The Informant is a new publication written launched by Nick R. Martin
Racism and hate are thriving in the United States today. Emboldened hate groups and so-called "lone wolves" are menacing and killing Americans. The crisis demands action and dogged, quality journalism. Martin is launching The Informant because the public urgently needs better information and intelligence into the scope of the crisis and what's fueling it.
“The working class who fight the battles, the working class who make the sacrifices, the working class who shed the blood, the working class who furnish the corpses, the working class have never yet had a voice in declaring war.” -Eugene Victor Debs, 1918
On the one year anniversary of the Tree of Life Massacre, we are mobilizing for a day of unity against anti-Semitism and white nationalism in Union Square Park at 3pm. This action will be centering communities currently facing racial and colonial violence from New York City to Kurdistan to Kashmir. It will be a space to mourn and to organize: for rage, for grief, and for growth. Join us for music, a memorial, storytelling, a speak-out, and more.
"The social upsurge that started in October 2019 in Chile expresses rejection, hate and deep rage in a people that has endured silently for too long. The “democratic” regime inaugurated in 1990 and headed by the Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia (Christian Democracy, Socialist Party, Radical Party, Party for Democracy), did not mean the improvement of the living conditions of the popular masses. This is the “democracy of the rich”. This democracy did not end the privatizations carried out under the dictatorship and has refused for years to question the fundamental pillars of the economic, social and political regime designed and established under the dictatorship. What is at stake is the survival of extreme neoliberalism that only serves world capitalism and a minority group within Chilean society... This social uprising in Chile, an "exemplary" country subjected to the dictates of transnational capital, is one more within Latin America. This expresses the deterioration of world capitalism. We call on all international organizations to have a common understanding of this moment and to join revolutionary forces to end the bloodthirsty capitalism that subjects us to misery and death." -excerpted from Tendencia Socialista Revolucionaria's October 20th statement
"Democratic modernity replies to the universalist, linear progressivist and determinist methodology deployed by the modern nation-state to achieve the homogenisation and herdification of society with a pluralist and probabilistic methodology that enables the visibility of democratic society. It develops its alternative through its openness to different political formations, its multiculturalism, its anti-monopolist stance, its ecological and feminist attributes and its economic structure that is grounded on satisfying society’s fundamental needs and societal disposition. As opposed to capitalist modernity’s nation-state, Democratic Confederalism is democratic modernity’s political alternative.
Democratic modernity is flexible in its approach to the nation. This in itself plays a significant role in solving so many societal problems by bringing together the multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-faith and multi-political segments of society as opposed to the singular approach of nations based on a single language, ethnicity, religion or state. The multi-dimensional approach of democratic modernity to the nation will form a strong foundation for the much needed establishment of peace and fraternity in the Middle East." -Abdullah Öcalan
On November 1st, 2014, millions of people around the entire world took to the streets for a day to express their solidarity with the heroic resistance of Kobanê. We call for this year’s November 2nd to be a day of global resistance against the Turkish War of Aggression, to break the normal situation and to paralyze life. Participate in creative and diverse actions of civil disobedience, demonstrations, and take over the streets and public spaces. Organize to Block, Disrupt, and Occupy companies and financial institutions which support Turkish fascism militarily or financially.
As long as the killing continues, the resistance must not stop!
Socialism could have a future in America, argue Bhaskar Sunkara and Sarah Leonard, if we just think about it differently. Sunkara and Leonard, co-editors of of the essay collection The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century say that people aren’t scared of socialism taking their money, they’re scared of Wall Street taking their money. In fact, in a socialist future, money might actually go where it’s supposed to: back to the people. Taking on intersections of class and race, class and gender, they explain the logistics of moving towards a socialist future.
Sarah Leonard is a senior editor at The Nation, contributor to famous left-wing publication Dissent, and lecturer at NYU Gallatin. Bhaskar Sunkara is the editor and publisher of Jacobin magazine, a left-wing quarterly magazine recognized for offering socialist perspectives on contemporary issues.
"If it’s possible in this oversaturated age for a mass-protest movement to fly under the radar, the battle over the building of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline certainly qualifies. Just this past weekend in Morton County, North Dakota, 127 people were arrested during protests over renewed construction, which follows what protesters believed was relief from the federal government, in the form of a multi-agency letter to the pipeline builders, Energy Transfer Partners, asking them to halt building for tribal consultation and the preparation of environmental-impact statements... The protesters, 270 or so who have been arrested since the standoff began in August, are a coalition of native people supporting the local Standing Rock Sioux, and they claim that the pipeline, which will carry sweet crude oil fracked from North Dakota’s Bakken oil patch through South Dakota and Iowa into Illinois, will endanger the region’s water supply, and that its construction is destroying their sacred lands. If you’ve got even the barest knowledge of the 150-odd-year history of native protests against the desecration and development of their land, you could be forgiven for assuming that things are unlikely to unfold in their favor. But in sheer scale, this resistance is bigger and more organized than any protests native people have undertaken in decades — thousands of supporters from more than 200 tribes have set up camp in Cannon Ball, North Dakota. Their protests have been frequently met with security forces armed with attack dogs and mace."
To donate to the official Sacred Stone Legal Defense Fund, click here.
Photograph via the Standing Rock Rising Facebook page Quote excerpted from Why the North Dakota Pipeline Standoff Is Only Getting Worse, New York Magazine
"Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living. But we are a minority -- the vast majority of our people regard the temporary equilibriums of our society and world as eternally-functional parts. In this is perhaps the outstanding paradox: we ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message of our society is that there is no viable alternative to the present. Beneath the reassuring tones of the politicians, beneath the common opinion that America will "muddle through", beneath the stagnation of those who have closed their minds to the future, is the pervading feeling that there simply are no alternatives, that our times have witnessed the exhaustion not only of Utopias, but of any new departures as well. Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any moment things might thrust out of control. They fear change itself, since change might smash whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for them now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect, threatening. The fact that each individual sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common reluctance to organize for change. The dominant institutions are complex enough to blunt the minds of their potential critics, and entrenched enough to swiftly dissipate or entirely repel the energies of protest and reform, thus limiting human expectancies. Then, too, we are a materially improved society, and by our own improvements we seem to have weakened the case for further change... Some would have us believe that Americans feel contentment amidst prosperity -- but might it not better be called a glaze above deeplyfelt anxieties about their role in the new world? And if these anxieties produce a developed indifference to human affairs, do they not as well produce a yearning to believe there is an alternative to the present, that something can be done to change circumstances in the school, the workplaces, the bureaucracies, the government? It is to this latter yearning, at once the spark and engine of change, that we direct our present appeal. The search for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and a commitment to social experimentation with them, is a worthy and fulfilling human enterprise, one which moves us and, we hope, others today."
Quote excerpted from The Port Huron Statement, 1962
Are you tired of business as usual? Want to help millions of Americans learn about the real alternatives that already exist and how to be a part of them?
We know the current system does exactly what it was designed to do: line corporate pockets at the expense of real people’s health and livelihoods, destroying the environment and fueling the war machine at the same time. But we also know that another world is possible. Many models for more economically and ecologically sustainable societies exist and as the ills of the current system become more apparent to the country at large, people are hungry to know what viable alternatives exist. The Next System Teach-Ins aim to help communities and campuses across the country engage in that debate and start exploring the alternatives that work best for them.
The teach-ins can be a powerful component to a growing national debate about what this country really needs and how we get there. In a time of political stalemate, we have to take responsibility for the important conversations and build the community needed to transform this country.
Host a teach-in at your school or attend one near you to find out more. We'll provide sample curricula, agendas and workshop ideas based on existing alternatives, burgeoning initiatives and cutting edge research in order to help you create an engaging and effective teach-in that brings your community's work to the next level.
In April 2016, more than one hundred organizations representing a diverse array of movements and hundreds of thousands of people are coming together to demand a democracy that works for all of us – a nation where our votes are not denied and money doesn’t buy access and power. Join us as we converge upon Washington, D.C. for an array of actions, including demonstrations, teach-ins, direct action trainings, music, a Rally For Democracy, and pressing for a Congress Of Conscience through non-violent direct action and advocacy.
"There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Call it what you may, call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country."
Quote excepted from a speech to the Negro American Labor Council, May 1965.
"The intention of Marxism is to provide a theoretical foundation for interpreting the world in order to change it. This is not an empty slogan. It has—or ought to have—a very precise meaning. It means that Marxism seeks a particular kind of knowledge, one which is uniquely capable of illuminating the principles of historical movement and, at least implicitly, the points at which political action can most effectively intervene. This is not to say that the object of Marxist theory is to discover a ‘scientific’ programme or technique of political action. Rather, the purpose is to provide a mode of analysis especially well equipped to explore the terrain on which political action must take place."
Text excerpted from The Separation Of the Economic And The Political in Capitalism (New Left Review, 1981).
