The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Statement from TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen on President Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration February 1, 2017

On every level, I am descended from immigrants and refugees. The Transport Workers Union was built by immigrants and refugees. So was NY’s subway system.

The founder of our great union, Michael J. Quill, fled Ireland in the 1920’s, the victim of political and religious persecution.

The Irish men and women who formed the backbone of my union in its earliest days came to the US to escape these same forms of discrimination.
They came for the economic opportunity they were denied in Ireland. My granny came from Derry City in the north of Ireland.
She was part of the great successive waves of immigration to the US from Ireland. She came seeking freedom and an opportunity to raise a family in peace.

I would be dishonoring her memory, and the memory of the founders of the TWU, if I did not speak out against the inhumane and discriminatory Executive Order on immigration signed by President Trump last week.

The story of the TWU is intertwined with the story of immigration.
In its earliest days, immigrants from Ireland, Italy, England and Germany provided the bulk of our members and leaders.

As the face of immigration has changed, so has the TWU. Chapters of our story were written by Black workers who migrated from the US South
to escape persecution and violence. New chapters are being written by members and officers from the Caribbean, Bangladesh, countries of the former Soviet Union, Nigeria and dozens of other nations. Like our founders, and all of my grandparents, they are coming for economic opportunity and to be free from religious and political persecution.
They are welcome in the TWU.

I am not someone who always wears his religious faith on his sleeve,
although anyone close to me recognizes how my Irish Catholic upbringing and adult Christian faith impact my life and the decisions I make every day.

They help guide me as a father, a husband, a worker, a citizen and a union president. These beliefs have combined with my sense of personal and institutional history to lead me to speak out against barring refugees from entering the US, against giving a preference to members of one faith over another, and against denying sanctuary to people in desperate need of it.

President Trump’s order is in opposition to traditional Christian values and teachings.

Personally, organizationally, and spiritually, I am the descendant of immigrants and refugees.

I am proud to be such. I stand with my Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and non-believing sisters and brothers against efforts to demonize every Muslim as a potential terrorist. I stand with all those calling for a fair and humane immigration policy that provides welcome and comfort to the victims of war and persecution.

This is a real American response, the correct response.
And it’s the reason my granny was welcomed with open arms when she sought refuge from the persecution against Catholics in the north of Ireland all those years ago

Thanks to BH for this.

A national business here February 1, 2017

Oddly revealing comment from Enda Kenny in the Dáil chamber just now discussing the Apple tax issue. He said in relation to the EU Commissioner’s interest in the issue ..” Corporate tax rates which are a national business here”.

They are indeed.

And speaking of the UK, what’s this about ‘having to get rid of much of its social safety net’? February 1, 2017

From Bloomberg…

The U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union is going to lead to dramatic changes in the way the country’s economy operates, which could create opportunities for a firm like Terra Firma Capital Partners, Chairman Guy Hands said.

And:

The country will have to get rid of much of its social safety net and may see a 30 percent decline in wages in real terms in the next 20 years to enable it to compete outside of Europe, Hands said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. Debt will command higher interest rates as more risk is ascribed to an independent U.K., and immigrants from Europe will be replaced with workers from the Indian subcontinent and Africa, who may be willing to accept “substantially” lower pay, he said.

Jesus Christ, they’re not exactly shy about the implications of the vote, are they?

Bored now… Trump and his empty field. February 1, 2017

Listen to Ken Rudin’s Political Junkie podcast and the first ten to fifteen minutes – where he has excerpts from Trump’s speech to the intelligence community. It’s absolutely stunning to hear how self-referential and self-pitying he is. As Rudin noted, here’s this guy who is President of the US and yet he has an obsession with the size of the crowd, the number of votes Clinton got, etc? “If he really believes he’s won why is he so defensive?” was the gist of the commentary. Rudin, by the by, positions himself as a largely neutral observer of US politics.

His guest, a Washington Post journalist, argued that he is firstly a provocateur and secondly that he is ‘somewhat bored with the mundane day to day business of being the President’. So ’its hard for him to go to the CIA to make a standard issue speech where nothing is going on’ and hence the urge to whip up controversy in order to keep him in the public eye.

Could it be that? That the man is ‘bored’, that he is addicted to coverage in the media?

Interesting point made that his attacks on the press is going to make it difficult for him to get ratings above 40-45%.

The February issue of Socialist Voice February 1, 2017

Socialist Voice can now viewed online:  http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/index.html

Contents:

Expressway to privatisation
Jimmy Doran
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/01-expressway.html

It looks like the Government have their greedy sights on Bus Éireann and the rural public transport system. They have been doing a very good job in their media over the last couple of years, demonising Bus Éireann as a hopeless case and a huge financial burden on the taxpayer.
They fail to point out that the financial problems are a direct result of policy decisions to starve Bus Éireann of the financial support needed to provide decent public transport to our citizens living in rural Ireland.

RTE and alternative facts
Alan Hanlon
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/02-RTE.html

Immediately after his inauguration as president of the United States, Donald Trump claimed there were more people at his inauguration than at any previous inauguration. All the evidence contradicted this.
His spokesperson described this Trumpism as an “alternative fact”; the American media described it as a falsehood.
An “alternative fact” is a falsehood. Channel 4 simply called it a lie. RTE, however, described it as “economical with the truth.”

A planned health crisis
Eoghan M. Ó Néill

http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/03-health.html

The headlines scream that once again Ireland is hit by an annual health crisis—that each winter, just around Christmas time, we are hit by a crisis in our A&E departments brought on by elderly bed-blockers and those who refuse to take the flu vaccination.
This year a record 540 people were on trolleys. The Government and the private sector came to the rescue by providing private beds, paid for from the public purse.

A critical assessment of Soviet agriculture
Eoghan O’Neill
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/04-soviet.html
The Soviet Union has many critics—some with just cause, but most of them ideologically driven to oppose the very nature of the system, despite the unprecedented scale of development that unfolded during the seventy-five years of its existence.
In this article I specifically deal with agriculture, the growth rates from 1909 to 1975, and finally the most controversial period of the first five-year plan, which began the drive for collectivisation.

Sinn Féin faces a daunting task
Tommy McKearney
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/05-north.html
Sinn Féin’s newly appointed leader in the North, Michelle O’Neill, faces a daunting task as she begins to guide her party during a period of uncertainty in the six counties.
Notwithstanding the fact that she is a politician of considerable experience and ability as outgoing minister for health in the Stormont Assembly, she faces several difficult challenges. Not only has she a short preparatory period before leading the party into an election in early March but she will be faced immediately thereafter with what are bound to be fraught negotiations with the DUP over the establishment of an Executive—and that may prove to be the easy bit.

The left must reclaim national sovereignty
Graham Harrington
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/06-left.html

With the rise of the far right in Europe and elsewhere, the left faces a stiff challenge. The former base areas of Labour and Socialist Parties are now seeing increased votes for parties such as the National Front in France, UKIP in Britain, Golden Dawn in Greece, and the Austrian Freedom Party. The election of Donald Trump in the United States has also galvanised the far right.
It is clear that, despite the different environments in which far-right forces are emerging, there is a pattern. While the continuing crisis of capitalism plays a significant role, perhaps the main reason is the failure of the left to organise sufficiently to provide an alternative.

Mental health: Lessons from Cuba
David Hartery
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/07-cuba.html

When attempting to create a comparison between the Irish and Cuban health systems’ attitudes to the treatment of mental illness, it’s important to remember that there is a structural and a philosophical difference between the two that is more than just about how a communist and a neo-liberal system is funded.
In attempting to create a communist health system we must look at how Cuba categorises illness, and not fall victim to Cartesian notions of sickness, separating mind and body.

How do we see our history?
Seán Edwards
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/08-quino.html

The little girl Mafalda is the creation of the Argentine cartoonist Quino (Joaquín Salvador Lavado) over fifty years ago. Mafalda, Susanita and their pals are noted for innocently raising serious questions, like this one.

Poetry:

Speaking bluntly
Gabriel Rosenstock introduces and translates a poem by Sukirtharani
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/09-poetry.html

The poem “I Speak Up Bluntly” was written in Tamil, one of the oldest literary languages in the world. Sukirtharani is a contemporary Dalit poet (the term that has replaced “Untouchable”).

Hard times
Jenny Farrell
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/10-film.html

Very few contemporary artists put working people and the unemployed, their raw treatment by society and their heroic attempts at fightback, centre stage as consistently as Ken Loach and Paul Laverty. Indeed there are few films—or art in general—in which working people can recognise themselves or their actual lives.

The ultimate no cost statements on SF by FG February 1, 2017

All the fuss and bother over Kenny’s non-statements about coalition with FG and what does it amount to? A no-cost means of roping in some voters – unlikely to be SF ones, perhaps more FF-inclined or Independent-inclined, who might transfer to FG. That it may have – unintentionally, undermined Kenny’s leadership is entertaining. But he’s going nowhere, not yet anyhow. And those lurking in the shadows behind him seem averse to wielding daggers. And so they should be, he has quite successfully put about the notion that a change of leadership would see FF support for FG withdrawn. And he might well be correct on that score.

What you want to say – 1st Febuary, Week 5, 2017 February 1, 2017

As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

A Few Tips….. January 31, 2017

Might be useful ……..

Half right… January 31, 2017

Justin Gest, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government and the author of The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality, writes in the Observer this weekend about the British Labour Party arguing that:

The Brexit debate has created an ideological crisis in the Labour party, driven by its inability to bridge Britain’s sociological crisis. Its leadership has been undermined by angry reaction to last week’s instruction to its MPs to trigger the process of leaving the EU. However, it had already lost the confidence of many of the party’s pragmatists, wary that Labour has found no way to transcend the toxic social divisions between north and south, city and suburbs, young and old that the referendum laid bare.

Faced with a rise in populist sentiment, such are the circumstances for the international left today. Here in the United States, downtrodden and perplexed Democrats are faced with a choice of seeking to win back a white, working-class constituency whose support for their party has dwindled in every presidential election cycle since 1992, or double-down on cultivating their coalition of ethnic minorities and white urban cosmopolitans.

And:

However, unlike America’s Democrats, Labour does not have the luxury of reverting to such a coalition. (It’s not even clear that Democrats do.)

Whereas ethnic minorities of Latino, African and Asian descent comprise 40% of the American population and will pass 50% in due course, minority constituencies in Europe comprise no more than 20% in any one country, so parties of the left must be able to sustain their appeal to white, working-class voters if they are to have any chance of assembling ruling majorities.

And…

The British – and American – left’s mistake was allowing themselves to think there was an “either, or” choice – that their pursuit of racial justice for minority groups was somehow incompatible with their pursuit of economic justice for all; that their celebration of immigration was incompatible with control of immigration; that their quest for meritocracy was incompatible with patriotism.

I wonder though. There’s certainly an element of truth that the British (and other European) social democratic left did move away from economic issues, or rather adopted more clearly neoliberal approaches in a remarkably uncritical fashion. But I think it is an exaggeration to suggest that the dynamic was quite as stark as he suggests. For example, Miliband offered a mixed approach – some unpleasant rhetoric on immigration, some shift leftwards, whatever, and yet that didn’t propel the BLP to victory some years back. Nor is it clear that eliding Brexit with the issues of the BLP, at least pre-Brexit is all that convincing as an argument. Consider that part of Labour’s weakness has been the loss of Scotland, not to the right but to a rival articulating at least in part a more clearly a ‘traditional’ social democratic approach. Tellingly Gest in the course of his long piece doesn’t mention Scotland at all.

Then there’s other points. Corbyn’s leadership has been variable but until Brexit there was at least a hope that the BLP might contest the next election reasonably strongly. Post-Brexit that hope is now gone. But to suggest that the weakness of the BLP was baked in is to overstate the reality of how tight the parliamentary arithmetic was and remains in this Parliament. The Tories won unexpectedly but not by a massively convincing margin.

Moreover it is possible to see Brexit going the other way at the referendum, or no referendum at all had Cameron played his cards better. And consequently the BLP doing better. Indeed some of what Gest says seems as if it is transposed from US rather than British political culture and as if he takes as read a primacy for identity politics in the pre-Brexit era which seems questionable.

Anti-racism has been an important concept for Labour and international leftists for a more than a generation. It has informed advances in anti-discrimination policies for housing, government and the workplace. It has cultivated cohesion and openness in neighbourhoods, schools, and universities. It has fostered greater sensitivity to our inherent biases in our social interactions, our media and in our own minds.

However, the label of racism has also been extended to characterise the views of people who seek a more managed immigration system, who are wary of globalising markets and, indeed, who support Britain’s opaque, ill-advised, but now inevitable departure from the European Union.

But hold on, one might say. Pro-immigration isn’t quite the badge one would pin on the BLP in the way Gest seems to. Indeed he doesn’t mention that until very very recently UKIP pushed the sovereignty line much more strongly than anti-immigration. And what of a press that whipped up anti-immigrant feeling and sustained it. What of a political class, as with Cameron et al, unwilling to articulate a positive case for open borders? And what of the inconvenience that it was a minority of LP voters who voted Leave (31% according to YouGov exit poll)?

This isn’t to say that longer deeper rooted dynamics did not exist, some date from the 2000s, some from much earlier than that. But again the sense that this is a transposing of US concerns onto the British polity in a half-digested way is quite strong. And what of the solution to this?

The party must empathise again, listen again, recognise the plight of its white, working-class constituents before judgment and build a social vision and economic future that transcends ethnic divisions, not reinforces them.

What exactly does that mean?

The Left in the RoI. What is to be done? Redux. January 31, 2017

The Phoenix, as noted in comments last week has a lavish spread on Brendan Ogle. And given how mixed opinions are on him his efforts to bring a certain unity to the Irish left are bound to be…er… controversial. The Phoenix more or less says that the variegated nature of the left, spread across a range of alliances and formations predicates against unity. But how to unify them, how to bring ‘a unified brand, common structure or strategy’? Or indeed to see them move away from ‘pursuing their own electoral goals’? Plug some names into a putative ‘left alliance’ that incorporated a good number of those the Phoenix references ‘SF with 23 TDs, AAA/PBP’s six, left Inds another six or so and two SDs’ and one can see how a ‘unified brand’ or a common electoral strategy is… unlikely.

There’s also mention of Michael Taft and the claim he faces a disciplinary procedure from Unite in part due to blog posts that suggest that an ‘economic recovery [is] taking place and that FF in particular was benefiting int he polls. At the same time, Taft argued, the left is still fighting last years’s protest battles and failing to create an alternative vision’.

Putting aside whether that is an accurate summation of the issues it is difficult to find fault with that broad analysis, that indeed a sort of patchy recovery is taking place, that FF’s vote is solidifying – at least to some extent, and that some of the energy and steam has gone out of the protests, not least because the government and FF have gone to great lengths to take those issues off the table for the time being.

All that could change, but then a government that is taking defeat after defeat in the Dáil in terms of votes and staggering on doesn’t seem to me to be too likely to try to up the ante any time soon.

Anyhow, returning to the broader issue, if unity wasn’t hugely present at the height of the crisis now as the aftershocks recede, albeit the grievous impacts remain in some form or another, difficult to see how matters would be much improved now.