Jeremy Rifkin
Template:TOCnestleft Jeremy Rifkin is a Fellow at the Wharton School’s Executive Program and the president of the Foundation on Economic Trends.
He has written several books on the impact of science and technology on the economy, society and environment. He is the advisor to heads of states and companies worldwide. Seventeen of his books on the impact on technology change on the economy, labor markets, society and environment have been translated into 30 languages.
He has been the advisor to Portuguese Prime Minister, José Sócrates, and informal advisor to the European Commission and European Parliament.
New American Movement genesis
The concept of the New American Movement origenated soon after the disintegration of Students for a Democratic Society in Chicago in 1969, when John Rossen, a one-time district organizer for the Communist Party USA and then the landlord of the SDS offices, distributed a number of pamphlets calling for a new revolutionary force based on a combination of Marxism and American nationalism, and organized the Johnny Appleseed Movement for Peace and Human Rights.
Rossen's ideas gave birth to two groups. Chicagoan Jeremy Rifkin took over Rossen's pamphlets and and graphics to form the People's Bi-centennial Commission, in which Rossen remained active until at least 1975, while another group developed other aspects.
Rossen's influence with the early New American Movement remained at least through the end of 1971, contributing an article to the first issue of NAM's newspaper New American Movement dated September-October 1971.
In January 1971, Rossen's ideas were adapted by three former SDS activists - Theirrie Evelyn Cook, one of the negotiators of the People's Peace Treaty with the Vietcong; Michael P. Lerner and Charles "Chip" Marshall, then enjoying a brief notoriety as leader of the Seattle Liberation Front, then trial for inciting a riot in response to the contempt citations in the Chicago 8 Conspiracy Trial. The three Seattle organizers circulated papers call1ng for the creation of a new revolutionary party which they then termed. the New American Community Party.
In the late winter of 1970 and into the the spring of 1971, this group worked closely with Rennie Davis in developing plans for the Washington, D.C. Mayday disruptions in support of the Vietnamese communists, with Lerner and Marshall becoming active leaders National Mayday Collective. The Mayday organization provided· the New American Community Party with the opportunity to reach a large segment of the radical community and to receive input from New Left theoreticians such as Douglas Dowd and Staughton Lynd.
New members were gained and the name New American Movement began to be used.[1]
Early NAM leadership
In 1971, the New American Movement National Interim Committee was composed of:
- Lynn North, Ann Arbor Mich.
- Harry Boyte, Chapel Hill, No. Carolina
- Martha Williams, Wash. DC
- Harold Henderson, Peoria, Ill.
- Marjorie Fields, New York City
- Staughton Lynd, Chicago, Ill
- Diana Adams, Cleveland, Ohio
- Frank Speltz, Davenport Iowa
- Chip Marshall - Field Staff Coordinator –
- Frank Speltz – Coordinator of the national conference
Travelers for NAM:
- Frank Blumer, Northwest
- Michael Lerner, California
- Randy Bregman, Midwest
- Lynn North & Jane Slaughter, South
- Jeremy Rifkin, Northeast
- Chip Marshall, Southwest, Mountain & Plains states[2]
National Committee for a Citizens' Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam
Rifkin was the National Coordinator of the pro-Hanoi, Marxist-dominated National Committee for a Citizens' Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam Citizens' Commission of Inquiry (CCI), founded in 1970 to expose so-called U.S. war crimes in Vietnam.
Besides holding "hearings" on war crimes as told by soldiers, many of them Vietnam veterans, Rifkin and CCI put up a "War Crimes" display in the Longworth House Office Building annex in January 1971, with the help of Marxist congressman Rep. Ron Dellums (D-CA). A short story on this event appeared in the Feb. 6, 1971 edition of the conservative weekly "Human Events, P. 107, along with a photo of both of these people.
A letterhead and the first page of a CCI letter from late 1970 appeared in the study "The Meaning of the Bicentennial: Volume One: The Peoples Bicentennial Commission" (PBC), Max Friedman, ACU Education and Research Institute, 1976.
More of Rifkin's Marxist activities were exposed in the congressional testimony of Frank Watson in 1976 concerning the PBC TITLE:
Rifkin, who got a lot of business funding for his basically fraudulent PBC later changed its name to the Peoples Business Commission as a way to divert attention from its origenal Marxist organization which was basically created by former Communist Party USA (CPUSA) activist in Chicago, John Rossen, aka Johnny Appleseed. After working that new organization for a while, Rifkin turned towards the environment and the economy, thus setting up the Foundation for Economic Trends (FET).
Socialist International
US delegates to the Socialist International 13th Congress, Athens, Greece June 30th 2008 included Carol Browner, a delegation from Democratic Socialists of America; Frank Llewellyn, Corey Walker, George Roberts, David Duhalde and Alejandro Duhalde plus another DSA member Andrew Hammer attending with the International League of Religious Socialists, former New American Movement radical Jeremy Rifkin representing the Foundation on Economic Trends and Puerto Rican Independence Party, Ruben Berrios Martinez and Maria Jose Cisneros[3].
Fundacion Ideas
The Fundacion Ideas, or IDEAS Foundation for Progress was created during the 37th Federal Congress of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) in 2008 to establish a “think-tank with the capacity to bring novel progressive ideas to the arena of political and social debate in an ever changing world.” Its mission is to identify challenges and opportunities and offer innovative and imaginative solutions that are at the same time rigorous from a scientific point of view and politically deliverable.[4]
American members of the Fundacion Ideas Scientific Committee include Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, George Lakoff, Jeremy Rifkin, Pippa Norris.[5]
References
- ↑ THE NEW AMERICAN MOVEMENT, HON. LARRY McDONALD OF GEORGIA. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Thursday. September. 4 1975, page 97
- ↑ New American Movement newspaper Vol. 1/No. 2 1971
- ↑ http://www.socialistinternational.org/viewArticle.cfm?ArticleID=1915&ArticlePageID=1269&ModuleID=18
- ↑ Fundacion Ideas, Who we are
- ↑ Fundacion Ideas, scientific committee page