Sankofa Meets the Future

Oliver Stone's South of the Border

We welcome Stones treatment of the welcomed changes taking place in Latin America challenging the Washington Consensus and Oligarchs. Along with Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Affair, opened minded folks will be exposed to critically important looks at the politics of the region.

Health Care Can't Wait, A Message from A Social Justice Pastor

Dr. William Barber, NCNAACP President lays out impasssioned call to fight for health care reform.

Health Care Can't Wait-Rev. William Barber from Ajamu Dillahunt on Vimeo.

Position of the National Front Against the Coup on Elections

http://tinyurl.com/kw4j2e

NEITHER CAMPAIGN NOR LEGITIMATE ELECTIONS IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE COUP

The general elections without the restitution of the constitutional order would be the legalization of the military violence against the State; and as such unacceptable. In light of this, the National Front of Resistance against the Coup d'Etat declares:

1. We do not recognize the electoral campaign, process and results, if the constitutional order is not reinstated, whose fundamental basis is the re-installation to his post of the legitimate constitutional President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

2. We exhort the Democratic Unification Party UD, the independent candidacies, the non-coup-aligned candidates to popularly elected posts from the Liberal Party and the Innovation Party, to make manifest their political position regarding the electoral process in the country.

3. We condemn the militarization of the society and of the so-called "electoral process" by the coup-makers, who with their armed presence introduce an additional element of political party violence and heighten the conditions of exclusion, darkness and repression to the detriment of the participants.=

4. We reiterate the call to promote the direct installation of a popular, participatory, inclusive, non-discriminatory and democratic National Constitutional Assembly.

Appeal for Zimbabwe:10 years of economic sanctions, that's enough

The crisis in Zimbabwe has faded from the view of the imperialist and mainstream press of late. The following article, although five months old is a well reasoned and strong argument for lifting the lethal sanctions against the people of Zimbabwe. Far from a shrill defense of Robert Mugabe and Zanu-pf, it focuses on the role of the former colonial power and it chief ally in driving the crisis at various points along the way. It does not take on the small or major mistakes of the post colonial nation building project; that is another although related and legimitate discussion.

As African leaders like Wade of Senegal aggressively promote the unification of Africa, the question of Zimbabwe must be resolved in favor of the popular masses as an example of why coordination and integration of the continent's nation states is critical to survival, not just as a philosophical goal of Pan-Africanism.

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Aminata Traoré, Jean Ziegler, Samir Amin, René De Vos and Amadou Diarra

2009-03-12, Issue 423

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/54740

Economic sanctions against Zimbabwe are worsening the plight of ordinary citizens in an already harsh climate and should be lifted immediately, urges an ‘Appeal for Zimbabwe’ launched in Mali in February. Signatories to the petition declared that drinkable water, food and medicine must ‘cease to be deployed as weapons of war’, and reminded the UK, the US and the EU ‘of the exorbitant social and human cost of the punitive measures’ they have used in a bid to drive regime change in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is grappling with 94 per cent unemployment, the highest inflation rates in the world and food shortages affecting an estimated seven million people.

The more than 3,000 deaths and nearly 70,000 people affected by cholera in Zimbabwe, with risks of the epidemic spreading to neighbouring countries, have not been enough to end the economic sanctions Great Britain and its allies have imposed on this country since the end of the 1990s. That’s how the European Council, during its session on 26 January 2009, decided ‘to extend for another year the Common Position on restrictive measures against Zimbabwe’. Of extreme gravity, such a decision can only exacerbate a situation that is already characterised by the highest unemployment (94 per cent) and inflation rates in the world, by food shortages that seven million people suffer from, by a lack of schooling for children, as well as brain drain and labour outflow, which includes many teachers and medical staff members.

The sole wrongdoing of a Zimbabwean people deprived of jobs, income, drinkable water, healthcare and of food – all in all condemned to a veritable descent into hell – is being led by Robert Mugabe, whose ousting and overthrow have been demanded during long weeks of destabilisation and demonisation. The former colonial power, political opponents of the Zimbabwean president, NGOs and mainstream media all accuse him of having ruined the country, of violating the rights of his fellow citizens and of remaining in power through the repression of his opponents, electoral fraud and ballot rigging. With Mugabe having refused to resign, the power-sharing deal with his main rival Morgan Tsvangirai has just been concluded after four months of talks, talks during which the president of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) acquired, on top of the position of prime minister, the control of key ministries.

It’s a good thing that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) member countries’ meeting held on 30 January 2009 led to this peaceful outcome, an outcome which has just translated into the setting up of a government of national unity. Let’s hope that President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front) will live up to expectations and this crisis will only be a bad memory!

But this important step is only the start of a normalisation process. To end the agony of the Zimbabwean people, what’s required is the immediate and unconditional lifting of the economic sanctions that have widely contributed to throw former Southern Rhodesia into such a calamitous situation.

Such a reading of the Zimbabwean tragedy from the point of view of punitive measures that kill, starve and impoverish innocent people does not exempt or exonerate the Zimbabwean president and his party for the mistakes they may have made at all. It is a matter of giving a chance to peace by highlighting fundamental facts which have deliberately been overshadowed and concealed.

Let’s go back to the Lancaster House Agreement, which in 1979 ended 14 years of fierce struggle for the liberation of former Southern Rhodesia from the
claws of the racist Ian Smith. It was signed in a context in which 6,000 white farmers owned more than 15.5 million of the country’s most fertile hectares. Meanwhile, with difficulty, nearly 4.5 million blacks lived on community land, often arid, where settlers had confined them during one century. The willing buyer, willing seller principle is one of the main aspects of the plan of action which was supposed to remedy that situation. Ten years later, it had not evolved in a tangible way because white farmers increased prices and were only giving up the less fertile land.

In 1997, Tony Blair’s government made it known to Harare that it could no longer financially contribute, as agreed, to the transfer of farmland to blacks by compensating British farmers who were supposed to be expropriated. The Zimbabwean president decided then to confiscate their land without compensation. Economic sanctions are the financial, economic, social and political war machine that has been deployed by way of punishment meted out by Great Britain and its allies, particularly the United States. Let’s judge for ourselves:

- In December 2001, the United States Congress passed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act. It comprises, among other things, the US opposition to any loan to Zimbabwe and to the cancellation of the debt by international financial institutions. This act has widely contributed to throw Zimbabwe into economic recession and turmoil and visit upon it a more and more vertiginous and astronomical inflation rate.
- In 2002, the Bush administration also implemented a programme entitled Governance & Democracy with a budget of US$6 million to support opponents (MDC, trade unions, religious groups, ‘independent’ media, etc…).
- At the peak of the land redistribution campaign, the United States opposed the World Food Programme (WPF) aid to Zimbabweans.
- In 2004, the Bush administration also opposed the support of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS to help sick people in Zimbabwe.
- Since 2002, the United States and Great Britain have been urging the European Union to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe, which is in violation of article 98 of the Cotonou Agreement signed in 2000 between the European Union and the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) countries.
- All the funds granted by several Western countries and devoted to education, healthcare and sanitation were suspended.

Let’s add to these sanctions the usual and disastrous consequences of the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank – namely liberalisation, privatisations, low wages, and worsening living conditions – as well as the more frequent cycle of droughts to understand the deep underlying causes of Zimbabwe’s sorry plight. Other African countries escape this fate only because they live with cash injections from external funding, funding of which this country is deprived.

Sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe are even more unjustifiable when they proceed from states or institutions that are non-transparent and non-democratic in their dealings with Africa if we study the rules of global trade, the terms of economic partnership (EPA) or African migrants’ re-admission agreements. They are illegitimate because they are unrepresentative of the African people whose rights they deny and trample underfoot but to which they callously pay lip service in their defence of their own interests.

Such undemocratic and murderous economic sanctions also stem from political and financial corruption insofar as by punishing leaders they consider undesirable, world powers dissuade other leaders who would otherwise be tempted to stray from the straight and narrow.

Democracy, human rights and good governance are debased, instrumentalised and discredited when powers who claim to be their representatives ridicule them or even convert them into dreadful weapons of pressure, domination and blackmail to withdraw their financing.

It’s high time to prioritise in the discussion on the present and the future of the post-colonial state in Africa, the key question, which is often overshadowed and concealed, of the control of resources as well as the initiative of change, including agrarian reform. Beyond the extreme personalisation of the political debate, Robert Mugabe’s country is, in this regard, a textbook case to meditate on at a time when you see multinationals from all over the world rushing to grab the fertile land of the continent and everything being sold off in the name of growth and the prevailing whims and supremacy of the market.

While the diagnosis is biased and the economic sanctions are deadly for entire populations, voices exhort President Obama to pursue the same course. In his turn, his ‘Yes we can’ does require a radical change in perspective, discourse and practices in terms of US foreign policy in Africa. It is of the utmost importance that he plays on the black continent, as in the Middle East, the listening and outstretched-hand card instead of carrying on with sanctions that are one way or the other nothing but a violent onslaught against destitute, helpless and uninformed people.

More practically, it means discarding and jettisoning George W. Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ theory, a theory which has inflicted on the world the aggression against and occupation of Saddam Hussain’s Iraq and the barbaric and repeated attacks of Israel against the Palestinian people, illustrated with the latest deluge of fire power unleashed on the Gaza Strip. In Africa, this theory applies to a certain extent to Zimbabwe too. The clarification of global economic, social, financial and environmental issues, in order for Zimbabweans and, more generally, Africans to be committed to the democratic process on grounds other than the mere alternation of power for its own sake and the jockeying for key positions, is the real challenge which should preoccupy and be uppermost in the minds and thinking of African leaders, sub-regional institutions as well as the African Union and the genuine allies of the continent.

It is perilous for Africa to follow the advice of the masters of this world who have sunk into the mire of a deep crisis, a crisis which serves as a potent indictment of the failure of their model of society that the moralisation of the financial sphere will neither rehabilitate nor manage to restore faith in. As for the legitimacy of political power in Africa, it is necessary to underscore that, beyond the requisite elections, it lies above all in the willingness and ability of elected leaders to trade and manage the resources of the continent in the best interests of those men and women who have elected them and mandated them to do so.

Also, the temporary lull and respite that has been attained by the SADC needs to be used to set up a lasting peace for Zimbabweans and be grasped as an opportunity for the whole of Africa to shed a different light on crises, since its customarily battered image has been considerably tarnished by the hypocrisy of lies which prevail in the analysis of the predicament of this country.

Intellectuals and other actors of critical civil society, along with African and non-African leaders who firmly believe that the black continent is not an isolated planet but well and truly the cradle and birthplace of humankind and an innocent victim of a wild, rampaging and destructive capitalism, need to analyse, reveal and dismantle the cogs of its oppressive machinery.

To give a chance to authentic and lasting peace in Zimbabwe, we join our voices to the chorus of Zimbabweans, the SADC and the African Union. We remind Great Britain, the US and the EU of the exorbitant social and human cost of the punitive measures imposed and foisted upon this country.

- We declare that drinkable water, food and medicine must cease to be deployed as weapons of war.
- We call for the immediate lifting and removal of the blockade that deprives millions of Zimbabweans of these amenities which are absolutely essential for human existence.
- We hold that it is profoundly unjust and irresponsible to make human lives depend on a top-level political power-sharing agreement.

Yes, we can! What is required is to stop mixing up British, US and European interests with the legitimate rights and entitlement of the Zimbabwean and African populations to land, food, drinkable water, healthcare, education, employment and income. WE ARE ALL ZIMBABWEANS!

Signatories:

Aminata D Traoré (essayist, Mali), Jean Ziegler (sociologist, Switzerland), Boris Boubacar Diop (writer, Senegal), Mireille Frantz Fanon (Frantz Fanon Foundation), Diadié Y. Dagnoko (teacher, Mali), Demba Moussa Dembélé (economist, Senegal), Assetou Founé Samaké (biologist, Mali), Bruno Rebelle - Souleymane Koly (choreographer, Côte d’Ivoire), Hamidou Magassa (writer, Mali), Christian Koné (journalist, Burkina Faso), Ismaël Diabaté (painter, Mali), Bibi Diawara (demographer, Mali), Lucette and Christian Morillon (France), Mamadou Goïta (socio-economist, Mali), Sarah Jane Mellor (translator France/UK), Moussa Bolly (journalist, Mali), Valerie Ngo Biem (Cameroon), Jean Michel Naud (teacher, France), Clariste Soh Moube (Cameroon), Moustapha Diaté (economist, Senegal), Aziz Coulibaly (accountant, Côte d'Ivoire), Aboubakary Gollock (economist, Canada), Amadou Gollock (consultant, Mali), Koulsy Lamko (ecrivain, activiste culturel, Tchad/Mexique), Amadou Kane Sy (Kan-si), (artiste plasticien, Sénégal), Juan Montero Gómez (Las Palmas, Iles Canaries, España), Aboubacar Demba Cissokho (journaliste, Sénégal), Oumar Dembélé (professeur d'enseignement secondaire, Mali), ZohraBouchentouf-Siagh (professeur de literature, l'Université de Vienne (Autriche), Algérie), MabroukaGasmi (communicateur, Tunisie), Nathalie M'Dela Mounier (enseignante, France), Massamba Mbaye (journaliste, Sénégal), Diagne Fodé Roland (enseignant, membre de Ferñent / Mouvement des Travailleurs Panafricains, Sénégal), Amadou Tiéoulé Diarra (avocat, Mali), Bah Djenebou (Bamako, Mali), Samir Amin (Forum du Tiers-Monde,Sénégal), Abdourahman Waberi (ecrivain, Djibouti/France), Brigitte Maître (médecin, France), Hamédine Racine Guissé, (professeur-consultant, Sénégal), Ibro Abdou (économiste, Niger), Coumba Ndoffène Diouf (professeur à l'Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) de Dakar), Révérend Louis Anatole Ntchinda (Pasteur, Cameroun), Patrick Hirtz (praticien hospitalier, spécialiste des hôpitaux, France), René de Vos (sociologue, France), Seydou Nourou Ndiaye (écrivain, directeur des editions papyrus a Dakar), Pascal Paquin (militant associatif, Fleury La Vallée, France).

If you wish to take part in this campaign, please sign the text by sending us your name, profession and address.

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

The Israeli Terror

This very long but compelling piece was posted at Fire on the Mountain. Written by David Rovics, it is mandatory reading for those who champion the rights of Palestinians to self-determination. For those who have more concerns for the "plight of Israelis, read with an open mind, this will surely generate at least an internal conversation about the realities of this six decade human tragedy.

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I was in Olympia, Washington driving towards Evergreen State College when I got a phone call from someone in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. An Evergreen graduate named Rachel Corrie had been killed a few days before by an Israeli soldier in an armored bulldozer, and someone with an Australian accent on my cell phone named Tom was wondering whether it was OK for the International Solidarity Movement to use the lyrics to a song I had just written about the incident on their website. Rachel's murder was followed quickly by the murder of a British ISM activist named Tom Hurndall.

And now, almost six years to the day after the murder of Rachel Corrie, my friend and comrade Tristan Anderson has been critically injured by the IDF. He joins ISM activist Brian Avery, who was also shot in the face. Brian survived, seriously disfigured but otherwise intact. Tristan lies in a coma in a hospital near Tel Aviv and may or may not be as lucky as Brian. His brain was exposed by the tear gas canister fired at close range at his face, and as I write, large parts of his frontal lobe have had to be removed by the surgeons. Rachel, Tom, Brian and Tristan join the ranks of the thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese civilians killed and the tens of thousands maimed by the IDF since 2000 alone. Being privileged foreigners (at least before they were killed or maimed), they did not have the opportunity to join the ranks of the millions of Palestinians and Lebanese who have been driven into desperate poverty, malnourishment and homelessness by the Israeli invasion and occupation of their lands.

Read more

Critical Discussions on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)

As the battle heats up in Congress and the business community sinks millions of dollars into the campaign to defeat this essential labor right, listen to a good discussion about the distortions and lies being used by the employers and their Congressional allies.

Israeli Lobby Strikes Again

This was posted on the March 13, 2009 Huffington Post

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Below is Chas Freeman's full statement following his decision not to serve as National Intelligence Council chairman.

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You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council.

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

As those who know me are well aware, I have greatly enjoyed life since retiring from government. Nothing was further from my mind than a return to public service. When Admiral Blair asked me to chair the NIC I responded that I understood he was "asking me to give my freedom of speech, my leisure, the greater part of my income, subject myself to the mental colonoscopy of a polygraph, and resume a daily commute to a job with long working hours and a daily ration of political abuse." I added that I wondered "whether there wasn't some sort of downside to this offer." I was mindful that no one is indispensable; I am not an exception. It took weeks of reflection for me to conclude that, given the unprecedentedly challenging circumstances in which our country now finds itself abroad and at home, I had no choice but accept the call to return to public service. I thereupon resigned from all positions that I had held and all activities in which I was engaged. I now look forward to returning to private life, freed of all previous obligations.

I am not so immodest as to believe that this controversy was about me rather than issues of public policy. These issues had little to do with the NIC and were not at the heart of what I hoped to contribute to the quality of analysis available to President Obama and his administration. Still, I am saddened by what the controversy and the manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society. It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government - in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.

The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues. I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.

In the court of public opinion, unlike a court of law, one is guilty until proven innocent. The speeches from which quotations have been lifted from their context are available for anyone interested in the truth to read. The injustice of the accusations made against me has been obvious to those with open minds. Those who have sought to impugn my character are uninterested in any rebuttal that I or anyone else might make.

Still, for the record: I have never sought to be paid or accepted payment from any foreign government, including Saudi Arabia or China, for any service, nor have I ever spoken on behalf of a foreign government, its interests, or its policies. I have never lobbied any branch of our government for any cause, foreign or domestic. I am my own man, no one else's, and with my return to private life, I will once again - to my pleasure - serve no master other than myself. I will continue to speak out as I choose on issues of concern to me and other Americans.

I retain my respect and confidence in President Obama and DNI Blair. Our country now faces terrible challenges abroad as well as at home. Like all patriotic Americans, I continue to pray that our president can successfully lead us in surmounting them.

Slave in Jefferson Davis' home gave Union key secrets

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/20/spy.slaves/index.html

William Jackson was a slave in the home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis during the Civil War. It turns out he was also a spy for the Union Army, providing key secrets to the North about the Confederacy.

 

William Jackson, a slave, listened closely to Jefferson Davis' conversations and leaked them to the North.

Jackson was Davis' house servant and personal coachman. He learned high-level details about Confederate battle plans and movements because Davis saw him as a "piece of furniture" -- not a human, according to Ken Dagler, author of "Black Dispatches," which explores espionage by America's slaves.

"Because of his role as a menial servant, he simply was ignored," Dagler said. "So Jefferson Davis would hold conversations with military and Confederate civilian officials in his presence."

                                                                                                                                    

African American and Latino Unity in North Carolina

Supporting Gaza after 23 Days of Human Rights Abuses and War Crimes

 

There is so much to say about the crisis in Gaza and what lays ahead for the oppressed people of Palestine. Beyond the politics, or perhaps in order to make sense of the politics underlying my political and ideological frame of reference I have turned to a personalization of the casualties.

I have suggested in speeches and conversations that in addition to the maddening and terrifying statistics we can cite and refer people to, we need to embrace the death of individuals and families. That is to say that we should learn the names of civilian victims of these war crimes. We need to name them for our selves and those that we reach out to.  There is profound need to humanize them by calling them by their name(s) remembering that behind each is a life story, aspirations and hopes and emotionally damaged family members who remain to salvage their own lives. I have decided to embrace Bilal Mohammed al-Ashqar and Mohammed Mohammed al-Ashqar.  From Electronic Intifada:

At 6:30am, also Saturday, IOF fired a shell -- believed to be white phosphorus -- which landed in the UNRWA Beit Lahia Boys School, which shelters civilians. As the refugees tried to evacuate the school, an artillery shell struck a classroom, where civilians are sheltered. The shell broke through the roof and exploded on the ground, spreading its shrapnel into classrooms. Two children were killed and their mother, Nujoud Shaban al-Ashqar, was injured. The children were identified as:

• Bilal Mohammed al-Ashqar, five; and
• Mohammed Mohammed al-Ashqar, four.

Now that ceasefires have been declared by the Israelis and Hamas, with a withdrawal beginning immediately, US supporters of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and an end of the occupation need to be very intentional about the form of their advocacy, protest and support work going forward. The one thing that has to emerge from this murderous three weeks is a commitment to a very audible and sustained voice in support of peace that insists on no border blockades, no more settlements and no apartheid wall.

This means that the anti-war movement has to move the Israeli/ Palestinian struggle to the top of the agenda on par with Iraq and Afghanistan. The millions of people who have arrived at a point of questioning support for Israel having been deeply effected by the unimaginable carnage have to been brought into a movement that pushes the Obama administration for a departure from the one sided nature of US diplomacy when it come to intervention in this 60 year colonial struggle. The horror they have expressed should be directed in as many directions as is possible without expecting that they will become aligned with the most advance sections or the anti-war movement much less the anti-imperialist movement. Encourage them to “get in where they fit in” as the old expression goes. This is new social capital that must not be allowed to dissipate through unreasonable demands on people’s time or the adoption of political demands that go way beyond what they embrace at this juncture. Finding ways to include the most moderate opposition to Israeli militarism and racism will be critical in the coming months.

The other two arenas that progressives must turn their attention to are the Black Church and organized labor. A Black faith voice is essential to counter the powerful Christian Zionist current that prevails in many Black churches, perhaps the majority. The theological notion of dispensationalism has to be challenged by African American clergy who are willing to advance the discussion of the political and human rights nature of the six decades dispute using their progressive political outlook and command of the sacred texts that inform the retrograde views of those who see prophesy realized in the genocide of Palestinians.

Organized labor has again, in the main, failed to speak out it a timely or decisive way about the death and destruction being visited upon workers in Gaza, particularly the women and children. As with the Iraq war it has been the initiatives of progressive and left unionist that have cried out for an immediate halt to the bombing. US Labor Against the War issued a statement Solidarity with the Working People of Palestine and Israel. In characteristic and welcomed fashion the Executive Board of the United Electrical Workers-UE issued a supportive statement calling for an end to the bloodshed in Gaza. Again this is not surprising coming from what Nation magazine called the “most valuable union.”  Clearly, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win or whatever a future merged Federation is called has to put this on their agenda and use whatever influence they will have on Obama and/or the new State Department to push back on the rabid Zionist who have shaped US policy towards Israeli. There are no guarantees here but unionist must be persistent in this quest. The deaths of over a thousand Palestinians compel us to be relentless.

There is also the growing call for a righteous divestment movement. Forces that have been pushing this for awhile are looking to get traction from this monumental assault on Palestinian human rights. The calls for boycotting Caterpillar Tractors because they supply the bulldozers responsible destroying Palestinian homes to clear land for illegal Israeli settlers are not supplemented by pleas to boycott a wide array of retailers and manufacturers who have ties to Israel through financial or political support. Kali Akuno of the Malcolm X Grassroots movement has argued for an intensification of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement at Pambazuka News. His piece takes a broad view of the politics behind the struggle and how the anti-imperialist movement needs to view it. It does not however review the various ongoing efforts and the new calls for BDS actions. Our question is how effective can we be at this stage with a shotgun approach to our targets? As with any BDS campaign initiated by progressive forces, there has to be a sober projection and measurement of the symbolic aspects of the efforts in relationship to the actual economic and related public relations/image impact these activities may have. The Global BDS Movement has very detailed information about various campaigns and the steps activists can take to get involved.

Many activists should ask themselves serious questions about whether they can take on Starbucks, for example because of CEO Howard Schultz’s support for and ties to Israel and the social and political capital they may be able to use in a local government divestment campaign. The options abound and most are not mutually exclusive. Yet there seems to be a tremendous need for coherent, targeted and coordinated efforts. Activists in Durham, N.C. are doing research now to determine if a divestment campaign is possible which would  be added to the successful Anti-Apartheid campaign of the 1980’s in that city.