In Resistance to Trump, “Community” Should Be a Verb, by Norman Solomon

Against a Trump regime that is totally unacceptable, we’ll need resistance that’s sustainable.

Like a healthy forest, the resistance will depend on great diversity to thrive -- a wide range of people engaging in a vast array of activities.

And our resistance will need community.

I’m not talking about the facile gloss of the word “community” that often follows an adjective denoting race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

The kinds of community that will make ongoing resistance possible have little to do with demographic categories.

The most powerful, most vital bonding will be transcendently human.

Facing a Trump presidency, we’ll have an imperative opportunity to go deeper as individuals and groups of people working together -- nurturing and growing the social, cultural and political strength that can overcome the Trump regime.

Our resistance has got to be broadly inclusive, offering and inspiring a great variety of nonviolent tactics and approaches, whether they emerge with a few people around a kitchen table or with many thousands of people at a public protest.

The strength of the united front that we need will depend on the extent of truly cooperative efforts.

Trump and his allies have already injected huge quantities of toxins into the body politic, with much more on the way. The antidote is democratic engagement from the grassroots.

Right now, as the new regime rolls out its top henchmen, early steps include doing all we can to block Trump’s horrendous Cabinet picks.

To challenge the enemies of democracy who have gained power, we’re just getting started.

What’s at stake for U.S. society includes basic social decency, human rights, economic justice, civil liberties, rule of law -- in short, democracy. Also at stake: climate change, nuclear weapons, the fate of the earth.

Trump has clearly shown his intention to destroy many decades of progress for the rights of women, people of color, Muslims, undocumented immigrants and many other people, while tightening the knot of the corporate state and the warfare state.

From Wall Street to Pennsylvania Avenue to the Pentagon, the purveyors of mega-corporate technocracy, oligarchy and militarism have given “power” a bad name. 

And yet the solution to anti-democratic power is power -- truly democratic power -- from the grassroots, from the bottom up -- really our only hope. 

From protests and electoral work to public education and lobbying and legal interventions and so many other forms of organizing and activism, countless essential tasks await us. 

During the presidency of Popular-Vote Loser Trump -- maybe more profoundly than at any other time in our lifetimes -- we’ll need each other to make resistance personally sustainable, socially viable and political effective.

This is all about energizing ourselves and each other, now and for the long haul.

That’s why community should be a verb.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of the online activist group RootsAction.org. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

For The Trump Era: Fight Not Flight, by Norman Solomon

A lot of U.S citizens are now talking about leaving the country. Canada, Europe and New Zealand are popular scenarios.

Moving abroad might be an individual solution. But the social solution is to stay and put up a fight.

The most right-wing U.S. government in our lifetimes will soon have its executive and legislative branches under reactionary control, with major ripple effects on the judiciary.

All the fixings for a dystopian future will be on the table. In a realistic light, the outlook is awfully grim. 

No wonder a huge number of people in the United States are struggling with mixtures of grief, anger, frustration, fear. 

If Donald Trump and major forces backing him get their way, the conditions described by Frederick Douglass -- still all too prevalent now -- will worsen in the years ahead:

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

As James Baldwin wrote, “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

Those quotes from Douglass and Baldwin are in a book of paintings by Robert Shetterly, Americans Who Tell the Truth. 

Another portrait in the collection appears under these words from Helen Keller:

“When one comes to think of it, there are no such things as divine, immutable, or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim on them.” 

That statement from Keller aptly describes our current predicament and possibilities. 

The impending Trump presidency is a direct threat to basic human rights. 

To make good our claim on those rights will require that we become “strong enough,” individually and collectively. 

Gaining such strength will require that we provide much more support for independent progressive institutions -- the array of organizations that can serve as collective bulwarks against the momentum of systemic greed, bigotry, massive violence, economic exploitation and environmental destruction. 

We’re now being flung into a new era that will intensify many of the oppressive aspects of the U.S. governmental apparatus and political economy. 

An ongoing imperative will be to mitigate serious-to-catastrophic damage in many realms. 

We need a united front -- against the very real threat of severe repression that could morph into some form of fascism. 

At this highly precarious time, progressives certainly don’t need the tempests of factional disputes and ideological battles. 

And we certainly don’t need the kind of reflexive capitulation that so often comes from the upper reaches of the Democratic Party.

We’re at the start of a protracted crisis that could become cataclysmic.

We need progressive unity and unrelenting determination.

Only with eyes wide open do we have a real chance to understand clearly and organize effectively against the Trump regime.

Failure to put up a fight should be unthinkable.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of the online activist group RootsAction.org. His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Dangerous Myths About Trump That Some Progressives Cling To, by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon

Even now, in the last days of this horrendous campaign, we’re amazed by fervent assertions coming from some progressives about Donald Trump. Here are three key myths:

Myth #1: “Trump can’t win.”

The popularity of this illusion has waned, but still remains remarkably stubborn.

This week the polling has moved in Trump’s direction. Several battleground states that were close now seem to be trending toward Trump, including Ohio.

A couple weeks ago, the respected forecasters at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website gave Trump a 12 or 13 percent chance of becoming president. Now it’s a 1 in 3 chance.

Myth #2: “If Trump becomes president, he’ll be blocked from implementing the policies he’s been advocating.” 

Some progressives have apparently convinced themselves of this comforting thought. 

One longtime Green Party activist claimed in an email a few days ago: “Trump would not be allowed by the ruling class or by us to actually implement his retrograde domestic social policies.” 

Such claims from self-described radicals involve a notable faith in the ruling class that we don’t share. 

And let’s not have an inflated view of our own power to block the policies of a President Trump.

Myth #3: “Trump couldn’t do much damage as president.” (Variation on Myth #3: “Trump is no more dangerous in the White House than Hillary Clinton.”) 

If progressives watched Fox News a bit more, they’d understand that Trump plans to appoint to the most powerful policy positions of the U.S. government individuals who are as whacked out as he is: Rudy Giuliani, Dr. Ben Carson, war fanatic John Bolton, to name just a few.

And hundreds like them to other top posts. (Clinton surrounds herself with corporatists and hawks, but overall they’re a less virulent strain.) 

A Trump presidency -- made possible by his demagogic appeals to racism, misogyny, immigrant-bashing and Islamophobia -- would empower the worst elements of U.S. society. 

That’s why an official Ku Klux Klan newspaper, the Crusader, devoted its latest front page entirely to supporting Trump. 

These forces are already in motion, as Politico on Wednesday with this headline:

“White nationalists plot Election Day show of force; KKK, neo-Nazis and militias plan to monitor urban polling places and suppress the black vote.” 

We have no illusions about Hillary Clinton. 

Neither one of us live in a swing state (we’re residents of New York and California where Clinton leads in each state by 20 percent); in our “safe states,” we’re voting for Jill Stein of the Green Party. 

But if we lived in a swing state, we would vote for Clinton as the only way to prevent a Trump presidency. 

Because it’s the state-by-state electoral votes, not the popular votes, that determine who will inhabit the White House. 

As Noam Chomsky said in May:

“If Clinton is nominated and it comes to a choice between Clinton and Trump, in a swing state, a state where it’s going to matter which way you vote, I would vote against Trump, and by elementary arithmetic, that means you hold your nose and you vote Democrat. 

“I don’t think there’s any other rational choice. Abstaining from voting or, say, voting for, say, a candidate you prefer, a minority candidate, just amounts to a vote for Donald Trump, which I think is a devastating prospect.”

Which are the crucial swing states? 

The latest assessment from FiveThirtyEight points toward these dozen states as potentially decisive: Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Other pollsters include Arizona, Georgia and Iowa as battleground states.

We need clarity and not mythology about the threat of a Trump presidency.

Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon are the co-founders of RootsAction.org.

Amazing, Inspiring and Dedicated Workers, by Archie MacKay

“We don’t believe that County Hall has made any attempt to properly explain the value of Teaching Assistants to parents and the public, and we just want a fair opportunity to tell people why we feel the need to take this action.” 

In their own words, that was the brief reason why two of County Durham’s Teaching Assistants (TAs) wanted to talk to me as ballot papers on strike action were being posted to the majority of the county’s TAs.

“Durham County Council (DCC) have even taken to calling us ‘classroom helpers’ in their press statements now, instead of ‘teaching assistants’ – even though that’s what we’ve been called since our jobs were re-evaluated by the same council in 2012 – because they want to distance us from the word ‘teaching’,” said Mary, who asked that her real name not be used, as did her colleague Ann.

“But the reality,” added Ann, “is that we aren’t just Teaching Assistants, we are assistant teachers.” 

“A lot of people think that we are in school to make sure classrooms are tidy before and after lessons and that’s the extent of our role.

“They don’t realise that not only are most of us educated to degree level, but we are also highly experienced and trained in specialised areas.

“For example, I have expertise in autism and looking after other children with special needs. That’s not training that teachers have received, so they are absolutely reliant on us to help children with complex requirements.”

The list of specialisms is wide ranging, from speech and language therapy to emotional counselling, allowing TAs to work one to one with children who may need additional support and freeing teachers to work with the remaining pupils.

“We also regularly plan and even take classes when teachers are absent,” said Mary.

“I know of many TAs who have taken classes for several days when a teacher is off sick. We’re effectively used as teachers to save the school the cost of hiring in expensive supply teachers. 

“The reality is that our role has changed significantly over the decades, as has the role of teachers, and we are now a profession in our own right and should be seen as such.

“But they [Durham County Council] just don’t value us for the work we do, which is ridiculous given some County Councillors are school governors and even ex-teachers.

“They know better than most how important TAs are to the proper functioning of a school.” 

Durham County Council, after a consultation in which TAs claim they have not been listened to, has decided to sack the majority of the county’s teaching assistants after they overwhelmingly voted to reject a compensation offer which would delay for two years life-changing pay cuts of up to 23%.

The ‘compensation’ is in fact an offer to retain their current salary - already up to £4,000 a year less than other local authorities in the North East - for two more years before the swingeing cuts are introduced.

The authority claims that this exercise is not about money, but about equality

That is to say, it is not a cost-cutting exercise by a council which says it must find £30m of savings this year, and £64m between now and 2020. 

They say that TAs are paid as if they work all year when in fact they only work term time. As a result, the council is open to equality claims from staff who are already on term-time only contracts such as school cleaners and cooks.

They deny that teaching assistants are already employed on term-time only contracts that, historically, were divided by 12 and paid in monthly instalments so that TAs did not have to sign on during the school holidays. 

The authority has already admitted that, in the years since the last review of teaching assistant pay, in 2012, when TAs lost their SEN allowance, there has not been one solitary equal pay claim.

It says instead that, even though no one sought to launch an action in the past four years, there are several claims awaiting the outcome of this exercise.

One might be tempted to ask whether the phrase ‘equal pay claims’ was first mooted by a disgruntled employee, or whether it was identified within the local authority legal department as a convenient Trojan horse for future cost cutting.

Certainly, the authority does not talk about the £3m that will be saved from the schools budget. It doesn’t say whether next year that saving will be identified as a surplus and clawed back in a future budget.

Neither does it report the projected long term savings this measure will recoup – both in wages and pensions.

Somewhat ironically, the projected £3m savings from firing and re-hiring 2,700 teaching assistants is almost exactly equivalent to the combined salary shared by Durham County Council’s 28 Chief Officers and Heads of Service.

County Durham Teaching Assistant Activists Committee (CDTAAC), the group formed within the TA workforce to challenge the council’s attack on their pay, used the authority’s own pay calculator to publish details of the financial impact on a Level 3 TA earning £18,560 a year with over 5 years experience. 

Under the new terms, if such an employee was to work an additional 4.5 hours per week, they would still lose £154.66 per month or £1,856 per annum – 10% of their salary.

However, if the same TA is unable to work the additional time and instead has to remain on their current 32.5 hours per week contract, that person will lose a whopping £323.96 a month, £3,887 a year and see their salary slashed by 21%, reducing their earnings to just £14,672.

By contrast, the equivalent person, working just a dozen miles away in Darlington, under another local authority, will be earning up to £23,061.

The equally devastating effect on pensions – and the substantial savings to be made by DCC – are easy to see, even if the council don’t want to mention them. 

“If it’s not about money, why are they enforcing a pay cut of up to 23%?” asks Ann. 

 The county are yet to provide an adequate reply, saying only that they have “tried really hard to mitigate the impact of changes linked to paying staff for the hours they actually work.” 

“They haven’t ‘tried really hard’,” suggests Ann. 

“The fact is they haven’t tried at all. If they had the will, they could very easily re-grade TAs so they keep their current salaries, but they haven’t.” 

“We’re not asking for more money,” says Mary, “We’re just asking to be paid what we currently earn. All councillors have to do is re-grade us so that we keep our salaries.

“It’s a simple solution that will completely resolve this dispute, but for a county that says they’ve tried ‘really hard’ and who claim they want to ‘mitigate the impact of changes’ to our contracts, they haven’t even entertained that option.” 

There are very few people in any profession who could cushion the financial impact of a 23% pay cut, let alone some of the lowest paid workers in the country, already earning well below the national average and expected to budget for a pay cut which in many cases is more than their monthly rent.

There is already an example of a recently bought home being sold in fear of mortgage payments becoming unaffordable. 

“There aren’t many of us who can live on between £300 and £500 a month being taken out of our wages, but on top of that, we have to listen to Durham County Council constantly trying to devalue the work that we do,” said Ann. 

 “In fact, many of us would be better off quitting and going on the dole, where we would be financially better off,” is her alarming conclusion. 

“All that we ask,” they both reiterate, “is that Durham County Council values us for the work that we do, and doesn’t drive us out of a profession that we love.” 

Indeed, ‘value’ is a word that has become rooted in this dispute, with the hashtag ValueUs used by the TAs in their highly effective social media campaigns, which have brought them to the notice of national media, including one of the country’s leading film directors, Ken Loach, who mentioned their campaign during a recent interview published in the Guardian. 

The TAs’ campaigning has also finally persuaded Unison, the union that represents the majority of teaching assistants, to throw its full weight behind the dispute. 

TAs had been critical of a perceived lack of support from Unison, but last week its General Secretary, Dave Prentis arrived in Durham to address a packed Miners Hall, saying: 

“I hope and expect Durham TAs will vote for strike action next week. When schools are closed or short-staffed by industrial action, perhaps then Durham Council will appreciate their immense value. 

“I know that communities across Durham understand what a difference teaching assistants make to the lives of the children they work with. 

“Whether they’re learning to talk or learning to read, TAs are there from before the first bell and still there long after the last child has gone home. 

“Together we can end the injustice of massive pay cuts for those who care for our kids. 

“Together, we can and will show Durham Council they have messed with the wrong group of amazing, inspiring and dedicated workers.” 

It remains to be seen whether Durham County Councillors are sobered enough to return to the negotiating table by the image of such highly skilled workers languishing on benefits while schools, parents and, most critically, children are robbed of their valuable experience.

If not, it will be more than the county’s Teaching Assistants who are the poorer for it.

You can contribute to the County Durham Teaching Assistants strike fund here.

The Small c Defence of Corbyn, by Adam Young

British politics is built on being a two-party system, with little room for a third party except in specific seats.

Out of necessity, then, to be active in politics and hope to get some change done, one has to pick one party or the other.

At this time, it is Conservative or Labour. Those are the options. Of course, that does not mean that I believe that people should stick to those parties dogmatically.

What I am suggesting is simply that a voter should be realistic about prospects of winning elections and should actually study the policies of both parties before making a choice, although this is not a criticism of non-voting.

As such, in my view when it comes to British politics at the moment, Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is the much saner choice from a small “c” conservative perspective.

Not once have I felt that Theresa May believed in what she said. The Conservative Party Conference of last year was filled to the brim with speeches that led many commentators to identify a leftward move by the party. “Reclaiming the centre,” or something to that effect.

Dan Hodges, when he was still at the Telegraph, dubbed Cameron at that time, “the New Leader of the British Left.”

May’s speech, on the other hand, was considered the token right-wing speech. It discussed the negatives of mass immigration. She averred that even if Britain could handle mass immigration, it “shouldn’t”. 

This is all well and good, if you ask me. However, anyone who has basic knowledge of immigration will understand that to prevent mass immigration, one must leave the European Union.

So when the time came for MP’s to come out in support for leaving the EU, one would expect May to jump all on board onto the Leave campaign. Yet she supported Remain. 

Now if May truly cared about reducing immigration, as she so fervently made out in her speech, then would she not back leaving the EU? 

May is a political chameleon, much like Tony Blair or David Cameron. She couldn’t name the philosophy she subscribes to, much like other members of the “Third Way” movement. 

I find this more dangerous than someone who has their own dangerous ideology. You know where you where stand with them.

But those of the supposed “Third Way”, which is not an original idea as Blair made out, are impossible to define and almost always appeal to the hedonistic and knee-jerk aspects of society.

Her purported support for grammar schools, seems to me to be nothing more than bold talk to appease the actual conservatives in her party. Much like Cameron’s laughable promise about “a bonfire of the quangos” in 2010.

I am doubtful that grammar schools are anything more than talk from May, who is trying to incorporate some conservative aspects into her perfectly coordinated look.

Her talk of “compassionate conservatism” and of “an economy that works for all” is the same as the “moderniser” terms used by Cameron and Osborne, and the New Labour spin of Blair. 

May is the continuation of this political farce that has ruined our humbled institutions and much of our civil society and liberty.

She is much the heir to Blair as Cameron said that he was.

This leads me to Corbyn. 

Corbyn is not that continuation. Corbyn is a break from what is considered the political narrative. That can only lead to good.

Corbyn’s greatest achievement so far has been the systematic destruction of the Blairites in his party, preventing them from ever again gaining a foothold in Labour.

One Blairite party was dangerous enough, but having two, with those as the two major parties, would have made it practically impossible to prevent national decline.

Furthermore, Corbyn is the only mainstream leader of any political party who openly disagrees with what is our current mainstream foreign policy consensus.

That is, of blindly following Washington neoconservatives who happily bomb Middle Eastern countries in a perpetual war for American exceptionalism and the mighty crusade for universal democracy.

Additionally, though we disagree on the solutions to such problems, we agree that neoliberalism is a broken ideology that will eventually lead to an economic hardship in the near future.

Certain elements of Corbyn I find rather disagreeable, of course. I am a Colonel Blimp, after all. But I can find comprises with most of them.

He is an egalitarian, I am not. But that is purely an argument of ideas rather than policies themselves.

He has happily talked to Gerry Adams, a man I personally dislike, in the past. But in the end, so have Prince Charles and David Cameron, and, when given the chance, so will Theresa May.

He did not sing the National Anthem, but I can think of few people whom I know for sure would know all the lyrics to God Save the Queen. 

The EU referendum was possibly the only real issue I could take with Corbyn. Critiquing May for backing Remain whilst not critiquing Corbyn for also backing Remain would be hypocritical of me.

But they were in two different situations. May could easily have supported leaving the EU, as did Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, and other Cabinet Ministers.

But she did not. Not out of care for the issue, but out of a desire to protect her position in power.

Corbyn, on the other hand, was leading a party in which the vast majority of his MPs were hoping to see him make a mistake, in order to justify a Leadership contest.

If Corbyn had supported Leave, then Labour MPs against him would have argued he was going against the party’s “values” (New Labour values), and would have claimed that he had weakened the case for staying in the EU.

So Corbyn, out of necessity, was required to support the EU, whether he wanted to or not.

Nevertheless, although both are of course flawed, when I weigh what I think about May and Corbyn, I think that in the current climate I could only safely put myself on the side of Corbyn.

Corbyn is option closer to my views, and the only one that I could expect to deliver what he had promised. May is a purveyor of political chitchat, with bold talk, but without much action or delivery.

Corbyn is what he says that he is. That is a rarity in politics, and he is all the better for it.

AFL-CIO to Planet Earth: Drop Dead, by Norman Solomon

At a meeting with the deputy political director of the AFL-CIO during my campaign for Congress, she looked across her desk and told me that I could get major union support by coming out in favor of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

That was five years ago.

Since then, the nation’s biggest labor federation has continued to serve the fossil fuel industry. Call it union leadership for a dead planet.

Last week, the AFL-CIO put out a statement from its president, Richard Trumka, under the headline “Dakota Access Pipeline Provides High-Quality Jobs.”

The rhetoric was standard flackery for energy conglomerates, declaring “it is fundamentally unfair to hold union members’ livelihoods and their families’ financial security hostage to endless delay.”

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is steadfast against the Dakota Access pipeline: “We will not rest until our lands, people, waters, and sacred sites are permanently protected from this destructive pipeline.”

In sharp contrast to the AFL-CIO’s top echelon, some unions really want to restrain climate change and are now vocally opposing the Dakota pipeline.

Communications Workers of America has expressed solidarity with members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe “as they fight to protect their community, their land and their water supply.”

At National Nurses United, Co-President Jean Ross cites “an obligation to step up climate action to protect public health and the future for the generations to follow us.”

Ross said: “We commend the leaders and members of the Standing Rock Sioux, the many First Nation allies who have joined them, and the environmentalists and other supporters who have participated in the protests against the Dakota Access pipeline.”

NNU points out that “the proposed 1,172-mile pipeline would carry nearly a half million barrels of dirty crude oil every day across four states.”

Ross says that such projects “pose a continual threat to public health from the extraction process through the transport to the refinery.”

As for the AFL-CIO’s support for the pipeline, NNU’s director of environmental health and social justice was blunt.

“We’re deeply disappointed in our labor federation siding with those that would endanger and harm the land, the water, the lives of the people along the pipeline path and the health of the planet itself in the name of profits,” Fernando Losada said.

He added that the Dakota pipeline is part of “a drive to extract fossil fuel that is untenable for the future of the planet.”

The nurses union is part of the AFL-CIO, but dominant forces within the federation are committed to corporate energy priorities.

Losada said that “some elements in the AFL-CIO” have caused a stance that “is a narrow position in the alleged interests of their members for some short-term jobs.”

Compare that narrow position to a recent statement from Communications Workers of America:

“The labor movement is rooted in the simple and powerful idea of solidarity with all struggles for dignity, justice and respect.

“CWA will continue to fight against the interests of the 1% and corporate greed and firmly stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the environmental and cultural degradation of their community.”

A venerable labor song has a question for the leaders of the AFL-CIO: Which side are you on?

When it comes to planetary survival, the answer from the top of the AFL-CIO hierarchy remains: We’re on the wrong side.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of the online activist group RootsAction.org. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

The Debut of Our Revolution: Great Potential. But., by Norman Solomon

While Bernie Sanders was doing a brilliant job of ripping into the Trans-Pacific Partnership during the livestreamed launch of the Our Revolution organization on Wednesday night, CNN was airing a phone interview with Hillary Clinton and MSNBC was interviewing Donald Trump’s campaign manager.

That sums up the contrast between the enduring value of the Bernie campaign and the corporate media’s fixation on the political establishment.

Fortunately, Our Revolution won’t depend on mainline media. That said, the group’s debut foreshadowed not only great potential but also real pitfalls.

Even the best election campaigns aren’t really “movements.” Ideally, campaigns strengthen movements and vice versa.

As Bernie has often pointed out, essential changes don’t come from Congress simply because of who has been elected; those changes depend on strong grassroots pressure for the long haul.

It’s all to the good that Our Revolution is encouraging progressives around the country to plan far ahead for effective electoral races, whether for school board, city council, state legislature or Congress.

Too many progressives have treated election campaigns as impulse items, like candy bars in a checkout line.

Opportunities await for campaigns that might be well-funded much as Bernie’s presidential race was funded, from many small online donations.

But except for presidential races, the politics of elections are overwhelmingly local -- and therein lies a hazard for Our Revolution.

A unified set of positions nationwide can be helpful; likewise publicity and fundraising for candidates across state borders.

But sometimes hidden in plain sight is a basic fact: National support does not win local elections. Local grassroots support does.

Backing from Our Revolution will be close to worthless unless people are deeply engaged with long-term activism in local communities -- building relationships, actively supporting a wide range of sustained progressive efforts, developing the basis for an election campaign that (win or lose on Election Day) will strengthen movements.

Sooner or later, some kind of culture clash is likely to emerge when social-change activists get involved in a serious election campaign.

Running for office involves priorities that diverge from some tendencies of movement activism (as I learned when running for Congress four years ago).

The urgencies and practicalities of election campaigns aren’t always compatible with how grassroots progressive groups tend to function.

As a 501c4 organization, Our Revolution won’t be running campaigns.

Instead, it’ll raise funds and provide support for campaigns while being legally prohibited from “coordinating” with them.

And -- most imminently with the urgent need to stop the TPP in Congress during the lame-duck session -- Our Revolution could make a big difference in pressuring lawmakers on key issues.

Overall, the livestreaming debut of Our Revolution continued a terrific legacy from the Bernie campaign of educating and agitating with vital progressive positions on such crucial matters as economic justice, institutional racism, climate change, Wall Street, corporate trade deals and health care.

But throughout Our Revolution’s livestream, war went unmentioned. So did Pentagon spending. So did corporate profiteering from the massive U.S. military budget.

In that sense, the evening was a step backward for Bernie.

After virtually ignoring foreign policy and military-related issues during his campaign’s early months last summer, he gradually criticized Hillary Clinton’s record of supporting regime change.

In early spring, during the New York primary campaign, he laudably called for evenhanded policies toward Israel and Palestinians.

Although he never delivered more than occasional and brief glancing blows at the military-industrial complex during the campaign, Bernie did offer some valuable critiques of foreign policy.

But from the debut of Our Revolution, including Bernie’s 49-minute speech, you wouldn’t have a clue that the United States is completing its fifteenth year of continuous warfare, with no end in sight.

Now, sadly, there may be a need to reactivate the petition headlined “Bernie Sanders, Speak Up: Militarism and Corporate Power Are Fueling Each Other,” which 25,000 people signed on a RootsAction webpage 12 months ago:

“Senator Sanders, we are enthusiastic about your presidential campaign’s strong challenge to corporate power and oligarchy.

“We urge you to speak out about how they are intertwined with militarism and ongoing war.

“Martin Luther King Jr. denounced what he called ‘the madness of militarism,’ and you should do the same. 

“As you said in your speech to the SCLC, ‘Now is not the time for thinking small.’ 

“Unwillingness to challenge the madness of militarism is thinking small.”

As the petition page noted, Dr. King “explicitly and emphatically linked the issues of economic injustice at home with war abroad.”

In a society desperately needing “adequate funds for programs of economic equity and social justice,” the challenge remains clear:

“Overcoming militarism is just as vital as overcoming oligarchy. We won’t be able to do one without the other.”

If Bernie and Our Revolution continue to evade the present-day realities of “the madness of militarism,” their political agenda will be significantly more limited than what our revolution requires for a truly progressive future.

Norman Solomon, national coordinator of the Bernie Delegates Network, is co-founder of the online activist group RootsAction.org. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Clinton’s Transition Team: A Corporate Presidency Foretold, by Norman Solomon

Like other Bernie Sanders delegates in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, I kept hearing about the crucial need to close ranks behind Hillary Clinton. 

“Unity” was the watchword. But Clinton has reaffirmed her unity with corporate America.

Rhetoric aside, Clinton is showing her solidarity with the nemesis of the Sanders campaign -- Wall Street. 

The trend continued last week with the announcement that Clinton has tapped former senator and Interior secretary Ken Salazar to chair her transition team.

After many months of asserting that her support for the “gold standard” Trans-Pacific Partnership was a thing of the past -- and after declaring that she wants restrictions on fracking so stringent that it could scarcely continue -- Clinton has now selected a vehement advocate for the TPP and for fracking, to coordinate the process of staffing the top of her administration.

But wait, there’s more -- much more than Salazar’s record -- to tell us where the planning for the Hillary Clinton presidency is headed.

On the surface, it might seem like mere inside baseball to read about the transition team’s four co-chairs, described by Politico as “veteran Clinton aides Maggie Williams and Neera Tanden” along with “former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.” 

But the leaders of the transition team -- including Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, who is also president of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project -- will wield enormous power.

“The transition team is one of the absolute most important things in the world for a new administration,” says William K. Black, who has held key positions at several major regulatory agencies such as the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.

Along with “deciding what are we actually going to make our policy priorities,” the transition team will handle key questions: 

“Who will the top people be? Who are we going to vet, to hold all of the cabinet positions, and many non-cabinet positions, as well? The whole staffing of the senior leadership of the White House.”

Salazar, Podesta and the transition team’s four co-chairs is withering.

“These aren't just DNC regulars, Democratic National Committee regulars,” he said in an interview with The Real News Network.

“What you're seeing is complete domination by what used to be the Democratic Leadership Council. So this was a group we talked about in the past.

“Very, very, very right-wing on foreign policy, what they called a muscular foreign policy, which was a euphemism for invading places.

“And very, very tough on crime -- this was that era of mass incarceration that Bill Clinton pushed, and it's when Hillary was talking about black ‘superpredators,’ this myth, this so dangerous myth.”

Black added:

“And on the economic side, they were all in favor of austerity. All in favor of privatization. Tried to do a deal with Newt Gingrich to privatize Social Security. And of course, were all in favor of things like NAFTA.”

As for Hillary Clinton’s widely heralded “move to the left” in recent months, Black said that it “was purely calculated for political purposes. 

“And all of the team that's going to hire all the key people and vet the key people for the most senior positions for at least the first several years of what increasingly looks likely to be a Clinton administration are going to be picked by these people, who are the opposite of progressive.”

In that light, Salazar is a grotesquely perfect choice to chair the transition team. 

fter all of Clinton’s efforts to present herself as a foe of the big-money doors that revolve between influence peddlers and government officials in Washington, her choice of Salazar -- a partner at the lobbying powerhouse WilmerHale since 2013 -- belies her smooth words. 

That choice means the oil and gas industry just hit a political gusher.

On both sides of the revolving doors, the industry has been ably served by Salazar, whose work included arguing for the Keystone XL pipeline. His support for fracking has been so ardent that it led him two years ago to make a notably fanciful claim: “We know that, from everything we’ve seen, there’s not a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an environmental problem for anyone.”

Salazar is part of a clear pattern. Clinton’s selection of Tim Kaine for vice president underscored why so many progressives distrust her. 

Kaine was among just one-quarter of Democrats in the Senate who voted last year to fast track the TPP. 

When he was Virginia’s governor, Kaine said that “I strongly support” a so-called right-to-work law that is anathema to organized labor.

A few years ago he faulted fellow Democrats who sought to increase taxes for millionaires.

Clinton announced the Kaine pick while surely knowing that many progressives would find it abhorrent.

A week beforehand, the Bernie Delegates Network released the results of a survey of Sanders delegates showing that 88 percent said they would find selection of Kaine “unacceptable.” 

Only 3 percent of the several hundred respondents said it would be “acceptable.”

The first big post-election showdown will be over the TPP in the lame-duck session of Congress.

Clinton’s spokesman Brian Fallon reiterated a week ago that “she is against the TPP before the election and after the election.” 

But her choices for running mate and transition team have sent a very different message. 

And it’s likely that she is laying groundwork to convey anemic “opposition” that will be understood on Capitol Hill as a wink-and-nod from a president-elect who wouldn’t mind “aye” votes for the TPP.

Blessed with an unhinged and widely deplored Republican opponent, Hillary Clinton may be able to defeat him without doing much to mend fences with alienated Sanders voters.

But Clinton’s smooth rhetoric should not change the fact that -- on a vast array of issues -- basic principles will require progressives to fight against her actual policy goals, every step of the way.

Norman Solomon, national coordinator of the Bernie Delegates Network, is co-founder of the online activist group RootsAction.org. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Father's Day, by David Lindsay

Only 35 years ago, a single manual wage provided the wage-earner, his wife and their several children with a quality of life unimaginable even on two professional salaries today.

This impoverishment has been so rapid and so extreme that most people, including almost all politicians and commentators, simply refuse to acknowledge that it has happened.

But it has indeed happened. And it is still going on.

If fathers matter, then they must face up to their responsibilities, with every assistance, including censure where necessary, from the wider society, including when it acts politically as the State.

A legal presumption of equal parenting. Restoration of the tax allowance for fathers for so long as Child Benefit was being paid to mothers.

Restoration of the requirement that providers of fertility treatment take account of the child’s need for a father.

Repeal of the ludicrous provision for two women to be listed as a child’s parents on a birth certificate, although even that is excelled by the provision for two men to be so listed.

And paternity leave available at any time until the child was 18 or left school, thereby reasserting paternal authority, and thus requiring paternal responsibility, at key points in childhood and adolescence.

Of course a new baby needs her mother. But a 15-year-old might very well need her father, and that bit of paternity leave that he had been owed these last 15 years.

That authority and responsibility require an economic basis such as only the State can ever guarantee, and such as only the State can very often deliver.

That basis is high-wage, high-skilled, high-status employment. All aspects of public policy must take account of this urgent social and cultural need.

Not least, that includes energy policy: the energy sources to be preferred by the State are those providing the high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs that secure the economic basis of paternal authority in the family and in the wider community.

So, nuclear power. And coal, not dole.

Moreover, paternal authority cannot be affirmed while fathers are torn away from their children and harvested in wars. 

Especially, though not exclusively, since those sent to war tend to come from working-class backgrounds, where starting to have children often still happens earlier than has lately become the norm.

Think of those very young men whom we see going off or coming home, hugging and kissing their tiny children.

You can believe in fatherhood, or you can support wars under certainly most and possibly all circumstances, the latter especially in practice today even if not necessarily in the past or in principle.

You cannot do both.

The Scandal of the Durham Teaching Assistants, by David Lindsay

I have given up trying to pitch these 500 words, or even just the story behind them, to what might have been expected to have been sympathetic outlets, and I am rather inclined to name names:

On 31st December, Durham County Council intends to sack all 2700 of its Teaching Assistants, 94 per cent of whom are women. On 1st January, it intends to rehire them all on a 25 per cent pay cut. It would then be paying its Teaching Assistants less than any other authority in the country.

There is no point blaming "the Tories". There are only four of those on Durham County Council, and they abstained. The Independents and the Liberal Democrats voted against this, while a huge number of Labour members absented themselves.

Just enough, in fact, for this measure to be passed by a majority of one. Even those of us who grew up around such things can still be taken aback when we see the game played with quite that level of ruthlessness and cynicism.

No authority is doing this apart from one that has been massively Labour-dominated since before living memory. Something similar has been successfully averted in Conservative-controlled Barnet.

The blame and the shame are those of the shiny-suited, management-speaking throwbacks who still control the Labour Group at County Hall, Durham.

No, Teaching Assistants are not "paid for the holidays". They never have been. In relatively recent decades, they have been paid in the holidays, because before that they used to sign on outside the school terms.

The decision was then taken to divide their term-time wage by 12 and to pay it monthly. That, and that alone, remains the situation. Cutting that rate of pay by 25 per cent, therefore, would take it below the national minimum wage.

Neil Kinnock once disowned a Labour council from the platform of a Labour Party Conference, in the presence of that council's leading figures.

When he addresses the Durham Miners' Gala next month, Jeremy Corbyn needs to denounce the grotesque chaos of a Labour council – a Labour council – scuttling round a county, handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.

The Teaching Assistants, whose cause is fully supported by the Durham Miners' Association (which is still active in welfare and campaigning, as well as in organising the Gala), will march on that day, Saturday 9th July. I for one will march with them.

As should you, if you are at all able. Over any distance, I can barely walk. But I will be marching for two miles, and every local Labour grandee on the balcony of the Royal County Hotel can tell Corbyn why we are marching.

Then, next May, every councillor who voted for this needs to lose his or her seat. And with it, the allowance that was increased in the same week as this vicious measure was approved. [At £13,300, even the basic allowance was already higher than many Teaching Assistants were paid even before this cut.]

I know many of them. I have known some of them for decades, by no means only through politics. But politics is what this is, and none of them will lose their homes when they lose their allowances. Whereas many Teaching Assistants are on the brink of losing their homes.

Follow @ta_hltaUK on Twitter, and the #ValueUs hashtag.

Why Libertarianism Needs Christianity, by Adam Young

When the non-libertarian is asked the question “What is a libertarian?”, besides possibly saying “Ron Paul”, the most common answer is almost always “Ayn Rand”.

That cheering enemy of state control and bureaucracy, who bashed all of those in the pocket of government, she suggested that perhaps a man would be better off free of the tyranny of state control and, just as importantly for her as a militant atheist, from that of religion.

With the first part, I agree. With the second, not so much. 

In Rand’s case, her philosophy, that splinter of secular libertarianism called “Objectivism”, was nothing more than a rip-off version of St Thomas Aquinas’s Natural Law tradition, but without the justification for existing. 

It is strange that this woman, who spoke of the ills of thinking that Jesus died for our sins and the evilness of using “faith” instead of “reason”, was taking her ideas from one of Christianity’s finest thinkers. 

When Objectivists and atheist libertarians talk about natural rights from an atheist perspective, that turns those rights into nothing more than things that exist just “because”, or it is a “fact of reality”. 

They have no reasoning, because it makes no sense to believe in rights while being an atheist. 

Do these atheist libertarians not realise that John Locke, the core founder of the idea of natural rights and of the non-aggression principle, based his thought on the belief that all men came from Adam and Eve, and as such had no right over each other?

And what about the great liberty minded documents made in countries that we libertarians like myself and Objectivists hold dear? Were they not written by Christians?

Magna Carta was written by Christians, and specifically by Catholics. The Petition of Right was influenced by the Christian Edward Coke, and was written by Christian men.

The United States Constitution was, in a good way, a rehashed version of Locke’s Two Treatises of Government.

Freedom under law, and natural rights, both come from an exclusively Christian idea of equality and the Golden Rule.

When atheist libertarians make the case of an “anti-theistic libertarian” society, then they make, to paraphrase Russell Kirk, the curious assumption that most human beings, if only they were properly schooled, would think and act precisely like themselves.

That simply is not the case. What happens to a society that loses God is that men are left to worship only the State.

That allows the leader of the State decide the value of human life, which tends to be as much value as a person would give the core of an apple.

That was why Stalin hated the Russian Orthodox Church, and why Hitler, who was an atheist using religion to gain votes, started to replace Christian holidays with Pagan holidays. They wanted to be the Gods of Men.

When a normal man is deciding the rights of other men, then they are not really rights at all. It is easier to justify overruling freedom when you do not have anything to stop you.

The Church stops that by giving the human being worth through absolute rules given to us by the Divine Ruler who is not hungry for power.

Of course, I do not believe that the Christian Faith has been perfect for protecting the rights and liberties of the people. In fact, it can be very prejudiced when it wants to be.

But I am not the kind of person who requires a perfect solution. We only have trade-offs in life, and I for one would rather have the Christian trade-off  rather than the obvious flaws of atheism.

Apple Versus The FBI Shows That The Surveillance Lobby Will Break Any Business, by Loz Kaye

On the face of it, Apple's Tim Cook is a pretty unlikely radical hero.

He is the Chief Executive of a globally dominant company that produces shiny devices and wants a slice of everything that you do.

But Tim Cook's message to customers refusing to cooperate with the FBI in gaining access to one of their shiny devices, is one of the most significant personal acts of defiance of surveillance overreach since Snowden. 

 If you have not already had the news via one of Tim's shiny devices, the FBI has obtained a court order for Apple to hack an iPhone used by one of the San Bernadino shooting suspects.

Reasonable enough, many would say. However, it is the detail of what is being required that is deeply worrying. 

It is about ordering Apple to create a tool to eliminate security protections the company had built in to the phone software to protect customers from, well, amongst others, criminals and terrorists.

This really is not the equivalent of the police checking up on a criminal's phone records as we have seen 101 times on cop shows. 

As Cook puts it: “The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that's simply not true… The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers”. 

The entire thrust of the US law enforcement has been to suggest wanting encryption that actually works is suspicious and unpatriotic.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of reasons for needing access to secure communications, for both business and individuals.

After all, even the UK Ministry of Defence has released its app to access casualty administration and compassionate leave requests for service personnel for Apple devices.

No doubt the debate on the balance of intercept legal powers will continue to rage. Bill Gates has just weighed in on behalf of the FBI, with about as much authority as a confused Clippy.

What this court order has done is fundamentally to change the focus of that debate. 

Up to this point, the battle has been about the authorities on one side, civil liberties groups on the other, and communications services providers being expected to make sense of it all. 

Now every business is in the frame. What is at stake here is a product that Apple makes, and how it produces information. 

The FBI is willing to break into, and so break, a company's product. And try to break that company publicly, with a vigorous legal and media onslaught.

What the FBI is proposing has profound implications, not only for our privacy, but also for how we manufacture, and for how we do business.

Increasingly, all our things are making data: our car, our thermostat, our solar panels, even the fridge. If Apple can be forced into changing its product, then so can any manufacturer.

If Apple can be forced to act completely contrary to what it believes that its customers want, then so can any business. 

CEOs may think that the FBI is 100 per cent right in what they are doing, but they should still be worried even if they do not think of their business as directly “tech” related. 

This is not just an American debate. Cameron has also been thundering about about companies providing safe spaces for terrorists to communicate in, even while the Government has promised there is no intention of an encryption ban.

Proposed British surveillance legislation in the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill was criticised by the Science and Technology Select Committee for lack of clarity on the issue.

That lack of clarity opens the door to what is being proposed by the FBI, and to even more extreme measures than that, in the United Kingdom. A letter such as Tim Cook's would have been illegal under the terms of the Bill.

Many have pointed out that Apple's record on privacy is, at best, patchy. At the end of the day, their job is to sell phones, not to be the champion of civil liberties. That is as it should be.

But if businesses of any kind are to continue to innovate and protect their customers, then they will have to engage in this debate and be bold.

Cook has made the technological and customer service arguments. It is time for businesses to make the political ones.

A London for All, by Nick Richardson

As a Labour Party member, and therefore writing under a pseudonym, I shall be giving my first preference vote for Mayor of London to George Galloway.

Sadiq Khan will receive any second preference that I might express on the day. But I am disgusted at his disloyalty to Jeremy Corbyn, his support for the disastrous neoconservative wars in the Middle East and North Africa, his ties to the anti-working-class property developers who are bankrolling his campaign, and his shocking connections to allies of the literally fascistic Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.

More Experience Than All The Others Put Together

George Galloway has been right about every military intervention of the present century, and his is now a lone voice in British politics for, if anything, a real war against Daesh in alliance with the Syrian, Russian, Iranian and Lebanese forces that are already in the field, not the Turkish, Saudi and other funders, suppliers and supporters of the enemy.

His role in the Scottish independence referendum was pivotal, reminding left-wing voters of the Old Labour case for the Union and of the Thatcherite neoliberalism of the "Tartan Tory" SNP, as well as of that party's fairly recent history as a vehicle for sectarianism.

He is the leading political figure in support of fathers' rights, and he is a prominent opponent of the drug use, fixed odds betting terminals, supercasinos, lap-dancing clubs, and hardcore pornography that became so ubiquitous during the New Labour years and which have remained so under David Cameron.

He is now, with Nigel Farage, one of the two main public faces of the campaign to leave the anti-democratic European Union, taking up the mantle of the late, great Tony Benn. Already, the media are having to peddle ridiculous lies, such as that hundreds of people walked out of a recent Grassroots Out rally when he appeared on stage at it.

He is a breathtakingly brilliant orator, with a vast vocabulary and range of knowledge as perhaps the last of the great working-class autodidacts. His world famous appearance before the United States Senate in 2005 made that clear. His unmissable Sputnik programme on RT is a vital counterweight to the British State and corporate media that are blacking out his Mayoral campaign.

He was elected the Labour Member of Parliament for Glasgow Hillhead in 1987 at the age of 32, defeating Roy Jenkins, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, President of the European Commision, and Leader of the media's beloved SDP.

Gallloway's leadership role against the war in Iraq in 2003 saw him expelled from Labour by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair. But Galloway continued his political mission, twice defeating Labour in its strongholds of Bethnal Green and Bow in London in 2005, and Bradford West in 2012.

He was born in a one-room attic, with an outside toilet that was shared with five other families. When he was four, his family moved into a council flat. He went to the local school. His father and mother were factory workers, and both were active in Labour and trade union struggles. He was educated at the University of Life, starting work as a teenager in Michelin tyres and working non-stop ever since.

He joined the Labour Party at the age of 13, and he joined the then Transport and General Workers' Union at the age of 19. He was active in both for nearly 40 years, including as the youngest ever Chairman of the Labour Party in Scotland at the age of 26.

He moved to London in 1983. From his election in 1987, he remained in Parliament, with a two-year break, until 2015, representing Glasgow, the East End of London, and Bradford West. In his decades in Parliament for four constituencies and in two countries, and with six election victories, he has been vocal and effective in vital national issues.

From housing to health, railways to race, cinema to music, education to the environment, he has brought more issues before the House of Commons than anyone else in politics today. He has more political experience than all his London Mayoral opponents put together, and many times over.

His prodigious constituency work in more than a quarter of a century has been often praised. Nobody who came to him for help was ever turned away. Nobody ever said that he failed to press their case, win or lose, with all his legendary vigour.

As is very well-known, George Galloway has long been active in international affairs. Reading Laurie Lee's As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, he became enthralled with the struggle against fascism in Spain and Portugal. As a 14-year-old, he marched in the famous Grosvenor Square demonstration against the Vietnam War and was active against the Greek military junta.

He adopted the cause of the Chilean exiles, and became an activist against apartheid in South Africa, even travelling at the behest of the ANC inside the country. There, he witnessed first hand the atrocities and absurdities of racial segregation.

In 1975, he became involved in the struggle for the Palestinian people. He has now been prominent within it for 40 years. He was awarded Pakistan's two highest civil awards, for his work for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, and for his work for self-determination for the people of Occupied Kashmir.

For many decades, he has fought poverty and underdevelopment, oppression and occupation, dictatorship and war, all around the world. His record was summed up by Unite's leading figure Andrew Murray, the Chair of the Stop the War Coalition, thus: "George Galloway has been for many years Britain's leading anti-imperialist."

It is for Iraq, and for his long stand against sanctions and war, that Galloway's political life will be most remembered. He opposed the war on Iraq longest, most eloquently, and most bravely. For this he was slandered, he was smeared, and he was expelled from the Labour Party in which he had spent his life.

His vindication came more quickly and completely than anyone could have imagined. No one now thinks that the Iraq War was right. The Al Qaeda-Daesh mutation that it has spawned is today rightly considered one of the world's gravest dangers.

George Galloway predicted it all. Galloway was right and Tony Blair was wrong. Everyone can now see that. As they will soon see Galloway's blockbuster film The Killing of Tony Blair, which is now in post-production and coming soon to a cinema near you.

In Parliament, on public platforms, on radio, on television, and in print, Galloway's oratory is legendary. Even his enemies cannot and do not deny him that. In his term as Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow, George worked on numerous causes for the capital, and achieved many.

George Galloway defended local people against Crossrail disruption, preventing a huge hole from being dug in Brick Lane. He warned of the cost of the PFI project to rebuild the Royal London Hospital, and the terrible effects that it would have on the local health economy, predictions that have come true entirely.

George Galloway campaigned against academies and free schools, and to preserve the successful model Tower Hamlets school family that has produced such great results. He campaigned against gentrification, and for increasing the amount of social housing in building projects. He fought for the victims of the First Solution money transfer scandal.

George Galloway fought to save the Lighthouse pub against the encroachment of more City Slicker offices. He opposed the spread of sleazy lap-dancing clubs spewing out of the City into the East End, including one almost opposite a mosque. He defended East End boxing at York Hall, working closely with the Repton and other local boxing clubs.

George Galloway fought in defence of local traders in the face of the Whitechapel station development, as part of his commitment to small and medium sized enterprises. He himself is a businessman, being a director of Monchique Films Ltd, of Spice Island Food Ltd, and of Molucca Media Ltd, as well as being about to make his return to commercial radio.

George Galloway defended local residents from being decanted from Robin Hood Gardens, and against Robin Hood Gardens' being knocked down and redeveloped as part of social cleansing and gentrification. He fought against overcrowding and poor housing throughout the East End, and for action to reduce the tens of thousands on housing waiting lists. 

George Galloway campaigned for the Decent Homes initiative, including investment in refurbishment, and including a programme of home insulation, both to lower energy costs for poor families, and for a greener London.

George Galloway fought the Labour Council's cuts to Youth Services. Against the Government's witch hunt and grant cuts, he defended London Metropolitan University, which is not only the birthplace of Blue Labour, but also the alma mater of Sadiq Khan. 

George Galloway fought for prayer facilities at Queen Mary University. He fought against the Labour Government's cuts to the teaching of English as a second language. He fought to defend Tower Hamlets College.

George Galloway played a leading role in the campaign to stop stock transfer of council houses to private landlords in Tower Hamlets, winning 15 out of 35 ballots during his parliamentary term, which led to the abandonment of the privatisation of council housing by the Labour Council. 

George Galloway campaigned to save the iconic East End George Tavern in Commercial Road. He took the lead, in alliance with the Fire Brigades Union, in saving fire services at Bethnal Green Fire Station, and against the madness of cutting fire services in an area of high-density, high-rise residential buildings.

George Galloway filibustered through the night in Parliament against Margaret Thatcher's attacks on the Dock Labour Scheme. He picketed outside Wapping in defence of London's print workers, when he was kicked by a police horse and treated in an ambulance.

George Galloway campaigned against bendy buses, and for the return and revamping of the Routemaster. He campaigned for the Stairway to Heaven war memorial, honouring those who perished there from German bombing in the Tube station in 1943.

George Galloway campaigned against the victimisation of disabled people through Atos vetting. He campaigned for women who were victims of domestic violence, and in opposition to forced marriage and to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

George Galloway visited Aldgate East and the Royal London in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist mass murder on 7/7, before going in to the House of Commons to place that atrocity in the context of the Bush and Blair wars. 

In 2005, George Galloway led the Respect campaign in East London, winning the constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow, and coming second in Poplar and Canning Town and Newham East and Newham West. 

George Galloway helped thousands of constituents in a weekly constituency surgery with "no appointment necessary". He maintained a high parliamentary profile on matters of war and peace, public services, opposition to tuition fees, and opposition to racism and Islamophobia.

George Galloway kept his promise to step down after one term as an East End MP so that he might be succeeded by an MP of Bangladeshi origin in an area with the world's largest Bangladeshi community outside Bangladesh. 

In August 2014, while serving as the elected Member of Parliament for Bradford West, George Galloway was viciously attacked on a London street, on account of his political views. He spent the night in hospital, as well as walking on crutches for some time thereafter. Neither the Prime Minister, nor the Speaker of the House of Commons, expressed the slightest sympathy, and most of the media treated it as a joke.

But then, on Galloway's first day back in the House after his election at Bradford West, David Cameron had referred to him from the Despatch Box by his name instead of as the Honourable Member for that constituency, and John Bercow had offered no rebuke.

Maybe It's Because He's A Londoner

George Galloway has lived in London for almost 35 years, in Blackheath, Streatham, Battersea, Ladbroke Grove, and the East End. Three of his four children were born in London, and all four grew up in London. His first child is now a mother of four, all born in London.

London is his home, and he considers it the greatest city in the world. High praise from a man who has been everywhere. He was a London Member of Parliament for five years, for Bethnal Green and Bow. In 2004, he stood for the European Parliament in London, when Respect was just 20 weeks old yet achieved almost 100,000 votes.

Having been elected to the British Parliament six times, and having served there for the best part of 30 years, he wants to bring the political experience of four decades to bear in fighting for us and for London.

It Is Time For A London For All

Though London is a great city, life is not great for all Londoners. It is run by and for the metropolitan elite. That elite does very well, while the majority struggles with the high cost of living, shortage of affordable housing, cramped and expensive transport, and savage cuts to our public services.

It is time for a London for all.

George Galloway will fight for your interests wherever you came from, whatever colour you are, however you pray. He is against all racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and he for unity amongst all Londoners irrespective of age, gender or orientation.

Financial services are an important part of London's economy. But the City and other corporate interests in London will have to do much more in the exercise of their social responsibilities to Londoners, who live and work around them and who provide the whole environment in which their businesses are thriving.

For with great wealth comes great responsibilities. As Mayor, George Galloway will campaign relentlessly for the London Living Wage and for a higher London minimum wage to take account of the higher cost of living in the capital.

Neither can we allow the continuing social cleansing of poor and ordinary working people from London. Virtually no social housing is built, while London property has become a safety deposit box for rich, sometimes dubious players, to lock up their assets far from their own countries.

As Mayor, George Galloway will tackle the housing crisis as his Number One priority. He will work to make London the pre-eminent world city, seeking out investments, business and tourism from all over the world including the parts he knows best, which are Latin America, China, Russia, and the Arab world.

He will bring financial transparency to the £18 billion of the annual London Mayor's budget through the revolutionary Mayorchain, blockchain technology that has been developed by London's young and brilliant FinTech sector. Max Kaiser will be his Finance and Economics Czar.

No Developments Without Social Housing

Under this Government and under Boris Johnson's Tory Mayoralty, ordinary Londoners are being priced out of their city like never before, by skyrocketing house prices and rents.

The average house in London costs almost £500,000, and the average rent is £1,600, with no sign of this spiral abating as wages remain stagnant. The working people, who keep London running, are forced to pay an ever-greater proportion of their income in rent, to live in inadequate living spaces, or to move out of the capital altogether.

Or even worse, in the case of housing estates such as Sweets Way in Barnet, whole communities are torn apart by forced relocations, with households moved across the city or away from it altogether; away from their neighbours, friends, family, and workplaces.

At the same time, whole streets in the wealthiest areas of the city lie empty, as speculators from around the globe buy up land and housing as an investment, i.e., as a means to conserve the value of their money, speculating on an ever-increasing house price bubble, and on soft touch British Governments' not daring to tax their wealth or to take back idle properties.

Not only does this mean that the money that we are told flows into our economy from non-resident investors has little positive impact on the economy, as it is swallowed up in speculation and rent-seeking, but it means that in fact the impact becomes negative, as prices of scarce land and housing are inflated beyond the wildest dreams of ordinary working people.

Mayor Johnson has done nothing to enforce the policy, introduced by Ken Livingstone, that 50 per cent of housing on all new projects must be dedicated to affordable housing.

For example, the development currently under completion on the site of the old Battersea Power Station has offered only eight per cent of properties over to affordable housing. And where this policy has been more or less followed, such as the Beaufort Park development in Collindale, Barnet, this has been demanded by the local council, not City Hall.

Likewise, the definition of affordable housing shows how out of touch our political elite is, with the limit being set at 80 per cent of average rent in a given area, which in much of London puts this out of reach for middle-class professionals, never mind working class Londoners.

This situation is not just immoral, since it is a transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest, but it is a drain on our economy: the more of people's income that is taken up by rent (or by transport, for those forced out of the city), the less that can be spent in businesses that actually produce goods and services to sell here.

A recent CBI and KPMG study concluded that 14 per cent of London businesses viewed the cost of housing as London's biggest weakness as a location for their business.

The decision is clear: either we take action to benefit working people, consumers, and productive businesses, or we allow London to continue to be a casino for speculators, buying up scarce land and housing and pricing everyone else out of the market.

Therefore, if you elect George Galloway as Mayor of London, he will ensure and enforce that any housing project submitted for his approval must be comprised of 50 per cent affordable housing. He will define affordable housing as 50 per cent of average rents, not the 80 per cent that is currently the case.

He will fight to introduce legislation to take back idle properties and developments, which are not lived in, rented, or used for business purposes by the owner.

And he will be a voice on the national stage to bring this issue to the centre of our political debate, seeking allies in all parties and all parts of the country to crack down on the speculators, and to make sure that our national priority becomes providing affordable and decent housing for all.

Saving Lives, Limbs and Lungs

London's transport system is a symbol of this great city; the Tube, the red buses, the black cabs. But too often, it feels the strain of a growing capital.

Boris Johnson has displayed Tory contempt towards the Tube's workforce throughout his entire spell as Mayor of London, refusing to meet union leaders to discuss proposals to close ticket offices and bring in 24-hour Tube services.

George Galloway is in favour of an all-night tube service in a 24-hour capital like London. But he will be making sure that workers are properly consulted on the process, are properly recompensed, and are not forced into working long, unsociable, and potentially dangerous hours.

London's transport system is the most expensive in the world. Galloway understands the difficulties faced in upgrading an antiquated network. But transport is what keeps London moving, and we need a network that is fit for a twenty-first century capital like London.

He is in favour of retaining the Congestion Charge. London is already too polluted and too congested. We do not want to encourage more cars onto the roads when we can encourage other forms of transport. Additionally, he is proposing to ban HGV vehicles from Central London during daytime hours, in a bid to reduce fuel emissions during those hours.

He want to invest in more cycle lanes and initiatives that make it safer to cycle around London. Far too many people are losing their lives this way. We need to be encouraging more people to leave their cars and travel on two wheels.

He is in favour of expanding London's airport capacity. London needs to be able to manage the needs of business and ensure business comes to London instead of going elsewhere. But he is against a third runway at Heathrow when Gatwick offers a better alternative.

Pollution levels are already too high at Heathrow without a third runway, and adding a second runway at Gatwick would cause far less disruption than adding the third at Heathrow. He believes that London can still thrive with two separate airport hubs.

He supports the moves to renationalise the rail network that brings millions into our city to work every day. Commuters are faced with astronomical fares that keep outstripping inflation. It is time to be the network back into public ownership. After all, we have already paid for it.

Standing Up For The Iconic Black Cab and Protecting The Customers

Uber represents everything that is wrong with the zero-hour, tax-dodging, deregulated economy promoted by our political elite. The company has been defended by Tory Mayor Boris Johnson, who has condemned its opponents as Luddites.

In contrast, if we elect George Galloway as our Mayor, then he will crack down on Uber, and protect the interests and safety of London's consumers, taxi drivers and small minicab firms.

What is it?

Uber functions as an app which drivers can register with, allowing customers to view and hail them electronically. It argues that is is a market place which brings together consumers and suppliers quickly and affordably, and therefore should not be taxed on its revenues or forced to recognise its drivers as employees.

So what's the problem?

In fact, a better question would be, where to start? Uber's drivers are not classed as employees, but as users of the app, who in return for being listed must pay  percentage of each fare to the company.

This means that they have no employment rights, such as the minimum wage, collective bargaining, severance pay, annual leave, or maximum or minimum working hours. These practices are typical of the low wage economy championed by the Tory Government, and by its cheerleaders or collaborators on the Labour Right.

The most immediate victims are Uber's own drivers, who are forced to work long hours with no rights, while the company takes the lion's share of profits an inevitable results when you have a huge multinational and an unorganised, casual workforce.

However, in the long-run, all working and middle-class people will suffer the consequences. London's taxi and minicab drivers will be increasingly forced to lower their own pay and conditions in order to compete. As this race to the bottom is replicated across the economy, we all become worse off.  Uber is just one very high-profile example, and this is why it is so important for the Mayor of London to take a stand.

Uber is also practising tax avoidance on an industrial scale, according to the London Private Hire Car Association (LPHCA). The San Francisco-based multinational processes its UK operations through Uber BV, a subsidiary registered in the Netherlands, allowing it to avoid UK Corporation Tax on its revenues. The company also uses this as an excuse to not charge VAT, taking advantage of Dutch legislation.

The result of this is that, in a time of austerity, Britain is shamefully allowing Uber to opt out of tax on its profits and revenues. At the same time, the company has an unfair cost advantage over UK registered minicab and car-hire firms, and taxi drivers, who do pay their fair share of tax.

Uber has been criticised for its lack of appropriate checks on drivers, which is made easier by the fact that it presents itself as a marketplace simply connecting buyers and sellers of a service.

This is in contrast to conventional minicab firms or taxi drivers, who have to register all their operations in the local areas where they operate, and are subject to strictly enforced quality and safety standards by TfL and local authorities.

As a result, there are many reported cases of dangerous driving and overcharging on agreed fares, with no telephone number listed on the company's UK and Ireland website. Even worse, many cases of violence or sexual assault have been reported around the world, and serious doubts raised about the safety of passengers placing their trust in the app.

Uber also practises surging, which means that the app uses algorithms to detect when there are fewer drivers on the road and raise fares accordingly. Imagine the outcry if London's cabbies would get together and agree such a practice! Perhaps this is an indication of what we can expect if Uber ever corners the market as it intends to.

What can be done? Countries such as Australia have already taken measures, such as ordering Uber to pay Goods and Services Tax, its equivalent of VAT, on revenue in that country. The French and Canadian Governments are also looking into similar measures, after protests from taxi drivers in those countries.

Transport for London has belatedly followed suit, after a long and hard-fought campaign from the London Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) and the LPCHA. But so far, we have seen no results.

That is hardly surprising, given Boris Johnson's instinctive Tory support for tight-fisted corporations. In contrast to Johnson, as Mayor Galloway will work together with taxi drivers, minicab firms, private car-hire firms, and consumers groups, to do everything within his power to ban Uber from London.

Transport for London has already looked at enforced waiting time and banning the listing of available cars for hire on a mobile application, and he will pursue this vigorously, as well as all other available channels. If this is not possible, he will force Uber to comply with the same quality, customer care, employment and safety standards as all other minicab firms operating in London.

This great city must offer the highest standards of quality and safety to tourists, and we cannot build that on deregulation, cutting corners, and precarious working conditions.

Mayor Galloway will be a leading voice on a national level for our Government, MPs and local authorities, to take this problem seriously. We should not only follow Australia's example of forcing Uber to pay VAT, but we should take the international lead in requiring Uber to pays its fair share of corporation tax.

A Friend of the Police Force, With Fair Policing Everywhere

Policing in London needs a complete overhaul.

We cannot continue to have a two-tier system in our capital. If you pick someone's pocket in Liverpool Street station, then you can be pretty sure that the Police will be onto you like a flash. Yet our law enforcement has turned a blind eye to gigantic crimes involving the theft of millions of pounds in the same Square Mile.

There are many fantastic Police Officers out there. George Galloway has needed them on many occasions. But the Metropolitan Police is not working for everyone in London. Too many people are unable to trust our Police Forces. There are undoubtedly deep problems of racism and discrimination in parts of the Police. We need a Force that will treat everyone in London equally, whether they have a black face or a white collar.

London's Police also needs to look like the city that it is protecting. The number of black and ethnic minority Officers is still unacceptably low. George Galloway will be making sure that London's Police starts to look a lot more like London itself.

He is proposing to merge the existing forces of the Metropolitan Police and the City of London Police. A substantial increase in the recruitment of BME police officers. A zero-tolerance attitude to racism within London's Police Force.

An end to the scandal of stop and search, which has marginalised our minority communities. Greater powers for the police in dealing with hate crime. And greater spending to ensure the protection of places of worship such as mosques, synagogues and churches.

The World Will Be Your Oyster Card

The use of the Oyster Card will be massively expanded under George Galloway. It will become an interest free debit card used in shops and restaurants, and for other services, and for the transfer of money abroad, either in family remittances or just mums getting emergency money to their kids abroad. In that sense, City Hall will become a publicly owned People's Bank.

The £18bn annual City Hall budget will be online in real time, absolutely transparently. Every expenditure, by every department and official, including the Mayor, will be visible to the public, and will be able to be criticised instantly. To achieve this, Galloway will use the BlockChain technology developed by London's red hot FinTech industry, currently based in the Shoreditch Corridor.

Fire Brigade Policies

The Fire Brigade is an essential part of London's public services and has suffered terribly under severe cuts and closures from Tory austerity. As Mayor of London, George Galloway will end immediately all fire station closures, and all cuts to London's fire services.

He will reverse the cuts already made to this lifesaving and vital public service. He will further endeavour to use his close working relationship with the London Fire Brigades Union to ensure that Londoners get the world class fire service that we deserve.

NHS Policy 

London is unique within the UK in terms of both its contribution and requirements. George Galloway will therefore campaign to have a "London NHS", with its own budget run directly by City Hall. That will allow him as Mayor to ensure Londoners have access to a healthcare service suited to the unique pressures and challenges faced by a global city in the twenty-first century.

How To Win

The success of the campaign to elect Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party demonstrates what is possible against all the odds and media scorn, as did George Galloway's elections to Parliament in 2005 and 2012.

Furthermore, all Labour and at least most Green first preference voters ought obviously to give their second preferences to George Galloway. It is now highly likely that most UKIP voters will do likewise; they certainly should.

The LDTA and LPCHA have pretty much endorsed Galloway. The RMT, which remains unaffiliated to the Labour Party, ought to do so, bringing with it the coalition that it assembled as the No2EU list at the last two European Elections, as well as the letter calling for withdrawal from the EU that was published in The Guardian last Thursday.

No2EU was endorsed by the Morning Star, the Editor of which signed that letter. So should Galloway be. Unite, ASLEF and the TSSA are affiliated to Labour, but there are still things that can and should be done. The same is true of the FBU.

As an anti-war and anti-imperialist opponent of the EU, opponent of Scottish separatism, defender of Julian Assange, critic of global warming policy, victim of physical assault for his exercise of free speech, and walking advertisement for working-class self-improvement, Galloway deserves the support of spiked, with its considerable reach into the right-wing papers, the BBC (especially Radio Four), and Channel 4 News.

And several of those causes, among other aspects of Galloway's work, ought also to commend him to a number of traditionally conservative commentators such as Peter Oborne, who has appeared on Sputnik and who alone distinguished himself when Galloway was assaulted, and Peter Hitchens, who has spoken and written many times of his admiration for Galloway.

There are many who wish to open up the political process itself, and not only comment on it, to voices from outside the Liberal Establishment. They should all consider that, even more than the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party, that cause would be furthered by the election of George Galloway as Mayor of London.