How ‘Communism’ Brought Racial Equality To The South
Tell Me More continues its Black History Month series of conversations with a discussion about the role of the Communist Party. It was prominent in the fight for racial equality in the south, specifically Alabama, where segregation was most oppressive. Many courageous activists were communists. Host Michel Martin speaks with historian Robin Kelley about his book “Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression” about how the communist party tried to secure racial, economic, and political reforms.
Im Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.
Coming up, whats going on in your house? But it doesnt look like the set of Leave It to Beaver. Writer Rebecca Walker wanted to capture the many new faces of the American family. Well talk about her provocative collection of essays in a few minutes.
But first, we continue our Black History Month series of conversations. Throughout this Black History Month, we have been focusing on new news about black history, new scholarship that has emerged in recent decades that sheds new light on the story of black people in America.
Today, we want to hear about communists in the civil rights movement. Now, that’s a sensitive subject since those working for equality have often been accused of being communist in this country, but some were.
And were joined now by Robin Kelley, author of Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. It documents how the Communist Party worked to secure racial, economic and political justice. Hes a professor of American studies and history at the University of Southern California. And this semester, hes the Harmsworth Professor of American History at the University of Oxford. And we welcome you to the program. Thank you for joining us.
This is an important new initiative that can play a crucial role in exposing and isolating the brutal Indian government, which has launched an unprecedented military offensive to seize the lands of this country’s poorest people, the adivasis or tribal peoples.
The International Campaign Against War on the People of India (ICAWPI) is being launched to work as a coordinating centre seeking international support for the resistance of the people of India against the all out military offensive of the Indian state against its own citizens.
ICAWPI is an international extension of widespread opposition and initiatives against this genocidal war to forcefully crush the heroic resistance of the tribal peoples in the heartlands of India and to hand over these lands rich in minerals and raw materials to international corporations such as Vedanta, Rio Tinto, Posco and others.
This overt war serving to facilitate the looting of the land and resources by Indian and international corporations for fabulous profits and the destruction of the livelihood of the countless numbers of the poorest of the poor in India is named as “Operation Green Hunt”. While in different regions of the country the same operation may be named differently, the Indian state shamelessly tries to hide this banditry against the people of India and utterly open servitude to the imperialism as “war against the Naxalites”– imposing a severe reign of terror and repression on progressive and democratic forces and individuals everywhere across the country.
Countless intellectuals, authors, film makers, academics, and other professionals such as lawyers and doctors who abhor the Indian state’s total lies and open disregard for civil and human rights have joined mass gatherings and rallies and various forums in India in order to raise their own voices and join forces to oppose the State and to defend the just cause of the oppressed tribal people in India.
In the course of this gathering movement countless people have been arrested and imprisoned. Untold suffering and restrictions have been imposed on the people. Read the rest of this entry »
Wikipedia describes Bassnectar like this: “Bassnectar is a freeform electronic music and social experimentation project based in San Francisco, California. Primarily a music project of Lorin Ashton, Bassnectar is also accompanied by various collaborators.[1] Ashton describes Bassnectar’s sound as “omni-tempo maximalism,” by which he means combining beats and basslines with music of any or all speeds, time signatures, rhythms, and sound source. The sound gravitates toward heavy tempos, playing with double time and half time, and using electronic methods to embellish and reinforce other styles of music, including ragtime, punk rock, blues, batucada, polka, salsa, film scores, gangsta rap, beatboxing, balkan gypsy music, ska, death metal, or dub. According to Ashton, “we are so blessed, and so deeply fortunate to be alive and awake right now…it’s a basic truth, but it’s very powerful. I think privilege confers responsibility, and Bassnectar is a reflection of that opportunity to give back; the motion of my cells bouncing back at the world.” [2] Bassnectar also has a podcast on iTunes called Bassnectar Transmission and regularly releases bootlegs on the official website.”
We have previously posted an article on the way in which the 2010 Olympics was used as a pretext to expand the repressive powers of the Canadian state under the guise of the “war on terror.” As the Olympics got underway, it was met with protests coordinated by Olympic Resistance Network [ORN], based in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories.
This is a video created by No2010.com, an indigenous-based website and part of ORN:
This was brought to our attention by Enzo. Author Ann Druyan was interviewed by Jad Abumrad of Radiolab. She tells the story of how she and Carl Sagan met and fell in love while working on the Voyager Interstellar Mission. As Enzo describes it, it’s the story of a “romance in the midst of a lofty science project, a love for humanity and the world… and the unknown.” Indeed.
With Valentines Day this Sunday – and dont say we didnt warn you – we decided to tell a little love story today. And this love story is a truly cosmic tale, coming to us from our friends at Radiolab.
“In reality, we are a mesh of working class, queer, gendered, differently abled and colored people. We don’t naturally have more allegiance to the queer segment of ourselves than the colored segment – we are all of it at once. We hate the white supremacist queers, as much as we disdain the ruling class people of color or labor bureaucracy who will readily sacrifice us for their own self interest. We also don’t naturally have more allegiance to the queer middle class than we do to the rank and file straight workers. Our self-conception is more complicated, and our liberations, more explosive.”
Queer Liberation is Class Struggle
Posted by JOMO
In the past two years, the issue of gay marriage has dominated the scene of queer struggles. Some of us are actively supportive, others, grudgingly supportive, and more others who rail that yet again, queer struggles are being monopolized by assimilationist, middle class versions of normality and family: “We are the same as you, except for in bed.”
Some supporters of gay marriage point to the economic benefits of marriage. Working class and poor queers need marriage to help alleviate their poverty; immigrant queers need marriage to get US citizenship. I agree. Yet, let’s not forget that many queers will never get married because of their suspicions of state institutions. Granting gay marriage doesn’t guarantee that immigrant spouses get visas or are free from ICE harassment. Also, around us we see families for whom marriage has not helped alleviate the race and class oppressions that they face everyday. While it may be true that gay marriage does benefit some immigrant couples, oftentimes this comes as an afterthought rather than a decisive theme of gay marriage struggles. It is undeniable that the struggle for gay marriage has been dominated by white, middle class queers who support the Democrats and are ashamed of those of us who don’t fit in their status quo.
One may see gay marriage as a reform to be won to open up space for more gains for queer liberation. Indeed, if gay marriage was simply a tactic within a broader strategy that integrated class, race and queer struggles, perhaps it wouldn’t cause so much anxiety among radical queer circles. In the absence of a broader strategy and vision however, all our hopes get pinned on this one struggle and the questions become stressful, burdensome and intense: Are we betraying our roots? Are we fighting for the society we envision through this struggle? Exactly what is this broader vision of queer liberation that gay marriage is a reform toward?
In February 1979, the Iranian Revolution was carried out by a broad array of forces, religious and secular, united around the single goal of removing Shah Mohamad Reza Pahlavi from power. During this time, Ayatollah Khomeini, who was exiled by the Shah and represented his conservative opposition, returned to Tehran. After the Shah was forced to flee from Iran, expressions of popular power emerged: workers formed factory committees, women demonstrated for equal rights, the Kurds pushed for autonomy, etc., This movement was fragmented and leftist revolutionary organizations, emerging from years of repression, were popular but politically short-sighted. Khomeini, by blending anti-imperialist, populist and religious sentiment, was able to take power and begin suppressing radical movements.
Fast forward to 2010. The increasing protests in Iran over the last year have led some to suggest that history may repeat itself in the form of another toppled government. Again, it’s not that simple. Dilip Hiro looks at the changes that have occurred within Iran over the last 31 years and offers a different take.
Regime Change in Tehran? Don’t Bet on It… Yet
By Dilip Hiro
The dramatic images of protestors in Iran fearlessly facing — and sometimes countering — the brutal attacks of the regime’s security forces rightly gain the admiration and sympathy of viewers in the West. They also leave many Westerners assuming that this is a preamble to regime change in Tehran, a repeat of history, but with a twist. After all, Iran has the distinction of being the only Middle Eastern state that underwent a revolutionary change — 31 years ago — which originated as a mild street protest.
Viewed objectively, though, this assumption is over-optimistic. It overlooks cardinal differences between the present moment and the 1978-1979 events which led to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the founding of an Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. History shows that a revolutionary movement triumphs only when two vital factors merge: it is supported by a coalition of different social classes and it succeeds in crippling the country’s governing machinery and fracturing the state’s repressive apparatus.
U.S. soldier ‘waterboarded his own daughter, 4, because she couldn’t recite alphabet’
By MAIL FOREIGN SERVICE
A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet.
Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.
As his daughter ‘squirmed’ to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.
Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water.
This is a picture of the corpse of an albatross chick, found on the remote Midway atoll in the Pacific. As it died and rotted, the contents of its digestive tract showed why it was fated never to mature.
Three days ago, Betsy Reznicek, office sparkplug at Veterans For Peace, posted another picture from Midway on her Facebook page and I have been unable to get it out of my mind. I backtracked to the website of photographer Chris Jordan. He has shot and posted about 30 of these images, and looking at one or two does not make the next couple dozen easier to take, believe me.
People’s Democratic Revolution in Nepal is now passing objectively through a gateway of great victory accompanied by a danger of serious defeat. A sharp and thoroughgoing 2-line struggle on the ideological and political questions and the need to develop through it an acquiescent plan to transform the challenges into opportunity is essentially a way to acquire necessary subjective strength that the objective condition demands. With a deep sense of responsibility, our party’s Central Committee Meeting, which continued for about three months amid intense ideological and political struggle, ultimately reached to a unanimous position on the questions of line. The document adopted in the very CC Meeting has been produced herewith.
Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
Present Situation and Historical Task of the Proletariat
Dear Comrades,
Today, our great and glorious party, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), has arrived at a serious and extraordinary juncture of possibilities and challenges.
The way how people’s revolution, in the external struggle, is advancing amid immense possibility of victory and serious danger of defeat, in the same manner, party’s internal life, as a reflection of the former, also lies in the midst of potentiality of advance and danger of anarchism and chaos as well. The height to which we can create new unity, voluntary discipline, self-confidence and vigour by means of a correct line, strategy, tactic, plan and programme to ensure as far as possible the decisive victory of revolution in this complex crossroads of class struggle, to that level will we be able to make victorious the revolution and party by safeguarding them from the danger of defeat and anarchism. In order to develop that kind of line and plan, we, by abandoning all kinds of subjective prejudices, must be able to have objective estimation of the situation and balance of class force based on the universal theories of MLM. The plan and programme prepared on the basis of objective analysis will enable our party to lead the decisive victory of revolution. Expressing high regard and esteem to the entire known and unknown martyrs of Nepalese people’s revolution including those of ten years of people’s war and admiring the entire disappeared, injured fighters and their family members, this plenum of the central committee will be able to bring about a new dynamism in our party.
Help us circulate this essay widely. Please post it on websites and email it. Print it up using our pdf version. (Greetings to the many people who have started taking up this important work.)
Eyes on the Maobadi: 4 Reasons Nepal’s Revolution Matters
By Mike Ely
Something remarkable is happening. A whole generation of people has never seen a radical, secular, revolutionary movement rise with popular support. And yet here it is – in Nepal today.
This movement has overthrown Nepal’s hated King Gyanendra and abolished the medieval monarchy. It has created a revolutionary army that now squares off with the old King’s army. It has built parallel political power in remote rural areas over a decade of guerrilla war – undermining feudal traditions like the caste system. It has gathered broad popular support and emerged as the leading force of an unprecedented Constituent Assembly (CA). And it has done all this under the radical banner of Maoist communism — advocating a fresh attempt at socialism and a classless society around the world.
People in Nepal call these revolutionaries the Maobadi.
Another remarkable thing is the silence surrounding all this. There has been very little reporting about the intense moments now unfolding in Nepal, or about the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) that stand at their center. Meanwhile, the nearby Tibetan uprisings against abuses by China’s government got non-stop coverage.
In addition to approving an ad from Focus on Family that promotes an evangelical, right-wing, anti-choice politics, CBS rejected an ad from a gay dating website ManCrunch because it was “not within the Network’s Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday.”
In the past, CBS has also rejected ads from PETA, moveon.org and one from the United Church of Christ which suggested churches should be places free from discrimination based on age, gender, race, and sexual orientation.
While it’s easy to see how this spot breaks new and unwelcome ground for the big game, the (more troubling) fact is that in many ways, the Tebow/Focus on the Family ad is just a new expression of a longstanding Super Bowl tradition in which women are valued only in direct relation to their usefulness to male athletes and fans…
In light of new research revealing that about a third of women who report partner violence also report that their partners try to pressure them into pregnancy and motherhood (as do 15 percent of women who had never reported relationship violence), this male-targeted argument is particularly chilling.
The Nation: The Super Bowl Woman’s Same Old Story
by Jaclyn Friedman
On Sunday, as nearly 100 million Americans gather to watch the New Orleans Saints take on the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV, they’ll be treated to something they’re probably not expecting: an ad speaking out against abortion. The spot, produced by the extreme right-wingers at Focus on the Family, features Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother, who claims she was advised by doctors to abort fetal Tim but “chose life” instead. Their message? You should, too.
The “hard-hitting COIN [counter-insurgency] force,” while shying away from battles with tough FMLN guerrillas, kidnapped and “disappeared” peasants, labor organizers, students, Catholic priests and nuns, or just plain folks caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, often subjecting them to hideous torture before lining the roads with their brutalized corpses.
Today, Pentagon planners and their cheerleaders in the corporate media are touting these tactics as a “fresh approach” to beat back the Taliban. In Afghanistan and Pakistan today, to ensure that effective measures of “populace and resource control” (PRC) are brought to bear to stem the insurgent tide, FID theorists recommend widespread political repression and panoptic methods of surveilling the “target” population.
Pakistan’s government could now face further anti-American feeling as the deaths disclosed the extent of the unpopular US military involvement. Tensions over American Predator drone missile strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants on Pakistani soil have already led to widespread anti-American protests.
America’s Silent War In Pakistan Unmasked
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Three US Marines were killed and another two injured in a suicide attack in Dir, northern Pakistan on Wednesday. The Americans, disguised in traditional Pakistani dress, were traveling with Pakistani military officers in a five-car convoy to attend the inauguration of a girl school, which had been renovated with the U.S. humanitarian assistance. Four schoolgirls and a paramilitary soldier were also killed in the attack while more than 120 school girls were injured.
To many Pakistanis the most shocking aspect of the latest Taliban suicide bombing the question was: What was a team of American soldiers doing in a volatile corner of North West Frontier province?
A revolutionary army was created and hardened in Nepal, through ten years of revolutionary guerrilla warfare. In a major political maneuver, the Maoists entered into a “peace process” three years ago — that toppled the monarchy, opened up the urban areas to their political work, gave them legitimacy as the people’s most popular party, and initiated political struggle over the nature of New Nepal. They were accused of giving up their army, of abandoning armed struggle, and more. But three years later, it remains clear that the Maoists’ Peoples Liberation Army has used the last three years (in “cantonment” base camps) to train their ranks much more deeply in revolutionary politics and military science.
The following is a major article devoted to this in the New York Times — where (if you read between the lines) you can see that the existence of this revolutionary armed force is a major factor in the whole political situation and future of Nepal.
This article also points to the ominous development that the reactionary National Army has grown tremendously over these last three years too — being prepared to finally defeat the revolutionary forces and enforce existing class society in Nepal.
* * * * * * *
February 4, 2010
Nepal Waits as 2 Armies, Former Foes, Become One
By JIM YARDLEY
JHYALTUNGDANDA, Nepal — Up in the foothills of the Himalayas, the soldiers of Nepal’s onetime rebel army have spent more than three years in camps monitored by the United Nations. Mornings begin with exercise, breakfast and drilling. Afternoons often mean political education sessions on their Maoist agenda for restructuring Nepal’s government.
“It has come to the attention of the principals of the (All-American Basketball Alliance) that [W]hite basketball players are essentially ’shut out’ of conventional professional basketball due to the proliferation of non-organized play on the court,” said promoter Don “Moose” Lewis in a news release, ironically, issued on Martin Luther King Day. “With players on other professional teams carrying guns, attacking fans in the stands, and going through the motions of playing the game, fundamentally sound [W]hite players are a vanishing species.” – AABA founder Don “Moose” Lewis from bet.com.
Perhaps what’s just as outrageous as the proposed formation of a blatantly racist sports league is the audacity of its founder in denying any racist intent. What does it signify about “post-racial” America that this can happen during the reign of an African-American President? Coming in the wake of teabagger rage, is this a further sign of white supremacist momentum towards establishing a foothold in mainstream culture?
This article below originally appeared in thenation.com.
All-White Basketball League: Bringing Segregation Back
Southpaw
By Dave Zirin & David J. Leonard
February 2, 2010
Many in the media are already apoplectic about the infamous launch of the All-American Basketball Alliance (AABA). For those untainted by the news, the AABA would be a league exclusively for native-born whites. According to its press release, “only players that are natural-born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league.” Citing the predominance of “street ball” within players of color, their lack of fundamentals and the overall incivility of the NBA, Don “Moose” Lewis, the commissioner of the AABA, denied that the motivation of the league had anything to do with race or racism. “There’s nothing hatred about what we’re doing. I don’t hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now. Here’s a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like,” he argued. “Would you want to go to the game and worry about a player flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch? That’s the culture today, and in a free country we should have the right to move ourselves in a better direction.”
Thanks to Adrienne for suggesting this from Washington Post.
No sanctions for Bush lawyers who approved waterboarding, report will say
By Carrie Johnson
January 31, 2010
Bush administration lawyers who paved the way for sleep deprivation and waterboarding of terrorism suspects exercised poor judgment but will not be referred to authorities for possible sanctions, according to a forthcoming ethics report, a legal source confirmed.
The work of John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, officials in the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, provided the basis for controversial interrogation strategies that critics likened to torture in the years after al-Qaeda’s 2001 terrorist strikes on American soil. The men and their OLC colleague, Steven G. Bradbury, became focal points of anger from Senate Democrats and civil liberties groups because their memos essentially insulated CIA interrogators and contractors from legal consequences for their roles in harsh questioning.
The reasoning, set out in a series of secret memos only months after Sept. 11, 2001, prompted a multi-year investigation by the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which reviews the ethics of Justice lawyers. The legal source was not authorized to discuss the report’s conclusions and described them on the condition of anonymity.
Understanding the history of the new communist movement (emerging from the 1960s) is an important part of preparing a new revolutionary effort. Tens of thousands of revolutionaries moved in the direction of communism and working class communities — and they formed a number of communist organizations, including several national attempts at building a new revolutionary party of communists.
In this two-part series, Steve Hamilton writes his summation of the Revolutionary Union, one of the major Maoist pre-party formations. Steve was one of the founders of the RU and (together with Bob Avakian) moved to Richmond in the Bay Area, to make important early attempts of communist work in working class communities.
This interview was originally posted on npr.org.
