Anti-Capitalist Meetup: May 1, 2017--mass intersectional direct action after "the 1st 100 days"

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When the oppressed are divided and ruled, a dialectic of united versus divided response emerges (February 6, 1869 illustration from Harper's Weekly: The National Colored Convention in Session at Washington, D.C.--Sketched by Theo. R. Davis in 1869.)

Next International Workers’ Day, May 1, 2017, will mark the one hundred day point of a new U.S. presidency (in the year one hundred years after the Russian Revolution, btw). I propose that would be an excellent time for a coordinated intersectional mass direct action in the U.S.

No matter who is inaugurated, workers and needy of the world will be unnecessarily suffering because of undemocratic global neoliberal hegemony. It is a certainty that after one hundred days a Clinton or Trump presidency, or even one of Sanders, would not have any pretense of ending this hegemony that gives us global climate change, one austerity-laden financial crisis after another, mass unemployment and underemployment, horrific poverty and inequality, and numerous other indicia of barbarism.

With a Sanders presidency now an extremely unlikely event, the language of economic rights and the social democratic features he advocates for the U.S. will not even have a well-placed champion. At best, the favorite of the Democratic establishment will be elected. Clinton, who professes to model herself after Eleanor Roosevelt, would likely give no attention in the first hundred days of her administration or thereafter to gaining U.S. ratification of the international economic, social and cultural rights covenant for which Roosevelt spent her final decade working to gain approval (https://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/cov-ecosoccultur-right...). Into the neoliberal void, whether he wins or not, the crypto-fascist Trump has marched and is likely to keep marching in a self-aggrandizing nationalist circle as open and notorious “free trade” trickle-down advocates find it increasingly difficult to retain complete control of their preferred party and turn to the insurance policy of Clinton herself and down ballot status quo protectors in both parties.

What then must we do, and how must we do it? We cannot let divide and rule define us if we are ever truly to be both “us” and conscious of our collective rights and duties as species-beings. But global intersectional solidarity is, to say the least, hard. However, through our conscious discouraging struggles to face complexity with open minds and hearts, even our failures may become part of a dialectic of unexpected hope.

That planning a global intersectional May Day 2017 mass protest would prove daunting is exactly why we should be doing it. We are not going to gain global liberty and justice for all by remaining bound to the status quo. The struggle for global intersectional solidarity will generate helpful catharthis even as it fails to immediately achieve its material ends. Shedding tears is not a bad thing, in part because we have much to cry about. Global intersectional reconciliation must occur, and this reconciliation is an important step in overcoming the undemocratic chains of the ruling class.

When critiquing U.S. labor history one quickly is confronted with egregious failures of global intersectional solidarity. The sad truth is that soon after the U.S. Civil War, African Americans were effectively forced to form their own separate national labor organization, with even its right to choose a name for itself effectively denied:

Previously in 1866, a National Labor Union (NLU) met and was organized in Baltimore, with Isaac Myers in attendance. One of the coordinators of the NLU, A.C. Cameron, while speaking at a national convention focused on the issue of "colored" or Negro labor and declared "…interests of the labor cause demand that all workingmen be included within the ranks without regard to race or nationality…" However, despite this statement, the membership of this organization's exclusion of issues and interests of the African American workforce was cause to arrange a separate union. This new organization was perfected in 1869. According to its constitution, the official name for the organization was, The National Labor Union. The word "colored" was added to the previous name apparently by the public media of the time, thus labeling it the "Colored National Labor Union."[3]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored_National_Labor_Union

Intertwined issues of immigration and racial and gender exclusion soon came to defeat solidarity:

The National Labor Union (NLU) was the first national labor federation in the United States. Founded in 1866 and dissolved in 1873,[1] it paved the way for other organizations, such as the Knights of Labor and the AFL (American Federation of Labor). It was led by William H. Sylvis.

The NLU drew much of its support from construction unions and other groups of skilled employees, but also invited the unskilled and farmers to join. On the other hand, it campaigned for the exclusion of Chinese workers from the United States and made only halting, ineffective efforts to defend the rights of women and blacks. African-American workers established their own Colored National Labor Union as an adjunct, but their support of the Republican Party and the prevalent racism of the citizens of the United States limited its effectiveness.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Union

Leadership of the African American version of this national union effort at least tried to articulate an intersectional vision:

In 1869, although both the National Labor Union (NLU) and Colored National Labor Union (CNLU) held separate conventions, both organizations voiced resolutions against the importation of Chinese “coolie” labourers. The CNLU sought to petition Congress to prevent the “importation of contract coolie labor” becoming a “system of slavery.”⁠ While the NLU also pressured Congress to honour the Anti-Coolie Act 1862, passing a resolution opposing, “the importation of a servile race, bound to fulfill contracts entered into on foreign soil.”⁠

However, John Mercer Langston, a former employee of the Freedmen’s Bureau and president of the National Equal Right League, believed, rather than division, American workers (including Chinese labourers) could be unified.⁠ In a speech delivered at the Colored National Labor convention, Langston drew a picture of the diverse American workforce within a frame of unionism, politics, and common interests.

Langston declared:

We know the maxim, ‘in union there is strength.’ It has its significance in the affairs of labor no less than in politics. Hence our industrial movement, emancipating itself from every national and partial sentiment, broadens and deepens its foundations so as to rear thereon a superstructure capricious enough to accommodate at the alter of common interest the Irish, the negro and the German laborer; to which, so far from being excluded, the ‘poor white’ native of the South, struggling out of moral and pecuniary death into life ‘real and earnest’ the white mechanic and laborer of the North, so long ill-taught and advised that his true interest is gained by hatred and abuse of the laborer of African descent, as well as the Chinaman, whom designing persons, partially enslaving, would make, in the plantation service of the South, the rival and competitor of the former slave class of the country, having with us one and the same interest, are all invited, earnestly urged, to join us in our movement, and thus aid in the protection and conservation of their and our interests.

https://thechinesequestion.wordpress.com/2011/09/10/the-national-labor-u...

What would an effective intersectional mass action on May 1, 2017 that included the U.S. look like? Below are a few thoughts just to get the ball rolling.

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The early history of May Day from the viewpoint of workers was intimately related to the fight for a shorter work day. www.marxists.org/… Having achieved this to some extent in the U.S., the system of neoliberal oppression in the U.S. is embodied in an overarching lack of economic "rights”, a lack perhaps most plainly evidenced in a non-rights based shaming of the unemployed and underemployed.

A President Clinton to her credit may make a valiant effort to achieve passage of equal pay legislation and some additional forms of gun control. She may also be far less draconian in her approach to deportation of undocumented workers than a President Trump. Speaking from my own vantage point of having Honduran friends working in the U.S., although they do not like Clinton for her role in backing the coup (http://m.democracynow.org/stories/16030), they are understandably much more deeply troubled by the thought of a President Trump.

However, a President Clinton would not push for ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. (www.ohchr.org/...) Without a rights-based system of economic justice, workers are ever in peril.

Nor will she push for an overhaul of the shame-based, worker-blaming unemployment benefits system in the U.S. Without an overhaul of this system to make it more in line with European countries (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits), the intersectional repercussions will be vast.

For instance, insecure workers in fossil fuel industries looking at U.S. unemployment benefits would more often than not be opposing to the maximum extent climate protection legislation. Similarly, the white working class will be easily manipulated by Trumpist antagonism against POC and undocumented workers when they will be ruthlessly cast aside with the next plant closure.

Nor will Clinton be a reliable ally against TPP and other faux free trade legislation that threatens the jobs of U.S. workers. Again, without economic rights, including true unemployment protection, these workers will be easily divided and ruled.

I propose that on May Day, 2017, the U.S. unemployed and underemployed and their allies occupy Congressional and state legislative field offices and state unemployment offices demanding U.S. ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, an overhaul of the U.S. unemployment system to match the European approach, passage of the broader "Sanders” social democratic agenda, and ends to the divide and rule wars--the Drug War, the criminal justice war on POC and the poor, the war on reproductive freedom, the war on the undocumented, and the war against LGBT equality. The occupiers should then take every trespass charge to a jury trial and make the Federal and State prosecutors explain to "juries of their peers” the "justice” of the U.S. for all the world to see.

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thanatokephaloides's picture

And by Beltaine of 2017, it will be obvious what the "Democratic" establishment has bought with its thirty pieces of silver. And it won't be pretty.

Your "best case scenario" regarding Hillary Clinton is way more optimistic than I would credit her with. The longer I look, the less daylight I can see between her and The Chump.

Needless to say, I agree: we need to plan an international mass direct action a year from today. And we need to have another aim, too: to remind Americans that Beltaine is the real Labor Day, the one and only, and that it was born right here in the U.S. of A.

Solidarity!

Give rose

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

NonnyO's picture

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I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute ..., where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference. — President John F. Kennedy, Houston, TX, 12 September 1960

Galtisalie's picture

I just watched it. I'm with him without reservation, to hell and back if necessary. Objectively I don't think what he said means that he is likely to win. Closed primaries, highlighted by NY, are an impediment to democracy that I don't think he will overcome.

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When nearly half the country isn't registered with either party, they can organize and pay for the damn primaries themselves.

I'm tired of financing their lock on the system.

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“If there is no justice for the people, may there be no peace for the government.”