Yesterday, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of the murder of George Floyd. While we recognize this was in fact the correct decision the jury could make, we acknowledge the problems of violent white supremacist policing run much deeper than any one officer or any one court case. We recognize that policing in the United States is rooted in white supremacy, and enacts violence, oppression, and death upon communities of color in general, and Black communities in specific.

While George Floyd’s murderer has been sentenced, we recognize that many similar murders have not had such consequences. We remember Donovon Lynch, who was murdered by Virginia Beach police less than one month ago. We remember Xzavier Hill who was murdered by Virginia State police earlier this year. We remember Marcus David-Peters who was murdered by Richmond police in 2018, while he was suffering a mental health crisis. Even yesterday, as the Derek Chauvin verdict was being read, police in Columbus, Ohio murdered Ma’Khia Bryant only hours earlier. She was sixteen years-old. We remember these, as well as countless other Black men, women, and children murdered by police whose families have not yet seen any amount of justice or accountability. 

We affirm, in the face of this senseless death that Black lives matter, and that police departments exist counter to this fact. We also affirm that it was the institution of policing and its supporters at all levels of government that is the root cause of these killings, and not merely the fault of flawed individuals.

It is for these reasons that we call for the abolition of municipal, state, and federal police, as well as the abolition of the carceral state. The criminal justice system, as it is, is not justice and cannot produce justice. Justice would be the dissolution of all police departments, and members at all levels of these departments being held accountable for the violence committed by the institution of policing. Justice would be protests and actions addressing police brutality being allowed to proceed unimpeded, and that organizers and protesters alike being cleared of any outstanding criminal or civil charges related to their activism. Justice would be jails and prisons of all types across the country being abolished in favor of justice that seeks to restore and heal rather than to punish.

We make these demands in solidarity with the families of people murdered by police, with abolitionist activists across the globe, with Black communities under the constant threat of policing, and Black community members subjected to violence from the police state, and criminal justice system.

By: Joel Campbell

To commemorate the 110th anniversary of the Furniture City Strike, Grand Rapids DSA is hosting its first Strike & Bike ride! The goal for each participant is to bike 110 miles from April 19th to August 18, the duration of the strike. It’s free to join! Friends and family members are asked to pledge at a dollar a mile for each rider. Funds will be used to further our mutual aid work in the community. Participants can join the Grand Rapids DSA Strava Club to help track their miles.  Before you ride, please register here!

The top three riders will receive one of the following prizes: 

• City Within A City: The Black Freedom Struggle in Grand Rapids, Michigan
• Manoomin: The Story of Wild Rice in Michigan
• Strike! How the Furniture Workers Strike of 1911 Changed Grand Rapids

To help promote cycling in Grand Rapids, we’ll be hosting three free bike repair clinics. These clinics will be held May 15th at Lincoln Park, June 12th at Riverside Park, and July 10th at Martin Luther King Park from 12pm – 4pm. You can show up to the clinic the day of or fill out this form ahead of time so we can make sure to have the materials for your bike.

As part of our Strike & Bike ride, we created a tour that takes you around the city and details various aspects of its history that don’t often get any attention. To get stop by stop directions, click here!

1. The Furniture Strike of 1911

The Furniture Strike of 1911, now memorialized on a plaque next to the Spirit of Solidarity statue, is arguably the most important strike in Grand Rapids’ history. On the morning of April 19th, 1911 more than 6,000 workers, largely made up of eastern European immigrants, walked off the job demanding higher wages, shorter work days, and union representation. The John Widdicomb factory, our first stop, was the main site for most of the strike. In retaliation, the Furniture Manufacturers Employers’ Association pressured banks to foreclose on workers’ mortgages while the Christian Reformed Church issued an edict that sought to expel striking workers from their church. During the strike, the Grand Rapids Police Department fired into the picket line. The strike ended on August 18th, about 5 months after it began. Much of the dissolution came from the lack of strike funds. Strike funds, even today, are largely comprised of dues that union members are required to pay which is why Right to Work legislation, signed by former Governor Rick Snyder is so effective in dismantling unions.

2. 1925 Ku Klux Klan March

On July 4th, 1925 over 3,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan marched down Bridge Street. The intimidation of them marching directly into the heart of the Eastern European immigrant and working class community cannot be overstated. The Klan in the 1920s, called the Invisible Empire was galvanized by the pro-Klan film, Birth of a Nation. Millions of Americans joined in droves. Members frequently included mayors, judges, business owners, and police officers. They sought to repel the immigration of Eastern Europeans into America through intimidation and violence. With Polish immigration came numerous other nationalities and ethnicities including a surge of Jews, Catholics, and Orthodox worshipers. These religions were, and still are, considered an affront by the KKK to a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America. The West Side of Grand Rapids, famously proud of its Polish heritage, is still home to a thriving Jewish community. On November 2, 2020, Jewish graves were spray painted with “TRUMP” and “MAGA” in the Ahavas Israel Cemetery. Anti-Semitism and anti-immigration sentiment continues to animate hate groups like the KKK, Proud Boys, and Oathkeepers to this day.

3. The Plum Tree Orchard

The Plum Tree Orchard that once stood here was demolished in the early 1870s, along with 46 burial mounds on land that Charles Belknap called “Mission land.” In his memoir, The Yesterdays of Grand Rapids, Belknap details how he spent his summers as a water boy quote “…for the men who did this grading | and had ample opportunity to gather the flint arrowheads and other implements that were unearthed in nearly every burial mound | along with the bones of the vanished race.” End quote. According to Belknap, much of the looted material, if not kept in private collection, was taken by the Kent Museum or shipped off to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. 

In 2018, Anishinaabe artist Jason Quigno created the Plum Tree Memorial to commemorate this spot. In addition, you will also see the ANISHINAABEK mural, painted by Alan Compo, a member of the Grand River Bands of Ottawa Indians. This piece was also unveiled in 2018. In an interview for Grand Rapids Magazine, Compo recalled the destruction of the Plum Tree Orchard. He said, “The story goes that it was burned down, and who knows if it was to stop them from coming or if it was for progress, but I just wanted to bring it back.” 

4. Breonna Taylor Way

Breonna Taylor, who grew up in Grand Rapids, was killed by Louisville Metro Police Department officers in her home on March 13, 2020. Officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove were responsible for the no-knock warrant that led to her death. The raid was part of a dedicated unit created by the Louisville Metro Police Department to help with the ongoing gentrification of Elliot Avenue where Taylor lived. The road you are riding on is dedicated to her memory.

Gentrification in Grand Rapids, like Louisville, is enacted through police violence against communities of color and working class neighborhoods. For years, the Grand Rapids police department received extra funding from the Department of Justice for Operation Weed & Seed. This program focused on the West Side, Heartside, and Southeast districts and saw the rise in police officers working the beat. In every single one of those areas today, gentrification is apparent. The new glistening buildings stand as monuments to police violence in both Louisville & Grand Rapids. 

5. Viva Flaherty

Viva Flaherty worked as a secretary at Fountain Street Church during the Furniture Strike of 1911. While the minister of the church preached for calm and unity between workers and the factory owners, Flaherty stood solidly on the side of the workers. In October 1911, only a few months after the end of the strike, Flaherty published “History of the Grand Rapids Strike” and detailed the lengths to which the owners, organized as the Furniture Manufacturers Employers’ Association sought to crush the movement for unions. One passage calls to us even now: 

“The workers lost the strike. Moral victories do not pay for potatoes and sugar, or secure the rest and relaxation that a hard day’s work merits. It was might not right that settled this strike and, consequently, industrial peace has not been secured in Grand Rapids. No one concerned yearns for another strike – particularly not the striker, – because he and his family suffer the most. But will the workers never wake up to their power, for they have it!”

6. The 1967 Rebellion

On July 25th,1967, an uprising in Grand Rapids began. For the next three days, in the predominantly black neighborhood, people sent a message to the city that they would not take any more abuse. As Will Mack of Black Past notes, “extreme poverty, joblessness, poor schooling and segregation….” were among the grievances of the community. On the second day, some white residents joined together and acted as vigilantes to try and suppress the uprising.   The Grand Rapids Police Department, unable to completely control the situation, relied heavily on reinforcements sent in by Governor George Romney. The Michigan State Police, arriving on the heels of neutralizing the rebellion in Detroit, engaged in a systemic crackdown that led to the arrests of 320 people and forty-four injuries. Over a thousand people participated in the uprising. This intersection where you are was one of the many spots in the city where police used tear gas against the rebels. 

The inequality that these uprisings sought to address never ended. Police brutality against the black community continues unchecked. In 2017, Officer Caleb Johnson pulled his gun on five black children as they were walking home. A few months later, Honestie Hodges, who was eleven-years-old at the time, was handcuffed and held at gunpoint. The officers involved were not disciplined for this action. The compounding racial discrimination helped fuel the uprising in 2020 and saw the return of tear gas to the streets of Grand Rapids.

7. Hopewell Burial Mounds

Before the Anishinaabe followed the manoomin west and settled in this area, the Hopewell lived here. Their territory extended from the Straits of Mackinac to New Orleans and ranged from West Virginia to Kansas. Grand Rapids was originally home to two sets of mounds, the Converse which was along the river, now called Ah-Nab-Awen Park, and the Norton group which is before you. These mounds were built sometime between 10 BCE and 400 CE. 

As you learned at the Plum Tree Orchard stop, those mounds, also called the Converse group, were leveled by colonizers while building the city of Grand Rapids. The Hopewell Burial Mounds before you are currently besieged by the highway and oil derricks which populate this area. These serve as a reminder that colonization is not something that happened long ago in the forgotten mist of time. It is happening right before your very eyes. 

8. 1836 Treaty of Washington D.C.

The Treaty of Washington D.C., sometimes called the Treaty of 1836, was signed between the United States, the Odawa and Ojibwe. The treaty encompasses 13 million acres and stretches from the southernmost point, where you stand, to Whitefish Point in the Upper Peninsula. The treaty guaranteed the rights of the Odawa and Ojibwe to hunt, fish, harvest, and worship. The Odawa and Ojibwe have been at the forefront of calling for the end of Line 5, Enbridge’s pipeline that runs through the Straits of Mackinac, as its continued existence threatens these very rights. 

9. Carbon Infrastructure in West Michigan

Grand Rapids Storage #2, 4026870000, owned by Goodale Enterprises, LLC, a subsidiary of Atonne Group, this storage tank is one of many parts of carbon infrastructure that dot not only Millennium Park, but all of Michigan. When we discuss climate change and massive oil and gas corporations like ExxonMobil, BP, or Shell, we tend to ignore smaller players like Goodale Enterprises or Wolverine Gas & Oil.

Unfortunately for local activists, the permitting of these storage tanks and oil derricks is handled by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, in particular The Oil, Gas, and Minerals Division. This places the responsibility firmly in the hands of the governor. To decarbonize our world, we must confront the reality that while large oil corporations are a problem, we must uproot the fossil fuel industries in Michigan as well. 

10. 1821 Treaty of Chicago

The Treaty of Chicago, signed in 1821 between the United States, the Potawatomi, Odawa, and Ojibwe ceded five million acres to the United States. It covers much of Grand Rapids at its northernmost and extends to Elkhart Indiana at its southernmost. Kalamazoo and Battle Creek are also part of this treaty. 

This is our last stop on the tour. Thank you so much for taking time to learn more about this land and the people who have struggled to make it a better place. This tour is part of the Grand Rapids DSA’s Strike & Bike fundraiser. All money raised will go to our mutual aid fund. 

The post Strike & Bike! appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

Portland DSA condemns the police murder of our community member, Robert Douglas Delgado, yesterday in Lents Park.

The brutality of policing is an everyday horror perpetrated against the most marginalized people in our society — and it is a tool of capitalism to maintain inequality.

Last year, Portlanders mobilized alongside millions of others around the country to protest racist police violence. Our demonstrations forced the Portland City Council to take action: they voted to defund the Portland Police Bureau by $15 million and remove police presence from schools and public transit. But we must not only prevent this funding from being reinstated — we must go further and strip the police of their power to terrorize and kill with impunity.

This most recent murder by the police happened in the pilot zone of the Portland Street Response. This clearly demonstrates that it’s not enough to create an alternative to the police if nothing is done to decrease the power, scope, and size of the Portland Police Bureau.

To do that, we need an organized mass movement of working class people capable of challenging the police and the ruling class interests they serve. Through coordinated, strategic mass action, we can build the power required to transform the system.

Socialists believe in a world where everyone is guaranteed a home and health care — not a military occupation masquerading as “safety.” We must divest from policing and use those funds to support essential public services that directly address the root causes of poverty, crime, and violence. True safety means dismantling the systems that perpetuate injustice, including the police and the prison industrial complex, and reinvesting in our communities.

That’s why we won’t stop fighting to defund, disarm, and disband the police. That’s why we demand justice for the victim, his family, and the community. And that’s why we demand accountability from Zachary Delong, the officer responsible for the public execution of a member of our community, as well as the Portland Police Bureau and every other police officer and department in this country.

Join Portland DSA at the city budget hearing on May 5 to make our demands heard!

Las Vegas DSA stands in solidarity with Adam Toledo’s family and people all over the country as we grieve the senseless killing of a 13-year-old child. Police have taken it upon themselves to become judge, jury, and executioner, this time resulting in the murder of a child who can clearly be seen complying with instructions on the released video.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s disgraceful attempts to cover up and place blame for this extrajudicial killing on anyone except the Chicago PD echoes the behavior of politicians throughout the country who continue to carry water for a corrupt and irredeemable institution. The sheer audacity of asking for calm after the murder of a child and the further criminalization of protest in response will not be forgotten.

Adam Toledo was a child, only 13 years old, and was gunned down within seconds. Adam was attempting to comply with the orders given by his state sanctioned executioners and was seen to have dropped the weapon and was attempting to raise his hands.

Time and time again, the capitalist system adultifies children of color, grinding them into cogs in the brutal system or killing them. This is the same system that murdered 12-year-old Tamir Rice for playing with a toy gun in an open carry state.

This is the same system that murdered Jorge Gomez, shot in the back by Las Vegas Metro Police Department as he attempted to comply and disperse. He was exercising his constitutional right to bear arms, a right that white supremacists will jump to defend when it benefits themselves but never for a person of color, a distinction that was also made clear for Philando Castile.

This is the same system that handcuffed Dre Hollingsworth, Deaf and unable to understand LVMPD orders, while her 11-year-old twin daughters cried for officers to stop. Half of people killed by police have a disability, so we are thankful that Dre left her encounter with the police alive, unlike Elijah McClain, Magdiel Sanchez, and so many others.

All of this is coming to light in the same week when Daunte Wright was gunned down “accidentally” by a 26 year veteran of the police force and while killer cop Derek Chauvin is on trial for the videotaped torture-murder of George Floyd.

How many times must we witness the police kill on camera, the victim’s last moments splashed on every screen, before we accept that police do not serve or protect us?  We live in a brutal capitalist society, undergirded by white supremacy, that will always value property more than human life. We will never be safe until this system is dismantled.

Las Vegas DSA reaffirms its support for abolishing the police, and our belief that  defunding the police is a necessary first step to building a world free of police, prisons, and constant oppression.

Learn more about police abolition

LVDSA Abolish/Defund Police Resource List

Inquiries

For inquiries, please contact lasvegasdsa@gmail.com

This episode of Heart of a Heartless World features Travis Donoho and Jeremy McMahan. Travis is a professional labor union organizer and member of Thich Nhat Hahn's Order of Interbeing Sangha. Jeremy is the producer of this podcast and a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and scholar. They discuss the relationship between socialism and Buddhism, how self care is essential for labor organizing, and why a lot of American Buddhists don't identify as socialists.

In case you haven’t heard, the tuition strike just won a massive victory last week: Columbia announced that they will take action on our demand for increased financial aid, to the amount of $1.4 billion. No matter what Bollinger says, we know this wouldn’t have happened without thousands of students’ collective action.

This additional $1.4 billion represents nearly three times the amount of financial aid allocated at Columbia this past year, exceeding our demand to increase financial aid by at least 10%. However, Columbia’s response to the demands of our tuition strike still remains utterly inadequate.

Considering the university’s refusal to lower tuition costs, even this increased aid will by no means ensure that tuition for all programs across Columbia institutions will become affordable for low-income students. Instead of cutting their own multi-million dollar salaries or pulling funds from their $7 billion in unrestricted assets, the administration resorts to alumni donations in order to address our demand for better financial aid.

Columbia does not need charitable donations in order to make its education affordable; it simply needs to put its financial resources toward its own students rather than gentrifying real estate projects and executives’ wealth. Columbia’s announcement shows us the power that we have when we stand together, but it’s also a reminder of how much work we have left to do.

That’s why we’re asking all supporters of our movement to contribute their thoughts on how we can strengthen the movement into the future by joining us Thursday night at 7 pm ET at our Tuition Strike Debrief / Strategy Session to assess the strengths and weaknesses of our campaign this semester and to strategize about how we can build a stronger campaign next semester. (RSVP here for Zoom info)

Even if you can’t make it tomorrow, please vote in this non-binding poll on the question of whether we should try to organize an even larger tuition strike next semester and to share your feedback on what alternative or additional tactics we should use, as well as to indicate if you can help organize a campaign next semester. (Vote here!)

Hope to see you tomorrow!

Solidarity,

Columbia-Barnard YDSA

This post is password protected. You must visit the website and enter the password to continue reading.

The Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act) is Federal legislation that would remove the many barriers that have driven down union membership.  This bill has already passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and President Biden says he supports it.  Now we must pressure the Senate to pass it.

With the power of the working class organized we can demand a Green New Deal and a just transition to a clean economy that works for all.

https://www.dsausa.org/proact/

The year was 1970, and the Black Panthers had sent the FBI, and now the State Department into a whirlwind of panic. Rumor had spread across the embassies that the Black Panther Party was in Jordan agitating the country against Jewish people in Israel. Huey Newton called a press conference to clarify: the rumor was not quite true, Kwame Ture was in Jordan, but not as a representative of the Black Panther Party, and they had no grievance against the Jewish people. But what was happening was something far more formidable: one of the most fearsome socialist organizations in the US had been operating with an international consciousness.

Whether or not a grassroots movement is able to assent to international anti-imperialism has become an infamous bellwether on the left ever since the imperialist turn of the Social Democratic Parties in Europe. As World War I broke out across the continent, Lenin and Luxemburg warned that this was a war among imperial powers for control over resources that would be wrong to support, but the Social Democratic Party in Germany, and other European socialist parties most directly influenced by Marx and Engels, decided to betray them and each other by choosing nationalism and voting for war credits to finance the war, demonstrating how a socialism organization even with the best intentions can be bended into a tool of capitalism and the state if their politics are not fully anti-imperialist. How much will Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez be willing to reduce the defense budget and withdraw US troops at the expense of their electability in the largest empire in the world? How much would the protestors who turned out against police brutality in the US be willing to turn out against Duterte’s lethal Anti-Terror Law in the Philippines? Every solidarity movement as it grows faces challenges to the limits of its solidarity that it must meet if it is to continue to unite the oppressed against their oppressor.

“We support the Palestinians’ just struggle for liberation one hundred percent,” announced Huey Newton at the conference, “we will go on doing this, and we would like for all of the progressive people of the world to join our ranks in order to make a world in which all people can live.” The Black Panthers had been in daily correspondence with the Palestine Liberation Organization, via Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers, who had traveled there fleeing US Law Enforcement. In about a year’s time, the Black Panthers had written and distributed 33 different articles on this topic in their newspaper, the Black Panther. 

But undoubtedly the most meaningful result of Black Panther’s relationship with Palestinian solidarity came with a militant Anti-Zionist organization which formed amongst Mizrahi youth in Israel in 1971. The Mizrahi are Jews who originated from Middle East and North Africa who were therefore both are Arab and Jewish, and as such have been treated as second-class citizens in Israel, above Muslim Palestinians citizens of Israel but below the European descended Ashkenazi Jews. Second-generation Mizrahim living in the slums of Musrara would learn of socialist movements from the revolutionary Matzpen movement organizing in Israel, and from these conditions the Mizrahi Black Panthers were born.

What’s beautiful about the Mizrahi Black Panthers is that rather than merely fighting for their own rights as Israeli Jews, they found common cause with their fellow Palestinian Arabs in Israel, who often lived in the same neighborhoods as them and faced similar problems of harassment and brutality by the police. They organized public demonstrations, often facing arrests from the police, including disrupting the World Zionist Congress of 1972 and organizing a hunger strike at the Western Wall which forced a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister. In what they had termed “Operation Milk,” milk bottles were stolen from rich Ashkenazi neighborhoods and given to poor Mizrahi families in need, along with incendiary literature explaining why this had been done. While they didn’t always necessarily identify as an Anti-Zionist or an Anti-Imperialist movement, their actions and their outlook situated themselves and the Palestinians against the Zionist state which to them was indistinguishable from the “white tribe” Ashkenazi supremacy of their condition.

At the press conference, Huey Newton had said, in what would later get published as “On the Middle East” that the Black Panther Party would “[n]ot just stand in international solidarity with all peoples oppressed by white supremacy but international resistance against all whom we understand to be the bodyguards of capital.” But how was it that it came to be that a movement that began in 1966 as two activists in Oakland arming and organizing black residents to defend themselves against police violence would be publicly declaring international opposition against all of capitalist imperialism in just four short years? What is it that they did or saw that we can learn from by their example? 

The first thing to note about the Black Panther Party’s solidarity with the Palestinians is that it was only a part of a rich relationship between Palestine and the broader Civil Rights Movement. Malcolm X was a significant champion of the Palestinian cause, on a personal level having been connected to the Arab world as a member of the Nation of Islam as well as ideologically as an anti-imperialist revolutionary, visiting Gaza in 1964. Malcolm X’s fight for black liberation extended to all non-whites oppressed by Western imperial power, not just African-Americans living in the US. Like Malcom, Kwame Ture’s concept of Black Power was also internationalist, explaining that “[w]hen you talk of black power, you talk of building a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created.” As chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Ture wrote a 1967 article drawing parallels between the black civil rights struggle in the US with the Palestinians rights struggle in Israel and staged a demonstration at a leftist conference to demand adoption of a resolution condemning Zionism.

While Ture and Newton both supported what they recognized as Palestinian Nationalism against the state of Israel, Newton felt it necessary to draw a distinction between a sort of alliance amongst oppressed peoples towards seperatism characteristic of Ture’s Pan-Africanism and his own conditional nationalism aligned not strictly by race but by the struggle against capitalist imperialism, stating “This transformation can only take place by wiping out United States imperialism and establishing a new earth, a new society, a new world. So politically and strategically the correct action to take is not separation but world revolution in order to wipe out imperialism. Then people will be free to decide their destiny. Self-determination and national liberation can not really exist while United States imperialism is alive. That is why we don’t support nationalism as our goal.”

And it must have seemed (more than usual) that these were particularly international times. It was the midst of the cold war and countries and conflicts were literally being categorized by their relation to Western Imperialism and Communism. More importantly, it was the midst of the Vietnam War. The most unpopular war in US history had been opposed by the Black Panthers  from the very start, including an anti-war plank in its original Ten-Point Platform, stating “We want all Black men to be exempt from military service. We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America.” The next year, the draft began and the number of deployed troops reached half a million.

At the same time this was a pivotal moment for the Israel-Palestine conflict in particular: in June of 1967 came the Six-Day War. It took less than a week for Israel to pre-emptive strike Egypt and much of Syria’s air force and drive out Egyptian and Jordanian forces on the ground until the UN came in to broker a cease-fire. The result was the entirety of historic Palestine became occupied by Israel, with a million Palestinians now living under Israeli rule and hundreds of thousands more fleeing as refugees. Unlike the relatively static occupation of this decade, the burgeoning party would have seen the nation of Palestine effectively wiped from the map in real-time.

Another essential aspect of the anti-imperialist politics of the Panthers, of course, was the anti-imperialist teachings of Marx, Lenin, and Mao whom as revolutionaries their leadership ascribed to. While Marx set the economic basis for describing the exploitation of Capitalism, it was Lenin who saw in particular its relation to Imperialism, describing it as the highest stage of the Capitalism system. Mao took this philosophy of Marxist-Leninism and recontextualised it outside of the West – first, as a “semi-colonial” country facing imperial aggression from Japan, later, as a Communist power facing aggression from the US. The result was militant political organizing conducted with a awe-inspiring combination of revolutionary zeal and analytical clarity, as illustrated here by Fred Hampton “We’re not going to fight reactionary pigs and reactionary state attorneys with any other reactions on our part. We’re going to fight their reaction when all working people get together and have an international proletarian revolution.”

The sources of the Black Panther Party’s revolutionary ideas appear to have come from a variety of places. From the first, the Black Panthers saw themselves picking up after the work of another revolutionary, Malcom X, who was assassinated a year before their founding. But for the Panther’s Maoism also wasn’t a historical matter, they could see these principals in motion in China and Vietnam. They also drew inspiration from the Cuban revolution as well as the Marxist and decolonial thinker Frantz Fanon. By Assata Skakur’s account, “I wasn’t against communism, but i can’t say i was for it either. At first, i viewed it suspiciously, as some kind of white man’s concoction, until i read works by African revolutionaries and studied the African liberation movements. Revolutionaries in Africa understood that the question of African liberation was not just a question of race, that even if they managed to get rid of white colonists, if they didn’t rid themselves of the capitalist economic structure, the white colonialists would simply be replaced by Black neocolonialists.” On the other hand, George Jackson simply stated “I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me.”

Among these factors which help explain the international character of the Black Panthers, the one I find most compelling is the simplest one: the Black Panthers and Palestinians both faced struggles which they could recognize in each other. The Black Panthers were founded as a community solution to police violences and began their first published article demanding justice for the police killing of Denzil Dowell. In Palestine, there were 48 people killed by Israeli officers enforcing curfew in Kafr Qassem and the Wadi Salin riots protesting the police killing of a Mizrahi Jewish man. At a time when black people in America relocated to escape the legacy of slavery a racial enmity in the rural South and faced the impacts of redlining in ghettos, Palestinians and Mizrahim faced displacement from Israeli troops and slums. While Huey Newton compared the black experience in America to a colonial occupation of Palestine, a Palestinian liberation leader reflecting on Huey Newton would compare the oppression of the Palestinians to the the US incarceration system. While the location, context, and degree of these struggles may vary between the two peoples, it is undeniable they struggled against much of the same problems, in truth both struggling against different facets of the same problem of racist and imperialist capitalist systems. The Black Panthers direct experience with this oppression and with this struggle, fundamentally, is not something that would require a textbook to explain.

Perhaps the political and organizational legacy of the Black Panther Party in the United States can best be seen today in the Black Lives Matter movement, arguably the most influential racial civil rights and police abolition movement since the Civil Rights Era, and Democratic Socialists of America, arguably the most influential socialist organization of this generation. What guidance can we offer these movements on how they can stay the course of international solidarity? In the case of Palestine at least there is some reason for optimism; in 2016 the Movement for Black Lives released a statement in support of the Palestinian struggle as part of their platform and in 2019 the DSA passed a resolution in support of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement. But the lesson I believe we can take from the Black Panther Party on internationalism is to study the movements that came before you, pay attention to the world events happening around you, study the revolutionary theorists of the past and present, but above all engage meaningfully in the struggle for liberation. To catch a panther cub you must enter the panther’s lair — there is no greater teacher on the contours of our shared political struggles than the material reality of the struggle itself.

References

• “The Black Panther Party and Palestine Solidarity,” Matthew Quest
• “Ninetieth anniversary of the German SPD voting for War,” World Socialist Web Site
• “The long history of Black and Palestinian solidarity,” Liberation School
• “The New Left and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in the United States,” Michael R Fischbach
• “When Israel’s Black Panthers found common cause with Palestinians,” The Electronic Intifada
• “’Our ideology is our pain’: Notes of an Israeli Black Panther”, +972 Mag
• “Rediscovering Huey P. Newton’s ‘On the Middle East’”, Workers Youth United
• “A historical framework for continued Black-Palestinian solidarity,” Mondoweiss
• “Stokely Carmichael,” History.com
• “A Huey Newton Story,” PBS
• “Vietnam War Protests,” History.com
• “Six-Day War,” Britannica
• “Vanishing Palestine,” Palestine Remix 
• “The communism of the Black Panther Party,” Redflag
• “50 years later – What can the Black Panther Party teach a new generation of revolutionaries?”
• “‘How do you organize that rage’: A podcast on policing and protest from The Oaklandside and East Bay Yesterday,” The Oaklandside
• “We’ll never forget October 1956 massacre, say Palestinians in Israel,” The electronic Intifada
• “Redlining,” Black Past
• “Great Migration: The African American Exodus North,” NPR’s Fresh Air
• “Why The Black Panther Party & Palestine Solidarity Is Still Relevant Today,” Black Lives Matter Alliance of Broward
• “Democratic Socialists of America BDS and Palestine Solidarity Working Group,” DSA

Voting for our officer election has concluded. Results are in, and we’re pleased to announce nine new officers for the Silicon Valley chapter of DSA! Join our first chapter meeting with them this Sunday, April 18th at 2pm. All are welcome to come meet the officers and ask questions!

Now is a great time to get more involved with DSA. Our committees could use a hand! Do you have interest in any of these areas?

• Communications: From social media to newsletters (hi!), our Comms Committee helps make sure our membership is aware of upcoming events, actions, and internal decisions. From writing to design, we’d love your help spreading the word.
• Outreach: Help bring DSA to local communities with the Outreach Committee. Seek out other organizations to partner with, share flyers in your area, and more.
• Agendas & Meeting Planning: Our AMP Committee is responsible for keeping things running smoothly — making sure all of the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed for upcoming meetings. Help keep our meetings as accessible as possible.
• Tech and Data: Want to build software to facilitate activism? Develop the chapter website? Ensure safe use of membership data? Join our Tech and Data Committee to help with the chapter’s technical structure.
• : Our goal is to make sure all comrades feel welcome in DSA spaces, whether they’re new to the movement, recently moved to the area, have been busy with other obligations, or are fully involved members. MDC helps to make sure you’re oriented, you get your questions answered, and you know where you can dive in.
• Finance and Inventory: This committee is responsible for confirming that our books are kept up-to-date and making sure we know what funds and resources are available — both critical aspects to enabling our work (from mutual aid to swag and beyond!).
• : Our newly-formed Social Committee is responsible for planning (virtual) events to bring our community together. If you have a fun idea, join the first meeting on Wednesday!

No experience required. Come to an upcoming meeting or to learn more!

In solidarity,
Your SV DSA Newsletter Team

The post Newsletter – 2021-04-12 appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.