FOLKS SHOULD PRESS FORWARD WITH THEIR PARTICULAR LIBERATION STRUGGLE ORIENTATION

With the Obama victory progressives ought to press forward with whatever liberation struggles they are pursuing and whichever ideology or framework guides them. Obama should be pressed to take progressive positions without delay and we must remain alert to counter Bush-Cheney surprises in what is hopefully the end of their nightmarish rule.

We can imagine progressives seeking to be part of the Obama administration.

We can imagine progressives in the Democratic Party organizing progressive caucuses based on progressive policies not hope in a single leader.

We can imagine progressives outside the Democratic and Republican parties organizing their own independent political and organizing initiatives to either pressure economic, social and political elites or to build independent progressive economic, social and political power.

Progressives are especially challenged to explain and respond to the tremendous economic crisis of capitalism. The capitalist crisis is a great opportunity and a great challenge for every progressive orientation, trend, framework and ideology.

SORTING OUT MY OWN THOUGHTS IS NOT ENOUGH

I could use some help with the whole framework project. I have sorted out some of my own ideas and dealt with at least some confusions in my own mind. I have wound up blogging about events that seem to be very important to me. So I have wound up with this Frameworks of Liberation project being in the background, somewhat neglected and yet present in the blogactivism.

Another distraction from the project has been my study of the far right and in particular the Minutemen movement and more recently the Joel's Army thing associated with the third wave Assemblies of God. This has given me some new understandings but it also seems to be something most left oriented folks are unfamiliar with and I think they wonder why I know about these things and why I think it is important.

One thing I have learned is that there are a lot of right wing groups, scads of them and a lot of them seem to be into creating little militias even if they don't call them such. So, I am wondering why there are not
lots of left wing militias? Is that because we are against guns or something? I think that it is rather the result of tolerance for these right wing groups by the big bourgeoisie and these fools will be mobilized to protect the super rich if the people seek to rise up against their masters.

Hopefully we can get back to this project after the revolution. Just kidding!

TAXONOMY OF THE LIBERATION ORGANIZATIONS

So we can imagine, for example, the whole set of Abrahamic progressive religious trends. This would include Jewish, Islamic and Christian phyla, orders, classes all the way down to genie and species. The Catholic Worker folks are inside the set of progressive Christian religious tends as well as the subset of progressive Catholic trends. So maybe the genus would be Catholic Worker and the species would be a particular Catholic Worker community or individual.

CATHOLIC WORKERS DO IT AGAIN!

I don't really have any facts, but I understand there was a protest last weekend at the Kansas City Federal Building against anti-immigrant policies. The Catholic Workers were apparently behind it. How do we know? Zorro works alone. Actually the coverage I saw was sparse, free of educational value pretty much. (Even Zorro has a trouble with the corporate media.) [Forgive me, believer, and forgive me, atheist, for I am an atheist who says, "Thank God for the Catholic Worker folk and their noble movement".] Warning, these people are very nice.!

Forgive me if I think that it should be obvious as to why the Catholic Worker community should be considered progressive. To put it succinctly, the Catholic Worker folks agree with the Pope when the Pope has a progressive position but disagree with him when he does not. I think they obviously side with the poor and try to serve them quite devoutly. Most of these Catholic Worker people are against all the militarism so U. S. Imperialism loses all of its potential support just with that. They are often feminists even if many remain inside the Catholic church proper or Catholic holy orders. I don't know if the catholic worker workers regard themselves as in a holy order but it would be interesting to find out.

Here is a living progressive community in many cities across the nation.

Of course the Catholic Worker communities are also political. They engage in various forms of public education, protests and organzing. I think of them as being cousins of the Catholic Plowshares Movement, truly committed antinuclear and antiwar activists who have served decades and perhaps centuries for their exemplary acts of civil disobedience. I hope to add some documents from a local Catholic Worker group to this blog in the future.

Jeremiah Wright is Righteous and Black Liberation Theology is a Progressive Trend

Well, Obama has shown his true political values by going after Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I have been listening to various interviews and speeches by the Reverend and while I don't think HIV was created deliberately I find his other views are pretty much liberation theology as applied to the black experience in the United States.

Of course, listening to the Reverend you get a lot of his positions on matters social and political in a few minutes. Reverend Wright is plain spoken. He does not pander in mere generalities.

Obama, on the other hand, remains the great undefined hope. Of course Obama is so persuasive and nice you almost think he has actually said something, but his rhetoric is rather general, rather imprecise. He speaks of "common hopes" and "common dreams" without clearly defining what those dreams are. He speaks of bridging a gap but a gap to where? How will he, a lone candidate or President bridge that gap? He hasn't said what gap he is talking about. It may be the gap in his campaign, anything of substance.

But Obama has finally taken a stand. An angry prophet of the the social gospel will not be heard. There is "nothing constructive" about Reverend Wright's prophetic voice according to the man who would be President of the Empire. He evaluates Reverend Wright's comments before the National Press Club as "rants not grounded in truth". So with an Obamaesque verbal excess he called Reverend Wright, in plain speech, a destructive liar.

Of course one black man distancing himself from a trouble maker of the same race is also part of the black experience. I suppose we could imagine that Obama secretly harbors liberation theology as his guiding ideology but his actions and deeds indicate the opposite. Reverend Jeremiah Wright has been speaking the truth and upholding the values of a progressive Christian trend.

Reverend Wright opposes empire and U. S. imperialism. Obama, on the other hand, wants to be chief warmonger. That is what the office of the President is, chief warmonger.

Oooh I bet Obama wouldn't like me either!

I thank Reverend Wright for saying the right things about the oppression of African-Americans and the crimes of the United States empire. Obviously the Biblical prophets were not popular with the powerful of their era. Jesus didn't try to become a loyal Roman or even run the Sanhedrin. It is Obama who is out of line, not Reverend Wright. He is caving into the racism and narrow bigotry of the oppressor elites who run America. He should unite with Reverend Wright and the right.

When I first saw Obama I was impressed with his extraordinary eloquence and stealthiness. His diplomatic language, calm demeanor and soft sell approach is quite impressive. It was quite revealing how his very mention of some white Americans being bitter about their lives unleashed an irrational fury directed at Obama, I still don't know for what. Apparently we can't talk about bitter whites or bitter blacks, not in the corporate media. Nor do our keepers and oppressors of the Democratic and Republican Parties want to talk about how angry many working Americans are about the way they are getting screwed by the rich. The ruling elites look for scapegoats and hope to focus the righteous anger of the multinational working class at the foreign enemy.

The rich are still getting richer as more and more of us go to the poorhouse. Neither Hillary nor Obama say much about that, not really, and they aren't progressive about foreign affairs either. They both want to bomb, bomb , bomb. Of course to get the peace vote they say things about withdrawing troops but I'll believe that when I see it and I think if you look carefully at what they say and how they say it that they are both supporting the permanent occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright is the real thing and Obama is, like Wright says, a POLITICIAN, politicians want everyone to like them. So Obama has said as little about race as possible and his white enemies are trying to draw him into it because if he makes white folks happy with what he says he is likely to alienate many blacks and if it says what he thinks that makes Jeremiah Wright happy he will alienate a lot of whites. This is not to say that there are not many Whites who would hate any person of color in the White House.

Not everyone likes a person, not even a member of the clergy who talks about disappointing and disturbing facts. When these disturbing facts violate myths about the history of the United States, those who honestly cling to those myths feel threatened. Any politician in the public eye will be subject to a campaign of ridicule if they expose the myths that so many Americans still worship. One of the most crucial myths is that American workers are a happy and contented.

There is a special fear and loathing of the righteous rage of the oppressed. Today that rage has a black face because we frankly have no
image of progressive white worker outrage to compete with it. White worker discontent is almost inconceivable in the propaganda system.
Then the lack of these images of white workers in struggle also reflects the stranglehold a sort of right-wing trade unionism and anti-labor legislation has on American workers.

A prophet and a real clergy person will defend unpopular positions even if there is a personal cost associated with it. Most self proclaimed Christians will not do this. Black liberation theology does. They talk the talk. Obama won't even do that!

LEADERSHIP BY WOMEN IS ESSENTIAL

At a time when some seek to keep women in chains forever it is important to say something about leaders like Benizir Bhutto who make a contribution to leadership even if it is a leadership tainted with corruption and a pandering to imperialism.

There is something important about a woman on the world stage precisely because it is so unusual. She seemed to be a secular if not progressive voice, a woman speaking in the wilderness martyred by men. That is part of the picture even if it remains largely unaddressed by those who rightly condemn her corruption and service to empire.

At a time when women are being told by a militant few and an indifferent majority that they must not speak in public Benizir Bhutto was a fine example of what they are afraid of, an intelligent woman capable of speaking her mind and seeking to lead in the realm of politics.

MORE ABOUT MY USE OF THE TERM "PROGRESSIVE"

If a chain is being broken, an oppressive relationship being resisted or overthrown then it seems like something progressive is probably happening.

Then there is the matter of direction, are things moving in the direction of abolishing oppressive social relations, oppressive relations of production, oppressive sexual relations or sex roles, oppressive racial relations and so on and so forth? If any of these oppressions are being reduced or moved towards oblivion I would tend to regard it as progressive unless, of course, it is somehow pitted against other liberation struggles.

ANARCHISMS AS LIBERATION FRAMEWORKS

Anarchism, like any other ism with any vitality, has numerous variants. Hence the term anarchisms seems appropriate. Similarly the term anarchism has been defined in many ways as have terms like democracy, socialism and christianityism. So, as distasteful as it may be to those who want to pretend there is only one sort of anarchism, we intend to at least make a partial catalogue if not family tree of anarchisms throughout the history of anarchism.

This sounds like a cold dispassionate search for the truth and hence lacks the elan of a more visionary approach. Of course that is the domain of each particular anarchism itself.

Frankly, the multifaceted history of anarchism is virtually unknown. Even the apparently vital anarchist movement in the United States has been unable to educate the broader society about what anarchism means and how it might be relevant to the lives of average citizens.

My own personal bias is that I tend to like what anarchists are saying and doing but remain confused about how they intend to get rid of capitalism and how a new society might emerge. I guess it would be an anarchist society? What does that mean, "anarchist society"?

How does or would anarchism organize production and civil society. If there is to be no state how will personal and social needs be met? Are there illuminating historical examples?

I am also interested in the historic split between the communists in the First International when the marxists split with the anarchists. I am one who bemoans the war waged by anarchists and the Spanish Republic on
one another, especially since this civil war among revolutionaries allowed the fascists under Franco, to win. I currently understand the Spanish Communist Party was servile and obedient to the orders of Comrade Stalin which led to it being heavy handed and otherwise undermined the Spanish Revolution. People need to think for themselves and really consider their own best interests whatever their ideology.

Then there is the spectrum of anarchisms which will undoubtedly reveal more colors than I currently imagine. I am also wondering where some anarchism may overlap with certain revolutionary socialisms.

I shouldn't forget terms like anarchy and anarcho-syndicalism. Hopefully I will not.

DEFINITIONS OF PROGRESS

I don't want to make a special ideology of terms like "progress" and "progressive". I simply use them to refer to that broad spectrum of political entities and ideas that embrace both the bona fide liberal, including religious, secular, revolutionary nationalist, various and sundry socialisms, communisms and anarchisms. I think of all these groups and individuals as having some sort of liberation framework, like anarchism, just for example. Just, for example, it seemed to me that the BPP had a progressive or leftist period, or I could say a liberation struggle building and affirming period.

Of course the idea that things can be better in society is at least belief in the possibility of some
sort of social progress. The fact that the bourgeoisie has taken the hope of progress for all and twisted it into the idea that progress should be for the few, whether that few be the entire
population of the Imperial Republic proper or the sainted economic and political elite within that Republic, is merely a testimony to how their ideas do tend to push out or in this case misdefine progressive ideas.

I leave it to each liberation framework to shed light upon what progress or should I say, progressive progress actually is and especially how we can achieve it.

I certainly like the idea that we see a development of understanding and practice over time
and so we understand progress also in the sense that things are developmental. We need to crawl before we can walk.

I don't mean by progress a naive belief in unlimited production as being a good thing or the idea that technology will solve our social problems in and of itself. I also don't mean using the term progress or progressive in a way that promotes empire or neglects to deal with the reality of empire when considering the role of the domestic population of the "one and only" imperial superpower. I don't think of the prohibition of liquor in the early twentieth century as progressive although I think that women getting the vote was progressive. Of course a woman or black imperial leader in the White House isn't progressive either.

It seems like anarcho-feminism would be progressive since there are problems of patriarchy everywhere.

For me, at least, the word "progressive" is not meant to be a precise term but more of a
grab-bag of liberal to revolutionary leftist ideas and entities.

Various Frameworks of Liberation Exist

It seems that wherever there is oppression there is the basis for yet another framework of liberation. Women are oppressed so we end up with a women's liberation or feminist movement and a whole critique of and struggle against patriarchy. Workers are oppressed and so we have seen various expressions of workers' efforts to liberate themselves whether we are talking about trade unionism, class solidarity, the socialist, communist and anarchist movements. Some might even include the fascist movements or exclude the communist ones. Then there are various forms of national oppression and each seems to develop its own response. African-Americans have a host of movements ranging from the civil rights groups to revolutionary and not-so-revoutionary nationalists. With LGBT there is also a great diversity of movements ranging from successful efforts to fund and treat HIV disease but also a panoply of liberation struggles reflecting the condition of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals respectively.

Of course this by no means exhausts the causes of liberation that exist in the world today. Even making a list is real work.
Considering the ideologies and struggles of each sector is a
daunting but attractive mountain peak of understanding.