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Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

NYC: March to Trump Tower, Drive Them From Power

July 17, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The message of July 15 resounded off the walls and streets of Manhattan, reaching, shaking up, and challenging people. The marchers came from all walks of life, with a wide range of perspectives and outrages, and a common determination to drive out the regime.

The day kicked off with a dozen or so people who had been part of 100 Hours of NO! In the Name of Humanity, We Indict FOX FASCIST NEWS. They marched through a street fair, down 6th Avenue, chanting, “No pussy grabbing, no patriarchy, no fascist USA;” and “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.” They met up with people from all over the NYC area near Trump Tower. Across the street a few dozen fascists screamed insults and chanted “USA! USA!” and “Build That Wall.”

Trump Tower was the starting point where people gathered holding NO! signs, Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! Jay Walker of Gays against Guns, speaking for the Rise and Resist organization, spoke as people readied to march. As people stepped off to march, the crowd grew to close to 500 people. What compelled them to be there? A white woman in her 70s said, “This is fascism—another Hitler, which means deporting people, no economy, martial law, Gestapo everywhere. My friends don’t see it so strongly. But my family came over here [from Europe] before World War 2 and they described what it was like. That has really shaped me and how I see things now.”

A Latina in her early 20s, said, “As a woman of color, this regime directly affects me and my family—mass deportations, attacks on women’s rights and access to healthcare. But it’s not like my problems are worse than those of people who are cut off from their families because of the Muslim ban. All suffering is equal!”

An immigrant woman talked about overcoming fear to be there: “Even if we’re not citizens we still have the right to speak out, so we have to. Donald Trump opposes everything I teach my children about what is right and what is wrong. Every single thing. Today is small, but we represent millions who couldn’t come, or who were afraid to come.”

A young activist with ACT UP said he was protesting the cuts to a lifesaving program that provides medicine to people with HIV and provides care for people living in the global south. “We are protesting the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and cuts to Medicaid which would leave large numbers of HIV-positive without having access to lifesaving medications.”

A young Arab-American, who has been reading Bob Avakian (BA), said, “Trump represents the potential for fascism with all that implies. The glorification of ignorance, the attacks on science, the violence and hatred towards the oppressed that will be much more prevalent. And all the progress of the last decades will be obliterated. And all that’s needed is for people to do nothing—they don’t have to support Trump or like Trump, they just have to stand back and it WILL become fascist. So people need to organize under the leadership of a vanguard party, which to me is the RCP, because BA’s work has done so much to bring forward how the world could be different, like it shows in the new Constitution. That Constitution is so important for people to see. But inaction is implicit consent. So once people realize what’s on the line, we can get the numbers to drive him out.”

There were college students, part of summer programs in NYC. There was a middle-aged steelworker union rep from Wisconsin visiting NYC with his family. He grabbed a NO! sign, and joined the rally. Most of his concerns have to do with the conditions of the other workers, and how things are getting worse. He was opposed to everything Trump is doing except... around trade, where he thought maybe it would do some good.

A young Black man said he was stunned when Jeff Sessions was made attorney general, “I mean Jeff Sessions? A man like that?” Waving his hand towards the march: “You see this, every color and nation and age? This is a cross-section of America, this is our strength.”

People marched from Trump Tower to Broadway and 48th street on the edge of Times Square for a rally with speakers and performers, including a representative of ACT UP New York, the Raging Grannies, Hawk Newsome of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, a dramatic reading of the July 15 statement—leading the crowd in calling out They Must Go! Noche Diaz of the New York Revolution Club read a statement from the Revolutionary Communist Party. The speech from Refuse Fascism was a highlight of the rally; giving people a sense of purpose as they took to the streets to bring the message to many more. Then, the march headed downtown, stopping at the intersection where a white racist who had come to NYC to kill Black people murdered Timothy Caughman, a Black man, on March 20. Hawk spoke to the significance of that murder, and the connection to Trump, and there was a 10-second moment of silence. A smaller crew took the march all the way down to Union Square, reaching parts of the city with more intense support for the message—fists in the air, with a final sendoff rally.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/la-july-15-protest-in-face-of-fascist-thugs-hundred-rally-and-march-humanity-first-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Los Angeles July 15 Protest:

In the Face of Fascist Thugs Yelling "USA, USA, USA"—
Hundreds Rally and March to say "HUMANITY FIRST!"

July 16, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Hundreds of protesters gathered at Hollywood and Highland, the site of the Trump Hollywood Star, to rally and march against the Fascist Trump/Pence regime. Fascist thugs came to contest the march, to try to intimidate and silence protesters, and to “defend” the Trump Star. They were not successful. People gathered for two rallies and marched through the street, shutting down Hollywood Blvd., powerfully demanding the Trump/Pence Regime MUST GO!

At rallies before and after the march, a broad range of speakers drove home why the Trump/Pence regime must be driven from power. Isabel Cardenas (Salvadoran-American activist and co-initiator of Refuse Fascism), GrayWolf (assistant director of Southern California Chapter of AIM), Alex Sanchez (Defend Movement), Crystal Keshawarz (Muslim-American activist), Reverend Frank Alton (Cathedral Center of St. Paul), Ernestine Henning (supervisor [ret.] AME church), Josiah Gonzalez (California Freedom Coalition), Tala Deloria (spokesperson for the Revolution Club Los Angeles), Perry Hoberman (representing for Refuse Fascism Los Angeles), and Steve Gregoropoulos (musician) spoke, and one sang, exposing the crimes of the Trump/Pence regime and the urgency of taking to the streets to demand this fascist regime be ousted.

Over 400 protesters came out into the streets to express their outrage. While numerous organizations were represented, the overwhelming majority of people were individuals—not under any banner, but indignant at the regime and the direction of the country. Representatives from the LGBTQ community, science lovers and teachers, members of labor unions, members of religious organizations, members of the American Indian Movement, Aztec dancers, students and youth, families, elderly people, homeless people, LGBTQ individuals, Black and Brown people, punks, rappers, and artists turned out. About 18 different news and press organizations came to cover the event.

People came from all over California, and people from all over the world were represented. Lots of people came out because they saw NO! posters across the city, saw the event on Facebook, heard about it on Pacifica Radio, or received a phone call from Refuse Fascism. Students from a liberal arts college in Hollywood saw the poster for the July 15 protest, snapped a picture of it, and sent it to their friends who came to the protest. People came from East LA, San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley, Antelope Valley, Joshua Tree, and San Clemente. People from Canada, Australia, South Korea, and different African countries bought NO! T-shirts and donated. Someone from Australia said, “This is really great, do you think that even though we are from Australia that we could participate and be involved there?” Tourists from Germany, a whole family, read the panels that indict the outrages of the Trump/Pence regime. The mother explained to her daughter in German and in English about the Trump/Pence attacks on women’s rights, pointing to the Refuse Fascism panel that powerfully describes this. A volunteer for Refuse Fascism said to them, “Trump is like Hitler,” and they said, “Yes, we agree.” This family joined the protest and was moved by it all.

About 80 fascists came to disrupt the rally and march. They assaulted two individuals, and harassed and attempted to intimidate many others. They tried to disrupt the chants, shove cameras and megaphones in people’s faces, and rip up posters and materials. Some spectators were indifferent and stayed on the sidelines, while others, once they understood what the rally was about, stood up and confronted the fascists and didn’t allow them to intimidate and disrupt the rally. Some people asked about the banner of the Portland Heroes—the two men who were killed and one who was injured by a white-supremacist neo-Nazi Trump supporter when they stopped him from harassing a young woman wearing a hijab and her Black friend. After hearing about the courageous action taken by these heroes, these people summoned their courage and joined the march. As hard as the fascists tried they were not able to shut us down. There was a moment where they were chanting “USA, USA, USA” the crowd responded with “HUMANITY FIRST, HUMANITY FIRST” and this made the fascists turn strikingly silent and the moment had a very profound effect on everyone involved.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/july-15-san-francisco-hundreds-rally-and-march-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

San Francisco July 15 Protest:

Hundreds Rally at UN Plaza and March Through the Mission

July 17, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Over 300 people joined the “Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!” rally at the UN Plaza. Then about 240 people marched, starting on Market Street, the main street in this city, and then going into the Mission district along Mission Street to 24th.

A range of people came to take part, support, speak, and march. One group came holding a homemade banner saying “Health Care for All—Leave no one behind.” People came from around the Bay Area—from seeing the event on Facebook, some students from SF State and UC Berkeley. A few individuals from Indivisible chapters were there. A number of people on the Refuse Fascism email list who had not been part of other things came out.

The Colectiva de Mujeres from the SF Mission, a grouping of women immigrants, came in a contingent of over a dozen people, spoke at the rally, and marched. Alex U. Inn, a grand marshal of the SF PRIDE parade, spoke and called on everyone to defy the Trump agenda. Rev. J. Alfred Smith Jr. of Allen Temple Baptist Church in East Oakland, powerfully called out the Trump regime as fascist and passionately called for resistance. The El/La para Translatinas organization from the Mission spoke movingly of the situation of trans people and immigrants. Sharif Zakout, the lead organizer of Arab Resource Organizing Center, spoke of the effect of the Muslim ban and made the point that the refugees who are being banned are largely forced from their homes because of wars waged or backed by the U.S. Longtime people’s lawyer Tony Serra urged the crowd to “resist, reject and repudiate all that Trump stands for, in every fashion that you are capable of. This is the struggle of the century....” (See excerpts from some of the statements, on this page.) One of the organizers read a powerful poem about confronting that this is in fact fascism. The salute “To the Brave Dreamers and Fighters of July 15” from the Revolutionary Communist Party was read with passion.

The rally was opened by a powerful reading of the Refuse Fascism call, and closed with a reading of the message from Refuse Fascism to these rallies. The march was loud, and the chants rocked the streets of San Francisco. The Brass Liberation Orchestra added a whole dimension. Many people who were marching in their first action with Refuse Fascism helped lead chants. The whole thing had a spirit of “It’s up to us” to drive out this regime. Everyone who was there was invited to come to the next meeting of Bay Area Refuse Fascism.

The alt-right forces who had threatened on social media to come did show up, but in small numbers. Three of them were there to film the rally and march. A couple others seemed to be there to assist in that. They did not attempt to disrupt. There was also a small grouping of UC Berkeley College Republicans, who just observed.

The following are excerpts from some of the statements made at the UN Plaza rally:

La Colectiva de la Mujeres:
“We have to unite. We have to unite to say: No Ban, No Wall. We have to unite to say we are coming together to get Trump out. We need a different future. A future that is worthy of human beings, a future for humanity. No more chains. No more intimidation. We have to stand up strong, united, and fight until we drive this guy and the whole regime out. We have to overcome fear and fight so that future generations can see that we have fought for them.”

Johanna, from El/La para TransLatinas:
“As Trans Latinas, we are immigrants. They say that we are a danger. But we are the ones that are endangered. We come here to work and we are being denied our basic rights. We demand that international law be respected. We demand full rights for the Latino community and all immigrants in this country. We come here to work as women. We don’t want to live in a situation where our life expectancy is 35 years. We want a full life and to live to an old age and live life fully.”

Alex U. Inn, 2017 San Francisco Pride March Grand Marshall:
“There is a small window of time, people. If we do not act on that, we have lost the power. Our voices, our action, everything in you as a human being today is what you need to be holding onto and saying I am not intimidated. I am not fucking going anywhere, and you are going to hear my voice, you are going to feel my power. You are someone that I will take from power and I will be in your face to do it.”

J. Tony Serra, people’s attorney:
“At no time in the last 50 or 60 years, though I have participated as a lawyer in many civil rights issues, has there been greater challenge than presently. We are engaged in a struggle to preserve the soul of the nation. Trump has declared a war against the poor, the working class, and the immigrants. Trump has declared a war against race, against religion.... The concept we all must embrace is resist. Resist his racism, resist his religious bigotry. This country does not belong to the wealthy, the white, and the Christian. Resist, reject, repudiate all that Trump stands for in any fashion that you are capable of. This is the struggle of this century. The soul of our democracy, the soul of our constitutional liberties, the soul of the great majority of persons is in jeopardy. Time will not reverse itself. We must reject the trajectory. So resist, my friends and we will prevail.”

Rev. J. Alfred Smith Jr., Senior Pastor, Allen Temple Baptist Church, Oakland
“Folks seem to be very conversant about the atrocities that are multiplying daily but they have not in many cases put a face on this. There’s been an elephant in the room, and nobody wants to name the elephant. Today, that elephant has been named many times, but in case any of us are slow in seeing the picture, the face of the elephant in the room, all we have to do is connect the many dots that describe this elephant. We’ve heard that this is an autocratic, authoritarian regime that rules by fear: that’s a dot. This is a racist, white supremacist regime that promotes state-sponsored persecution, discrimination, and violence against people of color, particularly Black lives, Brown people, our Native people. It has perpetrated this against immigrants, against Muslims, against LGBTQI sisters and brothers, against women. That just about includes all of us. Against the poor, against those that are vulnerable. This regime has assaulted science, has raped the environment. This regime is taking sections of government that are supposed to be led by civilians and turning them over to military generals. These are all dots. Many other dots have been identified. If we would just connect the dots we would see a three dimensional, panoramic view of the ugly face of fascism. An organizer of the protest asked me, ‘Are you going to use the F-word?’ I’m pretty free but when he said the F-word I was taken aback. I said, ‘No I don’t think I’m going to use that word,’ though some other speakers have used it today. But he wasn’t talking about that F-word. He was talking about fascism. My sisters and brothers we are going to have to confront fascism. We’re going to have to fight fascism. We’re going to have to refuse fascism. We’re going to have to resist fascism.”

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Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Chicago July 15: Rally and March of Hundreds in Downtown

July 16, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

There was a spirited rally in downtown of around 100 people, of all ages and backgrounds. Speakers at the rally included: Linda Solotaire of Refuse Fascism; Salman Aftab from the American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights & Elections; Carl Dix, who delivered the statement to the July 15 demonstrations from the Revolutionary Communist Party; Bishop Gregg L. Greer, President, Freedom First International; Curtis Harris, Chicago ADAPT, a disability rights organization; Bro. Michael Oboza, LGBTQ feminist and Ted Sirota, musician and founder of Degenerate Artists Against Fascism (DAAF). Matt Skolar did a blues number about how “no human being is illegal”; Shontay Luna read two poems; and Steakhouse Mints sang a new song, “We are united, we are not scared, we're not tired, we are marching, we are on fire!”

There were several contingents in the march which grew to about 300 people, including: “women breeders” dressed in red robes and white hats—like from The Handmaid’s Tale; the “mass incarcerated and tortured” in orange jump suits; giant grotesque puppets of Trump, Pence and the “grim reaper” Stephen Bannon; a contingent to honor the Portland heroes; the Revolution Club with a banner supporting J15 signed by Black people from the South Side neighborhood of Englewood; and a group of women drummers working with Ted Sirota.

The march, which went through downtown and to the Trump Tower, had a big impact—hundreds of people lined the march route, clapping, joining the chants, and taking pictures; and some taking up signs and joining the march. There were many different kinds of people on the march who had met Refuse Fascism in different ways—at the Pride Parade, the Climate March, the Women’s March in Chicago, the Handmaids demonstration, the counter-demonstration against the reactionaries who are spreading anti-Muslim hatred in the guise of being “anti-Sharia”; people who saw the July 15 protest on the morning TV news and decided to come join; and some who were just walking down the street.

Some high school students who joined the Handmaids contingent said there were lots of reasons to protest against Trump, including the threat of war in North Korea, climate change and attacks on science, the immigration ban and the wall, lying and nepotism, attacks on health and on women and abortion in particular, and the way fascists goons are being mobilized to attack people. A 14-year-old Latina said she came “to make a change... we’re the next generation... we’re the ones who can make it happen, to have a better world. Trump is sexist, against the nationalities, but we’re human, we all have a heart and feelings.” An older Jewish woman, when she heard this wasn't the Democratic Party but people who want to drive Trump OUT, said, “Yes! That's what I am about.” A scientist who came from the suburbs said she learned from the recent experience in South Korea, where weeks of protest by millions of people forced the resignation of a hated president, that driving out the whole regime is possible.

Shontay Luna, a poet who read two of her poems at the rally, said: “Up until he won the election, I never considered myself an activist at all. Up until that point, I considered myself a rebel, when it comes to writing words down. But activism was something that was left to other people to take up. But I see that he’s in the White House now, and I knew it could happen, but with him being in the White House now—each and every one of us who did not vote for him, we all have to be activists now because there’s no more... just standing along the sidelines and looking and saying ‘oh, wow.’ He won, he’s in there. Everyone who’s against him, we have got to drive him out.”

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/washington-dc-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Report from Washington, DC, Anti-NRA March

July 16, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

July 15, in the morning, more than 200 people came to a rally in front of the Department of Justice—this was a continuation of the protest called by organizers of the Women’s March, Women’s March from #NRA2DOJ , in response to the vicious videos from the NRA (see statement from Refuse Fascism, “We Must Support Those Under Attack”) which began on the day before at the National Rifle Association (NRA) headquarters in suburban Virginia. People marched 17 miles from there to the Department of Justice, where a rally was held the next morning. There were very strong demands in relation to the fascist attack videos that the NRA had recently put out, and there were gun control advocates and people who had family members die from shootings. Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez, and Tamika Mallory from the Women’s March were among those who spoke. There were some NRA and Trump supporters, perhaps 10 on other side of street, but overall there was not the menacing atmosphere there had been at the NRA headquarters the day before.

Several of us from Refuse Fascism came there in support and in participation of this two-day march and rally. At the end of Saturday’s rally, the main moderator got on the stage and said she wanted to give a shout out to Refuse Fascism and held up the flyer for July 15 and encouraged people to connect with Refuse Fascism people in the crowd.

After the rally officially was over, one of the Refuse Fascism activists did a mic check about the importance of driving out the Trump/Pence regime and its direct connection to the vital issues of the rally. A crowd of people gathered around and expressed strong agreement. Then, with the chant “No Trump, No NRA, No Fascist USA” being taken up by many in the crowd, 75 people joined in a march to the Trump International Hotel, two blocks away. Many stayed in front of the hotel for a spirited speak-out. At the beginning and end people took the pledge: “NO—In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!”

Throughout the speak-out, it was stressed that today, July 15, was a national day of action to drive out the Trump and Pence regime, in over 18 cities, and that everyone in attendance at the speak-out was contributing to adding powerful voices from DC to this national day of action.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/meeting-the-la-heroes-of-july-15-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Meeting the LA Resistance Fighters of July 15

by Michael Slate

July 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

It took courage to be among the hundreds who gathered at Hollywood and Highland, the site of the Trump Hollywood star, to rally and march against the fascist Trump/Pence regime on July 15 in Los Angeles. Trumpite fascists had threatened the marchers in advance—and they did come out to try to intimidate and silence the protesters, and physically assaulted at least two people.

Michelle Xai of Refuse Fascism Los Angeles, the young woman emceeing the rally, called out the fascists in a strong and spirited rap that got right to what was so important and urgent about the protest, and rallied the people forward:

We’re here on a mission to drive out this fascist regime. These people, what are they representing, what are they opposing? When Donald Trump says make America great again, what is he saying? He’s saying make America white again. He wants to go back to the days when there was a separation, when Black people had to use different bathrooms than white people, when they were treated as less than human. We say NO to that, and we are determined to drive out this fascist regime from power. And we are not going to sit back and wait and see. This fascist in the White House has already shown us what they’re gonna do. They’ve told us what they’re gonna do. And we are not gonna be those good Germans who just sat back when there was bodies all around them and just covered their eyes and pretended like it wasn’t happening. No! We are not gonna go back to those days!... We refuse these fucking ignorant fools trying to intimidate us. They came out here to protect a piece of concrete [the Trump star]. If it wasn’t so dangerous, it would be laughable. But these people are serious—this is how fascism consolidates, through these modern-day brown shirts going around and shutting up all opposition while the people in power continue to carry out these genocidal programs against the masses of people. We should not get distracted. We are on a mission to drive out this fascist regime from power, and we’re not gonna back down from that!

There was a moment where the fascists were chanting “USA, USA, USA,” and the crowd responded with “HUMANITY FIRST, HUMANITY FIRST!” The fascists turned strikingly silent, and the moment had a profound effect on everyone involved.

Who were the 400 resistance fighters doing the right thing, marching against the Trump/Pence regime? They represented a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds, and shared a sense of responsibility to humanity to drive out this fascist regime. Revolution correspondent Michael Slate caught up with a number of them, and shared notes on the scene, who was there, and why. We begin those notes here, and will add more in days to come, so stay tuned.

* * * * * * * *

Walking up Highland Avenue you could hear a faint rumble in the distance. When you turned on to Hollywood Boulevard it all got much louder and hectic. It was only 2:15 pm, still 45 minutes before the official beginning of the July 15 protest to demand that the Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

People had begun to set up and decorate the flatbed truck that was to be the stage for the rally. Some other people had already set up information tables along the sidewalk in front of the truck and within spitting distance of Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A group of fascists stood guard around Trump’s star, clearly feeling a religious calling to serve and protect.

Within 20 minutes a section of Hollywood Boulevard was transformed into a rally site as the flatbed truck took up a position in the middle of the street and the first of hundreds of protesters to arrive began to gather in front of the makeshift stage.

I walked through the crowd, talking to people here and there, keeping an eye on the fascists and trying to get an overall sense of what was happening. One thing that I found really refreshing was that while the crowd was people of all ages and nationalities, there were a very significant number of younger people, some at their first demonstration along with others more experienced. Each conversation opened another door on what is shaping up in terms of resistance to the Trump/Pence regime and why. Standing at the very back of the growing crowd were two women, each wearing a Muslim hijab. They were listening intently to the speakers while nervously scanning the crowd in front of them and the line of police behind them. Their family has roots in Egypt but they were born here. They are Muslims, and they were a combination of scared, concerned, and angry.

The younger sister, Z, spoke first. “Honestly, me and my family, we just came here for a day on Hollywood Boulevard and then we saw this and we were like, what’s happening here? So we blended in and I honestly agree with the No Trump thing. It’s completely outrageous, with everything he’s been doing and what he wants to do. I’m blown away. What I’m concerned about is how he basically just wants to remove 50 percent of the population of America, just get rid of all of the illegal immigrants. It’s not their fault, they just need some place to stay and they need a job and he is just trying to remove everybody. And he is so racist to everybody, including me and my religion, and that’s not okay with me or anyone who’s with me.”

Z’s older sister, L, had finished a conversation she was having with someone and turned to listen to us just as Z got a quiet, shy smile on her face, and said that while she wasn’t able to conceive of a way to bring down the Trump/Pence regime herself, “There is nothing else that you could lose.”

L jumped into the conversation at that point. She was very thoughtful and upset. “What brought me here today is that Donald Trump, from the beginning of his campaign, has made us feel like we don’t belong in America, despite me and my family being born and raised here. We are American citizens and he has this rhetoric that makes it seem like that doesn’t matter, like being on American soil doesn’t mean that we belong here. And even then, my parents are immigrants and they came here for the American dream. They started from nothing and became successful. And we all belong here. This is what America is about, building something from nothing.”

Trump’s Muslim ban made her scared for a bit, deeply perplexed, and then just straight-out angry. “When the Muslim ban happened, that was very, very disturbing. Honestly, I have no words. I don’t know how you could ban an entire people. There was no reason to ban—I don’t remember how many countries there were but—just for the slightest chance that there would be terrorism. Terrorism is not rooted in Islam. Terrorism happens because of the way that America treats our countries. They send their soldiers and they kill our people and they destroy our homes and expect people not to retaliate. We don’t hate America, I go overseas and nobody hates America, but when American soldiers come in and kill them, how do you want them to react? So, the ban has no purpose, it’s not going to achieve anything at all.”

L thinks the Trump/Pence government is fascist and that it’s important for people to understand that. “I feel that what most people get in their head is that they are Republicans and they have to vote Republican, they have to vote for these conservative values and they don’t see where they are going wrong, where there is a line that has been crossed into this fascist regime. Once you start telling people they don’t belong. Like the gay and lesbian community, the LGBT community, immigrants from all over the world, whatever their values are, whatever their political beliefs are, basically he is dividing America in half and saying these people are wrong and that these people are mental and they don’t know what they are talking about and that ‘we’ are the right ones. That’s what he’s saying and that’s incorrect. We’re all human beings and we all have different opinions and no one is going to be the same. And we all have to accept that.”

I reminded L that I had also asked her if she thought it was important for other people to understand that this is a fascist regime and what that meant in terms of getting rid of it. She said that this was a hard question and she took a few minutes to think, then she said, “Well, I do think that when people understand that Trump is a fascist and when people start coming together like this protest, when people start binding together in solidarity, we will show the government. We will start investigations into his intentions and what he’s actually doing in the government rather than overlooking what he’s been doing.”

L had a troubled look on her face as she said that, and I reminded her of what had happened in Egypt back in 2011 when the Egyptian people rose up and occupied Tahrir Square for almost three weeks in a push to overthrow the Mubarak regime and were defeated when the military came in to put it down. I asked her what she thought of that in relation to what is called for here. “In Egypt things are much, much different. They don’t have the right to protest over there, so when people go out there they get gassed and the police arrest everyone. We’re not safe over there. Here we are safe and we should be able to use our voices. Technically we have the right to protest. Over there, in Egypt, we do not have that right. Here we have to catch him. I know he is corrupt, so he is definitely doing something corrupt in office. We just have to catch him in the act. We can’t have people in the government turning a blind eye and just ignoring what he’s doing. We need to find out, and we need to expose him and get him impeached.”

* * * * * * * *

Hollywood Boulevard is famous for all kinds of reasons. And it really is true that you can find just about anything you want—and a whole lot that you would never even consider wanting—just walking down the street. On one side of the rally there was a junk-filled souvenir store stuffed with miniature Oscar statues, photos of movie stars and lots of Hollywood T-shirts, sweatshirts, and hats.

A group of young women just out of high school were carrying bags stuffed with trinkets to bring back home. They were a group of students from the Midwest here to get an early orientation for a college they’re going to attend in the fall. They came to Hollywood Boulevard just to kick it for a while, and Ellen, one of the young women, said, “We just saw this and we had to join because we had to protest with you all, we can’t walk past it.” Another student, Beth, chimed in, “When I was at Pride in Chicago the same thing happened and I really felt the need to join and the same thing here, I saw it and had to join.”

I asked them what it was that made them feel they had to join this demonstration and stand up against the Trump/Pence regime in general. Ellen jumped up with her response: “His blatant disregard for our livelihood, his superiority to immigrants, to women, to anybody else who he doesn’t think is worth it. It’s just aggravating to see that.”

Beth wanted to say more. “I do believe that everyone deserves to have equal opportunities here, no matter what—you know, race shouldn’t matter, background shouldn’t matter, things like that. We’re all humans and we should all just practice love. We should all really be here for each other and he’s not doing that. And it really sucks because he finds ways to nestle into small crevices like children, and he is breaking everybody apart and it sucks.”

I asked if they thought this was a fascist regime and why. Ellen spoke first: “Yes, this is definitely a fascist regime. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just how he treats people. It’s obviously like any other experience that we’ve had with fascist regimes. It’s the same scenario.” Beth thought for a moment and then said, “He literally bullies people. He just speaks down to everyone. And what kind of character is that? Honestly, just to start with that. We need to stick together. We need to protest like this that’s happening now. We need to get the word out more than anything because too many people are so ignorant of what’s happening, they just hear what he says on the news and that he’s a good speaker but they don’t know what’s actually happening.” Ellen added, “And even then, sometimes them knowing doesn’t really make a difference because sometimes they agree with it. So honestly, it’s just everybody needs to stick together.”

I asked both of them what they thought it would take to get the Trump/Pence regime out of power. Beth jumped up this time and her friend said that Beth wanted to talk because she had been thinking about that for a while. Beth jumped into it, “Ok, like, if you drive him out of power then Pence is up there. And if you drive Pence out then it’s the other guy. You gotta... honestly, I don’t even know. If you drive him out of power then it’s Pence and he’s worse. I understand that people want to just drive him out completely but at the same time it’s like okay, I get it, I do, but let’s sit back for a second and think logically because you get him out and you think your problem is solved but Pence is even worse.”

Ellen added, “It’s hard because we have two people in line that are both horrible and after that it keeps going and they’re not any better. So I think we need to make more of an impact and make sure that he knows that he needs to change what he is doing because if we don’t kick them out, we at least need to affect their decision-making. We agree that it’s going to take millions of people in the streets to do any of this.”

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/trump-pence-regime-moves-ahead-with-stealth-muslim-ban-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Trump/Pence Regime Moves Ahead with Stealth Muslim Ban
This Fascist Outrage Must Be STOPPED!

July 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The Trump/Pence Muslim Ban 2.0 is a lot in the news, but less known is that the regime is already moving aggressively ahead in other ways to close the door on people from Muslim countries. A New York Times op-ed by two representatives of the group Muslim Advocates sheds important light on this (“How Trump Is Stealthily Carrying Out His Muslim Ban,” by Farhana Khera and Jonathan J. Smith, July 18).

Two recent Supreme Court rulings (reported at revcom.us here and here) gave a green light to large parts of Trump’s Muslim Ban 2.0, which bans U.S. entry by all refugees and people from six Muslim-majority countries. The Court is due to take up the whole ban in October. But this regime has made clear it does not intend to let courts or laws get in the way of its fascist agenda. As Khera and Smith write, “Lost amid the uproar over the Trump administration’s travel restrictions on citizens from Muslim majority countries and the impending showdown at the Supreme Court are the insidious ways that the government has already begun to impose a Muslim ban. It’s doing so through deceptively boring means: increasing administrative hurdles and cementing or even expanding the current travel restrictions that are not under review at the court. The collective impact of these changes will be that a permanent Muslim ban is enshrined into American immigration policy.”

One of these stealth means is “extreme vetting” of people applying for visas for immigration or travel to the U.S. This takes what was an already intrusive process to a whole other level by requiring people to provide things like travel history for the last 15 years, including how the travel was paid for; work history and home addresses for the last 15 years; names and birth dates for all current and former spouses or partners; and all social media platforms and “handles” used during the past five years. Whether the people are approved for visas or not, the information collected could go into a database to be used to profile and politically target not only those individuals but others connected to them—overseas as well as in the U.S.—through personal ties or the social media.

Exempt from this are 38 countries considered “friendly”—almost all in Europe, plus a few others like Australia and Japan. Included are the rest of the world. As Khera and Smith note, while the State Department says only “populations warranting increased scrutiny” are subject to extreme vetting, “[E]veryone knows that term is code for people from predominantly Muslim countries.”

Other moves along these lines include:

* In June, Trump canceled a previous order that had required the State Department to make sure that most of the interviews for people applying for non-immigrant visas happen within three weeks.

* The departments of state, homeland security, and several other agencies sent reports to the White House in July about visa screening processes in the U.S. and other countries. That information supposedly would be used to figure out whether the short-term ban on people from Muslim-majority countries should be extended permanently and whether other countries should be added to the list. The regime has refused to make these reports public. But Khera and Smith point out in their op-ed, “[A]ll circumstantial evidence suggests that Muslim-majority countries will bear the brunt of these restrictions, which is exactly what President Trump has called for.”

The stealth Muslim-ban measures have already led to a 55 percent drop in U.S visas issued to people from the six countries on the Muslim Ban 2.0 (Iran, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen) compared to last year—and a 20 percent drop for visas issued to people from nearly 50 Muslim-majority countries.

Beyond this, the Muslim ban is fanning the demonization of all Muslims. Under the “clash of civilizations” paradigm that the Trump/Pence fascists are operating on, the billions of people in nations ravaged by the U.S. and other imperialist powers pose a dangerous threat. To the extent that reactionary Islamic Jihad has taken root in some of those places—in the soil and environment created by imperialism—that and any other challenges to U.S. imperialism must be crushed by overwhelming military force. And, in this genocidal worldview, because they undermine the white Christian supremacist coherence of the U.S., Muslims must be banned from entry and treated as pariahs. Further, if all people from Muslim countries are “potential terrorists,” as this fascist logic goes, then what about the Muslims in the U.S.?

This cannot go down! The Muslim ban must be stopped through fierce and widespread opposition, as part of the fight to drive out the fascist regime.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/sessions-speech-to-powerful-anti-lgbtq-hate-group-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Advancing the Christian Fascist Agenda:
Sessions’ Speech to Powerful anti-LGBTQ Hate Group

July 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On July 11, Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave a closed-door speech to the Alliance Defending Freedom, the largest and most powerful Christian fascist law firm you’ve never heard of. In their own words, ADF’s reactionary legal agenda is fighting against the “concocted” “constitutional ‘right’ to abortion”; the “myth” of the “separation of church and state”; and laws that promote “social approval of homosexual behavior.” For the last 20 years they have been involved in the most prominent legal cases attacking reproductive choice, spreading anti-LGBTQ laws in this country and internationally, and overall imposing religion on more and more realms of public life. (See sidebar.)

The ADF is not simply or mainly the product of a grassroots movement of religious fundamentalist bigots who hate and fear LGBTQ people. It has major financial backing from billionaires, like Richard and Helen DeVos (whose daughter-in-law, Betsy DeVos, is secretary of education) and other big-time capitalists. Most fundamentally, it is an agent of the agenda of sections of the ruling class who see an absolute need to re-cohere U.S. society under draconian Christian fundamentalist norms and morality, including demonization and dehumanization of LGBTQ people. These forces now have their people in the White House.

Discriminating against LGBTQ people = Christian fascists practicing their faith

Sessions opened his speech by praising ADF for the “important work” it does “to uphold and protect the right to religious liberty in this country.” He gave backing to the Christian fascists’ victimhood bullshit: “Many Americans have felt that their freedom to practice their faith has been under attack. This feeling is understandable.” Sessions wasn’t referring to the actual escalating terrorist attacks against Muslims, or his regime’s shutting down and infiltrating their places of worship, or the ban aimed at keeping people of the Muslim faith out of the country. What he was doing was giving support to ADF’s claim that prohibiting them from discriminating against LGBTQ people violates their god-given right to religious bigotry. This is akin to the logic of those who argued that fair housing laws violated the “sincere beliefs” of people who didn’t want to live near Black people.

Sessions then went on to promise the Alliance Defending Freedom they would have the backing of the Justice Department to impose their Christian fascist ideology on state and federal laws, and on every aspect of public life:

In all of this litigation and debate, this Department of Justice will never allow this secular government of ours to demand that sincere religious beliefs be abandoned. We will not require American citizens to give intellectual assent to doctrines that are contrary to their religious beliefs. And they must be allowed to exercise those beliefs as the First Amendment guarantees. We will defend freedom of conscience resolutely. That is inalienable. That is our heritage.

The essence of the logic of Sessions’ statement is that religious beliefs must take precedence over demands for equality and civil rights. Here Sessions’ language practically repeats ADF’s talking points in the upcoming case in Colorado where a baker was sued for refusing to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

Trump orders DOJ to write guidance on how to assist the Christian fascist agenda

Sessions also promised the DOJ was going to put its position in writing, saying “The president has also directed me to issue guidance on how to apply federal religious liberty protections.... The federal government will actively find ways to accommodate people of all faiths. The protections enshrined in the Constitution and our laws protect all Americans, including when we work together, speak in the public square, and when we interact with our government. We don’t waive our constitutional rights when we participate fully in public life and civic society.” (emphasis ours)

What Sessions is saying is that the Department of Justice intends to do all it can to clear the path for Christian fascists to impose their religious bigotry and their goal of a Christian fascist America on every sphere of public life. The speech Sessions gave to this “Summit” of Christian fascist lawyers represents a statement by the Trump/Pence regime that it intends to help advance not only their vicious anti-LGBTQ agenda, but their overall goal of a Christian fascist America.

Where did this Christian fascist movement come from?

For decades, the capitalist-imperialists in the USA have confronted very sharp contradictions: bogged down in wars and occupations, contention with other major powers, and in battle with outmoded Islamic jihadism internationally; while in this country the oppression of Black, Latino, and other oppressed nationality people, immigrants, and women intensifies, and there is the straining of the traditional social fabric holding this society together. In this context, a Christian fascist movement has been developing, backed by a major section of the U.S. ruling class, aiming for nothing less than a Christian theocratic society ruled by biblical law and morality.

As Bob Avakian (BA) has analyzed extensively in The Truth About Right-Wing Conspiracy... And Why Clinton and the Democrats Are No Answer and other works, fascism in America is a result of larger dynamics at this moment in history. He has scientifically analyzed the rise of this fascism, its underlying causes and drivers, and peculiarly American expressions such as Christian fascism—and what is to be done for the emancipation of humanity—and we strongly encourage readers to study these works. In The Truth About Right-Wing Conspiracy..., BA pointed out:

[These Christian fascists are] political leaders and forces who insist that “traditional morality,” as embodied in the patriarchal family as well as “right or wrong” patriotism—and rationalized in terms of fundamentalist Christianity—must be the basis for maintaining the cohesion and solidity of American capitalist society and the dominant position of imperial America in the world arena. In the vision these people profess, contemporary America—not just the government but the society as a whole—is in cultural and moral decline. More, it is in danger of disintegration and destruction.

The election of the Trump/Pence regime has brought this movement to power. Trump himself has fully united with the Christian fascists, beginning with Mike Pence, and with those who make up a large part of the cabinet. And with this control of the executive, Congress and major state governments--and with control of the Supreme Court an appointment or two away--the obstacles are being swept aside for the advance of the Christian fascist agenda to become the “law of the land”—enforced with all the violence at the hands of the U.S. state. The urgency cannot be exaggerated of mobilizing millions, and tens of millions, who hate the crimes being carried out by this regime more and more each day, to act on the understanding that this regime is fascist, to stand up together and stop them.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/the-us-liberation-of-mosul-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

The U.S. “Liberation” of Mosul:
War Crimes in Service of Imperialism

July 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The U.S. and Iraqi governments claim the city of Mosul has been “liberated.” The shattered city and its survivors tell a different story.

Bashar told PBS, “We tried to escape the day before, but ISIS shot at us. We ran back to the house and the army told us, stay inside. We will evacuate you when we make the area safe.” The next morning, two U.S. bombs hit his house. Bashar and other family members and friends dug through layers of concrete, desperately searching for his 18 relatives trapped in the rubble. They finally found them in a collapsed kitchen—all dead, including women and young children.

Bashar’s friend Ali’s house was hit 28 days earlier. Ali ticked off the dead: “My mother, three brothers, three sisters, my father, two sisters-in-law, two nieces.”

Vast swaths of Mosul, which was a modern city of 1.3 million, have been reduced to dusty, smoking rubble—hospitals, apartments, and businesses leveled. Traumatized survivors had huddled in basements during the U.S.-led assault, sometimes surviving on grass. A UN official said refugees from Mosul look “like someone who has gone through an experience like hell.”

Car and drone bombs exploded by ISIS—the jihadists in control of Mosul since June 2014—played a part. But overwhelmingly, sections of west Mosul have been flattened the American way: by 2,000 U.S. air strikes, cannon fire from Apache and Hind helicopters, and 29,000 munitions hurled at Mosul by the U.S.-led coalition during its nine-month assault. IRAMs—basically massive, flying IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices]—“were being flung into neighborhoods where people were trapped,” Amnesty International (AI) told Democracy Now!

AI estimates that between February 19 and June 19 of this year, 5,805 civilians may have been killed by Iraqi and U.S.-led coalition forces, and close to a million residents forced to flee, nearly 700,000 still living in refugee camps. A Kurdish intelligence official told Britain’s The Independent as many as 40,000 civilians may have been killed in retaking Mosul.

Covering Up America’s War Crimes

The blood staining the U.S.’s hands has been covered up by the Trump/Pence regime and the bourgeois media. Trump never mentioned U.S.-caused deaths in his statement on the “Liberation of Mosul.” The New York Times July 15 photo essay—“Satellite Images of Mosul Reveal the Devastation After the Islamic State Was Forced Out”—which showed neighborhood after neighborhood “in ruins,” never stated that U.S. munitions were overwhelmingly responsible.

“On the one hand, ISIS systematically moved thousands of civilians directly into areas of active fighting, and then they trapped them there,” a representative of AI told Democracy Now! “On the other hand, Iraqi and coalition forces then subjected these very same areas to relentless attacks. These attacks used explosive and imprecise weapons that killed and injured thousands of civilians and left the city flattened.” [Our emphasis]

Indiscriminate bombing that recklessly endangers and kills civilians is a war crime.

But that’s been the American way of war, from the firebombings of Dresden, Germany, and Tokyo, Japan, during World War 2, to the mass murder of three million Koreans during the 1951-53 Korean War, to the carpet bombing of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Not “heroic” close-quarter combat, but high-tech mass murder from a safe distance.

Liberation? No. A Deadly Clash Between Reactionary Imperialism and Reactionary Islamic Fundamentalism

There was nothing liberating about ISIS’s takeover of Mosul in 2014—and there’s nothing liberating about the U.S. and its allies seizing it back now.

ISIS (the Islamic State) imposed a barbaric, medieval form of Sunni fundamentalist Islam that included draconian dress codes and punishments for Iraqi women, while keeping others from minority nationalities and religions as sex slaves. Dissidents were flogged or executed publicly, often beheaded. Residents trying to flee the recent fighting were shot, sometimes hanged as a warning to others.

But what has America now brought to Mosul? The U.S. was in charge of retaking the city, and they trained, advised, and led the Iraqi forces and provided decisive airpower. The U.S. coalition’s use of massive, indiscriminate bombing was deliberate—not “inadvertent.” In May, Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis declared the U.S. policy is “annihilation”—taking no prisoners, not allowing any ISIS members to survive. Where did Mattis get his nickname? From leading the 2004 siege and devastation of the Iraqi city of Falluja, carried out by war crimes.

Humanitarian workers reported that the U.S. stepped up its bombing campaign in Mosul—including the use of 500-1,000-pound crater bombs—in order to maintain the military momentum and finish the battle as soon as possible. (NBC)

This was driven by key imperialist objectives: not getting bogged down; and sending a global message that the Trump/Pence regime won’t be bound by any concern—or even appearance of concern—for international law or civilian casualties. It won’t hesitate to savagely and violently impose U.S. dominance.

U.S. Imperialism, Emergence of ISIS, and Bringing Forward Another Way

How did ISIS emerge and seize control of Mosul?

This happened largely because of the actions and impact of U.S. imperialism. After invading and occupying Iraq in 2003—in the name of “liberation”—the U.S. empowered a new reactionary regime dominated by Shi’ite Islamic parties, which together with U.S. forces carried out horrific crimes against Iraq’s Sunni population. This was all part of attempting to secure U.S. domination of Iraq, but it fueled the spread of Sunni jihadism.

As the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian analyzed in Bringing Forward Another Way, reactionary imperialism and reactionary Islamic fundamentalism fuel and reinforce each other—even as they clash.

What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade [increasingly globalized western imperialism] on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these “outmodeds,” you end up strengthening both.

While this is a very important formulation and is crucial to understanding much of the dynamics driving things in the world in this period, at the same time we do have to be clear about which of these “historically outmodeds” has done the greater damage and poses the greater threat to humanity: It is the historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system, and in particular the U.S. imperialists. (BAsics 1:28)

America’s so-called “War on Terror”—actually a war of empire—has stoked this deadly dynamic across the Middle East. The U.S.-Iraqi assault on Mosul will do nothing to slow that dynamic.

In other words, nothing good for the people is going to come of the U.S. “victory” in Mosul. It is part of a reactionary war of empire that is not in the interests of humanity.

The carnage in Mosul is heartrending—even more so because it is completely outmoded and unnecessary. This underscores the urgency of taking up the challenge Bob Avakian poses and the leadership he provides in Bringing Forward Another Way, for building broad resistance to the crimes of America’s empire, and more fundamentally for preparing for revolution and birthing a radically different and far better world.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/trump-launches-worlds-largest-deadliest-aircraft-carrier-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Trump Launches World’s Largest, Deadliest Aircraft Carrier

July 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On Saturday, July 22, U.S. imperialism’s current godfather, Donald Trump, launched his latest grave threat to humanity and the world.

He commissioned the USS Gerald R. Ford—the largest, deadliest aircraft carrier in history, capable of carrying more warplanes and weapons, and launching more air strikes than any carrier before. This carrier, which will become operational around 2021, is part of a massive naval and military buildup by a military that already dwarfs all other militaries on the planet. And Trump made clear he intends to use this new weapon of American mass death and destruction.

Trump called this death machine an “incredible work of art” part of “the noble military history of our great nation,” and a “100,000-ton message to the world, American might is second to none, and we’re getting bigger. and better, and stronger every day of my administration.”

He declared:

Wherever this vessel cuts through the horizon, our allies will rest easy and our enemies will shake with fear, because everyone will know that America is coming and America is coming strong....This ship is the deterrent that keeps us from having to fight in the first place, but this ship also ensures that if a fight does come, it will always end the same way: we will win, win, win. We will never lose. We will win.... When it comes to battle, we don’t want a fair fight, we want just the opposite. We demand victory, and we will have total victory, believe me.

What’s this “noble military history of our great nation” Trump referred to? The genocide of Native Americans? The slaughter of tens of thousands in America’s conquest of the Philippines, captured in gruesome pictures of skulls piled high? Or did he mean the firebombing of Tokyo during World War 2, incinerating 100,000 people, overwhelmingly civilians? Or perhaps the nuclear incineration of 250,000 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? He may well have been talking about the napalming and use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, mass murdering three million and poisoning millions of acres of countryside. But then it could have been America’s 1991 slaughter in Iraq, or its 2003 “shock and awe” blitzkrieg of Baghdad, or its latest death-from-above campaign in Mosul.

And what has America carried out this death and destruction for? To maintain a global empire of enslavement and oppression—enforcing the most brutal exploitation—from Mexican laborers harvesting its food in pesticide-poisoned fields to children stitching its clothes and soccer balls in death-trap sweatshops in Pakistan or Bangladesh. Allying with murderous military butchers, or medieval religious butchers, all to keep it operating.

See all the articles in this series.

 

America was NEVER great.

Trump’s “win, win, win” message? A declaration that under his fascist rule, America will double-down, triple-down its violence and death to try and maintain its grip on the horrendous, unjust world it presides over. When Trump talks of never losing, of not wanting a “fair fight,” of demanding victory, “total victory,” he’s threatening genocidal—possibly nuclear—annihilation of those the U.S. can’t conquer.

Does anyone need a more glaring reason to drive this fascist regime from power? Or a more glaring illustration of the bankruptcy of the entire system he heads and the urgent need to dig into the revolutionary solution to the horrors it has created and now promises on an even more massive, globally threatening scale?

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/san-antonio-immigrant-deaths-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Nine Immigrants Dead, 17 in Critical Condition, in a Trailer Turned into an “Oven”

Cause of Death: THIS FUCKING SYSTEM!

July 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Just after midnight on Sunday, July 23, a tractor trailer was found outside a Walmart in San Antonio, Texas, with 38 immigrants inside, eight already dead from the brutal San Antonio heat that turned the trailer into an oven. The 30 still alive were rushed to hospitals, 17 in life-threatening conditions. A ninth person has since died as this report is being written, and suffering with heat strokes or heat injuries, many of those who live are going to have irreversible brain damage, according to the fire chief on the scene. Two of those hospitalized were 15-year-old children. There may have been more than 100 people inside this trailer at one point, undocumented immigrants from Mexico and possibly Central America.

Politicians and the head of Homeland Security rushed to make sure everyone knew who to blame, saying these immigrants were the “victims of ruthless human smugglers indifferent to the well-being of their fragile cargo.” The ruthless actions of smugglers may have been the immediate cause of this horrific end for the immigrants. But who created the situation that forces people to leave their countries and turn to smugglers to cross the border? As Bob Avakian says:

Now I can just hear these reactionary fools saying, “Well, Bob, answer me this. If this country is so terrible, why do people come here from all over the world? Why are so many people trying to get in, not get out?”...Why? I’ll tell you why. Because you have fucked up the rest of the world even worse than what you have done in this country. You have made it impossible for many people to live in their own countries as part of gaining your riches and power. (BAsics 1:14)

“Ruthless” and “indifferent”? No one comes anywhere CLOSE to those who rule this capitalist-imperialist system in the ruthlessness and indifference toward immigrants. It’s this same system that has filled the morgues in cities along the Mexican border with the unidentified remains of hundreds of men, women, and children burned up in the Southwest desert sun every year. People who were deliberately channeled by the actions of the U.S. into these deserts so they will perish—and to send a message to others not to try.

And now we have fascists with state power in their hands who have declared all undocumented immigrants “filth,” “criminal aliens,” “rapists and drug dealers,” and ratcheted up their border crackdown. They are forcing people to take even greater risks to escape and find a place to work and survive. And if they are able to survive this trip through hell, it is the ruling class of this capitalist-imperialist system that doesn’t blink an eye at treating them like criminals while at the same time ruthlessly exploiting them in the most dangerous, back-breaking, lowest-paying jobs in this country.

Who’s responsible for the horrible deaths of these immigrants in San Antonio? This fucking system!

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/499/to-the-brave-fighters-and-dreamers-of-july-15-from-the-revolutionary-communist-party-USA-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

To the Brave Fighters and Dreamers of July 15

From the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

July 14, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This statement will be read at protests across the country on July 15, 2017.

On behalf of the Revolutionary Communist Party, I want to salute everyone who came out today. Everyone who stood up to the intimidation and threats, everyone who fought through the defeatism that’s out there, everyone who has responded to the relentless implantation of fascism with that most eloquent of answers: NO! We especially salute all those who over these past months have birthed the absolutely essential organization that is Refuse Fascism, and especially those of you who were living your lives and then answered the call posed by events and have thrown so much into this. This vehicle of Refuse Fascism is precious and the time is now for it to get far bigger, far stronger, and far more all-embracing so that we can drive out this regime before it’s too late!

Continue to not just resist, but go further in this battle. This is life and death for tens of millions of people and maybe more. Let’s struggle in the days to come to draw out every lesson we can from today and everything that has led up to this; let’s interrogate what we’ve done and then let’s do better... because the stakes are way too high to do anything less. Today can be and must be not just a “good thing to do,” but a point of departure for a whole new level of struggle.

But we want to ask you to go further, too. Listen to this invitation from the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, Bob Avakian, or BA, on page 3 of this month’s issue of Revolution:

An Invitation
From Bob Avakian

Let’s go on a crucial journey together—full of unity against oppression and lively struggle about the source of the problem and the solution. Pursue your own convictions—that the outrages that move you are intolerable—to their logical conclusion, and be determined not to stop until those outrages have been eliminated. And if this, as well as learning about other outrages, and ideas about how this all fits together and flows from a common source—and how it could all be ended, and something much better brought into being—leads in the direction of seeing not only the need for bold and determined resistance, but also the need for revolution and ultimately communism, then don’t turn away from that because it moves you beyond your comfort zone, challenges what had been your cherished beliefs, or because of prejudices and slanders. Instead, actively seek to learn more about this revolution and its goal of communism and to determine whether it is in fact the necessary, and possible, solution. And then act accordingly.

There’s a way to take up that invitation. Get into BA. Read THE NEW COMMUNISM, which puts forth just what it says—a new communism, a way to scientifically understand and transform the world, to make revolution and to keep that revolution on the road to emancipation. Get into The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which lays out a blueprint and framework for the radically new and far, far better world that really is possible through that revolution. Pick up and carry with you BAsics, the handbook for revolutionary fighters.

Here’s a chance, and a challenge, to learn where this madness we’re fighting today came from... how it flows out of a SYSTEM, of capitalism-imperialism. To learn WHY we need a revolution, and why that revolution can and must overthrow the system. To learn how such a revolution could actually come about. And to learn about your role in it.

Go to www.revcom.us every day, and learn how events fit together and what they mean for revolution. Go to Revolution Books if there is one near you. Join the Revolution Club, where you can not only learn about this but be part of fighting the power as part of making revolution, taking on every outrage and fighting in every corner of society, where you can change the world and change yourself in the process, with people just like you and with people very different from you, in a spirit of struggle and questioning and courage and love.

Let’s go forward together, let’s drive out this regime, and let’s move on then to build a whole new world where the hellish nightmares of today really are no more, and humanity can truly flourish.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/face-off-on-the-south-side-of-chicago-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Face-Off on the South Side of Chicago

by Members of the Revolution Club

July 23, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On Saturday, July 22, the Revolution Club in Chicago politically hit back at the brutalizing, fascistic police of the 7th District on the South Side. The Club, along with people from the community, rallied at the corner in Englewood where five of us were arrested the day before. Friday morning, the pigs had swarmed not once but twice. The first time with 10 pig cars and the second time with 20. These pigs filled the whole intersection and streets nearby in a massive show of force to arrest five people supposedly for “hanging a sign” on a pole and then for sound amplification.

These arrests were the latest act of political repression by the pigs. These pigs have been coming down on the people and the RevComs in what has been an intense battle in the neighborhood. Starting in June, when the commander of the 7th District police showed up at the Revolution Club street rally with a paddy wagon for intimidation, police have been working very hard to stop people connecting up with the Revolution Club message.

And what is that message? “This summer in Chicago will NOT be a bloodbath of killing each other; This summer will NOT be free rein for police to murder and terrorize Black and Brown people; This summer we get organized for revolution to emancipate all of humanity.” Obviously, by their actions, these pigs show that they HATE this message getting out and they are hell-bound to prevent people from even hearing it, let alone connecting with it.

When the Revolution Club led people to blow the whistle at the police to stand up against the terror they use to keep oppressed people in their place, the pigs threatened retaliation against the whole neighborhood. The retaliation hit almost immediately and has been ongoing and getting more intense. The same night the pigs made their threats, the vacant hang-out house where the pigs made those threats was suspiciously burned down. On top of handcuffing people for no reason and carrying out an outrageous raid on a holiday family party where 13 people were brutalized and arrested, about a week ago police started telling people they were not allowed to stand on the sidewalk from 7 am to 3 pm. People wearing BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! T-shirts are being stopped and questioned about why they’re wearing the shirt. Some have been threatened with arrest if they did not take the shirt off. Those on parole have been threatened with violations. RevComs have been called “bitch” by police, filmed by police when just out talking to people, and pointed out by pigs in a threatening way.

Again, why? Because of the Revolution Club message: “This summer in Chicago will NOT be a bloodbath of killing each other; This summer will NOT be free rein for police to murder and terrorize Black and Brown people; This summer we get organized for revolution to emancipate all of humanity.”

Controversy and Struggle Among the People

There has been a lot of controversy and struggle throughout the neighborhood about all this and about the program and message of the RevComs. Is it right to defy the police—won’t it “just bring down more heat”? Should people check out, work with, and follow the RevComs even though communists don’t believe in god? Who is Bob Avakian, and is this the leadership people need? What is revolution, and is all this going somewhere that could really change things? People have put on the Revolution T-shirt and people have taken off the T-shirt. People have railed against us and then have started to check out BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian. And all this is going on in the context of these vicious actions and threats by the pigs.

The Revolution Club Leads People to Take a Righteous Stand

In response to the unofficial martial law of police telling people they could not be out on the sidewalk during the day, the Revolution Club issued a notice that we would defy this illegitimate order. We said that we would be on the sidewalk beginning at 7 am and stay there until 3 pm (the “prohibited” hours), and that Joe Veale, supporter of the Revolutionary Communist Party and former member of the Black Panther Party, would be at the corner to speak at noon. We put out the call to the neighborhood and others to stand with the people and the RevComs, defy the order, come out to hear Joe Veale, and wear the REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! T-shirt that day wherever they were.

All morning, the Revolution Club posted up on the sidewalk. One man yelled and ranted for the RevComs to leave, because he didn’t want his house getting burned down too—he had obviously gotten the message coming out of the 7th District sty. But he backed off when he didn’t get any support for that position from others on the block. A number of people took the occasion to stop and get into things with the RevComs more deeply, and one person left reading BAsics. A young woman joined in on the spot, put on a T-shirt, and ran with the Revolution Club the whole day.

About 10 in the morning the pigs moved in to make their first arrest. And then at noon, just at the time Joe Veale was scheduled to speak, they moved in again in an even larger sweep. Lots of people, younger and older, were out in the park and all around when this happened, and came over to witness and film and sometimes to speak out themselves against what the police were doing. A man who an hour earlier had been in a big argument with the Revolution Club members, with arguments that were taking the side of the police, was now filming the arrests and flipping off the police.

After the five Revolution Club members were arrested, others—including Carl Dix from the Revolutionary Communist Party, and the anti-repression activists Rev. Gregg Greer and Mark Clements—gathered and held a press conference in front of the 7th District police station. Already the commander of that station came out to whine and complain, after he had ordered tons of cop cars to try to squash the rights of the revolutionaries and the people who wanted to talk with them.

The revolutionaries and community activists made clear: we would be back in the neighborhood the next day! There was no way the Revolution Club was going to back off of standing with the people and leading people to fight through the repression—as part of actually taking responsibility to organize people for revolution and lead the masses all the way through to making revolution. As it says in “HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution”: “We need to oppose and disrupt the moves of the ruling powers to isolate, ‘encircle,’ brutalize, mass incarcerate and murderously repress the people who have the hardest life under this system and who most need this revolution. We need to ‘encircle’ them—by bringing forth wave upon wave of people rising up in determined opposition to this system.”

Showdown on Saturday

On Saturday, the Revolution Club rallied forces to come be part of the 3 pm rally at the corner where the arrests had taken place the day before. People in and around the Revolution Club stepped up to meet the need. People changed their plans, put on their T-shirts, and came out to the corner, and—once again—some activists who are not part of the Revolution Club also came to stand with the people and stand with the RevComs. Before the rally started, people who had seen the arrests either in person or on the videos that are circulating, came up to greet us. They were glad we had been released, some coming up giving us hugs. Other people were scared to talk to us, intimidated by police having threatened to arrest anyone seen around us or talking to us.

In the face of all the police intimidation in the neighborhood, a group of people from the neighborhood came right to the corner and joined the rally. About five of these people put on Revolution T-shirts for the first time and stayed for the whole rally. Other groups of people gathered in front of a store across the street, sat on benches in the park, or leaned on the fence back in the shade, close enough to hear the rally without coming over to join it. Rev. Gregg Greer and police torture survivor Mark Clements spoke in support of what the RevComs have been doing and against the police clampdown.

The Police Are Nothing But Modern-Day Slave Patrollers and Klansmen

Carl Dix spoke at the rally about the Chicago police enforcing modern-day Black codes. “Now back in the slavery days they had these laws where they said if a Black person wasn’t on the plantation, he had to have permission from the slave master and laws that said if two or more Black people hung out together, that was illegal. They had a name for these laws, they called them the Black codes, and it was how they kept Black people down then. Well the Chicago police department is enforcing modern-day Black codes. They got their pigs coming out here and telling people that they cannot be out on the street around certain hours. That they can’t be in front of their own house. They’re threatening people who blow the whistle when they see the police abusing people. They tell people don’t let us see you talking to the revolutionaries, because you’ll get in trouble for it. They even raided a family party in the family’s house where they gathered the extended family on the Fourth of July. These are modern-day Black codes, this is part of the law whether it’s official or unofficial and it’s no damn good.”

“The People Out Here Are Gonna Make Revolution”

Carl Dix also talked about what we have going for us to make the revolution we need, but the need and potential for people to take this up and fight for it. He said, “We got the leadership [in Bob Avakian], we got the strategy, we got a vision of the future world we can bring into being, and I’ll tell you, sisters and brothers, what’s missing is you. You got to get with it, you got to get with this revolution. I know that when I say this, there’s something else sounding in a lot of people’s heads, because this system and its mouthpieces have told us again and again and again that people on the bottom of this society ain’t worth nothing, ain’t never going to amount to nothing. They tell us that so often that some of our people internalize that and oppressive words start coming out of their mouths. They be saying oh these people down here, they’re too messed up, they can’t never do nothing. That’s not true.

“Here’s what Bob Avakian says on that, ‘Those this system has cast off, those it has treated as less than human, can be the backbone and driving force of a fight not only to end their own oppression, but to finally end all oppression, and emancipate all of humanity.’ That is the potential that is amongst our people here in this community. We got to reach into these communities and tap into that potential.

“Now when I say that, though, let me say one other thing: you cannot do that as you are. You cannot be involved in fighting and killing each other, you cannot be involved in treating women like they’re punching bags or sex objects or baby-making machines, you cannot be involved in looking across the street at another group of brothers and sisters who are just like you and thinking that they’re the enemy. You got to get out of that and you got to get out of the system’s way of thinking that has us caught up in all that. Because they want us fighting each other, they want us fighting each other because that way it’s easier for them to hold all of us down, so we got to get out of that and get into this revolution. And this is something you can start doing now, right here today. Put on this T-shirt, BA SPEAKS: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!, get a copy of BAsics, get a copy of the Constitution [for the New Socialist Republic in North America], get with this revolution and get with its leadership and become a part of the emancipators of humanity.”

When Carl said people could step into the Revolution on the spot by putting on the BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!, T-shirt, one man who was listening to the speech immediately walked away to go get his Revolution T-shirt out of his car and came back and put it on.

Carl Dix Lays It Out to 7th District Commander

Carl Dix ended his comments saying, “To one and all: Look, Mr. Pig, Chicago Police Department, Kenneth Johnson, district commander, we know why you have your pigs out here enforcing martial law on people, it’s because you’re scared. You are scared that if people here stand up, if they stop fighting each other, if they get together, and especially if they get together with the revolution, you won’t be able to hold them all down. That’s why you arrested the revolutionaries. And we’re going to be out here organizing people to stand up, we’re going to be bringing this message that this will be a different kind of summer, not a summer of Black and Brown people killing each other, not a summer of the police having free rein to terrorize, brutalize, and murder people, instead it will be a summer of organizing people into the revolution. We are determined to do that, we will not back up, we will not be driven off, we will continue to dig in with the people, organize the people, stand up together with them and say no more to this brutality, no more to this terror, we will do that as part of organizing for a revolution to emancipate all of humanity.”

As Carl Dix was finishing, who should pull up in a pig car but the commander of the 7th District police, Kenneth Johnson! Johnson showed up with an entourage of pigs and a paddy wagon behind him. The pig commander came over running out some really pathetic bullshit about how the police are doing good things for the community and the revolutionaries are there messing all that up and are not wanted in the neighborhood. Johnson sounded like he took his lines from an old Southern KKK sheriff out of the 1950s, threatening the civil rights workers of those days.

Sides Line Up, People Come Forward

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Carl stepped up to take on the bullshit of this so-called “commander,” and started speaking on the reality of what the police have been doing in that neighborhood. As he did, more people started to come over and line up with the RevComs. Six or seven people who had been listening in the park walked over and grabbed Revolution T-shirts and put them on right there.

When the commander was reduced to oinking that the revolutionaries don’t even live in that neighborhood, one person in a Revolution T-shirt jumped up on a milk crate and threw his hand in the air and said, “I do! I live here!” Others chimed in saying the same thing. An old man who had been listening from across the street and had told us earlier how he too had been ordered off the sidewalk by the police, came over to join in getting in the face of the commander. And when the commander told Carl if he wants to talk to the neighborhood he should sit down and talk with him, one of the people at the rally (who had been working with the Club) said, “Why would we want to talk to you, we want to talk to the people, but you don’t want us to talk to the people, don’t nobody want to talk to you!”

After the confrontation with the commander, the RevComs gathered people who had been at the rally and marched together through the neighborhood. As we stepped off just starting to march, one woman passed by with her fist in the air and yelled out insults against the police. Along the march, others expressed support, including some who earlier in the day in one-on-one conversations had not been supportive.

This was a good day. But it was only one good day. And “good days” aren’t enough anyway. We should cherish victories, but even more than that we should build on them. We need to take this forward to building a movement for revolution, a revolution that can take down this whole system and get us to a whole new world. That is the challenge. Important lessons were learned about the importance of standing firm in the face of the enemy... about struggling hard among the people for what is true and right... about going back to the people and challenging them and organizing them to come forward and stand up, not just against these murdering pigs—but against the system these pigs enforce. And most of all, to fight for something bigger: for the emancipation of all humanity.

The Revolution Club, Chicago, says this: We mean what we say, and we will not back off or turn our back on what we have started, on the people who need this revolution. We will keep coming back and digging in, to strengthen this movement for revolution, to build up the bases, spread the influence, and organize the forces we need to make revolution. We will not be scared off, backed down or driven away.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/chicago-timeline-vicious-police-attacks-on-the-revolution-club-and-the-masses-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Chicago Timeline: Vicious Police Attacks on the Revolution Club and the Masses

July 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The Revolution Club in Chicago has been out in the neighborhoods, bringing to people a way to scientifically understand the world... a strategy to win... a Constitution for the new society... once-in-a-lifetime leadership in Bob Avakian... and a way to get organized into the Revolution Club, and the Revolutionary Communist Party. A communiqué issued by the revcoms says: This Summer in Chicago Will NOT Be a Bloodbath of Killing Each Other; This Summer Will NOT Be Free Rein for Police to Murder and Terrorize Black and Brown people; This Summer We Get Organized for Revolution to Emancipate All of Humanity.

In response, the Chicago police are waging a vicious campaign of attacks against the Revolution Club and the masses.

In early July, Rev Club members in the neighborhood started blowing whistles when police went into the yard of a vacant house where people hang out. The pigs threatened to go after people if they didn’t turn against the revcoms—but in the face of this, most people stood with the revolutionaries. A couple of people during the standoff with the pigs walked right up to the revcoms and hugged and thanked them. The pigs left threatening to come back and go after people. Many people got whistles and put on “BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!” T-shirts. Later that night the house where people hang out was set on fire—which many suspect was the work of the police.

In the next few days, police drove their cars through alleys, stopping people, handcuffing them, then letting them go. They also stopped young people wearing the BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! T-shirt, asking them why they were wearing the shirt.

On July 4, over 100 pigs from three police districts raided a family party. They came in like an army, kicking in doors, dragging and beating people, terrorizing children who were hiding in fear in the bedroom, and arresting 13 people, some who now face serious charges. A member of the family whose party was raided said: “They dragged my niece down the stairs and down the block. My neighbor lives right down there and she videotaped it.... My nephew, her brother, she was trying to protect her brother; he has two knots on his each side of his head from where they beat him up out here.”

Police started telling people they were not allowed to stand on the sidewalk from 7 am to 3 pm and the pigs threatened to arrest people if they didn’t take off the BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! T-shirt.

In a nearby neighborhood, police destroyed a memorial for Devonte Morgan, one of 15 people killed during the July 4th weekend from violence among the people. The pigs cut down and stomped on the candles. But people weren’t having it. A woman dancing in front of the cop cars was brutalized and the people defended themselves. Four people were arrested and a cop was injured. The next day the Rev Club went to stand with people in this neighborhood, connecting them up with the revolution, and backing them up to re-do their vigil.

Another day, the revcoms were talking to people in a park when someone called for them to come because somebody was being arrested. The Rev Club and others started blowing whistles and stood up against the pigs. Two more times this day the Rev Club posted up where pigs were messing with people. The cops responded by sticking out their middle fingers and pointing to some people as if to say, “We’re going to go after you.”

Then on July 21, the cops arrested five members of the Rev Club supposedly for “hanging a sign” on a pole and then for sound amplification. The pigs attacked not once, but twice. The first time they came with 10 pig cars, the second time with 20—filling the whole intersection and streets in a massive show of force. A press conference at the 7th District police headquarters was held to expose this, with Carl Dix, Rev. Gregg Greer, Chicago police torture survivor Mark Clements, and a young witness from the community wearing the Revolution Club T-shirt. That night, the arrested comrades were all released with charges, court dates, and in some cases injuries.

The Revolution Club, Chicago has been on a mission to get the youth OUT of the madness of killing and maiming each other and INTO making revolution against the system that got them in this situation. This is what the system and its pigs—who wantonly brutalize and kill people all the time—see as so threatening.

These attacks must not be tolerated! A number of anti-repression forces are investigating the July 4 raid and there is a need for many others to join in the struggle to expose and put a STOP to these attacks.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/avakian/science/39ba-science...revolution-the-need-for-communists-to-be-communists-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/50th-anniversary-detroit-rebellion-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

50th Anniversary of the Detroit Rebellion

July 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

July 2017 is the 50th anniversary of one of the most powerful uprisings of the 1960s—the Detroit Rebellion.

It began at 3:45 am on Sunday, July 23, 1967, when cops raided a “blind pig” after-hours club where a party was going on for two Black GIs, back home from Vietnam. The cops broke down the door, and an angry crowd gathered as people were brutally arrested and loaded into a paddy wagon. As the cops left, they were pelted with bricks and bottles.

Bill Scott, the 19-year-old son of the club owner, later wrote, “For the first time in our lives we felt free. Most important, we were right in what we did to the law. I felt powerful and good inside for being a part of those who finally fought back regardless of fear.... Within the aggregation of people this night there was a certain unique madness that had taken possession of everyone’s body and soul which was almost what could be called the unification of the rebellious spirit of man; a fearless spirit ordained for complete liberation of the self, combined with and supported by a community at large. Guess one could say it was like fighting and gaining your citizenship, after having given it away to obedience to the law—police law—which was a one-man judge and assassin that ruled Black people.” (Hurt, Baby, Hurt)

In a city with 600,000 Black people, the police were 95 percent white—known for going into Black neighborhoods and beating the hell out of people “for recreation.” Black people faced systematic discrimination in housing, jobs, and social services. In the area where the rebellion began, about 30 percent of Black people under 25 were unemployed, and population density in the rundown apartments was 21,000 persons per square mile—double the city average.

Built-up anger against all this, and more, erupted and continued for five days. Buildings were set afire, and people took food, household goods, and other things from stores. An estimated 10,000 people took part in the rebellion. People rebelled against the whole way they had been cut out of society—given no real future, no decent way to live.

The youth—who faced extreme unemployment and police brutality—were the backbone of this rebellion, including some white youths who became part of “black-and-white teams.” Veterans just back from Vietnam brought what they had learned to bear in the rebellion.

The city imposed a 9 pm-5 am curfew. By Monday, the night of the first day of the rebellion, 350 state troopers and over 8,000 guardsmen had been sent in; 4,750 federal troops were also dispatched. Tanks thundered through the streets. And all these hated figures of authority and repression became targets of gunfire from the people. During a single hour on Monday, a police dispatcher reported that two precinct stations, two riot command posts, and five fire stations were all under sniper fire.

The scale and scope of the rebellion was huge—affecting 40 of the city’s 140 square miles. Some 1,300 buildings were burned and 2,700 “looted”; property damage exceeded $45 million; 7,231 people were arrested (6,407 of them Black), 400 injured, and 43 died (33 of them Black).

This was a just, righteous rebellion against decades of systematic oppression. News and photos of the rebellion spread throughout the country and internationally, inspiring millions of people. It ignited smaller rebellions in other cities including Pontiac, Flint, Saginaw, and Grand Rapids in Michigan, and Toledo, Ohio. The rebellion dramatically changed the thinking of many people, including many white people. It shook society and forced the rulers to grant concessions—after the rebellion, thousands of Black people were hired right off the streets to work in the auto plants. Because people rose up and militantly fought back—telling the world, “We refuse to tolerate this living hell”—many more people came to support the struggle of Black people and other oppressed people.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/justine-damond-murdered-by-minneapolis-police-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Justine Damond—Murdered by Minneapolis Police After Calling for Help

July 23, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Justine Damond called 911 for help the night of July 15. Minutes later, a Minneapolis pig shot her dead. One more outrageous, unjust murder at the hands of police in America.

Damond, a white Australian woman, called the cops because she heard what sounded like someone being sexually assaulted near her home. She was unarmed and in her pajamas when police arrived. The cops did not investigate the possible assault. Instead, one of them shot and killed her while she was speaking to them.

Activists with Black Lives Matter and the NAACP were among those who organized a vigil—attended by about 300 people—the day after Justine Damond was murdered. Janee Harteau, the Minneapolis police chief, was in Colorado when one of her cops murdered Damond on a Saturday, and posted vacation photos on Facebook in subsequent days. It was not until Thursday that she even bothered to speak to the public in Minneapolis about the killing.

When hundreds marched Thursday, July 20, Damond’s friends and neighbors, and members of the community said it was for Damond and all victims of police violence. Valerie Castile, the mother of Philando Castile, spoke at the march. (Just a month earlier, a jury had acquitted the pig who murdered Philando Castile a year ago in a suburb of St. Paul.) A number of protest signs demanded justice for Justine Damond, Philando Castile, and Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old Black man murdered by Minneapolis cops in November 2015.

On Friday, John Thompson, a friend of Philando Castile, spoke at a rally for Justine Damond organized by Black Lives Matter Twin Cities, the Council on American-Islamic Relations Minnesota, and Native Lives Matter, among others. They cheered when they heard that police chief Harteau had stepped down. And people disrupted Mayor Betsy Hodges’ press conference and demanded she resign. As we go to press, the pig who murdered Justine Damond is not even under arrest!

News accounts have made much of the fact that the killer cop comes from Minneapolis’ large Somali immigrant community. But a pig is a pig is a pig. All police are trained to have contempt for the people. Justine Damond’s murder is the product of a culture of police thuggery, based on what role they play in this society. As Bob Avakian says:

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness. (BAsics 1:24)

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/st-louis-jail-protest-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Defiant Protesters Come to the Aid of Prisoners at St. Louis Hell-House Jail

July 23, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

It was a week of triple-digit heat outside the Medium Security Institution (MSI), better known as the St. Louis workhouse jail, a 10-15 minute drive from Ferguson, Missouri. Heat indices outside have been 100-110 degrees daily; inside this jail, temperatures have soared as much as 5-10 degrees higher.

A Facebook video posted early Tuesday, July 18, captured chilling screams from some of the prisoners locked in this oven: “HELP! HELP US! We ain’t got no A/C!” Hundreds of thousands viewed it and an emergency protest was called for Friday, July 21, at the gates of this literal hellhole.

About 200 protesters came to the aid of the prisoners, expressing their outrage on signs and slogans: “Black Lives Matter”; “We Demand Humanity”; “This is Cruel and Unusual Punishment”; “We Treat Animals Better”; “Shut It Down”; and “Free Our People.” One protester told the press, “I am here for the sake of humanity.” The protesters’ chant of “let them go” was answered by inmates’ response of “let us out” as they waved towels out the windows. A Black state senator was among the protesters. Other Black officials issued letters and comments on the horrific jail conditions.

Nearly all of the 770 prisoners at MSI are locked up because they are awaiting trial and are too poor to afford bail. Besides extreme heat in summer and cold in winter, the men and women inside MSI live with black mold (for example, all over the cafeteria), being bitten by insect/rat infestation, sexual harassment, and negligent medical care. An ACLU report (2009) and a lawsuit by inmates (2012) charged guards with forcing inmates into “gladiator fights” for amusement. A Department of (IN)Justice report (2013) admitted that MSI “had one of the highest rates of reported sexual abuse among the country’s jails.”

Friday’s protest brought together young and old, and different nationalities, with many white youths taking part in rocking the jail’s outer security fence until its metal clasps loosened and the bottom of the fence was hoisted up. Some protesters ran onto the prison grounds defiantly. The cops waded into the crowd with pepper spray and made one arrest.

In the face of this pig attack, a second night of protest was called for Saturday, even as the mayor announced that five portable air-conditioning units would be sent into the workhouse. While the crowd was smaller—mainly Black and white youths, college students as well as youths from the hood, it was a spirited and determined action. People protested and chanted for hours, even in the pouring hot summer rain (with lightning!). Some of the chants raised were: “FTP... Fuck the Police”; “Who Shut Shit Down, We Shut Shit Down”; “Revolution, Rise Up”; “When people’s rights are under attack, stand up, fight back”; “Fuck the system, fuck the state, America was never great”; and “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?” The pigs rushed the protesters and made two arrests.

It is precious and righteous that people came to the aid of these prisoners—people this system has vilified and cast off. This kind of spirit and this kind of action is even more urgent today, as the Trump/Pence fascist regime targets whole groups of people—including immigrants, Muslims, Black and Latino people, women and LGBTQ people, and more—for even more vicious attacks and suppression. These battles must be increasingly focused on the objective of driving the Trump/Pence regime from power, and increasingly connected to the movement for an actual revolution

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/critical-juncture-in-fight-against-persecution-of-iggy-and-alfredo-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

From readers:

Critical Juncture in the Fight Against Persecution of Iggy and Alfredo—Arrested at 2014 Chicago Protest Against Murders by Police

July 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

After two and a half years of totally unjust legal persecution and prosecution, the case of two people arrested in Chicago at one of the earliest national days of demonstrations against the police murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner is coming to a crucial juncture. The two defendants—David “Iggy Flow” Rucker, who is well known for his association with the Revolution Club in Chicago, and Alfredo Reyes—have been dragged to court on an almost monthly basis since they were first arrested in December 2014 and charged with felonies for political protest.

Think about what has happened in that time. One after another, police who murdered people in cold blood have either not been indicted in the first place or allowed to walk free. In cases where there is video evidence of murder by police for the whole world to see, the outcome has been no different. We cannot sit by while they railroad people who were among those who righteously went into the streets against these police murders and as a result have been targeted for punishment. This persecution is intended to send a message beyond the two defendants—especially to Black and Brown young men: “You will pay a heavy price for standing up and speaking out.” All those who have been part of the outpourings of protest against police murder and brutality; all those who have come to see how racist and brutal and lying the Chicago Police Department is through the protests around the murder of Laquan McDonald; all those who refuse to allow the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests against police murder to be criminalized—YOU NEED TO SPEAK OUT.

Demand the charges be dropped against Iggy and Alfredo. Come out on Tuesday, July 25. Rally at 8:30 am outside Cook County Courthouse, 2650 S. California. Then come to courtroom 206 at 9:30 am for the hearing. Let everyone know about this case.

Iggy and Alfredo both face felony charges that carry up to seven years in prison. The charges and the ongoing prosecution are outrageous. What in fact happened was that a phalanx of police charged into a demonstration outside of a Nordstrom store on Chicago’s “Magnificent Mile” in the midst of the Christmas shopping season. A “die-in” had taken place inside the store, and a number of people were arrested (charges were later dropped). Outside there was a peaceful protest on the sidewalk until police attacked. They grabbed two young people, Iggy and Alfredo, who had been outside the whole time and piled on them! Their bail was set at $75,000 each. And since their release from custody, they have been confined to the state of Illinois the whole time unless they get special permission from a judge to travel.

Their lawyers, Joey Mogul and Molly Armour, have been tenacious in their efforts to get discovery from the city and the Chicago Police Department. In January 2017, the lawyers filed a major motion for supplemental discovery in an effort to get surveillance videos, photos, and memos regarding the defendants and groups connected to the December 2014 protest. They also requested information gathered by police cell-site simulators (Stingray devices). Stingray devices give the police the ability to monitor all cell phone traffic. Chicago police own such devices and are being sued for using them during protests.

The defense attorneys’ motion noted that previous materials received during discovery have been redacted (sections blacked out), and they are requesting these be un-redacted. They also requested information about whether any evidence in the government’s possession was obtained by confidential sources and asked for any and all surveillance photos and any internal police documents regarding the defendants. They sought documents authorizing the monitoring of the defendants and organizations they are connected to as well as any and all documents about the particular protest.

The city responded to this motion with a “motion to quash,” arguing there was no way they would release all this information because they claimed it was not necessary to do so.

At a hearing in June, the judge heard oral arguments about this motion. The lawyer for the city kept stonewalling, repeating that this is a “fishing expedition” and “over-broad.” He tried to claim that this is a simple case and the only issue is whether the defendants “assaulted” a police officer.

The lawyers for the defendants countered the prosecution argument vigorously. Supporters sitting in the courtroom reported that the lawyers argued that this was not a simple case but, in fact, their clients were exercising their First Amendment rights to protest. And they raised that even from the discovery they received so far, it was clear that the CPD was monitoring the protest and had informed the officers present that it was an “anti-police protest,” when in fact it was an anti-police brutality protest. They argued that the surveillance materials they were requesting were essential to their ability to defend their clients. At one point, one of the lawyers pointed out that in a previous political trial, when hundreds of people were arrested at a demonstration opposing the start of the Iraq War, they learned through discovery that even her law firm was under surveillance.

The judge set July 25 for ruling on whether or not the city is compelled to provide the materials requested in the defense attorneys’ motions. This is a critical juncture in the case.

Send statements in support of Iggy and Alfredo to revclub.chi@gmail.com

Come out Tuesday, July 25, Cook County Courthouse, 2650 S. California Ave.

Rally at 8:30 am

Hearing at 9:30 am in Courtroom 206

Call to demand that charges against Iggy and Alfredo be dropped:

Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly M Foxx (312) 603-1880

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/500/revolution-books-fund-campaign-extended-to-august-2-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Together We Can Win the Revolution Books Fund Drive

$25,000 By August 2^nd

Updated July 23, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

You, and we, have an opportunity and a responsibility to raise the funds, so that Revolution Books not only survives, but thrives at a moment when it is needed as never before. It is a time to donate generously.

There is no place else, none that plays the role that Revolution Books does. If you have spent any time at RB you experienced what we say about the store: that people come to Revolution Books from all over the world and around the corner—from the projects to the brownstones of Harlem—to find the books and the deep engagement with each other about why the world is the way it is and the possibility of a radically different way the world could be. How much does that matter at a moment when the Trump/Pence fascist regime threatens the seven billion people on the planet, and the planet itself?

Every dollar you donate to Revolution Books opens up possibility: for children to discover books with humane values, for young people to grapple with the big questions of our time, for people of all ages and nationalities from ex-prisoners to college professors—to know, grapple with, and be a part of changing the world. This can be life changing. But it only happens with your financial support.

Curiosity about everything, discovery of different cultures, learning of lives of peoples hidden from view, and the stories of history suppressed course through Revolution Books. Here you feel the vibe of certitude about the potential for a better world and a deep critique and intolerance for the unnecessary suffering of people. Authors, artists, and customers comment that programs or just hanging out here is different, richer—an engagement filled with a thirst for what is true.

This vitality stems from the breakthrough in revolutionary theory that is the new communism developed by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian. Most of all this is a more scientific method and approach to understanding the world as it actually is. The passion for changing the world at RB comes from his vision and the strategy for an actual revolution and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation.

More than a bookstore, Revolution Books is the political, intellectual, and cultural center of a movement for revolution. Important Books. Pulitzer and Grammy award winners mixing it up with youth and ex-prisoners. Scholars and writers engaging with spokesperson Andy Zee and other revolutionary thinkers and fighters. RB is a place of radical and revolutionary ferment. A place that hosts a culture of revolt against a revolting culture.

FOR ALL OF THIS, YOUR SUPPORT IS ESSENTIAL. YOUR CONTRIBUTION MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR THE NEW REVOLUTION BOOKS IN HARLEM TO BE VIABLE AND THRIVE.

This can't happen on the sale of books alone, especially when so many still don't know about the new RB in Harlem. Your contribution this year will go to a vibrant promotion campaign so that many more people learn about and make RB a destination. This is crucial to getting the store on a sustainable path.

RB has an important curated collection of thousands of books... but more titles are needed to serve the wide scope of our global mission and as part of making RB viable.

Without you, RB cannot meet the needs of today. But with your generous donation, Revolution Books will meet that need with the books, the engagement, and the understanding to forge a culture, a people, and a movement for a whole new world.

TOGETHER, WE CAN WIN THE REVOLUTION BOOKS FUND DRIVE—
$25,000 BY AUGUST 2

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/defend-the-claremont-mckenna-college-students-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Letter from a reader

Defend the Claremont McKenna College Students

Students who shut down a fascist speaker are harshly punished

July 25, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Three students have been suspended for a year and two others suspended for a semester by Claremont McKenna College (CMC) for staging a non-violent protest and blocking the entrance where white supremacist, fascist Heather Mac Donald was scheduled to speak last April.  (See “Cheers to Claremont Colleges Students: White Supremacist Fascist Shut Down at Claremont McKenna College,” April 11, 2017, Revolution newspaper @revcom.us).  Two other students have been placed on probation.  The College, as of this time, has not named the students.  Four of the students were seniors and had their degrees revoked pending completion of the suspensions, which will affect their ability to compete for jobs that require a college degree.  Those who are not seniors face the loss of financial aid, which could leave them unable to complete their degree programs.

Further, the college, which is 40 miles east of Los Angeles and is one of the seven affiliated Claremont Colleges, turned over “evidence” to the other colleges of involvement in the protest by students at the other campuses, and CMC has banned four of those students from “non-academic” activities on its grounds.

CMC, which is known mainly as a school of business and economics, is by far the most conservative of all the campuses at the Claremont Colleges, with Scripps College and Pitzer College being known as some of the most progressive colleges in the county.

Nana Gyamfi, an attorney for the students said, “The students were being held up as, ‘this is how we’ll whip you at the whipping post if you dare to speak up.’”  Clearly this is a signal from the administration to other students in order to shut them up and shut them down.

These outrageous actions by the CMC administration were meted out at a time when the students and faculty were on summer break, which means the campus community is unable to respond immediately to these fucked-up, retribution actions by the college.

Before the students and faculty left for summer break in May nearly 800 signed an open letter to college officials expressing concern over the “criminalization” of the students who participated in the protest.

Mac Donald was scheduled to speak on April 6 when over 200 student protesters surrounded the entrances to the building where she was going to speak.  In a Facebook post the protest organizers said, “We CANNOT and WILL NOT allow fascism to have a platform... To protect the current police and prison system means that you are maintaining the racist system which constantly murders and dehumanizes people of color.”

We need many, many more actions like this from students across the country and we can’t allow these college administrations to put a choke hold on any campus movement to stop fascism.

This was clearly laid out by Raymond Lotta in a speech he gave at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) earlier this year, “It IS Fascism—and the University Must Be a Zone of Resistance.”  (See Revolution newspaper, January 21, 2017, @revcom.us)  After running down what is fascism and the fascist program of the Trump/Pence regime, Lotta said, “... if students decide to engage in direct nonviolent action and take over buildings, they need the encouragement and involvement of their professors. We are fighting fascism that is aiming to consolidate itself.”

Lotta called for the campuses to “be turned into a zone(s) of resistance. Not sealed off from but opening into society—setting an example and inspiring others to act—and joining with others in mass resistance. People cannot fall into—and it behooves everyone to follow out—the logic of ‘preserving’ what we have or ‘my work.’ That is the politically and morally unacceptable logic of turning inward and turning your back on what is demanded of us at this perilous time. It is the logic, whatever one’s intentions, of complicity, of going along with horrors you never imagined possible but helped make possible—because you didn’t raise your head and you didn’t raise your voice when the costs were high.”

The students at CMC must be defended and we need to demand that these outrageous punishments be dropped and that the other Claremont colleges do not punish any of their students who were involved in this righteous action against a fascist.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/trump-to-boy-scouts-become-hitler-er-trump-youth-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Trump to Boy Scouts: Become Hitler ... er, Trump Youth!

July 26, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On Monday night Donald Trump spoke to some 40,000 gathered at the 2017 Boy Scouts of America National Scout Jamboree in Glen Jean, West Virginia. He didn’t bother with the tradition of a non-partisan sticking to “Scouting values,” hard work, community service and the like. No, he issued a full-throated recruiting call for the crowd of largely 12- to 18-year olds to become Hitler, er, Trump youth.

Who did Trump put forward as a role model for these impressionable youth? The open segregationist William Levitt! In a lengthy ode, Trump called him “an unbelievable success,” someone who made a “tremendous amount of money,” and had a “very interesting life.” Levitt’s claim to infamy was building Levittown in 1947, a housing development on Long Island and model of post-World War 2 expansion of suburbanization and homeownership—for white people! Levitt’s homes could not be “used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race,’’ his contracts stated. Even after courts struck this naked racism down and the civil rights movement emerged, Levitt continued to fight for segregation. In 1990, Levittown remained over 97 percent white! 

Trump used the Scout oath “to do your best and to do your duty to God and your country,” as he put it, as a call for tearing down the separation of church and state and imposing Christian theocratic fundamentalism throughout society: “under the Trump administration, you’ll be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again when you go shopping, believe me,” repeating Christian Fascist propaganda that Christians are being suppressed: “They’ve been downplaying that little beautiful phrase… But the words ‘duty,’ ‘country’ and ‘God’ are beautiful words… you’re pledging to be a great American patriot.”

Trump repeatedly attacked the bourgeois media: “The fake media will say, ‘President Trump spoke’—you know what is—‘President Trump spoke before a small crowd of Boy Scouts today.’ That’s some—that is some crowd. Fake media. Fake news.” He was training the Scouts to disbelieve and reject any source contradicting his ideological indoctrination, and to rely on him and him alone, as the only voice of truth. 

Trump called the Boy Scouts “very special people. You’re special in the lives of America. You’re special to me.” He hailed them as “people of character” who “uphold the sacred values of our nation” and put “America first.” Trump’s invocation of Scouts as special—the “real Americans”—carried with it the message that others, those who fall outside this special circle, don’t deserve to have their interests and humanity respected.

As for enemies, Trump railed against his establishment opponents, and called on the Scouts to come to his aid. Washington wasn’t just a swamp, it should be called a “cesspool” or “sewer.” He went on, “Scout law says, a Scout is trustworthy, loyal—we could use some more loyalty. I will tell that you that.” This was a recruiting call for fascist youth stormtroopers!

This didn’t just harken back to the days of Hitler, it was an actual parallel to the organizing of the Hitler Youth. This paramilitary arm of the Nazi Party became the sole and official organization for youth 14-18. Membership, which grew to eight million by 1940, was mandatory for “Aryan” youth (with a separate young women’s organization—the “League of German Girls”). The Hitler Youth were mobilized to violently crush dissent and opposition to the Nazis, on the streets and in the schools. Political opponents, Jews, non-conformists, and others were beaten; members spied on school and church classrooms, and a social atmosphere of conformity, intimidation and terror was fostered. The Hitler Youth emphasized physical fitness and military training—preparing young Germans for war.

Trump’s speech generated an outpouring of protest from within the Boy Scout community (see sidebar). One parent wrote, “What I was angry about was that this president took it as an opportunity to criticize others, demean others and not really speak to the concerns of 12- to 17-year-old kids who are looking for direction in life.”

Trump called Scouting a life-changing/shaping experience, and he was aiming to give these and millions of other youth a “direction in life”—a fascist direction, enlisting them in carrying out towering crimes against humanity. This must be stopped before it happens! 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/john-mccain-war-criminal-for-u-s-imperialism-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

John McCain: War Criminal for U.S. Imperialism

July 26, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

You can tell what kind of system U. S. imperialism is by whom they put forward as “heroes.” Last week Republican senator John McCain was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, and everyone from the fascist Donald Trump to “liberals” like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to the major news networks hailed him as a “hero.”

On Tuesday of this week, McCain flew to Washington, DC, to record a decisive “yes” vote in order to continue with the efforts to repeal Obamacare and the ramming through of a fascist health care plan that means suffering and death for millions. As McCain entered the Senate, he received a standing ovation from Democrats and Republicans alike.

But John McCain is a war criminal. He was a Navy pilot in 1967 as part of a bombing campaign called “Rolling Thunder” that cowardly rained death and destruction on the tiny country of Vietnam that was fighting for its independence from U.S. imperialism. Operation “Rolling Thunder” lasted for almost four years.

As we wrote in a previous article, “Vietnam Legacy: Heroes and Criminals”:

It was the most intense air war in world history. Seven million tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos—three times as many as had been dropped in all of World War 2. Huge parts of Indochina were "carpet bombed"—killing Vietnamese civilians and liberation fighters, ruining valuable farmland and leaving the countryside pockmarked with 21 million bomb craters.

The U.S. planes dropped anti-personnel bombs (containing thousands of flesh-shredding darts), white phosphorus incendiary bombs, huge "daisy cutter" bombs that turned jungle into flattened football fields, and jellied gasoline bombs called napalm. The notorious chemical Agent Orange was sprayed over tens of millions of acres—poisoning crops, forests and human beings in the strongholds of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front. In Washington, strategists of the air war came up with a slogan, "Bomb them back to the Stone Age." U.S. bomber pilots carried out 150,000 attacks on North Vietnam. In 1968, the C.I.A., in a secret report, acknowledged that 90,000 people were killed in these attacks, 72,000 of them civilians. McCain received the "Air Medal," the "Legion of Merit," and several other awards for his participation in mass murder....

In October 1967, John McCain was shot down during a bombing raid over the capital city of Hanoi. He had carried out 23 bombing missions. McCain was captured, his wounds were treated, and he was held in a Vietnamese prison with other captured pilots. Five years later, as the defeated U.S. withdrew from Vietnam, these prisoners were released.

What kind of system celebrates someone like this as a respected “hero and “wise man”? A system that needs to be overthrown at the soonest possible time. 

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/trump-youngstown-fascist-attacks-on-immigrants-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Trump Channels Hitler in Youngstown:
Fascist Attacks on Immigrants

July 27, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Anyone who doesn’t think that the Trump/Pence regime is fascist and could carry out genocidal crimes needs to come to grips with the speech Trump gave on July 25 in Youngstown, Ohio—especially what he said about immigrants:

...foreign criminal gangs that have brought illegal drugs, violence, horrible bloodshed to peaceful neighborhoods all across our country.... The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people, these beautiful, beautiful innocent young people, will find no safe haven anywhere in our country. And you’ve seen some of these stories about some of these animals....

They don’t want to use guns because it’s too fast and it’s not painful enough. So they’ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15, and others, and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die.

“Predators”... “criminal aliens who ... prey on innocent young people”... “animals”... These venomous words are aimed at vilifying and criminalizing all 11 million undocumented immigrants—and, by implication, casting suspicion on millions more non-white legal immigrants and on all Latinos, including those who were born in the U.S. These immigrants are human beings whose backbreaking labor has been the source of vast profits for U.S. capitalism. People whose only “crime” is seeking shelter from the horrors this same capitalist-imperialist system has visited upon their homelands—Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and many other countries across the world.

Trump openly called for lawless brutality in carrying out a “crackdown” on immigrants and sanctuary cities: “...we’re not doing it in a politically correct fashion. We’re doing it rough.... Our guys are rougher than their guys.... Our people are tougher and stronger and meaner and smarter than the gangs.”

The Immigration and Custom Enforcement agency (ICE) is planning raids across the country that target undocumented 16- and 17-year-olds accused of having gang ties. According to Reuters, ICE is rounding up and possibly deporting these youths based on whether they have tattoos, dress in “typical” gang clothing, or even just frequent areas with gangs. The National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles says, “We have seen babies labeled as potential gang members.”

The Trump/Pence regime is also reportedly moving toward ending DACA, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival, which had given temporary deportation relief to people who had been brought to the U.S. without documents as young children. The cancellation of DACA would subject nearly two million people—whose personal information is in the hands of the government—to deportation.

First They Came for the Immigrants...

Trump’s lies draw on the racism and white supremacy deeply baked into American society, culture, and history. Yet how is Trump’s demonization of immigrants fundamentally different than Hitler’s demonization of the Jews (and others)? In the wake of Trump’ speeches to the Boy Scouts and now at Youngstown, more people and commentators are making this comparison. Now is the time to act on this understanding.

Everyone needs to face the fact that fascism is happening here: Trump/Pence is a fascist regime which is, as Trump made clear at Youngstown, aggressively pushing forward as fast as it can to carry out its agenda and consolidate its rule.

We cannot allow this fascist regime to pick off one group after another. We need to stand with all who are being targeted. Today, that means massively opposing ALL attacks on immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ, and others.

All this underscores the urgency, as Refuse Fascism says, of fighting for a new stage of resistance—squarely focused on one central objective: driving the Trump/Pence fascist regime from power before it can solidify its power and carry out its whole nightmarish agenda.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/basics-3-25-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

July 27, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

We also need to be aware of the positive—and in significant ways “subversive of the system”—potential of the assertion of gay “identity” and gay rights, even with the very real contradictions in this, including the narrowing tendencies of “identity politics” as well as conservatizing influences related to traditional marriage, and, for that matter, the campaign to be allowed to be part of the imperialist military while being openly gay. Even with all that, in its principal aspect this has, and can to an even greater degree have, a very positive, “subversive of the system” effect. This is a contradiction which, in the society overall, is “out of the closet.” It could be forced back into the closet, and underground, with not only the stronger assertion of the kind of fascist movement that is being supported and fostered by powerful ruling class forces in this period, but with the actual assumption of a fascist form of bourgeois dictatorship. But the struggle against the oppression of gay people is not going to be easily suppressed. We should understand the potential of this as well, and the need to relate correctly to this, to foster the further development of its positive potential and its contribution to the movement for revolution.

Bob Avakian, BAsics, 3:25

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/stand-with-the-stonewall-4-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

July 29, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Received by revcom.us:

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/479/reality-check-the-generals-are-trumps-enforcers-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Reality Check:

The Generals Are Not the "Grown Ups" Who Will Check Trump; They Are His Enforcers

Updated July 29, 2017 (originally posted February 23, 2017) | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On July 28, Trump appointed Retired General John Kelly as the new White House Chief of Staff to replace Reince Priebus. As head of the American military’s Southern Command starting in 2012, Kelly advocated keeping the U.S. torture camp at Guantánamo open, and declared of the prisoners, “There are no innocent men down there.” Picked by Trump to head Homeland Security, Kelly has overseen the ramping up of immigrant deportations—more than 400 people each day, ripped away from the families, friends, and jobs. And he’s been in charge of enforcing Trump’s Muslim ban. Kelly said if Congress doesn’t like how Homeland Security is carrying out laws, they should “change the laws [or] shut up.” In light of this four-star general now being named to a key position in the Trump White House, we are reposting this Reality Check:

The Trump/Pence regime has loaded up its cabinet with generals. Some now claim these generals will be a “voice of reason” within the regime—the “grown-ups” who can be a check on Trump’s wilder ambitions.

Just the opposite. They are a critical piece of the juggernaut, essential to Trump’s wildest ambitions.

First: they are all proven cold-blooded war criminals. They all have records of violently enforcing the needs of the U.S. empire—from Vietnam to Iraq and beyond.

Second: The fascist agenda of the Trump/Pence regime requires a radical, violent restructuring of U.S. society, and a ferocious re-assertion of “America First” here and around the world. Trump’s incorporation of the generals strengthens his ability to do that.

Third: There is the idea that the nuclear codes are in sane hands. No they are not. These generals serve at the pleasure of Trump. And only one person can legally use these codes: Donald Trump.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/youngstown-a-model-for-us-all-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

From RefuseFascism.org

A Model For Us All: Dragged Out For Demanding Trump and Pence Must Go!

By Samantha Goldman | July 25, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On July 25th Trump held a fascist rally in Youngstown, Ohio. Several courageous individuals disrupted inside during the rally, parting the sea of red-hat-wearing thugs and puncturing through the xenophobia and racism. Three individuals held banners that read “Trump and Pence Must Go! Refusefascism.org” and chanted, “Humanity First! NOT America First!.”

Brave resister raises banner "Trump/Pence must go" at July 25 Trump rally in Youngstown.

One of the participants in this action is an organizer with Refuse Fascism in Cleveland and the other two are members of Junto Unsilenced, a Columbus, OH based group that is committed to “fighting against the mendacity and fascism that has pervaded our government.” One of the men, John, had the banner grabbed several times by modern-day Brown Shirts and was dragged out by police. He was unwavering and continued to stand up and proudly hold the banner. Video of his heroism went viral, providing hope and inspiration to thousands, and was picked up by many media sources putting the demand that Trump and Pence Must Go and refusefascism.org to millions.

I contacted John the next day during my car ride back from protesting Trump in Youngstown, since I wasn’t able to meet him while I was there. I wanted him to know how important what he did was, that he was a hero, and also to discuss how we can spread this type of determined resistance as part of building a movement to drive out the Trump/Pence regime.

I think we have a lot to learn from John. For John, the act of standing up to this xenophobic, racist, fascist and all his shock troops was not a complex decision nor does he see it as a great sacrifice but something that he felt compelled to do for all of humanity.

He had heard about the Trump Rally and the local plans of the Democratic club counter-protest but, according to John, he “wanted to do something more productive.” Rallying around healthcare didn’t feel commensurate to what is needed when Trump whips up his fascist base six blocks away. So he started thinking about what else he could do to bring a “pro-humanity” message to this Trump rally. Then on Saturday he met Refuse Fascism organizers who traveled to Columbus to protest Vice President Mike Pence. They brainstormed about what they could do to intervene on the scale that the times call for. That’s when the idea of and plans for disrupting were set into motion.

John shared with me that Junto Unsilenced regularly unites with others to ensure emergency responses when fascists have a public platform, so joining with Refuse Fascism to do this wasn’t out of the ordinary. He has done sit-ins in a senator’s office and put his body on the line before. That said, he hadn’t done anything quite like this–going in the middle of a Trump rally, chanting and unfurling a banner. When we were discussing how he decided to go in he replied, “I had never had the chance to get that close before. We are always scheduling rapid response and this seemed like the next step.” I asked him what inspired him. He was quick to give a one word reply “ADAPT” (a national disability rights advocacy organization that organizes direct actions). John explained that seeing, “people in wheelchairs putting their body on the line for their lives and the lives of others being carried out for refusing to leave was inspiring.”

The outrage and disbelief that John feels towards the Trump regime felt close, even though we were now miles apart. “Trump is a moron. We shouldn’t have a leader that is so ignorant. He is less educated than an 11-year-old. It is so outrageous he is doing campaign rallies. Completely unprecedented.” To be honest, John didn’t read the banner before he stuck it down his pants. He doesn’t “make those kind of things” and trusted that the message would be “anti-fascist, anti-Trump, and pro-humanity.”

He firmly believes that Trump and Pence must go: “It’s all I think, it’s all we should think.” John started thinking about impeachment proceedings the minute Trump was elected and continues to believe that removing him from power is very possible. When I asked him what went through his mind, how he didn’t give up or bend to those grabbing the banner or dragging him, he stated, “I knew what they were going to do. Try to do. I made up my mind. I was going to keep holding it up.”

In John’s voice there was pride and joy and a little exhaustion. He laughed a little when thinking about how far this has spread but steered the conversation away from his personal feelings. When I asked him about the chant, sharing how powerful I thought it was, that it broke through the toxic chauvinism and summed up so clearly what we are fighting for, he said, “Putting humanity first is the cornerstone of what my group is doing. This is a positive thing. I am pro-humanity and against all of his crap. I’m for equality, Black lives matter, and nobody being excluded. What Trump is doing is disgusting.”

John is a humble man, a father who works from home. He doesn’t see himself as the hero I do. Throughout our conversation he mentioned his fellow Junto Unsilenced member and the tremendous courage and determination she has. He believes he is in a unique position to travel and protest because of his flexible work schedule and his co-parenting relationship with his ex. He understands that not everybody can drop everything on a minute’s notice and take the risks he has, but hopes more will. John believes everybody has a role to play even if you can only make phone calls or share things on Facebook. Even to start there it is a good thing. When we ended the phone call he was already thinking ahead of what is next and will be continuing to be collaborating with those in Refuse Fascism Cleveland in terms of spreading and acting on the demand Trump and Pence Must Go.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/the-legacy-of-lynching-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Check It Out

The Legacy of Lynching: Confronting Racial Terror in America

Brooklyn Museum, Now through September 3

July 28, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

The Legacy of Lynching: Confronting Racial Terror in America opened this week at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City, and will run through September 3. The exhibition is a collaboration between the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), Brooklyn Museum, and Google. The EJI has done groundbreaking research into the history of racial terror lynchings and mass incarceration in the U.S. and has fought to free wrongly convicted prisoners.

According to the EJI website,

EJI’s multi-year investigation into lynching in 12 Southern states during the period between Reconstruction and World War II documented more than 4000 racial terror lynchings of African Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950—at least 800 more lynchings of black people in these states than previously reported in the most comprehensive work done on lynching to date.

In 2017, EJI supplemented this research by documenting racial terror lynchings outside the South, and found these acts of violence were most common in eight states: Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia.

An interactive map in the Brooklyn Museum exhibition details the scope of these atrocities. (The map is also on the EJI website.)

The powerful exhibition features short films with oral histories by descendants of Black people who were lynched. These are heartbreaking. Through their stories, you get a deep sense of how the monstrous crime of lynching has immeasurably affected not only the immediate families of those who died at the hands of white mobs, but of the impact lynching has had on the whole Black community for generations—“embedded terror” in the words of one descendant of a lynched relative.

Mass incarceration is another crime of this system that is highlighted in the exhibition. There’s a film about Anthony Ray Hinton, who spent 30 years on death row in Alabama for a crime he didn’t commit. Hinton relates what the white detectives said to him upon his arrest:

I don’t care whether you did it or didn’t do it. But I’m going to make sure you’ll be found guilty of it (murder). And there’s five things that are going to convict you. Number one, you’re Black. Number two, a white man is going to say you shot him. Whether you shot him or not, I don’t care. Number three, you’re going to have a white prosecutor. Number four, you’re going to have a white judge. And number five, more than likely you’re going to have an all-white jury. You know what that spell? Conviction, conviction, conviction, conviction, conviction.

The documentary strongly makes the point that the death penalty is an extension of lynching.

In an article in ARTnews magazine, EJI founder and and Executive Director Bryan Stevenson explained, “Imagery is another means of conveying history, but ... efforts were made to explicitly avoid graphic photographs that objectify victims over telling stories of ‘society’s complicity in tolerating terror.’”

Among the artworks in the exhibit are a framed fire hose by Theaster Gates recalling those used against civil rights demonstrators; panels by Jacob Lawrence, which were painted as an extension of his Great Migration series that portrays Black people who fled the horrors of the South and moved North only to find oppression in a different form; and a series of black painted laser-cut steel silhouettes by Kara Walker that includes a burning African village, lynching trees, and a man holding a whip. Besides these, there are works by at least 15 other artists.

The Brooklyn Museum’s web page notes:

After slavery was formally abolished, in 1865, racial terror lynching emerged in the late nineteenth century, and continued until about the middle of the twentieth century, as a vicious tool of racial control, to reestablish white supremacy and suppress black civil rights. The aftereffects are still with us today—from issues of mass incarceration to disproportionate sentencing of people of color....

Throughout the Brooklyn Museum’s history, our exhibitions and public programs have confronted difficult and urgent issues because we believe that great art and courageous conversations contribute to a more just, civic, and empathetic world.

The discourse opened up by this exhibit is more urgent than ever in today’s climate under the fascist Trump regime. If you’re in the New York City area, definitely make plans to experience this extraordinary exhibit.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/when-it-comes-to-fascist-repression-trump-and-sessions-on-same-page-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

When It Comes to Fascist Repression—Trump and Sessions on the Same Page

July 28, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Over the last week, Trump sent out multiple tweets attacking his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and there has been constant speculation in the media over whether Trump will fire Sessions or if he will resign. At the same time, Sessions has blazed on, continuing the Trump/Pence regime’s remaking of society and attempt at consolidating a fascist America.

Stepping Up Attacks on Sanctuary Cities and War on Immigrants

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice headed by Sessions announced a new policy depriving “sanctuary cities” of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants, unless they are in lockstep with the Trump/Pence regime’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. This includes the requirement that local law enforcement must allow ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents access to their jails to grill people who are detained and who aren’t able to produce documents showing legal status. Cities and states must also have their law enforcement agencies notify ICE at least 48 hours before releasing any incarcerated undocumented immigrants, if ICE had expressed interest in detaining them. The new Justice Dept. policy also requires that local jurisdictions can’t prohibit their employees from handing over information about an individual’s immigration status to the federal government.

These are among the steps that the Trump/Pence regime has been threatening as part of their ramping up of their assaults on immigrants—and now they are moving ahead to put those policies into effect. And more are in the works.

When Sessions announced this new policy, he said, “So-called ‘sanctuary’ policies make all of us less safe because they intentionally undermine our laws and protect illegal aliens who have committed crimes.” This is part of the Trump/Pence regime’s whipping up a poisonous climate of demonization and scapegoating of all immigrants as “criminals” and “animals” who “make us less safe”—in order to justify the fascist anti-immigrant offensive. This is aimed at criminalizing 11 million undocumented people in this country—and millions of others who are deemed “suspicious” because of the color of their skin, the way they speak, etc.

Sessions stepped up the demonization of immigrants as “criminals” with his July 27 trip to El Salvador to talk to government officials there about how to go after the MS-13 and other gangs. The next day, Trump himself gave a speech in Long Island in which MS-13 was a big focus. Again, all this talk about MS-13 (a violent criminal gang, many of whose members are immigrant youth, some of whom are forced to join) is a deliberate move by the fascists in power to create a pretext to demonize and target a whole section of society, millions of people, as “criminals” who deserve to be ostracized, hunted down, penned in, kicked out, and more. The immigrants who are being terrorized in this way are human beings whose only “crime” is to seek to escape the dislocation, poverty and reactionary violence that the U.S. imperialists have brought to their homelands in Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and many other countries across the planet.

Seizing Assets from People Not Even Charged with Crimes

Another repressive step Sessions took was to strengthen federal control over civil forfeiture—a legal process in which law enforcement officers seize assets (like cars and cash) from people who are alleged to be involved in illegal activity—even if they have not been actually charged with any crime. Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia had placed some restrictions on these civil forfeitures. Moving against these changes, Sessions announced that the assets seized through civil forfeitures can now be turned over to the federal government—bypassing state regulations on these forfeitures. The federal government will then pool the proceeds and return 80 percent of the amount gained to the local and state police.

Intensifying Assaults on LGBTQ Rights

Early in July, Sessions spoke behind closed doors to the Alliance Defending Freedom [ADF], the largest Christian fascist law firm in the U.S., and pledged the backing of the Justice Dept. for the ADF agenda of imposing Christian fascist ideology on state and federal laws and on every aspect of society. Then, on the same day that Trump tweeted that transgendered people would be banned from the U.S. military, Sessions’s Justice Department filed court papers in an important court case relating to LGBT rights. They pushed the outrageous claim that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a major federal civil rights law, does not protect employees from workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation.

This goes against a long-time federal policy. And while the particular case that the Justice Dept. intervened in has to do with employment law, if Sessions and the regime are able to get their way here, it has much wider implications. The Washington Post points out, for example, that Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendment, relating to discrimination in education, is “generally interpreted in sync with ruling on the employment discrimination law.”

Trump and Sessions: On the Same Page on Fascist Repression

When Trump tweets and questions Sessions’s “loyalty,” and bullies others in his cabinet, he is intentionally raising the fascist bar even higher. One commentator on Fox Fascist “News” said this is Trump “lighting a fire under Sessions.”

During his trip to El Salvador, when asked by a Fox talking head about the Trump tweets, Sessions bragged about how there has been a dramatic increase in criminal prosecutions across the U.S. What this translates into actually is that even more people, disproportionately Black and Latino, are being funneled into prisons and that the war against millions of non-white immigrants is being further revved up.

Sessions and Trump are on exactly the same page when it comes to anti-immigrant attacks and other aspects of the fascist agenda on stepping up repression. As the Call to Action from Refuse Fascism says:

Fascism has direction and momentum. Dissent is piece by piece criminalized. The truth is bludgeoned. Group after group is demonized and targeted along a trajectory that leads to real horrors. All of this has already begun under the Trump regime. History has shown that fascism must be stopped before it becomes too late.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/trump-taps-christian-fascist-crusader-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Trump Taps Christian Fascist Crusader for Office of International Religious Freedom

July 28, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has been chosen by the Trump/Pence regime to be ambassador at large for the Office of International Religious Freedom. Under the State Department, the OIRF “promotes religious freedom as a core objective of U.S. foreign policy.”

Brownback has been a leading figure in the Christian fascist movement for decades. Two core pillars of this movement are the patriarchal enslavement of women and the imposition of theocratic, biblical literalism on society. Now he’s being tapped to be an international mouthpiece for the Christian religious “freedom” of the Trump/Pence regime to crusade and plunder the world wrapped in the Bible taken literally (as interpreted by them) and the American flag.

Brownback is driven by a vision of a theocracy led by the “will of Christ alone.” He spent 15 years in the U.S. Senate promoting anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage legislation and other religious bigotry, opposing anti-bullying laws, and attacking secular public schools under the guise of promoting school vouchers. In 2006, Brownback blocked the confirmation of a federal judicial nominee because she had attended a same-sex commitment ceremony. At the same time, Koch Industries was Brownback’s chief campaign donor when he ran for governor of Kansas in 2010 principally because of his promotion of unrestrained free-market capitalism, including tax cuts for businesses and elimination of state jobs.

As governor, Brownback signed three anti-abortion bills the first year, one of them while standing in front of giant pictures of “fetal citizens,” as he calls them. “I see it [abortion] as the lead moral issue of our day, just like slavery was the lead moral issue 150 years ago.” He signed the “Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act,” which deliberately used false, unscientific, and inflammatory language to ban the safest and most commonly used method for abortions in the second trimester. And he issued an executive order protecting the “religious freedom” of clergy and organizations that opposed same-sex marriage. He rescinded an executive order by his predecessor protecting LGBTQ people from being fired because of their sexual orientation. And in 2016, he signed a law that prevented Kansas colleges and universities from requiring religiously affiliated clubs to not discriminate in their membership.

Brownback is an “evolution denier” who wants the anti-scientific “theory” of intelligent design—the latest form of creationism—to be taught in the classrooms to counter evolutionary theory.¹

Persecution of any person for religious beliefs should be opposed—but the Office of International Religious Freedom is not about that. It is a propaganda weapon in the political and military arsenal of U.S. capitalism-imperialism, with “religious freedom” used as a club for U.S. objectives. The Trump/Pence regime has declared “international religious freedom” a priority—with Vice-President Mike Pence pointing specifically to violence against Christians.

Brownback claims that more Christians have been persecuted during the last 10 or 20 years than throughout human history, and that Christianity is fighting a worldwide war against secularists and Muslims. This paradigm of a global clash of civilizations between Christianity and Islam underlies the Trump/Pence fascist regime’s contention that the billions of people in the nations ravaged by the U.S. and other imperialist powers pose a mortal threat to Christian civilization. And where reactionary Islamic Jihad has taken root in some of those places—in the soil and environment created by imperialism—the Trump/Pence regime declares it must be crushed by overwhelming military force.

Every day brings more and more evidence that the Trump/Pence regime is on a march to consolidate fascism—with a major Christian fascist component—and wield it to serve the goal of “America First” and “Make America Great Again.” People need to confront the reality that each new outrage and crime by the Trump/Pence regime is part of a fascist strategy and program. And this understanding is the starting point for a movement that mobilizes millions and millions aimed at doing what only the masses of people can do—stop this fascist regime and drive it from power.

1. Ardea Skybreak breaks down how intelligent design is a form of creationism in her book, The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: Knowing What’s Real and Why It Matters.[back]

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/roger-waters-us-them-tour-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Beg, Borrow or Steal a Ticket to Roger Waters Us + Them Tour

July 29, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

OK, well don’t steal, but short of anything unethical or illegal try to get your hands on a ticket to this show. I haven’t been to a concert this good since Janis Joplin! And I wasn’t even high.

“Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls” (from “London Calling” by The Clash)—they were there at this show. Multi-generational, many ’60s people, mainly white and probably a lot of people from the suburbs. And, of course, tons of Pink Floyd fans. But this experience wasn’t just reliving the ’70s. The crowd was really in tune (sorry for the pun) with the love for humanity that pulsated from the stage leading up to a resounding, scorching musical and visual denunciation of Trump. The show lives up to its billing as an immersive sensory musical journey. The music and the visuals soar and fill the stadium, bringing to life the beauty of the planet/cosmos and people from all over the world. At the same time, it jars you with the contrast of children working in garbage piles, homeless sleeping on the street, drones blowing away villages. The show and the music summon people to resist: images of people protesting in the streets against immigrant- and woman-bashing, against police brutality and for Black Lives Matter. “The Wall,” the iconic song the entire arena sings, features children lining the stage dressed in orange jumpsuits which, halfway through, they strip off to reveal T-shirts that say RESIST! as they careen happily to the music.

The song “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” is 12 minutes, and a visual curtain wall runs the length of the arena flashing pictures of Trump as an egotistical baby tyrant, Trump in a KKK hood, Trump as Hitler. The giant painted pig floats around the stadium denouncing the military and Trump. The song ends as the words “TRUMP IS A PIG!” fill a screen couple of stories high the whole length of the arena. (This is also the message on the back of some of the official concert T-shirts.)

The amateur videos at YouTube like this one give a taste.

This tour is heading to Detroit, Cleveland, and the East Coast. If you are with Refuse Fascism or the revcoms, be outside if you can with huge visuals to take the message to this audience. It is a chance to reach people who are part of the millions who hate the direction of the country and who will be challenged by Roger Waters.

Roger Waters, in an interview with Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune, says, “This a bit more radical than ‘The Wall’ is, but it’s pointing in the same direction philosophically and politically. With the nincompoop president, we’re building a nation with walls. You can’t be a nation without walls? Yeah, you can. We haven’t arrived at the end of the story.... This is what you find, if you ever have the opportunity to travel the world. You discover what the show is about: We’re all the same. No matter what color or religion, we’re all in this together. This is a small, fragile place, we’re in rough waters and we can’t navigate it without doing it together.”

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/john-kelly-fascist-star-in-trump-pence-regime-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

Gen. John Kelly—a Fascist "Star" in the Trump/Pence Regime

July 29, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

When Trump named John Kelly as the new White House Chief of Staff on July 28, he called the retired Marine general a “star.” What has Kelly done to earn this high praise from the fascist-in-chief?

Kelly rose to the rank of general during the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. This was a war of empire based on U.S. lies about Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” and “liberating” the Iraqi people. In reality, the U.S. invaders killed thousands of civilians, and their war and occupation unleashed all kinds of reactionary forces and violence that led to staggering horrors for the people in Iraq—hundreds of thousands killed and millions forced to become refugees.

As head of the Southern Command from 2012 to 2016, in charge of U.S. military forces in Latin America and the Caribbean, Kelly was a staunch defender of the U.S. torture camp at Guantánamo. He upheld the “interrogation” of Guantánamo detainees and force feeding of prisoners on hunger strike—practices that international human rights organizations denounce as torture. Many of the nearly 800 Muslim men originally brought there were people who had been simply sold for bounty to the U.S. military, and only a handful of prisoners have ever been charged with anything. But Kelly declared, “There are no innocent men down there.”

Picked by Trump to head the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kelly was one of three generals and an admiral named to high-level positions in the Trump/Pence regime (James “Mad Dog” Mattis, Secretary of Defense; Mike Rogers, Director of the National Security Agency; Michael Flynn, National Security Advisor—who later resigned and was replaced by another general, H.R. McMasters). As we’ve said, “The fascist agenda of the Trump/Pence regime requires a radical, violent restructuring of U.S. society, and a ferocious re-assertion of ‘America First’ here and around the world. Trump’s incorporation of the generals strengthens his ability to do that.”

As DHS chief, Kelly signed the orders in February that began to put Trump’s call for “expedited” deportations of immigrants into actual practice in horrific ways. Millions have been put in the crosshairs of the immigration police--even people who have been accused of nothing more than a traffic violation, or people who have for years been regularly checking in with immigration officials. Whole communities are living in terror. Families are being ripped apart. Civil liberties are being shredded. Undocumented immigrants, immigrants and anyone who looks or sounds like an immigrant to Trump’s Gestapo, can be grabbed up at any time, for anything.  Since the Trump inauguration, over 400 people a day have been ripped away from their families, friends, and jobs.

When he headed up the Southern Command, Kelly described the flow of undocumented immigrants into the U.S. as an “existential threat”—when, in fact, it is the domination by U.S. imperialists that has been the cause of deep poverty, violent conflicts, and political repression causing millions to flee their homelands. As DHS leader, he pushed for Trump’s border wall, large increases in Border Patrol and immigration police, and other measures to further militarize the border.

Kelly has also enthusiastically championed Trump’s fascist Muslim ban. In an April speech, Kelly attacked those who, in his words, because of “some alleged event at an airport, in a courthouse, or at a border crossing ... assume the men and women of DHS are intentionally abusing innocent individuals while breaking or ignoring U.S. law or court orders.” What he dismissed as “some alleged event at an airport” refers to the devastating effects of Trump’s Muslim ban, which was intended to—and did—send shockwaves of terror around the world. The ban led to sudden detentions and closing of doors to immigrants, refugees, and travelers. It separated families. It cut off the trickle of desperate refugees. It demonized Muslims around the world, including people living in the U.S.

Kelly has been right in line with Trump in his fascist attacks on the media and on the rule of law. He claimed that outrageous incidents—like the arrest of a woman who was seized while appearing in court for a domestic violence case and then deported—were simply “partial or inaccurate media report[s].” He declared that if Congress didn’t like the way his DHS was doing things, they should “change the laws [or] shut up.”

Now this promoter of torture, mass immigrant round-ups, and a ban on a whole group of human beings has become the chief of staff for Trump. Commentators in the mainstream media, including those put forward as “critics” of Trump, are hoping that Kelly will bring some “stability” and “order” to the White House.

No! Why the fuck should we want a “stable” and “orderly” fascist regime?! What humanity urgently needs is for people in their millions to drive out the fascist Trump/Pence regime, before they can firm up their power and carry out even more monstrous crimes.

Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/501/trump-calls-for-more-freddie-grays-en.html

Revolution #501 July 24, 2017

From RefuseFascism.org

Trump Calls for More Freddie Grays – NO!

July 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

In April 2015, Baltimore police murdered Freddie Gray by torturing him, folding his thin body like a pretzel, dragging him down the street to a paddy wagon and bouncing his body against the steel walls of a police truck on what they call a “rough ride”. No cops were convicted for the murder of Freddie Gray.

July 28, Donald Trump, in a speech to a room full of laughing, cheering police on Long Island, New York: “When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddywagon, you just see them thrown in, rough. I said please don’t be too nice. Like when you put somebody into a car and you protect their head? ... I said you can take the hand away, OK?” Trump is issuing a fascist call for open police brutality against Black and Latino people with the full backing of the most powerful authority in the country. NO! This must not be allowed! No More Freddie Grays!