ANSWER & the rest of the compatible left are disregarding Uhuru’s struggle. We’re finding out who the cause’s real friends are.
The PSL leaders who’ve directed ANSWER to hold a Palestine march on the same day as the November 4 Uhuru march; and to have it in a place with close physical proximity to Uhuru’s event; can only claim to be in the right by cultivating a sense of plausible deniability. By making it looks like their actions are totally benign, and like the folks at the African People’s Socialist Party are unreasonable for viewing these actions as dishonorable.
Part of how PSL’s leadership is trying to maintain control over the narrative; to manipulate people into ignoring the damaging impacts of ANSWER’s activities; is by claiming to support Uhuru against the DOJ. PSL put out a statement objecting to the charges against Uhuru when the indictments happened half a year ago, so PSL must be acting in good faith; or at least that’s what Brian Becker and PSL’s other leaders want us to think. They want us to ignore all the signs that behind their talk of supporting Uhuru, there’s a fundamental lack of concern for which actions are strategically optimal in the fight to defend the org.
That ANSWER had denounced the Rage Against the War Machine coalition, which Uhuru works in proximity to; that PSL opposes Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, placing it in sharp ideological opposition towards Uhuru; that PSL cultivates a base of supporters who are hostile towards Uhuru’s organizing partner the Center for Political Innovation; these are red flags for an underlying dynamic of inter-organizational tension. Tension which, when one of these orgs is fighting off state persecution, held risk of bringing about a disastrous scenario. A scenario where the party responsible for creating this tension—the PSL—would do something that seriously damaged the movement.
When the integrity of Becker and the others was tested; and they got invited to assist Uhuru in mobilizing against the state’s repressive campaign; they failed this test. They prioritized their goal of fundraising over what’s best for the cause, and didn’t bother to take the Uhuru march into consideration while scheduling their Palestine event. Even if this wasn’t a deliberate attempt to distract from Uhuru, it absolutely shows a lack of care on PSL’s part.
PSL, and the leftists who defend its negligent actions regarding Uhuru, have a limited amount of relevance; they’re only capable of influencing minds within a small “leftist” niche, because this niche is the only place they’re interested in operating within. It’s important to hold them accountable on this action, which Uhuru sees as an attack upon the Black liberation cause. The encouraging thing, though, is that the compatible left’s efforts to impede the struggle are happening in the context of an unprecedented opportunity for growing the anti-imperialist movement. And to take advantage of this opportunity, we don’t need to change the minds of everyone within leftist spaces. We only need to recognize Becker’s tendency as a strategic failure, then build a movement beyond the small realm in which PSL operates.
The reason why the state is trying to criminalize the authentic tendency of dissident organizing which Uhuru represents; as well as putting forth PSL as a “respectable” substitute for that tendency after the crackdown happens; is because the state desperately wants to keep the American people detached from revolutionary politics. The failure of Biden’s Ukraine proxy war, and the additional proxy war which the empire is waging against Palestine, have further alienated the working class from our socioeconomic system. The workers can see that their hope is not in more wars, but in what Dr. King Jr. called a “radical redistribution of economic power.” They’re looking for a means to advance their interests, and the compatible left isn’t interested in providing them with those means; orgs like PSL are satisfied as long as they can keep managing their little space. As soon as the people get exposed to a type of workers movement that’s not controlled by the Democratic Party, there’s going to be a mass mobilization towards aiding the anti-imperialist cause.
And that’s exactly the scenario the compatible left seeks to avoid. The reason why Becker has in effect abandoned whatever revolutionary principles he may have had; and responded to the intensification of state repression by disregarding the interests of that repression’s targets; is because if PSL were to start acting principled then its present form of operation would become untenable. The state has shown itself to be willing to tolerate the existence of a “socialist” org, so long as that org doesn’t act seriously threatening and can instead have a role as controlled opposition. As soon as socialists start doing the most strategically beneficial things for the class struggle, such as consistently acting in solidarity with victims of persecution, the state classifies those socialists as incompatible with liberal “democracy.”
That’s why PCUSA has been targeted with a massive COINTELPRO attack; and why CPI and its ideological leader Caleb Maupin have been getting smeared by the major media for years. These two orgs represent an element that’s genuinely unified with Uhuru, rather than merely claiming to support Uhuru like PSL does. So they’ve become bigger targets of the state than PSL could ever be.
If this element succeeds in its goals; and creates momentum for the communist movement which has an impact on the broader masses; then the conditions that allow for PSL to function will cease to exist. The brand-builders within modern American “leftism” depend on being able to hold a monopoly over a realm of organizing that’s too small and ineffectual to have a serious impact on history; yet can give these brand-builders great power precisely because of how marginal this realm is. If the struggle were to expand beyond the “left,” PSL would no longer be able to perpetuate the illusion that it represents the best avenue for advancing the class struggle. Becker and the other left opportunists are dominating a tiny space, and making themselves look gigantic because this space is the only one in today’s activism circles.
Or rather, this space was the only one until recently, when many of those who are dissatisfied with PSL’s way of operating came together to build an alternative. PCUSA’s founders have used their lessons from having been part of the opportunistic CPUSA to create an org that’s highly effective at ideologically training anti-imperialists, and that’s attained a considerable union presence. Caleb Maupin has used his lessons from having been part of the similarly shallow World Workers Party to create CPI, which is providing the antiwar movement with the means to regularly hold major events. The elements of libertarians who recognize fighting U.S. hegemony as the moment’s most important goal are assisting these organizations in advancing the struggle, which will soon have a potentially great source of mass exposure with the December 2nd anti-imperialist convention in Portland.
The best way we can respond to the actions of the left opportunists is by assisting these efforts to build something new; something truly capable of defeating the empire.
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So pathetic how the CIA's role in Ukraine since 1949 has passed the brains of these crocodile teared folk.
And what's their stance on the hatred toward China? War drums there? Fuck, it is a righteous special military operation in Ukraine, and the Communists in Russia are the correct thinkers -- should have been taken care of in 2015, and now, Christ, just cut the heads off the snakes in UkroNaziLandia.
From Sussman:
Joe Biden “is fueling the fire in the Ukraine.”
— Roger Waters of Pink Floyd
It takes a musical artist to cut through the morass of propaganda to educate American mainstream media (MSM) about the Russia-Ukraine crisis and the roleof the United States in instigating that conflict for its own nefarious ends.
The MSM have constructed an undiluted narrative about “Putin’s War” that disguises America’s imperialist expansion into eastern Europe. It is utterly Orwellian in its effort to project onto Russia what the U.S. and its main imperial ally, the UK (which a British journalist deemed “America’s tugboat”), have been doing non-stop since 1945—and indeed for centuries.
Looking back, the U.S. under Truman began the policy of turning enemies (Germany, Japan) into friends and friends (the important war-time alliance with the USSR) into enemies. The CIA, established in 1947, was the main clandestine instrument of this policy, working closely with the neo-Nazi Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) to carry out acts to sabotage, divide and destabilize the Soviet state.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/09/12/ukraine-the-cias-75-year-old-proxy/
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From the day he ripped down the racist mural from the walls of City Hall in St Petersburg, Florida in 1966, Chairman Omali Yeshitela (then known as Joseph Waller) has never stopped fighting for freedom for African people everywhere. Mobilized in his youth by anti-colonial movements around the world and the struggle for black liberation inside the U.S., Yeshitela dedicated his life to uniting and liberating Africa and African people everywhere.In the heat of revolutionary struggle and during his early years as a political prisoner, Yeshitela was driven to discover the reasons why black people all over the world are impoverished and oppressed. Yeshitela developed the political theory of African Internationalism that understands the world through the eyes of the African working class.
Through African Internationalism the Chairman exposes the significance of Marx’s concept of the “primitive accumulation of capital,” the starting point of capitalist wealth accumulation, playing in “political economy about the same part as original sin in theology.”Breathing life into Marx’s analysis, Yeshitela noted that “African Internationalism recognizes that the process of slavery and brigandage that consolidated the political economy, national identity and general well-being of what came to be known as Europe is the same process that results in the wretched, divided, impoverished and exploited lot of Africans and much of the world.”
Yeshitela contends that the leading force of struggle is the African and oppressed working class throughout the world against “parasitic capitalism,” embodied in U.S. and Western imperialism built on enslavement, genocide and colonialism.In 1968 Chairman Yeshitela founded The Burning Spear newspaper that continues to be published today. Throughout the years Yeshitela has authored numerous books, pamphlets and articles, including his latest book, An Uneasy Equilibrium: The African Revolution versus Parasitic Capitalism.
In 1972, Yeshitela formed the African People’s Socialist Party which he chairs. He built the worldwide Uhuru Movement and the African Socialist International with branches now active in the U.S., Europe, the Caribbean and on the continent of Africa.Many of the most critical and legendary campaigns of the African community over the past 40 years have been led by Chairman Omali and the Uhuru Movement.The campaign to free Dessie Woods, an African woman sentenced to 22 years for killing a white attempted rapist with his own gun in the 1970s, reverberated throughout the world with its slogan, “Free Dessie Woods, Smash Colonial Violence!”The historic Measure O, the Community Control of Housing Initiative placed on the ballot in Oakland, CA as a land and housing reform measure in 1984, won 22,000 votes and raised forever the struggle for African community control of housing.In 1996, the Chairman united and mobilized the African community following the rebellions sparked by the police murder of 17-year-old TyRon Lewis just four blocks from the Uhuru House in St Petersburg, FL. The Chairman launched the demand for “economic development, not police containment,” forcing the U.S. government to send in the Civil Rights Commission for hearings.
Chairman Omali succeeded in making reparations a household word with the establishment of the International Tribunal on Reparations for African People which was first held in Brooklyn, New York in 1982. Hearings of the tribunal, which determined that U.S. owes African people in the U.S. $4.1 trillion in reparations for stolen labor alone, have been held thirteen times.
In 1976 Chairman Omali formed the African People’s Solidarity Committee, the organization of white people under the leadership of the Party. Chairman Omali also founded several mass organizations including the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (INPDUM), which for more than 20 years has been in the forefront of defending the African community from police violence and other colonial attacks.
Other organizations created by Chairman Omali include the All-African People’s Development and Empowerment Program (AAPDEP), the African National Prison Organization (ANPO) and the Black is Back Coalition (BIB).
Throughout the years, Chairman Omali launched numerous successful African-controlled economic institutions such as Spear Graphics and the popular Uhuru Bakery Café in Oakland in the 1980s. The Party’s Uhuru Foods and Pies and Uhuru Furniture Stores are institutions that have enjoyed tremendous community-based success and support for more than 25 years.
The Chairman built Uhuru House centers in St Petersburg and Oakland, and the TyRon Lewis Community Gym, Uhuru Radio and UhuruNews.com based at Party headquarters.
In 2012 the Africa People’s Socialist Party launched Black Star Industries bringing all of the economic institutions of the Party under one umbrella and creating partnerships with community members.
Following a worldwide speaking tour in 2013, Chairman Omali convened the African People’s Socialist Party Sixth Congress in St. Petersburg, FL.
In 2014 Chairman Omali published his historic new book, An Uneasy Equilibrium: The African Revolution versus Parasitic Capitalism and led a month-long Cadre Intensive in St. Petersburg, attended by Party members from Africa, the U.S. and Europe.
The Chairman and Party members organized on the ground in Ferguson, MO following the police murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The Chairman spoke to churches and to the national mobilization to Ferguson. His video commentaries summing up the situation in Ferguson went viral.
Today, Chairman Omali Yeshitela speaks to his growing base of Party organizations, members and supporters around the world. He writes and actively leads the worldwide movement for the liberation of Africa and African people everywhere.
https://apspuhuru.org/2022/10/01/hands-off-uhuru-hands-off-africa-everyone-out-to-the-november-5-black-peoples-march-on-the-white-house/
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Railing against the monsters.
https://paulokirk.substack.com/p/of-course-the-world-is-going-to-blink
I will point out that it's true that Caleb has been unfairly attacked, it's also true he did some shitty things that gave real ammo to those attacks.
Can't argue with his organizing chops though.