We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, May 19, 2011

From Chiquita to Nike: Labor Activists Drive Corporations Bananas [updated 2x]

Click here to access article by John Lasker from Toward Freedom. 

The headline of this article would be much more accurate if it read, "From Chiquita to Nike: Corporations Drive Labor Activists Bananas.

I can't tell you how much an article like this angers me! This liberal view of the ongoing war on working people by ruling class corporations is precisely what is the most damaging to working people. It provides the prospect of hope for positive change by promoting methods that do not in any way disturb the system itself. To fight back according to the rules of capitalism will always ultimately end in defeat. 

Most labor activists have been doing this since the inception of capitalism, and what do they have to show for it? Is today's world so much better for working people than it was 300 years ago? Only for a relatively few high tech workers and workers in unions in the advanced capitalist countries. But, as we've seen, unions in the West are now facing all-out attacks by the ruling elites. 

The vast majority of working people (assuming they are working) in the world have seen their lives, and the environments in which they live, trashed. The working conditions in Columbia are not untypical working conditions in many areas of the world--it just isn't reported in capitalist media for obvious reasons. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.

It is long past time for activists and progressives to grow out of their delusions, and organize to fight this life destroying system! It is long past time for activists to start to create a new system that provides for social justice and one that enables us to live in harmony with the ecosystem!