Tag Archives: racism

China publishes report on U.S. human rights

The U.S. uses torture to "defend human rights" in Iraq and around the world.

The following is from Xinhua. For the full report, go to Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009

 

China Friday retorted U.S. criticism by publishing its own report on the U.S. human rights record.

“As in previous years, the (U.S.) reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory,” said the Information Office of the State Council in its report on the U.S. human rights record.

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009 was in retaliation to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 issued by the U.S. Department of State on March 11.

The report is “prepared to help people around the world understand the real situation of human rights in the United States,” said the report.

The report reviewed the human rights record of the United States in 2009 from six perspectives: life, property and personal security; civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; racial discrimination; rights of women and children; and the U.S.’ violation of human rights against other countries.

It criticized the United States for taking human rights as “a political instrument to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, defame other nations’ image and seek its own strategic interests.”

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Alabama: Campus Bus Drivers Fight for Living Wage

The following article by Laura Langley is from Fight Back! News:

Tuscaloosa, AL – Bus drivers, with the support of students at the University of Alabama (UA), are organizing a union campaign to win a living wage. The bus drivers shuttle students, football fans and others around the UA campus. Student activists are riding the buses to sign up student supporters for the bus drivers. The 62 Crimson Ride Shuttle Bus drivers work for FirstGroup PLC, a huge British multinational corporation. The union drivers and students are exposing the British company’s big ripoff of Alabama workers and taxpayers.

The bus drivers, most of whom are African American women, make only $9.50 per hour. This salary puts the drivers and their families below the poverty line. In May of 2009, the Crimson Ride Shuttle Bus Drivers at the University of Alabama unanimously voted to join the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1208, but still do not have a contract. Without a contract there are few benefits. The drivers have no job security. There are no guidelines regulating termination. The drivers are paid nothing during university holidays. Many work two jobs to make ends meet.

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America never was America to me.

In recognition of the Forth of July, I’m posting the following poem by the great revolutionary African American poet, Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again”. I encourage my readers to read some of Langston Hughes’ other radical poems, such as “Good Morning, Revolution”, “Put One More ‘S’ in the U.S.A.” and “Goodbye, Christ”:

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Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

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North Carolina: A Victory Won in Struggle Against White Supremacists at UNC

Haley Koch, one of the defendants, speaks at a rally outside the courthouse

Haley Koch, one of the defendants, speaks at a rally outside the courthouse

The following article is from Fight Back! News:

North Carolina
A Victory Won in Struggle Against White Supremacists at UNC

By Carlyn Cowen

Chapel Hill, NC – Haley Koch and six community activists had their first court date June 1, for their participation in the Tom Tancredo and Virgil Goode protests that took place in April. These protests were in response to a far right-wing organization, Youth for Western Civilization, that brought two anti-immigration speakers, Tom Tancredo and Virgil Goode, to the University of North Carolina campus within a week of each other. Hundreds of students and activists protested the racism, xenophobia and white supremacy that these speakers promoted and seven demonstrators were arrested by campus police in response. They all pleaded not guilty, even after being offered a deal by the district attorney which would lighten their sentence in return for admission of guilt. The seven are standing strong in their belief that they did no wrong in protesting racism and white supremacy on UNC’s campus and will represent themselves in their next court date, Sept. 14.

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Protesters were right to shut down the racist Tancredo

The following commentary by Kosta Harlan is from Fight Back! News:

fight-racism-goodeStudents at University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill made national headlines last week when they confronted the racist ex-congressman Tom Tancredo. 200 students marched, shouted down, or silently protested Tancredo. When 60 students chanted in the lobby of the building where he was to speak, police attacked the demonstration with pepper spray. Two women were thrown to the floor, another protester had her hair pulled by a cop and several people were pushed into the walls. The police drove the students out by threatening them with tasers. Shortly after we were pushed out, a window was broken and the event was shut down.

Thousands of articles, commentaries, and editorials have been written on this event. Most of it is a waste of everyone’s time. In typical mainstream media fashion, most of the coverage has completely turned reality on its head. Like Malcolm X would have said, they make the victim look like the villain and the oppressors look like the oppressed.

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Congress of South African Trade Unions oppose Israeli Apartheid

endisraeliapartheidThe following was posted on ML Today:

Why South African Trade Unions Favor Sanctions and Boycotts Of Apartheid Israel

Address to Lenasia (near Johannesburg) Rally on Palestine 14th January 2009, by Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary, Congress of South African Trade Unions [COSATU]

From our own experience, we know how painful and dehumanizing is the system of segregation, otherwise known as apartheid. Apartheid is a system based on the assumption that one group or race is superior to others and therefore has a right to all the privileges and virtues associated with that particular status. It has a right to run and determine the lives of others, excluding them from certain privileges, merely because they do not belong to the “chosen” group.

What other definition would so fittingly define a system based on different rights and privileges for Jews and Arabs in the Middle East? The bantustanization of Palestine into pieces or strips — West Bank, Ramallah, Gaza Strip and so on — run by Israel and with no rights whatsoever for the Palestinians, is definitely an apartheid system. Israel occupied the land of the Palestinian people and created settler communities of Jews who enjoy a different lifestyle and privileges than those experienced by Palestinians. Palestinians are packed like Sardines in a tin throughout the Bantustans, with Gaza being acknowledged as the world’s biggest open-air prison.

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Eric Mann on Obama

I first came upon Eric Mann of the Labor/Community Strategy Center when I read his excellent book, Katrina’s Legacy: White Racism and Black Reconstruction in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (this article is similar to the book). As the elections draw near, folks should consider this article by Eric Mann and what it outlines as “what is at stake” in this election. I don’t really agree 100% with his formulations, in particular I don’t agree with the idea the revolutionaries should go all out campaigning for Obama, basically submerging themselves into his campaign. For my view on how revolutionaries should relate to the election, please look at this along with my article, Revolutionary reflections on the election: we are the wind and the rain, and LS’s reply, “Electing Obama is an important blow against racism and white supremacy”.  

Ten Reasons We Should Turn Out the Vote for Barack Obama

by Eric Mann

For those of us who are in the Civil Rights, Immigrant Rights, Women’s Liberation, Environmental Justice, and Anti-War Movements, for those of us on the Left, the election of Barack Obama is of the utmost urgency. Voting for Barack Obama is not enough. In the next two weeks we need to put all our energy into getting out the vote to elect Obama and defeat McCain.

Because of his brilliant organizing, the possibility of an Obama victory is palpable. Because of the racism of this country and the strong reactionary elements of the general population, the threat of a McCain victory is only too real.

The stakes leave no room for passive support. The Republicans coalescing against Obama are carrying out a calculated strategy to preserve and extend the victories of Reagan and Bush. If it can be imagined, they intend to take the country even further to the right. They want to destroy what is left of democratic liberalism, destroy the Civil Rights and Black Liberation movements, destroy the Immigrant Rights, Women’s Liberation, LGBT, Anti-War movements, to destroy the Left.

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McCain and Palin rely on hate and fear to build the base for their campaign

I’ve posted about this presidential election campaign before. I’ve posted my article, Revolutionary reflections on the election: we are the wind and the rain, and a significant reply, “Electing Obama is an important blow against racism and white supremacy”. See also Tim Wise’s This is Your Nation on White Privilege. I would like to encourage people who haven’t to read those articles, and also to watch this video. Unfortunately, in my own experience, the racist and ignorant views expressed in this video are not at all uncommon.

“Electing Obama is an important blow against racism and white supremacy”

The following was originally posted as a comment from LS on my post, Revolutionary reflections on the election: we are the wind and the rain. I think this comment by LS is a significant contribution to a larger discussion on the Left about electoral politics, strategy and tactics. It also raises some interesting questions to think about in terms of the national-democratic aspects of the larger Black Liberation struggle for full equality and national self-determination. It deals with other questions as well, such as the war against Iraq, but the African American national question is central to what LS is talking about. There is a lot here to think about and digest, so I’m reposting it here for further discussion.

By LS

I appreciate you bringing up this topic, and grounding it in some key Marxist writings dealing with issues that have some similarities historically. This election is obviously an important topic of discussion for everyone on the U.S. left today. I think all the reasons you talk about for voting to defeat McCain in this election are solid. I’d just like to elaborate a bit more on my thinking about it.

I have three main reason for voting for Obama in this election. The first is that the election has become seen by the masses of people as a referendum on racism and on whether a Black person is capable of being president. Understanding the centrality of white supremacy and the oppression of Black people in all of U.S. history up to the current moment, I think we must strike a decisive blow to McCain/Palin’s shameful whipping up of racism and to the groundswell of fear of Black people (and Black political power) that McCain/Palin are tapping into and in fact fanning (i.e. Palin saying Obama ‘palls around with terrorists’, etc). Given the reality that Cynthia McKinney (the excellent and very progressive African American candidate of the Green Party) has no chance of getting even 1% of the vote in this election, the best way to deliver a decisive anti-racist message in 2008 is for Obama to win a decisive victory over McCain.

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Is a Vote for Obama a Vote Against Racism?

The following is from Counter Punch, October 15, 2008. Please see also my recent post, Revolutionary reflections on the election: we are the wind and the rain.

Is a Vote for Obama a Vote Against Racism?
The Politics of Race in America

By RON JACOBS

When I got on the bus last April after Barack Obama’s primary victory in North Carolina, the conversation was naturally enough about that victory. Despite its southern location, the town I live in–Asheville, NC–is known for its liberal politics and social tolerance. Consequently, the overriding tone was one of exuberance. Young black men and older veterans of the desegregation struggles of the 1960s smiled knowingly at each other. Indeed. one fellow said to every black person who got on the bus–“Black President.” Occasionally, he gave the new passenger what the right wing called a “terrorist fist pump.” If there was somebody on the bus who objected to this display, they kept their mouth shut. Continue reading