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Proletarian Novels in the 21st Century: They Also Make Excellent Gifts for the Season
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The new annual edition of our journal of discussion and analysis is now out. More than 170 pages, it includes dozens of articles on structural racism, fighting austerity, and 21st century socialism Click the title to buy it directly.
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by Paul Krehbiel
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| Shades of Justice Video: Bringing Down a President, Ending a War |
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By Giuseppe Fiori
Verso, 30 pages
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An Invitation to CCDSers
and Friends...
 Police Violence:
Sowing the Wind,
Reaping the
Whirlwind...
We're the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism...
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Most of all, it's important that you support a raise for low-wage workers, oppose militarized police and the ongoing 'long wars,' engage in 2016 races now, oppose austerity, support the 'Moral Mondays' in North Carolina and other states, the fight for the Green New Deal, a just immigration policy and the Congressional Progressive Caucus' 'Back to Work Budget'! We're doing more than ever, and have big plans. So pay your dues, make a donation and become a sustainer. Do it Now! Check the link at the bottom...
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Hundreds gathered for a vigil last night in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to honor father of five Alton Sterling, who was fatally shot by police early Tuesday morning. Sterling was a 37-year-old African-American. The two officers involved are both white. Bystander video shows Sterling was pinned to the ground when he was fatally shot.
The Justice Department has announced it will investigate the killing. Sterling's death has sparked two days of protests in Baton Rouge, as well as protests last night in Ferguson, Missouri, and Philadelphia, where activists were arrested for blocking Interstate 676. For more we speak with Louisiana State Representative Ted James and artist and activist Donney Rose. Speaking about the Department of Justice investigation, Ted James said: "The federal government has responded in record time. I guess the sad part is, it has happened so many times that the federal government and states know what to do when police officers murder black man in their community."
TRANSCRIPT
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Vigils are continuing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to remember Alton Sterling who was fatally shot by police early Tuesday morning. Sterling was a 37-year-old African-American, father of five. The two officers involved are both white. Bystander video shows Sterling was pinned to the ground when he was fatally shot. Sterling is at least the 38th person killed by Louisiana police since 2015. The Justice Department has announced it will investigate the killing, which has sparked two days of protests. At least two bystanders filmed the shooting on their cell phones. New video posted online Wednesday was filmed by Abdullah Muflahi who owns the convenience store where Sterling was killed. A warning to our TV audience, the footage you are about to see is very graphic.
ALTON
STERLING: Please, come on. Don't [beep].
POLICE
OFFICER: He's got a gun. Gun. Hey bro, you [beep] move, I swear to god.
[shouting]
[gun shots]
POLICE
OFFICER: Get on the ground.
[gun shots]
BYSTANDER: What was that for man?
POLICE
OFFICER: [indiscernable] shots fired, shots fired. [beep]
AMY GOODMAN: The officers involved, Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II, have been placed on paid administrative leave. In 2014, Lake was placed on paid leave after being involved in the shooting of another African-American man, Kevin Knight. On Wednesday, Alton Sterling's family addressed the media. This is Quinyetta McMillan, the mother of Sterling's son, Cameron. At the beginning of the press conference, the 15-year-old Cameron consoled his mother as she spoke. But after a few minutes, he broke down into the arms of supporters standing behind the two of them.
QUINYETTA MCMILLAN: Alton Sterling, regardless if you knew him or not, he is not what the mass media is making him out to be. This is a play to try and obscure the image of a man who's simply trying to earn a living. To take care of his children. With that being said, the individuals involved in his murder took away a man with children who depended upon their daddy on a daily basis. My son is not the youngest. He is the oldest of his siblings. He is 15 years old. He had to watch this as this was put all over the outlets. And everything that was possible to be shown. As some may know, Alton sold CDs, and was doing just that. Not bothering anyone. And had the consent of the store owners as well. And then the events that recorded during the two officers, that this event would not go unjustice.
CONFERENCE ATTENDEE: That's right.
QUINYETTA MCMILLAN: It would not go unnoticed, especially for the future.
CONFERENCE ATTENDEE: No justice, no peace.
QUINYETTA MCMILLAN: I, for one, will not rest or not allow him to be swept in the dirt.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Quinyetta McMillan ,the mother of Alton Sterling's 15-year-old boy Cameron, who broke down and was held and supported by the people at the news conference. As we go to Baton Rouge where we're joined by two guests. Edward "Ted" James is a Louisiana State Representative whose district includes part of East Baton Rouge Parish. And Donney Rose is with us, poet, activist, and youth development worker with Forward Arts, a non-profit youth spoken word program in Baton Rouge. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!. Ted James, let's start with you. Your reaction to what has taken place and to what the police and the governor has said since? But first, talk about what you understand happened to Alton Sterling.
TED JAMES: To my understanding, both videos speak for themselves and Alton was a man that was well respected, well known in the community. He was there with the consent of the store owner selling CDs as he has done many days and many nights on that same street, the street on which I grew up and spent many, many years. And before Alton was shot and killed, he was tackled against the car. He was tased several times, and then he was murdered, as you see depicted in the two videos. I can't even watch the second one. Just sitting here listening to the audio, it frightens me to even hear it....Click title for more
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In St. Paul, Minnesota, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the governor's mansion to protest the fatal police shooting of African American man Philando Castile during a traffic stop for a broken tail light. Castile, his girlfriend Lavish Reynolds and her young daughter were stopped by police on Wednesday. Reynolds broadcast the aftermath of the fatal police shooting live on Facebook in an extraordinary video, in which she narrates the events while still inside the car next to her dying boyfriend as the police officer continues to point the gun at her and her daughter. For more we speak with Nekima Levy-Pounds, the president of the Minneapolis chapter of the
NAACP: "It is not uncommon to treat black victims and witnesses as criminals in these types of cases."
TRANSCRIPT
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Welcome to all of our listeners and viewers around the country and around the world. Hundreds of protesters are gathered outside the governor's house in Minneapolis following the fatal police shooting of African-American man Philando Castile during a traffic stop for broken tail light. The immediate aftermath of the shooting was broadcast live on Facebook by his girlfriend Lavish Reynolds, who was speaking in the car next to her dying boyfriend as the police officer continues to point the gun into the car. A warning to our TV viewers, the footage is graphic.
LAVISH REYNOLDS: Stay with me. We got pulled over for a busted tail light in the back. And the police just --- he's, he's, he's covered. They killed my boyfriend. He's licensed, he's carry. He's licensed to carry. He was trying to get out his ID and his wallet out his pocket and he let the officer know that he was re -- he had a firearm and he was reaching for his wallet and the officer just shot him in his arm.
OFFICER: Told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand off it.
LAVISH REYNOLDS: He had -- you told him to get his ID, sir, his drivers license. Please don't tell me this, Lord. Please, Jesus, don't tell me that he's gone. Please, don't tell me that he's gone. Please, officer, don't tell me that you just did this to him. You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration, sir.
AMY GOODMAN: The video shows an officer ordering Lavish Reynolds out of the car. She is with her four-year-old daughter. She is then ordered by multiple officers to walk backwards. She is handcuffed and put in the back of the police car along with her daughter. This is more of the video as Lavish Reynolds continues to narrate from the back of that police car.
LAVISH REYNOLDS: Don't be scared. My daughter just witnessed this. The police just shot him for no apparent reason.
[screaming]
CHILD: It's OK, I'm right here with you.
AMY GOODMAN: Joining us now from St. Paul, Minneapolis, is Nekima Levy-Pounds, President of the
NAACP Minneapolis. Can you explain exactly where you are and your reaction to this latest police killing?
NEKIMA LEVY-POUNDS: Right now there are several of us, dozens of us outside of the Governor's mansion here in St. Paul. We are outraged that this egregious incident happened. Many of us were focused on the killing of Alton Sterling at the hands of the Baton Rouge Police Department. And little did we know that this type of tragic shooting would happen in our own backyard just months after Jamar Clark was killed at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department. So we've been here all night, camped out outside of the Governor's mansion, chanting, protesting and calling upon the Governor to issue a statement.
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The attack happened during a protest against recent police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana.
Four suspects are thought to have coordinated the attack with rifles, Police Chief David O. Brown said. Three are in custody, and the fourth died in a standoff with the police, Mayor Mike Rawlings said.
By Sewell Chan
New York Times
July 8, 2016 - On Thursday night, amid the chaos and horror surrounding the killings of five police officers in Dallas, the city's Police Department released a photograph of a man it described as "one of the suspects."
That man has since come forward, identifying himself as Mark Hughes. He said that he had presented himself to the authorities, had been questioned for 30 minutes and had been released.
"I can't believe it," Mr. Hughes told KTVT in Dallas. "I can't believe it. The crazy thing about it is that, I was down here, I couldn't get down to my vehicle because of the roadblock. And in hindsight, 20/20, I could have easily been shot."
Mr. Hughes said he had learned from a phone call that his photograph was circulating on social media.
"Immediately, I flagged down a police officer," Mr. Hughes said.
While his photograph was being shared online, he said, "I was talking to police, laughing and joking with police officers."
But what happened was no laughing matter, he added.
"I just got out of an interrogation room for about 30 minutes, where police officers were lying, saying they had video of me shooting a gun, which is a lie, saying that they had witnesses saying I had shot a gun, which is a lie," he said. "At the end of the day, the system was trying to get me."
Mr. Hughes said he had not received an apology: "We asked them, we said, now you all have my face on national news, are you going to come out and say this young man had nothing to do with this?"
Mr. Hughes said his brother had received death threats.
"I haven't even gotten on my social media," he said. "I don't even know what's going on."...Click title for more
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Valery, right, a transgender migrant worker, and Anna Leah Rick, a community worker in LGBT advocacy from California Rural Legal Assistance, at her office in Salinas, California, on Thursday, May 26. Sarah Rice / for NBC News
By Jeffrey Hannan
NBC News
"You need to talk to more women like us," Valery tells Flora. She is insistent that Flora know her rights. At the moment, they're seated in a conference room of the
California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) office in Salinas, California.
Both are in their 30s. Both are farmworkers in the Salinas area, a coastal offshoot of California's rural and predominantly agricultural Central Valley. Recognizing at an early age that they are transgender, they emigrated to the United States separately, in their teens, to flee the "terrible" conditions - harassment, abuse, violence and rejection - that often accompany being transgender in Mexico.
"No estás solita," Valery tells Flora. You are not alone.
This is the first time they have met. It is also the day Flora learns that in the state of California she has the legal right to use the bathroom that corresponds to her gender identity.
Flora works at a produce packaging facility in California, where she packages broccoli and other seasonal produce for distribution. She's is in the "difficult" early stages of her transition. She is friendly yet reserved. Her coworkers are generally "very supportive" of her; they refer to her affectionately as "chica" (girl). However, management requires her to use the men's bathroom, because the name on her working papers is male.
Valery, by comparison, is 34, confident and energetic, although she admits to being shy in large gatherings. She works on a lettuce farm, packing heads of lettuce as workers and equipment move through the fields. She came to the U.S. at the age of 18 so she could "be who I am."
When Valery first started working in the U.S., she felt she had to hide who she was. The makeup and clothes would come out at night, after work. Over time she gained more confidence - especially after discovering CRLA.
"They changed my life," Valery says. CRLA helped her legally change the name and gender on her work documents, and for the last six years she has been living and working fully as her true self: as Valery. Recently, she's embarked on a new path of transgender activism and education, motivated in large part by her involvement in CRLA's LGBT program in Salinas....Click title for more
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The president announces that promised troop withdrawals are being reversed.
By Sarah Lazare
AlterNet
July 6, 2016 - The open-ended U.S. war in Afghanistan is poised to grow even longer after President Barack Obama announced on Wednesday that he will further delay the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, reversing his prior position.
In a statement from the White House, Obama said at least 8,400 U.S. forces will remain in Afghanistan after he leaves office in January. This is a significant increase from his most recent vow to close his term with 5,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Currently there are approximately 9,800 U.S. troops deployed in the country.
The development is a lobbying victory for top military brass, which has been pushing for greater troop levels. The White House said Obama made the decision "based on a recommendation from U.S. General Nicholson, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dunford."
"The security situation in Afghanistan remains precarious," said the president, citing the threat of the Taliban. "Even as they improve, Afghan security forces are not as strong as they need to be." Obama added, "I will not allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again."
Yet, all accounts suggest that the nearly 15-year occupation of Afghanistan has left the Taliban stronger than ever. A report released by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction in January also concluded that the Taliban controls the most territory since the U.S. military invaded in 2001. Then in April, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) concluded that "the first quarter civilian casualty data for 2016 showed continued record numbers of civilian casualties."
"I believe the military occupation has worsened long-term freedom for Afghanistan because the Taliban feeds off of this military occupation, especially with the number of civilian casualties caused by foreign troops as well the permanent environmental damage to the country," Laila, cofounder of Afghans United for Justice, told AlterNet. (Laila requested that her last name be withheld due to online privacy concerns.)
Laila added that "foreign military presence in any country is a loss of its sovereignty. I don't feel that Afghanistan is an independent nation currently due to foreign military occupation and invasion. As long as there are foreign military bases, there is no sovereignty or independence."
The U.S. mission is creeping despite Obama's claim in December 2014 that the U.S. military's combat mission in Afghanistan had come to a "responsible conclusion" after 13 years. That same month, NATO symbolically lowered its flag in Afghanistan, with military commanders proclaiming that the mission was coming to a close....Click title for more
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By Anis Shivani
Alternet via Portside
June 29, 2016 - Few developments have caused as much recent consternation among advocates of free-market capitalism as various findings that millennials, compared to previous generations, are exceptionally receptive to socialism.
A recent Reason-Rupe survey [1] found that a majority of Americans under 30 have a more favorable view of socialism than of capitalism. Gallup finds [2] that almost 70 percent of young Americans are ready to vote for a "socialist" president. So it has come as no surprise that 70 to 80 percent of young Americans have been voting for Bernie Sanders [3], the self-declared democratic socialist. Some pundits have been eager to denounce [4] such surveys as momentary aberrations, stemming from the economic crash, or due to lack of knowledge on the part of millennials about the authoritarianism they say is the inevitable result of socialism. They were too young to have been around for Stalin and Mao, they didn't experience the Cold War, they don't know to be grateful to capitalism for saving them from global tyranny. The critics dismiss the millennials' political leanings by repeating Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's mantra, "There is no alternative" (TINA), which prompted the extreme form of capitalism we now know as neoliberalism.
But millennials, in the most positive turn of events since the economic collapse, intuitively understand better. Circumstances not of their choosing have forced them to think outside the capitalist paradigm, which reduces human beings to figures of sales and productivity, and to consider if in their immediate lives, and in the organization of larger collectivities, there might not be more cooperative, nonviolent, mutually beneficial arrangements with better measures of human happiness than GDP growth or other statistics that benefit the financial class.
Indeed, the criticism most heard against the millennial generation's evolving attachment to socialism is that they don't understand what the term really means, indulging instead in warm fuzzy talk about cooperation and happiness. But this is precisely the larger meaning of socialism, which the millennial generation-as evidenced in the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements-totally comprehends.
Capitalism has only itself to blame, forcing millennials to look for an alternative.
Let's recall a bit of recent history before amnesia completely erases it. While banks were bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars, the government was not interested in offering serious help to homeowners carrying underwater mortgages (the actual commitment of the U.S. government was $16 trillion to corporations and banks worldwide, as revealed [5] in a 2011 audit prompted by Sanders and others). Facing crushing amounts of debt, millennials have been forced to cohabit with their parents and to downshift ambitions. They have had to relearn the habits of communal living, making do with less, and they are bartering necessary skills because of the permanent casualization of jobs. They are questioning the value of a capitalist education that prepares them for an ideology that is vanishing and an economy that doesn't exist.
After the Great Depression, regulated capitalism did a good enough job keeping people's ideas of happiness in balance. Because of job stability, wage growth, and opportunities for mobility, primarily driven by progressive taxation and generous government services, regulated capitalism experienced its heyday during 1945-1973, not just in America but around the world. Since then, however, the Keynesian insight that a certain level of equality must be maintained to preserve capitalism has been abandoned in favor of a neoliberal regime that has privatized, deregulated, and "liberalized" to the point where extreme inequality, a new form of serfdom, has come into being.
Millennials perceive that what is on offer in this election cycle on the part of one side (Trump) is a return to a regulated form of capitalism, but with a frightening nationalist overlay and a disregard for the environment that is not sustainable, and on the other side (Clinton) a continuation of the neoliberal ideology of relying exclusively on the market to make the best decisions on behalf of human welfare. They understand that the reforms of the last eight years have been so mild, as with the Dodd-Frank bill, as to keep neoliberalism in its previous form intact, guaranteeing future cycles of debt, insolvency, and immiseration. They haven't forgotten that the capitalist class embarked on an austerity campaign, of all things, in 2009 in the U.S. and Europe, precisely the opposite of what was needed to alleviate misery.
But millennials are done with blind faith in the market as the solution to all human problems. They question whether "economic growth" should even be the ultimate pursuit. Ironically, again, it is the extreme form capitalism has taken under neoliberalism that has put millennials under such pressure that they have started asking these questions seriously: Why not work fewer hours? Why not disengage from consumer capitalism? Why trust in capitalist goods to buy happiness? Why not discover the virtues of community, solidarity, and togetherness? It is inchoate still, but this sea change in the way a whole generation defines happiness is what is going to determine the future of American politics.
Millennials understand that overturning capitalist memes to address the immediate social and ecological crises is only the starting point. The more difficult evolution is to reorient human thought, after more than 500 years of capitalist hegemony, to think beyond even democratic or participatory socialism, to a more anarchic, more liberated social organization, where individuals have the potential to achieve freedom and self-realization, precisely the failed promise of capitalism.
To distract attention by pointing to the failure of authoritarian state-driven experiments in socialism is not going to work. Cooperative models not driven by the state have been pervasive throughout history, all through the middle ages for example, or until recently in large parts of the world where capitalism hadn't yet penetrated. Whenever one forms a spontaneous association to fulfill real needs, whether in a family or community or town, one is embarking on activity that is discounted by capitalism.
In the 19th century, there was the successful cooperative model of Robert Owen, the British cotton-spinner and industrialist, followed in the 20th century with similar ventures by Owen's counterpart in Japan, Muto Sanji, as well as agricultural, industrial, housing, and banking cooperatives in Australia in the early 20th century, in the Basque region of Spain after World War II, in Italy's Emilia-Romagna, and in Sweden, Canada, Denmark, and elsewhere. Today, many examples of the cooperative model operate in Brazil [6], Venezuela [7] and other Latin American countries, spurred by resistance to the neoliberal model.
The idea is to move beyond money [8], interpreted in particular ways by capitalism, as the sole means of determining what is valued in human activity. Just because the means of production can be owned collectively does not mean-and indeed should not mean-that the state should be the owner....Click title for more
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By Maggie Lee
Variety
Blending Buddhist spiritual elements with classic Western motifs, Zhang Yang's Tibet-set epic features too many storylines to keep straight.
A slow-simmering, Western-style action drama of blood feud, misfired machismo, and spiritual quest spread across Tibet's rolling steppes and scorching deserts, "Soul on a String" follows the travails of a hunter led by fate to deliver a sacred stone to a mythic mountain despite motley foes at his heels. Chinese director Zhang Yang ("Shower," "Sunflower") eschews the thrill of propulsive duels for a discursive allegorical approach, serving up picturesque visuals, highland-dry humor, and karmic plot twists. While the nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time is sure to hamper theatrical release prospects, Zhang's quirky blend of genre and art-house elements should ensure considerable fest play.
The director's second film set in Tibet after his minimalist docudrama "Paths of the Soul" is steeped in fairy-tale color. Its prologue depicts a forest encounter between a young urchin, a deer hunter, and a young girl who falls from a cliff clutching a glowing stone. Like the metafictions of Italo Calvino and Jorges Luis Borges, the meaning of the characters' crossed destinies will be revealed in due course, but their connections remain concealed for so long, the multi-pronged narratives fell obscure and unfocused at first.
The story proper begins with hot-headed wastrel Guori (Zerong Dages) challenging a man called Tabei to a duel to avenge his father's death. "Many people are named Tabei," protests his hapless target, and sure enough, Guori's thirst for revenge doesn't stop with the first Tabei he meets. Both his mother and older brother Kodi (Lei Chen) fear that he's making so many new enemies that their future generations will have to pay dearly for it.
On a parallel quest is Tabei (Kimba), former hunter, ex-con and fugitive. He's revived by a lama (Mima) after being hit by a thunderbolt and told to bring a holy stone to Palm Print Mountain as penance to cleanse his many sins, attracting an odd bunch of followers en route: Chung (Quni Ciren), who decides he's the love of her life after a one-night stand; Pu (Yizi Danzeng), a mute scalawag with psychic powers; Gedan (Siano Dudiom Zahi), a mysterious stalker; Zandui (Solange Nima), a wanderer with a wondrously daffy dog.
Set on vast, vacant landscapes which make past and present indiscernible, the stylized film suggests Westerns in which characters struggle as much against the elements as they do other humans. Even when the men brandish broadswords, their poise and unpolished moves resemble standoffs in gunfights rather than typical Chinese martial arts duels. And yet Zhang offers a twist on generic ideas of vengeance by imbuing every fight with a spiritual dimension. The film's abstract tone slowly gives way to a moving sense of futile longing and tragedy as it explores Tabei's lifelong burden of having to pay for the murder committed by a father he's never met and how that colors his attitude toward love, or Chung's desire to bear his child.
The title refers to the leather string that holds the stone, which Tabei wears around his neck, as well as Chung's habit of counting the days of her romance by tying knots on a leather cord, symbolizing their pilgrimage to free themselves from physical and spiritual bondage. All the protagonists need to let go of their attachments, which according to Buddhist teaching is the root of all suffering. Without straining for heavy mysticism, the epiphany in the denouement skillfully elides time while rendering cause and effect irrelevant....Click title for more
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 White Trash
The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
Nancy Isenberg
Illustrated. 460 pages. Viking. $28
By John Collins
In These Times
June 26, 2016 - History favors uplifting interpretations of our origin story-tales of amiable Pilgrims, free markets, bootstraps and an escape from tyranny-mercifully packaged for a general audience. Nancy Isenberg didn't get the memo.
 In White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Isenberg does to white American history what Christopher Nolan did to Adam West's Batman. Out in time for summer, White Trash will ruin your day at the beach.
Before rednecks, trailer trash and swamp people, there were squatters, crackers, clay-eaters and white niggers. Before that, there were the lubbers, bogtrotters, scalawags and offscourings-Britain's "waste people" sent by London's elite to set up shop in the colonies. All terribly regrettable in hindsight, but, in addition to slavery and the slaughter of this continent's indigenous people, our equality-themed "land of opportunity" also required (and still does) a persistent class of poverty stricken white people.
Over the centuries, these born-to-lose, alcohol craving, sexually promiscuous degenerates have proven useful. In the beginning, for example, they could be rounded up and dispatched like expendable drones to recently acquired hostile territories. Many died, starving and toothless, but they were replaced. Eventually, as Isenberg tells us, enough fertile young women and booze were sent across the Atlantic (in exchange for tobacco) to assure their sustainable, albeit miserable, reproduction. Much later, during the Civil War, their children's children would provide cannon fodder for the South's planter elite. By this time, an indigent class, believed to be beyond all hope of social reform, had been widely accepted as an unfortunate but inevitable societal fringe-a "permanent breed."
Generations of white people have been born into poverty ever since-"curious" social fixtures who periodically collide with the national mainstream, often for our entertainment, before dissolving (again) into the background. Today, in towns we've never heard of, in rural counties from coast to coast, a variation of the cycle continues.
The instruments of other men
If the reader can manage to extract him or herself from the (well-researched) centuries of human suffering Isenberg lays bare, White Trash can be fun to be read.
The "intractable poor" have been driving the powers-that-be bananas for hundreds of years. Their wretched idleness has threatened civilized commerce since Jamestown! At first their tendency to fornicate irresponsibly, like "wild animals", was good for business, but these "waste people" were increasingly seen as a risk to the larger, more promising gene pool. Fearing a day when their numbers might become unmanageable, their habits and hygiene contagious, the progeny of this "lesser stock" were the source of great anxiety to some of our nation's most renowned leaders, intellectuals and visionaries.
From the first imported 17th century vagabonds to Duck Dynasty's recent success on television, White Trash tracks changes in the national perception (and function) of the ever-present poorest of the poor. The author quickly makes clear, "When it came to common impressions of the despised lower class, the New World was not new at all." The Jamestown hierarchy, for example, "borrowed directly from the Roman model of slavery"-a system in which "abandoned children and debtors" were fair game for forced labor. The Puritans also believed inequality and submission of the lower classes was "a natural condition of human kind."
Citing numerous court cases brought forth by masters charging their servants and slaves with everything from "disobedience...idleness, theft, rudeness, rebellion, pride and a proclivity for running away," Isenberg dispels the myth that these arrangements were accepted as "natural" by the exploited. In 1696, after enough troubling infractions, one prominent minister published A Good Master Well Served-a manual intended to remind servants and slaves what they were: "Animate, Separate, Active Instruments of other men." He suggested that their tongues, hands and feet "move accordingly."
The new world was still a place in which a person could be born free but, through a lack of status, become otherwise.
Throughout the book, Isenberg identifies an often disturbing preoccupation with human breeding among the ruling elite-first as a means of generating the numbers needed to colonize the land, but increasingly as something that could be manipulated to better ensure new American offspring of quality (class). Cringeworthy comparisons of fertile women to livestock abound....Click title for more
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Why I Joined CCDS
By Paul Krehbiel
I joined the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism because:
1. I wanted to be a part of an organization that was bigger than myself. I had been involved in many progressive, labor, anti-war, anti-racist and left campaigns but I felt a need to work together with other like-minded people to multiply my efforts.
2. I wanted to be a part of an organization that I agree with and feel at home within. There are many organizations on the left, and many do good work. But I felt at home in CCDS because it is an organization that is guided by principles and analysis that I agree with. CCDS is guided by Marxism but is not dogmatic, and is open to and supportive of the ideas of many other thinkers, and the actions of a wide array of social justice activists.
3. I wanted to be a part of an organization that is thoughtful, and encourages deep probing and questioning, and lively but friendly debate and discussion.
4. I wanted to be a part of an organization where members are rooted in mass movements and constituencies, and are really rooted among and with the American people and their organizations.
5. I wanted to be a part of an organization that gives special attention to the most exploited and oppressed, African Americans and other people of color, women and others who suffer discrimination. I want to be a part of an organization that is multi-racial, and reflects the diversity of the people of our country, knowing that it is right and makes us stronger.
6. I wanted to be a part of an organization that gives special attention to the working -class, especially the labor movement and all working people.
7. I wanted to be a part of an organization that believes in coalitions, knowing that the left and people's movements are stronger when we work together in alliances, and is actively working to bring these alliances into being.
8. I wanted to be a part of an organization that believes in democracy, and uses deeply democratic practices, inclusiveness and transparency in all areas of its work.
9. I wanted to be a part of an organization that knows how to link reform and revolution, that understands how to fight for immediate popular reforms today in a way that lays the groundwork for achieving something better, ultimately a socialist society.
10. I wanted to be a part of an organization that believes in international solidarity, especially with working people and the oppressed all over the world, and those who have freed themselves from the domination of oppressors, both foreign and domestic.
11. I wanted to be a part of an organization that has a general path forward and is creative. It's important to have a plan to achieve a better society, and also to recognize that it is a work in progress. CCDS encourages creativity, and testing different ideas and approaches as necessary steps to progress along the road to real freedom.
12. I wanted to be a part of an organization that is made up of a lot of nice people, people who have mutual respect for each other, help each other, and become good friends with each other. CCS respects the individual, and the collective. It's a lot easier and more enjoyable to work in that kind of organization.
That's CCDS. Join me and many others. Join CCDS today.
Being a socialist by your self is no fun and doesn't help much. Join CCDS today--$36 regular, $48 household and $18 youth.
Better yet, beome a sustainer at $20 per month, and we'll send you a copy of Jack O'Dell's new book, 'Climbing Jacobs Ladder,' drawing on the lessons of the movement in the South in the 1950s and 1960s.
Solidarity, Carl Davidson, CCDS
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