About
From Self-managed Solidarity Unionism to a
Self-managed Society (from ZNet, June 15, 2009)
Social Anarchism, Individualist Anarchism,
the State and Leninism: A Libertarian Critique of
Capitalism
Workers Power
and the Spanish Revolution (in HTML) Aug. 2006
Anti-displacement Victory in San Francisco (in PDF)
Workers' Liberation and Institutions of
Self-management in The Northeastern Anarchist #11, March 2006
San Francisco Transit
Fight
What is Gentrification? (revised 2004)
Slaughterhouse Fight: A Look at the
Hormel Strike (from ideas &
action 1986) (with Jake Edwards and Steve Boyce)
Workers Power and the Russian Revolution Revolution and Syndicalism (Part 1)
The Capitalist City or the Self-managed City? 2004
States of Affairs The Hidden Cost of the New Economy: A Study of the Northeast Mission
Industrial Zone
[In HTML]
[[In PDF]
Origins of the Union Shop (1989)
Life at the Bay Guardian (1987)
|
Challenges in an Era of AusterityCapitalism is based on oppression and exploitation of labor and is also an extractive system where profits are derived from plunder of the earth and shifting of pollution and other environmental costs onto others. Both of these aspects of capitalism are generating increasingly severe problems in the present period. Vast unemployment, huge numbers of home foreclosures, and a widespread fiscal crisis of the state are symptoms of the economic crisis. Radical economists usually distinguish two kinds of economic downturns. First, there are the recessions that are part of the normal business cycle. And then there are less frequent "structural" crises that reflect more deep-seated problems. The present epic recession seems to be a severe structural crisis. The economic crisis does not give any sign of ending any time soon. Huge numbers of people have been out of work now for record lengths of time. There are six unemployed for every job opening. The real unemployment rate is somewhere between 16 and 19 percent and much higher in African-American communities. More houses continue to fall into foreclosure. 140 banks collapsed last year and 110 so far this year. The FDIC has another 775 banks on its endangered list. Although the big banks sit on a cash hoard of $1 trillion, the IMF estimates their bad assets at $2 trillion. Lending to small to medium-sized businesses has dried up. Vacant Hotel OccupiedOn July 19th members of Direct Action to Stop the Cuts occupied a vacant 41-room hotel in San Francisco's Mission District. The action was intended to demonstrate the city's inaction on housing. While thousands of people sleep on the streets or live in very crowded living conditions in small apartments, potential housing units sit vacant.Victory in Fight for Union Freedom in GermanyThe FAU has won its appeal on the right to call itself a "union". The appeals court based on its decision on freedom of speech, that people have a right to express their opinion of what a "union" is. The FAU points out, however, that they are still up against the German laws that make it illegal to engage in any direct action if you can't prove you have the power to negotiate contracts with employers. Members of the FAU in Berlin previously were fined and jailed for their boycott campaign against Babylon Cinema. Review: International Socialist Review on "Contemporary Anarchism"The word "anarchism" is a rather vague word that covers such a wide variety of political views and approaches it is often hard to see how they have anything in common. This means it is also probably not very productive to produce "critiques" of anarchism that lump the many different viewpoints together. This problem is on display in the most recent critique of "contemporary anarchism" offered up by the International Socialist Organization in their magazine ISR. A weakness of the article is that it offers only brief pit stops at the various anarchist or libertarian socialist tendencies. Fight for Union Freedom in GermanyA struggle by the workers at the New Babylon Cinema in Berlin — a relatively small firm — has now blown up into a fight with much larger legal consequences for German workers. A December 11, 2009 court edict in Berlin now poses some serious questions: Will German workers have the legal right to a union of their own choosing? Will they have the legal right to form grassroots alternative unions? Chinatown land trust helps low-income housingBy Cory Paul (San Francisco Chronicle) Just a few years ago, floor boards popped up as Ji Jian-guang walked across his cramped Chinatown apartment. His wife, Ru Mei Peng, washed vegetables in a sink the size of a shoe box. Their two adult sons — along with a daughter-in-law and grandbaby — shared a bedroom split by a bookcase. Though cramped, 53 Columbus, Room 108, was home. For nearly a decade, the Jis feared they would lose it to encroaching developers. Tenants Celebrate Conversion of Building to CooperativeMore than 200 people attended a victory celebration June 16th in San Francisco for a group of tenacious tenants who successfully fought their eviction and now are in control of their building through their coop, the Columbus United Cooperative, at 53 Columbus Avenue. This struggle goes back more than a decade ago when the San Francisco Community College District bought a 3-story brick apartment building with the aim of knocking it down to build a new community college campus. From Self-managed Solidarity Unionism to a Self-managed SocietyWhen Marx drew up a draft set of principles for the first International Working Men's Association (the “First International”) in the 1860s, he began with the statement: “The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves.” Capitalism is built on various forms of oppression and structural inequality. But the subordination and exploitation of the working class remains at the heart of the system. A liberatory program and strategy for a remake of society needs to explain how workers can escape the class cage. The Shared Equity Solution: A Working Class Program for Housing
Since the 1980s efforts to increase homeownership among working class people with lower incomes have included government downpayment assistance programs and attacks on "redlining" practices of banks in communities of color. As banks sought to expand their mortgage business, they increasingly pushed lower income residents into risky adjustable rate mortgages and mortgages with baloon payments. Studies have shown that many people who were directed towards risky loans would in fact have qualified for less risky mortgages. This did lead to a small increase in the rate of homeownership — from 64 percent in 1985 to 69 percent in 2004 (58 percent in California). Homeownership has been promoted as providing more security than renting since you own and control your own dwelling. But the security becomes illusory when high debt and risky loans drive households into foreclosure. And an epidemic of foreclosures de-stabilizes working class neighborhoods as large numbers of families lose their home. |
Links
|
