Ecosocialism builds in the Bay Area
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OAKLAND, Calif.—The 400 ppm mea surement of the earth’s warming gas, carbon dioxide, on May 19, and the dem onstrated failure of the market system to avoid averting this dangerous climate milestone, has highlighted the task of building a mass movement to challenge the 1% purveyors of climate-altering gases. The enormity of this challenge and how it can be met was discussed at a June 14 panel in Oakland with representatives of several socialist organizations who have rallied around the banner of the Bay Ecosocialist Project (BEP). This project has been motivated in part by the 50,000 who mobilized this Feb. 17 in Washing ton, D.C., against the Keystone XL pipeline and the successful April 20 ecosocialist conference in New York, which attracted 240 participants.
A lively exchange took place at the Oakland forum between panelists who included initiators of the BEP—Social ist Action, Solidarity, the International Socialist Organization, and independent socialist activists. Their responses to a series of questions from the facilitator animated a crowd of 80 people, among whom were a diverse group of other so cialist organizations and radical thinkers.
The discussion grappled with a wide range of ideas, including the meaning of ecosocialism, its theoretical roots, and the ways that socialism’s best traditions can be employed as the basis to develop a program of action to advance the struggle for genuine environmental sustainability and to meet the needs of people through out the entire planet.
While discussing differences of opinion about how to orient to the mainstream environmental organizations, such as 350.org and the ultimate purpose of the Bay Ecosocialist Project, one crucial point upon which almost everyone in the room agreed was that a social revolution is necessary to solve the climate-change problems that capitalism has created.
The organizers of the forum announced a follow-up meeting a week later to con tinue organizing. The meeting was at tended by 23 people—including mem bers of several different labor unions, the Committees of Correspondence, the IWW, and the Peace and Freedom Party. The participants agreed to build a confer ence in the fall or winter to bring togeth er a wider range of ecosocialist thinkers and independent environmental activists in order to clarify the goals of the Bay Ecosocialist Project through an open, democratic process.
The conference can allow the key ques tion left open at the June 14 forum, among many others, to be addressed. If revolu tion is the solution to climate change, a viewpoint unequivocally embraced by Socialist Action, how could such a bold strategy be advanced?
The interests of working people, the 99%, sharply diverge from those of the carbon-polluting profiteers—giant oil corporations and the militaries that defend them. But mass anti-capitalist consciousness has yet to develop. This requires that practical steps be taken to mobilize huge numbers of working people, allied with the poor and specially oppressed sections of the population, in struggles to defend their health and live lihoods—and to protect and restore the planet. To be effective, such a mass move ment would need to raise bold demands that are counter to the failed marketbased solutions for climate change that have been put into practice by defenders of the capitalist status-quo.
What’s ultimately at stake? The habit ability of the planet for all living things. n SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 2013 3
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Tony Savino / Socialist Action (Left) New York City demonstration in solidarity with pro-democracy protesters in Turkey.
As a result of these protests, cracks within the pow er bloc are more apparent then ever. The AKP lead ership can hardly handle the rising tension between Erdoğan’s supporters and Fethullah Gülen, a religious cleric who resides in Pennsylvania. Indeed, the trans formation of these tensions into a crisis, would mean a split for the AKP.
Perhaps more importantly, the AKP government is losing its international allies. As is well known, the AKP enjoyed the full support of the major imperial ist rulers since coming to power in 2002. Signifi cantly, the U.S. Barak Obama administration assigned Erdoğan a big role—to be the leader of the Greater Middle East project. That includes overthrowing the Syrian Assad regime as well as the Iranian govern ment. Now, the U.S. and many other imperialist coun tries are reconsidering whether such a controversial figure as Erdoğan is really suitable for achieving that goal.
As the AKP is heading into a crisis, Erdoğan becomes even more authoritarian. He uses public funds to fi nance the gathering of thousands of his supporters. At the rallies he enflames his base with hate speech against the anti-government protesters.
The police arrest Twitter users, socialists, and many others. There are increasing numbers of reports of