tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65021879329107808232016-03-02T11:04:49.713-05:00Fire on the MountainA blog of struggle, self-determination, and socialism. And some other stuff, too.Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.comBlogger527125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-1838131316977262422015-11-11T18:21:00.000-05:002015-11-11T18:26:15.475-05:00Home By Christmas! GIs Thwart War Plans In 1945<br />When the Second World War ended in mid-1945, the world was almost thrust into World War III. There was a section of the US ruling class and the military high command who weren't happy that the Soviet Union had played such a key role in defeating fascism and rolling up the Wehrmacht in Europe, that communists had led the underground resistance to German and Japanese occupation in country after country in Europe and Asia, and that around the world national liberation movements were vocally demanding independence and an end to colonial bondage. The ruling class and its military chiefs wanted to run the world, and they were ready to crush the pesky reds and foreigners who stood in the way.<br /><br />They were stopped in their tracks.<br /><br />It wasn't the Red Army of the Soviet Union that did it, or the fighters of the French maquis, or Mao Zedong's Eighth Route Army in China. It was US soldiers and sailors and other troops, who launched a mighty movement to be sent home. They had signed on to do a job, to stop the drive to fascist world domination by Hitler Germany and Italy and Japan, and they had helped do it. <br /><br />The way they saw it, the job was done. But the brass was trying to keep the troops in Europe and Asia as an occupying army and a combat-ready invasion force. Unfortunately for them, many of the GIs were workers who had been involved in the giant wave of strikes that shook the US in the midst of the Great Depression in the late '30s. These disciplined collective struggles organized the mass production industries like auto, steel and rubber before the outbreak of war. The soldiers knew that back in the States, the winding down of the war had triggered a huge new strike wave which began in '44 and picked up steam in '45 to make up the ground lost during labor's no-strike pledge during the war.<br /><br />The first to stand up were troops from the European Theater who had made it back to the US only to find that orders had been cut to send them to the West Coast where they were to take ship to Asia for occupation duty. On August 21, less than two weeks after VJ Day, 580 soldiers from the Army's 95th Division signed a protest telegram to the White House. The 97th Division hung banners from the trains taking them to California, proclaiming "We're Being Sold Down The River While Congress Vacations." On September 15, General Twaddle of the 95th, assembled his soldiers for orders on occupation duty. The Washington Post the next day reported "the boos from the soldiers were so prolonged and frequent that it took [General Twaddle] 40 minutes to deliver a 15 minute speech."<br /><br />Families added their voices to the chorus. Congress was inundated with letters and telegrams, thousands every day, insisting that the troops come home and stay home. As fall turned to winter, some families sent baby booties to their congressmen, with a note which read "Be a good Santa Claus and release the fathers."<br /><br />And the outcry rapidly spread to the troops overseas. Nelson Peery, a veteran revolutionary who was in a segregated Black unit in the Philippines in 1945, recalls (in his autobiographical <i><b>Black Fire</b></i>):<br /><br /> "Perhaps it will never be known who coined the slogan 'Home by Christmas!' It was a perfect piece of agitation. This simple, understandable slogan was in the immediate interest of the troops and at the same time hit at the core of the generals' hopes of attacking the Soviet Union...<br /><br />"It was painted on the latrines. It was scratched on the directional posts at the crossroads. It appeared as if by magic in the recreation rooms and the mess halls. Sometimes it was even painted on the screened-in officers' quarters."<br /><br />When Christmas Day came, graffiti was no longer enough-4,000 soldiers marched in formation to the 21st Replacement Depot in Manila behind banners saying "We Want Ships!" Their panicked commander said, "You men forget you're not working for General Motors. You're in the army." On Guam, mass meetings called a hunger strike.<br /><br />Halfway round the world, thousands of soldiers marched down the Champs Elysee in Paris on January 8 to rally in front of the US Embassy and shout "Get us home!" The next day in occupied Germany in Frankfurt am Main, speakers at a soldiers' demonstration telegraphed a message to Congress that said only "Are the brass-hats to be permitted to build empires?"<br /><br />With Christmas past, things in the Philippines got hotter. A 156 man Soldier's Committee was elected in Manila to speak for 139,000 soldiers there, "all interested in going home." It issued leaflets which declared, "The State Department wants the army to back up its imperialism." The Soldier's Committee elected an eight man central committee which included Emil Mazey, a UAW local president who had played a leading role in the battle to unionize auto in the late '30s. <br /><br />Declaring that "the continued stay of these millions of GIs in the armed forces can only serve the predatory interests of Wall Street," the soldiers' leadership asked the powerful United Auto Workers to present their demands of Congress. The UAW did, further fueling the "Bring Us Home" movement stateside.<br /><br />With rebellion in the ranks turning political, discipline eroding and no sympathy on the home front, the ruling class and the military blinked. Orders to the Pacific were revoked and more vessels, everything up to ocean liners, were pressed into service to get the restive veterans home and demobilized. It was all the generals could do to keep enough troops to maintain the occupation of the conquered Axis powers.<br /><br />The invasion of Iraq may not last long enough to produce a wave of rebellion in the military like the Vietnam War did, but even if it doesn't, there's a lot we can learn from the soldiers who organized the post-WWII Troops Home movement, back in the day.<br /><br /><i>Originally published in Freedom Road magazine #4.</i>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-20332116335275000942015-09-30T16:55:00.000-04:002015-10-03T21:58:15.396-04:00Remembering A Fighter Who Died Too Young<br /><div class="MsoNormal">[<i>I think I might have met Neal Gammill. Once. These moving memorial thoughts by my friend and comrade </i><b>T. Shelton</b><i> of Tennessee give some idea of how much I missed.</i>]<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Dltuc1ILMOI/VgxLuZmcLOI/AAAAAAAABBE/ft4NYQzdRws/s1600/12068556_10206806061362848_6737734341687707940_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Dltuc1ILMOI/VgxLuZmcLOI/AAAAAAAABBE/ft4NYQzdRws/s320/12068556_10206806061362848_6737734341687707940_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">photo credit: Whitney Wood</span></div><br />"Hey, you're with that Freedom Road group, right?"</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Those were the first words Neal Gammill ever spoke to me. He had walked right up to me at an anti-war event, and as I would come to know in his true-to-form way asked the political question on his mind. Over the next 5 years we shared countless hours talking politics, and doing politics--from trade unions, to community campaigns, from police killings, to movement surveillance, to revolutionary feminism, to the centrality of racism and methods for organizing working class whites to destroy white supremacy. And internationalism. In fact, always internationalism.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">More than anyone else I know Neal always centered his revolutionary internationalism and the struggle to destroy white-supremacist imperialism headed-up by the USA. His internationalism and anti-imperialist line was always with him and his beloved <span class="st">Éire</span> (Ireland). These same lessons he shared time and again on the picket, at the rally, at the prayer meeting, at the public forum demanding self-determination and independence for occupied Palestine. A mid-southerner, the application of these politics to his own home was no different, always noting the imperialist root of US racism and seeing the struggle against white supremacy and for Black liberation as central fronts in our movement for real justice and freedom. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Neal could be counted on as a first responder to every threatened and undertaken act of US aggression, from Libya to Iran, from Egypt to Iraq, in Syria and Columbia. And Afghanistan. That was an imperial project he had seen firsthand, had participated in while in the Air Force and one, he would confide, he felt he had never been meant to make it out of alive. Like so many others, he did make it back from Afghanistan alive, but with those scars on the soul that the US military gives to vets.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Neal's politics grew on anti-authoritarian and anti-fa roots. Both as a working class white kid and in the military, he spent time in and around the white power movement. As is true for too many, the allure of whiteness and the ideas of Third Position politics were a quick mental exit ramp towards some taste of power. But even then Neal was always<br /><a name='more'></a>a great poser of incisive questions, and the degree to which those positions crumbled under his interrogation laid a firm anti-fascist cornerstone for his ideological foundation for the rest of his life.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Neal believed in organization. He founded a local Memphis collective of socialists that gave an open door into leftist politics for dozens of us. Growing from late night conversations between him and one other friend, that group has grown into one of the largest (and most ideologically advanced) branches of the Socialist Party. Though he left the collective as it evolved, Neal always, <i>always</i>cultivated "party spirit" with others on the left. He was so open to criticism, to making self criticism, to asking deep, probing questions, and to principled dialogue. The bar he set time and time again for all of us on the left was truly high, but he showed us what being principled instead of sectarian looked like. And even when we failed to live up to that example, he was there to talk it through, to share his ideas with such amazing humility. To show love.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He was a marksman, and an amazing rifle instructor. For many, from his days in the Air Force to his final months working as a consultant at one of the only Black-owned gun ranges in the US, Neal was the first person to really teach you how to hold, fire, strip, and clean a weapon. And again, there was never room for a division of mental and manual labor. Neal knew you cannot split work from working class politics, anything else wasn't genuine. Neal would give you a crash course in safe shooting along with a full round of anti-focoism. His rules were clear, no one in front of the firing line, always know the rounds in the weapon, never think that you can "wake up" the people with a gun, and never delude yourself into thinking that "guns" alone were going to end this class dictatorship. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He was a comedian. He was known to homebrew, and to bootleg. He knew so much, about so much, and these are just the parts of him I was lucky enough to meet. He was a worker. Teamster Neal at UPS. Lineman Neal pulling cable and climbing poles in his AT&T/CWA prem-tech polo. And he had dark places too, and demons, and scars both physic and physical he brought back with him. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He never joined the Road as a cadre, but he was much more than a fellow traveler. He wore the heck out of his 25<sup>th</sup> Anniversary FRSO/OSCL shirt, and publicly supported the organization. It was always only a matter of time before we would have been together in an organization. But time isn't guaranteed, and losing him at 40 feels like such a raw deal. He gave so much of himself to so many of us, and taught us so much more than we can put into words. He was our comrade. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Lal Salaam, my friend. <span class="text">¡</span><span class="text">Neal Gammill--Presente!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-45963862417212174122015-09-11T23:00:00.000-04:002015-09-13T11:52:36.294-04:00OFF+ON: 350.org Ramps It Up. Again.<style> /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-fareast-language:JA;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Last night I hit the 350.org <b>OFF+ON</b> Campaign roll-out event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Well over fifteen hundred people showed up to a program headlining Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oWgR0gCrx6w/VfQZ88xKTrI/AAAAAAAABAg/-srysKuUQvo/s1600/15-RENTAL-0512_350org_crowd_613x463.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oWgR0gCrx6w/VfQZ88xKTrI/AAAAAAAABAg/-srysKuUQvo/s320/15-RENTAL-0512_350org_crowd_613x463.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The catastrophic scale and gradual (though escalating) pace of global warming and planetary climate change can make it, I think, perversely compelling for many of us to ignore. It’s too vast, too unstoppable, to contemplate on a daily basis, while even new weather patterns which affect us adversely, like scorching summers, get: well, it’s the weather, what can ya do?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">That’s why, though not a full-time climate activist myself, I’ve made a point of trying to keep up with 350.org and their analysis and work since I attended McKibben’s inaugural “Do The Math” show three years ago.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">First the event itself. It amounted to a very effective and sophisticated pep rally, with a four-person crew, Klein, McKibben, the “Hip Hop Reverend” Lennox Yearwood and Cynthia Ong from the Borneo region of Malaysia, at center stage. They passed the mike back and forth amongst themselves for scripted stints of no more than a couple of minutes, with sharp visuals and a few brief video messages projected on large screens behind them. There were three brief cultural performances and some other speakers interspersed, notably a quartet of young folk from various countries who were held to the same two-minute, single-point messaging format. 350.org big May Boeve closed by sketching out some battle plans for the coming months.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The Message</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Here’s the message as I received it. (Your mileage may vary. <a href="http://350.org/off-on-live/" target="_blank">Watch it here</a> if you are so inclined.)</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Things are bad and getting worse. Though fossil fuel companies have reserves 5 times what can be extracted and burned without damaging the biosphere beyond repair, they are still spending hundreds of billions every year in exploring for more.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">People’s resistance is growing globally and has won significant victories—the “done deal” Keystone XL Pipeline of a few years ago hasn’t been built, for instance.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We are in a race between global warming and resistance, we aren’t winning yet, and every day counts.</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The main enemy is the giant fossil fuel companies (Shell, Exxon, India’s Adani Group, etc.), which must be “turned off” because the logic of their continued existence is to worsen the problem. The main tactic promoted here was divestment campaigns to drive down stock prices.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The rapid growth of renewable energy, especially solar, and the falling price of renewable generation means we can win this (The highpoint of the staging savvy of the evening was the introduction of this point and of the turn toward more optimism overall. It was a powerful and emotional performance of “Here Comes The Sun” by a young 350.org activist named Antonique Smith)</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Renewables, and the changeover to them, can best be accomplished by taking them up at a community level in conjunction with struggles against poverty and injustice. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We need “energy democracy” including insuring that the millions of new green jobs created are decently paid union jobs.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The enemy has much to lose, and the money to buy the politicians it needs to stave off change. We must build a movement that builds on our accomplishments so far and unites hundreds of millions who have much to gain.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>A Few Observations</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Attending such events answers some questions about what the leading figures in 350.org are thinking and what they will be doing. The emphasis on attacking the big fossil fuel corporations is a promising new approach, though no claim is made that that successes in divestment campaigns so far, while impressive, have made a qualitative difference. The success of sanctions against apartheid was cited repeatedly, but the likes of Exxon are, by comparison, hardened targets.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Klein, McKibben and the others are clearly intent on baking into this movement a central thrust of justice and equality, and an internationalist stance. This is, of course, helped by the very global nature of the crisis. The symbolic message of who was up on stage, and on screen, was part of this, obviously. Rev. Yearwood wore a Sandy hat for Sandra Bland and name checked Black Lives Matter. And while some of it just came of as earnest assertion, a strong case was made that many of the initial victorious struggles thus far have emerged from indigenous communities, poor and marginalized.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A schedule of big demonstrations pegged to international events like the Paris Climate Summit this December will move things ahead along on the path the group has been following. Ramping up divestment efforts will not take out Big Oil and Big Coal. McKibben hinted at more civil disobedience, but it’s not clear how that might be directed at, say, Shell or the Koch Brothers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of course, things which weren’t said also deserve our attention. For instance, McKibben did not mention the July 20 declaration by noted climatologist James Hansen and fellow scientists that newly understood feedback mechanisms may well mean a rise of ten feet in global sea level by 2065, which would be beyond catastrophic. Does 350.org disagree with Hansen? Or feel that the news is so grim that it would upset the balance of the <b>ON+OFF</b>dynamic embodied in the group’s new slogan?</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">More understandably, electoral politics and capitalism itself were touched on only by implication. The refusal to address the upcoming US presidential elections was. I think, wise, and reflects their understanding that only a huge mass movement can produce the changes needed. Subsuming such a movement in a presidential campaign would risk its continued existence once next November has come and gone. (That said, Sanders kids were present in large numbers and leafleting the crowd.) As for a frontal attack on the capitalist system itself, that’s not the job of the spokespeople for a broad and, one must hope, growing united front. That’s our job, us being the Reds, the revolutionary socialists in the movement.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Yo! Frankie!</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But this does bring up the most interesting omission, an issue my partner Dody asked me about straightaway when I was telling her about the program: Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, <i><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Laudato Si’</span></i><i><span style="font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, </span></i><span style="font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">which was mentioned only in passing</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. </span><span style="font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Not only is this document the most positive development in the Climate Justice movement so far this year, but Bill McKibben himself wrote <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/aug/13/pope-and-planet/" target="_blank">an impassioned and thoughtful appreciation</a> of it for the <b>NY Review of Books</b>, which she and I had read together.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Pope challenges, more directly that anything at the <b>OFF+ON</b> event, the “deification” of the market and the money power. More, Francis identifies the biggest obstacle to uniting the hundreds of millions needed to win this life and death battle. As McKibben summarizes him: </span></span></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Our way of life literally <i>doesn’t work</i>. It’s breaking the planet. Given the severity of the situation, Francis writes, “we can finally leave behind the modern myth of unlimited material progress. A fragile world, entrusted by God to human care, challenges us to devise intelligent ways of directing, developing, and limiting our power.”</span></span></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">350.org had an already convinced and ready-to-act audience at BAM. If such people are judged unready to rethink and take on the way late capitalism operates, with its television-reinforced culture of consumption <i>über alles</i>, </span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">and to change their lives accordingly, </span>we really are in deep shit.</span></span> </div></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-11500806159930200162015-07-02T22:26:00.000-04:002015-07-03T04:39:59.914-04:00Two Trips, To Kent State And To Jackson State, 45 Years On<style> /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; 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mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style><br /><div class="MsoNormal">This May I took it upon myself to attend two memorial observances, the 45<sup>th</sup> anniversaries of the massacres at Kent State and Jackson State. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IjH7eUnzpCo/VZXwWRMmBfI/AAAAAAAAA_s/awlMaJ7WEJU/s1600/jackson-state.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="185" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IjH7eUnzpCo/VZXwWRMmBfI/AAAAAAAAA_s/awlMaJ7WEJU/s200/jackson-state.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>On May 4, 1970, four students were gunned down by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University as part of a massive upsurge against the war and for social change that was sweeping American campuses. Ten days later on May 14, Mississippi state troopers and Jackson police opened fire on a student protest at Jackson State, killing two young men, James Earl Green and Phillip Gibbs, in a massive fusillade. These two shootings were critical points in the events of May ’70, the most massive and militant nation-wide student strike this country has ever seen. (I have written <a href="http://www.firemtn.blogspot.com/2010/04/may-70-finally-on-our-own.html" target="_blank">a series of pieces on May ’70</a>, 19 of them and counting.)<br /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Here are a few reflections based on what I observed. Please bear in mind that I had not been back to the battlefield at Kent since 1994, and this was my first trip to Jackson State. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">1. I am goddamn old. I was an adult, a young one, when this shit happened, and that was going on half a century ago. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Nevertheless, like many who were around then, I am unlikely to forget these killings before I check out. </div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C6qAQ4fKxkM/VZXvuU7c1BI/AAAAAAAAA_g/17KNvsTIgYM/s1600/10873994-large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="140" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C6qAQ4fKxkM/VZXvuU7c1BI/AAAAAAAAA_g/17KNvsTIgYM/s200/10873994-large.jpg" width="200" /></a>2. Amidst numerous moving and inspiring moments, I want to cite two that struck me particularly. The May 4 Visitors Center at Kent State, one of the most important victories won there in the long struggle against forgetting, has as its centerpiece a short film, 9 minutes perhaps, with many photographs and sound recordings of the deadly moments around the National Guard firing. I sat through it three times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you are ever within, say, a three hour drive, you should watch it. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">At Jackson State, the then-president of the school, Dr. John A. Peoples, described the aftermath of the shooting. He told how for the next four years at every sporting event the school’s team played in, Jackson students greeted the national anthem by standing silently with their fists in the air, Tommie Smith & John Carlos-style. His pride was evident, as was his quiet delight when he described sitting next to the governor of Mississippi at one such game. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">3. Kent is an amazing anomaly. For forty-five straight year people have made hajj to the campus from across the country, joining with a core of regulars associated with the university and the town of Kent to remember May 4, 1970. I cannot think of anything comparable in the left movement in this country. In New York there is an annual memorial for the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. In Bay View, WI, now part of Milwaukee, the local labor movement remembers the 1886 murder of seven strikers by National Guardsmen at a steel mill. Both of these events are mainly local in character and both date in their current form to the revival of labor militancy and interest in the working class during the '60s and '70s. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Why is Kent so different? The most obvious thing is that it was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">white</i> college kids who were shot, on their campus, by the National Guard. It stunned the country at the time, a time when hundreds of thousands of us were on strike at our own campuses. This was reinforced by the classic musical mnemonic, "Ohio" written by Neil Young and pushed into immediate release by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the aftermath of the killings. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Further, the university administration did its best to obliterate all memory of the killings. This led in 1977 to Tent City, erected to block the construction of a gymnasium on the murder site, and to a decades-long campaign of militant struggle rejecting further attempts to kill or to coopt and dilute the memory.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Nowadays, May 4 is observed by several days of talks, forums, and culture. One I attended was run by young members of Black United Students, whose powerful panel and heartbreaking stories laid bare how little has actually changed since their predecessors were organizing and protesting racism and discrimination at Kent in 1970. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dJoRqLu_YZM/VZXuR3Bg1SI/AAAAAAAAA_U/EtZ4vFhBR1I/s1600/11182758_10153317526992437_818065959861060516_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dJoRqLu_YZM/VZXuR3Bg1SI/AAAAAAAAA_U/EtZ4vFhBR1I/s400/11182758_10153317526992437_818065959861060516_o.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>The heart of the observance is memorial rituals now enshrined by time: a candlelight march as May 3 turns into May 4, this year numbering 335, followed by a vigil in which volunteers take rotating shifts holding candles at the now-memorialized spots where the four fell. (I stood for Jeffrey Miller and Sandy Scheuer at different points during the night). It culminates with an emotional memorial program. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">While folks come from around the country to take part, the commemoration is centered on Kent people. In addition to nationally recognized spokespeople like my old compa Alan Canfora and Tom Grace, there is a core of people residing in Kent who do the invisible work that makes it happen. Here I will single out as representative the folk I stayed with there, Mike Pacifico and Kendra Hicks Pacifico, whose basement is a well-organized stash of decades worth of banners, candles and other nuts and bolts of the protest. And the ongoing student group, the May 4 Task Force, provides not just bodies but leadership.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The whole comprises what old hands call the Kent May 4 Family. And in multiple ways it is a family. First, relatives of the fallen have been part of it from the start. Most of the parents, active from the start, are now dead or are unable to attend. Laurel Krause, Alison’s sister, is always a presence. So is Alan Canfora’s sister, Chick, another Kent alum. Beyond that, family members of longtime participants who have been brought to Kent since they were itty-bitties have now come on their own. And new regulars are adopted, like Canadian photographer Christian Bobak who came to document the anniversary five years ago and has returned every year since. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6CiRejQCnKs/VZXsHYA5GvI/AAAAAAAAA-w/LmoAuc7PMIg/s1600/Gibbs-Green45th_Slider-1600x545_Hi_t670.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="135" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6CiRejQCnKs/VZXsHYA5GvI/AAAAAAAAA-w/LmoAuc7PMIg/s400/Gibbs-Green45th_Slider-1600x545_Hi_t670.jpg" width="400" /></a>4. At Jackson State this year, a short memorial program was followed by a panel with vigorous participation from veterans of May, 1970 in the audience. Apparently, annual programs had fallen by the wayside in some past years but with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement focused first and foremost on police killings of young Black men, this year’s program had to happen. <br /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Where the observation at Kent State University was overwhelmingly white, the 110 or so at Jackson State were at least that Black. Participation was even older than at Kent. The two activists in their twenties who drove me down from Memphis were among the youngest people there, save for a few in strollers. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZAwJUpucMfw/VZXsRyDIhVI/AAAAAAAAA-8/7QkgW5SqOhg/s1600/James_Lap_Baker_and_Eddie_Jean_Carr_Ik_web_t670.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZAwJUpucMfw/VZXsRyDIhVI/AAAAAAAAA-8/7QkgW5SqOhg/s320/James_Lap_Baker_and_Eddie_Jean_Carr_Ik_web_t670.jpg" width="320" /></a>The formal program was attended by about blessedly short given the outdoor heat and lack of shade. Bjorn, one of the Tennesseans I traveled with, summed it up as highlighting students from 1970 who had gone on to academic or professional success, and marked by frequent references to the events of May 15 as “a tragedy.” Jackson’s new Chief of Police, a younger alum, had to say he knows what people are thinking about police these days and why, and pledged that there would be no such occurrences on his watch.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Maybe 50 people stayed for the forum after, and folks there were plenty clear. What happened in May 15, 1970 was not “tragic," it was murder. Murder by the police. It was fascinating to watch the veterans share their experiences and try and pull together what they had seen into a larger, more coherent picture of the deadly assault they had survived. Comparisons to the present murders of young African-Americans were blunt and frequent. And I wish every white yahoo who responds to police violence by going on about Black-on-Black violence could have been there to listen to folks from the community grapple with the problem.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">(Both halves of the program were livestreamed by Jackson State; video can be viewed <a href="http://livestream.com/jacksonstateu/events/4042678" target="_blank">here</a>.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">5. LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF KENT AND JACKSON STATE! was the slogan that resonated through the student movement in the 70’s and 80’s. Folks that were active in 1970 will, to this day, automatically respond to mention of Kent State by saying “<u>and</u> Jackson State.” Thus, the struggle for memory, and against the tendency of the fiercest of people’s battles to be crammed down the Great American Memory Hole, has also helped keep the memory of the Jackson killings alive far beyond the borders of the campus itself. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BRSf8eeRfGM/VZXxWnoPmVI/AAAAAAAAA_4/xIer5jRydLE/s1600/banner-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BRSf8eeRfGM/VZXxWnoPmVI/AAAAAAAAA_4/xIer5jRydLE/s400/banner-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Activists in the May 4 movement at Kent have always worked to maintain ties with Jackson State. For years until his untimely death earlier this decade, Gene Young represented Jackson at Kent State every year and was a cherished figure in the community there. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Still, the greater attention to Kent in memory and in history as it is taught and written in this white supremacist country is obvious. It clearly rankles many of the veterans at Jackson State. Several made a point of complaining that the protest at Jackson is too often described as an anti-war protest and not primarily as a protest against the multi-faceted racism directed at Black students in the capital of Mississippi in 1970.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">6. It is only natural that the focus on Kent (and, always, Jackson) in the May 4 commemorations carries with it a certain built-in narrowness. While the killings at Kent kicked the national student strike into overdrive, it was already the largest and most powerful student protest in the history of the country. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The thing about Kent is that the administration closed the campus up tight on the afternoon of May 4 and ordered everyone to leave. From the standpoint of Kent, the May '70 story pretty much ends here, but those of us who were around during that fateful month know this was only part of the story. The truncation of the narrative can be seen clearly in the May 4 Visitor’s Center. The Kent-centrism is reflected in the three parts of the museum. The build-up section presents a broad picture of the 60’s and the tectonic shifts in politics, society and culture that that gave rise to the earthquake that was May 1970. The central section is the film about the events of that day. The third part is heavily focused on various responses to the Kent killings, with some attention to Jackson State. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The fact that the movement went on to greater heights, more militant battles, and striking accomplishments is absent. I spoke with two paid staffers, neither of whom knew about the police killings of six young Black men in Augusta, Georgia between the shootings in Kent and Jackson, or about the “hard hat riots,” savage attacks on protestors by union construction workers, organized in conjunction with President Nixon’s White House. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This is baked into the long struggle at Kent and it is not the particular responsibility of activists there to correct it. That falls rather to veterans of all the battles of May 1970: step up, dredge up the memories and spread the lessons, as folks have been doing at Kent and Jackson all these years.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">7. There were some intriguing parallels at the two events.<br /><br />Both sets of May 1970 veterans emphasized the organized nature of the murderous attacks—at Kent, the National Guard unit wheeling, kneeling and firing in unison into the unarmed students, and at Jackson the way the po-po marched in order up Lynch Street before turning to fire on the students. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Similarly, some people at both campuses seem driven to deny that the burning of the ROTC buildings there were the work of campus protesters. At Kent, the conspiracy-minded attribute not only the May 2 fire but also the cutting of firehoses to prevent it being extinguished to the work of provocateurs directed by the feds. At Jackson, the tendency is to blame vandalism by “the corner boys,” young Black men who hung out in the neighborhood of the campus. Well, maybe. But let’s not forget that 30 ROTC buildings developed problems which compromised their structural integrity, shall we say, during the first week of May 1970. Thirty. I know for a fact that some were not the work of provocateurs or “outside elements.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">We have two books to look forward to, both headed for publication. Tom Grace, wounded on May 4 and now a professor in Buffalo, will add his analysis to the considerable body of works on Kent State. The absence of a comparable shelf full of books dealing with Jackson State is to be improved by Dr. Nancy Bristow of the University of Puget Sound, who is finalizing a definitive study.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Best of all is a little script flip. At Jackson State, a white prof, Dr. Robert Luckett of the History Department, evidently played an important role in organizing the program. At Kent the faculty adviser of the student May 4 Task Force for more than a decade is a lecturer in the Department of Pan-African Studies, Idris Kabir Syed, who also acts as advise<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>r to Black United Students there. Sweet, hunh?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">8. Finally, I want to issue a challenge to the Kent State May 4 Family and to others, old school veterans and new activists alike, who hold the memory of the events of May ’70 in their hearts. A Venn diagram of the attendees at the Kent and Jackson observations this year would show the circles intersecting at one point. Me. That ain’t right. If there is a 46<sup>th</sup>anniversary celebration at Jackson State next year, I hope you will join me there. </div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-3305907920766334802015-03-20T10:44:00.000-04:002015-03-20T10:46:14.472-04:00Shooting Cops In Ferguson<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Arial; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Arial; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When I saw, last week, a news bulletin announcing that two cops had just been shot in Ferguson, MO at the end of a demonstration, I thought, “Fuck. This could get really ugly, really fast.” </span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My fears have not been borne out, I am happy to admit. The cops both went home after a day or two in the hospital. The dude arrested for doing the shooting, Jeffrey Williams, reportedly said, and there’s other evidence, that he wasn’t even aiming at the police.</span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Still I was a bit puzzled by the low-key approach to the whole thing taken by the mainstream media and even moreso by the rather limited stir it caused in the fairly revolutionary corner of Facespace where I spend too much time. </span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Even as I noticed this, I was reflecting on some lessons from the incident, lessons that folks may have missed because there was relatively little attention paid.<br /><b><br /></b></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Ferguson Movement Continues to Amaze and Inspire</span></span></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />Most of all, it showed how astounding the movement in St. Louis has become. Even as it sparked the first real nationwide, as opposed to localized, movement against racist police violence ever in this country and triggered the reawakening of the Black Liberation Movement, it has remained the epicenter of the struggle, despite murders even more shocking than that of Mike Brown, like those of Akai Gurley in New York City and Tamir Rice in Cleveland.</span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Consider the March 12 protest which the gunfire ended. It was the community seizing on important victories it had just won and pressing the offensive. With the damning US Department of Justice report on racism in the St. Louis county police and court system, several perpetrators were fired or resigned, including a judge. That very day, the chief of the Ferguson PD resigned.</span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the evening, 500 people gathered at Ferguson Police Department headquarters, where most of the protests take place, facing off against a couple hundred battle-dressed cops. They were celebrating by demanding the resignation of Ferguson Mayor James Knowles as well.</span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Reports indicate there were disagreements, sometime heated, among the protesters over tactics, particularly blocking traffic on South Florissant, the main drag in front of the cop shop. Some of it evidently arose when the core who have been keeping the protests alive month after month tried to school newbies and irregulars who came out for this action in how the struggle has been built and conducted,</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">(I saw this dynamic myself acted out when I was among the couple thousand folk from around the country who answered the call to #FergusonOctober last fall. The way in which the organizers and the marshals on that weekend recognized and provided productive outlets for young militants, locals and visitors alike, to challenge the system and the police in non-approved ways without threatening the united front that had been built for the demo was a marvel of political astuteness.)</span></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_4vQsGNkfvo/VQwvaXSpTGI/AAAAAAAAA-U/OwV-jFVgDF8/s1600/635617318489933269-FergusonCopsShot.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_4vQsGNkfvo/VQwvaXSpTGI/AAAAAAAAA-U/OwV-jFVgDF8/s1600/635617318489933269-FergusonCopsShot.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The fifty or so protesters who were left on the scene at midnight when the shots rang out were themselves terrified. And well they might have been. With two cops down and many others with weapons at the ready, a massacre could have easily resulted. </span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Despite this, the protesters returned the next night, 50 strong, around the norm for the frequent protests over the winter, to </span></span><br /><a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">show their determination to keep the momentum going and to keep demanding that Knowles be ousted.</span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Guns In This Movement</span></span></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Some of the comments I saw in the Zuckosphere threads in the following days, mostly from young’uns, blithely hailed what seemed to them to be a dramatic escalation in the struggle against the police.</span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">They surely would have rallied to the defense of Ismaaiyl Brinsley, the guy who shot two cops dead in their patrol car in Brooklyn, and did so in a gigantic rage at the murder of young Black men by the police. By shooting himself when cornered, he saved the movement a season of bitter debate and division. Even so, the deaths put the brakes on a massive wave of protests in NYC around the exoneration of the cop who choked Eric Garner to death, live on video, an upsurge with huge popular support.</span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Similarly, Williams, the accused Ferguson shooter, denies any connection with the movement, and both his girlfriend and regulars at the protests say he was never an active part of the struggle. He also appears not to be the sharpest pushpin in the corkboard. Anyone who hangs on to a .40 caliber pistol that might be connected to the shooting of two police officers is certainly not a rebel mastermind.</span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We don’t know anything—yet--about the role that government provocateurs may be playing in the movement, but a news report yesterday showed that the entrepreneurial right wing is in there pitching. A staffer for online “journalist” and all-around sleazeball James O’Keefe quit when his boss told him to pressure a Muslim underling to announce at meetings he had infiltrated, “'Sometimes, I wish I could just kill some of these cops. Don’t you just wish we could have one of the cops right here in the middle of our group?'</span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One Big Lesson</span></span></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">All this leads me to reiterate a lesson that was learned, at considerable expense, during the late ‘60s and the ‘70s: <b>Don’t escalate the struggle past the level of a significant section of the masses to carry it on.</b> (This is independent of strategic critiques of revolutionary paths featuring urban guerrilla warfare under various names.)</span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army and similar groupings are the poster children for this lesson. All wound up not single sparks starting prairie fires but fizzles, isolated (and, J. Sakai and others argue, encapsulated—entwined in a mesh of unseen surveillance and informers). </span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am not arguing against taking up arms under circumstances short of a revolutionary crisis or insurrection. In situations of urban rebellion, like those of the ‘60s, it definitely played a significant role. In the union battles in the Appalachian coalfields, it was an essential tactic of struggle for decades.</span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ironically, the best example of the strategic role of armed violence is the very movement we are so often taught was guided purely by love and non-violence, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. As several recent books, most notably <i><b>We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement</b></i> by Akinyele Omowale Umoja, document, the threat of organized armed retaliation helped stymie the combination of state and Klan terror which had maintained the savage regime of Jim Crow for many decades, thus permitting the peaceful organizing. Thousands participated and they had the support of a big chunk of the Black community.</span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am not addressing ethical or moral questions here, nor those of tactics. Revolutionary strategy must be guided by the concrete analysis of concrete conditions, and not emotional responses to the crimes of this blood-drenched system. And it must be based on the masses of people, like the Black folk in the Lou who have organized and persevered for half a year now, and have kicked off a movement that may well, if we are indeed strategic, continue to reshape this country in directions we can only dimly sense now.</span></span></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-90420423014857366452014-12-06T01:19:00.000-05:002015-06-10T17:01:08.729-04:00Some Unsung Heroes Of The Struggle Against Police Murder<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have <a href="http://freedomroad.org/2014/09/reflections-on-ferguson-one-month-on-heroism-lessons-what-next/#more-3293" target="_blank">written elsewhere</a> in praise of the heroism of the people of Ferguson and, more broadly, St. Louis. In a few short months, the ripple effect from their protests have created what is shaping up to be a new historical moment in this country.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have been half-joking for a while now that I have a second hero, the weedy tech who nervously approached his boss and said, "Mr. Jobs, sir, you know we could put a video camera in our iPhones and charge an extra seventy bucks or so for them. People would take videos of their sweethearts and their pets and their kids' school play and then they'd send them around! What do you think?"</span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EL6U_FHuhBI/VIKfHyOov-I/AAAAAAAAA9g/eWNeLrRkBMM/s1600/ramsey-orta-update.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EL6U_FHuhBI/VIKfHyOov-I/AAAAAAAAA9g/eWNeLrRkBMM/s1600/ramsey-orta-update.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Today, there's been an enormous amount of commentary, online and in the press, on the national wave of demonstrations protesting the Staten Island Grand Jury process that walked killer cop Daniel Pantaleo. It is crystal-clear that that much of the outrage is fueled by the <a href="http://youtu.be/_OxM9pWGsaQ" target="_blank">readily available cell phone video shot by Ramsey Orta</a> as his friend Eric Garner was choked to death by police. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There is no way to deny or spin what you are seeing. And what you are hearing: "I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't breathe…" </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So instead of my mythical nerd, I decided to see if I could find out who my hero really is. Credit where credit is due. An hour or so spent with Comrade Google has given me some good candidates at least. Dr. Eric Fossum headed the NASA team that developed the CMOS ASP, the camera-on-a-chip in the early '90s. A gent named Kazumi Saburi developed the first peer–to-peer video-sharing phone for Kyocera, a Japanese firm in 1997. Doubtless there were others. J-Phone, a Kyocera rival, produced the first commercially successful phone with still and video capability in 2002. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">(Perhaps I ought to do some research on the originators of commercially available cloud computing too. <a href="https://www.aclu.org/kyr-photo" target="_blank">Recent court rulings</a>, even by the Roberts Supreme Court, have declared that citizens have the right to videotape police officers in the performance of their duties, that the contents of their cellphones cannot be inspected without a warrant and the police are completely prohibited from erasing any content on phones they have confiscated. This has been a boon to CopWatch programs. The Cloud enters into it because the po-po have repeatedly ignored these rulings. But if a video is automatically uploaded to the Cloud in real time, as in <a href="http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-beat-man-7-month-pregnant-wife-deleted-video-survived-cloud/" target="_blank">this very recent case</a>, the record of police violence is preserved.)</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Should any Alpha Geek deeply versed in this history wants to school me, I welcome corrections or additions. And meanwhile, I sincerely thank Dr. Fossum and Kazumi Saburi, their coworkers and others laboring in the dark satanic mills of the cellphone industry for letting us see, with our own eyes, what happened to Eric Garner. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And to Kajieme Powell.<br /> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And to Oscar Grant. </span></span></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-90951937634735052942014-11-27T22:18:00.000-05:002014-11-27T22:27:37.733-05:00WSJ on CEO Pay! Why They Hate The Truth, And Why We Should Spread It<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[<span style="color: #351c75;"><i>This article is by my friend John Lacny, a Pittsburgh-based activist. He possesses a pitiless eye for the mechanisms of domination employed by big capital, which make his pieces, like this one, a delight to read.</i></span>]<br /><b> </b></span><br /><h3><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>By John Lacny</b></span></h3><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> One of the first bitter lessons you learn as an activist is the fact that just because people know the truth does not mean that things are going to change. People have to actually do something about it -- and organizing them to do something about it is one of the toughest things in the world, not least because it requires you to inspire people to believe that it is possible to change things.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /> That said, our adversaries are well aware that mass-based knowledge is a dangerous thing for them, which is why they invest so much effort in obscuring the facts. An especially illuminating example of this can be found in an article that appeared in the house organ of capital, <i>The Wall Street Journal</i>, just before Thanksgiving. It is entitled <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/firms-prepare-to-disclose-pay-gap-between-boss-workers-1416948563">"The Boss Makes How Much More Than You? Controversial New Rule Would Make Companies Disclose Data,"</a> and it is accompanied by an illustration in which the average CEO is represented as a gigantic pig. (The average worker is portrayed as a much smaller piggy bank, but what do you expect from the <i>WSJ</i>.)<br /><br /> The subject is a new rule by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which would require US companies traded on Wall Street to disclose the ratio of pay between their CEO and their median employee. This rule has been a long time coming, and is the result of 2010's Dodd-Frank financial reform act. Dodd-Frank was a mild financial reform that has <a href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/josh-rosner-on-how-dodd-frank-institutionalizes-too-big-to-fail.html">more than a few shortcomings</a>, but much like the Affordable Care Act -- which is of similar vintage -- even its mildly progressive features have a way of causing vested interests to break out in hives.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>The Wall Street Journal</i> notes that the proposed rule about the CEO-worker pay ratio attracted more than 128,000 comments. Think about this for a minute. Do you know of the obscure website where people can comment on proposed SEC rules? Do your friends? How many of the people you know are even aware of the SEC's existence? Then think about the effort it takes to get someone to comment, and to get that to happen 128,000 times. Is this a grassroots movement that you're unaware of? Not likely, but it is an action encouraged by people who have a hell of a lot of money. And the usual suspects in Congress have responded to the demands of their constituency: Texas teabagger Jeb Hensarling, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, sent a letter along with two other Republicans <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/gop-lawmakers-tell-sec-to-delay-pay-rule-1416879189">calling on the SEC to delay implementation of the rule</a>.<br /><br /> The <i>Journal</i> writes: <b>"Critics say such pay ratios matter little to investors and could make executives easy targets for populist anger or hostile shareholders."</b> Note the explicit values here: These people are quite clear that the purpose of the SEC and the disclosures it requires of companies is to protect <i>investors</i>, not the public at large, and certainly not the people who actually do the work that makes the profits for publicly-traded companies. <br /><br /> Nevertheless, bosses are resigned to the likelihood that they'll have to comply with the rule, and with the desperate determination to mount a defense before they are carted away on the tumbrels, they are putting resources where it matters: into pure PR and HR bullshit artistry. Witness the <i>Journal</i>: <b>"Some employers are taking steps to plan for the possibility of internal morale problems, negative press and an investor outcry over the sizable gulf in pay between the top and the bottom. Among other things, they intend to expand employee training and shareholder outreach efforts."</b><br /><br /> The first step is no doubt a lot of board room Power Point presentations, many of them prefaced with an icebreaking joke illustrated by a Dilbert cartoon. You won't see that part. The part you will see is the various company handouts and press releases in which they try to defend the indefensible. Your job as an organizer is to see to it that they fail. <br /><br /> The really funny thing about this is that we already know how much corporate CEOs get paid, because the SEC has required companies to disclose that for years. You can look that up any time you want. It is on a <a href="https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html">website called EDGAR,</a> hosted by the SEC. Each year, every publicly-traded company files a DEF 14A form, more familiarly known as a proxy statement, and the SEC website has all of these. If you're on a fast food strike, and you want to know how much the CEO of McDonald's makes -- in salary, stock and stock options, bonus, and everything else -- you can look that up. (<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/63908/000119312514140308/d666434ddef14a.htm#tx666434_9">It was nearly $9.5 million last year, by the way.</a>)<br /><br /> So they're not really worried about the disclosure of CEO pay. What they're really worried about is that we will learn <i>how little the rest of us make</i>: <b>"'Half of your workforce is going to [ask], "Why am I paid below the median?"' said Jill Kanin-Lovers, a retired human-resources executive, at a National Association of Corporate Directors conference. 'That's going to be really explosive.'"</b><br /><br /> We have a perverse culture in this country where workers are not supposed to discuss their pay with one another. This actually starts in the schools. The very same people who like to complain because "kids these days" get participation trophies for sports -- when trophies should really only go to winners -- are the very same people who endorse the idea that a kid should be circumspect about discussing with peers what actually matters in school, which is academic achievement or the lack thereof. This is because if kids know how other kids are being graded, they will be able to figure out if the grading system is unfair and the teacher is playing favorites. Discouraging schoolchildren from discussing their grades is therefore not a salve to the self-confidence of the children who are not as academically proficient as others, but in fact quite the opposite. It is training for an adulthood in the workforce, and intended to inculcate a cringeing, submissive attitude toward one's social "betters" -- masked as American "rugged individualism," of course, when really it is an extreme form of social atomization that actually leads to the opposite of freedom, a life of diminished expectations reinforced by fear.<br /><br /> It is actually illegal for employers in the United States to fire or discipline workers for discussing their pay and working conditions, but most people don't know that, and it doesn't stop managers from doing it even if they know the law. Vindicating a worker's formal rights under the law can be a long and painful process, which is why most people shut up when they're told to do so -- unless they're in a union shop and can therefore count on their coworkers to back them up.<br /><br /> But the statement of Jill Kanin-Lovers is not the last of the revealing statements in this nutrient-rich <i>Wall Street Journal</i> article. Here is another:</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>"Companies with staff around the world 'worry their pay ratios will mean little because the median employee may be a part-timer in India making a few dollars a day compared with their U.S. CEO, who makes millions a year,' says James D.C. Barrall, a partner at Latham & Watkins LLP who specializes in executive compensation."</b><br /><br /> There you have it, India: you don't mean shit to corporate America. <br /><br /> But of course, pay ratios mean a <i>lot</i> in the cases of companies with large overseas workforces, perhaps <i>even moreso</i> than with firms whose workforces are mostly domestic. They demonstrate that all the "populist" campaigners are right when they say that US companies lay off domestic workers in order to further exploit workers in the Third World and thereby further enrich the CEOs. <br /><br /> "Populist" is the most terrifying all-purpose curse-word that the business press can affix to someone these days. So when they say that something could be used to stoke "populist anger," it means we should take advantage of the opportunity to prove them right.</span>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-55510984865405656042014-10-22T23:20:00.001-04:002014-10-23T07:19:29.637-04:00In Defense Of Snark<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DA7S4AiTMxk/VEhw8vv-ezI/AAAAAAAAA88/9A6U8e13V3Q/s1600/1904083_10153043372697345_8452114099487905193_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DA7S4AiTMxk/VEhw8vv-ezI/AAAAAAAAA88/9A6U8e13V3Q/s1600/1904083_10153043372697345_8452114099487905193_n.jpg" height="280" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The recent announcement that Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party (USA), creator of the New Synthesis ™, and the only dude with the chops to save our species from collapsing into barbarism and lead it into the bright communist future would be making his first publicly announced appearance in the US in over 30 years has occasioned some comment. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">After decades of exile, rumors of sightings, and long, long recorded speeches purportedly delivered in secret conclaves, it was hardly surprising that there would be skepticism and humorous commentary by that small section of the left that remembers him or has followed his career. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Then, though, his acolytes in the RCP advanced a bridge too far. Earlier this month, an anonymous article on their website promoting his upcoming talk at Riverside Church in Manhattan compared the chance to attend with a hypothetical opportunity to see Jimi Hendrix play live in his prime. (Read it <a href="http://revcom.us/a/357/you-have-a-chance-to-see-the-jimi-hendrix-of-revolution-live-en.html" target="_blank">here</a>.) As <i>TV Guide</i> used to say: Hilarity ensues.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So brutal (and funny) has been the mockery that the online edition of RCP organ <i>Revolution</i> now contains a little slogan box proclaiming<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aZG3Fu30G2w/VEhuOgnGIHI/AAAAAAAAA8k/3ZhM2pVyhtY/s1600/967846_10152732575331390_999712758_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aZG3Fu30G2w/VEhuOgnGIHI/AAAAAAAAA8k/3ZhM2pVyhtY/s1600/967846_10152732575331390_999712758_n.jpg" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal">Damn, can't these folks get anything right? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The culture of snark strikes me as a positive and transformative development in the youth culture of the 21<sup>st</sup> century. The last couple decades of the 20<sup>th</sup> century were dominated by cheap irony. Everything was equal because everything was worthless. You could do any stupid thing you wanted and simultaneously embrace it and proclaim your superiority to it. Wear a backwards gimme cap with a confederate flag on it and blast Public Enemy out of a boom box. Cheer, ironically, at ultra-patriotic films while stuff blew up. Or people. If you were around and paying attention then, you know what I mean. Irony's slogan is a world-weary "Whatever" with a knowing smirk.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Snark may share an evolutionary ancestry with pure irony, but the two occupy very different branches on the tree of worldviews. Its apostles in our era are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It is not a declaration of the equivalence of everything, because it has a place to stand—a standpoint, if you prefer. The snark stance carries with it the idea that things don't have to be as they are, and, further, that there are forces responsible for them being as they are or getting worse. Those forces should be mocked, be exposed and be opposed. They are the target of snark.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I'm not saying it's revolutionary. It's not. Hell, it's not like I've thought through this little exercise in cultural typology in any deep or systematic way. It may be entirely wrong-headed. But until argued out of it, this is where I stand. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And if that means being snarky about "the Jimi Hendrix of the Revolution," so be it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least I'm not wearing the peculiar little pin of Avakian the RCP made--the tiny featureless, text-less one which bears the image known as The Blob--trying to make some kind of contentless ironic statement.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6KFCluBNhmg/VEhwJockQMI/AAAAAAAAA8w/AQiu7vzceoA/s1600/blob_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6KFCluBNhmg/VEhwJockQMI/AAAAAAAAA8w/AQiu7vzceoA/s1600/blob_2.jpg" height="320" width="256" /></a></div></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-10200926472552324712014-09-22T12:57:00.000-04:002014-09-22T12:57:39.102-04:00Now It's 400,000 Climate Marchers? Puh-leeze...<div class="MsoNormal">Okay, I'm going to keep this short. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I thought I was done with the topic last night when I <a href="http://www.firemtn.blogspot.com/2014/09/once-more-on-counting-crowds-at-demos.html" target="_blank">posted a piece here</a> pegging the crowd in yesterday's nifty People's Climate March at over 100,000, a very impressive turnout, and explaining how that figure was arrived at. Toward the end, I criticized an estimate attributed to March organizers of 310,000.<br /><br />I woke up to discover my blogpost had generated a certain amount of interest and a bunch of Facebook comments They were even mainly favorable. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I also found that the organizers had jacked their "official" count up to 400,000. I thought, that’s just silly. Maybe they're counting all the folks who took part in demos around the world, like this one in <span class="st">Tromsø</span>, Norway that my friend Jon-arne sent me shots of.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WxZRc_U8F8w/VCBGMUvx_LI/AAAAAAAAA8U/eTm4en7H_pc/s1600/10620029_807408285949069_699922332875446567_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WxZRc_U8F8w/VCBGMUvx_LI/AAAAAAAAA8U/eTm4en7H_pc/s1600/10620029_807408285949069_699922332875446567_o.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Nope, according to the <i><b>NY Times</b></i>. <span class="uficommentbody">"Organizers, using data provided by 35 crowd spotters and analyzed by a mathematician from Carnegie Mellon University, estimated that 311,000 people marched the route." So far, no indication of whether the unnamed numbers cruncher also bumped her figures up by 89,000 overnight.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="uficommentbody">400,000 "marched the route"? A convenient number, on account of the March took just a hair over 4 hours to pass our vantage point on 53<sup>rd</sup> and 6<sup>th</sup>. So call it 100,000 people an hour. That works out to--lessee, strike the last zeroes—1,666 people passing a given point every single minute that the March lasted. This simply did not happen. If you weren't there, look at the photos on the front cover of today's <i><b>Times</b></i> or browse around on <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenmelkisethian/15128065859" target="_blank">Flickr</a>. That kind of density isn't there, even if all the people had been sprinting. Which they weren't. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="uficommentbody">So what? It feels good to see Fox News saying 400,000 marched, right? (Of course I don't believe what they say about anything else, but still...) Where's the downside of inflating crowd figures, some friends ask. For a more rounded argument about this, check my blogpost from last year, "<a href="http://firemtn.blogspot.com/2013/02/lets-stop-inflating-crowd-counts-eh.html" target="_blank">Let's Stop Inflating Crowd Counts, Eh?</a>"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="uficommentbody">In practical terms, I'm inclined to think the blowback comes almost immediately. We want to take the momentum, the high spirits and determination of the People's Climate March and convert it into continued action. Of course only a certain percentage of those who marched will go home and plan local protests or build groups or<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>promote petitions or lobby Congresscritters or register green voters or sabotage pipelines anyhow. But it's not hard to predict with a high degree of precision how many of the 275,000 phantom marchers will be galvanized into action. That is bound to dishearten not only the people who make up the base of the movement, but even those organizers and leaders who go for the okey-doke. </span><br /><br /><span class="uficommentbody"> It's Amilcar Cabral time again: </span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="uficommentbody">Tell no lies. Claim no easy victories.</span></blockquote></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-24097514862027541922014-09-21T22:06:00.000-04:002014-10-02T08:14:39.255-04:00Once More on Counting Crowds at Demos<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman"; panose-1:0 2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-parent:""; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">[<i><b>UPDATE</b>: This caused some controversy when it was first posted, so I wrote <a href="http://www.firemtn.blogspot.com/2014/09/now-its-400000-climate-marchers-puh.html" target="_blank">a shorter--and crankier--follow-up piece</a> a day later, which has a few additional thoughts.</i>]<br /><br />What a splendid march!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Props first of all to the 100,000 plus people who came to NYC from around the US (hello, South Dakota Quakers!) and around the world to stand up against the carbon-burning—and not coincidentally, capitalist--economy that is destroying the habitability of the planet for an awful lot of the present biosphere, including humans. You tended a tad toward the white end of the spectrum to be sure and were perhaps a bit naive, but you were young, you were jazzed and you were mighty imaginative in your posters and costumes and slogans.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kpP0P6F4nXY/VB-Hd3HicWI/AAAAAAAAA8E/v9FsQd5WKAE/s1600/10551773_10102327452019433_1984682281_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kpP0P6F4nXY/VB-Hd3HicWI/AAAAAAAAA8E/v9FsQd5WKAE/s1600/10551773_10102327452019433_1984682281_n.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Props too to the organizers who turned out all these folks on a very tight time-line, who made excellent use of the Internet and social media to build the protest, and who organized a very smoothly run march.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But let's face facts, nobody is much interested my review of the People's Climate March. What you want to know from me is how many people were there. I will give you two answers:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">1. There were well over 100,000 people, likely a bit upwards of 120,000 in the march.<br /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div><div class="MsoNormal">2. No way in hell were there 310,000 people on that march.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>125,000</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">How did we arrive at our first figure which was actually, before a fudge factor described below, 106,500?<br /><br />Okay, let's start with we. We is me and labor journalist Peter Hogness. Both of us are experienced demo counters who think having an accurate estimate of the strength of our own forces is invaluable for organizers. We set up shop on a marble bench on a raised space in front of some ugly-ass skyscraper on 53<sup>rd</sup>Street and 6th Avenue, which put out heads well above the level of the march.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Because the Climate March was going to be too big to count directly (anything over 15 thousand, maybe 20 on the outside, becomes too hard to do that way), we sampled. That is, we counted marchers passing a chosen point for three minutes. (We don't count 1,2,3,4, of course, but in clumps, 5s, 10s, even 20s, losing exactness. but maintaining a grasp on large numbers). This let us figure the rate per minute, and note the time or start a stopwatch.. When the density of the crowd or the speed at which it was moving visibly changed, it was time to stop the watch, note the time elapsed and take another three-minute sample. If the march stopped in front of us, the clock was stopped.<br /><br />The march started at 11:30 and reached our vantage point at about 12;02. During the first hour, it stopped and started repeatedly, leaving about 42 minutes of moving time. Repeated sampling gave results as high as 850/minute and as low as 600. Overall the average was, generously, 750/minute.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">42 X 750 = 31500</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">For another 20 minutes the march ran at about 500/minute, but never stopped again.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">20 X 500 = 10000</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">For the rest of the march, which ran without interruption for another two hours and forty minutes, samples bounced within a range of 300/minute and 500, with most around 400.. It was remarkable. We'd start a three minute sample when it seemed the march had thinned out to almost nothing and a big contingent of high school kids would roar through, chanting and bopping and knock the number up again. And vice versa. We figure that 400/minute was a good shot at a constantly changing target.<br /><br />160 X 400 = 64000</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">There you have it: a total of 106,500. With smaller demos I generally allow a fudge factor of 10% to cover counting errors, people who left the march before the counting point or took another route to the end point, etc. Brother Hogness, I think, usually gives 15%. For a march of this magnitude we considered 20% a generous but not unreasonable figure. That would take the total to about 125,000.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It would not take it to 310,000. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>310,000</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So where does this number I keep harping on come from? That's a mighty good question. I first saw it in an email from Doug Henwood, attributing it to "the organizers."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then it appeared at Climatechange.org. as official. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Now, I think that Bill McKibben has done amazing work with 350 org in forcing this crucial issue to the fore in this country. I've known Leslie Cagan, and many of her crew, and have worked with them for decades, and I rather doubt that anyone else could have pulled this off. The Avaaz people I know almost nothing about. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But I think that whoever is pumping this number is doing the movement a real disservice. I have written before about why I think inflated demo counts are such a bad thing, including <a href="http://firemtn.blogspot.com/2013/02/lets-stop-inflating-crowd-counts-eh.html" target="_blank">this rather passionate short piece</a> here at <i><b>FotM</b></i>. You may think that it's harmless, a "little white lie," but consider that this whole movement bases itself on the accuracy of numbers, numbers about global warming. It behooves us to be extra-careful about this.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So how do we know that the official figure is not correct? Well, for starters, we have confidence in our methodology and so do a lot of people who have tracked our earlier counts. But it is not hard to show that the 310,000 is impossible. I hope no one will challenge our statement that the march took 4 hours and a hair to get past our checkpoint. If that number had marched past us, they would have had to do so at a rate of 1300 a minute, non-stop for four hours. That's almost twice as fast as the fastest contingents we saw. 6th Avenue can comfortably accommodate 25 adults standing abreast, in a squeeze maybe 35. (We checked before the march came through). That would mean 30 rows a minute. The only people who can do that are troops, drill teams and maybe joggers in a race, not senior citizens, folks pushing strollers, marching bands (a score of them, and only one specializing in drumming on five gallon plastic compound buckets!), kids showing off the signs they made, giant puppets and the rest of the panoply which made the march so wonderful.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Friends asking about our count have raised the fact that many people (including them) who waited a long time to step off finally fell out and did not make it to our vantage point. That's what our 20% fudge factor is for, but maybe it's too low. Let's say one person bailed for every one who took more than two hours to reach our counting station. That would double the number of those who actually passed after 2:00, from 48,000 to 96,000. and that, that would only bring the total to 154,500, still less than half of what the organizers are evidently claiming.<br /><br />Somebody is going to have to have to show me in some detail where that 310,000 came from, before I'll buy it. Meanwhile, I'm calling bullshit.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Whenever I write about this topic, I find myself quoting the great Guinean agronomist and martyred revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Tell no lies. Claim no easy victories. </blockquote></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-25810162064070560562014-07-29T08:27:00.000-04:002014-07-31T08:14:27.548-04:00The War Over Gaza: A Battlefield Report from the Facebook Front<div class="MsoNormal"><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lfFAlfqbN4Y/U9d5uuEHyKI/AAAAAAAAA7Q/1tNajuTNebo/s1600/10557323_10102189809047053_1148102682895606926_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lfFAlfqbN4Y/U9d5uuEHyKI/AAAAAAAAA7Q/1tNajuTNebo/s1600/10557323_10102189809047053_1148102682895606926_n.jpg" height="185" width="320" /></a></div><br />This title may seem snarky, but it is deadly serious. What the Israeli Defense Forces call Operation Protective Edge, the deadly assault on the population of Gaza, is the most important war so far in the social media era. And this is being forcefully brought to our attention in ways that are both political and personal, but in any case increasingly difficult to avoid. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And the part about a report from the battlefront? That's because I don't pretend this is a definitive or even a deep analysis. It is a quick battlefield bulletin that I hope will get other people to think about this and chip in their own thoughts and experiences.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>From the personal</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I have been in half a dozen conversations, actual voice to voice conversations, over the last two plus weeks which all centered around a single shared experience. Some friend--an old and dear comrade, or a high school classmate rediscovered in recent years through the magic of the intertubes, an in-law or maybe just some amusing Facebook "friend"--suddenly, unexpectedly, turns out to be a zionist, or perhaps an I’m-not-really-a-zionist equivocator who tut-tuts po-faced over Israel's slaughter of the innocents and suggests that it's really all Hamas's fault.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And how did we learn this? By a news story these friends share, a status report, a comment on a contentious thread. It's jarring, in some instances actually chilling, to find this deep difference. If we explore it, even tentatively, in an online thread or exchange of posts, we can feel the barriers going up. They may not be 20 feet high and made of concrete poured over rebar but they are real barriers, as real as bannings and unfriendings. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>To the political</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And these lost or damaged friendships, online or IRL, are, in one sense, casualties in one front in the war in Gaza. This not a front restricted to the Raleigh, NC-size, battered hellhole of a ghetto that is both home and prison camp to 1.8 million Palestinian men, women and children. It is a global battlefront, one in which many of us are, willy-nilly, combatants.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">At the time Barack Obama took office and moved to ramp down the unjust and unjustifiable occupation of Iraq, there were about 50 million users registered on Facebook globally. Today there are a billion and a third! Twitter use wasn't even on the map.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Blogs, with few exceptions, have been correspondingly diminished as a locale for exchange of news and ideas, while Twitter seems less a replacement for and more of a compliment to Facebook-style social media. As for old skool broadcast news and dead-tree newspapers, they are pale shadows of their former selves. Breaking news comes to more and more people first through social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I'm not saying this is the first war of the new era, Social media was how we tracked the Arab Spring. The continued catastrophic fighting on the Middle East and Ukraine are obvious recent examples. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But this war is one where the battle for public opinion is paramount. Israel is has been exceedingly nervous about social media for quite a while now and devotes considerable effort to promoting her foreign policy on it, though expending only a fraction of the total money it drops on other parts of its coordinated influence buying, lobbying and manifold other public relations (PR) efforts. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Still, those running Israeli social-media efforts, whether in the IDF, the foreign ministry or government-funded think tanks, are faced with a horrific problem. Israel's armed forces, among the largest and best equipped in the world, are engaged in a brutal assault on a poorly armed militia—and on everybody who lives in the same high-security prison camp with them. The photos of shattered children, mourning families, burning power plants, whole neighborhoods reduced to rubble tell a story very different from the one Israel has been promoting.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>My neck of the FBosphere </b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I spend too much time on Facebook and I have a mess of FB "friends." True, many rarely post or even remember they are on. Others have been steered out of my line of sight by restrictive FB algorithms. As a result, most of the people whose stuff I see regularly tend to be folks who share my politics to one degree or another. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And I have found an intense spontaneous response to the assault on Gaza. Comrades and friends around the country have taken up the question in large numbers, posting and linking frequently. In fact, there have been more pleasant surprises, folk I hadn't really expected to see jump in on something like this choosing to stand up, than the disappointing moments I mentioned above. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I certainly have ramped it up, and, in doing so, have tried to develop a more systematic approach, which I will detail in another piece. A couple of my links to articles on the origins of this attack have been shared by dozens of people. And naturally I've tried to promote demonstrations and other protests, and share reports on them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Israel's strategy</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I mentioned the importance the Israeli state and establishment and allied organizations globally place on this battle. The Hebrew term "hasbara" means explanation, but has come to have connotations of PR or propaganda. The IDF maintains a Hasbara War Room (and has for over a year) where college students fluent in a variety of languages sit at 400 computers pretending to be something other than paid advocates of the official Israeli line. Trolls, in other words. Some argue points. Some seek to disrupt threads with ad hominem attacks and nonsensical claims. Some are "concern trolls" who express sympathy for the Gazans and go on to urge capitulation to Israel as the only practical option. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Of course, most of the defenders of Israel one finds on the net are not necessarily paid or sitting in a "war room." Rather they are individual zionists who feel their cause passionately and put it forward with varying degrees of coherence. The arguments do have a certain sameness to them, though. This was masterfully summed up six years ago, by the anti-zionist website <i><b>Jews sans frontieres</b></i> who lay out <a href="http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/how-to-make-case-for-israel-and-win.html" target="_blank">a four point template for<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pro-Israel argument</a>:<br /><br />1. We rock<br />2. They suck</div><div class="MsoNormal">3. You suck<br />4. Everything sucks</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Besides being extremely funny, in the "If you see me laughing, well, I'm laughing just to keep from crying" sense, it touches on something very profound. Israel's minimum program is to get people to turn their heads away from the suffering of the Palestinian people. Israel holds the military whip hand. If global public opinion doesn't bring pressure to bear on their government and on the US government, Israel's main enabler, they can keep committing these crimes indefinitely. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>The Palestinian side</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So in a sense our job is to keep the suffering of the Palestinians front and center. Supporters globally have been doing this in recent weeks, but let's not forget that we are functioning as allies of those who live on the real life battlefront. <br /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /><span class="null"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null">There are no 400-computer war rooms under central government direction in Gaza (or anyplace else) but there are people with cell phones who can take pictures and post reports, and they have truth on their side.</span> I was reminded of this by a courageous young woman from Ramallah with whom I've had several on-line exchanges on Facebook, We'am Hamdan has been promoting the Palestinian cause on the internet since long before the assault on Gaza, "<span class="null">because the conflict affects my being as a Palestinian living in the occupied territories of the West Bank."<br /><br />We'am works with an informal crew in Gaza and the West Bank who had a brilliant idea. They started a Facebook page entitled <a href="https://www.facebook.com/HOPalestine" target="_blank"><i><b>Humans of Palestine</b></i></a>. The name tells the story—it was based on the hugely popular internet phenomenon <i><b>Humans of New York</b></i>, which couples a snapshot of a person or two and a comment about their life in their own words.</span></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null">The idea of the page was to reflect the dreams of Palestinian people and their daily lives. But since the offensive started, the page aims at restoring the humanity that is often stripped away when Palestinians are reduced to calculative deaths, forgettable names, and burned and mutilated bodies, rather than people who shared loved ones, stories, dreams and aspirations.</span></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="null">This is a goal that I, for one, intend to learn from and to promote in my little section of the battle front.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Is it worth it? </b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">We'am Hamdan can have moments of self-doubt about the value of her efforts. "<span class="null">Sometimes I feel that it's a stupid virtual battle and it won't change much. Sometimes I feel, No! It's very important to raise awareness within the international community."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Like her, like many of us, I sometimes wonder how much is being accomplished. But until I find a better way of tackling the job, I plan to continue, just as I plan to continue going to demonstrations that the media and the political establishment do their level best to ignore.<br /><br />One way I hope to do that is with two follow-up pieces to this, one on how I am currently approaching the battlefield in practical terms and one on what happens when, inevitably, the IDF pulls back, leaving ruins in its wake, and Palestinian suffering continues while the world's gaze drifts elsewhere…<br /><br />I welcome your thoughts on this topic. </div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-82147391955405392072014-07-17T00:35:00.000-04:002014-07-17T09:53:41.130-04:00Now That's What I Call A Young Adult Book!It's a dream come true. You know how there's a book you know exists but somehow you can never find it? Well, I am thrilled to say that thanks to the magic of Teh Intertubes and the vagaries of US copyright law, I have finally been able to read <a href="https://archive.org/stream/boytroopersondut00haye#page/n0/mode/2up" target="_blank"><i><b>The Boy Troopers On Strike Duty</b></i></a>, and it's a corker.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oLz3_v2nsJ8/U8dPREC_UHI/AAAAAAAAA7A/dW-SeI9ZQbU/s1600/7757826.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oLz3_v2nsJ8/U8dPREC_UHI/AAAAAAAAA7A/dW-SeI9ZQbU/s1600/7757826.jpg" height="320" width="205" /></a></div>Let me back up and take a running start. Have you ever read any of the old Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew books, the originals I mean, not the weak tea retreads from the '60s and later? You may recall that the villains were generally swarthy "Dagos" or perhaps sinister Slavs, and our plucky WASP protagonists would best them with grit, strength and ingenuity.<br /><br />There were scads of similar series, some a bit more proletarian in flavor, I have before me here as I type a copy of one of the volumes in Allen Chapman's Railroad Series, which starts with the delightfully titled <i><b>RALPH OF THE ROUNDHOUSE Or, Bound to Become a Railroad Man. </b></i><br /><br />I read, back in my teen years, one of the Boy Troopers Series, by one Clair W. Hayes, about two fine young fellows who serve as valued allies of the Pennsylvania State Troopers, one of the first such forces. The other titles in the series were listed and one was <i><b>The Boy Troopers On Strike Duty</b></i>. Decades passed and I never came across a copy of this promising title, until last night. An idle search for one prompted Comrade Google to direct me <a href="https://archive.org/stream/boytroopersondut00haye#page/n0/mode/2up" target="_blank">to a very nice scan of the original 1922 edition, all set up for quick reading, full screen.</a><br /><br />My heart sank when I saw on the cover and again on the title page <i><b>The Boy Troopers On Duty.</b></i> What happened to the <i><b>Strike</b></i> part? Happily, when the story starts on page 3, the title is there again with the fateful word restored and the second paragraph takes us to the streets of a Pittsburgh suburb, Wilmercairn, streets crowded with "foreigners."<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Until the day before, these men--or a good many of them, at least--had been apparently faithful employes of the Wilmercairn Steel Tube Company.<br /><br />Today they were strikers--a small fraction of the steelworkers in the Pennsylvania-Ohio-West Virginia Districts--who had joined a walkout for more money and shorter hours. The total number of men on strike in these districts ran into the millions.</blockquote>I doubt I'm spoiling anything for potential readers when I say, with regret, that despite this promising start, the working class does not seize state power in the region by the end of the book.<br /><br />However, the strikers make a good run at it, planning an armed attack to seize the main mill and deploying a couple of machine guns in carrying it out. Not, mind you, that these foreigners could have come up with this on their own. (And generic foreigners is what they remain until page 123, where we finally learn that the "firebrands" are "composed entirely of Hungarians, Slovaks and other foreigners.") No indeed, they were stirred up by homegrown American "professional agitators":<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">These walking delegates were enlarging on the supposed grievances of the foreign strikers.</blockquote>Alas, we are introduced to only one of these splendid gents and get no idea of his organizational affiliation or political views.<br /><br />The factory managers, however, come up with a strategy better than their initially planned army of strikebreakers with the help of the heroes, Dick and Ralph: pitting true blue American workers against the foreigners by promising them much better pay and benefits. Although "there are a hundred 'Hunkies' in the mill to every American," the lads succeed in breaking the strike, with the aid of their state trooper buddies, after any number of fist fights, gun fights and narrow escapes. And the boss's daughter for romantic interest<br /><br />Even so, it is a close thing and one can dream (even if one is not among the "Boys 12-16 Years of Age," who were the author's target audience). <br /><br />Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-42922673767191969542014-06-29T17:14:00.001-04:002014-06-29T19:39:14.094-04:00A Black Dyke Reflects on the Panthers<div class="MsoNormal"><style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman"; panose-1:0 2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-parent:""; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.</style>[<i>It's Pride, at least here in NYC. In honor of that fact, I am posting here an article that Comrade Google suggests is not otherwise available on the Internet. It appeared as one of a stunning roundup of pieces by Black LGBTQ writers in </i>The Advocate<i> in one issue in the 1990s, under the irresistible title "Black Out."</i><br /><br /><i>By me, they should all be online, but I am posting this one for obvious reasons. It is by Alycee Lane, then a grad student at UCLA. In it she discusses what the Black Panther Party had meant to her—as an elementary school "baby dyke" in Buffalo and then later as she learned about <a href="http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/newtonq.html" target="_blank">Huey Newton's famous speech</a> in which he welcomed the women's and gay liberation movements and called on the BPP to work with them. That was in 1970 when the modern queer movement was first erupting in all its Stonewall-fueled glory—and when many other self-styled revolutionary and socialist organizations shied away from it, or adopted appallingly homophobic stances. </i><br /><br /><i>There's a lot about our history to be learned from this short piece, and there's always a chance that it won't be up at </i><a href="http://firemtn.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Fire on the Mountain</a><i> forever, so if you agree with me on its importance, I encourage you to save it and to make sure others have access.]</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Black Panther Party And Gay Liberation </span></b></div><b> </b><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><b> </b><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b>By Alycee Lane</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I really wanted to be a member of the Black Panther Party when I was younger. I imagined myself one day galvanizing the other kids in my neighborhood in Buffalo, N.Y., and conducting a righteous raid on that one house I passed on the way to my integrated school—that horrifying white house that donned, hatefully, a sprawling banner stained with the curse WHITE POWER. Yeah, I was going to conduct a <i>righteous</i><span style="font-style: normal;">raid. I figured this was the Panther thing to do, especially since I had seen the brothers walking proudly with their guns, policing the police, who were, in my young opinion, somehow connected to the curse.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In spite of their guns and "baaad black man" attitudes, it never occurred to me to feel intimidated by or afraid of the Panthers. For they never failed to greet me with love—"Good morning, little sister" and "How are you doing in school? Making those grades? Learning about your history?" I simply wanted to be with and be like them. I didn't know about the Panther <br /><a name='more'></a>sisters. I wish I had. Their names would have been important for me to speak as I became a woman.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Nevertheless, in seeing the brothers, I decided that <i>I</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> would free Huey Newton, whose face was postered on abandoned buildings and liquor-store windows. Newton was cofounder and minister of defense of the Black Panther Party. He had been arrested for allegedly killing a cop in 1967, and the government was intent on sentencing him to death (though he lived another 22 years). I can still see the image my child self conjured—a pigtailed baby dyke clad in leather, breaking Newton's chains and "offing the pigs" as I escorted him to freedom. (My relationship to leather is marked by so many fantasies.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">As the years passed, I learned more about Newton and his Black Panther Party. I read the ten-point platform and program he and co-founder Bobby Seale developed in 1966, which covered both the immediate needs and long-term desires of black communities.<i> </i>I discovered that, in addition to providing protection from police harassment and violence, the Panthers also protested evictions, taught classes in black history, established free breakfast programs for schoolchildren, and opened the People's Medical Care Center in Chicago. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In my research into African-American gay and lesbian history, I stumbled upon a letter Newton published in August 1970 in the party's newspaper, the <i>Black Panther</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Addressing "the revolutionary brothers and sisters about the women's liberation and gay liberation movements," Newton asserts "whatever your personal opinions and insecurities about homosexuality and the various liberation movements among homosexuals and women (and I speak of the homosexuals and women as oppressed groups), we should try to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion," The move was without precedent in black communities. Newton further states, "There's nothing to say that a homosexual cannot also be a revolutionary. And maybe I'm now injecting some of my prejudice by saying that 'even a homosexual can be a revolutionary.' Quite on the contrary, maybe a homosexual can be the most revolutionary."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The letter is fraught with the tension between Newton's own homophobia and sexism and his commitment to revolution. It also reveals his inability to recognize <i>black</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> lesbians and gays (emphasized by the fact that the picture accompanying the letter shows white lesbians and gays marching in a picket line). I don't know how this letter was received in black communities or by the Panthers themselves (who included in their ranks Eldridge Cleaver, the party's minister of information, who in his work </span><i>Soul on Ice</i><span style="font-style: normal;">asserts—among other things—that "if lesbians are anything, they're frozen cunts.") I do know that the change in Panther attitudes was not in any way swift and that many African Americans looked upon womens' liberation and gay liberation as counter-revolutionary.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Unlike black underground and mainstream papers, many white gay rags reprinted and commented upon Newton's letter. The comment varied. <i>The ADVOCATE</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, for instance, clearly speaking for mainstream white gays, printed in a 1970 editorial entitled "Sorry, Huey" that the "overwhelming majority of gays, we believe, do not want to destroy this nation and replace it with---well, what are you going to replace it with?" Others, like the </span><i>Great Speckled Bird</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, an underground gay newspaper, in the same year wrote—with reservations—that "the publication of this letter is an important event in the development of the revolutionary movement in the United States." Organizations such as the Gay Liberation Front embraced the Panthers with open arms, while others practiced a hopeful wait-and-see policy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Regardless of how all this played itself out within black communities and the white gay and lesbian movement community, this letter is crucial history for me to hold onto as an African American lesbian who is not supposed to go home as who I am. The letter gives what reading my history always gives me: hope—the hope that I can be myself in my own community without feeling fear or feeling betrayed, Certainly, I know that Newton and the party were plagued with inconsistencies and much of the bullshit that tears apart so many organizations and potential coalitions. Learning about the Panthers has taught me that too. But still I'll celebrate Newton and the Panthers—especially on Feb. 17, Newton's birthday—and think on those moments when my 8-year-old self went strutting down the street in my imaginary Panther uniform, lifting my fist high and saying to any sister or brother walking by, "Power to the people!"</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-37092066341703786282014-06-28T23:41:00.001-04:002014-06-28T23:49:10.621-04:00For My 'rades in Jackson, A Poem of Mississippi Summer<div class="MsoNormal">[Some comrades of mine are among those gathered this weekend in Jackson MS for a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Freedom Summer, or Mississippi Summer as we called it then. I post this poem for them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I wasn't in Mississippi that summer. I was fourteen, not what the organizers were looking for, and my mother didn't think much of the idea either. So I followed it in the news. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">When James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman disappeared on the night of June 21, we all pretty much knew what had happened. By a week later, 50 years ago tonight, there was no doubt. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This poem by John Beecher, a white southerner, a communist and a people's poet, locates Summer, 1964 in the long battle for freedom. For me the closing stanza conjures up 1964 as little else can, save only the civil rights anthems we sang, North and South, as the freedom struggle advanced.]</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>A COMMEMORATIVE ODE</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>For the 60<sup>th</sup> Anniversary of the Beecher Memorial </i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>United Church of Christ in New Orleans, Louisiana, </i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>October 25, 1964</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Old church with the same name as my own</div><div class="MsoNormal">you and I were born in the same year</div><div class="MsoNormal">It has taken two generations to bring us together</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now here we are in New Orleans</div><div class="MsoNormal">meeting for the first time</div><div class="MsoNormal">I hope I can say the right thing</div><div class="MsoNormal">what the man you are named for</div><div class="MsoNormal">might have said on one of his better days</div><div class="MsoNormal">He was my great-great-uncle</div><div class="MsoNormal">but come to think of it</div><div class="MsoNormal">he was instrumental in my founding too</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rolled in a tube at home I have a certificate</div><div class="MsoNormal">signed by Henry Ward Beecher</div><div class="MsoNormal">after he had united my grandfather and grandmother</div><div class="MsoNormal">in the holy bonds of matrimony </div><div class="MsoNormal">at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn</div><div class="MsoNormal">The year was 1858</div><div class="MsoNormal">and James Buchanan was President</div><div class="MsoNormal">The South was riding high</div><div class="MsoNormal">making the North catch and send back its escaped Negroes</div><div class="MsoNormal">and it looked to most people</div><div class="MsoNormal">as if slavery was going to last forever</div><div class="MsoNormal">but not to Henry Ward Beecher</div><div class="MsoNormal">which I suppose is why you named your church for him</div><div class="MsoNormal">He certainly helped change all that</div><div class="MsoNormal">together with his brother Edward and his sister</div><div class="MsoNormal">whose name was Harriet</div><div class="MsoNormal">and Mr. Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant</div><div class="MsoNormal">and a large number of young men</div><div class="MsoNormal">who wound up under the long rows of crosses</div><div class="MsoNormal">at Gettysburg Chickamauga Cold Harbor and such places</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Nineteen hundred and four was a better year</div><div class="MsoNormal">than 1858</div><div class="MsoNormal">and the building of this church was a sign of it</div><div class="MsoNormal">It was no longer a crime to meet and worship by yourselves</div><div class="MsoNormal">with your own preacher</div><div class="MsoNormal">your own beautiful songs</div><div class="MsoNormal">with no grim-lipped regulators to stand guard over you</div><div class="MsoNormal">nobody breaking up your services with a bull-whip</div><div class="MsoNormal">Yes this was some better</div><div class="MsoNormal">Booker T. Washington was in his hey-day</div><div class="MsoNormal">the apostle of segregation</div><div class="MsoNormal">"We can be in all things social as separate as the fingers"</div><div class="MsoNormal">he said and Mr. Henry Grady the Atlanta editor </div><div class="MsoNormal">applauded him to the echo</div><div class="MsoNormal">as did all the other good white folks around</div><div class="MsoNormal">and they said</div><div class="MsoNormal">"This boy Booker has a head on his shoulders</div><div class="MsoNormal">even if it is a nappy one."</div><div class="MsoNormal">Dr. Washington was 48 years old at the time</div><div class="MsoNormal">but you know how southern whites talk</div><div class="MsoNormal">a man is a boy all his life if he's black</div><div class="MsoNormal">Dr. Washington was a pragmatist </div><div class="MsoNormal">And settled for what he could get</div><div class="MsoNormal">When they announced that dinner was served in the dining car</div><div class="MsoNormal">he ate his cindery biscuits out of a paper bag</div><div class="MsoNormal">and when George the porter made up berths in the Pullman</div><div class="MsoNormal">he sat up all night in the Jim Crow coach</div><div class="MsoNormal">Because of his eminently practical attitude</div><div class="MsoNormal">Dr. Washington was successful in shaking down</div><div class="MsoNormal">The big white philanthropists</div><div class="MsoNormal">Like C.P. Huntington the railroad shark</div><div class="MsoNormal">or was it octopus</div><div class="MsoNormal">and Negro education was on its way.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Old church</div><div class="MsoNormal">since 1904</div><div class="MsoNormal">you and I have seen some changes</div><div class="MsoNormal">slow at first</div><div class="MsoNormal">now picking up speed</div><div class="MsoNormal">I have just come from Mississippi </div><div class="MsoNormal">where I saw churches like this one </div><div class="MsoNormal">burned to the ground </div><div class="MsoNormal">or smashed flat with bombs</div><div class="MsoNormal">almost like Germany when I was there in 1945</div><div class="MsoNormal">only these Negroes were not beaten people</div><div class="MsoNormal">They sang in the ashes and wreckage</div><div class="MsoNormal">such songs as <i>We Shall Overcome</i></div><div class="MsoNormal">and <i>Let My Little Light Shine</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>O Freedom!</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> they sang<br /></span><i>Before I'll be a slave<br />I'll be buried in my grave</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>And go home to my Lord and be free</i></div><div class="MsoNormal">They sang <i>I'm going to sit at the welcome table</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>I'm going to live in the Governor's mansion</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>one of these days</i></div><div class="MsoNormal">I heard three mothers speak</div><div class="MsoNormal">who had made the President listen</div><div class="MsoNormal">and "almost cry, or he made like he was about to cry"</div><div class="MsoNormal">when they told him how their homes had been dynamited</div><div class="MsoNormal">"It's not hard to be brave" </div><div class="MsoNormal">one of these mothers said<br />"but it's awful hard to be scared"</div><div class="MsoNormal">I expect see her statue on a column in the square</div><div class="MsoNormal">in place of the Confederate soldier's </div><div class="MsoNormal">one of these days</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Remember </div><div class="MsoNormal">Slavery looked pretty permanent in 1858</div><div class="MsoNormal">when it had just five years to go</div><div class="MsoNormal">and now in 1964</div><div class="MsoNormal">the White Citizens' Councils and the Ku Klux Klan</div><div class="MsoNormal">think they can keep their kind of half-slave South forever</div><div class="MsoNormal">Their South isn't on the way out</div><div class="MsoNormal">It's already dead and gone</div><div class="MsoNormal">only they don't know it</div><div class="MsoNormal">They buried it themselves</div><div class="MsoNormal">in that earthwork dam near Philadelphia Mississippi</div><div class="MsoNormal">when they thought they were getting rid of the bodies</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-57127386887493716592014-06-22T19:50:00.000-04:002014-06-22T20:20:47.144-04:00SDS "Red Guards" Sum Up the Battle of People's Park, 1969<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman"; panose-1:0 2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Arial; panose-1:0 2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} h3 {mso-style-next:Normal; margin-top:12.0pt; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:3.0pt; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; page-break-after:avoid; mso-outline-level:3; font-size:13.0pt; font-family:Arial;} h4 {mso-style-next:Normal; margin-top:12.0pt; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:3.0pt; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; page-break-after:avoid; mso-outline-level:4; font-size:14.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-parent:""; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} span.null {mso-style-name:null;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I am posting today a document from 1969, a summation of the Battle of People's Park in Berkeley, CA. It is one very cool document, for several reasons:</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1. It reclaims another bit of the history of people's struggle from the Great American Memory Hole. Those who came up in the '60s will find their memories jogged, while younger folk will get a glimpse of a different period in our long battle to smash exploitation and oppression.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">People's Park was created by radical students and community residents in Berkeley, CA on a trashed and abandoned lot on the University of California campus there. It embodied many of the strains of what we think of as The Sixties—a radical critique of the corporate multiversity and of capitalist property relations, a turn to "natural" rather than built environments, do-it-yourself approach to social change, direct action tactics. After a period of community meetings and articles in the local underground press, construction began on April 20, 1969. Residents donated tools, sod, plants, time and sweat. </span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">California governor Ronald Reagan had run pledging to crack down on UC Berkeley students, whom he had called "communist sympathizers, protesters, and sex deviants." Here was his chance. Overriding ongoing local negotiations involving activists, the U and the city, he sent cops in on May 15 to trash the park and erect an 8' chain link fence around the site.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A campus rally produced a march of thousands to liberate the park. Cops fought them off while Reagan's chief of staff Ed Meese ordered in hundreds of reinforcements from all over the Bay Area. The pigs used shotguns and rifles, killing student James Rector, who was watching from a roof and wounding over 100. Meese nrought in the National Guard, days of freeform street protest followed, and the park was eventually reclaimed.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i_J6bFmXL_w/U6dyy2UQRFI/AAAAAAAAA6w/3yXFhyaHPLI/s1600/peoplesparkmuseum-copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i_J6bFmXL_w/U6dyy2UQRFI/AAAAAAAAA6w/3yXFhyaHPLI/s1600/peoplesparkmuseum-copy.jpg" height="245" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2. The document is an impressive early attempt at summation in Marxist (and Maoist, to be more exact) terms of a major struggle by Red participants. In this case folks who had helped build the Park, and took part in the action summed it up, using the method of analyzing strengths and weaknesses, and looking at the class forces and political lines involved in the way the battle played out.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">3. It is a glimpse at the birth pangs of new communist movement of the '70s. This can be seen most clearly in the polemics are delivered against other tendencies. Least effective (in retrospect) is the section targeting a Jim Mellon article on People's Park in <i>New Left Notes</i> (the newspaper of Students for a Democratic Society). Mellon was an early theorist for the trend that became the Weather Underground, while this paper is clearly aligned with the emerging RYM II trend. The authors of the article critique </span></span><br /><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">his class analysis of the US, then claim (rather than demonstrate) that this covers for right errors made by others in the course of the struggle, especially failure to identify the main contradiction involved and take the struggle to the industrial working class. </span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The section aimed at the Progressive Labor Party (then dominant in Berkeley SDS) is much more on target, though the formula "left in form, right in essence," borrowed from the Chinese Communist Party, may muddy things a bit. PLP is criticized with concrete examples of how their lefty rhetoric and workerism undercut the struggle, but at the same time given credit for correct stands they took in the struggle.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">[The original article is posted on the <a href="http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/" target="_blank">Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line</a>, affiliated with the sprawling and magnificent <a href="http://www.marxists.org/" target="_blank">Marxist Internet Archives</a>.]</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><h3><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Battle of People’s Park</span></span></span></h3><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><h4><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Red Guard Caucus, Berkeley SDS</span></span></h4><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To criticize the people’s shortcomings is necessary, ....but in doing so we must truly take the stand of the people and speak out of whole-hearted eagerness to protect and educate them. To treat comrades like enemies is to go over to the stand of the enemy. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Mao Tse-Tung</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div></blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In 1967 the Regents of the University of California–representing the largest monopoly capitalists in the state-acquired land in the south campus area as part of the University expansion program. UC evicted the residents of the low-cost housing that existed on the acquired land, tore down the buildings, and left a large unsightly mudhole. For over a year and a half the mudhole remained. Early in 1969 residents of the south campus area–students/ street people, and working members of the community–took over a small part of that land and built a park for all in the city of Berkeley to enjoy. Peopled Park was a user-planned and developed area. Mothers in the community took their children to play on the swings, street people lolled on the grass, and students cut classes to maintain and improve the land. From the beginning the park–like all things in the real world–was full of contradictions. At one point the contradiction between the young and the old resulted in a night-long argument. The young in this case were the 3-6 year old children and the old were their under thirty parents. The argument revolved around the “pool”–a small hole filled with very muddy water. The adults thought the hole dangerous, the kids that it was great. After hours of heated debate the young kids won, celebrated by taking off all their clothes and jumping into the pool; proving Mao was right when he said, “The young people are the most active and vital force in society. They are the most eager to learn and the least conservative in their thinking,”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Soon, however, more serious and antagonistic contradictions faced the park. The university announced that it intended to build a soccer field on the lot, that the property belonged exclusively to UC, and that the park would have to go. Now soccer is not the most popular sport in Berkeley, and a lot of hard work had gone into that park, so the park’s supporters made it clear they would defend the community’s recreation area. At this point a cyclone chain fence was thrown up around the property, and 300 local pigs–armed with shotguns and Ml’s–stood provocatively on the streets surrounding the park. That day, at a noon rally attended by 3-5 thousand people, it was decided to march on the park and tear the fence down.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When the march got within 2 blocks of the park it was met by a line of heavily armed pigs, Someone turned on a fire hydrant and used it to spray the assembled pigs. They responded by teargassing and attacking the crowd. The people defended themselves and in the ensuing battle one white youth–James Rector-was shot and killed by the pigs, and dozens more were injured by buckshot. The next day 2500 national guardsmen occupied the city, the governor had re-instituted a “state of extreme emergency”, and the people were aroused in righteous anger.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The following two weeks witnessed repeated shootings and gassings–including an aerial attack by an army helicopter. Masses of people took to the streets in downtown Berkeley in order to reach shoppers and small businessmen with the truth about People’s Park. Within two weeks over 900 people had boon arrested and carted off to jail. While in jail many wore beaten–not just shoved around, or casually hit now and then, but literally beaten. On Memorial Day 25 to 30 thousand people marched peacefully in Berkeley in support of People’s Park and to protest the police and National Guard occupation of the city. Although the struggle was intense throughout the 2 week period, it was clearly marked by a progressive decline in militancy. Today the contested property is the only fenced in, electronically wired, burglarproof, and constantly publicly patrolled mudhole in America. The people still do not have their park, Why? </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">From its inception People’s Park was plagued by the same contradictions that have characterized Berkeley struggles since the Free Speech Movement of 1964–contradictions between serving the people or serving the narrowly defined (and often false) privileges of students and street people. The progressive aspects of the park, aspects which served the interests of all the working people in Berkeley, manifested themselves in four ways:</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1. The open seizure of private property. Land “owned” by the UC and worth over $1 and a half million was ripped off by the people of Berkeley to meet the needs of the local community rather than the interests of the monopoly capitalists who run UC. In reality, of course, this seizure was the recognition of the social character of that land. The contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation permits the U.S. rulers to finance their acquisitions with the surplus value stolen from the workers of this and colonized countries. Thus the land acquired by UC belonged not to the Regents of the University but to the working people of this country. By seizing this land and building People’s Park this relationship was forced into the open. Objectively the Park’s originators were following Marx’s dictum that the job of revolutionaries in every struggle is “to bring the property question to the fore.”</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2. Serving the People. “We should pay close attention to the well-being of the masses, from the problems of land and labour to those of fuel, rice, cooking oil and salt...All such problems concerning the well-being of the masses should be placed on our agenda...” People’s Park was not seen as an isolated act. It was undertaken in conjunction with a beginning free-medical care clinic to meet the needs of the south campus community. Those actions drew their inspiration from the BPP Breakfast for Children program. In both cases these actions politically exposed the corruption and lack of response to people’s basic needs that are inherent to capitalism. Neither decent food, nor medical care, nor non-alienated recreation can be provided to all under capitalism. Only by overthrowing this exploitative system, and building a socialist society, can the needs of the people be met. In the meantime only a strong movement for total social change can serve the people– for example, during the People’s Park struggle people began to discuss plans for seizing unused buildings on land owned by the state and turning them into free day care centers for the children of working mothers of Berkeley.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">3. Non-alienated labor. Many of the people who helped build People’s Park had never done any real physical labor before. Previous to the park their attitude toward work, and towards workers,, had been very negative. Building the park, however, began to convince them that what was wrong with work was not the sweat involved but its capitalist connotation. Selling their labor power, having the value they created stolen from them, and then seeing their products used to maintain a system that exploits and oppresses most of the world’s people, this was what students and street people rebelled against when they said, “work’s a drag, lets turn on and enjoy our freedom from it.” As a corollary to this realization People’s Park had the progressive effect of convincing many individuals that those who create value through their labor power deserve our respect and not our contempt.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">4. The fourth significant aspect of the park was that it was conceived of as a direct response to the University’s expansion program. For years UC has attempted to destroy the hip-radical community centered in the south campus area. To this end UC expansion has been planned to wipe out this community and replace it with university projects limited strictly to students. From the park’s inception, it was presented as a project integrally linked to the maintenance of the south campus community and one which could be defended by all members of that community.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Concommitant with these progressive features, the Park was plagued with tendencies of a more negative nature. Prime among those was the tendency to view the park as an isolated haven where one could escape the hassles of an oppressive system. Many of the park’s originators and subsequent supporters believed that they could substantially change their lives–via parks–without completely changing the governmental and economic system under which this country suffers. Such a view reflects the class make-up of the student-street people movement. UC–even more so than most American universities–is composed overwhelmingly of kids whose class backgrounds are petit-bourgeois, professional or bourgeois. Though sincere in their desire for fundamental change in this country <u>their perspective for achieving this change reflects their class background</u>. The same is true of the street people. Those individuals generally comprise a relatively unstable, barely surviving strata of the petit-bourgeoisie: small craftsmen (jewelry makers, dress-makers, printers, carpenters), creative artists (designers, photographers, musicians, painters, writers) etc. The younger brothers and sisters, who are also mostly from petit-bourgeois or professional backgrounds, are aspiring to this same class and rapidly learning those same skills so they won’t be forced to work for the big capitalists or the government. Many of them are reduced, in the meanwhile, to begging, “borrowing” from their parents, dealing, stealing, etc., in order to live. Among white youth the street people face the greatest amount of police harassment--harassment for getting loaded, for not conforming to the forms and morality of bourgeois society, and for their radical political views.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The desires of those students and street people for socialism are expressed, because of their class background, in two main forms: utopianism and reformism. The most popular current expression of utopianism is the idea that sex, drugs, and pacifism can make you free. Those people want the “inner peace” which communism relates to, but they regard this as an individual, personal matter. This view disregards the real conditions and struggles of the people and is completely subjective. Marx described this sentiment in The 18th Brumaire of Lois Bonaparte: “One must not form the narrow minded notion that the petit-bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes, that the special conditions of its emancipation (e.g. sex, drugs, etc.) are the general conditions within the frame of which alone modern society can be saved and class struggle avoided.” This negative tendency manifested itself ideologically during the park struggle in the form of seeing “politicos” as being just as destructive, violent, and confrontation-minded as the pigs.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Reformism can be briefly summed up as the idea that accumulated reforms granted by the bourgeoisie in response to mass pressure can fundamentally alter the social system. Reformism is the opposite of communism or the road of proletarian revolution. Reformism is one of the dominating ideas on the campus, and. plays an extremely important role for the bourgeoisie in separating the revolutionaries from the non-revolutionaries. The reformists often speak in Marxist rhetoric and call themselves socialists and communists. In reality, however, such individuals hold that the people are not the motive force in making history; rather, the people only provide the conditions (pressure) under which the bourgeoisie makes history. Politically this tendency manifested itself in the form of seeing the park as an island of ocialism. The strategy produced by such an analysis is to seize one institution after another until suddenly power has been pickpocketed from the ruling class. Such a strategy errs in thinking that the people can control any institution in their own interest under capitalism. People’s Park can never be an island of socialism in the capitalist wilderness, or a Debrayist foco from which to launch our rebellion. However, People’s Park can serve the immediate needs of the people of Berkeley for recreation, and the long term need for revolution. This latter goal will be served by concentrating on the progressive aspects of the park previously discussed, not by pretending that the park per se is a socialist stronghold.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Those negative tendencies remained strong throughout the struggle for two reasons: (1) the lack of working class leadership which could have overcome their petit-bourgeois-professional orientation; and (2) the failure of some of the more advanced elements of the Berkeley movement to integrate themselves with those people who are now in revolutionary motion. Initially many self-styled Marxist-Leninists dismissed the street scene–and the park–as being unworthy of serious organizing effort. Instead they too created a false polarity between the “non-struggle dropouts” and the “hard-core radicals.” Then when the incredible two week battle broke out those radicals were upset that people did not struggle “correctly”–it had to be their non-struggle attitude. In reality this non-struggle attitude cut two ways–their class tendency toward utopianism and reformism and many radicals’ refusal to honestly struggle–not just condemn–these tendencies.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Those tendencies were best combated by some members of the Radical Student Union (a left-liberal grouping on campus) and other independent radicals. While not formulating a basic political analysis of the struggle, those people recognized that the authority and control of the University wore being outrightly challenged by the south campus community’s seizure of private property owned by UC. Because of this these individuals participated in the park from its inception and thus helped break down the false antagonisms between the students and street people, straight and hip, political people and anarchistic street people. By working on the park from the beginning, and participating in its defense, political education was carried out and a more militant line came to the fore.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">n evaluating the good and bad aspects of People’s Park it seems undeniable that the park’s progressive qualities were far more substantial than its negative tendencies. Clearly the progressive features of the park reflect the unity between objective reality and subjective perception. Contrarily the negative tendencies generally reflected an incorrect subjective perception of class interest. As such, our job was not to condemn the park as objectively reactionary–as a dropout center or for creating non-struggle illusions of socialism–but rather to educate ourselves and others about what was really at stake.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">All reactionary forces on the verge of extinction invariably conduct desperate struggles. They are bound to resort to military adventure and political deception in all their forms in order to save themselves from extinction.</span></span></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Having analyzed the park <u>itself</u>really only gives us understanding of the least important aspects of the dual struggle waged <u>around</u> the People’s Park issue. The threat represented by People’s Park was certainly not substantial enough to warrant the response it received. Thousands of combat armed pigs, 2500 national guard, 900 arrests, a white youth shot and killed and hundreds of others wounded, are all indicative of the larger issue involved–premeditated repression. In fact the ruling class used and helped create the park situation in a deliberate, premeditated attempt to smash the movement in Berkeley. The repression in Berkeley must be seen in the context of the nationwide decisions made by the highest political lackeys of the monopoly capitalists–Nixon and Pigface Mitchell–to smash the vanguard elements of the struggle for progressive social change. The phony charges against the Panther 21 in NY, the Panther 8 in Connecticut, SDS leaders in Chicago and NY, the attacks on the Chicano and Latino organizations, etc., are not isolated incidents of local police harassment.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Internally to the movement there are three factors that are responsible for the escalating repressions we face. First, the rulers of America are uptight about our increasing links with the working class. So long as SDS armed itself with student power, anti-working class ideas, it was not a threat to the imperialist ruling class. However, ever since SDS assimilated the lessons of France and Italy our rulers have come to fear the potential threat of an anti-imperialist, anti-racist revolutionary youth movement. Our support for the striking oil workers at Standard Oil in California, of the wildcat at the Ford Mahwah plant in NJ, SDS’s support for the revolutionary Black Panther Party 10 point program, and our nationwide attempt to smash ROTC have all aroused the fears of those who materially benefit from exploitation and oppression.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Secondly, as a consequence of our collective experiences, the movement is overcoming its original tendencies towards pacifism. We have come to recognize that symbolic actions to demonstrate our reasonableness and sincerity will never end oppression and exploitation. The differences between the contending classes in America (as in any other country) cannot be mediated, negotiated, obscured or reformed away–they can only be resolved through a mass militant struggle which destroys the power of the bourgeoisie and replaces it with the organized power of the working class–the dictatorship of the proletariat. To this end we have begun to discuss and implement for the first time a policy aimed at armed self-defense. This too is a development which the ruling class will do anything to destroy.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The third internal development which has resulted in massive repression is the rise of genuine Marxism-Leninism within the movement. All across the country people are getting themselves together into collectives to study and apply the thought of Mao Tse-Tung to the American scene. This is in preparation for the eventual formation of a real Marxist-Leninist party in this country. It is no accident that J. Edgar Hoover could say just a few weeks ago that “never had the influence of Marxism-Leninism been so great within SDS.” More than anything else the ruling class fears the spread of Marxist-Leninist ideology throughout the working class, because they realize that, “If there is to be revolution, there must be a revolutionary party. Without a revolutionary party, without a party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory and in the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary style, it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of the people in defeating imperialism and its running dogs.”</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Repression, however, is also the result of factors external to the movement. It is a result of the sharpening of the principle contradiction in the world today– the contradiction between the imperialist U.S. ruling class and the oppressed peoples of the world. As successful wars of national liberation–such as the brilliant struggle of the Vietnamese people led by Ho Chi Minh – cut back on the imperialist profits of corporate America, the contradictions intensify all down the line. Because of this trend capitalists will be forced to squeeze more and more surplus value from the domestic labor force, which will result in sharpening class struggle in the mother country. Thus for the past several years real wages have fallen, strikes and wildcats have sharply risen, and as we could expect, the most exploited, segment of the working class–third world workers–have been in the vanguard of those struggles. Organizations such as the League of Revolutionary Black Workers have waged the most militant and class conscious struggles against monopoly capitalism in this country. Before this situation reaches the stage of open class warfare U.S. rulers will attempt to smash all the potential allies of the working class. To this end racist ideology will be increasingly fostered among all workers; workers will be led to believe that student rebels are dope-crazed, foreign-led, pampered children who are only out to destroy; and students will be indoctrinated with anti-working class ideas. After splitting black from white, young from old, worker from student, the ruling class will smash each isolated segment that fights for a better life. Such a tactic, if successful, will prevent us from our most vital task–the formation of a united front against imperialism, led by the working class.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">With this analysis of the condition and direction of monopoly capitalism it becomes clear why the park was chosen as the excuse for the massive repression that followed–because the ruling class hoped that this would be a difficult issue to link to the needs of the broad masses of people in this country. To this end they and their political and media lackeys did two things: (1) pictured the park as a hang-out for dope-crazed street people and students anxious to do their own thing; rather than as the community developed recreation area that it was; and (2) tried to pretend that the whole People’s Park struggle was simply an inter-university matter to be decided by the UC administration and possibly a few “responsible” student leaders. However, all the machinations and pigs at the disposal of these rulers could not have prevented us from waging a successful struggle around the People’s Park issue if we had overcome our own internal errors. Unfortunately, the park struggle was plagued by both right and “left” errors which hindered our local battle and our growing understanding of how to beat the American capitalist colossus.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The basis of the right errors that hindered the People’s Park struggle is to be found in a bourgeois ideology that has masked itself in Marxist rhetoric. This ideology has arisen because many in the movement have committed: (1) the empiricist error of mistaking the vanguard elements of the struggle as those who are now moving the most militantly; or (2) the pragmatist error of putting our greatest organizing efforts into current areas of high discontent (draft-ago youth, community colleges, etc.) and postponing hard-core organizing of the industrial proletariat until “the conditions of decaying capitalism make them more receptive to Marxism-Leninism.”</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Justification for those honest errors has boon provided by the phony “Marxist” <a href="http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1/debate-sds/mellen-more.htm">analysis</a>offered by Jim Mellon in <i>New Left Notes</i> of May 13. This analysis, which reappears in the “’Weatherman” proposal, is both incorrect in theory and dangerous in practice. Let’s run down some of his errors in theory and then show the application of this theory to the People’s Park struggle.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Mellon’s article argues that a class analysis of the U.S. would show a small but powerful class of monopoly capitalists, a “very small and declining petit-bourgeoisie”, and a very large working class. This analysis is derived by applying the Marxist criteria: ownership of the means of production. What Mellon says is that you either own the motherfucker or you work for it. If you own it, you’re a member of the bourgeoisie, if you work you’re working class. Now the problem becomes what strata of this large working class will play the vanguard role. Mellon isn’t sure which segment of the working class will lead–he suggests black workers have the most class consciousness today–but he is pretty clear who won’t be the vanguard–the industrial proletariat (30% black-brown):</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To continue irrationally to insist on the vanguard role of factory workers in our changed circumstances is mere assertion of orthodoxy, and not an argument... Dogmatic applications of Marxism to the US make (two) important errors: .. .They attribute to the struggle of industrial labor a centrality to the class struggle... We need a theory which will help us understand which segments of the working class can develop class consciousness and lead the rest. It is not enough merely to say that some segments of the working class are necessary to the construction of socialism–as surely the industrial workers are–but some reason must be offered as to why that segment is likely to break out of the mystification and particularism in which it is now bogged down.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div></blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If he wants a theory which will help him understand, “which segment of the working class will lead the rest” he should consider Marxism-Leninism. M-L theory would have shown him that his initial error was in using a non-Marxist criteria of class. In order to fully understand classes and subclasses one must apply the four criteria supplied by Lenin: (1) relationship to the means of production; (2) the creation of surplus value; (3) magnitude of the proportion of the social surplus maintained; and (4) mode of acquisition. Mellon correctly applies the first criteria, but he ignores #2-4. By just using the criteria of the relationship to the moans of production Mellon achieves unity with the Revisionist ruling clique in the Soviet Union. CPSU theorists–using Mellon’s class criterion–maintain that since there is social ownership of the means of production in the Soviet Union there can be no bourgeoisie, since by “Marxist” definition the bourgeoisie owns the moans of production. Dialectically if there’s no bourgeoisie then there can be no proletariat, since by definition they sell their labor power to the bourgeoisie. Therefore, in the Soviet Union, there are no classes, consequently class conflict under Soviet socialism is impossible. This scab theory of the “state of the whole people” has long been exposed by the CPC as an attempt to obscure the reality of capitalist restoration by the revisionist ruling clique in the Soviet Union.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If we just consider Lenin’s second criteria we can begin to understand the flaws in Mellon’s analysis. The mainspring of monopoly capitalism is the productive labor performed by the proletariat. Productive labor transforms material objects, adds value, and creates a commodity for exchange. Those whose labor does not create value are paid wages or salaries from the social surplus of value stolen from the proletariat. In our epoch national liberation struggles are inevitably destroying the monopoly capitalists’ ability to export capital and steal the surplus value created by the labor of colonized people. As a result this “lost” surplus value must be stolen increasingly from the domestic proletariat, otherwise the American capitalists could not survive the anarchic competition with their international rivals. Now the capitalists can’t steal value from any segment of Mellon’s vast working class except the industrial proletariat. The result will be that the industrial worker will face (1) an incredible speed-up along the production line as the capitalists try to greatly increase the intensity of labor; (2) a lengthening period of work; (3) a rapid decline in real wages; and (4) lay-offs on an unprecedented scale. As this dynamic develops and intensifies no amount of “mystificatiom or particularism” is going to obscure reality from those whom reality screws over. At this point the industrial proletariat–the only segment of any class that can successfully lead a revolutionary struggle which will establish socialism–will fulfill its historical mission.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Hopefully this theoretical criticism will help us to understand the right error made during the People’s Park struggle. Lack of clarity on which strata of society will lead the revolution, and on where to focus our organizing efforts, resulted in the following mistakes: (I) the principal issue of the struggle–the nationwide crackdown on the movement because of its threatening links with industrial workers–was obscured. Logically enough people who could not accept that the industrial proletariat will be the vanguard force of the revolution, could not accept the idea that the repression in Berkeley was part of a deliberate and premeditated national attempt to destroy a movement with growing links to that class. As a consequence a whole strategy developed out of the notion that this massive repression was simply a consequence of the threat posed by People’s Park itself. The practical course of action proposed by such a strategy was to “Build 2, 3, many parks”. Much energy was thus directed into channels–such as building new parks–which neither consolidated nor expanded our base of support. Although the decision to build other parks was partly tactical–reflecting the need for mobility, the desire for originality, and the need to avoid the same battleplan everyday–it ultimately proceeded from a lack of strategic clarity about where was the optimal point to direct our efforts. MOST IMPORTANTLY BY NOT UNDERSTANDING THAT THE KEY ISSUE WAS REPRESSION WE PERMITTED THE RULING CLASS TO ACHIEVE ITS GOAL OF ISOLATING US FROM THE WORKING CLASS. WE MISSED A FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY TO POINT OUT TO WORKERS THAT THE ESSENCE OF OUR STRUGGE WAS: 1. A PROXY ATTACK BY THE MONOPOLY CAPITALISTS ON THE WORKERS THEMSELVES, IN THE FORM OF AN ATTACK ON THEIR REAL ALLIES; AND 2. A DIRECT ATTACK ON A YOUTH MOVEMENT THAT IS ITSELF AMTI-IMPSRIAIIST. ANTI-RACIST. (II) No significant educational or agitational work was done in working class communities. Instead, because the terror tactics of the pigs angered students and faculty throughout, the California educational system, we found ourselves with a mass base of support. However, this base was white, student, and petit-bourgeois or professional in background, with a very strong liberal wing. In the face of the threats and the practice of the police fear began to play a very crucial role. The liberals could assuage this justifiable fear by appealing to the non-struggle tendencies that are a part of the class nature of its base of support. We, on the other hand, faced the more difficult task of overcoming that fear, overcoming class tendencies toward non struggle (the two are different), and directing our fight in a militant manner. The inherent (class) shortcomings of the People’s Park base, in the absence of working class leadership; and our absence of sufficient organization so that we could really protect people, resulted in a trend toward pacifism. Our hitherto militant street tactics wilted into the time-honored tradition of building toward a massive, peaceful protest march, replete with flowers and rock music. (III) The lack of serious effort to reach workers about our struggle was also a result of our own emphasis on the idea of a revolutionary youth street army. The basis of this error was the analysis that our job at this stage of the struggle was to focus all our energies on those people who were already in motion. Such a strategy might have been correct in the short run if the essence of the struggle had really been People’s Park itself. However, since the essence of the struggle was an attempt to smash the future allies of the industrial workers, great attention should have been placed on reaching them about the nature of the struggle in Berkeley.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Although we didn’t do educational work in the working class communities the ruling class media sure as hell did. Day after day our struggle was presented as a battle between dissident students and street people united to do our own thing and the local police and national guard protecting law and order.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Although those right errors were certainly serious only rarely did the result from a hardened, unchangeable ideology. The majority of people won to this line could, with a little patient and non-rhetorical educational effort, be won to a more pro-working class, Marxist-Leninist perspective. This is clearly our task for the future.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Before analyzing those errors that were left in form but right in essence, a brief description of Berkeley SDS is necessary. PL-WSA politics completely dominate the Berkeley chapter. There are two reasons for this. First, there has been a lot of hard work done toward building a base for WSA politics. Second, many individual who were tired of the factional disputes left SDS and began to work with the left-liberal Radical Student Union. Those non-WSA people who remained in SDS spent most of their time engaging in meaningless arguments with PL-WSA rather than building a base to defeat the bad politics that dominated the chapter.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In order to understand the left in form but right in essence errors of the People’s Park struggle it is necessary to recognize the role played by the neo-Trotskyist PLP. Today the leadership of the PLP has completely embraced “left” opportunism, both theoretically and practically. The chief characteristic of “left” opportunism (and why “left” is used in quotes) is the use of revolutionary phraseology and rhetoric in order to oppose in practice the struggles of the people. In other words, because a “left” line undermines the struggle, an objective unity is created with right revisionists who seek to water down the struggle and strip it of its revolutionary soul. In so doing, “left” opportunists serve the imperialists objectively, accomplishing for them within the ranks of the people what open supporters of imperialism are unable to accomplish. Hence, while “left” in form they are right in essence.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Because of their “left” opportunism PLP-WSA could not apply the mass line to the People’s Park struggle. This manifested itself in their attitude toward the park. First, they thought the park was bad because it took away a parking lot from the workers, then they argued the park itself was intrinsically a reactionary thing because it was not in a working class community. Finally, their position was that the park itself might be either good or bad but fighting for the park was reactionary. PL did not understand that:</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The masses have boundless creative power. They can organize themselves and concentrate in places and branches of work where they can give full play to their energy; they can concentrate on production in breadth and depth and create more and more welfare undertakings for themselves.</span></span></div></blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Thus by taking a “left” line that we should spend our time on smashing racism or seizing state power PL-WSA achieved objective unity with the most right-wing elements who also tried to prevent a sharp struggle from being waged around the PP issue. </span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">PL-WSA’s “left” line also unified itself with the political and media lackeys of the ruling class who tried to portray the park as a place for students and druggies to do their own thing. In one of the most reactionary mistakes of the whole struggle PL-WSA–who correctly saw the need of approaching working class communities–handed out a leaflet with a straight ruling class line: “When students see that they must fight for all the people instead of for their ’own thing’ <u>like the Park</u>–they will be a great threat.” This action must be seen in the context of the desperate attempt of the ruling class, mentioned earlier, to split various groups in this country by creating a false image of each–students and hippies do their own thing, workers are racist, bought off jerks, blacks are threats to job security, etc.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">PL-WSA however, also did some good things during the fight. They <u>and others</u> correctly saw that repression was the key to the whole struggle and that the national movement was facing intense repression because of its growing links to the working class. However, even this correct analysis was misapplied by the “left” opportunists led by PLP. Because they understood the issue of repression, PL-WSA correctly leafleted working class communities about the fact that the US ruling class was trying to prevent the student movement from joining up with workers1 struggles. However, by portraying PP as a do your own thing hangout, rather than bringing the property question to the fore, PL succeeded in uniting with the ruling class to prevent working communities from joining the movement in this struggle.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">PL-WSA also correctly argued that we must focus attention on the local representatives of state power–UC and the City Council–and not spend all our time in the streets of downtown Berkeley. However, once again their “left” opportunism showed itself. The PL-WSA “left” line was that we should <u>never</u> be in the streets of downtown Berkeley because actions like those would hinder workers from doing their shopping. In fact, of course, while in the streets there we did our only serious rapping to the working class. Rather than hinder their shopping we reached working people with our message and determination to keep the south campus community-developed recreation area. Instead PL-WSA argued from a “left” position that we should stay on campus (focus on representatives of state power) and away from downtown Berkeley (because being there was anti-working class). The objective result of this “left” line was to achieve the ruling class goal of isolating the struggle to the student area so that it could be portrayed simply as an intra-University matter and not as an issue (private property, alienated labor, etc.) that had implications for the entire Berkeley community.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Two final incidents should sufficiently expose the “left” opportunism of PLP. First, by focusing just on the issue of repression, and ignoring PP itself, PL-WSA-dominated SDS came up with bad demands. These demands were: end the curfew, withdraw, all troops, stop police terror, and amnesty. Interestingly enough, almost the entire city council of Berkeley came out with the very same line (with the exception of the amnesty Issue). Everyone from the Mayor of Berkeley to PLP pushed those three demands: end curfew, withdraw troops, stop police terror.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The difference was that only the mayor of Berkeley, PL-WSA-dominated SDS, and other reactionary elements made only those demands. Progressive elements also fought around the less co-optable demand of “either the people get the community-developed PP or the City of Berkeley will be shut down.” Lastly, PL at San Francisco State took an interesting position on the Memorial Day march, which turned out to be peaceful. Because of their “left” militance PL told people at S.F. State not to go to the march. That is, they did not simply take the non-revolutionary position of ignoring the march, they took the actively counter-revolutionary position of saying “stay away from the march, it will just be a liberal peaceful thing.”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Real Marxist-Leninists, who were justifiably disappointed with the tone (though not the turnout) of the 25-30 thousand people, took a different position. Throughout its planning stages, we tried, though in a disorganized fashion, to win people to the suggestion that the march be a mass, militant one with the goal of tearing down the fence around PP and actively fighting back against the two weeks of repression that had hit Berkeley, When this was unsuccessful we still went to the march and rapped with people about the dual character of the PP struggle and the need to fight back militantly. </span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">That is, we tried to apply Mao’s teaching:</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To link oneself with the masses, one must act in accordance with the needs and wishes of the masses. All work done for the masses must start from their needs and not from the desire of any individual, however well-intentioned. It often happens that objectively the masses need a certain change, but subjectively they are not yet conscious of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the change. In such cases, we should wait patiently, We should not make the change until, through our work, most of the masses have become conscious of the need and are willing and determined to carry it out.</span></span></div></blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Not only did PLP fail to grasp either the dual nature of the struggle or the correct tactics, what was worse was that they sought to serve themselves rather than the people. They consistently stood aloof from the struggle to arrive at mass tactics, they organized separately and in a sectarian fashion, and systematically found an opposite tactic to whatever the people had decided... Thus their neo-Trotskyism. By their actions these “left” opportunists objectively allied themselves with the struggle’s right errors; both acted to prevent us from reaching the working class, winning them to support the PP struggle, and in turn, learning from them.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Of course, those of us who share this analysis, and who either left SDS or did not work sufficiently hard inside SDS to defeat the WSA line bear heavy responsibility for the disastrous results of the SDS position on PP. Our errors of omission permitted PL-WSA to commit their sins of commission. The results of the SDS line were threefold: 1. it further tarnished the name of SDS on campus, and by extension, National SDS’ name. Thus the national vanguard element of the white revolutionary youth movement suffered a setback in the Bay Area. 2. Because PL-WSA pretend to be Maoists it gave Berkeley radicals a false picture of what the Thought of Mao Tse-Tung really is in practice. 3. Most importantly, PL-WSA actions helped build, not break down, anti-working class ideas in students. If workers are more interested in a mudhole for a parking lot than a community developed park, if workers think that PP was just privileged people doing their own thing, then they must be stupid, or reactionary, or both. This is the type of thinking that SDS’s actions helped to reinforce in students and street people. In reality, of course, workers know what alienated labor is, and who controls property in this country that’s ultimately paid for by workers. They know this and they could have sympathized and actively participated in our struggle. Right errors and “left” opportunism prevented this from occurring.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Of course, many good things developed out of the PP struggle. Prime among these were 1. The growing understanding that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” People realized that it was automatic weapons and not automatic shovels that put the fence up around the People’s Park, It was the pigs with their .357 Magnums, shotguns, 38’s, and carbines and even submachine guns, that drove the people out of our park and kept us out while the fence went up. If the pigs had not been there, we would have stopped the fence from going up; and if the pigs did not continue to occupy our park, we would have torn that fence down. People began to understand that the essence of bourgeois rule, or the rule of any class, is dictatorship. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie exists in the property and productive relations–there is no vote on the question of exploitation, who gets profits, etc.–and rests on their ability to command armed force, the main component of state power, 2. The fatal weaknesses of anarchism were seen by more and more people. People began to realize that the pigs were not acting on their own. They are the <u>armed</u> and <u>organized</u> force carrying out the <u>political</u> decisions of the rulers of this country. Unorganized, individual retaliation against them is both ineffective and dangerous to the masses of assembled people. People began to realize that we too must be disciplined and in an <u>organized mass </u>way militantly struggle for change in this country, 3. UC’s facade of liberalism was further exposed. It was the University which decided to put up the fence around PP, which called thousands of pigs and national guard onto campus to smash the student supporters of the Park. Indicative of this understanding that liberalism is just fascism in disguise was the peopled reaction to Chancellor Heyns. In other struggles on campus Heyns was able to convince people that he was caught in the middle of the issue and that he really sympathized with many of our demands. After James Rector was shot, however, thousands of people massed in front of Heyns’ house shouting, “Roger Heyns wanted for murder, Roger Heyns wanted for murder.” Heyns is still afraid to show his face on campus, and with good reason. Pacifism, as opposed to fear, was really set back in this struggle. Not only did people defend themselves against attack, but we also began to go on the offensive. A really good example of this occurred when several hundred people massed outside of Heyns’ house. Six or seven pigs began to attack some of our brothers. Immediately, spontaneously, the crowd turned on the pigs, surrounded them, and pelted them with rocks. The terrified pigs throw several tear gas canisters to disperse us, and one drew out a gun which he pointed at us. Then they caught one guy, handcuffed his hands behind his back, and began to lead him away. At this point about ten of us literally jumped on the pigs, attacked them with our hands and feet, and freed our captured brother. He ran off, hands still cuffed behind his back, and we split, satisfied that the people had won that round.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Many more individual things–some good, some bad–occurred during the two week struggle. But hopefully this report gives some general picture of what went on and why. Although our struggle was plagued by many errors–both of a right and “left” nature–we think that we have learned from those. Next time we will be stronger still.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">[signed by nine names]</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Red Guard Caucus, </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Berkeley SDS</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Labor was donated by the Young Patriots of Chicago</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-91047141887978056632014-03-28T21:31:00.000-04:002014-03-28T21:31:15.789-04:00How Hip Hop Prefigured "The New Jim Crow"<div class="_5k3v _5k3w clearfix"><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">[Welcome to the first article in a while <i><b>FotM</b></i> has posted by old friend Mark Naison, activist, </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">organizer, </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">educator, scholar, </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">novelist</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">, Bad Ass Teacher and, on occasion, MC (as The Notorious PhD). This essay draws on various of his skills to make an argument so clear that it may strike folks who never thought about it as obvious. The incisive work of Michelle Alexander in her 2010<i><b> The New Jim Crow</b></i> has been transformative in its effects, but many whose view of the world it so bluntly readjusted might not have found it so surprising had they been listening carefully to many of the hip hop cuts of two decades ago. <i>Jimmy Higgins</i>]</span><b><br /></b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Hip Hop Commentary on the Prison System: <br />An Unrecognized Antecedent to <i>The New Jim Crow</i></b></span><br /><h3><b>by Mark Naison</b></h3><br /><br />"You ain't gotta be locked up to be in prison<span><br />Look how we livin, thirty thousand niggas a day<br />Up in the bing, standard routine</span>They put us in a box just like our life on the block"<br /><br />Dead Prez “Behind Enemy Lines”<br /><br /><span>When Michelle Alexander published <b><i>The New Jim Crow</i></b> several years ago, many people were shocked to discover the devastating impact that the drug war and mass incarceration had on Black communities throughout the nation. The narrative her book contained was not one which had wide dissemination in commercial media, and was certainly never presented with the power, authority and mixture of statistical evidence and storytelling that<i><b> The New Jim Crow</b></i> displayed</span><br /><br /><span>However, there was one place where the story Michelle Alexander presented was highlighted with equal eloquence, and at times, even greater vividness and that was Hip Hop. From the late 1980’s through the beginning of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century, as the crack epidemic and the drug war it triggered led the number of incarcerated people to exceed 2 million and the number of people it indirectly affected by it to reach at least 10 times that number, a number of the most talented hip hop artists in the country, some commercially successful, some not, told heartbreaking stories in their music about what the prison system and the drug war were doing to individuals and whole communities.</span><br /><br />Hip Hop artists, on the ground in the most affected communities, coming from the generation of young people who gravitated to the drug business as the legal economy in their communities produced only low-paying service jobs, began spinning out prison narratives in great profusion, some of them filled with political commentary, some of them offering personal stories in grim detail.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="https://ytimg.googleusercontent.com/vi/msbZ3De3XsI/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/msbZ3De3XsI&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/msbZ3De3XsI&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></div><br />In the first category is <b>Brand Nubian</b>’s “Claimin’ I’m a Criminal” which sees the police apparatus developed during the drug war as something used to crush dissent in the Black community and views prison as a place filled with rebels against mass impoverishment<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I know the game so I just roll with the procedure<span><br />Illegal search and seizure, somethin that they're doin at their leisure<br />Down at the station, </span>interrogation is takin place<br />Overcrowded jails but for me they're makin space<br />Tell the devil to his face he can suck my dick<br />It's the whole Black race that they're fuckin with</blockquote>But even amidst their rage at the incarceration of a generation of Black youth, Brand Nubian offers this heartrending portrait of what jail feels like to any inmate, activist or not- when you are alone with desperate angry men, separated from your crew, your children, your wife or girlfriend, fearful for your life, afraid you are going to losing everything you had on the outside.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I was frustrated, I can't do no more push-ups<span></span><br /><span>Niggas be swole up, locked down cos of a hold-up</span><br /><span>"The devil made me do it" is what I say</span><br /><span>Got some bad news on my one phone call the other day</span><br /><span>"I love the kids and I teach em to love their father</span><br /><span>I'll get you some kicks and try to send some flicks</span><br /><span>But it's over, baby, yes it's over"</span><br /><span>Ain't much you can do when you're holdin a phone</span><br /><span>A million inmates but ya still alone</span><br /><span>You're not cryin but inside ya dyin</span><br /><span>You might cry in the night when ya safe and outta sight</span><br /><span>Damn I miss my peeps and the rides in the jeeps</span><br /><span>And my casual freedom, where's my crew when I need em?</span></blockquote>An even more detailed look at prison life, without the explicit political commentary , is presented what most think is the greatest hip hop prison narrative ever written, <b>Nas</b>’s “<a href="http://youtu.be/Qjd7EbUUds8" target="_blank">One Love</a>.’ which appeared on his landmark album “Illmatic,” which appeared when he was only 19 years old. Nas (Nasir Jones) who grew up in the Queensbridge Houses in New York creates a narrative in which prison, along with early death, has become the fate of an entire generation of Black youth living in the inner city in the late 1980’s to mid 90’s. The conversational intimacy of Nas's account, which juxtaposes portraits of prison life to those of street life, is the stuff of great literature, presenting an alternate reality which middle class Americans, Black as well as white, had little direct exposure to:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">What's up kid? I know shit is rough doing your bid<span><br />When the cops came you should've slid to my crib<br />Fuck it, Black, no time for looking back, it's done<br />Plus congratulations you know you got a son<br />I heard he looks like you, why don't your lady write you?<br />Told her she should visit, that's when she got hyper<br />Flippin, talk about he acts too rough<br />He didn't listen he be riffin' while I'm telling him stuff<br />I was like yeah, shorty don't care, she a snake too<br />Fucking with the niggas from that fake crew that hate you<br />But yo, guess who got shot in the dome-piece?<br />Jerome's niece, on her way home from Jones Beach - it's bugged<br />Plus little Rob is selling drugs on the dime<br />Hangin out with young thugs that all carry 9's</span></blockquote>Nas’s intimacy with the dangers on the inside, of rapes and beatings and deadly beefs, whether on Rikers Island or in upstate prisons (Elmira) gives the song a chilling quality. Here is a 19 year old artist who lives in a world where death and humiliation lurk around every corner: <br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">But I heard you blew a nigga with a ox for the phone piece<span><br />Wildin on the Island, but now in Elmira<br />Better chill cause them niggas will put that ass on fire<br />Last time you wrote you said they tried you in the showers<br />But maintainwhen you come home the corner's ours</span></blockquote>In the final verse, Nas acknowledges that nothing he has ever learned in school, or read, prepared him for the realities he and his friends face, and proclaims writing them down in verse as his personal mission:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Sometimes I sit back with a Buddha sack<span><br />Mind's in another world thinking how can we exist through the facts<br />Written in school text books, bibles, et cetera<br />Fuck a school lecture, the lies get me vexed-er<br />So I be ghost from my projects<br />I take my pen and pad for the weekend</span></blockquote><span>Nas was Michelle Alexander before <b><i>The New Jim Crow</i></b>, warning anyone who would listen of the tragedy befalling his generation. But it was 1994, and no one much outside of the hip hop audience listened.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="https://ytimg.googleusercontent.com/vi/xT-AhyomCYw/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/xT-AhyomCYw&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/xT-AhyomCYw&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></div>The combination of intimate details of prison life and acute consciousness of tragedy, which Nas's song highlights, appears in a great many Hip Hop prison narratives which followed “One Love” including those which were circulated only locally in various cities. <b>Rawcotics</b>, a Dominican Hip Hop group from Washington Heights, displays these features in a song widely circulated in NY called “Going All Out.” First the duo describes the virtual inevitability of incarceration among young men in their neighborhood:</div><div><blockquote class="tr_bq">Whats all my niggas is getting rich by breaking the law<br />Going through banded walls<br />Soothing the pain up with alcohol<br />Living the criminal tradition of organized crime and cooking mines<br />Playing with nickles and dimes<br />And then millions civilians is still snitching<br />Dangerous for legal living that is caused by the ammunition<br />Uncle Sam is mad win again<br />Every time we get locked up we feel somebody's throwing the coffins</blockquote><br />That done, they move on to a fear filled narrative of what awaits them in prison:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Ayo my drug infected sections got me infected what a selection direction<br />Department of corrections. Check though I left my castle unprotected<br />On a bus with these addicts stressing my necklace bullpens full of hooligans bull<br />Many vipers and mad syphers for the phone you get blown to the bone<br />. . . .<br />Me that body be in the infirmary emergency look at the shit that I got<br />Into for the American Currency Guliani got new laws got me looking at<br />Great walls bangs are being made in the mess hall</blockquote><blockquote>There is no pretense that this is anything but normal reality for young men in Washington Heights, as it was for those in the Queensbridge Houses. Did anyone outside this world notice, or care? Not much--at least in the 1990’s.</blockquote>At the end of the decade, some politically conscious hip hop artists began to directly address the indifference towards the mass incarceration of young men in inner city communities on the part of the vast majority of the American population. Some artists came together on an album called <i><b>No More Prisons</b></i> and one of the most powerful contributions was a song by <b>Chubb Rock</b>, and <b>Lil Dap</b>, <b>Ed O.G.</b> and <b>Paw Duke</b> “<a href="http://youtu.be/t27M-CY9-dk">Rich Get Rich</a>” with a chorus that presents a chilling view of life in the “hood”:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Because life ain't shit, you got to work for yours<br />Got to hustle from the bottom just to feed the poor<br />Niggas think shit is funny, got to work for yours<br />See the rich get, rich, the poor get poor</blockquote>But the most powerful lyric is Chubb Rock’s enumeration of major New York and New Jersey prisons along with matter of fact references to the things that happen to people in them, along with a cry of rage at the rich who profit from crime and somehow never end up behind bars;<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The JFK niggas died in cellblock 9<br />From the crack lackeys, hold your asshole in Coxsackie<br />Green Haven nigs in pens sweatin like pigs<br />Niggas get clockwork for five to ten blockwork<br />Then cry for balance, then toss the salads<br />Of the long wrong life, beaten knife, wound cabbage<br />Greenvale niggas at night, for bail adage <br />.....<br />The Guilianis, Armanis, who launder<br />The ducats from the Mexicans sweatin niggz from Rahway<br />How the fuck can street crack rule the NASDAQ?<br />That's like a rap nigga getting a check from ASCAP --<br />Can't happen, after Attica rule the Richter<br />The poor went raw and the rich got richer</blockquote></div><div>The song, which in some way prefigures Michelle Alexander’s entire argument, ends with a passionate shout out by Chubb Rock to people he knows behind bars:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">D-Rock, peace peace and one time peace<span><br />Freeze Love, peace peace and peace peace<br />Cocksachie, Greenvale, Greenwald<br />Attica, one more time, hold on<br />Rahway, come back cell block H<br />And everybody in Riker's, one love<br />One love..</span></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="https://ytimg.googleusercontent.com/vi/fVqr1s7QuOw/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/fVqr1s7QuOw&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/fVqr1s7QuOw&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></div><span>At around the same time, <b>Dead Prez</b> came out with a song called “Behind Enemy Lines” that may be the most powerful direct indictment of mass incarceration and its impact on the Black community ever recorded As you review the lyrics I quote, please remember that this song appeared at least ten years before the appearance of <b><i>The New Jim Crow</i></b><u>:</u></span><span><br /></span><br />The song begins with an invented dialogue between a guard and prisoners that goes as follows:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Let's go fellas, shower time's in five minutes<br /><span><sounds bars="" of="" prison="" shut="" slamming=""><br />Get those feet off the table, whaddyou think this is, home?</sounds></span><br /><br /><span>(This is bullshit - yo son let me get a cigarette)<br />(I'ma go.. back to my cell and read)</span><span><br /></span><span>That's it - five more minutes and that's it<br />Back to work fellas, back to work!</span></blockquote>The song then moves on to a narrative of someone who Dead Prez describes as a political prisoner, Fred Hampton Jr,, setting the stage for their analysis of mass incarceration as a form of political repression:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span>Yo, lil' Kadeija pops his locks, he wanna pop the lock<br />But prison ain't nuttin but a private stock<br />And she be dreamin bout his date of release, she hate the police<br />But loved by her grandma who hugs and kisses her<br />Her father's a political prisoner, Free Fred</span><span> </span><br /><span>Son of a Panther that the government shot dead<br />Back in 12/4, 1969<br />Four o'clock in the mornin, it's terrible but it's fine, cause</span><br />Fred Hampton Jr. looks just like him<br />Walks just like him, talks just like him<br /><span>And it might be frightenin the Feds and the snitches<br />To see him organize the gang brothers and sisters</span><br /><span>So he had to be framed yo, you know how the game go<br />Eighteen years, because the five-oh said so<br />They said he set a fire to a a-rab store</span><br />But he ignited the minds of the young black and poor</blockquote>Dead Prez then produces the first of two incredible choruses where they present their political analysis:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span>Behind enemy lines, my niggas is cellmates<br />Most of the youths never escape the jail fates<br />Super maximum camps will advance they gameplan<br />To keep us in the hands of the man, locked up</span></blockquote>Their next verse presents a devastating portrait of a Black youth abandoned, growing up in a devastated neighborhood, who ends up with a gun in his hand and a life behind bars, viewing his story as a metaphor for several generations of Black youth discarded, their potential squandered, their passion directed into a struggle for survival that leaves many casualties. Or, as Dead Prez puts it, “another ghetto child turned into a killer”:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Lord can't even smoke a loosey since he was twelve<br />Now he's 25 locked up with a L<br />hey call him triple K, cause he killed three niggas<br />Another ghetto child got turned into a killer<br />His pops was a Vietnam veteran on heroin<br />Used like a pawn by these white North Americans<br /><br />Momma couldn't handle the stress and went crazy<br />Grandmomma had to raise the baby<br />Just a young boy, born to a life of poverty<br />Hustlin, robbery, whatever brung<br />The paper home<br />Carried the chrome like a blind man holdin cane<br />Tattoes all over his chest, so you can know his name<br />But y'all know how the game go<br />Ds kicked in the front door, and guess who<br />They came fo'?<br />A young nigga headed for the pen,<br />Coulda been<br />Shoulda been<br />Never see the hood again </blockquote>Their final chorus presents a simple concept: Prison has become a metaphor for Black life in inner city neighborhoods throughout the nation. Never has their been a more elegant description of what sociologist <a href="http://loicwacquant.net/" target="_blank">Loiq Waquant</a> has called “ The Prison/Hood Symbiosis,” than this chorus from Dead Prez:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">You ain't gotta be locked up to be in prison<br />Look how we livin, thirty thousand niggas a day<br />Up in the bing, standard routine<br /><br />They put us in a box just like our life on the blocks<br />(behind enemy lines)<br />You ain't gotta be locked up to be in prison<br />Look how we livin, thirty thousand niggas a day<br />Up in the bing, standard routine<br />They put us in a box just like our life on the blocks<br />(behind enemy lines)</blockquote></div><div>What I hope to have shown here is that almost every important component of Michelle Alexander’s argument was presented by hip hop artists from 10 to 20 years before her book appeared. And in forms that were deeply familiar to the hip hop audience, and touched powerful emotions. That this discourse was neglected, and at times mocked, in virtually every mainstream venue of mass communication does not negate its power and importance. It only shows how easily our society renders whole sections of the population invisible.</div></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-30886187454302071592014-02-12T16:16:00.000-05:002014-02-12T22:49:43.354-05:00Comrade Valentine's Day Slogans--An Historical Compendium<br />February is the month in which we celebrate one of the great holidays of the international working class. And it is a fine thing indeed that the <b>Official Slogans for Comrade Valentine's Day 2014</b> have been released by the <b>Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad</b>.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TipwuJvFTN8/TViBjmriQtI/AAAAAAAAAqs/jFmA9Qa3vg4/s1600/valentines%252Blogo-1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TipwuJvFTN8/TViBjmriQtI/AAAAAAAAAqs/jFmA9Qa3vg4/s400/valentines%252Blogo-1.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573346987549541074" style="float: left; height: 140px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 200px;" /></a>As it has done for over a decade, <b>Freedom Road</b> has commendably undertaken to give scientific guidance to comrades celebrating this great day, taking into account the exact conjuncture of the class struggle at the present time. Because our movement is rooted firmly in the method and world outlook of dialectical and historical materialism, <i><b>Fire on the Mountain</b></i> has compiled in this post links to as much of the recent history of CVD as is available at present. (Inexplicably, the generally valuable Marxist Internet Archives and <span class="st">Encyclopedia of anti-Revisionism On-Line do not contain this crucial archival material.) </span><br /><br /><span class="st">We are aware of the dangers that revisionists and "left" sectarians alike may rummage around in this compendium, seeking to nit-pick or posit, a-historically, contradictions between one year and another. but <i><b>FotM</b></i> has confidence in the experience of veteran comrades and the perspicacity of the rising generation of class warriors alike. May they draw inspiration from the past and carry the observation of Comrade Valentine's Day into the bright future!</span><br /><br />First, <a href="http://freedomroad.org/2014/02/official-slogans-for-comrade-valentines-day-2014/" target="_blank">this year's slogans</a>, from the <b>FRSO/OSCL</b> website:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>Toilers! Tillers! All who yearn and fight for a better world!</b><br /><b><br /></b><b><span data-measureme="1"><span class="">Let us surge forward together, wave on wave, illumined by the bright red rays of Comrade Valentine's revolutionary romanticism. </span></span></b><br /><br /><b><span data-measureme="1"><span class="">Decisively demolish the saccharine commodity fetishism with which the bourgeoisie attempts to smother the proletarian character of Comrade Valentine's Day. </span></span></b><br /><br /><b><span data-measureme="1"><span class=""> Joyously celebrate the deepening rejection of heteropatriarchal homophobia by the masses in their millions, a victory for Comrade Valentine's Communist line!</span></span></b></blockquote><div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian</div><div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian</div><div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian</div>A new graphic illustrates the slogans. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-N0Fi4hMHz2U/Uvvjkpxy8XI/AAAAAAAAA6c/POeFw2c1XA0/s1600/Cde-Valentine-MMs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-N0Fi4hMHz2U/Uvvjkpxy8XI/AAAAAAAAA6c/POeFw2c1XA0/s1600/Cde-Valentine-MMs.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div><br />The <a href="http://freedomroad.org/2013/02/official-slogans-for-comrade-valentines-day-2013/" target="_blank">Official Slogans for Comrade Valentine's Day <b>2013</b></a> can be found on the FRSO/OSCL website.<br />Translations were supplied in Spanish, Filipino, Mandarin, Irish, Malayalam, Bosnian/ Croatian/Serbian, Swedish, German and Norwegian. A new graphic appeared as well. Research indicates it was created by a professional artist, Magaly Ohika of Puerto Rico.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3tQB5EVmv3M/Uvut-yIe1cI/AAAAAAAAA58/caaWEhzg80Y/s1600/FRSO-CVD-2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3tQB5EVmv3M/Uvut-yIe1cI/AAAAAAAAA58/caaWEhzg80Y/s1600/FRSO-CVD-2013.jpg" height="320" width="238" /></a></div><br /><div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian</div><div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian</div><br /><div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;"><b>Toilers! Tillers! All who yearn and fight for a better world!</b><br /><b>Let us surge forward together, wave on wave, illumined by the bright red rays of Comrade Valentine’s revolutionary romanticism.</b><br /><b>Decisively demolish the saccharine commodity fetishism with which the bourgeoisie attempts to smother the proletarian character of Comrade Valentine’s Day!!</b><br /><b>Joyously celebrate the deepening rejection of heteropatriarchal homophobia by the masses in their millions, a victory for Comrade Valentine’s Communist line!!!</b><br />- See more at: http://freedomroad.org/2014/02/official-slogans-for-comrade-valentines-day-2014/#sthash.Vs0z5xrF.dpuf</div><div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;"><b>Toilers! Tillers! All who yearn and fight for a better world!</b><br /><b>Let us surge forward together, wave on wave, illumined by the bright red rays of Comrade Valentine’s revolutionary romanticism.</b><br /><b>Decisively demolish the saccharine commodity fetishism with which the bourgeoisie attempts to smother the proletarian character of Comrade Valentine’s Day!!</b><br /><b>Joyously celebrate the deepening rejection of heteropatriarchal homophobia by the masses in their millions, a victory for Comrade Valentine’s Communist line!!!</b><br />- See more at: http://freedomroad.org/2014/02/official-slogans-for-comrade-valentines-day-2014/#sthash.Vs0z5xrF.dpuf</div><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;"><b>Toilers! Tillers! All who yearn and fight for a better world!</b><br /><b>Let us surge forward together, wave on wave, illumined by the bright red rays of Comrade Valentine’s revolutionary romanticism.</b><br /><b>Decisively demolish the saccharine commodity fetishism with which the bourgeoisie attempts to smother the proletarian character of Comrade Valentine’s Day!!</b><br /><b>Joyously celebrate the deepening rejection of heteropatriarchal homophobia by the masses in their millions, a victory for Comrade Valentine’s Communist line!!!</b><br />- See more at: http://freedomroad.org/2014/02/official-slogans-for-comrade-valentines-day-2014/#sthash.Vs0z5xrF.dpuf</div>The <a href="http://freedomroad.org/2012/06/official-slogans-for-comrade-valentines-day-2012/" target="_blank">Official Slogans for Comrade Valentine's Day <b>2012</b></a> can be found on the FRSO/OSCL website.<br />Translations were supplied in Mandarin, Spanish, Irish, German, Italian, Indonesian, Swedish and Norwegian. 2012 marked the first time the Official Slogans were credited to the Freedom Road Line Development Commission, as they have been since. An experimental CVD Slogans From Below feature was introduced but evidently did not catch on.<br /><br />The <a href="http://freedomroad.org/2011/02/official-comrade-valentines-day-slogans-for-2011/" target="_blank">Official Slogans for Comrade Valentine's Day <b>2011</b></a> can be found on the FRSO/OSCL website.<br />Translations were supplied in English and Mandarin. <br /><div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">Freedom Road Line Development Commission</div><br /><br />The <a href="http://freedomroad.org/2010/02/official-comrade-valentines-day-slogans-for-2010/" target="_blank">Official Slogans for Comrade Valentine's Day, <b>2010</b></a> can be found on the FRSO/OSCL website.<br />Translations were supplied in German, Spanish and Swedish. <br /><br />The <a href="http://firemtn.blogspot.com/2009/02/comrade-valentines-day-slogans-for-2009.html">Comrade Valentine's Day slogans for <b>2009</b></a> appeared only here at <span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Fire on the Mountain</span></span>.<br />Translations were supplied in Swedish, German and Spanish (2 versions). This may be the first appearance of the CVD "rising heart" version of Freedom Road's official rising star logo.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o9oSxVRA-x8/Uvu8cWpdzNI/AAAAAAAAA6M/IGWu-Ld_79A/s1600/valentines+logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o9oSxVRA-x8/Uvu8cWpdzNI/AAAAAAAAA6M/IGWu-Ld_79A/s1600/valentines+logo.jpg" height="223" width="320" /></a></div><a href="http://freedomroad.org/2008/02/official-slogans-for-comrade-valentines-day-2008/" target="_blank"><br /></a>The <a href="http://freedomroad.org/2008/02/official-slogans-for-comrade-valentines-day-2008/" target="_blank">Official Slogans for Comrade Valentine's Day, <b>2008</b> </a>appear on the FRSO/OSCL website.<br /><br />The <a href="http://freedomroad.org/2007/02/official-slogans-for-comrade-valentines-day-lemas-oficiales-del-dia-del-camarada-valentin-2007/" target="_blank">Official Slogans for Comrade Valentine's Day, <b>2007</b></a> appear on the FRSO/OSCL website.<br />Translation was supplied in Spanish. <br /><br />The <a href="http://freedomroad.org/2006/02/official-slogans-for-comrade-valentines-day-lemas-oficiales-del-dia-del-camarada-valentin/" target="_blank">Official Slogans for Comrade Valentine's Day <b>2006</b></a><a href="http://freedomroad.org/2006/02/official-slogans-for-comrade-valentines-day-lemas-oficiales-del-dia-del-camarada-valentin/" target="_blank"></a> appear on the FRSO/OSCL website.<br />Translation was supplied in Spanish. This appears to have been the first occasion upon which the Official Slogans appeared in a language other than English.<br /><br />T<span class="fullpost">he Official Slogans for Comrade Valentine's Day <b>2005</b> are to be found in a comment on <a href="http://firemtn.blogspot.com/2007/02/workers-celebrate-comrade-valentines.html" target="_blank">a thread in an <i><b>FotM</b></i> reposting</a> of the 2011 Official Slogans. They were:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>Workers and Oppressed People, Hold Aloft the Bright Red, Heart-Shaped Banner of Comrade Valentine's Day!</b><br /><br /><b>Hail the Trailblazing Revolutionary Gay Marriage of Ka Andres and Ka Jose of the Compostela Valley Province Front of the New People's Army of the Philippines!</b><br /><br /><b>Resolutely Repudiate All Attacks by the Reactionaries of the Monopolist Ruling Class and Their Joyless, Puritanical Running Dogs on Women's Reproductive Freedom, on the Democratic Rights of LGBTQ People, and on Progress toward Genuine Equality between Women and Men! </b></blockquote><br />And before 2005? All that exists is<a href="http://firemtn.blogspot.com/2011/02/official-slogans-for-comrade-valentines.html" target="_blank"> the following section of <i><b>Fire on the Mountain</b></i>'s 2011 repost</a> of the Official Slogans for that year:<br /><blockquote><span class="fullpost">The <span style="font-weight: bold;">2004</span> Official Slogans, thought lost, have been retrieved by Comrade Google as they were preserved by the far-sighted Scott McLemee. Here they are:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>Workers and Oppressed People, Unite to Make Comrade Valentine's Day a Joyous Holiday of Proletarian Class Love and Militant Struggle!</b><br /><br /><b>Decisively Defeat the Sinister Schemes of the Bush/Cheney Gangster Clique to Thwart the Romantic Aspirations of the L/G/B/T/Q masses!</b><br /><br /><b>Eternal Glory to Comrade Valentine!<span class="fullpost"></span></b></blockquote><span class="fullpost">Secondary sources--the legendary <b>Leftist Trainspotters</b> listserv--indicate that Comrade Valentine's Day Official Slogans were also released in <b>2002 </b>and <b>2003</b>. Further archival work will, it is to be hoped, make them accessible to future generations of proletarian fighters.</span></blockquote><br />Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-35776549002183489422014-01-31T09:01:00.002-05:002014-01-31T09:01:46.720-05:00Dave Marsh on Pete Seeger[I think I'm gonna ditch the piece on Pete Seeger I've been writing. Dave Marsh doesn't make several of the points I was going to, but those he does, he does better than I could and he's got some that never occurred to me. This is reprinted with permission from <i>RRC, Rock & Rap Confidential.</i> The permission reads, in Pete's spirit:<br /><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="msgbody" style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-top: 2px; width: 100%px;"><tbody><tr><td style="font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;"><zzzhtml xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"><zzzbody bottommargin="7" id="role_body" leftmargin="7" rightmargin="7" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;" topmargin="7"><span id="role_document" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><div style="font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;"><div style="font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: black; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Please feel free to forward or post this <i>RRC Extra</i> widely. We only ask that you include the information that anyone can subscribe free of charge to <i>Rock & Rap Confidential</i>by sending their email address to </span><a href="mailto:rockrap@aol.com" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="mailto:rockrap@aol.com"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">rockrap@aol.com</span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">.</span></span></div></div></div></span></zzzbody></zzzhtml></td></tr></tbody></table><br />So do it.]<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SJauEkiES8k/UuusKRXmWwI/AAAAAAAAA5c/wclOIFQ6mqA/s1600/1551538_10101841085881073_1253639315_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SJauEkiES8k/UuusKRXmWwI/AAAAAAAAA5c/wclOIFQ6mqA/s1600/1551538_10101841085881073_1253639315_n.jpg" height="288" width="400" /></a></div><h3><br /></h3><h3><br /></h3><h3><br /></h3><h3><br /></h3><h3><br /></h3><h3><br /></h3><h3><br /></h3><h3><br /></h3><h3>A GOLDEN THREAD, A NEEDLE….<br />by Dave Marsh</h3><br />I met Pete Seeger about 40 years ago on the Clearwater, a refurbished 19th century sloop which had begun its then seemingly hopeless task of cleaning up the shores and waters of the Hudson River. Like a lot of the things that Pete got involved in, it was a hopeless task until it turned out to be common sense. <br /><br /> That day, we cruised Long Island Sound, if I remember right, from Port Jefferson to Oyster Bay, which is not very far, and back, which is still not very far. It was worth every minute, and would have been if only for the chance to spend time aboard the 106 foot, single-masted Clearwater, a gorgeous vessel, stable even in Long Island Sound’s considerable chop and carrying as cargo volumes of lore and lessons about the costs of environmental neglect.<br /> <br /><div>You could say that those early Clearwater voyages were the precursors of the present-day celebrity cruise, but with fewer celebrities. No more were needed. Pete Seeger was not only the enduring star of American folk music, he was its leading evangelist and one of the greatest singer/musicians this part of the planet has produced. I remember Pete singing though not what songs, and some lectures about the important work of the ship and the ecology of the Sound and the Hudson River region, though not their specific content. The presentation did its best to be as folkie as a much-darned pair of wool socks, and unmistakably also an event with a star and a crew and an audience, never exactly commingled. It was also a strong, healthy political event, by which I mean that each of us left with a sense of mission and some ideas about how to execute it.</div><div><br /> I wasn’t there to clean up the Sound, though I was glad to be part of the movement, or to hear Pete perform, though I knew the importance of his music. I was there to write a story for Newsday, the Long Island daily. I did what you do in those situations, where you don’t know anybody and nobody knows you, which mostly means I watched and listened and took mostly the kind of sensory notes that you don’t write down on the spot.<br /><br /> When we docked everyone headed for the parking lot. Pete and his wife Toshi had several bags. I introduced myself, not only because we were meant to talk for a few minutes, but as a prelude to asking if I could help carry their stuff.<br /><br /> I got no further than, “Hi, I’m Dave Marsh from Newsday,” before Pete turned to me and snapped—and I mean snapped, like he was already booking me for malingering—“Grab a couple of those bags. It’s good for white collar workers to do physical labor.” Thus spoke the Harvard gentleman to the brakeman’s son who’d never owned a necktie. And no, I didn’t come up with my usual smartass retort. He was Pete Seeger, who had changed not only my life but the world, and the alternative to silence was insulting him as much as he’d just insulted me, and…well, for once it was not in me.<br /><br /> That incident was one of the best lessons I ever had several times over. I learned lessons I’d chew on for, apparently, the rest of my life: The relation between stardom and shyness, between changing the world and retaining your self, and between trusting your perceptions and remembering not to suppose anything until you’ve made sure the person about whom you’ve just supposed it is not a cartoon. <a name='more'></a> And I mean it, I’ve always been grateful because that dressing down has saved me all manner of grief, and not only in things about celebrity. The most important lesson, you see, was about recognizing a difference between loving something and liking something, even when that something is someone. A great teacher may or may not inspire great affection, and he or she may not even teach the best lessons deliberately. So it turned out that Pete and I were in many social and professional situations over the next 40 years without ever getting to know one another much and that isn’t surprising. Mainly because I didn’t learn my lesson all at once. Though I think I did learn, finally. I’ll tell you about it later.<br /><br /> I respected Pete Seeger so much that my teenage self forgave him writing “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” which to my ears was sheer bathos, and for deriding Bob Dylan’s beautiful electric music, which to my ears was the absolute poetry of a world in chaos.<br /><br /> One side of what he did was somewhat foreign to me. Years later my friend Jon Landau and I were talking about folk music one day, which inevitably came around to talking about Pete. Jon told me a story about Pete appearing at his left-wing summer camp or maybe it was Earl Robinson’s music school. I said something I thought was appreciative and Jon stopped me cold. “You don’t understand,” he said. “He was Elvis.”<br /><br /> To me, he was more like a father figure or anyhow that’s the way I made sense of him after I understood that he had many metaphoric children and was glad of it, though not always of the way that they behaved, musically or socially. (Hmmm, that is like Elvis, isn’t it?) He could be amazingly contradictory—a sign of humanity not deity. In his 1972 anthology, The Compleat Folksinger, which collects among other things many of his columns for Sing Out!, Pete wrote about a tour of Czechoslovakia he made in 1964. He was especially thrilled to go to a particular club and hear the groups playing guitars, which happened to be electric.<br /><br /> Back home, Pete was not only immune to Beatlemania but hostile to folk-rock. Maybe it was because, as Pete said, he couldn’t hear the words due to the high volume but he should have known more about music than to use that to justify attacks on the songs themselves. I’m more inclined to think that he didn’t like “Maggie’s Farm” with the Butterfield Blues Band because of the loud absence of explicit social commentary and Pete’s acknowledged absence of feeling for post-war blues.<br /><br />I am trying to reckon with the complexity of Pete Seeger as man and artist. It is not an easy road to travel, especially not today. But it never has been.<br /><br />Ten years ago, more or less, there was a panel discussion at a Folk Alliance conference that wound up in a tangle when Nora Guthrie said that Pete had refused to allow Madonna to issue a recording of “If I Had a Hammer” because she’d changed the lyric to “If I had a hammer / I’d smash your fucking head in.” (I don’t know if that’s funny. Depends on how she sang it, doesn’t it?)<br /><br />Another complex folk music elder, Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records, also on the panel, thought that Nora was responsible for the rejection and scolded her for not asking Pete to make the decision, since he would surely have supported free speech. I was the moderator and tried to help out by asking Nora if what she meant was that she had communicated a decision made by Pete himself. She said yes. Chris began to sputter, well past the point of coherence for few seconds, and finally a single sentence burst out: “WELL...well...well...then Pete’s not God anymore!”<br /><br /> He never was. He never needed to be. Like everybody else, Pete Seeger set examples good and bad. We might pause here to take notice that, though his feet were of clay, he had a remarkable ability to keep them shod. By which I mean, his transgressions may have been personal but they were very rarely public and he knew how to back down. In 1967 or so, he made a record using electric guitar—not played by him--and somewhat heavier beats. And then returned to doing what he did, as he should have. <br /><br /> Pete Seeger was such a prodigious talent, so young, that the godlike was expected of him. Born in 1919, the son of the ethnomusicologist Charles Seeger, he grew up in a left-wing household. It was the mandarin left wing: Like his father before him, Pete went to Harvard. He began his prominent performing career in 1940 on CBS Radio, alongside Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives and Josh White (the show was heard only in New York because the cast was integrated) and a year later was a founder of the first important left-wing folk group, The Almanac Singers, which defined protest singing. Pete Bowers, he called himself then—he had to, as his father was currently a government employee who had been blacklisted during World War I for espousing pacifism.<br /><br /> After the war, Pete formed the Weavers with Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert. Their songs were not always topical, because McCarthyism had begun, but the political songs were always there and they had big hits. Thus “Kisses Sweeter than Wine,” though the Weavers also rearranged Lead Belly’s “Good Night Irene” into one of the most important hits of 1950. Seeger and Hayes were a formidable songwriting team. Because of them, the Weavers also produced some of the most enduring post-war protest songs, notably “If I Had a Hammer.” By 1953, they were blacklisted by broadcasters. “If you had seen us coming down the street,” Toshi Seeger, Pete’s wife, told me once, “you’d have crossed over to the other side of the block.” I looked dubious. “That’s exactly what people did,” she said.<br /><br /> Toshi, at least as formidable and complicated as her husband, allowed herself the bitterness Pete never expressed. They had a lot to be bitter about. After being smeared as a Red, Pete became an unusually uncooperative witness before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in 1955. HUAC had caused the Hollywood Ten to be imprisoned for contempt of Congress in1950. The Ten lost for standing on the First Amendment as the basis for their refusal to testify. Since then, it had become the practice to stand on the Fifth—the non-incrimination clause--rather than freedom of speech and association. Pete returned to the fundamental issue: “I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this."<br /><br /> This was not god-like. It was human-- stubborn, flouting all sound advice, courageous. It was also not quite as futile as it immediately seemed. In 1957, he was charged with contempt of Congress. In 1961, Pete was tried, convicted and sentenced to a year in prison. In 1962, he won his appeal, a landmark case in ending the blacklist. But the consequences rolled on: The Weavers reformed in 1955, but mainly as a live act. They recorded for small labels but their music could not be broadcast. Nevertheless, they played the major role in popularizing “Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight),” “Sixteen Tons” and “Kumbaya.”<br /><br /> Pete was never idle. In the Fifties, he wrote How to Play the 5 String Banjo, invented the Longneck Banjo (three additional frets made it longer than a bass guitar), popularized the 12 string guitar (he’d learned from Lead Belly), and created the brilliant “Goofing-Off Suite,” using classical themes by Bach, Beethoven, Stockhausen and Grieg alongside Berlin’s “Blue Skies” and a batch of folk tunes. When John Hammond at Columbia finally got him a major label record deal, one of the first results was “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” probably the most beautiful antiwar melody ever composed. Pete championed the burgeoning topical song movement in the best possible way: He crammed the songs into his albums and concerts. He also took up world music, not as a stylistic synthesis, but as a collection of pieces that taken on their own terms resonated with one another, from Africa (“Wimoweh”) to Cuba (“Guantanamera”), even Europe. It was Pete who suggested that SNCC needed a singing group, and it was Toshi and Pete who befriended and cared for Bernice Johnson Reagon when the SNCC Freedom Singers broke up. He made children’s albums and live albums and thematic albums and mere collections of songs. He was instrumental in starting the Newport Folk Festival. He was on the editorial committee of Sing Out!, the Rolling Stone of the folk revival. And he played a major role (if not the central one—that credit he always gave to Guy Carawan and rightly so) in adapting and popularizing the most important song of the twentieth century, “We Shall Overcome.”<br /><br /> Pete made a live album called <i>We Shall Overcome</i>, recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1963. It was extremely well-edited, I don’t know by whom. The running order of the album--13 songs of the 40 performed--has absolutely nothing to do with the order of the concert, but it’s more focused, gets to the point more directly and clearly than the show did. Alas, the digital version is the whole thing. ( (It’s easy to make a playlist of the original running order—the original track listing is at the Wikipedia entry for the album.)<br /><br /> I heard the <i>We Shall Overcome</i> album at age 14, when I was the son of budding George Wallace supporters, living in an Up South town full of Ku Klux Klansmen and packs of freelance racists, and going to quietly but adamantly all-white schools. The headlines had been filled every day for the past year with Freedom Riders, pre-teens slaughtered by bombs placed in churches, nonviolent demonstrators attacked by dogs and high pressure hoses. And that was just in the South. Racial turmoil was a constant presence in southeastern Michigan, not just Detroit. The one true thing I was being told about this was that it meant the world, or a world, was coming to an end. The one set of contrary facts I held in my head was almost entirely musical, not the early songs of Bob Dylan but Motown and early soul music that insisted, obliquely but powerfully, that freedom meant everybody or it didn’t mean anything.<br /><br /> Buying <i>We Shall Overcome</i> was more the product of exploration than rebellion. What it inspired was rebellion’s necessary partner, conviction. Most important, the conviction that there really must be a better world, somewhere, and that it was open to the likes of myself. Pete Seeger’s version of a protest album offered a vision, and the core of that vision was not so much any particular songs but the gentle persuasiveness with which he introduced them, the passion with which he laid out their origin or history or contemporary relevance and the power with which he encouraged all present to sing them. What transformed <i>We Shall Overcome</i> from a powerful collection to something with deep historical significance was the presence of the SNCC Freedom Singers. They lent not so much authenticity as boldness and authority to “Oh Freedom,” “If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus,” and particularly “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.” They made struggling for equal rights seem like something even a blossoming but isolated teenager could do.<br /><br /> As Daniel Wolff pointed out to me the afternoon that we learned of Pete’s passing, he did this kind of teaching all the time. Seeger believed in singing, he believed it was good for you in all sorts of ways. He was, I recall, fond of reciting his father’s dictum that a country’s cultural health could best be ascertained by how many of its citizens sang and made music. I was just one among who knows how many—a number surely in the hundreds of thousands, maybe the tens of millions, over the sixty years or so that Pete performed—who had their lives turned if not upside down at least askew by the power of his conviction, by the contagion of his vision.<br /><br /> If nothing else, Pete Seeger made me understand how far behind enemy lines I was living—he showed me the road that had to be traveled, if I really wanted to live. He did this the same way that James Baldwin and Elvis Presley and John Coltrane did it: by example, and with the same generosity and the same sense that the world was packed with a load of insurmountable cruelty and that, nevertheless, the truth was that something better had managed to survive within it. Which meant, for each of us, a choice and a chance.<br /><br /> It may even be that Seeger, whose rectitude often communicated, at least to me, a whiff of the Puritanism he inherited, offered a more direct route to this not-at-all specious salvation of spirit and society than anybody else, and for the oddest reason: He thought smaller. He genuinely believed that one more singer, one more non-violent resister, one more example of gumption and love, one more song, one more guitar, was an important thing. And, this I am sure about, he genuinely believed that that was mainly what he, himself, was: One more.<br /><br /> That, and nothing more meek, was why Pete Seeger eschewed the celebrity path. (Ask yourself this: If Burl Ives could become a big star looking like that, what could the young Pete Seeger have become if he’d just given over a few names?) Pete could seem innocent but you’d be a fool to believe it. He paid the price and he had seen the bill coming, too.<br /><br /> If all you know about Pete Seeger is a protest singer, a rag-tag Red, a spinner of false hope, a doddering old man walking that hopeless line (but never by himself, you may have noticed), then you missed it. If all you know is the famous songs – most of which I haven’t even mentioned—you might even then not see it whole. Pete Seeger lived his life every day in the possession of what he envisioned.<br /><br />There is one song that to me expresses this vision almost perfectly, maybe the greatest of all the lyrics he wrote and in the performance on his mini-box set, <i>A Link in the Chain</i>, possibly his greatest recorded vocal performance. It is called “O, Had I A Golden Thread.” It’s sweet in a way the hard boys, left and right, fear, as they ought to. “Far over the waters I’d reach my magic band / To every human being so they would understand.” He makes it true. He makes those who hear him want to make it truer.<br /><br /> Without such a vision, the folk process that we talk about (or used to, before the scene shifted to singer-songwriters meditating on their inner lives—alas, almost never about the banality of them—and the preening cultists they attracted) isn’t worth much. But there is another question, which is whether Pete’s vision of freedom carries forward, whether it stands, whether it can be nurtured and sustained. <br /><br /> I am sure it will be and my conviction came, perhaps predictably, on the last night of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s magnificent Woody Guthrie tribute in 1996. Pete already wasn’t singing very much—Arlo led the night’s final song, which you knew was going to be “This Land Is Your Land” before you ever saw a ticket. But you didn’t know that the whole cast, including many of the conference’s speakers, would be on stage leading the singing.<br /><br />It had been a night of triumphs: For Ani DiFranco and the Indigo Girls, for Dave Pirner and Jimmy LaFave, Billy Bragg and Jack Elliott, Bruce Springsteen and Pete too. But the most powerful triumph was that group sing—above all for the spirit still embedded in a potential national anthem yearning for a country to become worthy of it. It floored me and really, it seemed like the moment caught everyone. John Wesley Harding and I, old friends, walked into the communal dressing room afterward, arms around each other’s shoulders, tears in our eyes. And there was Pete, with tears in his eyes.<br /><br /> I think it was the first time I’d ever truly seen him. He was pleased, I understood, not so much that the night had carried Woody and what he represented forth in such grand fashion. What I remember seeing in Pete Seeger’s eyes was a sense of relief. He knew something that night—if I’m right—something important about not just Woody’s work, but his own. Which meant also the work of all the people he’d learned from, and all those who’d taught them, from the slaves who came up with “O Freedom” to Mother Bloor writing the labor history Woody made into music. He knew that folks would try to carry it on, in both spirit and substance.<br /><br /> That linkage is the golden thread and its purpose now is weaving the garment of human survival, which was the explicit theme of Pete Seeger’s last few decades on the planet. A rainbow design without which we cannot live. A design that shows us why and how to keep the most important thing that Pete Seeger represents alive.<br /><br /> We cannot experience the full measure of what it means to lose Pete Seeger until we realize that this burden is not his to carry, anymore. Now, it’s on you. And me.<br /><br />Got any bags you need carried?<br /><br />(Thanks to Craig Werner, Danny Alexander, Daniel Wolff and Lee Ballinger, without whom grief might have overwhelmed coherence.)<br /></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-80920493471438398582014-01-26T07:18:00.001-05:002014-01-26T07:18:16.997-05:00Book Review: Stones from the Creek <style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman"; panose-1:0 2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-parent:""; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --></style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i><b>Stones from the Creek</b></i>, Rick Levine's new book, is a series of loosely-linked short stories about the United States during the period between the Spanish-American War and the onset of WWI. It is a splendid venture into relatively uncharted territory for radical fiction.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But permit me to digress for a moment. This is, if memory serves, the first book review in over 500 posts here at Fire on the Mountain, dating back to 2006. In general, it strikes me that there are two reasons to write a book review (at least, if someone isn't paying you to). </div><div class="MsoNormal">A. One has views and insights to offer its other readers, striving to engage in thoughtful discussion across time and space.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B. One wants to get people pumped up to go and read the damn book.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Let's be clear. This is an Option B review. <i><b>Stones from the Creek</b></i> is not only a fine and in many ways remarkable work, but it is self-published, and by a first-time author to boot. That means that unless fans beat the drums for it—hard—the sucker will have a hard time finding the audience it deserves.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ASwT7UlEKew/UuT7-kxAn8I/AAAAAAAAA5M/s5nLpf3vaPA/s1600/1499617_338111799664763_164775917_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ASwT7UlEKew/UuT7-kxAn8I/AAAAAAAAA5M/s5nLpf3vaPA/s1600/1499617_338111799664763_164775917_n.jpg" height="320" width="209" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Now, back to the book's considerable merits. The 14 loosely-linked short stories here present a unique panoramic view of the US as monopoly capital expands its grip and becomes modern imperialism. Yet the strength of the panorama is that only one story deals with on developments at the commanding heights and that one at twin removes, telling a tale of the Crash of 1907—as an Isaac Beshevis Singer-style Yiddish folktale.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">For the most part, the reader becomes engaged with a set of ordinary people, many of them actual historical figures, who are just as extraordinary as the everyday people whom we meet in life, or in the struggle. More extraordinary, because they come from cultures and backgrounds far removed from our own. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 5;">One of my current favorites is "The Giant Believed Her," whose center is the Apache chief Alchesay. It unfolds as the story of the attempt to revive traditional tribal culture in a guise which may just conceal it from the genocidal intentions of the dominant <i>ndaa</i> (white) power structure. The reader is drawn to understand the behavior, the manners, appropriate to an Apache man in this period, and to celebrate Alchesay's victory. Then further reading or simple reflection reveals a universal theme many of us are dealing with. How, in a period of setback, of defeat, do we decide what fights can be won, what tactics will serve, how the base can be mobilized?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 5;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 5;">Other figures who shine include a buffalo soldier who rescues Teddy Roosevelt's ass at San Juan Hill and is given a hard a way to go as a reward, the four-year-old Paiute girl whose life is changed when her grandmother slashes the throat of a BIA investigator, and the young wife heading the procession carrying the statue of San Miguel to its home in a New Mexico church, </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 5;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 5;">"The Sun Shone So Brightly" is perhaps the closest to a traditional work of "proletarian fiction," both in its subject matter, class unity forged in a miners' walkout, and in its optimism. But Levine is a materialist, and history is history. Two of the most unsettling stories feature Smedley Butler in the "banana wars" of Central America. As Major General Smedley Butler, he is known for his declaration in the 1930s, "I was a racketeer, a gangster for capital." Butler is hero to many of us, and especially members of Veterans for Peace. The stories tell, from the point of view of then-Captain Butler and of the Hondurans he is sent to repress, exactly what he did that caused him decades later to adopt that self-description. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 5;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 5;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal">The closing story, "In the Midst Of The Valley," takes up one of the central themes of the book, race. White supremacy and the color line must lie at the heart of any honest look at the history of this country. Few works of fiction that I know of explore the complexities of this reality with depth of Levine's 30 page look at the question of indigenous nations, African descent, white privilege and political power through the experience of a man pursuing a dream of "a New Africa, a Black Zion."</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 5;">To return to my digression at the start of this review: Go and read the damn book!</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 5;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 5;">You can find it at Amazon.com in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stones-Creek-Rick-Levine/dp/149447641X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390737946&sr=8-1&keywords=stones+from+the+creek+rick+levine" target="_blank">Kindle or dead treeversions</a>. If you patronize Facebook, go and "Like" the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/stonesfromthecreek" target="_blank">"Stones From The Creek" page</a>, and catch some snippets from these stories. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 5;"><br /></div>[Full disclosure: While it would be stretching things to say<b> </b>that Rick Levine and I are friends, he is an acquaintance. And a really good and interesting writer.]<br /> <div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-85994947249147131032014-01-15T22:37:00.000-05:002014-01-15T22:39:53.919-05:00The War On The Planet<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">[<i>This talk was delivered two days ago, by my old friend Gary Goff. The Brooklyn Museum is featuring an exhibition called <a href="http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/war_photography/" target="_blank">WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath. </a>The Museum asked <a href="http://www.brooklynpeace.org/" target="_blank">Brooklyn For Peace</a>, a presence in the community for 30 years, to organize<b> </b>what they called a "Perspectives Talk." Gary, who is active in BFP's Climate Action working committee delivered--short and sharp!</i>]</span><br /><h3><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>The War On The Planet</b></span></h3><h3><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>by Gary Goff</b></span></h3><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We usually think of violence as something that is abrupt and explosive --a bomb going off, a bullet finding its mark. The photos on exhibit here tend to reinforce this view.</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T2HaLJ4O5Sk/UtdQAbccmKI/AAAAAAAAA5A/Y9O3uShNlUI/s1600/Astrada-Congolese-Women_428H.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T2HaLJ4O5Sk/UtdQAbccmKI/AAAAAAAAA5A/Y9O3uShNlUI/s1600/Astrada-Congolese-Women_428H.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But there is another kind of violence that is increasing worldwide, the violence of climate change. Because it is incremental, it's mostly invisible, or at least not perceived as violence. But we need to reassess this view. Climate change is both violent and largely caused by human activity. It's as violent as war. People's homes and livelihoods are destroyed, their countries devastated, their lives taken. According to the UN there have been more than 4 million climate-related deaths since the 1970s.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">As startling as that number is, the relationship between war and the environment is more than the high casualty rates they share. Environmental disasters cause wars and wars cause environmental disasters. Let me explain.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">War destroys the environment wrecking agriculture and infrastructure, killing and displacing millions of people, leaving a landscape of lethal chemicals, heavy metals, and radioactivity in its wake. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If we step back from the news items about war and environment that we see daily, we may be able to perceive a pattern here, a macabre cycle of cause and effect. </span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Our national dependence on fossil fuels makes us intervene in countries that are rich in fossil fuels</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Which means we need a huge military</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Which is so dependent on fossil fuels that we have to intervene in other countries to keep it supplied</span></li></ul><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Even when not engaged in war, the military causes environmental damage. The burning of fossil fuels--coal, oil, natural gas--causes climate change and the US military is the biggest single user of fossil fuels in the world.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And environmental disasters set the stage for war. Climate change is causing droughts, wildfires, floods, famines, and storms like weve never seen before. Rising sea levels threaten island dwellers around the world. Huge numbers of people are forced to leave their homes. The International Red Cross says there are now more environmental refugees than political refugees. In 2009, the last year for which we have statistics, 36 million people were driven from their homes by environmental destruction. You don't have to be a sociologist to understand that this many environmental refugees exacerbates the conditions that lead to war.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Increasingly wars are being fought for access to and control of resources like oil, gas, water, and arable land.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Today we've heard about: </span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The war abroad in Asia, the Mideast, and elsewhere </span></li><li><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The war at home attacks on communities of color, cutbacks in schools, hospitals, and infrastructure that Noam Chomsky calls "pure savagery" </span></li><li><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And now, the war on the planet. Climate change is threatening the continued existence of human beings on this planet. </span></li></ul><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In Brooklyn For Peace, we say that you cannot stop any of these three wars unless you stop all of them. And we can only stop them if large numbers of people demand it and work for it. People like you. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Notes:</b></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Climate-related deaths.<br /></b>Climate Change and Health: Fact Sheet No 266, World Health Organization</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/" target="_blank">http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>US military's use of fossil fuels.<br /></b>Greenwashing the Pentagon, Joseph Nevins, Truthout, 13 June 2010</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/90115:greenwashing-the-pentagon" target="_blank">http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/90115:greenwashing-the-pentagon</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Environmental refugees.<br /></b>Climate Refugee, National Geographic Educational</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/climate-refugee/?ar_a=1" target="_blank">http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/climate-refugee/?ar_a=1</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><br /></b>Climate Refugees: The Human Toll of Global Warming, Teresita Perez, Center for American Progress, 7 December 2006</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2006/12/07/2428/climate-refugees/" target="_blank">http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2006/12/07/2428/climate-refugees/</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><br /></b>Climate Refugees in the 21st Century, Petra Durkova, Anna Gromilova, Barbara Kiss, Megi Plaku, Regional Academy on the United Nations, December 2012</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://acuns.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Climate-Refugees-1.pdf" target="_blank">http://acuns.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Climate-Refugees-1.pdf</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-37950361354436665522013-12-30T09:47:00.000-05:002013-12-30T12:20:52.881-05:00The Biggest Victory of 2013<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the year ends, the temptation to dust off the hands and say "Well, maybe 2014 will be better" is a strong one. But as we look ahead, it can't hurt to remind ourselves of some of the victories won in this country over the last twelve months.</span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">There were victories won by the courageous efforts of individuals, like Edward Snowden who followed in the footsteps of Chelsea Manning and ripped the lid off the massive snake pit of government spying on US residents and peoples and leaders around the world.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There were local victories whose impacts created national ripples, notably the election of longtime fighter Chokwe Lumumba as mayor of Jackson MS. His victory in one of the old </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">strongholds of Jim Crow racism gave heart to many in the Black liberation struggle.</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c8UifMCeTGU/UsGB_BufWmI/AAAAAAAAA4I/LqfnQv8Vxcg/s1600/Chokwe-Lumumba-son-Chokwe-Antar-daughter-Rukia-celebrate-primary-victory-052113-by-Vickie-D.-King-Jackson-Clarion-Led.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="202" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c8UifMCeTGU/UsGB_BufWmI/AAAAAAAAA4I/LqfnQv8Vxcg/s320/Chokwe-Lumumba-son-Chokwe-Antar-daughter-Rukia-celebrate-primary-victory-052113-by-Vickie-D.-King-Jackson-Clarion-Led.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></span></div><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Social Movements Pick Up Steam</b></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flourishing social movements at a national level have not yet won decisive victories, but their growing strength and impact alone signify celebration-worthy accomplishments:</span><br /><br /><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The immigrants' rights struggle, spearheaded by young "dream warriors" has kept the issue to the fore and caused serious splits in the most reactionary wing of US bourgeois politics.</span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Low wage workers, with organizational help from unions like the UFCW and SEIU and from local workers center-type outfits, have set back Walmart, McDonalds and their ilk and created public opinion for a higher minimum wage.</span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The environmental movement has ramped up the struggle against fossil-fuel caused global warming. Both the national drive to block the Keystone XL pipeline and the locally-based anti-fracking struggles have drawn strength from closer links to First Nation activists like those in Idle No More. </span></li></ul><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tLct6yP-MwM/UsGCi3_FVTI/AAAAAAAAA4Q/ogs1UKG6fxs/s1600/tar-sands-protest-arrest-537x358.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tLct6yP-MwM/UsGCi3_FVTI/AAAAAAAAA4Q/ogs1UKG6fxs/s320/tar-sands-protest-arrest-537x358.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Resistance to the "education reform" steamroller took a big leap, undermining the billionaire-funded drive to privatize and industrialize education and crush teacher unions.</span></li></ul><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Big One</b></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The biggest victory of 2013, though, is one that is too easily overlooked. For the first time, the people of the US stopped an imperialist war before it could start! The Obama administration and a substantial chunk of the ruling class were hellbent on an unjust and unjustifiable attack on Syria. Popular opposition stalled, then killed, their plan. </span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To be sure, there were favorable circumstances. George W. Bush's catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq tainted any push toward further imperialist adventures in the Middle East. The people of the UK, whose rulers had walked in lockstep with ours on Iraq, forced Parliament to vote No on this one. Racist hatred for Obama by Congressional Republicans and their teahadist supporters back home dried up what would normally have been a deep pool of support.</span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most importantly, the anti-war movement during the preceding decade had reminded the people of the US of the bitter lessons of the Vietnam War and drawn new ones from Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite a morale-sapping decline since the powerful days of 2003-7, anti-war forces rallied heroically in the crisis and provided the spearhead of resistance.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jazyQuIY6EE/UsGDL-dYFoI/AAAAAAAAA4Y/-3oWbD6aKy8/s1600/SYRIA_t750x550.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jazyQuIY6EE/UsGDL-dYFoI/AAAAAAAAA4Y/-3oWbD6aKy8/s320/SYRIA_t750x550.JPG" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">But what did the trick was ordinary everyday people. Polls showed that opposition to even the promised "limited attack" on the Assad regime ran as high as 80%. Local protests were backed up by a rapid outburst of rejection, with literally millions of calls, emails, petition signatures and letters to the editor bombarding the White House, politicians and the media. The message was simple: Don't Do This Thing!</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And we won. There was no attack on Syria, no subsequent escalation, no new quagmire. The civil war in Syria grinds brutally on, fuelled by money, arms and combatants from outside the country, much of it from the US and close allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey. But who can doubt that direct US intervention would have made things worse for the people of Syria and the whole region? </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On To 2014!</span></span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-42575053341860509642013-12-23T07:04:00.000-05:002013-12-23T09:02:27.124-05:00Keep Your Christmas! It's Maosday For Me!<style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman"; panose-1:0 2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Arial; panose-1:0 2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-parent:""; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -- </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">I don't celebrate Christmas. I suppose I could be said to observe it: since the early '80s, I don't think I've missed a December 25 family gathering, but thematically they have zero Christianity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">I don't celebrate Hanukkah, and I consider it a kind of fake-y holiday, puffed up over the last century, in the US especially, as an alternative Christmas (or Christmas Lite) to help Jewish parents keep their offspring from being tempted into the more commodified Christian camp. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">I don't celebrate the various attempts to revive solstice-based pagan festivals. True, the originals gave rise to all of the religious yearend observances, but since Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo we know the cycle of seasons is lawful and its recurrence doesn't require a lot of hoopla.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">I don't celebrate Kwanzaa for a number of reasons. While I am of African descent (we all are—it's where humanity came from, after all), I am not part of the more recent African diaspora the holiday is intended for. And I'm not much on single day rituals myself; ones that last seven are definitely tl;do (too long; didn't observe). Mostly, though, I came up in the '60s and find it hard to warm up to any project of Ron Karenga's. I remember John Huggins and Bunchy Carter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">(Still, you have to give Karenga some credit. It's no small feat to make up a holiday celebrated by millions and observed by the US Postal Service with a fresh release of new Kwanzaa stamps every year.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">Yet I prefer not to be left out of the seasonal festivities entirely. And by great good fortune, it happens that Chairman Mao was born on December 26 (in 1893). Hence <b>Maosday</b>, a splendid holiday for proletarians of all nations. A celebration of revolutionary history and struggle.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">We can simply emulate the Christian clerics who over the last two millennia appropriated all manner of practices from previous winter festivals—trees from Scandinavia, carols from the British Isles, feasting and partying from pretty much everywhere, like the Roman Saturnalia. &c. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">In fact, the 26<sup>th</sup> is already, in Britain and many of its former colonies, a holiday with a slight working class flavor, Boxing Day. Its origins are appropriately secular. Since the aristocracy and the wealthy required, obviously, all their servants around them on Christmas Day, cooking, cleaning, butling and so on, the Downstairs folk were not permitted to be with their families until the next day. Then they would be sent home with boxes containing small gifts and perhaps some nice leftovers from the Christmas feast.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">Come the revolution, the switchover should be fairly easy. Christmas becomes Maosday Eve, a lesser holiday which people can observe as they see fit, and most of the good shit happens on the 26<sup>th</sup>. The dichromatic red and green color scheme is broadened by the addition of black and/or yellow. And anyone playing "The Little Drummer Boy"--live or recorded--where other persons are forced to hear it without previously granting permission faces re-education.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IqNfA6NecZ4/UrgkIC1U8VI/AAAAAAAAA34/SlsRYfw-6qA/s1600/1380167_10152344619377345_1901601986_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IqNfA6NecZ4/UrgkIC1U8VI/AAAAAAAAA34/SlsRYfw-6qA/s1600/1380167_10152344619377345_1901601986_n.jpg" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">Maosday! </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">I can't wait. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">So I'm not. Yesterday I decorated my first ever official Maosday tree.</span></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-30367951025482830892013-08-28T22:19:00.000-04:002013-08-28T22:21:46.611-04:00Some Notes on The March on Washington: The 50th Anniversary Remix<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><div class="_38 direction_ltr"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span class="">Disorganized.<br /><br />Chaotic and frustrating.<br /><br />A hot mess, let's call it.<br /><br />One reason last Saturday's March on Washington was hot because it was a transformative experience for many, especially the majority who weren't old enough to really remember the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s. The march itself had been transformed, objectively, by two developments this summer. What had been shaping up as an exercise in nostalgia was reshaped by the "not guilty" verdict handed to the killer of Trayvon Martin and the Supreme Court's trashing of the Voting Rights Act.<br /><br /></span></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span class=""><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o8y950DWAPQ/Uh6oLMwY1uI/AAAAAAAAA2g/mgPLUvMdF3Y/s1600/1186100_10201453159044248_391853209_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o8y950DWAPQ/Uh6oLMwY1uI/AAAAAAAAA2g/mgPLUvMdF3Y/s400/1186100_10201453159044248_391853209_n.jpg" width="300" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span class=""><br />The speeches, those I heard, tended to focus on the latter more than the former, but Trayvon Martin signs (both homemade and printed) were the most common single theme in the crowd. My friend Rahim on the Docks pointed out the most brilliant single expression of this, a tee-shirt being hawked with MLK photoshopped into a hoodie—the Two Martins! <br /><br />The March itself was the biggest expression of Black solidarity since, perhaps, the exultant all-night street celebrations that followed the announcement that Obama had been elected in 2008. The crowd was at least 70% Black, and heavily working class, both among folks who came on their own and also those who were part of the substantial union contingents and of the community groups, civil rights organizations, sororities and frats, and church congregations spread throughout the crowd.<br /><br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eNIQkIf9P2Y/Uh6tP1GO40I/AAAAAAAAA2w/ljbKpvstqPE/s1600/893241_10152072236837345_1929434690_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eNIQkIf9P2Y/Uh6tP1GO40I/AAAAAAAAA2w/ljbKpvstqPE/s400/893241_10152072236837345_1929434690_o.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><b>The Mess</b><br /><br />The mess was twofold, political and organizational. We heard, those of us who could force our way toward the front, speaker after speaker, many cut off in mid-sentence. No two minute time limit was imposed on Attorney General Holder and House Minority leader Representative Pelosi, though. (A shameful shift from the 1963 March's ban on elected and appointed government officials speaking.) Nor were they heckled, although marchers from Newark booed their sleazy, ambitious mayor Cory "Hollywood" Booker.<br /><br />Plenty of demonstrators wore shirts and buttons from Obama's campaigns, maybe a triumph of hope over experience, maybe a clear estimate that the alternative remains the greater evil. Interestingly, however, none of the speakers I heard, including a couple union bigs, particularly emphasized voting. <br />Instead, the constantly repeated theme was "This is not about commemoration, it's about <br /><a name='more'></a>mobilization. We're not here to celebrate, We are here to agitate." A commendable sentiment although detailed proposals were pretty sparse. Meanwhile, little was said about racism, let alone the fact that we live in society based on white supremacy.<br /><br />The organizational mess was nightmarish. Bayard Rustin, the logistical master who made the 1963 March on Washington run like clockwork, was an atheist, and evidence that he was correct in his views lies in the fact that he would surely otherwise have returned to this mortal coil to smite the people who made such of hash of things. Folks started to arrive at 5:00 AM to get good positions for a rally scheduled to start at 8:00 and run for six hours!<br /><br />There were no marshals to help people find their way to the rally or around the grounds although chainlink fences surrounded the site. The sound system barely reached a third of the way up the reflecting pool in front of the stage, causing dense packing in the front. Most of the people who came may never have heard a single word! A concluding short, actual march was promised from the podium several times. It never actually materialized.<br /><br />Several friends who know I make a fetish of crowd counting have asked for my estimate. Sorry. There simply is no way to tell. Tens of thousands, maybe many tens of thousands. Folk were still arriving in droves as others wandered around try to find their way to the rally for an hour or more and as many more had already headed back to their buses.<br /><br /><b>That Was Then…</b><br /><br />Because this March on Washington was conceived as a direct remake of the one half a century ago, I want to highlight a few very important particular differences in the context in which the two took place to remind the veterans and school the younger folk.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_uk7ylXFk68/Uh6t8AujTEI/AAAAAAAAA24/qvrAqGF5jj4/s1600/1167616_10152073644127345_828782046_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_uk7ylXFk68/Uh6t8AujTEI/AAAAAAAAA24/qvrAqGF5jj4/s400/1167616_10152073644127345_828782046_o.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />1. The 1963 March was unprecedented. It was the largest protest march in Washington ever, and there had been precious few small ones since McCarthyism had made demonstrating almost treasonous. Since 1963, I have attended scores of Big Marches in DC—demonstrating around civil rights, the Vietnam war, women's liberation, queer liberation, environmental issues, intervention in Central America, AFL-CIO-called Solidarity Days and, of course, aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now it looks like we may have to head back in defense of the people of Syria in a few days.<br /><br />2. The coming together of Black and white in 1963 was also monumental. Communities, schools and workplaces in much of the country, not just the Jim Crow South were segregated and this was seen as the natural order of things. It's a far cry from today, where so many white folks feel obliged to cite made-up Black friends in conversation to defend their privileges or just their own efforts to seem cool.<br /><br />3. That March had the ruling class petrified. 6000 police officers, 2000 National Guards and 4000 regular troops were stationed in DC, Another 19,000 troops were deployed near the city. They're not scared of us now, not like that.<br /><br />4. The 1963 March came as the culmination, to that time, of a massive and growing Civil Rights Movement which had won big victories and suffered brutal defeats in the preceding years. It was still an unstoppable force, fueled by the courage of ordinary Black women, men and children determined to win through to equality and freedom, no matter what the cost. There is no such single movement today, obviously. But there is always struggle, always resistance, always organization arising from among the masses, as the magnificent and growing Moral Mondays campaign in North Carolina reminds us. And it's up to us to build the movement we need.<br /><br />In closing these personal notes on the 2013 March on Washington, I want to hark back to 1963 one more time. In his 1998 autobiography, John Lewis himself sums up the original March on Washington "as a failure in terms of prompting meaningful action on the part of the government or moving the segregationists in the South from their entrenched positions." But history presents it in a different light, for all its shortcomings, and what we do going forward will determine whether or not Saturday's demonstration will be remembered at all 50 years from now.<br /><br /></span></span></div>Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-34163991088433791252013-08-24T09:00:00.000-04:002013-08-27T22:10:18.897-04:00March on Washington: The 50th Anniversary RemixI’m in Washington, DC and it’s August 24. Before I head out to the March on Washington: The 50th Anniversary Remix, a few thoughts.<br /><br />A couple of months ago, I had decided not to come. It was, I thought, shaping up as an exercise in nostalgia. Not that I'm not nostalgic. My first political activism came around the Civil Rights Movement. The first really big fight I can remember having my Moms (and the last one I lost) broke out when she wouldn't let my 13 –year- old ass travel to the 1963 March from rural Northwest Connecticut. But the few dozen Big Marches I’ve humped down to DC for in the decades since then have blunted the sentimentality. <br /><br />Two things changed my mind: the Supreme Court decision trashing the voting rights act and the mass outrage triggered by the “not guilty” verdict for George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin. These two developments have objectively changed the character of today’s demonstration.<br /><br />As the blatantly preplanned and coordinated effort to disenfranchise students at traditionally Black colleges in NC shows, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act is the starting gun in an amped-up campaign to restrict the franchise as much as possible to white folks.<br /><br />Those leftists who would argue that this is a non-issue, given the bought-and-paid-for nature of elections in our bourgeois democracy do so in defiance of the entire history of this country. The famous compromise in the drafting of the US Constitution which defined a slave as 3/5 of a man for purposes of determining a state’s population, <br /><a name='more'></a>and thus its political clout in Congress and presidential elections, was only the starting point. As Supreme Justice John Paul Stevens points out, with the defeat of Reconstruction, largely accomplished by 1876, things got worse.<br /><br />From Reconstruction until the breakthroughs by the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, each Black resident counted as 100% of a person in the Jim Crow South, even though African Americans were effectively denied the right to vote, giving the white ruling class there even more clout. Or, let’s use the word, power. The Civil Rights Movement didn’t win state power for the working class. It didn’t meet the definitive ‘60s chant “Power to the People.” But it damn sure gave Black people the ability to exercise unprecedented power in their lives and communities, and to, as Lenin put it, affect affairs of state.<br /><br /> This is what is under attack now, for African Americans, for Latina/os, for the foreign-born, for the young, the elderly, the poor. <br /><br />Trayvon Martin's murder has often been compared to the savage 1955 killing of Emmett Till. That killing symbolized the lynch terror upon which the whole structure of Jim Crow rested, including the forcible disenfranchisement of Black people. Just as Emmett Till’s lynching wasn’t specifically designed to stop anyone from registering to vote, unlike the later murders civil rights workers in the ‘60s, Trayvon wasn’t killed to advance voter suppression.<br /><br />But they are not unrelated. The “stand your ground” laws, which the Koch Brothers-funded ALEC has pushed through in dozens of states, do more than give white vigilantes legal permission to kill black youth. The right wing is fond of pointing out that in Florida, more African Americans have not been charged in the killing of Black victims than anyone else. That’s true, and what it says is that, as it has always been in this country, Black lives are not seen as of equal value to white ones. <br /><br />Finally, the Trayvon Martin killing has given today’s March on Washington additional meaning because it has blown up the myth of “post-racial America,” the very myth the Supreme Court decision tried to enshrine in law. Black people were appalled not only by the killing but by the desperation with which many, many white people sought to justify the verdict or downplay the killing itself. For other white folks, not entirely blinded by their own privileges and the mythology that cloaks them, it has been a wake-up call.<br /><br />Many are here today—white, Black and other people of color--to take a stand against the forces who are trying roll back history to the days of Jim Crow and naked white supremacy.<br /><br />And that’s why I am out the door now.<br /><br /><br />Jimmy Higginsnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6502187932910780823.post-29979611773709156972013-07-17T18:32:00.002-04:002013-07-17T19:12:17.610-04:00Black NJ: Over 1,000 marchers in Newark demands federal Civil Rights charges against Zimmerman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-57cPmyh8c3k/UecKqQ6JuVI/AAAAAAAACJA/_lMTa-zaHPY/s1600/P3310634.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-57cPmyh8c3k/UecKqQ6JuVI/AAAAAAAACJA/_lMTa-zaHPY/s400/P3310634.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td class="tr-caption"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Immediately after the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in February of 2012, POP took to the streets</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="background-color: #fcfdfd; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“We want President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to launch a federal investigation and bring civil rights charges against George Zimmerman,” Larry Hamm, NJ state chairman of the People's Organization for Progress.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><br /></span></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LJHIeGF6vPM/UecUskTCPLI/AAAAAAAACJU/xiQ5C4GFtkw/s1600/P7140231.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LJHIeGF6vPM/UecUskTCPLI/AAAAAAAACJU/xiQ5C4GFtkw/s400/P7140231.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">When the usual "hard-core" 18-25 People's Organization for Progress members and supporters who begin every rally or march became a spirited picketline of more than 50 nearly an hour before an event is scheduled to begin, you know that the event answers a felt need in the community. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">When the picket demanding Justice for Trayvon Martin at the intersection Broad & Market in downtown Newark on Sunday quickly filled up the entire sidewalk on one side of the intersection, Newark police practically begged POP to take it to the streets! Before 3:00 PM, nearly 500 marchers were lined up on Broad Street to march down to the Federal Building. By the conclusion of the march and rally, the Newark Star Ledger estimated 700 participants, so I would suggest that 1,000 marchers is probably a conservative </span></span></span>evaluation (see <a href="http://njpop.org/wordpress/?p=1452" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hundreds Rally in Newark…</a> for the Star Ledger's report on Sunday's march and rally)<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">.</span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></span></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UyfapHnyj8E/UecUsinHXnI/AAAAAAAACJY/M6bgfXB3CVo/s1600/P7140318.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UyfapHnyj8E/UecUsinHXnI/AAAAAAAACJY/M6bgfXB3CVo/s400/P7140318.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Reflecting on the NAACP's call for federal Civil Rights charges, People's Organization for Progress has a bit of experience with the strengths and weaknesses of this tactic. In 1999, when the State of NJ refused to even consider prosecuting the Orange, NJ police officers responsible for the murder of aspiring rapper Earl Faison (in what the Federal Prosecutor would later refer to as a "stairwell of torture" in the Orange PD building), the only option available was charging the officers with violating Mr. Faison's civil rights. </span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Remember, that judicially, murder, manslaughter and homicide are state crimes. There is no federal </span></span></span></span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">equivalent, so the closest to justice that the Faison family could hope for was that a literal conspiracy of wilding by the cops would result in a few short jail terms.</span></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gwJFZFYYTGU/UecJ0DlQY-I/AAAAAAAACI4/UNhLYkRpR0s/s1600/P3310486.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gwJFZFYYTGU/UecJ0DlQY-I/AAAAAAAACI4/UNhLYkRpR0s/s400/P3310486.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Similarly for the family of Trayvon Martin, a federal civil rights conviction against George Zimmerman simply means he is not blameless, as the acquittal in Sanford court indicates the jurors believe. A greater victory, more justice for Mr. Martin's family would probably be the repeal of racist "Stand Your Ground" laws in Florida and throughout the US.</span></span><br /><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Interestingly, Newark mayor "Hollywood" Booker has gone out of his way to distance himself from those angered by Zimmerman's acquittal (see <a href="http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/07/cory_booker_other_nj_figures_react_to_zimmerman_verdict.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Booker, other NJ figures…</a>). Apparently, part of his US Senate campaign involves making himself so "non-offensive" to those he sees as his constituents that, by comparison, NYC's racist Mayor Mike is an absolute radical! Hopefully this will make Ras Baraka's election certain…</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></div>Rahim on the Dockshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12153239186575137289noreply@blogger.com1