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    A Portrait of Love in a City at War: Who Assassinated Haitian Community Leader Tchadenksy Jean Baptiste?

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    Originally published at Black Agenda Report on March 20, 2024

    One year since the murder of community leader and poet Tchadenksy Jean Baptiste, his dedication and love for his nation and his people lives on.

    Port-au-Prince is on fire. Not since Haiti rose from bondage to defeat the 60,000-strong army of Napoleon and all of the French empire’s reinforcements of tens of thousands of mercenaries has Haiti confronted such a dire moment. Paramilitary gangs armed to the teeth with U.S. weapons terrorize entire communities in Port-au-Prince and Latibonit.

    Buried within the hellscape of hunger, overflowing garbage and sewage, with gun battles brewing on every korido (alleyway) and kwen (corner), there is resistans.[1] Who are the nameless, fearless warriors who keep fighting for another Haiti beyond paramilitary and foreign control? How can we highlight their stories of hope as the corporate media feeds us nothing but anti-Haitian and anti-Black stereotypes? How can we be in solidarity with the popular movement in Haiti during these critical weeks when the U.S. prepares its next invasion? At a historical moment when colonialism has sought to bury the Haitian people’s collective self-esteem, the smiles, the courage and the love still burst forth. Thank you Tchadensky! ​​Mèsi Tchadenksy! Souri w ouvri wout pou Ayiti. Pwezi ou te viv e mouri pou peyi a. Byento ase Ayibobo.[2]

    Last year, on Tuesday, March 21st, a sniper’s bullet from an Israeli-made Galil ripped through the flesh of 24-year-old Haitian community leader and writer Tchadenksy Jean Baptiste. The war in Port-au-Prince counts among its victims hundreds of thousands of children and families who have been burnt out of their homes, raped and murdered. In Sniper City, death squads battle each other, the organized and unorganized masses and the police for territory and power. The police are among the favorite targets of the mercenaries, with on average 15 officers murdered every month in the capital. Amidst the imperial maelstrom, despite the bullets, gangs and hunger, community and resistance leaders continue their work, steadfast and confident in their people, their ancestors and their spiritual way of life. Armed with his perennial smile and poetry, Tchad was one such example of a determined militan (member of the organized protest movement) who never ceased to believe in and fight for Haiti’s unfinished second revolution. 

    “Pa Gen Moun Pase Moun” (No one is better than anyone else)

    To walk with Tchadensky in the korido yo (alleyways) of Belè, Fò Nasyonal and Port-au-Prince’s many sprawling, perilous slums was to walk shoulder to shoulder with revolutionary royalty. In neighborhoods where the battle for hegemony plays out between criminal, paramilitary organizations and the masses, every neighbor, every elder and youth knew him and looked up to him. He didn’t believe in eating alone. Children gathered around cement blocks or big boulders that served as makeshift tables eagerly waiting to see what their big brother had cooked up for them. His habit of always sharing his hot plate worried his mother who perennially wondered if her oldest son had eaten enough. The elders reminded younger generations that this collective approach flowed from lespri aysyen (the Haitian way or soul).

    Squatting in front of a ripped poster of Jan Jak Dessalin, on a side alleyway off John Brown Avenue, the 24-year-old speaks to a group of Rasta youth: “We fight for everyone to be treated like the dignified human beings that they are.” He stopped mid breath and mid sentence and pleaded with his political family: “Why are we losing this battle? How do we take our neighborhoods back?” Despite fleeing from home to makeshift shacks and then sleeping in the streets, in stadiums, abandoned buildings and in public parks alongside hundreds of families displaced by the proxy death squads, Tchadensky never stopped reading and writing. He cited Soviet leader Mikhail Kalinin who taught that it was important to find time to read and write even if it was on the battlefield. Tedina, his life partner, remembered him as a prankster, a chef, a perfectionist, a scholar, an indefatigable fighter and lover of life.

    Picture1.png
    Tchadensky performs his first love, poetry.
     

    “I don’t have time for hate. I only have time for love.”

    A year after his death, the university where Tchadensky studied and performed has yet to come to terms with their loss. His close friend and colleague James Junior Jean Rolph offered his own eulogy, reminiscing that this youthful renaissance man did not “have a big head, constantly motivated his peers, worked and progressed without complaining and always had his head in the books.”

    Tchadenksy, like so many in this city of 2.5 million, lived on the run. He remained a light in Port-au-Prince’s most infamous neighborhoods 一 Matisan, Delma 2, Kafou Fèy and Belè. These are the bidonvils (ghettos) that provide the canvas for the clips of unrestrained violence that circulate on Haitian whatsapp. Tchad and the movement rejected the sensationalism of the media. Internally within MOLEGHAF and other socialist organizations, they discouraged the sharing of what they saw as “Black Death Pornography.” Tchad and others cautioned against the sharing on Whatsapp of grizzly images of heads cut off, sexual violence against the most vulnerable, bodies tortured and massacres. After a deep breath, he patiently explained to a crowd that they and their self-esteem had been brutalized and traumatized enough. The insurgent’s responsibility was to re-instill hope and love in the masses. And this is what our protagonist did until he was again run out and his home, alongside thousands of others, was burnt down. How many poems, memories, dreams, libraries and futures have disappeared in the flames, smoke and ashes of imperialism? For some militan, what they most lamented after the loss of life, was the loss of memories. How many bookshelves of fresh literature and newly-written poems have been sacrificed at the altar of the U.S. government’s obsession with guns, violence and plunder?

    Haiti’s top newspaper, Le Nouvelliste, published the poet’s last words “Running, Always Running” which has survived the author and the hybrid war[3]:

    “Running, Always Running”

    I am always on the run
    Until I am out of breath

    I am not an athlete
    I am no type of sportsman
    But I am always running

    I am fleeing and hiding from stuff I did not do

    After Lasalin 
    I am in Aviyasyon
    I sprint through Dèlma 2
    All I know how to do these days is run
    Drenched in sweat
    I am running out of breath 

    I’m not running
    To get in better shape
    Or to impress anyone with a 6-pack
    I run because I am on the run  

    I have my backpack on
    My baby is in my hands
    I have blankets wrapped around me
    I grab any last memories I can
    I drop my passport in the fury
    I search for a corner
    A nook and cranny
    To rest my weary head
    My exhausted body
    To think of the life I completely lost.

    We all run
    We run together
    Our grandmothers
    Little ones
    Everyone
    United
    Running
    Some of us are burnt
    Others are on fire
    All of us running
    shoulder to shoulder with the trauma
    To see who will cross the line of death first.

    After Kanaran 
    I run through Divivye
    Then Site Solèy
    We are all running
    Drenched in sweat
    We are running out of breath
    We search for a hiding spot
    A refuge
    Where we can maroon the bullets
    So the stray bullets
    Do not
    Swallow us whole
    On the path
    where we are running”

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    A march to remember the families massacred in 2019 in Lasalin who were stripped naked before being butchered.


    David vs Goliath

    And on a Tuesday, like any other, surrounded by one of his usual extended families, Tchadensky suddenly went quiet and crumbled underneath his own weight. The children saw the bleeding wound on the side of his stomach and screamed out “Amwey! Tchadenksy pran bal.” “Help! Tchandenksy was shot.” Amidst the shock, his comrades scrambled to gather the money necessary to pay a motorcycle to bring him to The Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) hospital.

    According to Domini Resain, Coordinator of Mobilization for MOLEGHAF, (Movement for the Equality and Liberation of All Haitians ), the student leader was organizing a community meal and a workshop for children displaced by the gang war when a sniper blasted a bullet from an IMI Galil into his abdomen. Everyone speculated: “the sniper who shot Tchad, was he a police officer, a paid assassin or a gang member from the G9 or G-Pèp paramilitaries who have know reconstituted themselves under the command of Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier as the Viv Ansanm alliance (Live Together)?” Domini intervened before a crowd who gathered to express their condolences: “Does it matter who killed Tchad? They are all the same. These are not stray bullets as they claim. They are state bullets. These are PHTK bullets. These are police bullets. These are Washington bullets .”

    In the “Confessions of a Haitian kidnapper ,” police officer Arnel Joseph unpacks the secret connections that exist between political and economic power elites, the Haitian National Police and the gangs. While the dominant narrative carried by telejòl (television or media reports carried by mouth or through rumors) stated that a stray bullet struck the popular leader, the militan were quick to point out that these were state bullets and Washington bullets.

    As Peter Hallward’s classic book , Damming the Flood: Haiti and the Politics of Containment, on the rise and repression of the Lavalas movement shows, all of modern Haitian history is a contest for power between the desperately poor 99.9 percent and the fabulously opulent 0.1 percent of the Petyonvil mountain enclave. In this asymmetrical war, Tchad mobilized poems, smiles and flowers as his class enemies hired professional assassins for a cheap day’s pay. How many tens of thousands of Lavalas organizers and fighters from the broad social movement have been disappeared, exiled, imprisoned and assassinated?The oligarchy disappears the expression, art and leadership they deem to be an obstacle to their rule. If anything remains clear in Haiti, it is the fact that a handful of elite families hide behind their heavily-fortified castles and the carefully curated media they own and manage. There are more private security guards than public police in the most unequal country in the Western hemisphere. It was an entire system that murdered Thadensky, like so many others from his generation.

    Picture3.png
    A smile as eternal and irresistible as one of Tchadensky’s poems
     

    Washington Bullets and Resistans Ayisyen (Haitian Resistance)

    The average life expectancy in France is over 82 years. The average life expectancy in The Dominican Republic is 73 years. In Haiti , it is 10 years less. For a revolutionary in Haiti, the statistic drops several more decades. Tchadenksy joined a growing list of community leaders liquidated under the rule of the PHTK, the Haitian Bald Headed Party, named so because their first dictator, Michel Martelly was bald. The party’s rule is especially sinister because they hide behind their hired mercenaries, denying any involvement. Paramilitaries are more effective in Haiti, just as they were in Colombia, Argentina, El Salvador and other U.S. neocolonies because they are not accountable to anyone.

    The modern makouts (thugs and assassins) are loyal to Izo, Kempès Sanon, Barbecue, Vitalhom or whoever the local warlord is. Three survivors of a kidnapping in Mon Kabrit, who do not want to be named, explained: “The young recruits didn’t have money to eat that day but they gripped AR15s and AK47s worth over $10,000 on the streets of Haiti. We know they are involved with the drug trade. How can they get such expensive weapons when most of us are hungry? When they divided the men from the women (the speaker looked down), the kidnappers screamed allegiance to their leader Lanmò San Jou (Death without a day announced). They asked us who we were loyal to…which political party or gang? Refusing the debate, we looked away. They hit us and reminded us that their president and the president of all of Haiti was their boss, the paramilitary gang leader, Lanmò San Jou.” This anecdote is telling and sheds light on the highly localized reality of gang bosses who preside over their own fiefdoms of looting, raping and destruction. This is the colonial Haiti run by guns for fire that Tchadensky resisted, and the one that ultimately consumed him and thousands of other innocents. 

    Picture4.jpg
    The notorious warlord and ally of Barbecue, Kempès seeks  to burn Fort Nasyonal and Solino the ground.


    Our protagonist never hesitated to denounce the powers that be, “the gangsters in ties ” and foreign forces who fanned the flames of the fratricidal war. The griot articulates what so many know but cannot express or are deathly afraid to express – the chaos in Haiti has its origins faraway in the palaces and boardrooms of Washington D.C., New York, Miami, Ottawa, Montreal and Paris. While CNN, Fox and the New York Times deceitfully portray Haiti as isolated, the Caribbean nation of over 11.5 million has for centuries been integrated into the international capitalist machinery .[4]  And if the maroon nation ever steps out of line, U.S. Marines are not far off to remind them of their place in the global pecking order. Washington now prefers mercenaries from Brazil, Kenya, Chile, Chad, Nepal or Benin to carry out their fourth invasion and occupation of Haiti in the past 100 years.

    Regardless of the historical odds, there is an abundance of leaders and organizations who trained with Tchadensky and are fighting to elevate their homeland out of the neoliberal quagmire. They too are survivors of this hybrid war. Highly conscious of the ideological and media war against them, MOLEGHAF, the Black Panthers of Haiti , model another brand of leadership, honest, self-sacrificing and anti-imperialist.[5] For this reason, they have been targeted by state and paramilitary bullets. Many political demonstrations and protests in Haiti are in front of the U.S. embassy precisely because of this anti-imperialist awareness. Dahoud Andre, a spokesperson of KOMOKODA, the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti, and host of “Haiti Our Revolution Continues” on WBAI analyzed the ins-and-outs of the struggle today for Haiti’s definitive self-determination on Black Agenda Radio.

    On the anniversary of the death of a Haitian Fred Hampton, take time to resist the mainstream clichés against Haiti and share the memories of our Haitian saints. The Gregory Saint-Hillaires , Jean Anil Louis Justes and Tchadenskys gave everything for everyone, while awaiting nothing for themselves in return, as they fought and fell in combat in order to guarantee all the homeland’s children an abundance of water, food, peace, liberty, dignity and joy.

    Picture5.jpg
    Professor Jean Anil Louis Juste, here with the eternal comandante of the Caribbean, was assassinated hours before the 2010 earthquake for being a free thinker and organizer against the PHTK dictatorship.


    Fanmi Lavalas (Sali Piblik)
    KRÒS Kowòdinasyon Rejyonal Òganizasyon Sidès yo
    MOLEGHAF: Mouvman pou Libète Egalite sou Chimen Fratènize Tout Ayisyen
    OTR: Òganizasyon Travayè Revolisyonè
    Radyo Resistans
    SOFA: Solidarite Fanm Ayisyen
    Rasin Kanpèp
    Konbit Òganizasyon Politik ak Sendikal yo
    Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan
    MPP Movman Peyizan Papay
    Movman Popilè Revolusyonè (Sitè Soley)
    Sèk Gramsci
    Sèk Jean Annil Louis-Juste
    KOMOKODA (Komite Mobilizasyon kont Diktati an Ayiti Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti)
    Jounal revolisyonè: La Voix des Travailleus Revolutionaire
    Platfòm Ayisyen Pledwaye pou yon Devlopman Altènatif
    SROD’H: Syndicat pour la Rénovation des Ouvriers d’Haïti
    ROPA: Regwoupman Ouvriye Pwogresis Ayisyen
    OFDOA :Oganizasyon Fanm Djanm Ouvriye Ayisyen
    Altènativ Sosyalis
    Fwon Popilè e Patriotik
    JCH Jeunesse communiste haïtien

    [1] All spellings are in the national language of Haiti, Kreyòl, not the colonial language, French.

    [2] Translation: “Your smile opens up a new path for Haiti. Your poetry lived and died for Haiti. See you again soon comrade God bless!”

    [3] For the original version of the poem in Kreyòl see the embedded link. With permission from Tchadensky’s family, I translated the poem into English.

    [4] The Haitian state last conducted a census in 2003 under the leadership of Jean Bertrand Aristide so the population is probably much higher than 12,000,000.

    [5] Partial List of Leftist, Anti-Imperialist Organizations in Haiti

    Half a Trillion Dollars for Israel?

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    Washington Heights convulses before La Marcha Verde

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    Originally published at Liberation News on July 19, 2017

    A march of over 10,000 Dominicans blanketed the immigrant community of Washington Heights in scorching hot uptown Manhattan on July 16. The march was timed to coincide with a national Marcha Verde in the Dominican capital city Santo Domingo where over 200,000 people marched 4.2 km converging on Congress.

    Outraged at the corruption that has long been common practice in Dominican politics, the Dominican people took to the streets en masse to say “Basta Ya,” enough is enough.

    Impeach President Medina!

    The tipping point came last year when the Brazilian mega construction firm Odebrecht was caught red handed paying bribes to President Danilo Medina, his underlings and opposition party leaders from the PRM to score massive construction deals in the Dominican Republic. Grupo Odebrecht handed out payoffs of millions to key politicians and the government intentionally marked up the price on projects in order to overcharge Dominican taxpayers.

    Danilo Medina presides over what is one of the most corrupt political systems in the Caribbean. The 2016 presidential elections proved to be yet another contest to control the purse strings of the nation and pillage the treasury.

    Chanting “Danilo te jodiste por el dinero que cogiste” (Danilo you screwed up by stealing our money) and “el pueblo trabajando y el PLD robando” (the people working while the PLD robs), the sea of green moved up Broadway with onlookers joining the crowd.

    Ángel García, the national spokesperson of la Juventud Duartiana (The Juan Pablo Duarte Youth) analyzed the significance of this historic movement:

    “The Marcha Verde’s importance is that is has unleashed a movement that is empowering the citizenry. This mass movement represents a new precedent in our country. Never before in our national history have we mobilized so many people to stand up to impunity. Now everyday workers and students are becoming conscious that they have a responsibility to act as fiscal watchdogs over government functionaries. Those who thought themselves untouchable and above the law are finally under pressure; the bureaucrats understand that political delinquency will be punished. The massive green wave is demanding convictions of the corrupt politicians, the return of the money they stole to the public treasury and the suspension of all contracts with Odebrecht.”

    Building a mass movement

    Green became the color of this historic movement because it was distinct from the purple and white political symbols the Dominican electorate was accustomed to. Green symbolized something new and fresh that a people exhausted by traditional politics could believe in. The color symbolic of nature became the color of the anti-corruption campaign.

    Grassroots, leftist organizers were determined to launch a movement that masses of people could believe in and be proud of. Regional marches delivered green torches to historic places. Organizers in green shirts collected millions of signatures in green books. These were the building blocks of one long organizing campaign, culminating in this Sunday’s marches.

    This is the most massive resistance movement the D.R. has seen since the “Cold War” when a vibrant, united Dominican left challenged the U.S. puppet Joaquin Balaguer for power.

    The challenges of a mass movement

    The Green March movement is similar to the anti-Trump movement in that it is an ideologically diverse movement of millions with different political actors. There is a left and right wing vying for leadership.

    The other big bourgeois party, the PRM wants to cash in on La Marcha Verde movement. Don’t let its name fool you. There is nothing revolutionary about the leading “opposition” party, the Partido Revolucionario Moderno or PRM (Modern Revolutionary Party, formerly the PRD, the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano).

    The PRM is caught in a big contradiction. How can they lead the protest movement when they are complicit in the scandal? The PRM president Andrés  Bautista and their spokesman in the House of Representative Alfredo Pacheco are both implicated in the scandal. The PRM cannot demand jail time for the purple thieves (the color of the PLD) and liberty for the white thieves (the color of the PRM). Their claim to be part of La Marcha Verde is like Hillary Clinton’s claim to be part of the resistance in the U.S.: complete hypocrisy.

    This is one of the great lessons the Dominican and American people are learning. The PLD and PRM and Republicans and Democrats represent the two heads of the same coin of corruption and inequality. Voting for either one is a lost vote because the same exploitative system remains in power. Carlos Amarente Barat, leader of the PLD’s Political Committee, recognized the danger “this movement represents to the entire political system.”

    The task before the Dominican left is to win people away from the two traditional parties. The challenge is that when elections come in 2020, the PLD and the PRM offer bribes of 500 pesos (roughly $10 dollars), bags of Pica Pollo (fast food) and boxes of rum in order to buy votes. This tradition一dating back to Trujillo and Balaguer一gives a sense of just how rotten the system is. La Marcha Verde represents a steel wrench thrust into this corrupt political machinery.

    The way forward

    The Dominican left一which is composed of El Frente Amplio, El Movimiento Popular Dominicano, La Fuerza de la Revolución and other organizations一is committed to turning the green torch into a red torch. While the PRM and other liberal parties try to steal the media spotlight and take credit for the mobilization, it has been grassroots anti-imperialist organizers who have given the movement its national coherence.

    In the U.S. we are all too familiar with the abuse of authority. Our reality here of jail for the poor and impunity for the rich is a mirror image of the Dominican reality.

    It is also important to highlight the colonial relationship that exists between the two countries. The U.S. government works hand in hand with their Dominican cronies to keep the revolutionary movement at bay, twice occupying the Caribbean country in the 20th century. It is the U.S. military that trains and funds the Dominican military and U.S. capital that super exploits Dominican workers in la zona franca (Free Trade Zones or sweatshops). Until D.R. is free of external influence, millions will have no choice but to migrate in order to make a living.

    All progressive and revolutionary people should salute the unity and courage of the Dominican people and continue to stand with them in the streets. From la avenida Duarte in Santo Domingo to Broadway in Washington Heights, we have the same enemy and the same struggle. Hasta la victoria siempre compañer@s!

    Teófilo Stevenson: The most humble of champions

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    Originally published at Liberation News on June 15, 2012

    The boxing world and workers everywhere have lost one of their giants with the passing of Cuban heavyweight champion Teófilo Stevenson June 11.

    The 6 foot 3 inch, 209 lb. boxer is one of only three fighters to win three Olympic Gold medals alongside Hungarian László Papp and fellow Cuban Félix Savón. He was on track to achieve a fourth gold medal in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles but Cuba and 12 other socialist countries joined in solidarity with the Soviet Union’s decision to boycott the games that year.

    Fidel Castro summed up Stevenson’s selflessness in a tribute stating: “He could have achieved another two Olympic titles hadn’t it been for certain duties that the principles of internationalism imposed on the Revolution.”

    What stood out about “el caballero del ring,”—the gentleman of the ring as he was popularly known—was not just his agility as a heavyweight, his jab which kept his opponents at a distance or his punishing right hand, but his integrity as a human being and boxing champion. In a conversation with Cuban youth, he stated “Sports is not about feeling superior to anyone else. Sports is about harmony.  It’s about our health. It’s not to mistreat anyone else. Sports is one of the healthiest things we have in society.”

    Stevenson recorded 302 fights—losing only 22—an unheard-of number in this day and age. He never entered the ring with any intention of gaining money or fame, onlyfor the love of boxing, sports and competition in general. If some fighters could be considered one dimensional, Stevenson represented the very best of human qualities.

    In an age where championship boxing fosters show-boating, arrogance and multi-million dollar fights, Stevenson offers us another model to follow. In the words of one of the Cuban Five, René González, “Stevenson was so modest he appeared to reject the very idea of his own greatness. As an athlete he made millions of his countrymen and women quiver; as a human being he merged with all of us; and despite his impressive physical stature, he was just another one of us.”

    Imperialism —with its constant cliches in the media about “defectors” from communist countries— could never buy Stevenson. Even though he was offered $5 million dollars to fight Muhammad Ali for the world title in 1976, he declined, stating “What is one million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans? I wouldn’t change a piece of Cuban soil for all the money they could give me.”

    Teófilo Stevenson will forever be a shining example of hard work, humility and grace for young boxers and athletes the world over. Along with revolutionaries and boxing fans the world over, we offer our condolences to Stevenson’s family and to Cuba for this loss. ¡Hasta Siempre Campeón!

    Long Island: a boiling cauldron of injustice and struggle

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    Originally published at Liberation News on July 14, 2017

    Long Island is home to some 8 million people but is often overshadowed by its giant neighbor to the west, New York City. Often misperceived as a more privileged area, Long Island is host to the same class strife and stratification that plague New York City and every city in this country. As part of the growing momentum around the People’s Congress of Resistance, we wanted to highlight some of the local struggles Long Islanders are engaged in.

    Justice for Elizabeth Stenson

    Local hero Elizabeth Stenson

    On May 18, Elizabeth Stenson of Amityville, age 58,  was involved in a horrible accident in Hicksville in which two people died. According to people who knew her, Elizabeth had a seizure as she drove and lost control of her vehicle. She immediately surrendered to the police. Showing no sympathy for her medical condition, the Nassau police locked her up and charged her with two murders. While in jail, Stenson and her family desperately tried to access her medications for her heart condition. The authorities ignored her and her attorney’s constant request, and deprived Stenson of her blood pressure medications. Correction officers found her dead from a massive heart attack on May 27.

    The Nassau community demands justice for Elizabeth Stenson who according to close friends was an inspiration to all. Having herself survived addiction and the streets, she became a mentor and mother figure for many addicts in Bay Shore and Central Islip.

    One friend remembered Stenson “for helping and changing hundreds of lives with her selfless service. She was known for hugging the unhuggable and loving the unlovable. The amount of pain she was carrying from that horrific accident is hard to even imagine. This is extremely sad from all sides.”

    Police and ICE murder people

    RIP Kenny Lazo

    Unfortunately, Elizabeth Stenson’s story is not rare. Twelve inmates have died at Nassau’s jail in the past five years, including Iraq War veteran Bartholomew Ryan, age 32 and Kevin Brown, age 47. The State Commission of Correction found that both of these deaths and many others were preventable. Armor Correctional Health Services has been at the center of the controversy and is facing several lawsuits from the families of the victims for having provided shoddy health care for the Nassau inmates.

    These shocking deaths are all too familiar. In 2008 Kenny Lazo was beaten to death while in Suffolk County police custody. In 2003, 18-year-old Sha-Kie Williams stated that while he was handcuffed the police shoved him down an elevator shaft. Williams fell four stories and was hospitalized at Stony Brook but luckily survived.

    Rolando Meza Espinoza

    Brentwood’s Rolando Meza Espinoza died on June 10 while in ICE custody in New Jersey. The Honduran native died of internal bleeding and hemorrhagic shock at Jersey City Medical Center. Meza had diabetes, anemia and cirrhosis of the liver and did not receive the attention he deserved. His lawyer Manuel Portela and family assert that ICE made a mistake in apprehending Espinoza who did not even closely resemble the individual they were looking for.

    Nine people have died in ICE custody since Trump took office. Meanwhile, private prison stocks have nearly doubled in value since Election Day.

    Understanding MS 13: Intervention comes home to roost

    The mainstream media specializes in scaring people with horrific tales of MS 13 recruitment tactics and murders. What they never mention are the modern day roots of the massive exodus out of El Salvador, Nicaragua and other Central American countries. “The American Dreamers” would have you believe families just uprooted their lives because the United States is just so great. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    People’s victory in Nicaragua, 1979

    In the 1980s the U.S. unleashed a series of covert wars against liberation movements in Central America. The CIA and other intelligence agencies misappropriated millions of tax payer’s money to conduct illegal wars against the Sandinistas, the FMLN and other revolutionary movements in the region. When they could not achieve Congressional approval for their dirty wars, the intelligence cabal resorted to the sale of cocaine and crack to raise funds. This was the famous Iran-Contra scandal first uncovered by San Jose Mercury journalist Gary Webb.

    The death tolls from the U.S. proxy wars were staggering.

    • – 75,000 dead in El Salvador
    • – Tens of thousands slain from the Contra war in Nicaragua
    • – Hundreds of political “disappearances” in Honduras
    • – Some 100,000 people murdered in Guatemala
    • – To this day, the number of dead from the U.S. “Christmas bombing” of Panama in 1989 have yet to be counted.

    By making life unlivable, U.S. foreign policy de-futurized entire nations, displaced hundreds of thousands of families and orphaned a generation of children. How cruel and myopic for Trump to brag on Twitter about his “success” in closing the border to Central Americans, considering the historic debt this government has to those nations.

    Now the chickens are coming home to roost. On June 13, ICE conducted Operation Matador arresting 45 “confirmed” gang members, many in Central Islip, Brentwood and Bellport which is home to a big Salvadoran and Central American community.   

    Yes, we should decry the Central Islip deaths and any violent episodes in our communities but we have to dig deeper. Violence begets violence. How short-sighted to engage in sensationalism, denouncing individuals acts of desperation, without analyzing the hate that hate produced. The communities of Central Islip, Brentwood and Bellport are now dealing with the direct consequences of Reagan and the United States’ foreign policy.

    ICE and the Suffolk Police may provide sensational headlines and photo ops but they provide no real solutions. There is a certain truth to the statement that “nothing stops a gang bullet like a job.” Investment in jobs and education in Suffolk County and a 180-degree change in U.S. foreign policy are long-term solutions. 

    Opioid nation: a cry for help

    In 2016, over 500 people suffered fatal overdoses in Long Island, mostly from heroin and fentanyl. This past month of June, on one weekend, there were 22 overdoses.

    Dylan Caruso in action

    Twenty-four-year-old Dylan Caruso was one such victim. A star lefty pitcher and captain of Sachem High School’s baseball team, Caruso overdosed two weeks ago on opiates and died. Displaying absolute callousness before the family’s mourning process, the Suffolk county police waited outside the wake at Claude R. Boyd/Spenser funeral home to harass and eventually lock up Dylan’s older brother.  

    Families devastated by drug abuse are often survivors of generations of family violence and trauma.

    Meanwhile the pharmaceutical industry is making a killing off of our pain. The $1.05 trillion global industry is invested in getting more people addicted to opiates. The fastest growing group of “illegal” heroin addicts are prescription pill addicts who can no longer “legally” fill their prescriptions. The Sackler family—owners of Purdue Pharma, the producer of OxyContin—are worth $14 billion dollars. As the .001 percent counted their profits, 66,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year.

    Every hood’s the same

    Newsday, owned by Cablevision, is Long Island’s most popular daily and the most widely read “suburban” newspaper in the country. Newsday publishes weekly mugshots that criminalize and dehumanize working people without saying a word about the lives they led.

    People are not born criminals. In the words of the Greek scientist and philosopher Aristotle: “Poverty is the mother of revolution and crime.”

    Predictably, no rich people appear in Newsday’s mugshots because the rich can afford lawyers and can buy their way out of trouble with “the law.”

    Keenen King, Anthony Garriques and the man that murdered them, Christopher Bouchard

    Nineteen-year-old Keenen King and 20-year-old Anthony Garriques were considered criminals. Why? Because they were young and Black. Believing the two young men had stolen his younger brother’s dirt bike, Marine Christopher Bouchard hunted them down in his minivan and murdered them on June 21st. Bouchard charged into in coming traffic to intentionally ram into the two young men in North Bellport, killing them both. The police only charged Bouchard with reckless endangerment. Why? Because in Long Island, Black Lives do not Matter.

    This article focuses on just a few of the injustices that communities are organizing around in Long Island. They are just the tip of the iceberg.

    Everyday, the geographically narrow Long Island sees more golf courses, wine vineyards and seasonal housing while working families scramble to make ends meet and find shelter.

    Long Island is no different than any other community in the United States of Trump.

    Everyday the rich get richer and the poor die off silently. There have been a rise in hate crimes against Muslims and immigrants and a spike in the membership in the local KKK chapter in Hampton Bays. Local chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, Black Lives Matter, Redneck Revolt and other groups have stood together in defense of the communities under attack.

    The People’s Congress of Resistance on September 16-17 will bring together representatives of communities affected by addiction, police terror, gentrification and other social problems so we can find solutions to the common problems that plague us across this country.

    Book review: Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia

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    Originally published at Liberation News on November 3, 2010

    On Sept. 23 military sources in Colombia reported the murder of Jorge Briceño, aka Mono Jojoy, one of the members of the FARC secretariat. Amidst all the celebratory propaganda statements issued by the U.S. State Department and Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos about their claim they are defeating the “terrorists,” it is important for communists and progressives to revisit the class struggle in Colombia that gave birth to the FARC. What are the class interests of the FARC and why have the Colombian ruling class and their imperialist backers been unable to destroy the popular guerrilla army after 45 years of systemic repression? 

    With five years of field study in FARC-controlled territory, Professor James J. Brittain of Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada, has just published Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP, a book which sets out to dispel the ruling class’s myths about the popular guerrilla army. Brittain takes on all of the propaganda used to discredit the FARC, explaining that they are not a terrorist organization but rather a people’s army that is born out of the deep social contradictions that exist in Colombian society. Guided by Marxism-Leninism, the FARC is working to liberate Colombia’s land and resources from the grip of a minority ruling class and U.S. imperialism.

    Roots of the FARC

    The FARC emerged out of a time period known in Colombia as “La Violencia.” In 1948 liberal presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitán was murdered by the right wing because of his aspirations to implement reforms for the poor. Gaitán’s assassination set in motion a wave of violence against anti-imperialist, leftwing forces, forcing many Colombian revolutionaries to go underground.

    This led to the formation of rural self-defense organizations of peasants across Colombia connected to the Colombian Communist Party, the PCC. These “peasant republics” which fought for land reform and justice for the peasantry were the predecessors of the FARC.

    The Legend of Marquetalia

    In response to the armed peasant organization, from 1960-63 the Colombian government carried out “Operation Marquetalia”. Twenty thousand combined Colombian/U.S. troops and advisors invaded and pulverized the region, employing napalm several years before it was used in Vietnam in an attempt to push the guerrillas out of the Marquetalia Valley.

    In response to this attack, on May 27, 1964, the “peasant republics” united and intensified their struggle by banding into a guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC. Under the leadership of Manuel Marulanda, the guerrillas resisted the Colombian army and their U.S. backers, giving birth to “the Legend of Marquetalia.”

    La Unión Patriótica

    By 1970, the latifundia economy meant that 77.7% of arable land was in the hands of large rural landowners (7). As the contradictions in the Colombian countryside sharpened and more of the nation’s resources—oil, emeralds, coffee—were gobbled up by transnational monopolies, more and more peasants joined the FARC in defense of their their land. The FARC set up a new social organization within the peasant/guerrilla-run territories, providing free schooling, health care and other social services for the peasantry. In 1985 the FARC, unions and other civil society groups formed the Unión Patriótica, a left alternative to the two ruling-class parties. Alarmed at the potential threat of the left winning in the elections, the ruling class embarked on a political genocide, killing 6,000 members of the Unión Patriótica, including Jaime Pardo and Bernardo Jaramillo, the UP’s presidential candidates in 1986 and 1990. Realizing the dead-end of bourgeois politics, the FARC picked up their weapons again and returned to the countryside.

    The Role of the Paramilitaries: The Shock Troops of the Bourgeoisie

    Traditional state forces were never enough to stamp out the resistance that inequality bred. Since the 1920’s propertied interests also have hired private armies to protect their monopolies. Brittain reports that by the late 1990’s large landowners and the state were employing up to 10,000 paramilitaries. Unlike the disciplined, ideologically-motivated FARC, the paramilitaries’ role is to strike terror in the hearts and minds of Colombia’s exploited classes. Brittain documents their policies of torture and brutal slaughter towards civilians suspected of collaborating with or interacting with the FARC.

    According to the International Crisis Group, the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), umbrella group of the paramilitaries, committed over 1,145 massacres from 1997-2000 (125). In one such slaughter representative of the death squad’s campaign, “the paramilitaries mutilated bodies with chain saws. They chained people to burning vehicles. They decapitated and rolled heads, even playing soccer with one of the heads.” (126) It is the reckless violence of the paramilitaries that has left Colombia with 4.3 million internally displaced people (more than the entire Middle-East including Iraq) (24). Hundreds of thousands of families running from the paramilitary terror have in fact fled into guerrilla-run territory. While the press distorts class reality and turns it on its head, the truth is that the paramilitaries are guilty of the lion’s share of drug-trafficking and horrific brutality that is every day falsely attributed to the FARC.  

    Who are the Major Players in the Cocaine Trade?

    Imperialism has a vested interest in portraying the FARC as criminal drug-runners. But who is truly behind the drug trade in Colombia and what is the FARC’s stance on the cultivation of coca?

    The FARC discourage the trade of drugs but understand the reality for many peasants, who cultivate coca today, because of the plummeting of the coffee market and the absence of other sustainable options. The FARC promote a policy of crop-substitution searching for ways to encourage peasants to grow more bananas, yuca, coffee, sugarcane and other foodstuffs.

    The FARC have in place a class-based model of taxation where the landless and coca subsistence peasant farmers are not taxed but drug merchants, like cattle ranchers and Colombians and corporations worth over $1,000,000 have to pay a 10% tax.

    Washington’s war on drugs is a propaganda tool used to justify its billion-dollar funding to the Colombian government for counter-insurgency and more easily carry out the theft of Colombia’s vast wealth. Colombia is also being militarily boosted by U.S. imperialism as a regional threat to other countries like Venezuela and Ecuador.

    In their so-called war on drugs, U.S. and Colombian ruling elites overlook the fact that former president Alvaro Uribe and his connections are directly linked to narco-trafficking. The largest drug dealers also employ their own paramilitaries, competing violently for control of the drug-trade. They see the FARC’s pro-peasant stance as a threat to the drug trade they control. They form an alliance that seeks to amass as much land as they can to the detriment of the peasantry.

    Major drug trafficker Pablo Escobar himself once said: “that they try to present me as an associate of the guerrilla hurts my personal dignity. I am a man of investment and therefore cannot sympathize with the guerrillas who fight against property” (94). 

    Conclusion

    Amidst the barrage of lies and confusion in the mass media, it is important not to lose track of the class war that rages on in Colombia. The ruling class intentionally misrepresents and under-represents the FARC in the media. It often celebrates murderous attacks on the revolutionary forces, such as the highly touted invasion of Ecuador and murder of comandante Raúl Reyes and Ivan Ríos in 2008 and the natural death of commander-in-chief Manuel Marulanda the same year.

    Brittain’s research shows that throughout the 1990’s the FARC had about 40,000-50,000 trained combatants and a sprawling underground network of support across rural and urban Colombia, consistently maintaining a distance of 16 to 50 miles from Bogota’s downtown. Today the FARC continue to control vast sections of the Colombian landscape and develop their model of a new society, complete with schooling, medical care, a justice system, pensions and their own infrastructure. With meticulous research, Brittain assesses how, despite some setbacks and increased offensive by the U.S. and Colombian governments, the FARC is not defeated and their influence is not diminishing. The FARC continues to resist with the support they receive from the Colombian masses.

    Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia     is well documented and essential to gaining a deeper understanding of the FARC’s struggle for social justice, especially in these times of increased U.S. government demonization of popular movements in Latin America.

    Colombia: Peaceful rhetoric, deadly reality – Wílter de Jesús Quintero Tapasco presente!

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    Originally published at Liberation News on August 15, 2015

    All progressive and revolutionary people should condemn the assassination of union leader Wílter de Jesús Quintero Tapasco in the mining town of Marmato in the northern province of Caldas, Colombia. At 2 a.m. on August 13, Tapasco was ambushed and shot at close range as he finished his shift at the Mineras Nacionales de Colombia gold mine. Tapasco was only 26 years old. He was a dedicated and fearless leader of one of the most marginalized segments of the Colombian population.

    The murder of yet another labor leader follows a long pattern of state violence to intimidate the miners and other workers of Colombia and discourage them from organizing for their rights. In April, when the District Attorney of Marmoto travelled to the mines to investigate the unrelenting violence against the workers he was shot at and chased off. The government of Juan Manuel Santos portrays itself as a liberal option to the hardline Alvaro Uribe government (2002-2010) but the ongoing repression indicates otherwise.

    The strategic value of the United States’ Colombian colony

    Colombia has long functioned as imperialism’s “Israel” in Latin America, a gigantic battleship whose mission is to keep the region in check. With the leftward shifts that occurred in Ecuador & Venezuela—Colombia’s neighbors—and the continent as a whole, Columbia’s strategic importance for imperialism increased.

    In 2009, Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa forced the U.S. to close their military base in Manta sarcastically calling out the U.S.’s imperial arrogance: “We can negotiate with the U.S. about a base in Manta, if they let us put a military base in Miami.”

    True to its form, the U.S. responded by building nine new military bases across Colombia. A leaked U.S. Air Force cable confirmed as much, stating that the deal with former president Uribe offered “a unique opportunity for conducting full spectrum operations in the region against various threats, including “anti-U.S. governments” (The Progressive March 2010).

    Colombia’s value to the U.S. is not just of geo-political importance. Colombia is Latin America’s fourth largest economy with a GDP of $683 billion dollars. Its vast natural resources—including gold, oil, emeralds, coffee, cut flowers- reap enormous profits for multinational corporations. Even the capitalists themselves recognize how untenable the system is and warn the headstrong Colombian elite to implement reforms. Lars Christian Moller, a Senior Country Economist at the World Bank, warns that Colombia’s stark inequality and regressive tax system are a recipe for future social disaster. In a report released yesterday, London’s Financial Times warned that Colombia’s system makes it among the five most fragile in the world.

    Behind the attacks

    This central contradiction—a super-rich country, with a poor, exploited populace—is what drives the naked class warfare in Marmato and across Colombia. The workers are standing up to demand a bit more of the very wealth they produce but their organizing efforts are met with sheer repression. This ensures that further radicalization of the producing classes and the continuation of the seven-decade long civil war.

    The ongoing violence has to be seen in the context of a split in the Colombian ruling-class as to how to best rule the country and continue to siphon off Colombia’s enormous wealth. In December of last year, the armed revolutionary guerrilla army, the FARC and the government signed “a peace agreement.” This was heralded the world over as a step in the right direction for all parties in the Colombian conflict. But Santos was guilty of double-dealing, taking advantage of the cease fire to jail undesirable political activists and encroach further into FARC-controlled territory.

    As the repression continued, Santos continued to cruelly tax the Colombian working class and peasantry and slash social benefits. Like his predecessors, he is ignoring the underlying social inequality that gave birth to the struggle in 1948 when small farmers picked up guns to defend themselves against the violence of the landowning class and their state backers. (For more information on the history of the FARC click here).

    There were those in power who disagreed with any type of “negotiations” with the FARC. These fascist, paramilitary forces were personified by the hated former president Uribe. Some analysts argue that the latest round of persecution is an attempt to sabotage the “peace accord” and continue a war of extermination against the resistance. The political class’s U.S. handlers have given them the OK to employ a “good cop/bad cop” strategy as long as the deluge of profits from this oil and mineral-rich country continues to flow northward.

    The struggle for a sovereign Colombia continues

    As part of the so called “peace” agreement, the Colombian government was forced to provide for and guarantee the security of the union leadership. Betraying their word, the Santos government took away the security teams and assigned them to aspiring political candidates. This left the union leadership and rank-and-file exposed to the companies’ paramilitary death squads. The national leadership of SINTRAMIENERGETICA (National Union of Mine, Petrochemical, Agroricalutal and Energy Workers) has called for a demonstration in the capital Bogotá against the Santos government for Wednesday, a week after the assassination of their compañero.

    Rest in Power Wílter de Jesús Quintero Tapasco and the thousands of valiant Colombians who have always stood up to imperialism and their Colombian underlings against the selling off of their patria!

    50 years later – What can the Black Panther Party teach a new generation of revolutionaries?

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    Originally published at Liberation News on October 18, 2016

    Fifty years ago in October 1966, the Black Panther party exploded onto the political scene in the United States, striking fear into the racist ruling class and inspiring a new generation of revolutionaries to “seize the time.”

    Today, there is a renewed interest in the Panthers and what they stood for. The slogan “Assata taught me” is widespread in the Movement for Black Lives. Huey P. Newton’s Revolutionary Suicide, Bobby Seale’s Seize the Time, Assata Shakur’s self-titled autobiography and George Jackson’s Soledad Brother, among many other books by former Panthers, are staples of any revolutionary library.

    In the face of the ongoing racism, police terror and segregation that Black people and oppressed people face today, it is more important than ever to review the history of the Black Panther Party, and examine how it dealt with these same issues.

    The meteoric rise of the Panthers

    Revolution seemed to be on the agenda during the 1960s – in the United States and around the world.

    In plain view of a television audience of millions, the police departments of the South employed attack dogs, batons, water hoses and other weapons to repress the right of Black people to vote and to uphold segregation. After much sacrifice, the Civil Rights movement won the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Even though these acts declared Jim Crow practices illegal, the majority of Black people, in the South and in the North as well, still lived a precarious existence in either urban slums or impoverished rural areas, where they faced unemployment, substandard housing, disproportionate poverty and police harassment.

    Inspired by the anti-colonial and socialist struggles worldwide, many came to the conclusion that nothing short of a revolutionary overturn of the entire system could defeat white supremacy. As the 1960s went on, the epicenter of struggle shifted from the south to the cities and suburbs of the north, and from tactical non-violence to active self-defense.

    Malcolm X became the most influential voice of the Black Power movement. Local North Carolina NAACP leader Robert Williams, the Harlem 9’s Mae Mallory and organizations such as the Deacons for Defense armed themselves to stand up to the racist terror of the Ku Klux Klan and sheriff departments across the South. In Alabama, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)-affiliated Lowndes County Freedom Organization selected a black panther as the symbol of their struggle. LCFO Chairman John Hulett explained the symbol’s significance: “The Panther is an animal that when pressured moves back until it is cornered, then it comes out fighting for life and death. We felt we had been pushed back long enough and that it was time for Negroes to come out and take over.” (see Black against Empire: the History and Politics of the BPP by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin).

    A pivotal moment had arrived in the history of the Black liberation movement.

    In October of 1966, a year after the assassination of Malcolm X, college students Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, Calif., to stand up to police terror and continue the struggle for Black self-determination. The revolutionary political organization they formed became a lightning rod for oppressed Black youth and went on to become one of the most advanced expressions of working and oppressed people’s organization in the history of the United States.

    The Panthers gained national prominence after a dramatic action on May 2, 1967, when 30 Black Panthers—dressed in black leather coats, and armed with unloaded shotguns—entered the capital building in Sacramento to protest the Mulford Act, a measure designed to outlaw citizens’ right to carry weapons. As Governor Ronald Reagan and other politicians scampered away, BPP chairman Bobby Seale read a statement to “the American people in general and the Black people in particular,” detailing “the terror, brutality, murder, and repression of Black people by the racist power structure of America,” and concluding that “the time has come for Black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.” As reporters and cameramen shuffled to capture tomorrow’s headline, one reporter shouted out “who are you?”

    Sixteen-year-old Bobby Hutton, who would be martyred after a confrontation with police the next year, capturing the militant attitude that now gripped the nation, responded, “We’re the Black Panthers. We’re Black people with guns. What about it?”

    A few months later, Huey Newton was arrested and charged with murdering a police officer. The Panthers formed a broad coalition of radical and progressive organization and individuals that carried out a massive campaign to save him from execution. The demand “Free Huey!” echoed across the country, and in 1970 Huey Newton was released from prison.

    By 1969 the Panthers were a national organization of 5,000 members with a median age of 19. The majority of Black Panther members were women.

    The Panther’s guiding philosophy: Marxism-Leninism

    Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale wrote in his book Seize the Time, the “historical experience of black people, translated through Marxism-Leninism, is really the ideology of the Black Panther Party.”

    The Black Panther Party was born into a world where socialist revolution had tremendous prestige. From the Soviet Union  to China to Cuba, over a third of the world’s population lived in countries whose governments aspired to build socialism. The Panthers saw their struggle against racism and national oppression as part of this worldwide movement to break free of imperialism.

    In China at that time the Cultural Revolution brought millions of young people into the streets, sparking interest worldwide. Bobby Seale and Huey Newton raised money for the newly formed Panthers by selling copies of “Quotations from Chairman Mao,” popularly known as The Little Red Book.

    The Panthers were heavily influenced by Malcolm X. They also had the highest regard for the writings of Franz Fanon and the Marxist classics as the best guides for developing their own strategy for revolution and their own tactics for uplifting their communities. As Panther Field Marshal George Jackson said, “I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me.”

    Building off of the slogan and ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, “to serve the people,” the Panthers established breakfast programs in hundreds of cities across the country. In a sense, the BPP invented the term “grass roots,” developing a series of survival programs that responded to the complex problems that plagued oppressed communities, such as hunger, inadequate housing, drug and alcohol addiction, gangs, sexual violence and internalized self-hatred.

    They saw these survival programs, and their armed cop watch patrols, as a way to elevate the morale of their communities and attract people to socialism. The Panthers emphasized building a revolutionary united front because they understood that only the toppling of the white supremacist, capitalist order and the establishment of a socialist system would begin to seriously resolve the needs of all oppressed communities.

    What the Panthers did: Centralism, training and internationalism

    The Panther leadership developed a 6-week training program for the youth who lined up across the country to join them. They encouraged the party membership to read an average of two hours per day and study the origins of the class and race oppression that affected Black America. The Black Panthers operated according to the organizational model of democratic centralism, where there is unity in action and members are held to a high standard of discipline and dedication.

    The BPP educated the youth and they put them to work in the community. The Panthers’ leadership and confidence helped thousands of young Black people establish a new, revolutionary identity. Claudia Chesson-Williams, a teenage member in Corona, Queens describes the galvanizing effect the Panthers had:

    “No longer did we have to argue and fight about ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ and ‘Don’t step on my sneaker’ and ‘This is my block.’ Now, we really had something to fight for. We had a people to fight for. That was bigger than any gang or any club. We had a goal. We had something to look forward to, which was the betterment of Black people.”

    The panthers developed 35 survival programs. They distributed free food and served free breakfasts for children (at one point for 20,000). They organized liberation schools, GED classes, benefits counseling, free clinics, plumbing and maintenance programs, martial arts programs, a Sickle Cell Anemia research foundation, a visiting nurses program, legal aid and more.

    Their political organ, the Black Panther: Black Community News Service, was read nationally.

    Chairman Fred Hampton formed the original Rainbow Coalition in order to unite different revolutionary groups and ex-gangs into one united front.

    Before many groups dared to take a stance against the oppression of LGBTQ people, in 1970, just one year after the Stonewall Rebellion, the Panthers took a public stance recognizing that LGBTQ liberation was an important part of the liberation of all oppressed people.

    The Panthers were among the strongest proponents of international solidarity. The Panthers not only opposed Washington’s war on Vietnam, they also offered their members as soldiers to fight on the side of the Vietnamese against the Pentagon. In 1970, the Panthers gave full support to Palestinian liberation when few groups did.

    The Panthers’ example inspired other national liberation struggles within the American “prison-house of nations” – a term coined by Lenin to describe the Russian Empire but one that also applies to the United States, where the oppressed Black, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Indigenous nations and others are denied self-determination. The American Indian Movement, the Young Lords, the Brown Berets, the Grey Panthers and other groups emulated the Panthers’ example of self-sacrifice and centralism. We should remember that it was in a Chicago jail cell that Cha Chi Jimenez, the founder of the Young Lords, met Chairman Fred Hampton.

    State repression

    Despite these amazing achievements in just a few years, the Panthers were never allowed to reach their full potential.  The U.S. government intervened to repress them. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover classified the Panthers as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”

    Why did the U.S. government see the Panthers as a threat? Mumia Abu-Jamal explains, “It was terrified that the [Panthers] had the ability to put forward leaders to channel the mass defiance of the 1960s, growing especially militant among African American communities, into a potent revolutionary movement.”

    What differentiated the Panthers from other service organizations and what made them dangerous to the ruling class was their analysis that popularized a socialist revolution to overthrow white supremacy. For instance, Assata Shakur wrote:

    “I wasn’t against communism, but i can’t say i was for it either. At first, i viewed it suspiciously, as some kind of white man’s concoction, until i read works by African revolutionaries and studied the African liberation movements. Revolutionaries in Africa understood that the question of African liberation was not just a question of race, that even if they managed to get rid of the white colonialists, if they didn’t rid themselves of the capitalistic economic structure, the white colonialists would simply be replaced by Black neocolonialists. There was not a single liberation movement in Africa that was not fighting for socialism … The whole thing boiled down to a simple equation: anything that has any kind of value is made, mined, grown, produced, and processed by working people. So why shouldn’t working people collectively own that wealth? Why shouldn’t working people own and control their own resources? Capitalism meant that rich businessmen owned the wealth, while socialism meant that the people who made the wealth owned it.”

    A fighting organization with a wide following among the people and this type of ideological orientation was nothing short of an existential threat to the U.S. ruling class.

    COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was a sophisticated FBI effort to infiltrate and liquidate the BPP. In conjunction with police departments across the country, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover coordinated a massive campaign of misinformation, infiltration and extermination against the Panthers. 28 Panther leaders were assassinated, among them Bobby Hutton, Bunchy Carter, John Huggins, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and George Jackson.

    It was not until years later that the Senate’s Church Committee would show how pervasively the FBI worked against the Panthers and how much it influenced press coverage. It encouraged urban police forces to confront Black Panthers, planted informants and agent provocateurs, and intimidated local community members who were sympathetic to the group.

    While the state liquidated the Black freedom fighters with one hand, they implemented token reforms with the other. The liberal wing of the establishment propped up networks of non-profits and CBO’s (Community-Based Organizations) to give the illusion that the government was involved in rendering basic services. These two strategies of “pacification” were aimed at removing the true forces of liberation from the heart of oppressed communities. The new “grass-roots” were funded and directed from on high, from the outside, so that they became dead-ends for popular energy and anger.

    Panther leaders like Mutulu Shakur, Mumia Abu Jamal and Russel “Maroon” Shoatz continue to languish in prison today because of their uncompromising defense of the right of Black people to self-determination. Assata Shakur, who describes herself as a modern day run-away slave and maroon, is in exile in Cuba with a $2 million bounty on her head. Anyone who repeats the meaningless cliché that “the U.S. is the freest country in the world” should study the history of the Panthers.

    But for all the repression, 50 years later the Black Panther spirit lives on. Its historic legacy – and the active mentorship still provided by former Panthers to a new generation of radicals – can never be erased. The task ahead of us is to revive the revolutionary movement, construct the revolutionary party and seize power to build socialism – we will win!

    South Bronx man beaten senseless by police

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    Originally published at Liberation News on June 9, 2014

    On June 2, Liberation received a call about a showdown between police and community residents outside of an apartment building at 157th St and Courtland Ave in the South Bronx. Eyewitnesses describe a brutal police beating of 39-year-old Raul Garcia, which left the street covered in blood. (see photo)

    Footage obtained of the incident shows Garcia’s limp body being carried into a police vehicle while the community surrounds and denounces the officers responsible, trying to stop the abuse.

    Eyewitness Christian Johnson told Liberation the incident began when a man set a fire outside of Mr. Garcia’s door, with Mr. Garcia’s family trapped inside. After firefighters arrived to put out the fire, the police then arrested the alleged arsonist, but failed to remove him from the scene. As a result, an altercation developed between the man and Mr. Garcia, but instead of separating them, the police then mercilessly beat the victim, Mr. Garcia.

    According to Johnson, around 50 community members spontaneously challenged the police for their abuse, despite officers pushing them back, and threatening to beat them as well. “They made it seem like if we said anything to protect the individual, they would beat us up as well. Some of the police officers pushed pregnant women, old ladies,” Johnson remarked. “We were just tired of it … Some people were afraid but they had the guts to still stand up to the police because they knew that what was being done was wrong.”

    Mr. Garcia is reportedly being charged with criminal assault. No other community members were arrested at the time.

    Every Night

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    Originally published at Young Communist USA in November, 2003

    Every night is an opportunity to
    break night
    to vanquish sleep

    To listen
    to the broken dreams and broken men
    to the whispers and howls
    the midnights and daybreaks
    the weddings and the funerals
    to listen to the flow of the sewers and seas

    To study the sounds of wolves, winds and wounded wings
    Dialects, tempos and centuries’

    To dream to the rhythm of harrowing rains
    and awake in harmony with the land ís pulse

    To awake
    Armed with receptive ears to
    fallen souls
    and scorched flesh’

    Stalking time
    collecting the tears of accursed centuries
    organizing the scars in my memory
    Storing the testimonies like grenades deep in my chest

    Listening to the intimacy of
    death and victory
    anguish and love.

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    The essence of a revolutionary is their ability to stand up to bullying in all of its manifestations.

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