Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Please note I have a new phone number...

512-517-2708

Alan Maki

Alan Maki
Doing research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html


What we need is a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would make it a mandatory requirement that the president and Congress attain and maintain full employment.


"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens"

- Ben Franklin

Let's talk...

Let's talk...

Monday, June 24, 2019

Let’s Talk About the Politics and Economics of Livelihood and what we socialist can do

So, Facebook has denied me the right to create a new page entitled, “Let’s Talk About the Politics and Economics of Livelihood.”


I set up the page and made a post and the Facebook censors shut the page down about half an hour later.


This is what I had posted as the first post:


Any legitimate electoral struggle mobilizes people for action at the polls and mass action in the streets and at work and in the schools and neighborhoods.


This is where I think Bernie Sanders and other Democrats claiming to be liberal, progressive or left show us they are not actually interested in building real people’s movements.


Bernie Sanders claims a circle of one-million supporters but makes no attempt to mobilize these supporters to do anything except go to the voting booth.


Every one of those people have a circle of family, friends, neighbors, fellow students or workers... so the influence goes way beyond the one-million.


Any legitimate people’s electoral movement must bring people into the streets to back up its demands.


This is the only way struggles are ever won.


In fact, the Democrats don’t want people in the streets because those people will take on Democrats as well as Republicans over issues of peace, social and economic justice... we saw this with LBJ.


If one examines history we see this during the 1930’s, the movement against the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, too.


It takes persistent and sustained struggles to win.


Now, consider if Bernie Sanders was to help organize a new party which viewed things in this way.


We would have a huge movement of well over twenty-million people which would grow even larger the more we pushed our demands.


Notice: I never said “pressing the flesh was without merit” in the electoral arena... but, it must be combined with mass action.


And the reason for using social media like Facebook, blogging and blogtalk is to mobilize people for mass action... mass action, something Democrats want to contain to electoral struggle.


Because, again, these Democrats are afraid that a fully mobilized people will act against their own neo-liberal imperialist Wall Street agenda.


We need to build socialist political education and action committees to initiate these kinds of struggles based around the politics and economics of peace and in defense of our rights and livelihoods.


We need real health care reform. Medicare for All is a concept conceived for well-heeled upper middle class people... what we working people really need is a National Public Health Care System:


Publicly financed.


Publicly administered.


Publicly delivered.


Not for profit.


Free for all.


Any government with such a bloated military budget that can afford war after war and over 800 military bases dotting the globe certainly can afford to place a public health care center in every single neighborhood and community providing free health care for all.


The model of public education works for health care, too. But, instead of funding it through regressive taxes fund it with a huge peace dividend.


Then look at Social Security. No one should receive less than $2,700.00 a month and the age of retirement should be lowered to 58.


As far as this $1.4 trillion student loan debt there should be no garnishments of wages on anyone with an income under $40,000.00 a year.


No more wars, tariffs or sanctions.


People and our living environment before profits.


Think about this... we can’t continue to allow a bunch of greedy Wall Street millionaires and billionaires along with their over-paid pundits and muddle-headed upper-middle class management stooges to do our thinking for us.


We need a nationwide network of socialists... small groups of people who help each other learn and understand issues... meeting around kitchen tables... writing letters to the editor and distributing leaflets... tabling.. informational picketing and demonstrations.


Book clubs. discussion groups, roundtable discussions, organize debates.


One by one and we begin to add up... just like a little raindrop, alone we don't amount to much; but let it pour.


Socialism is working class power.