A Revolutionary Perspective on Fourth of July from Fredrick Douglas: The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro
Forget what you've been told: the American Revolution was not a revolution, but a white men's bourgeois war of independence.
The orthodox among us might be reminded of the concepts of "bourgeois democratic revolution"--the winning of independence before socialist revolution, a theoretically necessary precondition. If we were still a colony of England, how can we have any freedom at all? But the truth of the matter is that the so-called revolution, the American War of Independence, wasn't really that at all. When the Great White Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, they were signing it for themselves. Not for the slaves that they owned, or the women that they kept at home. Not for the indigenous peoples whose stolen land it was being declared independent. Not the indentured servants and not the courtesans. And that contradiction was obvious to all of the people left out of that document. Today we might be able to unite with some of that history--Don't Tread on Me, Unite or Die--but mostly it's a history of a victory for the people who ruled and rule this country, and for the rest of us, well...
Written by the National Executive Committee of FRSO/OSCL
Monday, 29 June 2009
Honduras Esta Presente!
The military coup that ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya must not only be denounced but must be overturned.
The circumstances surrounding this coup are eerily reminiscent of those
in connection with the ouster of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. In both cases, democratically elected presidents were
kidnapped and removed from the country. In both cases, wild
accusations were made against the democratically elected chief
executives in an attempt to defame their character and justify the
illegal operation.
The Honduran coup must be seen as a reactionary response to the wave of
popular, progressive activity that has been sweeping Latin America for
the last several years. Such activity is not only to be seen in the
electoral victories of center-left and left-wing candidates for office,
but as well in unsuccessful electoral struggles (e.g. Mexico with the
candidacy of Lopez Obrador) and in mass actions (e.g. the landless
workers movement in Brazil, the recent upsurges by indigenous
populations in Peru, and the emergence of an Afro-Latino movement in
Central and South America). This weekend the forces of reaction in
Honduras struck back and aimed to eliminate further steps towards
popular power in Honduras and efforts at redressing the demands of the
poor.
Written by National Executive Committee of FRSO/OSCL
Sunday, 28 June 2009
Tehran Protestors
It is no easier for FRSO/OSCL to understand and respond to the dramatic events now shaking Iran than anyone else. The situation there is confused and fluid, shifting daily. The basic assumptions of Shi’ite society under the Islamic Revolution differ in important ways from our own. The US media is a disgrace, producing simplistic banalities when it bothers to comment at all. Still, we have an internationalist obligation to do our best to understand, to support the masses in struggle, to undercut bids by our own rulers to take advantage of the situation and to draw lessons for our own struggle.
The Stonewall rebellion, which took place on June 28th, 1969, was the opening salvo of a radicalization of the gay liberation movement. The New York City police, in an attempt to shut down the mafia-controlled Stonewall Inn, entered the bar, expelled all of the patrons and began dismantling the furniture. Unlike other, all too common police raids, this night, people did not slink off into the night, but got increasingly agitated until a riot broke out, White, black, and Puerto Rican, gay, lesbian, and transgender, all fought back against the police over three nights of fighting throughout New York’s Greenwich Village. The symbolic meaning of the riots, an attack on both the NYPD and the mafia that controlled the gay bar scene in New York, cannot be understated. Within a matter of weeks, radical gay liberation organizations sprang up in New York and around the country.
Stonewall was not the birth of the gay rights movement; there had been organizing in the decades before in the homophile movement of the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. Nor was Stonewall the birth of radical politics. Some of the first connections between gay rights and socialism were by Magnus Hirshfeld, a German socialist and gay liberation pioneer, and Harry Hay, who came out of the CPUSA to form the Mattachine society. Stonewall wasn’t even the first uprising; major riots had taken place for similar reasons in the transgender community at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco two years earlier.
Throughout the left in the U.S., people have come to a greater
awareness of a left presence in the social movements. For theoretical
consideration the concepts of “social movement left” and “party left”
have been developed. Like any theoretical concept they have their use
but they are not totally adequate to contain the reality of day to day
practice. That is always the challenge of theoretical work. We abstract
from practice and make logical distinctions in order to explain
practice on the one hand. On the other hand the abstraction never
grasps the totality of the reality. This does not mean that we don’t
theorize. In fact it is probably impossible for human beings to not
theorize about their reality.
I open up to saying this because while the concept of “social movement
left” and “party left” are useful concepts I believe that they have
been taken up and used in an all too general and simplistic way. They
have not been sufficiently used in light of an understanding of the
reality of the U.S. For example some folks use these concepts to
conclude that in the U.S. there exists an immense gulf between what we
have called the “social movement left” and the “party left”. I will
touch on this below. This paper is an attempt to take these useful
concepts and view them in light of our reality in the U.S.
During this time of economic crisis the question is raised front and
center: who has the right to how determine how our cities will
function, where the resources go, and who will be at the decision
making table? US cities, most re-developed on the shaky foundations of
investment capital and shaped by the interests of the corporate elite,
most notably developers, are now being propped back-up with stimulus
money. Our cities have been operating under neo-liberal ideology,
involving the clearing all barriers to capitalist accumulation of
wealth on global scale through elimination of public goods and services
and the movement towards privatization. Neo-liberalism not only
affected what people had in terms of resources but ultimately people’s
sovereignty and expression with increased repression. Though
capitalism is floundering at this time, rest assured that it will
continue to finds ways to maintain and legitimize itself with the state
playing a key role.
I recently became a new parent, and navigating how to raise a child in
this complex world as well as holding down revolutionary / organizing
work is a daunting task.I feel like I have a lot more to learn from
other parents and caregivers than I have to offer at this point. In
fact, one of the most reassuring things, being a new parent, is that
radical/revolutionary parenting is not a new thing. This is not
uncharted territory, and like any life-changing experience, it’s
incredibly encouraging to know that we are not alone. In this article,
I put out some of my questions on parenting. It was helpful for me to
hear from others and I hope it will be helpful for others in the same
boat.
Comrades and friends: Below, a boiling down of socialism to eleven
talking points by CCDSer Carl Davidson. In keeping up with the
spirited dialogues happening here and across the United States and the
rest of the world about alternatives--something, anything, please!--to
capitalism, revolutionaries in the Marxist tradition are finding new
energy in creating a shared vision of what that other world, the one
that's possible, could possibly be. Up from kitchen tables and blogs
to the pages of The Nation (and unfortunately in the filthy mouths of
cable TV's pundits), people are talking about what is, and what isn't,
socialism. While describing
what the total transformation of our whole world could be like is no
small or even finishable task, and acknowledging that some
points may not be everyone's vision of what the world we can make would
be, this is posted as part of this capital-d Discussion of this
historic period where we might just figure out how to sink this ship
while building a new one to keep all of us afloat. Carl welcomes your comments and feedback; e-mail him at
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
I originally wrote this in 2004 but decided to update it during this period of economic crisis which many people (revolutionaries, organizers, social movement forces, and masses of people in general) will face on a personal level. I believe that this is still something we need to strategize around.
Ha! I have your attention. I knew you would never read something entitled “Self Care and the Movement” (neither would I, 8 years ago). I want to talk about the issue of sustaining ourselves and taking care of each other while we do revolutionary work. The life we choose is not an easy one. We choose to keep our eyes open in a horror film filled with greed, bombings, torture, occupation and oppression. We carefully analyze those who oppress us—their power located in weapons, in bailout money, in repetitive propaganda channeled into every household, in control of resources, in racist, sexist, heterosexist and classist laws. We recognize their inherent weaknesses, their infighting, their inability to break the will of the people, but we still know that we are up against a long struggle, a struggle that some of us have been fighting for most of our lives. We live this oppression, and we watch as our parents, our children and the ones we love live this oppression. It would be inhumane to think that one could go through this life with out any feelings of sadness, anger or depression. In this article, I’m only going to scratch the surface here by naming some of the problems I see and have experienced but hopefully this will help to spark discussion and planning of how we can work to take care of ourselves and each other.
Written by Oppressed Nationalities Commission of FRSO/OSCL
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Every activist and organization that knows and cares about May Day continues to acknowledge the role of the immigrant rights movement in reviving the Workers holiday in the U.S. The May 2006 demonstrations that brought millions into the streets in defense of immigrants were the first of the May Day actions that have taken place every year since.
Immigrants and their allies stood up to condemn the racist attacks on immigrants of color, especially those from Latin America, who were and continue to be on the receiving end of white supremacist scorn. This disdain has led to the mobilization of right wing opinion and violent action against immigrants at the border and in communities throughout the country.
Racial and national hatred are the social and political expressions, but the issue of workers rights is the fundamental question. The migration from many countries in the global south to the U.S. is driven solely by the search for jobs. Economic devastation (due mainly to free trade agreements) and political repression have created a situation which most migrants describe as desperation. People will do whatever they have to, no matter how dangerous and difficult, to provide for their families. Millions have been forced to cross US borders to find work that is often dirty, low paying and unsafe. The quality of the jobs in terms of wages, benefits and protection from arbitrary firings is a critical question for both U.S.-born and immigrant workers.
The electoral victory in El Salvador of Mauricio Funes, candidate of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) has immense historical and political significance. The FMLN was a guerrilla movement that in all probability could have won control of El Salvador had it not been for the massive US intervention in the early 1980s. Nevertheless, the FMLN fought on until a peace settlement in the early 1990s. Despite the peace settlement, right-wing forces based in the notorious ARENA party continued to dominate the political scene until this election.
The devastating occupation of Iraq is entering its seventh unjustifiable year. Young men and women who were eleven years old when the US invaded Afghanistan are now being deployed into combat there. With media coverage of the wars almost non-existent, an economic collapse of terrifying proportions underway and a whole new political landscape in DC, it’s important that progressives, revolutionaries and socialists take a long and careful look at the situation facing us on this deadly anniversary.
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