Blog for Peace and Freedom

Hat tip to Jeremy Wells for the links below.

Motivated at least in part by pressure from the U.S., the Mexican government essentially looks the other way when innocent migrant laborers are killed on its soil by criminal gangs. In this report on a massacre last week in which 72 immigrants were killed, the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) notes:

In addition to being kidnapped for ransom money, migrants are also seen by gangs as possible recruits for their operations. Many migrants, coming from destitute areas of Central and South America, have little or no protection on their long and dangerous journey to the United States.

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Blog administrator’s note: I have taken the liberty of reformatting Jerry’s post for clarity.

My comment below is an edited version of one first posted on the AFL-CIO NOW blog, to the article Trumka: Palin’s Rhetoric Is Dangerous, Poisonous by James Parks, Aug 26, 2010.

The radical right, massively funded by the most reactionary corporatist elements of the ruling class, dominating the corporate owned mass media, have created a “class-war” terrorist media campaign to drown out any expression or understanding of the many crises now impoverishing millions of working people. The AFL-CIO is feeding off this terrorist media campaign, to frighten working people to again support the Democrats and Obama yet again in November 2010. There is, we think, a small but growing element within the organized labor movement that understands the need to break away from both Democratic and Republican parties. to form a party the struggles for the economic survival needs of working people.

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In Napa County a handful of young activists are getting some press for socialist politics. From the August 23 Napa Valley Register:

A young new brew of social activism is simmering in Napa, its origins rooted in the intersection of politics and art.

This new faction of the Napa political scene is clamoring to give voice to disaffected youth with a grudge against the status quo.

In just a few months a group led by Alix Shantz and Lynnette Peterson has founded a Napa Valley College chapter of Students for Democratic Society, organized a couple of rallies, and set up a Peace and Freedom Party county central committee.

Until a physical injury intervened, Peterson planned to run for the Napa City Council this fall. I think she is on to something critically important. We can get elected to office as socialists. But we have to start with local office and build political careers from there. With a few exceptions, that’s how Democratic and Republican party office holders do it. They run for school board, sewer board, dogcatcher, whatever, until they win. Then they run for city council, then county board of supervisors, and only then do they try to get elected to the legislature.

Unfair ballot access laws force us to run for statewide offices in order to get 2% of the vote to keep our ballot status. We need to do that, and succeed. We also need to follow Lynnette Peterson’s example.

This article is cross-posted from the World Socialist Website.

Jesse Jackson, UAW hustle votes for Democrats at Detroit “jobs” march
By Shannon Jones
31 August 2010

A section of the march

The “Rebuild America: Jobs, Justice and Peace” march held in Detroit August 28, had nothing to do with rebuilding the devastated city, creating jobs, or achieving peace.

The event, called by UAW President Bob King and the Reverend Jesse Jackson, was little more than a campaign rally for the Democratic Party, which has overseen wholesale job and wage cuts in Detroit and nationally while escalating military violence around the world.

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Note from Cindy Sheehan …

Tomorrow, August 31st, in a fake ceremony in Baghdad, the U.S. will once again
declare a false end to the war in Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan’s Statement on the “End of Combat Operations in Iraq:

First of all-this was never a war, this always has been an illegal invasion and
occupation of a sovereign country and it was obviously for the monetary benefit
of a few and millions of people, including my family, have suffered because of
it.

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This article is cross-posted from the World Socialist Web Site.

US primaries: Millionaire candidates, right-wing politics and few voters
By Bill Van Auken
26 August 2010

Democratic and Republican primaries held in five states on Tuesday were dominated by multi-millionaire candidates, right-wing politics and the participation of scant numbers of voters.

The primaries took place in five states—Arizona, Florida, Alaska, Vermont and Oklahoma—and are among the last to be staged before November’s midterm elections. They failed to produce the sweeping anti-incumbent movement widely predicted in the media and left the outcome of the upcoming general election very much in doubt. The results reconfirmed only one certainty: the politics of both big business parties are shifting rapidly to the right.

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