Yep.  It was a trap.  I saw it myself (and was old and chicken enough to avoid it). But don’t fret.  Someone said that day that “the NYPD is doing PR for the protesters.”  I’m begining to believe this is bigger than the NYPD “can possibly imagine.”

My report was posted with my photos below, but you should really read my friend Billy Wharton’s account of the October 1st Brooklyn Bridge march and the more than forty other stories by people who were there, collected nicely at The Guardian.

In the end, it makes no difference.  We know what Kelly and his men are up to.  Every “clever” NYPD attempt to discredit and destroy the Occupy Wall Street movement just seems to backfire, as I’m sure it will when they inevitably decide to forcibly clear Liberty Square

I’ll share what I sent out to my friends that evening from the middle of a joyous Liberty Square.

Liberty sq is amazing: these kids who’ve just been beaten by cops are gathered, focused inward, not at the cops scowling at them in a cordon/ Singing “we are unstoppable” over and over, smiling. It literally sends chills down my spine. One of the most life affirming things I have ever seen. [In Contrast] I walked down wall street, cops nervously guarding Trump tower. The cops were herding, swearing, beating, & arresting them And they are joyful, smiling, welcoming everyone.  The media wants to paint these people as hateful, privileged: come here and see #occupywallstreet

I’ve seen a lot of demos, marches and occupations, back to anti-nuke “Freeze” marches and Anti-Apartheid college occupations back in my teens.  I’ve never felt anything like this.

These Liberty Square occupiers are optimistic and feel their own power.  The cops and the press and the mayor may lash out at them, but the people in that square can see through it all.  You can feel down there that the press and politicians are on the backfoot, the rich %1 are hiding, and the cops just seem afraid: not of violence, but because they themselves feel they can’t contain what’s starting to emerge in that concrete park in the Financial district.

Related articles

• NYPD Arrests 700 #OccupyWallStreet Protesters On The Brooklyn Bridge (occupiedwallstreet.wordpress.com)
• Over 500 Protesters Arrested After Being Kettled On Brooklyn Bridge (crooksandliars.com)
• Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested on Brooklyn Bridge (destructionist.wordpress.com)
• Over 700 Arrests for #OccupyWallStreet Protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge (dandelionsalad.wordpress.com)
• Blow by Blow: Brooklyn Bridge “taken” by Occupy Wall Street * (wilderside.wordpress.com)
• #OccupyWallStreet: Searching for Hope in America | The Nation (thenation.com)
• US protesters rally to occupy Wall Street | The Stream – Al Jazeera English (stream.aljazeera.com)
• The NYPD: Spies, Spooks and Lies (nypdconfidential.com)

By the way, I made that image at top, thanks to Upsetter FC.  Use it, but don’t say you made it yourself.

Also btw, I remembered the quote wrong.

Arresting thousands of protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge? NYPD should get paid for doing #OccupyWallStreet's PR.

1 October 2011 3:53 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@allisonkilkenny

allisonkilkenny

Frank R. Crosswaith, labor organizer and political activist.

Here’s a fascinating new article on the history of Harlem activists A. Philip Randolph and Frank R. Crosswaith, and their involvement with the Socialist Party (riven by right and left factionalism) in the 1920s.

It places them in contrast to Black Nationalism, but highlights the abuse they were willing to put up with at the hands of some purported “comrades” for their belief that race and class struggles are inextricable.

It’s also a nice picture of the diversity of the Socialist Party of America at the time, which in the New York Socialist Party was made up of many dozens of active locals. The full text of the article is available [in html and in pdf ] for a limited time. Some excerpts are below.

The history confirms my longstanding dislike of Victor Berger and Morris Hillquit (the right wing apparatchiks that overtook the party in the 20s) and my love of Eugene Debs and Big Bill Heywood, men continually struggling with the blindness of their times.

In the wake of this, I’m also eager to read more about St.Croix born New Yorker, labor activist and socialist Frank Crosswaith. Crosswaith, although a young radical, a lifelong socialist and prominent trade union organizer, in the 30s and 40s chose the Social Democratic blind alley of Roosevelt and various anti-communist Democratic party front groups.

Cornelius L. Bynum. The New Negro and Social Democracy during the Harlem Renaissance, 1917–37 The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2011), 10: 89-112

Randolph and Crosswaith’s assessment of socialism’s radical potential to counter racial discrimination aligned closely with the basic position that Eugene Debs took on race and the Socialist Party. Despite the clear racial animosity that both leaders and rank-and-file members openly expressed from the party’s inception, Debs recognized and strongly argued that racism and racial discrimination fundamentally violated the party’s core principles and mission. Though he was equally susceptible to the kind of personal failings on race that he so forthrightly criticized in others, Debs insisted that economic freedom and political equality went hand-in-hand. This reasoning fit with the sense of open participation at the center of Randolph and Crosswaith’s notion of social justice. Even as Socialist Party leaders and rank-and-file members continued to exhibit deep racial hostility, Deb’s position on economic justice and racial equality largely matched key aspects of Randolph and Crosswaith’s appraisal of African Americans’ plight.

…….

By the time Randolph and Crosswaith joined the Socialist Party it had lost much of the organizational cohesion of its first years. Nevertheless, they still viewed it as African Americans’ best political option. Portraying the plight of black workers as fundamentally caused by the impact of racial discrimination on their ability to “sell their labor in the market effectively,” they were convinced that the solution to this problem lay in greater labor organization and overhauling industrial capitalism. They and others maintained that the competition at capitalism’s core accentuated the economic roots of racism. The Socialist Party’s determination to redress the ills of industrial capitalism and promote unionization led Randolph and Crosswaith to believe that it was central to challenging racial discrimination and fostering the kind of social justice that they envisioned. It was this link between unionization and social justice that propelled them into the Socialist Party and became such a central component of the radical message that they preached in the postwar years.

……..

For Randolph, Crosswaith, and the small group of African Americans recruited into the New York Socialist Party‘s Twenty-first Assembly District in Harlem, this commitment to progressive reform and political mobilization was attractive. Randolph and Crosswaith in particular recognized the significant, if unintended, implications embedded in this electoral strategy for African Americans “seeking human status and full freedom.” The participatory nature inherent in drawing workers into local and regional politics fit neatly with their conception of social justice. As Crosswaith explained years later in reflecting back on his role in building interracial trade unions, he and Randolph understood that “the nation’s labor could not exist half-slave and half-free.” They looked to mobilization and interracial labor solidarity to promote the kind of industrial democracy that would ensure an “equality of responsibility and equality of benefits” for all workers. In fact, their willingness to turn a blind eye to clear racial antipathy in the party seemed largely predicated on the argument that African Americans could only “become a power to be feared and respected throughout this nation” by joining the Socialist Party. Their belief that the party’s emphasis on social and economic reform could be turned to the specific advantage of African Americans certainly seemed to have factored into Randolph’s decisions to accept the party’s nomination to run for New York state comptroller in 1920 and secretary of the state assembly in 1921. Even if Berger and Hillquit never really intended to engage an agenda of social justice for African Americans, Randolph and Crosswaith nonetheless found meaningful resonance between the reform strategies they promoted and the conception of social justice he and Crosswaith were formulating.

Randolph also found common cause with the syndicalist element of the Socialist Party concentrated in the mining and lumber states of the Mountain West. Primarily organized around William “Big Bill” Haywood’s Western Federation of Miners that gave rise to the IWW in 1905, this wing of the party endorsed industrial sabotage and violence as acceptable protest tactics and believed that workers should use the ballot to gain administrative control over government’s police powers to protect striking workers. They adamantly opposed any program of progressive reform on the grounds that it merely forestalled the inevitable workers revolution. Instead, Haywood and the IWW pushed for a general strike to reorganize society around factories, mines, and other places of production. Haywood was an especially strong advocate of industrial unionism. Focusing almost exclusively on labor’s immediate demands, he looked to organize all workers into one vast and well-disciplined labor organization with enough political power to successfully challenge their opponents. Most importantly perhaps for Randolph, Haywood and the IWW attacked all divisions of the working class—racial, religious, and ethnic—as detrimental to the cause of overthrowing of industrial capitalism. This decidedly inclusive organizational policy fit neatly with Randolph and Crosswaith’s conception of social justice and their determination to bring African Americans into the working-class fold.

……..

In the years immediately following World War I, A. Philip Randolph and Frank R. Crosswaith began devising a notion of social justice that set them apart from other African American radicals in Harlem and mainstream white socialists. Although they too believed that transforming industrial capitalism was central to combating racial discrimination, they rooted their assessment of modern industrial society in a conception of social justice that stressed the shared humanity of all and insisted that all were equally entitled to benefit from society’s advances. In fashioning their critique in these terms rather than the more standard producer theory associated with mainstream socialism, Randolph and Crosswaith articulated a position that set out to adapt the broader spirit of postwar reform to the particular conditions and concerns of Harlem. Even as their message of interracial cooperation in organized labor was simultaneously drowned out by the powerful appeal of Garveyism, ignored by white labor unions, and undermined by the Socialist Party’s inability to address the Negro question, the conception of social justice that Randolph and Crosswaith formulated in these years creatively fused black racial identity and class consciousness into an authentic and largely independent strain of black radicalism.

Related articles

• The Frank R. Crosswaith Papers, 1917-1965 at the New York Public Library.
• HW Bio: Hubert Henry Harrison A short introduction to the famous Harlem Socialist, Hubert Harrison (harlemworldblog.wordpress.com)
• Celebrating Hubert Harrison (socialistwebzine.org)
• On the Harlem Socialist activists: Afro-Americans and radical politics (From “Richard B. Moore: Caribbean Militant in Harlem,” edited by W. Burghadt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner) 1969, reprinted 1999.
• the Socialist Party of New York City (SP-USA)
• African Americans and the struggle for socialism, 1901-1925 By Abayomi Azikiwe and How Debs became a socialist by Paul D’Amato (1989) both deal with the same history from a Black Nationalist perspective (dandelionsalad.wordpress.com)
• Study Shows Depth of Unemployment for Blacks in New York – NYTimes.com a little reported survey showing the depth of the ethnic disparity still seen in a “colorblind” New York under “Business Friendly” capitalism (economix.blogs.nytimes.com)

Guinean's and supporters march in the streets of Manhattan following the September 28th killings.

Join the second march on the UN by Guineans and their allies in New York City, Thursday December 8th.  If you can’t make it, there are ways to get involved, including organizing solidarity events and extensive letter writing campaigns, so please do!

Kadiatou Diallo (Amadou Diallo‘s mother) and Norm Siegal of the NYCLU are lending their voices to this, in support of “Alliance Guinea” in America. Their Advocacy page asks: “Are you an elected leader or political activist? Join our advocacy action group. Email allianceguinea(at)gmail.com to get involved in any of these sub-committees.”   There is also a full list of ways you can help at http://www.allianceguinea.org/advocacy-what-you-can-do/ .

The US based rights group Alliance Guinea is organizing a march and protest demanding the military junta in Conakry, murderers of thousands of innocents and, be brought to justice.  Only last week it was reported that the Guinean military was employing South African and Israeli mercenaries, hired by a firm run by a US former West Point graduate and Morgan Stanley executive, to train ethnic militias.  The use of such divisions, long overcome in by most Guineans, could plunge the nation into a civil war like Yugoslavia  experienced in the 1990s, and create suffering across West Africa.  Demand the UN make sure the regime in Conakry knows they have no future in government, and their only hope is to hand over power to a civilian transitional authority immediately.

If you can’t make the Tuesday lunchtime march:

• Write a letter to your government and press demanding action, and

• Come to the “Musique contre la Violence” unity night in Harlem on December 9 at 8PM at Shrine in Harlem

Full release follows:

Pro-democracy march in NYC on Dec. 8

From: Alliance Guinea
http://www.allianceguinea.org

This is far from over – the latest news out of Guinea is a proposed deal that would have the CNDD junta heading a “national transition council” for up to 10 months and open the door for Dadis to stand in elections. At the same time, the UN is beginning the work of the international commission of inquiry into the crimes of September 28, but it’s clear that more international pressure against the military and support for the population is needed.

Here in New York Alliance Guinea has joined forces with the Guinean Forces Vives in the US and our friends Kadiatou Diallo and Norman Siegel of the Amadou Diallo Foundation to form the “September 28 Coalition for Justice and Democracy in Guinea.”

Together we are organizing a march and rally on Tuesday, December 8 from 11am – 3pm to demand justice for the crimes committed and support for a speedy and democratic transition to civilian rule in Guinea. At 11am we will gather in front of the Guinean consulate at 140 E. 39th St., marching then to 47th Street and rallying by noon at Dag Hammarskjold Park in front of the United Nations.
see http://www.allianceguinea.org Stay tuned for a list of expected speakers.

If you live far from New York and cannot join us in person, here are two things you can still do:

1. Make a donation – help us offset the cost of the rally (permits, transport, stage & sound system costs, etc.) through our new online giving button at http://www.allianceguinea.org  Check it out and pass the word – every gift counts!
2. Write a letter (again!) to your local newspaper or Congressperson/Member of Parliament and tell them about the march and how the latest news out of Guinea confirms the critical need for international pressure and support is critical to getting justice and preventing what could spiral into civil war. For sample letters and other tips, see http://www.allianceguinea.org/advocacy-what-you-can-do/
3. And if you are in the New York area and can’t make it during lunch hour on Tuesday, don’t miss for what is going to be an amazing “Musique contre la Violence” unity night in Harlem on December 9 at 8pm at Shrine in Harlem with some of the greatest masters of Guinean music living in America and guest speakers from the September 28 Coalition. (2271 Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, New York, NY 10030)

The situation in Guinea is just as dire as ever, and justice must be served and the military must go.

Need More details? see:

• Guinea: Bloody Repression Against anti-Junta Protesters (@ Indybay)
  http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/09/28/18623704.php
• On the brutal sexual violence perpetrated on September 28th (warning, disturbing images)
  http://hosive.agapeshack.com/2009/10/06/pause-horror-in-guinea/
• http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20091005-photos-women-stripped-naked-humiliated-posted-online-guinea-crackdown-abuse
• Blackstar Journal:  Ethnic cleansing in Guinea?  A detailed and disturbing letter from eyewitnesses to continued (October 21) violence and oppression aimed at opposition and ethnic groups
• http://blackstarjournal.blogspot.com/2009/10/ethnic-cleansing-in-guinea.html
• Human Rights Watch: Guinea: September 28 Massacre Was Premeditated
  http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/10/27/guinea-september-28-massacre-was-premeditated
• Friends of Guinea (US)
  http://friendsofguinea.blogspot.com/

Free stickers, via IDollarNY.org

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is general election day here in New York City and across the waters in NJ.  If you can vote, use it to make a point.

I know all the debates about voting not changing anything, and while I tend to agree, I’m not asking you to overthrow capitalism with your vote.  It won’t do that.  But it is a splendid soapbox from which to shout, and it is a way to ensure the object with which those in power can hit you is as small as possible.

So here are my recommendations:

Vote Against Bloomberg

The 4th richest man in America and the 17th richest in the world, Bloomberg is a billionaire 16 times over.  He’s spending over $100 Million to finance a campaign that is illegal under NYC law, after we all voted twice for term limits.  Of course he got other politicians to annul this law.  I wonder how?

Bloomy has jumped UP the rankings, making billions more during his two mayoral terms.  And yet he’s cutting schools, health care, services, and raising only those taxes that hit the working poor hardest.

http://www.voterevbilly.org

In short, he’s a scumbag.  Tell him what you think by voting for Reverend Billy Tallen for mayor!

You don’t have to worry that Billy will win and be corrupted by power.  And Billy has always been the first at every little picket or protest, always offered solidarity, always been there for those fighting power.  You owe him one (if not several).

Vote Socialist for NJ Governor

Greg Pason, perennial candidate for the Socialist Party is running for governor.  I may be biased.  But the media driven acceptable choices are the fat Republican who loves George Bush, or the hairy Democrat who made billions as a unrepentant capitalist merchant banker, or the “independent” who’s really a Republican who just doesn’t hate everyone who’s not straight/white/rich as much as the first guy.

http://www.votepason.org/

Greg Pason is not going to win.  Again, if you think this is a question of revolutionary principles, you’ve gotten ahead of yourself.  This is a lifeline to those out there who’ve always been told that capitalism, free markets, and wage labor are the only choices there are.  I’ve seen the effect that Greg’s campaigns can have on people across the state.  People are so rarely reached by radical newspapers, protests, email lists, or punk rock fanzines.  New Jersey law gives an avowed anti-capitalist air time, mailings that go to every home in the state, and a platform bigger than any march you’ve ever put together.  Every vote Greg and other anti-capitalist candidates gets lends legitimacy to a future more just society.

And this society has gotten so used to abstention, that despite what you’re told, no power is threatened when you stay home.  They just think you’re too fat and happy to shift your ass.

So drag it out: you won’t find a better use for a vote, even abstention.

Vote for Debbie Rose for NY City Council

Next Left Notes Photo: Michelle Akyempong

If you’re lucky enough to live on Staten Island, you have the chance to vote for Debbie Rose for City Council.  After decades of grassroots activism, Debbie got out the vote and shocked the Democratic Party machine in the primaries, spanking the right wing Democrat Fred Flintstone look alike Ken Mitchell.  Now Debbie is a day away from being the first person of color to be elected from any Staten Island election.  Ever.

If that’s not reason enough, Ken Mitichell is storming back, using the Conservative Party ballot line (NYC politicians stand on, sometimes seemingly contradictory, multiple party lines) to try and win back his City Council seat.  The same seat he was gifted by the Democratic machine, with which he did zero, except voting against a law that would protect Abortion providers from harassment.

Is Debbie Rose going to change the world? Hardly.  But she’s good people, has always been loyal to her working class community and the struggles here against racism, police brutality, pollution and poverty. We need to give her a louder megaphone, and take it away from the idiots who hold it now.

So like I said, votes won’t make a revolution.  That’s up to the rest of us.  Your vote can make a point.  Use it.

Related articles:

• See another leftist set of recommendations at  Next Left Notes (nextleftnotes.org)
• Reverend Billy: New York’s Consumerism (huffingtonpost.com)
• Bloomberg Sets Record for His Own Spending on Elections (nytimes.com)
• New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg spending 15000 an hour on reelection bid (telegraph.co.uk)
• On Tuesday Your Vote is Really Going to Count (streetsblog.org)
• New Poll: Anybody But Bloomberg [Polls] (cityfile.com)
• Newark Mayor Backed Bloomberg, Then Got Funds (nytimes.com)

Two or three thoughts for the day.   A review of Tom Goyens’ “Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914.” is available.  I may reprint it in full, as it’s under Creative Commons licensing.  Allow me to digress (or not to, given the subject).  Creative Commons is a Copyright/Left for creative works, which I think is generally superior to the GNU Public License.  If you’re unaware of this, and you produce text, art, or photographs, you really owe it to the world to take a crash course.  Copyright, which has expanded like a disease over the last fifty years, is doomed.  In fact, it has expanded like antibodies fighting an overwhelming infection: proliferating in a failed attempt to smother its stronger foe.  Information wants to be free, and all that.

But even with CC licenses you owe it to the rest of us to remember that the only thing you deserve from your work is the right to be identified as the person who created it, and recognized for exactly what you created. Try to impose a more strict license than that — which you can do in the CC — and it’s as doomed as copyright.  It’s the intellectual equivalent of “those who don’t work don’t eat.”  And since modern Capitalism is based upon one group of people benefiting from the work of other people, Copyright is going to go down fighting.  Think “Terminator: Salvation”, but with less natural dialogue.

Second, I’ve been slightly obsessing about the papers recently: not the normal ones, but Niamey’s latest political crisis through the distorted mirror of the thriving newspapers of Niger‘s capital. Every day’s Le Sahel (the government rag), Republicain, Roue de l’Histoire, and Le Canard déchaîné are piped on line by two expatriate run websites, which means they probably have more readers abroad than they do at home (see below).

The President is attempting a slow motion coup, under the slogan “Tazartché”.  My dictionary says that’s “continuity” in Hausa, but your results may vary.  That a 71 year old ruler’s pals don’t like constitutional term limits (they want a refurendum on a New “Sixth Republic” before this November’s elections) is no surprise. One must give props to the writers of the 1999 constitution, though.  Article 36 says that the President is limited to two Five year terms.  Article 136 then says, that Article 36 (amongst others) is unrevisable.  In any way.  And yet President / Lieutenant Colonel Tandja and his MNSD party — created in 1987 as a single party modeled on Mussolini and Franco’s Integral Nationalist  “managed” corporatism –  want to pull an end run.  Who in New York does this remind us of?  Except in Niamey there is a vibrant opposition, massive protests, and an outside authority (ECOWAS) saying “changing the rules just before an election is a coup”.

As an aside, I’ve just learned that Mike Bloomberg is legally 5′ 6”, although he had previously pretended to be 5′ 7”, and even 5′ 1” on a drivers license.  Isn’t that a felony? Additionally, anyone who’s stood near him thinks 5′ 6” is an exageration.  Not that being short is bad, but being dishonest about it is a sign you might enjoy large cocaded hats and invading Austria.

So having established from obsessively reading the papers online (what a world),  that Niger’s unstable political culture is more healthy than New York City‘s (Bloomberg is Mamadou Tandja, Anthony Wiener is Mahamadou Issoufou, Christine Quinn is Mahamane Ousmane, Reverend Billy is Moussa Kaka, I grow millet somewhere, etc…), what does this say about Nigerien politics?  Still nothing good, I’m afraid.  Headlines like  “Ben Omar, le petit menteur!”, calling the Minister of Communications a liar, or impugning him with diverting catering funds as a University student in 1988, mask some simple facts.

Over %80 of Nigeriens are illiterate.  Most don’t have access to clean water.  Most live in rural communities and grow crops to feed their families, sell the excess when available, and travel for a few months after harvest doing odd jobs in Ghana or Nigeria to earn some cash.  If the rains don’t come, there is little safety net.  In part, this is poverty.  In part this is because the intrusion of world markets since around 1980 (forced by the IMF and World Bank as “deregulation”) have turned rice and other basics into commodities, speculated upon by traders in London or Chicago, and consequently sold at prices matching what the Western Middle Classes can pay, but bought from government subsidized corporate agribusiness at prices much lower, and in volumes much higher, than any farmer can produce even in the poorest nations of the world. Given that reality, the newspapers slandering the largely ideologically vapid horsetrading that goes on amongst the Niamey elite is meaningless.

And that’s different from New York City only by degree, not by disease.