People’s Tribune Workshop at U.S. Social Forum The Future is Up to Us

Several speakers at the People's
Tribune workshop. From left to right,
Gerardo Espinoza, Keith Sadler,
Cheri Honkala

PHOTO/DAYMONJHARTLEY.COM

By Bob Lee

The following are excerpts from a talk given by Bob Lee, editor of the People’s’ Tribune, at a workshop at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit.

The whole world is undergoing a profound economic revolution. The economic foundation of society is being transformed from the previous industrial period, which was based on giant factories that employed masses of workers, to a foundation based on electronics—on computers and robots—and a system of production requiring little or no human labor. The US has lost nearly six million factory jobs just in the past 12 years, and that represents one in three manufacturing jobs. While electronics makes possible tremendous abundance for everyone, under capitalism the use of electronics in production creates massive permanent unemployment and underemployment. It results in poverty for the many and unheard of wealth for the few. Today, America’s richest 1 percent holds more wealth than America’s entire bottom 90 percent.

Electronics creates a new class of people who no longer have real ties to capitalism. These people range from employed workers who are barely surviving at part-time, contingency and below-minimum wage jobs to the permanently unemployed, millions of whom are utterly destitute and homeless. This new class created by electronics cannot solve its problems under capitalism. Their problems can only be solved by a cooperative society where the necessities of life are distributed according to need, not according to how much money you have. This revolutionary class created by electronics needs political power to build a new society that will serve humanity instead of the corporations. This class is the section capable of leading the whole people in the fight for fundamental change. Electronic production means that society is going to be reorganized—the only question is, in whose interest? Which class—the capitalists and their corporations or the new class created by electronics—will wield the political power to shape society?

The corporations are trying to build a new society that will allow them to keep private property and private profits, and this drive to maintain private property is absolutely antagonistic to the needs of humanity. Society is polarizing. This polarity is between the whole political establishment and the discontented mass of people who are beginning to understand they are threatened by an economic system that has turned against them. Under these conditions, the corporations can’t allow democracy. The corporations are merging with the state to impose a fascism that will allow them to maintain private property.

The question is: are we going to protect and serve property rights, or are we going to do what is right to protect and advance humanity?

History has demonstrated that a movement is a cause and a press. The revolutionary movement in this country needs a national press through which to share information, experience and tactics, and a press from which to gain political clarity and a strategy for victory. We need a press to help make the movement conscious of its real purpose so it can win. A press that gives us a vision of the new society we can build. The People’s Tribune and the Tribuno del Pueblo are striving to become that press. We have opened our pages to the movement. These papers are a means for the leaders of this growing movement to have a dialogue with each other. We have no paid staff, we get no grants, we are completely dependent on donations and subscriptions, and we depend on our readers and contributors to distribute the paper.

We are approaching a fork in the road. Revolutionaries must boldly step forward and explain to the people where each of the forks leads. One fork – the fascist road advocated by the spokespersons of the corporations – leads to the destruction of democracy, to political repression, to the destruction of the environment and to unending war. The other fork, the road to socialism, leads to co-operation instead of competition, to abundance for all, to peace and to an orderly world. This is the moment of decision. Will the corporations finish taking over society and run it in their interest, or will the people take over the corporations and run them in the interest of society? The future is up to us.

Another United States Is Necessary

By Sandy Perry

Over 20,000 community organizers from all across the country converged at the United States Social Forum (USSF) in Detroit from June 22-26. The political tone of the gathering was set on June 20, when the March to Fulfill the Dream, which began in April in New Orleans, entered Detroit. It was organized by the USSF Poverty Working Group and Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign.

The June 20 march resonated because it reflected the very reason Detroit was chosen for the USSF. With its 23% unemployment and 27% vacancy rate, Detroit more than any other city represents the crisis of the global private property system. This march, as well as many of the other marches, workshops, cultural events, poverty summits, and peoples movement assemblies, galvanized the USSF around the battle for water, housing, health care, and other economic human rights. They represented a growing trend toward class organization of the dispossessed to secure the necessities of life.

One expression of this was the resolution on World Courts of Women adopted by the Poverty Working Group (http://pma2010.org/node/206.) The World Courts of Women are public hearings all over the world called to share voices of survival and resistance from the margins. They seek to break the silence on poverty as a violation of both women’s rights and human rights. They reject the myth that dire poverty only exists outside of the boundaries of the U.S., and they demand an end to the tremendous violence of poverty that impacts our children, our families, and our communities. They are also committed to uniting the poor as the leadership base for a broad movement to abolish poverty everywhere and forever. Another was the resolution of the Poverty Summit (http://pma2010.org/node/217) that summed up the experience of this critical sector of the movement and pointed toward the future.

“We are clear that poverty is not the result of personal failures. It is the product of an economic system that increases and deepens poverty as it concentrates the abundance of this country and the world in the hands of the few. Those who control that system, with governments acting as their agents, have shredded even the ‘safety net’ that historically met some basic human needs. They have abandoned those they no longer need. They have created a growing class of dispossessed. We are conscious members of that class.

“Through our groups and organizations, we have fought for decades for reforms. It is clear to us now that our efforts have been, and continue to be, necessary — but not sufficient. We are clear that we must unite as never before to demand that the abundance of this country be used to meet the basic human needs of its people — no exceptions.

“We commit to that unity. As a first step, we hereby create an Assembly to End Poverty through which we can share our knowledge and skills, support each other, educate and engage our neighbors and friends, and act democratically and collectively to press our demands and secure our claims to economic justice.”

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