Resistance

By Sarah Jaffe - In These Times, March 7, 2017

Welcome to Interviews for Resistance. Since election night 2016, the streets of the United States have rung with resistance. People all over the country have woken up with the conviction that they must do something to fight inequality in all its forms. But many are wondering what it is they can do. In this series, we'll be talking with experienced organizers, troublemakers and thinkers who have been doing the hard work of fighting for a long time. They'll be sharing their insights on what works, what doesn't, what has changed and what is still the same.

Stephen Lerner: My name is Stephen Lerner. I am a fellow at Georgetown’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. I work on the HedgeClippers and bank workers and a number of different campaigns that are all focused on looking up the money tree at who is really running the politics and the economy of the country. 

Sarah Jaffe: Let’s start with the bank workers because the bank workers just kicked off a union drive.

Stephen: The bank workers campaign is really interesting, because what most people don’t realize is banks in most countries in the world are significantly unionized. We have a three-pronged campaign. One has been broadly building worker committees in banks in the United States. One of the first real victories of that is the bank workers campaign, the Committee for Better Banks, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and a whole series of community groups, which we will come back to, were the whistle-blowers on the Wells Fargo scandal, where they were opening fake accounts.

There is an ongoing, growing campaign with workers in all the major U.S. banks, but what we are focusing on now is a bank called Santander, which a Spanish-owned bank which is, again, union in most countries in the world and heavily unionized in Brazil and Argentina. In the United States they are primarily a northeastern bank, but they are also a big national subprime auto lender. There is now a global demand on the bank that they agree not to fight the union and be neutral, the same in the United States as they do in other countries. What was really exciting in the kick-off, and sort of unheard of, is an addition to the traditional solidarity actions, letters and pickets, in Argentina and Brazil, workers actually walked off the job and did shutdowns of bank branches and other centers, demanding the bank not interfere with workers’ rights to organize unions in the United States.

What has been fascinating about the campaign both here in the United States and bank workers in other unions, there has always been a dual demand. The traditional demand about how workers should be paid and treated decently, and simultaneously that workers should not be forced to sell predatory products or cheat people as a condition of employment. What we have argued is that bank workers, in the same way in a hospital a nurse is a frontline on quality care, that bank workers can be the frontline on making sure that banks aren’t cheating and robbing people.

That is why the work with Wells Fargo has been so exciting, because literally tens of thousands of workers have signed petitions saying these outrageous sales goals could only be met if they cheated customers. One part is workers as whistle-blowers, workers as a frontline in saying, “What the bank is doing is bad.” Then, “As workers, we don’t want to participate in a scheme where the bank makes money by cheating people.”

By Oscar Reyes, Bertie Russell - Common Dreams, March 11, 2017

“We’re living in extraordinary times that demand brave and creative solutions. If we’re able to imagine a different city, we’ll have the power to transform it.” – Ada Colau, Mayor of Barcelona.

On 24 May 2015, the citizen platform Barcelona en Comú was elected as the minority government of the city of Barcelona. Along with a number of other cities across Spain, this election was the result of a wave of progressive municipal politics across the country, offering an alternative to neoliberalism and corruption.

With Ada Colau — a housing rights activist — catapulted into the position of mayor, and with a wave of citizens with no previous experience of formal politics finding themselves in charge of their city, BComú is an experiment in progressive change that we can’t afford to ignore.

After 20 months in charge of the city, we try to draw some of the main lessons that can help inspire and inform a radical new municipal politics that moves us beyond borders and nations — and towards a post-capitalist world based on dignity, respect, and justice.

By Mark Hefflinger and Jane Kleeb - Bold Alliance, March 3, 2017

President Trump on Thursday backtracked on his Presidential Memorandum and countless claims that all pipelines in the U.S. would now be made with American-made steel — including Keystone XL — and said that TransCanada could use non-American steel for the foreign tarsands export pipeline.

“The Keystone XL pipeline is currently in the process of being constructed, so it does not count as a new, retrofitted, repaired, or expanded pipeline,” a White House spokeswoman told Politico on Thursday.

The Keystone XL pipeline does not have a Presidential permit, nor a permit from the State of Nebraska. Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline has not started, which in turn means the White House lied to the press yesterday.

“Trump is a liar and a fraud,” said Bold Alliance president Jane Kleeb. “Trump just got bullied by a foreign corporation, using foreign steel, carrying foreign oil, headed to the foreign export market all while opening a reckless door for foreign interests to use eminent domain for private gain against American landowners.”

On. Jan. 24, President Trump held an event to publicly sign a trio of Presidential Memorandums — one that said that “to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law” companies must use U.S. steel on all new pipelines, “as well as retrofitted, repaired, or expanded pipelines.” The memo goes on to further stipulate that this means the steel must be in the U.S. “from the initial melting stage through the application of coatings,” and rules out “steel or iron material or products manufactured abroad from semi-finished steel or iron from the United States” as qualifying as American-made.

The other two memos President Trump signed during the same ceremony on Jan. 24 aimed to fast-track the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. Since Jan. 24, Trump has repeatedly mentioned the “only U.S. steel” requirement in the same breath as his memos expediting completion of Keystone XL and Dakota Access.

By Jeff Abbott - Truthout, March 2, 2017

The defense of water knows no borders, according to the Mayan Ancestral Authorities, the communal authorities and elders of Mayan towns across Guatemala. This reality has led the Mayan leaders to work in solidarity with the Lakota Sioux as they challenge the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline.

The conflict in North Dakota between the Lakota Sioux and the company over the construction of the 3.6 billion dollar Dakota Access pipeline began in April 2016. The Sioux communities began their protest following the failure of the company to consult the tribe over the use of their tribal lands -- despite multiple requests by tribal leaders -- and a demand that the company preform an honest environmental impact report for the project.

On February 23, the National Guard and police raided the Oceti Sakowin camp, evicting the protesters. But despite the eviction, the example of Standing Rock continues to mobilize Indigenous activists across the world in defense of water. Thousands of supporters had traveled to the encampment to support the Sioux and their defense of water.

"When everybody showed up, including the clergymen of the world, I stood up on the bridge and I felt the meshing of all the religions, all the spirits, all the creators of all nations, and all the colors meshed as one people," Eddie P. Blackcloud Sr., a Sioux leader who was among the first to stand against the pipeline at Standing Rock, told Truthout. "This is more than just about Standing Rock; this is about the world."

The international support for the resistance will only strengthen as the United States Army has given the project the green light, despite the company's failure to consult the Indigenous populations impacted by the project's development.

Standing Rock and the struggle against Dakota Access pipeline have become the international example and rallying point for the defense of Indigenous territory. This resistance has brought Indigenous leaders together in solidarity from across the globe.

"Every community must arrive at its own means of struggle," Ana Lainez, an Ixil Maya spiritual guide and member of the Ixil Maya Ancestral Authorities told Truthout. "It is time for them to organize and move forward in the struggle."

Among those that traveled to Standing Rock to stand in solidarity with the Sioux were five representatives from the National Council of Ancestral Authorities of Guatemala. It was raining on October 12, 2016, when the representatives of Mayan political and spiritual leaders arrived at Standing Rock to stand in solidarity with the Sioux. The trip was organized by the International Mayan League, an advocacy group based in Washington, DC.

"We went primarily to stand in solidarity with the Sioux communities in resistance to the construction of the pipeline," Diego Cotiy of the Council of Indigenous Authorities of Maya, Xinca and Garifuna, told Truthout. "As members of the Ancestral Authorities of the Maya, Xinca and Garifuna, we are working to strengthen the movements and resistance against transnational companies that are violating the collective rights of our peoples, as well as violating our rights to land without any collective authorization to do so."

The leaders arrived to share experiences and have an interchange between the elders, which also included the sharing of different ceremonial performances and practices.

"When we arrived, a member of the tribe stood up and offered to sing for us in his language," Lainez told Truthout. "We felt incredibly welcomed."

The Maya of Guatemala have a long history of struggle, which they shared with their brethren at Standing Rock. Since the end of Guatemala's 36-year-long internal armed conflict in 1996, the Maya communities of the highlands have resisted the increased threat of the dispossession of Indigenous communal lands by transnational capital for the expansion of mining interests, the generation of hydro energy, and the expansion of export agriculture.

"We told them that they are united in the struggle, and that they are not the first or the last to be attacked," Lainez explained to Truthout. "They are defending the river. It is [a] point of unification of many Indigenous peoples in the United States, and the world, because the water is calling us."

"Without water, even the rich leaders of the United States cannot survive," Cotiy told Truthout. "We must respect water, and where it comes from. It is a spring of life. Water is the blood of our mother earth."

Others who have traveled to Standing Rock could feel this connection as well. Pamela Bond, the Fish and Wildlife coordinator for the Snohomish tribe, was present the nights of the visit by the Maya Ancestral Authorities of Guatemala, and pointed to the way in which the visitors brought the force of their own struggle to the NoDAPL camps.

"They all brought their songs and their prayers. It is like waiting for someone to come home, and to say, 'we support you,'" Bond explained to Truthout.  "There are no English words [that] can describe the feeling of your spirit, and the knowledge that people are uniting for a cause, for our first mother."

By Álvaro Robles Cartes, Francisco Seijo, and Josetxu Guijarro Urízar - Green European Journal, February 22, 2017

Beyond the tit-for-tat factional politicking that we have come to expect of North American democracy and its complex cryptic political rhetoric, the Trump presidency may ultimately prove to be the most unwillingly transformative administration yet regarding the unfolding global warming drama. For the first time since 1969 an American president has fearlessly decided to skip over mountains of scientific evidence and decades of politically correct platitudes to place the issue at the centre of his presidency’s political agenda; albeit if only in an effort to deny it. Trump may, however, prove to be a blessing in disguise for climate activism; a singular turning point for the largely inconsequential political strategies that activists have conceived to advance their cause so far.

As the classic protest song from the 1960s would have it, “There’s battle lines being drawn and nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong”. Indeed, Trump has managed to draw, in only a few weeks’ time, new lines in the climate change political battle with bold, abstract expressionist strokes that may have an initially shocking aesthetic effect but may prove, ultimately, to be only intelligible as a representation of Trump’s peculiar personality. Propagandistically, no doubt, Trump has been astute in reducing a complex scientific and intellectual debate to 140-character Twitter sound bites suggesting geopolitical conspiracy theories that have undoubtedly resonated with politically sceptical and economically depressed working and middle class Americans. Tellingly, Trump’s campaign spin that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by China with the goal of making American industry non-competitive is vaguely reminiscent of German nationalists’ concerns in the 1970s that the Nixon administration was trying to use the issue to check Germany’s emerging industrial power. In due course, this politically clever tweet could come back to bite Trump since the relaxation of American environmental legislation to regain industrial competitiveness can only result in more climate induced environmental disasters for the American workers whose interests he claims to prioritise. A form of socio-environmental dumping that Trump, ironically, accuses his main commercial rivals of inflicting upon America.

By James Trimarco - Yes Magazine, February 14, 2017

It was April 2012, and I was standing outside a Brooklyn subway station, handing out fliers for the May 1 general strike. Organizers were calling on employees to refuse to go to work and for students to refuse to go to school. We were urging everybody to gather in the streets instead for a festival of resistance and to demand economic justice.

Our fliers said “No work, no school,” and we meant it. We knew that getting even 5 percent of the city’s workers and students to strike would show the 99 percent’s willingness to walk away from an economy that exploited them. “Just try running this city without our labor,” we wanted to say.

But when May Day came around, we found most businesses bustling. Shopping and banking went on without a hitch. Even though thousands of people in cities across the United States participated, our organizing just hadn’t been strong enough to make a dent in business as usual.

Today, there are new calls for strikes in response to the actions of the Trump administration. The novelist Francine Prose published the first of these at the Guardian website. “Let’s designate a day on which no one (that is, anyone who can do so without being fired) goes to work, a day when no one shops or spends money, a day on which we truly make our economic and political power felt,” she wrote. Shortly after that, the creator behind the TV show The Wire, David Simon, suggested the date of Feb. 17 on Twitter. “No one spends, no one produces,” Simon tweeted in response to a critic. “The metric they understand is profit.”

Organizers quickly put together a website and are organizing local events in almost every state via a Google doc. This strike has two specific demands, according to its website, both of which ask members of Congress to stand up for the U.S. Constitution.

But Feb. 17 is just the beginning.

By Mike Ludwig - Truthout, February 14, 2017

Recent internal memos on how and when federal employees can speak their minds has left those frustrated by President Trump in murky waters, according to advocates.

For climate scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or rogue members of the National Park Service, this uncertainty around their ability to speak without fear of reprisal is causing confusion and despair as the Trump administration assumes control and attempts to assert its version of the facts, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a watchdog group that represents civil servants at agencies like the EPA.

"There will be a number of instances where people are speaking their minds and the rules aren't all that clear," said PEER Director Jeff Ruch, who counsels government employees about their rights. "And you have a chief executive who is somewhat thin-skinned, and that may trickle down through his appointees," who could punish employees for actions perceived as dissent.

Ruch said there seems to be a "level of mutual mistrust" between civil servants who staff federal agencies as nonpartisan workers and President Trump, who promised on the campaign trail to gut agencies like the EPA, and announced a hiring freeze for many agencies shortly after taking office.

"The hiring freeze was not an economic measure but an effort to drain the swamp, as if [federal employees] are a malignant force and, if you can bleed them off, then government will be better," Ruch said. "And a lot of this could be offensive to some of these career civil servants."

Some civil servants have dared to challenge Trump. Since the National Park Service's Twitter account was temporarily shuttered after it questioned White House statements on the size of the crowd at Donald Trump's presidential inauguration, dozens of "alternative" federal agency accounts (such as AltEPA and AltFDA) have opened and amassed followings that rival their official counterparts.

These accounts identify with the anti-Trump resistance, and are unofficial. Many make it clear that tweets and posts are not coming from government employees in their official capacity, if from government employees at all. Ruch said PEER has been fielding questions from operators of these alternative accounts, which often challenge Trump's public statements and draw attention to the latest climate science.

Agency employees who speak out against Trump are treading on difficult ground, particularly since federal civil servants have limited rights to free speech in the workplace. In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment does not protect public employees for statements made while acting in their official capacity, making it risky to speak out against a new administration that has been openly hostile to the media and anyone else who challenges its narrative.

Moreover, the Hatch Act of 1939 prohibits the vast majority of federal employees from participating in certain political activities on the job, including advocating for and against political candidates. Trump has filed 2020 campaign paperwork and is considered a political candidate. This means that federal employees are prohibited from speaking for or against his reelection in their official capacity, according to a memo circulated by the US Office of Special Counsel last week.

Ruch said making a statement as simple as, "This is a disaster, we've got to get rid of this guy," around the water cooler at a federal office could apparently cost a federal employee their job.

Federal employees do have First Amendment rights as private citizens, but that doesn't protect them in the workplace. Not too long after the White House's snafu with the National Park Service's Twitter account, the EPA sent out an agency-wide memo advising employees about the difference between addressing the public as an EPA employee and in their "individual personal capacity."

By Jack Rusk - Left Voice, February 9, 2017

Since the Women’s March brought millions into the streets the Saturday after inauguration, there has been a rising clamor on social media for a ‘general strike’ against the Trump administration.

Since the Women’s March brought millions into the streets the Saturday after inauguration, there has been a rising clamor on social media for a ‘general strike’ against the Trump administration. The call to stop work was picked up by the U.K. Guardian, Washington Post and now by Cosmopolitan magazine. And the discussion took off so quickly, it gave us multiple proposals for when the strike should happen: February 17 (to counter President’s day), March 8 (International Women’s Day), May 1 (the international workers’ holiday and anniversary of the huge immigrant-led protests of 2006). And the proposals emphasize different kinds of demands, from general resistance to Trump, to defending the rights of women, Black Lives Matter, and immigrants through mutual action to enforce those rights.

But numerous leftists also came forward to announce concerns about the feasibility of a general strike, especially if labor unions are not involved in organizing it. Among the first was Alex Gourevitch, writing in Jacobin, who gives an informative history of militant strikes in the U.S. that faced repression by the state and (sometimes) won. The implication of this and similar pieces is that a general strike call is irresponsible for this spring because organized labor is simply not in a position to carry out the work stoppage and protect striking workers:

If you’re going to ask people not just to risk losing their jobs but potentially face the armed apparatus of the state, there had better be preparation, leadership, and some evident readiness for mass labor actions… It would be reasonable for workers to dismiss the call for a general strike. It looks like they are being asked to be actors in someone else’s drama, by people who just cottoned on to the fact that things are shitty out there.