

Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ)
ATTN : Léo Bureau-Blouin, Président
presidence@fecq.org
2003 St Hubert,
Montréal, QC
H2L 3Z6

Fédération Etudiante Universitaire du Québec (FEUQ)‎
ATTN : Martine Desjardins, Président
president@feuq.qc.ca
15 Marie Anne O,
Montreal, QC
H2W 1B6

The Honourable Jean Charest
Premier of Quebec
commentairespm@mce.gouv.qc.ca
Édifice Honoré-Mercier
835, boul. René-Lévesque Est
3e étage
Quebec, QC
G1A 1B4

By Zoltan Zigedy

Via http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2012/05/silly-season-caricature-of-democracy.html

We are well into the silly season, the great US national election spectacle that will compete with the other inane entertainments offered by our mega-media; in a real sense, the 2012 Presidential and congressional campaigns are the ultimate reality shows. In fact, they are not far from mimicking the vulgar competitions of American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. Imagine a television show with participants chosen by how much money they can raise from mega-millionaires, shadow boxing over questions prepared by media multi-millionaires, and concluding with an extravagant climax in November, with US voters selecting the winners. And those winners then get to rule the US for the next two, four or six years. And that, without too much exaggeration, is our two-party electoral system. Of course ruling the US should be serious business. And the great tragedy is that this frivolous selection process is anything but serious.

This carnival has evolved. The role of television, for example, has transformed national elections into beauty pageants with $200 haircuts, attractive faces, winning smiles, and cute families superseding issues and programs. But before television, party bosses delivered the votes with patronage and Election Day “services.” The common denominator throughout the ages is money. Money, and the effort it buys, have been and continue to be decisive. Merely the ante has changed, growing astronomically until only the super-rich or their friends can vie for the highest offices. Inexorably, the staggering role of money exponentially multiplies the influence of a tiny cabal of the wealthiest in picking winners and shaping policy.

None of this is strikingly new or even seriously deniable. But what is striking and serious is the continued acceptance of this state of affairs by the millions of increasingly desperate citizens who cling to elections as an expression of their interests. Though elections are becoming more and more irrelevant to serving those interests, the cycle continues unabated.

For the “one percent,” the electoral circus is an undeserved gift that allows a refreshing of the ruling elites on a regular basis, with little chance of any renegades sneaking into the ruling clique. The pool of reliable candidates is determined well in advance based upon their service to capital and then the populace is allowed to pick from two duly anointed choices (certainly I recognize that in some “liberal” or minority districts better candidates vie, but this is consistently challenged with gerrymandering and hyper-spending geared towards embedding trustworthy and spineless social-liberals with no animus towards corporations).

For the ninety-nine percent, the elections are the meager meal that keeps the pitchforks in the barn and staunches the illusion that the US is a democracy.

While none of this is really disputable or even often challenged by the left, most of the left continues to dutifully climb on board the Democratic Party bus every election cycle. Sure, the thought of electing an ex-FBI snitch, clumsy B-film movie actor as President in 1980 drove most of us to vote for a mediocre Democratic incumbent who had already signed onto the neo-liberal agenda and betrayed his entire 1976 program (Ted Kennedy ran against him in the primary for exactly that reason). We should have known better—the Democrats had secured near-total dominance of the electoral arena after the Nixon fiasco and frittered it away, demonstrating no intention to further a progressive, popular agenda.

Election after election, the Democratic Party mobilizes its progressive base by stoking fears of the wacko-right. And like Pavlov’s dogs, the base pulls out all the stops to support well-groomed, corporate-friendly lawyer-candidates who promise, but never deliver. And now—over thirty years after Reagan—the incumbent Democratic Party President is on record as enthusiastically expressing his admiration for Ronald Reagan, the demon who stoked the great fear of the ultra-right. A bitter irony, but an irony lost on a new generation of leftists and progressives who hold their nose and work hard for a Democratic Party victory.

Why is this?

Arguments for repeating the same pattern abound: from future Supreme Justices to ending military occupations and containing economic predation. Yet the ideological disposition of the Supreme Court continually drifts rightward; the wars and occupations overlap from one regime to another; and inequality continues to grow unabated. Clearly, any merits of the “lesser-of-two-evil” tactic are not realized in practice.

What began as a credible tactic—put aside ideology, and deny the extreme right a shot at ruling—has since become an unthinking and unproductive habit, a habit that fails to stop or even slow the rightward drift in US politics. To break this habit, someone must pose, advocate, and work to popularize a new tactic that promises to turn back this vicious trend. To reverse this trend, a new approach is urgently needed.

But it would be naïve to believe that a new approach would emerge from within the Democratic Party. Party leaders have no interest in seeing such a movement arise and have been complicit for some time in smashing any internal insurgency by changing the rules against democracy, by siding with “winnable” moderates and rightists, and by undermining progressive candidacies; it’s their party and they’re keeping it. Yet many still tilt at these windmills.

Instead, devising a new approach falls upon the left, a left that seems determined to avoid this responsibility. The harsh reality is that the left in the US, even broadly defined, has little to no influence upon electoral outcomes and, therefore, has little to lose in exploring independent answers. That is not to deny that the labor movement in the US does seriously impact elections. But its long standing intimate relationship with the Democratic Party promises little change without a popular movement to show the way. Finding a new approach is one problem, but none will be found unless we begin to look for one.

Standing in the way are the naysayers, the perennial advocates for staying the course. Recently, I read an analysis by a “Communist” who castigated some on the left because they “disparage the electoral battle.” He pompously stated that the elections are the “main form of class struggle.” Such a view is sheer nonsense and an impediment to advancing both class struggle and class politics. Certainly, elections can be a form of class struggle, but never an effective form, except when influenced by powerful, independent and principled forces. We have known these moments both in the 1930s when the left mobilized millions in opposition to failed economic policies, and in the 1960s, when militant actions supported civil rights and challenged an imperialist war. If the results of the 2008 election (with a Democratic sweep) are a measure of the success of this form of “class struggle”, then its success for those on the wrong side of the class divide. If we learn anything from the malignant Tea Party, we should understand the value of not tendering our support unless we get something for it. And if the Democrats don’t need our support, then we are foolish to offer it.

Still other pseudo-Marxists justify their electoral obsession and fealty to the Democratic Party by appealing to the writings of Georgi Dimitrov. Dimitrov introduced the notion of a united front against fascism in his 1935 report to the Communist International. On their reading, the left should make common cause with the Democrats to defeat the ultra-right, thought by them to be the contemporary embodiment of fascism. But this is a felony against history: we are not faced with the fascist threat of 1935. Nor do these Marxist poseurs represent Dimitrov’s views faithfully. He never advocated surrendering the left’s identity to rival political parties; he never advocated fighting the class enemy solely in the electoral arena; and he never endorsed making nice with the Parties of the big bourgeoisie. Certainly US Communists didn’t interpret Dimitrov in this fashion when they ran Earl Browder and James Ford in the 1936 election against Franklin Roosevelt.

Another variant on this opportunist “Marxist” theme postulates stages or levels of struggle by anointing collaboration with the Democrats in their electoral bids as an intermediate stage on the road to a distant socialism. With this view, any motion at all towards that distant goal must await the final conflict with the ultra right.

Except this is not Marxism. Rather it is the pretentious appropriation of Marxist jargon to justify marriage to the Democratic Party. Marxists, first and foremost, recognize the direction of processes. And in the case of marching in lockstep with the Democratic Party, this policy has hardly been a productive process. In fact, it has led, over decades, to a continued rightward retreat under the banner of “the lesser of two evils,” a dubious launching pad for a higher stage.

From the perspective of an even lighter shade of red, Bill Fletcher has stirred a lively internet debate with his recent excoriation of those he sees as disdainful of electoral politics. In his “My Frustration with the Left when it comes to Electoral Politics”, Fletcher caricatures the debates on the left as between sensible, pragmatic leftists who bring their issues into the electoral arena and wild-eyed, cynical radicals who scorn elections. Like all caricatures, his simplifies and obscures differences and evades a real confrontation with the limitations of electoral politics in the here and now. Fletcher postures the electoral “arena” as a “field of struggle” for “popular power” and a place to “raise issues that have the possibility of gaining greater recognition.”

But is it? Certainly, it could be, under specific and ideal conditions—for example, the existence of a left bloc with the temerity and determination of our Tea Party foes on the right. But is the 2012 election such an arena for the left?

The answer is clearly “no.” A Democratic victory promises neither “popular power” nor the projection of any new, progressive issues. Surely, the betrayal of the meager program promised by the 2008 Obama victory underscores this point. Fletcher conflates what could be with what is. Elections could be meaningful if we had a class-based or anti-monopoly Party, but we don’t. Furthermore, Fletcher scoffs at the idea of building one. Instead, he projects one possibly arising “from an ‘insurrection’ within the Democratic Party and a major section of its base…” Waiting for this “insurrection” to spontaneously ignite has been a dream for generations, a dream of those blessed with patience, but short of vision and realism.

History teaches a different lesson: from the abolitionists through the anti-war movement of the sixties and today’s Occupy movement, change has come from organized forms resolved to press issues regardless of the electoral consequences and independent of electoral maneuvers. Were the abolitionists’ strategy to take the focus of struggle solely into the electoral arena, the cause would have languished for decades. Similarly, without labor’s independent militancy outside of the electoral arena in the early thirties, workers would have been saddled with the corporate-friendly NRA and the toothless section 7A.

Bringing struggles into the Democratic Party and entrusting it to advance these issues legislatively, as Fletcher suggests, inevitably dilutes, co-opts, and divides popular struggles. Certainly Democratic Party leaders opportunistically and parasitically adopt popular movements when they capture the attention of voters, but they do so to contain, compromise, and exploit those movements. That process was clearly demonstrated in the Obama era, with far-too-many leaders of the anti-war movement passing the cause on to the Administration. As a result, the wars continued to expand and the movement is virtually silent. Today, the Democrats are fervently trying to suck the energy of the Occupy movement into the electoral campaign. Should it succeed, it will eviscerate the movement.

Fletcher is correct to argue that we have yet to build a foundation for a left party in the US. However, we will never build one, if we do not fight to keep our struggles and movements independent of the Democratic Party and outside of a reliance on electoral politics. People should and will vote as they please. But energy spent on working for a Democratic victory in November is energy diverted from building our movements. Movements are the enforcers of ideas and policies. When the left builds its base, it will have something to advance or trade with bourgeois politicians and it will not surrender its support for nothing.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Read new poems from Gary Hicks on the blog:

www.poetsbrigade.blogspot.com

Happy May Day!

http://cpusa.org/happy-may-day/

www.wftucentral.org

“Wealth belongs to those who produce it”

The World Federation of Trade Unions addresses a fraternal salutation to all working women and men around the world. The 1st of May is the day that reminds us of our irreplaceable social role in the production of all the wealth in the world. The 1st of May is the day that reminds us of the invincible power, that class unity can provide us with, to change the world according to our needs and abilities. A world of prosperity, peace and fraternal solidarity. The only obstacle standing in the way of this progress is the parasitic activity of the monopolies. The predatory exploitation of the wealth-producing resources for their own profiting in burden of the peoples and the environment.

In times of capitalist crises, especially at a deep and synchronized one as the one we are facing nowadays, their inter-imperialist rivalries intensify, their lust for more spheres of influence, control over the wealth-producing resources, larger markets and cheaper labour force is splashing. They get more ruthless in the course of competition. The fire of imperialist wars and conflicts caused by the imperialist interventions is spreading. The intercapitalist rivalries give birth to wars and conflicts.

The impact in the peoples’ lives is dramatic:

16% of the total population is undernourished.

Unemployment rises continuously.

1 out of 6 people worldwide do not have access to adequate clean water.

More than 100 million people are homeless. Millions live in slums. Hundreds of millions of people live on rent or have to pay unbearable house loans in order to get their own home.

920 million people remain illiterate.

8,1 million children died in 2009 before reaching five years of age.

Each year about 2,1 million people around the world die from vaccine-preventable diseases.

The workers’ rights in decent basic salary, social security, free and qualitative public services (education, healthcare, transport, electricity) are being undermined and attacked.

The freedom of association and the trade union freedoms in general are being attacked.

Trade unionists are murdered, imprisoned, fired.

On the contrary, the capitalist profits rise or remain defiantly high.

In 2010 amidst the capitalist crisis, the 50 more profitable companies earned profits more than 715 billion dollars.

This reality forces us, the workers of the world, into coiling and militant counterattack against the capitalist exploitation and barbarity for the fulfillment of the contemporary basic needs and a world without exploitation of man-by-man.

On the 3rd of October 2012, the International Action Day 2012, we will struggle side by side with strikes, demonstrations, mobilizations, activities in dozens of countries of the five continents to end the multinationals’ predatory exploitation, to demand our right in Food, Clean Water, Housing, Medication, Education, Transport and Free and Qualitative Public Services for all.

A world without workers is impossible
A world without capitalists is necessary

W. T. Whitney Jr.

“Pitiless glacial rain was falling in Bogota” on April 23, one observer said. Then, “as if by magic, that mute, lugubrious world fell apart as marchers rumbling by brought color, happiness, fraternal embrace, and hope.” They filled the Plaza Bolivar from all sides; 100,000 people had arrived in 2500 buses from all 28 Colombian departments. They were, “the forgotten Colombia, the Colombia of young people, children, old people…men and women whose views were shaped on the land and in adversity.”

Speakers at this founding celebration of Marcha Patriotica called for a “second and definitive independence,” structural transformation, and peace with justice. Demands were heard for agrarian reform and access to health care and education. Marcha Patriotica “emanates from workers, small farmers, women trying to hold families together, indigenous peoples, and Afro-Colombians,” Nelson Lombana Silva writes. The movement seeks to integrate social movements and political parties. Planning started in 2010, the bicentennial year of liberation from Spanish rule.

Over two previous days, 4000 delegates representing 1700 social and political organizations, with two delegates each, had gathered at a convention center. They discussed Colombia’s political situation, outlined organizational structures, defined tasks, approved a political declaration, established commissions, and appointed a National Patriotic Council. Some 130 international guests were present. Plenary session speakers included: Voz newspaper director Carlos Lozano; Piedad Cordoba, leader of Colombians for Peace; Senator Gloria Inés Ramírez of the Alternative Democratic Pole (POLO); Jaime Caycedo, Communist Party secretary general and former Bogota city councilor; and Marcha organizers.

The movement’s political platform displays revolutionary aspirations. It notes “new dynamics of collective action in our country,” and “growing desire [for] exercise of politics linked to the many social and class conflicts.” The document proclaims a “vocation for power, while signaling the necessity for political change to overcome imperial domination and hegemony imposed by dominant classes over two centuries.” Marcha Patriotica is “not simply a tactic of alliances but is a process for building subjective consensus as to unifying the oppressed and exploited classes, our historic task.”

The platform calls for political solution of armed conflict; democratization of society, state, and economic model; alternative ways of life and production; human rights guarantees; “humanization of work,” reparations for victims; land reform and protection of rural people, educational reform based on “teaching for emancipation; a “culture of solidarity and transformation of the social order;” and lastly, Latin American integration, internationalism, and national independence.

The Liberal Party’s left wing headed by Piedad Cordoba and the Colombian Communist Party helped launch the Marcha Patriotica. National student organizations, the Fensuagro agricultural workers union, indigenous groups like the National Minga, small farmer groups, and protesters against the El Quimbo dam project were also instrumental.

Colombia is used to political projects aiming at left unity. The Patriotic Union (UP) and the Democratic Alliance, propelled by demobilized M-19 insurgents, emerged in the 1980’s. The recently established POLO electoral coalition, joined by the Communist Party, now suffers from internal divisions and disregard of social movements. Leaders issued a statement supporting the Marcha Patriotica, but POLO was unrepresented at the inaugural events.

Communist Party involvement with the UP and Marcha Patriotica suggests kinship of the two, which Marcha organizers deny. The UP came about because insurgents of the Revolutionary Army Forces of Colombia (FARC) abandoned armed struggle to enter electoral politics. The FARC now apparently has no role with the Marcha Patriotica.

Yet one clear sign of Marcha Patriotica’s impact is government scapegoating. President Juan Manuel Santos, other officials, and the media say Marcha Patriotica was a FARC idea and is infiltrated by the FARC. Evidence is cited derived supposedly from captured FARC computers, even though the Supreme Court earlier had discredited computer-based evidence used against journalists and other left wing political figures. Soldiers and police throughout Colombia have monitored and harassed Marcha activists over several months, arresting and tailing many of them, threatening family members, and barging into homes. They interfered with travel to Bogota. Intelligence operatives watched over proceedings there.

The U.S. – allied Colombian government, protective of banking, landowning, mining, and drug-running interests, intimidates also through killings. Under its auspices, 5000 activists associated with the UP were massacred. Now, three Marcha organizers are dead, or feared dead. Victims are: Martha Cecilia Guevara Oyola, community leader in Caquetá, who disappeared on April 20; Hernan Henrry Diaz, Fensuagro organizer responsible for getting 200 Putumayo people to Bogota, who disappeared on April 18; and Mauricio Enrique Rodriguez, bodyguard for Carlos Lozano and others, killed on April 27.

Nevertheless, expectations for the Marcha Patriotica are high. According to its political declaration, “Colombian patriots arrived in Bogota to affirm the existence of collective dreams, to lay out routes of dignity, to open doors of hope just as did liberators for the first independence. We are participating in a new historical chapter, forged necessarily in the broadest possible popular unity.”