Chris White Online

Organizing Comes Before Mobilizing
By Grace Lee Boggs
‘Last week veteran Detroit activist and TV producer Ron Scott shared his thoughts on the recent massive demonstrations in support of the Jena 6.
Emphasizing the distinction between organizing and mobilizing, he reminded us that the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began fifty-two years ago on December 1, [...]

A Super Power Of Near Demonic Dimensions
by Professor Noam Chomsky
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24302.htm

Statement from US labor against war. Australian labor has to be involved in this debate.
IRAQ
Despite hundreds of billions of dollars, more than 4300 US fatalities and an unknown number of Iraqi deaths and personal trauma, the people of Iraq and the US have little to show for it. Violence and economic devastation abound. More than [...]

John Bellamy Foster: Financial crisis, imperialism and environment — `Socialism is humanity’s best chance’
On September 17, 2009, John Bellamy Foster appeared on Democracy Now! to discuss the financial meltdown, social change and democracy. A conversation with John Bellamy Foster, editor of the US-based socialist magazine Monthly Review, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon [...]

mobilizing model produces unions that are directed by fulltime paid staff, in which workers play a subordinate role. At worst, workers become almost irrelevant in a numbers game in which the size of the union is what counts, rather than creating an organization they can learn to use to challenge the employer at work to win better wages and conditions.

The 2009 AFL-CIO Convention has ended, but the global union movement is keeping its attention focused on Pittsburgh, as world leaders arrive for the G-20 summit. AFL-CIO members expressed solidarity with workers around the world and recognized that we can’t solve the international economic crisis alone.
Convention delegates approved a resolution calling for a coordinated effort [...]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/05/03/happy-birthday-pete-seeger/
Also buy, the 2007 DVD of a stirring revelatory film of the life of Pete Seeger, “The Power of Song”, with music and tributes by Dylan, Guthrie, Baez, Springsteen, Peter Paul and Mary;
a wonderful song writer “Where have all the flowers gone?” “Turn, Turn, Turn” “If I had a hammer” and many more;
political active protester [...]

The US labour movement is in campaign mode to attack corporate interests lobbying against the new Employee Free Choice Act promoted by the unions and President Obama. Corporate America says they cannot afford in this crisis to have new workers’ rights.
Unions press the opposite – new workers’ rights are central to improving the [...]

US unions are campaigning for the freedom to organise. I receive daily campaign updates from the AFL-CIO to lobby to support The Free Choice Bill. But there are no daily emails from Australian unions and the ACTU to pressure the DPM, the ALP caucus and the Senate to amend the Fair Work bill before the [...]