Why Occupy Cincinnati? Because We’re a Microcosm of the Country

     The Occupy Wall Street protest now involves thousands and similar protests are taking place in dozens of cities and towns across the country. But why here in Cincinnati?

Pushing back on Wall Street's educational agenda

The gutsy young people who are encamping on Wall Street, the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, are probably doing more to save public education than anyone else.(Pace, Diane Ravitch). In pushing back on the economy, they are creating space for a meaningful discussion of what schools can and should do -- and what they can't. The mantra repeated daily in the media, by politicians from both parties, is that education can solve the nation's economic problems.

The al-Awlaki Killing: Rights and Safety Blown to Smithereens

     The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen on Friday by a U.S. drone has elicited cheers from most mainstream politicians and pundits. Civil libertarians, however, have noted the terrible precedent this sets: here an American citizen has been targeted for assassination and executed solely on the say-so of the president, with no need to indict him, or present open evidence of his guilt. If the U.S. government had wanted to tap al-Awlaki's phone, judicial review would have been required.

Strike Wave Sweeps Brazil: No Sector Unaffected; A New Union Movement On the March

     Workers in Brazil—in heavy industry, services, the public sector, and agriculture—are involved in a series of strikes and mass protests such as the country hasn’t seen in decades. . Driving the new labor upsurge is the strength of the country’s economy, the powerful position of unions in the society, and the rising inflation. In 2007 and 2008, Brazil’s economy grew at a rate of 5%, and though in the depths of the crisis in 2009 it shrunk by .02%, last year the economy grew again at a rate of 10%.

They hoped for FDR; all they got was the "F"

[The following appeared as a contribution to a symposium on electoral politics in the September 2011 issue of Yankee Radical, DSA's Boston-area socialist monthly. While the piece makes reference in places to the perspectives of a particular organization, its analysis is meant to apply to a broad swath of the US left as well.]

The Existential Robert Fitch

An overflow crowd at New York's Brecht Forum on Sept. 18 commemorated the life of the late journalist, author, scholar, educator, activist, union organizer and frequent New Politics contributor Bob Fitch, who died in March after complications from a fall. Among the speakers were Bertell Ollman, Steve Bronner, Doug Henwood, Christian Parenti, Jonathan Fitch and NP's Michael Hirsch. Below are Hirsch's remarks.

On Strike

On Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner told the Economic Club of Washington, DC, “Job creators in America are essentially on strike."

     He was quite right. Although most people have heard of a strike by workers, capital too can go on strike, and often has done so to achieve its political and economic goals.

     Economists Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis explained in their book Democracy and Capitalism how the capital strike works:

Jobs and Deficits: Obama Squares the Circle

     President Obama outlined his new American Jobs Act before a packed Congress, more than half of whom believe the poor and jobless are undertaxed moochers and that the government does not create jobs. The Democrats will have their hands full.

Talking about race and Haiti

Though these two pieces about education, one about the terrible way the US is destroying any possibilities for a real system of public education in Haiti, the other reasons the author is NOT talking about race, do not make this connection, they point to the fact that education in the US has to be seen in the context of international policy, and in particular US imperialism, in which racism is pro

Means-testing Social Security: The kiss of death

     MEANS-TESTING SOCIAL SECURITY is a proposal that some policy-makers are considering. That would be the beginning of the end for the program. When Social Security was first begun, in 1935 during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, some people proposed means-testing it as they means-tested Aid to Dependent Children (now TANF, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families). Roosevelt resisted it, knowing that would make it politically vulnerable. In order to protect it, Social Security needed to be universal. The rich as well as the poor would receive it.