Originally published at Black Agenda Report on December 7, 2021
“The master’s room was wide open. The master’s room was brilliantly lit, and the master was there, very calm… and our people stopped dead… it was the master… I went in. “It’s you,” he said, very calm. It was I, even I, and I told him so, the good slave, the faithful slave, the slave of slaves, and suddenly his eyes were like two cockroaches, frightened in the rainy season… I struck, and the blood spurted; that is the only baptism that I remember today.” —Aimé Césaire
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the passing of one of the greatest thinkers to have emerged from the ranks of the oppressed, Frantz Fanon (1925-1961).
Fanon’s contributions are timeless. As long as white supremacy and neocolonialism remain in the driver’s seat of human relations, Fanon’s thought will continue to arm the colonized in the Battle of Ideas.
The Radicalization of Fanon
Born and raised in what is still France’s Caribbean island colony of Martinique, Fanon was exposed to and shaped by the everyday class and race relations that characterized the island in the early 20th century. Forced to join a segregated column of Black troops, he fought in World War II. Upon continuing his studies in post-war France, he came face to face with the racism that dominates the European world. In his first book, Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Fanon reflects on coming of age in a world, where, “For the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.” At the time of publication, Fanon had just turned 27.
In 1953, the Martiniquais psychiatrist was assignedto Algeria, where he treated patients who were severely traumatized by the violence French colonialism had spun into motion. He met Dr. Pierre Chaulet, a French doctor who secretly treated members of the guerrilla resistance, Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), who had survived torture and captivity. “Viscerally close to his patients whom he regarded as primarily victims of the system he was fighting,” Fanon immediately became a cadre of the Algerian Revolution.1
By 1956, Fanon’s consciousness no longer allowed him to oversee operations at Blida Hospital in Algeria. In an influential resignation letter that moved many on the left, he wrote:
“There comes a time when silence becomes dishonesty. The ruling intentions of personal existence are not in accord with the permanent assaults on the most commonplace values. For many months my conscience has been the seat of unpardonable debates. And the conclusion is the determination not to despair of man, in other words, of myself. The decision I have reached is that I cannot continue to bear a responsibility at no matter what cost, on the false pretext that there is nothing else to be done.”
The Wretched of the Earth
Fanon produced a prodigious amount of intellectual work. Toward the African Revolution is a compilation of his writings on forging African and Third World unity with the Algerian Revolution at the vanguard of this process.2A Dying Colonialism explores how the Algerian people threw off their internalized inferiority complex by turning away from the colonizer’s cultural practices and embracing their own traditions.3
He dedicated his last days to dictating the final ideas of his most moving work to his wife, Josie. Six decades after it first hit the streets of Paris, The Wretched of the Earth: The Handbook for the Black Revolution That Is Changing the Shape of the World is as accurate and explosive as ever. The title comes from the line “Arise, ye wretched of the earth” from “The Internationale,” the Second Communist International’s official anthem, and from Haitian communist intellectual Jacques Romain’s poem, “Sales négres:”
too late it will be too late
on the cotton plantations of Louisiana
in the sugar cane fields of the Antilles
to halt the harvest of vengeance
of the negroes
the niggers
the filthy negroes
it will be too late I tell you
for even the tom-toms will have learned the language
of the Internationale
for we will have chosen our day
day of the filthy negroes
filthy Indians
filthy Hindus
filthy Indo-Chinese
filthy Arabs
filthy Malays
filthy Jews
filthy proletarians.
And here we are arisen
All the wretched of the earth
all the upholders of justice
marching to attack your barracks
your banks
like a forest of funeral torches
to be done
once
and
for
all
with this world
of negroes
niggers
filthy negroes.4
How many revolutionaries the world over became enraptured in his eloquent portrayal of the “Manichaean” differences between the neighborhoods of the rich white colonizer in Algiers and the casbah (ghettoes) of the colonized?
Here within this classic, that all revolutionaries have a duty to study, reside some of the most poignant prose on how the oppressed internalize violence and project it onto themselves:
“Where individuals are concerned, a positive negation of common sense is evident. While the settler or the policeman has the right the livelong day to strike the native, to insult him and to make him crawl to them, you will see the native reaching for his knife at the slightest hostile or aggressive glance cast on him by another native, for the last resort of the native is to defend his personality vis-a-vis his brother.”
Based on his treatment of patients in the Blida Hospital, which today bears his name, Fanon’s final chapter, “Colonial War and Mental Disorders,” examines the “ineffaceable wounds that the colonialist onslaught has inflicted on our people.”5
The fundamental pillar of the book, however, was Fanon’s conviction that the colonized could only shed their fear and shame through a baptism of revolutionary violence. Fanon’s former high school teacher and mentor, Aimé Césaire, had a profound influence on him. Césaire’s words cited at the beginning of this article from his epic poem on slave liberation, “And the Dogs were Silent,” set the tone for the Fanonian worldview. Despite a chorus of liberal complaints from the West that Fanon was “too violent,” Fanon concluded:
“As you and your fellow men are cut down like dogs, there is no other solution but to use every means available to reestablish your weight as a human being.”
‘You Can Kill a Revolutionary, But You Can Never Kill the Revolution’
Though Fanon died of leukemia when he was only 36, revolutionaries the world over have picked up his fallen weapons, his ideas, and applied them to their own particular national liberation struggles. Fanon’s observations and thesis continue to mold the thinking of awakening generations in life-and-death struggles from Johannesburg to Gaza to Harlem.
As political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal writes, the Black Panthers were Fanonists. His audio essay and tribute to Fanon discuss what the psychiatrist’s anti-colonial perspicacity meant to a 15-year-old Mumia, who has spent 40 years in prison. In Seize the Time, Bobby Seale talks about the influence of Fanon on the young Panthers and how Huey P. Newton read the book seven times.6
Malcolm X, Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Nelson Mandela all traveled to independent Algeria, which emerged as an epicenter of Pan-Africanism and internationalism. Paulo Freire stated that he had to rewrite Pedagogy of the Oppressed after reading The Wretched of the Earth. Hamza Hamouchene, president of the London-based Algerian Solidarity Campaign, discusses in CounterPunch what he deems Fanon’s unique contributions to understanding nationalism, the national bourgeoisie, political education and universalism, among other themes.
It is important to highlight that Fanon was more than just a doctor and writer.
At his graveside, Vice-president of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) Krim Belkacem emphasized Fanon’s diverse roles in the FLN’s total war. Beginning in 1954, Fanon worked as a writer, editor and propagandist for FLN periodicals Résistance algérienne and El Moudjahid. He also was a researcher; lecturer; a FLN representative in Ghana, Ethiopia, Mali, Guinea and Congo; as well as a clandestine militant.
Looking at the work of Karl Marx, Steve Biko, Cedric Robinson, Sylvia Wynter and other examples of revolutionaries/intellectuals, the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research wrote a tribute to Fanon because of how he embodied the praxis of a radical or organic intellectual: “The world will only be shaped by the most valuable insights of philosophical striving when philosophy itself becomes worldly via participation in struggle.”
Fanon survived an assassination attempt, exile in Tunis and was staring down a crippling disease that he refused to talk about but that ultimately claimed his life. Aware he was dying, he pledged, “I will not cease my activities while Algeria still continues the struggle and I will go on with my task until my dying day.”7
Today, it is more necessary than ever to study Fanon to understand the psychological, emotional and spiritual damage wrought by neo-colonialism on the peoples of Africa, the Americas, Asia and what the Black Panthers referred to as the United States’ internal colonies. Fanon’s conclusion in The Wretched of the Earth on African and human liberation begs the same questions six decades later:
“Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe [U.S.A.] where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of everyone of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe.”
Notes 1 Fanon, Frantz. Toward the African Revolution. New York: Grove Press. 1964. 2 Fanon, Frantz. Toward the African Revolution. New York: Grove Press. 1964. 3 Fanon, Frantz. A Dying Colonialism. New York: Grove Press. 1965. 4 Macey, David. Frantz Fanon: A Biography. London and New York: Verso. 2012. 5 Macey, David. Frantz Fanon: A Biography. London and New York: Verso. 2012. 6 Seale, Bobby. Seize the Time: The Story of The Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton. Random House: 1970. 7 Macey, David. Frantz Fanon: A Biography. London and New York: Verso. 2012.
Coauthored with Richie Merino, originally published at Black Agenda Report in 2022
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the best known of the so-called progressives. Her leftist image is a pose which intentionally creates political confusion.
On Monday March 20th 2023, U.S. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Adriano Espaillat co-hosted a “Student Services Fair” at Renaissance High School for Musical Theater and the Arts in the Bronx. As the official flier indicates, there was a large military presence . Alarmed that the two U.S. politicians, especially one who is a self-described “democratic socialist” and affiliate of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), were hosting this career fair, the Bronx Anti-War Coalition organized a counter-recruitment protest.
‘The Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World Today’
The official flier for the event listed seven representatives that would headline the fair. Six of them represented branches of the military. Protestors observed dozens of uniformed military personnel walk into the fair through the main entrance, while AOC snuck in and out through back doors. She refused to address her constituents’ questions and instead sent a U.S. Marine colonel outside to address us. The military officer bragged about his time training Saudi troops and the countries he and his government have invaded.
The “duck test” is a form of abductive reasoning, usually expressed as “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck.” The test implies that a person can identify an unknown subject by observing that subject’s habitual characteristics. It is used to counter abstruse arguments that something is not what it appears to be. This same reasoning can be applied here to deduce that this “student services fair” was in fact a military recruitment fair. Yet somehow, AOC continues to deny that the military played a major role at this event.
Dr. Martin Luther King was crystal clear on this question in 1967 , exactly a year before the U.S government assassinated him: “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.” AOC herself has been on record speaking out against predatory military recruitment tactics targeting our youth. Why then did she decide to host a fair giving these predators access to disenfranchised high school students? The Bronx Anti-War Coalition understands that anytime and anywhere we see military enlistment officers or representatives of the U.S. service academies near our youth, we must confront them and chase them out of our communities.
After her security detail briskly whisked her through a backdoor clear of our protest, she decided to respond to us via instagram . Like other U.S. politicians who practice duplicity, she has a true gift for evasion. She smeared and lied about us in a nine minutes and thirty second video while doubling down on why she has a “responsibility” to inform Bronx youth about U.S. military enlistment “opportunities.” Did it not occur to AOC and her inner-circle to denounce the genocidaires in her monologue? Too busy victimizing herself, at no point did the Congresswoman address the reasons we were outside protesting: 1) to defend the multinational, working-class youth being used as cannon fodder to fight imperialist wars, 2) to stand for the Black, Indigenous and Latinx soldiers murdered on U.S. military bases, such as Abdul Latifu, Vanessa Guillén, Elder Fernandes, and Ana Fernanda Basaldua Ruiz, among hundreds of others, and 3) to give voice to the millions of victims in the Global South targeted and murdered by U.S. sanctions, drone attacks and unprovoked invasions.
This article explores why the anti-war movement has a responsibility to continue to confront AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, Bernie Sanders and any faux leftist professional politician and sheepdog who go along with the bipartisan pro-imperialist and pro-war status quo.
Military Recruiters not Welcome at Renaissance High School[1]
A central part of AOC’s attack on our rally was that we were “outside agitators” who traveled from far away because we heard false rumors about her.
The reality is that the Bronx Antiwar Coalition is comprised of parents, teachers, students, activists, and community organizers from the Bronx and many are AOC’s constituents. Richie is a Special Education teacher at a public high school in the Bronx. Danny knows Renaissance High School well because it is part of the Lehman campus where he coached basketball for 3 years. Danny’s son Ernesto teaches fashion and modeling there for an afterschool program. We are not outsiders nor a threat to our children, as Ocasio-Cortez alleged ; the politicians rubbing elbows with the NYPD and U.S. military recruiters are the true predators.
Hearing her gaslight us like a typical U.S. politician, we felt it was more important to expose this clever politician who provides a “leftist” façade for the Democratic Party. She is this generation’s Obama , another example of POC misleadership promoted by corporate media and treated like celebrities, used to give the same white supremacist, capitalist system a more diverse and modern look. While this comparison is not perfect, both politicians are very popular figures who have invited millions of the most dispossessed and disenfranchised to reinvest their hopes into an undemocratic and broken system.
It is important to move beyond liberal identity politics (i.e. one based on “representation” and “being seen” promoted by corporate “DEI” initiatives) and judge AOC and other so-called “progressives” on their actual voting record on vital issues for principled anti-imperialists. The “democratic socialists” in Congress and their affiliate association, the DSA,[2] play a specific role in muddying the waters on what socialism is and what it means to be a socialist. They portray themselves as “socialists” but lack theoretical grounding in Marxism-Leninism, serving the establishment by smearing anti-war demands, like “abolish NATO” and “lift the sanctions,” as “pro-Putin. ” We must study how truly transformative, socialist revolutions were successfully organized and led by the most oppressed in society. Study shows us that we cannot wait for a U.S. politician to serve the interests of the people, because the people’s interests are diametrically opposed to the careerist aspirations of politicians like AOC. Dr. Ernesto Che Guevara taught us that only an independent, mass movement of poor and working class people can take down the class enemy when he said, “I am not a liberator. The people liberate themselves.” Anti-colonial and revolutionary movements succeeded in 1917, 1949, 1979 and beyond. What other alternative to capitalism and white supremacy can boast of such a historical record?
AOC’s Record on U.S. Foreign Policy: The Truth is Always Concrete
True socialists are asking themselves: Why would the “progressive” Congresswoman from the Bronx vote for a $40 billion-dollar military aid package , among dozens of others, for a murderous proxy war against Russia with Ukrainian workers trapped in the middle? At this juncture of the internationalized proxy war, the U.S. government and NATO have undemocratically pumped over $150 billion of our money into this war. When was the last time she advocated for the nearly $1 Trillion Pentagon budget to be invested in our communities? Alongside her Republican colleagues in Congress, AOC proudly adorned the Ukrainian flag during Biden’s State of the Union Address. This was a symbolic moment because Republicans and Democrats claim to be at each other’s throats but in actuality subscribe to the same unwavering american-dreaming and express the same loyalty to American Exceptionalism. Why hasn’t AOC ever mentioned the 2014 U.S.-backed fascist coup that installed a U.S. imperialist puppet in Kiev? What is Russia supposed to do as NATO – the U.S. and Europe’s attack dog – encircles them and attempts to revert them to the humiliating Yeltsin-years as a neocolon y of the West? The U.S. and NATO sabotaged the Minsk I and II Accords which laid out a path towards peace in the region. AOC voted “Yes ” in favor of the highly propagandistic April 2022 “Countering Malign Russian Influence Activities in Africa.” Is Russia to blame for political instability and underdevelopment in Africa? How many African nations are colonies and vassal states of Russia? Mouthpieces of U.S. imperialism constantly warn of the Chinese and Russian threat as they continue to be the number one labor exploiter, natural resource thief, military occupier and murderer in the world.
After the 2019 coup in Bolivia, the Congresswoman tweeted : “What’s happening right now in Bolivia isn’t democracy, it’s a coup. The people of Bolivia deserve free, fair and peaceful elections – not violent seizures of power.” That was correct, but then she backtracked, expressing, “The people of Bolivia deserve free, fair, and peaceful elections,” after Evo Morales had just won a democratic election. She then met with coup supporters.
AOC has never raised her voice against the CIA-orchestrated hybrid dirty war against Syria. Syria and Libya, similar to El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980’s, have been subjected to the most far-reaching U.S., Saudi and Gulf Kingdom intelligence efforts to overthrow regimes with interests opposed to the Pentagon. She and the rest of the Fraud Squad just voted to maintain imperial sanctions on Syria, even after well over 50,000 people died in the 7.8 magnitude, February 6th earthquake.
AOC has failed to speak out in defense of Venezuela’s world-inspiring Bolivarian Revolution? Why hasn’t she vocally opposed the deadly sanctions on the 30 million people of this nation? When asked who was the true leader of Venezuela, AOC said she “deferred to party leadership” in order to avoid taking a stance . This was a de facto endorsement of U.S. puppet Juan Guaido. She even participated in a standing ovation for the U.S.’ poster boy for regime change during Trump’s 2020 State of the Union.
How could a “socialist” promote further U.S. aggression against China and support CIA-backed “independence movements” in Hong Kong , Taiwan and Tibet ? Ted Cruz authored yet another declaration of war against China and guess who signed it ? AOC stood shoulder to shoulder with every imperialist U.S. congress member when she voted in favor of the anti-China and anti-development bill, “PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act.”
Has she stood up for Palestine? No. Did she defend Ilhan Omar during the AIPAC-Israeli lobby debate when Omar was under the gun by Zionist propagandists? No . Did she cave before “If Not Now,” a well-funded J-Street lobby? Yes. She “welcomed [Omar’s] apology” when Zionism owes millions of Palestinians much more than apologies, they owe them reparations and their land back. Where were the demands for an end to the Zionist’s apartheid state? AOC largely deferred to Pelosi, who she called “Mama Bear ”, on important international issues .
The Knife that has yet to Be Removed: AOC within U.S. Politics
Malcolm X succinctly explained the role of liberals in the U.S.: “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.”
“The Squad” plays a necessary role in this era of woke capitalism and intersectional imperialism . They work to co-opt left movement language and shore up support for the establishment from the most oppressed layers of society, Black, Latino, Indigenous and poor white youth. The misdirection, illusions and confusion they cause are harmful to the anti-imperialist movement. The dictatorship of capital attempts to hide behind the youthfulness, perceived dynamism and non-traditional outsider aesthetics of “the squad.” The corporate media paints them as the ultimate “rags to riches” examples of the “American Dream” and represent the utopian notion that any Black, Arab or Latin@ child can become president of this country. No socialist would want to join much less rule over the sickest system the world has ever known. Puerto Rican political prisoner and mentor Rafael Cancel Miranda wrote: “Not even the devil himself could dream of an empire as diabolical as this yankee one.”
The Republicans, no strangers to performance politics themselves, characterize AOC and her ilk as the “far left,” focusing on her supposed socialist bonafides. When the cameras are rolling, AOC pretends to stand up to the white supremacists and misogynists but only when they disrespect her and her colleagues and only if they are Republican. But why won’t she stand up for the masses of oppressed nationalities and against U.S. imperialism and sanctions? Does her theatrical advocacy for crumbs truly represent a threat to the U.S. ruling class? Overall, Marx’s words from 1859, when he was engaged in similar debates with the liberals of his time continue to ring true, “The liberal outcry that follows an age of reaction is all the louder the greater the cowardice displayed by liberals in putting up with the reaction for years on end without protest.” While it’s easy and fashionable to critique right-wing Republicans, AOC has been virtually silent on the role of Biden and the Democrats. Lacking a class-conscious program to improve the lives of workers in the U.S, the Democrats laid the foundation for a fascist Trump victory in 2016. Having learned nothing from being humiliatingly defeated by Trump once, are they going to make the same mistakes again, opening the road to another Trump victory in 2024?
AOC’s stance on the NYPD has been soft. She did “community outreach ” with the NYPD who thanked her for “bringing community and police together.” Following the example of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the original Rainbow Coalition, we need to mobilize our own people, alongside social workers and educators, to do this important community work. The NYPD is the domestic arm of the U.S. military in NYC, harassing, humiliating, brutalizing and murdering oppressed communities on a daily basis. The 1033 program gifts military grade weapons to local police departments, while military veterans have preferential hiring. Violence committed by the U.S. military against oppressed nationalities abroad is replicated domestically through local police departments.
Consistent with AOC’s histrionics, liberal apologists for AOC’s record have accused leftist critics of carrying out a “Cointelpro 2.0” against her. But doing ads for vogue , posing for the cover of Rolling Stone and Time magazine, and wearing a multi-thousand dollar evening gown with a tepid message to “Tax the Rich,” is performative. AOC is not a revolutionary. There is speculation she has presidential ambitions . What concrete demands and movements has she truly fought for and defended?
Sheepdogging Yet Again: No Liberal Illusions
Many of AOC’s cheerleaders celebrate that she has inspired a generation . Inspired them to do what exactly? To rise up against an oppressive capitalist system and fight imperialism? No. She’s inspired youth to engage in a certain type of celebrity-worship which gives the same exploitative system a polished facelift.
Intersectional imperialism is still imperialism. Women, the LGBTQ+ community and people of color rising up in the ranks of the U.S. government, the NYPD, the military and the CIA is not progress; it only further buttresses a system deadset against combating revolutionary organization. Largely ignoring meetings with working-class organizers in the Bronx, AOC prioritizes meetings with celebrities and now military recruiters.
As socialists and anti-imperialists, our orientation is rooted not in what bigots say in the beltway or gusanos in Miami. Our struggle goes way beyond exposing AOC and the Fraud Squad. Dead Prez’s song “Politricks ” remains instructive: “Even if Obama wins, Uncle Sam ain’t my friend.”
Can anyone sincerely argue that AOC is our comrade? Her track record shows she is not an ally of the billions of workers and fighters around the world struggling against the antiquated U.S. unipolar model of hegemonic world domination, and fighting against the billionaires and fascists at home. She has proven herself to be just another bourgeois politician: a top sheepdog, high-level Democratic Party operative, careerist, and sell-out of this generation. Despite what she proclaims, actions speak louder than tweets.
[1] Renaissance High School for Musical Theater, Lehman High School, Pelham Lab High School, Schuylerville Prep, Bronx River High School, and Westchester Square Academy are the 6 schools that make up Lehman High School Campus.
[2] Some leadership within the DSA’s International Committee has done solid work the past few years to undo the horrible pro-imperialist record of this organization.
Originally published at Liberation School on Feb 11, 2016.
“Trapped in a vicious cycle of ignorance, poverty, disease, sickness and death, and there seems no way out. There seems to be no way of escape. And because there seems to be no hope, no way out, no means of escape, we turn to wine, we turn to whiskey, heroin, morphine, cocaine, opium, poison, nothing but poison.”
–Malcolm X
A Revolutionary Understanding of Addiction
A Guardian report from Nov. 12, 2015, examines the deadly link between capitalist economics and drug abuse in one of the poorest towns in America—Beattyville, Kentucky. Beattyville’s median household income is a staggering $12,361 a year, ranking the town as the third poorest in the U.S., more than $40,000 below the national median income of $53,915.[1] The sweeping poverty and devastating unemployment have led to a growing sense of demoralization among families who historically earned a living as miners. The reality in Beattyville, a little-known town in the Appalachian Mountains, is a microcosm of the forces at play in every oppressed community across this country.
This article analyzes 1) addiction from a thoroughgoing, critical perspective (as a bio-psycho-social phenomenon), and 2) compares some widely accepted healing approaches with those of the Black Panther Party and the Rainbow Coalition—multinational, revolutionary-minded community groups that the Panthers inspired. The history and evidence presented here shows that the power structure does not have a genuine interest in healing afflicted communities. The argument concludes by showing how oppressed communities —mired in poverty and alienation—must forge their own liberation from the shackles of addiction and the structures that support it.
Drug addiction is a complex phenomenon that has all too often been cast as a moral deficiency or lack of willpower on the part of the addict. It has been managed by capitalist society as a criminal justice problem. Today, the concept that drug addiction is a medical issue that should be addressed with appropriate, coordinated public health measures is gaining ground though still not universally accepted. In part, this may well be because the criminalization of drug users is a way of siphoning off excess portions of the working class into the prison-industrial complex. Capitalism does not work to comprehensively solve the problem of addiction among workers, as addiction itself, as well as its criminalization, serve to divert and tamp down the class struggle.
Though this article is focused on addiction in the working-class and the flooding of oppressed and poor communities with narcotics and alcohol as a strategy of social control, this does not mean that addiction does not affect other social classes. Current research suggests that addiction may in fact be more prevalent among whites and Latinos than among Blacks or Asians. Some research even concludes that problem drug use appears to be more prevalent among people with higher incomes and education levels.[1] Trauma, which often leads to addiction, and addiction itself are universal human problems. Addiction plays out differently in different social milieus — typically with harsher legal consequences for oppressed and working class addicts. While the poor and oppressed drug user goes to jail and prison, financially well-off addicts may be given the freedom to drink or drug themselves to death or have the opportunity to go to costly treatment facilities.
The Black Panther Party
From its inception in 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense led local and national struggles to challenge the oppression that weighed on the Black community and on all disenfranchised people. A key part of their program was an analysis of and resistance to drug and alcohol addiction, which they called “chemical warfare,” or the plague.
The Panthers encouraged their membership to build up an acute awareness of the social world around them. Every leader was encouraged, if not required, to do two hours of reading every morning about world events in order to be able to relate them to what was happening in their own community.
The trailblazing, revolutionary party understood and challenged the source of rampant unemployment, substandard housing and health care, high prison rates and a host of other conditions that affected the Black nation. They redefined America’s African-American “ghettos” as internal colonies within the United States, where a population largely regarded as “surplus” by the capitalist class was deprived of the necessary resources to live economically, culturally and politically empowered lives in capitalist America.[2] Their popularization of Marxism — the study of class struggle — armed a generation of Black, Latino, Asian and white fighters to fight back against the conditions that encaged them.
This foundational understanding of oppression led the Panthers to frame addiction as another inevitable symptom of a dysfunctional system. They adopted the formulation Capitalism + Drugs = Genocide to synthesize their class and national understanding of the question. In reality, the drug epidemic is far worse today than it was 50 years ago when the Panthers confronted it as a major assault on oppressed communities.
Stepping into the No Man’s Land of Revolution
A Marxist understanding of alienation outlines how in an exploitative society: individuals are estranged from themselves, from one another (“their species being”), from their labor and from all of nature. Drugs have a similar effect, disconnecting the addict from their own pain/healing, from those who share a common plight and from the immense potential the world around them possesses. Addiction is often all-consuming, a brick wall before human growth. The Panthers’ exposure of the source of “the plague” empowered addicts to contextualize their own plight, relate more to their struggling sisters and brothers and acquire an awareness of the vampire-like nature of the society that they were born into.
The Rainbow Coalition
The Black national liberation struggle inspired other oppressed communities to stand up. Young Puerto Ricans, especially in Chicago and New York City, identified with the Black liberation struggle and connected it to their own struggle. Chairman of the Chicago BPP, Fred Hampton, started the Rainbow Coalition, a diverse alliance of revolutionary organizations dedicated to overthrowing the racist, exploitative capitalist system.
Inspired by Hampton and the Panthers, in 1969 Puerto Rican organizers formed the New York City branch of the Young Lords Party, which sought to organize against police terror and inequality and liberate Puerto Rico from American imperialism.
A concise review of the Young Lords’ model of community organizing demonstrates why it resonated with addicts—who largely came from the oppressed layers of society. The Young Lords provided leadership and direction to those Puerto Ricans, Black people and poor whites looking to confront the underlying source of their pain and addiction.
The Model of the Young Lords
Defying convention, the Young Lords challenged the institutions in their community that turned their backs on the people.
The Young Lords’ first significant action was the “Garbage Offensive.” Local East Harlem activists collected the trash that the Department of Sanitation of New York neglected to pick up in their neighborhood and then lit the trash heaps on fire on Fifth Avenue, blocking traffic. This bold action forced the city bureaucracy to pick up the trash every week.
Churches were another institution that generally turned their backs on the community. The Lords occupied the First Spanish United Methodist church in Harlem to pressure the church administration to provide vital services to the community. Inspired by the ideas of liberation theology, they called upon the local church officials to act in the spirit of “true Christians” and respond to the needs of the poor. The Reverend called in the police, who arrested 105 Young Lords and their supporters, for daring to challenge the conformist role of the church.
The community supported the Young Lords, who defended the interests of the silenced and marginalized. Fifty-year East Harlem community resident and veteran of the Iraq war, Joey Santana remembers how the leadership of the Young Lords—everyday revolutionary hegemony—played out:
“If the Lords caught you hustling, they took your dope, poured it into the gutter in front of the entire block and warned you to never feed poison to the community again. The second time they grabbed you; it was over for you. They took you up to the top of an overlooking tenement building and hung you off by your legs, shaking you until all of your supply splashed down onto the streets. This was their final warning. If it happened again, they promised to drop you.”
The Young Lords secured better services for their communities with their revolutionary action. They did not just talk about; they lived it. By taking over such institutions, they “expropriated the expropriators.” People for the first time felt invested in self-created, self-determining institutions that were previously part of the alienating machinery of their enemies.
Forty-five Years ago the Young Lords took over Lincoln Hospital
On a sweltering summer night in 1970, the leadership of the Young Lords planned a takeover of Lincoln Hospital to send a message to the city that there was a crucial need for increased public funding of health care in the Bronx. At the break of dawn, the young revolutionaries piled into vans and drove to the decrepit and dilapidated buildings of Lincoln Hospital.
Upon arrival, the activists quickly took control of a section of the hospital, careful to avoid disrupting the care of the patients. A large group of militant unionized healthcare employees stood in solidarity with their actions.[3] The result of this struggle was an unprecedented health care gain for the Bronx community; the Young Lords set up a holistic health center to treat heroin and alcohol addiction. What the state would never do for the community, the community did for itself. [4]
I’m not a junkie. I’m oppressed.
According to the authors of Hillbilly Nationalists, Race Radicals and Black Power, Amy Sonnie and James Tracy, these community-led rehabilitation programs, spearheaded by revolutionary community groups, were the most successful of their kind because of their pioneering approach. The far-reaching analysis did not assign individual blame to an addict but rather contextualized their situation. The recovering men and women came to see that they were not junkies, tecatos, bums or drunks, as they had been labeled by society; they were oppressed.
The oppressors’ argument that addiction is solely due to “personal weakness,” “defective personalities” or “poor home-life” effectively hides and perpetuates the cycle of oppression. This is not to say that addiction does not have an individualized, physical aspect to it. [5] Until a person suffering from addiction is ready to alter their lifestyle, there is little that loved ones or professionals can do for them. Although Ernesto “Che” Guevara used this phrase in a different context, it certainly applies here: “There are no liberators. Only the people can liberate themselves.”
Thanks to the mentorship of the Young Lords, many recovering addicts came to see that a particular arrangement of power in society had deprived them of the educational, health and spiritual resources that they needed to cultivate their talents and heal. King Tone — former Inca of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation, and in many ways an offspring of the Young Lords’ leadership — said it best:
“Why didn’t you teach me about Don Pedro Albizu Campos and Puerto Rico’s history in high school? All I had was Jordan and Magic. Maybe if I knew I was colonized and had my true history, I wouldn’t have sold crack.”
Inspired and trained by the Panthers — the architects of survival programs — other oppressed people, poor whites and radicalized young people organized themselves into the American Indian Movement, the Patriot’s Party and White Lightening, as well as many multi-national socialist formations across the country. Researchers Sonnie and Tracy examined these programs and their unparalleled success in cultivating self-understanding and a sense of purpose in those who were sick. Conscious self-realization was key to genuine rehabilitation.
Redemption
Frantz Fanon — the anti-colonial Martinican psychiatrist — wrote on the redemptive value of anti-colonial armed struggle. For Fanon—living through, engaging in and writing on the 1960 Algerian war of liberation—it was only when the colonized fearlessly rose against their colonizer that they could find purposeful action and individual/collective freedom. Fanon cites his fellow countryman Aimee Cesaire’s dramatic play And the Dogs were Silent, capturing the liberating effect of anti-colonial action:
“The master’s room was wide open. The master’s room was brilliantly lighted, and the master was there, very calm … and our people stopped dead … it was the master .. . I went in. ‘It’s you,’ he said, very calm. It was I, even I, and I told him so, the good slave, the faithful slave, the slave of slaves, and suddenly his eyes were like two cockroaches, frightened in the rainy season … I struck, and the blood spurted; that is the only baptism that I remember today.”
Rising up against addiction was the addict’s baptism, a baptism of fire and fury. Gaining awareness of the oppressor and going to war against him served a similar dual purpose: 1) to restore individual self-worth and 2) to harness and channel one’s energies into the empowerment of previously silenced segments of society.
From the perspective of the Rainbow Coalition organizations, the choice was clear; continue to bear witness to a chemical holocaust or build a fight back movement to recapture control over the social forces that lorded over poor people.[8] Revolutionary community leadership is the decisive subjective factor in determining which way the historical pendulum swings.
“It’s impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg.”
“The government is totally incapable of addressing itself to the true causes of drug addiction, for to do so would necessitate effecting a radical transformation of this society. The social consciousness of this society, the values, mores and traditions would have to be altered. And this would be impossible without totally changing the way in which the means of producing social wealth is owned and distributed. Only a revolution can eliminate the plague.”
—Michael Cetewayo Talbert, circa 1968
Though no public official, nor any face of power in America, would ever say it so bluntly, U.S. “democracy” has no interest in collective healing or empowerment for Black, Brown or white working-class people.
Genuine healing encompasses an in-depth comprehension of the structures of oppression and a resulting mass turning on these structures to overthrow them. This is diametrically opposed to the interests of the ruling class which thrives off obfuscating the source of the oppressed classes’ alienation.
By stoking the flames of white supremacy, misogyny, xenophobia, anti-gay bigotry and so on, the ruling elite have led many poor, working-class and oppressed people to internalize that violence and to turn on one another instead of on their common enemy. Malcolm X, in many ways the harbinger of the Black Panther Party, articulated many useful, penetrating metaphors to understand this dynamic:
“It’s impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg — even though they both belong to the same family of fowl. A chicken just doesn’t have within its system to produce a duck egg. It can’t do it. It can only produce according to what that particular system was constructed to produce. The system in this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, this social system, this system, period. It’s impossible for this system, as it stands, to produce freedom right now for the Black man in this country. And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg, I’m certain you would say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken!”[9]
The Two Hands of the State: Both Deadly
Community advocate and Panther 21 defendant Michael Cetewayo Talbert articulated the reality of why mainstream rehabilitation programs failed the vast majority of Black, Brown and poor white addicts in the 1960s.
“The basic reason why the plague cannot be stopped by the, drug prevention and rehabilitation programs is that these programs, with their archaic, bourgeois Freudian approach and their unrealistic therapeutic communities, do not deal with the causes of the problem. These programs deliberately negate or at best deal flippantly with the socio-economic origin of drug addiction. These programs sanctimoniously deny the fact that capitalist exploitation and racial oppression are the main contributing factors to drug addiction in regard to Black people. These programs were never intended to cure Black addicts. They can’t even cure the white addicts they were designed for.”
Cetewayo—named after the late 19th century Zulu king who fought the English invasion of Southern Africa—pointed an accusatory finger at individualized, government-sponsored programs, if and when they even existed, because they covered up the broader socio-economic context of oppression.
The state first crushed the liberation movement —dismantling the programs led by revolutionary organizations—and then set up a network of tunnel-vision, pity-the-poor, charity non-profits. Just in 1969, the FBI and COINTELPRO assassinated 26 leaders of the Black Liberation Movement and jailed hundreds of others on trumped up charges, including Cetewayo and 20 other New York City based Panthers. The state took the initiative to behead the movement so that the community would continue to burn. Do-gooder outsiders, usually white, were subsequently paraded in to replace the authentic, grass-roots leadership that had undertaken community healing as part of the social struggle.[11]
Limits of the Social Work Model
The media and educational system intentionally deprive people of their spiritual and political ancestry, laying a basis for disillusionment and pessimism. When none of this is addressed, the survivor/addict “comes up with answers that don’t answer and solutions that don’t solve,” to quote Fred Hampton. [12]
An underfunded social work agency is the cheap substitute for a self-determining community, the crumbs the system arrogantly tosses the disenfranchised. Instead of fostering a positive, redemptive, collective self-esteem, social work agencies push individualized solutions. This may include therapy and benefit access, and medications like Methadone and Suboxone. These interventions can be effective in some cases, but they are detached from the overarching cause of broad societal healing. When they are detached from genuine resistance, they are band aids that are placed over hemorrhages, often substituting one addiction with another.
This article should not be read as an attack on the individual social service workers, who, most often, are hard-working, compassionate people. This is a challenge to them as well, to begin, or in some cases continue, to question what social class they serve. Can they cease to be cogs in a machine that churns out stagnancy and disempowerment and align themselves with the liberation movement?[13]
The everyday social workers’ test is achieving balance between a job to survive and the revolutionary work that they believe in. Social work agencies (their job) consume their employees nearly entirely, leaving them few hours to step outside of their routine and to do the real, liberation work that needs to be done. By doing so, the non-profit sector benefits from the organizing talent of a particular segment of socially conscious college graduates. The potential freedom fighters are often bogged down and burnt out before they are able to find a revolutionary expression of their desire to help the oppressed.
Narcotics Anonymous
Narcotics Anonymous is a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of people. The author has seen the NA model keep his own sister alive and respects the powerful healing NA groups are engaged in, across the world. A powerful question to wrestle with is how can revolutionary organizations relate to individual members of NA groups so that they can move beyond an individualized approach to addiction to a community and national model of healing and consciousness-raising?
The strength of NA is that it is available to everyone. In contrast to the massive “recovery” industry in which people are shuttled off into 30, 60, 90 day or longer “spin dry” programs, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, NA, like a revolutionary organization, does not discriminate against or reject anyone. Many “rehab” programs are inaccessible because of how expensive they are.
The 10th tradition of NA states: “10. Narcotics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the NA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.” This tradition was originated by Alcoholics Anonymous, NA’s predecessor. The original AA “long version” of the tradition sheds more light on its intention:
“No A.A. group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate A.A., express any opinion on outside controversial issues—particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion. The Alcoholics Anonymous groups oppose no one. Concerning such matters they can express no views whatever.”
Given the history of NA and its primary objective —to beat addiction— this is understandable. For a NA group to violate the 10th tradition would be divisive for its membership and would spell doom for the NA fellowship organizationally.
The gut instinct, to distrust politics, makes sense from the perspective of populations hoodwinked every four years by politicians, who make empty promises in exchange for votes. But the vast majority of addicts are members of the working class, facing the same issues of exploitation or unemployment, racism, sexism and anti-LGBTQ bigotry as the rest of our class. In early recovery, addicts correctly focus on getting clean and staying clean, and this may take all their energy beyond basic survival. But with the help of NA and other recovery groups, many are able to enjoy the gift of long-term abstinence from drugs. At this stage of recovery, it makes sense to take an objective look at the world and try to understand it. Just as in NA addicts learn that “together we can do what we could never do alone,” so in the larger society, recovering addicts can learn that “the people united will never be defeated.”
This process is already beginning, as some people in the recovery community have formed a network called “New Recovery” that brings together community-based organizations made up of people overcoming addiction and their families. New Recovery focuses on community education and political advocacy around issues of importance to the recovery community—for instance, insurance parity for mental health and addiction treatment, restoration of voting rights for felons convicted of drug crimes, alternatives to prison as an approach to the problem of addiction, and so on.
Already, we know revolutionaries, union organizers, union members and conscious workers who are seeking or have achieved long-term recovery in NA and AA. How can revolutionary organizations organically win these survivors and fighters over to the broader fight?
The Mightiest ‘Higher Power’
The theme of the 12-step program is the importance of surrendering to a higher power. NA and AA are correct to leave this higher power vague, so as not to infringe upon an individual’s personal faith. Everyone is entitled to their own spiritual outlook.
Revolutionary socialists also believe in a higher power. And that power is the power of the people, millions of people—conscious, active, united and mobilized—in pursuit of emancipation. There are countless examples of the power of masses of people to directly intervene in and transform history, such as the Haitian Revolution, the Great Depression-era union struggles for Social Security and other benefits, the Chinese Revolution, the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnamese defense of their homeland and defeat of U.S. imperialism, from 1962-1975. As is said in NA, “Together we can do what we could never do alone.” This is true for freeing people from the chains of active addiction, and it is true for the processes that liberate people from political and social oppression.
The oppressors do not voluntarily give up anything. The oppressed, out of necessity, must seize what we deserve. It is an individual’s right to believe in divine intervention in the affairs of society, but it is our duty to understand and then challenge that which is unjust in the world in front of us. People who work a strong program of recovery have the potential to become powerful organizers because they are principled people. Tradition 12 states: “always remember to place principles above personalities.” Our work then in the present should be to form working relationships with groups of individuals involved in the 12-step programs and highlight our common interest in overthrowing the social conditions that magnify the incidence of addiction and early death under capitalism.
Cough it up, then Rise Up
Journalist Johann Hari explains that a child who suffered abuse is 4,600 percent more likely to become an addict than a child who never suffered trauma.[14] NA groups can empower and help individuals insofar as they bring oppressed people together to share their pain and vocalize the individual trauma that participants have endured. But they do not engage in a critical assessment of why trauma is so widespread; that is not their purpose.
It is a powerful step for someone to admit they are a survivor of sexual violence but the deeper question is: why is there a trans-generational culture of sexual abuse and rape? Returning veterans, who have lived through war and have PTSD, deserve and need group therapy. The far-reaching question though, is why are hundreds of thousands of teenagers and young men and women sent off thousands of miles away to persecute wars of foreign conquest, sustaining life-debilitating injuries, trauma and death in the process? And in the richest country in the world, why does brutal poverty and a hollow educational order deprive masses of people of a sense of purpose? Four million people in the United States survive on less than $2 a day, and the vast majority of them are children.[15]
There are tens of thousands of NA groups spread across the world in over 100 countries, although the majority are in the United States; there are many more AA groups. These fellowships will continue to grow in response to the profound suffering caused by addiction. These programs will continue to help one addict at a time until revolutionaries address the pivotal questions: how and when will the unhealthy society that we live in—that inevitably produces addiction—be transformed?
Like membership in NA, being a Panther or Young Lord was not a one-hour commitment, once or twice a week. It was a lifestyle. This righteous, inspired lifestyle transformed people. The uplifting of communities necessarily touched masses of people.
Oppressed and exploited communities need leadership, organization and centralism. It is only the mighty centralism of the oppressed that can defeat the centralism of the oppressor (the police, the army). It is only through this fight-back movement, that we can forge our liberation.
Another World is Necessary
There can be no genuine, collective healing in a society organized against the interests of the vast majority. Until the addict is transformed into a conscious actor on the historical stage, cognizant of the dehumanization he or she has suffered before white supremacy, sexual violence, systematic neglect and all the other features of class society, they will remain a powerless, atomized object of societal scorn. The breaking away must be both individual and collective.
Beattyville, KY, the Bronx, NY, Brockton, MA, Watts, Los Angeles, and every oppressed community in between writhes under the same system. Only a new system, based on a new set of principles, can begin to alleviate our suffering on a mass level. To embrace this historical challenge, arguably the most daunting any people has ever faced, is to bring into motion our people who have fallen by the wayside by the hundreds and thousands. We all have a role to play —no matter how great or small— in this struggle.
(The author dedicates this article to his cousin Ben (27) and his sister Ellen (46), both of whom died of heroin overdoses. No life was lived in vain if it inspires others to nurture and protect the lives of future generations.)
Endnotes
[1] Statistics according to that Census Bureau 2008-12 survey, cited in The Guardian’s November 12th report.
[2] Influenced by the Panthers, Angela Davis published Women, Race and Class in 1981, highlighting how poor Black women are triply oppressed by white supremacy, patriarchy and the class system. This is a good starting point for readers who want to read more on this subject.
[3] The authorities called in the NYPD to restore business as usual. It was only the outpouring of community support that prevented the NYPD from inflicting abuse and legal reprisals at the hands of the state.
[4] This clinic remained open until the next mayoral administration of Abraham Beame pulled funding from the project, resulting in a surge in untreated addiction in the area. In recent years, the cost of life saving medications needed to treat hepatitis C, cancer, cholesterol and other illnesses, rose more than 500 percent, creating wider gaps in an already unequal healthcare system. (“Drug Goes From $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight.” New York Times. Andrew Pollack. Sept. 20, 2015.) Only a new system, which prioritizes people’s needs over profits, can we make health care available to all poor and working people. It serves us to remember this militant example of resistance today, as heroin and other health care epidemics continue to ravage the very communities where Lincoln Hospital is located in the South Bronx.
[5] Live Science defines addiction as a brain disorder in which the circuitry of the brain demands “rewards,” in the form of alcohol or drugs. Addiction now Defined as Brain Problem, not Behavioral Problem. Live Science. August 15th, 2011. Socioeconomic Status and Substance Use among Young Adults: A Comparison across Constructs and Drugs. Journal of Studies of Drugs and Alcohol. September 2012. “Among Delinquent Youth, whites more likely to abuse hard drugs vs Black or Hispanics.” Russia Today. March 18, 2016. “Study: Whites more likely to Abuse Drugs than Blacks.” Heathland Time. Nov., 7, 2011.[6]From an interview in “Black and Gold” documentary film. Directed by Richard Rowley and Jacqui Soohen. 1999.
[7] Aime Cesaire, Les Armes Miraculeuses (And the Dogs were Quiet, Et les chiens se taisaient), pp. 133—37.
[8] Dead Prez’s song and video “I Believe” brilliantly synthesizes the thesis of this article through hip hop.
[9] From Malcolm X’s speech “This System can’t Produce Freedom,” March 29, 1964.
[10] “Capitalism Plus Dope Equals Genocide,” by Michael “Cetewayo” Tabor, n.d. 1968.
[11] This is precisely what happened in Haiti in the wake of the earthquake in 2012. Today “Third World countries” –read Oppressed Nations— have a higher rate of charity workers than ever, yet are further mired in impoverishment. This is by design. NGO’s are the internationalization of non-profit tactic of community dis-empowerment.
[13] The book The Revolution will not be Funded is a good resource to understand the everyday role of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex in stamping out resistance.
[14] Cited in Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, by Johann Hari.
[15] Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer. $2 a day: Living on Almost Nothing in America.
Originally published to Liberation News on Jul 28, 2009
According to a recent State University of New York at Stony Brook / Erase Racism survey, the census ranks Long Island as the third most racially segregated suburban region in the country, behind the suburbs of Newark and Cleveland.
In 1947, the Federal Housing Administration launched in Long Island the suburb of Levittown, issuing affordable home loans to returning World War II veterans. The government and corporate media celebrated the town as the “model” for a new era of social stability and rising living standards. But this vision was based solidly on racism; deed restrictions, backed by New York State courts, limited the 17,400 newly constructed houses to white families.
While the open racism of Levittown’s founding eventually came under criticism, the question remains: 60 years and two generations later, how much has housing segregation really changed in New York City and its suburbs? These days Levittown is 94.1 percent white and 0.5 percent African-American. The SUNY report concluded that many of New York City’s suburbs are today just as segregated, and “in many places home ownership for blacks and Latinos is still not an option.”
A brief history of housing segregation
The struggle against housing segregation has long been part of the wider Black freedom struggle. For generations, it was routine for the Ku Klux Klan—in close collaboration with local law enforcement—to burn crosses in front of the homes of African American families who had dared to move into the “wrong” side of town.
Even when the open symbols of white supremacy were not deployed, real estate developers, local legislatures and racist homeowners’ associations created policies and informal arrangements that rigidly preserved suburban segregation in the South and in the North. Behind these arrangements stood on one hand the threat of violence against African Americans or whites who dared defiance, and on the other hand the backing of the federal government.
A look back at post-WWII New York City reveals the collusion of the dominant institutions of U.S society that made a concerted effort to keep African Americans both separate and unequal.
The 1940s became known as the Second Great Migration, as more than 6 million African Americans who had been sharecroppers and low-paid agricultural laborers moved north. Prior to World War II, African American laborers were denied employment in the defense industry. New developments in agricultural machinery simultaneously started to eliminate the need for Black field labor. Where in earlier periods, Southern planters had passed laws to keep their workers from going north, now they aggressively pushed them away.
The new war drive demanded more workers in the factories and soldiers in the trenches. The capitalist class turned towards the oppressed African American communities, employing around 1.5 million African Americans in the defense industry, mostly in the Northern cities. Thousands more fought overseas in segregated units. The Black population in New York City increased from 458,000 in 1949 to 1,012,883 in 1950. New York City would soon have the largest urban Black population in the world.
At the conclusion of WWII, public funds made available to the Federal Housing Authority made the “American dream” of homeownership accessible for the first time to many white working-class families. The FHA entered into multi-million dollar contracts with developers and for the first time, bank loans were available in large quantities that allowed families to pay their mortgages off over 30-year periods.
Government funding for home ownership constituted perhaps the biggest federal welfare program in the U.S. history. But it was directed almost exclusively to whites. In a 1949 decision, the New York State Court of Appeals held up the right of private property to discriminate along racial lines. Thus, public funds and government policies built the very developments from which Blacks and Latinos were then excluded.
Official segregation in New York City
Robert Moses, New York City’s Parks Commissioner, led the racist offensive to keep Black families confined to the ghetto. To thwart integration attempts, Moses introduced the Urban Redevelopment Companies Act which made it legal for real estate companies to exclude Blacks from modern housing developments like Park Chester in the Bronx and Stuyvesant Town on 14th St. on the East side of Manhattan. Stuyvesant Town, the largest housing project in the country, offered low-income spacious apartments to white veterans and their families.
Stuyvesant was owned by MetLife, still the largest life insurance company in the country. MetLife fought tooth and nail to preserve the segregated character of Stuyvesant Town. Eviction proceedings were initiated against white families who challenged the segregation policy, and neighborhood children who were not white were chased away from the gated community by hired security. MetLife president Frederick Ecker stated “Negroes and whites do not mix.”
When three African American World War II veterans sued MetLife for their discriminatory practices, the court ruled: “It is well settled that the landlord of a private apartment or dwelling house may, without violating any provision of the Federal or State Constitutions, select tenants of its own choice because of race, color, creed or religion … Clearly, housing accommodation is not a recognized civil right.” For its part, the New York Times refused to endorse the integration of Stuyvesant Town.
Progressive tenants, including many Communists, challenged the segregation at Stuyvesant Town. In 1948, a Local 65 union organizer invited the African American Hendrix family to move into his apartment. A progressive tenants committee collected 1,200 signatures from Stuyvesant tenants welcoming the Hendrix family, including 12 of their immediate 15 neighbors.
Using a mixture of anti-Communist and racist arguments, MetLife attempted to evict the committee’s leading tenants and others who had entertained African Americans as house guests. As the eviction day approached, the tenants barricaded their doors, while local unions picketed MetLife; according to historian Martha Biondi, 3,000 members of District 65 picketed Stuyvesant Town at one point. (To Stand and Fight, 134) MetLife caved in, stopped the eviction proceedings and discarded its official segregation policy.
Where official segregation was overcome at the real estate and legislative level, enormous obstacles still remained. MetLife still maintained complete control of who entered which housing developments, using the excuse of obscure “waiting lists” to prevent integration. By 1960, only 0.2 percent of tenants were Black in Stuyvesant, and only 0.4 percent in Peter Cooper Village.
Red-lining: financial segregation
Throughout the region and the country, banks refused to lend money to aspiring non-white homeowners, effectively preventing them from making monthly payments. Through the practice of “red-lining,” banks kept maps of the racial demographics of neighborhoods and drew African American and Latino neighborhoods as bad investments.
In 1949, the National Association of Real Estate Boards made a list of threats to middle-class communities. At the top of the list were “madams, bootleggers, gangsters and Negroes.” The leasers in Levittown had a clause stating, “The tenant agrees not to permit the premises to be used or occupied by any person other than the members of the Caucasian race.”
The media presented the suburbs as a place for white families to enjoy privacy and tranquility and the inner city as an overcrowded, menacing place inhabited by Blacks. This was a tactic used to instill fear in white families, in order to justify the unnatural division of people. Such officially sanctioned racist hysteria led many whites to utilize violence to keep their neighborhoods segregated. The KKK intimidated and set fire to the homes of Black families who aspired to move into the Long Island neighborhoods of Copiague and Amityville.
The real estate companies, backed by the official “wisdom” of the government and corporate media, thus concocted the idea that the presence of non-white homeowners lowered property values—and then made the idea a self-fulfilling prophecy. The resulting process of “white flight” whereby white New Yorkers fled to the newly constructed suburbs was highly lucrative for real estate interests.
Meanwhile, in the city, the policy of “Urban Renewal” forced thousands of residents to move to the most neglected sections of the city. Funds that were supposed to go to urban redevelopment went towards the building of inferior public housing projects.
By 1955, 300,000 people lived in 74 New York City public housing projects, one-third of whom were Black. The City did not adequately fund and maintain public housing, eventually leading to the blighted, deteriorated projects that we know today.
The present reality of housing segregation disproves the claims of a “post-racial” United States. The ruling class would have us believe that residential segregation is somehow a natural—and therefore acceptable—division of people that reflects each community’s free will to “stick together.” They ignore both the proud history of those who have fought back and the deliberate government and banking policies that reinforce gentrification and housing inequality.
There is nothing mystical about the persistence of housing segregation in New York. It has lasted because of the absence of a powerful social movement to take head on the banks, real estate developers and their politicians. As the Stuyvesant Town struggle demonstrated, segregation is like any other reactionary phenomenon: it will not fall unless we hit it.
Originally published to Liberation News on May 11, 2006
When Karl Marx published “The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,” he set out to outline the process by which the capitalist mode of production exploits workers. He called this phenomenon alienation, meaning that working people put everything into their jobs but get little in return. Marx explained that, under capitalism, workers are alienated in the following three ways: within the production process itself; from the objects produced by their labor; from nature and from the rest of humanity.
Alienation from the production process
For most of the working class, labor is nothing more than a means for physical survival. The labor process—working a job—is not educational or enriching in any way. Marx refers to this process as “the sacrifice of vitality.” This means workers most often hate their jobs, but have to do them anyway. Few blue-collar or white-collar workers could make the argument that they greatly benefit or prosper from their 9-to-5 jobs. Each worker’s time, energy and intellect is focused solely on profit-making for whoever owns the business. As Marx noted:
“He who does not produce (that is, the owner) has dominion over production and over the product.”
For example, the wait staff at a restaurant—plus cooks, busboys, cleaners, hosts, bouncers—give much of their energy so that the business will continue to operate. Typically, they dedicate 40 to 60 hours per week to the restaurant, which they could otherwise spend with their families or doing something fun and enriching. But they need to get paid, so they work instead. At the end of the week, each workers earns a contemptibly meager check that is gobbled up by landlords and other parasitic bill-collectors. The workers end up with very little left over.
Alienation from the objects produced
The working class constantly produces, but the goods and services produced belong only to the owners of their labor. All of the aching bones, headaches, sweat, mental anguish, injuries, repetition and stress help generate commodities that reap benefits for somebody else. Workers have no control over the goods. They become alien to the worker once they are produced.
Marx commented on this reality:
“While the worker’s activity is torment to him, to another [the capitalist] it is his delight and his life’s joy. … The wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production.”
The owner gets richer at the expense of his or her employees. The quicker the laborer’s hands move to clean or cook, the more wealth is produced for the rich. In the case of a busy urban restaurant, kitchen workers produce $20 plates of gourmet food often at lower than minimum wage. The fact that workers’ labor goes toward the accumulation of the owner’s wealth while workers receive a pittance in return is a fundamental feature of capitalism.
Alienation from nature and humanity
The third form of alienation Marx analyzes is the most complex and pervasive—the alienation of workers from their social environment. Consumed by the daily quest for survival and individual ascension in the workforce and society, it is easy for anyone to feel isolated. Capitalism reduces workers to mere appendages of the machinery they operate.
The ruling institutions also cause many workers to seek to attain a higher status in society and to adopt the views or outlook of the very people who oppress them. This effect is called “false consciousness.” The vast majority of workers will never become capitalists or even wealthy. Most will barely be able to survive no matter how hard they work.
Alienation is built into this system. It is countered when workers fight together. Instead of being atomized individuals just seeking by in a society that exploits them, they can come together as a collective force. When workers struggle together, they find a new, non-alienating bond. This bond arises in the fight against the existing social order.
It is in the struggle against exploitation that false consciousness can be replaced by revolutionary class consciousness. Class consciousness is a byproduct of struggle. It is not spiritual or metaphysical, it is real. It can arise when people take action together to overcome oppression. Then they are no longer just individuals, they are part of a powerful, collective movement for revolutionary change.
Class consciousness can develop spontaneously during the course of intense class battles. Revolutionary class consciousness, however, can be achieved on a mass basis only by the successful intervention of a revolutionary socialist party in the spontaneous movement against oppression.
The way forward, the only way to eliminate the core contradictions facing workers—including the alienation that is intrinsic in capitalist society—is the elevation of the working class so that it can achieve political supremacy in society. That process is known as the socialist revolution.
Co-authored by Kobit Cujie, originally published on December 24, 2024
In an effort to bring the behemoth capitalist giant, Amazon, to the bargaining table for a contract, seven Amazon facilities went on strike on Thursday, December 19th at 6 AM. Workers at DBK4 in New York City; DGT8 in Atlanta; DFX4, DAX5, DAX8 in Southern California; DCK6 in San Francisco and DIL7 in Skokie, Illinois initiated the strike. Teamster President Sean O’Brien addressed Amazon owner Jeff Bezos: “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it.” Bezos is worth $238 billion dollars. The average Amazon worker takes home under $30,000 per year. Amazon generated over $620 billion dollars in revenue for the twelve months ending September 30, 2024, a 11.93% increase from last year, yet they refuse to recognize the workers’ unionizing efforts. The workers erected a giant pig to symbolize Bezos and the billionaires’ anti-worker greed.
If ever there was one, this is a David versus Goliath struggle.
A Sociological Snapshot of the New York City Proletariat
The workers are a snapshot of the proletariat of NYC. They are West Indian, Mexican, Dominican, Dominican American, Trinidadian, American etc. Many came here from one of the countries occupied by the United States, searching for a dream. What they found was more class struggle.
This is Sunnyside, where Queens blends into Brooklyn. The workers all have other jobs or side hustles. This is New York Motherfucking City. You survive or you don’t. Under capitalism, no one gives a fuck about you. The workers’ social media reflects this economic reality. Desmond sings calypso at clubs on the weekends. Others work security or drive Uber eats. Steve bounces at clubs on the side. Juan Luis is a Dominican hip hop artist. They invent ever more creative hustles to make ends meet. They need better salaries. They need insurance. They need sick days. They need workers’ comp. They need job security. As Pedro Pietri’s immortal poem “Puerto Rican Obituary” lays out: these workers have been fighting their whole lives and never got a break. They have family members to maintain here and others back in their home countries. Remittances are the lifeblood for their homelands, still in the grip of U.S. imperialism.
There are mothers and fathers on the picket line by day who bring their children and families. The children chant as enthusiastically as their fearless parents. The night crew has its own aesthetic. They pass the holiday coquito (rum-based eggnog) and spicy home-cooked food as the dembow (Dominican rap) and Bruce Springsteen blare out. Juan Carlos, Belinda and a crew crowd around small space heaters trading war stories from the inside of the Amazon facility which towers over us. They share music, chants and coffee. After sundown, Ramón passes out hot chocolate. Upon being released from jail, Tony, the most beloved of the Teamster organizers, starts dancing with a worker leader, Stacey. We chant: “Who are we? Teamsters!” and “What do we want? A union. When do we want it? Now!”
Only the NYC proletariat could maintain a certain level of Caribbean enthusiasm on a 20°F Queens night. Many daydream about being back home in 87°F lands with their families and fight the nostalgia, huddling closer to one another.
And here we were, on just another night in the N Y C, marching with working-class people of every skin complexion and accent, fighting to survive…
Survival until revolution…
We visited the striking Amazon workers in Queens, NY to hear their stories. Set up to fail, exploited by penny-pinching management, and forced to endure unsafe conditions, these workers are taking a stand. Their struggle is the frontline of a larger fight for dignity…
Yesterday, alongside the Teamsters, ACP Colorado demonstrated in support of local Amazon workers at a Thornton facility. These workers are the lifeblood of the American logistical system and deserve to be paid accordingly
On the first day of the strike, the police carted off workers in handcuffs who attempted to engage the scabs. A Dominican worker yells that the monos azules (the blue monkeys, Dominican slang for pigs) are closing in. We attempted to prevent the arrests but the phalanx of jakes (Queen’s slang for the pigs) and paddy wagons. Gustavo starts a chant, echoed by hundreds: “Fuck Be-zos! Fuck Be-zos!”
At the DBK-4 Amazon delivery facility located in Maspeth, Queens, the strikebreakers drove by, protected by the police. Some cover their faces because they feel shame; others because no one ever taught them to believe in themselves or the working class. Some told us they understand the need for this strike but they have to send back money to El Salvador or Barbados for the holidays. This is realpolitik. Objective facts are dogged; identity politics are dogmatic. This is Queens, the borough of “Get Rich or Die Trying.” Some workers are looking to be the next Nicki Minaj or 50 Cent, far fewer the next Joe Hill or Mother Jones. In Marxist lingo, we call this False Consciousness. This is individualist and consumer heaven, an anti-worker paradise.
The workers’ breath is visible as they condemn the elevation of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and other oligarchs above us in this caste society. The fluorescent blue letters A M A Z O N light up the street. They blast dancehall reggae and a local DJ who moonlights as Amazon delivery driver pumps out music from every corner of the Americas. On Saturday, mysteriously there was a massive flood when giant hoses dumped an avalanche of streaming, freezing water on the sidewalk where workers were picketing.
Thousands of UPS drivers, teachers, and community members, including the American Communist Party, Infrared and Midwestern Marx, have come out across the country in support and stood on the picket lines. One NY state ACP member and labor organizer laid out the strategy:
“As American Communists we aspire to be Tribunes or Defenders of the American People. We have supported the workers in whatever material ways, with food, heaters etc. We broadcast their raw and unfiltered voices out into the public through our media arms. We learned from them and got deeper insights into their concerns and about the character of the proletariat in our respective areas. For us as a young party this was a victory. We aspire to organize American workers, regardless of their political views, liberal or conservative. The union struggles were the school of organizing that Lenin highlighted.”
Yesterday we spoke with Oscar from Teamsters Local 705 about why Amazon workers are going on strike against the richest man in the world for paying them scraps!
ACP NY is on the ground with striking Amazon workers in Queens where Amazon has RETALIATED by FLOODING the streets where all the tables, food, and supplies of organizers are set up. This is ILLEGAL.
As both the bourgeois press and the Teamsters have emphasized, this is “the largest strike in Amazon’s history.”
The first recorded Amazon strike occurred in Minnesota in 2018 during Amazon’s Prime Day. The Awood Center, a nonprofit advocacy group in Minnesota for East African immigrants, organized the strike. Demands were for reduced workloads, better safety measures, higher wages, and improved job security, a running theme for the strikes that followed. The strike did not affect production because not enough workers participated out of fear and indifference. However, it did receive enormous attention from the bourgeois press, as it was the first significant protest at an Amazon site in the US.
Since then there have been small waves of protest, with Chris Smalls at the JFK-8 warehouse leading a strike in March 2020, due to the spread of COVID-19 at the warehouse. After this, due to the spread of information by social media and the bourgeois press, workers in several other locations, often with “the help” of nonprofits, launched small scale actions. The next major action was in April 2021, at the DIL3 Delivery Stations in Gage Park, Chicago. Delivery drivers walked out during the shift. This was followed in December 2021 by a walkout at the DIL3 and DLN2 delivery stations in Cicero, Illinois. The latter was the first multi-site walkout at Amazon and both were organized by Amazonians United. This was followed by the unionization of the JFK-8 facility in Staten Island, with the newly formed Amazon Labor Union(ALU) in April 2022.
We see a pattern here. There is hysteria from the bourgeois press with no major impact on output. Bernie Sanders and faux leftist politicians like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez gave it their full support, fawning over such victories. Liberals specialize in celebrating hollow, symbolic victories. Workers fight in the spirit of James Connolly: “For our demands most moderate are, We only want the earth…”
The ALU decided in June 2024 to affiliate with the Teamsters union. After internal struggle, the Amazon Labor Union split with Chris Smalls as leader and reorganized itself in late July 2024. With the partnership of the Teamsters and the ALU set, the Teamsters moved forward in their initiative to organize Amazon facilities. This introduced a large union with lots of organizers and funding into this struggle and led to the unionization of thousands of additional workers. Despite hundreds of thousands of Teamster dollars poured into this organizational effort, the results have been subpar to say the least. The true test of a union is its ability to organize the masses in collective action and thus far they have fallen short.
The hope of the organizers is that these actions will wake up the slumbering masses of Amazon workers into action and generate enough momentum to bring Amazon to the table. At a closing rally before a holiday break, the labor organizers informed workers of their Weingarten rights in case there is retaliation against them on the job.
Late-Stage Capitalism: Its Challenges and Lessons
Marxist-Leninist Amilcar Cabral always said: “Tell no lies, Claim no easy victories…:
Output has barely been affected. In DBK4, where we were, most workers crossed the picket line, despite the incredible media attention that this effort had received from the bourgeois press. At midnight, Friday, December 21st, at the Staten Island facility where the Teamsters represent 5,500 workers, few workers came out to walk the picket line. There were significantly more leftists than workers, showing the disconnect at the heart of this struggle. This is a minority strike against a capitalist behemoth that is hidden behind layers of legal subterfuges and subcontracting tricks. Bezos even claims the delivery drivers are not “his workers,” but are rather employees of Cornucopia and other subcontractors. The billionaires can now hide behind subsidiaries to distance themselves from the exploitation of the hundreds of thousands of workers who enrich them.
The key problem with this strike and the organization of transient workers like Amazon and Starbucks workers, is that the lead organizers, the paid staff of the union, have yet to listen to the wisdom of the masses. They attempt to inject a fighting spirit into the working class and substitute themselves for labor. Temporary workers don’t want to work for Amazon for the rest of their lives, stuck in this boring, repetitive, backbreaking work. As even Forbes, a chief mouthpiece of the billionaires admits, a high percentage of all workplace injuries in the U.S. occur at Amazon. The turnover rate is an astonishing 150 percent per year. These are some of the reasons there is little loyalty to the profession.
The Teamsters are attempting to bring Bezos to the bargaining table but there is a lack of unity among the base of the movement, the 750,000 workers, who are easily replaced and constantly moving in and out of the job. Over the past three days, Bezos’ The Washington Post, has run at least six different articles covering the strike from the perspective of the shareholders. They continue to pop champagne as their stocks go up and their own media companies glorify a struggle doomed to fail. Labor analysts explain the logic of the ruling class. They prop up unwinnable struggles, complementary to their aims of the continued occupation of the American people and the peoples of the world.
The bourgeois press is the enemy’s weapon and is used to mislead and misdirect revolutionary forces. Twitter, or X, is enemy territory designed to sap our militant energies. We cannot rely on social media to discover our duties to the American worker. We must deepen our independent investigation, utilizing our own forces, and become the decisive factor that ensures that workers not only fight, but win.
It is incumbent on us as communists to determine the concrete realities and the balance of forces within each particular labor struggle that emerges. It is not enough to simply support the striking workers, but we must also consider why it is that the vast majority did not strike, without simply writing them off as “scabs and traitors.” We must continue to reach out to them and hear their voices.
The ACP is engaging in more thorough investigation of labor in our regions and nationally. We seek to understand: What is the character of the proletariat in our particular areas? What are the most critical industries and where are the workers the strongest? What are the struggles that the bourgeois press is hiding? Which struggles are most likely to win and which ones need the most support? Which struggles advance the overall interests of the American proletariat and push them closer to the seizure of power? How can we drive up the “sensuous” immersion and practical participation of all cadres, particularly the terminally-online?
The ACP sees social investigation and active community involvement as absolutely essential to answer these questions and as the most honest measurement of who the emerging leaders are.
ACP members went to interview striking Amazon workers in chilling 13-degree weather on the frontlines in Queens, NY. “Amazon doesn’t treat their employees well. They treat us like we’re numbers, like we’re replaceable.”
From sunrise to sunset, the ACP walk shoulder to shoulder with the Teamsters and striking Amazon workers to fight against unfair labor practices. When labor organizes, there’s no fight they can’t win.
For all the naysayers, who say the Bezos, Musks, Clintons and Trumps are untouchable, we proletarians do not feel defeated.
24 hours before the most sacred of family holidays, workers stood their ground. These five days in December have taught us a great deal about the American proletariat, ourselves and our relationship to the working class. Over and over, those of us in the heat of class struggle, heard how much the Amazon workers had grown as friends, sisters and brothers and most importantly as comrades. A worker leader removed his Teamster Amazon skully to pledge his support for anyone who needed help moving forward. In this simple gesture, he was injecting optimism where the billionaires insisted on division, sectarianism and pessimism. Dozens of delivery men and women remarked how they had never spent so much time with their coworkers. Huddled around space heaters, they promised to have one another’s backs moving forward, determined to bring more of their coworkers onto the picket lines. Teamster organizer Tony closed a final rally before Christmas Eve exclaiming: “This is just the beginning. None of us as individuals are heroes. Together we are all heroes. We are the spark. We will inspire tens of thousands of others to strike!”
Today, ACP IL stood shoulder to shoulder with the Teamsters on the picket line, showing unwavering solidarity with workers striking against Amazon. The struggle continues, but so does our commitment to standing with those who power our communities
Today, I salute the hard-working, heroic Dominican people on this special day!
Motivated by love towards my Dominican family members, friends y compañeros and out of loyalty to the truth, I have long wondered what the truth was behind this day. From 1997 to 2001, I lived between the Dominican diaspora in the Bronx and the Dominican Republic. To this day, I live among the diaspora and have never stopped reading and asking Dominican poets, intellectuals and experts questions on this artificially “controversial” topic and everything Dominican. Mil gracias a todos que me ayudaron a escribir esta reflexión.
“For our homeland, we will be victorious or we will die.” -Juan Pablo Duarte
Independence or Manipulation
The Dominican Republic is the only oppressed country that celebrates its “independence” from another oppressed, colonized country, Haiti. DR also celebrates August 16 as its independence day from Spain, who the Dominicans defeated in 1865 in “the War of Restoration.” Dr. Emilio Michel Cordero and Dr. Saudi Garcia argue that “true Dominican independence was realized when the multiracial nation of black and mixed Dominicans were able to fight off slavery and annexation from the colonial powers.”
For generations, the fear-mongering, racist Dominican ruling class has deliberately manipulated the history of the two countries, particularly the period between 1822 and 1844, in order to perpetuate el anti-Haitianismo (anti-Haitian racism). For nearly two centuries, anti-Haitian hysteria and subordination to imperialist powers has been the unofficial religion of the anti-patriotic Dominican elites. But for the masses of Dominican workers who fight against poverty and inequality, what does the sacrosanct word and concept of “Independence” mean today?
The truth is that Haitians have never been responsible for the inequality and the dismal socio-economic conditions that exist in the Dominican Republic. Foreign domination and a handful of elite families — the Vicinis, Rainieris, Bonettis, Barcelós, and Brugals, among others — are the true usurpers of “Dominican independence.” The mega rich capitalist class drape themselves in the Dominican flag and engage in a shamefaced, rhetorical admiration for Duarte, Sanchez y Mella, los padres de la patria (the fathers of the homeland) but in reality, are the ongoing usurpers of a true Dominican independence.
The Facts behind Haiti’s ‘Invasion’ or ‘Unification’ of the Island
History is much more complicated and dialectical than zealots desire. The most oft-repeated image of the 22-year “occupation” was that “Haitian soldiers tossed Dominican infants into the air and caught them with their machetes.” This is a racist myth Dominican social movements seek to dismantle that is deeply embedded in the popular consciousness.
The Haitian slave revolution of 1804 — overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds —was one of the great achievements recorded in human history. Hundreds of thousands of former slaves waged a popular war that defeated successive French invasions under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte (James 1938). After the former slaves, turned generals, Toussaint L’ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines mobilized the Haitian people into a formidable fighting force, never again could the naysayers proclaim that revolution and the victory of the most oppressed was impossible.
Having emerged victorious from this sanguinary war of emancipation against the French, that left much of its land burnt to ashes, Haiti sought the unification of the island of Quisqueya (the Taíno name, later renamed “Hispaniola,” or “Little Spain,” by the Spanish crown Columbus worked for). Some Haitian leaders sought one fortified garrison against recolonization; others had their own self-interest in mind.
There are four incontrovertible facts about the 1822-1844 “invasion” or “unification.” Both terms can be accurate, depending on the class viewpoint held by the speaker or writer.
1) The Haitians entered into the Spanish empire’s sphere of influence — later known as the Dominican Republic — because France and the other colonial powers used this colonial outpost to threaten and re-invade Haiti in hopes of re-enslaving Haitians.
2) In 1822, Haiti liberated thousands of slaves in the Dominican Republic and sent former slave owners and landowners fleeing into exile.
3) Upon entering the eastern portion of the island, Haiti expropriated land from the all-powerful Catholic Church and the Spanish crown. This constituted land reform at the tip of “foreign” bayonets, a unique contribution from an “invading” army.
4) Historian and former president, Juan Bosch, overthrown by the U.S.-sponsored Dominican military in 1963, wrote Dominican Social Composition in 1970 to clarify these very questions. In chapter XIV, Bosch asserts that President Jean-Pierre Boyer needed land to pacify the once competing military and economic forces of Henri Christophe in the north and of Alexandre Pétion in the south. He looked to the eastern part of the island, emerging from the period of “La España Boba,” or “Negligent Spain,” to satisfy this need. On the part of fighters for equality, there is a tendency to over-glorify the Haitian entrance without taking into consideration the wider economic context.
Whereas the Spanish crown built a legal system around the protection of the encomienda system, based on slavery and feudalism, the Haitians introduced a legal code that protected all persons of African and Indoamerican heritage. The Haitian constitution — revolutionary in its essence — prohibited foreigners from owning property and extended citizenship and property rights to the humblest social classes. From the point of view of the oppressed, this act ushered in arguably the most progressive period in Dominican history (Santiago 2005). From the perspective of the encomenderos (plantation bosses), this was an unforgivable intrusion into their profit-making system (Price Mars 1953). Indeed, many slave owners fled as the Haitians advanced into what former president José Núñez de Cáceres had renamed “Spanish Haiti.” (as the DR was known from December 1, 1821 to February 9, 1822.)
A Nation Divided
Motivated by both anti-colonial principles and individual land grabs, the Haitian government lacked the economic means to carry out a successful unification of the two nations. Beleaguered by France’s enforcement of a “debt collection” of 150 million francs for “lost property” and facing an international blockade, the Haitian administration was unable to respond to the myriad needs of the Dominican population (Moya Pons 1977, Sagás 1994). Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer — overseeing 12,000 Haitian troops — faced formidable opposition from Dominican elites who desired further integration into the “global,” colonial-dominated economy. Ultimately, a combination of an emerging commercial petty bourgeoisie and the hateros, the land owners with access to cattle, filled the national void the Haitians sought to fill.
While the long-repressed blacks and mulattoes welcomed the arrival of an army of former slaves — as a safeguard for their own freedom — the lighter-skinned, propertied criollo class saw the “invaders” as a direct threat to their own economic interests and way of life. Led by Juan Pablo Duarte, a leader inspired by the democratic ideals of burgeoning national movements in Europe, sections of the Dominican population conspired and overthrew Haitian rule in 1844 (Ferguson 1992). Anti-Trujillo guerilla and intellectual Juan Isidro Jimenes Grullón captures the essence of the 1844 rebellion. Duarte and his co-conspirators expressed their admiration for the Haitian Revolution, but recognized their own personal and national economic need for genuine independence.
Juan Pablo Duarte, a man of democratic ideals ahead of his time. According to philosopher Pablo Mejia, Duarte was only positioned as “the father of the Dominican homeland” by intellectual elites in Santo Domingo in 1884.
The Dominican masses’ fears proved to be all too real. With the Haitians now pushed out of the scene after 1844, the privileged criollos looked to Spain to re-establish its authority and protect them and their property. The new national anthem of the separatist movement contained the verse “Rise up in arms, oh Spaniards,” hinting that this transfer of power was a counterrevolution in property relations. Seeing that its former colony was unprotected, Spain re-implemented slavery. As the word spread among the Black and mulatto population, they revolted against Spanish designs. Santiago Basora, the leader of The African Battalion, was among the newly-freed Black leaders who rebelled against the elitist separatist movement, forcing them, and their colonial overlords, to abandon the idea of reestablishing slavery in D.R. (Torres-Saillant 1998).
Santiago Basora, the leader of The African Battalion in Santo Domingo.
In 1861, when wealthy Dominican cattle-rancher and career politician Pedro Santana became the dictator of the Dominican Republic he annexed the country back to Spain, making the D.R. the only country in history to revert back to a colonial status.
The specter of a new era of Spanish colonization and slavery sparked a new nationalist resistance movement. The Black and mulatto masses — led by black General Gregorio Luperón — received support and launched guerrilla attacks from Haiti, successfully defeating the Spanish forces (Torres-Saillant, 1998).
General Gregorio Luperón.
The Centrality of History
History is contested ground. The class forces in power use their own version of history and manipulate it in order to promote myths and advance their interests. The ruling class’ “take” then becomes the accepted version of events. Nearly two centuries after the events discussed here, the Dominican nationalist version of history paints the western side of the island, Haiti, as a dark, menacing presence that seeks to “re-invade” the peaceful Dominican nation. Violence against Haitian migrants is justified under the pretext of the D.R. needing “to protect itself at all costs.” The reality is the opposite; Haitians have been the victims of Dominican state-sponsored racism, forced displacement, and massacres. In October 1937, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo oversaw a week-long extermination campaign along the border. Over an estimated 20,000 Haitians were murdered in the “Parsley massacre,” and thousands more were displaced. To be a Haitian today in the Dominican Republic is akin to being a Palestinian in Occupied Palestine (the West Bank).
Haitian and Dominican Solidarity
It is important to highlight the often unknown and downplayed instances of solidarity among the two nations.
As a maroon state, Haiti supported liberation movements throughout the hemisphere. They supported their one time adversary, the Dominican mulatto general, Francisco del Rosario Sanchez, against Spain’s next round of encroachments. Simón Bolívar and the anti-colonial movement in El Gran Colombia looked to Haiti for arms and support. The Venezuelan flag was sewn and first flown in Jacmel, Haiti in 1803 as Francisco de Miranda prepared his anti-colonial expedition to confront Spain. The great Cuban revolutionary José Marti set sail from Haiti when he went to fight for Cuban independence from Spain.
A century before Ernesto “Che” Guevara was born, the Haitians were the original internationalists.
The influence of the Haitian revolution was felt throughout the U.S. The southern slavocracy trembled before the idea that slaves could fight back and win. Denmark Vessey ─ a slave born in the West Indies and forced to travel to the South as the assistant of a slave trader ─ led a historic revolt of slaves in Charlestown, North Carolina (Dunkel Haïti-Progrès September 2003). He wrote to President Boyer in hopes of expanding the insurrection across the southern states.
During periodic round-ups throughout Dominican history, many Dominican families ─ risking their own lives ─ have hidden Haitians who were escaping the machete and gun-wielding military. The 23-year-old poet Jacques Viaux and other Haitians fought and died alongside Dominican revolutionaries in the “constitutional war” of April 1965, resisting the invasion of 42,000 U.S. Marines sent to squash a movement for popular democracy. When Haitians were forced to flee U.S.-backed coups against the democratically elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide in 1991 and 2004, the Dominican solidarity movement received them. The Dominican Republic was the first country to respond to the 2010 earthquake that rocked Port-au-Prince. When the Dominican government of Danilo Medina passed the law 168-13 in 2013, denying more than 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent citizenship, a multinational movement led by both the Dominican and Haitian communities, in the D.R. and the U.S., organized to overturn the law. Acción Afro-Dominicana is among many groups today that ignores their own safety and stands against U.S. imperialist attacks on Haiti.
“Where is my homeland? This is where I was born.”
Towards Genuine Independence
Today, February 27th “independence” celebrations are a hollow charade.
They are not focused on South-South solidarity or advancing Dominican workers’ interests. What plagues the Dominican Republic is not scarcity or competition with another oppressed people, but the greed and opulence of a few. In a word, capitalism.
Dominican elites meeting with Rudolph Giuliani
Millions of Dominican workers pour their lifeblood into the main industries that make the Dominican Republic profitable for investors; sugar processing, ferronickel, gold mining, textiles, cement and tobacco. The Dominican people collectively produce over $121.44 billion dollars in goods and services every year. From the point of view of economists — and the growth of the Gross Domestic Product — the economy is booming. Yet the average salary for a Dominican worker in these industries is a paltry $850 dollars a year! There is more than enough wealth to satisfy the needs and dreams of the 11.4 million Dominicans in D.R. and those economic migrants forced into exile abroad. No people chooses to be a diaspora. 2.4 million Dominicans live far away from their families in the US, some 250,000 in Spain and tens of thousands of others who live in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Canada and beyond. But all of the profits produced by the historic Dominican masses are siphoned off to the nation’s enemies.
It is the economically-exiled diaspora that sent back over $1 billion dollars during this past Christmas season. Remittances are a cornerstone of the Dominican economy.
The Dominican Republic is world famous for tourism. “The Dominican Republic” rakes in 10 billion dollars per year. I put “DR” in quotes because no one can deny that the lion’s share of these profits never reach the 99.9 percent of Dominicans. Over 11 million tourists visited DR in 2024. Not one of them knew or cared to know about the legacies of Tina la Bazookera, Francisco Alberto Caamaño or Mamá Tingó.
The world’s leading gold-mining company, the Barrick Gold Corporation, has billions of dollars invested in extracting gold, nickel and other valuable metals. Franklin Sports, Fruit of the Loom and Adidas owned Dick’s Sporting Goods are among the largest exploiters of sweatshop labor in the country, paying as low as an abysmal $32/week or $0.73/hour. Some 378,000 Dominicans work in these sweatshops.
Can a country be called “independent” given this reality?
As the scribe of African independence, Frantz Fanon, wrote this is merely the sham of “flag independence.”
Today’s neocolonial profits come on the heels of yesterday’s colonial enslavement.
Failure to understand this history obfuscates the present moment and leaves the Dominican working class vulnerable to racist dogma of narrow, nationalist anti-Haitian forces who are also anti-Dominican.
The Dominican bourgeoisie — the junior partners of high finance — strategically focus on a bogey-man, whipping up all types of racist hysteria about a Haitian re-invasion, while genuflecting before the true threat, U.S. imperialism. Hiding behind an imaginary threat, based on a manipulated history, the faux patriots seek to promote their own class interests, callously disregarding the wide spectrum of needs of the Dominican masses. They place puppet politician presidents like Leonel Fernandez, Hipolito Mejia, Danilo Medina and Luis Abinader into power as mouthpieces of their interests. No matter how far the nation descends into poverty and inequality, everything the government does is in the name of “freedom,” “democracy” and the “homeland.” One out of four Dominicans live on less than $6.85 per day. Many families live in precarious, informal housing. For thousands of Dominicans I have known, migration to Nueba Yol like Balbuena is their only idea of “freedom.”
The Dominican Republic — from its inception — has been a nation divided. There is no united Dominican nation with one set of common interests. While the masses eke out a living that is every day more precarious, the rich continue to play their role as obedient hirelings in the pillaging of the nation. The progressive, anti-imperialist movement calls for unconditional solidarity with Haitians and all oppressed workers and strives to organize the unfinished Dominican revolution so that in a near future all Dominicans have a definitive independence, worthy of celebration. Until then, everywhere Dominicans reside, in la patria (the homeland) and en exilio (in exile), la lucha continua/Nou toujou ap lite!
An earlier version of this article was originally published at Liberation School on February 27, 2016.
el indomable pueblo dominicano
Here is a list of resources for further reading on this topic.
Candelario, Ginetta. “E. B. Black Behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops.” 2007.
Cordero Michel, E.. Obras Escogidas. Ensayos I. “Proyecciones de la Revolución Haitiana en Santo Domingo.” 2016.
Dunkel, Greg. “Haitian History: What U.S. textbooks don’t tell.” 2003.
Espy, Jay. “Advancing the Anti-Racist Struggle in the Dominican Republic.” 2015.
Ferguson, James. The Dominican Republic: Beyond the Lighthouse. 1992.
James, CLR. The Black Jacobins. 1938.
Jimenes Grullón, Juan Isidro. La Ideología Revolucionaria de Juan Pablo Duarte. 2009.
Mella, Pablo. Los espejos de Duarte. 2013.
Price Mars, Jean. La Republica de Haiti y La Republica Dominicana. 1953.
Sagás, Ernesto. Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic. 2000.
Shaw, Danny. The Saints of Santo Domingo: Dominican Resistance in the Age of Neocolonialism. 2015.
Torres-Saillant, Silvio. “The Tribulations of Blackness: Stages in Dominican Racial Identity.” 1998.
Torres Ulloa, Alfonso. Duarte: Reto de los Democráticos. 2009.
Wucker, Michelle. Why the Cocks Fight. 1999.
Venator, Santiago. Charles. “Race, Nation-Building and Legal Transculturation during the Haitian Unification Period (1822-1844): Towards a Dominican Perspective.” 2005.
Originally published to the Black Agenda Report on May 15, 2024
Hundreds of college student encampments across the country against the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza have now spread to Europe, South America and the world. The acts of mass solidarity have seized the frontpages of mainstream tabloids for almost a month now. It all started on Wednesday March 17th at my alma mater, Columbia University, thanks to the leadership and solidarity of hundreds of student and faculty leaders. Mayor Eric Adam’s impressive squandering of our taxpayer money to harass and repress peaceful student protests will not soon be forgotten by voters.
I was one of the alumni and professors arrested for opposing this disgraceful holocaust of human life in Gaza that even the corporate media describes as a threat to the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families. The two-week encampment was a magical time of love, movement building and collectivity. While the NYPD arrested hundreds of us on the night of Tuesday April 30th, there were constant threats throughout the duration of the two-week encampment. As NYPD helicopters and drones circled overhead and hundreds of riot police prepared to invade Columbia for a second time in two weeks, here is a view from the inside of Columbia’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
A Second Sweep?
On the night of Tuesday, April 23rd tensions reached their highest point. An NYPD helicopter hovered above, low enough to make sure no one slept on the sixth night of occupation. A drone moved 10 feet every 5 seconds above hundreds of camped-out students who cried out for warmth and a Palestine free of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
After midnight, there were movements and adjustments by the hundreds of student protestors in expectation of the second sweep by the riot police. Or would it be the National Guard , as the administration was threatening? The heavy specter of the Kent State , Jackson State and Orangeburg student massacres towered over us. On the second day of the camp the previous week, Columbia’s president, the Baroness Manouche Shafik , had sent the NYPD in to arrest students and destroy the first Butler lawn encampment. After the one hundred plus arrests, a second team swooped in and occupied the adjacent East Lawn.
In the swirl of rumors, there was the temptation to run around in confusion, like chickens with our heads cut off. The Palestinian and anti-Zionist Jewish student leadership’s calm confidence checkmated the untested fears. This is the unity Zionism most fears.
On East Lawn, the protests of past epochs hung heavily over the hallowed grounds in front of the beams and columns of the towering neoclassical-structured Butler library. The names Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle and others were written above in bold letters on the imposing imperial structure. Before the pending showdown below, these names meant nothing more than a Literature Humanities or Art Humanities paper deadline for the multitude below determined to halt the gears of genocide. Timidity and academia have never inscribed themselves into the pages of history. Emboldened by the examples of Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, Muna El Kurd, Ahed Tamimi, Shireen Abu Akleh and so many other anti-colonial Palestinian fighters and martyrs, this was their moment. To even utter the names of Palestinian people’s soldiers was an act of rebellion. The corporate media was in overdrive to dilute and pervert the anti-genocidal message of the student occupations across the U.S. The students repeatedly say Palestine has a right to live and prosper; the mainstream media repeatedly misreports , in subtle and forthright ways, that “the movement is anti-Semitic.”
On the other end of every one of our anxious breaths, Palestine remained the compass and heartbeat of the encampment.
The Importance of Leadership and Centralism
In the inflection points of this struggle, there was a higher probability of deeper police infiltration. The student leadership broke us into smaller units to minimize the impact of snitches. Our camp security used tactics of restraint and patience with Zionist provocateurs. Student leaders reminded us that under-covers most often arrive under the amorphous cover of anarchy. Any new face at this eleventh hour was deeply suspicious.
Before the asymmetrical show of force , there was no vacillating. There was no doubt. One student posed the million-dollar question to her brigade: “Why are they treating us like this? We are a bunch of geeks with books and disgust for Zionist genocide.”
Best friends, new friends and veteran comrades squeezed each other’s hands in the brisk spring air. Those April days from 56 years earlier hung frozen in the balance.
Every instruction from our trusted leadership emerged from a high degree of collaborative reflection and centralism. The highly democratic, representative student body came together through 7 months and 76 years of organizing against Israeli apartheid. We organized ourselves into brigades. A student team evacuated dozens of tents in a lightning-quick logistical move. Brigade Red tossed them over a fence, along with any cautions that persisted. We packed up all of our food and collectivity. Was this the end of the Gaza encampment, the end of our commune of stubborn tears and raised fists? The concerns from hours ago over sunscreen and tent flies to stay dry dissipated into the observant night. The moon was our only front-line witness, as the Baroness had closed the citadel’s gates. Alumni complained about not being able to enter campus. A crowd had assembled outside the ivy gates reminding this prison house of nations, that private property is theft. We could hear the chants and drums outside of the protest in solidarity with us on the other side of the police barricades. The support just seventy-five yards away and across the world was the background of our resolve. We were not alone. This encampment symbolized the frustrations of billions of forgotten and voiceless human beings. The Columbia students had started a prairie fire with their fearless spark.
Some three hundred of us sat at assembly in touch with the pulse of the beating earth. A row of rustic lanterns illuminated 76 years of anti-colonial dreams, its sharp light piercing the walls of our humble tents. A frigid, visible breath short of its one-week anniversary, Columbia’s Gaza commune was under threat.
For the Global Palestinian Family, sleep was again the privilege of the colonial enemy and their pets. For in Occupied Palestine, the colonizers’ Doberman Pinschers are considered superior to the Native. And this is what united us all. The revolutionary, in their essence, is the one who no matter the odds, stands up to the bully .
We carry the genocide in our throats and consciences. What would Refaat have written? How did Motaz stand strong? Wael had birthed a new family…the family of humanity.
Hundreds of students were in collective anti-state motion, divided according to the commitments they could make. “The 10’s” prepared for arrest. “The 8’s” assumed their supportive positions. “The 6’s” played their role. “The 2’s” and “the 4’s” were international students or immigrants who could not get arrested. We were subdivided into rank-and-file cells of civil disobedience. Bodies scattered in one thousand directions. Endless beams of celestial light bounced around the football-field sized grass encampment.
The cold, irate ground shook below
the hopeful grass
the unwashed gravity
braced the selflessness
the internationalism…
Building on the legacy of the protests against the colonial slaughter in Vietnam in 1968, the ant-apartheid struggle of 1985 and the ethnic studies fight of 1996, Columbia’s offspring of past struggles demonstrated that the order of student revolt is anything but chaos.
Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism
The New York Times, CNN and Fox, The New York Post and their ideological cousins prepared their “anti-semitic” headlines divorced from material reality.
In the sea of keffiyehs, hundreds of “journalists” came and went, hunting for anything that could be twisted into an anti-semitic trope. Undercover informants and provocateurs infiltrated the outside rally engaging in an anti-semitic skit in front of the drooling cameras. In a scene totally alien to the essence of the Palestinian movement, two pretend students demanded money from a “Jewish student” in return for not further destroying a tattered, burnt Israeli flag. It was a disgusting scene meant to further demonize the burgeoning mass movement. The Atlantic took cheap shots at the liberated zones. Proud of their liberal arrogance, they surely knew better than anyone else how to stop seven and a half decades of colonial dispossession, humiliation and massacres. Entitled Zionists insisted on making it all about them and their colonial narcissism. Anything to distract from Gaza. The historic Jewish soul is trapped between two holocausts.
Two journalists tried to keep up with the lightning-quick, unified crowd but tripped over their self-seeking motives, sliding headfirst into the second base of sensationalism. The restive scene knocked the microphone out of their hands. This wasn’t about them. It was about the ancient Palestinian people whose only desire was to live as all nations aspire to live, free of foreign fetters.
“Stay Focused on Gaza!”
The censorship, the fascism and the holocaust of human life steeled the collective resolve. All thoughts were with Gaza. “Stay focused” was the silent prayer shared by all. “Staying Focused! We do not engage with instigators! (with a Why? And an explanation below).” was[1] a poster that sat as the third eye of the people’s occupation.
Imagine trying to engage in dialogue with Nazis who had been so thoroughly indoctrinated in hatred of all things socialist, Jewish and Slavic. The Zionist is a sociological reality who despises all things true, native and self-determining. The Zionist fashions himself superior to his neighbors. The camp insisted on not relinquishing control of the narrative to the genocidaires. Not engaging with Zionist provocateurs was tactic number one for the encampment populated by hundreds of tents.
Everyone had a task that was completed. Composed of some 300 ants, the ant colony acted as one body. Half-stepping was not an option. Was the National Guard about to enter? The negotiating team texted encrypted updates. Had the administration compromised? The Baroness and her minions wanted to talk about repealing suspensions if the students gave up; we were focused on the genocide.
The sea of keffiyehs had parted. The symbol of the most despised has united us like no other. To wear the keffiyeh in New York City is to remind ourselves every second that we are human and Zionism will not vanquish us. The flag that flew so high that April 17th is not just the flag of the Palestinian people, it is the flag of humanity.
Before the site of the SWAT teams, a sophomore majoring in English thought of calling her parents on Long Island to tell them she loved them. That thought quickly moved to the outer recesses of her mind. This was an inside moment among comrades who no one in the outside world could ever quite understand. Camaraderie was the watchword. A generation removed from the protagonists, I looked around at the beautiful leaders. Their passion compelled them forward. Who would one day write memoirs and make documentaries about this moment?
The roar of the helicopter and the silence of the drone above mocked us and our principles. The riot police, phalanxes of armed men and women, awaited orders to crack “the geeks’” heads open. The NYPD had all of the identity politics boxes checked. Black, Bengali, Dominican, women, LGBTQ+, young Asian cops etc. It mattered little. They formed a blue wall of repression armed with ignorance, self-interest and guns. All of mayors Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams’ diversity trainings boiled down to plain fascism.
The Passive U.S. Masses vs. A Restive Humanity
Hundreds of other students gathered on all sides of us to watch the unraveling of history.
A would-be stirrer of the masses yelled to the crowd of hundreds of journalists and onlookers who stood behind our occupied East Lawn: “Are you all with us?” No one dared to respond. The crowd looked around dazed and confused, unaware of the import of this moment. Had they even paid their admission? They refused to make eye contact with anyone, least of all their own soul. The mass agitator egged them on: “Will you stand against a genocide?” He chanted the cry of our epoch: “Free Free Palestine!” There was no reply. Expectations in the blind, colonial Western world are a resentment in construction, but he insisted. “Free Free Palestine!” There was silence. In the ideological void, a student yelled back: “Dude, we’re just spectators.” The neutral mass was again a wet hen before the anti-genocidal momentum of history.
To be a part of this night and these two weeks of unity, resistance and love for Palestine at the Columbia encampment has been an honor. It felt like I was back in the mid 1990’s when we waged struggles for Ethnic Studies and labor rights.
To the anti-colonial fighters who are the age of our children across the world: Keep going! Keep fighting! It is right to rebel! Columbia Administrators can go to hell! Seize the time! Keep leading the way! Gaza sees you! “Palestine is our moral compass!”
This presentation took place during a December 2, 2021, webinar. Toward Freedom has 69 years of experience publishing independent reports and analyses that document the struggles for liberation of the majority of the world’s people. Now, with a new editor, Julie Varughese, at its helm, what does the future look like for Toward Freedom and for independent media? Toward Freedom‘s board of directors formally welcomed Julie as the new editor. She reported back on her time covering Nicaragua’s critical presidential election. New contributors Danny Shaw and Jacqueline Luqman also spoke on their work for Toward Freedom as it relates to the value of independent media. Danny touched on the rising Pink Tide in Latin America while Jacqueline discussed the role of the Pentagon in Hollywood.
Today, the workers and oppressed people of the world stand together to celebrate the 36th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. This article looks at the historic accomplishments of the 1979 revolution and honors the fallen Sandinista fighters who risked and sacrificed everything to free their country.
‘A Son of a Bitch, but Our Son of a Bitch’
Beginning in 1502, Christopher Columbus and the Spanish empire invaded the land that would come to be known as Nicaragua. They massacred and enslaved the indigenous resistance and underdeveloped the economy to meet the needs of the colonizer. The Niquirano, Chorotegano, and Chontal peoples valiantly resisted the conquest. Their resistance was led by the Chiefs Nicarao and Diriangán. It is from Chief Nicarao of the Niquirano nation that Nicaragua derives its name.
The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 marked the onset of Manifest Destiny and the white supremacist stance that the Caribbean and the Americas were part of the “backyard” of the United States. Filibusters (read pirates and slavers) such as William Walker sought to turn smaller, neighboring countries into English-speaking U.S. colonies. Walker organized a mercenary invasion of the country and set himself up as dictator in 1856. The U.S. military invaded and occupied Nicaragua for decades, reorienting its economy towards the needs of big business and establishing another compliant “Banana Republic.” Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler’s summary of the true role of the U.S. military in Nicaragua and beyond is worth quoting at length, as it is still relevant eight decades later:
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
The humiliating foreign plunder inspired organized resistance, encapsulated in the popular guerrilla army of General Augusto César Sandino, who struck at the U.S. invaders wherever they could. To deal with this and future rebellions against their rule, the U.S. built a military school and trained the Nicaraguan National Guard. Anastasio Somoza Garcia—who hailed from a wealthy coffee plantation-owning family and was educated abroad in the United States—became the U.S.’s man in Nicaragua. He and his corrupt military henchmen emerged as the U.S.’s proxy rulers for the next four decades. From 1937 to 1979, the Somoza dynasty ruled over all facets of Nicaraguan politics and the economy with blood and iron. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was infamously quoted as saying that Somoza was “a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch.” This quote captures the U.S.’s neo-colonial attitude toward the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and beyond the length of the 19th and 20th centuries and through the present day.
Carlos Fonseca: the ideological motor
The Founding of the Sandinistas and the Leadership of Carlos Fonseca
The absolute bankruptcy of the Somoza regime bred resistance across Nicaragua. Named after the Campesino (Peasant) General Sandino—who was tricked and assassinated by Somoza in 1933—the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was formed by Carlos Fonseca in 1961. The FSLN was both an urban and a rural guerrilla army that pulled together the disparate oppressed sectors of Nicaraguan society to overthrow the hated dictator.
The leadership of the FSLN studied and taught Marxism-Leninism and coordinated its efforts to confront U.S. hegemonic interests with other liberation fronts across Central American and the Caribbean. As the ideological motor of the Sandinistas, Carlos Fonseca emphasized to the future leaders of the nation the importance of reading history and studying other national liberation struggles. Many of the original guerrilla leaders received ideological and military training in Cuba before returning to spearhead the national rebellion.
Deep in the mountains or within clandestine urban foci, Fonseca sought to convert “each military combatant into a teacher of popular education.” Fonseca forged the Sandinista ideology based upon his analysis of the tactics employed by Sandino’s popular army and his study of revolution in Russian, Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere. As a student of Vladimir Lenin and Ho Chi Minh, he emphasized that “the revolution’s significance was not just in military victories but in its capacity to grow into columns of steeled combatants.” Known to his comrades as “the other Che,” Fonseca promised his enemies: “For every West Point you have, we will form a Chipotón,” in reference to large swaths of mountainous terrain under Sandinista control that were used as staging grounds for attacks against the National Guard. Former guerrilla and present Sandinista leader Omar Cabeza’s Fire from the Mountain: The Making of a Sandinista makes for an excellent read for those wanting a detailed narrative of the disciplined training and enormous sense of self-sacrifice imbued within each Sandinista fighter.
Repression Breeds Resistance
In 1972, an earthquake rocked Managua killing thousands and leaving most of the city homeless. Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the second son of the former dictator, was now president of Nicaragua. Even though there was a shortage of blood as a result of the natural catastrophe, Somoza sold the blood of the victims abroad, cashing in on the tragedy in the most grisly of ways. This further increased popular anger at his misrule. Fighting between the Sandinistas’ fronts and the foreign-backed National Guard raged across the country.
The Sandinistas were extremely popular and flexible. Their ability to forge alliances with Liberation Theologians and to draw recruits from an array of class backgrounds merits further study for those seeking to build an anti-capitalist organization today.
Nora Astorga training new recruits circa 1978
Nora Astorga—guerrilla and future Sandinista ambassador to the United Nations—was one such recruit. Born into a deeply Catholic upper-class family, Astorga became politicized by the intense segregation and racism she saw while visiting Washington, D.C., in the 1960’s. Though she was guaranteed a prosperous future as a banking lawyer in Somoza’s Nicaragua, she refused to take her place at the trough and traded her briefcase for olive green fatigues and an AK 47. On International Women’s Day, she formed part of a kidnapping team that made international headlines when they abducted General Reynaldo Perez Vega or “El Perro” (the Dog), a CIA operative and Somoza’s second in command. Astorga lured Vega into a trap, where he was ambushed and held so he could be exchanged for FSLN political prisoners.
After the Sandinistas took power, Astorga—like Che Guevara a generation before her—oversaw the trials of more than 7,500 National Guard ruffians as the old state was smashed. Astorga, Giaconda Belli, Arlen Siu, Dora Maria Tellez and other Sandinista women ensured that within the ranks of the fighting units, the Sandinista Revolution was not just anti-imperialist, but also anti-machista (anti-sexist).
Sergio Ramirez—leftist intellectual and future Sandinista vice-president of the nation—wrote Adios Muchachos (Goodbye Children) to capture the élan of the times. He wrote of the “incomparable ethics of the Sandinista recruits.” He wrote of a people who believed everything was possible, at a time when everybody was united as sister and brother against the dictatorship. He told a famous story of Leonel Rugama, a Sandinista student leader who was in charge of recovering funds to be used in the people’s struggle. After a bank robbery, his getaway car was a public bus. With over $20,000 in his pockets, he refused to take a taxi because he did not want “to squander” the organization’s precious resources. Rugama’s conviction was emblematic of the fighting Sandinista spirit. At a later date, when Rugama was surrounded by Somoza’s goons in a shootout, they pressed him to surrender. Yelling “Que se rinda tu madre” (Tell your mother to surrender), he fought to the end for the patria (homeland) he knew was possible. His last words became an immortal battle cry for his comrades.
Victory
On July 19, 1979, the consolidated resistance marched triumphantly into Managua to the cheers of hundreds of thousands and claimed Nicaragua free of tyranny. Nicaragua became a beacon of hope for poor people across the globe and within the heart of the Empire itself. The old state apparatus was destroyed. In its place, the masses built up their own institutions of power such as the People’s Army, the Sandinista Workers’ Confederation, the Association of Agricultural Workers, the Nicaraguan Students Union, the Federation of Health Workers, and the National Teachers’ Union among others. These were all popular institutions of the revolution that could be mobilized against counterrevolution. Challenging old property relations, the Sandinistas began to transition to a mixed economy nationalizing public services. The disgruntled old ruling elites fled the country. Many joined their bitter Cuban counterparts in Miami to lament their losses and to organize counterrevolution, in hopes of turning back the clock of history.
International volunteer, Ben Linder, assassinated in 1987 by the Contras.
The year 1980 was dedicated to eradicating illiteracy. Tens of thousands of student volunteers traveled into the countryside to offer education to neglected families. The state banned the sexual objectification of women in the media. The Sandinista spirit of internationalism and solidarity was contagious. International brigades of volunteers, from the U.S., England and around the world, traveled to Nicaragua to make their own humble contributions to the revolution in the form of building homes, bridges and other architectural projects.
The Contra War
Nicaragua was dangerous. It was proof that an organized people could overcome centuries of colonialism, exploitation and underdevelopment. In the words of Cuban poet and singer Silvio Rodriguez:
“The grass of a continent is on fire, the borders kiss and warm up to one another. … Now the eagle (the U.S.) has its biggest pain. It is hurt by Nicaragua. The eagle is hurt by love. It is hurt that a child can safely walk to school. Because now it cannot sharpen its spurs against them.”
Ronald Reagan, the personification of U.S. dominance in Central America, could not stand to see Nicaragua progress. He oversaw policies and proxy wars that hurled Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador back centuries. In Nicaragua, his administration oversaw the recruitment, training and funding of the Contras. U.S. intelligence pitted hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans against one another, employing a mercenary army whose sole task was to wreak havoc on the population. Like Renamo in Mozambique, U.S. intelligence unleashed the terrorist Contra army on peaceful Nicaragua to undo the gains of the revolution. In an interview entitled “Reagan was the Butcher of my People,” Nicaraguan priest Father Miguel D’Escoto spoke on the wanton destruction visited on his homeland. The human toll from the death squads the U.S. military trained and oversaw defies reason. It is well-documented that Reagan’s “freedom fighters” were responsible for 70,000 political killings in El Salvador, more than 100,000 in Guatemala and 30,000 in Nicaragua.
The Contras engaged in direction assassination campaigns against literacy and health care workers, engineers and anyone dedicated to rebuilding Nicaragua. Unable to get congressional approval for the war, U.S. intelligence services resorted to facilitating the sale of crack cocaine in Los Angeles and beyond in order to raise funds for this illegal war. They also secretly sold arms to their sworn enemy Iran to raise money. This was the Iran-Contra affair. CIA officer Oliver North became the face of this horrific scandal. Neither he nor anyone ever did a day in jail for these crimes. North went on to become a celebrated author, politician and patriot.
The counterrevolution’s aim—as it has been in Cuba and Venezuela—was to wear down Nicaragua. Military and economic sabotage was designed to make life unlivable under the new classes in power. The U.S. used war, hunger, inflation, devastation and hoarding as weapons to blackmail the everyday people. The left wing of the liberation movement argued that the Sandinistas should not hold an election under these conditions with their powerful enemies bankrolling the opposition. In 1990, the former bourgeoisie—Washington’s mercenaries, who were only partially unseated from power—were able to regroup and win the presidential election behind the “liberal” candidate Violeta Chamorro.
Nicaragua today
The Sandinistas returned to power in 2006 with the reelection of Daniel Ortega. But the party and the times today are not as radical as they were two decades before. Haiti experienced a similar dynamic after the U.S. organized a coup d’etat against Aristide and his Lavalas party in 1991 and then occupied the country. Imperialism’s message was unmistakably clear: We will accept a toned-down version of the Sandinistas, but do not push too far or we will snap the whip again, as they did in the case of Haiti with another coup in 2004. The example of Haiti helps explain why Nicaragua is now more of a centrist government, retaining some of the revolutionary qualities of Sandinismo but remaining trapped in debt and the austerity programs of the IMF and the U.S. government.
As part of the general wave of anti-imperialism across Latin America and the Caribbean, Nicaragua is now part of the Venezuelan-anchored ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of America) and uses revenues from oil sales to fund anti-poverty programs Though the counterrevolution was a immeasurable immediate setback for the fighting classes of Nicaragua, the gains of the revolution remain clear. No one can deny the historic importance and symbolism of what the Sandinistas accomplished in such a short period of time. Never again could the imperialists say that the “wretched of the earth could not seize and maintain power. The Sandinistas proved that they could, inspiring the world over! Sandino Presente! Carlos Fonseca Presente!
Originally Published to Liberation News on July 18, 2015
