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Friday, August 15, 2014
To our Soldier’s Heart community:
Hands Off The Ferguson, Missouri
Protestors-Stop The Police Killings Of Black Youth-Stop The Harassment Of The
Press- Free All Protestors Now!
Frank Jackman comment:
It has always been easy for the
American imperialist capitalist government and their police to treat black
youth, especially black males and increasing Latinos like they have treated the
peoples of Southeast Asia in the past, and in Iraq and Afghanistan more
recently as so much collateral damage when they pulled the hammer down. The black and Latino ghettos and barrios are not "free-fire zones," (as the photo below shows we are not far from a common Baghdad scene when U.S. troops were on the loose.)
Trayvon
Martin, Michael Brown, and a myriad of others shot down over the years by the
police and/or vigilantes cry out for justice in Ferguson, Missouri this day and
will not accept another police whitewash.
**********Thousands Rally in Times Square for Michael Brown, Unarmed Missouri Teen Killed by Police
By Ida Siegal
Thousands of demonstrators flooded into Times Square Thursday evening in protest of the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black 18-year-old shot and killed by a white police officer outside St. Louis. Ida Siegal reports
Friday, Aug 15, 2014 • Updated at 7:23 AM EDT
Thousands of demonstrators flooded Times Square Thursday evening to protest of the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old shot and killed by a police officer outside St. Louis, Missouri.
Demonstrators carried banners and marched down busy midtown streets yelling, "Hands up, don't shoot" -- the cry protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, have taken up in the days since Brown's fatal encounter with officers -- as they joined in with protesters in 100 other U.S. cities.
The Times Square rally followed a smaller gathering in Union Square where demonstrators observed a moment of silence at 7:20 p.m. in unison with demonstrators in other cities. Part of the group in Times Square marched uptown from the Union Square vigil.
Dramatic Photos: Michael Brown Police Shooting
![[NATL] Dramatic Photos: Growing Unrest After Michael Brown Police Shooting](http://media.nbcnewyork.com/images/620*349/edtAP615940717223_1+copy.jpg)
Protesters said the rallies are a show of solidarity with Ferguson and a condemnation of they say is an epidemic of police brutality against black men, evidenced also in the deaths of Staten Islander Eric Garner in July and Sean Bell, who was shot 50 times by police in a confrontation in Queens in 2006.
Thursday, August 14, 2014
No New U.S. War In Iraq- Immediate Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops And Mercenaries! Stop The Bombing! –Stop The Arms Shipments …
Frank Jackman comment:
As the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, U.S. President Barack Obama, orders more air bombing strikes in the North, sends more “advisers” to “protect” American outposts in Iraq, and sends arms shipments to the Kurds guys who served in the American military during the Vietnam War and who, like me, belatedly, got “religion” on the war issue might very well be excused for disbelief when the White House keeps pounding out the propaganda that these actions are limited when all signs point to the slippery slope of escalation. Now not every event in history gets exactly repeated but given the recent United States Government’s history in Iraq those vets might be on to something. In any case dust off the old banners, placards, and buttons and get your voices in shape- just in case.
************
Here is something to think about:
Workers and the oppressed have no
interest in a victory by one combatant or the other in the reactionary
Sunni-Shi’ite civil war. However, the international working class definitely has
a side in opposing imperialist intervention in Iraq and demanding the immediate
withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries. It is U.S. imperialism that
constitutes the greatest danger to the world’s working people and downtrodden.
The Courage
To Resist –All Honor To The Heroic Israeli Draft Resisters And Soldier Who Have
Refused To Take Part In The Bloodbath In Gaza
Frank Jackman
comment:
A number of
members of Veterans For Peace, an organization of veterans of the American
government’s imperial adventures, now made up mostly of Vietnam War veterans as
veterans of earlier wars pass on but increasingly veterans of the Iraq and Afghan
campaigns, learned the hard way, and too late, like myself, that one could
refuse to comply with the government draft and military campaign orders. We
have come to appreciate the great courage that it takes to buck one’s government,
one’s neighbors, one’s friends when the war drums beat out the marching orders
and you are expected to join in lockstep. We salute those brothers and sisters in
Israel who have either refused induction in the military or have refused to take
part in the bloodbath in Gaza. One day when we live in a more peaceful world
those sacrifices will find a well-deserved place of honor. Presente!!!
*************
Comment: Rory Fanning
The courage to refuse
August 12, 2014
, a conscientious objector and author of the forthcoming Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger's Journey Out of the Military and Across America, reports on resistance within the Israeli military, in an article written for Truthout.
IDF refusnik Udi SegalTHE NUMBERS are small, but there are Israeli military resisters actively fighting the occupation of Palestine within the borders of Israel. These draft-age teenagers face enormous pressure from their government, family and peers to perpetuate state racism and the siege of the Occupied Territories. Despite the pressure, these brave Israelis adhere to their conscience and stand for justice in a society that increasingly rejects it.
In addition to supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestine from outside Israel involves standing in solidarity with those Israelis who find the courage to say, "I refuse." It is also the responsibility of U.S. conscientious objectors like myself to see the struggle of Israeli military resisters as part of our own struggle against U.S. imperialism here at home.
Udi Segal, a 19-year-old Israeli from Kibbutz Tuval in north Israel, was sent to jail last week for refusing to enlist in the Israeli military. Segal is tall and skinny, with intense, blue eyes and a long angular face. In an interview with +972 Magazine, his last before being sent to jail, he appeared composed and resolute in his decision, despite his confessed fear of his imminent jail sentence.
"We are using refusal as a tool against the occupation, to end the occupation," Segal said. He was referring to 50 other sarvanim--Hebrew for "refuseniks"--who are members of the group Breaking the Silence, and who wrote a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in early March 2014. In the letter, they expressed their collective "opposition to the military occupation of Palestinian territories," where "human rights are violated, and acts defined under international law as war-crimes are perpetuated on a daily basis." There are now over 130 signatories to the letter, according to Segal.
Segel revealed more about his decision in a prior interview, where he said he refuses to serve not only because of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but because the military supports a nationalist and capitalist system which benefits only a few at the expense of the majority. Segel called on other "soldiers and reservists to refuse orders and not participate in the massacre."
Segal went to a mixed Jewish-Palestinian grade school and Israeli public high school. He said the transition from grade school to high school was difficult. His high school in Kibbutz Tuval has one of the highest percentages of graduates in the country who go on to enlist as combat troops in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). His decision to refuse service was met with silence by his friends and harassment by his peers.
When asked how he felt about conscientiously objecting during Operation Protective Edge, Segal said, "I think that in these times, as the government and the media attempt to silence any critical voice that deviates even slightly from the belligerent mainstream, I think now, specifically, it is important not only to refuse, but to act against the occupation. Especially now when the destructive results of the occupation can be seen on TV right before our eyes."
According to +972 Magazine, when Segal reported to the draft office to declare his intentions, he was greeted by chants: "Go to Gaza! You're all traitors! Gaza is a cemetery! Go get f**ked in the a**!" He was also told that this was his "gay coming out party," and was called a "son of a whore," in front of his mother who was there with him. This response to Segal is revealing, particularly in light of Israel's claims that it is a "haven for the LGBTQ community."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ISRAEL REQUIRES all citizens with the exceptions of Palestinians and Orthodox Jewish women to serve in the IDF. Men are required to serve three years, and women must serve two. Like the conscription requirements during the Vietnam era in the U.S., Israelis can dodge the draft if they are enrolled in higher education.
Refuseniks are rare in Israel: There are only a handful each year, which is a testament to the high levels of propaganda Israelis are fed and the pressure they face to defend militarism in a country with a mandatory draft. Yonatan Shapira, a former Israeli captain and Air Force pilot, was one of the organizers of a 2003 letter signed by 27 Air Force pilots who refused to participate in Israeli military operations against Palestinians. In an interview with Democracy Now! Shapira said:
Today, we are a minority of a minority of activists in Israel. Of course there are more and more people, but we are still a very, very small minority. We have people that are going to jail. I have a friend who is going to jail for refusing to enlist with the army...But overall, there is a disease in my country, and the disease is spreading very fast, and it's called fascism and racism. Fascism and racism is now the biggest threat of the Jewish people in the Middle East.The Israeli government distinguishes between pacifists who reject the use of force for any reason and those with "selective conscience," or those who specifically refuse to fight because of the occupation in Palestine. The latter are treated much more severely and are more likely to receive a prison sentence.
We know that not all war resisters come to full consciousness of war, empire and occupation--which is why we should stand with all who resist war in the name of peace and justice, even as they sort out their sometimes contradictory rationales. Nevertheless, we can glean much from the way Israel distinguishes between mere pacifists and resisters who vocally oppose the occupation of Palestine in solidarity with the occupied.
Uriel Ferera, a 19-year-old student and social activist, with Orthodox sidelocks dangling below his ears, was jailed in May for refusing to enlist because of his objection to Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
After being released from prison (he expects to be sent back again soon) Ferera said:
Prison was difficult for me. They isolated me. The other prisoners didn't know why I was in here, and I didn't receive any letters--they probably didn't want me to know about all the support on the outside.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I didn't want to put on a [prison] uniform even though they yelled at me for "putting on a show." I couldn't stand up and began shaking; the only thing I could do was pray and recite from the Book of Psalms by heart. Despite everything, I didn't stop praying. They laughed at me. They claimed that God won't hear me because he was too busy to get me out of there. There I realized that if they are able to humiliate a Jewish person like them, one can only imagine what they do to Palestinian teenagers in the occupied territories.
THERE ARE a few organizations in Israel that support such refusers: New Profile is a leading organization and movement of feminists inside Israel struggling to demilitarize the country and end the occupation of Palestine. The group was formed following the second intifada in 2000, when 500 Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel stood united on the Wadi Road, where only a few weeks prior Israeli soldiers killed a group of Palestinians. The group of feminists marched despite warnings from Israeli officials who claimed the area was dangerous. Not a single Hebrew or English-language media outlet covered the protest. Through 2006, the group organized at least a dozen marches where thousands of Israelis and Palestinians took to the streets to protest the occupation and militarized Israel. The media turned a blind eye to every march.
In Israel, the most vocal critics of the occupation have been feminists. New Profile realizes that liberating women in a militarized Israeli society is directly connected to the liberation of all Palestinians. Thus women aspiring to refuse conscription turn to New Profile to gain the confidence to move forward with their decision. You can support and learn more about the group here.
Yesh Gvul was established in 1982 in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. According to their website, Yesh Gvul was created as a result of "growing numbers of soldiers [who] grasped that the campaign, with its bloodshed and havoc, was an act of naked and futile aggression in which they wanted no part." In 1982, 168 Israelis were jailed for refusing to invade Lebanon. The actual number of refusals was much greater, but the Israeli government hid these numbers out of fear of giving the resisters a platform that would inspire other Israelis to reject military service.
Yesh Gvul counsels soldiers who are struggling with the possibility of becoming a war resister. Those who do conscientiously object get moral and financial support. The group also holds vigils at the military prisons where the soldiers are held. On their Facebook page, they report on the often-muted stories of draft age Israeli men and women who reject service in the IDF.
Courage to Refuse is another Israeli organization that supports military resisters. The group was formed in 2002 after 51 soldiers and reserve officers drafted a letter that decried the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The letter was run in the Israeli daily Haaretz and would become known as "The Combatants Letter." By 2005, the number of signatories of "The Combatants Letter" had reached over 600. The founders of the group said they would always refuse to participate in any military action outside of the borders that existed prior to the 1967 Six-Day War. "We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people. We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel's defense. The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose--and we shall take no part in them."
Breaking the Silence, the organization that drafted the letter that Udi Segal signed, also supports Israeli military resisters. The members of this group served in the Israeli military since the start of the second intifada in 2000. Their mission is to explain the brutal conditions the Palestinians are living under in the occupied territories, conditions the soldiers have witnessed firsthand, to the Israeli public. They have over 100,000 followers on Facebook.
The U.S. government subsidizes the Israeli military with more than $3 billon in aid each year. The occupation of Palestine and the recent massacres in Gaza would not be possible without U.S. support. As a former member of the U.S. Army Rangers, I can personally attest that the U.S. military trains with and greatly admires Israeli soldiers. Israeli soldiers have gotten so good at door-to-door combat that the U.S. military flies troops to Israel to learn from soldiers in the IDF.
We know that ending war is possible. The Vietnam War came to an end as a result of the anti-war movement at home and abroad, the resistance of the Vietnamese, and U.S. soldiers refusing to fight. As we struggle to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine we look to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and the resistance inside Palestine. What we need is large numbers of Israeli soldiers to put down their weapons the way U.S. soldiers eventually did in Vietnam. This is why we should raise up and support the small minority of Israelis who do resist.
U.S. soldiers who oppose occupation and colonialism, and stand for human rights and self-determination, should refuse to train with Israeli soldiers. There needs to be a broader realization that the occupation of Palestine in Israel is much the same as the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan or Iraq. If we hope to stop these horrific massacres, endless occupations and the slow death of those living in occupied territories and countries, we must join together with Israeli soldiers who refuse to fight.
First published at Truthout.
In The 74th Anniversary Year Of The Assassination Of Great Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky A Tribute- DEFEATED, BUT UNBOWED-THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1929-1940
LEON TROTSKY AND THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, PART I
BOOK REVIEW
THE CHALLENGE OF THE LEFT OPPOSITION (1923-25), LEON TROTSKY, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1975
If you are interested in the history of the International Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of the writings of Leon Trotsky, Russian Bolshevik leader, from the start in 1923 of the Left Opposition in the Russian Communist Party that he led through his various exiles up until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space) Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by this important world communist leader.
Since the volumes in the series cover a long period of time and contain some material that , while of interest, is either historically dated or more fully developed in Trotsky’s other separately published major writings I am going to organize this series of reviews in this way. By way of introduction I will give a brief summary of the events of the time period of each volume. Then I will review what I believe is the central document of each volume. The reader can then decide for him or herself whether my choice was informative or not.
Although there were earlier signs that the Russia revolution was going off course the long illness and death of Lenin in 1924, at the time the only truly authoritative leader the Bolshevik party, set off a power struggle in the leadership of the party. This fight had Trotsky and the ‘pretty boy’ intellectuals of the party on one side and Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev (the so-called triumvirate).backed by the ‘gray boys’ of the emerging bureaucracy on the other. This struggle occurred against the backdrop of the failed revolution in Germany in 1923 and which thereafter heralded the continued isolation, imperialist blockade and economic backwardness of the Soviet Union for the foreseeable future.
While the disputes in the Russian party eventually had international ramifications in the Communist International, they were at this time fought out almost solely with the Russian Party. Trotsky was slow, very slow to take up the battle for power that had become obvious to many elements in the party. He made many mistakes and granted too many concessions to the trio. But he did fight. Although later (in 1935) Trotsky recognized that the 1923 fight represented a fight against the Russian Thermidor (from an analogy with the period of the French Revolution where the radical regime of Robespierre and Saint Just was overthrown by more moderate Jacobins) and thus a decisive turning point for the revolution that was not clear to him (or anyone else on either side) then. Whatever the appropriate analogy might have been Leon Trotsky was in fact fighting a last ditch effort to retard the further degeneration of the revolution. After that defeat, the way the Soviet Union was ruled, who ruled and for what purposes all changed. And not for the better.
The most important document in this volume is clearly and definitely Trotsky’s Lessons of October. Although there are a couple of other documents of interest- The New Course, his program to try to bring the agrarian and the industrial crisis into focus-and The Problems of Civil War- Trotsky’s contribution to the so-called “literary discussion” in the party far outdistances those documents in importance. When this document hit the press there was definitely gnashing of teeth by the ruling trio in the Kremlin- Why? Lessons of October is essentially a polemic against fainted-hearted, opportunist failure to appreciate both the rarity of a revolutionary moment and the necessity to have a sharp combat- tested organization to take advantage of that situation. Moreover, this polemic was a direct attack on Zinoviev and Kamenev for their position against insurrection at the time of revolution and on Stalin’s March, 1917 call for political support to the bourgeois Provisional Government.
George Bernard Shaw once called Trotsky the “Prince of Pamphleteers” and he certainly earns that title in Lessons of October. Alas, those who write the best polemics do not necessarily win the power. Those 200,000 plus politically immature or careerist new party members beholding to the increasingly Stalinist bureaucracy drafted under the “Lenin Levy” saw the writing on the wall differently. That was decisive. Nevertheless, Lessons of October is not just any political document- it is an essential document for the education of today’s militants. It bears reading, re-reading, and reading again. I know I always get something new out of it each time I read it.
*************
LEON TROTSKY AND THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, PART I
BOOK REVIEW
THE CHALLENGE OF THE LEFT OPPOSITION (1923-25), LEON TROTSKY, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1975
If you are interested in the history of the International Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of the writings of Leon Trotsky, Russian Bolshevik leader, from the start in 1923 of the Left Opposition in the Russian Communist Party that he led through his various exiles up until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space) Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by this important world communist leader.
Since the volumes in the series cover a long period of time and contain some material that , while of interest, is either historically dated or more fully developed in Trotsky’s other separately published major writings I am going to organize this series of reviews in this way. By way of introduction I will give a brief summary of the events of the time period of each volume. Then I will review what I believe is the central document of each volume. The reader can then decide for him or herself whether my choice was informative or not.
Although there were earlier signs that the Russia revolution was going off course the long illness and death of Lenin in 1924, at the time the only truly authoritative leader the Bolshevik party, set off a power struggle in the leadership of the party. This fight had Trotsky and the ‘pretty boy’ intellectuals of the party on one side and Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev (the so-called triumvirate).backed by the ‘gray boys’ of the emerging bureaucracy on the other. This struggle occurred against the backdrop of the failed revolution in Germany in 1923 and which thereafter heralded the continued isolation, imperialist blockade and economic backwardness of the Soviet Union for the foreseeable future.
While the disputes in the Russian party eventually had international ramifications in the Communist International, they were at this time fought out almost solely with the Russian Party. Trotsky was slow, very slow to take up the battle for power that had become obvious to many elements in the party. He made many mistakes and granted too many concessions to the trio. But he did fight. Although later (in 1935) Trotsky recognized that the 1923 fight represented a fight against the Russian Thermidor (from an analogy with the period of the French Revolution where the radical regime of Robespierre and Saint Just was overthrown by more moderate Jacobins) and thus a decisive turning point for the revolution that was not clear to him (or anyone else on either side) then. Whatever the appropriate analogy might have been Leon Trotsky was in fact fighting a last ditch effort to retard the further degeneration of the revolution. After that defeat, the way the Soviet Union was ruled, who ruled and for what purposes all changed. And not for the better.
The most important document in this volume is clearly and definitely Trotsky’s Lessons of October. Although there are a couple of other documents of interest- The New Course, his program to try to bring the agrarian and the industrial crisis into focus-and The Problems of Civil War- Trotsky’s contribution to the so-called “literary discussion” in the party far outdistances those documents in importance. When this document hit the press there was definitely gnashing of teeth by the ruling trio in the Kremlin- Why? Lessons of October is essentially a polemic against fainted-hearted, opportunist failure to appreciate both the rarity of a revolutionary moment and the necessity to have a sharp combat- tested organization to take advantage of that situation. Moreover, this polemic was a direct attack on Zinoviev and Kamenev for their position against insurrection at the time of revolution and on Stalin’s March, 1917 call for political support to the bourgeois Provisional Government.
George Bernard Shaw once called Trotsky the “Prince of Pamphleteers” and he certainly earns that title in Lessons of October. Alas, those who write the best polemics do not necessarily win the power. Those 200,000 plus politically immature or careerist new party members beholding to the increasingly Stalinist bureaucracy drafted under the “Lenin Levy” saw the writing on the wall differently. That was decisive. Nevertheless, Lessons of October is not just any political document- it is an essential document for the education of today’s militants. It bears reading, re-reading, and reading again. I know I always get something new out of it each time I read it.
*************
In Honor Of Leon Trotsky On The 74th Anniversary
Of His Death- For Those Born After-Ivan Smirnov’s Journey
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Ivan Smirnov came out of old Odessa town, came out of the
Ukraine (not just plain Ukraine like now but “the” then), the good black earth
breadbasket of Russian Empire, well before the turn of the 20th
century (having started life on some Mister’s farm begotten by illiterate but
worthy and hard-working peasant parents who were not sure whether it was 1880
or 1881 and Mister did not keep very good records up in the manor house)
although he was strictly a 20th century man by habits and
inclinations. Fashioned himself a man of the times, as he knew it, by
developing habits favored by those who liked to consider themselves modern. Those
habits included a love of reading, a love of and for the hard-pressed peoples
facing the jack-boot (like his struggling never- get-ahead parents) under the
Czar’s vicious rule, an abiding hatred for that same Czar, a hunger to see the
world or to see something more than wheat fields, and a love of politics, what
little expression that love could take even for a modern man stuck in a
backward country.
Of course Ivan Smirnov, a giant of a man, well over six
feet, more like six, two, well-build, solid, fairly muscular, with the Russian
dark eyes and hair to match, when he came of age also loved good food when he
had the money for such luxuries, loved to drink shots of straight vodka in
competition with his pals, and loved women, and women loved him. It is those
appetites in need of whetting that consumed his young manhood, his time in
Odessa before he signed on to the Czar’s navy to see the world, or at
least brush the dust of farmland Ukraine
and provincial Odessa off his shoes as the old saying went. Those loves trumped
for a time his people love (except helping out his parents with his wages), his
love of liberty but as we follow Ivan on his travels we will come to see that
those personal loves collided more and more with those larger loves.
So as we pick up the heart, the coming of age, coming of
political age, Ivan Smirnov story, he was no kid, had been around the block a
few times. Had taken his knocks on the land of his parents (really Mister’s
land once the taxes, rents, and dues were taken out) when he tried to organize,
well, not really organize but just put a petition of grievances, including the
elimination of rack-rents to Mister which was rejected out of hand and which
forced him off the land. Forced him off under threat to his life. He never
forgot that slight, never. Never forgot it was Mister and his kind that took
him away from home, split his family up. So off he went to the city, and from
there to the Black Sea Fleet and adventure, or rather tedium mixed with
adventure and plenty of time to read.
Ivan also learned up close the why and wherefores of modern
warfare, modern naval warfare. Knew too that come some minor confrontation the
Czar’s navy was cooked. As things worked
out Ivan had been in the Russian fleet that got its ass kicked by the Japanese
in 1904 (he never called them “Nips” like lots of his crewmates did not after
that beating they took that did not have to happen if the damn Czar’s naval
officers had been anything but lackeys and anything but overconfident that they
could beat the Johnny-come-lately Japanese in the naval war game). And so Ivan
came of war age and political age all at once.
More importantly after that debacle he applied for, and had
been granted a transfer into in the Baltic fleet, the Czar’s jewel and
defending of citadel Saint Petersburg, headquartered at later famous Kronstadt when the revolution of 1905 came thundering
over their heads and each man, each sailor, each officer had to choice sides. Most
seaman had gone over the rebels or stood on the sidelines, the officers mainly
played possum with the Czar. He had gone wholehearted with rebels and while he
did not face the fate of his comrades on the Potemkin his naval career was over. That was where his love of
reading from an early age came in, came and made him aware of the boiling
kettle of political groupings trying to save Russia or to save what some class
or part of a class had an interest in saving Russia for their own purposes. He
knew, knew from his dismal experience on the land, that Mister fully intended
to keep what was his come hell or high water. He also knew that Mister’s
people, the peasantry like his family would have a very hard time, a very hard
time indeed bucking Mister’s interests and proclaiming their own right to the
land all by themselves. Hadn’t he also been burned, been hunted over a simple
petition.
So Ivan from the first dismissed the Social Revolutionary
factions and gave some thought to joining the Social Democrats. Of course being
Russians who would argue over anything from how many angels could fit on the
head of a needle to theories of capitalist surplus value that party
organization had split into two factions (maybe more when the dust settled).
When word came back from Europe he had sided with the Mensheviks and their more
realistic approach to what was possible for Russia in the early 20th
century. That basic idea of a bourgeois democratic republic was the central
notion that Ivan Smirnov held for a while, a long while, and which he took in
with him once things got hot in Saint Petersburg in January of 1905.
That January after the Czar’s troops, his elite bloody
Cossack troops in the lead, fired on (and sabre-slashed) an unarmed procession
led by a priest, damn a Russian Orthodox priest, a people’s priest who led the
icon-filled procession to petition the Czar to resolve grievances, great and
small, Ivan Smirnov, stationed out in the Baltic Fleet then after the
reorganization of the navy in the wake of the defeat by the Japanese the year
before had an intellectual crisis. He knew that great things were going to
unfold in Russia as it moved into the modern age. He could see the modern age
tied to the ancient agrarian
age every time he had leave and headed for Saint Petersburg with its sailors’
delights of which Ivan usually took his full measure. He could see in the city
within a city, the Vyborg district, the growing working-class district made up
of fresh recruits from the farms looking for higher wages, some excitement and
a future.
That was why he had
discarded the Social Revolutionaries so quickly when in an earlier generation
he might very well have been a member of People’s Will or some such
organization. No, his intellectual crisis did not come from that quarter but
rather that split in the workers’ party which had happened in 1903 far from
Russia among the émigré intellectuals around who was a party member. He had
sided with the “softs,” the Mensheviks, mainly because he liked their leader,
Julius Martov, better than Lenin. Lenin and his faction seemed more intent
on gaining organizational control, had more hair-splitters which he hated, and
were more [CL1] wary of the peasants
even though both factions swore faith in the democratic republic for Russia and
to the international social democracy. He had sided with the “softs” although
he saw a certain toughness in the Bolshevik cadre that he admired. But that
year, that 1905 year, had started him on a very long search for revolutionary
direction.
The year 1905 had started filled with promise after that
first blast from the Czarist reaction. The masses were able to gather in a Duma
that was at least half responsible to the people, or to the people’s
representatives. At least that is what those people’s representatives claimed.
More importantly in the working class districts, and among his fellow sailors
who more likely than not, unlike himself, were from some strata of the working
class had decided to set up their own representative organs, the workers’
councils, or in the Russian parlance which has come down in the history books the soviets. These in 1905,
unlike in 1917, were seen as supplementary to other political organizations. As
the arc of the year curved though there were signs that the Czarist reaction
was gathering steam. Ivan had trouble organizing his fellow sailors to action.
The officers of his ship, The Falcon,
were challenging more decisions. The Potemkin
affair brought things to a head in the fleets. Finally, after the successes of
the Saint Petersburg Soviet under the flaming revolutionary Leon Trotsky that
organ was suppressed and the reaction set in that would last until many years
later, many tough years for political oppositionists of all stripes. Needless
to say that while Ivan was spared the bulk of the reprisals once the Czarist
forces regained control his career in the navy was effectively finished and
when his enlistment was up he left the service.
Just as well Ivan that things worked out as they did he had thought
many times since then because he was then able to come ashore and get work on
the docks through some connections, and think. Think and go about the business
of everyday life like marriage to a woman, non-political but a comfort, whom he
met through one of his fellow workers on the Neva quay and who would share his
home and life although not always understanding that part of his life or him
and his determination to break Russia from the past. In those days after 1905,
the dogs days as everybody agreed, when the Czar’s Okhrana was everywhere and
ready to snatch anyone with any oppositional signs Ivan mostly thought and
read, kept a low profile, did as was found out later after the revolution in
1917, a lot of low-level underground organizing among the dockworkers and
factory workers of the Vyborg district. In other words developing himself and
those around him as cadre for what these few expected would be the great awakening.
But until the break-out Lena River gold-workers strike in 1912 those were indeed
dog days.
And almost as quickly as the dog days of the struggle were
breaking the war clouds over Europe were increasing. Every civilized nation was
arming to the teeth to defend its civilization against the advancing hordes
pitched at the door. Ivan could sense in his still sturdy peasant-bred bones that
that unfinished task from 1905, that fight for the land and the republic, hell
maybe the eight hour day too, was going to come to a head. He knew enough too about
the state of the navy, and more importantly, the army to know that without some
quick decisive military action the monarchy was finished and good riddance. The
hard part, the extremely hard part, was to get those future peasant conscripts
who would provide cannon fodder for the Czar’s ill-thought out land adventures
to listen up for a minute rather than go unknowingly head-long into the Czar’s
arm (the father’s arms for many of them). So there was plenty of work to do.
Ivan just that moment was glad that he was not a kid. Glad he had learned enough to earn a hearing,
to spread the word.
As the war clouds came to a head after the killing of the
archduke in bloody damn Sarajevo in early summer 1914 Ivan Smirnov knew in his
bones that the peasant soldier cannon fodder as always would come flocking to
the Czar like lemmings to the sea the minute war was declared. Any way the deal
was cut the likely line-up of the Czar with the “democracies” of the West,
Britain and France and less likely the United States would immediately give the
Czar cover against the villainies of the Huns, of the Germans who just the
other day were propping up the Czar’s treasury. It could not end well. All Ivan
hoped for was that his party, the real Social-Democrats, locally known as the
Mensheviks from the great split in 1903 with the Bolsheviks and who had
definitely separated from that organization for good in 1912, would not get war
fever just because the damn Czar was lined up with the very democracies that
the party wished to emulate in Russia.
He knew too that the talk among the leadership of the
Bolsheviks (almost all of them in exile and thus far from knowing what was
happening down in the base of society at home) about opposing the Czar to the
bitter end, about fighting in the streets again some said to keep the young
workers and the peasants drifting into the urban areas from the dead-ass farms
from becoming cannon-fodder for a lost cause was crazy, was irresponsible.
Fortunately some of the local Bolshevik committee men in Russia and among their
Duma delegation had cooler heads. Yea this was not time to be a kid, with kid’s
tunnel vision, with great events working in the world.
Jesus, thought Ivan once the Czar declared his allegiance to
the Entente, once he had gotten the Duma to rubber-stamp his war budget (except
for a remnant of the Bolsheviks who were readied for Siberian exile), he could
not believe that Plekhanov, the great Plekhanov, the father of the Marxist
movement in Russia and mentor to the likes of Lenin, Martov, Dan, hell even
flea-bitten free-lancer Trotsky, had declared for the Czar for the duration and
half of Ivan’s own bloody Menshevik party had capitulated (the other half, the
leadership half had been in exile anyway, or out of the country for some
reason) this was going to be hell.
There would be no short war here, no quick victory over the
land hungry Huns, nothing but the stench of death filling the air overcoming
all those mobilization parades and the thrown flowers, the kissed girls, the
shots of vodka to fortify the boys for the run to the front. The Czar’s house,
double eagles and all was a house of cards or rather of sawdust like those
villages old rascal Potemkin put up to fool Catherine in her time. Most of the
peasant boys marching to the front these days would never see Mother Russia
again, never get to smell the good Russian earth. Yes but if he had anything to
say about it those who survived, those who would have to listen if not now ten
sometime, would have their own piece of good Russian earth unlike their fathers
who toiled on the land for Mister’s benefit for nothing. And went to early
graves like his father.
And so in the summer of 1914 as if led by blinders Europe,
along with solid phalanxes of its farm boys and factory workers, went to bloody
stalemated war.
Went without Ivan just that minute declared too old to fight
and relegated to the home guard. There would come a day, a day not too long in
the future when the “recruiting sergeants” would be gobbling up the “too old to
fights,” like Ivan the lame and the halt, any man breathing to fill the
depleted trenches on the Eastern front. By then though Ivan would have already
clamored to get into the ranks, get in to spread the new wave message about the
meaningless of the fight for the workingman and the peasant and that the fight
was at home not out in the trenches. But that was for the future, the music of
the future. Ironically Ivan’s unit wound up guarding the Peter Paul Fortress
for the Czar. The same place that would
see plenty of action when the time for action came.
The home guard was a loose operation, especially in Saint
Petersburg, which entailed not much more than showing up for guard duty when
the rotation called your turn and an occasion drill or assembly. The rest of
the time, or most of it, Ivan spent reading, reading clandestinely the sporadic
anti-war materials that were being smuggled in from various point in Europe by
whatever still free exiles groups had enough gall and funds to put together
those first crude sheets proclaiming the new dispensation. Ivan had time to
think too during those first eighteen months or so of war. Thought about how
right he had been that this “glorious little war” would not be over soon, would
devour the flower of the European youth and if enough lived long enough chance
the face of half-monarchial Europe. Thought about how, when, and where street
organizers like him (he admitted long ago that he was not a “theory man” would
get an opening to speak to the troops in order to end the mounting slaughter
and the daily casualty lists.
Ivan through all of early 1916 thought too that things
within his own Menshevik organization needed serious upgrading, needed to be
readied if the nation was to turn from semi-feudal monarchy to the modern
republic which would provide the jumping off point to agitate for the social
republic of the organization’s theory, and of his youthful dreams. Although he
was no theory man he was beginning to see that the way the bourgeoisie, native
and foreign, lined up it was as likely as not that they would not follow
through, would act even worse than in 1905 when they went hat in hand with the
Czar for the puny no account Duma and a few reforms that in the end only
benefitted them to the exclusion of the masses. He began to see Lenin’s point, if
it was Lenin’s and not some Okhrana forgery, that the new parties, the parties
that had not counted before, the peasant and worker parties, would have to lead
the way. There was no other way. And no, no thank you he was not a Trotsky man,
a wild man who believed that things had changed some much in the 20th
century that the social republic for Russia was on the agenda right away. No,
he could not wrap his head around that idea, not in poor, not in now wounded
and fiercely bleeding and benighted Mother Russia. Beside Trotsky was living
off his reputation in the 1905 revolution, was known to be mightier with the
pen than the sword and a guy whom the main leadership of the Mensheviks thought
was a literary dilettante (strange characterization though in an organization
with plenty of odd-ball characters who could not find a home with the
Bolsheviks and were frightened to death of working with the mass peasant
parties being mostly city folk).
He thought too about the noises, and they were only noises
just then, exile noises mostly that the Bolsheviks had had a point in opposing
the war budget in the Duma, those who had not deserted the party for the Czar
in the patriotic build-up, and who had been sent to Siberia for their
opposition. He admired such men and knew slightly one of the deportees who had
represented one of the Vyborg worker districts in the capital the Duma. Now
word had come back from Europe that a small congress held in some no-name
village in the Alps (Zimmerwald in Switzerland as he later found out) had
declared for international peace among the workers and oppressed of all nations
and that it was time to stop the fighting and bleeding. More ominously Lenin
and his henchmen had come out for waging a civil war against one’s own
government to stop the damn thing, and to start working on that task now. Worse
Lenin was calling for a new international socialist organization to replace the
battered Socialist International. To
Ivan’s practical mind this was sheer madness and he told whatever Bolshevik
committeemen he could buttonhole (in deepest privacy since the Czarist
censorship and his snitches were plentiful).
In Ivan’s mind they were still the wild boys, seemingly on principle,
and he vigorously argued with their committeemen to keep their outlandish anti-war
positions quiet for now while the pro-war hysteria was still in play. But deep
down he was getting to see where maybe the Bolsheviks, maybe Lenin, hell maybe
even goof Trotsky were right-this war would be the mother of invention for the
next revolutionary phase.
The Czar has abdicated, the Czar has abdicated, the new
republic is proclaimed! The whirl of early 1917 dashed through Ivan Smirnov’s
head. A simple demonstration and strike by women in the capital after the
bloodletting of over two years of war, after the defeats of 1905 and later
showed the monarchy, the now laughable double-eagle monarchy that held the
masses in thrall for centuries was shown to be a house of cards, no, less, a
house of sawdust blown away with the wind. While Ivan had not caught the early
drift of the agitation and aggravation out in the worker neighborhoods he had
played an honorable part in the early going. And the reason that Ivan had
missed some of the early action was for the simple reason that Ivan’s home
guard unit, the 27th Regiment, had been mobilized for the Silesian
front in early 1917 and had been awaiting orders to move out when all hell
broke loose.
This is where the honorable part came in. The 27th
Regiment had been fortified to a division with remnants of other front-line
divisions whose casualty levels were so high that they were no longer
effectively fighting units. As the units meshed and the action in the capital
got intense two quick decisions needed to be made by the 27th –would
the unit go to the front as ordered by the General Staff and subsequently would
the unit still stationed in Saint Petersburg defend the Czarist monarchy then
in peril. Now this new unit, this of necessity haphazard and un-centered unit,
was made up of the likes of Ivan (although none so political or known to be
political) and of disillusioned and bedraggled peasant boys back from the front
who just wanted to go home and farm the land of their fathers, for Mister or
for themselves it did not matter. And that is where Ivan Smirnov, of peasant
parents born, came center stage and made his mark. Ivan when it came time to
speak about whether they would go to the front argued that going to the front
meant in all probability that if they went that they would farm no land,
Mister’s or their own since they would be dead. And some other peasant boy
would come along to farm the ancient family lands. Ivan did not need to evoke
the outlandish theories of Lenin and Trotsky about civil war and the social
republic but just say that simple statement and the unit voted almost
unanimously to stay in the capital (those who did not go along as always in
such times kept quiet and did not vote to move out). Of course as always at
such times as well Ivan’s good and well-earned reputation among the home guard
members for prudent but forceful actions when the time was right helped carry
the day. That reputation, borne of many years of street organizing and other
work, also came in handy when the 27th was ordered to defend the
Czar in the streets. Again Ivan hammered home the point that there would be no
land, no end of the bloody war, no end of dying in some forsaken trenches if
the Czar stayed. The 27th would not defend the Czar to the death
(again the doubters and Czarist agents kept mum).
And for Ivan’s honorable service, for his honorable past,
when it came time to send delegates to the soviet, or the soldiers’ section of
the soviet (the other two sections being the workers and the peasants with
everybody else who adhered to the soviet concept filling in one of those three
sections) Ivan was unanimously elected to represent the 27 Regiment. Now this
soviet idea (really just Russian for council, workers councils mainly) was
nothing new, had been created in the heat of the 1905 revolution and had been
in the end the key governmental form of the opposition then. Now with the Czar
gone (and as our story moves on the government is in non-Czarist agents hands)
there were two centers of power- the bourgeois ministry (including representatives
of some worker and peasant parties) and the soviets acting as watchdogs and
pressure groups over the ministry. As Russian spring turned to summer Ivan from
his post in the Soviet saw some things that disturbed him, saw that “pretty
boy” Trotsky (who had just gotten back from American exile as had Lenin a bit
earlier) and now damn Lenin had begun to proclaim the need for the social
republic right then. Not in some few years future but then. But he was also
disturbed by the vacuous actions of his Mensheviks on the land question and on
social legislation. As the summer heat came Ivan began to see that defending
the people’s revolution was tough business and that some hard twists and turns
were just waiting ahead for him.
Jesus, Ivan said to himself
as summer turned to early Russian fall when is that damn Kerensky going to pull
us out of the war after that foolish summer offensive ordered by who knows who
collapsed and made Russia look ridiculous to the world, our ragged starving troops
are melting away from the trenches, his own 27th had repeatedly been
called up to the front and then mysteriously at the last moment held back to
defend something. Who knows what the General Staff had planned after Kornilov’s
uprising was halted in it tracks (everybody in the private drinking rooms laughed
at the fact that Kornilov could not move his troops step one once the Soviet told
the trainmen to halt all troop transfers). See here was the deal, the new democratic
deal. Now that Russia was a democracy, weak as it was, it was now patriotic no
matter what that madman Trotsky said, no matter what the man with the
organization Lenin said the brutal Hun must be defeated by the now harmonious
democracies.
Bullshit (or the Russian equivalent) said Ivan when a part
of his own party swallowed that line, went along for the ride. Lenin was
calling from the rooftops (in his Finnish hideout once old Kerensky put a price
on his head, wanted to smoke the old bald-headed bastard out and bring him to trial
for treason if he could) for a vote of “no confidence” in the ministry. Both were
beginning to call for the soviets to do more than express worker, soldier, and peasant
anger and to stop acting as a pressure valve for Kerensky and his band of fools
and take the power to change things into its own hands. And that madman Trotsky
was proclaiming the same thing from his prison cell at the Peter and Paul where
a remnant of the 27th was still doing guard duty (and standing in
awe of a real revolutionary giving him unheard of privileges). Meanwhile Ivan, Ivan Smirnov, the voice of the
27th, the well-respected voice of the peasant soldier, was twisting in
the wind. There was no way forward with Kerensky, the mere tool of the British and
French imperialists who were holding him on a tight string. But Ivan could not
see where poor, bloody, beleaguered and drawn Mother Russia, his earthen Russia
could move forward with the radicals who were beginning to clamor for heads,
and for peace and land too.
Jesus, cried Ivan the Bolsheviks have this frosty October
day proclaimed the social republic, have declared that the war over in the East
(or that they were prepared to sue for peace with whomever would meet them at
the table and if not then they would go it alone). Ivan had heard that it might
be peace at any price in order to get the new order some breathing room. But
peace. Necessary peace if Russia was not to lose all its able-bodied men for the
next two generations. The longed for
peace that Ivan had spent his underground existence propagandizing for. Ivan already
knew as a soldier delegate to the Soviet that the trenches had been and were at
that moment being emptied out by land-hungry peasant soldiers, his peasant soldiers
who heard that there would be “land to the tiller” and they wanted to till land
not be under it. Ivan’s old call was being taken up by the damn Bolsheviks who
sent out a land decree as a first order of business once they dumped the Kerensky
ministry, once they flushed out the Winter Palace of the old deadwood. All kinds
of things were being proposed (and sometimes accepted even when the human and material
wherewithal were non-existent which worried Ivan to perdition).
But here is the funny part. Although Ivan had lined himself up
with Martov’s Left Mensheviks (those who wanted peace and some kind of vibrant bourgeois
democracy to pressure forward into the social republic) in the Soviet for most
of the summer and fall he kept getting incessant news from the 27th that
they were ready to mutiny against the Kerensky ministry, they had had enough
and wanted to go home. Ivan was twisting in the wind. He saw that the idea of
the social republic was being presented too soon, that the resources were not there
to give the experiment a chance (who knows what outside force would come to the
aid of the Soviets and when). But he also knew that right that moment the old
ways could not relieve the impasse. And so he broke ranks with Martov and his
group, did not walk out when the voting did not go the way Martov wanted. In
fact when the division of the house was called Ivan Smirnov, longtime political
foe of the madman Trotsky and scarred opponent of the damn Leninists (he had
not heard that Trotsky had quietly joined the Bolsheviks earlier), voted for
peace, voted for the land distribution. The new day had come and there would be
hell to pay and he would not join the Bolsheviks, no way, but in for a dime in
for a dollar and he would defend the Soviet power as best he could.
Black Panther in Prison for Decades-Free Albert Woodfox!
Workers Vanguard No. 1045 | 2 May 2014 |
Black Panther in Prison for Decades-Free Albert Woodfox!
The sadistic jailers went after the Angola Three with a vengeance. For over 42 years, Woodfox has been locked down in Closed Cell Restricted (CCR) blocks, the longest stretch in solitary confinement ever in this country. The now 67-year-old man is confined in a two-by-three-meter cell 23 hours a day. According to his lawyers, he suffers from hypertension, heart disease, chronic renal insufficiency, diabetes, anxiety and insomnia—conditions no doubt caused and/or exacerbated by decades of vindictive and inhumane treatment. Wallace was also confined to solitary until last October, only to die three days after gaining his freedom. King, who spent 29 years in isolation, won his release in 2001. (For more, see “Herman Wallace, 1941-2013,” WV No. 1032, 18 October 2013.)
Woodfox first encountered the Black Panthers in New York City, where he had fled after escaping a New Orleans courtroom during his sentencing on armed robbery charges. Caught by police and hauled back to Louisiana’s dungeons, Woodfox had become a Panther member before he was shipped in the summer of 1971 to Angola, the largest maximum-security prison in the U.S. Named for the country of origin of the chattel slaves who at one time toiled in the fields of the plantation on which it is built, this institution worked its prisoners, overwhelmingly black, into the ground on its farm. The merciless all-white guards overseeing this forced labor were known as “freemen.” Among their political activities, Woodfox and Wallace organized inmate work stoppages and other protests, infuriating prison administrators.
The subsequent murder trial of Woodfox and Wallace was classic railroading. The prosecution failed to produce any physical evidence linking the men to the murder. A bloody print found at the scene was used as evidence, even though it did not match any of the accused. Since the trial, it has emerged that the main “eyewitness,” Hezekiah Brown, was bribed by prison officials to give statements against the men and that the state withheld evidence that other testimony was perjured. Still other witnesses have retracted their testimony.
So transparent is the frame-up that the slain officer’s widow, Leontine Rogers, has joined Robert King and others in demanding the release of Woodfox. In a recent interview with Amnesty International, she stated that after reviewing all the evidence she believes the Three to be innocent. Rogers said: “I feel like the state is pursuing them because they need to blame someone and they think they are doing justice. But what they have been doing is an injustice.”
In February 2013, Woodfox won a reversal of his murder conviction for a third time (the first two had been subsequently overturned by higher courts). But Louisiana attorney general James “Buddy” Caldwell immediately appealed that decision. Angola warden Burl Cain also is on a crusade to keep Albert Woodfox in torturous conditions for the rest of his life. In 2008, attorneys for Woodfox asked Cain to assume, if he could, that Woodfox is not guilty of the killing. Cain responded, “Okay, I would still keep him in CCR.... I still know that he is still trying to practice Black Pantherism.”
Woodfox joins 18 other class-war prisoners in the PDC stipend program, including internationally renowned prisoners like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Under the program, which was initiated in 1986, reviving a tradition of the early American Communist movement, these brave men and women, who are behind bars for standing up to racist capitalist oppression, are sent monthly stipends. Other recent additions to the stipend program include the Tinley Park 5, a group of anti-racist militants thrown into prison for dispersing a meeting of fascists outside Chicago in May 2012. Two of them, Alex Stuck and John Tucker, have now been released.
We reiterate our call for Woodfox’s immediate freedom and encourage our supporters to take up his cause and write to Albert Woodfox #72148, NIA #3-CCR, David Wade Correction Center, 670 Bell Hill Road, Homer, LA 71040.
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