Playing the Piano… People's Organization for Progress ups the ante of struggle in NJ

POP members, supporters, and community residents honor the 1967 Newark Rebellion at the site of the monument to 1967 at the intersection of Springfield Ave., Irvine Turner Blvd., & 15th Ave.

Updated  8/1:
There was a time some years back when "playing the piano" was the phrase folks would use to describe carrying out multiple revolutionary campaigns simultaneously. We could, it suggested, have one hand doing one thing while the other did another. With the People's Organization for Progress organized Daily People's Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Equality & Justice, POP has upped the  ante. But with the past week's 44th annual We Remember the Newark Rebellion & its Victims" event, we proved we POP can "play the piano"…


The People's Organization for Progress has held this annual event for more than 25 years, sometimes at the precinct house where the rebellion initially began and often (since the monument to the citizens who died was first placed on the 30th anniversary in 1997) at the monument itself (to see a slide show of Ingrid Hill's excellent photos from this year's remembrance, please click on this link). 


On July 12, 1967, Newark erupted in a rebellion against the scourge of police brutality and oppressive racially-biased living conditions. The rebellion prompted a massive police riot and a brutal armed crackdown marked by the National Guard and other police forces occupying the city for several days. It would lead to 39 people, overwhelmingly unarmed Black civilians, getting killed in that dramatic upheaval.

The next (and subsequent days this week) the People's Organization for Progress was back at the Lincoln statute in front of the Essex County Court House for our ongoing campaign for Jobs, Peace, Equality & Justice.


POP's ability to sustain and carry out multiple campaigns simultaneously is a testament to the organization's maturity, both politically as well as structurally!


Thanks to the reader who suggested we track down brother Hamm's speech at CEMOTAP. to view Larry's presentation click on this link. Then go to Drums in the Global Village to see the full speech.

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People's Organization for Progress "Daily People's Campaign," Part II

People's Organization for Progress daily demonstration attracts community residents
as well as POP members.

Monday, July 11 will mark the third week of daily demonstrations since the People's Organization for Progress launched our bold "Daily People's Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Equality & Justice" on June 27! As POP state-wide chairman Lawrence Hamm noted, “There have been times in history when the people have been faced with grave challenges, and they have met those challenges with profound, sustained actions that have made a difference, and we believe that this is one of those times.” 


Among the issues the campaign will address are a need for a national jobs program, a call to end military actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, a call to stand against police brutality, a call to preserve workers rights and collective bargaining, a call for a moratorium on foreclosures, a call for national health care and for affordable higher education, and more.


POP is calling on a broad range of organizations to endorse and participate in the campaign. This is in an effort to contribute to the forging of a progressive united front for social justice for this area. This is a bold and audacious effort in this period, but the response from motorist driving past the Court House  shows without a doubt that the campaign reflects the sentiment of the community. Other organizations are beginning to commit themselves to participation. This past weekend, members on NJ Chapter-21 of Veterans for Peace responded excitedly to a call to join the daily pickets in front of the Lincoln Monument at the intersection of Springfield Avenue & West Market Street.

Michael McPhearson, a longtime POP member and former Executive Director of the national Veterans For Peace, interviewed Chairman Hamm about this campaign (click on the video image above or the linked "INTERVIEW" before the parenthesis to watch video).


The daily actions continue daily from 4:30p.m. to 6:00p.m. at West Market Street and Springfield Avenue, near the Lincoln Monument and will take place their everyday for an indefinite period of time.

On Saturdays the actions take place from 12noon to 2:00p.m on corner of Broad and Market Streets in Newark.

On Sundays the action is from 2:00p.m. to 3:00p.m. back on West Market Street and Springfield Avenue, near the Lincoln Monument.

For more information, please call (973) 801-0001.

Special thanks to our POP Corresponding Secretary, Ms. Ingrid Hill, for her 

excellent photography

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NJ's People's Organization for Progress says "Afghan War Must End!"

UPDATED, Dec. 3—

Thanks to FotM reader, "Nat" who alerts us that POP's Plainfield Branch also held a demonstration against expanding the war in Afghanistan this past Saturday during their regular monthly picket of the so-called Army Career Center on Front Street. Tip o' the hat to Steve and the whole Plainfield Branch. Oh, and apologies for not including the Plainfield demonstration in this report (also included in this update is the link to December 3rd's Amsterdam News article about the POP demonstration…

Throughout its more than 25 years of defending our right to education, quality healthcare, peace in the streets and against police brutality, racism, sexual oppression and many other scourges on our community, the People's Organization for Progress has not been the kind of organization that waits to react to these attacks. When it became clear this past week that the federal government would use the goodwill of the Thanksgiving Holiday to launch the military's expanded attack on the Afghan people, it was imperative to call an emergency demonstration before these new deprecations become a fact.

"Money for Education, Not for War! Money for Healthcare, Not for War!" and "Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan… No More War!" POP members and supporters chanted as they picketed at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets in downtown Newark. "The US ambassador in Kabul reported that this war isn't winnable, that the government the Bush Administration put in place is corrupt. That Hamid Karzai's government is spending US tax dollars defending his brother's heroin business. We need that money in this country for schools and hospitals, for education and healthcare, not Ahmed Wali Karzai's poppy crop," Larry Hamm, chairman of the People's Organization for Progress told the crowd.

While the POP picket began with the usual 10-30 dedicated members who arrived earlier than the scheduled 12-noon starting time, the crowd quickly expanded as Broad Street shoppers picked up U.S. Out Of Afghanistan or Bring The Troops Home NOW! picket-cards and joined in, before going on with their Saturday activities.

Thanks to the creative influence of people who joined the picket, POP's signature rhythmic chants expanded to include references to Pakistan as well. In a brief address to those assembled, Larry Hamm had elucidated how a secret war was already sending robot drone-bombers across the border in Pakistan. To "older-heads" in the crowd this brought back memories of bombing raids on Cambodia and Laos, thirty years earlier. One Korean War veteran commented that "military plans don't get changed by the President's good intentions. The best guy may be in the White House, but the brass is supposed to take orders from their Commander-in-Chief, not the other way round…"

The New York Amsterdam News was unique among the print media in reporting on anti-war sentiment in the Black community. See Americans protest Afghanistan troop buildup for their report coverage, including POP's picketline this past Saturday.

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With POP at the Inauguration

"The honeymoon is over, there is no honeymoon; study this man's history and don't tell me you didn't know. We need to continue to speak truth to power, fight the power and remain grassroots!"

"Yes, we must hold Obama accountable, but let's remember that the new President is about what we're about, Justice."

"We're about one agenda, Justice. We have many different viewpoints among us and I respect that whether I agree or disagree. We're about unity, but we must understand and remember what government he's in charge of, what country he's leading, and we need to be wary."

While a recent CNN poll suggests that more than 66% of African Americans believe that the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for this country has been fulfilled, this "great unity" was not evident at a recent meeting of the People's Organization for Progress, a grassroots African-American community-based organization that ran seven buses to the inauguration in order to celebrate the election of Barack Hussein Obama.


The view promoted by CNN's poll is significantly different than fewer than 12 months ago. In less than a year, more than two-thirds of Black people in this country have apparently come to this conclusion. Put another way, this is like less than 13 million people uniting around a farfetched belief one day gaining more 15 million additional adherents almost overnight. What accounts for this weird conversion experience? It is hard not to conclude that this is completely based on last November's presidential election.

Last November, as the presidential election drew nearer, the People's Organization for Progress found itself in a bit of a quandary. POP is an African-American led, Black majority grassroots organization with more than a quarter-of-a-century history of struggle in Newark, NJ. POP has organized for community empowerment: for better schools, protecting healthcare, for peace in the streets, against police abuse, for reparations for the descendants of African slaves, etc. While the organization's legacy includes struggles such as major voter-registration campaigns, organizing a fuel oil cooperative, and a municipal campaign for a civilian police review board in its early days, more recently POP made history in anti-police brutality campaigns, particularly obtaining convictions of five Orange, NJ cops in the murder of Earl Faison while in custody, as well as many other instances of police abuse.

While the these campaigns defined the People's Organization for Progress in the news media as an "anti-police" organization, POP's depth is more event in the range of issues it takes up, such as "peace in the streets" (minimizing the negative impact of street gangs), multiple campaign against closing public hospitals, for reparations, and organizing as well as leading the largest anti-Iraq War coalition in the state, with more than 150 grassroots, community, religious, veterans organizations and peace group participating. In fact, building this coalition has played a role in POP expanding beyond it's original base in Newark and Essex County, N.J.

POP was in an odd position. There was massive demand to support Senator Obama's candidacy, at the same time as a significant minority of members were involved in Black activist Cynthia McKinney's militantly populist campaign. To make matters more complicated, the bylaws and constitution of the People's Organization for Progress expressly forbids endorsing candidates to elected office. In the end, POP voted in this single instance to suspend the rule against endorsements. After the election, the demand for celebration took many forms. Who can ignore the dancing in the streets, not just in Brooklyn, Raleigh-Durham and L.A., but world-wide? POP decided to run affordable buses to D.C. on Inauguration Day. Because our $40 bus tickets stood out in sharp contrast to the $80 and more everyone else was charging, we had people signing up from as far away as the Bronx to take buses out of Newark.


But POP's internal debate continues. At a recent weekly General Assembly meeting, a broad range of views continued to be heard:
"This is an African man, with a Black family. He has a wife and a mother-in-law that we know will call him out when he does wrong. Not one, not two, he has four Black women in the White House to keep him on the straight and narrow."

"As a people, we need to be elated. We've come from chattel slavery to Jim Crow, to the White House!"

"Since the beginning I've been an Obama fan!"

"I don't know how people can say these things. This is our moment! You don't here the whites criticizing their own for their shortcomings. We need to be less self-destructive…"

"I'm a teacher, and I was very interested in my students views after the inauguration; a few of them connected to 'Bush is gone,' and I understood. A few of them connected to Rev. Lowery and I found that interesting…"

In the end, from the viewpoint suggesting that any negative statements about President Obama are part of a racist plot, to those members who believe that the most limited support is evidence of having "drank the Kool-Aid", POP reflect the diversity of our movement. But clearly, "orthodox leftists" are out of touch when we believe that the grassroots enthusiasm about Obama is just another case of going for the okey-doke, of being bamboozled by "Black Faces in High Places."

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Black-Led March In NJ: We Need More Like This

This belated post is a brief report on Saturday’s demonstration in Newark, NJ. Despite the genuinely unpleasant hot and humid weather and the timing (the next to last weekend of the summer), about 1500 people turned for the rally and 1200 took part in a march down Broad Street past the Federal Building and City Hall through a major shopping area in downtown Newark.

Along with the successful demonstration at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, ME on the same day, it marked the unofficial start of the fall Iraq War protest season. And it was a very good start, with lessons I can only hope are taken up by the broader anti-war movement.

The most important thing about the People's March for Peace, Equality, Jobs & Justice, as Fire on the Mountain has emphasized repeatedly, is the fact that was called by a coalition initiated and led by forces in the Black community in New Jersey.

This had profound effects on the March, both on how it was built and on who took part. The slogans and call to the March drew clear connections between the occupation of Iraq and issues confronting the community. These were presented in an organic way, rather than, as too often happens, tacked on by organizers hoping that’ll substitute for the difficult work of building ties in oppressed nationality communities.

Two examples from among many should suffice. Both speakers and community groups at the rally pointed out that opposing the violence in Iraq should be matched by fighting against police violence right here, and especially against violence within the community. One rally participant had lost his son in the nationally covered shooting of three college students in a Newark playground earlier this month:

It's what brought out James Harvey, whose 20-year-old son, Dashon, was one of the three killed. Harvey stood off to the side in Lincoln Park as watched the speakers take turns at the podium. He wore a tired expression on his face, but said he wanted to show up.

"Anything to stop the war," Harvey said, "to stop the guns and the violence."

And the last speech before the marchers set out was delivered by Maretta Sharp, president of NOW New Jersey, who used the war and the need for unity in opposing it to talk about scapegoating and warn that African Americans must not fall into the trap of being pitted against immigrants.

As for participation, one way to look at it is to check out the coverage, overall pretty favorable, in the Newark Star-Ledger on Sunday. The article starts by talking about four year old twins brought by their father from suburban Howell Township, and repeatedly describes and quotes folks who traveled to Newark from other—and paler-- parts of the state.

But no mention is made of the largest contingent at the March, the 100+ members of the People’s Organization for Progress, hard to miss in their bright yellow t-shirts. POP has been the group which has been the driving force of the New Jersey Peace and Justice Coalition. (And they didn’t put away their “Impeach Bush” signs just because Representative John Conyers was a featured speaker.)

In fact, the March, while nowhere near as pale as these events usually are, was largely white, but the Star Ledger piece misses something very important. The white folk who came were largely experienced anti-war protesters who came by themselves or in small groups. A majority of the African Americans present were part of larger organized contingents. In addition to POP, for instance, there were good-sized crews from the Irvington NAACP branch (whose president Kathleen Witcher issued a powerful statement hailing the March the next day), from RWDSU Local 108 with their union banner, and from the Nation of Islam who turned out about 60 members (and impressed all present by appearing not to be affected in the slightest by the brutal heat despite the men’s suits and the women’s Islamic dress).

This is one key answer to the oft-raised question: How can the anti-war movement get folks who are against the war to act against the war? By working with and mobilizing groups to which people already have meaningful ties, especially groups whose members are affected by the war. We should hope that, in their summation of the March, the organizers discuss why some of groups which signed on to build the March had such strong organized turnouts and others were pretty much invisible.

One person I spoke with after Saturday asked, “How old were the marchers?” Well, I gotta say that’s something else to be worked on, but there was a world of promise in those who did come. including several members of Iraq Veterans Against the War. IVAW’s newly elected National Treasurer, Margaret Stevens, gave a speech which electrified the crowd . And I spotted a posse from Bloomfield HS, college students from the new SDS and members of the Almighty Latin Kings and Queens Nation.














Photo credit: Jon Levine

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