FIST

2.12.2007

Youth pay price of capitalism’s environmental destruction

By David Hoskins

Published Feb 9, 2007 9:45 AM

The Bush administration’s proposed 2008 budget calls for an extraordinary $2.9 trillion in spending.

A reasonable observer might expect that a budget that huge would allocate sufficient resources to fund the types of programs that would benefit young workers and students: universal higher education and the cancellation of existing student loan debt, job training, and public works programs employing young people to construct much-needed mass transit and energy-efficient affordable housing.

Instead, the Bush budget is designed to finance the escalation of conflict in the Middle East. It provides the Pentagon another $100 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars this year, on top of the $70 billion already allocated by Congress, plus $141.7 billion for these wars next year—all to pay for death and destruction meant to crush opposition to the super-exploitation of the area by the major U.S. and British oil companies.

The total 2008 Pentagon budget, which also includes huge expenditures on costly weapons systems and basing troops around the world, would come to $624.6 billion.

Killing people quickly and slowly

The immediate human impact of the Iraq war is obvious. Over 3,100 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq so far. Civilian Iraqi casualties of the violence are reported in excess of 60,000. The average age of a dead U.S. soldier in Iraq is less than 27.

The war in Iraq not only affects the young by sapping resources and sending them off to die. It also has dire environmental consequences for those with the longest time left to live on this planet.

The use of depleted uranium (DU), white phosphorus, MK77 Mod 5 napalm and other outlawed incendiary weapons in Iraq has an immediate and devastating effect on the health of soldiers and civilians. The Sierra Club of Canada pointed out as early as 1999 that “the environmental consequences of DU weapons residue will be felt for thousands of years as its decay products continually transform into other hazardous radioactive substances in the uranium decay chain.”

The U.S. economy was long ago deliberately structured to be dependent on oil by an agreement among the oil, rubber and automobile companies to stifle quality mass transit. (Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” gives the details.) According to the Energy Information Association, U.S. petroleum consumption now exceeds 20.8 million barrels a day. It’s a perfect example of how, under capitalism, short-term economic growth prevails over long-term sustainability because of the drive for profits.

Most workers across the United States have no access to reliable public transportation and must have cars to get to work, to shop, to have a social life. This takes a toll on the young worker’s pocketbook as gasoline prices remain above $2 a gallon. The environment also suffers as increased travel eats up almost 9.2 million barrels of oil a day.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) met in Paris at the beginning of February and issued a long-awaited report that finally confirmed, with much scientific data, that human activity is the main factor behind global warming. The IPCC predicted that temperatures will continue to rise by as much as 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

Global warming is caused when the concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO₂) rises and they begin to form a heat-trapping blanket around the Earth. More than half of the CO₂ now in the atmosphere comes from the burning of fossil fuels—oil, coal and natural gas. Deforestation is another main contributor to CO₂ because trees take in CO₂ and put out oxygen.

Environmental degradation and profits

The history of capitalism is replete with examples of disregard for the environment and the lives of young workers. The industrial revolution saw the creation of marvelous new technologies and laid the material basis for capitalism’s ascendancy around the world. Since the capitalists used these technologies to maximize their profits, widespread pollution resulted.

Manchester, England, in the 19th century was an example of how capitalism’s implementation of technology was ruinous from the beginning. There was no space in this industrial town for gardens or green spaces. The sky was filled with thick smoke that polluted the lungs, clothing and homes of the workers forced to live in the city.

Fifty-seven percent of working-class children there died before they reached the age of five. The average life expectancy for the poor was just 17 years. A government report issued in 1842 left no doubt that many of these deaths were the consequence of severe environmental degradation. The co-founder of scientific socialism, Frederick Engels, wrote about this assault on the workers and the environment in his 1845 book “The Condition of the Working Class in England.”

As capitalism in some countries advanced into modern imperialism, with its territorial division of the world among capitalist powers, modern and frequent warfare also arose.

The first and second world wars saw the redrawing of maps in Africa, the Middle East and Asia by the colonial/imperialist powers. The U.S. later waged ruthless wars against national liberation movements in Vietnam and Korea that were led by communists. And the first Gulf War proved itself just a precursor to the current occupation of Iraq.

The U.S. military says that 617,000 U.S. soldiers died in combat in the 20th century. Most of these soldiers were young and recruited from the working class; many were also from the nationally oppressed.

One of the biggest environmental threats arose out of World War II with the development and use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. government. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the deaths of an estimated 215,000 Japanese civilians. Black rain fell in some areas following the blast, bringing down radioactive material and creating a secondary source of exposure. Radiation-induced cancers and leukemia resulted along with widespread birth deformities and stillbirths.

The United States’ historical use of nuclear weapons and the recent threats of perpetual warfare under the Bush doctrine have made it necessary for countries such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to develop nuclear technology for self-defense purposes.

U.S. imperialism’s current refusal to tackle the root causes of global warming is just the most recent example of the misuse of modern technology by the ruling class.

Capitalism’s derelict stewardship of the environment points to the necessity for workers and oppressed to control the means of production so that technology can be redirected to meet people’s needs.

Socialism: A sustainable model

There is nothing inherently bad for the environment about the scientific and technological advances made since the industrial revolution. In fact, socialist Cuba shines a bright light on how workers’ control can lead to a more sustainable implementation of modern inventions.

Cuba has fought its way to the forefront of conservation and sustainable development against the backdrop of a brutal U.S.-led blockade of the country. The island nation has made incredible advances in farming techniques, housing construction and energy conservation.

One of Cuba’s most impressive achievements is the development of organic agriculture, beginning in the early 1990s. It successfully combines organically produced fertilizer and crop rotation techniques with modern bio-pesticides that use non-toxic microbial formulations to control pests and increase soil nutrition.

Neighborhood vegetable gardens in cities have reduced the amount of transportation necessary to feed urban areas. Havana, for example, has developed 50,000 community gardens to help feed the city.

Cuba reduced its reliance on oil in transportation by fitting public buses with bike racks and distributing over one million Chinese-made bicycles to the Cuban people. Experimentation with more natural building materials, such as bamboo, for the construction of modern-style homes was developed in response to concerns over the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from traditional construction methods.

Cuba has also integrated environmental education as part of its national curriculum while implementing special conservation programs for mountainous areas.

The way forward

Young people and students in the United States have been in the vanguard of environmental preservation. It is not unusual that young workers with their whole life ahead of them, many of whom face the question of when or whether to begin raising a family, would look to the future dangers posed by pollution with a sense of moral outrage.

Students played a key role in the establishment of the first Earth Day in 1970 and young people today are involved in a variety of environmental causes. But a key ingredient is often missing. That ingredient is class-consciousness.

Environmental degradation occurs because the capitalists are in charge of technology. Not surprisingly the multinational working class suffers the most from the environmental damage that results.

It is important that militant environmental action not be separated from the broader revolutionary movement for working class power. The campaign for things like clean air, fresh drinking water and sustainable coastal areas should be linked to the workers’ broader economic demands for affordable housing, education, healthcare and living-wage jobs.

The only way for workers to secure these demands for themselves is to organize a political movement to take the power, which is denied them under the plutocracy that the capitalists call democracy. Young workers and students must strive to position themselves at the forefront of this revolutionary working class movement for environmental and social justice.

The writer is an organizer of FIST-Fight Imperialism, Stand Together—youth group. Contact fist@workers.org for more information.

Coalition plans May Day actions

Immigrant rights activists meet in Los Angeles

By Minnie Bruce Pratt
and
LeiLani Dowell
Los Angeles

Published Feb 8, 2007 1:38 AM

In an historic development in the U.S. immigrant rights struggle, a coalition of national organizations met in Los Angeles on Feb. 3-4 to plan and coordinate the “Great American Boycott II” for May 1.

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Feb. 2 protest in front of Los Angeles
Federal Building.

WW photo: Dante Strobino

Called by the March 25 Coalition, initiator of the 2006 May Day actions that brought millions into the streets, the coalition aims to defend immigrant workers and show their power by bringing “business as usual” to a halt across the country on May Day.

William Torres of the coalition described the boycott as “the ultimate fight for dignity and justice.”

After the 2006 actions, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) stepped up vicious raids and deportations in an attempt to stop immigrant workers from organizing.

In one of hundreds of examples, ICE combined union-busting with immigrant worker repression by arresting 21 workers at a North Carolina hog-processing plant on Jan. 24. The raid followed two major protests at the Smithfield plant: one initiated by Latina women to stop harassment over immigration papers, and another led by African-American workers to demand union recognition and Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday. (Workers World, Feb. 2)

The Smithfield raids came after similar raids on thousands of workers at Swift and Co. meatpacking plants in six states on Dec. 12, 2006, when ICE agents terrorized and arrested workers from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Sudan, Ethiopia and elsewhere.

Conference mobilizes to defend workers

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but she joined the Feb. 2
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ICE raided this Latina's job,
taking half the workforce,
but she joined the Feb. 2
protest.

WW photo: Cheryl LaBash

A press conference and demonstration condemning the raids, called by March 25 Coalition organizers on Feb. 2 outside the Los Angeles Federal Building, drew a militant 80 people. Two Latina women from a local factory raided the previous day came and described the brutalization by ICE agents, who had held guns to the heads of workers.

The next day Teresa Gutierrez of the New York May 1 Coalition and the International Action Center emphasized: “This conference gathers the movement to defend immigrant workers—from fighting ICE attacks to changing devastating day-to-day working conditions. By mobilizing in the streets, we defeated the Sensenbrenner bill. Together, we can stop the raids!”

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner sponsored the racist and punitive H.R. 4437, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December 2005. One of its many discriminatory components was the proposed erection of a 700-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. Because of massive worker protest in 2006, the bill died in the U.S. Senate.

Chito Quijano, of the progressive Filipino alliance BAYAN-USA and the California Nurses Association, recounted a call for help from a cousin, a documented worker and 20-year U.S. resident, arrested on a trumped-up charge by ICE and threatened with deportation. Quijano said: “Sensenbrenner was the fire that fed last year’s massive protest. This year, the raids will be the fuel.”

A plenary on “Globalization of Immigrant Labor and Transnational Capitalism” featured Teresa Gutierrez and William Robinson, professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the leading U.S. academic critics of capitalism. Robinson outlined the growth of immigration and repression in the United States over the last 30 years, pointing out that contemporary “transnational capitalism” makes the profits it needs to sustain its existence through the value produced by low-wage labor of immigrants. To keep those profits it must maintain economic, legal and cultural control of immigrant workers.

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March 25 Coalition's William Torres
demands, "Stop the raids!"

Gutierrez highlighted the use of racism to divide the working class in its quest for profits. She cited recent inflammatory remarks by right-winger Pat Buchanan and former National Security Council member Samuel Huntingdon, that project when the United States will cease to have a “European” majority and characterize immigrants as threatening the country’s “national identity.”

Gutierrez posed a crucial question: “How, given the repression against immigrants, can we sustain the magnificent movement begun May Day 2006, and bring unity to the immigrant rights struggle?” She pointed out that the biggest fear of the right wing in the United States was that the immigrant question will cause all workers to question what kind of society the United States will be, and will raise the possibility of working-class unity across all nationalities.

Working-class unity

The theme of working-class unity across borders wove through the proceedings. Javier Rodríguez, a March 25 Coalition convener, said: “This conference is significant because it is the first organized national effort to convene the major coalitions and groups that are more to the left, that initiated last year’s May 1 boycott. This is the movement that will attempt to coalesce to establish a historical alliance of Latin@s and African Americans. All the roots are here at this conference, with significant representation from both groups.”

Clarence Thomas, an initiator of the Million Worker March, member of International Longshore Workers Union Local 10 and the Alameda County Central Labor Council’s Executive Board, paid homage to the country and people of Mexico for their support in the historical struggle against U.S. slavery, and called for the absolute right of Mexican@s to travel across the U.S.-Mexican border without reprisals. He noted that on May 1, 2006, in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, immigrant truckers refused to move shipping containers, shutting down 90 percent of the shipping. Those ports handle 40 percent of all container traffic coming into the United States.

Thomas vowed to return to Local 10 to ask that it participate in May 1 in a “meaningful way,” adding, “This is a rank-and-file movement, and that’s what’s keeping it afloat.”

Another emphasis of the conference was on international unity across borders, with a plenary featuring Pablo Franco Hernández of the Unión de Juristas de México and attorney for Oaxacan political prisoners, and Senator José Medina of the PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática) of Mexico. Both spoke of the movement against repression in the state of Oaxaca and its importance to the immigrant rights struggle within U.S. borders, tied as both movements are to resisting the misery and death wreaked by forces of capitalist globalization. The Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca organized massive demonstrations during 2006 for people-directed political autonomy; the Mexican government mounted violent reprisals, including arrests of Flavio Sosa and other leaders.

Medina called for an immediate end to massive deportations within the United States, and emphasized his opposition to any temporary worker program—“modern slavery to a handful of corporations.”

In a plenary on “History and Analysis of the Immigrant and Civil Rights Movement 1968-2006,” Ché López of the Border Social Forum chronicled the immigrant rights movement in North America from 1848 to the formation of his own organization in 2006, drawing together activists on both sides of the border to internationalize the struggle. He connected the new surge of organizing to a rise in class struggle against the current U.S. imperialist agenda, calling for May 1 to represent millions of immigrant and migrant workers all over the world as International Workers Day: “Social change needs to be created from the bottom, and will be by immigrants.”

Stating “I’m here to say the face of the immigrant rights movement is international,” Vicente Panamá Alba of the May 1 Coalition, New York, affirmed, “We are committed to mobilizing the international working class in New York for May 1.”

A video message from Elvira Arellano brought forward the special oppression and resistance of women immigrant workers. Arellano, founder of La Familia Unida Latina, has been in sanctuary in Chicago for six months in defiance of threatened deportation. She affirmed, “I am not a criminal. I am a mother and a father to my son. I fight so the undocumented people will be respected.”

Speakers and workshops at the conference emphasized the need to highlight the issues of immigrant women, such as their vulnerability to rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence when deportation can be used as a threat. Participants called for greater visibility and representation by women in the struggle, and stressed the leadership and resistance of women. One such leader was María Guardado, a former member of the FMLN, the liberation movement of El Salvador, who praised the conference as “a day to launch a great, important movement that is much needed, as we have to organize against the entire system that is the enemy of us all.”

National and transnational action reports and report-backs from the workshops including statements from religious leaders. Mohammed Hanif, imam with the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, vowed support, saying, “We are all brothers and sisters, to live together and fight together.” Bishop Filipe C. Teixeira, OFSJC, originally of Angola, said, “As a religious leader, as an immigrant man, I find in this conference ... unity with my brothers and sisters who are struggling.”

Northern California organizer Evelina Molina reminded workshop participants, “The farm worker movement was a class struggle. Let’s name this movement for what it is: a class struggle!” Molina helped organize 40,000 in May 2006 with KBBF’s “Voice of the Worker” in Santa Rosa—the first community-based non-profit Spanish language radio station, which celebrated 35 years in 2006.

Leon Waters of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund drew the connections between the immigrant rights struggle and that of people displaced internally, like the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

Walter Sinche from Pachamama Ecuadorian Organizations stated that the rights of Indigenous people throughout the Americas must be raised in the immigrant rights struggle. Sinche said he will march on May Day because it “is better to lose your job than your dignity.”

The need to close the disconnect between the anti-war movement and the immigration struggle and to educate the anti-war movement on the “other wars” in the United States, as well as the need for the immigrant rights struggle to endorse anti-war actions, was part of the report-back from the “U.S. Wars, Iraq and Immigration” workshop by Dianne Mathiowetz of the International Action Center-Atlanta.

Participating groups and organizations included Chispa, ELAC, Students for Immigrant Rights, APALC, South Asian Network, Korea Truth Commission, Hands Off Public Housing-New Orleans, Coalición de Derechos Humanos, Committee for Justice for Héctor Rivas, Mujeres Unidas Y Activas, Comité Pro-Amnistía Y Justicia Social, Jobs with Justice, TIGRA, Voices Crossing Frontiers/Voces Cruzando Fronteras, Unión del Barrio, P.U.E.B.L.O., UCLA Labor Center, IBT 808, U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange, SEIU 660, Bay Area Teamsters, FIST—Fight Imperialism, Stand Together, National Lawyers Guild, Sex Workers Across Borders, Workers World Party, Freedom Socialist Party, World Can’t Wait, and Peace & Freedom Party.

The conference closed with agreement on the points of unity and recommendations for action.

A statement by Emma Lozano, Director of the Chicago-based Sin Fronteras/La Familia Latina Unida, was given to each participant. It read in part: “Even the best spokespeople in Congress call our people lawbreakers and say we must go to the back of the line. ... While they debate, we must demand a moratorium! We must resist. ... We must join in the boycott!”

Fernando Ledezma, a teacher and member of United Teachers Los Angeles, said, “Martin Luther King spoke of ‘content of character’ and I think it is critical to measure people not by what they are worth in money, but by how they contribute toward society. May 1 will be a celebration of measuring people by the content of their character.”

John Parker from the March 25 Coalition commented about the conference, “This is a great beginning towards building a strong and united movement towards May 1, 2007 that could stop the raids and deportations and make a significant contribution to the struggle to win full legalization rights for all workers. And, given the makeup of labor, immigrant rights, social justice and anti-war organizations that participated in this conference a great contribution to unity and strength has been made.”

New FIST chapter fights bigotry

By Caleb T. Maupin
Cleveland

Published Feb 4, 2007 9:42 PM

Baldwin-Wallace College, a small liberal arts school near Cleveland, has recently been the site of major racist attacks. Two Black students living in an all-girl dormitory opened their door one afternoon to find the N-word scribbled on it. As a result, the college held a “forum” and publicly denounced the action.

The very next day, the same epithet, followed by the word “lover,” was scrawled on the door of the resident assistant, who reported the attack. The term has long been used by racists to characterize white people who defend people of color.

The college again publicly denounced the act with statements, but the attacks went on. They dropped the racial language but repeated verbal abuse of the resident assistant, using a word insulting women and telling her to “Get out.”

A few of the young women living in the dorm transferred to other colleges out of a desire not to be forced to tolerate this kind of bigotry.

The Black Student Alliance, a strong organization at Baldwin-Wallace, took action. Members of the alliance called the media. Soon local television crews were interviewing the leaders of the BSA, who called for justice.

The BSA at Baldwin-Wallace College has a strong history of defiance. In years past, it won a cultural center and additional funding for students of color on campus after a sit-in at the president’s office.

The recent attacks provoked loads of outrage around the campus, but it soon simmered down. However, the attacks against the resident assistant continued.

The college administration repeatedly promised to put in video cameras to catch the perpetrators, a promise that never materialized.

This is not an isolated incident at Baldwin-Wallace. Students organizing for the World Can’t Wait campaign often found their literature and postings crumpled up or defaced with phrases like “Go Bush!” or “Bomb the —-!”—using a racist term for Muslims.

Recently a dorm where many members of the LGBT community lived had homophobic words painted on the wall.

In light of all this, several students at Baldwin-Wallace have decided to start a chapter of Fight Imperialism Stand Together (FIST).

Explaining their goal, they say, “We hope to bring together the struggles of people of color and the LGBT community, as well as the many other students from the working class on campus. We hope to show that unity is key to defeating racism, sexism, homophobia and classism. We hope to show the students that their real enemies are not people with a different skin color, nationality or sexual identity, but rather those who inhabit Wall Street and Washington, D.C.”

FIST youth join protest

By David Hoskins
Washington, D.C.

Published Feb 1, 2007 12:31 AM

Scores of youth and student activists from around the country joined the FIST (Fight Imperialism Stand Together) contingent at the Jan. 27 mass anti-war convergence on Washington, D.C.

WW photo: G. Dunkel

FIST protested alongside thousands of other young people in a youth feeder march that began with a rally at the Smithsonian and ended in a united march around the Capitol.

Activists from over half a dozen cities, including Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York, New Brunswick, N.J., Raleigh, N.C., and Washington, joined the FIST contingent.

FIST activist Namibia Donadio organized about a dozen students from Rutgers University to attend the march, including several members of the Central and South American Alliance on campus.

Raleigh FIST organizers Peter Gilbert, Dante Strobino and Ben Carroll brought more than 80 students and working young people from the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle in North Carolina. Local activists from the newly refounded Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) also participated in the youth feeder march.

The youth distributed FIST leaflets, flyers for the Feb. 17 national day of actions called by the Troops Out Now Coalition and the March 17 united march on the Pentagon, and copies of Workers World newspaper to thousands of young people from around the country.

Many FIST members participated in a youth breakaway march. This bloc, made up mostly of anarchists and FIST cadre, engaged in a non-permitted march to a military recruiting center in the heart of D.C. to protest the lies that military recruiters tell young people and students, especially the working poor and people of color, in order to enlist them in imperialist wars such as those now raging in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After being violently dispersed from the recruiting center by police, the protesters continued to march through the streets, eventually meeting up with more FIST cadre who joined them on their march back to the Capitol.

The non-permitted march blocked traffic as police issued warnings over loudspeakers for demonstrators to return to the sidewalks. Car drivers and their passengers, however, honked and cheered the protesters on, often raising a clenched fist in the air to demonstrate support for ending the war.

Observers on the sidewalk clapped and shouted words of encouragement and several took time out to resist the police orders and march in the street themselves.

1.22.2007

WW speaks to Willie 'JR' Fleming

'Hip hop: a platform to unite the people'

By Eric Struch
Chicago

Published Jan 17, 2007 12:25 AM

Workers World newspaper recently interviewed Willie “JR” Fleming, a member of the Coalition to Protect Public Housing and chair of the Hip Hop Congress Community Development Chapters.

The Hip Hop Congress has 29 chapters nationwide. In Chicago, they have chapters at Columbia College, Loyola University, Morgan Park High School and University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Cabrini Green community.

Its Web site, www.hiphopcongress.com, describes the congress as “a 501(c3) non-profit corporation that uses hip hop culture to inspire social and civic action, and cultural diversity amongst young people.”

JR told WW: “Predominantly before, the Congress was basically set up in institutions like universities, affluent neighborhoods and certain high schools. Our vision was to change that, and put it in more local colleges, community-based colleges, communities where there’s a lot of African-American or urban population.

“The element of the Congress that we represent is activism, knowledge—I guess another word for that would be advancement of the Congress itself, or Hip Hop itself. By using Hip Hop as a platform or a bridge to get not only artists to be accountable and socially conscious to what’s going on, but also the community.”

He explained: “Music has always been a platform to unite the people, so we use Hip Hop as one of them tools to unite the people, educate them, and also at the same time, entertain them, or as some people would call, edutain, our people. There has always been a plight in various communities, a lot of social ills exist, a lack of social services, social injustices. So Hip Hop has become a platform to unite these people. We utilize that to the utmost. “

Fighting police brutality

JR led the Cabrini Green chapter of the HHC in an activist, struggle oriented direction. That was evident in the militant protests at Cabrini Green, organized under the leadership of the Hip Hop Congress, after the Aug. 7 shooting last year of Ellis Woodland, Jr., a 13-year-old African-American.

Woodland was shot three times by police. The killing took place in the North Side Cabrini-Green public housing development.

JR said: “I mean, make no mistake about it, he was shot three times, shot at four, he was hit three times by large caliber firearms. So their intention wasn’t to wound him, disarm him, or anything of that nature. Their intention was to take him out.”

First, police claimed the youth had a gun. Then, it became a BB gun. His father, Ellis Woodland Sr., publicly stated that neither he nor his mother ever purchased a BB gun for his son.

The shooting outraged the Cabrini Green community. Several days after the shooting, HHC organized a demonstration against police brutality in front of the police station at 1160 N. Larabee in the heart of Cabrini Green.

“We went around with the bullhorn of course to hype the people,” he said. “Word travels fast in this community, you know. Hip Hop Alliance played a role, Coalition to Protect Public Housing played a role.

“A lot of residents over here already know what’s going on. You know, this police shooting had more or less something to do with community development more than anything.”

There is a rising wave of gentrification of Cabrini Green. It is built on some of the most valuable land in Chicago and borders on one of its most expensive neighborhoods—the “Gold Coast.”

The police response was more racism and violence. Cops at the protest were heard taunting a 17-year-old Cabrini Green resident, Maurice Taylor. After he verbally confronted an officer, Taylor reported that cops threatened him. On Aug. 13, Taylor was stopped and viciously beaten by the cops.

“It’s just the nature of the treatment of the people” by the cops, JR said. “They feel that the people have been displaced out this community, population is dwindling, and they don’t have too many rights, where the people don’t really care about what’s going on around them. We say we beg to differ.

“We saw the results of the marches. After the shooting occurred, a lot of people, when they got out there, they wasn’t just really angry at the police, they was angry at politicians. They was angry at the mayor. They was angry at the Housing Authority. For a lot of people already know the reason behind that shooting stems from the gentrification of this neighborhood, or the urban cleansing of this community.

“So the people have realized that these are just tactics and ploys to make people want to leave this community, quicker than they need be.

“You know, everybody have a right to adequate housing,” HR concluded. “[T]he basic cutting of the budget for the housing problem is a crime against humanity. It’s plain and simple. That’s creating an atrocity. So until the people wake up, we’re going to have these problems.”

True peoples' commemoration denounces police brutality

Published Jan 18, 2007 1:12 AM

On Martin Luther King Day, the temperature in Denver was forecasted to be in the teens. Early in the morning, when people were gathering to remember the great slain fighter who fought against war and racist repression, the temperature was in single digits and the ground was covered in snow, in what has been a near record of snowfall in the Denver metro area.

Communities United Against Police Brutality, a coalition of leftists from the Black, Mexican, Latin@, Arab and Asian communities, had called for a separate commemoration and feeder march to the city’s benign rally and parade, that has for the last several years been sponsored by none other than State Farm Insurance—an insurance company being sued for millions of dollars for refusing to pay out damages after hurricane Katrina.

The rally before the “Marade” drew nearly fifty people, while the city’s rally drew hundreds more. The CUAPB event attracted a lot of attention and many community members dropped by to use the open mike. Many people followed behind the CUAPB banner, and when the rally got to its destination, at one point more than 100 people stopped to rally with the true peoples’ commemoration and to condemn the rampant police brutality in the Metro area, the closing of schools and the building of a half-billion-dollar jail.

—Larry Hales

Protesters demand: close Guantánamo

By David Hoskins

Published Jan 18, 2007 11:45 PM

On Jan. 11 prominent anti-war mom turned activist Cindy Sheehan and others marched in Cuba to demand that the U.S. torture center at Guantánamo Bay be permanently closed. The mothers of a prisoner held at Guantánamo and of a New York City firefighter killed on 9/11 were among the protestors.

At a conference on the eve of the protest Sheehan identified “George Bush and his administration” as “enemies of humanity.” She also referred to the crimes at Guantánamo as “horrific” and “unspeakable.”

The event was given front-page coverage in the Cuban Communist Party’s daily newspaper, Granma. The Guantánamo facility is unlawfully located on a part of Cuban territory occupied by a U.S. naval base. Cuban authorities have previously referred to the U.S. center as a “concentration camp.”

The protests coincided with similar events held in Washington and London. The new U.N. Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, has also called upon U.S. officials to shut down the infamous detention center.

The Center for Constitutional Rights and Amnesty International co-sponsored the demonstrations in Washington. The aptly named Witness Against Torture Protest began at Upper Senate Park and marched to the Supreme Court and then to the U.S. Federal Court. Approximately 100 dissidents were arrested inside the federal courthouse for protesting conditions at Guantánamo.

On the steps of the Supreme Court, organizers demanded that those held at Guantánamo not be sent to other detention facilities, secret “black sites” or to third-party countries for torture by proxy. CCR President Michael Ratner pointed out, “Five years ago, the Bush administration brought the first detainees to Guantánamo hooded and shackled in an attempt to create an offshore penal colony free from the rule of law and hidden from the eyes of the world.”

More than 750 men have been imprisoned at Guantánamo. All detainees have been denied access to a court of law and an AI report issued in summer 2005 detailed a pattern of systematic torture at the Guantánamo facilities.

Extra-judicial intimidation

Senior Pentagon official Charles D. Stimson said in a recent radio interview that he was unhappy with the fact that lawyers at several of the nation’s top firms were representing the Guantánamo prisoners, and called on the firms’ corporate clients to end their business ties with the firms.

New York University law professor Stephen Gillers has called Stimson’s comments “prejudicial to the administration of justice.” Reports in the New York Times identified an immediate backlash from lawyers, legal experts and bar association officials.

The U.S. government’s use of intimidation tactics to pervert the legal process for justice was echoed by Bush administration allies at the Wall Street Journal in an editorial by Robert L. Pollock. In a move eerily reminiscent of the McCarthy era anti-communist witch hunts, Pollock’s editorial provided a list of law firms, alongside a quote from an anonymous government official demanding that “corporate C.E.O.’s seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists.”

Reflections on the Duke Lacrosse rape case

Published Jan 13, 2007 7:33 AM

Following are excerpts.

On Dec. 22, Durham County, N.C., District Attorney Michael B. Nifong dropped the first degree rape charges against all three Duke lacrosse players. As of this writing, the kidnapping and sexual abuse charges against Dave Evans, Colin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann are still pending. According to the corporate media—including a recent editorial in the Washington Post—the remaining charges should also be dropped.

Meanwhile, the needs of the survivor are completely invisibilized and ignored.

Rape is a crime against humanity that violates and dehumanizes a person in the most invasive way imaginable. But rape is also a tool of sociopolitical dominance, and it is a main weapon in the arsenal of white male capitalist supremacy. Rape was and still remains a key component of genocidal imperialist campaigns across the globe. Imperialists understand very well the old dictum that once you have destroyed a nation’s women, you have subjugated that nation.

The concept of criminal law in the United States is based on capitalist property rights. This property concept includes interactions between individuals; in fact, all relations between people in U.S. society are commodified. Traditionally, women under capitalist law were defined as a man’s property, and the property rights over a woman were passed from her father to her husband upon marriage. Therefore, any injury upon the body of a woman was seen not as a violation of the woman’s bodily integrity, but as a breach of the man’s property rights. Even as women have fought for and won basic citizenship rights over the past two centuries, this basic ideological concept of rape as a breach of men’s property rights still stands.

This property concept forms the very basis of white supremacy in this country. Slavery as a system held Black bodies to be the property of white men, to be used for whatever purposes those men deemed fit. Male and female slaves were purposefully used as sexual and reproductive tools by slave-owners, in order to perpetuate and maintain white male wealth. Female slaves in particular were raped to ensure their total compliance to the master’s domination and will, and the children who were fathered as a result of these rapes legally assumed the class status of the slave mother, ensuring yet another generation of productive slave laborers. In short, it was a win-win situation for the slave-master.

From the beginning of the [Duke] case in March 2006, the corporate-owned media has sensationalized every detail of this case, while making no pretense at reporting the facts or informing the public.

Supporters of the three defendants profess an unerring faith in the criminal justice system, especially the supposed American principle of “innocent until proven guilty.”

When we are discussing sexual violence, or any issue of systemic power in society, it is imperative that we examine and question the conventional narratives that we have all been taught throughout our lives.

Yolanda Carrington
Raleigh, N.C.

The writer is a member of Raleigh FIST-Fight Imperialism, Stand Together-youth group.

King Day activities will evoke struggle, fightback

By LeiLani Dowell

Published Jan 10, 2007 12:10 AM

Over the Jan. 15 weekend, cities across the United States will be holding parades and marches to honor the life of civil-rights, labor and anti-war leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Each year, many of these events attempt to downplay King’s legacy of struggle, with anti-worker corporate sponsors and even military processions. However, the spirit of Dr. King lives on, and will be reflected in resistance events:

DENVER

In Denver a rally will distinguish itself from the city’s official MLK “Marade,” which is sponsored by State Farm insurance and several other companies. Although these companies have huge advertising banners, the city tells the people to not bring banners and signs.

Speaking at the people’s rally will be Larry Hales, FIST leader and contributing editor of Workers World newspaper, on King’s legacy to the global struggle against oppression; Tizoc Martinez from the Mexican National Liberation Movement, on attacks against immigrant workers in Greeley, Colo.; and Loree McCormick-Rice, victim of police brutality, on police repression. Rock Em Sock Em, a youth-of-color spoken-word group, will perform. A feeder march with anti-war, anti-oppression banners and signs will then join the city’s march.

The call for a separate rally states:

“As the conditions of the society pit us against each other, they have also led us to the conclusion that our struggles are linked. The fight must be moved forward together. Therefore, activists from the Black, Mexican, Latin@, Asian and Arab communities have come together to move the age-old fight of liberation into the future—first, by reclaiming our history and using its lessons to shape our struggle; then, by once again taking hold of our future with the optimism and courage that will forever change the world. For neither history nor the future belongs to a book or a leader or a classroom, it belongs to the people. So, just as the people have reclaimed history today, so we will reclaim our future.

“In commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement of the sixties, we ask all people of color to stay true to the values of all our fallen heroes. Year after year the MLK Marade passes, reminding us all of the potential of people of color to change their conditions. Our histories speak repeatedly of those who challenged the roles defined for them by their oppressor, those who refused to become tools for the oppressor, and those who died for the liberation of humankind. In uniting with our oppressed brothers and sisters, in believing in the people’s power to effect change, we are applying the values taught to us by these histories.

“We are calling for a separate rally and feeder march organized and led by people from the communities above to build a united front against racism, oppression, occupation and war.”

DETROIT

The Detroit Martin Luther King Day “Freedom from the shackles of war, racism and poverty” March gathers at Central United Methodist Church, Woodward at Adams in downtown Detroit, at noon on Jan. 15. This year’s rally and march will place special emphasis on the struggle to end the war in Iraq and the rising tide of racism in the United States, especially in light of the affirmative action ban passed on Nov. 7. A sound car sponsored by Latinos Unidos/United of Michigan to build for the march got an enthusiastic response on Jan. 7; more than 1,000 bilingual leaflets were distributed in the Latin@ community.

NEW YORK

In response to President Bush’s expected call for a troop “surge” in Iraq, the Troops Out Now Coalition in New York is calling for a united surge of antiwar forces to converge at Times Square on Jan. 15 at 4 p.m.

TONC leader Sara Flounders told WW: “On Dr. King’s birthday, TONC is working with antiwar forces around the country to launch a massive people’s offensive against the war, which will take us from the local battle fronts to Washington, D.C., this spring. Our central demands are the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of all occupation troops from Iraq, and a cut off of all—not some, but all—funds for the war.”

NORTH CAROLINA

In Raleigh, Black Workers for Justice and UE Local 150 will hold a Community Speakout and Action Planning on Jan. 13. Their announcement reads, “King stood with sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968! You, your co-workers, family & friends are invited to stand with workers in your community today!”

City workers will discuss their strike, building the union, fighting City Hall, the struggle for collective bargaining rights and building for a mass Feb. 10 NAACP march, which will deliver the organization’s 2007 14-point program to the legislature. This includes demands of “U.S. out of Iraq!” as well as repeal of N.C. General Statute 95-98, an anti-collective-bargaining rights law.

On Jan. 15, a March against War and Racism will be held in Chapel Hill.

SAN DIEGO

The San Diego parade to honor the memory of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was, years ago, moved out of the Black community. For many San Diegans the ubiquitous presence of FBI, police, U.S. military and militarized student contingents has become increasingly offensive and intolerable.

In an effort to return the commemoration to the Black community and to restore the tone to one opposing war and racism, the San Diego International Action Center initiated a coalition, the King/Chavez Coalition for Justice and Unity, which will hold a community rally and picnic at Martin Luther King Jr. Park, 6401 Skyline Avenue, on Jan. 15.

Coalition organizer Gloria Verdieu explained the purpose of the coalition is “to reclaim our legacy and cultural heritage in an effort to continue the advancement of social justice and unity.”

Uniting the names of two great leaders in the struggle for social justice, Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez, is a defiant answer to Minutemen types active in Southern California, who, as part of their efforts to criminalize undocumented workers, seek to drive a wedge between Black and Latin@ communities.

Larry Hales, Larry Holmes, Cheryl LaBash, Bob McCubbin and Dante Strobino contributed to this report.

Imperialists stand by as AIDS crisis grows

By Melissa Kleinman

Published Dec 23, 2006 12:24 AM

In the year to come, thousands of Caribbean people will die of AIDS and thousands more will become infected with the HIV virus. In just the past two decades, over 6,000 AIDS deaths were reported in the Caribbean, but the actual number is admittedly higher due to underreporting or misdiagnosis.

All the while, as people die and infection increases, imperialist governments in the United States and Europe reveal their racism as they economically strangle Caribbean countries such as Haiti and the Dominican Republic. They offer no reparations for the centuries of damage and exploitation done to these nations and peoples. Capitalist drug companies are even reluctant to provide the desperately needed antiretroviral drugs that can improve the quality of life and life expectancy for those living with HIV/AIDS.

In Haiti, the Bahamas, Barbados, the Dominican Republic and Guyana, the AIDS epidemic has spread beyond those called “high risk” to the general population. This occurs once the infection rate in the general population reaches approximately 5 percent. At such a rate the HIV virus spreads even more rapidly.

AIDS is most devastating to Haiti, where 12 percent of the urban and 5 percent of the rural population are estimated to be infected with the terrible disease.

By the end of 1999, 83,000 children under the age of 14 had been orphaned by AIDS in the Caribbean.

Furthermore, the AIDS epidemic is placing tremendous burdens on health care systems and on the labor force. As of 2006, 83 percent of AIDS cases in the Caribbean were found in the age group 15 to 54 years old, considered the prime age span of the work force. This epidemic not only affects personal lives and relationships but has the potential to negatively impact various key sectors, from agriculture, tourism and

mining to trade, as well as national budgets.

In the Caribbean, AIDS is a “hurricane” disaster, said Dominica’s Minister of Planning Artherton Martin in his closing statement at a recent HIV/AIDS conference: “We must deploy against HIV/AIDS as we would any other disasters. In fact, it is worse than hurricanes because it destroys people, our most important resource.”

Haitians in Dominican Republic

Amelia Cayo, 53, who is part Haitian and a Creole speaker, is one of 43 AIDS patients receiving free antiretroviral therapy from a clinic in the Dominican Republic sponsored by Bateye Relief Alliance Dominicana, a nongovernmental organization. She is one of many people who will be destroyed by AIDS if left untreated. Like many victims to the virus, she is on a time-consuming regimen of antiretroviral treatments, taking as many as four to seven different pills three times a day.

Cayo comments, “I feel better since I started the pills, and you can be sure I will keep taking them.” She and other descendants of Haitian sugarcane workers are part of an estimated 200,000 residents of bateyes, migrant worker communities adjacent to the mostly now-fallow sugarcane fields. Before the opening of the center, the estimated 3,000 bateye residents in the area received no medical care whatsoever.

There are currently only 3,500 people taking drugs, and they receive little or no medical attention. Among the country’s bateye inhabitants, roughly 5 to 12 percent are HIV-positive. Alliance Executive Director María Virtudes Berroa says sugarcane workers have been systematically excluded from the public health system because of racial, economic and social discrimination.

The Bateye health group has already lost funding in education and prevention programs for 30 bateye communities and at this point is reaching only a tiny portion of the people with AIDS in the bateyes. Wendy Valdez, a physician in the Cinco Casas bateye, said, “It would be disastrous if we had to stop.”

It has been suggested that an individual could receive antiretroviral therapy for less than $1 a day—which of course would exclude profits for the drug companies. However, under common political and funding trends, including all the programs underway and all the funds donated towards the Global AIDS effort, these medicines reached fewer than 1 million people by the end of 2005.

Worldwide, including the Caribbean, 5 to 6 million people urgently need antiretroviral treatment (ART), due to the severity of their illness, but only 300,000 people in developing countries receive these medicines. Many grassroots efforts have shown that ART can be delivered in poorer countries as effectively as developed countries. The World Health Organization says that increasing the availability of antiretroviral therapy makes it more likely that people will come forward for HIV testing, learn their status, receive counseling and care and become knowledgeable about preventing the spread of the virus.

Nevertheless, by the year 2015 the Caribbean region stands to have nearly 3.5 million people living with the virus, according to UNAIDS.

Yet there is a small beacon of light in the Caribbean, 90 miles from U.S. shores on the island of Cuba. The Cuban government has sent at least 4,000 doctors and health personnel to the poorest countries in the Caribbean, those most hard hit by AIDS, with the idea of creating an infrastructure able to provide the population with medications and the necessary follow-up. (www.cubaweb.com)

The immediate ongoing need is for the international community to come forward with the raw materials for further products and services. Yet, with the ongoing war on people of color and the poor, what can Caribbean countries and individuals like Amelia Cayo hope for from greedy capitalist nations?

Melissa Kleinman is a FIST member and a Denver public health care HIV/AIDS worker.

Youth continue effort to close recruiting station

By Ben Carroll
Chapel Hill, N.C.

Published Dec 19, 2006 10:09 PM

Some 50 youth and community members held a demonstration Dec. 15 at the recently opened Army recruiting station in Chapel Hill, N.C. The demonstration, organized by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), was scheduled to coincide with an official ribbon-cutting ceremony at the station by the Chapel Hill Chamber of Commerce.

About 10 youth activists, including members of Raleigh FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together), were prepared to attend the ceremony posing as onlookers. When the ribbon was cut, they would unzip their jackets to reveal shirts that read “Iraqi Civilian” splattered with red paint and fall to the ground in a die-in. The direct action was called off at the last minute, however, as the activists received word from a Town Council member, from recruiters present for the ceremony and from the media that the ceremony had been canceled.

Youth activists then joined community members in a picket line in front of the recruiting station. With chants of “Out of Iraq! Out of our schools!” and “No justice, no peace! U.S. out of the Middle East!” the demonstrators made their presence known.

After several minutes of the moving picket line, about 10 police officers and the property manager descended on the group of demonstrators and ordered them to leave the supposedly public ceremony. Using their physical prowess, the cops herded the demonstrators from the shopping center and onto the sidewalk.

It became apparent that the ceremony was indeed taking place, even without the Chamber of Commerce present. Three older community members who had remained at the ceremony then revealed signs that read, “Hands off my grandchildren—no recruiting” and “We mourn the dead.” These peaceful demonstrators were promptly arrested and hauled off to jail. Additionally, two youth activists received citations for holding a banner.

The Chapel Hill Chamber of Commerce later issued a public statement claiming it had received credible information that the demonstration was going to be “non-peaceful” and that it felt the “safety of Chamber staff and volunteers” was threatened. The Chamber used this violence-baiting not only as a tactic to avoid addressing the political content of the demonstration, but also to justify the police repression under the guise of “public safety.”

Youth activists from FIST and SDS said the reaction by both the Chamber and the police reveals the strength of the movement the youth are building. These organizations have vowed to continue confronting this recruiting station until it is forced to close its doors for good.

Anti-recruiting in New York

Anti-recruiting activists from North Carolina attended the Troops Out Now Coalition Antiwar Summit meeting in Harlem last Nov. 18, where the breakout group on counter-recruiting decided to do something concrete to impact the ability of Washington to wage war. “The one way we could do that,” Dustin Langley said, “was to hinder military recruiting.”

“So far,” Langley continued, “we in New York have been picketing at the Chambers Street recruiting station each Tuesday and Thursday. Our plans for the New Year are to hold a counter-recruiting activists meeting in January and see if we can organize picketing outside the station every day.

“After the New Year, we will also be calling on antiwar activists across the U.S. to ‘adopt a recruiting station’ and maintain a regular presence at that site with the goal of shutting it down. So far we’ve gotten a friendly reception on the street, and even a small protest will bring all the recruiters out and stop them from recruiting.”

Statewide Day of Action Against Smithfield

By Dante Strobino
Raleigh, N.C.

Published Dec 8, 2006 11:27 PM

More than 700 people gathered in 11 cities across the state of North Carolina on Dec. 2 to support the just demands of workers at Smithfield, the world’s largest hog slaughtering plant located in Tar Heel. The statewide day of action was held at North Carolina-based Harris Teeter grocery stores to demand that they support the largely immigrant workforce by not selling the company’s pork.

Smithfield workers " border="1">

Dec. 2 Raleigh solidarity action with
Smithfield workers

Photo: Donald Minor

Most of the Smithfield plants across the country are unionized through the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). But pork and turkey coming out of the North Carolina plants find their way into several local grocery stores, including Harris Teeter, which uses mostly Smithfield meat for its store-packaged pork.

The USDA requires that codes be placed on all meat designating its origin. Any meat containing codes 18079 or 79c is processed at the Smithfield plant by oppressed workers.

Demonstrations organized by UFCW and community supporters were held in Asheville, Charlotte, Durham, Fayetteville, Greensboro, Hickory, High Point, Raleigh, Rocky Mount, Wilmington and Winston-Salem. At each site there was a media conference where workers—most of whom were Latin@ or Black—spoke out about the conditions in the plant. After the press conference, workers and union organizers marched into the stores and delivered a statement requesting that Harris Teeter stop doing business with Smithfield.

The biggest demonstration was in Raleigh where almost 200 people gathered, including members of the NAACP, the N.C. Council of Churches, N.C. Public Sector Workers Union (UE local 150), Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST), Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), N.C. State University Student-Worker Alliance, College Democrats, Action for Community in Raleigh (ACRe), Teamsters, AFL-CIO, and high school students from Raleigh Charter and Athens High, amongst other organizations. Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) also played an important role statewide in mobilizing to support the demonstration.

Participants, stretched at arms length, nearly surrounded the entire parking lot of a Raleigh Harris Teeter and handed leaflets to customers that explained the union’s main grievances are that Smithfield “has used violence, threats and intimidation against workers to suppress their rights; creates a dangerous workplace with fast line speeds and inadequate training; routinely fires injured workers and denies their workers’ compensation claims; and stirs racial tensions among African-American and Latino workers.”

Supporters’ signs read “Power to Immigrant Workers, Union Rights Now” and “Black and Brown Unity—UNIDAD Moren@ y Latin@.”

North Carolina is ripe for class struggle. It is the second-least unionized state in the country and also has the fastest growing immigrant population. Led by two Latina women still wearing their hair nets and work hats, more than 1,000 workers walked out of the Smithfield plant, shutting down two shifts of production on Nov. 16. Even the private police force could not coerce workers back into the plant as they continued to exercise their class power through unity.

It is only through unity amongst the Black and Latin@ workers that the will of workers will be exercised. The majority Black workforce of city workers across the state continues to organize their union, UE 150, and build their power following the historic strike of Raleigh sanitation workers two mornings in mid-September. Durham city workers later held a two-hour work stoppage on Nov. 27.

UE150 is convening a Statewide City Workers Summit on Dec. 9, drawing union workers from Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Durham, Fayetteville, Greensboro, Greenville, Raleigh, Rocky Mount and Wilson.

The struggle continues as these two strong workforces continue to learn from each other and mutually build working-class power in North Carolina.

The writer is an organizer with Raleigh FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) youth group. Contact fist@workers.org.

Youth fight back on Rosa Parks Day

Published Dec 7, 2006 10:36 PM

A march was held in New York to commemorate Rosa Parks Day, Dec. 1, and continue that legacy of struggle. Organized by FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) leader and high school student Mia Cruz, the march focused on the criminalization of youth, demanding removal of the roving police scanners recently implemented in New York City schools. Students have suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of the cops who enforce the scanners, as well as have had their personal property, such as cell phones, markers and iPods, confiscated.

—Report and photo by LeiLani Dowell

12.07.2006

South Africa: same-sex marriage legalized

By LeiLani Dowell

South Africa became the first African country and the fifth country worldwide to legalize same-sex marriage on Nov. 30.

The government was forced to enact legislation on same-sex marriage after the country's highest court gave it a year, expiring Dec. 1, to change laws that denied lesbian, gay, bi and trans couples the same constitutional rights as heterosexual couples.

Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said, "In breaking with our past ... [we] need to fight and resist all forms of discrimination and prejudice, including homophobia." (iafrica.com, Nov. 14)

The first legal gay marriage took place the next day, when Vernon Gibbs and Tony Halls were married on World AIDS Day, Dec. 1. Vernon Halls-Gibbs told the BBC, "This marriage ... is for all HIV/AIDS sufferers and gay people who have experienced discrimination." (BBC, Dec. 1)

Mexico: president inaugurated under backdrop of repression, resistance

By LeiLani Dowell

Resistance to the Dec. 1 swearing in of Mexican President Felipe Calderón turned the traditional ceremony into a farce, symbolic of the fraudulent elections that granted Calderón the victory in July.

Legislators from the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) of Andrés Manuel López Obrador--who was sworn in as Mexico's legitimate president at a people's inauguration on Nov. 20--used chairs to barricade most of the doors to the Legislative Palace where Calderón's inauguration was to take place. He was forced to use a back entrance to take the oath of office.

The Los Angeles Times reports: "With European princes, Latin American leaders, former President Bush and other dignitaries looking on, Calderón was inaugurated amid a chorus of derisive whistles in a ceremony that lasted less than two minutes. 'Felipe will fall! Felipe will fall!' leftist legislators shouted."

Meanwhile, resistance continues as 159 people were swept up off the streets of Oaxaca and arrested over the weekend of Nov. 24-26, for charges related to recent protests. The Narco News Bulletin reports that 141 of those have been moved by helicopter to the penitentiary in San José del Rincón, Nayarit--a twenty-hour drive away from Oaxaca. None of the arrested has had access to legal support, reporters or family members. (Nov. 29)

It is feared that the rape and torture of prisoners--of the kind witnessed during the struggle of flower vendors at Atenco this May--will occur with impunity and without exposure. A tour of Mexico recently completed by The Other Campaign of the Zapatista National Liberation Army found hundreds of political prisoners, thousands of people facing arrest warrants or charges for political organizing, and family members of political activists that had been "disappeared" throughout the country. (narconews.com, Nov. 29)

Federal police in Oaxaca are now conducting house-to-house raids throughout the state, searching for leaders of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca.

Bolivia: massive land reform passed

By LeiLani Dowell

Bolivian President Evo Morales signed into law several progressive measures on Nov. 28, including a bill to reclaim tens of thousands of square kilometers of unproductive land from wealthy farmers.

The law will allow the redistribution of land in the eastern lowlands region to poor landless farmers, and states that land whose use is against the collective interest will be taken without compensation. The Inter Press Service reports that between 60 and 70 percent of the country's farmland is owned by a handful of families. (Nov.29)

More than 4,000 Indigenous people had marched on the capital city of La Paz to demand its passage; three died during the march, two of a suspicious car accident, one by lightning.

The measure was passed despite political maneuvering by the opposition parties to block it by boycotting the 27-member Senate, making it impossible to reach the 14-seat quorum needed to meet. However, after Morales threatened to pass the law by presidential decree, three opposition senators returned to the table with the 12 senators from Morales' Movement Towards Socialism party.

In addition to the land reform bill, contracts were passed with 10 foreign oil companies, in relation to the nationalization of Bolivia's natural gas reserves; and an economic cooperation agreement with Venezuela was approved. Morales also announced plans for other measures, such as nationalizing Bolivia's tin and mineral mines.

Sudan: African leaders denounce U.N. 'colonization'

By LeiLani Dowell

Leaders of African countries continue to voice their opposition to the imposition of U.N. troops in Sudan.

At a Nov. 19 meeting of Sudanese government officials and members of the Sudan Liberation Army, Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi told participants: "Western countries and America are not busying themselves out of sympathy for the Sudanese people or for Africa but for oil and for the return of colonialism to the African continent. ... The biggest disaster is if the Atlantic army came and positioned itself in Sudan."

Qaddafi continued: "The West exploits tribalism, sectarianism and {skin} color to feed war, which leads to backwardness and Western intervention in a number of countries. All the conflicts in Africa are caused by colonialism, which does not want the rise of the United States of Africa and works for division and interference and for military coups." (Al Jazeera, Nov. 19)

The Associated Press reported on a meeting of the heads of state of the African countries of Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya and Sudan on Nov. 21, saying that "the African leaders support Sudan's cautious attitude toward deploying U.N. troops in Darfur." (Nov. 21)

While agreeing to a combination of African Union and U.N. troops on Nov. 27, Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir reiterated Qaddafi's words, saying that Sudan "should not be the first recolonized country under the banner of humanitarian action in Darfur."(allAfrica.com, Nov. 27)

North Carolina organizers hold 'Statewide Day of Action Against Smithfield'

By Dante Strobino
Raleigh, N.C.

More than 700 people gathered in 11 cities across the state of North Carolina on Dec. 2 to support the just demands of workers at Smithfield, the world's largest hog slaughtering plant located in Tar Heel. The statewide day of action was held at North Carolina-based Harris Teeter grocery stores to demand that they support the largely immigrant workforce by stop selling the company's pork.

Most of the Smithfield plants across the country are unionized through the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). But pork and turkey coming out of the North Carolina plants find their way into several local grocery stores, including Harris Teeter, which actually uses mostly Smithfield meat for its store-packaged pork.

The USDA requires that codes be placed on all meat designating its origin. Any meat containing codes 18079 or 79c is processed at the Smithfield plant by oppressed workers.

Demonstrations organized by UFCW and community supporters were held in Asheville, Charlotte, Durham, Fayetteville, Greensboro, Hickory, High Point, Raleigh, Rocky Mount, Wilmington and Winston-Salem. At each site there was a media conference where workers--most of whom were Latin@ or Black--spoke out about the conditions in the plant. After the press conference, workers and union organizers marched into the stores and delivered a statement requesting that Harris Teeter stop doing business with Smithfield.

The biggest demonstration was in Raleigh where almost 200 people gathered, including members of the NAACP, the N.C. Council of Churches, N.C. Public Sector Workers Union (UE local 150), Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST), Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), N.C. State University Student-Worker Alliance, College Democrats, Action for Community in Raleigh (ACRe), Teamsters, AFL-CIO, high school students from Raleigh Charter and Athens High, amongst other organizations. Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) also played an important role statewide in mobilizing to support the demonstration.

Participants, stretched at arms length, nearly surrounded the entire parking lot of a Raleigh Harris Teeter and handed leaflets to customers that explained the union's main grievances are that Smithfield "has used violence, threats and intimidation against workers to suppress their rights; creates a dangerous workplace with fast line speeds and inadequate training; routinely fires injured workers and denies their workers' compensation claims; and stirs racial tensions among African-American and Latino workers."

Supporters' signs read "Power to Immigrant Workers, Union Rights Now" and "Black and Brown Unity--UNIDAD Moren@ y Latin@."

UE150 is convening a Statewide City Workers Summit on Dec. 9, drawing union workers from Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Durham, Fayetteville, Greensboro, Greenville, Raleigh, Rocky Mount and Wilson.

The struggle continues as these two strong workforces continue to learn from each other and mutually build working-class power in North Carolina.

The writer is an organizer with Raleigh FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) youth group. Contact fist@workers.org

‘Stop racist killer cops’

Killings of 23-year-old unarmed groom, 92-year-old woman are not isolated acts

By LeiLani Dowell
and Dianne Mathiowetz
New York and Atlanta

Published Nov 30, 2006 12:59 AM

Sean Bell was killed on what was supposed to be the morning of his wedding, Nov. 25, when police unloaded more than 50 bullets into the car he and two friends—all African American and all unarmed—were in. The three were leaving Bell’s bachelor party in Queens, N.Y.

Bell’s friend Joseph Guzman is in critical condition after being hit at least 11 times. The other, Trent Benefield, was hit three times. A report from New York in the Sydney Morning Herald said the two had been shackled to their hospital beds. (Nov. 28)

One white officer alone, Detective Mike Oliver, emptied a full magazine of bullets, reloaded and then emptied a second magazine—a total of 31 bullets. New York Police Department policy on shooting at moving vehicles clearly states that police cannot fire at a moving vehicle “unless deadly force is being used ... by means other than a moving vehicle.” (AP, Nov. 26) The officers involved were placed on administrative leave, yet are still being paid.

Not just ‘bad apples’

Authorities are scrambling to come up with excuses for Bell’s death. The police claim that one of Bell’s friends made reference to a gun. “Experts” discuss the problem of “contagious shooting”—which was amplified in 1993 when the NYPD switched from revolvers to semiautomatic weapons. The media is quick to point out that a multinational group of officers were involved in the incident—two white, two Black and one Latino—to downplay the racism in the killings. However, to reiterate, all the victims are Black.

But despite any excuses and “bad apple” theories, police violence and terror in communities of color is systemic, not individual. The police act as an indiscriminate, armed occupying force, with the mentality that the poor and people of color are disposable. Brutality against these communities is a daily occurrence.

As if to prove this point, the next day in the Bronx police attacked and then arrested Juanita Young, an activist against police brutality and the mother of Malcolm Ferguson, who had been killed by the NYPD in March 2000. According to a press release by the October 22nd Coalition, as many as eight cops participated in the attack, kicking her in the chest and back.

In addition, the group TransJustice has called for a press conference and rally on Nov. 29 to denounce the Nov. 1 beating and arrest of two African American men beaten by cops in the West Village of New York City. When a white male police officer pushed a young African-American woman without provocation, 23-year-old African-American college student Shakur Trammel requested his badge number. In response, the officer punched Trammel in the face and chest, threw him onto the police van and choked him with his nightstick. Eyewitnesses report that between four to six mostly white cops then kicked and punched Trammel and another African-American man who was being very vocal about his outrage at Trammel’s beating.

State violence grows with class tensions

Frederick Engels, Karl Marx’s closest collaborator and co-founder of scientific socialism, described the state as a public power that “consists not merely of armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons and institutions of coercion of all kinds.” Engels continues to explain, “It [the public power] grows stronger ... in proportion as class antagonisms within the state become more acute.” (Engels, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” 1884)

Anger in poor communities and communities of color is growing over the lack of jobs, healthcare and social services, the number of soldiers coming home dead or maimed from a war for big business, the news that the rich are getting even richer while the poor are still getting poorer. As during the Vietnam War, the ruling class fears organization and rebellion in the communities. The police apparatus is stepped up to keep these communities in line, to remind them of their “place.”

But this kind of repression inevitably leads to resistance. At a rally held the day after Bell’s killing, New York City Councilperson Charles Barron told the crowd, “I am fed up. I am not asking my people to do anything passive anymore. ... Don’t ask us to ask our people to be peaceful while they are being murdered. We are not the only ones that can bleed.”

A rally against the police state is planned for Dec. 6, 4:30 p.m., at One Police Plaza in downtown New York City. A statement by the December 12th Movement, organizers of the event, reads, “The issues on the agenda include the police profiling of Black youth; NYPD/Homeland Security occupation of the Black community; police aggression, harassment and overkill, as well as President Bush’s assault on Habeas Corpus; the erosion of civil rights; and Iraq war for oil.”

Atlanta cops kill 92-year-old woman

Police brutality of course is not unique to New York City. In Atlanta, 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston was killed Nov. 21 when an Atlanta drug squad executed a “no-knock” search warrant at her home.

Johnston’s neighborhood is close to an area known for drug trafficking and crime. According to her family, she was very concerned about being victimized and so had bars on her windows and doors and a permit for a pistol.

When Atlanta police pried the bars off the front door and broke it down, Johnston fired her rusty gun in self-defense, wounding three of the cops. They responded with a barrage of bullets.

Initially, the police claimed an undercover agent had purchased drugs at her home. Then the story changed: an informant had purchased crack cocaine with city-supplied funds at the address.

This informant allegedly told police that there were surveillance cameras at the house—an element which increased the likelihood of a “no-knock” warrant being granted. On Nov. 21 around 6 p.m., a Fulton County magistrate issued that warrant, based on an affidavit with these details submitted by narcotics investigator Jason R. Smith.

Barely more than an hour later, Atlanta police smashed through the front door of Johnston’s home.

Outraged neighbors and family insist that she lived alone. No one recognizes the description of the drug suspect, “Sam,” named in the warrant.

Johnston’s long-time neighbor Curtis Mitchell said, “I think that’s just something they made up.” Her niece, Sarah C. Dozier, agreed, saying, “As far as I am concerned, they shot her down like a dog.”

That suspicion was verified six days after Johnston’s death, when the informant publicly stated that he provided no such information to the police. He says that shortly after the shooting occurred, police called him, telling him to back up their story. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he has told internal affairs investigators and local media that the police fabricated the whole thing and told him to lie about his role in it. (Nov. 28)

Johnston’s killing came on the same day that the district attorney in adjacent DeKalb County announced that she will ask a grand jury to review a string of deadly police shootings there to determine whether criminal charges should be filed. Organized pressure forced this move by local officials, though it is only a modest response to community demands for police accountability and civilian review.

Since January 2006, DeKalb police have shot and killed 12 people and admit that several officers violated standard procedures. A 13th person died in custody after being hit with a baton and pepper-sprayed. Just days before the DA’s announcement, a 34-year-old woman was fatally shot by a police officer who said she came at him with a knife. Others at the scene said that she was scared and running away.

Congressperson Cynthia McKinney made a formal request on Nov. 25 for an immediate Department of Justice investigation into “a developing national pattern of police misconduct and abuse.”

From New York to Colorado to Milwaukee to Georgia, family members, community activists and progressive elected officials have demanded not only answers to what happened to these individuals but an end to police disregard for the lives of residents of working class and poor neighborhoods.

For weeks in Atlanta, there have been vigils, press conferences, rallies and other protests that have forced the issue of police killings into the public spotlight. Over and over, the people have made it clear: “No justice, No peace.”

FIST

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