For Frederick Douglass On His 200th Birthday- UP FROM SLAVERY-The Life Of Revolutionary Abolitionist Frederick Douglass

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the great revolutionary abolitionist and black liberation fighter, Frederick Douglass.

BOOK REVIEW

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, FREDERICK DOUGLASS, DOVER PUBLICATIONS, 2003

FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH

At the start of the 21st century the international labor movement faces, as it has for a long time, a crisis of revolutionary leadership. That leadership is necessary to resolve the contradiction between the outmoded profit-driven international capitalist productive system and a future production system based on social solidarity, cooperation and production for social use. In America, at least, there is also a crisis of leadership of the black liberation struggle, which is tied into the labor question as well through the key role of blacks in the labor force. More happily in the 19th century in the struggle against slavery by the slaves and former slaves for black liberation there was such a leadership and none more important than the subject of this autobiography, Frederick Douglass. Even a cursory look at his life puts today ‘clean’ black leadership in the shades.

That Frederick Douglass was exceptional as a fighter for black freedom, women’s rights and as a man there is no question. His early life story of struggle for individual escape from slavery, attempts to educate himself and take an active political role on the slavery question rightly thrilled audiences here and in Europe. I, however, believe that he definitely came into his own as a revolutionary politician when he broke from Garrisonian non-resistant abolitionism and linked up with more radical elements like John Brown and the Boston ‘high’ abolitionists like Wendell Phillips and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. This abolitionist element pointed the way to the necessary fight to the finish strategy to end slavery, arms in hands, that eventually came to fruition in the Civil War.

At one time I believed that Douglass should have gone with John Brown to Harper’s Ferry. He would have provided a better grasp of the political and military situation there than Brown had and would have been forceful in calling out the slaves and others in the area to aid the uprising. In no way was my position on his refusal based on his personal courage of which there was no question. I now believe that Douglass more than made up for any help he would have given Brown by his work for an emancipation proclamation and for his calls for arming blacks in the Civil War to take part in their own emancipation. As such, it is well known that Douglass was instrumental in calling for the creation of the famous Massachusetts 54th Regiment, including the recruitment of two of his sons. Yes, 200,000 black soldiers and sailors under arms fighting to the death, and under penalty of death by the Confederates, for their freedom is a fitting monument to the man.


Douglass, as well as every other militant abolitionist worth his or her salt, lined up politically with the new Republican Party headed by Lincoln and Seward before, during and shortly after the Civil War. However, the Republican Party ran out of steam as a progressive force fairly shortly after the war, culminating in the sell-out Compromise of 1877 which abandoned blacks to their fate in the South. Douglass, committed to emancipation, education and ‘forty acres and a mule’ for his fellows stayed with that party far too long.

Key elements of that party lost heart in aiding the black struggle for political, social and economic emancipation due to their racism and other factors, moved on to other more finacially rewarding interests, or accepted the traditional white leadership of the South. Douglass should also should have moved on to another more progressive formation. Embryonic workers parties and other such progressive formations were raising their heads in the 1870’s. I do not believe that office in the Consular Service in Haiti was worth continuing to support a party going in the wrong direction. Notwithstanding that point, if you want to read about the exploits of a ‘big man’ in the history of the struggle of the oppressed, our history, when it counted this is your stop. Honor the memory of Frederick Douglass.

Stop The Nuclear Weapons Madness-Now!

Stop The Nuclear Weapons Madness-Now!

By Special Guest Greg Green

“What goes around, comes around” as my friend Jack Riley’s father, Francis Riley always called Frankie by his friends, would said whenever the circle turned on any subject. Lately the subject, the very serious subject in light of this guy, this President of the United States, POTUS in twitter feed speak, one Donald J. Trump and his ranting about existential threats of nuclear war to his country by tiny miniscule North Korea. The threat given the disparity in size of arsenal and capacity to inflict massive and irreversible damage to that country and the earth much on the side of the United States. At no time in recent memory, certainly since the end of the Cold War with the world-historic defeat and demise of the Soviet Union, has the threat of nuclear war, the saber-rattling,  been as intense as now.          

That brings us to the “what goes around, comes around” part of the story. The late Peter Paul Markin, always known as “Scribe,” Frankie Riley’s old-time hang out in the neighborhood friend, in his very first political act, an act scorned by all his corner boy growing up friends, including Frankie and others who heard about it as well, back in the fall of 1960 attended an anti-nuclear weapons rally sponsored by SANE a group headed by Doctor Spock and some Quakers and people like that at the Park Street subway station stop on the Boston Common. He had been hounded and harassed by anti-communist thugs and other red scare Cold War types but felt that he had done the right thing. (The right thing aided by winning a five dollar bet with Frankie Riley that the Scribe would not go into Boston and do the rally). So protesting against the nuclear madness has come full circle.    

Here’s the interesting part- a few weeks ago at the Park Street subway station on the Boston one ancient Frankie Riley, surrounded by Quakers and other such types, was protesting the war clouds that could lead to nuclear war these days at a current anti-nuclear war rally. Yes, what goes around, comes around. 

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program -Five - A History Of One's Own

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program -Five - A History Of One's Own

What James “Big Daddy” Dixon did not know about history would fill a book said his boyhood friend Anthony Hilton. What Anthony meant by that, or what James thought he meant by that was the saga of the American experience was a book sealed with seven seals for him. James, not usually one to suffer a slight with a shrug of the shoulders, and he took the remark as a slight, a kidding slight, not to be avenged but a slight nevertheless, wanted to know more about what was on Anthony’s mind that cold February 1964 morning. Normally, James would not give a rat’s ass (a popular expression picked up by the kids, James and Anthony included, in the rat-filled tenement house on the corner of Washington Street in the high Roxbury ghetto where James and Anthony had grown up, and had come of age together before they parted company to go their separate ways in in this wicked old world) about what Mister George Washington did, or did not do, at Valley Forge. Or what madness Mister Andrew Jackson brought down on the English in front of New Orleans or whether Mister Davey Crockett was ill-advised to make that terrible, fateful last stand down in the Podunk Alamo or whether Mister Abraham Lincoln (Father Abraham in his grandmother’s home, a place where he was dumped more often than not when his late mother had her wanting habits on, wanting men habits on) meant to free the slaves or whether Mister Woodrow Wilson sincerely, hah,  wanted to “make the world safe for democracy” when he send American boys (including a grand uncle) over to Europe to do some hellish fighting in a war that lasted forever some years back or whether Mister Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, or did not, sell out to Mister Joseph Stalin at Yalta in the last big war or wherever it was that he was supposed to have done the deed.

James relationship to history was more up to date, more existential if he had known the word, or had asked Anthony what it meant (and if he had known the word then six-two-and even that Anthony would have known what it meant, Anthony always knew what the words meant, always). His world history was based on how much liquor had been served at his High Hat Club the night before (and how much he had been clipped for by those thieving negro brothers he had running the place), how his numbers runners were doing and whether the latest shipment from Mexico with that grade A reefer, that Acapulco Gold, would get here this month. And he expressed those world historic concerns to Mister Anthony Hilton (as he had done on other occasions) in no uncertain terms. What concerned him just that moment was whether Mister Honky (and he used that name freely in front of, and behind the backs of, his white associates) was going to continue to protect his operations in the neighborhood or not. And as he began to explain to Anthony (as he had also done many times before) the historical facts of his place in the sun in the Roxbury world Anthony stopped him short with this.       

“James, doesn’t it matter to you that you could be descended from kings, from great warrior -kings back in Mother Africa, back before bondage times and that our people could erect great works before the bloody honkys could figure out how to use a spoon to eat with(Anthony too , although college educated and ready to become a professor within a few years if things worked out right, maybe at Howard,  could speak the language of private black rage when he was among kindred, and James was kindred), doesn’t it matter that our history has been denied us. Not only that we were warrior- kings, but that we more than paid our dues when we came to this land all shackled up and bedraggled, that we built this country as sure as hell. That we fought our share, our freedom share with old Nat Turner, and a thousand other slave revolts, that our brothers stood with that old prophet angel John Brown at Harpers Ferry fight to make Mister Whitey red with rage, that our proud forbears right in this city formed a regiment, the Massachusetts 54^th, to avenge our shackles in Civil War fight, and that we have put our brand on American culture from ….”                           

With that James, who also knew, knew from deep in his brethren soul, that Anthony was prepared to give him the whole entire panorama of the black experience on these damn shores if he didn’t stop him right then and there did so. Did it as he always did with his right arm extended out hand palm up- stop. And Anthony knowing the sign, ever since that one time fight to determine who was the king hell king of the tenement night, knew to stop. As he prepared to go James stopped him, handed him ten one hundred dollar bills from inside his suit pocket and said, “Use that for that damn Negro History project you are working on over a Boston University.” 

After their good-byes and had Anthony left, and after James had figured up the previous night’s receipts and determined that those thieving negro brothers had only nicked him a little, he, in the quiet of his office, thought about what Anthony had said, about the warrior- king part of it, for in truth that was the only part he remembered. And the next time Anthony came by he was going to ask him more about that, a lot more and for just that minute James “Big Daddy” Dixon wished he had a known history, a history of  his own… 

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[39][40]

 

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

 

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

 

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

 

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

 

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

 

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

 

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

 

We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

 

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.

 

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

 

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

 

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.

 

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

 

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

 

We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
   

From Veterans For Peace-Open Letter to People of Viet Nam

Open Letter to People of Viet Nam

The letter below has been written by members of Veterans For Peace's Vietnam: Full Disclosure Committee. It will be delivered to the people of Viet Nam by members of Veterans For Peace on March 16, 2018. If you want your signature on the letter, please fill out the form. Thank you.  For questions or concerns, please contact Doug Rawlings (rawlings@maine.edu)

---

Many Americans, especially those of us who came of age during the American War in Viet Nam, understand that our war in Vietnam was a crime of untold proportion and a massive violation of international law. As citizens under this government, we have to accept responsibility for its actions. It is with that realization in mind that we engage with you as the 50th Anniversary of the My Lai massacre nears.

We acknowledge that this terrible massacre was a clear atrocity, but also we recognize that it was not an anomaly — that it is one of many such abominations that many of our soldiers inflicted on the people of Viet Nam during the American War.

We acknowledge the deep and tragic suffering we have caused you — death, destruction, the ruin of your land, and the torturous rending of your social fabric.

We acknowledge the great sacrifices you have made to resist our government's global, imperial designs, including battling the civil strife our military forces brought to your society as they pitted governments they manipulated against your resistance forces. Many of our soldiers deepened and exploited the divisions in your society.

We acknowledge the virulent form of racism that our government brought from our country into yours as it made almost no attempt to understand your rich history and culture.

We acknowledge that this racial animus led us to assault your people with what our government leaders imagined was "impunity," using our Pentagon's almost unlimited funding and massive firepower to kill, maim, and poison your land and people.

We acknowledge that even after our armed forces had withdrawn from your country, abandoning our government's colonial designs, many U.S. government officials continued to wage economic warfare against you to thwart your efforts as you rebuilt your reunified country.

Therefore, we pledge the following:

We will make an honest effort to try as fully as possible to understand and feel the impact of the war on your families and your land, to empathize with your struggles and suffering and to share our experience with others.

We who were directly engaged in this war will continue to publicly confess our complicity in your country's suffering.

We will do all in our power to make amends by supporting efforts to assist you in the healing of your land and your people.

We pledge to keep learning, and taking to heart, the lessons our people should have learned from the American War in Viet Nam as we work to attain peace and social justice in our own country.

We who were complicit in the American War in Vietnam will continue to search our consciences as we face our own direct and indirect participation in a system that enabled our government to start and escalate this war against your land. We cannot undo the wrongs we have done, but we will use our remorse to work for world peace.

Sign the letter

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To Sin By Silence When We Should Protest Makes Cowards Out Of Men (Women Too)!-Build The Resistance!

To Sin By Silence When We Should Protest Makes Cowards Out Of Men (Women Too)!-Build The Resistance!  

By Political Commentator Frank Jackman 

To Sin By Silence When We Should Protest Makes Cowards Out Of Men … (and I added women too)-lines from “Protest” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Usually when I want to grab a line or two from some poem it would more likely by from say Bertolt Brecht’s “To Those Born After,” Langston Hughes’ “Homage To John Brown” or Claude McKay’s “Let’s Us Die Like Men (and I would add women here again) and not some relatively obscure American poet but when the point is made so succinctly I could not resist using the damn thing as it disturbed my sleep one night    

Ella Wheeler Wilcox whatever her vices or virtues as an American working the ways of the late 19^th and early 20^th century had it exactly right-had a mantra that we need to live by these dark days on the American frontier (the frontier not Harvard Professor Turner’s old idea about the closing of the frontier once you hit the Pacific Ocean with all its consequences for a restless people ever since but the outer edge of civil society). We must continue to resist the Trump government with whatever resources we have. And whatever hubris we can gather in to keep us from the storm that has gathered right on our doorsteps.

Most of us didn’t want this fight, the older ones of us thinking that maybe we could pass on under conditions of an armed truce with the imperial government. But then the cold civil war descended on us and we had to pick sides, those of us who see the necessity of picking sides when bans are in place, when walls are being built and when the rich, no, hell no, the super-rich have literally stepped up to besieged every social program that our people need to face the next day. And act. Act to build the resistance which these days looks like it will need to be on the order of the French Resistance in World War II.

Do you really want to bend your head down when the deal, the hell train coming, goes down and your kids, if you have kids, your grandkids if you have grandkids, or just your own conscience asks you what did you when it was time to speak up. Remember Ella had it right, right as rain.

Here is Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After" if you need further reason-

I

To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

II

You who will come to the surface
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you've not had to face:

Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.

Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.

And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence. 

Bertolt Brecht

“Now the Fear Is Gone” highlights power of the FFP to fight sexual abuse and advance gender justice!…

Coalition of Immokalee Workers

9:17 AM

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New Report: “Now the Fear Is Gone” highlights power of the FFP to fight sexual abuse and advance gender justice!… Just three weeks out from the Freedom Fast and Time's Up Wendy's March in NYC, new report spotlights solution to national epidemic of sexual harassment and assault born in the fields of Florida... Just as farmworker women from Immokalee — together with their male co-workers from the fields and allies from across the country — begin to prepare for next month’s five-day fast calling on Wendy’s to help end sexual violence in its supply chain by joining the Fair Food Program, the Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network has released an extensive report that underscores the urgency of the fasters’ cause and the unique power of their solution. The new report, entitled “Now the Fear Is Gone: Advancing Gender Justice through WSR,” surveys “the abusive conditions that women farmworkers face daily in fields across the US, and spotlights the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program as a root-cause solution to gender-based violence in the workplace.”  Here’s an excerpt from the report’s Introduction: Sexual abuse, harassment, and other gender-based violence is a threat to all women workers and an international crisis. It is a chronic assault on the humanity of women, undermines women’s health and productivity, and makes the workplace a hostile environment. No group of women suffer more than low-wage women workers. With little power and fewer resources, low-wage women workers often have no choice but to accept humiliating treatment, harassment, quid pro quo arrangements, and even assault simply to earn a meager living...  Read more highlights from the WSRN's brand-new report "Now the Fear is Gone" over at the CIW website! Coalition of Immokalee Workers (239) 657 8311 | workers@ciw-online.org | www.ciw-online.org Connect with us

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