Minneapolis, MN – More than $26,000 was pledged at the May 25 Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) online fundraising event. The event featured Frank Chapman of the FRSO central committee member and executive director of National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, FRSO Standing Committee Member Fern Figueroa, and the FRSO Labor Commission Chair Cherrene Horazuk.

This means about $70,000 has been raised in the $130,000 fund drive that will help FRSO expand its national office and put more full-time organizers in the field.

Fern Figueroa, states, “Fundraising is an important part of organizing that can not be ignored. We seek to change the world around us and that takes resources. Everyone can help to build a revolutionary movement by donating.”

The online event included special guest Chrisley Carpio, one of the Tampa 5, who urged participants to contribute generously.

To contribute to the fundraising drive, go to FRSO.org and hit the donate button. You can also donate by mailing a check made out to “Lucy Parsons Institute” to 2942 Oakland Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55407.

#MinneapolisMN #PeoplesStruggles #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #Socialism

In the two weeks since the announcement of Freedom Road Socialist Organization’s $130,000 Spring Fundraising Drive, more than $25,000 has come in. More contributions are coming in every day.

FRSO Political Secretary Mick Kelly states, “We are off to a great start. FRSO is experiencing a period of unprecedented growth. We need to expand our capacity. This means we will be expanding our national office and bringing on more full-time staff. We will have more publications. And we will continue to send out organizers to build new districts of FRSO.”

Kelly continued, “The decline of monopoly capitalism is accelerating and every contradiction in U.S. society is sharpening. The conditions are extremely favorable for building revolutionary organization and doing this requires more resources.”

Local organizations of FRSO are identifying people who would like to contribute to this effort.

To contribute to the fundraising drive, go to FRSO.org and hit the donate button. You can also donate by mailing a check made out to “Lucy Parsons Institute” to 2942 Oakland Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55407.

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #Socialism

Caracas, Venezuela – The Freedom Road Socialist Organization delegation to Venezuela visited downtown Caracas, March 2, and spoke with working-class Venezuelan people. Delegation members include Chicano activist Carlos Montes, student organizer Enya Silva and anti-police crimes activist Omar Flores.

The group visited the home of Simon Bolivar (the Liberator), Bolivar Plaza, and several historic sites. Carlos Montes said, “I enjoyed the popular theater performance in the outside plaza with the public of all ages watching, and the displays of Simon Bolivar.”

FRSO delegate Omar Flores stated, “The city is exceptionally clean, I did not see any homeless people, which is in stark contrast to what I’ve seen in large U.S. cities. Living in the most segregated city in the U.S., Milwaukee, it is also stunning how integrated Caracas is.”

The delegation is participating in an anti-imperialist conference hosted by the PSUV, United Socialist Party of Venezuela, to honor and promote the work and legacy of Hugo Chavez, who passed away ten years ago on March 5.

The group viewed many murals dedicated to Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution throughout the city, as well as murals calling for an end to the blockade on Cuba; celebrating the victory over fascism at Stalingrad; and calling for the liberation of Palestine. Organizers for the conference are working to promote unity in Latin America and against U.S. imperialism. The demand to stop U.S. sanctions on Venezuela and freedom for diplomat Alex Saab will also be raised.

#CaracasVenezuela #Caracas #Venezuela #Americas #PeoplesStruggles #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #Socialism #BolivarianRepublicOfVenezuela

Fight Back News Service is circulating this greeting sent by the Political Secretary Mick Kelly, of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China.

Dear Comrades,

Freedom Road Socialist Organization congratulates the leadership of the Communist Party of China, with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, for the great successes achieved at the 20th National Congress. We are certain that the thoughtful deliberations and correct decisions made at the Congress will lead to still more victories in constructing a modern socialist county.

We congratulate Comrade Xi Jinping and all who were elected to the CPC Central Committee and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Under your leadership the People’s Republic of China will continue to thrive and prosper.

We place a high value on the positive role the People's Republic of China plays in the world today, and support your efforts to oppose the separatism promoted by the U.S. government. The achievements of the CPC’s 20th National Congress will no doubt strengthen national unity and increase China’s capacity to resist foreign interference in your internal affairs. There is one China, and we condemn Washington D.C.’s arms transfers to Taiwan.

Socialist China is an example to oppressed people everywhere who yearn for a better future. Again, congratulations on a successful 20th Congress. The CPC is truly a great political party that has proven its ability to do great things.

Long live the Communist Party of China!

Long live the unity between the people of China and the people of the U.S.!

With fraternal greetings,

Political Secretary Mick Kelly

of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee, Freedom Road Socialist Organization

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #CommunistPartyOfChina #Socialism

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement on Biden in Palestine and the Jerusalem Declaration, signed by 80 organizations, including Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO).

The joint declaration of U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid reveals not only the fundamental bankruptcy of the imperialist and Zionist systems they represent but also underlines the necessity to act and stand now in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their resistance, to liberate their land from the river to the sea. This strategic partnership of violence, warmongering, repression and colonialism must be met with our own anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist strategic partnership for justice.

Issued in occupied Jerusalem, itself a signal of the declaration's alignment with impunity for ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity, the document boasts of “shared values and shared interests.” It is clear that the shared values referred to here are those of imperial domination, settler colonialism and the violent oppression of Indigenous peoples. We reject these “shared values and shared interests” and instead uphold the shared values of humanity: the dismantling of apartheid and settler colonialism, the liberation of the land, and the protection of peoples' rights not war profiteers' greed and colonial land theft.

The declaration repeatedly attacks the Palestinian resistance and all forces and nations in the region that seek to defend their right to sovereignty and self-determination. It labels Palestinian resistance as terrorism while remaining silent on the ongoing extrajudicial killings of Palestinians, mass incarceration, land theft, siege and the exile of millions of Palestinians denied their right to return home. Israel and the US are waging colonial war. Their declaration asserts a right to unilateral war, the logic of the colonizer, and boasts of the over $3.8 billion in U.S. taxpayer money sent to further arm that war (while enriching U.S. arms developers). The Palestinian people, like all colonized people, have the right to defend themselves.

Biden and Lapid reinforce their attacks on boycott campaigns, the growing call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and the “delegitimization of Israel,” and clumsily attempt to link campaigns for justice and liberation in Palestine with anti-Semitism. In reality, the campaign to boycott and isolate Israel is growing on our campuses, in our community centers, labour unions and academic associations, in our food co-ops and social justice organizations, in the streets of our cities and communities. Such statements do nothing to legitimize a fundamentally illegitimate project — the colonization of Palestine and the dispossession of Palestinians.

While Biden and Lapid trumpet their military alliance, we must respond with a peoples' alliance: that is, an alliance that firmly rejects imperialism and Zionism, that builds the very boycott campaigns they seek to undermine or even criminalize, that supports the Palestinian people and their resistance by all means, and that stands together against the systems of domination, injustice, settler colonialism and exploitation that they represent. Together, we organize and struggle, until return and liberation, from the river to the sea.

Add your signature: https://bit.ly/bidenpalestine

Signed:

• Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC)
• Alkarama (Palestinian women's movement)
• Asociación Americana de Juristas
• BACBI
• BAYAN Canada
• BDS Vancouver – Coast Salish
• Behind Enemy Lines Anti-Imperialist Resistance
• Birmingham Palestine Action
• Cambiare rotta
• Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat
• Canada Palestine Association
• Canadian BDS Coalition
• Canadians for Peace and Justice in Kashmir
• Center for Study and Preservation of Palestine
• Centre for Counter-Hegemonic Studies
• Collectif Palestine Vaincra
• Crystal Palace Friends of Palestine
• CUNY4Palestine
• Dallas Palestine Coalition
• Dar al Janub – union for antiracism and peace policy
• Early Childhood Development Intercultural Partnership
• Edmonton Small Press Association
• Éirígí – For A New Republic
• Falastiniyat
• Free Palestine Maastricht
• Freedom Road Socialist Organization
• Frente Antiimperialista Internacionalista
• Global Peace Alliance BC Society
• Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War
• Human Rights for All ( HR4A) Saskatchewan
• Human Without Borders Organisation
• IDPAL – Indonesia Palestine Alliance
• Inminds Human Rights Group
• International Action Center
• International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
• International Jewish Antizionist Network UK
• International League of Peoples’ Struggle – Canada (ILPS)
• Jewish Network for Palestine
• Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
• Just Peace Advocates/Mouvement Pour Une Paix Juste
• Justice for Palestinians, Calgary
• Kings Bay Plowshares
• Labor for Palestine
• Let Kashmir Decide
• Louisiana Workers Voice Socialist Movement
• Madison for Palestine
• Manchester Palestine Action
• Masar Badil – Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement
• Nederlands Palestina Komitee (NPK)
• Nevadans for Palestinian Human Rights
• Niagara Movement for Justice (NMJPI)
• Not In Our Name: Jewish Antizionist CUNY Coalition
• NYC Jericho Amnesty Movement
• Oakville Palestinian Rights Association
• Occupy Bergen County
• One State Assembly
• PAJU (Palestinian and Jewish Unity)
• Palestine Action
• Palestine House – Palestinian Canadian Community Centre
• Palestinian Youth Movement
• Party of Communists USA
• Pax Christi Toronto
• Philippines-Palestine Friendship Association
• Plate-forme Charleroi-Palestine
• Red Banner Anti-Imperialist Collective
• Regina Peace Council
• Revolutionaire Eenheid
• Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
• Socialist Action
• Students for Justice in Palestine @ The Ohio State University
• Students for Justice in Palestine at UW-Madison
• Students For Palestine (NL)
• SUPER – UW
• SUPER PSU
• Syria Support Movement
• The Mapping Project Collective
• Toronto Raging Grannies
• U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)
• United National Antiwar Coalition
• Upstate Drone Action
• Whanganui Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa
• Within Our Lifetime – United for Palestine
• Workers World Party
• Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, Director and Senior Scholar, Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies, San Francisco State University

#UnitedStates #Palestine #PeoplesStruggles #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #MiddleEast

Late last year they approached the FRSO about joining and a comrade led them in a three-part study of the new book Marxist-Leninist Perspectives on Black Liberation and Socialism by Frank Chapman. They followed this with a study series on the basics of Marxism-Leninism.

The expansion of the FRSO to Detroit comes soon after the highly successful 9th Congress of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Party building was reaffirmed as the central task by the 9th Congress. This means the need to create a new revolutionary party, based on scientific socialism, one that leads sections of the working class and oppressed people in struggle in the U.S.

“We have been looking to join an organization that holds itself and its members accountable to do the work of building the revolutionary potential of the working class. Everything we have seen from FRSO has shown us that they are the Marxist-Leninist group in the U.S. most capable of doing that,” said Christina Ariano of the new Detroit FRSO.

The addition of a unified group of young militants means FRSO now stretches across Michigan, from Detroit to Lansing, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. The Detroit comrades discussed the idea of fusion, bringing the ideas of Marxism to the working class. A couple have jobs in the health care field and plan to be active in their unions. Others are in the student movement and activists in the movement for solidarity with Palestine.

#DetroitMI #PeoplesStruggles #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #Socialism

Fight Back News is circulating the text of a speech given by Sol Marquez at a celebration of International Women’s Day in Los Angeles.

Buenas tardes, hermanas, friends, comrades y Happy 114th IWD 2022!

My name is Sol Marquez, and I am speaking on behalf of the Marxist-Leninist Freedom Road Socialist Organization, whom I’ve been a member of for almost 12 years.

“Nobody’s going to save you. No one’s going to cut you down, cut the thorns thick around you. No one’s going to storm the castle walls nor

kiss awake your birth, climb down your hair, nor mount you on the white steed.

There is no one who will feed the yearning. Face it. You will have to do, do it yourself.”

This poem called Letting Go by one of our Chicana, queer and feminist sisters Gloria Anzaldúa is to remind us that we are more than capable of freeing ourselves. Our holiday, International Women’s Day, began when our New York garment working sisters had had enough.

But today isn’t just a day to celebrate and recognize us, it’s also a day to fight back.

We have come a long way. For Chicanas and Latinas, between the 1920s and 1950s we suffered forced and state-sanctioned sterilization in the highest numbers of the U.S. Out of about 60,000 total sterilizations, more than 20,000 were Chicanas and in California, meaning one-third all the sterilizations in the U.S. were to our people. The graph here demonstrates how in California, working-class and less educated Raza was the target. In other words, the graph proves how this country not only was founded on racism, but how it happily commits eugenics on non-white, and working-class people.

Our Black sisters in the Black Belt South, were also targeted by these sterilizations, where they too were disproportionately sterilized over white and wealthier women.

And while Chicanas in California were the biggest number of sterilizations, the highest rate of them was to our Puerto Rican sisters – one out of three – of them during this time, fell victim to being sterilized.

Chicanas and Latinas’ reproduction has forever been seen a threat to the U.S. “The Browning of America” or children of undocumented immigrants like myself who are referred to as “anchor babies.” We are seen as parasites who only want to live off this country’s social programs like WIC and welfare, and that our mothers are unintelligent and lazy. Let’s also not act like sterilizations are a thing of the past, because today our undocumented sisters are the target! Today, detention centers are continuing in this longstanding tradition of eugenics.

Today, gender-based oppression is rising like never before. Sexual violence and intimate partner abuse continue to be tolerated and taken lightly by the U.S. legal system. It’s no accident that the weight of these crimes falls most heavily on women, both cisgender and trans, and on our non-binary siblings.

Texas, Mississippi and Florida are three places where the system is currently attacking our reproductive freedom, and the right to determine what is best for our bodies.

Let’s continue fighting back against these attacks on us, sisters. March 8 is our day, but also our reminder to keep pushing back against the many ways the U.S. attempts to wipe out our people, through controlling what we do with our bodies. In Los Angeles, I have learned that not only do women hold up half the sky, but we also quite literally lead the movements.

If you would like to talk with me about revolution and joining Freedom Road, send me a message or go to frso.org/join. If you’re here today, it’s because you understand the importance of us sisters, leading ourselves to freedom. FRSO is growing in Los Angeles, and it’s because we are sick and tired of being ruled. Thank you, sisters and happy International Women’s Day!

#LosAngelesCA #PeoplesStruggles #InternationalWomensDay #Free