TNL just posted links to a fascinating documentary — covering the Textbook Wars of West Virginia in 1974.
People were mobilized largely through their churches — in mine strikes, school boycotts and mass rallies — to oppose new progressive textbooks entering the public schools. It was a rearguard action for fundamentalist and racist views — and was an early battleground of the Religious Right in the U.S. And it was a focus of frantic counter-organizing by those of us who wanted to beat back this movement.
The episode also shows (as I argued in my piece of “Ambush at Keystone“) that the militant activism of workers does not automatically produce a progressive or radical movement — that the active workers are not always the advanced, and that there is a deep struggle over politics and ideas that has to unfold.
Communist Militants Against the Strike
Not only are these Textbook Protests largely unknown — but so is the role played by communist organizers in West Virginia — in stopping the spread of the Textbook strike among coal miners. I have discussed this briefly before — and want to add a little more now.
This strike broke out in 1974.. not long after we had created the Miners Right to Strike committee, and were trying to develop a pole of organizing among the more militant miners. We had, for the first time, contact with several networks of militants across the southern part of West Virginia. So it was a paradox that one of our first serious tasks was to use those connections to help suppress and constrain a reactionary rightwing strike — and convince the militants not to take it up.
The communists of the early Revolutionary Union worked with a circle of militant anti-racist Black Vietnam veterans in Beckley, W.Va. to produce and circulate an exposure of the rightwing Textbook protesters — to expose their lies about the Black literature and progressive textbooks being introduced in West Virginia schools.
Trey Kay’s documentary on the fight over school textbooks in west Virginia in the 1970s has just won a Peabody award. This fight was contemporaneous with the Coalminer’s Gas Protest which Mike Ely participated in and has written on.
The Great Textbook War
April 20, 2010 —In 1974, Kanawha County, West Virginia was the first battleground in the American culture wars. Controversy erupted over newly-adopted school textbooks. School buildings were hit by dynamite and Molotov cocktails, buses were riddled with bullets and surrounding coal mines were shut down by protesting miners. Textbook supporters thought they would introduce students to new ideas about multiculturalism. Opponents felt the books undermined traditional American values. The controversy extended well beyond the Kanawha Valley. The newly-formed Heritage Foundation found a cause to rally an emerging Christian conservative movement. This documentary, recent winner of the Peabody award, tells the story of that local confrontation and the effect that it had on the future of American politics.
Gainesville, FL – The video of the March 2 shooting of Kofi Adu-Brempong has finally been released to the public. Students of the University of Florida and members of the community have been outraged about the shooting and have held demonstrations demanding justice for Adu-Brempong. (Thanks to the Marxist-Leninist)
This is an eyewitness report from Nepal. Jed Brandt’s other writings appear here on Kasama. Join us in circulating this widely. Do it now — events are moving quickly. Send links by email. Post this on your website. Donate funds to support his work.
by Jed Brandt
KATHMANDU, APRIL 29, 2010– Business as usual is over in Kathmandu. With two days to go until May First, overflowing buses are pulling in by the hour to the outskirts of town.
The city is crowded. Bus caravans are unloading directly into street marches wild with chanting, marshaled by uniformed cadre from the Young Communist League. Despite a week of fear-mongering by Nepal’s mainstream press, the crowds are militant, but unarmed. And they are giddy despite harassment from the Armed Police on the roads leading into the city.
Several Maoists have been arrested on petty weapons charges, but these are the exceptions to the rule.
The Maoist rallies have already started. The central intersections of every district I passed were filled with young people, always the young!
There is more density towards the center of the city, as mini-rallies are moving from the outskirts towards the center, but they aren’t all staying by government buildings. It seems as the contingents arrive, they are dipping into the center and then marching back out across the city. The convergence of all these hundreds of thousands of people is set for May First. The contingents are on their own for now. Read the rest of this entry »
People are taught that the Southern civil rights movement was “non-violent” — this is untrue. There was a general adoption of non-violent civil disobedience in many actions. There were large peaceful marches and boycotts.
But in a number of places, the organizing of Black people was protected by secret networks of armed Black men. One of those networks was the Deacons for Defense. While civil rights marchers slept in tents — in danger as obvious targets of night-riders and assassins — the Deacons for Defense were on watch, cruising in their cars through the darkness, prepared to shoot and kill the vicious agents of Jim Crow.
The seeds of modern Black revolution, the beginnings of the Panthers’ armed self defense, were in those brave moments on deserted country roads and in the parallel organizing by Robert Williams in North Carolina. [note: get and watch the movie.]
We remember Robert Hicks — and the fearless Deacons for Defense — and we pass on their memory.
It will be hard for people, far removed by space and time, to recapture how bold, shocking, and courageous it was for Black men in the Deep South to take a stand, with guns in hand, to defend their brothers and sisters — to defy two centuries of beating, whipping and lynching. To face off with those southern sheriffs and the hooded killers.
“They carried guns, with the mission to protect against white aggression, citing the Second Amendment.And they used them. A Bogalusa Deacon pulled a pistol in broad daylight during a protest march in 1965 and put two bullets into a white man who had attacked him with his fists.”
Robert Hicks, Leader in Armed Rights Group, Dies at 81
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Someone had called to say the Ku Klux Klan was coming to bomb Robert Hicks’s house. The police said there was nothing they could do. It was the night of Feb. 1, 1965, in Bogalusa, La.
The Klan was furious that Mr. Hicks, a black paper mill worker, was putting up two white civil rights workers in his home. It was just six months after three young civil rights workers had been murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.
“If the puppet government will not step down and clear the way for a new national government, the future action plan of the movement will be nation-wide revolt, which will ultimately establish a people’s federal republic.”
This is an important interview given by Prachanda on the eve of major May First actions in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. It focuses on long range revolutionary goals, the transitional demands of this moment, and the intentions of his party, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).
Many people are not clear about the meaning of these terms in Nepali and Maoist usage:
New democratic: the first step of socialism rooted in revolutionary distribution of land and the severing of foreign control of culture, politics and industry.
Federal: meaning that previously oppressed nationalities and ethnic groups have radical new forms of autonomy and self-determination, within an overall “federal” framework of a liberated New Nepal.
Republic: meaning the king is overthrown and will not be back, and that his former royal army is required to submit to the changes wanted by the people and their new government.
The interview was first published in the party’s international journal Maoist Information Bulletin (Vol. 04, No. 13) .
* * * * * * *
Prachanda: It is quite clear that the current transitional political situation is very sensitive and delicate.
The ongoing peace process and the process of drafting a new constitution are in a critical situation. The domestic and foreign reactionary and regressive elements are continuously conspiring against the aspiration of the people’s peace and constitution.
But we think that politically conscious Nepalese people will be able to overcome all the challenges created by the reactionaries and ultimately people will be victorious.
The following is an excerpt from Bill Martin’s “Into the Wild: Badiou, Actually-Existing Maoism, and the “Vital Mix” of Yesterday and Tomorrow.” This is a work on how we should approach the radical reconception of revolutionary theory, and about the role played by critical reexamination of past experiences. We will be publishing a number of excerpt over the next few weeks.
The essay was originally published on Khukuri. The essay can be downloaded as a pamphlet, or read three segments1, 2, and 3.
Except 2: Willing to Reground
If you’re not sometimes confused in this crazy world, then you’ve probably abdicated on being human, and certainly on being an intellectual. And who isn’t sometimes confused?
Fundamentalists and dogmatists and people sealed up inside a small, locked-up universe are the ones who are never confused. Charges of “agnosticism” and “relativism” do not do justice to the fact that sometimes we have to bracket what we know (or supposedly know or think we know) in order to be open to something new.
Revolutionaries have to be willing to go into the wilderness, and this is, I think, the main point at stake in Lenin’s having taken up Hegel’s Logic in 1916. One reading of this is that Lenin felt the need to reground his sense of how the dialectic works in Marx, especially in Capital. This is how Lenin’s “return to Hegel” is understood in the Marxist-Humanist trend of Raya Dunayevskaya, as represented for example in the excellent book by Kevin Anderson, Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism.
Different reports are coming in — First that Pima County Sheriff is refusing to cooperate with SB1070. Then that he will only do so if “forced.”
This borderland sheriff is no closet progressive — he recently suggested that the schools be investigated to ferret out undocumented youth. But his unease at this new law underscores how extreme it is — and how crudely it will force police to violate basic rights at the street level.
As for being “forced”: This fascist law, as you may know, has a provision for citizens to sue local police who refuse to enforce the law aggressively enough! (Think about how extreme and unusual that is: How often are people encouraged by law to sue the police! It is a deliberate encouragement for every vigilante racist to demand that the police enforce HIS standards of anti-immigrant persecution!)
The Sheriff said today, “This law is unwise, this law is stupid, and it’s racist. It’s a national embarrassment. . . If I were a Hispanic person in the state, I would be humiliated and angered. From that point of view, I think it’s morally wrong.”
At least 20 thousand cadres are expected to enter Kathmandu each day until May 1.
Kathmandu turns RED, Nepal Maoist’s cadres enter from all corners
Reports quote Nepal Police sources as saying that in the last two to three days more than 40 thousand cadres of Unified Maoists have already entered in Kathmandu for the so-called ‘Peoples Uprising’ beginning May 1, 2010.
They have entered the capital through Thankot, Dakshin Kali, Sankhu, Bode and Sanga entry points, police reveals.
Reports have it that the cadres have been kept at various locations in Kathmandu, mainly at Schools, covered halls, club buildings, Party venues, vacant lands, Parks, Pashupati Area, Bhrikuti Mandap, under construction buildings and factories. Read the rest of this entry »
The workshops of Kathmandu’s broken-down trolley system are not far from the airport. The roar of jet engines flying low on approach contrasts with the strange silence of the idle repair barns.
Working men play cards beside the rusting hulks of street cars, partially dismantled, piles of machine parts laid along the zinc-sheet walls waiting for resurrection. Some street cars were torched during bandhs shutdowns. None have left the shop in years.
The only bustle is around the union office. Workers were fixing up the central room, while a few dozen machinists sat clustered in the building’s shade, eating lentils and rice. Electrical load-shedding blackouts have crippled the electrical system constantly for three years now, so the trolleys can’t leave their barn. Now the yards provide their sporadic electricity output to charge up battery-converted tuk-tuks – a fleet of three-wheel minivans that are now the scrappy backbone of the city’s chaotic mass transportation.
At the yard gates, and pasted across each of the workshops are Maoist posters calling for total mobilization on May First. The only words in English read “Workers of the World Unite!”
“The government will fall or the people will rise. Thousands have already arrived in Kathmandu, occupying the private schools shut down by Maoist students last week. 500,000 villagers are expected to join the workers and students in the city. The Nepal Army is on alert, the People’s Liberation Army is, too. The people are coming to the seat of power. Rallies have started. All eyes are on May First.”
by Jed Brandt
Yesterday, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) called for an indefinite general strike starting May 2, should the current Prime Minister not step aside in the face of the May First mass mobilization.Sector by sector, business as usual is coming to a halt.
Wars and rumors of war
While rumors shoot around the city, the mood is uncertain. Only the Maoists have a resolution in mind, and only they are bringing the population into action. Their morale appears high, and they are busy.
Arizona seeks to nullify federal immigration law, now Oklahoma seeks to nullify federal abortion rights.Clearly a new strategy of rightwing “states rights” is in play: to consolidate ultra-reactionary base areas within this reactionary country.
The right to abortion is basic to women’s equality — without abortion as a fall-back form of birth control, many women are trapped in enforced parenting, losing control over their own lives and bodies. These laws try to put an official stigma and punishment on women seeking to exercise a fundamental right of privacy and choice.
Oklahoma, which is still upholding its reputation as a decidedly anti-choice state, just enacted some disturbing and restrictive legislation. The legislature overrode the governor’s veto on two measures: the first not only requires women to have a pre-abortion ultrasound, but for the doctor to set up the monitor so that the pregnant woman can see the screen and describe the heart, limbs and organs of the fetus. The second prevents women who have disabled babies from suing doctors who withheld information about birth defects in the womb.
The following is a transcript of the press conference yesterday in Kathmandu by Robert O. Blake, Jr. Assistant U.S. Secretary of State, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. It is from the U.S. State Department website.
We hope it is not necessary to say that the views represented here are not ours. Rather they represent the arrogance of an empire that thinks it can dictate how the Nepali people should run their society — and even conduct themselves in street protests.
We present it here as evidence of both the seriousness with which U.S. ruling circles are taking the impending May Day demonstrations. Also interesting is the suggestion that the Maoists closed the private schools in order that they might be used to house demonstrators coming into Kathmandu from the countryside.
We demand: “Take the Maoists off the terrorist list!”
“We … say that the Maoists will be judged not by their words, but by their actions, and how they implement the pledges they have made. That will be the standard by which the United States and other members of the international community will judge the Maoist actions.”
********
“I think investment is constrained now by several things. First of all, by the absence of a peace process and by the instability that exists here in Nepal, but secondly by some of the electricity shortages, and some of the labor problems that exist in part because of these mentioned general strikes.”
The following is an excerpt from Bill Martin’s “Into the Wild: Badiou, Actually-Existing Maoism, and the “Vital Mix” of Yesterday and Tomorrow.” This is a work on how we should approach the radical reconception of revolutionary theory, and about the role played by critical reexamination of past experiences. We will be publishing a number of excerpt over the next few weeks.
The essay was originally published on Khukuri. The essay can be downloaded as a pamphlet, or read three segments1, 2, and 3.
Except 1: The Debriefment of Maoism
From the introduction:
There are some who do not see this project of “debriefment” as a particularly important task, especially some who supposedly moved beyond this stage of things long ago. Perhaps this question doesn’t “divide into two,” exactly, but there are at least two important aspects to it.
The aspect which I would take as principal, or that I try to take as principle (though I probably fail in this respect here and there), is taking it as baseline that Maoism generates a “problematic” (as Althusser called it) from which we communists need to advance. That means building on the positive experiences, and understanding and criticizing the problems, and asking what it means to go forward from a certain place or a certain trajectory. This also means considering the contributions of Maoism after Mao. The problem is instead one of creating a framework where the really important contributions can be carried forward.
This is was written as part of a sharp debate that followed our posting of a document by a small leftist group in the U.S. — that accuses the leadership of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) of revisionism and calls for a split in their party. This debate takes place just as that Maoist party mobilizes to fight for its life and the future in Nepal.
The following is a response to thoughtful comments made by Nat S. — comments that are quite critical of me and of the Kasama Project. I am not going to deal with every point Nat makes, and urge you to click on the link and read his remarks in their totality.
By Mike Ely
I want to start by uniting with Nat’s sentiments, when he writes:
“I agree with the idea that the revolutions in South Asia should be supported and are extremely important for the future of the world communist movement.”
In the absence of organized support within the U.S. and in a situation where most progressive people have never heard of the revolution in Nepal, this is actually a very important bit of unity.
And let me point out that even calling the movements in South Asia “revolutions” is controversial among communists (believe it or not!) — and reveals that your support-for-support is significant.
On the Need for Critical Thinking
Nat also writes:
“Internationalism does not mean uncritical support even for those forces whose heart may be in the right place.”
And again: I agree — even though Nat was accusing me and Kasama of precisely such uncritical support and cheerleading.
But I have to point out that we have, on this site about South Asian revolution and on Kasama, very consciously tried to avoid uncritical support. In fact, while we worked to popularize news and analysis of those revolutions, we have also created places where criticism of the revolutions of South Asia have appeared and been seriously discussed. We have hosted (and encouraged) reams of critical remarks — both formal polemics of parties and the more informal comments of Kasama participants. Read the rest of this entry »
by Mike Ely
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