Sunday, January 19, 2014

Obama Defends the Indefensible

by Stephen Lendman

On Friday, Obama addressed sweeping NSA mass surveillance. He defended the worst of police state lawlessness.

He believes privacy invasion intrusiveness should comfort us. He lied claiming it makes us safer. How does destroying civil liberties protect them?

How does violating core Bill of Rights protections do it? How does trashing all rule of law principles? 

How does turning America into a police state? How do sweeping surveillance practices greater than anything before possible? 

How does letting NSA operate as a power unto itself? It's an unrestrained lawbreaker. Imagine Obama calling "(t)he folks at the NSA...our neighbors."

Imagine saying "they're our friends and family." Imagine claiming "(o)ur intelligence community follows the law..."

Imagine saying NSA officials and staff are "patriots." One lie followed another throughout his address. They constitute a gross abuse of power. So do his lawless policies.

He never once mentioned his responsibility to respect international, constitutional and US statute laws. He never once admitted how egregiously he violates them. 

He never once explained how his policies are heading America for full-blown tyranny. He never once acknowledged his war on humanity. 

He fronts for monied interests that own him. His entire tenure fails the smell test.

He lied saying "US intelligence agencies (are) anchored in a system of checks and balances - with oversight from elected leaders, and protections for ordinary citizens."

He lied claiming mass surveillance "prevented multiple attacks and saved lives - not just here in the United States, but around the globe."

Fact check: NSA domestic and foreign spying discovered ZERO terrorist threats. It foiled ZERO terrorist attacks. Claiming otherwise is false! Doing so is a bald-faced lie!

Obama lied claiming federal courts and congressional oversight curbed "some of the worst excesses that emerged after 9/11..."

He lied saying he "maintained a healthy skepticism toward our surveillance programs after (he) became president." 

He approved the worst of what's ongoing. He wants it continued. He wants it intensified. He wants nothing escaping NSA's spying eye. 

He wants it able to monitor everyone, everywhere, all the time. He wants America's fake war on terror continued. It's a war on freedom. It reflects the worst of police state lawlessness.

He lied saying he ordered "increased oversight and auditing, including new structures aimed at compliance."

He lied saying he "sought to keep Congress continually updated on (NSA) activities." Many congressional members know little about the worst agency practices.

Obama lied claiming nothing he's seen "indicate(s) that our intelligence community has sought to violate the law or is cavalier about the civil liberties of (American) citizens."

He lied saying "the men and women of the intelligence community, including the NSA, consistently follow protocols designed to protect the privacy of ordinary people."

He lied claiming "(t)hey're not abusing authority in order to listen to your private phone calls or read your emails."

He lied saying "(w)hen mistakes are made...they correct" them.

He lied saying "our intelligence community follows the law."

He lied claiming terrorist threats "are not going away any time soon. They are going to continue to be a major problem."

Fact check: America's only terrorist threats are ones it invents for political and/or strategic reasons. No real ones exist.

Obama lied saying he ordered "specific changes" for the better. The worst of NSA and other US spy agencies continues. It does so unabated. It does it extrajudicially. It does it unrestrained.

Obama lied saying he "approved a new presidential directive for our signals intelligence activities both at home and abroad. (It) will strengthen executive branch oversight of our intelligence activities."

It will ensure "that our actions are regularly scrutinized by my senior national security staff." It assures that business as usual continues.

Obama lied claiming "reform programs and procedures" he ordered will "provide greater transparency to our surveillance activities, and fortify the safeguards that protect the privacy of US" citizens.

Fact check: His administration is the most secretive in US history. It's the least transparent.

Candidate Obama promised transparency, accountability and reform. President Obama waged war on whistleblowers, dissent, and journalists doing their job. He exceeded the worst of his predecessors. 

Nothing suggests changed policy ahead. Everything indicates things going from bad to worse.

Obama lied saying he wants "Congress to authorize the establishment of a panel of advocates from outside government to provide an independent voice on significant cases before the (rubber-stamp) Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)."

Fact check: so-called executive branch and congressional independent oversight bodies are routinely stacked with Washington and corporate insiders. Expect no change in policy ahead.

Obama lied saying he "ask(ed) the Attorney General and DNI to institute reforms that place additional restrictions on government's ability to retain, search, and use criminal cases communications between Americans and foreign citizens..."

He lied saying "we can and should be more transparent in how government uses" National Security Letters (NSLs). They involve abusive police state intrusions.

They let FBI officials obtain personal information about anyone. At issue only is claiming what's wanted relates to alleged terrorism or espionage investigations. No proof is required.

Innocent people are affected. Virtually anything in public or private records can be obtained. Gag orders prevent targeted individuals or groups from revealing what's demanded. Doing so violates their constitutional rights.

Obama lied about ongoing sweeping mass surveillance. "This program does not involve the content of phone calls, or the names of people making calls," he claimed.

He lied about Patriot Act Section 215. He approved its use. It oversteps and then some. It violates core constitutional rights.

It's language is vague and deceptive. It's used to allow unrestrained metadata-mining. It permits the worst of police state intrusions. It authorizes government access to "any tangible item."

Included are financial records and transactions, education and medical records, phone conversations, emails, other Internet use, and whatever else Washington wants to monitor.

NSA and other intelligence agency powers are sweeping. They're greatly enhanced. They're used extrajudicially. Anyone can be targeted for any reason or none at all.

Section 215 is unconstitutional. It permits warrantless searches without probable cause. 

It violates First Amendment rights. It does so by mandating secrecy. It prohibits targeted subjects from telling others what's happening to them.

It lets FBI operatives investigate anyone based on what they say, write, or do with regard to groups they belong to or associate with.

It violates Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections by not telling targeted subjects their privacy was compromised. It subverts fundamental freedoms for contrived, exaggerated, or nonexistent security reasons.

Obama wants these practices continued. He claims nothing indicates abuse of power. He "believes it is important that the capability that this program is designed to meet is preserved."

He lied saying "proper safeguards" will prevent abuses. He'll "establish a mechanism that preserves the capabilities we need without the government holding this bulk metadata."

In other words, he'll order changes assuring no change. They'll amount to new wine in old bottles. Business as usual will continue.

Obama lied saying "reforms (he) propos(ed) today should give the American people greater confidence that their rights are being protected, even as our intelligence and law enforcement agencies maintain the tools they need to keep us safe."

Fact check: Domestic and most overseas NSA spying has nothing to do with national security. It has nothing to do with uncovering or preventing terrorist threats. 

It undermines public safety. It makes everyone far less secure. It assures some of the worst of police state lawlessness.

Obama lied about overseas spying. He lied saying his so-called "presidential directive" assures "that (America) only uses signals intelligence for legitimate national security purposes."

He lied claiming "intelligence (isn't) to provide a competitive advantage to US companies or US commercial sectors."

He lied saying it's only "to meet specific security requirements" counterintelligence, counterterrorism, counter-proliferation, cybersecurity, force protection for our troops and allies, and combating transnational crime..."

He lied saying he "t(ook) the unprecedented step of extending certain protections that we have for the American people to people overseas."

He lied claiming entirely new guidelines will be instituted. He lied saying they'll impose unprecedented restrictions.

He lied saying America "is not spying on ordinary people who don't threaten our national security, and that we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures."

He lied saying "(t)his applies to foreign leaders as well."

He lied saying he "made clear to the intelligence community than unless there is a compelling national security purpose, we will not monitor the communications of heads of state and governments of our close friends and allies."

He lied saying he "instructed (his) national security team, as well as the intelligence community, to work with foreign counterparts to deepen our coordination and cooperation in ways that rebuild trust going forward."

He proved his ill intentions, adding:

"Now let me be clear: Our intelligence agencies will continue to gather information about the intentions of governments (worldwide)."

"We will not apologize" for doing it. Allied heads of state should be comforted knowing "that we are treating them as real partners."

Obama will appoint new White House and State Department officials. They'll oversee so-called "changes" he ordered. 

Make no mistake. The worst of business as usual will continue. IF Stone once said: "All governments lie and nothing they say should be believed."

Obama elevated the art of lying to an unprecedented level. He failed the Pinocchio test. He exceeded the worst of Richard Nixon. He outdid George Bush. 

He's more despot than democrat. He matched Star Trek. He went where no US leader went before. He made a mockery of changes to believe in.

Things were deplorable when he took office. His policies made them far worse. His promises are made to be broken. His word isn't his bond.

He's a serial liar. He's an unapologetic law breaker. He's a disgraceful moral coward. 

A previous article said impeaching him is a national imperative. He belongs in prison, not high office.

Note: Gallup's latest daily job approval rating has Obama at 39%. Maybe he'll sink much lower ahead. 

Americans are woefully out-of-touch. They react slowly. They're beginning to catch on. 

Growing numbers know how egregiously Obama betrayed them. It's long past time they took to the streets en masse to show it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

 

…he was glad, glad as hell, to be off the troop transports, away from the sinking sweat of men, nothing but men, in close quarters who had been getting on his nerves from about mid-ocean to the portals of New York. Who had furthermore been stinking too of too many cigarettes (and butt-fiend guys cadging them off of him and not returning the favor when they got their ration), too many carbohydrate- loaded foods (bread and mashed potatoes piled on mashed potatoes and a ladle-full of gravy, or what passed for shipboard gravy), and too much boozy talk (leading to occasional no room fist-fights once the cheap booze hit about the third drink) and card-playing bravado (ditto on the guys borrowing dough, borrowing dough on some screwy pair of deuces, and “forgetting the I.O..U., forgetting it quickly). Yes, he had had just about enough of all that.

 

And while he was at it tired too of the naval cadre (who was he kidding swabbies, nothing but in-your-face swabbies, the lowest of the low) who were stationed on the ship and who were the worst, taking advantage of their superior status as regulars on the ship to force G.I.s, guys who had seen plenty of action on all of the European fronts where there were fronts, to swab decks and other house-hold chores because those bastards were too lazy to do it. Handing out mops and pails left and right to sullen war-weary soldiers who had long ago foregone latrine duties and such leaving that for their own privates now that they had some rank. Forced such work because they could force the issue if it came down to it, their ship’s captain if he wanted to avoid a mutiny or encourage slacking would back them up-one-hundred percent. Yes, enough of that too, thank you.

 

So once he hit New York, hit landlubber dry land he headed straight for the Diplomat (after the obligatory kissing of the New York port ground, kissed so many times it must have felt like a blushing bride)   with his pent-up dough and got himself a room with all the trimmings. Shower, he would drown himself in warm water and suds to start to take the stinks of Europe and the ship off of him, a big, big bed, soft, plenty of pillows, clean fresh sheets, an upholstered chair to sit on, sit on all by himself, and handy room-service-yes room service where for once after the previous three years he got to give the orders.

 

Of course a guy who had been ship-bound and had spent some serious dough to repair his self-esteem was thinking of nothing so much as heading out, or in this case heading down, to the nearest hot spot and checkout, well, the women what else. His plan was to snag some loose woman lonely since her man was still away and she had, ah, needs, needs he could take care of, or some camp-follower not a floozy but not too hard to pick up either or in a pinch just somebody’s little sister who couldn’t make it in the looks department back home and figured she would try her luck when the ships came in with sex-hunger men, lots of them.

 

And so it was that night as he entered the ballroom of the Diplomat. That night when he from nowhere North Adamsville up in Massachusetts saw more young women dressed to the nines than he believed existed on the earth.  (Little did he know that these women were wearing last year’s fashions, or from the year before, and were not feeling dressed to the nines that night. Although they were as thrilled in their own way as he was), There they were with swaying hips, or just swaying, to the sounds of the new cooler be-bop sounds that had begun to take hold since he had been away. Charlie blow, the Prez blow, Dexter high heaven blow. Sounds that reflected the hard realities of the European fights and now formerly beloved swing seemed too juvenile for grownup battle-weary men, and the women waiting for them.  

 

That night, from eight to two, he just danced, be-bop cool jazz danced, danced the way he felt inside, with every girl who would dance with him, drank an ocean of liquor, good stuff not that shipboard rotgut that would eat your insides out (and brought many drinks all around as well) and was happy. There would be a next time for finding some gal to share silky sheets with …  
From the Archives of Marxism-John Reed on Liebknecht and Luxemburg







The important contribution of John Reed to the revolutionary movement here in America before World War I and later during the Russian revolution and its aftermath has never been fully appreciated. Thus, Warren Beatty, whatever his personal motives, has done a great service in filming the life of this “traitor to his class” (and his Harvard Class of 1910) and partisan of the international working class.

As usual with such commercial enterprises the order of things gets switched in the wrong direction. The love affair between Reed (played by Beatty) and budding writer and early feminist Louise Bryant (and a little third party intervention by playwright Eugene O’Neill, played by Jack Nicholson) is set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution not the other way around, but such is cinematic license. More than most film depictions this one mainly gets the story straight; the early free-lance journalism tied to the Mexican Revolution; the bohemian life of pre-World War I Greenwich Village in New York City including their patrons; the socialist fight against American participation in World War I; the fight among socialist (and anarchists) over support to the Russian Revolution; and, an interesting segment on the in-fighting in the early communist movement between the foreign language federations and the Reed-led “Natives” which was ‘resolved’ in at Communist International headquarters. Those ‘natives’  who in the course of events would form the leadership of the party through most of the twenties when the cadre still wanted to make a revolution here and not just cheer on the Russian Revolution from afar. A nice touch in the film is the interplaying of commentaries by those, friend and foe, who knew or knew of Reed or were around during this time. See this movie. 


Workers Vanguard No. 1037
 






































































10 January 2014
 
 

Upholding the revolutionary traditions of the early Communist International, we commemorate the “Three L’s” this month, marking the assassination of German Communist Party founders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg on 15 January 1919 and the death of Bolshevik leader V. I. Lenin on 21 January 1924. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were murdered by reactionaries amid the counterrevolutionary terror unleashed by the Social Democratic government against a workers uprising.
Karl Liebknecht’s name is synonymous with intransigent opposition to one’s “own” bourgeoisie in the crucible of interimperialist war. His declaration that “the main enemy is at home” became the watchword for generations of revolutionaries at times of war between imperialist powers. When the Social Democratic Party fraction voted for the Kaiser’s military budget at the Reichstag (parliament) session of 2 December 1914, Liebknecht, then a member of the party, broke ranks and cast the sole vote against war credits. With Liebknecht prohibited from motivating his vote on the Reichstag floor and barred from the German press, his statement was published in a Dutch socialist newspaper.
Recounting Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg’s revolutionary opposition to their “own” capitalist governments is particularly timely as bourgeois ideologues, with no small amount of hypocrisy and deception, begin to mark the centenary of the outbreak of “the war to end all wars” in August 1914. WWI was not caused by an assassin’s bullet but by the struggle of the imperialist powers to redivide the world and further their exploitation of labor and control of markets. While some nine million mainly working-class conscripts would die as the imperialists’ cannon fodder, the carnage would also lead to the world’s first successful proletarian revolution—the Russian October Revolution of 1917 under the leadership of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party.
We print below a piece by John Reed from a special issue of The Revolutionary Age devoted to Liebknecht and Luxemburg and published on 1 February 1919. The ellipses were part of the article as printed. Reed was a radical American journalist who was won to Bolshevism while reporting on the October Revolution. His book Ten Days That Shook the World vividly depicts the insurrectionary days in Petrograd. Upon his return from Russia, Reed was instrumental in founding the American Communist movement. The Revolutionary Age was the organ of the left wing of the Socialist Party, out of which emerged many of the pioneers of American communism.
*   *   *
Karl Liebknecht’s Words
By John Reed
When I was in Berlin in December, 1915, I went to see Karl Liebknecht. He had an office in a district Social Democratic headquarters, in the poorer section of the city—on a street, I remember, which looked very like Washington Street in Boston. It was a large, bare room, the walls hung with pictures of Bebel and the elder Liebknecht, and memorials of historic events in the great history of the German Social Democracy.
Liebknecht sat at a table in the middle of the room, the lower half of his face faintly illuminated by a green-shaded lamp. He wore a semi-military coat buttoned up to the neck. There were dark circles under his eyes, but that was all the evidence of fatigue about him. His hand played nervously with a paper-cutter as he talked; his eyes never left mine. His face was dark and full—almost round—with a gentle expression.
The door to the inner hall had been left open. It was empty, except for two or three forlorn-looking women in widows’ weeds, who were sitting sadly and motionless on chairs along the wall, waiting for some official of the branch on business connected with death-benefits....
“The war?” I asked, pointing toward them. Liebknecht nodded. “The best of us—” he said slowly, in halting English interlarded with German words.
I had not seen the statement which Liebknecht had sent out to Holland, and which was even then being published all over the world, especially by the Allied capitalist press—then calling him “the bravest of the brave.” So it was more or less natural that I should ask him whether his attitude of extreme hostility to the War and the Government was still the same.
“There is no other attitude for a Social Democrat to take,” he said, with a faint smile of amusement. “As each problem of capitalist aggression arises, it must be met full and squarely. In spite of the prodigious influence brought to bear in all countries of the world upon their peoples, the international working class is still not convinced that this War is their War. As representative of the workers, I voice this sentiment.”
“And the chances of world Revolution?”
“To my mind,” he answered serenely, “nothing else can come out of the War.”
This is practically all of our conversation. Other questions which I asked him, which if he had answered, might have revealed the plans and projects of the movement, or the work then being done, he refused to answer. After all, he did not know me....
Rosa Luxemburg I never knew, but from talks about her with comrades who did, I have come to think of her as one of the great constructive brains of the Left Wing movement in Europe—an intellect which, like Lenin’s in Russia, would have been of incalculable value in the establishment of the new order in Germany, of which Karl Liebknecht was the flaming prophet.
Liebknecht was arrested, and while being taken in an automobile to prison by a group of “armed volunteers,” (no doubt aristocratic young officers), was shot “while trying to escape” “when the automobile broke down” crossing the Tiergarten. In other words, he was taken to a quiet spot and simply murdered. Rosa Luxemburg met a more terrible fate. She was beaten to death by a “white-collar mob,” and her body thrown into the canal.
It was the bourgeoisie of Berlin, of Germany, of the world—the bankers, business men, officers, “respectable people”—who actually did the killing.
But it was the Ebert-Scheidemann Government, the Kaiser Socialists, so long detested by the Allied capitalist press—who by suppressing the revolt of the German working-class with the aid of the Kaiser’s troops, allowed that mob to shoot holes in Karl Liebknecht’s back and trample the life out of Rosa Luxemburg. And the Allied capitalist press applauds....
What the capitalist newspapers have to say about it is a matter of comparative indifference to us. We are occupied with a closer and more dangerous enemy in our own ranks—the moderate Socialists, who, to their other crimes against the workers, have now added the crime of murder.
Proletarian Power Opened Road to Social Emancipation-The Russian Revolution and the Roma -Capitalist Europe: State Persecution, Fascist Terror Target Gypsies


Workers Vanguard No. 1037
 





10 January 2014
 
 
In Hungary, racist thugs firebomb their homes and shoot at fleeing victims. In the Czech Republic, neo-Nazi stormtroopers threaten to exterminate them in gas chambers. In the Slovak Republic, an off-duty cop on a mission to “restore order” shoots and kills three of them. In Bulgaria, racist assailants wearing brass knuckles attack them. In France, thousands last year suffered eviction under the government led by Socialist Party president François Hollande. In each case, the victims have one thing in common: they are all Roma (Gypsies).
From one end of the continent to the other, Roma are falling prey to heightened violence and xenophobia as the countries of the European Union (EU) reel under the effects of the capitalist economic crisis. In mid October, Greek cops seized a four-year-old girl and arrested her parents, accusing them of kidnapping on the assumption that Gypsies could not possibly have a fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter. A few days later, Irish authorities took a page from this playbook, ripping two light-skinned Roma children from their parents. Encouraged by state persecution of the Gypsies and feeling the winds of official racism in their sails, fascist skinheads in Serbia got into the act, attempting to abduct a fair-skinned Roma child.
The racist frenzy against the ostracized and historically persecuted Roma, who number 10 to 12 million in Europe, has been drastically escalated in recent months by governments of both the left and the right with the aim of deflecting workers’ anger away from the capitalist class enemy. As Trotskyists, the International Communist League has always opposed the EU as an imperialist trade bloc that was established to further the exploitation and immiseration of the workers and the oppressed, including Europe’s millions of immigrants, under the domination of German as well as French and British capital.
Although the EU’s legal framework includes the 1985 Schengen agreement, which supposedly guarantees the free movement of peoples in member countries, capitalist “Fortress Europe” has increasingly stepped up repression of immigrants and severely gutted the right to asylum. When Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, their citizens, including many Roma, were restricted from working in Germany, France and Britain. While these restrictions have now been formally lifted, a furor stoked by Britain’s Conservative/Liberal Democratic coalition government against Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants shows that they will continue to be hounded from one corner of Europe to the other.
As our comrades of the Ligue Trotskyste de France explained in a leaflet issued last October (see “French Government Crackdown on Roma, Immigrants,” WV No. 1035, 29 November 2013):
“In a precapitalist economy, the Gypsies occupied a marginal economic niche as artisans, peddlers and artists. With the development of capitalism, they were pushed to the margins of society, enduring abuses that culminated in the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Gypsies by the Nazis. The truth is that decaying capitalism is incapable of ‘integrating’ the Roma and all the more so in periods of crisis.”
Europe’s Gypsy populations do not comprise a single nation based on a cohesive territory or even a common language. Their character is similar in some ways to the position of European Jews in feudal society, who, playing an economic role as merchants and money-lenders, constituted a “people-class,” as analyzed by the Trotskyist Abram Leon. While Gypsies were even more socially marginalized, the two share a long record of suffering brutal victimization and hatred.
In defending the Roma against the capitalist state and fascist gangs, we seek to mobilize the working class to demand the recognition of their languages, dialects and culture; to champion the right of both nomadic and sedentary Roma to equality in education, housing and employment; and to demand full citizenship rights for Roma wherever they live. Ultimately, only socialist revolution will make possible the full, voluntary assimilation of Roma into European society with full and equal rights. This was the prospect offered by the Russian October Revolution of 1917 led by the Bolshevik Party.
The Prospect of Emancipation
Migrations of Gypsies to what would eventually become the territory of the Soviet Union occurred at different times in history. In the tenth century, a Gypsy people known as the Liuli began to move into an area of Central Asia that would later be part of the tsarist empire in order to escape Muslim assaults in their original homeland in northern India. In the early 15th century, Gypsies moved into Ukraine. Later in that century, persecution in Germany forced Gypsies to migrate into Poland and Lithuania, where Polish officials demanded that they be expelled. Russia annexed these territories in the 18th century.
In a 1931 work titled Tsygane Vchera i Segodnia (Gypsies Yesterday and Today), Alexander V. Germano, the Soviet Union’s leading Roma writer and intellectual, outlined the history of the European Roma as a bloodstained chronicle of persecution and alienation. Gypsies were burned at the stake, hanged, massacred and exiled. With villagers and officials relegating them to living temporarily on the outskirts, nomadism was reinforced as a way of life. Reduced to the status of pariahs, many Gypsies were forced into slavery or serfdom, resulting in cultural backwardness and political exclusion.
In tsarist Russia, Gypsies were subjected to police measures and discriminatory laws. In the mid 18th century, Empress Elizabeth issued a decree forbidding Gypsies from entering the capital of St. Petersburg and its environs. In 1783, the Senate sought to prevent Gypsies from moving from one landowner to another. Subsequently, it decreed that wandering Gypsies would be placed under surveillance and returned to their original districts.
Some Russian Roma were able to enjoy relative prosperity and stability because they belonged to Gypsy choirs, which were popular among the nobility up until this class was crushed by the Russian Revolution. Nevertheless, the waning years of the tsarist autocracy also coincided with increased oppression of Roma. For example, in 1906 the tsarist regime and several other European governments signed on to an agreement with Prussia to persecute nomadic Roma populations.
Understanding that the capitalist ruling classes foment racism and nationalism to divide and weaken the workers of different backgrounds and thus to maintain their hold on power, the Bolsheviks irreconcilably opposed anti-Semitism and all national, religious and ethnic oppression. The “Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia,” adopted shortly after the October Revolution, proclaimed “the right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination” and “the abolition of any and all national and national-religious privileges and disabilities.” The declaration committed the workers state to “the free development of national minorities and ethnographic groups inhabiting the territory of Russia.”
Animated by the Bolshevik program of combating national chauvinism and uniting the workers of the world against the capitalist-imperialist system, the early Soviet state made a heroic effort to bring progress, modernity and freedom to the Roma peoples. As historian David M. Crowe remarked in A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia (1994):
“The 1920s saw something of a Gypsy renaissance take root in Eastern Europe and Russia as Roma intellectuals struggled to carve out a niche for the Gypsies in the new nations. Though their efforts to create organizations and publish works in Romany were admirable, they were crippled by inexperience and lack of financial support as well as centuries-old prejudice and indifference. The most remarkable, lasting gains for Roma came in the new Soviet Russian state.”
While the Roma in Soviet Russia would go on to progress in ways unimaginable in the capitalist world, their advances were also circumscribed and in part reversed under the Stalinist bureaucracy that seized political control in 1923-24. While the Bolsheviks under V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky had upheld the equality of all nations and languages as part of their program for world socialist revolution, Stalin’s regime would increasingly be marked by Great Russian chauvinism as it promoted the nationalist, anti-Marxist dogma of “building socialism in one country.” Even in 1922, it was Stalin’s assault on the national rights of the Georgians that prompted Lenin to argue for his removal as General Secretary of the Communist Party.
It is necessary to understand that despite the political counterrevolution, the Soviet Union remained a workers state. Although distorted by the rule of a privileged bureaucracy and subjected to the immense pressures of the hostile imperialist powers, the collectivized, planned economy resulted in enormous social advances for the Soviet peoples, particularly the more benighted, as in Central Asia. In his groundbreaking analysis of the Soviet Union under Stalin, Trotsky observed in The Revolution Betrayed (1936):
“It is true that in the sphere of national policy, as in the sphere of economy, the Soviet bureaucracy still continues to carry out a certain part of the progressive work, although with immoderate overhead expenses. This is especially true of the backward nationalities of the Union, which must of necessity pass through a more or less prolonged period of borrowing, imitation and assimilation of what exists.”
The Struggle for Enlightenment
From sedentarization campaigns to the education of Roma children in their own language and the creation of vibrant cultural institutions, the Gypsies in the years following the Bolshevik Revolution made truly substantial strides. Among the major catalysts of this social transformation was a group of Gypsy activists, whose efforts are documented in a new book by Brooklyn College assistant professor Brigid O’Keeffe, New Soviet Gypsies: Nationality, Performance and Selfhood in the Early Soviet Union (2013). The heirs of Moscow’s prerevolutionary Romani intelligentsia that originated in the Gypsy choirs, these militant youth were energized by the revolutionary fervor in which early Soviet Russia was steeped.
A prominent leader of this work was I.I. Rom-Lebedev, who along with his friends organized a Communist Youth League (Komsomol) cell for Roma in Moscow in 1923 to promote enlightenment and combat fortune telling, begging and other practices inimical to productive labor. With the assistance of their trade union, the youths created a red corner in Petrovskii Park filled with books and journals, aiming to transform Roma into conscious Soviet citizens. A year later, the Komsomol comrades participated in the formation of an Action Committee of Member-Founders of the Gypsy Proletarian Society, which included three activists who had served in the Red Army, three Communist Party members and three Komsomol members.
In July 1925, the Action Committee received approval from the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) to form the All-Russian Gypsy Union (ARGU). Within a year of its founding, the ARGU’s influence had spread well beyond Moscow Province, leading to the formation of affiliates in Leningrad, Chernigov, Vladimir and Smolensk. Meanwhile, letters from Roma throughout the Soviet Union began to pour in to Moscow’s ARGU chapter, which by early 1926 claimed 330 members.
The Soviet Union’s first Gypsy collective farm was formed near Rostov in 1925 by a group of Roma who had supplied the Red Army with horses during the Civil War. Soon thereafter, the ARGU worked with the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture and the Nationalities Department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to establish the Commission on the Settlement of Toiling Gypsies, aiming to encourage Roma to abandon nomadism. Before long, Gypsies began to settle on lands set aside by each Soviet republic. Between 1926 and 1928, an estimated 5,000 Gypsies settled on farms in the Crimea, Ukraine and the North Caucasus. This was out of a total Roma population estimated as anywhere from 61,000 to 200,000, including nomadic Roma and others with settled lives in the cities and their outskirts.
Despite the efforts of the state and the militant activists, many Roma resisted moving to state lands. In addition to being atomized and largely illiterate, the Gypsy masses mistrusted authority, having suffered centuries of brutal oppression and ostracism. Not unlike women Communists who donned the veil to deliver the Bolsheviks’ message of emancipation to the women of the Muslim East, Gypsy Union activists went among the Roma to win them over. A poster written in both Russian and Romani explained Soviet efforts to liberate the minority peoples of the former empire from backwardness. It declared that while the tsars had oppressed nomads, imprisoning them in irrationality and alienation, now nomadic tribes with the help of Soviet power “are beginning to settle on land, to take up agriculture. They have their own land, their own farmstead, woods, villages, their own schools.”
Indeed, it was in the sphere of education that the Roma achieved some of their most impressive gains. A 31 October 1918 decree by the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros) titled “On National Minority Schools” had declared that Gypsies, like all Soviet nationalities, had a right to an education in their native language. In January 1926, the Soviet Union’s first Romani-language classrooms were established in Moscow, inside existing Russian elementary schools. Students were instructed in reading, writing, arithmetic, drawing, crafts, music, physical education, history and civics, and efforts were made to establish literacy centers for adults. Romani-language schools would also be established on collective farms where Roma settled.
Teachers also struggled valiantly to teach another subject: hygiene. Both inside and outside of the classroom, Roma children and their parents were taught the importance of washing, brushing their teeth and combing their hair. The Moscow Department of Education was alarmed at the high rate of malnutrition and illnesses such as anemia, tuberculosis and typhoid fever among Roma children. But neglect of basic hygiene was by no means confined to the Roma; it reflected the generalized material want and ignorance that pervaded early Soviet Russia, an overwhelmingly agrarian society that had inherited centuries of backwardness.
Lacking Romani-speaking teachers or even a Romani alphabet, pupils were initially taught in Russian. To surmount such hurdles, Gypsy Union activists, together with a linguist at Moscow State University, spearheaded a drive to create a Romani alphabet and standardize the language. A May 1927 Narkompros decree directed that the new alphabet be based on Cyrillic script with a few modifications, a break from the earlier Soviet practice of developing new alphabets, such as for Turkmen, based on Latin script.
Before long, the first Romani-language textbooks were published. A magazine in Romani, Romany Zoria (Gypsy Dawn), debuted in November 1927, followed by Nevo Drom (New Road), a reading primer intended for use by adults. The first Romani grammar book for use in Gypsy classrooms, Tsyganskii Iazyk (The Gypsy Language), appeared in 1931, while a 10,000-word Romani-Russian dictionary was published in the late 1930s. O’Keeffe asserts: “Although nearly all of the early Soviet Romani educational initiatives were terminated by the eve of World War II, many Romani students had already emerged from the practical and political education that they received in the late 1920s and 1930s as literate, integrated Soviet citizens.”
Paralleling the fight for Roma education was the struggle to assimilate Gypsies into the working class, resulting in the establishment of several industrial artels (cooperatives) in Moscow. By 1931, there were 28 Roma artels in the capital employing 1,350 workers. Crucially, two of the earliest and most successful, Tsygkhimprom (Gypsy Chemical Manufacturing) and Tsygpishcheprom (Gypsy Food Production), did not exclusively employ Roma. At Tsygpishcheprom, Gypsies labored alongside workers of at least eleven other nationalities.
Despite the modest progress, the Council of People’s Commissars and other leading Soviet bodies had grown skeptical of the Gypsy Union. In March 1927, the Moscow Control Commission’s Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate conducted a surprise inspection of the ARGU, concluding that its leadership was top-heavy with profiteers, stage performers and white-collar workers and that its membership consisted heavily of speculators on the horse market and other non-proletarian elements. In response, Gypsy Union leaders protested that their work had been hampered by skeptical, intolerant and mistrustful state officials.
When the ARGU was disbanded in February 1928, the NKVD declared that it had failed to adopt concrete measures to combat “fortune telling, begging, gambling, drunkenness, and other particularities of the Gypsy population.” Besides the fact that such social ills were hardly “Gypsy particularities,” eradicating them would require years of struggle in the best material circumstances, not to mention in the backward conditions then prevailing in Soviet Russia. Despite the ARGU’s dissolution, its members would go on to play a prominent role in Soviet life, contributing to the Roma cultural awakening of the late 1920s and early ’30s.
Roma Rights Rolled Back
The Roma would not be spared the massive social dislocations that accompanied the First Five Year Plan and the campaign to forcibly collectivize agriculture launched in the late 1920s. While Trotsky and the Left Opposition had been fighting for planned industrialization and voluntary agricultural collectivization to strengthen the USSR’s socialized economy, the regime of Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin encouraged the kulaks (rich peasants) to enrich themselves. By 1928, the kulaks’ growing self-consciousness had become a dagger pointed at the workers state, as seen in their blockade of grain to the cities, posing the threat of famine. The bureaucracy then abruptly turned against the kulaks. Having laid none of the technical or economic foundations, with Stalin’s characteristic brutality the Soviet state moved to collectivize the peasants and initiate an adventurous rate of industrialization. This turn foreclosed the immediate threat of capitalist restoration in the USSR.
In the midst of the ensuing chaos, thousands of Roma fled to the already overcrowded urban centers. Among them were many Vlax Roma, a people that had immigrated to Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from Romania and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Unlike the relatively established Russka Roma, the Vlax Roma often spoke no Russian. Now, with no other choice but to squat in tent cities on the edge of Moscow, they were deemed “foreigners” by the authorities. From 28 June to 9 July 1933, the secret police rounded up 1,008 Romani families in Moscow—5,470 people in all—and deported them to West Siberian labor colonies.
Such deportations coincided with attacks on the right of the Roma to be educated in their own language. In 1932, the first teacher-training courses for Roma had commenced in Moscow’s Central Institute for the Advancement of Qualified Education Cadres (TsIPKKNO). Eight months later, 15 Romani students graduated and awaited placement in schools throughout the vast stretches of the Soviet Union. Before long, however, some of the students began to complain of employment discrimination. In response, TsIPKKNO terminated the program. Other instances of discrimination and protest by Roma students followed. Finally, in January 1938 the regime issued a decree, “On the Liquidation of National Schools and National Departments Within Schools,” that led to the end of instruction in Romani. The decree also spelled the closure of schooling in Assyrian, Estonian, Finnish, Polish, Chinese and several other languages.
By this time, the bureaucracy was increasingly exhibiting the nationalism inherent in its doctrine of “socialism in one country.” After the Nazis rose to power in Germany, posing an imminent danger to the Soviet Union, in 1935 the Stalinists adopted the policy of the People’s Front, directing Communist parties to politically support and sometimes even join “progressive” capitalist governments that were supposedly friendly to the USSR. The Stalinists’ explicit renunciation of the need for workers revolutions abroad to spread proletarian rule to the economically advanced capitalist countries went hand in hand with their embrace at home of the putrid nationalism that the Bolshevik Revolution had rejected from its first breath.
Appeasement of imperialism served only to weaken the workers state in the face of its class enemies. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the very existence of the workers state was in question. While Trotskyists opposed all the imperialist powers in the war, they called on the Soviet proletariat and the workers of the world to fight in defense of the Soviet Union in its hour of danger. Meanwhile, the Stalinist regime dubbed the USSR’s military struggle the Great Patriotic War in a bow to Russian nationalism.
An estimated 30,000 to 35,000 Soviet Gypsies were slaughtered by the Nazi invaders during the PoÅ™ajmos (the Gypsy Holocaust). Soviet Roma played their part in combating and eventually defeating the fascist scourge. The Theatre Romen, the world’s first professional Roma theater, staged performances for the Red Army, while some of its troupe members became soldiers. Roma were also part of Soviet partisan units in Belorussia and Ukraine, prompting the chiefs of the German army field police to demand the ruthless execution of Gypsy bands suspected of being partisan supporters.
Notwithstanding bureaucratic rule, Soviet Roma achieved a high level of assimilation and cultural development in the years following the war. David Crowe cites Gypsy scholar Lajko Cherenkov’s observation in the early 1970s:
“It is rare to meet a Rom in the USSR to-day who cannot read and write, while before the war among certain groups, for instance those in Bessarabia, nobody could. Most of the young generation to-day are finishing eighth or tenth class, and one cannot distinguish in towns between Rom and other nationalities in this respect.”
East European Roma Under Stalinism: Integration at the Bottom
The victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany laid the basis for the overturn of capitalist property relations in East Europe and East Germany. By 1948, deformed workers states modeled economically and politically on Stalin’s Soviet Union had been created through the agency of Soviet forces and the domestic Communist parties. Exceptionally, the Yugoslav deformed workers state issued out of the victory of Marshal Tito’s partisans. The destruction of capitalist rule in these states brought significant gains for the Roma populations. But their treatment at the hands of the ruling bureaucracies was uneven and contradictory, varying from country to country.
Before the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC) assumed power in February 1948, that country’s government ministers had called for harsh and restrictive measures against the Gypsies. The KSC, in contrast, stated that its ultimate goal was to integrate the Roma with the rest of the population and raise their economic, social and cultural level to that of the Slavs. But while the new Communist regime correctly blamed previous capitalist governments for reinforcing the low social and economic status of the Roma, it initially took only halting steps to improve their lot and integrate them into the workforce and the broader society. In 1958, the government enacted a law punishing nomads with deprivation of liberty for six months to three years while also condemning racist bigotry against Roma.
While a struggle against nomadism was necessary, the KSC bureaucracy, like its Moscow brethren, implemented it through bureaucratic fiat as opposed to advocating voluntary assimilation. This fact should not blind anyone to the substantial gains for the Roma. Recognizing that some 67 percent of Slovakia’s Gypsy population of 153,000 lived in settlements that were unfit for humans, the KSC regime in 1965 initiated a program to demolish the substandard housing, resettle Roma in the more prosperous Czech lands and provide them with subsidies and loans to buy new homes. The resettlement policy continued throughout the 1970s, resulting in a dramatic improvement in Roma living conditions. By 1980, more than 70 percent of Roma lived in apartments, while the proportion of people living in unfit housing had dropped to 49 percent from 80 percent a decade earlier.
Progress was also made in the area of education. From 1971 to 1980, the percentage of Roma children who finished public school rose from 16.6 to 25.6, while the number of those attending colleges and universities increased from 39 to 191. In the same period, adult literacy rates jumped to 90 percent. Meanwhile, by the early 1980s, over four-fifths of the Roma were working in industry.
But such gains came with a price. The resettlement program was inadequately funded and it also fostered growing resentment toward the Roma arrivals in the Czech lands. Then in 1972, the government of Gustav Husak inflamed racist sentiments by passing a decree encouraging Roma women to be sterilized. The pretext for this cynical and outrageous campaign was the supposedly “unhealthy” size of the Roma population. Although constituting one of the largest Roma cohorts in East Europe, the Czechoslovak Gypsies accounted for less than 2 percent of the country’s population by 1980.
More backward and destitute than relatively industrialized Czechoslovakia, and with only a minuscule prewar Communist Party, overwhelmingly rural Romania was far less hospitable to its Roma citizens. As early as the 12th century, Gypsies began to arrive in what would become the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, regions that would eventually form part of modern Romania. By the late 14th century, Gypsy families had become enslaved to local monasteries, inaugurating a centuries-long descent into slavery that would come to an end only in 1864. Although life improved after emancipation, the Roma remained impoverished pariahs, oppressed by boyar landowners and resented by hard-pressed peasants. The Roma also fell victim to government indifference and outright racist terror. In 1941, the dictator Ion Antonescu called for the elimination of national minorities. An ally of Nazi Germany during WWII, he oversaw the slaughter of tens of thousands of Gypsies, many of them victims of the fascist Iron Guard.
Romania under Stalinist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej pledged to respect the educational, linguistic and cultural rights of the country’s nationalities. However, education remained elusive for large swaths of the Gypsy population, despite their increasing urbanization. While some 43 percent of Roma over the age of eight were enrolled in primary schools in 1956, schooling beyond that level was negligible. By 1966, only one Romanian Gypsy attended a university!
In the 1950s and ’60s, the Gheorghiu-Dej regime took some measures to address the high illiteracy rate among Gypsies. A 1983 study under the Nicolae Ceausescu government went further, defining goals for redressing the many problems besetting the Gypsy population, from illiteracy, bad housing, unemployment and crime to lack of hygiene, high rates of infant mortality and the prevalence of venereal disease, typhoid fever and tuberculosis. A special law emphasized the need to find jobs for Roma in construction and agriculture and mandated that public officials help them build homes. But under the demented Ceausescu, whose independence from the Kremlin won him the plaudits of the U.S. and other imperialist powers, the regime robbed the state of the resources necessary for housing, educating and caring for the Roma by spending billions to pay off the country’s debt to foreign bankers.
As Romania’s working people faced increasing impoverishment, the Stalinists wallowed in Romanian nationalism, with particularly dire consequences for the Roma and the Hungarian minority. In 1966, the government enacted a decree banning abortions for women under 45 who had not yet produced four children, a special blow to the poorest and largest families. In 1989, it was revealed that because of this vile policy, orphanages were overflowing with more than 100,000 children, disproportionately Roma. Ceausescu’s regime also carried out forced resettlements. While mainly targeting the Hungarian population, this policy led to the destruction of entire Gypsy neighborhoods, forcibly resettling their inhabitants in large apartment buildings frequently located in urban ghettos.
As the Hungarian Roma expert István Kemény remarked, the Roma had been integrated in a certain sense by the early 1970s, but “at the very bottom of the social hierarchy” (cited in Crowe, A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia). To one degree or another, this statement aptly describes the position of Roma throughout the degenerated and deformed workers states.
Counterrevolution: Catastrophe for Workers, Minorities
The Stalinist regimes’ sporadic and contradictory efforts to assimilate the Roma and foster a climate of full equality ran aground amid material shortages and economic dislocations. These maladies themselves stemmed from the relatively low productivity of the bureaucratically ruled workers states and their hostile encirclement by the economically more powerful imperialist countries. When the terminal crisis of Stalinism in East and Central Europe struck in 1989-92, the International Communist League fought, to the best of our ability and resources, to forge the revolutionary parties needed to win the battle against capitalist counterrevolution and for proletarian political revolution against the disintegrating bureaucracies. However, the workers, whose consciousness had been poisoned by decades of Stalinist misrule, failed to act decisively against counterrevolution, leading to the overthrow of those workers states.
During our interventions into the events in East Germany and the Soviet Union, we warned repeatedly that capitalist restoration would revive all the old crap of social reaction against women, Jews, immigrants, ethnic minorities and oppressed nationalities. In 1990, skinhead fascists began to target Gypsies and Vietnamese immigrant workers in Czechoslovakia. In Romania following the overthrow and execution of Ceausescu in December 1989, anti-Gypsy pogroms became the order of the day. With the government and the media in the forefront, Romania’s Roma were labeled “a social sore” and “the dregs of society,” echoing Hitler’s ravings against the Jews.
Bereft of a revolutionary leadership, many workers were susceptible to such poison. In “East Europe: Reaction and Resistance” (WV No. 505, 29 June 1990), we reported a mass mobilization of Romanian miners that put down counterrevolutionaries in Bucharest, after which some miners infected by venomous racism went on to attack Gypsy quarters.
From the Balkans to the Baltics and in Russia itself, the nationalist torrent that helped destroy the workers states reached a bloody apex in the aftermath of that defeat. Everywhere, the Roma were hounded, attacked and forced to flee for their lives. As Isabel Fonseca noted in her 1995 book, Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey: “The most dramatic change for Central and East European Gypsies since the revolutions of 1989 has been the sharp escalation of hatred and violence directed at them. There have been more than thirty-five serious attacks on settlements in Romania alone, mainly in remote rural areas, and mostly in the form of burnings and beatings.” Not surprisingly, several Roma who spoke to Fonseca in the town of Constanta in 1991 looked back favorably on life under Ceausescu.
The wave of violence, combined with intense Roma poverty, forced tens of thousands to flee to Germany. Once there, the desperate Roma were set upon by howling neo-Nazi gangs, who burned down their hostels as police watched. The government of reunited capitalist Germany went on to sign an agreement with Romania in September 1992 to deport Romanians—primarily Roma—back to their homeland.
In an article in Women and Revolution No. 38 (Winter 1990-91) titled “Fourth Reich Racism Targets Immigrants—Stop Persecution of Gypsies!” we sounded the alarm that the Roma “are fleeing Eastern Europe in fear of their lives.” The article went on:
“They are the No. 1 victims of the torrent of all-sided murderous racism engulfing Eastern Europe with the collapse of the Stalinist regimes and the plunge into an uncontrolled market economy. Bourgeois ideologues hail the ‘death of Communism,’ but with the return of capitalist exploitation has come the resurrection of all the nationalist, anti-Semitic, anti-Communist murderous scum which dominated the region before the victory of the Red Army in 1945.”
For the Socialist United States of Europe!
The ICL fought to the last to defend the gains of the October Revolution against capitalist restoration. In contrast, virtually all of our leftist opponents fell over themselves to support the forces of counterrevolution in the name of “democracy,” “freedom” or “national independence.” Today, some of these groups complain that the Roma are mistreated in post-counterrevolution Europe. A case in point is Sozialistische Alternative (SAV), German section of Peter Taaffe’s Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), to which Socialist Alternative in the U.S. belongs. In the second part of an article on the Roma in sozialismus.info (4 February 2013), SAV writes about the period following capitalist restoration in East Europe:
“For the most part, Roma were the first to be laid off because they were generally more poorly educated and had a lower level of education. Most Roma received nothing from the blessings of capitalism and were therefore among the first and biggest losers of the transformation. Out of need, many thus increasingly turned again to their family structures. That there are Roma who have to collect garbage or engage in crime to maintain themselves is not their fault. No, it is the fault of the capitalist economic system, which proves incapable of guaranteeing them a suitable standard of living.”
One would never know from these lofty truisms that the CWI’s Russian affiliate stood on Boris Yeltsin’s barricades in 1991 as this U.S.-backed counterrevolutionary led the final assault on the workers state that had issued out of the October Revolution. Or that the CWI’s sections have helped fan the flames of racist bigotry on their home turf. In 2009, the British Taaffeites played a prominent role in a reactionary construction workers strike at the Lindsey oil refinery against the hiring of workers from elsewhere in the EU. Captured in the slogan “British jobs for British workers,” which was wielded during the strike, this poison is now being dished out especially at Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants, including many Roma.
As the Spartacist League/Britain reports in “EU Austerity Fuels Racism: Irish State Abductions of Roma Children” (Workers Hammer No. 225, Winter 2013-2014), previous restrictions on the types of jobs that Bulgarian and Romanian citizens could take in Britain, where as EU citizens they could visit visa-free, expired as of January 1. As this deadline approached, the Tory-led government rammed through a host of measures restricting the rights of Bulgarians and Romanians to claim unemployment and housing benefits. The Labour Party, which had authored the job restrictions, responded that these racist measures came too late!
The rulers of EU heavyweights Germany and France, together with those of dependent countries like Greece that are chafing under the imperialist bankers’ dictates, use the Roma and other desperate immigrants as scapegoats for the mass unemployment, austerity, poverty and other ills generated by the capitalist system itself. Only the overthrow of capitalist rule through workers revolution can rid the continent of these evils, paving the way for a Socialist United States of Europe in which all peoples will have a free and equal place.
To achieve this goal, the ICL fights to build revolutionary internationalist workers parties whose mission is to instill in the proletariat the consciousness that it is the historic gravedigger of the capitalist system. As Lenin wrote in What Is To Be Done? (1902), revolutionary socialists must act as “the tribune of the people,…able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects;…able to generalize all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation…in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.” As vicious state repression and pogromist attacks sweep Europe, defense of the Roma and all immigrants is a key immediate task of the workers movement.
The World We’re In By Mumia Abu-Jamal





Workers Vanguard No. 1037
 
























10 January 2014
 
 
(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)
The following commentary dated 21 November 2013 was read at the Holiday Appeal event for class-war prisoners in New York City, December 15.
Who believed that the world that we see before us would be here, like this, when the last 2 elections were held?
OK—perhaps some of you had a clue. But for most of us, deep down, we believed we were on the brink of epic change. We thought that the social problems gnawing at the community, joblessness, the immense and monstrous mass incarceration system, homelessness, and the serious social problems of schools would be—well, at the very least, addressed.
That they are not honestly on the agenda is shocking. Shocking.
We learned, slowly, over time, that the color, complexion, or ethnicity of those in power are largely of no import: their ideas/ideals/beliefs are.
I know that this wasn’t widely articulated; but I also know and sense that it was felt.
The feeling of mass depression, of betrayal in the Black community is actually quite profound.
Oh, I don’t mean of the well-to-do, the moneyed, or the petit-bourgeoisie, but among the poor, the working classes, the average folks.
They feel like they were played.
But we know that this is the very essence of politics—this is the way things go—especially in capitalist societies.
This has been the practice since the American Revolution—a revolution that actually—perhaps for the first time in history—benefited the gentry, the wealthy, the ruling classes. This Revolution waged in the name of ‘freedom,’ was marked by the explosion of the slavery system, unbridled invasions of Indian lands west of the Appalachian Mountains, and the resurrection of the new rulers—American aristocrats, in the place of the British.
They used their media, their priests and their sycophants to sell their revolution, while living in, and trying to preserve one of the most unequal societies on earth (especially for Africans!).
This shows us the value of groups like the PDC. They question. They challenge. They protest the powers that be.
We should all learn a lesson from these recent experiences, if only to know, deep in our bones, that for the capitalists, ‘change’ only refers to what you get when you try to break a dollar.
Thank you all, once again, for helping my boy, Jamal,
Ona Move! Long Live John Africa!
 
Mumia Abu-Jamal
©2013 Mumia Abu-Jamal
HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT-Honor An Historic Leader Of The American Left-James P. Cannon
 
 
 
 EVERY JANUARY WE HONOR LENIN OF RUSSIA, ROSA LUXEMBURG OF POLAND, AND KARL LIEBKNECHT OF GERMANY AS THREE LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT. DURING THE MONTH WE ALSO HONOR OTHER HISTORIC LEADERS AS WELL ON THIS SITE.
 
Markin comment on founding member James P. Cannon and the early American Communist Party taken from a book review on the “American Left History” blog:
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.
At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian to today’s militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American socialist revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.
For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party.
These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates ;trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal disputes in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the late 1920’s that he became the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles in America this is mainly reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a revolution.
As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to the two-volume set by Theodore Draper - The Roots of American Communism and Soviet Russia and American Communism- the definitive study on the early history of the American Communist Party. It is also a useful companion to Cannon’s own The First Ten Years of American Communism. I would add that this is something of a labor of love on the part of the editors. This book was published at a time when the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was in full swing and anything related to Communist studies was deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America. Now is the time to study this history.
PDC Holiday Appeal: Greetings from the Class-War Prisoners


Workers Vanguard No. 1037
10 January 2014
 
 
(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)
 
The Partisan Defense Committee held its 28th annual Holiday Appeal events in December to raise funds for monthly stipends and holiday gifts to class-war prisoners and their families. At the December 15 event in Chicago, Spartacist League spokesman Patricia Kepler explained how the Holiday Appeal is an elementary act of solidarity: “We are here today to honor those who have been thrown behind bars, framed up, tortured by this country’s many governments—Republican and Democrat—for the simple reason that they stood up, spoke up and fought against the crimes of U.S. imperialism at home and abroad. Their fight is our fight.” She continued: “Although many look to the Democratic Party as a lesser evil, the simple fact is that Obama has done the job that the main body of the ruling class selected him for: overseer for the capitalist profit system that criminalizes young black men and chews up working people, spitting them out when their labor is no longer needed.”
In Chicago, the audience heard a recorded greeting from Alex Stuck, who had just been released from prison. He is one of the Tinley Park 5, a group of anti-racist militants thrown into prison for dispersing a meeting of fascists outside Chicago in May 2012. They are the most recent additions to the stipend program. In his greeting, Stuck stressed the importance to prisoners of knowing that there are people on the outside fighting for them:
“I remember while I was locked up I was reading a book. It was fiction, but it mentioned something about this French word called les oubliettes. Apparently the translation means ‘a forgetting place,’ and that’s what they call their French prisons. While I was locked up, I ran into a lot of people who had either severed their ties or just didn’t have any family, and that is exactly why the prison is a ‘forgetting place’.”
In his remarks at the Chicago event, SEIU Local 73 chief steward Joe Iosbaker of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression thanked the PDC for the support he received when he was targeted by the FBI in a series of raids against leftist and labor activists in 2010.
In New York City on December 15, Ralph Poynter read greetings from his wife, radical lawyer Lynne Stewart (see article on page 12 about Stewart’s subsequent release from prison). Stewart’s greetings conveyed the deep sense of human solidarity that continued to drive her under even the most inhumane conditions. She wrote that with her monthly stipend, she was able to purchase books and, after finishing them, put them into “circulation” for other inmates. Stewart has also used the stipend to help other imprisoned women without resources, providing them with coffee, peanut butter and shampoo. She noted: “I remember back to the days when I was out there and also understand that the people who find themselves put behind bars by a cunning government with evil aforethought, are the same as you and me. I understand that even better now.”
In her message, Stewart demanded freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther Party spokesman and well-known MOVE supporter who was framed up for the killing of a policeman in Philadelphia in 1981. While Mumia was taken off death row in 2011, he remains in prison with no chance of parole despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence. The fight for Mumia’s freedom has been at the forefront of the PDC’s work since the late 1980s.
Many of the other PDC stipend recipients have been in prison for decades as their demands for parole or release are repeatedly denied. Hugo Pinell is the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison. Jaan Laaman and Tom Manning were imprisoned for their roles in the Ohio 7, a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings against symbols of U.S. imperialism in the late 1970s and 1980s. Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, former Black Panther supporters, were framed up as part of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation in which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed. Leonard Peltier was incarcerated for his activism in the American Indian Movement.
The PDC also sends stipends to the remaining eight members of the MOVE commune who were framed up on conspiracy and murder charges after a vicious police assault on their home in Philadelphia’s Powelton Village in August 1978. In WV No. 1034 (15 November 2013), we reviewed the film Let the Fire Burn, a powerful documentary on the bombing of MOVE’s Osage Avenue commune in May 1985. Orchestrated by black Democratic mayor Wilson Goode along with federal agencies, this act of racist state terror incinerated eleven people, including five children, and reduced an entire city block in the black working-class neighborhood to ashes.
We appreciate the many letters and greetings to the events received from the prisoners, which are displayed at the Holiday Appeals for attendees to read. We print selections from the prisoners’ letters and greetings here.
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Jaan Laaman
26 November 2013
When the PDC states that, “the principle of non-sectarian class struggle defense guides their work...,” I can firmly tell you, this is exactly what they do. Even as a relatively small organization, they are consistent and determined in their solidarity and support.
A recent Workers Vanguard article quoted James Cannon, a leader of the historic International Labor Defense, on which the PDC is modeled, saying, “The procession that goes in and out of the prison doors is not a new one. It is the result of an old struggle under new forms and under new conditions. All through history those who have fought against oppression have constantly been faced with the dungeon of a ruling class.”... But the boot heel of U.S. imperialist repression stomps on. We now have fellow class war prisoners, like our sister Lynne Stewart, who is actually dying, as we speak, in a federal prison cell in Texas. We also have the Tinley Park 5, young anti-racist activists, who just this year were hit with prison sentences. So the work of the PDC, and people like yourself, is as important and necessary as ever. And we, the political prisoners, welcome and encourage your support and the continuing solid and vital work of the Partisan Defense Committee.
In these yearly messages, I often say, I wish I was sitting there next to you right now, participating in this event. As these prison years wear on, I’m not so certain I will finally get there, but you can be very sure, I will be joining all of you in solidarity and spirit at each of these events.
Finally, let me remind everyone that to find out a lot more about U.S. political prisoners, and our thoughts on developing events and struggle around the world, check out 4strugglemag.org. Issue #23 is just out and as usual, 4SM is also published as a hard copy magazine.
Have a great event!
Red Season’s Greetings to all of you, your families and close people.
Hugo Pinell
18 November 2013
Much love and justice to you. You know the short version of my story; 49 years in prison, 44 years straight in solitary confinement, 43 years without a contact visit, 32 years without a disciplinary infraction, and eligible for parole since 1985, but I am in here, still, and awaiting for my 10th parole hearing to be completed in April of 2014. All of this on my new sentence of 9 years for assault in the San Quentin 6 case (1971-76). Four of them were released in 1976 and the other in 1987, but I am here, still.
Some of you have been with me for 27 years now and this is what I want to talk to you about. I am here, still, and I’ll resist relentlessly, but I am very much alive, healthy of body, mind, emotions and spirits, humanly functionable in a freedom capacity, thanks to your sincere love, care and support, for all of these years.
Michael Davis Africa
13 November 2013
On the MOVE!
With so much suffering and misery caused by this government sanctioned repression, with so much terror and murder inflicted globally by the ghouls who head heartless corporations bent on hegemony (using likewise greedy flunky politicians to disguise their theft), and experiencing first hand the heinous tactics used by their agents of repression in an attempt to intimidate or stop folks from resisting. It is truly a powerful lesson being sent to the authors of that terror that there will always be a force of the people that will never stop resisting, no matter how big their threats, or how vile their tactics.
And it feels good to share a space filled with resistance, applauding its advances, never doubting its outcome. Fully understanding that when subjugation is the aim of those who call themselves leaders, no other option exists.
Warmest greetings to all in the fight for the freedom of the people, freedom of the planet, from those who would make us all slaves.
Long Live Revolution!
Long Live John Africa!
Ed Poindexter
5 December 2013
On behalf of Mondowelanga and myself, we extend our heartfelt thanks to all of our supporters. The financial support, in particular, has been very helpful to us, as we’re both disabled, yet continue to struggle on by not allowing a single opportunity to pass to “deliver the word.” Further, seasons greetings to all!
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We urge WV readers to support the work of the Partisan Defense Committee by becoming a sustaining contributor or by sending money earmarked for the Holiday Appeal stipend fund. Contributions can be sent to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013. For more information about the class-war prisoners, including addresses for correspondence, see: www.partisandefense.org/stipend.html.
Defiant Lynne Stewart Finally Released



Workers Vanguard No. 1037
10 January 2014
 
 
 
On December 31, leftist attorney Lynne Stewart finally left behind her the prison walls that have been “home” for the past four years after her frame-up conviction in a “war on terror” show trial. Terminally ill with Stage IV breast cancer, the 74-year-old Stewart walked out of the Federal Medical Center Carswell, a women’s prison hospital in Texas, and flew home to New York City, where she was greeted by family and friends. This brought to a close her months-long fight for the right to die at home surrounded by loved ones, a demand supported by more than 40,000 petitioners worldwide.
After months of obstruction, the Justice Department finally allowed U.S. District Judge John Koeltl, Stewart’s trial judge, to order her release on the grounds of her “terminal medical condition and very limited life expectancy.” The relief of Stewart’s supporters is tinged with the bitter knowledge that federal authorities had vindictively prolonged her imprisonment knowing her terminal condition. In fact, from the working-class point of view, this partisan of the downtrodden and oppressed should not have spent a single day behind bars.
In 2005, Stewart was convicted of giving material support to terrorism when representing blind Egyptian Islamic fundamentalist cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. The purported “material support” was to communicate her client’s views to Reuters news service. Her Arabic translator Mohamed Yousry and paralegal Ahmed Abdel Sattar were also convicted. These watershed convictions gave the capitalist government a green light to prosecute lawyers as co-consipirators of their clients—a frontal attack on the right to counsel enunciated in the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment. Originally sentenced to 28 months in prison, Stewart was resentenced in 2010 to ten years at the instigation of the Obama administration.
An unbowed proponent of 1960s New Left radicalism, Stewart dedicated her adult life to keeping Black Panthers, militant leftists and others reviled by the capitalist state out of the clutches of its prison system. As she wrote in a message to the New York City gathering of the Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal for class-war prisoners last month, among her clients were Jaan Laaman and Tom Manning of the Ohio 7 (see article on page 3). When Stewart ultimately found herself walking in the same shoes, she embraced that role without blinking. And her incarceration did not break her in the least. When she arrived at LaGuardia airport, she told her supporters, “I’m going to work for women’s group prisoners and for political prisoners.”
The Spartacist League and PDC have stood by Stewart and her codefendants from the beginning, despite our differing political outlooks, and have fought to publicize her case in the broader workers movement. This is an expression of non-sectarian, class-struggle defense of cases that are in the interests of the entire working people. The government’s barbarous treatment of this individual, whose “crime” was to zealously fight in the courts to uphold the rights of the oppressed that are purportedly sanctified in the Constitution, is itself an indictment of the class bias of American bourgeois justice. For champions of Stewart’s defense and that of all the class-war prisoners, let this be a clarion call to join the fight to mobilize the multiracial working class to sweep away the entire system of capitalist exploitation and oppression—and the “justice” system that enshrines it—through socialist revolution.