African American women across the county are in shock about the recent case of Jessica Ross and the decapitation of her baby, Treveon Isaiah Taylor Jr., during childbirth. This case illustrates the deeply troubling maternal and infant mortality crisis affecting African American communities. The heart-wrenching incident is a painful reminder of the urgent inequalities within the United States healthcare system that unevenly impact Black women and their infants. It is an unfortunate representation of a broader crisis that can only be addressed through the struggle for Black liberation and socialism.

Jessica Ross, of Georgia, filed a lawsuit against a Southern Regional Medical Center and others involved in delivering her baby Taylor Jr, who was allegedly decapitated during childbirth. The lawsuit claims that the hospital, located just outside Atlanta, attempted to hide the baby's death from the family. The complaint alleges that the doctor applied excessive traction on the baby's head and neck, resulting in Taylor Jr's death. The hospital insisted that the Treveon Isaiah Taylor, Sr, and Jessica Ross not view their baby and attempted to pressure the couple to immediately cremate Taylor Jr. The family's spokesperson states that the hospital only allowed them to view their baby wrapped tightly in a blanket to hide the decapitation.

This disturbing incident is not isolated. It exposes the deeply rooted racist and gender biased healthcare system that disproportionately affects Black women and their infants. Celebrities like Serena Williams have garnered media attention for her childbirth-related complications, shedding light on a much broader crisis. If even multi-millionaire African Americans are at risk of life-threatening injuries during childbirth, what does that mean for working-class African American women? Black women are nearly three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts.

Tori Bowie, a former Olympic track and field athlete, tragically lost her life at 32 due to childbirth complications. At eight months pregnant, Bowie was found dead during an unplanned home birth. The autopsy report indicated potential complications coming from respiratory distress and eclampsia – conditions linked to high blood pressure during pregnancy. The death of Tori Bowie mirrors the reality that African American women face during childbirth. For example, Black women are more likely to have preeclampsia and eclampsia during childbirth.

Additional stats show that African American women experience an infant mortality rate at 2.3 times higher than whites. This alarming statistic is a clear indictment of a capitalist healthcare system that refuses to adequately support and protect Black mothers and infants.

The situation is particularly dire in regions like the Black Belt South, where access to healthcare remains a struggle for many African Americans. One problem is the scarcity of Black doctors, particularly Black women doctors. It is wrong that in areas with majority Black populations, there is still limited availability of medical professionals. I have experienced this as a Black woman living in the Black Belt South. The scarcity of African American obstetricians and gynecologists in cities like Tallahassee illustrates the broader problem.

We need Black liberation and socialism to end this crisis. We must have self-determination and political power. We right to a proper education, jobs, safety and healthcare. We need a revolution. We need to build a united front against the rulers of this country, a united front with a strategic alliance of the multinational working class and national liberation movements at its center.

When we did have Black doctors, businesses, and thriving economic regions, we were attacked and brutalized in events like the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921, also known as the attack on Black Wall Street. In every sector of life, African Americans are repressed. That is national oppression. It is not just racism, it is real inequality – an actual economic, social and cultural attack on African Americans. It is how the ruling class holds onto its grip in this society. The ruling class benefits from national oppression. We can no longer allow them to rule in this way.

The horrifying case of Jessica Ross shines a spotlight on the pressing need to address maternal and infant health care within African American communities. The entire structure of this country must fundamentally change. We must hold these healthcare institutions accountable, end systemic racism in medical care, and commit unwaveringly to the cause of Black liberation. No parent should have to endure such a devastating loss and only we as a society can do that.

#UnitedStates #NationalOppression #WomensMovement #Healthcare #BlackWomen #birth

The Russian Empire under the Tsar was rightly called a “prisonhouse of nations,” because it oppressed, within its borders, whole nations of people. The Bolsheviks saw that it was a principal task of the socialist revolution to dismantle national oppression and support self-determination for the oppressed nations.

The United States is likewise a prisonhouse of nations, where the African American nation in the Black Belt South, the Chicano nation in the Southwest and the Hawaiian nation are all oppressed within the borders of the imperialist U.S. It will be a principal task of the socialist revolution in the U.S. to answer the national question, and we can draw on the experience of the Bolsheviks and others to understand how to do that.

The great African American communist leader and Marxist-Leninist theorist Harry Haywood lived in the Soviet Union, from 1925 to 1930, where he witnessed firsthand how the national question was handled there. In his autobiography Black Bolshevik, Haywood explained his experience there and the theory that guided the USSR on the national question. He writes,

“...the formation of peoples into nations is an objective law of social development around which the Bolsheviks, particularly Lenin and Stalin, had developed a whole body of theory. According to this theory, a nation is a historically constituted stable community of people, based on four main characteristics: a common territory, a common economic life, a common language and common psychological makeup (national character) manifest in common features in a national culture. Since the development of imperialism, the liberation of oppressed nations has become a question whose final resolution would only come through proletarian revolution.”

Haywood goes on to explain that the overthrow of the tsar and the construction of socialism required the unity of nationalities, and that this unity had to be based on “equality before the law for all nationalities – with no special privileges for any one people – and the right of the colonies and subject nations to separate.”

Thus, after the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution, these principles were turned into the law of the land. Socialism set out to remove the effects of national oppression within the liberated nations of the former Russian Empire. Resources were diverted to them to raise their standards of living, education, health, and so on, while respecting and developing their cultural and political institutions. For example, Haywood writes of witnessing this policy in action in Crimea and the Caucasus in 1927 and 1928:

“The languages and culture which had been stifled under the czarist regime were now being developed. The language of the Crimean people was a Turko-Tartar language, but before the Revolution, almost all education, such as there was, was in the Russian language. Now there were schools established which used the native language.”

Abolishing national oppression is the first step, since it is the material basis of racism and prejudice. But as Haywood explains, after the Bolshevik revolution,

“…remnants of national and racial prejudice from the old society were attacked by education and law. It was a crime to give or receive direct or indirect privileges, or to exercise discrimination because of race or nationality. Any manifestation of racial or national superiority was punishable by law and was regarded as a serious political offense, a social crime.”

Haywood explains that in all of his five years in the Soviet Union, he only experienced a single instance of racism, which was met with outrage from bystanders, leading to an impromptu mass meeting and the arrest of the perpetrator. It may be hard to imagine in the U.S. today, where the police murder Black, Chicano, and other oppressed people with impunity every day, but in the USSR in the 1920s, a racial slur led to a night in jail for the offender. Creating a just society free of racism and national oppression was taken seriously.

It isn’t possible to predict exactly how the national question will be resolved in the course of socialist revolution. What we can say is that the U.S. colonies, such as Puerto Rico and Guam, must be granted their independence – if they have not already achieved by their own efforts. The full sovereignty of native peoples must be respected as must the right to national development. And the Black, Chicano and Hawaiian oppressed nations must have the right to self-determination, to choose whether or not to separate their historically constituted national territory.

The national question in the United States will be solved in practice by the working and oppressed people themselves in the course of socialist revolution. But we can draw many lessons from the experiences of others. In the Soviet Union this played out through the formation of Soviet republics of the formerly oppressed nations. In China it led to national autonomous regions.

In any case, the national question must be answered correctly both before and after the revolution, for its purpose is twofold. First, it is necessary to right the past wrongs of U.S. imperialism and see that they are not perpetuated. As Lenin said, the right of national self-determination, like the right to divorce, can be the only basis for a true, voluntary unity. Second, that unity is the only way we can defeat the oppressors. Only the strategic alliance of the multinational working class and the movements for national liberation can form the core of the united front necessary to topple monopoly capitalism, and only by freeing all peoples can the working class itself ever hope to be free.

#UnitedStates #NationalOppression #MarxismLeninism #MLTheory #redTheory

Fight Back! News interviews the chair of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) Joint Nationalities Commission Masao Suzuki. Fight Back!: FRSO says that the U.S. is a jailhouse for oppressed nationalities. What is meant by this?

Masao Suzuki: The FRSO describes the United States as a “jailhouse for oppressed nationalities” for three reasons. First, the United States was founded on the genocide and land theft of Native Americans, and the chattel slavery of Africans. From its very beginning, U.S. capitalism was based on both national oppression and the exploitation of U.S. workers. Thus, in FRSO we see the core of the united front against imperialism as the strategic alliance between the working class and oppressed nationalities.

Second, inside the United States, three oppressed nations have developed: the African American Nation in the South, the Chicano Nation in the Southwest, and the Hawaiian Nation in Hawaii. FRSO supports the right to self-determination, up to and including the right to form their own countries, for these oppressed nations.

Third, FRSO supports the right to national development, including the return of land, to the indigenous peoples of the United States. Native peoples are the worst off all the oppressed nationalities: the most poverty, the shortest lifespans, the least educational opportunities.

Fourth, the United States still has colonies: Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, Belau (Palau), Guam, the Marshall Islands, and the Northern Mariana in the Pacific. These colonies have long been exploited by the U.S. military and U.S. corporations. FRSO supports independence of all U.S. colonies.

Fifth, there are large numbers of oppressed nationalities such as Arab Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos who face racist violence, language discrimination, residential segregation, and religious persecution. While not oppressed nations with a national territory with the borders of the U.S., FRSO supports full equality for oppressed nationalities.

In the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, tsarist Russia is referred to as a “prison of nations.” Much like the United States today, the Russian empire oppressed whole nations, such as Poland, as well as oppressed nationalities without their own national territory such as Russian Jews.

Fight Back!: A lot of people say the problem in the U.S. Is one of racism. What do you think?

Suzuki: Racism, that is the conscious or unconscious bias against oppressed nationalities, is certainly a problem in the United States. For example, African Americans routinely stopped, harassed, arrested, and even beaten and killed by killer cops – what is called “driving while Black.” But in my view, it is not the root problem faced by oppressed nationalities. National oppression – that is the economic, political and social inequality between white Americans on one hand and oppressed nationalities on the other – is in fact the basis for racism, not the other way around.

There are at least two problems with seeing racism as the problem. The first is that if the problem is racism, then the solution is changing people’s thoughts. This can be done by diversity trainings, “unconscious bias” testing, bringing people together for food and festivals, etc. Electing Barack Obama as president was a victory over racists and white supremacists. But his election did not help solve police violence against African Americans or aid the legalization of undocumented immigrants, 85% of who were Mexicano and Central American at the time.

A second problem, especially for progressives and revolutionaries, is that viewing national oppression as a matter of race separates the national and democratic struggle of oppressed nationalities here in the United States from the world struggle for national liberation of oppressed nations and nationalities around the world. The struggle for national liberation of the people Ireland against British imperialism was not a matter of “race.” Neither were the struggles of Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, Vietnamese and others against the vicious and genocidal Japanese imperialism, which killed millions of East and Southeast Asians during World War II.

Capitalism in the United States was founded on the genocide of indigenous people and the chattel slavery of Africans. Racism arose as a justification for the seizure of land from Native Americans and the profits from slave labor. So, I see the elimination of capitalism, that is a socialist society, as a necessary starting point for the elimination of national oppression and to bring about full equality.

Fight Back!: Given that the U.S. has established an empire that extends across the globe, how are developments in the international situation impacting inequality and discrimination here at home?

Suzuki: There is a long history of the international situation having an impact on national oppression here in the United States. Twenty years ago, the Bush administration declared the so-called “War on Terror” to justify the invasion and occupation of first Afghanistan, and then Iraq. A number of measures, including the special registration of foreign-born Muslims in the United States, infiltration of Islamic centers and charity organizations targeted American Muslims, in particular Palestinian Americans.

Recently, the growing tensions between the United States and China, and in particular, President Trump blaming China for the pandemic, ignited a wave of harassment, assault and murder of Asian Americans, culminating in the mass killing at a spa in Atlanta, where six Asian American women and two others were shot and killed. Trump said that foreign students from China are all potential spies, and the FBI carried out a campaign against Chinese American professors in the United States.

But the struggle for decolonization and national liberation in the Third World after World War II also put pressure on U.S. to distance itself from its colonial empire and racist practices here in the United States. While the massive struggle of African Americans in the Civil Rights movement was the main force in ending Jim Crow segregation, the U.S. imperialists knew that reforms ending explicitly racist policies would help the image of the United States.

The liberation struggles in Africa, Asia and Latin America provided inspiration to African American leaders from Luther King Jr. to Malcolm X and helped the rise of the Civil Rights movement and the Black Power struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. Leaders of liberation movements in the Third World were very conscious of this, with Fidel Castro staying in NYC’s Harlem on his first visit to the United Nations.

Fight Back!: How has the George Floyd rebellion changed the political landscape of the U.S?

Suzuki: Following the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, an uprising took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and millions of people poured into the streets across the country. This was the single largest protest in U.S. history, with more than 25 million people taking part. These protests were also the most multi-national as compared to other large protests where the vast majority were white Americans or African American or Chicano/Latino.

The George Floyd rebellion demonstrated again, much as the Civil Rights movement did in the early 1960s, that the African American movement has a particular ability to move Americans of all nationalities and all walks of life. Like the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s, the George Floyd rebellion with African Americans at its core, inspired other oppressed nationalities to action. Less than a year later, after the killings at an Atlanta spa where most the victims were Asian women, the largest wave of Asian American protests ever happened across the country. Many of the organizers had never organized a protest, but they had marched before – in protest of the murder of George Floyd.

In terms of police crimes, for the first time, the most egregious police killers are being arrested, tried and convicted. But despite a handful of killer cops going to jail there has been no fundamental change in racist violence by police. In 2021, the year after the George Floyd uprising, police killed more than 1000 people, one of the highest numbers in recent years. Of those killed who were unarmed most were African Americans and Chicanos and Latino.

One advance for the struggle is that the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, which was refounded in 2019, was able to lead many of the protest and advance the demand for community control of the police. This demand, first raised by the Black Panther Party in 1970, has become a leading demand to actually change policing by putting it under the control of the community through elected civilian accountability councils.

Fight Back!: What is the relationship between the struggle for consistent democracy and the fight for socialism?

Suzuki: The fights – against police crimes and for community control of police, the fight against deportations and militarization of the border and for legalization of the undocumented, the struggle for full equality for African Americans, Chicanos and Latinos, and other oppressed nationalities, the fight for reproductive rights and for full equality for women, and fight for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer rights – are all a part of the struggle for consistent democracy here in the United States.

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization believes that the fight for socialism requires a broad united front of many classes led by the party of the working class, a communist party. At the core of this united front is the strategic alliance between the workers’ movement and the movements of oppressed nationalities in the United States. Thus, most of our comrades are engaged in these two struggles.

But we are also involved in other struggles – in the anti-war and international solidarity movement, the student movement, for reproductive rights and the women’s movement, the LGBTQ movement, and the environmental movement. Through these movements we fight for democracy and to defend the lives of working people from many walks of life. These movements are also important to build the broadest possible united front against monopoly capitalism and for socialism.

We fight for socialism because we recognize that U.S. society is a democracy for the 1%, for the monopoly capitalists that own the wealth of this country. Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are parties of the ruling class, of the monopoly capitalists. National elections in this country give people a choice of different capitalist-backed politicians – not a real choice.

But for the vast majority of people, and for workers and oppressed nationalities, this facade of bourgeois democracy hides a steel fist of force and violence against any and all who would threaten the rule of the capitalist class.

#UnitedStates #Socialism #NationalOppression #AntiRacism

Jacksonville, FL – Throughout the months of January and February, there were over 20 bomb threats directed towards historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Black churches, most of which were in the South. These concentrated actions over the last few months are a microcosm of the extensive history of racism and national oppression that Black people have faced within the United States, particularly its southern region.

In general, all Black communities within the United States face systemic racism. The evidence is in the economically depressed ghettos of every city (big and small), riddled with deprived schools and social organizations, and lacking any significant political power. But racism alone cannot explain the particular violence that Black people face within the United States. For this reason, we must understand this phenomenon as a form of special oppression that Black people face under capitalism called national oppression. This unique form of oppression targets a particular group for their nationality. In the case of Afro-descendants living within the borders of the United States, this is a nation within a nation.

But why has the South, in particular, faced the most extreme manifestations of the terrorism associated with racist national oppression? Because historically, the South is where Africans and their descendants are and were most densely concentrated. This, of course, is the haunting legacy of centuries of enslavement in this region, which shaped the relationship between white and Black communities and whose effects radiate throughout every societal system existing today. Of course, this relationship includes the development of a particular form of racial terrorism. This terrorism stems from the slavery era, when enslavers and those who acted in their interests, used torture, terrorism and intimidation to deter any revolutionary organizing by freedom-seeking Africans.

After the Civil War, the KKK and other white supremacist organizations waged a campaign of political violence that overthrew Radical Reconstruction. This terrorism continued throughout the Jim Crow Era as lynch law dominated the South for nearly 100 years. This specific form of violence was – and continues to be – in response to white society’s fear of a Black nation in the belly of the imperial core.

This intense display of national oppression, including subjection to extreme violence, and economic exploitation led to the Great Migration, a period between 1916 and 1970, when 6 million Black people moved out of rural areas in the South to the Northeast, Midwest and West. Despite the Great Migration, one of the largest migrations in the history of the United States, the majority of Afro-descended people still live in the South, particularly the Black Belt region, where Black people constitute a majority in several contiguous regions. In 2010, 55% of the Black population lived in the South, and 105 Southern counties had a Black population of 50% or higher. Of the total U.S. population of 308.7 million in 2010, 38.9 million people, or 13%, identified as Black alone.

Of these roughly 40 million Afro-descendants living within the borders of the United States, over half, or about 22 million, still live in the South. 22 million is a larger population than all of Scandinavia combined, and Scandinavia consists of 7 nations. It's more than Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland, Serbia, Austria, and others. 40 million is a larger population than the majority of many nations on earth. Undoubtedly, a Black nation exists within the United States’ borders, and national oppression inflicted by the capitalist system serves to facilitate its continued underdevelopment.

This underdevelopment of a Black nation is exacerbated by extreme forms state-sanctioned violence and terrorism, which did not end after Jim Crow’s reign. In addition to organized threats against popular institutions, an even more organized system of police terror and violence is encouraged and expertly designed to brutalize Black people and hinder their national growth progress.

Black people are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly five times the rate of white people. And the conditions they face are even more dire. A federal judge ruled that the conditions for incarcerated persons with mental health issues in Alabama prisons is so “horrendously inadequate” that it violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

This is just one example of the shame of the United States. In Louisiana, 816 people were incarcerated for every 100,000 people in 2014. The increasing privatization of prisons for profit and the willingness to turn a blind eye to ongoing injustice against Black and brown people has not only widened disparities in healthcare, education, food security and housing but has also paralleled the rise of bold, extremist attacks against Black personhood, Black identity and Black power.

Extreme acts, such as the Emanuel AME Church massacre that devastated Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, illustrate the political violence still required to suppress a nation, and why bomb threats to HBCU’s and other Black institutions should not be taken lightly, or underanalyzed from the simple lens of being a one-off acts of racial violence, or hate crimes. In doing so, we miss the political nature of such attacks, and their intended function, which is political repression. We miss out on why Emanuel AME Church was targeted, and who was targeted. Of the victims, the primary target, was Black Senator Clementa Pinckney. Pinckney was the youngest Black person to be elected to the South Carolina state legislature. He proposed a bill to officially recognize the Pan African flag, held political rallies after the police murder of Walter Scott in North Charleston, and had introduced several bills to protect Black people’s land in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina. When we analyze acts of racial terrorism as a function of political repression that stem from national oppression, then Emmanuel AME is not simply a random anti-Black hate crime, but an assassination with the purpose of political repression.

If we fail to understand the implications of such bomb threats, the way many failed to understand the gravity of the Emmanuel AME massacre, then we will fail to understand the true intentions behind these acts of violence, and the purpose they serve in the grand scheme of things. All political acts are intentional, therefore terrorism aimed at Black communities have a political objective – to suppress the development of Black communities through violence and intimidation by targeting the productive forces – schools, churches, businesses and other social organizations – that are essential to any oppressed nation’s quest for self-determination.

Joshua Parks is a member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and co-founder of the Low Country Community Action Committee of Charleston, South Carolina, a National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression affiliated branch.

#CharlestonNC #InJusticeSystem #NationalOppression #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #AfricanAmericanNation #bombThreats

Jacksonville, FL – The United States has a notorious history with the national oppression of Black people. In the South, remnants of slave society exist as a constant reminder of this – Confederate street names, school names and monuments are physical reminders one encounters daily – but we see it also manifest in the social structure of the Black Belt South – the historically constituted nation of Black people in the United States.

The Black Belt South originally referred to the dark, rich soil geographically native to the region. The use of Black slave labor to cultivate this soil, however, changed the meaning of the term. Even after the abolition of slavery, the majority of Black families were left in the area with no land reform or resources to relocate. Since reparations were never distributed to former slaves or their descendants, many Black individuals and families were stuck in Deep South plantation culture, despite being ‘free.’ This poor start to ‘freedom,’ mixed with lingering racism harbored by the plantation owners who faced no retribution for their crimes against Black people, have impacted the Black Belt in the form of extreme social and economic repression.

The Black Belt has the highest concentration of African American and Caribbean American Black residents. It is also home to the lowest wages, lowest education rates and highest poverty rates in the country. These implications can be examined through the structure of Jacksonville, Florida – a city near the southern portion of the Black Belt.

Jacksonville, Florida is a hub for violence, and the numbers prove it. In the city’s 2017 homicide report, the number one cause of death was getting shot, while the second cause was getting shot by the police.

Jacksonville’s 2018 back-to-school season saw two mass shootings. Raines High School experienced a mass shooting during a football game against rival team Lee High School on August 24. Two days later at the Jacksonville Landing, a well-known landmark downtown, another mass shooting took place during a Madden NFL video game tournament.

Both incidents were carried out by young men, and both happened on the same weekend. Individually, however, they received very different coverage, coverage that mirrors how the U.S. media portrays whites positively and Blacks negatively. The coverage of each story reflects the racist national oppression of Blacks in Jacksonville and the Black Belt.

Consolidation, poverty, and the Black community

Raines High School sits north of Jacksonville’s 45th Street and Moncrief Road, also known as Jacksonville’s Northside. Historically, Blacks make up the majority of Jacksonville’s Northside – and this continues to be the case today. From the late 1800s to the early 1960s, before Urban Renewal plans hit neighborhoods in an attempt to ‘desegregate,’ the Northside experienced a Black renaissance. The area was formerly known as Sugar Hill.

Regarded as a ‘prestigious, upscale suburb,’ Sugar Hill included present-day Davis Street, Jefferson Street, Moncrief Road, and 8th Street. The neighborhood economically benefited by having a Black-owned hospital, George A. Brewster Hospital & School of Nurse Training, the Duval Medical Center, as well as a Black higher learning center prior to 1924 called the Cookman Institute. The Darnell Cookman School still stands on the intersection of present day Davis Street and 8th Street as a middle and high school.

Sugar Hill’s prosperity, however, came to an abrupt end with the addition of the Interstate-95 expressway in 1960. The expressway cut through the neighborhood and required the demolition of Black-owned homes and businesses in Sugar Hill during its construction.

For the Black-owned businesses not demolished by construction, the new interstate redirected traffic completely over and away from the neighborhood. Potential customers would no longer know these businesses even existed unless they took an exit. With the end of legal segregation and the passing of Civil Rights legislation, city politicians argued there was “no longer a need for a Black hospital.” In 1966, Brewster Hospital closed, which also landed a devastating economic blow to the area.

These actions arrived just three years before the city’s historic Consolidation Plan. The Consolidation Plan aimed to consolidate the outer suburbs of Jacksonville, which were predominantly white, under the same leadership as the urban core of Jacksonville, which was predominantly Black. This was a form of voter suppression. With consolidation efforts officially passing in 1968, Jacksonville’s Black leadership began to dissipate as white votes poured in from the surrounding areas suddenly recognized as Duval County. Jacksonville is the largest city in the United States by land area because of this consolidation.

These economic and political attacks have created many problems for Black people in Jacksonville, ranging from material difficulties to mental health issues. The conditions on the Northside remain desperate in the wake of natural disasters, like Hurricane Irma in 2017, which flooded out the Ken Knight Drive area ; the area received no aid from the city to rebuild. All of these forms of oppression forced upon the Black community often leads to individuals suffering from complex trauma. Complex trauma is a psychological disorder that can develop in response to prolonged, repeated negative experiences from which the individual has little or no chance of escape.

Present-day crime and city spending

Most violent crimes in Jacksonville are shootings. In a very failed effort to combat this, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office attempts to out-police violent gun crime. Since there is no way to actually ‘out-police’ crime – what the city sees instead is that police shootings rank as the number-two cause of homicide in Jacksonville.

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams asks for more funding around the same time of year (back-to-school season/election and budget season) based on the idea that more cops will help “crack down on crime.” However there have been no conclusive studies to prove this claim. The recent spike in violent crime in Jacksonville, despite city council leaders voting to increase the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) budget by $4.4 million and add 80 new officers in 2017, further illustrates that there is no correlation between more cops and less crime.

Crime results from the failures of the current system, which can only be swept away with a radical restructuring of society that places poor and working people in charge. The rich and powerful create the material conditions that lead to crime by depriving people of access to basic human needs. We can fight for increased spending on after-school programs, greater investments in public health and infrastructure, better job opportunities, public transportation and accessible mental health treatment as important ways to reduce crime as we fight for a better world.

The 2018-2019 Jacksonville city budget, which passed despite several organized community speakouts against it, adds $30 million in additional funding to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. Many people, particularly the Black community, expressed through several ways that $30 million could be better spent on programs and infrastructure that actually reduce crime rates.

Activists with the Jacksonville Community Action Committee (JCAC), some of whom are members of Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), led community members and other activist organizations in demanding city leaders redirect funds to social programs such as after school and other youth programs, rehabilitation centers and accessible mental health. However, the city, once again, voted to allocate funds towards disproportionately over-policing the Jacksonville area. They ignored the growing tide of activists fighting for community control of the police and an elected civilian police accountability council that could hold the police accountable for their crimes.

Racist reporting and lack of urgency

Early in 2018 Jacksonville made national news for the JSO inaccurately reporting five attacks on Black transgender and queer people, which included four fatalities. JSO’s investigation did not comply with the Matthew Shepard, James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act, which is a federal law mandating that police recognize the perceived identity of a victim, regardless of their legal name and gender marker. JSO failed to comply with this in their reporting, despite community activists and advocates informing them of the discrepancy.

This was incredibly disrespectful towards Black transgender people. It also allowed important evidence to disappear during the most critical hours of the investigation. For the first investigation, the police asked witnesses if they knew “DeVonne Walker,” while everyone knew her as Celine Walker. The Black transgender community, though small, suffered incredible trauma from both her death and the lack of urgency for justice and respect shown by JSO. This was repeated again and again after the four attacks on the same community that followed. Not only did the police fail to bring justice, but they insulted the victims again and again.

“The Black LGBT community is scared right now,” said the director of Coalition for Consent, a local gender liberation group led by Black and oppressed nationality activists. “It’s traumatic to see so many attacks back to back, but considering that there was no warning from officials or police about the targeting of Black transgender people really adds a disturbing aspect. It shows how much Black lives matter to them. If it were any other group of people, there would be warnings issued to help protect that community.”

A terrible aspect to these cases – one often seen in police reports about murdered Black people – is the suggestive language used by the police. It is not uncommon for reports to suggest that victims ‘deserved’ their fate in some way when it is a Black death in question.

For the Black transgender attacks in Jacksonville, it is important to note that an extension of the 2009 Matthew Shepard, James Byrd Jr. Act also claims that victims have a right to an investigation even if they were engaged in illicit acts such as sex work or drug dealing.

Despite these federal protections, reports from the JSO heavily suggested that Celine Walker was engaged in sex work because she was found in a hotel room. By adding this to the public reports, it muted the urgency in finding her killer. It suggested to the public that somehow, she deserved her fate because of her perceived lifestyle choices.

This is the same type of reporting we saw in 2016 when 22-year-old Vernell Bing was shot by Officer Tyler Laundreville on 9th and Liberty Street – an area formerly part of Sugar Hill. Initial police reports mentioned drugs and firearms were involved. Though later reports admitted that neither were actually present at the scene of Bing’s murder, the initial statements stuck in the media. This allowed JSO to paint Bing as a ‘thug’ and allowed Laundreville to keep his position on the force. This was one of the first local cases that started the fight for community control of the police in Jacksonville and demonstrated the need for a police accountability council.

Keegan Roberts, a Black working-class father, was murdered in his own front yard by a racist vigilante neighbor. Police reports said he had marijuana on him at the time of his death. This was an unnecessary addition since he was not being targeted by the police at all for anything illegal. Keegan was killed by his white neighbor over a small piece of litter. Keegan’s neighbor walked over to Keegan’s side of the street and murdered him while hurling racial slurs at Keegan and Keegan’s pregnant wife because he believed Keegan was responsible for a small piece of trash that had blown onto his lawn. The attempt to suggest that victim had drugs on him is a common tactic to deny the killer’s accountability. It also reinforces the notion that Keegan somehow deserved to be killed on his own property over a piece of trash. Neither the cops, the state attorney, or other city leaders have to do anything because Keegan ‘deserved it.’

Jacksonville also made national news in 2017 from an award-winning article by the Florida Times Union and Pro Publica titled “Walking While Black” which exposed illegal stop and frisk procedures and racial profiling of Jacksonville’s Black community. When asked by the JCAC if this was common practice by the JSO against Black civilians, Undersheriff Pat Ivey did not even seem to realize that stop-and-frisks were illegal. He admitted that they were a common method used by JSO to stop people and search them.

Overpoliced, facing discrimination and impoverished, the Black community in Jacksonville battles these conditions and all the problems they bring. Suffering from police crimes and a general lack of urgency when justice is needed, the community must also fight to hold the police accountable to the community.

Violent crimes: The double standard

According to Child Poverty as a Potential Developmental Trauma: Shame, Self-Esteem, and Redignification of Childhood, children living in extreme poverty suffer from trauma. Extreme poverty, with unaffordable childcare options, little to no after school youth programs, and parents working 50 hour work weeks, negatively impact children. Extreme poverty also leads to whole communities suffering from high crime rates as people struggle to survive. When crime is on the rise like it is in Jacksonville, the material conditions that cause crime must be addressed. In Jacksonville these conditions continue to be ignored, and more violent outbursts are seen, often targeting young people.

Black ‘gang’ violence was immediately associated with the shooting at Raines High School on the Northside by the police and media. This paints a negative picture of everyone involved, including the victims. The shooter at The Landing, a young white male gamer, was immediately deemed mentally ill. This dampens the call for accountability around the white shooter. These are dangerous reports in a city with a strong history of racism and demonstrate a double standard.

Tweets from the white shooter at The Landing revealed a hatred of women, hatred of humanity in general, and reverence for other mass killers like the Columbine, Colorado shooters. Media reports paint a picture of a lonely young man let down by society. As outlined above, Black youth are let down by society more often than not, but most mass shooters are white males. The fact is that mental illness does not correlate to violent crime.

Both shooters are murderers and must still be held accountable for their actions. Prevention should be taken more seriously, and care must be taken when reporting tragedies like these to avoid racist stereotypes and stereotypes against those who suffer from mental illness. It is wrong to associate violent crime with mental illness while ignoring the real material reasons behind everything. The rich and powerful are to blame for creating the conditions which produce crime. Only when the working class is in power can these conditions be swept away.

National oppression and the struggle for liberation

According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, humans first have physiological needs that must be met, i.e.: food, water and shelter, and then the next set of needs that must be met are safety and belonging. People need these requirements to be met, but when we do a breakdown of the Black community in Jacksonville, homelessness and unemployment rates suggest that many people go without basic needs. According to the 2012 Homeless Coalition Report, the homeless population is 55% Black while only accounting for 24% of the total population in Duval, Nassau and Clay counties.

While food, water and shelter are inaccessible to many Black people, particularly those in Jacksonville’s urban core, everyone suffers. For children living in poverty, some reports say they are three times as likely as an adult combat war veteran to suffer from complex post-traumatic stress disorder. According to the Florida Times Union, 23% of Duval County is under the age of 18. A quarter of those under the age of 18 live below the poverty line. Of those living below the poverty line, 58% are Black and 32% are white. Poverty, homelessness, limited job opportunities, high unemployment rates and racism leave the Black community much less prosperous than it was back in the days of Sugar Hill. These factors especially affect the youth struggling to survive in these conditions.

Cities like Jacksonville need to make sure that the basic needs of the community are met from the physiological (food, water, shelter) to psychological (safety and belonging). It is clearly not in the interest of the rich and powerful who rule society to ensure that basic human needs are met. It is up to the working class and oppressed nations, like the Black Belt nation, to fight to change society from the ground up and win political power away from the 1%.

In the Black Belt South, the struggle for self-determination faces political, economic, historical and mental oppression. It is only through militant, dedicated organizing efforts that the people’s movements are growing and cities like Jacksonville are organizing and fighting back.

#JacksonvilleFL #InJusticeSystem #NationalOppression #US #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #AntiRacism #Florida #PoliticalRepression

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following resolution from the 8th Congress of Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO).

Domestic Political Resolution

U.S. Domestic Politics and the Trump Administration

The current period in the United States reflects an imperialist power in decline – what Lenin called “moribund capitalism.” U.S. influence around the world is generally weakening, and this means a number of things for the working class and oppressed nationalities living inside the U.S. The primary factor U.S. communists see in the present day is heightened attacks against the people’s movements, which means that communists should fight back and win all we can win, build a new communist party, and bring forward into the struggle all elements willing to unite behind the correct line in the united front against imperialism. This period of U.S. politics is differentiated from the previous period by the election of Donald Trump.

The presidency of Barack Obama ended in 2016 with the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the election of Donald Trump, who was inaugurated on January 20, 2017. This was unexpected by many sectors of the ruling class which had backed Clinton and political analysts who said Trump had no real chance of winning. Many oppressed nationality people saw their worst fears confirmed, and many other people were shocked by the outcome. Trump was elected for a variety of reasons, including an excess of “dark money” free media which gave Trump a surprising financial edge at the end of the presidential race, and the mishandling of Clinton's campaign by leading democratic party officials who failed to plan visits to key battleground states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and lost those states to Trump. The impact of ‘right to work’ and the collapse of unions in Rust Belt states and an appeal to white supremacist rhetoric in the face of significant demographic changes also contributed. Clinton was viewed by many working-class people as an exceptionally corrupt politician unworthy of support, and this, coupled with voter suppression and sexism also played a role in the outcome of the election. In the end, Wall Street's candidate lost to the billionaire and the ruling class has never lost sight of its own interests in dealing with the aftermath of this.

Trump himself seemed surprised by his own victory, and quickly put into motion plans to construct a reactionary political cabinet around himself filled with military leaders and other billionaires. This cabinet is unique in that it is the billionaires themselves filling the seats, rather than the political lackeys who normally serve those roles. Trump also appointed Steve Bannon to a newly created position, that of White House Chief Strategist, which Bannon served as for about a year. Bannon, who is the executive chairman of the far-right Breitbart News and had support from right-wing billionaires like the Mercers, quickly began reinforcing Trump's already conservative ideology by advocating for stricter immigration policies and harsher trade regulations against China and Mexico. This is all an attempt to form an alliance with white supremacist and gain their support for an increasingly unstable and rogue administration that is an unstable representative of the ruling class. Bannon is one of many leaders of the ‘alt-right’ Trump has worked with to further his own 1% agenda of white nationalism, bigotry and economic policies that favor the rich.

Before Trump, Obama’s time in office saw some advances by the people’s movements, including the rise of Occupy Wall Street, the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement, the enacting of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the Affordable Care Act, and the legalization of gay marriage. Obama’s time in office also saw defeats for working people, including the devastating restructuring following the economic crisis of 2008, a continuation of war in the Middle East, more deportations of immigrants than ever before and continued attacks on the trade union movement.

Domestically, Trump has launched terrible attacks on the working class, oppressed nationalities, women and queer people. After coming out as a climate change denier, Trump has cut funding to the Environmental Protection Agency, withdrawn from the Paris Accords, pushed forward destructive and racist pipeline projects and deleted climate change data from federal websites. Some of these environmental attacks have a dual nature, such as the struggle over the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) that directly targeted native people and their land. He has consistently attacked transgender rights. He supports attacks on women’s dignity, and especially reproductive rights. His attacks on immigrants have gone far beyond rhetoric about building a wall. Trump's vocal opposition to the movement for Black liberation has had a strong effect on racist groups in the U.S., which are growing at an alarming rate.

These attacks have been met with a heroic resistance by a broad array of forces – a real resistance carried out in the streets and workplaces by working-class people, different from the efforts of failed politicians to lead workers and oppressed people back into billionaire political parties like the Democrats. Trump’s billionaire agenda, bigotry and backwardness have united many arenas of struggle with the goal of stopping the political agenda of Trump and the class he represents. While the movement is not as large as it was immediately following the election, those active on the ground are more focused and experienced than they were a year ago and it is up to communists to win them to the correct line.

Fighting National Oppression: Solidarity with Muslims and Immigrants and the Struggle of Chicanos, Mexicanos and Central Americans

One of the very first racist acts of the Trump administration was Executive Order 13769, the Muslim travel ban. A wave of mass protest at airports from coast to coast erupted, pushing the courts to block the ban. Many of the affected communities, including Palestinians in Chicago, Somalis in Minneapolis, and Iranians in Los Angeles mobilized for this fight. Right-wing anti-Muslim protests inspired by Trump were also swamped by counter-protesters who outnumbered them by as much as 20 to 1 or more. Other oppressed nationalities, such as Japanese Americans in the San Jose-San Francisco Bay Area and Chicanos in Los Angeles mobilized their communities to show solidarity with American Muslims, who are overwhelmingly oppressed nationalities (African, African American, South Asian and Arab Americans).

Central to the struggle for immigrant rights have been Chicanos, Mexicanos and Central Americans, who are the main target of the Trump administration’s racist anti-immigrant policies. Trump’s border wall, ending DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), the dismantling of TPS (Temporary Protective Status), the increase in deportation arrests, and the Republican RAISE act that would cut legal immigration in half and end family reunification visas all focus on immigrants from Mexico and Central America, as well as affecting other oppressed nationalities, especially Asian Americans, Arabs and others from the Middle East and Africa. This is an attack on all immigrants who are fighting for their homes, families and sanctuary in the U.S.

The struggle of Chicanos, Mexicanos and Central Americans also includes other fights. Inside the Chicano Nation in the Southwest, police killings of youth, privatization of public schools, and other forms of national oppression are facing a growing fightback. In the current period, attacks on immigrants are particularly vicious and must be met with a special emphasis by organizers.

The Struggle for Black Liberation Intensifies

The racist murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012 sparked a powerful movement around the country for justice, particularly around cases of police brutality and vigilante violence against Black people. Some of the heightened points of struggle include the Ferguson rebellion in 2014 and the Baltimore rebellion in 2015 after the murders of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, respectively. Around the country, protesters took to the streets and held vigils, marches and rallies for justice calling for an end to racism and national oppression. The slogan “Black Lives Matter” grew in use through many campaigns against injustice – including the protest movements against the murders of Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, Jamar Clark, and Philando Castille – and continues to inspire struggle. In perhaps one of the most interesting cultural events, National Football League player Colin Kaepernick’s taking a knee during the national anthem has sparked an even stronger debate about police brutality in the U.S. The phenomenon of taking a knee, begun by Kaepernick during the Obama years, has continued well into Trump’s presidency as a popular symbol of resistance. While the movement for justice has seen ups and downs since Trayvon Martin, with some sectors of the movement going over to the Democratic Party or non-profits, there remain many good forces dedicated to real organizing in the streets for justice and these are the forces communists should unite with. Many younger activists within the BLM movement have independently developed an interest in socialism and make up some of the brightest stars in the movement.

Police departments are becoming more and more militarized. Several cities around the country are struggling for community control of the police and are trying to pass police accountability councils. The people in the streets, who are the real agents of change in society, have much to be proud of and a lot of work still to come for the cause of Black liberation. In particular, the work fighting for community control of the police, headed by the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, has led to a rise in the movement fighting for police accountability in other cities like Jacksonville, Florida and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Trump has continued the Obama-era policy of not prosecuting killer cops who kill unarmed Black people. He has taken it further by actually promoting police terror, joking about police roughing up suspects. The state attacked the Black Lives Matter movement by targeting them as ‘domestic terrorist organizations,’ while killer cops face no repercussion. Attorney General Jeff Sessions event went as far as to end an Obama-era initiative that encouraged law enforcement agencies to enter into voluntary periods of reforming practices and procedures following special cases like the murder of unarmed oppressed nationalities by the police.

Trump's presidential race brought forward many white nationalists who, since his election, have become much more public and bolder. Alt-right figureheads like Richard Spencer have risen to prominence. Nowhere was this more visible than in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, when a white supremacist murdered anti-racist protester Heather Hayes during a demonstration to remove Confederate monuments in the city. The racist attack shows the importance of beating back national oppression and taking down Confederate statues and monuments. Even though the movement to remove the monuments is often taken up by white activist groups, it is still an important issue in the Black Nation of the South. We stand for defeating the growing far-right movement and defending our own movements by any means necessary.

Trump's Attacks on Labor

Trump's administration wasted no time attacking the historic gains made by the working class in the U.S. The Labor Department has been hard at work fighting to reduce overtime benefits that the Obama administration had tried expanding as a concession to the working class. Trump himself has been an advocate against raising the minimum wage, and in particular has opposed the Fight for $15 movement. There is less accountability for employers for how workplace health and safety are regulated. Right to Work is gaining momentum in states with conservative governors. Notably, Trump appointed a Supreme Court judge that will allow Janus v. AFSCME to move forward. This would result in the whole public sector going Right to Work on a national scale, which would be a devastating blow to the labor movement nationally. Trump's general approach to labor policy has been a reflection of his class affiliation as a billionaire who seeks to promote deregulation. His empty campaign promises about creating jobs have remained empty promises.

The trade union movement, including organizations like the AFL-CIO and others, is facing vicious attacks in the U.S. Unfortunately, the class collaborationist leadership of the trade unions has proven unable and unwilling to really organize much of a defense against policies like Right to Work, but there is hope in the rank-and-file movements. Partial victories like those seen by the Teamsters United campaign in 2016, where for the first time in years, reformers won important seats in the Central and Southern regions, show the ability of the working class to fight both the boss and the trade union bureaucrats and win. The level of strikes is at an all-time low in the U.S., but militant movements are struggling to revive that important weapon in the arsenal of labor. The militant strike led by the Chicago Teachers Union in 2016, one of the largest and most important strikes in recent years, showed an excellent example of how trade unions can fight back and win gains.

Women and Queer People Face Repression and Attacks

After the election, a million women marched in Washington. This is unfortunately no surprise, given the terrible comments about women made by Donald Trump before, during, and after his campaign. The #metoo movement has been a positive development. Institutions like Planned Parenthood face serious legal attacks, along with right-wing vigilante repression. The rights of women and trans people to choose about their reproductive health are under attack by politicians and their supporters under the guise of “making America great again” by placing women into a social status similar to the one they occupied in the earlier centuries. These attacks primarily target working-class women and oppressed nationality women, and that has led to lines of demarcation being drawn in the movement for women’s liberation between “petty bourgeois, majority white, trans exclusionary” factions and groups that have a more developed political line.

The murder of oppressed nationality trans people continues to occur at a higher rate than any other group in the U.S. Organizing around these cases is found lacking in far too many cities, which calls for greater vigor in fighting back when oppressed nationality trans people are murdered. Around the country, right-wing think tanks are funding local ordinances directed against trans and nonbinary people using the restrooms of their choice. Local movements are fighting back, and many cities around the U.S. have passed Human Rights Ordinances at the local level designed to protect the democratic rights of queer, trans and nonbinary people. While we advocate that no one should join the U.S. military, Trump’s attempted ban of transgender people in the military further highlights a reactionary aspect of his policies.

Students Fight Back

College campuses have become an even bigger arena of struggle against a variety of attacks on education and right-wing attacks in general. One of the biggest struggles has been over DACA. Student organizations like the New Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) have seen more chapters on more campuses than ever before following the election of Donald Trump. Students are continuing to fight to stop Trump’s agenda and have played important roles in shutting down both Trump’s own speaking events at universities and events planned by far-right popularizers like Richard Spencer. The fight for sanctuary campuses has produced good results and taught student organizers a good lesson: struggle can bring victory.

Sustaining the Anti-war Movement and International Solidarity

Growing concerns about war after Trump’s threats against the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or north Korea), and the never-ending U.S. occupation of Afghanistan point to the growing importance of the U.S. anti-war movement. Palestine in particular continues to face terrible repression at the hands of the Israeli government and their U.S. backers and must see greater solidarity from the anti-war movement if Palestine is ever to be free. These hot spots are but the tip of iceberg of U.S. military intervention around the globe. While the movement is not where it was 12 years ago when there were mass protests involving hundreds of thousands in the streets against the U.S. invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the anti-war movement did play a major role in the protests against Trump's anti-Muslim and anti-refugee policies. The anti-war movement must be prepared for any sudden escalation of military aggression by the United States.

Political Consciousness is High

There is no denying that right-wing groups, particularly white supremacist groups, have seen a rise in membership levels and activity since the election of Donald Trump. This includes organizations like the KKK, neo-nazis/facists but also newer formations of the alt-right like the 3%ers and Turning Point USA.

At the same time many progressive and left organizations are also seeing new members and organizers step forward to fight back against these attacks. Many progressive and revolutionary organizations have been undergoing a period of exponential growth. These new people are getting active and seeking to learn new theory for the fight against Trump. More people are standing up, some for the first time ever, and demanding a better world.

The Road Forward for Communists

This is what imperialism in decline looks like, a system that cannot correct itself but must be smashed and rebuilt from the ground up. It is up to the communists to navigate a difficult road to socialism, and communists must make many difficult choices along the way. We will see far too many of our friends lost to the trap of the Democratic Party and its cousin, the non-profit sector, in the coming years. We must learn to unite all those who can be united behind our campaigns in the coming years without losing our independent initiative and ideology within the united front. While the movement for change is perhaps not as large as that immediately following the election of Trump, there are still plenty of good forces to unite around the correct line of struggle, forces that are more and more convinced every day that the system cannot be reformed. We must also win over those who have independently developed an interest in socialism to our line.

This is a period of major attacks and widespread, large-scale fightbacks. The situation is very dynamic and fluid. As communists, we must lead campaigns that attempt to win all that can be won. Fortune favors the brave and bold. Struggles such as those for immigrant rights, community control of the police or the taking down of Confederate statues can capture the attention of movements in motion. The corrupt and rotten nature of the system is exposed with an unusual degree of clarity. Anti-capitalism and disgust of the bought-and-paid-for politicians is at an all-time high. Times have never been better to raise the level of struggle, be clear and forthright with a socialist vision and to build revolutionary organization. We need to be clear that the situation for the revolutionary and progressive forces is good, and we cannot afford to oscillate between rage and despair. We need to seize the time, take as many people as far as possible, and rain every possible blow on the enemy.

#UnitedStates #Socialism #NationalOppression #DonaldTrump #TrumpAdministration #resolution

Tampa, FL – Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the University of South Florida (USF) held a lecture and then a protest as part of Black History Month.

On Feb. 23, Elizabeth Kramer with Tampa SDS spoke on the ways in which African Americans, Chicanos and Native Americans are nationally oppressed in the U.S. She explained how the murders of African American people by police officers and the anti-immigrant laws, such as Arizona’s SB 1070 that legalized racial profiling, are part of national oppression. She also explained that fight to eliminate institutional racism against African Americans and Chicanos should include promoting national self-determination in the South and Southwest.

Danya Zituni with SDS said, “Whether it is racist admissions tests, or discriminatory policies that negatively impact Black and Latino students on campus, national oppression is with us constantly.”

The students showed a film, The Black Power Mixtape, a historical account of the Black Panther Party and their fight against national oppression in the 1960s.

Then on Feb. 25, 15 students gathered to demand affirmative action for African American and Latino students. The students called on the University of South Florida administration to take action on the falling rates of enrollment for African American students.

Students held large banners and chanted and gave speeches in support of affirmative action. SDS also demanded the reinstatement of African American studies programs and faculty who were cut in the past few years. The call for affirmative action is an initiative by Students for a Democratic Society nationally, in response to the case brought to the Supreme Court by Abagail Fisher.

Fisher claims she was denied acceptance to a Texas University because she is white. Fisher’s case represents another attack on affirmative action. In 1978, the Supreme Court case Bakke vs. University of California upheld the use of affirmative action but ended the use of quota systems for admissions of African American and Latino students.

Sam Beutler of SDS added, “Since Jeb Bush repealed affirmative action in Florida with the passing of the ‘One Florida’ plan, admission of Black and Latino students has fallen. The policy that was supposed to increase diversity has resulted in more exclusionary admissions. Now at other state universities, the percentage of first year Black students is just 6% or 7%. SDS is demanding affirmative action because it is one way to address the legacy of racism and oppression carried out by the U.S. government.”

Another SDS member, Sarah Owusu-Tweneboah said, “The only people who are benefiting from the ‘One Florida’ plan is the administration and we already know the administration doesn’t care about us, especially when we have a USF building named after a racist, sexist, homophobe. We are not making it about race, history already has. We as students need to defend affirmative action! Affirmative action is necessary until systematic inequity and structural racism stop playing a role in our society.”

Students ended the rally by chanting “Black Power!” and promised to continue struggling against the USF administration – the body that continues to perpetuate the legacy of national oppression with the use of racist administration policies and racist tests.

#TampaFL #StudentMovement #NationalOppression #PeoplesStruggles #Florida #Antiracism #BlackHistoryMonth

The fact that these church burnings came quickly in the wake of the Charleston Massacre raises serious concerns about them being acts of racist violence and terrorism. K. Marshall Williams, president of National African American Fellowship of the Southern Baptist Convention and pastor of Nazarene Baptist Church in Philadelphia, called for “…a nationwide outcry and action on all levels of government and society to insure that these acts of terror and hatred toward African Americans cease.”

Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, characterized these fires were as “heinous acts of violence.” He called for the “apprehension and prosecution” of those responsible.

The latest fire destroyed Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopalian Church in Greenleyville, South Carolina. This church was rebuilt after the Ku Klux Klan burned it down two decades ago.

Frank Chapman, Field Organizer of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression said in a press statement released July 2, “We stand in unqualified and unconditional solidarity with the Black churches, whose places of worship are being desecrated by racist terrorists. We are familiar with the terror tactics of the KKK and other racists hate groups, for they have been visited upon us ever since the overthrow of Radical Reconstruction. These fascists, cowards have always targeted Black churches in the South. That is why we don’t believe these are just random acts of violence. These are deliberate acts of terrorism designed to cripple and destroy our movement. Our response must be one of united action in support of the demands for justice put forth by the Black community and their allies. This is not a time for attacking the religious beliefs of the victims and survivors of racist terror. We must insist and demand that these racist-terrorists be brought to justice.”

#ChicagoIL #NationalOppression #AfricanAmerican #CharlestonMassacre #churchBurnings #WhyAreBlackChurchesBurning

Baltimore, MD – On the evening of April 21, over 1000 community members in West Baltimore met on the corner of Mount Street and Presbury. The angry crowd marched on the Western District of the Baltimore Police Department. Protesters marched demanding justice for Freddie Gray, an African American man murdered by police.

Gray was forced to the ground and then abused by Baltimore Police on April 12. While being detained, Gray's voice box was crushed and his spine damaged by police. Gray died of the spinal injury one week later on April 19 after lapsing into a coma.

Protesters chanted, “Tell the truth and stop the lies, Freddie Gray didn't have to die” as well as “No justice, no peace!”

The family of Freddie Gray called for the action. Other organizations such as the Baltimore Bloc, Baltimore People's Power Assembly and local African American clergy played a role as well. Protesters demanded that the Baltimore Police stop lying about the accounts of what happened to Gray while he was in police custody. Marchers called for the cops involved in Gray's brutal arrest and murder to be arrested and charged.

Those killer cops are Lt. Brian Rice, 41, who joined the department in 1997; Officer Caesar Goodson, 45, who joined in 1999; Sgt. Alicia White, 30, who joined in 2010; Officer William Porter, 25, who joined in 2012; Officer Garrett Miller, 26, who joined in 2012; and Officer Edward Nero, 29, who joined in 2012. Community members at the protest where outraged by the murder of Gray and promised more action until police terror in Baltimore is brought to an end. Eniubong Iniunam expressed the view of many people who live in West Baltimore, “I'm out here to support. There have been so many protests and this one hit real close to home. I saw pictures of the victim. I knew this kid. He's from here. I can be seriously next”. Baltimore Bloc, one of the groups leading protests said in a statement, “Baltimore Bloc stands in solidarity with the victims of this week's police violence and all the victims of the vicious, bloodthirsty gang known as the Baltimore Police Department. We will do everything in our power to bring this killing spree to an end.” Police detained one of the Baltimore Bloc organizers at the start of the protest, only releasing him when the protest ended.

#BaltimoreMD #BalitmoreMD #PoliceBrutality #NationalOppression #FreddieGray #BaltimorePoliceDepartment

Within three days, however, Slager and the police's story unraveled before the eyes of the world. Cell phone video taken on the scene by an eyewitness clearly shows Slager firing shots into Scott's back as he runs away. Scott never reaches for Slager's taser, as the police said. When Scott is shot down, Slager seizes the opportunity to handcuff the dying man, call in his bogus story to his superior officers, and plants a taser on Scott's body as false evidence.

The video, taken by 23-year-old Dominican immigrant Feidin Santana, fueled protests against this latest police murder of an unarmed Black man. Having been caught in a lie, the North Charleston police arrested Slager on April 7 and charged him with murder.

The murder of Walter Scott is the most recent case of racist police violence to draw national attention and protests. In August 2014, the murder of 18-year-old African American Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked a protest movement against racism and police brutality across the country. Similar cases, like the murder of Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, emerged since that time.

Thousands of activists, particularly young people, took to the streets to demand justice around the slogan “Black Lives Matter.” In many cities, activists have linked these nationwide high-profile cases with local police crimes, like the Dream Defenders' campaign in Miami, Florida, to win justice for a mentally disabled Black man who was killed by police earlier this year.

In all of these high-profile cases of police killing unarmed African Americans, the officers involved were not charged. This includes the murder of New York man Eric Garner, who was choked to death by police while being filmed on a cell phone camera. Garner's last words, “I can't breathe,” became a rallying cry for the thousands of activists who took to the streets demanding justice. Despite clear video footage of the murder, a New York grand jury refused to indict the officer responsible for killing Garner.

Now, the murder of Walter Scott by South Carolina police has ignited further debate around the usefulness of body cameras on police. The non-indictment of the police officer who choked and killed Garner highlighted a major flaw with this demand, since the entire murder took place on camera. The racist criminal injustice system, which prosecutes African Americans and Chicano/Latinos more than whites for similar offenses, allows police plenty of legal loopholes to inflict brutality on oppressed nationalities. Furthermore, the grand jury system gives state prosecutors – many of whom are bought off during elections by the police – a tremendous amount of power to frame these cases in a way that usually benefits the police.

In Scott's case, the release of the video footage led to the prompt arrest of officer Slager. Although activists should welcome this positive development, an arrest alone is still a far cry from justice. Many of the same freedom fighters of the Black Lives Matter movement were active in the movement for justice for Trayvon Martin in 2012. While mass protests led to the arrest of George Zimmerman, the racist vigilante who killed Martin, the criminal injustice system found him not guilty on all charges, including second-degree murder.

The video footage of Scott's murder is significant, but the travesty of justice in Eric Garner case reminds us to not overstate the significance of video evidence alone. The key to winning justice for Walter Scott and all victims of racist police crimes is to continue organizing and building a mass movement against the system of national oppression in the U.S.

In places like Chicago, major groups in the Black Lives Matter movement have united around the demand for “community control of the police.” To better exercise this control, Chicago activists are organizing neighborhoods and communities to establish an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC). The proposed CPAC in Chicago would have the power to appoint and dismiss the Superintendent of Police and issue subpoenas in investigations of brutality cases.

The growing popular outrage at racist police crimes and the criminal injustice system continues to fuel the Black Lives Matter movement. Activists and organizers have a real chance to strike a blow at the heart of this system by continuing to build the mass movement against racism and national oppression.

#JacksonvilleFL #OppressedNationalities #PoliceBrutality #NationalOppression #AfricanAmerican #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #Antiracism #BlackLivesMatter #CivilianPoliceAccountabilityCouncil #WalterScott #michaelSlager

It is no coincidence that Vinson, who is African American, and Pham, who is Asian American, are both oppressed nationality women. More and more, the health workers who actually care for people, such as registered nurses, vocational nurses and family doctors are oppressed nationality (African, Asian, and Latino Americans) and women, who are often immigrants.

The fact that both of the cases of Ebola transmission in the U.S. were health care workers shows that the U.S. health care and public health system are woefully unprepared to fight the epidemic. The National Nurses United, based on reports from nurses at the Texas hospital that treated Duncan, listed five major shortcomings: that Duncan was not immediately isolated but instead made to wait with other patients, that nurses were given protective gear that left their necks exposed and told to “cover up their necks with tape,” that contaminated linen and waste was allowed to pile up, that nurses were not trained, and that they were not supported, but instead being blamed for contracting the disease.

The Obama administration’s initial public response featured a representative of the Department of Homeland Security as if being an ‘anti-terrorism’ expert makes one knowledgeable about contagious disease.

The Center for Disease Control’s and National Institute of Health saw their combined budgets cut by about $1 billion over the last four years because of the federal austerity drive known as sequestration. These cuts include money that was going to fund development of drugs to fight Ebola. At a local level, 36% of Texas public health offices had to lay off staff due to budget cuts since the 2008 economic crisis.

For months, the corporate controlled media has been portraying the Ebola epidemic as an African problem, and claiming that the U.S. health system is number one in the world and thus the U.S. is not at risk. But Ebola is not just a medical problem; it is a public health problem. The combination of cutbacks in public health budgets, the fragmented nature of the public health system, the great inequality in access to health care with millions of people without health insurance despite the expansion of coverage under the Affordable Care Act and the drive for profit that leads drug makers to concentrate treatment of chronic conditions like high blood pressure where patients generally need drugs for years, and neglect infectious diseases like Ebola, puts working people in the U.S. at risk.

What the U.S. needs to do, first and foremost, is dramatically step up medical aid and medical staff to West Africa, to fight the Ebola epidemic at its center and at the same time learn how to better fight the disease in the U.S. Second, the U.S. needs to step up its overall public health spending and training and establish universal government medical care that can cover everyone in the U.S. Third, we need to reject the racist and xenophobic calls to ban travel from West Africa or putting people from Africa under suspicion. Last but not least, we need to bring our Ebola practices up to levels established by the World Health Organization, which has been on the ground in Africa and increase training not only at hospitals but also at local clinics where more and more people go for medical care, and do everything possible to support the nurses who are on the front lines of the fight.

#SanJoséCA #NationalOppression #ebola #ebolaOutbreak #nurse

El 17 de Julio, luego de haber ahorcado a Eric Garner, un Afroamericano padre de seis hijos, los agentes de la policía de New York decidieron revisarle los bolsillos antes de llamar a la ambulancia. Tres semanas después, el oficial Darren Wilson en la ciudad de Ferguson, Missouri mato de seis disparos al joven Michael Brown, dejando su cuerpo tirado en la calle sin llamar por ayuda médica. Por más de una semana la policía se negó a liberar el nombre del oficial Wilson y se rehusó a entregar el reporte oficial. Todo esto demuestra que también pretenden encubrir la verdad sobre el asesinato de Michael Brown.

Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, tan solo son los casos publicados más recientes de asesinatos llevados a cabo por la policía y vigilantes. Alrededor de todo el país, los hombres de color están siendo cazados. Muchos de ellos solo tienen la culpa de “caminar siendo negro” mientras otros han sido acusados de delitos menores, de igual manera la policía está actuando como juez, jurado, y ejecutor. Estos asesinatos solo tocan la superficie del problema. Por cada asesinato llevado a cabo por policías o vigilantes, existen miles de hombres y mujeres de color que son víctimas de policías, leyes, y cortes racistas creadas por los ricos y poderosos para llenar las prisiones de este país.

Gran parte de la base de la riqueza de los Estados Unidos es producto de la opresión de los Afroamericanos. En los primeros 200 años de las colonias Británicas, y luego con la fundación de los EE.UU, millones de Africanos fueron arrebatados de sus familias y hogares, y obligados a trabajar como esclavos. Millones murieron en el infame recorrido de África a las Américas, y aquellos que sobrevivieron fueron forjados en el sur de los EE.UU en una sola nación oprimida, con cultura, lenguaje y economía común.

Para poder suprimir la lucha de los esclavos por su libertad, los EE.UU institucionalizó milicias locales para combatir las rebeliones de los esclavos. Después de la guerra civil y la liberación de los esclavos, el ascenso del Ku Klux Klan fundado por el antiguo general de los Estados Confederados Bedford Forrest, junto al trabajo forzado de los Afroamericanos encarcelados en las famosas “chain gangs”, se desarrolla la colaboración entre vigilantes racistas, policías y cortes para reforzar un sistema de segregación social conocido como “Jim Crow”. Es aquí donde se ubica la raíz de la criminalización de los Afroamericanos en los EE.UU.

La segregación legal fue desmantelada en los años 1950 y 1960 por el movimiento de lucha de los Afroamericanos conocido como el “Movimiento de los Derecho Civiles”. Esta lucha no solamente les garantizó nuevos derechos y oportunidades a los Afroamericanos, sino que también ayudó a impulsar la lucha de otros movimientos de liberación tales como el de los Chicanos, Latinos, Asiáticos, indígenas, mujeres, y las personas LBGT. En la década de los 1960 también se intensificaron las luchas laborales y huelgas, dando inicio a muchos de los programas de asistencia como Medicare, Head Start y Medicaid, que beneficiaron a las personas mayores, niñ@s, y a los pobres.

Pero el 1% que gobierna los EE.UU se movilizó en apoyo al presidente Nixon y su traidora estrategia para lidiar con el movimiento de liberación de los Afroamericanos. Por una parte el FBI inicio una ola de represión con el programa COINTELPRO, creado para encarcelar y asesinar a líderes Afroamericanos, y acabar con sus organizaciones como la del “Partido de las Panteras Negras” (Black Panther Party). Al mismo tiempo, se desarrolló conscientemente a un nuevo sector de capitalistas y administradores gubernamentales Afroamericanos. Tradicionalmente los negocios de los Afroamericanos se encontraban en sus comunidades, y necesitaban el apoyo de la clase trabajadora. Pero esta nueva elite Afroamericana le serviría al a los sectores corporativos, militares y gubernamentales más alto de los EE.UU. Uno de los resultados fue el debilitamiento de la burguesía nacional Afroamericana, debido al robo corporativo de sus mercados.

Hoy en día todavía se puede ver esta estrategia en juego. De un lado existe la respuesta militarizada hacia las protestas en Ferguson, utilizando desde tropas de asalto hasta vehículos armados de guerra. Por otra parta, existen hoy varios Afroamericanos en los niveles más altos de poder, desde el Jefe de Estado Mayor Colin Powell y el Fiscal General Eric Holder, hasta el gerente general de McDonald Don Thompson, y el presidente Barack Obama.

Sin embargo, el pueblo de Ferguson, junto a las masas de la ciudad de Saint Louis y del resto del país que los apoyan, han podido resistir no solo la represión policial, sino también los esfuerzos de algunos líderes Afroamericanos que intentan pacificar la lucha. El pueblo rechaza el intento por parte de la policía de criminalizar a Michael Brown y justificar el asesinato. Mientras que los medios de comunicación han repetido las acusaciones de la policía sobre la presencia de agitadores externos, el hecho es que la mayoría de los arrestados son residentes del área de Saint Louis.

La Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad (FRSO por sus siglas en ingles) defiende el heroísmo del pueblo de Ferguson y de Saint Louis por haber confrontado la represión policial y por continuar luchando día tras día por que se haga justicia por el asesinato de Michael Brown. De la misma manera como el Movimiento de los Derechos Civiles atrajo a simpatizantes de todo el país, la lucha en Ferguson hoy en día está haciendo lo mismo. La conciencia política está en ascenso y se extiende desde artistas raperos que luchan por la causa, hasta políticos locales que defienden al pueblo en contra de la policía.

Sin duda alguna el movimiento se enfrentará a nuevos obstáculos. Por ejemplo, las cámaras corporales para oficiales que muchos piensan podrán ayudar a evitar la brutalidad policial, están siendo utilizadas para tratar de criminalizar a los protestantes. El oficial Darren Wilson todavía no ha sido arrestado, y su caso ha sido transferido a un jurado secreto bajo las ordenes de un procurador vinculado profundamente con la policía. El objetivo es poder retrasar el procedimiento detrás de puertas cerradas, esperar que muera el movimiento, y permitir que Darren Wilson salga libre de responsabilidad.

Se dice que existen muchos líderes Afroamericanos, pero no hay liderazgo. Lo que se necesita es liderazgo de la nueva generación de jóvenes Afroamericanos que puedan organizar y liderar a las masas trabajadoras Afroamericanas en la lucha por justicia, igualdad y poder. Tal y como surgió el Comité Coordinador Nacional de Estudiantes o SNCC después de las acciones de protestas en Greensboro el 1ero de Febrero del 1960, seguido por la oleada de desobediencia civil en contra de la segregación, hoy también lo que se necesita son organizaciones militantes de base que puedan crear un movimiento de masas en contra de los policías y vigilantes racistas, y que puedan luchar por la igualdad y el poder. Sobre todo debemos mantener el enfoque en las demandas:

¡Justicia para Michael Brown! ¡Arrestar y enjuiciar a Darren Wilson y a todos los policías asesinos y vigilantes racistas!

#UnitedStates #InJusticeSystem #NationalOppression #Editorials #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #Antiracism #MichaelBrown #MikeBrown

On July 17, Eric Garner, an African American father of six, was choked to death by New York City police, who then went through his pockets instead of calling an ambulance. Three weeks later, Michael Brown was shot at least six times and killed by policeman Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. His body was left in the street and no medical help was called. For more than a week the police refused to release Officer Wilson’s name and turned in no official police report. All of this shows that another cover-up is underway in the murder of Michael Brown.

Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Jordon Davis and Trayvon Martin are just the most publicized of the recent string of police and vigilante killings. Across the country Black and Brown men are being hunted down, some guilty of nothing more than “walking while Black,” while others are accused of petty crimes where the police have acted a judge, jury and executioner. These killings are but the tip of the iceberg. For every murder by police and vigilantes, there are thousands of Black and Brown men and women who are singled out by racist police, racist laws and courts set up for the rich and powerful, filling the prisons of this country.

One of the foundations of U.S. wealth is the oppression of African Americans. For the first 200 years of the British colonies and then the founding of the U.S., millions of Africans were taken from their families, homes and people to work as chattel slaves in the Americas. Millions died in the infamous “middle passage” between Africa and the Americas, and those who survive have been forged into an oppressed nation, with a common culture, language and economy in the U.S. South.

To suppress the slaves’ fight for freedom, the U.S. institutionalized local government militias to put down slave revolts. After the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, founded by former Confederate general Bedford Forrest, along with the with the use of African American prison labor in the infamous chain gangs saw the union of racist vigilantes and the system of police and courts, to enforce a system of U.S.-style apartheid segregation known as Jim Crow. This is at the root of the criminalization of Black people in the U.S.

Legal segregation was broken in the 1950s and 1960s by the African American freedom struggle known as the Civil Rights movement. This struggle not only brought about gains in the rights of, and opportunities for, African Americans, but also set the stage for Chicanos, Latinos, Asians, Native American, women, and LBGT people to launch their own movements for liberation. The 1960s was also a high tide for labor struggles and strikes, and saw the beginnings of many government programs such as Medicare, Head Start, Medicaid that benefitted the elderly, children and poor.

But the 1% who rule America rallied under President Nixon behind a two-fold strategy to deal with the Black Liberation Movement. On one hand, there was a wave of repression, centered around the FBI COINTELPRO to murder and jail African American leaders and organizations such as the Black Panther Party. At the same time, there was a conscious development of a new sector of Black capitalists and government managers. While traditionally Black-owned businesses were based in African American community and needed the support of the working masses, this new sector of elite African Americans was to serve at the highest level of U.S. corporations, military and government. One result is the traditional Black national bourgeoisie was weakened as mainstream corporations took their markets.

We can see this strategy at work today. On one hand there is the militarized response to the protests that rocked Ferguson for more than a week, complete with storm-trooper like police to military armored personnel carriers. On the other hand there are a few African Americans at the highest levels of power, from former military Chief of Staff Colin Powell, to Attorney General Eric Holder, to McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson, to president Barack Obama.

But the masses of Ferguson and their supporters from the Saint Louis area and around the country withstood both the police repression and the efforts of established Black leaders to cool out their fight. They rejected the police attempt to criminalize Michael Brown and to justify the shooting. While the media have been echoing the police claims of “outside agitators” across the country, in fact, the vast majority of those arrested were from the Saint Louis area.

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization hails the African American working masses of Ferguson and Saint Louis as heroes for standing up to intense police repression and continuing to fight, night after night, for justice for Michael Brown. Just as the Civil Rights movement attracted supporters from across the country, the fight in Ferguson is drawing people to the struggle today. Political consciousness is spreading, from rap artists who take up the cause to local politicians who side with the protesters and not the police.

New challenges will face the movement. Police body cameras, which many people hope will limit police brutality, are now being turned on the protesters to try to criminalize them. Officer Darren Wilson has not been arrested, and instead the case has been turned over to a secretive grand jury under the direction of a prosecutor with strong ties to the police. Their plan is to drag out the proceedings behind closed doors for months and hope that the movement dies down, allowing them to let Darren Wilson go free.

There is a saying that there are many Black leaders, but there is no leadership. What is needed is leadership from a new generation of Black youth, who can organize and lead the working masses of African Americans in the ongoing struggle for justice, equality and power. Just as the Student National Coordinating Committee or SNCC emerged out of the Feb. 1, 1960 Greensboro sit-in and the wave of civil disobedience against segregation that followed, so today what is needed is grassroots, militant organizations that can rally a broad movement against racist police and vigilantes and for equality and power.

Above all, we must continue to focus on the demands: Justice for Michael Brown! Arrest and jail Darren Wilson and all killer cops and racist vigilantes!

#UnitedStates #PoliceBrutality #NationalOppression #AntiRacism #nationalLiberation #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #MichaelBrown #Ferguson

Connie Burton, the Chairwoman of the Black People’s Advance and Defense Organization spoke, “Some people just want to stick their heads in the sand. We got to say that we oppose state-sanctioned murder and demand a future for our young people.”

The next speaker was Joseph Marchand of the New Black Panther Party, “I’m tired of my Black brothers and sisters and citizens of the U.S. being oppressed. Police think that they can go around shooting people because they think they have the license to kill.” Marchand referenced the police murders of two Tampa men, Willie and Tweet, as a local example of the national issue of police violence.

Lashawnda Smith joined the protest because Mike Brown’s story hits close to home. “It could have been one of my five brothers. What’s the need for the courts if the police are going to be the judge, jury, and executioner?”

Another protest is scheduled for next Saturday. Members of the Black People’s Advance and Defense Organization, Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society, New Black Panthers Party and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization were present at the action.

#TampaFL #NationalOppression #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #Antiracism #Ferguson #MikeBrown

But racism and the system of national oppression in the U.S. South sits at the heart of the murder of Jordan Davis, just as it does the murder of Trayvon Martin and the state persecution of Marissa Alexander. Although police brutality and vigilante violence against African Americans occurs across the country – for example the shooting of 16-year-old Kimani Gray by police in Brooklyn last year – Florida and other states across the Deep South continue to be ground zero in the struggle against racist discrimination.

Consider Dunn, a white thug who fired eight shots at a vehicle full of high school students in Jacksonville, Florida, killing Davis and injuring three others. Dunn said he felt threatened by the loud music coming from Davis' vehicle and fabricated a story for the police that he had seen one of the passengers pointing a gun at him. His claims were all lies. Police found no weapons, guns or otherwise, in Davis' vehicle, which never left the Gate gas station where the shooting took place. Dunn, on the other hand, drove to a bed and breakfast suite in Saint Augustine with his girlfriend and casually ordered a pizza, just hours after slaying the African American youth.

Unlike Zimmerman, Dunn was arrested after calling the police a day later. From prison, Dunn wrote letters to family members exposing the racist attitudes that led to Davis' murder. In one letter, he said of African Americans, “The more time I am exposed to these people, the more prejudiced against them I become.” Other letters from Dunn ranged from absurd claims that he was the victim of racial discrimination to an open call for genocide, in which he said to his girlfriend, “This may sound a bit radical, but if more people would arm themselves and kill these f—-ing idiots when they’re threatening you, eventually they may take the hint and change their behavior.”

Dunn should be charged with hate crimes in addition to first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder. However, state attorney Angela Corey, who is prosecuting Dunn despite her botched prosecution of Zimmerman last year, and the other representatives of the criminal injustice system want to downplay the real trial taking place in the minds of oppressed nationalities around the U.S. – the trial of the injustice system itself.

Opening statements in Dunn's trial began on Feb. 6 and a verdict is expected by Feb. 14. Even if Dunn is found guilty, though, the system that creates and empowers racist vigilantes like Dunn and Zimmerman to brutally gun down African Americans will continue victimizing more people.

It's no surprise that the historic home of slavery, the plantation system, lynchings, the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow segregation remains the epicenter of violence against African Americans, like Davis, in 2014. More than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation legally ended slavery and 50 years since the Civil Rights Act's passage, African Americans continue to suffer from racist killings, police brutality, higher unemployment rates, job discrimination, less access to quality health care and underfunded public schools, among other things. In the South though, these inequalities are greater and sharper than the rest of the country.

North Florida, including Jacksonville, sits on the edges of the Black Belt, which is the agricultural region historically farmed by Black slave labor and sharecroppers. Within the Black Belt exists a distinct nation made up of African Americans, formed on the basis of a common history, territory, economic life and culture. This nation, forged out of chattel slavery and the betrayal of radical reconstruction by the federal government, is oppressed by the imperialist ruling class of the U.S. for its labor, resources, and land. Racism and white supremacy are two particular forms that the national oppression of African Americans take within the U.S., which are enforced through state and local laws, mass incarceration, police brutality and vigilante violence.

The Black Belt South has been home to the key battles of the modern African American freedom struggle. From the Birmingham, Alabama Bus Boycott, to the Greensboro, North Carolina sit-in at the Woolworths' lunch counter, to the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the Black Belt South saw many battles by African Americans against Jim Crow segregation and for equality. These battles are part of the larger struggle for self-determination by an oppressed nation. This right to self-determination includes the right to a separate nation.

As part of the Black Belt, Jacksonville's African American community experiences the national oppression felt across the U.S. South. In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights activists fought to desegregate lunch counters and restaurants in the city in the face of tremendous repression. The most infamous example of racist backlash happened on August 27, 1960 – called “Ax Handle Saturday” – when a group of about 200 Klansmen and white racists attacked civil rights activists in downtown Jacksonville's Hemming Plaza with ax handles.

Just a year earlier, the racist United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) pressured the city's school board to change the name of Valhalla High School to Nathan Bedford Forrest High School, named after the infamous slave trader and first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The UDC's publicity stunt was in response to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated all-white schools throughout the country. Last year, activists in the Jacksonville Progressive Coalition led a successful campaign to change the name of Forrest High School, despite much protest from wealthy racist whites in the city.

The murders of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, along with the incarceration of Marissa Alexander, speak to the continued presence of laws in the Black Belt that specifically oppress the African American nation. Florida's state government, much like other state governments around the U.S. South, is controlled by the Republican Party, which generally represents the far-right sector of the capitalist class. This sector profits from exploiting agricultural workers and other workers in labor-intensive industries, meaning they materially profit from the brutal racism and national oppression of African Americans. Laws like Stand Your Ground, while nominally defending the right of self-defense, are applied in Florida to empower white racist vigilantes like Dunn and Zimmerman, while denying the same rights to African American women like Alexander who defend themselves from domestic abuse. The hypocrisy isn't simply misguided lawyers and judges. Instead, it is a fundamental part of oppressing African Americans in the Black Belt on the basis of nationality.

Like modern Afghanistan or Iraq under U.S. occupation, the U.S. imperialist ruling class writes laws and enforces its policies on the African American nation for the purpose of making itself richer. National oppression and racism benefit the imperialists, who favor busting unions, cutting food stamps and keeping wages low. These attacks affect the entire working class, but the brunt of their offensive in the South is directed at African Americans. In Jacksonville, for instance, over 66,000 black workers are in poverty (27% of the black population), which is both higher than the state average for black workers in Florida and more than 1.5 times the total number of white workers in poverty in Jacksonville alone.

The imperialist class uses the murders of Jordan Davis and Trayvon Martin to enforce terror in the Black Belt, whether the terror is committed by police or vigilantes. White southern landowners used the Ku Klux Klan similarly during Reconstruction, when African Americans gained unprecedented rights after the Civil War to own land, vote, hold political office and organize.

The struggle for justice for Jordan Davis is part of a larger freedom struggle for African Americans against racism and national oppression. Florida's system of laws that are designed to oppress black workers and youth, like mandatory minimum sentencing and harsh drug laws, are not unrelated to the wealthy elite in the US. Instead, they are an essential part of American capitalism designed to keep an entire nation within the borders of the U.S. in poverty and fearful of violence and prisons.

When activists around the country take to the streets to demand justice for Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander, they are striking a blow to this system of racism and national oppression. The protests, marches, rallies and building occupations strike at the heart of imperialism by exposing the racist system for what it is and empowering the masses of African Americans to defend their communities and struggle for self-determination. Demanding a guilty verdict for Dunn is a crucial battle in this larger struggle.

#JacksonvilleFL #NationalOppression #AfricanAmerican #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #JordanDavis #Antiracism #MichaelDunn

More than 50 years ago, when the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke out against the war in Vietnam, he said,

“The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy and laymen concerned committees for the next generation...We will be marching for these and a dozen other names [of countries] and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.” (April 4, 1967)

While the U.S. war in Vietnam is long over, the U.S. government waged war and occupied Iraq, is still at war in Afghanistan, is marching towards war in Syria and has military drone strikes in many more countries.

In much the same way, the goal of equality for African Americans that Dr. King fought for is far from realized. While the Civil Rights Movement and the resulting Civil Rights Act of 1964 swept away Jim Crow segregation in the South and the struggle to register black voters and the Voting Rights Act has led to the election of thousands of Blacks to political office, the masses of African American people are far from equal.

African American unemployment rates are still twice that of whites, while Blacks graduate from college at half the rate of whites. The typical income of an African American household is 40% less than a white household, while their wealth is 95% less. Black men in particular are arrested, convicted and jailed by the ‘injustice’ system, so that almost one third are in or have been through prisons. And Black youth like Trayvon Martin continue to be gunned down by racist cops and vigilantes while their killers walk free.

The root of the problem is that the U.S. was founded on the exploitation and oppression of Black people. As Europeans waged genocidal war on Native peoples, they also brought millions of slaves from Africa to work the land seized from Native Americans. The slave trade and slave labor not only enriched the white plantation owners of the South, but also the white merchants and bankers of the North – the Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers, whose collapse triggered the financial crisis in 2008, began as a financier of Southern cotton plantation owners.

The conflict between the northern industrialists and southern plantation owners led to the Civil War and an end to slavery. But the hope of Black freedom was smashed by the deal between the same two former enemies to end Reconstruction. Instead of 40 acres of land and mules to farm, African Americans were terrorized by the KKK and other forces to be tenant farmers, share croppers and convict labor under Jim Crow segregation.

It was after the Civil War that an African American nation was formed in the Black Belt South, named after the soil which grew cotton farmed by African American labor. This nation, with a common land base, economy, language and culture, saw some of the worst exploitation and oppression of African Americans. It was in and around the Black Belt that the great battles of the Civil Right Movement of the 1960s were fought. It was in the Black Belt that Stokley Charmichael (Kwame Toure), the chairperson of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which grew out of the 1960 sit-in by Black college students at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, made the historic call for “Black Power.”

Black Power, in its fullest expression, means nothing less than the right of self-determination, up to and including secession, for the African American nation. Only if the African American nation has this right to separate if need be, can this nation be liberated.

So who is it that stands in the way of Black Power, of self-determination for the African American nation and full equality for Black people outside of the nation? It is the descendents of the northern industrialists and bankers and the southern plantation owners, who are commonly known as the 1%, the tiny minority of rich who own the corporations and control the government.

These are the monopoly capitalists, the owners of the huge corporations that dominate the economy, and their servants among governments and universities who maintain the political and economic system in their interests. These are the same people who continue the U.S. foreign policy of war and occupation, while cutting education and services here at home.

So long as the political and economic system of capitalism, based on private ownership of the means of production and production for profit rules, no amount of Black elected officials, or even a Black president, can bring about the liberation of African Americans. The oppression of the African American nation and the oppression of African Americans all over the country continue today.

So we say that we not only have to fight racist discrimination, but need to end national oppression. We need to end the oppression of the African American nation in the Black Belt South and African Americans everywhere in the U.S. who make up an oppressed nationality (a distinct nationality facing political, economic, and social oppression and inequality, as do Chicanos, Mexicanos, Central Americans, other Latinos, Asian and Arab Americans, as well as Native Americans and Alaskan Natives).

To win this struggle for freedom, we need another economic system, one based on public, not private, ownership of the land and businesses that produce the goods and services in the economy, not a system controlled and for the benefit of the 1%. We need a political system based on democracy for African Americans, other oppressed nationalities and the working class. We call this system socialism.

Fight for Justice for Trayvon Martin! Fight for Full Equality, Self-Determination and Liberation! Fight for Socialism!

#UnitedStates #Socialism #NationalOppression #AfricanAmerican #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #TrayvonMartin

On July 13, an almost all-white jury ruled that George Zimmerman was not guilty on all charges for the murder of Trayvon Martin. While saddened and angered by this verdict, we were not surprised that the U.S. so-called ‘justice system’ has again said that racist cops and vigilantes like Zimmerman have a green light to shoot and kill African Americans.

Just as one of the foundations of the U.S. economy was profits from slavery, the U.S. legal system began with a constitution that said that African Americans were only 3/5 of a person. In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that African slaves and their children have no rights in the U.S., in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford. Then in 1896, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was constitutional in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. And early this year, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Civil Rights Act, opening the door for racist local and state governments to exclude Black and Brown voters from the polls.

The law, the police and the courts are not about justice, they are about protecting the property, privilege and power of the monopoly capitalists, the richest 1% who own and control the corporations and government that dominate the economy and society. They are part and parcel of the national oppression that African Americans face: the all-around, social, political and economic inequality of Black people face as an oppressed nationality in the U.S.

The fight for full equality and liberation by African Americans has been a powerful force for progress in the U.S. The sit-in by four African American college students at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter on Feb. 1, 1960 launched a national movement of direct action to desegregate the South and to fight for Black political power. This movement, and the organization that arose out of it, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC, directly led to the rise of Students for a Democratic Society and the anti-war movement and was an inspiration to other oppressed nationalities, especially Asian Americans, Chicanos, Native Americans and Puerto Ricans, as well as the women’s movement, and the struggle of LGBTQ people.

Our experience from participating in these movements for almost 50 years is that progress does not mainly come from the courts or elections. Nor does it mainly come from economic struggles such as boycotts. The fight for equality advances when the masses of working people organize and show their power in the streets through militant mass actions such as rallies, marches, occupations, strikes, etc.

The huge protests across the county that have mobilized hundreds of thousands of people, including large numbers of Black and Brown youth, are a great development. Everything possible should be done to build this struggle.

Justice for Trayvon Martin! Fight for Full Equality and Liberation for African Americans! Don’t Mourn, Organize!

#UnitedStates #NationalOppression #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #TrayvonMartin #GeorgeZimmerman #Antiracism