In Memory of Utah Phillips

I am very saddened by this news of Utah Phillips passing on May 23rd. If you've never heard of him or his music, you are truly missing out. Get your ears on these to start:

We Have Fed You All A Thousand Years, Utah Phillips
Live collection of great IWW and other songs. One of the best renditions of Solidarity Forever I've heard.

Fellow Workers, Ani DiFranco & Utah Phillips
Live. Some great stuff, well produced. The rendition of The Preacher & The Slave is priceless. Excellent instrumental rendition of The Internationale.

A recent article on Utah's passing:

Utah Phillips spoke directly to each of us in that filled auditorium on April 24 of this year. It didn’t matter that it was his disembodied voice, speaking over a cell phone held up to a microphone, held aloft by Pete Seeger, one of the event's headliners. The strength of Phillips' message was as clear as the vitality in his tone. I was happy to be there to hear his response to our benefit concert on his behalf, happier still to witness the warm exchange between he and Seeger, another elder of fighting the good fight.

But this room on that sunny spring day in Rosendale, New York was dedicated to Utah Phillips; we'd all come with the intention of helping this man who’d been there for the greater “us” for decades. He told us of his life and plans for the future. Sure, he sounded tired, but none could accept that he would not get through this challenge. He told us so. None would believe that he would pass away about a month later.

Damn, at least we can say that it took a lot to silence Utah. But the echo of his work rings loudly, as sonorous as the music onstage that day from Pete, Dar Williams, Redwood Moose, Sarah Underhill, Norm Wennet, Bill Vanaver, and my own band Flames of Discontent and others.

Phillips was born Bruce Duncan Phillips in Cleveland Ohio in 1935. Not simply because he was a Depression baby, not only due to the powerful example of his parents’ work in the militant labor movement, but perhaps due to a calling, Phillips decided early on that he would dedicate his time to social justice.

By the mid-1950s, he was a rambling veteran of the Korean War, damaged from the sights and sounds around him. Phillips was a drifter with a taste for drink. Ending up in Salt Lake City, 20 year-old Phillips arrived at the Joe Hill House, a shelter that was a part of the Catholic Worker movement facilitated by Ammon Hennacy, an anarchist and associate of noted humanist and socialist Dorothy Day.

Hennacy had a tremendous impact on the young Phillips, not only aiding him to get clean and focused, but by way of his radical beliefs and tales. Phillips absorbed these ideas and, adding in the influence of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Borscht Belt comedians, raconteurs and various country musicians, Phillips created “U,” Utah Phillips, the character whose life he’d maintain as his own throughout the decades. Hennacy also introduced Phillips to the Industrial Workers of the World and he became a life-long dues-paying member and activist with this global labor organization. He would later use many of Hennacy’s teachings and statements in his oratories, at once satiric, sentimental and revolutionary.

Though Phillips engaged in several noted career journeys (including an unsuccessful run in ‘68 for US Senate on the Peace and Freedom ticket), he will always be remembered as a folksinger. Making full use of the amazing heritage of song within the Wobbly repertoire, Phillips came to champion the IWW and their Little Red Songbooks. His rounded baritone adorned more than one collection of IWW recordings. In between writing many powerful originals songs such as “All Used Up,” Phillips brought to life the ballads of Joe Hill, Ralph Chaplin, T-Bone Slim and the “Unknown Proletariat,” who could have been most any of us. But he never failed to see the importance in the smallest of the small.

Oddly enough, Phillips became something of a cult figure with the college crowd in recent years. Two strong CDs with Ani DiFranco brought him a bit of notoriety, but he remained, well—Utah. Sometimes singing and fighting are just that interchangeable. Each time we lift up a guitar, put pen to paper, speak our mind or simply count our blessings, let’s pause a moment for Utah Phillips.

Pietaro, John. 31-May-08. Let's pause for Utah Phillips, 1935-2008. People's Weekly World.

China in Africa by Richard Behar

China is leveraging its Communist political legacy and 3rd world status, as well as its surging financial muscle, to compete head-to-head with the Western neo-colonials in Africa. Specifically China has gotten in on the resource grab for oil, timber, copper and other minerals which the US and European powers have been engaged in for well nigh a century.

There are signs, depending always on the quality of the local leadership, that the overall model may have longer lasting positive effects such as infrastructure and hospital projects, there are signs that China is even more exploitative of the African workers than the Westerners.

This is the most disturbing aspects, that China is using its credentials as a nation exploited by Western colonizers to gain leverage with African nations sharing a similar history. However, based on this article, it is not applying socialist principles to those efforts but instead applying the most brutal capitalist exploitive model possible on the ground against local workers. Behar even suggests that there are reports that Chinese workers imported to Africa are convicts, essentially slave labor.

This is especially sad in the case of countries like Zambia where during the 70s workers enjoyed cradle-to-grave security based on an extensive welfare state funded by nationalized mineral wealth, a model the western powers could not abide for long and one that the Chinese government, at least for now, seems uninterested in resurrecting.

Below is an excerpt from an incredible article by the tenacious journalist Richard Behar which appeared in, of all places, Fast Company magazine. I highly recommend you take the time to read the article:

[...]

An unfathomably vast terrain comprising 49 nations, the sub-Sahara represents nearly one-fifth of the earth's landmass. Yet its total economy is tinier than Florida's. Here, 300 million people get by on less than $1 a day. Until they don't: It is the planet's biggest tomb, where compared to the 1960s, twice as many children under the age of 5 are now dying each day from disease; a bottomless badland where $500 billion of Western aid since World War II (more than four Marshall Plans) has barely made a dent in the poverty; a region whose market share of world trade is shrinking by the hour as it gets left behind, perhaps permanently, in the dust of globalization; a place so desperate for everything -- cash, trade, investment, infrastructure -- and so powerless to negotiate strategically, that it's pretty much up for sale to the highest bidder.

[...]

In describing China's exploits, it's tempting to evoke the image of a benign, postcolonial West being outfoxed by a ruthless and unscrupulous neo-communist power. Don't bother. The American track record in modern Africa has been deplorable -- a half-century of backing strongmen, turning a blind eye, and taking what we can get with little or no regard for the health or welfare of the locals. So no, this is not an update about the Yellow Peril, although no shortage of U.S. officials see China's safari as precisely that. Instead, this is a story about an economic model of exploitation that is at once formidably efficient and tragically flawed, about a planet that's being consumed by those who live on its surface. Today's global economy has an insatiable need for raw materials. That's as true for China's rise as it is true for the maintenance of America's economy. With China exporting some 40% of its GDP, Americans need to understand that behind that Made in China tag at Wal-Mart is a mutually reinforcing death spiral. We are beginning to overwhelm our host.

[...]

Equatorial Guinea is less a country than a corrupt, extended-family business that cooked up its own national anthem. And the American oil industry has been singing along for years, cuddling up as much as necessary (and with barely any competition) to Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the 66-year-old despot who has ruled this backwater since 1979. Smaller than El Paso, Texas, E.G. has nevertheless managed to get itself at or near the top of just about every shameful list in the world -- from the most-censored countries (according to the Committee to Protect Journalists) to the most corrupt (Transparency International) to the worst places to do business (the World Bank). Geoffrey Wood, a business professor at the U.K.'s University of Sheffield and coauthor of The Ethical Business, concluded in his own 2004 study of E.G. that the country is a "criminal state" that matches or exceeds the "rapacity and brutality" of the Duvaliers' Haiti, Somoza's Nicaragua, and Batista's Cuba. Despite an economy with the highest average annual growth rate in the world (21%) since 2001, more than half of the population lacks access to potable water and electricity. The UN says E.G. shows the greatest disparity on earth between per capita income ($50,000, surpassed only by Luxembourg) and human welfare (most of E.G.'s citizens live on less than $1 a day).

Behar, Richard. June-2008. China in Africa: Part I. Fast Company.

Primative accumulation in contemporary China

Pictured right is Chinese labor activist, Huang Qingnan. He lies injured after he was attacked with a machete for helping workers fight for their rights. These types of attacks were very common in the US well into the 20th century. Workers were beaten and lynched on a regular basis by paid thugs and police. One of the most famous incidents was the Ludlow Massacre, perpetrated in the name of John D Rockerfeller.

Chinese activists have been concentrating on publicising the contents of the new Labour Contract Law that will come into force on 1 January next year. One of its positive features is that it will make it more difficult for employers to dismiss workers.

The law was passed despite fierce and sustained opposition from multinationals led by the American Chamber of Commerce, who threatened capital flight.

A compromise draft was eventually approved by the National People’s Congress – China’s non-elected parliament – with the bosses reassured by the certainty that implementation will be lax, not least because China’s only legal trade union is constitutionally and legally bound to uphold the leadership of the Communist Party of China.

While this link gives the organisation considerable leverage in law drafting, the union has barely any influence on the shop floor. Local government officials frequently find common interest with capitalists and ensure that enterprise-level trade unions are run by management or their stooges.

The rare instances of union officials speaking out on behalf of workers usually leads to their being sacked or transferred. Workers who organise outside the traditional union structures face arrest and imprisonment.

Although there is no protection of the right to strike in China and freedom of association is banned, there has been a marked increase in strike activity, as workers have made good use of recent labour shortages and a growing awareness of workers’ rights to demand a living wage paid on time.

Independent unions are banned, but workers often form hometown associations that are sometimes capable of organising strikes. Occasions where these associations unite in strike action are increasing.

The fight for labour rights in China’s cities. Socialist Worker. 11-Dec-2007.

Give Me Mao Better Statistics

Since the 1980s the propaganda campaign to discredit the achievements of socialistic states has intensified in support of the neo-liberal TINA ("there is no alternative" to capitalism) agenda.

A recent article in the Monthly Review (September 2006) by Joseph Ball picks apart the pseudo-science of the anti-Mao revisionist history movement:

Over the last 25 years the reputation of Mao Zedong has been seriously undermined by ever more extreme estimates of the numbers of deaths he was supposedly responsible for. In his lifetime, Mao Zedong was hugely respected for the way that his socialist policies improved the welfare of the Chinese people, slashing the level of poverty and hunger in China and providing free health care and education. Mao’s theories also gave great inspiration to those fighting imperialism around the world. It is probably this factor that explains a great deal of the hostility towards him from the Right. This is a tendency that is likely to grow more acute with the apparent growth in strength of Maoist movements in India and Nepal in recent years, as well as the continuing influence of Maoist movements in other parts of the world.

[...]

[I]n 1973-5 life expectancy in China was higher than in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and many countries in Latin America. In 1981 she co-wrote an article where she described the People's Republic of China as a 'super-achiever' in terms of mortality reduction, with life expectancy increasing by approximately 1.5 years per calendar year since the start of communist rule in 1949. Life expectancy increased from 35 in 1949 to 65 in the 1970s when Mao’s rule came to an end.

[...]

Monthly Review: Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?

Abraham Lincoln Brigade Veteran Dies at 92

A dedication to Moe Fishman posted by some new friends on the blog "An Unrepentant Communist.....":

Fishman (1915-2007) the seemingly indestructible Moe Fishman, the public face of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB) for more than half a century, died of pancreatic cancer on August 6, 2007 in New York. He was 92. Born in New York on September 28, 1915, Fishman left school during the Depression and became a laundry worker and truck driver. He participated in unionizing his fellow workers and found a commitment to social justice issues as a member of the Young Communist League. When war broke out in Spain, Fishman volunteered to fight, but was rejected for lack of military experience. However, his skill as a truck driver was needed and a second application for service was accepted—with the proviso that he recruit ten other volunteers. Fishman quickly found the men, though none actually showed up. The recruiters took him anyway. He arrived in Spain in April 1937 and trained as a foot soldier in the George Washington battalion. He was wounded during the battle of Brunete, his first action. He spent a year in convalescence in Spain; the injury left him with a lifelong limp.Back home in New York, Fishman stayed in touch with humanitarian aid organizations providing assistance for the civilian refugees of the Spanish Civil War.

SALUD! to Moe Fishman (1915-2007)