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H The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. —Karl Marx H MARCH/APRIL 2017 VOL. 17 NO. 2

A Watershed Election for U.S. Imperialism - Page 2 The Historic Women’s Marches of January 21, 2017 - Page 14 New York Taxi Drivers Take Solidarity Action - Page 21 Trump’s War On Women Women’s March responds to President Trump’s declaration of war on women By Shakaboona

Let’s face it. President Trump’s entire The Women’s March on ened a sleeping giant to begin the presidential election campaign was so Washington, organized by dynamic revival of the women’s movement. misogynistic, sexist, anti-choice, and anti- National Co-Chairs, including Angela So let the dishonest news media women’s rights, that women of America continue to mischaracterize and cast had no other option but to fight back The Women’s March doubt on the success of the Women’s against what can only be called Trump’s March on Washington. You know who declaration of war against women. on Washington is not doubting the potential power of On January 21, 2017, a day after represents the start of the over-one million women protes- Trump’s presidential inauguration, a widespread tors? President Donald Trump, the women responded to President resistance to Donald Republican Party, and the dishonor- Trump’s declaration of war on their able Democratic Party! bodies by marching—a 600,000-strong, Trump’s presidency. standing army of women (and men) —Prison Radio, January 30, 2017 Y. Davis, Gloria Steinem, Carmen protestors on Washington, D.C.; by Write to: fielding over one million women pro- Perez, Tamika Mallory, and Linda Kerry “Shakaboona” Marshall #BE7826 testors at 670 sister marches in cities Sarsour, was a spectacular historical SCI Rockview, Box-A across America; and by fielding an event that will change the political auxiliary force of three million women landscape in years to come and awak- Bellefonte, PA 16823 protestors at 600 sister marches on sev- eral continents around the world. The Women’s March on Washington rep- resents the start of a widespread resis- Introduction from the Editors tance to Donald Trump’s presidency. This issue of Socialist Viewpoint socialism. That’s a very general idea, Immediately after the Women’s has a lengthy analysis by Lynn but it is a logical alternative to the March demonstration, media talking- Henderson that puts the Trump reformists who look for support and heads and news pundits began attempt- presidency in the context of the col- aid within the Democratic Party, or ing to mischaracterize the Women’s lapse of the capitalist system. Marx the Green Party. Neither of these will March with false claims of the march predicted this and it’s been going on do. Neither represents the working having no single message, being divi- for a long time, but it seems to be class. We must have organized, inde- speeding up of late. We are seeing pendent, mass action in the streets sive, and having no clear objective. capitalism in its dying days—which and in the political arena. They made such false claims of the of course, doesn’t mean we’re home Women’s March, despite the fact that This issue also features several free. It’s a choice—socialism or bar- the protestors presented a unified mes- articles about the Women’s March barism—and at this point, we seem sage that they will not allow President and its meaning for a growing move- to be well on the way to barbarism, Trump to roll back hard-won equal ment of resistance to President and large sections of the world prole- rights for women; that one million tariat are already living in conditions Trump and the capitalist political women of differing ethnicities, reli- of barbarism. Understanding this and economic agenda. Significantly, gions, and beliefs, came together in a seems basic to what needs to be done, several prisoners welcomed the unified front to oppose President specifically, a thorough break with Women’s March, showing that uni- Trump’s anti-women’s rights policies the two-party duopoly; the forma- fied mass defiance of oppression is and platform; and that their objectives tion of independent working class welcomed by the most oppressed, are several, but primarily to protect organizations that are thoroughly who understand that an injury to women’s rights on a broad range of anti-capitalist; thoroughly democrat- one, is an injury to all and the con- social issues. How clear do the media ic; thoroughly based on the working verse, resistance from one segment of want it? Should the women protestors class (employed and unemployed); the oppressed is in the interests of all spell everything out for the media as if to chart an independent course for the oppressed. they were children?

FC SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 SocialistViewpoint March/April Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT www.socialistviewpoint.org CONTENTS email: [email protected] (415) 824-8730 U.S. and World Politics Martin Luther King’s Radical Legacy ...... 37 Introduction from the Editors ...... FC By TeleSUR Trump’s War on Women ...... FC The Beatification of Obama ...... 38 By Shakaboona By Kit A Watershed Election for U.S. Imperialism ...... 2 Here Comes the Police State ...... 40 By Sarah Lazare By Lynn Henderson Stop Klan-Nazi Terror ...... 43 Women’s March Values and Principles ...... 12 By Mike Alewitz The Historic Women’s Marches of January 21, 2017 . 14 Building a Movement Against Trump’s Violence . . . 44 By Kamran Nayeri By Michael Steven Smith Women On Strike! ...... 16 Massive Anti-Trump Rallies Across Mexico ...... 45 By Linda Martín Alcoff, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, By Common Dreams Staff Nancy Fraser, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Rasmea Yousef Odeh, Felicia Browne: Revolutionary Warrior ...... 46 Angela Davis and Barbara Ransby By Pauline Murphy Obama’s Muslim-Ban List ...... 18 By Sarah Harvard Incarceration Nation Ten Thousand Immigrants Go on Strike in Milwaukee . 19 Thank You Sisters! ...... 47 By Wladek Flakin By Jaan Laaman Political Prisoner Ruchell Cinque Magee ...... 48 Hey, Hey, Donald J., How Many Kids By Kiilu Nyasha Will You Deport Today? ...... 20 By Sarah Lazare Life Sentences Are Slow Death Behind the Walls . . . 50 Kim Brown Interviews Glen Ford New York Taxi Drivers Take Solidarity Action . . . . 21 Visit to a Jailhouse Environmentalist ...... 52 Trump’s War on Dissent ...... 22 By Suzanne Ross By Flint Taylor Chemical Weapons in U.S. Prisons ...... 53 Flint’s 1000-Plus Days Without Safe Drinking Water . 23 By Sarah Lazare By Glen Ford Texas Prisoner Beaten and Starved to Death . . . . . 55 The Fight for Medicare for All ...... 24 By Creede Newton By Glen Ford Texas Prison Free Speech Ban ...... 58 Class Is Where We Find Our Strength ...... 25 By Kamala Kelkar By Steven Strauss and Andrea Bauer Bloody Violence Among Texas Prisoners ...... 60 Standing Rock Burning ...... 26 By Keith “Malik” Washington By Brianna Provenzano Custer Died For Their Sins ...... 61 Thoughts on the News ...... 27 By Kevin Cooper By Carole Seligman A Crack in the Wall Of Death ...... 62 Billionaires Must Be Made Extinct ...... 28 By Mumia Abu-Jamal By Glen Ford Department of Corrections Appeals ...... 62 Unspeakable: the Black Book of Imperial Terrorism . .29 By Mumia Abu-Jamal By Paul Street To Those Who Kept Me Alive ...... BC Dawn of the Resistance ...... 33 By Chelsea Manning By Mark Harris Letters to the Editors ...... 63

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Vol.Vol.Vol. 17, 17,3, No.No. 22 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 1

U.S. and World Politics U.S. AND WORLD POLITICS

A Watershed Election for U.S. Imperialism By Lynn Henderson

The 2016 presidential election con- And they correctly concluded that between another Bush and another cluded with the improbable election of the existing political parties and the Clinton as the nation’s 45th president. real estate billionaire and reality show entire body of politicians that make Their arrogance stunned much of the celebrity Donald Trump. In this his- them up, not only had no solutions, American electorate and opened the toric election the dual parties of U.S. but no desire or self-interest in chal- door for the improbable candidacies of capitalism ended up presenting the lenging this. They also knew of course two “outsiders” with no real support in American electorate with the choice that not everybody was hurting. Under the official two-party system. One was between two individuals who were uni- the joint leadership and policies of the billionaire reality TV host Donald versally recognized as the most unpop- both capitalist parties the “one per- Trump, the other a self-proclaimed ular, distrusted candidates in the histo- cent” has been doing fabulously well, “socialist” Bernie Sanders. Their candi- ry of U.S. presidential politics. How did even outstripping in concentrated dacies were universally written off with this happen? Was it just a fluke? Was it wealth the fabled one percent of the derision and ridicule by all the political just the accidental luck of the draw? notorious “Gilded Age.” This then was experts and commentators. Donald A large army of professional media Trump became the official candidate of commentators, pundits and political the Republican Party and Bernie gurus continue to struggle mightily to In the main, the Sanders came within a hair’s breadth of explain the election and ponder its “middle-class” con- being the Democratic Party candidate despite an organized conspiracy by vir- results. Initially the best they could do cluded that the was comment that “people were tually the entire Democratic National angry.” While true, this was hardly an steady deterioration Committee to secretly smear and sabo- adequate explanation. People have in their prospects tage his candidacy in favor of their been angry for quite some time now. anointed, Hillary Clinton. Continued anger alone is an insuffi- was not temporary The seemingly bizarre unfolding of cient explanation. The American but permanent. Not the 2016 presidential election is not the “middle-class” (a more accurate label the function of some product of some unfathomable acci- would be “working class”) have seen dent or fluke. On one hand, much of their standard of living and future recurring business the U.S. middle-class/working class, prospects not only stagnate but steadily cycle, which would for the first time, lost all confidence in decline for well over three decades. the ability of either wing of America’s Until recently most hoped, and half eventually be two-party monopoly to address and convinced themselves that this situa- reversed, but rather reverse their long decline. In their des- tion was temporary—that there would something much perate search for some alternative, we be a reversal in this long downturn for had the completely unforeseen emer- the “middle class” and a return to more sweeping and gence of the Trump and Sanders candi- more “normal” times. This election fundamental. dacies. But even more fundamentally, cycle however was faced with a dra- the election represents the confused, matic new shift in sentiment. In the disruptive reaction of America’s ruling main, the “middle-class” concluded the reality in which the nation’s two elite to the painful ending of an almost that the steady deterioration in their party system approached the 2016 century-long era of U.S. global domi- prospects was not temporary but per- presidential elections. nation. The present two party system manent. Not the function of some Despite all this, in smug and blind and its political actors have been recurring business cycle, which would confidence, these two parties then thrown into complete disarray by this eventually be reversed, but rather marched ahead with their original plans new reality. Whatever name they may something much more sweeping and to present the U.S. electorate with the have used in the past to describe it— fundamental. “democratic” privilege of choosing “American Exceptionalism”—“Leader

2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 of the Free World”—they certainly reserve currency for the entire capitalist created in this era also sustained a new never contemplated its demise. Despite world replacing the pound sterling. consumer economy, primarily benefit- their growing confusion and deepen- This gave the dollar and U.S. capitalism ing but not entirely limited to the white ing internal dissent the U.S. ruling elite a uniquely advantageous position—the working class. This was marked by are determined that the costs of this exorbitant privilege of paying its for- increased home ownership, widespread new reality will be bourne not by them eign bills in its own currency, which it automobile ownership, leisure time but by America’s increasingly hard could just print. This status lasted for activities, etc. pressed middle-class/working class. decades. But not for a century. Continued class struggle The U.S. middle-class and the This utterly unique and yet predict- ably unsustainable hegemony provided While this unique period of pros- American century perity allowed for some tactical conces- The mass U.S. middle-class of today U.S. capitalism with the opportunity for an extended period of prosperity sions to America’s middle-class/work- is a relatively recent development. It ing class it did not mean the class was primarily created through WWII struggle was suspended. U.S. capital- and its aftermath. Prior to that, what But even more fun- ism also used the combination of post was then called the middle-class was a WWII prosperity and its long reaction- much smaller and narrower phenome- damentally, the ary cold war with the Soviet Union to non consisting primarily of profession- election represents housebreak the American labor move- als, small businessmen, managers, etc. the confused, ment. Through red baiting, the Taft The United States won WWII. It Hartley Act, and support for “right-to- won WWII big. It won WWII not just disruptive reaction work” legislation they cleansed the against the Axis powers but against its of America’s ruling labor movement of the class struggle own allies as well. With the exception radicals who were central to revitaliz- of the United States, the entire capital- elite to the painful ing the union movement coming out ist world came out of WWII in a ending of an almost of the 1930s. They were able to reshape shambles. Europe’s industrial plants century-long era the trade union leadership into a con- were destroyed or in decay, its working servatized bureaucracy utterly tied to classes were reduced, dispersed, and of U.S. global the capitalist two-party system, con- demoralized, its political structures in domination. verting it into little more than an turmoil, and its national economies for adjunct to the Democratic Party. the most part flat broke. and astoundingly large profits. Faced Because the Democratic Party was But the United States on the other with a strong trade union movement never a working-class party, it never hand came out of WWII immeasurably which had emerged out of the “Great initiated unions. However, once unions stronger in every way than when it Depression,” U.S. capitalism conclud- were formed the Democrats became entered the war. U.S. industrial capaci- ed that its best course was to concede quite good at absorbing them into their ty had dramatically expanded, incorpo- some wage concessions where neces- political machines. rating all the new technologies in man- sary, rather than disrupt the immense To their immense advantage they ufacturing, electronics, chemicals, etc., profit opportunities available to them also used their world hegemony to cre- developed during the war. The U.S. by avoidable class conflicts. For now ate a series of international institu- working class was intact with better there were bigger fish to fry. tions, which were utterly dominated skills and education than prior to the But this new era provided for more and controlled by U.S. capitalism. war. The U.S. was politically, militarily than just a general rise in wages. To Among these was the already men- and financially the completely domi- take maximum advantage of these tioned reserve currency status of the nant capitalist nation in the world. unique opportunities required a more U.S. dollar. Equally important was the The war ushered in what Time/Life skilled and educated workforce. For World Bank, the International founder and publisher Henry Luce, the first time, university and college Monetary Fund, the North Atlantic triumphantly proclaimed as the com- education was made available and Treaty Organization and the European ing “American Century.” The usual affordable to large sections of the work- Union. laws of capitalist international competi- ing class through the G.I. Bill and other With the inevitable reemergence of tion were temporarily in suspension. subsidies. Between 1944 and 1971 the intense international capitalist compe- The dollar, freed from any monetary U.S. government spent $95 billion on tition, the hegemony of the “American gold backing, was enthroned as the the G.I. Bill. The general prosperity Century” began to come to an end.

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 3 How has U.S. capitalism responded to and reliable postwar allies, to leave the use of the deadly chemical “agent this new global reality? For one, in European Union was almost as big a orange” in Vietnam and the massive response to growing global competi- shock then as the November Trump use of poison gas during the Iraq-Iran tion in manufacturing, it shifted its election was later on. war (1980-1988) by Saddam Hussein profit making focus. It concluded that An earlier and at least equally stun- against the Kurds and Iranian military. the quickest, largest, and easiest profits ning action was the August 2013 vote by The U.S. supported Saddam Hussein were now to be made not in the mak- the British Parliament refusing to sup- in that war and made no criticism of ing and selling of products, but in the port Obama’s imminent move to launch his use of poison gas. We know, so-called financial sector. Between yet another Middle-East war, this time through U.S. documents leaked by 1973 and 1985, the U.S. financial sector against Syria. The significance of this Manning, Snowden, and others that accounted for about 16 percent of action and its aftermath is worthwhile the U.S. government even used its sat- domestic corporate profits. In the reviewing as it has never been honestly ellite network to provide targeting 1990s, it ranged from 21 percent to 30 reported and was largely ignored even intelligence to the Iraqi military during percent. In the recent decades, it soared by much of the American left. this U.S. backed war with Iran. to as high as 41 percent of all U.S. As Obama prepared to go to war domestic corporate profits. against Syria it was clear that his only With the closing of this long post- Between 1973 and real partner would be Britain. The sup- WWII prosperity, U.S. capitalism also 1985, the U.S. port for the Bush era Middle East wars returned to the unavoidable necessity financial sector had over time been reduced to the so- to cut wages and working conditions called “coalition of the willing” which for the U.S. middle-class/working class. accounted for about eventually became little more than One typically revealing example as 16 percent of Britain and places like American Samoa. documented by Stephanie Coontz in Then to the shock of everyone, and her excellent article, “Why the White domestic corporate especially U.S. imperialism, the British Working Class Ditched Clinton”1— profits. In the 1990s, Parliament refused to sanction this lat- between 1947 and 1979, real wages for it ranged from 21 est war. With a fleet of American war an average meatpacking worker, ships and aircraft in place and publicly adjusted for inflation, increased by percent to 30 per- poised to launch a massive air and mis- around 80 percent, reaching almost cent. In the recent sile attack on Syria within days or at $40,000-per-year, a salary that could most weeks, Obama remained commit- support a comfortable middle-class decades, it soared to ted to go ahead. Now however he felt lifestyle. But between 1979 and 2012 as high as 41 percent required to have a supporting war vote the average meat packer’s wage of all U.S. domestic in Congress, something he had previ- declined by nearly 30 percent, to about ously asserted was unnecessary. He was $27,000. Also the need to quickly corporate profits. convinced he could get such a vote and upgrade the educational level of the orchestrated a crash media campaign to domestic workforce was no longer The war against Syria build support in Congress and with the required or “cost effective” for U.S. Despite the disastrous invasions of American public. capitalism. Policies were put in place to Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. imperialism Despite little in the way of an orga- return affordable college and universi- now under the Obama administration, nized antiwar movement there was an ty training to the province of the rela- moved to initiate yet another major immediate and spontaneous outpour- tively wealthy. war in the Middle East, this time ing of opposition to Obama’s war vote. As U.S. hegemony began to weaken, against Syria. Another regime change Congress was inundated with thou- the international institutions it created was projected with Obama’s announce- sands of messages demanding they and dominated since the close of WWII ment that Syria’s president Assad vote no. As the date set for the vote began to unravel. Despite U.S. capital- “must go.” The “mushroom cloud” loomed it became clear it would be ism’s increasingly frantic attempts to justification this time centered on the defeated. Such a result would have shore them up, this unraveling has use of chemical weapons, supposedly been an unmitigated disaster for U.S. significantly impaired their former breaking a precedent adhered to by “all imperialism. As far as I know, never in ability to direct and control events. civilized countries” going back to the the history of the nation has a presi- Last June’s “Brexit” vote by Britain, end of WWI. Ignored by the Obama dential authorization for war been one of U.S. imperialism’s most loyal Administration were the massive U.S. voted down.

4 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 The Obama administration and Imperialist institutions chal- (I.M.F.). In the global economy U.S. U.S. imperialism were forced to retreat. lenged imperialism set up following WWII, A cover strategy was concocted to allow The U.S.-created World Bank, which the I.M.F. functions as the thug debt- for and explain away this retreat. it has used to its advantage in directing collector and enforcer. In any national Suddenly at a relatively minor news and controlling major infrastructure financial crisis the I.M.F. insures that conference a reporter asked Secretary investments throughout the world the first priority will be the repayment of State Kerry if there was anything since WWII is also being challenged. of debt obligations to the international Assad could do to avoid the impending More than a year ago China announced banks. To guarantee this, the I.M.F. U.S. attack. Supposedly, Kerry off- it was launching a competitor to the imposes cuts in wages, pensions, social handedly replied, “…only if Assad safety nets and increases taxes on the agreed to get rid of all his chemical middle-class/working class. It is the weapons.” It is virtually certain this Ignored by the designer and enforcer of austerity. In reporter’s question was a plant. A deal Obama Europe today its policies are generating with Assad on chemical weapons, bro- increasingly fierce resistance, especially kered by Putin, was then quickly Administration were in Greece, Spain and Italy. Given its announced, negating the need for U.S. the massive U.S. use increasing unpopularity, the I.M.F. has military action and avoiding the sched- of the deadly chemi- a difficult time finding credible people uled war vote in Congress. to act as its director. Former director The most immediate cause of this cal “agent orange” Mr. Strauss-Kahn had to resign follow- imperialist defeat was the massive, in Vietnam and the ing accusations that he sexually assault- spontaneous and successful opposition massive use of poi- ed a maid in a New York City hotel. to the proposed congressional war The present director, Christine Lagarde, vote. This was a major victory by and son gas during the was convicted in December of criminal for the American people. The aid of Iraq-Iran war (1980- charges linked to the misuse of public Putin in helping to pull Obama’s chest- 1988) by Saddam funds. Despite her conviction the 24 nuts out of the fire didn’t come with- directors of the fund decided not to out a cost. Obama had to acquiesce to Hussein against the remove her explaining: “With interna- Russia’s military and diplomatic inter- Kurds and Iranian tional elites and their institutions facing vention in the Syrian civil war in sup- populist criticism amid political and port of the Assad regime. More broad- military. The U.S. social change in the United States and ly, the unfolding of the Syrian-Obama supported Saddam Europe this was not the time to leave scenario demonstrated at each stage Hussein in that war the I.M.F. rudderless.” the continuing collapse of U.S. post and made no criti- The diminished ability for U.S. WWII hegemony and its decreased imperialism to direct and control events ability to control and shape events. cism of his use of is reflected in the failure to consum- Today we continue to be inundated poison gas. mate the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the popular media with references to (TPP). TPP was a major element in the “Special Relationship” between the Obama’s “new tilt” toward Asia, and U.S. and Britain as if it is some kind of World Bank, the Asian Infrastructure was never primarily just about trade. mystical eternal institution. The U.S. Investment Bank. U.S. imperialism The deal, which excluded China, was for most of its history has had a hostile immediately moved to isolate and kill conceived as a vital move for shoring relationship with Britain and its the Chinese initiative by pressuring its up U.S. economic and military influ- Imperial Empire. The so-called “Special World Bank allies to boycott it. Almost ence in this fastest-growing and strate- Relationship” is another product of immediately Britain broke ranks with gically vital part of the world. Resistance WWII and its aftermath, which like the United States, becoming a member to the deal is deeper than U.S. domestic much else, is now unraveling. As a in the fall of 2014. Other members of opposition to yet another unpopular matter of fact, the term itself was first the European Union, including France trade pact. With the end of U.S. post invented by Winston Churchill in his and Germany quickly followed along WWII hegemony it is China that is now infamous 1946 Fulton, Missouri belli- with 27 other nations. the largest trading partner for most of cose speech launching the cold war Closely related to the World Bank is the countries in the region. The with the Soviet Union. the International Monetary Fund Philippines, despite its long status as a

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 5 colony and semi-colony of the United Even some of NATO’s oldest and parties were at all time historical lows. States, has under its new president, formerly most supportive members are The election itself has now resulted in a Rodrigo Duterte, begun dramatically beginning to resist continued U.S. further dramatic deterioration. shifting away from U.S. influence, and leadership and hegemony. With the toward China instead. Even a long-time collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S. The political damage inflicted by ally like Australia has shown little imperialism pushed an aggressive the 2016 campaign enthusiasm for TPP announcing just expansion of NATO, which placed On one hand, the Republican Party last month plans to push ahead with a NATO arms one thousand miles to the is captured by an extreme right wing, Chinese-led trade pact that would cover east closer to Russia’s borders, putting rogue billionaire, an open racist, who Asian nations from Japan to India but St. Petersburg, for instance, within brags about his successful sexual exclude the United States. Perhaps even range of NATO artillery. In response to assaults on women, banning individu- more revealing, Australia has also a recent U.S.-led NATO military exer- als from entering the country on the resisted pressure to join the United cise in Poland and the Baltic states, basis of their religious affiliation, and States in naval patrols in the South Germany’s foreign minister, Frank- among other things, promises to China Sea supposedly designed to Walter Steinmeier, warned U.S. offi- launch a global-wide trade war. The ensure freedom of international traffic. cials that the action amounted to ruling class itself sees Trump as a loose Of all the post WWII institutions “saber-rattling and warmongering.” cannon, dangerous and unstable—the created by and for U.S. imperialism kind of president that in this threaten- ing new era for U.S. capitalism, dem- none was more central to implementing More broadly, the the era of U.S. hegemony than NATO. onstrates every potential for making What made NATO possible, and the unfolding of the things dramatically worse. For the first glue which held it, and the otherwise Syrian-Obama sce- time in history every major newspaper in the nation opposed his candidacy. competing capitalist nations in Europe nario demonstrated together for so long, was the existence Yet despite the overwhelming opposi- and threat of the Soviet Union. This was at each stage the tion within its ranks the U.S. capitalist not essentially a military threat but continuing collapse class was unable to stop his election! rather a philosophical and ideological On the other hand, decade after threat. Even under what emerged as the of U.S. post WWII decade of “lesser evil” politics made it conservative, bureaucratized leadership hegemony and its easy to shift its entire two party monop- of Stalinism, the example of the Soviet decreased ability to oly further and further to the right. But Union and the 1917 Russian Revolution this also has a downside for the U.S. posed a revolutionary alternative for control and shape capitalist class. The Democratic wing of workers that was a continuous threat to events. their dual party system became less and every capitalist regime in Europe. With less able to even demagogically present the collapse of the Soviet Union the itself as a populist party posing to NATO of old began coming apart and The unraveling of these post-WWII defend middle-class/working class its days are now numbered. international institutions certainly Americans from an ever more austeri- NATO as any kind of unified bloc, reflects an increasingly difficult global ty-driven capitalism. The term “popu- especially any kind of unified bloc fol- environment for U.S. capitalism. But lism” even becomes a pejorative among lowing U.S. imperialism’s direction and even more immediately frightening for liberal commentators and Democratic lead is disintegrating. The ability to get U.S. capitalism is the massive political Party functionaries. The Hillary Clinton NATO support for U.S. directed sanc- damage inflicted by the 2016 presiden- candidacy was the perfect reflection of tions against Russia, Iran or anyone else tial election on its dual political parties. this right-wing evolution. The “super” is becoming increasingly difficult. The For the ruling elite of U.S. capitalism capitalist Trump successfully claims to recent evolution of NATO member, there has been no more essential and speak for an increasingly desperate Turkey, is revealing. Not only does valuable political institution than its blue-collar working class as the Turkey apparently believe that its stable two party monopoly. This has “change” candidate—“Make America national interests, at least for now, are been true for more than 150 years, ever Great Again.” Hillary spoke for the sta- closer to Russia than NATO, but Turkey since the smashing of the slavocracy in tus quo—with her campaign theme of even accuses the U.S. government of America’s great Civil War. But even portraying America as “Still Great.” being involved in the recent military prior to the election popular confidence The unchecked and un-checkable coup attempt against its president. in both the Democratic and Republican rightward evolution of the Democratic

6 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 Party is reflected not only in the candi- mented immigrants from licensed pro- Parties? Their solution was the launch- date but its entire electoral strategy. fessions, and initially slashed overall ing of a massive propaganda campaign Especially after Trump’s capture of the public welfare funding by $54 billion. absolving their two-party monopoly Republican Party, the Democrats As late as 2008 she continued to defend from any responsibility in the bizarre embraced a strategy built around a the legislation as a success. She also unfolding of the election and the dan- superficial turn to “diversity,” while supported bank deregulation during gerous Trump victory. The Trump promoting their pro-business policies the Clinton administration and the success, they wish to assure us, is not in an attempt to win votes in tradi- anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act. because of any fundamental failings on tional Republican bases in the white Her most famous political act was the part of the Democratic and suburbs. New York’s Wall Street her vote as Senator for the Iraq war. As Republican Parties or U.S. capitalism Senator Charles Schumer, who more the disastrous results of that war or even Trump’s inept electoral oppo- and more emerges as the chief political became more and more obvious she nent Hillary Clinton. Rather we are to strategist and spokesperson for the attempted to take her distance from it believe the Trump victory is the prod- Democrats, predicted: “For every blue- by claiming she was deceived by faulty uct of a diabolical, foreign conspiracy collar Democrat we lose in western intelligence. However, this did not pre- engineered by the evil Russians. The Pennsylvania, we will pick up two mod- vent her continued attraction for an prominent, liberal, New York Times erate Republicans in the suburbs in aggressive policy of military-imposed columnist, Paul Krugman, even seri- Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in regime change. She enthusiastically ously proclaims, in a word play on the Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” 1962 conspiratorial and reactionary In addition, no other potential film The Manchurian Candidate, that Democratic Party candidate was more In truth no govern- Trump is the “Siberian” candidate. closely tied to the disastrous results of ment has been During the campaign the blog “lesser-evil” politics than Hillary involved in more WikiLeaks released a series of docu- Clinton. She was an enthusiastic sup- ments damaging to Hillary Clinton porter of the Clinton administration’s actions to subvert and the Democratic National 1994 $30 billion crime bill that created foreign governments Committee. Among these were speech- dozens of new federal capital crimes, es Clinton gave to Wall Street fund- mandated life sentences for some and their elections raising groups, the text of which she three-time offenders, and authorized than the United repeatedly refused to make public. In more than $16 billion for state prison States. one she tried to assure her Wall Street grants and the expansion of police backers not to worry about statements forces. In her full throated support of she might have to make on the cam- the legislation, as Michelle Alexander supported the Libya military adven- paign trail because as a politician you: documented in, “Why Hillary Clinton ture, with again disastrous results. She “need both a public and a private posi- Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote,”2 she then became the most vocal proponent tion.” In another speech to wealthy used racially coded rhetoric to cast for a “no fly zone” in Syria, which like campaign donors she wrote off work- Black children as animals. “They are the “no fly zone” originally declared in ing class voters attracted to Trump’s not just gangs of kids anymore,” she Iraq, would have been nothing less promise of change as “…the basket of said. “They are often the kinds of kids than a conscious precursor to yet deplorables. They’re racist, sexist, that are called ‘super-predators.’ No another regime-change war. homophobic, xenophobic, conscience, no empathy. We can talk The 2016 election and the Trump Islamophobic—you name it.” about why they ended up that way, but presidency pose a dangerous threat to DNC documents also released by first we have to bring them to heel.” By two opposite and opposing constituen- WikiLeaks revealed that the committee the time Bill Clinton left office in 2001, cies, on one side the U.S. capitalist staff through scheduling, secret smears the United States had the highest rate class, on the other side America’s mid- and other maneuvers had been engaged of incarceration in the world. dle-class/working class. For the U.S. in a conspiracy to sabotage the Sanders Hillary supported the Clinton capitalist class the immediate question campaign in favor of Clinton. As a administration welfare-reform legisla- becomes how best to spin the election result, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was tion, which under the slogan of “end- to insulate their two-party system from forced to resign her position as chair of ing welfare as we know it,” shredded the disastrous results and at the same the DNC. A few weeks later her replace- the federal safety net for poor families. time restore some level of confidence ment, Donna Brazile, also had to resign The legislation also barred undocu- in the Democratic and Republican when other WikiLeaks documents

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 7 showed she had secretly provided debate South Vietnam ally, president Ngo On the index of income inequality questions to the Clinton campaign prior Dinh Diem, in which he was killed. In the Obama eight years saw essentially to at least some of the Clinton-Sanders 1973 the CIA organized a coup against no reduction in the enormous gap primary debates. CNN also had no the democratically elected president of between the one percent and the rest of choice but to fire Brazile from her lucra- Chile, Salvador Allende, in which he society. In the eight years of the Obama tive and valuable position as a was killed. In truth no government has administration ninety-five percent of Democratic political commentator as been involved in more actions to sub- households have not seen their incomes her unethical activities were revealed. vert foreign governments and their regain 2007 levels. Income inequality No one challenges the authenticity elections than the United States. in the United States continued to far and accuracy of these damning exceed anything seen in other advanced nations. In new data just released by WikiLeaks documents. But the increas- But the most telling ingly frantic campaign charging Russia the World Economic Forum the United with hijacking the U.S. election, wants part of Obama’s leg- States ranked 23rd out of 30 advanced to pretend their authenticity is irrele- acy is how much his economies in wage and non-wage vant. Pay no attention they say to compensation, and it ranked last in Clinton’s secret speeches, to the actions administration has social protection. And lately things of Wasserman Schultz, Brazile and prepared the ground have hardly gone in the right direction. On January 27th the government others. Rather focus on the claim that for Trump’s reac- WikiLeaks obtained these documents reported that the economy grew by from Russian hackers. That said, tionary, extreme only 1.6 percent in 2016, a significant WikiLeaks denies their source was right-wing program. reduction from around 2.5 percent in Russia. U.S. intelligence officials back both 2015 and 2014. Many of the white up the claim of a Russian source “with Trump in his prom- working-class who voted for Trump, high confidence.” WikiLeaks past ise of mass deporta- voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, some no doubt despite holding racist record for veracity is excellent, for the tions, inherited a U.S. intelligence community, not so views. Obama ran as the “change” can- much. It wasn’t that long ago that U.S. well-oiled deporta- didate who they hoped would provide intelligence guaranteed the existence of tion infrastructure some relief in their desperate economic and social situation. They got eight weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as from the Obama a “slam dunk.” In reality the dispute more years of the same. over the WikiLeaks source is an irrele- administration, But the most telling part of Obama’s vant “red herring.” The undisputed which has deported legacy is how much his administration authenticity and accuracy of the has prepared the ground for Trump’s WikiLeaks documents, and what they 2.5 million people— reactionary, extreme right-wing pro- reveal are not irrelevant. more than every sin- gram. Trump in his promise of mass The most cynical aspect of this entire gle U.S. president of deportations, inherited a well-oiled deportation infrastructure from the campaign is the portrayal of the U.S as the 20th century an innocent victim of unprecedented Obama administration, which has foreign interference in the election. A combined. deported 2.5 million people—more December 23, 2016 article in the than every single U.S. president of the Washington Post by Lindsey A. 20th century combined. In the spring O’Rourke,3 documents that since 1947 The Obama legacy of 2014 the National Council of La Raza the U.S. has tried to change other To restore some level of confidence, (NCLR), the nation’s largest Latino nation’s governments 72 times. Sixty- especially for the Democratic Party, we advocacy organization, which had pre- six times by covert actions six by overt have also witnessed the launching of an viously supported Obama, could no means. The article reports that 26 of the over-the-top campaign to burnish longer remain silent. NCLR President covert actions succeeded, apparently all Obama’s lackluster, eight-year, presi- Janet Murguía delivered a speech lam- six of the overt actions were successful. dential legacy. Typical of the tone is basting Obama’s deportation policy: Often when U.S. intelligence services New York Time’s columnist David “We consider him the deportation meddle in foreign elections it doesn’t Leonhardt’s claim that: “Obama leaves president, or the deporter-in-chief.” hack—it murders. In 1963 the CIA office as the most successful Democrat In 2007 before taking office Obama organized a coup against their supposed since Franklin Roosevelt.” assured the public that he would over-

8 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 see the nation’s extensive surveillance violated the right to life of the target. private school tuition. But a January 21, program without “undermining our Thanks to Obama’s actions, Donald 2017 article in the Washington Post by Constitution and our freedom.” Once Trump is inaugurated into an office its education reporter, Valerie Strauss, in office, however, the Obama White that presumes the authority to secretly titled, “Democrats reject her, but they House failed to meaningfully scale order the extrajudicial killings of helped pave the road to education nom- back surveillance practices established American citizens. inee DeVos,”4 shows that Democrats by Obama’s predecessor, including the Trump will also be inaugurated into can’t just blame Republicans for her unlawful bulk collection of Americans’ an office that construes its mandate to ascension. “It was actually Democrats” domestic phone call records. Michael kill with drones broadly, encompassing Strauss writes, “…who helped pave the Hayden, the former director of the U.S. strikes in countries with which America road for DeVos to take the helm of the National Security Agency, praised is not at war and targeting groups and Education Department. Democrats Obama explaining that surveillance individuals that had nothing to do with have in recent years sounded—and act- programs have “expanded” during the September 11, 2001 attacks. In ed—a lot like Republicans in advancing Barack Obama’s time in office and said corporate education reform, which the spy agency has more powers now seeks to operate public schools as if they than when he was in command under Michael Hayden, the were businesses, not civic institutions. President Bush. Expansion of danger- former director of By embracing many of the tenets of cor- ous surveillance rules continued right porate reform—including the notion of up to the end of the Obama adminis- the U.S. National ‘school choice’ and the targeting of tration. With mere days left before Security Agency, teachers and their unions as being blind President-elect Trump took office, to the needs of children—they helped Obama finalized new rules to make it praised Obama make DeVos’s education views, once easier for the nation’s intelligence explaining that sur- seen as extreme, seem less so.” agencies to share unfiltered informa- veillance programs There is probably no position in tion about innocent people. have “expanded” which Trump invests more emotional The Trump administration certain- capital than his promise to constrict ly plans to build on the already expand- during Barack and constrain what he calls the “lying ed surveillance program he inherited Obama’s time in press.” James Risen, an investigative from Obama. Trump also promises to reporter for the New York Times in an dramatically increase bombing in the office and said the December 30, 2016 news analysis arti- Middle East and expand it to target spy agency has more cle for the Times titled, “If Donald family members of those he concludes Trump Targets Journalists, Thank powers now than 5 are terrorists. Obama did not begin the Obama,” writes: “If Donald J. Trump drone-killing program but he did when he was in com- decides as president to throw a whistle- greatly expand it and greatly loosened mand under blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the F.B.I. to spy on a its rules. Under Obama’s approach President Bush. many aspects of his targeted killing journalist, he will have one man to policy are, to say the least, on dubious thank for bequeathing him such expan- legal footing, which have set hugely effect, Obama has construed the 2001 sive power: Barack Obama.” dangerous precedents. Authorization to Use Military Force so Risen continues: “Over the past Obama administration officials broadly that it’s now hard to discern eight years, the administration has have variously argued that targeted any meaningful limit. prosecuted nine cases involving whis- killing with drones is a state secret or a Many Democratic officials are tle-blowers and leakers, compared with so-called political question that isn’t expressing shock over Trump’s nomi- only three by all previous administra- properly “justiciable,” (subject to trial nation of the completely unqualified tions combined. It has repeatedly used in a court of law,) even if the target is and now confirmed, Betsy DeVos as the Espionage Act, a relic of World an American citizen. The Obama U.S. Secretary of Education. DeVos, a War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute administration asked Americans to Republican billionaire from Michigan spies but to go after government offi- believe not only that it was empowered who labeled the U.S. public education cials who talked to journalists.” to kill an American in secret; but that system a “dead end,” is an advocate for Risen concludes, “When Mr. Obama after the fact, courts should refrain privatizing public education by requir- was elected in 2008, press freedom from judging whether such killings ing the use of public funds to pay for groups had high expectations for the

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 9 former constitutional law professor… “law and order” President. He will begun under Obama. He will prevent, But today many of those same groups greatly increase police powers includ- under one formula or another, most say Mr. Obama’s record of going after ing the further militarization of the Muslims from immigrating to the U.S. both journalists and their sources has police. There will be no rollback of the including millions of desperate refu- set a dangerous precedent that Mr. War on Drugs or mass incarceration, gees from Washington’s wars against Trump can easily exploit. ‘Obama has and there will be no more federal over- Arab countries. laid all the groundwork Trump needs sight (already weak) of police violence. Trump will move quickly on his prom- for an unprecedented crackdown on Already within days of his inaugura- ise of big tax cuts for the rich and large the press,’ said Trevor Timm, executive tion Trump is proposing a large-scale corporations. Regulations will be relaxed director of the nonprofit Freedom of federal policing intervention into for the banks and other financial concerns the Press Foundation.” Chicago with its large Black, Latino, and environmental regulations will be Trumpism abolished or made inconsequential. What is the political nature of The Obama admin- He will dismantle Obamacare, Trumpism? Does it constitute a bur- which was already wholly inadequate, geoning fascist movement? The truly istration asked providing the worst healthcare system massive and uncontested anti-Trump Americans to believe of any advanced industrial country. demonstrations in dozens of cities not only that it was Despite promises to the contrary, it throughout the nation, the day follow- will be replaced with something cover- ing his inauguration gives the answer empowered to kill an ing fewer people with less healthcare. to that. Where were Trump’s fascist American in secret; He will put in place a massively “brown shirts?” The best Trumpism but that after the expanded program of voter suppres- could do, was a few dozen “Hell’s sion. He does not intend to have his Angels”-type motorcycle gangs that fact, courts should “legacy” besmirched by defeats in mid- did not even make themselves visible. refrain from judging term elections in two years, or his own However, this does not mean that whether such kill- reelection in four years. That is what is Trump is just another right-wing behind his seemingly ridiculous charge Republican in the mold of Richard ings violated the of massive voter fraud in the last elec- Nixon, Ronald Reagan or George W. right to life of the tion and his call for launching a voter Bush. The election of Donald Trump fraud investigation. as president of the United States is a target. Thanks to deeply dangerous development that Obama’s actions, Fighting Trumpism dramatically escalates the threat to Donald Trump is How can we successfully fight America’s middle-class/working class. Trumpism, which clearly does not rep- It is a decisive shift, representing the inaugurated into an resent the views or interests of the over- growing failure of center-right and office that presumes whelming majority of America’s mid- center-left parties not only here but in the authority to dle-class/working class? In her pene- all the advanced capitalist countries. trating article, “Why Hillary Clinton What makes it particularly dangerous secretly order the Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote,”7 for the U.S. middle-class/working class extrajudicial killings Michelle Alexander attempts a balanced is the complete absence here of any of American citizens. evaluation of Senator Bernie Sanders mass working class party that could and his call for a political revolution. present a fighting alternative. Alexander concludes: “The biggest Trump will quickly launch an problem with Bernie, in the end, is that aggressive attack on the civil liberties and Muslim populations. Finally he he’s running as a Democrat…I hold and civil rights of Blacks, Latinos, the intends to use the expanded powers of little hope that a political revolution women’s movement, unions, immi- a militarized police to suppress the will occur within the Democratic Party grants (especially Muslims), the press, anti-Trump demonstrations which he without a sustained outside movement and anyone who dares to criticize him. takes as a personal affront. forcing truly transformational change. I As Barry Sheppard already highlighted He will increase the militarization of am inclined to believe that it would be in his excellent article “The Rise of the border with Mexico and is already easier to build a new party than to save Trumpism,”6 he will first of all be the stepping up the massive deportations the Democratic Party from itself.”

10 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 Alexander expresses considerable This is the essential political debate, Returning to Michelle Alexander’s political wisdom here. It would be which will take place as the anti-Trump perceptive quote, she describes what she easier to build a new party, as difficult movement evolves—the fight to keep it believes would be necessary to accom- as that certainly would be, than to save independent of the Democratic Party. plish a political revolution, “a sustained the Democratic Party. All the evidence, New York Senator Charles Schumer, who outside movement forcing truly trans- especially the recent history, demon- is replacing a discredited Hillary Clinton formational change.” That is what the strates there is no “saved” Democratic as the principle spokesperson for the anti-Trump movement which began Party that can successfully fight Trump. Democratic Party, is already pushing to with the Woman’s March on January 21, It is the dual parties of capitalism, the channel the movement into Democratic 2017 should aspire to become. A placard Democratic Party and the Republican electoral politics. It’s well to remember I saw being carried at the Washington Party together, that have created the Schumer’s history and background as March was prophetic, “FIGHT conditions that gave rise to Trump. It’s “The Senator from Wall Street.” TRUMP—THE DEMS WON’T.” not irrelevant that Trump, for his He raises millions and millions of —January 2017 entire life, has supported and partici- dollars from the finance industry, both pated in both these parties. for himself and for other Democrats. In This of course does not mean that return, he voted to repeal the Glass- 1 http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/10/opin- the fight against Trump should wait on Steagall Act in 1999 and voted to bail ions/how-clinton-lost-the-working-class- coontz/ the creation of a new alternative politi- out Wall Street in 2008. In between, he cal party. The fight against Trump has slashed fees paid by banks to the 2 https://www.thenation.com/article/hill- ary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/ already gotten off to a pretty good Securities and Exchange Commission start—the really massive anti-Trump to pay for regulatory enforcement, and 3 https://www.washingtonpost.com/ news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/23/the-cia- demonstrations and the Women’s eviscerated congressional efforts to says-russia-hacked-the-u-s-election-here-are- Marches in the streets that took place crack down on rating agencies. 6-things-to-learn-from-cold-war-attempts- immediately following his inaugura- Schumer voted for the Patriot Act in to-change-regimes/?utm_term=.fec75393f175 tion. And this is certainly only the 2001, and sponsored its predecessor, 4 https://www.washingtonpost.com/ beginning. Trump sells himself as a the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/21/demo- crats-reject-her-but-they-helped-pave-the- “man of action,” and to bolster that 1995. During a Senate hearing, Schumer image and his ego, he will quickly road-to-education-nominee-devos/?utm_ explained that “it’s easy to sit back in term=.5f17b4114497 attack Black youth, immigration, the the armchair and say that torture can woman’s movement, Muslims, the 5 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/ never be used. But when you’re in the opinion/sunday/if-donald-trump-targets- labor movement, Latinos, Roe V. Wade, foxhole, it’s a very different deal.” journalists-thank-obama.html the environmental movement, and Schumer also defended the New York 6 http://links.org.au/rise-trumpism- anyone who challenges him. His Police Department’s surveillance of would-be-bonaparte administration will be one that con- Muslims across the region, which 7 https://www.thenation.com/article/hill- stantly provokes and energizes more Trump has cited as a national model. ary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/ people into opposition. The mass demonstrations following Trump’s inauguration were not initi- ated by the Democratic Party. Rather they were initiated independently by a small group of women activists. Trump was obviously stunned by their size and breath, but you can also be sure the Democratic Party leadership was more than a little apprehensive about its independent nature, remaining largely outside of their control. They recall the anti-Vietnam War movement, which despite their best efforts remained independent, successfully resisting being incorporated into the Democratic Party electoral machine.

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 11 Women’s March Values and Principles Women’s March guiding vision and definition of principles

• We believe that Women’s Rights the military grade weapons and location or education. We are Human Rights and Human military tactics that are wreaking understand that we can only Rights are Women’s Rights. This havoc on communities of color. have reproductive justice when is the basic and original tenet No woman or mother should reproductive healthcare is acces- from which all our values stem. have to fear that her loved ones sible to all people regardless of • We believe Gender Justice is will be harmed at the hands of income, location or education. Racial Justice is Economic Jus- those sworn to protect. • We believe in Gender Justice. tice. We must create a society in • We believe it is our moral imper- We must have the power to con- which women—in particular ative to dismantle the gender trol our bodies and be free from Black women, Native women, and racial inequities within the gender norms, expectations and poor women, immigrant women, criminal justice system. The rate stereotypes. We must free our- Muslim women, and queer and of imprisonment has grown fast- selves and our society from the trans women—are free and able er for women than men, increas- institution of awarding power, to care for and nurture their ing by 700 percent since 1980, agency and resources dispropor- families, however they are and the majority of women in tionately to masculinity, to the formed, in safe and healthy envi- prison have a child under the age exclusion of others. ronments free from structural of 18. Incarcerated women also • We firmly declare that LGBTQ- impediments. face a high rate of violence and IA Rights are Human Rights and • Women deserve to live full and sexual assault. We are commit- that it is our obligation to uplift, healthy lives, free of violence ted to ensuring access to gender- expand and protect the rights of against our bodies. One in three responsive programming and our gay, lesbian, bi, queer, trans women have been victims of dedicated healthcare including or gender non-conforming some form of physical violence substance abuse treatment, men- brothers, sisters and siblings. by an intimate partner within tal and maternal health services This includes access to non- their lifetime; and one in five for women in prison. We believe judgmental, comprehensive women have been raped. Fur- in the promise of restorative jus- healthcare with no exceptions or ther, each year, thousands of tice and alternatives to incarcer- limitations; access to name and women and girls, particularly ation. We are also committed to gender changes on identity doc- Black, indigenous and transgen- disrupting the school-to-prison uments; full anti-discrimination der women and girls, are kid- pipeline that prioritizes incar- protections; access to education, napped, trafficked, or murdered. ceration over education by sys- employment, housing and bene- We honor the lives of those tematically funneling our chil- fits; and an end to police and women who were taken before dren—particularly children of state violence. color, queer and trans youth, their time and we affirm that we • We believe in an economy pow- work for a day when all forms of foster care children, and girls— into the justice system. ered by transparency, account- violence against women are ability, security and equity. We eliminated. • We believe in Reproductive believe that creating workforce • We believe in accountability and Freedom. We do not accept any opportunities that reduce dis- justice for police brutality and federal, state or local rollbacks, crimination against women and ending racial profiling and tar- cuts or restrictions on our ability mothers allow economies to geting of communities of color. to access quality reproductive thrive. Nations and industries Women of color are killed in healthcare services, birth con- that support and invest in care- police custody at greater rates trol, HIV/AIDS care and preven- giving and basic workplace pro- than white women, and are more tion, or medically accurate sexu- tections—including benefits like likely to be sexually assaulted by ality education. This means open paid family leave, access to police. We also call for an imme- access to safe, legal, affordable affordable childcare, sick days, diate end to arming police with abortion and birth control for all healthcare, fair pay, vacation people, regardless of income,

12 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 time, and healthy work environ- included in our labor protections, immigrant and refugee rights ments—have shown growth and and we stand in solidarity with regardless of status or country of increased capacity. sex workers’ rights movements. origin. It is our moral duty to keep • We believe in equal pay for equal • We believe Civil Rights are our families together and empower all work and the right of all women birthright. Our Constitutional aspiring Americans to fully par- to be paid equitably. We must government establishes a frame- ticipate in, and contribute to, our end the pay and hiring discrimi- work to provide and expand economy and society. We reject nation that women, particularly rights and freedoms—not mass deportation, family deten- mothers, women of color, lesbi- restrict them. To this end, we tion, violations of due process and an, queer and trans women still must protect and restore all the violence against queer and trans face each day in our nation. Constitutionally-mandated migrants. Immigration reform Many mothers have always rights to all our citizens, includ- must establish a roadmap to citi- worked and in our modern labor ing voting rights, freedom to zenship, and provide equal oppor- force; and women are now 50 worship without fear of intimi- tunities and workplace protec- percent of all family breadwin- dation or harassment, freedom tions for all. We recognize that the ners. We stand for the 82 percent of speech, and protections for all call to action to love our neighbor of women who become moms, citizens regardless of race, gen- is not limited to the United States, particularly moms of color, der, age or disability. because there is a global migration crisis. We believe migration is a being paid, judged, and treated • We believe it is time for an all- fairly. Equal pay for equal work human right and that no human inclusive Equal Rights Amend- being is illegal. will lift families out of poverty ment to the U.S. Constitution. and boost our nation’s economy. Most Americans believe the • We believe that every person and • We recognize that women of Constitution guarantees equal every community in our nation color carry the heaviest burden rights, but it does not. The 14th has the right to clean water, clean in the global and domestic eco- Amendment has been under- air, and access to and enjoyment nomic landscape, particularly in mined by courts and cannot pro- of public lands. We believe that the care economy. We further duce real equity on the basis of our environment and our cli- affirm that all care work—caring race and/or sex. And in a true mate must be protected, and that for the elderly, caring for the democracy, each citizen’s vote our land and natural resources chronically ill, caring for chil- should count equally. All Ameri- cannot be exploited for corporate dren and supporting indepen- cans deserve equality guarantees gain or greed—especially at the dence for people with disabili- in the Constitution that cannot risk of public safety and health. ties—is work, and that the bur- be taken away or disregarded, —Womensmarch.com, January 21, den of care falls disproportion- recognizing the reality that 2017 ately on the shoulders of women, inequalities intersect, intercon- https://static1.squarespace.com/ particularly women of color. We nect and overlap. static/584086c7be6594762f5ec56e/t/587f stand for the rights, dignity, and • Rooted in the promise of Ameri- fb20579fb3554668c111/1484782369253/ fair treatment of all unpaid and ca’s call for huddled masses yearn- WMW+Guiding+Vision+%26+Definiti paid caregivers. We must repair ing to breathe free, we believe in on+of+Principles.pdf and replace the systemic dispari- ties that permeate caregiving at every level of society. • We believe that all workers— including domestic and farm workers—must have the right to organize and fight for a living minimum wage, and that unions and other labor associations are critical to a healthy and thriving economy for all. Undocumented and migrant workers must be

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 13 The Historic Women’s Marches of January 21, 2017 By Kamran Nayeri

Historic actions women’s oppression today. Sarsour, a majority of the 3.2 million participants January 21, 2017, Women’s Marches Palestinian-American, called it “a stand in the marches were ordinary working were historic in a number of ways. First, for social justice and human rights people. But even if there were a sizable in the United States, more than 3.2 mil- issues ranging from race, ethnicity, “middle class” component to the lion persons participated—at least gender, religion, immigration and marches, it should not have deterred 500,000 in Washington D.C. alone. healthcare.” Still, the marchers did tar- anyone seriously interested in radical There were more than 408 other march- get Trump, and his actions since inau- social change from supporting and es, covering all 50 states. One out of guration have confirmed they were not building them. After all, women’s every hundred people living in the coun- wrong to do so. rights like other human rights are uni- versal rights that socialists have always try participated, making it the largest Sectarian critics of women’s single-day street action in U.S. history. supported. Let us recall, that Marx’s marches socialism is a theory and a movement Second, there were 168 “solidarity” V. I. Lenin, the central leader of the for the emancipation of humanity, not marches in 81 other countries on all 1917 Russian socialist revolution, just the emancipation of the working seven continents, which bring the reminded us that “politics begin where class. The centrality of the working world total participation to 4.8 million. millions of men and women are; where class in this theory is due to its social Canada and Mexico, United States’ there are not thousands, but millions, position as the agency that has nothing neighbors, had 29 and 20 separate that is where serious politics begin.”1 to lose and everything to gain for tran- marches respectively. Unfortunately, as long as there scending capitalism and building a Third, these massive street actions have been mass actions in the modern classless socialist society. The same is were organized from the ground up. era, there have also been ultra-left sec- true for other important and even vital The Washington D.C. march was orga- tarian critics of them. A sideline critic struggles, which we face today, and can nized as follows. The day after the elec- of the women’s marches is the U.S. attract people from all social classes tion of Donald J. Trump to the presi- Socialist Workers Party (SWP) that such as the antiwar movement, the dency, Teresa Shook from Hawaii cre- attacked them as “bourgeois,” charac- anti-nuclear movement, and the envi- ated a Facebook event and invited terized the marchers as “middle class,” ronmentalist/ecology movement.2 friends to march on Washington in and claimed without proof that they As we know from history, mass protest. During his election campaign, were organized by supporters of Senator actions often erupt spontaneously or Trump’s misogyny was on full display. Sanders in the “Our Revolution” group with little influence from any orga- Similar Facebook pages were created by and the Communist Party and “numer- nized political force. Such was the case Evvie Harmon, Fontaine Pearson, Bob ous” other forces that were disappoint- with the February 1917 revolution in Bland, Breanne Butler, and others ed by the defeat of Hillary Clinton in Russia and the February 1979 revolu- quickly leading to thousands of women the November 2016 elections. As is tion in Iran. Again, we know from his- signing up to march. Soon, these indi- typical with sectarian political groups, tory that political forces that are more vidual efforts were conjoined and the SWP went to the marches “looking strategically placed, often because they National Co-Chairs including Tamika to debate and discuss political perspec- correspond to the present conscious- Mallory, Carmen Perez, and Linda tives with those...who participated,” ness of the masses, initially become Sarsour were selected to reflect the ris- and urge them to join the SWP to fur- more influential in the mass move- ing to prominence of women of color ther the women’s movement. (The ment. But the mass movement itself in the social justice movement in the Militant, February 6, 2017) provides the opportunity for the more U.S. Organizers insisted that they were For over two decades the SWP simi- consistent and better-organized forces “not targeting Trump specifically” and larly has been denigrating the precious to vie for leadership and succeed in that the event was “more about being few mass actions in the United States radicalizing the movement forward. proactive about women’s rights.” A to justify abstaining from building The Russian, October 1917, revolution lively discussion ensued where the them. Given that in 2015, the number provides a positive and rich example of issue of “intersectionality” was dis- of wage and salary workers was just shy this.3 Often, the retrograde political cussed—the importance of expressing of 134 million in a population of about forces manage to saddle the mass the multidimensional character of 320 million, it is quite likely that the movement and defuse or crush it. The

14 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 defeat of the Iranian revolution at the ered a massive action at the time. The the U.S. Witness the history of the hands of the clerical capitalist forces planning for it began nine months labor movement, Black liberation led by Ayatollah Khomeini provides earlier in December 1962. “It repre- movement, women’s liberation move- such a negative example.4 sented much more effort, commitment ment, and the environmentalists’ In real life, masses of working people and preparation than would a protest movement. Every major victory for any will get their political educations not of similar size today,” she adds. of these movements came when they from tiny sectarian groups on the side- The truth is that today’s mass mobilized mass actions in the streets line but from participation in the mass actions also require much advance not when they followed a policy of get- movement. It is through building mass organizing. The advantage offered by ting Democrats elected. When the lat- actions that working people find confi- social media is to make the task of mass ter “strategy” dominated, the mass dence in themselves, network with each communication, mass education and base of these movements was demobi- other, and potentially move on to big- mass organization easier and more lized except to get them to vote for ger and more effective political action. cost-and-time-effective. Another fac- Democrats on the Election Day. As I am writing, tens-of-thousands tor to consider is the degree of political As such, social and environmental- across the United States are protesting polarization and mass radicalization— ist movements of the 1960s and early president Trump’s racist selective ban we probably live in more polarized 1970s proved ill-prepared when the on entry to the U.S. of refugees and times now than in the early 1960s. Still, capitalist offensive by the corporate others from seven largely Muslim coun- social media and degree of political elite and their bipartisan government tries5 and his racist order to build a wall polarization do not replace the need (Democrats and Republicans) began, on the border with Mexico. No doubt for an effective strategy, tactics, and in the aftermath of the world recession these actions are stronger because of action program for the mass action. It of 1973-75, that signaled the end of the the women’s marches a week earlier. is here where many mass movements post-World War II capitalist prosperi- No doubt that many who are partici- have failed in the past as they ended up ty. The leadership of these movements pating or supporting these protest channeling the mass movement into that relied on the Democratic Party actions were also participants in the the Democratic Party politics. politicians to gain a few concessions in women’s marches. No doubt that both Ms. Tufekci urges her readers to a exchange for political support for its the immigrant rights movement and Democratic Party version of the Tea capitalist policies proved unable to women’s rights movement are stronger Party model—that is, to organize local resist the class war that ensued and as a result. Would not these also groups to question, pressure and elect continues to this day. Both Republican strengthen the position of the working politicians to adopt the movement’s and Democratic parties participated in class in the United States? goals. The same message is broadcasted this class warfare, although they employed different tactics (Think of The Democratic Party is the by hundreds of liberal-minded organi- the Republicans as the Stick Party and graveyard of social movements zations and personalities in the social the Democrats as the Carrot Party.) In an Op-Ed essay in the New York justice and environmentalist move- Times, Zeynep Tufekci “Does the Size ments. (By “liberal,” I mean persons Humanity cannot afford the con- of a Protest Matter?” makes an impor- who hold a liberal view on social issues tinuation of the same historically prov- tant observation about the women’s and support government action to soft- en bankrupt capitalist policies by the marches. “In the digital age,” she en the blows of the capitalist system to leadership of the social justice and envi- writes, “…the size of a protest is no the society and the environment.) Their ronmentalist movements: the planetary longer a reliable indicator of a move- strategy and tactics can be described as crisis caused by the workings of the ment’s strength. Comparisons to the follows: resist the Trump government anthropocentric industrial capitalist number of people in previous marches in the next two years while preparing world economy leaves humanity only a are especially misleading.” Her point is for electing Democrats in the mid-term few decades before existential threats the following. In the pre-digital age, elections, and if a majority in the House like catastrophic climate change or the organizers of mass actions had to work and Congress is achieved then go on the sixth extinction reaches the tipping hard for a long time to spread the offensive to implement a “liberal” or points beyond which no human inter- news, educate the public for many “progressive” agenda. vention can stop the existential disaster. months, to ensure a successful protest. There is a long history of social There lies the most important his- She cites the March in Washington in movements being dragged into sup- toric aspect of today’s mobilizations. August 1963 which brought together porting the Democratic Party, the They provide an opportunity for a work- a-quarter-of-a-million people, consid- graveyard of progressive movements in ing class vanguard to emerge that will go

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 15 beyond fighting the anti-working class Women On Strike! policies of Donald Trump, to break with the two-party system, and to form a Beyond Lean-In: For a Feminism of the 99 percent and a Militant mass labor party with a revolutionary International Strike on March 8 program to resolve the social and eco- By Linda Martín Alcoff, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, Nancy logical crisis by uniting working people Fraser, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Rasmea Yousef Odeh, Angela Davis in the U.S. and worldwide through a and Barbara Ransby government of direct producers. —February 2, 2017 The massive women’s marches of The kind of feminism we seek is January 21st may mark the beginning already emerging internationally, in of a new wave of militant feminist struggles across the globe: from the struggle. But what exactly will be its women’s strike in Poland against the 1 “Political Report of the Central Commit- focus? In our view, it is not enough to abortion ban to the women’s strikes and tee,” March 7, 1918. oppose Trump and his aggressively marches in Latin America against male 2 The Socialist Workers Party of the 1960s misogynistic, homophobic, transpho- violence; from the massive women’s and 1970s not only upheld these views but bic and racist policies; we also need to played a leading role in the mass movements of demonstration of the last November in those days, especially in the anti-Vietnam war target the ongoing neoliberal attack on Italy to the protests and the women’s movement. However, in the early 1980s Jack social provision and labor rights. strike in defense of reproductive rights Barnes, SWP’s National Secretary, led a purge While Trump’s in South Korea and Ireland. of the party’s historical program, strategy and organizational norms that were accompanied blatant misogyny What is striking by expulsions and forcing out of hundreds of was the immediate Women’s conditions about these mobili- leaders and members of the party. trigger for the mas- of life, especially those zations is that sev- 3 Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolu- sive response on eral of them com- tion, 1932, especially, Volume 1, Chapter 8. January 21st, the of women of color bined struggles 4 Nayeri and Nasab, The Rise and Fall of the attack on women and of working, against male vio- 1979 Iranian Revolution: Its Lessons for Today, (and all working lence with opposi- 2006. people) long pre- unemployed and tion to the casual- 5 What most people do not realize is that this dates his adminis- ban that affects more than 90,000 people is migrant women, have ization of labor and tration. Women’s imposed on those who have already been “vet- steadily deteriorated wage inequality, ted” by multiple U.S. security agencies and have conditions of life, while also oppos- been given admission to the United States. See, especially those of over the last 30 years, ing homophobia, “Infographic: The Screening Process for Refu- women of color transphobia and gee Entry into the United States.” thanks to financializa- and of working, xenophobic immi- https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ unemployed and tion and corporate blog/2015/11/20/infographic-screening-process- gration policies. refugee-entry-united-states migrant women, globalization. Together, they her- have steadily dete- ald a new interna- riorated over the tional feminist last 30 years, thanks to financialization movement with an expanded agenda–at and corporate globalization. once anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti- Lean-in feminism and other vari- heterosexist, and anti-neoliberal. ants of corporate feminism have failed We want to contribute to the devel- the overwhelming majority of us, who opment of this new, more expansive do not have access to individual self- feminist movement. promotion and advancement and whose conditions of life can be As a first step, we propose to help improved only through policies that build an international strike against male defend social reproduction, secure violence and in defense of reproductive reproductive justice, and guarantee rights on March 8th. In this, we join with labor rights. As we see it, the new wave feminist groups from around thirty coun- of women’s mobilization must address tries who have called for such a strike. all these concerns in a frontal way. It The idea is to mobilize women, must be a feminism for the 99 percent. including trans-women, and all who

16 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 support them in an international day women, their families, and their allies School for Social Research. Her books of struggle—a day of striking, march- throughout the world. include Redistribution or Recognition ing, blocking roads, bridges, and Linda Martín Alcoff is a professor of and Fortunes of Feminism. squares, abstaining from domestic care philosophy at Hunter College and the Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is an assis- and sex work, boycotting, calling out CUNY Graduate Center and the author tant professor in Princeton University’s misogynistic politicians and compa- of Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and Center for African American Studies and nies, striking in educational institu- the Self. She is currently at work on a the author of From #BlackLivesMatter tions. These actions are aimed at mak- new book on sexual violence, and anoth- to Black Liberation. ing visible the needs and aspirations of er on decolonizing epistemology. those whom lean-in feminism ignored: Rasmea Yousef Odeh is the associate women in the formal labor market, Cinzia Arruzza is an Assistant Professor director of the Arab American Action women working in the sphere of social of Philosophy at the New School for Social Network and leader of that group’s Arab reproduction and care, and unem- Research in New York and a feminist and Women’s Committee. ployed and precarious working women. socialist activist. She is the author of Angela Davis is Distinguished Professor Dangerous Liaisons: The Marriages and Emerita, University of California Santa In embracing a feminism for the 99 Divorces of Marxism and Feminism. percent, we take inspiration from the Cruz and a member of the jury for the Argentinian coalition Ni Una Menos Tithi Bhattacharya teaches history at 2012 Russell Tribunal on Palestine. (Not One Less Female.) Violence Purdue University. Her first book, The Barbara Ransby is an activist, writer, against women, as they define it, has Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education, historian, and professor at the University many facets: it is domestic violence, and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of but also the violence of the market, of (Oxford, 2005), is about the obsession Ella Baker and the Black Freedom debt, of capitalist property relations, with culture and education in the middle Movement, the editor-in-chief of and of the state; the violence of dis- class. Her work has been published in SOULS, and President of the National criminatory policies against lesbian, journals such as the Journal of Asian Women’s Studies Association. trans and queer women, the violence of Studies, South Asia Research and New Left Review, and she is currently work- —Viewpoint Magazine, February 3, state criminalization of migratory 2017 movements, the violence of mass incar- ing on a book project entitled Uncanny ceration, and the institutional violence Histories: Fear, Superstition and https://viewpointmag.com/2017/02/03/ against women’s bodies through abor- Reason in Colonial Bengal. beyond-lean-in-for-a-feminism-of-the- tion bans and lack of access to free Nancy Fraser is Loeb Professor of 99-and-a-militant-international-strike- healthcare and free abortion. Philosophy and Politics at the New on-march-8/ Their perspective informs our deter- mination to oppose the institutional, political, cultural, and economic attacks on Muslim and migrant women, on women of color and working and unemployed women, on lesbian, gen- der nonconforming, and trans-women. The women’s marches of January 21st have shown that in the United States too a new feminist movement may be in the making. It is important not to lose momentum. Let us join together on March 8 to strike, walk out, march and demon- strate. Let us use the occasion of this international day of action to be done with lean-feminism and to build in its place a feminism for the 99 percent, a grass-roots, anti-capitalist feminism–a feminism in solidarity with working

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 17 Obama’s Muslim-Ban List Donald Trump didn’t come up with the list of Muslim countries he wants to ban. Obama did. By Sarah Harvard

How did the Trump administration At the initial signing of the restric- having a higher burden for entry at all choose these seven Muslim-majority tions, foreigners who would normally underlies the bill Obama signed, too. countries to ban? The truth is, it didn’t: be deemed eligible for a visa waiver And one of the criticisms of Trump’s The countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, were denied if they had visited Iran, reported proposal for the early stages Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen— Syria, Sudan or Iraq in the past five of his Muslim ban—that it is security- were chosen during Barack Obama’s years or held dual citizenship from one theater—is true of Obama curtail- presidency. of those countries. ing visa wavers. Those restrictions were According to the draft copy of In February 2016, the Obama an early response to the San Bernardino Trump’s executive order, the countries administration added Libya, Somalia shooting and Paris attacks, but in both whose citizens are barred entirely from and Yemen to the list of countries one cases the assailant were nationals of the entering the United States is based on a could not have visited—but allowed countries in which they carried out bill that Obama signed into law in dual citizens of those countries who such violence. December 2015. had not traveled there access to the When the Trump administration Obama signed the Visa Waiver Visa Waiver Program. Dual citizens of announced its plans to issue the execu- Program Improvement and Terrorist Syria, Sudan, Iraq and Iran are still tive order, Sean Spicer told the White Travel Prevention Act as part of an ineligible, however. House press pool that people coming omnibus spending bill. The legislation So, in a nutshell, Obama restricted from the Middle East and Africa have a restricted access to the Visa Waiver visa waivers for those seven Muslim- “predisposition” for terrorism. The Program, which allows citizens from majority countries—Iran, Iraq, Syria, visa waiver restriction, a bipartisan bill 38 countries who are visiting the Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen— Obama signed into law, reinforces that United States for less than 90 days and now, Trump is looking to bar same xenophobic sentiment. to enter without a visa. immigration and visitors from the —Mic Network Inc., January 27, Though outside groups such as the same list of countries. 2017 American Civil Liberties Union and Trump’s use of a list created with https://mic.com/articles/166845/the- NIAC Action—the sister organization Democrats’ support is obviously geared list-of-muslim-countries-trump-wants- of the National Iranian American toward a more nefarious end. A total to-ban-was-compiled-by-the-obama- Council—opposed the act, the biparti- visa-issuance moratorium is more administration#.hl1U00ULY san bill passed through Congress with severe than restricting visa waiver little pushback. access. But the guilt-by-association of

18 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 Ten Thousand Immigrants Go on Strike in Milwaukee By Wladek Flakin

February 13, 2017—What would Custom’s Enforcement (ICE). This Trump’s plan for increased deporta- happen if the Trump administration would allow his officers to act on behalf tions—even more than the 2.4 million really were to deport millions of of ICE, giving them the power to arrest people deported during Obama’s two undocumented workers from the U.S.? and detain undocumented people. In a terms—is dividing the U.S. state appa- Milwaukee, Wisconsin got a brief taste Facebook post, Clarke justified a crack- ratus at all levels. The problem is that of that on Monday, the down with racist hogwash, including the U.S. economy is dependent upon #DayWithoutLatinos. More than ten the need to “prevent the spread of the labor of undocumented workers. thousand people went on strike. infectious diseases e.g. H1N1 flu, Even the most racist policies are The sun was shining and the streets Ebola,” as well as stopping refugees designed not to deport all immigrant of Milwaukee, on the frigid shores of who “would overwhelm America’s workers, but rather to make them live Lake Michigan, were full of demonstra- limited public services. The sheriff in constant fear and accept greater tors. More than 150 businesses shut called for “zero tolerance.” rates of exploitation. their doors on Monday as part of the Clarke, who has been pictured with The Milwaukee protest shows part of #DayWithoutLatinos. The Wisconsin his absurdly oversized cowboy hat at the way forward for the resistance non-profit Voces de la Frontera orga- Trump Tower, is one of approximately against Trump: Workers withdrawing nized the protest together with Muslim three Black people who support the their labor power and collectively shut- and anti-racist organizations. U.S. president. He got national atten- ting down the economy. The left and the Undocumented immigrants play an tion for a breathtakingly racist speech workers’ movement—including all the enormous role in Wisconsin’s economy, at the Republican National Convention, immigrant workers—need to urgently especially in the state’s dairy industry. specifically attacking the Black Lives discuss how we can advance towards a The protesters had left workplaces, Matter movement as a “hate group” general strike across the country. schools and farms. School students who “will join forces with ISIS.” —Left Voice, February 14, 2017 were excused from class if they had Interestingly, even the Milwaukee their parents’ permission. Busses had police have come out against the sher- http://www.leftvoice.org/10-000-Im- arrived from more than 25 cities across iff, as well as the county supervisors. migrants-Go-on-Strike-in-Milwaukee the state. They gathered at 11:00 A.M. and marched through the city center to the Milwaukee County Courthouse. They chanted: “Si se puede!” (“Yes we can”) and “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” (“The people united, will never be defeated.”) “We are workers, not criminals,” read one banner at the front of the march. While some U.S. labor unions have fallen for Trump’s chauvinist logic of protecting jobs by keeping out so-called “illegal aliens,” other unions recognize the need for the unity of all workers, with or without documents. The Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association was one of several trade unions supporting the protest. #StopClarke was a central slogan. Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke wants to enroll his department in the 287(g) program of the Immigration and

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 19 Hey, Hey, Donald J., How Many Kids Will You Deport Today? ICE is quietly accelerating deportations of Central American mothers and children By Sarah Lazare

February 16, 2017—Legal advocates year and held at all three family deten- peace. I feared my daughter and I say that since November, Immigration tion centers. Cambria says that if would be hurt any second, so I fled.” and Customs Enforcement has been deported Friday morning, her client’s According to Cambria, the woman expediting the deportation of safety and well-being will be at risk. faces deportation even though she has Salvadoran families from the Berks “This young person is an aban- been “afforded protection by a family family detention center in Pennsylvania, doned child, who has been alone since court in New York, which determined with plans to expel three more families she was three years old,” said Cambria. that she was abandoned, and it is not in this Friday morning. “This is an extreme way to get rid of a her best interest to be deported.” She The speeding up of deportations mother and child who face severe vio- also has a pending visa application, appears to stem from the more aggres- lence if deported. The type of violence said Cambria. sive approach of the Trump adminis- she is fleeing is gender- and sexual- While harsh policies toward refu- tration, say advocates. based violence in her country, similar gees from Central America are not ICE is accelerating the process by to others fleeing El Salvador.” new, Cambria believes the current cli- expelling families on non-commercial mate under Trump is behind the policy flights before they are granted travel shift. “This began under the Obama documents by the Salvadoran embassy, “This began under administration and gave Trump per- in a break from prior practice, say the Obama adminis- mission to heighten the crackdown,” advocates. Berks is one of three remain- tration and gave said Cambria. “Now that Trump is ing family detention centers that incar- president, we can see the power Obama cerate immigrant mothers with their Trump permission gave to the administration, and the children—prison-like facilities that to heighten the administration is running with it.” became a mainstay of former President crackdown,” said This shift in policy was first noticed Barack Obama’s response to mass, vio- by legal advocates in November. lent displacement from Central Cambria. “Now that According to Karen Hoffmann, a American countries. Trump is president, legal advocate on the ground at Berks Prior to the change, families were we can see the power with ALDEA, the People’s Justice granted provisional travel documents Center, “The first Salvadoran family to and deported on commercial flights. Obama gave to the be taken this way was [a mother] and By cutting out the role of the Salvadoran administration, and her severely traumatized and suicidal embassy in granting such papers, the administration seven-year-old son. They were trans- expulsions now move more quickly. ferred from Berks to Texas, because the “This is a way of circumventing is running with it.” consulate in New York wouldn’t issue their legal rights,” said Bridget travel documents, on November 3 and then removed them on November 8, Cambria, an immigration attorney In a declaration filed to the United still without travel documents.” who represents a 19-year-old woman States District Court of the Eastern slated for deportation tomorrow with District of Pennsylvania in November On February 3, two more Salvadoran her three-year-old daughter (their 2016, and viewed by AlterNet, the families were deported, says Hoffmann, names are being withheld to protect young woman stated: “I came to this even though each of them had pending their privacy.) “What they are doing country seeking protection due to complaints with the Asylum Office and now is, rather than allowing them to threats by MS-13, a transnational Office for Civil Rights and Civil fight their cases, ICE is taking on an criminal organization that threatens Liberties of the Department of adversarial role, putting families on the lives on a daily basis of ordinary Homeland Security. private charter planes to places where Salvadorans. I had the misfortune of “Neither the Asylum Office nor the there is belief they will be facing harm.” learning about their criminal dealings, Office of CRCL had issued a response The young woman and her child and since then, I have faced threats that to either before they were taken from have already been detained for nearly a made it impossible for me to live in their beds around 3:00 A.M.,” said

20 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 Hoffmann. “This is highly unusual. In Update, 4:55 P.M. EST: nent deportation, and not for the first the past, we had always received at least Legal advocates received word time, has that deportation stayed,” said a perfunctory denial before families Thursday afternoon that the United Kline. “Going back means certain were deported. Now it seems they are States District Court of the Eastern death. To have that stopped for this not even doing that.” District of Pennsylvania is staying the period of time, it’s a great feeling for us Court documents issued Thursday, deportation of the 19-year-old woman but even more so knowing that she is February 16, 2017, by the United States and her child, pending a decision on going to be safe a little longer.” District Court of the Eastern District of other litigation, including the effort to Legal advocates do not believe the two Pennsylvania state: “Plaintiff and her secure her special immigrant juvenile other families facing deportation tomor- mother are scheduled to be removed status. The deportation of the two row will have their expulsions stayed. from the United States to El Salvador other families, however, is expected to —AlterNet, February 16, 2017 on Friday, February 17, 2017.” The move forward. document, viewed by AlterNet, contin- “It’s hard to put into words how http://www.alternet.org/immigration/ ues: “The removal will take place via an you feel when a person you’ve been ice-quietly-accelerating-deportations- ICE air charter flight that will originate fighting hard for and is facing immi- central-american-mothers-and-children in Alexandria, Louisiana, and then stop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, before proceeding directly to El Salvador.” Legal advocates are still holding out New York Taxi Drivers Take Solidarity Action hope that tomorrow’s deportations can be stopped. “I think it is important When immigration authorities working-class movement that is to raise awareness of what ICE is doing began to carry out President Trump’s rooted in the defense of the to both Pennsylvania Governor Tom executive order on January 28, 2017, oppressed, we say no to this inhu- Wolf’s Office and with Senator Bob banning refugees and immigrants from mane and unconstitutional ban. Casey,” said Jacquelyn Kline, an attor- seven Muslim countries entering the “We know all too well that ney who has been supporting people U.S., thousands of protestors gathered when government programs sanc- incarcerated at Berks. “We are also at airports around the country. The tion outright Islamophobia, and asking people to call the Philadelphia New York Taxi Workers Alliance the rhetoric of hate is spewed from Field Office of Immigration and joined the protest and put out the fol- the bully pulpit, hate crimes increase and drivers suffer gravely. Customs Enforcement (ICE) and ask lowing statement: Our Sikh and other non-Muslim them to stop the removal.” The New York Taxi Workers Brown and Black members also ICE and the acting consul of the Alliance statement in support of suffer from anti-Muslim violence. Salvadoran consulate in New York did the protests “Today, drivers are joining the not immediately return requests for protest at JFK Airport in support “Professional drivers are over comment. of all those who are currently 20 times more likely to be mur- being detained at the airport dered on the job than other work- because of Trump’s unconstitu- ers. By sanctioning bigotry with tional executive order. Drivers his unconstitutional and inhu- stand in solidarity with refugees mane executive order banning coming to America in search of Muslim refugees from seven coun- peace and safety and with those tries, the president is putting pro- who are simply trying to return to fessional drivers in more danger their homes here in America after than they have been in any time traveling abroad. We stand in soli- since 9/11 when hate crimes darity with all of our peace-loving against immigrants skyrocketed. neighbors against this inhumane, “Our 19,000-member-strong cruel, and unconstitutional act of union stands firmly opposed to pure bigotry.” Donald Trump’s Muslim ban. As an —Facebook, January 28, 2017 organization whose membership is largely Muslim, a workforce that’s https://www.facebook.com/ almost universally immigrant, and a nytwa/posts/1562624543751719

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 21 Trump’s War on Dissent With executive order on policing, Trump declares racialized war on dissent By Flint Taylor

On the heels of the much bally- zation, from one white supremacist— practice acts of civil disobedience that hooed meeting that an obsequious Steve Bannon, to another, Jeff bring them into conflict with law Donald Trump conducted this week Sessions—to pursue the most racist enforcement. Not content with local with local law enforcement officials and reactionary criminal legal policies prosecutors dealing with these con- from across the country, the president in recent memory. The overriding frontations, this order encourages titillated the gendarmes with a threat to theme of the order is “to develop strate- Sessions and his Department of Justice destroy—COINTELPRO style—an gies led by the Department of Justice… to find more punitive federal laws to unnamed Texas state senator rumored to further enhance the protection and charge protesters, to seek the passage of to be introducing legislation to prevent safety of Federal, state, tribal and local new federal laws to further aid this law enforcement from financing police law enforcement officers.” What first effort, and to seek new mandatory operations by seizing arrestees’ prop- comes to mind, quite intentionally, no minimum sentences to enhance the erty before they have been found guilty punishment of protesters, all under the in a court of law. On Thursday, guise of protecting law enforcement February 9, 2017, Trump followed up I had a chilling from “violence.” with an executive order that gave the realization: This was Additionally, the order directs the recently confirmed Attorney General Department of Justice to work with Jefferson Beauregard Sessions a carte the same rationale, other federal agencies—no doubt the blanche to bring down the wrath of the and almost the exact FBI, CIA and NSA prominent among federal government on anyone who is same language, that them—to “develop an executive unfortunate enough to have a confron- branch strategy to prevent violence tation with a cop, a prison guard, a the notorious J. against Federal, State, tribal, and local border patrol officer or who knows Edgar Hoover used law enforcement officers.” As I typed who else outfitted with a badge and those words, I had a chilling realiza- carrying a gun. in his COINTELPRO tion: This was the same rationale, and At first blush, the order could be directives that almost the exact same language, that seen simply as a wildly unpopular pres- targeted Black the notorious J. Edgar Hoover used in ident playing macho man to our his COINTELPRO directives that tar- nation’s police departments and their liberation leaders geted Black liberation leaders Dr. reactionary police unions. The unions Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, have been chafing over being curbed Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), by the previous administration’s doubt, are cops killed in the line of Fred Hampton and their organiza- Department of Justice (DOJ), which, duty, the shooting in Dallas being the tions, and permitted wildly illegal gov- by means of pattern-or-practice inves- most prominent recent example. The ernment surveillance and orchestrated tigations and consent decrees, started policy statement—either explicitly or state violence during the 1960s. implicitly—appeals to fears about peo- to put the brakes on racist police vio- The order also calls for the DOJ to lence. On its face, Trump’s new order ple of color and the demonization of Black Lives Matter (BLM), resonating evaluate “all grant funding programs looks like much bluster, with no currently administered by the DOJ to enforcement mechanisms. Many of the with the barely coded racist refrains of “blue lives matter” and “law and order.” determine the extent to which its grant provisions will need to be passed by funding supports and protects” law Congress, receive funding and ulti- Within the rubric of that declara- enforcement and to seek legislation mately, pass constitutional muster—a tion, and the details that follow in cold that would “adequately support and hurdle that the authoritarian Trump and calculating procession, the order, protect” these agencies. What seems administration, with its white suprem- at bottom, takes aim at protesters, apparent from these provisions is that acist hatchet men at the helm, seems most urgently the Water Protectors at funding for police reforms in training, unwilling to pay even a trifling respect. Standing Rock, BLM protesters across discipline, monitoring and the like will On further analysis, however, the the nation, people protesting the be quashed, while funds for wartime order can be read as an official authori- Muslim ban, and many others who armaments such as SWAT tanks,

22 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 drones, high-powered weapons and Flint’s 1000-Plus Days sophisticated 21st-century surveillance will be the norm. Without Safe Drinking Water This order, like the similar legisla- By Glen Ford tion that the American Legislative Exchange Council is pushing on the Flint, Michigan, a city that used to infrastructure. Michigan’s two Senators, state level, is designed to criminalize be famous for producing cars but both of them Democrats, got worried and quash dissent. Like the attack on gained notoriety almost three years ago when they heard about the freeze from the media, it is aimed at defeating, with for its poisoned water supply, last week news reports. Neither the White House broad authoritarian strokes, growing marked its 1000th day without clean nor the EPA could say for sure whether popular opposition to a wannabe neo- drinking water. Nevertheless, the Flint’s money had been tied up by the fascist regime. Wrapped in “law and 100,000 mostly poor, predominantly freeze. Plus, the money doesn’t exactly order” and protecting the police, the Black residents of Flint have been have Flint’s name on it. The $100 million next target after those who practice civil informed that the current levels of lead is supposed to be awarded to “a munici- disobedience may well be the millions in their water no longer exceed federal pality that is, or has been, the subject of who have been taking to the streets. limits. That would be good news—if an emergency declaration due to lead you could believe it, and if lead were the contamination.” The bill doesn’t men- Yet, clearly, executive repression only problem with Flint’s water. Mona tion Flint by name. However, the funds will not signal the end of resistance. Hanna-Attisha doesn’t believe the should eventually find their way to Flint, This battle will continue to be waged in water is safe for drinking. She’s the since it’s the only city in the country that the streets, in the media and in the pediatrician who helped blow the whis- fits that description. courts. Our very existence depends on tle on skyrocketing rates of lead in the the outcome. blood of Flint’s children, after state Multiply that by 3,000 Flint Taylor has been litigating cases emergency financial managers forced But, when it comes to lead poison- against police torture in Chicago for 30 the city to draw its water from the heav- ing, Flint is anything but alone. An years and is one of the lawyers for the ily polluted Flint River. Dr. Hanna- investigative report by the Reuters news families of slain Black Panther leaders Attisha says the federal regulations are agency, in December, showed that chil- Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. too weak to protect young brains and dren in nearly 3,000 communities Together with his law partner Jeffrey bodies from stunted development. across the country show lead levels in Haas, Taylor was trial counsel in the Gina Luster, a community organizer their blood at least twice as high as kids marathon 1976 civil trial. For more in Flint, warns that, even if lead levels in Flint. In more than 1,100 neighbor- information on the Hampton/Clark are down, the there’s plenty of other hoods, kids tested four times higher case, the history of the Black Panther harmful stuff in the water. Her advice than children in Flint. At the peak of Party and the FBI’s program to destroy is, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.” Luster the contamination of Flint’s water, five it, visit PeoplesLawOffice.com. says she and other residents have been percent of children tested had high —Truth-Out, February 10, 2017 fooled “too many times” and “will levels of lead. However, in some neigh- never trust the water again.” borhoods in South Bend, Indiana http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/ Nine people have so far been crimi- almost one-third of the kids had high item/39445-with-executive-order-on- nally charged in the poisoning of Flint’s lead levels. Pennsylvania is the state policing-trump-declares-racialized-war- water, eight of them state employees. But with the most census tracts with lead- on-dissent no one at the federal Environmental contaminated water. Thirty-six percent Protection Agency, which has broad of the kids in Warren, Pennsylvania powers over the whole country’s water tested high for lead. supply, has been charged with a crime. So, if Flint needs $100 million to The EPA, however, is on President tackle a lead problem that is, supposedly, Donald Trump’s hit list—not for failing close to under control, how much money the people of Flint, but for sometimes is needed to make the water safe in 3,000 getting on the wrong side of Trump’s other communities across the country? friends in polluting industries. The Trump administration has frozen all EPA —Black Agenda Report, January 24, grants and contracts, which put in ques- 2017 tion $100 million that Congress allocated http://www.blackagendareport.com/ to help Flint replace and repair its water flint_water_unsafe_1000_days

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 23 The Fight for Medicare for All Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, won’t fight for Medicare for All By Glen Ford

Democrats will tell you that the The numbers tell the tale. When Bill later adopted by Republican Republicans are the reason the U.S. is Clinton first ran for president in 1992, Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. the only industrial country in the world two-thirds of the public—66 percent— Not only was Obamacare unpopu- that does not have universal, govern- told pollsters they supported a “nation- lar on its own merits, but because ment-provided healthcare. But, that’s al health insurance plan financed by tax Obama had used the trick terminology not true. Despite their legislative money.” The Clintons instead respond- “universal healthcare” to describe his majorities, the Republicans are not ed with a secretly-hatched, “managed program, the public became confused strong enough on their own to defeat a competition” plan that relied on pri- and demoralized about the whole sub- concerted campaign for a Medicare for vate insurers and took more than 1,300 ject of government healthcare. By 2016, All program, which is supported by pages to explain. “Hillary-care” died only 44 percent of the people had a overwhelming majorities of the public, ignominiously in Congress. positive reaction to the term “single including a very large percentage of payer health coverage.” However, Republicans. The U.S. does not have a By late 2006, an amazing 69 percent nearly two-thirds of those polled—64 single payer healthcare system because of Americans were telling pollsters they percent—liked the idea of Medicare corporate Democratic leadership, most agreed with the statement that “it is the for All, which is a form of single payer. shamefully under Presidents Bill responsibility of the federal govern- Medicare for the elderly is probably the Clinton and Barack Obama, have con- ment to make sure that all Americans nation’s most popular social safety net fused the public about what is, and have healthcare coverage.” Barack what is not, “universal” healthcare. Obama was getting ready to make his program, and younger folks would like They have offered counterfeit, private run for the White House. He claimed to be part of it, too, including lots of industry-based schemes—“Hillary- to want something he called “universal low-income Republicans. Even Donald care” in 1993, Obamacare in 2009— healthcare.” Most people assumed he Trump used to be for it. and fraudulently called them universal meant a single payer, Medicare for All- Medicare for All is an idea whose healthcare, when in fact these were type program, but instead, Obama time has come—again! And, with bait-and-switch schemes designed to dusted off an old Republican private Obamacare being dismantled and a prevent the successful passage of a insurance-based plan devised by the healthcare emergency looming, one genuine single payer health program. far-right Heritage Foundation and would think the Democrats would seize the time to push for a truly uni- versal healthcare plan with such broad support. But, corporate Democratic leadership—just like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—do not really want single payer healthcare, because their fat cat contributors oppose it. Therefore, they will urge the people to waste their energy on trying to salvage some aspects of Obamacare. Bernie Sanders will help them do it, because he’s still sheep-dogging for corporate Democrats. —Black Agenda Report, January 31, 2017 http://www.blackagendareport.com/ democrats_won%27t_fight_for_medi- care-for-all

24 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 Class Is Where We Find Our Strength By Steven Strauss and Andrea Bauer

Analyzing the reasons why Donald tiny minority who own the factories, class questions. For example, how do Trump “won” the 2016 election is in banks, oil fields and other means for you separate women’s rights in general part an exercise in absurdity, since producing profits. The capitalists real- from women’s position as super-exploit- Hillary Clinton attracted about three ize that profit by buying the labor ed workers? This goes double for women million more votes than he did. Still, power of a working class with no other of color, lesbians, and trans women, enough people chose Donald Trump way to survive. who face the most discrimination and to give him an Electoral College major- It seems simple, doesn’t it? But the earn the lowest wages. And how do you ity, and that is what counts in not-so- idea of class is surrounded with decep- separate the overwhelming number of democratic U.S. politics. tion and mired in confusion. youth of color in the criminal justice Many people in the non-Trump system from the underwhelming num- camp are scratching their heads. Why Resisting divide and conquer ber of good jobs available? did millions of working people, One of the biggest obstacles to under- But with identity politics, differences incensed that billionaires are thriving standing class is the conception that of race, gender, etc., become divorced while they are suffering, vote for a bil- “worker” means a straight white male in from the commonality of class. And, as lionaire? And not just any billionaire, a hard hat. No! All of us who sell our Emily Woo Yamasaki wrote in a previ- but a reactionary blowhard who labor power for a wage or a salary are ous Freedom Socialist article, this type of proudly announced that he will make workers, and we and our families are orientation means “having to rank the the rich even richer. working-class. And that gives us, as ways in which you are oppressed and diverse as we are, something in common. An even more burning question: choosing one or two as more important what do we do about it? The false notion of who is a worker and more worthy of activism than the is very convenient for the ruling minor- others.” (See “Beyond the limits of The answer to both questions ity, which relies heavily on “divide and ‘identity politics’” at socialism.com.) involves understanding the class sys- conquer” to keep its hold over the Identity politics comes in lots of tem under which the rich rule—and majority. taking a closer look at things that come flavors and has lots of kin, like radical to substitute for a class orientation, like For Trump, of course, divide and feminism (“men are the enemy”), cul- identity politics. conquer is his political bread and but- tural nationalism (“whites are the ter. If native-born white workers all problem”), and even white supremacy Which side are you on? realized that their well-being rises or (“people of color are inferior, the races Whatever Russia’s role in the elec- falls along with the welfare of Blacks, should be separate”). One of the core tion turns out to be, Putin can’t be other people of color, immigrants, and beliefs of the Freedom Socialist Party blamed for the outcome. From the refugees, Trump would still be hosting (FSP) is that the fights against special beginning of the long, torturous cam- the next season of Celebrity Apprentice. oppression are crucial in their own paign cycle, workers clearly expressed But Trump is not alone. right and as part of winning better lives their disgust with a system that’s failing Scapegoating based on gender, skin for everyone. But no abused and mar- them: witness their fervent interest in color, sexuality, nationality, etc., is an ginalized group succeeds on its own— both Trump and Bernie Sanders. Hillary attempt to distract working people or by seeing class sisters and brothers Clinton represented the status quo, and from the real enemy. Fostering distrust only as secondary allies rather than people wanted a fundamental change. and hostility among workers is how the equal partners in a fight for total Trump, as reprehensible as he is, is elites get away with squeezing us dry. human liberation. just the latest in the line of Republican Unfortunately, the lack of class-con- and Democrat politicians that working sciousness fostered by those who bene- Finding our strength people are cudgeled, dragooned, fit from it can have dire results in the But how does unity emerge from tricked and persuaded to vote for labor and social movements. One of the divisions among us? It often starts against their own class interest. those consequences is identity politics. when those in power, like Trump, go just one step too far. Whatever the rhetoric of their can- The issues of the majority of women, didates, the Democratic and Republican people of color, LGBTQ people, and When that happens, resistance is Parties represent the capitalist class, the others who are specially oppressed are triggered, and the reality of struggle on

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 25 the job or in our communities makes Standing Rock Burning solidarity a social imperative. Class- consciousness identifies a common Update on the camp the morning after evacuation, night of arrests enemy and the need to make alliances By Brianna Provenzano across the chasms created to split and weaken working people. As FSP found- On the morning of Thursday, a 7-year-old-boy and a 17-year-old- er Clara Fraser explains in Revolution, February 23, 2017, Standing Rock was girl—were transported to a hospital in She Wrote, “The creation of oneness burning. Bismarck for burns after two of the out of division is what produces strikes, Just one day after the Wednesday blasts. mass voter protests, and ultimately deadline to evacuate the camp, only an revolutions.” A chapter comes to a close estimated 25 to 50 protesters remained, Burgum signed the emergency order Plenty of opportunities to forge reluctant to abandon the last vestiges of to evacuate the camp last week, citing “oneness out of division” face the the movement to oppose construction safety concerns as accelerated snow- diverse U.S. working class. Challenging of the Dakota Access pipeline. police violence; opposing a Muslim melt threatened to cause “rising water Those that stayed set fire to tents registry and an expanded border wall; levels and an increased risk of ice jams.” and other monuments around the protecting and extending reproductive Dubbed the Oceti Sakowin camp, encampment. North Dakota rights and gains for LGBTQ people; the site played host to an estimated Governor Doug Burgum said that battling for the environment; opposing 5,000 to 10,000 protesters intent on cleanup crews were scheduled to enter imperialist war; defending Social halting the U.S. Army Corps of the once-bustling camp at 9:00 A.M. Security and the right to unionize; win- Engineers’ construction of the snaking local time. ning real universal healthcare. oil pipeline during its time in operation. “We’re very firm that the camp is Since President Donald What a list! But we can now closed,” he said during a press Trump signed executive actions to set tackle it—together conference Wednesday night. the project back in motion in January, We need to build united fronts— But Chase Iron Eyes, a member of the pipeline is expected to be complete alliances in which we fight democrati- the Standing Rock Sioux tribe that led and transporting oil even sooner than cally as one for shared working-class the resistance against the pipeline’s expected, and is now slated to be fin- goals, while respecting our differences. construction on the grounds that it ished “anywhere between the week of The experience of building united bisected sacred lands and threatened March 6, 2017, and April 1, 2017,” fronts will draw out the lessons of how the local water supply, said that shut- according to Energy Transfer Partners, capitalism works, helping to achieve a ting down the camp would not damp- the Texas-based company building the higher level of class consciousness and en protesters’ spirits. pipeline. an understanding of the need for revo- “You can’t arrest a movement,” he lutionary change. For 17-year-old Alethea Phillips, a told Reuters. ”You can’t arrest a spiri- protester from Michigan who had been An independent labor party built by tual revolution.” in the camp for three months, the rank-and-file unionists could be Wednesday night arrests bleakest hour of the resistance was the another vehicle for common mass most critical test the demonstrators action, not only through the ballot but Police in riot gear detained ten pro- would face. also jointly with the social justice testers on the road near the camp’s movements. main entrance on Wednesday night. “I feel as though now is the time to stand our ground,” she told Reuters. If not now, when? Class unity is the During the press conference, key to power for the powerless, and Burgum said that those who were —News.Mic, February 23, 2017 this is the moment to seize it. arrested would be charged with https://mic.com/articles/169370/ —Freedom Socialist Newspaper, “Obstruction of a Government standing-rock-news-live-update-on-the- February-March 2017 Function,” a class B misdemeanor. camp-the-morning-after-evacuation- www.socialism.com As sleet buffeted the camp, the night-of-arrests?bt_ee=ukGRbfoTlESrga remaining protesters set off fireworks 3EZBM+gF8mJ/1teDKwtLcXuHesGzQ Wednesday evening. Burgum said that QezRl1YZF2OG2mHdsEic6&bt_ in addition to the arrests, two people— ts=1487955653735#.8VWPKNJeB

26 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 Thoughts on the News By Carole Seligman

February 23, 2017—Sometimes wealth above that owned by half of poured the bulk of society’s wealth and reading the news can hit one over the humanity. resources into war and weaponry. head with the desperate situation This is a condition—enormous, In the years after World War II, and humanity is in. I was (hit over the unfathomable wealth alongside an since the early 1970s when the U.S. head). unfathomable degree of poverty and capitalist economy ended a period of Yesterday, I read an article in The suffering of masses of human beings, limited gains for the U.S. working New Yorker magazine of February 27, including millions of children—that class, these conditions have only wors- 2017, “The Children’s Odyssey,” writ- characterizes capitalist society. These ened. There are literally millions of ten in a low-key style by Lauren Collins, are conditions that show that capitalist people on the move—refugees from about unaccompanied minor refugees society cannot be moral, cannot solve war and environmental devastation traveling thousands of miles to seek the most basic needs of the human spe- that has caused more frequent famines, refuge away from their war torn coun- cies for shelter, sustenance (clean extreme weather devastation, environ- tries, and the gross failure of the water, good food a clean environment), mental deterioration that makes sub- advanced, wealthy countries of Europe safety, and health. sistence impossible in more and more to shelter and care for them. These conditions have existed for places. And the governments at the Later in the day, I read, “At over the last century and, in fact, the centers of wealth and power, those Wisconsin Juvenile Prisons, Children whole time that capitalism has been whose wealth and resources could be Face a Nightmare of Solitary the dominant social system in the mobilized to feed, clothe, and shelter Confinement and Abuse” By Valerie world, despite its ability to amass the whole world’s population, are Kiebala—which reports in detail about gigantic wealth. And although the unwilling and unable to do that. To do the abusive treatment of children in Trump Administration personifies the so would conflict with profit-making. solitary confinement in Wisconsin evils of capitalist society and its abuse And profit-making is the be-all and juvenile prisons. Abuse of children is of children, none of the “alternatives” end-all of capitalist society—human clearly a feature of society across a proposed to the Trump Administration needs be damned. Children’s welfare spectrum of the most “advanced”— by those who espouse some reformist be damned. read “wealthy”—countries of Europe vision of a kinder and gentler “socialis- Our job is to say “capitalism be and North America. tic” society have had any success in damned,” and to send it into the trash And today’s New York Times has a changing these conditions. And, they bin of history by any means necessary. mind-boggling report “At a ‘Defense’ don’t even seem to have wanted to Clearly, this means revolution, socialist Expo, an Antiseptic World of change them when they were in power. revolution to end profit-making and Weaponry” by Ben Hubbard. This arti- All the capitalist governments have war once and for all. cle begins as a kind of “antiseptic” report on the wares for sale at the International Defense [sic] Exhibition and Conference (IDEX) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. But, halfway into the article the author says, “As a Middle East correspondent during vis- its to Gaza, Syria, Iraq and Yemen I have seen up close the human cost to communities on the receiving end of many of these weapons.” And so, the author reports, he was “overwhelmed.” Reading these three pieces together paints an honest picture of conditions in a world of tremendous wealth in which eight individual billionaires own

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 27 Billionaires Must Be Made Extinct An ever-smaller circle of billionaires controls the planet’s wealth By Glen Ford

The world is being strangled, smoth- wealth of planet Earth. However, I doubt The last of the super-rich ered and starved to death by billion- that we will ever see an Age of Trillionaires The United States has by far the aires—1,826 of them, by Forbes maga- if only because global society would shat- highest concentration of billion- zine’s count. The ever-deepening con- ter and explode from the sheer magnitude aires—536, followed by China, with centration of wealth that is both the of the accumulated theft of human labor 251. Russia is way down in sixth place, logic and the inevitable result of capital- and natural resources. with only 77 billionaires, behind ism has reached such depraved propor- Britain, Germany and India. But, of tions that eight of the richest people on course, billionaires live anywhere they the planet now own as much wealth as want to—which really means they live the bottom half of the entire human nowhere at all. Home is where their race. The very existence of such concen- money is, and every billionaire is a fully trated private wealth is a crime against globalized citizen, with no loyalties humanity, and incompatible with any except to his class. notion of civilization. Indeed, how can a The existence of billionaires should society call itself civilized, when half the be seen as a measure of the sickness of value of all of humanity’s labor—which the capitalist system, now in its last is what those fortunes actually repre- stages. Of the eight richest billionaires sent—is at the disposal of eight men? in the United States, six made their Clearly, the world needs a revolution, The billionaires must be made fortunes from the telecommunications to throw off the dead weight of these bil- extinct, one way or the other, so that industry, whose political influence now lionaires. Last year, the Oxfam organiza- the multitudes can restructure the rivals that of Wall Street. Not only are tion calculated that it took 62 of the world into a survivable place. The 500 the Silicon Valley fat cats obscenely world’s richest people to equal the wealth richest people on the planet cannot be wealthy, but they control the informa- held by the bottom half of humanity. This allowed, 20 years from now, to pass on tion systems that the rest of us depend year, it only takes eight. According to $2.1 trillion in inheritance to their on to understand what’s going on in Oxfam’s latest study, the way capitalism is privileged children—the equivalent of our world. That makes people like Bill going, in 25 years we could be talking the entire yearly economy of India and Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg about a few trillionaires controlling the its 1.3 billion people. very dangerous. The good news is, young people around the world under- stand the nature of the threat to human freedom posed by these information system tycoons, who got rich through monopoly and market manipulation, just like the other capitalists. They too, must face expropriation, so that the saga of human equality can begin. —Black Agenda Report, January 17, 2017 http://www.blackagendareport.com/ billionaires_control_planet%27s_worth

28 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 Unspeakable: the Black Book of Imperial Terrorism By Paul Street

American “mainstream” journalists rescue the rest of the world.” Cook refugee streams in places like Iraq, who want to keep their paychecks flow- naturally supports Trump’s travel ban. Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Syria, and Iran ing and their status afloat know they (more on this below), all on Trump’s must report current events in a way Capitalism 101 travel ban. It’s a taboo topic in domi- that respects the taboo status of the It was fine reporting as far as it went nant media: the role of the military nation’s underlying inequality and but notice what was, to use the title of budget in hollowing out American oppression structures and its savage Chris Hedges’ latest book, Unspeakable. society from the inside. One unmentionable topic was capital- and relentless imperial criminality. Hedges gets this right in the follow- ism’s reliance on what Karl Marx called Those topics are understood as off lim- ing exchange in Unspeakable, a compi- “the reserve army of labor”—a mass of its, as beyond the narrow parameters of lation of interviews with left journalist job-seeking unemployed people suffi- acceptable and polite discussion. They David Talbot: are subjects that serious reporters and ciently large to keep the price of labor Talbot: “[Bernie Sanders] promised commentators have the deeply indoc- power to guarantee profitable exploita- to impose much higher taxes on the trinated common sense to avoid. tion of the working class. Is it unthink- able that Rutland might consider turn- wealthy and Wall Street speculators.” “We’ve done enough as a country” ing their town into a labor magnet that Hedges: “Yes, but if we don’t get An excellent example is a recent might attract workers by, say, raising control of our military spending we CNN report on how U.S. President the local minimum wage to $15 an are finished…Our infrastructure, Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban is hour? Sadly, it probably is because our public educational system, our social services—everything is crum- playing out in the small Vermont city local employers—including the global of Rutland. A CNN reporter spoke to bling for a reason, we don’t have megacorporation and leading corpo- money for it. It is being consumed two local players on different sides of rate welfare recipient and “defense” by the war machine. And Sanders the question of whether Syrian refu- contractor General Electric (GE), didn’t touch the military-industrial gees should be settled in Rutland. The which employs more than a thousand complex. That would have been first source was the town’s mayor, workers across two Rutland plants— political suicide…There will be no Chris Louras, who has been leading an want to keep wages as low as possible socialism until we dismantle imperi- effort to make Rutland a refugee reset- in the interest of sustaining an “accept- alism and dramatically slash military tlement hub that would welcome 25 able” rate of profit. Grow the “reserve spending power. Martin Luther Syrian families in 2017. When asked army” and grow the local tax base. King understood that.” about why he’s been pushing for this, We can be sure Louras doesn’t want And look what happened to Dr. the mayor cited humanitarian con- to give GE reason to shift its Rutland King, who was assassinated (or perhaps cerns (“it’s the right thing to do”) but operations elsewhere in pursuit of executed) exactly one year to the day also (and above all) mentioned eco- cheaper labor. That’s Capitalist Labor after giving a celebrated speech in nomic considerations. Rutland’s Market economics 101 and Corporate which he made a deep connection unemployment rate of three percent is Power 102. between his opposition to poverty and “dangerously low,” making it hard for racism at home and his opposition to companies to find workers and thereby Guns v. Butter: spiritual death the U.S. war on Southeast Asia. In inhibiting investment and “growth,” A second forbidden topic is the role explaining his decision to follow his the mayor told CNN. of U.S. militarism in, to use Dr. Cook’s conscience and speak out against U.S. CNN also featured an interview term, “tapping out” America. It is militarism, King said, “I knew that with Rutland doctor Timothy Cook, a beyond the parameters of acceptable America would never invest the neces- Trump fan and an opponent of the debate and commentary to note that sary funds or energies in rehabilitation of mayor’s refugee resettlement plan. “I the nation is impoverished thanks in its poor so long as adventures like think we’ve done enough as a coun- no small part to the massive Pentagon Vietnam continued to draw men and try,” Cook told CNN. “I’m tapped out budget (54 percent of federal discre- skills and money like some demonic and this nation is tapped out. We need tionary spending), which pays for the destructive suction tube. So I was to fix our own problems first and then global empire that has wreaked havoc, increasingly compelled to see the war we can reconfigure and see if we can fueled jihadism, and generated massive as an enemy of the poor and to attack

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 29 it as such… A nation that continues A proven history of terrorism Meritorious service year after year to spend more money Also unspeakable is the criminality Journalists and others looking for on military defense than on programs of what the America Empire—accu- such a history might want to go back of social uplift,” King warned, “is rately described by Dr. King in 1967 as and review the July 3, 1988 incident in approaching spiritual death” (empha- “the greatest purveyor of violence in which U.S. Navy warship Vincennes sis added). the world”—does abroad. It is shot down a civilian Iranian airliner Don’t take it just from left radicals unthinkable that CNN might challenge (Iranian Air Fight 655) with a guided past (King) and present (Hedges). In Dr. Cook’s notion of the U.S. as a cruise missile, killing all 300 people on his recent magisterial study of the over- nation that tries to “rescue the rest of board, 71 of whom were children. This lapping “deep state” concentrations of the world.” monstrous assault was perpetrated in corporate, financial, and governmental The correction would include con- Iranian airspace, over Iran’s territorial power that control American society fronting Washington’s role in crimi- waters in the Persian Gulf. Six years beneath and beyond the nation’s qua- nally devastating some of the very later, the Navy awarded special com- drennial electoral carnivals, the former nations from which Trump has tried to mendation medals for “meritorious longtime Republican Congressional ban travelers and refugees. Iraq, for service” to the Vincennes’ commander, staffer Mike Lofgren notes that the U.S. one leading example, has been subject Captain Will Rogers III and to his weapons systems officer. Lieutenant struggles with widespread poverty, rot- to two mass-murderous U.S. invasions Commander Scott E. Lustig. ting infrastructure, inadequate health- along with an intervening decade plus care, and deficient pubic services of deadly economic sanctions that have Iranians are likely recalling that (schools, transportation, and more) combined to kill millions, maim mil- horrendous crime now that Trump is not because the government lacks lions, and displace millions more. saber-rattling against Tehran. The new fascist president’s ex-National Security money but because too much of its Yemen has been ravaged by joint Advisor Michael Flynn has put Iran money goes to serve entrenched inter- U.S, and Saudi Arabian air assaults, “officially on notice” that Washington ests. Top among those interests is the U.S. Special Forces, and U.S. drone is considering action against it. He said nation’s enormous military-industrial attacks. complex, funded by a Pentagon budget that “we are considering a whole range that accounts for more than half of Sudan has long been tortured by the of options.” Meanwhile, U.S., British, U.S. federal discretionary spending U.S., which has played a central role in French, and Australian warships are and nearly half the world’s military political dissolution and civil war there. engaged in provocative “naval exercis- outlay. As Lofgren notes in his indis- Libya was collapsed with U.S. and es” off Iran’s shores. pensable book The Deep State: The Fall NATO bombs, miring that country in Highway of Death of the Constitution and the Rise of a civil war and jihad. Journalists and others looking for Shadow Government (2016): Syria has been torn apart by an epi- proven histories of terrorism might “Even as commentators decry a cally murderous Civil War that also want to reflect on the hideous car- broken government that cannot Washington has fueled along with the nage wreaked by the U.S. military on marshal the money, the will, or the jihadism that the U.S. and its oil-rich Iraq’s notorious “Highway of Death,” competence to repair our roads and Arab state allies and Pakistan have where U.S. forces massacred tens-of- bridges, heal our war veterans, or spread there and across the Muslim thousands of surrendered Iraqi troops even roll out a healthcare website, world. retreating from Kuwait on February 26 there is always enough money and will, and maybe just a bare minimum “During his campaign,” CNN and 27, 1991. The Lebanese-American of competence to overthrow foreign reported when the president announced journalist Joyce Chediac testified that: governments, fight the longest war in his travel ban, “Trump vowed to ban “U.S. planes trapped the long U.S. history, and conduct dragnet Muslim immigrants from countries convoys by disabling vehicles in the surveillance over the entire surface of with a ‘proven history’ of terrorism front, and at the rear, and then the planet (p.4)…It is as if Hadrian’s against the United States or its allies.” pounded the resulting traffic jams Wall was still fully manned and the for hours. ‘It was like shooting fish Orwell might have enjoyed that fortifications along the border with in a barrel,’ said one U.S. pilot. Germania were never stronger, even statement in light of the United States’ On…miles of coastal highway, Iraqi as the city of Rome disintegrated proven history of mass-murderous military units sit in gruesome repose, from within and the life-sustaining Superpower terrorism against the scorched skeletons of vehicles and aqueducts leading down from the countries Trump has imposed his trav- men alike, black and awful under hills began to crumble.” (p.216) el ban against. the sun…U.S. forces continued to

30 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 drop bombs on the convoys until all had not yet targeted a Doctors Without slaughter of civilians, the targeting humans were killed. So many jets Borders hospital for repeated lethal even of ambulances and hospitals, and swarmed over the inland road that it bombing or undertaken the systematic the practical leveling of an entire city. created an aerial traffic jam, and torture and rape of Iraqi and other The town was designated for destruc- combat air controllers feared midair Muslims, including children, in places tion as an example of the awesome collisions…. The victims were not like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and state terror promised to those who offering resistance…it was simply a Bagram Air Force base. dared to resist U.S. power. Not surpris- one-sided massacre of tens-of-thou- sands of people who had no ability “Our security,” Barack Obama said ingly, Fallujah became a powerful and to fight back or defend.” during his first Inaugural Address, instant symbol of American imperial- ism in the Arab and Muslim worlds. It According to Wikipedia’s richly “emanates from the…tempering quali- was a deeply provocative and insulting sourced account: ties of humility and restraint.” No responsible “mainstream” U.S. com- place for Obama to have chosen to “The 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing’s mentators dared to question the highlight American sacrifice and A-6 Intruder aircraft blocked Orwellian language of the new presi- “resolve” in the imperialist occupation Highway 80, bombarding a massive of Iraq. vehicle column of mostly Iraqi dent’s speech. Uncle Sam can do no Regular Army forces with Mk-20 evil in the eyes of properly indoctri- A shocking scene nated and/or fearful U.S. media and Rockeye II cluster bombs, effectively Obama would write his own name boxing in the Iraqi forces in an enor- educational “elites” (coordinators and in the black book of U.S. imperial ter- mous traffic jam of sitting targets for operatives). rorism, later telling White House aides subsequent airstrikes…journalist The same deafening media silence Robert Fisk …‘lost count of the Iraqi that “it turns out I’m pretty good at was heard when George H.W. Bush corpses crammed into the smolder- killing people” while commanding a ing wreckage or slumped face down said the following less than a year after drone program that became “the most in the sand’ at the main site and his airborne armed forces turned vast extreme terrorist campaign of modern [saw] hundreds of corpses strewn up stretches of a purposely blocked Middle times” (Noam Chomsky). Among the the road all the way to the Iraqi bor- Eastern highway into an epic monu- many grisly scenes Obama will carry to der….Some independent estimates ment of one-sided imperial criminali- his well-heated grave, one occurred go as high as 10,000 or more casual- ty: “A world once divided into two early in his presidency in the first week ties (even ‘tens-of-thousands’).” armed camps now recognizes one sole of May 2009, a U.S. air-strike killed and pre-eminent power, the United more than ten dozen civilians in Bola “Tempering qualities of humility States of America. And they regard this Boluk, a village in western Afghanistan’s and restraint” with no dread. For the world trusts us Farah Province. Ninety-three of the Truth be told, Uncle Sam was only with power, and the world is right. dead villagers torn apart by U.S. explo- getting warmed up building its Iraqi They trust us to be fair and restrained. sives were children. Just 22 were males and Muslim Body Counts in early They trust us to be on the side of 18 years or older. As the New York 1991. Washington had yet to enforce decency.” Times reported: the economic sanctions that killed at “The streets of Fallujah” “In a phone call played on a loud- least a million Iraqis or to undertake speaker on Wednesday to…the As a soon-to-be fully declared presi- the 2003 invasion that killed more than Afghan Parliament, the governor of a million more and devastated Iraq dential candidate, then-U.S. Senator Farah Province, Rohul Amin, said beyond repair. It had yet to ravage the Obama had this to say to the Chicago that as many as 130 civilians had Iraqi city of Fallujah (more on that Council on Global Affairs in the fall of been killed, according to a legislator, below), as it did in 2004, using (among 2006: “The American people have Mohammad Naim Farahi….The other things) radioactive ordnance that been extraordinarily resolved [in sup- governor said that the villagers have produced an epidemic of child leuke- port of the occupation of Iraq, P.S]… brought two tractor trailers full of mia there. It had yet to launch Barack They have seen their sons and daughters pieces of human bodies to his office Obama’s massive drone war across the killed or wounded in the streets of to prove the casualties that had occurred….Everyone was crying… Muslim world, recently described by Fallujah.” (emphasis added). watching that shocking scene.’ Mr. Noam Chomsky as “the most extensive It was a spine-chilling selection of Farahi said he had talked to someone global terrorism campaign the world locales. Fallujah was the site for colos- he knew personally who had counted has yet seen.” It had yet to kill thou- sal U.S. war atrocity by the U.S. mili- 113 bodies being buried, includ- sands upon thousands of innocent vil- tary in April and November of 2004. ing…many women and children.” lagers and farmers in Afghanistan. It The crimes included the indiscriminate (New York Times, May 6, 2009).

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 31 The initial response of the Obama The cleric was killed in a September handed to him by the Obama adminis- Pentagon to this horrific incident— 2011 drone strike “despite the fact that tration. It killed 30 people. Among the one among many mass U.S. aerial civil- he had never been charged with (let murdered: Anwar al-Awlaki’s eight- ian killings in Afghanistan and Pakistan alone convicted of) any crime” (Glenn year-old daughter, Abdulrahman’s lit- beginning in the fall of 2001—was to Greenwald), but Obama’s lust for kill- tle sister. She bled to death two hours blame the deaths on “Taliban gre- ing al–Awlakis still burned. Two weeks after a U.S. Special Forces warrior shot nades.” Obama’s Secretary of State later, a shiny new CIA drone killed the her in the neck. Call it the orange- Hillary Clinton expressed “regret” cleric’s 16-year-old and American- haired beast’s first imperial blood, about the loss of innocent life, but the born son, Abdulrahman, “along with scored with a big assist from the previ- Administration refused to issue an the boy’s 17-year-old cousin and sev- ous Child Killer-in-Chief, Barack apology or to acknowledge U.S. eral other innocent Yemenis.” Obama. responsibility. By contrast, Obama had What the Hell is going on? just offered a full apology and fired a White House official for scaring New the simplest and Candidate Trump said that he Yorkers with an ill-advised Air Force most reliable way to wanted a Muslim ban “until we can figure out what the Hell is going on” to One photo-shoot flyover of Manhattan stem the Muslim cause fear and hatred of the United that reminded people there of 9/11. refugee flow is to States in the Muslim world. As if there “Peace prize? He’s a killer.” So said is some mystery about that. a young Pashtun man to an Al stop waging crimi- Jazeera English reporter on December nal wars against Selective revulsion 10, 2009—the day Obama was given In its breathless coverage of mass the Nobel Peace Prize. “The man,” the Muslim countries protests of a leading American “alt- reporter wrote, “spoke from the village right” fascist scheduled to speak on the of Armal, where a large crowd gathered campus of the University of California It’s nice to hear that Obama has around the bodies of twelve people, at Berkeley last Wednesday night, CNN voiced support for the mass protests of one family from a single home, all anchors and commentators were hor- Trump’s Muslim travel ban but it’s a killed by U.S. Special Forces during a rified to see windows broken and a hard to believe that he could care less late-night raid.” bonfire started by Black Bloc anar- about Muslim lives in light of his bloody chists. CNN and the rest of the corpo- Murdering a family one at a time foreign policy in the Middle East, rate media have yet to convey the Five months later, Obama would northern Africa, and Southwest Asia. slightest hint of revulsion over the order the CIA to assassinate an Herr Trump ordered a drone assault Obama-Trump murder of 30 people in American citizen in Yemen, the charis- and commando raid in Yemen last Yemen, including many women and matic Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Sunday. The operation was set up and children and an eight-year-old girl. Also evading media disgust is the recent escalation of police state violence against the heroic water- and climate- protectors in Standing Rock. “We’ve done enough” So, yes, Dr. Timothy Cook and CNN, “we’ve done enough as a coun- try”—well, as a murderous empire— not “for” but rather to the Muslim world. With “rescuers” like Uncle Sam, who needed the Third Reich? “Fix our own problems first?” It might surprise many mass-mediated- mind-marinated Americans to know that transferring taxpayer dollars from the U.S. War Machine (the world’s greatest single institutional planet

32 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 warmer and carbon-burner, by the Dawn of the Resistance way) to the meeting of basic social and civic needs in “the homeland” (lovely By Mark Harris imperial term, that) would simultane- ously help U.S. and global citizens fix a As someone once said, a lie can Unlike former president Obama or great problem they share: American travel halfway around the world before candidate Clinton, many tens-of-mil- militarism and imperialism. the truth puts its boots on. In the 2016 lions of ordinary Americans are not Empire, it is worth recalling, is a presidential election, right-wing bil- asking everyone to give Trump a great upward distributer of wealth and lionaire Donald Trump’s lies may have chance or wishing him “success.” power, something to keep in mind in a carried him as far as the White House, They’re not talking about how as nation (the U.S., that is) where the top but with this past weekend’s global Americans we’re “all on the same thousandth (the 0.1 percent) has as Women’s March on Washington the team.” Nor are they clamoring to assist much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. truth put its marching boots on. Trump’s advisory Strategic and Policy As Noam Chomsky noted in 1969, The mass outpouring of opposition Forum on economic issues, as many “There are, to be sure, costs of empire to the Trump presidency was a remark- of Clinton’s most influential corporate that benefit no one: 50,000 American able and unprecedented global event. supporters are doing. corpses or the deterioration in the Certainly the liberal gloom prevailing We have to “throw sand in the gears strength of the United States economy in the United States since Trump’s vic- of everything,” instead declares Frances relative to its industrial rivals. The tory was given a much-needed jolt of Moore Lappe in a recent Nation essay. costs of empire to the imperial society spiritual fortitude. From Washington, Good idea. That means escalating the as a whole may be considerable. These D.C. to Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, defiance, escalating the resistance, costs, however, are social costs, where- New York City, Portland, and across stoking the fires of mass protest every- as, say, the profits from overseas invest- Europe, Australia and elsewhere mil- where they smolder. The moment cries ment guaranteed by military success lions of women and men sent the mes- out for new political leadership, for are again highly concentrated in cer- sage that the reactionary, authoritarian grassroots working-class activism, and tain special segments of the society. dreams of an ultra-wealthy capitalist for a way out of the stagnant swamp of The costs of empire are in general dis- and his cabinet of generals and billion- the corporate two-party system. tributed over the society as a whole, aires will be resisted. The message of while its profits revert to a few within.” January 21 was clear, loud, and uncom- Night of the Living Election Cycle In the meantime, here’s something promising: women’s rights and human If there is one positive consequence CNN will never tell Donald Trump, his rights will be defended. of the Trump presidency, it is that it signals the birth of a new era of grass- fan Dr. Cook, and the many Democrats There is deep popular opposition to roots activism and mass social protest. and Republicans who’ve been trained the legitimacy of a presidency occupied Where it will go remains to be seen, but to stick their heads in Orwellian sand by this toxic, twittering human smoke- when masses of people are in motion on Superpower’s crimes: the simplest stack of polluted right-wing demagogu- everything is possible. But what is also and most reliable way to stem the ery. Indeed, Trump faces widespread possible is that the very same Muslim refugee flow is to stop waging antipathy for his racist border wall Democratic Party “opposition” that set criminal wars against Muslim coun- plan, proposed Muslim registry, and the stage for Trump’s victory will limit tries. The vast taxpayer largesse squan- planned attacks on healthcare rights. the Anti-Trump Resistance to the goal dered on these unwarranted and racist His history of demeaning women as of merely reinstalling the same-old, wars should instead be given to the some sort of patriarchal birthright, same-old Obama-Clinton brand of nations the U.S. and NATO have coupled with an entitled silver spoon neoliberal corporate politics in the next destroyed—and to addressing social, mentality that he thinks gives him free elections. civic, and environmental needs at rein to insult, threaten, and bully any- home. one who challenges him, evoke for That is indeed the thinking at the —Counter Punch, February 3, 2017 many only public revulsion. For many top of the Democratic Party. “I don’t think people want a new direc- http://www.counterpunch. Trump is now perceived as the ultimate tion,” declared newly selected House org/2017/02/03/unspeakable-the-black- concierge of corrupt capitalism, a man minority leader Nancy book-of-imperial-terrorism/ whose economic orientation in office will translate into angling for every pos- Pelosi (D-CA) after the election. As she sible “deal” to further enrich the super- explained, “When President Clinton wealthy corporate class. was elected, Republicans came in big in

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 33 the next election. When President Bush even the most remote chance of win- in the last decade fall under the catego- was president, we came in big in the ning the presidency? Obviously, ry of what a recent Harvard- subsequent election. When President Clinton’s tepid center-right politics Princeton study describes as “alterna- Obama became president, the offered little to inspire American vot- tive work arrangements,” a euphemism Republicans came in big in the next ers. Even more—Clinton was seen by for temp workers, part-time employ- election.” many voters as the tired continuation ees, and contractors (without bene- Talk about Night of the Living of a quarter century of the Democratic fits). These have been invariably low or Election Cycle! What an exhaustingly Party’s contribution to deteriorating modest-paying jobs. lifeless view of the dynamics of social working-class living standards. Tellingly, early in his first term and political change. This is a vision The more astute among Clinton’s Obama rejected advisory proposals for a that reduces American politics to an supporters understand this. In a col- far more ambitious economic stimulus eternal tug of war between elite umn just prior to the election, former initiative, lest he fail to appease right- Republicans and Democrats, that can’t Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wing Congressional Republicans. see beyond the glare of Beltway poli- reminds us that Democratic presidents “Obama’s cautiousness, however, tics, and stands mute before society’s have been in power for 16 of the last 24 proved to be his undo- historic challenges. But what should we years, controlling both houses of the ing,” observed Walden Bello, analyst for expect from a Democratic National U.S. Congress for four of those years. Focus on the Global South, back in 2012. Committee (DNC) that apparently These were years characterized by polit- “The $787 stimulus compromise creat- feared Vermont Senator’s Bernie ical accommodation to a growing con- ed what would become Obama’s ‘Bridge Sanders reformist version of “social- centration of corporate power and too Far:’ it was enough to prevent the ism” more than Trump, who were wealth in the United States. Indeed, as situation from getting worse but not more interested in anointing Clinton Reich notes, both presidents Clinton enough to trigger a healthy recovery.” the party nominee than even allowing a and Obama failed in any meaningful Despite the great political capital fair primary in their own party? way to halt the long-term decline in Obama rode into office, with majority This DNC scenario for opposing working-class jobs, wages, and benefits. Democratic support in Congress in his Trump could signal short-term victo- Instead they promoted free trade agree- first two years, there would be no con- ries for the Democrats, in two or four ments that accelerated the loss of man- frontation with Wall Street or their years, but also a longer-term slide into ufacturing jobs, while offering displaced Republican defenders. There would be even more threatening versions of blue-collar workers, who once earned no attempt to emulate even the limited right-wing “populist” authoritarian- union wages, little in return. Nor did jobs programs of the New Deal era. ism. The problem now for the clueless either do much of anything to protect Nor would much be done to adequate- Pelosi and company is this: Without the democratic right to unionize, under ly rescue foreclosed homeowners. The political leadership that can genuinely assault, despite campaign propaganda nation’s first Black president would challenge all the attendant evils of neo- to the contrary. Consequently, union prove himself in the end to be just liberal capitalism, some far right-wing membership dropped from 22 per- another compromising politician con- “strongman” of one kind or another cent of all workers in the early years of tent to play around the edges of the could very likely dominate, define, or the Clinton administration to less than status quo. He was the man who kept otherwise play a major role in U.S. 12 percent today. Wall Street from the people’s pitch- politics for the indeterminate future. As for all those celebratory Facebook forks, as he himself once admitted, but For the gates to right-wing authoritari- memes liberals like to post about how finally couldn’t keep a racist billionaire anism are now thrust wide open with unemployment declined under from storming the gates of power to Trump’s election. They will be hard to Obama, Reich acknowledges in a plant his upper-class boots on the desk close if the only alternative is one ver- Facebook commentary (December 2) in the oval office. sion or another of corporate neoliberal that the current official 4.6 percent What to make of all this? “The politics in power. unemployment rate is essentially unsurprising result has been to shift The larger question that lingers over meaningless. “Counting everyone who political and economic power to big the political landscape is why exact- would prefer to work, a more accurate corporations and the wealthy, and to ly the worst major party candidate in measure would be closer to ten percent shaft the working class,” concludes years—a vulgar, chauvinistic, thin- real unemployment,” he says. Here’s Reich of Clinton and Obama’s impo- skinned, impulsive, lying right-wing something else to note. The over- tence before the historic trend of incompetent (there’s more!)—had whelming bulk of the new jobs created advancing corporate power. “That cre-

34 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 ated an opening for demagoguery, in eral jobs program to put many tens-of- popular mass struggles, to ever deci- the form of Trump. Donald Trump has millions of unemployed Americans to sively defeat Wall Street capitalism. poisoned America, but he didn’t do it work, rebuilding the nation’s infra- Utopian? Maybe. But is it less uto- alone. He had help from opportunists structure at union wages? Or if the pian to imagine Sanders and his pro- in the GOP, the media and at the high- nation’s leader had actually walked gressive supporters taking over a thor- est reaches of the Democratic Party.” picket lines with workers under siege, oughly corporatized Democratic Party, Of course, Democratic administra- such as in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011, revamping the party along the lines of tions were not entirely responsible for as Obama once promised to do during the Senator’s more or less social demo- the quarter-century decline of work- his first presidential bid? Imagine if he cratic platform? More to the point: Is it ing-class living standards. Give credit had provided decisive financial relief to less utopian to imagine a just, demo- also to the Republicans under George the millions of distressed homeowners cratic society under a reformed, kinder W. Bush’s two-term presidency. But at risk of losing their homes because of and gentler version of capitalism, as that’s the point. The relentless corpo- unfair banking mortgage practices? Or Sanders envisions? if the president had pledged to fight for rate neoliberal assault on the living Considering that the Democratic a federal minimum wage of $15 an standards of American workers is the Party has never actually been a work- hour, using his White House pulpit to result of bipartisan policies. No matter ing-class party (except in rhetoric), encourage grass-roots organizing for which major party is in power, the con- coupled with the entrenched, stagnant higher wages among all private sector centration of growing corporate wealth force of the corporatized party leader- workers? and wealth inequality continues its ship, Sanders’ Our Revolution organi- dystopian march forward. What if the president had used the zation faces a decidedly uphill and power of his office to resist a political most likely impossible battle. Circumscribed politics, dulled climate where private corporations can Admittedly, it’s long been hard for imaginations routinely threaten to move to cheaper many to even imagine a mass third The circumscribed nature of biparti- labor markets if they don’t get every party—a labor or socialist party— san politics, feet planted firmly in the damn tax break they want from state emerging in the United Sates. But is slop and muck of the status quo, has a and local legislators? Imagine if Obama there another option that offers a way way of dulling the social imagination, had used his office to educate and forward? Isn’t it time now to initiate a making it difficult for many to even mobilize mass public resistance to this wide-ranging popular discussion of imagine what significant or even revolu- sociopathic example of the “cost of these issues among the grassroots anti- tionary social progress might look like. doing business” under capitalism? Trump resistance? Imagine if Obama as president had Imagine also instead of bombing Resist the darkness used his political power to fight for a seven countries, organizing global mil- Writing for the Links International vision of a new, single-payer public itary drone assassinations, and vigor- Journal of Socialist Renewal (affiliated health system to guarantee every per- ously persecuting whistleblowers who with Green Left Weekly) in Australia, son’s right to healthcare? If such a sys- expose war crimes, the president had U.S. socialist Barry Sheppard describes tem were now in place, with free public declared his intention to close U.S. Trump as a “would be Bonaparte,” a access at the point of care, how many military bases across the world, to end cunning manipulator whose political ordinary Americans would have rushed the era of U.S. imperial global military power left unchecked threatens to to support a Republican know-noth- power, and to earmark military expen- move into outright authoritarian rule. ing’s “plan” to return to a full-out for- ditures for expanded social programs This is a distinct possibility. Yet, para- profit system that turns human health to benefit working people? doxically, there would have been no into just another exploitable commod- Such vision might sound like pie in justice or progress either in Clinton’s ity? How many now would be com- the sky, but at this historic juncture isn’t election. The latter conclusion speaks plaining about the injustice of remov- it even more utopian to believe peace, to the stone-hard reality that U.S. ing private insurance companies and social justice, and democracy is possible democracy is now more form than investors from the healthcare system? within the narrow limits of pro-capital- content, a wobbly propped-up façade Or, for that matter, complaining about ist politics? Of course, no individual hiding class contradictions, social rising premiums under the complicat- president alone could implement such inequality, and dominant corporate ed mess of the Affordable Care Act? far-reaching social change simply by power. This is capitalism in the mod- Imagine if the president had in 2009 taking office. It will take independent ern age. The rights of people will never declared his intent to create a new fed- social and political action, rooted in be secure as long as these contradic-

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 35 tions remain unresolved and the power Think about it. Eight billionaires As the Reverend Martin Luther of capital unabated. (six of them U.S. citizens) own as King, Jr. said in his 1967 Riverside As for Trump, if he were a fictional much wealth as half the world. Is that a Church speech opposing the Vietnam film character created by Orson Welles or social system that makes sense, or War, “When machines and computers, Oliver Stone to satirize modern politics, serves democracy? The overwhelming profit motives and property rights are the critics would probably say he was too majority of the people are not capital- considered more important than peo- crude a caricature, too broadly drawn, a ists or elitists. They are not privileged. ple, the giant triplets of racism, materi- vulgar, cartoonish exaggeration of the They are ordinary people and they alism, and militarism are incapable of modern political personality. But Trump work for a living. Yet they are also being conquered.” In that speech King is all too real. He is the barbarian who is extraordinary. Because they are the also called his own government “the now no longer at the gate. Not that barba- greatest purveyor of violence in the rism is anything new in this world of world.” It was an assessment that ours. But in the United States it is coming The message of remains essentially as true today as it home to roost now in a new way. was 50 years ago. January 21 was “The lights are going out and the In a sense, the global Women’s time to wake up from this nightmare is clear, loud, and March on Washington represents an today,” declared scholar Henry uncompromising: almost primal assertion of the people’s Giroux in the days following the elec- democratic spirit, rising from roots tion. “Forget depression, look ahead, women’s rights and deeply planted in the culture and get energized, read, build alternative human rights will be psyche of millions. The weekend pro- public spheres, become guerrilla fight- defended. tests were a profound reminder that ers. There are no guarantees in politics, there is one thing the world’s elites can but there is no politics that matters never take away—the power of the without hope, that is, educated majority to change the world. If you hope.” There are indeed grounds for majority. They have no intrinsic inter- think this is just some Pollyannaish such hope, educated and resilient and est in taking over the world or starting stab at optimism in a dark time, you determined to fight on. We saw such wars, exploiting others or using vio- are welcome to your cynicism. But his- hope in brilliant display this past week- lence to protect their privileges. They tory is made by those who refuse to end on the world’s streets, led by deter- also hold the key to the survival of accept social oppression and injustice, mined, visionary women. human society, if it is to survive. who resist adversity at all costs, and who keep fighting for justice until they’ve swept away every obstacle to the realization of the age-old dream of a world without war, economic exploi- tation, and social classes. Mark T. Harris is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. —Counterpunch, January 25, 2017 http://www.counterpunch. org/2017/01/25/dawn-of-the-resistance/

36 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 Martin Luther King’s Radical Legacy Black Lives Matter wants to #ReclaimMLK’s radical legacy By TeleSUR

The Black Lives Matter movement The images used by many media argued, must remember him “when we launched a campaign Monday, January 16, outlets of smiling and thoughtful King, see protests in the streets, when we 2017, to reclaim the true legacy of Martin the group argued, is a direct attempt to watch those in Syria fighting bombs Luther King, Jr. as the United States com- distance him from the struggle of with tweets, when we hashtag and memorates his anti-racism struggle and today’s Black activists, who in fact are #SayTheirName, we remember and civil rights leadership in the 1960s. inspired by him and his struggle. reclaim King’s legacy.” “King had less than 20 percent But the action was also very relevant approval rating during his time. He “We must imple- to present and future challenges facing was not celebrated until he was safely all people of color in the country, BLM dead and unable to counter govern- ment the radical said in a press release Monday. ment exploitation,” tweeted the measures King died Reclaiming King’s legacy was also Chicago branch of Black Lives Matter, fighting for right meant to send a message to “a president the anti-police brutality movement who is the antithesis of everything Dr. that has been active over the past few now by demanding King stood for; a demagogue who gal- years in response to many killings of fully funded schools, vanized millions by spewing hate and Black people. healthcare, jobs, promising to harm the most vulnerable “So yes we #ReclaimMLK from the in this nation,” the statement said refer- bullshit of capitalist revisionism. King access to housing, ring to President-elect Donald Trump. became increasingly anti-capitalist/ free drug-treatment The movement further highlighted imperialist and was killed for it.” programs and food,” recent attacks against the Muslim com- The group said the only way to munity, Black churches and schools as move forward on racial and social jus- “After being stabbed in Harlem, well as hate crimes against other mar- tice is to implement the now ignored King organized and marched. When ginalized groups in the U.S. by white radical legacy and the peaceful disobe- rocks were hurled at him in Chicago, supremacists emboldened by the elec- dience championed by King as he led he marched. Facing billy-clubs, dogs tion of Donald Trump. the U.S. civil rights movement. and hoses in Birmingham, Alabama, he This article previously appeared in “We must implement the radical marched. From jail, he fought with his the Roots and TeleSur English. measures King died fighting for right pen, and when his own government —Black Agenda Report, January 17, now by demanding fully funded conspired to destroy his family, he 2017 schools, healthcare, jobs, access to fought back,” they recalled. housing, free drug-treatment programs But in fact, people who want to be http://www.blackagendareport.com/ and food,” the movement said in an true to King’s legacy, the activists black_lives_matter_reclaims_mlk article on the Roots website Monday. Several Black liberation groups have joined the #ReclaimMLK action as a few protests took off in several cities in the United States. In their article, Black Lives Matter activists went on to describe how main- stream media in the U.S. systematically #ReclaimMLK misrepresents the Black leader’s legacy. “We have conflated nonviolence with passivity, and we have forgotten that King’s legacy is meeting incredible vio- lence with masses in the street.”

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 37 The Beatification of Obama By Kit

As the eight-year term of America’s Already the storyline is set—Obama • Obama is the first President in first black President draws to a close, was a good man, who tried to do great American history to be at war for the media are already in the process of things, but was undone by a Republican every single day of an eight-year myth-making. There’s room for an senate, and his own “sharp intelligence.” presidency. honest autopsy of a man who promised These people, as much as anybody, • Obama has carried out ten-times a new kind of world, and delivered reflect the cognitive dissonance of the more drone strikes than Bush ever merely warmed-over soundbites and a modern press. “Liberals,” to use their did. Every Tuesday a military aide few fake tears. own tortured self-descriptor, now presents Obama with a “kill list,” “With Barack Obama’s exit the U.S. is assign the roles of good guy and bad and the “decent, gracious” Obama losing a saint.” writes Simon Jenkins in guy based purely on aesthetics, conve- picks a few names off a list…and the Guardian, whilst Ann Perkins praises nience and fuel for their vanity. Actions kills them. And their families. his “grace, decency and defense of democ- and consequences are immaterial. And their neighbors. These illegal racy.” Lola Okolosie rhapsodizes on his For the sake of balance, here is a list acts of state-sanctioned murder legacy of “warmth, love, resilience.” of Saint Obama’s unique achievements: have killed hundreds of civilians in five different countries in 2016 alone. The only reason that num- ber isn’t higher is that the Obama administration re-classified all males over 18 as combatants, regardless of occupation. • After declaring he wanted to build a “nuclear free world,” Obama committed to spending $1 TRILLION dollars on rebuild- ing America’s nuclear weapons. • Under Obama, the National Security Agency (NSA,) et al, were able to spy on, essentially, the whole world. When this was revealed, not a single intelligence officer or government official was prosecuted. Instead… • Obama’s administration declared a “war on whistleblowers,” enact- ing new laws and initiating what they call the “Insider Threat Pro- gram.” Manning was prosecuted, Snowden sent into exile and Assange was set-up, discredited and (they hoped) extradited. It has never been more dangerous to be a government whistle-blow- er, than under Barack Obama • In terms of foreign policy, despite his press-created and nonsensical reputation as a non-intervention- ist, American Special Forces are

38 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 currently operating in over 70 tries America intended to destroy, without trial or charge (they are prob- percent of the world’s 195 coun- famously “leaked” by General ably still tortured). Other “suspects” tries. The great lie is that, where Wesley Clark. After the fall of can be simply declared guilty, and uni- Bush was a warmonger, Obama Libya, Syria was (essentially) sur- laterally executed…anywhere in the has sought to avoid conflict. The rounded by American military on world. The NSA and CIA are illegally truth is that Obama, in the grand all sides. Iraq, Israel, Turkey and monitoring the communications of tradition of the CIA and Ameri- America operating out of Libya half the world. If any other leader in can Imperial power, has simply could pour “freedom fighters” the world claimed even one percent of turned all America’s wars into into Syria to bring down “the this power, they would be decried as covert wars. regime.” When that didn’t work “autocratic,” and their country • Before Obama came into office, they deployed the trusty “WMD” denounced as a “pariah state.” Libya was the richest and most method, to demand “humanitar- The Middle East is ablaze from developed nation in Africa. It is ian intervention”…the Russians Libya to Afghanistan, and from Yemen now a hellhole. Destroyed by war, saw that off. Then “ISIS” was cre- to Turkey. Relations with Russia are as hollowed-out by corruption. The ated by the CIA, as al-Qaida were precarious as at any time since WWII, “liberal” press allows him to ago- before them, and their manufac- thanks to America’s efforts to break tured barbarism was used as a nize over this as his “greatest mis- Russia economically and shatter their pretext for invasion. The Rus- take,” and then gently pardon him global influence. There is no sign that sians, again, saw to it that this for his good intentions. The truth America intends to back-down (see the would not happen. is that Libya was not a mistake, or recent red-scare style hysteria in the a misjudgment, or an unforeseen • Perhaps in the hope of distracting American press.) Likewise America has consequence. Libya is exactly what Russia from the Middle East, or positioned itself to have a massive con- America wanted it to become. A perhaps merely as a short-sighted flict with China in the South China failed state where everything is for punitive measure, the Obama Sea. Obama is, in terms of influence, sale, a base to pour illegal CIA administration’s next foreign pol- nothing more than a used-car sales- weapons south into Africa and icy target was Ukraine. Victoria man. His job is not to create policy, but east into the Middle East. When Nuland’s own voice proves how to sell neocon ideas to the general pub- war is your economy, chaos is much that “color revolution” was lic, but his lack of agency cannot excuse good for business. When secrecy is an American creation. Ukraine is his lack of vision or morals. Under your weapon, anarchy is ammuni- broke, even more broke than it Obama’s notional leadership the world tion. Libya went according to was, its people starve and freeze has moved to the very brink of self- plan. A brutal plan, that killed through the winter. The new immolation in the name of protecting 100,000s and destroyed the lives of “democratic government” has American hegemony. Domestically millions more. Libya, like Iraq, is a shelled 10,000 people to death in America still crumbles. neocon success story. Syria on the the East of the country….using He had a nice smile, and a good other hand… American weapons. turn of phrase. He was witty, and cool, • Syria, probably the word that will • Yemen, the poorest country in the and looked good in a suit…but that follow Obama out of office as Middle East is being bombed to doesn’t mean he wasn’t just more of “Iraq” did his predecessor, is a shreds by the richest….again, using the same. He could say the right things, total failure. Both of stated intent American (and British) weapons. and sound like he meant them, but he and covert goals. Where the press Obama’s “defense of democracy” was still a monster. As he moves out to will mourn Obama’s “indecisive doesn’t extend to criticizing, or pasture, the press will try to spit-shine nature” and wish he’d “used his even discussing, the abhorrent Obama’s tarnished halo, to try to con- big stick,” the real story is one of Human Rights record of America’s vince us that he was a good man at evil incompetence, so great that it Saudi Arabian allies, and in an act heart and that, as politicians go, we would be almost comical…if it of brazen hypocrisy, even support- can’t do any better. hadn’t destroyed an ancient seat ed their chairing of the Human But yes, we can. Rights Council of the UN. of civilization and killed 100,000s —off-guardian, January 15, 2017 of people. Syria (along with Libya, This is the world Saint Obama has Iraq, Somalia, Iran and Sudan) created. Guantanamo is still open, and https://off-guardian.org/2017/01/15/ was on the list of the seven coun- terrorist “suspects” are still held there the-beatification-of-barack-obama/

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 39 Here Comes the Police State New laws aim for brutal crackdown on protest By Sarah Lazare

The rise of right-wing populism in nalize property destruction. destruction. This move would broaden the United States—from the White In recent weeks and months, politi- the powers of authorities to target pro- House to state legislatures—has been cians in at least 11 states—Minnesota, test organizers and participants—and met with public resistance on a stun- Washington, Iowa, Michigan, North even seize their assets. ning scale. Millions have taken to the Dakota, Indiana, Virginia, Colorado, Backed by the Arizona Police streets, staged direct actions and flood- Missouri, North Carolina and Association, Senate Bill 1142 “[e] ed airports to resist a flurry of presiden- Arizona—have either introduced or xpands the definition of riot to include tial decrees targeting undocumented, threatened to introduce bills that make immediate power of execution which Black, refugee, LGBTQ and poor com- it more dangerous or costly to attend results in damage to the property of munities. And long before Trump took protests, or be anywhere near them. another person,” according to an the White House, the Black Lives Matter One bill recently proposed in North Arizona State Senate fact sheet. movement and indigenous water pro- Dakota, and clearly aimed at Standing tectors at Standing Rock were leading “A person commits riot if, with two Rock resistance, would have expanded or more other persons acting together, the way with sustained mobilizations in protections for drivers who “acciden- the face of staggering repression. such person recklessly uses force or tally” hit and kill protesters. While the violence or threatens to use force or Now, under cover of the Trump legislation failed earlier this month, it violence, if such threat is accompanied administration’s “law and order” plat- nonetheless reflects a troubling politi- by immediate power of execution, form, Republican lawmakers at the cal push to snuff out dissent. which either disturbs the public peace state level—often with the backing of Using racketeering laws to go or results in damage to the property of police unions—are advancing a spate another person,” the bill states. of bills aimed at crushing this ground- after protesters’ assets swell. The proposed legislation would A bill that just passed through the According to Steve Kilar, spokes- impose draconian penalties on protest Arizona State Senate would expand the person for the ACLU of Arizona, the organizers and participants, expanding state’s racketeering laws on organized proposed legislation’s definition of local powers to put demonstrators in crime to “rioting,” broadly defined to rioting is “fuzzy and incredibly vague.” jail, seize their assets and further crimi- include acts that result in property This law “would allow police and pros- ecutors to go after anyone who is at a protest” that authorities claim turned into a riot, he explained. The Senate fact sheet notes that including “rioting” under racketeering statutes would provide prosecutors with “options that are generally not available under other types of criminal statutes, such as forfeitures, including the ability to confiscate the fruits of criminal activity from those convicted of racketeering offenses.” The legislation itself emanates from false conspiracy theories. “Senator Sonny Borrelli has said this is in response to unverified claims that protesters are being paid,” Kilar said. “He is using this false paid-protesters argument to con- nect his bill to anti-racketeering laws, which are targeting the financial incen- tives of criminal enterprises.”

40 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 The bill, which is headed to the civil disobedience on highways, mak- One bill introduced in Indiana ini- Arizona House, also aims to blur the ing such acts punishable by up to a year tially mandated that authorities clear line between rioting and terrorism. in jail. protesters from roadways within 15 According to Kilar, “If this bill were to Both pieces of proposed legislation minutes by “any means necessary.” pass, riots would join terrorism as the target the Black Lives Matter move- Following public outcry, lawmakers only racketeering crimes under Arizona ment in the state, which has actively removed the “by any means” language state law that would not require finan- protested the state-sanctioned killing from the bill, but the latest text still calls cial incentive.” of Black residents, including Jamar for the increased criminalization of par- The legislation appears to be aimed Clark and Philando Castile. ticipants in acts of civil disobedience. at mass mobilizations to oppose depor- Along similar lines, SF 111, cur- tations. Earlier this month, ICE was rently being weighed by the Iowa legis- met with a 15-hour, direct-action pro- “The language of lature, says that people who blocked test when it tried, with the help of traffic on highways can be hit with fel- Phoenix police, to deport Guadalupe this bill is focused ony charges, punishable by up to five García de Rayos. Protesters, including on ‘preventing vio- years behind bars. The legislation was her own son and daughter, sat in the direct retaliation for November pro- street holding hands to stop an ICE lence,’ which was tests against Trump that shut down the vehicle from taking away Guadalupe, the exact language of I-80 highway. who has lived in the United States for the memoranda that Meanwhile, Washington lawmakers 21 years. After an hours-long standoff, former FBI director are currently considering SB 5009, which was captured on live-stream, the which would stiffen penalties against mother of two was eventually deported J. Edgar Hoover protesters who cause “economic dis- to Mexico. By then, images of resis- wrote justifying the ruption,” imposing sentences ranging tance against her expulsion had spread from 60 days to a year in jail. Senator across the country. neutralization—i.e., Doug Ericksen, who introduced the “It appears that the state legislature destruction—of bill, said in a press statement that “The wants to silence people’s voices by everyone from measure is prompted by recent illegal passing these laws,” said Ernesto Lopez, actions that have blocked rail and high- an organizer with Puente Arizona, Martin Luther King way transportation, including a dem- which mobilized the opposition to Jr. to the Black onstration at a rail chokepoint in Skagit Guadalupe’s deportation. “This seems Panthers,” said County last summer that blocked traf- to be really extreme and aimed at fic between Seattle and Vancouver for silencing small organizations and peo- Taylor. “One of the 11 hours.” Over 50 people were arrest- ple’s movements in a very negative key aspects of ed in May 2016 when they blocked way.” trains to two key oil refineries to pro- COINTELPRO was test climate change and fossil fuels “They’d rather we just be quiet” to ‘prevent violence.’ extraction. The bill wending its way through That was the cover Arizona’s legislature is not an isolated “This is how you move toward case. The Minnesota House of for destroying fascism and nationalism” Representatives is currently weighing movements.” Heavy crackdowns on protesters are HF 322, which gives the city broad lati- not limited to cities and towns where tude to sue protesters for the cost of anti-protest bills have been introduced. policing demonstrations. The bill’s “It is really unfortunate that this is Over 200 people mass arrested at an author, Representative Nick Zerwas, what the GOP is choosing to focus inauguration protest in Washington, once made the jaw-dropping pro- their time on,” Mica Grimm, an orga- D.C., have been hit with felony riot nouncement that “Rosa Parks sat in nizer with Black Lives Matter— charges, each facing up to ten years in the front of the bus. She didn’t get out Minneapolis, told AlterNet. “I think jail and a $25,000 fine. Meanwhile, law and lay down in front of the bus.” that Trump has definitely emboldened enforcement is compelling tech giants Meanwhile another Minnesota bill, some people in the GOP to infringe on including Apple and Facebook to mine if passed, would impose harsher penal- civil liberties and criminalize dissent. the personal data of its users, and the ties on protesters who conduct acts of They’d rather we just be quiet.” companies appear to be complying.

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 41 Because the arrests took place in and within the boundaries of the from the Trump administration, are Washington, D.C., the cases are being Constitution and existing Federal laws, advancing efforts to declare the Muslim prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s to further enhance the protection and Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Office for the District of Columbia, safety of Federal, State, tribal, and local The initiative, which emanates from which is directly accountable to the law enforcement officers.” far-right conspiracy theories that the Department of Justice, now overseen Sessions, who heads the DOJ, has Sunni Islamist group is infiltrating the by the notorious white supremacist Jeff said that he does not believe systemic U.S. government, is aimed at crushing Sessions. police brutality is a problem worth Muslim civil society organizations at “We are seeing Sessions prosecuting addressing. the core of resistance to Trump. mass arrests from January 20, and it is “The language of this bill is focused Amidst a climate of authoritarian- very obvious that they are using draco- on ‘preventing violence,’ which was the ism, anti-protest laws are advancing nian tactics to criminalize dissent,” exact language of the memoranda that alongside so-called Blue Lives Matter Pooja Gehi, the executive director of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover bills that protect police officers under the National Lawyers Guild, told wrote justifying the neutralization— hate crime laws meant to safeguard AlterNet. “The protesters were charged historically oppressed communities. with inciting felony riot, under a sub- i.e., destruction—of everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. to the Black These initiatives are spreading across section that’s never used. This is a new the country, with Republicans now in precedent meant to terrorize people.” Panthers,” said Taylor. “One of the key aspects of COINTELPRO was to ‘pre- control of roughly two-thirds of the Flint Taylor, a founding partner of vent violence.’ That was the cover for partisan legislative chambers in the the Chicago-based People’s Law Office, destroying movements.” United States. told AlterNet that he believes that “I definitely think there are a lot of “Together with all the other pre- Trump’s three executive orders on crime Republicans who feel that Trump is a liminary indications from the Trump and policing have emboldened these dog whistle to start writing bills that administration, this executive order state-level initiatives. One decree, titled infringe on people’s rights, because bodes extremely ill, particularly for “Preventing Violence Against Federal, we’re seeing that on a federal level,” communities of color, in terms of State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement said Grimm. “They are taking advan- unleashing the already awesome and Officers,” is premised on the false claim tage of this time to make sure that racist power of police departments in that there is a war on cops. The order people who don’t agree with them don’t cities across the country.” instructs the executive branch to “devel- have the right to express that. This is op strategies, in a process led by the Meanwhile, right-wing Republicans how you move toward fascism and Department of Justice (Department) in Congress, with apparent backing nationalism, by getting rid of dissent.” —AlterNet, February 24, 2017 http://www.alternet.org/activism/ state-lawmakers-are-brutally-cracking- down-protesters-under-cover-trumps- law-and-order

42 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 Stop Klan-Nazi Terror Remembering the February 2, 1980 March on Greensboro protesting the murder of five anti-Klan activists By Mike Alewitz

On November 3, 1979, five anti- There are times when it is necessary to Dr. James Waller, textile workers Klan activists were brutally murdered physically defend ourselves against fas- union activist; by Klansmen and Nazis, in Greensboro, cists. It is not a game. Many have died-or Bill Sampson, a graduate of the North Carolina. The massacre was been seriously injured in such combat. Harvard Divinity School; organized in collusion with local police We need to minimize such losses by Cesar Cauce, Cuban immigrant and federal agents of the Bureau of winning great numbers of people to Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). who graduated magna cum laude from politically and physically support the Duke University; The events were filmed and the defense of democratic rights. murderers identified, but the killers Dr. Michael Nathan, chief of pediat- were eventually released by all-white rics at Lincoln Community Health Center in Durham, North Carolina juries. Fascist movements The Greensboro Massacre should be Ten others were wounded. a sober reminder that fascist groups are can only be neutral- For more information about the a serious threat to the working-class ized or defeated Greensboro Massacre: movement. While relatively quiescent through a political http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ in recent years, the Klan and similar Greensboro_massacre groups have deep roots and often work struggle that mobi- Mike Alewitz is a renowned muralist together with local police. They have lizes masses of peo- and labor activist. For three decades he received some wind in their sails with ple in opposition to has been active in movements for peace the election of Donald Trump. their poison. and social justice. He taught mural Fascist movements can only be neu- painting at Central Connecticut State tralized or defeated through a political University until his retirement in 2016, struggle that mobilizes masses of peo- Such mobilizations are the best way and is the artistic director of the Labor ple in opposition to their poison. to honor those that died in Greensboro. Art and Mural Project. Sucker-punching individuals or The murdered activists, members of —Facebook, February 2, 2017 trashing windows are not helpful in the Communist Workers Party: https://www.facebook.com/ advancing that goal. It allows the crim- groups/10048786795/perma- inals to look like the victims, and the Sandi Smith, a nurse and civil rights link/10154963773311796/ victims look like criminals. Such ultra- activist; left actions leave most working people as spectators, not participants. Groups that plan such activities leave themselves open to victimization or frame ups through the work of agent provocateurs. That does not mean there is no place for individual acts of civil disobe- dience. But I would contrast the ban- ner drop by Greenpeace activists to the Berkeley trashing. The crane takeover won the respect of tens-of-thousands of workers. The protestors were serious, disciplined, prepared and articulate. They are the kind of people you can trust in a fight.

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 43 Building a Movement Against Trump’s Violence Why the anti-Trump resistance movement should not initiate violence By Michael Steven Smith

It’s fair to say Donald Trump is much later have written about their Second—and this is the absolutely absolutely bonkers. And his cabinet of experiences in the struggle for social- crucial lesson—a handful of people billionaires, multi-millionaires, and ism. They cautioned against any kind of employing violence is wrong because generals is frightful. He could’ve got a offensive violence, from throwing they substitute themselves for mass par- better cabinet at IKEA. As Gloria stones at cops, bombing symbolic build- ticipation. They put the mass of people Steinem told the assembled half-mil- on the sidelines even if what they do is lion demonstrators at the Women’s applauded. History is made from below March in Washington, DC, “he found The Russian by the people. They must be involved in a fox for every chicken coop.” revolutionaries and their own liberation as a Howard Zinn But dangerous times are also times of taught us in his widely read A People’s great opportunity. On the 100th anni- their supporters History of the United States. versary of the historic Russian revolu- from Eugene Victor In czarist Russia over 3,000 hated tion of 1917 it is worth recalling that Debs at the time, to government bureaucrats were assassi- Lenin thought that if the Russian people nated by the Narodniks in the years lead- didn’t rise up and make a revolution by Howard Zinn, much ing up to the 1917 revolution. This was overthrowing the feudal czar, with- later have written objectionable on practical, not moral drawing from World War I, redistribut- grounds. As Leon Trotsky wrote in The ing the land to the people that worked about their History of the Russian Revolution, “The it, and having the people take over their experiences in the Czar could simply appoint another offi- own economy, that if this failed, then struggle for cial to come in and pick up the briefcase. fascism would surely triumph. This is so We don’t want a Pence for a Trump. very true here in the United States socialism. They Nothing fundamental would change. where it is accurate to say that we are in cautioned against The historic Women’s March on a pre-fascist situation. Pre-fascist any kind of offensive January 21 that saw more than four because we can still speak out, demon- million people gathered in America’s strate, and organize. We must not fail. violence, from streets was important not just because Trump’s presence in the White House is throwing stones at it sent a message to the bad guys. It like something out of a fairytale, an ogre cops, bombing was important because we sent a mes- conjured up to help children come to sage to each other; namely that “we are terms with their worst fears and night- symbolic buildings, many, they are few.” We rose from mares, a monster, in Chris Hedges or assassinating slumber. We have the power. words, “vomited up from the bowels of [a] decayed political system.” vile government We have to continue to mobilize and organize. If the ruling elite is able, through One hazard we must avoid in our officials. Why? their propaganda machine, to scare peo- struggle is to allow violence to be used in Because it puts the ple away because they say we promote the movement. We can’t afford to give onus of violence on violence, then we will not be able to grow our approval to this by green lighting the this movement and see it thrive. If we burning of limousines and the breaking us rather than on don’t draw a clear line against violence, of store windows, as happened in New the U.S. government our organizations will be open to infiltra- York City on January 21 at a demonstra- tion by agent provocateurs. tion near Trump Tower, or by punching where it belongs. the Nazi, Richard Spencer, in the face Ultimately the way out, the way to which is satisfying, but unproductive. avoid the ruination of our planet and ings, or assassinating vile government the living species that inhabit it is to The Russian revolutionaries and officials. Why? Because it puts the onus make a Socialist USA. We need to their supporters from Eugene Victor of violence on us rather than on the U.S. work with each other even more. We Debs at the time, to Howard Zinn, government where it belongs. need to communicate. We need to

44 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 group and regroup. We need—as Massive Anti-Trump Rallies Across Mexico many of us are now saying—to finally organize a new Socialist party, as By Common Dreams Staff Jacobin’s Baskar Sankara has recently written. We need an organization to February 12, 2017—Tens-of- search for concrete solutions,” said the lead in the struggle to take power away thousands of Mexicans protested coalition behind the marches. from the maniac now running our Sunday against U.S. President Donald Protester Julieta Rosas was wearing country. Trump, hitting back at his anti-Mexi- a T-shirt with a picture of Trump We are not pacifists. We are for self- can rhetoric and his depictions of them sporting an Adolf Hitler mustache. defense, as Malcolm X advocated. But as “rapists” and “criminals” and to “We’re here to make Trump see and we do not want to lead with our chin. demand “the respecting of Mexico.” feel that an entire country, united, is If violence occurs we want to be able to “Mexico must be respected, Mr rising up against him and his xenopho- be in a position to explain that we were Trump,” said a giant banner carried by bic, discriminatory and fascist stupidi- defending ourselves, our democratic protesters in Mexico City, who waved a ty,” said Rosas, a literature student at rights, our physical integrity. sea of red, white and green Mexican the National Autonomous University We are in complete moral solidarity flags as they marched down the capi- of Mexico (UNAM). with those in the Black Bloc. But we tal’s main avenue. “We are all migrants. We are all one. say to them “comrades, choose another In what is shaping up to be Mexico’s This is a time to build bridges, not way.” biggest anti-Trump protest yet, over 20 walls,” said 73-year-old protester Jose We recall that it was a massive cities joined the call to march. Dozens Antonio Sanchez, who was marching movement of the American people, of universities, business associations with his nine-year-old granddaughter. coupled with the heroic fighting of the and civic organizations are backing the —Common Dreams, February 12, Vietnamese people that ended the war protest. 2017 in Vietnam. “It is time we citizens combine forc- The antiwar movement organized es and unite our voices to show our http://www.commondreams.org/ and mobilized millions of people. indignation and rejection of President news/2017/02/12/mexico-massive-anti- Antiwar sentiment spread to the GIs in Trump, while contributing to the trump-rallies-staged-across-nation Vietnam. They refused to fight. Vietnamese soldiers and American sol- diers would encounter each other but not engage. When that happened it was game over for U.S. imperialism. We need to reach massive propor- tions to be able to throw sand in the gears of this government and it’s armed apparatus. We are off to a good start. Let’s not mess it up. As Rosa Luxemburg famously predicted, in the end it will be “socialism or barbarism.” —The Indypendent, February 1, 2017 https://indypendent.org/2017/02/01/ why-anti-trump-resistance-movement- should-not-initiate-violence

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 45 Felicia Browne: Revolutionary Warrior By Pauline Murphy

International Women’s Day, March In July 1936, Felicia went on a driv- All went well in the way of placing 8th, celebrates all that is great and good ing holiday through France with her the dynamite without arousing any about women and 80 years since the friend, the journalist and photogra- suspicion but little did they know they start of The Spanish Civil War. It pher, Dr. Edith Bone. Their vacation were being watched by a troop of would be timely to remember one saw them journey from Paris down Francoists nearby. woman from England whose lust for south and over the Pyrenees where Making their way back from the liberty would see her fight against fas- Barcelona was marked as their final railway line over the unruly Spanish cism and pay the ultimate sacrifice for destination of the holiday. But at the terrain Felicia and her comrades came doing so. heart of this decision was of course, across a downed plane. They recog- Felicia Browne was born into a well- Felicia’s left wing politics. nized the dead pilot as one of their own to-do family on February 18, 1904 in The two holidaying ladies arrived in and as they were burying him 40 fascist Weston Green, Thames Ditton, Surrey. Barcelona in time for the People’s soldiers ambushed them. The talented girl had a flare for art and Olympiad, a socialist opponent to the In the ensuing firefight one of at the age of just 16 enrolled in art col- 1936 Berlin Olympics, which saw Felicia’s comrades, an Italian, was shot. lege, first in St John’s Wood School of swaths of swastikas and a beaming As she tended to his wounds the Art and then the Slade School of Art. Hitler overseeing it all. Unfortunately ambushers unleashed a hail of machine In 1928 Felicia went to Berlin where the People’s Olympiad didn’t get a gun fire on them, to which Felicia and she traded in her paintbrushes and chance to go ahead as a coup by the her Italian comrade succumbed. canvas for a brief dalliance with metal fascist General Franco against the republican government occurred. In order to make a quick getaway, work and stonemasonry. She was in Felicia’s comrades were unable to bring Berlin to witness the growth of Nazism Many athletes and tourists either hers or the Italian’s body with them and instead of cowering away from the fled or found themselves stranded but but they managed to gather some of dark cloud of the swastika, Felicia took many more, including Felicia, chose to their belongings and from the 32-year- it on and was an active member in anti- stay and fight it out with the Francoists. old Felicia they took a sketchbook. fascist activities in Berlin, including She joined a Marxist militia and for a street fights with Hitler devotees! time was stationed in Barcelona where Felicia’s sketchbook managed to make its way back to England where its Perhaps it was her active role in the she did patrol duty. As the war esca- lated she wanted to be in the thick of contents made up part of a memorial anti-fascist movement in Berlin that exhibition in London in October 1936. saw her leave the city sooner than she the action and undertook weapons training before going to the front. They were then sold by the Artists preferred. She left it in such a hurry, International Association, with pro- she even left behind her art tools, but Felicia did not find it easy to enlist ceeds going towards Spanish relief. No her activism did not wane and when in a combat group. She had to fight doubt, the lady killed in defense of the she returned to her home soil she gender discrimination in order to win Spanish republic would have approved joined the Communist Party of Great her place to fight the fascists. Every of her art aiding the cause she gave her Britain. time she tried to join a militia at the life for. Felicia had witnessed first-hand the front lines she was dissuaded by those rise of Nazism and the spread of fas- in charge; men. But she held out, wore cism so she flung herself whole-heart- them down and eventually won them edly into the fight to stop it. She took over with her with gutsy attitude. “I part and organized protest marches can fight as well as any man,” she because as she saw it, it was up to the sternly informed them. ordinary working class to rise up against Felicia saw action on the Zaragoza front fascism as those in Downing Street where on August 25th she joined a small were merely ignoring it. She continued group of ten on a dangerous mission. They with her art but it took on a more left drove to Tardienta town by car before wing perspective and she became an art walking 12 kilometers to a rail line used by contributor to the Left Review. Francoists. Their aim was to blow it up.

46 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2

Incarceration Nation INCARCERATION NATION Thank You Sisters! By Jaan Laaman

January 22, 2017—We all should Historically and around the world, January 21st, was the massive outpour- thank the women who put out the call much smaller numbers of protests and ing of all kinds of people all across the and organized, coordinated, led, spoke protesters have led to regime change USA. This huge historic statement is at and participated in the January 21st and the launching of revolutions. Of the ground on which the Trump gov- “Women’s March.” Truly sisters, your course the purpose and plan of yester- ernment begins operating. As powerful insight and effort created a tremen- day’s massive outpouring of young and as all the marches were, I’m sure few of dous result; literally unlike any events old women, men and children, was the us doubt that Trump and his govern- we have ever seen in this country. peaceful but determined expression of ment will soon still begin its assaults on The huge central march in a wide range of people, telling this new various groups within the U.S. public. Washington, and the 600-plus rallies in government and the world, that jus- While many dynamic and signifi- cities and towns across all 50 states, tice, equality, freedom and basic cant organizations and women were brought out two to three million peo- Human Rights were realities that must responsible for calling and coordinat- ple, and maybe more. These marches be upheld. The many, and also very ing the rallies, no one organization or were very positive and heartening and large, rallies in other countries, leadership did it all. Many groups and definitely very necessary. As a long held London, Berlin, Paris, Sydney, Rome, organizers worked together and huge political prisoner, I was up early and etc., showed that people in the U.S. numbers of women heeded the call and spent most of the day in the cellblock were not alone in standing up for these came out. Now, the really important TV area, watching a lot of CNN and very important rights and principles. steps ahead are how to maintain this MSNBC. Even the Republican Party These international marches also unity and build on the powerful posi- sycophants at Fox News, admitted that showed that Donald Trump and his tive momentum of January 21st. huge numbers of protesters were new government were causing concern As a man sitting in a federal prison marching across the country. and worry around the world, and not cell, it is not my place or ability to tell all As many have chanted in past march- just for us here in the United States. you good activists, organizers and peo- es, el pueblo unido, jamas sera vencido— International solidarity is great, but ple of conscience, what to do and how the people united, can never be defeated. the real strength and significance of to keep the momentum going and Yesterday, we saw the reality of unity and power. Let’s be clear, these marches and rallies across the United States, were unlike any other public protests ever seen in the country. Of course there have been previous marches that were very large, coordinated and occurring in multiple cities simultaneously. As a life long revolutionary activist, since the 1960s, I have taken part in huge march- es, peaceful rallies, civil disobedience and street fighting. Let me tell you, what we saw on January 21st, has never hap- pened before in the U.S. Thousands, tens-of-thousands, and even hundreds- of-thousands of marchers gathered in cities in all 50 states, united in positive determination for Women’s Rights, Human Rights, for justice, equality and much more.

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 47 growing. What I do know and have Political Prisoner Ruchell Cinque Magee already heard expressed, is that march- ers have been urged to go back home Sole survivor of the August 7, 1970, Courthouse Slave Rebellion and connect with activist groups in By Kiilu Nyasha their communities, as well as with larg- er formations and national organiza- Preface: I can hardly believe that 47 Black newspaper (byline Pat Gallyot), tions. Many paths and efforts are and years have gone by since the August and covering the pretrial hearings of will be put forth. Reformist electoral 7,1970, Marin Courthouse Slave Angela Davis and Magee, subbing for organizing, beginning with local elec- Rebellion. Ruchell is now 77 years old, Reggie Major. tions; work towards new parties—a same as myself. It’s a sin and a shame the By 1971, Ruchell was an astute jail- labor party; grass roots community fascist state has practically taken this house lawyer, responsible for the programs and organizations; building brother’s whole life. And he has never release and protection of a myriad of and joining with national left/labor seriously injured anyone. Quite the oppo- prisoners benefiting from his extensive organizations; joining with or creating site, Ruchell has been responsible, through knowledge of law used to prepare writs, caucuses at work or school. No one size his jailhouse lawyering, for the release of appeals and lawsuits for himself and or strategy will be enough. The impor- countless prisoners over the five-plus many others. tant point I would urge, is for all the decades he’s been incarcerated. Here’s his Now Ruchell was fighting for the marchers, and those concerned people story, written years ago and updated. who did not actually get to a rally, to right to represent himself against “Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. join with others in building for the charges of murder, conspiracy to mur- It’s the same but with a new name.” — principles and goals you marched for. der, kidnap and conspiracy to aid the Ruchell Cinque Magee We have to use the energy and power of escape of state prisoners. this historic mobilization and upsurge I first met Ruchell Cinque Magee in Although critically wounded on of so many people, to be ready to stand the holding cell of the Marin County August 7, 1970, Magee was the sole up to and confront Trump, as we know courthouse in the summer of 1971. Ru survivor among the four courageous we soon must. Even more importantly, was soft-spoken, warm and gentlemanly prisoners who conducted the court- we really should build and create life in typically Southern tradition. We vis- house slave rebellion. Nevertheless, he and hope-centered efforts and momen- ited and corresponded for many years. was charged with everything they could tum to not only stand up to bigotry, I had just returned to California from throw at him including the murder of war, misogyny, injustice and other New Haven, Connecticut, where I had the judge, a charge later dropped. hateful policies, but to go beyond organized as a rank-and-file Panther, a “All right gentlemen, hold it right Trump. It might take four years to be leader of the People’s Committee (a there. We’re taking over!” rid of Trump, but we can already be diverse auxiliary group) and a member Armed to the teeth, Jonathan working on and creating a more just, of the legal defense team of three Jackson, 17, George’s, younger brother, equal, peaceful and life-centered society Panthers, Lonnie McLucas, Erica raided the Marin courtroom and tossed from our neighborhood up. Huggins and Chairman Bobby Seale, on guns to prisoners William Christmas The time for that is now and yes, we trial for murder and conspiracy. and James McClain, who in turn invit- will, no doubt also need to get out into Already familiar with courtroom ed Ruchell to join them. Magee seized the streets in all our numbers and even injustice, racism and bias against Black the hour spontaneously as they attempt- more, to stop at least some of the defendants witnessed in two capital tri- ed to escape by taking a judge, assistant attacks Trump has in store for us, the als (Lonnie McLucas tried first), it didn’t district attorney and three jurors as people of the United States. come as a surprise that Ruchell was get- hostages in that audacious move to Let’s remember: Unity brings ting a raw deal in the Marin courtroom expose to the public the brutally racist strength, brings hope, brings change! where he was frequently removed for prison conditions and free the Soledad outbursts of sheer frustration. Brothers—John Clutchette, Fleeta Freedom is a Constant Struggle! In my correspondence with George Drumgo and George Jackson—on trial Jaan Laaman is an anti-imperialist Jackson, author of the bestseller, for killing a guard with a mandatory political prisoner. Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of death sentence if convicted. Write to: George Jackson, he had advised me to McClain was on trial for assaulting a Jaan Laaman #10372-016 U.S. Penitentiary Tucson seek a press card in order to visit him at guard in the wake of Black prisoner P.O. Box 24550 San Quentin. In so doing, I wound up Fred Billingsley’s murder by prison Tucson, AZ 85734 working for The Sun Reporter, a local officials at San Quentin in February

48 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 1970. With only four months before a Therefore, he had the legal right to solitary confinement under tortuous parole hearing, Magee appeared in the escape slavery as established in the case conditions, despite having no assault courtroom to testify for McClain. of the African slave, Cinque, who had or murder convictions! The four revolutionaries successfully escaped the slave ship, Amistad, and Magee’s case is a prime example of commandeered the group to the wait- won freedom in a Connecticut trial. In the maltreatment and persecution of ing van and were about to pull out of fact, he added Cinque to his name. young Black men in this very racist the parking lot when Marin County Ruchell Cinque Magee had to first country. Here’s a brother who was police and San Quentin guards opened prove he’d been illegally and unjustly incarcerated at age 16 in Franklinton, fire. When the shooting stopped, Judge incarcerated for over seven years. He also Louisiana—Ku Klux Klan territory in Harold Haley, Jonathan Jackson, wanted the case moved to the federal the 1950s—for his association with a Christmas and McClain lay dead; Magee courts and the right to represent himself. white girl. He was charged with aggra- was unconscious and seriously wound- Moreover, Magee wanted to con- vated attempted rape and sent to the ed, as was the prosecutor, Gary Thomas. duct a trial that would bring to light notorious adult slave plantation, One juror suffered a minor injury. the racist and brutal oppression of Angola, for eight years, then banished In a chain of events leading to August Black prisoners throughout the state. from the state and sent to stay with rela- 7, on January 13, 1970, a month before “My fight is to expose the entire sys- tives in Los Angeles. His inherited prop- the Billingsley slaughter, a tower guard tem, judicial and prison system, a sys- erty—his mother died while he was in at Soledad State Prison had shot and tem of slavery. This will cause benefit Angola—was confiscated, no doubt. killed three Black captives on the yard, not just to myself but to all those who Six months later, he got into a minor leaving them unattended to bleed to at this time are being criminally altercation, was arrested and brutalized death: Cleveland Edwards, “Sweet Jugs” oppressed or enslaved by this system.” badly enough to be hospitalized before Miller and the venerable revolutionary On the other hand, Angela Davis, his being jailed in 1963. He immediately leader, W. L. Nolen, all active resisters in co-defendant, charged with buying the began filing writs and petitions pro- the Black Liberation Movement behind guns used in the raid and conspiracy, testing his illegal incarceration, and the the walls. Others in the Movement was innocent of any wrongdoing because rest is history. included George Jackson, Khatari the gun purchases were perfectly legal So-called law enforcement in this Gaulden, Hugo L.A. Pinell (Yogi Bear), and she was not part of the original plan. country lets police and prison guards Howard Tole and Warren Wells. Davis’ lawyers wanted an expedient trial murder with impunity, while our Black After the common verdict of “justi- to prove her innocence. This conflict in brothers and sisters wind up serving life fiable homicide” was returned and the strategy resulted in the trials being sepa- without the possibility of parole even killer guard exonerated at Soledad, a rated. Davis was acquitted of all charges though they never got that sentence. white racist guard was beaten and and released in June of 1972. thrown from a tier to his death. Three Ruchell fought on alone, losing Fight fascism! Free the people! prisoners, Fleeta Drumgo, John much of the support attending the Kiilu Nyasha, Black Panther veteran Clutchette and Jackson were charged Davis trial. After dismissing five attor- and revolutionary journalist, hosts the with his murder precipitating the case neys and five judges, he won the right TV talk show Freedom Is a Constant of The Soledad Brothers and a cam- to defend himself. The murder charges Struggle, broadcast live on San Francisco paign to free them led by college pro- had been dropped, and Magee faced Channels 29 and 76, and blogs at The fessor and avowed Communist Angela two kidnap charges. He was ultimately Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha, where Davis and Jonathan Jackson. convicted of PC 207, simple kidnap, episodes of Freedom are archived. Magee had already spent at least but the more serious charge of PC 209, She invites all who can to write and visit seven years studying law and deluging kidnap for purposes of extortion, Ruchell: the courts with petitions and lawsuits resulted in a disputed verdict. Ruchell Magee A-902051, to contest his own illegal conviction in According to one juror’s sworn affida- CMC, P.O. Box 8103 two fraudulent trials. As he put it, the vit, the jury voted for acquittal on the San Luis Obispo judicial system “used fraud to hide PC 209 and Magee continues to this CA 93409-8103 fraud” in his second case after the first day to challenge the denial and cover- —San Francisco Bay View News, conviction was overturned on an up of that acquittal. February 2, 2017 appeal based on a falsified transcript. Ruchell is currently on the mainline Magee’s strategy centered on proving of Lancaster California State Prison http://sfbayview.com/2017/02/ruchell- that he was a slave, held involuntarily doing his 54th year in California cinque-magee-sole-survivor-of-the-aug- and denied his constitutional rights. gulags—many of those years spent in 7-1970-courthouse-slave-rebellion/

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 49 Life Sentences Are Slow Death Behind the Walls Kim Brown Interviews Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report By The Real News Network

U.S. incarceration levels remain so administration, about how prison The Sentencing Project, whose high because this country hands down rates, incarceration rates, are going report is what you’re talking about, longer sentences than anyplace else in the down, but we know that crime has they did a study that focused specifi- world. People sentenced to life serve twice been going down for about 20 years, cally on lifers—and there are 160,000 as much time behind bars as they did in and even the five percent decrease in people who are serving life prison the 1980s. The Trump administration, the prison population that we’ve seen terms in the United States, and 50,000 not given to the token gestures of his pre- since 2009 doesn’t match in the least of them are serving life with no possi- decessors, is not expected to change this. the really dramatic decreases over the bility of parole. That comes to one out Kim Brown: Welcome to The Real past decades in crime. So what is keep- of every nine people who are in prison News Network in Baltimore. I’m Kim ing that incarceration rate so high? in the U.S. are serving life. Brown. This Sentencing Project Report If someone is convicted of a crime, ...a huge factor, in found that even for those prisoners and their sentence includes life, with or who are theoretically eligible for without the possibility of parole, that keeping U.S. incar- parole—that’s about 110,000 of the person has likely been convicted of at ceration rates so 160,000 lifers—their actual possibility least one serious felony. But, let’s fur- high is that the of really getting out of jail, out of pris- ther examine the phrase “life with the on, is much smaller than people believe, possibility of parole.” – It implies that United States keeps and much smaller than it used to be. the person has the chance or the oppor- the people that they A person who was convicted of tunity to one day leave jail, but do they have in prison murder back in the 1980s could expect end up serving longer sentences in to serve about eleven-and-a-half-years terms of, right now, in the present, behind bars for far in prison before getting out on parole. than they did in the past? The longer than any A person who was convicted of the Sentencing Project, which is a other country in the same crime in the 21st century can Washington, D.C., based non-profit expect to be in prison for at least 23 which works towards fair and effective world years. And it is that huge gap—you’re criminal justice reform recently basically holding two people if you released a new report titled “Delaying want to run it statistically, instead of A Second Chance: The Declining one person, over this period of time— Prospects for Parole on Life Sentences,” We also have to point out that even that makes it so difficult even in those and it is a very revealing report. though there’s a five percent general nation-wide decrease in incarceration, states that actually do want to bring the Joining us to further discuss this is there are still some states that are putting incarceration rate down, to do so. Glen Ford. Glen is the co-founder and at least as many people away in prison as We also have to note that many thou- the Executive Editor of The Black they used to. So this is just a general sands of these folks who are serving life Agenda Report. He’s also the author of curve, but there are lots of outlier states in prison were convicted as juveniles. the book titled The Big Lie: An Analysis that have never heard the word “reform” And some of them are serving with no of U.S. Media Coverage of the Grenada when it comes to prisons. possibility of parole. And this has given Invasion. But it’s been obvious to everyone the whole character of prison life in the Glen, I know that you took a par- that one factor, a huge factor, in keep- United States a whole different twist ticular interest in this new report from ing U.S. incarceration rates so high is where you have a very significant per- the Sentencing Project involving lifers. that the United States keeps the people centage of the inmates in middle age or What about this report jumped out at that they have in prison behind bars for even seniors, a kind of geriatric Gulag you? far longer than any other country in full of rather sick old men and women Glen Ford: Well, you know, it seems the world. The United States is the who have no real hope of ever getting to be counterintuitive. We have all of home of draconian sentences, and it out of prison, and that is what makes the this news, especially under the Obama hasn’t come off of that curve at all. mass incarceration rates so high.

50 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 All of the studies that have been so that if a person who’s convicted of think that their activity will slow up. done, without exception, show that murder can now expect to spend 25 or We just won’t have anything even a people age out of criminal activity 30 years in prison, even if they have tokenist approach to prison reform in somewhere around middle age, and so theoretically a chance at parole, that the White House... these elderly prisoners don’t pose any means that the bar has been set high And, you know, there should be no threat to society. They do pose a great for other folks, as well. And so, people discussion of prisons and mass incar- threat to society’s pocketbooks, how- who would’ve expected to get maybe ceration without talking about brother ever, because they cost a whole lot even three or four years for a drug convic- Sundiata Acoli, who was a member of with the very inadequate medical atten- tion back in the ’80s, may get five or the Black Panther Party. He’s been in tion that prisons provide. They cost a ten for a drug conviction, because the prison in New Jersey since the 1970s. whole lot more than holding young scale has been altered. He was eligible for parole in the ’90s, people in prison. So it’s not just the long sentences, but didn’t get it. He finally came up for Kim Brown: And the interesting well, the lifetime sentences that are the parole and was denied just a couple of thing, Glen, about this new report—I problem, but that other, lesser crime weeks ago, and told by the parole mean, it references some very startling sentences, tend to be longer, too, and board to come back in 15 years. Well, statistics including the number of peo- parole boards tend not to let folks out Sundiata Acoli is 80 years old. In 15 ple serving life sentences has quadru- until they’ve served a very long period years, he’ll be 95 years old. I think this pled since 1984, as you mentioned— of time because that bar is so high. speaks volumes to what parole boards and I know we remember the Reagan Kim Brown: Indeed. And when we in New Jersey and much of the rest of years as being very tough on crime, so talk about what to do about this issue, the country are really about. They’re it seems as though not only have states Glen, because criminal justice reform not there to evaluate honestly whether but the federal government has also at least was a hot topic of the previous people should have a chance at free- become tougher on crime themselves administration of President Barack dom before they die. They’re there to with the average person who was serv- Obama, who I believe commuted the keep people in prison to make a politi- ing time for a murder conviction, the sentences of about a thousand federal cal statement. amount of time that they serve nearly inmates, most of whom were non-vio- Kim Brown: Indeed. If you want to doubled from 11.6 years for those lent offenders, most of whom had drug see this report in its entirety see, paroled in the 1980s to 23.2 years for convictions, but now it’s a whole new “Delaying a Second Chance: The those paroled in 2013. That’s according ball game. We have Donald Trump sit- Declining Prospects for Parole on Life to their report from the Sentencing ting in the White House, and appoint- Sentences.”1 Project. ed Senator Jeff Sessions to be his —Black Agenda Report, February 7, So it seems as though like now we’re Attorney General at the Department of 2017 Justice. holding people in jail longer, and for http://www.blackagendareport.com/ people who do get life sentences with So, where do we see this issue going ford-report-life-sentences the possibility of parole, they’re serving as we move along into at least the early nearly twice as many years as they were part of the first term of the Trump during the Reagan years. What gives? administration? 1 http://www.sentencingproject.org/publica- To what do you attribute that? tions/delaying-second-chance-declining-pros- Glen Ford: Well, I’d like to say I pects-parole-life-sentences/ Glen Ford: We have a whole gener- agree with you, except I would predict ation of politicians who run for office that what Trump will do is deprive us on the promise that they’re going to of any tokenisms, which is what Barack lock folks up in jail and throw away the Obama gave us. Trump won’t even be key. That is the source of the prob- entertaining those kinds of token mea- lem—the politicians who pass these sures. But there is really, and has been laws, the politicians who run for judge- for some time, a solid kind of coalition ships and for sheriff in these localities. of rather conservative Republicans and And it’s interesting—these draconian Democrats in Congress that, for what sentences for people who get life or they say are fiscal reasons, that is to something close to life don’t just affect save money, have been studying and those inmates, because these are con- moving very, very slowly on prison sidered to be anchor kind of sentences, reform for some time—and I don’t

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 51 Visit to a Jailhouse Environmentalist By Suzanne Ross

On Monday, February 13, 2017, Joe arbitrary delays, postponements, can- never spoken with a psychologist or Piette of International Action Center cellations for so many reasons out of psychiatrist (noting humorously other in Philadelphia and I, of International the prisoners’ control, ones they often than with me, a practicing clinical psy- Concerned Family and Friends of don’t even get to have explained later. chologist.) He says philosophically or Mumia Abu-Jamal in New York City, People “adjust.” out of his faith, that he has turned this headed from our respective cities to I had spoken with Bryant many nightmare that was forced on him into meet in Frackville Prison (Frackville, times on the telephone and we had a blessing. Pennsylvania, just a few miles away corresponded some as well but this was I contacted Bryant when we learned from Mahanoy where Mumia is the first time I was meeting him. I was several months back, through Mumia, housed,) to visit the environmental struck by his polite, informal, and very that the water at Mahanoy was dark activist prisoner, Bryant Arroyo. Joe respectful manner. Now in his mid- and smelly, and that this situation was arrived a little before I did. By the time forties, he has been in prison for 23 affecting other Pennsylvania prisons as I got there he had already been told he years. He has fought to establish his well, including Frackville. Bryant had was not on the approved list, that there innocence throughout those many brought a legal suit against a corpora- was no record of his scheduled visit, years. It now looks as though his legal tion that was going to build a coal- and that he could not visit Bryant. We filing for wrongful conviction will processing plant next to SCI Mahanoy asked the guards to check the list again, finally be heard in court within the where he was then housed, and won which they claimed to do, but they next year or two. He is very encouraged the legal battle. The plant was not built! refused to show Joe any of the docu- by that, and hardly refers to the length When Mumia met Bryant after his own mentation they were supposedly of time this struggle has taken as being release from Death Row in 2011, he reviewing. outrageous. was obviously impressed. They did allow me in, two hours Bryant grew up in Lancaster, Bryant has filed several grievances later. They claimed the delay of my Pennsylvania, in a Puerto Rican family about the water at Frackville, but with- visit was due to Bryant not being in his that owned different small businesses out any improvement in the quality of cell. Bryant told me that he had never over the years. He was a tenth-grade the water available. left his cell, and had noted to the guard high school dropout when he became a that he was remaining there, even can- father, but earned a GED. He later Bryant’s description of the water celling his law library visit, just to be studied computers, drafting and, more situation at SCI Frackville sure not to miss us. A not very auspi- recently, “the science of law.” He was As Bryant sees it, the water problem cious beginning, and one highly sug- sentenced to Life in Prison Without in the Pennsylvania prisons is not gestive of targeted hassling of particu- Parole (a sentence that is being chal- unique to the prisons but is a commu- lar visitors. lenged across this country as unconsti- nity problem. It is, however, almost Both Joe and I wrote letters to the tutional.) Because of the upcoming always a problem at the prison. It is Superintendent of Frackville about the likelihood of court action, I am respect- very noticeable when brown or black disturbing behavior of the prison ing Bryant’s request not to discuss the but even when looking clear, it foams authorities in dealing with our visit. details of his case, which are, nonethe- in a way that suggests an impurity and Bryant, on his end, has filed a grievance less, available on the Internet. often smells of sulfur. There is some- on the disruption of his visitors’ ability Bryant says he has managed to keep thing wrong with it chemically. The to see him and of his ability to receive his focus through his more than two brothers at the prison constantly go to them. This morning, I received an decades in prison for a crime he vehe- the infirmary for intestinal problems, apology from the Superintendent for mently denies committing by his deter- frequent visits to the bathroom, espe- the delays. mination to prove his innocence, get cially if they drink say a pint or so of When I finally got to see Bryant, I out of prison, and continue the work water in a single gulp. At Frackville, was struck by how calm he was, as I he has begun while incarcerated, but clean bottled water can only be pur- showed up without Joe and so many on a larger level when he gets out. He chased in the visiting room, not in the hours after we had said we would be states proudly that he has never taken commissary. The guards’ dining room there. Life in prison inures people to any psychotropic medicine, and has Continued on page 61

52 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 Chemical Weapons in U.S. Prisons Banned worldwide in war, tear gas is routinely used in U.S. prisons and jails. By Sarah Lazare

Originally launched as a tool of of tear gas in U.S. prisons and jails. an umbrella term for one of two com- trench combat during World War I, They argue that the deployment of pounds: particulate CS, an aerosolized tear gas has been used around the chemical weapons of any kind against powder that hits the body’s pain recep- world over the past century to enforce imprisoned people constitutes militari- tors directly, or oleoresin capsicum, colonial rule, quell popular protests zation and torture. Representatives of alias ‘pepper spray,’ an oil that causes and aid in ethnic cleansing of civilians. War Resisters League (WRL), Witness excruciating pain on contact, especially This “riot control agent” was banned Against Torture, Black Movement Law around the eyes, nose and mouth.” as a “method of war” by the Chemical Project and other organizations Campaigners calling for an end to Weapons Convention, an arms control brought their demands to the doorstep chemical weapons in prisons and jails treaty that went into effect in 1997 and of the Department of Justice on January face an industry whose tentacles span now binds nearly 200 countries 9, 2017, staging a press conference and the world. WRL has identified four key (although numerous states are in viola- delivering a petition with over 13,000 companies that sell tear gas to prisons tion.) Yet in prisons and jails across the signatures. Addressing Deputy in the United States: Sabre, Combined United States, far from any conven- Attorney General Sally Q. Yates, the Tactical Systems, Sage and Safariland. tional battlefield or public scrutiny, petition implores: “We urge you to Notably, subsidiaries of Safariland have tear gas and other chemical weapons immediately order investigations, shipped tear gas and crowd control are routinely used against people held make recommendations concerning, weapons to governments known for captive in enclosed spaces, including and take action against human rights violently suppressing protests, from solitary confinement. abuses on prisoners involving tear gas/ Bahrain to Israel. chemical weapons on both state and Now, those forced to endure tear In addition, tear gas produced by federal levels.” Yates did not reply to a gas attacks while imprisoned in the the company’s affiliate, Defense request for comment from AlterNet. United States are speaking out. In over Technology, was deployed during the 100 letters sent to the War Resisters “We’re in a political moment now brutal U.S. crackdown on Black Lives League since 2013, incarcerated people where law enforcement violence could Matter protests in Ferguson in 2014. told of being doused in chemical agents potentially increase with the Trump One Safariland video advertising OC while denied the chance to wash their administration,” Tara Tabassi, nation- Aerosol Projectors shows a corrections bodies. Individuals testified that they al organizer for WRL, told AlterNet. officer gassing a prisoner in the face, were left with burns, scars and memo- “Folks in prison don’t have the plat- while the man tries to shield his eyes ries of agony and suffocation. forms we have on the outside; they with his hands. can’t go to the Department of Justice “They didn’t hit me with the gas until or talk to the press. So it is our respon- ‘Severe pain all over my body’ the fight was over and I was already in sibility to recognize the bravery and While companies advertise these handcuffs and shackles,” a woman incar- defiance of those writing to us.” products as “less lethal,” evidence cerated by the Colorado Department of shows that they can and do kill. The Corrections wrote in a 2014 letter viewed Profiting from chemical weapons World Health Organization notes, by AlterNet. “The captain sprayed me in prisons “Tear gas (e.g. CS or CN), usually a directly in the face. I immediately began The Centers for Disease Control harassing agent, can be lethal if a per- to choke, snot, tears, and saliva spewing and Prevention describes tear gas, a son is exposed to a large quantity in a from my face. It felt like I was breathing term used interchangeably with “riot small closed space.” fire. A couple minutes later I began to control agents,” as “chemical com- Even when deployed outdoors, tear vomit…I was not allowed to wash the pounds that temporarily make people gas can take human life. In just one chemical off until three days later. So for unable to function by causing irritation example, Physicians for Human Rights those three days the chemicals continued to the eyes, mouth, throat, lungs, and noted in 2012, “The Bahrain govern- to burn my flesh.” skin.” As Daniel Moattar explained in ment’s indiscriminate use of tear gas as Before Trump took office, human April 2016 in a Nation article that cited a weapon has resulted in the maiming, rights campaigners cited this mounting the testimony submitted to WRL, “In blinding, and even killing of civilian testimony to demand an end to the use the United States, ‘tear gas’ is usually protesters, and must stop at once while

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 53 the government reassesses the use of with first degree chemical burns. For was incarcerated at the Pontiac such toxic chemical agents.” two weeks a yellowish discharge Correctional Center in Illinois in 2013 flowed from these wounds. The The deployment of tear gas in and 2014, “they used tear gas to get guards did come and take pictures of enclosed spaces, such as prisons, adds inmates out of cells if they refused to my wounds after several days of pro- move. You have inmates who have additional danger. The CDC notes, tests about my treatment.” “Long-lasting exposure or exposure to a asthma, and it affected them.” She said While the Department of Justice did she had heard second-hand that at least large dose of riot control agent, espe- not return requests for information one incarcerated person had died due cially in a closed setting, may cause about how many people have died due to tear gas, saying, “I consider tear gas severe effects such as the following: to tear gas in the prisons it oversees, torture.” The Pontiac Correctional Blindness; Glaucoma (a serious eye media reports, lawsuits and personal Center did not immediately return a condition that can lead to blindness); testimony indicate that such killings are request for comment. immediate death due to severe chemical not unheard of. According to a lawsuit burns to the throat and lungs; respira- In a January 10 letter to Deputy tory failure possibly resulting in death.” Attorney General Yates, Margaret Huang, the executive director of “As quickly as possible, wash any In March of 2016, Amnesty International USA, sounded riot control agent from your skin with President Barack the alarm on use of tear gas in prisons. large amounts of soap and water,” “The use of chemical irritants in deten- advises the CDC. Yet, incarcerated Obama signed into tion is inherently open to abuse, as it people report they are denied this law the Williams can be used in an arbitrary or indis- opportunity, as illustrated in the fol- Correctional criminate manner that may, depending lowing testimony submitted in 2014 by on the circumstances, constitute tor- Fred D. Douty, while incarcerated at Officers Protection ture or other ill treatment,” states the the Mt. Olive Correctional Complex in Act, backed by U.S. letter, which was emailed to AlterNet. West Virginia: senators Pat This suffering is being inflicted by “I was experiencing irritation of weapons designed for war. Sven-Eric the eyes and throat due to the fact Toomey (R-Pa.) and Jordt, a professor of pharmacology at that two people were sprayed less Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Yale University School of Medicine, than one hour ago, and the excessive observed in an interview with the amount of chemicals used. I voiced which mandates the National Geographic in June 2013: my opinion to the guards that they Bureau of Prisons to cannot spray people for requesting “Tear gas under the Geneva Convention to speak to mental health, interalia, distribute pepper is characterized as a chemical warfare agent, and so it is precluded for use in that they had no right to shut my spray to corrections water off because I didn’t do any- warfare, but it is used very frequently thing wrong. A guard became asper- officers in medium- against civilians. That’s very illogical.” ity and approached my door, with- and high-security out any warning or provocation he ‘We don’t deserve it’ placed a rod under the door and prisons. In a 2009 review of its use of “less sprayed me with a chemical agent lethal” weapons, the Department of for five to seven seconds. I was left Justice (DOJ) noted: “In addition to with no way to alleviate the extreme filed in 2016, Randall Jordan-Aparo, a batons and pepper spray, the Bureau amount of pain, but to splash toilet 27-year-old man who was incarcerated Of Prisons (BOP) uses aerial disper- water on my face, I was left in the in Franklin Correctional Institution in sion rounds, the PepperBall system, cell for 40-50 minutes and as I 2010 died after being repeatedly gassed rubber projectiles, StingBalls, tear gas, pleaded for help, a guard came to and beaten. An investigation conducted bean bag rounds, and electronic cus- my door with a 35 or 40 mm riot in 2014 by the Miami Herald found that tody control belts.” control shotgun and threatened to shoot me unless I shut up. the man “was subjected to 600 grams of Lawmakers are successfully expand- chemical agents in a confined space,” ing chemical weapons use in prisons “The next day I awoke to severe including tear gas. pain all over my body, as I had large across the country. In March of 2016, burn blisters on my legs, thighs, Afrika Lockett, who is active with President Barack Obama signed into torso, arms and face. After a few days the prison abolition organization Black law the Williams Correctional Officers I was seen by a nurse and diagnosed and Pink, told AlterNet that while she Protection Act, backed by U.S. senators

54 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Bob Casey Texas Prisoner Beaten and Starved to Death (D-Pa.), which mandates the Bureau of Prisons to distribute pepper spray to Malnourished prisoner’s death reveals horrific conditions corrections officers in medium-and in a Texas prison high-security prisons. “Moving for- By Creede Newton ward Congress must redouble its efforts to ensure our corrections offi- Alton Rodgers was 31-years-old and pneumonia, bedsores indicating pro- cers are safe on the job,” said Senator suffering from bilateral bronchopneu- longed immobility, and other conditions. Casey in a press statement champion- monia, bedsores, and severe malnutri- The Intercept asked Carlos Torres, a ing the bill. tion when he died of head trauma on forensic doctor based in Dallas with no “It is striking that it is still legal and January 19, 2016, in the custody of the previous knowledge of the case, to common practice to use weapons Texas Department of Criminal Justice. review Rodgers’s medical records. against civilians engaged in political Guards had found Rodgers unrespon- While it was clear to Torres, who has protests in cities like Ferguson and sive in his cell at the William P. held positions at the University of Charlotte,” Nathan Sheard of the Black Clements Unit in Amarillo, one of the Texas and Harvard, that Rodgers had Movement-Law Project told AlterNet. most violent prisons in Texas, the pre- died of “massive brain injuries second- “But it is even more striking the way vious day. His fatal injury, the official ary to blunt trauma to the head,” he we’ve heard of its use in prisons through paperwork noted, was consistent with said that the fluid in both of the the United States, against people who having his head “slammed onto the inmate’s lungs resulting from bron- are isolated in their cells, who are shack- concrete floor.” The TDCJ immediate- chopneumonia was also a contributing led, who have medical conditions.” ly began investigating a suspect, cause. Viral or bacterial infections can Rodgers’s cellmate, Joe Greggs. In their letters, prisoners testified cause this condition, Torres explained. that they believe this practice is allowed But the official findings raised a He further noted that the inmate had to continue because it happens behind cloud of doubt. Why did they ignore or been diagnosed with schizophrenia closed doors, against people deprived make so very little of Rodgers’s dire and intermittent explosive disorder, a of their freedom. Roger Smith wrote medical condition even before the rare condition that leads to outbursts while incarcerated at the Mt. Olive blows to his head? The inmate’s family of anger. has raised questions about Greggs’s Correctional Complex in West “The other important finding was alleged involvement, Rodgers’s medi- Virginia, “I have medical documents that he was malnourished,” said Torres. cal treatment at the Clements unit, and that say I [had] first-degree chemical Rodgers was “extremely underweight… the conduct of the prison staff. In burns due to being sprayed. I have his BMI actually went down signifi- October, the family, represented by scars from those burns. I am housed in cantly during the last several weeks of attorney Jesse Quackenbush, filed a lock up in a single cell and I was not a his life.” Medical records maintained $120 million wrongful death lawsuit risk or threat to myself, staff or other by the Texas Tech University Health against the TDCJ, alleging that guard inmates.” Sciences Center, which oversees health- brutality and untreated tuberculosis “I think that there is a huge problem care in Clements, are sparse for the last contributed to his death. Rodgers was with the outside world not really know- four months of Rodgers’s life. first diagnosed with tuberculosis in ing what truly goes on inside of a pris- 2002 or 2003. “The purpose of the law- From October 1, 2015 to January on,” Smith continued. “Most people suit is to change the way [the state of 19, 2016, the records indicate only one either don’t believe it because it is com- Texas] treats inmates who are suffering physical health check, on November 6, ing from a convicted criminal, or most very serious diseases,” Quackenbush and that was a check-up after a cell just don’t care and turn a blind eye to told The Intercept. extraction, a procedure which involves it all. I don’t think it’s anyone’s job to the forceful removal of an inmate from harass and further punish someone Rodgers stood 6 feet 7 inches tall and weighed 148 pounds when he died. His his quarters. His last mental health just because they are locked up. It’s not check occurred on November 24. fair, and we don’t deserve it.” body mass index (BMI) was 16.7, dan- gerously lower than the bottom of the These records indicate that Rodgers —AlterNet, January 11, 2017 normal range, which physicians set at weighed 167 pounds in November http://www.alternet.org/activism/ 18.5. According to Northwest Texas 2015, and he had dropped to 148 by the scandal-chemical-weapons-us-prisons Hospital records, Rodgers was admitted time of his death. “I could not find any with hypoglycemia, a urinary tract infec- explanation as to the [weight] loss dur- tion, dehydration, bilateral broncho- ing that period of time,” Torres noted.

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 55 Torres did notice something pecu- adding that the standard of care had cross-contamination, because the test liar relating to Rodgers’s diet, however. more than likely been compromised requires an injection. This year, According to an entry dated June 24, “by not having adequate records and Johnson said, a fellow inmate tested 2015, Rodgers claimed that raisins and documentation of what happened to positive for the disease and never peanut butter were the only foods he this person.” received treatment. For that reason, could keep down and requested that Even the autopsy, for which records Johnson requested a test. He states that his diet be changed. This request was do exist, raised questions. Standard he was refused the test by the prison’s denied, the attending nurse wrote, autopsy procedure would have required medical officials and that the prison’s because there was “no diet of just pea- a culture to determine the origin of records falsely claim he refused when nut butter and raisins.” According to Rodgers’s bilateral bronchopneumo- the test was offered him on June 3. medical records filed after Rodgers was nia, Torres said, and as far as he could Another inmate at Clements, Jason admitted to the hospital in January, tell from the autopsy report, no such Walker, told The Intercept a similar guards said Rodgers “had been known test had been performed. Rodgers’s story. Walker claimed that he request- to be starving himself secondary to condition could have been contagious, ed tuberculosis tests on several occa- ‘trying to die.’” depending on whether it was viral, fun- sions without success. Prison officials “These are contradictory statements gal, or bacterial, Torres noted. He told him, “You have not been in con- from the patient and from the [health- could have posed a danger to other tact with TB.” care] providers,” Torres observed. inmates as well as guards and nurses. After Walker filed grievances asking Without further records, Torres His condition was also potentially for tuberculosis shots for all inmates in stressed, he couldn’t make a judgment, deadly in and of itself. Regardless of the his section, prison officials responded, but he certainly did not find any evi- head trauma, “if his weight did not go “No further action required.” dence that efforts had been made to up, if he was not being treated for the increase Rodgers’s weight. In yet another grievance, Walker bronchopneumonia, he would have alleges that a false test was adminis- “If someone is losing weight inad- died in a matter of days or weeks,” the tered following his complaints of vertently, they should have a complete doctor said. tuberculosis exposure. Prison officials medical evaluation, including a psychi- responded that Walker “received time- A pattern of negligence atric evaluation, to see if there’s a rea- ly and appropriate care.” son,” said Robert Greifinger, former Complaints about healthcare and head medical officer at the New York record-keeping at Clements are not These inmates surmise that the pris- State Department of Corrections, in hard to come by, and many of them on has put itself at risk of tuberculosis answer to questions about the standard center on the prison’s alleged refusal to infection for budgetary reasons. The of healthcare prisons are legally test inmates for tuberculosis. Roughly 2017 Texas state budget calls for a four required to meet. “Prison health offi- one-third of the world’s population percent decrease in funding for the cials are required to provide timely has latent tuberculosis, and those with state’s prison system, which amounts access to care. Part of that timely access weakened immune systems are more to a $250 million in slashed funds for a is accurate documentation of respon- likely to develop symptoms. system that is already under pressure. siveness and documentation of the Incarcerated persons typically fall into “The medical, security, mailroom nature of response for requests of med- this category. According to the Centers and grievance [departments] are all ical care.” for Disease Control, tuberculosis in severely under-staffed. This is what There is nothing in the medical prisons is a “public health concern” draws their negligence,” Walker sug- records obtained by The Intercept to because it is highly contagious and can gested. Johnson, who is active in orga- suggest such evaluations ever took spread to other inmates as well as nizing against “slave labor” in prison, place. And the gaps in the records prison staff, who can then communi- concluded by saying that the prison make some assessments very difficult. cate it to others outside prison. system wants “to make money off us, For example, Torres said that active Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, an inmate not spend it on us.” tuberculosis was probably not a factor at Clements and a founder of the New Although the adversarial relation- in Rodgers’s death, but the lack of Afrikan Black Panther Party—Prison ship between prison staff and inmates records makes it impossible to entirely Chapter, told The Intercept in a letter may cast doubt on the prisoners’ alle- rule that out. This poor quality of that in the 18 years he has spent behind gations, there is also evidence that the record keeping would be considered bars, he has typically declined to be TDCJ knows it was at fault in letting unacceptable in a hosptial, Torres said, tested for tuberculosis out of fear of Rodgers’s health deteriorate.

56 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 After Rodgers’s death, TDCJ repri- and conduct a “bed book check” twice breathing “very hard” and fighting to manded 17 guards for falsifying docu- a day in which an inmate must get up catch his breath as guards held him ments and recommended the firing of and look a guard in the eye. down on an examination bed, Crosby their supervisor, Major Rowdy Boggs, The former guard found the lack of told The Intercept. After a struggle, he who resigned during the disciplinary records documenting these required died. process. Senior Warden Barry Martin checks during the last two months of “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen, and Assistant Warden James Beach Rodgers’s life suspicious. “The fact that in my life, somebody pass. From being both retired within a month. Jason there’s no medical records makes me alive, fully aware of where they’re at, to Clark, a TDCJ spokesperson, told the think something got brushed off,” he actually dying,” Crosby said, still shak- Texas Tribune that guards weren’t said, suggesting that the prison might en by the experience. completing required checks on have withheld or destroyed documents. Rodgers’s cell. He declined to say for Crosby resigned from Clements how long this was the case. The He suggested that staff could have during an investigation into his repeat- Northwest Texas Hospital entry form falsified documents to show that bed ed tardiness. He cited the prison’s cul- for Rodgers states that guards were books and other required checks were ture of racism and morally question- “unable to provide when patient was taking place. McEvers told The Intercept able actions, such as document falsifi- last seen awake and alert.” that document falsification was routine cation, as well as his newborn child, as and “happens, I’d say, more than reasons for repeatedly showing up late The Intercept filed two pubic infor- daily.” to work. McEvers was fired after being mation requests with TDCJ, asking for charged with misdemeanor assault the door logs on Rodgers’ cell from Tyrail Crosby, another former Clements guard, concurred, saying after being accosted by a formerly September 1, 2015, to February 1, 2016, incarcerated person at a party. and a copy of the results into an inves- that document falsification is “very tigation into Rodgers’s death. TDCJ common” there. He recalled that one Both the Texas Department of has asked the Texas attorney general of his superiors asked him to falsify Criminal Justice and the Texas Tech for a legal opinion on whether these documents during his first week on the University Health Sciences Center documents must be released, citing job. Crosby’s concerns go further than declined to comment, citing ongoing “confidential information” and an record falsification: “It’s too many litigation. exception that enables a “governmen- people dying in there,” he said. —The Intercept, January 24 2017 tal body to protect its position in litiga- In 2013, two prisoners— https://theintercept.com/2017/01/24/ tion,” referring to the lawsuit against Christopher Douglas Woolverton, 51, malnourished-prisoners-death-reveals- TDCJ. At the time of publication, the and Arcade Joseph Comeaux, 56— horrific-conditions-in-a-texas-prison/ attorney general had not made a deci- died within one month of each other. sion on either information request. Their families have also filed wrongful When asked how so few checks death lawsuits. Woolverton, who had could be conducted on an inmate who asthma, was found dead in his cell in a had severe bilateral bronchopneumo- pool of his own urine and feces, accord- nia and was emaciated, Deric McEvers, ing to the lawsuit. He allegedly had a former guard at Clements who symptoms of stage IV chronic kidney worked in the facility for almost six disease and had suffered weight loss years starting in 2008, responded that even greater than Rodgers, dropping this was “an extreme lapse in security 44 pounds in just under three months, and medical.” Prison staff members from 157 pounds on August 29, 2013, routinely check on inmates and deliver to 113 pounds on October 22, accord- medications in the middle of the night, ing to the complaint. McEvers explained, often between 1:00 Comeaux died on November 13, A.M. and 3:00 A.M. At that time, the 2013, due to trouble breathing and a inmate “barely has the lights on, he’s in heart attack during an attempted elec- bed, nobody’s paying attention to him. trocardiogram. Crosby was a guard at They’re putting the pills in the win- the prison at the time. He was asked to dow—dropping and going.” According film Comeaux, who was also asthmat- to state regulations guards are required ic, being escorted from his cell to the to check on inmates every 30 minutes infirmary that day. Comeaux was

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 57 Texas Prison Free Speech Ban Resistance builds against social media ban in Texas prisons By Kamala Kelkar

The letter was published on a web- site in his name on December 31, 2016, and it tore through criminal justice reform advocate circles, provoking them to start a petition that garnered nearly 10,000 signatures online to address the “vicious treatment.” Azzurra Crispino, who co-founded the prison reform advocacy group, Prison Abolition and Prisoner Support, said she called the warden, who told her that Johnson was gassed because he had refused to take off his handcuffs. She is skeptical of that account, but Texas Corrections denied the When Texas correctional officials Ollie Jefferson, a human rights law- NewsHour Weekend’s request to inter- earlier this month saw an article by yer who spent most of her career work- view the warden. Kevin “Rashid” Johnson online that ing with immigrants, said that the way “Why would Rashid, who is already said they had gassed him and ran- one of her current clients is being in solitary confinement, want to hang sacked his cell in December, they pun- treated is “consistent with torture.” out in solitary confinement with his ished him—again. “We have human rights violations handcuffs?” Crispino asked the In April, Texas became the latest to here as much as in other countries,” NewsHour Weekend. join a trend of states banning people in Jefferson said. Crispino and other allies are con- prisons, who do not have access to the On December 21, 2016, Rashid, an cerned because they believed he did internet, from having a social media organizer for the New Afrikan Black not have access to the food he had account, saying it could be a threat to Panther Party who is known for his bought to keep his blood pressure security. These accounts are often provocative artwork and writing, said down and medication for the same. maintained by friends or family out- he was taken to a holding cell at the side of prison, or by contraband. Civil “He has family members who have William P. Clements Unit in Amarillo died because of family blood pressure,” rights leaders have blasted the decision while correctional officers confiscated and maintain that it is a violation of the she said. his food, legal documents and other First Amendment. But now other law- On January 5, 2017, Johnson wrote belongings. He said that on that day, yers say they have evidence that the another letter, saying he was met by a when he asked why, he was told it was, Texas Department of Criminal Justice team of guards in body armor and put “because I don’t know how to mind is using the policy as a tool to hold in a new cell on high-profile status, [my] business.” people in solitary confinement or oth- which he said means that guards have to erwise punish them for exposing When he was returned to his cell, accompany and record him any time his assault, horrid living conditions or which is in solitary confinement, he cell is opened, making it more difficult other wrongdoings. asked for his property. Instead, he said to receive aid in the event of a medical he was threatened with assault and The Prisoners Legal Advocacy emergency. They had with them paper- gassed while he was still handcuffed. Network (PLAN) of the National work that said he violated their social Lawyers Guild has found 22 cases of Rashid, 45, and serving a life sen- media rule with his article, he said. alleged misconduct in Texas prisons, tence, wrote a letter recounting the “Such efforts to block public scruti- where they say officers use rules such as incident partially titled, “Bound and ny and accountability remains the aim the ban on social media to target peo- gassed: My reward for exposing abus- of Texas prison officials…who even ple who are thought to be activists. es,” and sent it to a friend. printed out a copy of the statement off

58 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 the Internet and cited the URL,” he a friend this week, countering Clark’s such as Johnson, if their work is pub- said in the letter, which was also posted claim—the letter said he was still con- lished online. online. “Imma keep the word coming victed of the infraction, even though he “They’re not going to come after out as best I can.” pointed out his writing was posted to a me, they’re going to come after him,” PLAN is also working with Kevin website, not a social media account. Crispino said. “You, as a supporter, are “Malik” Washington, who filed a fed- In the late 1700s, the founding now being complicit in the punish- eral lawsuit on behalf of dozens of fathers constructed the skeleton of the ment of your friend.” people that says forcing him and others First Amendment with the hope that it Which is more in line with what to work under the 13th Amendment would safeguard the rights of individu- PLAN lawyers are focusing on. In a constitutes slavery, among other griev- als and prevent a small group of people notice of claim they plan to file in ances. U.S. Judge Lee Yeakel dismissed from having too much power, which March, they will allege that Texas the case on January 4, 2017. also involved leaving states to their Corrections is punishing people for “The biggest detriment and obstacle own discretion on certain issues. exercising their right to file grievances to our success…is the U.S. Constitution,” Around the 1830s, during the lead-up and act as jailhouse lawyers, or unli- Washington recently wrote in a letter to to the Civil War, Virginia and Tennessee censed legal aid within the jail. They the NewsHour. “The 13th Amendment enacted laws that banned publishers also plan to file one for Washington allows legalized slavery.” from printing material “calculated to specifically next month. He was referring to an exception incite” rebellion among slaves, according The claim is a formal legal filing that that was written into the 13th to David S. Yassky, an academic who will require the state to maintain all Amendment—the formal abolition of documented the era of the First documents, surveillance and relevant slavery in 1865—that excludes anyone Amendment. If a Black person was con- case information and will let Texas who has been convicted of a crime. victed of this offense, it could be punish- Corrections know that it has the atten- able by death. But activists in northern tion of human rights lawyers. Jefferson has been working with states continued to flood southern states Washington because he was put in with abolitionist pamphlets. Kamala Kelkar is a Digital Associate solitary confinement one day before a Producer for PBS NewsHour Weekend. national prison labor protest in “This country was really founded on She has been a journalist for nearly a September. the idea that free speech is a good thing, decade, reporting from Oakland, India, not just for the person who is speaking Alaska and now New York “Malik is an advocate. He’s really but for all of us,” David Fathi, the direc- well-versed in fighting for himself, and tor of the American Civil Liberties —PBS News Hour, January 29, 2017 he’s also concerned about broader pol- Union’s National Prison Project. “That http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ icies that would affect other prisoners, is the premise of democracy. So any updates/social-media-ban-texas-prisons/ so I have no doubt that in all likelihood time that you try to censor and silence they consider him to be a trouble- a politically unpopular minority, that’s maker,” Jefferson said. a loss not only for the people being A Texas Corrections spokesperson silenced but for everyone.” “Let’s be very clear on denied in an email that the facility He said that since Texas has prohibited what’s going on here. punishes anyone based on their advo- family members and friends from posting Texas prison officials… cacy work, while declining to provide on behalf of someone in jail, it violates are reaching way outside any information about Johnson or their First Amendment rights, too. Washington. “Let’s be very clear on what’s going the prison walls and Texas Corrections also denied that on here. Texas prison officials…are telling people in Canada Johnson received an infraction for his reaching way outside the prison walls and New York what they article in response to a public records and telling people in Canada and New request, but the NewsHour Weekend York what they can and can’t do on the can and can’t do on the obtained what appeared to be a copy. Internet,” Fathi said. “That is really Internet,” Fathi said. When shown to Texas Corrections extraordinary.” “That is really spokesperson Jason Clark, he respond- Crispino said she is less worried ed in an email with, “The case was over- about a possible infringement on her extraordinary.” turned,” and declined to answer further rights than what Texas or other states questions. But Johnson wrote a letter to might do to their friends in prison,

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 59 Bloody Violence Among Texas Prisoners Updated report on violence resulting in security lockdown at the Eastham-Administrative-Segregation Unit, Texas By Keith “Malik” Washington Peace and blessings Sisters and the abuse of the elderly or infirm pris- posely housed me around white males Brothers! oners, or the failure to protect Ad-Seg who identify as white supremacists. Today is Wednesday, January 25, prisoners from violent attacks—gross TDCJ’s logic is this: “Let’s mix this 2017. A white male prisoner housed in negligence and deliberate indifference Black Nationalist with these white Administrative Segregation was the are the operative words which apply. dudes and see what happens.” victim of a bloody “harpoon” spear The Texas prison system has sabo- But nothing happens! I am not a attack! The victim was Life-Flighted off taged a prisoner’s ability to be com- Black Nationalist. I am a Revolutionary the unit. pensated when they are hurt on account Socialist who fights for all oppressed This is the second such attack at of employee negligence. human beings. Eastham this month. The first attack TDCJ has a duty to protect prison- took place on January 9, 2017, approx- ers and they should compensate pris- imately 25 feet from my cell on E-Line Whether it is forcing oners when they’ve been hurt on here on the Eastham-Ad-Seg Section. prisoners to drink account of gross negligence and Needless to say, I witnessed the first employee error. toxic water, the incident in which two white males Help us to un-game the corrupt were “shot” with sharp spears while abuse of the elderly system in Texas prisons. they were being escorted to Outside or infirm prisoners, Recreation. The attacker was another Dare to struggle, Dare to win, All white male, a former member of a large or the failure to pro- power to the People! white supremacist gang here in Texas. tect Ad-Seg prison- Keith “Malik” Washington is Deputy Chairman, New Afrikan Black Panther There is a portable sliding shield ers from violent which, when used properly by Texas Party (Prison Chapter) Department of Criminal Justice attacks—gross neg- Write to: (TDCJ) prison guards, decreases the ligence and deliber- Keith “Malik” Washington #1487958 East HamUnit risk of prisoners falling victim to such ate indifference are attacks. 2665 Prison Road 1 the operative words Lovelady, TX 75851-5609 On January 9th officers chose not to use the shield and as a result one pris- which apply. oner was “shot” in the stomach. He was Life-Flighted by helicopter to John For instance, the prisoners who were Sealy Hospital in Galveston. The sec- attacked on January 9th both utilized ond prisoner was “shot” in the butt the offender grievance program in order cheek and taken to Huntsville Hospital. to address their issues. In both cases Both prisoners survived. their grievances were returned stating: Today, January 25th, there has been “Non grievable issue!” How can this be? no word on the status of the latest vic- A human being is attacked when he is tim, but the rumor mill is saying he is handcuffed; the officer fails horribly in in bad shape. We were notified at 2:00 protecting him, and the prisoner is told P.M. that we were on lockdown. the issue is non-grievable? I would like to briefly speak about Sisters and brothers: I tell you today the state’s duty to protect and how that the state of Texas has “gamed” the TDCJ ignores that duty. system in such a way that prisoners are Sisters and Brothers—Whether it is treated as slaves and sub-humans! forcing prisoners to drink toxic water, TDCJ prison administrators have pur-

60 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 Custer Died For Their Sins By Kevin Cooper

demand it now—the right to live “Free Kevin Cooper is an innocent man on San and in Peace and to Drink Clean Quentin’s Death Row in California. He continues Water” from an uncontaminated river. to struggle for exoneration and to abolish the death penalty in the whole U.S. Michelle Alexander, author of The Write to Kevin Cooper at: New Jim Crow in the Age of Kevin Cooper C-65304, 4 EB 82 Colorblindness wrote: “This nation was San Quentin State Prison founded on the idea that ‘Some Lives San Quentin, CA 94974 Don’t Matter.’ Freedom and justice www.freekevincooper.org for some, not all. That’s the founda- tion. Yes, progress has been made in Continued from page 52 some respects, but it hasn’t come easy. There’s an unfinished revolution wait- has bottled water available all the time. ing to be won.” The prisoners have no option but to drink the polluted water which makes That revolution is now happening them sick. in different parts of this country. From the inner cities, to the great plains of Bryant has written to both the Kevin Cooper North Dakota. The descendants of the Department of Environmental General George Armstrong Custer first people of this country, and the Protection and the Environmental (1839-1876) paid the ultimate price for descendants of slaves, both who were Protection Agency but he doesn’t the sins of certain white people of his left out of the United States Constitution believe their reports are truthful. First, time who committed damn near every when it was written, and who are the monitors who come to the prison type of crime against humanity upon treated like afterthoughts or footnotes do not test the water on the block but the indigenous peoples of this country. ever since, have a common goal: to get rather on somewhat cleaner water. So much so that many different their common oppressor to stop Second, one government branch often tribes of indigenous peoples came oppressing them and start respecting covers up for another (didn’t we see together, some who were sworn ene- them as the human beings that we are. that in Flint, Michigan?) mies, to fight and defeat their common Black Lives Matter, Red Lives Matter; The county in which Frackville, oppressor. Here in 2016, once again, and there is the potential for something Pennsylvania is situated, Schuylkill, has many different tribes of indigenous great to happen out of this historical been called a cancer hotbed because it peoples, and not just from this coun- oppression of these two proud and is so polluted and the cancer rate is so try, but from around the world have long-suffering, oppressed peoples— high. Bryant feels the government has come together defeat their common our coming together in dignity and both the funds and the resources to modern day oppressor. solidarity, and working together for our clean this up. They are gathered in North Dakota common good in this very real fight for We will surely be hearing more to stand up and peacefully fight for our collective humanity. from Bryant Arroyo as he has become a their human rights, and against oil As the late Reverend Dr. Martin passionate and very skillful and fighter pipelines being run through their Luther King, Jr. once stated: “It’s better for justice, one who challenges the sacred lands, and underneath their life- to walk in dignity, than to ride in authorities whenever they violate the line, which is their water. humiliation.” rights of prisoners, and who is deter- mined to make people aware of these Repeatedly, the indigenous peoples Our dignity, self-respect, and self- human rights violations. of this country, and around the world worth will no longer allow for us to be are fighting for their birthright—their humiliated by the powers that be! —February 20, 2017 right to be who they are, and to live, —Free Kevin Cooper, November 2016 Write to: and not just exist, as what they are— Bryant Arroyo #CU-1126 human beings. As human beings they http://savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_ SCI Frackville demand their Human Rights and they content.html?ID=461 1111 Altamont Blvd. Frackville, PA 17931

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 61 A Crack in the Wall Of Death By Mumia Abu-Jamal

How many people went insane dur- To them, it ain’t worth the paper it’s ing that period? printed on. How many committed suicide? From the very beginning the DOC has How many, with incompetent law- spit in the eye of the judge. They’ve filed yers, went to their deaths by an uncon- false documents. They’ve made mislead- stitutional execution? ing claims. They tried to intimidate him. We don’t know. We may never Why should they now be any different? know. And yet, the battle goes on, to save But for now, 100 people in Florida the lives of thousands of prisoners in have hope, for life—after death. Pennsylvania dungeons. Write to: —Prison Radio, January 14, 2016 Mumia Abu-Jamal AM-8335 SCI-Mahanoy Emergency Appeal for Mumia 301 Morea Road Abu-Jamal’s Legal Defense Frackville, PA 17932 The Committee to Save Mumia Mumia Abu-Jamal Abu-Jamal is the official fundrais- The State of Florida, as of 2017, held ing venue for Mumia’s legal defense over 383 souls on its Death Row. today. It has been raising funds, since Mumia was facing execution In America, it was the second largest Department of in the ’90s. Death Row, after California, which held over 700 men and women await- Corrections Appeals Please mail your tax-deductible check payable to the National ing death at the hands of the State. By Mumia Abu-Jamal Lawyers Guild. On the memo line, Similarly, Florida’s prison popula- Several days ago, the Pennsylvania be sure to write: “For Mumia Abu- tion, according to the U.S. Bureau of Department of Corrections (DOC) Jamal’s Defense.” Justice Statistics for 2012, was over appealed the January 3, 2017 U.S. Mail your check directly to: 100,000 people, the third highest num- District Court ruling that granted an ber in America. injunction against the DOC’s so-called Johanna Fernandez Several days ago, after a U.S. “protocol” covering hepatitis treatment 158-18 Riverside Drive W., Apt. 6C-50, Supreme Court ruling, the state courts (or should I say lack of treatment?) New York, New York 10032 ordered resentencing hearings or life The state waited almost ten days to sentences for some 100 people on file an appeal saying they didn’t have Florida’s Death Row. That’s because the time needed to obey a court order Florida law allowed a judge to override that gave them two weeks (14 days) to a jury’s decision. For example, if a begin the process. death-qualified jury couldn’t agree on a death sentence, say if it voted 8-to-4 They also ignored the court’s order that the DOC was enjoined from using for life, a judge could simply disagree, FREE and impose a death sentence. its “protocol”—they continue to use it, as if no court order was ever issued. Florida courts have known since 2002, under the Ring v. Nevada deci- If that ain’t contempt of court, what MUMIA sion, that such a process was unconsti- can it be called? tutional, yet they kept over a hundred The State violates constitutional people on Death Row—for 15 years rights daily—because it can. What’s ABU-JAMAL (!)—before granting any relief. another court order?

62 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 LETTERS TO THE EDITORS

Dear Socialist Viewpoint, I was handcuffed behind my back The PA DOC is trying to sweep it I am an inmate incarcerated in the and shackled, then savagely beaten under the rug and I continue to seek Pennsylvania Department Of with fists, batons, and open handcuffs. justice to no avail so far except for Corrections and I have a serious issue I suffered serious head, face, and being transferred out of the Special that I’m seeking your help with. torso injuries and concussions. I was Management Unit and here at SCI- Forest. On April 7, 2016, while housed in then placed in a restraint belt and chains, the Special Management Unit at SCI- still shackled with blood soaked and wet If you can and are willing to assist Fayette on a 9-day hunger strike, con- underwear and undershirt mixed with me in receiving justice or bringing fined to the infirmary, I was assaulted OC spray for days in a cell with no mat- attention to the incident, please write by a three-man team of officers with a tress, bedding, soap, toilet paper, etc. back. total of five cans of OC spray. My court-scheduled hearing a week Sincerely, Then again by a seven-man team with later was postponed for my force-feed- Derrick Gibson #JP-2190 another can of OC spray—a sixth can. ing, for an additional week because of SCI-Forest I was then placed face down inside a the swelling and injuries to my face. P.O. Box 945 shower stall with an officer and shield The six cans of OC spray and inju- laying on top of me. ries were recorded in my medical file. Marienville, PA 16239

Free Speech, Fear and the Primitive Human Brain—The Intrinsic Dangers of Social Hierarchy

Dear Editors, are often assumed to be less worthy and Ask yourself why we cannot shout fire It is illegal to shout “fire” in a white individuals are often assumed to in a crowded theater but we can shout out crowded theater. The idea of fire cre- be more worthy. This greater status hate speech anywhere? Millions of work- ates intense fear deep in the primitive attached to white skin is learned at a ing people of all colors and nationalities human brain known as the Limbic young age and continually reinforced by are seeing corporations move their jobs System, or emotional center. The U.S. culture. Furthermore, research has oversees or out of existence through auto- “Fight or Flight” reaction is activated, shown that those who believe in white mation. Vast numbers of people are inse- causing a stampede, resulting in injury supremacy and the negative stereotypes cure about their lives and the future for and death. Similarly “Hate Speech” can of Blacks, view a rise in the social status their children. Hate, fear and anger are a activate the emotional centers of the of Blacks as threatening, activating their primitive brain response, which clouds primitive human brain. “Hate speech” limbic—emotional center.2 Those who the mind’s ability to see how much more can be understood to be as intrinsically are committed to racist ideas of social we are alike than different. dangerous as shouting “Fire” in a superiority can also feel threatened dur- Dr. Nayvin Gordon, February 14, 2017 crowded theater. ing times of social unrest and instability, Dr. Nayvin Gordon is a Family Neuroscience studies have shown again activating emotional arousal in 3 Physician who has written many articles that both in brain activity and behavior, their primitive brain. This is particu- on health and politics. people place higher importance on social larly important in today’s neo-fascist status than money.1 When concerned politics tied to white supremacy. about social status the brain’s emotional Many countries have passed laws center in the limbic system, is most against “Hate Speech” because they rec- 1 “For the Brain, Cash is Good, Status is Bet- active. Brain activity in the emotional ognize that such speech incites violence ter,” Scientific American, April 24, 2008 center is also strongly correlated with a or prejudicial actions: Canada, France, 2 Neuroimaging Investigations of Social Status and Social Hierarchies, Jasmin Cloutier et al, person’s commitment to social status, Germany, England, Australia and many for example, strong belief in racial supe- Copyright 2016, pg. 195 others. One needs only to look at the 3 Ibid, pg. 197 riority and economic inequalities. hate speech of the white supremacist Ku In the U.S., social status and race are Klux Klan or the German Nazi party to often intertwined. African Americans see this obvious reality.

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 63 S o c i a l i s t V i e w p o i n t Where to find us: www.socialistviewpoint.org [email protected] (415) 824-8730

EDITORS Carole Seligman, Bonnie Weinstein

GRAPHIC & WEB DESIGN BUSINESS MANAGER Mykael Carole Seligman

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64 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 17, No. 2 To Those Who Kept Me Alive All These Years, Thank You By Chelsea E. Manning

When I was afraid, you taught me over absolutely nothing. But, we were holidays together. You were and will how to keep going. When I was lost, you always a family. We were always united. always be family. showed me the way. When the prison tried to break one For many of you, you are already To those who have kept me alive for of us, we all stood up. We looked out for free and living outside of the prison the past six years: Minutes after each other. When they tried to divide walls. Many of you will come home President Obama announced the com- us, and systematically discriminated soon. Some of you still have many mutation of my sentence, the prison against us, we embraced our diversity years to go. quickly moved me out of general pop- and pushed back. But, I also learned The most important thing that you ulation and into the restrictive housing from all of you when to pick my battles. taught me was how to write and how to unit where I am now held. I know that I grew up and grew connected because speak in my own voice. I used to only we are now physically separated, but of the community you provided. know how to write memos. Now, I we will never be apart and we are not Those outside of prison may not write like a human being, with dreams, alone. Recently, one of you asked me believe that we act like human beings desires and connections. I could not “Will you remember me?” I will under these conditions. But of course have done it without you. remember you. How could I possibly we do. And we build our own networks From where I am now, I still think forget? You taught me lessons I would of survival. have never learned otherwise. of all of you. When I leave this place in I never would have made it without May, I will still think of all of you. And When I was afraid, you taught me you. Not only did you teach me these to anyone who finds themselves feeling how to keep going. When I was lost, important lessons, but you made sure I alone behind bars, know that there is a you showed me the way. When I was felt cared for. You were the people who network of us who are thinking of you. numb, you taught me how to feel. helped me to deal with the trauma of You will never be forgotten. When I was angry, you taught me how my regular haircuts. You were the peo- —The Guardian, February 18, 2017 to chill out. When I was hateful, you ple who checked on me after I tried to taught me how to be compassionate. end my life. You were the people that https://www.theguardian.com/com- When I was distant, you taught me played fun games with me. Who wished mentisfree/2017/feb/13/chelsea-man- how to be close. When I was selfish, me a Happy Birthday. We shared the ning-prison-sentence-commutation you taught me how to share. Sometimes, it took me a while to learn many things. Other times, I would forget, and you would remind me. We were friends in a way few will ever understand. There was no room to be superficial. Instead, we bared it all. We could hide from our families and from the world outside, but we could never hide from each other. We argued, we bickered and we fought with each other. Sometimes,

Vol. 17, No. 2 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT BC Woman’s March, San Francisco, January 21, 2017. Read Woman’s March Values and Principles on page 12.

On the Front Cover: s Woman’s March, Washington, D.C., January 21, 2017. Read The Historic Women’s Marches of January 21, 2017 on page 14.

Emirati armed forces display at the opening of the International Defense Exhibition and Conference in Abu Dhabi. The U.S., as the world’s largest arms exporter, had more than 100 companies Protesters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin participate in the "day without represented. Read Thoughts on the News on Page 27. Latinos, immigrants and refugees" march on Feb. 13, 2016. (Photo by Sue Juggles) Read Ten Thousand Immigrants Go on Strike in Milwaukee on page 19.

« « « Attention Prison Mail Room: « « « Prisoners retain their free speech rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. That means you cannot legally suppress the expression and consideration of ideas. Prison walls do not form a barrier separating prisoners from the protection of the Constitution, according to the Turner v. Safely ruling. [482 U.S. 78, 107 Sct 2245 (1987)] If you exclude printed matter on an improper basis, or give a false pretext or rationale for its exclusion, because of the ideas expressed in it, you are breaking the law. The prisoner denied access to material he wants to read can bring a civil rights lawsuit against you with cause for seeking punitive damages. In the case of Police Department Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 95, 92 Sct 2286, 2290 (1972) the court found that “[A]bove all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, subject matter or content.”