FRSO and Workers World Party (WWP) have a long history of cooperating on national campaigns and demonstrations, including those at those at the Republican and Democratic conventions. Kelly noted the important role that WWP played in beating back the FBI repression directed against FRSO and others, saying, “we will never forget your tireless efforts to defend us.”

Kelly also stated, “The year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of WWP. Your accomplishments are many, and your commitment to proletarian internationalism is something that all revolutionaries can learn from.”

#NewarkNJ #PeoplesStruggles #frso #WorkersWorld #Socialism

Newark, NJ – Hundreds turned out for an Aug. 20 rally here to demand justice for Michael Brown. The protest was sponsored by the People’s Organization for Progress in Newark, NJ.

POP Chairman Lawrence Hamm told the gathering, “Justice is the arrest of the police officer who killed Michael Brown. That is the only standard of justice.”

He also demanded the appointment of a special prosecutor in the case of Michael Brown, charging that county prosecutors are “too cozy” with the police. Other demands were that President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder investigate all cases of Black people killed by police, and that police officer Daniel Pantaleo, whose chokehold led to the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, be arrested.

“They want people in Ferguson, Missouri to be quiet,” he said. “We say to the people of Ferguson, stand up for justice!”

In contrast, New York Mayor Bill deBlasio calls for nothing more than “peaceful means” at a protest scheduled for Aug. 23 in Staten Island. Rev. Al Sharpton, organizer of the march, has said “We want the DA to say that he is either going to make an arrest on probable cause or give the case to the feds.”

Three parents of victims killed by police also attended: Earl Williams, father of Earl Faison, killed in Orange, New Jersey in 1999; Tawanna Graham, mother of Jacqui Graham, killed while in custody by East Orange police in 2009; and Michele Kamal, mother of Abdul Kamal, killed by Irvington police in 2013. The march was dedicated to the memory of POP member and fighter for justice Mary Weaver, recently deceased, the mother of Randy Weaver, killed by East Orange police in 1999.

“My son did not deserve to be shot down in the street like an animal,” said Michele Kamal. She said she can only bear the pain because she has so much support from her church, POP and others. “It’s so hard every day to go over and go over and go over what happened to my son. New Jersey needs to take this case to the grand jury in a hurry,” she said.

“My son was arrested [on a misdemeanor] and three days later he was dead,” said Tawanna Graham. “His body was found naked in his cell. It was three weeks before I was allowed to see his body. I could not recognize him from him being so beat up. All I ever got was a $500 bill for transfer of his body from the jail to the morgue.”

“It’s a physical pain,” she continued. “It takes you down. I’m in this walker because of it. I’m hanging on to see something better happen for my other son.”

“Police need to be rigorously trained to serve us,” said Earl Williams. “Instead a lot of them seem to go out there to make somebody’s day miserable. We raise our children to be good citizens. You can’t just up and take a life!”

The time when police can take a Black person’s life with impunity is over.

#NewarkNJ #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #Antiracism #MichaelBrown #Ferguson #MikeBrown

Within 24 hours of the July 17 crash U.S. President Barack Obama was reported by the BBC as saying, “Evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile that was launched from an area that is controlled by Russian-backed separatists inside of Ukraine.”(1)  The BBC report cited no evidence, nor did it say how any could have been gathered. There has been a storm of empty allegations against Russia. Some of them have already been discredited, and some are ridiculous on the face of it.

To some, facts don’t matter. The U.S. government and the Nazi-infested regime it installed in Kiev are determined to convict Russia of the crime no matter what, and force European countries to join in tough sanctions against Russia. Despite all the noise, the game is not playing out well.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on the July 18 it was too soon to take a tougher stand on sanctions, as demanded by the U.S.: “The events with the plane, as far as I remember, were not even 24 hours ago and at the moment we need to sort out an independent investigation.”(2)

The next day Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on the telephone and “agreed that an international, independent commission under the direction of ICAO [the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization] should quickly have access to the site of the accident... to shed light on the circumstances of the crash and move the victims,” according to a German government statement.(3)

The German response is a major policy divergence with the U.S. It is based on differences of national interests. Mainstream coverage has been kept low key.

At a July 21 press conference the Russian military showed a recorded radar track from a civilian source. According to Gen. Andrey Kartapolov, the track shows an unidentified aircraft gaining height towards the MH17 flight. It came within 3 to 5 kilometers of flight MH17, and remained visible on the track until the crash. Kartapolov said an SU-25 fighter aircraft, a type the Ukrainian air force possesses, could have shot flight MH17 down with an R60 air-to-air missile. He said Kiev must explain why a military jet was tracking the passenger airplane. He also said the Kiev military forces had BukM1 missile systems in the area, and that there was a great deal of radar activity from these systems on the day of the tragedy.(4)

Unlike the vaporware U.S. claims, these are substantive allegations. They can be confirmed or denied by an independent investigation.

The possibilities for investigation further improved by an agreement reached between Alexander Borodai, a leader of the People’s Republic of Donetsk, and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.(5) Mr. Razak said in a statement, “Under difficult and fluid circumstances, we have been discussing the problems that have occupied us all: securing vital evidence from the aircraft, launching an independent investigation, and above all recovering the remains of those who lost their lives. Tonight, we have established the basis of an agreement to do just that.”

The agreement concerns transport, forensic work and the return home of remains of Malaysian victims. Bodies from the crash site were collected by People’s Republic of Donetsk authorities and transferred to a refrigerated train, after they had lain decomposing in summer heat for three days while Dutch crash scene investigators were kept in Kiev. Western media have despicably said the People’s Republic of Donetsk has been “tampering with the crash site.”

Mr. Razak’s statement further said, “I ask that all parties continue to work together to ensure that this agreement is honored; that the remains of our people are returned, that the black box is handed over, and that the international team is granted full access to the site. Only then can the investigation into MH17 truly begin; only then can the victims be afforded the respect they deserve. We need to know what caused the plane to crash, and who was responsible for it, so that justice may be done.”

The black box flight recorders have been handed over to Malaysia.

The U.S. campaign of hysteria is still going on but already it has lost a lot of steam. A July 22 on line report in the U.S. media quoted two unnamed “senior U.S. intelligence officials” as saying that “the U.S. had no direct evidence that the missile used to shoot down the passenger jet came from Russia.”(6)

How, with charges flying in every direction, can one’s bearings be found? One basic thing is to ask who benefits.

Russia does not conceivably benefit. Given the formidable technical level of its air defenses the possibility that it shot the plane down by accident is negligible.

The anti-Nazi People’s Republics have no conceivable reason to have done such a thing on purpose either. There is a small possibility that they captured Buk anti-aircraft systems from the armed forces of the Kiev neo-Nazis. Also the U.S. has claimed -with, as usual, no real proof – that Russia transferred Buk equipment to the People’s Republic of Donetsk. Russia has denied it did so. The possibility that the anti-Nazi armed forces destroyed the airliner by accident is very slight, but it requires investigation to make sure.

Even in the very unlikely case that the crash traces to the anti-Nazi Donbas militias, U.S. imperialism bears the main responsibility. If the U.S. had not interfered with a sovereign country to set up a puppet junta of its own devising, none of this would be happening.

The U.S. and its neo-Nazi stooges have a lot of reasons to perpetrate the incident. The coup that overthrew the elected government in February has met with failure after failure. 7 million people in Ukraine died in World war II at the hands of the Hitler fascists. They died in battle, they died from famine, they died from genocidal atrocities and they died from deportations to work as slave laborers.

The very existence of the Donbas People’s Republic is a heroic mass refusal of the people to be governed by neo-Nazis. The armed forces of the former Ukrainian state have shown time and again that they do not want to kill their fellow citizens on the orders of fascists. The militias of the Donbas republics have fought valiantly despite being greatly outnumbered and outgunned. They have repeatedly defeated the junta’s military attacks.

The U.S. and the junta need time to try and pull their armed forces together and stave off military defeat.

Further, Ukraine is closely tied economically to Russia. The disruption of these ties means that a disastrous economic breakdown is only a matter of time.

At this point, an international incident like the shooting down of an airliner is just the thing for U.S. imperialism and the Kiev junta. It puts Russia on the defensive, helps to stall for badly needed time, and distracts from the Israeli-perpetrated atrocities in Gaza.

There must be an independent investigation of the crash of flight MH17.

References

BBC, 18 July 2014, “MH17 hit by missile from rebel-held Ukraine – Obama,” http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28378388

UK Guardian, July 18, 2014, “Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash: world demands answers from Russia,” http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/mh17-pressure-on-russia-as-world-demands-answers-over-planes-destruction

AFP, 19 July 2014, “Malaysian Airlines MH17 crash: Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin agree on international probe of MH17 crash,” http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/38685294.cms?intenttarget=no&utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Russia Today, July 21, 2014, “Ukrainian Su-25 fighter detected in close approach to MH17 before crash – Moscow,” http://rt.com/news/174412-malaysia-plane-russia-ukraine/

“Flight MH17 Investigation. Malaysia will Collaborate with Donetsk People’s Republic: Full Statement of Malaysian PM Najib Razak,” posted July 21, 2014, http://www.globalresearch.ca/flight-mh17-investigation-malaysia-will-collaborate-with-donesk-peoples-republic-full-statement-of-malaysian-pm-najib-razak/5392578

Huffington Post, July 22, 2014, ”U.S. Officials: No Evidence Of Direct Russian Link To Malaysia Plane Crash” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/22/malaysia-plane-crash_n_5611113.html

#NewarkNJ #Ukraine #MH17 #Europe

Gibson was the first African American mayor of a major northeastern city. The Democratic Party bosses had their own candidate. A homegrown alliance upset the machine’s applecart. A historic Black and Puerto Rican Political Convention was held in 1969. It nominated Gibson and pulled off a major upset of the machine. The architect of the alliance was Amiri Baraka, the father of Ras Baraka.

Gibson’s election came at time of social upheaval. The defeat abroad of the U.S. wars of aggression in Southeast Asia, the Civil Rights Movement and the succeeding Black Power Movement at home all combined to bring a time of political and ideological crisis. Amiri Baraka later said it was only the time of crisis that allowed for the defeat of the machine.

There are many parallels today. U.S. imperialism is bogged down in stalemate and disaster in its many wars of aggression, all of which will sooner or later end in defeat. War weariness, worsening abuses of oppressed peoples, the growth of incredible wealth for a few while the majority face depression conditions and loss of constitutional rights have bred a climate of rebelliousness.

Newark is the scene of a huge parental rebellion against the closing of schools by a state-imposed superintendent. Small children will have to travel around a large city due to the loss of neighborhood schools and district schools are being stripped of resources in favor of charter schools, etc. Youth unemployment, gang violence and imprisonment are acute problems that have gone on for years with nothing being done beyond a little lip service here and there.

Baraka’s opponent, Shavar Jeffries, was lavishly funded, with at least $2 million to spend. He had the support of two Democratic Party bosses. Joseph D. Vincenzo (“Joey D” to those he likes) can sway any election in the northern part of the state and George Norcross runs things in the southern part. Democrat or Republican, it doesn’t much matter, one or the other of them can pretty much set you up. Both are close to Governor Chris Christie, who also supported Jeffries. Like previous Newark mayor Cory Booker, Jeffries got a totally artificial national media buildup. Jeffries’ big weak point is that he has no real history in Newark.

In contrast, the Newark-born Ras Baraka, formerly a high school principal and city councilman, has been locally prominent in his own right for decades. He has long spoken out against police brutality, in defense of regular district public schools and on many other issues of immediate interest to the community. Thus the election was a notable test of people’s demands that their needs be met, versus Democratic Party routine. Baraka did not have as much money as Jeffries, but he benefited from a real popular enthusiasm among Newark’s large community of active and aware citizens. That more than made up the difference. The election returns showed him getting 54% of the vote. Just as in 1970, it was an outcome of a time of crisis.

His written platform statements are much more extensive and detailed than usual – on jobs, education, economic development, etc. There are things that can and must be done. The schools have been controlled by the state since 1995 and the results are disastrous. The school system must be returned to local control, even if it takes a pitched people’s political battle to drive the state out.

But no bones can be made about it: the possibilities of real benefit to the masses are limited. The city’s problems are the problems of capitalism itself. cannosult of the country having become too rich, or “es are limited. the many other issues of immediaIts finances are firmly in the grip of Wall Street and no election can change or 'democratize' that.

Kenneth Gibson fell back into the Democratic Party mold within a few years. A small sector of middle income and moderately wealthy people benefited. Most did not. The way Gibson’s administration played out was a great lesson to many people, Amiri Baraka not least among them. The challenge before Ras Baraka is to continue to rely on the people and their struggle. More struggle, more active people, more aware people—that is the real criterion of progress.

#NewarkNJ #PeoplesStruggles #AmiriBaraka #RasBaraka #Elections

Clearly there is a problem here. There is far too little mass protest and agitation around the U.S. imperialist aggression against the people of Ukraine.

It is sometimes said people are too busy with local issues to take an interest in world issues. But no, that is not true. Every conscious and active person is vitally concerned. The problem is not a lack of good analysis and understanding, as any reader of Fight Back! News knows.

The problem is twofold. First there is a climate of fear and intimidation. U.S. policymakers and the major media are alike the tools of Wall Street. They have relentlessly lied that the Ukraine crisis is an attack by Russia on Ukraine, rather than what it is, an attack by themselves on the people of Ukraine. There is a fear that opposition to U.S. policy will be smeared as an apology for the ‘terrible’ deeds of the big bad Russian bear.

In fact Russian involvement in the Ukraine crisis is only secondary and reactive. Russia has not broken any international law, while the U.S. imperialists in their usual brazen way have trampled upon every principle of acceptable international conduct. Russia is not provably responsible for a single fatality in the crisis, while the U.S. imperialists and their Nazi local allies are smeared from head to foot with the blood of innocent people.

No, there is nothing to fear from Russia-baiting. Some people got out on a street corner. The sky did not fall. It is easy to break the climate of fear. Just get out there and do it!

The main objective of the Newark protest was to develop the mass line of opposition to U.S. aggression in Ukraine. The mass line is the expression of the concerns and interests that are already there in the minds of the people, but in a way that shows them to be the concerns of the great majority, makes them political issues rather than passive individual worries.

Accordingly, one protester carried a sign that said, “Ukraine: We won’t fight! We won’t kill!” Other signs said “No U.S. military in Ukraine,” “No U.S./Nazi hookup in Ukraine,” etc. People did not have had any problems with the signs.

There were two main themes spoken about over the bullhorn.

First, “The U.S. government cannot and will not even run the U.S. right. This country is a mess. How are they supposed to straighten out Ukraine? People are lined up in the hallways at Newark Beth Israel Hospital waiting for a room. It’s Wall Street health care – your money or your life! They are closing Newark public schools every day and turning them over to private management so Wall Street can make profits. Millions of families have had their homes foreclosed and their life savings plundered by Wall Street. Meanwhile Wall Street gets bailed out for the crisis is caused.”

The other theme was: “Same enemy, same fight!”

The U.S. imperialists are hooked up to Nazis in Ukraine. We have a special name here for Nazis: the Ku Klux Klan! Same enemy! Same fight! The Ukrainian Nazis are ultra-nationalists. We have a special name here for ultra-nationalism: white supremacy! Same enemy! Same fight!

Many people listened thoughtfully. A couple of them even spoke a few words on the bullhorn. Persistence is the key. The protest will be repeated weekly. It will surely grow.

#NewarkNJ #AntiwarMovement #Ukraine #Europe

Newark, NJ – The People’s Organization for Progress held a march here, Feb. 26, to commemorate the second anniversary of the murder of Trayvon Martin. Martin was murdered in Sanford, Florida. The state of Florida refused to convict his killer, George Zimmerman.

Dozens of people came out in the freezing cold for the protest. The acquittal of Michael Dunn for the murder of Jordan Davis, also in Florida, gave even greater impact to the march.

POP Chairman Lawrence Hamm told the gathering, “Never forget – because forgetting is the first step toward having it happen again. Violence has been used against us since the first slave ships tore families apart. More states are actually passing ‘stand your ground’ laws, but they all have to be repealed.”

#NewarkNJ #PeoplesOrganizationForProgress #TrayvonMartin #GeorgeZimmerman #InjusticeSystem

Newark, NJ – Workers and supporters of SEIU Local 32BJ held a rally at Newark Airport, Feb. 11, to demand pay equity for all airport workers of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. A spirited crowd turned up in Terminal C to present demands. Workers from JFK and LaGuardia airports came to support Newark workers.

The Port Authority’s mandate covers bus, rail, air and shipping transport in the entire area of New York City and northeastern New Jersey. It is a huge and immensely wealthy agency that employs many thousands of low-income workers. Newark Airport alone employs 4000 – as baggage handlers, skycaps, wheelchair assistants, ticket agents, etc. It falls under the joint administration of the governors of the two states.

Late last year 32BJ negotiated a contract with JFK and LaGuardia airports that raises pay in two steps from $8.00 per hour to $10.10 per hour. No corresponding step has been taken for workers in New Jersey, however. A worker at speaking at the protest got loud cheers saying that they were going to send a letter to New Jersey Governor Christie “in language he likes to talk – you can ignore Newark Airport as long as you want but we’re not going anywhere!”

Many elected officials and candidates turned up to speak. It is the workers who have taken the initiative and taken the lead, it is they who are the news. They have every intention to keep it that way.

The Port Authority management at this point looks to be going in a favorable direction. Still, success would leave the workers with low incomes. The struggle must go on. Anti-labor laws must be repealed. Stronger unions with a class struggle orientation are the way forward.

#NewarkNJ #LivingWage #workersRights #AirportWorkers #SEIULocal32BJ

Newark, NJ – He was a poet, playwright and political activist. He was my mentor and guide for almost a quarter of a century.

He was of a literary generation with James Baldwin, Maya Angelou and others who were intensely aware and confrontational of the injustices of U.S. society. Early on he was associated with the ‘beat’ writers, like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He went in other directions but maintained a friendship with Ginsberg until the end of the latter’s life. His best known play is Dutchman. It was made into a film with Shirley Knight and Al Freeman, Jr.

When I was in college, at a social gathering that was part of an arts festival, somebody passed by in the crowd. I recognized him as LeRoi Jones, a poet whose picture I had seen in Time magazine. He was the first famous person I had ever seen up close so it stuck in my memory. But that was that.

He was born in Newark, New Jersey, where he lived all his life, as Everett Leroy Jones. He changed his name to LeRoi – “the king.” Later still he changed LeRoi to “Amiri,” which means pretty much the same thing in Swahili. Thus, Amiri Baraka – “Prince Blessedness.”

He came of age with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and early 1960s and became a crucial force in its transformation into the Black power movement of the middle and later 1960s. The same period saw the defeat of the aggressive and wrongful U.S. wars in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The world’s largest country was led by Mao Zedong with an impact that is scarcely imaginable today. Africa was a hotbed of national liberation movements, giving rise to outstanding leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Robert Sobukwe, Sekou Toure and Nelson Mandela, among many others.

The status quo of U.S. society was on the defensive as at no other point in living memory. Amiri Baraka was ideally suited to the times, gregarious, energetic, mercurial, uncompromising, insightful, in the middle of everything, fighting all the time—un poet mo’ dit, perhaps. When it came to who was hooked up to who and how and why he could practically see through walls. His activities of the time were too many to mention completely.

He was a key organizer of the 1967 Newark Black Power Conference that laid out a comprehensive political and economic agenda for the advancement of Black people. He founded the Congress of African People (CAP), a nationwide alliance of forces in the Black liberation movement. He also founded and led the associated Committed for a Unified Newark (CFUN) to define and implement a program of community-based economic development.

The dominant ideology of the Black liberation movement at the time was black nationalism. There were different currents but the main idea was that the most important division in society is between black and white. Culture was correctly seen as an arena of conflict between the oppressed and the oppressors, rather than something handed down from on high in equal service to all. Some expressions described as “cultural nationalism” did not stand the test of time, but in many ways we would not think as we do now had not those ideas been tested.

In 1966 Kenneth A. Gibson ran a last-minute candidacy for mayor of Newark. He got 20% of the vote—a huge surprise. In 1970 a Black and Puerto Rican Convention was held in Newark, again organized at the initiative of Amiri Baraka. It consolidated an insurgent local political base that was the foundation of Gibson’s mayoral campaign that year.

The Democratic Party machine had had its own appointee in mind to become Newark’s first black mayor. The hometown forces proved stronger – an exceptional thing. The winner turned out to be Kenneth Gibson. It was a democratic step forward. A majority Black city whose elected officials had been overwhelmingly white had elected a mayor of its own choice.

Also, Gibson was the first Black mayor of a major northeastern city. The important thing about his election was that it tested ideas about black power and black liberation. Many, including the present writer, thought that basic change would come since Gibson was (and is) a Black person. There were some accomplishments. Black people had never been hired in city jobs, in the schools or in the police force. Now they were. There was a decline in police brutality, for a while anyway.

The problems of the great majority of the city’s residents went on just as before, however. After a few years it was conclusive: the Democratic Party and the big downtown business interests were as secure in their rule as always. These developments could not be explained as issues between Black and white.

Nonetheless the struggle for Black empowerment went forward. In 1972 the historic National Black Political Convention was held in Gary, Indiana. Again Amiri Baraka was one of the main forces in pulling it together. Another prominent attendee was Jesse Jackson. Gary reflected the view within the Black liberation movement that electoral politics was a main avenue of liberation. The convention’s purpose was to found a nationwide black political party.

Representation was broad – Baptists and Muslims, integrationists, nationalists, elected officials and grassroots organizers. Lawrence Hamm of the People’s Organization for Progress was a delegate, one of the youngest (at the time.) He recalls that Richard Hatcher, the city’s powerful mayor and a figure of national standing, had the lampposts decorated with black, green and red national liberation flags.

Class contradictions stood out at the convention. A resolution in support of the Palestinian people was introduced. Mayor Coleman Young of Detroit threatened that if the resolution was adopted he would pull the entire Michigan delegation out. The convention refused to be intimidated and passed the resolution. Young carried out his threat and pulled his delegation. From this and other actions it became clear that the elected officials’ loyalties were to the Democratic Party, and their positions could not be challenged by the people.

There was no follow-up to the Gary, Indiana convention. Black elected officials continued to be elected in growing numbers but through the Democratic Party. In spite of the hopeful signs of Newark in 1970, electoral politics turned out to be a safety net of the status quo. Gary was where the Black Liberation Movement found, in 1972, the limits of electoral politics. The nationwide test did not come until 2008. By that time the present writer was no longer surprised at the results.

Yet, Gary was a gathering from which white people were excluded. Again there were conflicts that could not be explained in terms of black versus white.

Lenin says somewhere that communists must always be for the fullest and most complete democracy because it is only under those conditions that it becomes clear that capitalism itself is the problem. One person who picked up in practice on the same idea was Amiri Baraka.

The Congress of African People and the Black liberation movement generally were hotbeds of ideological struggle. Ideas of black capitalism, electoral politics, religion and class struggle were heard on every hand and debated intensely. See History of the Congress of Afrikan People at http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1a/cap-history.htm for a much fuller story.

Neither was the state standing still. The FBI instigated conflicts between black organizations that went as far as bloodshed. Fred Hampton, the Chicago leader of the Black Panther Party (BPP) was assassinated in his bed by the Chicago police force. There was a general state war against the BPP. The state attack further intensified the struggle. Indeed, in the course of the Newark Rebellion in the summer of 1967 Amiri Baraka was grabbed off the streets by the police, thrown into a car, had a pistol pressed to his head and his life threatened and was beaten savagely. His presence at a protest was always an invitation to a police charge.

By 1974 Amiri Baraka was calling for ideological clarity. He was moving toward adherence to Marxism-Leninism. “I became a Communist through struggle, the intensity of realized passion, and understood and finally stood under, as a force, my ideological clarity, like a jet stream, a nuclear force of reason, from way back, birth black, history fueled, experience directed. Finally I understood that to hate whitey is accurate because since the only whitey is system and ideology, that whitey is a class and that the devil is what do d evil.” ( The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader, xiii) Around that time he and others founded the Revolutionary Communist League (Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought.)

The big conventions with ‘powerful’ national figures were a thing of the past. The media spotlight moved on. From bright lights and microphones and crowds with famous people in attendance, he now found his audience in places like church basements, speaking to local community turnouts. He had never had problems finding publishers for his work when he was what he himself described as a narrow nationalist, but as a communist it was much harder.

None of that much mattered. A period had run its course, served its purpose. The changes of the time had their objective side but the important thing was that the correct ideological and political course had been found. There is more revolution to be found among regular people in regular places than in hanging out with the ‘mighty.’

I joined the RCL in 1975 or 1976 (it’s been a long time.) The organization’s unrelenting struggle for rigorous adherence to communist thought was what decided me.

The time was one of intense struggle to form a new communist party. Many new Marxist-Leninist organizations had emerged in opposition to the line of Nikita Khrushchev, who had renounced the revolutionary heritage of the Soviet Union in 1956. He also proclaimed a path of “peaceful transition to socialism” in opposition to everything Marx and Lenin had to say on the subject. The Soviet Union under Khrushchev had little to none of its former appeal to a generation that had come to maturity in a time of worldwide revolutionary struggle. The Communist Party – USA followed Khrushchev into the swamp of revisionism and likewise met intense opposition with its “anti-monopoly coalition,” a fancy way of dressing up its tactics of trying to dragoon people into becoming the left wing of the Democratic Party.

There were a lot of organizations in the new communist movement. There was a lot of struggle. Amiri fought ‘right’ opportunism when that was the thing to do. He fought ‘left’ opportunism when that was the thing to do. There were indications of ‘left’ provocations that resembled those used by government agents earlier in the Black liberation movement. They caused harm again, but not as much as before. The movement to create a new party hung fire and did not succeed. But it came close. A full discussion of it is beyond the scope of this writing, but one day there will be success.

In 1980 the Revolutionary Communist League merged with the League of Revolutionary Struggle (LRS).*

Although Baraka was no longer a nationalist, but a communist, that in no way lessened his dedication to the democratic right of the African American people to national self-determination. The RCL issued a pamphlet titled The Black Nation that upheld resolutions passed in 1928 and 1930 by the Communist International which defined the Afro-American people as a nation of based in the Black Belt of the South, so named for the color of its soil, which was the historical territory of slavery.

Understanding the right of the Black nation to self-determination in that territory is part of building the strategic alliance for revolution of the working class and the oppressed nations, based on equality and democracy. The divisions among the people are a bastion of capitalist class rule; they can be overcome on no other basis. Amiri Baraka gave a profound analysis of the dynamics of these questions in his brilliant 1982 essay, Nationalism, Self-Determination, and Socialist Revolution.

He wrote, in part:

“Mao pointed out the Marxist of an oppressed nation must also be a patriot. The fight against that nation’s national oppression is ‘internationalism applied.’ Marxists cannot be so involved with theoretically upholding internationalism that they dismiss their own nation’s concrete national liberation struggle – that would be a caricature of Marxism...”

“The national liberation struggle of Black people in the U.S., must include the heightening of national consciousness, identity and self-respect. But these are not the same as nationalism, an ideology a world outlook, promoted by the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie that advocates the primacy; exclusiveness and privilege of “their” nation...”

“Bourgeois nationalism ultimately does not serve the real interests of the masses of that nationality. As ironic as this sounds, nationalism does not ultimately serve the nation. This is true and has been proven correct time and again. Bourgeois nationalism after a certain point isolates the oppressed masses from their mass allies and delivers them into the hands of the exploiters and reactionaries of their own nationality.”

The full essay is posted at http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/lrs-baraka.htm

What I value above all things I gained from him is an appreciation of the relation between the struggle for democracy and the struggle for revolution. He used to say, “The struggle for democracy is the path by which the people will find their way to revolution.” He had a genius for finding it.

He had a lethal wit. “God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning.” I had to look that one up. It’s been a long time. But back in the day shots like that were routine.

The League of Revolutionary Struggle continued the work of its constituent organizations through the 1980s. However, ideological and theoretical work was almost completely neglected after 1985 or so. By 1988 the LRS leadership had virtually become an appendage of Jesse Jackson’s presidential aspirations. Amiri resigned from the organization in protest. I didn’t agree with him about Jackson at the time but he proved to be right. But I think it would have been better if he had stayed in and continued the fight.

Gorbachev’s “glasnost” and the following crisis caught the LRS leadership completely unprepared. They refused to respond to demands of cadres to say something about the Soviet breakup. Instead they surrendered to bourgeois ideas and repudiated Marxism-Leninism. An attempt was made to continue the organization on a reformist basis, but without the discipline and sense of purpose that comes with Marxism-Leninism it simply faded away.

Amiri, another comrade and I restarted publication of Unity & Struggle, which had been the name of the publication of the RCL. It was an outlet for his and other voices at a time when many were in retreat.

Some years ago Amiri and I came to a parting of the ways. It was painful. I never forgot my immeasurable debt to him, though.

About a year ago there was something of a personal rapprochement. Maybe he knew he didn’t have a lot of time left. My sympathies go out to Amina and all the family.

His departure comes like a detonation of something deep in the earth, the remembrance of his greatness in all of its power. Hail and farewell, comrade.

*The League of Revolutionary Struggle (Marxist-Leninist) known as the LRS, formed in 1978 by the merger of the August 29th Movement (ATM) which had roots in the Chicano national movement, and the I Wor Kuen (IWK), which had roots in the Asian American national movements. In 1979 the RCL merged with the LRS, which became the largest Marxist-Leninist organizations to mainly come out of the movements of oppressed nationalities.

#NewarkNJ #OppressedNationalities #Remembrances #AfricanAmerican #AmiriBaraka

Newark, NJ – The struggle to get justice for Trayvon Martin continued here, July 20. Over 500 people turned out at the Federal Building to demand a federal civil rights investigation of his murder by George Zimmerman. The rally was called by the National Action Network (NAN.) Speaker after speaker denounced the Zimmerman verdict and contrasted it with the 20-year sentence given Marissa Alexander in the same state of Florida for firing a warning shot in her own defense that harmed no one.

Another common point was to build the Aug. 24 march in Washington, D.C. in observance of the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s historic March on Washington. Goals of thousands of buses from New Jersey alone and over a million in attendance were projected.

Bashir Akinyele of the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition (NAVC), urged four points for action: a federal investigation of civil rights violations by Zimmerman; the repeal of 'stand your ground' laws in all states that have them; a boycott of consumer products made by companies owned by the infamous Koch brothers, who financed Zimmerman’s defense; and a United Nations declaration of the national identity of African-American people.

He said we need a united front of struggle—NAN, NAVC, NAACP, People’s Organization for Progress (POP), Bloods, Crips, unions, teachers, everybody.

The main address of the day was given by Lawrence Hamm of the People’s Organization for Progress. He introduced Earl Williams, father of Earl Faison, killed in 1999 by police in Orange, New Jersey, to the crowd.

Earl Faison was just 27 when his life was taken. The police told his father he had died an “accidental death” – that he had fallen off a chair. What Earl Williams saw was that his son had been beaten so badly that boot marks were visible on his body. One eye was hanging out of its socket.

As in the case of Trayvon Martin, the police destroyed evidence and tried to cover up the crime, Hamm said. They didn’t count on the determination of the people. POP and the family of Earl Faison stayed out in front of the police station, with protest after protest. They marched for justice in 13 different cities. Eventually five police were found guilty on federal charges of civil rights violations. It took five years of fighting through all kinds of official delays and evasions before the perpetrators were finally sentenced.

“We have to be in it for the long term,” Hamm said, “even if we have to come back here a thousand times!” The gathering roared its agreement.

He noted that the NAACP had already been working on the murder of Emmett Till when the Montgomery bus boycott was being planned. “The struggle for Trayvon Martin will be the forerunner of many other struggles for justice, just as was the struggle for Emmett Till.

“We stand here today 150 years after the Civil War,” he said. “Our ancestors gave their lives so that we would no longer be seen as chattels. Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and Fannie Lou Hamer rose up to put Jim Crow in the garbage can.

“Since then we have been electing senators, representatives and governors. We even have a man in the White House. We even have an attorney general. Those officials can’t just sit there. If we can’t send this racist to jail, our ancestors will look down on us!

“Attorney General Holder has a representative here,” he said. “We demand that Federal Attorney for New Jersey Paul J. Fishman meet with leaders of our community to discuss our demand for a civil rights violations investigation of Zimmerman.

“Tell Obama dialogue is good but justice would be better. . . A voice calls from beyond the grave,” he said, urging attendance on Aug. 24 in Washington.

POP meets every Thursday night at 6:30 p.m. at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, 224 W. Kinney Street in Newark.

#NewarkNJ #AfricanAmerican #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #PeoplesOrganizationForProgress #TrayvonMartin #GeorgeZimmerman #NationalActionNetwork

Newark, NJ – Hundreds turned out here, July 14, to protest the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. The march and rally were called by the People’s Organization for Progress. The not guilty verdict was seen by protesters as a declaration of the right to kill any young Black man for nothing more than suspicion.

POP member Sandra Hayward spoke for many when she told Fight Back!, “Trayvon Martin’s death was a tragedy and this outcome was even worse. We should petition the Justice Department to bring up Zimmerman on charges of civil rights violations.” Asked how she saw the prosecution, she replied, “The prosecution did not look at all into it. They should have done more questioning.”

#NewarkNJ #OppressedNationalities #AntiRacism #TrayvonMartin #GeorgeZimmerman #InjusticeSystem

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from People's Organization For Progress (POP) chair Lawrence Hamm, from a May 10 Newark, New Jersey press conference.

Newark, NJ – The People's Organization For Progress (POP) calls upon the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to remove Assata Shakur (Joanne Chesimard) from its ‘Most Wanted Terrorists List.’ She does not belong on the list because Ms. Shakur was never charged nor convicted of an act of domestic or international terrorism.

To place her on such a list is fundamentally unjust. It is a perversion of justice and involves the ex post facto application of terrorist laws and definitions of terrorism that were not in existence or applied to her case at the time of her arrest and conviction.

Furthermore, she did not commit the crime she was accused of. She was placed on the list because her conviction connected her to the murder of a police officer. However, evidence in her case shows that she could not have shot and killed that officer. She became a fugitive because given the circumstances of her case, the atmosphere of repression, and the racism of the criminal justice system she could not get justice in this country and to remain here may have cost her life.

The move to place her on the list and the doubling of her bounty to $2 million has little to do with justice and everything to do with politics. It is an opportunistic attempt to use the criminal justice system to score political points in this highly charged post Boston bombing environment.

Placing Assata Shakur on the terrorists list when she was not convicted of a “terrorist act” is in essence falsely accusing her of a crime that she did not commit. It is the abandonment of the law in the name of enforcing the law.

Like the war in Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, preemptive strikes, and the abandonment of international law, it is the establishment of a false premise as a rationale for violent action, which has no legal basis but for which political support may be imagined or conjured up. Placing Assata Shakur on the terrorists list sets a dangerous precedent.

With the false premise established what will be next? Will Cuba be given the ultimatum to give up Shakur like the Afghanistan government was told to give up Osama Bin Laden before the U.S. invasion of that country? Will there be a drone strike of Shakur's supposed residence in Cuba? Will Navy Seal Team “7” be sent on a covert mission to assassinate Assata Shakur who is an American citizen?

By identifying Shakur as a terrorist the FBI is taking the terrorists list and making it a “political enemies” list, which is an instrument of state terror. And why not? This fits in perfectly with unjust and illegal trillion dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, extraordinary renditions, black site secret prisons in foreign lands, torture, assassination of U.S. citizens, military courts, secret trials, Guantanamo, elimination of habeas corpus, indefinite detention, government domestic spying, arbitrary arrests, police brutality, racial profiling, stop and frisk, mass incarceration, school to prison pipeline, suppression of dissent, COINTELPRO type operations, ignoring the Constitution, trashing the Bill of rights, and trampling upon our civil liberties.

And let's look at her accusers. Who is calling her a terrorist? The FBI who spied on Dr. Martin Luther King. The FBI whose Director J. Edgar Hoover made it his mission to destroy Dr. King. The FBI who engaged in acts of state terror that included assassination against people and organizations in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements.

And the New Jersey State Police who shot up Newark and killed innocent people during the rebellion. The New Jersey State Police who for years engaged in the worst forms of racial profiling. The New Jersey State Police, a department so rife with racism that the federal government had to put it under a “master” to force it to reform its racist ways.

With this precedent the rights of all Americans are placed in greater jeopardy. Now, anyone can be deemed a terrorist, not because this was proven in a court of law but by fiat, proclamation or declaration by the President, U.S. Attorney General, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, or some other agency of the federal government.

And this can be done not just for transgressions of the present. It can be done retroactively for sins of the past, ten, twenty, thirty, and forty years ago. If the government doesn't like someone just put them on the terrorist list.

Of course, this exercise of twenty-first century U.S. democracy would not be complete unless accompanied by the economic incentive that American capitalism can provide. In this age of robber billionaires a $1 million dollar bounty on the head of Assata Shakur was not enough. It has been doubled to $2 million.

Who are the $2 million pieces of silver for? Are they for enterprising U.S. citizens? No. Assata Shakur has been given political asylum in Cuba. This pot of gold is to entice elements within Cuban Society to violate the laws and policies of the Cuban government.

The FBI and company hope that in Cuba there are corrupt persons within the police, or criminal elements, or people opposed to the government who will take the bait and do this bit of subcontracting work and keep some of the heat off the bosses in the US.

They hope that there are Hamid Kharzais in Cuba who would like to have bags of money delivered to them on a monthly basis. “Bring Assata Shakur to us and you to can be a millionaire.” Dead or alive has not been specified.

The placing of Assata Shakur on the terrorist list while portrayed as a noble act in the attempt to get justice for a slain police officer is in fact a shameful act of revenge, opportunism, political manipulation, and authoritarianism. It is part and parcel of a corrosive trend eating away at the democratic processes and institutions in our country for half a century and which has accelerated since 9/11.

Assata Shakur should not be on the terrorist list. She should be removed from that list just as Nelson Mandela was removed from that list several years ago. When the threat of terrorism and the terrorist label is misused in this manner the victims of real acts of terror are dishonored.

#NewarkNJ #Newark #InJusticeSystem #Cuba #AfricanAmerican #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #PeoplesOrganizationForProgress #PoliticalRepression #AssataShakur

Newark, NJ – The People’s Organization for Progress (POP) put a Hands off Social Security picket line in front of the Essex County Social Security building, April 16. Hundreds of drivers blew horns. Passersby stop to talk and show solidarity. Other participating organizations included the International Action Center, One People One Nation, Veterans for Peace and the Coalition to Save Our Homes.

The protest was in response the Obama administration’s proposed cuts in cost of living adjustments for Social Security. A new “chained Consumer Price Index” would replace the established CPI with a lower percentage. The expectation is that Social Security outlays would be reduced by several hundred billion dollars over the next ten years. It is another proposal to support Wall Street profit demands by plundering the living standards of the masses.

That a Democratic administration would propose such a thing has caused widespread shock. The impact would be far broader than senior citizens, since families and dependents are also supported by Social Security. The protest showed that neither POP nor the other organizations nor the masses will have any of it. Wall Street’s attack on Social Security must be stopped.

#NewarkNewJersey #NewarkNJ #POP #SocialSecurity #PeoplesOrganizationForProgress

• People who have already lost their homes would supposedly be compensated $3.75 billion. It might sound like a lot but it is peanuts. If the banks really had to pay up for predatory lending, about $1 trillion in homeowner compensation would be a good start.

• In return for this puny cost-of-doing-business expense, the government will end efforts to hold lenders responsible for paperwork abuses like improper accounting of payments and excessive fees.

• The money would go to reduce payments for people who could then stay in their homes. That is, banks will reduce a few mortgages and avoid foreclosure losses. It is a write-off of money the banks would lose anyway. This way the banks get to keep something. The ‘settlement’ is only the latest bank bailout in disguise.

• The ‘settlement’ will end a review of 4 million mortgages ordered in 2011 by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a division of the Treasury Department. The banks paid the expenses of the review, which meant they could do things their own way. Now the review is ending because the banks say it is too expensive.

The lesson, as so many times before, is that distressed homeowners must join together to find their own solutions. They must end their personal isolation. The Coalition to Save Our Homes, the People’s Organization for Progress, and many other community and labor organizations have worked with distressed homeowners. We have marched and protested at bank locations, exposing the real culprits in the mortgage bubble. We demand a hearing for homeowners by the New Jersey Attorney General. We demand a federal criminal investigation of Wall Street's wrongdoing in the mortgage bubble.

Last year many people banded together and stopped a foreclosure eviction in Orange of Susie Johnson, forcing mighty JP Morgan Chase to admit it held no financial interest in her home. We recently brought a strong turnout to a New Jersey Appeals Court hearing of a case that highlights everything that is wrong with the judicial process in foreclosure.

United struggle is the right path for distressed homeowners to follow, not dependence on treacherous government programs. The power of the people is not just a fine-sounding ideal. It is a real force in the world, the only one the vast majority of the people can depend on.

#NewarkNJ #WallStreet #HousingStruggles #bankBailout #CoalitionToSaveOurHomes #HomeForeclosures

Up to 5 million people lost some or all of their electrical power, telephone service and internet service that evening. Wall Street in lower Manhattan was under water for a while. That was the only good thing about the storm. A severe gasoline shortage developed in the next few days. Lines at service stations were miles long at the worst of it.

As of this writing, Nov.9, large numbers of people are still affected. Many must still endure dark, cold houses, lack of refrigeration and elevator service, the inability to cook food or refrigerate medicines, and so on.

One reason it is taking so long is layoffs of utilities workers. The only reason for the layoffs was to cut costs and make more profits. Fight Back! asked someone who works for a major utility if this was one of the reasons for the delays. “Definitely,” he said, “if it wasn’t for that we wouldn’t be in this position.”

He said his employer laid 356 workers off in April and shifted the workload to those remaining. He has been working twelve hours a day seven days a week. “I haven’t seen my kids in two weeks,” he said.

The company plans to lay off even more workers. He said the job of anybody hired since 2003 is in jeopardy. “They want to get rid of people and work the other fellas to the bone. I am working slave hours, sunup to sundown, seven days a week. It’s slavery except we are getting paid. The whole plan is to work us until it’s done. It’s murderous. The money is good but nobody wants to die. You could fall out of the [crane] bucket and get killed.”

He compared the situation to miners in South Africa who are kept underground so long they lose touch with their children. “Maybe I can get to see my kids for 15 minutes in February,” he said.

“This is all to get maximum profit. [The company] made $6 billion dollars last year and still laid people off.” He was very critical of his union contract, noting that the workers lost benefits. “The union guys tell us they couldn’t get anything better, but the truth is they don’t want to fight.” He also said the company took FEMA money to make repairs but instead used it to put new installations, which normally would be its own expense.

#NewarkNJ #PeoplesStruggles #EnvironmentalJustice #HurricaneSandy

“POP demands that criminal investigations of bank misconduct in the mortgage bubble be undertaken and federal and state levels. The first priority must be to find out what happened to the supposedly ‘missing’ mortgage notes. The investigations must also look into the actions of the banks in the overpricing of homes, selling them for much more than they were worth. Finding of both civil and criminal wrongdoing must be prosecuted.”

POP and C2SOH scheduled a Nov. 1 protest rally in Trenton, the New Jersey state capital, to demand an investigation. Other demands are that Governor Chris Christie release $300 million in federal funds for distressed homeowners that has been held up, and that mortgage principals be reduced to reflect the true market value of overpriced homes.

“Every government program to supposedly help distressed homeowners has turned out to be a bank bailout in disguise,” said a spokesperson for the campaign. The Home Affordable Mortgage Program as a case in point. Millions of homeowners have been strung along for months by banks, having to file extensive applications time after time only to be denied and then saddled with charges and fines by the banks for the delay!

Bank criminality in abusive loans that were designed to fail and the Three-card Monte games they played with mortgage notes were criminal violations. There has not been a single criminal prosecution for any of it.

POP and C2SOH are reaching out to other organizations and people in a petition addressed to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Already it has met with an eager response. Work is under way for a coordinated effort. Everyone wants this to happen.

#NewarkNJ #HousingStruggles #PeoplesOrganizationForProgress #AttorneyGeneralEricHolder #CoalitionToSaveOurHomes #HomeForeclosures

Newark, NJ – A protest against predatory lending took place here, Sept. 15, at the Broad Street branch of Wells Fargo Bank. It was the joint effort of the People’s Organization for Progress (POP) and the Coalition to Save Our Homes (C2SOH).

Demands included immediate mortgage reduction, an end to foreclosure by banks that do not own the mortgage, and a five-year moratorium on foreclosures. The overall demand was to end Wall Street’s lawless reign of financial terror and make banks obey the law.

Many speakers, including distressed homeowners, took turns on the bullhorn to denounce predatory lending. The Newark area is hard hit by the depression. There are many issues. Foreclosure and homelessness are epidemic. Community violence claims lives every few days. The public schools are being closed and privatized in the areas where black people live. Mayor Cory Booker, a ‘rising star’ of the Democratic Party, is trying to sell off and privatize the city water system against intense community resistance.

Many protesters spoke on the bullhorn. Housing is a human right! There should be no poverty at all in the United States. Everyone should have a nice place to live. No one should ever have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. The problem is that capital’s need for profit eats up every human need.The government must take action against predatory lenders.

Protesters mingled with passersby throughout the event. A couple of people took POP and C2SOH literature and passed it out. Several distressed homeowners were given self-help information and were told about C2SOH. People raised their hands in solidarity. It became clear that everybody hates Wall Street, homeowner or not.

A key demand that was voiced at the protest is that special prosecutors be appointed at federal and state levels to investigate civil and criminal wrongdoing by financial corporations. There has been vast financial misconduct, much of it criminal, as well as predatory lending. The economy is in depression. Financial chaos is everywhere. Yet no one has been investigated, no one has been prosecuted and no one has gone to jail for all the harm that has been done. Regulators do nothing, Congress does nothing.

It is time to appoint special prosecutors to get the job done. It is important to clear up what happened to those millions of ‘missing’ mortgage promissory notes. We do not believe the usual excuses about ‘slicing and dicing’ in financial trading. The banks are hiding something. Let prosecutors investigate and find out. Let the chips fall where they may. As protesters chanted, the banks are “Not too big to fail, not too big to jail.”

#NewarkNJ #WallStreet #HousingStruggles #PeoplesOrganizationForProgress #CoalitionToSaveOurHomes #HomeForeclosures

Newark, NJ – The People’s Organization for Progress (POP) marched and held a speaking program Jan.15 in observance of the 83rd anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. An excellent turnout of 150 people representing many different organizations marched from the Lincoln Monument through the downtown area. The gathering marked the 204th day of POP’s Daily Picket for Jobs, Peace, Equality and Justice.

For the second year, the program was held in the chambers of the Newark Municipal Council. Councilpersons Mildred Crump and Ras Baraka spoke, as did representatives of the NAACP, the New Black Panther Party and others.

Veteran activist Amiri Baraka recounted a visit from Dr. King. Baraka was at home in the city’s South Ward, when he saw police cars drive past and heard helicopters overhead. A little later the doorbell rang. Baraka opened the door. Martin Luther King was standing there. “Hello, LeRoi,” he said. He wanted to talk about a united front within the Black Liberation Movement. King had recently met with Elijah Muhammad.

A few days later, Dr. King went to Memphis, Tennessee to support the strike of the city’s sanitation workers.

#NewarkNJ #AfricanAmerican #PeoplesOrganizationForProgress #DrMartinLutherKingJr

Newark, NJ – Peace activist and former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney visited here July 28, speaking at a meeting of the People’s Organization for Progress. The room was packed as over 200 people turned out to hear her speak about her recent visit to Libya, the latest country to be victimized by NATO aggression.

At the beginning of the program McKinney was given an Award of Merit presented by local people’s activists. A motion was made and passed by acclamation to declare her an honorary member of the People’s Organization for Progress.

She began by noting that Newark and New Jersey are in the grip of economic crisis. The official ideals are devoted to the people, but nonetheless the people are forced to fight for things like jobs and healthcare and to stop police brutality. If the government really cared about the people it would take care of them. Instead the people must fight to see who will be the winners.

McKinney said she takes her vision of Libya from the people she met there. They said, “This is our land and what lies underneath it belongs to us. We aren’t going to let anyone take it away. We will fight to the last person and the last bullet.”

The visitors’ group that flew to Libya had to land far from the capital city of Tripoli. They had to take a six-hour trip by automobile. “People have set up checkpoints,” said Ms. McKinney. “All cars going into Tripoli must be searched. But the people at the checkpoints are not police or military personnel. They are ordinary folks.”

People told her that if it were not for the NATO bombing they could have dispatched the ‘rebels in a matter of days. As it is, innocent people are dying from the bombs. Vital underground water pipes, that serve the needs of large numbers of people, have been destroyed.

A university in Libya was bombed while McKinney was there. She said that university tuition is free. Students there don’t know what tuition is. If a Libyan can get accepted at any institution of higher learning the government will pay his or her expenses to go there and study.

Medical care is also free. If a government cares about its people it wants them to be healthy. If a government does not care about its people that will also be reflected in what it does. In Libya food is subsidized. In the U.S. 25% of the children in the United States go to bed hungry.

Turning to her domestic political experience, McKinney said that if we want a government that respects us we cannot give our votes away for free. Referencing her home state of Georgia, she said it needs a Black Manifesto: “A Black Manifesto had been formulated in Georgia and circulated to lawmakers. An attempt was made to operationalize it. Lawmakers were asked to respond and recommendations were made according to the responses without regard to party affiliation. Experience proved that elected officials were more loyal to the Democratic Party than to the voters who elected them. 40% of Georgia’s population is made up of black people. Georgia has the largest state legislative Black Caucus in the country...and they have come up with nothing.”

McKinney still maintains it is possible to do better. “Libya is not perfect,” she said, “but we deserve a better country than we have. We have to change a little bit about the way we vote and who we elect to office so we can get better.”

#NewarkNJ #AntiwarMovement #NATO #CynthiaMcKinney #Libya #LibyaWar

Newark, NJ – On May 15, 2009, Basire Farrell, 30, was mercilessly beaten to death on the street at 2:00 a.m. by five Newark cops. He was dead, murdered, at the scene. Nothing has happened since to the killers because they are cops.

“He was calling out to everyone to come help him,” said his aunt, Sharonda Smalls. “He was calling out, Mommy, Rhonda, come help me. When he died he had a look on his face like he was in pain. He wanted justice.”

She was speaking to a May 15 protest to commemorate the second anniversary of the murder, called by the family of the victim and the People’s Organization for Progress. The family of Dawoo Culver, 16, killed by a Newark policeman on April 2 of this year, also spoke. With extraordinary courage, Cynthia Johnson told of being raped by a Newark police officer, only to be treated as a criminal when she sought justice.

“This makes two years,” said Sharonda Smalls. “We need to fight back. They want us to give up. They want us to live in fear. Don’t give up because that’s what they want.”

The rally then marched to Newark’s infamous Fifth Precinct station house. Cynthia Johnson told of the assault on her by a police officer. “I feel sick to my stomach to stand in front of a police station knowing my rapist is free,” she said. She told of going to Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Councilman Ronald C. Rice, who represents the ward where the assault took place. She went to Internal Affairs, the police agency responsible to look into police misconduct. Nothing came of any of it, she said.

She was herself charged with resisting arrest and other charges. She had to hire an attorney to get the charges dismissed. Courts would not listen her complaints. “I have PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder],” she said. “It’s easy to say I’m crazy.” She vowed to “put on my big yellow POP shirt” and continue the struggle. During the day other victims said they were only able to survive and continue the struggle because of the support of POP.

“Once we rise up and take charge of our community we will not have another Basire Farrell or Cynthia Johnson,” said Bertha Smalls, who raised Basire Farrell. “We got to hold Obama accountable,” she said. “We put him in there but he hasn’t done a damn thing for us.”

Fuquan Culver told of the killing in the West Ward of his nephew, Dawoo Culver, 16, on April 2 by a Newark cop. He said no other people are brutalized by police the way Black people are brutalized. “Our leaders when they get to a certain level get pacified,” he said. “We’re headed in the right direction now, but we need to get more people,” he said. He announced a protest march around the killing of his nephew for May 20.

POP Chairman Lawrence Hamm said the Department of Justice needs to come in and investigate the Newark Police Department, noting that the ACLU has filed a case for an investigation. He said the development of modern police forces parallels the experience of black people after emancipation. They were based on state militias that existed to protect against slave rebellions in southern states. “That’s why it’s so hard to break police brutality, that’s why we need to keep up the fight,” he said. “This wicked system is held in place by the most naked brutal force imaginable. We need a revolution. There’s a time for thunder and lightning in the United States of America in the struggle for justice, and the time is now.”

#NewarkNJ #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #PeoplesOrganizationForProgress #BasireFarrell

Newark, NJ – A joint labor-community rally held here April 26 marked a significant step in unity. The Newark Anti-Violence Coalition, the People's Organization for Progress and many of the city's veteran activists spoke and turned out among the crowd of more than 200. Newark is one of the richest cities in the United States in traditions of people's struggle, and it showed.

On the labor side, a large contingent from the America Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) turned out. The Reverend Al Sharpton, who is working on a Newark chapter of his National Action Network, also spoke, as did Ras Baraka and Mildred Crump, two members of the Newark Municipal Council.

Common themes were opposition to human services cutbacks, threats to bargaining rights of labor and threats to pension funds. Bank bailouts and tax cuts to the rich while the masses suffer were condemned. Newark Mayor Cory Booker and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were the foremost targets of the people's defiance.

The call for unity between labor and the community was heard constantly. “We're like crabs in a barrel,” said Rev. Sharpton. “We need to get out of the barrel and go after the people who put us there in the first place.” Hetty Rosenstein, New Jersey Director of AFSCME, blasted the idea that “there is nothing we can do.” The crowd took up the chant, “We are one.”

POP Chairman Lawrence Hamm denounced the attack by the right wing. “They are trying to take us back before 1960 on voting rights,” he said. “They are trying to take us back before 1930 and the right to form unions, back before 1920 and women's right to vote, back before 1900 and the eight-hour day.” He called for advancing a broad people's agenda that would include housing, jobs, health care and other concerns. He warned the crowd that even the achievement of a human needs program would not end the struggle, pointing out the need for fundamental social transformation.

“We need to have demonstrations every day for 385 days,” he said, commemorating the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56. “We have to be out here every day until our voices are heard, we have to be able to shut it down,” Hamm added. The people roared their approval.

The reason some unions are turning to community support is because of the systematic attack on public workers’ bargaining rights. Gov. Christie is one of the worst offenders. The state botched its handling of its public employee pension fund from the middle of the 1990s until now. As a result the fund is around $60 billion dollars short of its obligations. If the unions can be destroyed Christie can rob the workers of their pensions with relative ease. Also the unions are tightly aligned with the Democrats. The old reliance on the Democrats will not do, however. Organized labor needs to fight and it needs other mass forces.

Organized labor has to do a lot better overall. The difference must come from the rank-and-file, in terms of militant class struggle unionism. It is a hard fight, as shown by the experiences of Teamsters Local 743 in Illinois. In January of this year its principled elected leadership was removed by Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. on a rotten little administrative pretext. Broad rank-and-file militancy is the only antidote to misleaders like Jimmy Hoffa, Jr.

Events in Newark show the way forward. Unity of organized labor and community forces, unity of the working class and the oppressed peoples will grow in a mighty wave in response to the capitalist crisis.

#NewarkNJ #PeoplesOrganizationForProgress #NewarkAntiViolenceCoalition #AmericaFederationOfStateCountyAndMunicipalEmployeesAFSCME