SHOW FORGIVENESS - SPEAK FOR JUSTIC...

SOLIDARITY, CREATIVITY & DEFIANCE in 2011

SHOW FORGIVENESS  -  SPEAK FOR JUSTICE  -  AVOID THE IGNORANT

7’ x 40’ - Mural by the Fall 2010 Mural Painting Class/ Central CT State University

Jeff Glowa, Alyssa Lennehan, Brenda Marousek, Zoe Nicole Shaw, Jackie Sidor, Wiley Akin, Marissa Blaszko, Andrew Cusson, Ally King, Rachel Cabaniol

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NEW BRITAIN HERALD - Friday, November 12, 2010 / Page1

NEW BRITAIN — About a dozen Central Connecticut State University art students used their paint brushes to bring attention to their frustration over what they see as society’s Islamaphobia, and their work was unveiled Friday.

Borrowing a quote from the Muslim Quran, “Show Forgiveness, Speak for Justice, Avoid the Ignorant,” the students used a combination of Arabic script and wild-style lettering to create a 40-foot mural for display at one end of the Student Center’s exterior. Designed as a portable banner, the artwork, promoting religious tolerance, can be used as a backdrop or display at other venues or conferences on or off campus. 

“Their work speaks to an issue of building solidarity between human beings and not allowing ourselves to be divided by hatred or religious differences,” says Professor of Art Mike Alewitz....his students’ decision to focus on religious tolerance came from their discussion about the controversy over plans to build a mosque and Muslim cultural center near ground zero in lower Manhattan...

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The Flint Sit-Down Strike - December 30, 1936

Detail: Flint Sit-Down Strike

The History of the United Mine Workers Union 

by MIKE ALEWITZ/ 7’ x 100’ Portable Mural/ 1990 

Click Here for: The Flint Sit-Down Strike - Wikipedia

The History of the United Mine Workers Union 

by MIKE ALEWITZ/ 7’ x 100’ Portable Mural/ 1990 

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The 100’ History of the United Mine Workers Union was commissioned for the one hundredth convention of the union. The mural begins with children working in the mines and ends with them on the Pittston picket line. 

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The following is excerpted from Insurgent Images by Paul Buhle: 

Going back to the latter decades of the nineteenth century, American coal miners had an extremely militant tradition from Pennsylvania and Appalachia to Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas. The causes are not difficult to locate. Not only was coal mining the most dangerous occupation worldwide (it continues to be so today), measured by the number of deaths and injuries, but internally, that is, among workers themselves, it is one of the most democratic. By a centuries' old tradition of Welsh and English miners, young workers still learning the trade and old workers in their last years shared the least skilled jobs; to begin was to see the end in sight, at least for those fortunate enough to escape death or maiming in "the pits." Perhaps for these reasons, coal mining was also among the few racially integrated and unionized occupations of a century ago, although African Americans enjoyed fewer benefits and a constant threat of complete marginalization within the deeply racist American Federation of Labor.

But the UMW tended also, from its first decades, to be boss-ridden. The small coal-patch towns were an ideal political base for union grafting and for lucrative political trading with Democrats (and, on many occasions, Republicans). Taking office shortly after the beginning of the new century, John Mitchell, the first UMW president of wide reputation, quickly became known for his high living, his socializing with big businessmen, and his autocratic behavior in office. John L. Lewis, arguably the greatest American labor orator after Eugene V. Debs, came to power in the same tradition of double-dealing and frequent betrayal.

Lewis's career was marked by the acquisition of a personal fortune, but also by apparently wild swings against the Left, during which time he stuffed ballots and employed thugs to beat back radical threats to his power, alternating with swings toward the issues of the Left, as when he invited Communists into the new Congress of Industrial Organizations that he did much to bring into being. Lewis could also be more militant than the largest section of the Left, as during wartime when he called out miners in 1941, over Franklin Roosevelt's threats of injunction and over Communist demands that labor cease strikes for the duration. His threat to form a Labor Party in 1940 (he eventually supported Republican Wendell Wilkie) was the closest approach to national, independent labor politics for generations; his shifts, from the AFL to the CIO and back to the AFL, marked his frustrations with labor leaders' unwillingness to live up to the potential of the movement.

Lewis grasped as few American union bosses that his strength depended upon membership mobilization more than upon political trading-which as a registered Republican he did frequently, for his own purposes. From the early 1920s through the late 1940s, leading regional walkouts, he used his extraordinary vocal powers and capacity for organization to keep the union members and their families in struggle. He fearlessly denounced all opposition alike (employers. police, and the state) as the enemies of the miners and of the working class. In his later decades before retirement in 1957, while mines shut and automation cut further into the workforce, he traded struggle for retirement and health benefits. His immediate successor, the thuggish Tony Boyle, had all Lewis's defects and none of his virtues; democratic challenger Jock Yablonsky was counted out at a union election in 1969, and then murdered along with his family, apparently by Boyle henchmen. 

Arnold Miller, the reform candidate who came to power in 1972, brought the union real democracy but faced overwhelming odds. As the oil crisis of the 1970s brought back coal production, Miller faced a petition campaign to recall him from office. Disappointed with their president, miners nevertheless recognized the coal companies' deepest intentions: to weaken historic union control over work, and to strip away the health and safety benefits that kept coal towns alive. The strike that began in December 1977 awakened solidarity in a dormant labor movement. Even as leading 1 AFL-CIO officials dithered, more concerned with increasing the defense budget and pleasing a Democratic administration than with unions' steady decline, thousands of union members responded.

Heartened, UMW ranks turned down, at the bitter height of winter, a poor offer that Miller recommended for ratification. Even when the "pro-labor" Jimmy Carter ordered miners back under the Taft-Hartley Act that he'd promised to help repeal '' and as welfare officials refused food stamps to strikers, the miners held steady. After more than a hundred days on the picket line, they had won labor's most significant victory in an era of defeats. Oscar-winning Harlan County-USA (1976), a film made by documentarist Barbara Kopple, recorded the faces and voices of Kentucky miners and their families for millions of labor's sympathizers.

This was the background for events of the later 1980s. Pittston Coal, subsidiary of a giant conglomerate and a major coal exporter to Japan, withdrew in 1986 from the industry-wide labor agreement, attacking insurance, pensions, widows' benefits and the historic prerogative of miners to refuse the compulsory overtime work particularly hazardous in the trade. It was also a test for new miners' president Richard Trumka, elected in 1982 after a ferocious redbaiting campaign, to hold strong against what would have been a crippling defeat to the union. Hold they did. As the miners "worked to rule" (the old Wobbly tactic of staying at work and obeying regulations to the letter, hence slowing production) and organized a "corporate campaign" against Pittston management, the conflict escalated and in spring 1989 led to an explosive strike. Miners organized their families, neighbors, and communities, dressed in camouflage clothes like guerilla warriors, peacefully blocked scab trucks with their bodies and appealed for a wider solidarity.

The summer of 1989 saw the emergence of "Camp Solidarity" and the formal reaffiliation of the UMW with the AFL-CIO. Thousands of unionists from across the country came to stay for days or weeks, living out of tents and trailers, taking part in picketing, rallies and informal discussions. At one point miners occupied a coal processing center, the first time this sit-in tactic had been successfully adopted in generations. It was, in all, a historic moment that only the paucity of national press coverage and the phlegmatic character of labor leadership prevented from becoming a national cause celebre.

Mike Alewitz had special reasons for enthusiasm and involvement in this struggle. Not only the UMW traditions of militancy and commitment to winning the current strike, but the example of the P-9 strike all suggested that Pittston could become a kind of turning point for a broader shift within labor. He also helped to make a genuine cultural contribution, although his experience attempting to bring fellow artists to Austin had proved disappointing. Traveling to Nicaragua for the sake of workers and peasants obviously possessed more appeal than a trip to the midwest and its blue-collar (or rural) population, but Pittston might spark a collective artistic enthusiasm and insight. Besides, Alewitz's expulsion from the Socialist Workers Party intensified his determination to sink roots into New Jersey union activities. By dint of energy and good humor, he made himself the dean of the state's labor artists, the natural leader of an extended solidarity campaign with the prospect of raising strategic issues for the labor movement. His political comrade of a decade (and an early collaborator on murals), Bob Allen, had been a miner for some years before settling in New Brunswick, and Allen maintained friends and contacts among the UMW. Alewitz, Allen, and Gauvreau traveled to Pittston in summer 1989, bringing with them most of the art supplies (paid for by Alewitz's sign painters' local) necessary for a camp banner. 

Camp Solidarity quickly reminded the visitors that the mineworkers' union had in many unique ways retained its rich cultural traditions. Local union musicians exchanged songs with visitors around the country (and the world: Britain's Billy Bragg came to share music). Videos about the strike were quickly produced and widely shown in union locals elsewhere; camp dorms and trailers sprouted all sorts of popular art; and clog dancing broke out with amazing frequency. The mountain culture of the region could meld, as it had done so often in the past, with the contemporary struggles of the miners, releasing a collective creativity of remarkable proportions.

Behind the local color stood a rock-hard determination. The "Daughters of Mother Jones," a group of women miners, also spouses, mothers, and daughters, carried on a demonstrative support of the strike. Adorned in jackrock (a device made from mining nails that can blow out the wheels of scab vehicles—a practice which the UMWA officially discourages) earrings, they faced the police, went to jail along with others, but also traveled the country and spread the word ("jawsmithing"). The Solidarity Forever Camp banner was painted on site at Camp Solidarity in a day and a half, the design utilizing a drawing of miners that Allen had done in his miner's days for The Mineworkers Journal, showing a silhouetted line of miners with their hats aglow. The slogan is sufficient and expresses perfectly the favorite union song of the 1910s-1930s, a restatement of labor's creation of all value ("Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonder we have made") and a deeply evocative rendition of the an-injury-to-one-is-an-injury-to-all Wobbly spirit. Allen remained in Virginia to paint walls and even a barn roof on behalf of the strikers.

Alewitz returned in the fall with a caravan of artists and unionists from the New Jersey Industrial Union Council. Traveling fourteen hours through a bitter winter storm and a highway strewn with disabled vehicles, they staggered into the camp to deliver toys to the strikers' children. The miners had built a large drawing table for the artists to work, where they quickly and spontaneously designed and painted a banner commemorating the event. The camp was still a place to meet with strikers and fellow visitors, to share their experiences about labor solidarity and about the role of art and the artist. 

In the end, the Pittston UMW, joined by the 47,000 miners from elsewhere, who traveled to the site to show solidarity, and the thousands of other supporters outlasted the company. By spring, the strike was settled, with benefits that continued into negotiations with Pittston Coal thereafter. It had been a memorable moment for labor artwork as well, in some ways the most memorable since the 1940s when mainstream giants like Ben Shahn still painted on invitation for labor solidarity. 

The artistic result of all this was a seven-by-one-hundred-foot historical panorama banner of UMWA struggles, mine disasters, and union victories created for the union's centenary convention celebration. The panoramic narrative begins with a "breaker boy" releasing a canary that flies over the surface of the mural to alight on the hands of miners' children marching the Pittston picket line. The mural sees the history of the UMWA not simply as a struggle for rights for its members, but as a catalyst for the construction of the CIO, thus showing a scene of sit-down strikers in Flint, Michigan.

The centerpiece of the work is "Mother" Mary Jones—the most famous personality of women in American labor—and inevitably, John L Lewis himself. The banner also boldly suggests, with its women workers, that solidarity has now outgrown the "manly" tradition (a verse of Solidarity Forever runs, "Union Men Be Strong") for something larger and better. Alewitz was assisted by Darlene Sanderson and numerous volunteers, with Bill Kane (president of the New Jersey IUC) personally painting the red tie on the visage of John L. 

The imagery sparked some discussion. Young staffers and rank-and-file members of the UMWA objected to the inclusion of a scene of the union's international officers being arrested at a Pittston demonstration. Alewitz, who rarely uses living people in his murals, defended his decision. Union officers were, for once, doing the right thing by leading the union to victory—at a time when most labor officials were complicit in concessionary contracts. Throughout the strike, UMWA officers like Cecil Roberts supported the mobilization of the ranks, and through their militant (often anti-racist) speeches helped forge a movement with the confidence to take and occupy a key mine.

The banner was only shown for a single day in a poorly lit room at the miners' convention in Miami, then promptly buried in the UMW basement. Once the creative impulses generated by the mobilizations at Pittston ebbed, the commemorative mural was set aside. With the ranks back at work, DC staffers turned to other things... 

Vladimir Tatlin - 12.28.1885

Vladimir Tatlin - 12.28.1885

LABOR SOLIDARITY HAS NO BORDERS

LABOR SOLIDARITY HAS NO BORDERS

by Mike Alewitz

Library for Social Studies & Research

South-Central LA/ 1990/ Approx 23' x 48'

Dedicated to the Undocumented Workers of the World

 

Monument to the Third International, 1920

Vladimir Tatlin

The Russian Revolution, and the founding of the 3rd International (to spread the revolution to other countries,) was an inspiration to working people and artists throughout the world. For a few brief years, before the rise of Stalinism, there was a great outburst of new and visionary art.

One of the works that symbolizes this period was Tatlin’s Monument to the 3rd Communist International.

His sculpture, which was also a group of buildings, was to span the Neva River. At 1,300 feet, it would be the tallest human-made structure in the world.

Twin spirals symbolized the dialectic of the revolution and would contain vehicles to transport visitors around the structure.

The main framework would contain four large suspended buildings, rotating at different rates of speed.

At the base of the structure was a cube, designed as a venue for lectures, conferences and legislative meetings - it would rotate on its axis once a year.

Above that was a pyramid - housing executive activities and completing a rotation once a month.

Next came a cylinder - this would contain an information center, issuing news bulletins and manifestos via telegraph, radio and loudspeaker. It would rotate on its axis once a day.

At the very top was a sphere, with a projector to beam messages onto the clouds.

The buildings would all be made of glass, so that the workers could always see what their leaders were doing.

The new revolution did not have enough resources to feed the population, and the monument was never built. But it became a symbol of the optimism and spirit of the revolution and workers carried models of it in demonstrations.

- MA

PEOPLE'S ART TEARS THROUGH L.A. TINSEL

Alewitz has drawn on the agitprop tradition popularized by countless workers' movements. His work is a frank admission that all art takes sides.

 

By Eric Gordon

Special to the Guardian

May 1990

LOS ANGELES

 

South Central Los Angeles lies far from the towering decorator suites of television's "LA. Law." This part of town has a large Third World population, high unemployment, a big drug problem and a police department famous for riding roughshod over the rights of anyone who happens to be of the wrong color.

In the midst of this neighborhood, the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research was founded in 1963. Its doors are open to readers and researchers interested in books, posters, films, recordings and all manner of archival material relating to the labor movement, the struggles for peace and social justice, the women's movement and other progressive causes.

For years, plagued by unsightly graffiti, staffers at the library had appealed for a mural to grace its walls. Such outdoor murals are a recognizable feature of the Los Angeles cityscape, thanks in large part to the Social and Public Art Resource Center.

Never having heard of the library. New Jersey painter Mike Alewitz, known in New York for the oft-desecrated Pathfinder Mural, and for his labor union projects with the United Auto Workers, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, the United Mineworkers and other unions, applied to SPARC to paint a mural on the-dual themes of international solidarity with undocumented workers and organizing to protect the interests of all workers. Choosing Alewitz out of a hundred artists submitting proposals for this community, SPARC put his idea together with the library's request, and offered him the commission.

Alewitz worked on the 23-foot by 48-foot gessoed surface in April and May 1990, assisted by four students from nearby Manual Arts High School. The formal dedication of the library's north wall, at which numerous labor, cultural and community leaders spoke, took place May 15th.

The mural on the outside gives appropriate clues as to what is inside, for as William Doyle, president of the library, pointed out both the mural and the library exist to give the working class the knowledge it needs to gain power.

"In Los Angeles," Alewitz says, "we see a microcosm of world events. Millions are uprooted and driven from their homelands by economic and political repression. They seek a better life here, which for a great majority will remain unrealized. Instead, they will become victims anew, through other forms of economic exploitation, racism and the ghastly Hollywood culture which demeans and stereotypes their culture."

The mural depicts a mass of working people streaming toward the electrified, barbed-wire Mexican border from the distant, smog-shrouded city of Los Angeles. They wield a magnificent tool of their own creation, designed to cut through the frontier. On the right, the captains of local industry (grapes, wine, garment, pharmaceutical, machine tools, aeronautics, shipbuilding) look on in horror as their profits are threatened. Their mascot, the bloodsucking monster of imperialism, guards the pile of gold that has been created by labor. On the other side stand the legions of paper-shuffling bureaucrats, all of them plugged in to the middle-class conformity emanating from the TV monitor. Overhead, the sun that shines on all breathes out a banner held up by worker-angels, while a projector from the top of the tower spells out the title of the mural, "Labor Solidarity has no Borders," in English, Spanish, Korean and Farsi.

Clearly, Alewitz has drawn on the traditions of agitational propaganda (agitprop) popularized by countless workers' movements of the past. The influence of the Mexican muralists is self-evident.

His work is a frank admission that art— all art—takes sides. But he has also introduced many subtle references across space and time. He clothes his workers in modem garb: A woman in camouflage recalls the informal "uniform" of the Pittston miners during their militant 1989-90 strike, and the various headgear point up the multiethnic character of the working class.

Many of his figures reflect older sources. A female figure holding a jug comes from ancient Egypt: It is one of the earliest representations of labor in art. A male figure with a   basket   is   Gustave   Courbet's   painting “The Stone Breaker.”

A Sandinista woman spreading seed recalls Jean Francis Millet's painting '"The Sowers." while a man at the wheel restates a classic image by the Soviet photographer Rodchenko.

If the viewer seems to recognize Marx, Lenin, Malcolm X and Rosa Luxemburg in positions of prominent leadership, this is not unintended. The hovering cartoon angels are new versions of baroque cherubs; one, wearing glasses, and unmistakably Leon Trotsky, sends down an energetic blessing. The tower from which the workers flow is modeled after Tatlin's visionary project for a huge monument to the Third International in the early days of the Russian Revolution.

In a gesture of self-quotation, Alewitz has recreated his monster of imperialism from the "P-9 Mural" he painted in Austin, Minnesota in 1985 for Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, during the prolonged strike against Hormel. That mural, celebrated in song by folksinger Charlie King, was destroyed after only a few months when P-9 was taken into receivership by its international union.

Alewitz's mural is one of 15 commissioned through SPARC in its 1989-90 program of "Neighborhood Pride: Great Walls Unlimited." Funds for the project came from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, the Arco Foundation and the Hitachi Foundation. So far it has been well received in the South Central Los Angeles community, whose residents well understand its message.

Though the U.S.-Mexican border is the immediate reference, it is impossible to ignore the wider implications North and South, East and West. Labor solidarity must extend around the world. Indeed, as Alewitz has observed, "The future of the labor movement ultimately depends on how it relates to all the world's unorganized and undocumented workers. Will it champion the most oppressed sectors of society?"

The Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research is located at 6120 S. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, Calif. 90044; (213) 759-6063. Its hours are Tues.-Sat. 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

 

Socialists & Social-lites

alewitz/09

Socialists & Social-lites

It’s been over 100 days. I am now prepared to accept the apologies of those who worked to put Obama in the White House.

Remember your effusive praise, how you touted him as being different than Bush? You accused people of being a sectarian, and out of touch with reality, if they refused to vote for him.  You said he was leading a progressive movement - the beginning of a bright new era of politics.

You owe an apology to me and everyone else that spoke the truth about Obama. We said he would continue the Bush policies.  We told you so.

More importantly, you need to express remorse to the millions of working people in this country and around the world that you helped convince to vote for him.  Unlike you, they have nothing to apologize for. They made a mistake, but they did it for the right reasons - they hated what Bush stood for and wanted to express their solidarity as a class – they voted to reject war and racism.

They did not understand that the elections are a charade - but you did.

So let me make it clear who I am addressing this to: the union officials, peace activists, staff people for progressive organizations and others who have argued and fought against independent political action – all the longtime activists that have supported one lying, miserable Democratic politician after another as the lesser of two evils – Obama, Kerry, Clinton, Carter, Johnson, ad nausea.

I’ve now been listening to your equivocations and apologies for over 40 years. You cannot see beyond your own little milieu of self-absorbed radicals. You have learned nothing.

Let’s review what your man Obama has accomplished in his first hundred days: revived the military tribunals; refused to address himself to the don’t ask don’t tell policy; decided to keep prisoners in Guantánamo; maintained troops in Iraq; refused to release the pictures of torture; supported the Israeli devastation of Gaza; maintained the US embargo of Cuba; named Cheney’s chief interrogator to head up the war in Afghanistan; refused to bring criminal action against widespread torture; expanded the war in Afghanistan to bomb civilians in Pakistan; given hundreds of billions of dollars to his Wall Street backers; given billions of dollars to the auto industry as a reward for massive layoffs; indicated support for doctor’s refusing a women’s right to abortion.

And as a special bonus: preventive detention.

You groveled at the feet of the democrats, begging for the Employee Free Choice Act, (a wimpy substitute for organizing for working-class power) – he’s not even going to give you that. He’s not giving you a damn thing. Not even the jobs you coveted.

I’ve probably forgotten some of the rotten things he’s done, but this is just the first hundred days. Obama has years to promote the Bush program, which is and always has been, the program of the ruling class - regardless of who sits in the White House. Like we told you, time and again.

Obama has proven himself the faithful servant of imperialism. He was selected to derail the antiwar movement and stifle social unrest emerging from the economic crisis. And you wagged your little poodle tails and helped him herd workers off the streets and into the voting booth. You helped mislead millions of anti-war people into supporting a militarist president.  You covered up for him.  You apologized for him. You fawned over him and gushed over his election victory.

Obama is being loyal to the class he represents – the employers. Obama didn’t betray his class – you betrayed yours. Now you should stand up and take responsibility for your actions.

If you still support Obama, you are supporting the ruling class against your fellow workers. You cannot be a progressive for Obama. You can either be a progressive, or you can be for Obama.

Please don’t take this personally.  Some of you are friends. These comments are not directed at the many well-meaning people who got suckered in. They will learn from the experience and move on.

I’m talking about the pie-cards that have been hustling votes for the Democrats for years. I’m particularly talking about the most wretched, gutless, class collaborationist union bureaucracy that has ever existed. What a cesspool. At a time of growing economic crisis, when millions of workers would be willing to go into action and fight, you are hustling votes for the bosses and waging war with each other over dues money.

I’m not just referring to the millionaire pork-choppers like Stern, Gettlefinger, Wilhelm, etc  – I’m including all the thousands of cogs in the bloated bureaucratic machinery that justify, apologize for, or remain silent about this dues money feeding frenzy. I don’t care whether you’re a hardened business unionist that’s been sucking our blood for decades or a pretentious young nitwit that hires out to lead the poor workers - you should all be ashamed of yourselves.

Your behavior is a dishonor to the proud history of the militant working class of this country – to the women and men of the Knights of Labor, the IWW, the CIO, the anti-war GIs, the millions of undocumented workers that took to the streets in fearless action on Mayday just three years ago.

Any union staff person with an ounce of self-respect should get up from their desk right now and in a loud voice proclaim that you will no longer be a part of this travesty.  Tell them that you are no longer willing to participate in raiding operations and jurisdictional squabbles.  Tell them you are unwilling to impose contracts that sell out the next generations of workers.  Tell them that you are no longer going to crawl to the bosses offering concessions. Tell them you will not apologize for Obama and you will never, never, ever again support the candidates of the employers.

Then announce that you are going out to look for a job so you can help organize your class. If you do that, we would all be proud of you.

OK – so why my sudden outburst? After all, none of this is new. I guess the quantitative just became the qualitative. There was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the spark that led to this undisciplined outpouring and my years of self-control going down the tubes. This is what did it:

Basking in the glow of the ruling class electoral victory, some of you have begun to strut around, coming out as socialists. What’s more, having rediscovered socialism, you are redefining it.  We are being "re-imagined." Lucky us.

This is much like the European discovery of America. In both cases, there were indigenous people that had little in common with the recent arrivals. Many of us have been socialists all along and I can say without qualification: you are not one of us. If you support Obama you are not any kind of revolutionary - you can hardly be considered a reformer.  

You are not socialists; you are what I will call social-lites. Posers. Pretenders. 

The rapidity with which your leader has revealed his real agenda has put you in an awkward position. Having helped deliver the working class vote to the bosses, you will now try to pose as the socialist opposition to Obama. You’ll put on a Marxist patina to hide your rotten deeds. Being shrewd careerists, you’ll start back peddling, distancing yourself from Obama’s atrocities.  (Until you’re right back doing it again in the next elections.)

But we know what you are: frightened functionaries living off our labor. You didn’t believe us about Obama and you won’t believe me about this, but I’ll tell it plain: The workers that you have robbed and kept fettered in the face of the bosses offensive are going to rise up and roll right over you. When workers understand the depth of your duplicity, you are going to be booted so far that you will never be able to crawl back into your padded chairs.

Lest these words seem harsh, there is always room to change - it’s never to late.  Big fights are coming.  As the illusions in Obama disappear, there will be new upsurges in the anti-war movement, for immigrant rights and economic justice. We could use your help.

Break with Obama, apologize, promise not to do it again, and we will embrace you as comrades.

Otherwise, just get the fuck out of our way.

                                               

         - Mike Alewitz/ 5.23.9

 

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How to Tell Socialists from Social-lites:

I have composed the following guide to help recognize the difference between socialists and social-lites. (Not all of these characteristics may apply at all times.)

Social-lites get paid jobs with unions to organize workers; 

Socialists are workers that organize unions.

Social-lites work in industry for a couple of years and then spend the rest of their lives writing about it; 

Socialists work in industry their whole lives and then spend a couple years writing about it.

Social-lites have framed photos of themselves with Fidel Castro or Nelson Mandela; 

Socialists don’t need such photos.

Social-lites speak at movement banquets and leave to get some decent food; 

Socialists are glad to get some decent food at a banquet, despite having to listen to the boring social-lite.

Social-lites have titles that include the word executive;

Socialists have titles that include the word head.

Social-lites organize meetings that try to keep out the wackos, so things don’t get out of control; 

Socialists are the wackos.

Social-lites try to get arrested at demonstrations to display their militancy; 

Socialists try to stay out of jail so they won’t get fired.

Social-lites enjoy successful careers writing books or making art about workers; 

Socialists write leaflets and paint banners with workers.

Social-lites speak at rallies that they didn’t organize; 

Socialists organize rallies that they are not allowed to speak at.

Social-lites are invited to Danny Glover’s or Sean Penn’s for receptions; 

Socialists go door-to-door selling papers.

Social-lites spend time lobbying, urging diplomatic initiatives and promoting time schedules; 

Socialists stay in the streets and demand stuff now.

Social-lites support progressive legislation and courts; 

Socialists tear up injunctions.

Social-lites receive awards from groups because of their activism; 

Socialists get expelled from groups because of their activism.

Social-lites want to get the country back on track; 

Socialists want to make a revolution.

 

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I WAS A TEENAGE SUBVERSIVE

I WAS A TEENAGE SUBVERSIVE

 

(According to the FBI)

 

“...subject [Alewitz] has been a very disrupting factor and has contributed a great deal to the unrest on the KSU campus...subject has openly accused the United States of being an imperialist and racist nation and has advocated a socialist revolution in this country.”

 

 

Recently I received the first 1,033 pages of my FBI files.  Most of this is highly redacted (censored) material–information is blocked out that would actually reveal the secret methods and dirty tricks of the government. It is also safe to assume these thousand pages represent a fraction of what they actually possess.

 

Nonetheless, as I go through these documents, I will post some, in somewhat of a chronological order. Given the recent FBI attacks on antiwar activists, some people may find this of interest.

 

I will try to provide a sentence or two of background where it may be helpful. Please keep in mind that these are just a few initial pages.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

*  *  *  *

 

These are documents going back to my student activism at Kent State University.  I was 17 when I began at KSU in 1968 - a founder and chairman of the Kent Student Mobilization Committee Against the War in Vietnam and a member of the Young Socialist Alliance.  Attached are:

 

• Cover letter from J. Edger Hoover in 1970, characterizing me as a dangerous subversive

• Redacted list of FBI Informants

• Memo noting my arrest on May 4, 1970, and that my mother had formerly been associated with the very dangerous Cleveland Jewish Folk Chorus.

• A list of meetings and activities that I attended at Kent as reported by various unidentified FBI informants

• A flyer from the committee of Kent State Massacre Witnesses that was distributed widely to the national antiwar movement

• A memo noting my disruptive behavior

• An article from the Daily Kent Stater newspaper reporting my announcement as the Socialist candidate for student body President.

• Memos on other activities including the national emergency demonstration in Washington DC on May 9, 1970, announcing that I would be speaking at the rally

• More uninformed, confused reports by snitches, including comments on my location and the ominous notation that my grandparents had been born in Russia (a genetic connection?)

• A mischaracterization of the Student Mobilization Committee as a communist front organization. The SMC was in fact the largest antiwar group at Kent State University and mobilized thousands of students in antiwar activities.

I WAS A TEENAGE SUBVERSIVE (According to the FBI)

I WAS A TEENAGE SUBVERSIVE

(According to the FBI)

“...subject [Alewitz] has been a very disrupting factor and has contributed a great deal to the unrest on the KSU campus...subject has openly accused the United States of being an imperialist and racist nation and has advocated a socialist revolution in this country.”

Recently I received the first 1,033 pages of my FBI files.  Most of this is highly redacted (censored) material–information is blocked out that would actually reveal the secret methods and dirty tricks of the government. It is also safe to assume these thousand pages represent a fraction of what they actually possess.

Nonetheless, as I go through these documents, I will post some, in somewhat of a chronological order. Given the recent FBI attacks on antiwar activists, some people may find this of interest.

I will try to provide a sentence or two of background where it may be helpful. Please keep in mind that these are just a few initial pages.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

*  *  *  *

These are documents going back to my student activism at Kent State University.  I was 17 when I began at KSU in 1968 - a founder and chairman of the Kent Student Mobilization Committee Against the War in Vietnam and a member of the Young Socialist Alliance.  Attached are:

• ·       Cover letter from J. Edger Hoover in 1970, characterizing me as a dangerous subversive

• ·       Redacted list of FBI Informants

• ·       Memo noting my arrest on May 4, 1970, and that my mother had formerly been associated with the very dangerous Cleveland Jewish Folk Chorus.

• ·       A list of meetings and activities that I attended at Kent as reported by various unidentified FBI informants

• ·       A flyer from the committee of Kent State Massacre Witnesses that was distributed widely to the national antiwar movement

• ·       A memo noting my disruptive behavior

• ·       An article from the Daily Kent Stater newspaper reporting my announcement as the Socialist candidate for student body President.

• ·       Memos on other activities including the national emergency demonstration in Washington DC on May 9, 1970, announcing that I would be speaking at the rally

• ·       More uninformed, confused reports by snitches, including comments on my location and the ominous notation that my grandparents had been born in Russia (a genetic connection?)

• ·      A mischaracterization of the Student Mobilization Committee as a communist front organization. The SMC was in fact the largest antiwar group at Kent State University and mobilized thousands of students in antiwar activities.

Malcolm X Inter/Nationalist

MALCOLM X - May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965

Malcolm X Inter/Nationalist 

Ardoyne, Belfast, Northern Ireland/ 2002 
by Mike Alewitz


The Ardoyne area had been the flash point of struggle against racist loyalist mobs that have come out to protest the right of Catholic children to attend Holy Cross School. It has been called "the Little Rock of Northern Ireland." The mural was an effort to give expression to the idea of a working-class solidarity that transcends national borders. I chose Malcolm X as the central image, because he was a nationalist who understood that we also had to build an international movement to transform society.


In a shameful and criminal act, the mural of our martyred revolutionary leader was painted over by Sinn Fein at a time when they were attempting to reach an accommodation with Loyalist and the British occupation forces. The action of Sinn Fein is no different than if they had painted over a tribute to Bobby Sands.

Malcolm X speaks to North Belfast
BY LAURA FRIEL
An Phoblacht/Republican News · Thursday 22 August 2002


Mike Alewitz of the American based Labour Art and Mural Project has travelled the world bringing his street paintings of working class issues to countries as diverse as Iraq and Germany. 


Inspired by the images of Holy Cross, this summer Mike came to North Belfast to share his visual message of international solidarity and struggle with the people of Ardoyne.


As a political muralist Mike has a formidable reputation both within the USA and internationally. His most famous work, the Pathfinder mural in New York, reproduced on numerous posters and book covers, has become an image instantly recognisable in many countries throughout the world. [Later mutilated and destroyed by the US Socialist Workers Party - ma]


Denied expression in most mainstream mediums, Mike sees mural art as an important mechanism through which working people can address political and economic marginalisation.


"It's working people talking to the world," says Mike. The main focus of Mike's art has been the depiction of labour issues and union struggles but for North Belfast he chose Malcolm X as his theme for the mural.


"Malcolm X was the greatest voice of Black nationalism," says Mike, "but he was also an internationalist. He understood the interconnection between nationalism and internationalism. I hope that the imagery will encourage people to read Malcolm X not just as an American leader but as a World leader."


But Mike has already been pleasantly surprised by how many ordinary people in North Belfast recognise the image. "People here already know who Malcolm X is," says Mike, "I guess that's a reflection of the level of politicisation within these communities."


The mural also includes images of Holy Cross and Little Rock. "Television footage of the children of Holy Cross being attacked as they made their way to school immediately reminded me of the image of children being confronted by an angry mob in Arkansas," says Mike.


US President George Bush and British PM Tony Blair are also included in the mural as a couple of poodles. "I would like to take the opportunity to denounce the criminal activities of the US and Israeli government against the people of Palestine," says Mike.


Despite being sympathetic to the struggle for freedom and justice in the north of Ireland, this is the first time Mike has actually visited here to witness the ongoing problems of ordinary communities like Ardoyne,


"I didn't realise the level of segregation and victimisation," says Mike, "or the ongoing level of violence being endured by people within this community."


Mike Alewitz is travelling home from Belfast this week but his mural will ensure that while he may have gone, he will not be forgotten. And he promises to visit again.

______________________________

US Artist Inspires New Street Art
Irish News
(20/08/2002)
By Judith Maas


AN American artist has drawn on the history of the United States civil rights movement to inspire a new Belfast mural.


Mike Alewitz has painted murals around the world and lectures on the subject in a US university, and yesterday he brought his talents to Northern Ireland.


Belfast artists invited Mr. Alewitz to join them in the city and offered him the chance to create a new mural for the Ardoyne area of north Belfast.


Being free to choose his own topic, Mr. Alewitz dedicated a wall in Havana Walk to black power leader Malcolm X.


"Malcolm X was the greatest voice of black nationalism and also of black internationalism. He saw the black struggle in the context of the working class struggle," he said.


"There is something to be learnt from that. I am not here to explain the Irish struggle, but there is the fact that the American civil rights movement was able to convince white working class people of their rights.


"The images of Holy Cross children are similar to the children of the civil rights movement. They were faced with similar problems."


He argued against seeing the Troubles as a religious conflict and called for working class unity.


"It seems that the struggle is between Catholics and Protestants, but that is not true. The struggle is two-fold. There is a struggle to unite Ireland. All you have to do is to take a look at the map to see why," he said.


"Secondly, it is a struggle of the working class. Unification wouldn't solve problems of education, unemployment and poverty."


Malcolm X, who was murdered in 1965, is depicted in a 3 metre high portrait. To his left and right there are corpses painted in orange and green.


"Do you see the green and orange corpses in the painting? The only ones that gain here are the capitalists," he said.


Dogs shown being walked by two pigs depict US President Bush and British Prime Minister Blair, he explained. He said it was reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm.


"Orwell didn't have confidence in the working class. I would be more positive. I have seen people change," said the muralist, whose work features in a recently published book Insurgent Images: The Murals of Mike Alewitz.


Mr Alewitz will discuss his work in a slide show at 8pm tonight in An Chulturlann on the Falls Road. Entrance is free.