Re: [Marxism] ISO opposes blah blah blah
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Your response is an exemplar of a civil and rigorous debate--not to mention logic. It is hard to argue logic with someone who insists Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a group dedicated to opposing US imperialism's attacks on the island, was actually a CIA front. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Media claims China has US 'over a barrel on rare-earrth minerals
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Fred Feldman (ffeld...@bellatlantic.net) wrote on 2010-10-20 at 19:58:42 in about [Marxism] Media claims China has US 'over a barrel on rare-earrth minerals: Krugman blames China for the world capitalist economic slowdown-recessionn-depression. What a nonsense. China's development has given international capitalism a new lease of life. Without dozens and hundreds of millions people entereing the proletariat in China, the world would long be in a deep slump deeper than the one we lived thru around 1929. And of course, it goes without saying that China has no more right to order China around than it does Honduras or the Koreas. Fred Feldman I think that you meant USA at the first occurence of China. Cheers, Lüko Willms Frankfurt, Germany Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Biggest Show on Earth
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == New from Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! about the Chilean miners http://www.revolutionarycommunist.org/index.php/latin-america/1944-the-biggest-show-on-earth.html Our Chilean correspondent Marcelo was in Copiapo when the 33 Chilean miners were lifted to safety. This is his report. The incredible media frenzy has now passed, and Chile has returned to normal life. The global phenomenon is now a thing of the past and so too are the 24-hour transmissions dedicated to the 33 ‘heroes’ and to President Sebastian Pinera’s personal endeavour. Chile´s government proudly displays the ‘Fenix II’ capsule used to rescue the miners from the ‘gut of the earth’ in front of the presidential palace like a trophy of war. The San Jose Mine collapse ended happily for the 33 miners and their families, though the happiest of all are without a doubt the Chilean government, now rolling in popularity after an apparently well-planned and executed rescue mission. http://govanhilldefencecampaign.blogspot.com/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Excerpt from Michael Hudson's new book
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Bankers Fleeced America, and Launched a Global Crisis The following is an excerpt from Michael Hudson's THE MONSTER: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America – And Spawned a Global Crisis (2010, Times Books) A few weeks after he started working at Ameriquest Mortgage, Mark Glover looked up from his cubicle and saw a coworker do something odd. The guy stood at his desk on the twenty-third floor of downtown Los Angeles's Union Bank Building. He placed two sheets of paper against the window. Then he used the light streaming through the window to trace something from one piece of paper to another. Somebody's signature. Glover was new to the mortgage business. He was twenty-nine and hadn't held a steady job in years. But he wasn't stupid. He knew about financial sleight of hand -- at that time, he had a check-fraud charge hanging over his head in the L.A. courthouse a few blocks away. Watching his coworker, Glover's first thought was: How can I get away with that? As a loan officer at Ameriquest, Glover worked on commission. He knew the only way to earn the six-figure income Ameriquest had promised him was to come up with tricks for pushing deals through the mortgage-financing pipeline that began with Ameriquest and extended through Wall Street's most respected investment houses. Glover and the other twentysomethings who filled the sales force at the downtown L.A. branch worked the phones hour after hour, calling strangers and trying to talk them into refinancing their homes with high-priced subprime mortgages. It was 2003, subprime was on the rise, and Ameriquest was leading the way. The company's owner, Roland Arnall, had in many ways been the founding father of subprime, the business of lending money to home owners with modest incomes or blemished credit histories. He had pioneered this risky segment of the mortgage market amid the wreckage of the savings and loan disaster and helped transform his company's headquarters, Orange County, California, into the capital of the subprime industry. Now, with the housing market booming and Wall Street clamoring to invest in subprime, Ameriquest was growing with startling velocity. Up and down the line, from loan officers to regional managers and vice presidents, Ameriquest's employees scrambled at the end of each month to push through as many loans as possible, to pad their monthly production numbers, boost their commissions, and meet Roland Arnall's expectations. Arnall was a man obsessed with loan volume, former aides recalled, a mortgage entrepreneur who believed volume solved all problems. Whenever an underling suggested a goal for loan production over a particular time span, Arnall's favorite reply was: We can do twice that. Close to midnight Pacific time on the last business day of each month, the phone would ring at Arnall's home in Los Angeles's exclusive Holmby Hills neighborhood, a $30 million estate that once had been home to Sonny and Cher.On the other end of the telephone line, a vice president in Orange County would report the month's production numbers for his lending empire. Even as the totals grew to $3 billion or $6 billion or $7 billion a month -- figures never before imagined in the subprime business -- Arnall wasn't satisfied. He wanted more. He would just try to make you stretch beyond what you thought possible, one former Ameriquest executive recalled. Whatever you did, no matter how good you did, it wasn't good enough. full: http://www.alternet.org/books/148577/the_monster%3A_how_a_gang_of_predatory_lenders_and_bankers_fleeced_america%2C_and_launched_a_global_crisis/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] New book and launch events - 'The Obama Syndrome' by Tariq Ali
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == NEW TITLE: THE OBAMA SYNDROME Surrender at Home, War Abroad By TARIQ ALI Published 1 November 2010 - EVENTS: V40 Politics: Monday 25 October, 7pm, Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Street, London, EC1R 3GA Panel discussion with Tariq Ali, Mehdi Hasan, Patrick Cockburn and DD Guttenplan to discuss how much Obama's first two years in office will cost him at the most expensive elections in history. Tickets are FREE, but booking is essential for this event. Call 020 7324 2570 or email i...@freewordonline.comhttp://www.freewordonline.com/%22mailto:i...@freewordonline.com/%22 to book your place. More information here http://www.versobooks.com/events/47-v40-politics---the-obama-syndrome-surrender-at-home,-war-abroad Monday 8 November, doors open 8pm, Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, London, E8 3DL Tickets cost £4 advance/£5 on the door. For more information and to buy tickets: http://www.cafeoto.co.uk/tariq-ali.shtm Tuesday 9 November, Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London, W2 1QJ Tickets cost £12.50/10 early booking (£8 concessions - students/seniors). For more information and to buy tickets: http://frontlineclub.com/events/2010/11/insight-with-tariq-ali---the-obama-syndrome.html - A merciless dissection of Obama's overseas escalation and domestic retreat. Our country has borne a special burden in global affairs. We have spilled American blood in many countries on multiple continents ... Our cause is just, our resolve unwavering. We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might. -Barack Obama, West Point, December 1, 2009 What has really changed since Bush left the White House? Very little, argues Tariq Ali, apart from the mood music. The hopes aroused during Obama's election campaign have rapidly receded-the honeymoon has been short. Following the financial crisis, the reform president bailed out Wall Street without getting anything in return. With Democratic Party leaders and representatives mired in the corrupt lobbying system, the plans for reforming the healthcare system lie wrecked on the Senate floor. Abroad, the war on terror continues: torture on a daily basis in the horror chamber that is Bagram, Iraq occupied indefinitely, Israel permanently appeased, and more troops to Afghanistan and more drone attacks in Pakistan than under Bush. The fact that Obama has proved incapable of shifting the political terrain even a few inches in a reformist direction will pave the way for a Republican surge and triumph in the not too distant future. --- TARIQ ALI is an internationally acclaimed writer and commentator. He has written more than a dozen books on world history and politics. His Clash of the Fundamentalisms has sold over 80,000 copies, and he has also won awards and accolades for his fiction - the first book in the Islam Quintet, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree has sold over 20,000 copies. Ali is also a celebrated filmmaker and has written scripts for the stage and screen; most recently he co-wrote and appeared in Oliver Stone's South of the Border. He is an Editor of New Left Review and lives in London. - ISBN: 978 1 84467 449 7/ £9.99 / 160 pages --- For more information and to buy:http://www.versobooks.com/books/516-the-obama-syndrome -- Visit Verso's all-new website for blog updates, information on our upcoming events, news, reviews, publications and special offers: http://www.versobooks.comhttp://www.versobooks.com/books/469-manituana Become a fan of Verso on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Verso-Books-UK/122064538789 And get updates on Twitter too! http://twitter.com/VersoBooksUK Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Woods tendency articles on the crisis, part 3
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.marxist.com/crisis-of-capitalism-and-tasks-of-marxists-3.htm Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Please contribute to Swans
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == This is a pitch for Swans Magazine that is having its yearly fund-drive. Yesterday I told Gilles d'Aymery, the editor, that donations might be slow coming in since there is a widespread assumption that everything is free on the Internet. That is simply not true. To maintain a website like Swans involves monthly payments to an ISP, yearly registration for a domain, and lots of other costs involved with infrastructure. Before Marxmail was made part of the U. of Utah economics department network, I was paying up to $200 per month so I know what I am talking about here. This of course does not begin to address the hard work that Gilles puts into a very fine magazine. I don't think that this fund-raising effort will amount to a yearly wage, since the goal is $2500 as opposed to Counterpunch's $75,000 goal for its own fund drive taking place now. I have been writing for Swans since 2003 and consider it the only place worth my time and effort. After seeing the capriciousness of both high-profile websites like Counterpunch and Znet, as well as academic leftist publishers, Swans continues to impress me as an essential vehicle for both political and cultural thought on the left. It is a place where you will find Michal Barker's ongoing investigations of how Soros-style philanthropy undermines the left, while supposedly supporting it. It is also where you will find a new contributor Paul Buhle writing about comic book art, his latest passion in a life-long career writing about popular culture from a Marxist perspective. You simply could not find better writing in print or electronically no matter how hard you tried. With a modest goal of $2500, it should not be hard to meet with relatively modest contributions. I am about to donate $25 through Paypal (http://www.swans.com/about/donate.html) and urge you to do so as well. $5 or $10 would hardly make a dent in your budget but it would certainly matter a lot to the Swans editors when received by a large number of people. Like many Americans, Gilles and his wife and co-editor Jan Baughman are going through some hard times now and every little bit will help. Thanks for your consideration. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Excerpt from Michael Hudson's new book
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 10/22/2010 10:30 AM, Louis Proyect wrote: The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Bankers Fleeced America, and Launched a Global Crisis The following is an excerpt from Michael Hudson's THE MONSTER: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America – And Spawned a Global Crisis (2010, Times Books) A few weeks after he started working at Ameriquest Mortgage, Mark Glover looked up from his cubicle and saw a coworker do something odd. The guy stood at his desk on the twenty-third floor of downtown Los Angeles's Union Bank Building. He placed two sheets of paper against the window. Then he used the light streaming through the window to trace something from one piece of paper to another. Somebody's signature. Clarification from Doug Henwood: That book isn't by Michael Hudson, the economist. It's by a journalist - used to be at a paper in West Virginia, now with Center for Public Integrity. I had him on the radio a couple of times. Doug Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Dropping a film class at Columbia University
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Interesting in a very sad kind of way Lou. Academics are the pits really. The way she assaulted your paper is a typical instance of someone who cannot ignore the allure of the will to power. Having said that I have a Bhaskarian take on reality and you would appear to be working with something like a Kantian model. Now that would be a useful place to begin a dialogue. What especially interests me though is the case where a fictional text is truer than a non-fiction text. The example I use is Sebastian Barry's great novel on the Irish troops in WW1- *It's a long way.* The point I make here is that if one wants to understand what it would be like to be a soldier on the Western Front then one reads Barry's book and not the histories which he references at the back of his novel. In some way Barry's book is truer. The answer maybe lies in the role of imagination. If you take Toibin's great book *Lady Gregory's Toothbrush,* its success is due I think to Toibin's ability to imagine what it would have been like to have been part of Gregory's coterie and to have seen the starving peasants dying quietly by the wall of the Gregory mansion during the Great Famine, while Lord Gregory was pushing through the legislation to take their land of them if they got public relief. Toibin's book takes us below the surface of what happened to show us the underlying reality of the social relations that dominated Ireland in the 19th and 20th century. All that makes Toibin's book a very true text and one worth reading. All very interesting and worth exploring in a dialogic manner. As for the mockumentary thing, that is really a very insignificant moment. Just like lies proves there is something known as the truth, mockumentaries prove there is something called a documentary. comradely Gary Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] American-style
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I’m wondering if electoral politics can work for the purpose of getting the Communist/Socialist message out, to publicly explain the symptoms of the money-sickness in America, and offer a cure. It seems clear enough that any politician and/or activist who ignores the basic fact that America requires a whole new foundation, is building a house of cards, but since there are many bright folks, especially youth, in Dem-Progressive politics, there might be a good way to build a bridge with them, and eventually bring them over to our side, so I would like to hear what others think? glenn Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] American-style
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I was first attracted to the Socialist Workers Party by its campaign of Fred Halstead for President and Paul Boutelle for Vice President in 1968. I was involved with the Democratic party at the time—working for Eugene McCarthy's campaign—but I liked Halstead and Boutelle's straightforward message, as a contrast to some of the mealymouthed, compromising stuff from my own candidate. Stay tuned: I'm planning on telling the whole story of my experience with the Democratic party later this month or early next. Tom On Oct 22, 2010, at 4:51 PM, Glenn Parton wrote: == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I’m wondering if electoral politics can work for the purpose of getting the Communist/Socialist message out, to publicly explain the symptoms of the money-sickness in America, and offer a cure. It seems clear enough that any politician and/or activist who ignores the basic fact that America requires a whole new foundation, is building a house of cards, but since there are many bright folks, especially youth, in Dem-Progressive politics, there might be a good way to build a bridge with them, and eventually bring them over to our side, so I would like to hear what others think? glenn Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/ marxism/biastg%40embarqmail.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] blog post: These Homes Were Made (and Paid for) by You and Me
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Full at http://blog.cheapmotelsandahotplate.org/2010/10/22/these-homes-were-made-and-paid-for-by-you-and-me/ When we lived in Pittsburgh in the 1990s, my mother came to visit for a few days. She always wanted to see the Henry Clay Frick mansion, so we drove to Wilkinsburg, just outside the Pittsburgh city limits, to see it. Frick was the chief lieutenant of Andrew Carnegie and the architect of Carnegie Steel’s efforts to dislodge the union of skilled ironworkers from its mills. This led to the Homestead Steel Strike in 1892, one of the most famous working class struggles in U.S. labor history. Frick and Carnegie later parted company and feuded the rest of their lives. Frick abandoned his Pittsburgh home (though his daughter lived their until her death) and built a much grander residence in Manhattan. He said that the smoke from the mills in Pittsburgh was damaging his paintings. . . . Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Clarification on dropping a film class
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The first class consisted of an assignment to define what is documentary in a half-page, single-spaced. My frustration with the class had a lot to do with this assignment. How do you answer something like that in what amounted to a quarter of a page? After she gave us the assignment, she grinned and said that it would be a real challenge to stay within that limit. I don't know. I found that it undermined my thought process. But then again, I probably write 10,000 words a month so I am not typical. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Excerpt from Michael Hudson's new book
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Interesting-- better style, same approach. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect l...@panix.com To: sartes...@earthlink.net Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Le Monde: Chat with Besancenot on the pension struggle
==
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==
{From October 19. Great defence of the struggle]
Besancenot: Blocking the Economy to Block the Reform
Chat with Olivier Besancenot, Moderated by Caroline Monnot
*Esteban: Hello, this Tuesday's action is a symbolic last-ditch stand, isn't
it?*
Olivier Besancenot: No! It's another stage toward the general strike which
is beginning to happen. On Tuesday night, strikes will be renewed, and
there will be new demonstrations, as well as numerous blockades. The
question posed now is about blocking the economy to block the reform.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/besancenot191010.html
--
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s
original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made,
through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man
Under Socialism
“The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of
dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker
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[Marxism-Thaxis] Argument for historical existence of barter
One way to infer, perhaps, that much of historical commodity exchange is barter or without money is to consider that general use of paper as money is historically recent . So, the money of most of the time of history is gold or valuable metal. Only a limited amount of coins would have been minted through most of history. So, there wasn't enough liquidity for most transactions to involve money. The dryness of history implies much bartering. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Wall Comes Tumbling Down
The Wall Comes Tumbling Down http://www.thenation.com/blog/155437/wall-comes-tumbling-down Greg Kaufmann October 18, 2010 At a news conference on a farm outside of Immokalee in southwest Florida, Jon Esformes, operating partner of the fourth-generation, family-owned Pacific Tomato Growers—one of the five largest growers in the nation with more than 14,000 acres in the US and Mexico—declared, “In a free society, few are guilty, but all are responsible.” And with that he announced an agreement with the 4000-member Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to implement a penny per pound pay raise—which stands to increase workers’ annual earnings from about $10,000 to as much as $17,000—and establish a code of conduct that includes an external complaint resolution system, shade and protective equipment in the fields, and a worker-to-worker education process on their rights under the new agreement. “For us, you wake up and you realize that maybe this is something we could have done yesterday, but I am certainly not going to wait until tomorrow,” said Esformes. For those who have followed CIW’s decade-long fight to raise farmworkers’ sub-poverty wages and remedy oppressive working conditions—including slavery—this agreement marks the moment when a wall of denial maintained by the Florida agricultural industry came tumbling down. When the Department of Labor reported “sub-poverty annual earnings,” the growers denied it, claiming tomato harvesters averaged $12-$18 per hour. When the USDA described farmworkers as “among the most economically disadvantaged groups in the US” with “poverty more than double that of all wage and salary employees,” the growers maintained that they were performing a service by providing needed entry-level jobs. When the Department of Justice worked with CIW to prosecute seven slavery operations in Florida over the last fifteen years, resulting in the liberation of over 1,000 farmworkers, the growers claimed that these were isolated cases and there was no need for systemic reforms. When a detective with the Collier County Sheriff’s Office testified in Congress that human trafficking in Florida agriculture was “probably occurring right now while we sit here” and the growers “isolate themselves from what is occurring, and benefit from what’s going on,” the growers insisted they were victims of a sophisticated public relations campaign ginned up by CIW. And when CIW attempted to talk to the growers, they simply refused. During a 1997 worker hunger strike, one grower told CIW co-founder Lucas Benitez that industry would never meet the workers’ single demand for dialogue. “Let me put it to you like this,” said the grower. “The tractor doesn’t tell the farmer how to run the farm.” Even when CIW won penny per pound pay raises and code of conduct agreements with the four largest fast food companies in the world, the three largest food service companies, and finally, the largest organic grocer, the growers still stood in the way. A Senate hearing convened by Senator Bernie Sanders and the late Senator Edward Kennedy revealed that the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE), representing 90 percent of the state’s growers, went so far as to declare that any members who implemented the pay raise would be fined $100,000 for every worker who benefited. So millions of dollars in checks that buyers were cutting directly to the workers languished in escrow. An industry that had profited from 300 hundred years of forced labor in Florida’s fields wasn’t about to allow its workers—who have no right to organize, no right to overtime, and no right to bargain collectively—to receive a pay raise from its customers, much less win a seat at the food industry table. But standing in the crowded field during the announcement of this unprecedented agreement was the vice president of the FTGE himself, Pacific CEO Billy Heller. “Pacific truly came to the talks that led to today’s announcement with an open heart,” said Benitez. “Without that spirit of partnership, it wouldn’t have been possible to even talk about the kind of changes contemplated in this agreement, much less hammer out the concrete systems necessary to make those changes real and sustainable.” Senator Sanders, who has visited Immokalee and held Congressional hearings to shed light on the workers’ struggle, saw the agreement as a model for the industry. “This historic agreement should finally put an end to the harvest of shame that has existed for far too long in Florida’s tomato fields,” he told me in an e-mail. “It is now past time for all tomato growers to participate in the penny-per-pound program and ensure that no tomato worker lives in extreme poverty or is forced into slavery.” That vision is now shared by CIW and Pacific. With this agreement, a new standard for social responsibility and accountability in Florida’s tomato industry is set. There is no more room for denial, no more room for excuses. These two partners have finally opened
[Marxism-Thaxis] Tea Party Nationalism
Tea Party Nationalism By Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP http://www.teapartynationalism.com/ We know the majority of Tea Party supporters are sincere, principled people of good will. That is why the NAACP-an organization that has worked to expose and combat racism in all its forms for more than 100 years- is thankful Devin Burghart, Leonard Zeskind and the Institute for Research Education on Human Rights prepared this report that exposes the links between certain Tea Party factions and acknowledged racist hate groups in the United States. These links should give all patriotic Americans pause. I hope the leadership and members of the Tea Party movement will read this report and take additional steps to distance themselves from those Tea Party leaders who espouse racist ideas, advocate violence, or are formally affiliated with white supremacist organizations. In our effort to strengthen our democracy and ensure rights for all, it is important that we have a reasoned political debate without the use of epithets, the threat of violence, or the resurrection of long discredited racial hierarchies. This July, delegates to the 101st NAACP National Convention unanimously passed a resolution condemning outspoken racist elements within the Tea Party, and called upon Tea Party leaders to repudiate those in their ranks who use white supremacist language in their signs and speeches, and those Tea Party leaders who would subvert their own movement by spreading racism. The resolution came after a year of high-profile media coverage of racial slurs and images at Tea Party marches around the country. In March, members of the Congressional Black Caucus reported that racial epithets were hurled at them as they passed by a Washington, DC health care protest. Civil rights legend John Lewis was called the n-word in the incident while others in the crowd used ugly anti-gay slurs to describe Congressman Barney Frank, a long-time NAACP supporter and the nation's first openly gay member of Congress. Local NAACP members reported similar racially-charged incidents at local Tea Party rallies. At first, the resolution sparked defensive, misleading public responses from the usual corners. First, Tea Party leaders denied our claims were valid. Then Fox News repeatedly circulated the false claim that we were calling the Tea Party itself racist. Then their commentators and other media personalities said the Tea Party was too loosely configured to police itself. Local NAACP volunteers and staff members around the country were barraged by angry phone calls and death threats. Yet, amid the threats and denials, something remarkable began to happen: Tea Party leaders began to quietly take steps toward actively policing explicitly racist activity within their ranks. Before the end of July, the Tea Party Federation had expelled Mark Williams, then-president of the powerful and politically-connected Tea Party Express for his most-recent racially offensive public statements, a move they had previously refused to make. The move was significant for three reasons: 1) it proved wrong those national leaders and news personalities who said the Tea Party was too loosely configured to insist its leaders act responsibly, 2) it sparked a rift among Tea Party leadership between those who are tolerant of racist rhetoric and those who would stand against it, and 3) it showed our resolution was having an impact. Soon after, Montana conservative Tim Ravndal was fired as head of the Big Sky Tea Party Association after local media published messages posted to his Facebook account that appeared to advocate violence against gays and lesbians. In the midst of all this, Tea Party leaders moved quickly to take on a communications strategy typical of corporate crisis public relations. A Uni-Tea rally to promote Tea Party diversity was hastily organized, while FreedomWorks launched a Diverse Tea web initiative to spotlight pictures of nonwhite Tea Partiers. There was a Tea Party leadership race summit facilitated by Geraldo Rivera. In August, Fox News personality and Tea Party icon Glenn Beck instructed his followers to leave all signs at home in the lead-up to his rally on the National Mall to avoid media scrutiny, and has since admonished Tea Partiers across the nation to dress normally, lest their signs and t-shirts distract from the fiscal message for which he would prefer the Tea Party be recognized. In some areas, the response appears to have spread beyond the Tea Party itself. In September, former Florida Republican Party Chair Jim Greer made a surprise public apology for the racist views among some members of his party. These are welcome first steps. They promote diversity and acknowledge the inherent perception problem that plagues the Tea Party: that while many of its leaders are motivated by common conservative budget and governance concerns, for too long they have tolerated others who espouse racism and xenophobia and, in
