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No Free Speech for ‘Bell Curve’ Racist Charles Murray
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- 10 April 2017 64 hits
HARLEM, April 1—Progressive Labor Party salutes the brave students and staff across U.S. college campuses who protested the presence of racist Charles Murray. From Middlebury, Duke, Columbia, New York University, to Notre Dame and Villanova University, they have upheld that there should be no free speech for racists!
Charles Murray, best known for the pseudoscientist racist book The Bell Curve, is touring college campuses on the premise of promoting his new equally racist book Coming Apart. The book has gained increased attention since Donald Trumps’ election. The revival of Murray is no surprise; when overt racist politics are unapologetic fought for in the highest spheres of government, that legitimacy trickles out to colleges and all other institutions. Legitimatizing “scientific” racist ideas set the groundwork for intensifying racist actions. When they’re allowed to speak, they become emboldened. When they are emboldened, they grow. And when they grow, they put their words into actions—terrorizing and killing Black, Latin, Muslim, immigrant workers and youth.
Middlebury students by chasing Murray off campus carried out on a small scale what the brave soldiers of the Soviet Union proved in defeating Nazism: for the working class, the only response to fascism, and fascist ideas, is force. PLP fights for a society where racists like Charles Murray either scurry down into the darkness of the sewer where they belong, or they face the wrath of the multiracial working class.
At Duke University, Charles gave a talk the “cognitive elite”: those with “higher intelligence levels” have better chance at economic prosperity. This is a classic racist blame-the-victim ideology that Murray first developed in 1994, along with his fellow racist Richard J. Herrnstein, in The Bell Curve. That book is a Nazi-like racist garbage disguised as social science, arguing that Black people are genetically inferior in intelligence to white people. PLP had led a modest struggle against the racist The Bell Curve then, and we continue to fight pseudo-scientific racism.
Protest at Columbia and NYU
A modest group of students, faculty, and community residents and Progressive Labor Party protested both at Columbia and NYU. PLP’s flyer was titled, “No Free Speech for Racists!”
At NYU, students organized through the Torch Club to disrupt and chant down Murray. One held a sign, “No Eugenics on Campus — Fight Fascism.” The university’s Faculty of Color Caucus submitted a letter indicting Murray’s talk as “hate and fear under the guise of scholarship and free speech.” It is inspiring to see working-class people not let racist academics off the hook. Colleges can be a site of struggle for antiracist pro-communist ideas among the students and workers.
It makes sense that a system based on racist exploitation and inequality creates institutions that perpetuate and legitimatize that racism. Despite typically having liberal bona fides, colleges happily host racists and fascists of all types. Columbia—when it’s not too busy disenfranchising Black, Latin families out of Harlem—hosted Jim Gilchrist, founder of the racist Minuteman Project; and Tommy Robinson (via Skype) the co-founder of the English Defence League, a fascist, anti-Muslim organization in the UK.
Colleges extend a welcoming hand to these and other racists because they are part of a capitalist system that is soaked in the blood of racism. Students and workers have no need for these institutions and their racism! Even when they’re not actively promoting racists, capitalist colleges are busy indoctrinating students in the ways of capitalism. Racism, individualism, nationalism, competition, isolation, elitism, and greed—these are the lessons at every college worldwide. Students at these colleges, on the other hand, like those in Vermont, Quebec, and South Africa, have protested these lessons. Their militancy and bravery should be emulated.
But we need more than militancy! We need a guiding political strategy that overthrows capitalism and the racism and sexism upon which it rests. Let’s unite workers around the world of all “races” and nationalities, men and women, gay and straight, young and old. We invite anyone interested in learning about communism to join us to celebrate May Day, the international workers holiday.
The fight over repealing Obamacare exposes the growing infighting in the ruling class. Different factions are building political movements as they vie for power they try to leverage their movement against opposing groups of capitalists. The Tea party capitalists led by the Koch Brothers were able to mobilize the Freedom Caucus politicians to send a message that the ruling class has to take them into account.
The infighting is sharpening because the current situation of the U.S. bosses is extremely unstable and there are big fights coming as the bosses sort out their differences.
The differences that are playing out over health care range from the Freedom Caucus wanting to do away with virtually all government health care to the Bernie sanders/ Keith Ellison democrats fronting for the bosses who want to give more crumbs in the form of expanding Medicaid as big wars loom on the horizon.
The factions are somewhat fluid but here is an effort to give a description of the various factions.
The Trump faction
Trump built a political movement that got him elected, probably to his own surprise. The Trump movement has been built around racist attacks on immigrants and white nationalism. Trump was supported by the billionaire Mercer family, his own money as well as what amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars of free publicity from the Breitbart news run by White Nationalist Steve Bannon who saw Trump as a way to get into the White House, as well as the main news outlets like NBC and CNN who were encouraged by the Clinton campaign to build up Trump as the easiest opponent for Clinton.
The Main wing bosses have fought to surround Trump with their guys in the form Generals and finance people they feel are reliable. At the same time the Mercer family and Steve Bannon people are fighting for their own positions. On healthcare, like most issues the Trump faction has been schizophrenic, reflecting the infighting in its own ranks. Swinging wildly from healthcare for all to promising the Freedom caucus an end to almost all mandated care.
The Main wing
The Main capitalists, the biggest oil, finance, media and tech companies including JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Apple, Google, Exxon-Mobile, the Big Three Auto makers. These are the biggest capitalists and have had the outlook of maintaining the U.S. position as the dominant capitalist power. They were the backers of the Clinton campaign and are represented by what the media refers to as the centrist politicians mainly in the Democratic Party, people such as Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters and a wing of the Republican party including John McCain, Lindsey Graham and others.
This is the group that has rallied around Obamacare as a kind of half measure to try to appease the working class but not make the insurance or drug companies give up any profits.
Freedom Caucus
Backed by the Koch Brothers and the Heritage Foundation, this group has the Tea Party base and wants to do away with all mandatory requirements for insurance. In particular they have mobilized their base of small businesses owners who are pushing back against the requirement for companies with over 50 workers to offer mandatory insurance. But the bigger issue for them is to show they have some strength after Trump was able to co-op their base during the election. The fight over Obamacare was mainly an attempt to reassert themselves.
Sanders/Ellison wing of Democratic Party
Internal fight over tactics in the Democratic Party is playing out in the wake of the Republican failure on health care. Sanders/ Ellison forces who favor a more aggressive move towards state control over U.S. capitalism and have the support of younger people in the party are calling for single-payer health care and confronted Nancy Pelosi at a town hall to demand she back the demand.
This group represents the set of bosses who believe that in order for the U.S. to remain a world power major changes have to be made to win the working class to support much bigger wars. They want to tell the drug and insurance companies that they need to cut their profits to get workers on board with their plans.
What all these faction have in common is that they cynically see the working class as pawns to be manipulated and used for their purposes. Healthcare is a matter of life and death for the working class; not a carrot to be held out or taken away. This is the real sickness of capitalism.
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Students Debate Politics in Growing Sanctuary Struggle
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- 10 April 2017 68 hits
QUEENS, NY, April 2—Following Trump’s election, LaGuardia Community College students, faculty, and staff began mobilizing to begin a Sanctuary movement. The Trump administration is increasing its’ racist and sexist attacks on the working class. They are bringing us ever closer to world war. We have to increase our efforts to organize a multiracial working class to fight back. A sanctuary movement is a good start. Let’s also make it a step on the road to a world run by the working class, communism.
The threats against immigrants, Muslims, women, and transpeople were on the minds of the more than 100 people who gathered in December. Many were politically active for the first time. At least 40 percent of students at LaGuardia Community College were born in other countries, 57 percent are female, and 86 percent are “non-white.” Even more are the children of immigrants, and many are Muslim.
Link Sanctuary Fight to Capitalist Inequality
From this initial meeting, groups have been mobilized to learn and train others about legal protections, find resources for students and family members struggling with immigration status, develop a rapid response network, integrate lessons into syllabi, and to connect with community organizations. Many of the workers and students involved in these efforts want to link the sanctuary fight to the bigger problems of capitalism, such as racist police terror, poverty, health care, education. As we build this sanctuary movement, we should expose and organize to destroy the whole capitalist system.
The college administration’s response has been to pull many of the leaders into an ad hoc committee, now dubbed LaGuardia Rising, to work with attorneys to find “suitable responses.” Staff and faculty have been told that the word “sanctuary” is a call to illegal actions, leaving many worried about their jobs.
Nevertheless the Sanctuary Coalition, a loosely connected group of committees and individuals who are dedicated to resistance, are working in parallel to train anyone who is interested about resources and basic protections for immigrant students, build a rapid response network, and disseminate information.
Town Hall: Whom Do the Cops Serve?
A town hall meeting brought in hundreds of community members in mid March, students are visiting classes with the support of faculty to educate other students, and students reached out with a table at the college Club Fair to build the movement. Many at the college are mobilized.
Some leaders are working with the administration, who assured the community that Immigration Customs Enforcement would never be allowed into classrooms: If ICE personnel come to campus with judicial warrants, college security will get the students instead. What’s the difference if you are picked up by ICE or brought by college security to ICE? At the most recent Town Hall meeting, some students discussed working with the police. This is a trap. The cops serve the billionaire bosses. They protect the bosses’ property and profits.
The concern is deep and sincere, but the movement is riddled with contradictions. Questions abound. Should students hide their immigration status to protect themselves and their families, or should they boldly declare themselves undocumented as a political action? Are students who are already registered as DREAMers at risk? Should Sanctuary activists work with the college administration? As we build this anti-racist and anti-sexist movement, questions will be answered and issues will be resolved. We invite everyone fight against anti-immigrant racism to the Progressive Labor Party’s May Day march on April 29th (see the ad on page 8).
NEW YORK CITY, April 5—The pianist hit the ivory and ebony keys. The singer used her voice, and the Haitian and church communities gathered together let out a whoop of excitement during our sixth annual fundraiser to benefit grassroots work in Haiti. 120 people attended on a miserably rainy evening in a church basement to raise funds for reforestation projects in Southeast Haiti.
The organizations at the dinner are trying to develop volunteer work within their local communities in Haiti, to reforest areas that have serious soil erosion due to the loss of great forests. In another room there was a slide show of the work being done. Several thousand dollars were collected that evening with a silent auction, a raffle and an entrance fee. The work to bring people together and the struggles to maintain the continuity of the participating groups, create a deep respect for each other. It is with this kind of practical work against a tide of racism and sexism that strengthens this growing unity.
The struggles to free Haiti from French slavery and the worker’s battles to ensure life and emancipation have never disappeared in Haiti. The battle is always to try to eke out a living in a nation that was impoverished by Western imperialist nations. For the past 75 years or so, the United States has played the role previously played by European nations. That is, drawing every penny of value possible out of the labor and the land of Haiti. United States troops have invaded and occupied Haiti so U. S. banks could collect their bloody profits. Today United Nations troops still occupy Haiti. Their biggest “contribution” is bringing cholera to this poor country. Meanwhile the various “non-profit” aid organizations mainly benefit themselves and do virtually nothing for the Haitian workers.
Haitians were the first slaves to free themselves with a revolution in 1804 and had been forced for over a 100 years to repay the value of what was “stolen” from the slave owners – namely themselves. One of the speakers said that the capitalist class would never let Haiti forget, because they still remember and tremble at the thought of the Haitian revolution. Along with fighting deforestation and all the other evils brought on by capitalism and imperialism, Haitian workers need another revolution. We need to support our Progressive Labor Party comrades in Haiti as they fight for a Haitian revolution that will be part of the worldwide revolution for communism.
At our fundraiser the Haitian style black rice, the rice and beans, griot, chicken, salads, vegetable stews, macaroni au gratin were gathered up, and taken to tables where people talked and enjoyed each other’s company, argued, and laughed. Many people who came also produced the food. The kitchen had been jumping all evening in preparation with, what appeared, as seamless collaboration between the two communities.
Then the performances began. One of the musical groups, playing jazz, had people jumping up and dancing to the rhythm. Later a Haitian group sang songs of love, of life, of struggle. The many people who could not speak Haitian Kreyol loved the sound and the cadence of the music. It is hard to express the overwhelming feeling of joyous community and solidarity.
The leader of the Haitian organization and church members gave speeches. Music and poetry were in the air, and a deeper commitment was made to future organizing. When it was time for the cleanup, every single person present moved in amazing grace and, within 15 minutes, the hall was almost pristine. The kitchen took longer. Everybody helped. This is how everyone should live. Without each other we live in the capitalist nightmare of isolation. This was a small antidote for all the isolation and madness of a society that values money over people – that values profit over the needs of the many.
At this gathering, many of us could see both the “beloved community” of the Civil Rights movement, and the future of communism. Care for those who need the care and destroy the capitalism that creates poverty, division, racism, sexism and war. The future is bright!
As May Day, the international workers’ holiday, nears, a look at the world’s first success at workers’ power:
One hundred forty-six years ago, in 1871, armed workers ran the French bosses out of Paris and established the Paris Commune. France was a world superpower. Germany had a growing industrial base and its own super-power ambitions. "We, the members of the International Working Men's Association, know of no frontiers," declared the communists. But competition between French and German capitalists led to war in 1870. The French army was soon routed.
The Parisian masses, though sympathetic to communism, were still swayed by nationalism. They demanded arms to defend the city from the besieging German army. The bourgeois government organized most adult males into its National Guard. However, these Guard units, made up of the working class, organized their own leadership committees in each district and a workers' Central Committee to unite them.
On March 17, 1871, the government gave in to the German army and fled to suburban Versailles. When troops returned the next day to fetch arms they had left behind, angry workers confronted them. The troops refused orders to shoot into the crowd. They handed their weapons to the workers.
The Central Committee of the National Guard took over City Hall and ran up the Red Flag of workers' revolution. For the first time in the history of class society, the working class had taken power.
Building Equality
The Central Committee called for new elections. "The men who will serve you best are those whom you choose from amongst yourselves," it urged the workers. Red flags were everywhere.
The Commune kept the bourgeois form of elections, but the victorious workers did not simply take over the bourgeois state machine. They smashed it and began to build something brand new: the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
The masses were the real masters of the Commune. Twenty thousand activists attended small club meetings daily to offer criticisms and make suggestions. Elected officials considered all proposals and usually acted on them. Officials who disregarded the masses were subject to immediate recall.
The workers' government disbanded the bourgeois Guard units. It suspended all decrees of the old government. Workers pulled down the Victory Column, symbol of French imperialism. They elected a HungarianGerman communist to their governing body, declaring that the Commune represented workers everywhere.
The workers' government wiped out state support of religion and took over church property. It capped officials' salaries so that none made more than a worker's wage. It took away bosses' rights to fine workers. It took over workshops that had been closed because of the economic depression and turned them over to workers' cooperatives.
This working-class dictatorship was the necessary prerequisite to abolishing the wage-slavery of capitalism. The Commune held power for ten short weeks. It proved for all time that the working class can, must, and will rule society.
Why Did The Workers Lose in 1871?
The French bourgeoisie used tax money taken from the workers' sweat to pay off the German government to release French prisoners of war. In May, after a bloody civil war in the streets, these soldiers re-took Paris for the bosses. The communist movement was quick to draw some of the lessons of this heroic and historic struggle. Others we only recognized a century later.
Workers need to smash the bosses' state. But the Commune did not go far enough. It was lenient with counter-revolutionaries and renegades. It allowed the French bourgeoisie to regroup, instead of organizing a Red Army to hunt it down. The bourgeoisie was not lenient at all after it crushed the Commune, murdering 100,000 workers (including children). The Commune was not able to link up with Communes in Lyons, Marseilles, and other cities. The working class dictatorship needs to arm and organize the masses, but it also needs a Red Army.
The Commune organized workers into political clubs, but not into a Communist party. There was plenty of democracy (discussion of policy) but not much centralism (united action). The political form of bourgeois democracy undermined the working-class goals of the Commune.
The Commune did not move quickly enough to abolish capitalism. Had it expropriated the Bank of France, the French bourgeoisie would have had a much harder time raising a counter-revolutionary army.
The Commune recognized the need for equality among workers and revolutionary cadre. But we can see now that equalizing wages was no substitute for abolishing the wage system altogether.
As we march for Communism this May Day, the Progressive Labor Party will carry forward the spirit of the Paris Commune.
For more on the Paris Commune and the lessons communists drew from it, read Karl Marx's book, The Civil War In France; Frederick Engels, The Great Lessons of the Paris Commune.