Editor’s note: Frank Chapman wrote this statement to call for unity in struggle by Black, Latino and working-class communities.
Chicago saw great victories earlier in 2023 through a united front under a Black and Latino leadership, with the first-in-the-country elections for democratic civilian oversight of the police, and the election as mayor of a trade unionist, Brandon Johnson. Johnson defeated a racist who was backed by the Fraternal Order of the Police, Paul Vallas. Vallas is known in Chicago history for introducing neo-liberal policies, which included major attacks on funding for public schools. 90% of Chicago Public School students are Black and Latino.
Chicago, IL – Our perspective on the elections must be based on a sober, scientific analysis that assesses the relationship of forces in this moment in order to find the pathway forward. We believe that objective social relations in the final analysis is what determines subjective evaluations. In other words, we must take every precaution to make sure that every policy change, every tactical adjustment and firming up of our strategy is soundly rooted in a concrete analysis of concrete conditions.
Chicago, IL – We dip our banners of struggle for the civil and human rights icon, Harry Belafonte, who joined the ancestors yesterday, April 25, surrounded by family and friends in his New York City home. Belafonte was born in Harlem in 1927 and died at age 96. He always acknowledged that, “most of my family in Jamaica were plantation workers,” hence Day-O, or Banana Boat Song, had the lyrical line, “Come mister tally man, tally me bananas.”
Chicago, IL – This is the first day of 2023, after a year that has tested our movement like nothing in the last half century. We have a tradition to ring in the New Year with a review of what we accomplished in 2022.
I want all the revolutionaries and young freedom fighters who are members of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression to join us as we dip our banners of struggle for our dear comrade, Charlene Alexander Mitchell, who was born June 8, 1930, and died on December 14.
Fight Back News Service is circulating the following May 20 statement from Frank Chapman, Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.
What we are experiencing in this moment of history is not only the potential of World War III, but the unconcealed struggle of U.S. monopoly capitalism to establish its dictatorship internationally. While accusing Russia of threatening the world with nuclear war, it is U.S. imperialism which continues to buttress the most reactionary forces in all capitalist countries; it is our country which consistently steers a course supporting fascist dictatorships the world over.
Chicago, IL – The murder of George Floyd and the massive rebellion and protest that followed are the most remembered images of 2020. Unfortunately, images of Black people being lynched and murdered by white people in and out of uniform have been the most haunting images of American history. But the images of rebellion in 2020, of millions of people throughout the USA and the world rising up against racist police repression – and the system of oppression that police tyranny serves and protects – have inspired new hope and courage in the struggle for Black liberation.
Chicago, IL – Karl Marx observed over a 150 years ago that “the biggest thing happening in the world today are on the one hand the movement of the slaves in America started by the death of John Brown and on the other the movement of the serfs in Russia.”
Chicago, IL – It is so befitting that Trump, the self-made tyrant, with his latest political stroke to upend the elections, has in fact opened a new era of struggle – an era that will be characterized by the desire of the ruling class to return to normal, to return to the norms of bankrupt neo-liberal policies which will portray itself as the only path to political stability and economic growth.
Chicago, IL – When it comes to police reform, the powers that be in Chicago have been negligent in their response to the demands of the people of this city and this nation. People across the country are calling for systemic police reforms now. The resounding voice of the people in the streets is, “We will not accept this anymore!” In Chicago, we’re not new to this plaintive cry, unfortunately. We have the longest standing movement for community control of the police in the country, stretching back to the 1969 police murder of Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party. Yet our city is lagging behind every other major city with respect to announcing much needed reform, including New York City and Minneapolis.
Chicago, IL – The headline in the Chicago Tribune Wednesday, April 19 blared: “Two charities have bailed scores of felony defendants out of Cook County Jail. Some were soon charged with new crimes.” The headline could have said, with equal validity, that “Millions of Chicagoans were not arrested last year. Some were charged with new crimes.”
Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from Frank Chapman, Field Organizer of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.
Black liberation is a not a state of mind that can be characterized as “Black Marxism” or the “Black Radical Tradition.” Nonetheless, there is an ideological need to settle accounts on this question of the identity between the “Black Radical Tradition” and Marxism.
To my comrades and friends in the Black Liberation movement I say: Yes, it is important to point out the mutual suffering of separation of Central American and Mexican children from their families at the border and Black children daily separated through policies of mass incarceration and police perpetrated genocide; it is important if our point is to demonstrate that no oppressed people should be alone and isolated in the struggle for their humanity.
Chicago, IL – Karl Marx was born May 5, 1818 in the town of Trier, Prussia. He was not born into a revolutionary family but he was born in revolutionary times, in the wake of the French Revolution and the decline of the Prussian Empire. The French Revolution came to Trier during the Napoleonic wars. It tore the city out of the Holy Roman Empire and for two decades before the birth of Marx, it replaced the feudal society, with its chartered privileges, with a government in which all citizens were equal under the law. It was a turbulent period in which all the old, feudal orders of Europe were trembling in the face of bourgeois led popular revolutions.
“…even in the deepest moments of our struggle for liberation Mama Winnie was an abiding symbol of our people to be free…”-- Cyril Ramaphosa, president of the Republic of South Africa.
Chicago, IL — First of all, this movie took me back to my childhood love of fantastic tales of adventure and romance. So, for me, it was great entertainment made possible by cinematic art at its finest. It was a movie sprung from the pages of a comic book, moving pictures full of enchanting moments of musical chants, poetry flowing through panoramic scenes of spectacular beauty enhanced by the liquid murmurs of water falls. Most importantly, Black Panthe r is a movie endowed with the presence of Black African folk reflecting their social reality as dreams by way of rituals embellished by the contest of battles, dance and song.
