1 Another Segregated July 4th -- Gerald Horne
2 Re: Tom Paine and the 4th of July 
  -- Leonard J. Lehrman
3 SF Living Wage Coalition to Honor Giuliana Milanese
  and Howard Wallace
4 New Journal on Strikes and Social Conflict

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From: Gerald Horne
Re: Another Segregated July 4th

The U.S. "celebrated" yet another racially segregated
holiday, this one involving the birth of the republic.

Emails were flying on Black-oriented list-servs--I must
have gotten at least six--providing the text of
Frederick Douglass' now iconic remarks of 7.4.1852
denigrating what others were celebrating and,
fundamentally, calling into question the legitimacy of
the nation born in 1776.

Danny Glover's rendition of Douglass' remarks was
replayed on numerous Black-oriented radio stations (I
heard it at least twice) and now has become an essential
part of this holiday for some of us, like turkey on
Thanksgiving.

Minister Robert Muhammad of the Nation of Islam in
Houston, whose organization's membership, particularly
Black membership, dwarfs that of any leftist grouping,
invited me on to his Pacifica radio program and we
compared notes about how Texas secession in 1836
compared with Confederate secession in 1861--and North
American secession from the Empire in 1776--all as
examples of seeking independence in order to maintain
enslavement of Africans.

Chris Rock, actor and comedian, castigated "White
People's Holiday"--and, predictably, was scorned in the
"Washington Post", which wondered why he was complaining
since he was rich.

Meanwhile, trusty and reliable portside.org posted an
interesting commentary about Tom Paine, adopted by the
U.S. Left--like Douglass has been adopted by African-
Americans-- as an exemplar of 1776, though he played no
role in the U.S. government, was denounced repeatedly by
subsequent U.S. leaders (most viciously by Theodore
Roosevelt) and died in obscurity in North America
(reputedly a mere handful attended his funeral,
signifying his popularity--or lack thereof--in certain
circles, unlike his so-called 'Founding Father'
counterparts).

Portside.org also posted a commentary denigrating
Britain's leaders at the time of 1776 and hailing those
who rebelled against his rule--of course, no light was
shed as to why African-Americans might take a differing
view as to the founding of this republic, i.e. that in
June 1772 in Somerset's Case London seemed to prefigure
abolition throughout the Empire, to which certain forces
took umbrage, particularly slaveholders--who occupied
the presidency in subsequent years, along with lawyers
for slaveholders, e.g. John Adams.

Is there something wrong with this picture?  Is there
anything that can be learned from it to advance the
struggle against the detritus of African enslavement?

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From: Leonard J. Lehrman
Re: Tom Paine and the 4th of July (response to Martin
Gittelman in Announcement and Readers' Responses July 4)

Yes, I grew up on Howard Fast's novel, "Citizen Tom
Paine," and often thought of making it into an opera.
The National Emergency Civil Liberties Union, which
defended lefties the ACLU wouldn't touch in the 1950's,
gave an annual Tom Paine Award, until it merged with
(and was subsumed by) the Center for Constitutional
Rights.

In solidarity

Leonard J. Lehrman

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The San Francisco Living Wage Coalition is honoring
Giuliana Milanese as Labor Woman of the Year and Howard
Wallace as Labor Man of the Year at its 2nd Annual
Awards Dinner

http://www.livingwage-sf.org/current-events/2nd-annual-awards-dinner.html

Friday, July 20,  2012 6:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. SEIU Local
1021, entrance on Kansas Street, between 16th and 17th
Sts., San Francisco (parking available/wheel-chair
accessible)

Second Annual San Francisco Living Wage Coalition's
Awards Dinner on Friday, July 20, during the month-long
Labor Fest that commemorates the 1934 General Strike.

At 6:30 p.m., there will be a welcome and introductory
performances, at 7 p.m. a dinner and program, and at 9
p.m. dancing.

There will be cultural and musical performances.

Ticket prices are $35 per seat or $300 for a table of
nine.

For more information or to purchase tickets, contact the
San Francisco Living Wage Coalition at:

415-863-1225 [log in to unmask]

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New Journal - Workers of the World - International
Journal on Strikes and Social Conflict - seeking
articles

Workers of the World - International Journal on Strikes
and Social Conflict is a peer-reviewed academic journal
in English language, for which manuscripts may be
submitted in Spanish, French, English, Italian and
Portuguese. Workers of the World publishes original
articles, interviews and book reviews in the field of
labour history and social conflicts in an
interdisciplinary, global, long term historical and non
Eurocentric perspective.

It publishes articles about crisis, working classes,
internationalism, unions, organization, peasants, women,
memory, propaganda and media, methodology, theory,
protest, strikes, slavery, comparative studies,
statistics, revolutions, cultures of resistance, race,
among other subjects.

Editorial Board

Alvaro Bianchi - Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, UNICAMP
(Campinas, Brazil), [log in to unmask]

Andreia Galvao - Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, UNICAMP
(Campinas, Brazil), [log in to unmask]

Marcel van der Linden - International Institute of
Social History, Amsterdam (The Netherlands), [log in to unmask]

Raquel Varela - Instituto de História Contemporanea,
Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal),
[log in to unmask]

Serge Wolikow - Maison des Sciences de l'Homme,
Universite de Bourgogne, Dijon (France),
[log in to unmask]

Sjaak van der Velden - Independent researcher, Rotterdam
(The Netherlands), [log in to unmask]

Xavier Domenech Sampere - Centre d'Estudis sobre les
Epoques Franquista i Democratica, Universitat Autonoma
de Barcelona (Spain), [log in to unmask]

Website: http://www.workeroftheworldjournal.net/

Articles should be sent, according to the instructions
for authors, to the executive editor Antonio Simoes do
Paço at [log in to unmask]

Editorial statement

The first issue of Workers of the World. International
Journal on Strikes and Social Conflict will appear
online at the end of June 2012. The journal is an
important step to consolidate the initiative, decided on
at the Lisbon Labour Conference in March 2011, of
creating an international association of researchers and
institutions involved in the study of this subject.

The working class repeatedly continues to make its
presence known and by doing so refutes the pessimistic
predictions about the end of social conflicts that were
popular in past decades. Different forms of popular
struggle emerged in response to deteriorating living
conditions, precarious employment of labour, and the
change or elimination of social and labour protection
legislation. In addition to the renewed labour movement
in its classical forms of collective action and
organization through strikes and unions, we saw the
emergence or re-creation of movements of the unemployed
or underemployed, of the landless and the homeless, just
to mention some of the most widely known.

Despite numerous attempts to theoretically declare the
end of social classes, strikes, and social movements,
the inherent social contradictions in society and
workers' own actions constitute imposing evidence to the
contrary. Industrial conflicts repeatedly have
intersected with other social conflicts and ethnic,
gender and generational issues complexity and renew
interest in collective action, bringing in new
theoretical and analytical challenges to researchers.

Workers of the World. International Journal on Strikes
and Social Conflict aims to be innovative. This journal
aims to stimulate global studies on labour and social
conflicts in an interdisciplinary, global, long term
historical and non Eurocentric perspective. It intends
to move away from traditional forms of methodological
nationalism and conjectural studies, adopting an
explicitly critical and interdisciplinary perspective.
Therefore, it will publish empirical re-search and
theoretical discussions that address strikes and social
conflicts in an innovative and rigorous manner. It will
also promote dialogue between scholars from different
fields and different countries and disseminate analyzes
on different socio-cultural realities, to give
visibility and centrality to this theme.

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

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