Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 5,
2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
January 31,
2005
Dave Zirin
Mr.
Frank's Fatwah: New Republic Writer Calls for Death & Torture
of Arundhati Roy and Stan Goff
Robert Fisk
Amid
Tragedy, Defiance
Chyng Sun
Gonzales: Chief Prosecutor of Porn?
Greg Moses
The Real Scandals of the Texas Election
Mike Whitney
Cheney at Auschwitz
Ali Tonak
Turkey and the EU: Fantasies and Ultimatums
Patrick Cockburn
A
Victory for the Shia
Website of
the Day
Voting by the Script: Where Did the 8 Million Voter Turnout Figure
Come From?
January 29
/ 30, 2005
Manuel Yang
/ Peter Linebaugh
A
Dialogue About Murder in Toledo
Gabriel Kolko
Wilsonian
and Neoconservative Myths
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad: City of Empty Streets
Robert Fisk
This Election Will Change the World, But Not as the US Wanted
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Con Job: Bush Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
Bernard Chazelle
Why the Children of Iraq Make No Sound When They Fall
Gary Leupp
"This Kind of Subject Matter": Bush's New Ed Secretary
vs. Vermont's Lesbians
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Passion of Paul Shanley
Alexander Cockburn
The Case of Father Jerry
Ron Jacobs
Ballot of the Puppets in Iraq
Brian Cloughley
Smart Bombs; Wrong House: Iraq's Civilian Dead
Fred Gardner
Peron May Split
Sister Dianna
Ortiz
Memo to Bush from a Survivor of the Guatemalan Torturers: Stop
the Torture!
Tom Reeves
How Bush Brings Freedom to the World: the Case of Haiti
Fran Quigley
Report: Haiti Now "More Violent and More Inhuman"
Suzan Mazur
"Mr. Garsin from Kinshasa": an Old Hand Weighs In on
the Murder of Lumumba
Kurt Nimmo
Condi Rice and the Neocon Plan for the Palestinians
Lenni Brenner
Holocaust History: Beyond the UN's Rhetoric
Gilad Atzmon
The
Politics of Auschwitz
Luis Gomez
Power and Autonomy in Bolivia
Mark Gaffney
NASA Searches for a Snowball in Hell: Why Velikovsky Matters
Ben Tripp
Lament of the Mnemonopath
Richard Oxman
Meet the Fuqers
Poets' Basement
Louise, Collins, Shanahan and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
Chemical Industry: Deceit and Denial
January 28,
2005
Rachard Itani
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers: the US Really is a Miser
Jensen / Youngblood
Iraq's
Non-Election
Patrick Cockburn / Elizabeth
Davies
Attacks on Polling Places Leave 13 Dead
Dave Zirin
The Great Donovan McNabb: Proud "Black Quarterback"
Dave Lindorff
Suicide by State Execution?
Karyn Strickler
A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
Jorge Mariscal
Fighting
the Poverty Draft
January 27,
2005
Seymour Hersh
We've
Been Taken Over By a Cult
Cockburn /
Sengupta
The
US's Bloodiest Day in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Juke Box Journalism: Shilling for Bush
Ignacio Chapela
/ John F. García
The Laws of Nature
Mike Whitney
The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Those Liberal Southern Baptists!
Ray McGovern
Reining In Cheney
Russ Wellen
Marginalizing Bin Laden
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
Website of
the Day
Informed Eating
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
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|
Weekend Edition
February 5 / 6, 2005
He Never Waited on the Democrats
James
Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
By
DAVID SWANSON
"Any revolutionary movement
cannot succeed if the power of that movement is not in the hands
of the poor."
-- James Forman
Jim Forman died last week at age 76,
the same age Martin Luther King Jr. would have been this week
if he had not been assassinated. These two allies and rivals
in the most dramatic and effective social movement of this country's
last century still have much to teach us. And, although Forman
is much less well known, he in particular may have set an example
that we need right now.
Every year during this week,
the corporate media treats us to a version of King's life focused
on his eloquence, his religiosity, and his work for racial equality.
Every year a few progressive voices point out that King opposed
imperialistic violence as well as police brutality, and that
he struggled to end poverty and injustice that remain with us
today. Rarely does anyone mention that King, while accomplishing
amazing things that perhaps no one else could have done, was
often a moderate, a diplomat, a public face, and a power broker
in a movement being pushed in more aggressive directions by people
like Jim Forman.
We still have moderates today.
Most of them are not as brilliant, as inspiring, or as dedicated
as Martin Luther King Jr. And most of them are MORE moderate.
But we've got thousands of them. What we do not have is the band
of brothers and sisters that was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC). We do not have a group of people effectively
setting the nation's agenda by laying their lives on the line
for complete justice now and nothing less. And we are the weaker
for it. The right wing has its extremists who make its moderate
positions middle-of-the-road. We only have moderates, who must
therefore be dismissed as extreme.
In the past week, we have seen
many progressive organizations speak out for election reform
and voting rights, denouncing the suppression of black votes
that was seen in Ohio and other states last November 2nd. This
includes hip new online groups like MoveOn and 527s like ACT.
But between November 3rd and January 6th, these organizations
made no significant contributions to preventing the theft of
an election. From the day that Senator John Kerry conceded to
the day Congress certified the vote, members of what Jim Forman
used to call the liberal-labor syndrome refused to stick their
necks out. Even now, they will not suggest that there is any
doubt Bush won. This describes the behavior of every international
union and of the AFL-CIO, as well as the 527s, MoveOn (which
sent a message to the Ohio region prior to a Jan. 3 rally, but
nationally focused on Social Security that week), People for
the American Way (which released a report on election problems
along with a coalition of groups but did not connect it to any
effort to stop the certification of the election or any suggestion
that Bush did not win), and - of course - the majority of Democratic
senators and representatives. Various small groups did act, and
Rev. Jesse Jackson became a leading spokesman for those objecting
to a stolen election. The coalition cobbled together was surprisingly
successful in moving Congress Members and Senators to at least
give lip service to the matter. The seeds of something may have
been sown. But a mass movement was not organized. Civil disobedience
was not used. (One arrest in the U.S. Senate was not reported
on and accomplished nothing.)
Why are there no sit-ins today?
Why is nobody going to jail for justice? Why is our culture not
in upheaval over the injustices of our laws and practices? Surely
it is not because we live in a time lacking in injustice. The
illegal aggression against Iraq -- and the use of napalm and
depleted uranium there -- cries out for civil unrest while we
snooze or study "issue framing" or work on our graduate
degrees. The attacks on our civil rights by the Justice Department,
the drastic shifting of wealth and power to a tiny corporate
elite, the lowering of wages and increasing of work hours, and
the virtual elimination of any real right to organize a union
- these things scream at us to sacrifice, to lay our lives down
as those before us did to make a better world. But we can't be
bothered, we wouldn't want people to look at us funny. After
all, the television tells us things are looking up. And yet the
confinement of a whole generation behind bars and under the gaze
of a prison industry, the heedless destruction of our environment,
and ever-new forms of discrimination - these things leave a bitter
taste in our mouths, which we cover with soda or beer. Maybe
we sign a petition on a website just to make sure we're doing
our part. Maybe we push a button on a screen to vote for a candidate
and count on the computer to count our vote.
Jim Forman did not wait for
the Democratic Party to set an agenda. He gave us a model of
aggressive and militant action based on principles of equality,
social justice, and non-violence. Toward the late sixties he
grew more accepting of the idea of violent struggle, and in doing
so I believe he was horribly wrong. But what he showed us through
the early and mid sixties was aggressive non-violent organizing.
He organized, meaning he reached out to people, figured out what
they would fight for, inspired them to fight for it, coordinated
their work, found the resources to pay them for it, communicated
their work to the world, and bailed them out of jail. One of
the reasons Forman is not better known is that he actively sought
to avoid stardom, and one of the reasons he did so was that he
wanted to develop many leaders in a grassroots movement. Many
of those he mentored are still leaders today. Several, including
Julian Bond whom Forman made his communications person at SNCC,
have spoken fondly of Forman in the past week.
Bond has said that, according
to the publisher, he is the only professor who teaches a course
using Forman's "The Making of Black Revolutionaries,"
a 553-page book that gives a first person account including Forman's
childhood but focusing on his years at SNCC. The book ends in
1969 and was published in 1972. There is probably no better book
to read if you have an interest in organizing a social movement.
Forman wrote for the sake of educating those who came next. He
wrote what worked and what didn't, where he thinks he went wrong,
and where he thinks his friends and colleagues went wrong or
betrayed him. All the infighting and rivalries and comically
bad blunders that we see in organizations today were right there
in SNCC, and there is much to learn from an account of them.
SNCC did not accomplish what it did because it was free of problems,
but because it was a movement. What we have today are merely
organizations or ethical careers and hobbies, and that goes for
the "labor movement" too - it's not a movement. If
it wants to become one between now and the AFL-CIO's 50th Anniversary
Convention this July in Chicago, it would do well to study the
making of black revolutionaries.
The labor movement has improved
in some ways since the days in which Walter Reuther was a force
against which the Civil Rights movement had to push, the days
when labor leaders viewed Jim Forman as a communist, something
far worse than a racist. On Labor Day weekend 1967, Forman addressed
the National Conference for a New Politics convention in Chicago.
In the middle of this speech, he said:
"There are more than 15,000
American white Nationals in South Africa and millions of U.S.
dollars invested in plants there. Walter Reuther is supposed
to have said that the goose gets fatter no matter how much they
cut off. The weakness in his analysis is that he fails to realize
that General Motors and most other monopoly concerns in the United
States are getting fat on the lives of black people in Africa
and all over the world. For him and other so-called union leaders
to attack the problem of more wages for some but not all American
workers, and to participate in the slaughter and murder of our
people in South Africa, is in fact for them to make themselves
enemies of the people.."
Forman's criticism of Reuther
(as well as the decline of the labor movement!) had begun at
least as early as the 1956 Democratic National Convention in
Chicago, and he credited his learning experience there with the
aggressive position he took at the 1964 convention. In 1956 the
newly formed Leadership Conference on Civil Rights wanted to
get a strong civil rights plank into the platform and thought
they could do so if it were brought to a vote on the floor. Reuther
said that labor delegates would make enough noise to demand a
roll-call vote on the resolution. But they did not. There was
nothing but silence, and the platform was approved with a weak
position on civil rights, but without a fight over a tough civil
rights stance.
"I thought," wrote
Forman, "of the trick that had been played on the blacks
across the country who could not see what I saw or hear what
I heard. What a fake the entire platform hearings must be, I
thought. They probably had the resolution already written in
the National Committee meeting. They had the hearings only as
a pretense of democratic procedure, to let people talk. I learned
and I remembered."
In 1964, when African-Americans
from Mississippi sent their own delegation to the DNC in Atlantic
City, various leaders spoke to them and urged them to back down
and agree to recognize the party's official delegates, who had
been elected in a process that excluded blacks. Those urging
this compromise, which would have given the blacks two seats,
included Jack Pratt of the National Council of Churches; Bayard
Rustin, the great organizer of the March on Washington; Joseph
Rauh, general council for the UAW, whom Reuther had threatened
to fire if there was a floor fight; and King. But Bob Moses and
Forman, both of SNCC, urged the delegates to stand firm. And
they did so.
"Five years of struggle,"
Forman later wrote, "had radically changed the thought processes
of many people, changed them from idealistic reformers to fulltime
revolutionaries. And the change had come through direct experience."
And in the next four years, blacks in Mississippi substantially
gained the right to vote. At the convention of the NAACP in 1966,
by which time Forman and others had started shouting "Black
Power!", Vice President Hubert Humphrey announced his support
for racial integration, the first time a president or vice president
had straightforwardly done so.
But did we learn anything?
The DNC platform committee meeting in 2004, chaired by a black
woman, strung anti-war activists along for days before tossing
them a half an incoherent sentence in the platform. And they
accepted it. And anti-war delegates at the convention in Boston
kept their mouths shut. Their candidate lost, and the war continues.
Did we learn anything? Should we not, sometimes, borrow an acronym
from the right and ask WWJD, but use the J for Jim?
What Forman learned is encapsulated
in the quote at the top of this article. Assistance from the
wealthy and powerful is all well and good, but it cannot be counted
on. It will not spread into a movement. It will not hold fast
when the going gets rough. A poor people's movement must be controlled
by poor people. This lesson was taught by Gandhi and others,
and it is a lesson that community organizations like ACORN attempt
to build on. But we are back in the 1950s now in terms of the
work that it takes to build a movement. Our 1960s will not come
until the 2010s, and won't come even then if we don't demand
it now and organize for it now and dedicate our lives to it now.
Demand what? The right to vote,
the right to health care, the right to publicly funded elections,
the right to a living wage, the right to organize a union, the
right to democratic media, and the right to trade and environmental
policies created of, by, and for the people.
We're up against a well-funded
and trained opposition. And we're up against an even less democratic
media than existed in the 1960s. Forman understood the power
of the press. He had been a reporter for the Chicago Defender.
He became the press agent for SNCC. When news was not covered
locally, he would arrange for a friendly subscriber to the AP
or UPI wire service to request a story. And he understood the
need to produce your own media. He brought on Julian Bond to
publish a newsletter, and he insisted on having the news reported
from everywhere SNCC worked. Forman endlessly demanded that his
staff document their work. In his own words:
"I felt very strongly
about the importance of field staff sending in frequent and detailed
reports on their activities - so strongly that at one point,
we in the Atlanta office took the position of 'no field report,
no subsistence check.' The point was not to burden the already
overworked field secretaries with another task but to strengthen
our network of communications."
Forman smuggled out of the
South film of a police dog attacking, and he surprised people
when, in the middle of delivering an outraged response to a sudden
injustice, he could simultaneously make sure that press photographers
were able to get a good picture, not of him, but of the scene.
He knew the value of mass communications. His speeches included
recommendations to copy the transcript and publish it in local
newsletters. He was an incessant organizer. And in 1969, among
the expenses for which he and others demanded money in "The
Black Manifesto" were: "four major publishing and printing
enterprises for black people," and "four television
networks to provide an alternative to racist and capitalistic
propaganda."
But if Forman understood the
media so well, why isn't he better known today? Why did coverage
of his death appear as nothing beside the sanctification of Ronald
Reagan on all channels all the time? One reason may be that we
have been losing the battle for better media all these years.
Another important reason is simply that he was not killed. He
might be as well known as Malcolm X today, if not King, had he
been assassinated. In addition, as noted above, he tried not
to become the focus.
But there are a number of other
reasons, I think, that Forman is not better known. One reason
is that he did not often compromise with those in power, nor
did he compromise his rhetoric. He spoke against capitalism and
for revolution. He did not always speak strictly for nonviolence.
He shouted for Black Power, not only for integration. And he
was impolite. At a United Nations Conference in Africa in the
summer of 1967, as Newark and Detroit exploded, he read remarks
prepared by himself and others in SNCC, which included:
"Our brothers and sisters
are dying in the streets of the United States as we utter these
words. They are engaged in rebellions and revolts against white
people who have denied them their liberty and exploited our labor
for centuries. Yet the United States representatives sit at this
conference and talk about freedom blowing in the wind. There
is indeed something blowing in the wind, Mr. Chairman. It is
blowing all over the world and it is a determination by the oppressed
black, brown, and colored people who form a world majority that
the day of the white man exploiting all of us is over."
Forman's impoliteness extended
to outspoken opposition to Israel's policies toward Palestinians.
In 1969 he carried impoliteness so far as to disrupt a service
at Riverside Church in New York to demand that white churches
pay $500 million in reparations to African-Americans. If the
movement for reparations ever succeeds, Forman may be honored
as one of its pioneers. Until then, he's known - where he's known
at all - as someone who pushed for a change that has not yet
come (and must therefore be ridiculed or attacked). We forget
how many things he pushed for that are now taken for granted.
In addition, Forman did not
appeal to Americans' religiosity. "This God was supposed
to be just," he wrote of his early thinking about religion,
"yet we black people had to pray and pray and hope that
justice would come to us one day. This seemed too slow to me.
The myth of whites getting their just deserts in hell while we
finally got rewarded in heaven was responsible for much of the
apathy of black people, I thought."
And later: "When a people
who are poor, suffering with disease and sickness, accept the
fact that God has ordained for them to be this way - then they
will never do anything about their human condition. In other
words, the belief in a supreme being or God weakens the will
of a people to change conditions themselves."
That's not the kind of talk
that will endear you to religious Americans. But I believe it
is correct and of immense importance. And I believe more people
know it than have the strength of character to say it out loud.
Forman did not have all the
answers, and he faults himself plenty even in his own reporting
on events of the 60s. But he never lacked the nerve to speak
the ugly truth. And because he didn't, others were able to face
it and to believe they could change it. That he developed leaders
rather than acting as a public face for the movement should allow
us to recognize him as a great leader indeed. The things he fought
for and the words he spoke are part of our culture now. When
we say "One Man, One Vote" or "One Person, One
Vote," we are quoting Jim Forman. When we talk of an Ohio
Freedom Winter or an Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, we are echoing
the work Forman did putting organizers across the South and black
and white activists, himself included, on buses in the face of
beatings.
But, like ancient customs that
pretend to reenact once deadly rituals, our activism has become
in many ways a charade. We imitate the great ones, even as we
forget them. We ride buses around the country and give our bus
rides grand titles, when the problems we face have nothing whatsoever
to do with the freedom to ride buses.
We must return to the place
of "The Making of Black Revolutionaries" and recognize
that SNCC was a small group of activists, just like we are, but
that their dedication built a massive movement. Jim Forman died
last month a man who had made this world a better place. May
his example live on.
This article originally
appeared on the Black
Commentator.
David Swanson is Media Coordinator for The
International Labor Communications Association. He can be
reached at: dswanson@aflcio.org
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