“Hunger Games”: The Dark Fantasies Of A Doomed Strata

By Caleb T. Maupin

In the modern world, two great hostile camps exist.

In the first camp lies the richest of the rich. They are the owners of the overwhelming majority of all the  banks, factories, giant stores, military production, oil wells, natural gas, and all other economic power in the world. They own as their private property not just all these things, but the governments of most of the world which move at their every command. The western capitalists, or the “1%”, make up this first camp of power in the modern world.

In the second camp, lies the rest of us. Those of us who sell our labor power in order to survive: the working class. The people of colonized world, no matter what their occupation are also in this second camp. The peoples of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America struggling against imperialism and foreign domination, along with the global working class make up the second camp, the 99%; the contradiction to Wall Street power. This second camp is the overwhelming majority of all humanity.

The first camp has entrenched itself as the ruling class over the last 500 years, vanquishing feudalism and replacing it with high tech exploitation on a global scale. It has itself protected with propagandistic media, military power and brute force, and all other means of establishing itself as a force to be reckoned with.

The second camp is now in the process of entrenching and cementing itself, as it rises in battle with the first camp, and take its place at the helm of the world. The rising Bolivarian movements in Latin America, the unified struggle against Zionism and U.S. imperialism in the middle east, the alliance of China with the people of Africa; on a global scale this represents the solidification of the global 99% in their opposition, to the 1%.

Within the borders of the U.S., the 99% is also solidifying itself and asserting its power. The 2006 uprising of immigrant workers, the huge outpourings against police brutality and racism, the struggle to defend public sector unions, and the eruption of Occupy Wall Street signify the second camp, the rising power of the workers and oppressed of the world.

The Dying Middle Strata

However as this struggle boils on a global scale between the global 1% and 99%, there is one sector that is doomed. No matter what force is triumphant, whether the global capitalists, or the workers and colonized peoples, this small strata is doomed.

This is the “middle class”, the “petty bourgeoisie.” It is the indy artist or musician. It is the small shopkeeper. It is the owners of the small “family owned farms.” It is the well known intellectuals and academics. It is doctors and lawyers with their own practice, and no regular employer.

It is those within the western capitalist countries who are not workers, but do not find themselves within the global 1% of wealth power. They “have their own” in a sense, with no regular employer renting them out each day, but they will never be among the ranks of Warren Buffet or Bill Gates. They “have their own” but it is just a small corner. It is a little bit of security, a little bit of freedom, and some economic priviledge.

But this is slipping away. The global 1% is destroying them. Wal-Mart is destroying every family owned hardware store. Major record labels, internet self-publishing firms, all of them are rendering “independent artists” out of existence. Agribusiness is turning the family farmer into a mere hired laborer.

Doctors, the once hailed “professionals” are now mere hired employees of big healthcare firms. Academic jobs are highly competitive, and highly stifling. Professors are no longer free independent thinkers who “profess” knowledge to the younger generation, but cogs in an academic machine that brings in billions to the student loan sharks of Wall Street.

However, if the global 99% are victorious, this will not save the middle class. In a socialist society, just as in modern capitalism, these professionals and “independents” will not be able to “do their own thing.” Decisions in the field of economics will be decided democratically and equitably, but they will not be “laissez-faire.” Doctors will be sent where society needs them. Art, media, and education will be subject to popular criticism, input, and regulation. Big box stores will remain, but under popular democratic control, with prices, hours, and all else regulated by the workers and the community.

The future holds collectivism. It will be either the collective obedience to wishes of a small, and shrinking capitalist class in its drive for profits, or collective socialist decision-making and democracy among the overwhelming majority of humanity.

No matter which side is victorious, the petty bourgeoisie will perish. So, as they look to the future, they see misery. As artists often find themselves among the ranks of petty bourgeoisie, this hopelessness and fatalism is reflected in art.

“Hunger Games,” Another Dystopia

George Orwell, expressed the fatalism of his class in his novel 1984. He described the future as “a boot stomping on a human face.” He spoke of a world where “independent thinkers” will not be able to proclaim “2+2=4.”

Though Orwell was a social-democrat, who also associated himself with Anarchism and other left-leaning petty bourgeois movements, his dark vision of the future was no different than Ayn Rand.

Rand’s Anthem and Orwell’s 1984, have the same bleak view of the future. They are not opposites by any means, but mirror images of each other. They fear nothing but the future and the inevitable collectivism of it.

Petty bourgeois fatalism preaches against all collectivism with the same repulsion. They view KKK lynch mobs and anti-racist rallies with the same level of repugnance. Both show conformity, coordination of efforts, and subordination of the individual to the needs of a group. The fact that two such mobilizations serve a totally different social purpose is meaningless in such a mindset.

 “Hunger Games” is another dystopian fantasy of the petty bourgeois variety.

The very premise of it is in some ways sickening. It is set in a future United States, 70+ years after a failed revolt of starving people.

Why not make a film depicting such a revolt? Better yet, depicting a revolt of the starving against the 1% that leads to victory. This is a “Hunger Game” that would be very relevant in the age of capitalist decay. Such a film would reflect on the Occupy Wall Street events, the Black Liberation struggle, and all the rising movements across the world.

However, Hunger Games starts with the premise, before the first lines of dialogue are uttered, that such a revolt is doomed to failure.

The country created in the aftermath of the revolt is one with a very small population, in which there is mass poverty. In order to remind the public of the mistake of the failed revolt, some 70+ years ago, a high tech gladiatorial show of sorts is carried out each year, where youths fight each other to the death.

Yes, “the mob”, descendants of those who took part in the revolt, now joyfully watch in public spectacles of death and violence of their own peers.  One character even bemoans this fact saying “If we just stopped watching it would be over.”

The message is that the people in their millions, the true makers of history, are a worthless mob of easily led sheep. They are oppressed, but they are responsible for their oppression as much as the oppressors themselves. “Conformity” is the films villain, not oppressive institutions and systems.

And the Heroes?

So, with the masses of people in their millions as the villians, who is the hero?

How many times before have we seen this in modern, popular art? Harry Potter was “the boy who lived.” Slumdog Millionaire won out on a TV game show. Superman is the orphaned child of space aliens.

The heroes are never ordinary people who accomplish great achievements, or engage in heroic actions.

No, the heroes are always “different”, they are always “special”, they are somehow “chosen.”

Hunger Games is not different. The heroin is “chosen” to do battle in an arena. She is “special”, and “isolated.” Of course, the ordinary working class people she grew up around don’t understand her, and victimize her, hating her for her greatness.

While the feminist implications of female battle hero are by all means progressive in our misogynist society, the character is still highly problematic. The early scenes of the film border on grotesque in the level of tragedy. The level of suffering the protagonist is forced to endure is repulsive and over the top.

Other aspects of the film are equally confusing and senseless as they reflect the alienation of the petty bourgeois from all humanity.

Though only one of the combatants in the “Hunger Games” can be victorious, and all others must die, somehow certain combatants band together, and begin traveling as a group, working together, hunting down the protagonist.

Despite it being irrational somehow “the mob” of Randian and Orwellian nightmares finds its way into the climatic moments of the film, as a conspiracy is formed to destroy the protagonist. This is odd as those conspiring with each other against the protagonist, are expected to kill each other.

Why do they conspire against the protagonist? What rational sense does this make? They are all equally doomed.

They do it because she is “the chosen one”, she is the “great individual”, and the world, the mob, is lined up against her. This petty bourgeois paranoid fantasy has no rational way of fitting into the constructed narrative, yet it still manifests itself.

The Revolution Is Not A Game

The heroin of Hunger Games by successfully “giving hope” to her district is seen as a potential liberator of the suffering people of this future world. A “special person”, a “chosen one” is seen as potentially achieving what a revolt of millions did not?

The hope for the suffering people of this world is not that someone will randomly chosen to become famous, and expose oppression with their fame. If this were true, the likes of Paul Robeson, John Steinbeck, Lillian Hellman, Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover and Jane Fonda would have rescued it long ago.

The masses in their millions are the makers of history. There will be no “condescending saviors” who win freedom for the people.

Only a movement of millions of people, coordinating their efforts, empowering eachother, and eventually removing the small elite that rules can point the way forward. Yes, individuals will play a role in such a movement, and prove their exceptional qualities in the process, but they will do it by their ability to put millions into motion, shaping the course of the true makers of history.

A vanguard is just a small part of a larger army, and in isolation, it is weak and worthless.

Socialism and the Individual

While the rugged individualism of the petty bourgeoisie and its self-isolating hero fantasies will perish in the flames of worldwide socialist revolution, individuals will not perish.

The Soviet Union was filled with artists, writers, musicians, and theater. Cuba today brings music into the education of every child’s life, in a manner far beyond what any capitalist country has done.

Socialism produced the many well known scientists who conquered the heavens with Sputnik. Socialism brought us the films of Sergei Eisenstein. Socialism brought us epic breakthroughs in Ballet and Orchestral music.

China’s cultural revolution brought films, theater troops, and art to millions of people.

Socialism as it existed in the former USSR, and currently in Cuba and People’s Korea has brought us many great individuals, who have flourished due to collectivism. Collectivism empowers and unleashes the individual to do far more than is possible in a state of isolation and competition.

However, these great individuals were great because they showed selflessness, devotion, and courage in their service of the collective. They were not self-serving sociopaths like John Galt, or angsty egotists like Winston Smith.

The heroes of the Socialist future are the like of John Q, Tom Joad, and Jimmy Higgins. They are the selfless female liberation fighters portrayed in “The White Haired Girl”, and in “Red Detachment of Women.” They are unlikely tragic characters like the whistle-blowing Marine in Brian De Palma’s classic Redacted. They are the unknown masked freedom fighter in “V for Vendetta.”

These are the individuals hailed in Socialist art, art that fights for freedom for the 99%, against the 1%.

Our movie does not end with an explosion, or the vanquishing of a hated foe. No, the taking of power and the defeating of the 1% is the beginning of the epic masterpiece of human history, when we rise as one and continue to the line of march to stateless, classless Communism.

Hunger will be abolished, along with the sick egotistical profiteering games that hold it intact.

"We Get Confused When The Law Changes Every Day!"

Read entire article here:
Gothamist: "Union Square: The Very Model of a Modern Police State





"Ask yourselves," one young protester implored a cluster of stoic young officers, "Why are you here? There have been fights and drugs here in Union Square forever. It's never been shut down. But as soon as someone wants to stand up for a political cause there are tons of cops here." Another activist, Caleb Maupin, told us, "They make up the laws as they go along here. One night they say we can't have cardboard. Another night we can. Tonight there's fewer people here so they push us all the way off the sidewalk. But I've seen much worse than this tonight."

Occupy Movement Exposes Ron Paul's Demagogy

By Caleb T. Maupin
Published Jan 4, 2012 8:37 PM

The “libertarian” movement has never been friendly to the 99%. Its members are not apologetic about wanting to abolish all social programs that aid the people, from Medicaid to food stamps. They want to shut down every government department that in any way limits the excesses of the 1%. These include the Departments of Labor, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, among others.

Libertarians also want to abolish the minimum wage, affirmative action, workplace safety regulations, and all other protections of workers and oppressed people. Their belief is that the power of the capitalists should be totally unrestrained.

With Marxism on the ideological defensive after the collapse of the USSR, many people may be confused about where to turn as the capitalist system crumbles around them. Even those who are of the 99% and who sympathize with that movement might be deceived by the libertarians’ program.

This is even more likely with a libertarian candidate like Ron Paul, whose recent decision to emphasize isolationism in his public image has added to his appeal. He is the only Republican candidate who appears to hold an anti-war position. Paul publicly calls for ending U.S. aid to Israel, closing U.S. military bases around the world, and trimming the massive military budget. He also points out that Iran is no military threat to the United States, and should not be sanctioned.

These are all positions people who want peace and oppose U.S. imperialism support. Without these positions, no one with anti-racist or progressive convictions would even consider supporting Paul.

OWS protests Paul in Iowa

This makes it all the more important and gratifying that the Occupy Wall Street movement, or at least the section of it in Iowa, has taken such a strong position exposing Ron Paul’s real positions.

Activists from OWS were arrested outside Paul’s campaign office in Des Moines on Dec. 29, protesting his reactionary program, specifically his intention to close down the Environmental Protection Agency and allow capitalists to degrade the environment without even the limited restraint the EPA represents. Among those arrested was a 14-year-old woman.

To make sure there was no confusion that OWS had become pro-Democratic Party, others from the same group were arrested that same night at the Democratic Party office in Des Moines. There, they loudly opposed Obama’s refusal to stop home foreclosures and to close Guantanamo Bay. (The Blaze, Dec. 29)

These activists from OWS are clear that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, nor ultra-right-wing demagogues like Ron Paul, speak in the people’s name.

Paul’s agenda: thoroughly racist, reactionary

Despite Ron Paul’s isolationist rhetoric, his program is loaded with horrifically right-wing and reactionary planks. It includes overturning the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which Paul has voted to do in Congress, and is not at all apologetic about. He claims it limits the “right” of business owners to discriminate.

Aggressively anti-immigrant, Paul has run television advertisements bragging about how much he intends to persecute undocumented workers and people from what he calls “terrorist” nations.

Paul’s newsletters from the 1990s have become a big scandal because they speak with such extreme hatred about people of color that even mainstream Republicans — especially those now running for president — have denounced them.

That Paul claims not to have personally written them is irrelevant. These newsletters circulated openly bearing Paul’s name. Clearly his movement is neither anti-racist nor for economic justice. Paul opposes the right to abortion, even though he poses as a libertarian and against government intervention.

He hides his racism behind an appeal for “state’s rights,” much as the pro-segregation racist politicians of the 1950s did. Paul claims he is a true believer in “small government” and cannot have government restrict the racists. Meanwhile, he is endorsed by numerous white supremacists, anti-Semitic forces and by the viciously reactionary John Birch Society.

The only way the 99% has ever been able to win concessions from the 1% has been through popular movements and struggles like OWS. It is in these moments, when the power of the ruling class of bankers and capitalists is threatened, that real change is won.

Justice Dept. Calls Sheriff Arpaio Racist

By Paul Teitelbaum
Tucson, Ariz.
Published Dec 23, 2011 8:43 PM

On Dec. 15, the U.S. Department of Justice released a report confirming the criminal practices of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his racist department. The report lists the findings of a Civil Rights investigation that began in June 2008 and concludes that the entire Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office violates not only Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act but several constitutional amendments and laws.

Specifically, the Justice Department said that Arpaio engaged in a “pattern of misconduct” in policies and practices that targeted and mistreated Latinos/as. Its tens of thousands of pages of evidence show his department’s rampant racial profiling of Latinos/as with unlawful stops, detentions and arrests and its use of “excessive force” and abuse of Latino/a prisoners.

These findings are not news to anyone who lives in Arizona or is familiar with Arpaio. Since becoming Maricopa County Sheriff in 1992, the sheriff has brutalized detainees at his jails and carried out an ever-increasing terror campaign against immigrants and the Latino/a community. He has been instrumental in stoking the flames of racism and anti-immigrant hostility in Arizona and in supporting the notorious anti-immigrant law SB 1070.

Arpaio has received ample airtime on television and radio to promote his brutal policies and practices. He has been elevated to celebrity status by the capitalist media, even having a short-lived television show on the Fox network in 2008. The A&E cable channel filmed one of his raids for a so-called “reality” TV show. A SWAT team with armored vehicles and a tank carried out the raid.

The beatings and deaths in Arpaio’s jails continue. On Dec. 17, 44-year-old Ernest “Marty” Atencio was brought into the Fourth Avenue jail. He was then beaten and tasered so badly that he is now “brain dead” and on life support at a Phoenix hospital.

In 1995, Scott Norberg was killed by Arpaio’s thugs 15 hours after his arrest. They beat him so badly that his larynx cracked. Although Maricopa County settled a civil suit with Norberg’s family, no action was taken against the guards who ended Norberg’s life.

Norberg’s attorney discovered that important records pertaining to this incident had been destroyed and that Arpaio had actually promoted the guards involved.

In 1996, detainees in the Tent City jail rebelled against their conditions. Temperatures inside the tents climbed to 145 degrees in the summer. Detainees were routinely denied access to adequate food and water. This abusive treatment led to the first Justice Department case against Arpaio, which was quietly settlled in 1998 when federal officials said that he had made the necessary improvements at the jails.

After the immigrant uprising on May Day 2006, the Department of Homeland Security instituted the 287(g) program, which allows local cops and sheriffs’ departments to enforce federal immigration law. Arpaio signed on to 287(g) and declared war on the Latino/a and immigrant community.

In the first year of 287(g), Arpaio was responsible for 25 percent of all deportations resulting from its enforcement nationwide. His highly publicized neighborhood dragnets for undocumented workers and his blatant racial profiling of Latinos/as have been allowed to escalate under the governorships of both Janet Napolitano and Jan Brewer. With the passage of reactionary law SB 1070, Arpaio acted with impunity.

The Justice Department did not just decide out of the blue to investigate Arpaio’s conduct. It is the same Justice Department that serves subpoenas to anti-war and solidarity activists, that indicts Arab Americans in FBI-manufactured “terrorism plots,” and that participates in planning the crackdown on the Occupy movement.

Jason Aragon is a Tucson videographer, activist and member of Migra Patrol, an organization that documents abuses by Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities and border patrols. He has been on the front lines of the struggle against Arpaio. Aragon has spent recent years researching Arpaio and filming for his documentary “Under Arpaio.”

When asked about why the Justice Department investigated Arpaio, Aragon told this writer, “The Justice Department did not decide to do this on its own. They acted in response to the groundswell of community actions and organizing against Arpaio. People risked their lives documenting Arpaio’s [immigration] sweeps and the conditions in his jails.” He explained that Barrio Defense Committees were formed throughout Maricopa County, and people were filming the immigration sweeps. He concluded, “The Justice Department was forced to act.”

This Civil Rights investigation, like its 1996 predecessor, contains no provisions for punishing Arpaio for his cruel and racist practices. Although Homeland Security has terminated the 287(g) program for Arpaio, the report itself contains only a set of recommendations for “reforms” that will correct the “deficiencies” highlighted in it.

Aragon stresses, “Arpaio is in violation of Civil Rights law. He is responsible for abuses and deaths in the jails. He should be indicted for everything that he has done. From the abuses in the jails to the political retaliation against his critics, all the way back to the implementation of Tent City. If the Department of Justice leaves Arpaio in power, it further proves that sheriffs and cops who violate people rights can act with impunity.”

Arpaio is a racist criminal. Even if he did not carry out the abuse and other mistreatment himself, he creates the climate for it and encourages it among his deputies and prison guards. He is responsible for much of the terror wrought upon Arizona’s Latino/a population. Arpaio helped to set the stage for the passage of the ultra-right law SB 1070 and draconian copycat laws like those enacted in Alabama and Georgia. All this has been made possible by the funding and power granted by the federal anti-immigrant 287(g) program.

NDAA Means War on Bill of Rights

By Sara Flounders
Published Dec 23, 2011 8:47 PM

Dangerous provisions inserted into the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012 (NDAA-2012) have created great alarm among civil liberties organizations, Muslim organizations, groups that defend anti-war activists and many activists of the Occupy Wall Street movement who have recently been targeted across the country.

The wording in the defense bill has created alarm because it is in explicit violation of basic rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and long considered untouchable, even in a time of rapidly growing political repression.

This article will examine the NDAA, investigate its relation to U.S. military expansion, look at the history of the Bill of Rights, and see how this can help point the way forward toward expanding rights and defeating repression.

What’s in the NDAA?

The controversial provisions in the NDAA grant the U.S. military authority to hold in secret and indefinite detention people deemed a threat to national security without recourse to counsel or a lawyer and without charges presented in a court of law or the right to a trial. Such police-state tactics have already been used against thousands of Muslim immigrants in the U.S. and around the world as part of the so-called “war on terror” since Sept. 11, 2001.

Across the U.S., press conferences, rallies and petition campaigns were quickly organized by a whole series of organizations on Dec 15. Ironically, passage of NDAA by a final conference committee representing both houses of Congress coincided with the 220th anniversary of the passage of the Bill of Rights on Dec. 15, 1791.

The bill’s provisions are an explicit violation of what is known as “habeus corpus,” the guarantee of the right to a hearing before a judge. They also violate the guarantee that the U.S. military will be kept out of all internal domestic areas. This is called “posse comitatus,” meaning the U.S. military cannot act on U.S. soil against U.S. citizens.

A statement released by the United National Anti-War Coalition sighted recent ominous national trends, including massive spying, entrapment and phony plots in the Muslim community, recent raids on homes of anti-war activists by federal agents and subpoenas to appear before federal grand juries, and the nationally coordinated, often violent police evictions of the Occupy movement around the country.

The statement also protested the refusal of the Chicago city government and the federal government to allow for peaceful protests when NATO and the G-8 countries come to Chicago in mid-May 2012 to hold summit meetings.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Coalition for the Protection of Civil Freedoms, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the International Action Center, the National Coalition to Stop FBI Repression, Occupy Wall Street, Muslim Peace Coalition and many other groups released statements and participated in organized protests and internet petition campaigns calling on President Barack Obama to veto the bill. This unified response is an essential first step in what is needed.

A veto is unlikely because the Obama administration requested the inclusion of this provision in the military budget bill, and has been actively involved in efforts to further restrict basic rights.

Unfortunately, many courageous civil rights organizations in attacking these reactionary provisions have made no mention or criticism of the NDAA itself. But highlighting this vital connection will help provide a perspective on how to fight back.

Military breeds repression

It is no accident that this assault on basic political rights long considered beyond the reach of government attack is part of the bill that funds the giant military machine. The military is the nut of the problem. This new unprecedented attack on civil rights at home cannot be seen in isolation to the ever-expanding role of the U.S. military on a global scale.

The NDAA is the annual bill that funds the bloated military. The U.S. military budget is already larger than the combined miltary budget of the rest of the world. The 2012 bill authorizes $554 billion for the Pentagon’s base budget and $115.5 billion for continuing the current wars and occupations. This appropriations bill funds 1,000 U.S. military bases in more than 150 countries around the world.

Other hundreds of billions of military expenditures hidden in the U.S. budget bring the war machine’s total cost to more than $1 trillion. This year’s NDAA further extends restrictions on the transfer of detainees out of Guantanamo, and it contains new threats and stricter sanctions on Iran.

The demonization and criminalization, spying and entrapment of the Muslim community, especially since Sept. 11, 2001, has been used to justify aggressive new wars of conquest and expanding military influence. Increasing the budget for police and prisons is the domestic reflection of the growing weight of the military.

The U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq represents a significant setback for U.S. strategic plans. But as this NDAA confirms, the U.S. military is hardly closing down. U.S. wars and the threat of military action across the globe, invasions, subversion, sabotage, increasing drone surveillance, deadly surprise assaults, kidnapping, secret rendition and targeted assassinations are all treated as acts of defense and national security.

The Pentagon serves the interests of the corporate ruling class. It secures global markets, loots natural resources and subjugates the workers of each country to the capitalist owners of all production. Its mission is to destroy any opposition to this domination from governments and popular rebellions.

The bill signals that no concessions are on the drawing boards, only further repression.

Bill of Rights & class struggle

Many appeals to President Obama to veto this defense bill because of the new repressive provisions have glorified and idealized what the Bill of Rights is, what it stands for and how rights are secured and maintained.

The Bill of Rights was never a sacred document of grand wisdom arrived at by the “founding fathers,” as presented in popular myth and school history books. Nor was it just an academic debate between federalists and anti-federalists.

The Bill of Rights was from the very beginning a reflection of the early class struggle in the U.S. It was not part of the original Constitution drafted in 1787. That document was designed to protect the propertied classes, balance their competing interests and centralize the authority of the state.

These ruling-class elements were meeting in haste after a broad uprising in 1786 throughout New England of indebted small farmers against bankers and merchants known as Shay’s Rebellion.

When the Constitution was originally drafted, any proposal to include any individual rights was overwhelmingly voted down. Land seizures, food riots, debt protests and enormous social ferment made it clear that a Constitution written by slave owners, merchants and land speculators would not pass without some rights guaranteed to significant section of the masses.

This was especially true because the masses were armed and in motion. The top 1% of 1787 — slave owners, plantation owners, wealthy merchants — made this belated and grudging concession after four years of intense political struggle in many of the newly minted states. They gave in because they were anxious to quickly organize a centralized federal state to deal with the growing assertion of grievances and rights by poor farmers facing ruin.

The first 10 amendments to the Constitution are called the Bill of Rights. They include freedom of speech, assembly, press, religion; freedom from torture or cruel and unusual punishment; freedom from warrant-less searches, excessive bail, seizures or imprisonment; plus the right to trial by jury and protection from a standing army. From the beginning they were a contradiction to the Constitution that protected property.

Despite its progressive side, it is important to recognize that the Bill of Rights did not mean rights for all people. Most people in the South were kidnapped African slaves who could be bought, sold, branded, beaten or killed without any protection. Indigenous peoples were targeted for expropriation, removal or extermination. Women were considered the property of their husbands and were granted no rights or protections. Thus the amendments guaranteed rights to a small minority of white men who owned property and were the only ones allowed to vote or assured of having rights.

Every step forward in rights took enormous and often bloody struggles. The struggle for the abolition of slavery only began to be resolved by the Civil War. And 100 years later the monumental Civil Rights Movement struggled for decades for the right to vote and win formal equality.

Even when the rights to freedom of assembly, speech and trial by jury were assured, they did not exist for working people. It took strikes, shut-downs, plant takeovers to win the right to unionize. It took 80 years of marches and mobilizations for women to even gain the right to participate in political life.

It is important to remember this history of struggle to expand rights in order to understand how to push this fight forward today.

OWS & fighting to expand rights

Defending the right to freedom of speech, assembly and the press is important in the class struggle today — in order to have a voice to fight for the right to a job, the right to health care, the right to an education, the right to housing, the right to a safe and clean environment, and the right to oppose endless wars. Given the fabulous ability of technology to provide for all, these basic rights to a full life must be asserted, demanded and won.

But given the crisis of capitalism, all these basic human rights run counter to corporate survival.

Occupy Wall Street’s great contribution in this period of contracting capitalism is its focus on the 1% who have benefited from all government bailouts and policies at the expense of the 99%. This popular formulation is a leap forward in class-consciousness on a national scale. Occupy Wall Street has also found creative new forms of mass participation and inclusion. Though imperfect, they are a big step forward.

For these very reasons, the large legal and overwhelmingly peaceful protest assemblies that erupted across the country were threatening to U.S. corporate power, the police and the military, who want only fear and compliance and are driven to shut down all forms of activism.

On a national scale through the Department of Homeland Security, every major OWS encampment was targeted with mass arrests. HS coordinated local police attacks. Even Democratic Party forces, which had originally embraced OWS as an antidote to the Tea Party, complied with police crack-downs.

But the past three months of mass struggles since Sept. 17 confirm once again that the best way to push back reactionary provisions in the NDAA is to raise the level of resistance. Defend the courageous young OWS activists who have opened new political space, build solidarity with the Muslim community against the broad-scale attacks, and challenge racist police practices of stop and frisk. Unity, solidarity and resistance point the way forward.

PressTV: "OWS Scares Ruling Elite"

Click Here For Video

A new Gallup survey records just 11 percent approval for the US Congress, the lowest single rating in Gallup's history of asking this question since 1974.


The rating, which was conducted from December 15 to18, comes at a time when Congress is wrangling once again at the last minute over extensions of a payroll tax holiday, unemployment benefits and higher pay for Medicare doctors.

The previous low Gallup reading for congressional job approval was 13%, recorded in August, October and November of this year and in December 2010.

In an interview with Press TV, Caleb Maupin, with the International Action Center in New York, shares his thoughts on the issue.

The video offers the opinions of two additional guests: Sherwood Ross, a prominent American blogger and journalist and Paul Street who is the co-author of 'Crashing the Tea Party'. Below is the approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Caleb Maupin, we have been talking about this new poll 11 percent of Americans having faith in Congress and of course the lawmakers --many of them millionaires. I would like to get your reaction on that and then maybe you can tell us if that is a reflection on how it maybe ties in with Obama's approval rating which a recent poll actually is suggesting that he would not be reelected.

Maupin: Well, I would say that the recent poll results are due to the fact that there are thousands of families in this winter season who will be celebrating the holidays living literally intense all throughout the United States and people know that there are thousands and thousands of empty houses all through the United States as well.

There are empty houses all across the United States and there are people who have been evicted from their homes, because they cannot find work and they are unable to pay their mortgages and this situation is what people are facing. They are facing poverty and the horrific reality that in the country with the richest top one percent of any country in the world, people are still suffering and when people can see that, how can they approve of Congress? How can they approve of their government officials?

They have taken polls that say 12 percent of the US population favors communism over capitalism but only 11 percent approves of Congress. That is how low it is. With all the McCarthyism, communism is more popular in the US Congress. That shows that things are beginning to change and people are standing up for once and that is why they attempted to declare the Occupy Wall Street movement over many times.

But it is certainly not over. People are in the streets; there seems to be a confrontation all the time and it is continuing and the crisis will only continue until the forces of the one percent and the top ruling elite of Wall Street are forced to step down.

Press TV: First of all, it does not make sense, Caleb Maupin, does it? When they are planning on repression --in this case let us mention the occupy protesters-- which is going to cost money because it is going to bring in more forces; we are going to work probably overtime. Give us your comments on that and also a reaction to whether the US administration is getting the point here or why is not it that they are? Because from many corners, it is said that the civil unrest is perhaps arriving in the US, if it has not already in different counties perhaps.

Maupin: Well, I would say, first of all, in response to the whole issue with whether the money is there, there is plenty of money that the US government has. The vast majority of it goes to bomb countries, to set up military bases all around the world, and maintain empire for the defense of Wall Street's profits.

I am all for raising taxes on the rich, do not get me wrong, but it is a question of how that money is spent. They need to end the wars around the world and then the money would be there. They are cutting the programs massively, be that they always have money for the police and more money for means of repression.

With regards to the whole issue of the prison system, the prisons and the police are largely being privatized now. You have private contractors in the military. All over Iraq, you have private military contractors, who Wall Street banks are getting kickbacks from these things, whereas the social programs are being cut, because these things actually go to help people and not to help big banking institutions and not to help the ruling elite.

There is a great fear on the part of the ruling elites right now, because they fear the fact that people are waking up and are furious with the facts, the conditions, that they forced upon them. Things are beginning to change; we are going to see a tightening of the apparatus and a tightening of the violence and this national defense authorization act is an incarnation of that.

They are trying to scare people and they are preparing --they are bracing-- for the fact that the Occupy Wall Street movement is just the beginning. What began in Tunisia in January and in Egypt was just the beginning of a global revolt against the monopoly power of the ruling elite and they are trembling right now and they are going to do everything they can to restrain the people from taking what is rightly theirs, their seats as the rulers of the world.

Press TV: Caleb Maupin, where do you see this going in terms of how the occupy movement is going to occur in terms of its intensity and keeping the momentum and having any say when it comes up to the votes that are supposed to count --if you agree with it-- in 2012?

Maupin: Well, there was a saying among activists and revolutionaries in this country about a hundred years ago and they said if voting could change anything, it would be illegal. I think a lot of people believe that because when we go to polls, we have the choice of a Democrat who supports the wars, supports repressing people and is in the pocket of Wall Street, or a Republicans who supports the wars, supports continuing repressing people and is also in the pocket of Wall Street.

The beautiful thing about the Occupy Wall Street movement is that people are no longer channeling their anger into the useless stage called elections. People are pouring into the streets; their feet are their votes and they are out in the street and they are confronting the state and the police and they are beginning to see that this idea that this is the freest country in the world and there is total freedom in the US is a deception.

They are ready to go out and they are ready to fight, to make it not a deception but to make it reality and to make a world where people are indeed free, but they realize it won't come through voting, it will come through being in the streets, from standing up and from engaging in a struggle for true democracy.

MY/MSK/JR

Reproductive Justice Under Pervasive Attack

By Sue Davis
Published Nov 19, 2011 11:12 AM

Initiative 26 was trounced 58-42 percent by voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8. It would have outlawed all abortions, many forms of birth control, fertility treatments and stem-cell research and possibly have criminalized women who had ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages.

Known as the “egg-as-personhood” referendum, its defeat is an unexpected victory for women in the most conservative state in the U.S. It’s also a real setback for all who seek to deny women their full human rights by denying them control over their own bodies.

This pro-choice victory was not predicted even two weeks before the election. Polls showed passage was a done deal. The Oct. 26 New York Times reported both candidates for governor supported passage and quoted people in favor of or undecided about it.

What turned things around was a massive eleventh-hour, grassroots effort mounted by Mississippians for Healthy Families, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the Feminist Majority Foundation and the NAACP. Mississippi now joins Colorado and South Dakota in rejecting “personhood” laws — twice in both those states. But new campaigns are said to be planned in Nevada, Georgia, Florida, Montana, Ohio, California, Oregon, Michigan, Wisconsin and South Dakota (yet again).

Meanwhile, anti-choice laws have spread like a rabid virus in many states. They include bans on insurance coverage for abortion; laws mandating that women who seek abortions must visit a “crisis pregnancy center” for an anti-abortion lecture by religious zealots; and laws that require a woman to view a sonogram of the fetus before having an abortion. Other laws seek to deny public funding to Planned Parenthood because it is the country’s largest abortion provider, even though millions of poor women rely on its facilities for their primary health care. Those who would be deprived are disproportionately women of color, young and living in rural areas.

But the most far-reaching attack on women’s reproductive rights occurred at the federal level on Oct. 13, with the endorsement and blessing of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Family Research Council. By a vote of 251 to 172, the House of Representatives passed the horribly misnamed “Protect Life Act.” Among its many anti-women, anti-health and anti-life provisions was one that would allow doctors, other health care providers and hospitals to “exercise their conscience” and let pregnant women who need emergency medical care die.

No wonder women’s rights and progressive legal groups called it the “Let Women Die Bill,” while thoroughly opposing it. During debate before the vote, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) denounced the bill, saying that “had this law been in effect 20 years ago she might not be here, because she was one of those women who needed an emergency abortion to save her life.” (rhrealitycheck.org, Oct. 13)

Among its provisions, which would deprive millions of women of benefits they receive today, the law would force insurance companies to drop comprehensive coverage in state health insurance exchanges. This would prevent women from paying for health insurance, even with their own money, if it includes abortion coverage. And it would allow states to pass laws stipulating that health plans can refuse to cover preventive services, including birth control, even though the Department of Health and Human Services announced Aug. 1 that all preventive care for women, including birth control, should be provided at no extra cost in insurance plans.

All the major women’s health and rights organizations are fighting the good fight. For instance, the Center for Reproductive Rights won injunctions in Oklahoma, North Carolina and Texas to stop anti-choice laws from going into effect. Planned Parenthood has mounted an information campaign asserting that though it is a major abortion provider, no government funding is used to pay for abortions.

United fightback needed

But more is needed to defend women’s rights and ensure reproductive justice for all women in this climate of political reaction. Nowadays, lawmakers would rather use state power to impose paternalistic, life-threatening limits on women’s right to life and health than to pass bills that create real jobs or that tax millionaires.

It’s instructive to note that in an essay posted Oct. 27 on rhrealitycheck.org, Loretta Ross, an African American who has devoted 35 years to the struggle for reproductive justice, advocated that the coalition fighting Initiative 26 link that struggle with the fight against Initiative 27, which mandated government-issued identification in order to vote. The Feminist Majority Foundation calculated that passage of similar laws nationally could prevent 35 million women from voting. Ross raised the slogan: “Two no’s make a right.” Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and the voter ID exclusion act passed.

After calling the defeat of Initiative 26 “a peoples’ victory, a triumph in which people of all backgrounds, races, professions and religions came together,” Ross wrote in the Nov. 9 rhrealitycheck.org, “Millions of dollars of staff and resources poured into Mississippi from around the country to defeat 26. … What if those same resources had been equally devoted to defeating 27? … Could we have saved the right to vote in Mississippi at the same time we saved (at least temporarily) the right to obtain an abortion?”

It’s time to link the fight for women’s rights with today’s fightback movement led by Occupy Wall Street, the unions and community groups. A broad-based, united struggle is needed to win justice on all issues for all people.

Hank Skinner Wins Stay Based on DNA Evidence

Bulletin: As this paper goes to press, on Nov. 7, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the execution of Hank Skinner pending the results of his legal challenges for DNA testing. The case was sent back to the trial court for further review. WW will provide an update.


Hank Skinner has been on Texas death row since 1995 for a 1993 murder he steadfastly has said he did not commit, and is now within days of a scheduled Nov. 9 execution. Yet the state of Texas continues to withhold key evidence that could be tested for DNA evidence before Skinner is put to death.

Gray County District Attorney Lynn Switzer is thumbing her nose at the law by refusing to release seven different untested items of evidence. A newly enacted Texas law requires DNA testing, regardless of when it is asked for, if a person’s life is at stake. The law, signed by Gov. Rick Perry, went into effect on Sept. 1.

Skinner was convicted in 1995 of murdering his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two adult sons in their Pampa, Texas, home. Skinner doesn’t deny that he was in the house that New Year’s Eve in 1993, but maintains that he was too incapacitated from a mixture of vodka and codeine to carry out the attacks.

Skinner’s court-appointed attorney had previously resigned from the district attorney’s office after he was caught siphoning money in an asset forfeiture case. He was appointed as Skinner’s counsel by a judge who was a personal friend. For representing Skinner, the judge ordered that the attorney be compensated an amount roughly equal to what the attorney owed in criminal fees.

This same attorney had formerly prosecuted Skinner on minor assault and theft charges, which were used as aggravating circumstances to get Skinner the death penalty. The attorney didn’t object.

In 2000, the Medill Innocence Project at Northwestern University began investigating the Skinner case when students uncovered physical evidence that witnesses said was critical to the case. The evidence includes a rape kit; fingernail clippings from Twila Busby; the murder weapons; and a windbreaker covered in blood and hair, found near the murder scene. The prosecution did not use this evidence in trial, and Skinner’s defense attorney did not ask for it, despite Skinner’s requests.

After Northwestern University professor David Protess challenged the district attorney on a talk show later that year, Texas conducted preliminary mitochondrial DNA testing on hair fibers Twila Busby was clutching at the time of her death. When those tests showed that the hairs belonged to neither Skinner nor the victim, the state halted any further testing.

Now the case is generating worldwide interest, with editorials in every major Texas newspaper as well as in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, West Australian, Guardian (Britain) and Huffington Post. The New York Daily News held a poll this week; the majority of respondents voted that Skinner should be allowed DNA testing.

On Nov. 4, Skinner’s supporters hand-delivered 16,000 signed petitions to Switzer urging her to grant the DNA testing. She has not responded. Then, in just two days, more than 130,000 people signed petitions calling on Texas governor and presidential candidate Perry to stay the execution until the evidence is tested.

“Testing DNA evidence has exonerated 275 prisoners in the United States since 1989, including 43 in Texas. So it seems unbelievable that the state of Texas refuses to turn over key evidence to be tested,” said Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner, Skinner’s spouse and an activist with Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (Together Against the Death Penalty) based in Paris, France.

According to Locke Bowman, director of the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University, “Skinner’s long and winding journey through the Texas and federal court systems has been an absurd — and obscene — waste of time and money. … Shame on the Texas prosecutors and the judges who’ve wasted all this time obstructing the search for truth in Skinner’s case.” (Huffington Post, March 22)

The view of Skinner’s supporters is summed up by the San Antonio Express-News, which editorialized, “Justice isn’t served by putting innocent people behind bars … or on death row. Testing for DNA evidence should be routine in death penalty cases. It is unconscionable that the state would fight Skinner or anyone else to prevent such testing.” (April 3)

Protess, now head of the Chicago Innocence Project, recalls the recent execution of Troy Davis in Georgia: “Skinner has gained support for his cause from, among others, six of the jurors who found him guilty and voted for death. Although this sordid episode is unfolding in Texas — a state that has already performed almost one-third of the country’s executions this year — it is not too late to speak out with Georgia still on your mind. Troy Davis would have liked that.” (Huffington Post, Oct. 4)

More information is available at www.hankskinner.org.

Operation Dixie marker reveals Black labor history

By James Wrenn
Rocky Mount, N.C.

A North Carolina Highway Historical Marker recognizing the 1946 tobacco leaf house workers union campaign was unveiled in Rocky Mount by the Phoenix Historical Society on Sept. 3. The United Electrical Workers union, Local 150 co-sponsored the event.

Entitled “Operation Dixie,” the marker stands on N. Franklin Street at the corner of McDonald Street, across from the Imperial Centre, and denotes the China American Tobacco Company plant on N. Pearl Street, Rocky Mount, N.C., where workers cast the first pro-union vote in the campaign on Sept. 5, 1946.

Most African-American workers cast their first vote ever in this union election, since racist Jim Crow laws denied voting rights to Black people in North Carolina. This leaf house union campaign in 1946 is considered a precursor to the civil rights movement.

More than 90 people gathered at the Imperial Centre to hear remarks from Duke University historian Robert Korstad (author of “Civil Rights Unionism”), UE Local 150 Vice President Larsene Taylor and N.C. AFL-CIO President James Andrews. Rocky Mount City Councilman Reuben Blackwell read a moving resolution from the City Council honoring the courage of the tobacco workers of 1946.

Retired Wilson tobacco union worker Dorothy Edwards gave tribute to the pioneers of 1946 who paved the way for workers’ rights and civil rights in eastern North Carolina. The highlight of the day was 94-year-old Cora Baines Tann, who was a worker at China American and joined the FTA-CIO union in that historic 1946 vote. She and James Andrews had the honor of unveiling the marker.

Leaf house workers, who were 100-percent African-American and 75-percent women, stemmed and processed tobacco in miserable working conditions with low pay and 12-hour shifts under often abusive white male supervisors in factories across eastern North Carolina. These workers were at the base of a very profitable tobacco and cigarette industry.

In the summer and fall of 1946, nearly 10,000 leaf house workers joined unions in a massive organizing campaign called “Operation Dixie” with the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural & Allied Workers of America, and also the Tobacco Workers International Union.

The first pro-union vote by Chinese-American workers was followed by 26 more pro-union votes in the next two months in the North Carolina towns of Oxford, Henderson, Rocky Mount, Greenville, Wilson, Smithfield, Goldsboro, Kinston and Lumberton, and South Boston, Va. Workers secured union contracts in over 30 tobacco plants that resulted in higher pay, eight-hour workdays, paid holidays, improved working conditions and grievance procedures to address abusive supervisors. Today, only two tobacco union locals remain.

The Phoenix Society will present a lunchtime “History a la carte” program on Operation Dixie at the North Carolina Museum of History on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012, at noon.

Wall Street & The Anti-Immigrant Campaign

By Teresa Gutierrez
Published Nov 3, 2011 10:15 PM

On Oct. 18 the Obama administration announced that it had deported almost 400,000 undocumented immigrants during the 2011 fiscal year. “All told, this administration has deported nearly 1.2 million people, leaving a wake of devastation in Latino communities across the nation,” said the American Civil Liberties Union in a press release.

The Latino/a community has the largest group of immigrants in the U.S., but people from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean have been victimized as well by the anti-immigrant campaign sweeping the country. The massive deportations and the unprecedented detention of workers amount to a tsunami of injustice.

It is an attack on not only migrant workers but really against the entire working class. It is meant not only to terrorize one of the most exploited sectors of the working class, but also to sow division at a time when solidarity and unity among the working class is so decisive.

Make no mistake about it: The deportation and detention of workers is big business. It is hugely profitable for the capitalist class. That is why the immigration issue and the defense of immigrant workers has everything to do with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Recent articles in the progressive press and the production of a PBS documentary, “Lost in Detention,” reveal the depth of the injustice. Some of the information demonstrates the unholy alliance between the bloodsucking corporations and those in Washington who willingly take their marching orders from the CEOs.

In an article written for the Americas Program, Peter Cervantes-Gautschi shows that the two largest companies that build and operate U.S. prisons are very much involved in anti-immigrant legislation from Georgia to Arizona. (cipamericas.org) This comes as little surprise as corporate lobbying in Washington — involving obscene amounts of money — is one of the reasons why there is so much anger at Wall Street.

The two corporations that Cervantes-Gautschi notes are the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group. These two corporations have already earned the wrath of progressive groups. Prison rights activists and the families of the incarcerated have for years targeted the CCA for its abuses as well as for profiting from the unjust imprisonment of so many in this country.

According to the Pew Center on the States, 1 in every 99 persons in the U.S. is behind bars. Because of institutionalized and pervasive racism, the rates are criminally higher for Black and Brown folks. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, so the unbridled drive to lock up immigrants is no shock.

The GEO Group is a worldwide corporation based in Florida. It is infamous for securing the contract in 2003 to run the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp on the occupied soil of socialist Cuba. This detention center has been targeted by progressives for its use by the U.S. government to illegally and unjustly detain primarily Muslims under the ruse of “fighting terrorism.”

According to Cervantes-Gautschi, GEO and CCA spent a total of $6 million to lobby Congress in just one year. He points out that as workers marched for immigrant rights in record numbers in 2006, the scene was being set for a radical turn in immigration policy to primarily one of enforcement.

Cervantes-Gautschi notes that “Wall Street advisers publicly recommended buying stock in private prison companies like CCA and GEO,” and that “for every dollar spent on lobbying the government, GEO received a $662 return in contracts, a total of $996.7 million.” CCA received a total of $330.4 million.

The PBS Documentary, “Lost in Detention,” details how since 2008 “historic levels” of detentions and deportations have occurred, a fact that will forever mark the Obama administration.

The documentary shows how after a worker is picked up — by a Gestapo-like raid or by a terrifying police stop — and before he or she is deported, they are held in what amounts to human warehousing at these corporate-owned and run detention centers.

The imprisonment of migrant labor is the fastest-growing incarceration system in the country. There are over 250 immigrant detention centers now in the U.S. They are hell holes, exactly like the prisons that incarcerate primarily African-American and Latino/a people. They are mainly built in remote areas that are hard to get to and far from the families of the detained.

In detention, the undocumented workers risk beatings, death or rape. The documentary points out that many have no access to legal representation. Many beg for deportation just to get out of the hell hole.

The mass deportations and detentions affecting millions of workers and their families are why the immigrant rights struggle will inevitably connect in a massive and integral way with the Occupy Wall Street movement. These sectors will unite in a righteous anger against the rich ruling class that exploits us all. The seeds of that unity have already been planted.

Skulls & Hypocrisy - German Imperialism in Africa

By G. Dunkel
Published Oct 14, 2011 10:17 PM

As a gesture of “reconciliation,” the German imperialist government sent 20 skulls back to Namibia in early October. They had been removed from the bodies of Herero and Nama warriors killed by German soldiers who were occupying their country — then called South West Africa by Europeans — in the early 20th century.

The skulls had been taken to Germany more than a hundred years ago for racist experiments.

When the Herero people rose up in anger over these beheadings and attacks on their herds and lands, the German army began a campaign of genocide against them. In three years, 90,000 people were reduced to 15,000, who were then driven into the Namib desert. The German army even poisoned the water holes and wells, using a tactic that went back to the Middle Ages when Jews were accused and persecuted for something that Germans had done.

Gen. Lothar von Trotha, speaking as the Great General of the German Kaiser, issued his infamous Extermination Order on Oct. 2, 1904: “The Herero people must however leave the land. If the people do not do this I will force them with cannon. Within German borders every Herero, armed or not, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will no longer accept women and children, I will drive them back to their people or I will shoot them. These are my words to the Herero people.”

While the Namibian people welcomed the return of their ancestors’ bones, they were angered by the refusal of Germany, which has paid substantial reparations to the racist, Zionist state of Israel, to pay reparations to Namibia.

The kind of genocide unleashed in the 1940s against the Jews and Romani in Europe had its beginning 40 years earlier in Africa.

White farmers, descendants of German settlers who still speak German, and some racist white Boers from South Africa still farm the land seized from the Hereros more than a hundred years ago.

University professor Hoze Riruako, a senior adviser to the paramount chief of the Herero, warned that their patience was running out.

“If something is not done, we cannot guarantee that you will not see the same kind of land grabs that you see in Zimbabwe,” he said. (Associated Press, Oct. 4)

Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba decried the colonial-era abuses, but did not mention reparations when he addressed 1,000 people gathered at the Heroes’ Acre shrine outside Windhoek, the capital.

“German imperial troops committed horrendous atrocities” against Namibians, he said. (AFP, Oct. 4)

“Through their unselfish sacrifices, our ancestors laid a strong foundation for the modern liberation struggle,” leading to independence from South Africa in 1990.

“Their spirits were never broken and while their mortal remains were removed from Namibia amidst the ruins of war, they returned now to an independent, peaceful and stable Namibia.”

Namibia is a potentially very prosperous country but with an extremely high degree of economic inequality inherited from its colonial past. For Germany to pretend to strive for reconciliation without reparations is nothing more than a hypocritical attempt to hide its racist past in Africa.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, unsung hero

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Published Oct 14, 2011 10:45 PM

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a leading figure in the Civil Rights movement, passed away on Oct. 5 in Cincinnati. He was 89. Shuttlesworth is one of the many unsung heroes in the struggle to break down legalized segregation in the South, where African Americans were subjected to slave-like conditions of social and economic deprivation and state-sanctioned terror for more then a century after the Civil War ended.

Shuttlesworth’s life and legacy are illustrated by the passage of laws that struck down racial barriers in the United States due to the organization and mobilization by the African-American people themselves. The struggles carried out by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Shuttlesworth’s Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights led to congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Shuttlesworth was born on March 18, 1922, in Mt. Meigs, Ala. By 1940 he had graduated from Rosedale High School, a significant achievement for African Americans then in the Deep South. During World War II, he was a truck driver. He attained a bachelor’s degree at Selma University, a master’s degree, and then he became a Baptist minister.

In 1952 Shuttlesworth relocated to Birmingham, the most segregated major Southern city. It was known for police repression and mob violence against the African-American population. There, Black steelworkers and service sector workers were subjected to super-exploitation.

Shuttlesworth became Bethel Baptist Church’s pastor in North Birmingham in 1953. That year the mass Civil Rights movement first surfaced with a bus boycott against segregation in Baton Rouge, La.

The U.S. Supreme Court, after years of legal challenges, issued the historic Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka ruling, and in 1955 it declared that school desegregation should proceed “with all deliberate speed.” Nonetheless, it took another 15 years to get any real movement on school integration in the U.S. South and the North.

The Civil Rights struggle emerges in Alabama

In 1955, responding to the rising ferment, Shuttlesworth and 76 other ministers petitioned the Birmingham City Commission to hire African-American police officers. Their efforts were rejected.

The same year, African Americans throughout the country were shocked and angered by the brutal lynching of young Emmett Till in Mississippi.

The African-American community in Montgomery, led by the Montgomery Improvement Association, organized a citywide boycott of the segregated public transportation system, which began on Dec. 1, 1955. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. emerged during this historic struggle to national prominence as a Civil Rights spokesperson.

In 1956 Shuttlesworth accompanied Autherine Lucy in her attempt to desegregate the University of Alabama. The state of Alabama then got an injunction outlawing the NAACP.

Immediately, Rev. Shuttlesworth founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, which demanded an end to segregation and the hiring of African Americans in Birmingham’s civil service.

In the first significant victory in the Civil Rights movement, the Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation on Montgomery’s buses in December 1956.

Days later, Shuttlesworth’s home was bombed. Yet he emerged unharmed, with greater determination to continue the struggle against segregation.

In January 1957 Shuttlesworth, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Soon after, a racist mob beat Shuttlesworth; his spouse, Ruby Shuttlesworth; and Lamar Weaver, a white union worker and minister, when they sought to desegregate Birmingham’s bus station.

Later that year Shuttlesworth petitioned the Birmingham Board of Education to enroll two of his daughters at the all-white Phillips High School. When he, his spouse and his children attempted to enter the school, Klansmen viciously attacked them.

To instill fear in the African-American community, the Ku Klux Klan castrated Judge Aaron, a young Black man, and threatened to do the same to any Black student who enrolled in a segregated public school.

The following year, racist police chief Bull Connors instigated a plot with known white supremacist J.B. Stoner, who then bombed Shuttlesworth’s Bethel Baptist Church.

Shuttlesworth was driven out of Alabama after Birmingham officials retaliated and sued him when a New York Times ad accused them of harassing the ACMHR. The courts assessed him $500,000 in damages and seized his car and home.

After relocating to Cincinnati in 1961, Shuttlesworth regularly traveled to Birmingham to organize demonstrations against segregation.

1963: The high tide of the Civil Rights struggle

When Shuttlesworth and other Civil Rights leaders were being arrested and jailed in Birmingham, he and the ACMHR appealed to Dr. King and other leaders to initiate a campaign of mass civil disobedience in Birmingham.

In 1963 demonstrations against racism and segregation spread throughout the South and other U.S. regions. In Birmingham thousands marched, facing beatings, fire hoses, attack dogs and jail.

In 1964 the federal Civil Rights Act was passed which outlawed legalized segregation in the U.S. That year, the Supreme Court reversed Shuttlesworth’s conviction in the landmark free speech case regarding the New York Times ad.

Shuttlesworth kept at his activism in Alabama and Ohio from the 1960s through the 1980s. He spoke out strongly against police brutality and murders of African Americans in both states.

In 1967 he attempted to intervene in the Cincinnati rebellions by advocating nonviolence. However, by this time, African-American youth were moving in the direction of Black Power and revolutionary struggle.

Shuttlesworth’s legacy & the role of youth today

Although legalized segregation was ended in the U.S. as a result of the Civil Rights struggle, the ruling class seeks to reverse 50 years of gains. With the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, racism is on the rise, despite the advent of the first African-American president.

Youth, students and workers have initiated a new round of mass struggles in the U.S. The Wisconsin occupations, the emergence of new activists in this fight, and the racist execution of Troy Davis have fueled the anger and impatience of millions across the country.

The Wall Street occupation has spread to other cities, suburbs and towns throughout the U.S. The contributions of Shuttlesworth and the Civil Rights activists of the 1950s and 1960s should inspire the current generation who are seeking the elimination of racism, national oppression, economic exploitation, imperialist war and social injustice.

75 Years Ago Today, British Workers Beat Back Fascists at Cable Street

Sunday 02 October 2011
by John Millington at Cable Street


From: Morning Star Newspaper, UK

Over 1,000 anti-fascists took over the streets of east London today sending a defiant message to mark 75 years since the historic victory over the blackshirts at Cable Street.

Veterans and campaigners led a march and rally to the scene of the famous battle, fought by an alliance including the local Jewish community, Communist Party members and London workers against Oswald Mosley's uniformed thugs.

They said the fight against Mosley's modern-day equivalents would be equally tough.

Representatives from the local Jewish and Bengali communities were flanked by trade unionists from across the movement.

Cable Street veteran and former Communist councillor Max Levitas emphasised the need for the trade union movement today to fight "modern fascism."

But he added: "We know that they are not really modern. They are no different from 1936."

Mr Levitas raised the biggest cheer of the day when he urged supporters to "join a union" and campaign to bring down the coalition government whose cuts allow fascism to thrive.

"We can only do it by campaigning and organisation," he told the Cable Street 75 rally.

Mr Levitas was speaking as 30,000 trade unionists marched on the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.

Rob Griffiths, general secretary of the Communist Party of Britain which co-organised the event, urged a broad defence of the country's multicultural communities from the British National Party and the English Defence League.

Mr Griffiths called for unity within the anti-fascist movement, appealing to "friends" Hope Not Hate and Unite Against Fascism to unite their forces "whatever your differing tactics."

High-profile speakers from the trade union movement were also in attendance.

TUC deputy general secretary Frances O'Grady told those gathered to send a message to EDL leader Stephen Lennon that "you are not a voice of the working class.

"We are. You are just a voice of fascism."

Ms O'Grady demanded of the government: "Instead of scapegoating migrant workers, why don't you get out there and create some jobs and punish the bankers?"

Unite assistant general secretary Diana Holland warned that legislation created in 1998 to effectively end slavery and domestic servitude was on the Con-Dem government's hit-list.

She said workers "must oppose" any moves to scrap the legal safeguards.

And RMT general secretary Bob Crow reminded the crowd that without Irish migrant labour the railways would not have been built.

"Fascists feed off scapegoats," he said.

"But if you create a society where everyone has a job and a house then you have a society where the fascist cannot live.

"It's the ideological issues we have to beat them on."

Mr Crow urged labour movement unity when workers go on strike next month over pensions.

"We have to raise a movement that can beat fascism and help us build a socialist society," he said.

Ron Paul brags how he "stood behind reagan" -- Real Peacenik, huh?

Ron Paul looooved Ronald Reagan! His new ad tells us so.

Ronald Reagan funded the Contras in Nicaragua who murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

Ronald Reagan funded the Mujahadeen to overthrow democracy in Afghanistan, and massacred people who dared offer literacy courses.

Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada and killed hundreds of civilians.

Ronald Reagan launched a war against organized labor.

Ronald Reagan joked about Nuclear War in public.

Ronald Reagan bombed Libya, years before Obama.

Ronald Reagan supplied Chemical and Biological weapons to Iraq to use against Iran.

Ronald Reagan sold missiles to Iran to use against Iraq at the same time.

YOU THINK RON PAUL IS "ANTI-WAR" WHEN HE WORSHIPS REAGAN? ARE YOU NUTS!

Ron Paul may pretends he's a 1960s peace activist, but he's not. He's a "libetarian."

Libertarians talk against wars, but what they hate the most is social security, medicare, food stamps, student loans, labor unions, and all other things that get in the way of the rich, Rand's "great men", from riding roughshod over the rest of humanity, who they dub "the mob."

As I said two years ago:



WE DON'T NEED 1776! WE NEED 1917!

P.S.

Just in case your still not convinced that the Ron Paul movement is made up of fascist thugs:

2,000 Workers Smash Neo-Nazi Rally in Milwaukee

From: UMW Post

Self-identified neo-Nazis were in short supply at the In Defense of White America Rally held in West Allis on Saturday afternoon, drowned out by the approximately 2,000 counter-protesters in attendance.

Speakers from the Milwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope fought an ideological war of words with the several dozen members of the National Socialist Movement, who argued in defense of “White America.”

Although a heated discussion took place between a group of African-American youth chanting “peace” and neo-Nazi sympathizers, the argument was broken up peacefully by police, and no injuries were reported during the event.

Five were arrested, according to police, at least one for weapons possession and several for disorderly conduct.

Several UW-Milwaukee students attended the counter-protest, including members of Students for a Democratic Society, a left-leaning youth organization “working to build power in our schools and communities,” according to the group’s website.

SDS member Jacob Flom said that although SDS helped organize the peaceful rally, he would not hesitate to respond with violence if it was offered in kind by the NSM.

“We are here supporting the non-violent rally, but we stand in solidarity with anybody that wants to take any kind of action against Nazis,” Flom said.

Approximately 130 police officers from West Allis, the state and the surrounding communities stood watch over three blocks of West Greenfield Avenue as protesters began gathering before City Hall around noon.

NSM, a neo-Nazi organization based in Detroit, organized the rally in response to the violence that erupted at the Wisconsin State Fair earlier this summer.

Describing the incident, in which several dozen black youth attacked white fair-goers, as a “black flash mob” of violence, NSM Commander Jeff Schoep encouraged “all respectable White Nationalists, Local Citizens groups, and friends” to attend the event via the organization’s website.

The “Walk of Faith” counter-protest, organized by Mandela Barnes through MICAH, called upon all people “committed to the spirit of community” to join in drowning out the racially intolerant message of NSM.

Police Chief Michael Jungbluth sent a letter on August 24 urging businesses in the downtown area to close during the rallies activities, citing concerns of potential violence.

All the businesses located within the three block radius of City Hall followed suit. Papa John’s Pizza on W. Greenfield Ave. posted a sign that read, “We do not support hate.”

Communists, activists and members of various religious groups arrived carrying signs calling for racial unity and religious tolerance. One sign read, “Jesus wasn’t white (but he loves you anyways).”

Factory worker and activist Derek Thacker said he came from Detroit to counter the NSM rally and “drown out the racist message any way I can.” Thacker said the NSM has never rallied in Detroit as they were attempting to do in West Allis.

“They tried to hold a holocaust denial meeting a few months ago, but once they caught wind that we were going to counter-demonstrate, it was cancelled,” Thacker said.

Speakers from MICAH took to the makeshift stage in heavy rain around 1 p.m.

In announcing the speakers, Barnes said, “I am glad to see everyone here today, despite the rain, but I would rather see the streets filled with rain than the streets filled with hate.”

Pastor Joe Ellwanger said they came to counter-protest anything that breaks down the beloved community for which they had previously fought for in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960s.

“We are here today to denounce everything that tears down that beloved community, but also to affirm everything that builds up that beloved community,” Ellwanger said.

Members of the NSM began arriving in groups around 2 p.m. and were separated from the counter-protestors by a wall of police dressed in riot gear.

Several NSM members chose not to enter the City Hall gates, they said, because they did not want to hand over their weapons.

One unidentified NSM member, when asked why he chose to attend the event, responded, “Don’t you watch the news?”

Schoep took the stage at 2:30 p.m. and castigated the counter-protesters for trying to drown him out with noise.

“If you actually listen, instead of judging before you hear what is going on, perhaps you’ll open your mind to some new types of thinking and hear what we actually have to say,” he said. “Notice of respect and decency is what we are asking for here.”

Schoep then spoke out against the individuals who participated in attacks during the State Fair, inviting the “black mob” to try to attack the neo-Nazis in attendance.

“No longer will white people be easy victims, as we heard from some of these moronic animals that were attacking white people at the State Fair this year,” he said.

As he spoke, Schoep’s supporters in the crowd shouted, “White power.”

Libya: NATO Escalates Bombing As "Rebels" Enter Tripoli

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Published Aug 22, 2011 9:54 PM

A six-month-old war against the government of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya has reached a new stage as NATO escalated its intervention with air power, naval power, strategy and intelligence to push the Transitional National Council’s armed units into the capital, Tripoli.

On Aug. 21, the TNC moved into at least three areas of Tripoli and its surrounding suburbs. Meanwhile, NATO warplanes flew coordinated military actions aimed at toppling the government.

By nightfall in Libya, the corporate media began to repeat claims that Tripoli, a stronghold of the government, had largely fallen to the TNC forces. Reports indicated that the airport was under TNC control and that three sons of Gadhafi had been taken into custody by the armed opposition.

Beginning early on Aug. 22, there were reports of fierce fighting in several areas of Tripoli between government loyalists and the TNC forces. Although Western media claimed Tripoli’s Green Square was under TNC control, rebels and journalists embedded with them were forced to retreat from the central section of the city.

These developments followed fierce battles in and around Zawiya, Zlitan, al-Brega and other areas in the west of the oil-producing country. NATO has intensified its bombing of Libya in efforts to facilitate a takeover of Tripoli ahead of the upcoming United Nations Security Council deliberations on the renewal of the military operations that the U.S. and NATO first launched on March 19.

A U.S.-NATO war of destabilization and conquest

Since Feb. 17, at least a half-dozen imperialist states operating under a NATO banner have supported and supplied weapons for a series of attacks against the Libyan government by armed groups.

The imperialist role became obvious when France, Britain and the U.S. passed U.N. resolution 1970 through the Security Council allowing a naval blockade of Libya, allegedly to stop arms, and U.N. resolution 1973 on March 19, giving a pseudo-legal cover to military intervention.

Since March 31, U.S.-NATO air power carried out 19,877 sorties, which included approximately 7,459 rocket or bomb strike sorties. These bombing operations grew more devastating when 105 struck the capital and its environs on Aug. 20. (Center for Research on Globalization, Aug. 22) Later, on August 21-22, there were additional bombings of specifically targeted civilian areas of the capital.

“Tripoli has been the object of extensive bombings of residential areas, creating an atmosphere of panic. Rebel forces are not the decisive factor. The decisive forces are the extensive NATO bombings and the support provided by NATO to the rebels,” reports Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya from Tripoli. (CRG, Aug. 22)

“Operation Mermaid Dawn,” aimed at taking Tripoli, began on the evening of Aug. 20 with the armed actions of TNC cells involving several hundred people. Flaunting U.N. Resolution 1970, a NATO warship anchored off the shore of Tripoli delivered heavy weapons and additional TNC rebel forces. Government and medical sources said 350 deaths and 3,000 injuries took place that night.

“Fighting started again during the night. There were intense firefights. NATO drones and aircraft kept bombing in all directions. NATO helicopters strafed civilians in the streets with machine guns to open the way” for the opposition forces, writes Thierry Meyssan for CRG, Aug. 21.

Meyssan also reports that a convoy of governmental officials came under fire, and they eventually headed to the Hotel Rixos, where foreign journalists are based. By 11:30 p.m. in Libya, the Health Minister said that the hospitals were full of wounded and injured people.

NATO forces have been the most important factor in the war aimed at regime-change in Libya. According to the Aug. 22 New York Times, U.S. military aerial surveillance proved crucial in the recent fighting. Unnamed U.S. and NATO officials told the Times that “coordination between NATO and the rebels, and among the loosely organized rebel groups themselves, had become more sophisticated and lethal in recent weeks, even though NATO’s mandate has been merely to protect civilians, not to take sides in the conflict.”

The Pentagon and the CIA’s deployment of predator drones enhanced the ability to pinpoint targets for air strikes that allowed rebel forces to advance from Zawiya to the capital of Tripoli. “At the same time, Britain, France, and other nations deployed special forces on the ground inside Libya to help train and arm the rebels, the diplomat and another official said.” (New York Times, Aug. 22)

NATO’s bombing operations attacked thousands of targets, including rocket launchers, tanks and military installations as well as national infrastructure that severely damaged the ability of the Libya government and military to coordinate its response to the intensified air strikes and TNC attacks. “The cumulative effect not only destroyed Libya’s military infrastructure but also greatly diminished the ability of Colonel Gadhafi’s commanders to control forces, leaving even committed fighting units unable to move, resupply or coordinate operations.” (NYT, Aug. 22)

The TNC leaders credited NATO with providing an opportunity to advance in the eastern and western parts of Libya. In earlier battles on their own, the TNC forces were quickly sent running when in battle with the government forces, even after NATO warplanes had eliminated much of the government’s armor.

It was thus not these ragtag “rebels” that stormed Tripoli, but the combined force of Britain, France, Canada, Italy and the United States — and the support of more of the old colonialist allies. This most powerful military and economic alliance supplied air forces, intelligence and special forces as well as warships that have supplied the TNC with weapons, training and transportation to fight an oppressed African country of 6 million people.

Implications of the U.S.-NATO war against Libya

As of Aug. 22, the situation in Libya still remains fluid militarily and politically. A major aspect of the war against Libya has involved psychological operations and media-generated propaganda that seeks to demonize the Libyan leader Gadhafi, his family and government.

Much of the information circulated about the political and military situation in Libya has been designed to turn both the people inside the country and the international community against the Libyan government. International conferences convened by the imperialist states have bestowed “recognition” to the TNC rebels as the sole legitimate forces representing the country.

Nonetheless, the people of Libya and throughout the regions of North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf can only be alarmed by the Western military assault against the Libyan people. It is now possible to deploy U.S. and NATO ground forces into Libya, should the TNC forces appeal for “boots on the ground” to purportedly restore “stability” to the country.

Africa and the Middle East have a long history of struggles against colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism. The uprisings throughout the region have set off panic among the ruling classes of North America and Western Europe due to the strategic minerals that are supplied to the world capitalist markets from various countries, especially oil.

However, the workers and oppressed of the region will not benefit at all from these imperialist military interventions. In all of the countries that are allied with the U.S. and other capitalist states in the region, the conditions of the masses of people have worsened.

As these conditions deteriorate along with those of the workers and oppressed in the imperialist countries, greater opportunities will arise for international solidarity among people throughout the world.