Columbia, SC – Facing sweltering heat, and in the face of a massive police presence, about 2000 protesters, including the New Black Panther Party, confronted a Ku Klux Klan rally on the grounds of the capitol building here, July 18. Snipers could be seen at the corner of every building top.

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was rallying to allegedly defend the Confederate battle flag, upset that it had been removed from the capitol building in the wake of the racist massacre of nine attendees of the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina weeks earlier.

At the KKK rally, speakers employed the tired old ‘heritage not hate’ argument for the Confederate flag – a symbol of racism that was used extensively by opponents of the Civil Rights movement. For their protection, the KIan was surrounded by a phalanx of state police, many in paramilitary gear. Midway through the event, participants in the Klan protest unfurled a giant swastika flag.

About half of Klansmen were dressed street clothes, but another half seemed to be dressed in quasi-uniforms covered in Nazi symbols. As one of these wannabe storm troopers stepped to the edge of an elevated marble ledge and spewed racial epithets at the majority Black crowd, people below spontaneously begin chanting, “Jump! Jump! Jump!”

Shortly after this, a man draped in the Confederate flag was seen walking through the counter-protesters loudly proclaiming, “This flag does not represent hate, it represents heritage. I’m not a racist, people died for this flag,” and so on. Several counter-protesters tried to explain the flaws in his argument, but he was hearing none of it. Later this flag was snatched from his body by a young Black man, who said, “We’re taking this shit back home to burn!”

Shortly after that encounter, this reporter witnessed a cop, hanging from the side of a fast-moving State Law Enforcement Division SUV and dressed in battle fatigues, jump from the vehicle with what appeared to be a shotgun. He then chased an unarmed Black youth, who was able to escape.

Police wound up escorting KKK and Nazi supporters to a parking garage. Counter-protesters followed and continued to express their disdain for the racist groups.

Despite the thick police guard, at least one counter-protester managed to get a jaw-busting punch through to a retreating KKK member. The counter-protester was dragged away by police immediately, and indiscriminate arrests began. Small scuffles and rock throwing took place.

Despite some challenges, the counter protest was absolutely successful, forcing the KKK’s rally to end an hour early. Counter protester Phil Davis of Columbia said, “The fascists were weak today, very weak. The progressives and revolutionaries outnumbered them by hundreds, and they were resoundingly defeated, and let’s hope they don’t come back.”

#ColumbiaSC #PeoplesStruggles #AntiRacism #KuKluxKlan #KKK #SouthCarolina

Chicago, IL – Standing in solidarity with the memories of those massacred in Charleston, South Carolina, activists here in Chicago linked their murders with the national epidemic of police crimes.

“We have to stop the police from occupying our communities. We have to have community control of the police. We have to win an elected, civilian police accountability council [CPAC],” said an angry LaCreshia Birts, as she addressed the 75 people gathered in the shadow of the federal building. One of the leaders of the Black Youth Project 100, Birts is also an organizer in the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

According to Birts, the murderer in Charleston was influenced by the national oppression of Black people, in which the police play a big role. “Police murders of our people breeds white supremacist ideas,” said Birts.

Birts passionately challenged the crowd to not let the deaths in Charleston be in vain. Pointing to community control of the police as a way to win the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement, she urged those in attendance to join the Alliance campaign for CPAC, and the planned march for CPAC on August 29 in Chicago.

“We have to do this work to stop the killing of Black people,” said Brits.

#ChicagoIL #AfricanAmerican #Antiracism #CharlestonShooting #SouthCarolina

Durham, NC – Over 200 people gathered in east Durham on June 20 to rally and speak out against the white supremacist terror attack in Charleston that left nine African Americans dead earlier this week. The rally, organized by the Durham Solidarity Center, included speakers from Muslims for Social Justice, Black Workers for Justice, Workers World Party, as well as other activists and organizers in the community.

“I still feel numb over what happened,” said Lamont Lilly, the emcee of the event. “Every week there is a hashtag of someone in our community who's been killed.” Another speaker quoted Malcom X, saying, “We are not Americans, we are victims of America.”

While the overriding emotions expressed were of shock and pain, many speakers urged those in attendance to organize, defend the community and keep fighting back against racist terror and police killings. Desmera Gatewood gave an powerful speech that urged everyone attending to work every day to challenge the system of racist oppression. Qasima Wideman, speaking for Muslims for Social Justice, noted, “We call on Muslim community to join us in challenging white supremacy in all its forms, whether murders of Black and brown people by police, school-to-prison-pipeline, prison-industrial-complex, environmental racism, gentrification or the war on poor.”

#DurhamNC #AfricanAmerican #Antiracism #Charleston #SouthCarolina

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) has been criticized for its slow response to an outbreak of tuberculosis (TB) which has infected more than 100 people in rural Greenwood County, South Carolina since last March. More than 400 children at Ninety Six Primary School in Greenwood County were not tested for almost three months after TB was first reported.

Greenwood County is part of the Black Belt, named for the rich soil farmed by slave labor, which forms the heart of the African American Nation in the South. The national oppression that Black people face is most intense in the Black Belt South, even greater than other areas of the South. The poverty rate for Blacks, already much higher than that of whites, is even higher for Blacks in the African American Nation than other Blacks in the South. The infant mortality rate is also higher and the life span lower for Blacks in the African American Nation than Blacks living outside the nation but in the South.

The mishandling of the TB outbreak by the South Carolina DHEC is another example of the poor-quality government services and health care that are part of the all round economic, political, cultural and social oppression that African Americans face in the U.S.

I want to comment on two mistaken views in the left about national oppression. One incorrect view reduces national oppression to just a matter of racist attitudes among whites in general and white workers in particular. According to this view, if we can just overcome these racist ideas, then African Americans and whites can “unite and fight.” The problem is that there are important material differences in the lives of whites and African Americans, not just bad ideas. For example, African Americans are almost twice as likely as whites not to have any health insurance (19.5% vs. 11.1%). This is in part because many more whites (61.6%) than African Americans (44.6%) have jobs that provide health insurance benefits. White workers need to be won over to supporting demands for equality for African Americans, such as universal government health care, which would especially help African Americans, and also Chicanos, Mexicanos and Latinos, whose lack of health insurance is even higher than that of African Americans (at 30.1%) .

There is also a view that whites in general and white workers in particular actually benefit from the national oppression of African Americans. If this were true, we would expect to see a pattern where the more intense the national oppression is, the better off whites should be. But in fact whites in the Black Belt South where the African American Nation is based are worse off than other southern whites outside the Black Belt. An example of this is that the life span of whites is shorter, and the infant mortality rate among whites higher, in the Black Belt South than in other areas of the South.

This should be no surprise, for when the government doesn’t take care of public health, the tuberculosis bacteria doesn’t care if the body they are infecting is African American or white. So fighting national oppression is in the interest of white workers, because they face a common enemy: the wealthiest 1%, or the monopoly capitalists, who own and control the giant corporations that dominate the economy and control the government. But to upend the power of the 1%, we need an alliance between the working class and the national movements (the movements of oppressed nationalities such as African Americans, Arab and Asian Americans, Chicanos, Mexicanos, and Latinos, and Native Americans and Pacific Islanders). This alliance can only be forged by explaining to white workers that fighting national oppression is in their own interests and that they need to support the struggle for equality by Black people and support the right of self-determination, up to and including secession, for the African American nation.

#SouthCarolina #SC #healthCare #AntiRacism #selfdetermination #BlackBeltSouth