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Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

September 6, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Announcing: The Launch of a Pathbreaking New Book from Bob Avakian

THE NEW COMMUNISM
The science, the strategy, the leadership
for an actual revolution,
and a radically new society
on the road to real emancipation

 

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Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Letter to the Editors: A point to add on Bob Avakian's new book

The World Needs THE NEW COMMUNISM

September 12, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

To the editors:

I wanted to add one point to last week’s exciting coverage at www.revcom.us of the upcoming publication of Bob Avakian’s THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation and the plans laid out to take the BA Everywhere campaign to a much higher level. And that point is internationalism.

First, the book itself is an event with international ramifications. BA has taken communism—which is a science encompassing the entire world, a political movement that must take root in every corner of the globe, and the goal of a world community of peoples, beyond borders and countries—to another level. To be a communist in the world today is to be a follower of Bob Avakian—anything short of that, let alone opposed to it, just isn’t communism. This is not just something for the movement in the U.S.—and the May 1 statements this year from revolutionary communist organizations in other countries, as well as polemics and articles from still other groups and individuals, make that very clear (see end of the letter for titles and links).

Second, one of the key elements of the new synthesis of communism is a breakthrough that BA has made in the theory of internationalism. BA has taken much further and qualitatively deepened our understanding of the extremely complex but nonetheless interconnected process through which the world develops in this era of imperialism, and the revolution against imperialism. On that basis, he has broken with significant errors made in previous communist revolutions and laid the basis for a real leap in HOW our movement, worldwide, fights both today as we hasten and prepare to make revolution and in the future, when we are leading new socialist societies after state power has been seized. This is precious—it opens the way for all of humanity to get beyond the horrors of today. And BA has personally and politically always put the whole world first—another thing that comes through in this new book. (See “The New Synthesis of Communism: Fundamental Orientation, Method, and Approach, and Core Elements—An Outline,” by Bob Avakian, Chairman, Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, Summer 2015)

All this leads me to my conclusion: that a huge effort should be made this fall to get word of THE NEW COMMUNISM out into immigrant communities, to expatriate or visiting intellectuals and artists, and to international students. In the communities, on the campuses and at cultural programs and seminars—word must spread, and the ways be found to engage people with this work... and with BA's new synthesis overall. There would always be the need for an advance like this to get out to all of humanity—but does this not cry out with even greater urgency today, in a world wracked with needless, excruciating suffering but where the only REAL way out is not even known about in the vast majority of the planet? The lack of engagement with this, or even knowledge of it, has had tremendously negative consequences for whole regions of the world—this is something we must urgently work to change.

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Check out these statements, polemics, and articles:

“The New Synthesis of Communism and the Residues of the Past,” by the Revolutionary Communist Organization (OCR), Mexico

“This Is an Emergency May Day Call! No Time to Waste! A Radically Different World Is Possible! Only If We Take Up the New Synthesis of Communism!” from the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)—May Day 2016

“Urgently needed: Take up the new synthesis of communism of Bob Avakian, the new framework required for a new stage of revolution!“ Declaration of Grupo Comunista Revolucionario de Colombia, May 1, 2016

SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION: On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian—an Interview with Ardea Skybreak

 

 

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Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

September 6, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

THE NEW COMMUNISM

 

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Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

 

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Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Updated September 19, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

THE NEW COMMUNISM

 

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Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Native Americans Fight Modern-Day Genocide:

Standing Up at Standing Rock

Updated September 19, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

Update, September 19: Following the government’s September 9 intervention (see below), construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) has been temporarily halted on federal land near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. However, pipeline construction continues in other areas—and the pipeline’s owners, Energy Partners, has vowed to complete it. Since then, the fight to stop the DAPL has continued and broadened. This weekend more than 3,500 people took part in the protest encampment at Standing Rock. On September 13, thousands took part in support actions for Standing Rock in over 200 cities across the U.S. as well as in Canada and England. The next day, more than 20 people were arrested near New Salem, North Dakota, some 70 miles northwest of Standing Rock, for blocking pipeline construction.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe of North Dakota has been battling for two years to stop the construction of an oil pipeline near their reservation. The pipeline threatens their water, land, and irreplaceable historical and cultural sites—literally threatening to destroy the Standing Rock Sioux as a people.

The Standing Rock Sioux are a small tribe—8,250 live on the reservation near where the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers meet. And they’re up against long odds and powerful forces: America’s long history of genocide, and now a juggernaut of big financial institutions and energy companies, backed by the government, the legal system, and the armed enforcers of the state.

But the people of Standing Rock have truth and the interests of humanity on their side, and they’ve refused to give up. Instead, they have fought courageously, standing firm, and reaching out widely for support. In the last few months, their battle has become a national and international issue. It has thrown a spotlight on the history of America’s genocide against Native Americans and how that horror continues in new guises today. More Native American tribes, some 200, have come together than ever before around Standing Rock. Thousands of Native people as well as environmentalists and activists have come to the protest encampment there to stop the pipeline. The hashtag #NoDAPL has been spreading on social media.

The battle intensified as Friday, September 9, approached. That was the day a federal court was scheduled to announce whether or not the construction of the pipeline would continue. Protesters stood up to the pipeline company pigs and their dogs, stopping construction at one point. Support actions have taken place across the country. According to media spokespeople for the Standing Rock Sioux, press attention has been overwhelming. The battle has reverberated internationally: When President Obama recently traveled to Laos in Southeast Asia, he was grilled on America’s treatment of the Standing Rock Sioux and its indigenous peoples. (See "Obama's Bullshit vs. 10 Realities on Past and Present U.S. Crimes Against Native Americans.") Meanwhile, North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple had activated the National Guard to be used against protesters.

Then on September 9, the battle took a sudden turn. That afternoon, a federal judge rejected the Sioux’s demand that the pipeline construction be halted. Literally moments later, in the context of unprecedented protests and global outrage, the Department of Justice, Department of the Army, and Department of the Interior issued a joint statement. They announced that construction of the pipeline would be temporarily halted on Army Corps of Engineers land bordering and under Lake Oahe (the part of Missouri River next to the Standing Rock reservation, where the Dakota Access pipeline is supposed to cross). They also said that the federal government would meet with Native peoples to discuss giving them more of a voice in future infrastructure projects like the pipeline.

But everything that has led to this explosive confrontation—why the pipeline is being built, and what the Standing Rock Sioux have faced—points to why this step back by the federal government is not to be trusted. And it points to why the struggle must not simply continue but deepen—and be more connected to the revolution it will actually take to stop the genocide of Native peoples and the destruction of the Earth’s environment.

Genocide: STILL as American as Apple Pie

What’s being done to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in North Dakota is as American as apple pie.

A capitalist juggernaut of banks, drillers, and corporations, backed by the regulations, laws, and armed force of the state were again marauding over Native peoples. They were again despoiling the lands that Native Americans live on, plundering resources, and carrying out the genocide of Native peoples that has been taking place in one form or another ever since European settlers landed on American shores. And because exploitation and the dispossession of Native peoples are built into the fabric of U.S. capitalism-imperialism, this is not ancient history. It’s still going on.

This time it is called the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL). This pipeline, owned by the Texas conglomerate Energy Transfer Partners, could eventually carry 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day some 1,200 miles from the Bakken oil fields in northwest North Dakota to Illinois (nearly as long as the infamous Keystone XL pipeline).

The Dakota Access pipeline “would snake across our treaty lands and through our ancestral burial grounds,” writes the Standing Rock tribal chairman, Dave Archambault II. “Just a half-mile from our reservation boundary, the proposed route crosses the Missouri River, which provides drinking water for millions of Americans and irrigation water for thousands of acres of farming and ranching lands.” Some of those crucial historic and ancestral sites—which include irreplaceable Native art and pictographs—were savaged on September 3 by the Dakota Access bulldozers—after the company and the government were told of the sites.

The whole process of planning, approving, and constructing this pipeline drips with Native blood and the historic stench of America’s genocide of Native peoples. Over 90 percent of the pipeline is being built on private land—much of which was stolen from the Sioux. The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie granted the Greater Sioux all of present-day South Dakota west of the Missouri River, including the Black Hills. But most of that land was stolen back 11 years later after the Great Sioux War.

And the theft has continued since then, including of 56,000 acres taken from the Standing Rock Sioux by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1958. On September 9, sickeningly, one justification the federal court used to refuse to stop the pipeline was that some of the relevant government environmental and historical preservation regulations don’t apply to private land.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the original plans didn’t call for the pipeline to cross the Missouri near Sioux lands but near Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota. State officials worried that an oil spill could poison the capital city’s drinking water. So in a blatant act of environmental racism, they moved the pipeline crossing to within half a mile of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation—land taken from the tribe in 1958.

The Dakota Access project was approved without “meaningful consultation” with the Standing Rock Sioux. “The first draft of the company’s assessment of the planned route through our treaty and ancestral lands did not even mention our tribe,” states tribal chairman Archambault II. “The U.S. government is wiping out our most important cultural and spiritual areas,” LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, the Standing Rock Tribe’s Historic Preservation Officer, wrote in YES! Magazine. “And as it erases our footprint from the world, it erases us as a people. These sites must be protected, or our world will end, it is that simple.”

Environmental Racism & Genocide

The Dakota Access pipeline has been subject to minimal environmental regulation. A pipeline break and oil spill would threaten drinking and irrigation water supplies and endanger the health of not only the Standing Rock Sioux but millions in the region. This isn’t a remote, abstract danger. From 2012 to 2013, there were 300 oil pipeline breaks in North Dakota alone. And since 1995 there have been more than 2,000 significant accidents involving petroleum pipelines across the U.S. This total has increased under Obama, in step with the nearly 60 percent expansion of U.S. oil production and fracking since 2009.

Such an oil spill could have a devastating, even genocidal impact on the Standing Rock Sioux and other peoples. “We are borrowing this land from our grandchildren so we need to take care of our main life source: water,” one participant in an April Relay Run in Opposition of Dakota Access Pipeline wrote. “Without clean water, we will cease to survive, thus exterminating our own existence. We are running for our future generations.”

Then there’s the planetary impact of releasing yet more greenhouse gases from the burning of another 500,000 barrels of oil a day—at a time the environmental crisis is visibly accelerating. This planet needs another oil pipeline like it needs to collide with a massive meteor—whatever the pipeline’s pathway. But the compulsion to continue to extract, sell, and burn fossil fuel and control its supply globally is built into the economic workings and the strategic military imperatives of the U.S. imperialist empire—no matter who’s president.

This is why drilling and fracking has skyrocketed under the self-proclaimed “environmental president” Barack Obama, whose actual role is commander-in-chief of U.S. imperialism. And this is why he refused to meet with tribal representatives and remained silent for so long on the Dakota Access pipeline—despite the fact that he visited the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in 2014 and promised them, “My administration is determined to partner with tribes.”

Standing Up at Standing Rock

Robbing Native peoples, threatening their heritage and lands... plundering the environment... and doing so with government support—in America, all this is routine, business-as-usual. It’s how the United States was forged, and it’s how it operates today. Then all of a sudden it wasn’t... because people—originally a small group of people—refused to put up with it.

Find out more about the revolution         Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution

The Standing Rock Sioux began opposing Dakota Access when they first learned of it in 2014. They filed lawsuits to stop it. And in April of this year, they set up a camp protesting the pipeline’s construction. They were met with hostility, racial profiling, police roadblocks and surveillance. The sheriff and Energy Transfer have called the protest “unlawful.” North Dakota’s governor, a Trump supporter, has declared a state of emergency for the protest site.

But people stood strong and had right on their side. They reached out to other Native peoples and activists and progressive people more broadly. The word got out. More people came. By August the protest encampment had become the most significant coming together of different Native American tribes in memory. Nearly 2,000 people were camped out.

The action by a determined few had touched a nerve, galvanizing the feelings and fighting spirit of many more. “This is a historic moment for indigenous people,” Tara Houska of Honor the Earth said. (Democracy Now!, September 9) “They have come from all over the country to stand here with the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and to say, ‘No more. Enough is enough.’ So, to see this moment, I think that people are aware that indigenous people are still here. They’re aware that we have treaty rights, that we are no longer accepting any type of environmental injustice of a pipeline being sent through drinking water. You know, this is a moment in which we are standing up together.”

The battle at Standing Rock has also cast a glaring spotlight on the genocidal history and genocidal realities of the United States today. And it has raised big questions about the legitimacy of the whole thing. The government and some backward fools have been mobilized against Standing Rock. Once again, they’re being whipped up behind “the right” of white people to roll over Native people in seeking “prosperity.” But the firm stand by a determined few—in the face of daunting odds, reactionary forces, and an initially unfavorable polarization—has in important ways repolarized the terrain. This time, lots of people—white, Native, and other nationalities—are not having this racist, genocidal garbage, and they’re putting shit on the line to oppose it.

Support actions have taken place across the country, including Washington, DC, Denver, New York City, San Francisco, Tulsa, and Omaha. Celebrities, including actor and comedian Chris Rock; actors Susan Sarandon, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Shailene Woodley; and cast members of the upcoming movie The Justice League, including Ben Affleck, have spoken out against the pipeline.

There have been more militant, determined protests to shut down the pipeline. On August 23, Native Americans on horseback startled and drove back a line of police. On September 3, people rushed over barricades and stood up to mace and guard dogs—which bit six people, including children—to stop construction and the desecration of Native sites. Right after the federal court ruling the pipeline would continue, a PBS reporter at the protest encampment noted, “There is a minority of people here, at least, who will do everything they possibly can to try to stop this from going forward.”

The Rulers Take a Step Back... What the DOJ Announcement Means, and Doesn’t Mean

Why did the federal government step in to halt at least part of the pipeline construction? Because they had a serious problem on their hands.

The Standing Rock battle has turned into a national and international cause célèbre. It has thrown a spotlight on the history of America’s genocide against Native Americans and how that horrific abuse continues today. Native peoples were coming together, many were being radicalized, and diverse forces were being brought together in opposition to fault line contradictions—the destruction of the environment and the historic oppression and genocide of Native peoples—which this system has no answers for.

This is unfolding at a moment when the very notion of “America’s greatness” is being invoked in different ways by both presidential candidates and is being very broadly contested in society. (For example, in the burnings of the U.S. flag at the Democratic and Republican conventions by the communist revolutionaries, and the refusal of San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick and other athletes to stand for the national anthem.) All this has called America’s legitimacy into question—at home and around the world, and that makes this a very explosive issue for the powers that be.

The rulers feared the whole situation could become even more explosive and exposing. So they stepped in to defuse the confrontation, buy time, divert the struggle into their killing embrace, and work to preserve the appearance of their system’s legitimacy.

What the Obama administration will do in relation to the pipeline is unclear. But the statement from the Departments of Justice, Army, and Interior only stated that construction would be temporarily halted on Army Corps of Engineers land—which makes up roughly three percent of the land the pipeline is being built on—until they can review the permit process. They’ve made clear that they’re simply asking Dakota Access to “voluntarily pause” construction in a 40-mile radius around Lake Oahe and construction on the rest of the pipeline can continue. And their promises to meet with Native peoples and discuss the permit process offer no guarantee whatsoever of any significant change.

Most fundamentally, these are agencies of a ruling class and capitalist state that has broken every treaty it’s ever had with Native Americans. It’s a setup whose very existence and power has been based on shredding those agreements and stealing the land and resources of indigenous peoples.

A World Without America and Everything It Stands For—Including Genocide!

The rulers hope that temporarily stopping part of the pipeline will mollify people—rather than it being seen as a sign of weakness that inspires people to fight harder. The temporary halt is a sign of the difficulties the rulers face, and now is the time to fight harder. We should appreciate the lessons in what’s happened so far at Standing Rock: This IS a country built on slavery, genocide, and unjust war. And calling that out in a bold and determined way can hammer at “cracks in the wall” people are locked down inside of, and change the political and ideological terrain.

The Standing Rock Sioux have stated that their struggle against DAPL will continue. That’s important, and this fight must increasingly become part of the movement for an actual revolution. The horrific genocide of Native people formed part of what Karl Marx, with biting and bitter sarcasm, called the “rosy dawn” of the capitalist system. This genocide, now focused in the battle at Standing Rock, continues under that same system in various forms today. Moreover, this crime of theft and slaughter and cultural extermination—foundational as it is to everything this society is about—formed the basis for a whole horrific roster of crimes, which are documented on this website every week in the revcom.us series American Crime.

It will take revolution, a communist revolution which draws forward and leads those whom this system has tried to crush, along with all those who refuse to go along with that and seek a better world, to be part of the overthrow of that system and the establishment of a radically different society to finally end the genocide, exploitation, and environmental devastation capitalism constantly gives rise to, here and all around the world. It will take communist revolution to bring into being a global society in which the seven billion on the planet can live lives worthy of human beings.

Bob Avakian (BA), the leader of the movement for revolution, has written the blueprint and plan for a radically emancipating society that opens the way to a whole new society and which, as part of moving to that, will mobilize people and resources to overcome the effects and legacy of America’s terrible history of genocide and oppression of Native peoples. That document is the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal). And we urge everyone aching for a different future, everyone seeking alternatives, to read it and deeply engage it (see sidebar). And BA has developed the strategy for an actual revolution—a way to mobilize millions to defeat and dismantle the institutions of force and violence and a strategy through which they could be victorious. A way, at last, to overthrow this system of exploitation and genocide, and bring in a whole new one based on overcoming all that and bringing in totally different values.

If you have been part of those at Standing Rock, or part of the many more who have been moved by it, or are just learning about it now... check out this site. Get into BA. Learn more... and get involved. (Read the Constitution.)

 

 

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Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Obama's Bullshit vs. 10 Realities on Past and Present U.S. Crimes Against Native Americans

September 12, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

During a town hall in Laos during his recent Asia trip, Barack Obama was challenged to say what he was doing about protecting the rights of Native Americans, including at Standing Rock (see: Native Americans Fight Modern-Day Genocide: Standing Up at Standing Rock). Obama dodged speaking about the protests. Then he said, “the way the Native Americas were treated was tragic”—and claimed that one of his priorities has been “restoring an honest and generous and respectful relationship with Native American tribes.”

No, Obama—what happened to Native Americans was not some “tragic” thing that just happened in the past, as if it fell from the sky. The way the rulers of this country have related to Native Americans has been full of lies, violent theft, and dehumanizing disrespect—from decimation of the original inhabitants through genocidal violence...to broken treaty after broken treaty...to the grinding oppression today.

Here are 10 realities about the past and present U.S. crimes against Native Americans.

1. The United States was founded on genocide. This country was founded on genocide of Native Americans—along with slavery and theft of Mexican land. George Washington, the “father” of this country, was commander-in-chief of a genocidal military campaign against native peoples in western New York, known as the Iroquois League. Washington ordered the U.S. Army to carry out “total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible.” Over 50 communities were totally demolished. Hundreds of those who fled this horror during the dangerous winter months died from the cold, malnutrition and disease. This massacre became a model for the violent expansion of the United States westward across the country into territories where Native Americans had been living for centuries. Would Obama—or any other ruling class representative—ever denounce George Washington, quite accurately, as a genocidal maniac? Not a fucking chance. (For more on the massacre of the Iroquois that Washington commanded, see: “American Crime: Case #90: The Sullivan Expedition, 1779—Genocide of Native People and Scorched Earth in Upstate New York”)

2. Genocidal atrocities as official government/military policy. The history of the United States is marked by repeated massacres of Native Americans. Four examples: In 1838 and 1839 the U.S. stole the lands of tens of thousands of Cherokee people and forced them on a death march to Oklahoma—4,000 died on the forced march known as the “Trail of Tears.” On January 29, 1863, 450 Northwestern Shoshone were killed by the U.S. military near what today is Preston, Idaho. In 1890, the U.S. cavalry killed 300 Lakota men, women, and children on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota in the Wounded Knee massacre. On September 3, 1863, the U.S. Army massacred more than 300 people from different Sioux communities at Whitestone—not far from where the current fight over the Dakota Access pipeline is taking place.

3. The United States has broken every treaty it ever made with Native Americans, with the murderer’s logic of “might makes right.” One example is the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 that granted land to the Sioux, including the land now being used for the Dakota Access pipeline as well as the Black Hills area of South Dakota. When gold was discovered in the Black Hills, prospectors rushed in. At that point, the U.S. government instigated armed conflict against Native people of the area, in what came to be called the Great Sioux War of 1876. There was determined and heroic armed resistance by Native Americans. The U.S. military suffered a significant defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (portrayed in American culture as “Custer’s Last Stand,” as if the genocidal general who commanded the U.S. troops died a “hero”). However the U.S. defeated the native people’s forces, tore up the Fort Laramie Treaty, and forced the Native Americans to give up much of the land that had been covered by the Treaty, including the Black Hills.

4. Cultural genocide. Part of the genocide carried out by the U.S. against Native Americans were the attempts to wipe out the people’s language and culture through forcing Native children into “boarding school” to be educated according to European-American standards. Beginning in the late 1800s, these schools were set up by Christian missionaries as well as the U.S. government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. Youths were often separated from their families, forbidden to speak their original languages, and pressured to abandon their Native American cultures and identities. Their traditional names were replaced by European-American names, in the name of “civilizing” and “Christianizing” the children. Recent investigations have revealed many documented cases of physical, sexual, and mental abuse at these schools (for example, “Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools” in Amnesty International magazine).

5. Poisoning of health and environment. There is an ugly history of the U.S. rulers not only stealing resources from the land Native Americans lived on but also utter disregard for the effects on people’s health and their environment. One example is U.S. uranium mining and the deadly consequences for Navajo people in the Southwest. After World War 2, the U.S. ramped up uranium mining as they rapidly expanded their nuclear arms arsenal. When large uranium deposits were found in or near the Navajo Reservation, many Navajos were hired to work in the mines. The mining companies and the U.S. government kept the Navajos in the dark about the known dangers—this went on for decades. As radiation illnesses began to mount among the Navajo, those who tried to get compensation and help through the courts were often unsuccessful. And this poisonous legacy continues today—with hundreds of uncleaned abandoned mines in the Navajo areas and other regions of the Southwest posing continuing health and environmental dangers. This, again, is not some blameless “tragedy”—it is a deliberate crime against a whole people, a product of a system of exploitation and oppression, carried out by those in power in the U.S.

Find out more about the revolution         Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution

6. Deep, widespread poverty. The horrific legacy of the crimes that the U.S. has carried out for so long against Native Americans continues to have very real and terrible effects today. Most of the people who survived the massacres and other genocidal assaults on Native American lives were forced onto reservations controlled and surrounded by the armed forces of the U.S. capitalist-imperialist state. Today, most Native Americans live outside reservations. While poverty rates for Native Americans as a whole are very high, the reservations are some of the most poverty-stricken areas of this country. In the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, the poverty rate is over 42 percent, triple the average nationwide. Two out of three members of the tribe are jobless, and the average annual individual income is only about $4,400 (compared to the national average of over $24,000).

7. Disparities in health and life expectancy. Because of poverty, discrimination in delivery of health services, and other factors, Native Americans are disproportionately affected by serious health problems. Native Americans die at higher rate than other people in the U.S. in many categories of health problems, like chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, diabetes mellitus, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. Among young adults ages 18-24, Native Americans have a higher suicide rate than people of any other nationality/ethnicity. Life expectancy on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is the lowest anywhere in the western hemisphere, except for Haiti. A recent study found the life expectancy for men to be 48 years, and for women it is 52 years.

8. Targets of police murder and terror. Today, Native Americans make up just 0.8 percent of the total U.S. population—but they are victims in 1.9 percent of all killings by the police across the country. This is a higher rate of death at the hands of the police than for any other group. Native American men are sent to prison at four times the rate of white men; and the incarceration rate for Native American women is six times the rate for white women.

9. Assaults on Native American culture. Attacks against and degradation of Native American culture—as part of promoting white supremacy—is not a thing of the past. The callous disregard of the Standing Rock Sioux ancestral burial grounds and other important cultural sites by the Dakota Access pipeline company and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is one manifestation. According to LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, Standing Rock Sioux tribal historian, “Of the 380 archaeological sites that face desecration along the pipeline route, 26 are at the confluence of these two rivers [Missouri and Cannonball]. It is a historic trading ground, a place held sacred not only by the Sioux Nations, but also the Arikara, the Mandan, and the Northern Cheyenne.” (Yesmagazine.org, 9/3/16)

10. Continuing imprisonment of political prisoner Leonard Peltier. In 1975, Leonard Peltier was framed by the U.S. government for the deaths of two FBI agents who were part of a massive attack on an American Indian Movement (AIM) camp on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Peltier and others were helping to protect the people on the reservation from violent thugs who were protected and backed by the U.S. government and the FBI. During this “Reign of Terror,” 64 AIM members and supporters were murdered. Peltier has now been in federal penitentiaries for over 40 years. He is in failing health, and there have been calls for his release from a wide range of forces in the U.S. and worldwide. But the U.S government continues to keep this political prisoner behind bars.

 

 

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Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Sit Down for Their Nasty-full Anthem! A Teachable Moment in the USA

Updated September 19, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

All over the country, there’s a breath of fresh air blowing out of the world of athletics. From San Francisco to Alabama and beyond, from the pros to the high schools, people are taking the disgusting patriotic ritual of standing and saluting the national anthem at sporting events and using it to raise questions, register dissent, and project resistance. As you might expect, this is coming under attack—and opening up debate.

Now is the time to go to these events and bring things like “The Top 10 Reasons to Sit Down for the Nasty-full Anthem—#sitdownfortherag” and critically relevant BA quotes. If people are acting, talk to them, listen and engage. Take action yourself. Join or provoke the debate—and take it further. Bring Bob Avakian’s Invitation to people—and ways for them to take it up. Take the Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party—and put out the challenge, and the possibility, of REAL revolution.

In short: dive into the controversy... and take it further.

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/454/sit-down-for-the-rag-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Updated September 19, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

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Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

How Socialist State Power Would Handle the Louisiana Flood:

Confronting Disaster in the Struggle for a Communist World

September 12, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

A few questions to think about ...

An urban area endures massive flooding that destroys over 100,000 homes. Legions of youth are unemployed, many of them eager for work. Yet those youths aren’t mobilized to put their energy and creativity into rebuilding the city. Why?

A month later, debris and stinking, rotting garbage remain in piles six feet high on countless streets in 100-degree heat. White property owners arm themselves against and threaten to shoot on sight (largely non-existent) “looters” supposedly bent on stealing their destroyed property, because the loss of this garbage will impact their claims on insurance companies. And everyone knows that when they say “looters” they mean Black youths who “don’t fit in”.

Why should anyone accept this?

Waters engulf a region routinely soaked with heavy rains; urban and agricultural areas prone to flooding; a region filled with bayous, swamps, and rivers, bordered by one of the world’s largest rivers that has repeatedly flooded. In response, a patchwork, haphazard series of dams, levees, retention ponds, canals, and other measures provide an (often false) sense of security in some locales, but worsen the overall disaster by diverting it to other, nearby sites.

Why isn’t there a systematic, centralized plan to deal with this situation in a way that preserves and protects human life and the delicate ecosystems in the region?

An area that has been the scene of centuries of brutal oppression of Black people—enslavement and harsh labor on cotton plantations; 100 years of viciously enforced degradation and brutality called Jim Crow; decades of mass incarceration and police brutality, is devastated by a natural disaster. Once again, Black people, and areas where Black people live, are the most severely impacted. The response of the system’s political leadership? "That’s just the way it goes."

But why is that the “way it goes”? What can be done to change that?

The Rain and the Flood

In mid July floodwaters engulfed Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana, and large rural and semi-rural areas around the city. At least 13 people were killed. Over 110,000 people have had to apply for housing assistance. As of September 1, the Baton Rouge Advocate reported that exactly one Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailer was in place to provide temporary housing.

Revolution recently wrote about some of the stories behind this flood—the heroism of many oppressed people, the crimes of this system and its police, the big questions of climate change, capitalism, and the future that this flood put before society—and the revolution that can solve this. (See “The Louisiana Flood: A Natural Disaster, a Disastrous System“).

“God brought the rain, man made the flood”. Numerous people in Baton Rouge have told us this or something similar. People are saying the rain was a natural phenomenon; the flood was caused by conscious decisions and actions taken by authorities. It’s true that heavy summertime rain in southern Louisiana is not exactly news. It’s also true that conscious decisions taken by political leaders worsened the catastrophe faced by many people.

But we need to dig deeper to get at the real causes of the massive flooding. Must severe natural events always have such devastating impact? How has the social order and structure imposed by capitalism-imperialism shaped the ways in which floods and other contingencies are prepared for (or not prepared for) and confronted? How are people mobilized to deal with such a large scale, life threatening event when it occurs; what is considered important to protect, what values and goals drive and organize how people move through such a situation?

A System that Blocks Human Potential

All societies are organized in certain ways. As Bob Avakian wrote in Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity, the most basic and essential of all human activity is “the production and reproduction of the material requirements of life.” BA continues that people don’t do this any old way, but by becoming part of a definite set of “relations of production.” This means how individual people fit into the division of labor that exists in all of society—whether they work with their hands and backs or in mental work; picking tomatoes or stocking shelves at Walmart; even whether they can find work at all. It means how much of the products they receive in return for their work. And most of all it means whether or not they own the factories, mines, farmland, ships, etc.—the means of production. And on this foundation a network of legal and political institutions, and ideas that correspond to those institutions, arises, and reinforces the existing relations of production.

In the system of capitalism-imperialism, millions of people in this country and literally billions worldwide engage in production that is tightly bound together, whether any of those particular individuals know it or not. This is socialized production—production that takes place most fundamentally not on the basis of individuals working alone (to make cars, grow foods, sew clothes, or produce anything else), but of countless particular people engaged in the worldwide processes of producing, mining, harvesting, packaging, shipping, and distributing the material goods of life.

But ownership of that production is not in the hands of those who labor to produce it. It is appropriated by a relative handful of people—the capitalists—who use it to amass their own obscene amounts of wealth, but even more to keep the entire process of exploitation going. This bedrock relation of capitalism runs through, influences, and shapes all the relations of capitalist society. It sets the limits and forms for how people think and view the world, and their own place in it. This process, or contradiction, of socialized production and private appropriation (ownership) results in the bitter impoverishment of billions of people worldwide, and the enrichment of a few.

Indications of what this means down on the ground are everywhere in Baton Rouge. The Mississippi river is filled 24-7-365 with tankers, cargo ships and barges carrying industrial and agricultural products to and from all parts of the world. ExxonMobil’s oil refinery is one of the world’s largest, and sprawls over an enormous area along the river in North Baton Rouge, sending toxins into the air, land, and water. Baton Rouge and the surrounding area is one of the poorest places in the U.S., and Louisiana has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, overwhelmingly because young Black men are incarcerated at a staggering pace.

One key expression of socialized production and private appropriation is that in capitalist societies, there is no conscious social planning to meet human need, to prepare and mobilize for emergencies, or to protect vital and diverse ecosystems. This is not an oversight. It is not mainly because of capitalist heartlessness—though there is plenty of that to go around.

Many people are eager and willing to join together and act to help as many people as possible in a crisis like the Louisiana flooding. But the potential for that is held in check, channeled, and ultimately squashed by this system. As one man in Baton Rouge said to us, when the floods hit it was “everyone for himself, and God for us all”. It is still “everyone for him (and her) self” in the aftermath of the deluge.

While there is no god—whether “for us all” or not—there IS the system of capitalism running things, which is not for anyone besides its own continued functioning and expansion. At times of crisis (and in general) the big focus of the system’s rulers is to maintain control, to keep people in place, to keep them passive, relying on the authorities and perhaps charity. They do NOT want people acting together with others independent of the authorities, raising their heads, asking questions, and forging unity. So in North Baton Rouge and other largely Black areas, no official rescue teams were seen for several crucial days when flood waters surged up to six feet deep. When they did appear it was to impose a curfew and prowl the streets of the oppressed.

A New State, Setting New Terms for Society

Things would be radically, completely different in the state made possible by revolution and envisioned in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.(CNSRNA).This new state would have come into existence after the victory of an actual revolution: after the complete defeat and dismantling of the currently existing capitalist-imperialist state, in particular its armed forces of repression and the institutions that back them up: the military, the police, the national guard, the courts, the prisons and the penal system. An entirely new power would be in place, setting new terms for all of society and all the individuals in it.

 

Find out more about the revolution         Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution

This is possible because this state would be built on a foundation of public-state, not private ownership. Socialized production would be, increasingly, socially owned until, through continued revolutionization of society worldwide, communism is attained and the whole concept of “ownership” will become obsolete. That process of revolutionary transformation would open up entirely new vistas of possibilities for humanity.

A crisis such as the Louisiana flooding would be a big jolt in the new socialist society. Would the new society confront this crisis in a way that meets its urgency and doesn’t take days to take shape, but also serves the advancement of the world revolution and the overall revolutionary transformation of society?

Meeting people’s needs in the new society means not only “doing things differently” but challenging, and transforming, how people think. As Bob Avakian wrote in his essay “Three Alternative Worlds”, “How can the masses of people really take up the task of consciously changing the world if their outlook and their approach to the world remains what it is under this system? It’s impossible, and this situation will simply reproduce the great inequalities in every sphere of society ...”

Raising the Bottom Up

A basic principle of the CNSRNA and its approach to the economy is to take special measures to “raise the bottom up.” The CNSRNA states that “This principle serves the crucial task of overcoming historic inequalities affecting the formerly oppressed nationalities, and other profound disparities in society. The whole of society will be mobilized to overcome these inequalities. Priorities in distribution of needed social goods and services (like health and housing) will be guided by this principle.”

If anyone thinks this process will be smooth sailing in the aftermath of something like the flood in Baton Rouge, they are in for a rude awakening. There is a whole history and reality to the oppression of Black people in this country. As BAsics 1:1 states, “There would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth.”

This oppressive legacy has left material and ideological scars, and they are as deep in Louisiana as anywhere in the country. Years of whiplashed enslavement along the “river of dark dreams”; a century of viciously enforced “second class citizenship” and “no rights that a white man is bound to respect” Jim Crow, with all the lynching and brutality that enforced it; institutional segregation and discrimination down to today that is barely distinguishable from the era of the 1950’s. And an odious, hateful outlook—virulent racism—that has reinforced, justified, and perpetuated all this.

Raising the “bottom up” and working to overcome the historic inequalities left over from centuries of oppression of Black people will be official policy and not be “up for grabs”. But this will be sharply contested and contended.

The stakes will be very high. Struggles over questions like how to confront the sudden trauma of major flooding can lead to great leaps and advances in further overcoming the old, bourgeois economic and political relations and ways of thinking, and advancing on the revolutionary road. They can also lead to stagnation, even setbacks in the fight to revolutionize society and advance the world revolution, and strengthen the basis for capitalism to re-emerge.

There will be differing assessments of the situation, differing solutions offered—a diversity of political outlooks, programs and tendencies which reflect and express economic and social relations of the old society. One very sharp question would likely be—why should the policy of “bottom up” be applied when other areas also suffered extreme damage? What would it mean to apply that policy in the first place? Does this mean simply giving Black people “preferential treatment” like so-called “affirmative action” claims to do in capitalist society, or is it aimed at actually uprooting the legacy of oppression?

All this would be in the context of a revolutionary society and a socialist state that, while giving due emphasis to meeting the needs of the people and continuing to uproot remaining inequalities, gives fundamental priority to advancing the revolutionary struggle, and the final goal of communism, throughout the world. In that light, how would the goal of advancing the world revolution be met concretely in circumstances like a major flood? Wouldn’t many people argue along lines similar to an argument often heard today: “How can we help people around the world if we can’t get our own situation straightened out?”

Optimizing Resources

Another big question would center around how to optimize society’s resources. There are never unlimited resources. There is never an ability to do “whatever you want”. Everything couldn’t be rebuilt at once. The question of whether some places and things should be rebuilt or restored would almost certainly be sharply contended. Understanding all this is part of understanding the terms that objective conditions will set on socialist society, even as the conscious forces continually struggle to lead in transforming those conditions.

In a socialist society, preparations would be made in advance to minimize, in a planned and societal way, the potential impact of flooding and other foreseeable natural crises in different areas of the country. Steps would be taken that prepared for emergency responses to mobilize masses of people to ensure that the most basic needs of life were met—food, shelter, water, medical supplies and support. More than that, overall efforts would be made to minimize the long term possibility of potential flooding in southern Louisiana and the entire area up and down the Mississippi river.

This effort would consciously aim at implementing and concretely developing all three of the criteria cited above in the CNSRNA (see sidebar). It would draw on the knowledge, insight, and experiences of scientists and engineers, along with people from the affected areas. Housing that could withstand foreseeable potential crises would be systematically constructed. All this would be thrashed out through struggle, based on the overall guidelines of the three criteria. None of this is possible under capitalism. But it could, and would, be underway in a planned way, very quickly in the new society.

This intersects with the problem of the enormous destruction of the environment capitalism-imperialism has caused. Already, sections of the earth have been made uninhabitable. The likelihood of extreme weather conditions is intensifying. Hard decisions will have to be made about whether some areas can be saved for human habitation. Often these are areas—like South Louisiana—that are home to large numbers of oppressed people. This will be debated out very broadly, on the basis of the broad principles and guidelines we’ve already talked about.

A Moving Target

The orientation of “solid core with a lot of elasticity” will be at the heart of how communists approach all challenges in the new socialist society. It will also be part of the cohering political glue of society.

Concerning the orientation and objectives of the new society, the CNSRNA states that “the principle of ‘solid core, with a lot of elasticity’ must be applied. This means that, on the one hand, there must be a continually expanding force in society, with the revolutionary communist party as its leading element, which is firmly convinced of the need to advance to communism and deeply committed to carrying forward this struggle, through all the difficulties and obstacles; and, on the basis of and at the same time as continually strengthening this ‘solid core,’ there must be provision and scope for a wide diversity of thinking and activity, among people throughout society, ‘going off in many directions,’ grappling and experimenting with many diverse ideas and programs and fields of endeavor—and once again all this must be ‘embraced’ by the vanguard party and the ‘solid core’ in an overall sense and enabled to contribute, through many divergent paths to the advance toward the goal of communism.”

BA’s breakthrough understanding of “solid core with a lot of elasticity” is a central part of the advance in epistemology that runs through all dimensions of his New Synthesis. It is not just a theoretical abstraction, a “good idea”. It is in fact a very good idea—and more to the point it is profoundly, scientifically moored in material reality in all its wild conflict and turbulence. It scientifically reflects and concentrates the actual material relations of all of society, a reality communists are seeking to transform.

Advancing through any natural disaster or social crisis would not be simple or easy in a socialist society. But without a scientific understanding grounded in Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism and leadership firmly proceeding from that, there is no way anything positive for humanity’s emancipation can come out of it.

So, think again about those questions at the beginning of this article. Things don’t have to be that way. Another world is not only necessary—another world is possible. We need revolution as soon as possible to get to that world.

 

 

 

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Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

45 Years After the Rebellion at Attica Penitentiary:

Resistance in America's Hellhole Prisons

September 12, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On September 9, 1971, the most powerful and significant prison rebellion in U.S. history erupted at New York’s Attica State Penitentiary. Over half of Attica’s 2,200 inmates, mainly Black but also white and Puerto Rican prisoners, seized control of large parts of the prison, taking 38 guards hostage. They declared: “We are men. We are not beasts, and we do not intend to be beaten and driven as such... What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed...” On September 13, 1971, police, sheriffs, park police, and the National Guard launched a murderous assault at Attica prison in upstate New York, killing 39 unarmed people. Forty-five years later, the actual revolution that will end this kind of inhuman brutality is needed more urgently than ever. (See American Crime: Case #81: September 13, 1971—Massacre of Heroic Attica Prisoners.).

This year, on the anniversary of the Attica rebellion, there were courageous outbreaks of resistance inside U.S. prisons up to and on September 9.

Uprisings in Florida Prisons

On September 7, and lasting long into the night/early morning of September 8, more than 400 inmates at Florida’s Holmes Correctional Institution rose up in a series of protests that spread throughout the compound. It appears that at least one instigating factor was the authorities’ decision to keep prisoners confined to dangerously hot dormitories except at meal time, and deny them access to outdoor recreation of any kind.

Prisoners worked together to disrupt ways in which a dehumanizing network of surveillance cameras and guard posts keep prisoners under constant scrutiny. The sustained nature of the uprising involved protests breaking out in different dormitories. As the guards suppressed one outbreak, new protests erupted in other dormitories.

In a nation of hellish mass incarceration, Florida ranks third—behind Texas and California—in the number of people locked up. Over the past few years, glimpses of the conditions in the Florida prison system have come to light, including brutal or unexplained deaths of inmates, and a record number of use-of-force incidents by guards. In one such incident four years ago, Darren Rainey, a Black 50-year-old mentally ill prisoner serving a two-year term for drug possession at the Dade Correctional Institution, was savagely murdered by prison guards—forced into a scalding hot shower and left there for more than an hour. When guards finally opened the door, Darren was dead, with his skin shriveled and peeling from his body. One inmate said he saw Darren’s “burnt dead body” go by his cell on a stretcher. Another was told to clean up the scene, and said he found chunks of Darren’s skin in the shower and on Darren’s shoe that he was told to throw in the trash.

In response to the protests at Holmes, the Miami Herald reported that authorities re-established control “after setting off canisters of chemicals, making it hard for the prisoners to breathe.” There are reports that prisoners are confined to dorms, or being shipped to other locations. Prison authorities have imposed ominous censorship, denying prisoners access to the media to tell the truth about the conditions they face and the violence they were hit with.

On September 9, two additional Florida prisons (besides Holmes) were placed on lockdown, where prisoners are confined to their cells and dormitories. The Florida Department of Corrections, said “disturbances” had happened Friday morning at Gulf and Mayo Correctional Institutions, and smaller protests were reported in other prisons across the state. In a telling admission-in-the-form-of-a-lie, and as an indication of growing outrage in society over conditions in prisons, the Miami Herald reported that a spokeswoman for Florida prisons insisted the prisoners’ actions were “not in protest of ‘inhumane conditions’ or abuse.”

Prison Strikes

Prisoners and activists issued a call for prisoner strikes on September 9, the anniversary of Attica. They called on prisoners to refuse to work their jobs maintaining prisons, cooking meals, and working at jobs that produce profit for the prison system and private corporations. Calls for the strike included, “This is a call to end slavery in America. This call goes directly to the slaves themselves. We are not making demands or requests of our captors, we are calling ourselves to action. To every prisoner in every state and federal institution across this land, we call on you to stop being a slave, to let the crops rot in the plantation fields, to go on strike and cease reproducing the institutions of your confinement.”

Find out more about the revolution         Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution

Strike organizers are posting reports on Twitter including: In North Carolina, many prisoners refused to go to work on September 9, and suspected leaders were placed on lockdown in their cells. At the Central California Women’s Prison in Chowchilla, a number of women refused to work, and because of the nationwide prison strike, and fear of an uprising, the prison was locked down stopping ALL slave labor! And, women at the Fluvanna prison in Troy, Virginia, participated in the strike, as well as women in a Kansas prison.

A report from inside Holman prison in Alabama said that at “12:01 Sept 9th, all inmates at Holman Prison refused to report to their prison jobs without incident. With the rising of the sun came an eerie silence as the men at Holman laid on their racks reading or sleeping. Officers are performing all tasks.”

Chelsea Manning Initiates Hunger Strike

While in the U.S. Army, Chelsea Manning leaked a secret video showing U.S. soldiers in a helicopter gunning down Iraqi civilians, journalists, and passersby who tried to aid the wounded and dying—the infamous “Collateral Murder” video. For that heroic act, she is serving a 35-year sentence at the maximum security military prison at Fort Leavenworth for exposing U.S. war crimes.

At the time of her arrest six years ago (when she was known as Bradley Manning), Chelsea Manning was a transitioning female. During her time in prison, she has been subjected to inhumane physical and psychological torture directed at trans people in U.S. prisons.

In a statement on September 9, Chelsea Manning said:

Today, I have decided that I am no longer going to be bullied by this prison—or by anyone within the U.S. government. I have asked for nothing but the dignity and respect—that I once actually believed would be provided for—afforded to any living human being.

I do not believe that this should be dependent on any arbitrary factors—whether you are cisgender [people who are not transgender] or transgender; service member or civilian, citizen or non-citizen. In response to virtually every request, I have been granted limited, if any, dignity and respect—just more pain and anguish.

I am no longer asking. Now, I am demanding. As of 12:01 am Central Daylight Time on September 9, 2016, and until I am given minimum standards of dignity, respect, and humanity, I shall—refuse to voluntarily cut or shorten my hair in any way; consume any food or drink voluntarily, except for water and currently prescribed medications; and comply with all rules, regulations, laws, and orders that are not related to the two things I have mentioned. (Read the entire statement here.)

Chelsea Manning should not be in prison in the first place. Her persecution by the U.S. government was a move to silence and terrorize other whistleblowers who expose war crimes. And nobody should ever be subjected to the systematic, depraved abuse of lesbians, gays, bi-sexual, or trans people that is institutionalized throughout the U.S. prison system.

A Radically Different and Better World Is Necessary and Possible

The mass incarceration of millions in America’s hellhole prisons is a crime against humanity. It serves to violently enforce the needs and interests of a system of exploitation and oppression. An ACTUAL revolution will not only end this crime against humanity, it will unleash as many prisoners as possible as positive factors in the ongoing revolutionary transformation of society.

The prisoners who have stepped out and stood up to the barbaric conditions they are subjected to have done so at great risk. Everyone with a conscience must stand with them, and oppose moves by the authorities to punish them. And these courageous acts pose the biggest questions about the nature of a system that brands itself the model of human rights, but finds it necessary to lock up more people than any other country under the most horrific conditions.

The actions of these prisoners create an opening, and a real challenge to those who see that the world does not have to be this way: to connect people with a scientific understanding of the problem, and enlist them in the solution.

How the new revolutionary society will address this situation is blueprinted in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, written by Bob Avakian and adopted by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party. “Article III. Rights of the People and the Struggle to Uproot All Exploitation and Oppression” includes a section “Legal and Civil Rights and Liberties.” We are reprinting part of that section on this page, and strongly encourage readers to dig into and promote the whole Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/456/prisoners-write-on-revolution-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Letters from the Hellholes of America’s Prisons—on Science & Revolution... An Interview with Ardea Skybreak, and Getting into Bob Avakian

September 12, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/456/letter-from-prisoner-in-indiana-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Letter From a Prisoner On Science & Revolution... An Interview With Ardea Skybreak

"Realizing this will allow me to engage with those [middle] classes and present an argument they can comprehend"

September 12, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Indiana, August 24, 2016

Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund (PRLF) Volunteers,

I finished Science and Revolution, the interview with Ardea Skybreak, last night. It was quite informative and thought provoking, especially in regards the middle strata. Not only is this an important work for the middle strata to read and study, it is a work we in the proletariat need to get into because it reveals the mindset of those in the middle strata. As a proletarian I have a lot of animosity toward those in the middle and upper classes, but after reading this interview I realize that some of those people may not be as intentionally ignorant or careless about the plight of the lower classes. Realizing this will allow me to engage with those upper classes and present an argument they can comprehend and perhaps relate better to, rather than me just telling them they are wrong. I can show them how they are wrong from their point of view. There is a lot more to be learned from this interview, but I just wanted to mention this aspect because it struck the loudest chord with me. I also want to relay my appreciation for your having sent it to me.

The interview mentioned two other works I would like to read, Democracy: Can’t We Do Better Than That? and Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy, both by Bob Avakian. Is it possible you could send one or both of these?

Sincerely, A Comrade in the Struggle

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/456/letter-from-prisoner-in-california-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Letter From a Prisoner On getting into Bob Avakian

"Now that I'm getting into BA, I find myself at a crossroad to where I am given the choice to take the necessary burden of change upon my shoulders and just dive right in"

September 12, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

California, August 23, 2016

To: Whoever this may concern at Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund (PRLF):

Immediate changes in values, beliefs and principles is a difficult task to accomplish—although evolution is inevitable. We, who are incarcerated, have spent years resistant towards the change the system has bestowed upon us as an admirable way to assimilate into mainstream society. For it is we, who often come from the arduous circumstances of the ghetto, who see the worse of law enforcement and the system’s arbitrary use of law enforcement to keep the lower class on its belly.

Because of the war on our class, we have seen crimes perpetrated by law enforcement that the common persons in society will never experience. I mean how long has those labeled criminals been saying that cops whom patrol their neighborhoods are wrongfully murdering them? Long before this sudden explosion of cops being caught in the act, on social media, have we been saying the same exact shit many peoples are growing conscious of today. This prison system has archives of instances of police brutality and torture by the state prisoners have been complaining about for centuries.

That is why so many of us harbor such hatred towards this whole fucken system. I mean, I know, I need to change, but to emulate those people whom parade such racism, fascism and bigotry—I WILL NEVER! Are we not better off resisting the system than sheepishly giving in and compromising our experiences and values? For what atrocities society, through social media, has caught glimpses of, I see everyday. So what? Be more like them to get by?

For instance: when I was a child, I was picked up by a pig for a gun charge. Mind you that I’ve been a gang member since I was twelve years old. I understand that I shouldn’t have had a gun or been from a gang etc. But I was taken from my neighborhood, gang-territory, to drive around my enemies’ territory—only for the cops to point out rival gang members’ houses and vehicles. After being told to not let them (the pigs) down, I was given back my gun and released into rival territory. I may have been thirteen at the time, but I knew these motha fuckers were foul as fuck. Many more instances come to mind when these swine had meant to stir the pot and cause harm by orchestrating circumstances that either could have or have caused someone to be injured or killed. That’s not to mention how many people I know whom were murdered or beat at the hands of these perpetrators.

You can’t forget that. You can’t forget the homies you know who were either killed or set up to be killed by the cops. I guess that is why we resist change indefinitely, although we know how we’re living isn’t exactly appropriate to our evolutional process, there isn’t (wasn’t) an appropriate alternative for us to emulate.

Find out more about the revolution         Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution

Now that I’m getting into BA, I find myself at a crossroad to where I am given the choice to take the necessary burden of change upon my shoulders and just dive right in to the motha fucker. Certain articles resonate deeply and are corroborated by my experiences. I, also, find myself challenged to evaluate the garbage I allowed to fester within my mind. I mean, maybe I do harbor alot of the oppressors’ doctrine and don’t even know it. Patriarchy is one that I am guilty of and I wouldn’t want any of the women in my life to be subjectified by some motha fucker thinking he can, simply, because he was born with a penis.

I’m doing double life for gang murders. I was twenty years old when I was first arrested. Of course, I evolved. That hatred for self, manifested in crimes perpetrated on people whom resemble that man in the mirror, has become evident. I don’t want to be that type of person anymore. Thank you for your guidance. Please keep in touch. I really believe in Bob Avakian’s message.

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/456/obama-in-laos-being-an-imperialist-means-never-having-to-say-sorry-for-war-crimes-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Obama in Laos: Being an Imperialist Means Never Having to Say Sorry for War Crimes

September 12, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

A scene from the country of Laos:

A couple of poor farmers are walking in the countryside near their village looking for scrap metal to sell. They start to dig up a piece of metal half-buried in the ground. They know it is an old bomb casing left over from when the U.S. dropped bombs on their country during the Vietnam War, but assume it is no longer dangerous. But the bomb explodes. Shrapnel rips through the body of one of the men who has four kids, killing him instantly. His friend survives the blast but is now blind and has lost his left leg and arm.

Now a scene from Obama’s recent trip to Laos to attend the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (September 7):

Obama is speaking at a center that provides prosthetics for those who have lost their arms and legs. He acknowledges that during the Vietnam War, the U.S. dropped 270 million cluster bombs on Laos, more per capita than any other country in the world... that 80 million of these bombs did not explode and that in the last four decades, some 20,000 people, including many children, have been killed or wounded by unexploded ordnance (UXO).*

So did Obama apologize for this horrendous war crime carried out by the USA—that continues today to kill and maim many hundreds of Laotian people? Did he apologize for the fact that these cluster bombs were designed to explode in hundreds of pieces with razor-sharp shrapnel that would rip through a human body? That they had a toy-like shape and that 40 percent of the casualties from unexploded bombs since the war ended have been children?

NO. Being a top-dog imperialist power in the world means never having to say sorry for the war crimes you carry out against the people.

Obama DID NOT apologize for the savage bombing—let alone the whole UNJUST war the U.S. waged in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. He didn’t say anything of the sort.

Instead, in a typical Obama-esque way, he promised more money to help clean up the bombs, accompanied by BULLSHIT comments about how “We see the victims of bombs that were dropped because of decisions made half a century ago and we are reminded that wars always carry tremendous costs,” and that there is “the suffering and sacrifices on all sides of that conflict.”

NO, motherfucker! This was not a “tragic” war or, as you say, one of the “painful chapters in our history.” This was an imperialist war for U.S. domination in Southeast Asia, where the U.S. carried out great crimes against humanity. It is bullshit to talk about the “suffering and sacrifices on all sides of that conflict” as if this was not an UNJUST war waged by the U.S. and that 58,000 Americans who died in the Vietnam War count for as much as the one to three million Vietnamese, over 600,000 Cambodians, and a million Laotians who were killed.

The next day, September 8, a headline in the Asia Times read: “US apologizes to Laos over cluster bombs, then sells them to pound Yemen.” In fact, only three days after Obama talked about “America’s moral obligation to help Laos heal,” his administration approved another $1.15 billion arms package to Saudi Arabia to bomb Yemenis—which INCLUDES THE SAME KIND OF CLUSTER MUNITIONS used in Laos that have and continue to kill and maim hundreds of people, including many children.

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* A "cluster bomb" contains hundreds of small bomblets that it spreads over a very wide area; each bomblet then explodes, releasing shards of metal that tear through the bodies of any one in their path.

 

Find out more about the revolution         Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/456/reality-check-ngos-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Reality Check: NGOs

September 12, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

NGOs (non-governmental organizations) at best, aim to reform injustice; they adjust and leave intact the system that is the source of injustice.

Revolutions, communist revolutions, aim to root out injustices; they overthrow the system, opening the road to emancipate humanity.

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/456/american-crime-80-1915-1934-haiti-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Case #80: 1915-1934: The U.S. Invasion, Occupation and Domination of Haiti

September 12, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Bob Avakian recently wrote that one of three things that has "to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better: People have to fully confront the actual history of this country and its role in the world up to today, and the terrible consequences of this." (See "3 Things that have to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better.")

In that light, and in that spirit, "American Crime" is a regular feature of revcom.us. Each installment will focus on one of the 100 worst crimes committed by the U.S. rulers—out of countless bloody crimes they have carried out against people around the world, from the founding of the U.S. to the present day.

 

THE CRIME: On July 28, 1915, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson ordered 330 U.S. Marines to invade Haiti’s capital city of Port-au-Prince. This was the beginning of a 19-year U.S. occupation that didn’t end until 1934. At the time of the invasion the political situation in Haiti and the government itself were extremely unstable. U.S. troops landed after Haitian President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was killed by people in the streets. And Sam himself had come to power after leading a revolt to topple the president a year earlier.

Haiti, a Caribbean country that shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, had been France’s most lucrative colony until the Haitian people rose up in the largest successful slave rebellion in history, led by Toussaint L'Ouverture in 1791. At the time of the U.S. invasion, Haiti was a poor, mainly rural country that different foreign imperialist powers were trying to dominate.

After the invasion, the U.S. immediately gained complete control over Haitian finances. Even before the invasion U.S. soldiers had gone to the Haitian National Bank, removed its gold reserves and sent them to National City Bank (now Citibank) in New York City. The U.S. also forced the election of a new pro-American puppet president, Philippe Sudré Dartiguenave, by the Haitian legislature in August 1915.

In September 1915, the U.S. ratified the Haitian-American Convention, a treaty granting the U.S. security and economic oversight of Haiti for a 10-year period. The U.S. was given veto power over all government decisions in Haiti, and U.S. Marine Corps commanders served as administrators in Haiti’s government departments.

By 1918, the Haitian Constitution, which had banned foreign purchases of land, had been rewritten by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was then Assistant Secretary of the Navy (and would later become president of the U.S.), to explicitly allow foreign ownership of Haitian property. Land was seized from small peasants to create large plantations; the economy was reorganized so that 40 percent of Haiti’s gross domestic product flowed to U.S. banks. The U.S. seized control of Haiti’s banks and the national treasury and 40 percent of Haiti’s national income was designated to repay debts to American and French banks. This included debt that originated in the “indemnity” that Haiti was forced to pay to France for property—including slaves—the French lost after the Haitian Revolution, the equivalent of $40 billion in today’s currency.

Racist attitudes toward the Haitian people by U.S. occupation forces were blatant and widespread. Robert Lansing, then U.S. secretary of state, justified the occupation by claiming Haitians had “an inherent tendency toward savagery and a physical inability to live a civilized life,” so were incapable of self-government. Medill McCormick, a senator from Illinois, wrote in 1920 that the American occupation was necessary “to develop the country, the Government, and above all, the civilization of the people, of whom the overwhelming majority have African blood in their veins.” There were many reports of U.S. Marines sexually assaulting Haitian women. The occupation included segregation and enforced chain gangs to build roads and other construction projects.

Find out more about the revolution         Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution

The Haitian people fiercely resisted the occupation in a series of revolts, which the U.S. military ruthlessly crushed—murdering leaders, burning villages to the ground, and killing thousands of people.  Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat wrote: “My grandfather was one of the Cacos, or so-called bandits, whom retired American Marines have always written about in their memoirs. They would be called insurgents now, the thousands who fought against the occupation. One of the stories my grandfather’s oldest son, my uncle Joseph, used to tell was of watching a group of young Marines kicking around a man’s decapitated head in an effort to frighten the rebels in their area.” Danticat also talks about how the Marines murdered one of the occupation’s most famous resistance fighters, Charlemagne Péralte, then pinned his body to a door where it was left to rot in the sun for days.

During the 19 years of the U.S. occupation, at least 15,000 Haitians were killed. In 1918 there was an uprising of some 40,000 people. After the Haitian Gendarmerie was overwhelmed, U.S. Marines helped put down the rebellion, killing 2,000 people. During a December 1929 demonstration in the city of Les Cayes, part of a nationwide strike and ongoing rebellion, U.S. Marines fired on 1,500 people, wounding 23 and killing 12.

The U.S. didn’t end its occupation until 1934—leaving behind a brutal, U.S.-trained Haitian National Army to repress the people.

This invasion and occupation was the beginning of, and laid the basis for, subsequent decades of U.S. domination of Haiti and brutal U.S.-backed regimes.

François “Papa Doc” Duvalier came to power in the 1957 presidential election and set up his own army of thugs—the Tontons Macoutes. The Duvalierist reign of terror—supported and backed by the U.S.—killed roughly 50,000 people. When Papa Doc died in 1971, U.S. warships were stationed just off the coast of Haiti to oversee a smooth transition of power to Duvalier’s son, Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”). Baby Doc was closely associated with the “American Plan,” which explicitly aimed to cut the ground out from under peasant agriculture by large-scale imports of cheaper U.S. goods. This drove hundreds of thousands of peasants into the cities and shantytowns, desperate for work in U.S.-owned assembly plants. These were being set up by companies like Disney and Kmart, some paying workers 11 cents an hour to make pajamas and T-shirts.

After popular uprisings ousted this brutal tyrant, the U.S. maneuvered and intervened—opposing any forces that threatened U.S. interests—and worked unsuccessfully to prop up and stabilize a series of governments that the Haitian people called out as “Duvalierism without Duvalier.” In 2004, the U.S. was directly involved in overthrowing the popularly elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

At the time of the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Bill Quigley, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said of the U.S. role in Haiti: “We have kept the country dependent. We have kept the country militarized. And we kept the country impoverished. We have dumped our excess rice, our excess farm produce and that stuff on the country, thereby undercutting the small farmers who would make up the backbone of the place.... We didn’t create the earthquake, but we created some of the circumstances that made the earthquake so devastating....” (Democracy Now!, January 14, 2010)

THE CRIMINALS:

1915-1934 invasion and occupation: President Woodrow Wilson; Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Assistant Secretary to the U.S. Navy; the U.S. Marines

1957-1986: The U.S. government, which backed the brutal dictatorships of “Papa Doc” Duvalier and “Baby Doc” Duvalier with their murderous Tonton Macoute militia that killed thousands of people.

THE ALIBI:

Wilson claimed the reason for the 1915 invasion and occupation was to “re-establish peace and order...”

THE ACTUAL MOTIVE:

At the time of the invasion, the U.S. Secretary of the Navy instructed Admiral William Deville Bundy, commander of the invasion, to “protect American and foreign” interests. These interests had everything to do with U.S. imperialism recognizing the strategic importance of controlling Haiti, as part of dominating the Caribbean region and Latin America as a whole, while preventing rival powers from gaining influence.

The years leading up to the U.S. invasion of Haiti was a time of great political instability—where there were a series of political assassinations and forced exiles resulting in six presidents holding office between 1911 and 1915. Various rebel armies carried out coups, enlisted by rival political factions. This was taking place in a situation where German imperialism—which at that time was embroiled in World War 1 against other European imperialist powers over which one would dominate the world—was gaining influence in Haiti and increasingly becoming a rival power for the U.S. in the region. The U.S. itself would enter that war two years later and emerge from it as a major imperialist power. It was in this context of violent contention among imperialists for empire that it was crucial for the U.S. to control this nearby island of Hispaniola.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS:

The official U.S. government “Office of the Historian” website says:

As a potential naval base for the United States, Haiti’s stability concerned U.S. diplomatic and defense officials who feared Haitian instability might result in foreign rule of Haiti. In 1868, President Andrew Johnson suggested the annexation of the island of Hispaniola, consisting of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, to secure a U.S. defensive and economic stake in the West Indies.... In 1915, Haitian President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was assassinated and the situation in Haiti quickly became unstable. In response, President Wilson sent the U.S. Marines to Haiti to prevent anarchy. In actuality, the act protected U.S. assets in the area and prevented a possible German invasion.

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/455/the-new-communism-and-internationalism-shaking-up-columbia-univ-nyc-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

The Revolution Club, NYC—
DIS-Respecting the Flag, Shaking Things Up at Columbia University

September 9, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The NYC Revolution Club stepped out on the first day of classes at Columbia University, ready to shake some things up. In the middle of the afternoon, one member of the club walked to the middle of campus, alone, pulled out the american rag, laid it out on the steps, and sat on it. Then three other RevComs entered the scene with large signs: One with "Sit Down with Colin Kaepernick" from revcom.us, and the other with Joey Johnson and the RNC 16 burning the american rag. They started chanting "1,2,3,4, slavery, genocide and war, 5,6,7,8, America was NEVER great!" Noche Diaz of the Revolution Club began agitating about what this country is really all about, why we have no respect for that imperialist rag. He continued: in fact, there is a way out; we have the leadership in Bob Avakian and the Revolutionary Communist Party and a strategy to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time. He invited students to the October 8 launch of the book, THE NEW COMMUNISM by Bob Avakian, featuring Cornel West and Carl Dix.

This drew in lots of students, who got the Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, "Time to Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution."

The club sat on the rag, and talked with people who were interested in what we were doing, what we were about, etc. A small group of veterans came out to challenge us, and very quickly debate sharpened over the role of the U.S. military. A veteran and friend of the Revolution Club came by and was invited to sit on the rag, and struggled with a reactionary veteran, saying that even in the Navy, they treat Black people like slaves, and that he was ashamed to have served in their military. Another student joined the club in calling out a reactionary veteran, and struggled with a friend of his who was trying to argue that America was essentially "post-racial." He signed up to learn more about the club, and left with a handful of materials.

So some things have been opened up on this campus with the club's bold action, and need to be pushed on a lot further.

Find out more about the revolution         Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/456/shitstorm-over-nasty-full-anthem-spreads-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Shitstorm Over the Nasty-ful Anthem Spreads ... Dive In! Take it Higher!

September 13, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The first week of NFL football, the real story was not who won or lost. Something way more important was going on. At least a dozen NFL players joined San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in either refusing to stand for the nasty-ful anthem, or in responding with defiant fists–often with black gloves–inspired by the historic protest staged by Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics.

The website for CBS news in the Bay Area, reported that one fan heading for the 49ers game said of Kaepernick’s protest: “I ain’t going to stand with them. I’m going to kneel with him. We go through police brutality, you know what I mean? We lose people every day to police brutality.”

And CBS coverage of the first game of the season included: “Activists with the Revolutionary Communist Party were handing out flyers at the Santa Clara Caltrain station encouraging those attending the game to keep their seats during the anthem. The flyer, which was topped by the title ‘Top 10 Reasons to Sit Down for the Nasty-full Anthem –#sitdownfortherag,’ offered a list of alleged wrongdoings committed by the United States dating back to the 1800s right up through modern times.”

And KCBS TV coverage included an interview with Joey Johnson, who burned the American flag with the Revolution Club at the Republi-fascist convention that nominated Trump.

And in all levels of sports, all around the country, the shitstorm continues and spreads (see more coverage here). Now is the time to go to these events and get out “The Top 10 Reasons to Sit Down for the Nasty-full Anthem—#sitdownfortherag” and critically relevant BA quotes. If people are acting, talk to them, listen and engage. Take action yourself. Join or provoke the debate—and take it further. Get out to high school football games and stir shit up! Do like the Revolution Club in Chicago did: give people the opportunity to walk on the red, white and blue rag and speak out about why. Bring Bob Avakian’s Invitation to people—and ways for them to take it up. Take the Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party—and put out the challenge, and the possibility, of REAL revolution.

In short: dive into the controversy... and take it further. And send reports and correspondence on the experience to revolution.reports@yahoo.com.

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/457/carl-dix-pigs-in-columbus-ohio-kill-13-year-old-with-toy-gun-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Statement from Carl Dix

Police Terror Must Be Stopped!
PIGS IN COLUMBUS, OHIO KILL 13-YEAR-OLD WITH TOY GUN!

September 15, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On September 14, cops in Columbus, Ohio, chased 13-year-old Tyre King into an alley and gunned him down. These pigs and the media, were quick to justify their murderous deed by spreading the police story that the BB gun they claim King had looked like a real gun.

I don't give a damn if he had a BB gun that looked real. And let's be clear, so far the only story about how this killing happened is the police story, and they lie all the damn time, especially when they're trying to justify murdering a Black youth. I don't care if he ran from the cops. I'm sick and tired of seeing cops getting away with murdering Black people. Now this Black child is dead at the hands of those who are supposed to “protect and serve.” This was the illegitimate action by the front line enforcers of an illegitimate system.

We must not let this go down. People need to stand up and refuse to silently accept the system killing our children. We should live in a world where those entrusted with public security would sooner lose their own lives than kill or injure an innocent person. It's up to us to bring that kind of world into being.

Fierce determined resistance is critically needed in the face of the system unleashing its cops to brutalize and murder people. And it will take an actual revolution—one that overthrows this system and gets rid of its institutions of violent repression and its economic and social relations and brings into being a totally different system with new economic relations and new ways for people to relate to each other —to end this horror once and for all.

We in the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) are organizing right now for an actual revolution. We have the leadership needed for this revolution in Bob Avakian, the leader of the RCP. Avakian and the party he leads have developed a vision of the kind of world we could bring into being thru revolution and the strategy needed to realize that vision.

If you hate hearing that the life of another Black child has been gunned down by the police and all the other horrors this system enforces on humanity, get with this revolution and join the fight to stop these horrors once and for all.

 

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/457/marines-torture-muslim-recruits-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Marines Burn and Terrorize Muslim Recruit in Industrial Dryer, Drive Another to Death...
Another Reason NOT to Support the Troops

September 19, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The U.S. military puts their lives on the line so others can be “free” and “safe.” Risks it all to fight “bad guys” and help people around the world?  Real heroes? 

What about the Marine drill instructor at Parris Island, South Carolina who repeatedly berated one Muslim recruit as a terrorist: “You’re going to kill us all the first chance you get aren’t you, terrorist? What are your plans? Aren’t you a terrorist?” He even accused him of being involved in 9/11. This sergeant, on multiple occasions, forced this recruit to get inside an industrial clothes dryer and then turned it on. The recruit was left in so long he could feel his arm and neck start to burn; he was traumatized and terrorized. 

In one instance, the drill instructor ran the dryer for 30 seconds, stopped it and asked him who he was “working for.” When he replied “nobody,” the drill instructor turned on the dryer again, stopped it and asked what his religion was. When he replied “Islam” he turned it on again. The instructor stopped the dryer and asked if he was still a Muslim. When the recruit answered “yes,” he turned it on again. This is sick and depraved—it makes you think of the Gestapo! 

This torture happened in 2015. The victim reported it to Marine officials on Parris Island, who had been aware since at least 2014 of this kind of vicious hazing of recruits. But the drill instructor was allowed to continue "training" recruits. Within months this same sadistic, xenophobic dryer-burning marine drove another Muslim recruit to his death.  Raheel Siddiqui, a 20-year-old recruit from Michigan was being harassed and abused by this same Drill Instructor. On March 18, he told his instructor he wasn’t feeling well. The instructor forced him to do punishing sprints. Siddiqui collapsed and the instructor slapped him so hard it could be heard throughout the facility. Siddiqui ran away rather than endure more abuse—and died when he leapt from a 40-foot stairwell. The Marines are now claiming Siddiqui committed suicide and there was “no foul play.” But Siddiqui’s family isn’t buying it. 

This kind of an abuse isn’t an aberration; it’s baked into “Jarhead culture.” That’s why the Marines ignored the 2015 reports of this drill instructor’s torture by dryer. This is why they’re now claiming suicide and “no foul play” in Siddiqui’s death. The M.O. of the entire 3rd Recruit Training Battalion this drill instructor was part of was physical and emotional abuse, even physical injury, coupled with racist and homophobic verbal assault. And drill instructors threatened recruits that they’d be beaten if they complained about these outrages: “snitches get stitches."  

All this has continued, even though the Marines have rules prohibiting abuse and occasionally punish some Marine officers, because it had a logic and a purpose: inculcating a broader culture of brutality and dehumanization of Muslims in general. Protecting this vicious abuser and enabling him to continue—even after throwing a human being in a dryer!—sent a message to the entire base that abusing and harboring xenophobic, racist hatred of Muslims was institutionally protected and encouraged. 

Overall, this is all about preparing savage killers and torturers to carry out the barbaric war crimes demanded by U.S. imperialism around the world, and especially in the Middle East right now. This is a military that encourages and then covers up widespread war crimes against people in countries it occupies. To take but one example, in 2005, U.S. Marines murdered 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in the city of Haditha and then blamed it on “insurgents.” 

Any military is a concentration of the kind of system and society it is fighting to maintain and enforce. In this case, one waging an unending war of imperialist domination and terror against whole regions, including those with large Muslim populations. One that demands bigotry and xenophobia at home... A society that promotes and enforces a culture of degradation, rape, abuse, and dehumanization of women... A society founded on the enslavement of Black people which is maintained by murdering and terrorizing them. This is a country that bullies, beats, and kills people who don’t conform to its reactionary heterosexual sexual and gender norms and way too often drives them to suicide... All this in the service of enforcing the global system of capitalism-imperialism, a world of exploitation and plunder, that intensifies the misery of billions on our planet every single day. 

This is what the U.S. military and its troops are fighting for and defending.

No! Just as you should not stand for the anthem, just as you should not salute the bloody U.S. rag, you should NOT support the troops!

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/457/rnc-flag-burning-defendants-file-for-dismissal-of-charges-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

 

September 15, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

We received the following press release:

RNC Flag Burning Defendants File for Dismissal of Charges Their Attorneys Call “Unconstitutional” and “Unacceptable”

15 September 2016
For Immediate Release
Contact: Revolution Club Media
646 450 4701 RevClubMedia@gmail.com
revcom.us

Protesters arrested July 20 outside the Republican convention as a flag was burned filed Wednesday to dismiss criminal misdemeanor charges on constitutional grounds. At the protest, organized by The Revolution Club, Gregory “Joey” Johnson, who fought and won the 1989 Supreme Court decision that it is legal to burn the U.S. flag, burned a flag and was arrested with 15 others.

Today their attorneys detailed the “content-based policing” they are discovering. They said, “Flag burning is protected free speech activity. The City of Cleveland had a duty to protect the rights of these protesters, including their right to burn the flag – but instead the Cleveland Police violated their constitutional rights and threw them in jail,” said Michael Nelson, president of the Cleveland Branch of the NAACP and one of the attorneys who filed motions to dismiss on behalf of the RNC protesters.

More than 40 attorneys with the NAACP and the Ohio Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and other affiliated lawyers have “volunteered to defend these protesters against the criminal charges on a pro bono basis,” the group said.

Raphael Kadaris, a defendant arrested July 20 and profiled by MSNBC, is available for interviews.

 

The defendants, collectively known as the RNC16, released this statement:

On July 20, 2016, the theme inside the Republican National Convention was “Make America #1 Again.” Outside, with the whole world watching, Gregory “Joey” Johnson and members of the Revolution Club and other protestors gathered to burn the American flag. Johnson said “America First? It's always BEEN first: at genocide, at slavery, exploitation, destruction of the environment, torture, coup d’états, invasions ... we're standing here with the people of the world today.”

Joey had to cut short what he was saying over the bullhorn because the police were already assaulting us, trying to force their way into our circle of protest to stop an act of constitutionally protected speech—the Supreme Court decision upholding this even bears his name!

The police assaulted us! Everyone can see this on the videos that are widely available. Yet besides all the people scooped up and charged with misdemeanors, there are also two Revolution Club members who were charged with felonies for allegedly assaulting the police AFTER the police assaulted a peaceful protest. The prosecutor took it to a grand jury and increased the felony charges—while in Cleveland, the cop who murdered Tamir Rice was not even indicted.

Joey and another defendant are charged with assaulting a member of the media when they supposedly got burned by the flag. These fake ass reporters were Alex Jones' Infowars operatives who actually brag on video about assaulting Joey and doing everything they could to stop the flag burning as unAmerican! The fact that these charges have not been dismissed shows this is a vindictive and politically motivated prosecution.

We uphold the right to burn the flag. We also want to stress that it was absolutely RIGHT to burn the flag. The fascist Trump says “Make America Great Again.” Clinton says it’s already great. We were out there to cut through the BS and get out the truth by burning the American flag—America has NEVER been great!

For days during the RNC, the Revolution Club was in the streets of Cleveland hammering home this point: Was America great when it carried out genocide of Native Americans? Was America great when it kidnapped and enslaved Africans? Was America great during a century of Jim Crow segregation and lynch-mob terror? Is it great right NOW when its police are terrorizing, brutalizing and gunning down Black and Brown people and the murderers never go to jail?! Is America great right NOW as the flag flies over hundreds of ICE detention facilities housing thousands of immigrants? Our message was unmistakable—the flag is the brand for a global network of exploitation and wealth extraction and a military armada, CIA black sites and mass graves from My Lai to Fallujah.

Gregory “Joey” Johnson and the Revolution Club are fighting for a radically different future. We are a disciplined force with a clear message that we took to the streets of Cleveland “America Was Never Great. We Need to Overthrow this System.”

IT was RIGHT to burn that filthy rag.

We demand the charges be dropped immediately against all the protestors arrested that day at the RNC.

 

Members of the Revolution Club and RNC 16  September 15, 2016

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/457/texas-youth-football-team-refuses-to-stand-for-the-anthem-despite-death-threats-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Letter from a reader

Texas Youth Football Team Refuses to Stand for the Anthem Despite Death Threats

September 15, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Last Saturday, September, 10, the entire Beaumont (Texas) Bulls youth football team and their coach knelt during the national anthem. Now they are receiving death threats, but the team and the coach vow to continue to not stand for the anthem.

Eleven-year-old running back Jaelun Parkerson had been very upset about the police murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and wanted to do something about it. After hearing about Colin Kaepernick’s protest against the treatment of “Black people and people of color” and when Brandon Marshall of the Denver Broncos knelt during the anthem last Thursday, Jaelun (who is bi-racial with a white mother and Black father) told his mom, “OK, We’re going to do this.”

Jaelun, his entire team, his coach, Rah Rah Barber, and the rest of the coaching staff “kneeled and placed their hands on each other’s shoulders in silence before the playing of the national anthem” at their game this past Saturday.

Barber said that Jaelun had shown him a photo of professional football players not standing for the anthem and said the team wanted to do the same. Barber asked the team, “Do you know what this means?” And “they said that they did.” The players and the team got approval from their parents to go ahead and protest.

Jaelun’s mom, April Parkerson, told ABC News that the team wanted to show solidarity with other protesters and to help bring attention to the issues of racial injustice” and in doing that “players on the team have received threatening messages.” Tweets and messages on social media have threatened the youth with death and one tweet called for the lynching of Coach Barber. Parkerson said that the team’s protest of the national anthem “will continue.” Barber also told the press that these threats are not going to stop the team from taking their stand.

Barber said these threats have showed “how far behind we are as a society.” He said that Kaepernick’s protest has “motivated (him) to read up on the history of the national anthem.”

Colin Kaepernick’s courageous protest against the oppression of Black people and people of color and against police brutality has resonated among the oppressed and others and they are taking this up. Jaelun’s mom said that “Colin didn’t have to take this subject on. But he decided to use the platform he had to speak up for people who have no voice.”

Well, the people are showing they DO have a voice and this voice—and the debate around not standing for this rag has got to grow. If these youth can do it, so can thousands and thousands of others who hate the way things are in this country. Not standing for the national anthem is a wonderful and beautiful thing. The www.revcom.us article “Sit Down for Their Nasty-full Anthem! A Teachable Moment in the USA” calls on people to go to these sporting and other events and “bring things like The Top 10 Reasons to Sit Down for the Nasty-full Anthem—#sitdownfortherag’ and critically relevant BA quotes. If people are acting, talk to them, listen and engage. Take action yourself. Join or provoke the debate—and take it further. Bring Bob Avakian’s Invitation to people—and ways for them to take it up. Take the Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party—and put out the challenge, and the possibility, of REAL revolution.”

So let’s get to it and dive into the controversy... and take it further. And send reports and correspondence on the experience to revolution.reports@yahoo.com.

 

 

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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/457/tyre-king-murdered-by-pig-who-shot-3-killed-1-before-en.html

Revolution #456 September 12, 2016

Tyre King—Murdered by Pig Who Shot 4 and Killed 2

September 18, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a reader:

The day after 13-year-old Tyre King—who was just 5 feet and weighed less than 100 pounds—was murdered by cop Bryan Mason, we arrived in Columbus, Ohio as a vigil/speak-out was taking place in a park near where Tyre had his young life unjustly cut short. About 200 people were gathered in a circle. In the middle, people spoke of their sorrow and frustration at the murder of Tyre—another Black child shot down by the police. Tyre's sister poured out her anger and grief and spoke about the shock of learning her brother wouldn't be coming home.

Tyre was not the first victim of the murdering pig Mason—this “nine-year veteran” of the force shot dead a man in 2012, and was involved in two other shootings in recent years. He hasn’t even received a slap on the wrist for any of this—in fact, the department gave him an award for “bravery” in 2010. The department is now providing him with counseling for what they claim is “trauma” he supposedly is going through after killing a 13-year-old. The Columbus police killed four people in four weeks this June and July. None of the cops involved have been charged with anything. And if you look around the country, the police have killed over 770 people so far this year.

 

As Bob Avakian (BA) points out, the fact that cops murder youth after youth—and are almost never punished for these crimes—shows how that is their “job.” (Watch the video clip on this page: “Bob Avakian on: Police murder...and the murderous logic of this system’s election game”)

The crowd at the vigil/speak-out for Tyre, organized by People’s Justice Program, was a mix of people of all ages. While it was mainly Black people, there were also many white and some Asian and Latino people. In a historically Black neighborhood where there’s been recent gentrification and tensions among different sections of the people, it’s significant there were many middle class people, Black and white, taking a stand against yet another police murder of a Black youth. One of the speakers said, “After this we can’t just let things go back to business as usual.” (Another vigil was organized by students of the Black Liberation Network at Ohio State University five miles away.)

We stood with the people in outrage at the police murder of Tyre King, and got out the Message from the Central Committee of the RCP, "Time to Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution" among the crowd. We connected people with the liberating truth that there is a way to bring an end to murder by police and other horrors—and a revolutionary movement and leadership that is organizing to overthrow the system behind these pigs at the soonest possible time.

Find out more about the revolution         Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution