“To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself.” —Karl Marx In 2014, I managed a seemingly crazy move, against all odds, and with literally no chance of success: I ran for governor in the most populous, costliest, and economically divided state in the country, California. I decided to do this at a time when every political party and movement in the U.S. was steeped in crisis. When society was rent with irreparable economic and political ruptures, including a massive mortgage and financial calamity that began in 2008. When archaic
We are not in any position to stick our heads in the sand and wait for this storm to pass. For many of us that’s a practical impossibility as well as a moral and political one. But it would be just as irresponsible to lose focus and let ourselves be led along by events instead of using this moment to lead and forge new leaders.
Luis J. Rodriguez What stories, thinking, and organizational forms are needed for the chaotic political times we are in? There are thousands of ideas flaunted everywhere, especially on the internet, with or without any basis in truth or facts, ideas from the most reactionary to the most visionary. Which of these will take hold among the most exploited and oppressed of this country—and the world—as they move to break the chains on labor, creativity, minds, and hearts? We are in “pregnant” times—something vital, encompassing, and whole is trying to be born, even as the old capitalist relations and structures are
Noam Sandweiss-Back During the 1970s and 1980s, a wide and diverse socialist movement emerged across the United States. Known as the New Communist Movement, it encompassed tens of thousands of revolutionary organizers who were inspired by popular revolutions across the globe and committed to building working-class power at home. One of the many groups involved was the Worker’s Viewpoint Organization, later renamed the Communist Worker’s Party (CWP). The CWP organized across racial lines and among the working class in communities and industrial settings throughout the country. They were also the target of a brutal and infamous massacre that left five
By The Rev. Sarah Monroe, Chaplains on the Harbor Gustavo Gutierrez, famed as the founder of liberation theology, believed that all theology must begin with praxis.[1] That is, theology should only be done from the ground up, starting from the experience of the poor. We cannot talk about God, truly, unless we listen to the voices of the poor and we cannot do theology except from the context of their experience. I work in a specific context. I work in the rural United States, in Grays Harbor County in Washington State, where deindustrialization has fueled the rise of incarceration and
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The economic crisis throughout the world, including the US, continues to unfold, and the outline of a political crisis in the US is beginning to emerge. It is becoming urgent for those of us who see the necessity of fundamental societal change to deepen our understanding of how and why societies change. This demands we turn to the study and the further development of Marxist thought.It is impossible to have an in-depth understanding of the world we live in today without developing an understanding of, at least, the basics of Marxist philosophy. As Harry Selsam and Harry Martel put it in Reader in Marxist Philosophy, Marx and Engels believed “philosophy, in the old sense of the term, had come to an end, and that the solutions offered by conventional philosophy, brilliant as many of them were, were nevertheless infected with an alienation from reality. The time had come, they maintained, for the emergence of a new type of philosopher, one whose feet were on the ground, and who regarded the social practice of mankind as both the source of philosophical concepts and the criterion of their truth.” These “new philosophers” were not inventing or discovering anything, but rather only giving expression to the actual realities of the world as it existed.
The dispossessed of this nation — the poor, both white and Negro — live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty.The only real revolutionary, people say, is a man who has nothing to lose. There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life.Rev. Dr. King wrote these words for a series of lectures he gave in December of 1967. The passage is one of the clearest statements of how he saw America’s political and economic situation at that time; as well as the vision and strategy behind his call for a Poor People’s Campaign. Looking closely at it can help us understand that vision and strategy, especially the idea that the poor — as a united social force — can and must lead the rest of our society.That idea is more true today than ever. The current technological revolution is transforming every part of the economy all over the world. Because of our “cruelly unjust” class-based society, this revolution is bringing more poverty and violence instead of shared wealth. The poor are feeling the effects first: they’re becoming totally unnecessary, from the perspective of those who own and control the economy. This puts them in position to lead the “middle class” to political independence and clarity, as they face the trauma and fear of downward mobility.
Recently Alex Kogan of the University of the Poor interviewed Erica Nanton. Erica Nanton is a Miami-born and Chicago-based organizer, community leader and activist in the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. She has worked on initiatives in Chicago around education justice, police accountability, and racial and economic justice, as well as national work to hold those in power accountable. She was part of the struggle to raise the Cook County minimum wage to $13 per hour, and marched for 200 miles over 15 days in May 2017 from Chicago to Springfield, IL to fight for a People and Planet First Budget. A member of the Local School Council at Southside Occupational Academy, her recent work includes registering inmates to vote at Cook County jail as part of Chicago Votes, where she served as a Community Engagement Manager. She works with a coalition of students, parents and teachers from Englewod, IL who are fighting the closure of public high schools in their area. She is currently a co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign in Illinois. At the time of the interview, Erica had just returned from speaking at a conference of the Bermuda Union of Teachers.
La Campaña Nacional de la Gente Pobre: Un Llamado para el Renacimiento de la Moral, de la cual la Dra. Liz Theoharis y el Dr. William Barber son los co-directores, no solamente conmemora el 50 aniversario de la Campaña de la Gente Pobre del Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Es una Nueva Campaña de la Gente Pobre para hoy en día. Jamás ha sido tan necesitada una campaña como esta, y los co-directores están sumamente calificados para estar al frente de un movimiento nacional e histórico. El Reverendo Dr. Barber, quien escribió el prólogo al libro de Theoharis, proviene de la Asociación Nacional por el Avance del Pueblo de Color (NAACP, por sus siglas en inglés) de North Carolina, donde dirigía un movimiento de los pobres en defensa de sus propios intereses que es multi-racial, multi-étnico y multi-todo. La Reverenda Dra. Theoharis ha pasado las últimas dos décadas de su vida organizando entre los pobres en los EEUU y através del mundo. Juntos han viajado por más de 20 estados, organizando a los pobres.
In all the long duration of human history, from the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt to the glistening towers of our coastal megapolises, there has never been a crisis as severe, as devastating, or as cataclysmic as the one unfolding now. Unless drastic changes are made in very short order to the human social system that encompasses the planet, dire and frightening transformations that cannot be reversed will develop in the Earth's climate, its ocean, and its biosphere. Never has a generation faced a challenge of this magnitude. The fate of all present and future humans, and of the millions of species that share the Earth with us, now hinges on the choices and actions taken immediately by the present generation alive on the planet today.
