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Indybay Feature
SHU protest - Berkeley
Protest against the torture units in California prisons continued with a demo in Berkeley Saturday.
California SHU protests continue: Berkeley November 23
November 23 – The mock-SHU prison control unit was erected in front of the University of California, Berkeley for a day long protest of these torture chambers that exist in prisons across the state of California. This demonstration, along with the week long SHU vigil in downtown San Francisco the first week of November, and the protest November 25 in Sacramento are part of an on-going campaign organized by MIM, the All People’s Coalition, the Barrio Defense Committee, the Uhuru Movement and others. We are working to abolish the Security Housing Units (SHU) in California prisons.
SHU is an acronym for "Security Housing Unit" but it really stands for torture and terrorism. Many prisoners have been confined to the SHU for 5, 10, 15 years or more. Prisoners confined in the SHU, which is based on a sensory deprivation model that CDC knew would have significant psychological consequences on prisoners, receive all their meals in their cells, they are not allowed to participate in training or educational activities, they are not allowed contact visits and they have no phone access. SHU prisoners spend 22 hours a day in a windowless, 6x9 cell and they're shackled and strip searched every time they leave their cell. The exercise "yard" (which is just another concrete cell, only larger) has no exercise equipment and no view of the outside world.
For over 15 years the California Department of Corrections (CDC) has had a practice of placing prisoners in the SHU under the guise that the prisoners are prison gang affiliates or a threat to the safety of others or institutional security. The five California SHU's - Pelican Bay State Prison SHU, Valley State Prison for Women SHU, California State Prison at Corcoran SHU, California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi SHU and Corcoran SATF - are the lynchpin for the CDC's prison system. They are the most brutal prisons in the system and principally target those prisoners who show the most resistance. They are designed to break inmates' spirit.
The Berkeley and Sacramento protests were organized around a meeting November 25 between Senator Polanco and the California Department of Correction along with a few select prisoner advocacy groups. This meeting is to address the demands of the SHU prisoners in Pelican Bay on hunger strike to protest the conditions there. Pelican Bay prisoners have been on hunger strike since October 19. Senator Polanco has expressed support for the striking prisoners but the tone of the meeting is to address making the SHU torture units kinder and gentler rather than recognizing that control units must be abolished. Our protests have gathered more than a thousand petition signatures already, demanding that the SHU be abolished. At the Berkeley protest we added just over 100 additional signatures to the total.
The Berkeley environment was a contrast to the protest in downtown San Francisco in an area with a large concentration of homeless and former prisoners. In Berkeley the crowd was predominantly white and well off. But nonetheless we met a number of former prisoners, several people who had worked in the prisons in CA and knew firsthand the horrible conditions, and many people who knew nothing about the SHU but were eager to sign a petition once we took the time to describe it to them. In addition to the signatures we collected, several people who stopped to sign took copies of the petition to gather more signatures.
We met one former prisoner who received MIM Notes while on the inside. He is currently homeless, a common condition among released prisoners, and organizing homeless people. He took a copy of the petition to gather more signatures. A defense attorney stopped to talk about the conditions in prison, donate money to our work, and sign the petition. Several people working in the prisons also stopped to support the protest. And a number of high school students taking SAT classes at UC Berkeley stopped to sign the petition on their lunch break.
In a classic example of the influence of knowing someone in prison, a MIM activist talked to two young white men about the issue. One of them said that everyone in prison is no good and a criminal and deserves to suffer. The other one said to him "hey, my dad's in prison" and eagerly signed the petition proclaiming how much he would hate to be locked in the SHU. He then convinced his friend to sign as well. At the rate imprisonment is rising in the U.$., the number of people who have been or know someone in prison is reaching far into the population. And this provides a significant base of support for our fight against the criminal injustice system. This is concentrated in the Black and Latino communities which are disproportionately targeted by the criminal injustice system but reaches many whites as well. This explains the higher level of support for the protest in downtown San Francisco relative to the supposedly progressive Berkeley.
Berkeley students riot after football game
The SHU protest was the same day as the big Berkeley vs. Stanford football game leading to even larger than usual crowds on the streets. But these crowds were far from sympathetic to the protest. Many of them walked by commenting "I think torture is good" if they bothered to say anything at all. The time between the start and finish of the game was far better for finding sympathetic passersby to sign the petitions. This leads us to the conclusion that Amerikan sports crowds are not a good target group for prisons organizing work. This is no surprise as the largely white petty bourgeois crowds reflect the interests of mainstream Amerika in general.
At the end of the football game (won by Berkeley), a crowd of thousands rushed the field and, after repeated clashes with police, successfully pushed their way through and tore down the goal post. They then took to the streets, shutting down traffic in their victory march carrying the goal post onto another part of the Berkeley campus. According to a policeman who stopped to ask what was in the mock-SHU, no arrests were made in connection with the crowd at the football field. This tolerance of blatant property destruction and illegal activity demonstrates the unity between the white nation and the criminal injustice system. Blacks and Latinos living in poverty who steal food or other property to feed their family are sent to prison, and crowds of oppressed nation youth demonstrating bring down serious police repression. But white students tearing down a goal post and taking over the streets without a permit results merely in news camera coverage. Media that was uninterested in the SHU protest. As the crowd surged past the mock-SHU we didn't see a single police office anywhere nearby.
The positive side to the football game was the exposure of thousands of fans to the mock-SHU which was in the footpath of most of the crowd. Many were too drunk to stop and read the signs, but as they walked past a number of people did ask what the SHU is or took a flyer. While we don't expect widespread support from this crowd, the sheer numbers mean that at least some of them know people in prison, or will be opposed to the torture in prison.
Prisoners describe conditions
A prisoner in the Corcoran SHU wrote to MIM in November: "I’m incarcerated in a maximum security prison. I am in my cell 23 hours a day, 7 days a week. My only permitted luxury are books. We’re allowed to purchase them from outside bookstores. But I have no income to do so. The library here supplies books, but only novels, which I derive no pleasure from. I prefer books that have intellectual value such as philosophy and other classical literature. Unfortunately they are in absence in the library here so this brings me to you in hopes that you can help me out with a few books." The lack of educational materials is just one aspect of the repression in the SHU.
A prisoner in the Pelican Bay SHU wrote: "These prisoncrats are about to implement another repressive policy: effective Jan 1, 2003 all incoming mail must be written on 81/2 x 11 inch paper, on one side only and incoming letters cannot be longer than 4 pages in length. Handwriting or printing must be legible so the fascist censor can screen all the incoming mail plus we will be able to receive only five letters per week. This bullchet policy will be introduced for 'security reasons.' Yea right. Like all other Pelican Bay policies this one is pure crap. This policy is simply another vehicle of oppression and social control."
The blatant repression of prisoners in the SHU demonstrates the lack of real security concerns and the use of these units, as the Pelican Bay prisoner pointed out, for social control. Join us in this battle against control units in California. Download the petition and flyer and get out on the streets to collect signatures: http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/agitation/prisons.html
November 23 – The mock-SHU prison control unit was erected in front of the University of California, Berkeley for a day long protest of these torture chambers that exist in prisons across the state of California. This demonstration, along with the week long SHU vigil in downtown San Francisco the first week of November, and the protest November 25 in Sacramento are part of an on-going campaign organized by MIM, the All People’s Coalition, the Barrio Defense Committee, the Uhuru Movement and others. We are working to abolish the Security Housing Units (SHU) in California prisons.
SHU is an acronym for "Security Housing Unit" but it really stands for torture and terrorism. Many prisoners have been confined to the SHU for 5, 10, 15 years or more. Prisoners confined in the SHU, which is based on a sensory deprivation model that CDC knew would have significant psychological consequences on prisoners, receive all their meals in their cells, they are not allowed to participate in training or educational activities, they are not allowed contact visits and they have no phone access. SHU prisoners spend 22 hours a day in a windowless, 6x9 cell and they're shackled and strip searched every time they leave their cell. The exercise "yard" (which is just another concrete cell, only larger) has no exercise equipment and no view of the outside world.
For over 15 years the California Department of Corrections (CDC) has had a practice of placing prisoners in the SHU under the guise that the prisoners are prison gang affiliates or a threat to the safety of others or institutional security. The five California SHU's - Pelican Bay State Prison SHU, Valley State Prison for Women SHU, California State Prison at Corcoran SHU, California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi SHU and Corcoran SATF - are the lynchpin for the CDC's prison system. They are the most brutal prisons in the system and principally target those prisoners who show the most resistance. They are designed to break inmates' spirit.
The Berkeley and Sacramento protests were organized around a meeting November 25 between Senator Polanco and the California Department of Correction along with a few select prisoner advocacy groups. This meeting is to address the demands of the SHU prisoners in Pelican Bay on hunger strike to protest the conditions there. Pelican Bay prisoners have been on hunger strike since October 19. Senator Polanco has expressed support for the striking prisoners but the tone of the meeting is to address making the SHU torture units kinder and gentler rather than recognizing that control units must be abolished. Our protests have gathered more than a thousand petition signatures already, demanding that the SHU be abolished. At the Berkeley protest we added just over 100 additional signatures to the total.
The Berkeley environment was a contrast to the protest in downtown San Francisco in an area with a large concentration of homeless and former prisoners. In Berkeley the crowd was predominantly white and well off. But nonetheless we met a number of former prisoners, several people who had worked in the prisons in CA and knew firsthand the horrible conditions, and many people who knew nothing about the SHU but were eager to sign a petition once we took the time to describe it to them. In addition to the signatures we collected, several people who stopped to sign took copies of the petition to gather more signatures.
We met one former prisoner who received MIM Notes while on the inside. He is currently homeless, a common condition among released prisoners, and organizing homeless people. He took a copy of the petition to gather more signatures. A defense attorney stopped to talk about the conditions in prison, donate money to our work, and sign the petition. Several people working in the prisons also stopped to support the protest. And a number of high school students taking SAT classes at UC Berkeley stopped to sign the petition on their lunch break.
In a classic example of the influence of knowing someone in prison, a MIM activist talked to two young white men about the issue. One of them said that everyone in prison is no good and a criminal and deserves to suffer. The other one said to him "hey, my dad's in prison" and eagerly signed the petition proclaiming how much he would hate to be locked in the SHU. He then convinced his friend to sign as well. At the rate imprisonment is rising in the U.$., the number of people who have been or know someone in prison is reaching far into the population. And this provides a significant base of support for our fight against the criminal injustice system. This is concentrated in the Black and Latino communities which are disproportionately targeted by the criminal injustice system but reaches many whites as well. This explains the higher level of support for the protest in downtown San Francisco relative to the supposedly progressive Berkeley.
Berkeley students riot after football game
The SHU protest was the same day as the big Berkeley vs. Stanford football game leading to even larger than usual crowds on the streets. But these crowds were far from sympathetic to the protest. Many of them walked by commenting "I think torture is good" if they bothered to say anything at all. The time between the start and finish of the game was far better for finding sympathetic passersby to sign the petitions. This leads us to the conclusion that Amerikan sports crowds are not a good target group for prisons organizing work. This is no surprise as the largely white petty bourgeois crowds reflect the interests of mainstream Amerika in general.
At the end of the football game (won by Berkeley), a crowd of thousands rushed the field and, after repeated clashes with police, successfully pushed their way through and tore down the goal post. They then took to the streets, shutting down traffic in their victory march carrying the goal post onto another part of the Berkeley campus. According to a policeman who stopped to ask what was in the mock-SHU, no arrests were made in connection with the crowd at the football field. This tolerance of blatant property destruction and illegal activity demonstrates the unity between the white nation and the criminal injustice system. Blacks and Latinos living in poverty who steal food or other property to feed their family are sent to prison, and crowds of oppressed nation youth demonstrating bring down serious police repression. But white students tearing down a goal post and taking over the streets without a permit results merely in news camera coverage. Media that was uninterested in the SHU protest. As the crowd surged past the mock-SHU we didn't see a single police office anywhere nearby.
The positive side to the football game was the exposure of thousands of fans to the mock-SHU which was in the footpath of most of the crowd. Many were too drunk to stop and read the signs, but as they walked past a number of people did ask what the SHU is or took a flyer. While we don't expect widespread support from this crowd, the sheer numbers mean that at least some of them know people in prison, or will be opposed to the torture in prison.
Prisoners describe conditions
A prisoner in the Corcoran SHU wrote to MIM in November: "I’m incarcerated in a maximum security prison. I am in my cell 23 hours a day, 7 days a week. My only permitted luxury are books. We’re allowed to purchase them from outside bookstores. But I have no income to do so. The library here supplies books, but only novels, which I derive no pleasure from. I prefer books that have intellectual value such as philosophy and other classical literature. Unfortunately they are in absence in the library here so this brings me to you in hopes that you can help me out with a few books." The lack of educational materials is just one aspect of the repression in the SHU.
A prisoner in the Pelican Bay SHU wrote: "These prisoncrats are about to implement another repressive policy: effective Jan 1, 2003 all incoming mail must be written on 81/2 x 11 inch paper, on one side only and incoming letters cannot be longer than 4 pages in length. Handwriting or printing must be legible so the fascist censor can screen all the incoming mail plus we will be able to receive only five letters per week. This bullchet policy will be introduced for 'security reasons.' Yea right. Like all other Pelican Bay policies this one is pure crap. This policy is simply another vehicle of oppression and social control."
The blatant repression of prisoners in the SHU demonstrates the lack of real security concerns and the use of these units, as the Pelican Bay prisoner pointed out, for social control. Join us in this battle against control units in California. Download the petition and flyer and get out on the streets to collect signatures: http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/agitation/prisons.html
For more information:
http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM
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You said:
"This tolerance of blatant property destruction and illegal activity demonstrates the unity between the white nation and the criminal injustice system. Blacks and Latinos living in poverty who steal food or other property to feed their family are sent to prison, and crowds of oppressed nation youth demonstrating bring down serious police repression. But white students tearing down a goal post and taking over the streets without a permit results merely in news camera coverage. "
I can assure you, the capitalist class has total contempt for all workers of all colors. The white students attending UC Berkeley (with a significant percentage of Asian Americans, and some blacks and Latinos and others) do not represent the white workingclass population, and the same is true of all the other students. UC Berkeley is a finishing school for the rich; it is completely unaffordable to the entire workingclass and is becoming more unaffordable daily, as fees increase while our tax dollars go to prisons and the war machine.
Those workers who do manage to get into and finish UC Berkeley either have to promote capitalism in order to get those "good" corporate jobs, or they too, will find themselves working in workingclass jobs.
The growing prison system reflects a lack of a labor movement. It is a means of warehousing and murdering the unemployed and providing jobs for the hoodlum sector of the workingclass as prison guards. Any system dedicated to punishment instead of rehabilitation is by definition a death camp-concentration camp system, which the US prison system is.
It is certainly good that you are trying to raise consciousness about the American death camp system, but its end can only come with a serious labor movement that abolishes the death penalty and the prison system and promotes rehabilitation for decent-paying jobs.
"This tolerance of blatant property destruction and illegal activity demonstrates the unity between the white nation and the criminal injustice system. Blacks and Latinos living in poverty who steal food or other property to feed their family are sent to prison, and crowds of oppressed nation youth demonstrating bring down serious police repression. But white students tearing down a goal post and taking over the streets without a permit results merely in news camera coverage. "
I can assure you, the capitalist class has total contempt for all workers of all colors. The white students attending UC Berkeley (with a significant percentage of Asian Americans, and some blacks and Latinos and others) do not represent the white workingclass population, and the same is true of all the other students. UC Berkeley is a finishing school for the rich; it is completely unaffordable to the entire workingclass and is becoming more unaffordable daily, as fees increase while our tax dollars go to prisons and the war machine.
Those workers who do manage to get into and finish UC Berkeley either have to promote capitalism in order to get those "good" corporate jobs, or they too, will find themselves working in workingclass jobs.
The growing prison system reflects a lack of a labor movement. It is a means of warehousing and murdering the unemployed and providing jobs for the hoodlum sector of the workingclass as prison guards. Any system dedicated to punishment instead of rehabilitation is by definition a death camp-concentration camp system, which the US prison system is.
It is certainly good that you are trying to raise consciousness about the American death camp system, but its end can only come with a serious labor movement that abolishes the death penalty and the prison system and promotes rehabilitation for decent-paying jobs.
thank you mim for this great article.
worker wrote:
"I can assure you, the capitalist class has total contempt for all workers of all colors."
that may be true. however, workers of colonized nations and workers of colonizer nations (ie; white workers) have a completely different relationship to the means of production in a capitalist economy -- entirely different animals, with different material interests within the capitalist system.
workers of colonizED nations end up in prisons, ghettos and barrios and in the shu program. workers of colonized nations were doing better prior to capitlalisms assualt on them. look at the chart on in the image for evidence of this. or for a live example, next saturday, drive up university avenue in berkeley and look at the mexican workers hanging around truitt and white lumber yard begging for work. make a left on fourth street and see how the white workers spend their time.
white workers, or workers of colonizER nations, do not generally go to prisons, and more often than not graduate to the petty beourgosie in a few generations of coming to this land we've participated in stealing. before capitalism rescured us, white workers were white feudal peasantry. as white peasants we were in europe, dying from diseases in droves and living in dire poverty and ignorance. we had really bad teeth and didn't know that taking regular baths was a good idea. capitalism rescued white workers from these conditions.
until white workers stop trying to deny this reality, we will continue to be backwards, reactionary social forces whose only claim to "progressive" is our demand for a better split of the stolen wealth from the capitalist class.
worker wrote:
"I can assure you, the capitalist class has total contempt for all workers of all colors."
that may be true. however, workers of colonized nations and workers of colonizer nations (ie; white workers) have a completely different relationship to the means of production in a capitalist economy -- entirely different animals, with different material interests within the capitalist system.
workers of colonizED nations end up in prisons, ghettos and barrios and in the shu program. workers of colonized nations were doing better prior to capitlalisms assualt on them. look at the chart on in the image for evidence of this. or for a live example, next saturday, drive up university avenue in berkeley and look at the mexican workers hanging around truitt and white lumber yard begging for work. make a left on fourth street and see how the white workers spend their time.
white workers, or workers of colonizER nations, do not generally go to prisons, and more often than not graduate to the petty beourgosie in a few generations of coming to this land we've participated in stealing. before capitalism rescured us, white workers were white feudal peasantry. as white peasants we were in europe, dying from diseases in droves and living in dire poverty and ignorance. we had really bad teeth and didn't know that taking regular baths was a good idea. capitalism rescued white workers from these conditions.
until white workers stop trying to deny this reality, we will continue to be backwards, reactionary social forces whose only claim to "progressive" is our demand for a better split of the stolen wealth from the capitalist class.
Characterizing 4th St. in Berkeley as an example of how white workers in the US live is absurd and dishonest. Fourth street is a gentrified mecca that caters to the affluent. Like all ritzy consumer zones, you will, of course, see wage-workers, and even some poor people, downing a coffee or buying a book or CD, but, as Matthew surely knows, the lamp-shops, design stores (etc etc etc ad nauseaum) make their scrilla attending to the "needs" of the upper-middle class and rich.
I avoid Fourth Street like the plague, but having been given a gift certificate to Cody's, I made a trip down there yesterday. And what should I see in front of Peet's, but Matthews' Uhuru House, selling pies for the holidays! No, the Uhuru's weren't organizing the Latino proletarians around the corner -- they were peddling pies to the bourgeoisie (who they stupidly castigate as "white workers"!).
What a befuddled bunch you all are.
I avoid Fourth Street like the plague, but having been given a gift certificate to Cody's, I made a trip down there yesterday. And what should I see in front of Peet's, but Matthews' Uhuru House, selling pies for the holidays! No, the Uhuru's weren't organizing the Latino proletarians around the corner -- they were peddling pies to the bourgeoisie (who they stupidly castigate as "white workers"!).
What a befuddled bunch you all are.
GET A LIFE!! KARMA HAS A WAY OF CATCHING UP WITH YOU. ASK ANYONE WHO HAS BEFRIENDED THESE ANIMALS AND IT IS JUST A MATTER OF TIME WHEN THEY THEMSELVES BECOME VICTIMS OF THE VERY PEOPLE THEY HAVE TRIED TO HELP. I KNOW OF COUNTLESS FOLKS WHO, FOR WHATEVER REASON HAVE BECOME HOOKED UP WITH THESE CREEPS AND PAID DEARLY FOR IT LATER. THESE ANIMALS HIDE BEHIND THE "POLITICAL PRISONER" EXCUSE AND "RACE CARD" MANTRA. WAKE UP!
'Worker' is really deluded. He's been smoking god knows what? It's strong whatever it is.
Matthew is similarly deluded.
What we have here is denial of reality.
Reality is that Capitalism works. It's the only thing that works.
Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, etc. are all failed econcomic systems that have never been successful wherever tried. Nor could they ever be successful. They're conceptually and fatally flawed.
Berkeley is the symbolic world headquarters for dippy hippy liberals. Isn't that where Pacifica Radio is headquartered? Enough said.
Matthew is similarly deluded.
What we have here is denial of reality.
Reality is that Capitalism works. It's the only thing that works.
Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, etc. are all failed econcomic systems that have never been successful wherever tried. Nor could they ever be successful. They're conceptually and fatally flawed.
Berkeley is the symbolic world headquarters for dippy hippy liberals. Isn't that where Pacifica Radio is headquartered? Enough said.
Now there's some nice simplistic crap to be spoon-fed to all the conservative babies out there.
Great argument, love your sources and lack of stereotyping.
Great argument, love your sources and lack of stereotyping.
The Doltish Supervisors' posts are never more than unsubstantiated assertions draped in couch potato humor.
I'd love to air-lift his sorry-ass to to one (or more) of the slums that ring capitalist cities around the globe and watch the response as he explains capitalisms' magnificence to its victims. Methinks he might get his head torn off.
I'd love to air-lift his sorry-ass to to one (or more) of the slums that ring capitalist cities around the globe and watch the response as he explains capitalisms' magnificence to its victims. Methinks he might get his head torn off.
There seems to be some kind of fantasy that all whites are rich and all non-whites are poor. Whites work the same workingclass jobs as non-whites. In particular, whites hold such jobs as mechanic, stationary engineer, electrician, construction worker, secretary, paralegal, nurse, teacher, medical lab technician, computer programmer, office file clerk, cook, waitress, retail clerk, firefighter, airport baggage screener , job counselor, receptionist and many other jobs, all of which pay less than $60,000 a year, which in the Bay Area, defines a workingclass position. In most of the United States, where non-whites are clearly a minority, whites also hold minimum wage jobs.
There can be no effective unity based on color as the basic contradiction in this society is between capital and labor. The solution to the prison issue can only be achieved by a united workingclass of all colors, genders, sexual orientation and other such identities in one active labor movement, for the growth of the death camp-prison system is due to a lack of a united and active labor movement.
Most of the students attending UC Berkeley come from homes where the household income is over $200,000 a year, and usually much more than that when one includes income from stocks and bonds and other investments added to the salaries. Their parents own their home, and there is plenty of inherited wealth soon to be received by these students, if not already being partially received in the form of trust funds for college.
As to the hoodlum football crowd, the serious students at UC Berkeley, like the serious students everywhere, despise the football garbage and all the rest of the sports garbage. They certainly do not have time to attend this stupidity called a football game as they are too busy studying to be "A" students and begin their careers. The football crowd is usually (not always) the sorority/fraternity filthy rich kids who often major in business and slide through school on their parents' obscene wealth. You will find the serious students in the library and they are not destroying property and making pigs of themselves. That does not change their class outlook, but whether rich or poor, the football crowd is despised by the serious students everywhere.
There can be no effective unity based on color as the basic contradiction in this society is between capital and labor. The solution to the prison issue can only be achieved by a united workingclass of all colors, genders, sexual orientation and other such identities in one active labor movement, for the growth of the death camp-prison system is due to a lack of a united and active labor movement.
Most of the students attending UC Berkeley come from homes where the household income is over $200,000 a year, and usually much more than that when one includes income from stocks and bonds and other investments added to the salaries. Their parents own their home, and there is plenty of inherited wealth soon to be received by these students, if not already being partially received in the form of trust funds for college.
As to the hoodlum football crowd, the serious students at UC Berkeley, like the serious students everywhere, despise the football garbage and all the rest of the sports garbage. They certainly do not have time to attend this stupidity called a football game as they are too busy studying to be "A" students and begin their careers. The football crowd is usually (not always) the sorority/fraternity filthy rich kids who often major in business and slide through school on their parents' obscene wealth. You will find the serious students in the library and they are not destroying property and making pigs of themselves. That does not change their class outlook, but whether rich or poor, the football crowd is despised by the serious students everywhere.
yes. we go to where the money is to get it. that's what we do so that the uhuru house doors stay open and the lights stay on. that's why you'll find us on fourth street on any given moment selling pies or doing some other fundraising endeavor. thats why this story is fresh in my mind.
so thats why we were there.
but aaron, the white worker, is truly amusing in his half-assed excuse for why HE was there. "I avoid Fourth Street like the plague, but having been given a gift certificate to Cody's, I made a trip down there yesterday..."
blah blah. so aaron's white working ass was on fourth street, cashing in on free books at cody's, but he wasn't REALLY there. he just happened to be there this weekend to get a gift certificate to codys. but he never REALLY goes there. he hates the beougeoisie stuff. he really does.
i'm sure the reason he's usually in that neighborhood -- that is, when he's not cashing in on his book gift certificates at cody's -- is to sit on the corner at truitt and white and beg to dig ditches like the rest of the workers. how many times have you been in the fourth street neighborhood with that objective, aaron? you white worker, you!
anyway, i certainly hope you stopped by the table and said hello.
so thats why we were there.
but aaron, the white worker, is truly amusing in his half-assed excuse for why HE was there. "I avoid Fourth Street like the plague, but having been given a gift certificate to Cody's, I made a trip down there yesterday..."
blah blah. so aaron's white working ass was on fourth street, cashing in on free books at cody's, but he wasn't REALLY there. he just happened to be there this weekend to get a gift certificate to codys. but he never REALLY goes there. he hates the beougeoisie stuff. he really does.
i'm sure the reason he's usually in that neighborhood -- that is, when he's not cashing in on his book gift certificates at cody's -- is to sit on the corner at truitt and white and beg to dig ditches like the rest of the workers. how many times have you been in the fourth street neighborhood with that objective, aaron? you white worker, you!
anyway, i certainly hope you stopped by the table and said hello.
You act like it's some unpardonable counter-revolutionary sin that I have a gift certificate, Matthew. If you don't believe that I hate 4th St., I don't really care, but if I were really that devious, why wouldn't have I just said I heard from someone that the Uhuru's were peddling pies on 4th?
Listen, I don't deny that blacks and Latinos are disproportionately poor and imprisoned in the US. I don't deny that blacks, in particular, face discrimination and abuse. What I object to is your simple-minded formulation that white workers benefit from this set-up.
Millions and millions of whites live in poverty in this country. Tens of millions more live pay-check to pay-check. Conditions for workers and poor people in the US have been deteriorating for thirty years now, and there's every reason to believe that conditions will only continue to get worse. You can flog people all you want with your ossified crypto-Stalinist black nationalism, but don't think for a second that it provides a strategy for overcoming capital's onslaught against working class and poor people OF ALL RACES. You might sell a few pies to sheepish upper-middle class liberals, but that's all.
Indeed, I think the Uhuru's prefer, and are more comfortable forming (momentary) alliances with, affluent whites than with white working class people that possess class-consciousness. After all you can steam-roll the former, while the latter are apt to shoot holes in your go-nowhere racialist ideology.
Listen, I don't deny that blacks and Latinos are disproportionately poor and imprisoned in the US. I don't deny that blacks, in particular, face discrimination and abuse. What I object to is your simple-minded formulation that white workers benefit from this set-up.
Millions and millions of whites live in poverty in this country. Tens of millions more live pay-check to pay-check. Conditions for workers and poor people in the US have been deteriorating for thirty years now, and there's every reason to believe that conditions will only continue to get worse. You can flog people all you want with your ossified crypto-Stalinist black nationalism, but don't think for a second that it provides a strategy for overcoming capital's onslaught against working class and poor people OF ALL RACES. You might sell a few pies to sheepish upper-middle class liberals, but that's all.
Indeed, I think the Uhuru's prefer, and are more comfortable forming (momentary) alliances with, affluent whites than with white working class people that possess class-consciousness. After all you can steam-roll the former, while the latter are apt to shoot holes in your go-nowhere racialist ideology.
Yup, it sure does. Nothing, not even war, causes more people do starve to death on a regular basis than capitalism.
"You act like it's some unpardonable counter-revolutionary sin that I have a gift certificate, Matthew."
no i don't. i get gift certificates from time to time and cash them in, myself. nothing sinful about that, nor did i imply as much. i might even go to fourth street to find something cute in one of those ritzy stores for my dear momma who has a birthday coming up. i just pointed out your story as an amusing and justification for aaron's ironic presence on fourth street.
nothing inherently counterevolutionary, or sinful, even in aaron's apparent inablity to understand the differences between workers from colonized nations (such as the ones begging to dig ditches on fourth street) and workers from colonizer nations (the ones cashing in on gift certificates on fourth street, turning their noses up at the fancy shops they can't afford). the uhuru movement is happy to disagree with those who can't unite with us on that matter and work together on this things we can agree on; for example some "stop the war in iraq" demo.
but aaron does committ a "counter-revolutionary sin." this is his kneejerk cry of "racism," and other similar attempts to marginalize and otherwise attack those of us who can see the colonial relationships that exist within capitalism for what they are. this is similar to the zionist charge of "anti-semitism" any time isreal is criticised. these attacks are, objecetively, a form of collaboration with the imperialist class to protect capitalism for being challenged by the ever-emerging national liberation struggles.
aaron does this because, as a white worker and white leftist, aaron has a stake on protecting the stolen resources, land and labor which literally gave him his existance as a white worker and white leftist. this, even at the same time that white workers experience contradictions and sometimes even outright oppression within the capitalist economy.
however, even though capitalism is white power, which functions in the interests of white people of all classes, this does not mean aaron, or any white person, is inherently a reactionary, counter revoluiontary force. human nature allows us white people to reject our class interests within the framework of capitalism and embrace our human interest to see a world free of oppression and material want. however we do need the leadership of colonized people for whom the realization of this world is a matter of life and death, not just a good idea.
this is what the uhuru movement believes, and this is the message we take to white people on fourth street as well as elswhere.
for those interested in the pie campaign the uhuru movement has been doing in the bay area for 21 years now, check out:
http://apedf.org/pies/
we are looking for volunteers to help us bake and sell pies, and folks who need a pie for the holidays who'd like to buy one from a good cause.
yours, matthew
no i don't. i get gift certificates from time to time and cash them in, myself. nothing sinful about that, nor did i imply as much. i might even go to fourth street to find something cute in one of those ritzy stores for my dear momma who has a birthday coming up. i just pointed out your story as an amusing and justification for aaron's ironic presence on fourth street.
nothing inherently counterevolutionary, or sinful, even in aaron's apparent inablity to understand the differences between workers from colonized nations (such as the ones begging to dig ditches on fourth street) and workers from colonizer nations (the ones cashing in on gift certificates on fourth street, turning their noses up at the fancy shops they can't afford). the uhuru movement is happy to disagree with those who can't unite with us on that matter and work together on this things we can agree on; for example some "stop the war in iraq" demo.
but aaron does committ a "counter-revolutionary sin." this is his kneejerk cry of "racism," and other similar attempts to marginalize and otherwise attack those of us who can see the colonial relationships that exist within capitalism for what they are. this is similar to the zionist charge of "anti-semitism" any time isreal is criticised. these attacks are, objecetively, a form of collaboration with the imperialist class to protect capitalism for being challenged by the ever-emerging national liberation struggles.
aaron does this because, as a white worker and white leftist, aaron has a stake on protecting the stolen resources, land and labor which literally gave him his existance as a white worker and white leftist. this, even at the same time that white workers experience contradictions and sometimes even outright oppression within the capitalist economy.
however, even though capitalism is white power, which functions in the interests of white people of all classes, this does not mean aaron, or any white person, is inherently a reactionary, counter revoluiontary force. human nature allows us white people to reject our class interests within the framework of capitalism and embrace our human interest to see a world free of oppression and material want. however we do need the leadership of colonized people for whom the realization of this world is a matter of life and death, not just a good idea.
this is what the uhuru movement believes, and this is the message we take to white people on fourth street as well as elswhere.
for those interested in the pie campaign the uhuru movement has been doing in the bay area for 21 years now, check out:
http://apedf.org/pies/
we are looking for volunteers to help us bake and sell pies, and folks who need a pie for the holidays who'd like to buy one from a good cause.
yours, matthew
I have to give "worker" credit for trying to define working class. S/he states that earning less than $60k makes for a working class persyn. Assuming that "worker" doesn't pretend to be a marxist, that's at least a fair attempt at a definition. (If worker does claim to be a Marxist s/he needs to go back and read Marx on the definition of exploitation and the classes.) It is also good that "worker" recognizes that owning a home counts towards wealth. Many proponents of the so-called white working class majority like to ignore forms of wealth and even ownership of the means of production other than wages. MIM has published an extensive analysis of the wealth in this country, the distribution to various nations and classes, including information about home ownership and stock (MIM Theory #1). I encourage anyone who is serious about studying this issue to read it. You can find this and many other more extensive essays on on this subject at the web site below.
Rather than using wage cutoffs like "worker", we define proletarian by looking at who is exploited: this means the people who are earning less than the value of their labor. The value of labor can be quantified, that's how profits are made. Exploited workers get paid for less value than they create and the capitalists profit off of the extra value.
In fact, whites became a majority white collar workers in the 1980 Census. Parasites are workers who do nothing productive. In the imperialist countries, the working class is a majority or headed to a majority of parasites. They are paid for their allegiance to the capitalists. For instance, people working in advertising are not doing anything productive, but they can get a lot of money to do this. Where does that money come from? That's the crux of the issue here. When the imperialists exploit workers in the Third World they extract great profits. Those profits are brought home. The capitalists keep the majority share, but they also distribute these profits to their home country workers to keep things quite at home. Making less than the bourgeoisie does not necessarily make someone "working class". There's a whole class of petty bourgeoisie who make less than the bourgeoisie.
Where is this great labor movement that "worker" and so many others are calling for and have been for years? Why is this movement so strong in Third World countries where the people suffer daily at the hands of imperialist exploitation and oppression? Why is this movement supporting the Amerikan terrorist wars around the world in this country? Superprofits can buy allegiance.
Lenin--
"On the one hand, there is the tendency of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists to convert a handful of very rich and privileged nations into 'eternal' parasites on the body of the rest of mankind, to 'rest on the laurels' of the exploitation of Negroes, Indians, etc., keeping them in subjection with the aid of excellent weapons of extermination provided by modern militarism. On the other hand, there is the tendency of the ITAL masses END, who are more oppressed than before and who bear the whole brunt of imperialist wars, to cast off this yoke and to overthrow the bourgeoisie. It is in the struggle between these tendencies that the history of the labour movement will now inevitably develop."
(Lenin, "Imperialism and the Split in Socialism")
Rather than using wage cutoffs like "worker", we define proletarian by looking at who is exploited: this means the people who are earning less than the value of their labor. The value of labor can be quantified, that's how profits are made. Exploited workers get paid for less value than they create and the capitalists profit off of the extra value.
In fact, whites became a majority white collar workers in the 1980 Census. Parasites are workers who do nothing productive. In the imperialist countries, the working class is a majority or headed to a majority of parasites. They are paid for their allegiance to the capitalists. For instance, people working in advertising are not doing anything productive, but they can get a lot of money to do this. Where does that money come from? That's the crux of the issue here. When the imperialists exploit workers in the Third World they extract great profits. Those profits are brought home. The capitalists keep the majority share, but they also distribute these profits to their home country workers to keep things quite at home. Making less than the bourgeoisie does not necessarily make someone "working class". There's a whole class of petty bourgeoisie who make less than the bourgeoisie.
Where is this great labor movement that "worker" and so many others are calling for and have been for years? Why is this movement so strong in Third World countries where the people suffer daily at the hands of imperialist exploitation and oppression? Why is this movement supporting the Amerikan terrorist wars around the world in this country? Superprofits can buy allegiance.
Lenin--
"On the one hand, there is the tendency of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists to convert a handful of very rich and privileged nations into 'eternal' parasites on the body of the rest of mankind, to 'rest on the laurels' of the exploitation of Negroes, Indians, etc., keeping them in subjection with the aid of excellent weapons of extermination provided by modern militarism. On the other hand, there is the tendency of the ITAL masses END, who are more oppressed than before and who bear the whole brunt of imperialist wars, to cast off this yoke and to overthrow the bourgeoisie. It is in the struggle between these tendencies that the history of the labour movement will now inevitably develop."
(Lenin, "Imperialism and the Split in Socialism")
For more information:
http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM
What "ever-emerging national liberation struggles" are you referring to Matthew? The ANC and its austerity programs? The FARC and its capitalist narco terror? The FMLN and its electoral fecklessness? The Sandanistas and its IMF placating? Zimbawbwe's Mugabe and his austerity and xenophobia? The Uhuru House and its bake sales on 4th Street?
If you haven't noticed, Matthew, the cutting edge of the revolt against capital doesn't dress itself up in the language of "national liberation" -- an oxymoron if there ever was one. The so-called liberation of the nation is no match for the power of the world market, and no threat to it. This isn't to say that all struggles that take on a national character are irredeemably reactionary, but radicals within them realize that, to succeed, they must spread and go past the physical and political parameters DRAWN BY CAPITALISM. Anti-capitalists don't fetishize the nation as undifferentiated (as the Uhuru House does with blacks in America), nor do they seek to take state power and administer capital with a red beret adorned upon their heads.
I have already acknowledged that blacks in America are disproportionately poor and imprisoned. Whites in America do not face racism (in any meaningful sense), and they do not confront the legacy of slavery and segregation. Relative advantages are bestowed upon whites qua whites. But this doesn't meant that white wage-workers aren't exploited, nor that they don't have a self-interest in battling capital. The move toward a "service economy" has coincided in the past thirty years with a profound deterioration in conditions for wage-workers and poor people of all "races". The fact that as of 1980 (according to MIM) the majority of white workers are employed in white collar work proves nothing about the status of white workers. White collar workers are still wage-slaves, most or many doing deadening, stupid, and poorly compensated work for capitalists whom appropriate surplus value from their toil.
I'm all for recognizing the historic legacy of racism. I'm all for combatting it where it appears. But, unlike the Uhuru demogogues, I'm opposed to allowing divisions imposed by our rulers' to dictate the contours of struggles today.
If you haven't noticed, Matthew, the cutting edge of the revolt against capital doesn't dress itself up in the language of "national liberation" -- an oxymoron if there ever was one. The so-called liberation of the nation is no match for the power of the world market, and no threat to it. This isn't to say that all struggles that take on a national character are irredeemably reactionary, but radicals within them realize that, to succeed, they must spread and go past the physical and political parameters DRAWN BY CAPITALISM. Anti-capitalists don't fetishize the nation as undifferentiated (as the Uhuru House does with blacks in America), nor do they seek to take state power and administer capital with a red beret adorned upon their heads.
I have already acknowledged that blacks in America are disproportionately poor and imprisoned. Whites in America do not face racism (in any meaningful sense), and they do not confront the legacy of slavery and segregation. Relative advantages are bestowed upon whites qua whites. But this doesn't meant that white wage-workers aren't exploited, nor that they don't have a self-interest in battling capital. The move toward a "service economy" has coincided in the past thirty years with a profound deterioration in conditions for wage-workers and poor people of all "races". The fact that as of 1980 (according to MIM) the majority of white workers are employed in white collar work proves nothing about the status of white workers. White collar workers are still wage-slaves, most or many doing deadening, stupid, and poorly compensated work for capitalists whom appropriate surplus value from their toil.
I'm all for recognizing the historic legacy of racism. I'm all for combatting it where it appears. But, unlike the Uhuru demogogues, I'm opposed to allowing divisions imposed by our rulers' to dictate the contours of struggles today.
"I'm all for recognizing the historic legacy of racism. I'm all for combatting it where it appears. But, unlike the Uhuru demogogues, I'm opposed to allowing divisions imposed by our rulers' to dictate the contours of struggles today."
the uhuru movement doesn't spend time fighting racism. racism is just ideas. fighting racism puts white people in the center of the universe because the struggle becomes how to get bad ideas out of the heads of white people.
the uhuru fights against colonialism. the uhuru movement most definitely represents one component of the ever-emerging national liberation struggles. a great example of the u.s. front of the african liberation struggle. we agree with aaron when he says "hey must spread and go past the physical and political parameters DRAWN BY CAPITALISM" that's why the uhuru movement recognizes that all black people are africans. the freedom of all black people lies in the liberation of africa.
aaron tries to minimize the significance of the uhuru movement by characterizing our pie campaign -- where we sell thousands of pies over the course of about a month -- as a "bake sale on fourth street." thats fine, slanders is to be expected from the white left. however, those who only know the uhuru movement from our great pie campaign should read this story on the november 13, 1996 uprisings in st. petersburg, where the pigs tried to pull a MOVE on the st. pete uhuru house and got routed from the community. read this while munching on that slice of uhuru apple pie with granola topping that you just nuked for 3 minutes in the microwave with a scoop of 'nila ice cream on top. yummy!
______________
AFRICAN PEOPLE'S SOCIALIST PARTY TAKES STRUGGLE TO ANOTHER FRONT
ST. PETERSBURG, Fl – On the sixth anniversary of the police attack on the National Office of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), the struggle has entered another front, this time in the courtroom.
In August and September more than 50 members and supporters of our Party and movement filed into Circuit Court in St. Petersburg to participate in hearings generated by our civil suit against the City and then-Chief of Police Darrel Stephens.
The suit revolves around the infamous November 13, 1996 attack on the Uhuru House in St. Petersburg. Three hundred troops from Tampa Bay area police agencies along with Highway Patrol officers backed up by National Guardsmen on standby in a nearby stadium assaulted our national office.
The hearings in August and September involved technical issues that, more than anything, revealed that the City of St. Petersburg intends to engage in trench warfare, fighting over every detail. Rather than face its responsibility for the unwarranted attack on our office, the City would demonstrate that constitutional guarantees are meaningless to colonized Africans.
One of the main issues is the attempt by the City to remove Darrel Stephens as a defendant in the case. If the city succeeds, this will limit the City’s liability and negatively affect our case in other ways.
It would appear logical to any thoughtful person that Stephens’ role as the chief of police who signed on to the plan to attack our rights and assault our headquarters makes him a defendant in this case. The law is not so clear and gives great advantage to the City, if the matter is determined solely in the courtroom.
The fact is that the City of St. Petersburg, unable to engage the African community in political debate and afraid of the consequences of the Party’s criticism of its tyrannical colonial domination of our people, especially after the police murder of a young African man, used the only weapon left at its disposal: the military in the form of the police department.
In 1996 the African community rebelled in response to the murder of TyRon Lewis and fought back against the attack on our offices, a logical response in the face of injustice without avenues of recourse. As a result, the City government made a plethora of promises to overturn its practice of police violence and heal the divisions in the city by rectifying the historical wrongs done to our community.
Now, six years later, after some semblance of colonial peace, the City feels it can forget those promises and send in a battery of lawyers to fight in its defense, as if the community will not be able to deliver a political consequence.
Uhuru Movement kept pressure on City to take responsibility for police murder of African youth
November 13, 1996 will always have a special place in the history of our Party, our Movement and the struggle of our oppressed and colonized people in this city.
That is the day the City government threw the supposed U.S. constitutionally-protected right to free speech in the garbage and tried to squash the struggle of the people by attempting to murder the leaders of our Party and Movement, especially our Chairman, Omali Yeshitela.
It was on that day that Point Number 4 of our Party’s 14-Point Working Platform, demanding the right to free speech and political association, was made significant in bold relief.
It was on that day that the police agencies from throughout the St. Petersburg-Tampa Bay Area made a massive attack on the Uhuru House, our national office.
The police attack on our office occurred one day short of three weeks after the October 24 police murder of 18-year-oldTyRon Lewis. That broad daylight, public shooting just three blocks away from our office sparked an uprising that shook the city to its foundation. The people’s rebellion threatened the plans of the local white owning class and political leaders to add a baseball team to lure even more white people to this city, whose economy is based on tourism.
However, the City was convinced it could overcome the bad publicity associated with the rebellions just as other cities, such as Miami, had done in the past. The problem was the Party and the Uhuru Movement that we lead. We wouldn’t let the issue of TyRon Lewis’ murder die. We were certainly guilty of leading demonstrations and a host of other actions including a general strike that made it impossible for the government to sweep the issue out of public view.
In an attempt to discredit us, the police department and other elements of the government accused our movement of actually starting the rebellion that resulted in the fiery destruction of police precincts and shops owned by avaricious merchants.
The work of our Movement in criticizing the murder of TyRon Lewis and attempting to lead our people to political power forced the government to take off the gloves. It revealed the fragility of a social order that drops all pretense of free speech rights when that speech actually has the potential to make a dent in the colonial subjugation of our people and the monopoly of political and economic power enjoyed by the colonial-capitalist white ruling class.
The November 13 attack on our Movement began while the public was awaiting a ruling from the grand jury regarding the responsibility of the police for the murder of TyRon Lewis. The International People’s Democratic Movement (InPDUM) was holding its regular Wednesday meeting which included on its agenda a discussion of the grand jury’s decision. Thousands of flyers had already been distributed by InPDUM to announce the topic of the meeting to the African population.
The police department and the state’s attorney had already agreed that the grand jury’s decision to absolve the killer cop of any criminal responsibility for Lewis’ death would not be announced until police were in place to control the response of our movement and our people.
SUBHEAD: City attempts to contain the Movement using military assault
A major problem for the city was how to contain the Party and the Uhuru Movement. Snitches were sent to our mass meetings and even into our mass organizations. Local government leaders were publicly demanding our arrest. Early on the afternoon of November 13, police began arresting people associated with our Movement on outstanding misdemeanor warrants as a way to disrupt our organizational capacity.
One of these arrests occurred just outside our office where nearly 30 members of a special weapons team wearing helmets and cammys, and with gas masks strapped to their thighs, accosted a young brother on an outstanding charge of driving with an expired license plate sticker. During the confrontation that developed during this arrest, our Chairman and a local woman Party leader were pepper sprayed by cops.
It was obvious by now that the police department, an arm of the colonial State, a colonial occupying army in our community, reeling from the humiliating military defeat of October 24 and the political defeat engineered by our Party and Movement, was now being used to resolve the problem of the Party’s leadership of the people’s resistance with a new military assault.
The naked, brazen harassment of our leaders and members outside our office was an act that was drawing hundreds of angry African spectators and sympathizers to the scene. It was among the provocations intended by the police to result in a confrontation that could justify a military response.
Other provocations included carloads of heavily armed cops riding through the gathered crowd of community sentries who had come to protect our organization. The rear doors of the cop cars were open and their weapons were menacingly directed toward the people.
By 6:00 p.m., a half hour prior to the meeting time, the police department had closed the streets near the Uhuru House in both directions of the major thoroughfare, 18th Ave. South. This was done to stop traffic from coming to the meeting and to isolate the building for the upcoming assault.
Many people were turned away from the meeting by police threats. Others, on foot and in cars, circled through back streets and made it to the meeting despite police efforts. By then an army of ruling class media organizations had joined with the police outside our headquarters.
At about 6:30 p.m., as the meeting was about to begin, the police made an announcement from a loud speaker outside the front of the Uhuru House. They declared the meeting an unlawful assembly and gave the people five minutes to leave the building or be tear gassed by the assembled battalion-sized military force.
This announcement was followed almost immediately by teargas projectiles which delivered the choking chemical into the meeting hall and caused panic among the scores of people assembled. Many of the women began to scream for their children as they sought to leave from rear and side exits, away from the primary assault.
After the first rush of people left the Uhuru House by the rear and side doors, further attempts to leave were met by clouds of teargas. The police had initiated a full scale chemical weapons assault on our building and much of the neighborhood.
While many of our organizers had been trapped on the outside of the building by the police assault, several of our leaders, including our Chairman, were trapped inside by the fussilade.
One African who witnessed the assault on our building equated it with what he had encountered in Viet Nam when the U.S. had attempted to continue the colonial domination of those heroic people. Another likened the attack to the 1985 assault on the MOVE organization by the Philadelphia Police Department, especially when the police used a helicopter and light airplane in the assault against our building.
In the rear of the building the trees were being set afire by the deliberately aimed teargas canisters which functioned as incendiary devices.
SUBHEAD: African youth come to defense of Uhuru Movement
Courageous African youngsters braved the police assault to snatch flaming branches from the trees to keep the fire from reaching our cars parked nearby or otherwise spreading to buildings in the neighborhood.
As the young warriors dragged the flaming branches away from the building, police targeted them with teargas canisters, attempting to drive them away. The government made other attempts of arson by shooting the canisters onto our roof.
In the front of the building, some terrified media reporters actually hid under their vans from the fury of the police attack. Police also fired tear gas canisters in the direction of many of those who had successfully escaped the building at the first sign of teargas, were chased by teargas canisters fired in their direction as they attempted to find their cars or other ways to leave the scene of the intended massacre.
Inside the building, the teargas was becoming overwhelming. The fury of the openly ruthless attack made it clear that no one was supposed to leave the building alive. Some of those trapped in the building had begun to look for ways to protect themselves from the gas with no real expectation of surviving the attack.
However, the Party and the Movement had spent many years building a base among the oppressed colonized working class masses, both employed and unemployed, especially the young Africans. They respected our Movement because of our unwillingness to compromise with our oppression, our political line which spoke to the needs and aspirations of the African working class as key to social progress and our practical battles in defense of the democratic rights of our people, especially the slandered young workers.
While our basic mass work had always been in defense of the democratic rights of the African working class, the young African workers, inspired by years of Party-led political education and their hatred of the oppressive occupying army, the primary disciplinary tool of the ruling class, responded decisively and heroically in defense of their Party and Movement.
Wearing ski masks or tying bandanas and their t-shirts around their faces to hide their identities, similar to the Sandinistas of Nicaragua and the Zapatistas of Mexico, these young warriors, many on bicycles, picked up stones, bottles and automatic weapons and engaged the colonial occupying army in a furious counter-assault.
Whatever the intent of the helicopter overhead, there was no repeat of the Philadelphia attack on the MOVE collective. This was due to the fact that these Africans, who called themselves "Ghost Faces," shot the helicopter down, wounded two cops and, according to a report in the St. Petersburg Times, left the commander screaming on the microphone to others, "Pull the troops out. We’re under heavy fire."
The armed forces attacking our center used the city’s entire supply of tear gas against our building and community. The Ghost Faces, fighting like seasoned guerillas, drove them out of our community with their tails between their legs like mangy curs.
Now, six years later the city wants to pretend that none of this happened. It is like the case of Rodney King where the all white Simi Valley jury pretended not to have seen what the entire world had seen on the video tape that showed the horrible beating King had received from the police and acquitted the cops.
The ability of our Movement to win this case is dependent on our ability to organize our community and to keep the events of November 13, 1996 before the people. This is especially obvious in the face of the white ruling class media’s refusal to give the case attention equal to its significance.
All Party members and supporters of our Movement must begin to plan for massive mobilizations here in St. Petersburg as the case moves closer to a court date. All Party members and supporters should also begin to call, fax and e-mail the City demanding that the City take responsibility for the November 13 attack on the Uhuru House and the people at the meeting. The city government must be made to reaffirm a commitment to the rights of freedom of speech and assembly for African people living in this city.
(THE BURNING SPEAR, NOV 2002 Issue)
the uhuru movement doesn't spend time fighting racism. racism is just ideas. fighting racism puts white people in the center of the universe because the struggle becomes how to get bad ideas out of the heads of white people.
the uhuru fights against colonialism. the uhuru movement most definitely represents one component of the ever-emerging national liberation struggles. a great example of the u.s. front of the african liberation struggle. we agree with aaron when he says "hey must spread and go past the physical and political parameters DRAWN BY CAPITALISM" that's why the uhuru movement recognizes that all black people are africans. the freedom of all black people lies in the liberation of africa.
aaron tries to minimize the significance of the uhuru movement by characterizing our pie campaign -- where we sell thousands of pies over the course of about a month -- as a "bake sale on fourth street." thats fine, slanders is to be expected from the white left. however, those who only know the uhuru movement from our great pie campaign should read this story on the november 13, 1996 uprisings in st. petersburg, where the pigs tried to pull a MOVE on the st. pete uhuru house and got routed from the community. read this while munching on that slice of uhuru apple pie with granola topping that you just nuked for 3 minutes in the microwave with a scoop of 'nila ice cream on top. yummy!
______________
AFRICAN PEOPLE'S SOCIALIST PARTY TAKES STRUGGLE TO ANOTHER FRONT
ST. PETERSBURG, Fl – On the sixth anniversary of the police attack on the National Office of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), the struggle has entered another front, this time in the courtroom.
In August and September more than 50 members and supporters of our Party and movement filed into Circuit Court in St. Petersburg to participate in hearings generated by our civil suit against the City and then-Chief of Police Darrel Stephens.
The suit revolves around the infamous November 13, 1996 attack on the Uhuru House in St. Petersburg. Three hundred troops from Tampa Bay area police agencies along with Highway Patrol officers backed up by National Guardsmen on standby in a nearby stadium assaulted our national office.
The hearings in August and September involved technical issues that, more than anything, revealed that the City of St. Petersburg intends to engage in trench warfare, fighting over every detail. Rather than face its responsibility for the unwarranted attack on our office, the City would demonstrate that constitutional guarantees are meaningless to colonized Africans.
One of the main issues is the attempt by the City to remove Darrel Stephens as a defendant in the case. If the city succeeds, this will limit the City’s liability and negatively affect our case in other ways.
It would appear logical to any thoughtful person that Stephens’ role as the chief of police who signed on to the plan to attack our rights and assault our headquarters makes him a defendant in this case. The law is not so clear and gives great advantage to the City, if the matter is determined solely in the courtroom.
The fact is that the City of St. Petersburg, unable to engage the African community in political debate and afraid of the consequences of the Party’s criticism of its tyrannical colonial domination of our people, especially after the police murder of a young African man, used the only weapon left at its disposal: the military in the form of the police department.
In 1996 the African community rebelled in response to the murder of TyRon Lewis and fought back against the attack on our offices, a logical response in the face of injustice without avenues of recourse. As a result, the City government made a plethora of promises to overturn its practice of police violence and heal the divisions in the city by rectifying the historical wrongs done to our community.
Now, six years later, after some semblance of colonial peace, the City feels it can forget those promises and send in a battery of lawyers to fight in its defense, as if the community will not be able to deliver a political consequence.
Uhuru Movement kept pressure on City to take responsibility for police murder of African youth
November 13, 1996 will always have a special place in the history of our Party, our Movement and the struggle of our oppressed and colonized people in this city.
That is the day the City government threw the supposed U.S. constitutionally-protected right to free speech in the garbage and tried to squash the struggle of the people by attempting to murder the leaders of our Party and Movement, especially our Chairman, Omali Yeshitela.
It was on that day that Point Number 4 of our Party’s 14-Point Working Platform, demanding the right to free speech and political association, was made significant in bold relief.
It was on that day that the police agencies from throughout the St. Petersburg-Tampa Bay Area made a massive attack on the Uhuru House, our national office.
The police attack on our office occurred one day short of three weeks after the October 24 police murder of 18-year-oldTyRon Lewis. That broad daylight, public shooting just three blocks away from our office sparked an uprising that shook the city to its foundation. The people’s rebellion threatened the plans of the local white owning class and political leaders to add a baseball team to lure even more white people to this city, whose economy is based on tourism.
However, the City was convinced it could overcome the bad publicity associated with the rebellions just as other cities, such as Miami, had done in the past. The problem was the Party and the Uhuru Movement that we lead. We wouldn’t let the issue of TyRon Lewis’ murder die. We were certainly guilty of leading demonstrations and a host of other actions including a general strike that made it impossible for the government to sweep the issue out of public view.
In an attempt to discredit us, the police department and other elements of the government accused our movement of actually starting the rebellion that resulted in the fiery destruction of police precincts and shops owned by avaricious merchants.
The work of our Movement in criticizing the murder of TyRon Lewis and attempting to lead our people to political power forced the government to take off the gloves. It revealed the fragility of a social order that drops all pretense of free speech rights when that speech actually has the potential to make a dent in the colonial subjugation of our people and the monopoly of political and economic power enjoyed by the colonial-capitalist white ruling class.
The November 13 attack on our Movement began while the public was awaiting a ruling from the grand jury regarding the responsibility of the police for the murder of TyRon Lewis. The International People’s Democratic Movement (InPDUM) was holding its regular Wednesday meeting which included on its agenda a discussion of the grand jury’s decision. Thousands of flyers had already been distributed by InPDUM to announce the topic of the meeting to the African population.
The police department and the state’s attorney had already agreed that the grand jury’s decision to absolve the killer cop of any criminal responsibility for Lewis’ death would not be announced until police were in place to control the response of our movement and our people.
SUBHEAD: City attempts to contain the Movement using military assault
A major problem for the city was how to contain the Party and the Uhuru Movement. Snitches were sent to our mass meetings and even into our mass organizations. Local government leaders were publicly demanding our arrest. Early on the afternoon of November 13, police began arresting people associated with our Movement on outstanding misdemeanor warrants as a way to disrupt our organizational capacity.
One of these arrests occurred just outside our office where nearly 30 members of a special weapons team wearing helmets and cammys, and with gas masks strapped to their thighs, accosted a young brother on an outstanding charge of driving with an expired license plate sticker. During the confrontation that developed during this arrest, our Chairman and a local woman Party leader were pepper sprayed by cops.
It was obvious by now that the police department, an arm of the colonial State, a colonial occupying army in our community, reeling from the humiliating military defeat of October 24 and the political defeat engineered by our Party and Movement, was now being used to resolve the problem of the Party’s leadership of the people’s resistance with a new military assault.
The naked, brazen harassment of our leaders and members outside our office was an act that was drawing hundreds of angry African spectators and sympathizers to the scene. It was among the provocations intended by the police to result in a confrontation that could justify a military response.
Other provocations included carloads of heavily armed cops riding through the gathered crowd of community sentries who had come to protect our organization. The rear doors of the cop cars were open and their weapons were menacingly directed toward the people.
By 6:00 p.m., a half hour prior to the meeting time, the police department had closed the streets near the Uhuru House in both directions of the major thoroughfare, 18th Ave. South. This was done to stop traffic from coming to the meeting and to isolate the building for the upcoming assault.
Many people were turned away from the meeting by police threats. Others, on foot and in cars, circled through back streets and made it to the meeting despite police efforts. By then an army of ruling class media organizations had joined with the police outside our headquarters.
At about 6:30 p.m., as the meeting was about to begin, the police made an announcement from a loud speaker outside the front of the Uhuru House. They declared the meeting an unlawful assembly and gave the people five minutes to leave the building or be tear gassed by the assembled battalion-sized military force.
This announcement was followed almost immediately by teargas projectiles which delivered the choking chemical into the meeting hall and caused panic among the scores of people assembled. Many of the women began to scream for their children as they sought to leave from rear and side exits, away from the primary assault.
After the first rush of people left the Uhuru House by the rear and side doors, further attempts to leave were met by clouds of teargas. The police had initiated a full scale chemical weapons assault on our building and much of the neighborhood.
While many of our organizers had been trapped on the outside of the building by the police assault, several of our leaders, including our Chairman, were trapped inside by the fussilade.
One African who witnessed the assault on our building equated it with what he had encountered in Viet Nam when the U.S. had attempted to continue the colonial domination of those heroic people. Another likened the attack to the 1985 assault on the MOVE organization by the Philadelphia Police Department, especially when the police used a helicopter and light airplane in the assault against our building.
In the rear of the building the trees were being set afire by the deliberately aimed teargas canisters which functioned as incendiary devices.
SUBHEAD: African youth come to defense of Uhuru Movement
Courageous African youngsters braved the police assault to snatch flaming branches from the trees to keep the fire from reaching our cars parked nearby or otherwise spreading to buildings in the neighborhood.
As the young warriors dragged the flaming branches away from the building, police targeted them with teargas canisters, attempting to drive them away. The government made other attempts of arson by shooting the canisters onto our roof.
In the front of the building, some terrified media reporters actually hid under their vans from the fury of the police attack. Police also fired tear gas canisters in the direction of many of those who had successfully escaped the building at the first sign of teargas, were chased by teargas canisters fired in their direction as they attempted to find their cars or other ways to leave the scene of the intended massacre.
Inside the building, the teargas was becoming overwhelming. The fury of the openly ruthless attack made it clear that no one was supposed to leave the building alive. Some of those trapped in the building had begun to look for ways to protect themselves from the gas with no real expectation of surviving the attack.
However, the Party and the Movement had spent many years building a base among the oppressed colonized working class masses, both employed and unemployed, especially the young Africans. They respected our Movement because of our unwillingness to compromise with our oppression, our political line which spoke to the needs and aspirations of the African working class as key to social progress and our practical battles in defense of the democratic rights of our people, especially the slandered young workers.
While our basic mass work had always been in defense of the democratic rights of the African working class, the young African workers, inspired by years of Party-led political education and their hatred of the oppressive occupying army, the primary disciplinary tool of the ruling class, responded decisively and heroically in defense of their Party and Movement.
Wearing ski masks or tying bandanas and their t-shirts around their faces to hide their identities, similar to the Sandinistas of Nicaragua and the Zapatistas of Mexico, these young warriors, many on bicycles, picked up stones, bottles and automatic weapons and engaged the colonial occupying army in a furious counter-assault.
Whatever the intent of the helicopter overhead, there was no repeat of the Philadelphia attack on the MOVE collective. This was due to the fact that these Africans, who called themselves "Ghost Faces," shot the helicopter down, wounded two cops and, according to a report in the St. Petersburg Times, left the commander screaming on the microphone to others, "Pull the troops out. We’re under heavy fire."
The armed forces attacking our center used the city’s entire supply of tear gas against our building and community. The Ghost Faces, fighting like seasoned guerillas, drove them out of our community with their tails between their legs like mangy curs.
Now, six years later the city wants to pretend that none of this happened. It is like the case of Rodney King where the all white Simi Valley jury pretended not to have seen what the entire world had seen on the video tape that showed the horrible beating King had received from the police and acquitted the cops.
The ability of our Movement to win this case is dependent on our ability to organize our community and to keep the events of November 13, 1996 before the people. This is especially obvious in the face of the white ruling class media’s refusal to give the case attention equal to its significance.
All Party members and supporters of our Movement must begin to plan for massive mobilizations here in St. Petersburg as the case moves closer to a court date. All Party members and supporters should also begin to call, fax and e-mail the City demanding that the City take responsibility for the November 13 attack on the Uhuru House and the people at the meeting. The city government must be made to reaffirm a commitment to the rights of freedom of speech and assembly for African people living in this city.
(THE BURNING SPEAR, NOV 2002 Issue)
For over a year strikes have continually broken out in South Africa's gold and coal mines, car industry, etc. Rent strikes have spread throughout townships and industrial suburbs. Laws on pass-control have been defied by countless illegal immigrants. Teenagers have deserted schools and set them on fire. They have attacked vehicles transporting scabs to work. Foodstores have been looted; townhalls, churches, police stations have been sacked and burnt down. Elections have been rejected and the "people's representatives" have become the target of angry mobs while informers have been terrorized when not executed. The thousands of death no longer inspire submission; every funeral of assassinated proletarians turns into a demonstration against the "peace of the tombs".
Within the course of a year South Africa has been shaken all over by this one movement that not only affected big industrial cities but also remote bantoustans, dormitory-suburbs and most of the huge mining areas. Workers' massive revolt against sacrifices has become the main axis around which struggles develop. These struggles that the bourgeoisie can no longer control are an extension as well as an advancement of the so-called Soweto-riots (savagely put down - 6000 killed - by the State in '76). Today the bourgeois security is irremediably endangered by the violent rupture of social peace.
Confronted with proletarians' rejection of their miserable conditions of life and their revolt against poverty the South African bourgeoisie has no other choice but to repress these struggles violently while at the same time calling upon people to fight for "more freedom", "more democracy", "for the freedom of press", "of association", etc. This way the bourgeoisie manages to present the proletarian struggle as a reaction to the racist attitude of the South-African State. Such polarization assumes the shape of apartheid or anti-apartheid, that are nothing else but two expressions of one and the same reality, of one and the same bourgeois alternative.
In order to take advantage of the struggles, the bourgeoisie mobilises the proletarians on the issue of "Black Consciousness", of "Black people's liberation", of anti-apartheid,...
The cohesion with which world capitalism strives to establish a regime of anti-apartheid is only being equalled by the eagerness each imperialistic constellation display to restore order and stop proletarian struggle.
While miners get surrounded by the army, while workers' living areas get patrolled by the police, the "Black" leaders of the A.N.C., of the U.D.F.,... negotiate with bosses and government representatives in order to put an end to "all that violence". Proletarian blood is being sold by these so-called revolutionary leaders. The crisis of the State in South Africa is only a symptom of the difficulties world capitalism experiences in enrolling proletarians behind measures of austerity and always worsening conditions of survival.
South Africa occupies a strategic position at the meeting point of three oceans. Its industrial power, mainly concentrated in mines and agriculture, equals that of the rest of the African continent. It is the first producer of precious ores and a pole of the world market where capital has been concentrated to an impressive extend. All these conditions have determined the development of an extremely powerful and militarized State. The stability of world capitalism has imposed a state of apartheid in South Africa (it is not by accident that this racist State was accepted as a constitutional regime just after the war in 1948) as the only way - thanks to social peace that this way was achieved at little expense - of facing the strategic battles that continually opposed imperialist powers. Anyway, the Allied forces have never been embarrassed to help create a "racial state)" - what they all are - and other concentration camps after having "freed the world from barbarity" (sic).
If capital backs apartheid or fascist regimes, it is mainly because such regimes allow for a more important valorization (cheaper workforce): this is its major care. At the same time capital never stops trying to show its purity by defending the "world community of democratic interests" (an ideology aimed at cementing the whole of society in order to prevent a real understanding of our class interests). In fact, in South Africa capital's interests are double: on the one hand capital requires an unceasing increase in surplus value and on the other hand it must imperatively move towards a State of anti-apartheid to try to restore law and order amongst proletarians. This brings about dissensions between the various bourgeois fractions in the world.
Counter-revolution takes the shape of polarization not only as a cover for the struggles between fractional interests that shake world capitalism but also and in the first place as a means to stop the more and more threatening waves of proletarian struggles. This polarization is based on always the same obstacles continually faced by proletarians: racism, forced immigration, police control, discriminations, persecutions,... When fighting against pass-control, against deportations to the home-lands, against confinement in town-ships, real concentration camps, or when squatting living places that are forbidden for black people, the proletariat fights against the social misery of this rotten society. Today's struggles are not engendered by the need for "Black liberation" nor by racial antagonism but by the need for liberation from the links that enchain proletarians to the mercy of capital's needs.
The fact that these struggles get a strong echo amongst clandestine immigrants, unemployed and even amongst young whites, illustrates the force of the movement which, instead of being limited to factories, has touched all categories of proletarians and all places of capital reproduction, expressing the general willingness of the proletariat movement to refuse all separations and to keep united in spite of the anti-apartheid movement that tries to hide this reality and to break it down. By claiming the "law of the majority", universal suffrage, the anti-apartheid leaders invite proletarians to give up social struggle and to join them in the "paradise" of democratic rights (for more details on this subject see "Against the myth of democratic rights and liberties", Communism n?1). With their universal suffrage they try to impose black nationalism claiming for a government by African! They use all the power of their organizations, supported by different world capitalist fractions, to try to restrain revolutionary agitation (that attacks all defenders of order, black and white) and to lock it up in the prisons of African nationalism!
The A.N.C. and U.D.F. militants, the union leaders, the Nobel prize of social peace,... they all display their terrorist arsenal against "refractory" proletarians and other "provokers" who threaten the peaceful development of the negotiations for conciliation, for "opening" towards the government and the bosses representatives.
Trade-unions may state their regrets about the outcome of the miners' strike at the end of last August at a time when they actively prepared together with the government the army's demonstration of intimidation against strikers as the only "glorious" outcome possible to make proletarians accept the successive refusals of their claims -amongst which some concerned a rise in wages judged "unrealistic" by the unions as well as the re-engagement of proletarians sacked because of their sabotage actions anti-scab violence-. The anti-white radicalism of certain A.N.C. branches such like the P.A.C., as well as the democretinism of trade-unions and pacifists, is just another way of sabotaging the rising class-movement by trying to link proletarians to a patriotic army, organ of promotion for imperialistic war and massacres (bourgeois attempt to get rid of class contradictions). The pious calls for justice and for "black people's right" (approved by all right-thinking humanitarians) express the pacifist ideology, the violence and the "whites" terror with which the South African bourgeoisie represses the revolutionary vanguard minorities and tries to counter the extension and the organization of different struggle practices that constitute the only alternative for the proletariat.
Apartheid and anti-apartheid both reinforce the South African bourgeoisie; they bring about divisions, isolation and weakening amongst the worlds proletariat.
In order to be able to grant to the South African state the help of international capitalism, the bourgeoisie with its press, its lawyers, its churches of all religions, its many friends of man and earth, accomplishes its dirty job of turning proletarians away from the struggles of their class brothers: this is the only way for the bourgeoisie to stop the revolutionary blaze that is threatening them.
The corollary of this polarization is the organization and social function not only of anti-apartheid campaigns but also of pacifism itself with such masquerades as the "Band Aid" that only serve the purpose of concealing our real class interests so as to strengthen social peace. The anti-apartheid campaigns make the proletariat all over the world believe that those "poor blacks" just have to fight against one "type of regime" and not against world capital.
By presenting these social struggles as specific to Africans, the world state manages to prevent all real class solidarity from coming up and all proletarian internationalism to develop. The proletariat, struggling for its own interests and against austerity, rejects all national solidarity and all cross-class unity. In South Africa, through their hard and violent struggles proletarians try to break the nationalist frontiers. Even though their movement is still marked by weakness mainly due to their isolation, they sabotage the national economy and attack law and order for the sake of their own class interests. To the boycott of elections by anti-apartheid reformists, proletarians have answered by sabotaging the electoral truce and by direct action against the state. With its strikes and never ending riots the proletariat hasn't tried to "overthrow a government" but has shaken the social domination of capital and has denied all bourgeois fractions the capacity of ruling. To the violent police interventions and to the pacific "framing" of the movement by unions and churches, the proletariat has answered with the vital necessity of revolutionary violence to protect the workers' demonstrations from repression, to counter the action of scabs and informers and to prevent mass lock-out and dismissals (1700 miners are threatened with sacking for having been on strike; others have been dismissed for sabotage actions).
Our comrades' struggle in South Africa aims at destroying the frontiers, ideologies, racism,... that are continually used by the state in order to separate us. Their struggles show our common class interests as opposed to sacrifices and austerity. It is our duty to develop here the only real solidarity with this struggle: the merciless fight against austerity, against misery and against social peace. In other words, let's fight here and everywhere for the same interests as those for which our comrades in South Africa attack the world capitalist state!
Within the course of a year South Africa has been shaken all over by this one movement that not only affected big industrial cities but also remote bantoustans, dormitory-suburbs and most of the huge mining areas. Workers' massive revolt against sacrifices has become the main axis around which struggles develop. These struggles that the bourgeoisie can no longer control are an extension as well as an advancement of the so-called Soweto-riots (savagely put down - 6000 killed - by the State in '76). Today the bourgeois security is irremediably endangered by the violent rupture of social peace.
Confronted with proletarians' rejection of their miserable conditions of life and their revolt against poverty the South African bourgeoisie has no other choice but to repress these struggles violently while at the same time calling upon people to fight for "more freedom", "more democracy", "for the freedom of press", "of association", etc. This way the bourgeoisie manages to present the proletarian struggle as a reaction to the racist attitude of the South-African State. Such polarization assumes the shape of apartheid or anti-apartheid, that are nothing else but two expressions of one and the same reality, of one and the same bourgeois alternative.
In order to take advantage of the struggles, the bourgeoisie mobilises the proletarians on the issue of "Black Consciousness", of "Black people's liberation", of anti-apartheid,...
The cohesion with which world capitalism strives to establish a regime of anti-apartheid is only being equalled by the eagerness each imperialistic constellation display to restore order and stop proletarian struggle.
While miners get surrounded by the army, while workers' living areas get patrolled by the police, the "Black" leaders of the A.N.C., of the U.D.F.,... negotiate with bosses and government representatives in order to put an end to "all that violence". Proletarian blood is being sold by these so-called revolutionary leaders. The crisis of the State in South Africa is only a symptom of the difficulties world capitalism experiences in enrolling proletarians behind measures of austerity and always worsening conditions of survival.
South Africa occupies a strategic position at the meeting point of three oceans. Its industrial power, mainly concentrated in mines and agriculture, equals that of the rest of the African continent. It is the first producer of precious ores and a pole of the world market where capital has been concentrated to an impressive extend. All these conditions have determined the development of an extremely powerful and militarized State. The stability of world capitalism has imposed a state of apartheid in South Africa (it is not by accident that this racist State was accepted as a constitutional regime just after the war in 1948) as the only way - thanks to social peace that this way was achieved at little expense - of facing the strategic battles that continually opposed imperialist powers. Anyway, the Allied forces have never been embarrassed to help create a "racial state)" - what they all are - and other concentration camps after having "freed the world from barbarity" (sic).
If capital backs apartheid or fascist regimes, it is mainly because such regimes allow for a more important valorization (cheaper workforce): this is its major care. At the same time capital never stops trying to show its purity by defending the "world community of democratic interests" (an ideology aimed at cementing the whole of society in order to prevent a real understanding of our class interests). In fact, in South Africa capital's interests are double: on the one hand capital requires an unceasing increase in surplus value and on the other hand it must imperatively move towards a State of anti-apartheid to try to restore law and order amongst proletarians. This brings about dissensions between the various bourgeois fractions in the world.
Counter-revolution takes the shape of polarization not only as a cover for the struggles between fractional interests that shake world capitalism but also and in the first place as a means to stop the more and more threatening waves of proletarian struggles. This polarization is based on always the same obstacles continually faced by proletarians: racism, forced immigration, police control, discriminations, persecutions,... When fighting against pass-control, against deportations to the home-lands, against confinement in town-ships, real concentration camps, or when squatting living places that are forbidden for black people, the proletariat fights against the social misery of this rotten society. Today's struggles are not engendered by the need for "Black liberation" nor by racial antagonism but by the need for liberation from the links that enchain proletarians to the mercy of capital's needs.
The fact that these struggles get a strong echo amongst clandestine immigrants, unemployed and even amongst young whites, illustrates the force of the movement which, instead of being limited to factories, has touched all categories of proletarians and all places of capital reproduction, expressing the general willingness of the proletariat movement to refuse all separations and to keep united in spite of the anti-apartheid movement that tries to hide this reality and to break it down. By claiming the "law of the majority", universal suffrage, the anti-apartheid leaders invite proletarians to give up social struggle and to join them in the "paradise" of democratic rights (for more details on this subject see "Against the myth of democratic rights and liberties", Communism n?1). With their universal suffrage they try to impose black nationalism claiming for a government by African! They use all the power of their organizations, supported by different world capitalist fractions, to try to restrain revolutionary agitation (that attacks all defenders of order, black and white) and to lock it up in the prisons of African nationalism!
The A.N.C. and U.D.F. militants, the union leaders, the Nobel prize of social peace,... they all display their terrorist arsenal against "refractory" proletarians and other "provokers" who threaten the peaceful development of the negotiations for conciliation, for "opening" towards the government and the bosses representatives.
Trade-unions may state their regrets about the outcome of the miners' strike at the end of last August at a time when they actively prepared together with the government the army's demonstration of intimidation against strikers as the only "glorious" outcome possible to make proletarians accept the successive refusals of their claims -amongst which some concerned a rise in wages judged "unrealistic" by the unions as well as the re-engagement of proletarians sacked because of their sabotage actions anti-scab violence-. The anti-white radicalism of certain A.N.C. branches such like the P.A.C., as well as the democretinism of trade-unions and pacifists, is just another way of sabotaging the rising class-movement by trying to link proletarians to a patriotic army, organ of promotion for imperialistic war and massacres (bourgeois attempt to get rid of class contradictions). The pious calls for justice and for "black people's right" (approved by all right-thinking humanitarians) express the pacifist ideology, the violence and the "whites" terror with which the South African bourgeoisie represses the revolutionary vanguard minorities and tries to counter the extension and the organization of different struggle practices that constitute the only alternative for the proletariat.
Apartheid and anti-apartheid both reinforce the South African bourgeoisie; they bring about divisions, isolation and weakening amongst the worlds proletariat.
In order to be able to grant to the South African state the help of international capitalism, the bourgeoisie with its press, its lawyers, its churches of all religions, its many friends of man and earth, accomplishes its dirty job of turning proletarians away from the struggles of their class brothers: this is the only way for the bourgeoisie to stop the revolutionary blaze that is threatening them.
The corollary of this polarization is the organization and social function not only of anti-apartheid campaigns but also of pacifism itself with such masquerades as the "Band Aid" that only serve the purpose of concealing our real class interests so as to strengthen social peace. The anti-apartheid campaigns make the proletariat all over the world believe that those "poor blacks" just have to fight against one "type of regime" and not against world capital.
By presenting these social struggles as specific to Africans, the world state manages to prevent all real class solidarity from coming up and all proletarian internationalism to develop. The proletariat, struggling for its own interests and against austerity, rejects all national solidarity and all cross-class unity. In South Africa, through their hard and violent struggles proletarians try to break the nationalist frontiers. Even though their movement is still marked by weakness mainly due to their isolation, they sabotage the national economy and attack law and order for the sake of their own class interests. To the boycott of elections by anti-apartheid reformists, proletarians have answered by sabotaging the electoral truce and by direct action against the state. With its strikes and never ending riots the proletariat hasn't tried to "overthrow a government" but has shaken the social domination of capital and has denied all bourgeois fractions the capacity of ruling. To the violent police interventions and to the pacific "framing" of the movement by unions and churches, the proletariat has answered with the vital necessity of revolutionary violence to protect the workers' demonstrations from repression, to counter the action of scabs and informers and to prevent mass lock-out and dismissals (1700 miners are threatened with sacking for having been on strike; others have been dismissed for sabotage actions).
Our comrades' struggle in South Africa aims at destroying the frontiers, ideologies, racism,... that are continually used by the state in order to separate us. Their struggles show our common class interests as opposed to sacrifices and austerity. It is our duty to develop here the only real solidarity with this struggle: the merciless fight against austerity, against misery and against social peace. In other words, let's fight here and everywhere for the same interests as those for which our comrades in South Africa attack the world capitalist state!
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