N.Y. assault on & free speech
2016 2016-06Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 9 →
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As part of a major multi-country assault designed to outlaw advocacy of boycotts of Israel, New York Gover nor Andrew Cuomo on June 5 signed “Executive Order No. 157”, instructing state agencies to divest from com panies and institutions that participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. In the tra dition of McCarthyism, the order directs state agencies to blacklist “institutions and companies” that support boycott activity in defense of Palestinian rights.
At Manhattan’s exclusive Harvard Club, flanked by oth er politicians and Israel state lobbyists Cuomo said: “If you boycott against Israel, New York will boycott you.”
Palestine Legal, a legal resource for Palestine solidari ty activists, quickly responded: “[the Order] is a blatant ly unconstitutional attack on freedom of speech. … It is unprecedented for a state to create a list of entities that support or engage in a First Amendment protected po litical activity, and deny them financial benefits because of it. Boycotts are a constitutionally protected form of speech, association and assembly, and have a long his tory of being used successfully to address injustice and demand political change.”
This outrageous executive order is a frontal attack on BDS, Palestine solidarity activists, and the democratic rights of all working people. A massive and immediate outpouring of opposition to this unconstitutional order is necessary.
All supporters of Palestinian self-determination and Equal Rights, and all defenders of democratic rights need to stand up and loudly demand its immediate re peal.
... Sanders’ demise (continued from page 8: “The working class was wealthy were profiting”)
form Party. Nader ran on the Reform Party’s ballot line in return for making reactionary statements lim iting the right of women to abortion and restricting immigrants from entering the country. (See Nader’s June 21, 2004, interview with Patrick Buchanan in the American Conservative.)
None of these “third parties” are independent of and against the fundamental capitalist politics of the Democrats and Republicans. Or, to be precise, none seek to organize the working class to replace the capitalist system with a socialist one—in which the private ownership and control of the nation’s banks, corporations, and wealth is ended, and the vast ma jority, the 99 percent, act to reorganize society for the common good. None are based on, financed, and controlled by working-class organizations like trade unions or other democratic mass working-class orga nizations.
None, as a matter of class principle, reject voting for