>From 2010, a year of living dangerously - to 2011, a year of living victoriously!
Dear Friends, The Freedom Socialist Party sends solidarity and a New Year's salute to all those struggling around the world. We are part of an international move- ment fighting to free the working class from the increasingly deadly chains of the capitalist economic order. 2010 has been a year marked by individual and collective acts of heroic dissent, amidst growing resistance to the austerity drive directed at working people across the globe. Despite corporate media censorship, images of resistance are leaking out along with incriminating truths about this corrupt system we live under. >From Bradley Manning exposing the double-dealing and terror of U.S. imperialism, to the massive street protests by European workers and students demanding the bosses pay for their crisis, our class is living dangerously. How else could we live in this time of capitalist calamity? Throughout 2010, FSP members and international affiliates have engaged in struggles far and near, big and small, to rock the system. A few highlights: The San Francisco Bay Area branch was in the thick of students hitting the streets against tuition hikes at the University of California at Berkeley and participated in protests of the criminal police murder of Oscar Grant. FSP has also helped socialist feminist allies in Bay Area Radical Women launch a community campaign, Sisters Organize for Public Education. Both Bay Area and Los Angeles branches hosted a tour by Puerto Rican student striker Gamelyn Oduardo. He told the inspiring story of the female- led strikes that shut down ten campuses of the University of Puerto Rico from April to June. His message: community and labor strikes are the way to ensure everyone's demands will be met. In Los Angeles, FSP did just that, working with the Los Angeles March 4th Committee to Defend Public Education and Social Services to bring together library workers, students, teachers, and the community to oppose cuts on all fronts. Los Angeles FSP and Radical Women were also proud participants in the huge Arizona protests against anti-immigrant laws. In Washington State, the party helped organize rallies, meetings, labor support and community canvassing to defend vital services such as Basic Health (a low income healthcare plan) under the leadership of Radical Women's Sisters Organize for Survival campaign. FSP pressured unions and public service providers to fight together against the cuts, rather than be picked off one by one. And the branch led in the formation of Seattle United Against FBI Repression to oppose the Obama administration's FBI raids and grand jury witch hunt targeting socialists and antiwar, labor and international solidarity activists in the Midwest. In Oregon, FSP worked in a labor-led coalition that helped pass a ballot measure to increase taxes paid by corporations and the rich. Portland also organized on issues of police brutality and international labor solidarity with Mexican electrical workers protesting privatization and union-busting. New York FSPers marched for jobs and hospitals in Harlem and sent worker-to-worker aid to Haiti. They defended the construction of an Arab community center near Ground Zero and, with Radical Women, provided ongoing defense of an embattled Bronx abortion clinic. In Melbourne, Australia, FSP fought for pay equity in public sector jobs; helped the Indigenous Social Justice Association win freedom for Aboriginal political prisoner Lex Wotton; and saw charges dropped against a young Cairns couple targeted under Queensland's anti-abortion laws. In Japan, FSP organized for trade union rights among teachers and staff at private Tokyo language schools. Our international emissaries made several trips to Cuba to study changes in the political climate. In Mexico, an FSP representative met with striking workers and revolutionaries interested in socialist feminism. FSP and Radical Women also attended the huge Encuentro de Mujeres (Women's Conference) in Argentina, where they stood with Latin American feminists fighting for reproductive freedom and confronting Catholic church repression. Amidst all this activity, FSP also held a momentous national convention in July that analyzed U.S. and global politics and set directions for action and intervention. It won't surprise you to learn that all this organizing costs money. I urge you to support FSP's efforts in 2011 by clicking here to donate to the Freedom Socialist Party. Every dollar counts! Events in the coming year will call on all of us to take a stand. Bradley Manning, Lynne Stewart, and Mumia Abu-Jamal knew the risks when they courageously stood up to injustice, lies, and the rising police state. Their decision inspires us all to battle the U.S. machinery of war and austerity while we fight for the birth of a new world. In this way, we can move from living dangerously to living victoriously. In solidarity, Doug Barnes FSP National Secretary, U.S. Donate here ___________________________________________________________ Freedom Socialist Party U.S. Section 4710 University Way NE, #100 Seattle, WA 98105 USA Australian Section PO Box 308 Brunswick, VIC 3056 Australia ___________________________________________________________ To subscribe to the Freedom Socialist newspaper, or see the booklist at Red Letter Press, or to find out more about the Freedom Socialist Party, go to www.socialism.com, or reply to this message. 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