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    Estados Unidos. “¡Te cubro las espaldas!”. Reflexiones de los piquetes de los camioneros de Amazon

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    Este artículo originalmente fue publicado en Resumen Latinoamericano el 27 diciembre, 2024

    En un esfuerzo por llevar al gigante capitalista, Amazon, a la mesa de negociaciones para un contrato, siete instalaciones de Amazon se declararon en huelga el jueves 19 de diciembre a las 6 AM. trabajadores de DBK4 en la ciudad de Nueva York; DGT8 en Atlanta; DFX4, DAX5, DAX8 en el sur de California; DCK6 en San Francisco y DIL7 en Skokie, Illinois, iniciaron la huelga. El presidente de los Teamsters (camioneros), Sean O’Brien, se dirigió al propietario de Amazon, Jeff Bezos: “Si su paquete se retrasa durante las vacaciones, puede culpar a la codicia insaciable de Amazon. Le dimos a Amazon una fecha límite clara para sentarse a la mesa y hacer lo correcto para nuestros miembros. Lo ignoraron”. Bezos tiene una fortuna de 238.000 millones de dólares. El trabajador promedio de Amazon se lleva a casa menos de $ 30,000 por año. Amazon generó más de 620.000 millones de dólares en ingresos durante los doce meses que finalizaron el 30 de septiembre de 2024, lo que supone un aumento del 11,93% con respecto al año pasado, pero se niega a reconocer los esfuerzos de sindicalización de los trabajadores. Los trabajadores erigieron un cerdo gigante para simbolizar la codicia antiobrera de Bezos y los multimillonarios.

    Si alguna vez hubo una, esta es una lucha de David contra Goliat.

    Una instantánea sociológica del proletariado de la ciudad de Nueva York 

    Los trabajadores son una instantánea del proletariado de la ciudad de Nueva York. Son antillanos, mexicanos, dominicanos, dominicanos americanos, trinitenses, americanos, etc. Muchos llegaron aquí desde uno de los países ocupados por los Estados Unidos, en busca de un sueño. Lo que encontraron fue más lucha de clases.

    Esto es Sunnyside, donde Queens se funde con Brooklyn. Todos los trabajadores tienen otros trabajos o actividades secundarias. Esta es la puta ciudad de Nueva York. Sobrevives o no sobrevives. Bajo el capitalismo, a nadie le importas una mierda. Las redes sociales de los trabajadores reflejan esta realidad económica. Desmond canta calipso en clubes los fines de semana. Otros trabajan en seguridad o conducen Uber Eats. Steve se mueve en los clubes a escondidas. Juan Luis es un artista dominicano de hip hop. Inventan movidas cada vez más creativos para llegar a fin de mes. Necesitan mejores salarios. Necesitan un seguro. Necesitan días de baja de enfermedad. Necesitan compensación para trabajadores. Necesitan seguridad laboral. Como dice el inmortal poema de Pedro Pietri “Obituario puertorriqueño “: estos trabajadores han estado luchando toda su vida y nunca han tenido un descanso. Tienen familiares que mantener aquí y otros en sus países de origen. Las remesas son el alma de sus patrias, que aún están en las garras del imperialismo estadounidense.

    Hay madres y padres en el frente de piquetes durante el día que traen a sus hijos y familias. Los niños cantan con tanto entusiasmo como sus intrépidos padres. La tripulación nocturna tiene su propia estética. Pasan el coquito navideño (ponche de huevo a base de ron) y comida casera picante mientras el dembow (rap dominicano) y Bruce Springsteen resuenan de fondo. Juan Carlos, Belinda y un equipo se amontonan alrededor de pequeños calefactores que intercambian historias de guerra desde el interior de las instalaciones de Amazon que se elevan sobre nosotros. Comparten música, cantos y café. Después de la puesta del sol, Ramón reparte chocolate caliente. Al ser liberado de la cárcel, Tony, el más querido de los organizadores de los Teamsters, comienza a bailar con una líder obrera, Stacey. Nosotros, corean: “¿Quiénes somos? ¡Camioneros!” y “¿Qué queremos? Un sindicato. ¿Cuándo lo queremos? ¡Ahora!”

    Solo el proletariado de Nueva York podía mantener un cierto nivel de entusiasmo caribeño en una noche de Queens a -6 °C. Muchos sueñan despiertos con estar de vuelta en casa en tierras de 30 °C con sus familias y luchan contra la nostalgia, acurrucándose más cerca unos de otros.

    Y aquí estábamos, en una noche más en Nueva York, marchando con gente de clase trabajadora de toda tez y acento, luchando por sobrevivir…

    Supervivencia hasta la revolución…

    En el piquete

    El primer día de la huelga, la policía se llevó esposados a los trabajadores que intentaban enganchar a los esquiroles. Un trabajador dominicano grita que los monos azules se están acercando. Intentamos evitar las detenciones, a pesar de la falange de jakes (jerga de Qeens para referirse a los cerdos) y los furgones policiales. Gustavo comienza a cantar, del que se hacen eco cientos de personas: “¡A la mierda Be-zos! ¡que le jodan a Be-zos!”

    En el centro de entrega de DBK-4 Amazon ubicado en Maspeth, Queens, los rompehuelgas pasaron, protegidos por la policía. Algunos se cubren la cara porque sienten vergüenza; otros porque nadie les enseñó a creer en sí mismos ni en la clase trabajadora. Algunos nos dijeron que entienden la necesidad de esta huelga, pero que tienen que enviar dinero a El Salvador o Barbados para las fiestas. Esto es realpolitik. Los hechos objetivos son obstinados; Las políticas de identidad son dogmáticas. Esto es Queens, el barrio de “Hazte rico o muere en el intento”. Algunos trabajadores buscan ser la próxima Nicki Minaj o 50 Cent, muchos menos el próximo Joe Hill o Mother Jones. En la jerga marxista, llamamos a esto Falsa Conciencia. Este es el paraíso individualista y consumista, un paraíso antiobrero.

    El aliento de los trabajadores es visible mientras condenan el ascenso de Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk y otros oligarcas por encima de nosotros en esta sociedad de castas. Las letras azules fluorescentes A, M, A, Z, O N iluminan la calle. Ponen música para bailar reggae a todo volumen y un DJ local que trabaja como repartidor de Amazon y saca música de todos los rincones de las Américas. El sábado, misteriosamente, hubo una inundación masiva cuando mangueras gigantes arrojaron una avalancha de agua helada en la acera donde los trabajadores estaban haciendo piquetes.

    Miles de conductores, maestros y miembros de la comunidad de UPS, incluidos el Partido Comunista Estadounidense, Infrared y Midwestern Marx, han salido en apoyo de todo el país y se han unido a los piquetes. Un miembro de la ACP del estado de Nueva York y organizador laboral expuso la estrategia:

    “Como comunistas americanos aspiramos a ser tribunos o defensores del pueblo americano. Hemos apoyado a los trabajadores de cualquier manera material, con alimentos, calentadores, etc. Transmitimos sus voces crudas y sin filtros al público a través de nuestros medios de comunicación. Aprendimos de ellos y obtuvimos una comprensión más profunda de sus preocupaciones y del carácter del proletariado en nuestras respectivas zonas. Para nosotros, como partido joven, fue una victoria. Aspiramos a organizar a los trabajadores estadounidenses, independientemente de sus opiniones políticas, liberales o conservadoras. Las luchas sindicales fueron la escuela de organización que Lenin destacó”.


    Preparación para la huelga

    Como han enfatizado tanto la prensa burguesa como los Teamsters, esta es “la huelga más grande en la historia de Amazon”.

    La primera huelga registrada de Amazon ocurrió en Minnesota en 2018 durante el Prime Day de Amazon. El Awood Center, un grupo de defensa sin fines de lucro en Minnesota para los inmigrantes de África Oriental, organizó la huelga. Las demandas eran de reducción de la carga de trabajo, mejores medidas de seguridad, salarios más altos y una mayor seguridad laboral, un tema recurrente en las huelgas que siguieron. La huelga no afectó a la producción porque no participaron suficientes trabajadores por miedo e indiferencia. Sin embargo, recibió una enorme atención de la prensa burguesa, ya que fue la primera protesta significativa en un sitio de Amazon en los EE. UU.

    Desde entonces ha habido pequeñas olas de protesta, con Chris Smalls en el almacén JFK-8 liderando una huelga en marzo de 2020, debido a la propagación de COVID-19 en el almacén. Después de esto, debido a la difusión de información por las redes sociales y la prensa burguesa, los trabajadores en varios otros lugares, a menudo con “la ayuda” de organizaciones sin fines de lucro, lanzaron acciones a pequeña escala. La siguiente acción importante fue en abril de 2021, en las estaciones de entrega DIL3 en Gage Park, Chicago. Los repartidores se marcharon durante el turno. A esto le siguió en diciembre de 2021 una huelga en las estaciones de entrega DIL3 y DLN2 en Cicero, Illinois. Esta última fue la primera huelga en varios sitios en Amazon y ambas fueron organizadas por Amazonians United. A esto le siguió la sindicalización de las instalaciones JFK-8 en Staten Island, con el recién formado sindicato Amazon Labor Union (ALU) en abril de 2022.

    Vemos un patrón aquí. Hay histeria por parte de la prensa burguesa sin mayor impacto en la producción. Bernie Sanders y falsos políticos de izquierda como Alexandria Ocasio Cortez le dieron todo su apoyo, adulando tales victorias. Los liberales se especializan en celebrar victorias vacías y simbólicas. Los trabajadores luchan en el espíritu de James Connolly: “Porque nuestras demandas más moderadas son: Solo queremos la tierra…”

    El ALU decidió en junio de 2024 afiliarse al sindicato Teamsters. Después de luchas internas, el Sindicato de Trabajadores de Amazon se separó con Chris Smalls como líder y se reorganizó a fines de julio de 2024. Con la asociación de los Teamsters y el conjunto del ALU, los Teamsters avanzaron en su iniciativa de organizar las instalaciones de Amazon. Esto introdujo un gran sindicato con muchos organizadores y fondos en esta lucha y llevó a la sindicalización de miles de trabajadores adicionales. A pesar de los cientos de miles de dólares de los Teamsters invertidos en este esfuerzo organizativo, los resultados han sido deficientes, por decir lo menos. La verdadera prueba de un sindicato es su capacidad para organizar a las masas en una acción colectiva y hasta ahora se han quedado cortos.

    La esperanza de los organizadores es que estas acciones despierten a las masas dormidas de trabajadores de Amazon a la acción y generen suficiente impulso para llevar a Amazon a la mesa. En un mitin de clausura antes de las vacaciones de fin de año, los organizadores laborales informaron a los trabajadores de sus derechos Weingarten en caso de que haya represalias contra ellos en el trabajo.

    ¿Qué son los derechos de Weingarten?

    El derecho a un testigo.

    Los uniones se crean sobre la base del principio de que todos los trabajadores merecen un trato justo y respeto. Esto incluye asegurarse de que los gerentes no utilicen medidas disciplinarias para castigarlos injustamente a usted y a sus compañeros de trabajo.

    Si un supervisor lo lleva a una sala para hablar y cree que puede ser disciplinado, puede sentir que está entre la espada y la pared.

    Pero cuando está en una unión, nunca está solo. Siempre tiene el derecho de llamar a los representantes de su unión o lugar de trabajo para que lo respalden en estas situaciones. Estos son sus derechos de Weingarten, que reciben su nombre de un caso judicial histórico con el mismo nombre.

    En el caso Weingarten, la Corte Suprema dictaminó que los trabajadores representados por una unión tienen derecho a la representación de la unión en todas las reuniones o conversaciones con los supervisores o gerentes que el trabajador crea razonablemente que podrían conducir a medidas disciplinarias. Estas reuniones o conversaciones incluyen conversaciones en el piso de trabajo, en las áreas de trabajo, en las oficinas, por teléfono e incluso fuera del centro.

    ¿Por qué debo ejercer mis derechos de Weingarten?

    Los delegados y representantes de la unión están capacitados para tratar las medidas disciplinarias, y su función en estos casos es actuar como testigos y como asesores. Una representación de la unión está ahí para:

    Exigir a la gerencia que explique por qué se convocó la reunión

    Hablar con usted antes y durante la reunión sobre las razones por las que podría ser disciplinado  

    Escuchar todo lo que se dice y solicitar cualquier aclaración

    Detener los cuestionamientos injustos

    Tomar los descansos necesarios para una conversación individual

    y brindar asesoramiento privado y en tiempo real

    El capitalismo tardío: sus desafíos y lecciones

    El marxista-leninista Amílcar Cabral siempre decía: “No digas mentiras, no reclames victorias fáciles…:

    La producción apenas se ha visto afectada. En DBK4, donde estábamos, la mayoría de los trabajadores cruzaron la línea de piquete, a pesar de la increíble atención mediática que este esfuerzo había recibido de la prensa burguesa. A la medianoche del viernes 21 de diciembre, en las instalaciones de Staten Island, donde los Teamsters representan a 5.500 trabajadores, pocos trabajadores salieron a caminar por la línea de piquete. Había significativamente más izquierdistas que trabajadores, lo que muestra la desconexión en el corazón de esta lucha.

    Se trata de una huelga minoritaria contra un gigante capitalista que se esconde detrás de capas de subterfugios legales y trucos de subcontratación. Bezos incluso afirma que los repartidores no son “sus trabajadores”, sino que son empleados de Cornucopia y otros subcontratistas. Los multimillonarios ahora pueden esconderse detrás de las subsidiarias para distanciarse de la explotación de los cientos de miles de trabajadores que los enriquecen.

    El problema clave con esta huelga y la organización de trabajadores transitorios como los trabajadores de Amazon y Starbucks, es que los organizadores principales, el personal pagado del sindicato, aún no han escuchado la sabiduría de las masas. Intentan inyectar un espíritu de lucha en la clase obrera y sustituir a los trabajadores. Los trabajadores temporales no quieren trabajar para Amazon por el resto de sus vidas, atrapados en este trabajo aburrido, repetitivo y agotador. Como admite incluso Forbes, uno de los principales portavoces de los multimillonarios, un alto porcentaje de todas las lesiones en el lugar de trabajo en los EE. UU. ocurren en Amazon. La tasa de rotación es de un asombroso 150 por ciento por año. Estas son algunas de las razones por las que hay poca lealtad a la profesión.

    Los Teamsters están tratando de llevar a Bezos a la mesa de negociaciones, pero hay una falta de unidad entre la base del movimiento, los 750.000 trabajadores, que son fácilmente reemplazados y entran y salen constantemente del trabajo. En los últimos tres días, The Washington Post de Bezos ha publicado al menos seis artículos diferentes que cubren la huelga desde la perspectiva de los accionistas. Continúan descorchando champán a medida que sus acciones suben y sus propias empresas de medios glorifican una lucha condenada al fracaso. Los analistas laborales explican la lógica de la clase dominante. Apuntalan luchas imposibles de ganar, complementarias a sus objetivos de la continua ocupación del pueblo estadounidense y de los pueblos del mundo.

    La prensa burguesa es el arma del enemigo y se utiliza para engañar y desviar a las fuerzas revolucionarias. Twitter, o X, es territorio enemigo diseñado para minar nuestras energías militantes. No podemos confiar en las redes sociales para descubrir nuestros deberes para con el trabajador estadounidense. Debemos profundizar nuestra investigación independiente, utilizando nuestras propias fuerzas, y convertirnos en el factor decisivo que asegure que los trabajadores no solo luchen, sino que ganen.

    Nos corresponde a nosotros, como comunistas, determinar las realidades concretas y la correlación de fuerzas dentro de cada lucha obrera particular que surja. No basta con apoyar a los trabajadores en huelga, sino que también hay que considerar por qué es así La gran mayoría no se declaró en huelga, sin simplemente descartarlos como “esquiroles y traidores”. Debemos seguir tendiéndoles la mano y escuchar sus voces.

    La ACP está llevando a cabo una investigación más exhaustiva sobre el trabajo en nuestras regiones y a nivel nacional. Tratamos de comprender: ¿Cuál es el carácter del proletariado en nuestras regiones particulares? ¿Cuáles son las industrias más críticas y dónde son los trabajadores más fuertes? ¿Cuáles son las luchas que esconde la prensa burguesa? ¿Qué luchas tienen más probabilidades de ganar y cuáles necesitan más apoyo? ¿Qué luchas promueven los intereses generales del proletariado estadounidense y lo acercan a la toma del poder? ¿Cómo podemos impulsar la inmersión “sensorial” y la participación práctica de todos los cuadros, en particular de los terminales en línea?

    La ACP considera que la investigación social y la participación activa de la comunidad son absolutamente esenciales para responder a estas preguntas y como la medida más honesta de quiénes son los líderes emergentes.

    ¡Te cubro las espaldas!”

    Para todos los detractores, que dicen que los Bezos, Musk, Clinton y Trump son
    intocables, los proletarios no nos sentimos derrotados.

    24 horas antes de la más sagrada de las fiestas familiares, los trabajadores se mantuvieron firmes. Estos cinco días de diciembre nos han enseñado mucho sobre el proletariado estadounidense, sobre nosotros mismos y sobre nuestra relación con la clase obrera. Una y otra vez, aquellos de nosotros en el fragor de la lucha de clases, escuchamos cuánto habían crecido los trabajadores de Amazon como amigos, hermanas y hermanos y, lo que es más importante, como camaradas. Un líder obrero se quitó la calavera de los Teamsters Amazon para prometer su apoyo a cualquiera que necesitara ayuda para seguir adelante. Con este simple gesto, inyectaba optimismo allí donde los multimillonarios insistían en la división, el sectarismo y el pesimismo. Decenas de repartidores y repartidoras comentaron que nunca habían pasado tanto tiempo con sus compañeros de trabajo. Acurrucados alrededor de calefactores, prometieron apoyarse unos a otros para avanzar, decididos a atraer a más de sus compañeros de trabajo a las líneas de piquete. El organizador de los Teamsters, Tony, cerró un mitin final antes de la víspera de Navidad exclamando: “Esto es solo el comienzo. Ninguno de nosotros, como individuos, somos héroes. Juntos todos somos héroes. Somos la chispa. ¡Inspiraremos a decenas de miles de personas a hacer huelga!”

    Book Review: ‘Before Crips’ Dismantles Dominant Narrative on Gangs

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    Originally published at Toward Freedom on November 29, 2022

    Before Crips: Fussin’, Cussin’, and Discussin’ Among South Los Angeles Juvenile Gangs by John C. Quicker and Akil S. Batani-Khalfani (Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 2022)

    For the past several decades, the media has severely manipulated the question of gangs and their socio-economic origins. John C. Quicker and Akil S. Batani-Khalfani’s new book, Before Crips: Fussin’, Cussin’, and Discussin’ among South Los Angeles Juvenile Gangs, exposes the mainstream stigmas and half-truths surrounding gangs. It also explores the true history of the South Los Angeles street organizations that predated the Crips and the Bloods.

    Drawing on research by other progressive scholars and ethnographers, the two authors chart the landscape of street groups and their way of life before the Black Liberation Movement that emerged in the 1960s. They found that the true legacy of the early street groups was one of unity, self-defense and resistance, not one of bullying, crime and violence.

    Letting the Real Experts Speak

    Quicker, a sociology professor for the past 32 years at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and Batani-Khalfani, or Bird, one of the founders of the Slausons street group, teamed up to write this timely book.

    Challenging the dominant definition of “gangs,” the authors prefer to use the term “street organization” or “street group,” because they “most accurately characterize the juvenile assemblies of early South Los Angeles” (page 62). The veterans and founders of early groups, such as the Businessmen, the Slausons, the D’Artagnans and dozens of other street groups, called themselves “neighborhoods, hoods, barrios, clubs, social clubs, brotherhoods and sets” (page 56). Respondents the authors interviewed saw many college fraternities, the police and other dominant societal groups as fitting the conventional definition of a “gang” (page 43). The authors conclude, “A group is a gang when those who control the definitions say it is.” Citing sociologists C. Wright Mills and G. William Domhoff, they write, “Defining right from wrong and good from bad is primarily a prerogative of the power elite or the upper class who accomplish it directly or indirectly through their operatives” (page 43).

    Throughout the text, the two authors pull no punches debunking racist and classist sociology that masquerades as “Gang Studies,” permeating the media and the academy. They posit their mission is to allow the “experts’ experts” to speak. Bird, and others who have lived this reality, speak throughout the book and challenge the dominant canon. For example, they expose the control perspective narrative that posits that gang leaders are the most “sociopathic” members. Drawing on German sociologist Max Weber’s theory of “charismatic leadership,” they show how the Slauson leaders were  really “heroes” up against “systematic suffering” (page 124).

    Beyond Crips builds on the research of sociologist David Brotherton, whose work revealed “a discussion about gangs is never just about gangs. It is about history, morality, politics, responsibility, and how the researchers view the world and the society of which they and the gangs are part” (page 14). They collect their data from “oral histories from living experientialist historians” (page 20). The extensive interviews they conducted tracked the individual, family and community backgrounds of key early South Los Angeles street-group figures, such as Chinaman, Roach, Kumasi, Wild Willie Poo Poo and so many other larger-than-life street sages who paved the way for future generations.

    In reflecting on the social forces that brought them together into “bands of brothers,” early street-group members would invoke the phrase, “rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.” In other words, they would rather go to court for defending themselves, facing 12 jury members, than be carried by six coffin bearers to their burial). Some of those social forces included the second great migration from the U.S. South triggered by World War II, “economic racism” (page 25), the “ghettoization” of Watts (page 26), and the need for self-defense against the police and white supremacist gangs that had migrated from the South (page 32).

    The authors provide an ethnographic overview that goes beyond the “if it bleeds, it leads” sensationalistic news headlines (page 302). They look at women’s participation in gangs (page 183), the relative lack of drug use beyond alcohol and marijuana (page 269), and the lower crime patterns prior to the 1970s (page 277). The study reviews major hegemonic and counter-hegemonic literature on street groups, establishing no accurate study of “gangs” can arise from outside the communities that gave birth to them.

    Born in a State of Suspended Animation’

    The final chapters look at the leadership of “Mayor of the Ghetto” Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and the Black Panther Party, to which he belonged. Many Slausons and street group members joined the Panthers. Others would have, too, if it were not for the hand of the U.S. state. To understand the rise of the Crips and Bloods, so vilified by the power structure, one has to understand the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) and the mass repression of the Black Power Movement. In 1969 alone, the FBI and U.S. police departments targeted and executed 28 Black Panther leaders.

    The final chapter begins to explain the rise of the Crips and Bloods and explores how what would become “modern gangs” were “unable to embrace the ideology,” as in the Black Panther’s ideology of liberation (page 299). The social vacuum left by deindustrialization and state violence beheaded the leadership of the most oppressed communities. Kumasi, a former street-group leader who is now a community organizer, further explains (page 332):

    “The original Crips came out of our neighborhood. They were the children we passed by every day and paid no attention to. But they watched us. We had something to attach ourselves to, to connect with—the great personalities of our parents’ generation—but they didn’t. They were born in a state of suspended animation, totally disconnected, like a planet out of orbit. They were made in America.”

    Before Crips takes its place alongside Brotherton’s and liberation theologian Luis Barrios’ The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation: Street Politics and the Transformation of a New York City Gang, as well as the work of the recently deceased author Mike Davis, ethnographer Dwight Conquergood and other progressive scholars. Like the must-see documentaries, “Bastards of the Party,” “Black and Gold” and “Crips and Bloods: Made in America,” this new book centers the voices of the organic intellectuals who have lived, fought and died in this reality.

    Book Review: ‘Coup’ Recounts How the Bolivian People Foiled Another U.S.-Backed Attempt At Recolonization

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    Originally published at Toward Freedom on April 14, 2022

    Coup: A Story of Violence and Resistance in Bolivia, by Linda Farthing and Thomas Becker (Haymarket Books: Chicago, 2021)

    A new book, Coup: A Story of Violence and Resistance in Bolivia, provides an in-depth, balanced view of the 2019 coup and the ongoing Bolivian revolutionary process. Journalist Linda Farthing and attorney Thomas Becker’s 306-page book evaluates the balance of class forces that led to the coup, as well as the anti-imperialist forces who were ultimately able to repel it and seize political power again in the plurinational state of 11.4 million.

    The Plurinational State of Bolivia Emerges

    In 2006, Bolivia embarked upon a new path, with an emphasis on social benefits reminiscent of revolutions past, from the Soviet Union to Nicaragua to Grenada.

    The plurinational leadership, representing 36 different Indigenous languages, fought against a legacy of white supremacy, which many experienced as “apartheid without pass laws” (30). (Pass laws were used in South Africa to police Africans, forcing them to carry identification at all times.) In Bolivia, they established the Ministry of Institutional Transparency and Fight Against Corruption to uproot corrupt interests and clientelism sabotaging government attempts at reform (33). Social movements were now part of the people’s government. Part II of the book, titled “Fourteen Years of the MAS,” charts these enormous social gains that made it clear to the world that the decolonization of every facet of society, from the educational system to the media, was possible (71). MAS stands for Movimiento al Socialismo, or Movement Toward Socialism.

    At the helm of this long overdue social transformation was coca farmer, trade unionist and veteran of the Cochabamba Water War and Gas Conflict, Juan Evo Morales Ayma. Morales emerged as the inspiring local and international representative of the Aymara, Quechua, Uru, and other Indigenous nationalities and working-class mestizos long marginalized in Bolivian politics and the economy. Every September at the United Nations General Assembly, Morales—as Bolivia’s president—articulated a defense of Pachamama, the Andean Earth Mother, spearheading a trailblazing, international environmental movement from the bottom. At the same time, MAS leadership, particularly Morales, was present in Managua, Havana and Caracas, forging an internationalist, Bolivarian unity project.

    It was clear to all anti-imperialist observers that Bolivia and the global hegemon to the north—the United States—were on a collision course. In 2008, MAS leadership ordered U.S. ambassador Philip Goldberg to leave the country after they found out USAID had used its Office of Transition Initiatives to give $4.5 million to the pro-secessionist Santa Cruz departmental government. The Bolivians then expelled the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency from their country.

    Supporters of profound social change inside and outside of Bolivia wondered: How long before imperialism and their local agents seek to decapitate this vital leadership and halt the progressive social changes under way?

    ‘Black November’

    Like all U.S.-backed coups in South America and the world over, this one was based on violence and intimidation.

    Cover of Coup, by Linda Farthing and Thomas Becker (2021)

    Farthing and Becker document the mobilization of fascist groupings based out of the European enclave of Santa Cruz, as well as police raids targeting MAS leaders and the destruction of the wiphala and other Indigenous symbols. Lighter-skinned European descendants and mestizos screamed “F*ck Pachamama,” blamed the MAS for the corruption that existed in the country, and forced Morales and other leaders to go into hiding and exile (141).

    Once in office, Añez and her cabinet picks worked to undo 13 years of social gains. They retired their embassies from progressive countries, kicked out 725 Cuban doctors, and re-established relations with the United States and Israel (166).

    In November 2019, 35 people were murdered for standing up to the coup (155).

    The class-conscious researchers dedicate chapter 5 to documenting the extreme, racist repression to which millions of Bolivians were subjected. Through interviews with massacre survivors, the authors reconstruct how soldiers shot into crowds that had marched outside of the city of Cochabamba, turning another city called Sacaba into a “war zone” (147). “At the end of the day, Añez’s fourth in office, state forces had killed at least 10 and injured over 120 protesters and bystanders. All casualties were Indigenous, not a single police officer or soldier was harmed” (149).

    When Lucho Arce took power as president in 2021, he recognized the blood that was shed to restore MAS to power, “asking for a moment of silence for those killed in Senkata, El Alto; Sacaba, Cochabamba; Montero, Santo Cruz, Betanzo, Potosi, Zona Sur La Paz; Pedregal, La Paz” (194).

    Resuming the Path of Revolution

    On November 9, Morales returned to his homeland. Millions came out into the streets, converging on Chapare, a MAS base, to see their humble leader, who never stopped standing up to the U.S. empire and their local agents. Admiring families brought him his favorite meal, chuño (freeze-dried potatoes) and charque (dehydrated meat), expressing how Morales “has made us proud to be Indigenous” and “we wouldn’t be here without Evo” (203).

    Arce was the economic minister under Morales. He represents the ongoing defense and promotion of the class interests of the poor. Arce’s government presented this month an economic reconstruction program dedicated to building additional housing projects for the underprivileged, infusing $2.6 billion into the economy to satisfy mass consumer demands, opening up lines of credit, placing taxes on personal fortunes above $4.3 million, and increasing subsidies and pension plans (200).

    Farthing and Becker present a balanced view of the Bolivian experience anti-imperialists everywhere can learn from. They don’t hesitate to dive into MAS’s challenges, excesses and mistakes. They contextualize the errors within centuries of Spanish colonial bureaucracy and underdevelopment. Potosi historian Camilo Katari also examines this wicked inheritance and how it continues to plague the Bolivian state today. Revolutions, now in the driver’s seat of history, don’t just attract the best of us. Careerists, opportunists, and other neocolonial bitter-enders jostle within local and national bureaucracies to secure their own sinecures and petty interests.

    The Bolivarian Camp Pushes Forward

    Bolivia occupies a unique space in the U.S. left’s imagination. Sometimes it may seem like they are spared some of the harshest neoliberal critiques. The truth is CNN en español and other corporate outlets continue to function as mouthpieces for the Añez camp and vilify Bolivia’s process. The full slate of corporate media outlets and leftist-liberal outlets go after MAS arguably as hard as they go after Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba.

    Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela—the anchors of the Bolivarian camp—have been spearheading the multi-centered global process. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro recently finished high-level meetings with Nicaraguan and South African leadership to continue building unity against the United States’ hegemony. These maroon states—those in which a large percentage of the population is of African descent—represent a permanent threat to the unipolarity U.S. transnationals are hellbent on imposing around the globe.

    Coup is an important contribution, lest we forget where we need to stand and fight at this historical moment as neoliberalism and unipolarity are on the wane and a multipolar world surges forward from below.

    America’s Worst Dad 

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    Dedicated to Viviana and Vinny:

    Somersaulting over translucent horizons

    with the levity of the ancestors

    & the lightheartedness of our parents

    My son Ernesto was nine years old in the summer of 2011. I applied for and received a research grant from the Professional Staff Congress, the union for professors at the largest university system in the country, the City University of New York (CUNY). We traveled to Maui and the Big Island to visit friends and research how the U.S. government and elite agribusiness interests coerced and trafficked Puerto Rican jibaros (peasants) to the Hawaiian islands to toil in sugar cane and pineapple plantations in the early 1900’s. These rich tracts of land were owned exclusively by the oligarchs of the “Big Five,” Castle & Cooke, Alexander & Baldwin, C. Brewer & Co., H. Hackfeld & Co. (later named American Factors) and Theo H. Davies & Co. Our friends in the working-class neighborhoods far away from Honolulu proudly wore t-shirts that read “I am HawaiiaChinaFilaPortRican and proud!” The national slogan spoke to the diverse ancestry of a nation of some 1,000,000 Native Hawaiians who have a mix of “native Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese and Puerto Rican ancestry.”

    I took Ernesto hiking through the steep rungs of Mauna Loa volcano. He was overwhelmed by the grueling climbs, but he fought through, too proud to complain. In the early evening, I asked him if he wanted to learn how to drive on the top of Mauna Loa. His legs could not reach the break and accelerator. He sat on my lap. I had Biggie Smalls and 112’s 1996 classic “Only You” on repeat as he learned to smooth out the initial herky-jerky movement an untamed car makes. We had fun on our trip. We camped out with native Hawaiian communities who had been pushed out of their family and ancestral lands by one of the highest real estate markets in the country. Our favorite memory was a specific utterance of Hawaiian Creole that the native islanders spoke. One displaced worker, Uncle Keanu, was squatting on the beach playing with his dog and telling us stories of Waianae and Makaha resistance against police evictions. We stayed in his makeshift camp, making friends who I keep in touch with until today. Uncle Keanu’s signature phrase was “Fuck a booby right here!” as he called his dog back to him. He kept his rifle close in case any Hawaii Five-o’s dared to return to evict him and his family. 

    The following summer of 2012, I took my son to hang out and box with the Inmaculada Boxing Club in the 6 counties in the north of Ireland, divorced from the 26-county Republic. It was marching season in Occupied Ireland.

    By night, the bonfires roared across West Belfast. Many a colonial Union Jack met its incendiary fate hung above 40 feet of wooden crates alongside other occupying enemy flags. This was Ireland Ireland. Green. Bold. Nationalist. The local Catholic youngsters kept the police entertained and busy all night.

    When the paddy wagons stopped at the intersection of West Falls Road, the local ruffian‘s pounded two by fours over the peelers’ (Belfast slang for police or pigs) windshields. The 12-year-old urban guerrillas lobbed bricks, stones and molotov cocktails at the police who didn’t dare get too close. Former IRA commanders dressed as uncles took a swig of Guinness applauding the lads with hands that were not guaranteed to have five fingers. These were anti-colonial snipers and anti-humiliation bombers’ hands.

    Ernesto was right there with his peers and sprouting comrades. He had turned 10 years old the month before. One social worker masquerading as a reveler whispered to the local gossip girls that the other side of the pond brought “America’s worst dad” back to Ol’ Ireland.

    The Hunts Point section of the Bronx has long been known for its infamous alleyways and boulevards with the freshest drugs and baddest prostitutes. Hunts Point always had a reputation that preceded itself. A fatal overdose brought the faithful-to-death forgotten herds scampering for the most sought after of fixes. Boyfriends met their girlfriends and husbands met their wives outside the six train or at the Bx 6 bus stop because it was too dangerous for the women to walk home alone at any time of the day. Addicts screamed at dealers, showing off their punctured and penetrated veins as proof that they were not undercover cops and were worthy of their heroin and fentanyl. I taught my son how to drive in Hunts Point. I made a video for Facebook of “the youngest Dominican taxi driver in the history of the Bronx.” Family members felt I was being reckless with my son, raising their objections under my post and in real life. Someone called Children Protection Services on me. As I told the CPS agents who arrived at my home the next night, “driving is a skill.” By the time Ernesto could reach the steering wheel and brakes, he drove like a man. I have observed his nerves of steel under extreme duress. I have also witnessed him fall 100 times. He has stood right back up every time. 

    Lenore Skenazy was “America’s worst mom.” In 2008, she granted her nine-year-old son Izzy permission to ride the New York City subway by himself. She dropped him off in one part of Brooklyn, armed him with a map, a paper with their address written (just in case), a $20 dollar bill and quarters in case he needed to make a phone call. He was home within 45 minutes. The story of the atypical mother became big news. First amendment lawyer Greg Lukianoff and New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt tell the story of Skenazy in The Coddling of the American Mind, How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure: “two days later [Lenore] was on the Today Show, and then MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR. Message boards were flooded with posts,” as she recounted, “mostly condemning our decision, others applauding it.” Soon Skenazy was decried as “America’s worst mom.”

    Lenore Skenazy: “America’s Worst Mom”

    I lectured my college students today in this my 20th year of teaching as only a 47-year-old grouchy professor could. This was no classroom lecture with a powerpoint. I was lecturing them. I broke everyone of Paulo Freire’s rules from Pedagogy of the Oppressed as I scolded them in a way only their parent’s generation, Generation X, aka Generation Grumpy, could: 

    “You all are of the fragile generation; the screen generation; the iPhone generation; the terminally-online generation; the depressed generation; the anxious generation; the asocial generation; the fearful, punk generation; the call-out, cancel culture generation; the filtered, plastic-surgery Instagram generation; the paranoid parenting generation; the Culture Wars generation; the doxed generation; the social media generation; the addicted-to-porn and addicted to everything generation; the microaggression generation; the catastrophizing generation; the gender identity generation; the safetyism generation; the trigger-warning generation; and the identity politics generation. But does your generation know inner-peace?” 

    One intrepid student did not blink: “Professor: do you like anything about us?”

    It was an honest question. 

    I collected my thoughts. 

    I did not see this type of cowardice growing up, though I was surrounded by no lack of cowardice. I appreciate everything you teach me every day. It is humbling. At times, the spiritual disconnect could not be greater.

    As Haidt’s research shows in The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, for the first time in millions of years, there is a generation of mammals who did not grow up playing with one another. Nor do these un-curious mammals have a relationship with nature. This is the first technology-based childhood in the mammal timeline. Our sons and daughters are the guinea pigs of the billionaire CEOs of TikTok, Call of Duty and Pornhub. Haidt and Lukianoff sum up their conclusions: 

    But efforts to protect kids from risk by preventing them from gaining experience–such as walking to school, climbing a tree, or using scissors–are different. Such protections come with cost, as kids miss out on opportunities to learn skills, independence, and risk assessment. (Keeping them indoors also raises their risk of obesity.) Skenazy puts the case succinctly: ‘the problem with this ‘everything is dangerous’ outlook is that overprotectiveness is a danger in and of itself.’

    The establishment’s treatment of my new favorite mom, Lenore Skenazy, is a reminder that we will never be lauded and will always be judged when we teach our children to think independently, because it is only then that they are a threat to the order of things.

    In contrast to many of his peers, my son is a chameleon. Drop him off in Beverly Hills. He will make 10 friends. Drop him off in South Central. The result will be the same. “Fear is a thief” so Ernesto Dessalines pickpocketed fear. 

    I never read a book on parenting. I never reflected on any of this until I got completely sober. Like no starches and no dating sober. (What percent of America is completely sober?) I made my share of mistakes for which I’ve made amends. I raised my oldest son instinctually the way I lived every day of my life. My class instincts are his. His class reflexes are mine. 

    From the streets of Santo Domingo and Brockton to the streets of Paris and Kuala Lumpur, my son taught me how to be a man. In the process, I exposed him to the infinite beauty of this vast, open road we know as life. Bob Marley raised this very question in “Rebel Music 3 o’clock roadblock:” “Why can’t we roam? There’s open country. Oh Why can’t we be what we want to be? We want to be free.” I modeled being a natural-born ethnographer to my son and he revealed this to me in words I’d never heard.  

    Venezuelan revolutionary assassinated

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    Originally published at Liberation News on October 5, 2014.

    The people of Venezuela and the world are in mourning over the murder of the Bolivarian leader Robert Serra and his companion Maria Herrera on Oct. 1 in their home in Caracas. Robert Serra — the youngest elected representative to the National Assembly and leader of the youth wing of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) — was an important figure and inspiration within the Bolivarian revolution. Known for his humility and warmth, Serra was a tireless worker in the fight for a self-determining, socialist Venezuela.

    While the authorities are still conducting a full investigation there is ample evidence that exposes the role Colombian paramilitaries played in his assassination. Minister of Interior Relations Miguel Rodríguez Torres stated:

    “We are not dealing with unfortunate events committed by a common criminal. We are dealing with an intentional murder, planned and executed with great precision. According to the evidence obtained everything points to a planned, organized and detailed assassination technique.”

    In a recently released video, right-wing Venezuelan spokesperson Lorent Saleh highlighted his links to former Colombian president and death squad organizer Álváro Uribe, and the acquisition of over $8,000 of weapons to be used for a “social cleansing,” apparently referring to his political opponents in the Chavista (supporters of deceased president Hugo Chávez’s revolution) camp. He outlined plans to target 20 “dirigentes” for execution including the young, charismatic Chavista leader Robert Serra.

    Why would the conscious people of the world think for a second that a ruling class still desperately grasping to maintain power is not capable of this vile, heinous crime against the collective interests of Venezuela’s working class? These are the very same political forces who orchestrated a bloody coup against the democratically-elected president Hugo Chávez in 2002, killing 53 people in the process. Later that same year the bosses of the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA engineered an oil shutdown in an attempt to bring Venezuela’s economy to its knees. Today the owning class hoards essential items like flour, food and household goods to create economic havoc for the masses of Venezuelans. In concert with the international finance system, they have intentionally sparked inflation and devalued the national currency. Most recently the right wing has organized violent mobs in an attempt to create more chaos and spark a civil insurrection against the government of President Nicolás Maduro. This is their latest calculated and cold-blooded attempt to demoralize the honest, freedom-loving patriotic forces.

    Flipping reality on its head the bourgeois press here and in Venezuela has gone to great lengths to present the government as the instigators of the violence. We must be clear about who the true terrorists are in Venezuela. Malcolm X’s words are all too relevant to the challenges the Venezuelan people are facing:

    “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

    Serra’s comrades remember how in 2007 at the height of the right-wing student opposition movement he came to their campus proposing to debate them publicly in order to highlight their anti-national and opportunist motives. Yon Goicochea — a leader of the privileged students of the private universities — was nowhere to be found, fleeing the university rather than debate the Bolivarian student leader. Robert presented the hostile students with a Venezuelan flag urging them not to stain the symbol of national unity with their narrow, sectarian motives.

    Tens of thousands of people across Caracas and Venezuela have come into the streets vowing to continue Robert’s work and to prosecute the material and intellectual authors of his death. President Nicolas Maduro — visibly choked up by the revolution’s loss — vowed to take “swift action against these terrorist acts.”

    In a statement paying homage to Robert Serra’s life and example the youth of the PSUV declared:

    “We assume the responsibility of making the ideals of our comrade reality. He was a fierce defender of his homeland and an unyielding revolutionary who worked to defend the legacy of our eternal commander Hugo Chávez. He will live forever in our hearts and in the principles of our youth.”

    We echoe this tribute and pledge to defend the right of the Venezuelan people to freely determine their future without foreign interference. In the words of the revolutionary Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, himself a victim of a U.S.-sponsored coup against his homeland:

    “They can pull up all the flowers but they cannot detain the arrival of spring.”

    Robert Serra Presente!

    Eyewitness Venezuela elections: Overcoming obstacles, revolution advances

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    Originally published at Liberation News on October 21, 2017

    Participatory democracy

    The Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE) invited 70 international observers. The United Socialist Party of Venezuela invited 18. We did not see anything like what the Western media reported. Quite the opposite!

    The delegation I was a part of—invited by the PSUV—visited 7 polling stations spread out across working-class communities in Vargas and Miranda. The polling stations were at schools and community centers.

    We did not see any violent confrontations or crack down on the population’s right to cast their vote. People of all ages and from different political tendencies stood in line and voted side by side one another in peace. Some wore political t-shirts of their party; others were dressed casually. There were vendors circulating in the streets, children playing and normal neighborhood activity. Coordinators at polling stations were volunteers who were well-known to the community. They provided special assistance for the elderly and disabled to assess voting stations. We were free to interview and interact with voters and volunteers alike for the duration of the day on Sunday.

    Our delegation—representing twelve Latin American and Caribbean countries and the U.S.— saw an electorate that was eager to cast their votes. We saw communities free to debate their problems and vote in a laid-back atmosphere. Lines that looped around polling stations moved swiftly. The biometric authorization equipment was modern and efficient.

    At one station in Vargas, a middle-aged man waiting to vote cried out that the government was responsible for inflation and unemployment. His arguments were quickly drowned out by a group of women who recast the blame on the U.S.-sponsored economic war.

    Rosa—a resident of Vargas state—stated emphatically to foreign visitors:
    “There is no dictatorship here. Tell Trump, Macri and the rest of the would-be invaders there is no dictatorship here. You see these houses, you see this community, you see everything we have here, it is because of the revolution.”

    Here is the complete report of the International Electoral Accompaniment team for more details on the efficiency and transparency of the elections.

    Against all odds: victory amidst the Economic War

    What makes this electoral victory so impressive is that it comes amidst a devastating economic war that has forced tens of thousands of families to flee Venezuela.

    International banks and financial institutions—dominated by the U.S. and their allies—have stripped the Bolivar of its value. The average monthly salary is 310,000 Bolivares. This is a paltry $10.30 when the Bolivar is converted into its street value. To gauge what this means in real life, a pair of imported sneakers costs in the range of one million to two million Bolivares. This gives a sense of just how stifling inflation and the devaluing of the currency is.

    Add to this the impact of the 50 percent drop in global oil prices since 2013. After centuries of colonialism and neocolonialism, Venezuela is a mono-producer, highly dependent on oil for foreign revenue.

    No country in Latin America besides Cuba has experienced such crippling “international” sanctions and a blockade. This has precipitated the exodus of more than 150,000 Venezuelans in the last year alone, according to scholars studying the emigration phenomenon.

    Despite this reality, the PSUV won 54 percent of all votes!

    Though the opposition predicted it would make big gains, it actually lost 3 million votes compared to the 2015 elections. The ruling party won 18 states compared to the opposition’s five, three of which were border states heavily influenced by neighboring U.S.-ally Colombia. Even in Miranda, a state known to have a history of anti-Chavista violence, 52.54 percent of the votes were for the government.

    Nationally there was a 61.14 percent turnout. In order to gain a sense of the significance of this number, it is useful to compare this to U.S. presidential election turnout which has been between 54-59 percent the past 3 elections.

    A 25-year-old worker in the public sector, Raquel Galindo, expressed a view that encapsulated the thinking of the vast majority of Venezuelans: “These election results showed the Venezuelan people’s political consciousness. We didn’t allow ourselves to be manipulated by the economic crisis. The opposition is divided and has lost credibility because it endorses violence. Many of their past supporters stayed home because of this deception. These elections showed Venezuela is a democracy.”

    The U.S. media war

    The U.S. press was largely silent about the elections, except to give voice to the right wing. The State Department claimed that the elections resulted were tainted, reflecting their usual disdain for Venezuela.

    The hypocrisy is glaring considering the U.S. government has a history of shutting down polling stations, disenfranchising masses of Black, Brown and poor people the right to vote and failing to provide functional machinery in oppressed neighborhoods.

    The New York Times accused the government of malfeasance, roadblocks, intimidation and “forcing voters to go to poor neighborhoods.” There were a total of 13,559 polling centers. Only 201 polling centers (a fraction of the total) were relocated, usually within a mile’s distance. Reading between the lines, perhaps what the Times meant was the polls were accessible to everyday, working people.

    U.S. media reports are motivated by a desire to demonize Venezuela and have little to do with material reality. The U.S. media shows right-wing violence and sabotage and presents it as a “popular rebellion.” President Nicolas Maduro summed up the opposition’s response: “When they lose, they cry fraud. When they win, they shout ‘Down with Maduro.’”

    Venezuelan canciller (the U.S. equivalent of the Secretary of State) Jorge Arreaza stated at the post-election press conference: “The U.S. media was silent after right-wing opposition violence in which human beings were burnt alive. Now they question the election results? Why? To promote more violence?”

    Governors elections: a popular referendum on the revolution vs. the opposition

    The overwhelming victory for the Bolivarian revolutionary was a rejection of the MUD (Democratic Unity Roundtable) opposition and their strategy of provoking violence in order to justify a U.S. invasion.
    The past four months of guarimbas (armed riots) saw 147 deaths in the streets of Venezuela. There were paramilitary attacks on government forces. 29 Venezuelans were lit on fire by the opposition, many of them simply because they were Black. 9 of these citizens were burnt to death.

    Before the attacks, the government ordered their troops not to fire back and to maintain peace, and continued to seek dialogue. PSUV youth leader Aybori Oropeza explained the “turn the other cheek” strategy to our delegation: “Chavez taught us to be patience and peaceful. We cannot can sucked into this trap. That is what the U.S. and their puppets want so they can bomb us.”

    In anticipation of the elections, right wing demagogues made extremist, sanguinary predictions that this was the eleventh hour for the revolution and there was no way to deal with the government but through violence. Their admitted goal has been bloodshed in hopes that the “international community” (an euphemism for the U.S. government) would intervene.

    Despite the media offensive, even opposition leaders recognized the results. According to one opposition leader, Enrique Ochoa Antich, the elections showed the Chavismo is the dominant political force in the country and independent bodies audited the election results 14 times, confirming just that.

    Here is a more detailed analysis of the collapse of the opposition.

    Another large reason for the PSUV’s success was its principled response to the Economic War. The government has provided subsidized food through the CLAP program and waged a campaign against state corruption. For a deeper analysis of the Venezuelan leadership’s moves to deepen people’s democracy and overcome the Economic War, see here.

    In summary, the vote for the PSUV was a vote for peace.

    The Latin American class struggle

    We cannot underestimate the regional implications of Sunday’s solidification of the Bolivarian Revolution. The Bolivarian current has been on the defensive recently. The 2015 victory of Mauricio Macri in Argentina, the 2016 coup in Brazil and the changing of the guard in Ecuador this year have all been victories for right-wing forces aligned with imperialism.

    Sunday’s victory in Venezuela; the massive campaign forming around Cristina Fernandez’s bid to be the senator of Bueno Aires province; the grassroots movement in Brazil against the coup and Rafael Correa’s pledge to take control back over the Revolucion Ciudadana are all signs that popular forces are fighting back across the region.

    Sunday proved that a united, conscious people can overcome all odds. Despite the ruthless attempts by self-anointed global tyrants to strip Venezuela of any buying power, reduce it to hunger & pauperism, provoke massacres and mass migration, the Venezuelan people stood up and triumphed. Sunday was not just a victory for the working people of Venezuela; it was a victory for poor people across the world.

    The struggle for self-determination in Hawaiʻi

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    Originally published at Liberation School on July 7, 2017

    Today, July 7th marks the 119th anniversary of President William McKinley and the U.S. government’s annexation of Hawaiʻi. When we hear any mention of Hawaiʻi, we undoubtedly first think of breath-taking beaches, volcanoes and tourism. But what is the class and national realty in Hawaiʻi that lies beyond Waikiki and the tourists’ paradise?

    4

    The modern history of Hawaiʻi is a history of anti-colonial resistance and class struggle. Understanding how this national struggle unfolded explains what class forces seized the reigns of the Hawaiian state and whose class interests the state protected. An examination of the profound national oppression that the Hawaiian people have suffered at the hands of U.S. imperialism lays bare the roots of Hawaiʻi’s modern social ills and the resistance that has emerged to reclaim Hawaiʻi.

    The theft of a kingdom

    Hawaiʻi consists of eight “main islands” which are, from the northwest to southeast, Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Maui, and Hawaiʻi. There is anthropological evidence that the ancestors of the Hawaiian people first came to inhabit Hawaiʻi some 4,000 years ago (Sykes). However, for the Hawaiian people the last 200 years of history has been one long eviction from their island nation by colonial and neocolonial forces.

    1778 marked the arrival of British captain James Cook, the first colonizer to try to explore and exploit Hawaiʻi. The Hawaiians defended the islands against Cook, ultimately killing him for his aggression against their nation. However, the British invasion set in motion the arrival of an onslaught of missionaries and marauders who began to stake their claim to the Pacific island. Their aim was to uproot the native economic and cultural system and replace it with a different social design based on a foreign religion and the supremacy of private property above all else.

    Hundreds of missionaries arrived convinced they had to convert, what they termed, “a licentious, indolent, improvident and ignorant” people to Christianity. But behind the cloak of these so called “humanitarian” motives was an interest in laying claim to Hawaiʻi’s vast wealth.  Many of the chief capitalists who formed the initial colonial ruling class arrived as missionaries or were the sons of missionaries. The church and big companies worked hand in hand and were in essence one in the same. In the words of Desmond Tutu, describing the South African people’s own experience with European conquest: “the colonizer arrived with a gun in one hand and a bible in the other.”

    The leading American companies who sank their fangs into Hawaiian land and squeezed the peasantry to extract profits were referred to as “the Big 5:” Castle and Cooke, Alexander and Baldwin, C. Brewer & Co., American Factors and Theo H. Davies & Co. Holding a monopoly over the land but faced with a labor shortage, the sugar cane and pineapple plantation owners looked to contract laborers from abroad, preying upon the poverty of Japanese and Chinese laborers. The Hawaiian census of 1890 indicated that there were 40,612 Native Hawaiians, 27,391 Japanese and Chinese laborers but only 6,220 Europeans and white Americans. The Big 5 was faced with a fundamental contradiction: How could they maintain power over the land when they were such a tiny minority of individuals?

    Post-1890, foreign capital recruited labor from the Philippines, Portugal and Puerto Rico.  Fleeing the colonial conquest and the savage class inequalities of their own homelands, tens of thousands of Portuguese, Filipino and Puerto Rican peasants came across the seas to Hawaiʻi. 184,000 immigrant laborers from these countries were officially recorded as having arrived in Hawaiʻi from 1852-1905.

    Because they were so numerically small, the Hawaiian ruling class looked to the U.S. to provide them with protection. Motivated to expand their profiteering off of the rich Hawaiian soil, the Big 5 entered into a “reciprocity treaty” with the United States, the latest country seeking to join the club of imperial powers. The colonial agreement was that big sugar cane interests would be allowed access to U.S. markets without tariffs in exchange for allowing the U.S. government to maintain exclusive commercial and military control over Hawaiʻi. In 1887 Pearl Harbor was handed over to the U.S. on what Queen Liliʻuokalani called “a day of infamy for the Hawaiian people.”

    As long as the ruling elite could depend on a compliant monarchy to do their bidding, they could maximize their profits. However with the death of the puppet King, Kalākaua, the sugar cane elite ran into a problem. Kalākaua’s sister, Queen Liliʻuokalani came to the throne and refused to do the bidding of foreign interests at the expense of her own nation. She immediately moved to pass a constitution that would allow only Hawaiian citizens to vote. When bribes failed to buy her off, the propertied interests resorted to force.

    In 1893, with the support of the U.S. military who invaded Honolulu and surrounded the Queen’s Iolani palace, the leading imperial business interests waged a coup d’etat.  Up against a superior military power, Queen Liliʻuokalani was forced to sign over Hawaiʻi to the foreign sackers who misleadingly called themselves “the Committee of Safety.”

    The Queen’s refusal to resign captures the spirit of the Hawaiian people’s resistance:

    “I, Liliʻuokalani, by the Grace of God under the Constitution of the Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the constitutional government of the Hawaiian kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a provisional government of and for this kingdom.

    That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America, whose minister plenipotentiary, John L. Stevens, has caused the US troops to land at Honolulu and declared that he would support the provisional government.

    Now, to avoid any collision of armed forces and perhaps the loss of life, I do under this protest, and impelled by said force, yield my authority until such time as the Government of the U.S. shall, upon the facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representative and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.”

    Sanford Dole, an elite judge, whose son would go on to be the future founder of the Dole fruit conglomerate, was placed at the head of the U.S. protectorate to rule on behalf of the foreigners. Officials banned the use of the native language in 1896. Under the presidency of William McKinley expansionists and missionaries annexed Hawaiʻi in July of 1898, making it an official U.S. protectorate. The seizure of Hawaiʻi initiated a century of U.S. wars of conquest abroad. Soon followed the U.S.’s conquest of Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba. In the 20th century the U.S. military would go on to launch hundreds of invasions, reminiscent of their seizure of Hawaiʻi which proved to be the beginning of the “American Century.”

    The many uses of Hawaiʻi

    Because of its function as a strategic U.S. military outpost during WWII, Hawaiʻi was made a state in 1959. Located more than 1/3 of the way across the Pacific, the U.S. military continues to maintain a web of bases and over 50,000 troops spread across Hawaiʻi as a menacing threat to the nations of the Pacific and Asia. The U.S. military occupies 1/4th of all Hawaiian land, employing 60 million rounds of live ammunition training every year.

    The U.S. military’s abuse of Hawaiʻi is the clearest violation of Hawaiian sovereignty. In 1976, the military’s bombing runs on the island of Kahoʻolawe became a center of protest. Similar to the popular struggle to force the Navy to leave Vieques, Puerto Rico in 2001, Hawaiians protested the use of their islands for war and destruction. Under mysterious conditions two sovereignty activists, Kimo Mitchell and George Helm, were disappeared. Helm wrote these words about the struggle to defend the land which would become an example for water defenders at Standing Rock and beyond:

    “There is man and there is environment. One does not supersede the other. The breath in man is the breath of papa (earth mother). Man is merely the caretaker of the land that maintains his life and nourishes his soul. Therefore, the ʻāina (love of the land) is sacred. The church of life is not in a building, it is the open sky, the surrounding ocean, the beautiful soil.”

    After years of protest the U.S. government was finally forced to end live-fire training on the island in 1990.

    Like other underdeveloped nations, Hawaiʻi has become dependent on a militarized economy. One out of 5 families in Hawaiʻi has a family member in the military. A majority of Hawaiians and workers in the U.S. can’t afford to leave their island or state. In the cruelest of ironies, for many Hawaiians the only perceived economic and physical escape from island poverty is to join the U.S. military. The military feeds off of the chronic unemployment that plagues the Hawaiian nation. Conscripted Hawaiians are sent off to fight wars of conquest and plunder. When the author interviewed a group of Hawaiian GI’s and veterans about why they had joined the military, they had an all too familiar response: “I wanted to make something of myself. There were no other opportunities.” They also spoke about the bonds they made in the military with Puerto Ricans, Chicanos and other oppressed nationality soldiers. Thousands of miles away from their island home, stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq or Korea, they were keenly aware of who their true enemies and friends were.

    The Water War in Maui

    Foreign capital, mainly from the U.S. and Japan, controls the lion’s share of the land, property and means of production. Alexander and Baldwin [A&B] is one of these corporations. A&B made its initial massive profits from the surplus value extracted from super-exploited sugarcane laborers. Today A&B continues to dominate the sugar, shipping and most importantly the water supply on the island of Maui.

    Maui is an island internationally renowned for its natural beauty and the diversity of its climate.  An island that can be circled in a mere six hours, Maui is the home of deserts, rain forests, jungles, volcanoes, freezing cold mountain peaks, water falls and some of the most awe-inspiring waves in the world.

    1

    What was once a serene natural landscape, has been converted into a top tourist destination. For the Hawaiian people who make their living on the island, the tourist reality is omnipresent. “It is like we live in a park.” This is how one Maui native describes living in his ancestral land.  Surrounded on all sides by invasive tourists and resorts, what has been left for the Hawaiian people?

    Brain drain is one cruel result. Refusing to serve foreigners for a living, many of Hawaiʻi’s top intellects have left for the colonial mainland in pursuit of more rewarding careers.

    In pre-colonial times, the Hawaiian community ensured that the natural streams flowed continuously for everyone. Each family carved out their ditch to catch the amount of water they needed and let the water flow on to the next community. A concept such as privatizing water was beyond comprehension. This was introduced with the advent of European settler rule.

    Today the water no longer flows.  In order to provide sufficient water resources to the sugar cane fields, A&B built dams and ditches to monopolize the water and cut off farmers’ access. They continue to feed their sugar cane and siphon off the precious water to make desert areas green resorts for tourists, with artificial water-falls, plants, grass and golf-courses. The entire ecosystem of Maui has been altered for the benefit of some and to the detriment of others. The eviction from the land proletarianizes more and more Hawaiians, forced to make ends meet as servants in the tourist industry.  A majority of farmers now have to buy water from Alexander & Baldwin.

    On the island of Maui alone 60 billion gallons of water are diverted from natural watersheds to supply real estate interests (Al-Jazeera). The water war in Maui is symbolic of the overall struggle of Hawaiians to regain control over their land and lives. One leader of a farmers’ collective posed the struggle for sovereignty in the following terms:

    “The theft of our water is the theft of our natural existence. As indigenous people we know how to coexist with the planet. Water and land was healing. Today when we see our people destroyed by drugs and depression, we bring them back to the land and to the water so they can rediscover their spirituality. Their culture was stolen from them. We need to bring it back.”

    Tourism: An economy of servants and the served

    7,000,000 tourists per year visit Hawaiʻi.

    In popular, tourist culture Oahu is referred to as the “gathering place.” But the gathering of who? On the north side of Oahu is Turtle Bay. Italian, American, Japanese and other wealthy tourists pay an average of $350 dollars a night to stay at a massive, glamorous hotel complex that sits in plain view of the world’s most coveted surfing waves. Replete with jacuzzis, saunas, & back-rubs, the massive Turtle Bay complex is set back behind walls of security.

    Before this reality of haves and have-nots, one is left to ask the question: how much has the economic system changed since the days of servants and slaves, masters and overseers? Racism, paternalism and inequality still govern human relations in the Pacific.

    Oahu’s work force does the cooking, driving, and waiting that keeps the tourist industry running. Waikiki, one of the US’s largest tourist destinations generating $6.8 billion in revenue per year, is an obnoxious and painful reality. The local mixed Asian & Pacific population dresses up in Aloha shirts and feigned smiles to serve the privileged.

    Oahu functions as a sort of Mecca of Pacific Island and Asian cultures. The supremacy of U.S. capital in the region has created a concentration and mix of Filipinos, Fijians, Samoans, Chuuqueese Islanders, Vietnamese, Koreans, Tongans, etc. across Hawaiʻi. Honoululu is the New York City of the Pacific & one of the most diverse places in the world, uniting toiling people from the entire Pacific and Asia in a small geographic area.

    The locals talk about taking back this “Aloha culture” which has been kidnapped by interests alien to those of the Hawaiian people. Hawaiian reggae artist Mana Kaleilani Caceres’ lyrics expose the history of Hawaiʻi that is absent from the tourist brochures.

    “They Took the Land

    They Took Aloha

    Overthrew the Queen

    Even though They Didn’t Know Her

    Suppressed Ikaika (strength) and the Kupuna (ancestors)

    Broke the ʻOhana (family)

    But They Couldn’t Take the Mana (spirit)”

    Multinational unity: same struggle, same enemy

    A young woman in Waiʻanae donned a t-shirt that read “I’m Chiwaiianfilarican and what?” Her Chinese, Hawaiian, Filipino and Puerto Rican ancestry represented the historical roots and journey of Hawaiians today. Another young mother explained her bloodline: “Well on my mom’s side, we are Vietnamese, Native Hawaiian, Haole (white), Puerto Rican and then my dad is half Samoan and mixed Tongan, Filipino and Portuguese.”

    The Hawaiian working class is comprised of the descendents of the late 19th century plantation workers and a host of other Asian and Pacific nationalities dislocated from their homelands and pulled to Hawaiʻi by U.S. capital. The multinational Hawaiian working class works shoulder to shoulder today in providing the services that make tourism and production run in Hawaiʻi.

    Through a wide array of laws and segregation the ruling class tried to drive wedges between the different nationalities. For example, Hawaiians are today considered U.S. citizens and are entitled to certain “benefits” such as food stamps, public housing and welfare. However, immigrants from Samoa, the Philippines and other neighboring countries in Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia and Asia who come to Hawaiʻi in search of work are defined as undocumented and are forced to take the lowest paying jobs and live in inferior housing. Having fled the conquest of their own island nations, they are then scapegoated for the unemployment and poverty that exists in Hawaiʻi. These are the same divide and conquer tactics that Bigot-in-Chief Donald Trump and other demagogues use today across the U.S.

    The successive waves of migration from oppressed nations to oppressor nations have not been voluntary. Colonial profiteering disoriented entire national economic infrastructures in the Pacific and Asia in order to meet their own economic imperatives. Stripped of a chance as economic stability in their home countries, hundreds of thousands of families have involuntarily migrated in search of work in the Hawaiian tourist industry.

    A microcosm of the entire U.S., Oahu is called a melting pot. But who gets burned at the bottom of the pot?  Who rests at the top on a float to savor, relish and delight in the finished product of the social labor? How was the American dream built up on the back of so many millions of other dreams?

    The Polynesian Cultural Center exposed

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    The Polynesian Cultural Center [PCC] is among the most vivid examples of the racist, ultra-exploitive brand of tourism. The PCC is a theme park on the Northeast Coast of Oahu owned and run by the Mormon Church. Claiming to be dedicated to the promotion of Polynesian cultures, the Mormon Church charges up to $285 for the super-ambassador passes “to experience authentic villages from Samoa, Tahiti, New Zealand, Hawaii and Fiji.” A whole range of exploited Pacific Island nationalities are converted into stereotyped mascots who sing, dance and smile on the command of the PCC supervisors.

    The Mormons portrayal of the happy “native” is reminiscent of the Black-face, minstrel shows used by white supremacy to shape the general (mis)perception of African American identity.  Every thing in the PCC is staged — the clothing, the monologues and the villages. There is no deeper investigation of the rich histories of resistance and courage that formed these nations.  Hundreds of Polynesian youth dance, sing, serve and entertain hundreds of thousands of tourists each year. 90% of the PCC work force is not paid a salary for their labor which generates hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for the Mormon Church. Instead, for working five days a week, the church “grants” them discounts off of their tuition at Brigham Young University.  For this, they are told to be thankful.

    One mormon recruiter explained:

    “Without our help, these poor people would be stuck back in their countries.”

    8

    Cultural exchange can be a beautiful thing but not on these terms. All of the artificial smiles dupe the gullible tourist into believing that everything is happy and jolly across the Pacific. Hawaiʻi is by no means alone in playing this role. From Rio de Janeiro to Bangkok to Santo Domingo, corporations monopolize the most precious beaches and natural beauty and preserve it for the exclusive benefit of the wealthy. This brand of tourism continues to be a scar across Hawaiʻi’s heart.

    The inequality of nations

    The main feature in the epoch of imperialism is the inequality of nations. The oppressor nations exercise economic, military, political and cultural domination over the oppressed nations. In the “rich” nations, such as the U.S., Britain, and Japan, the ruling class and the ‘better off’ sectors of the working class can afford to take vacations abroad. They make enough money and they do not need a visa or any other paperwork that would prevent them from traveling. Yet when members of oppressed nations, with the exception of a tiny, ruling elite, desire to visit the exploiter nations there are all types of obstacles in effect to limit their ability to travel. Even within the most “advanced” nation, the United States, most families cannot afford to leave their block or community because they are too busy surviving. The dream of leaving the Bronx, Oakland or Kansas City to explore the Pacific Islands or Southern Africa is a pipe dream for most workers.

    Life does not have to be this way. Under socialism there would be equality of all nations. Every human being, in addition to enjoying free access to housing, healthcare and education would benefit from the right to travel and explore other national cultures. Travel and international exploration would cease to be the exclusive privilege of the few.

    While the surplus value created by worker’s sacrifice today makes billionaires out of the owners of our labor, in a socialist world society’s surplus would guarantee that there was enough money to pay for these rights for all workers. How outdated is this racist epoch when travel is the exclusive right of mostly privileged white tourists! Airline companies should work for the benefit of all and not to profit off of those who can afford the privilege to travel. Instead of first class and coach tickets there would be free trips as part of educational and community activities for youth, students and workers. Nations would relate to one another on an equal basis with mutually beneficial trade agreements like those that today exist between Cuba, Venezuela and the rest of the ALBA bloc (Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas).

    The other Hawaiʻi: the forgotten coast

    The tourist economy means skyrocketing real estate prices and a major housing crisis for working class Hawaiian families. Three years ago, governor David Ige declared a state of emergency before the housing crisis. Hawaiʻi has the highest rate of homelessness of the 50 states. With land gobbled up by the tourist industry, Hawaiians are left to scramble to find affordable housing.

    The Great Mahele or the Great Dispossession of 1848 passed under pressure of missionaries and foreign business concerns signified a counterrevolution in property relations. Special interests parcelled up the land, breaking the traditional communal trusteeship over the land and collectivized cultivation.

    Prior to colonization, the Hawaiian social system consisted of a monarchy with a ruling class and commoners. While there were battles for political control between different warring chiefs and large tracts of land were redistributed when power changed hands, there was no class stratification to the extent that would be introduced. This legacy of private property is the material basis for understanding the deep class stratification that persists today.

    Outside of Honolulu, on the West side of Oahu, there are no tourists. This is not the Hawaiʻi of the tourist brochures. Only 30 miles from some of the most expensive and popular tourist resorts in the United States but here there is a different reality. For this reason, the West Coast is called the “forgotten coast.” Here there are communities ravaged by homelessness, drug addiction, alcoholism, senseless violence, gang violence, domestic abuse against women and children, teen pregnancy, school drop outs and soaring prison rates.

    Many families gravitate between shelters and overcrowded Section 8 housing. There are currently 6,100 federal and State public housing units in Hawaiʻi and a waiting list of over 10,000 with the Public Housing Authority. Of the 5,800 homeless people counted in the most recent survey on Oahu, 3,500 people are in shelters and 2,200 are unsheltered (Hussey 1). Authorities constantly target makeshift homeless communities for destruction.

    5

    Camp 125 is a make-shift squatter’s camp in Waianae. Hundreds of families constructed their living quarters with tents on the beach shore. If Camp 125 were pushed any way further from Waikiki, it would fall into the ocean. Families tie up long blue and black plastic sheets to trees and hoist them up as the roofs for their homes. They break crates or wooden boards for the floor. The police continually harass the community and threaten to push them out of existence. In the summer of 2010, two beach residents, among them a U.S. military veteran, tired of being pushed down and arrested by the police, hung themselves to protest the destruction of their camp.

    In camp 125, the Hawaiians, Creole or Pidgin flowed naturally, unintelligible to outsiders. Pidgin according to local knowledge was the Cantonese word or pronunciation for business when the Hawaiian Islands functioned as a trading and meeting point for international commerce. Hawaiian Creole grew out of the 200 year Hawaiian class struggle. The Pidgin becomes a reflection of assimilation or cultural resistance. The deeper one penetrates into the harvest, the land, the country, the more alive the native Hawaiian language and pidgin becomes. There were also white Hawaiians who are born and raised working the land at peace with the native communities. They too spoke pidgin, showing that both class and race were determinants of social position.

    Hundreds of families survive at the end of Oahu where the mountains meet the sea in Mākaha.  The resistors do not know when they will be expelled permanently. Their experience with eviction is a microcosm of the past 200 years of Hawaiian history.

    Crystal Meth, gangs and oppression

    It is only within this history of economic and cultural dislocation that one can begin to understand the modern day issues affecting Waianae, Wahiawa, Nanakuli and other working class communities across Oahu and Hawaiʻi. Ruling class ideology asserts that social problems are the fault of the individual. Liberals hoist up this or that politician or social program as a way of resolving social ills. But these minor concessions do not begin to address the underlying causes of social inequality.

    A group of four young single mothers commented on the epidemic: “Well we ain’t got shit else to do on this island. Some beers, getting high, we rolling.” They commented on how the state locked up many young fathers for the typical crimes of poverty; stealing cars, fights and hustling. They explained that any crime that nets more than a year is served in the mainland, thousands of miles away from their family. They referenced the A&E show Dog the Bounty Hunter, explaining how their families were the ones being hunted down for their petty crimes. For the privileged, the plight of the poor makes for great entertainment.

    It was common in the working class districts to see posters of women and men scratching deep scars and scabs. The posters were warnings about the effects of Crystal Meth. They were side by side Heineken ads that read “Keep Hawaiʻi green…Buy Heineken.” Across New York City’s poor communities, the Department of Health (DOH) uses similar degrading images for its Hepatitis C “prevention campaign.” These are classic examples of neoliberal public health interventions  seen across the USA that blame the “victim” while failing to address the root cause of the illnesses  eg. housing, working, generational trauma, post-colonialism.

    Many studies show drug abuse is as common if not higher in wealthy communities yet there were DOH posters in those neighborhoods? The billboards, tv programs, radio ads and songs that bombard the children have damaging effect on their self-esteem.

    Only a few miles west of Waikiki are the largest housing projects in the Pacific.  When one enters the Kuhio Park Terrace (KPT) or Crawford Housing Development it is similar to an urban housing model in any inner-city. There are 350 units in each building with a total of about 3,500 people.

    The residents here complained of raw sewage backing up into individual units, lack of hot water, leaking pipes and stairs littered with trash, wet with rain water and reeking of urine.  There was only one working elevator is in each building, creating long waits for the 2,000 tenants. Many of the families here are Samoan and KPT is known as the most dangerous housing development in Honolulu. Junior, Donald and Thomas described how KPT projects were in a rivalry against Crawford housing. Groups of youth band together and fight groups from neighboring projects & towns. Overwhelmed by the loss of control over their surroundings, the abused lash out in anger at their own class. Mikey, lamented the loss of several of his friends to this senseless violence among the oppressed. In arguments over girlfriends or alcohol, all too often the beef ended in the death of loved ones.

    There is nothing natural or inevitable about this suffering. Hawaiʻi is the Puerto Rico of the Pacific; the loss of self-determination is the cause and the context of the social ills that befall people.

    The equality of nations

    There is a strong sovereignty movement fighting for native Hawaiians’ economic, political and cultural rights. On the 100 year anniversary of the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani, the Hawaiian people took to the streets demanding 1.3 million acres in land and reparations from the U.S. government. U.S. presidents have issued official U.S. apologies but nothing more. Like Puerto Rico, Guam and other U.S. territories, Hawaiʻi is still a colony in every sense of the word.

    2

    The greatest support for the Hawaiian people’s just struggle for self-determination is to fight to seize power for working people across the United States. One of the first decrees of a socialist government in the belly of the beast would be the restoration of reparations and land to their rightful owners so that Hawaiʻi, Palestine, Puerto Rico and so many other neo-colonies can at least breathe and grow freely.

    While the equality of nations may appear to some to be a far flung fantasy, this is what the PSL fights for day in and day out. In the words of Karl Marx, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways—the point however is to change it.”

    Long live the Hawaiian and all oppressed nations’ right to self-Determination!


    Works Cited

    Al-Jazeera. Inside the USA: The Other Hawaii. September 26th.

    Hussey, Ikaika. “Following Beach Eviction, Waianae Man Commits Suicide.”  The Hawaiian Independent. July 19th, 2010.

    Kinzer, Stephen. Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.  New York: Times Books. 2006

    Silva, Noenoe. Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to Colonialism.

    Sykes, Brian. The Seven Daughters of Eve. 2001

    Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. 1980.

    Behind the Racist Coup in Bolivia

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    Originally published at the Council of Hemispheric Affairs on November 11, 2019.

    Yesterday, Sunday November the 10th, at approximately 4pm (eastern standard time) the democratically elected president and vice president of Bolivia, Evo Morales and Álvaro García respectively, were forced to resign from power. This was no voluntary resignation as CNN, the New York Times and the rest of the corporate media is reporting, nor has it been accepted by the Legislative Assembly as required by the Constitution of Bolivia.[1] This was a coup that employed threats and brutality against Morales, García, members of the cabinet, congressional representatives, and their families. Both the commander in chief of the military and head of the Bolivian Police requested, in no uncertain terms, the resignation of Morales.[2] The coup forces, led by Pro-Santa Cruz Committee president Luis Fernando Camacho, continues to target Movement for Socialism (MAS) activists, progressive social movements, and Indigenous peoples of Bolivia.

    Behind the Misleading Headlines

    The corporate press has predictably given one-sided coverage of the unfolding situation in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, a resource-rich Andean nation of 11.5 million, of which approximately 50% are Indigenous[3]. While the mainstream media act as cheerleaders for the unrest in Hong Kong and magnify any sign of discontent in Venezuela or any other country perceived by the US government as “enemy”, it has largely ignored the popular uprisings in Haiti, Chile, Ecuador and beyond. Now, in the case of Bolivia, conservative circles in the Americas are celebrating an opportunity to take power back from a president, administration and people who have been a regional driving force for the advancement of Indigenous, environmental, women’s and workers’ rights. Bolivia has enjoyed one of the most stable economic growth rates in the Americas, between 4% and 5% in the last years, and decreased poverty among millions of Bolivians, from 59% to 39%, according to official data from the World Bank.[4]

    Protest against the Coup, in solidarity with the Bolivian government, President Evo Morales and the Bolivian people, in front of the Organization of American States, OAS, in Washington DC. (Photo-credit: Cele León)

    A Call for Solidarity

    On Thursday, October 24th, Bolivia’s election panel declared Morales the winner with 47.07% of the votes and Carlos Mesa the runner up with 36.5% of the votes.[5] According to a Center for Economic and Policy Research, Morales had a sufficient margin of victory to be declared the victor in the elections.[6] The Organization of American States presented findings that the election had irregularities and that the “auditing team could not validate the electoral results and were thus, recommending another election.”[7] The opposition contested the election, led by extreme right wing leader of the Santa Cruz Committee, Luis Fernando Camacho. Camacho is involved in the continental corruption case known as “The Panama Papers”[8]. He also has links with terrorist and separatist Branko Marinkovic, who enjoys safe harbor in Brazil, which is governed by the right-wing presidency of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil[9]. In response to charges that the election was not valid, Morales invited the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS) to conduct an audit.[10] The opposition rejected these calls, reiterating their demands for Morales to step down.[11] Morales responded to the OAS audit, which claimed there were irregularities, by calling for new elections and a reconstitution of the electoral commission but the coup leaders rejected all of these concessions.[12]

    Since the anarchy began, all of president Morales’ public statements have pleaded for peace and dialogue. However, the opposition has no interest in the social peace the MAS built. Quite the opposite, they want to reverse all of these gains.

    In the town of Vinto, protestors brutally attacked, cut off the hair and marched MAS mayor Patricia Arce through the streets to humiliate her. Anti-government forces have picked up arms and burned down the homes of MAS activists and family members. In response, Morales said: “Burn my house. Not those of my family. Seek vengeance with me and Alvaro. Not with our families.”[13]

    The U.S. headlines do little to explain the racial and class divide that defines Bolivia historically and at the current moment. Pro-democracy forces should seek to understand the inner-dynamics at work in Bolivian society and support the restoration of democratically-elected government and peace. Veterans of centuries of resistance, the Bolivian people are poised to keep resisting the coup and preserve the historic gains of the “process of change”.

    Protest against the Coup, in solidarity with the Bolivian government, President Evo Morales and the Bolivian people, in front of the Organization of American States, OAS, in Washington DC. (Photo-credit: Cele León)

    Behind the Propaganda

    Morales and the Movement for Socialism’s (MAS) true crime ⎯ in the eyes of the salivating gas multinationals and their local lackeys ⎯ was the severing of Bolivia’s historically exploitative relationship with the U.S.

    In 2005, Evo Morales became the 80th president of Bolivia and its first Indigenous. In 2006, the MAS re-nationalized Bolivia’s vast gas reserves. Morales expelled the DEA, USAID, the Peace Corps and the U.S. ambassador because of their agendas of political intervention in domestic affairs, which is illegal in any country, as it is surely in the US. Aware of the 200 plus U.S. military invasions in the continent in the 20th century, the MAS established an anti-imperialist military school to train their own officers and rank and file soldiers. Cholitas, as Aymara women are known, have made important gains since 2005. Traditionally alienated from the formal economy and exploited as servants in the homes of the wealthy, Bolivia’s women have carved out new economic and cultural terrain to exercise more self-determination over their lives.  

    Despite all of the social and economic gains, the process of change was unable to completely transform the old state apparatus over the past thirteen years. In the decisive moment, when the rule of law came under attack, important sectors of the military high command and the police supported the coup.

    In Evo’s own words upon resigning, in order to prevent more attacks against innocent Bolivians, “my sin is I’m indigenous and I’m a leftist.”

    Protest against the Coup, in solidarity with the Bolivian government, President Evo Morales and the Bolivian people, in front of the Organization of American States, OAS, in Washington DC. (Photo-credit: Cele León)

    Contextualizing the Coup

    Contrary to what the second-place candidate Carlos Mesa, Luis Fernando Camacho and other pro-coup forces would have us believe, the violence and chaos is not just about Morales’ fourth presidential term; it is about what class forces control the future of Bolivia. 

    The overthrow of the MAS government and the victory of pro-U.S. interventionist forces, for the present moment, represent a monumental setback for the Bolivian people as well as for the cause of regional independence and democracy, akin to the rise of Pinochet in Chile in 1973.


    While 66.2% of Bolivians are of Indigenous or mestizo (mixed Native and European with the indigenous component higher than the European) ancestry, the violence is concentrated in Santa Cruz and other areas where the largely lighter-skinned, Spanish-descendent, wealthier sectors have no interest in Bolivian unity and democracy.[14] The concentration of wealth in these sectors is the result of unequal development, a direct product of centuries of colonialism.

    Santa Cruz tried to secede from Bolivia in 2008. The secessionist forces trampled on the red, yellow and green flag of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, the Wiphala, electing instead to fly the green and white regional flag. The call for “autonomy” and the latest burning of homes and violent attacks seek to steal back the direction of the Bolivian state. Driven by racism and a thirst for the unconstrained power they have been accustomed to since the inception of Bolivia’s history, these class forces believe they have won this round, forcing Morales and García from power.

    Protest against the Coup, in solidarity with the Bolivian government, President Evo Morales and the Bolivian people, in front of the Organization of American States, OAS, in Washington DC. (Photo-credit: Cele León)

    An Insurrectionary Continent

    It is important to place the temporary setback in Bolivia in the wider context of what is unfolding across Latin America.

    Bolivia’s neighbor to the south, Argentina, just rejected the right-wing agenda of Macrismo at the polls. To the west, Chile is in revolt against a billionaire agenda and president, Sebastián Piñera. Further north, Colombia rejected Uribismo in local elections. Lula –the most popular politician in Brazil — is free after 19 months as a political prisoner. Millions of Haitians are in the streets demanding an end to U.S.-led exploitation and occupation. In Ecuador, there is a popular movement against Lenín Moreno’s hard turn towards the neoliberal economic model. And in Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador leads a new party which aims at building a post-neoliberal order for the country. Venezuela and Cuba continue to fight back against an all-out U.S. diplomatic, military, media and economic offensive. 

    Protest against the Coup, in solidarity with the Bolivian government, President Evo Morales and the Bolivian people, in front of the Organization of American States, OAS, in Washington DC. (Photo-credit: Cele León)

    The Coup Cannot Bury the Process of Change

    As this article goes to press, there are numerous official denunciations of the coup from governments which defend the constitutional order in Bolivia as well as expressions of solidarity from progressive forces around the world. This is indeed a great blow to democracy and social justice in the Americas.

    The OAS, after having failed to denounce the violence and racist attacks perpetrated by coup forces, has belatedly voiced support for the preservation of the constitutional order, for a new electoral authority, and for new elections, all of which were sought by President Morales himself.

    The OAS statement declares:

    “The General Secretariat requests an urgent meeting of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly of Bolivia to ensure the institutional functioning and to name new electoral authorities to guarantee a new electoral process. It is also important that justice continues to investigate existing responsibilities regarding the commission of crimes related to the electoral process held on October 20, until they are resolved.”[15]

    Now that President Morales and Vice President Álvaro García have resigned and the coup has polarized Bolivian society, it will be difficult to re-establish the “institutional functioning” undermined by the coup. Morales has been granted asylum by Mexican authorities. Celebrants of the anti-Indigenous victory are burning the Whiphala in public squares. Popular mobilizations against the coup and in support of Morales which are now on the rise, are being met in some areas with brutal repression by the police.[16] There are reliable video and testimonial reports that mutinous police, who stayed in their barracks during the violence and destruction wrought by the anti-government forces, are now using live ammunition on people in El Alto.[17] Meanwhile the MAS and other organizations that have been major protagonists of the process of change are seeking to protect their ranks from persecution and regroup in order to defend the progress of the past decade, gains which have lifted millions of Bolivians out of poverty, revalorized Indigenous culture, and contributed to continent wide aspiration of realizing the Patria Grande. As Evo Morales has promised, “the struggle continues.”[18]


    End notes

    [1] Londono, Ernesto. “Bolivian Leader Evo Morales Steps Down.” New York Times. Nov. 10, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/10/world/americas/evo-morales-bolivia.html. See Article 161 (3) of the Constitution of Bolivia: The Chambers shall meet in Pluri-National Legislative Assembly to exercise the following functions, as well as those set forth in the Constitution: 3. To accept or reject the resignation of the President of the State and of the Vice President of the State.

    [2]Nov. 10, 2019, statement of Vladimir Yuri Calderón Mariscal, Commander in Chief of the Bolivian Police, who subsequently resigned his post. https://twitter.com/Pol_Boliviana/status/1193621777081159682?s=20. Also see statement of Commander of the Armed forces of Bolivia, Williams Kaliman, who called for Morales resignation on Nov. 10, 2019. https://www.msn.com/es-xl/noticias/mundo/ej%C3%A9rcito-de-bolivia-pide-a-morales-que-renuncie-para-garantizar-estabilidad/ar-BBWyxVr?li=AAggXBX .

    [3] International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA). According to the 2012 National Census, 41% of the Bolivian population over the age of 15 are of indigenous origin, although the National Institute of Statistics’ (INE) 2017 projections indicate that this percentage is likely to have increased to 48%. https://www.iwgia.org/en/bolivia

    [4] The World Bank In Bolivia. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/bolivia/overview

    [5] Krygier, Rachel. “Bolivia’s election panel declares Evo Morales winner after contested tally; opponents demand second round.” Washington Post. Oct. 24, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/bolivias-evo-morales-claims-election-victory-after-contested-tally-opponents-demand-second-round/2019/10/24/b17b592c-f666-11e9-b2d2-1f37c9d82dbb_story.html

    [6] Nov. 2019. Center for Economic and Policy Research. What Happened in Bolivia’s 2019 Vote Count? The Role of the OAS Electoral Observation Mission. http://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/bolivia-elections-2019-11.pdf?v=2

    [7] Oct. 20, 2019. Preliminary Findings of the Organization of Amercain States. Analysis of the Electoral Integrity of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. http://www.oas.org/documents/spa/press/Informe-Auditoria-Bolivia-2019.pdf

    [8] “Informe involucra a cívico cruceño y envían dos casos al Ministerio Público”. https://www.eldiario.net/movil/index.php?n=37&a=2019&m=08&d=01

    [9] See “Revelan que Camacho se transporta en vehículo de Marinkovic en La Paz”, https://www.exitonoticias.com.bo/articulo/politica/romero-revela-camacho-transporta-vehiculo-marinkovic-paz/20191107190954042023.html, and “El racismo de Branko Marinkovic es emulado por Luis Fernando Camacho”, https://www.primeralinea.info/el-racismo-de-branko-marinkovic-es-emulado-por-luis-fernando-camacho/

    [10] Oct. 29, 2019. “Bolivia election: U.S. withholds recognition; Morales supporters and opposition clash as sides await OAS audit.” Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/bolivian-election-morales-supporters-opposition-clash-us-withholds-recognition-as-all-await-oas-audit/2019/10/29/eed045be-f9a2-11e9-9e02-1d45cb3dfa8f_story.html

    [11] Ramos, Daniel. “Bolivia military says won’t ‘confront’ the people as pressure on Morales builds.” Reuters. Nov. 9, 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bolivia-election/bolivia-military-says-wont-confront-the-people-as-pressure-on-morales-builds-idUSKBN1XJ0A2

    [12] Bolivian President Morales calls for new elections after OAS audit. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bolivia-election-morales-idUSKBN1XK0AK

    [13] Nov. 10, 2109. “Statement of the Bolivian President, Evo Morales, upon Resigning from the Presidency.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUPkAv5E5ks

    [14] http://pdba.georgetown.edu/IndigenousPeoples/demographics.html

    [15] Statement on Bolivia, OAS, Nov. 11, 2019. https://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-101/19

    [16] There are reports that the police have asked for the military to intervene. See http://www.la-razon.com/nacional/Policia-Paz-intervencion-FFAA-violencia_0_3255874431.html

    [17] In a tweet on Nov. 11, Evo Morales said: “After the first day of the civic-political-police coup, the mutinous police repress with bullets to provoke deaths and wounded in El Alto. My solidarity with these innocent victims, among them a girl, and the heroic people of El Alto, defenders of democracy.” https://twitter.com/evoespueblo/status/1193943984424603650?s=20

    [18] Nov. 10, 2109. “Statement of the Bolivian President, Evo Morales, upon Resigning from the Presidency.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUPkAv5E5ks

    Book Review: ‘Cancel This Book’ Asks for a Return to Revolutionary Class Analysis

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    Originally published at Toward Freedom on February 4, 2022

    Cancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture, by Dan Kovalik (Hot Books: New York, 2021)

    Academic and activist Dan Kovalik’s new book, Cancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture, was written on the frontlines of the twin struggles of our time, the class struggle and the fight for Black liberation. Reading it brought me back to so many magical and contradictory movement moments that I could not resist writing a review.

    ‘White People Go to the Back of the March’

    On the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day in 2017, thousands of protesters took to Fifth Avenue and the frigid streets of New York City to demand criminal charges against the police who murdered Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge; Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota; and hundreds of other unarmed Black and brown men. Some Black Lives Matter march marshals had determined that Black and brown families and activists—presented as the only real victims and fighters—would march in the front. White people—presented as all equal benefactors of white supremacy and white privilege—were assigned to march in the back, separated from the youthful, militant front. It was a strange scene. Forty-nine years after the U.S. state assassinated Dr. King for risking his life to organize a multiracial movement against white supremacy—and in his final months, a Poor People’s Campaign against the capitalist system—surely he would find it curious we no longer needed outright white supremacists like Bull Connor or George Wallace; we were now capable of segregating our own marches.

    Malcolm X's only meeting with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on March 26, 1964, during the U.S. Senate debates regarding the (eventual) Civil Rights Act of 1964 / credit: Marion Trikosko
    Malcolm X’s only meeting with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on March 26, 1964, during the U.S. Senate debates regarding the (eventual) Civil Rights Act of 1964 / credit: Marion Trikosko

    So many questions leapt into my mind as my eyes traced the 10-block-long protest. Where did poor whites belong? Veterans? Whites who had been through the prison system? How about Black students who had both parents in a position to pay their tuition out of pocket at NYU or Columbia? They had all earned the front? Then there was my Ernesto Rafael, my son, half Dominican, half poor-white, harassed by the police too many times in the Bronx. Where did he “belong,” according to the marshals?

    This was but one example of the new racial dynamics on display across the country in the BLM movement from Oakland to Boston, and everywhere in between. For class conscious revolutionaries throwing down in the heart of this mass movement, it represented a series of fresh, unique challenges.

    When I picked up Kovalik’s new book, I was intrigued by his biting class analysis of the similar experiences he had. In chapter 2, “Cancellation of a Peace Activist,” he writes directly about being a participant on the frontlines of the BLM movement in Pennsylvania, ducking and dodging police batons as organizers collectively figured out their next strategic moves. Kovalik, a union and human rights lawyer and professor, based out of Pittsburgh, dives deep into the contradictions he and so many others experienced. Kovalik slams both the arrogance of isolated white anarchists whose faux militancy puts all protesters at risk, as well as the bullying tactics and racial reductionism of some radical liberals. This took me back to the explosion of protests following the police murders of Eric Garner and Michael Brown in 2014, which brought millions of people into the streets to denounce the epidemic of police terror in Black and brown communities. Millions were in motion and different political tendencies vied for leadership. Kovalik examines key lessons to be drawn from the almost decade of collective experience we have as a movement in what came to be known as “Black Lives Matter.” This is but one must-read chapter in Kovalik’s exciting new book.

    Woke Capitalism

    Kovalik’s book is an expose of Woke Capitalism and the cancer of cancel culture.

    While millions took to the streets to stop President George W. Bush from invading Iraq, the peace movement was eerily silent when Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president, became “the drone-warrior-in-chief, dropping at least 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone.” (pg. 109) He critiques the peace movement for going quiet every time a Democrat is (s)elected to the oval office.

    Dan Kovalik's book, Cancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture" (2021)
    Dan Kovalik’s book, Cancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture (2021)

    This page-turner exposes today’s liberal establishment, which touts “racial equity” without ever questioning the underlying structure that intensifies white supremacist control of society’s institutions. David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, is but one example of a liberal who bloviates over the U.S. Capitol rioters and their violent methods. Yet, he advocated for the bombing, sacking and recolonization of Iraq. (pg. VIII) The book exposes corporate and campus departments that pay hefty salaries to “experts” to lecture on “racial justice” without ever touching the structures that buttress white supremacy and racial and class segregation. These defenders of racial capitalism—from the academy to the pressroom—give political cover to hucksters, who make a killing by bullying white liberals into forking over money, lest they be labeled racist. As one class-conscious scholar sarcastically asks in Black Agenda Report: Do we really “wonder why these rural voters didn’t just go to their local Barnes and Noble to purchase a copy of How to Be an Anti-racist before the election?” Are all of the books that have emerged from the White Privilege Industrial Complex reaching that mass of “deplorables,” whom Arlie Hochchild refers to in her monumental sociological exposé as “strangers in their own land”? (“Own land” as in stolen Indigenous land).

    Kovalik takes on the Frankenstein-esque outgrowth of cancellations in academic institutions and beyond, asking what are the political forces behind them? He offers the real-life example of the canceling of Molly Rush, an octogenarian peace activist who reposted a quote that took on a life of its own. Instead of speaking with her face to face to clear the air, internet activists dragged her down and expelled her from the movement, like a group of pre-teens playing a game of Telephone. (pg. 13) Kovalik surmises that many keyboard warriors who have never stared down police lines or even handed out a flyer don’t want dialogue and growth. They want to score woke points and “likes” to the detriment of other comrades.

    Liberal bully politics short-changes us all. Kovalik takes a big leap to the international realm to examine the West’s arrogant dismissal of Cuban medical internationalism, the Russian Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine and China’s success controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. China had two deaths in 2021. Kovalik concludes:

    “It simply boggles the mind how the mainstream media and the Democratic Party elite are willing to compromise world peace and public health all in the interest of political gain. In so doing, they have taken ‘cancel culture’ to the very extreme, and they may get us all canceled, permanently, in the process…” (pg. 139)

    A sit-in protest on July 8, 2016 in San Francisco in response to the Alton Sterling shooting / credit:
    A sit-in protest on July 8, 2016, in San Francisco in response to the Alton Sterling shooting / credit: Pax Ahimsa Gethen

    We Never Give Up on Our People

    It’s a new era. One tweet-turned-Twitter-game-of-telephone can ruin a comrade’s life.

    How does the state operate online? How do anarchists operate online? When do they intermingle? Any anonymous account can start a smear campaign against any public figure.

    This book invites us to ask: If we cancel every last screw-up, addict and lumpenized scroundrel, who will absorb the body blows needed to bob and weave forward in the class struggle?

    When in history has another social class organized, led and defended a revolution? The petite-bourgeoisie blows with the wind. Who will be left? Who is willing to put in that work? Who knows hell well enough not to fear it? Nicaraguan national hero Augusto Sandino said, “Only the workers and peasants will make it all the way.” Kovalik is not turning his back and giving up on the potential cadre of the future. Will you?

    A Boston police mug shot of Malcolm X, following his arrest for larceny in 1944
    A Boston police mug shot of Malcolm X, following his arrest for larceny in 1944

    As Marxists, revolutionaries and anti-imperialists, we believe nothing is permanent; everything is in a state of flux. The watchwords are growing through contradictions among the people, healing and restorative justice. We don’t have the luxury of discarding comrades. There has to be a path back or we risk cannibalizing and condemning our own ranks. Who would Malcolm X have been if everyone had given up on him in his 20s, when he was imprisoned? How many young Bobbies, Hueys and Assatas are sidelined right now? How can we be less judgemental and give people opportunities to learn from their mistakes?

    The Other White America

    Black and Brown people in the United States, and those in solidarity with the Black Liberation Movement, have every right to be angry. But angry at whom?

    Most white people are not CEOs or members of the ruling class; many more are National Guard soldiers, correction officers and other reactionary rent-a-cops, the overseers of a society divided between the haves and the have-nots. But the racial portrait of state repression is more complicated. Fifty-eight percent of the Atlanta police force is Black. Over half of Washington, D.C.’s police force is Black. 

    A liberal portrait of white privilege fails to tell the full class story in the United States. Seventy million people received Medicaid in 2016—43 percent were white. Of 43 million food stamp recipients that year, 36.2 percent were white. Over 100,000 overdoses took place in the past year. The overwhelming majority of opioid overdoses occur among poor whites, roughly 72 percent. Are these cast-off layers of our class our enemies?

    A demonstrator raising awareness of the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in April 2015 / credit: Voice of America
    A demonstrator raising awareness of the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in April 2015 / credit: Voice of America

    Kovalik points out that similar to white people, “the top 10 percent of Black households hold 75 percent of Black wealth.” (pg. 96) Is every brother your brother?

    Given the complex class and racial terrain, do we cast poor and working-class whites away as “a basket of deplorables” or do win them over to defend their class interests? Wouldn’t sticking all white protesters in the back of marches with more yuppified layers only alienate them more? Is the movement a “safe space” for them, or more importantly a revolutionizing space? 

    Cancel This Book refuses to give up on the other white America—the poor, forgotten and de-industrialized “oxy-electorate” (writer Kathleen Frydl’s term for white people who live in the U.S. Rust Belt, where OxyContin addictions are on the rise). Those white people are full of disappointment and hatred for this system—between the tens of millions who refused to vote for another neoliberal Dixiecrat like Hillary Clinton, and the tens of millions of others who were duped into believing a spoiled, trash-talking, billionaire, real-estate mogul hoax and punk with infinite air time was their white knight.

    As Malcolm X taught: “The truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it is against the oppressor.” We can win over workers who have only ever known the american-dreaming chauvinism they have been fed. Bursting with ideological perspicacity and revolutionary hope, this book pushes us not to get caught up in the liberal webs of identity politics and call-out culture.

    Kovalik also challenges the white liberals who unknowingly acted as “masochists at the protests.” This constructive critique is not meant to take away from anyone’s hard work and real contributions. Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) was one outgrowth of these liberal politics, which relegated many well-intentioned, liberal, student and petite-bourgeoisie (“middle-class”) whites to cheerleader positions. Is this the militant mass-movement that is going to stand up to the State Department, the Pentagon, the police and the intelligence agencies? When Malcolm held up white abolitionist John Brown’s life as an example of real struggle to follow, he was challenging these liberal politics.

    Amidst the ever-evolving dialectics of our movement, Kovalik’s book comes as a breath of fresh air. It is a clarion call about the damage we are collectively doing to our movement if we do not center class politics next to the need for Black liberation and the liberation of all oppressed people.

    The Haitian State Is Neo-colonized, Not “Failed”

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    Originally published at Black Agenda Report on March 27, 2024 by interviewer Ann Garrison

    Ann Garrison spoke to Professor Danny Shaw, who speaks fluent Haitian Creole and returned from his last trip to Haiti one month ago.

    ANN GARRISON: Danny, I know this is a large ask, but can you outline what has happened in Haiti over the past 20 years, beginning with the overthrow of President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004 and leading to the current crisis?

    DANNY SHAW: The last truly participatory democratic elections in Haiti took place in 2000, when the masses were inspired once again by President Jean Bertrand Aristide, a liberation theologian and truly a man of the people, who came out of the La Saline and Cité Soleil ghettoes. The movement he led was so powerful that it was called Lavalas, the word for flood in Haitian Creole. 

    Aristide had been the democratically elected president in 1991, but he had been taken out by a coup after just a few short months. Then, when the Haitian oligarchs and the US foreign policy establishment saw that he was about to be elected again in 2000, they immediately mobilized a hybrid war against him, first a media war and an aid war—cutting off aid. At the time, Haiti was receiving roughly $600 million per year through NGOs and USAID, and that was halved as soon as Aristide returned to power in 2001.

    The hybrid war also galvanized and armed these paramilitary outfits, and one of their leaders, Guy Philippe, led the coup that removed Aristide. Philippe received all types of help from the Dominican generals and oligarchs, and from US intelligence. With relatively few paramilitary soldiers, he crossed the Dominican border to northern cities and then the capital, Port-au-Prince, in the south. And he of course was working very closely with what was called the the Group 184 led by a multimillionaire Haitian businessman. Most of these Haitian oligarchs who own the mines, plantations, and ports don’t even have full- time residence in Haiti. They live in Miami, France, and Montreal.

    That 2004 coup was engineered and carried out by the US, France, and their proxy paramilitary forces in Haiti. Once it was successful, the Haitian people were again up against a cruel, unelected military dictatorship. This continued for two years, but ultimately Rene Préval was elected president for the second time. Both times the US took out Aristide, Rene Préval followed him. Préval is part of Lavalas but is by no means the inspirational leader that Jean Bertrand Aristide is.

    Elections were held again in 2011, and that’s when Michel Martelly came to power. He was from the PHTK, which was in power before Aristide was removed. Martelly was extremely corrupt and had no real political leadership experience. He was a neo-Duvalierist, and he had nothing but scorn for the 99.9% of Haiti. Haitians often talk about him as the one responsible for the gangster ideation of Haiti. Experts on Haiti agree that the country really begins to be in the hands of the paramilitaries after he comes to power in 2011. He’s just another kleptocrat and US government lackey, who serves US and oligarchic interests.

    Then, in 2018, a mass, nationalist, anti-colonialist movement exploded against the PetroCaribe Scandal . Venezuela had sent billions of dollars in petrol aid in solidarity with Haiti, seeking to work with the the past Aristide-type leadership, the Lavalas leadership that follows in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Dessalines , the original liberator of Haiti. But what they got was President Michel Martelly and then President Jovenel Moise, who stole more than $6 billion of the PetroCaribe funds.

    I believe it was at the end of summer 2018 when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets against the government of Jovenel Moise, demanding to know where their money was. Moise was highly unpopular, as was Michel Martelly.

    This movement was explosive. I was there in 2021, when there were supposed to  be new elections, but those elections never happened. Jovenel Moise, unpopular as he was, insisted on staying in power, and a movement of millions of Haitians exploded. It galvanized all sectors of Haitian civil society, and the streets were full of resistance. I have many fond memories of those days.

    AG: This is 2021.

    DS: Yes. Then on July 7, 2021, President Jovenel Moise was assassinated and that became carte blanche for the Haitian ruling class to repress the movement. The movement of millions of Haitians was no longer in the streets. And then the US came in once again and said that Ariel Henry, one of the coup-mongers from 2004, would be the prime minister.

    There was no election. The Haitian people again had no say. And then Ariel Henry was in power up until last week when the State Department, according to the Miami Herald, informed him that he was no longer president while he was on a plane flying back from Kenya, where he’d been trying to arrange for Kenyan police to lead the new invasion and occupation of Haiti. So Haiti is now without a head of state. Headlines will say it’s a failed state, but I think we can say it’s a successfully neo-colonized state.

    AG: What role is Jean Bertrand Aristide playing in Haiti now?

    DS: It would be difficult to quantify the amount of trauma inflicted upon the population who see him as the modern father of the Haitian popular movement. It’s similar to how we hear medical experts say that children in Gaza don’t have post-traumatic stress disorder because all they’ve ever known is trauma. I think that’s true of Haiti, the Palestine of the Caribbean, and certainly their most righteous popular leaders like Aristide. Because of US imperialism, he was twice couped and twice kidnapped.

    He has largely retired to private life, where he now oversees a university, offering opportunities to thousands and thousands of Haitian students, the next generation of Haitian professionals, doctors, lawyers, writers, and poets, and he’s still extremely popular, specifically in the ghettos of Haiti, where so much of his support came from. In 2021, before the mass movement was repressed, it was not uncommon to see T-shirts and signs and portraits of Aristide wherever the popular movement was flexing its muscles. Haitians have been saying for decades that he has more than nine lives because there’ve been so many ambushes and attempts on his life. In 2004, he was whisked off to the Central African Republic, then to South Africa, where he received an anti-colonial hero’s welcome, but he wasn’t able to return to Haiti for six or eight years. Now I think it’s kind of an implicit deal with the corrupt colonial power structure that he can stay so long as he doesn’t rise to power again.

    So the 2021 movement wasn’t trying to pivot to Aristide again for a third presidency, but it was demanding a true transition, not one overseen by the Blinkens and Bidens and the Republicans and the Democrats, but one that’s overseen by true representation of the peasant sector, the women’s sector, the neighborhood sectors, and all the popular sectors of Haiti.

    AG: What are the most salient points that you would make to anyone who’s been hearing that Haiti is in the news again, but doesn’t have a lot of background?

    DS: How tragic, how racist it is that Haiti is only in the news when it has to do with some disaster—a coup, an earthquake, an epidemic, the next occupation, or the assassination of this or that president or dictator. Two weeks ago, Haiti was trending on social media and on front pages all over the world. I even received calls from India about Haiti, which is quite rare. And it was because there were these horrific white supremacist rumors that Jimmy Chérizier, one of the paramilitary bosses, was a cannibal who had eaten one of his victims.

    Any attack like that on any Haitian is an attack on all Haitians, on their self-image and self-esteem. The war on Haiti is an information and media war. So I think it’s important to move beyond those headlines. There is indeed a crisis but it’s not a crisis that was just made in Haiti. We have to understand the colonial context. MOLEGHAF, one of the key grassroots popular movements in the ghettos of Port-au-Prince, lays it out that the masses are trying to organize their own transition out of this crisis, a popular transition. MOLEGHAF and the Black Alliance for Peace will have a press conference about it this week.

    AG: What does MOLEGHAF stand for?

    DS: It stands for the National Movement for Liberty and Equality of Haitians for Fraternity. It’s one of the grassroots actors that organizes popular education and resistance like Fanmi Lavalas. Everyone should check out them and their people-to-people fundraiser.

    The United States is overseeing a seven-person “transitional government.” Last week Anthony Blinken oversaw a meeting to arrange it with CARACOM leaders, particularly Guyanese President Irfaan Ali and Jamaican President Andrew Holness. These are imperial stooges.

    Anyone who wanted to even be considered for this new, seven-person, transitional government had to agree to the pending US-sponsored and directed invasion and occupation of Haiti, the fourth invasion and occupation in the past 100 years.

    The paramilitary gangs supposedly signed a truce about 10 days ago, but the violence continues. There are now close to half a million Haitians who have been displaced by these death squads. The mainstream media calls them “gangs,” but that word isn’t sociologically sufficient to understand this phenomenon. These are paramilitaries armed to the teeth.

    The US and the Haitian ruling class have a history of using paramilitaries, and they’ve reactivated their agent, Guy Philippe.  It seems as though the US understands that the more chaos they can engender, the more justification they have for carrying out their fourth invasion and occupation.

    AG: What role would you say the drug traffic from Latin America to North America and Western Europe is playing in this?

    DS: It’s extremely difficult for an investigative journalist or an ethnographer, like myself, to connect all the dots, but it’s very clear that in the south of Haiti, there are massive shipments of cocaine and marijuana coming into the ports. The ports are controlled by the billionaire and multimillionaire families. They also control landing strips in small private airports.

    No guns and no drugs are produced on the island. There’s no culture of consuming these drugs there. Moonshine is the only intoxicant most people can afford. So it’s a transshipment point because of this intentionally “failed state.” The mercenary bosses, the leaders of the death squads, the warlords, they’re the ones that control the central arteries of Haiti, the central roads that connect Port-au-Prince to the south and every exit out of Port-au-Prince. That’s why we can say that Port-au-Prince is like Gaza or the West Bank.

    It’s highly profitable for these gang bosses to control what we would call highways. And that’s how we begin to explain why there are paramilitary gangs. Haitians always say that this is a planned and organized disaster because it’s inexplicable that in a country where the vast majority of people try to survive on two dollars or less per day, there will be these young people gripping weapons that range in price from $10,000 to $30,000.

    How could they have such massive arsenals? Well, it’s because the drugs come into the south and then get exported from the north of Haiti to the North American and European markets. Maybe the oligarchic families of Haiti’s 0.01% could afford cocaine, but hardly anyone else can, and it’s not part of Haitian culture.

    There’s a history of drug dealing among the kleptocrats and the ruling class and the generals under Duvalier and the US-appointed generals.

    AG: I believe you said that there’s only one boat in the Haitian Coast Guard.

    DS: Yeah, one boat, so it’s a smuggler’s paradise, and every day there are fewer police. On average, every month, these paramilitaries kill dozens of police.  Not that the Haitian police as an institution are the answer; they fired on the masses during the 2021 mass uprising.

    Guy Philippe served time in a Florida jail for being a drug trafficker and money launderer, and now he’s back attempting to be the next president of Haiti.

    AG: Some say that the coalition of paramilitary groups led by Jimmy Chérizier, aka “Barbecue,” is revolutionary. What’s your response to that?

    DS: I think it would be a grave mistake to oversimplify a complex historical and sociological phenomenon. To anyone who tells you Barbecue is the savior of Haiti, I would say that’s absolutely ridiculous. That’s based on my many different conversations across the ghettos of Port-au-Prince and in the north and south. There are an estimated 12 to 13 million Haitians, and they probably have 12 to 13 million different points of view on Barbecue.

    And what I hear from the Haitian people all the time is that if he’s truly a revolutionary, how come all the blood on his hands is that of the poor, the dispossessed? You know, show us the pudding. Talk is cheap. When are you going to walk the walk? If you really have a war on the oligarchy and this putrid system, how are you going to carry that out? Are you going to march on the oligarchs in the mountains? So a lot of people think it’s all talk.

    Some people just see him as a media phenomenon. There’s been an incredible amount of intrigue around him. What you hear a lot and what I heard in 2021, when I marched shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the streets, was that Barbecue was one of the enforcers for Jovenel Moise, the dictator at the time, and that he stopped people from the ghetto in downtown Port-au-Prince from participating in that massive popular insurrection.

    Some say that Barbecue’s name is because when he was a little boy, there were so many Jimmies where he lived that he was called Jimmy Barbecue because his mother sold barbecued chicken at night. Others say it’s because he burned down so many people’s houses.

    I think it would be a grave mistake for anyone to put all of their eggs in the Jimmy Chérizier basket. He’s completely unproven. He’s never been connected to any type of actual organized resistance across Haiti, so time will tell. It’s way too early to cast any type of final judgment. For foreigners, it would be so exciting to think that he is a Haitian Che Guevara, but the majority of the Haitian people are not buying that.

    Jimmy Chérizier is definitely a leader, but what type of leader? There’s no question that he’s charismatic. To be able to somehow bring together all of these different gangsters, some of whom are just 100% criminal cutthroat butchers and rapists, is no small feat. But what is he going to do with this alliance, and how much bloodshed and displacement are they responsible for? About two weeks ago, Jimmy Chérizier held a press conference to announce that all these different paramilitary death squads are uniting. And he says to the Haitian people, “You have to excuse us, you have to forgive us for what we’ve done.”

    You’re talking about upwards of half a million refugees, internally displaced people, just in Port-au-Prince. So it seems completely ridiculous to think they can just say they’re sorry.

    The true revolutionary force in Haiti is the leadership of the mass sectors, the peasantry, the workers, the ghettos, the women’s sectors, and the unification of all these civil society sectors, but they’re always under the gun. It’s been said by so many that Jimmy Chérizier and these other gang leaders are the Tonton Macoutes of today, so we should continue to weigh all of the ethnographic evidence and provide platforms for different Haitians and translate their voices, as we will in the press conference we have coming up with MOLEGHAF and the Black Alliance for Peace.

    I think that’s the most important role that we can play to encourage the Haitian people to be the protagonists who usher in a new day with a true sense of economic, political, cultural, and diplomatic self-determination.