The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

What is May Day?

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On May Day 2012, I’ll be joining in solidarity with workers around the world for “A Day Without the 99%.” My plans are simple: to spend the day in reflection, and perhaps share some appropriate music and movies with my children. I hope that next year I’ll be able to be in the company of Fellow Workers in Chicago for the day, but that’s simply not possible this year.

If, like me, you grew up without knowing the significance of May 1st to the working class, you might find some of these articles of interest as we prepare to celebrate International Workers’ Day 2012.

What is May Day and why is it called International Workers’ Day? [IWW.org] – May 1st, International Worker’s Day, commemorates the historic struggle of working people throughout the world, and is recognized in every country except the United States and Canada. This is despite the fact that the holiday began in the 1880’s in the United States, with the fight for an eight-hour work day led by immigrant workers.

Building on May Day traditions today. [SocialistWorker.org] – On May 1, workers across the globe will demonstrate, attend meetings and go on strike in celebration of International Workers Day, a working-class holiday with origins in the U.S. more than a century ago. With class inequality reaching new heights and shaping politics in the U.S. and internationally, a new generation is discovering the importance of May Day and embracing its message of militant working-class struggle and international solidarity.

A Short History of International Workers’ Day. [Holt Labor Library] – May 1, 1886, became historic. On that day thousands of workers in the larger industrial cities poured into the streets, demanding eight hours. About 340,000 took part in demonstrations in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Boston and other places. Of these nearly 200,000 actually went out on strike.

The Haymarket Affair. [Illinois Labor History Society] – No single event has influenced the history of labor in Illinois, the United States, and even the world, more than the Chicago Haymarket Affair.

The McCormick Strike and the Haymarket Tragedy. [The Autobiography of Mother Jones | IWW.org] – “The police without warning charged down upon the workers, shooting into their midst, clubbing right and left. Many were trampled under horses’ feet. Numbers were shot dead. Skulls were broken. Young men and young girls were clubbed to death.”

Addressing Objections to Occupy May 1st. [IWW.org] – There have been a number of objections or concerns raised about the May 1st, 2012 general strike. Juan Conantz attempts to briefly address some of the most common ones.

U.S. Preps for Air War with Iran

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David Axe reports for Wired Danger Room:

“The U.S. Air Force is quietly assembling the world’s most powerful air-to-air fighting team at bases near Iran. Stealthy F-22 Raptors on their first front-line deployment have joined a potent mix of active-duty and Air National Guard F-15 Eagles, including some fitted with the latest advanced radars. The Raptor-Eagle team has been honing special tactics for clearing the air of Iranian fighters in the event of war.”

Axe notes “The warplanes are in place. The pilots are ready.”

Read the full story.

Aerial Armada Assembles Off Iran. [Danger Room | Wired]

More On The Port Huron Statement at 50

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Boston Review has an excellent collection of articles online assessing the impact and enduring legacy of The Port Huron Statement.

I especially like this, from Bernardine Dohrn:

The Statement endures, however, not only because it nailed our country’s systemic racism and global military domination, but also because it lit up the ideal of participatory democracy. The Statement’s authors didn’t simply call for participatory democracy; by carefully articulating their reasons and sharing them publicly, they showed what participatory democracy is.

Read more, including articles from Hayden, Ayers and others…

Forum: The Port Huron Statement at 50. [Boston Review]

The Port Huron Statement at 50

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It begins like this:

“We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.”

It ends like this:

“If we appear to seek the unattainable, it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable.”

In between, there is a child, observing the grand parade of America, and declaring that the emperor is naked.

The Port Huron Statement was completed on June 15th, 1962. It was principally the work of Tom Hayden, who was Field Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society at the time, and adopted by those in attendance at the SDS convention near Port Huron, Michigan. The SDS had grown out of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society of the early 1900s. During the few short years of its existence (1960 to 1969) the organization represented the intellectual core of an emerging “New Left” in the United States. It was the largest “radical” student organization in U.S. history, and the largest student organization of any kind in the 1960s.

Reading the statement again these many years later, I was struck by how it is, in almost equal measures, a relic of its time and a light to ours.

In These Times features an assessment of the legacy of The Port Huron Statement by 14 activists (including three of the document’s framers) that I found interesting. Bill Ayers had this to say. “Revolution is still possible, but barbarism is possible as well. In this time of peril and possibility, rising expectations and new beginnings, when hope and history once again rhyme, it’s absolutely urgent that we embrace the spirit embodied in the final words of The Port Huron Statement.”

I am encouraged to learn that a new Students for a Democratic Society was organized in 2006, and is active in campaigns for education rights, the protection of civil liberties, peace and anti-globalization.

Seek the “unattainable.” Occupy the future!

Industrial Worker April 2012

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The April 2012 issue of Industrial Worker from the IWW is now available.

The Industrial Worker is the official (English language) newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World. It is published ten times a year, and printed by GCIU/Teamsters union labor. The editor is elected by the membership via a rank and file vote for a two year term of office.

I’ll be posting a link to the online version of each new issue as if becomes available. You can always find the most recent issue by clicking on the image of the newspaper in the right sidebar of this Weblog.

Headlines:

  • Industrial Bakery Workers Fight For Dignity In NYC
  • Living Wage Victory For IWW Cleaners In London
  • IWW Launches In Uganda

Features:

  • Direct Unionism And Beyond
  • Special: Lessons From Workplace Organizing
  • IW Book Review: The Fiction Issue

Download a Free PDF of this issue.

Chomsky on Occupy and an Empire in Decline

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Noam Chomsky on America’s Declining Empire, Occupy and the Arab Spring. [AlterNet] – Last year, the Occupy Movement rose up spontaneously in cities and towns across the country, radically shifted the discourse and rattled the economic elite with its defiant populism. It was, according to Noam Chomsky, “the first major public response to thirty years of class war.”

We Love America

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“Our patriotism is that of the man who loves a woman with open eyes. He is enchanted by her beauty, yet he sees her faults. So we, too, who know America, love her beauty, her richness, her great possibilities; we love her mountains, her canyons, her forests, her Niagara, and her deserts–above all do we love the people that have produced her wealth, her artists who have created beauty, her great apostles who dream and work for liberty.”

— Emma Goldman, from her Address to the Jury, 9 July 1917

Obama and Civil Liberties

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How Obama Became a Civil Libertarian’s Nightmare. | [AlterNet] – When Barack Obama took office, he was the civil liberties communities’ great hope. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, pledged to shutter the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and run a transparent and open government. But he has become a civil libertarian’s nightmare: a supposedly liberal president who instead has expanded and fortified many of the Bush administration’s worst policies, lending bipartisan support for a more intrusive and authoritarian federal government.

10 Great Container Tomatoes

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There’s nothing like stepping out back and picking a beautiful, ripe homegrown tomato for a BLT, a salad or simply for slicing and serving with a little seasoned salt. I started planting tomatoes in huge terra cotta pots more than a decade ago when I didn’t have diggable space in a decent, sunny location for a garden, and the habit stuck. I’ve always loved the first tomato of the season. No matter how fresh they are from the farmers’ market, they’re never quite as tasty as the ones you grow yourself.

Colleen Vanderlinden over on Treehugger has a wonderful post about ten tomato varieties that do well in containers. The Black Krims sound particularly tasty.

I first ran across Colleen’s article on the Occupy Monsanto blog. The more I learn, the more I realize that some of the most simple and pleasant everyday things we do – like choosing to grow heirloom tomatoes in pots – can be powerful political acts as well. For me, that makes such things all the more satisfying.

I’m hoping it won’t be too late to plant a few pots after our move next month.

A word of caution to those who want to grow container tomatoes on an upstairs balcony. Be careful where you set them. Remember that Tommy Ewell nearly got killed by Marilyn Monroe’s falling tomato plant in The Seven Year Itch. 🙂

P.S. Here’s another interesting article on best practices for pruning tomatoes.