Irvington, NJ – “Forty acres and a mule!” and “You stole us. You sold us. You owe us,” chanted here, Feb. 23, demanding reparations for African American people. The march was sponsored by the People’s Organization for Progress (POP) and the New Black Panther Party.

The first chant refers to Field Order 15 issued by General W.T. Sherman in 1865. The intent was to furnish a livelihood to Black freedmen after the end of slavery. Sherman’s field order was the first attempt to give reparations to the victims of slavery. It was never successfully implemented.

POP Chairman Lawrence Hamm brought out the history of the struggle for reparations for 250 years of stolen labor and 100 years of Jim Crow segregation. Slave labor created immense wealth that built this country through the production of cotton, corn and other agricultural products.

“People spoke and prayed to end slavery,” said Hamm, “but it took guns and cannon to end slavery because you could not reason with the slave masters.” 220,000 freedmen joined the Union Army and 40,000 laid down their lives.

With the end of Reconstruction in 1877 the progressive measures of Black legislatures were nullified. “The Black Codes and segregation became the law of the land,” Hamm said. Slavery was reinstated through sharecropping, the convict labor system and segregation. The convict labor system created vast wealth – the railroads of the late 19th century were largely built on convict labor. The legend of John Henry commemorates that contribution.

Black people were never paid for any of it.

“Some of us don’t just want a check,” said Zaid Muhammad of the New Black Panther Party. “We want it [reparations] to happen in a way to break the back of this system so that what happened to us can never happen again. You can’t put a number on the pain and suffering. The ghost of that suffering is still with us.”

He noted the presidential campaign of Barack Obama is said to be ‘beyond race.’ “How is it gonna be beyond race when you get beat every day by the police, when we don’t have jobs and suffer from gentrification and police brutality?” demanded Muhammad. “Race ain’t goin’ nowhere, not now.”

Instead of downplaying demands like reparations during the presidential campaign, Muhammad said, “Now is the time to accelerate this issue,” and other issues of the people’s agenda.

The march was organized by Ingrid Hill, Chair of the POP reparations committee, who raised the question of self-determination, saying, “We need money that we control so we can restore ourselves to what we were before.”

Workers of every nationality should support reparations for African American people. It is a just demand. Monopoly capitalism in the United States rests on the inequality and the systematic discrimination directed against African Americans and other oppressed nationalities within this country’s borders. It is a system of racist discrimination that benefits the big corporations at the expense of all working people. Reparations now!

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Plainfield, NJ – Four members of People’s Organization for Progress (POP) were arrested here Nov. 17 during a peaceful rally. They were protesting against police brutality and the violence that is permitted to rage in low-income communities.

At about 11:00 a.m. the four – Steven Hatcher, Jeff Hitchcock, Zackariah Jackson and Stuart Rosenberg – were in a small downtown park. They were distributing a flyer and holding signs that said, “Stop police brutality,” and “Peace in the streets.” Hatcher is the chairman of the Plainfield branch of POP. They had been there for 15 to 20 minutes when a police car drove by. Two cops got out of the car and said, “You aren’t allowed to do this without a permit.” The four were told to put their signs away.

They remained in the park holding their signs, however. Two held their signs visibly and two held them at their sides. Five minutes later the cops returned. The same cop as before told them they could not have a demonstration, although the four were just standing there.

A police captain also approached. He looked at the flyer the group was distributing and demanded to know what the rally was about. Hatcher explained it was against police brutality like the recent killing of Coppin Kiel in New York and also against violence that recently took the life of a youth in Plainfield. The captain replied, “That doesn’t happen on my watch.”

POP member Rosenberg was asked, “What is your name? What is your address?” Rosenberg asked why the police needed his address. He was then grabbed and handcuffed. Hatcher told the police he was the chairman of POP and was himself handcuffed. The other two men were then handcuffed and arrested. By this time there were four police cars and a van at the scene.

The four were taken to the Plainfield police headquarters and mug shots were taken. They were charged with unlawful assembly and released.

“We demonstrated before in a vigil for Rosa Parks and nothing happened,” says Hatcher. “We have demonstrated before many times. It is absolutely clear to me that we were arrested because our flyer and our signs were against police brutality.”

The next day 40 people showed up at 3:00 p.m. at the Plainfield City Hall for a press conference to protest the arrests. Again the cops showed up and told the peacefully assembled group that they were ‘hostile,’ that they needed a permit, and that they were, “going about this the wrong way.” No one left, however, and this time the cops did not act on their threats.

People’s Organization for Progress chairman Lawrence Hamm spoke and denounced the erosion of constitutional rights under the Bush administration. He mentioned the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act among other repressive measures passed by Congress. He stated three demands: All charges against the Plainfield Four must be dropped; the incident must be investigated from the time of the arrests until the release of the four; and any municipal ordinances in violation of constitutional rights must be repealed.

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Plainfield, NJ – The People’s Organization for Progress (POP) called a rally here, Dec. 15 to protest the Nov. 19 arrest of four of its members. The 4 were peacefully rallying against police brutality and violence in the community when they were arrested, photographed and charged with unlawful assembly.

About 60 people turned up at the arrest site on Dec. 15 to continue the struggle against this outrageous violation of civil and constitutional rights. Plainfield Mayor Sharon Robinson Briggs approached the group. To the cheers of the participants she read a statement that all charges would be dropped, the records expunged and the photos shredded. “Everyone has the right to fight for their civil rights,” she said.

POP had demanded that any city ordinances in conflict with rights of free speech be dropped. Bennet Zurofsky, attorney for the 4, said, “Police often treat people who demonstrate in the streets as people who are only marginally behaving in a legal manner, who should be grateful for whatever they’re given, when in fact, it’s the law of the nation.” He will meet with city officials to discuss changes in the ordnances to protect demonstrators.

The repressiveness of the G.W. Bush era is a sign of weakness and crisis in the U.S. social order, not of strength. The victory of POP and the Plainfield 4 is due to the power of the people. When the people stand together they are stronger than the Bush forces.

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