RAY O’ LIGHT NEWSLETTER
September-October 2015 Number 92
Publication
of the Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA
To Enforce “Black Lives Matter” — What’s
Next?
by RAY LIGHT
Within the USA today
the most serious mass motion against the U.S. imperialist state apparatus is
the Afro-American-based and led “Black Lives Matter Movement.” The aroused
Afro-American community in Ferguson, Missouri, having been moved by the blatant
murder of clearly innocent young Trayvon Martin and the exoneration of his
community watch murderer in Florida, responded to a similarly cold-blooded
police murder of unarmed teen-aged Michael Brown. The Ferguson community
exploded both because of the long-standing criminal conspiracy in Ferguson of
the cops and courts to steal from and criminalize the community and because of
the lynching character of the murder, with Michael’s lifeless body left on the
street for more than four hours as a source of terror and attempted
intimidation against the community. Months later, with the Ferguson community
still in the streets, killer cop Wilson was “cleared” by the Grand Jury.
Ferguson has been the springboard for the Black Lives Matter motion around the
USA that has spread and been sustained for the past year.
The current motion in Afro-American communities in cities and
towns directly responding to the police murders there that have been exposed as
clearly unjustified, have been largely spontaneous, local, defensive, and
focused on the systemic police murders of innocent Afro-American young men in
their respective communities. Especially where this movement has functioned as
a “support” for other communities
(such as for Ferguson, Cleveland,
Charleston and Baltimore) the “Black
Lives Matter” local movements have been
vulnerable to right opportunist leadership focused primarily on
having dialogue with the police so as to educate and humanize them. This
political direction has been led by paid middle class non-governmental
organization (NGO) staffers and Black bourgeois politicians and
police spokesmen. There has also been a secondary tendency to ultra-left
anarchistic “heroics” as an individualist substitute for mass mobilization. As
occurred with the significant Occupy Wall Street movement several years ago,
this current movement, in most instances, has no coherent anti-imperialist
political program. Indeed, the slogan
“Black Lives Matter” is itself more a humanist and pacifist plea to the
greatest source of violence in the world, bestial U.S. imperialism, than an
inspiring, mobilizing, empowering one.
This October 10th, on
the 20th Anniversary of the formidable Million Man March called by
Nation of Islam Minister Louis
Farrakhan, he has called for a new march on Washington on the National Mall. This year the timely
theme is “Justice or Else.” And, while the original march directly appealed to Afro-American
men who provided a tremendous mass response back then, this time men and women
of all ethnicities and backgrounds are being invited. As part of our
involvement in the ongoing struggle against systemic police terror on the
Afro-American community, in particular, the forces associated with the Revolutionary Organization of Labor,
USA should
actively participate and mobilize “Black Lives Matter” activists and others for
the upcoming march called by Minister Farrakhan.
Finally, in the special section of our current Newsletter below,
we offer three pieces (a poem, a letter to the editor and an article) seriously
addressing, from different perspectives, the way forward for the Black Lives
Matter movement. It’s worth pointing out, in line with the letter to the
editor, that Robert Williams, the outstanding Afro-American national liberation
fighter of the 1950’s and 1960’s, with the successful implementation of armed
self defense in his local Black community in Monroe, NC, was never defeated
there. Before the U.S. government drove
him out of the country, his projection of armed self defense was successfully
vying with Martin Luther King’s “non-violence and integration” for the
leadership of the then emerging civil rights movement. In that light, a leading
woman comrade suggested combining the upcoming march slogan with her new
knowledge about Robert Williams and the Monroe, NC experience: “Justice or Else
— Negroes With Guns.” We welcome your feedback on all these matters.
The Murder
of Emmett Till: Black Lives Still Matter
by PEARL HAINES
On August 28, 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, an
African-American boy from Chicago, was snatched away from the home of his
great-uncle in Money, Mississippi by two white men and tortured for several
hours before being shot in the back of the head and having his body dumped in
the Tallahatchie River. What was his “crime”? He allegedly whistled at the wife
of one of the two men. In 1955 in the Deep South, it was verboten for a black
male, even a teenager, to speak to a white female. In the eyes of his murderers,
Till had overstepped his bounds and needed to be made an example of for being
too “uppity” and not “knowing his place.”
Sixty years later, rights for African-Americans have marginally
improved, but the white supremacist feeling that we have a certain “place” is
still ingrained in the fabric of our society. Unarmed black people are killed
at twice the rate of unarmed whites. Victims like Sandra Bland, Eric Garner,
Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and Mike Brown are blamed by racists
for their own deaths, saying that they should have just complied with police
orders. What they’re really saying is that African-Americans should stay in the
roles this white supremacist society has chosen for them, meaning that they
should submit themselves to the indignity of being pulled over for “driving
while black” and being treated more violently by cops than their white
counterparts.
However, history has proved that things won’t change for blacks
unless we step out of the “place” that the U.S. white supremacy hegemony has
created for us. The courageous decision by Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie
Till-Mobley, to have an open casket and display her son’s disfigured remains to
the world allowed her to expose the ugly reality of the epidemic of lynchings
of African-Americans in the South. The decision of Till’s great-uncle, Moses
Wright, to stand up in court at the trial of the murderers and positively
identify them was defiant in the face of the attempted suppression of witnesses
by the local sheriff. The prominence of Till’s death in the news media and the
acquittal of the killers helped spark the beginning of the powerful black Civil
Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s.
Although
African-Americans have made gains in employment, housing, education and voting
rights since 1955, the systemic killing of unarmed blacks by police officers is
today ushering in another stage in the long struggle for equal rights. The
camera phone video of Walter Scott being shot eight times in the back as he ran
from North Charleston patrolman Michael Slager is comparable to the pictures of
Till’s maimed body being published in
magazines and newspapers around the country: evidence of the continuing war
U.S. monopoly capitalism and imperialism is carrying out against the African-American
people. The “Black Lives Matter” movement is emerging in response to the
prominence of police brutality against unarmed African-Americans.
As comrade Ray Light recently pointed out, “…the fight by any
means necessary against police brutality needs to be sustained and intensified.
This needs to become part of the struggle for Black Power. … And the struggle
for Black Power needs to be connected to the struggle for a Socialist USA and a
Socialist World.”
WE WHO
ARE BLACK
THE ARRESTS
OF FREDDIE GRAY AND DYLANN ROOF
A POEM
by LORETTA A.
HAWKINS
This is the tale of two arrests, and how the arrestees were
treated. The contrast is stark – the end results true, and how justice was
totally defeated. It’s the tale of arrests of two young men, one African-American,
the other one white. And what happened to each after apprehension, suggests
something in America’s not right.
Now Freddie was walking down the street and the police looked up
and saw him. And for whatever reason, we’ll never know, Freddie ran – and the
police immediately chase him. A cell
phone was present a video made, and on
TV we see Freddie can’t walk. “His leg is broke,” a bystander screams, and
other voices try to talk. We see how
police roughly drag Freddie Gray, we see them throw him into the van. The next
time our eyes fall on Freddie Gray, he’s a paralyzed broken-up man.
We learn his spine was almost completely severed. His body bruised
and pitifully swoll. He died without ever gaining consciousness, a tale that
too often is told. A reporter spoke – asked for a report. “What exactly did
Freddie Gray do?” “He looked at us,” the policeman said. “And then he ran – so
we had no choice but to pursue.” So that is the sad tale of Freddie Gray – of
how another innocent black man died. And we who are black – and understand –
saw and once again silently cried. For again they exposed their savagery,
that’s been imposed upon us since slavery.
Now let’s look at the arrest of Dylann Roof. Let’s examine what
did he do. He entered a church and prayed with them, then nine innocent prayers
he slew. And like Freddie Gray – he ran away- like Freddie he also was caught.
But here the stories diverge so much, for what happened to Dylann from this
point on – ought not. We watched on TV – and we who are black – see how gently
they handled this man. See how carefully they shielded his head from harm – Our
brains struggle to comprehend! Our cognition screams, “What is this thing?”
Dylann said to the cops, “I’m hungry.” So they took him to Burger King.
Yes! They took him to Burger King, before they took him to jail.
And that is just one hiccup, you know, in this sad melancholy tale. For here
was a man who had killed nine times! Killed nine people because they were
black! And we were not surprised, we who are black, that he arrived at the
station with his whole back intact. In fact, not one little blond hair was
injured on his lily white head. But Freddie! Freddie was dead!
There were so many ludicrous things that were said, when we found
out that Freddie was dead. One witness purportedly said Freddie tried to commit
suicide, by throwing himself inside the van side to side! If so, it would have
been in history the very first time, a human committed suicide by deliberately
breaking his own spine!
Now the witness who said Freddie committed suicide – the witness
who we all know lied, felt police who are responsible that Freddie no longer
has life, implied Freddie deserved to die because he had a knife! A knife!?? To
die because you have in your pocket a knife? Just another day in American life!
To kill nine people who did not one wrong thing. To kill nine people then be
treated to Burger King! What is this thing?
God, we ask you, “What is this thing?” It’s certainly not about
the song they sing. About the land of the brave. The home of the free? Where
black people still are not given dignity! After all of these years. After all
of our fears! After hundreds of years after slavery! We who are black can so
clearly see, that this land is not brave and it’s certainly not free!
(Written 6/23/15) Copyright
2015 by Loretta Hawkins
* * * * *
August
2015
Letter
to Editor
[on
Robert Williams and Armed Self Defense],
Dear
Ray,
Congratulations
on the outstanding article on the Charleston, SC massacre … calling for the “urgent
need for Afro-American National Liberation.” Permit me to raise an additional
thought in relation to an important short run demand of the Afro-American
masses — the action of armed self defense.
Robert
Williams, the courageous civil rights leader of Monroe, NC and beyond, led the
most significant movement of armed self defense during the modern civil rights
movement. I would encourage all your readers to read “Negroes with Guns”, by
Robert Williams. In addition there was a very positive PBS documentary produced
a few years ago on Robert Williams and the movement he led in North Carolina. I
suggest that now is a good time to get hold of a copy, view the documentary and
share and discuss with friends in house gatherings, etc.
Attitudes toward gun control are changing among the
Afro-American people in response to the Charleston murders, the police terror directed at the
Black communities and people, and refusal of law enforcement to protect the
Black communities. In a July 15, 2015 Reuters article published in a number of
major newspapers, Philip Smith, who recently founded the National
African-American Gun Association, is quoted as saying, “If anyone should have
the right or need to carry a gun, it should be the African-American community.”
The article quotes a board member of an African-American church who wants to be
prepared, “They won’t be the only one pulling a trigger.” The article reports
on the activities of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club in Texas which was formed last
year after the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Referring to recent polls, “The
idea that guns provide protection appears to be quickly gaining currency among
American blacks. In December 54% of blacks polled by Pew said they believed
guns were more likely to protect people than to put their safety at risk. That
figure was up from 29% two years earlier.”
Armed self-defense is an important
democratic right of the African American people in the face of white
supremacist terror inflicted on their communities.
Comradely,
Mike
S.
Includes my view of the U.S.-Iran Nuclear
Treaty
U.S. Imperialist War is a Bi-Partisan Problem
by CINDY SHEEHAN
“I do not
hesitate one second to state clearly and unmistakably: I belong to the American
resistance movement which fights against American imperialism, just as the
resistance movement fought against Hitler.”
–Paul
Robeson
I believe that just as important as it is to study the great
thinkers, revolutionaries, and philosophers of the past, we should use that
information to inform our lives as we draw from our own past and experiences.
It took me awhile to look at the world and my past through a
revolutionary, anti-Imperialist lens. When my son Casey Sheehan was first
killed in Iraq in 2004, my eyes were clouded by a red-hot hatred of George Bush
and the Republican Party that I believed had murdered my son.
I quickly learned though through much trial, heartbreak and
profound disappointment that even though BushCo were a HUGE problem, it was not
THE problem. Unfortunately, most of my comrades during the Bush regime years
have not come to that same conclusion.
Of course, a relative handful of others and I, have continued the
struggle against US Imperialism since the oppressors allowed Bush to leave
office and Obama to move in as the head C.E.O. of USA Murder, Inc. However, the
antiwar movement was effectively co-opted and demobilized as far back as 2006
when the Democratic half of Imperialism reared its ugly head.
A few of the Obama regime’s lowlights include: the expansion of US
troops to Afghanistan; the continuing and now expanding occupation of Iraq;
greatly expanding the use of “drone-bombing”; “kill” lists; the absolute
destruction of Libya; increased tensions and hostilities with Russia as the
Obama regime supports neo-fascists in Ukraine; and the creation of ISIS and all
of its crimes with increased incursions into Syria, Yemen, and Kurdish areas.
Most of these “Nobel Prize” winning events were met with little opposition, and
in fact with outrageous shows of support from the same people who would have
apoplectic fits if, say, a McCain or Romney regime were pulling the same
disastrous stunts.
Currently, we have the “Iran Nuclear Treaty” deal. Of course, the
“deal” was forced on Iran (which by all accounts and evidence is NOT seeking a
nuclear bomb and does not have Imperial or colonial designs like the US and
Iran’s closer neighbor, Israel). Top
Iranian officials signed the “deal” to, I am sure, alleviate some of the
crippling economic sanctions that were hurting them. [That is, both the Iranian
rich and the Iranian people. — the editor]
The treaty is one-sided and negotiated by a “super” power that has
thousands of atomic weapons at its disposal, and, by the way, the only nation
that ever used atomic weapons against civilian populations. The treaty is
opposed by the colonist and Zionist state of Israel, which has hundreds of
nuclear weapons on hand and has been shown to be like its benefactor: not
opposed to brutally slaughtering innocents.
The same forces and organizations that have given Obama a
free-pass when it comes to his crimes against humanity, are now in an uproar
because the Republican sector of the US Imperialist state opposes this treaty
and the “peace” NGOs are telling us that this “deal” is the “best chance for
peace in the Middle East.” My response is “seriously?”
I have been asked to sign petitions and write letters to members
of Congress to urge them to pass the treaty, but these petitions and letters
NEVER mention the fact that the USA and the USA/Israel collaboration are in
fact the biggest blocks to “peace in the Middle East” and are responsible for
killing millions, directly or indirectly through terrorist proxies.
The state of Iran, with all of its issues, is NOT the major
deterrent to peace in the Middle East or the biggest sponsor of terrorism.
Plainly and simply, that would be the USA.
Considering the fact that the USA has never entered into a treaty
it hasn’t broken (especially with indigenous populations), I am not sure what
all of this cheerleading for this newest treaty is about, really. However, I
suspect it is just another hammer to use to beat the dead horse of partisan
politics with: “Democrats good and peaceful” vs. “Republicans bad and warlike.”
In my humble opinion, the best chance for “peace in the Middle
East” would include, but not be limited to:
1) The US removing all occupying forces from the
Middle East and closing all Military bases and CIA /covert operations;
2) The US stopping support to “terrorist”
organizations such as al Qaeda and IS(IS);
3) Israel ending its occupation of Gaza and
territorial expansion with focus being on the right of return and a Palestinian
state;
4) The US paying reparations to the people it
has harmed and giving aid for rebuilding and repair.
The US (under Obama) is greatly expanding its military/economic
Empire to Africa and is trying to isolate Russia and China, so “peace in the
Middle East” is actually just one piece of the Imperial pie.
The antiwar movement has been effectively neutralized by its
affiliation with and devotion to the Democrat Party, but we as true
revolutionary anti-Imperialists must never waver in our resolve to resist and
smash the US Empire and to try to lead others to the same conclusions and
principled action.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
On the 10th Anniversary of
Hurricane Katrina
by THE EDITOR
Hurricane Katrina and its horrifically lethal, man-made aftermath
resulted in the deaths of several thousand people and perhaps many more. It
clearly exposed the fact that U.S. imperialism is the enemy of the poor and
working people within the USA just as it is the enemy of the oppressed peoples
and the international working class everywhere. In pursuit of maximum private
profit, U.S. monopoly capitalism and imperialism wages ceaseless war against
all the oppressed and exploited people of the earth. On this tenth anniversary,
we are republishing our (we were “Ray O. Light, USA” at the time) official
statement released immediately after the hurricane. Even with the explosive
growth of the internet since then, it is arguably our most widely reprinted
statement ever. Within that first week, it traveled around the globe, as
millions of people learned, mainly through the medium of television, that, for
poor people, even in the USA, in the belly of the beast, U.S. imperialism cares
about them not at all.
In the ten years since then, thousands of Afro-Americans who were
dispersed around the country at the time have still been unable to get back
home. Much of this formerly Afro-American majority city in the Black Belt South
homeland has not been rebuilt, while monopoly capitalist speculators have run rampant.
The criminal administrative role of Republican President George W. Bush and his
FEMA buddies in the actual Katrina disaster caused untold human suffering.
Nevertheless, for most of this period, the President of the USA has been a man
of color, an African-American Democrat, a fact which has not helped the
Afro-American victims and other poor people, the hardest hit survivors of
Hurricane Katrina. The main value of reprinting the statement ten years later
is revealed by its title, “Hurricane Katrina Exposes Imperialist Nature of
System.”
* * * * * *
Hurricane Katrina Exposes Imperialist Nature
of System
Statement by Ray O. Light,
USA
(9-6-05)
The blood of the poor and largely Afro-American victims of
Hurricane Katrina is on the hands of the Bush Regime and its Democratic as well
as Republican representatives of US imperialism in Congress just as surely as
the blood of the Iraqi people is on their hands. And the US ruling class is
waging a ruthless war at home as well as in the Middle East and throughout the
world in ruthless pursuit of maximum private profit.
The devastating winds and flood waters of Hurricane Katrina washed
away layers of rhetoric, deception and outright lies about the nature of the
present socio-economic system operating in the USA. The real face of US
monopoly capitalism and imperialism appeared with the emergence of the victims
– especially the poor and the working poor, largely Afro-American people of New
Orleans. Far more quickly than any organized rescue efforts on behalf of these
victims, the two previous US Presidents, Bush’s father a Republican and Bill
Clinton a Democrat, were appointed by George W. to head the effort to cover
over the naked reality.
US liberals and radicals, and self described revolutionaries along
with conservative and bourgeois elements have decried the failure of the
system, and demanded that the system right itself, thus attempting to provide
an organized rescue effort for US imperialism. The truth is just the opposite.
The system did not fail. US monopoly capitalism and imperialism worked in the
interests of the US ruling class. It was business as usual.
For example:
1. In
pursuit of maximum short-term profits for the biggest bankers and capitalists:
“Engineering feats…tamed the flow of the Mississippi and turned it into one of
the world’s richest shipping channels… [at] a heavy price: Relentless erosion
of marshes, swamps and barrier islands along the coast that once acted as
buffers to the surging waters from storms. Without them, New Orleans sat
defenseless.” (USA Today 9-2-05 editorial)
2. For at
least twenty years, scientists, environmentalists and other concerned citizens
have warned about the dangerous and worsening condition of the New Orleans
infrastructure. In the past four years or so Louisiana state officials have
joined them in demanding a twenty year plan to restore the coast. Yet every
year since 2001, the Bush Regime, with Congressional blessing, “has slashed Louisiana’s
request for flood control funds” (ibid). Massive tax cuts for the richest
one-tenth of one percent of the population combined with massive public
expenditures on US imperialist wars for oil/gas seizures and control in order
to maintain US economic hegemony in the world capitalist system served this
same US ruling class, while protecting the lives of the citizens of New Orleans
was no priority at all.
3. To
commandeer all available automobiles, buses, trucks, trains, planes, cruise
ships, etc. to evacuate those without private automobiles or the cost of a bus
ticket would have interrupted the normal flow of business for private profit.
It is this clear priority of the system, private profit for the rich no matter
what the expense to the masses of humanity, especially the poor and the working
poor, which explains why no mass public evacuation efforts were even attempted,
despite the advance warning of Hurricane Katrina’s impending wrath. By
contrast, the Cuban government under the leadership of Fidel Castro, to whom
the people’s wellbeing is a priority, despite the poverty of the country, has
demonstrated time and again remarkable ability to move well over a million of
its citizens out of areas where Hurricanes have threatened to unleash deadly
destruction. To Bush and the US ruling class, thousands of lives of
Afro-American people and poor whites and Latinos along the Gulf Coast are
expendable, are of just as little concern, as the lives of the US military men
and women, the children of the poor and working poor, who have been sent to
kill and be killed by the people of Iraq fighting to liberate their country
from US imperialist occupation.
4. New Orleans was an
important port in the old Slave South; it is an important city in the oppressed
Afro-American nation today. In 1927 at the time of the Great Flood on the
Mississippi River, while the white settlers’ families were evacuated from the
area, thousands of Afro-American sharecroppers, at considerable risk of their
lives, were compelled by armed white settlers on horseback to fortify the
levees and the nearly half million Afro-American men, women, and children were
compelled to remain in the dangerous Delta area because the white settlers knew
that if they got out many would never voluntarily return to their semi-slave
status in the Delta. It is no accident that 70% of New Orleans population was
still Afro-American when Katrina hit and that among the estimated 20% of the
people of the city (the poorest of the poor) who were unable to leave their
percentage was much higher. All of this is a reflection of the long shadow of
the plantation system. The ability of US imperialism to reap super profits from
the New Orleans area continued to be based on the special oppression of the
Afro-American people on their own land.
5. Apparently large
numbers of small Afro-American groups, many out of desperation to seize any
food, clothing or shelter available and angered by their desertion by the US
government in their hour of need, spontaneously took up arms. Some apparently
took aim at any US authorities that began to appear in New Orleans. To keep the
Afro-American victims of this disaster from having their justifiable anger
spill over into the beginning of an Afro-American armed national liberation
struggle based in the Black Belt South as well as to continue to protect
private property over human life, Shoot to Kill orders were given to the US
military coming in to New Orleans and Commander in Chief George W. Bush
declared “Zero Tolerance” for “looting” by those whom he had deprived of all
public support.
6. Finally,
the immediate price gouging by US oil companies at gas pumps all over the
country in the immediate aftermath of the Hurricane and before any relief
efforts were even begun on the Gulf Coast is a striking reminder to all US
citizens of whose class interests the current US government serves, of what
this system’s priorities really are.
Conclusion:
In the short run, maximum mobilization of aroused citizens
throughout the USA should compel US imperialism to provide food, clothing and
shelter as well as medical care, education and jobs to the displaced. (“Money
for Hurricane Relief, Not for Imperialist War!”) Over the long run, Katrina
should become a battle cry for revolutionary organization, so the peoples fury,
rather than disintegrate into every man/woman for themselves, can be directed
against the devastation of US monopoly capitalism and imperialism and their two
party puppet apparatus that shipped thousands of body bags to New Orleans
rather than spend public dollars to evacuate thousands of people to safety.
Katrina should become a battle cry for socialist revolution
throughout the USA – for the poor and working class people of the United States
to organize against Bush and the US ruling class, including the oil companies,
their war of occupation and plunder in Iraq and around the world and their
profiteering at home and to fight for an end to the system of private profit.
Katrina should become a battle cry for Afro-American national liberation, for
land and state power, in the Black Belt South of the USA. The establishment of
an Afro-American Peoples’ Democratic Republic, much like present day Cuba, that
will defend the well being of its people, is a realistic goal. Today the Iraqi
Resistance is showing the way.
Remember
Hurricane Katrina:
Independence
for the Oppressed Afro-American Nation!
Socialism
in the USA!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
CLINTON JOINS TRUMP ON IMMIGRATION
by ROSE BROWN
When billionaire Donald Trump officially announced his candidacy for
President of the USA in mid-June, he projected the BIG LIE that Mexico was
sending “rapists, criminals and drug users” across the border into the USA! His
campaign slogan is “Make America great again.” His way to do that? Build an
impregnable wall between the United States and Mexico and deport the eleven
million undocumented immigrant workers presently in the USA who came here
fleeing economic hardship and political repression in their native lands
dominated by U.S. imperialism! He has even raised the demand to change the U.S.
Constitution so that what he has called “anchor babies,” i.e. U.S. citizen
children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States, would no longer
be U.S. citizens.
Arrogant, bombastic,
chauvinistic, openly hate-mongering Donald Trump has risen in the polls to
become the front-runner of the Republican presidential candidates, tapping into
a deep-seated white and great nation chauvinism and frustration and
dissatisfaction of U.S. white middle class and working class folk in particular
which has been fueled by the long standing capitalist economic crisis. CNN
reported in mid-August that Trump was the clear leader of the Republican
presidential candidates “with the support of 24% of Republican registered
voters” and that 44% of Republican voters “trust Trump over others on illegal
immigration.”
Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton has criticized Trump for
his “inflammatory” rhetoric. But when Trump responded with his “inflammatory”
tweets to a random tragic killing in San Francisco by an undocumented Mexican
immigrant, Clinton responded to the situation stating: “The city [San
Francisco] made a mistake, not to deport someone that the federal government
strongly felt should be deported … I have absolutely no support for a city that
ignores the strong evidence that should be acted on.” (Huffington Post, 7/7/15) So there we
have it once again! Leading candidates of both Republican and Democratic
political parties, what Ray Light has referred to as the “Republicrats,” with
the same message – Attack, intimidate, and terrorize undocumented workers and
their families!
The Democratic Obama
administration, within which Hillary Clinton has been a key player, has
deported over two million undocumented immigrants, more than any other administration
in U.S. history. According to a recent New York Times article, today “immigration enforcement takes up half the
nation’s entire law enforcement budget. The border patrol’s budget alone has
increased more than tenfold since 1970 to $4 billion.” The article also points
out that “Border Patrol personnel have doubled since 2004, to 21,000. More than
650 miles of fencing have been built, festooned with sensors and backed by
drones.” (“Donald Trump’s Shaky Grasp on Immigration,” 9/1/15) Trump’s “wall”
is already in place!
In May 2006, in an article entitled “The Growing Movement for
Immigrant Rights in the USA and the Question of Immigration,” Ray Light pointed
out “The aim of US imperialism is to maximize private profit through
exploitation and super-exploitation of workers both within the United States
and around the world. The various proposals for ‘immigration reform’ being
considered by [both Republicans and Democrats in] the US Congress represent two
sides of a strategy to entice immigrants into the United States to work (‘Bring ’em here’) and to maintain a
workforce submissive and ripe for super-exploitation (‘Beat ’em down.’) Such exploitation and
terror directed against one section of the working class serves also to further
repress all sections of the working class (‘Beat ’em all down’).” (Ray O’ Light Newsletter #42, May 2006)
In opposition to this imperialist approach, workers of all
nationalities who form part of the multi-national U.S. working class have a
direct stake in working class unity. In the current climate of ongoing
capitalist economic crisis, proletarian vanguard forces must remain ever
vigilant to rally the entire U.S. working class against the dangerous
“scape-goating” of the Latino immigrant section of the working class, in particular.
The “immigrant-bashing,” bi-partisan immigration policies of Trump and Clinton
and other “Republicrats” divide us and only serve the Wall Street monopolist
capitalist and imperialist ruling class.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The
Emergence of Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Presidential
Election
Campaign and its Revolutionary Significance
(A substantially edited and
excerpted contribution by a longtime ROL-USA activist to the initial internal
debate within the Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA regarding the 2016
US Election—the editor)
***
This summer we are
witnessing the meteorite rise of Senator Bernie Sanders in the primary season
of the Democratic Party leading up to the U.S. presidential election. He and
his message are taking the country by storm. Tens of thousands of people have
turned out for rallies throughout the country from Maine to Wisconsin, Portland
OR to Phoenix, Dallas and Houston. 28,000 gathered in Los Angeles alone. One
evening of recent “house parties” garnered 100,000 participants.
Who is Senator Bernie
Sanders?
Seventy-three year old Bernie Sanders is a senator from the largely rural and
mostly Caucasian state of Vermont with its tiny population. He began his
political career as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont’s largest city. Prior to
becoming Senator in 2007, he served as the state’s only representative in the
House of Representatives.
In all his previous
elections he refused to run with either the Democratic or Republican parties,
running as an independent. He openly identifies himself as an “independent
socialist” in a society where over the last seventy years “socialism” had
become a “dirty word,” vilified and demonized by the ruling class and imbued in
the culture of the masses of people. Nevertheless, during his years in Congress
he has caucused exclusively with the Democratic Party. Last year, emphasizing
his loyalty to the Democrats, he was appointed by the Democratic Party
leadership to be their “ranking member” on the powerful Senate Budget Committee.
As an elected
Congressional representative, he has maintained a “pro-union”, “pro-U.S.
worker” and “pro-civil-rights” record. He has been active in the fight against
fast track trade authority and the Trans Pacific Partnership, advocated for a
$15 (“living”) wage, built a political coalition to defend and expand social
security and actively championed defense of the public postal service. He
walked picket lines with the Fairpoint telephone workers during their recent
strike in New England.
However, like the
Democratic Party he is now openly serving, over his years in political office,
he has proved to be a consistent defender of the U.S. imperialist Empire and
open enemy of the international working class and the oppressed peoples.
Following 9-11 he became part of the frenzied drive toward war and voted to
give then President George W. Bush extensive war powers to prosecute the
so-called “war on terror.” In this connection, Sanders has been a persistent
defender of the Israeli settler state and opponent of the Arab people. Sanders
did vote against the war in Iraq, but subsequently voted multiple times to fund
the war. And, as ROL, USA has established over the years since 9-11, since
George W. Bush launched the U.S. Empire’s War of Terror, there is a dialectical
relationship between the U.S. Empire’s War abroad and War at home. Thus, to
support the Empire abroad is to strengthen it at home against the workers and
oppressed nationalities within the USA as well. Not surprisingly, Sanders voted against the Patriot
Act but then voted to make it permanent.
What has caused the uproar about the Sanders’ candidacy?
In late April, 2015,
Bernie Sanders announced his run for President of the United States opting to
run in the Democratic Party primaries. Few in the media and even Sanders
himself, saw it as a viable campaign for president of the United States, but
rather as a podium to raise important issues.
But in a time of
growing income inequality, a starvation minimum wage, extensive joblessness,
home foreclosures, declining standards of living, growing student debt and
austerity policies directed against the workers, Sander’s progressive domestic
program is striking a powerful chord. He is espousing a strong anti-corporate,
anti-Wall Street, pro-people platform that calls for an end of the oligarchy of
the billionaire class. He promotes a “living wage” of $15/hour (thus uniting
with the demands of the fast food workers), free college education at public
universities, medicare for all as a single payer health care system, breaking
up the “too big to fail and too big to jail” Wall Street banks and firms,
expansion of social security benefits, an end to trade deals like the TPP,
taxing the wealthy, a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street financial transactions,
ending the corporate buying and selling of elections including repeal of
“Citizens United” and a massive infrastructure rebuilding program to create 13
million new jobs.
These are similar
issues that led to the bursting forth of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the
Sanders campaign undoubtedly has become a continuer of the political expression
of that positive movement. The enthusiasm and broad appeal of the Sanders
candidacy has caught the ruling class and their pundits by surprise. As Sanders
rapidly rises in the polls (for example he is now leading the presumptive
Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton in the early primary state of New
Hampshire polls, 44% to 37%, rising from 8% support a few short months ago)*
the ruling class is not sitting idly by. The fact that sitting Vice President
Joe Biden is now seriously weighing a presidential run “out of the blue” is in
direct response of the ruling class to stop the Bernie Sanders express as
Clinton drops in the polls.
*New Hampshire is next door to Vermont. But Sanders is
on the verge of catching up with Clinton in Iowa as well.
On the other hand, the
Sanders’ campaign within the Democratic Party, serves as an obstacle to Afro-American, Latino, labor, environmental and other
progressive third
party
initiatives in the very election period following the bitter experience of the
working class and oppressed nationality masses with almost seven years of the
Obama Regime. Think: Black Lives Matter, Deportation of immigrants, Obama’s
Republican-led Fast Track Authority on the Trans Pacific Partnership.
General Principles with which we examine the 2016 U.S.
Presidential Election Campaign
There is no question
that the capitalist system cannot be reformed and that bourgeois elections
exist to sustain capitalist rule under the scam, sham and illusion of
“democracy.” “Marx
grasped the essence of capitalist democracy splendidly, when ... he said that
the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular
representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in
parliament.” (Lenin, The State and Revolution.)
Through Newsletters,
articles and books, and political activity, including recently in the struggle
to block the Republican-led Fast Track Authority for Democratic President Obama
regarding the Trans Pacific Partnership,
Ray Light and the Revolutionary Organization of Labor organization have
consistently and correctly documented that the historical facts of the last
decades prove, over and over, that the Democratic party is but one of two
corporate parties, that cooperatively combine as “Republicrat rule” to
politically represent the U.S. Empire against the working class and oppressed,
abroad and at home.
Our long run goal of
workers’ power and a collective socialist economy cannot be won primarily with
elections, but mainly through a revolutionary seizure of power where the
working class becomes the ruling class. But, as a revolutionary working class
organization guided by Leninism, we know that it is the working class and the
oppressed masses in their thousands, millions and billions (and not the
vanguard in isolation) that make world history. The working class and oppressed
peoples within the US multinational state, just like those throughout the rest
of the world, need their own direct political experience in order to become
convinced that the difficult path of revolution is the only path to freedom. Bourgeois
elections are part of that direct political experience.
***
Editor’s Note:
In this context, we will continue our coverage of the 2016
Presidential Campaign in our next issue. It will include, among other things,
our collective tactical decisions regarding the limits of our participation
with the Sanders’ candidacy. Meanwhile, we would be happy to hear from you on
this subject.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
In the belly of the beast
31 Per Cent of World’s Mass Shootings Here
by RAY LIGHT
“The U.S. is home to 5% of the world’s population, but has had 31%
of the public mass shootings worldwide between 1966 and 2012 …,” according to
Adam Lankford, a University of Alabama criminal justice professor. (See “Why
the U.S. Has 31% of the World’s Mass Shootings” by Tanya Basu, Time on-line, August 2015)
Presenting his new study at a late August meeting of the American Sociological
Association, Lankford stated that there were “292 public mass shooters who have
killed a minimum of four people between 1966 and 2012. And when you narrow
shootings down to just those that occur at school and work, American incidences
account for 62% of global cases.”
Lankford believes his study is the first to confirm that “there’s
something strongly American about public mass shootings.” He and Time’s writer Tanya Basu
try to link this mainly to the number of firearms per capita in the USA which
leads the world by far. But Lankford knows there is more to it. He points to
the “strong sense of exceptionalism and individualistic culture, something that
American kids are taught from an early age.” But the bankruptcy of Lankford’s
theory is exposed by the following (cited by Basu). “‘There’s a silver lining,
however. Because
the U.S. has a preponderance of public mass shootings, the country is better
prepared than any other to deal with them,’ Lankford says. He points
to Columbine and Sandy Hook as events that shaped enforcement procedure.” (sic
and sick) (My emphasis, ROL) Clearly the orientation of the criminal justice
professor is to control the U.S. population, not deal with the society’s
sickness.
***
Compare the following excerpts from my 2013 article, “The Brutal
and Decaying U.S. Empire and the Newtown School Tragedy” (Ray O’ Light
Newsletter #76, January-February
2013):
“President Obama’s response to the tragedy was to immediately back
stronger gun control laws. This has been the overwhelming response of the U.S. ruling
class, including its military leaders. Already gun buy-back programs have been
implemented by such notorious law enforcement agencies as the Los Angeles
Police Department (LAPD). At the same time, other ‘enlightened’ ruling class
folks have called for better access to mental health support. And all kinds of
social-democrats, pacifists, and other opportunists are prescribing some
combination of disarming of the U.S. population (but not the police and the
military who are armed to the teeth) and a better mental health care system.
“Whatever their specific prescriptions, however, the apologists
for monopoly capitalism have a unified message: there is nothing
fundamentally wrong with this imperialist society; just a few tweaks will take
care of the problem.
“But a closer look at the facts leads to a different conclusion
entirely. The horrific Newtown, Connecticut school tragedy has the “mark of the
beast” all over it — the decadent U.S. Empire, having already devoured so many of the
world’s peoples as it grew ever more fat and parasitic over the past six
decades, is now in sharp decline and is beginning to devour its own young.
“For example, between 1991 when the first U.S. Gulf War led by
Republican President George Bush I ended and 2003 when his son, George Bush II,
embarked on the second unprovoked U.S. war against the people of Iraq, a
constant saturation of U.S. Air Force aerial flights enforced a ‘no-fly zone’
that effectively upheld a U.S. embargo, preventing medical supplies and much
necessary materiel from reaching the children of Iraq. The estimates are that
from 500,000 to a million Iraqi children under the age of five perished as a
result of this U.S. embargo that lasted for more than a decade, most of it
under Democratic commander in chief Bill Clinton. Were these Iraqi children any
less precious than the twenty children of six and seven who were murdered in
Newtown, Connecticut last month?!
“The social fabric of U.S. society in 2013 is woven almost
entirely from the reality of the crumbling of the U.S. Empire, that is, from
the decades-old violent and parasitic legacy of U.S. imperialist hegemony and
from its current
and precipitous decline. …
“No wonder millions of ‘red blooded American boys’ have gotten the
message that might makes right and that mayhem and murder is the solution to
their problems. There is an epidemic of mass murders in U.S. society. Many of
them have had a white supremacist and/or fascist motivation. … And there is
every indication that tragic mass murder events in the USA will become not less
but more
frequent in the
foreseeable future. …
“Given the current political and economic developments in the USA,
the only remedy to this sick situation, the only way to avoid an out-of-control
epidemic of mass murders such as have occurred so recently in Aurora, Colorado
and now Newtown, Connecticut and the developing military-fascist state is to defeat, dismantle and
destroy the U.S. Empire.”
[For a copy of the
entire 2013 article, please send your request to:
Boxholder,
607 Boylston St, Lower Level Box 464, Boston, MA 02216]
* * * * * * * * * * * *
NOTE FROM CINDY SHEEHAN:
Ray O’ Light Newsletter Now On Line!
Dear
Comrades,
The
Soapbox People’s Network (www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com) has been diligently publishing everything
that the ROL Newsletter sends us. We are receiving over 100,000 hits per month
and the information is certainly getting out there.
The ROL page is at:
http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/ray-olight.html
http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/ray-olight.html
I can always be reached at my email:
CindySheehansSoapbox@gmail.com
CindySheehansSoapbox@gmail.com
In struggle,
Cindy Sheehan
* * * * * * * * *
“The
great appear great to us
Only
because we are on our knees:
Let
us rise.”
— Camille Desmoulins
Revolutionary
Organization of Labor (ROL), USA is a revolutionary
working class organization that fights for working class power and the
elimination of all human exploitation. Ray O’ Light
Newsletter is the regular publication of ROL, USA. We believe, with comrade
Lenin, that the working class “… needs the truth and there is nothing so
harmful to its cause as plausible, respectable petty bourgeois lies.” In the
spirit of Karl Marx who taught that “our theory is not a dogma but a guide to
action,” we welcome your comments.
Comradely the
Newsletter Staff,
Ray
Light, Editor Rose
Brown, Assistant Editor Carl
Pappos, Production Coordinator
