Support the Georgian Prison Strikers.
Georgia's prisoners unite and strike. London, Defense of wikileaks,
It has been a bit of an exciting week for long in the tooth revolutionaries like myself. London, now that was a good one. On the night I was in another room from where my partner was watching TV, my partner who has never been involved politically in her life. I heard her shouting and shouting. What the hell? What was wrong? I rushed out. Maybe the Jack Russell had bit the chihuahua, or maybe the other way around. That chihuahua can be nasty at times and in spite of being about the size of a couple of egg cups he thinks he is super dog. He recently bit me on the nose when I sang him Danny Boy. He will get it yet.
But imagine my surprise, it was none of these things. Instead it was my partner up on her feet shouting like a mad woman and cheering on the London youth, beside herself with excitement and joy, and as an extra bonus, so so happy to see the royal twits shook up. I joined her. As we settled a bit we both concluded we were unconditionally supportive of the youth giving the cops what they deserved for supporting the right wing government in trying to put up tuition fees and also for their role in smashing the miners strike so many years ago. You need a long memory in this business. I am a strong believer in bearing grudges.
I know I know, to an extent cops are workers too. But how could any self respecting worker have helped smash the miners strike. And now looking at these cops the government is going to attack their living standards this time around. Are they going to help attack themselves? Jesus. There has to be some sort of a brain or consciousness in there somewhere. And yes I know I know, it is the role of the goddamn union leaders and the Labor Party leaders. If they would only lead. Then the cops could be at least divided. Maybe there is a case for, in this one case, and in this one case only, for the cops to ..... no. no. I am joking , I am joking, Just the whole excitement going to my head.
I know and work towards the proper solution. We have to build the opposition forces in the workplaces, the unions the neighborhoods so that the union and labor leaders will see that if they do not move and lead then they will be removed.
My partner and I both sobered down and agreed that the youth were over all doing a good job. Were they making the best use of the paint we discussed. We agreed they were. Every now and then my hand would twitch. It was the season to be merry. I was considering going back to the whiskey.
And the season not only to be merry for London. But also for the great united strike of the prisoners in Georgia. It has cut across the most vicious racist divisions in the US prison system and in US society. Sisters and Brothers, this is historic. These heroic Georgian prison strikers must get our support. Please please take action. . (Scroll back and get the contact numbers and addresses in the article on this blog.) US capitalism has over 2 million people in its prisons and divides these workers along racial lines. The Georgian strike has over come this and is challenging the regime which treats the prisoners like slaves.
And then we also have the movement to defend wikileaks. The software to store and distribute the wikileaks material is being downloaded at the rate of 1,000 copies per hour with one third of these in the US. An estimated I million people already have the wikileaks files on their hard drives for safe keeping and if they decide it is best, for distribution. And tens and tens of thousands are in chat rooms and on line forums discussing how to defend wikileaks and Internet access. This is a new movement. The Internet has exploded in the faces of world capitalism.
The capitalists cannot function in the light of day. They fight like dogs and cats behind their dirty hypocritical smiles and this and and their dirty deeds are being increasingly seen by the working class thanks to wikileaks and the Internet in general. This is weakening capitalism. Wikileaks have done a service and is doing a favor for the working class and shifting the balance of class forces in favor of the working class. This is the first such shift in some time. It is a happy day.
My partner and I are looking forward to the publication of more files on the US corporations. These vicious organizations have been increasingly squeezing their workers in the most ferocious way for decades. They have been conducting a vicious offensive against the working class. There is a powerful rage building against this in the working class. Distributing the information about what these corporations and their capitalist system does will increasingly seem to be a good idea to more and more US workers. The leaks and distribution will increase. At some stage this will reach a level which will mobilize a movement in the workplaces and the streets. Things are looking up.
The movement to defend wilileaks. The Georgia prisoners' strike. And more. But what I would like to mention now is the big one that lies ahead. China. And I am not talking about the rise of the Chinese elite. This will have its affects too as it weakens US capitalism. But what I am talking about here is the coming movement of the Chinese working class and especially the youth which will weaken Chinese capitalism and capitalism world wide. Have a look at these facts.
In 1998 Chinese universities produced 830,000 graduates per year. Last year the number was six million and rising. A staggering increase. Now this would not be a bad thing if the system had a rewarding job for these educated youth. But for the overwhelming majority it does not. There is a new name for the hundreds of thousands of youth graduates who move to the big cities in desperation looking for work which corresponds to their education. In Beijing there are 100,000 alone. The overwhelming majority of these youth cannot get jobs for which their education has prepared them.
The New York Times quotes a Chinese sociologist: "They often settle in crowded neighborhoods, toiling for wages that would give even low paid factory workers pause." Along with this migrant workers such as these young people are not eligible for subsidized housing and other health and welfare benefits enjoyed by legally registered residents in the cities. Add to this a 17 million increase in four years of 20 to 25 year olds and an explosion lies ahead.
This same New York Times article described the conditions of these youth. "As the light faded and the streets became thick with young receptionists, cashiers and sales clerks heading home, Mr Yuan led his friends down a dank alley and up an unsteady staircase to his room. It was about the width of a queen size bed and he shared a filthy toilet with dozens of other tenants and a common area with a communal hot plate."
And another young man with a finance degree is quoted about how he spent weeks at job fairs but could not get a job. He was told his finance degree was useless as he was an outsider and therefore could not be trusted to handle cash and company secrets. He finally found a job selling apartments but left after a week as his boss fined him every day he did not sell one. He eventually ended up selling noodles working 12 hour days returning home to eat a meal of instant noodles. The only decoration in his room was a poster for instant noodles. A poster for instant noodles?? This new generation of Chinese youth are not partaking of the great Chinese art and culture never mind getting enough to eat and a future.
But all the rising youth are not the same. There are the children of the elite. As one of the young graduates said after being in Beijing for five months: "If you are not the son of an official or you don't come from money, life is going to be bitter." You read about the high test scores of the Chinese youth, about the huge market for expensive western cars, but this just applies to a very thin coddled privileged layer of Chinese society. I live in Chicago close to an Ivy League university. The coffee shops and streets are full of Chinese youth in extremely expensive designer clothes. These are part of this tiny thin prevailed layer, not representative of the great mass of Chinese youth and workers. It will be the great mass of Chinese youth, not this thin layer, whop will shift the world on its axis in the years ahead.
The same New York Times article talks further about the problems facing the majority of Chinese youth who move to the big cities with their university degrees which were mostly paid for with their parents savings. These youth have high expectations. The New York Times reports: "While some recent graduates find success, many are worn down by a gauntlet of challenges and disappointments. Living conditions can be Dickensian, and grueling six day work weeks leave little time for anything else but sleeping, eating and doing laundry. But what many new arrivals find more discomfiting are the obstacles that hard work alone cannot overcome. Their under graduate degrees, many from the growing crop of third tier provincial schools, earn them little respect in the big city. And as the children of peasants or factory workers, they lack the essential social lubricant known as guanxi, or personal connections, that greases the way for the offspring of China's nouveau riche and the politically connected."
What we are looking at here is a situation that cannot last. A society that gives tens and tens of millions of its youth high expectations and cannot fulfill these expectations will explode. Listen to the arrogant Mr Peng Xizhe, Dean of Social Development and Public Policy at Fudan university in Shanghai. He suggests that the youth who have trained for their degrees should: "either shift to more practical vocations like nursing and teaching or recalibrate their expectations." that is downgrade their expectations. I wonder has he done this? That is recalibrate his expectations? Arrogantly he says, 'It's okay if they want to try a few years seeking their fortune, but if they stay too long in places like Beijing or Shanghai, they will find trouble for themselves and trouble for society." Yes exactly. They will demand a decent life and the evolving Chinese capitalism cannot provide this so their will be "trouble." The youth will join the struggle for a better life. There will be "trouble." When the hundreds of millions of Chinese youth and workers join the struggle for a better life, join London, Georgia and the rest then my partner and I will have even more reason to shout and cheer and jump about.
Sean.
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