Make Trump an offer he can't refuse: the wall for the registry date

For Trump, "The Wall" has always been a bullshit issue: a symbol of "America First" white supremacy triumphant, and not at all a measure with any practical significance.

Why of no significance? Because the wall is already there. Some 702 miles, 1,130 kilometers, of physical barriers first proposed under Democrat President Jimmy Carter that began to be built under Democrat Bill Clinton.

It was called a "fence" mostly because calling it a wall when the commie one in Berlin was still a recent memory would have been a bad PR move.

But Trump does want to call it a "wall," I guess to prove he's just as mean as Stalin used to be. And replacing a few segments of existing metal spikes with metal spikes covered by concrete. Why? My guess is that is would be easier to engrave "TRUMP" in gold letters on a concrete surface, you know, for photo ops.

What Trump really wants is not a construction project, but to create a wall of racism, but for that reason, every dollar Congress approves for his phony physical wall is another brick in Trump's wall of bigotry and discrimination.

This is how legalization was done in the 1930s
and how it should be done now -- just register

Unless, of course, the money is solely for painting "TRUMP" in gold letters, because it is accompanied by a sweeping measure of acceptance and welcome for immigrants and their communities.

That's where "the date" comes in.

What date? The registry date.

WTF is a registry date and what good is it? I'll let the official U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services web site answer:

Aliens who have continuously resided in the United States since January 1, 1972, are of good moral character, and are not inadmissible, are eligible to adjust to legal permanent resident status under the registry provision. Before the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 amended the date, aliens had to have been in the country continuously since June 30, 1948, to qualify.

From back in the day when most people who had come to the United States were European, and the 1920s anti-immigrant hysteria had subsided, there is a provision in immigration law that says, basically, if you have been living permanently in the United States since a certain date, let the government know and you will be recognized as a permanent resident.

It is a simple, direct and effective mechanism for  mass legalization of immigrants based on the iron-clad logic that those who have been residing permanently in the United States are in fact permanent residents thereof.

So I think we should make Trump and offer he can't refuse: sign the change in the registry date and we'll give you the wall.

But if Trump doesn't want to, is there any way to stop him from refusing?

As of January 3, the Democrats have a majority in the House. Simply decide that nothing gets to the floor, goes to the Senate or gets to the President for his signature that does not include a sentence to the effect of: "The registry date is changed to January 20, 2017."

Nothing. Zero. Zip. No military spending. No disaster relief. No mother's day proclamation. Like, nada.

And why that date? I think January 20, 2017 --the day Trump became president-- would be a nice gesture of gratitude, allowing The Donald to add "no one is better at amnesty for illegal aliens" to the list of things that no one is better at than him. If he wants, he can even call it by its true name: justice for the undocumented.

--José G. Pérez

People not voting is the fault of the system and its politicians, not the people

I am fucking sick a tired of hearing congresscritters and other members of our political class, and their news media acolytes, attack the people for exercising their democratic right to give elections the finger.

Never mind this election we just had; look at the big one. For two years before a presidential election we are subjected to a constant 24 X 7 X 365 bombardment about how we get to decide the ultimate fate of life, the universe and everything!

No-one is allowed to say different. There's not even a single letter to the editor, never mind a columnist or TV gasbag that disagrees. When did you ever read a column saying, "don't vote. It only encourages them?" Or hear a TV or radio political pontificator explaining what you can hear on any bus in any American city: "If God had meant us to vote, she would have given us candidates."

Then comes the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of a year divisible by four without a remainder. Almost 66 million vote for Queen Hillary, 63 million for Trumpus Maximus, and six million between them for the Greens and Libertarians, there to show how even weirdos, perverts and the clinically insane can have their own presidential candidates.

And, oh yeah. There's 100 million, give or take, who say, "take this election and shove it!"

Why would they say that? Well consider the numbers I reported above: 66 megavotes for Hillary. 63 for Trumpus, so The Donald is president.

Do you realize that in just about every  other country in the entire world, when they want to cram a president down your throat, at least they have the decency to pretend that the person got more votes?

And then there's the Senate. The nearly 40,000,000 people of California will once again be represented by Diane Feinstein, who will have the same exact status and power as John Barrasso, who is being sent to the Senate by the fewer than 600,000 people of Wyoming.

We have 500,000 --that's right, half a million-- elected positions in this country but the vast majority are not really elected, they're imposed by the dominant political machine in the area. Then there are the contested elections, where politicians sell themselves through a legalized system of bribery known as "campaign contributions" although there's also the modality where the rich people will buy both candidates and then let the people freely choose which one is better at fooling them.

Beyond "elections" we come to the Holy of Holies, John Roberts and the Supremes. It's a dictatorial constitutional convention with nine delegates appointed for life. I say dictatorial in the strictest, scientific sense of the word: an authority bound by no pre-existing laws. They "interpret" (invent) the constitution as it serves the purposes of the majority of these robed reactionaries of the ruling rich ... and whoever holds their puppet strings.

Liberals and self-styled "socialists" who berate the people for not exercising their "democratic" right to vote should concentrate instead on getting rid of our slave owner's constitution and replacing it with one that provides for a democratic republic instead. And I don't even mean a socialist one; just a plain old standard-issue bourgeois democracy would be a great advance.

--José G. Pérez

11-11-11 and the memory of a hundred years

It was on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month that the guns fell silent a century ago. The war to end all wars had ended. It would take but a few years to learn that it had been the overture, not the finale.

The First World War gave us a League of Nations, a ban on poison gas, restrictions on the ships and tonnage of navies. But World War One did not end the arrogance of the Great Powers that were great only in avarice and conquest.

Nor could it stop the advance of scientists. Their accomplishments would be feted in a quarter century by the radiance of a thousand suns burst at once into the sky of a cold New Mexico desert night.

A false dawn. Not dreams but nightmares. Remembrance Day they call it in many countries, that day 100 years ago when they told us it was the last day of the last war. Remember what came after.

--José G. Pérez

Trump's real program: not deporting immigrants, but keeping them 'illegal'

This may sound like an insane thing to say after a couple of weeks when Trump has promoted every anti-immigrant idea that self-hater Stephen Miller has been able to come up with, from overthrowing the most important amendment to the constitution in 200 years to ordering 15,000 troops to the border and telling them to feel free to open fire on unarmed civilians.

But President Trump's real, on-the-ground policy on "illegals" is exactly the same as every other president going back decades: not to get rid of the undocumented, but to keep them "illegal," bereft of rights so they can't defend themselves and can be easily ripped off and super-exploited.

Just look at it, as it plays out in real life: how many "illegals" were there before Obama was elected? More than eleven million. 

And how many were there when he left office, after the Great Recession and three million deportations? More than eleven million.

And how many are there now after two years of "Build the Wall" chanting and Trump's rule? More than eleven million.

And if you think that's going to change, do the math. If you leave aside those caught near the border shortly after crossing, how many people were deported each year under Obama, from the settled undocumented population inside the country?

Give or take, a quarter million a year. And how many are being deported now? Give or take, a quarter million.

So how long would it take to "solve" the problem by deporting all the undocumented? Forty-four years, give or take. And, mind you, that's assuming the government's figure of just over 11 million is right.

Because professors from MIT and Yale, utilizing "standard demographic principles" just published a study saying by the most conservative yardstick, the real number is almost 17 million, but with standard methodology, the number is 22 million, double the official estimate. If that's so, you'd need to be pretty unlucky to get deported before you died.

So has anything changed with Trump? Yes, most of all the rhetoric. Though we should remember Trump is not that unusual as a politician trying to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment. But his deportation policies have been more cruel and arbitrary than Obama's in order to spread fear throughout the entire immigrant community. As were Clinton's in relation to his predecessors.

But as for the rest of it, the real policy has been essentially the same for many decades: not to throw out the "illegals," but make sure that if they stay here, they stay "illegal," meaning super-exploitable and thus super-profitable for the bosses.

--José G. Pérez

The Democratic Socialists, the Democratic Party, and the tactic of critical support

In a previous post, I explained why I disagree with a statement put out by the New York City DSA criticizing Alexandria Ocasio Cortez for saying that she would support all the Democrats in November. I think it was OK. She has made her differences with the establishment Democrats perfectly clear, and no one who pays the slightest attention to politics could possibly believe that she supports Cuomo's policies.

But unless she went out of her way to denounce Cuomo in the general election, her support for his candidacy will be taken for granted: she is his running mate. And her denouncing Cuomo would not have made any sense to the people socialists are trying to reach.

But is it true that her statement about “rallying behind all Democratic nominees” in effect “erases” the message of the insurgent candidates against the party establishment, as the criticism of her asserts?

I don't think so. I believe people who follow politics in the slightest understand Ocasio represents a very different political approach from Cuomo's, despite what she said.

I want to suggest that the way to analyze this situation, from a Marxist point of view, is as an application of the tactic of "critical support."

Lenin, writing about Britain right after the Russian Revolution, urged his British comrades to back Labour Party candidates. He explained that "I want to support [Labour Party Leader] Henderson in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man."

What does that mean? That the objective of your “support” is precisely to hasten the day when someone like that won’t be able to fool enough people to stay in office.

Does this mean you really secretly want Cuomo's Republican opponent to win? Absolutely not. You really do want Cuomo to win, to show, for example, that he has no solution for the health care insurance crisis.

You might think, after two terms Cuomo has already shown that plenty!

But the issue is not what you or I understand, but how millions of ordinary people see things. They have barely begun to think through ideas like single payer medicare for all, a living minimum wage of $15 an hour, free college tuition, driving big money out of politics and especially how those things can be achieved.

The idea is to tell working people that don't yet agree with your more radical program that you won't stand in the way of what they view as a lesser-evil candidate like Cuomo in a two-way confrontation with the more reactionary candidate. 

Can't this be confusing, running in opposition to what Cuomo stands for, supporting his socialist opponent in the primary and then turning around and saying "vote Cuomo on November 6"? Actually, that is pretty standard in American politics. And Bernie Sanders did the same thing in 2016, and both clarity about his program being different, and his reputation for integrity, did not suffer in the slightest.

But why do this at all? Why not simply run as independents, as Bernie had always done before 2016? It's just a tactic, isn't it?

Two reasons:

First, Bernie has been an exception, unique. There have been hundreds, possibly thousands of campaigns run as independents or third party candidates in the last few decades, and I can't remember one that had even a smidgin of the support Bernie has garnered locally in elections before 2016. There have been a few other "independents" who have made it to Congress, but these have been traditional politicians who for some reason were on the outs with their party machines, not politically independent.

Second, because Bernie's 2016 campaign, not as an independent, but within the Democratic Party, changed things. It set a new pattern, created a new model. Millions of people rallied to his banner to support not just a candidacy, but become part of a movement. The big jump in DSA membership after the June New York congressional primary confirms that this is the shape the movement is taking right now. What we need to do is understand what it means..

As I explained in this post, I think what is involved is working people trying to grope their way to uniting as a class, to fight for a program that defends our interests.

To really do that, what we need is our own party, a workers party, not necessarily in the form of a ballot line (which is what most people in this country think of when you say "party") but a national organization or movement that acts in a coherent way explicitly in the name of working people.

But isn't it a contradiction to try to do that within the oldest capitalist party in existence, the Democratic Party? Absolutely. But we can't simply reject the contradiction. It must be overcome, the movement has to work its way through it. And there really is no point complaining that things ought not to have developed this way. They did.

In there any historical precedent for this, a working class movement gestating within a capitalist party? Actually that is not so unusual. But there is one historical example that I think is worth delving into, and it comes from the founders of the modern socialist movement Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

Frederick Engels in the 1840s

The experience was recounted in 1884 by Engels in the article, "Marx and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung," dealing with events decades before, during the revolution of 1848.

The context was that towards the end of 1847, Marx and Engels  succeeded in convincing a group called The League of the Just to become the Communist League and adopt the Communist Manifesto as its program.

The Manifesto had just been published when a revolution broke out at the beginning of 1848 in France and soon spread to Germany. At Marx's initiative, the Communist League, composed mostly of Germans in exile, dissolved. The reason was that Germany was divided into many different states and principalities, making it impossible for a group to offer more than general guidance and ideas, but Marx believed a newspaper --the Neue Rheinische Zeitung-- was a better instrument to do that. Engels explains:

The proletariat [was] undeveloped ... having grown up in complete intellectual enslavement, being unorganised and still not even capable of independent organisation.... Hence, although in point of fact the mortal enemy of the [bourgeoisie], it remained, on the other hand, its political appendage.... Thus, the German proletariat at first appeared on the political stage as the extreme democratic party. 

In this way, when we founded a major newspaper in Germany, our banner was determined as a matter of course. It could only be that of democracy, but that of a democracy which everywhere emphasised in every point the specific proletarian character which it could not yet inscribe once for all on its banner.

I think the analogy with our days is in the extreme political underdevelopment of the American working class and what has been until now its "complete intellectual enslavement." Thus, now that the U.S. working class is beginning to come onto the political stage, it does so "as the extreme democratic party." The coincidence of the name "democratic party" is accidental, of course,  but the political similarity is not.

And note: this is not about a lesser evil strategy. Nor is the point to reform or transform the Democrats; it is about the working class being transformed through this and other experiences, cohering ever more clearly and consciously as an independent political force.  

What is most striking is that Engels says when Marx and his friends began their work in Germany, "our banner was determined as a matter of course." It could only be that of the working class movement that was beginning to emerge but was not recognized as such and instead viewed as the left of the bourgeois-democratic forces. Engels concludes:

If we did not want to do that, if we did not want to take up the movement, adhere to its already existing, most advanced, actually proletarian side and to advance it further, then there was nothing left for us to do but to preach communism in a little provincial sheet and to found a tiny sect instead of a great party of action.

That's the choice. We either accept the movement as it is as our starting point in order to help it go further, or we can stand on the sidelines shouting "correct" slogans at it.

And if we accept the movement as it is, it means accepting the tactic that Bernie pioneered in 2016, and that tactic of necessity implies going along with the results of the primary. We don't have to actively campaign for the likes of Cuomo, but we have to understand that from where Ocasio Cortez is now situated, it makes sense for her to have said what she did even if we as the DSA would not have put out a statement like that.

Socialists are getting a much broader and more sympathetic audience by running as Democrats given this new motion among working people, but offering "critical support" to traditional Democrats is an inescapable part of the tactic. It is built into the situation.

But we do so honestly, openly and transparently. We don't pretend differences with corporate Democrats have disappeared. We don't suggest the "lesser evil" is really OK after all. But we don't break with the working class people who are evolving towards political independence by trashing them for voting for Cuomo (which is the effect of denouncing him and opposing a vote for him).

--José G. Pérez

International Declaration against Fascism

[The following manifesto against the ultraright in Brazil is being circulated with a request that people add their names to the list of signers by emailing freelulabrasil@gmail.com and sgeral@mst.org.br.]

We, women and men, united in our commitment to democracy and human rights, express our unequivocal rejection of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, a contender in the second round of Brazil’s presidential elections on October 28.

The positions that this candidate has defended throughout his public life and during the current electoral campaign are based on xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic values.

This far-right candidate openly defends the violent methods deployed by military dictatorships, including torture and assassinations.

Positions such as these are a threat to any free, tolerant and just society.

In the second round of the election, the people of Brazil will be making a choice of paramount importance, between liberty and pluralism and retrograde authoritarianism, with a lasting impact, not only for Brazil but also for Latin America, the Caribbean and the rest of the world.

We call on Brazilians to reflect on the gravity of this pivotal moment in history.

There can be no neutrality in the choice between democracy and fascism!

Russian woman indicted for criminal conspiracy to commit free speech

In a new attack on freedom of speech, Trump's Justice Department has indicted a Russian woman for a conspiracy to post things on the Internet that the U.S. government doesn't like.

"The strategic goal of this alleged conspiracy, which continues to this day, is to sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions," G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.

This campaign was focused on "a wide variety of topics, including immigration, gun control and the Second Amendment, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBT issues, the Women’s March, and the NFL national anthem debate."

"Members of the conspiracy took advantage of specific events in the United States to anchor their themes, including the shootings of church members in Charleston, South Carolina, and concert attendees in Las Vegas; the Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ rally and associated violence; police shootings of African-American men; as well as the personnel and policy decisions of the current U.S. presidential administration," the Justice Department said in its press release.

It also praised the "exceptional cooperation" of Twitter and Facebook, making it clear that the Internet giants have become subsidiaries of the political police.

You might say, "but constitutional guarantees are only for American citizens" or "only apply within the United States." But that's not so. The First Amendment doesn't give any rights. It protects them by prohibiting the government from interfering with them.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Congress shall make no law. It is an absolute, categorical mandate. And the amendments adopted after the civil war extended the prohibition to all levels and branches of the government. Which part of "no law" doesn't the Justice Department understand?

The freedom of speech that is being attacked is our freedom of speech: there is only one. Consider, for example, the strategic aim of this conspiracy: "to sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions."

That description could well be applied to what I do day after day on Radio Información. I don't just sow discord or undermine, I promote protest and denounce the fraud of American democracy. Here are some things I've said just in the past week or so.

• They guy who lost the election is sitting in the White House. 
• Fewer than 600,000 people in Wyoming have the same representation in the Senate as the nearly 40 million people in California. 
• Republicans got 1.4 million fewer votes than Democrats in House races in 2012 but had 33 more seats.
• The Supreme Court is a committee of unelected politicians with lifetime terms that function  like a permanent constitutional convention accountable to no one.
• We have more than a half million elected positions, the huge majority of which are noncompetitive and simply filled by diktat by the dominant local machine. 
• For the more important positions, these are for sale to whatever stooge of the rich got the most bribes (so-called "campaign contributions").
• In a very few cases, the very rich buy both major candidates but let the people freely choose which one is better at fooling them.
• In other countries, at least they have the decency to pretend the guy they're shoving down  your throat got the most votes.
• American democracy? I think it's a great idea.

There's not a single activity that's been in  the press on the woman's supposed crimes that isn't simply organizing and paying people to say nasty things about the U.S. government, U.S. policies and U.S. Society. 

--José G. Pérez