We Can Learn from Paulo Freire

     Paulo Freire was regarded by many on left as one of the most significant educational thinkers of the twentieth century.   His most famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed  applies the ideas of  Antonio Gramsci and U.S. philosopher  and socialist John Dewey  to educational projects of organizers and educators working  along with the oppressed in a capitalist society.

In Brazil in the 1960’s, Paulo Freire and his coworkers taught peasants to read in about 30 hours using cultural circles. They developed a theory to explain their action. The theory required praxis, an interaction of consciousness, and social action on the side of the poor (Freire, 1972). Often working along side of  efforts of Liberation Theology, Freire, his students and allies formed teams of cultural workers to engage  peasants  in dialogue to develop literacy and to democratize knowledge, culture, and power in their societies.

The works of Freire and his teams have had a profound effect on literacy, political ,and education practices worldwide. Revolutionary projects in Brazil , Nicaragua, Cuba, Guinea-Bissau,  and elsewhere applied and developed his pedagogical  ideas .

Politics in a Time of Crisis - Podemos

Reading Politics in a Time of Crisis – A view from the Left.

By Duane Campbell

As we know, the economic crisis of 2008-2012 disrupted the U.S. economy.  The crisis was much worse in some of the peripheral countries of Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Italy among others), and even more destructive in under-developed regions of African and Asia. 

Spanish political leader Pablo Iglesias Turrión has written Politics in a Time of Crisis: Podemos and the Future of European Democracy, published in an English translation by Verso Books. Iglesias provides a critical summary of the crisis that began in the U.S., and spread to much of the world causing political upheavals and leaving misery, starvation, and massive migration in its wake. 

We can learn much from reading Iglesias about this crisis in Spain and  other countries and economies, including how the crisis led  several social democratic political parties in Spain, Greece, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe to collaborate with right-wing movements to impose austerity on the people.  This collaboration led to the collapse of  many social democratic political parties, the rise of  authoritarian right-wing parties,  and now the rise of a new left.  A similar process led to the collapse of social democratic parties in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.  Currently in Mexico the formerly left-wing Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD) is working with the right-wing National Action (PAN) party while a new left –the National Regeneration Movement (“MORENA”) may well win this summer’s presidential elections.

Socialism in Black America

by Rev. Andrew J. Wilkes

We live in strange times. We have a black president using race-neutral framing for social justice, alongside a Black Lives Matter movement using structural racism framing for participatory democracy. Killer Mike, a Southern rapper best known for his work with the Grammy Award-winning superduo Outkast, has endorsed a sitting U.S. senator and self-described socialist, Bernie Sanders. Some black preachers, apparently, are tripping over themselves to cozy up to Donald Trump or reposition themselves within the arc of Hillary Clinton's historic candidacy. Strange times indeed.

Today, presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders launches a tour of historically black colleges and universities (The HBCU Tour) in states where Clinton holds a clear advantage with black voters. He’ll be carrying a message of democratic socialism, one that rarely gets a hearing among any voting bloc.

Given the unique character of our political moment, I would argue that freedom-loving black folks should consider socialism as a viable political strategy for ameliorating the massive human misery in America. The reasons are embedded in our history and situation.

Socialism has deep roots in African American political history. The most famous and revered black person in America--Martin Luther King, Jr.--was a democratic socialist. Many of the most effective organizers and grassroots theorists of that era --folks like Ella Baker and A. Philip Randolph, and Bayard Rustin, for instance--held to a political vision of what may be called socialism. I appeal to black history to rebut the often-made claim that socialism has no lineage in communities of color and therefore is either untested or not to be trusted. 

Socialism or Barbarism ?

Rosa Luxemburg was right. Our choice is between socialism and barbarism.

“Free trade” agreements put corporate profits over democratic governance and grind down our living standards in a global race to the bottom.
Climate change threatens our very existence, yet the capitalists want to squeeze out every little bit of profit they can with no regard for future generations.
Police and court systems around the country disproportionately criminalize whole communities of color and use modern-day debtor’s prisons as a revenue stream.
Help DSA organize against the slide towards barbarism.
But it’s getting worse. Hate, fear and bullying are being used to turn us against each other. Donald Trump started it with his comments about Mexicans being rapists, egging on his fans to beat up a Black Lives Matter protestor while they shouted “n—,” and blaming all Muslims for ISIS/Daesh’s horrific violence.
Now his comments have emboldened white supremacists and other extremists to come out of the darkness to begin openly terrorizing our communities.
To fight back, socialists bring an important voice. In the wake of the Paris attacks, the French Left began using the slogan “Your wars, our dead” to highlight the fact that people in power make decisions to bring nations into war, but ordinary people on both sides are the ones who end up dying.
DSAers are organizing from a perspective of love and solidarity. Some cases in point: our Central New Jersey group mobilized against Chris Christie’s rejection of Syrian refugees; our New York chapter took to the streets after yet another civilian was killed by an unaccountable police officer; and our Detroit local mobilized for $15 an hour and union rights.
We’re building the kind of unified movement that can win. That’s why I’m asking you to make a special contribution today.
 We're planning for the long game, just as GOP ideological institutions do. And unlike many Democratic politicians who refuse to address the real problems that we face, we point out the central issue—capitalism itself—and the creeping, inevitable barbarity it brings.
 In 2015 our work focused on two priorities—action and education. It is because we are socialists that we bring the next generation of progressive movement leaders through an ideological transformation that they won’t get anywhere else.

Socialism and Sanders - As American as Apple Pie

Socialism :Long deployed by the right as an epithet, this form of left-wing populism is as American as apple pie.

Peter DreierN

Now that Bernie Sanders has entered the contest for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Americans are going to hear a lot about socialism, because the 73-year-old U.S. senator from Vermont describes himself as a “democratic socialist.”

“Ever since I was a kid I never liked to see people without money or connections get put down or pushed around,” Sanders explained in making his announcement. “When I came to Congress I tried to be a voice for people who did not have a voice—the elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor. And that is what I will be doing as a candidate for president.”

We can expect the right-wing echo chamber—including Fox News hosts, Tea Party politicians, and Rush Limbaugh—to attack Sanders for espousing an ideology that they’ll likely describe as foreign, European, and un-American.

But Sanders’s views are in sync with a longstanding American socialist tradition. Throughout our history, some of the nation’s most influential activists and thinkers, such as Jane Addams, John Dewey, Helen Keller, W.E.B. DuBois, Albert Einstein, Walter Reuther, Martin Luther King, and Gloria Steinem, embraced socialism.   

Of course, America’s right-wingers say there’s already a socialist in the White House.

Change is in the Air Across Southern Europe » CounterPunch:

Change is in the Air Across Southern Europe » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

"Last night (Thursday, January 22, 2015), Pablo Iglesias of Podemos spoke at a massive Syriza rally in Athens, just three days before the Greek elections that Syriza is expected to win. The fates of Syriza and Podemos are increasingly seen as linked – both by their own leaders and the European establishment. In late December, a headline in Bloomberg Business week asked, “Is This the Dawn of the #Tsiglesias Era in the Euro Zone?” (12/30/2014). Both parties have surged into the lead in their respective countries on the basis of their rejection of years of austerity imposed by Brussels, and on a pledge to recuperate national sovereignty and democracy. Their programs call for a renegotiation of their national debts, higher taxes on the rich, major jobs programs, and the restoration of rights and benefits taken away during the economic crisis..."  -  check it out directly, from Counterpunch:

Si Grecia venció, España vencerá. 
Democracy won against the Bankers and the Capitalists in Greece!

Black Prophetic Fire - A Review

By Kurt Stand

On October 14, Cornel West spoke to a capacity crowd at the 5^th and K Street Busboys and Poets bringing a message of hope and determination in the struggle for justice, a struggle that has grown sharper in recent years.  The occasion was publication of West’s new book, Black Prophetic Fire – an exploration of the contemporary relevance of the legacies left by Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, Ella Baker, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X.   A set of dialogues with Christa Buschendorf (a German scholar at the University of Frankfurt/Main specializing in African-American studies), the work emphasizes how these figures championed a different, alternative conception of US democracy by uniting demands for racial and economic justice.

Rejecting the caricatures and simplifications by which history remembers them, West reminds us of the prophetic tradition – the “Black Fire” referred to in the title – within the African American community, a tradition which strove for liberation from the shackles of racism by positing a vision of human liberation.   Each leader he discusses, in his or her own unique way, connected the dots that link the pervasive social and personal alienation inherent in a system of racial privilege to the exploitation and violence that pervades everyday life.   Thus, as they spoke out and organized against the horrors of slavery, lynching, and segregation, they sought not acceptance into an oppressive system, but rather social transformation that would make society worthy of inclusion.   Whether we look at the largely forgotten Ida B. Wells, whose pioneering role documenting the scourge of lynching served as a precursor to Progressive Era muckraking, or recall DuBois, whose towering intellectual importance has been placed in a corner by anti-Communism, dominant historical narratives leave out the substance of the struggles for equality that have been at the core of political struggles throughout our history.

The Other 9/11. Chile in 1973

To mark the 41st anniversary of the military coup that overthrew Salvador Allende's democratically elected socialist government in Chile on 9/11 of 1973, we're pleased to post the first article in a two-part series by Jorge A. Lawton, who worked as a Latin American analyst on the Senate “Church Committee,” and as an advisor to former Chilean Foreign Minister, Orlando Letelier, until his assassination in September 1976. -- Ed.

By Jorge A. Lawton

Pre-dawn on Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, 1973, three years of relentless intervention by the hemisphere's greatest power, the United States, succeeded both in choking off Chile's historic experiment in its “transition to socialism through democracy,” and in giving birth to the brutal years of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. For many reasons, both U.S. perception and policy against the “Allende experiment in socialism,” as well as U.S. support for and use of the Pinochet alternative, are rich in present day and future lessons. Close examination also reveals how the same relatively limited repertoire of policy tools is likely to be available to implement U.S. interests today and in the future (for ex., destabilization efforts in Venezuela).

Chavez Legacy in Venezuela to continue

Nicolas Maduro

April 12, 2013

The Guardian (UK)

Venezuela has lost an extraordinary leader, but his democratic and socialist project of transformation is more alive than ever

A month ago Venezuela lost a historic leader who spearheaded the transformation of his country, and spurred a wave of change throughout Latin America. In Sunday's election Venezuelans will choose whether to pursue the revolution initiated under Hugo Chavez – or return to the past. I worked closely with President Chavez for many years, and am now running to succeed him. Polls indicate that most Venezuelans support our peaceful revolution.

Chavez's legacy is so profound that opposition leaders, who vilified him only months ago, now insist they will defend his achievements. But Venezuelans remember how many of these same figures supported an ill-fated coup against Chavez in 2002 and sought to reverse policies that have dramatically reduced poverty and inequality.

To grasp the scale of what has been achieved, it's necessary to recall the state of my country when Chavez took office in 1999. In the previous 20 years Venezuela had suffered one of the sharpest economic declines in the world. As a result of neoliberal policies that favoured transnational capital at the expense of people's basic needs, poverty soared. A draconian market-oriented agenda was imposed through massive repression, including the 1989 massacre of thousands in what is known as the Caracazo.

This disastrous trend was reversed under Chavez. Once the government was able to assert effective control over the state oil company in 2003, we began investing oil revenue in social programmes that now provide free healthcare and education throughout the country. The economic situation vastly improved. Poverty and extreme poverty have been reduced dramatically. Today Venezuela has the lowest rate of income inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean.

As a result our government has won almost every election or referendum since 1998 – 16 in all – in a democratic process the former US president Jimmy Carter called "the best in the world". If you haven't heard much about these accomplishments, it may have something to do with the influence of Washington and its allies on the international media. They have been trying to de-legitimise and get rid of our government for more than a decade, ever since they supported the 2002 coup.

The Radicalization of Martin Luther King

Chavez claims victory in election

Chavez calls Venezuela vote mandate for socialism
By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER – 16 hours ago
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Hugo Chavez says a referendum victory that removed limits on his re-election is a mandate to intensify his socialist agenda for decades to come. Opponents warn of an impending dictatorship.
Both sides had called the outcome of Sunday's vote key to the future of this South American country, split down the middle between those who worship the president for redistributing Venezuela's oil riches and those who see him as a power-hungry autocrat.
"Those who voted "yes" today voted for socialism, for revolution," Chavez thundered to thousands of ecstatic supporters jamming the streets around the presidential palace. Fireworks lit up the Caracas skyline, and one man walked though the crowd carrying a painting of Chavez that read: "Forever."
Josefa Dugarte stared at the crowd from the stoop of her apartment building with look of dismay.
"These people don't realize what they have done," she muttered.
With 94 percent of the vote counted, official results showed the amendment passing 54 percent to 46 percent, an irreversible trend, and opposition leaders accepted the results. Tibisay Lucena, president of National Electoral Council, said turnout was 67 percent.
The constitutional overhaul allows all public officials to run for re-election as many times as they want, removing barriers to a Chavez candidacy in the next presidential elections in 2012 and beyond.
"In 2012 there will be presidential elections, and unless God decides otherwise, unless the people decide otherwise, this soldier is already a candidate," Chavez said to applause. First elected in 1998, he has said he might stay in power until 2049, when he'll be 95.
But analysts said Chavez shouldn't count on getting re-elected just yet.
"Chavez's intention is clear: He aspires to be president for life," said Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. "He is convinced he embodies the popular will and is indispensable to the country's progress. But his capacity to pull this off is far from assured."
He said the global financial crisis and the plunging price of oil, which accounts for 94 percent of Venezuela's exports and nearly half its federal budget, will limit Chavez's ability to maintain the level of public spending that has fueled his popularity.
"The greatest challenge the government now faces is governing in the face of crisis and not falling into triumphalism," said Miguel Tinker Salas, a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
At their campaign headquarters, Chavez opponents hugged one another, and some cried. They said the results were skewed by Chavez's broad use of state resources to get out the vote, through a battery of state-run news media, pressure on 2 million public employees and frequent presidential speeches which all television stations were required to air.
With the courts, the legislature and the election council all under his influence, and now with no limits on his re-election, officials say Chavez is virtually unstoppable.
"Effectively this will become a dictatorship," opposition leader Omar Barboza told The Associated Press. "It's control of all the powers, lack of separation of powers, unscrupulous use of state resources, persecution of adversaries."
Associated Press writers Ian James and Fabiola Sanchez contributed to this story.