Early Response to Sean Bell Verdict

People’s Justice had called for a protest in front of the Queens District Attorney's office at 5:30 p.m. in the event of an acquittal for the police officers who killed Sean Bell. FYI, People’s Justice is an impressive network of organizations and projects led mostly by under-40 people of color, like Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Audre Lorde Project, Immigrant Justice Solidarity Project. Though there had been an angry gathering in front of the Court House right when the verdict was announced, this was the first planned response for which a broad call had been issued.

On first view, the scene was a little disheartening: crowd of a few hundred, bad sound system, not much focus, and the usual suspects--the organizing groups and SDS and some other young people, plus the hard left and too many middle-aged people who looked familiar to me. The grassy knoll near the court offices obviously didn’t get a lot of community foot traffic or passers by. And despite the incredible rage evident at many workplaces that day, the remote location (35 minutes from midtown by train, much more from Harlem, Brooklyn or the Bronx) and the end-of-work week timing had clearly limited the turn-out.

As the sound improved, it was possible to hear Sean Bell’s step-brother, I believe the only family member who spoke, yelling “F…the police,” a chant picked up by some of the crowd. Overall the tone was angry, militant, purposeful, determined to respect the family’s call for non-violence but determined also to make the system pay.

Things picked up with the call to march. Gathering together and moving we were louder and had more momentum, though I wasn’t the only one not clear about our destination—which turned out to be the Club Kahlua, where the shooting happened. The police didn’t try to stop us from taking Queens Boulevard and they clearly had been ordered to be cool, with many community officers present.

After almost a mile, we turned onto Jamaica Avenue, a much busier street with stores and pedestrians doing errands. Here people started to join the march and the chanting grew louder. We reached a thunderous level with the help of the echo effect under the Archer Avenue subway and Long Island Railroad Station, stopping for a couple of minutes and chanting “Sean Bell, Sean Bell." Turning onto the street where the shooting happened, we were joined by more local residents. One woman got in her car and hit the horn to amp up our volume on the chants, others seemed to bring more noise-makers out of their houses. Organizers led a count to 50 shots, a moment of silence, and asked for a pledge to keep struggling against police brutality and for people’s power.

At this point, most elders left while some youngbloods marched around the neighborhood and into the projects. Walking back, we wound up next to an African-American young woman in her early teens, holding her little brother by the hand. She was talking very excitedly into her cell phone: “See, I told you there was gonna be a protest! So when I heard the people yelling, we came out and marched and I taped the whole thing…”

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Henry Glover, Musical Trailblazer

The mildly fabulous DJ D played another Ragged But Right Show set at Brooklysn own Teddy's Bar & Grill Thursday night. This one featured an hour and a half tribute to an unsung pioneer in pop music, Henry Glover. The following sheet was handed to Tedddy's patrons.

Tonight from around 9:30 to 11:00, DJ D will be spinning a tribute to a remarkable man, Henry Glover. Born Black in 1921 in Hot Springs, AK, he broke out of the Jim Crow South with his trumpet playing, winning a seat as a young man in touring dance bands. In 1945, Syd Nathan, Jewish owner of King Records in Cincinnati, hired Glover out of Lucky Millinder’s Orchestra to scout talent and material, to beef up King’s presence in the “race records” market.

Glover did that and much more, writing songs and arrangements, producing sessions and running King’s NY office. He became the first high Black executive with a white-owned record company. But another Henry Glover “first” suggests the breadth of his accomplishments. He was the first Black producer to be elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame. A fan of hillbilly music from his boyhood, he wrote and produced for country stars on King’s roster like Cowboy Copas and Hackshaw Hawkins.

Glover’s influence on the birth of rock and roll was enormous. Perhaps most significantly, he helped take a simple Charlie Parker riff from “Now’s the Time” and turn it into “The Hucklebuck,” an insanely catchy dance tune that swept the Black community (and leaked over into the “popular”—i.e. white--market on its own). Then he took the same tune, slowed it down, lost half the riff, and morphed it into “Blues Stay Away From Me,” a massive country hit for the Delmore Brothers and dozens of others, itself to be covered by Black artists like B.B. King. All before 1950. (Listen for the Delmore Brothers cut; King Curtis’s “Hucklebuck” will be up next—you can’t miss the connection.)

But enough musicology—just enjoy Glover-connected smashes like “Let The Little Girl Dance,” “Easier Said Than Done,” “Peppermint Twist,” and “Drown In My Own Tears.” Then order another round, and drink to his memory—Henry Glover died in Saint Albans, 17 years ago this month.

And here's what it's all about. There are a number of good "Hucklebuck' versions on YouTube, and some real stinkers, but here's a nice short instrumental version by some Brits called "Blast Off Rockabilly."



I was likewise unable to find any '40s or '50s videos of "Blues Stay Away From Me," but this live collaboration between the Judds and Carl Perkins demonstrates nicely why the tune has become an evergreen.



And finally, no actual video at all, but a YouTube version of the great #1 by The Essex, "Easier Said Than Done."

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'Bout That Food Crisis

Some kind of quantity changing into quality point has been reached--suddenly the newspapers are full of "in-depth" reports on the global food crisis, a crisis that seems to have sprung up as suddenly as the credit crisis did a few months ago. I've been tracking this for a while and decided to think on the keyboard instead of out loud. I think it is important to try and understand this while it is a New Thing, before it becomes more background noise in world politics and our daily lives.

1. Production shortages and inflation are two major factors in the crisis.

What's causing the shortages?

Global warming is widely regarded as a contributing factor in droughts which have stricken not only subsistence farmers in East Africa, but also major commodity grain producers in the Southern Hemisphere--Chile, Argentina, and especially Australia, with thousands of square miles in their eighth straight year with no rainfall to speak of.

Growing Asian economies, especially in China and India, have made possible better and more diverse diets for hundreds of millions of people. This growing demand for food has additionally seen rising meat consumption by the middle class (echoing US consumption trends), and, as vegetarians are quick to point out, it takes 16 pounds of grain to produce a pound of beef.

The great ethanol scam has been US government's main answer to peak oil and to rising fuel and energy prices. Even favorable estimates suggest that producing a gallon of ethanol requires inputs of 70% of the energy it will eventually produce when burned. In the meantime, just under one third of the nation's entire corn crop is already being converted into ethanol.

Enormously wasteful factory fishing has resulted in population collapse of many major species of food fish. Pollution has deepened the damage in coastal areas and in freshwater fisheries.

Globally, inventories of staple foodstuffs have dwindled drastically. The IMF's neo-liberal policies penalized developing countries for national food policies which "interfered with market mechanisms," including maintaining stockpiles as a bulwark against shortages and famine. Even in the US, the government-sponsored wheat stockpile today is smaller than it's been since the late 1940s.

Neo-liberal "free market" policies, spearheaded by the US and implemented through the World Bank and IMF, relentlessly pushed poor countries over the last 25 years to gear their agriculture for the export market and to open their domestic markets to Western agribusiness exports and investment. The combination severely undercut local producers of staple crops and national food independence. In addition, marketing boards for commodities like cocoa--agricultural OPECs which tried to have products released into the market in a coordinated, controlled roll-out to buffer against price swings from glut or bad harvests-- were dismantled as "anti-competitive."

The ongoing destruction of productive farmland is not limited to suburban sprawl in the US and the urbanization of coastal China. In the Philippines, for example, where mass struggles led by the Communist Party and the New People's Army have forced the ruling class to pass laws mandating some distribution of farmland to the people who work it, big landlords would rather convert agricultural land into golf courses, residential villages, and agro-industrial parks than take government offers for it.

Why inflation, besides the obvious fact of supply shortages?

Many Third World counties, including even a powerhouse like China, have their currencies pegged to the US dollar, which continues to fall like a rock. If they were paying in euros, the price rises would be nowhere near as steep.

The cost of agricultural inputs has risen rapidly, especially petroleum, now at about $115 a barrel, which not only fuels farm machinery and transportation of crops to market, but is also is a basic feedstock for the manufacture of much fertilizer.

Agriculture is not like manufacturing, where the cost of each additional unit tends to bring the price down, because the fixed capital (plant, machinery, etc.) is already there and is being used more fully. In farming, the best land (most fertile, best supplied with water and closest to transportation) is already being used. Bringing more into production means higher costs of production for each additional bushel of output, not less.

Hoarding is an brutal fact of life in capitalist and semi-capitalist economies. Someone with a warehouse full of flour is not going to sell it today if he thinks that the price will be 20% higher next week--unless he thinks that he'll otherwise get dragged to jail or see his warehouse looted by desperate mobs.

2. The food crisis may have erupted onto the scene very quickly, but it is very, very real.

Haiti has been widely reported on in the US because of at least seven deaths during rioting in Port au Prince and elsewhere, and because popular anger forced the Prime Minister out. I'll bet you didn't read about the food riots in Cameroon in February in which at least 40 people died. Or the less deadly riots and protests this year in places like Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Morocco, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

This is becoming a desperate situation. As anyone who has seen Sergei Eisenstein's masterpiece, The Battleship Potemkin knows (watch the maggoty meat section here from about minute 5 to minute 17), food shortages can be the spark for a revolutionary upsurge. In Burkina Faso two weeks ago, the unions held a general strike protesting inadequate government concessions after February food riots there. In Egypt, the semi-legal opposition has made food prices a central theme of pro-democracy agitation against the Mubarak regime.

But that's only one side of the contradiction. Widespread hunger can destroy the fabric of a society. In deep famines, people find it very difficult to maintain social solidarity and moral and ethical values. In prolonged periods of hunger, people sink into lethargy or move to where there is food. The Irish potato famine of 1845-52 didn't produce an immediate national rebellion against British colonialism, but rather a million deaths and the start of the wave of emigration which left the island's population in 1911, 4.5 million, at half what it had been before the famine began 65 years earlier!

For poor folk in the US too, hunger is a growing problem. 28 million Americans are on food stamps. The value of food stamps has been cut by inflation to the point where they last only only about half the recipients past the 15th of the month. Then it's food bank time--except that across the country church volunteers and others who staff the food banks report that requests for help are way up and donations from supermarkets and other donors are down. Some have had to close up entirely. What will happen as the recession bites harder, layoffs climb and the end of the social safety net as we know it becomes manifest?

3. The food crisis may change its form, but it won't be going away any time soon, and "waiting for the market" to solve it will prove catastrophic.

There will not be an international free market in food. Period. The elites who rule nations are stupid if they don't protect their production, because they are courting instability and worse if they can't keep the population fed. Countries in which it's been tried, like Mexico where NAFTA drove millions of traditional maize growers under with cheap US corn which is suddenly extremely pricey, suffer. Right now Vietnam and India, the number two and three rice-producing countries in the world, have export bans in place. They are forgoing massive profits from selling into a soaring market, because the social and political cost of shortages at home would be too great.

Even if there were a more open global market, agriculture responds slowly to market stimuli. Consider what the business press calls "Turf Wars"--the struggle to predict and beat the market in allocating land to production. In the US this year, wheat and soybean plantings are up, while corn, potatoes and rice plantings are down, all based on last year's crop prices. In the meantime, rice has skyrocketed by 145% since New Years Day. But with seed purchased, fields prepped and the harvest contracted for, few farmers are in a position to turn on a dime and put everything into rice.

The other thing that comes with "free markets" is speculation.

Three major factors are at work in the recent spike in futures prices for agricultural commodities, from soybeans to orange juice. The first is that the rise of commodity hedge funds using fancy financial instruments have driven up the volume and volatility of commodity trades--as they did in mortgage and other credit markets. Second, since nobody is buying tranches of subprime mortgages anymore and other credit markets are sitting dead in the water, the money has to go someplace. Third, the evil little Wall Street ratbags in their $280 silk ties look around and say "Hey, people are rioting over food. Looks like a good place to make a buck."

The big role played by hoarding and speculation means that the stunning increases reported in news headlines may reflect a market bubble. Certainly the massive ramp-up in prices we've seen across the board this year suggests that something more is going on than just the corner being turned on a Malthusian imbalance between population and food. Well, doesn't that mean that when the bubble pops, tons and tons of food will come flooding back into the market and prices will be forced back down to a stable affordable level?

Nunh-unh. The underlying factors cited in point one are still operative, just intensified by speculation. And a collapsing commodity bubble could produce continued "contraction" of the broader credit markets, meaning banks will be too leveraged or too scared to lend. This could easily cut off credit to farmers, and agriculture is a business in which producers have to borrow at the start of every production cycle to buy seed, fertilizer, and/or machinery and to pay hands until the crop is in when they see if the price they get keeps their heads above water. Any sudden big drop in prices will hit small farmers, especially in the Third World, extremely hard, especially if they've invested in expanding or modernizing their operation. Like the credit crisis, there is no easy way out of this one, and the stakes are higher.

And like that deepening crisis of the credit markets in the aftermath of the collapse of the housing bubble and sub-prime mortgage scam, the current food crisis makes crystal clear, one more time, that the neo-liberal ruling consensus that dominated the global economy for the last quarter century is a colossal failure which has resulted in poverty, hunger and insecurity for the many and almost inconceivable wealth for a few.

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Casey's in the Sandbox Now

Last week I posted a video made by a guy named Casey J. Porter. He was in Kuwait, waiting to be shipped into Iraq. Casey is an active duty soldier who got Stop-Lossed and sent back to Iraq a couple weeks ago. He's also an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, and he's taken his video camera with him. His goal--to give folks here (and troops who haven't been shipped to Iraq yet) a sense of what it's like to be part of an occupying army in a distant country in a senseless war.

This one records the mortar attacks that hit the FOB as soon as they got there. Check it out.



And thanks again to Jeri Reed, this time for kicking this to me as soon as it was up at YouTube.

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Nepal Maoists: "We chose a new form of struggle"

[As vote-counting shows the election in Nepal to be a massive victory for the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), Fire on the Mountain is very pleased to be able to publish a second interview with Hisila Yami, a central committee member. Like the earlier one, this was conducted in English in Oslo, Norway in December. Where that piece focused particularly on the role of women in the Nepalese revolution, this one deals directly with questions of the revolutionary strategy adopted by the Maobadi. FotM is deeply grateful to the Norwegian comrade who gave us permission to use this interview. This is the first publication of the interview anywhere. The editing and explanatory comments are by FotM contributor Skwisgaar Skwigelf.]



Interview with Hisila Yami
Conducted by Frontlinjer/Campo Antiimperialista

F/CI: How does the CPN(M) see the current stage of the struggle in Nepal?

Hisila: We took a new course after the people's war; we chose a new form of struggle. From the outside it might look simpler, but seen from the inside, it was a much more difficult course. We took a zig-zag path, as we were near to the smashing of the old state, we felt that the US and India was closing in to smash us. This situation could have led to a never-ending war. Today we gain through the legal struggle and on the streets.

Before, we followed a military strategy, where the politics were influencing the military situation. Now we follow a political strategy, and it's much more difficult.

During the peace talks, our strategy was always to break up the alliance between the Ranas [a historical ruling family of Nepal --ed.], the King and Congress. After the second Jana Andolan [the 2006 mass movement against the monarchy --ed.] we began a new alliance, to expropriate the property of the king. The law has been passed, but only on paper. It has not been implemented.

We have today two basic demands: to declare the republic before the elections for the constituent assembly and to go for a full proportional electoral system in these elections. In order to achieve these aims we went into an alliance with the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) [called UML for short --ed.] against Congress, which remains a feudal force. On the issue of a proportional system we could make compromises, but on the issue of the king we are not flinching.

Before it was only us who were in favor of a proportional electoral system. Now, the umbrella front of all ethnic groups ask us not to leave these issues. They have all been raising these issues. There's also increasing support in all the parties and mass organizations. The parties have realized that they can use the ethnic groups to create a vote bank. Also, the UML tried to outsmart us when we left the principle of a full proportional system. But it wasn't for real, it was just to trap us. After they criticized us, they went back on their position again. But we had to unite with them to smash the Congress Party.

After UML diluted our stand, they said that we should "go for the process" both in terms of elections and declaring the republic. It was a middle way, neither to declare a republic directly before, nor after.

Now, sections of congress are complaining that they are being "pushed by the Maoists" and are starting to talk about "returning to the constitution of the first Jana Andolan [the 1990 mass movement against the monarchy --ed.].

Before the elections the People's Liberation Army and the Royal Army should be integrated.


F/CI: Do you think there will be elections for a constituent assembly this spring?

Hisila: Chances are equal. Tomorrow I'm told that they are meeting with Koirala [the prime minister, from the Congress Party --ed.]. There are efforts to come to some understanding and a republic may be declared.


F/CI: What will you do if the demands of a republic and a proportional system are not being met?

Hisila: We will go back to the mass movement. That's why we have the republican front. Prachanda has also said that "even patriotic forces which before were forced to ally with Gyanendra could come over to our side."


F/CI: How will a 40/60 proportional system affect the ethnic groups? Could this stir up new problems with for instance the Madhesi [the populations in the southern lowlands near the Indian border --ed.]?

Hisila: This depends on to which degree the umbrella of the ethnic groups, Janjati Masan, is successful. They want to establish a round-table conference of all the parties, ethnic groups and all the other people. This conference should be the decision-maker on this issue.


F/CI: But if you're running for elections to a constituent assembly without it being a fully proportional system, what are your chances of success?

Hisila: We will make an alliance, preferably also with Congress, but at least with the UML and the other left parties.


F/CI: What are the goals of the Maoists with the constituent assembly?

Hisila: Our goals are the new structuring of the state, federalism, employment, a better health service and to take action against gender disparity. The end result will be what we've been addressing all the time. We'll get radical reforms, not New Democracy, as we initially wanted when we began the people's war. The New Democracy will have to wait for another wave of the people's struggle.

It's nothing new in our strategy, it's like before, when we went to parliament after Jana Andolan I. You never know--later, we might go for a higher leap.


F/CI: What's the power of the Maoists?

Hisila: We've got associations parallel to the state level. We'll be continuing like before, and if we fail, at least we'll fail in a new way.


F/CI: What's the importance of the Indian revolution to the situation in Nepal?

Hisila: In India, we can hope for another leap coming with the Indian revolution.


F/CI:: How do you work on your international relations?

Hisila: With increased globalization we have to use all kinds of avenues. We are taking now intense diplomatic moves from the party headquarters. Before, Maoist leaders were denied entry to the United States, but now that we are in parliament they allow us to go there for talks. Now the US also wants to come to Nepal through the UN. That is why we press for the constituent assembly, because we want the UN to leave as soon as possible. In this we stand together with China and India.

The US want to make us into a new UML.


F/CI: What's your relation to the Communist Party of India (ML)?

Hisila: There are no party relations with the CPI(ML). During the peace process there was some contact and we considered the CPI(ML) easier to deal with than BJP.


F/CI: What do you think of the Norwegian role?

Hisila: Norwegian businessmen are better in some regards, they are more sensitive to public and social issues.

Before, Norway was on the side of the US, now they are more neutral. But Norwegian neutrality can easily shift, they could soon lean towards the US.


F/CI: What will happen to the king?

Hisila: If the king is sensible, he'll run away. If he tries to act smart, he'll be killed or imprisoned. Unlike your king, he's had a lot of power, he even killed his own family! If he were ousted as a result of the people's war, we'd take other steps than we do now. But if he remains silent, we will not touch him.


F/CI: What about child soldiers in the People's Liberation Army?

Hisila: The last statement by Prachanda stated that if it's proved by the UN (they have a system to prove this) that there are children in the PLA camps, they should be sent back to their villages with some economic means. But during the war, we even had children's organizations. We had many orphans, as in tribal societies remarrying isn't a taboo. This leads to children being abandoned, and they would come to us. We even let them help to carry things with the army.


F/CI: Wouldn't it have been better to continue fighting while you were on top?

Hisila: Through all the peace talks, we had the strategy of isolation the king and coming to an understanding with the parliamentary forces. During the people's war we were able to limit and encircle the enemy to the district headquarters. The enemy was fortifying their bunkers and our effort was to bring them to their bunkers and fight. After the two-line struggle [a struggle between Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai--ed.], you had two major military attacks, like the one in Kara, where we lost many people, and in Pili, where we won, but only because the bunkers was still being built.

We were feeling that neither they nor we could win. So the coup was a breakthrough. Whenever before we said to the other parties, "Look, you'll be cheated by the king," they refused this, but then they saw this with their own eyes.

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