Leftology

n today’s episode, we have a news article about an upcoming political strike in the US, University of Florida SDS students on hunger strike for a socially just endowment investment plan, one of my favourite pieces of political theatre, and a good solid ripping of ‘Obamamania’. Enjoy!

Longshoremen to close ports on West Coast to protest war by Jack Heyman: In what has to be one of the most positive developments I’ve heard in some time, the U.S. West Coast dock workers have voted to go on a one-day strike to protest the Iraq War on my favourite day of the year, May 1st. Here’s the beef:

This decision came after an impassioned debate where the union’s Vietnam veterans turned the tide of opinion in favor of the anti-war resolution. The motion called it an imperial action for oil in which the lives of working-class youth and Iraqi civilians were being wasted and declared May Day a “no peace, no work” holiday. Angered after supporting Democrats who received a mandate to end the war but who now continue to fund it, longshoremen decided to exercise their political power on the docks.

I can’t find the words to express how happy this makes me - it’s stuff like this (and the next link) that restore my faith in the American people to resist their government’s bullshit. One day (hopefully in the near future) when historians look back on what changed the political tide so the ‘Next New Left’ could bloom, it’s stuff like this that they will point to.

Support the UF Hunger Strikers! Support Socially Responsible Investing! on Facebook of all places (via insidehighered.com): This one’s a bit new for me: posting a link to a Facebook group as a news link (also check out this blog post here), but that’s how I got it. The UFlorida chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society have been on a hunger strike for a short while in an effort to pressure their University President to back a plan for a Socially Responsible Investment strategy. They’ve been on a water-only diet since April 9th - support them by joining the Facebook group above or by signing the online petition here.

George Galloway vs. the United States Senate: I can recall when they came out a few years back, must have been 2004 or so. They tried to ring up Galloway on some garbage charges, and whereas many other foreign politcos would have shied away from such an event, Galloway went in guns blazing and completely spanked both Norm Coleman, the Republican twit who was behind it, but also the entire American politcal establishment - the garbage oratory we see in modern American politicians is nothing compared to the barn-storming MP from Tower Hamlets.

I’m planning on doing a post of similar bits of political theatre, so stay tuned.

Would you like Change with that? An analysis of Obamamania by Doug Henwood: Finally, here we have a rather good article examining the draw of Obama and (hopefully) bursting any illusions people have for him as a genuine progressive.

On what is this mania based? Obama is inspiring the young, lifting the alienated off their couches, and catalyzing a new movement for … change, presumably one we can believe in. The content of this change is hard to specify. Some serious leftists we know and love point to Obama’s roots as a community organizer in Chicago, though many people in a position to know say he didn’t rock many boats in those days. He was embraced by foundation liberals, however, who greased his way into the Harvard Law School via a lakefront condo.

All of which doesn’t make Obama uniquely bad: he’s just another mainstream Democrat with a sleazy real estate guy in his past.

As Henwood points out, Obama isn’t really anti-war, or anti-establishment, or what have you. He isn’t even really that different from Clinton, for that matter; far from being the choice for an undifferentiated ‘change’, it would be more of a palace coup.

What was particularily interesting, however, was the speculative analysis at the end; Henwood makes an interesting point that the upswing of electing a Democrat that people seem to think is progressive/’change’-y is that it will lead to popular disillusionment with the Democrats, which is always a good thing. As he says at the end of the article,

Never did the possibility of disappointment offer so much hope. That’s not what the candidate means by that word, but history can be a great ironist.