Reader Comments: The Greek NO Vote; Argentina; Puerto Rico; Anti-Confederate Flag Flurry; Dominican Republic's Ethnic `Cleansing' of Haitians; Support the Iran Deal!; Nina Simone film; Culture and Cultural Workers; Hillary and Israel; Salon Staff to Unionize; Police are Killing Mentally Ill People;
Add Your Name: The Charleston Imperative: Why Feminism & Antiracism Must Be Linked
The Greek NO Vote - A U.S. Trade Unionist's View: A Tough Negotiation (Dave Cohen)
Re: Why We Voted No: Young Greeks on the Referendum (Spyros O-Ithakisios, Artemis)
Re: Greece Says NO to Permanent Austerity (Samia Shannan Tamimi)
Re: Argentina Shows Greece There May Be Life After Default (Mark Bailey, Chris McCamic)
Re: Why We Recommend a NO in the Referendum - In 6 Short Bullet Points (Laurel MacDowell)
Re: Yanis Varoufakis Resigns: Greek Referendum Will Stay in History As a Unique Moment When a Small Nation Rose Up Against Debt-Bondage
Re: Puerto Rico - Like Greece - Will Default on its Debts, as the U.S. Has Ignored the Island's Financial Problems for Decades (Charles Brown)
Re: The Anti-Confederate Flag Flurry and the Prospects for Lasting Change (Ernest Brill)
Re: The Confederate Flag at War (But Not the Civil War) (Sterling Vinson)
Re: The Bloody Origins of the Dominican Republic's Ethnic `Cleansing' of Haitians (Randy Gould, Claudia De La Cruz)
Re: Support the Iran Deal! (Dan Gilman, John Zuraw, Alfred Rose)
Re: Review: 'What Happened, Miss Simone?' Documents Nina Simone's Rise as Singer and Activist (Larry Skwarczynski, Bradley C. Porter
Re: Culture Isn't Free (Elliott Milford)
Re: 2000 Labor & Radical Posters Online (Scott Tucker)
Re: Hillary Clinton Pledges to Defend Israeli Apartheid & Fight BDS Movement in Letter to Mega-Donor (Manijeh Berahmandi, Patricia Dowling, Mary Handy Moore)
Re: The Destruction in Syria (Stan Nadel)
Re: Salon Staff to Unionize with Writers Guild (David Newby)
Re: A Fourth of People Killed by Police in 2015 were Mentally Ill (Mental Health Project of the Urban Justice Center)
Re: Stop Killing the Elderly With Kindness (Marvin Engel)
Add Your Name: The Charleston Imperative: Why Feminism & Antiracism Must Be Linked (Zillah Eisenstein)
The Greek NO Vote - A U.S. Trade Unionist's View: A Tough Negotiation
n January 2015 Syriza won the elections in Greece on an anti-austerity platform, with 36% of the vote.
While this was a great victory, it did not give Syriza a mandate to go to war with rest of Europe.
Those of us who have spent lots of time in negotiations with capitalists have been in similar situations. We want to resist concessions but our base is sometimes not that solid. People are afraid of losing their jobs, other workers have made concessions, etc.
What do we do? We use the negotiation process to build, expand and strengthen our base to stand against the demands for wage cuts, benefit cuts, against austerity.
This sometimes make negotiations complicated. We want to show those members who are wavering that it is the Employer who is determined not to compromise, not us. As negotiations continue with the Employer demanding total surrender, many of the wavering members join in with those willing to fight. Negotiations is an educational process if we want it to be. We need to be talking to people, involving them, not lecturing them.
It seems to me that Syriza engaged in just such a process. From 36% voting for the anti-austerity platform to 62% rejecting the demands of the Troika. This is skillfull bargaining.
The road ahead will be tough. The vote doesn't automatically mean that the Greek people are ready to withdraw from the Euro, most polls show they aren't. But that doesn't mean they might not be in the future.
Dave Cohen
Re: Why We Voted No: Young Greeks on the Referendum
I think this was the greatest and louder NO TO AUSTERITY heard in a 'developed' capitalist european country. i hope there will be more NO in many other countries followed by a big YES for social justice and prosperity....
Spyros O-Ithakisios
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
====
We, also, strongly believe that young people will be the leader of a massive anti-austerity ,democracy movement...
Artemis
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Greece Says NO to Permanent Austerity
The "existing dialogue in Europe" should definitely be changed...... Europeans are lucky that this happened in Greece, because strong economies were killing less strong ones and taking advantage of citizens of these less strong economies, with the complicity of their corrupted politicians... look what is happening in Spain as an example
Samia Shannan Tamimi
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Argentina Shows Greece There May Be Life After Default
Thank you for this article. this is capitalism at its worst. I hope Greece rejects the austerity path and chooses the uncertain path I will pray for the people of Greece.
Mark Bailey
====
Of course there's life after default. The global financial system is up to its eyeballs in its own bullshit right now, and we should not hesitate to force whatever adjustments are needed.
Chris McCamic
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Why We Recommend a NO in the Referendum - In 6 Short Bullet Points
The Greek situation may fundamentally be about politics and the Greek people have had a terrible few years as a result of the debt and the relationship with the EU.
But there is still the issue of paying taxes and that is a cultural issue. The 1% in Greece as well as other countries avoid taxes even when they are needed to help the country but even among less wealthy persons, there is a reluctance to give receipts or pay sales or income taxes and that is a problem. You cannot have a functioning government unless citizens pay taxes to support its programs and provide money for salaries (although it is a government likely overloaded with people).
Yesterday Christine Lagarde said Greece needs 50 billion euros more to turn around their economic situation. I thought how is that possible for a country of 10 million people? What are they doing, paying everyone a salary? So despite the impassioned rhetoric on both sides, there does not seem to be much common sense and the people who suffer the most are those less well off in Greece.
The investigative reporting needs to improve. We need more information and analysis and less rhetoric.
Laurel MacDowell
Re: Yanis Varoufakis Resigns: Greek Referendum Will Stay in History As a Unique Moment When a Small Nation Rose Up Against Debt-Bondage
I am dismayed to see the poster for Greece's resistance to EU austerity has resorted to visual sexism: Angela Merkel is not the only Troika face, nor even a representative face for a financial-political ploy that's been around for decades. This unconscious exchange of Machismo for Heroic is only too common, where the "face" given to the baddies is a European woman.
The play Paper Flowers by Egon Wolff was my first encounter with the war between rich and poor being characterized (by men) as a war between women (rich) and men (poor). Since the theme inevitably stinks of male violence toward women and rape mentality I think it should be exposed wherever it surfaces. And this poster is a classic. The visual ideological meme showing "MAN" triumphant over "WOMAN' to signal the resistance of the oppressed is similar to visual tactics of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings showing the Uruk-hai as the quintessence of unconsciously projected white Afro-phobia.
I don't mean Jackson is a racist, or Tolkien; I do mean that the unconscious symbols for good and evil almost automatically resort to deep ideological prejudices. In art, in literature, in cinema and theatre they work! The man in the white hat always always is read in ART as the good.
I don't make this comment to distract from the anti-austerity struggles of Greece. I am 100% anti-austerity. "Austerity" is just a new name for an old phenomenon of `developing' the `underdeveloped,' where `underdeveloped' referred to countries that resisted letting only the capitalists get rich while the people were further impoverished. Let us all follow the Icelandic Revolution. Just not in the name of Manhood!
Juanita Rice
Re: Puerto Rico - Like Greece - Will Default on its Debts, as the U.S. Has Ignored the Island's Financial Problems for Decades
Too important to fail
Charles Brown
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The Anti-Confederate Flag Flurry and the Prospects for Lasting Change
a terrific and informative article, especially about the changing demographics in the South.
Ernest Brill
Re: The Confederate Flag at War (But Not the Civil War)
All very interesting. But the authors overlook, it seems, the "galvanized Yankees," Confederate prisoners recruited by the Yankees to go out west and fight Native Americans. Quite a few took advantage of the offer (it was better than starving in a Yankee prison), but my great grandfather refused, telling the Yanks, "I told you an' I told you: No, God damn you, no!" He also refused to take the Ironclad Oath at the end of the war, until the Yankees removed the clause, "I take this oath freely and under no compulsion." So he was stuck in prison for two months after Lee's surrender.
Sterling Vinson
Re: The Bloody Origins of the Dominican Republic's Ethnic `Cleansing' of Haitians
The Dominican Republic, Haitians and the Global War on Blackness
Current efforts to remove Haitians from the Caribbean Nation speak to DR's long history of anti-Black policy
Claudia De La Cruz
July 01, 2015
Ebony
"Nothing happens in a vacuum, and what is happening in the Dominican Republic is no exception. It is a reflection of a global attack on poor, Black and immigrant communities. The work is larger and deeper than we are taught to perceive. It will take the hands and consciousness of a united front of poor black people everywhere, who understand we are under attack globally by the systems of capitalism and white supremacy to defend our existence. These systems create chaos in our livelihoods constantly and consistently, and so often we are forced to react rather than respond. Some times we feel we need to choose one cause or the other. From Ferguson to Santo Domingo to Port-au- Prince, these times call for more critical analysis, radical ideas, serious strategizing and unified actions to win the war that has been waged against Black, immigrant and working class communities. We must survive together on these fields."
---Claudia De La Cruz
[thanks to Randy Gould for bring this to the attention of Portside and our readers.]
Re: Support the Iran Deal!
Have you asked Veterans For Peace to sign on? I'm sure they would; part of our mission statement is to rid the world of nuclear weapons and to replace war and violence with diplomacy.
Dan Gilman
Veterans For Peace, Chapter 92 Seattle
====
Wouldn't it have been more persuasive to release this statement after a deal is concluded? By releasing the statement during the most intensive negotiations, your claim that the deal "secures peace and cuts off Iran' pathways to a nuclear weapon" rings hollow.
John Zuraw
Oak Park, IL
====
Such an impressive group of organizations!
Alfred Rose
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Review: 'What Happened, Miss Simone?' Documents Nina Simone's Rise as Singer and Activist
(posting on Portside Culture)
MISSISSIPPI GODDAMN' SHOULD BE BUILT INTO EVERY 'confederate monument' AS A PERMANENT fixture ... including infamous s.f.austin& his quotes in Austin,txss &YES -DA_...alamo -- s.antonio its Travis park etc.- oh the mayor > go back to that repuliCAN article!
Larry Skwarczynski
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
====
This sounds amazing. I love it when writers use the subjects own words. I directed an autobiographical play about Charles Dickens that was told like A Christmas Carol, with Dickens being visited by ghosts from his past. The playwright used hundreds of Dickens's letters to write the dialogue. It was fantastic...
Bradley C. Porter
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Culture Isn't Free
Please read this moving, and unbelievably RELEVANT piece on the state ie the present condition of artists and related professionals. We need to SUPPORT CREATIVITY NOW!
Elliott Milford
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: 2000 Labor & Radical Posters Online
(posting on Portside Labor)
Thought you and Portside might also be interested in CSPG (based in Los Angeles, see link below) after seeing the item on the Labadie collection in current issue of Portside.
Center for the Study of Political Graphics
Regards
Scott Tucker
Re: Hillary Clinton Pledges to Defend Israeli Apartheid & Fight BDS Movement in Letter to Mega-Donor
"Clinton may be elected the first woman president in November 2016, but, just as President Ronald Reagan will forever be remembered as a fervent supporter of South African apartheid, Clinton is now on a path to potentially becoming a US president, who aligned herself with militant defenders of Israeli apartheid..."
Manijeh Berahmandi
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
====
Not a good sign.
Patricia Dowling
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
====
People should put a stop to blind loyalty to a racist idea that is modern Israel. People need to learn to fearlessly think things through, and stand upon the conviction that EVEN and ESPECIALLY Israel can be a menace to a society because it believes itself to be infallible and "wholly acceptable" unto, well, everybody.
Mary Handy Moore
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The Destruction in Syria
Bizzarro, no mention of the al-Qaeda Nusra Front or IS--but somehow manages to attribute lots of blame to Israel. Protocols of the Elders of Zion anybody?
Stan Nadel
Re: Salon Staff to Unionize with Writers Guild
(posting on Portside Labor)
Seems like we have a trend here--and a good and critical one!
David Newby
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: A Fourth of People Killed by Police in 2015 were Mentally Ill
New recruits spend up to 60 hours learning how to use a gun but only 8 hours learning strategies for handling the mentally ill - where are the priorities?
Mental Health Project of the Urban Justice Center
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Stop Killing the Elderly With Kindness
The Travis Saunders article of June 2 is correct as far as it goes, but there is another important aspect. My wife and I live in supported housing and are both in our 80's. Although my wife has Alzheimer's and a significant segment of the roughly 300 plus residents are seriously incapacitated, either physically or mentally or both, many of us are still in good shape and a fair number sport advanced academic degrees. Management takes a patronizing position, particularly as it involves politics. They want a rose colored golden age, dodges discussion of political matters as CONTROVERSIAL!! and to be avoided on those grounds from the house journal. This has happened in other similar settings including a New Jersey institution, which refused to accept a discussion re the construction of a major oil pipeline adjoining their grounds.
Besides walking and doing calisthenics, many of us still think and vote. We don't give up our civil rights because our ideas may differ or be considered to be controversial..
Marvin Engel
Add Your Name: The Charleston Imperative: Why Feminism & Antiracism Must Be Linked
[this is an important letter signed by more than 800 people so far decrying the murders in Charleston and standing for racial and gender justice. i have forwarded the letter below....it would be great if you could post it. we are looking for 5000 signatures by July 17, the one month anniversary. thanks so much -- Zillah Eisenstein]
To add your name, click here.
The Charleston Imperative: Why Feminism & Antiracism Must Be Linked
July 7th, 2015
African American Policy Forum, Inc.
As we grieve for the nine African Americans who were murdered in their house of worship on June 17 2015, those of us who answer the call of feminism and antiracism must confront anew how the evils of racism and patriarchy continue to endanger all Black bodies, regardless of gender.
As antiracists, we know that the struggle against racial terror is older than the Republic itself. In particular we remember the work of Ida B Wells who risked everything to debunk the lies of lynchers over 100 years ago. Today, we see that fierce determination in Bree Newsome who scaled the 30-foot flagpole at the South Carolina state Capitol and brought down the Confederate flag. As feminists, we recognize how racism has been -- and is still -- gendered. Patriarchy continues to be foundational to racial terrorism in the US, both in specious claims that justify the torture of Black men in defense of white womanhood, and in its brutal treatment of Black women and girls. We also recognize that while patriarchy and racism are clearly intertwined, all too often, our struggles against them are not.
If the reaction to the Charleston massacre is to be realized as something beyond a singular moment of redemptive mourning, then neither the intersectional dynamics of racism and patriarchy which produced this hateful crime, nor the inept rhetorical politics that sustain the separation of feminism from antiracism, can be allowed to continue.
As antiracist feminists of every color, we refute the patriarchal, racist practices that endanger Black people across the nation. In so doing, we also insist that the extremism of Roof's declaration that Black people "must go" because they are "taking over our country" and "raping our women" should not obscure how anti-Black racial logics are embedded in the routine decisions made by millions of people every day. Decisions about where to live, how to identify a "safe neighborhood" or a "good school," whom to police, and to whom police are to be accountable, also rest on a longstanding demonization of Black bodies. These choices, grounded in ideologies of Black threat, frame separation from Blackness as a rational choice. The narratives that routinely diminish the life chances of African Americans are not yesterday's problems. Dylann Roof was born in 1994, yet murdered nine Black people having thoroughly consumed narratives that continue to denigrate Black people over half a century after the supposed fall of white supremacy. The continued assault on Black churches--several which have been burned to the ground since the Charleston Massacre--tells us that even the most extreme expressions of this denigration are not isolated.
We must recognize, at last, that racial violence, including the cycle of suffering and slow death that hovers over Black communities, is structural as well as individual. Equally significant, racial violence has never been focused on males alone. A clear indication of the way that white insecurities can unleash murderous impulses against all Black people, is that Roof murdered six Black women as well as three Black men. In his perceived defense of white women, Roof killed Black mothers, grandmothers, sisters, wives and daughters. To would-be purveyors of Black genocide, there are no collateral victims. Every Black body is a threat; every dead one is one step closer to their ultimate goal.
Feminists must denounce the use of white insecurity -- whether in relation to white womanhood, white neighborhoods, white politics, or white wealth -- to justify the brutal assaults against Black people of all genders. Antiracists must acknowledge that patriarchy has long been a weapon of racism and cannot sit comfortably in any politic of racial transformation. We must all stand against both the continual, systematic and structural racial inequities that normalize daily violence as well as against extreme acts of racial terror. Policy, and movement responses that fail to reflect an intersectional approach are doomed to fail. We want a loving community across difference. In the memory of Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Cynthia Hurd, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Daniel Simmons Jr. and Myra Thompson, we commit to a vibrant, inclusive, and intersectional social justice movement that condemns racist patriarchy and works to end its daily brutality and injustice. Anything less is unacceptable.
Signees:
Kimberle Crenshaw, Executive Director, the African American Policy Forum, New York, NY
Sumi Cho, Professor of Law, DePaul University College of Law, Chicago, IL
Laura Flanders, Founder GRITtv, New York, NY
Zillah Eisenstein, Professor of Women's Studies at Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY
Barbara R. Arnwine, The Civil Rights Coalition on Police Reform, Washington DC
Eve Ensler, Artist and Activist, New York, NY
Terry O'Neill, President of the National Organization for Women, Washington DC
Mab Segrest, American feminist writer and activist, New London, CT
Kiese Laymon, Author of Long Division and How To Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, Poughkeepsie, NY
Juan M. Thompson, Reporter at The Intercept, New York, NY
Tanya McKinnon, Literary Agent, Dobbs Ferry, NY
Richard Simon, Dobbs Ferry, NY
Janine Jackson, FAIR Radio, New York, NY
Gloria Steinem, Feminist Activist, New York, NY
Noor Mir, Amnesty International, Washington DC
Julia Sharpe-Levine, The African American Policy Forum, New York, NY
Rachel Anspach, The African American Policy Forum, New York, NY
Sophie Delfeus, Student, Amherst College, MA
Pam McMichael, Highlander Center, New Market, TN
Lori Hirtelen, Attorney, Rochester, NY
Carla F. Wallace, Louisville Showing Up For Racial Justice, KY
Sarah Eisenstein Stumbar, MD, MPH, Miami, FL
Lisa Buckley, Historic Preservationist, Nyack, NY
Beverly Guy-Sheftall, College professor, Atlanta GA
Melissa Fisher, Visiting Assistant Professor, New York University, NY
and 915 other signers as of July 9, 2015 - 11:00pm EDT