AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager

Thursday, July 18, 2013

20 June 2013

Harry Targ : Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, Again!

Smoke from fighting in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, December 1, 2012. Photo by Javier Manzano / AFP / Getty Images.

One more time:
Waist deep in the Big Muddy

The case is clear that increasing the United States' military involvement in Syria has negative consequences for the Middle East, international relations, the inspiration of Arab Spring, American politics, and the people of Syria.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / June 20, 2013

In 2011 the grassroots revolts that spread all across the Middle East caught the traditional imperial powers in the region -- the United States, Great Britain, and France -- by surprise. Even more so, the Middle East theocracies and dictatorships -- Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and others -- were threatened by those young people, workers, unemployed, and women, who took to the streets motivated by the vision of another world.

The United States watched the street protests hoping against hope that the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt would weather the storm. The Obama administration did not move publicly to aid these regimes to crush the protest but withheld its endorsement of the grassroots democracy movement.

The idea of popular revolt spread to places all across the globe including Madison, Wisconsin; Santiago, Chile; Athens, Greece; Madrid, Spain; and Quebec, Canada. The Occupy Movement in the United States expanded.

Globally, movements for a 21st century democratization seemed to be replicating 1968.

In this historic context, the imperial powers needed to transform the Middle East narrative from demands for jobs, worker rights, women’s rights, and democratization, to the more traditional religious and ethnic conflict model of Middle East politics.

The United States organized a United Nations/NATO coalition to intervene to encourage rebellion in Libya coupled with a game-changing air war against the Libyan military. The result was the overthrow of the government of Muammar Gaddafi and its replacement by a quarrelsome ungovernable regime rife with ethnic strife.

The UN/NATO war on Libya was billed as the next phase of Arab Spring, while actually it imposed religious and ethnic conflict on a relatively stable but authoritarian regime.

The anger over the U.S. encouragement and military intervention in the Libyan civil war was reflected in the killings by Libyan terrorists of CIA operatives in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012. What intervention in Libya did was to destabilize that society and eliminate its former dictator who was opposed to the growing U.S. military expansion in North Africa.

Most important, it took off the front pages and the hearts and minds of youth, the poor, women, and trade unionists the hope of mass movements to bring about democratic change in the region.

U.S. covert and military intervention has shifted now from Libya to Syria. Mobilization against the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship in Syria was applauded by the United States. As the protest escalated into civil war in that country with contestants including secular and religious groups fighting against Assad’s army, the United States, Sunni countries of the Arab League, and NATO countries escalated their support to the rebels.

Another Libya-style UN/NATO military operation was thwarted by strong opposition from Russia and China and the threat of growing military support for the Syrian regime by Iran.

Part of the ongoing story of Syria is the following:

The United States launched its diplomatic involvement in the Syrian civil war by insisting that Bashar al-Assad must step down. This precluded any possibility of a diplomatic settlement of the civil war and the eventual dismantling of the Assad regime. Most important, the United States' non-negotiable demand made diplomatic collaboration between the United States and Russia all but impossible.

Support for various rebel factions, diplomatic and presumably covert, has encouraged the escalation of opposition violence which has been matched by state violence.

Rebel factions, ironically, have included groups with profiles that resemble the terrorists who were responsible for the 9/11 murders in the United States and terrorist attacks on various targets in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Violence and political instability have begun to spread to Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan, and have drawn Israel and Iran closer into regional war.

As the Syrian civil war has escalated it has become a “proxy” war between the United States and Russia and Sunni and Shia Muslims.

In the United States, the civil war in Syria has rekindled the war factions. These include the “neoconservatives” who were responsible for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Using 9/11 and lies about weapons of mass destruction, the neoconservatives influenced the Bush administration to pursue their agenda to use United States power to transform the globe in its interests.

The escalation of the civil war, the growing military role of the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey, NATO, Hezbollah from Lebanon, and Israel has led to nearly 100,000 Syrian deaths and more than a million refugees. As in most international wars, innocent people suffer and die as military decisions are made in government capitals.

The case is clear that increasing the United States' military involvement in Syria has negative consequences for the Middle East, international relations, the inspiration of Arab Spring, American politics, and the people of Syria.

The hope for a more just and peaceful future requires support for the resumption of the spirit and vision of the original Arab Spring that began in Tunisia and Egypt and spread all across the globe. Otherwise the United States will once again be “waist deep in the big muddy” as in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

02 July 2013

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part I, 525 BC-641 AD

Cleopatra VII and her son Caesarion at the Temple of Dendera. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

A people's history:
The movement to democratize Egypt

Part 1: 525 BC to 641 AD period -- From the Persian invasion to the Byzantium Empire

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / July 3, 2013

[As literally millions demonstrate in Egypt in an attempt to bring down the Mohammed Morsi government, and as the Egyptian military appears poised to take action against the Morsi regime, we begin Bob Feldman's Rag Blog "people's history" series, "The Movement to Democratize Egypt." Also see Feldman's "hidden history" of Texas series on The Rag Blog.]

Most people in the United States now realize that most Egyptians want to see their society politically and economically democratized. But most people in the U.S. may not know much about the history of the over 83 million people who currently live in Egypt, beginning in 525 BC when the country was invaded by the army of the Persian Empire, led by Cambyses II, the son of Cyrus II (“Cyrus the Great”).

As The Rough Guide To Egypt observed, “the Persian invasion of 525 BC began…rule by foreigners” in Egypt that essentially lasted until 1952.

Despite a number of unsuccessful revolts by people in Egypt against their Persian rulers during the next two centuries, “Egypt remained under Persian control until 332 BC, when their entire empire succumbed to Alexander [the Great]" of Greece, according to The Rough Guide To Egypt.

And according to Jason Thompson’s A History of Egypt, “so detested was the Persian yoke that when Alexander the Great arrived in Egypt, he was welcomed as a savior.” Initially, there was no resistance by people in Egypt to the rule of Alexander and -- following Alexander’s death in 323 BC -- to the rule of the Greek Ptolemaic Dynasty of General Ptolemy Soter I and his descendants between 322 and 30 BC.

But according to A History of Egypt, “the population of Ptolemaic Egypt consisted of a comparatively small number of relatively privileged Greeks superimposed onto the great masses of native Egyptians, most of whom lived around subsistence level but whose back-breaking labor supported Ptolemaic society and government;” and, not surprisingly, “Ptolemaic rule…became highly resented over time.”

As the same book recalled:

There were numerous rebellions, especially during the second and third centuries BC. Most may have resulted from economic desperation or lax central control because of dynastic infighting, but some…expressed a longing for the glorious past when Egyptians ruled Egyptians. A distinctly "nationalistic" literature appeared… Government officials extorted everything they could from the peasantry, frequently leaving them insufficient means to sustain themselves. Famine, inflation, banditry, and flight are all too abundantly attested during the later Ptolemaic Period…

The last representative of the Ptolemaic Dynasty to rule Egypt, Cleopatra VII, was made queen by the Roman General Julius Caesar after his troops killed her brother and rival for the Egyptian throne, Ptolemy XIII, in 47 BC.

But, according to A History of Egypt, Cleopatra was “so unpopular that Caesar permanently stationed three legions in Egypt ” and “when he departed in spring 47 BC to new conquests...Cleopatra was pregnant.” Then, after Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, Cleopatra formed a similar political/sexual alliance with Mark Antony.

But, after Octavius Caesar’s Roman forces defeated Antony and Cleopatra’s forces in 31 BC at the Battle of Actium (and both Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide), Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire in 30 BC.

As part of the pre-partitioned Roman Empire until 395 AD, Egypt was exploited as the grain-producing “breadbasket” of Rome; and during the 30 BC to 395 AD period of rule by Romans and their Roman legions, “vast amounts of Egyptian land” that had been owned by the state under the Greek Ptolemaic dynastic rule “were now mostly sold to private individuals, some of whom acquired extensive estates,” according to A History of Egypt.

As a result, “small landholders, though comprising a large proportion of the population, were increasingly hard-pressed;” and “many became little better than serfs and slaves on the estates of the privileged, who assumed powers that previously had belonged to the state, giving them even greater control over the peasantry,” according to the same book.

In 330 AD, Roman Emperor Constantine founded Constantinople; and when the Roman Empire was partitioned for the last time into East and West in 395 AD, Egypt became a province of the Constantinople-based eastern Byzantium Empire until 641 AD; and during this period “Egypt’s grain and revenue remained extremely important to Constantinople,” according to A History of Egypt.

But the same book also notes that, “the Byzantine yoke became so odious to Egyptians, both politically and religiously…that they were not averse to the change of rule that came in the seventh century.”

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

11 July 2013

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part 2, 641-1805

Egyptian Mamluk warriors serving in the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. Image from The Lost Treasure Chest.

A people's history:
The movement to democratize Egypt

Part 2: 641-1805 period -- Egypt under many rulers.

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / July 11, 2013

[With all the dramatic activity in Egypt, Bob Feldman's Rag Blog "people's history" series, "The Movement to Democratize Egypt," could not be more timely. Also see Feldman's "hidden history" of Texas series on The Rag Blog.]

Egypt became part of the Islamic Arab Empire in 641 when Arab armies replaced Egypt’s Byzantine Empire rulers “thanks in part to aid from the indigenous [Egyptian] population of Coptic Christians,” according to Egypt from Independence to Revolution, 1919-1952 by Selma Botman.

But the indigenous Coptic Christians in Egypt eventually became a religious minority, as Egypt was Arabized and Islamized. And by 834 Egypt was an autonomous state of the Baghdad-based Islamic Arab Empire, which generally permitted it to be ruled by a locally-based elite of Turkish ethnic background.

In 969, however, the religious leaders of a Tunisia-based Shiite Islamic sect, the Fatimids, moved their troops into Egypt from western North Africa, started construction of the new city of Cairo and began ruling Egypt until 1171.

Between 1171 and 1250, Sunni Islamic religious leaders next ruled Egypt. And then, between 1250 and 1517, the Mamluks -- a military dynasty of former soldier-slaves of mostly ethnic Turkish or Caucasian origin -- were the rulers of the autonomous state of Egypt. And it was during the period when the Mamluks controlled Egypt that the bubonic plague spread from Europe to Egypt in 1347; and, by 1349, the plague had caused the death of 33 percent of the people who had lived in Egypt in 1347 and damaged the economic base of the Mamluk regime.

Then, in the 15th century, “another serious blow to the Mamluk economy came...when the Portuguese found the ocean route around Africa, providing Europe with a direct connection to India, the Far East, and the east coast of Africa, disrupting the Mamluks’ lucrative Red Sea trade and diminishing the importance of Egypt as a commercial connection between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea,” according to Jason Thompson’s A History of Egypt.

But after the better organized, more disciplined, more numerous, and better-armed troops of Turkey’s Ottoman Dynasty defeated the Mamluk forces in the August 1516 Battle of Marj Dabiq in Syria and marched into Egypt in 1517, Egypt became a subject Arab province of Turkey’s Ottoman Empire for most of the next 400 years.

Yet as The Rough Guide To Egypt observed, “even after the Turkish conquest, the Mamluks remained powerful figures in the administration of what was now a province of the Ottoman Empire” and “the Mamluk army continued to grow with the import of Caucasian slaves.”

According, to A History of Egypt:

One can speak of a neo-Mamluk system that prevailed within Ottoman Egypt... The neo-Mamluks...quickly reinserted themselves into Egypt’s overall military establishment and again became the most powerful force in the land..... The Ottomans basically kept the commanding heights under their supervision, but left many administrative tasks to…religious endowments, or waqfs… About 20 percent of the land was religiously held by the end of the 18th century. The Mamluks…continued to control much of the rest.”

As a province of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt was exploited as a “breadbasket” and a “land tax” source for the Turkish imperial government’s treasury; and “Egypt also provided a valuable base for Ottoman operations in the Red Sea,” according to the same book.

But between July 1798 and September 1801, Napoleon’s French troops temporarily occupied Egypt until UK troops and Ottoman troops jointly recaptured Egypt for Turkey’s Ottoman Empire in 1801. A new local ruler, a Turkish military officer named Muhammad Ali, was then appointed as viceroy/governor/pasha of Egypt by the Turkish government in Istanbul in July, 1805; and the royal dynasty in Egypt which he founded governed Egypt -- usually as puppet rulers for foreign imperialists -- until 1952.

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

13 July 2013

Harry Targ : Egypt, Popular Uprisings, and 21st Century Social Movements

Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged as a powerful charismatic figure in Middle East politics. Image from The Majalla.

Egypt, popular uprisings, and complexity
of 21st century social movements

On one side are those who remember military coups supported by the United States all around the world. On the other, the case can be made that each rupture in a society must be understood in its own historical context.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / July 13, 2013

Egyptian history

Egypt secured its formal independence from British colonial control in 1922. Nevertheless, the British continued to dominate Egyptian military and political life until 1952 when the “Free Officers” Movement led by Gamal Abdel Nasser launched a coup that toppled King Farouk, the British man in Egypt.

Following Egypt’s real independence Nasser emerged as a powerful charismatic figure in Middle East politics, seeking to create a zone of "Arab Socialism.” He established economic and political ties with the former Soviet Union, initiated efforts to construct a “United Arab Republic” with Syria, and militarily opposed former European colonial powers and Israel in reference to control of the Suez Canal in 1956 and the “Six Day War” against Israel in 1967.

Nasser died in 1970 and his successor Anwar El Sadat led the Arab assault on Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Before Sadat was assassinated in 1981, Egypt reversed course, ending ties with the Soviet Union; tilted toward the West; signed the Camp David Accords with Israel under the tutelage of President Jimmy Carter; and began its long-term relationship with the United States, despite anger from the Arab world.

Egypt became one of the major recipients of United States military assistance from 1980 to the present (receiving $1.3 billion per annum). By the 1980s, the Egyptian military gained control of a large portion of the economy of the country. After Sadat’s assassination Hosni Mubarak, the third leader from the military, began his 30-year rule.

Arab Spring, the massive street mobilizations in the Middle East which started in Tunisia in January 2011, quickly spread to Egypt and elsewhere in the region. These revolts had large representations from the working class, youth, and women and others demanding democratization.

As a result of the revolt in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in February 2011, the military stepped in to replace the former dictator, Hosni Mubarak, to stabilize a country on the verge of fundamental social and economic change; established an interim military government; and constructed a new constitution that would mollify protestors, provide for elections, and at the same time would maintain its own institutional power.

Elections were held in 2012 and Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi was elected president. In the year Morsi served as Egyptian president, he declared the presidency’s ultimate power over the courts, used his position to expand the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood over the political system, repressed the 10 percent of the population affiliated with the Coptic Christian Church, stalled efforts to expand the rights of women in Egyptian society, and most recently declared Egypt’s full support of the rebels fighting against the government of Syria.

Two weeks ago a movement of young people calling themselves the rebels (the Tamarrud) circulated a call to rally in Tahrir Square. On June 30, a massive mobilization (some say the largest in modern history) was launched demanding the ouster of Morsi from office. The military issued a statement urging the Egyptian president to achieve some sort of compromise with the protestors and, when he refused, they carried out a coup putting in place an acting president. Subsequent to the coup there have been massive mobilizations in opposition to and in support of Morsi.

Economic context

In a recent article in The Guardian (July 4, 2013), Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, executive director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development, scholar and reporter, discussed the state of the Egyptian economy.

Generally he characterized the Egyptian economic policy embraced at least since the 1990s as involving “structural failures rooted in an unsustainable global model of industrial civilization -- addicted to fossil fuels, wedded fanatically to casino capitalism, and convinced, ostrich-like, that somehow technology alone will save us.”

Ahmed pointed out that oil production has declined by 26 percent since 1996 and a once food sustaining economy now requires the importation of 75 percent of its wheat. Inflation has increased in recent years, particularly regarding the price of food. Egyptian debt constitutes over 80 percent of GDP and the Egyptian government began to institute neoliberal structural adjustment policies in the 1990s. The population has experienced declining safety net policies and generalized programs of austerity as experienced elsewhere in the world.

Meanwhile, financial support of the military remains unchanged. Austerity programs and increased taxes have been designed to get approval for a new $4.8 billion IMF loan. And most critical, “with 40 percent of Egyptians already below the UN poverty line of less than 2 pounds a day, Morsi’s IMF-inspired policies amounted to a form of economic warfare on the Egyptian people.”

What Now?

Debate about the legitimacy of the ouster of Morsi from office has begun to occur within the peace movement. On one side are those who remember, with good reason, military coups supported by the United States all around the world.

The brutality of the U.S.-sponsored coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, comes to mind. The Chilean people suffered from a brutal dictatorship leading to thousands of assassinations and people “disappeared,” the end to formal democracy, the crushing of trade unions, and the imposition of a brutal program of neoliberal economic policies that increased economic inequality, reduced the quality of life of most Chileans, and conformed to the dictates of the transnational capitalist class.

On the other hand, the case can be made that each rupture in a society must be understood in its own historical context.

First, the mobilizations of June 30 can be seen as continuation of a “revolutionary” process that began in 2011 (if not earlier). Many activists at that time argued that the ouster of Mubarak is just the beginning of what will be a long process of societal transformation. They articulated the view that there were no “quick fixes;” that Mubarak, the military, and the rest of the capitalist class were the product of a larger global political economy.

Second, even though powerful military forces should not in the main be relied on for social transformation, contexts and militaries vary. For example, Hugo Chavez came out of the Venezuelan military and he was saved from a U.S.-engineered coup by his military comrades. Most important in the Egyptian case, the military has dominated Egyptian political life since the Nasser-led ouster of British/American Egyptian puppet, King Farouk. Nasser remained enormously popular with his people until his death. On the other hand, as Democracy Now!’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous points out, the political instability brought on by Morsi’s policies threatened not only his regime but the special status of the military.

Third, Egyptian history, conveniently forgotten by the media and political pundits, suggests that Nasser led a campaign to create a coalition of secular states, even using the word “socialism” to describe his vision. Even though his vision and practice were flawed, Nasser was one of those first generation of post-colonial leaders supporting what Vijay Prashad called “the third world project.” In other words, he was a secular, radical nationalist. From the 1950s on, ironically, United States policy has often tilted toward supporting “Political Islam,” that is regimes and movements which embrace religious fundamentalism and represent little or no threat to the global political economy. United States funding of Osama Bin Laden in his war against the secular regime in Afghanistan is a glaring example.

Fourth, political analysts, from academia and the Left, have a fetishized conception of democracy. Democracy as it is conventionally understood is about process. While important, periodically going to a voting booth and choosing between a selection of candidates for public office is only part of a more holistic conception of democracy. Democracy is procedural and it is substantive. In other words, democracy is about choosing candidates and policies and it is also about providing for the fulfillment of human needs. If 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, democracy in the substantive sense is woefully inadequate.

Finally, what we may call 21st century social movements are spreading all across the globe. Tunisia, Tahrir Square in Egypt, Greece, Spain, Chile, Quebec, the industrial heartland of the United States, and occupiers everywhere constitute a new politics that only partially conform to traditional models of mobilizing for social change. Indeed we celebrate the mass movements for the eight-hour day, the right of industrial workers to form unions, poor people’s campaigns, anti-war mobilizations, and public campaigns to save the environment.

The historic role of socialist organizations and visions remains critical to 21st century social transformations. But the programmatic character of contemporary mobilizations; the inspirational connectivity of movements across borders, classes, genders, and races; and the recognition by participants that each is part of a historic process may be somewhat new.

Social movements today often see the need to “compromise” with institutions such as the military to advance the condition of the people. At the same time, as the movement in Egypt suggests, they remain mindful of the limitations of alliances of convenience.

Therefore, there are lessons from Egypt for the peace movement in the United States. Peace activists should analyze moments of instability and change in their historical, economic, cultural, and political complexity. They need to assess specific situations to understand which social forces are more likely to represent the values that they support.

Then in each concrete case they should ask how activism in the United States can best support the just struggles of 21st century social movements.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

16 July 2013

BOOKS / Ron Jacobs : 'Fire and Flames' is History of German Autonomist Movement

'Fire and Flames':
Spontis, squats, and West Germany

The squats served as living spaces and community meeting places. By 1973, they would become the site of some of the fiercest street battles ever seen in postwar Frankfurt.

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / July 16, 2013

[Fire and Flames: A History of the German Autonomist Movement by Geronimo, Introduction by George Katsiaficas, Afterword by Gabriel Kuhn (2012: PM Press); Paperback; 256 pp; $19.95.]

My latest novel is situated in Frankfurt am Main in what was then West Germany (or the Bundesrepublik Deutschland for you German speakers). The time period is 1971-1972 and two of the main protagonists live in a squatted building across from the U.S. military’s Post Exchange.

This squat really existed. In fact, there were several squatted buildings in Frankfurt, especially in the part of the city known as the Westend. The squats served as living spaces and community meeting places. By 1973, they would become the site of some of the fiercest street battles ever seen in postwar Frankfurt. The battles took place because the police had been instructed to take the buildings back by the banks that owned them and the politicians that served those banks.

I mention this because I just finished reading a testament to the movement that grew up in the wake of the early 1970s squatting movement, the demise of the German New Left, and the rise of the West German terror groups like the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction).

This testament, written by a participant in this movement who goes by the name Geronimo, is titled Fire and Flame. Originally published in Germany in 1990, it was translated from the original German in 2012 and published by the left/anarcho PM Press out of Oakland, CA.

The book is a brief survey of the numerous left and anarchist movements that characterized extraparliamentary West German politics in the 1970s until the end of East Germany in 1989. The squats, the red cell groups, the antinuclear movement, the Spontis, the Red Army Faction, and the alternative movement are presented and briefly discussed. In addition to relating stories of actions and events, Geronimo also discusses the politics of the different groups from what can best be termed a libertarian left perspective.

Unlike in the United States, the left libertarian and anarchist groups in Europe tend to have a clear understanding of how capitalism works. Instead of identifying as anti-capitalist without the theory to back that position up, the groups discussed in Fire and Flames (who would become known as Autonomen) usually professed their anti-capitalism in clear Marxist terms.

The areas where the Autonomen differed the most with Marxist organization, whether they were small and cadre-oriented like the Rote Zellen and the Rote Zora, or larger party organizations bearing the term Kommunistische somewhere in their name, was in how they organized. In short, the Autonomen were against leaders and against cooperation with the authorities. They expressed their politics through protest, lifestyle, and attitude. Naturally, this frustrated those with more long term goals.

Fire and Flames is introduced by George Katsiaficas, author of The Global Imagination of 1968 and several other books examining various protest movements around the globe, including his look at the European squatters’ movement of the 1980s.

The choice of Katsiaificas is an intelligent one. His approach to modern social movements extends well beyond a traditional Marxist-Leninist or anarchist understanding. The phenomenon he calls the “eros effect” is similar to what Immanuel Wallerstein calls “antisystemic movements.” While incorporating a Marxian analysis of capitalism and its history and its mechanics, both reject the approach to systemic change experienced in previous modern revolutions.

In other words, for these men the vanguardist model is dead. Meanwhile, both consider the changes in consciousness and culture brought on by the events of 1968 (and in Wallerstein’s thesis, 1848 as well) to be intrinsically revolutionary in a perhaps even greater sense than the bourgeois revolutions of the late 18th century and the Leninist ones of the 20th.

One of the most intense protests I ever attended was in spring of 1973. A German-American friend of mine had introduced me to a squatted set of apartments in the Westend of Frankfurt am Main. The main attraction for me was a small Gasthaus and meeting room on the ground floor of one of the buildings. I would occasionally visit the place to listen to music, drink beer, smoke hash, and maybe talk to a German girl.

That spring there was an impending sense that a showdown with the authorities was coming. The speculators who had purchased the buildings were tired of letting squatters live in them. They wanted to tear them down to build much more profitable office buildings. The Social Democratic city council was ready to cave and the Polizei were ready to kick ass.

I convinced myself that I was ready for whatever happened and took the streetcar to a stop near the protest that April weekend. The fight was already underway when I got off the tram. I lasted perhaps four hours and left when a couple hundred more cops arrived.

This protest was an early part of the movement described by Geronimo. From the squats to protests against nuclear power; from struggles against prison terror to rallies against abortion laws and more. This quick catalog of the West German street movements of 1968-1989 suffers from only one thing: its brevity. Thanks to PM Press for introducing it to the English-speaking audience.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His novels, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, and Short Order Frame Up will be republished by Fomite in April 2013 along with the third novel in the series All the Sinners Saints. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Jay D. Jurie : 'Approved Killing' in Florida

Emmett Till, left, and Trayvon Martin. Image from Tumblr.

Intimations of Emmett Till:
A 'shocking story of
approved killing' in Florida

Today the pre-1960s explicit racial 'code' has been supplanted by the implicit code upon which 'profiling' is based.

By Jay D. Jurie / The Rag Blog / July 18, 2013

SANFORD, Florida -- Inevitable comparisons between Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin have been made by several observers, including Lecia Brooks of the Southern Poverty Law Center and Ben Jealous of the NAACP.

What happened to Emmett Till has been described in numerous accounts. By way of brief recap: In 1955 Till, a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago, was sent by his mother to stay with relatives in rural Money, Mississippi. That August, he entered a "mom and pop" grocery store where an encounter ensued between him and the proprietor, a young white woman named Carolyn Bryant.

What happened isn't exactly clear. Till supposedly whistled at, or flirted with, the woman. While whatever he said or did may have been inappropriate, only in the South at that time would it have warranted a death sentence. Elsewhere, it would at most have been seen as a minor offense.

Even in 1950s racially-segregated Mississippi, Till had every legal right to be where he was. However, he overstepped the bounds of the "code" of subservient behavior imposed by the white majority on Southern African-Americans at that time. Although his relatives reportedly schooled him on the code, perhaps fueled by the impudence characteristic of teen-aged boys of any race, Till may have had little or no idea of the gravity of his "offense."

Word of what occurred soon reached the husband of the store owner, Roy Bryant, and several nights later, with his half-brother, J.W. Milam, and possibly another companion, he kidnapped Till from the home of his great-uncle. Till was savagely beaten and tortured, and then shot. A 70-pound cotton mill fan was tied to his neck with barbed wire, and his body was dropped into the nearby Tallahatchie River.

Several days later, his body was discovered in the river and then was shipped back to Chicago. His mother ordered it placed in an open casket, so the extent of Till's injuries could be seen. This created a sensation, with thousands viewing the body and the story receiving nationwide media coverage.

Seated in the racially-segregated courtroom at the subsequent trial of Bryant and Milam was an all-white jury selected from a part of the county known to be disposed against African-Americans. Not surprisingly, Bryant and Milam were acquitted. Protected against double jeopardy, Milam later admitted in a magazine interview they had in fact murdered Till.

The interview, by journalist William Bradford Huie, was published in Look magazine under the title, "The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi" :

As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in their place. Niggers ain't gonna vote where I live. If they did, they'd control the government. They ain't gonna go to school with my kids. And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he's tired o' livin'. I'm likely to kill him. Me and my
I stood there in that shed and listened to that nigger throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. "Chicago boy," I said, "I'm tired of 'em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I'm going to make an example of you -- just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand."

Milam's revelation sent shock waves across much of the country, and in its wake, the first of the major post-Reconstruction federal laws, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, was passed to secure the rights of African-Americans. It's now widely contended the South is a far different place than it was prior to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Florida, some have argued, was always a much different place than Mississippi. However, that's not entirely accurate, either then or now.

It can be argued that's particularly not the case when it comes to Sanford, Florida, where 17-year old African-American Trayvon Martin was shot dead by Neighborhood Watch coordinator George Zimmerman on February 26, 2012. Sanford was historically an agricultural community with an African-American population employed as farm labor. When the agriculture industry declined, this population was left stranded economically.

One more time. Image from Tumbler.

A very recent movie, 42, about Jackie Robinson, the first African-American major league baseball player, features scenes from Sanford in the late 1940s. One scene, of Robinson being thrown off a playing field by the police chief, is represented as taking place in nearby Deland, when it actually occurred in Sanford. Another scene, showing Robinson being forced to flee Sanford due to threatened Ku Klux Klan violence, is accurate (Goldsboro Historical Museum).

Sanford is where fatally-injured civil rights pioneers Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore were taken after their nearby home was bombed by the Klan in 1951. Sanford filled in its downtown public swimming pool rather than allow it to be integrated, and to this day, the only public swimming pool is in a predominantly African-American part of town.

Like the rest of Florida, and the South, Sanford has experienced change. However, not only is the past still present, but ongoing efforts preserve the status quo ante. While Sanford possesses several diverse neighborhoods, most of the town remains divided into sectors which are either predominantly white or predominantly African-American. Sanford has been the scene of several instances of police abuse or neglect of the African-American population, which have lately been extensively covered in the mass media.

Explicit, hard-core racism, as epitomized by the Milam quote above, is largely part of the past. Nonetheless, even more insidious, and more intractable, is implicit, soft-core racism. Illustrating this is the debate in 1998 to build a hotel-conference center in the same downtown park as the filled-in swimming pool.

Testimony from white residents in support of this proposal was based on the claim that the park was only used by drug-dealers, pimps, and prostitutes. Yet, no evidence was ever produced in support of this assertion, whereas many of the park users consisted of African-American boys and young men playing basketball.

Although not overtly stated that way, this was a not-so-transparent means for whites to reclaim "their" park. Similarly, until met with considerable protest, a recent city ordinance prohibited fishing along portions of the city's river front, when clearly the large majority of the people who fished there were African-American.

A prominent white citizen, while campaigning for city council, proposed running the homeless out of downtown, and building a shelter on 13th Street, which is the heart of Goldsboro, the most prominent African-American neighborhood in Sanford. This proposal did not meet with success, but instead, Sanford's imposing new police center was put in the heart of the community.

Incidentally, Goldsboro was once a separate and distinct African-American municipality, which over the objections of its residents, was incorporated into Sanford.

Trayvon Martin was murdered at the Retreat at Twin Lakes subdivision, in a rapidly developing part of Sanford, a somewhat diverse part of town alongside Interstate 4 also featuring other newer housing developments, big box stores, strip malls, including the 7-11 where he bought his last Skittles and iced tea, and auto dealerships. Not far to the east is Goldsboro, placing the newer and unstable identity of the Retreat in proximity to "old" Sanford.

It was into this admixture of past and present that George Zimmerman stepped in his self-appointed role as Neighborhood Watch captain. Speculatively, Zimmerman may be uncertain about, or conflicted with, his own ethnic identity. Of Jewish and Hispanic background, it is unlikely the explicitly racist white supremacists would consider him one of their own.

In addition to being a "wannabe cop," Zimmerman may also have been asserting his desire for acceptance by "white culture," he may have sought to protect both this identity, and community, which may have helped frame and foster implicit racist presumptions.

Today the pre-1960s explicit racial "code" has been supplanted by the implicit code upon which "profiling" is based. When Trayvon Martin sought to return to where he was staying with his father, even less knowingly than Emmett Till he violated that code. In today's "New South," perhaps especially in "purple" Florida, he may have thought he was more free than he was, not understanding he did not "belong" in that neighborhood, and was expected to react obsequiously if confronted by a "creepy-ass cracker."

Validation: George Zimmerman congratulated by attorneys Don West and Lorna Truitt after verdict. Photo by Joe Burbank / Reuters.

Implicit racism should be regarded as part of an entrenched system of values. Like its unwritten code, this system sustains itself through the denial of its existence. Granting a defense motion in the Zimmerman case, Judge Debra Nelson ruled the prosecution could not use the word "race" in describing "profiling." In a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper after the trial, "Juror A-37" claimed "we didn't talk about race" during the jury deliberations.

While the jury at the Emmett Till trial, was all white, the jury in the Zimmerman case, with one Hispanic exception, was all white. An interesting question, which the prosecution apparently was not allowed to ask during voir dire, even if they wanted to, was the extent to which prospective jurors might identify with "white culture and values," or to what extent they were familiar with, or subscribed to, the "code."

Seminole County, the pool from which the jury pool was drawn, is 81% white, including 65% non-Hispanic white, and 12% African-American (U.S. Census).

A closely-related question not considered is Seminole County's political climate. Whereas in 2012 Barack Obama won Florida, Mitt Romney won Seminole County 53% against 46% for Obama (Politico.com). Aside from Democratic pockets of the County consisting largely of African-American and Hispanic voters, and a scattering of white liberals, the white population is fairly solidly conservative.

A jury drawn from this political background is more likely to identify with the narrative spun by George Zimmerman, and be unaware of the influence of the "code" or even deny its existence.

Some argue the problem today is no longer race, but gun laws such as "stand your ground" that must be changed. There can be little doubt that such laws cry out desperately for change. But, especially here, the race factor is inescapable.

Critics contend Zimmerman was tried on the grounds of self-defense, not stand your ground. Regardless, it was Zimmerman's stand your ground claim that allowed him to walk free for a month and a half before public pressure resulted in his arrest.

Evidence at trial indicated Sanford Police believed and supported Zimmerman's claim, which implicitly denied Trayvon Martin's legitimate right to be where he was, and dismissed the possibility that an unarmed Martin unsuccessfully attempted to stand his own ground.

Preliminary research has found that stand your ground laws are predominantly biased in favor of whites at the expense of African-Americans (Richard Florida, The Atlantic Cities).

There's the current case of Marissa Anderson, a black woman in Florida who produced no injury when she fired a warning shot at her abusive husband, but when she claimed a stand your ground defense, received a 20-year prison sentence on a charge brought by Angela Corey, the same state attorney who unsuccessfully prosecuted George Zimmerman.

What happened to Trayvon Martin is not simply an anomaly. Some racial progress has been made. Sanford, Florida, in 2013 is not Money, Mississippi in 1955. But we are not as far removed from that time or place as many would misleadingly have us believe. We need look no further than the approved killing of Trayvon Martin.

[Jay D. Jurie, Ph.D., is an associate professor of public administration and urban and regional planning at the University of Central Florida. He lives in Sanford, Florida. Read articles by Jay D. Jurie on The Rag Blog.]

Also see "Walking while black: Trayvon Martin's fatal shortcut" by Jay D. Jurie on The Rag Blog, March 22, 2012.

Citations and References:
Richard Florida, The Atlantic Cities article: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/07/its-not-just-zimmerman-race-matters-lot-stand-your-ground-verdicts/6195/
Goldsboro Historic Museum, Sanford, on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Foliver1961
Huie, William Bradford, PBS:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/sfeature/sf_look_confession.html
Robin D.G. Kelley article on systematic racism:http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/15/the-us-v-trayvon-martin/
Sanford, FL: a place to wait for a verdict:http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/07/12/in-black-sanford-a-place-to-gather-and-wait-for-a-verdict-2/
SPLC compares Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin:http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/statement-from-civil-rights-memorial-center-director-lecia-brooks-in-response-to-v
Washington Post article on the Zimmerman trial verdict and justice:http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ruth-marcus-zimmerman-verdict-in-martin-case-shows-justices-flaws/2013/07/14/7f7eae6a-ecc7-11e2-a1f9-ea873b7e0424_story.html

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Markin comment:

I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and 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.

Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.

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Jay D. Jurie : 'Approved Killing' in Florida