Showdown Looms

Stand With Standing Rock

November 28, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

There is a showdown looming at Standing Rock Indian Reservation in the Dakotas. Thousands of Native American Indians, along with supporters, have been camping out there. They have been protesting the installation of an oil pipeline that gravely threatens the water that Native people and thousands of others in the area depend on, and violates Indian treaty rights. Hundreds have been arrested and hundreds more have stood up to beatings, macings, high-powered water hoses in sub-freezing weather, and unending harassment and insult.

Now the Army of Corps of Engineers has vowed to arrest anyone who remains in the camp past Monday, December 5. Here we see Obama once more extending his “hand of unity” to the fascist Donald Trump—taking upon himself the ugly business of violently repressing this righteous struggle and thereby relieving Trump of getting his own hands bloody.

The Native people cannot be left to face this alone. The environment cannot withstand yet another insult. It is on everyone—every revolutionary, every radical or progressive, everyone with a beating heart and a working conscience—to stand up for the Standing Rock Sioux and the water protectors.

Revolution Clubs should immediately choose representatives and organize solidarity delegations to go to Standing Rock. The Revolution Club members should bring enough XXXL “REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!” T-shirts for the many people who may want to wear them and represent for revolution (you’ll need XXXL to wear over the down coats that you’re gonna need). Once there, Club members should act as a unified force, standing with the people to prevent this towering injustice from going down. Clubs and Party supporters should step up in every city to work with and participate in solidarity demonstrations, especially but not only on the 5th and the days leading up to it. These must extend to religious communities, the campuses, and in the neighborhoods.

The insult of issuing this order on the day after Thanksgiving—a day that commemorates an exchange between Native people and the invading Europeans, and that set off a bloody four-century genocidal trail of tears—was noted by the tribal leader Dave Archambault II.

The truth is this: America Was Never Great! Only a revolution—a genuine communist revolution that aims to institute the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America as its framework—can end the oppression suffered by the Native peoples, as well as other oppressed nationalities, and can end the insane plunder of the environment by the capitalists. Battles like the one in Standing Rock can be and must increasingly be built as part of strengthening the movement to make that revolution. And in the shadow of the looming fascism of Trump, the struggle for the basic justice of the demands of the water protectors in Standing Rock takes on even greater significance.

The whole world will be watching to see what the people of this country are going to do. What happens in Standing Rock will set terms one way or the other going into perilous times. Be part of making sure they are the right terms.

 

 

For full coverage and the current issue of REVOLUTION click here

Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.