Remember the Orangeberg Massacre of Black Civil Rights Protestors

February 8, 1968 Orangeburg South Carolina

 

I admit that I just learned about this event. The Orangeburg Massacre, when South Carolina police opened fire upon students protesting on the campus of South Carolina State University against segregation at the local All Star Bowling Lane. Three students were killed: Samuel Hammond, Delano Middleton, and Henry Smith. 28 others were wounded from bullets, being beaten, or being trampled by those fleeing the police onslaught. In an ensuing trial all officers were acquitted of any wrongdoing, reminiscent of the recent acquittal of the police murderers of Sean Bell. One of the protesters however, SNCC member Cleveland Sellers, spent several months in jail on the totally bogus charge of inciting a riot.

 

Some of the articles make the important point that this massacre is largely overshadowed by the Kent State police killings of students in 1970. It is hard not to make that inference since in racist America; white life is so much more precious that Black life. 

 

This event deserves to be added to the arsenal of working class and radical historical memory. Let this event show: the racist nature of the U.S. capitalist class and their state,  the heroic sacrifices made on behalf of those fighting for Black Liberation, and the lengths to which the ruling class will go in order to preserve their backwards order.

 http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/3/1968_forty_years_later_a_look 

http://www.orangeburgmassacre1968.com/

Pangea Day Film: I Remember Lebanon

This link will take you to a really nice short film taking a look at daily life in Lebanon before during and after the 2006 Israeli onslaught that killed in excess of one thousand people, including three hundred children. I lifted the Image from www.pangeaday.org.

Fruits of Capitalist Counter Revolution in USSR

This Trotskyist punk video is absolutely astonishing and wretchedly saddening at the same time. It shows the lives of very young street orphans, bezprizorniki, living in Moscow's metro's, begging, and sniffing glue to get high in order to stave off the pain of their abused existence. These are the results of a real restoration of capitalism (1991-1992), just in case someone thought that it had occurred at some other time. The music is quite good and uses the melody of the Soviet National Anthem, which I must admit I have a fondness for.

My Response to NPR anti-Communism

I wrote the following response to the recap and letters from a May 7 edition of "The Story" from American Public Media aired on NPR. The original story, linked to here, aired on May 5. The story and letters from May 7 were so grossly anti-communist that I could not help but to respond. Here is my response:

To Dick Gordon,

 

I have to voice my extreme displeasure over the coverage and subsequent stream of letters that followed the story of Ahn Duong, U.S. weapons maker. The extreme lies, smears and distortions against Communists presented in the story and in the letters that you read really present a lying and skewed picture of world history and the fight for freedom of the worlds oppressed. To read the story of the Vietnamese victimized by the Communists and not remind people of the possibly 2 million Vietnamese killed by the U.S., not to mention American bombing of Laos and Cambodia.

 

To constantly mention, as NPR does, persecution in Cuba by the Fidelistas, all the while hiding the great health care, and relative social equality that Cubans enjoy, far in excess of any other poor nation of their level of development, really distorts reality. How are people supposed to make informed decisions about history when even NPR is not much above a kind of "iced latte McCarthyism."

 

I am a descendent of Yugoslav immigrants who "fled" Yugoslav Communism. These parents/relatives of mine are the vilest sort racists who not only support the wholesale slaughter of their fellow country-men (during the 1990's Bosnian-Civil War, Kosovo, etc.) but are horrid racists against Blacks and other racial minorities here. I find a similar pattern among many of the "refugees" from Socialist states. They come to America/Canada and basically become white supremacists and ass holes. If I were alive in 1945, I too would have thrown my grandfather in prison as a soldier in the Royal Yugoslav Army-clearly a potential threat to multi-ethnic, communist Yugoslavia.

 

I would welcome an opportunity to share these views on your show.

 

Thank you

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

I just returned from the Partisan Defense Committee initiated, united-front protest for Mumia's freedom in Chicago. About one hundred or so people were in attendance at the peak of events, possibly more. Excellent speakers included representative from the PDC, Spartacist League, AFSCME, ATU, UAW, an immigrant rights group I forget the name of, the Spartacist Youth Club, Labor Black Struggle League, murdered Black Panther Fred Hampton's Brother, and the New Black Panther Party among others.

Yes, their should have been more people but after the case has been demobilized, largely by the reformist left, it is necessary to rebuild support. Kudos to Gay rights groups which showed up. I think only one other leftist group came, the League for the Revolutionary Party. Chicago is the home of Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party, where were they? Nowhere.

Many speakers stressed the need to place no faith in the capitalist courts, responsible for the racist frame-up in the first place, to grant Mumia freedom. Others stressed the importance of labor centered protest around unions, while the Panther criticized this position as excluding the "peasants" and the lumpenized. I spoke at length with the Panthers and both agreed and sharply disagreed with their positions, especially on their issue of social service or "charity work." Other speakers made clear the link between Mumia's case and the international important of the Black liberation struggle as part of the struggle for socialist revolution. Two Amalgamated Transit Workers held their banner the whole two hours in the cold. Nice, baby.


I had the opportunity to speak to Mumia's former attorney Rachel Wolkenstein and had a great conversation.
She was the epitome of what Lenin referred to as the necessity to patiently explain positions to the masses. My wife had many questions.

As I was passing out literature I happened upon two Irish tourists who took great interest in Mumia's case and likened it to the case of the Birmingham 8 (I think it was), the story that the Daniel Day-Lewis movie In the Name of the Father was made about. They whole heartedly agreed with the notion of Marx's parallel between the historic oppression of the Irish workers in Ireland and in England with Black workers in America, and the poisonous hatred sowed by the ruling class and the system of laws and rewards that were founded in their interests. They further shared that Irish unions had successfully fought on behalf of immigrant workers for rights and benefits. Just great.

All Out To Protest! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

Please go to protests in your area. I'll be attending in Chicago. Follow the link for events and times.

Starvation, Capitalism and the Planned Economy

NPR reported today that Africa’s GDP would have been 1/3 greater if there had been a cure or effective treatment for malaria. By extension, poverty would have actually been less severe. There is however, a number of existing treatments, cheap, preventative measures and other cures could have been developed except that capitalism saw no profit in doing so. A collectivized socialist world economy would make ridding Africa and other tropical regions of preventable diseases part of the program of extending free medical care to all.

This topic of the socialist planned economy seems all the more relevant given the huge spike in food prices, which seem to have been rising for some time now, that have spawned food riots across the globe. Again the proof that the capitalist economy can only serve the market and not human needs, essentially telling the 1 billion people who exist on less than $2 a day to go fuck themselves.

The long-term solution is in the establishment of a coordinated planned economy working to serve the total development of humanity. To do this we must work for world socialist revolution!

Free Tibet Movement: Tool of Imperialism

I believe that this picture speaks for itself in demonstrating the utter bankruptcy and backward politics of the counter-revolutionary, "monkist", Free Tibet Movement.

A small exposure of meanness

This is a "small exposure" of the way in which capitalism, here exemplified by Wal-Mart but just as easily by dozens of other firms, has a callous disregard for human life. Just click the title.