(click image) Health reform in 2009? Yes we can! see more headlines from the November 2009 issue: One Year of Change in America

Today we are faced with a major economic crisis, but along with it there is also a deepening moral crisis of US capitalism. However, the people who are always finding fault with poor people, from teen pregnancy to deadbeat dads, are not speaking out about the immorality of the sub-prime robbery that resulted in mass foreclosures, especially for Black and Latino families.

As the swastika flew over most of Europe and millions of German fascist troops drove toward Moscow in early 1941, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels said, “we have put an end to 1776, 1789 and 1917,” referring to the American, French and Soviet revolutions.

It was an amazing continuation of where the AFL-CIO and the labor movement have been going in general. I think there was a fantastic amount of attention paid to questions of diversity, questions of opening up the ranks, and in particular real concern about how to bring young workers into the labor movement.

Our forefathers thought so much of these four basic rights that they made them the very first amendment to the Constitution of the US. So why have so many official authorities in this country, sworn to uphold that Constitution, spent so much; time, money, and energy to suppress them?

This past week the House released its version of the national health care legislation. It is no longer the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (H.R. 3200); it's now the Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009 (H.R. 3962). There are many changes, some of them are responses to the peoples' health movement.

Sept. 1 marked the 90th anniversary of the gathering that founded the Communist Party. The Communist Party we’re celebrating is a uniquely American institution. It is also founded on the crossroads of struggle. We’re celebrating our 90th birthday.

I don't remember what the world was like before Ronald Reagan. My first political memory is of the day John Hinkley shot him. That was March 30, 1981. I was eight.

The goal of full employment and the highest quality of life for all is at the heart of our struggle to make human rights more sacred than property interests. To accomplish this goal in the United States will take a mass, organized movement that through progressive stages and leaps reforms and ultimately revolutionizes our relations of production.

(click image) Can Capitalism Last? see more headlines from the November 2009 issue: One Year of Change in America

Through my work in numerous organizations which represent the interests of oppressed communities I have realized that, while many of my fellow activist's values are rooted in Marxism, they do not believe themselves to be Marxists.

On the front page of the New York Times (Sept. 28), Steven Erlanger, paraphrasing the words of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, announced that “the specter haunting Europe” is now the “specter of Socialism’s slow collapse.”

A major gap in the radical history of the United States has at last been filled. Nunzio Pernicone’s Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a Rebel (New York, Palgrave, 2005) strongly argues for Carlo Tresca’s inclusion in the pantheon of the country’s venerable American revolutionaries.

Joel Emmanuel Haaglund (1878-1915), more commonly known as Joe Hill, was – and remains – the guiding force of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and stands as a vision of revolutionary arts for all of the labor movement.

Many of us can still remember exactly where we were and what we were doing on the morning of April 30, 1975 when the American media reported that Saigon had “fallen” and had been renamed Ho Chi Minh City, and that the decades-long nightmare was finally over.

This is an excellent graphic novel about the life and times of Bertrand Russell and his search for the foundations of mathematics. Believe it or not, this is a really good read and not a dry and esoteric exercise in the history of mathematics. Even activist and writer Howard Zinn calls it “extraordinary.”

Pass the Employee Free Choice Act! (click image) see more headlines from the November 2009 issue: One Year of Change in America

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write: if you care about democracy and the rule of law, you need to care about women's ski jumping. This juxtaposition, straight out of a Hunter S. Thompson acid trip, relates to a court ruling in Canada that is both frightening in its scope and outrageous in its implications.

It recalled ancient Greek tragedies. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), founded in the 19th Century, is the country’s oldest party, and now its saddest one. On September 27th it suffered its worst election defeat since 1897, losing six million former voters and ending up with only 23 percent of the vote.

It is possible that any day now President Obama may decide to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Here in the U.S. and no doubt around the world, people will react in pain, anger and sorrow, knowing what tragedy and suffering will follow.

As the historic fight for health care reform passes to the Senate next week, and then to conference committee before final vote, a continued and expanded push is needed to prevent blockage of this key legislation.

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