Nations Want Liberation: The Black Belt Nation in the 21st Century

The following article below was originally published by the political news blog Return to the Source:

By Vince Sherman & Frank Thomson, with contributions from Black Uhuru
June 24, 2012

Thousands rally for Trayvon Martin in Sanford, FL.

In the past year, the United States has experienced an upsurge in black political consciousness as hundreds of thousands of organizations and people poured into the streets to demand justice for Trayvon Martin, the 17 year-old African-American youth brutally murdered in Sanford, FL. Martin’s case has drawn enormous attention to the daily terrorism inflicted on African-Americans by both the US government and vigilante terrorists, like George Zimmerman, who uphold and enforce a vicious system of white supremacy.

As the movement against police brutality and racist oppression continues to grow, Marxist-Leninists must grapple with the burning question of how to build a revolutionary national liberation struggle capable of ending white supremacy and imperialism in the United States.

Seeking to capitalize on the growing struggle against racism, the International Socialist Organization (ISO) has republished a series of articles from the 1980s reflecting their understanding of “The History of Black America” in its newspaper, Socialist Worker. Complete with all of the errors endemic to their bizarre Trotskyite understanding of revolutionary history, these articles are a flaccid attempt for a mostly white organization – an organization that expelled several activists of color from its Washington DC branch in 2010, no less – to make itself relevant to the struggle of African-Americans against white supremacy.

However, one article in particular, republished on Saturday, June 16, stands above the rest in its historical revisionism, its fallacious analysis, and its generally poor syntactical construction. Lee Sustar’s piece, “Self-determination and the Black Belt” is a hit piece on the Marxist-Leninist demand for African-American self-determination, the entire concept of the Black Belt nation, and black nationalism in general.

Rife with historical errors, strawman characterizations, and misspellings, Sustar’s piece itself is barely worth a response. Never missing an opportunity to denounce and slander Josef Stalin, Sustar makes the totally absurd claim that “The Black Belt theory was part of a sharp “left” turn by the Communist International (Comintern) used by Joseph Stalin to mask his bureaucracy’s attack on the workers’ state,” arguing that somehow upholding the demand for African-American self-determination allowed Josef Stalin to better consolidate his so-called “state capitalist regime in Russia.” (1) The relationship between the struggle for black nationalism and the USSR is never explained or warranted by Sustar.

Neither is his claim that the demand for black self-determination was based “on the works of a Swedish professor who aimed to theoretically justify the political turns of the bureaucracy which was coming to control Russia.” (2) Sustar never names this Swedish professor, supposedly the progenitor of the demand for black self-determination, nor does he offer any evidence that such a professor had any impact on the development of the black national question adopted and implemented by the Communist International (Comintern). But a lack of evidence never stands in the way of the ISO’s vicious slander of Marxism-Leninism so the omission of key facts is both unsurprising and expected.

However, the continued relevance and renewed importance of the black national question in the 21st century demands serious consideration by Marxist-Leninists. It is important to respond to these unprincipled criticisms and slander of the experiences of black nationalist organizations and the CPUSA. The ISO may have published this piece nearly 30 years ago, but the same theoretical bankruptcy demonstrated in this re-published essay continues to inform their strange blend of Cliffite-Trotskyism today.

Instead, Marxist-Leninists must put forward a principled and materialist evaluation of the successes and failures of these various groups struggling for black liberation that appropriately contextualizes their specific struggles.

The Soviet Union and the National Question

V.I. Lenin

The Marxist-Leninist position on the African-American national question and the Black Belt South developed directly out of the Soviet Union’s own experience with actualizing the demand for self-determination for oppressed nationalities. The October Revolution of 1917 and the founding of the Soviet Union marked the end of tsarist oppression of the nations in the transcaucasus and Central Asia. In addition to Russia, many other nations under the Tsarist empire participated in the proletarian revolution in October 1917, and the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, began to work towards the creation of a voluntary federation of free, self-determined nations.

The destruction caused by the Russian Civil War, waged between 1918 and 1922, along with the Allied invasion of Russia by fourteen countries in 1921, forged a sense of unity between the underdeveloped constituent nations of the former Russian empire and the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary government. After exiting World War I through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and emerging victorious over the tsarist White Army, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) met with representatives from these formerly oppressed nations and formed the Soviet Union in 1922. The Soviet Union’s recognition of its constituent nations’ right to self-determination finds its embodiment in the 1917 “Declaration of the Rights of the Russian People,” which legally guaranteed “equality and sovereignty of the peoples of Russia, the right of peoples of Russia to free self-determination up to secession and the formation of independent states, abolition of all national and national-religious privileges and restrictions, [and] free development of national minorities and ethnic groups inhabiting the territory of Russia.” (3) Thus, any analysis of the Soviet Union must account for the complexities of its international composition, rather than viewing it as a purely Russian political phenomenon.

After the formation of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) implemented a policy of korenizatsiya to encourage the indigenous development of revolutionary leadership among the USSR’s constituent nations. While the CPSU argued that the process of socialist construction for each nation was generally the same, it acknowledged a firm belief that “each nation which has overthrown capitalism seeks to plot the course of its economic, political and cultural development in such way as to be most in conformity with its concrete historical features and progressive traditions.” (4) Korenizatsiya was a means by which the CPSU would help create indigenous communist parties, culture, and economies tailored to the specific needs of the nation in question. The central component of this, in the view of the CPSU, was the cultivation of native communist leadership in each nation’s party and the promotion of national minorities in higher Soviet institutions. (5)

In practice, the CPSU “supported local languages, educated and promoted local elites and thus built new loyalties to the socialist cause” as a part of korenizatsiya. (6) Reza Zia-Ebrahimi of the London School of Economics & Politics describes this process in a 2007 article entitled “Empire, Nationalities and the Fall of the Soviet Union,” pointing out that “each Soviet republic was flanked with an official culture, official folklore and national opera-house. (7) Soviet authorities went as far as to develop written systems for local languages that had previously lacked them.” (8) She notes that this policy of nativization also had the effect of combating Russian national chauvinism, citing Ukraine in the 1920s as an example, in which “a Russian residing there also had to be educated in Ukrainian.”(9)

Though the precise manifestations of korenizatsiya oscillated over the history of the USSR and at times nations had less operational freedom – particularly during the glasnost period brought on by Gorbachev – the Soviet state’s dedication to raising the status of national minorities and guaranteeing political representation demonstrates a genuine ideological commitment to national self-determination that inspired oppressed nations around the world. (10)

Developing the Black National Question

Harry Haywood, one of the founders of the Marxist-Leninist line on the Black Belt nation.

Among the many activists inspired by the Russian Revolution was African-American communist Harry Haywood. In his autobiography, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist, Haywood recounts his excitement at the many achievements of the Russian Revolution, noting its specific importance to African-Americans: “Most impressive as far as Blacks were concerned was that the revolution had laid the basis for solving the national and racial questions on the basis of complete freedom for the numerous nations, colonial peoples and minorities formerly oppressed by the czarist empire.” (11) Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ handling of the national question in North Asia prompted Haywood to join the CPUSA in the winter of 1923 and to visit the Soviet Union as a part of a student delegation in 1925.

Sustar views genuine African-American revolutionaries like Haywood, who developed the demand for black self-determination in the Soviet Union, with condescending contempt. He writes, “For these leaders, the Comintern’s theory of self-determination for the Black Bell (sic) must have appeared as a revolutionary commitment to fighting the enormous racism in the U.S.” (12) The implication, of course, is that Haywood, Otto Hall, and James Ford were more or less passive recipients of the black national question line – a falsehood that flies in the face of historical fact – and that they were basically duped into accepting a position hoisted upon them by Stalin.

In actuality, the black national question established by the Comintern came about through vibrant debate and struggle between African-American comrades, the white comrades in the CPUSA, and Soviet comrades, who contributed their own first-hand experience in building a multinational republic of the 15 unique constituent nations of the USSR. During his four-year visit to the Soviet Union, Haywood meticulously analyzed the character of black oppression in the US alongside other comrades.

The CPUSA’s position at that time was that black workers were subject to harsh societal prejudice based on race, but fundamentally they experienced the same capitalist exploitation as white workers. Haywood and the Communist International (Comintern) came to criticize this position because “To call the matter a race question, they said, was to fall into the bourgeois liberal trap of regarding the fight for equality as primarily a fight against racial prejudices of whites.” (13) This simplistic view placed total emphasis on building the trade union movement irrespective of race, leading the CPUSA to mistakenly see the struggle for black civil rights “as a diversion that would obscure or overshadow the struggle for socialism.” (14)

Furthermore, looking at the exploitation of African-Americans purely as a question of race “slurred over the economic and social roots of the question and obscured the question of the agrarian democratic revolution in the South.” (15) In describing Reconstruction, Haywood writes that the “revolution had stopped short of a solution to the crucial land question; there was neither confiscation of the big plantations of the former slaveholding class, nor distribution of the land among the Negro freedmen and poor whites.” (16) The White Supremacist counter-revolution of 1877 brought an end to Reconstruction, and through fascist terrorism by paramilitary groups like the Ku Klux Klan, African-Americans were denied the political rights and economic opportunities afforded to White citizens. Thus, Haywood writes in his 1948 book, Negro Liberation, “The uniqueness of the Negro problem in the United States lies in the fact that the Negro was left out of the country’s general democratic transformation.” (17)

Influenced by Lenin’s Draft Theses on the National-Colonial Question and Josef Stalin’s Marxism and the National Question, both of which identify African-Americans as an oppressed nation within the US, Haywood and the leadership of the Comintern launched an intensive study of the character of African-American people. (18)  In Marxism and the National Question, Stalin outlines the objective conditions for nationhood, which are, “a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.” (19) Using the criteria set out by Stalin, Haywood notes that “Under conditions of imperialist and racist oppression, Blacks in the South were to acquire all the attributes of a single nation.” (20)

A common territory is one of the criteria for nationhood. Although African-Americans were spread out across the US, Haywood argued that the “territory of this subject nation is the Black Belt, an area encompassing the Deep South,” because even after the post-war Northern migrations of black workers, the Black Belt “still contained (and does to this day) the country’s largest concentration of Blacks.” (21) Additionally, Robin D.G. Kelley writes in his book, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression that “This region, dominated by cotton plantations, consisted of counties with a numerical black majority.” (22) The demographic concentration of African-Americans, along with their historical tie to the land, led the Comintern to adopt a resolution affirming the presence of a black nation in the American South at its Sixth World Congress in 1928. (23)

The Black Belt Nation, derived from James Allen’s 1938 pamphlet, Negro Liberation.

Sustar’s article spins a web of sophistry in trying to back-handedly argue that Lenin would have opposed the Comintern’s line on the black national question. While he acknowledges that Lenin viewed African-Americans as an oppressed nation, he then proceeds to ignore that fact in painting Lenin’s position as one in harmony with the ISO’s Trotskyite position: That the struggle for national liberation is simply “a means to fight chauvinism and racism in the working class.” (24)

In actuality, Lenin maintained that “it is necessary that all Communist Parties render direct aid to the revolutionary movements among the dependent and subject nations (for example, in Ireland, among the Negroes in America, etc.) and in the colonies.” (25) True to Trotskyite form, Sustar leaves out any mention of the other toiling masses besides the proletariat, whose support is vital to the national liberation struggle. Lenin writes, “the cornerstone of the whole policy of the Communist International on the national and colonial questions must be a closer union of the proletarians and working masses generally of all nations and countries for a joint revolutionary struggle to overthrow the landlords and the bourgeoisie.” (26) The term “working masses” unmistakably refers to the peasantry and the petty-bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations, who can and must support the proletariat for a revolutionary national liberation struggle to succeed. Much as Trotsky held contempt for the Bolshevik line on a strategic alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry in Russia, the ISO holds contempt for the strategic alliance between the multinational working class and the other nationalist classes comprising the oppressed African-American nation. He can hold that position, but it is characteristically anti-Leninist, as is the entirety of Trotsky’s theory of revolution.

The Comintern’s groundbreaking new line on the African-American question maintained that “African-Americans had the right to self-determination: political power, control over the economy, and the right to secede from the United States.” (27) In a broader sense, however, Haywood’s line on the national question represented an affirmation of the revolutionary character of black nationalist movements, whose efforts could strike blows against US imperialism from within. While Marxist-Leninists view nationalism as a bourgeois ideology, it can nevertheless fuel revolutionary movements against imperialism in colonized nations, whose economic and social development were held back by foreign exploitation.

Organizing in the Black Belt Nation

Sustar has an incredibly superficial understanding of the black national question in theory, but his historical evaluation of its impact is equally flawed.

When Haywood returned to the US in 1930, the CPUSA had already begun implementing the African-American national question by sending party cadre into the Black Belt to organize and raise the demand of black self-determination. Suster claims that “the new perspective launched the CP into a series of senseless sectarian attacks on reformist Black and working-class leaders, alienating the party from the mass of workers,” the actual effect of the Party’s focus on the black national question was tremendous growth in its black membership. (28) The Alabama Communist Party was particularly successful in building strong ties with African-Americans through applying the theory to political organizing. Kelley notes that “From the beginning, Birmingham blacks exhibited a greater interest in the Party than did whites.” (29) The party’s appeal among African-Americans came from its outspoken opposition to racism and its support for national self-determination. Kelley writes that “During the 1930 election campaign, the Communist Party did what no political party had done in Alabama since Reconstruction: it endorsed a black candidate, Walter Lewis, for governor. The election platform included complete racial equality and maintained that the exercise of self-determination in the black belt was the only way to end lynching and achieve political rights for Southern blacks.” (30)

The Alabama Communist Party’s orientation towards building a strong, independent African-American movement translated into exponential growth in black cadre. Starting with a mere three organizers in 1929, the Party “was augmented to over ninety by the end of August 1930, and over five hundred working people populated the Party’s mass organizations, of whom between 80 and 90 percent were black.” (31) Contrary to Sustar’s baseless claims, the correct application of the national question to organizing fueled the early rapid levels of growth for the CPUSA among African-Americans.

Black workers were hit hardest by the Great Depression’s rampant unemployment due to racist firing preferences by White managers. In response to the mass demand among African-Americans for jobs, the Alabama Communists organized an unemployment relief campaign in 1933. By the end of the year “the Party’s dues-paying membership in Birmingham rose to nearly five hundred, and its mass organizations encompassed possibly twice that number.” (32) The unemployment relief campaign was particularly successful in its goal “to increase the number of black female members, who often proved more militant than their male comrades, from open confrontation to hidden forms of resistance, and would later prove invaluable to local Communists continuing their work in the mines, mills, and plantations of the black belt.” (33) The Alabama Communist Party maintained high diversity because of its attention to the plight of African-Americans, and in particular, the plight of African-American women.

Southern communists heavily involved themselves in the sharecropper labor movement, whose composition was primarily African-American. In Alabama, for instance, the Party organized the Share Croppers Union (SCU) in 1931, which grew to “a membership of nearly 2,000 organized in 73 locals, 80 women’s auxiliaries, and 30 youth groups.” (34) The SCU was openly organized by Alabama communists, and while it drew substantial support from the African-American community, it was also subject to a harsh crackdown by state and non-state actors. (35) Nevertheless, “the SCU claimed some substantial victories. On most of the plantations affected, the union won at least seventy-five centers per one hundred pounds, and in areas not affected by the strike, landlords reportedly increased wages from thirty-five cents per hundred pounds to fifty cents or more in order to avert the spread of the strike.” (36) The mass appeal of the SCU, an explicitly red trade union, and its tremendous victories demonstrate the power once possessed by the CPUSA in the American South.

Because sharecropping and rural wage labor was dominated by African-Americans, the SCU gave Alabama communists an interesting opportunity to apply the national question to trade union organizing. African-American communist Al Murphy was chosen as the Secretary of the SCU, and the bulk of the union’s leadership was always black. (37) Kelley writes that as Secretary, “Murphy, an unflinching supporter of the Party’s demand for self-determination in the black belt, had very definite ideas about the radical character of the SCU. He saw within each and every member ‘standard bearers of Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Frederick Douglass,’ and regarded the all-black movement as the very embodiment of black self-determination.” (38) The SCU came to represent the embodiment of Black self-determination applied to organizing because African-American cadre themselves comprised the union’s leadership, rather than the white labor bureaucrats that marked most other industrial trade unions in the 1930s. Nearly all of the Party’s black leadership had no prior experience in radical movements, making the SCU an authentic people’s trade union reflecting the class conflicts of the South. (39)

Perhaps the only aspect of Sustar’s piece with a kernel of principled criticism is his claim that the black national question was never “consistently put forward in practice.” While the CPUSA did implement and adapt the theory to much success, the rise of fascism and the breakout of World War II produced zig-zags in the Party’s line on African-American liberation, much to the detriment of the Party. For instance, the CPUSA abandoned Haywood’s line on the national question in 1935 in order to collaborate with conservative middle class black organizations in anti-war work related to fascist Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. (40)

It is important to understand that Sustar is completely wrong in his assessment of the line’s implementation. Contrary to Sustar’s claim that the black national question “means subordinating the needs of workers to those of the middle class in the oppressed nation,” it wasn’t until the CPUSA dropped the demand for black national self-determination in 1935 that the Party began tailing the conservative black petty-bourgeoisie. (41) While the demand for a black nation was gaining traction among the black proletariat in the American South, the political pivot to a more rightist position proved costly to the CPUSA and actually fueled their waning influence in the working class. Sustar’s claim is outrageously ahistorical, and the facts actually demonstrate that abandoning the line seriously damaged the proletarian character of the black nationalist movement that the Party was building.

This political zig-zag was the product of Northern communists, who dominated the CPUSA leadership at the time. (42) Additionally, the sudden appearance of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), one of the only national trade unions to allow black members, prompted communist leaders to fold the SCU into the CIO in 1936. Although organizing within the CIO had tactical advantages in terms of available resources, the dissolution of the SCU “exacted a costly toll from the Alabama cadre, especially black party organizers.” (43) Because of racist internal policies limiting African-American leadership, “Black Birmingham Communists, for the most part, did not (and often could not) become pure union bureaucrats in the way that their comrades had in Northern and Western CIO unions.” (44) Reflecting deeper changes in their political line, the Alabama Communist Party’s influence declined across the South as it gradually lost its mass base among the African-American Nation.

One of the more bold claims made by Sustar is his claim that the CP pushed a line not shared by African Americans: “in the early 1930s, it was the Communist Party–not Black workers and farmers–who called for self-determination of the Black Belt.” Exactly who else is to put out slogans and calls? Is it a communist party’s job to wait until the people have perfected their demand and in the meantime there is nothing to do but twiddle one’s thumbs and hope for the best? Absolutely not. We say it is the job of the party to collect the best sentiments of the masses and translate them into coherent revolutionary action. Additionally, the tremendous success of the Communist Party in the South, especially among African-Americans and despite incredible state repression, indicates that the workers and sharecroppers in the South responded positively to the line precisely because they demanded it.

Justice for Trayvon: Continuing & Taking the Struggle Higher

By Li Onesto
April 19, 2012

George Zimmerman has now been arrested and charged with second-degree murder for the killing of Trayvon Martin.

This happened because people all over the country came together, took to the streets and said with one voice: NO MORE! Tens of thousands refused to let this murder go down without a struggle, and all kinds of people—from politicians and pastors, to celebrities and sports stars, along with those on the bottom of society as well as in the middle class—stood up and demanded justice for Trayvon.

It looked like Zimmerman was just going to walk. But this time masses of people were determined to not just swallow another bitter pill. This time, people were determined to come together and do something with their outrage. In cities and towns, from coast to coast, people of different nationalities protested and dragged the ugly injustice of this murder into the light of day and onto the top of the news.

These demonstrations have been all the more powerful because people have connected up and been speaking out against something that happens to Black people all the time in communities, big and small, all over this country. People are stepping forward to speak their own bitter stories of how Black youth are targeted, demonized, brutalized, and murdered. People carrying signs that say “Trayvon Martin is My Son” are speaking to the fact that there is a whole generation of Black youth this system treats as a “generation of suspects” to be murdered and jailed.

Another “isolated incident”—on top of so many other “isolated incidents.” Another Black family, burying their son for no reason other than he was young, Black, wearing a hoodie and so (as Zimmerman told the 911 dispatcher) he “looked suspicious” and “like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs.”

The murder of Trayvon Martin—and the mass outrage around it—brought to the surface, for all to see, hear and confront, the history and the current reality of what it means to be a Black person in the United States of America. People were outraged at what this was—a modern-day American lynching.

In this country that brags about being the “greatest country in the world,” 2.4 million people, the majority Black and Latino, are locked up in prison, many in conditions of torture in solitary confinement. In this post-racial “home of the free,” mass incarceration now concentrates the way Black people are systematically oppressed as a people by this system.

With the murder of Trayvon Martin, people across this country are taking to the streets and raising big questions about whether things have to be this way. And the whole world is seeing and hearing this—all of which poses a real problem for the powers-that-be.

The anger that poured out around the murder of Trayvon… what it has revealed about the nature of this society and this system… and the potential for this struggle to continue and go even further… for the very legitimacy of this whole setup to get called into question… for millions of people to not accept the current setup and be willing to act to change the way things are… all this poses a tremendous threat to those who rule over this society.

There has been contention over how to deal with this situation and different responses among those who rule. There are powerful forces who are pushing to prosecute Zimmerman who are highly critical of Stand Your Ground–type laws (which exist in over 20 states). At the same time, reactionaries are mobilizing to defend Zimmerman portraying him as the victim while dehumanizing Trayvon. But from all sides, with the arrest of Zimmerman, there are efforts to shift the focus and defuse people’s anger, to turn people’s heads down and into the fight in the legal arena. People are being told that now is the time to put our “faith in the justice system” and to take the spotlight OFF all the searing issues brought to the surface by this horrible murder and the nationwide protest it ignited.

Zimmerman has been arrested now, but this doesn’t mean he’ll necessarily go to trial. He will now have two chances to try to prove he shot in self-defense. He can ask a judge to just throw out the case before it ever reaches a jury on the basis of the Stand Your Ground law. The Stand Your Ground law was cited as the reason Zimmerman was not arrested in the first place. This law—which encourages vigilantism—says someone can basically get away with murder on the basis that they had a “reasonable belief” that it was necessary to kill the person “in order to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.” And then if the judge goes ahead and allows the case to go to trial, Zimmerman’s attorneys can assert this self-defense argument again. And citing the Stand Your Ground law, Zimmerman’s lawyers could argue not that his life actually was in danger—but that he had the belief that he feared for his life. And of course… the person who supposedly threatened his life cannot testify.

Put our faith in the system? Let the system work? It HAS been working!! The workings of this system of INjustice are exactly what compelled people to take to the streets in protest. The U.S. legal system doesn’t have anything to do with getting justice. The whole set up of cops, laws, courts and prisons is in fact an essential part of the way the powers-that-be rule over and enforce the oppressive economic and social relations of capitalism.

The Bigger Picture

The oppression of Black people has been essential and deeply woven into the very fabric of U.S. society—even as the different forms this takes have changed throughout the history of this country: from the first day an African slave was dragged in chains to these “shining shores,” to the days of Jim Crow segregation and KKK lynching, to tonight’s six o’clock news, when you’ll hear about the latest police murder of a Black youth in Anytown, USA.

For many, the murder of Trayvon Martin brought to mind the 1955 murder of Emmett Till—how the gang of KKKers who murdered this 14-year-old Black youth were easily found not guilty and then openly bragged about their heinous crime. For many it fanned embers of anger at how, today, an endless list continues to grow of Black and Latino youth gunned down by cops or racist vigilantes who almost always go free. From 1865 to 1965, 3,446 Black people were lynched. Such is the ugly history of this country that went on for a long time, even after slavery ended.

In the time of Emmett Till, Jim Crow laws and “KKK justice” meant all Black people walked around with a death sentence over their heads—knowing they could be dragged out of their homes, or could accidentally run into some men in white sheets—and then your life would be over, your body mutilated, strung up on a tree, burned.

And now, in the time of Trayvon Martin, all Black people, especially the youth, still face an ever-present death sentence—where being in the “wrong neighborhood,” wearing “suspicious clothes” or just being Black can make you the target of a trigger happy cop or racist vigilante. Now today, we get the official police policy of Stop-and-Frisk that targets hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino youth for unconstitutional harassment and searches—feeding a big pipeline for arrests and mass imprisonment.

What created the kind of racist, vigilante mindset of people like George Zimmerman, who see a Black youth wearing a hoodie and immediately consider him “suspicious” and literally, fair game to be hunted down and killed? Why has it been over 50 years since the murder of Emmett Till, yet a Black youth can still be lynched for the crime of walking down the street wearing a hoodie?

For decades now, the government’s “war on drugs” has systematically targeted Black and Latino people, especially the youth—arresting and imprisoning hundreds of thousands. And an integral part of all this has been an ongoing and insidious ideological campaign to convince the population at large that this section of society are nothing but dangerous thugs to be feared, who are beyond rehabilitation, and need to be locked up and kept away from everyone else.

As Carl Dix has said:

This kind of racial profiling [in the murder of Trayvon] is what leads into the kind of horrific numbers of people who are warehoused in prisons across the country and the millions more who are treated like second-class citizens even after they have been punished and served their sentences. And the backdrop to this horrific reality is that this capitalist system has got no way to profitably exploit this generation of Black youth, and their response to that has been criminalization and incarceration. This is why I say: Mass Incarceration + Silence = Genocide. This system has no future to offer this generation of Black youth. Its approach comes down to a slow genocide that could become a fast one. But we could break up this deadly equation by stepping up with resistance, and increasingly powerful resistance, and that’s what people need to do.

Continuing, and Taking the Struggle Higher

We need to fight for justice for Trayvon Martin. And we need to link that to and wage a struggle to change the whole horrific reality of mass incarceration in society—from the sheer unacceptable number of people being kept behind bars; to the way police brutality and policies like Stop and Frisk function as pipelines for prisons; to the constant demonization of Black and Latino youth; and to the caste-like treatment of people who get out of prison and are denied jobs, education and housing.

The powers-that-be need to convince the population at large that the Black and Latino youth are to blame for all the horrible things that are happening to them—that it is NOT the system. This is important for them, in terms of keeping society together and getting people to accept things the way they are. And this is why there has been such a systematic and conscious effort, for decades, to stigmatize and demonize a whole people—and justify the brutalization, murder and incarceration of this section of society. All that has come to the surface in the wake of the murder of Trayvon Martin—threatens to unravel this, which underscores the importance of why we need to not only continue this struggle, but take it higher.

Tens of thousands have been moved—in their hearts, in their minds, and with their feet—to take a stand, to come together.

This is a moment when many people can begin to question the legitimacy of the whole system responsible for the murder of Trayvon—which is NOT an isolated incident but only the latest of an endless chain of such acts that are perpetrated, condoned and covered up by the powers-that-be.

We need to Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution.

We need to step up the struggle against the oppression of Black people in this country—as an integral and extremely important part of building a movement for revolution. And right now, a key concentration in this is the battle to end mass incarceration.

Mass incarceration + silence = genocide. But we can and we urgently need to break this up through mass, determined resistance.

Source

ZANU-PF secretary Cde Chombo: ‘Govt. won’t allow white settler farmers back into land’

April 16, 2012

ZANU-PF Secretary Cde Ignatius Chombo

Government will never allow white former commercial farmers ousted under the Land Reform Programme to return, Zanu-PF secretary for land reforms and resettlement Cde Ignatius Chombo has said.

Addressing journalists in Harare last week, Cde Chombo said the land reform programme was irreversible.

He said Zimbabweans owning the land should drive Zimbabwe’s economy without interference from the white farmers.

“Some quarters, both local and international, continue to entertain the possibility of the return of the white settler farmers to the land appropriated in terms of the laws of Zimbabwe for equitable redistribution to the indigenous people of Zimbabwe,” he said.

“Our people are now on the land and are committed to ensure optimum utilisation of this valuable Zimbabwean resource.” Cde Cho-mbo said Zimbabwe was beginning to reap the fruits of the land reform.

“After the land reform programme, we have seen a transformation in our agricultural sector with numerous success stories in tobacco, cotton, livestock and even horticultural sectors,” he said.

“We need not remind our detractors that people went to war in order to reclaim, not just our independence but also our land.”

He said it was “wishful thinking” for people to imagine that whites would be given a chance to appropriate the land.

Source

Florida forced to charge Trayvon Martin’s killer with murder

After a firestorm of protests

By Monica Moorehead
April 11, 2012

New York, April 10. WW photo: G. Dunkel

George Zimmerman, the killer of the 17-year-old African American Trayvon Martin, was formally charged on April 11 with second-degree murder. It took the state of Florida 45 days to make an arrest of the wanna-be-cop Zimmerman, who fatally shot the unarmed teenager on Feb. 26 because he looked “suspicious” while wearing a hoodie.

The charge was announced by Angela Corey, a special prosecutor who was assigned to the case on March 14 in order to decide whether or not to bring charges against Zimmerman. A conviction can carry anywhere from a 25-year sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Statewide Prosecutor’s office and the Sanford Police Department had initially refused to arrest and charge Zimmerman with Martin’s murder. They gave as an excuse Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which protects those who claim self-defense. Sanford, especially its police department, has a sordid history of blatant racism against the Black community.

While Corey at her press conference was singing the praises of her prosecutorial team, the governor and the police authorities, she didn’t say what was most glaring: that there would have been no arrest or charges against Zimmerman had it not been for the massive explosion of all forms of protests from below — rallies, marches, sit-ins, teach-ins, walkouts and more, all demanding justice for Trayvon Martin.

Furthermore, all these forms of grassroots protests in big and small cities were inevitably leading toward a massive rebellion, starting in Florida and spreading throughout the country — if Zimmerman had not been charged with murder. The real possibility of such a rebellion led by Black and other oppressed youth weighed heavily on the racist, capitalist ruling class, who already have their hands full attempting to manage an unmanageable economic crisis.

Larry Hales, an organizer of Occupy 4 Jobs and the People’s Power Tour, stated in an April 11 press release, “What made this case so egregious is that Zimmerman was never initially arrested for the heinous crime against this teenager. In many cases, racist police and vigilantes are at least put on trial, even though 90 percent of the time they are given a slap on the wrist, resulting in very little jail time, or they are not convicted and are set free. The arrest of Zimmerman is one step in a long process of bringing about justice for Trayvon Martin and his family.”

Hales went on to say, “This case is more than about Trayvon Martin. He is the face of all Black and Brown young people who are racially profiled by police and vigilantes. This case is the tip of the iceberg of the war against Black and Brown youth, a war that includes growing incarceration, attacks on education, depression-level unemployment and more. We must continue to build a struggle for social justice so that victims like Trayvon Martin will not have died in vain.”

In the days and months to come, the movement must be on alert in every step of the process to bring Zimmerman to justice by mobilizing in every neighborhood, every city and every state.

Source

Hip-Hop artist/activist Brother Ali speaks at One Million Hoodies for Trayvon

1000 Utah marchers say, “Justice for Trayvon Martin!”

By David Self Newlin
April 3, 2012

Salt Lake City protest demands "justice for Trayvon Martin" (Fight Back! News/Staff)

Salt Lake City, UT – More than 1000 people marched through the streets of downtown here, March 31, with Trayvon Martin posters and peace signs waving. Marchers raised their fists in the air and shouted, “Justice for Trayvon, justice for everyone!”

Salt Lake City residents, led by organizers from the University of Utah Black Student Union, United for Social Justice, Occupy Salt Lake City and Revolutionary Students Union, marched to show support for the movement now building around Trayvon Martin, an African American teenager fatally shot by vigilante George Zimmerman while walking back to his father’s house in a gated community. Protesters called for the arrest of Zimmerman.

“We are doing a march for Trayvon Martin. May he rest in peace,” said protester Jay Bone Tha Young Savioso. “We feel that it’s not right. We’re all here together standing up for what’s right.” Savioso carried an iced tea and a bag of Skittles, items that Martin carried with him when he was shot. He also had his daughter, a toddler, with him.

More than calls for the arrest of Zimmerman, the march demanded action against racist police and government. “No justice, no peace, no racist police!” was chanted time and time again along the route. The shooting of Trayvon Martin outrages many activists. The strong stance of Martin’s family brought national attention and many hope to build a movement to stop similar murders, along with racist police brutality and misconduct in general.

“It is a case where the racism of the system seems very clear,” said Revolutionary Student Union organizer Kerem Cantekin. “I don’t mean just Zimmerman. I think it was not only Zimmerman who took Trayvon as the prime suspect, but the police, the investigation.”

Many African American protesters were concerned about the fact they are looked upon as suspect by default. Rally speaker Brent Jackson said that he had personally been stopped by Salt Lake City police simply for being Black and wearing certain clothes. He asked the crowd to “wake up.”

“A lot of Black people are scared now because any one of us can be next,” said a 17-year-old protester named Carl.

Annette Bankhead, a member of the Black Student Union, worried about her godchildren and how they would be treated. “I felt it was important to organize the march, because I am a godmother of a young boy, and I do not want him to have to walk down the street wearing a hoodie and be profiled.”

Organizer Victor Puertas said that he helped put together the march because, “I am tired of racism, of how this racist country treats people of color and then how they excuse this treatment.” He said that people in Utah feel the pain of police brutality every day, “even when it doesn’t make the news.”

Puertas specifically cited Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD) officer Shane Conrad. It was recently ruled that he used “unjustified” force in the non-fatal shooting of Denzel Davis last year. There are other officers infamous in the community for targeting the homeless and people of color for arrest and harassment. Protesters also denounced the SLCPD gang unit for brutality and racial profiling, chanting, “Shame on SLCPD gang unit!”

Puertas also spoke about the murder of Iraqi immigrant Shaima Alawadi as an important example of the racist oppression in the United States. Alawadi was murdered in her California home after being harassed and called a terrorist a week earlier. She was given no protection by the local police department. Relatives sent her body home to be buried in Iraq.

Both Bankheab and Puertas also said that it was important to show that Utahns are against racism and to show solidarity with those fighting against it. “I did not want Utah not participating when the nation was coming together for justice,” Puertas said.

Utah is one of over 20 states that has a so-called “stand your ground” law, which allows for much wider latitude in using deadly force than simple self defense. The law has existed in some form in Utah since 1994.

Deb Henry from Occupy Salt Lake City spoke about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), citing them as partly responsible for introducing “stand your ground” legislation in Utah and called for protests against them. ALEC will meet in Salt Lake City in July.

“This law has got to go and we all have to be together on this,” said immigrant rights activist Archie Archuleta.

Source

Trayvon Martin and the Need for an Independent Human Rights Movement

The following article below was originally published by People of Color Organize: 

April 3, 2012

The irrelevant, disconnected, abstract chatter that we see on the “mainstream” human rights listserves as it relates to issues that Black and oppressed communities are concerned with – and concomitant complete lack of substantive discussion about the Trayvon Martin case – demonstrates once again the need for a formation that centers the perspectives, interests and political objectives of human rights defenders from oppressed communities who are grounded in a radical understanding of human rights.

Mainstream formations dominated by middle-class lawyers seem to be unable to see or understand the major impact that Trayvon Martin’s case is having in the Black community, and the progressive social change movement in general. Limited by their race and class perspectives (including “people of color” who have not dealt with their internalized white supremacist influences), and lacking any connection to grassroots organizations or popular social change networks, alliances or coalitions, they are unable to grasp when conditions are created that could allow for the advancement of a human rights understanding and framing that could influence the national discourse.

Hamstrung by a stale, mechanistic approach to human rights work dictated and controlled by the narrow and confused priorities of liberal funders who only pay lip-service to supporting social change efforts not tied to the interests of the Democratic Party, the elites of the mainstream human rights movement in the U.S. will either opportunistically co-opt an issue (especially if there are funding opportunities to be had – think national security and human rights, racial profiling, and so-called “immigrant rights”) or, as in this case, largely ignore it.

Yet, within the “mainstream” human rights circles there are decent and dedicated people who understand the limitations of a domestic movement that is dominated by middle-class lawyer advocates and “501(c) NGOs.” They understand, like we do, that the only way that the human rights movement in the U.S. can escape the class-based fragmentation and opportunism that characterizes so much of the approach to human rights work is to ground the movement in the interests, perspectives, objectives and leadership of the Black, Latino, Indigenous and oppressed communities that are dedicated to anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, anti-oppression (in all its forms) and self-determination. This should not be paternalistic “empowerment” but a renouncing of class privilege and gate-keeping and getting out of the way so that an authentic, democratic leadership and processes can emerge out of a social change movement that is embracing a “people-centered,” radical approach to human rights.

But we know that the displacement of opportunism will not come about as a result of appeals to morality and conscience alone. We are not that naïve. There are powerful material incentives (including the ability to secure and waste literally hundreds of thousands of dollars) and non-material advantages that ensure that the various cabals’ of gatekeepers won’t give up easily. It is only through self-organization and independence that we will be able to develop and advance a people’s agenda for human rights, democracy and social justice. That is why a National Alliance for Racial Justice and Human Rights is needed. An alliance of human rights defenders who understand an analytical framework informed by human rights principles that elucidate and give life to the connection between the political demands for self-determination for all oppressed nations and peoples, and the peoples’ insistence on dignity – expressed through the demands for the human right to education, housing, health and health care, a clean environment, water, individual and collective development, real social security through-out life, and an end to all forms of racial, gender (patriarchal), sexual, national, ethnic and religious oppression.

Those who take this approach to human rights advancement understand that these demands will only be realized when there is a shift in power away from the capitalist state and the white supremacist Republican and Democratic parties (the advancement of the interests of the white supremacist 1% is not dependent on the color of its agents!) to the organized people. This shift will require struggle and organization. An alliance of human rights defenders who recognize the historic tasks that this period demands will greatly facilitate the creation of an “alternative bloc” of the 99%.

As horrific as the killing of Trayvon Martin was, the cold objective fact is that every few years a case emerges, whether it is Oscar Grant or Sean Bell, just to mention a couple of contemporary cases, that reminds us of the disparate value that is placed on Black life by the agents of White authority. But as human rights defenders who have an internationalist understanding and perspective, we would be morally remiss and politically irresponsible if we did not link the devaluation of Trayvon’s life to the general devaluation of non-White life that is a permanent feature of European and U.S. imperialism world-wide. The non-indictment of Trayvon’s killer should not be surprising for anyone with just a cursory understanding of what this country stands for and its real interests – from the “collateral” damage of predatory drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia to the killings of 17 women and children by a U.S. occupation solder in Afghanistan, the killings, torture and assaults perpetrated by the U.S. state and its NATO criminal gang allies against people of color exemplifies a lack of respect for non-White life. Stamford, Florida is in fact not very different from southern Afghanistan in that respect.

So while we mourn the death of Trayvon Martin we must also remember the countless victims whose names we will never know and who have lost their lives at the hands of racist police, 500 pound bombs made in the U.S., or vicious mercenaries and economic sanctions. For all who understand that we must struggle against precisely those enemies in our fight for our human rights, we invite you to join us to discuss the way forward for building a powerful alliance for racial justice and human rights. That call will take place on April 4th, the anniversary of the murder of Dr. King, at 4 p,m.

To register for the call please go here.

- Ajamu Baraka

Milwaukee rallies for Trayvon Martin, demands justice for victims of Milwaukee Police Department

By Jacob Flom
March 29, 2012

Milwaukee protest demand justice for Trayvon Martin (Fight Back! News/Staff)

Milwaukee, WI – Students and community members rallied at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, March 29, to demand justice for Trayvon Martin. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized the rally with the Black Student Union, AFSCME Local 82 and the support of Occupy the Hood Milwaukee and Occupy Milwaukee. 75 students marched silently across campus behind a banner that read “Justice for Trayvon.” When the march reached the student union they began chanting a call and response “Jail the killer, fire the cops! Without justice we won’t stop!”

Inside the student union, a crowd gathered to hear Brent Green of the Black Student Union speak about the now symbolic hoodie that Trayvon Martin was wearing when he was murdered. “Trayvon was killed wearing a hoodie. You wear a hoodie for warmth and safety,” he said, “Wanting to be safe is not a crime.”

SDS demanded that George Zimmerman be arrested for the murder of Trayvon Martin, but the rally also addressed the killing of Bo Morrison in Wisconsin, recent news of Milwaukee police department brutality in the community and the brutal murder of Iraqi immigrant Shaima Alawadi in her California home. Jameela Asmar from Students for Justice in Palestine linked the violent attacks on Black and Brown youth to the murder of Shaima Alawadi, committed by a racist anti-immigrant thug.

Bryan Pfeifer, representing Wisconsin Bailout the People Movement, spoke about the recent murder of a 20-year-old Black man, Bo Morrison, in Slinger, Wisconsin. The murder has received national attention for its parallels to the murder of Trayvon Martin. Bo Morrison fled an under-age drinking party and was his on a neighbor’s porch when the homeowner shot him. This week, hundreds of community members rallied in support of the Morrison family. At the time of the killing, the homeowner knew of the party next door, had already called the police, and knew police were in the area. According to his own testimony, the homeowner loaded his weapon and walked outside to confront Morrison on the porch. When Morrison stood up, the homeowner shot and killed him. “He executed my son,” said Bo Morrison’s mother, “this cannot happen to another kid.”

Brutality by Milwaukee Police

Community outrage is growing over allegations of brutality by the Milwaukee Police Department. This week, eight Milwaukee District 5 police were placed on “desk duty” for illegally strip-searching, cavity-searching and sexually assaulting neighborhood residents in public. One of the victims, a 22-year old woman, said the police illegally strip searched her “at least three times,” adding that they even searched her vagina and anus in public, without consent. The police department started an internal investigation into the sexual assault after piling up years of allegations, as well as a recent lawsuit.

One of the police under investigation for that crime is District 5 Supervisor Sergeant Jason Mucha. In 2011, Sgt. Mucha crashed his squad car into another driver. He then accused the other driver of possession and crashing into the police vehicle. That case was dismissed in court after video evidence contradicted Sgt. Mucha’s testimony. The court found that Sgt. Mucha wrongfully searched the driver’s car, but did not punish the officer. Sgt. Mucha has also been investigated for police brutality and planting drugs on search victims, but was never punished by the department’s internal investigations. Now he is once again the subject of an internal investigation by the same department. But this time, community members are demanding an independent civilian review board.

More allegations of brutality were raised against Milwaukee Police District 5 after the death of a 22-year old Black man, Derek Williams, in the back of a squad car. The case recently resurfaced after new evidence revealed there was a broken bone in his neck when he died in custody on July 6, 2011. Police claim Williams died from a “sickle cell crisis” although Williams did not have sickle cell anemia disease and therefore could not have suffered a sickle cell crisis, according to doctors at the National Institutes of Health. Williams begged for help as he was handcuffed and shackled in the back of the squad car. Police failed to call for an ambulance and Williams died in the back of the squad car. His family has filed a lawsuit against the department.

Police brutality is nothing recent for residents of Milwaukee. This month, after a long public battle, the Milwaukee Police Department finally paid police brutality victim Frank Jude $2 million for a beating by Milwaukee police that nearly killed him in 2004. After celebrating that hard-won victory, community organizations are demanding justice for other victims of the Milwaukee Police Department.

Milwaukee organizations are mobilizing for a mass march on April 10, at 4:00 p.m. at the statue of Martin Luther King on MLK Drive. The rally is in correlation with George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s killer, first day before a Florida grand jury.

Source

Gainesville Florida SDS Marches for Trayvon Martin

By Fernando Figueroa
March 27, 2012

Gainesville SDS MC Chrisley Carpio introduced the speakers at Turlington Plaza, firing up the crowd. (Fight Back! News/Staff)

Gainesville, FL – Over 200 students, community activists and supporters rallied and marched from the University of Florida campus to the downtown FBI office on March 26, demanding justice for Trayvon Martin. Organizers of the rally brought forward two main demands: Arrest George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin and fire the police involved in the case for obstructing justice and covering-up the truth.

Protesters gathered in the blazing sun near Turlington Plaza on the University of Florida campus to begin the event and listen to speakers demanding justice for Trayvon Martin. Several local media stations filmed the activists and aired some of the more outstanding speeches. Speaking about the racism and oppression faced by African-Americans, Chief Steward Jose Soto of Graduate Assistants United said, “We are not one nation as our pledge suggests. We are many nations. We gather here today, just as we rallied for Kofi Adu-Brempong two years ago this month, to demand justice and self-determination for African American people.” Kofi Adu-Brempong is an African Graduate Teaching Assistant shot in the face, inside his own home, by a racist campus cop. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized a campaign that led to the racist cop’s firing and a settlement for Adu-Brempong.

Despite the efforts of local law enforcement, the angry crowd marched in the streets, blocking an entire lane of traffic for over a mile (Fight Back! News/Staff)

The rally chanted, “Arrest George Zimmerman! Justice for Trayvon!” Next the students marched to the nearby Institute of Black Culture. There, African American and other student speakers emphasized their demands for the killer and the police to be brought to justice in the Trayvon Martin case. The activists and their allies began a mile long march to downtown Gainesville to deliver their demands to the local FBI field office. Gainesville Area SDS member Skye Schmelzer led several chants: “Jail the killer, fire the cops, without Justice, we won’t stop!”

Despite the intense hostility and best efforts of local law enforcement, the 200-strong chain of people stormed onto University Avenue, blocking an entire lane of traffic. Cops shouted at the protesters to get back onto the sidewalk, but the angry crowd ignored them. At one point, two police cars tried to block the road by turning sideways in front of the march, but Gainesville Area SDS member Conor Monroe bravely jumped out to keep the road from being closed. The police cars came close to trapping Monroe’s leg in between the bumpers of their cars, but the way forward remained just large enough for the crowd to push on through the police cars.

Protestors took University Avenue as they marched downtown to confront the FBI and demand Justice for Trayvon (Fight Back! News/Staff)

After the mile-long march was over, the crowd arrived at the foot of the FBI Field Office in Gainesville. The main doors into the building were locked, but members of Gainesville Area SDS found a secondary entrance. A ten-person delegation made their way upstairs to the FBI Field Office, which was located inside a Wells Fargo bank. Meanwhile, the crowd chanted, “No justice, no peace, no racist police” outside.

Inside the FBI Field Office, the delegation demanded a meeting with a member of the FBI. FBI officials demanded that the delegation leave the building and claimed that the police were on their way. “The police followed us here as we marched in the streets, and they’re standing around outside, what do you mean they’re on their way? We want a meeting to present our demands to the FBI,” SDS member Cassia Laham shouted back.

Standing their ground, the activists pressured the FBI officials into taking their list of demands up to their superiors before they were satisfied enough to leave the building. The organizers called upon the crowd to continue the struggle to win justice for Trayvon Martin by joining them in Sanford, Florida on March 31 for a mass demonstration in the town of the Martin’s shooting.

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Malcolm X: A Lie of Reinvention / Preview the Introduction!

The following post below was originally published by People of Color Organize:

We would like to thank our good friends at Vox Union for providing the people with this sneak peek.

DOWNLOAD AND READ THE FULL INTRODUCTION NOW!