[Marxism] Indian general strike, January 8

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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On Wednesday (January 8) another massive general strike took place in
India.  Some 250 million industrial workers, white-collar workers,
agricultural labourers struck against the government’s economic policies
and attacks on the Muslim population through new proposed citizenship rules.

This is the fourth massive general strike since September 2015.

The strike. . .

full at:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2020/01/10/indian-lessons-for-nz-workers-the-january-8-general-strike/
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[Marxism] The Surprising History of McDonald’s and the Civil Rights Movement

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Jan. 9, 2020
The Surprising History of McDonald’s and the Civil Rights Movement
By Jennifer Szalai

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America
By Marcia Chatelain
Illustrated. 324 pages. Liveright. $28.95.

Say the name McDonald’s, and what comes to mind? Tasty hamburgers or 
hardened arteries? Entry-level jobs or dead-end McJobs? Responsive 
community outreach or mercenary corporate power?


In “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America,” Marcia Chatelain has 
written a smart and capacious history suggesting that McDonald’s should 
summon all of those thoughts, and then some.


The cover image on her book encapsulates the multiple layers of the 
story she tells. On first glance it simply looks like a photograph of 
two people smiling in front of a McDonald’s as one helps the other 
register to vote, but on closer inspection the picture has been 
manipulated to look grainy and frayed. The history in this book is 
similarly hopeful and fraught, recounting a “somewhat bizarre but 
incredibly powerful marriage between a fast-food behemoth and the fight 
for civil rights.”


Fast food is now so cheap and readily available that its consumption is 
associated more with straitened circumstances than with affluent ones, 
but that wasn’t always the case. Chatelain, a history professor at 
Georgetown and the author of “South Side Girls,” about the experiences 
of black girls in Chicago during the Great Migration, recalls the early 
days of restaurant franchising in the 1940s and ’50s, when fast-food 
chains emerged as emissaries of the American dream — with all the 
complexities of race and money that entailed.


Roadside restaurants generally started out as a suburban phenomenon, 
many of them clustered in Southern California, catering to the mostly 
white beneficiaries of the postwar boom. By 1954, these restaurants 
included a few outlets owned by the McDonald brothers, when a milkshake 
machine salesman named Ray Kroc offered to help them expand. Kroc 
eventually took over the business in 1961. The Greensboro, N.C., sit-ins 
had taken place the year before, and civil rights activists began to 
turn their attention toward roadside restaurants like McDonald’s, which 
either refused service to black people in the Jim Crow South or forced 
them to place their orders at separate windows.


As Chatelain describes it, those early battles between McDonald’s and 
civil rights activists mainly revolved around who got served and who got 
hired. Later, activists began to petition for black ownership of 
franchises located in black neighborhoods, a demand that McDonald’s was 
initially slow to meet but eventually pursued out of shrewd 
self-interest. After the uprisings that followed Martin Luther King 
Jr.’s assassination in April 1968, when a number of white franchisees 
and employees fled their stores, the corporation set out on a nationwide 
search to do something it had never done before: enlist a black 
franchise owner.


This turning point is where Chatelain’s book really takes off, as she 
documents how McDonald’s came to play a growing role in black 
communities, offering not only food and jobs but also sponsorships 
ranging from funds for the local Little League team to grants for the 
N.A.A.C.P. Today, the online portal 365Black.com showcases the company’s 
cultural efforts, including a Gospel tour and an event featuring the 
rapper 2 Chainz.


But the partnership between the civil rights movement and the McDonald’s 
Corporation bristled with compromises and contradictions from the 
beginning. Chatelain includes a memorable anecdote about Ralph 
Abernathy, King’s successor as the president of the Southern Christian 
Leadership Conference, who toured the country in 1969 and rejected the 
idea that opening up modes of production to black entrepreneurs meant 
that benefits would inevitably trickle down.


“I don’t believe in black capitalism,” Abernathy declared, echoing 
King’s demands for economic justice. “I believe in black socialism.” Yet 
when visiting Chicago, he accepted a $1,300 donation for the S.C.L.C. 
from McDonald’s. Chatelain describes it as the first of many donations 
from the corporation to civil rights organizations, which increasingly 
yoked “King’s dream to Kroc’s dream, despite the two men’s hopes for the 
world being miles apart.”


The discrepancy between Abernathy’s words and deeds is the kind of 
hypocrisy that might get him denounced by political purists nowadays, 
but Chatelain is less accusatory and more circumspect. Throughout this 
impressively judicious book, she is attuned to the circumstances that 
encouraged increasingly intricate ties between 

[Marxism] The NY Giants new coach and NFL racism | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://louisproyect.org/2020/01/09/the-ny-giants-new-coach-and-nfl-racism/
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Re: [Marxism] Largest Ever Strike in India Shakes Up Modi Govt

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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IMO this is ESSENTIAL reading and should be shared widely, especially for
those who will be puzzled as to why not more has been changed.
In the same vein see the article on France's multiple strikes/revolts, each
of which had us saying "this is the one!":
http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article6347


>
>
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[Marxism] Largest Ever Strike in India Shakes Up Modi Govt

[Michael Yates via Marxism]

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Last year, on the day my book, Can the Working Class Change the World? 
(translated into Hindi by  Indian Comrades) went on sale at the Delhi book 
fair, a massive general strike began. Now, another, still more massive, general 
strike is in progress. I hope that the consequences of this strike are 
far-reaching. There have been many such strikes over the past 20 years, but the 
results have been only moderately beneficial to workers. Still, it is 
impossible to imagine anything like this in the US. And we never know what 
spark will begin a conflagration. Solidarity to all Indian workers and peasants.

Here is the beginning of chapter 4 of my book:

"In 2016, workers in India organized a massive general strike. Estimates of the 
number of participants went as high as 180 million, which would make it the 
largest such strike in history. All but one of the major Central Trade Union 
Organisations called for and supported the strike. However, most workers in 
India do not belong to labor unions, nor are most covered by the country’s 
weakly enforced labor laws. Unorganized employees, many in informal and 
contracted-out employment, took an active part in the strike. Workers in every 
Indian state, in all sectors—agriculture, mining, transportation, 
manufacturing, services, government—and in nearly every occupation, walked out 
in large numbers. Tens of millions of women struck.

The general strike, one of seventeen that have occurred in India since 1991, 
should be seen in the context of the twenty-seven years of a 
government-capitalist alliance that has wreaked havoc on India’s workers. State 
properties have been sold to private businesses; the needs of capital have 
taken precedence over those of workers and peasants to an unprecedented degree; 
rural lands have been stolen and privatized; unions and left-wing political 
parties have been subjected to great state repression; workers have been 
squeezed to work more intensively, meaning that while productivity rose, 
employment did not; wages have stagnated; food consumption in the countryside, 
home to more than 800 million people, has fallen; the oppression of women 
continues; and ecological crises loom menacingly over the country. Given the 
difficulties of waging struggles in individual workplaces, rage has boiled 
over, providing fertile grounds for short general strikes as the best available 
means of protest.

The main organizers of the strike put forward a list of demands, similar to 
those in the previous general strikes:

Ÿ Contain price rises through a universal public distribution system [see below 
for explanation] and ban speculative trade on the commodity markets.
Ÿ Institute concrete measures for employment generation.
Ÿ Enforce all labor laws and stringently sanction violations.
Ÿ Provide universal social security coverage for all workers.
Ÿ Assure minimum wages not less than Rs 18,000 [about $267] per month.
Ÿ Assure pensions not less than Rs 3,000 [about $44.50] per month for entire 
working population.
Ÿ Stop disinvestment of central and state public sector undertakings.
Ÿ Stop contract work [precarious work] . . . and institute equal wages for same 
work.
Ÿ Require registration of unions within a period of 45 days and immediate 
ratification of ILO [International Labour Organization] conventions C87 and C98 
[these guarantee the rights of people to free association and to organize for 
mutual protection, including bargaining collectively with employers].
Ÿ Stop labor law amendments [restricting workers’ rights].
Ÿ Stop FDI [foreign direct investment] in railways, insurance and defense.

These are worthy demands. They address the conditions of the entire working 
class and not just those of a particular group within it. The first demand is 
especially noteworthy. The Indian government has established a network of Fair 
Price Shops, which sell basic foodstuffs to the poor in publicly-owned shops at 
subsidized prices. This “public distribution system,” which began in 1947, has 
left much to be desired in terms of coverage, corruption, and quality of the 
goods sold. The unions’ request doesn’t address these problems, but it does 
insist on universal coverage. That is, every Indian would have access to the 
shops, something that could help alleviate the country’s food crisis. To keep 
prices low, the demand includes a curb on commodity speculation, which has been 
responsible for spikes in food prices.

The fact that so many Indians embraced the demands and stopped work throughout 
the nation is remarkable, as is the great diversity by class, caste, gender. 
industry, and occupation of the strikers. Nothing remotely 

[Marxism] [UCE] A howl of protest about plight of the poor

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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Books about what it's like to be poor were all the rage 10 years ago after
the success of Barbara Ehrenreich's *Nickel and Dimed*
.
That was an excellent book, albeit one that, like its imitators, was
written from the vantage point of the safari Jeep: middle-class journalists
taking minimum wage jobs and then writing about them when they got safely
home.

These books, while useful, missed a large part of what it is to be poor:
not just the logistical nightmare of juggling bad jobs, bad credit and bad
housing, but what it feels like, for the entirety of your life, to be
despised by the culture you live in. The existential threat to one's
self-esteem can only be got at by those who have lived for decades with no
safety net and who, as Tirado points out, not only act but look poor. It
changes the way people treat you.

The shocking thing about *Hand to Mouth*, which is part memoir, part
polemic and part howl of protest, is that, in some ways, Tirado is lucky.
She was not born into poverty. (She skirts over her background, hinting at
some family problems that meant her parents, for a long stretch of her 20s,
wouldn't help her out after she dropped out of college. And she wrestled
with ill health and depression.) She is articulate and can argue her way
out of things. And she has, more often than not, been employed, albeit in
one or more fast-food jobs with no benefits or security.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/hand-to-mouth-review-linda-tirado-poor-poverty
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[Marxism] Jetliner crash in Iran

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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there are now suspicions that the jetliner that crashed outside Tehran was
shot down. That's what I wondered all along. Given that the plane crash
happened a few hours after Iran had launched the missiles at the Iraqi
bases, I'm sure that the entire Iranian defense force was on the highest
level of alert. It seems to me to be entirely possible that somebody along
the chain of command mistook that plane for a US counter attack plane and
ordered it shot down.

If that turns out to be the case, then this will give new life to the mass
protest movement in Iran.

See:
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/plane-crash-us-officials-confident-iran-shot-down-passenger-jet-bound-for-ukraine-today-2020-01-09-live-stream-updates/?fbclid=IwAR1vBHV9V064eKVaoAjFizOAKJoKsse874Vgl6MjglUGjHDIPp6JyftJezE

-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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[Marxism] US increasingly believes Iran shot down Ukrainian airliner by accident - CNNPolitics

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/09/politics/is-iran-ukraine-plane/index.html
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Re: [Marxism] Indian Mega Strike

[Marla Vijaya kumar via Marxism]

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Ha ha, Louis, at last your radar has detected India!
A 250 million strong nationwide strike by workers and peasants should make 
world headlines, but everybody, including the Western Left ignore India.
The Modi Fascist Government has brought in CAA, an act aimed at isolating 185 
million Muslims and ultimately to deprive them of 
Indian Citizenship. 
Since the act was passed in Indian Parliament where Modi's BJP has a crushing 
majority, protests have begun modestly in some places.
But when the students of Delhi's JMI University where many Muslim students 
study, were brutally attached by the police, the protests spread across the 
country.
Since then, protests had taken place on a regular basis in all the cities and 
towns across India in the last one month. Delhi had seen 
viscous violence on the demonstrators by the police.
Hyderabad had seen a 2 million strong rally against the CAA. Nagpur city, the 
base of RSS had seen a similar protest, though on a 
slightly smaller scale.
Restrictions were place on all university campuses against assembly and 
protests. Now students from even elite colleges have come 
out to join the protests.
The students of  Indian Institute of Management, a premier institution in 
Bengaluru had invented a new way of showing their dissent.
Since assembly of more than 3 people is prohibited, students come to the main 
gate one by one, leave their shoes, with a flower and a 
protest paper. This is unnerving for the Government.
The students of Jawarlal Nehru University, which is the stronghold of the Left 
and the epicentre of the fight against the Hindutva 
forces, has been specially targeted, on the lines of Kristalnacht on 5th 
January evening. A band of RSS goons, assisted by the police 
had entered the University hostels and residences of teachers and brutally 
attacked with bamboo sticks and iron rods and dozens 
sustained injuries. The police had clamped criminal cases, not on the 
attackers, but on the victims!
A positive outcome of the present protests is that Muslims, Christians, the 
lower caste untouchables (Dalits) - who were away from 
struggles have joined forces together with the Left. Left leaders are 
addressing rallies with hundreds of thousands of people.
The protestors display the Indian National Flag and sing songs popular with the 
Left, such as the Leftist poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz's "Hum 
Dekhenge" ("We Shal See'). Students have come out with innovative banners. One 
banner reads, :We Lose Fear, They Lose Power."
This radicalization of students on such a mass scale and defending the 
democratic Constitution is a welcome development.

We have to wit and see.
Vijaya Kumar M


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[Marxism] What Passes for Reality Is Not Worth Respecting: The Second Newsletter (2020).

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://mailchi.mp/thetricontinental.org/what-passes-for-reality-is-not-worth-respecting-the-second-newsletter-2020?e=77bd6c9887
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[Marxism] Largest Ever Strike in India Shakes Up Modi Govt | NewsClick

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.newsclick.in/Nationwide-Workers-General-Strike-8-Jan-Modi-Government
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Re: [Marxism] What Do You Do When Neo-Nazis Crash Your Anti-War Rally?

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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This is a depressing measure of how much a movement is going to have to
re-invent the wheel.

Relying on small self-selected groups to deal with this is an invitation to
all sorts of trouble.  As a general rule, organizers need to marshal their
demonstrations.  When there's a disruption to distract from the focus of
the march, the disrupters are invited to remove themselves and, failing
that, they are removed by any means that will best minimize the distraction
they intend to cause.  We had this problem locally back when Occupy
exploded on the scene and nobody knew how to deal it when small clusters of
tea party types came in and began chanting batshit crazy slogans.

Of course, the essentially Democratic engineers of the enterprise (and the
architects of its destruction) did just the opposite of what they needed to
do.

Cheers!
Mark L.
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[Marxism] What Do You Do When Neo-Nazis Crash Your Anti-War Rally?

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-do-you-do-when-neo-nazis-crash-your-anti-war-rally
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[Marxism] The political (auto)biography of a generation | Lefteast

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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n Eastern Europe, this global turbulence overlapped with a regional one, 
and this is the second salient force: the exhaustion of socialist 
developmentalism led by the political monopoly of the communist parties. 
This did not happen in an instant – as the fixation with 1989 suggests. 
Instead, it was a complex and protracted process with unforeseen and 
contradictory outcomes.


https://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/political-autobiography-generation1989/
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[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Christmas in January: Trump’s Gifts for US Hawks and Iran’s Government

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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By Mina Khanlarzadeh

https://secure-web.cisco.com/1epkkQLrjytb5z0DmOJENJg-z4jKyfTNlX6zuMxT6qLe0AbWQmVDt3TPv1uMBUII3q-fPdPc5rKcblzj1hNXhbP7fwvELHaSMQmlYnmXLLcrgGRujKmP6eFW5EaI5bS6cqBgFxumULt5WsQYDLaMzY5XFJevG8FOXm24yhPkiRZXYLxhf1YL9iLMDc89jkKQaQcSKnjvSqm_gIvgdTQpcbYkR5BTQ1uLZ1FEGT8lKvgTPD3TYu7VnuseTOmW_OpqU9PUx4-RsbXnpIHMI5oMAVvh8lsviC9bDTgHO2eJ99NaD7aUVqm2gplVjcDzokmi68grCxLdgYyff8lQxgHxjD32Y2Tf9I2XXJPKX-PbsUhjTTLRynjC7or2hlRCWu8Fgwb9Y3EhHN-esVifVgtvoqw/https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40mina.khanlar%2Fchristmas-in-january-trumps-gifts-for-us-hawks-and-iran-s-government-b2d7e7d1e0f1

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