Boris Kagarlitsky: ‘Do not include me in any prisoner exchange lists!’

By Boris Kagarlitsky

Published 17 November, 2024

Translation by Dmitry Pozhidaev for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

Recently, discussions about another exchange have intensified.

It is still unclear who Russian political prisoners are to be exchanged for, but there is already an active debate over who should be included in the prisoner exchange lists and who should not. I have stated several times, and I will repeat it once again, that I do not wish to participate in such exchanges and ask not to be included in these lists. I see no sense or benefit in emigrating. If I wanted to leave the country, I would have done so myself. But I have no intention of leaving my homeland, and if staying means being in prison, then I will stay in prison. After all, imprisonment is a normal professional risk for a left-wing politician or social scientist in Russia, one that must be accepted when choosing this path. It is like being a firefighter or a rescuer — just part of the job, which I have done and will continue to strive to do as conscientiously as possible.

Since ancient times, exiling dissident citizens has been a form of political repression. And if we are fighting for freedom, then such repression, even in this softer form, must be condemned. Political prisoners must be fully freed — all of them — and in their homeland.

It is said that some participants in the previous exchange were taken out of Russia without their consent. I do not know what truly happened, but I want to make it clear: if anything like that is attempted with me, I will consider it an act of kidnapping. I will file a lawsuit against any foreign government as accomplices to this crime if they attempt to accept me against my will.

I am grateful to my family for their support and understanding, as well as to the many people who have written to express their approval of my decision. But this is not just about me. There are broader issues that need to be addressed.

There is a danger in replacing the fight for the complete release of all political prisoners (which would not only be a humane act but also a step toward transforming the moral climate in the country) with the compilation of exchange lists aimed at freeing a few dozen relatively well-known individuals, while hundreds or even thousands of other prisoners of conscience remain behind bars. Moreover, those compiling the lists take it upon themselves to decide who will walk free and who will stay in prison. This is unjust and undemocratic, contradicting the very principles for which we make sacrifices. The only correct demand is the release of all participants in non-violent political protests and all those arrested for exercising their constitutional right to criticise the authorities' decisions.

There is another important factor that must not be forgotten. Political prisoners are not only a reality in Russia. Everything happening to us carries global significance. If dictators worldwide realise that political prisoners are a valuable resource that can be successfully exchanged or sold, they will work to increase their “exchange fund”. They will imprison even more people. Meanwhile, the goal must be to make it unprofitable for states to have political prisoners, ensuring that repression becomes too costly for ruling circles. This was the case in the late 20th century, when democratisation processes unfolded not only in the former Soviet bloc countries but also in other regions of the world. We know that this democratisation was extremely superficial and did not challenge the dominant position of the elites. Nevertheless, it was a step forward. Now, we are witnessing a reversal of these processes everywhere. This is precisely why it is crucial to fight not for the release of individual high-profile political prisoners but for an end to political repression as such.

Of course, there are different situations, and in some cases, exchange is the only available means to save a person. The conditions under which political prisoners are held vary widely. I am well aware that my situation is far from the worst in comparison. For this reason, I do not presume to decide for others or present my personal opinion as a universal principle. However, I would recommend, first, that those political prisoners who have the physical and moral strength to continue the struggle refuse to participate in exchanges. Second, I ask the organisers of exchanges and those compiling lists to include only those prisoners who have explicitly agreed to accept freedom at the cost of being exiled from the country.

In conclusion, I will say: whatever choice we make, we must never forget that our goal is freedom and rights for everyone — not only for those behind bars but for those subjected to other forms of oppression in Russia and around the world.

The Trump effect

By Boris Kagarlitsky

Published 17 November, 2024

First published in Russian at Rabkor. Translation by Dmitry Pozhidaev for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

Alas, I must begin this article with inevitable self-criticism. When the Democrats in the United States replaced the ageing [President Joseph] Biden with the youthful and elegant Kamala Harris, I, like many others, concluded that the return of Donald Trump to the White House could be prevented. Of course, I can now justify myself by pointing out that, being in prison, I did not have sufficient access to current information and could not follow all the twists and turns of the electoral race.

However, the problem is much deeper. I underestimated the scale of bureaucratic inertia among the “reasonable” camp (Democrats, liberals, leftists and all those who know for sure that the Earth is round and that humans evolved from ancient primates), as well as the degree of demoralisation and demobilisation among the masses, tired of two decades of empty politically correct chatter. I thought that the looming real threat would force the political apparatus to mobilise beyond the usual electoral measures and that the masses, dissatisfied with the current state of affairs but unwilling to return to the past, would awaken from apathy. The election results show that the mere threat of a reactionary turn was not enough. Liberals and liberal leftists are now doomed to reap the fruits of their catastrophic policies, the dire consequences of which many have already written about — from Thomas Frank to the author of these lines. But importantly, this will affect not only the United States but the entire world.

What has changed since 2016?

But is the danger really that great? After all, Trump was already in power from 2016 to 2020, and nothing terrible happened. Strictly speaking, nothing happened at all. Even the promised wall along the Mexican border was not built. But the fact is that over the past 4-5 years, the political situation has changed not only in the United States but worldwide, including in Russia.

In 2016, it was possible to gloat over Trump’s victory: “These are the worthy fruits of their wickedness.”1 The Democratic Party apparatus, through manipulation and falsification, suppressed the activists’ rebellion, eliminated the threat of a “left turn”, and derailed Bernie Sanders’ candidacy, ultimately resulting in Trump in the White House. Moreover, many disgruntled Sanders voters supported Trump back then. A millionaire from New York played the role of a protest candidate for the people, partly in spite of his own views and plans.

If you think the same thing happened in 2024, you are deeply mistaken.

Over the years, a revanchist coalition has formed around Trump, uniting all varieties and sorts of reactionary forces that seemed to have been rejected by the history of the 19th and 20th centuries. From opponents of revolutionary theory to provincial isolationists who believe that the US entry into the war against [Adolf] Hitler was a fatal mistake. The inertia of the protest that arose in 2016 has been successfully exploited by Trumpists, but the social program the winners are preparing to implement will primarily harm those who voted for the jovial Donald. It must be admitted that the US’s incomplete and chaotically constructed social policies are inadequate, but dismantling them will make the situation even worse. The hardworking “rednecks” who believe they can achieve anything through their labour, will soon feel the consequences of their choice.

What does this mean for us?

If Russian officials and propagandists who praised Trump hope he will solve their problems (primarily concerning Ukraine), they are, of course, mistaken. Trump’s isolationism (and that of his business colleagues), combined with his manic drive to start a major trade war with China, promises Russia nothing good. Since Russia cannot be a US ally in this trade war, it will inevitably become an adversary.2 This means seeking partners not only in China but also in Western Europe, with which Moscow (unlike Beijing) has burned its bridges. However, regardless of how international events unfold, the Russian bureaucracy is tempted to freeze decision-making until spring 2025, when the new administration in Washington will finally take office. It is clear that during this time, domestic affairs will become even more entangled, and contradictions will deepen.

What could counteract this situation?

First, the worsening of economic problems and rising inflation, which the Central Bank is trying to curb by raising the key interest rate to an exorbitant 23–25%, stifling demand in non-military sectors.3

Second, pressure from “brotherly China” that, on the eve of a potential trade war with the US and the loss of part of the US market, is particularly interested in resuming railway transit of its goods to Europe via Russia and Ukraine. This means inevitable “coercion to peace” by Chinese 
“brothers”.

Finally, third, the sharpness of contradictions within the Russian elite itself. These contradictions are accumulating and intensifying, without resolution. Moreover, they concern far more than just foreign policy.

What does this mean for the future?

In 2016, both the liberal establishment and liberal left received a very serious lesson. But they did not learn from it. Worse, they doubled down on implementing principles of political correctness against the backdrop of dismantling the welfare state and pursuing market reforms. The result has been an objective intensification of class contradictions, with no political representation for the interests of the lower classes. This gap made it possible for the growth of right-wing populism, exploiting mass discontent but directing it not against dominant economic interests, but against ethnic minorities, liberal intellectuals, external enemies, and so on. Of course, there is nothing new here. This is exactly how fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany ran their campaigns in the 1920s — and successfully so. But there are two significant differences.

The first is that in the 1920s, there was a strong leftist movement represented by Communists and social democrats. Yes, they quarrelled and obstructed each other. But they were strong and popular. Today, no such movement exists.

The second difference is that in the 1930s, the far right managed to implement a program of regulating capitalism. Now, however, their program boils down to economic protectionism combined with creating a “free market for their own”. At best, they might remove cheap migrant labour from the workforce and close markets to cheap Asian goods. Such a program will not work.

The paradox is that Trumpist economic policy is likely to destabilise global and US capitalism. Theoretically, this (along with the demoralisation of the left and classic liberals) potentially creates space for new class-based left forces. But potential and realisation are two different things. And let us not forget the prophecy of the Strugatsky brothers: “After the grey ones come the black ones.”4 If the political vacuum representing the working majority is not filled by an adequate leftist force, the consequences will be tragic.

And if anyone thinks “the worse, the better,” they are also mistaken. Recall the slogan of the German Communists in 1932: “Lass Hitler kommen, nach kommen wir” (“Let Hitler come, we will come after”). Unfortunately, the price of such illusions can be unbearably high.

• 1

  “These are the worthy fruits of their wickedness” (original: «Вот злонравия достойные плоды») is a quote from the 18th-century comedy The Minor (Недоросль) by Russian playwright Denis Fonvizin. It is spoken by one of the characters to describe the brutish selfishness and crudeness of the poorly educated minor from the country gentry, who mistreats his parents — a consequence of their own wickedness in raising him.

• 2

  Kagarlitsky analyses Russia’s limited political options, given the irreconcilable positions of the US and China, in his previous interview on LINKS Boris Kagarlitsky on the US elections, Trump, peace talks and prospects for world war. There he argues that any rapprochement with the US would require one very important condition: that Russia become a key US ally in the fight against China. But for the Russian economy, which has grown increasingly dependent on China, a pivot to the West would be catastrophic, economically and geopolitically.

• 3

  Kagarlitsky refers to the decision of Russia’s central bank in October to raise the key rate to 21% to rein in higher-than-forecast inflation. The economic community agrees that the rate is likely to be raised again in the near future.

• 4

  The quote is from the Strugatsky brothers’ novel Hard to Be a God (Трудно быть богом): «Там, где торжествует серость, к власти всегда приходят черные», which translates to: “Where mediocrity triumphs, the blacks always come to power.” In the novel, “greyness” symbolises mediocrity and complacency, while “the blacks” refers to a fictional clerical reactionary order that established a brutal dictatorship characterised by mass murders and pillaging.

 

Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers Program is a Massive Violation of Human Rights

by Owen Schalk / November 16th, 2024

On August 11, 2022, workers in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) penned an open letter about their experiences in the program. “As it currently stands,” they wrote, “the [SAWP] is systematic slavery.” The article was written by Jamaican workers, but they asserted that migrants of other nationalities had faced similarly dehumanizing experiences. “It feels like we’re in prison,” they continued. “[Bosses] physically intimidate us, destroy our personal property, and threaten to send us home.” Workers were “treated like mules” by unaccountable companies that the Canadian government had empowered to repress migrant workers’ labour rights and political voice.

The SAWP was created in 1966, a time of labour militancy for much of the Canadian working class – in fact, in the mid-1960s, Canadian workers were striking more than one thousand times per year. The SAWP, which allows Canadian businesses to employ workers from Mexico and the Caribbean on temporary visas, provided Canadian companies with workers who existed in a more precarious position than Canadian employees. Therefore, they were less likely to cause labour disruptions.

From the very start, workers in the SAWP resisted their dehumanization and exploitation. In 1966, a group of Jamaican workers refused to work on Saturday, the Sabbath day of the Seventh-day Adventist faith. One year later, Trinidadian workers engaged in wildcat strikes, hoping to pressure their employer to rectify their poor working conditions and unequal pay between Canadian and Caribbean employees.

Gabriel Allahdua, whose 2023 book Harvesting Freedom is the first published account of the life of a migrant farm worker in Canada’s SAWP program, wrote: “I began to notice the echoes of slavery, indentured labour, and colonialism in my experiences as a migrant farm worker.”

Ottawa launched the SAWP at the same time that Canadian capital was globalizing. While Ottawa was promoting Canadian investments around the world, the Canadian government also spent money in nations like Allahdua’s home country, St. Lucia, to persuade workers into joining the SAWP. Workers were presented with a rosy, misleading notion of Canada’s government and society, bolstered by Ottawa’s funding of education initiatives overseas. With this hopeful image of Canada in their minds, many workers initially felt privileged to join the SAWP. However, even for those who were optimistic about their lives in Canada, there were often early warning signs. Allahdua himself noted that, in the early 1990s, the Canadian government was funding unpopular resource extraction projects in the region. “This was an early red flag about Canada for me,” he wrote.

When Allahdua arrived in Leamington, Ontario, the greenhouse and migrant worker capital of Canada, his preconceptions about the country were “completely shattered.” His employer worked him for fourteen hours or more each day, and there were no mandated breaks. It was, to use Allahdua’s word, an “authoritarian” system. According to Canadian law, migrant workers were not entitled to the following: “daily and weekly limits on hours of work; daily rest periods; time off between shifts; weekly/bi-weekly rest periods; eating periods; overtime pay.” At the same time, companies exercised total surveillance over workers’ lives. All activities were logged so the bosses could track workers’ movements; meanwhile, employers flaunted their power over workers, openly telling Allahdua and his fellow migrant workers “If you only knew how much money I’m making off you” and “We own you all.”

When workers tried to unionize, they were fired, as Allahdua observed when a group of Mexicans who tried to unionize were simply replaced with Guatemalans. “The element of fear is built into the SAWP and serves as a powerful tool for employers,” writes Allahdua. “A populace in fear cannot fight back.”

As Edward Dunsworth explains in his introduction to Allahdua’s book:

…workers in the SAWP are tied to a single employer, unable to freely choose or change who they work for. Those employers wield an immense amount of power over workers, and not only during the workday. Workers live in employer-provided housing, and they often find their social and private lives – where they go, who visits the bunkhouse, and so on – monitored and controlled by their bosses…A further disincentive against rocking the boat is the fact that employers enjoy essentially free rein to fire workers and send them back to their home countries should they be dissatisfied with them in any way. In the SAWP, then, farmers are not only participants’ employers, but also their landlords and immigration agents.

Effectively, the Canadian government has stripped an entire population of their labour and political rights in order to benefit Canadian businesses.

In addition to dehumanizing the migrant workforce, the SAWP is useful to Canadian capital because it suppresses wages. A 2014 study from the C.D. Howe Institute admits as much: “The goal of a temporary foreign worker (TFW) program is to accommodate shortages of labour that otherwise would cause wages to rise substantially or possibly stop production because of the difficulty of finding resident workers.” A 2012 analysis of Canada’s migrant labour regime also notes that the program “has the broader function of regulating labour supply in a fashion optimal for employer bargaining power.” In other words, it serves companies’ profitability by attacking the rights of workers.

“From the standpoint of capital,” write professors Geoffrey McCormack and Thom Workman in The Servant State: Overseeing Capital Accumulation in Canada, “migrant workers make the perfect worker: obedient, non-confrontational, cheap, unlikely to organize a union…”

Alone in a foreign country, Allahdua and his coworkers lived in low-quality company housing in which visitors were not allowed. Many of his fellow migrant labourers had low literacy rates and did not understand the contracts they had signed. “The program is calling for people of colour,” writes Allahdua.

The program is calling for people who are illiterate, or who are struggling with English, or who have English as a second language. The program is calling for people who are largely ignorant about labour issues and human rights issues. These are the kinds of people that the program is really calling for – people who are easily exploited. To me, this was the slavery and colonial handbook being used in modern Canada…So many of these [injustices] make me think about the conditions of enslaved Africans during the colonial period in the Caribbean (and elsewhere) and of the indentured labourers who came afterwards.

In 2022, the Canadian Migrant Workers Centre interviewed 30 migrant labourers who had fled their workplaces. The results show that racism and abuse are ingrained in the everyday functioning of Canada’s migrant labour system.

29 [of the 30] had experienced financial abuse. This came in the form of unpaid wages, unpaid overtime, excessive hours, forced return of wages to the employer, and extortionate recruitment fees. Seventy percent of the workers experienced employers who were verbally and psychologically abusive. They had faced verbal insults, threats of deportation, and/or racist and discriminatory remarks. Thirty percent of the workers experienced physical abuse by their employer, and 10% experienced sexual abuse.

A United Nations report released in 2024 accused Canada of relying on modern-day slavery. Released by UN investigator Tomoya Obokata, the report notes that Canada’s foreign worker program is a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” In researching the report, Tomoya investigated working conditions in Ottawa, Moncton, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. According to the UN’s findings, Canada’s migrant labour regime “institutionalizes asymmetries of power that favour employers and prevent workers from exercising their rights.”

One year prior to being accused of contemporary slavery, the Canadian government approved the hiring of 239,646 temporary foreign workers, more than double the 2018 total. Despite global condemnation, Canada has continued to impose “contemporary slavery” on migrant workers so Canadian companies can increase their profits. Many employers now use temporary workers as a permanent labour supply.

By promoting neoliberal policies and imperialist interventions abroad, Canadian foreign policy helps create the conditions that force citizens of the Global South to migrate to Canada, where many are deprived of their rights so that Canadian companies can profit. Ottawa’s globalization agenda, aimed at promoting Canadian profits abroad and restricting foreign states’ ability to rein in capital, “directly feeds into the displacement of workers from their countries of origin – and their subsequent migration to countries like Canada,” as Amanda Aziz of the Migrant Workers Centre writes.

When migrant workers displaced by globalization organize to improve their pay and working conditions in Canada, they are often abused, fired, and deported, as many personal testimonies reveal. This needs to change. Canadians must organize to dismantle the system of “contemporary slavery” that our leaders have allowed to grow, in spite of UN warnings, on behalf of Canadian businesses.

Owen Schalk is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, among them two books on Canadian foreign policy. Among many other writing credits, he is a columnist at Canadian Dimension magazine. Read other articles by Owen.

 

Losing Honestly and Gracefully

by Robert Jensen / November 16th, 2024

After election defeats, political writers are quick to explain that if only the politicians had read my book and followed my advice, things would have been different for our side.

My pitch is a bit different. Please read It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics, but not for a winning electoral strategy.

If candidates opposed to reactionary authoritarian nationalism had advocated the positions I endorse, Trump and like-minded Republicans still would have won control of all three branches of the US government. But at least Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party, and activists further left (the category I put myself in) would have lost gracefully by being more honest.

The book starts with an analysis of contemporary intellectual culture (defined in a non-snobby way, not just people with advanced degrees but the way we think together) before taking on three hot-button topics in today’s politics—race and white supremacy, sex/gender and the trans movement, and the economic implications of an ecological worldview.

On race: I don’t hesitate to criticize the jargon and haughtiness of some anti-racist activists and acknowledge the failures of many institutionalized DEI programs, arguments that may have resonated with some white folks who voted for Trump. But I also argue that the United States remains a white-supremacist culture and that we white people have an obligation to change. Such “messaging” wouldn’t have won Democrats many white votes.

On sex/gender: Mainstream feminism in the United States has gone all-in on the demands of the trans movement, even though that movement has never offered a coherent account of transgenderism. The Republicans exploited that incoherence effectively. For a decade, I have articulated a feminist challenge to transgender ideology, a position that would have made the Democrats a more credible voice for women’s rights. But because my analysis is rooted in a radical feminist critique of institutionalized male dominance, it’s bound to scare away many conservative voters.

On environmentalism: Almost without exception, politicians on all sides advocate economic growth. The debate is usually about which policies are likely to be more effective. When population comes up in the United States, the most common concern is falling birthrates, not the problem of overpopulation. I argue that human survival depends on “fewer and less”—a dramatic reduction in the population and a dramatic reduction in aggregate consumption, with steps taken to ensure a fairer distribution of wealth. I know of no politician from any party who faces the reality that the human future—if there is to be a human future—depends on our ability to shrink the economy, not expand it.

I realize that my race and sex/gender arguments are radioactive in some circles, and that demanding an ecological reckoning guarantees being ignored by most everyone in the mainstream. If unsuccessful center/liberal/left candidates had embraced these positions, they likely would have lost by larger margins than they did. But at least they would have lost gracefully, making principled arguments that may not carry the day politically but offer a model for honestly engaging difficult questions.

If I can’t promise electoral success in the short term, why should anyone bother with these critical perspectives? That’s a reasonable question, given that electoral success matters. I don’t believe that any of today’s politicians are going to magically solve our problems, but which politicians are setting policy today can either reduce the chances of a decent human future or carve out some space for hope.

My only answer: Responses I have received to the book tell me that there are people—not a majority, not even a significant minority right now—who are facing tough questions and want a space to explore this kind of politics without fear of being baited or insulted. It’s possible that from that small group, a more honest and graceful politics is possible.

Robert Jensen, an Emeritus Professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics from Olive Branch Press. His previous book, co-written with Wes Jackson, was An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. To subscribe to his mailing list, go to http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html. Read other articles by Robert.

 

Expanding the Possible, from Below

by Alexandria Shaner / November 16th, 2024

The Green New Deal has been largely blocked at the national level, but it is thriving in communities, cities, and states. Jeremy Brecher’s new book is both an urgent call to action and proof of concept.

Starting where we’re at

Less than one week after Trump was re-elected to the single most powerful political office in the world, it seems like a horrible time to release a book about the Green New Deal.

Thinking back to 2018, not so long ago in time but perhaps much longer in space, to when the Green New Deal was launched into public attention as a bold proposal for transformative national legislation, is frankly, beyond depressing. Loss, grief and rage compete with numbness and shock, easily overwhelming any effort to fathom where we were then, and where we find ourselves now.

But this is not a depressing story. We have no time for that now.

This is a story, a true story, about expanding the sense of what is possible and thereby expanding the actual limits of the possible. It is about shifting the balance of power and expanding democracy – what could be more right, right now? This story weaves once strange and wary bedfellows into a surprising sort of magical fabric, capable of keeping us safe as we pull the rug from under kings. This is the view from below.

What makes a Green New Dealer?

Jeremy Brecher’s new book, The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy, is a timely and important contribution for organizers and anyone thinking about rebuilding the world from the bottom up.

Drawing on decades of hands-on experience at the intersections of environmental, labor, and justice movements, Brecher offers an overview of Green New Deal from Below initiatives across various sectors and locations, highlighting a diverse array of programs already in progress or under development. The initiatives shared by Green New Dealers are intended to inspire countless more projects, which can serve as the foundation for local, national, and even global mobilization and reconstruction – even, and perhaps especially in times when national legislation cannot be relied upon.

Brecher begins with questions, “Is [the Green New Deal from Below] a brilliant flame that may simply burn out? Will it continue as a force, but not a decisive element in a society and world hurtling toward midnight? Or will it prove to be the start of a turn away from catastrophe and toward security and justice? The answer will largely depend on what people decide to do with the possibilities [it] opens up” (10).

The Green New Deal is a visionary program designed to protect the earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. Like The New Deal of the 1930s, the Green New Deal is not a single program or piece of legislation – rather, according to Brecher, it exhibits many of the traits of a social movement. “[The New Deal] was a whole era of turmoil in which contesting forces tried to address a devastating crisis and shape the future of American society. In addition to its famous “alphabet soup” of federal agencies, the New Deal was part of a broader process of social change that included experimentation at the state, regional, and local levels; organization among labor, the unemployed, urban residents, the elderly, and other grassroots constituencies; and lively debate on future possibilities that went far beyond the policies actually adopted” (12). While the New Deal certainly had its limitations in terms of racial and gender justice, it was this unifying and expansive vision that set it apart as a cohesive and immensely transformative program.

From its outset, the core principle of the Green New Deal has been and remains, “to unite the necessity for climate protection with the goals of full employment and social justice” (11). In other words, not only does the GND provide a unifying vision that aligns environmental, labor, and justice movements together in the pursuit of mutual aims, it weaves constituencies and communities into transformative power blocs, greater than the sum of their parts.

Though the GND has so far been consistently blocked and largely coopted at the national level by the fossil fuel lobby, and by corporate interests antagonistic to its inherent socialist implications, a lesser-known wave of initiatives has also emerged. Driven by community groups, unions, city and state governments, tribes, students, and other nonfederal actors, all aimed at advancing the climate protection, economic and social justice objectives of the Green New Deal, this grassroots movement can be recognized as “a Green New Deal from Below.”

“So far, these forces have managed to block the Green New Deal at a national level. The strategy of the Green New Deal from Below is to outflank them” (174). Brecher warns against mistaking the Green New Deal from Below movement for an unrelated collection of isolated or even of loosely related interventions – that would be to miss the forest for the trees, or as Brecher describes it, that would be like describing a collection of lecture halls, library, stadium, cafeteria, and dorms but failing to recognize the university.

The type of vision fueled and integrative coalition building exemplified by diverse Green New Dealers has major potential for mass member organizing, shifting power, expanding democracy, and could provide the way forward from our current predicament, shoved between a neoliberal heat-rock and a cold, hard fascist place.

How to Green New Deal from Below

Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez, who has introduced a motion to create a new city office to support workers transitioning out of jobs affected by new technology, including those in the oil and gas industry, summed it up well: the city cannot “correct the sins of environmental racism” by “taking away jobs from working-class communities” (108).

The core idea behind Green New Deal from Below initiatives is to address the urgent need for climate protection while also meeting the needs of working people and marginalized communities, an approach that moves beyond fragmented policies to a comprehensive set of strategies for social change. It integrates climate protection with the creation of good jobs and tackles the disproportionate concentration of carbon pollution, such as from fossil fuel plants, in low-income communities of color. This policy integration is reflected in the collaboration of previously separate or opposing constituencies. “When once-divided groups reach out to each other, explore common needs and interests, and start cooperating for common objectives they thereby create new forms of social action. That is the process that [Brecher has] called the emergence of “common preservation”” (180).

The initiatives described by Brecher are largely driven by such coalitions of diverse groups working toward shared goals, often including neighborhood organizations, unions, racial and ethnic justice groups, political leaders, government officials, youth and senior organizations, religious congregations, and climate justice advocates. Chapters 1-4 provide detailed but highly accessible examples of such initiatives, including candid debriefs that don’t shy away from exploring lessons learned from mistakes, at the community, municipal, and state levels.

One particularly potent lesson, gleaned through numerous campaigns, relates to tensions that can arise between environmental and labor protections. Historically and now, climate protection policies have often been viewed as a threat to workers and communities reliant on the fossil fuel economy. This perception generates opposition to climate action, with certain communities and worker groups highlighted as “poster children” for the negative impacts of such policies, leading to the widely framed “environment vs. jobs” debate, fueling conflict between environmentalists and organized labor, often amplified by fossil fuel interests.

Brecher lays out three key shifts in mindset that are beginning to offer an alternative to this polarization (147). First, many trade unionists have come to recognize that the transition to cleaner energy is inevitable, and that their members will be vulnerable unless policies are put in place to protect them. Second, climate advocates are realizing that their policies will face significant resistance unless they also address the needs of workers and communities that could be negatively impacted by these changes. Third, the core idea of the Green New Deal, that climate protection can be an opportunity to address inequality and injustice, opens up a broader vision for social change that transcends narrow interest group politics.

This “new thinking” often begins with specific interests but is increasingly fostering a broader awareness. Unions are recognizing the necessity of climate protection; environmentalists are acknowledging the importance of community well-being; and justice advocates see the potential for new coalitions to tackle long-standing inequities. “The result has been the development of coalitions among groups that had previously been at odds, lobbing virtual projectiles at each other from separate silos” (148).

Green New Deal from Below initiatives contrast sharply with dominant neoliberal public policies that prioritize private enterprise as the primary vehicle for achieving social goals and restrict government action to facilitating private wealth accumulation – or more simply, they intentionally break from the profit over people and planet model of business as usual. Green New Deal from Below programs emphasize public planning, investment, and strict criteria for achieving public objectives. Their implementation involves not just private corporations but also government-run programs, public banks, cooperatives, and other alternatives to profit-driven enterprises. Resources are often raised through strategies like pollution fees, taxes on large corporations, and uber-wealthy individual incomes.

The climate policies of Green New Deals from Below aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the pace required by climate science with a focus on proven strategies: expanding renewable energy, phasing out fossil fuels, decreasing energy demand by increasing energy efficiency and doing more with less through programs focused on public abundance, while rejecting more costly, risky and green-washed approaches like carbon capture, hydrogen blends with fossil fuels, and nuclear energy.

Brecher gets into detail via diverse examples of campaigns, direct actions, community and public projects, as well as overarching and particular strategies in chapters 5-11: Climate-Safe Energy Production, Negawatts (Efficiency and Managed Contractions), Fossil Fuel Phaseout, Transforming Transportation, Protecting Workers and Communities on the Ground, Just Transition in the States, and New Deal Jobs for the Future. This is a wealth of information in a highly accessible and actionable presentation – from the nitty gritty of organizing meetings and local bicycle lanes to very large-scale campaigns like public jobs guarantees.

Strategy from below

The Green New Deal from Below does not provide a strategy for total social transformation. “That would require transformation of the basic structures of the national and world order, including capitalism and the nation-state system. The Green New Deal from Below can be part of that more extensive process of change, but it cannot subsume it” (174).

The Green New Deal from Below is a hybrid movement that operates both inside and outside the dominant political system, including elected officials, party leaders, government bureaucrats, and electoral activists, as well as communities, ethnic groups, labor organizations, and other civil society groups. It pursues its goals through a mix of conventional political tactics, such as supporting candidates, lobbying for legislation, and public education, alongside direct-action methods, including occupying political offices, blocking fossil fuel pipelines, and supporting strikes aimed at a just transition to a climate-safe economy.

These initiatives strategically function both within, alongside, and in opposition to existing political institutions. Actions focus on tangible changes that directly improve people’s lives. Whether it’s shutting down a polluting coal plant in an asthma-ridden community or providing free transit or bicycles to young people, these initiatives aim to make a real difference. They also educate and inspire: free transit and bicycles not only reduce vehicle pollution but also allow young people to explore alternatives to car-dependent lifestyles.

Additionally, participation and justice are centered in practice. Actions are also almost always led by coalitions of diverse groups. For example, the Green New Deal for Education brings together teachers, school staff, students, parents, unions, and racial justice advocates to fight for investment in healthy schools free from fossil fuel pollution. Sate coalitions have united unions, climate-impacted communities, racial and ethnic justice groups, and climate advocates to push for legislation that phases out fossil fuels in ways that create good jobs, support community development, reduce environmental injustices, and build climate-friendly housing and transit.

Historical sociologist Michael Mann argues that new solutions to societal problems often arise from the overlooked spaces within existing power structures – what he calls the “interstices.” These gaps, often hidden from the mainstream, provide fertile ground for marginalized or seemingly powerless groups to propose alternatives to the status quo. This process is sometimes called the “Lilliput strategy,” where small, isolated efforts are linked to create larger systemic change. However, Brecher points out that this strategy is not without tension (169). It requires balancing the need for identity and independence within each group with the necessity of broader cooperation. The resulting tension can either lead to fragmentation or domination, but it can also spark a process of collaboration where the distinct needs and concerns of each group are incorporated into a larger, unified vision.

This dynamic is key to the development of the Green New Deal from Below. While recognizing the unique needs of different constituencies, advocates of the Green New Deal have worked to forge connections between diverse groups that have historically been at odds. A notable example mentioned previously is the collaboration between organized labor and environmentalists – two groups that have often been in conflict. Rather than forcing these groups to give up their individual identities, the Green New Deal offers a shared identity centered on common goals. The success of these coalitions depends on ensuring that all participants benefit from cooperation through policies that combine labor protections, environmental justice, and greenhouse gas reductions. However, Brecher warns that these coalitions are fragile and can falter if the priorities of key constituencies are not given adequate attention.

Ultimately, Green New Deal from Below actions seek to shift the balance of power away from fossil fuel polluters, exploitative corporations, and the wealthy elite, toward exploited workers, marginalized communities, and non-elite groups. At their heart, they aim to expand democracy, challenge the rise of autocracy and plutocracy, and ensure power is more equally distributed and accessible to all.

By helping to build organized constituencies and coalitions that serve as political foundations for broader Green New Deal campaigns, these projects also create institutional building blocks, from energy systems to transportation networks, that can become integral parts of the economic and social infrastructure of a larger Green New Deal. By engaging people in projects that reflect common interests and a shared vision, these initiatives help overcome divisions and contradictions that weaken popular movements. They also reduce the influence of anti–Green New Deal forces by dividing them, disorienting them, undermining their support base, and, at times, even winning them over.

Brecher’s presentation reveals that the fight for the Green New Deal is closely tied to the fight for democracy. These initiatives offer models for, and demonstrate the benefits of, popular democracy. Green New Deal from Below projects show that people can achieve tangible gains that improve their lives, building a base for the protection and expansion of democratic governance at every level, embodying local participatory democracy while also reinforcing representative democracy against the threat of fascism at the national level.

Local and state-level Green New Deal initiatives are therefore crucial for achieving both climate and justice goals. They help build momentum and power for a national Green New Deal and serve as testing grounds, offering a “proof of concept.” These building blocks, when linked, form a more effective Green New Deal with deep local roots. Programs “from below” can then connect with each other and align with national planning and investment. Some national proposals even outline policies to facilitate this coordination. While federal and global action are needed to fully realize Green New Deal goals, the movement is already taking shape at the local level.

Going further

Brecher cautions, that while the Green New Deal program is crucial and beneficial, it is not sufficient on its own to address the deeper structural issues of an unjust and self-destructive global order. There are also critiques outside the scope of this book which assert that even if the Green New Deal was adopted at the national level today, on its own, it doesn’t go far enough, fast enough on climate protection to avert devasting outcomes.

One of its strategic objectives must therefore be to pave the way for more radical and far-reaching forms of change. Indeed, an internationalist Global Green New Deal has begun to materialize – both “from below” and championed to various degrees by a few government and multinational formations. The key will be to continue to build and connect participatory, justice centered activity around the world in ever widening and deepening solidarity.

Today, we are living with a profound sense of urgency – the urgency of the climate crisis, as well as the urgency of those suffering and dying due to injustice. The original Green New Deal proposal responded to this by calling for a ten-year mobilization aimed at transforming American society and economy as dramatically as the New Deal and the wartime mobilization during World War II. “The Green New Deal arose in a sea of hopelessness and despair. It pointed the way toward viable alternatives to the realities that evoked that hopelessness and despair. The Green New Deal from Below provides people with a way to start building those alternatives day by day, where they live and work” (180).

Seven years later, a recent headline from New Scientist reads: “The 1.5°C target is dead, but climate action needn’t be”. For the first time, climate scientists have explicitly said it will be impossible to limit peak warming to 1.5°C. Our focus must be on taking real action, like the initiatives Brecher has laid out and like many others around the world, not on meaningless platitudes and slogans like “Keep 1.5°C alive” or vague promises of “net-zero”.

At the outset of the book, Brecher cites the world historian Arnold Toynbee on how great civilizational changes occur. The existing leadership of existing institutions face new challenges and fail to change to meet them. But a “creative minority” may arise that proposes and begins to implement new solutions. “Those building the Green New Deal are creating such new solutions, from below” (180).

Therefore, perhaps the greatest success, as well as the greatest potential, of the Green New Deal from Below is its ability to expand the boundaries of what is possible, bringing together and empowering people to fight for the things they need but have long considered out of reach.

Workin’ on a world

We may never know if these solutions will be sufficient or come in time. But Brecher offers us the chance to resonate with the feelings expressed by songwriter Iris Dement in her song “Workin’ on a World.” She recalls waking each day “filled with sadness, fear, and dread,” as the world she once knew seemed to be “crashing to the ground.”

Looking around where we find ourselves this November of 2024, in the shadow of so much loss but with so much yet to lose, it wouldn’t be crazy to admit to feeling the same. Yet, as Iris “reflected on the struggles of those who came before her, the sacrifices they made, she realized those sacrifices had opened doors for her that they never lived to see” (180).

“Now I’m working on a world I may never see,
I’m joining forces with the warriors of love
Who came before and will follow you and me.
I get up in the morning knowing I’m privileged just to be
Working on a world I may never see.”

Brecher concludes, “whether we will see the world of the Green New Deal fully realized, in the Green New Deal from Below, we can see that right now we are making a part of that world” (180).

I’d only add that in so doing, we are also each reaffirming our own and one another’s right to be here, to reclaim our world here and now with a place for us all in it, to choose to live and to help live, to occupy our lives. We’re not just doing it for the future, we’re doing it for the now. In the words of a different movement ancestor, Salaria Kea, an American nurse, desegregation activist, and the only black nurse who worked in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, fighting against fascism on the frontlines:

“I’m not just goin’ to sit down and let this happen. I’m going out and help, even if it is my life. But I’m helping. This is my world too.”

Through action, especially through our collective action, we are our vision come to life. We are the embodiment of that world we’re busy working on. Through us, it already does exist.

The Labor Network for Sustainability is taking the opportunity to launch the book, as well as the organizing models it provides, in a live webinar event scheduled for Wednesday, November 20th at 7:30 pm ET.

Alexandria Shaner (she/her) is a sailor, writer, & organizer. She is a staff member of ZNetwork.org and active with Extinction Rebellion, Caracol DSA, & the Women’s Rights & Empowerment Network. Read other articles by Alexandria.

Deliberate Israeli Targeting of Palestinian Children Becomes “Local News” on the BBC

Buried out of Sight

by Media Lens / November 16th, 2024

Imagine an experienced Ukrainian surgeon breaking down in front of a committee of British MPs as he related how Russian forces had been deliberately targeting Ukrainian children.

Imagine the surgeon had had to operate in desperate conditions on young children who had been lying injured after a Russian bombing attack and who were then ‘picked off’ by Russian drones. The atrocity claims would be headline news all across Western media.

Here, in the real world, the horrific testimony of a British surgeon who had operated on children in Gaza targeted by Israeli drones after Israeli bombing attacks– something that happened ‘day after day after day’ – has been largely blanked.

Professor Nizam Mamode, a retired NHS surgeon who recently returned after working at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, said he had ‘never seen anything on this scale, ever’. He has worked in a number of conflicts around the world, including the genocide in Rwanda.

Prof Mamode worked for a month between August and September as a volunteer for the charity, Medical Aid for Palestinians. In a hearing on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, he told members of the UK parliamentary International Development Committee :

‘Drones would come down and pick off civilians, children. This is not an occasional thing. This was day after day after day operating on children who would say, “I was lying on the ground after a bomb dropped and this quadcopter [a small, remotely-piloted helicopter drone] came down and hovered over me and shot me”.’

Prof Mamode told MPs he saw children with sniper injuries to the head. He also noted that the pellets fired by most drones were more destructive than bullets which would go straight through a victim’s body. Instead, the pellets would bounce around inside bodies, creating much more extensive damage.

A seven-year-old boy, who had been caught up in an Israeli bombing and then deliberately hit by an Israeli drone, came into the hospital with his stomach hanging out of his chest. He had further injuries to his liver, spleen, bowel and arteries.

‘He survived that and went out a week later. Whether he is still alive, I don’t know.’

The surgeon broke down three times during his testimony. He described one case of an 8-year-old girl who was bleeding to death during surgery: ‘I asked for a swab and they said, “No more swabs”’.

As he spoke to the MPs, he was momentarily overcome with emotion.

Simple medical items, such as sterile gloves and painkillers, are in short supply because of Israel’s blocking of aid into Gaza, said Prof Mamode. This also applies to basic items like soap and shampoo, leading to unhygienic conditions.

He added:

‘I saw I don’t know how many wounds with maggots in [them]. One of my colleagues took maggots out of a child’s throat in intensive care. There were flies in operating theatre landing in wounds.’

He told MPs that he had spent the entire month in the hospital, partly because it was not safe to travel around. But also because, in January 2024, Israel had bombed the guest house used by Medical Aid for Palestinians.

The surgeon believes that this was done deliberately by Israeli forces:

‘All of those guest houses are in the Israeli army’s computers and are designated safe houses, so my assumption is that it was a deliberate attack and the aim behind it is to discourage aid workers from coming.’

He said the same applied to five Israeli attacks on UN convoys, including one while he was in Gaza.

Labour MP and committee chair Sarah Champion asked Prof Mamode if he meant that rogue snipers were shooting at the armoured vehicles.

‘No, no. This is the Israeli army coming up as a unit and deliberately shooting.’

Prof Mamode’s Palestinian colleagues told him that when Israeli forces attacked the hospital in February, they killed members of staff and deposited them in a mass grave with dead patients. Many other colleagues were taken away. The surgeon related one such case:

‘They [Israeli soldiers] just took him away and killed him. That’s what’s going on. As far as I can see, it doesn’t matter who you are in Gaza. If you are a Palestinian in Gaza, you are a target.’

Champion said in her parliamentary summary:

‘The Committee will do all we can to act on Professor Mamode’s extraordinary testimony and ensure his experiences are heard loud and clear. If leaders are not yet listening, they should be by now.’

This should have generated massive coverage across national news media, with the Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Minister David Lammy being bombarded by questions from journalists on what action the UK government would now take. Instead, there has been virtual silence. As far as we can tell, there was no broadcast coverage on BBC News, Sky News or ITV, although Channel 4 News did include an item on Prof Mamode’s testimony, at least on its X feed (we could not find a broadcast item, however, on the Channel 4 News programme catch-up page). We do not have the resources to monitor all television and radio programmes, so we cannot rule out that there was a passing mention on the BBC World Service or elsewhere.

Nor were there any editorials or significant coverage in major news reports in UK national newspapers. Prof Mamode’s appearance before the parliamentary committee was reported in a live Guardian blog about Gaza on 12 November, but his most compelling and harrowing evidence was omitted or glossed over. To his credit, Owen Jones mentioned the surgeon’s account in a Guardian opinion piece.

The appalling lack of serious coverage is actually highlighted by the fact that there was one article on the BBC News website about Prof Mamode’s testimony to the committee (we were alerted to it by a post on X by one of our followers). The article was titled, ‘Gaza surgeon describes drones targeting children’. As is often the case, the word ‘Israel’ or ‘Israeli’ – as in ‘Israeli drones’ – was missing from the headline. In other words, the perpetrator of violence was missing. Moreover, rather than refer to Prof Mamode as a British surgeon, he was labelled as a ‘Gaza surgeon’, perhaps implying that he was employed by the ‘Hamas-run health ministry’, the phrase that is routinely deployed in BBC News reports.

But here was the most glaring feature of the piece: rather than being placed on the front page or even somewhere in the section marked, ‘Israel-Gaza war’, a glaring misnomer for an ongoing genocide, it appeared deep inside the BBC’s ‘Local News’ category on the page for ‘Hampshire & Isle of Wight’. (As far as we know, it never appeared in a more prominent place on the BBC News website. But the fact that the bottom of the article contains the line, ‘Get in touch: Do you have a story BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight should cover?’, suggests that it was immediately placed in that section). The same treatment was afforded to an earlier BBC News article in October, shortly after the surgeon had returned from Gaza, but with the most disturbing details about the deliberate targeting of children omitted.

Why place such an important story in the ‘Hampshire & Isle Of Wight’ local news section of the BBC website? The ostensible reason is that Prof Mamode comes from Brockenhurst, a New Forest village in Hampshire. But surely the real reason was to minimise public attention and thus evade pressure from the powerful Israel lobby. After all, as we have mentioned before, senior BBC News staff have admitted to ‘waiting in fear for the phone call from the Israelis’. The Israel lobby’s weaponising of antisemitism, which was deployed to prevent Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister, is being used to suppress or silence criticism of Israel. This has had a crippling effect on journalism and free speech.

Regular readers will recall the dearth of media coverage given to the harrowing testimony provided by Professor Nick Maynard, a UK surgeon who works as a consultant gastrointestinal surgeon at Oxford University Hospital, when he returned from Gaza earlier this year. He had described the clear, deliberate targeting of hospital and healthcare facilities; but also the actual execution of Palestinian surgeons and other medical staff.

In April, Prof Maynard said that Israeli forces are: ‘systematically targeting healthcare facilities, healthcare personnel and really dismantling the whole healthcare system.’

He described what had happened to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza where he had previously worked, and where around 400 Palestinians had reportedly been killed in a brutal two-week attack by Israeli forces:

‘Every single part of the hospital has been destroyed. The whole infrastructure of the hospital has been destroyed. When I spoke to Marwan [a Palestinian colleague] yesterday, he told me there were 107 patients, 60 medical staff. God only knows what has happened to them. I think we’ve seen some of the pictures. Surgeons I know have been executed in the last 48 hours there. Bodies have been discovered in the last 12-24 hours who had been handcuffed, with their hands behind their back. [Our added emphasis].’

He added: ‘And so, there is no doubt at all, that multiple healthcare workers have been executed there in the last few days.’

All of the above, taken together with the media’s recent gaslighting about a supposed ‘pogrom’ against rampaging Israeli football fans chanting genocidal, anti-Arab slogans in Amsterdam last week – disinformation expertly dissected by Richard Sanders for Double Down News – reveals like never before the monstrous, genocide-enabling reality of ‘mainstream’ news media.

Meanwhile, Israel appears able to continue unimpeded in its brutal drive towards a ‘Greater Israel’, openly espoused by Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians, which would require the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians ‘from the Jordan to the sea’.

Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The most recent Media Lens book, Propaganda Blitz by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2018 by Pluto Press. Read other articles by Media Lens, or visit Media Lens's website.