Posted by rflacks on: Thu 25th Mar, 2010

 As President Obama said on signing the health insurance bill, "as we mark the turning of spring, we also mark a new season in America".  It's a hopeful forecast that can be fulfilled and that depends on sprouting grassroots.

The new health law changes the climate. The pundits' declaration of change focuses on the President's allegedly new determination and ‘toughness' and on the totally disciplined behavior of the Democrats in congress. All of that is to the good, though I feel like asserting that the chattering class has misunderstood and misestimated Barack Obama since the moment he stepped on the national political stage. A case can be made that from the outset he has more or less been doing the right moves strategically to get this health measure actually passed.  He held off confrontation with the insurance lobby and the GOP until it was clear to the country (and not just to him) that they were refusing to cooperate. He seems to have understood from the start that a variety of deals with corporate power centers would have to be made if there was to be any hope for reform. He's like Goldilocks, looking for what's ‘just right' and often finding it when others can't.

The biggest question about what could have been has to do with the public option.  Some such provision could have passed congress, but its scope and potential was destined to be very constrained, and the fuel it would have provided to the ‘government takeover' line made it politically dangerous. Had a version of the public option been included in the bill, however, its passage would have provided a clearer foundation for more progressive reform down the line.

Still, in his declaration of victory, Obama said: "And we have now just enshrined -- as soon as I sign this bill -- the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care." A modest restatement  of the progressive belief that healthcare is a right and therefore a fundamental responsibility of government to guarantee for all. The historic significance of the new law is that it enshrines that right. That new fact is something to  be built on in the years to come.

Those of us who understand that 'single payer' is the right and only practical way  have universal guaranteed health care long ago won the rational argument. What we might learn from the last year of struggle is that the case has not been made to a popular majority. But an opportunity to made headway on that score might be  to follow the strategy of trying to institute single payer plans on the state level. The need for this will be evident if the fears of health reformers about the new law bear fruit-namely that health costs for consumers will continue to rise, that the policies actually provided by the private corporations will be flawed, that loopholes in the new law will mean people will continue to be denied insurance, or their coverage will be inadequate when major illness strikes. Groups like the National Nurses Union and the Physicians for National Health plan (http://www.pnhp.org/) need to develop a strategy that makes the failure of the private insurance corporations evident and urgent.

The sweetness of the HCR was enhanced by the passage along with it of the direct student loan act. Here's a case where congress was in fact willing to terminate some major corporate business by ending the federal subsidies to private banks to provide student loans. Putting the banks out of the student loan business releases billions that can be rechanneled to direct aid for students. 

Under the radar these last weeks has been a considerable mobilization of people power for healthcare and student loan reform expressed largely through torrential rain of email and phone calls to congress.  The progressive grassroots are stirring. Students and teachers on the march in California (this week thousands rallied in Sacramento again). Huge immigrant rights march in DC with more to follow in other cities. Antiwar rallies on the anniversary of the Iraq war. These are further harbingers of a new season.  

But media attention focuses on the fascistic mobilization on the right-displays of which certainly foul the spring air. It's certainly newsworthy that congresspersons are being threatened and their offices vandalized, and that a rhetoric of violence is being spewed by major national figures. It's past time to demand that Palin, Limbaugh and the congressional leadership denounce violence and the threats of it (think of the contortions Obama had to go through in the matters of Rev.  Wright and Bill Ayers). It's to be hoped that the Democrats will made the case that the best way for ordinary citizens to repudiate that extremism is to vote against those who seek to profit from it.

The progressive legislative agenda has to include active support for job creation. An important aspect of that has to be aid to the states and cities to prevent scenarios of mass layoffs of teachers and other public workers, and to create jobs to sustain the infrastructure. There's a lot more on that agenda (from financial reform to immigration reform, energy reform, workers rights reform), all of which is guaranteed to be powerfully resisted.  Maybe in the new season, progressive national leaderships and local activists will feel new confidence to advance that agenda. Otherwise, a winter of hate and despair looms.

Tags: Obana, healthcare, fascism, progressive movement, progressive agenda, student loans, congress

Posted by rflacks on: Wed 24th Mar, 2010

 this week we'll do our annual radio passover seder--a bit prematurely but I'll be away next week. Since March 25 marks the 99th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, we'll include some songs of the Jewish sweatshop workers who struggled and who died in those years, resonating with the struggles in today's sweatshops. A collection of songs traditional to the seder's recollections of biblical slavery will be interspersed with African American slave songs embodying similar recollections. All this and more...

culture of protest Thurs 3/25/10  6-7pm pdt  kcsb 91.9fm www.kcsb.org

Tags: Passover, triangle fire, sweatshops, slavery

Posted by rflacks on: Wed 17th Mar, 2010

Jn honor of St. Patrick's day, this week's  radio show will feature the newly released Chieftain's album that recalls the St. Patrick battalion. It was a band of 200 Irish immigrant soldiers, who in the midst of the US invasion of Mexico in  1847 defected and joined the Mexican Army. After fighting several fierce battles, they were captured; many hung as traitors, others physically branded as deserters. Forgotten in the US, but well remembered in Mexico and Ireland, the new record presents a fusion of Irish and Mexican music, and a number of ballads about the San Patricios. The show concludes with a tribute to the Clancy Brothers, who bewgan 50 years ago to revive Irish folk music and rebwel songs. The last  surviving member, Liam, died 3 months ago.

 culture of protest thurs 3/18/10 6-7 pdt kcsb 91.9 fm www.kcsb.org

Tags: st. patrick's day, . chieftains, Clancy Brothers, Irish fok songs, culture of protest radio show

Posted by rflacks on: Wed 10th Mar, 2010

union maid

Its not usually acknowledged in observances of International Women's Day  that it began in 1911 as a socialist sponsored tribute to feminism  and to women workers. One of the events that gave rise to its observance was a great strike by women sweatshop workers in NY in 1909.

 Some of the most stirring and memorable protest songs  come out of such struggles.  On  this week's show we'll pay special tribute in song  to the 99th anniversary of the Triangle Fire in which 146 women sweatshop workers died, and to embattled school teachers so often being being blamed for society's educational debacles.

 culture of protest thurs 3/11/10 6-7pm pst kcsb 91.9fm www.kcsb.org

Tags: international womens day, women workers, triangle fire, kcsb radio

Posted by rflacks on: Sat 6th Mar, 2010

You're read various reports about the March 4th mobilization in defense of education. Media coverage was more than respectable, emphasizing the fact that all kinds of marches, rallies and other collective action happened throughout California, and in at least 32 other states. Students at UC Santa Cruz barred the entrances to the campus.  Bay Area students blocked a major freeway. Grade school kids took to the streets all over the place.  News reports suggest that hundreds of thousands participated.

Events in Santa Barbara were probably typical. Hundreds of students rallied on campus under the auspices of a coalition that included the campus unions (who represent clerical, maintenance, professional, technical workers, TAs and lecturers, librarians) and student groups.  Ralliers boarded buses (paid for by UCSB chancellor Yang) or rode bikes en masse to the heart of Santa Barbara (ten miles from campus). There they were met by contingents of teachers and others mobilized by the California Teachers Association (representing k-12 schools) who led a march down State St. from city hall to the steps of the County Courthouse. I estimated about a 1000 participants in these actions. The energy of the young marchers was potent and infectious. Speeches, however, were inaudible since no one had arranged an adequate sound system. 

You couldn't help but be excited by the spirit and the promise of a gathering movement. The evident intention of those who took part was to wake people to the fact that public education is becoming a casualty of the state fiscal crisis. Some 18000 K-12 teachers have received pink slips. Enormous tuition increases in the public universities are coupled with drastic reductions in course offerings and services, and significant salary cuts for faculty and staff. Next year may be worse, since the state deficit keeps growing and federal stimulus help will dry up. Gov Schwarzenegger has promised to protect the education budget. We have reasons to be skeptical.

I've been hoping for and predicting this sort of movement since last Fall. But yesterday's actions left me with mixed feelings about the prospects. The best news was the alliance that's emerged among students, teachers and education unions (with the latter getting good support from the labor movement generally). And it does seem that a new activist generation has taken leadership on campuses, recognizing the need for ongoing struggle.  

Further action is in the works. Yesterday, the California Federation of Teachers, supported by a very broad labor based coalition, started a 48 day march on Sacramento; a long march through the state, reminding us of Cesar Chavez' enormously effective similar action 40 years ago, could be galvanizing.

But it was dismaying how little was said or done Thursday about a policy agenda for which people could work and that might provide some hope for a new direction. Marching down the main street demanding a return to free education  elicits smirks and shrugs from bystanders, since everyone believes that there is no money and that everyone must sacrifice given the state of the economy.  

Public resignation can be challenged by concrete proposals that can offer hope. There are at least two proposals now being taken up by the union and student groups. One is the THE CALIFORNIA DEMOCRACY ACT, the  ballot initiative formulated by George Lakoff, which reads, in its  entirety: "All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote".  Efforts to get this on the ballot are now in process; its passage would remove one of the key reasons California is now a failed state (that all fiscal matters have to be passed by 2/3 of the legislature). But as far as I can tell, almost nothing was done Thursday to build mass involvement in this ballot drive.

The  second proposal with legs is Assembly Bill AB 656. Proposed by majority leader Alberto Torrico, it would tax oil extraction in California (now the only oil state not having such a tax) to create an annual revenue stream of $2 billion earmarked for higher education. If any tax measure has a chance to get wide public support, this is  it. UC Pres. Yudof (who  backed yesterday's protests) is reported to be opposed to the Torrico bill because it provides funding to all segments of higher education rather than privileging UC.

In any case, little was done in yesterday's actions to inform people about this proposal and channel energy in its behalf.

It's important for people to have seen that anger is seething in our schools. But that anger won't have much political meaning unless it fuels a political agenda. A focused anger is needed to challenge the combination of greed, ignorance a, structural dysfunction and spinelessness that has virtually destroyed the state government. 

Apart from the promise of grassroots energy, the political scene in California is depressing to say the least. Our once and future governor, Jerry Brown, announces a candidacy by articulating no ideas that might promise change. He pledges no new taxes without a popular vote, repeating his seventies mantras about 'living within our means'. He's chosen to pander to the infantile side of the California electorate-those who think 'we' are overtaxed and that government waste is the problem. A just published Field poll shows the electorate profoundly split-half willing to consider tax increases as the key to restoring the budget, a third opposed to all tax increases, and the remainder maybe willing to hear some pro-tax argument. 

Still, Jerry thinks its politically necessary to not talk about taxes. He's up against super-rich Meg Whitman who seems, like Republicans generally, to feel that she can say anything she wants regardless of logic and truth, and fork out millions of her own money to disseminate the effluent. 

If I were advising Jerry Brown, I'd suggest that he can take the lead  were he to talk about the need for an oil tax, about pluggimg huge corporate tax loopholes that recently were adopted, about fixing prop 13 so that property tax relief goes to homeowners and not to commercial interests. I'd raise the question of whether the biggest waste in government isn't in the prison system. 

He could galvanize a storm of student support if he talked about decriminalization of marijuana as a way to reduce prison costs and raise new revenue sources.

I'd be pleasantly surprised if he provided such leadership. But what's needed is a new progressive coalition -a coming together of progressive leaderships at the state and local levels to spell out an agenda for California that can change the terms of discourse and debate. Maybe this week's protest can begin to such a process.

 I encourage you to share your thoughts and observations. To register here so you can make comments you need to know that Santa Barbara's main street is State St.

Posted by rflacks on: Wed 3rd Mar, 2010

After some more travel we're back--and on the air:

this land is your land

 woody guthrie wrote the song 70 years ago this week. So of course we'll feature it on this week's show , listening to many variations. But first we'll talk with Kelly Burns, one of the organizers of tomorrow's local demonstration in solidarity with nationwide local events in defense of education, organized by education unions and students. You can take part locally as follows:

  7:30-9:30am- Bagel breakfast in the Arbor with rally info and social. 
Hosted by CUE (Coalition of University Employees).
12pm- Rally and press conference in the Arbor with students, workers, 
faculty, staff, and local politicians speaking.
1:00-3:04pm- Carpools/busses from NH bus loop to downtown.
1:30pm- Critical bike mass begins at Pardall Tunnel.
3:45pm- Gather to march on State Street with SB Teachers
Association, UCSB folks, community members, and parents.  Demand 
Sacramento to invest in public education!!
The March on state street begins in De La Guerra Plaza, and goes to 
the courthouse.

culture of protest thurs 6-7pm pst kcsb 91.9fm www.kcsb.org