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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review:

Expanding and Strengthening the Imperial Death Machine

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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

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

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

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

A World Filled with Uncertainty and Turmoil

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

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

A Nuke for Every Occasion

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

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

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

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

Global Gangsters Prepare for War

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

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

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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

Schumer Gives Away His Power and Then Pleads Powerlessness

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

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

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

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

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

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

Schumer Shills for Mitch McConnell’s “Promise”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

********

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

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

From members of the Revolution Club Chicago:

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

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

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

Government Brings Charges Against Nine Pro-Immigrant Activists

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From readers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

September 16, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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

by Bob Avakian

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

Download, print and distribute this quote everywhere

Download PDF HERE

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

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

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

What You Can Do Now

January 12, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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

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

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

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

3) Get the memes out all over.

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

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

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

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Notice:

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

From the Revolution Club Chicago:

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

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

Download the PDF of this Revolution Club Chicago poster HERE

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

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

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

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Translated from Spanish by revcom.us

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

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

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

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

From A World to Win News Service:

Tunisia: Bright anger amid dismal atmosphere

By Sam Albert

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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

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

Different from the 2010-11 Uprising

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

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

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

Sharply Contradictory and Unstable Situation

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

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

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

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

Move by International Monetary Fund Sparks People’s Anger

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

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

Tunisia’s Distorted, Imperialist-Dominated “Development”

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

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

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

The Only Real Way Out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

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

January 29, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.
BAsics 1:24

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

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

January 31, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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

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

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

To Trump, American Lives Are the Only Ones That Matter

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

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

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

Cast Away Illusions, Prepare for Struggle

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

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

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

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

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

The Dismissal of Victor Cha

Trump Moves Closer to Military Attack on North Korea

February 1, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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

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

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

Talking about Depravity…

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

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

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

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

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

Confront Reality… and Act to Change It

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

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

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Check It Out...

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

January 31, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

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

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

THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!
In the Name of Humanity,
We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America
A Better World IS Possible

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_______

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

Let’s go!

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

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

February 1, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SHUT DOWN GUANTÁNAMO!

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

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

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

Revolution #528 January 29, 2018

Amid Outpourings of Women’s Anger…

Remembering Kate Millett

By Mary Lou Greenberg

February 3, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are a couple of examples I wanted to share.

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

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

Kate Millett—Troublemaking to the end

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

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