Revolution #528, January 29, 2018 (revcom.us)

Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/512/see-and-share-this-talk-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

In this Film, Bob Avakian Analyzes the Deep Roots and Driving Forces of Trump/Pence Fascism and What Must Be Done to Stop It.

Watch It Here, and Spread It.

| revcom.us

 

Be part of bringing the most serious answers to the most urgent questions to tens and hundreds of thousands, and ultimately millions.

This talk from Bob Avakian (BA) provides a scientific understanding of the roots of this fascist regime—in the history of the U.S. and the deeper roots in the system of capitalism-imperialism. He does so with passion, humor, humanity, and a deep sense of history. He cuts into the deepest, most agonizing questions, first in the speech and then in a wide-ranging Questions and Answers.

If more people watched this talk, it could change today’s political equation. But far too few have seen this talk, or even know about it. You are needed to be part of changing this.

Donate towards promotion of this film:

Scroll down for the film trailer, videos of the Q&A session following the speech, and clips from the film


Click to view the full speech.

The film and all video clips are also available for download HERE

For instructions to download this film click HERE

 

 

 

Questions and Answers with Bob Avakian

NEW:  Download, share, and watch each Q&A in a separate clip. To download these clips, click the "v" icon on the bottom right of the clip to get to the Vimeo page, and scroll down to the button for "Download"

Q&A: What do you say to the comedians who ridicule Trump/Pence but also run the risk of contributing to normalizing fascism?

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Q&A: If we drive out the Trump/Pence regime, what will replace it?

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Q&A: How can we sustain the massive movement required to drive this regime from power?

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Q&A: What strategies are there to break through the mainstream news whiteout of Refuse Fascism?

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Q&A: How can we protect immigrants targeted directly by this regime?

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Q&A: What's the role of students in the movement to drive out the Trump/Pence regime?

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Q&A: The Democrats are supposed to be the lesser of two evils, but I don't want to vote for them. I know the system sucks, but what do we do in the interim?

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Q&A: As a revolutionary Christian, I believe that we do need this revolution but how can you have religious people not feel alienated?

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Q&A: What's the relationship between fighting fascism and making revolution?

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Q&A: How can we overcome obstacles in reaching out broadly to drive out the Trump/Pence regime?

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Q&A: Millions hate what's happening with the Trump/Pence regime, but does that matter if they don’t act?

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Q&A: Do you think that we need animal liberation?

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Trailer and Clips From the Film:

Clip: "Free Yourself from the GTF!"

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Clip: "For Black people, isn't Trump just more of the same?"

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Clip: "America: the leader of the free world? When was that ever true?"

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Clip: "What's the matter with liberals?"

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Clip: "Slavery? Genocide? And you think fascism can't happen here?"

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Clip: "What are we facing?"

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Clip: "Order or Justice?"

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Clip: "What Must We Do?"

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Clip: "The direct line from the Confederacy to the fascists of today"

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Clip: "Why is it the Democrats can only try to resolve this on the terms of the system?"

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Clip: "The Christian Fascists
Now In Power"

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Clip: "The 'Unholy Alliance' Between Trump and Fundamentalist Christian Fascists"

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Clip: What Has Given Rise to the Situation in Which We Have a Fascist Regime Ruling the U.S.?

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Clip: Why Can't We Rely On the Democratic Party to Root Out the Trump/Pence Fascist Regime?

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Clip: If We Drive Out Trump, Won't We Just Get Pence? And How Can Mass Action Drive Out Trump, Anyway?

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Clip: On What Basis Can Revolutionaries and People Who Are Not Revolutionaries Unite to Drive Out the Regime?

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Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Let's Enlist Those Who Like BA's New Talk to Help Spread It

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Recently, including in this issue, we’ve run different positive and enthusiastic responses to the filmed talk of Bob Avakian on the Trump/Pence fascist regime and what must be done to stop it. There’s nothing like this talk—and if it got out even in the tens of thousands (at first), it could have a huge impact on people’s understanding and, therefore, their actions.

Next week we intend to lay out a whole plan to do just that. But even the comments we’ve been running raise an immediate question: Wouldn’t it be important, when people DO respond this way, to enlist them in getting this unique and incredibly important film out far more broadly? It’s not always clear from these reports that this is happening. The people responding clearly have social networks—through work, family, neighborhood, and so on. Are we going into with them how important it would be for this film to get out far and wide—the possible impact it could have? Are we actively strategizing with them how to spread this film? Are we giving them the materials—and the ongoing contact, where possible—to assist them in spreading this? Again, we’ll be laying out fuller plans next week—but there’s no need to wait.

Another thing: Are we going into “A Contended Question” with people to prepare them for what they’ll encounter, negative as well as positive? Are we following up with them to see how it’s going? Most of all, and what has to be at the foundation of all of this—are we bringing home to them the urgency of getting this analysis out as far as we all can so that we can not only understand the dire situation we’re in (which nothing explains like this talk!) but change it?

 

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/comments-on-film-of-ba-talk-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Comments on Film of BA’s Talk: “Avakian explains and keeps refocusing your attention to the system that enabled the ascension of this regime”

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From staff of Revolution Books, NYC:

The film of Bob Avakian’s talk THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible was shown this past Sunday at Revolution Books in Harlem, New York City. Ten new people attended—including a librarian from Queens; a ninth-grade public school teacher from the Bronx; two post-doctoral fellows at Columbia University (one from France and the other from England); a young African-American from the neighborhood (living in a homeless shelter) who has hooked up with the Revolution Club; and a young woman from Brazil active in social movements there. We showed the film and followed it with a clip from REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! posted on revcom: “Resisting the Brainwash—A Radical Revolt Again a Revolting Culture.”

After the showing, we asked people what struck them most about the film, what they got most out of it... and people got right into it. Here are three comments. (The French visiting fellow plans to come by the store to discuss the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, written by Bob Avakian, which she dove into after the showing.)

Young homeless person: “This is the second time I’ve watched this film. I never understood the role of religion in enslaving people, and this Christian fascism justifying greed and the degradation of women. We’re supposed to put our fate in God’s hands, and not face things ourselves but wait for heaven and angels. But breaking with God is so hard.”

Teacher: “I have to say what struck me most was how Bob Avakian makes you face and recognize America’s past, that you can’t get away from slavery and the injustices done to Black people. He explains how we became the nation we are in a way I never experienced before. And that we have to face that history.”

Librarian: “One of the problems we have in understanding what’s going on, with the terrible direction things have been going in, with Trump and Pence... is that there is so much focus on individuals. But Avakian explains and keeps refocusing your attention on the system that enabled the ascension of this regime.”

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/defeat-the-racist-immigration-deal-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Points of Orientation:

Defeat the Racist Immigration “Deal”: NO to the White Supremacist Ransom Note!

Drive Out the Trump/Pence Fascist Regime! A Better World IS Possible!

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

As we go to press, word is that the Trump/Pence regime will announce a deal in which 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who came here as children (many of them known as “Dreamers”) will be enabled to stay and have a “path to citizenship” in return for a harsh new set of laws on immigration. These laws are said to include: $25 billion for Trump’s border wall; major increase in “internal enforcement”—increased arrests, speeded-up deportations, and stepped-up security at airports and other ports of entry; intensified crackdown on people who overstay their visas; prevention of people who are U.S citizens from bringing non-citizen parents from other countries into the U.S.; the ending of a State Department program to encourage migration from under-represented countries.

This comes on top of weeks of agitation by Trump and the Republicans demonizing immigrants—including calling whole areas of the world “shitholes,” and viciously slandering and insulting those who come from those areas.

One: Such a deal is intolerable—in the words of one of those being offered citizenship, “it is a white supremacist ransom note.” It will add fuel to the whipping up of an ugly nativist sentiment and white supremacist atmosphere hostile to immigrants and people of color, which is a cornerstone of the Trump/Pence regime’s “Make America White Again” program.

Two: The United States lords over a worldwide empire which plunders vast regions of the world. It violently rends the social fabric of those countries and sentences billions of the human beings who live there to dispossession and grinding exploitation, and often to being driven from country to country seeking work and even survival. It has no right to then declare people from those countries to be “illegal” and to hound and persecute them.

Three: The wall being built is both real and symbolic. It is real in the sense that it will actually further militarize the border and make it even more deadly for any who are driven from the hells that the U.S. has created in Central America and Mexico when they risk their lives to escape. And it symbolizes the determination of the U.S. to “lock out” the rest of humanity in the face of the rapidly worsening environmental crisis.

Four: We need a world without borders, without exploitation, and without oppression of any kind. Such a world actually IS possible and the work that’s been done by Bob Avakian—the forging of a new communism—shows how it could be achieved. Humanity does not have to go along with the sentence now being imposed on it.

Five: People in this country need to mount the strongest possible fight to DEFEAT this compromise/deal and to make this fight a building block to driving out the whole Trump/Pence fascist regime. This will require going into the streets in determined and defiant nonviolent mass action, as well as other nonviolent expressions of opposition (like wearing armbands or other symbols, etc.) ultimately involving millions, and refusing to go along with the capitulationist “electoral calculus” of the leading Democrats.

 

Immigrants and the New Socialist Republic in North America

The following is from the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which was authored by Bob Avakian and adopted by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.

H. Immigrants, Citizenship and Asylum.

1. Throughout its history and its development into an imperialist power, the United States of America depended on the exploitation, often in extreme conditions, of generations of immigrants, numbering in the many millions, who were driven to the USA as a result of oppression, poverty, war and upheaval. These immigrants—including those from Europe who came to the USA during the latter part of the 19th and the first part of the 20th century, or at least several generations of them—were also subjected to discrimination and demeaning treatment, although after a period of time many of these immigrant groups were integrated into the larger “white European” population in the USA and, on the basis of expansion and conquest by U.S. imperialism, and the spoils acquired in this way, many were able to rise from the ranks of the working class and poorer sections of the population and become a part of the “American middle class,” with a more or less privileged position in relation to especially the lower and more exploited sections of the proletariat and the masses of Black and Latino people and others concentrated, and forcibly contained, within the decaying and repressive confines of the inner cities of late imperial America. At the same time, and in a heightening way through the end of the 20th and the first part of the 21st century, as a result of the domination and plunder carried out by U.S. imperialism throughout most of the Third World in particular, and the devastation and massive dislocation that resulted from and accompanied this, great numbers of immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, as well as other parts of the Third World, were driven to the U.S., many of whom were not able to secure legal entry and consequently were forced to live in the shadows and remain vulnerable to extreme exploitation as well as to discrimination and to violence and terror carried out by the state and by mobs encouraged by reactionary policies, actions and statements of the government and government officials. And the ruling forces of the imperialist USA seized on this situation to further tighten control over, and unleash more terror against, these immigrants and to subject many of them to even more extreme exploitation, while whipping up a xenophobic and fascist anti-immigrant atmosphere.

The defeat and dismantling of the imperialist USA and its machinery of violent destruction and repression has radically changed this situation. In this revolutionary struggle, and its victory, large numbers of immigrants, as well as masses of Black people and other oppressed nationalities within the former imperialist USA, played a crucial role, and they can and must continue to play a vital part in the continuing transformation of society, and the world as a whole, as part of the backbone of the New Socialist Republic in North America.

2. At the time of the establishment of the New Socialist Republic in North America, all those residing within the territory of this Republic—with the exception of those who played a leading role in opposing the revolution which brought about the establishment of this Republic, and/or who may have been found guilty of war crimes and/or other crimes against humanity—shall have been accorded citizenship in this Republic, with the rights and responsibilities of citizens, in accordance with this Constitution. And, from that time forward, all those born within the territory of the New Socialist Republic in North America, as well as all those, wherever they are born, who have at least one parent who is a citizen of this Republic, shall be citizens of this Republic.

3. The orientation of the New Socialist Republic in North America is to welcome immigrants from all over the world who have a sincere desire to contribute to the goals and objectives of this Republic, as set forth in this Constitution and in laws and policies which are established and enacted in accordance with this Constitution. From the time of the establishment of the New Socialist Republic in North America, anyone residing outside of the territory of this Republic who wishes to enter its territory, and any such person wishing to become a citizen, or a permanent resident, of this Republic, must follow the relevant laws and procedures which have been established on the basis of this Constitution. Anyone who applies for asylum in this Republic and, through the relevant procedures that have been established for this purpose, is found to have been persecuted, or to have a well-founded fear of persecution, on account of having taken part in just struggles against imperialist and reactionary states or other reactionary forces, or on account of scientific, artistic, or other pursuits which have brought them into conflict with reactionary powers and institutions, shall be afforded asylum in the New Socialist Republic in North America, so long as they pledge to act in compliance with the Constitution of this Republic, and do act accordingly. Provided that they do not engage in any serious violation of the laws of this Republic, people granted asylum have the right to remain within the territory of this Republic for as long as they choose to do so, and shall be accorded the same rights as citizens, with the exception that, so long as they have not become citizens, they may not vote in elections or be elected or appointed to public office. They shall have the right, after a certain period, determined by law, to become citizens of this Republic, with the same rights and responsibilities as all other citizens. The citizenship process, as well as review of the asylum status of all those granted asylum, shall be carried out in accordance with the laws and procedures established for these purposes.

4. Anyone who is discovered to have entered the territory of this Republic without following the relevant laws and procedures, shall be detained and provided with a timely hearing, conducted by the government institution with the relevant responsibility, to determine the reasons for their presence within this Republic. In connection with this process, such persons may apply for asylum or seek residency on some other basis, and these requests will be considered in the light of the basic orientation and principles set forth here. If, however, evidence emerges which would indicate that the person, or persons, in question have entered the territory of this Republic not only by means that are in violation of its laws, but also with the intent to further violate the law in an effort to carry out sabotage or otherwise do harm to this Republic and its people, then criminal proceedings shall be instituted against such a person, or persons, in accordance with laws and legal procedures established on the basis of this Constitution.

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/527/RefuseFascismOrg-first-they-came-for-the-immigrants-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

From RefuseFascism.org

FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE MUSLIMS,
THEN THEY CAME FOR THE IMMIGRANTS
Not This Time...

Stand Up Now with the Immigrants
This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

January 26, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The gloves are off.  The Trump/Pence Regime has launched an all-out comprehensive and qualitative leap in the implementation of a program of genocidal ethnic cleansing of immigrants – particularly targeting Black and Brown peoples.

This is a monumental horror in its own right, creating terror and untold suffering.  At the same time, it is a major escalation in the consolidation of a fascist America.  From Trump’s election campaign to the opening days of the regime, anti-immigrant, xenophobic nationalism has been the battering ram and lynchpin of the Trump/Pence Regime.  Trump’s “Wall” is a potent symbol and instrument of terror that concentrates the shattering of old norms and cementing Trump’s new order of: America First...Make America Great White Again.

This assault on immigrants must be stopped and the Trump/Pence Regime that is responsible  must be driven from power by the only force that could do this: the united nonviolent mass sustained struggle of hundreds of thousands and millions voting with their feet in the streets.

Now is the time for everyone to come to the defense of those first and most viciously under attack and strengthen the movement to drive the fascist Trump/Pence regime from power.

***********

This comprehensive and qualitative leap in the ethnic cleansing of immigrants is comprised of  these five major moves made in the last two weeks:

  1. Further moves to end DACA protections for 800,000+ Dreamers (immigrants brought to this country as children) while cruelly bargaining their future in exchange for the lives of millions of other immigrants. Ending DACA would destroy the lives of nearly a million young people, shatter their families, and instill even greater terror among all immigrants. The Trump/Pence Regime threatens the sword of deportation over the Dreamers in order to drastically cut legal immigration and institute even more draconian military and vigilante terror against all immigrants.  Heartlessly, they seek to end immigration that reunites families. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party leadership acts like horse traders, only with human lives, collaborating and capitulating.  Any “deal” that trades the security of a section of the Dreamers for heightened terror and ethnic cleansing against other immigrants is not only immoral, it would feed the anti-immigrant juggernaut that would sooner or later come for all immigrants.
  2. Targeted detentions, deportations, and threats of the same against outspoken immigrants rights leaders, including Ravi Ragbir, Jean Montrevil, and Maru Mora-Villalpando. The targeting of courageous leaders is a calculated tactic of the United States political police aimed at breaking the movements of the people. This must not be allowed.  These leaders must be defended and many more must step forward to fight right now.  Also, nine members of No More Deaths, an Arizona group that leaves water in the desert where thousands of immigrants have died, were arrested in recent days.
  3. The looming threat of a major ICE raid in the Bay Area aimed at breaking the sanctuary city/state movement nationallyReports state that U.S. immigration officials are preparing a major sweep in San Francisco and other Northern California cities aiming to arrest more than 1,500 undocumented people. The goal is not only to destroy the lives of countless immigrants and their families, but also to break any legal opposition from state and city officials anywhere.  This follows vicious coordinated dawn raids on immigrants working at 98 7-Elevens nationwide. Homeland Security said this was a “harbinger” of what is to come.
  4. Ending of Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for 200,000 Salvadorans, 60,000 Haitians, 5,300 Nicaraguans, 1,000 Sudanese, and the threat/likely ending of TPS for 57,000 Hondurans very soon. Over a quarter of a million immigrants will face deportation or life in the terror of the shadows under Trump, families will be shattered, and deportation or “voluntary” departure will send these human beings into conditions of intense deprivation, violence, and in many cases certain death.
  5. The racialization and white supremacy of this anti-immigrant program. This has been clear from the beginning, but took a leap when Trump viciously called for shutting down immigration from the Black and Brown nations of Haiti, El Salvador, and the continent of Africa – calling them “shitholes” – while welcoming more immigrants from (white) countries like Norway. This is a rallying cry to Trump’s fascist social base, a signal to the rising white-euro fascist nationalism around the world, and an actual genocidal program being concretely advanced with the full force of the most powerful state in the world.

*****

Is calling this the beginning of genocidal ethnic cleansing of Black and Brown immigrants too extreme?  Look at the numbers.  Look at children torn from parents. People sent to countries where they may face death.  What else do you call the criminal notion that where you were born, the color of your skin, and the language you speak should define whether you are regarded as human or not, whether you live or die?  What else do you call the view that any crime can be committed against those who are deemed “less than human” in the name of protecting the “real (ie: white, native-born) Americans,” meanwhile the U.S. can invade, torture, and even nuke other countries at will?

This MUST not be allowed.  It must be actively and effectively resisted in order to prevent the enormous suffering, terror, and advancement of actual genocide and ethnic cleansing against millions of immigrants and their families.

And, this must be resisted in a way that strengthens the movement to drive out the whole fascist Trump/Pence Regime through mass, sustained, nonviolent political protest.

Any attempt to wait it out, or to “save one’s fight” for some imagined bigger battle to come, is immoral delusion – it is trading away immigrants and losing one’s own humanity, and will put you in a worse place to fight the next attack.  It is imperative for everyone to come to the defense of those first and most viciously under attack. Now is the time for everyone to find the ways to show – in word and deed – that: In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America.

Everywhere, people need to meet, to plan and to ACT together – on campuses, among the faith community, by prominent artists and musicians, and all throughout society.  We need symbols of defiance taken up by hundreds of thousands and even millions, and protests, marches, and other acts of political resistance. Over the next weeks the world must see, the powers-that-be must feel, that people in this country will not allow them to take our brothers and sisters.

Refuse Fascism is calling on people to get organized to resist and for diverse organizations to talk to and really work with each other, to build much needed unity to stop this terror.  We, as RefuseFascism.org, invite and urge everyone who is outraged and concerned to reach out to us, strategize with us, and make big plans to STOP this nightmare and get organized to drive out the Trump/Pence Regime.

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

In the Name of Humanity We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!

 

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/527/resisting-trump-attacks-on-immigrants-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Resisting Trump Regime Attacks on Immigrants: "This is no time for business as usual"

New Coverage March 5, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Urgently Needed—A BROAD Outpouring in Support of Immigrants!

January 22, 2018

In recent months, weeks, and now practically every day, our immigrant brothers and sisters have been going into the streets and into the halls of Congress, risking arrest and deportation to challenge "business as usual," and resist the most vicious, blatant, and criminal assault on the rights, the dignity, the humanity, and the very lives of immigrants in this country in their millions. All of those who are NOT immigrants must stand shoulder to shoulder with these courageous immigrants, pour into the streets and find every other possible way to actively refuse and stand up against this fascist regime's advancing assault on immigrants...

Read entire article

From RefuseFascism.org, A Letter to Chapters:

The Trump/Pence Ethnic Cleansing Attacks on Immigrants and Immigration: Qualitative, Comprehensive, and a Linchpin in Forging a Fascist America— The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

February 12, 2018

Read more

From RefuseFascism.org:

FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE MUSLIMS, THEN THEY CAME FOR THE IMMIGRANTS
Not This Time...
Stand Up Now with the Immigrants
This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

January 26, 2018

Read more

Chicago Clergy’s Protest Calls on People to “Stand with the Dreamers”

February 7, 2018

Chicago clergy rally for Dreamers

On Monday, February 5, in 1 degree weather, almost 100 clergy and members of faith communities and organizations gathered at Federal Plaza in downtown Chicago to demand protection for the Dreamers. The call for the rally said, “100 clergy from across the Chicagoland area will join together to call on Congress to protect DREAMers. February 5th marks one month before the March 5th DACA deadline, after which, over 900 DREAMers will lose their protection from deportation and their ability to work in the U.S. every single day.”

Read more.

San Francisco: Protests Target ICE and Their Immigrant Round-Up Plans

February 5, 2018

Projection of “GESTAPO” on the ICE building in San Francisco, January 29

There have been recent reports in the press that ICE is preparing major raids in the San Francisco Bay Area, aimed at hunting down and deporting more than 1,500 immigrants. San Francisco is one of the sanctuary cities—and the Trump/Pence regime has been stepping up threats and moves against those cities and officials responsible for sanctuary policies. In response, Refuse Fascism, immigrant rights groups, religious forces, and others have been protesting at the ICE facility in San Francisco, including blockading the gates and projecting “GESTAPO” on the building.

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West Los Angeles: Hundreds March for Dreamers and All Immigrants Under Attack

February 5, 2018

On Saturday, February 3, several hundred people rallied and marched in West Los Angeles in the Keep the Dream Act Alive March. This action called for “organizations [to] join forces and ask for the Dream Act, a permanent solution to protect the more than 800,000 immigrant youth protected by DACA. Every day without a clean Dream Act in Congress an estimated 122 DACA recipients lose their protection from deportation and their ability to work and drive legally in the United States. That’s 5 every hour and 851 every week. Millions have categorically rejected Trump’s ‘DACA Fix’ proposal which shamelessly uses young immigrants as the bargaining chips to get $25 billion for the border wall, more enforcement and deportations, destroys family unity, and ends diversity visas. We want a humane, moral, practical solution that protects young immigrants from being arrested, detained, and deported.”

Coming in the context of a serious, comprehensive, and escalating assault on immigrant people, this was a welcome action in West LA. There need to be many more of these actions all across the country! Overwhelmingly, those at the march were immigrants, and most of them were young—in their teens and 20s. Many others need to step out now to march and resist in many other ways to act together to stop the Trump/Pence regime’s attacks on immigrants.

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NYC March to Trump Building on Wall Street Denounces Attack on Haitians and Others: “Donald Trump, Donald Trump, When We’re Mad, We’re Not Playing”

January 20, 2018

Marching over the Brooklyn Bridge, January 19, 2018

 

January 19—Hundreds of people, overwhelmingly Haitian immigrants, marched for miles from central Brooklyn, across the Brooklyn Bridge, through lower Manhattan and to the Trump Building on Wall Street, in angry and spirited denunciation of Trump’s racist attack on Haiti and African countries as “shitholes.” In November last year, the Trump/Pence regime cancelled the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) under which about 60,000 people from Haiti, many who came here after the devastating earthquake eight years ago, had been able to live and work in the United States.

There was a palpable sense of determination among the Haitians (and children of Haitian immigrants) in the march that Trump’s assault on them must not stand. Two young women—a Fordham University student and a pediatrician—both said that they were opposed to Trump before, but they took the “shithole” insult “personally” because of their family backgrounds and heritage. Many protesters brought out how the poverty and misery plaguing Haiti today have everything to do with the actual history of domination, invasions, predatory acts, and backing of oppressive regimes by the U.S. and other powers (see the revcom.us article that brings this history alive). And a major theme in the protest was the proud history of Haiti where the first and only successful slave revolution in history took place in 1804.

At points in the march, people broke into exuberant and deeply felt singing of lines in Creole that translate as “Donald Trump, Donald Trump, when we’re mad, we don’t play.” This was to a danceable beat provided by a group of musicians that joined the march with drums and homemade horns.

The organizers of the march, the 1804 Movement for All Immigrants, brought out the common fight of all immigrants and others against Trump. Among the 1804 Movement’s demands are “permanent US residency for all holders of TPS” (aside from Haitians, people from El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, among other countries, have had their TPS revoked or threatened) and “an end to all forms of racial profiling and police terror in the US, above all against black and brown people.” Among the chants was a call-and-response saying “Haitians, Mexicans…one fight, one struggle,” repeated with naming Salvadorans, Africans, etc. The rally at the Trump Building included Puerto Rican and Filipino activists and Carl Dix, co-initiator of Refuse Fascism and a representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party, along with Haitian activists.

 

Carl Dix speaks on January 19 during 1804 Movement for All Immigrants protest.  "These vile comments by Donald Trump calling countries around the world shitholes have a genocidal logic."

 

There was a strong presence of activists from Refuse Fascism (which is a part of the 1804 Movement coalition) in the march, with many in the march taking up “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA” and other Refuse Fascism chants. A Haitian woman artist came with a handmade poster showing a photo of a pig with the face of Trump and the words “Guess Who?” Later in the march, her sign had a sticker on it saying “NO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!”

On Martin Luther King Day 2018, more than 1,500 immigrants largely from Haiti but also Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic as well as from Africa rallied in Times Square. The high point of the day was the march of over 500 Haitian immigrants and Haitian Americans to New York City’s number one Shithole—Trump Tower. The march was spirited, it was angry, it was rhythmic, and it was beautiful. The night air was filled at times with resounding chants: “FUCK YOU TRUMP!” and “Haitians Are Here to Stay!” There was a sense that people felt this was the last straw. That in the face of Trump’s latest white-supremacist outrage—and threat—the people have had enough. Someone described it as: “You fucked with the wrong people!” There was pride and determination—Haitians standing up and liberating themselves and their humanity from the filth that the Shithole-in-Chief had hurled on them.

Dozens of Jewish Clergy and Activists Arrested in Capital Protest for Dreamers

January 21, 2018

Washington, DC, January 17—More than 80 protesters, many of them Jewish clergy, were arrested in an action demanding protection for some 800,000 young immigrants covered under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). These immigrants, known as Dreamers, are under threat of deportation as soon as March because of the Trump/Pence regime’s cancellation of DACA.

Activists from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Bend the Arc Jewish Action, the Anti-Defamation League, T'ruah and other Jewish organizations sat in concentric circles at the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building in a civil disobedience protest, until they were arrested and moved away by police. The activists sang protest songs in Hebrew and English.

A statement from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism said in part: “This is no time for business as usual. In the Torah, we are called 36 different ways to love the stranger, the orphan, and the widow. We were strangers in the land of Egypt, and know what it means to be turned away from places we thought of as home.”

One of those arrested, Rabbi Sheldon Lewis from Palo Alto, California, said, ““We spoke up for compassion for the Dreamers, especially out of our own core values and experience. Caring for the marginalized is central for our people.”

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ICE Van Blocked by Defiant Protest in LA

February 19, 2018

February 15—Immigrant rights protestors from several groups joined "Koreatown Popular Assembly" in protest of the ICE raids taking place throughout Los Angles, and the nation.

Refuse Fascism's Michelle Xai rallied the group just prior to the march and subsequent blocking of a Homeland Security van, keeping it from entering the Detention Center in Downtown Los Angeles, California USA.

Hundreds of Students Walk Out of Houston High School to Demand ICE Release Their Classmate

February 16, 2018

Several hundred students walked out of Stephen F. Austin High School in Houston, Texas, February 14, demanding that immigration authorities release Dennis Rivera-Sarmiento, a senior at their school, now in ICE detention.

Read more.

Immigrant Prisoners and Supporters at Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma on Hunger Strike to Demand End to Inhumane Conditions

February 14, 2018

Immigrants inside ICE’s Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington, are on hunger strike—and people outside are also staging hunger strikes in support! This action is to stand against the ongoing extreme conditions of isolation, uncertainty, and injustice there against the immigrant prisoners. Those inside report they have been beaten and abused in attempts by authorities to stop the strike.

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Hundreds Come Out to Support Sanctuary Movement Leader Ravi Ragbir

February 12, 2018

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Lawsuit Demands an End to ICE Targeting of Immigrant Rights Movement Leaders

February 12, 2018

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From a reader:

ICE to Use License Plates to Track Down Immigrants
"Never Again" Is Now!

February 5, 2018

Read more

Michael Slate Interview with Ravi Ragbir, Immigrant Activist Leader:
"There is a warfare against the immigrant community"

February 5, 2018

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Hundreds Protest at U.S. Capitol to Demand “Clean” Dream Act

February 7, 2018

Protest in Capitol Building, Washington D.C., February 7  Credit: Twitter/@Altochulo

February 7—Hundreds of immigrants and others from different immigrant rights groups filled the rotunda of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC in a civil disobedience action to demand a “clean” Dream Act—protection for young immigrants covered under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and for all immigrants. About 100 protesters were arrested. Trump’s cancellation of DACA threatens deportation of hundreds of thousands of young undocumented people (“Dreamers”), who were brought to the U.S. as children. The Trump/Pence regime is now dangling possible legalization for these immigrants years down the line, in return for the border wall and stepped-up immigration enforcement, which will further intensify repression against millions of undocumented and all immigrants—and Democratic leaders may agree to this “deal.” The demand for a clean Dream Act opposes such a reactionary “deal.” The protesters raised signs reading “OUR LIVES ARE IN DANGER. PASS THE DREAM ACT NOW.”

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Tacoma, Washington: People's Tribunal Against Persecution of Immigrants

February 5, 2018

Tacoma Washington, February 4Photo: Refuse Fascism Seattle

On Sunday, February 4, there was a People’s Tribunal held at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington. It was aimed at the ongoing persecution of immigrants carried out at this institution, with a related important issue at the forefront being the threatened deportation of local immigration activist Maru Mora-Villalpando.

About 200 to 300 people were there, some coming from as far away as Salem, Oregon, and Bellingham, Washington, including college students and other youths.

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Harvard Students Protest Top Democrat for Making Immigration "Deal" with Republican-fascists

February 5, 2018

On February 1, around 100 Harvard University students protested against Dick Durbin, one of the top Democratic senators, when he spoke on the campus. Durbin was one of the Democrats who voted in December to end the government shutdown in return for a “promise” from the Republican leadership that the issue of protection for recipients of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals)—undocumented youth who were brought to the U.S. as children—would be taken up at some point. Trump cancelled DACA last year, and hundreds of thousands of “Dreamers” are under threat of deportation. Durbin is co-sponsoring with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham an immigration “reform” bill that would make DACA permanent in return for new attacks on immigrants, like eliminating the visa lottery, and limiting the ability of immigrants to sponsor family members for immigration to the U.S.

According to the Harvard Crimson, protesters carried signs like “We Are Not Your Bargaining Chip” and “The U.S. Government Has Never Protected Us,” and chanted slogans like, “Say it loud, say it clear—immigrants are welcome here!” Some demonstrators “infiltrated” the room where Durbin was speaking and held up protest signs as he spoke. The protest was co-sponsored by some 20 student organizations including Act on a Dream, the Harvard-Radcliffe Asian American Women’s Association, and the Harvard College Democrats.

Houston DACA March to "Reclaim Our Humanity"

Houston DACA March to “Reclaim Our Humanity”

January 19—Tonight in Houston, 80 people marched through the streets of downtown chanting “Save DACA, No Deal!” and “¡Sin papeles, sin miedo!” (“Without papers, without fear”). The DACA March to Reclaim Our Humanity was organized by FIEL (Familias Inmigrantes y Estudiantes en la Lucha). DACA is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which was canceled by the Trump/Pence regime, putting 800,000 immigrants who were brought into the U.S. without documents at a young age (known as “Dreamers”) under threat of deportation.

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/526/january-20-emancipation-of-women-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

January 20, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

One year after the inauguration of Trump/Pence, people took to the streets again for Women’s Marches in hundreds of cities across the U.S. and around the world. In the slide show on this page, we are presenting just a sampling of pictures of protesters who were out in the streets from the largest cities in the U.S. to the smallest. Over 500,000 marched in Los Angeles; 125,000 in New York City; 300,000 in Chicago, and tens of thousands in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Philadelphia, Washington, DC., and Denver, Colorado. And people in hundreds and thousands marched in, just to name some of the other smaller cities, Juneau, Alaska; Riverside, Sacramento, Orange County, and San Jose, California; Augusta, Georgia; Iowa City, Iowa; Indianapolis, Indiana; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Annapolis, Maryland; St. Louis, Missouri; Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina; Morristown, New Jersey; Albany and Seneca Falls, New York; Cincinnati, Ohio; Tulsa, Oklahoma; State College, Pennsylvania; Providence, Rhode Island; Sioux City, South Dakota; Nashville, Tennessee; Austin and Ft. Worth, Texas; Richmond, Virginia; Bellingham, Washington...and others too many to name.

  • New York, New York.

  • Los Angeles, California. Credit: Twitter/@Rshehee

  • Madrid, Spain. Credit: Twitter/#womensmarch

  • Los Angeles, California. Credit: Twitter/@baby_boomster

  • Boston, Massachusetts. Credit: Twitter/@_redheadmeg

  • Kolkata, India. Credit: Twitter/#womensmarch

  • New York City, New York. Credit: Special to revcom.us

  • Seneca Falls, New York. Special to revcom.us

  • Los Angeles, Revolution Club. Credit: Special to revcom.us

  • Helsinki, Finland. Credit: Twitter/#womensmarch

  • Asheville, North Carolina. Credit: Twitter/@EdKrassen

  • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Credit: Twitter/@USseriously

  • Houston, Texas. Credit: Special to revcom.us

  • Los Angeles, California. Credit: Twitter/@refusefascismLA

  • Washington, DC. Credit: Twitter/@gimomma65

  • Austin, Texas. Credit: Twitter/@sirbabsalot

  • Chicago, Illinois. Chicago Revolution Club organized a speakout on the spot. Credit: Special to revcom.us

  • San Francisco Bay Area. Credit: Revolution Books Berkeley Instagram

  • New York, NY

  • San Francisco, California. Credit: Special to revcom.us

  • Indianapolis, Indiana. Credit: Twitter/@warvvely

  • Albany, New York. Credit: Twitter/@michaelOstevens

  • Greenville, South Carolina. Credit: Twitter/@Teddifish

  • San Francisco, California. Credit: Special to revcom.us

There were a wide range of signs, calling out Trump and the regime on their attacks on women as well as on immigrants, Black people, and others. In a number of cities, revcom.us banners with “Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution” attracted the attention of many people. Some of the signs carried by people, to give a very small sample: “Our Rights Are Not Up for Grabs, Neither Are We”; “Public Cervix Announcement: Fuck You”; “I’m Not Mindlessly Marching to the Polls, I’m Fighting for Real Change”; “Get the White ’Hole Out of the Shithouse”; “Terrible Racist Unfit Misogynist Pussy-grabber” (with the initial capital letters highlighted); “Destroy the Patriarchy, Not the Planet”; “Mother Earth Says #MeToo.”

The marches last year were an expression of people’s deep horror at what Trump and his whole regime would bring down on women and broad sections of people here and around the world. In this urgent situation, the outpouring on the streets today is welcome—and a glimpse of the importance and potential for millions to take to the streets and resist. The energy and creativity of people in denouncing Trump and the whole regime are being expressed in thousands of ways.

The last year has shown even more clearly how sharp and dire a threat the Trump/Pence regime is to humanity. This regime is working furiously to lock down a fascist form of rule in the U.S. It is preparing to bring down even greater horrors that could well mean the end of humanity and that would, in any case, foreclose the possibility for any change for the better for a long time to come.

Let’s go forward, in the name of humanity, to build a massive movement united and acting on the demand that “NO! This Nightmare Must End. We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America. The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!”

And we invite everyone to get into the works on this page from Bob Avakian, BA, on the source of the oppression of women, and how this oppression must and can be uprooted and eliminated as part of an all-around revolution.

BA has brought forward a new synthesis of communism that analyzes the truth as it is, digs deep into the underlying dynamics and patterns, and applies this, as he has said, “to reality in general and in particular the revolutionary struggle to overturn and uproot all systems and relations of exploitation and oppression and advance to a communist world.” Nobody else has done the work Bob Avakian has done in further developing the theory on the “crucial role—and the even further heightened role in today’s world—of the struggle for the emancipation of women and its relation to the proletarian revolution and its goal of emancipating all humanity through the advance to a communist world” (from “The New Synthesis of Communism: Fundamental Orientation, Method and Approach, and Core Elements—An Outline”).


It is a striking fact—which is starkly evident in the U.S. now—that, in comparison to what is done to women, there is no other group in society that is so systematically reviled and defiled in a way that has become acceptable (or widely accepted in any case) as a significant part of “mainstream” life and culture, as happens in a concentrated way through pornography and the extremely demeaning and degrading images and messages about women it massively and pervasively purveys (with the Internet a major focus and vehicle for this), including pornography’s extensive portrayal of sadistic and violent sexual domination of women...

I began the “Revolution” talk with “They’re Selling Postcards of the Hanging,” reviewing the ugly history of the lynching of Black people in America and the way in which celebration of this became a cultural phenomenon in the U.S., with the selling of picture postcards of these lynchings a major expression of this—often including smiling and leering crowds of white people surrounding the murdered and mutilated body of a Black man. In a recent exchange, a comrade emphasized this profoundly important and compelling point: Today, the way in which pornography depicts women—the displaying of women in a degraded state for the titillation of viewers—including the grotesque brutality and violence against women which is involved in much of this, is the equivalent of those “Postcards of the Hanging.” It is a means through which all women are demeaned and degraded. 

Bob Avakian
Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Unresolved Contradictions, Driving Forces for Revolution

A Question of Basic Stand and Orientation

By Bob Avakian

SUPPORT AND SPREAD
THE FURY AGAINST SEXUAL ABUSE

The phenomenon of sexual harassment and sexual assault—including (but not limited to) the sexual abuse of women by men who hold positions of power over them—is long-standing and widespread throughout this male supremacist society and is reinforced by the putrid culture it has spawned. The outpouring of outrage against this sexual abuse and the all too commonplace institutional cover-ups and complicity with it, and the demand for a radical change in the culture—which has made a major leap in relation to the accusations against Harvey Weinstein and has now spread far beyond that, involving millions of women, in sphere after sphere throughout this country and in other countries as well—is right, righteous, and long overdue, and should be supported, encouraged, spread, and defended against counter-attack.

In the context of such a long-suppressed outpouring of outrage, there are bound to be some negative aspects, including some excesses, where false or exaggerated accusations are made in particular cases; but these have been (and will almost certainly remain) a very secondary aspect of the phenomenon. If and when it may be necessary to point to some of these shortcomings, this must be done very judiciously, in a way that does not undermine the overwhelmingly positive character of this upsurge, and in fact helps to strengthen it.

This long-suppressed and thoroughly just outpouring of outrage is not the same as any particular accusation. Such particular accusations do have to be approached on the basis of scientifically evaluating the evidence, and this is especially important where the accusations not only allege misconduct but actual criminal action, such as rape or other sexual assault. But this distinction, between particular accusations and the overall phenomenon, should not be allowed to obscure or diminish the righteousness and importance of the massive upsurge against this widespread and deeply-rooted abuse and the tremendous injury it does to women and to humanity as a whole.

“Can This System Do Away With, or Do Without, The Oppression of Women?—
A Fundamental Question,
a Scientific Approach to the Answer”

by Bob Avakian

Through which mode of production will any social problem be addressed?

That is the most fundamental question that must be asked, in regard to changes in society. And the answer to that question will be decisive in determining what must be done to bring about the changes that are understood to be necessary and desirable. Why? Because the mode of production—the basic economic relations and the basic dynamics of the economic system—is the decisive factor in determining what the character of a society, and its dominant social relations, politics, and ideology, will be.

To apply this to the particular question of whether this capitalist-imperialist system can do away with, or do without, the oppression of women, it is necessary to pose, and answer, some essential questions that need to be addressed in determining this, including:

How, under this system and given its fundamental relations and dynamics, would the role of women in childbirth and the rearing of children, the character and role of the family, and the system of commodity production and exchange that characterizes capitalism—how would all this, and the many direct and indirect expressions and manifestations of this in the superstructure of politics and ideology, be radically transformed in a way that would lead to abolishing the oppression of women?

How would the putrid social relations and culture that dominate in this society—which oppress and degrade women in a thousand ways, including the most vicious and violent—be actually transformed, within the confines of this system, in a way that would contribute to doing away with all the oppression and degradation of women?

How would all this be achieved, not only within a particular country, such as the U.S.—and not just for a section of people, particularly the more well-off and privileged—but for human society as a whole, on a global scale, especially given the highly globalized nature of this system, and its fundamental relations and dynamics?

There is much that has already been brought to light which demonstrates how the oppression of women has been historically, and today remains, completely and integrally bound up with the division of society into masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited. At the same time, there is further analysis and synthesis that needs to be done—in regard to the situation of women in the world and how this relates today to the fundamental relations and dynamics of the dominant system in the world, capitalism-imperialism. But this needs to be taken up with a thoroughly and consistently scientific method and approach. And I am firmly convinced that such a scientific analysis and synthesis—including with regard to the basic questions that have been posed here—will reinforce, and further deepen, the fundamental understanding that it is impossible to achieve the emancipation of women under this system, and that this emancipation can only be fully and finally achieved through, and as a key part of, the revolutionary advance to communism throughout the world.

If someone wishes to argue that it could be possible to do away with the oppression of women under this capitalist-imperialist system, then let them make that argument, but that argument must include an answer to the kinds of essential questions I have posed here.

(Published in Break ALL the Chains! Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution)

Full edition | Sampler edition

See Table of Contents

Read full book (PDF)

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Excerpt from the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal)

Authored by Bob Avakian

Adopted by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

Compare this Constitution—both the passage below and the entire document itself—with any other constitution on the planet! And after doing so, tell us why we should not fight for such a society.

Eradicating the Oppression of Women. (Article III. Section 3.)

The oppression of women emerged thousands of years ago in human history together with the splitting of society into exploiting and exploited classes, and this oppression is one of the cornerstones of all societies based on exploitation. For the same reason, the struggle to finally and fully uproot the oppression of women is of profound importance and will be a decisive driving force in carrying forward the revolution toward the final goal of communism, and the eradication of all exploitation and oppression, throughout the world. Based on this understanding, the New Socialist Republic in North America gives the highest priority not only to establishing and giving practical effect to full legal equality for women–and to basic rights and liberties that are essential for the emancipation of women, such as reproductive freedom, including the right to abortion as well as birth control–but also to the increasing, and increasingly unfettered, involvement of women, equally with men, in every sphere of society, and to propagating and popularizing the need for and importance of uprooting and overcoming all remaining expressions and manifestations of patriarchy and male supremacy, in the economic and social relations and in the realms of politics, ideology and culture, and to promote the objective of fully emancipating women and the pivotal role of the struggle for this emancipation in the overall transformation of this society and the world as a whole. This orientation, and policies and laws flowing from it, shall be applied, promoted, encouraged and supported with the full political, legal and moral force, authority and influence of the government, at all levels, in the New Socialist Republic in North America.

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/trump-nuclear-posture-review-strengthening-imperial-death-machine-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review:

Expanding and Strengthening the Imperial Death Machine

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

A draft “Nuclear Posture Review” (NPR), prepared under the direction of James Mattis, secretary of “defense” in the Trump/Pence fascist regime, has been posted on the Huffington Post website.

The NPR, which will be finalized in February, is a strategic document that lays out the direction for the development and use of nuclear weapons. It regards nuclear weapons as the foundation of all political and military undertakings by the U.S.

The Trump NPR calls for massive upgrading of existing weapons and development of new ones. It removes any pretense of nuclear disarmament, and criticizes previous U.S. leadership for putting caps on military spending. It expands the pretexts and conditions for using nuclear weapons.

It repeatedly stresses that the U.S. must be poised to go to any length in any conceivable conflict, and develop the capacity to prevail—whatever “prevail” means in the incinerated, radiated deathscape that nuclear holocaust would create. It is a call for shifting the military’s emphasis from fighting “low-intensity” counterinsurgency wars against Islamic fundamentalist jihadists to nuclear strikes against rivals or perceived threats, up to and including other major imperialists.

A World Filled with Uncertainty and Turmoil

A basic premise of the NPR is that the U.S. now confronts “an international security situation that is more complex and demanding than any since the end of the Cold War.” It states the U.S. now contends with “a return to great power competition. Russia and China both have advanced their military capabilities to act as global powers.”

North Korea and Iran are also specifically cited as posing “proliferation threats.” The NPR claims they undermine stability in particular regions of the world, and endanger the “international security environment” (translation—unimpeded U.S. domination).

A Nuke for Every Occasion

The NPR argues the U.S. must upgrade its existing “triad” of nukes (land-, sea-, and air-based weapons). This means developing new weaponry, improving existing weapons, and modernizing “support infrastructure.” It means fortifying its “NC3”—nuclear command, control, and communications. The NPR says contention among nuclear powers now extends to outer space and cyberspace.

The review calls for development of more “low-yield” nuclear weapons to enhance U.S. nuclear “flexibility.” Low yield does not equal “nukes lite.” The bombs the U.S. dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War 2 resulted in the immediate deaths of over 100,000 people, and tens of thousands more deaths from radiation poisoning. Today similar bombs would be considered “low yield.”

The leaders of this country are moving towards building on the 4,000-plus nuclear weapons they already have with a broader range of weapons so they can “climb the ladder of escalation,” and always be ready to up the ante in whatever conflict they find themselves. And these mass murderers have the audacity to present this as “deterrence”!

The NPR warnings to North Korea concentrate its perverse medley of bloody threats and self-righteous sanctimony. “Our deterrence strategy for North Korea makes clear that any North Korean nuclear attack upon the United States or its allies and partners is unacceptable and will result in the end of that [the North Korean] regime. There is no scenario in which the Kim regime could employ nuclear weapons and survive.”

Global Gangsters Prepare for War

The U.S. has never made a “no first use” pledge regarding nuclear weapons. But it did claim that it would use them in response to specific and immediate threats of nuclear attack. In fact, several times during the era of confrontation and contention between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war.

Now, the U.S. claims the “right” to respond in advance with nuclear bombs to what the NPR describes as “extreme circumstances.” These circumstances include “non-nuclear strategic attacks ... on U.S. or allied command and control, or warning and attack assessment capabilities.” The review specifically insists that any force attempting to disrupt or disable the U.S. “NC3” will be “held accountable” and face “dire consequences.”

Only one country has actually used nuclear weapons—the United States. The U.S. has enough weapons to destroy the planet several times over. It has nuclear-armed submarines and aircraft carriers patrolling the seas, and bombers armed with “old fashioned” gravity bombs that can annihilate entire cities. It has ballistic missiles stored in silos capable of crossing continents to hit their targets. It has cruise missiles that can be fired with murderous accuracy from jets or submarines.

But now all this is deemed inadequate. This Nuclear Posture Review is utter lunacy and the depths of moral depravity—and it is a concentration of the logic of capitalism-imperialism; it is a concentration of what “making America great again” means; it adds a whole other dimension of danger to the Trump/Pence regime.

There is an urgent need to build determined, relentless opposition to all the war preparations being made by the fascists in power in the U.S. More deeply, there is a great need to work towards building a movement for revolution that can overturn the system that even considers such horrors, and advance humanity to a society in which its creativity and the resources of the planet are put to use building a world where these horrific weapons of annihilation are remembered only in history books.

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/schumer-on-maddow-show-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Fuck Schumer on Rachel Maddow—The Logic of Conciliation and Capitulation

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, was on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show Tuesday, justifying the Democrats' ending of the government shutdown without getting the protection of the Dreamers passed into law. What he said, and the underlying logic he was revealing, provides an important lesson to all.

Schumer Gives Away His Power and Then Pleads Powerlessness

“What people have to understand ... we don’t have the levers of power,” said Schumer, referring to Republican control of Congress and the presidency.

First, the government shutdown was precisely a “lever of power,” one the Democrats supposedly exercised to demand protection of the Dreamers, but they caved and capitulated within days. Why? “Craven” Chuck’s logic: “The public would lose support of the shutdown. The public does not like shutdowns and we’d actually lose support for the Dreamers.”

Who exactly is “the public” here? Mainstream polls showed mass support among liberal and progressive voters for the shutdown to demand Dreamer protection. But Democrats are working within an electoral calculus of the 2018 midterms, aiming to get conservative Democrats elected in more conservative states. Schumer and other Democratic leaders don’t want to alienate these voters, “the public.” From their standpoint, the liberals and progressives are already “in the bag,” and have no choice within the electoral framework. Indeed, Schumer’s task is to first scoop up and then hem in the progressives who want real change.

The Republi-Fascists Invoke the Military, and the Dems Fall Right in Line

What were the terms of “the public” not liking shutdowns? As soon as it started, the fascists, including Trump himself, went on overdrive saying the Democrats are pitting the interests of immigrants over the “brave men and women” of the U.S. military, who would earn their pay but not actually get it during the period of the shutdown. Schumer and the Democrats caved, placing the paychecks of “the troops” ahead of the lives and even survival of millions of people.

Reality check: these are troops of a military that has committed and continues to commit war crimes untold, from use of nuclear weapons to genocides and massacres across the globe (see the revcom.us “American Crime” series), enforcing the interests of this system. The down-the-line Democratic support of these troops is not a mistake but reveals the Democrats for what they are: a ruling class party of the worldwide system of exploitation and oppression enforced by those troops. Indeed, this very military—both directly and as “trainers” or through aid—tore apart many of the very countries from which the immigrants have been driven.

Schumer Shills for Mitch McConnell’s “Promise”

Oh, but Mitch McConnell “promised” to take up a bill on immigration in February. “The thing about McConnell’s promise,” said Schumer, is “he didn’t just make it to me. He made it to 10 Republican members of his caucus. A leader is very, very reluctant to break a promise to members of his caucus.”

This statement flies in the face of reality. First, there is a whole history, including recent experience, of McConnell making promises and breaking them, in order to advance the fascist agenda, including with the recent tax bill’s provisions undermining healthcare. Second, the Republi-Fascist Party is precisely the one advancing this horrific anti-immigrant program with senators like Tom Cotton, David Perdue, and others... advocating not only mass deportations of the undocumented but also restricting legal immigration—and would not allow such a move unchallenged. Third, Schumer himself made promises with the shutdown to members of his own caucus, and then promptly turned around and broke them!

Schumer Then Goes on to Actually Welcome the Prospect of Mass Deportation—As a Political Tool!

Even if the bill were to miraculously pass the Senate, the House, controlled by Republi-Fascists, would have to pass it, according to Schumer. This is what he had to say about the strategy for the House:

“But if we pass it in the Senate with a bipartisan vote, we have a good chance to put pressure on the House to do it, particularly if they don’t do it by March 5th ... the awful, awful, awful pictures of DREAMers being deported, I think, will rally the nation and the House will be forced to do it.” Later he repeated this thought that “the pictures of people being deported will rally the nation” and will put pressure on House Republicans!

This was the clincher, the Democrats’ strategy: Let the Dreamers start getting deported, then, maybe, the House will do something. Instead of forcing shutdowns and using every single means at their disposal to secure protection for the Dreamers and prevent deportation, this is their strategy!

The logic is akin to: Once the trains are on their way to Dachau, to Auschwitz, then maybe we can get the Nazis to do something. Who do you think is running those trains, who do you think is filling those trains?

As the fascist juggernaut moves right and rolls on, the Democrats conciliate. Why? They are but a ruling party of the same system, the Republi-Fascists being the other. Objectives and strategies are determined from this vantage point, and not risking the stability of the system or their perch atop it, even as the horrors of fascism advance. These Democratic top dogs do NOT want masses in the streets in an uncompromising and defiant mood and will do whatever they can to prevent it. In other words, it is not a matter of Chuck being Craven, but Chuck being Chuck, who he and the Democrats are!

This is why instead of calling mass protests to stop these deportations in the first place, or continuing the shutdown till their demands are met, raising hell, stopping everything, Fuck Schumer and the Democrats opt instead for “the awful, awful, awful pictures of Dreamers being deported.”

For Schumer and the Rest of His Ilk, Fascism Is a Matter of Taste

Fascism is a matter of taste for the bourgeoisie, the capitalist ruling class. Leaving aside the actual living reality of what this means, the terror of uncertainty, the lives torn apart and asunder, the message is clear: This is all that’s possible—within the “normal” framework of how things are done—and that’s the limit of what you can hope, or fight, for!

The politics of the "possible" is the politics of monstrosity. To adhere to, or acquiesce in, the politics of the "possible" is to support, and actually to facilitate, monstrosity.

—Bob Avakian

However horrific it may be for some to contemplate, the “the awful, awful, awful pictures of Dreamers being deported” may even help “mobilize” the Democratic base for the midterms, and help them in the elections. Schumer says, “[I]f we become the majority next year, if the House becomes the majority [Democratic], we will get Dreamers.” And what happens till then?

Just on immigration alone, let’s look at the record of the Democrats: Obama’s tenure witnessed mass deportations, and he sought NO comprehensive immigration law when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency (2009-2011). Whatever minor concessions were wrought for Dreamers is now under fascist assault. Democrats in recent times have been amenable to all manner of horse trading on this—“Trump’s wall,” effective surrender on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) that has already driven many Salvadorans to their deaths, severe and racist restrictions on legal immigration, etc. The Dreamers themselves have been used as a bargaining chip, and the Democrats have not drawn the line on this. Leading Democrats did not walk out when Trump labeled some countries “shithole” countries, expressing preference for immigrants from (the very white) “Norway.”

The Democrats are not proceeding—and will not proceed—from the interests of the immigrants. They, the Democrats, are not on “OUR TEAM,” the people, but are part of the ruling class. They are on the “same team” as the fascists, as Obama himself so eloquently and clearly put it—albeit with sharp differences at times.

Returning to Schumer’s opening line, what “cause” is he advancing, but that of the Democrats themselves, their electoral calculus, and conciliating while fascism marches on?

It is way past time to stop relying on the Democrats, and way past time for the people to ACT, independent of the electoral framework and normal channels, raising hell on the streets till society and the system shake. The Democrats are part of the problem, not the solution, especially in their channeling people back into the “normal” framework of how things are done and the killing confines of electoral politics, when what is needed is busting out of this framework of what is “normal,” “possible” and “realistic”—for these are not normal times, but the early years of a fascist regime that rains horrors and threatens the whole planet into oblivion. What is needed is to oust this regime at the soonest possible time, with millions and millions—who feel this is a nightmare—acting in concert till the ensuing political crisis results in this regime being driven from power!

********

Small Note: Fascist Fox News and Trump have gone into overdrive on the supposed “murders committed by illegal immigrants,” constantly invoking the name of Kate Steinle, a young woman killed by an undocumented immigrant, in what seems by all accounts to be an accidental firing of a gun—a crime for which he was acquitted. This reminds one of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in the late 1800s to early 1900s. This show featured what historian Richard White has called the myth of the “inverted conquest,” depicting whites as victims of the Native peoples, thereby justifying the genocide of Native peoples as form of self-defense. How far are we from that reality now, with this new myth of the “inverted conquest”?

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/fascist-pig-dog-bannon-the-people-respond-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

From members of the Revolution Club Chicago:

University of Chicago Cordially Invites Vile Poison to Spew Forth From the Mouth of Fascist Pig-Dog Bannon... The People Begin to Respond

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

White supremacist and fascist Steve Bannon accepted an invitation to speak at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business from Professor Luigi Zingales. No date has been set, but in response nearly 50 professors signed an open letter of protest, 100 protesters came out to protest immediately at the Booth School chanting “Say it loud and say it clear: stop inviting fascists here!” and a timely mass public meeting was called for the next day.

The Revolution Club came together to discuss what articles to bring out to the mass meeting and the students at U of C. We thought the article “The Issue Is NOT ‘Free Speech’! The Issue Is FASCISM!” by Sunsara Taylor would be good guidance and a model for what students and faculty should do because it gets into WHY the issue should not be on the terms of “free speech” but why this is a platform to justify, normalize, and allow fascists to consolidate power. We felt we had to connect people up with the need to drive out these fascists and to our upcoming film showing 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. We also talked about how the need for people to stand up to the assault on immigrants is connected with this, not least because Bannon is being invited to speak on the topic of “globalization and immigration”! We decided to send one team to the meeting and another out on campus with signs and a loudspeaker to reach out to students broadly and play the BA video clip, “Why do people come here from all over the world?”

Out on campus, many students had heard that Bannon was coming to speak. There were a few yells of “Fuck Bannon!” from students who walked past us and some people were clear and firm that he shouldn’t be speaking on campus. A lot of others hated Bannon but felt he should be allowed to speak because of the importance of the principles of free speech. People argued that if you stop Bannon from speaking, this threatens all free speech. And that the best way to take on Bannon is to defeat his arguments in a debate. Some people didn’t believe this was a big deal.

We struggled with people over all this. To see that Bannon speaking on campus is part of normalizing fascism, that it’s part of a conscious attack on the universities to strengthen the fascist movement, silence critical thinking and dissent and actually CRUSH free speech. We also struggled over what the actual terms of this “debate” were about and asked students whether we should’ve allowed for Nazis to come into our classrooms for a debate or that people had to get organized to drive them out in Nazi Germany. We made the point that free speech IS important and if people really want to fight for free speech they should be rocking the campus with protests to stop Bannon coming and let people everywhere debate THAT!

We connected this up with what is happening to immigrants right now. The all-out assault on immigrants that is driving forward the consolidation of fascism. As well as the overall white supremacy of Bannon and the whole Trump/Pence regime. The actual terror and destruction of people this means, and the need therefore for students to stand up to stop this Bannon event from happening, as part of standing up to drive the whole regime from power. In between speaking out on a loudspeaker, we played the short version of the clip, “Why do people come here from all over the world?” This drew people to us and helped set terms for all the conversations we were having.

Meanwhile, at the meeting, people came together to reject Bannon’s white supremacist agenda, recognizing the implications of legitimizing him by giving him a platform and inviting him to speak and the need to do all we could do to protest his coming to U of C. There was a feeling in the room of urgency, energy, and initiative coming off of the immediate response of protest the day before. This was strengthened the morning of the meeting by the courageous stand of Samantha Eyler, a staff worker under Professor Luigi Zingales. She recused herself from having anything to do with the Bannon event, and after initially being allowed to do that, she was given an assignment as part of preparing for Bannon coming to U of C. She decided to publicly resign from her position and denounce the invitation to Bannon, and she posted her resignation letter to the UChicago Socialists-ISO Facebook page.

One of the questions in the room was whether to call on the university to disinvite Bannon. Some put out proposals to have programs at the same time when Bannon came to speak instead of confrontation, and that this would more reflect the values of the university. It was good that the majority of the room didn’t go with that and thought it would be a good thing if mass opposition and protest made it so that Bannon doesn’t come to speak. We spoke on this, celebrating those who had stood up immediately the day before and came together today to oppose this, and talked about what it means for this fascist leader to come to the university, the need for universities to become fascist-free zones as part of taking on this fascist regime, and contrasted the example of Pastor Niemöller who did nothing as the Nazis came after one group after another.

There were differences among those who wanted to stop Bannon from coming on how to approach this, such as where and how to focus pressure, but the feeling in the room was that this should precisely be part of what we do now. There was talk of how to be disruptive in all kinds of ways and looking at different ways of doing that. Several people proposed civil disobedience, and talked about the need to put bodies on the line while protecting those people who are more marginalized because of who they are.

Another question in the meeting was how to see the relationship between Bannon coming to the university and what is going on throughout society. Some were proposing that the attention on this issue be used to bring attention to other campus issues that are usually ignored. Here, too, it was a good thing that most people didn’t go for this. We helped to draw the lines more clearly, as people had been saying opposed things and not really addressing the question. It would be wrong for this moment to become one in which people’s sights are narrowed to what this campus was facing. This has to become a moment where students’ sights are raised and everyone has to confront what is actually happening to the people of the world, including right now as leaps are being made in attacking immigrants as part of a whole fascist momentum and consolidation.

This became something many people had to speak to, and most people agreed that what was happening at the university needed to become connected to what is happening in society. An English teacher bounced off this point and proposed we do everything we can at the Booth School of Business and turn that space into a place of radical politics with people doing all kinds of things so business as usual couldn’t happen.

The meeting ended with passing the proposals to protest weekly starting next Friday, also to do silent protest of Zingales when he teaches, holding a banner-making party, and to make sure that if Bannon does come, that there is massive mobilization of protest. Everyone had come together with the focus of how to organize this opposition to Bannon, and this represented a very positive beginning. A lot of the main questions that did come out, like the need to prevent fascists from speaking on campus and the issue of free speech, and the responsibility of students to be part of opposing this regime, have to do with whether and how people understand that there is a fascist regime in power remaking society and doing tremendous harm to the planet and humanity. This will have to be struggled out further as people are coming together and acting to create a response that is commensurate to what is needed to oppose Bannon’s invitation to speak at U of C, and this will be an important part of building the urgently needed movement to drive out the Trump/Pence regime.

 

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/government-brings-charges-against-pro-immigrant-activists-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Sabotage of Life-Saving Water by Border Patrol Increases Immigrant Deaths—

Government Brings Charges Against Nine Pro-Immigrant Activists

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From readers:

Last week, the Arizona-based groups No More Deaths and La Coalición de Derechos Humanos released the second of their planned three-part report “Death & Disappearance on the US-Mexico Border.” “Part 2: Interference with Human Aid” documents systematic government interference with humanitarian aid to migrants, and specifically how the U.S. Border Patrol acts to increase death and injury to thousands of people attempting to cross from Mexico into the U.S. by destroying food and jugs of water left by volunteers hoping to prevent people from dying on their trip north.

Hours after the report was issued, Scott Warren, one of the leaders of No More Deaths and an Arizona State University instructor, was arrested by Border Patrol pigs who smashed down the door to a sanctuary building in Ajo, Arizona, used to house migrants. He is facing five years in prison on felony charges for harboring two people without documents. Eight other No More Deaths volunteers have been hit with misdemeanors for “abandoning personal property in a national wildlife refuge” (i.e., leaving water and food) and other charges.

Hundreds of thousands of people from Mexico and countries further south have been driven from their homelands into the U.S. every year seeking a way to survive massive unemployment, hunger, and the growing violence and dislocation that U.S. capitalist-imperialist exploitation and destruction has brought down on their countries

The journey north is extremely perilous. The U.S. has built new border walls, increased electronic and drone surveillance, and expanded both the numbers of Border Patrol agents and immigration check points. Since at least the Clinton administration, immigrants have been driven to try to cross in more and more remote spots. One of those spots is the Sonoran Desert region in southern Arizona, where temperatures regularly range from 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer to well below freezing in the winter.

Medical professionals recommend those traveling north to drink 1.3 to 3.1 gallons of water daily, depending on conditions. Water sources along the way are scarce and often polluted, so border crossers rely on whatever water they can carry. But this is rarely more than two gallons for the entire journey which can take weeks.

For years, No More Deaths volunteers have been placing food and water in remote areas along the U.S.-Mexico border on trails regularly used by migrants attempting to make it through the desert region. Those supplies can literally mean the difference between life and death. A December 2017 USA Today report said that according to the Border Patrol’s own data, at least 7,209 people had died trying to cross the border in the last 20 years because of extreme heat, cold, and dehydration from lack of water. But USA Today concluded the actual number is far higher because federal authorities largely fail to count deaths of those whose remains are recovered by local authorities. Moreover, only a fraction of those who die are discovered; everyone else is simply declared “missing.”

Nearly 90 percent of the water left by humanitarian organizations has been used by border crossers, undoubtedly saving countless lives. But No More Deaths and La Coalición de Derechos Humanos have documented that between March 2012 and December 2015, at least 3,586 gallon jugs of water in 415 separate incidents were destroyed just in the 800-square-mile desert corridor between Nogales, Mexico and Tucson, Arizona. By analyzing who has access to the land, the timing of hunting seasons, and other factors, the report concludes that the majority of destruction has been by U.S. Border Patrol agents, some of it caught on video. Border Patrol agents have also dumped out or punctured cans of beans so the food inside rots, destroyed blankets, and slashed the straps of backpacks so they can’t be carried.

These actions by the Border Patrol are conscious and deliberate, part of a strategy it calls Prevention Through Deterrence. As the report “Part 2: Interference with Humanitarian Aid” notes, “The practice of destruction of and interference with aid is not the deviant behavior of a few rogue Border Patrol agents, it is a systematic feature of enforcement practices in the borderlands.”

The report quotes a man from Sinaloa, Mexico, about what he saw during his several border crossings: “I saw the water bottles stabbed. They break the bottles so you can’t even use them to fill up in the tanks. I needed water, some of the other people in the group needed water, but we found them destroyed. [I felt] helplessness, rage. They [the U.S. Border Patrol] must hate us. It’s their work to capture us, but we are humans. And they don’t treat us like humans.”

Carrot Quinn, a writer/photographer who focuses on U.S.-Mexico border issues, wrote in the Guardian about her interview with Scott Warren of No More Deaths: “He told me that once he’d walked out into the desert at night, just to see what border crossers saw. He’d been overcome with the loneliness of that great emptiness, and he’d looked up at the stars and thought about how these same stars were the last thing that many people saw before they died, in an arroyo or under a palo verde tree, hundreds or thousands of miles away from the people that they loved. Then he’d laid down in the dirt, in the dark desert, and he’d wept for a long time.”

The Trump/Pence regime’s promise to build even more physical walls on the border, increase electronic detection and other surveillance technology in the border region, and hire massive numbers of new Border Patrol agents will make all this even worse. This is nothing short of racist mass murder. And it is a key part of consolidating and further ramping up fascist rule in the U.S.

Border Patrol agents have harassed, intimidated, and detained No More Deaths volunteers, including a three-day stand-off last June with roughly 30 Border Patrol agents who eventually entered a No More Deaths camp and arrested a group of migrants receiving urgent medical treatment. Scott Warren’s felony arrest last week is because he was accused of giving food, water, clothing, and bedding to two migrants.

And this is occurring at the same time authorities are targeting immigration activists for arrest and deportation—including leaders of resistance against anti-immigrant repression, such as the politically targeted arrest, detention and threatened deportation of two prominent immigrant leaders in New York City recently. The government is also going after young recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and ending legal protections (Temporary Protection Status, TPS) for hundreds of thousands who have been in the U.S. because of life-threatening conditions in their home countries, and stepping up raids at work places and on public transportation. And there are open threats by Trump/Pence regime officials that all this will dramatically increase.

No More! ¡Basta Ya! Anyone with an ounce of humanity must come to the aid and defense of immigrants and those who are stepping out to help them, and being arrested for it. The Trump/Pence regime’s assault on immigrants and their defenders must be opposed, and the whole regime must be driven out!

 

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/508/bob_avakian_a-country-ruled-by-white-supremacists-since-when-is-that-acceptable-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 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?!

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/525/what-you-can-do-now-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

What You Can Do Now

January 12, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

In the face of the white supremacist attacks by Donald Trump on immigrants from Haiti, Africa, El Salvador and elsewhere, here's what you can do now to spread the word about the very timely and relevant works from Bob Avakian (BA), and to resist this foul, racist shit.


1) Spread the clip from Bob Avakian: Why Do People Come Here From All Over the World? Send it to your friends and email lists, post it on Facebook and Instagram, tweet it out, send text messages: "Why DO people come here from all over the world? Bob Avakian answers @ youtube.com/revolutiontalk." Watch this clip, FWD this text. Get the clip up on blogs and into internet discussions.

Bob Avakian, "Why do people come here from all over the world?"

 

 

2) CONTRIBUTE to our coverage. Write to revolution.reports@yahoo.com with your comments. People need to know the history of US domination and crimes in Haiti, Africa, El Salvador and countries the world over. Write to us about what you know, and about your experience and the experiences of your friends and family.

 

3) Get the memes out all over.

Share on social media

Share on social media

Share on social media

Share on social media

 

4) Get into BA—and right now: Watch and share BA’s talk “The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!”; listen to or read the talk “The Problem, the Solution, and the Challenges Before Us”; and read “A Country Ruled By White Supremacists—Since When Is That Acceptable?”

Bob Avakian, "The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!"

 

 

5) Check revcom.us every day for breaking news and crucial analysis.

 

 

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/notice-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Notice:

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Owing to critical developments in this country (and internationally), which have further intensified the already urgent need to focus on bringing forward masses of people, reaching into the millions, in powerful, sustained nonviolent mobilization to drive out the Trump/Pence fascist regime at the soonest possible time—and in order to correctly handle the relation between that and the crucial work of building the culture of appreciation, promotion and popularization of the revolutionary leadership of Bob Avakian (BA) and the new communism he has brought forward and its fundamental importance for the emancipation of humanity from all systems and relations of oppression, and to create the necessary conditions and best possible basis for projecting the voice and works of BA throughout society—the talk by BA, on Freedom of Expression and Communist Revolution, which had been envisioned for this April on the UC Berkeley campus, has been postponed until a later time.

 

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/rev-club-stand-up-against-assault-on-immigrants-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

From the Revolution Club Chicago:

Stand Up Against Trump/Pence Regime’s All-Out Assault on Immigrants!

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

A major move is happening right now in the sick Trump/Pence program to “Make America White Again.” In just the last few weeks they have ramped up an all-out assault on immigrants, especially targeting Black and Brown people. People are being arrested, detained, deported, ripped away from their loved ones, and in some cases sent to countries where they will be killed. Laws have changed overnight to declare hundreds of thousands of people from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan “illegal” people. The 800,000 Dreamers, young people whose parents brought them to the U.S. as children, are having their lives and futures debated and traded on. Immigrant leaders are being detained and given deportation orders. Sanctuary cities are being targeted for raids and even elected officials have been threatened with arrest.

ALL kinds of people need to be standing up against this, now, not just the immigrants. This assault on immigrants has to be stopped and the whole Trump/Pence regime that is responsible has to be driven out of power. This has everything to do with what this society is going to be in the immediate future and what kind of world we need and are willing to fight for. This whole country was built on slavery and genocide and built its capitalist-imperialist empire by exploiting immigrants and people all over the world. This is what the Trump/Pence regime longs for and aims to take to more savage heights when they say “Make America Great Again” and when they change the laws, and how the whole government works, to more viciously crush people. The fight we have to fight is to come together to make revolution and tear this whole system down, and right now strengthen the movement to drive out the Trump/Pence regime. This country needs to start looking like the women’s march every day with even millions more, including those who are most targeted, until the Trump/Pence regime is driven from power.

Again, ALL kinds of people need to be fighting to stop this, and nobody should be falling for the ways this system tries to play different groups of people they oppress against each other.

Like, “Immigrants are using up the American resources Black people should be getting.” This is just begging for crumbs from a system that set you up in a situation where you can’t get resources and gets you competing with other people it did the same thing to. Worse, the system is getting you to become part of the machinery of crushing other people, taking up that “me first” and “America first” bullshit. The U.S. built its wealth on the backs of slaves and then further built its empire by plundering countries and exploiting their peoples, and you want “to get yours” out of that? And, by the way, if you think unleashing white supremacist attacks on immigrants is going to be good for Black people, go ahead and try to explain to everyone how the kkklansmen, neo-Nazi fascists in the White House and their followers who are whipping up all this shit are going to do right by Black people.

Or, “Black people have already been going through all this, so why should we stand up for the immigrants?” First of all, if you are a human being, get off that heartless shit and stand up for anyone being oppressed and mistreated. Especially if you know what it feels like. Secondly, is this really the kind of world you want? People pitted against each other and assisting in each other’s oppression on the basis of narrow self-interest? If you can see how horrible this is for people to go through, come together with all kinds of people to be part of the fight to PUT AN END to the system that keeps doing it.

The Revolution Club is working to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time. We fight for a world without borders, and for equality among different peoples, cultures, and languages. Be part of fighting for that world, including standing up now against the fascist assault on immigrants. 1) Take this message, get it out to others and post it up everywhere. 2) Go to the website www.revcom.us and watch and spread the video by Bob Avakian, “Why do people come here from all over the world?” 3) Join the protests in support of immigrants. 4) Learn about and join the Revolution Club.

Revolution Club, 312-804-9121, revclub.chi@gmail.com, Facebook.com/revclubchi, 1857 E. 71st Street, Chicago, Illinois 60649

 

Download the PDF of this Revolution Club Chicago poster HERE

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/465/other-voices-on-trump-resistance-en.html#olympians

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/mexico-city-protest-against-trump-pence-fascist-regime-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Mexico City Protest Against the Trump/Pence Fascist Regime:
“Away with Trump, Away with Peña, Down with the Whole System!”

From the blog of Aurora Roja, voice of the Organización Comunista Revolucionaria, México, January 24, 2018

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Translated from Spanish by revcom.us

In unity with the big protests in several cities in the United States on January 20, a year after the inauguration of the Trump/Pence fascist regime, between 350 and 400 people marched in Mexico City from the Ángel de la Independencia to the U.S. embassy where they held a protest rally. Among the participants: a large contingent of the Unión Popular de Vendedores y Ambulantes, “28 de Octubre” from Puebla, about 45 students from the rural teacher-training school in Tiripetío (in the state of Michoacán), organizations in defense of migrants, the Movimiento Popular Revolucionario, and others.

Among the slogans that were heard: “Away with Trump, Away with [Mexican President Enrique] Peña, Down with the Whole System!” and “NO, In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!” Supporters of the communist revolution also chanted other slogans, such as “Humanity Needs Communist Revolution!” and “The Crisis of the System Has No Solution, the Only Solution Is Revolution! Re, Re, Revolution, Is The, The, The Solution!”

Among other speakers, there was a message of solidarity from a Brazilian. At the end, the Huizache Rap group played. While leafleting, exposing fascism in the United States and the collaborationist government of Mexico, a man told us some of what happened to him: “I am displaced from Veracruz. The narcos took everything from me. I reported it to the authorities but I realized that the army is with them and it would be better to come to this city. We get work here in whatever we can, but I feel real bad....” Only one of the innumerable crimes of the world capitalist-imperialist system.

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/awtwns-tunisia-bright-anger-dismal-atmosphere-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

From A World to Win News Service:

Tunisia: Bright anger amid dismal atmosphere

By Sam Albert

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

January 20, 2018. A World to Win News Service. By Sam Albert. Demonstrations and fighting broke out across Tunisia for about ten days in January in the most important flare-up of popular anger since the toppling of the Ben Ali regime seven years ago. These events are all the more significant in that Western representatives and apologists for the current state of the world have held up Tunisia’s political situation as the most successful outcome of the 2011 “Arab Spring”—”successful,” that is, from the point of view of maintaining the status quo. Actually, this explosion of anger shows that the underlying factors driving that popular revolt in multiple Arab countries are still at work—factors also visible in the similar recent events in Iran.

About 800 people were reportedly arrested. In the first trials, two young men were sent to prison for burning a Tunisian flag, and eight more for setting up a burning traffic barricade during a protest. The authorities have described the protests as mainly violent, and yet the ten-day outbreak included both peaceful gatherings and marches, and fighting with security forces. A new movement of young people calling itself Fech Nestannaw (“What are we waiting for?”) called the first protests against proposed new sales taxes and tax hikes on consumer items like fruit and vegetables, cooking gas and phone and Internet use, on January 4. Within 48 hours the government had about 50 suspected organizers round up and jailed, some for handing out leaflets. A week later, marches in the center of the capital, Tunis, and other major cities called by the parliamentary left and other traditional opposition forces had to face off against massed police. Meanwhile, starting about January 8, especially in protests taking place after dark, youth clashed with police in towns and cities in the country’s most impoverished interior regions and in several of Tunis’s poorest suburbs—the epicenters of the 2010-11 revolt. Businesses and stores (most notably a French supermarket chain) were burned, and police stations and other regime sites were attacked. Army troops were deployed to several small and medium-sized cities.

Different from the 2010-11 Uprising

This was not a repeat of the December 2010-January 2011 uprising, and not just because none of the protests attained the scale of those days. It seems that this time, students and middle class people in the coastal cities have not embraced, to the same degree, the desperate anger of youth in the interior—who seem ready to risk death rather than face another day with no future (after all, the [2010-2011] upheaval was triggered by the public protest suicide by fire of a young street vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, whose merchandise had been confiscated by the police).

In the period seven years ago leading to Ben Ali’s downfall, millions of Tunisians of all social classes seemed to speak with one voice demanding that the rulers “Dégage”—Get out. The anger of the most downtrodden brought to life and gave backbone to many in the coastal middle classes, including (and maybe especially) professionals, and even people at the top of society unhappy with (or at least excluded by) Ben Ali.

Reports from contacts in Tunisia paint a picture of a different situation now. Many people do not feel that they understand what is going on and are suspicious and even somewhat cynical, unsure of what to do. The sides in the fighting are much less clear. Some people fear the protests are being manipulated by rival forces in the government (a coalition between the traditionally pro-French heirs of Ben Ali in various factions of the Nidaa Tounes party, and the country’s biggest party, the Islamist Ennadha). The former are said to be encouraging their youth followers to fight alongside the police, and the latter to be encouraging trashing and looting. Rumors state that government functionaries have been seen paying youth in poor neighbourhoods to attack property. No one seems sure whether the small bomb set off in a synagogue on the island of Djerba, the last remaining pocket of what was once Tunisia’s large Jewish community, was the work of Islamists or the government.

Sharply Contradictory and Unstable Situation

The situation is sharply contradictory. On the one hand, there is a profound disappointment and discontent across Tunisian society in the wake of “the revolution,” when the prevailing feeling was that political change (the end of Ben Ali’s regime) and reform (the end of the regime’s monopoly of power and the official stifling of dissent) would lead to a better life. Not only have living conditions deteriorated, especially for the poor and much of the middle classes, due in particular to rising prices as well as the lack of jobs and social services, but there is no longer much hope. As a woman commented, “We are tired of things always going backward, never forward.” Tired may be the key word here. Unlike the contagious euphoria of 2010-11 and the days after, reports from Tunisia indicate a great deal of cynicism and depression. As a journalist perspicaciously pointed out, while social media played a key role in spreading the 2010-11 rebellion, now “You can be in Tunis following Facebook and not really know what’s going on in the country.”

It seems that some in the urban middle classes are uneasy about the anger of those below, afraid of where unbridled revolt might lead—that it might strengthen the Islamists, or bring about a return of a Ben Ali-like openly repressive regime (definitely a possibility, according to the latest report from the Western government-supported think tank the International Crisis Group, the ICG). Both outcomes would mean an end to the freedoms these people in particular now enjoy, like being able to buy different books and discuss politics freely in cafés and other public spaces, participate in formerly forbidden cultural and social events (like the recent LGBTQ film festival) and conduct their private lives more or less as they please.

However, the status quo is very unstable. Tunisia has gone through nine governments over the past seven years because of infighting between its constituent factions, each seeking supremacy rather than long-term coexistence. None of them have been able to achieve solid support or even legitimacy among broad sections of the people. Instead, the two major parties and the Popular Front grouping of traditional “leftists” (whose highest goal is more seats and authority in parliament, and whose most important function is to legitimize parliament) have become increasingly discredited. Many people don’t bother to vote. This political instability, labelled as dangerous by Western watchdogs like the ICG, is in itself fueled by the country’s social instability and an economy totally incapable of meeting the stated demands of the “revolution”—bread, dignity and justice.

Millions of young Tunisians feel they have no acceptable future. This is clearly demonstrated by the once again soaring numbers of youth trying to cross dangerous waters to nearby Italy, and the many thousands of others who have gone to neighbouring Libya or other countries to wage war against what they perceive as the Western way of life, thirsty for vengeance against foreign domination and the oppressors’ hypocritical values. Whether harraga, “sea jumpers” ready to risk death by drowning, or jihadi eager to give their lives in “holy war,” what these two different paths have in common is that many young Tunisians still can’t accept the lives they’ve been given. This is a flagrant symptom of a lethal condition none of the parties can cure.

Move by International Monetary Fund Sparks People’s Anger

The immediate cause of the prospect of increased taxes that made people’s anger overflow was a decision by the International Monetary Fund. This financial institution was set up at the end of the Second World War (along with the World Bank) to stabilize the global financial system and promote “development” in the context of the imperialist system, where the wealth produced by human labour everywhere serves the accumulation of capital based in the imperialist countries that dominate the world. Because the imperialist powers were concerned by what might happen in Tunisia following the fall of Ben Ali and wanted to reinforce their grip on the whole region, the IMF extended large loans to Tunisia. Tunisia has now become one of the world’s most indebted countries. These loans are falling due, and its government needs more loans to pay off old loans, some going back to the time when Ben Ali’s cronies siphoned off considerable amounts of money.

Once again the IMF is offering a line of credit, on the condition that Tunisia increase its ability to reduce its massive government debts by increasing tax revenues, among other measures. In other words, the money meant to stabilize a government slavishly dependent on the IMF has made that government even less stable. The “solution,” for the imperialist powers, is not to enable a government that can meet the needs of the people, but to back and strengthen the repressive forces of the government deeply in their debt. Above all, this means building up the armed forces, especially by the U.S., alongside Tunisia’s former colonial master, France. The West considers the security forces and army the most reliable part of the state, and the possibility of ruling more directly through them is being openly discussed.

Tunisia’s Distorted, Imperialist-Dominated “Development”

Both Ben Ali’s heirs and the Islamist Ennadha party have fully supported following the IMF’s strictures, claiming that development will solve the country’s problems. So has the UGTT, the trade union confederation that served as the tolerated opposition during the Ben Ali years, which itself is split between the political factions in the government. But it has been Tunisia’s development, or more precisely the form this development had to take, that has brought Tunisia to where it is today. The country whose wheat and olives exported to Europe made it the breadbasket of the Roman empire cannot feed its people without imported food. It pays for those imports by funneling capital into export-oriented economic sectors that under the conditions of today’s imperialist-dominated world market can only heighten Tunisia’s dependency on foreign markets and capital, reduce its ability to support itself, and constantly deepen the economic and social chasms within the country, especially between the coastal cities and the interior.

Youth from poor families in the interior feel cut off from the modern world as it is enjoyed by some on the coast and people in the West in general. Their fathers work, when they can, wherever they can, in back-breaking construction, often far away, and their mothers in investor-owned fields producing export crops under the thumb of merciless labour contractors who act as if they own them. Workers in assembly plants and call centres near the coast are at the mercy of fluctuating overseas requirements. The educational system, especially in the technological fields, fills students with a narrow “input” of narrow skills they hope to “output” in a vocation promising a different life than their parents— until at last, emerging with diploma in hand, they tumble into the abyss of unemployment or mindless jobs with no prospects. Official figures put unemployment among young university graduates at 30 percent, twice the overall rate. For millions throughout the country, higher education is a fraud, a form of disguised unemployment. Further, because they are educated and have been able to see other lives through digital media, the situation they are trapped in feels all the more intolerable. The cruelly thwarted hopes all this produces have been and remain one of the sharpest fault lines in Tunisian society.

In the southern interior, the phosphate mines that bring much of the country’s wealth produce serious environmental problems and few jobs for the people who live around them. The coastal tourism “industry” touted as the country’s hope is driven by real estate speculation and prostitution, and the huge number of people trapped and tortured in prostitution reveals what values and future the West has to offer Tunisia. Dependence on tourism is both a symptom and a product of the country’s subordination to imperialism, and it has prevented the balanced development of industry and agriculture in a mainly self-sufficient economy that could serve as the basis for a radically different society. These production relations are still what define the lives of Tunisia’s people.

The Only Real Way Out

The question is not how to advance or at least preserve “democracy” in Tunisia. The bourgeois democratic form of rule (parliamentary democracy) and the Western imperialist governments that have historically promoted that form of rule are responsible for the horrors that billions of people now suffer in oppressed countries like Tunisia throughout the world. Further, even in an imaginary situation where Tunisia were not ruled by traditional and Islamic capitalists whose fortunes are entirely intertwined with the interests of the imperialist system, if somehow the people could freely vote to make basic decisions about their country’s future, they would be overruled by the workings of the imperialist system and its enforcers, as happened in Greece, where the hopes that saw the Syriza government elected have been brutally dashed. There is no way out of this situation except by uprooting and replacing the existing relations of production, the way people produce and exchange the material basis for life, how people work together and for what. This cannot be achieved by trying to use the institutions of the existing state like parliament that reflect, serve and reinforce those relations of production. No, a real revolution requires the overthrow of the state that represent these relations and the exploiting classes, and, because capitalism is a global system, aiming at eliminating classes globally, along with the production relations on which they rest and the social relations and thinking arising from those relations—a communist world.

This is not the point of view of Tunisia’s traditional “left,” particularly the Popular Front whose spokesman is Hamma Hamami. His group’s original position on the new budget before the protests was unclear to many people, but after the protests it has now clearly come out against it and tried to gain prestige (and votes in upcoming municipal elections) by calling for legal marches, while condemning what are commonly called the “night protests.” Although touting itself as the continuation of the 2011 “revolution,” which at least toppled a regime, ever since then the Popular Front has focused its activity on parliament, where it has become closely tied to pro-Western forces most openly slavish to the IMF while also making concessions to Islamism. It has also distinguished itself by its support for the security forces under the Ministry of the Interior and the army. They have learned nothing from the disastrous end of the period after the 2011 exit of Mubarak in Egypt, when in the name of opposing an Islamism whose hunger for power they could no longer conciliate with, the youth movements and “left” supported an army coup that ended up crushing them.

All the parliamentary parties are representatives of the production relations that define the lives of Tunisia’s people and will continue to do so until the overthrow of the state that enforces those relations and the establishment of a new kind of state that makes possible the development of the country’s industry and agriculture in a mainly self-sufficient economy that could serve as the basis for a radically different society and as a base area for world revolution against the imperialist system.

A Tunisian comrade wrote, “The protests are driven by socio-economic circumstances no matter how they were produced, and with the ongoing decline in our situation protests will surely continue. The people have tasted the power of the street and they are not ready to let it go yet.” It’s true that millions have tasted their ability to transform the political situation and thwart the will of their rulers. But the legacy of 2010-11 is contradictory. Millions today seem still determined not to “let go”, to continue fighting, but others have been discouraged by the bitter results of a “revolution” that decisively changed neither the state nor the circumstances of the people and the country. People are right to fear the dangers they face, but even if there is much manipulation going on amid the unrest, this movement’s demands have been just, its targets correct. At the same time, even in the most immediate sense, Tunisia’s young rebels face big problems that have to be solved.

The most central problem is that the reasons for the people’s misery have not been clearly enough understood and no real solution has been brought into sight. Without that, it’s impossible to begin to both unite people broadly and bring into being a core oriented by the most advanced outlook and method in today’s world, the science of communism that Bob Avakian has brought to a new level of development by deeply analysing the positive and negative experience of the communist movement and its thinking. To accomplish these tasks would be very hard, but there’s no other way to build a radical movement that can fight off interference by what people call the “lobbies” (ruling class and parliamentary factions), persist in the face of difficulties and ups and downs, and lead to a real chance for radical change. The radical explosions of anger concentrated among the lower classes and the unquenchable dissatisfaction throughout society, seven years after the magnificent toppling of Ben Ali that set off challenges to the status quo across the region, make the possibility and urgent need for that kind of revolutionary leadership all the more clear.

 

On March 17, 2017, A World to Win News Service (AWTWNS) announced its transformation into a more thorough-going tool for revolution based on Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism. Read its “Editorial: Introducing a transformed AWTWNS” here.

 

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/former-kentucky-pig-chief-if-black-shoot-them-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

What a Former Kentucky Pig Chief Told a Recruit: “If Black, shoot them”

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a reader:

When a Louisville Police Department recruit asked Todd Shaw, the acting chief of the Prospect Police Department in Jefferson County, Kentucky, a suburb of Louisville, what was the “right thing to do” if he came upon three youths smoking weed, Shaw responded, “Fuck the right thing. If Black shoot them!”

In dealing with one of the Black youth’s parents, Shaw stated, “...if mom is hot then fuck her ... if dad is hot then handcuff him and make him suck my dick ... Unless daddy is Black. Then shoot him.”

These racist comments, made in 2016, were discovered in court documents during an investigation into Shaw. The mayor of Prospect told CNN that town officials thought Shaw had “performed well” before his ugly racist shit became public and they were forced to fire him. There are 24 criminal cases that he dealt with that may be thrown out due to his racism.

The recruit was also fired for making racist comments in his Facebook discussions with Shaw, like Black people hide guns in their hair.

In later Facebook exchanges with the recruit, Shaw also made a racist comment about Martin Luther King Jr. and then added, “But because someone shot him, I get a day off with pay each year so I will take it.” He also stated, “What has POLICING come to when all you can shoot are white people and injured deer. LOL.”

Shaw wrote to the recruit, “For years I have seen the Blacks live off uss (sic) and putting them in one big housing area breeds HUGE peoblems (sic). We don’t see a Muslim problem around here we just see lazy ass people that don’t want to work and that entices more Mexicans to cross the border and take the American jobs.”

Shaw's language may be extreme and right out there, but it corresponds to the actual behavior of pig forces across this country that racially profile, harass, demean, brutalize, and shoot unarmed Black and Brown people.

People must grasp, understand, and act on the truth in the quote from Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party:

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.
BAsics 1:24

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/trumps-state-of-union-address-a-nazi-like-rally-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Trump’s State of Union Address…
A Nazi-Like Rally

January 31, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Tuesday night, Donald Trump began his first State of the Union message by declaring, “Each day since [he took office], we have gone forward with a clear vision and a righteous mission—to make America great again for all Americans.”

Then for 80 bellicose minutes he made clear what that meant.

Trump threatened to unleash America’s “unmatched power” and a rebuilt nuclear arsenal against terrorists, “rogue regimes,” and global rivals like Russia and China. He threatened Iran and ominously warned that he may have to deal with the “depraved” North Korean regime “very soon.” He said his regime would now label its enemies “unlawful combatants” and “annihilate” or capture them, international law be damned. He announced the globally hated torture center at Guantánamo would be kept open.

To Trump, American Lives Are the Only Ones That Matter

Trump said it was his “sacred duty” to protect American citizens and made clear they were the only ones among the earth’s seven-plus-billion people that matter.

He relentlessly targeted millions of immigrants, equating them with MS-13 gang members, criminals, and terrorists, claiming they “break into our country,” flood communities with drugs, and kill innocent Americans. He dangled a possible path for citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, provided they stay in line and conform to what Trump considers being a rightful American. But as revcom.us analyzed in “Points of Orientation: Defeat the Racist Immigration ‘Deal’: NO to the White Supremacist Ransom Note!” he offered this “deal” in order to target many millions more and radically transform U.S. immigration policy on a racist, make America white again basis. 

For Trump, worthy “Americans” are those who are patriotic, flag-waving, god-fearing citizens, loyal and obedient to his white American supremacist agenda. 

Cast Away Illusions, Prepare for Struggle

Anyone who still believes Trump has no ideology or agenda or that he’s just crazy needs to listen to Tuesday’s speech and confront reality. Trump is a FASCIST. His fascism is rooted in white supremacy, patriarchy, extreme religious fundamentalism, and America First chauvinism. It’s a fascism that springs from America’s history and the contradictions its capitalist-imperialist ruling class faces right now. His program is an American version of Hitler’s “Deutschland Uber Alles”—Germany above all else—except Hitler never had nuclear weapons.

Tuesday night, Trump doubled-down. He made clear his fascist regime is determined to fight through any obstacles their ruling class opponents put in their way and carry through the fascist reorganization of all society. The Republicans loudly cheered all the way through, capping off the evening with chants of “USA! USA! USA!” 

The “opposition” Democrats mostly sat quietly through this Nazi-like horror show, but applauded, even stood, at any mention of the police, military, American heroism, or anything they could unite with, like more American jobs or the infrastructure. Why? Because, like Obama said, they’re on the “same team” that Trump is and represent the same oppressive system. The Democrats’ differences with Trump are over how to advance that system’s interests. Their words and actions cover up and normalize Trump’s fascism, and in many ways accelerate its consolidation.

The Trump/Pence fascist regime is barreling ahead—Trump made that plain last night. It is urgent that people face this regime’s fascism, and the grave danger it poses for humanity. But it’s still possible for the determined, courageous actions of millions, taking the streets in nonviolent political protest, demanding “The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go,” to oust these monsters and prevent an unimaginable global catastrophe. Trump’s State of the Union address should serve as a loud wake-up call and loud clarion call for millions to join in this history-making effort.

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/the-dismissal-of-victor-cha-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

The Dismissal of Victor Cha

Trump Moves Closer to Military Attack on North Korea

February 1, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On January 30, several news organizations reported that Donald Trump had dropped the nomination of Victor Cha to be U.S. ambassador to South Korea. Cha’s offense? According to news reports, he “raised concerns about U.S. plans to use a pre-emptive military strike to give North Korea a ‘bloody nose.’”

Cha was director for Asian Affairs on the U.S. National Security Council during the presidency of George W. Bush. He advocates “enhanced and sustained U.S. regional and global pressure” on North Korea, as he wrote in a recent op-ed. This includes what he calls a “forceful military option available that can address the threat without escalating into a war that would likely kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Americans.” Cha’s approach is typical of how the U.S. imperialists dealt with North Korea before the Trump/Pence regime rose to power.

But this is not enough for the hard-core fascists of the Trump/Pence regime. Cha’s dismissal indicates that the U.S.’s plans for possible war to resolve its conflict with North Korea is serious as a heart attack. They don’t want anyone in a responsible position who isn’t 100 percent on board with this.

Talking about Depravity…

“We need only look at the depraved character of the North Korean regime to understand the nature of the nuclear threat it could pose to America and to our allies.”

—From Trump’s January 30 State of the Union speech.

Who the hell is Trump to call anyone “depraved”?! He and his masters of nuclear war are drawing up plans to use the world’s most advanced weaponry to pound a poor and isolated country. North Korea is not any kind of “socialist” or liberatory society—but it does pose an obstacle to unfettered U.S. domination of East Asia, and the world. The concern expressed by U.S. leadership is for their troops and other Americans in Korea—not for the tens of millions of Koreans, and tens, even hundreds of millions more people, who could be killed if a conflict there sparks off wider war, as it well might! This is utterly unacceptable.

The U.S Seventh Fleet— the largest naval fleet in the world—has about 70 ships, 300 aircraft, and tens of thousands of personnel around North Korea. Last year the U.S. opened a sprawling $11 billion military base in South Korea that, according to a military expert, aims to “enable the rapid deployment of augmenting U.S. forces to the [South Korean military] and their expeditious projection to the forward area” (i.e., to invade North Korea, about 50 miles away). This is one of over 100 U.S. bases in South Korea. Trump has issued a steady stream of threats and insults at North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong-un.

The “bloody nose” plan Cha objected to is no schoolyard fist fight. John Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel who worked with “Defense” Secretary James Mattis in Iraq, described this scenario: “We give North Korea a ‘bloody nose’ They respond with a conventional artillery strike on [the South Korean capital of)] Seoul. We go nuclear. China mobilizes [to prevent the fall of the North Korean government)]. … There is every prospect of a ‘bloody nose’ for North Korea ending in global war between China and the United States.”

Confront Reality… and Act to Change It

The reality is that the U.S. could launch a strike on North Korea at any moment. It could include, or quickly escalate to, an exchange of nuclear weapons. The lives of tens of millions of people would immediately be imperiled. The possibility is great that an attack on North Korea could spiral into a conflagration that would involve other powers, and spread to other parts of the world, using a range of weapons that could include chemical and biological poisons, as well as nuclear bombs.

There are some basic questions that have no moral ambiguity to them, questions that millions of people in this country must confront. Do you think Korean lives are every bit as valuable as American lives? Do you think the U.S. has no right to threaten, bully, and attack a country on the other side of the world? Do you think the slaughter that such an attack would initiate is completely unjustified and criminal? Do you need to do everything in your power, to act with and mobilize others to bring forth mass political opposition to a U.S. assault on North Korea?

 

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/politicized-grammys-brings-anger-defiance-and-love-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Check It Out...

A Politicized Grammys Brings Anger, Defiance and Love for the People of the World

January 31, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a reader:

There were some positive and important things that took place at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night—reflecting a depth of anger at Donald Trump and several shout-outs and love sent to the people of the world, especially from “shithole countries.” There were important statements about the #MeToo movement and a seething performance from Kendrick Lamar.

This wasn't all without contradiction, and there is much in the “music industry” (and note well the term) to be struggled against right now, but there are positive stirrings to learn from and appreciate. I won't capture them all here, but here are a few highlights:

The rapper Logic performed a moving song about suicide with singers Alessia Cara and Khalid. Afterwards, he gave the following speech:

Black is beautiful. Hate is ugly. Women are as precious as they are stronger than any man I have ever met. And unto them I say: Stand tall and crush all predators under the weight of your heart that is full of the love they will never take away from you. Be not scared to use your voice, and especially in instances like these when you have the opportunity. Stand and fight for those who are not weak, but have yet to discover the strength that the evil of this world has done its best to conceal. To all the beautiful countries filled with culture, diversity and thousands of years of history, you are not shitholes! And lastly, on behalf of those who fight for equality in a world that is not equal, not just and not ready for the change we are here to bring. I say unto you, bring us your tired, your poor and any immigrant who seeks refuge. For together, we can build not just a better country, but a world that is destined to be united.

U2 performed in front of artwork from JR (French photographer)—showing the humanity of people of all different nationalities. And they made a statement in unity with people from “shithole” countries. They also performed in front of the Statue of Liberty, and while their stand was mainly positive, it reflected a lot of illusions about the real nature of the U.S. (which was a certain theme throughout the night).

Ice-T's metal band, Body Count, performed a fierce song against police brutality and murder, “Black Hoodie.”

The singer Kesha sang with a number of well-known women artists about getting out from under a relationship of brutal sexual assault—learning she can stand on her own. This year, Kesha was forced to pay a large penalty to get out of a recording contract with a producer who she accused of sexual assault and abuse. Many prominent women contributed funds for her to do this. This performance reflected a beautiful solidarity and togetherness that captured some of the best of the #MeToo movement, along with a refusal to be broken.

Finally, Kendrick Lamar's performance was powerful and complex. I won't here attempt a further analysis of the song (verses from a number of different songs and freestyles), but the performance was wrestling with the oppression of Black people, the satirical promise of America, and the revenge mentality. In the middle of the song, Dave Chappelle stepped in to say: “I just wanted to remind the audience that the only thing more frightening than watching a black man be honest in America is being an honest black man in America.”

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/join-in-a-month-long-special-effort-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Calling all revcom readers and everyone who urgently wants to end the nightmare being put into place by the Trump/Pence fascist regime.

Join in a month-long special effort to promote the talk and Q&A's 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

Updated with new material February 6, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Be part of bringing the most serious answers to the most urgent questions to tens and hundreds of thousands, and ultimately millions.

This talk from Bob Avakian (BA) provides a scientific understanding of the roots of this fascist regime—in the history of the U.S. and the deeper roots in the system of capitalism-imperialism.  He does so with passion, humor, humanity, and a deep sense of history. He cuts into the deepest, most agonizing questions first in the speech and then in a wide-ranging Questions and Answers.

If more people watched this talk, it could change today’s political equation.  But far too few have seen this talk, or even know about it.  You are needed to be part of changing this.

What follows is a multi-layered plan to do just that.  We will provide you with promotional materials, draft letters, phone banking scripts and more... so stay tuned.  If you encounter obstacles or questions you don’t know how to answer, write to us.  If you have experience that others can learn from, write to us.  This is just the beginning of bold and exciting plans to impact all of society with this talk, and Avakian’s revolutionary work overall.  We’ll be writing with more plans and proposals and look forward to your feedback, and your ideas.

In addition to the film itself, a couple of important tools in this promotional effort include the official biography of Avakian, which gets deeply into Bob Avakian’s history and the content and world historic significance of his work.  And there is the website for The Bob Avakian Institute, a nonprofit institute organized for educational purposes whose mission is to preserve, project, and promote the works and vision of Bob Avakian with the aim of reaching the broadest possible audience.  Plus, of course, right here at revcom.us, which will be covering this closely.

We also recommend people read and share this piece on why BA is a contended question and welcome and join the controversy over this—positive and negative.

Here are some key elements of the plan for the next several weeks:

• Social media.  This is going to be one of the main ways people encounter this talk, but there needs to be a big breakthrough in reach and impact.  Follow @tuneintorevcom on twitter, facebook and instagram.  In addition to wielding the powerful content of revcom, we will be focusing on promotion of this film—in its own right and in relation to key questions and major events breaking in society.  Help build the following of these accounts and if you already have social media, share on yours.  If you’re promoting the film: watching it with others, out on the street, hanging in the dorms, take a picture, record a comment from someone and post on social media.  Everything should be maximized via social media.  And to volunteer to be part of a national social media team, write to us at revolution.reports@yahoo.com

• Mass promotion in the street with displays, palm cards, and posters. Go into areas and put a big TV on the back of a truck or van, or show clips on the spot on phones and tablets.  Make a scene and encourage people to watch on the spot, and schedule a time where they can get into it more deeply—on their own, or with their friends and family.  Schools are back in session and we should work with students to spread this in their dorms, make classroom announcements, have viewings with student clubs, or at a coffee shop after school.  Go out to busy transit hubs or even play a minute of it between train stops on mass transit.  Make a stir and let people know that if they are agonizing and confused about what is happening with this regime, they need to hear the analysis in this talk!

Pick a couple areas or spots to saturate, to create real bases where this is a “thing” that everyone knows about... or feels they have to... and the terms of discussion and debate get changed on a mass scale.

As there are new outrages with this regime, join people in the streets and pass out materials about this talk.  Schedule an emergency viewing so people can make the links between the particular outrages, the rapid pace of the regime as a whole—and why we can’t rely on the normal channels that brought this regime to power to stop it, why we must rely on ourselves.

• Organized viewings. In addition to scheduling viewings and inviting people broadly, work with people to show it among their circles, formally and informally.  Talk with pastors about scheduling church showings, reach out to organizations you know, and those you don’t know, about watching clips in a meeting or setting up a time to watch the whole thing. Are there alternative high schools you work with that would show it as a school assembly, what about showings in barber shops and hair salons, neighborhood boxing gyms and more?

• Following up with everyone we meet.  Sit down and strategize with those who have bigger platforms or disproportionate influence.  Make a concerted effort for phone banking and email follow up, inviting people to watch it and promote it on their social media.  Ask people to make video or written statements, send it to us directly or share on their social media.

• Bloggers, podcasters, commentators.  The stand-alone clips from the talk, and the single Q&A’s would make VERY good radio and podcast material.  Reach out to people you know with radio shows, or who have this kind of online platform.  If you have ideas, write to us at revolution.reports@yahoo.com

• Raising funds for more major online promotion. Every aspect of this should involve fundraising: being out on the street collecting funds, phone banking, and group viewings.  Everyone you meet can be part of enabling this to reach many others by contributing funds to have exponential impact.  Also, stay tuned for a call for a weekend of house parties to raise funds ... but don’t wait to start reaching out to set these up.

• February is Black History Month—And This Talk Is A Must-See In That Context!  Nothing links the whole history of Black people in this country to the rise of this “Make America White Again” regime like this talk does.  Nothing goes anywhere near as deep as this talk doesbe bold and get it out there, to people, groups, events, institutions, etc. who are observing the month!

_______

In everything we do, let people know there is a need for them: for their ideas, questions, skills and creativity.  We need designers, social media mavens, film editors and much more... and every need there is to be filled should provide an opportunity to involve people in the fight for a better world.  We look forward to having a big and very necessary impact on society with this film and, at the end of this month, to get ready for further major advances.  And we look forward to learning a great deal in the process.

Let’s go!

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/trump-pence-plans-to-keep-open-and-expand-guantanamo-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Trump/Pence Regime Plans to Keep Open—and Expand—Guantánamo Bay Torture Center

February 1, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a reader:

In his January 31 State of the Union speech, Donald Trump said that he is “going to keep open the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay” located at the U.S naval base in Cuba. What he called “detention facilities” is in fact a torture center where the U.S. has illegally detained, brutalized and dehumanized people. (See the revcom.us American Crime series article on Guantánamo.) Trump also said the U.S. was going to “chase people down” (those deemed as “enemy combatants”) and imprison more of them at Guantánamo.

This is hugely criminal in itself. But there are reports that the Trump/Pence regime plans to do a lot more than that at Guantánamo Bay.

The Miami Herald reported last August that Trump’s Pentagon had requested a half-billion dollars for construction to expand the base. Funds have already been approved to build new barracks for 848 “prison troops.” Also in the works is a new hospital and new housing for the current workforce of about 2,200 Jamaicans and Filipinos, plus some other new construction.

But what is most disturbing, and not being talked about, is the proposed construction of what is being called a “13,000-migrant tent city and housing for 5,000 U.S. forces” in an unused corner of the 45-square-mile base. The Herald did not say whether the location of the tent city is part of the actual detention center. According to the Herald, “A public-address system atop utility poles is also to be added… The migrants, according to design plans released with the $25 million to $100 million project solicitation, are to be housed in five pop-up tent cities and a 900-person medical unit.”

The Herald article said the “migrant camp project is a bit mysterious … spokesmen for the Navy, Southcom and the Department of Homeland Security were unable to say why the military had concluded it needed to bring in and house 5,000 U.S. forces and other staff at the base to run an encampment housing 13,000 people.” Further, “DHS [Department of Homeland Security], spokesman David Lapan said by email that the department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] division ‘was not directly involved in this contract.’ ICE, he said, ‘does not have any plans to use this facility for any new/additional detention.’”

The U.S. base at Guantánamo has a population of about 5,500, including military personnel, about 2,200 Filipino and Jamaican workers, and the 41 prisoners at the torture center. The “migrant camp project” is clearly not for the base’s migrant workers, since there is new housing already being built for them. And what does it mean to have tent city housing of 13,000 along with additional housing for 5,000 more U.S. forces? Why would they need a force of 1 military person for every 2.5 people housed? These are questions that need to be asked and answered.

According to the Herald, “The Army holds regular training exercises there, spending millions of dollars to rehearse a mock migration crisis. This year [2017], it flew in 400 troops plus Homeland Security and Department of State officials, and housed them around the base for the drill, which was closed to press coverage.” But there were two extremely devastating hurricanes that hit the Caribbean last year, and the military showed no ability to be prepared for any type of “migration crisis.”

Here’s what we do know. The Trump/Pence regime’s fascist “law and order” program means intensifying repression, especially on Black, Latino and other oppressed people. Trump has called for locking up those who oppose him, including opponents in the ruling class like Hillary Clinton. He has called for banning Muslims from entering the country. He has stepped up the rounding up of immigrants and has taken away Temporary Protected Status from hundreds of thousands who have come to the U.S. from the Caribbean, Central America and elsewhere. He has called for getting rid of those he labels “bad guys.”

So, who are those 13,000 that the fascist Trump/Pence regime may put in Guantánamo?

Martin Niemöller, a German Protestant pastor who was imprisoned by the Hitler regime from 1937 to 1945, said after the defeat of Nazi Germany:

First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— 
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

A fascist America under the Trump/Pence regime is not exactly the same as fascist Germany under Hitler. But if you understand the Niemöller quote, then you can get a sense of who might be forced into the proposed Guantánamo tent city.

 

SHUT DOWN GUANTÁNAMO!

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

In the Name of Humanity,
We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America

 

 

 


 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/528/remembering-kate-millett-en.html

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Amid Outpourings of Women’s Anger…

Remembering Kate Millett

By Mary Lou Greenberg

February 3, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The strong and joyous Women’s Marches across the country made me think of Kate Millett, who died on September 6, 2017, a few days short of her 83rd birthday. 

Radical feminist writer, artist, and activist since the 1960s antiwar and women’s movements, Kate Millett called herself a “troublemaker.” She was, in the best sense of the word, daring to challenge and upend the status quo in many arenas, and most of all the crushing weight of patriarchy. She relished taking on the misogyny, the hatred and cruelty toward women of political patriarchs of various stripes and guises, and she challenged others to do it, as well. 

She is best known for her radical work of theory, history and cultural criticism, Sexual Politics, published in 1970. A product of her involvement with the growing women’s liberation movement, it attempted, in her words, “to formulate a systematic overview of patriarchy as a political institution.”

In Sexual Politics, Millett drew on the work of historians, anthropologists and political theorists, including Friedrich Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, to critique the notion that patriarchy, including traditional marriage and the family, is the natural social order and that male dominance and female subservience are based in biology and, therefore, inevitable. Sexual Politics exposed Sigmund Freud’s “habitual masculine bias” in his theory of female psychology (a very bold thing to do then), and took on the misogyny in the writings of literary icons including D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and Norman Mailer, among other things.

Millett ended her book with a call for “freeing humanity from the tyranny of sexual-social category and conformity to sexual stereotype – as well as abolishing racial caste and economic class,” and liberating women from their “immemorial subordination.” 

Millett, however, never made the leap to grasping and applying a fully scientific method and understanding of society, and in different ways ran counter to it. This included the way that the mode of production, that is, the ways in which production is carried out in capitalist society determines and shapes social relations and values, and the need for revolution to bring into being new production and social relations and totally new values as leaps toward liberating women and emancipating humanity. She never broke free of working within and radically changing the current framework. Yet she made valuable contributions. For instance, her insistence that women’s oppression is neither biologically rooted nor inevitable helped open peoples’ minds to the possibility of real change and to refuse to accept male domination. 

Sexual Politics hit like an earthquake. Time magazine put her on its cover. Amid controversy and vitriolic attacks as well as considerable praise, Sexual Politics quickly became a bestseller.

Following her death, feminist author Carol Adams wrote in the New York Times:

[I]t was Ms. Millett’s book that made us feminists… In 1963, Betty Friedan had called the “feminine mystique” the problem with no name. It was Ms. Millett who gave it a name — sexual politics — and explained its cause: patriarchal society. By introducing the concept of “patriarchy as a political institution,” she equipped her readers to become their own theorists of culture … helping us perceive the power structures in what had previously been cast as apolitical terrain: the home; literature; romantic relationship. It felt so liberating to realize that we could follow her lead. We could take this fundamental insight to our jobs, our schools, our marriages — and to politics itself. Theory mattered. It was capable of propelling real change. (September 7, 2017)

A breadth of vision, knowledge, creativity and concern for humanity

Millett had a breadth of vision, knowledge, creativity and concern for humanity that could fill books, and she wrote many, including Flying (1974) and Sita (1977) about her sexuality and coming out as lesbian; The Loony-Bin Trip (1990), about being forcibly institutionalized for mental illness and a cry against all such treatment; and The Politics of Cruelty (1994), an exposure of state-sanctioned torture of prisoners.

There are a couple of examples I wanted to share.

Kate Millett was a visual artist as well as a writer. In 1970, Millett was denounced in the U.S. House of Representatives for her artwork of a wooden cage housing a porcelain toilet with a U.S. flag stuffed in it. Titled “The American Dream Goes to Pot,” it was created for “the People’s Flag Show” art exhibition in New York City.  

In 1979, Millett and her longtime partner and spouse Sophie Keir traveled to Iran soon after the U.S.-installed Shah had been forced out and the new reactionary Islamic regime headed by Ayatollah Khomeini had taken power, an experience she wrote about in Going to Iran (1982). She’d been invited to speak at the March 8 International Women’s Day celebration in Tehran. Shortly after they arrived, Khomeini announced that all women must wear the veil (chador), and the planned celebration turned into a huge women’s protest march, braving not only the mullahs but groups of infuriated men bent on enforcing Khomeini’s orders. The two jumped in and participated fully. For that they were arrested and expelled from Iran. Years later, some revolutionary Iranian women who had been part of the march told me they were thrilled that Kate Millett had joined them.

Kate Millett—Troublemaking to the end

Kate Millett had a broadness of mind and an unquenchable radical spirit, and her important theoretical work continues to resound with truth, insight and relevance. She continued to speak out against cruelty and injustice throughout her life and worked with others, including revolutionary communists, in an open, non-sectarian way, with boldness and spirit. She was passionate about abortion rights and LGBTQ rights, and participated in the 2017 Women’s March in NYC in a wheelchair, proudly holding a sign with her name.

In the great endeavor to bring about a new world, I feel confident that the work of Kate Millett, along with her bold troublemaking spirit, breadth of vision and joyous heart that touched and influenced so many, will contribute to getting there.