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Showing posts with label Anti Capitalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anti Capitalism. Show all posts
3/30/09
3/29/09
Meet the anarchists plotting to overthrow capitalism
Thursday lunch time at the City of London headquarters of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and at the stroke of one o'clock, 200 people arrive on the pavement outside. Some are wearing red nooses around their necks, others are parading around in top hats and City-boy pinstripes, a few are carrying placards that read, "Storm the banks". A pedal-powered sound system is cranked up and The Fall's anthem to grinding poverty, "F'oldin' Money", blares out across the street.
This is a flash-mob demonstration, mobilised through a Facebook event called "Give us our money back". It's a protest against the Government pouring billions of pounds into the banking industry and the ?16.9m pension pot awarded to the former RBS chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin. A man picks up a megaphone. "Congratulations, people," he says. "After the biggest bailout from the poor to the rich that this country has ever seen, this bank now belongs to us. The time has come to claim what is rightfully ours." The protesters applaud wildly. "Whose money?" they chant over and over, "Our money."
Armoured police vehicles are scattered up and down Bishopsgate and the grand glass-fronted entrance to the RBS building is guarded by a phalanx of the Met's finest. From within, a few bemused RBS workers look nervously out at the street. It's probably not the best day to be slipping out for a boozy banker's lunch.
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Standing cackling on the sidelines is Ian Bone, a self- confessed "lifelong enemy of the state" and member of the Whitechapel Anarchist Group (WAG). "This is just a taste of things to come," he says. "That was the spring offensive. Next up is the summer of rage." Bone is referring to a wave of mass demonstrations planned for the capital which kicked off yesterday with the Put People First march, organised by a coalition of trade unions and environmentalists. On Wednesday, 1 April or "Financial Fools Day"? thousands more are due to take to the streets of the City for the biggest show of public anger since the
credit crunch began. And Thursday, dubbed G20 Meltdown, is when protesters will descend on the Excel Centre in London's Docklands ? the day that world leaders arrive in the capital for the G20 summit.
According to media reports, police are gearing up to deal out terrifying levels of violence to unprecedented numbers of protestors.The G20 Meltdown campaign posters show a besuited mannequin being hanged. City staff are being advised to dress down and cancel all non-essential meetings.
"People are in an incendiary mood," says Bone. "1 April will see the biggest ructions on the street since the poll-tax riots and possibly even the Gordon riots of 1780. I don't think politicians realise quite how angry we are. In the past six months, this country has been turned upside-down. A deep recession has been created by a few greedy bankers and as a result, thousands have lost their homes and jobs. A dam of resentment has built up and 1 April is when all these pissed-off people march on the City to take what's theirs. Capitalism itself is on the ropes."
Bone believes the anarchists' moment has finally come. With the banking system on its knees and capitalism ' floundering, a window of opportunity for real change has arisen. "We need to seize the moment," he says. "There was a moment in May 1968 and another in the 1980s under Thatcher when the miners were on strike, but we failed to grasp either. This
one is different. No one's ever seen what we are seeing now with the economy and it's the economy that drives people to the streets."
Bone's own particular brand of anarchism is extreme. "I'm full of class hatred," he tells me cheerfully over a pint in the local Wetherspoons pub after the demonstration. "I just want to overthrow the ruling classes." He was radicalised from an early age: his father was a butler for one Sir Gerald Coke, and the young Bone spent his formative years
witnessing him bowing and scraping to his superior. By the age of 15, he was a regular on the Aldermaston CND marches and in 1983 he set up the anarchist journal Class War, "Britain's most unruly tabloid", which still runs to this day.
Although there are no membership figures ? anarchists don't deal in such administrative formalities ? Bone claims the numbers of people joining the movement has risen significantly in the past six months. But what makes him more convinced that the anarchists' moment has come is that the types of people joining are entirely different.
"Traditionally, anarchism appealed to young, inner- city types," he says. "Now we've got people coming into the anarchist movement we've never seen before. There's older people, whose pensions or savings have been wiped out, as well as people from the suburbs ? the aspirational working-class who voted Tory, bought their own council flats and moved up in
the world. These are people who were sold all that stuff about the free-market dream and now are being repossessed or made redundant. Capitalism has failed them and they are angry as hell. In the past we've needed to create rage. We don't need to do that now because the rage is already there."
Despite his own hardline stance, Bone is astute enough to realise that not all of these "anarchists" want actual revolution. Some simply want to voice their anger at the greed and recklessness of the City, others want peaceful protest, and some just want a ruck with the police. But if there is one uniting consensus among them, it's the belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with a capitalist system that has allowed the rich of the world to carry on getting endlessly richer.
Chris Knight, a professor of anthropology at the University of East London, and one of the co-ordinators of G20 Meltdown, describes himself as moderate. "I'm the kind of anarchist that adheres to some form of organisation," he says. "I'm not into throwing bricks through windows; what I'm talking about is something closer to revolutionary, or anarcho, communism."
Since the economic crisis began, Knight has regularly taken to the streets brandishing a placard reading, "Eat the bankers". "We haven't got any secrets," he tells me. "On 1 April, we fully intend to overthrow the Government. ' Gordon Brown is on his last legs, this is his last throw of the dice. The revolution starts here."
Knight adds that 1 April is a date that is highly pertinent to the anarchist calendar: it's exactly 360 years to the day that the Diggers, the English civil-war revolutionaries and arguably the UK's first anarchistic group, set up an independent commune and issued a call for equality.
"If we succeed," Knight continues, "and New Labour falls, we say let's immediately nationalise all banks and redistribute the wealth. In other words, we take the power and we don't let the bankers dictate to us any more. We stop the money pouring into bankers' pockets, where it disappears, and start giving it to the people who will spend it ? students, single mums, the unemployed. We need to spend money to stop this country going bankrupt: well, that is a solution.
"It's seismic," Knight concludes. "There has already been a whole balance-of-power shift and the world has been turned upside-down, but it's all happened peacefully. There is going to be a velvet revolution. Not a violent one."
Commander Bob Broadhurst of the Metropolitan Police doesn't seem to think so. He has 7.2m earmarked for the police operation from Wednesday until the conclusion of G20 and believes there to be "unprecedented" planning between protest groups, which are now using technology such as Twitter to organise themselves. What further worries him is that
certain groups Reclaim the Streets and the anarchist group the Wombles, for example that have lain dormant for much of the boom years of the noughties, are showing signs of remobilisation. Groups such as these are the ones that gave the authorities such an enormous headache throughout the 1990s from the poll-tax riots in 1990 to the protests over the Criminal Justice Bill in the mid-1990s and finally the violent Reclaim the Streets protests at the end of the decade.
Alexander Callinicos, professor of European Studies at King's College, London, who is speaking at this week's demonstration, backs up Broadhurst's belief that new allegiances between protest groups are being forged. He went to an anti-capitalist demonstration on Halloween last year at Canary Wharf following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. "It was an unusual event," he says, "because for the first time there was an unlikely alliance between anarchists, Marxists and other groups that don't usually get on terribly well. Whatever our disagreements, we are all united in the belief that the blind hunt for profit
leads to catastrophe. That is what has brought us all together."
Like his fellow protesters, Callinicos is feeling buoyant about the situation. "I have high hopes for this week," he says. "The economic crisis has exposed the bankruptcy of capitalism and the dire need for an alternative. Anyone who feels there is something fundamentally wrong with capitalism is entitled to feel this is their moment."
But is this all just talk? Is the country really ready for revolution? Tim Harford, Financial Times journalist and author of The Logic of Life (just published in paperback) doesn't think so. "The last time we had a really bad economic depression, we got National Socialism and I'm sure this isn't the alternative these guys have in mind. We have to ask the question, is it really all that bad? Unemployment is clearly terrible but it's nothing like America in the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 1981, it was also bad, it was a rotten time. But was that the end of capitalism as we know it? People have a tendency to engage in wishful thinking. Journalists want it to be really appalling because it makes an exciting story; anarchists want it be the end of capitalism because that's what they've spent their lives hoping for; and economists think that it's nothing really that remarkable."
Nor does Harford think it's time for capitalism to be brought to its knees. "Clearly the free market has its faults, but no one could argue we haven't all done very well out of it in the West," he says. "It's lifted an awful lot of people out of poverty. Generally, the
places in the world that have not been successful in letting the market take off tend to be the places that are poorer. Capitalism has had a fairly good track record. I hope it's not on its last legs because I doubt it could be replaced by anything more effective."
Meanwhile, back at the flash-mob gathering, Madonna's "Material Girl" has started up and the obligatory crazy dancing has broken out. Tamsin Omond, one of the five who were arrested after climbing on to the roof of the House of Commons in a protest against the expansion of Heathrow, and the current poster girl for climate change, is right in the thick of it. "What shall we chant?" she asks her friend breathlessly. "Something about banks, maybe?"
"Stupid twat," says Ian Bone. "Listen to her accent. She's just one of those climate-change lot who do a bit of environmental action to get it on their CV before going back to live in their big house with mum and dad. You watch: she'll be an overpaid
environmental consultant before you know it."
If this is the unity Commander Broadhurst is so worried about, perhaps he can relax a little. It's hard to tell if anything really has changed; today, it looks like the same old faces doing the same old thing. Should we really be in fear of revolution? We'll have
to wait until Wednesday to find out.
Here comes trouble: A brief history of anarchy
1649
The Diggers, a group of agrian communists, are formed. They believe man can be free only in a society without government interference, wherein all products are shared
1780
Anti-Catholic riots are led by Lord George Gordon; 60,000 people proclaiming "No Popery" march on Parliament. Homes are burned, churches attacked and prisoners freed. Nearly 300 are left dead
1840
In "What is Property?", the French political writer Pierre-Joseph Proudhon coins the slogan "Property is theft". He is the first person to define himself as an anarchist
1868
Mikhail Bakunin founds the Social Democratic Alliance with the doctrine of Collectivism and the belief that anarchy is possible only through violent revolution
1876
Prince Peter Kropotkin of Russia renounces his royal title and develops the theory of anarchist communism. He also helps found the London-based Freedom Magazine, still published today
1911
The Siege of Sidney Street between the police and two Latvian burglars. The stand-off ends in death for the Latvians, who have become anarchist heroes for resisting the authorities
1936
During the Spanish Civil War, anarchist militias gain control of much of eastern Spain. Autonomous libertarian villages are set up, money is abolished and the land is tilled collectively
1972
The Angry Brigade, also known as the Stoke Newington Eight, a British libertarian militant group, is responsible for bomb attacks between 1970 and 1972. Strongly influenced by anarchists, their targets include banks, embassies and the homes of Tory MPs.
1976
"Anarchy in the UK", the first single by the Sex Pistols, is released on 26 November. The three-and- a-half minute song reaches number 38 in the UK charts. Its lyrics espouse a nihilistic concept of anarchy
1983
Class War, a cobbled-together tabloid newspaper that has become the voice of the movement, is founded by Ian Bone. The cover, right, refers to the birth of Prince William
1994
The anarchist Zapatista army declares war on the Mexican state and seizes part of their Chiapas homeland, and in the process kickstarts a resurgence in the global anarchy movement
1999
J18, an international day of anti-capitalist protest on 18 June, coincides with the G8 summit. A battle breaks out as 5,000 people converge on the London International Financial Futures Exchange
2008
A young schoolboy is shot dead by police in Athens, resulting in four weeks of rioting across Greece. Anarchists seize control of government buildings. Similar riots kick off in other parts of Europe
Anarchy in the EU: How one boy's death sparked riots across Europe
The demonstrations that took place in cities across Europe last December, as protesters took to the streets in solidarity with Greek rioters, were a stark indication that anarchism is alive and kicking throughout the EU. In Athens, it was the shooting of
15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos by police that triggered weeks of violent clashes between the authorities and youths frustrated by government corruption, crony capitalism and high unemployment. Almost immediately, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden and Denmark saw unrest and, in some cases, similar outbreaks of serious violence, sparking fears that mass
insurrection was the shape of things to come.
While many of the protestors were quick to identify themselves with a unified anarchist scene, political commentators agree that in reality, the European picture is ideologically and strategically fragmented, composed of more or less self-contained groups. In each country, individual factions are engaged in their own specific battles with the political
establishment, from economic to environmental issues, linked only by a broad anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist stance. Although overlaps with the ultra-Left exist, leading to widespread confusion between the two, what ultimately separates anarchist
groups is their belief in practical, militant action.
Not surprisingly, the European countries in which the anarchist movement tends to be strongest are those in which a capitalist status quo exists, as is the case in Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia. In Greece, Italy and Spain, the situation is aggravated by a deeply felt divide between the Right and Left, and ? in the case of the latter two relatively fresh memories of right-wing dictatorships.
Nevertheless, recent events suggest that anarchist activity is on the rise in nations where it has not previously been a major concern. In France, for example, where a strong far-Left has traditionally stifled any anarchist movement, the Interior Minister Michle Alliot-Marie has spoken of a serious threat from "ultra-Leftist" and "anarchist" terrorists. In November, nine members of a group of young men and women living in a commune in southern France were arrested in connection with sabotaging the power supply to high-speed train lines and "associating with wrong-doers with terrorist aims". All but one of the "Tarnac Nine" has now been released, amid accusations of absurd heavy-handiness on the part of the authorities.
9/8/08
Crowd Bites Wolf
Demonstrators shut down the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meeting in Prague, September 26th 2000. Entire video can be downloaded here: http://www.ngvision.org/mediabase/111
8/8/08
Independent People's Tribunal on the World Bank
Arundhati Roy's initial findings of the in India that took place in Delhi at the end of September 2007
The Independent People's Tribunal on the World Bank Group in India was the first People's Tribunal in India which brought together a broad spectrum of society to look at the damage caused by the World Bank to the country as a whole. Affected communities and concerned groups presented testimonies across four days in order share experiences and to inject a sense of responsibility for people's rights into the discourse about the Bank.
The process is ongoing. Groups are discussing state-wide Tribunals, the testimonies are being collected to publish in print and on the web, and Tribunals in other countries have already taken place.
6/16/08
Neoliberal Immigration & Guestworker Programmes
I dedicate this talk to the memory of Ka Bel – Crispin Beltran - a friend and comrade who passed away in the Philippines last month. His humanity, hunger and commitment to social justice, and lifelong, principled and militant opposition to imperialism are already sorely missed by so many who had the privilege to know him.
“Free Trade”, Neoliberal Immigration & The Globalization Of Guestworker Programs
International Migrant Alliance Founding Assembly – 15 June 2008
Wages, Job Security, Remittances & GATS Mode 4 - Migration & Free Trade Agreements
Speech By Aziz Choudry, GATT Watchdog & bilaterals.org
I dedicate this talk to the memory of Ka Bel – Crispin Beltran - a friend and comrade who passed away in the Philippines last month. His humanity, hunger and commitment to social justice, and lifelong, principled and militant opposition to imperialism are already sorely missed by so many who had the privilege to know him.
For Canadian academic/activist David McNally, “[t]he plight of migrant workers from the Third World exposes a dirty secret about capitalist globalization: while constraints on the movement of capital are being eased, restrictions on the movement of labour are being systematically tightened. It’s not that global business does not want immigrant labour to the West [sic]. It simply wants this labour on its own terms: frightened, oppressed, vulnerable. The fundamental truth about globalization – that it represents freedom for capital and unfreedom for labour – is especially clear where global migrants are concerned.”
The Declaration of Philadelphia, now an annexe to the International Labour Organization (ILO) constitution, unequivocally states: “Labour is not a commodity” . The ILO is hardly a radical organization, nor is this statement a radical proposition. Yet today, workers, especially migrant workers, are routinely commodified, through domestic, regional and international instruments, policies and agreements. These include the expansion of temporary migrant worker programs, and disputes over the interpretation of labour mobility provisions in free trade and investment agreements such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and bilateral and regional free trade and investment agreements (FTAs) outside of the WTO. In this presentation, I will talk about the links between the resurgence of guestworker programs, migrant workers, and free trade, mainly in reference to the Asia-Pacific.
For all of the talk of postcolonialism in some circles, in 2008, Third World countries are treated as little more than colonies of transnational corporations (TNCs) and powerful governments for natural resource extraction: notably minerals, energy, biodiversity, and even people, either as labour commodities for export themselves, or producing for export in free trade/special economic zones (FTZs/SEZs), and industrial agriculture. This system of capitalist relations is backed by war, the militarization of borders, conflict- and poverty-fuelled forced migration, and in turn, the criminalization of many migrants and immigrants. Justin Akers Chacón calls this phenomenon “neoliberal immigration” - “displacement accompanied by disenfranchisement and often internal segregation in host countries” .
Neoliberal policies force people from their farms, jobs, families and communities and into exploitation and precarity as migrant workers in other countries. Deindustrialization and the downsizing and privatization of essential services – accompanied by increasing user fees - are other “push factors”, forcing growing numbers to seeking work abroad. Health and education professionals in shattered public sectors are forced to migrate in search of work. Free trade, its advocates (like the US Administration) promise, will supposedly lead to a reduction of immigration because countries will become more prosperous. Washington proclaimed that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would lead Mexico to export goods, and not people to the US, yet so-called illegal immigration to the US has risen .
In looking at how free trade and investment agreements can and do affect migrant workers, it is important to frame our understanding of them as comprehensive instruments of imperialism, and avoid compartmentalizing or reducing the discussion to technical trade policy analysis talk which clouds a more critical “big picture” analysis.
We are witnessing the entrenchment of immigration apartheid. A global (often Western-) educated elite is relatively mobile, but of those who are able to leave their home countries at all, the overwhelming majority of migrants are temporary, non-status, exploitable, and often underground/“illegal”. Immigration requirements have tended to become more elitist, refugee systems leave fewer avenues for appeal, and for many, permanent residence is harder to attain. Meanwhile, in both migrant-worker sending and receiving countries, a more general trend of state withdrawal for responsibility for provision of social services impacts local and migrant workers alike. Worldwide, the neoliberal offensive has also eroded trades jobs, attacked unionism, imposed policies of labour deregulation, flexibilization, casualization, expanded subcontracting chains, and the relocation of industry to cheaper production sites. In some cases, these changes have fuelled exclusionary or racist practices within unions towards new immigrants, instead of solidarity and support for struggles for workplace justice and within wider society. Immigration status is used as a tool by governments and business elites to undermine alliance-building among workers, while immigrants still make convenient scapegoats for politicians the world over. Simultaneously, there is a widespread reluctance and denial in many countries to admit the extent to which their economies depend on migrant labour.
In temporary migrant worker schemes, migrant workers are commodities, pure and simple, temporary labour units to be recruited, utilized and sent away again as employers require, tied to a specific employer, and therefore often stuck with worse conditions with little recourse to improve them. In this context, discrimination and exploitation because of race, immigration status, class, and gender play out together. Women migrant workers are particularly impacted, comprising the majority in sectors with the least protections, lowest wages and most demeaning conditions. Typically, guestworkers are not allowed to join unions, so have no collective bargaining power. Sometimes they are not paid on time or maybe not paid at all, may endure unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, and receive wages far below the average paid to local workers for equivalent work, toiling long hours, and perhaps be more willing to accept this situation because of the relatively short duration of their employment abroad, and are subject to abuse from employers. The labour of international migrants is systematically devalued. Skilled migrants frequently leave their countries only to find their qualifications and experience are not valued in the new country, so are locked into low-skilled jobs .
Migrant workers and remittances are a key area of interest to the World Bank , the European Commission, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and other international agencies, which increasingly promote the concept of migrant workers' family remittances to keep their native countries from collapsing. Remittances are what Devesh Kapur, in a 2004 UNCTAD/G-24 discussion paper calls “the new development mantra” . The growing dependence on remittances from migrant workers puts many countries at the mercy of vagaries of anti-immigrant sentiment and immigration (and other) policies of other countries. Locked into a neoliberal model, countries that have grown dependent on exporting workers often have shrinking policy space to pursue other options for economic development. Growth of remittances has outpaced that of private capital flows and official development assistance (ODA) during the last 15 yrs . A 2007 UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)/Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) report showed that migrant remittances were over US $ 300 billion in 2006 , well over twice what ODA contributed. Of course, migration is certainly not only a South-North phenomenon, but occurs among countries in the South, Indonesian workers in Malaysia, South Asians in Gulf, Filipina caregivers in Syria, Lebanon, and dozens of other countries, and Zimbabwean and Mozambican workers in South Africa, as last month’s anti-migrant worker violence tragically reminds us .
GATS, “Mode 4”, and migrant workers
I) GATS – A deal made in heaven for TNCs, and hell for the people
According to David Hartridge, former Director of the WTO’s Services Division, "without the enormous pressure generated by the American financial services sector, particularly companies like American Express and Citicorp, there would have been no services agreement" . The European Commission stated: “GATS is not just something that exists between Governments. It is first and foremost an instrument for the benefit of business” . GATS is more about investment than trade. Under GATS, governments agree to open the economy to foreign suppliers of certain services. Services have been described as anything that you cannot drop on your foot, including banks, schools, energy, healthcare, water, rubbish collection, libraries, railways, airlines, TV and radio. In those services, foreign suppliers must be given at least as favourable treatment as it gives to local suppliers. Governments cannot set limits on the numbers of service suppliers operating in its market or impose requirements for local content. Just as workers are treated as mere commodities in these agreements, so too are fundamental services. New Zealand academic Jane Kelsey characterizes GATS as an ideological transformation of services from fundamentally social relations embedded in communities to commercialized commodities traded within an international marketplace . Unsurprisingly, the GATS approach to labour mobility is very much driven by the interests of TNCs and investors, and not those of workers in the global south.
II) Mode 4– facilitating corporate operations: a false panacea for migrant labour justice
GATS includes clauses on the temporary movement of ‘natural persons’ to facilitate trade and investment in services, although there is no definition of what “temporary” means. Its annexe on the movement of natural persons deals with negotiations on individuals’ rights to stay temporarily in a country for the purpose of providing a service. GATS mode 4 extends to foreigners who are service suppliers in the host, home or a third member country, in respect of the supply of a specific service, employed in a foreign company established abroad, or which is supplying services under a contract without permanent presence in that country. It also includes independent or self-employed service providers, who get paid directly by customers.
GATS does not apply to work outside of service sectors nor to people seeking permanent employment or permanent residence. There are differing interpretations among WTO member countries about the relationship between Mode 4 and other modes of supply. Broadly, Northern governments insist that Mode 4 is supportive of the other modes. So Mode 4 supports mode 1 (cross-border supply of services); mode 2 (consumption abroad); and mode 3 (commercial presence or foreign direct investment). For example, for mode 1, an IT consultant travels abroad to install software supplied internationally by his company; for mode 2, a travel agency sends a guide abroad along with a party of tourists, and for mode 3, TNCs post executives to staff offices overseas.
The World Bank estimates that over 40% of Mode 4 commitments are for intra-corporate transfers, and another 50% cover executives, managers and specialists and business visitors . Some governments argue that there is no a priori exclusion of any occupation or skill level from GATS coverage, and in that sense, all categories of natural persons could be negotiated under mode 4. Mode 4 commitments are restrictive, and subject to various limitations regarding immigration rules and economic needs tests. Where it exists, the right of labour mobility does not necessarily entail the right to practice a profession, due to national regulations for licensing and recognition of qualifications.
III) Tensions over Mode 4 and liberalizing the movement of labour
Some Southern governments see GATS Mode 4 as a way to help facilitate increased mobility of temporary workers from labour-abundant countries to labour-scarce ones, earning them more foreign exchange, while others see in these moves the potential for a global guestworker program that should be opposed. Southern governments, like India, push for an interpretation which sees Mode 4 as covering independent suppliers of services, and not just supportive to other modes, an interpretation which favours TNCs and their interests. Northern governments are pushing stringent GATS commitments on the South, and making it clear that they will not improve their offers on Mode 4. India wants separation of mode 4 from Mode 3, arguing that only Northern TNCs can afford commercial presence (mode 3). As a draft WTO negotiating text on services, released in late May shows, there remains little movement on this issue: no member country has tabled new offers on services at the WTO since late 2005 .
India has put forward the idea of a GATS visa to facilitate the temporary entry of Indian professionals under mode 4. The Least Developed Countries (LDC) group at the WTO, led by Bangladesh, has unsuccessfully pushed developed countries to liberalize their markets for semi-skilled categories of service providers of the LDCs under mode 4 of GATS, going beyond high-skilled categories. Some commentators argue that governments lobbying for a broader interpretation of GATS Mode 4 would need to demonstrate their intention and means of enforcing the temporary nature of the Mode 4 movement before the developed countries agree to liberalize this area .
Some NGOs also see GATS mode 4 as a potentially favourable instrument to regulate and liberalise the movement of migrant labour. They seek to allay perceived fears of developed country governments regarding the adoption of a liberal interpretation of mode 4 such as opposition to the permanent immigration of workers who might enter under such an agreement, concerns about rising unemployment and related domestic opposition to foreign workers, and argue for practical ways to overcome these obstacles.
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU, now ITUC ) and Public Services International (PSI) expressed alarm at a request from China and India to take the stipulations of wage parity that those countries which have made Mode 4 commitments have specified in their offers out of the negotiations. “Not only is it bad enough that the WTO, which has no expertise in migration issues, has undertaken to conduct such discussions….It sends the wrong signal to all those who think exploitation of workers is a competitive advantage in the quest for profits”, argued Guy Ryder, General Secretary of the ICFTU.
Under dispute mechanisms of free trade and investment agreements, wage parity between temporary migrant service workers and locals may even be challenged as a protectionist measure. Sending countries could charge that wage parity undermines the competitive advantage of their migrant workers who will work for lower wages. Yet temporary foreign service workers would still have to pay the same living expenses as local workers. Proposals to expand Mode 4 commitments to explicitly cover semi-skilled and unskilled workers must be seen in context of expansion of temporary foreign worker/guestworker programs in North. They are no solution to injustices created by neoliberal programs, they work to undermine domestic labour rights, by creating and expanding a subclass of workers on special temporary visas, only here, impacting service sector jobs in ways that hitherto have mainly affected manufacturing.
Tensions over the coverage and liberalization of labour mobility under GATS cannot be separated from analysis of horse-trading, armtwisting and bullying that takes place in relation to other aspects of trade and investment agreements, and aid conditionalities, for example, as well as longstanding debates over linkages between labour standards and free trade commitments. Third World governments are being blamed for blocking progress at the WTO on services which are in the interest of Northern governments and TNCs. Yet Northern governments are not making any commitments in areas of interest to the Third World like labour mobility, and continue to pressure Southern countries to make better offers on service sectors (especially finance, telecommunications, energy, distribution, environment) as a prerequisite for any new concessions on agriculture, for example.
FTAs
With the slow pace of WTO negotiations and the understanding that lower-key one-on-one talks can often get faster, deeper results, while dividing up emerging alliances among Third World governments against Northern positions at the WTO, attention turned to bilateral free trade and investment agreements (FTAs). In general, governments have preferred bilateral labour agreements (BLAs), usually sectoral, giving them more flexibility control and regulatory discretion over multilateral agreements . Now, a number of bilateral free trade and investment agreements have also become processes through which some governments seek to include agreements on labour mobility.
IBON has drawn attention to the reality behind the much-heralded labour mobility provisions of the still-to-be-ratified Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) . The agreement allows for the entry and temporary stay of Filipinos who supply health services as nurses or certified caregivers for one to three years (which may be extended). But these professionals must be proficient in both spoken and written Japanese and be qualified under Japanese law - prerequisites which severely limit their entry into the Japanese labour market. Very few nurses and caregivers will be able to overcome such barriers. After 6 months of language training, applicants can already have on-the-job training for up to 3-4 years while they try to pass the relevant national exams. Until they pass, they will only be paid as non-licensed workers, trainees, candidates, or as nurse’s aides and caregiver’s assistants. This may reduce healthcare costs in Japan, but at the expense of Filipino health professionals. Similarly, under Japan’s EPA with Indonesia, 600 experienced caregivers and 400 registered nurses from Indonesia are to be admitted on 3-4 year visas .
The European Union (EU) and the Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Relationship Trade Agreement (CER) are broadest in terms of labour mobility, including access to labour markets of member countries without work permits, full national treatment for service providers, and mutual recognition of technical qualifications. Where FTAs have made some ‘GATS–plus’ commitments under Mode 4, governments have often not negotiated mutual recognition agreements (MRA) for recognizing qualifications to allow skilled professionals to take up jobs. The labour mobility provisions in the India-Singapore Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) are largely similar to GATS, with 127 subsectors of skilled occupations granted temporary entry , but only professionals in auditing, architecture, medical doctors, dentistry and nursing can practice subject to MRA between to the two countries. The agreement says that mutual recognition is granted in service sectors subject to the licensing requirements of accounting and auditing, architecture, medicine, dentistry and nursing within 12 months from the date of entry into force of the agreement. This is yet to be resolved.
Singapore has been most proactive in Asia-Pacific in liberalizing movement of natural persons through bilateral FTAs, varying in the specificity of scope and length of stay. But basically, these still mainly cover business visitors, investors and intra-corporate transferees, citizens and residents of partner governments who represent a service supplier. In the Japan – Singapore Agreement there is no chapter on movement of natural persons, but provision for facilitation of movement of investors for business purposes in Chapter 7 on investment . ASEAN Investment Framework Agreement commits to freer movement of skilled labor and professionals.
US FTAs such as the ones concluded with Singapore and Chile allow temporary entry of business professionals from other parties to facilitate trade in services, but US approaches each trade deal individually to determine if a temporary entry chapter will benefit US trade in services .
Under the Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement, Australia made GATS-plus commitments by granting temporary entry to Thai professional chefs and masseurs, especially to provide services such as cooking training and training in traditional Thai massage through training institutes agreed to hold consultations on establishing a standard of recognition of Thai qualifications for acceptance of qualified Thai massage therapists.
In sum, while there has been some limited sector-specific liberalization of temporary movement of labour in FTA services provisions, the restrictive and cautious approach has prevailed. Interestingly, the EU-Algeria FTA (Euro-Med Association agreement) has articles on permission for entry of intra-corporate transferees under GATS, but also articles which explicitly commit to cooperation in preventing and controlling illegal immigration and readmission.
Good enough to work, good enough to stay
Where some liberalization of labour movement has been written into agreements like GATS Mode 4 and similar provisions in FTAs, it is highly restrictive, and framed in the interests of TNCs and overseas investors who are the true beneficiaries and authors of these deals. Generally, FTAs have tended to deepen, accelerate and broaden liberalization and deregulation, but in this area, they have thus far had very limited effect. We cannot place any hope or faith in these instruments to advance workers’ rights to migrate. There remains a danger that such agreements could in future become institutional frameworks covering temporary migrant labour flows. Political sensitivities about immigration have to contend with ageing populations and shrinking domestic labour (and taxpayer) pools in many Northern countries, putting new pressures to bring in new workers.
Struggles for dignity and justice and a living wage for migrant workers cannot be left to be fought in arenas which commodify them, like GATS and FTAs, by governments which are themselves frequently antagonistic to people’s struggles domestically and internationally by their embrace of neoliberal and imperialist policies. Global capitalism fragments labour and the lives of working people everywhere. Across the board, WTO and FTAs serve the interests of TNCs and other political and economic elites, not the people. GATS and services liberalization under FTAs are fundamentally about advancing and locking in privatization, deregulation, and unrestricted foreign investment and contracting-out that workers around the world have been resisting on many fronts. Just as many movements have rejected the idea of giving global capitalism a happy face by incorporating so-called “social” and “green” clauses linking free trade to labour and environmental standards, so too we must assert that neoliberal globalization is fundamentally exploitative of workers, and insist that such agreements have no legitimacy to deal with the lives of migrant workers. To expect to harness or transform them into instruments that will somehow advance migrant workers’ struggles is like expecting a tiger to become a vegetarian. Injustices perpetuated in the WTO and FTAs are not unintentional imbalances to be resolved by polite NGO lobbying, but underpin the very values and framework of these instruments. Rather than fighting to expand terms and provisions in these trade and investment agreements, we must support struggles of immigrant workers for regularization, justice and dignity. Support migrant worker organizations like Migrante , the New York Taxi Workers Alliance , immigrant workers centres , and encourage established trade unions to support immigrant workers’ struggles. As a 2004 Canadian Labour Congress discussion document argues, this struggle “is critical in holding the line against declining wages and working conditions for the entire labour movement. [Migrant workers] are at the edge of the economic divide and must be protected and involved in our collective struggle in order for real change to occur. A worker is a worker is a worker.”
4/16/08
Kwame Toure / Afrika / pt. 2
Alright, now dig. Here comes this honky from Europe, sets foot on this country, the red people are here, but they don't exist, so he discovered it. This has been the history of white society, they have never recognized anybody who is non-white, so nothing happens until they come and find you. Ha!Kwame Toure/Stokely Carmichael
But now you've got to dig this thing about Columbus real deep, because when they tell you he discovered America and he was a dumb honky, I mean he was real stupid. He died thinking he was in India that is how dumb he was. And because he was stupid, he titled the Red man Indians. That's why they have the name, because some dumb honky thought he was in India.
So you've got to understand that. That's how riddled with racism it is -- that you can't even recognize it. They don't even recognize how racist it is to say that Christopher Columbus discovered America. And they never will admit it; they can't, they can't.
Not only that, if you go to writing the real history of this country you would say that this country is a country of thieves. They started off by stealing this country from the red men and committing genocide against them. Not only did it steal the country from the red men—that didn't satisfy them—they stole us from Africa. You've got to understand that this nation is a nation of thieves and is becoming a nation of murderers in Vietnam, we've got to stop it, we've got to stop it. Because we have to save our humanity! Let white American do as it will, but as black people we have to save our humanity. That is very very important .
3/10/08
Ybal Khan-Révolutionnaire
Morceau exclusif d'Ybal Khan!!!kanaky warrior j
Kanaky continue the struggle against Capitalism and Colonisation
3/5/08
Tahi
Tahi, One Pacific One Struggle (against colonialism and exploitation), is a video about the various sovereignty, pro-democracy and independence movements around the Pacific Rim including Hawai'i, Aoteoroa, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Kanaky (New Caledonia), Australian Aboriginals, Samoa, Tonga, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
12/9/07
Revolutinary Theory #3 Franz Fanon
Franz Fanon (1925-61) was born in Martinique in the French Antilles in 1925. He was educated in Martinique and in France and in 1943 he joined the Free French Forces in Dominica before being posted to Morocco. His anti racist sensibilities were sharpened by his wartime experiences as black Free French soldiers were treated as subordinate to their white counterparts and experienced racism on a daily basis.
After the war, Fanon continued his studies at Lyons Medical School where he took a course in psychiatric medicine as well as studying philosophy and editing a number of political magazines. After furthering his studies in psychiatry, he was appointed head of the Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria in 1953. In 1954 he resigned to join the Algerian rebels, the FLN, fighting an armed struggle for independence from French colonial rule. This led to his expulsion from Algeria and a lifetime of critical, theoretical and practical work fighting against colonialism and racism.
As Deborah Wyrick usefully points out in her excellent introductory study, Fanon for Beginners, his work can be divided into three sections. These being; the search for black identity, the struggle against colonialism, and the process of decolonisation.2 Fanon’s work on black identity was formed through his experiences in psychiatry and is deeply influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. This stage of Fanon’s work is best illustrated by his
powerful book Black Skin, White Masks. This work can be seen as a pioneering example of psychoanalytical theory being used as a critical tool in political theoretical writing.
In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon suggests that colonialism, with its explicit conceptual under-pinnings of white racial superiority over non-white peoples, has created a sense of division and alienation in the self-identity of the non-white colonised peoples. The history, culture, language, customs and beliefs of the white colonisers are, under colonialism, to be considered as universal, normative and superior to the local indigenous culture of the colonised. This creates a strong sense of inferiority in the colonised subject and leads to an adoption of the language, culture and customs of the colonisers by the colonised as a way of compensating for these feelings of inferiority in their self-identity. This creates a divided sense of self in the subject formation of the colonised.
This adoption of the culture and beliefs of the colonisers leads to a sense of alienation from their own culture by the colonised. Fanon also suggests that the adoption of the language and forms of representation of the colonisers has further negative effects on the indigenous subject in that representational stereotypes are constructed which tend to infantilize, primitivise, decivilize, and essentialise them.3 Fanon’s work on the role of representation in the construction of self-identity clearly shows the influence of the theories of Lacan, in particular his concept of the mirror-stage of identity formation. Here Lacan outlines a theory of identity formation in reference to the image of completeness in the body of another person outside of the self. This occurs in early childhood and begins a process of identification with images in the construction of the self which continues throughout adult life.4
‘As I begin to recognise that the Negro is the symbol of sin, I catch myself hating the Negro. But then I recognise that I am a Negro. There are two ways out of this conflict. Either I ask others to pay no attention to my skin, or else I want them to be aware of it. I try, then to find value for what is bad - since I have unthinkingly conceded that the black man is the colour of evil. In order to terminate this neurotic situation, in which I am compelled to choose an unhealthy, conflictual solution, fed on fantasies, hostile, inhuman in short, I have only one solution, to rise above this absurd drama that others have staged around me, to reject the two terms that are equally unacceptable, and, through one human being, to reach out for the universal.’5
The second stage of Fanon’s critical activity is the struggle against colonialism, which grew out of his active involvement in the Algerian war of independence and his membership of the FLN. This can be found in his works Dying Colonialism and Toward the African Revolution. Given the revolutionary nature of these writings and the context in which they were written it will be unsurprising to find that they are deeply influenced by Marx and the discourses of Western
Marxism6 including the work of the Marxist structuralist Louis Althusser. The complex discussion in regard to importance of Marxist thinking to the project of post-colonial theory would entail a large digression and unfortunately will not be manifested here.7
Fanon’s important contribution to the struggle against colonialism is his concern with history. For Fanon, the work of the struggle against colonialism involves the ‘claiming back’ of their own history by the colonised from the negative or nonexistent versions of it produced by the colonisers. He stresses the vital importance of the culture and representations of their past being central to the creation of both new positive forms of subject formation and new forms of social organisation which are necessary in the newly independent post-colonial era. This emphasis on the creation or rediscovery of new forms of history or the understanding of history in the plural shows some affinity with the work of Michel Foucault, albeit from a position inspired by a Marxist concept of the dialectic rather than Foucault’s non-dialectical post-structuralist analysis.
Much of this work can be found in Fanon’s most famous and widely read work, The Wretched of the Earth. Published in 1961, with a preface by one of his intellectual influences, Jean-Paul Sartre, Wretched of the Earth is a passionate and revolutionary work of political critique and is a cornerstone of post-colonial theory. ‘colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people and distorts, disfigures and destroys it… . … .To fight for national culture means in the first place to fight for the liberation of the nation, that material keystone which makes the building of a culture possible.’8
The process of decolonisation relates to the third stage of Fanon’s critical activity. Along with the reclamation and reconstruction of their own history and culture as the basis for the new post-colonial forms of nation and national identity, Fanon also discusses two further ideas which are of vital interest to later post-colonial work. These are concepts of ‘colonial space’ and ideas
surrounding the role of the middle-class intelligentsia in these new nations. Both of these ideas stem from Fanon’s understanding that it is important for postcolonial nations to develop new forms of social democracy rather then utilise existing colonial institutions and simply fill existing administrative positions with indigenous people. Using the example of city planning and urbanism, Fanon suggests that these colonial institutions are inherently racist, as they reproduce and construct the concepts and ideas of the colonisers. For example, most colonial cities contain areas where the colonial administrators and business people live and work. These are zones of privilege which largely exclude indigenous people and as such, they construct and reproduce the ideologies of the colonisers. Fanon argues for the radical rebuilding of these urban areas and all other forms of colonial administration and government in ways which will
construct more democratic, post-colonial forms of social organisation, to thoroughly reject the ideologies which underpin colonial rule.
He also argues that the education sections of the colonised population must be aware that their education is based on the ideologies and beliefs of the colonisers and although they are indigenous people, they must take care not to reproduce the concepts and beliefs of the colonisers in the period of postcolonial rebuilding.
Many of Fanon’s insights have been developed by a new generation of critics and theorists who have taken his ideas as inspiration but moreover have extended their scope through the application of further contemporary forms of post-structuralist analysis, whilst retaining Fanon’s radical spirit.
FOOTNOTES
1. For more details on these ideas see McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism
Manchester University Press, Manchester 2000 pp. 6 - 34.
2. Wyrick, Deborah. Fanon For Beginners
Writers and Readers Publishing. London 1998 p. 3.
3. Ibid p. 34.
4. For more details on Lacon’s theories see Bowie, Malcolm. Lacon
Fontana, London. 1991 pp. 17 - 43.
5. Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks in Ashcroft, Bill. Griffiths, Gareth.
Tiffin, Helen.
The Post-Colonial Studies Reader
Routledge, London. 1995 p. 325.
6. For more details on Marxist theory see McLellan, David. Marxism:
Essential Writings
Oxford University Press, Oxford. 1989.
7. See Wyrick, Deborah. Fanon For Beginners op. cit. pp. 122 - 132.
8. Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth in Ashcroft, B. Griffiths, G.
Tiffin, H.
The Post-Colonial Studies Reader op. cit. p. 154.
READING LIST 2
Fanon
Wyrick, Deborah. Fanon For Beginners
Writers and Readers Publishing. London. 1998.
Gordon, Lewis, R. T. Deneon Sharpley-Whiting and Renee T. White
(Eds). Fanon: A Critical Reader
Blackwell, Oxford. 1996.
Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks
Trans. Markmann, Charles. Grove Press. 1967.
Fanon, Franz. A Dying Colonialsim
Grove Press, NY. 1970.
Fanon, Franz. Toward The African Revolution
Trans. Chevalier, Haakon, Grove Press. NY. 1970.
Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth
Trans. Farrington, Constance. Grove Press NY. 1963.
Barry, John. Beginning Theory
Manchester University Press. Manchester. 1999.
Sturrock, John. The World From Paris: Essays on Modern French
Thinkers and Writers.
Verso, London. 1999.
Sturrock, John. Structuralism
Fontana, London. 1993.
Hawks, Terence. Structuralism and Semiotics
Routledge, London. 1992.
Sarup, Madon. An Introductory Guide to Post-structuralism and Postmodernism
Harvester Wheatsheaf. London. 1993.
Matthews, Eric. Twentieth Century French Philosophy
Opus. Oxford. 1996.
Behey, Catherine. Critical Practice
Methuen, London. 1980.
LINKS
http://landow.stg.brown.edu/post/poldiscourse/fanon/fanon1.html, an introduction to Fanon.
http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/panop/home.htm, k.i.s.s. (Keep It Simple Stupid) of the
panopticon is a cultural theory and new media literacy
http://ernie.bgsu.edu/~ckile/cultstudslinks.html, A site for Cultural Theory links
Revolutinary Theory #2 Remembering the Black Panthers
Remembering the Black Panthers
An example of revolutionary defiance and militancy
By Carlos ‘Carlito’ Rovira
 The Panthers’ action at the California Statehouse in 1967 launched them onto the national spotlight. |
Forty years ago, in October 1966, the Black Panther Party was born. This was one of the highlights in the history of the U.S. revolutionary movement, and the Black liberation struggle in particular.
Young African Americans dared to stand up and challenge the rule of the capitalist state, to the point of arming themselves to demand an end to Black oppression. Their vision of Black emancipation evolved into a vision of the liberation of all oppressed people and the smashing of the capitalist system.
The U.S. government, terrified by the potential for revolution and the influence these Black leaders and freedom fighters were gaining, resorted to the most extreme violence to destroy the BPP. It is a campaign that is still felt today.
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, as the party was first called, was formed in Oakland, Calif., by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The name—and the famous panther logo—came from the Lowndes Country Freedom Organization in Alabama which organized for independent Black political action with the help of Stokely Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
The formation of the Black Panther Party was the culmination of a resistance movement over the long history that characterizes the oppression of African Americans in the United States, from the lashes of slavery to the beatings and murders by the police in modern times. It grew up in the aftermath of the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X—a powerful voice for militant Black self-determination and liberation. It drew inspiration from the Deacons for Defense and Justice, organized for African American self-defense against racist Klan and police terror in the South.
The Panthers recognized the need for an organization that was capable of addressing the racist violence that the Black masses faced. Every gain being made by the Civil Rights movement was being matched by violence and lynchings by racist cops and the Ku Klux Klan, in the North and South alike.
The right to armed self-defense
The Panthers won respect and admiration for their militancy and defiance in the face of the racist police state. For example, less than a year after their founding, on May 2, 1967, a group of 30 Black Panthers walked into the California state capitol building armed with shotguns and automatic rifles. The armed but peaceful demonstration was to protest the Mulford Act, aimed at prohibiting citizens from carrying firearms on their persons or in their vehicles.
As the Panthers walked towards the entrance of the capitol building, they were approached by television and other news media. They used the occasion to call upon African Americans everywhere to arm themselves against the systematic brutality and terror practiced by the power structure.
But the party’s efforts went far beyond their call for armed self-defense and their patrols of racist cops. They also carried out consistent community work, gaining the confidence of the people not only in the Black community but among other oppressed nationalities as well.
Panther chapters sprang up in the African American communities of major cities from coast to coast. Wherever they established branches, they tried to set up outreach programs like free breakfast for children and free clothing drives. They used every one of these opportunities to expose the avaricious nature of the rich and powerful who exist at the expense of the poor.
 The Panthers became a symbol of militancy and discipline in the Black community. |
The Panthers were influenced by Malcolm X’s rejection of “turn the other cheek” pacifism for the Black liberation struggle, as well as by the socialist movement in the United States and around the world. Their “Black Power” salute combined with street corner sales of Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Books” of quotations.
The international situation during this period also contributed to the birth of the Panthers. The 1949 Chinese Revolution, the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution and the heroic struggle of south Vietnam’s National Liberation Front against U.S. imperialism, along with the other national liberation struggles in Africa, Latin America and Asia had a great impact in inspiring revolutionaries in the United States, including the Black Panthers.
Their militancy and revolutionary politics quickly put them in the center of the African American liberation struggle, as well as in the growing mass movements that were sweeping the country.
Capitalism is the problem
More and more, the party put the blame for the plight of the African American people on the capitalist system. It rejected the view that the problems of racism could be solved within the confines of the exploitative system, or that it was possible to accumulate enough capital in the Black community to rival capitalism with “Black capital.” Instead, Panther speakers called for socialist revolution within the context of the Civil Rights era. Their uncompromisingly revolutionary and anti-capitalist stance was the most prominent in what became a new trend within the Black liberation struggle of the 1950s and 1960s.
As part of the political training of its membership, the BPP studied Marxist literature like the Communist Manifesto and the writings of Mao Zedong.
The Black Panther Party was a disciplined and organized revolutionary political entity. The Panthers put forward the need for professional, organizational sophistication in building a revolutionary political party.
While the party’s Ten-Point Program reflected its political views and line of march, it was the membership rules that ensured the internal discipline of the organization. Membership rules touched a range of matters, including mandatory collective study of revolutionary theory; respect for women inside and outside the BPP; and respect for the property of the poor.
Revolutionary multinational alliances
The Panthers advocated a united front of revolutionary organizations to guarantee the success of a revolutionary struggle in the United States. Their organizing efforts extended to Puerto Rican, Chicano, Asian, other nationally oppressed people and the white working class.
They forged alliances of various kinds, such as with the American Indian Movement and Cesar Chavez and the farm workers’ movement. The Panthers stood in solidarity with the struggle for women’s equality, especially supporting those sectors of the women’s movement that were anti-imperialist and anti-racist. To the surprise of many, on the heels of the Stonewall rebellion, Panther leader Huey P. Newton publicly supported the struggle to end gay and lesbian oppression.
The Panthers perspective was toward building a multinational alliance of revolutionary organizations. Their most notable effort was the Rainbow Coalition, organized in June 1969 in Chicago by Panther leader Fred Hampton, which consisted of the Black Panther Party; the Young Lords, a U.S. organization of Puerto Rican revolutionaries; and organizations representing Chicanos, Asians and poor whites. Hampton’s vision was to eventually merge these allied organizations into a single revolutionary entity, to forge a revolutionary organization with representation from the full spectrum of the working class.
Wherever their agitational work was conducted, on the streets, on campuses or at public events, the Panthers upheld the principle of solidarity with the liberation movements in the oppressed and colonized countries. At the height of the Vietnam War, the Black Panther leadership made an open gesture of internationalism by offering to send party members to fight alongside the National Liberation Front in their struggle against U.S imperialism.
Fierce U.S. repression
Faced with the Black Panther Party’s tremendous growth and revolutionary orientation, the U.S. government struck back. It organized a massive political-military campaign, involving the FBI and police departments around the country, to destroy the Panthers’ leadership.
In a now well-documented campaign called COINTELPRO, or Counter Intelligence Program, the FBI orchestrated covert operations—personally overseen by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover—to provoke conflicts between the Black Panthers and other organizations. They employed a network of infiltrators and provocateurs to disrupt the party’s discipline and leadership.
Police attacks were common. Cops routinely raided party offices and the homes of Panther members. Dozens of Panthers were killed outright, often in cold blood. The most notable of these cop assassinations was the Dec. 4, 1969, murder of Fred Hampton in Chicago while he slept. He was 21 years old.
Dozens more Panther members and leaders spent years in prison.
The campaign to jail Panther leaders and activists long outlived the organization itself. Mumia Abu-Jamal, who at 16-years-old had been the minister of information in the party’s Philadelphia branch, was framed up and sentenced to death in 1981. He has been in prison ever since, despite a worldwide effort to save his life.
The Black Panther Party ultimately could not withstand the government onslaught. The combined police attacks and covert operations compounded internal differences. Unable to withstand the tremendous repression, by the mid-1970s the Black Panther Party was essentially defunct.
Lessons for today
Bourgeois historians often try to downplay the role of the state in the destruction of the Panthers. When they do acknowledge the state repression, it is to discourage revolutionaries—especially from the oppressed nationalities—from taking action. Do not dare to struggle, you cannot stand up to the power of the capitalist state.
Revolutionaries draw different lessons. The rulers were not then and are not now invincible. The fact that the U.S. government relentlessly attacked the Panthers before they had a chance to steel the discipline of their rank and file only points to the need to build disciplined organizations of professional revolutionaries today in preparation for the battles to come.
As long as capitalist oppression exists, the rise of revolutionary movements, like the one that gave rise to the Black Panther Party, is a historical certainty. The Panthers showed that revolutionary ideology and organization, embraced by the most oppressed sectors of the working class, is what the ruling class fears the most.
Everything the Black Panthers did and the sacrifices they made will not be in vain. Those organizing for socialism in the United States embrace their history and strive to emulate their courage and revolutionary spirit.
11/7/07
10/29/07
Ben Harper's Oppression; A Xicano Interpretation
A powerful song, and I can only hope that I have not taken anything away from it. A statement on the oppression of different peoples, with an eye toward Mexicanos, especially. Nezua
Dedicated with love to all the whanau everywhere : Esa ola irá creciendo cada día que pase, esa ola ya no parará mas.Che
(This wave will swell with everyday that passes, this wave will no longer be stopped)
9/5/07
Back n Blacklist
The Melbourne Alliance for Civil Disobedience Co-ordination (AC/DC)
Presents:
Back n Blacklist
Anti APEC Solidarity Melbourne
Speeches, Street theatre, Open mic
Call out for creative protest and free speech
Melbourne APEC Finance Centre
Monash University City Office
30 Collins Street
Melbourne
7 September 2007
1-2pm
uriohau@gmail.com
phone:9504 8449
8/15/07
A call for shared intent against the violence of APEC
Sydney :: Public Meeting on APEC & Direct Action
Wednesday August 22 :: 6.30 pm
University of Technology Sydney, Tower Building
"We're not going to sit in silence, We're not going to live in fear."- John Farnham
The Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) is a forum where heads of governments in the Asia Pacific region, will meet to discuss economic and military strategies that will benefit ruling powers in the region. APEC heads of state will arrive in Sydney on Friday 7th and meet Saturday 8th September at the Opera House and Sunday 9th
September at Government House.
In Australia, the policies of APEC have resulted in the privatisation and degradation of public transport, low wages, de-unionisation of workplaces, high cost housing, an elitist
education system, increased military funding at the expense of education and health, and the lack of prevention of climate change.
As a colonial power in the Asia Pacific region, the Australian government has a direct interest in implementing these policies. In Papua New Guinea, East Timor, the Solomon Islands and elsewhere,
Australian companies profit, with military enforcement, from the privatisation of public assets, the displacement of local indigenous peoples and environmental degradation.
These policies create situations whereby people have a right to respond with anger. Governments can only maintain the legitimacy of such policies by maintaining an image of social control and demonising protest by committing millions of taxpayers' dollars to surveillance, repression and violence. But we are fighting for a better world.
The people who speak out against the repression of APEC will attend the protest as individuals on their terms. But with shared intent,
good communication and collective organisation, we can participate in mass direct action that is both meaningful and strategic. This can send a strong message against the poverty and violence imposed
by APEC's policies. It is important that we stay safe and minimise the repercussions of police repression in our families and communities.
We invite local community groups, individuals, unions and others to work with us and communicate with us before the event to develop a shared intent. A number of direct action training sessions will take place in Sydney and Melbourne to prepare for a mass, strategic intervention to the APEC meeting. We also support and hope to work
alongside others taking action in whatever way they see fit.
By the very praxis of stepping out and challenging their control of space we are committing what is regarded as a violent act. It is the violence of articulating resistance; it is a violation against
their understanding of our lives.
We want to act together with an approach that is empowering, strategic and fun. We want to use their borders against them. Our proposal is to disrupt their meeting by disrupting their control of the space, to challenge the exclusivity of their politics. We want together as a mobile obstruction and where we see a border silence
us, we challenge them, we turn their zones into the political forum we want to have. We make it known that we don't agree and we are not going to live in fear.
A call for direct action at the anti- APEC protests will be big news in Sydney. But will people join us? Only if we can successfully delegitimise APEC, give people hope that disruption is possible, communicate powerfully why they should participate and most importantly counter the huge fear campaign which the state has
rolled out against the people of Sydney.
This is a statement of our intent to disrupt the APEC conference, because we believe it promotes exploitation, inequality and the destruction of the planet. We are dreaming up ways to disrupt the
conference whilst communicating our deeply held convictions against capitalism and the authoritarian state, and our belief that another
world is possible. We call out to others to join us in planning creative, strategic disruptions, and to plan your own actions of disruption.
sharedintent(*)gmail.com
Related
* http://indyhack.blogspot.com/2007/06/apec-black-list-why-are-you-surprised.html
* http://uriohau.blogspot.com/2007/08/head-pig-for-apec.html
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