The Lessons of 2011: Transcending the Old, Fostering the New, and Settling Outstanding Accounts
Kali Akuno, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
Friday, February 24, 2012
The militant working class struggles of 2011 – from the strikes and occupation in Wisconsin, to the countless demonstrations against Wall Street Banks, the direct action and broad resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, to housing occupations throughout the country, to the defeat of regressive anti-Union legislation in Ohio, to the (inter)national explosion of the Occupy Movement – demonstrated the critical fact that the multi-national working class contained in the United States can stop the” shock doctrine” measures being imposed upon it by transnational capital and the neo-liberal state.
The initial returns on these struggles are not insubstantial. Just two months into 2012, we have witnessed ILWU Local 21 coming to an agreement with transnational conglomerate EGT/Bunge in large part due to the impact of the Port Shut Down actions in Seattle, Portland, Oakland, and Los Angeles on December 12, 2011 and the threat of mass industrial action in Longview by the Occupy Movement allied with the Million Worker March Movement and militant rank and file members of the ILWU. Inspired by the Occupy Movement, the mass action in Oakland on November 2, 2001 and coast wide actions of December 12, Truck drivers in California and Washington State took independent organizing and industrial action to win wage and safety concessions from employers and potential legislation in Washington State that that will enable the Truckers to unionize. The victory in Longview halts the concerted drive to destroy the ILWU and further weaken organized labor and the pending Washington State legislation could potentially reverse decades of circumvention of the Wagner Act and provide an opening for sectors (and with it oppressed peoples) historically excluded from its protections.
None of this would be possible without the militant mass action of the multi-national working class, both unionized and non-unionized, acting in open defiance of the rules of engagement established between organized labor, capital, and the state in the 1930’s with the New Deal. As the power struggle between capital and the working class intensifies over whom and how the economic crisis will be resolved, the working class would do well to recall the lessons of 2011 and build on them. In addition to reaffirming the lesson that the working class must rely on militant mass action – that is strikes, occupations, blockades, general strikes and other forms of industrial action – as a primary means of exerting its own will and power, several other critical lessons we believe must be affirmed. These lessons include:
That in order to halt and over turn the slide of the labor unions, the unions must wage struggle beyond the confines of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and/or the Wagner Act framework.
That mass action will only be successful if it pulls in and engages broad sectors of the working class, particularly critical sectors of the 89% of the multi-national working class that is not unionized, and directly addresses their issues and demands.
That new forms of working class organization must be constructed capable of organizing workers as a self-conscious class that encompasses and incorporates the broad diversity of its totality as differentiated by race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and legal status.
That the multi-national working class must build, maintain, and exert its political independence from the Democrats (and Republicans), and not rely on electoral politics and processes (such as the recall efforts in Wisconsin that worked to negate mass action) to exercise its power, realize its demands, and build the society it envisions.
That the struggle for equity and economic democracy necessitates struggling to reclaim and redefine as much public space as possible – particularly the Ports given their strategic importance to the distribution of the necessary goods that sustain life – in order to rebuild the “commons” and exert democratic control over various processes of social production and exchange.
That the decolonization of the entity presently known as the United States national state is fundamental to the social and material liberation of the multi-national working class, particularly its subjected and colonized sectors, i.e. Indigenous Nations, New Afrikans (Black people), Xicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Native Hawaiians.
However, it should be noted that the struggles of 2011 and the lessons gleamed from them did not come out of nowhere. Read more »
Tom Lasseter – McClatchy Newspapers, February 26, 2012
PANHE, China — The old woman walked over to the door and peeked out from behind a blue curtain, looking slowly from one side of the street to other. She muttered to those huddled in the room behind her, “the police will come.”
The men, who’d been talking about officials stealing their land in Panhe, fell quiet. They knew what a visit would mean — threats, beatings and then getting dragged off by the police.
In December, a high-profile standoff between residents and Communist Party bosses in a fishing village named Wukan, about 450 miles southwest of Panhe, ended peacefully. That case had some observers wondering if Chinese officials had changed the way they dealt with the intertwined problems of land rights and corruption.
What happened here suggests otherwise. Read more »
[In a move that indicates both the declining prospects for the Syrian Assad regime, as well as the growing role of the Saudi regime in post-Mubarak Arab alignments, Hamas--which is also busily retooling its relations with the Fatah forces and the Palestine Authority as a whole--has made a significant break in relations with Syria, Hezbollah, and Iran. This deserves some close attention. The revolutionary currents in the Arab world, while not invested in any of these organized and governmental forces, will find in these shifts some openings for their own initiatives, because the controllers of political life on all sides are off balance. In every crisis, opportunities will surface--for those who dare to cast away illusions, rely on the masses, and seize the time. -- Frontlines ed.]
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By Omar Fahmy and Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters
CAIRO/GAZA, Feb 24 – Leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas turned publicly against their long-time ally President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Friday, endorsing the revolt aimed at overthrowing his dynastic rule.
The policy shift deprives Assad of one of his few remaining Sunni Muslim supporters in the Arab world and deepens his international isolation. It was announced in Hamas speeches at Friday prayers in Cairo and a rally in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas went public after nearly a year of equivocating as Assad’s army, largely led by fellow members of the president’s Alawite sect, has crushed mainly Sunni protesters and rebels.
In a Middle East split along sectarian lines between Shi’ite and Sunni Islam, the public abandonment of Assad casts immediate questions over Hamas’s future ties with its principal backer Iran, which has stuck by its ally Assad, as well as with Iran’s fellow Shi’ite allies in Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. Read more »
[Ethnic and racial profiling has always been a central feature of US economics, politics, culture, and forceful repression. From Africans on slave plantations, to American Indian wars and displacement, to the "Chinese Exclusion Act" the pattern is unbroken. 80 years ago this month, 500,000 Mexicans and US-born Chicana/o citizens were deported to Mexico, in a series of "El Repatriado" deportations of, eventually, nearly two million--after being falsely blamed for "taking American jobs" during the collapse of the capitalist economy known as The Great Depression. 70 years ago, 120,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up and placed in concentration camps after being falsely accused of loyalty to the Japanese Emperor during WW2. Now, adding to these and many such reprehensible traditions, Islamophobia has become a feature which the police state is boasting about, as it destroys the human rights of privacy, speech, and association of millions of Muslims now subjected to hostile surveillance and stalking--amidst false claims of inherent Muslim criminality and terror. -- Frontlines ed.]
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Demonstration in New York, November 2011
NYPD Defends Tactics Over Mosque Spying; Records Reveal New Details On Muslim Surveillance
NEW YORK — The New York Police Department targeted Muslim mosques with tactics normally reserved for criminal organizations, according to newly obtained police documents that showed police collecting the license plates of worshippers, monitoring them on surveillance cameras and cataloging sermons through a network of informants.
The documents, obtained by The Associated Press, have come to light as the NYPD fends off criticism of its monitoring of Muslim student groups and its cataloging of mosques and Muslim businesses in nearby Newark, N.J.
The NYPD’s spokesman, Paul Browne, forcefully defended the legality of those efforts Thursday, telling reporters that its officers may go wherever the public goes and collect intelligence, even outside city limits.
The new documents, prepared for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, show how the NYPD’s roster of paid informants monitored conversations and sermons inside mosques. The records offer the first glimpse of what those informants, known informally as “mosque crawlers,” gleaned from inside the houses of worship. Read more »
A February 20 Movement protest in Marrakech, Morocco
Feb 21 2012
by Mohamed Daadaoui
On the one-year anniversary of the February 20 protest movement in Morocco, (henceforth referred to as Feb. 20), the kingdom boasts relatively meager political progress. Despite the much-vaunted reforms and constitutional changes, Morocco has reinvigorated its state edifice, managed to outmaneuver an inexperienced Feb. 20 protest movement, and engaged in a crackdown on freedom of the press and speech. In the last couple of weeks, the regime has arrested three Moroccans for crimes against his majesty’s person and “defaming Morocco’s sacred values.” In a country where the monarch is inviolable, the use of cartoons depicting the king is considered an outrage to a symbol of the country.
More importantly, a year after the initial mass protests, we need to assess the record of the movement in terms of appeal and success in Morocco. The Feb. 20 movement has undoubtedly sparked a national discussion for institutional changes, but fell short in exercising enough pressure for deeper structural changes to both the political system dominated by the king, and a system of crony-capitalism that has for decades crippled the national economy. The new constitution is an impressive exercise in state management of dissent. Groundbreaking only in its style and cosmetic in terms of real effective change, the constitution allows for greater executive power for the Prime Minister, but falls short in tackling the vast discretionary powers of the monarchy.
The constitution does not address aspects of direly needed reforms. Kleptocracy and nepotism are endemic in the Moroccan administration and economy. No matter how inchoate institutional reforms are, they have to be complemented with stringent, implementable guarantees against abuse of power, corruption, and inequality of the laws. Individual freedom and liberty of the press are guaranteed in the constitution, but have to be safeguarded from the arbitrary abuses of the state. The result is the same maladies of yesteryear: a regime suffering from institutional schizophrenia, promoting inconsequential reforms, and tightening its grip on power and individual freedom. Read more »
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity, February 2012
Dear Friends,
Occupy San Quentin demonstration on February 20, 2012
As you know on February 20th, over a dozen rallies and demonstrations were held throughout the US for a “National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners,” including in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Austin, Denver, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York.
At Occupy San Quentin in California, despite the prison administration’s attempts to close off access to the protest, over 700 people gathered at the prison’s East Gate to hear statements from prisoners and family and community members of prisoners, former prisoners, and people directly affected by the prison industrial complex speak out against the destructive impacts of imprisonment.
Many prisoners sent words of encouragement and vision to be read at the actions. Prisoners in Ohio State Prison went on hunger strike in solidarity with the national day in support of prisoners. Prisoners in the Security Housing Unit at Corcoran State Prison wrote a statement of solidarity and have raised 10 demands for the Occupy Movement. The N.C.T.T (NARN Collective Think Tank) at Corcoran SHU, a group of prisoners who participated in the CA hunger strike in the summer and fall and have been writing reports and statements about prisoners’ struggles inside, writes:
You champion us all with your ideas and the courage of your convictions, just as we continue to support you with our sacrifices and insight. It is now time to take the movement to its next evolution and ultimately to its inevitable conclusion: victorious revolutionary change.
Some of the San Quentin 6, formerly incarcerated San Quentin prisoners--friends and comrades of George Jackson, who had been accused of rebellion when he was murdered by prison guards in 1971--spoke to the demonstration on 2/20/12.
Your greatest power lies in your unity and cooperation and ultimately your organizational ability. The power of the people far surpasses all the repressive violence of the Babylons attacking you/us or the wealth of the 1 percent, who will stop at nothing to silence us all.
This is a protracted struggle; there will be no 90-day revolution here. Victory will require sacrifice, tenacity and competent strategic insight. The question you must ask is, Are you prepared to do what is necessary to win this struggle? If you answer in the affirmative, commit to victory and accept no other alternative. The people, as we are, are with you. Until we win or don’t lose, our love and solidarity to all those who love freedom and fear only failures.
Read the full letter, including ten demands for the Occupy Movement from the NCTT at Corcoran SHU here.
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity is calling for hunger strike supporters to jam the CA legislature’s communication with overwhelming support for the hunger strike.
Visit our blog for sample phone & email scripts, as well as an open letter you can send in or fax, and flyers to pass out at Occupy’s National Day in Support of Prisoners and other events. Read more »
A 25-year-old man who died in police custody here was a victim of excessive torture, his father alleged on Monday and sought an independent probe.
Chhattisgarh Police, however, denied the charge and said they were open to magisterial inquiry.
Bhagwat Daharia, father of Santosh Daharia, claimed his son was arrested on February 14 on the charge of kidnapping a minor girl, and was excessively tortured at Kharora police station, some 30 kilometre from here. As a result, his son died, the villager said.
According to him, the police did not inform Santosh’s relatives about his death. Kharora police station personnel, however, denied that the young man was tortured.
Santosh, a police official said, was sent to the state’s Central Jail, and then admitted to Raipur’s Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar Government Hospital on Saturday as he complained of “some health problem” and was vomiting.
“He was not tortured. The charges against us are baseless. We are open to magisterial inquiry,” Kharora police station chief P K Pathak said. But Pathak did not explain why he did now allow relatives to meet Santosh when he was in custody at Kharora police station.
‘Not allowed to meet’
Bhagwat alleged that he and his relatives were repeatedly disallowed by policemen at Kharora police station and also at the Raipur Central Jail to meet or see Santosh even after they learnt of his death.
I H Khan, additional superintendent of police (Raipur rural), said, “We are collecting details of what exactly happened to the accused. We are surely looking into complaints of the relatives very seriously.”
The custodial deaths in Chhattisgarh, mainly in forested areas of Maoist hotbed, are common as are allegations that police pick up youths from villages, brand them as Maoists and torture them routinely.
by Jorge Rivas, Colorlines.com, Wednesday, February 22 2012
Over the weekend Oakland Police seriously injured 24-year-old Tony Jones after they shot him in the back. Jones’ mother says he is a cousin of Oscar Grant — the Hayward man killed by a BART police officer on Jan. 1, 2009.
“I talked to my son. My son said ‘Momma, the officers [are] lying. They watched me get out of the car. They watched me walk. They started speeding up and I took off running across the street and when I took off running and I heard the gun go pow, pow, pow,’” Jones’ mother Betrina Works-Grant told KGO. “He said he was running with his hands like this [at his sides]. The police shot at him and shot him in his back. They never said they [were] the police.” Read more »
KATHMANDU: A day after a section of the Young Communist League, youth wing of the UCPN-Maoist, announced that they would stage a sit-in at the party chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s residence and the party headquarters, the struggle committee of the disqualified Maoist fighters today called an indefinite Nepal Bandh from March 4.
“Since both the party and the government paid no heed to our demands, we have no other way but to resort to indefinite Nepal Bandh,” said Krishna Prasad Dangal, coordinator of the struggle committee of the Former Disqualified People’s Liberation Army Nepal. “We will announce the struggle plan amid a press conference at Jana Sanchar Abhiyan tomorrow.”
Dangal informed that regional struggle committees would also organise press conferences and stage torch rallies before enforcing the bandh. Read more »
[Some may suggest that Greece pay back its creditors in rusty tanks and leaky submarines--not Euros. -- Frontlines ed.]
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February 21, 2012
Sell Them Tanks, Then Call Them Profligate
Germans, French Were Keen to Sell Arms to Greece
by PATRICK COCKBURN, writing for Counterpunch
Athens — As Greeks waited for a second eurozone rescue package to finally be agreed in Brussels today, many were blaming Germany and France for encouraging and benefiting from some of the much-criticized profligate spending that reduced Greece to near bankruptcy.
About 1000 protesters gathered in front of the Greek Parliament in central Athens yesterday, while riot police waited to see if there would be a fresh confrontation. But, in general, Greeks are resigned to the new package of austerity measures which will cut jobs in public service and slash pensions and the minimum wage.
Hopes are high that the eurozone ministers’ meeting today will agree to the €130 billion bailout after Athens detailed the new budget cuts.
While most Greeks are critical of the reforms on which the troika of the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank are insisting, many also feel that Germany and France share some of the blame for Greece’s overspending.
Over much of the past decade, Greece – which has a population of 11 million – has been one of the top five arms importers in the world. Read more »
[The Japanese Kyodo News Agency reported, "Defense Secretary Leon Panetta indicated Tuesday that the United States is considering moving some of its Marines in Japan's Okinawa Prefecture to the Philippines as part of efforts to diversify their deployment on a rotational basis....Noting the importance of maintaining a military presence in the Pacific region, Panetta told a hearing of the Senate Arms Services Committee, 'We've just developed an agreement with Australia to do a rotational presence there. We're working with the Philippines on hopefully a similar arrangement there as well.' .....Giving up the initial plan to transfer some 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam, the Pentagon is now considering moving about 4,700 Marines from Okinawa to Guam and 3,300 to elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region." After this news was reported, the Communist Party of the Philippines issued the following statement, with important background information. -- Frontlines ed.]
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Before its closure 20 years ago, the US Naval Base Subic Bay was the largest Navy base overseas, and a hub of activity during the imperialist war on Vietnam. Today the US seeks to re-establish a permanent presence in the Philippines, as military attention is focusing anew on the Asia-Pacific region
Information Bureau, Communist Party of the Philippines
Press Release, February 16, 2012
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today assailed the US government for seeking to establish another Subic Naval Base in the Philippines, a little smaller perhaps, to service ships and troops being “rotated” in the Asia-Pacific region.
“US plans to setup a mini-Subic military base, service facility or exclusive dock in the Philippines have become increasingly apparent as officials of the Obama government announced it is going to rotate at least 3,300 troops from its Okinawa base in Australia, Singapore, Hawaii and the Philippines.
Testifying before the US Senate Armed Forces Committee, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Obama government is working to forge an agreement with the Aquino regime similar with that forged with Australia allowing the US military to regularly dock American warships and maintain “rotational” presence.
US officials have announced earlier that it had scrapped initial plans to transfer its 8,000 troops based in Okinawa to its base in Guam, an American territory. Instead, it now plans to transfer only 4,700 troops to Guam and have the rest of its Okinawa-based forces “rotated” in the Asia-Pacific countries.
“The plan to set up facilities in the Philippines for the regular docking of American warships will practically bring back American military bases in the country,” said the CPP. “The US wants to use the Philippines as a platform for its power-projection, China-containment and interventionist operations in the Asia-Pacific region.”
“The biggest problem of the Filipino peopls is that the Aquino regime is all too willing to provide its masters with all the facilities it needs.”
The matter of providing facilities for American troops on rotation in the Philippines was discussed in the Strategic Defense Dialogue (SDD) meeting earlier last month between officials of the US government and the Aquino regime. Aquino’s officials have promised the American government that it would come up with concrete proposals for this plan.
An agreement to setup such a facility in the Philippines is one of the agreements that the US seeks to sign in the coming months. Such negotiations are being carried out in the dark by officials of the Obama and Aquino regimes are an affront to Philippine sovereignty.
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today called on the Filipino people to vigorously oppose US imperialist machinations to set up facilities in the Philippines to accomodate thousands of American troops who are to be put on “rotation” in Asia-Pacific waters in the upcoming years.
“The Filipino people must fan the flames of patriotism and stand up against the imperialist machinations of the US to use the Philippines as a platform for their hegemonism,” said the CPP.
by Mamoru Shishido, Evening Edition Department, Mainichi Daily News, Mainichi, Japan
February 20, 2012
‘Bikini incident’ survivor’s story relevant today as Fukushima crisis continues
Matashichi Oishi, 78, talks about his experience as a crew member of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru at his home, where he has a photo with author and anti-nuclear activist Kenzaburo Oe hanging on the wall. (Mainichi)
Eleven months since the outbreak of the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant run by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), with people still living in fear of radiation exposure, I went to hear what a man who was exposed to radiation 58 years ago, had to say.
Matashichi Oishi, 78, was a crew member of the fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru, or “Lucky Dragon 5,” which one day in 1954 found itself covered in the “ashes of death” from a nuclear experiment being conducted in the Pacific by the U.S., off the Bikini Atoll.
“Many people were exposed to blasting winds and extreme heat by the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Oishi said. “As for us, we were covered in radioactive white powder that rained down from the sky, and suffered internal radiation exposure.”
It was Feb. 11, and Oishi was speaking to an audience of about 60 people attending a study session co-hosted by a civic group and the Nishitokyo Municipal Government. He’d shut down the dry cleaning business that he’d run for years in Tokyo at the end of 2010.
“I’d always been trying to share my experiences through spoken and written words, but no one would listen to a mere former fisherman-turned-launderer. But ever since the disaster in Fukushima broke out, what I have to say is no longer ‘someone else’s pitiful story,’” he said.
That Oishi characterized his ordeal — an incident which sparked Japan’s anti-nuclear activist movement — as having been viewed as “someone else’s pitiful story” is testament to the turbulent road he’d been forced to take. Read more »
[New mobile communication technologies such as twitter have been extremely useful for youth, students, and many petty-bourgeois activists in the "Arab Spring" and its many spin-offs in North Africa and in the MiddleEast. These communication tools have also been recounted as essential instruments, as if there would be no rebellion without tweets, and that is a ridiculous claim. Additionally, at certain key junctures, the repressive state apparatus has been able to use these new technologies for enhanced surveillance, and at times, when popular over-reliance on twitter was detected by the police, they could systematically shut it off and prevent communications among rebel groups. Nevertheless, this AlJazeera account of the role of Twitter and Tweets in Tahrir has fascinating insights to one part of the ongoing story of a revolution that has only taken its first step. -- Frontlines ed.]
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AlJazeeraEnglish on Feb 19, 2012
Cairo’s ‘Twitterati’ tweeted their revolution for 18 days from in and around Tahrir Square.
Young, urbane and highly-motivated, their tweets revealed the truth of the scale of the uprising which Egypt’s state media sought to hide, and gave a street-level, minute-by-minute account of how the persistence and bravery of the Egyptian people brought down a dictator.
Note: The book ‘Tweets From Tahrir’ by OR Books was the inspiration for this film.
FLORANGE, France (Reuters) – Workers at an idled Arcelor Mittal steel plant in northeast France occupied the site Monday, seeking to put their plight on the political map ahead of a presidential election where industrial decline is a central theme.Some 200 workers invaded management offices at the factory in Florange, in the Moselle region close to Belgium and Germany, after ArcelorMittal announced last week it was prolonging the temporary shutdown of its two blast furnaces.Unions had announced at the weekend their intention to take action and workers found the offices empty. They plan to install a tent village at site, imitating the “Occupy” anti-capitalist movement which swept Western nations in the wake of the global financial crisis.
23 Feb: Vigil at US Embassy, London as Bradley Manning is Arraigned in US
WISE Up for Bradley Manning | 20.02.2012
Thursday 23 February, 5pm – 6pm: Stand in solidarity with Bradley Manning in London as he is arraigned for Court Martial in the US. The Vigil will take place at the hour the arraignment is starting at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Meet in front of the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Nearest tube: Bond Street
Solidarity Vigil presently sponsored by London Catholic Worker, Veterans for Peace UK, WISE Up for Bradley Manning
Short YouTube video of a previous vigil outside the US Embassy by British Veterans in solidarity with Bradley Manning here
The Court Martial of Bradley Manning is expected to begin in early May.
Meanwhile, the US National Lawyers Guild has called for all charges against Bradley Manning to be dismissed.
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Browne, forcefully defended the legality of those efforts Thursday, telling reporters that its officers may go wherever the public goes and collect intelligence, even outside city limits.
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