Stephanie McMillan

Following is a letter from a member of Batay Ouvriye (Workers’ Struggle) requesting support for their activities for May Day. I’ve volunteered to collect donations for them through my Paypal account.

Thank you for any support you can provide!
–Stephanie

* * *

Batay Ouvriye, (Worker’s Struggle, www.batayouvriye.org), a labor movement in Haiti, is planning a series of activities to commemorate International Worker’s Day (May Day), 2012.

The objectives of these activities are to:

· Continue to build the workers federation known as May First Trade Union Federation/BO.
· Reinforce the combative capacity of the trade unions inside BO (so that members are better prepared to fight for worker’s interests).
· Plan a national meeting of all union delegates.
· Elect the new executive committee of the newly formed union SOTA/BO. (Sendika Ouvriye Tekstil ak Abiman, Creole for Textile and Clothing Workers’ Union).
· Organize a march on May Day in Port-au-Prince.
· Organize marches throughout Haiti of sweatshop factory workers, peasants, and agricultural workers.

To organize these series of events, urgent funding is needed and we ask for your financial support and solidarity. It is not easy for workers to organize themselves across great distances in a land which is constantly attacked by natural disasters, foreign intervention, and brutal regimes. The Haitian workers, who are constantly in danger of repression, ask for your help and support. Any contribution which you can make will benefit Haitian workers in their struggle to better their conditions. Thank you for your help!

Please send contributions to the Paypal account
of supporter Stephanie McMillan (you don’t need a Payapl account, just a credit card). Go to Paypal.com and send to steph@minimumsecurity.net, or click the button:

Signed by:
Yannick Etienne,
BATAY OUVRIYE

If you’re in New York, I’ll be on two panels at the Left Forum on March 18. Please come by if you can!
More information: http://www.leftforum.org/

Noon, Sunday
Building the Red-Green Revolutionary Strategic Alliance
with Ron Whyte (Deep Green Philly) and Joe Ramsey (Kasama)

http://www.leftforum.org/panel/building-red-green-revolutionary-strategic-alliance

3 p.m. Sunday
Cartoonists For/Against Revolution (and/or other major changes)
with Ted Rall (Anti-American Manifesto) and Ruben Bolling (Tom the Dancing Bug)

http://www.leftforum.org/panel/cartoonists-foragainst-revolution-andor-other-major-changes

I’m thinking about the past year and making plans for this one.

Some highlights of 2011:

* I attended “Stop the Machine” for a week in Washington, DC and drew a 10-page comics-journalism piece about it: http://www.cartoonmovement.com/comic/20

* In November, I spoke at Earth at Risk, an all-day conference in Berkeley, with Derrick Jensen, Arundhati Roy, Thomas Linzey, Waziyatawin, Aric McBay, and Lierre Keith: http://www.earthatrisk.net/. A DVD and a book of this event will be released in the coming months.

* I spoke at various events including Left Forum and Spring College Media Convention (NYC), Occupy Miami, and the Society of Environmental Journalists conference (where I also helped organize a rally outside with dozens of local environmentalist organizations).

* The anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist collective that I work with, One Struggle, continued to grow, hold discussions, and participate in local political life. Here’s the website: http://onestrugglesouthflorida.wordpress.com/

* My editorial cartoon, “Code Green,” earned a Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

This year so far I plan to speak again at Left Forum and other venues. I have a couple books in the works, including “The Knitting Circle Rapist Annihilation Squad,” a novel (genre: political comedy) co-written with Derrick Jensen, to be out in September. The current story for “Minimum Security” is all plotted out to finish this summer, after which the format will change. I’m working on a short film with the working title “Capitalism Must Die.”

Oh yeah, and the economy will collapse and we’ll be further along in the process of revolution. Lots to do!

The people are in motion! We’re standing up to join a global movement, what may become a global revolution.

This is beautiful! I’ve been waiting and working all my life to see this. We’re all here because in general we want the same things: a new society based on fairness, sustainability, healthy communities, a living planet. An end to domination and oppression of all forms.

What stands in our way? Is it greedy corporations that have grown to big and gone too far? It’s those, but it goes deeper than that. Profit. Profit is the problem. And a whole social/cultural/economic/political system based on accumulating profit, through the extraction of natural resources and the exploitation of labor.

We have an enemy. I’ll go ahead and name it: global capitalism.

Capitalism is not a thing, but a process: the conversion of life into commodities into toxic waste.

It’s also a social relation, where a small minority owns and controls our means of subsistence and uses this to dominate and exploit the majority of people and the world. Those in power start out by seizing land and destroying traditional land-based and indigenous communities. They push people into labor camps (commonly known as cities), and make them work for food and shelter. Would anyone consent to work in a factory or mine if they had any other way to survive? Would you? I wouldn’t.

Capitalism is based on constant expansion, on ever-increasing rates of private accumulation. This means it’s structurally unreformable. The nicest capitalist in the world might want to change that, but wouldn’t be able to. They must make profit or go out of business.

Global capitalism is in deep crisis. It’s played out. Many expect it to collapse. But the truth is, it won’t. It’s dynamic and adaptable. It could morph into fascism or neo-feudalism. But it will use up everything and keep going until all life on the planet is extinguished.

I don’t know about you, but for me that’s too late.

We must eliminate it. It’s our responsibility. We may be the last generation with the opportunity to do so.

With this action, with this movement, I’m starting to believe it’s possible!

I hope to see this grow into a radical mass movement that can unite all who can be united to fight the system, our common enemy. A diverse, non-sectarian movement, mutually supportive, and above all visionary and fearless.

We don’t know what’s going to happen or what this will become. But we have to keep it going, keep moving hand-in-hand to wherever the demands of our situation may lead us.

Sure, we’re chaotic, flawed, unpredictable. This may not be exactly what each of us wants or thinks we need. But the important thing is that we’re MOVING. We’ve woken up. We’re challenging the system.

Capitalists, we’re coming for you!
Imperialists and war-mongers, we’re coming for you!
Exploiters and oppressors, we’re coming for you!
Ecocidal maniacs and corporate bloodsuckers, we’re coming for you!

We’ll fight you, and we’ll fight you, and we’ll make mistakes along the way, and we’ll falter. But we’ll keep getting up and we’ll fight again, and fight again, and one day we are going to win.

I’ll be in DC starting Thursday, participating in the “Stop the Machine” protest. Hope to see you there!

Earth Day is coming up fast, April 22.

Here are some greeting cards, for when you care enough to share your inner militant eco-warrior:

Earth Day Greeting Cards

Sets of greeting cards, 4.25″ x 5.5″ (folded) with envelopes.
Available in sets of 6 ($8), 12 ($10) and 24 ($18).
FREE shipping.

Available sets

Set of 6 $8.00 Set of 12 $10.00 Set of 24 $18.00

From Overthrowing the Profit System to Not for Profit

The rise of NGOs and the decline of mass movements

When: Saturday, January 8, 2011 3:00 PM

Where: Florida International University, room WUC 155

3000 N.E. 151st Street

North Miami FL 33181

The past forty years have seen an explosion in the growth of NGOs. The World Bank

estimates that nearly 15% of all overseas development aid is now channeled through

NGOs. At the same time, we have seen a precipitous decline in mass social movements.

One Stuggle South Florida is hosting a discussion on the rise of the NGO and the

fall of mass movements. Our hope is to foster an inter-organizational dialogue to

raise awareness of the NGO trap and how together we can rebuild mass movements for

justice, social change, and popular power.

Join us to help find a way forward.

I. Intro

A. Definition

B. Scope

II. NGOS as Agents of Capitalism

A. Enables capitalists to shield wealth from taxation

B. Gives capitalists another mechanism of control

C. Shifts goals from structural change to charity (part 1)

III. NGOs as Agents of the State

A. Anti-violence programs

B. Shifts social programs from state to NGOs

1. Workforce One

2. Faith Based Aid

IV. NGOs as Agents of Imperialism

A. Shifts goals from structural change to charity (part 2)

1. Haiti

2. Cultural programs

3. Micro-loans

4. Population control

B. Supports imperial agenda

1. Fundamentalist religious revivals

2. Save the women, i.e., brown women from brown men.

V. NGOs as Agents of Demobilization

A. Gives donors control of agenda

1. Civil Rights Movement

2. INCITE

3. Changes focus from movement building to social work.

B. Professionalization of movement work

1. Changes oppressed from subject to object

2. Requires everything to be packaged at successes to continue funding, rather

than dropping failed strategies

C. Shifts goals from structural change to charity (part 3)

1. Better Policing, not community control

2. Conservation, not environmentalism

3. Job training not unions

D. NGO Problems

1. Scams: How to “Save the World” and make a profit

2. Exploitation of workers

VI. Conclusion

A. What is to be done?

There are a few right-wing nutcases who love to comment on my cartoons at comics.com (http://comics.com/minimum_security). There are other, more insightful and supportive people too, who weigh in. (Thank you to the latter!!)

The current storyline is making the nuts go ballistic! In their arguments, they seem to believe that this comic strip is real. They seem THAT passionate when they denounce Kranti, especially. And they equate her, as the central character, with me.

Just to be clear, she is not me. She has thoughts and desires and impulses that I understand, and that I am exploring. I don’t always agree with her. This story is a thought experiment — testing in a narrative what is viable and what is not, in terms of transforming the social/economic/political structure.

Anyway, all this has made me think I have underestimated the power of storytelling. I find it fascinating.

A cartoonist in Bangladesh, Arifur Rahman (age 23), is in trouble with religious extremists for drawing a child naming his cat Muhammad. Conservative Madrassa clerics led demonstrations against him, claiming that naming an animal for the Prophet insulted Islam. He (not the demonstrations) were declared a threat to public safety. He was thrown in jail for several months, and lost his job at the popular daily newspaper “Prothom-Alo.” His continuing legal battle has been expensive, and he has faced this problem nearly alone.

Now his situation has turned even worse. His mother has been hospitalized with damaged kidneys. Now on dialysis, she requires a kidney transplant. This would cost $5000 in Bangladesh, but the death rate there from post-op infections is high. The nearest safe place to bring her for the surgery is India, where it would cost about $22,000.

Here is the controversial cartoon with a translation at Cartoonists Rights Network International: http://cartoonistrights.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=51

From Arif’s blog (translated from Bangla): http://cartoonist.amarblog.com/posts/116439

“I heard from my granny that my mother was married when she was only 12/13 years old. I was born only year and half after her marriage. When I was only 12/13 and my only sister was 2/3 years old; my dad divorced my mom and there after he did not bother to care about us for a bit. My mom took us to our grandparents home and raised us with great care under extreme hardship.

“When I was in jail in 2007 it was very difficult for her to visit me. She used to send her affectionate letter for me by hiding inside the rice cake for me. From the village, she came to visit me in Dhaka city for the first time of her life, but could not visit for the first time. Then she succeeded after a great difficulty. I still could see the tears running out of my eyes after realizing her irresistible love and affection for me.

“Today she is seriously ill, both of her kidneys were damaged. She must need kidney transplantation, and by that needs dialysis twice a week, with expensive medications. I am trying my best to treat her, though it is beyond my imagination to think about all of the costs associated with the treatment. I only can rely upon God, and the well wishers.”

If you can help Arif, please send funds through the Cartoonist Rights Network. 100% of all donations will be directly tranfserred to Arif.

Checks can be sent here (please earmark for Arifur Rahman):

Robert Russell, Executive Director
CRNI
10600 Alison Drive
Burke, VA 22015

Online donations can be made to CRNI through their fiscal sponsor, The New York Foundation for the Arts, here: http://www.nycharities.org/donate/c_donate_nyfa.asp?CharityCode=1285. Type “CRNI – for Arifur Rahman” in the Emerging Organization field.

There is also a Facebook page, “A Mother Needs Children,” here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=150532911652011

Ben of the Candlelight Collective (West Bend, WI) (http://candlelightcollective.wordpress.com/) has a new tattoo on his arm! I drew this for him based on some of the images from “As the World Burns.” I’m honored that Ben would want my drawing with him for the rest of his life!

Here are some cartoons I’ve drawn in the last several months for the VJMovement (http://www.vjmovement.com/), an international cartoon agency based in Amsterdam.

Cartoonists and video journalists pitch stories to them, and then anyone is welcome to vote (pitches are displayed in the “newsroom” section) on which ones they would like to see made. Those are the ones that then receive funding. Media democracy in action!

If you go to San Diego Comic-Con next weekend, please come and see me at the NBM Publications table!
Here’s my schedule:
Thursday 2:30-4 p.m.
Friday 4-5:30 p.m.
Saturday 2:30-4 p.m.
Sunday 10:30 a.m.-noon

Here, on Facebook, etc, Code Green Idea #7 was the comic that was clearly preferred by readers. So I drew it. Thanks to everyone for their input!

[EDIT: Paypal button removed -- thanks to everyone who donated! Future donations to this organization can be made to them directly]

I’m raising money for the Gulf Emergency Summit to take place June 19 in New Orleans.

Donate $18 and I will send you a signed, full-color print (on photo paper) of this cartoon:

I will collect funds through midnight June 19 (Saturday). On Monday (June 21) I’ll make the prints and mail them out, and will send 100% of the donations (after mailing and printing costs) to the Summit organizers.

If you’d rather donate to them directly, there’s a link on their website.

From the webpage of the event:

Call for an Emergency Summit

AN EXTRAORDINARY CRISIS REQUIRES
AN EXTRAORDINARY RESPONSE

THE PEOPLE MUST ACT
TO STOP THE GULF CATASTROPHE

The BP oil blowout is an environmental catastrophe, bringing great peril to marine and wildlife in the Gulf and threatening ecosystems of the planet. The spill is still out of control and spreading. It jeopardizes communities and livelihoods. The government and BP have proven unable and unwilling to stop the disaster, protect the Gulf, or even tell the truth.

The people must come together now to stop this nightmare.

Millions are sick at heart and looking for ways to act. Many individuals and groups have spoken out, offered suggestions, volunteered to help, protested. BP and the government – pursuing their own interests – have ignored people’s ideas, blocked public participation, suppressed and harassed scientists, and prevented people on the Gulf from taking initiative to keep oil away from shore.

This must not continue. A broad, determined, and powerful “peoples’ response” is urgently needed – to get the truth out, to protect the shores and oceans and deal with the ecological impacts, while exploring deeper causes and solutions.

The Emergency Summit will bring together scientists, people from fishing communities, environmental activists, progressives, radicals and revolutionaries, artists, intellectuals and all who want to halt this horror. There will be testimony on the true scope and impact of the disaster and on what can be done to protect ecosystems, wildlife, and people. We’ll thrash out ways for people to act now – on different fronts and in different ways – and to galvanize many, many more, across the Gulf and beyond.

The world is watching. We must not allow the Gulf and oceans to be devastated. Our mission is nothing less than stopping this catastrophe.

Draft Demands:

1. Stop oil drilling in the Gulf
2. The government and entire oil industry must allocate all necessary resources to stop the spill and clean up the devastation. Full support, including by compensation, must be given to efforts by people to save the Gulf.
3. No punishment to those taking independent initiative; no gag orders on people hired, contracted, or who volunteer.
4. Full mobilization of scientists and engineers. Release scientific and technical data to the public; no more lying and covering up. Full and open scientific evaluation of emergency measures like the use of dispersants. Fund all necessary scientific and medical research.
5. Full compensation for all losing livelihood and income from the disaster.
6. Provide necessary medical services to those suffering health effects of the spill. Protect the health of and provide necessary equipment for everyone involved in clean up operations. Full disclosure of medical and scientific studies about the effects of the oil disaster.

Initial Endorsers:
William Quigley, Loyola University; Legal Dir., Center for Constitutional Rights*
Michael G. Hadfield, Marine Biologist, University of Hawaii*
Larry Everest, author Oil, Power & Empire, Revolution newspaper
John Pearse, Prof. Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz*
Eloise Williams, Lower Algiers Environmental Committee, New Orleans
Elizabeth Cook, Women United for Social Justice, New Orleans
Andy Washington, Civil Rights Activist, New Orleans
Survivors Village, New Orleans
Ben Gordon, Pax Cristi, New Orleans
Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait
Sharon Jasper, public housing activist, New Orleans
C3-Hands Off Iberville, New Orleans
George Mahdi, Social Worker, New Orleans
Endesha Juakeli, housing activist, New Orleans
Randy Poindexter, New Orleans
Rebecca Austen, New Orleans
Gilda & Sain Reed, New Orleans
* for identification purposes only

Website: gulfemergencysummit.org
Email: gulfemergencysummit@gmail.com

Saturday, June 19, 2010
10AM-End Time TBA
First Unitarian Universalist Church, Sanctuary
5212 South Claiborne Avenue
New Orleans, LA

Under capitalism, competition causes the rate of profit to drop, and overproduction results. This is when the business cycle dips, and we experience recessions and depressions. To restore the rate of profit and force the cycle up again, capitalists have several methods including financial speculation and deliberate waste. Plus they must destroy capital, usually through wars. During the current dip we have seen a frenzy of financial speculation, waste, and wars.

In the process of destroying capital to save capitalism, there is always contention among capitalists: whose capital will be destroyed? This is a point of conflict – no one wants it to be their own. When this conflict becomes acute, it can be resolved by war.

At the moment, the capital of a British oil company, the fourth largest corporation in the world, is being destroyed. BP was allowed to create this destructive situation by the US government. We assume it must have been due to greed, negligence and short-sightedness.

But what if it wasn’t? Couldn’t this, actually, be war in another form, the deliberate facilitation of destruction of British-based capital by representatives of US-based capital?

That would explain why Obama isn’t doing anything about it.

Among the headlines on commondreams.org I spotted this: “If There Was Ever a Moment to Seize,” by Bill McKibben. For one wild second I thought — wow, McKibben sees the revolutionary potential in this crisis and is finally going to encourage people to rise up and overthrow the maniacs killing the planet!!! But that was not, of course, the case. Instead of asking *us* to seize the moment, he is asking *Obama* to do so. He wants Obama to be the leader of a people’s movement for sustainability.

Um… I think Obama is already very busy being the leader of the ecocidal, murderous capitalist class that runs this country.

Tomorrow, Victoria Guinea Pig will come to life on Youtube, thanks to the animation of the brilliant David Essman! Please watch this space.

Come and see me at the first two, and one of my cartoons at the third.

• Small Press Expo (SPX)
  September 11-12, 2010
  Bethesda, MD
  
• San Diego Comic-Con
  July 21-25, 2010
  San Diego, CA
  
• Lines of Attack: Conflicts in Caricature
  Feb. 4-May 16, 2010
  Nasher Museum, Duke University
  Durham, NC
  

My friend went to Haiti after the quake and is writing a series of reports that’s being run in Revolution newspaper. They’re compelling and immediate, connecting us with some of those who have been through this horrific experience. This paper, which is one in my regular reading list, in general offers great exposure of the crimes of imperialism, plus a lot of ideas and assertions that are important to wrestle with. Please consider supporting the paper and/or its travel fund that facilitates reporting like the series written by my friend. Thank you!

http://revcom.us/a/195/Haiti_journal-en.html

Earth Day is coming up fast, April 22.

Here are some greeting cards, for when you care enough to share your inner militant freedom fighter:

Earth Day Greeting Cards

Sets of greeting cards, 4.25″ x 5.5″ (folded) with envelopes.
Available in sets of 6 ($8), 12 ($10) and 24 ($18).
FREE shipping.

[EDITED 4/7: Paypal button removed -- I'll offer them again next year!]

[EDITED 3/8]:

The cards have arrived! In time to ship them to you in time for you to send them in time for Earth Day!

I drew one for a client. It focuses on our instinctive human response: empathy, sorrow. Before that, I had to draw the political one. I just had to. That’s who I am.

Here’s today’s Code Green comic. I add one every week at: stephaniemcmillan.org/codegreen/