Statue of Liberty Wears Chains and Shackles Honoring Freed Slaves ~~ Sharon Kyle

https://www.laprogressive.com/statue-of-liberty-wears-chains-and-shackles/

~~ posted for Collectivist ~~

The LA Progressive ran a story in the spring of 2011 that began with a video of Sarah Palin being interviewed at Liberty Island. In it she is asked about the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty, she responded:

“It is, of course, the symbol for Americans to be reminded of other countries because this was gifted us, of course by the French—other countries warning us to never make the mistakes that some of them had made.”

Paraphrased, Palin was attempting to explain that France gave the United States the statue to warn the U.S. not to commit the mistakes committed by other countries.

The problem with her response --American exceptionalism and word salad aside — is that it has no basis in fact. In other words, it is WRONG.

Palin Visits Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island

Historians tell us that the Statue of Liberty represents the OPPOSITE of what Palin suggests. Instead of reminding the United States not to make mistakes made by other countries, the Statue of Liberty was given to the U.S. as a monument to acknowledge the end of one of its biggest mistakes  — slavery.

When we ran the story in 2011, pointing out that the Statue of Liberty wears chains and shackles, we got lots of feedback from readers who were surprised to learn about the chains and shackles. They were even more shocked to learn that the Statue of Liberty was in any way connected to American slavery.

Some readers challenged us.  They did some checking on their own and commented that they couldn’t find information corroborating our story. Some mentioned that the U.S. National Park Service (the federal agency responsible for the Statue of Liberty) offered information on their site that did not line up with what we were reporting.

They were right. In 2011, the U.S. Park Service website made no mention of the chains or the connection between the emancipation of the American slaves and the gift from France — the Statue of Liberty.  Even though the U.S. Parks Service was fully aware of the story, they didn’t mention it on their website or in any of the pamphlets given to tourists when visiting Lady Liberty. But sometime between 2011 and 2014 the U.S. Park Service made a dramatic change. Today, the National Park Service website tells the story of how the Statue of Liberty came to be in New York’s harbor and its relationship to slavery. Following is an abbreviated version.

The statue on the left is a copy of an early version of the statue with chains in hand. The one on the right is the way she appears today.

The Statue of Liberty that today sits on Liberty Island in New York harbor is known to have been the brainchild of noted Frenchmen and abolitionist Edouard de Laboulaye, a man so dedicated to the eradication of slavery that he co-founded the French Anti-Slavery Society. The idea for establishing a monument specifically to honor the emancipation of slaves in America was discussed between Laboulaye and Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, a French sculptor in 1865, the year the U.S. abolished slavery.

In addition to his abolition work, Laboulaye was also a U.S. Constitution expert. Although we cannot know this for sure, one can only imagine that the 1865 signing of the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution would be very important to an abolitionist and likely fueled Laboulaye’s desire to have the monument built. We do know that he shared this idea with Frederic Bartholdi at an event they both attended, again in 1865 and that Frederic Bartholdi, who later became the designer of the statue, worked closely with Laboulaye to make Laboulaye’s vision a reality.

The connection between the Statue of Liberty and the abolition of slavery is one that has been denied for 125 years. Almost from the start of the project, the American financiers wanted no mention of slavery and for 125 yrs they got their wish.

Although Laboulaye and Batholdi had envisioned a statue holding broken chains and shackles (as shown in the image above), the early financiers that funded the project did not want chains on the monument. It was the American backers who were most opposed to the notion that the statue should in anyway acknowledge slavery. Because the French, who were paying for the statue, were facing difficult economic times, Laboulaye and Bartholdi relied on Americans to pay for and build the pedestal where the statue would stand. This was an essential part of the monument. Without American financial backing, the project could not be completed, but the American financiers were adamant that Laboulaye lose the chains and shackles. One can only surmise that some of the backers may have made their fortunes directly or indirectly through slavery.

In her book, Enlightening the World: The Creation of the Statue of Liberty, Yasmin Sabina Kahn explained that although Laboulaye came upon the idea and communicated it to Bartholdi in 1865, the political climate in France at the time and a lack of funding made it impossible to raise enough money to get the project off the ground for several years. Indeed, it took the sculptor years to raise the funds. According to Kahn, “Bartholdi’s original depiction of Lady Liberty had her holding broken chains in her left hand, with more broken chains and broken shackles at her feet. The chains were symbolic of the end of slavery in the United States.”

Feet of the Statue of Liberty with chains

Today, in lectures and on speaking tours, noted professor Dr. Joy DeGruy, frequently talks about the chains that were part of the original renderings of the Statue of Liberty. DeGruy explains that Bartholdi intended the statue to represent democracy and to symbolize the end of all types of oppression. However, according to DeGruy, the American decision-makers of the day rebuffed Bartholdi for including the chains and shackles and insisted that he remove them. Bartholdi was adamant that they remain, although he eventually compromised because he didn’t want to risk losing the financial support that was making the project possible. Finally, he removed the chains from Lady Liberty’s hand, replacing them with a book.

But, what most people don’t know, even today, is that Bartholdi left the broken shackles and chains that were at her feet. These symbols of state-sponsored bondage, human chattel and the hypocrisy of American exceptionalism remain there on the Statue of Liberty as a permanent reminder of the slaves that contributed to the building of the United States.

Because the height of the pedestal where the statue stands makes it impossible to see the chains and shackles from the ground, most people visiting Liberty Island remain unaware of the shackles and chains. This is where the U. S. Park Service plays a pivotal role.

While it is not surprising that Sarah Palin got it wrong, it should be noted that if asked, most of us would likely get it wrong too.

Clearly, the chains were obvious when the statue was delivered and installed 125 years ago but that knowledge quickly faded from memory. Aided by the fact that the height of the pedestal made the chains and shackles impossible to see unless one were viewing the statue from a helicopter, the wishes of the original funders were fulfilled. No one need know the true meaning of the Statue of Liberty. For most of the years since the statue’s installation at Liberty Island, its true meaning has been kept in the dark. Even the U.S. agency tasked with the responsibility of caring for and educating the public about the statue had a hand in keeping the true meaning hidden.

One contention of those in opposition to the idea that the statue celebrated the end of slavery was the date the statue was proposed. Due to lack of funding, more than 20 years passed between the time the statue was first proposed in 1865 and the actual installation on Liberty Island in 1886. Those who wanted to downplay the connection between the statue and slavery insist that the year 1865 played no role in the idea to build the monument.  In a report released by the U.S. Park Service in 2000, the Park Service claimed that noted abolitionist Edouard de Laboulaye did not propose the idea of constructing a monument in 1865. Their report stated:

This story is a legend. All available evidence points to its conception in 1870 or 1871. The dinner party legend is traceable to a single source — an 1885 fund-raising pamphlet written by the statue’s sculptor, Auguste Bartholdi, after the death of Laboulaye.

But somewhere along the way, the U.S. Park Service changed its position. They now admit that

• the year 1865 was a key element of the story;
• Laboulaye is the father of the idea for the monument; and
• he was an abolitionist who wanted to honor the emancipation of the slaves.

Perhaps pressure was brought to bear on the agency forcing them to change their literature and their website but today they devote pages to the history of the statue and prominently state that the statue was a gift to the United States from the people of France to celebrate “the Union’s victory in the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery.” You can find this and more at The National Park Service website.

I started this piece with the video of Sarah Palin partly because any mention of Sarah somehow catches people’s attention but mostly because Sarah Palin’s understanding of the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty is probably not very different from most Americans. So while it is not surprising that Sarah Palin got it wrong, it should be noted that if asked, most of us would likely get it wrong too.

As an American who is a decendent of slaves, I find it all the more shameful that this country continues to have countless monuments honoring men known to have been slaveholders but nothing honoring the millions whose blood, sweat and tears built this country. From that perspective, the story of the Statue of Liberty and how it came to be a part of our national landscape is as important as the story of Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride and should be as widely known. The National Park Service took an important step towards that end when it changed its position. And people like Dr. Joy DeGruy and others likely had a hand in making that happen.

To all who made that happen, I say thank you.

On Trump’s Next Absurd Acquittal BY PAUL STREET

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/10/on-trumps-next-absurd-acquittal/

~~ posted for Collectivist ~~

Photograph Source: Rob Olivera – CC BY 2.0

“Fight Like Hell to Take Back Our Country”

On Wednesday, January 6th of this year, with 14 days left in his fascist presidency, after months of trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election, a rabid Donald Trump sent thousands of his frothing minions to the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. The animating idea behind the Trumpist rampage that broke into the Capitol complex was belief in the baseless fascist lie that Biden and the Democrats had stolen the election from its supposed rightful winner, the demented oligarch Donald Trump.

Five people died in the assault while members of Congress hid for their lives. The body and casualty count could easily have been much higher. The overwhelmingly white male mob, including Proud Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, neo-Nazis, military veterans, and law enforcement personnel, spoke of lynching Congresspersons and Vice President Mike Pence. The marauders were equipped to kill and take hostages for the purpose of keeping their Dear Leader, Donald Trump, in power.

It was no random act of lumpenproletarian looting. Political scientist Robert Pape and researcher Kevin Ruby’s recent detailed analysis of the 193 people arrested in connection with the January 6th Capitol Riot shows that:

“Two-thirds are 35 or older, and 40 percent are business owners or hold white-collar jobs. Unlike the stereotypical extremist, many of the alleged participants in the Capitol riot have a lot to lose. They work as CEOs, shop owners, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants. Strikingly, court documents indicate that only 9 percent are unemployed.”

The Capitol rioters’ motives were fundamentally political, driven by Trump’s big “stop the steal” lie. As Pape and Ruby recently reported in The Atlantic:

“Our team reviewed all court documents related to each arrest—which include criminal complaints, statement of facts, and affidavits—and conducted searches of media coverage of each arrestee…the attack on the Capitol was unmistakably an act of political violence, not merely an exercise in vandalism or trespassing amid a disorderly protest that had spiraled out of control. The overwhelming reason for action, cited again and again in court documents, was that arrestees were following Trump’s orders to keep Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the presidential-election winner. Dozens of arrestees, court records indicate, made statements explaining their intentions in detail on social media or in interviews with the FBI. ‘I am incredibly proud to be a patriot today,’ wrote a 37-year-old man from Beverly Hills, California, ‘to stand up tall in defense of liberty & the Constitution, to support Trump & #MAGAforever, & to send the message: WE ARE NEVER CONCEDING A STOLEN ELECTION.’”

Trump fueled the Attack on the Capitol with his Goebbels-worthy grand theft election story. For weeks, Trump had been telling his supporters to come to Washington to stop the certification. On December 19th he tweeted this: “Statistically impossible to have lost the Election” and “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there… be wild!” Nine days later, former Trump White House official Olivia Troye said that she was “very concerned that there will be violence on January 6th because the president himself encourages it. This is what [President Trump] does. He tweets. He incites. He gets his followers and supporters to behave in this manner, and these people think that they’re being patriotic because they are supporting Donald Trump.”

Then came the January 6^th rally on Constitution Avenue. Trump’s mob lawyer Rudy Giuliani called for “trial by combat.” The Republifascist neo-Confederate Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks told the mob that “today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” Trump made inflammatory remarks that sent the frenzied mob over to the Capitol:

“You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong…Something is wrong here, something is really wrong, can’t have happened and we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore…we are going to…walk down Pennsylvania Avenue…to give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re try–going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country…I’ll be right there with you.”

By “our country,” Trump meant a white-supremacist nation where a president could never-be unelected if he wins the Caucasian vote.

Delighted and Excited Over an Attempted Coup

As the attack unfolded, The New York Times learned, Trump was “initially pleased” by the events as he watched them on television. “He disregarded aides pleading with him to intercede.”  White House aides said Trump was “delighted,” while “walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team [are]n’t as excited.”

Trump rebuffed and refused requests to mobilize the D.C. National Guard. The Guard was belatedly mustered to defend Congress only after the order came from acting Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller. Vice President Mike Pence approved the command, not Trump. “Republican House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy demanded that Trump make a statement denouncing the rioters. Trump refused, leading to a ‘screaming match’ between the two men.”

At 4:17 PM, President Trump consented to tweet out a recorded statement in which he told his fascist marauders to go home but reiterated his absurd charge of a rigged election and told the rioters that “We love you, you’re very special.” At 6:01 he tweeted “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. …Remember this day forever!”

Make no mistake, a delusional Trump wanted the events to spiral out of control to the point where he could declare a state of emergency and introduce martial law within and beyond Washington. There was little chance of that happening, but that was the hope and the intent, consistent with the counsel of his disgraced former National Security Adviser, fascist felon Michael Flynn.

Amerikaner activists feel invigorated by the fascist putsch attempt. The Times reports that the “safely pardoned” Flynn “is positioning himself as a voice of a far-right that, in the wake of the Capitol riot, appears newly and violently emboldened.” Terrorism expert Colin P. Clarke thinks the Storming of the Capitol could mark “a new era of far-right violence in America.” He reflected darkly after the riot:

“the siege of the Capitol will be framed [on the far right] as a successful demonstration …Almost immediately, images from that day proliferated across [far right] social media platforms…Large segments of the mob that stormed the Capitol were unaffiliated…. these could well be the new foot soldiers of the far right. Some, perhaps many of these new recruits will have military experience or law enforcement training. The infusion of younger members into the ranks of the far-right is likely to breathe new life into the movement…References to the date Jan.6 will be just as symbolic for far-right extremists as Sept. 11 is to Americans…[Trump’s] efforts to spread disinformation, undermine longstanding democratic institutions and pit Americans against one another will continue to help propel the far-right long into the future…The images of the Capitol siege …will have enduring resonance…The turbulence of the next several years should not be underestimated…With Mr. Trump no longer in office, a portion of his supporters are vulnerable to recruitment into more extreme networks and, potentially, white-supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations. These groups are energized and confident in their ability to co-opt militant Trumpists…As a result, a larger segment of the far-right could come to engage in racially and ethnically motivated violence…the siege of the Capitol…could catalyze an age of domestic far–right extremism.” (emphasis added)

An Act of Pre-Civil War

If Trump can’t be convicted in an impeachment trial by the U.S. Senate and then barred from holding federal public office again after January 6^th then there’s really no point in having the impeachment clause in the U.S. Constitution. You might as well just tear the clause up and throw it away.

If the deranged lunatic Donald Trump can get away with fueling and then setting a match to a murderous mass assault on the nation’s legislative branch and the certification of a U.S. presidential election, that is a big green light to future violent fascist attacks on bourgeois democracy or what’s left of it – coming assaults likely to be led by shrewder, younger, and more disciplined authoritarians than the unhinged septuagenarians Trump and Giuliani.

The non-conviction of Trump is an invitation to future and more menacing and coordinated political violence by the far right. It will be an act of pre-civil war.

Bad Arguments…

All the arguments against Senate conviction of Trump and the banning of Trump from holding future federal office are idiotic. The argument that Trump shouldn’t be convicted because he was simply exercising his right to free speech on January 6^th is absurdly mistaken on multiple levels. The Senate does not have to determine whether Trump’s First Amendment rights are being protected (they are) to find his conduct worthy of conviction under the impeachment clause.

The claim that it is unconstitutional to convict a president after he’s left office is rejected by all serious constitutional scholars. The notion that a president can do anything he or she wants in their last month or so in office is absurd and dangerous.

The notion that the trial means Congress can’t move forward on covid relief and other necessary measures is moronic. The idea that that the attack was a populist proletarian uprising is false (see above).

So is the idea that it “wasn’t really that big a deal” – something I’ve heard from more than a few “left” Facebook bloviators. Right, you betchya: eight thousand militant Trumpist-white supremacists and proto-fascists marched to Congress at the direction of their fascist commander-in-chief. An armed assault broke into the U.S. representative chamber with the explicit intent of halting the certification of a presidential election. The mob included military veterans and law enforcement personnel scheming to capture and even kill members of Congress (and even the insufficiently Trump-loyal Christian fascist Vice President). The event riveted national and global attention for hours and many days afterwards. Five people died. Fascist paramilitary groups were prominent among those who breached the complex. Herr Trump hoped the attack would provoke a crisis he could use as a pretext to declare a state of emergency and martial law, suspending the authorization of Biden’s victory. Sparked into action by the President of the United States, the rioters had allies inside Congress, including at least four Republifascist Congresspersons.

Sorry, that was a big deal in American history.

A supposed anarchist recently told a Chicago Refuse Fascism activist that Trump shouldn’t be convicted because a guilty verdict would “send the message that other capitalists aren’t criminals too.” Oh, okay: let’s let some murderers go unpunished since other murderers get away with murder.

I’ve heard it said that Trump shouldn’t be convicted because he and other presidents have (as I have noted in a recent Counterpunch essay) committed bigger crimes than January 6^th, like the invasion of Cambodia, the invasion of Iraq, stealing children from their parents’ arms at the border, fueling and fanning a pandemic that may kill a million or more Americans. Oh, okay, so people get to go free on one crime if they and others haven’t been charged with other and bigger crimes they committed. Really?

There’s more I could say about the arguments being made against Trump being convicted and banned from future office. All of them are rubbish.

…That Will Prevail

But here’s the thing: the bad arguments will prevail. Trump is almost guaranteed to be “exonerated” for a second time by the Senate. Under the holy charter passed by and for 18^th Century slaveowners and merchant capitalists for whom democracy was the ultimate nightmare, it takes a two-thirds vote in the upper body of Congress to convict. That’s not going to happen in a Senate that drastically over-represents the nation’s most reactionary regions: every state has two U.S. Senators regardless of population size, which ranges from nearly 40 million in liberal California to just over half a million in right-wing Wyoming. The deeply corrupt Senate Minority Leader Malevolent Mitch McConnell, who initially called Trump’s January 6^th actions impeachable, now absurdly claims it is unconstitutional to convict a president after he’s left office.

Initial hopes that enough Republican Senators (17 are required) would turn against Trump to convict seem to have been dashed by the revelation that the electorally deposed fascist is too popular with his Amerikaner base for Congresspersons to properly punish him without incurring big primary voter backlash in right-wing districts and states. Cowardice combined with cynicism, racism, polarization, and constitutional absurdity seem certain to grant the Mar a Lago Mussolini yet another undeserved acquittal.

Sensing perhaps that the game is rigged by the nature of the deeply conservative U.S. constitutional and partisan set-up, last Sunday’ Times didn’t carry a single story or editorial on this week’s Senate trial. The trial must go forward and will contain a great deal of shocking material on Trump’s conduct and the riot, but much of the liberal elite is quietly in “let’s move forward not backward” mode – the same mindset behind the non-prosecution of Bush and Cheney for torture and the murder of Iraq.

This is the Hollow Resistance that the bipartisan fascism-appeasing American establishment has long exhibited in response to the growth of the ever more mainstreamed Amerikan far right. This is the mindset of MoveOn.org and Indivisible and other so-called Democracy Defenders, the liberal and progressive Astroturf groups that explicitly decided NOT to take to the streets and the public squares to make a visible popular response to the neofascist authoritarians who are being allowed to terrorize the nation. They kept people off the streets and refused to say “the F-word” for most of the last four years of Trump’s fascist presidency. They stayed true to their fascism -denial and quiescence to the bitter end, refusing to make a mass anti-fascist statement even after a failed coup attempt.

The mainstream liberals and progressives don’t get it. Fascism must be properly and openly identified, refused, fought, and defeated. The same goes for the at once racist, sexist, and ecocidal capitalist-imperialist system that gives birth to the far right again and again throughout history. Only mass popular resistance determined to carry out an actual people’s anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-imperialist revolution can defeat this fascist movement and the sick, eco-exterminist class rule social order that gave rise to it.

The Only Place Where Black People Did Not Revolt is in the Pages of Capitalist Historians: Black History Month on Left Voice ~~

https://www.leftvoice.org/the-only-place-where-black-people-did-not-revolt-is-in-the-pages-of-capitalist-historians-black-history-month-on-left-voice

This Black History Month, Left Voice will be filling our pages with what C.L.R. James said the capitalist historians have deliberately excluded — from the struggles of enslaved people to the Black workers who went on strike in Ford factories to Black people struggling today against police violence, against the pandemic, and against capitalist hyper-exploitation in workplaces across the country. We invite you to submit to Left Voice at: contact@leftvoice.org.

Black resistance has been a constant force throughout U.S. history, beginning with the first enslaved Africans kidnapped and brought to stolen indigenous land. It persisted into the labor movements of the 1930s. There was the Black struggle of the 1960s and 1970s, from Civil Rights to Black Power and the Black Lives Matter movement of today. It is a history of refusal — in the face of the oppression of Black people — to abide by racism and exploitation.  “The only place where Negroes did not revolt is in the pages of capitalist historians,” C.L.R. James wrote in his 1939 Revolution and the Negro.

Last summer, the continued violence against Black communities was laid bare. The brutal video of George Floyd being strangled to death for close to ten minutes by Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin was a grim reminder that the police murder with near impunity. It shook the entire country and the world. After George Floyd, the police didn’t stop. There was Jacob Blake, Walter Wallace Jr., Casey Goodson Jr., Elijah McClain, and too many more. Breonna Taylor’s killers weren’t even charged with murder. 

Meanwhile, President Trump had protesters tear-gassed and egged on radicalized white supremacists. While Democrats in Congress draped themselves in kente cloth, Democratic mayors and governors gassed, arrested, and repressed the movement as well. Despite the diverse faces, the Democratic Party shares responsibilities with the Republicans for holding up this system that systematically terrorizes Black people. 

A dangerous far right that attacked protesters throughout last summer turned its rage on the Capitol on January 6, and now the Biden administration controls the executive branch of the U.S. government. But nothing has substantially changed: having a “diverse” cabinet means nothing when those cabinet members pledge to uphold the same racist, exploitative system of their predecessors. Both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris built their political legacies on the mass incarceration of Black people in this country while supporting U.S. imperialist policies in Africa, the Middle East, and throughout the world. 

The system is beyond reform. In fact, it has never been reformable, because oppression is its foundation and lifeblood.

The murder of George Floyd came after the first wave of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, which did not choose its victims equally, but rather highlighted all the deep inequalities of modern capitalism. While bosses went away to their beach homes, essential workers fought the pandemic, ran public transit, cared for the sick in hospitals, and shipped food to supermarkets they stocked across the country. Among these essential workers, Black people are disproportionately represented — and it was Black people who have died at exorbitant rates while the capitalists have been raking in massive profits.

Capitalism is a system that promotes and profits from racism — from the lower wages paid to Black people to the semi-slave prison labor population in which Black people are disproportionately represented. Racism is not some bug in the system — it is at the very core of capitalism. 

The capitalists do not confine their racist system to the U.S. borders; the brutal legacy of slavery and the racist capitalist system built upon that brutal, murderous labor  is reflected in the imperialist degradation of Africa and the ongoing oppression of Black people in Europe and throughout the Americas. Anti-Blackness spread for the profit-making of slavery; anti-Blackness fed the spread of colonialism around the world. And today, in countries around the world, there are George Floyds. That is why his murder resonated across the globe and why there were protests around the world. 

In every country where Black people were enslaved, Black people have risen up. Black people were the protagonists of the glorious Haitian revolution, defeating none other than one of the world’s most powerful imperialist armies — the French. In Brazil, Black people built quilombos— towns of escaped slaves, often numbering in the thousands, who organized attacks and helped other enslaved people escape.  Black people are not just victims of racist capitalist brutality. Black people are the subjects of the most explosive struggle this country, and the world, have ever seen.

More recently, in the U.S., Black people have been at the forefront of struggle throughout the pandemic, from Chris Smalls who led Amazon workers in struggle and was fired for standing up, to the Black workers at Hunts Point market who recently went on strike, to nursing home workers in Chicago who went on strike just a few months ago. Black people have been at the forefront of eviction defense actions demanding rent cancellation and of mutual aid networks all across the country. 

 Socialists are clear in the knowledge that Black struggle will be at the center of any struggle for a new socialist society. That struggle will require uniting the working class to fight capitalism. Unity will not come from ignoring racism, but fighting it — including within the ranks of the working class itself. This unity is key because the struggle against institutional racism and capitalism require a working class that uses our fire power at the point of production to fight racism. This means it is essential to kick cops out of our unions. But we need to go much further to include actions such as strikes against racist police violence. 

Black struggle is class struggle. Black people are part of the working class, as the pandemic has brought to light in the most brutal ways. The stronger the fight against institutional racism, the more we organize, protests and fight, the more we will succeed in defeating racism and the capitalism it feeds — and the more we will improve the lives of Black workers and all workers. The working class will advance and wrest concessions from the system when it self-organizes — and in particular when the Black working class organizes and unites as part of a multi-racial class struggle that opposes racism in all it forms. That is a lesson from history, when the fighting ranks of the proletariat were filled with organized socialists and communist revolutionaries. 

This Black History Month, Left Voice will be highlighting Black struggle — from the struggles of enslaved people to the Black workers who went on strike in Ford factories to Black people struggling today against police violence, against the pandemic, and against capitalist hyper-exploitation in workplaces across the country. We will shine a light on the enemies of Black people and expose the capitalist parties and their attacks on Black people in the United States, Africa, and the rest of the diaspora. We will use our pages to fight the co-optation of the Black Lives Matter movement by the Democratic Party and all of the misleaders who push Black struggle into the confines of “lesser evil” electoralism. We will report on the fight against police brutality, which will not end until we Abolish the Police. We will explain that police abolition will only come with an end to capitalism. 

We invite you to submit writing, interviews, articles, and other media that highlight Black struggle to Left Voice at: contact@leftvoice.org. 

We descend from those who mutinied on slave ships, and from those who organized and set fire to plantation torture chambers and who risked everything to organize the Underground Railroad. We are in a continuum with the strikers, and those who defied the water cannons, batons, tear gas, and bullets. We are revolutionaries, and this month we will focus on revealing the hidden history of resistance — and talk about the resistance to come. 

We share the confidence of C.L.R. James when he wrote, “In Africa, in America, in the West Indies, on a national and international scale, the millions of Negroes will raise their heads, rise up from their knees, and write some of the most massive and brilliant chapters in the history of revolutionary socialism.”

Classs Struggle in the Biden Era ~~ Jimena Vergara and James Dennis Hoff

https://www.leftvoice.org/class-struggle-in-the-biden-era

It’s been just over two weeks since the inauguration of President Joe Biden, and already the liberal establishment is gushing over his accomplishments. The New York Times, MSNBC, the Washington Post, and CNN have all heaped praise on the new president, and the by now almost obligatory comparisons to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) keep flooding in. Meanwhile, Democrats and bourgeois economists across the spectrum have lined up behind Biden’s proposed coronavirus relief bill, which, according to some polls, has the support of a whopping 74 percent of U.S. adults. All this suggests that the “honeymoon” period of Biden’s presidency has gotten off to a good start. This is in no small part thanks also to the chaos of the weeks preceding the inauguration and the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump’s riot mongering, rather than shaking the U.S. regime, united an important sector of the establishment around the incoming administration, providing Biden with a popular legitimacy that has largely obscured his relatively narrow electoral victory in November.

Unsurprisingly, the Biden administration has used this newfound legitimacy to quickly reverse many of the most controversial policies of the Trump era. Since January 21, Biden has signed dozens of executive orders. Most notably, the new president has rejoined the Paris Agreement on climate change, ended the “Muslim ban” and the construction of the border wall with Mexico, fortified the program of deferred action for childhood immigrants (DACA), expanded access to the Affordable Care Act, and repealed the global gag rule that limited the use of federal funds for reproductive health measures abroad. At the same time, the president has also instituted a host of new orders to address the pandemic and the economic crisis, including an extension of the federal moratorium on evictions, increased access to food stamps, a move toward a $15 minimum wage (exclusively for federal employees), the continued deferral of student loan payments, mask requirements (on federal property), and increased Covid vaccinations and testing. At the same time, Biden has promised to aggressively push for a second $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill that could include $1,400 direct payments to individuals, an increase in unemployment benefits, and billions of dollars in funding for state services.

It would, however, be a mistake to think Biden will prioritize the needs of the working class any more than he absolutely needs to or is forced to do. Most of the executive orders that he has signed so far are little more than an attempt to return the U.S. state to where it was before the 2016 elections, and they do almost nothing to actually address the systemic problems that led to the rise of Trump in the first place. Meanwhile, the proposed coronavirus relief package, though nearly twice as large as the previous bill passed by congress in December, is still $200 billion smaller than the first CARES Act signed by President Trump, which was itself only a fraction of what was needed. Although Biden likes to present himself as a working-class son of the Rust Belt, his primary task remains the speedy restoration of a capitalist stability in which the needs of working people will always remain secondary to those of capital.

While it is quite possible that the conditions created by the pandemic may force Biden in the short term to exert more pressure than usual over capital, it is only a matter of time before the administration tries to make the working class, both at home and abroad, pay for the costs of any economic recovery. The degree to which Biden can successfully achieve this will depend upon how the crisis and the class struggle develop — whether through workers’ struggles or the reemergence of the anti-racist or anti-imperialist movement — and how the relationship of forces will shape up in the future, both in relation to inter-bourgeois divisions and in relation to continued social polarization. And Biden has already signaled, under the guise of fighting the Far Right, that he is prepared to use the state to repress such movements. His refusal to address the problem of police violence and his proposed domestic terror bill point to the kind of repression the Left can expect to see in the future. And, of course, Biden has already shown that he is more than willing to continue the trade war with China and bloody imperialist interventions in order to protect the profits and interests of U.S. capital overseas.

This is why it is imperative that working people not fall into the trap of supporting or making common cause with the Biden administration. Instead, we must prepare the ground to fight both the capitalist state (including its leaders in government) and the reactionary Right, with the weapons of the working class.

Biden’s First Task Is Restoring Capitalist Stability

While the Biden administration has so far proved to be somewhat more progressive than anticipated, the real meaning behind Biden’s rejection of Trump’s policies and his so-far comparatively robust response to the pandemic and the recession can be understood only when considered within the context of the broader economic and political crises that continue to plague the United States and global capitalism more broadly.

Last year the global economy suffered one of the worst contractions since the Great Depression. Global economic growth fell an astounding 4.4 percent in 2020, while the U.S rate of growth dropped 3.5 percent, the worst performance since 1946. This economic crisis has been combined with a pandemic that has killed millions of people worldwide and at least 450,000 in the United States. As dire as the situation is, though, these crises have only exacerbated the larger political and economic crises that have afflicted the United States since the neoliberal project ran smack into the wall of reality in 2008. The long economic recession and growing inequality that followed the 2008 financial crisis, the decades-long privatization and destruction of social services, the downward mobility of the lower middle classes, and the continued suffering of the working classes — all this has led to increasing political polarization and a general distrust of institutions. The rise of Trump and the Far Right, the massive uprisings against police brutality, and the storming of the U.S. Capitol last month — these are but a few of the many morbid symptoms of this developing organic crisis that has threatened the very legitimacy of the U.S. regime both at home and around the world.

Considered within this bigger context, Biden’s actions to date, and even his proposed $1.9 trillion dollar relief package — which is already being challenged by House Republicans — are likely inadequate to address the real problems faced by the U.S. economy and the needs of the U.S. ruling class, which Biden represents. The long-term economic crisis, grounded in falling rates of profit and massive levels of corporate debt, will not be solved by a short-term injection of consumer spending. Like FDR before him, Biden is faced with the task of saving capitalism from its crisis, but Biden is no FDR. And even if he were, the political situation in 2021 is very different from that of 1933.

The economic crisis, for its part, has not yet reached the level of the first two years of the Great Depression, when the masses were subjected to extreme hardship and widespread starvation. Moreover, while FDR was faced with a strong union movement, massive workers’ struggles, and a confrontational and well-organized Left, the balance of forces exerting pressure on the Biden administration is much more balanced in favor of the needs of capital. On one side are the Wall Street bankers and the labor bureaucrats who supported his campaign, all of whom share the goal of restoring capitalist productivity as soon as possible. On the other side is the new reformist wing of the Democratic Party, which is pressuring Biden to adopt measures in line with Bernie Sanders’s platform. But “progressive” Democrats are trying to exert pressure in the halls of Congress, not by organizing mass struggles. This kind of horse-trading may lead to some short-term gains for working people, but it always ends in favorable agreements for the bosses and Wall Street.

The Biden administration faces an even more fundamental dilemma, however. Unlike the period after the 2008 financial crisis, when corporate bailouts and quantitative easing were enough to stabilize the economy (though still insufficient to restore pre-2008 levels of productivity), the economic crisis that has been accelerated by the pandemic requires a much larger and broader level of investment and stimulus. This is why, after the election, the Biden administration immediately proposed yet another larger stimulus package focused on direct payments to individuals and families.

The purpose of the stimulus plan is not, as Paul Krugman would like you to believe, intended to help working people stay home until a vaccine is distributed. Instead, the primary goal of the coronavirus relief bill is to provide just enough aid to avoid further civil unrest, like what we saw this summer, while spurring consumer spending in order to keep the economy on life support until it fully reopens.

The United States, however, is already facing an almost $4 trillion deficit. Adding an additional $1.9 trillion in government spending will only push that higher. Although there is currently a general consensus among bourgeois economists that such deficits are acceptable in an emergency, as soon as the economy temporarily regains its footing, Republicans and Democrats alike will begin carping again about “reducing the debt,” which means attacking the working class. Such a situation will make it difficult to pass any new spending bills, such as Medicare for All or a Green New Deal. And it is not out of the question that social security and other essential services could be put on the chopping block after the midterm elections in 2022.

No Support for Capitalist Politicians

Despite Biden’s track record as a conservative Democrat and neoliberal deficit hawk, his administration has the overwhelming support of the trade unions and social movements. This includes the AFL-CIO and much of the leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement. Many of these individuals and organizations — along with some self-described socialists and leading members of the DSA — put their full energy into Biden’s electoral campaign against Trump. While the unions and social movements do not, by any means, speak for all working people, they nonetheless represent a large section of what has passed for the organized Left in the United States for the last several decades. These groups see it as their obligation to critically support the Biden administration and the Democratic Party in order to push for more robust reforms. 

Unfortunately, this tendency to team up with the Democratic Party was only strengthened by the events of January 6. After the assault on the Capitol, much of the Left took a campist or semi-campist position, incorrectly following the regime’s line that the situation after January 6 constitutes a struggle between “fascism” and “democracy.” This led big sections of the Left and social movement leaders to identify the new government as their own, even if on the surface they maintained an appearance of independence from the Democratic Party. In other words, the Left (construed broadly) was blinded by the incidents of January 6. And they have so far been strategically unable to understand the implications of these events in class terms. This has only helped the regime generate a mass consensus against the “attempted coup” in order to legitimize (1) the elections themselves; (2) the bipartisan regime, which is supposedly “defending democracy and the Constitution”; and (3) the institutions of the state, including the police (as demonstrated by the gesture of having a Black cop from the Capitol escort Kamala Harris on Inauguration Day).

While it is fundamental to denounce the Far Right and the police who support them, it is no less vital to denounce the political operation underway to legitimize the incoming government. This operation gave the regime and the new government room to announce a series of Bonapartist measures like the domestic terror bill, which will be turned against the working class, the Black struggle, and the Left. Almost a month after the assault on the Capitol, the regime has successfully given new life to a neoliberal government with a program and a president that, at the time of the election, were still deeply unpopular. In other words, liberal talk of a “fascist threat” has been enough to drum up an uptick in support for the capitalist state and its new government.

Going forward, the left wing of the Democratic Party, as well as the leaders of the working class and the Black movement, will try to use the struggles of the exploited and the oppressed to negotiate their demands in Congress, always bargaining with the establishment, Wall Street, and its friends to water down those demands. We have to be clear that the Biden administration is not going to grant any concessions without a fight. We will not get anything in the coming months without mobilization in the streets and class struggle. Many activists, including the rank and file of the DSA, enthusiastically support the working class, as seen on the picket line at the Hunts Point strike. The task of the Left is to support these struggles unconditionally, bring the united front perspective to the forefront, and deepen every progressive struggle to win all our demands and raise the consciousness of the working class and oppressed.

Some leaders think we can win our demands by forming a “popular front” with the progressive wing of the ruling class — in this case, the Democratic Party. This strategy, however, only weakens the demands of the working class and prevents it from becoming an independent political force. The far-right assault on the Capitol showed that there is still strong support for the anti-working-class, anti-immigrant, anti-socialist politics of Donald Trump, and the Left needs to remain vigilant against the threat posed by neofascist groups. But for the short term at least, the Far Right is weakened, and the Left has a chance to shape the agenda going forward, but only through bold actions and independent class struggle. Forging an alliance with the capitalists and their representatives against the Right at this moment would be a mistake.

The Road to a United Front

To fight both the Biden administration and the Far Right, we will have to reorganize the forces of the working class and unify them with the anti-racist movement of the youth and the vanguard. This is why class struggle is so important in this moment, and there are indications that such struggle is again on the rise. The Hunts Point strike, the looming CTU strike, the unionization drive at Google, and efforts to organize Amazon — all these struggles point the way toward more class struggle in the workplace. In many cities, the movement against police brutality is still alive, and the flame of BLM has not faded from the consciousness of millions who took to the streets this summer. 

And we need to bring those struggles together around issues that unify the working class. Unions must come together to fight for immediate demands: a $15 minimum wage now, a national health care system with universal coverage, and education for all. We need to kick cops out of our unions. Money wasted on police departments must be put into education, health care, affordable housing, and public transport. Millions of people were left unemployed by the pandemic; it is essential to fight for a universal unemployment insurance that benefits all workers (citizens, immigrants, and undocumented workers) and to fight for the distribution of working hours among all available hands with guaranteed living wages for all. To stop the pandemic, we need to abolish patents on vaccines and nationalize production. Essential workers need hazard pay and shorter hours with no loss of pay; everyone else needs pandemic pay so they can stay home.

The road to a united front, however, involves developing working-class self-organization. This means assemblies in workplaces, neighborhoods, and cities, to decide on what we need and how to get it. In the history of our class, there are thousands of examples of the power that the exploited and oppressed acquire when they manage to equip themselves with their own forms of self-organization. In many cases, it is in these processes that the working class can make leaps and bounds in its consciousness and organization: in more developed forms, such advances involve the working class identifying itself as a national class (and in the best of cases, as an international class), united by common interests in defiance of all the barriers that the capitalists and their representatives impose on us: divisions between race and gender, between the unemployed and employed, etc. It is in these processes that the working class discovers that it can rule in place of the bourgeoisie and learns how to organize itself to defend against the attacks of the state and its allies.

Leaders of unions and NGOs might believe that an alliance with Biden is the best way to implement parts of their program. But the opposite is the case: the Democratic Party is taking note that it can count on the unconditional support of these sectors, without granting them any real concessions. The way to win our most urgent demands is via a national movement around a common platform and a plan of struggle including mobilizations, pickets, and strikes, and mass demonstrations. Such a struggle, organized around a united front of the working class, will bring far more results than backroom negotiations with the new White House.

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE. . .Part 2. ~~Collectivist

 ~~ Written by Collectivist ~~

https://youtu.be/7ZEnUrWptZU

TWO MINUTE HISTORY | POWER TO THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY WOMEN

    Despite  its revolutionary stance on many issues the Black  Panther  Party  began very much under the  influence of traditional mainstream patriarchal culture. In 1968 the Party newspaper  stated that the role  of female members was to be '"subordinate to the males".

     The following  year, however, Fred Hampton publicly condemned sexism in the Party as 'counterrevolutionary'. Consequently, the Party's position changed to recognize the "brutal equality of oppression of black males and females, based on chattel enslavement, and the necessity for a creative approach to gender roles in African American communities.  

     From that period forward the BPP newspaper portrayed woman as co-equal revolutionaries, using the examples of Party members such as Elaine Brown, Erricka Huggins,  Kathleen Clever, and others. It showed women as active participants in the armed self defense movement, picturing them as protectors of the home and community. From 1969 to the end of its publication in 1982 the head editors of the paper were women. By the early 1970s most Party members were females, with several chapters headed by them. The Party publicly supported reproductive rights and reprimanded males who violated the rules of gender equality.

     One of the most significant projects the Party initiated occurred in September  of 1970, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  It was there, after months of planning, a 'Revolutionary Constitutional Convention' was held. A multicultural gathering of over 15, 000 people assembled to draft a new U.S. constitution, providing "authentic liberty and justice for all Americans."  

     In the week leading up to the convention Philadelphia police attacked the three Panther offices in the city.  During the armed  confrontation three officers and dozens of Panthers were wounded; many other members were arrested. Adding insult and humiliation to injury and injustice, the latter were forced to strip and walk naked through the street, while being photographed by the press.

     Nevertheless, some of the main proposals formulated during the Constitutional Convention included:

- community control of public schools

- free decentralized medical care

- gay and lesbian rights

- confiscation of billions of organized crime wealth 

- the reorganization of police forces into rotating, volunteer bodies, coordinated by police review boards drawn from a weekly list of volunteers from each community

- redistribution of the world's wealth

     The BPP had organized an armed underground wing of the group from its earliest days. Anticipating that its political activities would eventually be suppressed they envisioned a 'secret', guerrilla army capable of defending the group. However, by 1969  Newton, Minister of Defense, while still incarcerated, and David Hilliard, Chief of Staff, began to to deemphasize armed, clandestine activities, and emphasize expansion of the various survival programs. That same year the national leadership initiated a policy to expel members involved in 'unauthorized' armed activity.

     After release from jail, in 1970, Newton - now, 'Supreme Servant of the People' -  introduced his theory of 'intercommunalism', and changed the name of the  national newspaper  to the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service . Instead of the initial philosophy of revolutionary black nationalism, Newton argued that "the world was a collection of communities, mostly exploited by a small community of corporations based in the U.S.," i.e. "reactionary communalism". Therefore, "revolutionary communalism" was necessary in order to guide oppressed and exploited communities toward "global communism" Subsequently, Eldridge Cleaver, Minister of Information (in exile) and several chapters were expelled. 

     Fueled in part by the above changes and COINTELPRO*,  BPP membership declined precipitously in the 1970s. Members who had joined the group for less than revolutionary reasons, unreformed 'gangsters', continuing vestiges of male supremacy, in addition to Newton's increasing drug addiction,  were other factors in the organization's demise. In 1973, all chapters were dissolved except the one where it all began: Oakland, California.

     "By 1974, it was obvious that Huey was moving in a direction that Seale did not fully support. Huey, flanked by a 30-man strong security squad, had started to shake down the criminal elements in Oakland. Pimps, drug dealers and managers of after-hour spots were now obliged to kickback money or face consequences.. . But things began to get out of hand. Later that year a warrant was issued for Huey's arrest for the murder of a prostitute. The local pimps and hustlers put out a $25, 000 contract on our leader's head, and with many of the members of the security squad leaving the Party, he eventually had no protection. Huey and his wife 'disappeared. They resurfaced in Cuba." , Aaron Dixon, former Newton security squad member.  (After returning to the States three years later, , Huey was killed by a drug dealer in 1989.)

     Before Newton's departure to Cuba, co-founder Seale was expelled from the Party and central committee member,  Elaine Brown, became chairperson. Under her leadership the BPP allied with several political power brokers in the Bay area and Sacramento. A major victory occurred with the election of John George, the Party's longtime lawyer, as the first black member of the Oakland/Alameda County Board of Supervisors.  In 1975 another political ally, Lionel Wilson, became the first black mayor of Oakland.

     Meanwhile, the Panther-created Intercommunal Youth School, begun in 1971, gained a reputation as one of the best community-based schools in the country. Directed by Brown, Huggins and Donna Howell, the institution developed a novel approach to education by not having grade levels. It also offered free busing, books and school supplies; ; breakfast, lunch and dinner; clothes and medical examinations.

The BPP officially disbanded in 1982.

*FBI  counter intelligence program

For further reading:

A Taste of Power, by Elaine Brown

This Side of Glory, by David Hilliard 

Blacks Against Empire, by Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin

To Die for the People, by Huey P. Newton

https://youtu.be/e3GdFZKLwfI