The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

Curated Links

May Day Joint Statement

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The first of May is a moment for us to remember the Chicago Haymarket Martyrs of 127 years ago. These Chicago anarchists helped to lead the major battle of the day, not only for the 8 Hour Day, but also for social liberation.

Chicago’s Four Star Anarchists and several other allied groups have issued a joint statement titled Remembering the Past, Fighting for Tomorrow. It includes a short history of May Day, an examination of present conditions, a positive vision for our world and a call to action.

I commend it to you as appropriate for this May Day, 2013. Click here to read it.

Solidarity!

★★★

Today’s Must Read: A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse

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“Submitting oneself to labor discipline—supervision, control, even the self-control of the ambitious self-employed—does not make one a better person. In most really important ways, it probably makes one worse. To undergo it is a misfortune that at best is sometimes necessary. Yet it’s only when we reject the idea that such labor is virtuous in itself that we can start to ask what is virtuous about labor. To which the answer is obvious. Labor is virtuous if it helps others.”

Read the Full Article: A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse | David Graeber | The Baffler.

The Death Rattle of American Democracy

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From Joe Kishore, at WSWS:

The Obama administration’s recently-leaked “white paper” on the assassination of US citizens, and the actions carried out on the basis of the arguments it advances, must be taken as a dire warning to the working class in the United States and around the world. The democratic rights of the people are in grave peril. The American ruling class, steeped in lawlessness and violence, is moving toward dictatorship.

READ MORE: The death rattle of American democracy – World Socialist Web Site.

This Is No Time For Austerity

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Yesterday 350 prominent economists issued a statement urging our lawmakers and the Obama Administration to focus on jobs and economic growth, not the budget deficit. I suspect that their plea will be largely ignored, unless we, the people, take responsibility for our own future and rise up in opposition to austerity.

Here is part of what the economists wrote.

The U.S. economy, once in free-fall toward a new depression, has begun to recover. But we are still mired in a prolonged slump marked by mass unemployment, rising poverty, and declining wages. And the fragile recovery is threatened by obsessive concern with cutting deficits that has infected both parties.

As even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recognizes, it is long term unemployment, not excessive deficits or debt, that is now inflicting the greatest human toll and economic damage. Polls show that voters agree joblessness and a bad economy are much higher priorities than deficits.

Yet too many in Washington are fixated on cutting public spending to balance the budget, not on how to put people back to work and get our economy going. There is no theory of economics that explains how we can deflate our way to recovery. Businesses are not basing investment decisions on how much Congress cuts the debt in 2023. As Great Britain, Ireland, Spain and Greece have shown, inflicting austerity on a weak economy leads to deeper recession, rising unemployment and increasing misery.

Indeed, reports this morning indicate that a second recession has already hit the Eurozone.

Please share this information widely. I’ll continue to post more on what we’re facing (and how to resist) in the coming days and weeks. Please comment or email with your own ideas and links to share as well.

Read the Economists’ Full Statement: Jobs and Growth, Not Austerity – Campaign for America’s Future.

P.S. The image above depicts firefighters in protest over budget cuts at Thessalonika, Greece on September 8th, 2012.

Barry Commoner and the Citizens Party

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Jeff Faux writes at The American Prospect:

“Barry Commoner ran for president in 1980 on the ticket of the now-defunct Citizens Party, an episode few on the left remember and the obituaries dismissed as a quirky personal misadventure. It was more than that. The Citizens Party was an effort to respond to the early signals that the Democratic Party was on the way to becoming morally and intellectually bankrupt. Three decades later, that ugly process is almost complete.”

Read More: Barry Commoner and the Dream of a Liberal Third Party.

Footnote: I’m proud to say that I voted for Commoner that year. It was one of those rare times that I didn’t feel I was voting for the lesser of two evils.

American Labor History Timeline

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The American Prospect magazine’s Website has posted an interactive timeline depicting a brief history of the Labor Movement in the U.S. adapted from If Labor Dies, Whats Next? – a Harold Meyerson piece that appears in the September/October issue.

The timeline includes such notable moments as the founding of the Knights of Labor, the Pullman Strike of 1894 (shown above), the Triangle Fire, the founding of the IWW and more. It’s basic information that every American ought to know, but relatively few do.

See the interactive timeline: A Brief History of American Labor.

Anaheim Explodes

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Anaheim Riots Sparked By Power Imbalance, Police Shootings In Time-Tested Formula. [The Huffington Post] – While much of the country watched in shock, people who study urban unrest and police community relations say that Anaheim, a Southern California city best known as the home of Disneyland and a seat of Orange County conservatism, shares the social tinderbox characteristics that have set other communities ablaze from Detroit to Los Angeles.

Bankrupt? Blame The Bankers, Not The Unions

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California cities’ bankruptcies: Blame the housing bust. [latimes.com] – From reading the voluminous accounts of the fiscal woes of Stockton and San Bernardino, you’d think that municipal unions and feckless city officials are primarily what led these cities down the path to fiscal ruin.

But you’d be wrong. What bankrupted Stockton and San Bernardino were the most severe housing busts in the nation. What bankrupted those two cities were banks peddling subprime mortgages to poorly paid workers.

Read the full op-ed from Harold Meyerson here.