By Chris W - New Syndicalist, February 25, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

We can’t put our faith in the ballot box

The recent election of SYRIZA in Greece has invested a lot of hope in the emergence of a popular anti-austerity front across Europe. However the deep resistance that SYRIZA are facing to even the modest social reforms they are proposing from their European partners gives an indication of the intrinsic limits of parliamentary action alone to wider, and particularly deeper, social change. That is not to say that there are no important lessons to be drawn from this situation. Part of SYRIZA’s success story is in the way in which it has effectively capitalised on political ground that has been largely conceded by the parties of the social democratic centre in their widespread commitment to “responsible” economic policies and continuing austerity. This is a situation repeated across many European democracies. The so-called PASOKification of the centre left (in the UK and particularly in Scotland) has left a certain degree of political space “up for the taking”. The recent explosion in Green Party membership in England and Wales fits this story nicely: some might even find themselves feeling optimistic about alternatives to the Political status quo. Nonetheless, we need to be hard-headed in how we deal with these recent trends.

Poverty, hopelessness and powerlessness have drawn many throughout Europe, including a considerable section of both our own and the Greek electorate, to the populist and far-right. Understanding why it was the left that triumphed recently requires more than looking to SYRIZA’s leadership and electoral strategies – we need to look at the way broader Greek anti-capitalist culture operates. For decades a vibrant network of extra-parliamentary parties, social movements and trade union groups have sustained the continuing case for basic social solidarity through the maintenance of left spaces, solidarity networks and other forms of community engagement. This genuinely life-sustaining work has highlighted the pragmatism of socialist ideas above the individualistic solutions offered by the far-right and pro-austerity left. The future of SYRIZA’s relation to these social and extra-parliamentary movements is very unclear at this stage. Similarly, but on a smaller scale, is it possible to understand the surge in SNP popularity following the independence referendum without also appreciating the explosion in grassroots activity that preceded it?

In England and Wales the outlook is even bleaker. Not only is the left generally lacking in the basic forms of outreach and engagement that has empowered our Greek and Scottish friends, but the electoral system is stacked against any chance of even a modest swing in electoral sentiment. Even if the Green Party was to mobilise an army of supporters comparable to that seen in the Scottish referendum the “breakthrough” would be underwhelming, at most a victory of a handful of parliamentary seats.

The splitting of the political centre ground, combined with the massive disenfranchisement brought about by austerity policies, leaves a great deal of potential for any movement offering real and practical non-parliamentary alternatives. As solidarity unionists we believe that grassroots engagement and direct action are not merely the means of realising that latent potential, they are the basis for the worker-run society we’re trying to build. Meaningful and lasting victories can be won through these activities in a number of highly adaptable and scalable forms – from the group of workmates who march on the boss to win back their tip jar to the occupied and collectivised factory employing thousands of workers, we’ve got a working model for building the society we want.

By Motmakt - February 19, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Today we, a group of autonomous environmental activists, hung a 40 square meter banner from the Holmenkollen ski jump to protest the Oslo Energy Forum. The forum is being held at Scandic Holmenkollen Hotel, which is located just a couple of hundred meters from the ski jump. There are two primary reasons for why we chose to thave our banner action at this location: Firstly, because it is a national landmark that lies in close proximity to the place where the forum is held, and secondly, because winter sports like skiing will be something only found in history books if the fossil fuel industry is allowed to continue its current levels of polluting.

The Oslo Energy Forum is a closed meeting space where CEOs of various petroleum companies, politicians and other hand-picked guests meet to discuss the future of energy production. Neither the media nor civil society organizations (such as environmental organisations) are granted access to the meetings. Thus the general public is left to speculate about what kind of agreements and dirty deals are made at the conference. For the most part, the identity of who will be attending is also kept in the dark. Of the few names that are made public are such powerful figures as Johannes Teyssen, the CEO of the German company E.ON which produces electricity through hazardous nuclear plants and the burning of coal, and the Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg, who recently managed to change the definition of where the arctic ice cap starts, allowing petroleum companies to drill for oil further north than what was previously allowed. Wolfgang Ischinger, the ambassador for the Munich Security Conference, a forum where Western powers plan bombing raids against less powerful nations, is also present. We believe that when such people exchange ideas without any transparency, the outcome will be nothing good for our climate. The ideas and strategies that are likely to come out of the forum, are ones which will accelerate and worsen the current climate crises even more.

We believe that radical social change is inevitable, for future generations to have the opportunity to live their lives on anything resembling a planet worth living on. Capitalism is based on the absurd idea of unlimited economic growth, and seeks to achieve this through appealing to some of mankind’s worst traits, such as greed and a competitive mindset. Thus, capitalism will not be able to handle the task that is confronting us, and must be abolished for there to be any hope for a descent future for coming generations. In its place, we need to establish a social order based on humanism and solidarity. A social order where the economy is organized with the goal of fulfilling human needs, not for generating the highest possible profits for private holders of capital. A social order where everyone contributes based on their abilities and receives according to their needs. A social order that does not destroy our planet and the natural conditions for life itself.

We have no faith in being saved by politicians, capitalists or other parts of the elite. It is time we take the struggle for a decent future into our own hands. That´s why we declare:

Save the climate. Smash capitalism. Shut down the Oslo Energy Forum

By Arthur J. Miller - IWW, February 22, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Though there are more than enough reasons to stand in solidarity with Native people on this issue, there is a lot more to it than just that. Those Native folks were workers and that was the real point in what Serra did, FREE LABOR, SLAVERY OF WORKERS! Just because a group of workers have a different skin color or culture does not make them any less workers as any other workers. So dear labor activists, is it OK to you that a group of workers are enslaved, murdered and exploited without pay? Or is it just OK because they look different than you? And the fact that the Pope and the Catholic how is making Serra into a saint sends a very clear message of what that church and the Pope are really at and that nothing has changed over the years. It speaks clearly that they do not support workers or their rights. This is not just about what was done long ago, but rather also what is being done right now! The Pope could not issue a more anti-labor statement than to make Serra a saint. I guess from the bosses point of view this is great because now they finally have one of their own to pray to.

There is a lot of information on this out there. And there are people trying to do something about it. We working folks need to support that. You will find a lot of information on my facebook page. There are some important events coming up and there needs to be labor support. So the question comes up again, is the labor movement just about some white agenda? Or does it include all workers even if they maybe different than you are?

just an old retired shipyard worker,
Arthur J Miller

By X331980 - iww.org, February 22, 2015

The Sakuma Brothers Farms, Inc. berry boycott campaign spread to yet another grocery store in Bellingham, Wash. on Feb. 21. A large group of Wobs and friends picketed a Haggen Foods grocery store on behalf of the Familias Unidas por la Justicia farm workers union. This was the first of these boycott pickets organized by the Whatcom-Skagit IWW, and it drew a good crowd. A large, bright red “Boycott Berries” banner attracted attention from the busy street in front of the store. Other picketed on the busy street corner two blocks down. Some pickets held signs supporting the nationwide boycott of Driscoll’s berries and Häagen-Dazs ice cream, large purchasers of berries grown at Sakuma Farms in Burlington, Wash. Some signs urged drivers to “honk your support farm worker justice” and drivers did. Others leafleted customers entering the parking lot with information about the boycott. Similar pickets occur frequently in Bellingham, Mount Vernon, Burlington, and Seattle, organized by various groups supporting Familias Unidas. There is a need to spread these pickets to groceries everywhere Driscoll’s berries and Häagen-Dazs ice cream are sold. Contact the Whatcom-Skagit IWW for information: iwwbellingham@gmail.com.

The migrant farmworkers at Sakuma Brothers Farms organized themselves into an independent farm workers union in 2013, and have since held six strikes for better conditions and higher pay. Courts have so far upheld all lawsuits the workers have brought against the farm corporation, but management has yet to recognize the union or agree to negotiate.

By Macros Restrepo - Miami IWW, February 13, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Eyes have been on Colombia recently with news of negotiations between guerilla organizations like the FARC and the Colombian government along with electoral attempts by the left to find a foothold in power. In South Florida, Colombia makes its impact both in our communities and the strong economic and political ties to the region. We are sharing a piece by Macros Restrepo that looks back at the process that led the left in Colombia to this moment and its impact on the potential for a more liberated society. His article highlights contradictions as sections of the left moving to integrate with the state and its living authoritarian practices. In exploring the counterproductive aspects of recent left history in Colombia he aims us at a better direction.  

The political left in Colombia faces major challenges from within as well as from outside enemies.

The murder of Carlos Pedraza in late January of this year once again puts the reality of armed violence against leftist social and political movements in Colombia up front. Pedraza, a member of Congreso de los Pueblos was forcefully disappeared on January 19 and shot to death with a bullet to the head 24 hours later.

Left leaning social and political movements are tangled in an old struggle, going back to the 1980s, to separate themselves from ongoing accusations of being nothing more than unarmed stooges or undercover agents of the remaining guerrilla movements, the FARC and the ELN.

These accusations from local, national political and private sector representatives, right wing media pundits, the military and paramilitary organizations continue despite the ongoing changes within Colombia’s political left.

By Jessica Cohen - Pocono Record, February 4, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

MILFORD — Accusing Columbia Pipeline Group of flagrant disregard for clean air and local laws, about 40 people braved temperatures in the teens Saturday to picket on Broad Street and at CPG’s gas compressor construction site on Fire Tower Road.

Construction workers began showing up in January, within a day or two of successive federal and state approvals, to clear trees and demolish the old compressor station. They work seven days a week, often from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., according to a neighbor of the site.

Last Friday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved construction of a new compressor, much bigger than the one that had been on the site.

Alex Lotorto, Energy Justice Network organizer, who put together Saturday's demonstrations, said Columbia Pipeline Group has refused to comply with local law requiring a township conditional use hearing.

“In December of 2013, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that townships have both the right and responsibility to protect the environmental rights of their residents,” he said.

An electric compressor would largely eliminate toxic emissions, but would cost CPG several million dollars more than a gas compressor, said Milford township supervisor Gary Clark, who has requested that concession. However, Clark said he and the other township supervisors fear an expensive lawsuit if they legally enforce demands that CPG submit to a conditional use hearing.

David Wallace, an attorney in Montague, N.J., who has litigated against gas companies, questioned that decision.

“When the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down Article 13 (legislation that would have given gas companies more local power), it put the Constitutional responsibility for resources and safety back in the preeminent position where it belonged,” he said. “Townships have a basic responsibility, and they don't really have a good excuse to avoid it.”

One picketer, Justin Snyder, who lives next door to the compressor site, said that since the recent pipeline expansion, gas fumes have been frequent and nauseating, but his complaints have drawn little action.

By Noam Chomsky - Alternet, February 2, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

There is “capitalism” and then there is “really existing capitalism.”

The term “capitalism” is commonly used to refer to the U.S. economic system, with substantial state intervention ranging from subsidies for creative innovation to the “too-big-to-fail” government insurance policy for banks.

The system is highly monopolized, further limiting reliance on the market, and increasingly so: In the past 20 years the share of profits of the 200 largest enterprises has risen sharply, reports scholar Robert W. McChesney in his new book “Digital Disconnect.”

“Capitalism” is a term now commonly used to describe systems in which there are no capitalists: for example, the worker-owned Mondragon conglomerate in the Basque region of Spain, or the worker-owned enterprises expanding in northern Ohio, often with conservative support – both are discussed in important work by the scholar Gar Alperovitz.

Some might even use the term “capitalism” to refer to the industrial democracy advocated by John Dewey, America’s leading social philosopher, in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Dewey called for workers to be “masters of their own industrial fate” and for all institutions to be brought under public control, including the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication. Short of this, Dewey argued, politics will remain “the shadow cast on society by big business.”

The truncated democracy that Dewey condemned has been left in tatters in recent years. Now control of government is narrowly concentrated at the peak of the income scale, while the large majority “down below” has been virtually disenfranchised. The current political-economic system is a form of plutocracy, diverging sharply from democracy, if by that concept we mean political arrangements in which policy is significantly influenced by the public will.

There have been serious debates over the years about whether capitalism is compatible with democracy. If we keep to really existing capitalist democracy – RECD for short – the question is effectively answered: They are radically incompatible.

It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive RECD and the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it. But could functioning democracy make a difference?

By Steve Early - CounterPunch and Beyon Chron, February 4, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Twelve years ago, America’s leading advocate of occupational health and environmental safety succumbed to pancreatic cancer.

In the U.S., where the influence of organized labor has long been contracting, the death of a former trade union official is often little noted. Yet Tony Mazzocchi was no ordinary labor leader. His passing from the scene, at age 76, was widely recognized and correctly mourned as a great loss for the entire union movement.

As a top strategist for the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW), Mazzocchi pioneered alliances between workers concerned about job safety and health hazards and communities exposed to industrial pollution generated by companies like Shell, Chevron, and Mobil.

In 1973, members of the OCAW (who are now part of the United Steel Workers) conducted a national contract campaign and four-month strike at Shell Oil over workplace safety rights and protections. As Mazzocchi’s biographer, Les Leopold notes, “the strike helped build a stronger anti-corporate movement” because OCAW members learned “that you can’t win these fights alone.” To win—or even just battle Big Oil to a draw—workers had to join forces with the very same environmental organizations long demonized by the industry as the enemy of labor and management alike.

By Marc Norton - 48 Hills Online, February 3, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran a major investigative story on Sunday outlining how nasty waste from the oil industry winds up in Central Valley aquifers.

The story by David R. Baker detailed how state regulators have allowed oil companies in California, particularly in Kern County, to pump wastewater containing “a blend of briny water, hydrocarbons and trace chemicals” into underground water supplies, potentially contaminating water that could be used for drinking and irrigation

But if people in the Bay Area think that this is an issue only for farmers and residents in the hinterlands where oil production takes place, they need to think again.

The toxic effects of the disposal of oil production wastewater may be as near to you as the supermarket or your corner grocery. Here’s why: It’s an open secret that the big corporate agriculture landlords in Kern County are irrigating their crops with wastewater from oil production supplied to them by Chevron.

Do you eat potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, onions or bell peppers?  Do you like almonds or pistachios?  How about oranges, grapes or pomegranates?  Put a little honey in your tea?

Eat any wheat products?

These are all crops that are grown in Kern County, in the southern part of the San Joaquin Valley.

Do you eat beef?  Eggs?  Got milk?  These are also big Kern County agricultural products.

There is a lot of cotton grown in Kern County.  Do you wear any cotton clothes?

And they grow roses.  Makes a nice gift for your sweetie, don’t you think?

In total, Kern County produces over $3.5 billion worth of agricultural products every year, much of it irrigated by wastewater from Chevron’s oil well wells.

Chevron insists that that recycled water is safe, and in fact brags about how wastewater from oil development helps agriculture.

But farmers who live and work in the area aren’t so sure. And given the history of the oil and chemical industry’s environmental safety claims, there’s reason for at least concern.

By Javier S. Castro - Notes toward an International Libertarian Eco-Socialism, January 26, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Organized by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), the first annual Festival Mundial de las Resistencias y Rebeldías contra el Capitalismo, or the Global Festival for Anti-Capitalist Resistance and Rebellion, was held in central and southern Mexico over a two-week period at the end of 2014 and beginning of 2015. The event’s subtitle sums up its purpose well: “While those from above destroy, those from below rebuild.” Taken as a whole, this new Festival recalled the different “intergalactic” meetings hosted by the EZLN in Chiapas in the 1990’s, such as the Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neo-Liberalism (1996). According to the statistics made known at the event’s close at CIDECI-Unitierra in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, the number of officially registered participants at the Festival came to over 3400 Mexicans, including 1300 individuals belonging to 20 indigenous ethnicities, and 500 foreigners from 49 countries—though the total number of those who attended the Grand Cultural Festival in Mexico City and the EZLN’s year-end festivities at the Oventik caracol at other points over the course of the Festival must be considered as amounting to several times this total. While the Festival generally focused on the numerous problematics faced by Mexico’s various indigenous peoples amidst the power of capital and State—due in no small part, indeed, to the central participation of the CNI in the event—the distressing case of the 43 students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School who were forcibly disappeared by police in Iguala, Guerrero, in late September also took central stage throughout the event.

The Anti-Capitalist Festival was inaugurated in Mexico state on 21 December, and the comparticiones (“sharings”) followed for two days afterward in two locations in central Mexico. While I was present for neither, I can here relate the reports made ex post facto at CIDECI regarding the goings-on at these spaces. The launch of the comparticiones took place simultaneously in San Francisco Xochicuautla in Mexico state and in Amilcingo, Morelos. San Francisco Xochicuautla has become an emblem of socio-ecological resistance in Mexico lately, as the local indigenous Ñatho peoples have opposed themselves to the imposed plan of building a new private highway on their territory—a project that implies vast deforestation, and which has to date seen State repression meted out on those in opposition—while, as two Nahua CNI delegates from Morelos explained to me as we waited together outside the Zapatista Good-Government Council’s office at Oventik on New Year’s Eve, the case of Amilcingo reflects the problems of domestic and foreign rackets, extractivism, and profit in Mexico, as these exigencies result in the plundering of territory (despojo) and fundamentally violate indigenous autonomy. In Amilcingo, in accordance with the vision set forth in the “Integral Morelos Plan” (PIM) that has been on the books for years, there has been an attempt to construct a natural gas pipeline that would supply a planned thermal power station, this despite the various dangers posed to the integrity of such structures within such a seismically and volcanically active area as Morelos. In Amilcingo, as in San Francisco Xochicuautla, indigenous Nahuas have mobilized to prevent the construction project from being carried through. At both sites on 22-23 December, representatives from indigenous ethnicities represented in the CNI and affiliates of the National and International Sixth—that is to say, those who subscribe to the EZLN’s Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle (2005)—made presentations about their struggles, philosophies, and commitments.