This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Thursday, November 06, 2014
Free Chelsea Manning - President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!
July 30, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
One year after Chelsea Manning’s conviction, Amnesty International is still calling on the US government to grant her clemency. Amnesty demands that Chelsea be freed immediately, and for the US government to, “implement a thorough and impartial investigation into the crimes she uncovered.” Read the full statement from Amnesty International below or click here to view it on amnesty.org:
Exactly one year after Chelsea Manning was convicted of leaking classified government material, Amnesty International is renewing its call on the US authorities to grant her clemency, release her immediately, and to urgently investigate the potential human rights violations exposed by the leaks.
Chelsea Manning has spent the last year as a convicted criminal after exposing information which included evidence of potential human rights violations and breaches of international law. By disseminating classified information via Wikileaks she revealed to the world abuses perpetrated by the US army, military contractors and Iraqi and Afghan troops operating alongside US forces.
“It is an absolute outrage that Chelsea Manning is currently languishing behind bars whilst those she helped to expose, who are potentially guilty of human rights violations, enjoy impunity,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas Director Amnesty International.
“The US government must grant Chelsea Manning clemency, order her immediate release, and implement a thorough and impartial investigation into the crimes she uncovered.”
After being convicted of 20 separate charges Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, much longer than other members of the military convicted of charges such as murder, rape and war crimes.
Before her conviction, Chelsea Manning had already been held for three years in pre-trial detention, including 11 months in conditions which the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture described as cruel and inhumane.
Chelsea Manning has always maintained that her motivation for releasing the documents to Wikileaks was out of concern for the public and to foster a meaningful debate on the costs of war and the conduct of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Notable amongst the information revealed by Private Manning was previously unseen footage of journalists and other civilians being killed in US helicopter attacks.
“The US government appears to have its priorities warped. It is sending a worrying message through its harsh punishment of Chelsea Manning that whistleblowers will not be tolerated. On the other hand, its failure to investigate allegations that arose from Chelsea Manning’s disclosures means that those potentially responsible for crimes under international law, including torture and enforced disappearances, may get away scot-free,” said Erika Guevara.
“One year after the conviction of Chelsea Manning we are still calling on the US government to grant her clemency in recognition of her motives for acting as she did, and the time she has already served in prison.”
Amnesty International has previously expressed concern that a sentence of 35 years in jail was excessive and should have been commuted to time served. The organization believes that Chelsea Manning was overcharged using antiquated legislation aimed at dealing with treason, and denied the opportunity to use a public interest defence at her trial.
In addition, there is little protection in US law for genuine whistleblowers, and this case underlines the need for the US to strengthen protections for those who reveal information that the public has the right to know.
It is crucial that the US government stops using the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning.
Markin comment There is no question that now that her trial, if one can called what took place down in Fort Meade a trial in the summer of 2013 rather than a travesty, that a year after her conviction on twenty plus counts and having received an outrageous thirty-five year sentence essentially for telling us the truth about American atrocities and nefarious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the American government can stick its nose that Chelsea Manning's case has dropped from view. Although she occasionally gets an Op/Ed opportunity and has several legal moves going from action to get the necessary hormonal treatments reflecting her real sexual identity to now preparing the first appeal of her conviction to another military tribunal the popular uproar against her imprisonment has become a hush. While the appeals process may produce some results, perhaps a reduction in sentence, the short way home for her is a presidential pardon right now. I urge everybody to sign on to the Amnesty International petition above to put the pressure on President Barack Obama for clemency.
In Boston
Encuentro 5 &
Mesa sin Fronteras
p r e s e n
t
Peña Latinoamericana When: Sat.
Nov. 08 | 7:00 - 11:30 pm Where: at e5 9 Hamilton Place, Boston, MA
02108
Refreshments Provided
$5 suggested donation. No one turned
away.
Join us for a night of folklore,
storytelling, arte y amor, the poetry of struggle bringing histories to life,
and life to our circles of song.
A Peña is a gathering of musicians,
artists, and friends who come to share their work and to play together. Peñas
take historical root from Chilean social gatherings during the 60s and early 70s
that expressed the spirit of creativity and resistance in melody, poems, and
artwork.
Please feel free to bring your own stories, songs,
poems, or artwork to share.
Revolution:
The term November Revolution may
refer to:
October
Revolution of 1917, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution,
Red October or the Bolshevik Revolution, which happened in
October according to the Julian
calendar, but in November according to the Gregorian
calendar. Because of this, it is sometimes called the November Revolution, although modern usage
favours October
Revolution
Mexico’s Revolution Day
November 20. (Dia de la
Revolución) is a national public holiday that
celebrates a 10-year revolution that began in 1910 to end the struggle against
dictator José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori.
Encuentro 5 &
Mesa sin Fronteras
p r e s e n t
a
Peña Latinoamericana Cuando: Sáb. Oct. 11 | 7:00 - 11:30
pmDónde: e5 9 Hamilton Place, Boston, MA
02108
Habrá
aperitivos
Donativo sugerido $5:00. Nadie será
rechazado
Ven a compartir una noche de
folklore, narrativa de arte y amor. La poesía de la lucha que traen las
historias y vidas en los ciclos de la canción.
La
Peña es un encuentro de músicos, artistas y amigos que vienen a compartir su
trabajo y música juntos. Peñas surgieron a raíz de las de reuniones
político-sociales chilenas durante los años 60 y principios de los 70 que
expresan el espíritu de la creatividad y la resistencia en forma melódica,
poemas y obras de arte.
Por favor, trae tus historias, canciones,
poemas, obras de arte o para compartir con otros.
Revolución: El términorevolución de
noviembrepuede referirse a: •Revolución de Octubrede 1917, también conocido comola GranRevolución Socialista de
Octubre, Octubre Rojoola RevoluciónBolchevique, Todolo quesucedióen octubresegúnel calendario juliano, en noviembre segúnel calendario
gregoriano. Debido a esto, se le llama a vecesla revolución de noviembre, aunque el usomodernoFavoreceRevolución de Octubre •Larevolución alemana(alemán:Novemberrevolution)Revoluciónalemanade
1918-1919, unconflicto
civilimpulsadopolíticamenteenAlemania a finalesde la Primera GuerraMundial •RevolucióndeMéxicoel día20 de
noviembre(Día de la Revolución) Esta revolucióncomenzóen 1910para
poner fin ala luchacontra
eldictadorJosé de laCruzPorfirioDíazMori.
REMEMBER SLAIN LABOR MILITANTS-CESAR CAUCE, MICHAEL NATHAN, BILL SAMPSON SANDI SMITH AND JIM WALLER
For those too young to remember or who unfortunately have forgotten the incident here is a capsule summary of what occurred on that day bloody day:
On November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, five anti-racist activists and union organizers, supporters of the Communist Workers Party (CWP), were fatally gunned down by Ku Klux Klan and Nazi fascists. Nine carloads of Klansmen and Nazis drove up to a black housing project-the gathering place for an anti-Klan march organized by the CWP. In broad daylight, the fascists pulled out their weapons and unleashed an 88-second fusillade that was captured on television cameras. They then drove off, leaving the dead and dying in pools of blood. From the outset, the Klan/Nazi killers were aided and abetted by the government, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who helped train the killers and plot the assassination to the "former" FBI informer who rode shotgun in the motorcade of death and the Greensboro cop who brought up the rear. The five militants listed above died as a result. The Greensboro Klan/Nazis literally got away with murder, acquitted twice by all-white juries.
This writer has recently been raked over the coals by some leftists who were appalled that he called for a “no free speech platform” for Nazis and fascists Rather, this writer argued that labor should mobilize its forces and run these vermin off the streets whenever they raise their heads. Despite recent efforts to blur the lines of the heinous nature and political motivation of these murders in Greensboro in some kind of truth and reconciliation process militant leftist should etch in their brains the reality of the Klan/Nazis. There is nothing to debate. The niceties of parliamentary democracy have no place in a strategy to defeat these bastards.
Additional Markin comment in 2014:
The events of Greensboro, North Carolina in November 1979, today more than ever as we gear up our struggles in the aftermath of the spark of the Occupy movement a few years back now when it looked for a minute like we would have a movement of similar magnitude as the social explosions of the 1960s before the police acting as storm troopers like something out of Nazi Germany stomped on us, the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown incidents (to name just the most notorious) which have exposed for all to see that rather than a post-racial world we are still mired in the old time plantation mentality when it comes to the value of black life, and as we begin, once again to oppose the American war machine in the Middle east, should be permanently etched in our minds. We had best know how to deal with the fascists and other para-military types (including the police now fully militarized like in the storming of the Occupy sites and most recently in Ferguson) that rear their heads when people begin to struggle against the bosses.
*******
Markin comment on the article below:
Every year, and rightfully so, we leftist militants, especially those of us who count ourselves among the communist militants, remember the 1979 Greensboro, North Carolina massacre of fellow communists by murderous and police-protected Nazis, fascists and Klansmen. That remembrance, as the article below details, also includes trying to draw the lessons of the experience and an explanation of political differences. For what purpose? Greensboro 1979-never again, never forget-or forgive.
Although right this minute, this 2014 minute, the Nazis/fascists are not publicly raising their hellish ideas, apparently “hiding” just now on the fringes of society waiting to pounce (although the anti-immigrant border vigilantes give a recent taste of what they are capable of provoking to a willing audience), this is an eternal question for leftists. The question, in short, of when and how to deal with this crowd of locust. Leon Trotsky, one of the great leaders of the Russian revolution in 1917 and others, notably his followers in the American Socialist Workers Party back then, had it right back in the late 1920s and early 1930s-smash this menace in the shell. 1933, when they come to power, as Hitler did in Germany (or earlier, if you like, with Mussolini in Italy) is way too late, as immediately the German working class found out as its independent organizations were decimated and presses destroyed, including its Social-Democratic and Communist sympathizers who should have known found out, and later many parts of the rest of the world. That is the when.
For the how, the substance of this article points the way forward, and the way not forward, as represented by the American Communist Party’s (and at later times other so-called “progressives” as well, including here the Communist Workers Party) attempts to de-rail the street protests and rely, as always, on the good offices of the bourgeois state, and usually, on this issue the Democrats. Sure, grab all the allies you can, from whatever source, to confront the fascists when they raise their heads. But rely on the mobilization of the labor movement on the streets to say what’s what, not rely on the hoary halls of bourgeois government and its hangers-on, ideologues, and lackeys.
******
Should Fascists Be Allowed the Right of Free Speech?
A Working Class Point of View on the Question That Was Brought to the Fore Again by the Professional Democrats When the Nazis Mobilized at the Garden_
-Reprinted from the Socialist Appeal, 3 March 1939
It seems that the only point of importance that the Professional Liberals and Democrats could see in the big mobilization of the Nazis at Madison Square Garden last week, was their "right of free speech and assembly."
Mayor LaGuardia kept reiterating emphatically that his attachment to Democracy compelled him to grant the Fascists the right to hold their meeting and provide them with extraordinary police protection.
The American Civil Liberties Union rushed into print to insist that the right of free speech be extended to the Hitlerites.
One of the numerous committees of the Jewish bourgeoisie, anxious to demonstrate that it loves fairness above all else, did likewise.
Even the wretched little Jewish anarchist weekly published in New York indignantly reproached the Trotskyists for the lack of sense in "demanding the right of free speech and assembly for oneself and at the same time trying to prevent the freedom of speech of our opponents..."
Freedom for Nazis But Not for Pickets
Before going further into the consideration of the question of "free speech for Fascists," it is interesting and important to record the fact that all the above-mentioned who showed such touching concern for the "democratic rights" of the Nazis, are entirely unconcerned with the brutal police suppression of the picketing rights of the workers who assembled outsidethe Garden.
The Mayor simply refused to see a delegation which came to protest against the violence of the police who rode down and slugged the picketers.
The American Civil Liberties Union, apparently exhausted by its noble efforts in behalf of the Nazis, didn't utter a peep about the democratic rights of free speech, assembly and picketing being denied the 50,000 anti-Fascists who came to protest the Nazi rally. Ditto for the Jewish committee.
As for the anarchist Freie Arbeiter Stimme, it says not a word about the police assaults, but villainously insinuates that the Terrible Trotskyists were really at fault because, Mr. Police Commissioner, they planned a violent attack on the Nazis who were innocently celebrating Washington's Birthday. Unbelievable, but here are its exact words: "But there are times when people who endeavor to do social work, must reflect ten times, a hundred times, before they come out with an appeal for acts of violence."
What the Problem Really Involves
The question of "democratic rights for the Nazis" cannot be resolved on the basis of Liberal phrasemongers. All such a discussion can produce is a bewildering tangle of words and abstractions. At a more decisive stage, as all recent experience has proved, it produces a first class disaster not only for the working class but also for the Professional Liberals and Democrats themselves.
How many of them, indeed, are there in concentration camps, in prison and in exile who are continuing the thoroughly futile and abstract discussion over whether or not the Fascist gangsters should be granted the "democratic rights of free speech and assembly"!
And what is most decisive—this is the point which leads us directly to a solution of the problem that seems to agitate so many people—is the fact that in Italy, in Germany, in Austria, in Czechoslovakia, in Spain, the Democrats were so concerned with preserving the "rights" of the Fascists that they concentrated all their attacks and repressive measures upon those workers and those labor organization which sought to conduct a militant struggle against the Fascists and for the preservation and extension of their truly democratic rights and institutions.
It is when the bourgeois "democrats" like Giolitti in Italy and Bruening in Germany, had done all in their power to smash' the most progressive and active sections of the working class—as LaGuardia and his police tried to do on a smaller scale in New York last week—that the Fascists concluded successfully their march to totalitarian power. Whoever forgets this important lesson from abroad, is a fool. Whoever tries to keep others ignorant of this lesson, is a rogue.
A Simple Example
Let us take a simple example which every worker has ex¬perienced dozens of times.
A strike is called. The authorities promptly jump into the situation in order to protect the "democratic rights" of the scabs and the company gunmen who guard them. The "right to work" of the scab, which is guaranteed by the capitalist govern¬ment, amounts in reality to his "right" to starve out the striking workers and reduce them to helpless pawns of the employers.
Millons of workers have learned the futility and deceptiveness of the academic discussion of the scab's "democratic rights," as well as of appealing to the government and its police to "arbitrate" the dispute involved. They try to solve the question, as they must, in the course of struggle. The workers throw their picket-lines around the struck plant. The conflict between the scab's "right" to break a strike and the workers' right to live, is also settled on the course of struggle—in favor of those who plan better, organize better, and fight better.
Same Rule Applies on Broader Scene
The same rule applies in the struggle against the much bigger scab movement that Fascism represents. The workers who spend all their time and energy in the abstract discussion of the Nazis' "democratic rights"—to say nothing of working themselves into a lather in defense of these "rights"—will end their discussion under a Fascist club in a concentration camp.
The workers who delude themselves and waste their time begging the capitalist Democrats in office to "act" against the Fascists, will end up in the same place, just as the workers of Italy, Germany and Austria did.
The workers have more vital concerns. They are and should be interested in defending and expanding their democratic rights. But not in any abstract sense. These rights are the concrete rights of free speech, assembly, press, the right to organize, strike and picket, without which an independent working class simply cannot exist.
A decaying capitalism—of which Fascism is only a natural product—seeks constantly to restrict and destroy these rights, which are not truly genuine even in "normal" times. These rights can only be defended from the assaults of capitalism and its ugly offspring, Fascism, in the same way in which they were first acquired: by the tireless, aggressive, unbending, independent struggle of the working class.
The wailing and weeping about the Nazis' "rights" can safely be left to the prissy Liberals and the phony Democrats.
The self-preservation of the working class demands that it cut through all abstract chatter and smash the Fascist gangs by decisive and relentless action.
Wednesday, November 05, 2014
As The 100th
Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poets’ Corner
In say 1912, 1913,
hell, even the beginning of 1914 before the war clouds got a full head of steam
in the summer they all profusely professed, artists who saw the disjointedness
of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put
twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other, writers of serious history
books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress, humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument
of policy, writers of not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden
gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that
man and woman had too much to do to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s
cry and the maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets, musicians whose
muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, and poets, ah, those
constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack
of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair
of another man, that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would
stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist, world and blast the
war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels.
And then the war
drums intensified and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out,
poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the
trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for….
CANADA TO ENGLAND
Great names of thy great captains gone before Beat with our blood, who have that blood of thee: Raleigh and Grenville, Wolfe, and all the free Fine souls who dared to front a world in war. Such only may outreach the envious years Where feebler crowns and fainter stars remove, Nurtured in one remembrance and one love Too high for passion and too stern for tears.
O little isle our fathers held for home, Not, not alone thy standards and thy hosts Lead where thy sons shall follow, Mother Land: Quick as the north wind, ardent as the foam, Behold, behold the invulnerable ghosts Of all past greatnesses about thee stand.
_Marjorie L.C. Pickthall_
Pay College Athletes! For Unionization!-College Sports Plantation
Workers Vanguard No. 1054
17 October 2014
Pay College Athletes! For Unionization!-College Sports Plantation
(Young Spartacus pages)
Roughly $12 billion is generated—tax free—each year by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its associated athletic conferences and member schools. Far more profit is raked in on college sports by major corporations, such as television broadcasters and game manufacturers. Football and basketball coaches are paid, on average, between $2.5-3.5 million a year. In 40 states, the highest-paid public employee is such a coach. Meanwhile, the typical Division I athlete lives $3,500 to $5,000 below the poverty line and is prohibited by contract from receiving a single cent of those billions generated off their sweat, discipline, endurance and talent.
College athletics is a concentrated expression of capitalist greed and exploitation, bolstered by flag-waving religiosity and underpinned by the ludicrous legal concoction that defines players as “student-athletes” and the associated myth of amateurism. The fiction is that wholesome, all-American students play purely for love of the game. But for the black students who make up nearly 60 percent of college players in men’s basketball and football in the six major college conferences and at the same time make up less than 3 percent of full-time undergraduates overall, reality is better captured by what many have dubbed the NCAA system: the “plantation.”
Stories abound of athletes starving and homeless, often having suffered debilitating or life-threatening injuries without medical coverage. Between the racist war on drugs and the gutting of public education, sports are seen as one of the only escape routes from the hellish conditions of ghetto life. As The Notorious B.I.G. famously rapped, “Either you’re slingin’ crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot.” And a very small, talented few may make it to school on athletic scholarships.
The students aiming at these scholarships are often “in the pipeline” by the time they hit high school, spending countless hours practicing and preparing for their shot at a different life. A large percentage of these athletes will experience some form of serious injury. Even most of the uninjured will be used up and tossed aside in a matter of years. Ultimately less than 2 percent of NCAA football and basketball players ever make it to the pros.
In the face of such a rigged game, several players have chosen not to accept the racist status quo. In March, the Chicago office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that scholarship football players at Northwestern University are employees and therefore eligible to form a labor union. While this case may be tied up in the courts for some time, it demonstrates a growing consciousness on the part of players that they can and should fight back. Additionally, over a dozen lawsuits have been launched against the NCAA and its partners. On August 8, in an antitrust lawsuit whose lead plaintiff was former All-America basketball star Ed O’Bannon, who led University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to a championship in 1995, the judge issued an injunction against the NCAA, allowing players to receive compensation for the use of their names, images and likenesses. This ruling puts a modest dent in the millions the campuses generate from selling merchandise emblazoned with players’ names and deals with TV broadcasters and video-game manufacturers. Another antitrust suit, led by Jeffrey Kessler, seeks to do away with compensation caps for college football and basketball players altogether. Kessler is the sports attorney who helped bring free agency into the National Football League (NFL) in 1992.
Up through the mid 1970s, most professional athletes were mercilessly exploited in a somewhat similar fashion to the way college players are today. Major league baseball’s reserve clause made players effectively the property of their teams. In 1969, black All-Star Curt Flood refused to be traded from the St. Louis Cardinals and demanded his right to negotiate as a free agent, writing to the baseball commissioner, “I do not, however, consider myself to be a piece of property to be sold regardless of my desire.” Known as “Baseball’s Bolshevik,” Flood was subsequently driven from the sport, but players won the right to free agency in 1975. In 1976, a lawsuit by black basketball legend Oscar Robertson was settled, paving the way for free agency in the National Basketball Association (NBA).
The college players’ challenges to the NCAA have wrung some concessions thus far. The NCAA has decided to stop forcing players to sign over the rights to their names and likenesses. Indiana University has announced an athletes’ bill of rights that promises free tuition guaranteed until a degree has been earned instead of the typical renewable one-year scholarships (often performance-based). Others are considering covering the full cost of attending college as well as increased health coverage for players. This is key—football especially has been shown to be a lethal game. In 2011, college football player Derek Sheely suffered a head injury during practice. After he had begun to bleed profusely from his head, his coach at Frostburg State told Sheely to “stop your bitching and moaning and quit acting like a pussy and get back out there!” Soon after, Sheely died from his head injury. From 2004 to 2009, there were 30,000 concussions sustained by college athletes. On average, 12 high school and college football players die each year as a result of playing their sport. Three high school players died in a single week this fall.
We in the Spartacus Youth Clubs believe college athletes should be paid and receive compensation for the images used by the media. They should have the right to unionize, strike and collectively bargain. As for the fiction that universities are providing free “education” to these exploited athletes, the following provides a glimpse: in the 1980s, Jan Kemp, an English instructor at the University of Georgia, was fired because she refused to inflate grades for athletes. Defending the university from a lawsuit, a lawyer explained just what they really thought of “student-athletes”: “We may not make a university student out of him, but if we can teach him to read and write, maybe he can work at the post office rather than as a garbage man when he gets through with his athletic career.”
We fight for everyone to receive the benefits of a quality education, up to and including the university. We are for open admissions, no tuition and a state-paid living stipend for all who need it. Cancel the student debt! As for the elite private campuses, bastions of race and class privilege, we call for their nationalization. While colleges and universities purport to embody higher ideals, under capitalism higher education is run as a business. The capitalist ruling class maintains elite schools as preserves for their offspring, training a new generation of politicians, judges, academics, scientists, military brass, managers and technicians. But for the education of those they exploit and oppress, they spend only what they can realize back in profit and what they have conceded as a result of social struggle. The rulers add insult to injury by brutally exploiting those few who find an athletic scholarship and escape the projects and prisons.
The Superexploited Athlete
In March, soon before leading the University of Connecticut (UConn) Huskies to a college basketball championship, point guard Shabazz Napier said on national television, “There are hungry nights that I go to bed and I’m starving.” His experience is not unique. In the documentary Schooled: The Price of College Sports, Arian Foster, who is now a running back with the NFL’s Houston Texans, summed up the bitter experience of getting by as a college football player:
“There was a point when we had no food, no money, and so I called my coach. And I said, coach, we don’t have no food, man and we don’t have no money and I’m hungry. Either you give us some food or like I’m going to go do something stupid. And he came down, he brought like 50 tacos for like four or five of us—which is an NCAA violation! But then the next day I walk up to the facility; I see my coach pull up in a brand new Lexus. Beautiful.”
Schooled features a speech by civil rights historian Taylor Branch calling for increased rights for student-athletes. In response, former Navy Athletics Director Jack Lengyel tells him, “The student does not have consent. You can’t have the animals running the zoo in a college education.” Such grotesque statements reveal the bigotry and backwardness that mark much of the upper echelons of sports—college and professional—in this country.
Branch’s muckraking book The Cartel argues that the NCAA’s maze of bureaucracy and bylaws is reminiscent of the logic behind the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision of 1857, that black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” College athletes indeed give up control of nearly every aspect of their lives. The Northwestern NLRB ruling recounted the regimented and grueling daily routine of these football players. Training begins in August, plunging them into a 60-hour workweek in which entire days are mapped out by the coaching staff, from 6:30 a.m. training room sessions to 10:30 p.m. mandatory “lights out.” When the school year starts, this schedule is “merely” 40 to 50 hours per week for the three- to four-month season—on top of classes.
Kain Colter, the ex-Northwestern quarterback who is leading the players’ unionization drive, testified to the NLRB that he was encouraged by his advisers and coaches to give up his pre-med major because his football schedule was too demanding. He eventually fell behind and had to switch to psychology.
Players also testified to the Orwellian extent of control that their employers exercise over their personal lives. They are not allowed to swear in public. In order to monitor their every waking minute, players are not allowed to deny a coach’s friend request on Facebook and are restricted in what they may post. Players also must submit detailed information to the school on the vehicles they drive, presumably so the university can make sure no boosters are bumping them above the poverty line. Scholarship players must live on campus for their first two years at school, and upperclassmen who live off campus must submit their leases to the coach for approval before signing.
No less than the flag-waving extravaganzas that mark major sport events, religion also teaches obedience to authority and conservative social values and has served many coaches well in disciplining players. At Clemson University, where the football team is saturated with religiosity, recruits have been told by Coach Dabo Swinney, “I’m a Christian. If you have a problem with that, you don’t have to be here.” In 2012, Swinney had player DeAndre Hopkins baptized on the team’s 50-yard line.
As greater sums of money have poured into college sports over the years, the NCAA has sought more and more to crack down on “scandals” involving players breaking the NCAA’s amateurism rules. Some students sold autographs and memorabilia or traded them for minor favors such as tattoos. Branch describes the case of A.J. Green, a wide receiver at Georgia who confessed to selling his jersey to pay for a spring-break vacation:
“The NCAA sentenced Green to a four-game suspension for violating his amateur status with the illicit profit generated by selling the shirt off his own back. While he served the suspension, the Georgia Bulldogs store continued legally selling replicas of Green’s No. 8 jersey for $39.95 and up.”
In 1995, UCLA linebacker Donnie Edwards, who went on to the NFL, said on the radio that he was having trouble paying his bills and did not know where his next meal would come from. An anonymous donor then left some groceries on his doorstep. The NCAA suspended him for a game for accepting a gift from a supposed sports agent! These regulations extend down through the entire high school-to-college pipeline. In 2010, after high school football coach Bill Buldini allowed a homeless athlete to move in with him, he was suspended, the school was fined and the next year, Buldini resigned his post. Similarly, in 2011, UConn basketball player Ryan Boatright was suspended because a family friend paid for his mother to accompany him on a recruiting trip—while he was still in high school.
The Amateur “Ideal”
Sports have always supplied the ruling class with an ideological lightning rod to drain off the energies of radicalized and working-class youth into harmless pursuits. Karl Liebknecht, founding leader of the German Socialist Youth leagues, noted in 1911 that, at the German Kaiser’s initiative, “the tomfoolery of sport is being used among the young in order to produce a mood which will estrange them from the great proletarian struggle” (Speeches of Karl Liebknecht, 1927). In the U.S., the cult and business of spectator sports has become another “opium of the people.”
In late 19th-century America, as universities expanded across the country, sports programs were seen as a vital means to build student enrollment and loyalty to their institutions. While many players were in fact compensated under the table, amateurism appeared in U.S. universities as a guiding moral principle and ideological training mechanism. Walter Camp, the “Father of American Football” and coach of the Yale and Stanford football teams disingenuously claimed, “A gentleman never competes for money, directly or indirectly.” In the 1912 Olympics, Native American Jim Thorpe, considered by many to be one of the greatest athletes in history, won the first ever ten-event decathlon. It was later revealed that he had played minor league baseball in violation of the Olympics’ amateurism rules. He was promptly stripped of his medals and having lost his foothold in the sports world, he died penniless. Long after his death, the rules were changed and Thorpe’s medals were posthumously returned to him.
Black track star Jesse Owens, whose record-setting four gold medals smashed Hitler’s parade of the “Aryan master race” at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, was greeted with a reception at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria…which he was allowed to enter only through a freight elevator. Exhausted after his Olympic performance, Owens was ordered to compete in a number of exhibitions, one of which he refused. He was suspended by the Amateur Athletic Union and blacklisted from amateur sports for life. Famed actor and musician Paul Robeson was stripped of his All-America award as star running back for Rutgers, due to his affiliation with the Communist Party.
So much for the lofty mythology of amateurism. As Branch recounts, the NCAA was formed in the early 20th century, effectively as a shrewd maneuver to offset outrage against the mounting body count of college football, with 25 deaths in the 1905 season alone. He writes: “For nearly 50 years, the NCAA, with no real authority and no staff to speak of, enshrined amateur ideals that it was helpless to enforce.” In fact, not only were college football players often paid, but in 1939, freshman players at the University of Pittsburgh went on strike against the wage gap with upperclassman players.
But in 1951, then-NCAA head Walter Byers seized on a series of scandals involving grade inflation and gambling to suspend the University of Kentucky basketball team for a full season. With the momentum from this, the NCAA took control of licensing for all televised games, thus securing enough money and power to win the NCAA full control over the regulation of all college sports. Branch documents how the “student-athlete” arose not from “the nobility of amateurism and the precedence of scholarship over athletic endeavor” but as a tool for the NCAA to fight workmen’s compensation claims for injured players.
During the 1950s, the NCAA carved its definition of amateurism out of the death of football player Ray Dennison, who played for the Fort Lewis A&M Aggies. After he died from a head injury received during a game, his widow filed for workmen’s-compensation death benefits; the school refused to pay. In the ensuing legal battle, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that she was not eligible for benefits because the college was “not in the football business,” and that Dennison was therefore not an employee but a student. The designation of “amateur” also serves as a pretext to deny players the right to bargain to receive even a fraction of the massive profits that they generate.
Down With Plantation Rule!
The limited victories won for college athletes thus far reflect an important social fact. While students in general have virtually no social power, if college athletes were to withdraw their labor and go on strike, it could have a significant impact on this multibillion-dollar industry. William Friday, former president of the University of North Carolina, was sworn to secrecy by a colleague who told him that in the lead-up to a championship basketball game one year a team had planned to go on strike if they made the finals. The prospect that such an action could have cost the colleges hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue struck fear into Friday and his colleagues. (To their relief, this team did not make the finals.)
We recognize the athletes’ status as employees who, as such, should have the basic right to workmen’s compensation. Moreover, we support their struggle to unionize and get paid for their labor. The treatment of college athletes reflects the basic appetites and interests of capitalist profiteers—to extract as much labor as possible, as brutally as need be, from those with no better option. Because class exploitation and the special oppression of black people as a race-color caste are inextricably linked to the workings of American capitalism, the struggle to unionize college players must include a fight for black rights and against the racism that pervades organized sports.
NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar put it succinctly:
“Yes, I was just like the rest of those black athletes you’ve read about, the ones that put all their waking energies into learning the moves. That might be a sad commentary on America in general, but that’s the way it’s going to be until black people can flow without prejudice into any occupation they can master. For now it’s still pretty much music and sports for us.”
In racist America, even as some black athletes are revered by black and white fans alike, others remain hostile to the fact that there are black sports stars who make big money. Hank Aaron, writing of his stature as baseball’s highest-paid player in the early 1970s, recalled, “The Atlanta fans weren’t shy about letting me know what they thought of a $200,000 n----r striking out with men on base.”
In the context of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War struggles, black athletes like Flood, Muhammed Ali and others challenged the racist owners—at great personal sacrifice. 1968 Olympic gold and bronze medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos were banished from the U.S. Olympic team and given 48 hours to get out of Mexico after raising the clenched-fist “black power” salute during the awards ceremony. But their silent act of defiance spoke loudly to a generation of angry, politicized youth of all races.
The injustices and deprivations of this society may be temporarily ameliorated through hard class and social struggle. But only when the entire capitalist system is swept away by victorious workers revolution can we begin to speak of genuine equality. What is required is the expropriation of the exploiters, the smashing of their state and the construction of a society in which those who labor rule. Stripped of capitalist profiteering and exploitation in such a society, sports will provide simple human enjoyment. Education will be organized, as will everything else, not on the basis of individual profit and exploitation, but for collective social gain. We seek to win young people to act as partisans of the working class—the only class with the social power to and interest in smashing once and for all this vile system of racism and war, poverty and disease. There is a future—it lies in the fight for socialist revolution.
The Immigration “Crisis": Has US Foreign Policy Created It? What Can We Do
About It?
When: Tuesday, November 11, 2014, 7:00 pm to 9:00
pm Where: encuentro 5 • 9 Hamilton Place • Park St T •
Boston
A
forum cosponsored by United for Justice with Peace and Massachusetts Trust Act
Coalition
What is the "border crisis" and how does it affect
Massachusetts?
What are political and social consequences of terms such as
"illegal aliens"
How has US foreign policy contributed to the problem?
How are local communities confronting the criminalization of
immigration polices, and helping recently arrived refugees?
Prof. Aviva Chomsky will provide historical context on the creation of
the so-called “illegal immigrant” in the US. She will discuss the effects
of military aid that the US poured into Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in
the 1980s that helped create a violently enforced inequality leading to the
problems today. Prof. Chomsky is coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem
State University and author of Undocumented: How Immigration Become
Illegal (2014).
Gabriel Camacho is the Immigration Programs
Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee. Locally the AFSC is on
the Steering Committee of the Massachusetts Trust Act Coalition. With the
protracted death of "immigration reform" at the federal level, and President
Obama's repeated delays on executive action, Gabe will speak on conditions
facing newly arrived refugee families and how local communities are confronting
these issues.
