We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

About the Progressive Democrats of America… from a FaceBook discussion

Alan L. Maki

Alan L. Maki

I am very familiar with PDA... my experience with this group in Minnesota has been that they follow pretty much obediently along the Democratic Party leadership's line when push comes to shove. I haven't seen any interest on their part to go beyond the Democratic Party in organizing some kind of alternative.


I would note some things that I find of great concern with PDA...


1. John Conyers often speaks for PDA... Conyers and his wife--- a member of the Detroit City Council now forced from office--- have been involved in a corporate bribery scandal for quite some time... she has already--- finally--- admitted her criminal wrong-doing and it is widely believed that John Conyers backed away from Bush/Cheney impeachment after Karl Rove threatened to send him to prison for a long time.Nancy Pelosi threatened Conyers similarly and he withdrew support for single-payer. PDA should have disassociated itself from Conyers as soon as his involvement in this bribery scandal became known.


2. PDA has endorsed a very reactionary piece of legislation being pushed as "single-payer" in Minnesota when this legislation's intent is to saddle working people with monthly payments of around $750.00; this is not single-payer... plus, the worst part of this legislation, first called single-payer and now called "The Minnesota Health Act" is that it takes the burden of healthcare from business and places the burden of healthcare costs on the backs of working people... as far as I am aware, this legislation is opposed by all unions in Minnesota, has no support from civil rights organizations or any of the progressive community and flies in direct opposition to the single-payer universal healthcare resolution passed by 72% of the MNDFL State Convention delegates in 2006.


In fact, members of PDA engaged in a long-running and vicious red-baiting campaign against me personally as I traveled across Minnesota visiting all 87 counties pushing for single-payer as a first step towards socialized healthcare. I don't call this kind of red-baiting "progressive." Not one single member of the little PDA group here in Minnesota which is lilly-white would support this resolution which I authored; nor have they supported the resolution in support of affirmative action we are trying to bring to the upcoming state convention so that support for affirmative action would become part of the MNDFL's "Action Agenda"--- at present, no state agencies or departments or federal agencies or departments are enforcing affirmative action on the massive public works projects going on here in Minnesota in spite of unemployment rates ranging from 60% to 85% on thev 11 Indian Reservations and PDA has refused to call on Obama and Congress to enforce affirmative action where these stimulus funds under the guise of the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" are being allocated.


3. PDA held a national legislative conference at the very time the savage and barbaric Israeli carnage was taking place in Gaza Strip and the Congresspeople addressing their conference actually supported the shameful resolutions in support of the Israeli killing machine. We had to wage a massive call in campaign to individuals participating until on the final day the issue was raised by only a couple people in their questions and comments. This was at a time people were calling on Obama to end his silence and speak out.


PDA has not "held Obama's feet to any fire" as they promised they would do in supporting him. To the contrary, they have repeatedly let him off the hook time and time again.


I am not opposed to PDA... they can do what they want with their organization which is funded largely by Hollywood movie stars whose commitment is to the Democratic Party.


We need a party committed to solving the problems of the American people.
PDA has supported Obama's so-called "peace in Iraq" which is nothing but an occupation taking place using mercenaries for which the American people will pay the increased costs of up two 18 times more for these mercenaries than for U.S. troops to do Wall Street's same dirty work.


I have personally repeatedly asked PDA to support our campaign for recognition of the rights of casino workers employed in the smoke-filled operations of the Indian Gaming Industry now employing over two-million workers at poverty wages and without any rights under state or federal labor laws. And, to add insult to injury, PDA in Minnesota has refused to condemn the fact that not one single Native American Indian sits among our more than 200 state legislators or our federal congressional delegations.


I don't discourage anyone from becoming involved in PDA... on the other hand, I don't see PDA as being any substitute or reliable ally in these struggles for reforms and for the kind of alternative we need to the Democratic Party---it goes without saying the Republicans need to be defeated.


Plus, PDA--- in my opinion--- suffers very serious delusions that progressives can actually somehow take over the Democratic Party... a party wholly and completely owned by Wall Street. Not even during the days of massive struggles on the part of the American people during the 1930's or in the 1960's while the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movement were at an all time high could progressives take control of the Democratic Party... progressives were able to nominate George McGovern and reactionary union leaders along with the Wall Street interests withdrew all support from George McGovern with many even going so far as to support Richard Nixon.
Because PDA has such delusions and illusions of taking over the Democratic Party does not mean the rest of us have to suffer and muddle along behind these Dumb Donkeys.


Our Organizing Committees also have an "inside/outside" policy in the way we work... we push forward issues aimed at solving our problems and the problems of the working class as a whole inside the Democratic Party fully aware that a primary focus of our work has to be in pushing for independence from the Democratic Party. We are willing to work with PDA where ever our concerns are mutual... as is the case with any and all other organizations and individual activists.


That PDA and its leaders like Tim Carpenter, Tom Hayden and these other "Progressives for Obama" do not support the rights of casino workers tells me most of what I need to know about PDA.

 
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

We need a new party

Alan L. Maki

Alan L. Maki

We need a new party in order to make this presently very corrupt government functional.


I would suggest there are three major points of unity people who are liberal, progressive and on the left can come together around:


1. Peace: ending these dirty wars.


2. Socialized health care or some variant of it which would include a vastly expanded public healthcare sector which includes single-payer universal healthcare based upon Canadian-style healthcare.


3. Jobs, jobs, jobs... creating a single-payer universal health care system would create about three million jobs--- a fully socialized healthcare system would create about ten million jobs.


Paying for this kind of healthcare reform which would create jobs is very easy if we stop these dirty wars.


Peace = Healthcare reform + Jobs


If a new political party did nothing more than deliver these three things that most Americans want it will have been a success.


The first thing we need to do is sign a "Declaration of Independence" from the Democratic and Republican parties controlled by Wall Street.


The second step is to serve notice on the Democrats and Republicans:

  • No peace; no votes.
  • No real healthcare reform; no votes.
  • No jobs; no votes.

Then we need to convene a national conference to plan how to move forward in establishing regional, state and local committees for a new party--- perhaps we need to begin by challenging the Democrats in their own primaries and running as independents and even as write-in candidates committed to these three unifying things: peace, healthcare reform, jobs.


If everyone who are members of this FaceBook page would copy and paste this all over the Internet and on their FaceBook pages, blogs and WebPages and e-mail it to everyone on your e-mail lists we would start building a new political movement one person at a time... it would be like rolling a little snowball down a long, steep hill on a warm spring day--- the movement would keep getting bigger and bigger.

Each of us is like one little snowflake--- we don't amount to much... but, let a blizzard come along and try shoveling those little tiny snowflakes.

 
No one is going to do any of this for us; this needs to be a grassroots initiative.


Debbie; thanks for starting this discussion.

Friday, February 26, 2010

A FaceBook comment I made about Obama’s healthcare reforms…

Alan L. Maki

Alan L. Maki

Worse than what you say about Workers' Comp, Tom... if they can't adequately fund, according to legislative mandate, VA, the Indian Health Service or the National Public Health Service not to mention Medicare and Medicaid--- how are they going to fund even the smallest of their "reforms" aimed at helping the poorest of the poor in an economy where the largest growing industry is Goodwill Industries?


What we need is nothing short of socialized healthcare.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

• From former United States Senator Mark Dayton’s FaceBook page

… Mark Dayton is now running to become governor of Minnesota.


I would note, that after a conversation Mark Dayton and I had about casino workers and the Indian Gaming Industry, he came out in support of what the Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council has been advocating for years--- a state operated, state owned casino while taking a poke at Stanley Crooks and his Mystic Lake Casino empire employing over 5,000 Minnesotans.

After asking me what he should do as part of his campaign to address the issue of the failure of city, state and the federal government to enforce affirmative action… Dayton publicly lashed out at the two main state agencies--- the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development and the Minnesota Department of Transportation--- responsible for massive government expenditures in their failure to initiate, adhere to and enforce affirmative action when it comes to Native American Indians and other minorities, women and the disabled.

The time to engage in these kinds of dialogs with these politicians is during election campaigns--- not when the election is over. Liberals, progressives and the left have made, and continue to make, this mistake of failing to vigorously engage Obama and the Democrats on issues of importance to working people.

I have taken a lot of heat because I have vigorously spoken my mind with these politicians… but, as a result, people are discussing the issues and politicians are being forced to respond… in the case of a few like Mark Dayton, the response has been very good. In the case of racist bigots like State Senator Tom Bakk now running for Minnesota governor and his friends… the response has been less than cordial.

Anyways, read this dialog taking place on Mark Dayton’s FaceBook page… feel free to join in the discussion.

Alan L. Maki

Wall-to-Wall





Mark Dayton

Thank you, Sen. Berglin, Rep. Murphy, and other legislators, who have worked together to develop this much more compassionate and cost-effective approach to providing essential health care to the poorest or the poor, and not bankrupting hospital emergency services upon which all of us depend.

Sen. Linda Berglin, Rep. Erin Murphy: GAMC plan is bipartisan and affordable
StarTribune.com

www.startribune.com

Last Thursday the Legislature sent Gov







Alan L. Maki

This crap with healthcare has gone on long enough... Minnesotans should tell all you politicians to go take a flying leap when you come begging for our votes.



The only solution to this healthcare mess is socialized healthcare.



When I drafted the DFL resolution on single-payer universal healthcare three years ago which was approved by 72% of the delegates at the 2006 MN State DFL Convention, we had a real mess that could have been straightened out with Canadian-style single-payer universal healthcare.



Now, nothing short of socialized healthcare is going to get us out of this mess that has worsened astronomically in the last three years.



This is the wealthiest country in the world spending trillions of dollars on wars and militarism financing over 800 foreign military bases dotting the globe protecting Wall Street's interests and profits and you politicians can't provide the very people who you go whoring for votes from with real healthcare reform.



Roseau County Democrats at the 2006 County Convention unanimously passed a resolution calling for:



"No-fee/no-premium, comprehensive, all-inclusive, pre-natal to grave, universal health care; publicly funded, publicly administered and publicly delivered."



I challenge you or any other politician to do what people do in a democracy... put this to a vote alongside all your other phony healthcare proposals like the one you are praising these politicians for and see for yourself what Minnesotans want in the way of healthcare reform.



You will find just what I did when I visited every single one of the 87 counties as you are doing looking for delegates to support single-payer universal healthcare Canadian style...



That the overwhelming majority of Minnesotans want nothing less than socialized health care although they will settle for Canadian-style single-payer as a first step towards socialized healthcare.



I understand for that for most of you politicians it is very difficult for you to squeeze the words "socialized healthcare" from between your lips... but, with a little practice you might manage this simple feat.



Until then... I'm not wasting my one precious vote on any politician who continues to pander like a bunch of whores for campaign contributions from doctors or insurance companies for campaign contributions.



And as far as you paying for buses to take Minnesotans to Canada--- which the Canadians were opposed to you doing because it placed a strain on their healthcare system; you should have been insisting that people receive their medications right here in Minnesota at a reasonable and affordable price... you politicians can't even manage this simple task, how can we possibly trust you to talk about healthcare reform?



And don't forget... you still have over 40,000 Minnesotans employed in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages working in these atrocious and despicable conditions without any rights under state or federal labor laws... and this isn't helping any to keep healthcare costs down unless you don't believe the materials put out by the American Cancer Society and the Heart and Lung Foundations--- two organizations I understand you have contributed to.



The sheer hypocrisy of all of you politicians in the face of this healthcare mess is sickening.



Over one-third of this state's casino workers make less than $8,000.00 a year... so, the tax-payers have to subsidize their healthcare when they are employed in the most profitable industry in the world.



Maybe you should be talking about taxing this casino industry to pay for healthcare reforms? Right now, these casinos don't pay their way... tax the hell out of them.



Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,

Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council







Joe Gardner



I would hate to see socialized medicine in Minnesota or even for the US as a whole. It isn't very good care at all. I know what I'm talking about. I'm living in Europe and here it is ok to have as you don't pay for it but through taxes, and they are high here. Roughly 40% of your income is paid in taxes not including all the VAT that you have to pay on other things as well. The care you get, once you get into the system isn't too bad. It is the wait for care that is the problem. I know a couple of people have been waiting for care for months and it isn't helping them at all.



As far as the Casino's? That is an Indian Nation Problem. They say they are a separate nation. Tell them to pay higher wages and more to health care. Remember how much money each of those Indians are getting. From what I remember hearing it is in the millions a year. Do you complain about that? Go to them about it. Talk to AIM and see if they will help you. I doubt they will.



I like what Mark was trying to say with his bus trips. I see alcohol as a major problem more than smoking. There is more violence related problems with drinking than with smoking. I say this. If you don't want to work in those conditions then leave and find work else where. Leave it up to each place like that to be smoke free. I don't smoke and believe it is not healthy but it is a choice to smoke or not to smoke.



Socialized anything isn't going to be the answer. We have enough of our government getting into things as it is. This is a dangerous slope to go down if you start with socialized medicine then what next? Socialized industry? We all know how that works. What is needed is reform and the option. An option for employers of small businesses to afford good coverage for their employees and for people that can't get coverage to opt into something to help them. Put it on a scale for people so they can contribute at a reasonable rate. Big business can afford better coverage but just plain won't as they don't see how it will help their bottom line. If their workers are healthy less days lost of employees not able to work.



What else is needed is better education on how health care works. As a former Call center person it is amazing how many people don't understand how their coverage works or even how to access medical care the way it should be that would be more help to them. Then there are those that come from areas of the world where you just show up and expect to be taken care of. Hence why Emergency rooms are full.



Cut down on litigation and such as well. The Doctors are being sued a large amounts when something happens. That will make costs sky rocket as well.



It is mostly about educating the public on health care. Instead we are more interested in who wins American Idol.






Alan L. Maki



Joe, no one will stop you from paying for your own health care since you like it that way. I know a few, not many, people who rant and rave about how evil the socialist Social Security program is... but boy, they sure waste no time looking for that Social Security check in the mail every month.



Like I said... put socialized health care up for a vote.



Quite honestly, you don't seem to have much empathy or understanding for others so I am not surprised you take the very selfish positions that you do.



As far as I'm concerned, the more socialization that takes place in this country the better. What do you propose to do with the almost 4,000 mines, mills and factories now closed and idle in this country?



Working people with their labor create every single bit of wealth while having no say in how this wealth is used or distributed.



Millions of people are unemployed in this country when millions more require all kinds of things like healthcare.



I say: Stop Obama's dirty senseless wars and put the money saved towards building a socialized healthcare system creating millions of new jobs in the process of building and staffing community based healthcare centers all over this country... peace, healthcare and jobs... if the present politicians can't deliver this kind of very basic program meeting the needs of the people instead of killing people half-way around the world they don't deserve to be in office.



As far as the Indian Gaming Industry... the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association has corrupted Minnesota politics beyond belief as they distribute their bribes at election time... this is not democracy; this is nothing but plain old greed and corruption.



I notice you claim to be so concerned about Native American Indians' rights when it comes to paying people poverty wages and abusing workers by forcing them to work in unhealthy, smoke-filled work-places... but, you conveniently fail to explain how it is that a rich white man heads up the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association doling out millions of dollars in bribes to politicians to protect this industry from having to respect the rights of 41,000 Minnesotans--- many of whom are Native American Indians--- being paid poverty wages getting heart and lung diseases and all kinds of cancers from working in these smoke-filled casinos while there isn't one single Native American Indian sitting among the more than 200 Minnesota State Legislators or in its Congressional delegation.



There are very, very few Native American Indians getting rich like Mr. Stanley Crooks from his Mystic Lake Casino empire... there are, however, thousands of Native American Indians being pushed further into poverty by this casino industry because they are paid such pitifully little poverty wages... pay someone a poverty wage and they live in poverty--- as any school child can figure out, especially when they are the child of a casino worker who can't make ends meet from pay-check to pay-check and they have to go to school hungry.



Keep your for-profit healthcare system and build yourself a casino and fill it with all the smoke you want to your heart's content... but build it on some little uninhabited island where you can breathe in all the smoke you want and tax-payers won't have to subsidize paying for your illnesses.



You detest socialism... in fact, you don't understand what socialism is... maybe you are the kind of person who doesn't think or understand until your belly-button hits your back-bone and then it turns on a light upstairs.



Maybe you haven't noticed but we have quite a few socialist type programs in this country besides Social Security and they all work just fine when properly funded:



Public education.

Public libraries.

Public city, state and national parks and recreation centers.

Police and fire protection.

Public water and sewer systems.

Public streets, roads and highways.

Social Security.

Unemployment Compensation.

Workers' Compensation.



I am sure you can think of other programs to add to this list.



Government itself is a public institution.



I find it rather ironic politicians trying to shove the "market" and "free-enterprise" system down our throats all the time would even run for public office since they hate big-government so much. I guess these hypocrites just run to get their dirty little corrupt fingers in the public till because they don't want to work for a living.



And, yes, we already have a pretty darn good start with a socialized health care system which includes VA, the Indian Health Service and, you will be surprised to know, we even have the National Public Health Service... all of which can be expanded upon quite easily to provide everyone with free healthcare at less cost than is being spent for healthcare by the government right now with everyone from greedy profit-gouging doctors to health insurance companies to HMO's, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies not to mention the home healthcare providers and nursing homes all looking for government hand-outs while decrying socialized healthcare... which, by-the-way, is nothing but public health care.



Without public education we wouldn't even be able to teach 300,000,000 people to read and to write... why would anyone have ever thought that private, for-profit health care would serve the health care needs of so many people? I hasn't worked over the years; it doesn't work; and private, for-profit health care will never work... socialized health care, like socialism itself, really works and that is why Minnesota's two most popular governors ever, Floyd Olson and Elmer Benson, supported socialism and socialized health care--- free health care for all.



Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,

Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council





Yours in struggle and solidarity,



Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,

Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council



58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763



Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell Phone: 651-587-5541



E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net



Please check out my blog: http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/



Let’s talk about the politics and economics of livelihood for real change.




A comment I made on FaceBook in response to a question about Obama and healthcare reform

Alan L. Maki

My personal opinion is that Obama and the Democrats are never going to support real health care reform or any other meaningful reforms... we should continue to build mass pressure for single-payer and a vastly expanded public health care sector.

BUT, unless these struggles are undetaken ALONG WITH creating a real progressive political party in this country along the lines of the New Democratic Party in Canada or the old socialist Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party (not to be confused with the corporate, big-business dominated Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party [Democratic Party in Minnesota toaday]), we aren't going to be seeing any REAL change, let alone any REAL reforms of any kind from Obama and the Democrats.




Obama's backers among the "leadership" of organized labor have begun a very deceptive and dishonest campaign claiming that Canadian health care reform began with Tommy Douglas' very small and modest efforts similar to Obama's legislation.


Tommy Douglas' efforts at healthcare reform were not modest, nor were they small. Tommy Douglas from the very first day he entered politics made it known that he was for socialized healthcare and he maintained this position until the day he died in bed.



And these people working with the Campaign for America's Future and the AFL-CIO leadership who will say and do most anything in support of Barack Obama no matter how deceptive or how big the lie, go on to make the utterly false claim that Tommy Douglas began with legislation just like Obama and the Democrats are bringing forward... lies, lies and more lies... the entire Obama enigma is built upon such lies... lies that were spread by these very same people to get Obama elected--- that he was liberal, that he was progressive, that he was some kind of closet socialist, that he was for working people... the entire campaign of "hope" and "change;" it was all lies just like it is a lie that this health care legislation has anything of value for working people when it doesn't.



The leadership of the AFL-CIO and its mouthpiece, the Campaign for America's Future, have a lot of nerve talking about how we need to take "small steps" on the way to health care reform by comparing an impoverished Canadian Province like Saskatchewan where American corporations--- including the huge grain cartels and mining companies--- bled the Province dry helping to create the wealthiest country in the world and then lecturing us about how we need to take small steps towards healthcare reform.



The wealth exists in this country to finance and fund the best socialized healthcare system in the world.



When asked about his position on redistribution of wealth in this country, Obama conveniently joked around that those accusing him of being a socialist in support of redistributing the wealth must be referring to his having shared a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a classmate in grade school.



Well, redistribution of wealth is no joke.


Redistribution of wealth in this country is what real healthcare reform is resting on.



We have a government headed up by Barack Obama and the Democrats squandering the wealth of this country on wars and militarism while bailing out the banks and Wall Street.



There is no reason for people living in the wealthiest country in the world--- wealthy because working people created every bit of this wealth--- should have to stand by and suffer for lack of access to healthcare as our tax-dollars fund the Israeli killing machine to the tune of tens of billions of dollars while trying to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan as we pay to maintain over 800 military bases across the globe as this rotten government allows plants to close and remain idle while people's needs and requirements for decent lives go unmet as the Wall Street coupon clippers and parasites seek out greater profits through cheaper labor and resources in other parts of the world conveniently protected by this far-flung and vast network of military bases.



Look, Richard Trumka and these labor leader impostors can't even protect the jobs of 1,100 Whilrpool workers paying union dues for years when the Crown family with controlling interests in Whirlpool Corporation is one of Barack Obama's primary campaign contributors... along with the AFL-CIO.



Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO can't count on the President they invested so much in electing to help save the jobs of 1,100 workers--- union members--- producing certified "green" energy-saving refrigerators (I own one) and we are supposed to trust these kinds of labor leaders when they tell us we have to rally around Barack Obama and cut him some slack on healthcare reform otherwise it will probably cost Obama and the Democrats the next two elections.



Capitalism has failed in healthcare; capitalism has failed to provide millions of working people with jobs. Capitalism is never going to be "green" and the closing of a "green" Whirlpool refrigerator manufacturing plant proves this, again.



I find it interesting that only socialized healthcare can solve the healthcare mess we are presently mired in... and only the socialist option of public ownership of the Whirlpool plant where "green" refrigerators are manufactured can save 1,100 jobs for working people--- who, by the way, will be losing their health insurance.



Capitalism doesn't work; socialism works.



We had better start including the need to build some kind of socialist oriented political party in this country along the lines of Canada's New Democratic Party or the old Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party if we want any kind of reforms.

Winnipeg’s North End, Yesterday and Today

This is a great article from Canadian Dimension Magazine... I posted a comment which is at the very bottom.

Alan



Winnipeg’s North End


Yesterday and Today



By: Jim Silver
January 7th 2010

http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2674/


Winnipeg’s Historic North End. Photo Courtesy of The Winnipeg Tribune / University of Manitoba Archives.

Elsie Strewchuk stands behind the counter of the North Main Groceteria that she and her husband opened in 1954. Photo Courtesy of The Winnipeg Tribune / University of Manitoba Archives.



Poverty in the North End today. Photo by Jon Schledewitz


Winnipeg’s historic North End was a contradictory place. Poverty was widespread and deep; out of its midst grew a rich and vibrant culture. Today’s North End is similar in many respects — deep poverty and racism, and an emergent culture of resistance, for example — yet different in important ways.



Poverty in Winnipeg’s Historic North End

After 1896 Eastern European immigrants arrived in large numbers in Winnipeg, settling in the North End to work in the vast rail yards and associated industries. Housing was inadequate and terribly overcrowded. The 1908/09 Annual Report of All-Peoples’ Mission, then headed by J. S. Woodsworth, said of a part of its North End neighbourhood: “in 41 houses there were 120 ‘families,’ consisting of 837 people living in 286 rooms,” more than 20 people per house. Overcrowding, plus half the North End houses not being connected to the water supply, produced disease: in 1904 and 1905 Winnipeg had more deaths from typhoid than any North American city. A 1913 study by Woodsworth found that a “normal standard of living” required wages of $1,200 per year; many in the North End were earning less than half that.



Most people were working; they just didn’t get paid enough. Others worked seasonal jobs on farms or railway construction and endured cold, hungry winters in Winnipeg.



Winnipeg was deeply segregated, a city divided, the North End cut off from the rest of the city by the vast CPR yards and distinguished by its “foreign” character. A 1912 publication described the North End as “practically a district apart from the city,” adding that “those who located north of the tracks were not of a desirable character.” The largely Eastern European working class residents of the North End were called “dumb hunkies,” “bohunks,” Polacks; anti-semitism was rampant.



In Under the Ribs of Death, John Marlyn’s novel set in early twentieth Winnipeg, Sandor Hunyadi, a young Hungarian immigrant, lives in the North End, described as “a mean and dirty clutter … a howling chaos … a heap seething with unwashed children, sick men in grey underwear, vast sweating women in vaster petticoats.” When the young Sandor visits Crescentwood, the south end home of those of Anglo-Saxon descent who controlled the political and economic resources of the city, he was shocked to see that “the boulevards ran wide and spacious to the very doors of the houses. And these houses were like palaces, great and stately, surrounded by their own private parks and gardens. On every side there was something to wonder at.”



Much was extremely positive about the North End. Selkirk Ave was a thriving commercial street with a dazzling variety of shops and stores whose owners typically spoke several Eastern European languages. A rich and varied cultural life characterized the North End: newspapers published in many European languages; literary associations, drama societies, and sports clubs; a wide range of alternative schools; and according to one author, “a music teacher in every block in the North End to give the Jewish, Ukrainian, and Polish kids massive degrees of musical instruction weekly.” There was a thriving co-op sector, mutual aid societies, a labour temple, and radical politics of a bewildering variety of kinds.



Most of this was invisible to those outside the North End, but as Roz Usiskin has put it, from this vibrant culture North End residents “derived a dignity denied them by the dominant society.”



Post-War Change in the North End

In the post-Second World Large numbers of North End residents who could afford to do so moved to the larger, newer houses and greener spaces of the suburbs. Businesses andcultural organizations followed; economic and cultural life in the North End atrophied. Housing prices dropped; many became rental properties, some owned by slum landlords.



By the late 1960s-1970s manufacturing began to leave, and the character of the labour market shifted, with full-time unionized industrial jobs gradually being replaced by part-time, non-union, low-wage service sector jobs.



Just as these broad social forces — suburbanizationand de-industrialization — were unfolding, Aboriginal people began migrating to western Canadian cities, and especially Winnipeg, starting in the 1960s and growing by the decade. In 1951 there were 210 Aboriginal people resident in Winnipeg; in 1961 there were 1,082. By 2006 there were 68,380, the largest urban Aboriginal population in Canada. Many Aboriginal people located in the North End, attracted by cheap rental housing. When they arrived they were, generally speaking, ill-prepared for modern urban life, the result of a century of marginalization, colonization, and the damage inflicted by the residential schools. They arrived just as the good jobs were leaving, to the suburbs or out of Winnipeg entirely. And upon their arrival they faced a wall of racism.



Aboriginal people have replaced Eastern European immigrants as the poor and frequently reviled residents of the North End. They face the same racism and exclusion today that the newly-arrived Eastern European workers and their families did early in the twentieth century. They experience similarly inadequate and over-crowded housing conditions — the result of the severe shortage of low-income rental housing all across Canada that is accentuated in Winnipeg’s now sprawling inner city.



They have suffered racist abuse for decades. In a 1962 Winnipeg Tribune story, Jarvis Ave., just north of the CPR yards and previously the heart of the pre-Second World War Jewish North End, was described as “the worst street in the entire city.” Houses had long been little more than shacks; many of the small lots had two or more dwellings squeezed onto them. The Tribune story began: “The police, with ponderous legal irony, call it Jarvis Boulevard. Others, with more bitterness, have called it Tomahawk Row.” Aboriginal newcomers had located there, in search of low-cost housing. Their socio-economic circumstances were the root cause of problems in the area.



But, like their Eastern European working class predecessors who had occupied the same neighbourhoods before them, they were blamed for their poverty. A half-century earlier, in 1912, Winnipeg’s Associated Charities Bureau had written, referring to the Eastern European working class immigrants squeezed into inadequate North End housing and underpaid as they were, that “the large majority of applications for relief are caused by thriftlessness, mismanagement, unemployment due to incompetence, immorality, desertion of the family and domestic quarrels.” Such simplistic and stereotypical claims echo across today’s North End.



These things about Winnipeg’s North End have not changed. It is home to deep and widespread poverty; those who are poor are reviled and blamed for their own fate; and the North End remains spatially and socially segregated from the rest of the city. Many in Winnipeg do not venture into today’s North End; most are largely ignorant of life in the North End; it has ever been thus.



It’s Still the Same, but Different

Whereas the poverty of the early twentieth century North End was a working class phenomenon, today, because of dramatic shifts in the global economy, a much higher proportion of those in poverty are the jobless poor, largely outside of and in many cases with little or no experience of the paid labour force. This is disproportionately the case for Aboriginal youth, and is a source of many problems. Massive, publicly funded job creation is needed.



The North End poor of the early twentieth century typically lived in and benefited from intact, two-parent families, and ethnic cultures that were a source of strength and pride. Today, a much higher proportion of those who are poor live in families and communities that are less strong and resilient than was the case in the past, and in many cases their cultures have been seriously damaged. In the case of Aboriginal people, this is the result of the historic and contemporary process of colonization, by which the Canadian state set out deliberately to destroy Aboriginal families and cultures.



The route out of poverty taken by many of the descendants of the Eastern European working class is less readily available to the disproportionate numbers of today’s North End poor who are Aboriginal. Eastern Europeans were able to, and wanted to, assimilate into the dominant culture. Aboriginal people are less able to assimilate, less able to escape racism than their White predecessors in the North End, and less willing to do so.



The poverty of today’s North End has changed dramatically because of the intensified crime that plagues the inner city. Street gangs, the illegal drug trade, and damage done to families and cultures, and the almost complete disconnection of large numbers of young people from the labour market, have created a serious problem of crime and violence that is qualitatively different, and worse, than what existed in the North End during earlier periods of the twentieth century.



Finally, the poverty of today’s North End is experienced by many as a sense of hopelessness, of deep and dark despair. Inadequate housing, deep poverty, the prevailing crime and violence, the absence of jobs that pay a wage sufficient to support a family, have created a “spiritual” malaise among many that is particularly debilitating.



In many respects, today’s North End is unchanged from that of the early part of the twentieth century: deep poverty; widespread racism directed at the poor; their spatial segregation in a devalued part of the city. In other respects, it is different, perhaps even worse: the disconnection from a changed labour market; the erosion, in many cases, of families and cultures; the widespread crime and violence; the deep sense of despair and hopelessness amongst many.



Rebuilding from Within

These poverty-related problems notwithstanding, there is a dramatic process of rebuilding from within that is currently underway in Winnipeg’s North End and broader inner city. Like the vibrant culture of the early twentieth century North End, it is largely invisible to those who do not live there. It takes the form of a wide range of community-based organizations that have emerged from the ground up, and that use a community development approach to heal and empower those who are poor and have been damaged by poverty, racism, and colonization. Aboriginal people and Aboriginal women in particular are among the leaders in this work. The best of their efforts is aimed at rebuilding awareness and appreciation of their rich cultural heritage. Women’s centres of a wide variety of kinds, family resource centres, alternative educational institutions and neighbourhood development organizations are all part of an increasingly strong infrastructure of community-based organizations. Their work is creative and innovative; they hire local people thereby creating employment opportunities; they work in a way informed by their workers’ and leaders’ own experience of poverty and racism.



This rebuilding process is slow and difficult. For every step forward, another is taken back. It would be faster and less difficult with more public sector support. The civic and federal governments are largely absent from this process. The provincial NDP government has been supportive in many important ways. They have not done and still do not do enough to nurture and support this indigenous rebuilding process, but they have been quite supportive in some very important ways, and would be likely to be more so if they thought that there was public support for a stronger anti-poverty strategy.



The North End and the Left

The anti-poverty strategy that has emerged out of Winnipeg’s North End and broader inner city over the past quarter-century has not taken a form familiar to most leftist readers of Canadian Dimension. It has been and is being built by the poor themselves, and has taken a form that they have defined, and that has grown out of their realities. The labour movement is largely absent from this struggle; the far Left, to the extent that it exists at all in Winnipeg any longer, is absent from this struggle.



It is striking, however, that growing numbers of progressive young people are becoming interested in and active in this struggle. Although what follows is impressionistic, it may be that many young people recently energized by the anti-globalization movement have now turned their attention to local, community-based anti-poverty struggles in the North End and broader inner city.



If young, urban Aboriginal people were also to become politicized as part of this struggle, and were to begin to mobilize around demands related to antipoverty efforts, the pace of change would surely accelerate. There are few signs yet of that happening, and in fact an Aboriginal middle class is emerging, anxious to distance themselves from the poverty and related problems of the North End.



Yet there is deep anger in Winnipeg’s North End, the product of poverty, racism, and segregation. Much of that anger is inner-directed, in such forms as addictions and domestic abuse, but also in the form of increasingly severe street-level conflict and violence confined largely to the North End and directed largely at other North End residents, and frequently at police.



Most Winnipegers, spatially and socially segregated from the North End and its residents and steeped in stereotypes previously used to describe Eastern Europeans, are removed, in every respect, from these issues. If they could be mobilized in support of genuine, publicly-driven anti-poverty efforts, and/or if North End youth, and especially Aboriginal youth, were themselves to become politicized and direct their anger outwards, real gains could be made in the North End. Until that happens, and despite the exceptional community development efforts in the North End, change will be unbearably slow, and will come too late for many.



This article appeared in the January/February 2010 issue of Canadian Dimension magazine. SUBSCRIBE NOW to get a refreshing and provocative alternative delivered to your door 6 times a year for up to 50% off the newsstand price.



5 comments

I live in the South End of Nanaimo, which is considered the skuzziest neighborhood in the city. Yes, you do see some poor young girls in the sex trade walking down Victoria Road, and that is because men in fancy cars from the North End come looking to exploit their drug addictions which were induced by some other exploitative men. On what is considered THE worst block in this city, a couple of blocks from downtown, my friend just bought an 80 year old house, a Craftsman, which has unsurpassable charm. Three stained glass windows, original fir floors in good condition, coved ceilings, french doors with etched leaded glass panels, a sun room with windows on 3 sides, which leads to a sundeck with a sweeping view of the estuary and Gabriola Island, and spectacular sunrises which are reflected on the water. There is a walk-in closet off the master bedroom. There is a little inner courtyard outside, and a peach tree and 2 Kiwi fruit trees, and a fish pond in the yard. Next door to her live 4 men who are a brass quartet, and they have a big old boat in their backyard. My point in all this is that it is possible to find beauty and charm where you least expect it, and it doesn’t have to be about big money at all. In fact there can be something ugly about big money neighborhoods - the pretentiousness of them, and the lack of originality, spontaneity, history, and variety.



#1. Posted by Madeline Bruce, RPN in Nanaimo, B. C. on January 8th 2010 at 4:35pm



So , it would seem to me to solve the problem of poor people living in the North End, would be to double the rents to get rid of the poor .



#2. Posted by rosencrentz in winnipeg on January 28th 2010 at 6:58pm



No, that doesn’t sound nice at all. Speaking for South Nanaimo, the poorer section of Nanaimo, the price of houses and rentals is lower than the rest of Nanaimo. Gradually the old houses are being re-vamped, which makes for a very charming ambiance. As for unemployed people, many impoverished people are employed - just not getting enough hours, or enough wages. As for the chronically underpriviledged, some kind of entreprenurial initiative is needed to help them. Perhaps the teaching of new skills by retired people, which they could then market themselves, would get them on the road to a renewed self-confidence and hope for the future.



#3. Posted by Madeline Bruce, RPN in Nanaimo, B. C. on January 28th 2010 at 7:32pm



I enjoyed reading this article and found it very thoughtful. I grew up in the North End in the 1950s and 60s, spending all my time hanging around at the Sals and Sportsman’s. I am old enough to remember the unpaved back lanes that flooded every spring. Two formative events in the North End not mentioned in the article were the 1919 Strike and, less often noted, the tearing out of the street care tracks along Main Street. In the 1980s when I was Deputy Minister of Community Services in the Pawley government we ‘blew up’ the Winnipeg Children’s Aid Society and established five decentralized ‘Child and Family Service Agencies’ across the city, including one in the North End - with its HQ in the old Bank of Montreal building on Main and Bannerman (I think that was the cross street). Over 3000 people turned out for the election of the first Board. I think the agency could have made areal difference in the North End, as it included strong representation from within the Aboriginal community and took on a significant preventive mandate, but the Filmon government took over and got rid of all the agencies after a little more than a year, so we will never know what might have been. We did however fund the community effort to set up Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre which remains to this day. So perhaps it was not all for naught.



#4. Posted by Michael Mendelson in Toronto on February 8th 2010 at 6:17pm



Michael Mendelson speaks of the New Democratic Party Manitoba government led by Howard Pawley and just a few of its important initiatives of which there were many—- probably the most honest government in the history of the North American continent. He then goes on to mention how the thoroughly reactionary government of Gary Filmon destroyed several of the Pawley government’s programs of which there were so many destroyed by the Filmon government which leads me to wonder why no one has yet written a comparison of these two governments.






It seems to me now would be the time to write such a comparison.






I was living in Manitoba for about ten years at the time the Filmon government was coming into power. Filmon privatized the Manitoba Telephone Service and Manitobans are still suffering the consequences.






But, Filmon also did, what I consider to be one of the most callous and anti-human things imaginable in putting an end to the dental program in the elementary schools.






If every government in the world was just one iota as honest and caring about the needs of working people as was the Pawley NDP government, people could be living pretty decent lives.






There is a story that needs to be told here—- a tale of two governments; one for the people, the Pawley NDP government—- the other, the Filmon Government of Progressive Conservatives for the greedy wealthy few and the corporations.






(Now there—- Progressive Conservative—- is a real oxymoron if ever there was one.)






A webb site or blog would be the perfect place to tell this story of a tale of two governments. Working people across North America need to know and understand this story which is the history of the clash and struggle between classes.






This is an especially important story to tell at a time when working people are beginning to think there is no hope for change while taking such beatings and are being battered by Bay Street and Wall Street.






Working people across North America need to experience the all-inclusive government like that of Howard Pawley’s government which welcomed a full and complete expression of just about every political view from liberal to socialist to communist represented in the various people’s movements… proving people working together accomplish great things.






When people tell me about “hope” and “change” here in the United States, I always tell them: You don’t know what “hope” and “change” is all about unless you understand the people’s movements that brought governments like that of Howard Pawley, Tommy Douglas, Floyd Olson and Elmer Benson to power.






Unlike the Tommy Douglas story or the history of the socialist Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, the story of the Howard Pawley NDP government is still fresh enough to become an important factor in the struggles of today. Tell the story.






#5. Posted by Alan L. Maki in Warroad, Minnesota, USA on February 25th 2010 at 9:44am

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Tell Obama and the Democrats: No healthcare, no jobs and no peace; no votes.

First of all, on health care. The AFL-CIO leadership from its very inception and creation has always been a very selfish labor body eager to sell out the working class to get a few crumbs for its members. The AFL-CIO's think tank, the Campaign for America's Future, was used to destroy the single-payer movement... Roger Hickey and Robert Borosage both kept saying, along with their writers on their web site that they continued to support single-payer... anyone can look at the dialog I had with them on their web site--- they called me a liar for saying they were about to sell-out the single-payer movement when in fact Co-chair Roger Hickey had his book at the printers which stated the case for betraying single-payer even as their hacks were denying it.

Now, after selling out and betraying the entire working class, Trumka is crying that Obama and the Democrats want to tax their members' health care benefits... these class collaborationists never learn; or, more appropriately, they have been bought off for the purpose of betraying the entire working class.

Second, liberals, progressives and the left are still in a daze of confusion over Obama really thinking he intends to eventually do something for those other than Wall Street... I have never seen such delusional thinking.

We should be pushing to resolve this healthcare mess by bringing forward a socialized healthcare system which would create between six and ten-million new jobs. Socialized healthcare should be seen as creating jobs to solve the healthcare mess and it should be paid for with the funds saved from stopping these dirty imperialist wars.

Just as Sweeney and Trumka derailed the single-payer movement, Trumka is now setting out to try to prevent a real movement for jobs from developing. Again, labor should be pushing the best jobs creation program possible by fighting for socialized health care--- healthcare and jobs, not wars.

No healthcare, jobs and peace; no votes.

It is called "accountability."

Monday, February 15, 2010

Precinct Caucus Resolution Supporting Affirmative Action

I find it very interesting that the Campaign for America’s Future, like Obama and the Democrats, is evading any discussion about the role of affirmative action.

While doling out funds for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,  Obama never insisted on enforcement of affirmative action. As such, millions of people of color, women and the disabled were denied jobs they were entitled to.

Here is a resolution we passed in Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party precinct caucuses across Minnesota:

Precinct Caucus Resolution Supporting Affirmative Action

Institutionalized racism is still firmly in place and entrenched in all aspects of life Minnesota.

Institutionalized racism has resulted in horrendous and disgraceful unemployment and poverty afflicting communities of people of color far exceeding that of the general population.

No place is the effects of institutionalized racism more evident than in Native American Indian communities and on Indian Reservations.

Affirmative action is the only remedy to discriminatory practices in hiring resulting from institutionalized racism.

State agencies and departments are required by statute to enforce affirmative action in hiring as the way to end historic patterns of discrimination against people of color, women and the disabled.

The required enforcement of affirmative action has not been taking place in Minnesota.

Whereas the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party is not presently on record supporting affirmative action;

Therefore---

Be it resolved the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party supports the strict enforcement of all affirmative action guidelines and policies; and, when missing, but required, affirmative action plans must be drawn up and implemented to become part of all projects in Minnesota--- including as part of the initial planning process and in all stages thereafter.

Be it resolved that Affirmative Action shall become a part of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party’s “Action Agenda” and it shall become the responsibility of all public officials--- elected and appointed--- to see to it that affirmative action is fully enforced on all public works projects and any projects involving public participation by local, state or federal government bodies in Minnesota employing more than ten people and/or involving more than $50,000.00 in public investments.

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
Alternate State Convention Delegate, Roseau County DFL

58891 county Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell Phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Please check out my blog: http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

"SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY REAL ALTERNATIVE"

Statement adopted by the 11th International Meeting of the Communist and Workers' Parties, New Delhi, Nov. 20-22, 2009


This 11th International Meeting of the Communist and Workers' Parties, held to discuss "The international capitalist crisis, the workers' and peoples' struggle, the alternatives and the role of the communist and working class movement":


     - Reiterates that the current global recession is a systemic crisis of capitalism demonstrating its historic limits and the need for its revolutionary overthrow. It demonstrates the sharpening of the main contradiction of capitalism between its social nature of production and individual capitalist appropriation. The political representatives of Capital try to conceal this unsolvable contradiction between capital and labor that lies at the heart of the crisis. This crisis intensifies rivalries between imperialist powers who along with the international institutions - the IMF World Bank, WTO and others - are implementing their `solutions' which essentially aim to intensify capitalist exploitation. Military and political 'solutions' are aggressively pursued globally by imperialism. NATO is promoting a new aggressive strategy. The political systems are becoming more reactionary curtailing democratic and civil liberties, trade union rights etc. This crisis is further deepening the structural corruption under capitalism which is being institutionalized.


     - Reaffirms that the current crisis, probably the most acute and all encompassing since the Great Depression of 1929, has left no field untouched. Hundreds of thousands of factories are closed. Agrarian and rural economies are under distress intensifying misery and poverty of millions of cultivators and farm workers globally. Millions of people are left jobless and homeless. Unemployment is growing to unprecedented levels and is officially expected to breach the 50 million mark. Inequalities are increasing across the globe - the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. More than one billion people, that is one-sixth of humanity go hungry. Youth, women and immigrants are the first victims.


     True to their class nature, the response of the respective capitalist governments to overcome this crisis fails to address these basic concerns. All the neo-liberal votaries and social democratic managers of capitalism, who had so far decried the State are now utilizing the state for rescuing them, thus underlining a basic fact that the capitalist state has always defended and enlarged avenues for super profits. While the costs of the rescue packages and bailouts are at public expense, the benefits accrue to few. The bailout packages announced, are addressed first to rescue and then enlarge profit making avenues. Banks and financial corporates are now back in business and making profits.

Growing unemployment and the depression of real wages is the burden for the working people as against the gift of huge bailout packages for the corporations.


     - Realizes that this crisis is no aberration based on the greed of a few or lack of effective regulatory mechanisms. Profit maximization, the raison d' etre of capitalism, has sharply widened economic inequalities both between countries and within countries in these decades of `globalization'. The natural consequence was a decline in the purchasing power of the vast majority of world population. The present crisis is thus a systemic crisis. This once again vindicates the Marxist analysis that the capitalist system is inherently crisis ridden. Capital, in its quest for profits, traverses boundaries and tramples upon anything and everything. In the process it intensifies exploitation of the working class and other strata of working people, imposing greater hardships. Capitalism in fact requires to maintain a reserve army of labor. The liberation from such capitalist barbarity can come only with the establishment of the real alternative, socialism. This requires the strengthening of anti-imperialist and anti-monopoly struggles. Our struggle for an alternative is thus a struggle against the capitalist system. Our struggle for an alternative is for a system where there is no exploitation of people by people and nation by nation. It is a struggle for another world, a just world, a socialist world.


     - Conscious of the fact that the dominant imperialist powers would seek their way out of the crisis by putting greater burdens on the working people, by seeking to penetrate and dominate the markets of countries with medium and lower level of capitalist development, commonly called developing countries.


     This they are trying to achieve firstly, through the WTO Doha round of trade talks, which reflect the unequal economic agreements at the expense of the peoples of these countries particularly with reference to agricultural standards and Non Agricultural Market Access (NAMA).


     Secondly, capitalism, which in the first place is responsible for the destruction of the environment, is trying to transfer the entire burden of safeguarding the planet from climate change, which in the first place they had caused, onto the shoulders of the working class and working people. Capitalism's proposal for restructuring in the name of climate change has little relation to the protection of the environment. Corporate inspired `Green development' and 'green economy' are sought to be used to impose new state monopoly regulations which support profit maximization and impose new hardships on the people.

Profit maximization under capitalism is thus not compatible with environmental protection and peoples' rights.


     - Notes that the only way out of this capitalist crisis for the working class and the common people is to intensify struggles against the rule of capital. It is the experience of the working class that when it mobilizes its strength and resists these attempts it can be successful in protecting its rights. Industry sit-ins, factory occupations and such militant working class actions have forced the ruling classes to consider the demands of the workers. Latin America, the current theatre of popular mobilizations and working class actions, has shown how rights can be protected and won through struggle. In these times of crisis, once again the working class is seething with discontent. Many countries have witnessed and are witnessing huge working class actions, demanding amelioration. These working class actions need to be further strengthened by mobilizing the vast mass of suffering people, not just for immediate alleviation but for a long-term solution to their plight.


     - Imperialism, buoyed by the demise of the Soviet Union and the periods of boom preceding this crisis had carried out unprecedented attacks on the rights of the working class and the people. This has been accompanied by frenzied anti-communist propaganda not only in individual countries but at global and inter-state forums (EU, OSCE, Council of Europe). However much they may try, the achievements and contributions of socialism in defining the contours of modern civilization remain inerasable. Faced with these relentless attacks, our struggles thus far had been mainly defensive struggles, struggles to protect the rights that we had won earlier. Today's conjuncture warrants the launch of an offensive, not just to protect our rights but win new rights. Not for winning a few rights but for dismantling the entire capitalist edifice - for an onslaught on the rule of capital, for a political alternative - socialism.


     - Resolves that under these conditions, the communist and workers parties shall actively work to rally and mobilize the widest possible sections of the popular forces in the struggle for full time stable employment, exclusively public and free for all health, education and social welfare, against gender inequality and racism, and for the protection of the rights of all sections of the working people including the youth, women, migrant workers and those from ethnic and national minorities.


     - Calls upon the communist and workers parties to undertake this task in their respective countries and launch broad struggles for the rights of the people and against the capitalist system. Though the capitalist system is inherently crisis ridden, it does not collapse automatically. The absence of a communist-led counterattack engenders the danger of rise of reactionary forces. The ruling classes launch an all out attack to prevent the growth of the communists and the workers' parties to protect their status quo. Social democracy continues to spread illusions about the real character of capitalism, advancing slogans such as `humanization of capitalism', `regulation', `global governance' etc. These in fact support the strategy of capital by denying class struggle and buttressing the pursuit of anti-popular policies. No amount of reform can eliminate exploitation under capitalism. Capitalism has to be overthrown. This requires the intensification of ideological and political working class led popular struggles. All sorts of theories like `there is no alternative' to imperialist globalization are propagated. Countering them, our response is `socialism is the alternative'.


     We, the communist and workers' parties coming from all parts of the globe and representing the interests of the working class and all other toiling sections of society (the vast majority of global population) underlining the irreplaceable role of the communist parties call upon the people to join us in strengthening the struggles to declare that socialism is the only real alternative for the future of humankind and that the future is ours.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

The Peace, Jobs and Healthcare Party

This is combined from two posts I made on different people’s facebook pages.

 

Alan L. Maki

Maybe things are too complicated... let's do what Gramsci would do... look for common points of unity with lots of people and put it all together in an organized way for people to understand.


Here is a posting I made on another facebook site... let's see if this merits discussion:


Alan L. Maki... I agree with Jane and John... the thing is, how do we get people together to kick off such a movement?


A while back Terri proposed a "declaration of independence from the democratic party."


We need to have some way to physically bring people together by issuing a call of some kind for the formation of a new party that creates maximum unity around three issues that seem to be on the minds of many people in this country:...

Peace

Jobs

Healthcare

To me it seems like a simple thing... formulate a program that calls for a National Healthcare System (call it socialized healthcare, whatever)... which will create at least 6 million new jobs--- decent jobs with good pay; all paid for by ending these dirty wars... we proclaim our independence from the Democratic Party because they are incapable and unwilling to break with their big-business partners in delivering such a program. We tell the American people this is our program... plain and simple.


Call the party what we are seeking: the Peace, Jobs and Healthcare Party.


We don't have to agree on accomplishing anything else as an electoral coalition... anyone wants something else, they take care of that through their own organizations and build other coalitions.


We could draft a model piece of legislation ready to be introduced by people elected on this platform.


We could put on one heck of a campaign across this country.


We explain to people that Obama's wars are costing them free healthcare and good jobs, and say any country that can squander trillions on wars can provide its own people with jobs providing us all with healthcare.


What is the obstacle to progressive minded people agreeing to take up such a task while declaring our independence from the Democratic Party ?

Friday, February 12, 2010

Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign


Sisters and Brothers of the Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign,

I think your call for this demonstration is a good idea--- long overdue.

I hope you will circulate this letter to all of those associated with this important campaign, including all of the endorsers.

In my opinion you should be advocating for a national public health care system (not just single-payer) because this would also be a massive job creation program.

Your campaign would provide a great opportunity to explain what kind of healthcare reform we really need in this country.

Here is a “letter to the editor” I wrote that was published in over 80 newspapers around the Midwest; this is the one published in the Grand Forks Herald:

Letter to the Editor, Grand Forks Herald; submitted for publication. July 12, 2009

Our country is embroiled in controversy and debate over health care reform. Focus on the purpose of health care has been lost. Health care has two purposes:

1.         Keep people healthy.
2.         Get people well when sick.

Barack Obama and the Democrats have killed single-payer universal health care which was by far the most popular alternative. Now they are confusing the issue with talk about a "public option" when the only real "public option" is something like VA or the Indian Health Service; both of which could be combined and expanded to include everyone under a Public Health Service.

Our public officials squander our limited and scarce resources--- during a period of a crumbling economy--- financing wars in three countries; subsidizing the Israeli military machine; and spending trillions of dollars financing 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil dotting the globe; and then they tell us there is no money for health care. Instead, we should be building 800 public health care centers stretching out across the United States providing a public health care system which includes:

•           No-fees/No premiums
•           Comprehensive   (cradle to grave)
•           All-inclusive   (general, dental, eyes, physical therapy, prescription drugs)
•           Universal   (everybody in; nobody out)
•           Publicly funded
•           Publicly administered
•           Publicly delivered

The United States is the wealthiest country in the world.

We can afford to provide a first-rate, world-class, free public health care system for our own people--- if we get our priorities straight.

We need health care reform based upon: Everybody in; all the profiteers out.

Health care is supposed to be about people, a human right; not about profits.

Representing workers employed in smoke-filled casinos suffering from cancers and heart & lung problems, I know a little something about why we need health care reform now.

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council


I would note that for a completely adequate public health care system, people I know who work in administrative capacities the National Public Health Service and with the Indian Health Service tell me that it would require about 30,000 community health care centers across the United States which would be like satellite branches of these 800 main health care centers--- 17 in each state… we are talking about a massive jobs creation program here. This would be comparable, in jobs creation, to the jobs in public education. We wouldn’t expect a private for-profit school system to educate everyone, why do we expect a for-profit healthcare system to be able to take care of our healthcare requirements when it comes to three-hundred million people?

Figure it out. The American people want jobs. The American people want real health care reform. The American people want peace.

Why shouldn’t the working class be shoving a comprehensive program bundling this altogether to put under Obama’s and the Democrats’ noses?

We are easily talking 8 to 10 million jobs here which I doubt you can get from single-payer although I support single-payer as a step towards a national healthcare program (I was the author of the single-payer universal healthcare resolution which passed with 72% support at the 2006 State Convention of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party [Democratic Party])… 8 to 10 million jobs is quite an incentive to get people demanding peace because cutting this military budget is the only way we are going to get these kinds of programs. In my opinion, the way labor should push this is by saying: We need to begin health care reform with a vastly expanded network of the existing public health care sectors including expanding Medicare, VA, Indian Health Service and the National Public Health Service in order to bring healthcare to the 50 million people in this country who presently have no or inadequate access to health care as we implement a single-payer system like the Canadians have for everyone else until we can phase everyone, beginning with pregnant women and children through age 18, into a national public health care system.

In fact, the single-payer system in Canada was advocated by Tommy Douglas to be a temporary fix until the entire healthcare system became socialized healthcare because as Tommy Douglas so often explained, as long as healthcare is motivated by profits this profiteering would bleed the system to death.

The American people have been denied the opportunity to participate in this healthcare debate because all the facts have been withheld from them… without all the facts it is impossible to participate in the decision-making process so it is up to the working class movements to bring forward real progressive alternatives to this healthcare mess.

To put things in perspective as to why single-payer alone is inadequate, we need to consider that the number of people without access to healthcare in our country is larger than the entire population of Canada.

Not having access to free health care is the price we pay for wars and militarism.

One other suggestion:

I think you need to consider including something in your materials about the need to enforce affirmative action in hiring along with your call for jobs because otherwise poverty is going to continue to mount in communities of people of color where unemployment is already three to six times the national average in these areas. Here in Minnesota, on some Indian Reservations unemployment is as high as 85% with most Reservations having unemployment hovering at 65% and higher… there is no way to explain this deplorable and shameful situation other than failure by local, state and federal governments and their departments and agencies to enforce affirmative action. Former United States Senator Mark Dayton, now running for governor of Minnesota has pointed out that both the Minnesota Department of Transportation and the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development are refusing to implement the affirmative action programs they are mandated by law to enforce… between these two Departments, they oversee the bulk of projects financed with “stimulus funds” under the  American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. I am sure if a study were to be done this would be found to be the case because Barack Obama and his Administration have steadfastly refused to enforce affirmative action so how could it be anything other than an explanation why unemployment has risen so drastically and disproportionately in communities of people of color other than lack of enforcement of affirmative action. People cannot be expected to join the struggle for jobs if they are going to be entering into a “new” era where they are once again “last hired and first fired.”

We should be telling Barack Obama and the Democrats:

No peace; no votes.
No real health care reform; no votes.
No jobs; no votes.

It’s time to look to Canada for more than just healthcare reform; we need to look at the Canadian workers’ NDP as an alternative to this rotten and corrupt two-party trap labor has found itself caught in with Democrats promising anything to get our support, our votes and our money. The New Democratic Party in Canada is backed by the Canadian Labour Congress and its affiliates all across Canada. The NDP government in power is an example of what working people can accomplish. For the life of me, I don’t understand why American labor has not sought out some advice from the new Canadian Ambassador to the United States, Gary Doer, who resigned as the Premier of Manitoba to take his present job. Gary Doer has been a life-long labour leader whose activities fighting for the rights of working people got him elected first as a member of the Provincial Government and then to lead that government which, under his leadership accomplished many important reforms making life better for working people. There is a great deal to be learned from the experience of the Canadian working class having its own political party. Having attended several Canadian Labour Congress national conventions as a guest, I found it very interesting that John Sweeney would speak to the convention delegates lauding their support for the New Democratic Party of Canada but then return to the United States and pretend the NDP does not exist nor inform American workers of the tremendous progress Canadian workers have made through the NDP.

We would have a much different kind of government if progressive-minded workers occupied 25% of the seats in the United States House and Senate along with State Legislatures.

I would note that the New Democratic Party in Canada has its roots in the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party that controlled Minnesota politics for many years with two socialist governors, Floyd Olson and Elmer Benson, and communist United States Congressman John Bernard who went on to become one of the finest trade union organizers in the United States for many years. Floyd Olson became so popular nationally that the intent was to take the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party national with Floyd Olson intending to run against FDR because he was moving too slowly in implementing the New Deal reforms.

In fact, socialized healthcare was supposed to have been a part of the New Deal reforms. Over 70 years later we still don’t have it.

Working people shouldn’t be forced into the position of constantly having to hold up the Dumb Donkeys’ tails having to live on what the sparrows leave behind as Wall Street coupon clippers, vultures and parasites grow fatter and fatter on profits from wars; profits derived from the wealth created by labor.

I am glad to see the diverse support you are gaining for your project.

I have posted the following information on your call to action on my blog and will be posting this entire letter:

Friday, February 12, 2010
South Carolina AFL-CIO Endorses DC March for Jobs, Peace and Justice!

WORKERS EMERGENCY RECOVERY CAMPAIGN

P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140 Tel. (415)
641-8616; fax: (415) 626-1217 email:
wercampaign@gmail.com website: www.wercampaign.org

----------

[please excuse duplicate postings, and please
distribute widely]

Dear Sisters and Brothers:

Rank-and-file unions from various parts of the country,
as well as Central Labor Councils, have been passing
resolutions calling on the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to
organize a massive Solidarity Day III demonstration in
Washington to demand job-creation programs as well as
other programs vital to working people. [See initial
list of endorsers of this call below.]

This campaign just took a qualitative leap forward when
the statewide South Carolina AFL-CIO passed a similar
resolution, which you will find below.

These resolutions have a receptive audience. AFL-CIO
President Richard Trumka recently argued: "It's not
time to leave it to any political party to take care of
us once we put them in office. It's time to organize
and mobilize as never before to make every elected or
aspiring leader PROVE he or she will create the jobs we
need in an economy we need with the healthcare we need.
I know we are the people who can mobilize a massive
army to force elected leaders to deliver."

Together, these developments signal that now is the
time to act. We want to encourage all of you to raise
similar resolutions in your union locals and
labor/community organizations. Every resolution will
help, and any single resolution might just provide the
essential tipping point that results in a nationwide
call for a Solidarity Day III demonstration.

Every recent poll has concluded that job loss is the
top concern of the American public. If we succeed in
winning a call for Solidarity Day III march in
Washington, this diffuse sentiment will achieve
concrete expression in the streets as working people
across the country mobilize under the banner of a
demand for job-creation programs, single-payer
healthcare, an end to home foreclosures and evictions
and war, money for education and vital social services,
and so on.

The labor movement in this country represents the
interests of the majority of the people in this
country. The bankers do not. We have a solemn duty to
press for Solidarity Day III so that the collective
voice of the majority of working people can be heard
across the nation.

In Solidarity,

Alan Benjamin and Bill Leumer WERC Co-Conveners

********************

SOUTH CAROLINA AFL-CIO
Post Office Box 39
Swansea, S.C. 29160

* (803) 798-8300 * Toll free 866-798-8300 *
FAX (803) 798-2231 * E-Mail: scaflcio@bellsouth.net
----------

Resolution in Support of a Labor-Sponsored March on
Washington WHEREAS in the aftermath of the
Massachusetts special senatorial election, AFL-CIO
President Richard Trumka issued a statement declaring,
"It's time to organize and mobilize as never before to
make every elected or aspiring leader PROVE he or she
will create the jobs we need in an economy we need with
the healthcare we need. I know we are the people who
can mobilize a massive army to force elected leaders to
deliver;" and

WHEREAS despite the so-called economic recovery, the
economic crisis for working people has continued
unabated, with growing unemployment and
underemployment, rising home foreclosures and
evictions, and the underfunding of public education and
vitally needed social services; and

WHEREAS the government has bestowed billions of bailout
dollars on the financial institutions whose
recklessness and greed created this economic crisis and
who are rewarding those responsible with obscene
gigantic bonuses; and WHEREAS the labor movement's
legislative priorities -- a massive program for jobs,
true universal healthcare, and enactment of the
Employee Free Choice Act -- are all in great peril; and

WHEREAS while the government has no problem allocating
a trillion dollars for two wars thousands of miles
away, it has not committed funds critically needed to
put America back to work, with healthcare and quality
education for all; and

WHEREAS right wing, anti-labor forces, such as the Tea
Bag movement, have brought hundreds of thousands of
people into the streets to advance their reactionary
demands; and WHEREAS there is a growing movement within
the House of Labor to counter the right-wing offensive
against workers' living standards with our own massive
mobilization; and

WHEREAS various union bodies, including the South Bay
Labor Council (CA), acting on a resolution submitted by
Plumbers and Fitters Local 393, Troy Area Labor Council
(NY), and the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO,
have adopted resolutions calling upon the AFL-CIO and
Change to Win to organize a Solidarity Day III March on
Washington D.C. in the spring of 2010 to demand jobs,
healthcare, housing, full funding for public education
and social services, and peace; now therefore be it

RESOLVED that the South Carolina AFL-CIO joins with our
brothers and sisters in calling for a labor-sponsored
march on Washington for jobs, peace and justice, which
would have the capability of mobilizing the kind of
massive army Brother Trumka spoke of; and be it finally
RESOLVED that a copy of this resolution be sent to the
AFL-CIO and to Change to Win. (Adopted by the SC AFL-
CIO Executive Board  -  February 2nd, 2010)

********************

Initial list of endorsers of Call for a Labor-Sponsored
Demonstration in Washington for Jobs, Peace and Justice

- South Carolina State AFL-CIO - San Francisco Labor
Council - South Bay Labor Council (San Jose, Calif.) -
San Mateo Central Labor Council - Hartford (CT) Central
Labor Council - Troy (NY) Central Labor Council - AFT
Local 1021 (Los Angeles) - Executive Council, AFT
Missouri - California Peace and Freedom Party - Harlem
Tenants Council - Harlem Antiwar Coalition - Bay Area
Labor Committee for Peace and Justice - Ohio State
Labor Party - Railroad Workers United - Painters and
Dry Wall workers Local  93 (Bay Area)

- Glen Ford (Black Agenda Report) - Donna Smith,
American SiCKO, American Patients United - Harry Kelber
(Labor Educator) - Sharon Black (Organizer, Bail Out
the People Movement) - Monadel Herzallah (Arab American
Union Members Council) - Andy Griggs (UTLA member) -
Don Bechler (chair, Single Payer Now!) - Larry Duncan
(Labor Beat-Chicago) - Allan Fisher (AFT 2121) - Fred
Hirsch (South Bay Labor Council) - Jerry Gordon (Ohio
State Labor Party) - Bill Balderston (Bay Area Labor
Committee for Peace and Justice)

WERC Interim National Committee Members:

- Kali Akuno, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Gulf Coast
Reconstruction activist - Alan Benjamin,* Executive
Committee member, San Francisco Labor Council - Mike
Carano, Progressive Democrats of America - Colia Clark,
Veteran, Civil Rights Movement - Donna Dewitt*,
President, South Carolina AFL-CIO - Pat Gowens,
National organizer, Welfare Warriors - Bill Leumer,*
International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 853
(ret.) - Luis Maga
a, Coordinator, Organization of
Farmworkers of California (OTAC) - Cynthia McKinney,
Former Member of Congress, 2009 Green Party
presidential candidate - Jack Rasmus, Economist,
Professor at St. Mary's College - Al Rojas,
Coordinator, Frente de Mexicanos en el Exterior - Marc
Rich, United Teachers of Los Angeles - Cindy Sheehan,
Gold Star mother, antiwar activist - Clarence Thomas,
Member, ILWU Local 10 - Mark Vorpahl*, SEIU Local 49,
Portland, OR - Nancy Wohlforth*, Co-Pres., Pride at
Work/AFL-CIO, Vice Pres.,California Federation of Labor
Posted by Alan L. Maki at 12:42 PM



Yours in struggle and solidarity,

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell Phone: 651-587-5541


Please check out my blog: http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Let’s talk about the politics and economics of livelihood for real change.