Bernie Sanders: Making Socialism Cool Again

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign event in Spartanburg, S.C., on Feb. 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Love him or hate him, Bernie Sanders has emerged as the indisputable front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Sanders has inspired a massive, energetic, hardworking and fiercely loyal following, determined to carry him to victory at the Democratic National Convention in July.

To the great agitation of his rivals and critics, Sanders has demonstrated a stunning popularity among a diverse cross-section of voters, including women, Latinos, Blacks, Muslims, union members and especially young people.

The oft-repeated trope of the white “Bernie bro” has proven to be more myth than reality. Sanders’ rapid and dramatic rise to front-runner status has sent his critics in the Democratic Party into a full-blown panic, revealing their inability to understand the current historical moment and the rhetorical power of the Sanders campaign.

Women, including young women of colour, are among those who have been energized by Sanders. Supporters are seen here in South Carolina. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

How, they wonder, has Sanders risen to the top of the field? What exactly is his appeal? 

Why are young people, including young women of colour, going for the old white guy?

Perhaps most importantly, why are so many Democratic voters warming to socialism, long regarded as antithetical to the American way of life?

As he did in 2016, Sanders has exposed a deep rift in the Democratic Party between its centrist and progressive wings.

The Third Way

This rift is not so much an intra-family dispute as a longstanding rivalry between two distinct political traditions. The first of these traditions is the so-called Third Way, first described by British sociologist Anthony Giddens in the early 1990s.

The Third Way was conceived after the end of the Cold War as an alternative to the left and the right. Also known as the “radical centre,” the Third Way rejects both the robust government interventionism championed by the left and the intolerance and bigotry congenital to the right.

It pursues incremental change while vigorously upholding a capitalist order. Bill Clinton was the first American president to put Third Way politics into practice. The Third Way has since become the reigning orthodoxy of the Democratic Party. Even Barack Obama, who campaigned on the lofty rhetoric of “hope and change,” governed as a resolute and unapologetic centrist, much to the disappointment of his progressive base.

Elizabeth Warren is also at odds with the Third Way. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

 With the exception of Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the rest of the Democratic field falls squarely within the tradition of the Third Way.

While the Third Way proved to be a politically salient politics during the 1990s, it has since calcified into rigid and obstinate dogma. The longstanding habit of ignoring the poor, siding with the rich and powerful and pursuing only incremental change has run up against a brick wall of brute reality: Gilded Age-levels of income inequality, skyrocketing medical debt, US$1.5 trillion in student loan debt, a racist criminal justice system and impending ecological collapse.

‘Massive failure’

Set against this stark empirical reality, incrementalism appears to far too many voters to be a massive failure. And the apologetic habit of dressing it up in the robes of pragmatic necessity has become a kind of secular theology: it demands faith in a better future that it can never deliver, a future lacking precise detail because it lacks a definable goal.

In the logic of the Third Way, incremental change becomes an end in itself: change for its own sake.

The problem with this delicate high-wire act — preaching incremental change in the face of exponentially worsening social and environmental crises — is that it has become impossible to pull off convincingly. Talk of incremental change doesn’t sound very promising or encouraging when the planet is on fire and climate scientists have given us a very short window to act.

By contrast, Sanders has been a lifelong advocate of democratic socialism, a tradition whose core principle is that democracy should be expanded from politics into the workplace — the sphere of life in which we spend the bulk of our waking lives.

Democratic socialism goes beyond mere social democracy — beyond programs like universal health care and public pensions — by calling for a fundamental change in the relationship between executives and workers.

It holds that workers should also have decision-making power, including over how revenue is distributed and how they get paid.

Deep, structural change

Democratic socialists want the workplace to be structured democratically, not like little North Koreas, in which CEOs rule like tyrants. Socialists see capitalist exploitation of people and the planet as the root of injustice. Hence, they advocate not incremental, but deep, structural change.

The reason Sanders has been so politically appealing to a diverse coalition of voters is because he offers a powerful explanatory key for making sense of America’s crisis moment.

He indicts not just specific people, like Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg and Jeff Bezos, but the system: The political economic structure in which the super-rich have amassed extraordinary sums of wealth at the expense of everyone else, and our shared planet.

Bernie Sanders is seen speaking to an overflow crowd at a Super Bowl watch party campaign event on Feb. 2, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Sanders’s rhetorical genius is to have linked different types of injustice, like income inequality, racial inequality, gender inequality, and environmental breakdown, through a single frame: corporate greed.

This enables voters to see injustice in big-picture terms. Sanders has equipped his base with a revolutionary political vocabulary for expressing their sense of injustice, as well as a language of shared struggle against a structure that thrives on exploitation. Solidarity, it turns out, is incredibly empowering.

Rise of a new politics

Third Way Democrats have scrambled to understand the Sanders revolution.

They’ve dismissed him as an old man yelling at the clouds and a snake-oil salesman offering the false promise of “free stuff.” Worse, they have been forced to perform the awkward dance of claiming the mantle of progressivism while disavowing popular progressive proposals and “revolution politics.”

This has inspired rhetorical gimmicks like cowboy talk and meaningless platitudes, that have been mercilessly satirized online. The desperate turn to disavowal and gimmickry strongly suggests the collapse of the Third Way and the rise of a new politics for the Democratic Party.

Democratic socialism might just be about to have its moment in America.

About Today's Contributor:

Jason Hannan, Associate Professor of Rhetoric & Communications, University of Winnipeg

• Jason Hannan is the author of Ethics Under Capital: MacIntyre, Communication, and the Culture Wars (Bloomsbury, 2020). Read the prologue here.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Related Stories:

• How Socialism Became Un-American Through The Ad Council’s Propaganda Campaigns
• Citizens Regeneration Lobby - Group Representing U.S. Consumers, Farmers & Ranchers - Endorses Bernie Sanders

How Socialism Became Un-American Through The Ad Council’s Propaganda Campaigns

Bernie Sanders was asked at a CNN-sponsored town hall about socialism. (CNN screenshot)

Bernie Sanders has emerged as the Democratic front-runner in the race for the presidential nomination.

Yet even some left-leaning pundits and publications are concerned about what they see as Sanders’ potential lack of electability.

Sanders is a Democratic Socialist. And the label “socialist” is a political liability in American culture. According to a Gallup poll released on Feb. 11, 2020, only 45% of Americans would vote for a socialist.

I am a scholar of American culture with an interest in the relationship between political ideologies and popular culture. In my research, I have found that this antipathy toward socialism may not be an accident: American identity today is strongly tied to an image of capitalism crafted and advertised by the Ad Council and American corporate interests over decades, often with the support of the U.S. government.

A screenshot from one of the corporate Cold War-era cartoons linking the Bill of Rights to free-enterprise ideology. (Internet Archive, Prelinger Collection)

Business and government solidarity

In 1942, a group of advertising and industry executives created the War Advertising Council, to promote the war effort. The government compensated the companies that created or donated ads by allowing them to deduct some of their costs from their taxable incomes.

Renamed the Ad Council in 1943, the organization applied the same wartime persuasive techniques of advertising and psychological manipulation during the Cold War years, the post-war period when the geopolitical rivalry between the U.S., the USSR and their respective allies raged. One of their goals: promoting the virtues of capitalism and free enterprise in America while simultaneously demonizing the alternative – socialism – which was often conflated with communism.

Government propaganda at home portrayed the communist USSR as godless, tyrannical and antithetical to individual freedoms. As a counterpoint, America became everything the Soviet Union was not.

This link between capitalism and American national identity was advertised through a sophisticated, corporate effort as efficient and ubiquitous as state-driven propaganda behind the Iron Curtain.

The campaigns used the ideological divisions of the Cold War to emphasize the relevance of their message. In a 1948 report, the Ad Council explained its goal to the public: “The world today is engaged in a colossal struggle to determine whether freedom or statism will dominate.”

Extolling capitalism’s virtues

The campaigns started as a public-private partnership. At the end of World War II, the government worried about the spread of communism at home. Business interests worried about government regulations and about the rising popularity of unions. The Cold War provided both parties with a shared enemy.

In 1947, President Truman asked the Ad Council to organize the Freedom Train Campaign, focusing on the history of America’s political freedoms. Paramount Pictures, U.S. Steel, DuPont, General Electric and Standard Oil provided financial support. For two years the train crisscrossed the nation, carrying original documents that included the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.

One of the Ad Council’s messages about capitalism in America. (Outdoor Advertising Association of America Archives, Duke University Libraries)

The following year, the Ad Council launched a business-led campaign, called “The Miracle of America,” intended to foster support for the American model of capitalism, as distinct from its Western European version, which was more friendly to government intervention. It urged increased productivity by U.S. workers, linked economic and political freedom and, paradoxically, asserted capitalism’s collaborative nature.

“Sure, America is going ahead if we all pull together,” read a brochure. Another flyer, “Comes the Revolution!,” cast its support of American capitalism in the language of global struggle: “If we continue to make that system work…then other nations will follow us. If we don’t, then they’ll probably go communist or fascist.”

In its first two years, the Miracle of America message reached American audiences via 250 radio and television stations and 7,000 outdoor billboards. Newspapers printed 13 million lines of free advertising. The Ad Council boasted that the campaign made over 1 billion “radio listener impressions.”

American factory workers received about half of the 1.84 million copies of the free pamphlet “The Miracle of America.” One-quarter were distributed free of charge to schools, and 76 universities ordered the booklet.

This pro-business propaganda, expressed in the language of Cold War patriotism, had reached roughly 70% of the American population by the end of the campaign.

How Ad Council campaigns after WWII helped make socialism un-American.

Cartoon capitalism

The efforts produced more than just print and billboard messages.

In 1946, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, founded by the former head of General Motors, paid the evangelical Harding College to produce “Fun and Facts about American Business,” a series of educational cartoon videos about capitalism, produced by a former Disney employee.

Between 1949 and 1952, Metro Goldwyn Mayer distributed them in theaters, schools, colleges, churches and workplaces.

The films promoted the same messages as the Ad Council campaigns, although they were not part of the project. They continued a decade-long effort by the Sloan Foundation to start, in the words of its executive director, “a bombardment of the American mind with elementary economic principles through partnering with educational institutions.”

To both Sloan and the movement’s backers, business interests were synonymous with the national interest. The free-enterprise system was a shorthand for freedom, democracy and patriotism. Unlike in Europe, the videos suggested, class struggle – of the kind that required unions – did not exist in the U.S.

In the cartoon “Meet the King,” Joe, the archetypal American worker, realizes he is not an exploited proletarian. Instead, he’s a king, “because he can buy more with his wages than any other worker on the globe.”

Conversely, government regulations of, or interventions in, the economy were described in the cartoons as socialist tendencies, bound to lead to communism and tyranny.

“Make Mine Freedom,” and “It’s Everybody’s Business” presented the state as a perpetual threat. A money-sucking tax monster, the government reduces everyone’s profits, crushes private enterprise and takes away individual freedoms: “No more private property, no more you.”

According to an estimate from Fortune magazine, by 1952, American businesses spent US$100 million each year, independent from any Ad Council campaigns, promoting free enterprise.

‘Peanuts’ pushes freedom

In the early 1970s, business responded to rising negativity about corporate power with a new campaign coordinated by the Ad Council.

“The American Economic System … and Your Part in It” was launched alongside the bicentennial national celebrations. It was the largest centralized pro-business public relations project thus far, but only one of many independently run by corporations.

Part of a page from the 1970s booklet that used Charles Schultz’s ‘Peanuts’ comic strips to explain the benefits of America’s economic system. (Amazon)

The media industry donated $40 million in free space and air time in the first year of the campaign. The Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor contributed about half a million dollars toward the production costs for a 20-page booklet.

That booklet used data provided by the departments of Commerce and Labor and Charles Schulz’s ‘Peanuts’ comic strips to explain the benefits of America’s economic system. The system was again presented as a foundational freedom protected by a Constitution whose goal was to “maintain a climate in which people could work, invest, and prosper.”

By 1979, 13 million copies had been distributed to schools, universities, libraries, civic organizations and workplaces.

Echoes now?

For four decades, the Cold War provided a simple good-vs.-evil axis that consolidated the association between freedom, American-ness and free-enterprise capitalism.

The business community, independently and through the Ad Council, funded massive top-down economic education programs which shaped American perceptions of business and government and of capitalism and socialism.

The Cold War ended 30 years ago, but its cultural structures and divisions endure – perhaps, even, in the responses of some Americans to Bernie Sanders’ socialism.

About Today's Contributor:

Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, Associate Teaching Professor of American Studies, Miami University

Cet article est republié à partir de The Conversation sous licence Creative Commons. 

"When the Earth Moves" to Premiere at the EarthX Film Festival and the Smithsonian Earth Optimism Summit

"When the Earth Moves" (Outrider Foundation/Generous Films)

The timely short film When the Earth Moves is set to premiere via back-to-back screenings at the EarthX Film Festival on April 22nd and the Smithsonian Earth Optimism Summit on April 25th and will then immediately be available on YouTube and at outrider.org. 

When the Earth Moves reclaims the authentic story and original vision of Earth Day as a bipartisan and socially just environmental movement and highlights the need for people across generations and on both sides of the political aisle to play an active part. The premiere coincides with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day – an event that is expected to activate over a billion people worldwide around environmental and climate action.

The film features archival footage of the original 1970 Earth Day and its founder, Wisconsin Senator and Governor Gaylord Nelson, as well as leading voices from the modern Earth Day movement, including Nelson's daughter and Outrider Foundation Managing Director Tia Nelson, former South Carolina Congressman and RepublicEn founder Bob Inglis, and youth activist and Sunrise Movement co-founder Varshini Prakash.

"I feel especially compelled to tell my father's story at this unique moment in history," says Tia Nelson. "He worked tirelessly his whole life to build an inclusive Earth Day movement, and today, 50 years later, the job is not yet done. It's imperative that we come together as a nation to protect our environment and renew our commitment to building a brighter future for all Americans."

"When the Earth Moves demonstrates that when it comes to environmental issues like climate change, we're literally in this together – all of us, the whole nation and world," says Bob Inglis. "In solving them, we have the opportunity to model a way out of divisiveness, a way out of destruction, a way of respect and love. This is a huge challenge and an incredible calling."

"Building on the momentum generated by the millions of students who took to the streets on Earth Day 1970, we are the climate generation today," says Varshini Prakash. "We are promoting a new kind of environmentalism that is rooted in racial and economic justice, and waking and shaking millions more people to action."

When the Earth Moves - Trailer:

The film is produced by Outrider Foundation, in partnership with Generous Films.

Outrider Foundation believes in the power of an informed, engaged public. It uses digital media to help enhance public understanding of global threats such as climate change and nuclear war, and to inspire action. 

Outrider's content – including films, interactive features, and in-depth articles – help audiences learn what's at stake and how they can be a part of the solution. 

• For more information, visit: outrider.org

Generous Films is an independent production company focused on socially and politically relevant campaigns that spark change. 

Generous' work includes the renowned short film series Let Science Speak, which premiered at the 2018 Tribeca TV Festival and aired on The Weather Channel. 

• For more information, visit: generousfilms.com

EarthX Film Festival features films and emerging media that explore conservation, climate change, and the environment while honoring the heroes working to protect our planet. 

The goal is to turn awareness into action, through art and motion picture media including documentaries, film shorts, and virtual reality, and to partner with environmental, film and entertainment organizations across the globe. 

EarthX Film Festival will run April 22-26, 2020 in Dallas, Texas. 

• For more information, visit: earthx.org/

Smithsonian Earth Optimism Summit showcases stories of both small and large-scale actions that frame the conversation and demonstrate that success is possible. 

The event reaches millions around the world who can learn, adapt, and scale success for greater impact. 

The Smithsonian Earth Optimism Summit will run April 23-25th in Washington, DC. 

• For more information, visit: earthoptimism.si.edu/

SOURCE: Outrider Foundation

Let's Make China Free The Uyghurs!

Let's Make China Free The Uyghurs! (image via Avaaz.org)

Dear friends,

Coronavirus put China in the spotlight, but there's another crisis it wants to hide from the world: 1 million Uyghurs have been brutally detained and brainwashed by Chinese authorities!

Women raped and tortured, children stolen from their parents.

It's too horrific to believe this is happening in 2020 and most of our governments aren't brave enough to speak up. But we won't remain silent! In days, the UN could discuss this nightmare, and insiders say that a global call to bravery can get key countries to finally challenge China. If everyone reading signs now, we can deliver 1 million signatures into the meeting -- 1 for every Uyghur who has been detained!

Then, we'll take survivors' voices to parliaments across the world and pressure global companies to end their engagement in this cultural genocide -- showing China and the world that we won't let go until the Uyghurs are free.

Click here to sign the urgent call to free the Uyghurs!

Beijing has felt threatened by the Uyghur community for decades -- but it's steadily gone from caution to control, to repression, and now mass incarceration and indoctrination. The sheer scale of the repression requires huge tech infrastructure -- facial recognition, surveillance on homes and public spaces, and massive DNA databases.

Global brands offer capital and tech, while China offers up forced labor and huge returns on investment in Chinese surveillance technologies -- it’s an unholy alliance! But if the UN, governments, companies, and investors speak out, impose sanctions on those responsible, and throttle funding streams coming into China, Beijing could shift course… and we could make it happen!

Recently, a Holocaust survivor offered an 11th Commandment for humanity: “Thou shalt not be indifferent.” This is a matter of conscience for all of us.

Let’s start by compelling our governments to call on Beijing to protect the human rights of the Uyghur people. Then, we'll urge global investors and CEOs to break their silence and stop business as usual with China! 

Sign now and share with all of your friends.
Click here to sign the urgent call to free the Uyghurs!

Time and again our community has stood with brave minority groups fighting for their right to exist. From the Indigenous in the Amazon to the Maasai people in Kenya, we have amplified their voices for the world to hear. Now, let's amplify the voices of the Uyghurs suffering in mass brainwashing camps in China, and do all we can to help them walk free. Join now!

With hope and determination,

Loup Dargent

On behalf of Meetali, Diego, Luis, Huiting, Nataliya, Will, Wissam and the rest of the Avaaz team

More information:

• Watched, Judged, Detained (CNN)
• In China’s Crackdown on Muslims, Children Have Not Been Spared (New York Times)
• US Universities And Retirees Are Funding The Technology Behind China’s Surveillance State (BuzzFeed News)
• Exposed: China’s Operating Manuals For Mass Internment And Arrest By Algorithm (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists)
• US Lawmakers Want An Examination Of The US Money Funding Surveillance Tech In China (BuzzFeed News)

What We Don't Understand About Young People's Motivations

Young people stand on the steps of the Alberta legislature during the climate strike in Edmonton in 2019. Youth are often seen as problems rather than as people who are creating solutions. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Amber Bracken)

Young people are demanding change. In the last few days, young Indigenous activists and their supporters blocked parliamentarians in Victoria, B.C., from accessing the provincial legislature and led waves of protest across the country.

For some young people, climate change is urgent. For others, gun violence is a crisis. From truth and reconciliation to inclusion and diversity and mental health, young people are bringing awareness to societal crises and making headlines along the way.

Historically, this is really nothing new. Young people have long been leaders and catalysts of important movements. Unfortunately, these change-makers are often thought to be outside of what is considered typical of this age group.

Young people are often labelled problematic, selfish or not yet ready to lead. This negative view of young people aligns with the multitude of research studies that frame their questions within a deficit model.

In a deficit model, the standard for healthy development is preventing behavioural or emotional problems. In both cases, there is a failure to acknowledge youth’s capacity or motivation to contribute to something larger. Underestimating youth is a mistake. Of course it is important to acknowledge and study the risks and barriers faced by this age group, but if we do not balance this view with understanding their capacities and contribution, it can lead to some faulty assumptions.

What youth can do

In our Community and Youth (CandY) research lab, we use a positive psychology approach. As such, we examine the positive motivations and capacities of youth. We are especially interested in the role young people play in improving our society, as well as the role communities can play to offer young people contexts that allow them to thrive.

Our research is rooted in the psychosocial model of Erik Erikson developed in the 1950s and 1960s. When boiled down to its simplest form, Erikson’s theory states that we all face a series of crises across our lifespan. How we resolve these crises helps determine our developmental success.

For example, in adolescence we face the crisis of identity versus identity diffusion; in midlife we face generativity versus stagnation. That is, when we’re young, we’re trying to figure out who we are and what matters to us, and as we age, we become more concerned with what we’re leaving behind.

Generativity — defined as concern for future generations as a legacy of the self — is well-studied. Most studies on generativity only consider people in middle age, even though there is evidence to suggest that this concern for the future and one’s own legacy is important earlier in the lifespan.

In fact, young people do share a concern for the future and their contribution to it. Our research shows that young people between the ages of 14 and 29 show levels of generative motivation that are as high or even higher than adults. Early generativity is also associated with caring friendships, community involvement and healthy identity development in adolescence and young adulthood. So not only are young people interested and capable of caring for future generations, but doing so is likely good for them.

Autumn Peltier, a young water defender from Wikwemikong First Nation, is an advocate for climate change policy.

Beyond the research, Autumn Peltier, a young activist advocating for clean water, has said, “We are the keepers of the generations yet to come.” She leaves little room for doubt that young people can be motivated by generativity.

Changing how we work with youth

Our team has seen first hand the generativity of youth at the Students Commission of Canada (SCC), a not-for-profit organization that is working towards a world “where all young people transition successfully into adulthood.”

At their “Canada We Want” conferences, we have witnessed early generativity in action. Young people from across Canada with a diversity of experience, expertise and identities work together to develop a plan to create the change that they want to see in their community, tackling issues such as poverty, employment, prejudice and substance abuse. This work is then presented to politicians, policy-makers and other leaders and has helped inform Canada’s first national youth policy. 

Taking IT Global is another organization that capitalizes on young people’s generativity. It works to “empower young people to become agents of positive change in their local and global communities.” It has given out more than 2,500 grants to youth, and also provides education and online resources for adults. The grants have helped youth educate boys about mental health, and prompted a $15-million cleanup of a river in Nova Scotia.

So how can we incorporate these ideas in our everyday interactions with young people? Whether we are parents, teachers, coaches or community leaders, it is worth reflecting on whether our assumptions of youth stem solely from a deficit model, or whether we account for the capacities and motivations of young people. Rather than focusing on what they lack, much more focus can be placed on their capacity and desire to have a positive and lasting impact. At the same time that we are asking young people who they want to be, we should be asking young people what kind of world they want to leave behind.

Greater awareness of the importance of generativity in youth will contribute to a more pervasive narrative of young people as capable, and motivated to contribute, thus combating some useless and inaccurate stereotypes about youth.

So the next time you see a young person in the news, or in your community, making the world a bit better for the next generation, you might smile to yourself and think, “Typical.”

About Today's Contributors:

Heather Lawford, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Bishop's University and Heather L. Ramey, Adjunct Professor, Child & Youth Studies, Brock University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Little Steven Marks 30th Anniversary Of Nelson Mandela's Historic Release From Prison By Announcing Remastered Vinyl Edition Of Landmark Protest Album 'Sun City'

Little Steven Marks 30th Anniversary Of Nelson Mandela's Historic Release From Prison By Announcing Remastered Vinyl Edition Of Landmark Protest Album 'Sun City' (image via Wikipedia)

Little Steven, aka Steven Van Zandt, is commemorating today's 30th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's historic release from a South African prison after 27 years in captivity with the announcement that his 1985 landmark protest album, Sun City, by Artists United Against Apartheid, the extraordinary supergroup brought together by Van Zandt, producer Arthur Baker and journalist Danny Schechter to fight racial injustice in South Africa, will be released on vinyl for the first time since its initial release 35 years ago. 

The long-out-of-print LP joins five additional classic albums from Van Zandt making all of Little Steven's records from his early career once again available on vinyl.

The upcoming releases, previously only available in last year's limited edition box set, RockNRoll Rebel – The Early Work, and now available individually, have all been remastered and include all of the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer's solo records between 1982 and 1999: Men Without Women (1982), Voice Of America (1983), Sun City (1985) Freedom – No Compromise (1987), Revolution (1989) and Born Again Savage (1999). 

Releasing March 13 via Wicked Cool/UMe, all albums will be available on both 180-gram black vinyl and as a special, limited edition version on 180-gram color swirl vinyl mirroring the psychedelic platters released in the box set. 

• The color vinyl variants can be purchased exclusive at uDiscover. 
• Click here to pre-order your copy 

Notably, Revolution will be making its individual US vinyl debut, having previously only seen vinyl release in Europe, while the 2LP Born Again Savage will be available individually on vinyl for the first time ever.

Little Steven announced the rerelease of his 1985 landmark protest album, 'Sun City,' by Artists United Against Apartheid, on vinyl on the 30th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s historic release from a South African prison after 27 years in captivity.

Hailed by Rolling Stone as "one of the most fervent and forceful political statements to emerge from Eighties pop music," Sun City, celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, remains an undisputed milestone in music and cultural history. The project began with "Sun City," a song Van Zandt wrote to expose and oppose South Africa's apartheid system which included the forced relocation of its black population who were also stripped of their right to vote. The song, featuring the memorable chorus of "I ain't gonna play Sun City," was a declaration and boycott from a stunningly diverse group of artists that they would refuse to perform at Sun City, a resort located within the Bantustan of Bophuthatswana, one of many internationally unrecognized states created by the South African government to forcibly relocate its black population. 

To record the track, Van Zandt, co-producer Arthur Baker and journalist Danny Schechter brought together Artists United Against Apartheid – a still breathtaking cadre of international superstars that included Bruce Springsteen, Miles Davis, Pete Townshend, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Ringo Starr, Zak Starkey, Darlene Love, Run DMC, U2, George Clinton, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, Rubén Blades, Peter Gabriel, David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Bobby Womack, Afrika Bambaataa, Kurtis Blow, DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Melle Mel, The Fat Boys, Herbie Hancock, Jackson Browne, Peter Wolf, Bonnie Raitt, Hall & Oates, Jimmy Cliff, Big Youth, Peter Garrett, Ron Carter, Ray Barretto, Gil Scott-Heron, Nona Hendryx, Pat Benatar, Clarence Clemons, Stiv Bators, Doug Wimbish, and Joey Ramone, to name but a few. 

Named as the top single of 1985 by The Village Voice's prestigious "Pazz & Jop" critics poll, "Sun City" was followed that same year by a full-length album that saw many of those same artists joining together for a number of additional exclusive tracks, including "Silver and Gold" (performed by Bono with Keith Richards and Ron Wood), "The Struggle Continues" (featuring Miles Davis, Stanley Jordan, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Okosuns, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, and Richard Scher), and "Let Me See Your I.D." (featuring Gil Scott-Heron, Miles Davis, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Peter Wolf, Sonny Okosuns, Malopoets, Duke Bootee, Ray Barretto, and Peter Garrett).

Sun City proved a critically acclaimed and globally important work for both its powerful social message – allowing Van Zandt, Baker, and others involved in the project to donate more than a half million dollars to causes supporting the anti-apartheid struggle – as well as its innovative, world-spanning musical approach, ultimately earning inclusion in Rolling Stone's "100 Best Albums of the Eighties," which noted "Sun City threw an effective political punch: Not only did it discourage musicians from playing the South African resort city, but it also helped spread the word about new sounds like rap." Van Zandt is donating all artist and publishing royalties from Sun City to the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation for the TeachRock.org music history curriculum.

"It took courage for artists to make the leap from social concerns to political action for a cause that was virtually unknown at the time," said Van Zandt. "Victories that clear cut are rare in the sphere of international liberation politics. Once in a lifetime if you're lucky."

The release of Little Steven's early catalog comes on the heels of the expansive box set, RockNRoll Rebel – The Early Work, released in December. Limited to just 1,000 copies, the comprehensive collection includes all six aforementioned albums across seven colored vinyl LPs housed in a bespoke slipcase. The multi-format set also boasts four CDs of rarities culled from Van Zandt's personal vault, allowing an in-depth look at his early solo career with 51 tracks spanning previously unreleased demos, B-sides, rehearsals, outtakes, radio spots, non-album singles, classic concert performances, and a number of never-before-heard studio gems, complete with corresponding liner notes from Van Zandt about each of the bonus tracks.

"It's been a blast going through the archives and finding all these hidden gems," says Van Zandt. "In addition to demos in various stages of completion, there are entire songs I'd completely forgotten about, and we found some really early things pre-Jukes like Southside Johnny and the Kid (The Kid being me!). I'm excited to have my stuff back on vinyl for the first time in decades!"

All six albums included in RockNRoll Rebel – The Early Work are also now available digitally as individual Deluxe Editions, expanded with the same rare and unreleased material from the era that make up the four discs of rarities in the physical collection. 

The Early Work, a special digital-only collection compiling 10 previously unreleased tracks of early rehearsals and live performances with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes spanning 1973-77 and capped off with a 1995 live performance of The Temptations' "I Wish It Would Rain," is also now available. 

Also now available digitally is the rare 1985 three-song 12" EP, Let Me See Your I.D., featuring the Extended Mix, Street Mix and Beat and Scratch Mix of the landmark "Sun City" single. 

All albums can be streamed/downloaded below:

• Men Without Women
• Voice of America
• Freedom – No Compromise
• Revolution
• Born Again Savage
• Sun City
• The Early Work
• Let Me See Your I.D.

In addition, a limited edition standalone 144-page, 12" x 12" companion book is in the works featuring Van Zandt's in-depth liner notes for RockNRoll Rebel, alongside memories and stories about the making of each album, lyrics to every song, and hundreds of never-before-seen photos.

SOURCE: Wicked Cool/UMe

Citizens Regeneration Lobby - Group Representing U.S. Consumers, Farmers & Ranchers - Endorses Bernie Sanders

Citizens Regeneration Lobby - Group Representing U.S. Consumers, Farmers & Ranchers - Endorses Bernie Sanders (jmage via berniesanders.com)

The Board of Directors for Citizens Regeneration Lobby (CRL), representing about 2 million U.S. consumers and thousands of farmers and ranchers, today announced its endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Ronnie Cummins, president of the board, issued the following statement:

"Sen. Sanders, the first of the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders to back the Green New Deal, has outlined a $16.3-trillion plan that includes $841 billion to transform the U.S. industrial agriculture system into an organic regenerative food and farming system that supports independent family farmers, guarantees access to healthy, locally produced food for all, cleans up our waterways, restores soil health and biodiversity and promotes climate stability.

Industrial agriculture's monopolistic approach to food and farming has all but destroyed America's family farms and rural communities. And the industry's reliance on toxic chemicals and degenerative farming practices makes it one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas pollution. Sanders' Green New Deal, in addition to holding the fossil fuel industry legally and financially accountable for its pollution and climate-destructive behavior, also takes on Big Ag by, among other things, enforcing anti-trust laws and declaring a moratorium on factory farms.

Sanders' Green New Deal is the only plan in the industrialized world that sets a goal high enough to actually reverse global warming and eliminate economic injustice, environmental destruction, deteriorating public health and global conflict, while also offering the first realistic assessment and timeline for what needs to be done in the limited timeframe left to avoid climate catastrophe."

In September 2019, CRL, along with Regeneration International, Organic Consumers Association, the Sunrise Movement and other organizations, launched the national coalition of U.S. Farmers & Ranchers for a Green New Deal. 

The coalition represents about 20,000 independent farmers, ranchers and members of food and farming organizations committed to overhauling U.S. agriculture policies in order to advance organic regenerative agriculture and land-management practices.

Citizens Regeneration Lobby is the 501(c)(4) sister lobbying organization of the Organic Consumers Association. The nonprofit grassroots organization lobbies on behalf of millions of consumers and farmers for safe, healthful food and a clean, biodiverse, climate-stable ecosystem. 

SOURCE: Citizens Regeneration Lobby

Trump Cancels Obama Landmine Policy; Ensures Civilian Suffering With New Mine Use Potential

Trump Cancels Obama Landmine Policy; Ensures Civilian Suffering With New Mine Use Potential (image via LoupDargent.info)

The Trump Administration has announced a deadly landmine policy shift, effectively committing the U.S. to resume the use and stockpiling of antipersonnel landmines. 

Landmines are devastating, victim-activated devices that cannot discriminate between the footstep of a child or that of a soldier.

"This move is a death sentence for civilians," says Jerome Bobin, Canadian Executive Director of Humanity & Inclusion. "There are acts in war that are simply out of bounds. Nations, even superpowers, must never use certain weapons because of the superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering they cause. Landmines fall directly into this category. There is no use for landmines that cannot be accomplished by other means that do not so significantly and indiscriminately kill and maim civilians."

The move is a direct reversal of President Obama's 2014 commitment that inched the U.S. closer to compliance with the 1997 Ottawa Convention, known as the Mine Ban Treaty. President Obama's move left only the Korean peninsula as an exception, due to ongoing mine use in the demilitarized zone.

Failure rate

The announcement states, "The Department of Defense is issuing a new landmine policy. This policy will authorize Combatant Commanders, in exceptional circumstances, to employ advanced, non-persistent landmines specifically designed to reduce unintended harm to civilians and partner forces."

Non-persistent mines are typically laid on the ground surface, and they should be able to destroy themselves within a relatively short period of time—from few hours to days.

"Don't be fooled," warns Alma Taslidžan Al-Osta, Humanity & Inclusion's Disarmament and Protection of Civilians Advocacy Manager. "Everything that man creates has a failure rate. The idea that so-called "advanced" landmines will be safer than older types of devices, is absurd. What happens if they don't neutralize as intended? Our teams see, first hand, how weapons often marketed as "self destructing" continue to injure, maim, and terrorize civilians all over the world on a daily basis.

We also see how quickly and regularly civilians move from one area to another to avoid conflict. What if they enter a mined area and such self-destruction hasn't happened to the mines around them?"

Mine Ban Treaty

The U.S. is one of the few countries that has yet to join the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, sharing ranks with China, Egypt, India, Israel, Pakistan, and Russia. There are 164 States parties to the treaty, making the ban on landmines a universal norm of international humanitarian law. However, the great paradox of this policy shift is that for nearly 30 years, the U.S. has refrained from using or trading antipersonnel landmines.

What's more, the policy change sends a very negative signal, essentially handing a blank check to States or groups willing to continue or expand their use of landmines, which had significantly decreased after the entry into force of the Mine Ban Treaty. "Canada cannot remain indifferent to this dramatic American movement," Bobin adds.

Humanity & Inclusion's decades of experience with clearing landmines, as well as taking care of survivors of landmine explosions, leads to the conclusion that no use is safe.

 "We oppose in the strongest terms the idea that military commanders will feel empowered to use mines," Bobin notes. "The safest landmine is the one that is never produced."

Backward step

"Make no mistake, this is absolutely a step backward," Bobin adds. "This significant and negative development is a thunderclap for all of the thousands of individuals who have survived contact with a landmine, as well as the family and friends of hundreds of thousands who have not."

Humanity & Inclusion runs projects to minimize the impact of landmines on civilians in dozens of countries, returning land to communities through demining, teaching people to spot, avoid and report explosive remnants of war through risk education, and providing support and care to victims of landmines. The organization works to raise the visibility of these landmine victims and their communities, so that the world is reminded of the scourge of landmines.

Mine Ban Treaty

The Mine Ban Treaty prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of antipersonnel mines. It is the most comprehensive international instrument for eradicating landmines and deals with everything from mine use, production and trade, to victim assistance, mine clearance and stockpile destruction. The treaty has been signed in Ottawa in 1997.

The International Campaign against Landmines received the Nobel Peace Price, Oslo, December 1997 (image via Humanity & Inclusion)

About Humanity & Inclusion

Co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for its work banning landmines, Humanity & Inclusion (the new name of handicap international), is an independent international aid organization working in situations of poverty and exclusion, conflict and disaster for 38 years. 

Humanity & Inclusion is one of six founding organizations of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, and winner of the 2011 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize. 

Humanity & Inclusion takes action and campaigns in places where "living with dignity" is no easy task. In 2018, Humanity & Inclusion's projects directly benefited 2.1 million people.

SOURCE: Humanity & Inclusion Canada

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