Chicago Emergency Organizing Meeting for “NO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America!

December 21, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Forty people of all ages and walks of life, from the city and suburbs, came together in Chicago on Monday night to urgently take up the call to “Prevent the Trump/Pence Regime from Taking Power! Stop It Before It Starts!”

A number of people came early to watch the first hour of live stream of the inspiring emergency meeting in New York. The powerful Call was read again to unite everybody about why we must refuse to accept a fascist America, the vision and plan for how the Trump/Pence regime could be prevented from taking power, and to get organized to do that.

Speakers went into what this fascist program will mean and why we have to stop it before it starts. A young organizer who does local, national, and international organizing, spoke of how the youth in the inner cities are already literally under the gun of the police, they are marginalized and discriminated against, with no jobs and no future, and how under Trump their suffering will go to another level. He talked about the coup in Honduras in 2009 when the president was kidnapped in a fascist coup, how the radio stations and media were shut down, and the government rounded people up and “disappeared” them. He said there has to be a massive mobilization of the youth, and to do that, they need to know what fascism is and how it happens, and what it will mean and they need to be mobilized to act.

A social activist minister spoke of the danger and “urgency of now.” “We don’t accept this administration. Everyone can understand this, we have to clearly and simply get across to people what fascism is, and what the future will be with this administration,” naming the growing American militarism and the white supremacy of this regime. “Everything we do has to be strategic,” he said, aimed at stopping this regime before it starts “with simple, comprehensive actions. “

A well-known jazz musician said his Jewish family’s history in the Holocaust, burned the lesson into him early in life that fascism and genocide should never happen again. He said the election of Trump compelled him to act. He initiated a Facebook group, “Degenerate Artists against Fascism,” named after an art show in 1937 of what Hitler deemed “degenerate art.” The Nazis stole the paintings of many artists from galleries, put them in this show in order to attack the art and the artists, and to outlaw this art and even certain kinds of music, including jazz. Artists and musicians were attacked and even sent to the death camps. “We have to stop this before it starts,” he said. The Facebook group has over 1000 people, and they are strategizing on how to spread the resistance much broader, including going to school assemblies and doing teach-ins, and making public acts of resistance.

A correspondent for Revolution newspaper spoke to the disastrous leap backward it would be if this regime is not stopped from coming into power—how fascism relies on widespread political and social repression and a deep poisoning of the “soul” of society. “We cannot wait to see what happens or take the defensive posture of trying to fend off the fascist attacks once the regime is in power. This fascist regime must be stopped before it starts. We must be the ones to stop it, starting now. We have to act in accordance with the actual emergency situation this is. The most pressing thing for everyone is to get organized and organize others to WIN this huge battle. We have to be organizers of organizers. We can learn quickly as we act and expand the resistance exponentially to the millions who oppose what this regime is about and galvanize them to come into the street until there is such a political crisis that this regime cannot take office.”

Everyone heard the vision (see box at top right) and the national plan and schedule from now until January 20. Then people broke into four working groups: outreach broadly, an outreach group for youth and students over the holidays and as soon as school starts after the holidays, fundraising, and social media. Plans were laid for a major outreach action the day after Christmas and a major protest at Trump Tower on New Year’s Eve. There was a lot of determination to stop this fascist regime and a lot of grappling about how to immediately bring many more people (and who those people are) into organizing many others.   Massive dissemination and showings of the link to the video of the NY program will be very important in rapidly organizing people and enabling them to organize others.  It gives them an understanding of what the situation is, why it has to be stopped before it starts, what is the picture of what this would look like and the plan for doing it.

 

 

 

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