THEORY / PRACTICE &

“HumanNEWS power is its own end”—Karl Marx LETTERSVol. 63 No. 4 July-August 2018 $1 Trump-Kim ‘peace’ Millions denounce Trump’s threatens masses heinous immigration abuses “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” With this bombastic declaration, by Buddy Bell within 14 days, all others within 30 days. The hun- President Donald Trump was not charting a path to On June 20, U.S. policy at the border changed dreds of rallies helped the separated families win world peace but rather toward a more openly brutal under pressure. Since May, the federal government this case on the basis of a Fifth Amendment viola- world order. His June 12 summit in Singapore with had separated 2,500 children from their parents, tion. In a written decision, judges recognized: “To Kim Jong-un came in the midst of a brewing trade merely to advance a policy to deter refugee families prevail on this claim, Plaintiffs must show that the war and threats against Iran, and immediately af- Government practice ‘shocks the conscience.’” from arriving—as ter Trump wrecked the G7 summit, denouncing the though these fami- Photo: Families belong together-Chicago At the McAllen leaders of Canada and lies just came to the port of entry, hun- Germany. Aside from his border for entertain- dreds of parents demand to return Putin’s and children were ment. Public outrage EDITORIAL Russia to the G7, his admi- placed in separate expressed by all levels ration was reserved for the “very smart” and “very chain link cells. of U.S. society started talented” totalitarian ruler Kim, who “loves his peo- From there, they to seep into the struc- ple” and “wants to do right by them” so they love him would be separated tural foundation of back with “great fervor”: “He speaks and his people and sent to indefi- President Trump’s sit up in attention. I want my people to do the same.” nite detention. “It’s base: religious con- Trump’s delusions notwithstanding, North Ko- the worst night- servatives, who called rea’s Foreign Ministry attacked Secretary of State mare I can imag- the policy “disgrace- Mike Pompeo for pushing a “unilateral and gang- ine for a child,” ful” and “wretched.” ster-like demand for denuclearization” at Pompeo’s said Louis Kraus, Trump was forced to July meeting in Pyongyang following up on the child psychologist summit. Clearly, North Korea will not disarm, and reverse course for po- at Rush University Trump’s threat of “fire and fury like the world has litical survival, order- Medical Center. A never seen” may be postponed but not ruled out. ing border officials mother detained to maintain “family in Texas said that NORTH KOREAN MASSES UNDER FIRE unity.” Some of the over 60,000 who gathered and marched in Chicago on June 30, It is true that the non-binding June 12 agree- agents took her From the nar- 2018, protesting Trump’s despicable policies on immigration and refugees. ment was empty and that Kim got much while baby as she was row criticism by conceding little, simply repeating his state’s long- breastfeeding. the base conserva- standing wish for “complete [not unilateral] denucle- Sometimes parents tives, a problem quickly follows. What hap- arization of the Korean Peninsula.” However, it re- and children are told the child must go with pens after the first negation of a fault? What veals the direction for global power politics. If North an agent to take a bath. They never come back. happens once the likes of Ralph Reed and Korea is, for now, no longer the target of “fire and A woman from Honduras had to strap her cry- fury,” its masses continue to be. Franklin Graham extract a concession to their ing one-year-old in a car seat to be driven away anti-woman and anti-queer altars of politi- That is shown not only by the way Trump from her. In court, a mother from El Salvador cal power passing as “sanctity of the family”? swatted away any concern about human rights, said, “I do not want my children to think that I How many politicians and corporate spokes- continued on p. 9 abandoned them.” people will fall silent as family unity inside a Erendira Rendón speaks of her experience prison cell becomes the order of the day? Even crossing the border at age 4: “I remember sitting un- if asylum-denialism called “zero tolerance” is derneath a bush and hiding and I remember falling VOICES FROM THE INSIDE OUT stopped, what happens next? What if state and asleep on my mom’s arm, and when I saw her, she private capital still use prisons to profit from was awake. I went to sleep, and when I woke up—I warehousing poor people, what if workers are don’t know how many hours later or minutes later— Prisoner reviews still exploited, what if young people have ever- she was also still awake… I don’t have any other fewer options? memories of my crossing. I think I was probably con- Specters of Revolt Chirayu Patel spoke at a June 23 rally in Chica- fused, but I’m sure I wasn’t scared because I was with by Faruq go demanding a plan to reunite families already sep- my mom the entire time.” arated, one of hundreds of demonstrations across the In Richard Gilman-Opalsky’s book, Specters of THE TORTURING OF CHILDREN U.S. that were quickly put together and announced Revolt: On the Intellect of Insurrection and Philoso- Disability rights activist Chuy Campuzano: “I over social media. “In a different time, what’s hap- phy from Below, he presented a methodology for the am very open to say I’m a person with a mental ill- pening today could have been me, or it could have critical interpretation of philosophy that emerges ness. [Speaking about] mental illness is very impor- been my family. When we are carving up families and from revolts. While he has not developed something tant to me because if you don’t have a mental illness, separating children, even detaining families indefi- new, he is attempting to generate a renewed focus once you’re separated from your family, you’re going nitely… when leaders are dividing us based on our that he thinks has not been central to how revolts to have one.” Indeed, as cries for their parents are race or where we come from or who we worship, they ignored or even ridiculed by staff, terrified children are interpreted. (See: “Review: Specters of Revolt” by don’t have a vision. They’re dividing and ruling, the Franklin Dmitryev, March-April 2018 N&L, p. 11.) have resorted to screaming, running down hallways, oldest trick in the book.” throwing furniture, harming themselves. The Shi- Interesting is Gilman-Opalsky’s observa- loh detention center south of Houston has been sued tion of the present sadness and disaffection MASSES IN THE STREET MADE CHANGE for forcefully injecting children with medications, exhibited by Leftists, the result of the endless That the rallies had a direct effect was clear on or prying their mouths open to make them swallow trail of failed revolutions of the 20th century. June 27, when a federal court ordered Trump to re- In the face of such dismal dispositions, he sug- unite minors under five years old to their families continued on p. 10 gests replacing the ideas of dread and sacri- fice, usually associated with struggle, with pleasure and desirability. Turkey’s Erdoğan tightens authoritarian rule That might sound impractical to most revolu- With his victory in the June 24 presidential ing civil servants, teachers, and people in the tionary-minded people immersed in struggle. But election, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has further consoli- military. Some 140 media organizations have how else does one engage in as huge and burden- dated his one-man rule of Turkey’s 80 million-plus been shut down. Now the largest media orga- some a process as social transformation if not inher- population. The election followed last year’s referen- nizations support Erdoğan without question. ently driven by a sense of pleasure and desirability? dum, which eliminated the office of prime minister Six journalists have just been convicted of ter- Both those elements are, in fact, derivatives of the and created an executive presidency that Erdoğan ror-related charges and sentenced to long jail essential element generating social participation in will now administer. His powers include appointing terms. They join 150 journalists already in jail. ministers, vice presidents and top bureaucrats, pre- struggles for freedom: love. The more than a decade and a half of Erdoğan’s paring the budget and deciding on security policies, rule brought deep change to Turkish society, as he FREEDOM NEEDS MASS INVOLVEMENT including removal of civil servants, all without par- worked to impose his religious ideology. Secular for History has shown that the struggle for freedom liamentary approval. decades, Turkey has now been inculcated with reli- continued on p. 8 ERDOĞAN’S CLEAN LEGISLATIVE SWEEP gious trappings directed by Erdoğan and his Justice A new parliament with increased seats was and Development Party. Perhaps most emblematic ON THE INSIDE elected. Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party of the transformation has been the field of educa- p. 4 Return to the Humanism of Marx together with the allied Nationalist Movement Party tion, with the opening of more government-funded p. 5 Saito’s Ecosocialism rejects Marx now control an absolute majority of seats. religious schools. Both last year’s referendum and this year’s elec- Another part of Erdoğan’s deadly rule has been p. 3 López Obrador elected in Mexico tion of president and parliament have been held in relation to the Kurds, who make up close to one- p. 8 Women protest money bail under Erdoğan’s “state of emergency” following a fifth of Turkey’s population. He has waged sporadic military coup attempt in 2016 supposedly led by the wars on the Kurdish population. Despite early “dia- pp. 10, 11 ‘Families belong together’ cleric Fethullah Gulen. logue” with the Kurds, including their right to par- Under the state of emergency, tens of ticipate in elections with their own party, Erdoğan ONLINE: www.newsandletters.org thousands have been jailed and fired, includ- continued on p. 9 Page 2 NEWS & LETTERS – www.newsandletters.org JULY-AUGUST 2018 WOMAN Bulwark against reaction Reproductive Justice: AS Women’s March Distaff tity of human life while bowing down to and The patriarch of stolen propping up a monster who has already caused An Introduction REASON powers the death of many by his expanded global gag Loretta Ross—the co-author with Rickie Declared spinning to be a rule, and whose environmental policies will Solinger of Reproductive Justice: An Introduction woman’s work kill many more, if not the entire planet. (University of California Press, 2017)—cofounded So the sweet sisterhood of spiders Trump’s war against women is, pointedly and the first reproductive justice organization, Sister- Spun the web of a new world. deliberately, most brutally a war against poor wom- Song Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collec- —P. Geist en and women of color. Rich women may always be tive, in 1992. There are many reasons why women’s right to able to get an abortion, decent healthcare and the an abortion, that is, women’s right to control our contraception of their choice. In this war, Trumpism REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS+SOCIAL JUSTICE own bodies, is under such ferocious attack. But what is going after women’s healthcare. Trying to destroy The concept of reproductive justice is a combi- is bringing all reactionary forces together at this Planned Parenthood, even those clinics that do not nation of “reproductive rights” and “social justice.” moment is the recognition by creatures like Don- offer abortion, is only the tip of the iceberg. The big It consists of the right not to have a child, to have ald Trump that women are the implacable enemy of guns are being brought out to destroy Title X, whose a child, and to parent children in safe and healthy emerging fascism. That has always been true, but it purpose was to make birth control and reproductive was renewed with a vengeance when women threw healthcare affordable to all. the gauntlet in Trump’s face the day after his inau- THE PLANNED DESTRUCTION OF TITLE X guration with their unprecedented massive marches Here there is not room to enumerate all the in every U.S. state and around the world. damage planned for Title X. As the National Wom- WOMEN/YOUTH LEADING EVERY MARCH en’s Health Network explains, it “threatens to take Women have been the backbone of every demon- away quality, affordable reproductive healthcare stration since, including the youth- and women-led and information from millions of women.” Beyond March for Our Lives against gun violence and the banning Title X clinics from providing, talking of, recent—again massive—marches against Trump’s or referring women for abortions—a legal right we brutal policy of violently separating children from supposedly have—it would allow “providers” to lie to their parents at the U.S. border with no plan to re- women and not only by omission. turn them. (See articles pp. 1, 10, 11.) Women will now have to struggle to find When women in the U.S. made it as clear as pos- the truth about contraception and abortion environments. It places the denial of abortion and sible that they would oppose Trumpism with every and will not be able to trust medical person- contraception rights into a bigger picture of govern- creative fiber of our being, the war against women nel. Teens would not be able to find out about ment and corporate control of all aspects of repro- that Republicans had been waging for a decade esca- birth control; sex education would be that in duction. It also places reproductive rights into a hu- lated. Every possible avenue to bring women to our name only; fake clinics that outright lie to man rights framework along with the right to make knees was and is being explored and exploited. women—an abuse now sanctioned by our Su- one’s own sexual decisions. Gutting women’s human right to an abor- preme Court—would now reap even more gov- Ross states, “Interference with the safety tion is only the slavered-over jewel in the ernment funds. The list goes on. and dignity of fertile and reproducing per- crown of this reactionary government. It is So misogynist is this administration—one that sons is a blow against their humanity—that is also a way for Trump to bind abortion fanatics pretends to care about aborted fetuses—that it has against their rights as human beings.” to him, fanatics who prattle on about the sanc- opposed a resolution to encourage breast-feeding at Rickie Solinger is an historian who “focuses a recent U.N. World Health Assembly, despite the on the intersection of race, gender, sovereignty and fact that, according to a study in the Lancet, “uni- class and who critiques patriarchy, white suprema- versal breast-feeding would prevent 800,000 child cy, and capitalism.” Most other historians of repro- WOMENWORLDWIDE deaths a year” globally. ductive rights do not focus on women of color or poor by Artemis We are learning how rights given to women by women, although colonialism and white supremacy the Supreme Court can be taken away in the blink are among the main reasons the government has ex- Photo: Equal Playing Field of an eye. That is a great argument for a revolution erted patriarchal control of reproduction. Solinger in permanence. defines reproductive justice as “what history looks like when the voices of marginalized women are cen- Rapists freed in Spain tered in the lens.” RACIST HISTORY OF REPRODUCTION Madrid—There have been massive demonstra- The book contains numerous examples of the tions in 30 major cities of Spain, including Ma- U.S. government’s racist and classist purposes for re- drid, Pamplona and Barcelona, right after the five productive control of populations and for separating members of the La Manada case were set free from children from their mothers. These include rape and prison on June 22, after only two years in jail. Span- forced childbearing for enslaved African-American ish Army personnel José Ángel Prenda and Alfonso women and selling their children. Native Ameri- Cabezuelo, along with Civil Guard Antonio Manuel can women, like African-American and poor white Guerrero, as well as Jesús Escudero and Ángel Boza women, have been sterilized without their consent, Equal Playing Field (EPF) is an organization of were pardoned after gang-raping an 18-year-old girl and their children placed in boarding schools to be women soccer players from 29 countries, including in Pamplona during the San Fermin ceremonies in reeducated into the dominant culture. The children the U.S., Pakistan, Spain, Syria, France, Venezu- 2016. of poor women and single mothers have been dispro- ela, Palestine, Tanzania, Canada and Australia. In They were originally sentenced to nine portionately seized and placed into foster care. April, they formed two all-female soccer teams and years for sexual abuse, but were released early The authors wrote this book to introduce repro- set a record for playing the lowest altitude FIFA- when all three judges decided that they will ductive justice to a broader audience and to explain accredited match next to the Dead Sea in Jordan. never behave as such in the future. Thousands how it differs from being “pro-choice.” The use of the Last year, they set a record for the highest on Mount term “choice” is influenced by neoliberalism. Kilimanjaro. The picture above was taken there. The “Choice” focuses on each individual wom- players travelled through Jordan, Tanzania, and an’s decision. It is similar to the government’s South Africa to play exhibition games and set up soc- focus on the individual when it states repro- cer clinics for girls in local communities. EPF’s goal ductive controls are for each woman’s own is to promote women’s sports and introduce girls to good rather than for control of a population. It soccer so that they can participate in public life, as- also regularly claims that individual women’s sociate with boys as equals, and learn the benefits reproductive decisions are the cause of every of sports, including teamwork and accomplishment. real or imagined social or economic collapse. * * * “Choice” has not been very effective in secur- In June, over 30,000 women marched in Seoul, ing reproductive rights for all women because South Korea, to protest law enforcement’s lack of re- there are so many economic and social forces sponse to men using hidden cameras to film women One of many of the demonstrations held across Spain protesting the affecting and limiting most women’s reproduc- in restrooms, gyms, baths, and other public areas. freeing of the La Manada rapists. The signs read “I believe you,” and tive decisions. Men upload these invasive films to the internet as “Misogynist Justice.” The authors describe the importance of the a genre of pornography called “molka,” prompting right to a living wage, education, healthcare, public women to wear masks and search for cameras in re- of angry demonstrators in Madrid shouted in transportation, voting rights, freedom from violence, strooms. The marchers wore masks to prevent ha- the streets, “It is not abuse, it is a violation!” and an environment that is not polluted with tox- rassment and chanted, “Those men who film molka, The prisoners were released on 6,000 euros bond ins. Providing for these as human rights would allow those who upload it, those who watch it, all should and not allowed to leave the country or to enter the women to make reproductive decisions that are the be arrested and face stern punishment.” Signs read, city of Madrid where the teenage girl lives. Those re- best for their own lives and for their communities. “My Life is Not Your Porn” and “Wanna Shit with strictions have already been violated by Guerrero, WHAT WE HAVE ACCOMPLISHED! My Guard Down.” An organizer stated: “We are re- who applied for a passport. —Mannel The book concludes with stories of what re- claiming our right to challenge existing conditions productive justice groups have accomplished. One that aggravate sexual discrimination. We are rais- helped transform the March for Choice into the 2004 ing uncomfortable issues.” NEWS & LETTERS VOL. 63/NO. 4 JULY-AUGUST 2018 March for Women’s Lives with a focus on reproduc- * * * News & Letters (ISSN 0028-8969) is published bi-monthly. Sub- tive rights and women of color. Others fought against In Sudan, 16-year-old Noura Hussein was mar- scriptions are $5 a year (bulk order of 5 or more copies, 25c attacks on abortion rights and for women’s access ried against her will, although underage and forced each) from News & Letters, 228 S. Wabash, #230, Chicago, IL to HIV prevention using a human rights framework marriages are unconstitutional there. She hid with 60604. Phone 312-431-8242. Fax 312-431-8252. Periodical post- age paid at Chicago, IL. POSTMASTER: Send address changes and community involvement. They have made con- her aunt until she was 19, when her family kid- to News & Letters, 228 S. Wabash, #230, Chicago, IL 60604. Ar- nections between reproductive justice and racial jus- napped her, giving her to her husband, who raped ticles may be reprinted verbatim if credited to "News & Letters." tice movements such as Black Lives Matter. her. When he attempted a second rape, she stabbed Raya Dunayevskaya, Chairwoman, National Editorial Board (1955- These are only a few examples of the importance him, and a court convicted her of murder, sentencing 1987). Charles Denby, Editor (1955-1983). Franklin Dmitryev, National Orga- of the reproductive justice framework. This book will her to death. Her supporters, including the activist nizer, News and Letters Committees. help activists understand the interconnections of group Equality Now, organized an online petition, Terry Moon, Managing Editor. Felix social issues that become visible when listening to receiving over a million signatures. In June, an ap- Martin, Labor Editor (1983-1999). Olga Domanski, National Or- ganizer (1958-2015). John Alan, National Editorial Board Member the experiences of marginalized people. This in turn peals court reversed the death sentence, finding her Emeritus (2008-2011). strengthens social justice movements because they guilty of manslaughter and sentenced her to five News & Letters is printed in a union shop. support each other. —Adele years in prison. News & Letters is indexed by Alternative Press Index. JULY-AUGUST 2018 NEWS & LETTERS – www.newsandletters.org Page 3 Letter from Mexico Trump helps Harley- Will López Obrador hear masses? the winner, he met with the business and political Davidson kill jobs by J.G.F. Héctor class and not with the social movements, making Kansas City, Mo.—Trump and Speaker Paul The historic victory for the leftist candidate clear whom he views as the subjects of “change.” Ryan had guaranteed last December that the newly López Obrador and his party Morena in the July 1 Certainly, López Obrador’s administration may rammed through Republican tax cuts, slashing cor- election in Mexico, with 53% of the votes, is a clear be more open to dialogue and less repressive than porate taxes from 35% to 21%, would at least mean indication of the massive dissat- higher wages and more job security. If there were isfaction with the dramatic in- any workers at the Kansas City Harley-Davidson crease of violence, corruption and plant who believed it, by January those expectations inequality in the country in the were dashed. last decade. It was a huge “no” Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson almost si- against continuing to live in this multaneously announced an increase in their share- horrific situation. holders’ dividend and a corporate buyback of $700 MASSES WILL WATCH AND million of their own stock—and their plans to close their Kansas City plant altogether next year. Those JUDGE OBRADOR jobs will go to workers already at the York, Pa., fac- Now the masses will keep tory. a close watch on Obrador, mak- ing their voices heard every time TAX CUTS HELP DISAPPEAR JOBS their expectations are betrayed. That was how Harley-Davidson, like corporation In a letter to López Obrador af- after corporation, had used their tax windfall—on ter his victory, people from San stock buybacks and job cuts, not on the fantasy of Salvador Atenco, who have been Striking farm workers in San Quintín, Baja California, one of many movements from below that raising the wages of U.S. workers. But the 800 work- fighting against the construction will test López Obrador’s leftist campaign promises in practice. ers here in Kansas City had reason to expect their of a new airport on their land, re- jobs were secure enough to work until retirement. quested a “direct audience” with The factory was just over 20 years old. It the previous ones, at least in its beginning. However, him “to take on [this subject], its implications, and had been built in 1997 with millions of dollars to focus our political actions on making demands on its environmental, social, economic and legal conse- in subsidies, from both grants and tax forgive- quences.” his government in order to force it to “bend more to ness, from Kansas City. The city strove to find At the same time it reminded him that “a the Left” is not just an incomplete vision, but a naïve some replacements for its disappearing in- government like the one you are proposing one. dustrial base of shuttered packing plants and [can’t] make deals with the business class on GOING LOWER AND DEEPER soap factories. the future and the lives of poor people, with- In order to achieve radical change, we must pay By March Trump had given Harley-Davidson an out the consent of the people themselves, with- attention to the actions and thoughts of those whose incentive to move jobs, not just to Pennsylvania but out even having listened to them.” struggles are posing a new way of exercising pow- overseas, when heavy tariffs on steel and aluminum A month and a half earlier, the parents of the 43 er. There are the Zapatistas, who for decades have added $2,000 to the production cost of each motor- disappeared students from Ayotzinapa had crashed shared and practiced the idea of “whether you vote cycle. Trump named Canada as a national security one of López Obrador’s rallies to ask for assurances or not, get organized.” threat in order to evade Congressional authority from him that, if he became president, he “shouldn’t over tariffs. forget our case….We want to achieve truth and jus- There is also the National Indigenous UNION BUREAUCRAT BACKS TRUMP tice [for our children].” How can that genuine wish Congress (CNI), which through its spokes- Embarrassingly, for a united labor movement, for change be concretized, so that our expectations woman Marichuy traveled all around Mexico, Steelworkers president Leo Gerard willingly offered don’t get defrauded once again? not looking for votes or members, but listen- ing to the voices from below and inviting them Trump and his anti-worker regime a cloak of legiti- MORENA’S OBVIOUS CONTRADICTIONS to get organized. The Purépecha people from macy. Gerard not only heaped praise for the tariffs As many Left critics have pointed out, the proj- Nahuatzen, Michoacán, did not even allow of- on this anti-worker occupier of the White House, ect of Morena, López Obrador’s party, is insufficient ficial elections in their territory, so as to de- but he also spoke in the name of union members by to solve Mexico’s problems: it is not based on the promising that steelworkers would not forget Trump fend their right to choose their own represen- eradication of capitalism, but merely aims at a more at the ballot box in future elections. “equal” distribution of wealth and the elimination of tatives. In order to strengthen these struggles and to By the end of May, as Trump courted a corruption. As soon as López Obrador was declared full-blown trade war, the tariffs that China help give birth to new ones by people who showed and the EU in particular imposed on motorcy- their massive wish for change in the latest elections, cles, among other U.S. products, gave Harley- we need not just a “tactical” analysis but a whole Landless people are Davidson the cover it needed to step up the view of liberation. That involves a philosophy that timetable on its planned move of production goes beyond the critical comprehension of current attacked in S. Africa to a new factory in Thailand. society and poses an integral relation between the- Workers expect not only that their jobs will dis- Tembisa, South Africa—On Feb. 13, 2018, more ory and practice—ideas of liberation and struggles appear, but that the factory itself will be dismantled than 700 people had occupied a large tract of empty from below. and shipped to Thailand. Harley-Davidson is follow- land in Tembisa, on the East Rand near Johannes- The methodology of struggle can illuminate ing the capitalist law of value, pay workers the mini- burg. During apartheid the land had been used by the path needed to get rid of the existent class divi- mum and extract from them the maximum. Harley- the army. Since then it had remained unused. The sions, racism and sexism and to build a new society. Davidson’s moves have, however, been hastened by occupiers marked out 20’ by 20’ stands and the new To concretize this vision together with the struggles the guy in the White House famous for not paying settlement was carefully planned. from below is the most urgent task we face in this the workers he has hired. Some of the occupiers had registered for post-election period. —Retired Kansas City worker government houses as far back as 1996. They still have their forms, but the promised houses were never delivered. On the day of the occu- pation the Municipality arrived and said that they planned to build 7,500 government houses Now published in paperback... in the area. Since then there has been no fur- ther discussion of the promised houses. The occupation was first attacked on Feb. 26. Russia: From Proletarian Revolution The shacks that have been built on the occupation have now been destroyed 12 times. At first the metro to State-Capitalist Counter- police were coming once a month. Now they are com- ing almost every day. They attacked us on July 2 and 3. If no bribe is offered, the metro police will destroy Revolution: the shack and burn or confiscate the building ma- terials. Selected writings by POLICE INJURE WOMEN AND CHILDREN This week a 14-year-old boy was throttled and Raya Dunayevskaya beaten for taking a photograph of the police. One lady was injured after her shack was destroyed Regularly $36 plus while she was still inside it and a piece of zinc sheet- ing hit her head. A pregnant woman was assaulted by the police. shipping. Now, through Currently 65 people are still sleeping on the land. After each eviction the people are rebuilding, December 2018, get but now with plastic and paper because their build- ing materials have been confiscated or burnt. your copy for $20, The government has failed us. We have no jobs and no houses. Corruption is everywhere. includes free shipping We are forced to live without dignity. This has forced us to take responsibility for our within the U.S. own lives, to govern ourselves and to occupy. We want houses for our children. We don’t mind building our Order from: own houses, but we need to have land first. In fact, we don’t want the government’s RDPs. We just want News & Letters them to allow us to remain on the land that we have occupied and to give us services. We can build our 228 S. Wabash Ave. #230 own houses and plan our own community. We are desperate and we will not turn back. Chicago, IL 60604 —Siyahlala ngenkani for Abahlali baseMjondolo Page 4 NEWS & LETTERS – www.newsandletters.org JULY-AUGUST 2018

FROM THE WRITINGS OF A return to the Humanism of Marx imperative. Because Marx’s Humanist Essays were Humanism, to me, is the only genuine ground from not available in English at the time Marxism and which to oppose Communist totalitarianism, I felt Freedom came off the press in 1958, I included these the compulsion to show that Humanism is not some- RAYADUNAYEVSKAYA 1 writings as an Appendix. Since that time there thing invented by me, but came directly from Marx, Editor’s note: At a time when the social crisis have been several English translations of these Es- who fought what he called ‘vulgar Communism,’ is total—political, economic, cultural, ideologi- says as well as many commentaries on them. It soon writing that ‘communism, as such, is not the goal of cal—this clarion call for a return to the original became evident, however, that this was done, not to human development, the form of human society.’ ”2 form of the Humanism of Marxism speaks to to- re-establish the integral unity of Marxian economics Skepticism also greeted my statement in the day’s need for more than just political change, with his philosophical humanism, but only in order first edition that the road to a new society, opened but for a total view and a total solution to global to exorcise the ghost of Karl Marx and then rebury by the Hungarian Revolution, was no less illumined retrogression. This originally appeared in 1963 as him, this time as a Humanist. by the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Since then the Ne- the introduction to the second American edition It cannot be done. Marxist Humanism will re- gro struggle has become all-rounded and so engulfed of Raya Dunayevskaya’s Marxism and Freedom, main alive so long as a new world on truly new, hu- the North, as well as the South, that the phrase, from 1776 until Today. man beginnings has not been established. “Negro Revolution,” has become almost a cliché. Yet TOTALITARIAN COMMUNISM under- the fact that a revolution can be treated as a mere “Only that which is an object of free- stands this so well that the counter-revolutionary journalistic phrase only further reveals the failure dom can be called an idea.”—Hegel suppression of the Hungarian Revolution went to grapple with the truth that the American Negro The first edition of Marxism and Freedom went hand-in-hand with the suppression of thought. The has always been the touchstone of American civiliza- to press as Sputnik No. 1 went into orbit. That same subsequent Nikita Khrushchev-Mao Zedong desig- tion, which had an ever expanding frontier but no year, 1957, the Little Rock riots shared headlines nation of Marxist Humanists as “revisionists” and unifying philosophy. Nor has the challenge been met with the scientific phenomenon. In 1962, two differ- the denunciation of “revisionism” as the “main dan- when the call for a unifying philosophy came from an ent events were again held in unison in men’s con- ger” did not, however, deter the American “ideology altogether new source: the scientist (Dr. William E. sciousness. This time James Meredith’s courageous specialists” from taking over the term, “revision- Pickering) who first succeeded in sending the Amer- entry into the University of Mississippi took the ism,” and similarly using it against the opponents of ican Explorer into orbit. In speaking of the fact that luster out of Walter Schirra’s spectacular six-orbital the ruling bureaucracies who had not only revised, mankind was now “only one-half hour away from to- entry into space. An age in which “a little thing,” like tal annihilation,” Dr. Picker- school desegregation, can hold in tow such scientific ing said that mankind was in milestones is an age in which men’s consciousness is need, not of more destructive preoccupied, not with scientific conquest, but with weapons that the scientists human freedom. invent, but of “a new, unify- This new edition appears when our life and ing philosophy.” times impart an urgency to the task of working out THIS SAME PERIOD a new relationship of philosophy to reality. Thought saw the emergence of the and deed cannot forever stand apart. Somewhere, African Revolutions under sometime, they must meet. Throughout history the their own Humanist ban- forces that have produced great social revolutions ner.3 It was indeed the birth have also generated great philosophic revolutions. It of this new world indepen- was true when Thomas Rainsborough expressed the dent of the Communist orbit motive power of the English Revolution of 1648 as: that both led to the Commu- “...the poorest he in England hath a life to live as the Left: True Levellers defend St. Georges Hill, 1649. Right: Occupied Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt, 2011. nist discovery of this “third greatest he.” It is true when, in 1963, James Bald- world” and to the rift within win speaks of “a glimpse of another world....I speak but vitiated, Marxism. The very intellectuals who its own orbit. (On the Sino-Soviet Rift see Chap- of change not on the surface but in the depths— had lost their collective tongue during the period of ter XVII.) Because the dynamism of ideas escapes change in the sense of renewal.” Seventeenth-cen- McCarthyism now found their individual tongues to American “ideology specialists,” they do not pick up tury English Leveller fighting for equality, or twen- attempt to fragmentize Marx. the gauntlet for the struggle for the minds of men. tieth-century Negro fighting for freedom now, pull The debate around the Essays degenerated into Instead, they act as if any ideological battle, if even strenuously at the intellectual tendency to resist a question of first-edness as if it were a college debate it concerns the very survival of humanity, is only the compulsion to original thought on the very eve held for scoring points. As I stated during the discus- rhetoric. It is not that they do not know as well as of social revolutions that demand philosophic recon- sion in 1961: “The dispute over who was the first to anybody that, far from rhetoric, this is the overrid- structions. translate Marx’s 1844 Economic-Philosophic Manu- ing fact in a world of H-bombs and ICBMs. Nor is it THE TWO FEATURES which characterize scripts into English is a meaningful controversy only that they held their breath any less than the rest of great periods of upheaval are, one, that a new sub- if it has a substantive relationship to the spirit of us when, in October, 1962, J.F. Kennedy told N.S. ject is born to respond to the objective pull of history those Essays and of our times. I was compelled to Khrushchev that the United States was ready to un- by making freedom and reason the reality of the day. be the first to publish these Essays in 1958 because loose a nuclear holocaust unless Russia removed its And, two, a new relationship between theory for the fifteen years previous I had tried, in vain, missiles from Cuba. It is rather due to their belief and practice is forged. This is true for the past— to convince other scholars, writers, and publishers that their aging views toward ideas would somehow Levellers in seventeenth-century England; the sans of the cogency of these Essays. When in the period magically dissipate the class struggle, and the racial culottes in the French Revolution of 1789-1793; the between the 1953 East German Revolt and the 1956 struggle would thereby become bite size. runaway slaves impelling the United States to the Hungarian Revolution, the Russian Communists Where some reviewers wished to return Marx’s Civil War of 1861-1865; the St. Petersburg proletar- openly attacked those Essays (Voprosy Filosofii, #3, Humanist Essays to the archives, others questioned iat in the 1905 and 1917 Russian Revolutions. This 1955), I once again began my round of publishers. my theory of state-capitalism, saying that I had paid is true for the present—in the Hungarian Revolu- This time the Essays were part of my book. I held insufficient attention to the changed conditions in tion against Russian totalitarianism, no less than in that the Russian Communist attack on them was not Russia since the ascent of Khrushchev to power. the African Revolutions against Western imperial- academic, but a foreboding of revolutions to come. They pointed especially to “the abolition of the forced ism. This does not mean that each of these historic The following year the great Hungarian Revolution labor camps.” Curiously enough, this criticism came, periods has given birth to a totally new philosophy. raised the Humanist flag clearly. Because Marxist in large measure, from those who denied the very An original philosophy is a rare creation, born after existence of the camps until Khrushchev declared much travail only when called forth by a new stage 1. That appendix has been dropped from this new edition them abolished. That the worst of the concentra- because the Essays are now easily available in English. tion camps have been eliminated does not mean in world consciousness of freedom. It does mean that The official Moscow publication (1959) is marred by that there are none. It only means that “corrective a viable philosophy must be capable of meeting the footnotes which flagrantly violate Marx’s content and challenge of human experience, of the new revolts intent. The preferable translation is T.B. Bottomore, labor” has taken a different, a milder form. Neither symbolic of the lack of specific freedoms. which, with other primary materials, is included in United States “free enterprise,” nor Russian “com- To this author it meant that, no matter what Marx’s Concept of Man by Erich Fromm (Frederick munism,” has changed the fundamental Marxian the reasons were that caused the transformation Ungar Publishing Co., New York, 1961). My original theory of value and surplus value, or capitalism as of the Marxian theory of liberation into its oppo- Appendix B, the first English translation of Lenin on an exploitative relationship of capital to labor. Af- site after the Russian Revolutions failed to realize, Hegel’s Science of Logic, has likewise been dropped ter the Russian admission, in 1943, that the law since the material is finally available in English trans- that is to say, put into practice this philosophy of of value operates in Russia, there was no further lation (V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, Philosophi- point to continue the detailed analysis of their State freedom (see Chapters XII and XIII), a return to the cal Notebooks, Foreign Languages Publishing House, original form of the Humanism of Marxism became Moscow, 1961). Plans. My analysis of the Five Year Plans, therefore, stopped with World War II, and thereafter focused on the Russian assault on Marx’s Capital and his Marxism and Freedom dialectically presents history and theory as Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts (see Chapters emanating from the movement from practice, re-establishing the American III and XIII). There is no reason to revise my analy- and world humanist roots of Marxism. sis. Using as her point of departure the Industrial and French Revolutions, What is fundamentally new now are the devel- the European upheavals of 1848, the American Civil War, and the Paris opments in the Sino-Soviet orbit. My analysis of the Commune of 1871, Raya Dunayevskaya shows how Marx, inspired by rift was originally elaborated in 1961 as part of a these events, transformed Hegel’s philosophy. new book I am writing on world ideologies and the technologically underdeveloped countries. Because Freedom for Marx meant freedom from capitalist economic exploitation “The Challenge of Mao” has a special urgency for to- but also from all political restraints and the free development of day, I brought it up to date when Japanese friends human beings as social individuals. Dunayevskaya reveals how asked to include it in the edition of Marxism and completely Marx’s original conception of freedom was perverted Freedom they are preparing for publication in Tokyo. through its adaptations by Stalin in Russia and Mao in China, and the It is included as Chapter XVII in this new American subsequent creation of totalitarian states. Exploitation of the masses edition as well. Both editions are going to press as persisted under these regimes in the form of a new state-capitalism. we approach the one-hundredth anniversary of the Despite the profound derailment of Marxism, Dunayevskaya points to developments founding of the International Working Men’s Asso- such as the Hungarian Revolution, workers’ struggles against capitalist automation, and the ciation in London, in 1864. Civil Rights struggles in the United States as signs that the indomitable quest for freedom on the Raya Dunayevskaya part of the downtrodden cannot be forever repressed. The Hegelian dialectic of events propelled November 1, 1963, Detroit, Michigan by the spirit of the masses thus moves on inexorably with the hope for the future achievement of 2. This is quoted from a November 1961 letter by Du- political, economic, and social freedom and equality for all. nayevskaya to New Leader. —Editor 3. See my pamphlet, Nationalism, Communism, Marxist- To order see page 7 Humanism and the Afro-Asian Revolutions (News & Letters, Detroit, 1959; Cambridge, England, 1961). AS OTHERS SEE US

JULY-AUGUST 2018 NEWS & LETTERS – www.newsandletters.org Page 5 ESSAY Saito’s ecosocialism rejects Marx’s philosophic moment by Ron Kelch than “cause and effect”—the reciprocal reinforce- the great dialectician, Karl Marx.” Overwhelmed by ment between “private property” and “alienated la- empirical data, Engels, like Saito today, turned to ...if we look more closely at the description of bor”—as they search “in vain to find...the exact his- an original unity, ending Origin of the Family with alienated labour we make a remarkable discovery: torical and logical genesis of alienated labor” (35). Lewis Henry Morgan’s view of “the future being just what is here described is not merely an economic Marx’s concern, however, was not a point of “gen- a ‘higher stage’ of primitive communism.”3 matter. It is the alienation of man, the devaluation of esis,” especially from the perspective of an infinite life, the perversion and loss of human reality...As the series of causes and effects. Marx’s concern at that “Genesis” of Modern Alienation and Marx’s result of an idea about the essence of man and its re- point, given the estrangement that exists, was how Method of the “Power of Abstraction” alization, evolved by Marx in his dispute with Hegel, “this estrangement [is] rooted in the nature of hu- Marx’s Capital poses no infinite series of causes a simple economic fact appears as the perversion of man development.” That means beginning not from and effects, no ambiguity about the “exact historical the human essence and the loss of human reality. external forms like property but the contradiction and logical genesis” of modern alienation. The abso- —Herbert Marcuse with labor itself (CW 3, 281). “Human development,” lute “genesis” is capitalist society’s conceptual “cell,” Nature is the human’s as Marx had already indicated, proceeds through the commodity-form of the product of labor “itself” inorganic body...That the hu- given barriers to human essence, barriers to specifi- (BF, 164), which historically emerged as barter in man’s physical and spiritual cally human “life activity” which is “free, conscious the interstices of pre-capitalist forms. The way Marx life is linked to nature means life activity.” This determination of human essence laboriously traces, through the “power of abstrac- simply that nature is linked is not one with which the human being ever “directly tion” (BF, 90), the minutiae in the logical self-dif- to itself, for the human is a merges” (CW 3, 276). In other words, the nature of ferentiation of this cell was largely ignored or even part of nature. In estranging “human development” is human essence asserting berated by post-Marx Marxists. Yet Marx captured from the human (1) nature, itself in the face of given mediations. the whole course of human development and the ab- and (2) the self, the self’s solute contradiction in “modern alienation” out of own ... life activity, estranged Saito’s “Original Unity” Breaks with what seemed at first to be a benign form. labor estranges the species Marx’s Universal Through the commodity’s immanent logic hu- from the human ...The whole Saito breaks with Marx’s philosophic universal, man labor became a commodity; and people, pos- character of a species...is contained in the character repeating the myth that identifies Marx’s universal sessing only their labor power, must sell it in order to of its life activity; and free, conscious activity is the with Ludwig Feuerbach’s “species being” because of live. Workplace life activity becomes merely a means human’s species character. Life itself appears only as their use of the same expression. Marx’s 1844 philo- to life, ruled by the alien imperatives of capital ac- a means to life. —Karl Marx sophic moment begins from a universal human es- cumulation. This self-alienating, “phantasmagoric” In Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, sence that continuously particularizes itself. Feuer- reality is present with the embryonic beginnings of and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy bach’s static concept of “species being” lacks any the commodity-form, in as much as commodity pro- (Monthly Review Press, 2017), Kohei Saito brings to critical engagement with politics or any actual “en- ducers relate to each other through an abstraction, light some of the volumes of Marx’s unpublished re- semble of social relations.” Modern or otherwise, all average labor time or socially necessary labor time, search and growing concern over capitalism’s delete- specifically human social relations, says Marx, owe embodied “in” the commodities they create. “The rious effect on the environment. Marx had prepared their very existence to the mediating “power of ab- commodity-form,” writes Marx, “and the value-rela- the first edition of Volume I of Capital for publica- straction” (CW, 30:232). Saito cites Marx’s criticism tion of the products of labor within which it appears, tion in 1867. Many of these notebooks were part of of Feuerbach’s species being which knows human re- have absolutely no connection with the physical na- Marx’s research for Volumes II and III of Capital, lations only as fixed universals like “love,” designa- ture of the commodity and the material relations which he partially prepared but never completed. ted by religion as divine attributes (58), but falsely arising out of this” (BF, 165). The movement against capitalism’s destruction says Marx had this view in 1844 (32). Abstractions Capitalist reality is a hyper-subjective, total of the environment at first dismissed Marx’s view of attributed to the divine are themselves not fixed disconnect from material limits. Concern over mate- socialism as a hostile theory. Since then there has and have their own history and, in any case, are not rial limits had to be introduced externally whether been a growing body of “ecosocialist” work on the Marx’s universal. Marx’s universal, human essence that was the protracted struggle for a normal work- relevance of Marx’s theory and concept of socialism or “species being,” never directly merges with any ing day when capitalism, in its beginnings, used up to saving the environment. Though burdened by an stage of development, let alone any fixed attribute of three generations of workers in one; the ongoing bru- anti-philosophical bias, Saito shows how totally or- the divine, and is always in the process of particular- talization of the human through domination of capi- izing itself. ganic Marx’s critique of capitalism and his social- tal in the workplace; the pauperization and wanton Saito brings to light some of Marx’s unpub- ist vision of the future are to reconnecting with the discarding of those humans when not needed; or lished immersion in the then-new empirical data on material world in a way that meets the challenge of concern about laying waste to the environment. The capitalism’s effect on the environment, particularly today’s ecological crisis. “power of abstraction” led Marx to the commodity- Justus Freiherr von Liebig’s studies on the failure of Saito returns to Marx’s 1844 writings and “the form’s absolute opposite, “freely associated labor” industrial agriculture to replenish the life-sustain- relationship between humans and nature as the cen- in which the “social life-process,” including humans’ ing capacity of the land. Saito is not the first to pose tral theme of his famous theory of alienation.” Un- metabolism with nature, becomes “transparent” an “original unity” in the face of new empirical data fortunately, the “famous theory of alienation,” from (BF, 173). confronting humanity under the regime of capital. which Marx critiqued all, pre-capitalist and capi- Humanity’s future then becomes a return to the past Marx’s Freedom Idea and Multidimen- talist, human development becomes related only to on “a higher level.” sional Revolution in Permanence “modern alienated life.” Saito counterposes “modern Marx’s remarkable immersion in vast and vari- In his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program (CGP) alienated life” to the “radical dissolution of the origi- ous areas of empirical data as they emerged has dis- Marx’s very first point is to criticize the way the Left nal unity between humans and nature” (14).1 oriented post-Marx Marxists beginning with Fried- of his day, the Lassalleans, mirrored capitalism’s The “original unity,” which Saito cites from rich Engels. In his 1880s Ethnological Notebooks hyper-subjective view of labor by claiming all wealth Marx, is “between the worker and conditions of la- (EN), Marx submerged himself in the latest anthro- comes from labor, forgetting nature (CW, 24:81). bour” in various pre-capitalist forms, which become pological studies, including pre-capitalist forms of Marx had hailed the Parisian masses who in 1871 separated under capitalism. Marx’s “negation of the the man/woman relationship. Marx’s critical view of organized their social production in a new non-state negation” here becomes “the positive rehabilitation the pre-capitalist communal form was a continuity communal form. In the CGP Marx turned to organi- of the original unity on a higher level” (50).2 Saito with the way, in 1844, he illuminated the universal zational principles for a post-capitalist society. One claims that Marx’s 1857 Grundrisse replaces philos- of human essence by singling out not “labor” but the principle piqued Marcuse’s interest in an exchange ophy with the concept of labor’s “metabolic interac- man/woman relationship as the most fundamen- with Dunayevskaya: “...after labor, from a mere tion with nature” that can restore “original unity” tal. While appreciating how in some ways the role means to life, has itself become the prime necessity (67). The Grundrisse takes up the way all such pre- of women in pre-capitalist communal forms was in of life”4 (CW, 24:87). In addressing what happens capitalist unity is “mediated” by the community and advance of modern society, Marx was also careful to after a revolutionary transcendence of the inverted its diverse forms of social relations (CW 28, 409). point out the limits on women’s free development. reality of the commodity-form, Marx returns to his Saito ignores Marx’s ruthless criticism of each of His critical appraisal noted how even relatively egal- 1844 philosophic moment—life activity as freely de- these forms. Above all, the unity of pre-capitalist itarian forms of social division of labor in the gens termined in distinction from life activity as a mere communal forms is “predetermined for the individ- were prone to dissolution and transformation into means to an end. ual,” constraining both her relation to nature and to opposite or caste. In his 1844 philosophic moment Marx singled “co-workers.” This constraint drives the dissolution Raya Dunayevskaya traced the stark contrast out the type of “negation of the negation” that is of multiple and diverse pre-capitalist forms, lacking between Marx’s EN and Engels’ Origin of the Fam- explicitly not defined by one’s opposition to an ex- a concept of the “free and full development, either of ily, Private Property, and the State, produced after istent abstraction, even opposing an abstraction as the individual or of society” (CW 28, 410-11). Marx’s death and supposedly based on EN. Du- daunting as the value-form or private property. Only This critical view of pre-capitalist forms in the nayevskaya’s observation on the vast amount of new through negation of the negation in the form of a Grundrisse resonates with the philosophic moment anthropological data that Marx absorbed at the end “self-referred negation” does “self-deriving...positive inherent in Marx’s “famous theory of alienated la- of his life also applies to Marx’s submerging him- humanism” emerge. This is the real “act of...emer- bor.” Citing Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm as self in all the studies on capitalism’s ruinous effect gence of species-consciousness and species-life.” The examples, Saito takes issue with humanist Marxists on the land: “no greater ‘empiricist’ ever lived than idea as human “life activity” is no longer disembod- for whom “alienated labor” is a philosophic break- ied from the whole human being as Marx felt it be- through. Saito’s argument is not only with humanist came with Hegel (CW 3:342) and Feuerbach (CW Marxists. It is with Marx’s 1844 view that “private Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s 5:3). property” and “the external relation of the worker to Today, when the survival of humanity is in nature and himself” is not the cause but rather the Liberation, and Marx’s question, from ecological suicide to war from the mil- “consequence” of alienated labor (34; CW 3, 279-80). itarization of the mind, the struggle for new human Saito counters that no one has gone further Philosophy of Revolution relations pervades all aspects of everyday life ac- 1. For an earlier take on alienated labor under capital- by Raya Dunayevskaya tivity—in relations with nature, in the classrooms, ism as the root of the today’s total environmental crisis, see in homes, on the streets, in workplaces. A unifying This book discovered Franklin Dmitryev, “Ecosocialism and Marx’s Humanism” dialectic is found in Marx’s concept of human es- a trail to our age in (News & Letters, Aug.-Sept. 2009). Saito ignores the grow- sence itself as the absolute opposite of humanity’s ing evidence that pre-capitalist societies had a tremendous Marx’s “new moments” alienated forms of social being. Marx’s revolution in impact on the environment, much of which was hardly be- on new paths to permanence was never more relevant in standing for nign, though not on the scale of modern industry. See, for revolution, on new the self-expanding, never-ending Idea of recognizing example, the article in Science (April 20, 2018) on how the concepts of man/ one’s and the other’s humanity in freely determining spread of hominids out of Africa coincided with the path of woman relations, and on extinction of large mammals. that everyday activity. This goes beyond any stagifi- philosophy of revolution 2. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works cation, including even making revolution the goal of as inseparable from (International Publishers: New York), Vol. 33, p. 340, fur- the movement. ther referenced as “CW” with the volume number and page organization. number in the text, except for the commonly used Ben 3. Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Fowkes translation of Capital, which is referenced with To order see page 7 Philosophy of Revolution, p. 186. “BF.” 4. The Power of Negativity, p. 312. Page 6 NEWS & LETTERS – www.newsandletters.org JULY-AUGUST 2018 FIGHTING TRUMP’S ANTI- • IMMIGRANT HYSTERIA SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES Scapegoating refugees is very Swords into Plowshares Peace personal to me. In 1937 my father and Center & Gallery sponsored a commu- his family escaped likely death in Hit- nity conversation in Detroit inspired ler’s Germany by fleeing to this coun- by its exhibition “Guns: Artists Re- try through Italy. Had they come two READERS’VIEWS spond.” The Women’s Caucus for Art join the protests against Trump’s hor- It is so maniacal for Saudi prince years later, on a different boat, the St. and Mothers Demand Action brought rible policy of separating families at bin Salman to round up and imprison Louis, they would have been among the artists together with community repre- the border because of the extreme activists who were advocating on be- more than 900 German Jews refused sentatives. The conversation was com- heat and humidity, even though two half of women being able to drive a asylum, first by Cuba (after massive plex: the mostly older women present rallies in Detroit were planned. One car. He labels them traitorous, not be- anti-Semitic anti-immigration rallies) said things like “I grew up with guns, was in Clark Park, the center of the cause liberalizing the driving law is a and then by the U.S. despite appeals I like guns, and we have to do some- Latino neighborhood, and one was threat in itself—right now he is enact- to President Roosevelt, who was un- thing about gun violence.” One of the planned for downtown amid tourists ing exactly that policy—but because der pressure from an isolationist Con- artists reminded people that although and upscale shops and restaurants. any shred of dissent is an affront to an gress. A few of those refugees were so the public actions and demonstrations When the young organizer received absolute tyrant who sees something desperate they attempted suicide on- during Freedom Summer, 1964, were responses from thousands on social moral in getting his way at all times. board. Most of them were sent back to non-violent, the young northern white media instead of the few hundred she This refraction of morality holds as its Europe. About a third were taken in activists and their host Black families expected, the city withdrew her per- absolute basis that masses of people by Britain; the remainder were taken wouldn’t have survived had those fam- mit, claiming they couldn’t guaran- cannot think for themselves. in by France, Belgium and the Nether- ilies not been known to own and use tee crowd safety. This, when just the B.B. lands. When the Nazis overran those guns should it be necessary. The aim week before we heard the city brag- Pasadena, Calif. three countries, those refugees were of “Guns: Artists Respond” and the ging about the hundreds of thousands *** trapped under the Nazi regime again community gathering “is to give art- who came downtown for the fireworks, Irish women’s #hometovote cam- and about half perished. Scapegoating ists a chance to express their views on without incident. Despite the City, paign is inspiring! Maybe Irish wom- and sending refugees back to certain gun violence and to offer an environ- both rallies were well attended. en will even emerge from the repeal of violence and likely death is not a neu- ment open to growth and understand- Susan Van Gelder the abortion ban with full citizenship tral act. It is political and moral cow- ing, especially because gun violence is Detroit rights in the country of their birth? We ardice and it is evil. Audrey experienced very differently in differ- *** women in the U.S. are already living Memphis ent Detroit communities.” *** When I think about the walls on in a heavily policed state where our the Mexican-U.S. border, I start think- bodies are more regulated than banks! Steve Donald Trump’s ongoing attack Detroit on immigrants ing about the Berlin Wall and its pur- Socialist feminist prompted many pose, similar to Trump’s in reverse, Washington, D.C. Japanese Ameri- and the fact that only good immi- *** • cans to speak out at grants who work will be allowed into If anti-abortionists are going to HUMAN RIGHTS marches and rallies the country, and only if you are from keep calling pro-choice people baby in support of fami- certain countries like Norway, Germa- killers, then it’s time to start referring STRUGGLES IN IRAQ... lies fleeing horrid ny, Sweden, Iceland, with the blonde to them for what they are: people who There is another injustice being economic and se- hair and blue eyes, all that good stuff. would kill women. perpetrated in Iraq by those trying Hell, why not just replace the poem at Reproductive justice supporter ISIS for war crimes and doing it in

Urszula Wislanka curity conditions in Latin America. the base of the Statue of Liberty with Dublin, Ireland such an unprincipled way. (See “In- Even those of us a sign, like the ones at Nazi death human Iraqi rush to judgment,” p. 8.) too young to have camps: “Arbeit Macht Frei!” Not only are those being judged not experienced the Robert Taliaferro • experiencing justice, but even those U.S. concentration Black River Falls, Wisconsin ATTACKS who were victims of ISIS are not see- camps (President *** ON GAYS ing justice. Yazidis, who certainly suf- In the U.S., protests against fered horribly from ISIS, are not con- Franklin Roos- If and Trump’s policies have been going on sidered in these trials. An article in Al evelt’s terminology) when Ka- for several days. That is important Monitor gives voice to a Yazidi woman, know the conse- vanaugh is to know. Here in Mexico very little is Hayat, who was enslaved by ISIS. It quences of government-sponsored eth- appointed to known of what is happening there, on makes the point that to help women nic targeting. At the very least it leads the Supreme the other side. Little is known about brutalized by violence, the perpetra- to contrived divisions within the com- Court, the the emancipatory struggles and pro- tors need to be punished. According munity such as “loyal” and “disloyal.” 5-4 majority tests in the U.S. to the article, what happened to the A worst-case scenario is self-hatred in favor of LGBT and women’s repro- Feminist Yazidi is not considered in any of the in the form of violence, e.g., Black-on- ductive rights will be gone. The Court Mexico City trials in Iraq against ISIS. It is anoth- Black crime, Brown-on-Brown crime. will be a 5-4 majority against LGBT, *** er way of making the Yazidi invisible. Trump’s policies, especially those that women, workers’ rights....Elections I am a Lakota Sioux Native Iraq needs to concentrate on justice, break families apart, encourage divi- have consequences, people! American. My ancestors were some not retaliation. On many levels these sion as well as formation of gangs like Socialist LGBT activist of the greatest warriors before we “trials,” these rushes to judgment, are the U.S.-originated MS-13. Memphis were forced onto reservations. But our wrong. David M’Oto *** voices were never silenced. So, on be- Bay Area If Supreme Court Justice Antho- Terry Moon half of Native Americans—the origi- *** ny Kennedy—who wrote in his narrow Chicago nal Americans—refugees and immi- My friend and I, both in the Medi- majority opinion that LGBT people grants, you are welcome. If you are not care generation and battling health is- have equal dignity—stayed, I think Indigenous, if you are an immigrant or sues in addition to capitalism, couldn’t there’d have been a chance future • refugee and need help, Mother Earth cases about LGBT rights, including ...AND IN RUSSIA was meant for sharing because we are ARTHUR GURSCH rights versus so-called religious liber- On July 3, activists and members all brothers and sisters and this world ty, could have been decided in our fa- of the coalition Democratic Petersburg IN MEMORIAM isn’t getting any better. We welcome were detained once again for wear- We mourn the passing of friend vor. But now that Kennedy is leaving you in peace. Let’s make a change and ing political buttons and distributing and fellow fighter Arthur Gursch and a conservative likely seated, the repair life for everyone. leaflets dedicated to the 64 Ukrainian on June 21 at age 72. His partici- Queer community could lose every- Prisoner political prisoners who are illegally pation in a forum of the Chicago thing. The Queer community and our Indian Springs, Nev. being held in Russian prisons. Some Local of News and Letters Com- supporters must resist while we con- prisoners, like Oleg Sentsov, are on mittees on “Racism in Boystown” stantly state that we are for our total a long hunger strike, and several ac- in 2011—with activists confronting liberation. Let’s also push, push, push • tions have supported them. Detained fractures within the North Side Gay Democratic and Republican senators WOMEN’S LIBERATION on July 3 were Irina Bogdanovskaâ, community over issues of race and to block any Trump nominees to the I say “Mic drop!” for the young Maria Koževatova, Olga Smirnova, Il- class—was informed by more than Supreme Court until the November Indian chess champion who, at great yas Éšfér, Vladimir Šipicyn. 40 years battling for Gay Liberation midterms are over. You know, a la the personal loss, said the hell with com- and for revolution. McConnell rule because this is a ma- Democratic activist peting in Iran. She proclaimed: “I His personal history spanned jor election year. Queer from Japan St. Petersburg, Russia find the Iranian law of compulsory the history of the modern move- Chicago headscarf to be in di- ment for Gay Liberation, having rect violation of my joined the Gay Liberation Front To our incarcerated readers— basic human rights in New York in 1970 in the imme- • Prisoncrats sometimes choose including my right diate upsurge from the Stonewall SUPPORT RESTAURANT to return an issue to us undeliv- to freedom of ex- Rebellion, and then joined the Gay ered, but if you have been moved— pression, and the WORKERS Activists Alliance. He was pivotal to another prison, or within the right to freedom I was excited to participate in a to ACT-UP campaigns in both New same prison—the USPS will not of thought, con- meeting of restaurant workers at Jud- York and Chicago against govern- science and reli- son Memorial Church in New York forward newspapers. Help us keep ment inaction on HIV/AIDS. His gion....There is no this spring because the faith com- N&L in your hands by letting us primary organization at the end of place for an enforce- munity was supporting the “Fight for know your change of address, in- his life was the Gay Liberation Net- able religious dress code $15.” But I felt the speakers, mostly cluding when you are released. work. in sports.” Nor, I would add, anywhere young priests, spoke in abstractions When you leave prison your do- It is testimony to Art’s passion else. Just how sick are we all of men, and pushed their own agendas, look- nor subscription can continue to for the movement and his involve- governments, etc. telling women what ing to beef up their sagging congrega- your new address for one addi- ment in it that he checked himself they should or should not wear? If all tions. The solution promoted by the tional year. We do not match up out of his living facility over medi- those who went to Iran took Soumya organizers was that workers should pen pals, or offer legal advice or cal objections in order to take part Swaminathan’s stance, Iran would become entrepreneurs and open their access to attorneys. This paper is in Pride Weekend and march in the change their oppressive compulsory own restaurants, rather than confront a place where the voices of people Chicago Pride Parade. His commit- veiling laws. existing management. I don’t think a ment to freedom was greater than Angry feminist engaged in struggles inside and Chicago French name will change their condi- his self interest. Bob McGuire outside prison walls can be heard *** tions of labor. P. Geist speaking for themselves. Chicago New York City JULY-AUGUST 2018 NEWS & LETTERS – www.newsandletters.org Page 7

VOICES FROM BEHIND BARS ist-Humanism and your Constitution. MARX’S NEW MOMENTS AND TODAY’S NEED I have no means of earning income but FOR REVOLUTION AND PHILOSOPHY I have been incarcerated in Gua- I will try to send some donations your dalupe County Adult Detention Cen- way through my family. The world Dunayevskaya’s remarks on the new movements and, if so, how does ter in Texas for 20 months, unable to needs alternatives to capi- centenary of Marx’s death in 1983 the Left plan to meet that passion and make bond due to poverty talism, as it will soon im- (“New moments in Marx form trail help it develop? and family struggles. I be- plode under its own greed. to today,” May-June 2018 N&L), re- Women’s Liberationist lieve the justice system is I hope prisons don’t dete- mind us of what it should mean to Chicago corrupt. We inmates are riorate to unbearable con- celebrate the life of a revolutionary: *** being punished by having ditions as the capitalist finding emancipatory new beginnings The economic laws of capitalism to pay bond to get out of structure crumbles. for one’s own time. She asks “Where are just as oppressive and crisis-prone jail, even though we have Prisoner and how to begin anew?” and proceeds today as in Marx’s time. Few today not been found guilty. (See Florence, Ariz. to show how all of Marx’s life involved think, as many post-Marx Marxists “Women Demand: ‘End *** that question. She concretized this by did 100 years ago, that the crises Money Bail!’” p. 8.) We inmates, by You “wake my game up” on global tracing out four moments from Marx’s would automatically bring capitalism law, are innocent until proven guilty. and local issues. I share N&L with last decade that manifest Marx’s new down, clearing the path for socialism. This is a violation of our rights. The other incarcerated offenders who beginning as methodology. These in- “New moments in Marx form trail for government is just stealing money agree. We look forward to receiving cluded the possibility of a revolution in today” stresses how post-Marx Marx- from us. What else is our government and reading future papers. Prisoner Russia, perhaps before the “advanced” ists separated the economic laws from coercing us to do? We are basically San Diego, Calif. West, as well as his Critique of the Go- the dialectics of revolution, while for slaves to the State while incarcerated *** tha Program, seeking to show the re- Marx the dialectics changed even the pending trial. We are property of the N&L has helped me begin to lation between ideas or principles and economic laws. Not that the laws could state while innocent in incarceration change my own opinions on world organization. be ignored, but the paths of human de- until proven guilty! #BailReform events, political agenda and ideology. What does this mean when we are velopment are not predetermined, and Prisoner I am not proud to admit that my edu- celebrating the bicentenary of Marx’s the concept of “absolute movement of Seguin, Tex. cation and ideology was polar opposite birth? Shouldn’t it mean that such a becoming” as flowing out of those very *** to the one you espouse. I was at one “celebration” needs to be so deep an ex- objective dialectics of revolution is a Your paper lets me know that time fiercely anti-Marxist. I tell you ploration of Marx in relation to today’s determinant in whether we can create there are a lot of good people fighting this so that you all can get an idea of reality that we can hopefully discover a new society. to correct our dysfunctional society/ the leaps and bounds in which my own theoretical/philosophical threads that Franklin Dmitryev system. I’ve always been a Marxist point of view has shifted. I am now can assist us in working out our own Chicago and use N&L to work with other in- dedicated to furthering my knowledge revolutionary transformation in face mates, to teach them that Humanism of Marxism and I am more empathetic of capitalism’s threats to humanity’s and Marxism are not the evils that the to those around me and the troubles very existence? • current capitalist, exploitative system they face. I now find myself trying to Eugene Gogol FETISH OF PROPERTY VS. portrays in their propaganda. As I am learn to be part of the solution rath- Mexico City HUMANITY AND THE PLANET unable to send any funds, do you ac- er than continuing to be part of the *** cept donations of stamps? Prisoner problem. I am an indigent inmate in “New moments in Marx form trail Trump’s Littleton, Colo. a state that refuses to pay the inmates for today” takes up a crucial concept pardon of Editor’s note: We will gladly use who are forced to labor in their farms, for our age of retrogression: “Where Steven and any stamps you send us. or I would gladly pay for my subscrip- and how to begin anew?” and how to Dwight Ham- *** tion. I hope you can find another donor do that as a summation of where your mond is not For the past 20 years I’ve been for my continued subscription. Thank world is at. This is a necessary ques- really about deeply involved in the punk rock scene, you for helping me find a new path in tion when almost every hour Trump- the two men, dedicated and devoted to Anarchist life, an infinitely more healthy philos- ism announces some new horror that who burned and left-wing causes, against author- ophy. Prisoner will decimate one section or another public land. (In one case, after illegal- ity, human rights violations, sexism, Marianna, Ark. of the population. Helpful was where ly poaching deer, Steven ordered his racism, nationalism, imperialism, she wrote that “movements from prac- cronies to “light up the whole coun- capitalism, homophobia, organized tice demand beginning anew,” and try on fire.”) It is a signal of support TO OUR READERS: Can religion, private property, inheritance how important self-development is to for the “wise use” anti-environmental you donate $5 for a prisoner who and the family unit! I offer my service that. The new movements, or new it- ideology linking industry front groups cannot pay for a subscription in any ways. Prisoner erations of the women’s, youth, labor, with militias and Christian Right fun- to N&L? It will be shared with Wrightville, Ga. and Black movements—are calling damentalists, whose basic tenet is the many others. A donation of $8 *** for a more comprehensive movement sacredness of private property (owned pays for a subscription plus the Thank you for such a wonderful of theory to meet them. Not everyone by white people, anyway) and the news source. I do not have much choice Pelican Bay Hunger Strikers thinks the Democratic Party will solve right to exploit and privatize public of news so I appreciate alternative pamphlet to be sent to a prisoner. all our problems, and people have a lands without environmental or safety views and coverage on important is- Prisoners are eligible to continue sense of history—we’ve seen fascism restrictions. sues such as those your paper covers. I their free subscriptions when they before. 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money to wrestle a Black woman out Urszula Wislanka for News & Letters Stand, Odd Thomas, The Dresden Files) disap- of the clutches of Alameda County pear on a daily basis. No joke, Crime and Pun- Jail just a few days ago. Below are ex- ishment is a banned book here! Marx, Jung, Ni- cerpts from some of those who spoke: etzsche, Twain, banned. Books on technology Gina Clayton, Executive Direc- and medicine are banned for “imminent threat tor of Essie Justice Group: We are to the safety and security of the institution.” here because at this very moment, And we have zero recourse. Right now I’m at- thousands of people sit behind bars, Gina Clayton of Essie Justice speaking at the Mothers’ Day rally in Oakland, Calif. tempting to help the Wiccans, the Asatrus and away from their families, their jobs, the Thelemites keep their religious material. the embrace of the people who love them, simply be- of them. And so was the woman we bailed out last If the head of the mailroom, Mrs. Patricia Keene, cause they can’t afford to pay their bail. There are Friday. were allowed to read outgoing mail, you wouldn’t be 46,000 people across California who are right now Women lose custody of their children while they reading this now. incarcerated pre-trial. We are one of two countries in can’t make bail. Families are torn apart because they I’ve attempted to get the men around here to “sit the world that has a pretrial justice system that cares can’t bail out. The system of white supremacy is dev- down” for their first amendment rights. “Nothing’s more about profits than it cares about people. astating Black communities everywhere. It is time to going to change, so what’s the point?” is the common An exploitative $2 billion bail bonds industry end it! refrain. Single-person hunger strikes get you put in profits off of taking people’s freedom. This is an in- Judy, mother of the woman bailed out by Es- the hole, you lose your good time and nothing ever dustry that learned the ins and outs of bounty hunt- sie Justice on May 4, said: I am a Black mom. My happens. The very few times censorship has been ing from slave catching; of controlling Black people’s challenged from the outside, they usually back down, movements from slavery. And you know who has been daughter was incarcerated for a crime she did not footing the bill? Black women. commit. They showed a picture of the person who did but getting that accomplished is near impossible. Seventy-five percent of women in local jails are commit it, and he was very tall. She is 5’ 2”. The bail My name is Fredd and I stand where others women of color. And for Transgender women, partic- system makes no sense. $50,000 is a lot of money. can’t or won’t. —Fredd ularly Black Transgender women, not making bail is How many of you have $50,000 in your pocket right a matter of life or death. now? I got a call from Essie Justice. They said they Nearly one in two Black women today has a were going to stay until she was released. I’ve never VOICES FROM THE INSIDE OUT family member who is incarcerated. Because in heard of anything like that! But then I heard she was continued from p. 1 places like California, where the average bail going to be released! It made it real. beyond the dictates of capital faces an array of amount is $50,000, it is women who are putting Jasmine from Young Women’s Freedom Cen- potential setbacks. The issue that Gilman-Opalsky up our homes for collateral, handing over car ter said: In Black families, women are the founda- is presenting bears serious consideration because it titles, scraping together resources and going tion. When daddy is not there, you depend on your into debt, to buy our loved ones’ freedom. is an indispensable element to achieving freedom. mom. And daddy is usually not there. So what hap- From training in community, to visits with There is the need for large mass participation in the pens when mom is not there either? I’ve been in jail a elected officials, to sponsoring legislation, to con- struggle for humanity’s freedom. An obvious chal- vening grassroots groups across the state, to bail- couple of times. I could not afford bail, which meant I lenge for revolutionaries is imagination. ing out Black women—the women of Essie Justice could not be with my kids. We sit in jail for no reason In looking at the Occupy Movement, Gilman- Group have been hard at work leading the fight to but the color of our skin. Opalsky gives a concise view of the logic of capital, #endmoneybail. A representative from TGIJP said: I am here and the demands it places on the majority of people’s Please donate to nomoremoneybail.org. today to talk about saving Black mamas, and espe- social activity. Was it an impractical idea for those A member of Essie Justice spoke about her cially Trans Black mamas. When legislation crimi- movements not to list their demands? He answered life: With my husband behind bars, the burden is all nalizes sex work, which is real work, when cities turn by stating the impracticality of listing their demands because capital will invariably view them as being on me to run the household, raise our children, earn to homeless sweeps, like they do in San Francisco, co-optable at best or irrational at worst. an income while trying to educate myself. I know that rather than increase social safety nets to address root I am not alone. Women make up 80% of family mem- causes of homelessness, when survivors of domestic ALL HUMAN RELATIONS TRANSFORMED bers primarily responsible for covering court costs. violence are treated as criminals and put into cages, At the core of the people’s demands is not only On average they incur $13,000 in fees and fines from many, many Black mamas, many, many Black wom- the questioning of existing social relations, but also the court system. The California median bail is five the implicit call for the refiguring them so as to en- en, many Trans Black women end up in cages. times the national average. Those who cannot afford compass human beings as the true social entities of Bail reform is life and death for Trans people, for to pay bail have to wait. Or they take loans with high society. Thus it is important to make clear the peo- interest rates. The predatory bail system uses the gender non-conforming people. In order to decrease ple’s ability to comprehend the necessity of a phi- love Black women have for their children to persuade our folks’ risk of facing physical violence, sexual as- losophy of liberation—that is, in practice, the per- women to put up their homes that they have had in sault or solitary confinement, which is deemed to be manency of revolution, which he refers to as never their families for generations, auction off their cars for their own “protection,” we need to be able to get settling for an end state. and sell any of their valuable possessions they may our folks out. We need to end money bail! In addition the reader is presented with a view have had in their families. If my husband had been of what has taken place in Mexico that could be of offered bail, unfortunately we would have had to tell use in the current moment of Trumpism. The Za- him, “we ain’t got it.” Inhuman Iraqi patista Movement has been successful in combatting Another Essie Justice member said: I am the organized lies against it by the Mexican govern- here today to call for an end to the money bail system ment and other capitalist forces via social media. that harms us all. There are hundreds of other Black rush to judgment It is in the final pages of the book that women in jail today we want to bail out. The bail Iraq’s court system has been blind to the ele- Gilman-Opalsky draws together the theoreti- system is a form of hostage-taking. ment of coercion as they rush to put to death not cal threads of philosophical thoughts into a My arrest was a nightmare. The first thing on only ISIS fighters but their hostages as well. On one cogent advocacy for the indispensable need my mind were my children. Bail was not an option, April afternoon, two hours was all a judge needed to to grasp the implicit content of philosophy realistically. So I sat in jail for 10½ months before my convict 14 women who had been rounded up from ar- emerging from below. The analyzing of revolts case was tried and I was released. I lost contact with eas liberated from ISIS and sentence them to hang. for the mere purpose of gaining insight as to my children for months. And then I lost hope. Eighty Their children, the youngest two years old, will be why revolts happen is passé. percent of women in jail are mothers. 80%! I was one left orphaned. When revolts are viewed in the context of a Two of the women on trial, Amina Hassan philosophical work, it opens up a broader view for and Nazli Ismail, both from Turkey, pleaded understanding them and, at the same time, informs ‘The End of Policing’ with the judge that they were forced to come us of the whys. The “whys” also speak to reason, si- Olney Spring, Colo.—I recently obtained the best, to Syria by their husbands, fleeing for the multaneously the source of what will determine the most revealing book on the nature and viciousness of Iraqi border after an air strike killed their praxis. husbands. They were ignored. “policing” in Amerika today. It is The End of Policing ‘PRAXIS’ CRITICAL-PRACTICAL ACTIVITY Quoted in the New York Times, Belkis Wille of by Alex S. Vitale (Verso, 2017). To quote from it: “The “Praxis” is in distinction from the general mean- Human Rights Watch, who was present at the 14 tri- reality is that the police exist primarily as a system ing that is often said to be “action.” Defining it as als, said that in addition to women, “cooks, medical for managing and even producing inequality by sup- simply “action,” Raya Dunayevskaya stated, robs workers, everyone is given the death penalty….the pressing social movements and tightly managing the praxis of its theoretical and critical dimensions. presumption is because you are foreign and you were behaviors of poor and nonwhite people: those on the Thus it is quite necessary that praxis be seen as the in ISIS territory, there is no need to provide more losing end of economic and political arrangements” critical-practical activity; in essence practice that is evidence.” (p. 34). also a form of theory. It is that specific manner of The chapter “School-to-Prison pipeline” JUSTICE PUT ON HOLD interpreting revolts that should give us the method- tells how many public, and especially charter Besides moral concerns, the executions have ological approach to move toward creating a new so- schools, are basically mini-prisons, patrolled horrible political ramifications. Insofar as Iraqi law ciety based on the best of humanist principles. by cops carrying automatic weapons. Kids metes out the same punishment to terrorist fighters Specters of Revolt is an attempt to generate and who “get in trouble” such as talking back to as it does to those who finance or otherwise assist advance revolutionary thinking, so it should be giv- teachers or using prohibited cell phones are them, there is little incentive for the government to en a careful read. handcuffed by a cop and charged. If they “talk actually investigate serious crimes such as systemic back” to him they are charged with resisting rape, slavery, and genocide. No higher punishment News & Letters arrest. Off to juvy court for them. Naturally, is available anyway. Countries where armed ideo- A donation of $8 to students who are Black and Brown are the logical groups still hold territory, for example Nige- pays for a subscription plus the largest group receiving “notice” by the cops. ria and Burkina Faso, have cause to worry that the Pelican Bay Hunger Strikers So get this book. Read it. Then pass it on to oth- frenetic pace of executions in Iraq will serve as a bad ers who need a wake-up call as to the world in which precedent, dooming efforts that might otherwise en- pamphlet to be sent to a prisoner. they live: the police state Amerika. —John Taylor tice fighters to desert their posts. —B.B. JULY-AUGUST 2018 NEWS & LETTERS – www.newsandletters.org Page 9 Stop genocide against Syrians Erdoğan tightens Chicago—Free Syria activists gathered on Chi- Saudi massacres against civilians in Yemen cago’s Magnificent Mile on June 8 within sight of and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netan- authoritarian rule Trump Tower in a vigil opposing the ongoing geno- yahu’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza. continued from p. 1 cide against civilians who While we know that has attacked any genuine discussion of autonomy, are ignored by most of the our display of banners, self-rule, or the possibility of a Kurdish state, as world. One Palestinian far from Syria, falls short “terrorism” and treason. All such talk and action added his Palestinian flag of halting counter-revo- he counts as support for the Kurdish Workers Party to our Free Syria flag and lutionary attacks around (PKK), the armed militant Kurdish organization our banners demanding the globe, Chicagoans and that has demanded independence and most recently that the Dictators Inter- passersby who responded autonomy. For Erdoğan, this is anathema. Thus, national stop bombing ci- to our demonstration ex- Selahattin Demirtaş, the pro-Kurdish candidate vilians in Syria, Gaza and pressed their appreciation. for the Turkish presidency, has been jailed for more Yemen. One woman told us she than a year and a half. While the press cov- would be carrying the mes- Erdoğan has sent his troops into Syria to ers Russia hosting the sage of resistance and the fight, not against Bashar al-Assad’s dictator- blood-soaked World Cup, pictures she took back to ship, but against Kurds preserving an inde- Russian President Vladi- Florida. pendent space, the enclave of Afrin, in face of mir Putin’s bombers have, Photo: David Turpin with Donald Trump’s One of our signs pro- Assad’s murderous rule. complicity, killed or driven out of Daraa more than claimed, “You cannot mas- Opposition continues against Erdoğan’s contin- a quarter million civilians, many seeking refuge in sacre an idea of freedom.” But in the face of unre- ual consolidation of power. Significant Parliamen- vain at the closed border of Jordan. strained campaigns against civilians, we need as tary opposition forces were elected, including Kurds. The free hand that Syrian President many Americans, Syrians (and Yemenis and Ga- Furthermore, there is the country’s dire economic Bashar al-Assad and Putin have had, using zans) to take part when that idea of freedom propels situation. The authoritarian rule of Erdogan will not bombs and chlorine gas against patients and revolution again. —Marxist-Humanist participant have a free hand. —Eugene Walker staff in hospitals and children in schools and other civilian targets in Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta and elsewhere, has only encouraged Trump-Kim ‘peace’ summit threatens masses continued from p. 1 nomic statistics. That is seen in both the precari- about which he cares nothing, whether in his ousness of working-class lives and the buildup of own country or in Kim’s concentration camps, record debt levels higher even than before the 2008 which Trump would just as soon replicate for crisis—including record levels within the past year QUEERNOTES undocumented immigrants and people of col- of total global debt, U.S. household debt, U.S. credit or in North America. card debt, U.S. corporate debt, and U.S. government debt. With a trade war looming, the stage is set for by Elise It is above all shown by the line in the June 12 agreement: “President Trump com- another deep recession. And trade wars can pave the In a terrible reversal, Delaware’s school person- mitted to provide security guaran- way for actual shooting wars. nel must now out Transgender students to their par- tees to the DPRK.” From whom will What makes the crisis total is ents before school personnel can acknowledge their the U.S. protect Kim’s state? From EDITORIAL the fact that it expresses the law gender identity or help them obtain their rights, the U.S., after its own military ma- of motion of capitalism: the motive such as school property being a safe space and access neuvered to keep Trump from bombing North Ko- force of production is the extraction of ever greater to locker rooms that match their gender. This is in a rea? Or from any rising of the North Korean people amounts of unpaid labor from living workers, while blue state with a Democratic governor and secretary against Kim, a potential “destabilization” that has the method of production calls forth ever greater au- of education, who are pushing some of the most anti- long worried both China, South Korea and the U.S.? tomation, including computerization, and relatively Transgender legislation in the U.S. In addition to “security guarantees,” the decreasing living labor. It is the totality of crisis * * * agreement gave China an excuse to ease eco- and the looming sense of no future that creates the A press conference was held in front of the Im- nomic sanctions on North Korea, and Trump ground for the march of fascism. migration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office bestowed upon Kim a suspension of war games CAPITALISM DEMANDS BRUTALITY in Santa Ana, Calif., for Gay asylum seeker and de- with South Korea and, not least, what pundits The liberal/conservative establishment laments tainee Udoka Nweke, from Nigeria. Nigeria is one pointed out could only be given once: the le- Trump’s attacks on the old alliances and the old lib- of the most dangerous countries for LGBTQ people. gitimacy conferred on Kim by finally getting eral order since, in their time, they benefited capi- a long-sought summit with a U.S. president. talism and kept the U.S. on top. They fail to under- But the pundits forget that, in return, Trump stand that the new moves, however poorly thought gained legitimacy and normalization—as out, are aimed at benefiting capitalism and keeping was proven well enough when liberals and the U.S. on top in a changed economic-political en- centrists, not to mention “Left” apologists vironment. In place of rules-based trade, which was for North Korea, fell into his trap by practi- always geared toward U.S. supremacy, Trump pre- cally nominating him for a Nobel Peace Prize. fers bullying each country “bilaterally.” Like Kim They castigated anyone who pointed out that Jong-un, Bashar al-Assad, and ISIS, Trump knows Trump was only turning down the heat on his the value of open and not only hidden displays of the own war threats. brutality that has always been central to the capital- While Trump promotes his twisted, racist, capi- ist economic order. talist conception of “national security,” the real ques- Both rulers and masses feel the oppressive tion for him is his own power. He’s not going to turn weight of the lack of a future for them if this around next year and admit that Kim gave up noth- system continues—and fascism presents itself ing in terms of nuclear weapons and missiles; if it as a false alternative. The real opposition to a comes to that, he will simply accuse Kim of treach- new fascist order is seen not in the Democrats, ery and take several steps back down the road to let alone the Republicans distancing them- war. Meanwhile, the administration has said little selves from Trump’s immigration atrocities, about intelligence that North Korea continues to ex- but in the mass outrage without which those A coalition of Nweke’s supporters, including the pand its nuclear weapons production facilities. politicians would not have found their voices; Transgender Law Center’s Black LGBTQIA+/BLMP in the mass resistance that is still plagued by (see “Queer Notes,” N&L, March-April 2018, p. 9), is TRUMP’S AIM: FASCIST WORLD ORDER the false alternatives of electoral politics as working for his release from the deadly Adelanto De- Welcoming that country into a normal capitalist well as of the pseudo-Left whose “anti-imperi- tention Center, where he’s been held for 15 months. relationship with the U.S. would fit perfectly with Trump’s aim of building a fascist world order with alism” brings them alongside Kim, Putin and * * * himself as the leader, which unites his international Assad’s counter-revolution. Lesbian activist Constance Kurt died at the age and domestic actions. For the mass outrage to result in a true alterna- of 81 in May. She and her partner Ruth Berman had While he has been busy supporting anti- tive—an emancipatory, revolutionary transforma- won domestic partnership benefits for all New York immigrant fascists in several European coun- tion creating the foundations of a new human soci- City employees in 1994 when they successfully sued tries—and Russian President Vladimir Putin ety—it needs to coalesce not only with all the forces the City Board of Education. They also started chap- has been doing the same, only quietly—Trump of revolution but with a philosophy of revolution. ters of Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians and confronted top European leaders at the G7 How to contact Gays (PFLAG) in Florida and New York, and served summit. He objected to the phrase “rules- as co-chairs of New York chapters of the Lesbian based international order” in the G7 communi- NEWS & LETTERS COMMITTEES Rights Task Force. qué that he later refused to sign, reflecting his CHICAGOCHICAGO LOSLOS ANGELES ANGELES * * * efforts to tear up the old order and replace it 228 South Wabash, #230 MEETINGS Aryman Menem, a Syrian Gay man, is founder with a more open brandishing of U.S. military Chicago, IL 60604 Alternate Sundays, 6:00 PM of Tea and Talk for Syrian LGBT, a safe space for and economic power, which had of course been Phone 312-431-8242 Echo Park United Methodist Syrian LGBT persons in Istanbul, Turkey, who es- the basis of the old order. Trump’s moves are Fax 312-431-8252 Church, 1226 N. Alvarado caped Bashar al-Assad’s Syria and ISIS. Tea and rooted in both the weakness and the strength MEETINGS (North of Sunset, side door) Talk provides secure housing, refugee services, jobs of U.S. capitalism. Call for Information Phone 213-627-7086 and psychosocial support. Menem has decided to While U.S. imperialism remains pre-eminent DETROIT stay in Istanbul, even though it too is dangerous for both economically and militarily, its decay is mani- P.O. Box 27205 OAKLANDOAKLAND Queer people. He knows of one Gay and three Trans- fested in both the rising competition from China Detroit, MI 48227 P.O. Box 3345, Oakland, CA gender members of his group who were murdered. and, more importantly, the underlying failure to [email protected] 94609 recover fundamentally from the Great Recession [email protected] * * * MEETINGS despite ten years of official recovery and rosy eco- About 8,000 marchers participated in Baltic Sundays, 2:00 PM MEETINGS Pride’s Pride Parade in Riga, Latvia, with its theme Write for information Sundays, 6:30 PM of “See Diversity! See Freedom!” Many supporters Become a bundle dealer for News & Letters ! FLINT,FLINT, MI MI Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library watched the peaceful march, which also drew pro- Sell News & Letters at your newsstand, book- P.O. Box 7676, Flint, MI 48507 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland store, demonstrations or other venues. We will testers, including a man arrested for throwing a INTERNET smoke bomb. Tallinn, Estonia, hosted Baltic Pride send you bulk orders of five or more copies for 25 in 2017, which will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania in cents each. Distribute the only Marxist-Humanist EMAILEmail WORLDWORLDWIDE WIDE WEBWEB [email protected] www.newsandletters.org 2019. paper in the U.S. Page 10 NEWS & LETTERS – www.newsandletters.org JULY-AUGUST 2018 Millions denounce Trump’s immigration abuses continued from p. 1 long-standing policy in December. Conditions of More than 750 U.S. cities and towns held march- pills, practices that lawyers claim to have seen at confinement induce miscarriages. Rape and sexual es on June 30 demanding family reunification. The other facilities. The medications make children le- abuse are widespread, occurring along the way to temperature exceeded 105°F at the White House, thargic and dizzy. the border, in the crossing process, and in deten- but more than 30,000 people still demonstrated in More than 10,000 children are locked up in tion; yet federal authorities make access to abortion Washington, including Monette Dawson. Recount- some 100 facilities in 14 extremely difficult for ing one phase of slavery, she told The Guardian: “My states, most of them run Urszula Wislanka for News & Letters women in custody. Roxa- ancestors were separated from their children going at a profit by private na Hernández, Trans- back 250 years. I wasn’t around to stand with them companies. Often, these gender asylum seeker then, so I am standing with them now.” (See articles are the same places that from Honduras, died in on this page and p. 11.) housed unaccompanied New Mexico last May Racism in government policy impels individu- minors since the Obama after being placed in a als to action, as it has been doing for centuries. The Administration greatly freezing cold cell. Medi- activism of late June 2018 was made possible by expanded grants in 2014. cal staff had not checked billions of human decisions, including those of pho- While a few children in on her for a week. tographers, journalists and whistleblowers who ex- are cared for in foster Some countries posed acts of inhumanity. Human history is driven homes, more are locked criminally punish Queer by these individuals. But time is of the essence. In in staffed residential people, but agents who order to seize the future from Trump and his flat- houses, trailer parks, do “credible fear” hear- terers, ordinary people must keep on speaking and or recycled Wal-Marts. ings and final asylum acting. The newest facilities are cases are not all sympa- quickly erected tent cit- thetic or humble. The ies in hot climates with judge who heard LGBT- portable bathrooms out- ally Che Eric Sama’s L.A. is fighting Trump side. Three shuttered case denied that he had Los Angeles—In June, this city was one of hun- prisons in Texas were suffered “enough per- dreds in mass protests against Trump’s “zero tol- rebranded as so-called secution” in Cameroon erance” agenda against migrant refuges looking “tender-age shelters” after he reported being for asylum. On June 30, over 30,000 mostly white where children younger attacked with a knife. youths in white T-shirts, Latinx families and low- than 13 could receive wage workers, and Black and mixed race couples ANTI-IMMIGRANT gathered at Grand Park downtown protesting the special care and atten- POLICY WORLD- tion, a breathtaking separation of 3,000 children from their families WIDE contradiction when the criminalized for seeking refuge. A woman makes her views known in Families Belong Together U.S. policy reverber- separation itself was the Under the banner “Keep Families Togeth- demonstration in Oakland, Calif. (see article page 11). ates through Europe and abuse being suffered. er,” signs read: “Who Steals Children?—Boko beyond. Racism and xe- All children are pre- Haram and the U.S. Government!” “Seeking nophobia are on the rise as the world economy still vented from hugging. Staff abuse, such as throwing Asylum Is Not a Crime,” “Kidnapping Is Not a reels from effects of the 2008 crash. Worker insecu- children into walls, has been reported. At least two Policy, It’s a Crime,” and “You Can’t Go Back rity and the increased extraction of surplus value sites have failed to screen staff using proper back- to Change the Beginning, but You Can Start from workers certainly boosted the stock market, but ground checks. In 2014, the Houston Chronicle re- Where You Are and Change the End.” Democrats with two years of undivided government ported on the Shiloh facility’s history of using pain- Among the speakers were Senator Kamala Har- and two presidential terms failed to take actions ful physical restraints on children. In 2011, a child ris and Congresswoman Maxine Waters. At a July necessary to pull workers out of wage stagnation. there was killed when staff tied him up and left him 1 press conference to support Waters, Pastor Shane Looking for another answer, a startling number of in a closet. At least two teenagers have successfully Scott was one of 20 to 30 Black pastors from South- them resorted to the putrid anti-humanism of blam- escaped from facilities in Chicago and Tucson. ern California. She stated: “The policy is reminiscent ing the outsider, blaming people of color. of days of slavery when it was legal for families to Since a 2014 incident where children were Meanwhile, a record rate of refugees have left be ripped apart and sold and for others to profit on released to traffickers who posed as parents their homes because of war and persecution: 68.5 Black and Brown bodies....We call for the end of the and secretly forced the children to work at an million people worldwide, including 6.3 million Syr- cruel punishment of separating children from their Ohio egg farm, the Office of Refugee Resettle- ians, 2.6 million Afghans, 1.4 million South Suda- parents.” ment (ORR) has required DNA testing to verify nese, 1.2 million Rohingya expelled from Burma Halfway through the rally, the protesters parentage. In at least one instance, a child was (Myanmar), and 1 million from Somalia. marched to the federal detention building to support willfully abandoned by his father when a DNA A new government in Italy turns away the detained migrant refugees. test came back negative. boatloads of African refugees, while Austra- Supposing families will now again be detained ‘ABOLISH ICE! ABOLISH PRIVATE PRISONS!’ lia intercepts boats leaving from Southeast together in a jail setting, they must be released On June 22, hundreds of protesters with the Asia and forces them to land in Nauru. World within 20 days, in accordance with a 1997 court case “ICE out of LA coalition” gathered against Trump’s leaders take a cue from Trump when claiming that prevented the Clinton Administration from in- attack on primarily Central American asylum- they put people in danger to save their lives. definitely detaining immigrant children. The Trump seeking migrants at the downtown detention build- Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma (Myanmar) in- Administration tried to get a court to overturn the ing, where many immigrants are incarcerated. Signs sists news articles about the burning down of 20-day limit as plans develop to create tent cities on read “Abolish ICE!” “End Family Incarceration,” Rohingya villages are fake. All this while the Texas military bases that will confine tens of thou- “Abolish All Borders” and “You Are on Indian Land.” U.S. Supreme Court blocks citizens from Syria, sands of family members. An immigrant from Sri Lanka stated: “The Somalia, and five other countries, upholding historical war between India and Pakistan was pro- WHY FAMILIES FLEE Trump’s travel ban. Sarah, a one-year-old So- voked by colonizers. This is a war on people of color.” These families are most often fleeing violence mali girl displaced to Ethiopia, will not be re- On the same day, several hundred protest- worse than the risks they face in crossing the bor- united with her father in Kentucky. “She will ers, also with “ICE out of LA coalition,” pro- der. Their motives range from government repres- be judged based on the security of the country tested Trump’s executive order to detain im- sion, to starvation, to escaping gangs, to fleeing (Somalia), but she’s never been there.” migrant families indefinitely. They called for abusive husbands. Governments, supported by the Trump calls refugees “animals” who “infest” the abolition of the private prison industry U.S., abuse their own people (see “Uprising in Hon- the nation. The words are reminiscent of the way and all prisons and for the abolishment of ICE. duras,” March-April 2018 N&L, p. 11) and have been Jews were discussed by Hitler in Germany. Ron- Even before the massive national protests on completely unrestrained in killing and jailing their ald Mortensen, Trump’s nominee to head the State June 30, on June 14 several thousand people gath- opponents. “This country [the U.S.] has a history of Department Bureau of Population, Refugees, and ered at MacArthur Park to protest separating moth- colonization, a history that involves the extraction Migration, lied outrageously when he wrote in The ers from their children at the Mexico/U.S. border by of resources,” said Nigerian immigrant Hugo Cara. Hill: “Most illegal aliens routinely commit felonies. U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “And so naturally, people seek refuge in countries The myth of the law-abiding illegal alien is just Organized by MarchAndRallyLA.com, this pro- that aren’t war-torn because of what [the U.S.] did to that: a myth.” Trump plays some groups of people test was part of the national protests in support of make their homes war-torn.” off against others, at times making supportive com- immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S. Over half the In late 2016, a mother made the harrowing ments about young people brought across the border protesters were white activists in support of Latinx decision to bring her daughter and sons to the as children, but in September he canceled the DACA migrants primarily from Central America. U.S. after men from a gang killed her husband program, which shelters them from deportation. Signs read “Keep Families Together,” “Migra- for refusing to let one of them “marry” his DACA DECIDE ALL NEED PROTECTION tion Is a Human Right,” “Defend DACA” and “Stop daughter, code for making her a sex slave. Last Young undocumented activists at UCLA and ICE, Stop Separating Families, Trump Should Be May, the girl was nearly forced to go back to elsewhere are rethinking discourse and slogans. Charged with Crimes against Humanity.” El Salvador except for a stay of deportation is- They’ve begun to specify a phenomenon they call Among the speakers was a woman representing sued by the Supreme Court. After Wayner Ber- the “Dreamer narrative” and reject its exclusivity the Alliance of Feminists Fighting Fascism, Impe- duo was shot by gang members but managed in deciding who deserves dignity. Dulce, a young rialism and Racism, an organization for immigrant to get away, he tried to enter the U.S. from undocumented lawyer in private practice, explains: women’s rights. She stated: “I’m fed up with this gov- Mexico with a wife and child. They could not “I’m tired of having to say I’ve graduated from this ernment that abuses our children. Immigrant wom- get past U.S. agents who stood in the middle school and I’ve done this, because as a human being, en and children are people. Family separation due of the bridge, physically blocking them from I should have legal protections as well. I should be to deportation results in fear of not coming home to stepping across the border. “They always say protected under our Constitution as well.” our children, family and community. We experience come back later.” On June 28, a Senate office building in depression, anger, anxiety and pain.” On June 11, later became too late. Attorney Washington, D.C., was filled with almost 600 After the speeches we marched several miles to General Jeff Sessions announced no more victims of women who denounced the mass detention the downtown federal detention center where un- gang violence or domestic violence would be granted of immigrants. They chanted, “We care!” and documented migrants are held and chanted there: asylum. (Asylum courts are administrative courts “abolish ICE!” The push to abolish a 15-year- “When our children are under attack, what do we subordinate to Sessions.) In doing so, he overturned old agency is reflected in protests at ICE offic- do? Stand up, fight back! When immigrant rights the asylum of a Guatemalan woman whose husband es in dozens of cities. In Los Angeles and Dal- are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight burned her with paint thinner. las, demonstrators blocked driveways where back!” —Basho WOMEN FLEEING ABUSE ARE ABUSED detainees are driven in and out. At ICE offices Medical negligence of women in ICE custody in Detroit, Portland, Ore., and other cities, ac- Readers: Do you have a story to tell? Write is rampant, especially pregnant women, who were tivists formed protest encampments, vowing to or email us! See contact information, p. 9. generally released on bond until Sessions ended stay until the facility is closed down. JULY-AUGUST 2018 NEWS & LETTERS – www.newsandletters.org Page 11 Demonstrations for refugees cover the entire U.S. “occupation” in front of the San Francisco ICE of- ‘Families Belong Together’—Chicago 23. The fact that protests like these are popping up from the grassroots all over the country reflects fices, this disgusting lack of caring is awakening a the breadth and depth of outrage over the Trump new humanism. administration’s separation of children from their —Marxist-Humanist, Oakland parents at the border. In Rogers Park between 300 and 600 of us œ walked down Morse Avenue from the el stop ICE challenged in Portland and then up Clark Street to Touhy Park, a Portland, Ore.—By June 17, as news spread of bor- popular gathering place for people of all races, der agents unjustly separating and detaining fami- many of them Latinx, often engaged in soc- lies throughout the U.S., Occupy ICE in Portland, cer games. The support from pedestrians and Oregon, was starting. It began as a few dedicated drivers on Clark Street was overwhelming, people putting up tents and grew day by day. It now with more friendly honking than I’ve ever seen stands as an encampment on the railroad tracks at a protest. right behind the ICE building in Southwest Port- Many people carried handmade signs, including land. It has resisted multiple attempts at destruc- “Zero tolerance for family separation,” “Only MON- tion by heavily militarized Department of Homeland STERS keep children in cages,” “We belong to each Security agents and federal police. other / RISE UP defend the children,” “I really DO With vigils being held frequently, Occupy care, do you?” “Just following orders built Dachau,” ICE protestors invite sympathizers to come and “Families. Together. Free. Resistencia y Liber- and show support for those impacted by unjust tad!” ICE detention. A “F*** ICE” balloon floated Marchers were of all races and ages, from young high above a nearby building and candles and children to elderly, including quite a few parents flowers lined the altar that sat on the steps in pushing strollers. The spirit was passionate and de- front of a Tesla dealership near the camp. The termined, and the event was energizing and restor- mood was solemn but communal. A member of ative, preparing us for the citywide “Families Belong the encampment began by speaking about why Together” march. —Marxist-Humanist Participant they were there and committed to abolishing œ ICE. They had seen the power of collective ac- tion and prayer in other Occupy movements Chicago—“Families Belong Together!” was the Battle Creek, Michigan, demonstrates! and they wanted to see it here. rallying cry for 60,000 people who protested in Chi- Battle Creek, Mich.—I attended a demonstration A musician played his shekere as his wife cago June 30. We knew it was going to be big when downtown against Trump’s policy of separating ref- passed out lavender she had collected that day. Oth- most of the passengers on the el train were headed ugee children from their parents at the (in)”justice ers spoke about how their homelands of El Salvador for the rally, and one of them said she had seen the center,” i.e., jail. There were about 200 people there. and Ecuador had been negatively impacted by U.S. previous train jam-packed with protesters. The train It was the biggest demo I have been to in Battle imperialism but were rarely spoken of except when operator, an African-American woman, surprised us Creek since about...forever. Even during the Viet- people discussed their favorite coffee blend. A Trans by announcing not the next stop, but her feelings nam War, all the big demonstrations were in Kalam- woman from an island nation called out all the white about the demonstrators. She said, “You are dem- azoo, 30 miles to the west, which has a large college people in the audience, saying whites need to stop onstrating even though the humidity makes the tem- student population. The demonstration was called being so nice to police officers and federal agents perature feel over 100 degrees!” She expressed her by VOCES, a Latinx group. who are trained to kill people of color with impunity. dismay over Trump’s politics and thanked us pro- —Retired postal worker There was a pall cast over the event as DHS fusely for protesting. Those in our car exploded with agents presided silently over the vigil, standing on spontaneous applause, which we wished she could œ the roof of the ICE building with their guns pointed have heard. Child-led demonstration in Bay Area at the crowd. From where we were sitting, they were Events were also held in over 700 other Oakland, Calif.—On June 30, tens of thousands simply an outline illuminated by the sunset. But we cities and towns across the U.S. and some in in the Bay Area demonstrated against President knew why they were there and what they were do- other countries. Despite sweltering heat, huge Trump’s cruel, criminal and racist separation of ing. —Liz Fraser crowds gathered in Washington, D.C., New York City, Los Angeles and other cities, includ- ing big turnouts in border cities from Texas to California. YOUTH IN ACTION Many families came out in Chicago, of all dif- by Buddy Bell ferent ages and races, most with handmade signs. In Delhi, nearly 1,000 college-age youth jammed Speakers included children of immigrants and moth- a street in front of the Staff Selection Commission ers of detained children. It was clear that protesters (SSC) when official exam questions were found on were united in passionately opposing the separation social media Feb. 28. Despite government efforts of families at the border and the caging of children, to close down train stations, bathrooms and inter- and in the sense that the country is going in a hor- net reception near the area, the protest went on. rific direction. By March 6, an investigation was ordered, but 500 As Rachel, a 20-year-old college student, told students remained camped out, demanding that all News & Letters: “I came today because this has been tainted exams be repeated. Deepak Prajapati, 26, happening too much in our country. I don’t agree said: “My father is a farmer, and I have taken a loan with the idea of separating children from their fami- from friends for extra classes. I have also spent three lies. If I were one of those children, I would have been

Urszula Wislanka for News & Letters years preparing for the exams, but some students terrified. Those children are no different than me; it get through them on the basis of money power and doesn’t matter where they came from or what they by cheating. It is demoralizing.” Protesters called a look like, they are the same as any other child and temporary stop after 18 days of scorching sun but should not be separated from their families. What 3,000 came back on March 31 to also demand the Trump is doing is cruel and racist and I’m totally resignation of the SSC director and that Prime Min- against this.” ister Modi provide sufficient jobs for unemployed Rachel’s friend, Lydia, said that she was at the youth. Police chased and attacked the youth with demonstration because: “My boyfriend came here il- sticks, arresting 200. legally when he was two years old, and if he had come families at the border. Demonstrators gathered in * * * now he might be sitting in a cage, which is frighten- Oakland, San Francisco and at the County Deten- Students at Michigan State University in East ing to him and to me. He is in total shock. I’m here tion Facility in Richmond used by ICE. Lansing held a rally on March 5, in which more than for him and his family, some who came here illegally, A unique “Families Belong Together” rally of 500 people stood in opposition to Richard Spencer, and everyone else because this is just wrong! Every about a thousand at Oakland Lakeside Park was a speaker of the Alt-Right movement. In an action day my friend lives in fear that he is going to be taken initiated by a ten-year-old girl, Kaia Marbin, who organizers described as self-defense against Spen- away and that shouldn’t be the case. I’m worried for shared her distress with her mother over a photo of cer’s advocacy of genocide and hate crimes, several all these people.” a crying child at the border. When her mother, Jyothi demonstrators locked arms to form chains between a A young Black man, Taylor, told us: “I came Marbin, explained to her what was happening at the parking lot and a pavilion where Spencer was about here to protest against family separations and this border, Kaia organized this “kid-led” rally. to speak. Like a game of “Red Rover,” they tried to really draconian policy against immigrants. I’m in Kaia and other young people spoke, including prevent the entry of attendees but were pushed by opposition to the current system of capitalism and the Evelyn, who said this has been happening for years. police on bikes. When Spencer declined to appear, way our government is set up, especially the current She related a heart-wrenching account of trying to the event was cancelled. administration. Any protest against Trump is worth keep a distant, loving connection with her father, checking out. I talk to a lot of friends outside this * * * who was taken away from her in an ICE raid. The After Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in- country and they’re more aware of what the govern- troduced pension and social security cuts while ment is doing and not so much aware of the opposi- rally brought out many families who don’t ordinarily increasing a payroll tax, university students held tion. They think the opposition is only by radicals, demonstrate. a street protest in the capital, Managua, on April but it also happens by people towards the center, it Part of the activity was youth painting their own 18. Student Pablo Sánchez told Al Jazeera: “I’m in- is happening by all sorts of people. There are people signs, with statements like “Stop Pretending Your dignant that my grandparents will receive 5% less fighting against this system that really care; we don’t Racism is Patriotism,” “Where’s Your Humanity?” of their already anemic pension….That’s not money all just support everything our government does.” “Families Belong in Communities, Not Cages” and By the second After the rally at Daley Plaza, the crowd “Zero Tolerance for Child Abuse.” From a Japanese- being lent, that’s money they paid in.” day of growing protests, government forces opened marched to the Immigration and Customs Enforce- American family came the message “Never Again, fire, and about 200 demonstrators were besieged in- ment office, where several set up tents, as has been No Prison Camps.” side a cathedral. In light of this, students took over done in Portland, Ore., and other cities. Trump declared that his political opponents several university buildings, barricading themselves —Participants want immigrants to “infest” the U.S. This assumes human beings are vermin, when in fact they are inside. Ortega revoked the cuts on June 22, but by œ families seeking asylum, often already traumatized, then protesters were demanding his resignation escaping extreme violence and economic depriva- over government crackdowns whose death toll was ‘Families belong together’—Rogers Park tion. In many ways U.S. policies were implicated in the hundreds by July. The country is now awash Chicago—Hundreds of people marched in neigh- in creating those conditions. As seen in an ongoing in roadblocks and general strikes occurring from borhood immigrants’ rights protests here on June León to Matagalpa to Masaya. Page 12 NEWS & LETTERS – www.newsandletters.org JULY-AUGUST 2018

WORLD IN VIEW What’s next for Nicaragua? They did so with popular participation, but often in and the creation of public-private partnerships that by Eugene Walker tension with their insistence on top-down control. guaranteed lucrative business to the private sector— Nicaragua is in deep crisis. In early April, uni- They did this while enduring murderous as- capitalism at the expense of the public treasury. At versity students and environmentalists protested the same time Ortega’s rhetoric con- against the government’s failure to act decisively tinued to be “anti-imperialist.” against wildfires in the Indio Maíz biological re- The concrete reality of life serve. They called themselves the autoconvocados and labor came to a head, with (the self-assembled). the massive protests and Orte- DEMONSTRATIONS AGAINST ORTEGA ERUPT ga’s murderous response. Much At the same time, President Daniel Ortega had of the international Left contin- imposed drastic pension “reform” without consulta- ues its knee-jerk defense of Orte- tion. Pensioners together with students, environ- ga’s dictatorial rule in the name mentalists, feminists, religious leaders, Black and of so-called anti-imperialism. Indigenous activists, journalists, as well as left-wing But as the Portuguese left so- and right-wing opposition groups, coalesced in pro- ciologist Boaventura de Sousa test. Tens of thousands took to the streets. Ortega Santos asks: “Can a government responded violently. Almost 150 have been killed by continue to be called left (and government forces, and thousands injured. even revolutionary) despite fol- An autoconvocados activist, Madelaine Ca- Photo: bacanalnica.com lowing the ideology of neoliberal racas, spoke of their movement: “We trust no Autoconvocados #SOSNicaragua march 100,000 strong on April 24, 2018. capitalism with the conditions it one. In Nicaragua there is no opposition. They imposes and the consequences it saults by U.S. imperialism during the Reagan presi- are all the same….It is all Nicaraguans who generates?” dency and its funding of the Contras, a collection Nicaragua is a deeply divided country. Ortega’s are in the streets. It is no political party, no of counter-revolutionary groups. After a decade of “Sandinismo” has long ago betrayed the ideals it be- liberals, no conservatives, not the CIA. It is an seeking to advance a revolution surrounded by a gan with, and no longer represents a viable alterna- awakening; we are tired of seeing our brothers constant counter-revolution, the Sandinistas lost an tive. The Nicaraguan masses will need to create an killed.” Today, close to four decades after the Sandinis- election and yielded power. emancipatory alternative. tas first came to power, how could Nicaragua arrive SANDINISTA CAPITULATION at a Sandinista leader, Ortega, ordering the shoot- In the years that followed, the Sandinistas, led ing of his own citizens? by Ortega, lost three elections. Finally, in 2006, they Reaction and racism The 1978-79 Revolution, led by the Sandinista won. But what kind of transformation did they un- National Liberation Front (FSLN), ousted the Somo- dergo? Ortega decided the only way to win was to in the ‘new’ Europe za dictatorship. It was a mass rebellion of hundreds make alliances with the opposition—in particular Poland—Tens of thousands of Poles took to the and then thousands of Nicaraguans in urban areas. the Catholic Church and big business. streets to protest their narrow nationalist govern- Once in power the Sandinistas carried out an The first concession to the Church in 2006 was ment’s attempt to purge and replace their Supreme agrarian reform and a literacy campaign, and cre- to pass a law prohibiting all abortions, even in cases Court’s judges. While 27 of the 72 justices were forced ated a public health service, among other things. of rape or danger to the life of the woman. This, in into retirement, some refused to leave. Almost half a country with a high incidence of violence against the justices of the Constitutional Tribunal said that women and children. its workings became politicized and dysfunctional. Gaza, Israel and Trump Then came neoliberalism, with the deregulation Their letter calls into question the functioning of the The aspirations and depravity that the world of the economy, the signing of free trade agreements Tribunal, claiming cases are rigged. witnessed on the split TV screen on May 14 told The protests and crisis within the courts are an everything: On one side were Palestinians in Gaza indication of the ruling Law and Justice Party mov- demonstrating for their right of return and against Colombia’s Election ing toward a deeply authoritarian government. the impossible, vile living conditions they endure The election of right-winger Iván Duque is a Italy—The anti-migrant League party is gov- under Israeli control. On the other side Ivanka real threat to the peace agreement that ended Co- erning Italy in a coalition with the anti-establish- Trump, Jared Kushner and Israel’s Prime Minister lombia’s decades-long war between the government ment 5-Star Movement. Since taking power on June Benjamin Netanyahu were celebrating the opening and the country’s largest guerrilla insurgency, the 1, the new government has instituted new anti- of the American Embassy ordered by U.S. President Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). immigrant policies and closed Italian ports to any Trump to be in Jerusalem. Since protests began on Even though the peace agreement has barely begun ship bringing migrants rescued at sea. March 30, at least 135 Palestinians have been mur- to be implemented, Duque says he will demand revi- Italy even blocked rescuers from reaching one dered by Israeli sharpshooters who targeted medical sions, including eliminating the guarantee of legis- capsized boat, murdering nearly 100 refugees. This workers and youth. Hundreds were wounded. lative seats to FARC, as well as immunity for some despite the fact that immigration is considerably Palestinians, seeking a non-violent way to of their commanders. lower than in previous years. Meanwhile, far-right militantly protest, organized the Great March Duque’s victory came through a right-wing co- Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has been fulminat- of Return rallies. Hamas, which calls for the alition of military, religious, political, bureaucratic, ing against the oppressed Roma minority, calling destruction of Israel, sought to co-opt the dem- financial and commercial as well as agro-industrial for them to be “registered” and their camps to be onstrations. Neither the Palestinian Authority elites. They were all connected in one way or another “bulldozed.” The Roma have been the target of rac- nor Hamas genuinely represent the Palestin- with the presidency of Álvaro Uribe, who waged a ist speech and violence in Italy and other European ian masses. In Israel, citizens need to break violent campaign against FARC that also killed in- countries for years. the grip of right-wing reactionaries leading nocent civilians. He fought vigorously against the Hungary—Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime their occupying country to a dead-end apart- peace agreement. The agreement is supposed to in- minister, has guided his Parliament to pass a series heid state. volve economic transformation, but the Right surely of anti-migrant laws. The laws criminalize the act of Trump’s inflammatory action of moving the U.S. intends to resist or abrogate such a possibility. helping undocumented migrants and create a paral- embassy to Jerusalem is part of his administration’s The one bright spot was that, for the first time, lel court system, which could be used for politically plans to back up Israel’s determination to destroy a Left candidate, Gustavo Petro, was able to enter sensitive cases. The anti-migrant measures were any possibility of creating a viable Palestinian state. the run-off election and gain over 40% of the vote. passed on World Refugee Day. Kushner’s so-called “peace plan,” promised to be Never before has the Left been represented in such Since regaining power in 2010, Orban has con- released soon, will certainly point only to a further a powerful way. Whether such a showing can stem solidated his position by appointing close colleagues denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination a drive for renewed militarism and reactionary con- to key judicial posts and by undermining the inde- and to the continuation of Israel’s deadly occupation. solidation of power remains to be seen. pendence of the media. NEWS AND LETTERS COMMITTEES Who We Are And What We Stand For News and Letters Committees is an The articulation of the relationship be- plores Marx’s body of ideas from his discov- imperative not only to reject what is, but organization of Marxist-Humanists. It has tween the movement from practice which ery of a continent of thought and of revo- to further work out the revolutionary Hu- always stood for the abolition of capitalism, is itself a form of theory and the movement lution in his youth to the “new moments” manist future inherent in the present. The both in its private property form as in the from theory to philosophy is reflected in of his last decade. Written for our time of recreation of Marx’s philosophy as Marxist- U.S., and in its state property form calling Dunayevskaya’s three major works. revolutions in developing countries, the Humanism is recorded in Dunayevskaya’s itself Communist, which appeared as the Marxism and Freedom, from 1776 un- rise of the international women’s liberation archives, The Raya Dunayevskaya Collection— Russian Revolution was transformed into til Today (1958), established the American movement, and global economic crisis, it Marxist-Humanism: A Half-Century of Its World its opposite. That retrogression anticipated roots of Marxism while presenting a com- reveals the absolute challenge to make real Development, deposited at Wayne State Uni- the next stage of development—the age of prehensive attack on present-day Commu- Marx’s “revolution in permanence” as the versity in Detroit and available to all. state-capitalism. We stand for a society of nism, which is a form of state-capitalism. It determinant for the relationship of theory We aim to continue to develop new human relations, what Marx called a re-established Marxism in its original form and practice and as ground for organization. Marxist-Humanism and make it available new Humanism. as “a thorough-going Naturalism or Human- These works spell out the philosoph- to all who struggle for freedom. In oppos- News & Letters was founded in 1955, ism,” while pointing to the new Humanist ic ground of Marx’s Humanism. American ing this capitalist, racist, sexist, heterosex- the year of the Detroit wildcat strikes philosophy expressed by the working class. Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard ist, class-ridden society, we have adopted a against automation and the Montgomery It presented history and theory as emanat- (1963, 1983) concretizes it on the American committee form of organization rather than Bus Boycott against segregation—activities ing from the movement from practice. scene and shows the two-way freedom road any elitist party “to lead.” which signaled a new movement from prac- Philosophy and Revolution: From Hegel to between the U.S. and Africa. We participate in all class and freedom tice that was itself a form of theory. News Sartre and from Marx to Mao (1973), writ- In 1989 News and Letters Commit- struggles, nationally and internationally. As & Letters was created so that the voices of ten after the failed revolts of the 1960s, ar- tees published Dunayevskaya’s original 1953 our Constitution states: revolt could be heard unseparated from the ticulated the integrality of philosophy and philosophic breakthrough—her two letters “It is our aim…to promote the firm- articulation of a philosophy of liberation. revolution as the characteristic of the age on Hegel’s Absolutes—and her 1987 Pre- est unity among workers, Blacks and other Raya Dunayevskaya (1910–1987), and, tracing it historically, caught the link of sentation on the Dialectics of Organization minorities, women, youth and those intel- founder of the body of ideas of Marxist- continuity with the Humanism of Marx. As and Philosophy in The Philosophic Moment of lectuals who have broken with the ruling Humanism, was Chairwoman of News and against the vanguard party, the integration of Marxist-Humanism. bureaucracy of both capital and labor.” We Letters Committees from its founding to dialectics and organization reflects the revo- This body of ideas challenges all those do not separate mass activities from the ac- 1987. Charles Denby (1907–1983), a Black lutionary maturity of the age and the passion desiring freedom to transcend the limita- tivity of thinking. rank-and-file autoworker, author of Indig- for a philosophy of liberation. tions of post-Marx Marxism. In light of the Send for a free copy of the Constitution nant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal, was edi- Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and crises of our nuclear-armed world, climate of News and Letters Committees or see it tor of the paper from 1955 to 1983. Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution (1982) ex- change, and failed revolutions, it becomes on our website: www.newsandletters.org.