The Warm Sunny Day of the KI EcoCEnter vs. the Dark Frigid Night of the IPJC

 

The contrast between these two Indianapolis groups couldn’t be starker: on the one hand the KI EcoCenter, a vibrant community meeting place and advocacy/dialogue center in Indianapolis’ Near North Side neighborhood that is multi-racial, regularly schedules interesting events that are open to the public (and attract that public), and actively promotes programs that benefit the Near North Side community and actually empower youth, who make up much of its activist backbone; and on the other hand, the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center (IPJC), a hoary, moribund, top-down group of mostly septuagenarian and even octogenarian religious pacifists concentrated in a Board of Directors which makes all decisions without allowing anything but the most token participation or input from its “grassroots” members, hosts public events so rarely that they only occur once in a decade (the IPJC sponsored a forum on mental health in February 2001; its next event, aside from regular meetings, was co-sponsored with the local Veterans for Peace and a few others was in August 2012), holds dry-as-dust monthly meetings that are almost farcical, and whose only public face is the eight-page quarterly “newspaper,” the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal, which is a disgrace to journalism.  I know—I’ve attended meetings of, participated in, both organizations, and even wrote for the Journal, which never could ever muster what it took to actually be a real newspaper.

Another contrast: the KI EcoCenter actually tries to do what its program says it is about, and succeeds; the IPJC only tries half-heartedly at best to implement its program, and almost never succeeds—and when it does technically succeed, such as in publishing the Journal approximately on time every quarter (when once it published monthly except for the summer issue, which was bimonthly), the ensuing product is so bad it is not to be taken seriously.

In fact, publishing the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal is now the IPJC’s only raison d’être; it long ago gave up serious outreach to the broader Indianapolis community on peace and justice issues, chiefly because it only talked to those who were already committed religious pacifists—no secularists, atheist or agnostics allowed, please; and certainly no one who only opposed certain wars of the U.S. that lacked justification, such as Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan either, please.  If you thought World War II might have been necessary to stop Hitler, or that the Civil War was perhaps the only way to end the plague of slavery, get out now!

And also, be sure to uncritically embrace Martin Luther King and Gandhi; but stop sharply right there, don’t go on to see merit in Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, or Fidel Castro, and don’t even consider that Marxism might have more relevance to today’s problems than pacifist theology!

Ah, but such is the official stance of the IPJC—never stated as bluntly as this, of course, because the IPJC like vagueness in words and action, and would rather engage in a soporific symbolic action that shows just how pure it is, and would never even consider doing something that might upset a good churchman or churchwoman.  With the IPJC in action well represented directly in all its “activity” every Friday afternoon in Indianapolis across from the new federal building—by three or maybe four lonesome pacifists standing on the corner holding Peace signs, and never going beyond that.  And it’s been that way now for well over two decades, as what was once fresh grew moribund and moss-covered due to lack of imagination and fear of “contamination” by those non-religious and non-pacifist, no matter how committed they might be to actually achieving peace with social justice.  But if they wished to do so through action that that was direct and forceful, and not confined merely to symbolic “witnessing,” the dominant religious pacifist claque of mutual admirers made sure they were not welcomed or accepted.

It wasn’t always this way in the IPJC, as there was diversity and ferment in Indianapolis in the 1980s, a willingness to experiment, stretch boundaries and destroy Indianapolis’ image as the place where nothing happened outside of the big Indy 500 race.  But that changed when Jane Haldeman, so devoted a Quaker pacifist she was blind to anything and everything else, gained paramount influence in the organization and quickly turned the IPJC into a rest home for her fellow Quakers and Quaker co-thinkers, with no dissent or difference allowed lest it disturb the Quaker notion of “consensus.”  That “consensus,” enforced by the iron hand of ostracism toward all who thought differently, became the norm among Indianapolis “progressives,” as it naturally fit their already-existing timidity.  And so, from the early 1990s on, interrupted only by a flurry of activity at the new millennium that soon petered out, hidebound religious-oriented “consensus” laid its stifling hand on everything else that might have otherwise emerged.  When a group of feisty young anarchists founded an independent left bookstore, Solidarity Books, the “respectable progressives” moved to stanch it by hook or crook.  A longstanding rumor has it that the anonymous phone call that brought a police raid on the Solidarity Books collective house in search of a nonexistent cache of weapons had been placed by a certain leading member of the IPJC.  This person gets indignant over the accusation, but has never denied it, even privately.  As it was, the Solidarity Books was forced to totally disband by 2005, with its members dispersing in chagrin and disgust, and a youth movement of radical activists never again emerging in Indianapolis until the Occupy movements swept the nation.  From which the old “progressives” were all conspicuous by their absence across the board—socialists, pacifists, labor people, all noticeably absent except for a few token people who never stayed around too long.  Such is the legacy of the IPJC.

By contrast, the KI EcoCenter has only been around since 2005, in contradistinction to the IPJC’s being around since 1986.  In 2009 it founded the 317 Media Café and public space in a former grocery store that abandoned the neighborhood, and continued to build from this ever on.  The Media Café now houses an alternative school that serves more than just “special needs” children, has a regular program menu of community forums, films and even a monthly open mic talent night; in all of which youth play a prominent and self-directing role, not being mere “fronts” for the adults controlling things from behind.  I’ve been to four of the KI EcoCenter’s events to date, and can attest to the enthusiasm and vitality that permeates the Center, and to the high quality of its programs.  Though little-known, the KI EcoCenter represents that positive direction which this veteran activist of peace and social justice movements would like to see permeate Indianapolis.  I discovered it through serendipity, a chance invitation by a friend on Facebook to a forum on community job creation, and once present, was immediately and enthusiastically hooked.  This was the vibrancy I had once briefly seen in Indianapolis in the 1980s, and again, also briefly, in the Solidarity Books collective of the early new millennium.  But the KI EcoCenter has had a staying power now for seven years, and seems to be not only well established, but also having lost none of its vigor over time.  It is just an exciting place to visit, and the earnestness of the Near North Side neighborhood participants, overwhelmingly young and great-majority black, rubs off on me every time I attend a function there.  It is as addicting as heroin, as sweet as chocolate, and far healthier than either: for who would ever have thought that, this far removed from the synergistic 1960s, such movement and energy was still going on!

Each time I’ve visited the EcoCenter I’ve noticed the active participation of two older adults—Paulette, the Director, and M., both appearing to be in their late fifties.  But the vast majority of the other participants are young people from late childhood into their twenties, overwhelmingly black residents of the neighborhood, and they do the key work and run the show.  Paulette and M. guide and encourage, offer lead at times but never dominate, but draw out from the young participants instead.  So when the KI EcoCenter says it is about youth empowerment, it’s not jivin’!  It is a powerful living example of the best in Black Nationalism, a real adherence to and practicing of its motto, “Self-empowerment through self-mastery,” and is the kind of community-focused self-help that Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, or the young Black Power activists of SNCC in the 1960s would see as living embodiments of their social philosophy.  Not that persons of other races don’t participate, or are not encouraged to—quite the opposite.  The KI EcoCenter, situated in a mixed-race neighborhood that is predominantly black, is foremost about the empowerment of the whole community, not just of some within it.  The first time I attended a KI EcoCenter event, a community jobs forum, the four panelists were comprised of two white persons and two black persons, all residents and activists in the Near North Side neighborhood.  And following the showing the presentation of the PBS documentary, “So Goes Janesville,” on the economic devastation and search for development alternatives following the closing of the GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, was one of the most impressive panels I’ve ever seen—one comprised entirely of black youth aged 16, 13, and even as young as 10, all of whom spoke intelligently on the film and ably fielded probing questions from the adults in the audience.  Even the ten-year-old girl displayed knowledge and self-confidence!  The KI Eco Center is truly an exciting find for me, and I am hoping it can serve as a model that will spread to other Indianapolis neighborhoods.  I hope I am indeed seeing the future of positive social justice empowerment there, just as I hope that in the IPJC I see the dying gasps of an all-too-moribund past that lived far, far beyond its usefulness and appropriateness.  (The KI EcoCenter also has a website, www.kiecocenter.org.)

A couple of weeks ago the Fall 2012 issue of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal came out, the first under its new editor, old IPJC hand Carl Rising-Moore; and though I am used by now to seeing dismal issues of this paper, this is the worst issue yet.  Under rising-Moore’s aegis, the Journal shifted from being a forum which provided space for developing local writers to being a compendium of articles already on the Internet, striking a blow both against relevancy and for redundancy.  With a layout designed by another IPJC old hand, Jim Wolfe, it’s also the worst-appearing issue of the Journal yet, with an eye-averting appearance that’s as attractive and enticing as the prospect of sitting in the hot August sun watching paint dry!  Cronyism dominated the editorial selections by Rising-Moore, who posted two pieces by Jim Wolfe, in addition to having Wolfe do the layout—for which he also received credit.  Both the Wolfe pieces were silly: there was a sentimental poem about his wife, and a horrible article about gender and diversity that begins with a description of Jim Wolfe actually teaching his university class on Gender Day dressed up drag in traditional woman’s garb and mincing like a cartoon caricature of that “traditional” woman.  If I had been in Wolfe’s class as a student when he pulled such a shenanigan, I would’ve walked out in disgust and headed immediately to his department chairman’s office insistently demanding he be fired!  For some reason Jim Wolfe is proud of such a gross display of conduct unbecoming a true university professor (Wolfe regularly teaches at a local university).

Another bad article by a local author in the Journal is Ed Towne’s on guns in Indianapolis, which aside from relating a shooting incident in Indianapolis that demonstrates more stupidity than gun violence—a man actually attempted an armed robbery at gunpoint of Don’s Guns!—had no other local content whatsoever, just generalities on guns and gun control of a generic nature.  Except for one glaring error—Towne’s article has George Zimmerman fatally shooting Trayvon Martin in Indianapolis, not in Sanford, Florida, where this nationally-notorious shooting actually occurred!  Why Rising-Moore or someone else who was putting together the issue didn’t notice this blatant typo is beyond me; or perhaps it’s not—the Journal has always displayed such troubling unprofessionalism that it’s regularly referred to (and all these are comments I’ve actually received concerning the Journal) as “lame,” a “boring rag” and “looks like middle school.”

Despite my active career as a freelance writer who regularly publishes at the national level, Carl Rising-Moore has seen fit to bar me permanently from contributing to the Journal because an article I submitted was an alleged “personal attack” on one of his cronies, local Veterans for Peace President Ken Barger.  But of course, given his sanctimonious pacifism, Rising-Moore can’t just turn down a submission, he has to personalize my very submitting of the article in the first place—a sure-fire demonstration of personal pique triumphing over any notion of professionalism. So bad it’s even worse than amateurishness—it’s downright childish!  But again, that’s the IPJC and the way it actually is.  As for my “personal attack,” what I actually wrote was a scathing critique not of Barger himself, but of his truly naïve and childish notion of the “peaceful society” that was published in the Summer 2012 issue of the Journal—where somehow Barger’s idea of the “peaceful society” is akin to that of AT&T or a credit card company; i.e., one of compulsory arbitration to “benefit all parties concerned…where protest is not even needed[.]”  Indeed!  Well, I’ll let the reader of “Politically Incorrect Leftist” judge for himself whether I’ve personally attacked Barger or merely his ideas.  The piece in question, “The ‘Peaceful Society’ and Social Reality” is posted as another blog entry directly below this one.

The “Peaceful Society” and Social Reality

This entry was originally submitted to the new editor of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal, Carl Rising-Moore, who not only rejected it but called it a “personal attack” on Indianapolis Veterans for Peace President Ken Barger, barred me from ever writing for the Journal under his watch, and said further that he would never, ever, answer an e-mail from me!  Geez, Carl!  A really professional editor would’ve written back that the piece was simply not deemed acceptable for publication, and left it at that.  But of course, Carl Rising-Moore is not a professional editor, nor even anyone with extensive editing or writing experience.  He’s written perhaps two or three articles for the Journal in the last couple of years, all of them accepted for publication because the editors in charge were all his personal friends and fellow members of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center (IPJC) Board; to say the relationship was incestuous and self-serving from the beginning might be a severe understatement!  But I will let the reader judge for him/herself whether I am personally attacking Barger, or merely sharply critiquing a horribly bad notion of a “peaceful society” that Barger developed and published as “What is a Peaceful Society?” in the Summer 2012 issue of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal.   

 

Ken Barger, President of the Indianapolis Veterans for Peace, wrote in the lead article of the Summer 2012 Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal the following on what a “peaceful society” supposedly is:

What kind of society automatically looks for solutions to disagreements and conflicts that benefit all parties concerned…where protest is not even needed? [Emphasis added; otherwise, text is as originally written.]

 

Only a pacifist utopia would fit that bill, and it will never be realized.  Won’t be realized because of what Karl Marx, simply noting and profoundly elaborating on what had already been observed by others going back to Adam Smith and even before, already knew and thoroughly demonstrated—that there was (and still is) an irreconcilable class conflict between the workers (those who actually produce the goods and services that constitute societal wealth, who constitute the vast majority of us) and the capitalists (the tiny minority who expropriate those goods and services to themselves for sale for profit because of “ownership of the means of production”), with the workers given only a measly portion of this wealth through wages.   As to “benefit” to “all parties concerned,” the Preamble to the Industrial Workers of the World (the famed IWW) Constitution said it succinctly:  “The working class and the employer class have nothing in common.”

Barger is back to the Book of Isaiah, where “the lion shall lie down with the lamb;” but such lying down, let’s admit realistically, won’t prevent the lamb from becoming the lion’s dinner!  Yet, according to Barger, we can create a world of “solutions to disagreements and conflicts” where Occupy activists will sit at the table and politely discuss matters of disagreement with Wall Street bankers;  protestors from the left can amicably work things out with Tea Partiers; unemployed African Americans and low-wage Hispanics can be considered equals by John Boehner and Eric Cantor; and hard-pressed union members and other workers, not to mention the unemployed, can talk things over with Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and agree to disagree on matters of “disagreement and conflict” such as Right to Work, the 25% cut in unemployment benefits, and defunding Planned Parenthood! [Daniels signed all the above into law.]

This could go even further.  Gay rights activists and feminist women, not to mention all women who use birth control or even had abortions, can come to mutual agreement with the Catholic bishops!  So, of course, can the victims of priest-pedophilia; and of course, in the spirit of “Christian charity” the victims of Jerry Sandusky’s sexual predation will all say to him, “That’s alright, Jerry, it’s all over now.  Forget it.”!!!

As for a “society where protest is not even needed,” that’s just what the Southern crackers told Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights marchers and sit-downers:  “protest isn’t needed” to resolve the matter of race and “state’s rights” because the status quo is just fine!  The Republicans said the same thing to Occupy Wall Street, and such a luminary as Herman Cain, “successful” philanderer as well as successful businessman, even said to Occupy Wall Streeters, don’t protest, “take a bath” and “get a job” instead!

All this that Barger envisions as the “peaceful society” flows so nicely from pacifist theology, all those nice nostrums of “harmony” that Quakers, Brethren and Mennonites so eloquently preach!  Only trouble is, pacifism doesn’t work so well.  Just ask the veterans of World War II, who had to fight Hitler for years in fierce combat because all those pacifist actions (or rather, inactions), from not responding to Nazi Germany’s building up its military all the way up to Neville Chamberlain’s capitulation to Hitler at Munich, only emboldened, not mollified or pacified, the Führer.  At least 217 Civil Rights workers were killed by the racists during the “nonviolent” attempt to end segregation and Jim Crow in the South in the 1960s.  From India to Sharpeville in South Africa, nonviolent protestors were mowed down by the forces of the repressive state.  That nonviolent action gained what it did is a testimony to the firmness, courage and strength of the nonviolent activists, not to some supposed benevolence or “warming of the heart” of the rulers and their satraps in the state apparatus.  (See in particular on this George Fish’s “Slandering Nonviolence” in New Politics online, http://newpol.org/node/510, an updated version of the article that originally appeared in the October 2008 Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal.)

What Ken Barger, whether he’s religious or not, denotes so well above is really that “heart of a heartless world” nature of religion that was acutely recognized by—yes, none other than Karl Marx himself!  (In “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.”)  But the same Marx who noted this also noted that this “heart of a heartless world” was also the “opium of the people,” that it comforted and quieted the oppressed, same as opium, with soporific dreams that had nothing to do with reality, but only offered temporary escape from it.  Which is precisely the rub when it comes to Ken Barger’s vision of the “peaceful society”: it is just too unsubstantial to be real, and thus is not realizable, no matter how hard we may try.

That was brought out forcefully in Fran Quigley’s speech on “What Is the Peaceful Society?” of August 4, 2012.  Quigley, Clinical Professor of Law at the Health & Human Rights Clinic, Robert H. McKinney School of Law, Indiana University-Indianapolis, delivered his speech at an event co-sponsored by the IPJC and Veterans for Peace for which Barger’s article was an advertisement and a preface.  I originally attended this event with trepidation; but to my joyous surprise, Quigley’s speech was not only far, far better than Barger’s article, it was also noteworthy and memorable in itself, and made for an enlightening evening. Quigley took John Lennon’s song “Imagine” as his starting point in defining what a “peaceful society” is, and went through the song line by line drawing parallels between Lennon’s imagery and the actual criteria for such a society. Further, Quigley pointedly noted that all we would regard as de rigueur for a “peaceful society”—an end to racial and gender discrimination, equal rights to voting and political participation, rights for labor—came not through the end of protest, but through protest itself, because of, as a result of, protest. So that achieving a modicum of the “peaceful society” in the first place belies the very notion of Barger’s “protest not even needed” from the beginning—though the proponents of the status quo would agree with Barger’s notion that “protest”was indeed “not…needed”! In other words, the social gains needed for the “peaceful society” all had to be fought for. Further, as was directly said by Fran Quigley, “There is no peaceful society without economic justice!” Which is to say, there is no possibility of a“peaceful society” without overthrowing, drastically changing, the status quo of oppression, which has certain strong supporters with power, for oppression is to their advantage. If this seems to be Marx’s idea of the ruling class, so be it; history and the present have taught us well that that is the social, political and economic reality. The great 19^th Century abolitionist and supporter of women’s suffrage (who lived in a time when both slavery and the denial of the right to vote to women were the “law of the land”in the U.S.), Frederick Douglass, put it definitively: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will.” But demands must be realized—and that happens only through the process of confronting power, i.e., struggle. Struggle in which nonviolence can be an effective tool in the arsenal of those who challenge such power, but struggle nonetheless. It moves beyond simply “Speaking truth to power” to say, “The social truth demands we take power from you, supporters and satraps of the oppressive status quo.” 

The way to the "peaceful society" is through empowerment of the oppressed, through the realization of tehir demands for justice, equality and self-determination.  Not through vision alone, but through praxis that bears fruit, gives positive results, makes the world more just, more equal, more empowering of the disempowered.  Perhaps an endless process, but ever and always, a necessary one. 

 

Conundrums for the Left in the 2012 Elections--the Presidential Vote

“American exceptionalism” is a bad word on the left, but it is the reality—in many ways the U.S. is different from Europe, and nowhere does that difference show up than in the political systems. Unlike European (and Canadian, Israeli) parliamentary systems, there is no coalition building in U.S. politics—it’s winner-take-all, and losers or also-rans are just not recognized; in fact, they can be ignored when it is not convenient to recognize them, even if they represent 49% of the vote. Also, thanks to the “genius” of the Founding Fathers, who feared direct democracy, there is the Electoral College to consider, because the Electoral College actually elects the President, not the voting public. The Bush-Gore contest of 2000 made this abundantly clear: while Al Gore defeated George W. Bush by 543,895 votes, with 50,999,897 voters, or 48.38% of the total electorate, casting votes for him, to 50,456,002 voters, or 47.87% of the electorate, casting votes for George W. Bush, Bush won the Presidency because he was awarded the disputed Florida Electoral College votes, giving him 277 Electoral College votes to Gore’s 266. And, as we know from his record in office, George W. Bush paid no mind to the 48.38% of the electorate that wanted Gore instead of Bush; and certainly not to the 2,882,955 voters, or 2.74% of the electorate, who voted for Ralph Nader, showing clearly that they wanted neither Bush nor Gore. That’s the nice thing about winner-take-all for the winner—you can absolutely ignore your opposition and essentially do whatever you can get away with, and smirk at those who protest, “Tough beanies, losers!”

Ralph Nader, of course, was sullied as a “spoiler,” and not just by Gore-supporting Democrats and liberals, but by elements of the left also. They claimed that the Nader vote put Bush in office because, had not been for Nader, the 2.74% of the electorate that voted for him would’ve voted for Gore, thus clearly giving Gore the Electoral College votes he needed. Of course this ignores that at least some of those who voted for Nader might not have voted at all in 2000, but rationalizations and recriminations have no room for logical subtleties. I voted for Nader in 2000 because I had no Gorillusions, and certainly not because I wanted to see George W. Bush in office. Nader addressed well the “spoiler” issue in an interview then on CNN, dismissing it with “Only Al Gore can defeat Al Gore.” If anything, Nader might’ve gained votes for Gore because, with a sharp-tongued opposition to his left, Al Gore got bolder on the campaign trail than he’d been initially. I received the same criticism from some labor Democrats who claimed that I’d really voted for Reagan when I told them I voted for Barry Commoner of the Citizens Party in 1980. No, not so in either case—I voted for Barry Commoner in 1980 because I wanted to support the politics and platform of Barry Commoner, and the same with voting for Nader in 2000. I didn’t want to buy into the “lesser evil trap” in either election.

But in looking back on it, while realizing that Al Gore would not have been either an effective President, as such things go, or a consistent champion of progressive politics and truly-needed social change, he certainly would’ve been better than George W. Bush, and perhaps better for the left as well had he won the Presidency. George W. Bush’s harshly rightist policies and practices in office did not galvanize the broad left—ranging from those mildly left of center to committed radical socialists—into sustained protest, resistance and concerted action; rather, it demoralized vastly, and drove many to eschew independent and third-party politics altogether and always vote for the Democrat as the only “realistic” alternative. And actively urge others to do so as well.

In 2004 I formally voted for John Kerry; but actually I didn’t vote for Kerry, I voted against Bush. In Indiana where I live, neither Nader nor the Green Party made it onto the ballot, and the only way to cast any kind of third-party protest vote was to go through the onerous process of casting a write-in vote for the Socialist Party candidate, a process which, at least in Indiana, meant filling out paper ballots for all races up for grabs, even if one leaves them blank—one just had to go through all those pieces of paper. In 2008 I voted for Obama, not because I had any particular Obamillusions, but mainly because at the time he was an unknown quantity who spoke well and seemed to be saying, albeit vaguely, all the right things; also because, like many Americans, I was scared to death of John McCain and especially of Sarah Palin, having that queasy feeling in my stomach that, because of McCain’s advanced age, I might wake up some morning and have President Palin to contend with! (Should this have come to pass I would’ve much preferred President Tina Fey—a clear case where the copy was far superior to the original.) Further, and once again, there was no Nader or Green Party candidate on the ballot, due to Indiana’s ballot access laws being among the most restrictive in the nation. As for the Socialist Party write-in option, the numbers tell the general futility of that—in 2008 the Socialist Party candidate got a total of 12 votes statewide.

Now it’s 2012, and I have even fewer Obamillusions than I had in 2008. I need not dwell on all the flip-flops, rotten compromises, broken promises, and even dangerous moves Obama has made since he became President—just pointing out his support of NDAA, use of lethal drones in Pakistan, compiling a “hit list” of persons targeted for assassination, advancing no serious jobs or economic recovery program, and the refusal to even consider single-payer in the healthcare debate will suffice. As has now long been pointed out, Obama, far from being even a liberal, is a pro-business centrist who clearly supports Pax Americana and regards the Wall Street crooks and big business CEOs as “savvy businessmen” (as he once stated) whom he wants on his team; and of course, surrounding himself with Wall Street types, Clintonites and Democratic Party flacks as advisors, key aides, and cabinet members while driving out, or forcing out, all those of a more progressive bent who originally came on board. But on the positive side, such as it is, he is ending active US military presence in Iraq and has set a deadline for US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. And though there is strong and concerted opposition to Obama’s policies from the left, the overwhelming opposition comes from the right, especially from the hard right, and has often been overtly racist in character.

Mitt Romney’s opposition to Obama is not at all based on Obamacare not going far enough (though it is clearly modeled on the healthcare program Romney supported as “moderate” Governor of Massachusetts), or because Romney sees the NDAA as a threat to civil liberties, or because he opposes drone warfare or official assassination lists as fundamentally unethical and disregarding of innocent lives—no, Romney’s stated opposition to Obama’s policies is all from the hard right, as his campaign rhetoric, overt appeals to the Tea Party, and choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate have amply shown. Further, very similar arguments apply to Democrats in House of Representatives and Senate races against Tea Party-supported Republicans (which is, all Republicans).

Simply put, while Obama and almost all Democrats are bad, very bad, the Republicans are worse, even much, much worse. And that’s a good part of the rub in terms of how leftists should vote in the 2012 elections, and whether it’s better, simply as a tactical measure that has some chance of effectiveness, to hold one’s nose and vote for Obama or other Democrats; or whether it’s better as a matter of principle to vote for Jill Stein and the Green Party, or Rocky Anderson and the Justice Party, or Roseanne Barr and the Peace and Freedom Party, or the Socialist Party, as possible. (Jill Stein, Presidential candidate of the Green Party, is on all state ballots except Oklahoma’s, but only as a write-in in Indiana and Georgia; the Justice Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, and the Socialist Party are on even fewer state ballots, though they may be write-in options wherever not formally listed.)

Socialists have stated it well both ways: Eugene Debs said famously, “Better to vote for what you want and not to get it than to vote for what you don’t want and to get it;” while Greg King, union activist in SEIU Local 888 and New Politics online contributor, said to me in an e-mail on October 24, “Those Democrats aren't much better than the Republicans in Indiana or nationally, but the Republicans, especially the Tea Party aligned ones, are SO bad that it's worth voting for the Democrats.” (King’s remarks were part of a comment on an article I’d written for the online Examiner.com newspaper, “The Tea Party and the 2102 Indiana elections,” where conservative Democratic candidates for Governor and Senator are running against openly Tea Party-backed Republicans, http://www.examiner.com/article/the-tea-party-and-the-2012-indiana-elections?cid=db_articles.)

Further, it isn’t only the left that has third-party movements attempting to appeal to those disaffected with both the Democrats and the Republicans. The Libertarians, and further right that the Libertarians (yes, it is possible), the Constitution Party, as well as a gaggle of openly racist and neo-Nazi splinter parties, are all trying to build opposition parties of the right that oppose the Republican Party, the right’s traditional home.

There is also the practical matter that no third party or independent Presidential electoral challenge since early in the 20th Century has ever broken through the magic 3% barrier, i.e., getting 3% or more of the total national vote; most of the time it’s been less than 2% and often less than 1%. That was true of Nader in 2000, as noted above with 2.74% of the vote, and even the actively-organized and widely-publicized run of Henry Wallace as the Progressive Party’s Presidential candidate in 1948, which garnered 2.4% of the vote—same percentage of the vote as the segregationist States Rights Party Presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond, garnered that year, but with fewer votes than the States Rights Party. The last third party to become a major party in the US was the Republican Party in 1860, but only because the two major opposition parties in the traditionally two-party American system, the Whigs and the Democrats, had either disintegrated (Whigs) or split (Democrats, with one Presidential candidate in the North, and another in the South), due to the highly divisive issue of slavery. Another aspect of that much-maligned on the left, but factually true, “American exceptionalism.”

As it is, the case on the left for voting for Obama has been compellingly, but not fully convincingly, advanced in three important articles seen by many who consider themselves left-of-center. The most forcefully pro-Obama one was by Tom Hayden, September 4’s “Saving Obama, Saving Ourselves,” http://tomhayden.com/elections/saving-obama-saving-ourselves.html; less sanguine, but still urging a vote for Obama from the left, were Achy Obejas’ “Voting Obama with no illusions” in the November 2012 In These Times (not available online until November 5) and Daniel Ellsberg’s October 18 “Progressives: In Swing States, Vote for Obama,” http://rootsaction.org/news-a-views/534-progressives-in-swing-states-vote-for-obama, also reprinted in the Huffington Post and carried by the left news listserve Portside. All three articles raised the specter of a Romney/Ryan victory as a tremendous setback for the left and enshrinement in practice of far right policies: a refrain of my argument stated above, that while Obama may be bad, Romney would be far worse. Hayden further brings up an interesting point for the overwhelmingly white anti-Obama left to consider, that persons of color, particularly African Americans and Hispanics, are for Obama by margins of 70% or greater. These are not arguments easily slighted, especially in our highly polarized winner-take-all, damn-all-those-who-didn’t-vote-for –us American political system we of the left face in 2012, and will face beyond 2012.

 And while it is true that there is little difference of substance between the Democrats and Republicans, it is sheer hyperbole to say there is no difference, especially given the open support of the Tea Party and corporate money for the Republicans; and it is accurate to say that, on all issues of concern to the left, while the Democrats usually waffle and often strongly disappoint, the Republicans advance a clear far right political and social agenda on all these issues, from civil liberties to foreign policy, economic and jobs issues to gay and women’s rights, that we of the left can consider truly dangerous, especially if enacted. And also, that too many of the anti-Obama left not only cavalierly dismiss the threat of Romney and the Tea Party-backed Republicans, they actually portray Obama as somehow worse than Romney, a greater danger to the left and to meaningful progressive social change than Romney. This smacks me as indulging in a blind ultraleftism reminiscent of Germany in 1932, when the Communist Party denounced the Social-Democrats as “social fascists” worse than the Nazis, were openly dismissive of Hitler and the Nazis as a mere flash in the pan, and advanced as their chief political slogan, “After Hitler, our turn!”

No, not after George W. Bush can we of the left categorically say there is no real threat from a corporate-supported hard right in public office; and we certainly can’t say that in light of the deadlock imposed on all progressive legislation and political appointments, no matter how tepid or unsatisfactory, by the victory of Tea Party-backed House Republicans in 2010. I don’t much like the slogan advanced for years by the Communist Party, “Defeat the ultraright,” and the strategy flowing from that, elect Democrats no matter what they are; yet I can’t categorically dismiss it either. There is some realism embodied in it, especially in view of the US’s winner-take-all political system and, in terms of the Presidency, the paramount role of the Electoral College, not the popular vote, in determining who becomes President.

Still, I can’t say that definitely rules out voting for third-party candidates of the left in protest, even though, as a matter of practicality, voting for them will have no discernible political impact in the short term. (Though it might serve as a base from which to launch an independent left electoral movement at a later date, if the left can reach out effectively to all those disaffected who voted for left third-party candidates.) But when I raised the question of who I would vote for in 2012, saying I might hold my nose and vote for Obama, or I might vote for Jill Stein as a write-in, I was excoriated by one Ed Griffith of the New Progressive Alliance, a pro-third party of the left group that does consider Obama a greater threat than Romney and talks only of the Democratic and Republican “uniparty.” Griffith, with whom I had become friends due to his support of my short-lived independent candidacy for Lt. Governor in Indiana (more on that in Part II), turned viciously against me after I’d posted an anti-Romney (but not pro-Obama) video on Facebook excoriating Bain Capital’s role in the outsourcing of jobs from a business in Freeport, Illinois to China. Griffith wrote me this final livid e-mail:

You have chosen to openly support evil and the very people who are oppressing you. You may not have the mental capacity to chose, but I am through making excuses for you. I believe we all have free will and you have made the cowardly choice to support evil even though it goes against your interest. The blood of all the innocents that Obama is killing in his many wars is on your hands. No relationship with you is possible. I will ignore all future communication.

New Politics online editor Stephen Shalom commented trenchantly on Griffith’s vitriol and its political import, "I guess Ed G. has just broken off all communication with 99% of the American population: a real good strategy for achieving social change!" Because on November 7, no matter what the outcome, we of the left will need to talk to those at the grassroots who supported Obama if we are serious about building a significant third-party electoral force. Because on November 7 we are going to wake up either to a re-elected President Obama, or a President-elect Romney, period, and not even remotely to a President-elect Stein, or a President-elect Anderson, or a President-elect Barr, or the Socialist Party nonentity as President-elect—and that alone will impact what we of the left do, and can do, for at least the next four years.

I still haven’t decided who I am going to vote for as President on November 6: whether it will be reluctantly for Obama; whether it will be futilely for Jill Stein, who advocates what I really believe in; or whether I will just ignore the Presidential race entirely here in a state that is considered a shoo-in for Romney; nor does my one vote make much difference in Indiana or nationally. So all I would advise my fellow leftists is simply and rather vacuously, “Vote whatever you think is best.” But I do know that the left is going to have to do more than dabble inconsistently in electoral politics, as it is doing now and had done for decades, if it wishes to be a serious political force; and that if serious independent left electoral third parties are to be built, they will have to be truly grassroots-based and be able to command considerable support and be able to actually win, or have a realistic chance of winning, at least some elections, even if at present only at the local level (not even statewide, because presently that simply is not possible, despite the visible, yet small, presence of the Peace and Freedom Party in California). I will be addressing how to seriously build left third-party electoral movements in a later post.

Peace with Social Justice Issues Require a Programmatic Approach

This is the longer, more extensive version of an article recently published in the Summer 2012 issue of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal--GF

Peace with social justice issues are indivisible—one can’t have true peace without eliminating the cause of conflict, namely oppression and injustice. Oppression and injustice are at the heart of conflict, its root causes, and if it was Karl Marx rather than George Fox, Paul Tillich or Thomas Aquinas who noticed this obvious fact first, so be it. It won’t be the first time this bearded Jewish atheist was right when the holy religious authorities were wrong! (But elaborating on this is something to be discussed later.) As the popular old song goes, “you can’t have one without the other;” peace and justice do go together hand-in-hand.

That’s why I “recommend” to all those who want peace most of all, if you really want peace then you should support right-wing dictatorships; because, historically, repressive dictators and fascist movements brought “peace” when before there was social chaos and disruption. Historically, the coming to power of Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, the Brazilian, Greek and Argentine military coups that ousted civilian leaders—all of them brought the “peace of the graveyard” to previously unruly and disruptive societies. They put an end to disruption and contentious dissent by—putting an end (often literally, through execution) to the disrupters and dissenters! And their “peace” of course didn’t last forever—but it did last for a long time in all cases, and it remained a stable “peace.” That’s why it’s always to question peace in and of itself as a goal. Because peace in and of itself is not peace with social justice, because the process of achieving social justice, the prerequisite for lasting peace, is always and forever a contentions process. Because powerful elites have vested interests in maintaining and promulgating social injustice.

 That’s why the Southern crackers, who charged that people like Martin Luther King and the nonviolent protests against segregation they organized in the 1960s were “disrupting the peace” and “riling up people who wouldn’t otherwise be riled up,” were absolutely correct! Martin Luther King and the other leaders and activists for civil rights really were “disturbing the peace” of the oppressive status quo, really were “riling up” those who had previously been too timed and afraid to stand up. And Martin Luther King also really understood the linkage between civil and political rights and economic rights and freedoms, really understood that you couldn’t have the resources to provide for justice at home while spending it on foreign wars. Which is why, quite in opposition to the “liberals” who said he would “hurt” the cause of achieving civil rights, Martin Luther King spoke out against the war in Vietnam as well as calling for civil rights at home, and why the final acts of his life were supporting African American city trash collectors in Memphis and organizing the Poor Peoples March, both issues of economic as well as racial justice. In Martin Luther King himself we see the interconnectedness, the very indivisibility, of peace and social justice issues—and the need to address both. And as Martin Luther King himself did, address them programmatically, through concrete demands and concrete modes of action such as sit-ins and marches, not just articulating them as abstract principles and addressing them only through token and symbolic actions of supposed moral witness.

(Parenthetically though, in view of what I wrote above about “crackers” and the unrelenting hostility I receive from some in the IPJC no matter what I write, I categorically deny that my use of the word “crackers” above was in any way intended to insult, demean, or offend—saltines! In fact, some of my best friends are saltines—along with Triscuit, Ritz, Town House and many, many others of this important culinary species! All of its myriad members, in my humble opinion, deserve recognition and acknowledgement for their significant contributions to gastronomy, which are too often overlooked and simply taken for granted.)

But back to programs. Programs are what make principles real and realizable, programs guide actions that guide and goad supporters, and make those actions real and concrete move beyond the purely symbolic expressions of a select cognoscenti—in other words, programs suggest and lead to application, limn roads to follow for putting principles and goals into effect, i.e., tactics. Which, while often overlooked, are really the lifeblood of any serious movement for peace with social justice. Noam Chomsky has written tellingly on the crucial nature of tactics:

Talk of tactics sounds sort of trivial, but it is not. Tactical choices are the ones that have real human consequences. We can try to go beyond the more general strategic choices—speculatively and with open minds—but beyond that we descend into abstract generalities. Tactics have to do with decisions about what to do next, they have real human consequences. (Chomsky on Anarchism, AK Press 2007, p. 237)

This is key, more key than many in the IPJC imagine, for tactics lead to implementation of principles, they bring about power and influence—and let’s honestly face it, a movement without power and influence, a movement unable to implement what it stands for and believes in, is impotent. Impotent despite the sincerity of its members, the “deep meaning” (or perceived “deep meaning”) of its symbolism and symbolic actions, and the “good guy” nature of its organization and small membership (necessarily small, because impotent organizations, organizations that cannot wield power, influence, and get things done do not attract large numbers of people wishing to join).

IPJC expresses one tactic which has proven effective, as many mass movements have shown—nonviolence. Unfortunately, IPJC confuses the tactic, nonviolence, with the abstract principle of pacifism. But in so tying nonviolence directly to pacifism, especially the pacifism of the organized peace churches, IPJC automatically limits its appeal drastically, cuts itself off from numerous potential supporters. Many more would be drawn to IPJC as an organization were it not so stiff-necked on pacifism, for many who desire a peaceful world with social justice are not pacifists, indeed are critical of pacifism justifiably: after all, pacifism proved only a hindrance both to stopping Hitler and to ending slavery in the U.S., where numerous pacifist measures had previously been taken to prevent the inevitable conflicts that both slavery and Nazism represented. I even wrote positively on this originally in the October 2008 issue of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal, “Slandering Nonviolence,” which was updated (with attribution to the Journal as original source) and expanded for New Politics online and posted September 15, 2011, http://newpol.org/node/510. Which is to say bluntly, one does not have to be a pacifist to be peaceable; conversely, not being a pacifist does not automatically commit one to violence under any circumstances. That’s just a hoary but blatantly false canard that needs to be abandoned without reservation now and forever. Even by committed pacifists.

Pacifism limits IPJC in other ways as well, making it automatically almost completely occupied with issues of war and foreign policy, on which it can have little influence, especially in Indiana, one state out of 50, and one both overwhelmingly hidebound and without consequence when it comes to issues of war and peace. Which makes the IPJC, along with its complementary organization, the Indiana Peace and Justice Network, IPJN, little more than foreign policy windbags. Conversely, the social justice and labor movements in Indiana, such as organized labor itself and organizations such as the Community-Faith-Labor Coalition and Central Indiana Jobs with Justice, press local and domestic social justice issues without reference to antiwar issues, even though it is the so-called national “defense” budget and the costs of imperial wars such as Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan which drain vital resources that could be used to create a society in which unemployment, affordable healthcare, decent housing and schools, and other social ills would not be the pestilences they are today. More indication that peace and social justice issues are inextricably linked; and that an effective program in one area must also encompass an effective program in the other. In other words, what the peace and social justice movements need now is a unified program that address the real, compelling need—peace with social justice—that separated movements, one for peace, the other for justice, and neither the twain shall meet, cannot adequately address themselves through this separation, this artificial “division of labor.”

Yes, perhaps we march separately, and for some certain issues are more paramount than others, at least for the moment; but we realize not only the need to strike together, but to strake multiple targets. And while we of the movements may not realize this, believe me, the economic elites and their political satraps do. That’s why the military hawks such as the Blue Dogs, the Tea Party, and the Republicans all wish to gut organized labor, support “right-to-work,” and eviscerate social entitlement programs as well—they understand the interconnectedness of peace and social justice issues, even if peace and social justice grassroots activists do not!

This interconnectedness is something the political campaign of Donnie Harold Harris for Indiana Governor and me, George Fish, for Lieutenant Governor realized from the beginning, and drew up as our campaign proposals an interconnected platform, which we invite all to examine and “steal” from as deemed appropriate. This interconnectedness is developed in writing at length in two documents readily accessible: my entry on my “Politically Incorrect Leftist” blog, “A Peace with Social Justice Program for Indiana—and the World,” http://politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com/2012/07/peace-with-social-justice-program-for.html; and “The Peace with Social Justice Platform of Harris-Fish for Indiana: Catching the Occupy Spirit!” under “About” on the Harris-Fish for Indiana Facebook page.

Principles in themselves are not enough—they must be fleshed out with programs and appropriate tactics, or else they become dead letters. The world has long been waylaid by plenty of good principles not properly put into practice—and the principle of peace with social justice will join them if it is not dealt with appropriately, programmatically, and with an eye to implementation as well as to mere articulation.

A Peace with Justice Program for Indiana—and the World

Let it be said forthrightly: the first obstacle to be overcome in proposing and implementing an Indiana-relevant peace with social justice program is Indiana’s “traditional” left itself; here in Indianapolis, with spillover across the state, that means overcoming the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center (IPJC), a hoary body of aged pacifists that’s been in place now since the early 1980s, despite a track record of virtually nothing achieved. In fact, many of the same people who were in charge of things in the IPJC in the 1980s and 1990s are still around, having aged not like wine or cheese, but like garbage set out and allowed to sit and rot. “Living” proof, as it were, of what precious little religious pacifism has to offer anyone, other than a smug sense of sanctimonious self-righteousness among the pacifist “elect.” (And they do consider themselves elect.)

The same would apply to the Indiana Peace and Justice Network (IPJN), the “labor” group Community-Faith-Labor Coalition (“Coalition for what?” you may properly ask; good question—but try and get it answered!), Central Indiana Jobs with Justice (largely do-nothing local branch of a good but far from perfect national group, very much mired in “guns and butter” Hubert Humphrey-style liberalism; if Jobs with Justice does anything in Indiana, it’s done by the Southern Indiana branch, located in the college town of Bloomington, home of the main campus of Indiana University), and assorted churchy groups; they comprise the “respectable” left, the ones that the Democratic party likes, or at least gives lip-service to, and are the ones that will never, ever conjure up hidebound middle-class fears of “Anarchy! Bolshevism! Reckless, out-of-control youth!”

It wasn’t always this way, although it’s been this way for the last nine years. And especially in the 1980s and 1990s there was real activity on the part of Indianapolis’ “traditional” left, and even a few partial gains; most of all, groups like IPJC and the Community-Faith-Labor Coalition attracted and galvanized people, particularly youth, who are now not only totally absent, but look at those groups and members with universal disdain. And while the Occupy movements have sprouted throughout large parts of Indiana, the old-timers of those remaining groups such as the IPJC play no part in them; in fact, deliberately stand aloof from them. The torch has definitely not been passed, and now sputters and faces extinguishing.

But in the early 1990s IPJC had a dynamic leader at the helm, Tim Quigley, who galvanized action and built a mass movement in opposition to the First Gulf War that drew hundreds to demonstrations and rallies. Antiwar rallies occurred into the early part of the 21st Century. There were public forums and speakers, and national left luminaries such as Howard Zinn and Phillip Agee spoke on local campuses. In 2001 a group of feisty anarchist youth organized Solidarity Books (later called Paper Matches in its new location), an independent, non-sectarian left bookstore that provided a wide range of literature, including the pacifist literature so beloved of the “respectable peaceable religious.” This youth collective also organized mass activities to agitate for decent public transportation in Indianapolis, and was active in protesting the National Governors’ Conference in Indianapolis in 2003.

But because they were young and bold, and weren’t afraid to talk the language of revolution, they soon became anathema to the IPJC; and in one of the most ignominious passages in IPJC’s history, the Solidarity Books/Paper Matches collective was deliberately destroyed by leading IPJCers, through the machinations of a leading “movement” type who rented a house to the collective that was dilapidated, and had an equally-dilapidated furnace that would’ve spewed lethal gases if turned on; then another “leading movement activist” made an anonymous phone call to the Indianapolis police alleging that these youth had a weapons cache in the basement of their house, an absolutely false accusation that brought not only a police raid but continued police harassment; and then, as the coup de grace, their “movement” landlord (actually slumlord) sued them in small claims court in a specious lawsuit which he won (for, unlike the “respectables” of the IPJC, The Solidarity Books/Paper Matches collective was truly hated by the Indianapolis political establishment), with the small claims court judge refusing to give the reason for his decision. The upshot was that most of the collective left town in frustration and disgust, while those remaining dropped out of politics.

The Solidarity Books/Paper Matches collective was one of the very few organized groups of the “far left” to gain a foothold outside of college towns in very conservative Indiana, where the conservatives are troglodytes, most “leftists” are liberals at best, and the Democrats are thoroughly Blue Dog or in fear of retaliation from the Blue Dogs. While small Marxist-Leninist groups have led marginal existences in the college towns of Bloomington and West Lafayette (home of the main campus of Purdue University), declaring oneself a Marxist (or revolutionary anarchist) is the surest way in most of Indiana (and certainly in Indianapolis) to become not only politically isolated, but also socially ostracized—and not just by conservatives, but by the “progressives” as well. Hell, even not attending church regularly and not publicly professing Christian pacifism will get one ostracized! Needless to say, Indiana’s left is almost entirely lily-white, almost entirely Christian, with African Americans and Jews present only as tokens to represent “diversity” (because the putative Indiana and Indianapolis “traditional” left talks only to the already-converted, which means that white Christian pacifists and timid liberals talk only to other white Christian pacifists and timid liberals).

So, given the above, isn’t trying to develop an Indiana-relevant peace with justice program rather like imitating Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill? Perhaps, but it still must be done. Done in the hope of reaching persons truly interested in social change and willing to advance beyond parochial group loyalties, whether in the “traditional” peace and social justice groups or in Occupy movements; and possibly even reaching those who aren’t presently aware that there is any kind of left in Indiana, much less an effective one, but who would be interested in helping constitute an effective left. So with that in mind, here goes. I’ve developed this program in sections, with specific planks, goals and analyses arranged under appropriate headings.

I. RECOGNIZE THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF PEACE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES

The strange “division of labor” that prevails on the Indiana putative “traditional” left means that groups like IPJC and IPJN confine themselves to being foreign-policy windbags who don’t touch on domestic issues, while the labor and social justice groups never bring up wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, and never mention antiwar, militarism, or foreign policy issues—essentially making them “guns and butter liberals” who confine themselves to talking only about butter and never about guns! Yet it is precisely the U.S.’s financially draining military costs and costs for wars such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq (of which this latter, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and a colleague calculated, will cost the U.S. four trillion dollars!) that take money away from providing employment for the unemployed through a new WPA such as worked so well in the 1930s, keep our badly-crumbling infrastructure in disrepair, and prevent shoring up our badly frayed social safety net. Thus, there should naturally be collaboration between antiwar and social justice groups in Indiana and elsewhere, not separation. The same would apply to issues of racial justice, immigrant rights, and police brutality issues. Yet, when the twain shall not meet, all groups, all constituencies, and all issues suffer, even though they’re all so interconnected. Indeed, several activists in antiwar causes doff their antiwar hats and go to other meetings where they put on their social justice hats, and vice versa—wearing each hat separately, as though they weren’t the same hats at all! To emphasize this interconnectedness and advance it in a program for effective action, I give the following proposals.

First on what might be considered “global” issues:

1. Advocating for peace and an end to wars in itself is not enough; the highly-militarized economy not only drains resources from social justice needs, it itself undermines addressing social justice needs such as full employment, decent infrastructure and schools, a meaningful social safety net, and other positive social needs, as well as destroying foreign cultures and peoples. It hurts all, domestically and abroad. Therefore, the antiwar movements must also address fulfilling domestic needs as well as ending militarism, while social justice needs must realize that their causes will not be adequately addressed as long as needed resources and monies are drained off to support militarism. Which is a way of saying that groups such as IPJC and IPJN must discuss and act on domestic social justice issues as well, while labor groups such as Community-Faith-Labor coalition and Jobs with Justice must realize that militarism undermines workers’ rights and full employment in useful civilian tasks, and both must join together to advance a common full employment, full social justice and antiwar program that satisfies the real needs of the peoples of Indiana, the U.S., and the world. Justice is indivisible.

2. The U.S. cannot, and should not, play Cop of the World; world peacekeeping needs should be addressed by a strengthened United Nations free to act independently of Great Power vetoes.

3. In this economically interconnected world, where financial crisis in one part of the world can cause financial crises in other parts of the world, global finance, investment and trade cannot be left strictly in private hands, subject to what multinational corporations find most profitable. The beginnings of a world economic order, where financial, investment and trade decisions and impacts are regulated for the benefit of all, must be put in place. We see the need for such now in the Eurozone, where the profitability of German banks comes at the cost of forcing austerity and misery on the peoples of Greece, Italy, Spain, and elsewhere.

4. The world North-South and East-West distribution of wealth must be drastically modified so that some countries are prosperous while others are mired in poverty and destitution.

5. Since all we peoples of the world must live on the same planet, and cannot live if the world is destroyed by ecological damage, world ecological sustainability must be a prime goal that must be achieved, and not subject to undermining by the whims of multinationals in search of profit or the parochial interests of certain countries at the expense of others.

These planks underscore for all of us that Utopia can no longer be considered utopian, but has become a necessity, a necessity underscored by the world recession since 2007 which threatens to become worse, threatens to become a new recession when the world has not recovered from the old one. Obviously, social justice must encompass racial justice as well, and gender and sexual preference justice also, as well as the traditional justice concerns of civil rights and liberties. Equality for women; end to all racial and ethnic discrimination; the right to practice one’s religion without hindrance, and concomitantly, the right to profess no religion at all; the right to engage in consensual sexual activity fully buttressed by access to birth control, abortion, and prophylactic protection from STDs are both social justice issues as well as issues of concern to peace groups, for bigotry and intolerance readily spill over into violence against despised minorities by bigots. Decent education for all that teaches not only how to make a living, but to live a fully human life is also such an issue, as is the rights of immigrants to live, work and contribute to the societies in which they become resident. The right to speak and write without fear either of overt censorship or the “necessity” to self-censor is also a fundamental right that cannot be undermined on the basis of “commercial,” “intellectual property” or other barriers—the right of creative and intellectual expression is fundamental to human life and dignity. We need even more forcefully to assert these rights in today’s world because they are under attack from a wide array of bigots and special interests—religious, political, commercial, ideological. Safety in mind and body is also a paramount right, as well as a most desirable social goal, yet undermined by a galaxy of forces, from poverty and repressive laws to corporate and individual irresponsibility. We live in a world that seems to be falling apart everywhere we look; it is time to address that.

II. USING THE ELECTORAL PROCESS PROACTIVELY

I am running for Lieutenant Governor of Indiana in the 2012 election as an independent write-in candidate with Donnie Howard Harris, an antiwar disabled Vietnam veteran, write-in for Governor. We believe in using the electoral process to advance a peace with social justice agenda to educate and raise consciousness on peace and social justice issues, and that is an arena that can, and should, be used more actively by concerned citizens. Democracy and citizen’s voice is very much as Dr. Ruth said famously about sex: “Use it or lose it.” Even running for state and local offices can be used in a proactive way to advance national and foreign policy issues, as means to raise local awareness of the wider world we live in, and the interconnectedness of various issues. Clearly, as we know all too well in Indiana, such matters as foreign trade and completion for jobs not only with other states but with other countries has had a big impact on Indiana—we see it in the figures for jobs lost in the Hoosier state. Further, independent candidates can play a pivotal role in educating people to the idea that we don’t have to automatically accept a choice between Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, between a Tea Party Republican and a Blue Dog Democrat. It is time to enhance democracy and political participation by citizens, not eliminate or truncate it.

III. RECOGNIZING, COMBATING, HOOSIER MEDIOCRITY

Indiana’s Brain Drain is more than a catchy journalistic slogan; it’s an ugly and palpable Hoosier reality, where 46.6% of Indiana’s recent college graduates (according to the Indianapolis Star) leave the state immediately upon graduation, because there are no jobs for them. And those who stay behind, or are left behind, often end up economically stuck, trapped in low-wage, low-skill jobs, frequently forced to work only as temps, with their abilities and knowledge wasted. Indiana, once a haven for the uneducated and undereducated because factory and construction jobs were plentiful, now faces a double whammy as factories close and those new jobs created are increasingly service jobs which are either low-pay unskilled work or else high-level professional jobs which Indiana lacks the workforce to fill. Thus, as Indiana loses its college graduates who attend school in Indiana because they possess the “wrong” degrees—it increasingly imports college graduates with the “right” degrees from elsewhere. Talk about a Rube Goldberg economy!

 Again, according to the Indianapolis Star, quoting a Brookings Institution report, while Indianapolis has 32% of the college graduates in the state, it certainly doesn’t have 32% of its jobs available requiring college degrees. In fact, a long-term personal observation of jobs and college graduates indicates that Indianapolis probably has one of the most college-educated workforces of bartenders and servers anywhere!

But also, Indiana’s workforce as a whole is one of the least-educated in the nation, well below the national average for high school graduates as well as below the Midwest average for high school graduates. Indiana’s primary and secondary schools are noted as well for their educational inadequacy, and due to both this educational and job weakness, per capita income in Indiana consistently fell every year from 2005 to 2010, the last year statistics are available. (See http://politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com/2012/02/eight-to-work-is-not-only-issue-in.html.) "We're stuck,” Philip Powell, Associate Professor of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington told the Indianapolis Star in 2009, “We're stuck because we don't have the knowledge base we need in the labor force. A lot of that is because of our really mediocre primary and secondary educational system."

But it’s not just economically and educationally that Indiana demonstrates its fundamental limitations and social negatives. Indiana is among the “leaders” among the states in obesity, cigarette smoking, date rape, and minors involved in sex with adults. Dave Fey and I wrote a detailed account of this substantive Hoosier failure in the July 12, 2009 Bloomington Alternative, "Mediocrity--a Hoosier affliction," http://bloomingtonalternative.com/author/george-fish-and-dave-fey,

an article which garnered some notable—and needed—attention.  But, while the statistics in the article are dated, sadly, the social pathologies they quantified are still present.

Certainly key among Hoosier afflictions of mediocrity is Indiana politics, especially as shown in the General Assembly of 2012. With both houses of the Assembly dominated by Tea Party Republicans, not only was the Democratic minority continually harassed and basic parliamentary procedure consistently ignored, some of the worst, most inappropriate, legislation in Indiana history was rammed through. This was especially true of the Republicans’ pet legislative project, so-called “right-to-work,” rammed through in the face of union workers’ mobilized opposition that drew thousands daily to the Statehouse in outraged protest. No matter—what ordinary Hoosiers thought was of no concern. For the Republicans, unions were the cause of anemic job growth and continuing unemployment, and “right-to-work” the magic wand that would fix all of Indiana’s economic ills, despite study after study showing that was not the case. Further, because of legislation passed in the 2011 legislative season, unemployed workers now face a 25% cut in unemployment benefits, while employers get a 33% cut in taxes they pay for unemployment compensation. Low wages, poor working conditions, and desperate unemployed willing to take anything—that will be the engine of economic growth in Indiana!

 

Never mind that this panacea has been tried and failed to bring the expected results elsewhere, most recently in Oklahoma, which became a “right-to-work” state in 2002 and is still waiting for all those jobs promised to materialize. “I’m a Republican, don’t confuse me with economic facts!” was the legislature’s rallying cry. Besides, there were more pressing matters to deal with—such as extending what my friend John Zaphiriou calls the “nanny state” by making it more difficult to light up a cigarette in Indiana, and requiring religious creation stories to be taught as a regular part of the school curriculum, though not necessarily in the science classes—fortunately, this latter did not pass, though the former did. Truly a dismal showing by what the late Harrison Ullman, NUVO Editor Emeritus and Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame inductee had dubbed long before “America’s worst legislature.”

And somehow Indianapolis became truly a “big city” by hosting that commercial extravaganza, the Super Bowl, a lavish party for the very rich and the well-off steadily employed, yet another example of the city’s Third World growth model—bring money in from outside through tourism and shopping, and expect that trickle-down to generate low-wage service jobs catering to the whims of the visitors. Wages? Steady work? Who needs steady wages when, if you really hustle, you can get big tips!

Unfortunately, for many Hoosiers all this is peachy-keen. Indiana has never really been able to separate boosterism from providing actual substance, and has always regarded culture and education as something suspect. That’s the mindset that has led its two most able Indianapolis-born contemporary writers, Kurt Vonnegut and Dan Wakefield, to tellingly satirize the Circle City in two best-selling novels, Vonnegut’s 1973 Breakfast of Champions and Wakefield’s 1970 Going All the Way. It’s also the mindset that impelled Indianapolis blues drummer Furious George to remark, “People will think nothing of paying someone to fix their toilet, but they won’t pay a dime for creative or artistic work. They think you should just do it for free.”

But societal mediocrity and strong movements for peace with social justice no more mix than do oil and water. So for their own viability, peace and social justice movements in Indiana, including Occupy movements, will have to address Hoosier mediocrity as well, become insistent pedagogues that will, paraphrasing 1956 Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson’s famous campaign phrase, “Drag Hoosiers kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.” Toward that necessary end I propose:
6. Emphasize the need for quality education throughout all Indiana schools, especially the public schools.

7. Remind Hoosiers that the world does not begin and end at the Illinois and Ohio borders, that Indiana is interconnected to a much wider world than Hoosiers like to admit; and that Indiana is not the center of the universe, does not have everything one could desire, and is not complete in and of itself.

8. That in educating Hoosiers to the realities of Hoosier mediocrity and critiquing Hoosier self-centered parochialism we are not “insulting Hoosiers.”

9. That Indiana must become truly arts and culture conscious, not merely conscious of what is commercially successful.
10. That integral to Indiana being arts and culture conscious is recognizing and nurturing Indiana artists and cultural workers across the board, in popular arts as well as those traditionally “highbrow.”

11. That art and culture consciousness is for the working class also, and not just the well-off; and that this consciousness depends on material security for Indiana’s workers.

12. That in providing this material security unions have a pivotal role to play, so that “right-to-work” needs to be repealed as soon as possible, and that the right of collective bargaining is necessary for a vibrant Indiana economy; that good-paying jobs actually help an economy more than hinder it, and everybody loses in an economic race-to-the-bottom.

IV. TOWARD A TRANSFORMATIVE SOCIETY

For many, probably most, Hoosiers, even “progressive” ones, this program will smack of “socialism,” something exotic, foreign and undesirable, even if socialism as such is not widely understood. Because of the ingrained conservatism and individualism in Hoosier political and social life, Hoosiers see concerted social action and using government to provide and distribute necessary social services to all as somehow suspect, somehow a swallowing up of hard-working ordinary citizens and taxpayers by a bloated monster called Big Government. Yet it is Indiana conservatism itself, as manifested in the deeds of Republican and Blue Dog Democratic politicians, that has swallowed up ordinary Indiana citizens; swallowed up through union-busting and favoritism toward business coupled with “culture wars” propaganda that has undermined the economic and social security and stability of ordinary Hoosiers. Swallowed up through measures such as Indiana joining in the lawsuit to undermine the extension of Medicaid, thus denying adequate healthcare coverage to many; measures such as rigid voter ID requirements that inhibit greater democratic participation in Indiana political life; propaganda that says Hoosier economic woes are the result of “illegal aliens,” “parasites collecting unemployment compensation” and “welfare queens,” not the business-fawning policies of Tea Party Republicans and their Blue Dog allies. Unfortunately, much of this propaganda succeeds, so that for many ordinary working men and women it is more important to them that they share the same tastes in country music with Chamber of Commerce business elites than it is to recognize that they are part of the 99% championed by Occupy movements; and that it is the Chamber of Commerce elites who are the real parasites, the real job and economic security killers.

Indiana’s all-too-hidebound conservatism drives far too many Hoosiers, under attack by this very conservatism expressed politically, to embrace as protest not Occupy movements, but the ersatz of Libertarianism. So an important part of political education by the traditional peace and social justice movements, in tandem with the Occupy movements, will be to emphasize that individual freedom and collective social action are not antitheses, but complements—and that the road to individual freedom lies in broader participation in political life, with fewer roadblocks in the way of democratic expression and participation. The traditional peace and social justice movements will have to see that they are not separate from Occupy movements; and that Occupy movements, with their energy and appeal to youth and action, are integral to the success of these more traditional peace and social justice movements. That far too heavy a price has been paid, and is still being paid, for standing aloof in “respectability,” and that these movements are seen as “respectable” by all the wrong people—the people who actually represent the 1%, the people who really don’t want peace with social justice, but who want to win the class war—for the elite 1%.

Thus does the movement toward the transformation of society begin with the transformation of consciousness, and the realization that the transformative society’s future lies in the hands of the Occupy movements, Occupy movements transformed into a cogent political force. (Becoming such, “institutionalizing” Occupy, will be a necessary task for Occupy movements to undertake; without it, I fear that Occupy movements will just burn themselves out in incoherence and lack of focus.) This will require leaving behind a lot of “respectable” baggage. But it is precisely the need for peace with social justice that demands it, not the chimera of quietly working behind the scenes; it means boldly speaking truth to, and making demands on, power, not begging “pretty please” for favors from it. But are the “respectables” ready to join with the “rowdy” Occupiers to achieve real peace with real social justice? Now is the time to answer that question squarely put.

THE “JOBS FOR ALL” LETTER AGAINST THE CURRENT NASTILY REFUSED TO PRINT

Recently, I tried to post the following Letter to the Editors of Against the Current on Occupy movements and the unemployment crisis:

To the Editors of ATC:

While I appreciate the coverage of left movements I get from Against the Current (ATC), including the extensive posts on the Occupy movements in the latest issue, #156, January/February 2012, as a very much "self-interested" unemployed worker I have to object to the consistent exclusion of articles in ATC that has been going on for the last couple of years (only one exception), the unemployment crisis, which is at the heart of the people's massive misery caused by the Great Recession. I can't help but personally feel that this exclusion flows from the fact that the left generally has no personal understanding or awareness of the severity of the crisis, and cannot seem to grasp its devastating impact on the unemployed themselves, who often feel psychologically as though trapped in the lowest rungs of Dante’s hell.

Noted socialist writer Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." That doesn't just apply to the business and managerial classes alone--I submit, it can also apply to those who are economically comfortable either as workers or as retirees--and thus have no inkling of what it's like to be one of the working poor, what it's like to be chronically unemployed and "living" on a mere $600/month in unemployment compensation, to live constantly desperate. Such as I do, even as a college graduate (but with the "wrong" degree for the job market!), along with my college graduate friends who also have the "wrong" degrees, who are also older (as I am), who have to try and subsist on only temp agency work that pays $10/hour or less (as I had to do for 10 years, before being cut loose even from this kind of employment!) And yes, Upton Sinclair's remark applies to many a putative socialist as well, and to numerous "activists" in Occupy movements and left groups who don't have to worry about the economic wolf at the door, at least for the time being.

It is literally shameful the way the U.S. left has ignored the unemployment crisis, either slighting it through silence altogether, or not proposing bold Keynesian measures such as a new WPA, which created 8.5 million jobs in the 1930s and provided paychecks to 9.7 workers then, according the UCubed, the "union of the unemployed" set up by the Machinists' union (but which is not conceived as an "unemployed council" such as were established in the 1930s, but merely as a voting bloc to pressure Obama and the Democratic Party to "do right."). The reformist socialists such as DSA and CCDS only advocate for Obama's tepid jobs program, which will create merely 1.2 million jobs in an economy with a far bigger workforce than existed in the 1930s. The "revolutionary" socialists are even worse, aiming their fire at the "inadequacy" and merely "reformist" measures that would result from implementing Keynesian measures such as were instituted during the New Deal. So afraid of "saving capitalism," our "revolutionaries" would rather sacrifice the unemployed upon the altar of ideological purity, thus presenting themselves through their inaction as tacitly “aligned” (though for much different reasons) with the obstructionist Republicans and Tea Partiers--who also don't want any Keynesian measures applied to help the unemployed by providing decent-paying, productive, valuable jobs that fulfill real economic needs such as repairing infrastructure, and can actually become Green jobs.

Fortunately, there is one honorable socialist exception, the semi-Trotskyist/Third Camp socialist journal and website New Politics, http://newpol.org, of which ATC Editor David Finkel is a Sponsor, and of which leading Solidarity member Dan La Botz is an Editor. I published on New Politics online on February 3, 2011 my "Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis" calling for a new WPA, http://newpol.org/node/425; in this I was ably seconded by Brian King's supportive article and history of the WPA, "Jobs for All," http://newpol.org/node/445. Radical historian Jesse Lemisch also contributed mightily to this discussion with two articles on New Politics online, "Occupy the American Historical Association: Demand a WPA Federal Writers' Project," http://newpol.org/node/555, and "A WPA for History: Occupy the American Historical Association," http://newpol.org/node/582. I also briefly discussed Occupy youth and their roles as probably unemployed workers once they leave the student confines in "Carl Davidson, Bill Ayers, and Zig Ziglar Moments," http://newpol.org/node/568, where I pointedly noted in a footnote that, according to the New York Times, only 56% of the graduates of the Class of 2010 had found jobs by 2011! But these are virtually unique in what is otherwise a blackout of articles and analyses on the unemployment crisis in "revolutionary" socialist publications!

Jack Rasmus’ article in ATC 135 (July/August 2008), “A New Phase of Economic Crisis,” http://solidarity-us.org/site/node/1608, which was touted to me by one of the Editors of ATC as an exception to my claim of silence on the unemployment crisis, is no exception, really, to this blackout. Much of the article is but a compendium of economic statistics that leads only to the weak, deterministic conclusion that essentially the unemployment and ancillary crises caused by the Great Recession can’t even be seriously ameliorated under capitalism. A “revolutionary” call to passivity in concrete action now while calling for the overthrow of capitalism in the indefinite future. Certainly not a call for a “Jobs for All” new WPA as we called for in New Politics, which, while possibly “saving capitalism from itself” (albeit with major restructuring of this “saved” capitalism), would directly benefit millions, galvanize and energize them, and draw them into more militant political action precisely because they would now feel a sense of real hope and empowerment—plus having the material means to live a decent life, not merely scrounge to survive! Same as the (admittedly) reformist and inadequate New Deal did in the 1930s—which aside from achieving real changes in the way capitalism worked, also radicalized millions and pushed the “limits of the possible” much further to the left. Good things, yes? One would really think so, especially on the part of the “revolutionary” left as represented by ATC and Solidarity, but—these “revolutionaries” tragically disappoint by only wanting to say “no” to this.

But as my comrade and fellow New Politics contributor Brain King put it in an e-mail comment to me that was shared with this ATC Editor, “Why don't ‘Socialist’ groups and journals want to support ‘Jobs for All’? That's a tough one, but it's gotta have something to do with how they see their own group interests and the maintenance of their institutions. They must figure that it's much cooler to promote some pie-in-the-sky version of an ethereal state of affairs called ‘socialism’ than to get jobs for all, gain a lot of control over labor markets, but leave capitalism still functioning. I also think a lot of these so-called ‘socialists’ don't much like the idea of being involved with a lot of politically incorrect schlubs, like me and you. If your gonna build a mass movement, you're gonna have to learn to get along with a lot of working people without left pedigrees.” [As originally written by King—GF]

Leaving socialists such as myself, Brian King and Jesse Lemisch who are aware of the horridness of the unemployment crisis and the sting of unemployment between the Scylla of reformist tailing after Obama's inadequate approach, or the Charybdis or the tacit “alignment” with the Republicans against Keynesian measures that would actually work by the "revolutionary" left (although, again, for entirely different reasons), as demonstrated by the deafening silence coming from the "revolutionaries”!

I write this letter out of my great respect and appreciation for ATC.

George Fish

This was a revised version of an earlier draft I’d sent to this socialist bimonthly—most notably revised from the original in that I’d excised some language that Against the Current Managing Editor and Editorial Board Member David Finkel had vehemently objected to. For in the original I’d talked of persons on the left not understanding what it was like to be unemployed because many of them were among the “smug employed” and the “smug retired.” Finkel also drew my attention to the article by Jack Rasmus, on which I commented in the revised letter. Those were the two notable changes made, and made specifically to answer Finkel’s objections; and so I sent off the revised letter to Against the Current for re-consideration. Despite Finkel’s nastily reproachful tone, I’d been professional enough to take his objections into consideration, and revise accordingly. I expected no problems with the revised letter, even though personal relations with him were strained, had been for some time, and in the fall of 2010 Finkel personally instigated proceedings that led to my expulsion from Solidarity, the socialist grouplet (only 200-some members nationally) that publishes Against the Current as a ‘broader” left magazine. In fact, many’s the time I’d previously published in Against the Current, frequently with Finkel’s previous encouragement and approval. (It should be mentioned here that David Finkel is also a listed Sponsor of the New Politics hard-copy journal.)

What I got instead from Against the Current was this below, directly from Finkel:

My final note to you, last week, very explicitly stated that “…you don’t need to send us any more ‘letters to the editor’ or proposals for articles, and in fact you can stop sending messages here on anything whatsoever. If there is any part of the above that is not clear, please re-read as many times as necessary.” There is no way to make the point clearer. We will not acknowledge or respond to any further communications from you.

There it is, ladies and gentlemen, friends and comrades! Just like Lucifer, I’ve now been cast into the pit of hell by Almighty God himself, in the form of a Managing Editor of a small, and to most people, highly obscure, magazine of the left with which I’d been associated with before; and had even been told by Finkel himself that I could submit proposed articles and letters to Against the Current even after I’d been expelled from Solidarity.

What’s particularly interesting, I think, in all this is not any objection to “offensive” language (which had been excised, anyway, in my revision) on the part of Against the Current, but the fact that, like much of the left today, it doesn’t really want to talk about “Jobs for All” new WPA-style programs. New Politics online has been the only notable (and to me, honorable) exception, having first published my awkwardly-titled "Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis" that called for such a new WPA, which was ably seconded on New Politics online by Brian King; further, also on New Politics online, radical historian Jesse Lemisch posted three articles in support of a WPA-like proposal for unemployed cultural and intellectual workers. (Two of Lemisch’s articles are linked above in the letter, as are King’s and my articles).

That “Jobs for All” programs and the left’s failure to adequately address the unemployment crisis because new-WPA proposals are seen as either inherently “reformist,” or conversely, other elements of the left don’t want to destroy “unity” by going beyond what Obama’s proposed, seems to me what’ at the ideological crux of Against the Current’s refusal, not language that had since been removed. That was seen to be the ideological issue involved by Brian King and three other friends and comrades of mine, who sent me the following remarks on my original draft, and whose words of support had been passed on to Finkel. They wrote, from a variety of political orientations, as seen below.

Greg King, member of CCDS, shop steward, SEIU Local 888, Boston city workers:

George, the Left hasn't been completely silent on the unemployment issue. They probably haven't devoted anywhere near as much time and energy to the crisis as it deserves. Discussing & pushing for solutions such as your WPA proposal would be a very good thing to do. Sometimes there is too much posturing and abstract theorizing, not enough attention to the real problems of real people.

Also, I didn't think your letter was that offensive. I thought it was well-argued and frank.

Harold Karabell, former left activist in Indianapolis, now living in St. Louis, Missouri:

In addition to infrastructure work, my own city could use a few thousand trees in various neighborhoods.

So perhaps it's time to revive the CCC as well!

Brian King, comrade from Seattle, long-time activist, contributor to New Politics:

I'm not surprised that ATC refused to publish your letter. For the record, I thought it was very good, and, for you, remarkably restrained. [I admit to sometimes getting carried away with harsh language—GF] My experience with all these guys (ATC, CCDS, DSA, Monthly Review, Nation) is that they are very uncomfortable with the idea of Jobs for All and the idea of building a movement for a new WPA. Actually, as far as I know, the only person of national prominence who supports us is Robert Reich, Clinton's old Secretary of Labor.

Why don't "Socialist" groups and journals want to support "Jobs for All"? That's a tough one, but it's gotta have something to do with how they see their own group interests and the maintenance of their institutions. They must figure that it's much cooler to promote some pie-in-the-sky version of an ethereal state of affairs called "socialism" than to get jobs for all, gain a lot of control over labor markets, but leave capitalism still functioning. I also think a lot of these so-called "socialists" don't much like the idea of being involved with a lot of politically incorrect schlubs, like me and you. If your gonna build a mass movement, you're gonna have to learn to get along with a lot of working people without left pedigrees.

and Phil Davis, former member of Solidarity, unemployed recent college graduate:

I think Dave should publish your letter regardless of whether or not he agrees with it. He could perhaps publish it and then write a rebuttal explaining why he disagrees with you. Instead, he chooses not to publish it at all. This is sad and unfortunate and yes it is censorship…you are correct.

Yes, I agree with you that "Jobs for All" is the slogan we should be fighting for. As someone who is unemployed, I believe that's a very, very important demand. I think Finkel should publish your letter regardless of whether or not he personally agrees with it. He could always write some type of rebuttal explaining why he disagrees with it, but I guess he won't even be doing that.

Refusal to even discuss “Jobs for All” programs compounded by censorship. Those are the political issues at the heart of Against the Current’s vehement refusal to print my Letter to the Editors, nor even allow the issue to be raised, even in a miniscule journal of the U.S. left where, given the mood of the U.S.’s also-miniscule left as a whole, both the letter itself and the issues it addresses would soon be forgotten. If anyone on the left ever wonders why, in this time of continuing deep economic recession, there exists this historical anomaly of the great bulk of the 99% not identifying with the left, nor wishing to get involved, even in amorphous Occupy movements, we need look no further than this incident for at least partial explanations.