Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir The Woman In The Window.
DVD Review
The Woman In The Window, starring Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea, directed by Fritz Lang, 1944
Okay, okay I know this one is a crime noir by Fritz Lang and I will bow down, bow down profusely, over his use of interesting cinematic techniques, his photography, and his attention to detail that were his hallmark traits. That done though what is there to yell about in this noir? Sure there is a femme fatale, sort of, played here by Joan Bennett who whatever her ruby red-lipped, bedazzled charms for 1940s male audiences, or female audiences for that matter, does not compare, compare at all, to such femmes as Lauren Bacall, Rita Hayworth, or Jane Greer.
And sure there is a murder, sort of, committed by a learned New York professor of psychology, no less, played by, well played by, Edward G. Robinson, better known for his great 1930s gangsta movies. And there is a blackmailer, sort of, to complicate the plot, played by Dan Duryea. And there is a circling around the wagons to find the murderer by law enforcement, headed by clever, sneaky clever Raymond Massey. That is natural for this genre. But didn’t I already, sort of, review this film before under the name Scarlet Street with this same cast of characters. Fritz Lang directed that one as well and provided us with his hallmark traits. And the crimes were real there, if not rightly solved.
Maybe I had better give a little plot to show what I mean. The good professor, the good middle-aged professor, (Edward G. Robinson) is having something like a mid-life crisis as his wife and kids leave town, New York town, to get away from the bustle of the city. On the way to his Mayfair swell club (on a 1940s professor’s salary?) he is entranced by a portrait of a beautiful woman in an art gallery window (hence the title of the film). Well one thing leads to another and while he is a little drunk after dinner he has what turns out to be an adventure, a theoretical adventure, which will have him facing the gallows before dawn. Seems our lady of the window (Ms. Bennett) appears in “real” life, is in distress due to some caddish lover, and is in need of our professor’s services as her gallant knight. In short, he kills, kills in self-defense really, the cad.
Of course, under the circumstances, they have try to commit the perfect crime by covering up, covering up as it turns out in such a poor way that any school boy could sent them to the electric chair on day one of the investigation and have time for lunch. To add to their cover-up distress woes, a blackmailer (Brother Duryea), a worldly-wise (at least in comparison to their amateurish antics) wants dough for his silence. Ya, I know, the suspension of disbelief part associated with any movie just doesn’t quite make it. And it doesn’t have to because at the end the good professor merely had just too much to drink. So back to the drawing board on this one, except now we get our noses rubbed into the theme song of this genre. Crime doesn’t pay, awake or asleep. Sorry Fritz, but you will always have Metropolis as your immortal work.
Friday, December 16, 2011
The Latest From “The Rag Blog”
Click on the headline to link to The Rag Blog website.
Markin comment:
I find this The Rag Blog very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. So the remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least ones that would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left militants.
Markin comment:
I find this The Rag Blog very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. So the remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least ones that would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left militants.
The Latest From The “Occupy Oakland” Website-This Is Class War-We Say No More- Take The Offensive- Make The “Occupy” Movement Streets Labor’s Streets-Defend The Oakland Commune!
Click on the headline to link to Occupy Oakland website for the latest from the Bay Area vanguard battleground in the struggle for social justice.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Today the Bill of Rights is 220 years old - and faces a Congressional DEATH SENTENCE-Down With National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)!
Markin comment:
Many times I place items in this space that I do not agree with, or fully agree with. This is a case in point. The inclusion of the Bill Of Rights to the American Consitution is an important event in humankind's progress. No question. No question either that the founding fathers "forgot" to put them in the original document (1789, so note the difference in anniversary dates) and were put in as a result of tremendous plebeian pressure. Today this National Defense Authorization Defense Act (NDAA) threatens us all, and I mean all. That part is not in question by me. What is in question is whether a little phone call to President Obama is in order. Mass protest, building mass protest, and fighting this thing tooth and nail as we will have to do in the end seems more appropriate. But I will not haggle today. Let's just fight this thing.
********
Today the Biff of Rights is 220 years old - and faces a Congressional
DEATH SENTENCE.
Today, Congress is expected to pass the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)of 2012. It makes the whole world a battlefield, possibly forever. It authorizes the military detention of civilians anywhere in the world, including American citizens here at home, who could be held indefinitely as 'suspects' without charges or trial. The NDAA would gut the Bill of Rights, which guarantees due process and access to the courts.
December 15 is Bill of Rights Day - make it the day you stand up for our fundamental freedoms!
PLEASE CALL PRESIDENT OBAMA!
Call the White House at 202 456 III.
Urge President Obama to protect the Bill of Rights and VETO
the NDAA!
Co-sponsored by: ACLU of Massachusetts,American Friends Service Committee - New England, Amnesty International, Boston United National Antiwar Coali¬tion, Come Home Amercia - Boston chapter, Community Change, ISBCC/Muslim American Society- Boston Chapter, Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action, Massachusetts Peace Action, National Lawyers Guild - Massachusetts chapter, the National Police Accountability Project, Occupy Boston Action for Peace Working Group, United for Justice with Peace
Many times I place items in this space that I do not agree with, or fully agree with. This is a case in point. The inclusion of the Bill Of Rights to the American Consitution is an important event in humankind's progress. No question. No question either that the founding fathers "forgot" to put them in the original document (1789, so note the difference in anniversary dates) and were put in as a result of tremendous plebeian pressure. Today this National Defense Authorization Defense Act (NDAA) threatens us all, and I mean all. That part is not in question by me. What is in question is whether a little phone call to President Obama is in order. Mass protest, building mass protest, and fighting this thing tooth and nail as we will have to do in the end seems more appropriate. But I will not haggle today. Let's just fight this thing.
********
Today the Biff of Rights is 220 years old - and faces a Congressional
DEATH SENTENCE.
Today, Congress is expected to pass the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)of 2012. It makes the whole world a battlefield, possibly forever. It authorizes the military detention of civilians anywhere in the world, including American citizens here at home, who could be held indefinitely as 'suspects' without charges or trial. The NDAA would gut the Bill of Rights, which guarantees due process and access to the courts.
December 15 is Bill of Rights Day - make it the day you stand up for our fundamental freedoms!
PLEASE CALL PRESIDENT OBAMA!
Call the White House at 202 456 III.
Urge President Obama to protect the Bill of Rights and VETO
the NDAA!
Co-sponsored by: ACLU of Massachusetts,American Friends Service Committee - New England, Amnesty International, Boston United National Antiwar Coali¬tion, Come Home Amercia - Boston chapter, Community Change, ISBCC/Muslim American Society- Boston Chapter, Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action, Massachusetts Peace Action, National Lawyers Guild - Massachusetts chapter, the National Police Accountability Project, Occupy Boston Action for Peace Working Group, United for Justice with Peace
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-Free Bradley Manning Now! All Out In Support of Bradley’s Pre-Trial Hearing On December 16th Vigil &17th March And Rally At Fort Meade, Maryland
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network for the lates information in his case.
From the American Left History blog, dated March 17, 2011
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of card. American imperialism’s house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th because I am outraged by the treatment of Private Manning meted to a presumably innocent man by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. The military has gotten more devious although not smarter since I was soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago. Allegedly Private Manning might become so distraught over his alleged actions that he requires extraordinary protections. He is assumed, in the Catch-22 logic of the military, to be something of a suicide risk on the basis of bringing some fresh air to the nefarious doings of the international imperialist order. Be serious. I, however, noticed no "spike” in suicide rates among the world’s diplomatic community once they were exposed, a place where such activities might have been expected once it was observed in public that most of these persons could barely tie their own shoes.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient reasons for my standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an addition reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came.” Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me through the tough days inside. So on March 20th I am just, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, brother, are a true winter soldier.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us, or hear about our rally in your defense. Better yet, everybody who read this join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to those high heavens mentioned above-Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
******
And, of course, I will be standing in support of Private Manning December 17th.
*******
Army schedules Dec. 16 pretrial hearing for PFC Bradley Manning
November 21, 2011.
Bradley Manning Support Network.
Today the United States Army scheduled an Article 32 pretrial hearing for PFC Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence specialist accused of releasing classified material to WikiLeaks. The pretrial hearing will commence on December 16 at Fort Meade, Maryland. (Army News Release PDF)
This will be PFC Manning’s first appearance before a court and the first time he will face his accusers after 17 months in confinement. In a blog post this morning, Manning’s lead counsel, David Coombs, notified supporters that the pretrial phase is scheduled to last five days.
Here is the full text of his update:
“The Article 32 hearing for PFC Bradley Manning will begin on December 16, 2011 at Fort Meade, Maryland. The hearing is expected to last approximately five days. With the exception of those limited times where classified information is being discussed, the hearing will be open to the public.
The primary purpose of the Article 32 hearing is to evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of the government’s case as well as to provide the defense with an opportunity to obtain pretrial discovery. The defense is entitled to call witnesses during the hearing and to also cross examine the government’s witnesses. Each witness who testifies is placed under oath; their testimony can therefore be used during the trial for impeachment purposes or as prior testimony should the witness become unavailable.
Our office is committed to providing the best representation for PFC Manning during this upcoming hearing. Achieving this goal is the sole focus of the lawyers, experts, and administrative staff working on this case. Given our focus, we will not be granting any media interviews or responding to any media inquiries. However, recognizing the public’s interest and the growing support for PFC Manning, we will be issuing regular public releases. The goal of these releases is to keep PFC Manning’s supporters informed and to assist the media in providing accurate information about this case.”
Supporters will be present outside Fort Meade when he arrives on December 16 and as part of a day of action on his 24th birthday, December 17.
“The charges against Bradley Manning are an indictment of our government’s obsession with secrecy,” said Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers and accelerated the end of hostilities in Vietnam forty years ago. “Manning is accused of revealing illegal activities by our government and its corporate partners that must be brought to the attention of the American people. The Obama administration lacks the courage to confront the crimes and injustices that now stand exposed.”
Manning’s supporters assert that the information he is accused of making public was wrongly and illegally classified, and that whoever leaked the information should be protected as a whistle-blower. The WikiLeaks revelations include the “Collateral Murder” video, which shows the killing of Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists, as well as diplomatic cables that have embarrassed governments and corporations around the world. Another cable related to the cover-up of a war crime contributed to the early exit of troops from Iraq by the end of this year.
PFC Manning’s confinement conditions drew strong reactions and protests from legal scholars, politicians, and human rights advocates from around the world. He was confined for ten months at a Quantico Marine base, where he faced extreme conditions in which he was forced to stand naked and was kept in isolation. P.J. Crowley, then-spokesperson for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was forced to resign after he called Manning’s treatment “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid.” Juan Mendez, the United Nations’ rapporteur on torture, still seeks to meet with Manning, unmonitored, as part of an official investigation of evidence of abuse.
The Bradley Manning Support Network will continue to provide updates as they become available.
************
Vigil for Bradley, attend the pre-trial hearing
VIGIL FOR BRADLEY
START OF COURT MARTIAL PROCEEDINGS
ARTICLE 32 PRE-TRAIL HEARING
Fort Meade Main Gate
Maryland 175 & Reece Rd
Fort Meade, MD 21113 (map)
Rally for Bradley at Fort Meade leaflet PDF
VIGIL (or attend the hearing)
Friday, December 16th, 8am to 5pm
RALLY & MARCH
Saturday, December 17th, Noon to 3pm
The Fort Meade Main Gate is located in Odenton, Maryland, 25 miles northeast of Washington DC, between Washington DC and Baltimore, Maryland.
DEC. 17th MARCH
After a rally and vigil, supporters will march via the sidewalk along MD 175/Rouse Pkwy/Annapolis Rd, one mile, to Maryland 175 & Llewellyn Ave (the military court room is located on Llewellyn Ave one mile from the gate). Afterwards, we’ll march back to the main gate.
MARC TRAIN
Shuttle van will be made available from the Odenton MARC train station, located on the MARC Penn Line between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, MD. It is 2.5 miles from the Fort Meade Main Gate. The station is on Amtrak’s high-speed Northeast Corridor; however, Amtrak does not stop at this station.
DRIVING
From Washington, DC: Go to MD-295 N towards BALTIMORE to US 175 EAST. Follow 175 EAST until you come to the Reece Road intersection (there is a traffic light). From Baltimore, MD: Go to MD-295 S towards WASHINGTON to US 175 EAST. Follow 175 EAST until you come to the Reece Road intersection (there is a traffic light).
SUPPORTERS ATTENDING THE PROCEEDINGS
Those wishing to attend the proceedings should go to the Visitor Control Center (near the intersection of Maryland 175 & Reece Rd, Fort Meade, MD 21113) when it opens at 7:30am (and certainly no later than 8:15am). All other gates are for military I.D. card holders only.
You do not need to pre-register. Each person will need a valid state or federal photo ID such as a driver’s license or state photo ID card.
Anyone driving on to Fort Meade will be required to submit their driver’s license, vehicle registration, and printed (not digital) proof of insurance. Your vehicle will be subject to search. Consider walking on base if there are any questions at all regarding your vehicle and paperwork.
The proceedings are likely to start at 9am daily at the Magistrate Court, 4432 Llewellyn Ave, Fort Meade, MD 20755. The court room is 1.5 miles from the Visitor Control Center. The pre-trial hearing will break from Friday, December 23 until January 2 if needed.
MEDIA ATTENDING THE PROCEEDINGS
Contact the Fort Meade Public Affairs office for information at 301-677-1361
INFORMATION FOR SUPPORTERS
Contact Courage to Resist at 510-488-3559
From the American Left History blog, dated March 17, 2011
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of card. American imperialism’s house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th because I am outraged by the treatment of Private Manning meted to a presumably innocent man by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. The military has gotten more devious although not smarter since I was soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago. Allegedly Private Manning might become so distraught over his alleged actions that he requires extraordinary protections. He is assumed, in the Catch-22 logic of the military, to be something of a suicide risk on the basis of bringing some fresh air to the nefarious doings of the international imperialist order. Be serious. I, however, noticed no "spike” in suicide rates among the world’s diplomatic community once they were exposed, a place where such activities might have been expected once it was observed in public that most of these persons could barely tie their own shoes.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient reasons for my standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an addition reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came.” Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me through the tough days inside. So on March 20th I am just, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, brother, are a true winter soldier.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us, or hear about our rally in your defense. Better yet, everybody who read this join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to those high heavens mentioned above-Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
******
And, of course, I will be standing in support of Private Manning December 17th.
*******
Army schedules Dec. 16 pretrial hearing for PFC Bradley Manning
November 21, 2011.
Bradley Manning Support Network.
Today the United States Army scheduled an Article 32 pretrial hearing for PFC Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence specialist accused of releasing classified material to WikiLeaks. The pretrial hearing will commence on December 16 at Fort Meade, Maryland. (Army News Release PDF)
This will be PFC Manning’s first appearance before a court and the first time he will face his accusers after 17 months in confinement. In a blog post this morning, Manning’s lead counsel, David Coombs, notified supporters that the pretrial phase is scheduled to last five days.
Here is the full text of his update:
“The Article 32 hearing for PFC Bradley Manning will begin on December 16, 2011 at Fort Meade, Maryland. The hearing is expected to last approximately five days. With the exception of those limited times where classified information is being discussed, the hearing will be open to the public.
The primary purpose of the Article 32 hearing is to evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of the government’s case as well as to provide the defense with an opportunity to obtain pretrial discovery. The defense is entitled to call witnesses during the hearing and to also cross examine the government’s witnesses. Each witness who testifies is placed under oath; their testimony can therefore be used during the trial for impeachment purposes or as prior testimony should the witness become unavailable.
Our office is committed to providing the best representation for PFC Manning during this upcoming hearing. Achieving this goal is the sole focus of the lawyers, experts, and administrative staff working on this case. Given our focus, we will not be granting any media interviews or responding to any media inquiries. However, recognizing the public’s interest and the growing support for PFC Manning, we will be issuing regular public releases. The goal of these releases is to keep PFC Manning’s supporters informed and to assist the media in providing accurate information about this case.”
Supporters will be present outside Fort Meade when he arrives on December 16 and as part of a day of action on his 24th birthday, December 17.
“The charges against Bradley Manning are an indictment of our government’s obsession with secrecy,” said Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers and accelerated the end of hostilities in Vietnam forty years ago. “Manning is accused of revealing illegal activities by our government and its corporate partners that must be brought to the attention of the American people. The Obama administration lacks the courage to confront the crimes and injustices that now stand exposed.”
Manning’s supporters assert that the information he is accused of making public was wrongly and illegally classified, and that whoever leaked the information should be protected as a whistle-blower. The WikiLeaks revelations include the “Collateral Murder” video, which shows the killing of Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists, as well as diplomatic cables that have embarrassed governments and corporations around the world. Another cable related to the cover-up of a war crime contributed to the early exit of troops from Iraq by the end of this year.
PFC Manning’s confinement conditions drew strong reactions and protests from legal scholars, politicians, and human rights advocates from around the world. He was confined for ten months at a Quantico Marine base, where he faced extreme conditions in which he was forced to stand naked and was kept in isolation. P.J. Crowley, then-spokesperson for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was forced to resign after he called Manning’s treatment “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid.” Juan Mendez, the United Nations’ rapporteur on torture, still seeks to meet with Manning, unmonitored, as part of an official investigation of evidence of abuse.
The Bradley Manning Support Network will continue to provide updates as they become available.
************
Vigil for Bradley, attend the pre-trial hearing
VIGIL FOR BRADLEY
START OF COURT MARTIAL PROCEEDINGS
ARTICLE 32 PRE-TRAIL HEARING
Fort Meade Main Gate
Maryland 175 & Reece Rd
Fort Meade, MD 21113 (map)
Rally for Bradley at Fort Meade leaflet PDF
VIGIL (or attend the hearing)
Friday, December 16th, 8am to 5pm
RALLY & MARCH
Saturday, December 17th, Noon to 3pm
The Fort Meade Main Gate is located in Odenton, Maryland, 25 miles northeast of Washington DC, between Washington DC and Baltimore, Maryland.
DEC. 17th MARCH
After a rally and vigil, supporters will march via the sidewalk along MD 175/Rouse Pkwy/Annapolis Rd, one mile, to Maryland 175 & Llewellyn Ave (the military court room is located on Llewellyn Ave one mile from the gate). Afterwards, we’ll march back to the main gate.
MARC TRAIN
Shuttle van will be made available from the Odenton MARC train station, located on the MARC Penn Line between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, MD. It is 2.5 miles from the Fort Meade Main Gate. The station is on Amtrak’s high-speed Northeast Corridor; however, Amtrak does not stop at this station.
DRIVING
From Washington, DC: Go to MD-295 N towards BALTIMORE to US 175 EAST. Follow 175 EAST until you come to the Reece Road intersection (there is a traffic light). From Baltimore, MD: Go to MD-295 S towards WASHINGTON to US 175 EAST. Follow 175 EAST until you come to the Reece Road intersection (there is a traffic light).
SUPPORTERS ATTENDING THE PROCEEDINGS
Those wishing to attend the proceedings should go to the Visitor Control Center (near the intersection of Maryland 175 & Reece Rd, Fort Meade, MD 21113) when it opens at 7:30am (and certainly no later than 8:15am). All other gates are for military I.D. card holders only.
You do not need to pre-register. Each person will need a valid state or federal photo ID such as a driver’s license or state photo ID card.
Anyone driving on to Fort Meade will be required to submit their driver’s license, vehicle registration, and printed (not digital) proof of insurance. Your vehicle will be subject to search. Consider walking on base if there are any questions at all regarding your vehicle and paperwork.
The proceedings are likely to start at 9am daily at the Magistrate Court, 4432 Llewellyn Ave, Fort Meade, MD 20755. The court room is 1.5 miles from the Visitor Control Center. The pre-trial hearing will break from Friday, December 23 until January 2 if needed.
MEDIA ATTENDING THE PROCEEDINGS
Contact the Fort Meade Public Affairs office for information at 301-677-1361
INFORMATION FOR SUPPORTERS
Contact Courage to Resist at 510-488-3559
The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-Drive to Execute Mumia Halted-Mumia is Innocent—Free Him Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
10 December 2011
Drive to Execute Mumia Halted-Mumia is Innocent—Free Him Now!
On December 7, the Philadelphia District Attorney announced that he will not seek another death sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal, America’s foremost class-war prisoner. The announcement by D.A. Seth Williams comes in the wake of the October 11 U.S. Supreme Court decision rejecting the D.A.’s petition to reinstate the death sentence that was overturned in 2001. This means Mumia, framed up for the killing of Philadelphia police office Daniel Faulkner in 1981, will be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. While it is welcome that Mumia will no longer be under the threat of state execution, it is an abomination that this innocent man, who has already spent 30 years entombed, is condemned to a living death in prison!
The government’s drive to execute Mumia has run aground, but the vendetta of the prosecution, cops and capitalist politicians, both Democratic and Republican, against Mumia continues. There is a mountain of evidence, including Arnold Beverly’s confession that he shot and killed Faulkner, that demonstrates Mumia is an innocent man who should never have spent one day in prison. The courts have refused to consider this evidence because it exposes Mumia’s frame-up as not just some aberration of a rogue cop or a bad judge, but the result of the workings of a whole “justice” system whose real purpose is the repression of workers, minorities and the poor on behalf of the capitalist rulers (see the July 2006 Partisan Defense Committee pamphlet, The Fight to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal—Mumia Is Innocent!).
Beginning in the late 1960s, Mumia was targeted by the police and FBI as a Black Panther leader and later as a MOVE supporter and journalist renowned for his searing exposés of cop brutality and racist oppression. The prosecution railroaded Mumia to death row in 1982, building its case on the basis of phony ballistics and other manufactured “evidence,” a “confession” concocted by cops and prosecutors, massive police intimidation of witnesses and racist jury rigging. His trial was overseen by “hanging judge” Albert Sabo, who was overheard saying he would help the prosecution “fry the n----r.” To secure the death sentence, prosecutors pointed to political statements made by Mumia as a 16-year-old Panther.
In December 2001, federal judge William Yohn overturned Mumia’s death sentence as unconstitutional based on improper jury instructions while simultaneously upholding every aspect of the 1982 frame-up conviction. As for the Supreme Court, its 2009 denial of Mumia’s petition essentially put an end to his legal efforts to overturn his conviction on constitutional grounds.
During the decades of his unjust imprisonment, Mumia has remained unbowed, speaking out for the oppressed and the impoverished through his death row commentaries. Mumia’s cause has been an international focal point of the fight for abolition of the death penalty, which in the U.S. is the legacy of black chattel slavery and represents the pinnacle of state terror. When Mumia faced a death warrant in the summer of 1995, massive publicity about his case and worldwide protests that were endorsed by trade unions representing hundreds of thousands of workers played a crucial role in staying the executioner’s hand.
Now the state authorities hope with the latest decision that Mumia’s cause will be forgotten and that he will rot in prison hell until he dies. This must not be Mumia’s fate. As the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee have always insisted, fighters for Mumia’s freedom must look to link his cause to the class struggles of the multiracial proletariat. Trade unionists, opponents of the racist death penalty and fighters for black rights must continue the fight to free Mumia from the racist dungeons of Pennsylvania and to abolish the racist death penalty.
Partisan Defense Committee
10 December 2011
10 December 2011
Drive to Execute Mumia Halted-Mumia is Innocent—Free Him Now!
On December 7, the Philadelphia District Attorney announced that he will not seek another death sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal, America’s foremost class-war prisoner. The announcement by D.A. Seth Williams comes in the wake of the October 11 U.S. Supreme Court decision rejecting the D.A.’s petition to reinstate the death sentence that was overturned in 2001. This means Mumia, framed up for the killing of Philadelphia police office Daniel Faulkner in 1981, will be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. While it is welcome that Mumia will no longer be under the threat of state execution, it is an abomination that this innocent man, who has already spent 30 years entombed, is condemned to a living death in prison!
The government’s drive to execute Mumia has run aground, but the vendetta of the prosecution, cops and capitalist politicians, both Democratic and Republican, against Mumia continues. There is a mountain of evidence, including Arnold Beverly’s confession that he shot and killed Faulkner, that demonstrates Mumia is an innocent man who should never have spent one day in prison. The courts have refused to consider this evidence because it exposes Mumia’s frame-up as not just some aberration of a rogue cop or a bad judge, but the result of the workings of a whole “justice” system whose real purpose is the repression of workers, minorities and the poor on behalf of the capitalist rulers (see the July 2006 Partisan Defense Committee pamphlet, The Fight to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal—Mumia Is Innocent!).
Beginning in the late 1960s, Mumia was targeted by the police and FBI as a Black Panther leader and later as a MOVE supporter and journalist renowned for his searing exposés of cop brutality and racist oppression. The prosecution railroaded Mumia to death row in 1982, building its case on the basis of phony ballistics and other manufactured “evidence,” a “confession” concocted by cops and prosecutors, massive police intimidation of witnesses and racist jury rigging. His trial was overseen by “hanging judge” Albert Sabo, who was overheard saying he would help the prosecution “fry the n----r.” To secure the death sentence, prosecutors pointed to political statements made by Mumia as a 16-year-old Panther.
In December 2001, federal judge William Yohn overturned Mumia’s death sentence as unconstitutional based on improper jury instructions while simultaneously upholding every aspect of the 1982 frame-up conviction. As for the Supreme Court, its 2009 denial of Mumia’s petition essentially put an end to his legal efforts to overturn his conviction on constitutional grounds.
During the decades of his unjust imprisonment, Mumia has remained unbowed, speaking out for the oppressed and the impoverished through his death row commentaries. Mumia’s cause has been an international focal point of the fight for abolition of the death penalty, which in the U.S. is the legacy of black chattel slavery and represents the pinnacle of state terror. When Mumia faced a death warrant in the summer of 1995, massive publicity about his case and worldwide protests that were endorsed by trade unions representing hundreds of thousands of workers played a crucial role in staying the executioner’s hand.
Now the state authorities hope with the latest decision that Mumia’s cause will be forgotten and that he will rot in prison hell until he dies. This must not be Mumia’s fate. As the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee have always insisted, fighters for Mumia’s freedom must look to link his cause to the class struggles of the multiracial proletariat. Trade unionists, opponents of the racist death penalty and fighters for black rights must continue the fight to free Mumia from the racist dungeons of Pennsylvania and to abolish the racist death penalty.
Partisan Defense Committee
10 December 2011
From The Partisan Defense Committee-The 26th Holiday Appeal In Support Of Class-War Prisoners-Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Free Leonard Peltier, Free Lynne Stewart And Her Co-Workers-Free The Remaining Ohio 7 Prisoners!
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class struggle defense in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
***********
Workers Vanguard No. 991 25 November 2011
Free the Class-War Prisoners!
26th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal
An Injury to One Is an Injury to All!
(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)
The holiday season is once again upon us. Any day now, we’ll be assaulted 24/7 with commercials hawking the latest PlayStations, full-page newspaper ads featuring Christmas lingerie and jewelry, sitcoms with oafish dads sporting hideous Christmas ties and endless broadcasts of the movie about the Midwestern banker who, thanks to his guardian angel Clarence, discovers that “It’s a Wonderful Life.” For most, this year’s holidays mean that the bosses are in the Bahamas sucking up single malt scotch while paychecks are replaced with pink slips and the Santa shimmying down the chimney is a marshal serving a foreclosure notice. At the same time, poor families debate whether the small bit of money set aside for the holidays will be spent on presents or a bus ticket to visit their loved ones behind bars.
For us, this time of year is an occasion to redouble our commitment to those among the inhabitants of America’s vast network of prisons who were singled out for standing up to racist capitalist oppression—the class-war prisoners. Twenty-six years ago, the Partisan Defense Committee revived the program of the early International Labor Defense (ILD) under its secretary, James P. Cannon, of sending stipends to the class-war prisoners—irrespective of their political views or affiliations. As Cannon wrote:
“In one sense of the word the whole of capitalist society is a prison. For the great mass of people who do the hard, useful work there is no such word as freedom. They come and go at the order of a few. Their lives are regulated according to the needs and wishes of a few. A censorship is put upon their words and deeds. The fruits of their labor are taken from them. And if, by chance, they have the instinct and spirit to rebel, if they take their place in the vanguard of the fight for justice, the prisons are waiting.”
—James P. Cannon, “The Cause that Passes Through a Prison” (Labor Defender, September 1926)
We provide monthly stipends to 16 class-war prisoners and holiday gifts for them and their families. The $25 monthly stipends help ease a little bit the horrors of “life” in capitalist dungeons. More importantly, they are a necessary expression of solidarity with these prisoners—a message that they are not forgotten.
Since we initiated this program in 1986, we have provided stipends to over 30 class-war prisoners around the world. Among the first was former Black Panther leader Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), who spent 27 years in prison, for a crime that the state authorities knew that he did not commit, before being released in 1997. Geronimo died in June, an untimely death undoubtedly linked to his many years in prison.
Most of the class-war prisoners who receive PDC stipends have already spent decades in prison, and the capitalist rulers are determined not only to see them die behind bars but also to repeatedly subject them to harassment and degradation. American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier wrote us about his recent transfer to a prison in Florida far from his family and supporters, where the authorities placed him in a cell with a skinhead sporting on his back a tattoo of a KKK nightrider!
For those behind bars, the human tragedies that befall us all are made ever more acute by the enforced separation from family and friends. Jaan Laaman recently informed us of the death of his son Rick. Earlier this year, death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal lost his sister, Lydia Barashango, who was a tireless activist in Mumia’s fight for freedom. Mumia also had the bittersweet experience of seeing his son, Jamal Hart, railroaded to prison on bogus gun-possession charges in retaliation for speaking out on his father’s behalf, finally released from prison after serving every single day of his 15 and a half year sentence.
Persecution of those imprisoned for their political views and actions has not only continued unabated, but Obama and his top cop, Attorney General Eric Holder, are making reservations for many more to join those already behind bars. The Obama administration has expanded the repressive measures adopted during the Clinton/Bush years that are being wielded against those who propelled him into office—labor, blacks, immigrants and liberal youth. Obama has used the “anti-terror” laws to target leftist supporters of Latin American guerrillas and oppressed Palestinians, far surpassed the Bush regime in deporting immigrants and carried out the assassination abroad of an American citizen without even the pretense of charges or a trial.
The struggle to free the class-war prisoners is critical to educating a new generation of fighters against exploitation and oppression—a schooling centered on the role of the capitalist state, comprising the military, cops, courts and prisons. In recent weeks, the young activists of the “Occupy” protests have been on the receiving end of pepper spray, tear gas and police truncheons, with thousands arrested—a small taste not only of the daily hell of life for black people in this country but also what the bosses’ government unleashes against workers when they engage in class struggle. This was seen in the brutal cop attacks and arrests this September of over 130 leaders, members and supporters of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in Longview, Washington. In its battle with the giant union-busting EGT grain exporter, the union has engaged in the kind of militant labor actions that built this country’s industrial unions. A defeat in Longview would be a body blow against the ILWU as a whole.
The 16 class-war prisoners receiving stipends from the PDC are listed below:
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” This year the Philadelphia district attorney’s office unsuccessfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the death penalty for this class-war prisoner. The D.A. now has until mid April to convene a new sentencing hearing, the sole purpose of which would be to determine whether Mumia is to be again sentenced to death or will rot in prison for life.
This December marks the 30th anniversary of Mumia’s arrest for a killing that the cops know he did not commit. Mumia was framed up for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Mountains of documentation proving Mumia’s innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner, have been submitted to the courts. But from top to bottom, the courts have repeatedly refused to hear this overwhelming evidence.
While others plead with the current U.S. president and his attorney general to “investigate” violations of Mumia’s “civil rights,” the PDC says that Mumia’s fate cannot be left in the hands of the government of the capitalists. The racist rulers hate Mumia because they see in him the spectre of black revolt. The stakes are high and the situation is grim, but any real fight for Mumia’s freedom must be based on class-struggle opposition to the capitalist rulers, who have entombed this innocent black man for more than half his life.
Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier’s frame-up trial, for the 1975 deaths of two marauding FBI agents in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation, shows what capitalist “justice” is all about. Although the lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 67-year-old Peltier is still locked away. This year, Peltier, who suffers from multiple serious medical conditions, was thrown into solitary confinement and then transferred to Florida, far from his family. He is not scheduled to be reconsidered for parole for another 13 years.
Eight MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—are in their 34th year in prison. They were sentenced to 30 to 100 years after the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops in collaboration with the Feds. After more than three decades of unjust incarceration, most of these innocent prisoners had parole hearings this year, but none were released.
Lynne Stewart is a radical lawyer incarcerated for defending her client, a blind Egyptian cleric imprisoned for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. Last year, she was resentenced to ten years, more than quadrupling her earlier sentence, in a loud affirmation by the Obama administration that there will be no let-up in the massive attack on democratic rights under the “war on terror.” Stewart, now over 72 years old and suffering from breast cancer, is known for her defense of Black Panthers, radical leftists and others reviled by the capitalist state.
Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison, convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. Their children were kidnapped at gunpoint by the Feds.
The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals during the Vietnam antiwar movement and by New Leftists who wrote off the possibility of winning the working class to a revolutionary program and saw themselves as an auxiliary of Third World liberation movements. But, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not a crime. They should not have served a day in prison.
Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They were victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. Poindexter and Mondo were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and they have now served more than 40 years in jail. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter and Mondo new trials despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a 911 audio tape long suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.
Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison, has been in solitary isolation for more than four decades. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with George Jackson, his comrade and mentor, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite numerous letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years, Pinell was again denied parole in 2009. Now in his 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence at the notorious torture chamber, Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit in California, a focal point for two recent hunger strikes against grotesquely inhuman conditions.
Contribute now! All proceeds from the Holiday Appeals will go to the Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund. This is not charity but an elementary act of solidarity with those imprisoned for their opposition to racist capitalism and imperialist depredations. Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class struggle defense in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
***********
Workers Vanguard No. 991 25 November 2011
Free the Class-War Prisoners!
26th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal
An Injury to One Is an Injury to All!
(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)
The holiday season is once again upon us. Any day now, we’ll be assaulted 24/7 with commercials hawking the latest PlayStations, full-page newspaper ads featuring Christmas lingerie and jewelry, sitcoms with oafish dads sporting hideous Christmas ties and endless broadcasts of the movie about the Midwestern banker who, thanks to his guardian angel Clarence, discovers that “It’s a Wonderful Life.” For most, this year’s holidays mean that the bosses are in the Bahamas sucking up single malt scotch while paychecks are replaced with pink slips and the Santa shimmying down the chimney is a marshal serving a foreclosure notice. At the same time, poor families debate whether the small bit of money set aside for the holidays will be spent on presents or a bus ticket to visit their loved ones behind bars.
For us, this time of year is an occasion to redouble our commitment to those among the inhabitants of America’s vast network of prisons who were singled out for standing up to racist capitalist oppression—the class-war prisoners. Twenty-six years ago, the Partisan Defense Committee revived the program of the early International Labor Defense (ILD) under its secretary, James P. Cannon, of sending stipends to the class-war prisoners—irrespective of their political views or affiliations. As Cannon wrote:
“In one sense of the word the whole of capitalist society is a prison. For the great mass of people who do the hard, useful work there is no such word as freedom. They come and go at the order of a few. Their lives are regulated according to the needs and wishes of a few. A censorship is put upon their words and deeds. The fruits of their labor are taken from them. And if, by chance, they have the instinct and spirit to rebel, if they take their place in the vanguard of the fight for justice, the prisons are waiting.”
—James P. Cannon, “The Cause that Passes Through a Prison” (Labor Defender, September 1926)
We provide monthly stipends to 16 class-war prisoners and holiday gifts for them and their families. The $25 monthly stipends help ease a little bit the horrors of “life” in capitalist dungeons. More importantly, they are a necessary expression of solidarity with these prisoners—a message that they are not forgotten.
Since we initiated this program in 1986, we have provided stipends to over 30 class-war prisoners around the world. Among the first was former Black Panther leader Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), who spent 27 years in prison, for a crime that the state authorities knew that he did not commit, before being released in 1997. Geronimo died in June, an untimely death undoubtedly linked to his many years in prison.
Most of the class-war prisoners who receive PDC stipends have already spent decades in prison, and the capitalist rulers are determined not only to see them die behind bars but also to repeatedly subject them to harassment and degradation. American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier wrote us about his recent transfer to a prison in Florida far from his family and supporters, where the authorities placed him in a cell with a skinhead sporting on his back a tattoo of a KKK nightrider!
For those behind bars, the human tragedies that befall us all are made ever more acute by the enforced separation from family and friends. Jaan Laaman recently informed us of the death of his son Rick. Earlier this year, death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal lost his sister, Lydia Barashango, who was a tireless activist in Mumia’s fight for freedom. Mumia also had the bittersweet experience of seeing his son, Jamal Hart, railroaded to prison on bogus gun-possession charges in retaliation for speaking out on his father’s behalf, finally released from prison after serving every single day of his 15 and a half year sentence.
Persecution of those imprisoned for their political views and actions has not only continued unabated, but Obama and his top cop, Attorney General Eric Holder, are making reservations for many more to join those already behind bars. The Obama administration has expanded the repressive measures adopted during the Clinton/Bush years that are being wielded against those who propelled him into office—labor, blacks, immigrants and liberal youth. Obama has used the “anti-terror” laws to target leftist supporters of Latin American guerrillas and oppressed Palestinians, far surpassed the Bush regime in deporting immigrants and carried out the assassination abroad of an American citizen without even the pretense of charges or a trial.
The struggle to free the class-war prisoners is critical to educating a new generation of fighters against exploitation and oppression—a schooling centered on the role of the capitalist state, comprising the military, cops, courts and prisons. In recent weeks, the young activists of the “Occupy” protests have been on the receiving end of pepper spray, tear gas and police truncheons, with thousands arrested—a small taste not only of the daily hell of life for black people in this country but also what the bosses’ government unleashes against workers when they engage in class struggle. This was seen in the brutal cop attacks and arrests this September of over 130 leaders, members and supporters of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in Longview, Washington. In its battle with the giant union-busting EGT grain exporter, the union has engaged in the kind of militant labor actions that built this country’s industrial unions. A defeat in Longview would be a body blow against the ILWU as a whole.
The 16 class-war prisoners receiving stipends from the PDC are listed below:
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” This year the Philadelphia district attorney’s office unsuccessfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the death penalty for this class-war prisoner. The D.A. now has until mid April to convene a new sentencing hearing, the sole purpose of which would be to determine whether Mumia is to be again sentenced to death or will rot in prison for life.
This December marks the 30th anniversary of Mumia’s arrest for a killing that the cops know he did not commit. Mumia was framed up for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Mountains of documentation proving Mumia’s innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner, have been submitted to the courts. But from top to bottom, the courts have repeatedly refused to hear this overwhelming evidence.
While others plead with the current U.S. president and his attorney general to “investigate” violations of Mumia’s “civil rights,” the PDC says that Mumia’s fate cannot be left in the hands of the government of the capitalists. The racist rulers hate Mumia because they see in him the spectre of black revolt. The stakes are high and the situation is grim, but any real fight for Mumia’s freedom must be based on class-struggle opposition to the capitalist rulers, who have entombed this innocent black man for more than half his life.
Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier’s frame-up trial, for the 1975 deaths of two marauding FBI agents in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation, shows what capitalist “justice” is all about. Although the lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 67-year-old Peltier is still locked away. This year, Peltier, who suffers from multiple serious medical conditions, was thrown into solitary confinement and then transferred to Florida, far from his family. He is not scheduled to be reconsidered for parole for another 13 years.
Eight MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—are in their 34th year in prison. They were sentenced to 30 to 100 years after the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops in collaboration with the Feds. After more than three decades of unjust incarceration, most of these innocent prisoners had parole hearings this year, but none were released.
Lynne Stewart is a radical lawyer incarcerated for defending her client, a blind Egyptian cleric imprisoned for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. Last year, she was resentenced to ten years, more than quadrupling her earlier sentence, in a loud affirmation by the Obama administration that there will be no let-up in the massive attack on democratic rights under the “war on terror.” Stewart, now over 72 years old and suffering from breast cancer, is known for her defense of Black Panthers, radical leftists and others reviled by the capitalist state.
Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison, convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. Their children were kidnapped at gunpoint by the Feds.
The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals during the Vietnam antiwar movement and by New Leftists who wrote off the possibility of winning the working class to a revolutionary program and saw themselves as an auxiliary of Third World liberation movements. But, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not a crime. They should not have served a day in prison.
Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They were victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. Poindexter and Mondo were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and they have now served more than 40 years in jail. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter and Mondo new trials despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a 911 audio tape long suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.
Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison, has been in solitary isolation for more than four decades. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with George Jackson, his comrade and mentor, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite numerous letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years, Pinell was again denied parole in 2009. Now in his 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence at the notorious torture chamber, Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit in California, a focal point for two recent hunger strikes against grotesquely inhuman conditions.
Contribute now! All proceeds from the Holiday Appeals will go to the Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund. This is not charity but an elementary act of solidarity with those imprisoned for their opposition to racist capitalism and imperialist depredations. Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.
The Latest From The “Occupy Oakland” Website-This Is Class War-We Say No More- Take The Offensive- Make The “Occupy” Movement Streets Labor’s Streets-Defend The Oakland Commune!
Click on the headline to link to Occupy Oakland website for the latest from the Bay Area vanguard battleground in the struggle for social justice.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
From The “West Coast Port Shutdown” Website-This Is Class War, We Say No More!-Defend The Longshoremen’s Unions!-Defend All Our Unions- Take The Offensive
Click on the headline to link to the West Coast Port Shutdown website.
Markin comment December 13, 2011:
We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West Coast activists. As I have pointed out in my remarks below this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling class for a different more society. Not everything went as well, or as well-attended, as expected including our rally in solidarity in Boston but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the post-encampment era.
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Remarks prepared for the Speak Out in defense of Occupy Boston, Occupy West Coast and in solidarity with the West Coast Port Shutdown action at Boston City Hall Plaza, December 12, 2011:
I will read from prepared notes. Let me explain why. In the old days, my old street corner agitator days, I could whip up a speech off the top of my head. But of late, before the fresh breeze of the Occupy movement blew across the Boston waterfront, I was more used to sitting at tables in small, over-heated rooms. Or participating in small marches, rallies, and vigils where such oratorical skills were not in much demand. But let me get to my main point.
Sisters and brothers, brothers and sisters, no question, no question at all that the recent police occupation at Dewey Square was a big defeat, a big if temporary defeat, for our struggle for freedom of expression and assembly in the public square. In response, over the past few days not a few younger or newer activists, not used to the ebb and flow of the political struggle, the class struggle, have been disheartened and expressed a sense of defeat.
Today though I bring you glad tidings. The sleeping giant of the labor movement has begun to stir. The long night of despair and disorientation is beginning to lift. At the beginning of this year when the struggle of the public workers unions in Wisconsin heated up I, among others, proposed a general strike and solidarity rallies in order to beat back the anti-labor attacks. We were written off as mad men and women, old-time leftists gone off their rockers. General strike, shut down, no, that was okay for those Greek workers who seemed to strike every other day, or those French workers who struck every day. In America, never. And then came the mass actions in Wisconsin, the shut down of the Port Of Oakland on November 2nd, and today’s actions. Now we can quibble over whether such events are real general strikes or not but now the language of general strike and shutdown is firmly etched on labor’s political agenda.
The old Polish socialist scholar, Isaac Deutscher, once remarked back in the 1960s heyday of the anti-Vietnam War movement that he would give up all the endless marches, rallies and vigils for one dock strike against the war. He was right. We have to hit the war-mongers, the capitalists where it hurts-their profits and power. And today’s West Coast actions are proof of that proposition. If the age of the Occupy encampment has passed so too has the age of endless marches, rallies and vigils. They certainly have their place but now we must take the offensive. Now every action must be thought out to measure the effect on breaking the power of the one percent.
I had, several weeks ago, proposed to various people that we shut down the Port of Boston today in solidarity with the West Coast. That proposal was premature considering the situation in the Boston movement. But someday, someday soon, we too will be marching to shut down the port. To shut down GE in Lynn. To shut down the Bank of America. To shut down their government. And maybe not to just shut them down for a day either. I will leave you with this thought. We created the wealth-let’s take it back. Working people and their allies must rule!
*******
***********
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
Markin comment December 13, 2011:
We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West Coast activists. As I have pointed out in my remarks below this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling class for a different more society. Not everything went as well, or as well-attended, as expected including our rally in solidarity in Boston but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the post-encampment era.
***********
Remarks prepared for the Speak Out in defense of Occupy Boston, Occupy West Coast and in solidarity with the West Coast Port Shutdown action at Boston City Hall Plaza, December 12, 2011:
I will read from prepared notes. Let me explain why. In the old days, my old street corner agitator days, I could whip up a speech off the top of my head. But of late, before the fresh breeze of the Occupy movement blew across the Boston waterfront, I was more used to sitting at tables in small, over-heated rooms. Or participating in small marches, rallies, and vigils where such oratorical skills were not in much demand. But let me get to my main point.
Sisters and brothers, brothers and sisters, no question, no question at all that the recent police occupation at Dewey Square was a big defeat, a big if temporary defeat, for our struggle for freedom of expression and assembly in the public square. In response, over the past few days not a few younger or newer activists, not used to the ebb and flow of the political struggle, the class struggle, have been disheartened and expressed a sense of defeat.
Today though I bring you glad tidings. The sleeping giant of the labor movement has begun to stir. The long night of despair and disorientation is beginning to lift. At the beginning of this year when the struggle of the public workers unions in Wisconsin heated up I, among others, proposed a general strike and solidarity rallies in order to beat back the anti-labor attacks. We were written off as mad men and women, old-time leftists gone off their rockers. General strike, shut down, no, that was okay for those Greek workers who seemed to strike every other day, or those French workers who struck every day. In America, never. And then came the mass actions in Wisconsin, the shut down of the Port Of Oakland on November 2nd, and today’s actions. Now we can quibble over whether such events are real general strikes or not but now the language of general strike and shutdown is firmly etched on labor’s political agenda.
The old Polish socialist scholar, Isaac Deutscher, once remarked back in the 1960s heyday of the anti-Vietnam War movement that he would give up all the endless marches, rallies and vigils for one dock strike against the war. He was right. We have to hit the war-mongers, the capitalists where it hurts-their profits and power. And today’s West Coast actions are proof of that proposition. If the age of the Occupy encampment has passed so too has the age of endless marches, rallies and vigils. They certainly have their place but now we must take the offensive. Now every action must be thought out to measure the effect on breaking the power of the one percent.
I had, several weeks ago, proposed to various people that we shut down the Port of Boston today in solidarity with the West Coast. That proposal was premature considering the situation in the Boston movement. But someday, someday soon, we too will be marching to shut down the port. To shut down GE in Lynn. To shut down the Bank of America. To shut down their government. And maybe not to just shut them down for a day either. I will leave you with this thought. We created the wealth-let’s take it back. Working people and their allies must rule!
*******
***********
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
From #Occupied Boston (#Tomemonos Boston)-No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being Drawn-There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-Random Sights From Life At Dewey Square #7
Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
**********
Markin comment November 18, 2011:
Josh Breslin didn’t know what to expect this time as the streamlined subway car that he was riding was approaching the South Station stop on the MBTA Red Line in Boston. He half-expected to see some multi-colored hand-made poster proclaiming this stop as “Occupy Boston,” something with stenciled and silhouetted clenched fist, or something like that, proclaiming this newly sacred ground, this fetid, dank subway stop, in the name of the people. Hell, just like back in the old days, the old 1960s times of blessed memory, when no wall, no public wall anyway, was safe from revolutionary pronouncements, or off-hand midnight-crafted graffiti. He had certainly seen stranger signs plastered around the Occupy encampment the last few times that he had previously come over from his home in Cambridge on the other side of the river. Stuff from Thoreau and Gandhi, naturally, but also odd-ball wisps of wisdom about being kind, not being greedy, corporate greedy or otherwise, not being sexist, racist, homophobic and the whole litany of politically acceptable Don’ts scripted out since those ‘60s that seemed self-almost explanatory and in not need of proclamation in this microscopic social experiment, this exemplar of the “new world order,” leftist-style.
Ya, these times definitely call for some outlandish statement in bright day-glo colors something, he mused amused, to confuse the touristas who were making the Occupy site a “must see” stop on their vacation itineraries. Something to throw them off the scent when they asked their infernal questions- “What are the kids up to, why all the tents, why all the black flags (really not many but that black flag of anarchy, like the red one of communism, spooked people, made their deepest fears surface, and in the old days rightly so),” and on and on. Like he, Joshua Breslin, known far and wide back in the day under the moniker, Prince of Love, a magical mystery tour merry prankster, music-and-drugs-are- the-revolution, west coast communal living madman knew what was on the kids minds today, except they were getting the short straw in the game of who gets what in the social game.
Just then he reflected, flash-back reflected, that a lot of what he had seen and heard on those other occasions when he had crossed the river of late, maybe four or five by now, echoed some long ago, half-forgotten signs and totems from the times when he was searching for the blue-pink great American West night back in the late 1960s and had wound up in People’s Park in Berkeley out in wayward California. And had been wounded and tear-gassed, Prince of Love renown notwithstanding, for his efforts when things got twisted and the deal went down. Yes, this was just exactly what it was like and now he had a “theme” for the notes that he was feeling pressed to take on this trip now that he had a “feel” for the situation. Although this time, unlike back then, he was not expecting, not expecting in his on-coming dotage, to be wounded or tear-gassed. He frankly admitted to himself after his last visit to the camp site a few days before that he was not up those rigors now, those shake-them-off-and-come-back-swinging-youth- spunks that he had in great quantity as he headed barrel-assing out west from his old hometown, Olde Saco up Maine way.
The train then stopped jarring him in mid-thought, opened its air-pressurized doors, and its sullen passengers decamped for seven winds places. No, Josh noticed, no sign at the subway level anyway that occupyitis had expanded to the cavernous underground. On surfacing in the Dewey Square sunlight though, another mercifully warm late October day starting to break through, his ears were immediately accosted by the ranting, there was no other name for it, of “Syllable Slim,” a name that he had coined for this vagabond prince standing kitty-corner in front of him when he first heard him holding forth on the perfidies of the Democrats, democrats, Republicans, republicans and anyone else who held the whiff of power, or wanted it, at Park Street Station years ago. Now Slim was the “king” of the Dewey Square day and night having moved either uptown or downtown, Josh was not quite sure of the geographic relationship between the two subway stops, with a new audience to ignore, or try to ignore, him. What was also perfectly clear was, uptown or downtown, Slim would be hard-pressed to describe what was going on at his Occupy kingdom. His spiel did not depend on such trivials The city, any city with size, produces its fair share of drifters, grifters, and midnight shifters and they, like lemmings to the sea, have heard of the glad tidings emitting from Dewey Square (read: food, shelter, and no hassles-the famous “three squares and a cot” from “on-the-road” jungle camp lore) and have come forth. And Slim is their king.
Josh, by the way, was here, here on assignment, not much pay but an assignment anyway, his first since he “officially” retired from his onerous editorial duties a couple of years back to be able to sit back, kick back, and write that great sex/drug/political/musical/ hail fellows well met/digger commune 1960s explosion novel he had been putting off since, well, since he “got off the bus” in 1971 and headed back first to Olde Saco and then drifted down to various Boston area spots. See the pay part was required, no, demanded by Josh, in order to give his employer a real “feel” for the flavor of what was going on at Dewey Square to the “soccer moms and dads” who might be wondering what they were missing while waiting, SUV-waiting, for their little Ashley or Samson to finish up their suburban kids soccer league workouts, or one or another of twelve other possible organized kid to do things for their resumes, the kid’s that is. A few random notes to titillate the rubes, and move on. No sweat. He, moreover, was going to parlay those skimpy notes into working order for his now great Tom Wolfe-ish sociological sex/drug/political/musical/ hail fellows well met/digger commune 1960s explosion novel. And in Josh Breslin’s mind Syllable Slim was already slated, with a big intro, to lead off this 21st century magical mystery tour, merry prankster gig, warts and all. We merely get his leavings.
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“Hey brother, can you help me put this tarp over my tent? It got cold as hell last night and the winds were blowing fierce,” yelled a cherub-faced male, almost too youthful to be here but such are the times, although it was later learned that he was now a few weeks-seasoned Occupy Boston grizzly veteran resident to a middle-aged man casually walking by. “Sure thing, let’s get to it” replied that passer-by. Was the passer-by some wayward tourist looking for the next thrill in the city night life, a career gawker, or just one many unnamed “volunteers” who have sprung from the woodwork (okay, okay suburbia) in response to the news that something more than nine-to-five and white picket fences might be in the air?
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“Can you bring this hot pot of soup to the kitchen? Some lady, a lady who would not give her name and would not acknowledge anything but thanks, drove up on the Atlantic Avenue side and asked me to unload some stuff for her,” said one young woman in shorts, short shorts thereby showing off her firm athletic legs for one and all to see to another young woman dressed in long pants, maybe jeans, getting ready for colder climates. Shortly thereafter the “laundry lady” tooted her horn looking for help in unloading a trunk-load of everything from towels to sleeping bags. And our two young women again “hit” the Atlantic Avenue curb for this “angel.” See the angel’s kindly thing, her matronly, middle-aged, unnamed kindly thing, was to come by on Tuesday for dirty laundry and return on Thursday with everything Seventh Generation bright and clean. Said “laundry lady” is also unnamed like our tent-fixing passer-by and soup lady, but clearly one who has come out of the woodwork on the news of the glad tidings.
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“If you want a meal, a nice hot meal, could you wash some dishes to help us out,” barked, barked above the din of the dozen assorted humans in line in front of him, a man who has daily volunteered to help out in the makeshift kitchen. A kitchen whose primitive dishwashing apparatus entailed the familiar rubber soul dish pan, some lukewarm water, a little oily from the leaving of some off-hand meal, joy detergent, and rinsing tub, dishcloth and done. Primitive like back in kid time doing after supper dishes before being released in the teenage be-bop dark streets night. And a couple of older guys, older guys who knew the streets and the lore of the streets backward and forward, stepped behind the tent and got to work on a stack while the third passed on the request. When the hot meals came on deck all three got a meal, no questions asked, but somewhere, somewhere deep inside his career vagabond heart that third man knew he was not built for this new world a-borning. Not for social solidarity dishes cleaned. Meanwhile our kitchen master chef, master of the artful tuna sandwich and of the slabbed peanut butter and jelly (grape just then) variety as well answers an older man’s inquiry about what was pressingly needed for the next day’s “menu.” That older man, a man who did not look like he had the means to do so, and could have very easily passed for a “resident” of this tent city, had been coming daily with perhaps one hundred dollars worth of whatever our master chef told him the kitchen needed. Angels, apparently, come in all sizes, shapes, and circumstances.
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Jesus, the logistics of this encampment is simplicity itself. A few rows of tents, sleeping tents, mostly good firm weather-conditioned tents in all colors, mainly blue or the feel of blue though. Unlike those watered-down Army olive drab pup tents that I made do with out in ‘Frisco when Butterfly Swirl and I were a thing traveling up and down the West Coast in the summer of love, 1967. Of course then love drove the be-bop great western night and we probably could have made due with some newspapers under our heads. But that’s a story for another time. Then several tents at each end of the encampment for special tasks like media, the library, and the “information desk.” A few odds and end here and there but mainly kept up nicely, city urban vagabond nicely. Fit for any well-fed college student out on an urban adventure to place his or her head on, and not have mother worry too much. And at the far end, the end away from the subway station a huge granite gray slab of a building, something to do with the ‘big dig” project that created this space, officially the Rose Kennedy Greenway, in its aftermath. The side wall of that big slab now serves as the main poster board for any political messages that people have the energy (and magic marker) to proclaim. And in front of that wall a few chairs, a mike, and various other equipment for those who want harangue, humor, or hum the crowd. That fleeting chance at fifteen minutes of fame for the soul-weary, for the voiceless, and for the voiced-over. Let’s listen in for bit and jot down a few of the things said.
“Karl Marx was right, this capitalist system has got to go and we need to make a new world,” sing-songed a middle-aged man, seemingly some kind of college professor out doing missionary work this day, who then proceeded to spend his fifteen minutes expanding on his scheme to have Congress vote to limit the amount of profit each corporation can make, using some sort of exotic formula that only he had the pass code to unravel. I missed that idea when I read Marx long ago but maybe I missed one of the footnotes the probable source. Our professor didn’t. This place, every time I come, at least during the day is loaded down with professors and others from the myriad local colleges and universities that dot the Boston skyline and each brings his or her own panacea with them, usually some third-rate variation off of Marx or some other 19th century thinker dressed up to wake up the texting-enchanted modern listener.
“This place is a Potemkin Village,” chanted another younger speaker a little later to a wandering, wavering crowd audience of about seven. “The people who run this thing go home at night to their nice warm beds while we stay here and keep the faith, the real faith,” he added. This inflamed black flannel-shirted youth finished up with this epistle, “Besides half the tents are empty and the tents that have people in them are just drifters and bums who don’t know anything about what we are trying to do here. They are just trying to keep warm and away from getting hassled by the cops.” I had heard that sentiment expressed before, more than once, from political types and kind of dismissed it out of hand but this guy seemed to be speaking from some truth experience. I reminded myself to come back in a few minutes and talk to him when he was done. However when I went back about ten minutes later he was gone. But his plaintive plea stuck with me and I will have to keep on the trail of that strand.
********
Later that same day at the same wall-
“Man, play us a Hendrix tune on that thing, ‘cause you are smokin’, man” earnestly requested a young, red-bearded man, obviously a student, an ardent musical student from the look of him. “Okay man, if you play a little drum behind me,” came the reply from the reincarnation of Jimi, complete with tie-dyed headband to hold his head together. And for perhaps fifteen minutes they held it together like some aura out on the 1960s be-bop night, their fifteen minutes of fame on the Dewey Square main stage for their resumes. And the crowd that swelled to listen in knew they had heard some old phantom primordial from the womb sound, and liked it. Another group this time a guitar, harmonica, drum combination trying to bring a blues riff together sends most of the crowd wandering in all directions. Such are the hard facts of the fame game from Broadway to tent city. Hopefully some more harmonious society will have more room for the fringes of that game.
*********
“Say, can I have cigarette, man, I’m out?” said another older man weary, street weary, getting ready to enter a tent to catch a few winks. “I’m rolling Bull, okay?” answered a red-headed dread-locked young man. That cadging of cigarettes, factory-made or from the pouch, between and among the young is somewhat strange after the righteous lifetime drumbeats of foul smoking. Not all messages get through.
Such were, are, will be the random sights and sounds of the Occupy Boston encampment on any given day, or any given minute if you can be in seven places at one time, as the camp continues to organize itself in the tradition of the old westward pioneers seeking that great American west blue-pink night, and still are seeking it generations later.
********
“Hey man, don’t be cheap give me a fucking cigarette, I’m all shaky,” shouted out a razor- edged guy, obviously working off some hang-over, although not necessarily an alcoholic or drug one. “I’m down to my last one, what the fuck do you want from me,” came the surly reply. The tension spiked then passed away in the midday air. In that same midday air came this from one of the tents, voiced by an unseen man, a gruff-voiced man, not young “Fuck, give me my space, my free space, don’t be all around me.” And that voice too went to ground, unresolved.
*******
“This place is neat, three squares and a cot, and nobody hassles you and you don’t have to work for your grub, or nothing,” murmured a street veteran, shabbily-dressed, rough edge- bearded but of sober expression to no one in particular in a crowd of suburban tourists who have made the site at Dewey Square a place on their “must see” map. A young man came up to a clot of that same crowd to discuss the Occupy theme. A question was asked about the shabbily-dressed man’s comment. “Oh, ya, most of the residents are street people, a few of us like me stay to keep the peace but most of the politicos go home, or back to the dorms when the General Assembly is over. We opened the space to anyone who followed the simple rules of the camp so here we are.” One tourista smirked the smirk of someone who “knew, just knew” this thing was not going to work, not with bums, hell no. We shall see.
********
“Out of the tents, into the streets, Out of the tents, into the streets” yelled a tall dark-haired young man dressed in black, Black Bloc black, meaning black everything black, from boots to jacket, topped off with the de rigueur black bandana handkerchief covering the bottom part of his face as some kind of security blanket measure. This youth is known to me so that there is only a little affectation in his dress to be in touch with his anarchist heart. Others’ motives I am not as sure of as they flaunt their garb like wearing the “uniform” would cast away all sins and black purify their corrupted souls. Such act would guard against turning into a stinking bourgeois baddie like daddy.
This sight, the nightmare sight to every protective mother guarding her young against the travails of the world and the bane of every government seeing spook shadows behind the dress, is however here among the tents just another guy with a cause. He repeats himself several times as he tries to rouse the denizens of the new world tent city to come out and march on behalf of any number of causes, this one in solidarity with the shutting down of the Port of Oakland by Occupy Oakland on this early November day, the vanguard action city of the whole American movement and one that has been increasing under attack, under police attack almost nightly.
A few younger comrades also dressed in black, head-to-toe black as well, heeded his plea and stirred from their tents, stretching the stretch of the huddled or prone to ready themselves for the couple of mile walk on this cold but clear evening. Mostly the camp residents ignore the plea and go about their business of fixing tents, heading to the kitchen mess tent for supper or just pretend that our big-hearted black-attired anarcho-mad monk of an activist will gather his troops and leave. And here is where the funny part comes in as I think back to a guy I heard up on the “main stage” a few days back who kept yelling about this occupation site being a Potemkin Village. [Markin: For those not in the know about Russian history or are unfamiliar with the term it signifies all front, no substance. Allegedly one of Russian Empress Catherine the Great’s lovers back in the 18th century, Potemkin, ordered beautiful villages build with only the facades so his honey would have pleasant sights to see when they went riding by. Ya I know, lame but that is the story.] And today that seems true, at least to my eye, as the vast majority of the three hundred or so marchers were not resident “occupiers,” or had the now signature drawn-out slightly dazed sag look of occupiers. In any case we are off, as I have decided to express my solidarity with the sisters and brothers in Oakland (a place I know well from back in the day).
Naturally the black-suited sisters and brothers are up front leading this thing chanting solidarity slogans centered on the defense of Occupy Oakland ("From the East Bay to Back Bay-Defend Occupy Oakland"), the ubiquitous “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” that is something of a national anthem for the movement now, and to show the tenor of militancy this night this little beauty, “What’s the solution?: Revolution, What’s the reaction?: Direct action." All in a day’s work out in the protest march world though. What makes this one a little unusual is the march route. See the line of march on this one, perhaps reflecting some super-black dream kick, is deliberately planned to go helter-skelter, one assumes to “throw off” the bicycle police and other law enforcement types who are “guarding” the march.
Of course the only ones who are confused by all this are the few marchers who are rare rookies to this scene, trampling on others' shoes we travel zigzag (and they, the rookies zigzag) up the wrong way on Winter Street or Congress Street stopping already stopped rush hour traffic with our pleas for solidarity and a whole range of other concerns. Eventually we get to the State House on Beacon Street then march down to Charles Street and move against the waiting traffic before heading back to Boylston Street and then to Downtown Crossing for the now obligatory “die in” (a momentary sit-in, if you are not familiar with that term) a few “mic check” shout-outs and then more chanting back to camp. Done, finis, chalk up some more march miles on my protest-o-meter. A spirited march, a necessary march, no question, but I hope that I was just being jittery when I got that feeling in my spine at the end of the march that something was out of joint, that those who wish to “lead” a revolution, a black-encrusted revolution, were heading up the wrong street with their antics.
********
“You had better stay the fuck away from my woman, and stay way away,” threatened a young guy, a young white guy, not a street guy, not a student but just the kind of guy who drifts in and out of things. “Fuck you and your woman,” came the reply from a young Spanish-looking dude who had daggers in his eyes as the two nearly came to blows. Just then someone yelled “rainbow” and several people appeared to calm the situation down. Not too quickly calmed it down by the way.
This too is a part of the “new world a-borning” as not everybody is quite ready yet to shift gears, or just has too much, much too much, baggage from old bourgeois society to make the leap of faith just yet.
********
Voices overheard while waiting for a rally or march against or for something to start, a Free School University lecture to begin, a this or that meeting to proceed, a just plain old ordinary passing through the camp or the thousand and one other things waits at the Occupy Boston site at Dewey Square.
“See, this is the way it works,” said a tall, red-headed curly-haired young man, dressed in an “approved” regulation Occupy resident garb, fatigue jacket, denim jeans, a rakish hat, and this warmish evening wearing shoes with no socks to a small, middle-aged, graying woman dressed in some outfit worthy of high hippie times in the summer of love, 1967 but who was having a hard time getting around the various concepts involved in participation in a General Assembly (GA) show-up, the central decision-making body of the Occupy movement, although she liked the idea in theory as she made plain to tell her “tour guide” at the start.
The red-headed youth, let’s call him Red for short although no inference should be drawn about his political allegiances from that, continued, “Somebody brings an idea they, or their group, want to have heard, discussed, and voted on by GA. Let’s say, for example, an action like having everybody turn in their saving and checking accounts at the big banks like Bank of America and transfer the money to credit unions or small neighborhood banks on a certain day. They come here, get their point put on the agenda and when their turn comes up they can motivate it. Then people can discuss it, discuss it from all angles, sometimes unto death practically, I’ve seen that at GA, and periodic “temperature checks” can be taken on the favorability of supporting such an action.”
“What’s a temperature check?” asked our somewhat bewildered ancient flower-child.
“That’s a sense of the meeting on some point and instead of the crowd yelling and screaming a response you just wiggle your fingers on one hand, or two, in the middle, or down. It doesn’t mean a thing about whether the thing, the idea being presented, will pass or not,” young Red answered, answered in the patient low-key monotone that he had either spent many moons perfecting in secret or came naturally to him. I suspect the latter from other times I have seen him give his spiels at GA. “After the proposal is presented then people can approach the facilitator, or the assigned “stack” person, and ask to speak on the matter, in turn.” Okay, so far?”
“After full discussion that can, like I say, take the whole evening there is a vote, a vote if there is a quorum left at GA by voting time. Sometimes there is not, more so recently. Then a bunch of procedures come into play that I don’t always understood about dissent blocks and mortal dissent blocks that can kill a proposal even before a vote if somebody thinks it is a small or big danger to what the Occupy movement is trying to do. And others agree after a vote, if it gets that far. Usually though that doesn’t happen because the stuff we deal with isn’t that weird. The quorum thing will more likely delay action on a vote and the thing is tabled until a later GA. If nothing gets in the way though it can be voted that night by consensus.
“What?” asked the starting to get glazed-eye woman, who seemingly no stranger to the in and outs of grassroots participatory democracy, is taken back by our Red’s use of the word.
“Okay, okay in the corporate world things get done by majority vote, right. So a lot of people can be losers even if the vote is close so to guard against that tyranny of the majority everything is done by consensus. Someone explained it to me this way and it made sense to me. You raise your hand in approval if you can live with the proposal. On the credit union thing that would be easy but on some other stuff maybe not.”
“So what if you don’t get consensus but have a majority? Our fair lady asks. “No go, go back and work on your proposal or give it up,” shot back Red, for the first time a little annoyed with a question like the idea of consensus was automatically the best way to do things in a democracy and how could anyone, especially an anyone who came from 1960s land, object. “Thanks, for your help” our hippie lady, our perplexed hippie lady on that last point, told Red as she meandered around the camp looking for the kitchen area, or maybe just to think over what had suddenly perplexed her.
***********
“How long have you been coming here?,” asked the white-haired old man, neatly although inexpensively dressed, a man who seemingly had seen many struggles in his time, not all of them political, but enough of them to know that he had some political thoughts hidden among those white hairs. “Oh, I started camping out here on Day 1 in September and stayed for a few weeks but then I had to go back to my dorm at Boston University because there was too much noise here at night for me to study and anyway I got kind of bored just hanging around a lot being gawked at by tourists and everybody else who wanted to see what was going on here at the beginning,” forthrightly answered a fetching young brunette who did not, frankly, look, strictly from appearances, like she belonged here for one day never mind weeks but that is the beauty of what has been churned up this fall by the tide of the Occupy movement in the face of overwhelmingly social discontent.
The wizened white-haired man moved slowly away to speak to others he had met, especially a couple of Veterans For Peace supporters whom he had come to know fairly well, at the site when the young woman reached out, tugged at his coat and said “Wait, I have more to tell you.” A little startled the old man stopped in his tracks and asked to hear more. She continued “I’ve seen you around camp before, talking to some people I know about the 1960s and about the funny stuff that went on then, and you look like you might have been a hippie or something so I think I can tell you stuff.” “What stuff?” answered the now red-faced old man waiting for the young damsel to pore out her heart about the indignities of life, boy-friend problems, some unknown addictions, or some such thing.
“I just didn’t leave because I couldn’t study or was bored although that was part of it. Mainly it was because I feel this movement has lost direction, lost direction in a big way, by spending all its time and energy here defending and winter fortifying the camp and getting isolated from trying to reach out to people. I’m studying about social movements in school and this one seems to be going away from what groups like the black civil rights movement and anti-war movements were trying to even if they made a lot of mistakes. My boy-friend and I almost broke up over it because he likes the camp life, he’s still here, and he doesn’t want any demands raised, period, and thinks that if we just show a good example people will gravitate to see things our way. He was furious when I said nobody was watching, or not enough were. We made up after I left and went back to my dorm room but I still think after over a month that the encampment has been here that I was right, although we avoid talking about it. What do you think?”
The white-haired man laughed, laughed good-naturedly explaining that he did not expect in his fairly frequent stops at Dewey Square that he would be performing Dear Occupy Abby services to the lovelorn. She gave half a smile to that notion. He continued, “We too made every mistake in the book back in the day, especially in going out of our way to alienate every possible person who disagreed with us until, like some light bulb going on, we finally got it that such things were self-defeating and changed tack. I too share your reservations about getting isolated out here in the middle of nowhere, even if it is the center of the Financial District, but an old radical, and old communist actually, told me back in the day that each generation must find its own ways to drive the struggle. And he was basically right. At least some of us did learn and I am living proof that not all mistakes are politically fatal. Things are still fresh yet so talk to your boy-friend, and keep talking about the need to break out of the camps. Okay?” She nodded the nod of the half-believer and walked away saying she hoped to run into our wizard again.
**********
“Hey, what time is the Women’s Caucus march starting?, asked, asked softly and politely, a young, maybe mixed spanishblackwhiteindian, woman dressed in what I would describe as modern young women casual elegant, student division, but what do I know of such North Face fashion trends, as I approached the tent full gravel walkway entrance that leads into the Occupy Boston encampment on the kitchen side. I answered softly and politely not out of instinct, or mannered effect, but from hoarsed-out chanting-“Whatever we wear, Wherever we go, Yes means Yes, No means No!” – “Consent in the sheets, Dissent in the streets!” – “We are unstoppable, another world is possible!,” words that rang in the streets that Sunday afternoon as the Women’s Caucus and their allies, including me, marched through Boston. A little change of pace from the generic national anthem-like “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” slogans of late, but necessary to show, show manly show, solidarity with the women of this encampment who have led the struggle against male chauvinism and sexual harassment in general-and, disturbingly, in the camp.
“Sorry, you just missed it, we are just finishing up,” I told her. She responded that she thought the thing started at two (another of those snafus that are intrinsic to makeshift social movements, even movements hard-drive driven by modern computer technology), it said so in the Occupy Daily Calendar and she had rushed over here to make it in time. “That is when the music and poetry was listed to start. In fact they are underway down at the main stage now. I’ll walk you down” “Oh, I hope I didn’t miss Letta Neely reading her poetry, that is really why I came. She speaks to me, speaks to me a lot” I replied that I was not familiar with this woman’s work. “Oh she is a sistah, a black beautiful lesbian sistah who writes about stuff I feel, feel deeply, being a mixed race, mixed-up, bi-sexual woman.” I gulped, and smiled, smiled inside, not at what she said but at what infinite number of words would have to go into righteously describing her with that added information, and her space. I gave up as we approached the main stage and listened to a woman who described herself as PuertoDom ( I hope I am spelling this right, Puerto Rican and Dominican, okay) reading her poetry. Very sharp, witty, and politically to the point poetry. Then Letta Neely came on. Check this out:
From Juba:poetry/by Letta Neely, Wildheart Press, copyright 1998
juba
for renita
u be a gospel song
some a dat
ole time religion
where the tambourine git goin
and the holy ghost sneak up
inside people's bones and
everybody dancin and shoutin
screamin and cryin
oh jesus, oh jesus
and the people start to clappin
and reachin back to african rhythms
pulled through the wombs of
the middle passage
and women's hats start flying
while the dance,
the dance they do gets hotter and holier
and just the music has brought cause for celebration
yeah, u be a gospel song, girl
like some a dat ole back in the woods, mississippi river kinda
gospel
and i feel the holy ghost when you is
inside me
and the tambourines keep goin
and folks is stampin they feet
and oh no,
it's the neighbor knocking on the door
askin is we alright
say we was screamin
oh jesus, oh jesus
and i heard us but i
didn't hear cuz
i was being washed in the gorgeous wetness of
your pussy
being baptized w/ole time religion
the oldest religion there
is
2 women inside the groove
of each other
we come here
we come
we come here
to be
saved
I an old white man who spend his 1960s drug-drenched be-bop nights summers of love chasing women (young girls really) and running away from my old working-class Olde Saco, Maine oceanside white bread roots am probably separated by entire gulfs of time, of age, of politics, of means streets, hell, of sexual preference, kind of, but know this, my new-found young mixed woman friend was right. Letta Neely is a sistah.
************
From The Occupy Boston Daily Digest:
Saturday, December 3
10:00am Occupy Movement Day of Action (Neighborhood specific locations);11:30am Occupy ICE – Ocupa la Migra;12:00pm **Corporate Negligence and Bhopal, India: An Ongoing Disaster (FSU);12:00pm Faith & Spirituality WG Meeting;1:00pm Unity Rally (Copley Square);2:00pm Winterizing meeting;3:30pm Women’s Caucus;4:00pm General Assembly (Copley Square);5:30pm Anti-Oppression Working Group meeting
6:00pm Alperovitz: America Beyond Capitalism (FSU Economics Forum – Offsite)
6:30pm Safety meeting.
Sunday, December 4
12:00pm **Teach-In on Secure Communities (FSU); 12:00pm Occupy Boston Women’s March; 12:00pm Davis Square Carolers; 12:00pm Faith & Spirituality WG Meeting
1:30pm Catholic Mass;2:00pm **Occu-Stock- Women Spoken Word (see Description for line up);2:30pm Peace Action Working Group Meeting;3:00pm POC Working Group Meeting (People Of Color);3:00pm Media Working Group Meeting;3:00pm (CANCELLED) Publicly-Funded Elections & Repairing Representative Government (FSU Discussion);3:00pm **Concert: Occu-Stock Concert -Erica Russo and Lauren DeRose;4:00pm Facilitation Working Group Meeting;4:00pm **Middle East and North Africa Solidarity Day;4:00pm Socialist Caucus WG Meeting;4:30pm Peace Vigil
5:30pm Queer/Trans Working Group Meeting; 6:00pm General Assembly; 6:30pm Safety meeting; 7:00pm MENA Solidarity Day Plan.
Monday, December 5
Take Back the Capitol;9:00am MAMLEO – Food Drive Drop Off;10:00am FOOD BANK DROP OFF12:oopm Health And Safety Improvement Festival!;2:00pm Community Wellness Working Group Meeting;4:00pm Radio Meeting;4:00pm Direct Action Meeting4:00pm Street Theater Working Group;5:00pm Facilitation;6:00pm Finance and Accountability Working Group Meeting;6:00pm Climate Action, Sustainability and Environmental Justice Working Group;6:00pm Food Tent Working Group Meeting6:00pm Houseless And Allies Community Working Group;6:00pm Outreach working group meeting;6:30pm Safety meeting;7:00pm Occupy Boston Social;7:00pm InfoTent Working Group Meeting
********
“Josh, I am feeling a little overwhelmed by all the meetings and events that I am committed to going to here when I come down for two or three days of heavy political work,” sighed Bonnie Bream (nee Stein) a long-time activist whom I had met a few decades ago while fighting the good fight over Ronald Reagan’s crazed war policies in Central America. Bonnie, then a bright young student at Harvard, was the darling of that movement because she threw herself, absolutely threw herself, into the work, including a couple of stints down in the fields of Nicaragua. I had seen her a couple of times since then down in D.C. or New York fighting the good fight against one or another Bush war policy but it had been a while when I ran into her a couple of weeks ago here on a Sunday afternoon. Like I say Bonnie is an activist, a hard-core activist, and that remained true even when I heard through the grapevine that she had moved up north with her husband to Maine in order to help him with his dream deferred, deferred in support of her social justice dream, of setting up a seashore restaurant in Belfast or Camden, I forget which one. As she told me when we met that first Sunday when she saw and hear about the Occupy movement’s encampment down here it was like lemmings to the sea, she had to come. And so she has come down to work a few days a week before trundling home to serve lobsters, clams, and whatever to hungry ocean-starved touristas in summer and “real food” to the townies off-season.
As she spoke those words I could see just the slightest air of resignation, of a certain tiredness maybe, a certain confusion, perhaps, about which way the winds were blowing here and the flat-out possibility that just too many damn things were going on and it was wearing people down. I had heard such inchoate mutterings before from some younger activists tired of the endless this or that cause marches. But when Bonnie Bream says stuff like that then you know there are some troubled waters stirring so I wanted to hear more.
She then went on, “I don’t mind the work. Or the too many committees with too few people, or two few same people on about six committees. You know I live for this stuff. I don’t even mind, if you can believe this Josh, the disorganized, haphazard way things are run, especially meetings that resolve nothing. But what bothers the hell out of me is when things that are scheduled don’t occur. Like this last Sunday. I knew it was going to be a big long day what with the Women’s Caucus march through the streets of Boston. That was fun, just like in the old days when we tried to roust the slumbering masses having their tea and coffee at Fanueil Market. And the music and poetry performances on the main stage after were great. But then one of the working group meeting which was scheduled failed to materialize, a socialist caucus meeting that I dearly wanted to attend since they had previously met on Fridays when I am not here was wrongly placed on the daily schedule, and then a peace vigil I planned on attending hoping to run into some old UJP [United For Justice with Peace, the local pre-Occupy umbrella activist organization] folks I used to run with never happened for reasons unknown to me. So I spent a lot of the later part of the day just talking the talk to the same people that I always see here on Sunday (or Saturday or Monday my three chosen days). Hell I could just have easily done that at some pokey UJP event.”
I had no answer to her plea just then, and said so. We then went on to other subjects, more personal subjects that need not detain us here. Except later when thinking about it as I was making my own exit from the camp to head home for the evening I stopped for a moment to reflect on this conversation. When the Bonnie Breams of this “new world” feel adrift in this big old amorphous movement then sunny days do not lie ahead.
*******
Five minutes ago the sidewalk along the Atlantic Avenue side of the encampment was deserted, a lonely yellow-jacketed cop shifting back and forth on his heels to make his duty time pass more quickly. Now the first sign of the day, “Tax The Rich,” along with it human holder, here a well-dressed, well-preserved older woman, a woman who looked like she has seen many battles for social justice in her time hit the sidewalk. And her action acted as a catalyst because then came a couple of young students carrying a banner-“Banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” one of the anthems of the Occupy movement, to stand beside her. They smile, she smiles, nothing more is needed as they banner understand each other completely.
Then a convoy of about twelve middle-aged and older Universalist-Unitarians from out in some suburban town, who have rented a bus for the occasion, begin filling in the sidewalk a little farther up the street with their “peace, this,” “peace, that,” “good-will toward all” signs. Upon investigation this group had made a solemn decision, as only U-Uers can, to come weekly to Boston to stand in solidarity with the efforts in Dewey Square.
A few minutes later, from out of nowhere, came a nomadic resident of the “village” with a plateful of cookies, chocolate chip perhaps, and offers them to those “working the line” on Atlantic Avenue.
********
Later, an older model automobile, frankly a heap, driven by a menacing-looking man in lumberjack jacket with fierce flashing eyes like some crazed survivalist stopped just in front of the Atlantic Avenue entrance to the encampment and yells out, “Hey, when do I put these sleeping bags, tarps, shovels, and pots? I can’t stay but I am with you, with you all the way.” Of such acts by such desperate looking men, revolutions are made, big-time revolutions.
Toward late afternoon the Atlantic Avenue traffic gets heavier, bumper to bumper, as people try to leave the city, and city cares behind. A guy in a big dump truck, a flat-top hair cut showing yells out, “Get a job” at a group of street people standing on the avenue. Later a pedestrian muttered to that yellow-jacketed cop on duty, who was still rocking his heels, about how he paid taxes and isn’t it a shame what these people are up to. The call of the day though goes to a guy, a light-skinned Cuban-looking guy in a late model cherry red sports car driving on the far right lane away from the encampment, who yells out, “Commies, go back to where you came from.”
Ya, I know not everybody got the news about twenty years back, not everybody gets what is going on now, and not everybody, despite the sleek street slogan of ninety-nine percent, is with the Occupy movement. But just remember that guy, that lumberjack jacket guy in that old heap, who gave what he had, and gave all the way.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
**********
Markin comment November 18, 2011:
Josh Breslin didn’t know what to expect this time as the streamlined subway car that he was riding was approaching the South Station stop on the MBTA Red Line in Boston. He half-expected to see some multi-colored hand-made poster proclaiming this stop as “Occupy Boston,” something with stenciled and silhouetted clenched fist, or something like that, proclaiming this newly sacred ground, this fetid, dank subway stop, in the name of the people. Hell, just like back in the old days, the old 1960s times of blessed memory, when no wall, no public wall anyway, was safe from revolutionary pronouncements, or off-hand midnight-crafted graffiti. He had certainly seen stranger signs plastered around the Occupy encampment the last few times that he had previously come over from his home in Cambridge on the other side of the river. Stuff from Thoreau and Gandhi, naturally, but also odd-ball wisps of wisdom about being kind, not being greedy, corporate greedy or otherwise, not being sexist, racist, homophobic and the whole litany of politically acceptable Don’ts scripted out since those ‘60s that seemed self-almost explanatory and in not need of proclamation in this microscopic social experiment, this exemplar of the “new world order,” leftist-style.
Ya, these times definitely call for some outlandish statement in bright day-glo colors something, he mused amused, to confuse the touristas who were making the Occupy site a “must see” stop on their vacation itineraries. Something to throw them off the scent when they asked their infernal questions- “What are the kids up to, why all the tents, why all the black flags (really not many but that black flag of anarchy, like the red one of communism, spooked people, made their deepest fears surface, and in the old days rightly so),” and on and on. Like he, Joshua Breslin, known far and wide back in the day under the moniker, Prince of Love, a magical mystery tour merry prankster, music-and-drugs-are- the-revolution, west coast communal living madman knew what was on the kids minds today, except they were getting the short straw in the game of who gets what in the social game.
Just then he reflected, flash-back reflected, that a lot of what he had seen and heard on those other occasions when he had crossed the river of late, maybe four or five by now, echoed some long ago, half-forgotten signs and totems from the times when he was searching for the blue-pink great American West night back in the late 1960s and had wound up in People’s Park in Berkeley out in wayward California. And had been wounded and tear-gassed, Prince of Love renown notwithstanding, for his efforts when things got twisted and the deal went down. Yes, this was just exactly what it was like and now he had a “theme” for the notes that he was feeling pressed to take on this trip now that he had a “feel” for the situation. Although this time, unlike back then, he was not expecting, not expecting in his on-coming dotage, to be wounded or tear-gassed. He frankly admitted to himself after his last visit to the camp site a few days before that he was not up those rigors now, those shake-them-off-and-come-back-swinging-youth- spunks that he had in great quantity as he headed barrel-assing out west from his old hometown, Olde Saco up Maine way.
The train then stopped jarring him in mid-thought, opened its air-pressurized doors, and its sullen passengers decamped for seven winds places. No, Josh noticed, no sign at the subway level anyway that occupyitis had expanded to the cavernous underground. On surfacing in the Dewey Square sunlight though, another mercifully warm late October day starting to break through, his ears were immediately accosted by the ranting, there was no other name for it, of “Syllable Slim,” a name that he had coined for this vagabond prince standing kitty-corner in front of him when he first heard him holding forth on the perfidies of the Democrats, democrats, Republicans, republicans and anyone else who held the whiff of power, or wanted it, at Park Street Station years ago. Now Slim was the “king” of the Dewey Square day and night having moved either uptown or downtown, Josh was not quite sure of the geographic relationship between the two subway stops, with a new audience to ignore, or try to ignore, him. What was also perfectly clear was, uptown or downtown, Slim would be hard-pressed to describe what was going on at his Occupy kingdom. His spiel did not depend on such trivials The city, any city with size, produces its fair share of drifters, grifters, and midnight shifters and they, like lemmings to the sea, have heard of the glad tidings emitting from Dewey Square (read: food, shelter, and no hassles-the famous “three squares and a cot” from “on-the-road” jungle camp lore) and have come forth. And Slim is their king.
Josh, by the way, was here, here on assignment, not much pay but an assignment anyway, his first since he “officially” retired from his onerous editorial duties a couple of years back to be able to sit back, kick back, and write that great sex/drug/political/musical/ hail fellows well met/digger commune 1960s explosion novel he had been putting off since, well, since he “got off the bus” in 1971 and headed back first to Olde Saco and then drifted down to various Boston area spots. See the pay part was required, no, demanded by Josh, in order to give his employer a real “feel” for the flavor of what was going on at Dewey Square to the “soccer moms and dads” who might be wondering what they were missing while waiting, SUV-waiting, for their little Ashley or Samson to finish up their suburban kids soccer league workouts, or one or another of twelve other possible organized kid to do things for their resumes, the kid’s that is. A few random notes to titillate the rubes, and move on. No sweat. He, moreover, was going to parlay those skimpy notes into working order for his now great Tom Wolfe-ish sociological sex/drug/political/musical/ hail fellows well met/digger commune 1960s explosion novel. And in Josh Breslin’s mind Syllable Slim was already slated, with a big intro, to lead off this 21st century magical mystery tour, merry prankster gig, warts and all. We merely get his leavings.
********
“Hey brother, can you help me put this tarp over my tent? It got cold as hell last night and the winds were blowing fierce,” yelled a cherub-faced male, almost too youthful to be here but such are the times, although it was later learned that he was now a few weeks-seasoned Occupy Boston grizzly veteran resident to a middle-aged man casually walking by. “Sure thing, let’s get to it” replied that passer-by. Was the passer-by some wayward tourist looking for the next thrill in the city night life, a career gawker, or just one many unnamed “volunteers” who have sprung from the woodwork (okay, okay suburbia) in response to the news that something more than nine-to-five and white picket fences might be in the air?
********
“Can you bring this hot pot of soup to the kitchen? Some lady, a lady who would not give her name and would not acknowledge anything but thanks, drove up on the Atlantic Avenue side and asked me to unload some stuff for her,” said one young woman in shorts, short shorts thereby showing off her firm athletic legs for one and all to see to another young woman dressed in long pants, maybe jeans, getting ready for colder climates. Shortly thereafter the “laundry lady” tooted her horn looking for help in unloading a trunk-load of everything from towels to sleeping bags. And our two young women again “hit” the Atlantic Avenue curb for this “angel.” See the angel’s kindly thing, her matronly, middle-aged, unnamed kindly thing, was to come by on Tuesday for dirty laundry and return on Thursday with everything Seventh Generation bright and clean. Said “laundry lady” is also unnamed like our tent-fixing passer-by and soup lady, but clearly one who has come out of the woodwork on the news of the glad tidings.
********
“If you want a meal, a nice hot meal, could you wash some dishes to help us out,” barked, barked above the din of the dozen assorted humans in line in front of him, a man who has daily volunteered to help out in the makeshift kitchen. A kitchen whose primitive dishwashing apparatus entailed the familiar rubber soul dish pan, some lukewarm water, a little oily from the leaving of some off-hand meal, joy detergent, and rinsing tub, dishcloth and done. Primitive like back in kid time doing after supper dishes before being released in the teenage be-bop dark streets night. And a couple of older guys, older guys who knew the streets and the lore of the streets backward and forward, stepped behind the tent and got to work on a stack while the third passed on the request. When the hot meals came on deck all three got a meal, no questions asked, but somewhere, somewhere deep inside his career vagabond heart that third man knew he was not built for this new world a-borning. Not for social solidarity dishes cleaned. Meanwhile our kitchen master chef, master of the artful tuna sandwich and of the slabbed peanut butter and jelly (grape just then) variety as well answers an older man’s inquiry about what was pressingly needed for the next day’s “menu.” That older man, a man who did not look like he had the means to do so, and could have very easily passed for a “resident” of this tent city, had been coming daily with perhaps one hundred dollars worth of whatever our master chef told him the kitchen needed. Angels, apparently, come in all sizes, shapes, and circumstances.
********
Jesus, the logistics of this encampment is simplicity itself. A few rows of tents, sleeping tents, mostly good firm weather-conditioned tents in all colors, mainly blue or the feel of blue though. Unlike those watered-down Army olive drab pup tents that I made do with out in ‘Frisco when Butterfly Swirl and I were a thing traveling up and down the West Coast in the summer of love, 1967. Of course then love drove the be-bop great western night and we probably could have made due with some newspapers under our heads. But that’s a story for another time. Then several tents at each end of the encampment for special tasks like media, the library, and the “information desk.” A few odds and end here and there but mainly kept up nicely, city urban vagabond nicely. Fit for any well-fed college student out on an urban adventure to place his or her head on, and not have mother worry too much. And at the far end, the end away from the subway station a huge granite gray slab of a building, something to do with the ‘big dig” project that created this space, officially the Rose Kennedy Greenway, in its aftermath. The side wall of that big slab now serves as the main poster board for any political messages that people have the energy (and magic marker) to proclaim. And in front of that wall a few chairs, a mike, and various other equipment for those who want harangue, humor, or hum the crowd. That fleeting chance at fifteen minutes of fame for the soul-weary, for the voiceless, and for the voiced-over. Let’s listen in for bit and jot down a few of the things said.
“Karl Marx was right, this capitalist system has got to go and we need to make a new world,” sing-songed a middle-aged man, seemingly some kind of college professor out doing missionary work this day, who then proceeded to spend his fifteen minutes expanding on his scheme to have Congress vote to limit the amount of profit each corporation can make, using some sort of exotic formula that only he had the pass code to unravel. I missed that idea when I read Marx long ago but maybe I missed one of the footnotes the probable source. Our professor didn’t. This place, every time I come, at least during the day is loaded down with professors and others from the myriad local colleges and universities that dot the Boston skyline and each brings his or her own panacea with them, usually some third-rate variation off of Marx or some other 19th century thinker dressed up to wake up the texting-enchanted modern listener.
“This place is a Potemkin Village,” chanted another younger speaker a little later to a wandering, wavering crowd audience of about seven. “The people who run this thing go home at night to their nice warm beds while we stay here and keep the faith, the real faith,” he added. This inflamed black flannel-shirted youth finished up with this epistle, “Besides half the tents are empty and the tents that have people in them are just drifters and bums who don’t know anything about what we are trying to do here. They are just trying to keep warm and away from getting hassled by the cops.” I had heard that sentiment expressed before, more than once, from political types and kind of dismissed it out of hand but this guy seemed to be speaking from some truth experience. I reminded myself to come back in a few minutes and talk to him when he was done. However when I went back about ten minutes later he was gone. But his plaintive plea stuck with me and I will have to keep on the trail of that strand.
********
Later that same day at the same wall-
“Man, play us a Hendrix tune on that thing, ‘cause you are smokin’, man” earnestly requested a young, red-bearded man, obviously a student, an ardent musical student from the look of him. “Okay man, if you play a little drum behind me,” came the reply from the reincarnation of Jimi, complete with tie-dyed headband to hold his head together. And for perhaps fifteen minutes they held it together like some aura out on the 1960s be-bop night, their fifteen minutes of fame on the Dewey Square main stage for their resumes. And the crowd that swelled to listen in knew they had heard some old phantom primordial from the womb sound, and liked it. Another group this time a guitar, harmonica, drum combination trying to bring a blues riff together sends most of the crowd wandering in all directions. Such are the hard facts of the fame game from Broadway to tent city. Hopefully some more harmonious society will have more room for the fringes of that game.
*********
“Say, can I have cigarette, man, I’m out?” said another older man weary, street weary, getting ready to enter a tent to catch a few winks. “I’m rolling Bull, okay?” answered a red-headed dread-locked young man. That cadging of cigarettes, factory-made or from the pouch, between and among the young is somewhat strange after the righteous lifetime drumbeats of foul smoking. Not all messages get through.
Such were, are, will be the random sights and sounds of the Occupy Boston encampment on any given day, or any given minute if you can be in seven places at one time, as the camp continues to organize itself in the tradition of the old westward pioneers seeking that great American west blue-pink night, and still are seeking it generations later.
********
“Hey man, don’t be cheap give me a fucking cigarette, I’m all shaky,” shouted out a razor- edged guy, obviously working off some hang-over, although not necessarily an alcoholic or drug one. “I’m down to my last one, what the fuck do you want from me,” came the surly reply. The tension spiked then passed away in the midday air. In that same midday air came this from one of the tents, voiced by an unseen man, a gruff-voiced man, not young “Fuck, give me my space, my free space, don’t be all around me.” And that voice too went to ground, unresolved.
*******
“This place is neat, three squares and a cot, and nobody hassles you and you don’t have to work for your grub, or nothing,” murmured a street veteran, shabbily-dressed, rough edge- bearded but of sober expression to no one in particular in a crowd of suburban tourists who have made the site at Dewey Square a place on their “must see” map. A young man came up to a clot of that same crowd to discuss the Occupy theme. A question was asked about the shabbily-dressed man’s comment. “Oh, ya, most of the residents are street people, a few of us like me stay to keep the peace but most of the politicos go home, or back to the dorms when the General Assembly is over. We opened the space to anyone who followed the simple rules of the camp so here we are.” One tourista smirked the smirk of someone who “knew, just knew” this thing was not going to work, not with bums, hell no. We shall see.
********
“Out of the tents, into the streets, Out of the tents, into the streets” yelled a tall dark-haired young man dressed in black, Black Bloc black, meaning black everything black, from boots to jacket, topped off with the de rigueur black bandana handkerchief covering the bottom part of his face as some kind of security blanket measure. This youth is known to me so that there is only a little affectation in his dress to be in touch with his anarchist heart. Others’ motives I am not as sure of as they flaunt their garb like wearing the “uniform” would cast away all sins and black purify their corrupted souls. Such act would guard against turning into a stinking bourgeois baddie like daddy.
This sight, the nightmare sight to every protective mother guarding her young against the travails of the world and the bane of every government seeing spook shadows behind the dress, is however here among the tents just another guy with a cause. He repeats himself several times as he tries to rouse the denizens of the new world tent city to come out and march on behalf of any number of causes, this one in solidarity with the shutting down of the Port of Oakland by Occupy Oakland on this early November day, the vanguard action city of the whole American movement and one that has been increasing under attack, under police attack almost nightly.
A few younger comrades also dressed in black, head-to-toe black as well, heeded his plea and stirred from their tents, stretching the stretch of the huddled or prone to ready themselves for the couple of mile walk on this cold but clear evening. Mostly the camp residents ignore the plea and go about their business of fixing tents, heading to the kitchen mess tent for supper or just pretend that our big-hearted black-attired anarcho-mad monk of an activist will gather his troops and leave. And here is where the funny part comes in as I think back to a guy I heard up on the “main stage” a few days back who kept yelling about this occupation site being a Potemkin Village. [Markin: For those not in the know about Russian history or are unfamiliar with the term it signifies all front, no substance. Allegedly one of Russian Empress Catherine the Great’s lovers back in the 18th century, Potemkin, ordered beautiful villages build with only the facades so his honey would have pleasant sights to see when they went riding by. Ya I know, lame but that is the story.] And today that seems true, at least to my eye, as the vast majority of the three hundred or so marchers were not resident “occupiers,” or had the now signature drawn-out slightly dazed sag look of occupiers. In any case we are off, as I have decided to express my solidarity with the sisters and brothers in Oakland (a place I know well from back in the day).
Naturally the black-suited sisters and brothers are up front leading this thing chanting solidarity slogans centered on the defense of Occupy Oakland ("From the East Bay to Back Bay-Defend Occupy Oakland"), the ubiquitous “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” that is something of a national anthem for the movement now, and to show the tenor of militancy this night this little beauty, “What’s the solution?: Revolution, What’s the reaction?: Direct action." All in a day’s work out in the protest march world though. What makes this one a little unusual is the march route. See the line of march on this one, perhaps reflecting some super-black dream kick, is deliberately planned to go helter-skelter, one assumes to “throw off” the bicycle police and other law enforcement types who are “guarding” the march.
Of course the only ones who are confused by all this are the few marchers who are rare rookies to this scene, trampling on others' shoes we travel zigzag (and they, the rookies zigzag) up the wrong way on Winter Street or Congress Street stopping already stopped rush hour traffic with our pleas for solidarity and a whole range of other concerns. Eventually we get to the State House on Beacon Street then march down to Charles Street and move against the waiting traffic before heading back to Boylston Street and then to Downtown Crossing for the now obligatory “die in” (a momentary sit-in, if you are not familiar with that term) a few “mic check” shout-outs and then more chanting back to camp. Done, finis, chalk up some more march miles on my protest-o-meter. A spirited march, a necessary march, no question, but I hope that I was just being jittery when I got that feeling in my spine at the end of the march that something was out of joint, that those who wish to “lead” a revolution, a black-encrusted revolution, were heading up the wrong street with their antics.
********
“You had better stay the fuck away from my woman, and stay way away,” threatened a young guy, a young white guy, not a street guy, not a student but just the kind of guy who drifts in and out of things. “Fuck you and your woman,” came the reply from a young Spanish-looking dude who had daggers in his eyes as the two nearly came to blows. Just then someone yelled “rainbow” and several people appeared to calm the situation down. Not too quickly calmed it down by the way.
This too is a part of the “new world a-borning” as not everybody is quite ready yet to shift gears, or just has too much, much too much, baggage from old bourgeois society to make the leap of faith just yet.
********
Voices overheard while waiting for a rally or march against or for something to start, a Free School University lecture to begin, a this or that meeting to proceed, a just plain old ordinary passing through the camp or the thousand and one other things waits at the Occupy Boston site at Dewey Square.
“See, this is the way it works,” said a tall, red-headed curly-haired young man, dressed in an “approved” regulation Occupy resident garb, fatigue jacket, denim jeans, a rakish hat, and this warmish evening wearing shoes with no socks to a small, middle-aged, graying woman dressed in some outfit worthy of high hippie times in the summer of love, 1967 but who was having a hard time getting around the various concepts involved in participation in a General Assembly (GA) show-up, the central decision-making body of the Occupy movement, although she liked the idea in theory as she made plain to tell her “tour guide” at the start.
The red-headed youth, let’s call him Red for short although no inference should be drawn about his political allegiances from that, continued, “Somebody brings an idea they, or their group, want to have heard, discussed, and voted on by GA. Let’s say, for example, an action like having everybody turn in their saving and checking accounts at the big banks like Bank of America and transfer the money to credit unions or small neighborhood banks on a certain day. They come here, get their point put on the agenda and when their turn comes up they can motivate it. Then people can discuss it, discuss it from all angles, sometimes unto death practically, I’ve seen that at GA, and periodic “temperature checks” can be taken on the favorability of supporting such an action.”
“What’s a temperature check?” asked our somewhat bewildered ancient flower-child.
“That’s a sense of the meeting on some point and instead of the crowd yelling and screaming a response you just wiggle your fingers on one hand, or two, in the middle, or down. It doesn’t mean a thing about whether the thing, the idea being presented, will pass or not,” young Red answered, answered in the patient low-key monotone that he had either spent many moons perfecting in secret or came naturally to him. I suspect the latter from other times I have seen him give his spiels at GA. “After the proposal is presented then people can approach the facilitator, or the assigned “stack” person, and ask to speak on the matter, in turn.” Okay, so far?”
“After full discussion that can, like I say, take the whole evening there is a vote, a vote if there is a quorum left at GA by voting time. Sometimes there is not, more so recently. Then a bunch of procedures come into play that I don’t always understood about dissent blocks and mortal dissent blocks that can kill a proposal even before a vote if somebody thinks it is a small or big danger to what the Occupy movement is trying to do. And others agree after a vote, if it gets that far. Usually though that doesn’t happen because the stuff we deal with isn’t that weird. The quorum thing will more likely delay action on a vote and the thing is tabled until a later GA. If nothing gets in the way though it can be voted that night by consensus.
“What?” asked the starting to get glazed-eye woman, who seemingly no stranger to the in and outs of grassroots participatory democracy, is taken back by our Red’s use of the word.
“Okay, okay in the corporate world things get done by majority vote, right. So a lot of people can be losers even if the vote is close so to guard against that tyranny of the majority everything is done by consensus. Someone explained it to me this way and it made sense to me. You raise your hand in approval if you can live with the proposal. On the credit union thing that would be easy but on some other stuff maybe not.”
“So what if you don’t get consensus but have a majority? Our fair lady asks. “No go, go back and work on your proposal or give it up,” shot back Red, for the first time a little annoyed with a question like the idea of consensus was automatically the best way to do things in a democracy and how could anyone, especially an anyone who came from 1960s land, object. “Thanks, for your help” our hippie lady, our perplexed hippie lady on that last point, told Red as she meandered around the camp looking for the kitchen area, or maybe just to think over what had suddenly perplexed her.
***********
“How long have you been coming here?,” asked the white-haired old man, neatly although inexpensively dressed, a man who seemingly had seen many struggles in his time, not all of them political, but enough of them to know that he had some political thoughts hidden among those white hairs. “Oh, I started camping out here on Day 1 in September and stayed for a few weeks but then I had to go back to my dorm at Boston University because there was too much noise here at night for me to study and anyway I got kind of bored just hanging around a lot being gawked at by tourists and everybody else who wanted to see what was going on here at the beginning,” forthrightly answered a fetching young brunette who did not, frankly, look, strictly from appearances, like she belonged here for one day never mind weeks but that is the beauty of what has been churned up this fall by the tide of the Occupy movement in the face of overwhelmingly social discontent.
The wizened white-haired man moved slowly away to speak to others he had met, especially a couple of Veterans For Peace supporters whom he had come to know fairly well, at the site when the young woman reached out, tugged at his coat and said “Wait, I have more to tell you.” A little startled the old man stopped in his tracks and asked to hear more. She continued “I’ve seen you around camp before, talking to some people I know about the 1960s and about the funny stuff that went on then, and you look like you might have been a hippie or something so I think I can tell you stuff.” “What stuff?” answered the now red-faced old man waiting for the young damsel to pore out her heart about the indignities of life, boy-friend problems, some unknown addictions, or some such thing.
“I just didn’t leave because I couldn’t study or was bored although that was part of it. Mainly it was because I feel this movement has lost direction, lost direction in a big way, by spending all its time and energy here defending and winter fortifying the camp and getting isolated from trying to reach out to people. I’m studying about social movements in school and this one seems to be going away from what groups like the black civil rights movement and anti-war movements were trying to even if they made a lot of mistakes. My boy-friend and I almost broke up over it because he likes the camp life, he’s still here, and he doesn’t want any demands raised, period, and thinks that if we just show a good example people will gravitate to see things our way. He was furious when I said nobody was watching, or not enough were. We made up after I left and went back to my dorm room but I still think after over a month that the encampment has been here that I was right, although we avoid talking about it. What do you think?”
The white-haired man laughed, laughed good-naturedly explaining that he did not expect in his fairly frequent stops at Dewey Square that he would be performing Dear Occupy Abby services to the lovelorn. She gave half a smile to that notion. He continued, “We too made every mistake in the book back in the day, especially in going out of our way to alienate every possible person who disagreed with us until, like some light bulb going on, we finally got it that such things were self-defeating and changed tack. I too share your reservations about getting isolated out here in the middle of nowhere, even if it is the center of the Financial District, but an old radical, and old communist actually, told me back in the day that each generation must find its own ways to drive the struggle. And he was basically right. At least some of us did learn and I am living proof that not all mistakes are politically fatal. Things are still fresh yet so talk to your boy-friend, and keep talking about the need to break out of the camps. Okay?” She nodded the nod of the half-believer and walked away saying she hoped to run into our wizard again.
**********
“Hey, what time is the Women’s Caucus march starting?, asked, asked softly and politely, a young, maybe mixed spanishblackwhiteindian, woman dressed in what I would describe as modern young women casual elegant, student division, but what do I know of such North Face fashion trends, as I approached the tent full gravel walkway entrance that leads into the Occupy Boston encampment on the kitchen side. I answered softly and politely not out of instinct, or mannered effect, but from hoarsed-out chanting-“Whatever we wear, Wherever we go, Yes means Yes, No means No!” – “Consent in the sheets, Dissent in the streets!” – “We are unstoppable, another world is possible!,” words that rang in the streets that Sunday afternoon as the Women’s Caucus and their allies, including me, marched through Boston. A little change of pace from the generic national anthem-like “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” slogans of late, but necessary to show, show manly show, solidarity with the women of this encampment who have led the struggle against male chauvinism and sexual harassment in general-and, disturbingly, in the camp.
“Sorry, you just missed it, we are just finishing up,” I told her. She responded that she thought the thing started at two (another of those snafus that are intrinsic to makeshift social movements, even movements hard-drive driven by modern computer technology), it said so in the Occupy Daily Calendar and she had rushed over here to make it in time. “That is when the music and poetry was listed to start. In fact they are underway down at the main stage now. I’ll walk you down” “Oh, I hope I didn’t miss Letta Neely reading her poetry, that is really why I came. She speaks to me, speaks to me a lot” I replied that I was not familiar with this woman’s work. “Oh she is a sistah, a black beautiful lesbian sistah who writes about stuff I feel, feel deeply, being a mixed race, mixed-up, bi-sexual woman.” I gulped, and smiled, smiled inside, not at what she said but at what infinite number of words would have to go into righteously describing her with that added information, and her space. I gave up as we approached the main stage and listened to a woman who described herself as PuertoDom ( I hope I am spelling this right, Puerto Rican and Dominican, okay) reading her poetry. Very sharp, witty, and politically to the point poetry. Then Letta Neely came on. Check this out:
From Juba:poetry/by Letta Neely, Wildheart Press, copyright 1998
juba
for renita
u be a gospel song
some a dat
ole time religion
where the tambourine git goin
and the holy ghost sneak up
inside people's bones and
everybody dancin and shoutin
screamin and cryin
oh jesus, oh jesus
and the people start to clappin
and reachin back to african rhythms
pulled through the wombs of
the middle passage
and women's hats start flying
while the dance,
the dance they do gets hotter and holier
and just the music has brought cause for celebration
yeah, u be a gospel song, girl
like some a dat ole back in the woods, mississippi river kinda
gospel
and i feel the holy ghost when you is
inside me
and the tambourines keep goin
and folks is stampin they feet
and oh no,
it's the neighbor knocking on the door
askin is we alright
say we was screamin
oh jesus, oh jesus
and i heard us but i
didn't hear cuz
i was being washed in the gorgeous wetness of
your pussy
being baptized w/ole time religion
the oldest religion there
is
2 women inside the groove
of each other
we come here
we come
we come here
to be
saved
I an old white man who spend his 1960s drug-drenched be-bop nights summers of love chasing women (young girls really) and running away from my old working-class Olde Saco, Maine oceanside white bread roots am probably separated by entire gulfs of time, of age, of politics, of means streets, hell, of sexual preference, kind of, but know this, my new-found young mixed woman friend was right. Letta Neely is a sistah.
************
From The Occupy Boston Daily Digest:
Saturday, December 3
10:00am Occupy Movement Day of Action (Neighborhood specific locations);11:30am Occupy ICE – Ocupa la Migra;12:00pm **Corporate Negligence and Bhopal, India: An Ongoing Disaster (FSU);12:00pm Faith & Spirituality WG Meeting;1:00pm Unity Rally (Copley Square);2:00pm Winterizing meeting;3:30pm Women’s Caucus;4:00pm General Assembly (Copley Square);5:30pm Anti-Oppression Working Group meeting
6:00pm Alperovitz: America Beyond Capitalism (FSU Economics Forum – Offsite)
6:30pm Safety meeting.
Sunday, December 4
12:00pm **Teach-In on Secure Communities (FSU); 12:00pm Occupy Boston Women’s March; 12:00pm Davis Square Carolers; 12:00pm Faith & Spirituality WG Meeting
1:30pm Catholic Mass;2:00pm **Occu-Stock- Women Spoken Word (see Description for line up);2:30pm Peace Action Working Group Meeting;3:00pm POC Working Group Meeting (People Of Color);3:00pm Media Working Group Meeting;3:00pm (CANCELLED) Publicly-Funded Elections & Repairing Representative Government (FSU Discussion);3:00pm **Concert: Occu-Stock Concert -Erica Russo and Lauren DeRose;4:00pm Facilitation Working Group Meeting;4:00pm **Middle East and North Africa Solidarity Day;4:00pm Socialist Caucus WG Meeting;4:30pm Peace Vigil
5:30pm Queer/Trans Working Group Meeting; 6:00pm General Assembly; 6:30pm Safety meeting; 7:00pm MENA Solidarity Day Plan.
Monday, December 5
Take Back the Capitol;9:00am MAMLEO – Food Drive Drop Off;10:00am FOOD BANK DROP OFF12:oopm Health And Safety Improvement Festival!;2:00pm Community Wellness Working Group Meeting;4:00pm Radio Meeting;4:00pm Direct Action Meeting4:00pm Street Theater Working Group;5:00pm Facilitation;6:00pm Finance and Accountability Working Group Meeting;6:00pm Climate Action, Sustainability and Environmental Justice Working Group;6:00pm Food Tent Working Group Meeting6:00pm Houseless And Allies Community Working Group;6:00pm Outreach working group meeting;6:30pm Safety meeting;7:00pm Occupy Boston Social;7:00pm InfoTent Working Group Meeting
********
“Josh, I am feeling a little overwhelmed by all the meetings and events that I am committed to going to here when I come down for two or three days of heavy political work,” sighed Bonnie Bream (nee Stein) a long-time activist whom I had met a few decades ago while fighting the good fight over Ronald Reagan’s crazed war policies in Central America. Bonnie, then a bright young student at Harvard, was the darling of that movement because she threw herself, absolutely threw herself, into the work, including a couple of stints down in the fields of Nicaragua. I had seen her a couple of times since then down in D.C. or New York fighting the good fight against one or another Bush war policy but it had been a while when I ran into her a couple of weeks ago here on a Sunday afternoon. Like I say Bonnie is an activist, a hard-core activist, and that remained true even when I heard through the grapevine that she had moved up north with her husband to Maine in order to help him with his dream deferred, deferred in support of her social justice dream, of setting up a seashore restaurant in Belfast or Camden, I forget which one. As she told me when we met that first Sunday when she saw and hear about the Occupy movement’s encampment down here it was like lemmings to the sea, she had to come. And so she has come down to work a few days a week before trundling home to serve lobsters, clams, and whatever to hungry ocean-starved touristas in summer and “real food” to the townies off-season.
As she spoke those words I could see just the slightest air of resignation, of a certain tiredness maybe, a certain confusion, perhaps, about which way the winds were blowing here and the flat-out possibility that just too many damn things were going on and it was wearing people down. I had heard such inchoate mutterings before from some younger activists tired of the endless this or that cause marches. But when Bonnie Bream says stuff like that then you know there are some troubled waters stirring so I wanted to hear more.
She then went on, “I don’t mind the work. Or the too many committees with too few people, or two few same people on about six committees. You know I live for this stuff. I don’t even mind, if you can believe this Josh, the disorganized, haphazard way things are run, especially meetings that resolve nothing. But what bothers the hell out of me is when things that are scheduled don’t occur. Like this last Sunday. I knew it was going to be a big long day what with the Women’s Caucus march through the streets of Boston. That was fun, just like in the old days when we tried to roust the slumbering masses having their tea and coffee at Fanueil Market. And the music and poetry performances on the main stage after were great. But then one of the working group meeting which was scheduled failed to materialize, a socialist caucus meeting that I dearly wanted to attend since they had previously met on Fridays when I am not here was wrongly placed on the daily schedule, and then a peace vigil I planned on attending hoping to run into some old UJP [United For Justice with Peace, the local pre-Occupy umbrella activist organization] folks I used to run with never happened for reasons unknown to me. So I spent a lot of the later part of the day just talking the talk to the same people that I always see here on Sunday (or Saturday or Monday my three chosen days). Hell I could just have easily done that at some pokey UJP event.”
I had no answer to her plea just then, and said so. We then went on to other subjects, more personal subjects that need not detain us here. Except later when thinking about it as I was making my own exit from the camp to head home for the evening I stopped for a moment to reflect on this conversation. When the Bonnie Breams of this “new world” feel adrift in this big old amorphous movement then sunny days do not lie ahead.
*******
Five minutes ago the sidewalk along the Atlantic Avenue side of the encampment was deserted, a lonely yellow-jacketed cop shifting back and forth on his heels to make his duty time pass more quickly. Now the first sign of the day, “Tax The Rich,” along with it human holder, here a well-dressed, well-preserved older woman, a woman who looked like she has seen many battles for social justice in her time hit the sidewalk. And her action acted as a catalyst because then came a couple of young students carrying a banner-“Banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” one of the anthems of the Occupy movement, to stand beside her. They smile, she smiles, nothing more is needed as they banner understand each other completely.
Then a convoy of about twelve middle-aged and older Universalist-Unitarians from out in some suburban town, who have rented a bus for the occasion, begin filling in the sidewalk a little farther up the street with their “peace, this,” “peace, that,” “good-will toward all” signs. Upon investigation this group had made a solemn decision, as only U-Uers can, to come weekly to Boston to stand in solidarity with the efforts in Dewey Square.
A few minutes later, from out of nowhere, came a nomadic resident of the “village” with a plateful of cookies, chocolate chip perhaps, and offers them to those “working the line” on Atlantic Avenue.
********
Later, an older model automobile, frankly a heap, driven by a menacing-looking man in lumberjack jacket with fierce flashing eyes like some crazed survivalist stopped just in front of the Atlantic Avenue entrance to the encampment and yells out, “Hey, when do I put these sleeping bags, tarps, shovels, and pots? I can’t stay but I am with you, with you all the way.” Of such acts by such desperate looking men, revolutions are made, big-time revolutions.
Toward late afternoon the Atlantic Avenue traffic gets heavier, bumper to bumper, as people try to leave the city, and city cares behind. A guy in a big dump truck, a flat-top hair cut showing yells out, “Get a job” at a group of street people standing on the avenue. Later a pedestrian muttered to that yellow-jacketed cop on duty, who was still rocking his heels, about how he paid taxes and isn’t it a shame what these people are up to. The call of the day though goes to a guy, a light-skinned Cuban-looking guy in a late model cherry red sports car driving on the far right lane away from the encampment, who yells out, “Commies, go back to where you came from.”
Ya, I know not everybody got the news about twenty years back, not everybody gets what is going on now, and not everybody, despite the sleek street slogan of ninety-nine percent, is with the Occupy movement. But just remember that guy, that lumberjack jacket guy in that old heap, who gave what he had, and gave all the way.
From The Pages Of Workers Vanguard-South Africa-Early Years of the Communist Party
Click on the headline to link to the International Communist League (ICL) website.
Markin comment:
It is only the accident of birth or where you were brought up in this wicked old world that determines where you wind up fighting the struggle for a newer world but it seems to me from the relatively safe quarters of America, the United States, after reading these two articles, that the early communists in South Africa, black and white, but particularly highlighting the whites just now must have been extraordinary revolutionaries to carry on the class struggle work necessary to gain that black-centered workers’ republic they were fighting for. The Stalinist degeneration of the Comintern, and the communist movement, derailed yet another promising situation, one that has not resolved since then. We militants today must remember that, remember that very well.
*******
Workers Vanguard No. 991
25 November 2011
South Africa-Early Years of the Communist Party
Part One
We reprint below the first part of an article from Spartacist South Africa No. 7 (Winter 2011), incorporating minor factual corrections. It is an edited version of a class given by comrade Karen Cole at a meeting in 2000 of Spartacist/South Africa, section of the International Communist League.
Urgent tasks faced the Third International in its early, revolutionary years. Out of the devastation of World War I and the Second International’s betrayal of the world working class, the Bolshevik Party in Russia led the first and only working class revolution. Workers around the world solidarised with this victory, and the Bolsheviks looked immediately to extending their revolution internationally. Nothing less than world revolution was on the agenda. They looked outward to differentiate among disparate elements from all sorts of backgrounds—anarchists, syndicalists, liberals, social-democratic workers, intellectuals—who subjectively sided with the overthrow of capitalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The task was to draw a line to exclude the reformists and centrist pretenders and regroup with the genuinely revolutionary workers.
They fought to build a new International for their own survival as well as mankind’s. They had to focus on the strategic battle fronts in the advanced industrial countries where revolution seemed most imminent—where the prerequisites seemed to be all there, particularly Germany. The lesson of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution was that the leadership of a Bolshevik party like the one led by Lenin and Trotsky was the critical factor. That was the one prerequisite missing elsewhere, and it was decisive. This lesson was outlined most clearly in Trotsky’s The Lessons of October (1924).
The newly formed Third International also organised to extend the revolution to the East and South, to the countries of belated capitalist development. The Russian Revolution had vindicated Trotsky’s theory and programme of permanent revolution regarding the inseparable link between national liberation from the yoke of imperialism and proletarian revolution. Trotsky wrote in The Permanent Revolution (1929): “that the democratic tasks of the backward bourgeois nations lead directly, in our epoch, to the dictatorship of the proletariat and that the dictatorship of the proletariat puts socialist tasks on the order of the day.” This understanding, proved in the experience of the Russian Revolution, opened the possibility of successful revolutionary struggle under the leadership of a proletarian vanguard in the colonial and less advanced countries. Trotsky’s analysis and generalisation of permanent revolution, based on the experience of Russia and, in a negative sense, the 1925-27 aborted revolution in China, laid out the necessary programme to lead the colonial peoples to liberation.
So this is the political context in which we have to examine the first years of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA)—from its beginnings in World War I through the late 1920s.
I want to briefly start with the split within the South African Labour Party which eventually led up to the founding of the Communist Party of South Africa, and describe the historical period to get a sense of the leap that the founders of the early CPSA had to make if they were to be the leadership of a South African revolution. They started out expecting that the organised and militant white mineworkers would be the vanguard of the proletarian revolution—but it didn’t work out that way, reflecting the unique historical overlap between race and class in South Africa.
After the Anglo-Boer War [1899-1902], the policy of the British colonialists was to assist British immigrants in settling as a bulwark against Afrikaner nationalism. On the Rand [central gold mining region], political rights were restricted to whites. The English-speaking workers who brought specialised skills from Britain were kept as a supervisory layer in the mines, and their job classifications were protected by colour-bar laws. On the Rand with its centre in Johannesburg (and I am going to mainly talk about the Rand because this was the centre of class struggle), the gold mine commission legislated the racial exclusions with the full support of the whites-only union leadership. Black Africans were permanently disenfranchised migrant mineworkers, forced off their rural homes by hut and poll taxes and expelled by white farmers. They were confined and policed in fenced-in compounds, with no political or union rights. Blacks were considered expendable, replaceable and were offered no training. Their every movement was totally controlled and resistance was met with swift punishment and death. White workers consistently scabbed on any attempts by black workers to strike.
But the inexorable laws of capitalism which demand continual maximising of profits—particularly in the labour-intensive deep gold-mining industry—set the mine owners and white miners at odds. The Afrikaner as well as British miners engaged in many industrial struggles, and the British miners were closely linked to and influenced by the militant union movement of Britain. But the volatility of gold prices meant the mine owners needed cheaper labour, and had no need to protect the white workers. For a while, they imported indentured Asian labour but, in the long run, saw their future in superexploiting black peasant labour.
So during the 1910s and 1920s, you see the leadership of a white working class attempting to fight to preserve its privileges on the backs of the black masses. The 1920s was a time of changing economic relations. Over time the rural Afrikaners, who had been a factor in the mines, eventually moved into the state-protected apparatus. After outbursts of bloody state repression of rearguard white mineworker strikes, the ruling-class strategy developed into absorbing the white workers into the petty-bourgeoisie. Instead of the white workers being ground down into impoverishment, their relations to the means of production shifted into being the overseers, managers, supervisors and state bureaucrats. Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie continued to deprive black people of the right to own land and levied taxes to compel more landless blacks to migrate into designated “locations” near metropolitan areas and become proletarianised. Brutally enforced pass systems were used to control this labour force.
The Impact of World War I
On the eve of World War I, in South Africa as in the rest of the world, there was tremendous ferment among sections of the workers and oppressed. At the same time, the war highlighted, in South Africa like in Europe, the bankruptcy of bourgeois nationalism and labour reformism. There were rebellions among various sectors of the South African population on the eve of the war.
In 1913 there were uprisings and strikes of Indian workers across [the province of] KwaZulu-Natal. They struck in the mines and cane fields, railways and shops. Mahatma Gandhi, who had been in South Africa since 1893, pleaded for passive resistance. Nevertheless, the cane workers clashed with police and workers were beaten and killed. Gandhi came to an agreement with the government during the Natal uprisings, and called the struggle of Indian workers off with little gains. On the Rand, in 1913 and 1914, the white gold miners led general strikes, and the government killed over 20 people to put the first strike down, and deported nine trade-union leaders to put the second down. In Jagersfontein diamond mine, Sotho [South African ethnic group] miners went on strike when a white overseer kicked a black miner to death, and eleven miners were killed in the subsequent struggle. In Cape Town, 600 coloured [mixed-race] stevedores struck for an 8-hour day and wage increases.
The existing misleaders of the workers and oppressed were busy lining up support for the first interimperialist war on the side of the British overlords of South Africa. During World War I Gandhi urged Indians in South Africa to join the British army. As described by Jack and Ray Simons in Class and Colour in South Africa 1850-1950 (International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1983), Gandhi earlier argued that passive resistance was “best for ‘illiterate natives.’ It taught them to break their own heads and not other people’s in order to redress grievances.”
After a brief moment of hesitation on the eve of the war, the South African Labour Party signed up for the war no less enthusiastically than the mine owners’ Unionist Party. Colonel Frederic Creswell, the leader of the Labour Party, enlisted and called for support to the war in a manifesto titled “See It Through.”
In the Western Cape, the African Political Organisation (APO, renamed the African People’s Organisation in 1919), the main political voice of the coloureds, had tremendous illusions that the British imperialists would influence their South African counterparts to drop the colour bar, and hoped that if coloureds supported the war effort, they would be rewarded for their loyalty.
Days before Britain declared war in 1914, Dr. Abdullah Abdurahman, president of the APO, proclaimed, “The present foundation of the Empire is rotten, and cannot last.” Weeks later he said, “The only question we have to ask ourselves is how we can best serve the Empire” (Class and Colour in South Africa).
In 1912 the South African Native National Congress [SANNC], predecessor of the African National Congress, was founded by lawyers, church-trained intellectuals and tribal chiefs. Their reaction to the outbreak of World War I was to cancel a meeting to discuss opposition to the 1913 Natives Land Act which dispossessed the majority of the black population, and instead to organise recruitment of blacks into the British army.
David Ivon Jones, secretary in the South African Labour Party and later a leader of the CPSA, adamantly opposed the interimperialist war. When the editor of the SANNC newspaper proposed a motion of condolence on the death of British Lord Kitchener at a public meeting in 1916, Jones opposed this, stating that Kitchener “was the agent of the class who exploit both native and white working class and encompass the death of millions of our fellow workers” (Baruch Hirson and Gwyn A. Williams, The Delegate for Africa: David Ivon Jones 1883-1924 [Core Publications, 1995]). Kitchener was the military architect of British imperialism across the African continent from Sudan to South Africa.
Internationalism and the Struggle for Black Liberation
David Ivon Jones and Sidney Percival Bunting, both immigrants from the British Isles who were central party leaders, were the outspoken antiwar leaders. In September 1914, Bunting and a small group of oppositionists to British imperialism in the South African Labour Party formed the “War on War League.” They were not pacifists but revolutionary defeatists. They called for socialist revolution to bring down all contenders in the imperialist carving up of the world. After leaving the Labour Party, they formed the International Socialist League (ISL). Bunting immediately made the link between working-class internationalism and solidarity with the non-whites of South Africa. Their solidarity with the struggles of coloureds, blacks and Indians in many ways had made them as anathema to the Labour Party as their antiwar positions.
They distributed works of Marx, Engels and Daniel De Leon, a leading American Marxist. Even before the October 1917 Revolution in Russia, their newspaper enthusiastically cited German revolutionary Karl Liebknecht and comrades in Russia as fellow opponents of the imperialist war. In September 1915, they put out propaganda on the need for a new International. They were ignorant of the struggles by Lenin within the Zimmerwald conference [held in Switzerland in September 1915] for an anti-imperialist opposition to the war. At their first conference in January 1916, they voted to affiliate with the Zimmerwaldian International Socialist Commission in Switzerland as a manifestation of the beginning of a new International.
Simultaneously, Bunting confronted the new group with the race question in South Africa. It was and continued to be the key test of whether they had broken from the white-supremacist programme of the Labour Party. Bunting proposed that the League “affirm that the emancipation of the working class requires the abolition of all forms of native indenture, compound and passport systems; and the lifting of the native worker to the political and industrial status of the white” (quoted in Allison Drew, Between Empire and Revolution: A Life of Sidney Bunting, 1873-1936 [Pickering & Chatto, 2007]). But at this meeting Bunting’s motion was amended by others in the group to include a reactionary call for preventing the increase of numbers of black wage workers, and this version passed.
Bunting and Jones, as leaders and editors of the ISL, continually carried on a fight to incorporate demands for blacks among their small membership. In their newspaper The International, Jones wrote:
“If the League deal resolutely in consonance with socialist principles with the native question, it will succeed in shaking South African capitalism to its foundations. Then, and not till then shall we be able to talk about the South African proletariat in International relations. Not till we free the Native can we hope to free the white.”
—“The Parting of the Ways,” 1 October 1915 (reprinted in South African Communists Speak, 1915-1980 [Inkululeko Publications, 1981])
Bunting and Jones were often alone. The ISL invited black men and leaders of the Native Congress to ISL meetings, which led them to get expelled from the Trades Hall [in Johannesburg] in late 1917. Bunting used the expulsion as an opportunity to denounce the racist Labourites. He hated and condemned all who called themselves socialists and claimed to support the 1917 Russian Revolution, but did not support black African struggle. In April 1919 he wrote in The International: “It is humiliating to have to keep on emphasising that the essence of the Labour movement is Solidarity, without which it cannot win. The outstanding characteristic of the capitalist system in South Africa being its Native labour, the outstanding movement of the country must clearly be the movement of its Native labourers” (quoted in Edward Roux, S.P. Bunting: A Political Biography [Mayibuye Books, 1993]).
Through the ISL conferences of this period and the early 1920s Bunting and Jones wrote articles and repeatedly introduced motions and theses calling for special attention to black workers in all sorts of ways: for classes to be instituted, for leaflets to be addressed to them, for incorporating demands for the right to vote, organise, end pass laws, etc. In late 1918 the ISL published a leaflet written by Jones titled “The Bolsheviks Are Coming” [see page 5], which was translated into Zulu and Sotho. He combined solidarity with the Bolshevik Revolution with the necessity to emancipate the black workers—he ended by saying that this is Bolshevism—that black and white workers combine in one organisation irrespective of craft, colour or creed. In Jones and Bunting’s break from social democracy to international working-class revolution, they applied their understanding of Marxism to the inseparable fight for black liberation and socialist revolution in South Africa.
The pages of The International, the ISL newspaper, were filled with solidarity with the Russian Revolution. Jones was prescient in March 1917 when he wrote about the February Russian Revolution that overthrew the tsar. He hailed the Russian workers as the vanguard of world revolution: “this is a bourgeois revolution, but arriving when the night of capitalism is far spent. It cannot be a mere repetition of previous revolutions” (“170 Million Recruits,” The International, 23 March 1917). They serialised the manifesto of the First Congress of the Communist International in 1919 and they sought to affiliate with the Third International born out of the workers revolution.
In 1919 Bunting wrote a scathing denunciation of the Johannesburg white municipal workers strike which the workers called the “Johannesburg soviet.” He called it ironically a “White ‘Soviet’,” and attacked it for its racist hypocritical indifference to black workers. In February 1920 some 70,000 black miners went on strike, and Bunting wrote appeals to white workers to support their struggle.
The Industrial Workers of Africa
One other effort of the ISL I want to mention before I get on to the formation of the CPSA is the Industrial Workers of Africa (IWA), founded in October 1917 and modelled on the American syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World. The slogan of this all-in industrial organisation became “Sifuna Zonke” (“We want all”). They distributed their leaflets in Zulu and Sotho. As described by Jones in his March 1921 report to the Comintern, “Communism in South Africa”: “The native workers of the IWA quickly grasped the difference between their trade union and the Congress [SANNC] and waged a merciless war of invective at the joint meetings of their Union with the Congress against the black-coated respectables of the Congress” (reprinted in South African Communists Speak).
In this period they also planned to publish in Hindi and Tamil in Durban, and they organised coloured garment workers in Kimberley. One of these people in Kimberley was Johnny Gomas, who later became a Cape Town union organiser and leader of the Communist Party.
James P. Cannon, a founder of the American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader, makes the point in The First Ten Years of American Communism (1962) that it took the intervention of the Comintern under Lenin to force the American communists to take up the black question. Cannon says that the best of the early American socialists, Eugene Debs, could only say that the Socialist Party was “the party of the whole working class, regardless of color.” It took the authority of the Russian Revolution to fight with the American communists against their “colour blindness” and to pay attention to the special oppression of blacks, just as the Bolsheviks had championed oppressed nationalities. Armed with the lessons of the Russian Revolution, the American communists took up black oppression as a special question of American capitalism, and they became the foremost champions of black liberation and recruited blacks to the party.
During the course of the rise of American capitalism, the origins of black oppression in chattel slavery led to blacks becoming a race-colour caste. This is very different from South Africa where black oppression originated in colonial subjugation and national oppression. However, the comparison I want to make is that the assimilation of the lessons of the Russian Revolution would have directly guided the early CPSA. Jones, Bunting and later Eddie Roux were inspired by the Russian Revolution. Although they were physically distant from the Comintern, they grasped the centrality of the fight against black oppression, and this manifested itself in their perseverance in making the Communist Party a mass black party. But they never developed a theoretical framework to this question as it applied to South Africa. And it became more and more impossible for them to develop a programme as the Comintern degenerated into more a tool of the nationalist Stalinist bureaucracy rather than an organising centre for world revolution, as it was under Lenin and Trotsky.
Founding of the CPSA
In January 1920, the ISL resolved to affiliate with the Third International and sent their rules and constitution to “convince you that our policy is on all fours with that of Communist parties of Europe and elsewhere” (quoted in South African Communists Speak). Apparently the application was read and applauded at the Second Congress of the Comintern.
In 1921 they pulled together various groupings from Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg and other places and formed the Communist Party. Their membership was almost all English-speaking immigrants. They debated adopting the “21 Conditions” of the Second Congress of the Comintern. Their agreement with the Comintern’s programmatic conditions for entry caused some of the syndicalists and others who refused to support the dictatorship of the proletariat to part ways.
Jones’s “Communism in South Africa” was presented on behalf of the ISL and used as the basic report on South Africa for the Third Congress of the Comintern in June 1921, which he attended. Jones initiated a motion to devote serious attention to the Negro question as a separate question of importance.
The report reflects his sensitivity to the horrendous conditions of blacks. He tries to inform the Comintern of the unique social and political groupings that make up the country. Jones denounces the Native Congress for its timid pro-government programme and its fear of the masses, and predicts that class-based organisations will dominate in South Africa. The “national and class interests of the natives cannot be distinguished the one from the other.” What comes out strongly is Jones’s desire to bring the question of black oppression to the forefront of the International. He appeals for reinforcements, and for the South African movement to come more into the purview of the Third International. He writes: “The white movement dominates our attention, because the native workers’ movement moves only spasmodically and is neglected. It requires a special department, with native linguists and newspapers. All of which require large funds, which are not available.” His final remarks are that “African natives are ripe for the message of the Communist International.”
The party remained divided as to whether their purpose should be to address white workers and about admitting black members. After Jones left South Africa in 1920 to spend his final days in the Soviet Union, Bunting continued almost alone to push the party toward the black masses.
In October 1922 Bunting wrote a document called “The ‘Colonial’ Labour Front” (reprinted in South Africa’s Radical Tradition: A Documentary History, Volume 1, edited by Allison Drew [Mayibuye Books, 1996]). It takes on the relation of national oppression to class based on the theses of the Second Congress of the Communist International. This document tries to explain how the bourgeoisie splits the workers of the imperialist countries from workers in the colonial countries, that racism has an economic basis. And he argues that the task of the communist parties is to bridge the divisions between white and black labour, between the workers of the imperialist and colonial countries. He says that national liberation struggles must not “postpone” labour action; particularly in places like South Africa there is no real national liberation movement or peasant movement to link up with. He quotes from the Supplementary Theses on the National Question of the Second Congress (1920): “we must in any case struggle against control by bourgeois democratic national movements over the mass action of poor and ignorant peasants and workers for their liberation from all sorts of exploitation.”
Workers Vanguard No. 992
9 December 2011
South Africa
Early Years of the Communist Party
Part Two
We reprint below the second part of an article from Spartacist South Africa No. 7 (Winter 2011), incorporating minor factual and stylistic corrections. It is an edited version of a class given by comrade Karen Cole at a meeting in 2000 of Spartacist South Africa, section of the International Communist League. Part One appeared in WV No. 991 (25 November). The article refers to the Voortrekkers, who were Afrikaner farmers (Boers) who left the British Cape Colony in the first half of the 19th century for the African interior.
The newly founded Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) had not completely broken from the Labour Party. Sidney Bunting and David Ivon Jones as well still saw the militant white miners as strategic to the South African revolution. The young party was immediately faced with an enormous and contradictory class battle on the Rand. The 1922 ten-week strike of white miners was a hard-fought battle in defence of the racist colour bar, the reservation of higher-paid job classifications for whites. Miners seized towns and carried out armed combat with the police and army. Four strikers were hanged, and three of them went to the gallows singing “The Red Flag.” Aerial artillery was used against striking workers. The Jan Smuts government ruthlessly crushed the strike.
The strike fundamentally had a reactionary purpose—to preserve the colour bar in mining. The ostensible reason for the strike was in defence of skilled miners who had been retrenched [laid off], but everyone knew this was part of the drive to replace these privileged white workers with superexploited black labour. Back in 1907 when Keir Hardie, a Scottish miners’ leader, visited South Africa, he was pelted when he raised the basic demand that white unions should be opened to the blacks on the basis of equal pay for equal work. White workers’ consciousness had not changed much from that time, but the mine owners were more determined now that falling gold prices required increasing the rate of exploitation by hiring black labour.
The strike had various leaderships, and one of them was headquartered in the offices of the Communist Party led by Bill Andrews, a longtime union leader and party founder. This included expelled union leaders who considered themselves Marxists. There was a Commando faction led by Afrikaner miners modelled on the Commando units of the Voortrekkers who terrorised and murdered blacks and Indians. At a march one could see a banner, “Workers of the World Fight and Unite for a White S.A.” (Class and Colour in South Africa, 1983).
It is interesting to note that Dr. Abdullah Abdurahman of the APO [African Political Organisation] and Clements Kadalie of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU), the two most prominent political leaders of the coloured and black masses at the time, both rightly condemned the racism of the strike, but coming from petty-bourgeois perspectives, they both directed their appeals to the racist Smuts government to increase their control and repression of the unions.
Eddie Roux wrote that Bunting, who had always been a regular soapboxer, never spoke publicly throughout the strike at the hundreds of meetings, and walked around muttering criticisms. The CPSA propaganda condemned attacks on black Africans. At the same time, Bunting and the CPSA didn’t directly attack the colour bar regulations, rationalising that the rules kept up overall wage levels and the fight should be for improving the wages of Africans.
In November 1922 the Fourth Congress of the Comintern issued a protest statement on the execution of the four strikers. They stated that the task was to “draw the native workers too into the struggle against South African Capitalism, and thereby ensure common and final victory” (reprinted in South African Communists Speak, 1981).
After the Rand Strike
In 1923 the Afrikaner Nationalist Party of Barry Hertzog and the Labour Party made an alliance to defeat the Smuts government, which became known as the “Pact.” The Labour Party promised to drop any mention of socialism, and the Nationalists promised to drop their call for secession and an independent Afrikaner republic. What they had in common was white supremacism. To get a flavour of this electoral alliance, in the midst of the campaign, the Labour Party was calling for the expulsion of Asians.
From Moscow, Jones advocated a united front with the Labour Party. In this way they would be part of the anti-Smuts alliance. He argued with Bunting at the time of the Fourth Congress of the Comintern in November 1922 that this would be an application of the anti-imperialist united front as put forward in the “Theses on the Eastern Question.” Bunting brought back from the Congress the importance of fighting for “immediate demands” and for the “united front.” Bunting argued for Comintern discipline and for carrying out the decisions of the Comintern in South Africa, and argued against sectarianism. In keeping with such arguments, the CPSA voted to apply for affiliation to the Labour Party and to support its electoral alliance with the Nationalists.
There was some resistance to this line in the Western Cape where the party had more links with black and coloured labour, but they fell in line. This strategy of the CPSA had to repel black militants. After the victory of the Pact alliance at the polls, the CPSA quickly withdrew their support, and called for Labour Party delegates to oppose putting Frederic Creswell and Tommy Boydell, Labour Party leaders, in the new cabinet. The new government as promised passed yet more laws to reinforce the colour bar and further exclude blacks.
In the article “Permanent Revolution vs. the ‘Anti-Imperialist United Front’: The Origins of Chinese Trotskyism” (Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 53, Summer 1997), we criticise the ambiguity of the slogan for the “anti-imperialist united front” put forward in 1922 by the Fourth Congress, as easily interpreted as a two-stage programme for revolution in the colonial countries and as a call to ally with bourgeois-nationalist forces. However, in the Spartacist article we also make the point that it was a sharp descent from these unclear formulations and opportunist appetites to the full-blown betrayal later of the 1925-27 Chinese Revolution under Stalin and Bukharin. The South African party vastly misread the white miners’ anger coming off the smashing of the Rand strike. Their continued support to the Labour Party demonstrated their continued ambivalence toward the black proletariat.
In 1924 the CPSA national conference debated entering the Labour Party once again. Arguments based on interpretation of Comintern tactics that applied to Europe—where there were mass social-democratic parties—were used to motivate entry. By this time, the Rand strike and the Pact government had had an impact on Bunting and the party, as both made clearer that both the English-speaking and Afrikaner workers were tightly in the grip of their racist and nationalist leadership. Bunting and Roux argued against entry and that the main task was to take their programme to the black masses. This time they won. Some older members in the right wing fell away, and this cleared the way for the party to turn its face to the black proletariat.
The new youth group, the Young Communist League (YCL) of the CPSA, most directly challenged the old status quo of the CPSA. In 1921 Eddie Roux, one of the first Afrikaners and native-born South Africans in the party, founded the youth group. As Eddie Roux came more under the influence of Bunting, he became an advocate for recruiting blacks to the party. Roux became a regular speaker for the Communist Party at ICU meetings. The ICU, which I will get back to later, was growing rapidly at this time. When Roux argued in early 1924 that they must recruit black youth and they must set up a Cape Town branch so they could recruit black and coloured youth, he found himself in a small minority. Roux appealed to the Young Communist International, and he was backed up, and the policy was implemented. The YCL passed a motion stating that the main task of the YCL of South Africa is the organisation of the native youth.
They recruited two blacks early on: Stanley Silwana and Thomas Mbeki. Trade unionist Johnny Gomas, who became a longtime leader of the CPSA, heard Roux speak at a YCL meeting in Cape Town in 1924 and joined the party. Bunting had found new bloc partners with the new youth. Also, the Cape Town branch was more determined to recruit coloureds and blacks where racism was slightly more modulated than in the raw Rand area.
The ICU
There was tremendous political activity among the black workers in the mid to late 1920s. The ICU was the first mass popular semi-political union organisation of black and coloured workers. Its influence far overshadowed that of the Native Congress [predecessor of African National Congress (ANC)] in its time. The development of the ICU reflected the eagerness of black workers to organise in self-defence. It was organised by Clements Kadalie who came from Nyasaland, today’s Malawi. He organised the black Cape Town dock workers in 1919, and the ICU soon grew into the main political representative of blacks in South Africa—organising city and farm labourers all the way to Durban.
The ICU was racked with internal contradictions because it was a massive populist organisation. Kadalie endorsed the Afrikaner Nationalist leader General Barry Hertzog because he sent greetings and a donation to the ICU. Kadalie looked to British trade-union bureaucrats and liberals, and by the end of the 1920s the organisation was disintegrating. In December 1926 he expelled the Communist Party members in the organisation, partly to please his newly acquired British liberal patrons. CPers had entered the ICU to recruit out of it, and in 1923 Eddie Roux helped set up the Johannesburg ICU office. Young Communist League member Thomas Mbeki became the Transvaal secretary of the ICU. Among those expelled along with Mbeki in 1926 were Johnny Gomas and Jimmy La Guma, who had joined the CPSA while in the ICU and were the Cape Town ICU leadership. By the time they were expelled, the CPSA was so popular that several branches protested their expulsion.
Night School and the Unions
The Ferreirastown night school, set up in 1925, was run by T.W. Thibedi, the first black member of the International Socialist League (ISL) and later a CPSAer. It had its origins dating back to the days of the ISL. By 1928, it had over 100 students and taught literacy with the use of The ABC of Communism [1920 book by Bolsheviks Nikolai Bukharin and Evgeny Preobrazhensky] along with other basic subjects. The school had been moved to a bigger building and was now run by a retired schoolteacher and militant atheist. In order to avoid arrest past nine o’clock, the teachers had to manufacture fake passes for all the students.
Much of the CPSA’s work required Bunting’s legal skills—he was for years the best-known lawyer in the country defending blacks against state repression. One story from this period of rapid black recruitment is interesting: Thibedi went to address a meeting of 1,000 in Potchefstroom. He was arrested, and the entire crowd attempted to follow him to the court. Thibedi was charged with inciting hostility between the races. Bunting defended him, and an unusually liberal judge acquitted him. The CPSA held an immediate rally to celebrate the victory. A group of whites attacked the celebrating crowd, including attacking the white Communists. In response to seeing that a Communist lawyer could get a black man out of jail, and then witnessing the same white Communists being attacked by other white men, most of the residents of the location decided en masse to join the Communist Party.
The CPSA paper was renamed the South African Worker and had more than half its articles in Xhosa, Zulu and Sotho. The paper also serialised an adapted version of The ABC of Communism, the book used in the Soviet Union to teach Marxism and literacy. In the late 1920s, the CPSA finally made breakthroughs in both organising black unions and joint struggles of white and black workers. They formed the Non-European Federation of Trade Unions in the Witwatersrand, and membership in the unions and the party grew rapidly. A whole new layer of black leadership was brought in, and the party was transforming itself into a majority black party of a couple of thousand. The South African party had some all-black branches. They had organised industrial unions with black leadership. The party had made a tremendous leap.
The Sixth Congress of the Comintern
One cannot evaluate this period without the knowledge that a fierce battle was going on in the Comintern that impacted this small and remote party struggling to apply a revolutionary programme. In economically backward Russia there was a political counterrevolution in 1923-24, which had its material basis in the destruction of industry and the death of many of the most politically advanced workers during the Civil War, combined with the defeat of revolutionary opportunities abroad, especially the 1923 German Revolution. A parasitic bureaucratic caste led by Stalin usurped political power from the proletariat. Stalin’s rationalisation for defeatism and abandonment of international revolution, “Socialism in One Country,” ultimately dictated the strategy for the South African revolution, and would require the working class to be politically subordinated to a so-called “anti-imperialist united front” with the national bourgeoisie of the colonial countries. Supporters of Trotsky’s Left Opposition, many of whom were arrested and ultimately murdered by Stalin’s police, fought against the degeneration of the revolution and for international proletarian revolution necessary to build socialism.
The ramifications of Stalin’s class-collaborationist policies were tragically illustrated in China. In this largely peasant country the working class was highly concentrated in a few key cities like Shanghai and by 1925, inspired by the Russian Revolution, it had begun to seek the road to power. But the Comintern leadership under Bukharin and Stalin was abandoning its revolutionary purpose. Over Trotsky’s objections, the Chinese Communist Party was subordinated to the nationalist party, the Guomindang. In 1927 the revolution was crushed. Out of this decisive historical test, Trotsky generalised the perspective of permanent revolution. This was codified in The Third International After Lenin (1929) and later in The Permanent Revolution (1930). In so doing, he both incorporated and transcended the evolved communist position on the colonial question as codified at the Communist International’s First and Second Congresses. [For more background, readers are referred to the 2008 ICL pamphlet The Development and Extension of Leon Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution.]
The African National Congress (as the South African Native National Congress renamed itself in 1923) was the leadership of the only non-white petty-bourgeois nationalist movement in South Africa. It held disdain for workers. The ANC had consistently looked to British imperialism for their favours. They had no particular interest in the struggles of the black proletariat. J.T. Gumede in this period was the ANC leader most supportive of the Comintern. He travelled the country after visiting the USSR to popularise the idea of Communism. His report to ANC chiefs in 1928, which referred to the overthrow of the tsar in 1917, caused the tribal leaders to express alarm that they too would be killed if there was a Bolshevik Revolution in South Africa. The degenerating Comintern courted the ANC as part of its appeal to nationalist leaders.
In February 1927, the Comintern organised the “Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism” in Brussels. This conference was attended by Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian bourgeois-nationalist leader; Lemine Senghor, Senegalese Pan-Africanist; Messali Hadj, Algerian nationalist leader who ended up supporting [French imperialist ruler Charles] de Gaulle’s colonialist reform schemes in 1958 in the midst of the war of independence; and Mohammed Hatta who became an anti-communist Indonesian nationalist. The Congress read out greetings from the widow of Sun Yat-sen of the Guomindang of China just as the Shanghai proletariat and their Communist Party leadership were about to be slaughtered by her party. The Stalinised Comintern had made Chiang Kai-shek an honorary member of the Comintern, thus cementing the subordination of the Chinese CP to these butchers.
James La Guma attended the Congress as representative of the CPSA. Afterward La Guma travelled to Moscow and participated in discussions with Bukharin and other CI leaders. A resolution passed by the Executive Committee of the CI (ECCI) laid out the same two-stage revolution strategy for South Africa that led to annihilation of the working-class base of the Chinese CP.
The ECCI’s resolution for the South African party, with the central slogan of “an independent Native republic as a stage towards a workers’ and peasants’ government,” was referred to the section for discussion. This was, in fact, the application of the disastrous Stalinist Chinese strategy to South African soil: that only an anti-imperialist capitalist revolution led by the nationalist petty bourgeoisie was on the agenda. The dictatorship of the proletariat is not on the agenda and must wait.
Bunting and his wife Rebecca and Edward Roux attended the 1928 Sixth Congress of the Comintern as delegates representing the majority of the party which opposed the new slogan. The Buntings found that the whole atmosphere of the Comintern had changed between the Fourth Congress they attended and the Sixth—the Fourth Congress had a spirit of hope and comradeship. They came to the Sixth Congress excited that they could report that the party was now largely black African. Out of 1,750 members, 1,600 were black. However, they were bluntly greeted with “We are going to attack you,” and were cold-shouldered by what Roux called “a hard-bitten gang of bureaucrats.” Bunting, who had fought for more than ten years to transform the party into majority black, was dismissed as a “white chauvinist.” Roux says he ran into Trotskyist sympathisers at the Congress and heard cynical statements of delegates that Trotsky was right on China, but Trotsky was no longer a Communist.
Bukharin sycophants Jay Lovestone, a careerist in the U.S. party, and John Pepper, a Hungarian Communist who had been sent to the U.S., are mentioned as demonstratively ignoring Bunting’s speeches in the commission. Pepper was the major advocate of a farmer-labour party policy in the U.S. CP—basically a two-class workers and peasants party for America. James W. Ford, a leading black American delegate, ignored them.
Bunting spoke against the “native republic” slogan, arguing that black African peasants have been drawn into the working class where they are most militant, i.e., they are proletarianised. Industry in South Africa is far advanced for a colonial country, and so consequently is the working class. Bunting objected to the fact that the draft programme of the CI referred only to “colonial masses” and not the colonial proletariat. There are classes in the colonial world. We do not have to wait for capitalism to develop; it has been thrust upon us. He begged for more Comintern attention to South Africa, and less ignorance of the particular conditions in different colonies of the African continent. He said in his 20 August 1928 speech at the Congress: “the class struggle is practically coincident and simultaneous with the national struggle” (South Africa’s Radical Tradition, 1996). Roux also argued at the Congress that it is not the task for the party to artificially build a nationalist movement: “There is no need to go through the laborious and (from the point of view of the revolution) dangerous process of building up a native bourgeois-nationalist movement the leadership of which must be displaced before the proletarian revolution can be achieved” (South Africa’s Radical Tradition).
Bunting also argued that the slogan would alienate white workers, that either the neutrality or occasional support of white labour would be of great value as a shield against state repression for the revolutionary native movement. Such arguments undermined his valid arguments against two-stage revolution in South Africa. All the CP’s actions on the ground at home were toward Africanising the party. But Bunting did not have Lenin’s understanding that the struggle for national liberation using the methods of proletarian class struggle could be a powerful motor force for socialist revolution in South Africa. So he had nothing to counterpose to the Stalinist programme of politically chaining the black masses to the nationalist leadership.
It didn’t really matter what Bunting and Roux argued about the class forces or the status of the national movement in South Africa. Hammering out a programme for revolution was not the purpose of this Congress. In evaluating the debates with Bunting and Roux at the Sixth Congress, you have to keep in mind that really what is going on is the increasingly conservative Comintern clubbing any potential opposition to the nationally limited programme of “Socialism in One Country” and class peace with the world bourgeoisie. The Bukharinites (although Bukharin was deposed soon after this Congress) were not looking for a correct political programme for South Africa; they were looking for followers who would toe the line of the Comintern leadership. Thus the Comintern resolved that: “Our aim should be to transform the African National Congress into a fighting nationalist revolutionary organisation against the white bourgeoisie and the British imperialists, based upon the trade unions, peasant organisations, etc., developing systematically the leadership of the workers and the Communist Party in this organisation” (Resolution on “The South African Question” adopted by the ECCI following the Sixth Congress, reprinted in South African Communists Speak).
Roux refers to a document that was circulating among certain delegates at the Congress—the first and third parts of The Third International After Lenin. Trotsky made the point that the International had no programme; it had rationalisations for defeats and generalities to cover its zigzag policies. The Stalinists had replaced the struggle to win the working class organised in the unions to the Communist Party by the opportunist utilisation of the ready-made apparatus of the trade-union bureaucracy exemplified in England where the Soviet government maintained a bloc with the labour leadership just as they were selling out a general strike, or in the so-called “revolutionary national bourgeoisie” as in China—in both cases ending in defeat for the workers and oppressed. Trotsky was launching an international struggle to win the communists back to the programme that had made the Bolshevik Revolution.
Seven years later, Trotsky wrote a letter to the fledgling Left Oppositionists of the Workers’ Party of South Africa in response to their draft theses. He took issue with their argument that “the slogan of a ‘Black Republic’ is equally harmful for the revolutionary cause as is the slogan of a ‘South Africa for the whites’.” Based on the application of permanent revolution, Trotsky wrote that the character of the proletarian revolution in South Africa will be one of national liberation of the black masses as well:
“Three-quarters of the population of South Africa (almost six million of the almost eight million total) is composed of non-Europeans. A victorious revolution is unthinkable without the awakening of the native masses. In its turn, that will give them what they are so lacking today—confidence in their strength, a heightened personal consciousness, a cultural growth.
“Under these conditions the South African Republic will emerge first of all as a ‘black’ republic; this does not exclude, of course, either full equality for the whites or brotherly relations between the two races—depending mainly on the conduct of the whites. But it is entirely obvious that the predominant majority of the population, liberated from slavish dependence, will put a certain imprint on the state.
“Insofar as a victorious revolution will radically change the relation not only between the classes but also between the races and will assure to the blacks that place in the state that corresponds to their numbers, thus far will the social revolution in South Africa also have a national character.
“We have not the slightest reason to close our eyes to this side of the question or to diminish its significance. On the contrary, the proletarian party should in words and in deeds openly and boldly take the solution of the national (racial) problem in its hands.
“Nevertheless, the proletarian party can and must solve the national problem by its own methods.
“The historical weapon of national liberation can be only the class struggle.”
— Leon Trotsky, “On the South African Theses” (20 April 1935), Writings of Leon Trotsky (1934-35) (Pathfinder Press, 1971)
Bunting and Roux never found their way to Trotsky’s Left Opposition although other communists did join Trotsky’s Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Today we Trotskyists of Spartacist South Africa are the continuity of Lenin and Trotsky’s party. We fight for a black-centred workers government as part of a socialist federation of Southern Africa. This is directly counterposed to the illusion fostered by the South African Communist Party today that the “national democratic revolution” has achieved a “rainbow nation” based on the ANC’s celebrated doctrine of “non-racialism.” We call for workers to break with the bourgeois Tripartite Alliance—a class-collaborationist nationalist popular front that ties the working class to the capitalist rulers.
Just a few final notes. Jones, always sickly, spent his last days in Moscow providing the invaluable service of translating parts of the early works of Lenin into English, including popularising What Is To Be Done? He also continued to write on the black question, and Africa and world imperialism. He died in 1924. Bunting stayed in the CPSA. He carried on a difficult and courageous election campaign in Thembuland with Rebecca Bunting and their comrade Gana Makabeni as Xhosa interpreter. They attempted for the first time to bring the communist programme into the rural reserves whilst being watched by police and opposed by the Native chiefs living on government salaries. Bunting and others were purged in 1931 as the party came under the direct manipulation of Stalin’s fake “left turn,” and he died some years later, still a loyal Communist. Eddie Roux repudiated his communist politics, became an academic and did a service by writing Time Longer Than Rope and S.P. Bunting: A Political Biography.
The early South African Communist Party was a mix of comrades in motion, grappling with a rapidly changing reality, and racked with contradictions. There was an element in this party that was revolutionary internationalist, trying to apply Marxism to South Africa, and particularly to the question of ending black oppression. They were inspired and transformed by the Russian Revolution, but, in the end, their struggle to sort out a strategy and programme for black liberation and the dictatorship of the proletariat was cut short as the Comintern they looked to was strangled by Stalin and his heirs. It is the revolutionary Trotskyists of Spartacist South Africa who are carrying forward the necessary fight for the programme of proletarian revolution in Southern Africa.
Markin comment:
It is only the accident of birth or where you were brought up in this wicked old world that determines where you wind up fighting the struggle for a newer world but it seems to me from the relatively safe quarters of America, the United States, after reading these two articles, that the early communists in South Africa, black and white, but particularly highlighting the whites just now must have been extraordinary revolutionaries to carry on the class struggle work necessary to gain that black-centered workers’ republic they were fighting for. The Stalinist degeneration of the Comintern, and the communist movement, derailed yet another promising situation, one that has not resolved since then. We militants today must remember that, remember that very well.
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Workers Vanguard No. 991
25 November 2011
South Africa-Early Years of the Communist Party
Part One
We reprint below the first part of an article from Spartacist South Africa No. 7 (Winter 2011), incorporating minor factual corrections. It is an edited version of a class given by comrade Karen Cole at a meeting in 2000 of Spartacist/South Africa, section of the International Communist League.
Urgent tasks faced the Third International in its early, revolutionary years. Out of the devastation of World War I and the Second International’s betrayal of the world working class, the Bolshevik Party in Russia led the first and only working class revolution. Workers around the world solidarised with this victory, and the Bolsheviks looked immediately to extending their revolution internationally. Nothing less than world revolution was on the agenda. They looked outward to differentiate among disparate elements from all sorts of backgrounds—anarchists, syndicalists, liberals, social-democratic workers, intellectuals—who subjectively sided with the overthrow of capitalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The task was to draw a line to exclude the reformists and centrist pretenders and regroup with the genuinely revolutionary workers.
They fought to build a new International for their own survival as well as mankind’s. They had to focus on the strategic battle fronts in the advanced industrial countries where revolution seemed most imminent—where the prerequisites seemed to be all there, particularly Germany. The lesson of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution was that the leadership of a Bolshevik party like the one led by Lenin and Trotsky was the critical factor. That was the one prerequisite missing elsewhere, and it was decisive. This lesson was outlined most clearly in Trotsky’s The Lessons of October (1924).
The newly formed Third International also organised to extend the revolution to the East and South, to the countries of belated capitalist development. The Russian Revolution had vindicated Trotsky’s theory and programme of permanent revolution regarding the inseparable link between national liberation from the yoke of imperialism and proletarian revolution. Trotsky wrote in The Permanent Revolution (1929): “that the democratic tasks of the backward bourgeois nations lead directly, in our epoch, to the dictatorship of the proletariat and that the dictatorship of the proletariat puts socialist tasks on the order of the day.” This understanding, proved in the experience of the Russian Revolution, opened the possibility of successful revolutionary struggle under the leadership of a proletarian vanguard in the colonial and less advanced countries. Trotsky’s analysis and generalisation of permanent revolution, based on the experience of Russia and, in a negative sense, the 1925-27 aborted revolution in China, laid out the necessary programme to lead the colonial peoples to liberation.
So this is the political context in which we have to examine the first years of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA)—from its beginnings in World War I through the late 1920s.
I want to briefly start with the split within the South African Labour Party which eventually led up to the founding of the Communist Party of South Africa, and describe the historical period to get a sense of the leap that the founders of the early CPSA had to make if they were to be the leadership of a South African revolution. They started out expecting that the organised and militant white mineworkers would be the vanguard of the proletarian revolution—but it didn’t work out that way, reflecting the unique historical overlap between race and class in South Africa.
After the Anglo-Boer War [1899-1902], the policy of the British colonialists was to assist British immigrants in settling as a bulwark against Afrikaner nationalism. On the Rand [central gold mining region], political rights were restricted to whites. The English-speaking workers who brought specialised skills from Britain were kept as a supervisory layer in the mines, and their job classifications were protected by colour-bar laws. On the Rand with its centre in Johannesburg (and I am going to mainly talk about the Rand because this was the centre of class struggle), the gold mine commission legislated the racial exclusions with the full support of the whites-only union leadership. Black Africans were permanently disenfranchised migrant mineworkers, forced off their rural homes by hut and poll taxes and expelled by white farmers. They were confined and policed in fenced-in compounds, with no political or union rights. Blacks were considered expendable, replaceable and were offered no training. Their every movement was totally controlled and resistance was met with swift punishment and death. White workers consistently scabbed on any attempts by black workers to strike.
But the inexorable laws of capitalism which demand continual maximising of profits—particularly in the labour-intensive deep gold-mining industry—set the mine owners and white miners at odds. The Afrikaner as well as British miners engaged in many industrial struggles, and the British miners were closely linked to and influenced by the militant union movement of Britain. But the volatility of gold prices meant the mine owners needed cheaper labour, and had no need to protect the white workers. For a while, they imported indentured Asian labour but, in the long run, saw their future in superexploiting black peasant labour.
So during the 1910s and 1920s, you see the leadership of a white working class attempting to fight to preserve its privileges on the backs of the black masses. The 1920s was a time of changing economic relations. Over time the rural Afrikaners, who had been a factor in the mines, eventually moved into the state-protected apparatus. After outbursts of bloody state repression of rearguard white mineworker strikes, the ruling-class strategy developed into absorbing the white workers into the petty-bourgeoisie. Instead of the white workers being ground down into impoverishment, their relations to the means of production shifted into being the overseers, managers, supervisors and state bureaucrats. Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie continued to deprive black people of the right to own land and levied taxes to compel more landless blacks to migrate into designated “locations” near metropolitan areas and become proletarianised. Brutally enforced pass systems were used to control this labour force.
The Impact of World War I
On the eve of World War I, in South Africa as in the rest of the world, there was tremendous ferment among sections of the workers and oppressed. At the same time, the war highlighted, in South Africa like in Europe, the bankruptcy of bourgeois nationalism and labour reformism. There were rebellions among various sectors of the South African population on the eve of the war.
In 1913 there were uprisings and strikes of Indian workers across [the province of] KwaZulu-Natal. They struck in the mines and cane fields, railways and shops. Mahatma Gandhi, who had been in South Africa since 1893, pleaded for passive resistance. Nevertheless, the cane workers clashed with police and workers were beaten and killed. Gandhi came to an agreement with the government during the Natal uprisings, and called the struggle of Indian workers off with little gains. On the Rand, in 1913 and 1914, the white gold miners led general strikes, and the government killed over 20 people to put the first strike down, and deported nine trade-union leaders to put the second down. In Jagersfontein diamond mine, Sotho [South African ethnic group] miners went on strike when a white overseer kicked a black miner to death, and eleven miners were killed in the subsequent struggle. In Cape Town, 600 coloured [mixed-race] stevedores struck for an 8-hour day and wage increases.
The existing misleaders of the workers and oppressed were busy lining up support for the first interimperialist war on the side of the British overlords of South Africa. During World War I Gandhi urged Indians in South Africa to join the British army. As described by Jack and Ray Simons in Class and Colour in South Africa 1850-1950 (International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1983), Gandhi earlier argued that passive resistance was “best for ‘illiterate natives.’ It taught them to break their own heads and not other people’s in order to redress grievances.”
After a brief moment of hesitation on the eve of the war, the South African Labour Party signed up for the war no less enthusiastically than the mine owners’ Unionist Party. Colonel Frederic Creswell, the leader of the Labour Party, enlisted and called for support to the war in a manifesto titled “See It Through.”
In the Western Cape, the African Political Organisation (APO, renamed the African People’s Organisation in 1919), the main political voice of the coloureds, had tremendous illusions that the British imperialists would influence their South African counterparts to drop the colour bar, and hoped that if coloureds supported the war effort, they would be rewarded for their loyalty.
Days before Britain declared war in 1914, Dr. Abdullah Abdurahman, president of the APO, proclaimed, “The present foundation of the Empire is rotten, and cannot last.” Weeks later he said, “The only question we have to ask ourselves is how we can best serve the Empire” (Class and Colour in South Africa).
In 1912 the South African Native National Congress [SANNC], predecessor of the African National Congress, was founded by lawyers, church-trained intellectuals and tribal chiefs. Their reaction to the outbreak of World War I was to cancel a meeting to discuss opposition to the 1913 Natives Land Act which dispossessed the majority of the black population, and instead to organise recruitment of blacks into the British army.
David Ivon Jones, secretary in the South African Labour Party and later a leader of the CPSA, adamantly opposed the interimperialist war. When the editor of the SANNC newspaper proposed a motion of condolence on the death of British Lord Kitchener at a public meeting in 1916, Jones opposed this, stating that Kitchener “was the agent of the class who exploit both native and white working class and encompass the death of millions of our fellow workers” (Baruch Hirson and Gwyn A. Williams, The Delegate for Africa: David Ivon Jones 1883-1924 [Core Publications, 1995]). Kitchener was the military architect of British imperialism across the African continent from Sudan to South Africa.
Internationalism and the Struggle for Black Liberation
David Ivon Jones and Sidney Percival Bunting, both immigrants from the British Isles who were central party leaders, were the outspoken antiwar leaders. In September 1914, Bunting and a small group of oppositionists to British imperialism in the South African Labour Party formed the “War on War League.” They were not pacifists but revolutionary defeatists. They called for socialist revolution to bring down all contenders in the imperialist carving up of the world. After leaving the Labour Party, they formed the International Socialist League (ISL). Bunting immediately made the link between working-class internationalism and solidarity with the non-whites of South Africa. Their solidarity with the struggles of coloureds, blacks and Indians in many ways had made them as anathema to the Labour Party as their antiwar positions.
They distributed works of Marx, Engels and Daniel De Leon, a leading American Marxist. Even before the October 1917 Revolution in Russia, their newspaper enthusiastically cited German revolutionary Karl Liebknecht and comrades in Russia as fellow opponents of the imperialist war. In September 1915, they put out propaganda on the need for a new International. They were ignorant of the struggles by Lenin within the Zimmerwald conference [held in Switzerland in September 1915] for an anti-imperialist opposition to the war. At their first conference in January 1916, they voted to affiliate with the Zimmerwaldian International Socialist Commission in Switzerland as a manifestation of the beginning of a new International.
Simultaneously, Bunting confronted the new group with the race question in South Africa. It was and continued to be the key test of whether they had broken from the white-supremacist programme of the Labour Party. Bunting proposed that the League “affirm that the emancipation of the working class requires the abolition of all forms of native indenture, compound and passport systems; and the lifting of the native worker to the political and industrial status of the white” (quoted in Allison Drew, Between Empire and Revolution: A Life of Sidney Bunting, 1873-1936 [Pickering & Chatto, 2007]). But at this meeting Bunting’s motion was amended by others in the group to include a reactionary call for preventing the increase of numbers of black wage workers, and this version passed.
Bunting and Jones, as leaders and editors of the ISL, continually carried on a fight to incorporate demands for blacks among their small membership. In their newspaper The International, Jones wrote:
“If the League deal resolutely in consonance with socialist principles with the native question, it will succeed in shaking South African capitalism to its foundations. Then, and not till then shall we be able to talk about the South African proletariat in International relations. Not till we free the Native can we hope to free the white.”
—“The Parting of the Ways,” 1 October 1915 (reprinted in South African Communists Speak, 1915-1980 [Inkululeko Publications, 1981])
Bunting and Jones were often alone. The ISL invited black men and leaders of the Native Congress to ISL meetings, which led them to get expelled from the Trades Hall [in Johannesburg] in late 1917. Bunting used the expulsion as an opportunity to denounce the racist Labourites. He hated and condemned all who called themselves socialists and claimed to support the 1917 Russian Revolution, but did not support black African struggle. In April 1919 he wrote in The International: “It is humiliating to have to keep on emphasising that the essence of the Labour movement is Solidarity, without which it cannot win. The outstanding characteristic of the capitalist system in South Africa being its Native labour, the outstanding movement of the country must clearly be the movement of its Native labourers” (quoted in Edward Roux, S.P. Bunting: A Political Biography [Mayibuye Books, 1993]).
Through the ISL conferences of this period and the early 1920s Bunting and Jones wrote articles and repeatedly introduced motions and theses calling for special attention to black workers in all sorts of ways: for classes to be instituted, for leaflets to be addressed to them, for incorporating demands for the right to vote, organise, end pass laws, etc. In late 1918 the ISL published a leaflet written by Jones titled “The Bolsheviks Are Coming” [see page 5], which was translated into Zulu and Sotho. He combined solidarity with the Bolshevik Revolution with the necessity to emancipate the black workers—he ended by saying that this is Bolshevism—that black and white workers combine in one organisation irrespective of craft, colour or creed. In Jones and Bunting’s break from social democracy to international working-class revolution, they applied their understanding of Marxism to the inseparable fight for black liberation and socialist revolution in South Africa.
The pages of The International, the ISL newspaper, were filled with solidarity with the Russian Revolution. Jones was prescient in March 1917 when he wrote about the February Russian Revolution that overthrew the tsar. He hailed the Russian workers as the vanguard of world revolution: “this is a bourgeois revolution, but arriving when the night of capitalism is far spent. It cannot be a mere repetition of previous revolutions” (“170 Million Recruits,” The International, 23 March 1917). They serialised the manifesto of the First Congress of the Communist International in 1919 and they sought to affiliate with the Third International born out of the workers revolution.
In 1919 Bunting wrote a scathing denunciation of the Johannesburg white municipal workers strike which the workers called the “Johannesburg soviet.” He called it ironically a “White ‘Soviet’,” and attacked it for its racist hypocritical indifference to black workers. In February 1920 some 70,000 black miners went on strike, and Bunting wrote appeals to white workers to support their struggle.
The Industrial Workers of Africa
One other effort of the ISL I want to mention before I get on to the formation of the CPSA is the Industrial Workers of Africa (IWA), founded in October 1917 and modelled on the American syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World. The slogan of this all-in industrial organisation became “Sifuna Zonke” (“We want all”). They distributed their leaflets in Zulu and Sotho. As described by Jones in his March 1921 report to the Comintern, “Communism in South Africa”: “The native workers of the IWA quickly grasped the difference between their trade union and the Congress [SANNC] and waged a merciless war of invective at the joint meetings of their Union with the Congress against the black-coated respectables of the Congress” (reprinted in South African Communists Speak).
In this period they also planned to publish in Hindi and Tamil in Durban, and they organised coloured garment workers in Kimberley. One of these people in Kimberley was Johnny Gomas, who later became a Cape Town union organiser and leader of the Communist Party.
James P. Cannon, a founder of the American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader, makes the point in The First Ten Years of American Communism (1962) that it took the intervention of the Comintern under Lenin to force the American communists to take up the black question. Cannon says that the best of the early American socialists, Eugene Debs, could only say that the Socialist Party was “the party of the whole working class, regardless of color.” It took the authority of the Russian Revolution to fight with the American communists against their “colour blindness” and to pay attention to the special oppression of blacks, just as the Bolsheviks had championed oppressed nationalities. Armed with the lessons of the Russian Revolution, the American communists took up black oppression as a special question of American capitalism, and they became the foremost champions of black liberation and recruited blacks to the party.
During the course of the rise of American capitalism, the origins of black oppression in chattel slavery led to blacks becoming a race-colour caste. This is very different from South Africa where black oppression originated in colonial subjugation and national oppression. However, the comparison I want to make is that the assimilation of the lessons of the Russian Revolution would have directly guided the early CPSA. Jones, Bunting and later Eddie Roux were inspired by the Russian Revolution. Although they were physically distant from the Comintern, they grasped the centrality of the fight against black oppression, and this manifested itself in their perseverance in making the Communist Party a mass black party. But they never developed a theoretical framework to this question as it applied to South Africa. And it became more and more impossible for them to develop a programme as the Comintern degenerated into more a tool of the nationalist Stalinist bureaucracy rather than an organising centre for world revolution, as it was under Lenin and Trotsky.
Founding of the CPSA
In January 1920, the ISL resolved to affiliate with the Third International and sent their rules and constitution to “convince you that our policy is on all fours with that of Communist parties of Europe and elsewhere” (quoted in South African Communists Speak). Apparently the application was read and applauded at the Second Congress of the Comintern.
In 1921 they pulled together various groupings from Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg and other places and formed the Communist Party. Their membership was almost all English-speaking immigrants. They debated adopting the “21 Conditions” of the Second Congress of the Comintern. Their agreement with the Comintern’s programmatic conditions for entry caused some of the syndicalists and others who refused to support the dictatorship of the proletariat to part ways.
Jones’s “Communism in South Africa” was presented on behalf of the ISL and used as the basic report on South Africa for the Third Congress of the Comintern in June 1921, which he attended. Jones initiated a motion to devote serious attention to the Negro question as a separate question of importance.
The report reflects his sensitivity to the horrendous conditions of blacks. He tries to inform the Comintern of the unique social and political groupings that make up the country. Jones denounces the Native Congress for its timid pro-government programme and its fear of the masses, and predicts that class-based organisations will dominate in South Africa. The “national and class interests of the natives cannot be distinguished the one from the other.” What comes out strongly is Jones’s desire to bring the question of black oppression to the forefront of the International. He appeals for reinforcements, and for the South African movement to come more into the purview of the Third International. He writes: “The white movement dominates our attention, because the native workers’ movement moves only spasmodically and is neglected. It requires a special department, with native linguists and newspapers. All of which require large funds, which are not available.” His final remarks are that “African natives are ripe for the message of the Communist International.”
The party remained divided as to whether their purpose should be to address white workers and about admitting black members. After Jones left South Africa in 1920 to spend his final days in the Soviet Union, Bunting continued almost alone to push the party toward the black masses.
In October 1922 Bunting wrote a document called “The ‘Colonial’ Labour Front” (reprinted in South Africa’s Radical Tradition: A Documentary History, Volume 1, edited by Allison Drew [Mayibuye Books, 1996]). It takes on the relation of national oppression to class based on the theses of the Second Congress of the Communist International. This document tries to explain how the bourgeoisie splits the workers of the imperialist countries from workers in the colonial countries, that racism has an economic basis. And he argues that the task of the communist parties is to bridge the divisions between white and black labour, between the workers of the imperialist and colonial countries. He says that national liberation struggles must not “postpone” labour action; particularly in places like South Africa there is no real national liberation movement or peasant movement to link up with. He quotes from the Supplementary Theses on the National Question of the Second Congress (1920): “we must in any case struggle against control by bourgeois democratic national movements over the mass action of poor and ignorant peasants and workers for their liberation from all sorts of exploitation.”
Workers Vanguard No. 992
9 December 2011
South Africa
Early Years of the Communist Party
Part Two
We reprint below the second part of an article from Spartacist South Africa No. 7 (Winter 2011), incorporating minor factual and stylistic corrections. It is an edited version of a class given by comrade Karen Cole at a meeting in 2000 of Spartacist South Africa, section of the International Communist League. Part One appeared in WV No. 991 (25 November). The article refers to the Voortrekkers, who were Afrikaner farmers (Boers) who left the British Cape Colony in the first half of the 19th century for the African interior.
The newly founded Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) had not completely broken from the Labour Party. Sidney Bunting and David Ivon Jones as well still saw the militant white miners as strategic to the South African revolution. The young party was immediately faced with an enormous and contradictory class battle on the Rand. The 1922 ten-week strike of white miners was a hard-fought battle in defence of the racist colour bar, the reservation of higher-paid job classifications for whites. Miners seized towns and carried out armed combat with the police and army. Four strikers were hanged, and three of them went to the gallows singing “The Red Flag.” Aerial artillery was used against striking workers. The Jan Smuts government ruthlessly crushed the strike.
The strike fundamentally had a reactionary purpose—to preserve the colour bar in mining. The ostensible reason for the strike was in defence of skilled miners who had been retrenched [laid off], but everyone knew this was part of the drive to replace these privileged white workers with superexploited black labour. Back in 1907 when Keir Hardie, a Scottish miners’ leader, visited South Africa, he was pelted when he raised the basic demand that white unions should be opened to the blacks on the basis of equal pay for equal work. White workers’ consciousness had not changed much from that time, but the mine owners were more determined now that falling gold prices required increasing the rate of exploitation by hiring black labour.
The strike had various leaderships, and one of them was headquartered in the offices of the Communist Party led by Bill Andrews, a longtime union leader and party founder. This included expelled union leaders who considered themselves Marxists. There was a Commando faction led by Afrikaner miners modelled on the Commando units of the Voortrekkers who terrorised and murdered blacks and Indians. At a march one could see a banner, “Workers of the World Fight and Unite for a White S.A.” (Class and Colour in South Africa, 1983).
It is interesting to note that Dr. Abdullah Abdurahman of the APO [African Political Organisation] and Clements Kadalie of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU), the two most prominent political leaders of the coloured and black masses at the time, both rightly condemned the racism of the strike, but coming from petty-bourgeois perspectives, they both directed their appeals to the racist Smuts government to increase their control and repression of the unions.
Eddie Roux wrote that Bunting, who had always been a regular soapboxer, never spoke publicly throughout the strike at the hundreds of meetings, and walked around muttering criticisms. The CPSA propaganda condemned attacks on black Africans. At the same time, Bunting and the CPSA didn’t directly attack the colour bar regulations, rationalising that the rules kept up overall wage levels and the fight should be for improving the wages of Africans.
In November 1922 the Fourth Congress of the Comintern issued a protest statement on the execution of the four strikers. They stated that the task was to “draw the native workers too into the struggle against South African Capitalism, and thereby ensure common and final victory” (reprinted in South African Communists Speak, 1981).
After the Rand Strike
In 1923 the Afrikaner Nationalist Party of Barry Hertzog and the Labour Party made an alliance to defeat the Smuts government, which became known as the “Pact.” The Labour Party promised to drop any mention of socialism, and the Nationalists promised to drop their call for secession and an independent Afrikaner republic. What they had in common was white supremacism. To get a flavour of this electoral alliance, in the midst of the campaign, the Labour Party was calling for the expulsion of Asians.
From Moscow, Jones advocated a united front with the Labour Party. In this way they would be part of the anti-Smuts alliance. He argued with Bunting at the time of the Fourth Congress of the Comintern in November 1922 that this would be an application of the anti-imperialist united front as put forward in the “Theses on the Eastern Question.” Bunting brought back from the Congress the importance of fighting for “immediate demands” and for the “united front.” Bunting argued for Comintern discipline and for carrying out the decisions of the Comintern in South Africa, and argued against sectarianism. In keeping with such arguments, the CPSA voted to apply for affiliation to the Labour Party and to support its electoral alliance with the Nationalists.
There was some resistance to this line in the Western Cape where the party had more links with black and coloured labour, but they fell in line. This strategy of the CPSA had to repel black militants. After the victory of the Pact alliance at the polls, the CPSA quickly withdrew their support, and called for Labour Party delegates to oppose putting Frederic Creswell and Tommy Boydell, Labour Party leaders, in the new cabinet. The new government as promised passed yet more laws to reinforce the colour bar and further exclude blacks.
In the article “Permanent Revolution vs. the ‘Anti-Imperialist United Front’: The Origins of Chinese Trotskyism” (Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 53, Summer 1997), we criticise the ambiguity of the slogan for the “anti-imperialist united front” put forward in 1922 by the Fourth Congress, as easily interpreted as a two-stage programme for revolution in the colonial countries and as a call to ally with bourgeois-nationalist forces. However, in the Spartacist article we also make the point that it was a sharp descent from these unclear formulations and opportunist appetites to the full-blown betrayal later of the 1925-27 Chinese Revolution under Stalin and Bukharin. The South African party vastly misread the white miners’ anger coming off the smashing of the Rand strike. Their continued support to the Labour Party demonstrated their continued ambivalence toward the black proletariat.
In 1924 the CPSA national conference debated entering the Labour Party once again. Arguments based on interpretation of Comintern tactics that applied to Europe—where there were mass social-democratic parties—were used to motivate entry. By this time, the Rand strike and the Pact government had had an impact on Bunting and the party, as both made clearer that both the English-speaking and Afrikaner workers were tightly in the grip of their racist and nationalist leadership. Bunting and Roux argued against entry and that the main task was to take their programme to the black masses. This time they won. Some older members in the right wing fell away, and this cleared the way for the party to turn its face to the black proletariat.
The new youth group, the Young Communist League (YCL) of the CPSA, most directly challenged the old status quo of the CPSA. In 1921 Eddie Roux, one of the first Afrikaners and native-born South Africans in the party, founded the youth group. As Eddie Roux came more under the influence of Bunting, he became an advocate for recruiting blacks to the party. Roux became a regular speaker for the Communist Party at ICU meetings. The ICU, which I will get back to later, was growing rapidly at this time. When Roux argued in early 1924 that they must recruit black youth and they must set up a Cape Town branch so they could recruit black and coloured youth, he found himself in a small minority. Roux appealed to the Young Communist International, and he was backed up, and the policy was implemented. The YCL passed a motion stating that the main task of the YCL of South Africa is the organisation of the native youth.
They recruited two blacks early on: Stanley Silwana and Thomas Mbeki. Trade unionist Johnny Gomas, who became a longtime leader of the CPSA, heard Roux speak at a YCL meeting in Cape Town in 1924 and joined the party. Bunting had found new bloc partners with the new youth. Also, the Cape Town branch was more determined to recruit coloureds and blacks where racism was slightly more modulated than in the raw Rand area.
The ICU
There was tremendous political activity among the black workers in the mid to late 1920s. The ICU was the first mass popular semi-political union organisation of black and coloured workers. Its influence far overshadowed that of the Native Congress [predecessor of African National Congress (ANC)] in its time. The development of the ICU reflected the eagerness of black workers to organise in self-defence. It was organised by Clements Kadalie who came from Nyasaland, today’s Malawi. He organised the black Cape Town dock workers in 1919, and the ICU soon grew into the main political representative of blacks in South Africa—organising city and farm labourers all the way to Durban.
The ICU was racked with internal contradictions because it was a massive populist organisation. Kadalie endorsed the Afrikaner Nationalist leader General Barry Hertzog because he sent greetings and a donation to the ICU. Kadalie looked to British trade-union bureaucrats and liberals, and by the end of the 1920s the organisation was disintegrating. In December 1926 he expelled the Communist Party members in the organisation, partly to please his newly acquired British liberal patrons. CPers had entered the ICU to recruit out of it, and in 1923 Eddie Roux helped set up the Johannesburg ICU office. Young Communist League member Thomas Mbeki became the Transvaal secretary of the ICU. Among those expelled along with Mbeki in 1926 were Johnny Gomas and Jimmy La Guma, who had joined the CPSA while in the ICU and were the Cape Town ICU leadership. By the time they were expelled, the CPSA was so popular that several branches protested their expulsion.
Night School and the Unions
The Ferreirastown night school, set up in 1925, was run by T.W. Thibedi, the first black member of the International Socialist League (ISL) and later a CPSAer. It had its origins dating back to the days of the ISL. By 1928, it had over 100 students and taught literacy with the use of The ABC of Communism [1920 book by Bolsheviks Nikolai Bukharin and Evgeny Preobrazhensky] along with other basic subjects. The school had been moved to a bigger building and was now run by a retired schoolteacher and militant atheist. In order to avoid arrest past nine o’clock, the teachers had to manufacture fake passes for all the students.
Much of the CPSA’s work required Bunting’s legal skills—he was for years the best-known lawyer in the country defending blacks against state repression. One story from this period of rapid black recruitment is interesting: Thibedi went to address a meeting of 1,000 in Potchefstroom. He was arrested, and the entire crowd attempted to follow him to the court. Thibedi was charged with inciting hostility between the races. Bunting defended him, and an unusually liberal judge acquitted him. The CPSA held an immediate rally to celebrate the victory. A group of whites attacked the celebrating crowd, including attacking the white Communists. In response to seeing that a Communist lawyer could get a black man out of jail, and then witnessing the same white Communists being attacked by other white men, most of the residents of the location decided en masse to join the Communist Party.
The CPSA paper was renamed the South African Worker and had more than half its articles in Xhosa, Zulu and Sotho. The paper also serialised an adapted version of The ABC of Communism, the book used in the Soviet Union to teach Marxism and literacy. In the late 1920s, the CPSA finally made breakthroughs in both organising black unions and joint struggles of white and black workers. They formed the Non-European Federation of Trade Unions in the Witwatersrand, and membership in the unions and the party grew rapidly. A whole new layer of black leadership was brought in, and the party was transforming itself into a majority black party of a couple of thousand. The South African party had some all-black branches. They had organised industrial unions with black leadership. The party had made a tremendous leap.
The Sixth Congress of the Comintern
One cannot evaluate this period without the knowledge that a fierce battle was going on in the Comintern that impacted this small and remote party struggling to apply a revolutionary programme. In economically backward Russia there was a political counterrevolution in 1923-24, which had its material basis in the destruction of industry and the death of many of the most politically advanced workers during the Civil War, combined with the defeat of revolutionary opportunities abroad, especially the 1923 German Revolution. A parasitic bureaucratic caste led by Stalin usurped political power from the proletariat. Stalin’s rationalisation for defeatism and abandonment of international revolution, “Socialism in One Country,” ultimately dictated the strategy for the South African revolution, and would require the working class to be politically subordinated to a so-called “anti-imperialist united front” with the national bourgeoisie of the colonial countries. Supporters of Trotsky’s Left Opposition, many of whom were arrested and ultimately murdered by Stalin’s police, fought against the degeneration of the revolution and for international proletarian revolution necessary to build socialism.
The ramifications of Stalin’s class-collaborationist policies were tragically illustrated in China. In this largely peasant country the working class was highly concentrated in a few key cities like Shanghai and by 1925, inspired by the Russian Revolution, it had begun to seek the road to power. But the Comintern leadership under Bukharin and Stalin was abandoning its revolutionary purpose. Over Trotsky’s objections, the Chinese Communist Party was subordinated to the nationalist party, the Guomindang. In 1927 the revolution was crushed. Out of this decisive historical test, Trotsky generalised the perspective of permanent revolution. This was codified in The Third International After Lenin (1929) and later in The Permanent Revolution (1930). In so doing, he both incorporated and transcended the evolved communist position on the colonial question as codified at the Communist International’s First and Second Congresses. [For more background, readers are referred to the 2008 ICL pamphlet The Development and Extension of Leon Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution.]
The African National Congress (as the South African Native National Congress renamed itself in 1923) was the leadership of the only non-white petty-bourgeois nationalist movement in South Africa. It held disdain for workers. The ANC had consistently looked to British imperialism for their favours. They had no particular interest in the struggles of the black proletariat. J.T. Gumede in this period was the ANC leader most supportive of the Comintern. He travelled the country after visiting the USSR to popularise the idea of Communism. His report to ANC chiefs in 1928, which referred to the overthrow of the tsar in 1917, caused the tribal leaders to express alarm that they too would be killed if there was a Bolshevik Revolution in South Africa. The degenerating Comintern courted the ANC as part of its appeal to nationalist leaders.
In February 1927, the Comintern organised the “Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism” in Brussels. This conference was attended by Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian bourgeois-nationalist leader; Lemine Senghor, Senegalese Pan-Africanist; Messali Hadj, Algerian nationalist leader who ended up supporting [French imperialist ruler Charles] de Gaulle’s colonialist reform schemes in 1958 in the midst of the war of independence; and Mohammed Hatta who became an anti-communist Indonesian nationalist. The Congress read out greetings from the widow of Sun Yat-sen of the Guomindang of China just as the Shanghai proletariat and their Communist Party leadership were about to be slaughtered by her party. The Stalinised Comintern had made Chiang Kai-shek an honorary member of the Comintern, thus cementing the subordination of the Chinese CP to these butchers.
James La Guma attended the Congress as representative of the CPSA. Afterward La Guma travelled to Moscow and participated in discussions with Bukharin and other CI leaders. A resolution passed by the Executive Committee of the CI (ECCI) laid out the same two-stage revolution strategy for South Africa that led to annihilation of the working-class base of the Chinese CP.
The ECCI’s resolution for the South African party, with the central slogan of “an independent Native republic as a stage towards a workers’ and peasants’ government,” was referred to the section for discussion. This was, in fact, the application of the disastrous Stalinist Chinese strategy to South African soil: that only an anti-imperialist capitalist revolution led by the nationalist petty bourgeoisie was on the agenda. The dictatorship of the proletariat is not on the agenda and must wait.
Bunting and his wife Rebecca and Edward Roux attended the 1928 Sixth Congress of the Comintern as delegates representing the majority of the party which opposed the new slogan. The Buntings found that the whole atmosphere of the Comintern had changed between the Fourth Congress they attended and the Sixth—the Fourth Congress had a spirit of hope and comradeship. They came to the Sixth Congress excited that they could report that the party was now largely black African. Out of 1,750 members, 1,600 were black. However, they were bluntly greeted with “We are going to attack you,” and were cold-shouldered by what Roux called “a hard-bitten gang of bureaucrats.” Bunting, who had fought for more than ten years to transform the party into majority black, was dismissed as a “white chauvinist.” Roux says he ran into Trotskyist sympathisers at the Congress and heard cynical statements of delegates that Trotsky was right on China, but Trotsky was no longer a Communist.
Bukharin sycophants Jay Lovestone, a careerist in the U.S. party, and John Pepper, a Hungarian Communist who had been sent to the U.S., are mentioned as demonstratively ignoring Bunting’s speeches in the commission. Pepper was the major advocate of a farmer-labour party policy in the U.S. CP—basically a two-class workers and peasants party for America. James W. Ford, a leading black American delegate, ignored them.
Bunting spoke against the “native republic” slogan, arguing that black African peasants have been drawn into the working class where they are most militant, i.e., they are proletarianised. Industry in South Africa is far advanced for a colonial country, and so consequently is the working class. Bunting objected to the fact that the draft programme of the CI referred only to “colonial masses” and not the colonial proletariat. There are classes in the colonial world. We do not have to wait for capitalism to develop; it has been thrust upon us. He begged for more Comintern attention to South Africa, and less ignorance of the particular conditions in different colonies of the African continent. He said in his 20 August 1928 speech at the Congress: “the class struggle is practically coincident and simultaneous with the national struggle” (South Africa’s Radical Tradition, 1996). Roux also argued at the Congress that it is not the task for the party to artificially build a nationalist movement: “There is no need to go through the laborious and (from the point of view of the revolution) dangerous process of building up a native bourgeois-nationalist movement the leadership of which must be displaced before the proletarian revolution can be achieved” (South Africa’s Radical Tradition).
Bunting also argued that the slogan would alienate white workers, that either the neutrality or occasional support of white labour would be of great value as a shield against state repression for the revolutionary native movement. Such arguments undermined his valid arguments against two-stage revolution in South Africa. All the CP’s actions on the ground at home were toward Africanising the party. But Bunting did not have Lenin’s understanding that the struggle for national liberation using the methods of proletarian class struggle could be a powerful motor force for socialist revolution in South Africa. So he had nothing to counterpose to the Stalinist programme of politically chaining the black masses to the nationalist leadership.
It didn’t really matter what Bunting and Roux argued about the class forces or the status of the national movement in South Africa. Hammering out a programme for revolution was not the purpose of this Congress. In evaluating the debates with Bunting and Roux at the Sixth Congress, you have to keep in mind that really what is going on is the increasingly conservative Comintern clubbing any potential opposition to the nationally limited programme of “Socialism in One Country” and class peace with the world bourgeoisie. The Bukharinites (although Bukharin was deposed soon after this Congress) were not looking for a correct political programme for South Africa; they were looking for followers who would toe the line of the Comintern leadership. Thus the Comintern resolved that: “Our aim should be to transform the African National Congress into a fighting nationalist revolutionary organisation against the white bourgeoisie and the British imperialists, based upon the trade unions, peasant organisations, etc., developing systematically the leadership of the workers and the Communist Party in this organisation” (Resolution on “The South African Question” adopted by the ECCI following the Sixth Congress, reprinted in South African Communists Speak).
Roux refers to a document that was circulating among certain delegates at the Congress—the first and third parts of The Third International After Lenin. Trotsky made the point that the International had no programme; it had rationalisations for defeats and generalities to cover its zigzag policies. The Stalinists had replaced the struggle to win the working class organised in the unions to the Communist Party by the opportunist utilisation of the ready-made apparatus of the trade-union bureaucracy exemplified in England where the Soviet government maintained a bloc with the labour leadership just as they were selling out a general strike, or in the so-called “revolutionary national bourgeoisie” as in China—in both cases ending in defeat for the workers and oppressed. Trotsky was launching an international struggle to win the communists back to the programme that had made the Bolshevik Revolution.
Seven years later, Trotsky wrote a letter to the fledgling Left Oppositionists of the Workers’ Party of South Africa in response to their draft theses. He took issue with their argument that “the slogan of a ‘Black Republic’ is equally harmful for the revolutionary cause as is the slogan of a ‘South Africa for the whites’.” Based on the application of permanent revolution, Trotsky wrote that the character of the proletarian revolution in South Africa will be one of national liberation of the black masses as well:
“Three-quarters of the population of South Africa (almost six million of the almost eight million total) is composed of non-Europeans. A victorious revolution is unthinkable without the awakening of the native masses. In its turn, that will give them what they are so lacking today—confidence in their strength, a heightened personal consciousness, a cultural growth.
“Under these conditions the South African Republic will emerge first of all as a ‘black’ republic; this does not exclude, of course, either full equality for the whites or brotherly relations between the two races—depending mainly on the conduct of the whites. But it is entirely obvious that the predominant majority of the population, liberated from slavish dependence, will put a certain imprint on the state.
“Insofar as a victorious revolution will radically change the relation not only between the classes but also between the races and will assure to the blacks that place in the state that corresponds to their numbers, thus far will the social revolution in South Africa also have a national character.
“We have not the slightest reason to close our eyes to this side of the question or to diminish its significance. On the contrary, the proletarian party should in words and in deeds openly and boldly take the solution of the national (racial) problem in its hands.
“Nevertheless, the proletarian party can and must solve the national problem by its own methods.
“The historical weapon of national liberation can be only the class struggle.”
— Leon Trotsky, “On the South African Theses” (20 April 1935), Writings of Leon Trotsky (1934-35) (Pathfinder Press, 1971)
Bunting and Roux never found their way to Trotsky’s Left Opposition although other communists did join Trotsky’s Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Today we Trotskyists of Spartacist South Africa are the continuity of Lenin and Trotsky’s party. We fight for a black-centred workers government as part of a socialist federation of Southern Africa. This is directly counterposed to the illusion fostered by the South African Communist Party today that the “national democratic revolution” has achieved a “rainbow nation” based on the ANC’s celebrated doctrine of “non-racialism.” We call for workers to break with the bourgeois Tripartite Alliance—a class-collaborationist nationalist popular front that ties the working class to the capitalist rulers.
Just a few final notes. Jones, always sickly, spent his last days in Moscow providing the invaluable service of translating parts of the early works of Lenin into English, including popularising What Is To Be Done? He also continued to write on the black question, and Africa and world imperialism. He died in 1924. Bunting stayed in the CPSA. He carried on a difficult and courageous election campaign in Thembuland with Rebecca Bunting and their comrade Gana Makabeni as Xhosa interpreter. They attempted for the first time to bring the communist programme into the rural reserves whilst being watched by police and opposed by the Native chiefs living on government salaries. Bunting and others were purged in 1931 as the party came under the direct manipulation of Stalin’s fake “left turn,” and he died some years later, still a loyal Communist. Eddie Roux repudiated his communist politics, became an academic and did a service by writing Time Longer Than Rope and S.P. Bunting: A Political Biography.
The early South African Communist Party was a mix of comrades in motion, grappling with a rapidly changing reality, and racked with contradictions. There was an element in this party that was revolutionary internationalist, trying to apply Marxism to South Africa, and particularly to the question of ending black oppression. They were inspired and transformed by the Russian Revolution, but, in the end, their struggle to sort out a strategy and programme for black liberation and the dictatorship of the proletariat was cut short as the Comintern they looked to was strangled by Stalin and his heirs. It is the revolutionary Trotskyists of Spartacist South Africa who are carrying forward the necessary fight for the programme of proletarian revolution in Southern Africa.
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