a queer black man is not
like asia
with lungs the size of the old union of soviets
and india lodged like a heart under ribs
despite Bahia’s longing to settle once more inside an African pelvis
(i am) not like south america
forced westward by magma
a queer black man is
from a time when the word continent could find no body on
which to be born and pronounced
no one male or female was there to record
what may have occurred
and so
our geography is not of interest
in the signing of treaties about carbon or sanctions against iran,
nor in the managing of economies that consume the future
in the age of men, agriculture, domesticated dogs, private property,
condoms, televised religion,
water bills
queer black men burn like everything else prehistoric
our love, unwieldy like a mastodon
survives under the pressure of a trillion tons of sediment
as something called crude
extracted only to power the technologies of other genders
we groan, as any planet does
when we remember how our skin was burst apart in order
to transform the earth into a map laid flat—that is to say,
into men and women
[It is difficult to describe how thrilled I am to be posting this poem. First, because it is a fine and subtle creation in its own right. Second, because it is a sneak preview of a collection of the writer's poetry and other works due to be published soon, under the titleDifficult Miracles. Best of all, by me, is the fact that Sendolo Diamanah is the newly elected general secretary of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad, the group I have been a proud member of since its founding in 1985.]
Election day is but two days away, but I feel compelled to write this. Earlier in the week, I posted a statement by Freedom Road calling for a vote for Charles Barron, Black activist and New York City Council member, as governor of NY State, and specifically warning against any vote for Democrat Andrew Cuomo, even on the Working Families Party line.
The day that flier came out, the New York Times confirmed its correctness by publishing an article entitled “Cuomo Vows Offensive Against Labor Unions.” Based on an extensive hour and a half interview with the politician, it is a grim harbinger of things to come.
The lede, the first paragraph, tells the story:
Andrew M. Cuomo will mount a presidential-style permanent political campaign to counter the well-financed labor unions he believes have bullied previous governors and lawmakers into making bad decisions. He will seek to transform the state’s weak business lobby into a more formidable ally, believing that corporate leaders in New York have virtually surrendered the field to big labor.
Go ahead, read that again and let it sink in.
The next governor of New York has vowed an ongoing frontal attack on one of the few union bulwarks left in the United States. Union membership in the US, after decades of brutal attacks by corporate power and of government hostility or indifference, has declined to 12.3% of the workforce. New York is the only state where over a quarter of all workers (barely, 25.3%) are still union members. Six states have unionization rates below 5%.
This has consequences. One of the ugliest effects of the union busting that shifted into high gear with President Ronald Reagan’s breaking of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Union in 1981 is that real wages for blue collar workers have remained stagnant or declined since the 1970s. Meanwhile, the incomes and wealth of the top 1% of the population have soared.
Contemplate for a moment the second half of that paragraph, too. He wants to make the state’s business community “a stronger ally” of his, does he? On account of Wall Street, the too-big-to-fail banks, corporate executives, developers and landlords don’t have enough political clout, I guess. Even the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision to allow unlimited secret spending on political campaigns isn’t a big enough thumb on the scales for Cuomo.
A couple of additional thoughts:
First, the main strength unions in New York State have is not, whatever Cuomo claims, their ability to put millions into a bank account and buy television ads, with the result that:
The governor’s popularity drops; the governor’s knees weaken; the governor falls to one knee, collapses, makes a deal.
New York State unions do buy ads, but their political clout is based much more on their attention to state elections and on their ability to flood Albany with informed and fired-up members when important bills are before the Legislature. Anyone who has watched buses of construction workers, teachers, or purple-clad SEIU members descend on the State Capital to reason with, shall we say, their elected officials will have to wonder--and worry about--what Cuomo’s plans to counter that might be.
Second, this has shown up the weakness of the Working Families Party as an electoral third party formed expressly to representative working class interests in New York State. NY is one of eight “fusion states” where parties can cross-endorse the candidates of other parties (usually one of the two major parties). The WFP has mainly endorsed Democrats (and run its own candidates in Democratic primaries), but has also backed Republicans and sometimes run candidates solely on the WFP line--and won.
The catch is that to maintain ballot status, WFP must garner 50,000 votes for its gubernatorial candidate every election cycle. Without this, a party must go through the arduous work of collecting tens of thousands of valid signatures on petitions—which, for instance, the Green Party has done since 2002.
This year, Cuomo--whose Republican challenger Carl Paladino is racist, sexist, reactionary, seriously dim and a sure loser--played cat and mouse with the Working Families Party for months, withholding acceptance of a promised WFP nomination he didn’t really need.
At last, with no time at all left before the ballots were to be printed, the Working Families Party was permitted to ”crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,” as Shakespeare hath it, and kiss Cuomo’s ass, accepting his whole platform, full of anti-union and pro-business planks. They, like the progressive unions which bankroll the WFP, are now working to elect a candidate who is a sworn enemy of the union movement and of the working class as a whole.
In closing, I echo the FRSO/OSCL statement. Fellow NYers, this Tuesday, please vote for Charles Barron and the Unity Party! Or, if you are so inclined, vote for Howie Hawkins and the Greens. Or skip the governor's race on the ballot. But don't stab yourself in the back with a vote for Cuomo. Read more!
[UPDATE (11/14): I have, faced by a barrage of righteous indignation, pared down the who's-been-naughty list of groups who had not responded, as far as I could ascertain, at the time this was posted. Please read the comments (click on the link at the end of this article) for further details. Rather than do a full update here, let me refer folks to the even more impressive list, with links, at the website of the Committee To Stop FBI Repression. Included as well are a variety of other types of groups including labor organizations, among them, I am pleased to say, my old local, the New York Metro Area Postal Union. ]
A few days ago, I posted a piece here at FotM reflecting on the impact that the online social networking site Facebook had on the spread of news and analysis of the recent FBI raids. In it, I called the broad, swift and relatively unified response of the left to this outrage heartening.
We have seen more practical evidence of this as events unfold. More than forty protests around the country, almost all of them at Federal Buildings, have denounced these attacks—and that’s within a week of their occurrence! This video is simply the most recent I’ve seen, from Memphis, TN, yesterday (23 plus one infant at noon.)
More, a national Committee to Stop FBI Repression, including members of a number of left, socialist, anti-war, solidarity and civil liberties groups and concerned individuals, has convened its first conference call and will be working to provide direction to the movement to protest the raids and shut down the Grand Jury.
To look closer at this relatively unified response, I’ve collected a bunch of statements from national-level socialist and anarchist organizations in the US. (Students for a Democratic Society is also included, as SDS members are among those attacked.) All the statements denounced the raids as an extremely dangerous attack and a threat to all activists which requires the broadest possible unity to resist. Another common thread was the need to inform ourselves about our legal rights and be prepared for similar FBI harassment.
Who said—and didn’t say--what
While assembling them, I noticed some areas in which differences occur which may well be significant. Some statements mentioned the FRSO which was attacked—the one which publishes Fight Back!, not the one I’m in—others did not. Similarly some mentioned Colombia and Palestine and/or the FARC and the PFLP specifically—others did not.
Finally some targeted the Obama administration by name, while others made no mention of the president. The following table includes the results, with passing mentions indicated by a lower case x and anything slightly more detailed with an upper case X.
The obvious caveats apply. The evaluation is my own, as is the selection of excerpts. Some groups may not customarily issue organizational statements, but make their analysis and calls in their press (some of these are at the bottom of the list, marked with *.) Some statements were issued very quickly, others after a couple days of reflection.
Nota Bene: The text of other statements, or links to them, are welcome and could conceivably be included in an update.
(click to see enlarged version)
Groups with some 'splainin' to do
As far as I can tell, nothing has been heard from the following national groups save the sound, as they say on the Internet, of *crickets chirping*.
Progressive Labor Party Democratic Socialists of America
Corrections or updates on this matter would be most welcome!
Excerpts from and links to organizational statements
FRSO/OSCL: Read the whole statement, it’s that good.
Solidarity: This record demonstrates important lessons. First, the U.S. government and its "intelligence" agencies are quick to strip individuals and organizations of their constitutional rights and ignore the basic rules of democracy in order to discredit and demoralize opposition from the left. Second, the most potent defense against this disruption has been the refusal to be intimidated, and the support to targeted individuals and groups provided by communities and movements. Committees of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism: We demand that the FBI cease and desist in these attempts to intimidate and divide, that the Grand Jury proceedings and subpoenas be vacated and stopped, and that the FBI return the belongings seized. We urge all Americans to repudiate this misadventure if they hold to the democratic values in our Constitution. Even if actions like these seem bizarre and aimed at relatively small groups, they must be nipped in the bud. An injury to one is an injury to all. International Socialist Organization: So it should come as no surprise that members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization are the most prominent target of the latest raids. If history is any guide, the FBI and federal prosecutors believe they can drive a wedge between socialists and the wider left, including liberals, and establish a precedent for further violations of civil liberties and political repression.
Socialist Party USA: Although the governmental repression following the attacks of September 11, 2001 did not target the left, it did serve to massively expand the security state. Today, more than 800,000 people are employed by the government to spy on, track and investigate. It is widely believed that the recent raids are the result of a "fishing expedition” by one or multiple parts of this expanded repressive apparatus. Taken together with the continued undercover governmental disruptions of large-scale protests such as the G20 demonstration in Pittsburgh, these raids represent the increasing disruption of civil liberties.
Freedom Socialist Party/Radical Women: There are various conjectures being put forth as to why the Obama administration is staging these raids now: to appear tough on terrorism before the Congressional elections; to chill activists before the antiwar demonstrations on October 9-16; or to take attention away from last week’s Justice Department admission that the FBI used false claims to mount “counterterror” investigations as a cover for spying and infiltration of activist groups across the country.
Socialist Alternative: The timing of the FBI raids and grand jury investigation was almost certainly designed to coincide with Obama’s meeting with new Colombian president Juan Manual Santos on Friday, which was publicly billed to include discussion on continued U.S. assistance in the war against FARC. The day before, the Colombian military gained U.S. headlines for their assassination of a prominent FARC leader. The assassination and FBI raids appear intentionally coordinated to provide a useful media back-drop for the Obama-Santos meeting, underlining the cynical and politically motivated character of this state repression. Hopefully these events will dispel any lingering illusions that Obama is a friend of the antiwar movement!
First Of May Anarchist Alliance: The dedicated organizing in defense of the RNC 8 in Minnesota is a good example that can be built upon. We should begin discussing what it would take to unite all those (excluding the fascists and white supremacists) that have faced state repression into some common action. From the Muslim community, to the targets of the “Green Scare”, to the spied upon anti war activists in Iowa, to those activists hit by these most recent raids – we need to push back together.
Bring The Ruckus: The state is an enemy of peoples' struggles for justice and freedom. These latest attacks on US activists demonstrate that we cannot depend on, or cooperate with, the state in our organizing. We encourage all activists and organizers to take their safety and security seriously and to in no way cooperate with law enforcement or grand juries as they go about their business of trying to destroy our movements.
Students for a Democratic Society: The FBI are apparently looking for evidence linking activists to "material support of terrorism" specifically liberation struggles in Colombia and Palestine. In addition to SDSers being harassed in Minneapolis, two SDSers in Milwaukee were also contacted by the FBI about their anti-war activism.
Organization for a Free Society: While resistance, revolutionary, and national liberation movements represent the "threat of the good example" abroad, likewise the U.S. government will not stand for the "threat of the good example" within its borders. They try to divide us because they know what each of us must remind ourselves: that we be many and they be few! Together our love is more powerful than any bomb, more powerful than any F.B.I. raid. They cannot stop us. But to be unstoppable, together we must reinvent the art of politics in the United States.
Fight Back! (published by FRSO [Fight Back!]] This suppression of democratic rights is aimed towards those who dedicate much of their time and energy to supporting the struggles of the Palestinian and Colombian peoples against U.S. funded occupation and war. The activists are involved with well-known anti-war groups including many of the leaders of the huge protest against the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN in September 2008. The FBI agents emphasized that the grand jury was going to investigate the activists for possible terrorism charges. This is a U.S. government attempt to silence those who support resistance to oppression in the Middle East and Latin America.
ANSWER statement (published at PSLweb.org, website of Party of Socialism & Liberation): The aim of the FBI raids is clearly the suppression of free speech and dissent. The government wants all activists to be afraid to speak out. And the Obama administration’s Justice Department is now leading the charge. But we cannot allow the government to stamp out the right of people to advocate for political beliefs that do not align with the aims of the Pentagon war machine. We cannot allow tem to continue to erode our civil rights and civil liberties.
Workers World (published by Workers World Party): On taking office President Obama made few changes in the Bush Justice Department, replacing only a few of the top personnel and keeping much of the racist, right-wing apparatus intact… Under the cover provided by Attorney General Eric Holder, this repressive agency has had an ever-freer hand, for example, to go after Black elected officials with all manner of spurious charges of corruption. Preventive detention and outrageous entrapment and frame-ups of Muslims have accelerated along with the continued campaign to execute Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Revolution (published by the Revolutionary Communist Party USA): This is a very sinister move by the government, one that should alarm and concern anyone who thinks the government should not be allowed to trample on people's rights, and who thinks it is important that there be opposition, and the freedom to oppose, what the government is doing here and around the world. This is a major escalation against the anti-war movements in particular.
Again, please leave any comments, additions and corrections in the comments section here.
And much respect to the website of the Kasama Project, where I found some of these. They've been posting and especially reposting a lot about the raids and their aftermath.
Read more!
The outrageous FBI raids on international solidarity and anti-war activists in the Mid-West has triggered a heartening outpouring of solidarity on the left. It also demonstrated that we are in a new stage in the development of the ever-changing Internet. This was the first major attack by the FBI in the Facebook Era, when social networking reportedly comprises almost a quarter of every hour spent on the Internet, more than games or email or any other single use.
I’ll start with my own involvement. By a fluke I was not only online but on Facebook last Friday morning, September 24. I saw a status update posted five minutes before by Stef Yorek, a friend and a former comrade in FRSO/OSCL. It read:
The FBI is executing a search warrant on our house right now. The claim to be looking for evidence of material support for so-called Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The FARC and PFLP are mentioned by name. This is taking place in multiple cities across the country. I have been served with a warrant to appear before a Grand Jury. It's an outrageous fishing expedition.
I immediately posted it as my status (out of consideration to those who are not familiar with Facebook's structure, terms of art there are here italicized) and then, at the suggestion of Kay Kersplebdeb, posted it here on Fire on the Mountain and linked to it on my Facebook profile so that others there could share it more readily. In the first ninety minutes, at least six other people I know of shared the link and there were well over 200 visitors to this site.
Others were, I am certain, spreading the word as well. Thus, thousands of people around the country were alerted to the attack even as FBI agents were still in the activists’ houses, stealing their files and computers!
The story continued to dominate Facebook for the next few days, or at least the admittedly politicized corner of it where my friend list is based. In the course of tracking it, I noticed a few things I want to summarize here.
First, I saw the process of posts, reposts of the first articles from the mainstream media, and comments around the attack very quickly jell into a political consensus, a line which could be used to understand and organize around the raids. The attack was seen and summarized as aimed at solidarity activists rather than members of a particular organization. It was seen as a deliberate and unjustified move by the government (and in most people’s view the Obama administration) against the left and the anti-war movement.
The raids were seen as using the excuse of “fighting terrorism” to demonize activists and undercut basic Constitutional rights, and as posing a threat to anyone fighting this government’s foreign policy now or in the future.
As it shifted into the blogosphere--the previous center of gravity in the development of the Internet--this was reflected in almost all the pieces I read. (One site did initially choose to spotlight the presence of open members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization [Fight Back] among those targeted, a mistake on two counts, I would argue. Factually, by no means all of those active in the solidarity groups named in the warrants are members of any group or even socialists. Politically, unless those attacked themselves decide to emphasize organizational matters, doing so tends to make it easier for the state and the media to slander and isolate them.)
As the activists targeted in the warrants, raids and subpoenas regained their footing, they produced a statement and a couple of YouTube videos like this that underscored the line arrived at on Facebook and in the blogosphere.
And in the final stage, this consensus was reflected in the commendable spate of statements produced by socialist, anti-war and progressive organizations, much faster than they might have been even a few years ago.
Second, I saw a very disparate group of individuals--liberals, progressives and revolutionaries, even some libertarians--move to inoculate themselves and their milieu against further attacks. Within the first hour, people were widely posting and linking the Center for Constitutional Rights pamphlet and then the ACLU's slightly shorter equivalent. Folks got the message:
If the FBI knocks: 1) Clam Up. 2) Lawyer Up.
Over the ensuing hours and days this was continued but also deepened and given nuance by further posts and comments. On the nitty-gritty end of the spectrum, at least one friend pointed out that anyone expecting to hear a Miranda warning these days has been watching too many cops shows. Far above street level, others pointed out the menacing effects of the Supreme Court decision only a few months ago in Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project, which rules that speech alone can constitute “material aid” to groups on the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list.
Third, this spontaneously collective process, while it produced an admirable consensus response and trained thousands in the appropriate stance for dealing with possible contact with the Feds, did not produce a program of struggle around the raids. At least it didn’t do so before those hit by the raids put out a call (or perhaps endorsed some existing ones—I’m not sure of the timeline) for folks to bombard Attorney General Holder’s office with phone calls and emails and to hold local demonstrations at FBI offices, Federal Buildings or similar targets. So far more than 30 protests have been held or called and I’ve spoken to at least three friends who went to one based directly on an announcement they read on Facebook.
Now, a couple quick words on the downside of the Facebook-centric rapid response that I’m general citing as a good thing here. For one thing it’s like trying to drink from a firehose if you have many friends or ones who post frequently. It’s decentered so there’s no way of ensuring that there is a common body of knowledge or practice--for instance, I learned in the last day of three demonstrations which were not on the best maintained list, that of the International Action Center--in Memphis, San Diego and Portland, OR. It has a wicked short shelf life--in the last half hour I have seen only six raid-related posts, while on Sunday that would have been dozens. The space for political discussion and education is limited--almost nothing on Facebook or in the blogosphere has dealt at all with the corrupt and brutal government of Colombia and the reasons the FTO-listed Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionaria de Colombia (FARC) have waged a decades long guerrilla war to smash the rule of the oligarchy.
Finally, a caution, which should be obvious. I am, of necessity, like Mao Zedong’s frog in the well here:
A frog in a well says, "The sky is no bigger than the mouth of the well." That is untrue, for the sky is not just the size of the mouth of the well.
For one thing I don’t use Twitter, and I’m sure a lot of this spread there as well. I hope that folks who have made it this far will chip in observations and thoughts based on what the sky looked like from the bottom of your particular well…Read more!
The situation in Iran has largely fallen out of popular consciousness as the mediagenic street demonstrations have been repressed and arrests of activists have increased. But the political situation there continues to be extremely volatile and, while things do not look good for the forces fighting the regime right now, neither the popular upsurge been decisively crushed.
The best overall summation I know of, at least for progressives in the US, is the "Statement on Iran" released last week by FRSO/OSCL. You can read it here and I highly recommend that you do. I was gratified when a Iranian friend I forwarded it to, a woman who had been active in Marxist-Leninist groups there during the ‘70s and who remains an inveterate revolutionary, sent me the following note:
Your article has covered the main issues and is quite informative. For us, as I am sure you know, the details are important. I guess we are resigned to the fact that the general picture is pretty depressing and try to find a slight ray of hope to cling to. For example, after 30 years, Rafsanjani's daughter and Mosavi's wife are advocating voluntary hejab (Islamic Dress Code) and not forced hejab. It took them three decades to realize that they cannot force women to accept Islamic hejab.
Perhaps, they might decide to ease some restriction for the young as well, however, I do not have that much hope for the change in the system. Unfortunately, the workers strike did not materialized and there is no leadership for this spontaneous movement. At this point the fight is between the clergy and the secular masses who protested by the millions are not organized. There is an obvious lack of political party to lead the movement.
Now everybody is waiting to see if there would be a mass demonstration next week. (18th of Tir).
When the Freedom Road statement addressed tasks for folks in the US, the first thing it called for was our attention.
We have to keep informed. This may require a bit more work than it has in the past. There has never been a political upsurge of this scope in which the new media has been so central, whether organizing on the ground in Iran or spreading the word in the rest of the world.
In that spirit I offer three recent developments for FotM readers to consider. But first let me recommend that folks who want to follow this should, at minimum, visit the Iran liveblogging section maintained by Nico Pitney inside the Huffington Post empire. It contains first hand reports from Iran and aggregates the best and most timely reportage on developments there. It is updated every day, in real time.
So what is up in Iran today?
First, the Revolutionary Guard has moved even closer to the center of power in Iran. With the Army standing to the side and local police shunted to the side, Revolutionary Guard leaders announced to the press on Sunday that it has been “assigned the task of controlling the situation, [it] took the initiative to quell a spiraling unrest.” Guard General Yadollah Javani declared at the press conference:
Today, no one is impartial. There are two currents -- those who defend and support the revolution and the establishment, and those who are trying to topple it.
Second, the internal differences within the clerical establishment have not abated. The repression or street demonstrations and arrests of activists, and the lack of clear leadership to the mass struggle have made this the main battlefield of the moment. Threats, declarations that dissent is treason and the like have not significantly cowed the reform mullahs who wish to diminish the role of the clergy in the state. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, and Mehdi Karroubi, announced they will continue to protest the election they regard as stolen. The day after the National Guard announced “We in charge here,” the party headed by senior cleric, political powerhouse and plutocrat Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani spoke out for the first time since the voting. Its statement declared
We declare that the result is unacceptable due to the unhealthy voting process, massive electoral fraud and the siding of the majority of the Guardian Council with a specific candidate.
Third, the millions who demonstrated, calling for democracy and chanting “Death to the Dictator” have not been crushed—the nightly rooftop chanting of “Allah-u-Akbar” is still going on. 18 Tir, referred to in the letter above, is Thursday, July 9 by our calendar is the 10th anniversary of the last major eruption of protest in Iran, when students protesting the suppression of a popular newspaper were attacked in their dormitory rooms by the police and thrown from the windows in Tehron and Tabriz. Using the excuse of a massive sandstorm, the government has closed all schools and government buildings until after Thursday. SMS transmissions throughout the country are down, without explanation. They clearly fear a revived protest movement. Read more!
It started on teh Intertubes. The social networking space called Facebook, or at least the small self-created corner of it where I rattle around, was awash in May Day greetings, forwardings and comments. I clicked the li’l thumbs-up button to register my approval of every one that came my way. Literally dozens of my Facebook friends chipped in on the theme.
Some included snatches of poetry, verses to The Internationale, embedded YouTube videos or links to articles on the holiday, like this and others at Kasama and some Rowland Keshena Robinson posted at By Any Means Necessary.
Meanwhile, on Leftist Trainspotters, an oddball internet group for people whose hobby is following left organizations around the world (especially small and peculiar ones), the estimable David Walters, of the Marxist Internet Archives, encouraged everyone to report in on their local International Workers Day activities.
Thus prodded, I headed out to check out two rival May Day rallies called in downtown Manhattan yesterday afternoon. I can’t claim that it was altogether a heartening or uplifting trip.
Two Rallies
The first rally, at Union Square, was sponsored by the May 1st Coalition, an outfit in which—how shall I put this delicately?—members of the Workers World Party seemed to play quite the central role. The theme was very much about immigration—the largest visible contingent was day laborers from NJ, Los Jornaleros de Freehold and a big sign at the front read:
Dear President Obama, 100 Days have passed. We need fair and humane immigration reform now. [signed] May 1 Coalition
There were maybe 200 people there at 2:00, two hours into the event, spread across a largish plaza. At least four self-styled socialist groups had tables and were attempting to distribute their press to each other’s cadres. A friend reports that the crowd grew somewhat larger and developed a clear immigrant majority by the time a short late afternoon march took place in the rain.
The second rally was at the same time, maybe seven or eight blocks to the north at Madison Square. With around 600 people present when I was there, it was overwhelmingly made up of immigrant workers, mainly Latina/o, mostly from non-union, CBO-type organizations, the largest contingents those of Make the Road by Walking and La Union.
There were a score of staffers and members of SEIU Local 32 BJ, some teachers and other public sector workers, and I spotted Ed Ott from the NYC Central Labor Council. To be fair, early afternoon on a Friday isn’t the easiest time to draw out the employed. A clump of strikers from the nearly seven months old picket line at the Stella D’Oro Bakery were also there. Not much identifiably socialist presence.
All of this has prompted a few thoughts on where May Day is at today and how we got here.
The Revival of May Day
We are in the second distinct stage in the revival of May Day. May Day was once the central holiday of working class revolutionaries in this country, before it was broken by McCarthyism and the subsequent all-but-total collapse of the Communist Party during the ‘50s and ‘60s.
The first stage came in the 1970s, and drew on the huge layers of advanced fighters thrown forward by the decade of upheaval we call The Sixties. The main organized forms this revival first took were marches and rallies sponsored by left groups, especially those of the New Communist Movement. These tended to be very militant and Red in flavor, and were almost invariably held by a single organization and its supporters. With the collapse of the NCM by the early ‘80s it seemed likely that May Day would vanish again.
But veterans of those organizations and other radical and labor activists kept it alive. In some places May Day became an annual event observed with rallies and concerts, if not parades. The radical press invariably carried articles on the history. In a few areas, unions and other people’s organizations which had come under left leadership since the start of this first stage started taking part in or holding May 1 observances. The Revival Leaps Ahead
The second stage in the revival of May Day came with the great levantamiento that shook this country so profoundly during the Spring of 2006, when millions of immigrant workers struck to protest anti-immigrant attacks and demand justice. May 1, 2006, was the largest single day of protest during the whole upsurge.
As the Freedom Road/El Camino De La Libertad statement this May Day correctly highlighted, the result is that the essential character of May Day is now that of an immigrant holiday. More particularly, it is an immigrant workers' holiday. This is hardly surprising. Immigrants to the US, especially the undocumented ones, are workers, and they know that they are workers. Further, they come from countries (pretty much anyplace else in the world) where May Day is the working class holiday, whether the tame equivalent of our Labor Day or the occasion for launching or escalating campaigns against the employers and the government.
At the same time, the native-born base for May Day has grown as well. Its history as a proletarian holiday, a socialist holiday, a holiday born in the class struggle right here in the US, has been spotlighted by the likes of Howard Zinn—and by the thousands of teachers and professors who have drawn on that understanding in their work with young people over the last 30-plus years.
New Roots As Change Unfolds
This renewed revival has left May Day more deeply rooted than it has been in well over half a century. I don’t want to get ahead of myself here. It’s still on the radar of a very small section of the population in this country. On the other hand, it is no longer the property of what Marta Harnecker calls the “party left,” but is more broadly recognized and embraced as an intrinsic part of radical culture in the US.
And, by me, that’s a very hopeful thing at a time when, as a Rasmussen poll recently reported:
Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.
This pro-socialist tide (strongest among the young, incidentally) has little to do with anything we’ve done and everything with the palpable failures of capitalism and with the yahoos who are out there denouncing anything faintly progressive or egalitarian as “socialism.”
May Day in many ways embodies our broad vision and our hopes for humanity and can surely be one door that the folks polled by Rasmussen walk through toward revolutionary socialism.
[The following is a newly published open letter by some of the younger members of Freedom Road which is getting a fair amount of circulation. The authors of this blog encourage you to read the statement, and if you have anything to say in response, please visit the main site for the statement and join in the discussion.]
A Struggle Paper. That's what our elders in the movement would have called what you are about to read. But not a lot of young folks use the words "Struggle Paper," so consider this a love letter. It's a poignant prod at the sectarians and a come hither nod at the independents. It's a potluck discussion and a midnight session, and if we could play something hot in the background while you read this, we would. It's a challenge, because we love you, to think about what it's going to take to actually start building a revolutionary movement in the belly of the baddest beast this Earth has seen. We've got some thoughts about ORGANIZATION, and we want to know what y'all think.
First Things First, Who We Are:
For the sake of transparency, we are young leaders in Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad, a revolutionary organization with members throughout the United States.
But more importantly, we are you…the Young and Left.
We claim ancestors and homelands from all over the globe, genders from across the spectrum, and, well, let's just say our sexual identities are diverse and open for suggestions. Some of us grew up poor and know what it means to struggle; others never knew hunger but have a bad taste in our mouths from all the inhumanity of this system. We're from the cities, the suburbs, and the country; from the cold and rainy to the hot and sunny.
We are young and Left and frustrated just like y'all. We work long hours in grassroots organizations working to end imperialism, war, and gentrification; fighting to abolish the prison industrial complex; building power for workers and immigrants; and creating a world free from sexual violence. But big wins are few and far between.
We are busting our tails building workers' movements, but we're burnt out by traditional union practices. We are in grassroots community struggles, in intense local fights, but feel disconnected from the broader movement because the day-to-day is just so consuming. Some of us organize for exciting non-profits and community organizations, but we know the revolution will not be funded. We are waiting tables, cleaning rooms, watching kids, and making stuff that somebody else is going to get rich off of, and having a hard time trying to win our co-workers over to fight against our bosses. We're studying and teaching about really important stuff, but feel disconnected from the movements that feed us.
We are young and Left and have babies to feed, partners and family members to support, loans to pay off, and these gas, food, and rent prices are killing us. We're not going to "grow out of this" and do something "more responsible" than trying to change the world. We know that there's an island of trash twice the size of Texas that's floating in the Pacific Ocean, and wonder when, how, and how hard the ecological crisis is going to come down on us, our children, and the generations that will follow. We love Hip-Hop, punk rock, feminism, YouTube, and some of us even go to churches, temples, mosques, and quiet parks on peaceful mornings.
We work and live here in the U.S. most of the time, but know that we are part of an international movement that is facing many of the same struggles.
We all got here differently, but we share one conclusion: this system we're in cannot be reformed…it's got to go.
Our Generation, Our Dilemma
This is a scary new world we're in. The economic and political conditions around the world, as well as the state of people's movements, are quite different than those that our elders faced. The ideas that we're exchanging are constantly shifting; and the future looks a lot different from here than it did in the 60s, 70s, or 80s. Capitalism is shooting more steroids than the New York Yankees, and, despite inspiring and critical pockets of resistance to the Washington Consensus, neoliberalism is a force unlike any that people have ever faced.
We're standing on the shoulders of our elders, and they continue to push and support us, but it's time for us to recognize the unique position we find ourselves in. Chief among these differences facing our generation of the Left in the U.S. is:
There is no Left in the U.S.
Well, that's not entirely true. There are lots of little Lefts. There are collectives here, study groups there; small Left organizations scattered about; pockets of revolutionaries working in unions, community organizations, non-profits, and schools. We have much more in common politically than we differ on, but we don't have a consistent venue for sharing, for strategizing, or working on projects together.
Historically, that's been the purpose of Left organization in the U.S. and across the globe: to pool the collective insights and resources of revolutionaries and build a fighting force. Identify and support new leadership from people's movements. Study the problems, envision long-term solutions, and create a program to organize for the changes we need. In these organizations, everyone doesn't have to be everything; cultural workers stand side by side with organizers and people who are talented administrators as everyone works to fill in each other's gaps. Support and love each other. Coordinate and amplify. By creating a venue where revolutionaries can connect across diverse movements and geographies, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Revolutionary Voltron.
But our generation is scared of many types of organizations, and rightfully so. We've heard the horror stories from our older comrades. A lot of these organizations marginalized people of color and claimed that feminism and queer liberation were separate from, and should be subordinated to, the class struggle. Brutal criticism/self-criticism and crippling struggles over positions and power. They've pushed folks aside, and broken a lot of hearts: there's a lot of healing to do.
Plenty of times, they've mimicked the worst of the dominant system and tragically eaten themselves up in orgies of hierarchy, competition, isolation, and violence. All centralism, no democracy. The state has exploited these weaknesses as they've wrought their deadly havoc.
Which Way is Left?
But we have to differentiate between babies and bathwater. After all, as ugly as these movement organizations got at times, this is the generation that spawned the Black Power, Chican@, Gay Liberation, and Women's movements, among others. And we're standing on their shoulders. Avoiding the lessons of a sometimes painful past doesn't do these histories any justice. We're supposed to learn from the mistakes and move forward, armed with knowledge, to generate new solutions. If the conclusion that we draw from these stories is avoidance, we're missing the picture.
The reality is: we need to be more connected. We need to be in regular dialogue about what's going on in the world and how we can change it. We need to be sharing lessons and teaching one another. We need more strategy, more summing up and sharing, and more collective action.
And now more than ever, as this period is ripe with contradictions for our political picking. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the neoliberal transformation of New Orleans, the whole Gulf Coast, and every major city in the U.S.; the attacks on immigrants; mass incarceration and criminalization of African-Americans and other people of color; looming economic crisis and a price pinch that is killing all of us; climate change and ecological catastrophe: each of these issues could catalyze major moves. And they are. There are surges here, breakthroughs there-like the Social Forum and growing projects like Right to the City. Then there's the Obama campaign and what it may or may not represent. But what is out there to connect all of us in a sustainable movement? Where can collective analysis and strategy come from? There is no place to regularly debate and make decisions together. How do we make sure that we're headed in the same direction?
The loose networks that we have right now just don't facilitate that process. They are good for periodic bursts, but then recede as we go back to the daily grind of our local struggles. We need a mechanism to connect our fights and share analysis about what is working and what isn't. We must use our limited resources and abundant technology to shrink the distances between East and West, North and South.
In other words, we need organization.
Without it, our vision will remain just that. Organization is key to making our vision a reality. There certainly are other components, but they are hard to develop AND sustain without organization and a means of bringing us together for collective action and struggle. We need theory, a program to match it, and the commitment and numbers to make it happen.
Whether it's Marx or Marcos; Ella Baker or Anne Braden; Malcolm, Mao, or Che: the people who have influenced us have always stressed the need for oppressed people and freedom fighters to have organizations. Our local struggles, social movement organizations, unions, and non-profits are not enough. If we don't start connecting the bigger dots, and connecting with each other, we're going to keep on struggling in vain. We work too hard to keep doing this. There's too much at stake.
So let's take all of our mistrust for Left organizations, combine it with an ambitious hope for collective liberation, and talk about this together. Let's talk about what we share and how we can work together. Let's come up with 20-year dreams, 10-year plans, 5-year goals, and 1-year strategies. Let's patiently rebuild what we're all afraid of, but we all know is irreplaceable: organization.
We're proposing any and all of the following five steps as a place to start. Try something out, and hit us back so that we can really start to make this thing move. Together.
1. Study. All over the world, people have been struggling with this question for generations. What was wrong with the Soviet approach? What structures did the South Africans have? What happened in China, when millions all over the world had been inspired by their revolution? What about the Venezuelans? Palestinians? Cubans? Zapatistas? What's working and what isn't? What about the history of the Left here? Get together with folks that you believe in and do some research.
2. Make spaces at regional/national/international gatherings for conversations about organization. How do we stay connected with each other and move towards our goals collectively even if we're spread out in social movement organizations, community organizations, unions, schools, non-profits, and revolutionary organizations? What kinds of formations can help us coordinate and amplify our local and issue-based work into a coherent, unified, approach towards total liberation? Many of you attended the "Which Way is Left" and "Another Politics is Possible" workshops at the US Social Forum or elsewhere to have these very conversations. Continue these conversations in your home towns. Then get together nationally just to generate vision and strategy.
3. Build a common project or campaign with folks who are in social movement organizations, community organizations, unions, schools, and revolutionary organizations. Base the project on local investigation of issues that folks can develop and work on together. We need more base-building, more mass movement. That's how we create space for people to change their own realities. Revolutionaries, together, have a big role to play here. Doing this kind of work with those that we haven't before will help to build trust and lasting political relationships that can take us to a higher-level of struggle.
4. Join an existing Left collective, organization, or network. We might recommend one if y'all asked (www.freedomroad.org, in case you're interested). Find a group that has good ideas and good work on the ground, and get your feet wet. Are they organizing, or just talking? Do you respect the people involved? Is there room for change? Bring other organizers and activists with you and push these organizations to be better. Hell, join them, transform them, and change their directions. Utilize the resources and networks that exist to create the structures we're going to need.
5. Start a new collective, organization, or network. But be careful, one of the failings of the previous Lefts is that they were too fractured, too disconnected, too many. If you're starting something new, think about why. Do you need to build a new house, or can you find one that is structurally sound, move in, and make the changes that need to be made? If you have to build something new, how will you connect with allied organizations? Have this in mind before you begin.
As young members of Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad, we believe that organization is absolutely necessary if we're going to make these changes. We know that this is going to have to take new forms, and a variety of forms, but it has to happen soon. Think this over and get back to us. We've got some work to do together.
Peace and struggle,
Kim Diehl, Michelle Foy, Bryan Proffitt, and Claire TranRead more!
[I had intended this blog post to be a short introduction to a video from New Orleans, offered here as a reminder for you FotM readers of what we are losing down the memory hole. As I wrote, it expanded and grew angrier, and became, I hope, a reminder that, well, reminders aren't enough. So I want to encourage everyone reading this, in the strongest possible terms, to check out the article "Join the Fight on the Second Anniversary of Katrina" posted at the website of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization / Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad. It focuses not on lessons, but on the practical tasks Katrina and its aftermath put before the Left today.]
Today, only two lousy years later, it takes an actual mental effort to recall what a massive impact the devastation and death in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast had--or seemed to have--on the consciousness and the consciences of the people of this country.
People from coast to coast were stunned, and mobilized themselves to help. Comparisons with the 9/11 attacks were commonplace. Even that little toad George W. Bush had to speak about poverty and the legacy of racism! The cover of America the Beautiful, the City on the Hill, was not merely twitched back but torn right off.
In those horrifying days, some of us lamented the inability of the weak, divided Left in this country to respond with program beyond issuing fliers that pointed out the fairly obvious workings of racism and capitalism in the catastrophe. We hoped against hope that the shock was so great that many white folks would not drift quietly back into the fog of privilege.
We all know how things turned out.
Katrina did serve as a wakeup call, a kind of national-scale DWB (Driving While Black) incident for some Black professionals and youth who had been lured by the system's okey-doke. But the ability of the Black nation and of Black elected officials and their allies to deal with the disaster, let alone use it as springboard to advance the struggle, was just not there.
The Left, eager to criticize the criminal ineptitude and conscious racist neglect displayed by the Bush administration, did not cover itself with glory in terms of practical organizing. After the waters receded, the bodies were picked up and the teevee cameras had moved on, the white blindspot of too many in this country kept them from seeing what has been going on since. The ethnic cleansing of NOLA. The warehousing of many of the displaced in toxic "refugee camps." The failure to come to grips with the poverty, the racism, the environmental causes, the governmental neglect--everything we all saw in that uncovered moment.
Sure, two weeks ago we saw broadcasts and articles and photo ops on the 2nd anniversary, but I was struck by how much the sense that Katrina was a moment of historic change has eroded. In two lousy years. Contrast that with the bright line ---that was then, this is now--drawn between the world before 9/11 and the present day. You'll get plenty more of that as the anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks engulfs us (and is trotted out by the administration to justify continuing the unjust and unjustifiable occupation of Iraq).
Apologies. I hadn't planned to post a rant, just a short introduction to a video, by Sess 4-5 (featuring L.O.G.), a NOLA native who uses images not of the flooding but of the subsequent struggle, in his conscious rap "The Black Man." (The project setting and collective spirit are reminiscent of the video by Glaswegian hiphoppers Steg G and the Freestyle Master that I blogged here in May.)
Fire on the Mountain is most pleased to see that the Freedom Road Socialist Organization / Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad has posted the Official Comrade Valentine's Day slogans for 2007. (This fine tradition has been augmented this year with some reflections on Loving In The Movement, by Claire Tran, a young FRSO/OSCL leader.)
Here, for those too lazy to click the link, are this year's slogans (but if you go to th' Road's web page you get to see the Official Comrade Valentine's Day logo, too).
Comrade Valentine's Day Slogans, 2007
Progressive And Revolutionary People Everywhere,
1. Resolutely Uphold The Militant Bolshevik Spirit And Revolutionary Romanticism Embodied In Comrade Valentine!
2. Decisively Smash Retrograde And Joyless Ultra-Left Lines Which Disparage Proletarian Love And Desire!!
3. Warmly Celebrate the 20th Anniversary Of ACT-UP, A Militant Organization Which Attacked The Bourgeois State And Big Capital On Behalf Of LGBTQ People And All AIDS-Affected Oppressed Communities Worldwide In 1987 And Has Remained On The Offensive For Two Decades!!!
UPDATE:
FRSO/OSCL has added a Spanish language translation of this.
A Los/Las Progresistas Y Pueblos Revolucionarios En Todo El Mundo,
1. ¡Mantengamos El Espíritu Militante Bolshevique Y Romanticismo Revolucionario Incorporado En Camarada Valentin@!
2. ¡Derrotar Las Lineas No-Felizes Ultra-Izquierda Y Atrasadas Que Desbaratan El Amor Proletario Y El Deseo!
3. ¡Celebremos El 20 Aniversario De ACT-UP, La Organización Que Atacó El Estado Burgues Y El Gran Capital Por Parte De Gente LGBTQ Y Todas Comunidades Oprimidas Del Mundo Afectadas Por El SIDA En 1987 Y Que Se Ha Quedado En La Ofensiva Por Dos Décadas!
