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Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

THE NEW COMMUNISM COULD CHANGE EVERYTHING—IF...

March 15, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The following are excerpts from a document written by a leading comrade of the Revolutionary Communist Party and circulated among Party members and supporters. Footnotes have been added here.

 

Let’s speak frankly now. Let’s be willing to honestly confront and be blunt and grapple with the problems of the revolution, including with people outside our own Party. Let’s start by stating some simple basics about the current reality:

We revolutionary communists are supposed to represent and speak in the name of the interests of all of humanity. And we are supposed to do so on the basis of science and nothing less. On that basis, we can in fact have a great deal of certitude in stating that what humanity needs, more than anything else, is a communist world, achieved through a process of revolutions (of the right kind) to establish socialist societies (of the right kind) as a transition and road, and a base for advance, to that communist world. So it’s not just communism we are fighting for, it’s the right kind of communism, the NEW COMMUNISM.

The new synthesis of communism brought forward by Bob Avakian (BA) really is a total game-changer, which objectively represents and constitutes the opening of a whole new chapter in the historical evolution of communist theory and practice. IT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING. But this will happen only IF the New Communism of BA becomes widely known, takes root, and spreads ever more broadly, in a kind of geometric progression, throughout this society and also throughout the entire world.

But right now the objective situation is such that hardly anyone has even heard of the New Communism, hardly anyone is even searching for that kind of solution to the world’s problems, and the so-called educated or “progressive” and “enlightened” people here and around the world remain primarily mired in moribund and paralyzing retrograde frameworks of the past (standard bourgeois democracy, social democracy,¹ variations on Ajithism,² etc.) and by and large are stubbornly (and sometimes snarkily, with significant vitriol) refusing to explore and engage anything that might be radically new and inspiring but which might actually require them to question and break out of the relative stability and comfort they can still typically benefit from (especially in the U.S.) thanks to their objective acceptance, accommodation and ultimately complicity with the dominant and ruling exploitative and oppressive frameworks, in all their vile and brutally violent incarnations (including their increasingly fascist directions) here and throughout the world.

So the external objective/subjective conditions we are dealing with are difficult to say the least. And, relatedly, the revisionism that has plagued the ranks of communists everywhere in recent decades, including in our own Party,³ has posed especially significant obstacles to waging the necessary struggles to break through any of this. So overall this is a very challenging time.

But one thing is crystal clear: There is nothing that would be more important to accomplish in this period of history than to succeed in breaking through some of these obstacles and getting the New Communism, as well as its architect, BA (the person who has elaborated and developed this new synthesis of communism, and who himself stands as a concentrated expression of its core principles and scientific methods), widely known, engaged and appreciated throughout this society (and among all strata), and beyond that throughout the world. And it must also be said that, conversely, if we don’t succeed in doing THAT—if we don’t succeed in making qualitative and quantitative breakthroughs in fulfilling THAT mission—then not much at all will come out of anything any of us have done over the past decades, or continue to do today. All that hard work, and all that dedication, and all that sacrifice? It will all amount to a big fat zero if we do not succeed in broadly spreading the New Communism, getting it to take root and initiating a process of sustainable geometric progression.

If we don’t succeed in this, there really is no point to any of the other things we do. If we don’t succeed in this, then even important things like: the website (and associated social media) outreach and leadership; particular “Fight the Power...” conjunctural initiatives around any and all of the 5 Stops⁴ (including genocidal police brutality and murder); particular emergency-worthy and strategic “nodal point” initiatives (such as Refuse Fascism); particular attention paid to international developments (and to revolutionary-minded forces in other countries) and to struggling against the stranglehold of jingoism and national chauvinism among the people in this country; particular attention paid to realizing the two maximizings (developing work among both the most oppressed social base and educated youth in particular); particular attention to vigorous recruitment and the developing of a newly revitalized Leninist party on the basis of the New Communism (and not something else or lesser than that...), none of our dedicated work in any of these spheres will ultimately amount to anything more than perhaps a minor footnote in history, unless...

Unless we do manage to fulfill our core mission and accomplish what we should all recognize as being our single most crucial and critical strategic goal, and daily preoccupation: which, again, would mean breaking through the assorted obstacles to get BA and the New Communism he has brought forward WIDELY known, engaged and appreciated throughout society. 

Managing to do that should be understood to be our foremost, most singular and critical, strategic mission and objective (for all of humanity and its future, if it is to have any kind of future worth having). 

In line with all this, let’s once again take a hard look at BA’s previous interventions of recent years—what he himself accomplished, vs. what did or did not come out of it in terms of the #1 objective.

Much of this is familiar to all of us, of course. To be blunt once again: they have ALL been, to a very large extent, criminally squandered.

But first, to speak to the positives: Simply put, in addition to the many invaluable published works and audio and video compilations, we have in recent years been treated to an unbelievable series of public and semi-public direct interventions by BA in person. These have consistently been incredible, world-class-level presentations of new communist theory, propaganda and agitation, all put forward with great depth, and substance, and heart, and all done in such a way as to serve as a living laboratory of scientific methods applied to the problems of human society. All done in a manner that is widely accessible to a wide variety of audiences, and which concentrates many different levels of precious lessons for everyone, ranging from brand new people, of different backgrounds and strata, to the most experienced communist “veterans,” including top leadership of our own Party, including, of course, ourselves.

Isn’t everything I just said here true? Just think of direct interventions like the 7 Talks,⁵ or the talks that gave rise to the 2003 Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About film; or the talks that gave rise to the REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! film; or the series of internal leadership seminars a few years ago which drilled home the importance of scientific methods and the need to break with the mass line,⁶ reification,⁷ populist epistemology,⁸ etc. carried over from earlier stages of communism; or the thrilling (and contended) public Dialogue at Riverside Church with Cornel West, and the film that came out of that; or the series of internal seminars which ultimately fed into the process of BA’s writing the seminal book THE NEW COMMUNISM; or the most recent semi-public (and only one-hour long!) 2017 talk which is a truly masterful concentration of both current conjunctural (fascism on the rise) and deeper historical roots analyses (how did we get to this point and why?), along with leadership being given to what to do about all this, all while never failing to reveal and confidently proceed back from the largest and most strategic objectives of the New Communism, while also providing a school of method and principle, plus an outlining of the basic pathway forward in practice for those with whom unity can be forged in the current conjuncture even if they don’t yet share (and might never share) those ultimate communist objectives. A model of solid core, with lots of elasticity based on the solid core. A model of unite all who can be united, on the right basis and with the right methods. A model of calm confidence and certitude based on science. A model of decency, of morality, of approachability, of humor and compassion, and yes of hope, all the while not falling into the slightest bit of tailing or ass-kissing and instead waging ferocious polemical struggle with the masses of different strata to work on those living contradictions and challenge and bust through the obstacles and the confining and paralyzing frameworks of this period. And all in an hour. Wow! And then with it the Q&A, with all its intangibles, substance, remarkable scientific ease and liveliness on full display “off the cuff”–Wow yet again!

So all that is great and inspiring, but here’s the rub: ALL these more or less “direct” interventions by BA have been remarkable and world-class in terms of both form and content. ALL of them have been schools of method, for everyone. ALL of them are objectively priceless in and of themselves, and I am quite sure that they will ultimately “bear fruit” in a way commensurate with their quality—at least I expect this to happen over the longer term, if somehow humanity manages not to drive itself to literal extinction in the near future. I certainly am confident, on a scientific basis, that any decent future for humanity would necessarily have to be carved out by “going through” the new synthesis of communism brought forward by BA.

Because of all that I have said here (about the longer-term future in relation to the entirety of BA’s body of work, including all these interventions), it would be totally and obscenely wrong to conclude these interventions have been wasted efforts because they were, ultimately, squandered in the aftermath. But at least in the shorter term, to put it quite crudely, “what has come out of these interventions?”

BA did his part(s), but what have the rest of us succeeded in doing in the aftermath of these BA interventions that we could point to and honestly say: “This has really helped to spread the New Communism much more broadly and widely; you can see that, thanks to this intervention, lots more people now know about BA, and what he has brought forward; that lots more people are now discussing, debating, contesting, engaging the New Communism; that this is all giving rise to a certain kind of geometric progression as all this is really beginning to take hold and is spreading farther and farther day by day, reaching a great many people we could not possibly encounter directly. Very significantly, there are now clear indications of the emergence of significant new cohorts of genuine and motivated actual followers of BA and of the New Communism–significant not simply in importance, but in actual numbers, and expanding societal influence, as well—all of which bodes well for the possibility of the New Communism spreading and taking root to an unprecedented degree in the next period.”

Unfortunately none of this has happened.

Again, BA has done his part, in every single instance. But the “toxic combination” of recent years, characterized by the predominance of anti-scientific revisionism in both our own Party and the international movements, combined with the frustrating degree to which masses of all the different strata have NOT been correctly identifying the source of “the problem” confronting society and all of humanity, or have not been in any serious way looking for this kind of “solution” (for all the reasons we have previously discussed and which I won’t belabor here)—this “toxic combination” has resulted in a situation where it is today incredibly difficult and dislocating for even the best of the current communist leadership to create the necessary conditions for these BA interventions to take place on an even remotely correct basis (appropriate audiences, appropriate security, etc.) and, even beyond that, in every instance, there also does not seem to have been a sufficient material basis and/or sufficiently grounded ideological orientation to enable even the best of current leadership to “come out the other end” of these BA interventions in such a way that seeds of New Communism could really be broadly planted and then harvested on any kind of significant scale. 

So, we have to confront this reality, and yet figure out ways to not let it defeat us. Acknowledge the reality that all that incredible effort gets put into things but, in this period at least, not a whole lot actually “comes out of it all” in terms of really making significant progress in meeting that #1 strategic objective. Again, it will all likely bear fruit in a more commensurate way somewhere down the line, but at least in this period, in a period where the fragile flickering light of the New Communism could still so easily be extinguished, I don’t think we have succeeded in creating anything like the necessary material basis within which these remarkable direct interventions could actually be properly harvested, with the goal of unleashing that process of “geometric progression” of spread and societal influence we so desperately need to effect.

One of my recurring frustrations is also that every one of these interventions has produced incredibly valuable materials (books, films, etc.) which themselves provide so much of what we need to “spread” BA and the New Communism broadly throughout society, but we are always so busy doing other things that we barely make use of these most valuable tools for harvesting and spreading.

But of course this does not mean that the current situation (the repeated squandering) is acceptable, or could never ever be transformed (!), or that, no matter what we decide in the particular, we should not do all that is in our power to figure out how to spread the New Communism far and wide and work to have it take root. This does need to happen! It does need to be our #1 strategic objective.

For one thing, we need to revive the whole orientation around barefoot doctors⁹ and Huxleys.¹⁰ We need everyone, from leading people to Party members and supporters broadly, to serve minimally, or at least in some capacity, as barefoot doctors. Can you call yourself a communist if you’re not in some fashion doing at least that? To engage in at least the simplest tasks that can help spread the New Communism and BA (including by distributing BA literature and showing BA films as well as advertising the existence of the website, etc.). The original barefoot doctors in China during Mao’s time (largely peasant masses who were given basic medical knowledge and training) may not have had the basis to provide advanced medical theory or conduct complex medical interventions (they did not and would not have been allowed to try to do so, as this could have done more harm than good) but they provided an invaluable service by tirelessly going out far and wide, by trying to reach as many people as possible, by doing so repeatedly and consistently, and by bringing very basic medicines and treatment and basic medical education (the equivalent of spreading literature and films) to all sorts of places and people who had never had access to even such basics. An invaluable service. So is there anyone who really cannot or should not serve minimally as a barefoot doctor in relation to BA and the New Communism?

In conjunction with that we need Huxleys to actually be, and function as, HUXLEYS(!!). To do so correctly, consistently, and with the understanding that this is their PRIMARY mission, not just something they do alongside everything else they do. I don’t care how many direct interventions BA does, or of what quality, or with what conjunctural timeliness—if we don’t have a crew of ardent and motivated Huxleys, who see themselves first and foremost as followers of BA, and who consistently see their primary mission as what I referred to as our #1 strategic mission overall, and then act in accordance with that in everything they do, including by actually acting in society primarily as Huxleys, then we will never have the material basis to not squander BA’s works and interventions, and we will never develop fresh new cohorts of motivated followers of BA and the New Communism. We might recruit one or two fresh faces here or there, but we will never be able to regroup, re-ascend and revitalize an actual Leninist party that actually corresponds to and can implement the core objectives and methods of the New Communism.

At the same time, I know one thing: If this fascism of the Trump/Pence regime gets consolidated and this really becomes the widely accepted “normal” of this society, not only will this have disastrous consequences overall, but more specifically, we, as communists, are going to have an even much harder time getting anywhere, including with the spread and promotion of the New Communism and the works of BA and the development of open and motivated active followers of BA dedicated to getting all this to take root and spread even more. So the mission of Refuse Fascism, and whether it spreads and gains traction and committed adherents and stays on the right track, and so on, really is not “just another good initiative or good thing to be doing.” And in relation to our strategic communist objectives, the failure of what is represented by Refuse Fascism might well end up putting the final nail in our coffin.

Something like the recent 2017 talk by BA, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible—which speaks powerfully to the immediate, urgent importance of bringing forward masses of people in nonviolent but sustained political mobilization to drive out this fascist regime, and the crucial relation between that and our fundamental revolutionary objectives—really needs not to be squandered! This film needs to be used (a lot!!) and there needs to be an active approach on our part to have all its positives made full use of and broadly projected and injected into everything, etc. I get frustrated that still not enough of this is going on (and that the film still seems to get sort of “tacked on” to other things). With that particular intervention and film, if we don’t keep putting enough leading attention into it even now, in the aftermath, then we will suffer the consequences (yet again) of unconscionable squandering (including in failing to fulfill both some important aspects of our #1 objective to promote and project BA and the New Communism, and also failing to take full advantage of this talk’s ability to positively influence the development of the necessary anti-fascist trajectory). All this would be bad enough, and we really should try very hard to make full use of everything that could be accomplished through broad promotion and dissemination of that talk—I think we have barely scratched the surface!

I will end here by simply restating the obvious:

BA himself really does actually concentrate the best of what is the New Communism, and his various works and interventions are themselves the best possible “advertisement” for this new synthesis of communism—there are no better tools for the spread and popularization of the New Communism than BA’s various works and interventions “in their own right,” free of any intermediary distortions or re-castings or reinterpretations.

But—and this is a critical but—regardless of what BA himself is or is not able to personally undertake, everything that is represented by the New Communism—which really does have the potential to “change everything!” in the interests of all of humanity—will never spread broadly enough and will never take root deeply enough unless there develop legions of motivated, inspired followers—genuine, motivated and inspired followers—of the New Communism, and of BA himself as a concentration of all that. So, one way or another, bringing that into being really has to be our primary preoccupation and objective, increasingly in its own right, as well as within everything we do.

 

 

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FOOTNOTES

1. Social democracy refers to a political trend that envisions a form of “socialism”—actually, some variant of state ownership of some industries and extensive welfare measures—that would come to power through bourgeois elections. It denies the need to meet and defeat the violent repressive power of the bourgeois state through massive all-out struggle for power involving millions and millions, and opposes revolutionary trends that recognize this necessity. This began as a serious trend in Europe, where the usually unspoken basis for it was the spoils from the continued plunder of colonies and neo-colonies. Today it is a significant force in Latin America (Lula in Brazil, Bachelet in Chile, etc.), as well as elsewhere, and takes shape in the U.S. in groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and others. [back] 

2. Ajithism refers to the trend concentrated in the pamphlet “Against Avakianism,” written in July 2013 by Ajith. This trend is analyzed and extensively criticized in the article “Ajith—A Portrait of the Residue of the Past,” published in the online journal Demarcations. This polemic with Ajith is a critical work that goes into and demarcates the new synthesis from what has gone before on a range of questions, focused on Bob Avakian’s breakthrough in epistemology. The authors make the point that “To the extent that there were errors in the communist movement, including in the thinking of its greatest leaders, this should neither make communists shrink in horror nor adopt an ostrich-like defense of secondary weaknesses. But what were mistakes in one historical context, when championed, canonized and developed as Ajith does, become transformed into a qualitatively different project for society.” “Ajith—A Portrait of the Residue of the Past,” page 80. [back]

3. Revisionism refers to schools of thought and political trends that claim to be communist, or Marxist, but revise the revolutionary heart out of communism. The character of revisionism today has been gone into in many works—most especially Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage, A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, RCP Publications, 2008 and THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, Bob Avakian, Insight Press, 2016. Essentially, revisionism draws on some variant of bourgeois democracy, or a fixation on certain incorrect and wrong lines in the first stage of the communist revolution (the period from the writing of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 to the overthrow of socialism in China in 1976), or both to oppose the further advance of communism, as crystallized in Bob Avakian’s new synthesis. Both these works go deeply into the Cultural Revolution within the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA—the content of the lines that have contended with the new communism, the course of the struggle, and its crucial character in determining whether or not there will be an actual vanguard, a revolutionary... communist... party in this country. [back]

4. STOP Genocidal Persecution, Mass Incarceration, Police Brutality and Murder of Black and Brown People!
STOP The Patriarchal Degradation, Dehumanization, and Subjugation of All Women Everywhere, and All Oppression Based on Gender or Sexual Orientation!
STOP Wars of Empire, Armies of Occupation, and Crimes Against Humanity!
STOP The Demonization, Criminalization and Deportations of Immigrants and the Militarization of the Border!
STOP Capitalism-Imperialism from Destroying Our Planet! [back]

5. 7 Talks. These talks were given by Bob Avakian in 2006 and covered a wide range of topics. Some of the material in these talks were drawn on for other works, including Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy, Bob Avakian, RCP Publications, 2008 and Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World, Bob Avakian, Insight Press, 2008. These talks include: “Why We’re in the Situation We’re in Today... And What to Do About It: A Thoroughly Rotten System and the Need for Revolution”; “Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy”; “Communism: A Whole New World and the Emancipation of All Humanity—Not ‘The Last Shall Be First, And the First Shall Be Last’”; “The NBA: Marketing the Minstrel Show and Serving the Big Gangsters”; “Communism and Religion: Getting Up and Getting Free—Making Revolution to Change the Real World, Not Relying on ‘Things Unseen’”; “Conservatism, Christian Fundamentalism, Liberalism and Paternalism ... Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton ... Not All ‘Right’ but All Wrong!”; “‘Balance’ Is the Wrong Criterion—and a Cover for a Witch-hunt—What We Need Is the Search for the Truth: Education, Real Academic Freedom, Critical Thinking and Dissent.” [back]

6. Mass line was a method developed by Mao that set the heart of the communist method as taking the scattered and unsystematic ideas of the masses, concentrating what is correct in them, and returning what is correct to them in the form of policies that they can take up and act on. Bob Avakian analyzed the problems with this principle in his 2014 talks [“The Material Basis and the Method for Making Revolution” and “The Strategic Approach to Revolution and Its Relation to Basic Questions of Epistemology and Method”]. Such a method relegates communists to essentially holding a mirror up to and confining themselves within the limits of whatever the sentiments of the masses are at any given time, as opposed to scientifically analyzing what must be done at any juncture and then struggling and working with masses to take this up. The “mass line,” however, became enshrined for decades as a more or less unchallenged principle prior to BA’s forging of the new communism; and, in fact, “mass line” was a method, as BA points out, that Mao himself did not follow at certain critical junctures in the revolution. [back]

7. Reification refers to the view, predominant in the communist movement before the new synthesis, that proletarians by virtue of their class position, have a special purchase on the truth; in particular, that they have within them the means to grasp the historic role of the proletariat as a class and will “instinctively” gravitate toward that view. This confounds the position of the proletariat in society as a class and the consciousness of individual proletarians. In fact, an understanding of the historic role of the proletariat in relation to ending all forms of exploitation and oppression came out of scientific study of the whole course of social development, and analysis of the underlying and generally hidden dynamics behind that development. Anyone who wishes to understand and play a role in leading the communist revolution has to study it as a science, whatever their class background (and people of all backgrounds can and do take this up). At the same time, everyone in society, no matter their class origin, is both influenced by the pulls of living life in a capitalist system and subject to being trained in, and spontaneously taking up, all sorts of unscientific and, indeed, antiscientific methods. For more on reification, see “Ajith—A Portrait of the Residue of the Past.” [back]

8. Populist epistemology refers to the notion that what people think ultimately determines reality, or at least that communists should “factor in” what the majority of people think in arriving at the truth. Truth, however—including the truth about objective reality and whether particular analyses or policies correctly reflect that reality and the path forward toward transforming it in a revolutionary direction—is independent of what anybody thinks. Darwin’s theory of evolution would be true whether anybody thought it was or not; as are certain fundamental truths about society and what kinds of transformations are necessary to change it, as well as more immediate things that can be determined to be true or not. This notion has done and continues to do tremendous damage, leading communists to opportunistically tail behind and fail to challenge backward sentiments and beliefs and outright wrong and even reactionary paths among masses of people. The correct understanding is captured in BAsics 4:11: “What people think is part of objective reality, but objective reality is not determined by what people think.” BAsics: from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, Bob Avakian, RCP Publications, 2011. For more on this, see “The Material Basis and the Method for Making Revolution” and SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION: On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian, An Interview with Ardea Skybreak, Insight Press, 2015. [back]

9. “Barefoot doctors” were peasants in China who, during the period when China was revolutionary and in particular during the Cultural Revolution, were given very basic training in medical science and sent among the masses to minister to basic health needs. While they were not fully trained in medicine, they could still do good by spreading certain basic scientific understanding about the human body and health. By analogy, barefoot doctors are those who may not have the most developed understanding of the science of communism but who want to help spread it as they are learning more, and while they may not be able to contend with other outlooks and modes of thought, can still do a great deal of good. [back]

10. Thomas Henry Huxley was a champion for Darwin’s theory of evolution. While Darwin for various reasons did not focus on debating the truth of the theory in public venues, Huxley played the role of going everywhere to fight for Darwin’s breakthrough. He was known as “Darwin’s bulldog.” By analogy, people who do gain a more developed understanding of the new communism should be out taking on all proponents of contending viewpoints and modes of thought. [back]

 

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/515/what-people-are-saying-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

What People Are Saying About This Film

Updated June 24, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/536/what-this-film-opens-up-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

THE DIFFERENCE THIS FILM MAKES—
THIS CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING!

Updated April 30, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/536/what-you-can-do-to-make-a-real-difference-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

What You Can Do To Make a Real Difference

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/515/Bob-Avakian-film-the-trump-pence-regime-must-go-palmcards.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

Download/Print/Distribute Social Media Graphics and Palmcards for the Film:

THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!
In The Name of Humanity,
We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America
A Better World IS Possible
A Talk by Bob Avakian

Updated April 19, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/537/april-1968-black-rebellion-that-shook-the-world-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

April 1968: The Black Rebellion That Shook America and the World

April 2, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Just hours after the April 4, 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, the beginning flames of rebellion flared up in larger cities like Washington DC, Chicago, and Baltimore, as well as smaller cities. Above: Police line the street in riot gear on 14th and U Streets in Washington DC. Photo: AP

Fifty years ago, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was cut down by an assassin in Memphis, Tennessee. King was 39 years old and the foremost leader of the civil rights movement.

King preached and fought for change, especially against the poverty and discrimination pressing down on Black people, within the framework of this existing system. Before he was killed, he had been increasingly speaking out against the U.S. escalation of the war in Vietnam. And, as would come out later, the FBI was carrying out an insidious campaign against him, not only spying on him but trying to discredit him by spreading malicious rumors and even sending him an “anonymous” letter threatening to reveal details about his private life and suggesting that he commit suicide in order to avoid a scandal. While many people looked up to King, there were others, like the emerging Black Panther Party, who were seeking out and advocating more radical, revolutionary solutions. These forces had broken with King’s road of working within the system and were going directly up against it.

But everyone was profoundly affected by the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., and came face-to-face with deep questions. As Nina Simone sang—three days after the assassination—in “Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)”: “He was not a violent man. / Bigotry had sealed his fate. / Folks you’d better stop and think / everyone knows we’re on the brink. / What will happen, now that the King is dead?” Then, in a searing improvised passage, she sang:

What’s gonna happen now, in all of our cities?
My people are rising...
If you have to die, it’s all right
’Cause you know what life is.
You know what freedom is for one moment in your life.

Violent repression, degrading racism, life-robbing poverty... this was what millions of Black people had faced for so long and continued to face daily. And then to see Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated—this was just too much.

Rising Up in City After City

The word spread like wildfire—“They killed Dr. King!”—from person to person, neighborhood to neighborhood. A reporter who was with U.S. troops, including Black GIs, at a Marine base in Vietnam, recalled later, “The death of Martin Luther King intruded on the war in a way that no other outside event had ever done.”

There were tears... and there was tremendous outrage. Just hours after King’s assassination, by that Thursday evening, the beginning flames of rebellion flared up in larger cities like Washington, DC, Chicago, and Baltimore, as well as smaller cities like Flint, Michigan; Hartford, Connecticut; Jackson, Mississippi; and many others. Over the next days and nights and into the following week, Black people rose up in an unprecedented nationwide rebellion that spread to more than 120 cities in 28 states.

As people rose up, the powers that be lost control of large sections of inner-city Black neighborhoods. The hated pigs were driven off by stone-throwing youths and by people using rifles from rooftops in self-defense against the shoot-any-Black-person-on-sight cops. In Baltimore, two days after the King assassination, crowds of 1,000 or more men and women moved through the streets. Businesses hated for ripping off the poor in the ghettos were burned down, and people took goods that had been denied them. Over 1,000 fires were reported just in DC—the president and other officials in the White House could see smoke rising over the city out of their windows, and troops with machine guns guarded the Capitol building. The opening of the Major League Baseball season had to be postponed in several cities.

Students at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and other African-American campuses joined in the uprising. In Kansas City, Missouri, things had been quiet until the day of King’s funeral on the Tuesday after the assassination, when a police tear gas attack on several hundred students marching to demand that the city close schools touched off a two-day uprising.

There was debate, wrangling, and defiance among broad numbers of people. Carl Dix, of the Revolutionary Communist Party, recalls how he “got the first draft notice in April 1968, a couple of days after Martin Luther King was killed and the rebellion swept the cities. I was in no mood to show up at the Army. I sent them a notice back and said I’m too busy right now.” Dix ended up being drafted but refused to be deployed to Vietnam and was imprisoned for his resistance.

A Black journalist in Chicago described a scene in a Black neighborhood in the city: “63rd Street on Palm Sunday was an ominous canyon, crowded with people, stirred by anger, swept by wind, littered with glass and refuse. As men from the 46th Infantry’s 4th Battalion stood before shuttered stores in the East 100 block, 50 teenagers marched by the soldiers shouting mock orders and words of abuse. The soldiers’ heads rotated from east to west, warily watching the ragged adolescent army pass in review.”

Reverberations Across the Globe

The news and images from the April 1968 rebellion electrified people around the world. Suddenly, it became clear for all to see that there were deep divides and sharp conflicts right inside the belly of the hated imperialist beast.

Mao Zedong, the leader of China, then a revolutionary socialist country, issued a statement on April 16, in which he pointed out that Martin Luther King was “an exponent of nonviolence” but that “the U.S. imperialists did not on that account show any tolerance toward him, but used counter-revolutionary violence and killed him in cold blood.” And he said, “The Afro-American struggle is not only a struggle waged by the exploited and oppressed Black people for freedom and emancipation, it is also a new clarion call to all the exploited and oppressed people of the United States to fight against the barbarous rule of the monopoly capitalist class. It is a tremendous aid and inspiration to the struggle of the people throughout the world against U.S. imperialism and to the struggle of the Vietnamese people against U.S. imperialism. On behalf of the Chinese people, I hereby express resolute support for the just struggle of the Black people in the United States.”

The April 1968 rebellions—and the great upsurge of the 1960s to early 1970s, which drew in very broad sections of U.S. society beyond the Black ghettos—did not lead to a revolution that actually defeated the rulers and their system. But there were important lessons to be learned. As vicious and powerful as they are, the U.S. imperialists are not all-powerful—even on their own “home turf.” And there is a section of people in this country who are a potentially powerful revolutionary force—who have nothing to lose under this system and who, when conditions are ripe, would be willing to put everything on the line to go all out for revolution.

As Bob Avakian would powerfully insist some years later:

There will never be a revolutionary movement in this country that doesn’t fully unleash and give expression to the sometimes openly expressed, sometimes expressed in partial ways, sometimes expressed in wrong ways, but deeply, deeply felt desire to be rid of these long centuries of oppression [of Black people]. There’s never gonna be a revolution in this country, and there never should be, that doesn’t make that one key foundation of what it’s all about. (BAsics 3:19)

Full-Scale Violent Repression

When it quickly became clear that the local police forces were not able to quash the uprisings, National Guard forces were mobilized in many cities. And when even those combined forces looked incapable of containing the rebellions in key cities, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the deployment of Army troops in Washington, DC, Baltimore, and Chicago. All told, over 50,000 Army and National Guard troops were deployed in dozens of cities.

A “riot control” headquarters led by a general was set up in the Pentagon, as well as a special high-level team in the White House. This was the first time since the Civil War that troops had been deployed to guard the national seats of power.

There were reports of debates among Black soldiers at the Fort Meade base in Maryland as orders came in to the 6th Calvary Regiment to occupy Washington, DC. Officers received orders to be on alert for “conspiracies” among Black troops, including among the U.S. forces in Vietnam.

In Chicago, occupied by 11,000 federal troops, a number of Black men were shot and killed—probably by police, though no pig was ever even identified as a killer, let alone charged. Shortly after the authorities restored “order” in the city, Mayor Richard Daley made clear how the pigs had been given a license to murder: he commanded the police chief to order his cops to “shoot to kill” anyone suspected of arson. Later media reports claimed that 46 people died nationally in the April 1968 rebellions, 41 of them Black, 14 teenagers. But no one really knows how many were actually killed by the police and troops. More than 20,000 people were arrested.

This was a naked display of the institutions and organs of violent repression wielded by the rulers of this capitalist-imperialist system, who prey upon the masses of people here and around the world. The rulers were able to re-impose their “order” after days of rebellion. But people broadly saw the real nature of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in this country, even if they did not have a full scientific understanding of this. Instead of being intimidated, many people were further enraged by this and compelled into opposition and struggle against the system, among Black people and also more broadly.

As the rulers came down violently on the uprisings, the U.S. Congress rushed to pass a new Civil Rights Act on April 10 that officially banned discrimination in housing. They hoped that people would believe the system was open to reform. But the law also contained new repressive measures—like making it a felony to cross state lines to “incite a riot,” which was used against Black revolutionaries and others.

Turning Point

April 1968 marked a turning point in the struggle in the U.S. Many, many more people had to face up to the fact that they faced a vicious enemy that was ruthless—even against those who resisted peacefully. More people started considering radical and revolutionary ideas and strategies. They wanted to struggle—and win—against the rulers and their system.

People were increasingly seeing the limits of the civil rights movement that began in the early ’60s, and the Black Liberation Movement was rising explosively. In the period following the rebellions, organizations like the Black Panthers and the Revolutionary Union, forerunner of the Revolutionary Communist Party, led by Bob Avakian, attracted new fighters. There was a widespread sense that big, fundamental changes were needed; and many from different sections of the people raised, confronted, and debated big, consequential questions: What were the actual changes that were needed in society and in the world? How were those changes going to be made? What kind of ideology and what kind of leadership did you need? How should the masses of people be mobilized and organized? What would it take to actually defeat the enemy?

This oppressive monster, the system of U.S. capitalism-imperialism, still rules today—and now in an even more grotesque, dangerous way in the form of the fascist Trump/Pence regime. More than ever, there is a crying, urgent need for an actual revolution that can bring an end to this system and open the door to a radically new, liberating system aiming toward the emancipation of humanity. The struggle of Black people to be free of their oppression is a key part of this revolution. And a significant section of Black people can come to recognize the great social need to step up to help give leadership to that revolution. As Bob Avakian points out:

There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness: Black people playing a crucial role in putting an end, at long last, to this system which has, for so long, not just exploited but dehumanized, terrorized and tormented them in a thousand ways—putting an end to this in the only way it can be done—by fighting to emancipate humanity, to put an end to the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/537/second-amendment-nra-police-in-schools-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

The Second Amendment, the NRA, Police in Schools—Gun Violence and White Supremacy

April 2, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The horrible mass murder in Parkland, Florida and the outpourings of protest against gun violence have sparked widespread debate. People are struggling to understand why this violence keeps happening

What are the roots of the gun violence that takes so many lives in this country? Is the problem the guns? Why does the National Rifle Association seem to have such power and influence? Would putting even more police into schools protect students or endanger them?

These important issues need serious responses—but most answers out there don’t get to the reality of the situation in the U.S. today, or the history that has led to this juncture. Revolution has addressed these issues in previous articles (here, and here) , and we encourage people to dig further into the works by Bob Avakian linked from this article.

Here we focus on three major points of contention: the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the National Rifle Association, and the role of police in schools.

The 2^nd Amendment—Enforcing a White Man’s Constitutional Right to Genocide and Slavery

The authors of the U.S. Constitution did not put the Second Amendment into the Bill of Rights to ensure people’s right to resist a federal tyranny, as today’s fascists often say. It wasn’t even about the right of individuals to own guns.

It was all about arming white men to control and suppress slaves—African people and people of African descent, and to drive Native Americans off their land, including by killing them.

For one thing, “the people” in the original U.S. constitution excluded slaves and Native Americans. White women were barely considered. Everyone at the time who read this Constitution—and certainly those who wrote it—knew that it was only talking about allowing white men to be armed.

Historian Carl T. Bogus wrote that James Madison wrote the Second Amendment to assure Southerners that the federal government couldn’t use its powers to stop slave patrols. There were hundreds of documented revolts and “conspiracies” by slaves before U.S. independence, and, as Bogus wrote, “Southerners were terrified of slave revolts and very much obsessed about possible insurrections during the late eighteenth century. They invested enormous energy in maintaining a slave patrol system, in which white patrollers worked throughout the night to stop blacks from moving about without permission, to search black homes for weapons and other contraband, and to administer lashings to blacks who committed infractions.”

The militias enshrined in the Second Amendment had existed for decades, and as another author pointed out, when the colonies agreed to become states these militias “were expected to continue fulfilling two primary roles in the United States: destroying Native communities in the armed march to possess the continent, and brutally subjugating the enslaved African population.”

These bloody origins of the Second Amendment continued to shape how gun rights developed in this country through the years; armed posses of slave catchers; scalp hunting parties of whites killing and dispossessing Indians; lynch mobs terrifying Black communities during the years of Jim Crow; heavily armed vigilantes prowling the U.S./Mexico border today. All this treated as legitimate, constitutionally protected activity.

Even while the historical roots of the Second Amendment are in white supremacy, and that is the basis on which today’s fascists uphold and fight for it, the problem facing the people today is much larger than guns and gun violence per se. Reactionary violence is as American as apple pie—it is woven into the fabric of this system, its culture and all its social relations.

Because of this, gun control and repealing the Second Amendment is not the solution. Besides, the state—the institutions of government that rule over this society, especially its police, military, and legal apparatus—can’t be allowed to control and regulate the ability of the people to defend themselves against reactionary and illegitimate violence. First of all, no power on Earth commits greater and more widespread violence than the government of the U.S. Any and all powers given to this state to take away people’s right to self-defense will be used against the people and against political movements of resistance. This has happened repeatedly in the history of this country.

As we wrote previously, “Don’t be foolish. New gun control measures would only heighten repression. Guns—especially high-powered automatic weapons—would NOT be taken from the state and its brutal military and police. Proposed background checks allow sections of the people—like the NRA and the white-supremacist fascists who marched in Charlottesville—who say they are preparing for ‘race war’—to still buy guns, while barring others”.

The NRA—From Gun Safety Association to Mass Fascist Organization

The problem with the NRA is not that it has influence out of proportion to its numbers, or that many politicians are afraid to cross it. The problem is that it is a key part of the constellation of forces moving aggressively to consolidate fascism in this country, including acting as a propaganda arm of the Trump/Pence fascist regime.

Bob Avakian has analyzed how the Republican Party has been becoming more and more openly fascist since the time of Richard Nixon. The NRA has been increasingly tied to the Republicans through these years—these Republi-fascists want to keep weapons in the hands of the white supremacist social base they are mobilizing. Last summer, as protests around the country were mounted against different measures of the Trump/Pence regime the NRA released two ads that, in the words of one journalist, were “barely a whisper shy of a call for full civil war.”

The growth and transformation of the NRA began in the 1960s, as righteous uprisings of Black people erupted in cities and towns across the entire U.S. People rose up against police brutality and harassment, rigidly enforced segregation, and degrading treatment in every sphere of life. The rebellions reverberated across the world. U.S. News and World Report wrote that the 1967 rebellion in Detroit was “the nearest thing to civil war that the U.S. had witnessed in more than 100 years. Officials and frightened citizens saw it as an ominous warning of what could happen in many big American cities. … To many Americans, it all looked like a developing plot to bring about a nationwide ‘black revolution’.”

Gun sales surged, especially in segregated suburbs where the population was swelling with white people fleeing large cities. This pattern has continued in the decades since, after people have risen up in rebellion and protest in cities like Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Ferguson, Missouri. During the Los Angeles Rebellion of 1992, a gun store owner said, "I always thought if there was a serial rapist or murderer loose my business would go up, but nothing beats a race riot.”

Many of the newly armed whites joined the NRA, and the focus of the NRA began to change drastically as it became increasingly and openly white supremacist. Opposition to any limitations on white men owning guns became its defining feature. It expanded as a mass organization of heavily armed white people in suburbs and rural areas.

The Trump/Pence regime and the NRA have, so far, adamantly opposed any gun control. This is because they are fascists, not because they are beholden to the “gun lobby.” They want to keep weapons directly in the hands of their white supremacist, xenophobic social base. As fascist-in-Chief Donald Trump said when he addressed the NRA at its 2017 convention, “You have a true friend and champion in the White House.”

Police in Schools and the School-to-Prison Pipeline

There has been an epidemic of police violence in this country over the past several decades. Generations of young Black and Brown people have been incarcerated. Children as young as 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland in 2014 have been murdered by police. Hand in glove with this, police—not school guards, full-fledged, armed police officers from local police and sheriff’s departments—have become increasingly common in schools across the country.

After the Parkland shootings, there have been calls for more police protection in the schools. Let’s be real here—more police will mean more violence, not less. And it will be particularly aimed at Black and Brown youth.

Kai Koerber, a Black student at Parkland, powerfully expressed the reality faced by millions of Black students across the country. “The police presence at my school is not comforting. It’s intimidating… My once safe, beautiful school now resembles a prison. We have police towers in front, military-grade entry and exit points, and now we have invited those who are infected with the disease of prejudice to protect us.... It’s bad enough we have to return with clear backpacks. Should we also return with our hands up?”

"The police are making their own rules and are turning our school into a police state. Every day, students lose more and more freedoms at MSD (Marjory Stoneman Douglas High). Students of color have become targets and white students have become suspects... Students of color, black and brown students, like myself have been racially profiled while we are on heightened alert, fearing the emergence of another Caucasian shooter.... I would like to see us not only reclaim our school, but our right to privacy on campus. We do not welcome the militarization of MSD. It is terrible to see our school lose control over the protection of their students and their facilities."

Koerber vividly expresses a reality that exists for millions of students across this country. Police now patrol 40 percent of the schools in the U.S. 70 percent of students arrested or referred to law enforcement in school are Black or Latino. Children have been led away in handcuffs from elementary schools. In El Paso, Texas, a 7-year-old was taken to a holding cell by police, and all his mother knew was that he had been “misbehaving.” The boy said of the cop, "He carried me and put me in handcuffs, and when I was going to tell him what happened, he told me to shut up and I just wanted my family." Incidents like this have happened across the country; in Miami, in Kentucky, to 10 kids aged 6 to 11 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

The most common charge against children and youth arrested in school is disorderly conduct. In other words, the police begin pinning arrest records on children as young as 6, priming them for a life in which the system sticks them with the label “habitual criminal.” More cops in schools means more youth in the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

Gun violence won’t stop with more armed police—it will increase. It will make school more dangerous and threatening, especially for Black and Brown youth.

In this article, we addressed three threads that run through the discussion about gun violence in this society. But there needs to be much wider debate throughout society, debate that strives to get at the roots of the reasons and sources of this plague.

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/537/sacramento-pigs-shot-unarmed-stephon-clark-six-times-in-the-back-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

“#Stephon Clark. Say His Name!”
Sacramento Pigs Shot Unarmed Stephon Clark Six Times in the Back!

April 2, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Stephon Clark, 22-year-old father of two young children, unarmed and in his own grandmother’s backyard, was repeatedly shot in the back by two Sacramento pigs, according to an independent autopsy released at a news conference on Friday, March 30. The autopsy was commissioned by Stephon Clark’s family and conducted by Dr. Bennet Omalu—best known for his work in highlighting concussive damage to football players—after the family was told by authorities that an official report would not be released until the case is finished in the courts. The autopsy report proves the story the cops told is a complete lie!—the lie that they fired 20 shots at Stephon the night of March 18 because he moved toward them pointing what they thought was a gun. No gun was found, only a cell phone.

Dr. Omalu told the press on Friday that Clark “was not facing the officers” when he was killed. “During the entire interaction, he had his back to the officers.” Omalu said the first bullet hit him in the side with his back “slightly facing the officers,” causing his body to turn. His back was to the pigs when they hit him in a storm of six more shots, striking him in the neck, back, and thigh, breaking bones and piercing his lung. The final shot to the front of the leg was fired when he was already on or falling to the ground. The bullets combined to make Clark “bleed massively,” but still, “Death took about three to 10 minutes.” In other words, after shooting a young, unarmed Black man in the back, these pigs just watched Stephon die, instead of making any attempt at assistance.

The family’s attorney, Benjamin Crump, who previously represented the family of Trayvon Martin, said, “This independent autopsy affirms that Stephon was not a threat to police and was slain in another senseless police killing under increasingly questionable circumstances.”

The police murder of Stephon Clark has awakened the people of Sacramento like never before, with nearly daily protests and major disruptions of business as usual, and numerous confrontations with the police. Angry protesters have repeatedly marched through the streets, shutting down rush hour traffic; they’ve taken over Interstate 5 and backed up cars for a mile in each direction; they’ve taken over a city hall meeting; taken over the neighborhood where Stephon lived—and died—and twice blocked the entrance to the NBA’s Sacramento Kings games, leaving the teams to play before largely empty stands. The courage and determination of this increasingly multinational uprising has inspired a growing number of protests around the country.

Well over 500 people attended the funeral for Stephon on Thursday, March 29, in a powerful and moving event for everyone who was there. Stephon’s brother Stevante, who has responded to the murder by being in the forefront of these protests, interrupted the service at one point to call on people to “never forget Stephon!” People of all nationalities attended, including Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders. An imam who spoke said, “At some point you ask yourself, ‘If a system keeps on making these fatal mistakes, at what point is the system disqualified? At what point is the system evil?’”

On Saturday, March 31, 400 people took part in a rally, organized by former NBA player Matt Barnes, across from City Hall. That evening, at a vigil, a 61-year-old protester was injured when a Highway Patrol SUV hit her, throwing her into the air, and then drove away. She said at the hospital, “If I did that I’d be charged. It’s disregard for human life.”

How many more times will we have to listen to pigs—and this whole system that backs them—“justify” their utter depravity toward Black, Latino, and Native American young people by saying “we thought he had a gun”? This time, once again, there was no gun. These police killings, over and over again, are not accidents. They are not the result of “lack of training” or “bad policies.” Why do they get away with it almost every time? Because they are doing what they are supposed to do as armed protectors of the system that rules over the people.

Enough Is Enough! Time’s Up for This System! No More!

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/537/massacre-in-gaza-israel-opens-fire-on-unarmed-palestinians-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

Massacre in Gaza: Israel Opens Fire on Unarmed Palestinians—15 Murdered, 1,400 Injured

April 2, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On Friday, March 30, Israeli forces opened fire on thousands of unarmed Palestinians at a non-violent protest along Gaza’s border with Israel.

According to available reports, at least fifteen protesters were killed by Israeli troops. The Palestinian Ministry of Health reports that 805 were wounded by live ammunition. Over 1,400 were injured—with bullets, tank rounds, rubber bullets, and tear gas. On Saturday, March 31, 49 more unarmed demonstrators were wounded by Israeli fire.

This massacre is taking place in the context of the Trump/Pence regime’s bellicose posture in the Middle East, its unqualified support for Israel, and its decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, signaling its full backing for even more genocidal Israeli assaults on the Palestinian people.

Premeditated Mass Murder

Israel immediately claimed the protest was a “terror gathering” and that the Palestinians had initiated the violence. These are lies.

The evidence—including Israel’s own words—overwhelmingly points to Israel’s attack being unprovoked, premeditated mass murder to terrorize the Palestinian people from holding a non-violent demonstration.

On Friday, some 30,000 Palestinians had gathering for the first day of a planned six-week encampment and protest. They were demanding that Palestinian refugees have the “Right of Return” to land stolen from them during the 1948 war to found Israel and over the decades since. Thousands of Palestinians also turned out because Israel and Egypt’s crippling, 11-year long blockade has turned their lives into an intolerable hell, and they’re demanding that it be lifted.

In the days before this planned gathering, Israel’s military unilaterally declared that Palestinians could not gather—on their own land!—within 300 meters of the Gaza’s border with Israel or they’d be shot. The day before the protest, an Israeli government official used video of an unarmed Palestinian being shot in order to “threaten Gazans,” according to an Israeli human rights activist.

Israel also pre-positioned military forces on the border, including some 100 snipers, as well as tanks and helicopters.

Then, on March 30, before dawn and before the protests had begun, a Palestinian was murdered by tank fire while working on his farm near the border. The Israelis claim he was acting “suspiciously.” He was picking parsley.

During the protest, demonstrators were being hit by Israeli bullets hundreds of yards from the border fence. One video shows Abdul Fattah Abdul Nabi, an unarmed 19-year-old, being shot in the back of the head by Israeli snipers. He didn’t have a gun or a Molotov cocktail, he was only carrying a tire. “Does that harm the Israelis, a tire?” his brother Mohamed Abdul Nabi asked. “He wasn’t going toward the Israeli side. He was running away.”

One 20-year-old had just arrived at the protest. “He asked for a cigarette, I gave it to him, he had two puffs, and then he was shot in the head,” his brother told the Washington Post. “He’d only been there 10 minutes.”

One protester tweeted, “I was there we were protesting peacefully and Israeli were shooting directly toward us!!” The New York Times reported an 18-year-old protester saying that “holding a Palestinian flag in one hand and a rock in the other would be enough to get him killed by an Israeli soldier.” Some Palestinians threw stones to signify this was their land. But as one demonstrator said, “The stones never even reached the fence.”

“We Know Where Every Bullet Landed”

Afterward, the Israeli Army posted the following message—seen and screen copied by an Israeli human rights activist—before the Army quickly removed it:

Yesterday we saw 30,000 people; we arrived prepared and with precise reinforcements. Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed.

Read this again. It is nothing less than an admission of, taking credit for, and bragging about carrying out a pre-planned massacre.

This was underscored by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who declared: “Well done to our soldiers.”

Murder and Terror to Silence Exposure of Israel’s Crimes Against the Palestinians

Why did Israel carry out this savage, blatant massacre? For one reason, the Gaza protest was putting before the whole world the core truths and core crimes of Israel’s founding in 1948: the violent expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and lands—lands their forebears had inhabited for centuries. Most of Gaza’s two million inhabitants are refugees from the 1948 war or descendants of those refugees. The first day of protest took place on the 42nd anniversary of Land Day, a day of remembrance of Israel’s murder on March 30, 1976 of six Palestinians protesting the theft of their land in northern Israel.

The six-week protest and encampment is due to culminate with a "Great March of Return" on May 15—the anniversary of Israel's 1948 founding as a settler outpost for imperialism, a date Palestinians mark as the Nakba ("the catastrophe").

This history and Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people have been relentlessly suppressed and lied about. This six-week encampment is shining a global spotlight on it at a time when more and more people around the world are protesting and questioning Israel’s apartheid atrocities.

The six-week protest encampment would also highlight the ongoing crime of the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip, a small, isolated section of Palestine on the border with Egypt. This blockade has collapsed Gaza’s economy and turned this 25-mile long, 5-mile wide strip of land into an open-air prison. Palestinians have been robbed of jobs, electricity, freedom of movement, the minimum requirements of survival, and any future, leaving them with barely enough to survive. The blockade has created a “humanitarian crisis” that has already killed more than 1,000 Palestinians.

“Life in Gaza is hard,” Atef Abu Saif writes in a devastating portrayal in the New York Times. “Then it gets worse and we think it’s intolerable. Then it gets even worse.”

Israeli activist and author Miko Peled argues the blockade has “a very clear intent, to see the people of Gaza die a slow death and we’re talking about 2 million people.” (See Peled’s interview on The Michael Slate Show.)

America’s Hands Dripping With Palestinian Blood—Trump/Pence Give Green Light for Far Worse

Israel has carried on ongoing violent ethnic cleansing, including spasms of mass murder and massacres from the Nakba to the latest massacre in Gaza. The U.S. rulers—whether Democrats or Republicans are in power—have staunchly backed Israel (whatever tactical or face-saving criticisms they occasionally raise) for decades, and they have rivers of Palestinian tears—and blood—dripping from their hands.

But now, as part of his America First fascist agenda to more violently and directly impose U.S. dominance around the world, Trump has loudly signaled that Israel has a green light to do whatever it chooses, and there will be no criticism—even the kinds of tactical critiques or differences that have sometimes come up between this attack dog and its U.S. master.

The message of U.S. support for Israel’s escalating ethnic cleansing was sent loud and clear by the pending transfer of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which is due to take place on or near May 15—the day Palestinians commemorate the Nakba. (See A Dangerous Escalation: Trump Plans to Move U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem) And following this latest massacre, the U.S. representative at the UN blamed the Palestinians, saying that “bad actors” were using the “protests as a cover to incite violence” and “endanger innocent lives.”

Israel’s massacre is taking place in the context of ominous U.S. moves in the Middle East (and around the world). Trump is targeting Iran, and on May 12 he may break out of the nuclear deal the U.S. signed with Iran and other global powers—a deal Netanyahu and other powerful forces in Israel have opposed. This would radically escalate tensions in the region, and possibly lead to a U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Israel’s deliberate, pre-planned March 30 massacre, as well as its threats to “expand” its attacks if Palestinians continue to protest, is aimed at terrorizing the masses of Palestinians and people across the region, ahead of the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem and the possibility greater U.S.-Israeli crimes to come.

Palestinians have denounced Israel’s mass killing as a crime and are demanding justice. All people of conscience, no matter where they are, should join them in loudly and unequivocally condemning Israel’s massacre!

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/537/michael-slate-interviews-author-activist-miko-peled-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

Michael Slate Interviews Author and Activist Miko Peled

“Palestinians are suffering from a regime of apartheid, a campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide all at the same time”

April 2, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The following is excerpted from an interview with Miko Peled, aired on March 16, 2018, on The Michael Slate Show on KPFK Pacifica radio. The entire interview is available at themichaelslateshow.com.

Miko Peled is the son of an Israeli general, and Miko Peled himself served in the Israeli army. After his niece was killed by Palestinians in a suicide bombing, instead of responding with blind hate and revenge, Peled was driven to learn for himself why the Palestinian people were so full of outrage. Today he lives in the U.S. where he courageously speaks out against Zionism and Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. He is the author of The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine and Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.

The Michael Slate Show airs every Friday at 10 am Pacific Time on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles. The show can be streamed live here and people can listen to or download archived shows here.

Revolution/revcom.us features interviews from The Michael Slate Show to acquaint our readers with the views of significant figures in art, theatre, music and literature, science, sport, and politics. The views expressed by those interviewed are, of course, their own; and they are not responsible for the views published elsewhere by Revolution/revcom.us.

 

Michael Slate: There’s a full-scale assault on the Palestinian people right now and it has been kept quiet and secret from the rest of the world. In February alone at least 1,319 Palestinian people were detained by the Israeli occupation forces and other assaults continue unmitigated. Yet so little is known to the rest of the world. What’s your assessment of the situation today?

Miko Peled: It’s funny, you know, because people always say to me, “So how are things in Palestine? It seems like it’s really nice and quiet there now, like nothing’s going on.” I’m thinking how in the world does anybody reach that conclusion? What in the world makes people think that everything is fine? Palestine is bleeding like an injured human being, bleeding to death. Bleeding to death at an unbelievable speed, an unbelievable speed. It’s a miracle that there’s any piece of Palestine that is still alive. It will require an enormous effort, enormous relief, to just bring Palestine back on its feet and that relief isn’t anywhere in sight. And so the patient is dying very rapidly, the bleeding is severe, and like you said, people go around the world thinking that everything’s fine because they don’t see it on the news.

Michael Slate: There’s a lot of assaults on the Palestinian people, but it really does look like what we’re looking at is ethnic cleansing. That raises things to a whole other level. Cleansing the Palestinians from Jerusalem, but also throughout the country as a whole.

Miko Peled: Yes, you know it’s interesting, too, because when you use terms like ethnic cleansing, like genocide, like describing Israel’s regime as an apartheid regime, people on the other side are always up in arms, they’re outraged: “How dare you say the Jews could possibly commit genocide? The Jews would never agree to impose apartheid on other people.” I think Nancy Pelosi once said it’s absurd to think the Jews would ever use apartheid against other people. First of all, Jews are like any other people; they can do what other people do, just as bad and just as good. But on the issue of Palestine, it’s very easy to show because the international community has defined these terms.

What is happening in Palestine is all of the above. It’s an apartheid regime and, again, international law describes exactly what apartheid is. It is ethnic cleansing. Again you can look at the definition of ethnic cleansing. And it’s genocide. Look at the Geneva Convention and the description of the crime of genocide and compare these three definitions to what has been happening in Palestine over the last seven decades and somebody come up here and tell me that it is not a perfect fit. It is genocide, it is ethnic cleansing, and it’s a regime of apartheid all at the same time. Again, the definitions are very clear so for some reason to come up and say oh no, it’s not this and it’s not that, it’s not the other―it’s complete nonsense. All you have to do is look at the definition that international law has given these terms, these crimes, and it’s a perfect fit.

Michael Slate: Let’s get into some concrete examples of what is actually happening in Palestine now.

Miko Peled: We have two million people in the Gaza Strip without access to clean water, without access to proper medical care. They have been subjected to bombing beyond belief and the injured from those bombings still have not been able to get medical relief. We’re talking about tens of thousands of people without access to relief. If you want to kill someone without shooting them, you can injure them, then let them die slowly, or you can deny them water, or you can deny them clean water and they will die from disease. So there’s clearly an intent here, a very clear intent, to see the people of Gaza die a slow death—and we’re talking about two million people.

We know very well as a result of the relief organizations that are able to do some work there that a child with a curable disease—a curable cancer—inside the Gaza Strip will die. A Jewish-Israeli child a mile away on the other side of the border with the exact same disease will live, and it’s only because Israel denies the health care, the proper medical care, to the Palestinian child. So that is two million people in the Gaza Strip.

We have hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Negev Desert who are denied clean water, with infant mortality rates that are off the charts and without any comparisons to mortality rates among Israeli Jews. We’re talking about the Bedouins in the Negev Desert, Palestinians who are Israeli citizens. Children are dying because they have no access to clean water, so they’re admitted to the hospital with diseases that you never see Israeli children, Jewish children, being admitted with these diseases. They don’t have those problems, they have access to clean water, they have access to health care immediately.

With Palestinians in Jerusalem who are losing their homes at an alarming rate, losing the right to live there ... you know, I was born and raised in Jerusalem—I can come and go as I please. I’ve been gone for 20 years—I go back, I’m a citizen. Palestinians in Jerusalem are—first of all, they’re not citizens, they’re “alien residents” even though several of the families there go back very far. And if they leave, then they lose their ability to return, they lose their alien resident status, and their property is taken away. This is happening at an alarming rate, plus home demolition, plus entire communities in the periphery of Jerusalem, which used to be attached to Jerusalem, Palestinian communities, Palestinian towns that have become complete ghost towns. You see the brand-new buildings—businesses, homes—completely abandoned because the people have been subjected to ethnic cleansing.

And the list goes on and on and on—in Galilee, in every part of the country, Palestinians are suffering from a regime of apartheid, a campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide all at the same time.

Michael Slate: This is pushed underneath everything else so a lot of people don’t know about it at all. Gaza in particular really reminds me of the Warsaw Ghetto. There’s a certain irony there given who’s actually reigning over what’s happening in Gaza right now. But the fact that it does look like and remind one of the Warsaw Ghetto is pretty heavy

Miko Peled: Yes, it’s horrifying, it’s beyond horrifying. The fact that the world is allowing that to happen, and again—we’re not talking about some remote mountaintop in the middle of Afghanistan where there’s no access. We’re talking about Palestine, we’re talking about a country where there’s plenty of access—or where there could be plenty of access to clean water, to the best health care ... people are educated. It is a three-hour flight from Paris. I mean, for God’s sake, you know, it’s half an hour from Tel Aviv, from Jerusalem—cities where you wouldn’t dream of seeing Israeli Jews live like this, and nobody cares. There are no protests, there are no demands that the siege on Gaza be stopped.

If this was any other place you’d have the [U.S.] Sixth Fleet there forcing the siege open and giving basic humanitarian care to the people there, but they won’t do that because it’s Israel. Eventually what needs to happen is the Sixth Fleet needs to force that siege open instead of collaborating with the state of Israel, which is what the U.S. military is doing now on a huge scale, and for some basic relief for the two million people of Gaza.

By the way, the crime of genocide as it is defined by the Geneva Convention also speaks about complicity with genocide, and that’s where the United States government and the European government hopefully will one day find themselves—in a court of law—because they are complicit with the genocide of the Palestinians.

Michael Slate: Miko, there’s a specific role of U.S. imperialism here, and it’s been ongoing. But it’s taken a leap since the ascendancy of Trump to the top of the regime. You look at, for instance, just the recent thing with Jerusalem and the U.S. embassy being moved to Jerusalem, which is a declaration that the U.S. stands solidly behind the genocide that the Israeli administration and government is bringing down on the Palestinian people.

Miko Peled: Yes, without a doubt Trump has emboldened Israel in a way that was hard to imagine, because we all thought this was as bad as it’s going to get. This move—putting the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem—was, first of all, reckless. But it was also a move that was designed as a slap in the face to all the Arab and Muslim world. It was a personal, political gift to Benjamin Netanyahu, because Netanyahu and Trump have become BFFs. And now they brought into the equation the new crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who is a criminal, who is conducting a horrifying campaign of killing and slaughtering in Yemen, and was just given billions of dollars’ worth of weapons by the Brits and a complete license to continue this by the Americans. And the price he has to pay is, of course, normalized relations with Israel, and there is every reason to expect that there will be normal diplomatic relations between the two countries before long.

So this is a very dangerous, very dangerous, time. I think it is more dangerous than anything I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. And the people who suffer the most as a result of this are the Palestinians, because Israel has been emboldened—they are even more violent and more brutal towards Palestinians and Palestinian children than they have ever been before.

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/537/bob-avakian-memoir-ch7-ramparts-bpp-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

 

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Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

September 16, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

A Country Ruled By White Supremacists—Since When Is That Acceptable?

by Bob Avakian

 

July 15, 2019: In light of Donald Trump's racist comments on Sunday, July 14 about the Democratic Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley, we are reprinting the following piece from Bob Avakian, originally written in 2017 but at least as timely today... and certainly as urgent.

 

Jemele Hill, a commentator at ESPN, tweeted that Donald Trump is a white supremacist, whereupon White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders called for Hill to be fired. (She has not been fired but had to issue an apology, saying she should not have implicated ESPN in her comments.) And then there is the comprehensive and compelling case made by Ta-Nehisi Coates, in the current issue of the Atlantic, that Trump’s defining ideology is white supremacy. Here it must be sharply raised:

What does it mean, and what does it require people to do, if an overt white supremacist is sitting in the White House, if this whole administration (regime) is based on white supremacy, if not only Jemele Hill’s comments, but Ta-Nehisi Coates’ argument in his Atlantic article, is accurate—which is the case? Is this something people just have to accept—that overt white supremacists are now ruling the country? Is it something that can, or should, wait until some future election (2018 or 2020) to see if it gets “worked out”? And who will cause this to “work out” in a good way, if their moral and political standard is that it is alright, or something people just have to accept, that the country is being openly ruled now by white supremacists?!

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/537/this-nightmare-must-end-the-trump-pence-regime-must-go-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

Call to Action From Refuse Fascism:

This Nightmare Must End:
The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
In the Name of Humanity,
We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America.

April 2, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

We are horrified and angered at the shocking damage already done to lives here and around the world by the Trump/Pence regime. We recognize that they are poised to do far worse, including threatening WAR, even nuclear war. Through an unrelenting barrage of daily outrages and Twitter outbursts, the Trump/Pence regime is radically remaking society—step by step hammering into place a vicious American fascism. This is not insult or exaggeration, it is what they are doing.

Therefore, WE RESOLVE that nothing short of removing this whole illegitimate regime from power will stop this nightmare.

There is a way to do this. To do so,we must cast aside illusions and self-delusions:

All too many people think and act as if what we face is just the worst of pendulum swings between Republicans and Democrats. NO! This regime, if left in power, will effect a thoroughly reactionary restructuring of society.

If we think that the normal processes of the 2018 or 2020 elections, or the Mueller investigation will, by themselves, redress the situation that humanity faces, we are not understanding the determination of these fascists in power to shatter norms—even though they have been doing so for over a year.

If we think that the heightened activism of the past year, either by itself or together with the elections will stop this regime, we are missing how much harm this regime has already done, absorbing individual protests as it rapidly moves its agenda forward on multiple fronts.

If we are not as outraged and motivated to act today as we were right after the election, we are on our way to accepting a great horror that builds daily. If we adjust to the injustice of this regime, do not ask how the German people could have accepted Nazism in the 1930s.

An American Fascism

We must not reassure ourselves that it couldn’t happen here. It is. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” is a 21st century fascist program of Manifest Destiny—”America First”—wrapped in the flag and Mike Pence’s Bible taken literally, with a program of white supremacy, misogyny, and xenophobia.

This regime denies truth and objective evidence, and yet it has its hands on the most powerful military and nuclear arsenal in history and is preparing and threatening to use it! Millions of immigrants live in terror fearing their loved ones will be ripped away. People’s humanity is viciously denied. Women are poised to lose the right to abortion. Trump and Sessions have instructed police to “take the gloves off,” further brutalizing people of color. LGBTQ rights recently won are under assault. Damage done to the environment by this regime in just 14 months could be irreversible.

Fascism rules by organized repression and terror by the government: civil liberties are stripped away, law re-written, dissent criminalized, the courts packed with fascists, and the separation of powers and of church and state ultimately eviscerated. As part of radically remaking society, the Trump/Pence regime must sharply attack those in positions of power who oppose them. Fascism also mobilizes mobs of vicious thugs as we’ve seen with Nazis marching and murdering in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Trump/Pence Regime has not yet been able to implement their full program. But they are advancing. It might only take a single serious crisis—international or domestic—for this regime to drop the hammer.

Don’t Normalize... Don’t Accommodate... Don’t Conciliate... Don’t Collaborate...

People all over the world are counting on us to STOP this nightmare. The different strains of fascist demagogues and movements in this country see in Trump and Pence their “last chance” to achieve their reactionary program. They will not listen to facts or reason; they have already and will continue to change rules, manipulate elections, and they will not give up.

The Democratic Party leadership will NOT lead us out of this. They are about maintaining order for their whole set up. For them, order is more important than justice, even if that means the order of fascism. After Trump’s election, President Obama said of Trump, “We are all on the same team... We are now all rooting for his success.” NO! If Trump succeeds, it will be catastrophic!

But there IS another way. A different kind of protest. We need to organize now for the time when we can launch massive, sustained nonviolent protests in the streets of cities and towns across the country—protests that continue day after day and don’t stop, creating the kind of political situation in which the demand that the Trump/Pence regime be removed from power is met.

Everyone who recognizes that the Trump/Pence Nightmare Must End is invited to join in and prepare for launching this great act of sustained resistance.

Imagine tens of thousands beginning in several cities and towns, with marches, candlelight vigils, rallies—students, religious communities, immigrants, everyone with a heart for humanity in the streets and not backing down—growing from thousands to hundreds of thousands and eventually millions. Our actions will reflect the values of respect for all of humanity and the world we want—in stark contrast to the hate and bigotry of the Trump/Pence fascist regime. The whole world will take heart.

This will shake millions awake, with many losing their adjustment to life under this regime. The international credibility of the regime will be undermined. A determined struggle that doesn’t yield and won’t be provoked can create a serious political crisis. Those in power who are themselves now under attack by the regime but conciliating with it would be compelled to respond to our struggle from below, leading to a situation where this illegitimate regime is removed from power.

This would be hard, but possible. Possible because millions of us feel the horror of Trump and Pence. Many have righteously protested different outrages, but now we must rise to another level of determined resistance.

We must confront the reality that the world as we have known it is being torn asunder. This requires getting out of our comfort zones and not allowing our differences to stand in the way of rising together in an unprecedented, unrelenting mass struggle to confront the danger of a Trump/Pence fascist America.

WE PLEDGE that we will not stand aside while there is still a chance to stop a regime that imperils humanity and the earth itself. Join us. Let’s stand together with conviction and courage, overcoming fear and uncertainty, to struggle with all we’ve got to demand: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go.

In the Name of Humanity,

We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!

This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

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Go to:
RefuseFascism.org
to add your name to this statement

 @RefuseFascism on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/537/launching-the-new-call-from-refuse-fascism-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

Launching the New Call from Refuse Fascism

April 2, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

NOTE FROM THE EDITORS: Revcom.us received the following letter to Refuse Fascism organizers from RefuseFascism.org. It lays out their plans to launch their new Call to Action (linked here and at the bottom of this page). We are sharing this with our readers because it is of tremendous import to people all over the world that this effort succeeds. We will have more on this effort in the next week.

 

April 1, 2018

To Chapters and Organizers:

Trump’s recent appointment of a team of torturers, war criminals and eager-to-be war criminals—coming on top of more than a year now of the regime’s fascist assault on many different sections of the people as well as many norms and institutions of society—make the mission of RefuseFascism.org more urgent and necessary than ever before.

People all over the world need for us to succeed very soon in launching a movement of sustained mass nonviolent protests that start with many thousands and grow to millions and do not stop until the demand—The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!—is met.

To this end, it is of tremendous importance that we now have a new Call to Action. This new Call captures in a single piece the scope and magnitude of the danger we face 14 months into a fascist regime and compellingly puts forward the only way that this can be stopped.

This Call provides a unified understanding and mission around which RefuseFascism.org can go out and struggle to win hundreds, soon thousands, and then tens of thousands and more to the understanding and determination to act together to stop the catastrophe that is the American fascism of the Trump/Pence Regime.

The following are plans for all of us—in different parts of the country and in different ways—to work together to launch this Call with the greatest impact and in a way that builds both greater unity of will among broader numbers of people and, very importantly, greater organization and participation in RefuseFascism.org. This “launch plan” is to provide more detail and direction as to how to implement the first phase of the overall plan for 2018 which chapter organizers received two weeks ago, and which we encourage everyone to return to.

This launch plan includes “soft launch” of grassroots efforts that begins to get the new Call out hand-to-hand and prepares momentum and participation in a bigger launch on April 11, with heightened buzz, distribution, and organizing around the new Call in the two weeks to follow that.

Through this entire four week period, RF will be spreading our basic message far and wide through the Call and getting out our main slogans (This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! and, NO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!). This spreading of our Call and slogans will be integrated with three additional things: [1] building organization and raising funds, drawing forward and involving new people through meetings, discussions, watching the film of the talk by Bob Avakian: “THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible”; [2] preparing for a month of actions that will put the basic objective and message of RF before the world; and [3] doing all of this in the midst of the swirl of struggle against the regime around the danger of war, the assault on immigrants, and other key fronts where RF intervention would contribute to achieving our objective. Key in this period is stepping out with the Call, the slogans/posters and organizing masses into RF preparing for the struggles to come.

TODAY TO APRIL 10—”SOFT LAUNCH”

For this concentrated period, chapters and volunteers should focus on grassroots efforts of mass distribution of the new Call to Action and uniting beginning cores of people around the content of this Call (this should include existing members, folks who have been in and out of the chapters in recent months, and new people you are meeting).

a) Focus on mass distribution of the initial Call/layout. This should include not only distributing this at protests, but also at high schools (students are extremely politicized right now and very receptive), at theater events, forums, mass transit hubs, and other places. Aim to get out thousands—even tens of thousands. Collect new sign-ups and volunteers for the next phase. Always have a donation can and ASK EVERYONE to donate (the more you ask, the more people give).

b) Through this, build a buzz for and invite very aggressively to mass meetings on (or, if your chapter needs to do it near) Wednesday, April 11th.

c) Begin discussing the content of the new Call with the members of your chapter, with clusters of friends and family, with students and others you are meeting. The more people wrestle with and are united around the content of this Call, the more they can be involved in the next phase of launching this to an even greater audience. Again, ask people to donate to getting this Call printed in mass quantities, advertised online, and for the movement being built around it to succeed.

d) Take this Call to Action to people who have disproportionate influence and ask them to sign it and to donate. Send in records of people who sign this to the National Office. Once we garner a critical mass of prominent signers, we will announce the initial list in the second phase.

e) SOCIAL MEDIA: During these 9 days, RF social media (and those it can unleash) should build anticipation for the April 11th launch of the new Call to Action. This should include a series of anticipation-building posts all week (memes, short videos from RF and folks RF is meeting, clips from the BA talk, and more), perhaps a thunderclap prepared for the 11th, lining up the participation of people with larger platforms for the 11th itself, and other ideas generated by the social media team in conjunction with the National Office. This should incorporate asking people to donate and popularizing the reasons people give for donating.

APRIL 11—OFFICIAL LAUNCH

On April 11, there will be a new, more compelling and attractive print layout of the Call to Action available for distribution and “unveiled” online. There will be a 30 minute livestream from the NY meeting that will include: a dramatic reading of the Call, a presentation of the national plan, and likely a short presentation on the present danger of war (about 10 minutes each), as well as a fund-pitch. This launch should be built up in the week ahead of time on social media, and through the mass emails from RF, getting people to tune in live online and spread the livestream as it happens.

Chapters and other clusters of people around the country—everyone met through the “soft launch”—should gather to watch this live in mass organizing meetings (or on video later in the day, or later in the week). Everyone should be asked to donate on the spot online, or by filling out a pledge card indicating how much they will give and by when (which organizers will have to follow up on to collect).

This should then kick off a much more intense and wide-reaching effort to mobilize many new people to work together to mass distribute this Call to Action to an even greater range of people over the next two weeks. This should include a movement of readings of the call at pertinent locations—in front of Trump properties, in school cafeterias, from the pulpit, in senior centers, on public transit, etc. These should be filmed and promoted through social media (and creative splices of different readings could be created to spread momentum and involvement). Chapters and organizers must plan this well so this becomes both a way to reach many tens of thousands of new people with the Call and a means to concretely organize scores of new organizers to work together with, and become part of, RefuseFascism.org as they do. This must include plans for fundraising on an even bigger scale—both mass fundraising and the development of more significant donations and regular donors.

April 12 – April 25—Mass Campaign to Distribute and Get Organized Around the Call to Action

Distribute hundreds of thousands of copies of this new Call to Action across the country, creating a grassroots buzz, growing organization, setting political terms, and garnering prominent signatories that can disproportionately shape public opinion.

Fundraising: Major funds need to be raised in this period. Millions are being mobilized to donate funds and time to elections which hold no chance of stopping the nightmare Trump/Pence are imposing. We have to aggressively and boldly go out and win many thousands to very soon become donors—one time donors as well as ongoing sustainers—of RefuseFascism.org, the one organization and movement that is accurately assessing the problem we face and has a plan to move the millions required to stop this nightmare. Donating and raising funds for RF are among the most important ways of strengthening this movement—enabling us to reach millions more with the funds that are raised and organizing people by winning them to become donors and sustainers and to, in turn, take up fundraising themselves. Fundraising must be woven into every activity we undertake (always shaking the can when going out broadly, for example) and there must be specific fundraising efforts planned and persevered in (phone-banking, fundraising potlucks, bake sales, targeted outreach to develop higher level donors and sustainers, etc.).

Posters, stickers, T-shirts, hats and more. New materials are being developed to be ready for April 11. Important: We need more designers and volunteers to help develop these materials—please contact us if you, or someone you know, can volunteer.

Social media: Unleash a campaign that wields the content of the Call (entering into hot conversations and in its own right) and calls on others to sign it. Show images of posters getting up, stickers being worn and getting out, the Call being mass distributed. Work to involve more and more volunteers met online to participate in spreading this (mass emails should also include regular instructions for spreading on social media). Fundraising intensifies—including through sales of merchandize online.

Preparations for next phase: During this period, plans also must be developed for—and people organized and won to take part across the country in—forms of political protest and action that project this Call and its mission much more dramatically into society.

The National Office will write with more thinking on this soon, but in the meantime we strongly encourage you to think and strategize among your chapters and to share—in appropriate ways—ideas and suggestions (or questions) that you come up with.

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/537/jeff-sessions-strategic-plan-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

BOLO (Be On the Lookout For) Alert…
Jeff Sessions’ “Strategic Plan”: Unrestrained Police Brutality; Ethnic Cleansing; Amping Up the Death Penalty

April 2, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

HuffingtonPost.com (HuffPo) recently published an important article on what they said was a leaked draft of the Department of Justice (DOJ) five-year strategic plan. HuffPo did not publish the draft itself, but quoted from it and characterized key features; the DOJ has confirmed their characterization as broadly accurate.

While we must wait to see the final plan to make a full analysis, some key features revealed by HuffPo show that this is a “strategic plan” for escalating police brutality and murder, for ethnic cleansing of foreign-born people, and for accelerating the ongoing slow genocide against Black people.

As such, it forms a central pillar of the Trump/Pence fascist regime.

Unleashing Police to Be Even More Brutal and Murderous

In a sharp break with the recent past, the plan does not include a focus on “criminal justice reform.”

During the Obama years, exposure and protest erupted against rampant police murder (and the potential for this to continue to burst to the surface is evidenced in the current outrage over the murder of unarmed Stephon “Zoe” Clark in his grandparents’ backyard in Sacramento.) And a movement grew against the mass incarceration of 2.3 million people—mainly Black and Brown, and mainly for nonviolent offenses.

The Obama DOJ paid some lip service to this. It issued critical reports about unjust “patterns and practices” of policing in some cities and towns and made a big show of paltry reforms, such as “consent decrees” that were supposed to limit police abuse.

These in no way put a stop to, nor substantially diminished, the oppression of Black and Brown people. And in the cases of police murdering Black and Brown people that brought forward major protests—Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, Ramarley Graham, Keith Scott, and many, many more—the DOJ had a “pattern and practice” of either refusing to take them up at all, or of promising justice and investigations to get people off the streets, and then months later quietly exonerating the killer cops. In fact, there were zero DOJ indictments for any of the thousands of police murders that occurred on Obama’s watch.

Nevertheless, the fact that the DOJ even acknowledged that there was a problem with “police-community relations,” that there might be some “bad” cops, and that policing needed to be “reformed” conceded some legitimacy to the protests of thousands and the outrage of millions.

Under Sessions even this minimal concession is being flipped completely. Sessions falsely claims that the DOJ’s modest reforms “cost more lives by handcuffing the police instead of the criminals.” A DOJ spokesman declared that the DOJ “will never negotiate or sign a consent decree that could reduce the lawful powers of the police.”

This is fully in line with Donald Trump’s notorious call to cops around the country to “please don’t be too nice” to the masses who are in fact victimized by these pigs day in and day out.

As Carl Dix, for decades a leader and fighter against police brutality and murder¹ and a spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist Party, said:

“With this five-year DOJ plan, Sessions is sending an ominous message—that the police terror that disproportionately targets Black and Brown people will continue AND that the DOJ won’t even make a show of doing anything about it. Instead it will give its backing to the pigs who inflict this murder and brutality This means the slow genocide that has been enforced on Black and Brown people will not only continue unchecked but will be intensified as part of hammering fascist rule into place. This shows why it is urgent that everyone who doesn’t want to live in a society where people are subjected to horrors like this has to join in driving this regime from power as soon as possible. And it points to the need to ultimately make revolution to get beyond a situation where this kind of savage oppression is built into the normal workings of society.”

Opening the Gates to New Levels of Ethnic Cleansing Against Immigrants

A major focus of the plan is “enhancing immigration enforcement,” which wasn’t previously even part of the DOJ’s domain. (The Border Patrol, as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, are part of the Department of Homeland Security, not the DOJ.)

So what will the DOJ be doing on this front? One major component will be attacking “sanctuary jurisdictions” (cities, states, universities, and other entities that provide some protections for undocumented people) or even prosecuting public officials who stand with immigrants, as Sessions threatened to do with the mayor of Oakland.

A second, even more chilling element is (according to HuffPo) to “prioritize” efforts to “denaturalize those who obtained citizenship fraudulently.” [Emphasis ours.] Thus, even as the U.S. is slamming the door on and sending home hundreds of thousands of refugees from Haiti, Central America, and elsewhere, even as it is carrying out raids around the country aimed at driving all the estimated 11 million undocumented people out of the U.S., it is opening up a new front—stripping citizenship from foreign-born people who have already obtained it. While the DOJ claims this is aimed at those who obtained citizenship fraudulently, in the hands of this regime of immigrant-hating xenophobes this looms as the potential and basis to turn into a witch hunt, where every real, alleged, or imagined mistake on an immigration form or any minor misdeed will be “justification” to “denaturalize”—and deport—people.

Cranking Up Mass Incarceration, and Dramatically Expanding the Death Penalty

This plan calls for amping up violent repression in Black and Brown communities under the banner of the “War on Drugs,” which has been the official pretext for mass incarceration, stop-and-frisk, and police murder for over 40 years. Illegal drugs are a huge business controlled by large-scale international capitalist entities (cartels) as well as (in the case of the opioid epidemic) major “legitimate” pharmaceutical companies. But the prisons have been filled to overflowing with users and street-level dealers, most of whom are either youths desperately trying to survive, or addicts seeking to secure their own supply.

HuffPo says the “draft document calls for a ‘strategic and targeted’ plan to incapacitate violent criminals and says the DOJ will partner with other law enforcement agencies to dismantle drug trafficking organizations.”

Sessions has already rolled back Obama-era policies of not seeking extremely harsh sentences for small players in the drug economy—instead, Sessions ordered U.S. Attorneys to “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense.” And Sessions is bitterly opposed to the decriminalization of marijuana, threatening to carry out federal arrests even in states that have legalized pot. Marijuana arrests are a major way in which millions of Black and Brown youths have been criminalized and incarcerated.

Even more ominously, in recent weeks both Sessions and Trump have begun calling for the death penalty against “drug dealers.”

Trump made this a major part of his recent “campaign KKK rallies” and of his proposal for dealing with the opioid epidemic. And Trump has praised Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (and other despots), who brags about ordering the street executions of thousands, mostly poor people in the slums as well as some of Duterte’s high-level political enemies, for supposed “drug dealing,” murders openly carried out by police and by fascist vigilantes. Now Sessions has ordered U.S. Attorneys to examine the ways that they could use existing laws to obtain death sentences for drug dealers.

Think about this: right now there are about 90,000 people in federal prisons alone for drug dealing, and around 480,000 people in state and federal prisons for drug crimes. Black and Brown people are about 56 percent of those prisoners, even though drug use is fairly evenly distributed among different nationalities. Promoting the death penalty as the “answer” to the drug problem opens the door to genocidal levels of state murders of oppressed people, and a broader demonization of Black and Brown people that can unleash extra-legal murder on a mass scale, à la the Philippines.

There is more in this plan, including moves to create new “freedom” for Nazis and fascists on college campuses while repressing anti-fascist forces, defending the “right” of Christians to discriminate against LGBTQ people, and efforts to clamp down on those forces still within the U.S. government apparatus who aren’t fully down with the fascist program.

We will have more on this outrageous plan once we see the full document.

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1. Carl Dix is a representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party and a follower of and advocate for Bob Avakian, his leadership, and his visionary new synthesis of communism. He is a courageous freedom fighter from the 1960s who went on to become a revolutionary fighter and a communist. Dix spent two years in military prison for refusing to fight in the unjust Vietnam War. He emerged unrepentant and went on to become a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), USA, dedicating his life to the emancipation of all humanity. Carl is a co-initiator of Refuse Fascism. He co-founded, with Cornel West, the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN), and initiated Rise Up October that brought thousands into the streets in New York City in 2015 demanding a stop to police terror.  [back]

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/537/trump-pence-regime-shows-fangs-no-more-daca-deal-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

News Flash:

Trump/Pence Regime Shows Its Fangs: “NO MORE DACA DEAL!”

April 2, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

At 6:56 am on April 1, the ‘‘Shithole”-in-Chief followed his “Happy Easter!” tweet with a monstrous Easter message from the Trump/Pence regime: “NO MORE DACA DEAL!” ¹ No “deal” with the Democrats to keep DACA. Nothing to prevent this regime from moving ahead to shatter the lives and hopes of over 1.8 million undocumented immigrants brought here as children, whose deportation had been delayed by DACA.

Once more, Trump has twisted the dagger he first stabbed into the back of nearly two million Dreamers in the first days of last September. In the six months since he has been using the lives and future of these Dreamers as hostages for ransom—to demand complete acceptance by the top Democratic leadership of not only the wall on the Mexico border but more and more steps in the regime’s program to “Make America White Again” by driving millions of immigrants of color out of the country and dramatically reducing the future admission of immigrants from what Trump has called, in his racist language, “shithole” countries of the world.

The top Democrats have been perfectly willing to allow Trump to use the lives of these young people as “bargaining chips”—despite the fact that the Dreamers have demanded explicitly and repeatedly that Democrats not be complicit with Trump in harming millions of other immigrants in “exchange” for some continuation of DACA. And the Democrats twice threw the DACA people under the bus instead of stopping government business-as-usual and demanding the renewal of DACA status.

As we have emphasized, the Trump/Pence regime’s attack on the Dreamers is a battering ram aimed at busting down the door to their full-on attack on all immigrants. There is a great deal at stake at this moment for immigrants and for all people: “Making America White Again,” now focused on forcing out and deporting millions of immigrants, is a cornerstone of the full fascist program of the Trump/Pence regime.

It is time to cast away illusions. To continue to rely on the Democrats to resist, let alone stop, this regime from consolidating its program is suicide. The white-supremacist attack on immigrants is repugnant and unacceptable. We cannot allow this to happen! It has to be stopped, as part of driving out the whole fascist regime!

1. Trump had reportedly been listening to a Fox News report on a caravan of asylum seekers on their way from Honduras to the U.S. border. He responded on Twitter with a flurry of lies to justify threatening Mexico, attacking Democrats as enemies, screaming “NEED WALL!” and announcing “NO MORE DACA DEAL!”[back]

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/536/how-long-will-pigs-keep-murdering-and-walking-free-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

From the Revolution Club, Chicago:

How long will pigs keep murdering and walking free? How long will they enforce this system with its murder, brutality and oppression?

UNTIL WE MAKE REVOLUTION TO GET RID OF IT!

Get With the Revolution Club and Start Getting Ready for Revolution

March 30, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

“Stephon!” “Clark!” The call and response resonating out of the streets of Sacramento wrenches our hearts with fury. Twenty shots. Twenty-two-years old. In his grandmother’s backyard. Black lives shattered, murdered, stolen. By police with a green light to kill. Again. GODDAMN! Stephon’s brother powerfully spoke out and called forward inspiring resistance, and people have poured into the streets of Sacramento day after day, righteously standing up and demanding justice. Shutting down a Sacramento Kings game, city hall, and the I-5 freeway. This is beautiful and needs to continue and spread.

At the same time, the blue-coated killers of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge are walking free. People rose up and rocked Baton Rouge—and all over the country, people took to the streets demanding justice. Alton Sterling was selling CDs outside a convenience store when the pigs came and slammed him on the car, threw him to the ground, and shot him while he was down, and they are not even charged with a crime.

We see it again and again. Just here in Chicago: Decynthia Clements in Elgin. For an hour, police surrounded her car while she was having a mental breakdown. She needed HELP. They knew she had a knife and no gun, but as soon as they got her out, they shot. GODDAMN! Justus Howell in Zion, 17 and shot twice in the back. No punishment. The pig who opened fire on Quintonio LeGrier, murdering him and his neighbor Bettie Jones? Nothing. Even after the review board said the cop should be fired, the police superintendent, Eddie Johnson, repeats proven lies from the killer cop justifying these cold-blooded murders.

These are the system’s bullshit “answers.” Civilian review boards that don’t mean shit. Body cams, federal and state investigations, independent prosecutors, voting in elected officials... what does it get us? Killer cops caught red-handed still walking free, more infuriating excuses, more families slapped in the face with “justifiable homicide.” And now the Trump/Pence fascist regime is straight up calling for “taking the gloves off” police, to “get tough” and execute “drug dealers.”

Does this mean we should not rise up and resist? NO. Resistance is righteous, necessary, and the only way to even get close to justice. But we have to look at the cold truth, and face reality in a scientific way. We have to take to heart the lesson from Bob Avakian, leader of the revolution, when he says:

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.

Here’s another true statement from BA: “We need a revolution. Anything else, in the final analysis, is bullshit.”

A real revolution isn’t just protests or a general change. REVOLUTION means OVERTHROWING the system, defeating and dismantling its armed forces of violent repression through the conscious struggle of tens of millions of people. To be able to wage this struggle and WIN, we need to work now toward a revolutionary situation at the soonest possible time, by actively carrying out the “3 Prepares”: Prepare the Ground, Prepare the People, and Prepare the Vanguard—Get Ready for the Time When Millions Can Be Led to Go for Revolution, All-Out, With a Real Chance to Win.

We in the Revolution Club are taking up BA’s leadership, the science and strategy for making revolution. The question facing you: to accept all this terror and brutality; to keep playing the fool to this system’s promises of reform; to keep killing each other in the senseless gangbanging they have set us up to do—or to dig deeper, get with the Revolution Club, and take up fighting for a better world.

To start, you can spread and post this leaflet, spread the quotes on the back from Bob Avakian that speak the TRUTH about the role of the police and what will really deal with this system. And watch and spread the word of the film from Bob Avakian, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible. Everyone needs to see this right now both to understand the depth of the danger we are facing right now, what can be done to face this, and to introduce many more people to this revolutionary leader.

Revolution Club Organizing Center
1857 E. 71st St.
312.804.9121
revclub.chi@gmail.com
@RevClubChi on Twitter and Facebook

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/537/maya-stood-with-undocumented-immigrants-drop-charges-drop-ban-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

Maya Stood in a Silent Protest With 11 Million Undocumented Immigrants
Drop the Charges! Drop the Ban!

April 2, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On March 1, 2018, University of Chicago police brutally attacked and arrested Maya, a member of the Revolution Club, Chicago, as she was leaving campus after participating in a SILENT protest in the Reynolds Club student center, where almost the entire dining hall fell silent for 11 minutes in support of 11 million undocumented immigrants. On top of this outrageous attack, in which SHE is the one who sustained injuries, Maya has been indicted with a felony charge of battery on a police officer and resisting arrest. She was further targeted by the state at what should have been a routine bail hearing when the assistant state’s attorney presented a lengthy, distorted, and utterly irrelevant political dossier on Maya, implying that she should not be released—on the basis of her alleged political views and associations. She has been banned from campus as a condition of being released.

Meanwhile, the university has rolled out a red carpet for Steve Bannon to speak. Bannon spoke recently to a gathering of fascists in France and advised them, “Let them call you racist... wear it as a badge of honor.” His propagating of the racist myth of the “superiority of Western civilization” comes with the head of state, Donald Trump, giving speeches calling immigrants criminals, animals, and snakes, targeting sanctuary cities and states, ruthlessly hunting down and deporting people, holding the terror of deportation over the heads of hundreds of thousands of Dreamers, and separating children and parents in detention centers. At the same time the Trump/Pence regime assembles a war cabinet and makes bellicose threats to attack Iran and North Korea.

Universities are places where critical thinking can and should be what is in the air, where ideas are debated with intellectual rigor and creativity, where new ideas can take hold and reverberate throughout society. Instead, at the current moment, there is a real attempt to make them platforms to legitimize and normalize fascist ideas, and more and more the voices of dissent are being repressed with the power of the state.

Maya, a revolutionary who is fighting for the emancipation of all humanity, has courageously stood up to say the attacks on immigrants are intolerable, and she has been working to bring forward a mass, determined movement to drive the Trump/Pence regime from power. She has argued for the importance of taking up what is said in the filmed speech by Bob Avakian, “THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible,” in particular the need for everyone who cares about justice to step outside their comfort zones and be willing to put themselves on the line to prevent Trump/Pence fascism from consolidating its rule and fully implementing its program.

Drop the charges and drop the ban. Thursday, April 5, we will do as Maya did and stand for 11 minutes of silence, outside university president Robert Zimmer’s office at Levi Hall.

To contact Revolution Club, Chicago, find us on Facebook or Twitter @RevClubChi, 312.804.9121, revclub.chi@gmail.com, 1857 E. 71st Street in South Shore.

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/536/the-young-karl-marx-bob-avakian-and-contending-with-other-views-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

From a Revolution Club Member:

The Young Karl Marx, BA, and Contending with Other Views

March 26, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

We received this letter from a member of a Revolution Club with thoughts off of seeing the recently released film The Young Karl Marx. The film tells the story of 26-year-old Karl Marx, along with Friedrich Engels and others in the 1840s who were fighting to bring a scientific understanding to the revolutionary movement of the time. For more, see the interview with the film’s director, Raoul Peck, on The Michael Slate Show.

I went to watch The Young Karl Marx and it had a big impact on me, the more I let it sink in and kept thinking about it. The history, what was in the film I didn’t know anything about it, so it was really interesting learning about it.

The point on contending lines has been something I’ve been thinking a lot about, and one thing that was really great about Marx was that he was not afraid to be contending with all these lines out there. He had an understanding that he knew was necessary to put forward. I’ve been thinking about that in relationship to the Revolution Club, to what we have in Bob Avakian (BA), and what we need to be fighting for in society. I think this made it more clear in my thinking what contending lines look like and why it even matters how we are fighting for this line to gain leadership.

I was thinking about what is represented in the new synthesis and in BA. Why does it matter for that to be what gains leadership? Put simply: It is what humanity needs! It is what people need to be introduced to, and engaging with and taking up themselves if we are serious about making this revolution real!

In the Club, we can’t be afraid to contend with other lines. I remember a struggle in the Club where someone said that one of the reasons they weren’t stepping up to lead was because they were “afraid to say the wrong thing.” This person talked about other people who have led the Club in a situation where the pigs are fucking with people, the agitator would do a very great agitation in exposing the pigs and what they represent and at the same time, people would cheer and give us thumbs up and agree with what was being said. And I was thinking, well why the fuck do we do agitation? Is it to be popular? To get people to come around us and tell us “good job!”? Because a lot of the times we are too content with that!

This is in opposition to what’s discussed in HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution: “[W]e need to approach everything―evaluate every political program and every organized force in society, every kind of culture, values and ways of treating people―according to how it relates to the revolution we need, to end all oppression. We should unite with people whenever we can, and struggle with them whenever we need to, to advance the revolution.”

That’s the reason we do agitation! Not just to get thumbs up! So I’ve been thinking about how to change this in the Club. We can’t be liberal or apologetic when it comes to contending with lines. We shouldn’t pick a fight with everyone who puts forward something reformist. But how are we really going to change people’s thinking and understanding if we aren’t putting forward our line, and having people make the compare and contrast on their own? And not in an antagonistic way either.

Learning and appreciating how BA does it, with a lot of humor and heart for people, not making people feel stupid for thinking something that isn’t true. But also with lots of urgency and hatred towards the system.

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/536/more-wrangling-about-the-movie-black-panther-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

Letter from some readers:

More Wrangling About the Movie Black Panther

March 26, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

We are writing this letter to contribute to further discussion and wrangling with this very important movie, which has had a major impact, which many people have seen, and which many people are discussing and debating.

If you have not yet read the review by Noche Diaz, stop reading this letter and go read it. This letter is a reflection on the analysis of the film in that review.

Ultimately, we agree with how Noche Diaz calls out the filmmakers both for their depiction of what passes for revolution and revolutionary youth (as epitomized by the character Killmonger) and their clear stand on the side of reform and against the desirability of revolution—and if it comes down to it, on the side of counterrevolution. But there are three issues which we want to thrash out with a little bit more depth.

First, we think that the writers and director were seriously and honestly wrangling with the moral dilemma of reform vs. revolution. An important question at this moment in time is why, as Noche Diaz puts it, “they stumbled badly.” This is an important strategic question for the revolution and something to explore more deeply.

Second, we feel that it is important to explore more deeply the character of Erik Killmonger—both from the viewpoint of why the filmmakers depicted him in the way that they did and in terms of the objective effect this character is having on the audience, those among all strata of (but not only) Black people.

Third, in our wranglings with this, we are not sure if it is correct to label this movie “poisonous gas” with the finality of verdict in relation both to the intent of the filmmakers and to the objective effect of the movie on those watching it. It is one thing to point to where the logic of the movie ultimately leads (as Noche Diaz does), but at the same it’s important methodologically in evaluating a multilayered work of art (and more generally) to guard against “flattening out” contradictions and in this case, to pass judgment on a film based on what it may represent in the final analysis.

To give a very short synopsis of the central storyline of the movie: Black Panther is set in the context of Wakanda, a fictional African nation with a fantasy resource, vibranium, which has allowed it to develop advanced technology and remain unconquered because it has been able to remain hidden from the rest of the world, thus not becoming the target of the colonial forces in the world which for centuries had plundered Africa. The film depicts this fictional African country beautifully and imaginatively, bringing to life its language, dress, culture, and traditions. The creativity and artistry of the movie, in conjunction with a Black superhero, an overwhelmingly Black cast, and its portrayal of women as intelligent, strong, and courageous, have rightfully earned the movie critical acclaim and have contributed to its becoming a cultural phenomenon.

The two central characters in the film are T’Challa, the new king of Wakanda, the Black Panther; and Erik Killmonger, who was born and grew up in Oakland, California, but whose father was N’Jobu, a Wakandan who had been sent to the U.S. to keep tabs on what was going on there. We are going to rely on your having seen the movie or having read Diaz’s review to understand why Killmonger became the enemy of the Wakandan rulers and how this propelled his life forward. It is this plot line, the contradiction between Killmonger and the Wakandan rulers, particularly T’Challa, the Black Panther, which drives the film and through which the moral issue between reform vs. revolution is played out.

A key argument in the movie, being battled out in various dimensions, centers around two moral dilemmas.

The first is: Should Wakanda, with its advanced civilization and its immense resources (including the ability to heal people), take on the responsibility to help people beyond their borders, or does the horrid history of slavery, colonization, and relentless exploitation and oppression in Africa by colonial and imperial powers justify Wakanda’s choice to protect itself by staying hidden from the rest of the world? There was some dissent among Wakanda’s elite, some of whom did want to use their powers to help others (including by sharing the technology they had developed that gave individuals some superpowers). Early in the movie we see that one of the characters, Nakia, is undercover in an unidentified African nation rescuing young women being kidnapped and enslaved. In fact, this moral dilemma is something which T’Challa (who early in the movie takes on the role of a young heir to the throne of Wakanda and the title of Black Panther) struggles with throughout the movie.

The second moral dilemma, related to this and also independent of it, which becomes the central theme of the film and clearly the one resonating with masses of people who have seen this movie is, as Noche Diaz’s review speaks to with depth and insight, reform vs. revolution. Through the character of Killmonger this dilemma is further developed: Is it the responsibility of Wakanda to utilize its resources to arm the oppressed the world over and end the oppression of all those held down by their oppressors? Killmonger’s basic stand is that it is wrong for Wakanda to do nothing, thereby allowing the oppression of people all over the world to continue. (Killmonger’s view on what constitutes revolution is something which this letter will come back to later. Essentially his is a revenge-fueled vision of the oppressed rising up to become the new oppressors, in sharp contrast to a real revolution aimed at emancipating humanity.) While the plot line concerns Wakanda versus the rest of the world, the movie makes clear (as Noche Diaz points out) that this basic moral dilemma of reform vs. revolution is “explicitly speaking to and dealing with the oppression of Black people in America, and what is to be done about it.” Within this, there are two basic themes as we understand it: one, the film is wrangling with the legacy and verdict on the Black Panthers of the 1960s (which we are not going to speak to at any length here); and two, it is wrangling with the contradictions and outlook of Black youth in this country and the implications for making revolution (the latter being concentrated in the character of Killmonger—which will be explored more deeply here). Related to both of these themes, there is also an implicit warning to those of influence in the ruling class, but more directly, we think, aimed at the Black middle and upper classes, that if you don’t pay attention to what is happening at “the bottom” of society, the whole world could be ripped apart by those rising up against oppression in the ways concentrated in the Killmonger character.

Through the course of the film, T’Challa and the Wakandan elite decide that Wakanda will come out of hiding, break with its isolationist policies, and use its resources to attempt to render reforms to help the world. In one of the last scenes of the movie, T’Challa and Nakia return to Oakland, to the basketball court and apartment building where young Killmonger had grown up. Wakanda had bought up land in the area and is in the process of putting up housing and resource centers for the people of the area. A little boy comes up to T’Challa and asks him, “Who are you?” Of course he is the Black Panther, and we believe that this was the filmmakers’ way of saying that this is the road (breakfast programs and health clinics, etc.) which the Black Panthers of the ’60s should have stayed on, whereas their ideas of revolution would ultimately lead to where Killmonger ended up. We think that this can be reasonably deduced from this scene and the whole trajectory of the movie, even as it could also be possible that the filmmakers likely have great respect for the Black Panthers, including some of their more militant ideology and self-defense actions.

This gets to the core of an urgent and strategic question for the revolution: Why, around this basic moral issue of revolution vs. reform, did the filmmakers, as Noche Diaz puts it, stumble so badly?

Noche Diaz calls out the class outlook of the filmmakers: “But what we get coming through in the film is the vision and aspirations characteristic of sections of Black middle strata and Black bourgeoisie, along with their fear of basic masses of Black people, their destructive potential, and the upheaval that would come from their rising up. The fear that if this gets unleashed, the only place it can go is a bloodbath of revenge with despotic new rule over the people.”

Again, ultimately we think how he is describing the class outlook of the filmmakers is true, but we also think that the filmmakers were struggling with this viewpoint, in regards to themselves and sections of the Black middle strata and Black bourgeoisie. This is something which we should look at more deeply in terms of how we approach this.

We think the dynamics of what the filmmakers failed to understand or refused to confront is framed by the following insight of Bob Avakian, leader of an actual revolution and the architect of a new framework of human emancipation:

Now, when you come up against the great gulf that often, and even generally, exists between the conditions and the suffering of the masses of people, on the one hand, and what you are able to do about that at any given point—when you run up against that repeatedly, everyone feels a definite pull which expresses itself in moral terms: how can you stand by and not do something about what’s happening to the masses of people?...

But moralities are a reflection of class outlooks, ultimately. They are a reflection of your understanding of reality, which takes a class expression in class society, in an ultimate and fundamental sense. And there is a morality that corresponds not to reformism and seeking merely to mitigate the conditions and the suffering of masses of people—not merely to addressing some, and only some, of the symptoms of that suffering—but to uprooting and abolishing the causes of that suffering. This morality corresponds to a revolutionary understanding, that we cannot eliminate the suffering of the masses, and in fact it’s only going to get worse, as long as this capitalist-imperialist system remains.
—“Reform or Revolution—Questions of Orientation, Questions of Morality,” Supplement to Chapter 1 of BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian

Sometimes people with good intentions want to see the mitigation of the suffering of masses of people—but at the same time they do not want revolution. We think that the director and screenplay writer, Ryan Coogler, sincerely cares about the masses of oppressed people. His film Fruitvale Station, on the life and murder of Oscar Grant at the hands of the police, could not have been so powerful and affecting if this were not the case; nor could he have crafted the character Killmonger in some of the ways he did, with great affection (something we will speak to later), if this were not the case. One can see oppression, one can see horrible injustices, and sincerely yearn for a “better world,” but if the “understanding of [this] reality” does not start with a scientific understanding of, as BA says, “the causes of that suffering” and the recognition that “it’s only going to get worse, as long as this capitalist-imperialist system remains” then there is a basis for people to deceive themselves into believing that the only road is that of reform, and when masses do rise up, to possibly oppose them with counter-revolution. [Italic emphasis added to quote.]

Can people with a middle class or petit-bourgeois outlook (which is also the outlook of most of those from the basic masses) break with this outlook and unite with the need for an actual revolution? Yes, but no matter how sincerely they may agonize over the suffering of the masses, if they stubbornly refuse to take up a scientific materialist understanding of reality they will end up in the wrong place. This is an epistemological battle which needs to be waged very fiercely in its own right.

Once people do come to understand things more clearly, more scientifically, then one finds oneself at a place where, as Bob Avakian has put it, epistemology and morality meet. In THE NEW COMMUNISM, BA speaks to this:

I have made the point ... that there is a place where epistemology and morality meet. What does that mean? It means that, if you come to understand certain things, then the question poses itself: What do you do about what you’ve come to understand? Do you follow it, or do you turn away from it, or adulterate it, water it down and change it into something else? These are the places where epistemology and morality meet. And this doesn’t happen just once, it happens repeatedly in life and in an ongoing way, for everyone. The challenges repeatedly pose themselves. As you’re learning about life and the world, what do you do with what you’re learning?
—THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation

This is the challenge which must be put to filmmakers, artists, and intellectuals like Coogler (and of course more generally with the broad masses of people) in order to win them over, through struggle, to the side of revolution.

So the question is: Did the filmmakers “stumble badly” because they don’t have a scientific understanding of reality and therefore don’t recognize that the oppression and suffering of the masses of people is rooted in the functioning of the system of capitalism-imperialism (and they haven’t done the work to achieve this scientific understanding), or do they understand this on some level but have refused to confront the implications of this understanding—that revolution is the only solution? (We won’t go into this here because Noche Diaz did so in his review, but what the fuck were they thinking making a CIA operative a hero in the film? What does this reveal about their outlook?!) These are the kinds of questions which need to be taken up and put to the filmmakers; and more to the point, we do think the film raised these questions and it is our responsibility as revolutionary communist leaders to pull such questions out of the film and struggle with others about them.

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We feel that it is important to explore more deeply the character of Killmonger―both from the viewpoint of how he was depicted by the filmmakers and the objective effect this character is having on the audience, those among all strata of (but not only) Black people.

This is where we are not sure if we totally agree with Diaz’s interpretation of the character Killmonger, or what the intent of the filmmakers was in the depiction of this character. We thought that there was a very conscious crafting of this character—with Killmonger concentrating the historic anger and angst, the rage and hopelessness of getting any justice out of this system, and at the same time concentrating an outlook that the only way to fight the system was to become like the system. Killmonger had joined the U.S. military Special Forces and killed people all over the world in order to learn, as we would say, to “fight their way.” This means fighting in correspondence to his vision of “revolution,” which was to use Wakanda’s technology to initiate a worldwide uprising of the oppressed in order to take over empires and become the new conquerors. At one point, Killmonger declares, “The sun will never set on the Wakandan Empire.” This distorted conception of revolution is one where the oppressed rise up only to become the new oppressors. And how Killmonger fought, including killing people close to him as well as anyone else who got in his way, is a reflection of “the end justifies the means.”

This is where we do need to step in and challenge the filmmakers, who themselves could not see beyond the framework of bourgeois reform or imagine a real revolutionary uprising. You do want to yell, if you are going to pit reform vs. revolution, at least have the integrity to depict what an actual revolution would look like! What those under the leadership of Bob Avakian are fighting for is a revolution whose goal is the emancipation of humanity—the most radical revolution in human history, one that aims at nothing less than overcoming all forms of oppression and exploitation all over the world, a society where humanity could truly flourish. Furthermore, we will “fight our way,” meaning in ways corresponding to the objectives and principles of such an emancipating revolution. In discussing the character of such a revolution, Bob Avakian has pointed out that a revolution would be possible: “when there is a qualitative change in the objective situation, when a revolutionary situation and a revolutionary people in the millions and millions have been brought into being.” And in terms of the character of that revolution, he goes on to say:

...And when that revolution is made, when a new, revolutionary state power is brought into being, there would not just be a new army, but that new army would be guided by very different principles. There would be a culture in that army, but it would definitely not be (as in the hymn of the imperialist Marine Corps): “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli”—that’s just not going to be what guides the new state apparatus! .... The principles we’re talking about here, and the reason we’re going out to win people to be emancipators of humanity, is that they’re going to be the actual backbone of the new state.
—BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian , 2:15

From what we have read, Killmonger is being embraced and is being recognized not as the villain of the film, but as its hero and (while this is debated) the “real revolutionary” (as opposed to T’Challa, the Black Panther character), by many who have seen the film including many film critics. The reason we believe this is the case is that even as Killmonger’s program of revenge (which essentially comes down to “they have ruled long enough, now it’s our turn”) mirrors that of the oppressors, it was clearly coming from the experience of the oppressed and the justness of the oppressed rising up against their oppressors.

We do not think that Ryan Coogler, the director and one of the writers, was only using the character of Killmonger as a precautionary warning to those in power. We think he is conflicted on how to view the Black youth, especially those locked in the hellhole cities of this country. Yes, his depiction of Killmonger and more broadly what is represented by Killmonger is a warning shot, so to speak, to those in power about the powder keg that they are sitting on; likewise we are sure it is also a cautionary tale to those in the middle and upper classes of Black people who see the oppression of the masses and are just “letting this be.” However, based on what we know about Coogler, there is good reason to think that he himself is in angst not just that the system has no future for Black youth (and Black people more generally), but that it has carried out such oppression and savagery for centuries. We think that he has real problems seeing beyond the hopelessness of the situation and is in fact anxious about where this hopelessness might lead. We think that this is what he is wrangling with in this movie—we do not think his humanizing of Killmonger (in various ways in the movie) was merely a sophisticated cynical device to sneak in why revolution might seem like something you want, but really it is a dead end.

At the end of the movie, Killmonger refuses to give up on opposing the system (or as Noche Diaz puts it, refuses to denounce revolution) when he refuses T’Challa’s offer to allow him to live, because obviously it would be on T’Challa’s terms. Killmonger’s defiant response to T’Challa was, “Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from the ships, because they knew death was better than bondage.” We did not think that this was a cynical move by Coogler to say to the masses, give up of any hope of revolution—your only choices are to give in to the system or die. We do not think this was Coogler’s only intention (though it could have been one possible interpretation), nor do we think this is the objective effect it is having on the masses of Black people as well people more broadly. But to be honest, we do not know for sure, but in things we are reading about the responses to the film, this is not the hit we are getting. To anyone who watched this film and has any heart, we think this scene might have been meant to legitimize Killmonger’s hatred of the historic oppression of Black people and to keep open the question of revolution. Even if this was not the intent of the filmmakers, we think this is the objective effect it has been having on many in the audience. Whether this was the intent of the script or the result of the moving and powerful performance by Michael B. Jordan, we are not certain—but we do think this is the objective effect. But in any case, the Killmonger character was crafted with both an emotional and intellectual core that was meant to be admired and wrangled with in a number of dimensions. Finally, it has created a lot of controversy and debate around how to understand Killmonger.

None of this is to argue that the filmmakers have or support a more liberating view of an actual revolution.

Clearly, the filmmakers are much more comfortable with some kind of fairytale of reform. The last scenes in the film where Wakanda comes out of “hiding,” joins the world “community,” and starts dispensing charity to the oppressed are very clear on this. But this was not the emotional core of the ending of the movie—it was definitely Killmonger’s defeat and then death. We interpreted this to say, to rebel is just, but to rebel the way Killmonger tried is a dead end—but we think the filmmakers were possibly leaving open this question of revolution as something to be wrangled with.

By pitting T’Challa, the king of Wakanda and the Black Panther, against Killmonger and siding with a benevolent bourgeoisie over Killmonger and what is represented by his character, this film (whether this was the intention of the filmmakers or not) squarely raises a very strategic question for the revolution: “Are the masses fit to rule?” Clearly this film says no! Two things here: One, when was the last time this question has even been raised in a mass way in the culture; and two, related to this, we need to see this as an opportunity to struggle with the filmmakers (as well as other artists and intellectuals) and the masses more generally around this strategic question.

What it means and how to approach preparing the masses to be fit to rule is spoken to in “On the Strategy for Revolution”:

Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution is a key part of our strategic approach, which provides a way for the Party to unite with and give leadership to people to change themselves as they take part in the struggle to change the world...to lift their heads and broaden their vision, to recognize what kind of world is possible, what their real interests are, and who their real friends and real enemies are, as they rise up against this system...to take up a revolutionary viewpoint and revolutionary values and morals as they join with others to resist this system’s crimes and build up the basis for the ultimate all-out revolutionary struggle to sweep this system away and bring in a whole new way of organizing society, a whole new way of being...to become emancipators of humanity.

For all this to happen, and for the revolution to have a real chance of winning, leadership is essential. And there is such leadership. But there is also much work to do.
—A Statement from the Revolutionary Communist Party, “On the Strategy for Revolution”

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As Noche Diaz points out, this film has been seen by millions and millions of people, and among Black people it was “so welcomed as a breath of fresh air.” We do think it is necessary to call out, as Noche Diaz has done, what is “poisonous” in the film. Yet, our thinking is that even with all the serious problems with this film, the film has opened up “air” or space to delve into, wrangle with, and sharply struggle out these questions with individuals and blocs of people—comparing and contrasting different approaches, different world views, different epistemologies, and where they will lead. Further, because we think that the filmmakers are themselves wrangling with some of the questions raised above, we do not think it is correct to label this movie “poisonous gas” with the finality of verdict in relation both to the intent of the filmmakers and especially to the objective effect of the movie on the audience.

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/537/revolution-club-chicago-updates-en.html

Revolution #537 April 2, 2018

April 2, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us