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Activists from around the country at an evening plenary of the annual Socialism conference

THE UNPRECEDENTED outpouring of resistance to the presidency of Donald Trump has set the stage for what is likely to be the largest and most important Socialism conference yet.

The annual Socialism conference has a well-deserved reputation for bringing together leading left-wing figures with activists from the front lines of today's struggles for social justice to participate in a weekend of discussion and debate--about contemporary events, hidden chapters in radical history, and the tradition of socialism from below.

This year's conference, which will take place July 6-9 in downtown Chicago, comes at an especially critical moment. Trump's attacks on immigrants, escalation of U.S. military operations and embrace of law-and-order politics--not to mention his cabinet stuffed with billionaires and arch reactionaries--has provoked a massive response from ordinary people horrified by his agenda.

The call for a Women's March on Washington the day after Trump's inauguration led to the largest single day of protest in American history, and since then, there have been repeated mobilizations in opposition to Trump's anti-Muslim travel ban and his attacks on undocumented workers.

A new generation of activists is thus being forged--in the crucible of street protest and political radicalization. Some of these people are also looking around for ways to get involved, get educated and find others with whom they can seriously engage in the project of fighting for social change.

Socialism 2017 will feature scores of talks, panels and discussions, as well as entertainment, art and culture.

This year's featured speakers include #BlackLivesMatter co-founder Alicia Garza; historian and indigenous rights activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz; feminist playwright Eve Ensler; African American historian Karen Fields; labor journalist Sarah Jaffe; Scottish socialist Neil Davidson; Subterranean Fire author Sharon Smith; Socialist Worker editor Alan Maass; and many, many more.

As in years past, the radical independent book publisher Haymarket Books is curating a huge selection of the best progressive, socialist and Marxist books--covering every topic under the sun from an unapologetically left-wing point of view.

Haymarket authors will be on hand to sign books, including Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation; Jewish Voice for Peace executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson, a contributor to On Antisemitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice in Palestine; Donna Murch, author of Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Mass Incarceration, and the Movement for Black Lives; and Paul D'Amato, author of The Meaning of Marxism and the editor of the International Socialist Review.

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THIS YEAR'S conference will also include a series of talks organized by Jacobin magazine. Jacobin founding editor Bhaskar Sunkara and contributor Paul Heideman will be just a few of the speakers featured in this track of meetings.

A list of some of the more than 150 talks is now available on the conference website--and audio recordings of prior Socialism conference talks have been posted at WeAreMany.org, if you're interested in getting a taste of what the conference is like.

To mention just a few of this year's scheduled talks: "Trump, Economic Nationalism and Imperialism Today," "Race, class, and Marxism," "Is It Too Late to Save the Environment?" "Bread and Roses: Women in the U.S. Labor Movement" and "Ways of Seeing: The Art and Politics of John Berger."

And because this year is the centenary of the Russian Revolution of 1917, there will be a half-dozen talks on various aspects of the revolution and its continued relevance today, including the role played by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, factory councils and workers' power, and the rise of Stalinism.

If you're interested in meeting up with others now who will be at the conference, check out the website of the International Socialist Organization to find out about branches in your area.

Depending on your location, you may find people with whom you can coordinate travel and collaborate with to publicize the conference--and find out about important meetings and events you can get involved with in your city or region today.

Downloadable flyers (large 11x17 posters and smaller handbills) are now available on the Socialism 2017 website. They can be posted in cafes, on campuses and on street corners, and handed out at protests, on the street, at activist meetings and events, and in classes to let people know about the conference.

Print some out, hand them out and post them around your workplace or school today!

Finally, take a moment right now to get registered for the conference. The early-bird registration rate, which is available through May 15, is just $85 (the regular rate is $100). In order to make the conference as easy to attend as possible for a new generation of student radicals, the Socialism conference is this year offering a special discount rate of $50 to students with a valid student ID.

See you in Chicago on July 6!

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Start planning now for Socialism - Socialist Worker Online

Americas Addiction to Terrorism 288 pp, $20 pbk, ISBN: 9781583675700 By Henry A. Giroux Foreword by Michael D. Yates

Reviewed by Leigh Denholm in Socialism and Democracy, vol. 31, no. 1

Henry Giroux is one of our foremost critical voices. With Americas Addiction to Terrorism, he once again applies his critical pedagogy to the US, finding a common thread of growing authoritarian state terrorism through 12 chapters on such varied phenomena as selfie culture, austerity, education, cinema, nuclear proliferation, and the state of public intellectuals, while neatly tying these threads to the more obvious tapestry of racism, police militarization, and torture.

While blaming Americas declining condition on neoliberalism is by no means novel, Giroux surpasses expectations by consistently returning to the compelling central conceit of the work, that the breakdown of civil society and decline of the notion of the public good have removed the ethical grammar to keep the forces of militarization, violence, and state terrorism in check and in its stead have built a culture of terrorism (17). As Michael Yates notes in his foreword, not only is this evident in the historical trajectory of America from its foundation of slavery, through the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the deployment of nuclear weapons, to contemporary immiseration through neoliberal policies; terror is central to the concomitant threat of violence against those who dare to resist, to speak up, to effect change.

Giroux uses a thorough examination of the current culture of discipline, repression, purposeful forgetting, and violence to trace the roots of contemporary American society and contrast this current condition with the recent past. What constitutes the past varies by area of focus, as the tendrils of the culture of terrorism extended at a dissimilar pacefrom the blur[ring] of the distinction between military and civilian casualties born of Hiroshima (216), to the complicit[y] with a new mode of state terrorism through surveillance in the era of the smartphone (78).

Giroux invokes a wide variety of sources: political speeches, news events and associated coverage, theoretical touchstones like Arendt, Derrida, and Fanon, and sociological scholarship. He uses historical examples to point out that this is not a long-standing, natural, or inevitable state of affairs; rather, these are recent changes, intentionally instituted by human agents. In this way, Giroux avoids the nihilism that so often infects works on this subject: if this addiction is a human invention, then humans have the power to reverse it, and further, to improve the situation. Giroux consistently reminds us that the antidote to the poison of neoliberalism is a collective of mass-movements in solidarity, rather than individualized appeasement.

The book is a collection of essays, which together cast a wide yet tightly-woven net. While some readers may view the organization of the work as a mere listing of Girouxs complaints about contemporary society, the arrangement subtly furthers his overall point: that this multitude of crises shares a common root and intersectionally impacts many of the same groups and individuals, and thus can only be addressed through a broad alliance in struggle against the central cause. (Unfortunately, the editorial essay style also characterizes Girouxs sources; throughout the book, he cites editorial content, blog posts, and journalism as much as academic scholarship. While this by no means invalidates his argument, it would be strengthened by the inclusion of more rigorous references, rather than secondhand opinion pieces.)

Girouxs portrait of America is dire, with only his remarkable way with words mitigating the histrionics that occasionally creep in. His repeated invocations of Arendt not only serve as signposts on the road to authoritarianism, but imply American affinities to the most infamous terror-state in human history. This is a bold, but evidently necessary technique, as Giroux devotes portions of three chapters to castigating the cowardice and seclusion of American intellectuals. Taking sharp aim at his peers, Giroux decries the sordid careerism and the quest for status which renders contemporary academics complicit with the rising terror-state, and thereby with their own destruction (173). Instead, he offers three resolutions: that academics advocate for the support of education as a public good; that they champion the rights and agency of students as participants, not consumers; and that they directly protest the shift towards a bureaucratically dominated labor force of precariously employed teaching staff. The bold and uncompromising critique thus functions both as analysis and as exhortation.

Central to Girouxs argument is his distinction between the recent past and the looming present. He does not pine for a conservative mythic past, but rather identifies the social shift which has underpinned the withering of the notion of the public good under the pressures of neoliberalism. He castigates the left for its nave belief that an onslaught of facts can compensate for the absence of formative training in critical thinking and ideals of public citizenship; without a thorough remodelling of the education system, disclosures fall empty at the feet of a populace trained to never question authority. This point seems particularly prescient in light of recent American political events. which bear out David Roberts notion of post-truth politics, in which political affiliation dictates ones epistemological framework, rather than the inverse. Girouxs tracing of the shift in public education towards mere technical training is highly pertinent.

Observations that might have seemed extreme only a few years ago now reflect a political culture which seems to have wholeheartedly embraced the authoritarianism and organized forgetting (59) fostered by efforts towards the erasing of public memory (153) and elimination of the teaching of history entirely (158) which Giroux identifies as common foundations for the titular addiction to torture, surveillance, violence, racism, and repression. Indeed, the ascendancy of the pedagogical power of neoliberalism (165) now confronts both observers and participants at every turn, as media products do not merely entertain us; they are also teaching machines that offer interpretations of the world and largely function to produce limited political horizons (31). Giroux dramatically lays out and demystifies the grim atmosphere that confronts us today, leaving us with a palpable sense of urgency-in-outrage, primed for the books closing mandate: it is time to flip the script (248).

(C) 2017 Leigh Denholm Graduate Program in Sociology York University, Toronto, Canada

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America's Addiction to Terrorism reviewed in Socialism & Democracy - Monthly Review

This week, Vice President Mike Pence hatched a plan to fix Obamcare with legislation that would allow states to opt-out of the law entirely. The tea party members of Congress, who are members of the so-called Freedom Caucus, have killed the new proposal, however.

In a report from The Guardian, Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) confessed that he feels like the conservative members keep moving the goal posts on Republicans attempting to pass a bill.

We built them a bridge, said Collins. All they have to do is walk across. He added, simply: The problem is with Freedom Caucus.

But Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) disagreed, saying that his caucus has voted over and over again to repeal Obamacare and that is all they are interested in doing. According to him, the Republicans like Pence and President Donald Trump who say that they want to keep parts of Obamacare have not only moved the goalposts, theyve taken out the stadium, chopped em up and burned them.

Former House Speaker John Boehner laughed off the idea that the GOP would be capable of doing anything to get rid of Obamacare.

Republicans never ever agree on health care, he said in Nov. 2016. Most of the framework of the Affordable Care Act thats going to be there.

Wednesday, right-wing groups attacked the moderate wing of the GOP for what they claim derailed the repeal of Obamacare.

Were looking at ways to get our message out, vice president of Heritage Action, Dan Holler told The Guardian. It was a hint that the political group might be running attack ads against moderate Republicans he believes are the obvious hurdle.

David McIntosh president of Club for Growth called them the left wing of the GOP, saying that they werent willing to compromise or keep their pledge to their voters to repeal Obamacare.

Collins called it nothing more than a fundraising ploy but moderates have refused to pass a bill that removes protections for those with pre-existing conditions and removes maternity care, mental health and substance abuse treatment.

Trumps administration told Republicans that they would like the bill by the end of the week.

Mark Meadows (R-NC), who chairs the Freedom Caucus, claimed that he was still hopeful a bill could come to the House floor.

I am still optimistic that everybody is working in good faith and hopefully it will happen this week. However, he remarked: Its important to set realistic expectations that passing a bill between now and Friday is still a Herculean task.

The rest is here:
Trumpcare 2.0 dead-on-arrival as Tea Party blocks Pence intervention - Raw Story

From Texas Standard:

Congressman Ted Poe (R-Humble) surprised observers last week when he announced he would leave the House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative lawmakers whose opposition to the American Health Care Act (AHCA) put them at odds with President Donald Trump and House leadership.

The Freedom Caucus, which consists mainly of House members who identify with the Tea Party movement, opposed Obamacare, and most other initiatives of the previous administration, but had supported President Trump reliably until the AHCA debate.

Poe says the Freedom Caucus needs to evolve from an insurgency into a group that exercises power in a Congress that is now dominated by the Republican Party.

What has occurred, especially in the healthcare legislation [is that] the Freedom Caucus quit being the party of opposition to the previous administration, but became the party of opposition to the current Republican conference, he says.

On why the Freedom Caucus was formed:

The purpose of the Freedom Caucus was to offer conservative principles on legislation...to offer a strong conservative voice to the previous administrations legislation. Thats why it was started.

On whether the group remains relevant, with Republicans in control of Congress and the White House:

This was all part of the founding of the Freedom Caucus to have a seat at the table in the Republican Conference. And the Freedom Caucus now has a seat at the table in the Republican conference. But in this latest legislation [the group] became the party of opposition to the Republican party. And that prevented legislation from getting passed.

On why he announced his intention to leave the Freedom Caucus:

I thought it was important that my constituents, the people in Texas understand the reason I was leaving the Freedom Caucus. Because the Freedom Caucus had become the opposition party in the Republican party and was really stonewalling legislation at the time.

On whether splits among conservative House members could lead to a war within the Republican Party:

No, I dont think so. At the end of the day, we still have Obamacare, and thats the problem. Conservatives and Im still as strong a conservative as anybody here have to get legislation passed. We have to lead. Otherwise were stuck with the same situation...Were not going to get everything we want in legislation.

On whether the President and Congressional Republicans can get things accomplished with the Freedom Caucus opposing some initiatives:

Yes. I believe so...The Freedom Caucus now has a seat at the table in the Republican Conference. Its not being ignored anymore. And i think that is very important that the Freedom Caucus and other members of the Republican Party all get their input on legislation before we actually vote on it. And now thats occurring and I think the conservative principles of the Freedom Caucus will continue to have an impact on legislation.

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Rep. Ted Poe Says The Freedom Caucus Needs To Focus On Passing Legislation - KUT

Fine china, along with animal-themed tea pots, graced the tables at The Venue in St. Amant.

And Mrs. Potts, the teapot from "Beauty and The Beast," would have been proud of the tea party 7-year-old cancer survivor Lily Raffray hosted Sunday to raise money for St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital.

Lily was diagnosed with Stage 1 Hodgkin lymphoma at the start of kindergarten when she was 5 years old. She received chemotherapy from both St. Jude and its Baton Rouge affiliate, Our Lady of the Lake.

Raffrays family started Team Lily Raffray to raise funds for St. Jude. The family helped raise money last year by participating in the St. Jude Half Marathon. To date, the team has raised nearly $18,000.

Lilys treatment was short, compared to others, said Lilys mother, Juliet Raffray. Eight cycles of chemo, but we wanted to give back to St. Jude. Any parent that goes through this wants to help out.

Lilys grandmother, Vanessa Babin, said Lily helped come up with the tea party idea.

We would have our own tea parties with just Lily and myself, Babin said. Then, Lily wanted to invite family and friends to the tea parties. After her diagnosis and treatment, we thought a tea party would be a great fundraiser because Lily likes tea parties.

Each year, the tea party has been held attendance has increased, Juliet Raffray said. This years attendance sold out at 158 people.

Its fun to get dressed up, Lily said. I really like having the tea party and having lots of people come.

The event also included coloring pages for the girls in attendance, a photo booth, silent auction and a raffle for an LSU quilt.

Lisa Bonin, of Prairieville, brought her daughter 1- year-old Molly.

Its a different kind of fundraiser. Its fun to see all the dresses, Bonin said.

Linda Mayers, who represented her sorority, Beta Eta, sold raffle tickets for the quilt made by Joy Mahaffery.

I just love the fact that its a tea party, Mayers said. All the dressing up is really nice. It gives the little girls a chance to be little girls and attend a real tea party.

The menu included chicken salad sandwiches, peanut butter sandwiches, scones, teacakes, muffins, cupcakes and petits fours. Babin said the food and drinks were donated by local businesses.

Megan Starkey attended with 2-year-old daughter Grace.

Lily is a student at the school I teach, St. Amant Primary, Starkey said. Its wonderful to see the community come together. We have pretend tea parties at home, so a real one is a lot of fun.

Kristie Riviere, brought her daughters, Anna, 5 and Addison, 4.

We had fun picking out the bows and putting on makeup, Riviere said. We were going to wear hats, but decided to go with bows instead.

Jessie Weber, who donned a hat, had tea with daughters Kate, 4, and Abbey, 3.

Its a wonderful organization and a great opportunity to get out and spend time with our daughters, Weber said.

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St. Amant tea party raises money for cancer research - The Advocate