Tallahassee, FL – If you are like me, you have probably checked your bank account dozens of times throughout the day waiting for the recent round of $600 stimulus checks.

If you are like me, then you have searched online through Google for “stimulus check,” “delay” or anything else that can explain the holdup of much needed financial relief.

This second round of stimulus checks is a complete insult to the millions of workers who pay way too much in taxes and yet are constantly disregarded and disrespected by the ruling class.

Just last week, in a stunning position, Donald Trump urged Congress to give Americans $2000 in stimulus relief per eligible American. Yet, Mitch Connell and even 41 Democrats voted against the enlargement of stimulus checks.

Over 300,000 Americans have died from coronavirus and it has affected the entire country – oppressed nationality workers, and disabled people are bearing the brunt of this epidemic.

Despite this fact, that we are currently in one of the most desperate economic situations in our recent lifetimes, us workers are not getting any sort of support. Politicians instead give millions of dollars in tax breaks and stimulus packages to big businesses and support the continuous exploitation of workers without a national mandate for hazard pay.

If you are like me, then you are pissed.

As I checked my bank account for the 20th time, and tried everything possible to log on to the IRS “Get My Payment” tool I consulted the brain hive that is called the internet.

My Facebook feed is full of people waiting for their $600 stimulus checks.

There is one answer to the delay regarding our checks.

Third-party tax preparers.

According to NBC News, those of us who filed taxes last year with H&R Block and TurboTax will have a significant delay to the delivery of our stimulus check. With an estimate of four weeks. We will have to wait for a check or a debit card to receive our stimulus checks along with the our tax refunds.

Apparently, if a person who filed last year’s taxes chose the option to pay H&R Block and TurboTax through their refund, then the aforementioned companies will create a temporary account to receive their cut of the tax refunds.

This isn’t even the first time that this happened. If you look online you will see this occurred back in April 2020.

It was a known glitch that occurred over seven months ago. According to the same NBC same article I referenced earlier, a TurboTax rep said, “the [IRS] is the sole party with the ability to determine eligibility and distribute stimulus payments.” H&R Block is allegedly rerouting payments to its customers directly and made a comment that the glitch will be fixed today.

Millions of Americans are unemployed due to coronavirus, and the economic situation does not seem to get any better. The IRS is passing blame to tax preparers such as TurboTax and H&R Block, and these multimillion-dollar tax preparer companies pass the blame to the IRS.

Meanwhile millions of Americans are suffering. The economic situation is so dire that delaying payments by four weeks is the difference between life and death to some Americans who are struggling to pay for rent, utilities, food and rising health costs.

It does not have to be this way. We, the workers of this country, have created all that is produced through our labor and it is our right to decide how this country is run. Yet multi-millionaire politicians and the monopoly capitalists give us crumbs while they take from us with shovels.

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #Capitalism #OpEd #economy #Trump #StimulusCheck #HRBlock #TurboTax #Stimmy

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Wisconsin District of Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

Milwaukee, WI – The Freedom Road Socialist Organization was named in an article published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on January 7 after a candidate for Milwaukee County Executive was pictured at an anti-war protest near a FRSO banner.

Wisconsin FRSO does not currently endorse candidates for public office, however, we appreciate political candidates that are willing to take a principled stand against Trump’s escalation of war with Iran.

Over 100 community members, trade unionists, students, elected officials, and progressive candidates attended the anti-war rally on January 4th to say “Money for human needs, not war,” “No war against Iran,” and “U.S. Out of Iraq!”

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization has played a leading role in organizing mass movements in Milwaukee for over a decade. Nationally, FRSO claims hundreds of members as leaders in the anti-war, labor, immigrant rights, campus organizing, and police accountability movements. These popular movements encompass a broad spectrum of political ideologies, from liberalism, to social democracy, to Marxism-Leninism. FRSO believes a broad united front strategy is necessary to defeat our enemies, the billionaire capitalist class – the 1 percent.

As a billionaire’s son, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele has used his inherited wealth to buy power and attack the interests of working and oppressed people in Milwaukee County. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that a representative of Abele referred to FRSO as “kooks” in the Journal Sentinel’s redbaiting hit piece.

FRSO wants to replace the inherently undemocratic system that allows the super-rich, such as Abele and Trump, to implement their racist and anti-worker agendas over the working class majority. Recent polls show that socialism is extremely popular among young people, so while billionaires slander Socialists as “kooky,” we know that now is the time to build a mass movement for socialism to end the power of the billionaire class. We believe the working class should run society.

FRSO will play a leading role in the January 14th protest outside Trump’s rally at the UWM Panther Arena at 5:00 pm. We look forward to working with other socialists, as well as progressives, liberals, and all others who oppose Trump’s racist, anti-worker agenda.

#MilwaukeeWI #Iran #frso #OpEd #Wisconsin #Trump

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Wisconsin District of Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

Milwaukee, WI – The Freedom Road Socialist Organization was named in an article published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on January 7 after a candidate for Milwaukee County Executive was pictured at an anti-war protest near a FRSO banner.Wisconsin FRSO does not currently endorse candidates for public office, however, we appreciate political candidates that are willing to take a principled stand against Trump’s escalation of war with Iran. Over 100 community members, trade unionists, students, elected officials, and progressive candidates attended the anti-war rally on January 4th to say “Money for human needs, not war,” “No war against Iran,” and “U.S. Out of Iraq!” The Freedom Road Socialist Organization has played a leading role in organizing mass movements in Milwaukee for over a decade. Nationally, FRSO claims hundreds of members as leaders in the anti-war, labor, immigrant rights, campus organizing, and police accountability movements. These popular movements encompass a broad spectrum of political ideologies, from liberalism, to social democracy, to Marxism-Leninism. FRSO believes a broad united front strategy is necessary to defeat our enemies, the billionaire capitalist class – the 1 percent.As a billionaire’s son, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele has used his inherited wealth to buy power and attack the interests of working and oppressed people in Milwaukee County. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that a representative of Abele referred to FRSO as “kooks” in the Journal Sentinel’s redbaiting hit piece. FRSO wants to replace the inherently undemocratic system that allows the super-rich, such as Abele and Trump, to implement their racist and anti-worker agendas over the working class majority. Recent polls show that socialism is extremely popular among young people, so while billionaires slander Socialists as “kooky,” we know that now is the time to build a mass movement for socialism to end the power of the billionaire class. We believe the working class should run society.FRSO will play a leading role in the January 14th protest outside Trump’s rally at the UWM Panther Arena at 5:00 pm. We look forward to working with other socialists, as well as progressives, liberals, and all others who oppose Trump’s racist, anti-worker agenda.

#MilwaukeeWI #frso #OpEd #Wisconsin #MilwaukeeJournalSentinel

Chicago, IL – Today, a military coup took place in Bolivia. The first act began on October 20 – the day that Evo Morales was re-elected president by a ten-point margin against his nearest opponent, starting with violent protests in the country's urban middle-class neighborhoods. The final act was carried out by the head of the Bolivian Armed Forces, Gen. Williams Kaliman, who went on national television today and demanded that Morales resign. This followed a day of police mutinies in key cities, and in totality it was clear that the elected government had lost the support of the armed apparatus of the state. Without arms to fall back on, and fearing the slaughter of their supporters, Morales, his vice president Álvaro García Linera, and the president of the Senate, Adriana Salvatierra resigned. Morales stated, ”I am resigning so that my comrades will not continue to be intimidated and threatened, so that [the reactionaries} will stop burning their homes and persecuting the humble people.”

From the beginning, it must be clear that the street violence that led to this moment was not about “the people vs. the government.” In Bolivia, where the people live under a constitution that was popularly written and democratically approved in 2009, the people are the government. For the first time since the Spanish invasion, the indigenous masses exercised political control over their own territory – Bolivia being the only country left in the Americas where the majority of the population is indigenous. In the entire history of this hemisphere, only two indigenous people have been elected president – Benito Juárez in México a hundred and fifty years ago, and Evo Morales in Bolivia.

Before Evo came to office, Bolivia was the sole governance of a handful of families, the oligarchy whose historic roots lie in the Spanish Conquest and whose only fount of current legitimacy comes from U.S. capital. It was not long ago that the country was an apartheid state, where the indigenous were denied the right to vote and own property. A national democratic revolution in 1952 tore down this order, but the oligarchy quickly regained power in the new democratic order. It was in the mass revolt against this consolidation of power that Che arrived to fight, and ultimately die, alongside his Bolivian comrades.

Evo came to office in 2005 as an indigenous trade unionist, at the helm of the Movement to Socialism (MAS), a political alliance of left-wing trade unions, peasant unions and indigenous organizations. In the thirteen years since first taking office, his government has led a transformation of Bolivia from an economic backwater – a country without any sovereignty, totally beholden to American imperialist thuggery – into a genuinely prosperous society. The mines and gas refineries that used to be the sole property of U.S. firms were nationalized, and their revenue directed to lifting the poor out of poverty. For as long as Bolivia has existed, it has not known a period of greater collective prosperity and genuine democracy.

From day one, Evo's government has been a government of the mass movements, with indigenous workers and farmers occupying the halls of power that were built on their ancestor's backs. None of this could be forgiven by the oligarchy, nor by the social classes that benefited from their patronage system. These were the forces that have resisted MAS' transformation of Bolivia, and these were the forces that took to the streets on October 20th.

So what are these demonstrations about, if not democracy? The protesters decry “electoral fraud” without offering any proof, although that does not matter at all for the shameless U.S. media outlets that serve as the faithful loudspeakers of any rich thug. But, do they turn their attention to the seats of government in the capital, occupying Congress and demanding a new election? No. Instead, they set fire to union houses. They drag the elected mayors of cities and towns, only those that belong to MAS, from their homes and beat them, along with their family members. They drag one, a proud indigenous woman, into the middle of a crowd and forcibly cut off her hair. They set fire to the house of Evo's own sister. This was terrorism, on an organized scale and with the open support of the far-right opposition parties and the U.S. media.

What will now happen to the incredible society their movement has built is unclear. Reports are coming in that at least twenty people from Evo's government have sought asylum in Mexico's embassy in the capital. The wiphala, the flag that represents the diversity of Bolivia's indigenous people, has been taken down from government buildings in the capital. Evo, for his part, has declared that he will not leave. He and his vice president have gone to the countryside, to their base, in order to lead the grim struggle going forward.

The coup faces one of the most organized mass movements on the continent, one whose resilience and revolutionary courage goes back centuries, from the resistance to the Spanish Conquest in the 1500s to the armed miner uprisings of only a few decades ago. The Bolivian people possess in their history and in their lived experience a great bravery. Now they must use it to defend the better society they have built.

This week is a sober reminder that history does not move along a straight line. An incredible victory in one corner can be, and often is, accompanied by a terrible defeat in another. Such is the nature of war. And what we are witnessing in our continent, from Haiti to Chile, is a war. A contradiction, like any tension, can only last so long before it breaks. The Americas have broken open, and all energy must be coalesced into common struggle to cast the bourgeoisie of our countries – whose descendants consciously committed genocide and forced millions into slavery so that they could live in decadence – into the dustbin. “History is ours,” said Salvador Allende as airplanes of the U.S. backed military dropped bombs around him and his comrades, “and the people make history.” In Bolivia, we suffered a defeat today. Tomorrow, let us ensure a victory there and in every corner of our America.

#Bolivia #Opinion #Americas #PeoplesStruggles #Coup #OpEd #LatinAmerica #SouthAmerica #EvoMorales

Since returning to power in 2006, Ortega and the Sandinistas, formally the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN), have reversed the neoliberal agenda of privatizing important public services like water and electricity. Not only that, but they have overseen significant achievements in public housing, Zero Hunger programs, Zero Usury microcredit programs, free public education, increases in productivity, development of a strong cooperative sector, and a diversification of economic activity that even the U.S.-controlled World Bank is forced to acknowledge. The Sandinista view is that government should serve the people, not the other way around.

Despite all these accomplishments that have lifted Nicaragua out of being the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere, violence and terrorism are now gripping the country. For nearly two months, violent protesters are aiming to destabilize the country and force out President Ortega. On the surface, the U.S. corporate press makes it seem as if the entire country wants Ortega to step down amid a controversy over social security changes. To combat this distortion, we must examine deeper issues and seek truth from facts.

Media stokes opposition with twisted story

Most observers agree that the point of origin for the unrest and violence was a proposed change by the Sandinista government to social security benefits. However, after the initial student protests began at the Managua Technical University, President Ortega immediately rescinded the proposal. It is important to note, it was merely a proposed change, hoping to break the impasse between the business sector, labor unions and the government, which have an agreed-upon tripartite relationship.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was attempting to push the business sector to cut benefits, reduce health coverage and privatize public sector clinics. What has the FSLN government done since returning to power? Fight neoliberal attacks against public services. So the government proposed modest, fairly distributed increases to the social security contribution for both employer and employee, and in addition, improved healthcare coverage for pensioners.

All of this sounds rather routine for negotiations, except if the right-wing dominated press twists the story and feeds the students a slanted version. It is not conspiracy to say that the family that controls one of the country’s largest newspapers that daily calls Ortega a dictator is the same family that produced Violeta Chamorro, the U.S.-backed candidate for president in 1990. This paper is currently running stories comparing Ortega to the U.S.-backed dictatorship of the Somozas. The world turned upside down.

Similarly, when quoting the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH), the corporate press is not clear that all the deaths since late April are related to protests, with other deaths being lumped into the figures. Moreover, neither the corporate press nor the groups claiming the large death toll have made the qualification of who is dying at whose hands? It has been made to appear that all deaths are at the hands of the government. In fact, many videos and stories have surfaced showing the ultraderechistas (ultra-rightists) being violent and committing acts of terror. This was also the character of the opposition guarimbas in Venezuela. As well, the corporate media in both the U.S. and Nicaragua have failed to report that many of the NGO groups promoted in their stories are heavily funded by the U.S. government.

U.S. funding opposition NGOs and media

From 2014 to 2017, the U.S. State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funneled 55 grants worth $4.2 million to NGOs that create media stories for the opposition. One of the groups often quoted by U.S. media received over $220,000 since 2014 and is run by the son of ex-president Violeta Chamorro. The U.S. corporate media reports one-sided accounts that omit important facts: police are being murdered by ultras, the ultras’ blockades are harmful to working people, and the ultras are burning people’s houses. The one-sided reporting fits with what the U.S. government has said about Ortega, despite his popularity, since the 1980s. It also aligns with U.S. imperialism’s goals of attempting to reverse the rising tide of left movements and independent governments in Latin America.

Character of the violence reveals character of the opposition

It must be made clear: Who is being attacked? Where are the attacks being centered? In the traditional stronghold areas of the FSLN like Masaya and Leon, FSLN offices have been attacked and destroyed by the ultraderechistas (ultra-rightists). The attacks also include the private homes and small businesses of long-time Sandinistas who are working class, small owners and campesinos.

It is clear the politics of the attackers are against the most popular political party in the country and speaks to their obvious connection with the goals of U.S. imperialism. Furthermore, in small towns, the blockading of roads has cut off vital services of food and fuel to families and communities in more distant areas. This also displays the anti-working class character of the protesters. Like in Venezuela where two children’s hospitals were set on fire, Nicaragua’s violent opposition attacked health care workers. These facts allow us to conclude that the opposition is not aimed at improving Nicaragua but bringing about its destabilization. The far right hope to invite U.S. intervention and a full-on assault on public services and any gains accomplished by the Sandinistas since 2010.

While criticisms can certainly be made of some of Ortega’s concessions to the Catholic Church on abortion rights, the Sandinistas making those criticisms are also being attacked by the ultraderechistas. The U.S. media pundits will use anything they can against President Ortega’s popular leadership. As internationalists we must call for “Hands off Nicaragua” and support a restoration of peace.

U.S. imperialism continues Monroe Doctrine

In 1823, with the anti-colonial rebellions throwing off the Spanish empire throughout Latin America, the U.S. boldly declared to European empires that the region was the U.S.’s ‘backyard.’ Since then, U.S. intervention in Latin America has left millions dead, while supporting military dictatorships, and massive theft of natural resources and wealth by corporations.

The 21st century has seen little change to the U.S. approach to its southern neighbors. In April 2004, U.S. imperialism attempted a coup against democratically elected President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Since 2014, the U.S. also supported two coup attempts against democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. Maduro successfully thwarted them and came out stronger. Last month, the U.S. strengthened its military presence in South America by having Colombia join as a partner in NATO. Colombia’s eastern neighbor Venezuela immediately recognized the threat posed to their Bolivarian Revolution by having a nuclear-armed partner on their doorstep. Many on the left recognize the U.S. is attempting to regain nations that broke away from U.S. domination when the U.S. was occupied with invading and destroying Iraq in the early 2000s. In this time period, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Brazil and Honduras all saw left-leaning parties claim significant electoral victories as the movements against U.S. domination grow inside their countries. It is clear that U.S. imperialism wishes to reverse the popular trend by sowing terror and destruction through violence and calls for ‘regime change.’

Legacy of anti-imperialism

The resolve of Nicaraguans to resist and at times, successfully defeat U.S. imperialism, cannot be overstated. Their commitment to their country and their people, and to fight off the imperialists is nothing short of heroic. The way forward for internationalists in the U.S. must be to call for “U.S. hands off Nicaragua!”

Lifting the enormous influence and burden of U.S. imperialism in Nicaragua allows for a process internal to Nicaraguans to develop. The responsibility of ending the U.S. intervention machine falls squarely on the shoulders of the anti-war movement in the US. Once again, Nicaraguans are suffering through a playbook designed by U.S. imperialism to collapse an ardent anti-imperialist government whose track record of improving conditions for the workers and campesinas and campesinos stand head and shoulders above the neoliberal regimes of the 1990s.

U.S. hands off Nicaragua! No U.S. funding to opposition groups! Dialogue and peace now!

#Nicaragua #Americas #PeoplesStruggles #OpEd #Commentary

Jersey City, NJ – The U.S. opioid epidemic is yet another chapter in the shameful history of U.S. public health policy failing working-class Americans. The deadly effects of heroin and opioid addiction have long since plagued America’s resource-deprived urban centers and impoverished rural areas. However, the U.S. opioid epidemic has only recently entered the mainstream national discourse; clearly the result of its deadly effects now ravaging middle-class suburbia and the children of the 1%.

U.S. policy-makers have yet again proven only to be inclined to take action on public health epidemics if and when their deadly effects spill out of low-income urban centers and rural poverty zones into the ‘white picket fence America’ of policymakers beholden to the elite, in order to ‘stay in the game.’

Obstacles to transformational public policy changes

The non-existence of proven to harm reduction strategies – such as clean needle exchanges and free drug counselling and treatment services in the communities populated by those most in need, is a clear example of the criminality of the ruling class and their political puppeteers in Congress. Such callous indifference to human suffering is already an inherent fact of life for the masses under capitalism, but this criminal cruelty rooted in both class and national oppression hardly stops at indifference.

Instead of public health policy designed to lift people up from addiction and at least mitigate the most harmful effects of capitalist economic practices on its victims, the puppets of the 1% in Congress instead continue ever more brazen assaults on the 99%. The American Healthcare Act of 2017 (aka Trumpcare) and the expansion of the devastating ‘War on Drugs,’ both in rhetoric and in practice within Jefferson Beauregard Sessions’ Justice Department, signals in no uncertain terms that the U.S. government is resolved to further escalate its assault on the multinational working-class.

War on Drugs: Naked national oppression and class warfare.

Michelle Alexander proves this to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt in her 2010 New York Times bestseller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, pointing to the fact “African Americans are not significantly more likely to use or sell prohibited drugs than whites, but they are made criminals at drastically higher rates for precisely the same conduct.”

Rather than enact policies that combat the economic angst crippling working-class and oppressed peoples, the U.S. is doubling down on austerity and repression in oppressed communities. Therefore, it should be no surprise that substance abuse and addiction rates continue to soar; people are facing a normalization of misery that fuels the desire to escape through substance use and abuse. The U.S. is perpetuating and expanding law enforcement’s most ruthless drug-enforcement practices. These cases are then handed over to district attorneys with a dogmatic religious-like devotion to the gods of mandatory minimum sentences; an indispensable tool in ensuring fully occupied private prisons for indifferent, and outright nefarious investors seeking the most ‘bang for their buck.’ Mandatory minimums bar judges from exercising discretion in sentencing when confronted with the most egregious of injustices.

Former New Jersey governor employs newly-found compassion on his way out the door

Enemy of the working-class, and now former New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, served as front man for Reach NJ during his final year in office in 2017 in an attempt to humanize himself prior to re-entering civilian life. Reach NJ is a state-funded public-service announcement campaign that features ads imploring people struggling with addiction to seek help. Christie proclaims in one of these ads that “New Jersey is experiencing an epidemic of heroin and opioid abuse; friends and family are dying from overdoses at a rate twice the national average; that number is rising, and we are working hard to do everything we can to stop this disease.”

On the surface, this appears to be a rare instance of a large state, devastated by the opioid epidemic, actually doing something different. However, the inconvenient truth for Christie and legions of opportunist New Jersey politicians is their long-established record of support for a ‘law enforcement only’ response to not just this crisis, but every aspect of drug policy so long as middle-class hamlets or the gated communities of the 1% are spared the effects.

These policies have created a nightmarish system for working-class people struggling with drug addiction – a system best characterized as a never-ending cycle of deja vu: arrest, incarcerate, profit from incarceration, release and repeat. It would be logical to assume that someone with such a shameful record of wielding repressive state power would not dare claim to be a champion for people battling the complex challenges that come with being an addict. Right? Wrong!

The now former New Jersey governor, despite never providing the needed state funding for comprehensive addiction counselling and treatment services for poor and working-class New Jerseyans, still had the audacity to make this ‘heartfelt’ appeal in one of his many 2017 Reach NJ ads: “If you’re struggling with addiction, supporting someone who is or just don’t know where else to turn, don’t suffer, don’t wait, I want you to know you are not alone; help is within reach.”

Christie’s ploy is hardly an isolated example of a died-in-the-wool enemy of the working class attempting to rebrand themselves for personal gain; it is essential that all reactionary politicians attempting to obscure indefensible records with humanizing propaganda not be let off the hook. Now is the time to fight back against the cynical ploys used by the politicians hand-picked by the 1% to carry out anti-worker class warfare in every city and state across the U.S.

Part II of this series will address the paradoxical complexities of the U.S. opioid epidemic. The nearly simultaneous timing of the influx of deadly fentanyl-laced heroin hitting U.S. streets, with law enforcement’s nationwide crackdown on lucrative ‘pill mills’ will be explored and analyzed in detail.

#JerseyCityNJ #PeoplesStruggles #OpEd #opoid

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for some socialists in the United States last year when Robert Mugabe resigned as president of Zimbabwe. Far from celebrating the achievements of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, or even just taking an even-handed look at the successes and challenges facing the Southern African nation, a number of voices on the U.S. left seized the opportunity to smear the 93 year-old liberation leader’s legacy.

Zimbabwe underwent a tense but peaceful transition of power in November 2017 that saw Mugabe leave office after 37 years as head of state. Though the usual denunciations of Mugabe as a ‘tyrant’ came from the U.S. and British press, the left-wing journal Jacobin joined in the chorus, publishing some of the sorriest articles on Zimbabwe ever.

Jacobin is a social democratic publication that sometimes carries insightful articles about the U.S. economy and the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party. But for all their talk of socialism, they’re remarkably comfortable parroting the State Department’s line on many international issues.

So it is with Zimbabwe.

Writing in Jacobin on December 5, 2017, Benjamin Fogel asks “Why do so many Western leftists defend Robert Mugabe?” According to Fogel, Mugabe did absolutely nothing right. The charges made by Fogel are all familiar to anyone who has read a BBC or CNN article on Zimbabwe in the last 20 years: rampant corruption, opulent wealth, eliminating political opponents and using the nation’s fast-track land reform to enrich his “cronies.” But Fogel takes it one step further claiming “that Mugabe and ZANU-PF betrayed the national liberation struggle” in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle

Let’s look at the facts. In Mugabe’s 37 years as head of state, Zimbabwe transitioned from decades of white-minority rule to an independent Black-majority republic. Under British colonial rule, Zimbabwe – then known as Southern Rhodesia, named after the genocidal imperialist Cecil Rhodes – existed as an apartheid state, where a tiny class of white plantation owners possessed most of the nation’s land and natural resources. A 1962 survey by the Rhodesian government found that while Europeans comprised just 1/16th of the population, they owned more than half of the country’s land—and 82% of the fertile land!

Land hunger by the indigenous Black population fueled the nation’s liberation struggle. Led by the Zimbabwean African National Union (ZANU) and the Zimbabwean African People’s Union (ZAPU), a popular insurgency of workers, peasants and farmers defeated the Rhodesian Army – and its apartheid South African backers – in 1979.

Mugabe, one of the founders of ZANU, played an instrumental role in the liberation war’s victory, suffering 12 years of imprisonment by Rhodesian president Ian Smith, training guerrilla fighters in neighboring Mozambique, and crafting political and battlefield strategy. It’s hard for many activists in the U.S. to grasp the level of sacrifice it takes to spend 12 years in prison fighting for liberation, but it doesn’t excuse Fogel or Jacobin’s trite dismissal.

ZANU and ZAPU signed the Lancaster House Agreement with Britain and the U.S. in 1979, bringing an end to the liberation war and bringing majority-rule democracy to Zimbabwe. According to the terms of Lancaster House, the newly formed government of Zimbabwe agreed to a gradual land reform, whereby Britain and the U.S. would subsidize the purchase of land from white settlers and its redistribution to the indigenous black population. In total, both countries pledged around $1 billion in aid to Zimbabwe.

The people elected Mugabe prime minister in 1980 because of his revolutionary leadership. But while victorious, Mugabe inherited enormous economic damage inflicted by the white-minority Rhodesian government and severe underdevelopment in the countryside. Worse yet, Britain paid only a fraction of its obligation and the U.S. paid nothing at all. White landowners took advantage of the agreement, only selling fallow land to the government – at a markup! Fogel pays only lip-service to these obstacles, treating them as an after-thought rather than the set of concrete conditions that Mugabe’s government faced.

More tellingly, Fogel completely ignores the devastating foreign intervention by apartheid South Africa in the 1980s aimed at crushing independent African governments, Zimbabwe included. South Africa sent troops to back Ian Smith’s white minority regime as it terrorized indigenous Black Zimbabweans during the liberation struggle, but even after independence, South African destabilization cost Zimbabwe a staggering $10 billion – more than 14 times the total debt left by the deposed Rhodesian government – according to a 1998 study by Joseph Hanlon of the London School of Economics. The disturbances in Mtebeleland during the 1980s, which Fogel also cites, trace back to South African-backed death squads and arms shipments to anti-government rebels in the countryside.

In the 1990s, a series of the worst droughts in modern Zimbabwean history added fuel to the fire of Western betrayal. These challenges forced the government to take loans from international creditors in order to pay workers’ wages, finance future land reform efforts, and continue funding successful social programs, like the public education system. Like countless oppressed nations have experienced though, the IMF and World Bank never loan money without strings attached.

Fast-Track Land Reform

Mugabe’s government found itself between a rock and a hard place, as international creditors pushed for austerity measures while the U.S. and Britain continued to ignore their obligations. War veterans launched protests demanding more radical measures, and trade unions struck government services demanding raises. Something had to give – and it did in 1999, when liberation war veterans began directly organizing peasants, workers, and the urban poor to seize land from white owners.

While initially concerned that the land occupations would worsen the nation’s economic situation, Mugabe’s government came to embrace these actions. In the year 2000, the ruling ZANU-PF party, led by Mugabe, codified these land occupations in the constitution as the ‘Fast Track Land Reform Program’.

This is where the Jacobin drive-by of Mugabe really hits the skids. Fogel offers some mealy-mouthed praise for the “popular movement performing actual land reform” while also making the tired claim that Mugabe “hijacked the land reform project, ensuring his family and their cronies made off with the prime land.”

But that’s just a bald-faced lie. According to a study of Zimbabwe’s fast-track land reform published in 2013 by Joseph Hanlon, J. M. Manjengwa and Teresa Smart, “less than 5% of new farmers with under 10% of the land are ‘cronies’ [of the government]” – a term they heavily criticize as a vague political slur.

In actuality, the vast majority of the land reform recipients were workers, peasants, and farmers. Ian Scoones’ groundbreaking 2010 study of Zimbabwe’s land reform found that 54% of recipients of individual land plots were peasants and farmers, 12% were workers or urban poor people, 17% were civil service workers, ranging from teachers to public sector workers, 4% were security services personnel, 5% were business people, and 8% were former farm workers. For the larger commercial farms, 12% of land recipients were peasants/farmers, 44% were workers or urban poor, 26% were civil service, 2% were security service personnel, 10% were business people, and 5% were former farmworkers.

From 2000 to 2013, 169,000 Black Zimbabwean farmers and their families received land, making it the single-largest and most progressive land reform in the history of Africa. Compare this to South Africa, where white landowners still possess over 73% of the nation’s land 14 years after the end of apartheid, and its clear that Zimbabwe’s example is something to celebrate.

For years, the State Department and the British government churned out this garbage of land reform “cronyism,” which wasn’t backed up by any data, and the corporate media was more than willing to publish it. But by 2009, study after study disproved the claim that the land reform had only benefitted Mugabe’s “cronies.” With so much data at their disposal, Fogel and Jacobin are either stuck in the mid-2000s or just willingly ignorant.

Socialism and National Democratic Revolution

The weirdest part of Fogel’s article is how much time he spends denouncing the idea of “Mugabe as a socialist revolutionary” – an idea I’ve only seen published in the Wall Street Journal.

While Marxism heavily influenced both ZANU and Mugabe during the liberation struggle, Zimbabwe did not pursue a socialist path after independence. Like many oppressed nations that overthrew colonialism in the post-WWII period, Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle was a national democratic revolution, which brought together all classes opposed to imperialism. The government led by Mugabe and ZANU-PF was national democratic, not socialist.

But as socialists living in the United States – the largest and most violent imperialist country on earth – it’s our duty to support the struggles of oppressed nations to win their freedom, whether they’re socialist or not. Workers in the U.S. have a common interest with all people around the world fighting the same class of billionaires, banks and corporations that we do. That’s part of the material basis for international solidarity and Jacobin just doesn’t do that.

Fogel’s opportunism reaches new heights when he compares Mugabe’s government to two other national democratic projects: the socialist-led government in Venezuela, and Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya. While acknowledging that “Venezuela suffers from serious economic problems,” he quickly adds that the oil-rich Latin American nation “reached heights far beyond those in Zimbabwe.” Incredibly, he also writes that Qaddafi “at least built a semi-decent welfare state for Libyans.”

Oh my! What a stunning reversal for Jacobin, which published a disgraceful hit-piece on Venezuela just five months earlier (see: “ Being Honest About Venezuela” by Mike Gonzalez) and gave hand-wringing support for the NATO-backed Libyan rebels in 2011, who now operate open-air slave markets along the Mediterranean (see: “ Libya and the Left” by Peter Frase).

One wonders what kind of outcome Fogel and the editors at Jacobin would like to see for Zimbabwe. Is it one where the U.S. and British-backed Movement for a Democratic Change (MDC) come to power? MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, a sell-out opportunist trade union leader, regularly meets with U.S. and British officials and lobbies for more devastating sanctions on his own nation. Would his pro-West party better advance Jacobin’s misguided concept of ‘socialism’? Or would they like an imaginary, non-existent clique of perfect socialist revolutionaries, with well-worn copies of Jacobin’ s holiday issue tucked in their coat pockets, coming to power like they wanted for Libya in 2011?

Liberation from Zimbabwe to the U.S.A.

While this issue may seem abstract to a lot of socialists in the U.S., some of the implications hit closer to home than many realize. For one, Zimbabwe still suffers far-reaching sanctions imposed by the U.S. and Britain for taking back its land – under Mugabe’s government, no less. Meanwhile, the U.S. government’s promise of financial support in the Lancaster House Agreement goes unfulfilled, as does Britain’s obligations. The enormous economic challenges that Zimbabwe indeed faces today – from inflation to high unemployment – principally come from these outside factors. Socialists in the U.S. owe our support and international solidarity to the people of Zimbabwe as they continue struggling against imperialism.

But beyond the immediate economic struggles, there are many striking parallels between Zimbabwe’s ongoing liberation struggle and the struggle for Black liberation in the U.S.

These parallels weren’t lost on then-Rhodesian president Ian Smith, who looked to another former British colony ruled by a white minority when he issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. Smith saw a kinship with slaveowners like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who issued their own “UDI” in 1776. Indeed, Rhodesia’s UDI drew its textual inspiration from the U.S. Declaration of Independence, hoping to stave off the international pressures of decolonization.

Zimbabwe’s ‘civil war’ from 1966 to 1979 brought a majority-Black government to power, just as following the U.S. Civil War – the second American Revolution – the formerly enslaved Black population elected majority Republican state legislatures committed to equal rights, including a Black-majority legislature in South Carolina.

Reconstruction in the U.S. wasn’t a socialist revolution. It was a democratic revolution, whose aim was to bring the political and economic gains made under capitalist democracy to a section of the people – African Americans – that remained in literal slavery after the Revolution of 1776.

But in the U.S., the second revolution didn’t solve the land question. The guarantee of redistribution to the freed Black population – “40 acres and a mule,” promised in General Sherman’s Field Order 15 – went unfulfilled, and the white plantation class was allowed to keep their land and wealth. With their economic power intact, they used paramilitary groups like the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize the Black population and restore their political power by 1877.

Zimbabwe faced a similar dilemma in the late 1990s. The land question remained largely unresolved, with the white landowning class retaining most of their wealth and angling to restore their political power.

But the Zimbabwean people wrote their own history and took back their land. President Mugabe and ZANU-PF supported these efforts and codified them in the constitution – and they paid an enormous price for this, ranging from sanctions to foreign-backed destabilization. Whatever Mugabe’s shortcomings and mistakes – and he had plenty – his government represented the people’s continued national democratic struggle against imperialism.

Jacobin’s attacks on Mugabe and Zimbabwe’s national democratic revolution are just another sorry example of the chauvinism far too common in the U.S. Thankfully there are better examples of international solidarity we can look to, like the 1,000-plus crowd of African Americans who packed into Mount Olive Baptist Church in New York to hear Mugabe speak in 2000. While discussing land reform in his own nation, Mugabe expressed his solidarity for the fight against racism and white supremacy in the U.S.

Fogel’s piece seems preoccupied with the fate of ex-patriot intellectuals in Zimbabwe, and he seems very offended by the criticism of Jacobin’s position on social media. He doesn’t seem very concerned with the masses of ordinary Black Zimbabweans who, for the first time in a century, own their own land and control their own nation. He should probably spend less time on Facebook and Twitter, and more time organizing against the U.S. government’s imperialist designs for nations like Zimbabwe, Venezuela and Libya.

Jacobin, too, should consider that workers in the United States need every ally we can get in the fight against our own ruling class of billionaires, bankers and corporations. We should put our time and energy towards helping to break the shackles on independent nations, like Zimbabwe, rather than echoing the talking points of the rich and powerful.

#UnitedStates #OpEd #Zimbabwe #RobertMugabe #Jacobin #Africa

Trump's executive action on trade has a lot of people confused, and it's understandable. Like he did on the campaign trail, Trump has played off his executive order as ‘anti-establishment’ and ‘shaking up Washington.’ After all, Wall Street and corporate America wanted the TPP passed, along with most Democrat and Republican leaders.

But Trump immediately filled his cabinet with billionaires and corporate executives, who generally support the same 'free trade' deals he criticized. For instance, Trump's pick for treasury secretary, former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin, is a major free trade proponent, as is investment banker Gary Cohn, who will head up Trump's National Economic Council. Even Vice President Mike Pence built his political career supporting free trade. So what the hell is going on, exactly?

First off, Trump's executive order on the TPP barely drew a yawn from Wall Street, much less a harsh condemnation. Investors priced this move into the stock market months ago. Support in Congress for the TPP dried up even before Trump's unlikely victory in November 2016 due to widespread opposition to corporate outsourcing. To Wall Street, Trump's order was just a formality.

An offer he can't refuse: Opposing free trade deals important to Trump's victory

Wall Street has accepted the TPP isn't happening. The 2016 election pitted two candidates who represented Wall Street, and the billionaire, Donald Trump, won. While Trump now acts as the political representative for monopoly capitalism in the U.S., it's important to remember that he was not their first choice to win either the GOP primary or the presidency. Wall Street largely favored Clinton in the election, fearing Trump's unpredictable behavior and some of his populist rhetoric. Even Trump himself didn't expect to survive past the first few caucuses and primaries, according to campaign sources.

But from literally the first day of his campaign, Trump made repealing trade deals a defining issue. Along with building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, opposing trade deals became his signature platform point. Both Trump and Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders campaigned against free trade, and this message resonated with many working class voters. It's one of the major reasons why Trump trounced the field of typical corporate Republicans in the primary and mobilized enough votes to win Rust Belt states in November.

Trump had to kill the TPP. He's already walking back on other promises that were completely farcical – making Mexico pay for the wall; repeal-and-replace the Affordable Care Act on the first day; deport all undocumented immigrants. He's already made peace with Wall Street and corporate America – and they with him – but opposing free trade agreements struck a particular nerve with a massive part of Trump's mass base. He can't afford to turn them against him this early, especially in the face of giant street protests.

Bring the jobs back: Lies and damned lies

Trade deals have hurt workers on all sides of the U.S., Mexican and Canadian border. Beginning in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan launched an offensive against unions and struck down restrictions on trade. Wall Street began to buy up manufacturing businesses, outsource operations, cut jobs, bust unions, and slash wages and benefits. Corporations stepped up manufacturing goods in Third World countries because of lower wages, fewer labor laws and little to no regulations on safety or pollution. This continued into the 1990s under Bill Clinton, who signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico and Canada, and into the 2000s.

From the signing of NAFTA in 1994 to 2015, the U.S. lost about 4.5 million manufacturing jobs total. Outsourcing and trade agreements contributed to this trend as corporations imported cheap goods manufactured in the Third World.

However, the major source of U.S. manufacturing job losses was automation, not trade agreements as Trump claims. Technological innovations and robotics in the last 30 years phased out millions of jobs, which lowered labor costs while raising productivity – and profits. Rising wages in developing countries, where U.S. companies exploited cheap labor for decades, has made outsourcing manufacturing operations less profitable and riskier. As a result, quite a few companies have already moved manufacturing operations back to the U.S. They simply employ less workers.

Trump's populist talk about the decline of good manufacturing jobs touched on real anger felt by workers, who saw their wages and standard of living decline because of capitalist greed. But he can't and won't deliver on his promises to “bring manufacturing jobs back” from Mexico, China and other countries – jobs largely eliminated by automation. Instead, Trump plans to viciously attack unions, wages and benefits with National Right to Work legislation and more, all in the name of corporate profits.

Rise of the machines: Using automation to boost profits, hurt workers

Contrary to Trump's claims, manufacturing output in the U.S. today is actually double that of 1979 when adjusted for inflation, totaling $1.91 trillion in 2015, according to the Department of Commerce. But while the industry produces more, it employs fewer workers due to automation. For example, auto manufacturers like General Motors employ roughly a third of their 1979 workforce despite producing far more cars.

Even when productivity increases in the U.S., the workers don't see the benefits. From 1975 to 2015, productivity increased about six times more than wages, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In other words, corporations rake in greater profits from automation and technological progress while workers lose jobs and wages.

Far from pushing a comeback of well-paid manufacturing jobs, Trump and his cabinet of billionaires plan to further leverage automation against workers. Andy Puzder, the former fast food CEO of CKE Restaurants and Trump's pick for labor secretary, strongly supports using robotics and technology to eliminate even more jobs. In 2014, Puzder argued for replacing workers with robots since, in his words, robots are “always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex or race discrimination case.” For Puzder and other fast food CEOs facing pressure from workers in the Fight for $15 movement, they see automation as a weapon against labor's demands for higher wages and benefits.

Trump and war against China: Wall Street's long-term policy

Wall Street had already accepted the fact that the TPP wasn't going to pass. To them, the trade agreement was never particularly important as a purely economic initiative. In the short and medium term, most economists projected it would actually amount to a net loss for the U.S.

The real value of the TPP to Washington was as a long-term foreign policy maneuver: a centerpiece of Obama's so-called ‘Pivot to Asia.’ Long-term, the overall policy of the U.S. is preparing for a war with the People's Republic of China. Most of Wall Street favored the Obama administration's approach of boxing out China in Southeast Asia and Latin America and positioning military pieces for war, all while avoiding direct conflicts in the meantime. They hoped the TPP would keep countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Mexico, New Zealand and Peru from aligning with China, bribing their national capitalists with unrestricted access to U.S. markets and investment.

Trump, along with a huge section of industry, has something different in mind. They also plan on war with China, but they favor ramping up economic and military aggressions sooner rather than later. Steve Bannon, an avowed white nationalist advisor to Trump, recently placed in charge of the National Security Council, said on his radio show in March 2016, “We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to ten years.” Other key officials in Trump's cabinet, like commerce secretary nominee and billionaire Wilbur Ross, favor taking adverse economic action against China. Trump himself threatened to label China a “currency manipulator,” slap tariffs on Chinese imports, and risk a trade war.

Energy corporations like Exxon-Mobil – who’s former CEO Rex Tillerson now runs the state department under the Trump administration – want to speed up the time table for confronting China. In Africa, South America and even parts of Europe, Chinese investment continues to grow, which threatens U.S. energy corporations' control over key petroleum and natural gas reserves in countries like Angola and Nigeria. The Obama administration's gradual pivot to Asia offered few immediate benefits for the fossil fuel industry, especially in light of expanding domestic energy production in natural gas and shale oil.

Similarly, the auto industry and other domestic manufacturers viewed the TPP with skepticism. While weaker regulations in the agreement could have boosted car exports, industry executives also feared an influx of cheap imports, especially from Asia. With rising wages in many developing