Happy Labor Day! We're proud to announce the launch of the Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor (CMPL). Over the next few weeks we will be unrolling the campaign, adding to the website, holding local launch meetings in cities across the country, and above all, spreading the word about the need to break with the big business parties and build a mass labor party. We invite you to learn more about, join, and work with us to help build the CMPL. Read more about the CMPL and join here. You can also join the CMPL Facebook group and help spread the word by inviting your friends and contacts.

Recently, TV and talk radio have been obsessed with stopping the construction of an “Islamic Center and Mosque” which will be located two blocks away from where the World Trade Center used to be. The right wing, including former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and NY Republican Gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio, have seized on this issue, attempting to gain political support...What Gingrich, Lazio, Reid and other right-wing commentators are practicing is a well known method known as “divide and rule.”

For over a year, President Obama and Congressional Democrats have been threatening to “terrorize” the financial sector by creating new stipulations that would redefine how it operates. However, despite the Democrats’ attempts to claim otherwise, the finance reform bill passed by the Senate on May 20th leaves a number of loopholes open for Wall Street Banks to continue their shady lending behaviors and speculative schemes – the same kind of speculation that led to the financial meltdown in the first place.

New York Governor Patterson was trying to get the state work force to accept a one-day-per-week furlough. This would have meant a 20% cut in pay! The unions went to court and the furlough plan was stopped. Now, Patterson threatens 10,000 state workers with lay-offs on January 1, 2011. This is on top of many education and service cuts. The Metropolitan Transit Authority is laying off 475 station agents and plans to lay-off 500 subway conductors and bus drivers. Many local governments in NY State are also making deep cuts.

A recent Pew Research Center poll, arguably by the most respected polling company in the USA, asked over 1,500 randomly selected Americans to describe their reactions to terms such as “capitalism” and “socialism.” Pew summarized the results of the poll with the title: “Socialism not so negative; capitalism not so positive.”

“Please wake me up when the recession is over.” This sentiment, expressed on a T-shirt, sums up the mood of many American workers. They are anxious for what they assume to be a temporary disruption in the “normal” course of their lives to be over. Unfortunately, this is the new “American Dream,” a living nightmare of stress and constant insecurity, of unemployment and homelessness.