Here is an important document from the encylopedia of anti-revisionism by Harry Haywood, the great communist theoretician of the African American national question:
Class Struggle, theoretical journal of the October League (Marxist-Leninist), No.1, Spring 1975
October League (M-L) Introduction: Harry Haywood is a veteran Black Marxist-Leninist, now living in Detroit. He has spent several decades as a leading member of the Communist Party USA and as a fighter against modern revisionism.
In 1928 and 1930, Haywood helped draft the Resolutions of the Communist International as well as the position of the CP on the Afro-American national question. His thoughts on this question were summed up in his famous book, “Negro Liberation.”
Haywood broke from the CPUSA in the late 50’s after the party had thoroughly abandoned the revolutionary struggle for socialism and Black liberation. Along with other anti-revisionists, he helped form the Provisional Organizing Committee (POC). The POC, like many of the new communist organizations of today set as its main task, the building of a new Marxist-Leninist party.
The POC failed in this first attempt at a new, anti-revisionist party. Haywood’s letter upon leaving the POC shows some of the reasons why it failed and serves as a lesson to those who might try to follow in the ultra-“left” footsteps of these sectarians.
On November 3rd, 1979, the Workers Viewpoint Organization (which would become the Communist Workers Party) held a anti-Klan rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. Five WVO cadres were killed by the Ku Klux Klan with the assistance of the Greensboro Police. The following is an excellent documentary about the Greensboro Massacre, called “Greensboro’s Child“.
The Beloved Community Center, Greensboro Justice Fund, and other organizations in Greensboro are hosting a conference and other events to commemorate the “30th Anniversary of the Tragic Killing of Five Labor and Community Organizers by Klan and Nazis in 1979″ from Nov. 4-7th.
Claudia Jones was born in Trinidad in1915 but migrated to Harlem in 1924. She became active in the Scottsboro struggle. She became a leader of the Comunist Party in the 1940’s, until she was indicted under the Smith Act (under which teaching Marxism was illegal) and imprisoned in 1955. She was then deported to London, where she lived and worked until her death 1965. She was buried beside of Karl Marx.
To get an idea of her importance, read her article, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Women” (PDF), which analyzed the situation of black women from a Marxist viewpoint, and which was her major contribution to feminist thought.
Today is the 150th anniversary of militant white abolotionist John Brown’s armed raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, an important moment in the African American Liberation struggle. To mark the occasion, here is a quote from Malcolm Xin 1965:
There are many white people in this country, especially the younger generation, who realize that the injustice that has been done and is being done to black people cannot go on without the chickens coming home to roost eventually. And those white people, even if they’re not morally motivated, their intelligence forces them to see that something must be done. And many of them would be willing to involve themselves in the type of operation that you were just talking about.
For one, when a white man comes to me and tells me how liberal he is, the first thing I want to know, is he a nonviolent liberal, or the other kind. I don’t go for any nonviolent white liberals. If you are for me and my problems - when I say me, I mean us, our people – then you have to be willing to do as old John Brown did. And if you’re not of the John Brown school of liberals, we’ll get you later – later.
This video is from the 9/12/09 “Tea Party” in DC, against basic reforms (particularly health care reform) and for basically everything reactionary and backwards imaginable.
“Fascism will never come to America as fascism. It will come as 100 percent Americanism.” – Huey Long
Dangerous hatred in the US?
By Rob Reynolds, senior Washington correspondent
Michelle Bachmann, the US Republican Representative for Minnesota, tells a radio interviewer she believes Barack Obama, the US president, plans to set up mandatory “re-education camps” to indoctrinate young Americans.
Glenn Beck, a television personality working at the Fox news network, says on the air that Obama is a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people”.
Comparing Obama to Adolf Hitler, an Iowa man named Tom Eisenhower speaks up at a town hall meeting held by Republican Senator Charles Grassley, and says “The president of the United States, that’s who you should be concerned about.”
“I’d take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me.”
Retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson, a prolific writer and speaker about conspiracy theories involving devilish sex cults and the Illuminati, tells a gathering of right-wing “Patriots” in Florida that the federal government has set up 10,000 internment camps across the country and is storing thousands of guillotines for mass executions.
Mel Sanger, a self-described “political researcher”, offers visitors to his website a $24.97-report full of “cutting edge evidence” that Obama is the biblical Antichrist.
Tens of thousands of right-wing demonstrators march on the US Capitol waving signs reading “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy” and calling Obama a “bloodsucking Muslim alien”.
Steven Anderson, the pastor of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona, preached a sermon last month entitled “Why I hate Barack Obama”, in which he declared, “I’m going to pray he dies and goes to hell”.
Carlos Montes is a veteran fighter in the Chicano Liberation movement. He was a founder of the Brown Berets and the Chicano Moratorium. Montes is currently active in the Southern California Immigration Coalition, the East L.A.-based Latinos against War and with CSO, which organizes parents in the East Los Angeles area to fight against the privatization of public education in Los Angeles Unified School District. For more on the Chicano Liberation Struggle, see the League of Revolutionary Struggle’s 1979 Resolution on the Chicano National Question.
The following commentary by Carlos Montes is from Fight Back! News:
39th Anniversary of Chicano Moratorium: The Struggle Continues
Commentary by Carlos Montes
Los Angeles, CA – Today, Aug. 29, 2009, shows that our people are continuing the fight for equality and self-determination. It was demonstrated by the many groups that were present today at Salazar Park, including the student group MECHA and the new Brown Berets, to commemorate the historic day in 1970 when over 20,000 Chicanos marched down historic Whittier Boulevard in East L.A. to protest the war in Vietnam and the high casualty rate of Chicanos. The mass peaceful rally in 1970 was attacked by the Los Angeles Police Department and the sheriffs. Ruben Salazar, news director for KMEX, was killed, along with Angel Diaz and Lynn Ward. A similar example of repression took place on May 1, 2007 when the LAPD attacked a pro-immigrant rights rally at MacArthur Park.
‘We Say Fight Back!’ national conference to be held in Chicago
By Chapin Gray
In the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, leaders and organizers across the country are gearing up for the “They Say Cut Back, We Say Fight Back!” national conference planned for Oct. 3 in Chicago, Illinois. From California to New York, people who for the past years have been fighting back against cuts to programs that serve our communities, against home foreclosures and evictions and against plant closures will come together to share experiences and make plans to work together in the coming years.
Click on the image for a PDF flyer for the conference
The following is the call to the “We Say Fight Back” conference, a very important national working class conference that will take place October 3rd in Chicago:
We are now in the midst of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Millions of homes are in foreclosure. Unemployment is growing. Massive cuts are taking place to the programs that benefit poor and working people, while the government tries to balance budgets on our backs. Inequality is growing, oppressed people–African-Americans, Chicanos, and Latinos are the last hired and the first to lose their jobs.
The rich and powerful are waging a war on working people and many of us have decided to respond by fighting back. In cities around the country there are sharp struggles to stop evictions and to demand a moratorium on home foreclosures. At places like Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors there have been intense battles in response to plant closures. From California to New York, people have taken to the streets to protest cuts to programs that serve our communities.
On October 3, 2009, trade unionists, immigrant rights activists and members of low-income, community, housing, student and other progressive organizations will come together in Chicago for a conference that will help build our collective movements. We will take this opportunity to learn from one another’s experience. We will lend support to key struggles. Importantly, we will make common plans. Together we can make a difference and build a more powerful fight back.
Go to the Conference website for a list of endorsers and other important info: http://wesayfightback.com/
In recognition of the Forth of July, I’m posting the following poem by the great revolutionary African American poet, Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again”. I encourage my readers to read some of Langston Hughes’ other radical poems, such as “Good Morning, Revolution”, “Put One More ‘S’ in the U.S.A.” and “Goodbye, Christ”:
Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
Letter from Harry Haywood to the Provisional Organizing Committee
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