Sunday, April 29, 2012
PressTV: OWS Still Alive Despite Repression
Unlike other
demonstrations in the United States the Occupy Wall Street movement has
survived and will continue to do so, an American activist tells Press TV.
Their struggles are continuing and they’re intensifying because as
long as the 1 percent has the power and tries to force the suffering
from the war upon everyone else as their system crashes and burns. As
long as that goes on people have to fight and they have to struggle
until eventually we can take the power away from them some day, which is
what we’re all fighting for.
To further discuss the issue, Press TV has interviewed Caleb Maupin with the International Action Center in New York. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Many thanks for joining us here on Press TV Mr. Maupin. Security is being beefed up ahead of May Day protest which is going to be an international day of action specifically all eyes will be on the US as Occupy Wall Street protesters are scheduled to take to the streets all across the country. What do you think is going to go down come May Day?
Maupin: I think May Day is going to be a day in which we are going to see massive demonstrations not just here in New York but all over the country.
People taking all kinds of causes, whether it’s the demand that the wars end, whether it’s the demand that immigrant workers have their civil rights and not be demonized and threatened by vigilant violence and by repressive laws, whether it’s the cause of labor unions who are being repressed here in the US with repressive laws, like the Taft-Hartley law [a US federal law that monitors the activities and power of labor unions], whatever cause it is, the people struggle against the one percent, those who own the banks and the factories and have all the wealth and continue to wage wars and they repress people for their profits.
All over the US, Europe, all around the world we’re going to see people demonstrating against this and demanding that justice is done. So I’m very hopeful about it and if the demonstrations, you know, a couple of days ago around the student tuition and debt and if the demonstrations we’ve been seeing against the wars are definitely any sign of things to come this is going to be, May Day is going to be very very historic.
Press TV: The winter is over, spring and summer is almost near, the Occupy Wall Street Movement so an invigoration earlier this year after a quiet winter, relatively quiet winter that is but so far as our reporter also said the Occupy Movement has not gotten the media attention from the mainstream media as it had enjoyed when it first started last fall.
Do you think May Day will be sort of a tipping point as far as not just the media but attention of politicians and lawmakers goes in bringing them back to the issues that the 99-percenters are raising and rallying for?
Maupin: Well, I think that since the Occupy Wall Street has begun, it has become much more focused and clear and the fact that it shows international workers day, a working class holiday that originated here in the US to be the day of, you know, their proposed general strike of the 99 percent.
And the day that they’re going to gather in union square and demonstrate and have 99 tickets sold all throughout the city and have actions all over the country. The fact that May Day was chosen shows that politically Occupy Wall Street is growing; it is growing into a movement of the entire 99 percent against this 1 percent that owns it all and is fighting for justice.
Occupy Wall Street is growing; I disagree that it was a quite winter: I think a lot of amazing things happened over the winter, whether it was people going into the Grand Central Station here in New York and disrupting over the repressive National Defense Authorization Act, whether it was a demonstration against Islamophobic laws; whether it was the Occupy the corporations’ rallies, you know, things have been going.
For a long time in the US there have been demonstrations and they happened for one day and then everyone goes home but Occupy Wall Street changed that, Occupy Wall Street was a demonstration that didn’t end. It kept going, it kept going and it’s still going on and it’s no where near ending. The struggle for justice is continuing and Occupy Wall Street is changing everything in the US.
Press TV: Indeed, since all eyes have been on May Day, what comes after that?
Maupin: Well, I know in June, a demonstration, mass demonstration against political repression is planned here in New York. New Yorkers will be rallying round the fact that Ray Kelly should be fired.
He is the head of the police department and he is the defender of all of the brutality, all of the ugly crimes that the NYPD is engaging in as well as an extreme anti-Muslim, an extreme racist and people in New York are going to be out in the streets all over June demanding that he be fired and demonstrating against the repressive policies like ‘stop and frisk’ and all the other police brutality going on in the city.
You know, the labor movement is continuing, the transit workers are struggling to get a contract. Even the people that make it so, people can come into Manhattan every day with the train but they’re struggling to get a contract and get decent wages for their families, so you know their struggle is going on around that.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Free Marissa Alexander!
Published Apr 26, 2012 9:18 PM
Marissa Alexander |
Corey’s actions in this case completely ignore Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law that supposedly justifies the right to self-defense — including taking someone’s life — for anyone who feels he or she will be harmed by anyone in any way. This is the same law that the Sanford, Fla., police allowed George Zimmerman to use to remain free for 45 days after he shot and killed unarmed, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26.
Once Zimmerman claimed that he felt “threatened” by a “suspicious” looking Martin, who was wearing a hoodie, the police refused to even arrest him. It was only after a massive, sustained outcry of protests throughout the U.S. that Corey was forced on April 11 to arrest Zimmerman, who was then freed on bail on April 23.
Alexander defended herself against a violent attack on Aug. 1, 2010, by her estranged spouse, but she is now facing many years in prison as the alleged assailant. It didn’t seem to matter to the prosecutor that she had an order of protection against her spouse and that she only fired a warning shot in her own home to scare him off.
Alexander’s case is an important example of the double standard that African Americans, in this case particularly African-American women, face in defending themselves against attack, including domestic violence. It makes clear that the so-called Stand Your Ground laws — which exist in many states — are really only designed to protect white male gun owners.
An open letter by Alexander, written on April 3 in consultation with her lawyer, states in part:
“On August 1, 2010, my premature baby girl, born nine days earlier, was in the Baptist South N.I.C.U. fighting for her life and I would too be fighting for my life in my own home against an attack from my husband. I am a mother of three children, but at the present time, I am not able to be with them due to the following circumstances. I am currently sitting in the Pretrial Detention Facility in Jacksonville, Fla., Duval County awaiting a sentence for three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon with no intent to harm. …
“I am a law-abiding citizen and I take great pride in my liberty, rights, and privileges as one. I have vehemently proclaimed my innocence and my actions that day. The enigma I face since that fateful day I was charged [and throughout the] trial: Does the law cover and apply to me too? A step further and more importantly is in light of recent news: [Does] justice for all include everyone, regardless of gender, race or aristocratic dichotomies? I simply want my story heard, reviewed, and the egregious way in which my case was handled from start to finish serve as an eye-opener for all and especially those responsible for upholding judicial affairs.”
To read the entire letter, sign the national petition to demand Alexander’s freedom, and find out how to get involved in this struggle for justice, go to justiceformarissa.blogspot.com.
Guns, Racist Terror, and Self-Defense
Published Apr 26, 2012 8:55 PM
The police, for no legal reason, frequently stop Black and Latino/a youth and pat them down under the guise of hoping to find illicit weapons. The justifications given for these degrading “stop and frisks” are outrageous, such as “a suspicious bulge” or “furtive motions.” As a coalition of mostly young Black activists fighting this policy put it, the real reason is almost always nothing more than “walking while Black.”
Recently, Ramarley Graham was walking home in the Bronx. He was stopped by police, but rather than be searched, he escaped. In response, the police stalked him and fatally shot him in his apartment.
There is a group of “gun rights” activists who call themselves the Second Amendment Movement, referring to the part of the U.S. Constitution that guarantees the right of the people to bear arms. However, they are not involved in the struggle against “stop and frisk.” Nor can they be found among those who have been part of the heroic civil disobedience campaigns and protests aimed at this repressive policy.
This right-wing movement instead campaigns for capitalist politicians, rails against communism and now champions the racist killer George Zimmerman.
They and the rest of the gun lobby are sponsored by firearms manufacturers and the military-industrial complex. The aim of these forces is not to protect oppressed people from the repressive capitalist state, but to protect and reinforce the racists and vigilantes who terrorize oppressed people.
In addition, these groups whip up racist stereotypes and fear of crime in order to sell more of their products. They promote this vile racism, resulting in more senseless killings.
Does this mean that a ban on firearms would be a good thing? No! A ban on firearms would be a setback for the workers and oppressed peoples of the U.S.
Right to self-defense
Racist murderers like George Zimmerman and his racist ilk in the Ku Klux Klan and other neofascist vigilante groups will always be able to obtain weapons. Their allies in the police departments, the FBI and other organs of the state will enable them to wage terror against oppressed people, whatever laws exist.
A ban on firearms would also not disarm the racist murderers in the police departments throughout the country. The Pentagon brass, the greatest collection of armed, warmongering profiteers, would remain armed to the teeth.
Marxist-Leninists unapologetically defend the right of workers and oppressed people to defend themselves with any means available. Historically, there have been many occasions in the people’s struggle for justice where guns have been utilized.
When civil rights activists were being murdered in the South, the Monroe, N.C., chapter of the NAACP, under the leadership of Robert F. Williams and Mae Mallory, beat back KKK terror in the 1960s through armed self-defense of their community. The Black Panther Party shook up the racist establishment when its young members patrolled Oakland, Calif., monitoring the activities of the police while carrying shotguns and law books.
During the Depression, when Nazis from the Silver Legion of America mobilized to attack the Teamsters in Minneapolis, the union, led by communists, formed workers’ defense guards. This caused the fascists to back down.
For years coal miners had to arm themselves against the violence of company goons trying to break their union.
As long as class oppression and racist violence exist, workers and oppressed people will need to defend their just struggles, sometimes with weapons in hand. It is a right that must not be surrendered.
The writer is a youth organizer in Workers World Party and FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together).
French Election Shows Need For Anti-Fascist Mobilization
Published Apr 26, 2012 9:04 PM
Voters in the first round of France’s
presidential election on April 22 reflected the impact of the capitalist
economic crisis on the population. A high vote for the fascist National
Front (FN) party raised a danger flag for the European working class.
This was partly countered by the Left Front’s mass actions during the
election campaign.France’s incumbent center-right president Nikolas Sarkozy got 27 percent of the vote, two percentage points behind François Hollande, the candidate of the so-called Socialist Party, whose program is not much different from that of the U.S.’s Democratic Party. This is the first time an incumbent president has trailed a rival in the first round since the founding of France’s Fifth Republic in 1958.
While polls had indicated that a large number of voters intended to abstain, a record number actually voted.
Sarkozy and Hollande will run in a second round on May 6. The winner of that contest will become president, which is the most powerful post in the French government.
Ten parties ran in the first round. Marine Le Pen, candidate of France’s fascist FN, got 18 percent. The Left Front, whose candidate was Jean-Luc Mélenchon, got around 11 percent. A centrist party got around 9 percent, and all the other parties, including two other small leftist parties, got 2 percent or less.
The highest-ever FN vote has led to calls from Sarkozy’s party, the Union for a Popular Movement, to campaign by appealing to the fascists. That would mean emphasizing his already-racist approach to foreigners, especially to Muslims and Africans.
The French Communist Party (PCF) did not run independently. It had a very close alliance with the Left Front, helping to coordinate its campaign.
Two major issues raised
In March a French citizen, born in France to Algerian immigrants, named Mohammed Merah, apparently killed three French paratroopers and in a later assault killed three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school.
While Sarkozy and Hollande stopped campaigning until after the funerals and condemned the killings unequivocally, both the PCF and the Left Front, while condemning these criminal acts, tried to put them in the context of the racist oppression of North African Muslims and expressed sympathy with the distress of Merah’s father.
Sarkozy tried to use the incident against Hollande and Mélenchon. A number of commentators on French blogs thought this incident cost Mélenchon votes.
The other issue that surfaced in the election was the economy. Sarkozy has pushed for a policy of austerity that he developed in conjunction with the German government. Hollande promoted higher taxes and for more economic expansion.
Sarkozy ran in 2007 on a platform of transforming the French economy to make it more like the U.S. economy. The level of productivity — the output per hour — is about the same in both countries. But in France, although Sarkozy’s government has chipped away at the benefits the French working class had won through hard struggles, workers still have guaranteed vacations, free day care and higher education, universal health care and a shorter work week. In the United States, the productivity gains of U.S. workers increased the profits of the 1%.
The Left Front ran on a platform of the fundamental reorganization of the French state and economy, withdrawing French troops from Afghanistan and France from the euro zone and NATO, and building a more just and humane society. The Left Front wants to defeat Sarkozy without making any deal with Hollande. More significant than its vote, however, was the Left Front’s ability to mobilize mass anti-capitalist and anti-racist demonstrations, the largest being 100,000 in Paris on March 18.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Occupy The Justice Department For Mumia Abu Jamal
Published Apr 19, 2012 11:27 PM
Against a backdrop of the murder of Trayvon Martin and an all-out war against Black youth, this protest comes at a critical time.
On the occasion of Abu-Jamal’s 58th birthday, protesters will link the violations in his case and fraudulent trial to the crises of mass incarceration, torture, the death penalty, police brutality and racist, vigilante violence in the U.S.
The civil disobedience action will demand an end to mass incarceration; end to solitary confinement and torture in U.S. prisons; end to the racist death penalty; hands off immigrants; free all political prisoners; and jobs, education and health care, not jails!
The action will also demand the release of other political prisoners, including the MOVE 9, Leonard Peltier, the Cuban Five, Sundiata Acoli, Russell Maroon Shoats and others.
Danny Glover, Frances Fox Piven, Norman Finkelstein and M1 of Dead Prez will be among those taking part in the civil disobedience action demanding a meeting with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss police corruption and Civil Rights violations.
Torture: 30 years in solitary
For nearly 30 years, Abu-Jamal was kept in solitary confinement on Pennsylvania’s death row at SCI Greene. International human rights standards, including those signed on to by the U.S., consider more than 15 days in solitary confinement to constitute torture.
In 2001, U.S. District Court Judge William Yohn overturned Abu-Jamal’s death sentence on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct during the 1982 sentencing phase of the trial. Following this ruling, Abu-Jamal could have been transferred from death row to general population, but the Philadelphia District Attorney immediately appealed.
As a result Abu-Jamal was forced to remain on death row, and denied direct contact with family and friends, during the 10-year appeals process. Finally, in October 2011, the district attorney’s final attempt to challenge Yohn’s decision was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, and in December Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams officially accepted the sentence of life imprisonment for Abu-Jamal.
Yet even after Abu-Jamal was transferred from death row at SCI Greene to SCI Mahanoy where he was to be placed in general population, the Pennsylvania prison system prolonged its torture by keeping Abu-Jamal in solitary confinement — the “hole”—for seven more weeks.
Supporters again mobilized. They held a press conference on Jan. 26 and traveled to Mahanoy to present 5,000 signatures demanding Abu-Jamal’s release into general population. He was reassigned on Jan. 27, finally able to embrace his family and friends.
Time to free Mumia
Now the fight is on to win Abu-Jamal’s release from the prison system altogether.
In addition to the April 24 action, petitions requesting that the U.S. be held accountable for its violations of human and civil rights in Abu-Jamal’s case are being filed with the United Nations Council on Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Days before Abu-Jamal’s release from death row, human rights activist Desmond Tutu declared: “Now that it is clear that Mumia should never have been on death row in the first place, justice will not be served by relegating him to prison for the rest of his life — yet another form of death sentence. Based on even a minimal following of international human rights standards, Mumia must now be released.
“I therefore join the call, and ask others to follow, asking District Attorney Seth Williams to rise to the challenge of reconciliation, human rights, and justice: drop this case now, and allow Mumia Abu-Jamal to be immediately released, with full time served.” (freemumia.com)
Role of police corruption
Widespread police brutality and corruption are key to understanding this case. During his years of activism, first as a student fighting racism in his high school, then as a member of the Black Panther Party, later as a world-renowned journalist, Abu-Jamal took on the issue of rampant police brutality in Philadelphia. He was brutally beaten by police at a rally against George Wallace in 1968, and was then targeted by both Cointelpro and Philadelphia officials.
The cops who shot, beat and arrested Abu-Jamal in 1981 for the shooting death of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner were under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Within days of Abu-Jamal’s July 1982 trial, 15 of the 35 police officers involved in collecting evidence in his case were convicted and jailed on charges of graft, corruption and tampering with evidence to obtain convictions.
Among the convicted officers was Alfonzo Giordano, who led the crime scene investigation in Abu-Jamal’s case.Yet the DOJ investigation failed to provide relief for defendants like Abu-Jamal who were convicted by the testimonies of these corrupt cops.
In Abu-Jamal’s case witness coercion by the state and evidence tampering by police played a role in his conviction. The police even claimed they failed to perform standard tests to see if Abu-Jamal’s gun had been fired or if he had gunshot residue on his hands.
New period of struggle needed
In the 30 years that Abu-Jamal was confined on Pennsylvania’s death row, and now in general population, a lot has changed. Globalization of the technological means of production has expanded capitalism’s hold over the world’s wealth and its exploitation of labor, including inside the rapidly expanding prison-industrial system.
The U.S. prison population has skyrocketed. With only 5 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. The U.S. is now the leading jailer in the world.
Author Michelle Alexander in “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” notes that the majority of young Black men in large U.S. cities are “warehoused in prisons” because their labor is no longer needed in the globalized economy.
Many states, including Pennsylvania, spend considerably more on building prisons than on educating youth. Prisons are built while schools are closed.
The global capitalist economic crisis and its particular impact on youth have fueled the growing Occupy movement in the U.S. and general strikes throughout the world. In response, the capitalist state has intensified its campaign to restrain people and silence dissent.
The Occupy Wall Street protests, originating in response to the income disparity gap between the wealthiest 1% and the majority 99%, gained momentum when demonstrators took to the streets in September 2011 to protest the execution of Troy Davis. They were met with police wielding batons and pepper spray, and later coast-to-coast repression, under a campaign coordinated through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
At the same time, passage of HR 347 (called the “anti-protest” or “criminalizing- protest” bill) and the National Defense Authorization Act opened the way for increased state repression and denial of First Amendment rights, while legislation in several states increased the scapegoating and detention of immigrants. State surveillance, profiling and mass incarceration of Muslims has expanded since 2001.
Abu-Jamal’s removal from death row coincides with the dramatic shift of consciousness brought on by the OWS movement. The struggle for his release comes alongside massive coast-to-coast protests calling for justice for 17-year-old slain Black youth Trayvon Martin.
While massive protests eventually forced Florida police to arrest Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, 45 days after Martin was killed, more than two dozen youth of color were killed at the hands of police or vigilante terrorists in the months surrounding Martin’s death. Over 23 states in the U.S. have similar shoot-to-kill laws designed to protect vigilante racists like Zimmerman.
Critical to building the movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal is linking the violations in his case and fraudulent trial to the issues of mass incarceration, the war on Black youth, growing state repression and the economic crisis that denies jobs and education for millions of youth.
The call for the April 24 Occupy the Justice Department protest notes the importance of solidarity: “On April 24, we will breathe life into the old labor slogan: ‘An injury to one, is an injury to all.’ On that day we will say that we are all Mumia, we are all immigrants, we are all Bradley Manning, we are all poor, we are all Palestinian, and we are all Troy Davis. … On April 24, make a placard and write on it all of your grievances. They will be welcomed. Above all, on that day, bring your fighting spirit and your desire to create and live in a decent and different world.”
Monday, April 23, 2012
Editorial: Misues of the word Socialist
Published Apr 20, 2012 7:45 PM
From: Workers World
Is President Barack Obama a “socialist”?
Anyone, like the editors of Workers World, who really is for a socialist revolution and an overturn of capitalism would answer, “Far from it.”
The far right in the U.S., however, and that includes most of the Republican Party these days, calls Obama “socialist.” These forces want to end Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid and any vital benefits that the workers and poor won through struggle in the past. They also mislabel these benefits “socialist” as part of their attack.
We discuss this rightist campaign against Obama here only to point out how it distorts the conception of what “socialist” means.
The idea of socialism has been confused even more lately by the political affiliation of the French politician and banker, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. This vile individual was the leading candidate of the “Socialist Party” for president of France. That is, he was leading the pack before he quickly fled New York just ahead of rape charges made by a woman immigrant from Africa. Now he is being investigated in France for alleged connections with a prostitution ring.
The media often mention the Socialist Party affiliation of this thoroughly unsavory character. This makes it even more important to clarify what the “Socialist Party” really is.
Parties by this name have influence in most southern European countries. They have often led governments, until recently in Portugal, Spain and Greece, and earlier in France. In northern Europe, these parties are usually called “Social Democrat” and in Britain, the Labor Party.
Their only connection to real socialism, however, is historical. The forerunners of most of these parties were founded in the 19th century and were then connected with the movement to overthrow capitalism that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels initiated.
As World War I began, these parties’ leaderships betrayed socialist internationalism by supporting their own capitalist ruling classes during this imperialist war. Better elements resisted. After the war, these parties split into Communist parties that supported the Russian Revolution and “Socialist” parties that attacked it. The “Socialists” promoted pro-worker reforms but opposed revolution. They supported the imperialist designs of their own capitalist ruling class.
Following World War II, these parties often administered the government to preserve and expand capitalism. They did pass some laws — for example, providing government-paid health care — that benefited workers between 1945 and 1989. In that period, the European capitalist class feared competition from the Soviet Union and the pro-socialist countries in Eastern Europe, in China, etc.
Since the end of the Soviet Union, however, these parties have been unable to even defend these benefits for workers against the rapacious and triumphant capitalists. Instead, they have administered austerity programs, made concessions to anti-immigrant groups and backed imperialist wars. Without yet dropping the name, “Socialist,” they have become simply a more moderate version of the openly pro-rich parties, much like the Democratic Party here.
When Workers World describes someone or some party as socialist without quotes, this means they are for taking the means of production — including land — out of the hands of the capitalist ruling class and having it owned publicly. They would oppose imperialist wars and all forms of racism and oppression. Neither Obama nor the French Socialist Party — even without Strauss-Kahn — fits this definition.
From: Workers World
Is President Barack Obama a “socialist”?
Anyone, like the editors of Workers World, who really is for a socialist revolution and an overturn of capitalism would answer, “Far from it.”
The far right in the U.S., however, and that includes most of the Republican Party these days, calls Obama “socialist.” These forces want to end Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid and any vital benefits that the workers and poor won through struggle in the past. They also mislabel these benefits “socialist” as part of their attack.
We discuss this rightist campaign against Obama here only to point out how it distorts the conception of what “socialist” means.
The idea of socialism has been confused even more lately by the political affiliation of the French politician and banker, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. This vile individual was the leading candidate of the “Socialist Party” for president of France. That is, he was leading the pack before he quickly fled New York just ahead of rape charges made by a woman immigrant from Africa. Now he is being investigated in France for alleged connections with a prostitution ring.
The media often mention the Socialist Party affiliation of this thoroughly unsavory character. This makes it even more important to clarify what the “Socialist Party” really is.
Parties by this name have influence in most southern European countries. They have often led governments, until recently in Portugal, Spain and Greece, and earlier in France. In northern Europe, these parties are usually called “Social Democrat” and in Britain, the Labor Party.
Their only connection to real socialism, however, is historical. The forerunners of most of these parties were founded in the 19th century and were then connected with the movement to overthrow capitalism that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels initiated.
As World War I began, these parties’ leaderships betrayed socialist internationalism by supporting their own capitalist ruling classes during this imperialist war. Better elements resisted. After the war, these parties split into Communist parties that supported the Russian Revolution and “Socialist” parties that attacked it. The “Socialists” promoted pro-worker reforms but opposed revolution. They supported the imperialist designs of their own capitalist ruling class.
Following World War II, these parties often administered the government to preserve and expand capitalism. They did pass some laws — for example, providing government-paid health care — that benefited workers between 1945 and 1989. In that period, the European capitalist class feared competition from the Soviet Union and the pro-socialist countries in Eastern Europe, in China, etc.
Since the end of the Soviet Union, however, these parties have been unable to even defend these benefits for workers against the rapacious and triumphant capitalists. Instead, they have administered austerity programs, made concessions to anti-immigrant groups and backed imperialist wars. Without yet dropping the name, “Socialist,” they have become simply a more moderate version of the openly pro-rich parties, much like the Democratic Party here.
When Workers World describes someone or some party as socialist without quotes, this means they are for taking the means of production — including land — out of the hands of the capitalist ruling class and having it owned publicly. They would oppose imperialist wars and all forms of racism and oppression. Neither Obama nor the French Socialist Party — even without Strauss-Kahn — fits this definition.
France: 'Left Front' Contests Elections
Published Apr 20, 2012 7:29 PM
A “Left Front” candidate in the upcoming elections in France has provided a way for voters to express an anti-racist and pro-99% position at the polls. Perhaps even more important, some election rallies for the candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, have turned at least partially into anti-racist demonstrations. A rally on March 18 in Paris to coincide with the anniversary of the 1871 Paris Commune drew more than 100,000 people — to everyone’s surprise. This strong outpouring, shown here, served as a response to the pro-fascist candidacy of the National Front, which campaigns against all foreigners in France and especially Muslims and Africans.
The candidates most likely to make it past the first round on April 22 are the current president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the candidate of the “Socialist” Party, Francois Hollande. Sarkozy is a vicious rightist who employs racism and xenophobia almost as much as the National Front. Hollande, though nominally socialist, has a program much like the Democratic Party in the U.S., that is, he is essentially pro-capitalist and supports all of France’s imperialist intentions.
While it is almost impossible for the Left Front to make it to the second round, it is possible for it to win more than 10 percent and a moral victory against the racist National Front and to provide a pole for popular mobilization against racism and austerity. —John Catalinotto
A “Left Front” candidate in the upcoming elections in France has provided a way for voters to express an anti-racist and pro-99% position at the polls. Perhaps even more important, some election rallies for the candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, have turned at least partially into anti-racist demonstrations. A rally on March 18 in Paris to coincide with the anniversary of the 1871 Paris Commune drew more than 100,000 people — to everyone’s surprise. This strong outpouring, shown here, served as a response to the pro-fascist candidacy of the National Front, which campaigns against all foreigners in France and especially Muslims and Africans.
The candidates most likely to make it past the first round on April 22 are the current president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the candidate of the “Socialist” Party, Francois Hollande. Sarkozy is a vicious rightist who employs racism and xenophobia almost as much as the National Front. Hollande, though nominally socialist, has a program much like the Democratic Party in the U.S., that is, he is essentially pro-capitalist and supports all of France’s imperialist intentions.
While it is almost impossible for the Left Front to make it to the second round, it is possible for it to win more than 10 percent and a moral victory against the racist National Front and to provide a pole for popular mobilization against racism and austerity. —John Catalinotto
Find Trayvon Martin's Killer Guilty Now!
By Monica Moorehead
Published Apr 19, 2012 12:56 AM
The arrest on April 11 of George Zimmerman for
the murder of Trayvon Martin is an important victory. Millions of people
in the U.S., however, agree that the struggle for justice for Martin is
far from over. Those who have come out into the streets chanting “I am
Trayvon Martin” — and many of them are new to the movement — have come
to understand exactly what it took to get Zimmerman charged with
second-degree murder. And it wasn’t putting their confidence in the
racist Florida authorities.
It took the state of Florida 45 days to make an
arrest of the wanna-be-cop Zimmerman, who fatally shot the unarmed
teenager on Feb. 26. Zimmerman claimed that he felt threatened and that
Martin looked “suspicious” because he was African American and wearing a
hoodie.
Special prosecutor Angela Corey announced the murder charge at an April 11 press conference. Corey had been assigned to the case on March 14. Conviction for second-degree murder starts at a 25-year sentence up to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The Statewide Prosecutor’s office and the Sanford Police Department had initially refused to arrest and charge Zimmerman with Martin’s murder. Their pretext was Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which protects those who claim self-defense if the so-called perpetrator is either wounded or killed.
Sanford, especially its police department, has a sordid history of blatant racism against the Black community.
Corey opened her press conference by praising her prosecutorial team, the governor and the police authorities. She failed to say what many saw as the most glaring omission: there would have been no arrest or charges against Zimmerman at all had it not been for the massive explosion of all forms of protests from below. These rallies, marches, sit-ins, teach-ins, walkouts and more — all demanded justice for Trayvon Martin in the form of arresting this bigot Zimmerman.
Rulers fear mass rebellion
There were signs that sections of the ruling
class feared the atrocity would lead to mass rebellions. For example,
McDonald’s, Kraft, Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola — all companies that sell to
a mass market — publicly stopped supporting the American Legislative
Exchange Council. ALEC is the group behind the Stand Your Ground laws.
Billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg started mobilizing mayors
against this law.
Of course, other ruling-class sectors still support ALEC and the National Rifle Association’s promotion of this vigilante law. But withdrawal from a pro-business group like ALEC shows that the mass-market corporations feared rebellions if Zimmerman was not charged with murder. The real possibility of such a rebellion led by Black and other oppressed youth weighed heavily on the racist, capitalist ruling class, which already has its hands full attempting to manage an unmanageable economic crisis.
Larry Hales, an organizer of the People’s Power Tour, said in an April 11 press release issued by Occupy 4 Jobs, ”What made this case so egregious is that Zimmerman was never initially arrested for the heinous crime against this teenager. In many cases, racist police and vigilantes are at least put on trial, even though 90 percent of the time they are given a slap on the wrist, resulting in very little jail time, or they are not convicted and are set free. The arrest of Zimmerman is one step in a long process of bringing about justice for Trayvon Martin and his family.”
Now that Zimmerman is in custody, a media campaign has escalated aimed at sanitizing this killer. It has been reported that Zimmerman plans to plead not guilty at an upcoming bail hearing, claiming that he was the victim. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Before Zimmerman cut short the life of Martin, he had a history of making numerous, documented 911 calls complaining of Black males looking suspicious, including those as young as seven to nine years old.
Whenever Zimmerman’s name is raised, guilty should be raised right along with it. Getting a conviction of Zimmerman is a justified, immediate demand that could potentially help keep this new movement of Justice for Trayvon Martin together. It won’t be easy because his lawyer, along with the courts and police, will do everything possible to get him off.
Building a movement for social justice
The murder of Trayvon Martin is not just about Zimmerman as an individual. It is about a double standard of justice — and sometimes more — that exists under capitalism for people of color. It is about how young Black and Brown people are racially profiled daily in this society, how they are judged as less than human. That’s why the media encourage people to not give a damn if these youths are beaten, incarcerated or become homicide victims.
In an April 14 article entitled “Young, Black, Male and Stalked by Bias,” Brent Staples, an African-American writer for the New York Times, writes: “Society’s message to Black boys — ‘we fear you and view you as dangerous’ — is constantly reinforced. Boys who are seduced by this version of themselves end up on a fast track to prison and to the graveyard. But even those who keep their distance from this deadly idea are at risk of losing their lives to it. The death of Trayvon Martin vividly underscores that danger.”
Staples goes on to provide the facts to show that “racial stereotypes play a powerful role in judgments made by ostensibly fair-minded people.” These lead to longer sentences and more death penalties for Black defendants and for people of color who kill white people. He also quotes a professor who states that “virtually every aspect of life and material well-being is influenced by skin color, in addition to race.”
This systematic bigotry was built into the handling of Trayvon Martin’s murder.
The system killed Trayvon Martin
What Staples’ article did not try to show is that the capitalist system needs racism and other forms of special oppression to keep the 1% — the bankers and bosses — in power in order to extract profits from workers worldwide. Legal and extra-legal forces exist to accomplish this.
All these repressive forces are known to activists and revolutionaries as the state. They include the police, the courts, the prisons and, in a special way, the corporate media. These institutions unleash naked terror when the working class and especially youths face massive joblessness and alienation.
The authorities work in tandem with extra-legal terrorists, including racist vigilantes like George Zimmerman; like the neo-Nazis who recently shot five Black people in Tulsa, killing three; like the fascist-like militia in Arizona who recently killed two undocumented workers. These forces work hand-in-hand with state institutions. The Sanford police, for example, were wholeheartedly complicit in covering up Martin’s murder when they first opted not to arrest Zimmerman.
The state upholds the ideology of the 1% based on centuries-old white supremacy that is institutionalized from the top down. Consider the popular “Saturday Night Live” show that trivialized
Trayvon Martin’s death with an April 14 comedy sketch. Consider the racist slurs against Martin on walls at predominantly white college campuses like Ohio State University. Consider an exit sign on an interstate in Michigan and a marine writing racist rants against Martin on his blog. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg.
In contrast, those who want to express solidarity with Trayvon Martin are targeted. Teacher Brooke Harris in Pontiac, Mich., was fired from a charter school for organizing a fundraiser for Martin’s family. Graffiti artists in Elmwood Park, N.J., were forced to take down a mural they had produced in Martin’s honor.
The attacks on these individuals are meant to scare away others from taking a stand against racism. But this tactic has just galvanized whole new layers of people into taking a visible anti-racist stand.
This growing movement for social justice, led by Black youths and students, is reminiscent of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s first ignited by the 1955 lynching of another Black youth — 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi.
The big difference now is that this movement comes in the midst of an acute capitalist economic crisis. Calling for justice for Trayvon Martin will more and more bring about a demand for good paying jobs with benefits for Black, Brown, white and all youth.
In the April 11 press release, Larry Hales also said: “This case is more than about Trayvon Martin. He is the face of all Black and Brown young people who are racially profiled by police and vigilantes. This case is the tip of the iceberg of the war against Black and Brown youth, a war that includes growing incarceration, attacks on education, depression-level unemployment and more. We must continue to build a struggle for social justice so that victims like Trayvon Martin will not have died in vain.
Published Apr 19, 2012 12:56 AM
The arrest on April 11 of George Zimmerman for
the murder of Trayvon Martin is an important victory. Millions of people
in the U.S., however, agree that the struggle for justice for Martin is
far from over. Those who have come out into the streets chanting “I am
Trayvon Martin” — and many of them are new to the movement — have come
to understand exactly what it took to get Zimmerman charged with
second-degree murder. And it wasn’t putting their confidence in the
racist Florida authorities.Special prosecutor Angela Corey announced the murder charge at an April 11 press conference. Corey had been assigned to the case on March 14. Conviction for second-degree murder starts at a 25-year sentence up to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The Statewide Prosecutor’s office and the Sanford Police Department had initially refused to arrest and charge Zimmerman with Martin’s murder. Their pretext was Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which protects those who claim self-defense if the so-called perpetrator is either wounded or killed.
|
Corey opened her press conference by praising her prosecutorial team, the governor and the police authorities. She failed to say what many saw as the most glaring omission: there would have been no arrest or charges against Zimmerman at all had it not been for the massive explosion of all forms of protests from below. These rallies, marches, sit-ins, teach-ins, walkouts and more — all demanded justice for Trayvon Martin in the form of arresting this bigot Zimmerman.
Rulers fear mass rebellion
There were signs that sections of the ruling
class feared the atrocity would lead to mass rebellions. For example,
McDonald’s, Kraft, Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola — all companies that sell to
a mass market — publicly stopped supporting the American Legislative
Exchange Council. ALEC is the group behind the Stand Your Ground laws.
Billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg started mobilizing mayors
against this law.Of course, other ruling-class sectors still support ALEC and the National Rifle Association’s promotion of this vigilante law. But withdrawal from a pro-business group like ALEC shows that the mass-market corporations feared rebellions if Zimmerman was not charged with murder. The real possibility of such a rebellion led by Black and other oppressed youth weighed heavily on the racist, capitalist ruling class, which already has its hands full attempting to manage an unmanageable economic crisis.
Larry Hales, an organizer of the People’s Power Tour, said in an April 11 press release issued by Occupy 4 Jobs, ”What made this case so egregious is that Zimmerman was never initially arrested for the heinous crime against this teenager. In many cases, racist police and vigilantes are at least put on trial, even though 90 percent of the time they are given a slap on the wrist, resulting in very little jail time, or they are not convicted and are set free. The arrest of Zimmerman is one step in a long process of bringing about justice for Trayvon Martin and his family.”
Now that Zimmerman is in custody, a media campaign has escalated aimed at sanitizing this killer. It has been reported that Zimmerman plans to plead not guilty at an upcoming bail hearing, claiming that he was the victim. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Before Zimmerman cut short the life of Martin, he had a history of making numerous, documented 911 calls complaining of Black males looking suspicious, including those as young as seven to nine years old.
Whenever Zimmerman’s name is raised, guilty should be raised right along with it. Getting a conviction of Zimmerman is a justified, immediate demand that could potentially help keep this new movement of Justice for Trayvon Martin together. It won’t be easy because his lawyer, along with the courts and police, will do everything possible to get him off.
Building a movement for social justice
The murder of Trayvon Martin is not just about Zimmerman as an individual. It is about a double standard of justice — and sometimes more — that exists under capitalism for people of color. It is about how young Black and Brown people are racially profiled daily in this society, how they are judged as less than human. That’s why the media encourage people to not give a damn if these youths are beaten, incarcerated or become homicide victims.
In an April 14 article entitled “Young, Black, Male and Stalked by Bias,” Brent Staples, an African-American writer for the New York Times, writes: “Society’s message to Black boys — ‘we fear you and view you as dangerous’ — is constantly reinforced. Boys who are seduced by this version of themselves end up on a fast track to prison and to the graveyard. But even those who keep their distance from this deadly idea are at risk of losing their lives to it. The death of Trayvon Martin vividly underscores that danger.”
Staples goes on to provide the facts to show that “racial stereotypes play a powerful role in judgments made by ostensibly fair-minded people.” These lead to longer sentences and more death penalties for Black defendants and for people of color who kill white people. He also quotes a professor who states that “virtually every aspect of life and material well-being is influenced by skin color, in addition to race.”
This systematic bigotry was built into the handling of Trayvon Martin’s murder.
The system killed Trayvon Martin
What Staples’ article did not try to show is that the capitalist system needs racism and other forms of special oppression to keep the 1% — the bankers and bosses — in power in order to extract profits from workers worldwide. Legal and extra-legal forces exist to accomplish this.
All these repressive forces are known to activists and revolutionaries as the state. They include the police, the courts, the prisons and, in a special way, the corporate media. These institutions unleash naked terror when the working class and especially youths face massive joblessness and alienation.
The authorities work in tandem with extra-legal terrorists, including racist vigilantes like George Zimmerman; like the neo-Nazis who recently shot five Black people in Tulsa, killing three; like the fascist-like militia in Arizona who recently killed two undocumented workers. These forces work hand-in-hand with state institutions. The Sanford police, for example, were wholeheartedly complicit in covering up Martin’s murder when they first opted not to arrest Zimmerman.
The state upholds the ideology of the 1% based on centuries-old white supremacy that is institutionalized from the top down. Consider the popular “Saturday Night Live” show that trivialized
Trayvon Martin’s death with an April 14 comedy sketch. Consider the racist slurs against Martin on walls at predominantly white college campuses like Ohio State University. Consider an exit sign on an interstate in Michigan and a marine writing racist rants against Martin on his blog. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg.
In contrast, those who want to express solidarity with Trayvon Martin are targeted. Teacher Brooke Harris in Pontiac, Mich., was fired from a charter school for organizing a fundraiser for Martin’s family. Graffiti artists in Elmwood Park, N.J., were forced to take down a mural they had produced in Martin’s honor.
The attacks on these individuals are meant to scare away others from taking a stand against racism. But this tactic has just galvanized whole new layers of people into taking a visible anti-racist stand.
This growing movement for social justice, led by Black youths and students, is reminiscent of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s first ignited by the 1955 lynching of another Black youth — 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi.
The big difference now is that this movement comes in the midst of an acute capitalist economic crisis. Calling for justice for Trayvon Martin will more and more bring about a demand for good paying jobs with benefits for Black, Brown, white and all youth.
In the April 11 press release, Larry Hales also said: “This case is more than about Trayvon Martin. He is the face of all Black and Brown young people who are racially profiled by police and vigilantes. This case is the tip of the iceberg of the war against Black and Brown youth, a war that includes growing incarceration, attacks on education, depression-level unemployment and more. We must continue to build a struggle for social justice so that victims like Trayvon Martin will not have died in vain.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
"U.S. Out Of The Philippines!" Mic Check in NY Consulate
From: Asian Journal
NEW YORK -- As the formal resumption of joint military exercises between the US and Philippine governments known as Balikatan commenced last Monday in the Philippines, members of BAYAN USA, the International League of Peoples Struggle (ILPS) and the International Action Center (IAC) staged a surprise protest action inside the lobby of the Philippine Consulate in New York City to condemn US military buildup in the Philippines and demand the junking of the US-RP Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).
The action was part of a larger call from BAYAN USA for similar actions across the US and an international call from ILPS, a global anti-imperialist formation with members in over 40 countries. On the same day, nationwide protests in the Philippines against the joint war games were spearheaded by BAYAN Philippines.
Protesters practiced the "people's mic" to condemn the Aquino regime's welcoming of greater US military intervention over territorial disputes in the South China Sea between the Philippines, China, and other neighboring countries. The stated the Balikatan exercises as supported by unequal military agreements such as the VFA play to the intention of the US government to provoke military aggression against China.
"We denounce all foreign intervention our country, whether China or the US. It puts our country in unnecessary danger of being caught in the crossfire between China and the US," stated the protesters in the lobby led by Yves Nibungco of Filipino youth group Anakbayan New York/New Jersey. "These military exercises are a provocation for war," the protesters also declared.
Consulate officials were unsuccessful in their attempts to silence the protesters and force them to exit the building.
"As a US citizen, I don't want my tax dollars to murder Filipino people. US out of the Philippines!" stated Caleb Maupin of the International Action Center national office in New York City, who also participated in the surprise action inside the Consulate.
The action was preceded a day before by a community teach-in on the history of US military presence in the Philippines, it effects on the Filipino people, and current implications of the 28th Balikatan exercises in the Philippines in line with the Obama administration's declaration of a so-called "rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region" in its new US defense strategy.
But a infographic recently released by research think tank IBON Foundation illustrates the US military pivot to the region as early as 2001, when the Bush administration declared the Philippines as the so-called "Second Front to the War on Terror". The infographic also challenges claims by both the US and Philippine governments that continuing US military presence in the Philippines under the US-RP Visiting Forces Agreement is temporary and respectful of Philippine national sovereignty and territorial integrity.
(BAYAN-USA)
Óró Sé do Bheatha 'Bhaile - Irish Anti-Imperialist Anthem From 1740s
English Translation:
Oh-ro You're welcome home,
Oh-ro You're welcome home,
Oh-ro You're welcome home...
Now that summer's coming!
Welcome oh woman who was so afflicted,
It was our ruin that you were in bondage,
Our fine land in the possession of thieves...
And you sold to the foreigners!
Chorus
Gráinne O'Malley is coming over the sea,
Armed warriors along with her as her guard,
They are Gaels, not French nor Spanish...
And they will rout the foreigners!
Chorus
May it please the King of Miracles that we might see,
Although we may live for a week once after,
Gráinne Mhaol and a thousand warriors...
Dispersing the foreigners!
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Autistics Struggle Under Capitalism
Published Apr 16, 2012 10:21 PM
By Scott Thomas
Scott Thomas, who prefers to write under a pseudonym, is an Autistic young adult, a member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and a candidate member of Workers World Party. Thomas, like the majority of the Autistic community, rejects person-first language and prefers to be called “Autistic” rather than “a person with autism.” Autistic is capitalized because being Autistic encompasses more than a diagnosis of autism; there is an Autistic culture and an Autistic community that goes beyond the mere diagnostic criteria for the neurological disability called autism.
Much hype has been generated in the media about a group of diagnoses whose incidence has been greatly increasing over the last 10 years. These diagnoses, widely believed to be genetic in nature, are known collectively as the Autism Spectrum.
Autistics embody a variety of diverse characteristics that constitute the various diagnoses, but most Autistics share the following characteristics in various degrees: intense interests and rituals, repetitive movements, difficulty in social situations, difficulty communicating, and difficulty processing sensory information. While many of these difficulties seem challenging, many of the challenges that Autistics face are precipitated by a society that is unwilling to accommodate a diverse set of needs that humans face.
The increase in diagnosis over the past 10 years is because clinicians are now beginning to accurately diagnose people previously not believed to have a disability. The increase in diagnoses has prompted more accommodations for Autistics, both in the education world and in the workforce. Research indicates that Autism Spectrum Disorders are still greatly underdiagnosed and may affect as many as 1 in 38 people. Invisible disabilities are especially underdiagnosed in women, people of color, and those in dire financial straits who cannot afford the expensive, specialized health care required to receive a diagnosis.
Sometimes anti-Autistic propaganda is set forth by groups that purport to assist people. For example, the charity Autism Speaks promotes the Tragedy Model of Autism, which is the idea that a diagnosis of autism means certain, unbearable, financial and emotional hardship for the family of the Autistic. A promotional video called “Autism Every Day” includes former executive vice president of Autism Speaks, Alison Tepper Singer, voicing her fantasy to drive her daughter and herself off of the George Washington Bridge.
The organization stated that non-Autistic parents of Autistics should embrace these types of feelings rather than flee from them or seek help for them. This propaganda creates an attitude of dehumanization; the message is that we are so devastating to abled peoples’ lives that we should be eradicated via whatever means necessary (whether by cure or another method), and that our lives are so miserable they must not be worth living. Sometimes, tragically, this occurs, like the 2006 case of Katie McCarron, a three-year-old Autistic girl in Illinois whose mother was convicted of first-degree murder for suffocating her. People who kill Autistic and other people with disabilities are more likely to be acquitted by sympathetic juries or more lightly sentenced by judges than those who murder non-disabled people. (thiswayoflife.org)
Socialism, disabilities and the 99%
The dehumanization of Autistics and people with other disabilities stems from a fundamental element of the capitalist system. Under capitalism, all things that exist are valued according to their ability to generate profit for the 1%. Even the 99%, who have nothing to sell but their labor, are given value according to their ability to produce profit for the 1%, who make money purely via their ownership of the means of production.
Because of this, those in the 99% are valued according to their ability to work within the profit-producing machine that the 1% engineered. Therefore, the 1% want to give us as little as possible; they attack us with institutionalization, poor education and austerity measures. Because of this devaluation, people with disabilities have been neglected, abused and killed since the dawn of class society.
Despite the many transgressions which capitalist society has carried out against Autistics and other people with disabilities, there is still hope for the future. In Cuba, a country where the 99% rose up and drove out the 1%, people with disabilities are viewed, first and foremost, as people who have something to contribute to society, rather than a burden.
Rather than cut away at education, health care and benefits, as is happening in the U.S. and other capitalist countries, Cuban society provides excellent education free through the university level, free health care, and jobs or income for all.
Cuban schools use a diverse set of educational approaches geared toward helping Autistic children become educated and happy citizens capable of making a contribution to socialist society, rather than being trained to become cogs in the profit machine as in the U.S. People with disabilities who are unable to do the work that most Cubans do are given jobs reading to other workers so that the workers are better able to enjoy the time spent at work. These jobs provide people with disabilities both the income to support themselves and the satisfaction that comes with knowing that one is valuable to society.
Capitalism offers only dehumanization, destitution and even death to people with disabilities. Only by smashing the 1% can people with disabilities have the full freedom to live the most fulfilling lives possible, unhindered by the misdeeds of a system that seeks to destroy us.
By Scott Thomas
Scott Thomas, who prefers to write under a pseudonym, is an Autistic young adult, a member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and a candidate member of Workers World Party. Thomas, like the majority of the Autistic community, rejects person-first language and prefers to be called “Autistic” rather than “a person with autism.” Autistic is capitalized because being Autistic encompasses more than a diagnosis of autism; there is an Autistic culture and an Autistic community that goes beyond the mere diagnostic criteria for the neurological disability called autism.
Much hype has been generated in the media about a group of diagnoses whose incidence has been greatly increasing over the last 10 years. These diagnoses, widely believed to be genetic in nature, are known collectively as the Autism Spectrum.
Autistics embody a variety of diverse characteristics that constitute the various diagnoses, but most Autistics share the following characteristics in various degrees: intense interests and rituals, repetitive movements, difficulty in social situations, difficulty communicating, and difficulty processing sensory information. While many of these difficulties seem challenging, many of the challenges that Autistics face are precipitated by a society that is unwilling to accommodate a diverse set of needs that humans face.
The increase in diagnosis over the past 10 years is because clinicians are now beginning to accurately diagnose people previously not believed to have a disability. The increase in diagnoses has prompted more accommodations for Autistics, both in the education world and in the workforce. Research indicates that Autism Spectrum Disorders are still greatly underdiagnosed and may affect as many as 1 in 38 people. Invisible disabilities are especially underdiagnosed in women, people of color, and those in dire financial straits who cannot afford the expensive, specialized health care required to receive a diagnosis.
Sometimes anti-Autistic propaganda is set forth by groups that purport to assist people. For example, the charity Autism Speaks promotes the Tragedy Model of Autism, which is the idea that a diagnosis of autism means certain, unbearable, financial and emotional hardship for the family of the Autistic. A promotional video called “Autism Every Day” includes former executive vice president of Autism Speaks, Alison Tepper Singer, voicing her fantasy to drive her daughter and herself off of the George Washington Bridge.
The organization stated that non-Autistic parents of Autistics should embrace these types of feelings rather than flee from them or seek help for them. This propaganda creates an attitude of dehumanization; the message is that we are so devastating to abled peoples’ lives that we should be eradicated via whatever means necessary (whether by cure or another method), and that our lives are so miserable they must not be worth living. Sometimes, tragically, this occurs, like the 2006 case of Katie McCarron, a three-year-old Autistic girl in Illinois whose mother was convicted of first-degree murder for suffocating her. People who kill Autistic and other people with disabilities are more likely to be acquitted by sympathetic juries or more lightly sentenced by judges than those who murder non-disabled people. (thiswayoflife.org)
Socialism, disabilities and the 99%
The dehumanization of Autistics and people with other disabilities stems from a fundamental element of the capitalist system. Under capitalism, all things that exist are valued according to their ability to generate profit for the 1%. Even the 99%, who have nothing to sell but their labor, are given value according to their ability to produce profit for the 1%, who make money purely via their ownership of the means of production.
Because of this, those in the 99% are valued according to their ability to work within the profit-producing machine that the 1% engineered. Therefore, the 1% want to give us as little as possible; they attack us with institutionalization, poor education and austerity measures. Because of this devaluation, people with disabilities have been neglected, abused and killed since the dawn of class society.
Despite the many transgressions which capitalist society has carried out against Autistics and other people with disabilities, there is still hope for the future. In Cuba, a country where the 99% rose up and drove out the 1%, people with disabilities are viewed, first and foremost, as people who have something to contribute to society, rather than a burden.
Rather than cut away at education, health care and benefits, as is happening in the U.S. and other capitalist countries, Cuban society provides excellent education free through the university level, free health care, and jobs or income for all.
Cuban schools use a diverse set of educational approaches geared toward helping Autistic children become educated and happy citizens capable of making a contribution to socialist society, rather than being trained to become cogs in the profit machine as in the U.S. People with disabilities who are unable to do the work that most Cubans do are given jobs reading to other workers so that the workers are better able to enjoy the time spent at work. These jobs provide people with disabilities both the income to support themselves and the satisfaction that comes with knowing that one is valuable to society.
Capitalism offers only dehumanization, destitution and even death to people with disabilities. Only by smashing the 1% can people with disabilities have the full freedom to live the most fulfilling lives possible, unhindered by the misdeeds of a system that seeks to destroy us.
Monday, April 16, 2012
The Chongqing vs. Guangdong models
By Fred Goldstein
Published Apr 12, 2012 10:27 PM
The ouster of Bo Xilai as Communist Party Secretary of Chongqing comes at a juncture of intensifying contradictions, pressures and antagonisms in China. They reflect three decades of a steadily advancing encroachment of the capitalist mode of production and a dangerous erosion of the socialist framework established by the great Chinese Revolution of 1949.
The Chinese Communist Party leadership is rent with conflict. On the one hand are pressures from China’s growing internal capitalist and middle classes, as well as from the imperialist banks, represented by the World Bank. On the other hand is the growing discontent of millions of workers and peasants.
Furthermore, as the state-owned sector of the economy grows, the capitalist side is also expanding. Capital expands automatically through the accumulation of profits. The state sector, however, expands as a matter of conscious policy and the absolute growth of the economy. Its growth reflects the magnitude of tasks the state-owned banks and enterprises are called upon to perform.
The struggle to control the planned development of society while retaining sovereignty over the Chinese economy inevitably collides with the growth of the internal contradictions of capitalist development and the infectious influence of global finance capital.
The CCP leaders are trying to plan high-speed railroads, advanced communications, hospitals, health centers and aid for rural development to close the gap between the highly developed east and the underdeveloped west. They are introducing more ecologically sound technology and other strategic industries while improving the social security system for 1.3 billion people. At the same time, they have to worry about the development of inflation, real estate bubbles, the global capitalist economic crisis, mounting inequality of wealth, and a clamor by the bourgeois elements for so-called democratic reforms — which would be a channel for open political organizing of the capitalist class and its middle-class supporters.
As these contradictions and antagonisms mature, the question of which way forward for China becomes more and more pressing.
Chongqing versus Guangdong
In the recent period, differences in the leadership have surfaced in the controversy over the so-called Chongqing model versus the Guangdong model. Bo Xilai has been identified with the Chongqing model, which has come under heavy fire since his ouster.
Chongqing is the largest municipality in China and perhaps the world. It has a population of 33 million and is located inland in western China. It is one of China’s four centrally ruled municipalities, the others being Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. It has a rural area of 23 million farmers and an urban population of 10 million. Millions of farmers are employed as migrant workers in the city.
Guangdong is the largest province in China, with 104 million people. One-third of the population, 36 million, are migrant workers. It is on the east coast and is the site of the Pearl River delta, where the turn toward market reforms and “opening up” first allowed the establishment of special economic zones. Overseas capitalists from the imperialist countries as well as Hong Kong, Taiwan and south Korea are heavily invested there, and have created a large, low-wage manufacturing industry geared toward exports.
Bo Xilai became the party secretary of Chongqing in 2007. He initiated a policy of emphasizing the dominant role of the state in the economy alongside the capitalist market. Under his regime half of the budget of Chongqing was spent on health care, housing, pensions, education and other public services. (“One or Two Chinese Models?” European Council on Foreign Relations, Asia Centre, November 2011) Some 87 percent of its recent growth was in the state sector.
The government has undertaken to build 800,000 units of low-income housing with rents at 40 percent below market rates and a low-income limit for eligibility. (Bloomberg Businessweek, March 22) The apartments can be owned after five years, but cannot be thrown on the market. The units are built in the center of the city, near higher-income housing to prevent ghettoizing.
The government in Chongqing is also spending 300 billion yuan ($47.6 billion) for rural education, health care and housing. In addition, it has developed a policy to allow and encourage the rural population to migrate to the city, but at the same time balances that with a policy to develop new agricultural areas. In China’s so-called “hukou” system of residency permits, everyone has either a rural hukou or an urban hukou. Urban residents are entitled to social benefits like health care and education at government-subsidized prices.
Chongqing was the first city in China to develop this rural-to-urban program. Its goal is to allow 10 million farmers to get urban permits. (“Bo Xilai and the Chongqing Model,” East Asian Institute, Vol. 1, No. 3)
‘Red culture’ versus more ‘opening up’
Politically, Bo initiated what he termed “red culture.” This included encouraging and organizing the singing of songs from the Mao era and performances of operas from the period of the Cultural Revolution. He stopped commercials on the local television station, replacing them with Maoist and other readings and performances. He had Mao sayings tweeted to cell phone users in the city. And he took a 1,000-member singing troupe to Beijing to sing Maoist songs.
Bo recommended that students and government workers spend time in rural areas to get experience with the life of the masses.
Bo initiated a crackdown on gangsters and corrupt party and government officials. And he initiated this by calling on the masses to submit “letters of denunciation.”
The Guangdong model, on the other hand, emphasizes the capitalist market as the dominant force in development. Shenzhen is the city that Deng Xiaoping visited in 1992 when he declared “opening up” China to foreign investment. It was the first special economic zone. Since then the province has been known as the area where the capitalist market prevails over state enterprises and planning.
The present party secretary in Guangdong, Wang Yang, was appointed in 2007. He had been in Chongqing, but Bo Xilai took his place. Wang has openly advocated the superiority of the capitalist market in allocating resources. He has called for “small government.” (Wall Street Journal, March 14) Wang’s policy is for further “opening up” and “reforms.”
Guangdong has been the site of numerous workers’ strikes and rebellions. Some 200-plus strikes took place in the Pearl River delta last year, beginning in May with Honda workers near Guangzhou. (The Economist, Nov. 26, 2011)
Wang preaches democracy, but the class orientation of his democracy was illustrated by an experimental local election he authorized in the city of Dudan last September. As The Economist reported, fewer than 7,000 local inhabitants were allowed to vote, while 60,000 sweatshop workers who had come from other provinces were disenfranchised.
‘Red GDP’
Before Bo was ousted, he and Wang were both candidates for the nine-member Standing Committee of the CCP’s Politburo. There was open struggle between them. Bo called for a “red GDP,” meaning economic development had to be subordinate to the well-being of the masses. Their differences emerged publicly in a famous controversy shrouded in an analogy called “cutting the cake.” The “cake” was a metaphor for the GDP — the country’s total production of goods and services.
On July 10 of last year, Bo said that a “better division of the cake” takes priority over “making the cake bigger.” The next day Wang answered with “to make the cake bigger, we must still concentrate on economic development.” In other words, overcoming inequality takes a backseat to production and profits. (“Bo Xilai and Wang Yang: China’s Future Leaders?” Jeffrey Hays, factsanddetails.com, updated March 2012)
The political left in China has rallied to the cause of Bo, and had great hopes for his ascendancy to the Standing Committee. In the wake of his ouster, many web sites of the left have been shut down for a month. The struggle is shrouded in secrecy, and it is very hard for the masses or revolutionaries and progressives inside China, as well as outside, to get any kind of accurate picture.
But it is clear that the Bo forces favoring the Chongqing model are oriented to blocking further inroads of capitalism in China and reversing it, if possible. The forces that side with Wang and the Guangdong model are for widening the capitalist road.
Center-right bloc against Bo
The immediate task in the present struggle is to push back against the right and the counterrevolution. However, by lining up against Bo, the party center is in a bloc with the right. The center is fearful of the Maoist revival and the leftist mood. The fear is that this could merge with the mass discontent down below and take the form of not just an economic struggle against inequality, but a political struggle against the capitalist road. (Last year China reported 180,000 “incidents” — protests, strikes and rebellions.) But the right wing is counterrevolutionary and wants to go all the way in bringing the capitalist class to power.
In truth, the Chongqing model, while certainly preferable to free-market capitalism and the political reaction of the Guangdong model, is only a stop-gap measure at best. It still retains the capitalist market as a significant force. And capital grows through the accumulation of profits. Furthermore, 93 of Fortune 500 global corporations are operating in Chongqing.
Reviving Maoist culture is a step in the right direction. Fighting inequality is also a step in the right direction. But what is more to the point is to revive the spirit of workers’ struggle that was advocated and led by Mao.
Cultural Revolution model
Before Bo was ousted, Premier Wen Jiabao attacked Bo and warned of the “horrors of the Cultural Revolution.” What precisely were these “horrors”? The essence of the Cultural Revolution was to mobilize and empower the workers to run socialist society, in the spirit of the Paris Commune. The goal was to oust privileged officials from their comfortable positions of authority and establish a revolutionary dictatorship under the direct authority of the proletariat. Of course, excesses were committed during that period. But the excesses were not the essence of what took place. The essence was the attempt to “storm the heavens,” as Marx referred to the goal of the Paris communards. The essence was for the Chinese workers to rule directly and take their destiny into their own hands. No amount of vilification of the Cultural Revolution can erase that.
No one could suppose for a moment that such a development is in the offing. But everyone in China who stands for the working class and Marxism must be asking themselves, which way back? How do the Chinese workers and peasants get back to the socialist model they once had?
Deng Xiaoping and his political descendants in China justified their program of so-called “market socialism” on the ground that China needed the capitalist market and capitalist technology to develop. Leaving aside the validity of that assertion, the fact is that China has developed enormously. It is now the second-largest economy in the world. The working class has gone from 30 million to more than 450 million. China is competing with imperialism in cutting-edge technology.
All justification for needing capitalism to further develop has been undermined by China’s economic advances. The interests of the workers have been mercilessly sacrificed, counterpoising them to the need for development. The task now is to find the way back. When casting about for models to take China back on the socialist road, the road of the Cultural Revolution is a glorious one. It’s not necessary to retain the same name or make it a carbon copy of the original. What is important is to revive its revolutionary essence.
Published Apr 12, 2012 10:27 PM
The ouster of Bo Xilai as Communist Party Secretary of Chongqing comes at a juncture of intensifying contradictions, pressures and antagonisms in China. They reflect three decades of a steadily advancing encroachment of the capitalist mode of production and a dangerous erosion of the socialist framework established by the great Chinese Revolution of 1949.
The Chinese Communist Party leadership is rent with conflict. On the one hand are pressures from China’s growing internal capitalist and middle classes, as well as from the imperialist banks, represented by the World Bank. On the other hand is the growing discontent of millions of workers and peasants.
Furthermore, as the state-owned sector of the economy grows, the capitalist side is also expanding. Capital expands automatically through the accumulation of profits. The state sector, however, expands as a matter of conscious policy and the absolute growth of the economy. Its growth reflects the magnitude of tasks the state-owned banks and enterprises are called upon to perform.
The struggle to control the planned development of society while retaining sovereignty over the Chinese economy inevitably collides with the growth of the internal contradictions of capitalist development and the infectious influence of global finance capital.
The CCP leaders are trying to plan high-speed railroads, advanced communications, hospitals, health centers and aid for rural development to close the gap between the highly developed east and the underdeveloped west. They are introducing more ecologically sound technology and other strategic industries while improving the social security system for 1.3 billion people. At the same time, they have to worry about the development of inflation, real estate bubbles, the global capitalist economic crisis, mounting inequality of wealth, and a clamor by the bourgeois elements for so-called democratic reforms — which would be a channel for open political organizing of the capitalist class and its middle-class supporters.
As these contradictions and antagonisms mature, the question of which way forward for China becomes more and more pressing.
Chongqing versus Guangdong
In the recent period, differences in the leadership have surfaced in the controversy over the so-called Chongqing model versus the Guangdong model. Bo Xilai has been identified with the Chongqing model, which has come under heavy fire since his ouster.
Chongqing is the largest municipality in China and perhaps the world. It has a population of 33 million and is located inland in western China. It is one of China’s four centrally ruled municipalities, the others being Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. It has a rural area of 23 million farmers and an urban population of 10 million. Millions of farmers are employed as migrant workers in the city.
Guangdong is the largest province in China, with 104 million people. One-third of the population, 36 million, are migrant workers. It is on the east coast and is the site of the Pearl River delta, where the turn toward market reforms and “opening up” first allowed the establishment of special economic zones. Overseas capitalists from the imperialist countries as well as Hong Kong, Taiwan and south Korea are heavily invested there, and have created a large, low-wage manufacturing industry geared toward exports.
Bo Xilai became the party secretary of Chongqing in 2007. He initiated a policy of emphasizing the dominant role of the state in the economy alongside the capitalist market. Under his regime half of the budget of Chongqing was spent on health care, housing, pensions, education and other public services. (“One or Two Chinese Models?” European Council on Foreign Relations, Asia Centre, November 2011) Some 87 percent of its recent growth was in the state sector.
The government has undertaken to build 800,000 units of low-income housing with rents at 40 percent below market rates and a low-income limit for eligibility. (Bloomberg Businessweek, March 22) The apartments can be owned after five years, but cannot be thrown on the market. The units are built in the center of the city, near higher-income housing to prevent ghettoizing.
The government in Chongqing is also spending 300 billion yuan ($47.6 billion) for rural education, health care and housing. In addition, it has developed a policy to allow and encourage the rural population to migrate to the city, but at the same time balances that with a policy to develop new agricultural areas. In China’s so-called “hukou” system of residency permits, everyone has either a rural hukou or an urban hukou. Urban residents are entitled to social benefits like health care and education at government-subsidized prices.
Chongqing was the first city in China to develop this rural-to-urban program. Its goal is to allow 10 million farmers to get urban permits. (“Bo Xilai and the Chongqing Model,” East Asian Institute, Vol. 1, No. 3)
‘Red culture’ versus more ‘opening up’
Politically, Bo initiated what he termed “red culture.” This included encouraging and organizing the singing of songs from the Mao era and performances of operas from the period of the Cultural Revolution. He stopped commercials on the local television station, replacing them with Maoist and other readings and performances. He had Mao sayings tweeted to cell phone users in the city. And he took a 1,000-member singing troupe to Beijing to sing Maoist songs.
Bo recommended that students and government workers spend time in rural areas to get experience with the life of the masses.
Bo initiated a crackdown on gangsters and corrupt party and government officials. And he initiated this by calling on the masses to submit “letters of denunciation.”
The Guangdong model, on the other hand, emphasizes the capitalist market as the dominant force in development. Shenzhen is the city that Deng Xiaoping visited in 1992 when he declared “opening up” China to foreign investment. It was the first special economic zone. Since then the province has been known as the area where the capitalist market prevails over state enterprises and planning.
The present party secretary in Guangdong, Wang Yang, was appointed in 2007. He had been in Chongqing, but Bo Xilai took his place. Wang has openly advocated the superiority of the capitalist market in allocating resources. He has called for “small government.” (Wall Street Journal, March 14) Wang’s policy is for further “opening up” and “reforms.”
Guangdong has been the site of numerous workers’ strikes and rebellions. Some 200-plus strikes took place in the Pearl River delta last year, beginning in May with Honda workers near Guangzhou. (The Economist, Nov. 26, 2011)
Wang preaches democracy, but the class orientation of his democracy was illustrated by an experimental local election he authorized in the city of Dudan last September. As The Economist reported, fewer than 7,000 local inhabitants were allowed to vote, while 60,000 sweatshop workers who had come from other provinces were disenfranchised.
‘Red GDP’
Before Bo was ousted, he and Wang were both candidates for the nine-member Standing Committee of the CCP’s Politburo. There was open struggle between them. Bo called for a “red GDP,” meaning economic development had to be subordinate to the well-being of the masses. Their differences emerged publicly in a famous controversy shrouded in an analogy called “cutting the cake.” The “cake” was a metaphor for the GDP — the country’s total production of goods and services.
On July 10 of last year, Bo said that a “better division of the cake” takes priority over “making the cake bigger.” The next day Wang answered with “to make the cake bigger, we must still concentrate on economic development.” In other words, overcoming inequality takes a backseat to production and profits. (“Bo Xilai and Wang Yang: China’s Future Leaders?” Jeffrey Hays, factsanddetails.com, updated March 2012)
The political left in China has rallied to the cause of Bo, and had great hopes for his ascendancy to the Standing Committee. In the wake of his ouster, many web sites of the left have been shut down for a month. The struggle is shrouded in secrecy, and it is very hard for the masses or revolutionaries and progressives inside China, as well as outside, to get any kind of accurate picture.
But it is clear that the Bo forces favoring the Chongqing model are oriented to blocking further inroads of capitalism in China and reversing it, if possible. The forces that side with Wang and the Guangdong model are for widening the capitalist road.
Center-right bloc against Bo
The immediate task in the present struggle is to push back against the right and the counterrevolution. However, by lining up against Bo, the party center is in a bloc with the right. The center is fearful of the Maoist revival and the leftist mood. The fear is that this could merge with the mass discontent down below and take the form of not just an economic struggle against inequality, but a political struggle against the capitalist road. (Last year China reported 180,000 “incidents” — protests, strikes and rebellions.) But the right wing is counterrevolutionary and wants to go all the way in bringing the capitalist class to power.
In truth, the Chongqing model, while certainly preferable to free-market capitalism and the political reaction of the Guangdong model, is only a stop-gap measure at best. It still retains the capitalist market as a significant force. And capital grows through the accumulation of profits. Furthermore, 93 of Fortune 500 global corporations are operating in Chongqing.
Reviving Maoist culture is a step in the right direction. Fighting inequality is also a step in the right direction. But what is more to the point is to revive the spirit of workers’ struggle that was advocated and led by Mao.
Cultural Revolution model
Before Bo was ousted, Premier Wen Jiabao attacked Bo and warned of the “horrors of the Cultural Revolution.” What precisely were these “horrors”? The essence of the Cultural Revolution was to mobilize and empower the workers to run socialist society, in the spirit of the Paris Commune. The goal was to oust privileged officials from their comfortable positions of authority and establish a revolutionary dictatorship under the direct authority of the proletariat. Of course, excesses were committed during that period. But the excesses were not the essence of what took place. The essence was the attempt to “storm the heavens,” as Marx referred to the goal of the Paris communards. The essence was for the Chinese workers to rule directly and take their destiny into their own hands. No amount of vilification of the Cultural Revolution can erase that.
No one could suppose for a moment that such a development is in the offing. But everyone in China who stands for the working class and Marxism must be asking themselves, which way back? How do the Chinese workers and peasants get back to the socialist model they once had?
Deng Xiaoping and his political descendants in China justified their program of so-called “market socialism” on the ground that China needed the capitalist market and capitalist technology to develop. Leaving aside the validity of that assertion, the fact is that China has developed enormously. It is now the second-largest economy in the world. The working class has gone from 30 million to more than 450 million. China is competing with imperialism in cutting-edge technology.
All justification for needing capitalism to further develop has been undermined by China’s economic advances. The interests of the workers have been mercilessly sacrificed, counterpoising them to the need for development. The task now is to find the way back. When casting about for models to take China back on the socialist road, the road of the Cultural Revolution is a glorious one. It’s not necessary to retain the same name or make it a carbon copy of the original. What is important is to revive its revolutionary essence.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
After Firestorm of Protests, Florida Forced To Charge Trayvon's Killer With Murder
By Monica Moorehead
Published Apr 11, 2012 10:29 PM
George Zimmerman, the killer of the 17-year-old African American Trayvon Martin, was formally charged on April 11 with second-degree murder. It took the state of Florida 45 days to make an arrest of the wanna-be-cop Zimmerman, who fatally shot the unarmed teenager on Feb. 26 because he looked “suspicious” while wearing a hoodie.
The charge was announced by Angela Corey, a special prosecutor who was assigned to the case on March 14 in order to decide whether or not to bring charges against Zimmerman. A conviction can carry anywhere from a 25-year sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The Statewide Prosecutor's office and the Sanford Police Department had initially refused to arrest and charge Zimmerman with Martin's murder. They gave as an excuse Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which protects those who claim self-defense. Sanford, especially its police department, has a sordid history of blatant racism against the Black community.
While Corey at her press conference was singing the praises of her prosecutorial team, the governor and the police authorities, she didn't say what was most glaring: that there would have been no arrest or charges against Zimmerman had it not been for the massive explosion of all forms of protests from below — rallies, marches, sit-ins, teach-ins, walkouts and more, all demanding justice for Trayvon Martin.
Furthermore, all these forms of grassroots protests in big and small cities were inevitably leading toward a massive rebellion, starting in Florida and spreading throughout the country — if Zimmerman had not been charged with murder. The real possibility of such a rebellion led by Black and other oppressed youth weighed heavily on the racist, capitalist ruling class, who already have their hands full attempting to manage an unmanageable economic crisis.
Larry Hales, an organizer of Occupy 4 Jobs and the People's Power Tour, stated in an April 11 press release, "What made this case so egregious is that Zimmerman was never initially arrested for the heinous crime against this teenager. In many cases, racist police and vigilantes are at least put on trial, even though 90 percent of the time they are given a slap on the wrist, resulting in very little jail time, or they are not convicted and are set free. The arrest of Zimmerman is one step in a long process of bringing about justice for Trayvon Martin and his family."
Hales went on to say, "This case is more than about Trayvon Martin. He is the face of all Black and Brown young people who are racially profiled by police and vigilantes. This case is the tip of the iceberg of the war against Black and Brown youth, a war that includes growing incarceration, attacks on education, depression-level unemployment and more. We must continue to build a struggle for social justice so that victims like Trayvon Martin will not have died in vain."
In the days and months to come, the movement must be on alert in every step of the process to bring Zimmerman to justice by mobilizing in every neighborhood, every city and every state.
The spirit of Kim Il Sung lives on
By Deirdre Griswold
Published Apr 11, 2012 8:46 PM
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is preparing to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, an amazing revolutionary who for more than 60 years led the Korean people’s struggle against imperialist domination.
His life began in April 1912, shortly after Japan had formally annexed Korea as its colony. His political development included years of anti-colonial struggle and the building of an anti-imperialist armed guerrilla force that finally achieved liberation of the north in 1945.
Kim Il Sung had to reorient the struggle after the defeat of Japan, when the United States sent troops to occupy the southern half of Korea and tried to roll back the socialist revolution in the north. The Korean people knew from direct and bitter experience what Japanese colonial rule had meant. But they were to discover that U.S. imperialism was just as brutal and just as intent on controlling and exploiting Korea, albeit under the name of “democracy.”
We cannot do justice in one small article to all that Kim Il Sung accomplished for the Korean struggle and the world movement for socialism. In this piece, we will focus on why Kim became a communist, as explained in his autobiographical series of books entitled “Reminiscences with the Century.” (Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang)
Kim came from a family of poor farmers who sacrificed much to give their children an education. His family was proud of having fought foreign aggressors: “When the U.S. imperialist aggressors’ ship General Sherman sailed up the River Taedong and anchored at Turu Islet, my great-grandfather, together with some other villagers, collected ropes from all the houses and stretched them across the river ... to block the way of the pirate ship.” The ship opened fire on the people of Pyongyang, but the villagers set it ablaze and it sank with all hands aboard. This struggle in 1866 resonated in the Kim family for generations.
Kim Il Sung described his father, who died at the early age of 31, as “a pioneer of our country’s national liberation movement.” His father was an early organizer for the Korean National Association, which was building resistance to the “living hell” created by Japanese imperialism. One of Kim’s first political memories was, at the age of six, visiting his father in a Japanese-run prison. The next year, during an uprising for independence, he saw for the first time the killing of a Korean by troops of the colonial regime.
In this period, many Korean patriots fled to China and Siberia, where there were large Korean communities. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, “when the combined forces of imperialism and the internal enemy who followed their dictates pounced upon the Soviet Union ... thousands of Korean young people gave their blood and lives with arms in hand either in the guerrilla ranks or in the Red Army in order to defend the socialist system,” Kim wrote.
Inspired by the proletarian revolution
This revolution of the workers and peasants in Russia inspired the anti-imperialist movement in neighboring Korea. Kim remembered his father explaining his idea of the proletarian revolution “as the building of a new society which would provide rice to those who had no food and ... clothes to those who had no clothing ... [and thus] he awakened the workers, peasants and other working masses to a progressive idea and united them into one revolutionary force.”
The Korean Communist Party had been founded in 1925 but “ended its existence as an organized force in 1928 owing to the cruel suppression on the part of the Japanese imperialists and the factional strife in its highest circles,” Kim wrote.
While still in his teens, Kim Il Sung became immersed in the political debates roiling the Korean exile community in Manchuria, a province of China. The Korean nationalist movement and the communist movement often were in struggle with each other, and Kim looked for ways to bring the best of them together.
The Korean revolutionaries in China also had to respect the fact that they were in another country and had important relations with the Chinese Communist Party, which itself suffered big setbacks in 1927.
Different groups of communists vied for recognition from the Comintern, based in Moscow, which dissolved the Korean Communist Party in 1928. It was in this period that Kim began developing the view that later became known as “Juche,” or self-reliance. Of his group of young revolutionaries, he wrote, “We came to the conclusion that it would be impossible to found a revolutionary party by rebuilding the party that had been dissolved or by relying on the existing generation that was infected with the vicious habit of factional strife.”
Rather than being discouraged by these problems, the new generation of revolutionaries in 1930 formed the Society for Rallying Comrades, in which “the communists from among the new generation overcame the mistakes made by the communists of the preceding generations and pioneered a new way of winning over the masses and employing the art of leadership. The heroic fighting spirit and the revolutionary fighting traits displayed by the communists of the new generation became the motive force enabling us to defeat the Japanese imperialist aggressors.”
The leadership of the DPRK today is imbued with this spirit of resistance to foreign domination and reliance on the masses of people to build a socialist society. It is this spirit that has enabled the Korean Revolution to endure despite a century of Japanese and later U.S. imperialist aggression.
When Outrage Can Lead To Rebellion
By Larry Holmes
Published Apr 11, 2012 9:27 PM
Based on a presentation at a Workers World Party forum in New York
on April 6.
Why do some atrocities get a bigger mass response than others?
Hurricane Katrina got some reaction, but not what might be expected from such a devastating event. James Byrd was dragged to his death in Texas. Oscar Grant was killed in the BART transit system in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sean Bell was gunned down in his car in Queens, N.Y. These outrages drew mostly local reactions.
Compare these to the tremendous response that Trayvon Martin’s killing has aroused. Not only in Sanford, Fla., but in New York City, Atlanta, Detroit and Los Angeles where thousands came out in protest and in Baltimore where thousands took City Hall. Thousands mobilized wearing hoodies.
Young people see this murder as something they want to identify with. Even professional sports teams were doing it. Former Black Panther Bobby Rush, now in Congress, spoke wearing a hoodie and had to be dragged out of Congress by racists. What accounts for the strong reaction?
Maybe it was because there was no arrest. Even the ruling-class media have brought that up.
Maybe it’s because it was so familiar to millions of Black and Brown people, especially to young people. No person of color has grown up in this country and has not been profiled at one time or another. They feel lucky if it’s one of the less lethal. but still humiliating forms of profiling.
Someone asking, “Are you lost?” when you’re walking in the “wrong” neighborhood. Or “How can I help you?” repeatedly, as you’re just looking in a store.
But is there something deeper that’s provoking the reaction? It was a young African-American journalist, chief editor of Politic365 website, Krystal High, who is often invited on CNN and MSNBC panels, who said of Martin, “People say, hey, he is our Arab Spring,” meaning that the case — the outrage — is a “call to action” for the African-American community.
A lot is at issue now as we approach April 10. This will be a massive national day demanding justice. In New York there are two days of demonstrations in Union Square on Monday, April 9, and Tuesday, April 10. Martin’s family will be there Monday. We have lots of responsibility on Tuesday.
Will the grand jury be convened? If not, will the special prosecutor do something? If there is no arrest, what will be the mass reaction? Might it be a rebellion?
I think we have to be ready for that. It should be uppermost in our minds to be ready to explain, defend and help such a rebellion, should it occur.
In Tunisia a young worker, a street merchant, set himself on fire. That was the catalyst that evoked something deeper, that provoked millions to rise up and then the movement to spread throughout the region. That’s what the Arab Spring means to me.
It happened in Britain last August. A London cop killed a person of color, with roots in the West Indies. A rebellion started in London and spread. Outrage started it, but austerity drove the rebellion.
Unemployment is the big issue
What are the issues for working class youth like Trayvon Martin? They are 45-50 million strong. Many young workers, from their teens to their 30s, are unemployed.
There is a war against Black and Brown youth. What is that war? In many cities, more youth are in jail than holding a job. The drug laws, like the Rockefeller law in New York state, have created an assembly line sending people of color to jail.
They face austerity and are deprived of education. The problem is systematic. The big issue is devastating hyper, depression-level unemployment. Officially it’s maybe 30 percent, but it’s more like 40-70 percent really. Few jobs exist, and most that do are low-paying — jobs with no future.
Unemployment has been around a long time, but no one has been able to make it the big issue. Those benefiting from the capitalist system don’t want it to be an issue because unemployment can’t be solved under capitalism. Capitalism can’t solve it.
The rulers have written off this section of the working class. They are closing schools and eliminating housing. Capitalism can’t create a basis for exploiting large sections of the working class, so it has condemned them to social and political death.
What’s the question now? How does a section of our class, condemned to social death, fight back? Do they rise up and say “I demand”?
History of struggle
Black people in the United States have a history of hundreds of years of struggle. Ever since the first enslaved people were brought here, they fought back. The struggle against national oppression is constant, deep, but the rulers try to ignore the day-by-day resistance. It needs a rebellion to be noticed.
The Civil Rights movement had an impact because the ruling class was forced to try to buy time by making concessions. Some 45 years ago, it took the 1964 rebellions in Harlem, the 1965 rebellion in Watts in Los Angeles, the big ones in 1967 in Newark and Detroit, and in more than 100 cities in 1968 after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered to shake up the capitalist ruling class to do something.
Even though underlying the rebellions were bad housing, unemployment and systemic racism, police violence was the catalyst. Repression opened it up, but other things were at the roots of the struggle.
In 2006, the immigrants had their spring. They rose up and held the biggest general strike in 100 years on May Day.
Black and Brown youth are facing not exactly the same conditions, but there are similarities in how extreme the crisis is. Though a generalized rebellion is not guaranteed, we should at least plan a contingency for a big struggle, so we are not taken by surprise.
A cry for revolutionary optimism
If it is an Arab spring — that is, a generalized rebellion of the oppressed — it would be great for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Those activists are in motion, and the Black struggle would push OWS in the direction of solidarity with the oppressed.
Don’t think it was a coincidence that Trayvon Martin’s family went to Union Square, where OWS had relocated, and why they’re going back there on April 9, where many forces are involved.
I differ with those who say OWS is going away. There’s a difference now from the conditions during the Vietnam War when many white activists were propelled into struggle. Then, when the war ended, most went back to their normal lives and back into the system.
Now that option is no longer promised, even for white youth. It doesn’t matter how savvy they are, the jobs aren’t there. A little while ago they thought they had a future; now they are shocked that it has vanished. The knowledge they have, their education, their savvy — they can only use them for resistance and rebellion.
We know the Arab Spring is filled with contradictions. The imperialists took advantage of the opening to overthrow the government of Libya and are now intervening against Syria. When we talk of the good part of the Arab Spring, of OWS, of the outraged activists in Spain, we mean how they connected Tahrir Square in Cairo to Plaza del Sol in Madrid and to Union Square and Zuccotti Park in New York.
The deepening of the capitalist crisis on a world scale has opened up the possibility of struggle on a world scale. Of course, as revolutionaries, we have to be optimistic. The global capitalist crisis has created conditions for all the forces in the working class to be pushed together in solidarity.
We need to understand that and imagine a synthesis of forces that can come together. Otherwise we base ourselves on experiences where this didn’t happen.
We look at the objective process moving the forces. With all the pitfalls of organizing, the ups and downs, the conditions won’t go away. We hope they will push forward solidarity and unity in ideology against imperialism.
There is too much at stake to be stuck in old habits. The crisis is pushing us together. This is not clear to all, but it has to be clear to us.
Even if it’s a false start, even if there is an outside chance it will develop into a sustained rebellion, we have to respond as revolutionaries to help it go as far as it can.
Holmes is First Secretary of Workers World Party’s National Secretariat.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
32 County Soveirgnty Movement Commemorates Easter Rising
2012 Easter Statement of 32 County Sovereignty Movement
From: 32 CSM Fermanagh
The 32CSM would like to thank all of you for attending and all who travelled from near and far to be here. We send solidarity greetings to fellow Republicans and to all those who struggle against oppression and Imperialism. We would also like to pay special tribute to our honorary National Secretary Marian Price who may be absent here today, interned in a British cell but who is always in our thoughts.
It has been nearly 100 years since the Irish Volunteers and their comrades in the Irish Citizens Army marched out in unison to declare a Republic and to defend it through any means necessary. We are here today to remember their sacrifice and the sacrifice of all those who died struggling to realize that aim.
The past 100 years have seen many changes, however the underlying political problems which motivated the men who marched out that April morning remain. The twin presence of imperialism and capitalism continue to cast a long shadow over the lives of the Irish people. Republicans stand here today continuing to defy those who demand submission.
The past year has highlighted the extent to which the six county state remains an outpost of British oppression. We have seen the continuing harassment of Republican families, the return of the supergrass system, internment and the inhumane treatment of Republican prisoners in British jails. The targeting of our families has shown up the PSNI as the inheritors of the RUC’s shameful legacy.
Children are being brought into a political conflict, not through the actions of Republicans but by the trauma they have suffered at the hands of the PSNI. The searching of children as young as five and six has been admitted as a regular occurrence by this police force that we are expected to embrace as one which is here to defend our community. The actions of the PSNI have not only resulted in a new generation rejecting their presence it has also shown that no British force in Ireland will ever be utilized for anything other than to repress dissent.
The 32CSM challenges those who defend these servants of the crown, to explain what Republican argument exists that defends the right of the PSNI to traumatise children and harass activists promoting the Republican political message.
The return of supergrass trials is a timely reminder that little has changed in the six counties. Old tactics are being revived despite being totally discredited and contrary to the very notion of due process. Although these efforts have so far been aimed at Loyalists it is obvious that should they prove useful they will then be utilized against Republicans. The 32CSM stands resolutely against this system of paid perjury.
As in the case of Marian Price the British government have already proved that should there be no case to answer in court then they will dispense with the judicial process. Internment is alive in 2012 and its victims are filling the wings of Maghaberry prison. Marian has been interned now for the best part of a year in isolation for her political opposition to the Stormont regime.
She was intended to serve as an example by the British, a warning to all who dare challenge their right to rule in Ireland. Instead Marian stands today as an inspiration to all who refuse to bend the knee in the face of oppression. The 32CSM will continue to rally around Marian and we urge all Republicans to do likewise. We also send greetings to the prisoners on protest in Maghaberry. They have shown that in the words of Volunteer Bobby Sands “They have nothing in their whole imperialist arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who refuses to be broken”
The prisoners in Maghaberry are standing by the Republican position. This is the same position that the 32CSM has always stood by, that the Republican struggle is a legitimate political one whose adherents will not be criminalised. The 32CSM has since our inception put forward a consistent and logical political argument. We believe that the fundamental source of conflict in Ireland remains the violation of Irish Sovereignty through the occupation of the six counties. As such all our actions, positions and future endeavours are underpinned by the reality of the occupation.
In the past two years there has been a clamour of numerous individuals, religious figures and political personalities rushing to call for Republicans to engage in dialogue. They have presented Republicans as unwilling to talk or as criminals devoid of any political argument. This is a distortion of history and an attempt to mask their true intentions. The 32CSM has sent our policy positions which are publicly available to all political parties In Ireland. No one can claim that we have failed to make public our position. Those seeking to engage in dialogue with Republicans have given no basis for which such talks should take place. This is because they have no intention of addressing the core issues of the conflict.
The narrative that is being peddled by the establishment is one of Republican violence and refusal to engage politically with the Stormont regime. Republicans however have consistently pointed to the British presence as the source of conflict. The only legitimate basis for engaging in discussion is to talk about the removal of the occupation. Other secondary issues can then be engaged with as outlined in our policy.
Today we say to the British government, their allies in Stormont and those calling for dialogue, the IRA are not the source of conflict, they are a response to an illegal occupying force. The suppression of republican political activists by the state is no accident. They seek to undermine the political nature of Republicanism. They fear our argument not only because it is consistent but because there is no way to accommodate it within the occupation. Republicans cannot and will not engage with the institutions of partition and those who do have no right to claim the label Republicans.
We are fast approaching the centenary of the Easter Rising; however next year will mark 100 years since the 1913 strike and lockout. In 1913 it was Irish capitalists supported by the British government supressing the working class. Capitalist oppression has no limitations of nationality. These coming years should be a time for Republicans to reflect on the social struggle and its intertwining with the goal of national liberation.
Irish Republicans have not always given the social struggle its proper place within the wider movement. This has been to the detriment of our cause and has seen us too willing to make compromises which have betrayed the working class from which we draw our support. The 32CSM has committed itself to the establishment of a sovereign Republic. We accept the analysis of James Connolly, that without the twin destruction of Capitalism and Imperialism in Ireland then there can never be true freedom.
The inescapable conclusion for all Republicans must be that just as Imperialism is politically bankrupt so is Capitalism morally bankrupt. We do not believe that replacing the union jack with a tricolour will be a sufficient resolution for the ordinary people of Ireland. We also recognize the reformist and anti-revolutionary nature of constitutional nationalism. They will wrap themselves with the green flag whilst enacting Tory and IMF cuts. Whilst we recognize the integral role of the class struggle in National liberation we lament the failure of the broader socialist movement to recognize that without the removal of British occupation there will be no defeat of Capitalism.
The 32CSM understands that these are not easy times to be a Republican. We firmly believe that we have a solid framework available that provides for a New and better society in Ireland. We have placed ourselves at the heart of our communities to better defend their interests. We feel that increasingly republicans are faced with the option of doing what is right or doing what is easy. The unavoidable conclusion to reach when looking at former comrades in Stormont is that there is simply no constitutional path to a United Ireland.
In the coming months we will be expanding upon our social program and we ask all 32CSM activists and supporters to give their input into this effort. We salute the continued resistance efforts by the volunteers of the IRA, their courage and resilience in the face of such odds stands as an example to all Republicans. We urge all of you to go from here today and to continue your activism on the streets and in our communities. We will continue to grow and our message will continue to serve as an opposition to those who urge conformity instead of resistance, subservience instead of revolution and slavery instead of freedom. Onwards to a Sovereign Republic
Beir Bua
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