Reports from USA
We could not post these reports from the blogsite Facts for Working People for technical reasons last week. We have put them on Left-Horizons now because although they are two weeks old, they include important commentary and an eye-witness report on the massive awakening of American youth, particularly but, not exclusively, on the issue of gun control.
On March 23rd, 800,000 people marched against gun violence in Washington DC. The protests were in response to irresponsible gun laws and the ease with which people can buy just about any kind of weapon in US society. Tens and tens of thousands more marched in another 800 locations throughout the US. Many solidarity marches took place around the world.
This movement in the US is led by the youth. Only youth speakers were allowed to address the 800,000 at the march in Washington DC, so the platform was not dominated by millionaire celebrities. Speaker after speaker in Washington and around the country condemned the NRA, the lobbying group for the gun manufacturers, the bribers of politicians, the bag men and women for the profit-addicted gun capitalists. Speaker after speaker called for people to get out and vote and to vote against any candidate, Republican or Democrat or against any other party that took money from the NRA and that did not support common sense gun regulation.
It appears that a new movement has begun and one that represents a new phase in US society. A phase which will be marked by the anger that exists amongst the majority of the population in US society, expressing itself in great struggles and also through the electoral process. This represents a change in the consciousness in sections of US society.
When Trump was elected President through the fraudulent, undemocratic electoral college in 2016, Facts For Working People Blog, in the weekly Conference Calls of our Think Tank, explained that in our view, Trump’s election would result in a stepping up of the offensive of US capitalism against the working class, against minorities and women, against the environment and against the albeit minor regulations that exist to try to restrain the worst excesses of capitalism. Part of this stepped-up offensive has been the massive tax cut to the rich, the removal of regulations from Wall Street and the big banks, industry and the environment and also the increased talk of war. On top of this, Trump’s own racism and sexism has encouraged the most backward elements to show their faces.
Youth condemned for school strike
There is an extreme overconfidence and arrogance among the US and international capitalist classes. This results from the collapse of Stalinism and the refusal of the leaders of the workers’ organizations, in the US the leadership of the trade unions, to fight.
This arrogance, over-confidence and stupidity was summed up in the recent statement of former Republican Senator and former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Rick Santorum. He condemned the youth for walking out of their schools to demand a change in the gun laws and told them instead that they should learn CPR. In other words, he advocates that nothing be done to try and stop the shooting of the students. Instead students should learn CPR to try and help their classmates who would continue to be shot as the present status quo remains. This is Rick Santorum’s insulting contribution to a much-needed debate. This overconfidence and arrogance of Santorum and of the capitalist class in general, is coming back to haunt them, is giving life to the movements now taking place.
The view of Facts For Working People at the time of Trump’s election was that the increased capitalist offensive that Trump represented would be met with an increase in struggles against that offensive. This is what we are now seeing. The women’s marches for women’s rights and against sexual harassment and discrimination, the anti-racist movements and the anti-police violence movements, the 40,000 who marched against the Nazis and racists and chased them out of Boston, the movements in defence of the environment, the movements to increase the minimum wage, the victorious West Virginia teachers and education workers strike in defiance of their own union leaders, the threat of more teachers strikes, the uptick in union organizing such as the vote to unionize at the viciously anti union Los Angeles Times and we are now seeing calls from sections of the high tech industry as coders are attempting to organize. And most recently and most dramatically we have the youth-led movement on guns. All these developments are the beginnings of the counter-offensive of working people, minorities, women and youth against the capitalist offensive presently led by the racist and sexist thug, Trump.
In our weekly conference calls, one subject of discussion has been US working class history and its militant traditions. After periods of defeat great explosive movements have taken place which have brought about changes in society. In the 1930s there was the rising of the working class that built the union movement from just over 2 million to over 12 million as the industrial workers entered the organized working class in huge numbers. In the 1960s there was the black revolt which forced the US capitalist class to retreat on some of the worst racist aspects of their rule and the rise of the women’s movement that forced changes such as the legalization of abortion. Also, in the 1960s there was the movement against the Vietnam War both at home and also with opposition and outright revolt in the ranks of the US military in South East Asia.
New recession is inevitable
It is likely that we are at the beginning of a similar period now in the US: new period when great mass struggles will explode and when capitalism will be forced to retreat from its offensive, at least temporarily. It is a mistake to be too definite when we try to look into the future. It is necessary to be conditional as major events can cut across developing processes. One such event could be an attack on North Korea. However, it is highly unlikely that Trump will launch a war on North Korea, or for that matter on Iran. The saner sections of the US capitalist class will probably stop him. However, if he did, then this could change the process of events in the US and around the world.
It also has to be kept in mind that the present economic situation will not last and a new and deeper recession or possibly an outright slump lies ahead. This would also change the consciousness. It is also inevitable that catastrophic events arising from climate change and the pollution of the planet’s water, land, air and food by capitalism will take place. All or any of these could come to dominate consciousness and events and cut across the existing processes. So, a ‘perspective’ has to be conditional. However, while there are, and while there will be, reactionary elements in the unfolding processes, it is most likely that these events will push in the direction of greater criticism and more action against the present unfolding catastrophe that capitalism means to life on earth.
It has been said that the art of revolution is to combine analysis of the objective situation with subjective action. That is, revolutionaries have to try to figure out the phase through which we are passing and what should be advocated and what should be done. The youth-led movement and the other movements referred to are magnificent. They must be fully supported. However, it also has to be noted and pointed out that the leaders of these movements in the main are new to political struggle.
They are under great pressure from opportunistic forces. One such pressure is the liberal capitalist media which fawns over the leaders of this youth movement, presents them on their TV shows and in doing so makes every effort to ensure that there is no discussion about the realities – that gun violence is driven by the wider crisis in capitalist society, alienation, despair and insecurity, and by the addiction to profit of the capitalist, market-driven gun industry.
This liberal capitalist media plays the role it usually does when new movements arise: it seeks to direct them into safe channels for capitalism and prevent the issue of capitalism from being discussed at all. They played and still play a similar role in the movement against sexual abuse in society. They kept off their airwaves and out of their newspapers all discussion on the need to organize into fighting democratic unions to fight the sexual predatory culture of capitalism and class-based society. This liberal-capitalist media seeks to channel all such movements and trap them in the capitalist Democratic party.
It is the task of revolutionary socialists to be part of these this youth movement and all these movements, to learn from them, to exchange ideas with them and to seek to assist them, but also to see that capitalism is the problem and seek to bring these movements to see that it is only a united working class that can end capitalism, through mass struggle.
Earlier this month, those of us who participate in the FFWP blog’s weekly conference calls discussed the gun rights question and out of that discussion we issued a statement expressing what we think the approach should be. We would like to invite our readers to look at this, consider our views and see if they appear to be helpful to take the movement forward, and we also invite our readers to add to these views, strengthen and if necessary correct these views. Readers can also contact us and work together with us to these ends.
Report of demonstration in Phoenix, Arizona
Local news outlets in Phoenix have estimated there were at least fifteen thousand marchers assembled today in Sun Valley to protest gun violence in schools, but some organizers have placed that total closer to twenty-five thousand. I was there from start to finish and interacted with various groups of people from student groups and the League of Women Voters, registering eligible voters, to those friends and families waving signs and banners, to candidates and staffers from political campaigns. It is a positive move to action for those who came out, but without a viable political option for workers in the United States, it appears the local participants may be corralled into the progressively liberal wing of the Democratic Party in Arizona.
I arrived at the State Capitol building at about 7:30 am and I witnessed that several dozen event organizers and about two hundred early march attendees wearing bright orange tee-shirts were already there. Tables and chairs were being setup at multiple locations for this event, but the memorabilia crowd was in place early, peddling their silk-screened protest garb for about twenty dollars apiece. I didn’t ask where the money was going, however. It was eerily similar to the #RedforEd Wednesdays where local teachers have been wearing red clothing to work in protest of low teacher salaries. The Arizona Highway Patrol and local police were present as well, but I will get to them later.
As I moved from one group to another, I was told by a woman event volunteer to be careful of a man wearing a red shirt and carrying a sign with the NRA written on it. Apparently, the woman (an elderly white woman who appeared to be a retiree) had already notified event security about this man’s suspicious behaviour because he was filming himself at the event and talking into his cell phone. He was standing by himself on a grass lawn approximately fifty feet in front of the small stage where speakers were scheduled to address the crowd. Within five minutes the man was surrounded by four law enforcement officers where he was questioned for some time and allowed to remain.
Over the next two hours thousands of people filtered into the plaza in front of the State Legislative buildings and music played over the loud speakers which were scattered throughout. People using camera-phones for selfies with friends and photo-ops with politicians grossly outnumbered the few local television news crews as hundreds of teenage marchers arrived by the busload. They all gathered with their signs supporting assault rifle bans, background checks, and solidarity with student marchers across the country as they geared up for a walk through the streets of Phoenix and back. The crowd was upbeat and there were smiles and hugs everywhere. A man wearing a camouflage tactical vest with a matching cap and dark sunglasses was holding the leash of a dog trained to locate explosives as it brushed by my leg.
Gun lobby in Arizona
Shortly before 10 am, I walked from one side of the plaza along the sidewalk behind the stage through a crowd of a few hundred people. As I crossed the street, headed toward an empty parking lot where the portable restrooms were staged, I heard a buzzing noise which sounded like a blown speaker. I looked up in the air and approximately twenty feet over my head a small four-propeller drone was circling above. The event speakers took the stage and began shouting out their gun violence statistics accompanied by the legislative success of Arizona against the NRA. Then they read through a list of reasons why the current governor and legislature doesn’t stand up to the gun lobby now.
Needless to say, the Democratic Party of Arizona was attempting to rope in this movement. However, not everyone who showed up was willing to cheer for this effort. A group of approximately 40 anti-protesters assembled with some waving their American flags and wearing Make America Great Again hats. Many of them were carrying pistols and one even had a military-style rifle hanging by a nylon strap across his chest. It was a mixed crowd of men and women with several members of colour, including many Latino males and an African-American female wearing a green shirt with a logo for the Arizona Border Recon Support Team. The AZBR is a paramilitary militia composed of former members of the armed forces, law enforcement officers, and security contractors. They were quickly encircled by police officers and separated from the thousands of protesters present.
It was at this time I saw someone wearing a black leather vest with an IWW patch on the front pocket and a small pin with a picture of Lenin on his lapel. I asked if he was with a group nearby to which he showed me a flier that he had been given by someone he spoke with earlier. When he opened it I read, “Make Arizona Blue in 2020.” I asked him about his patch and he mumbled something and walked away.
Then a woman quickly approached me and asked if I had heard of Our Revolution. I politely told her yes and she moved on. I was scanning the crowd for any sign of the left groups which usually frequent these types of events, but perhaps I was looking in all the wrong places. Or, maybe they just weren’t there. I did see one guy was wearing a shirt for the Green Party of Arizona, but that group was over-run by ‘Berniecrats’ and ‘#DemExiters’ after the Vermont senator’s capitulation to the neo-liberals at the Democratic National Convention.
Suddenly, I saw the suspicious guy who the cops were talking to earlier. I noticed he had a ball cap with “working class” embroidered on it and I started up a conversation with him. It turns out he was a march supporter wearing a shirt with #I’mwithEmma (Emma Gonzalez is the very articulate young woman with short-cropped hair who was one of the more vocal survivors of the mass killing at a Florida High School this past Valentine’s Day). He said his name was Karl and I thought I might have found someone whose consciousness may have been elevated. Although he was receptive to a few comments, it became apparent he was not familiar with Marx.
Facial recognition technology deployed
However, he did have an interesting story. Karl told me the police approached to ask him to leave the area and assemble with the counter-protesters. They had mistakenly assumed he was a Trump supporter trying to antagonize the crown until an officer read one of the four signs he had made for the event. His NRA reference was about them trying to sell more guns. We both had a laugh and I told him how that sweet little lady said that I should be afraid of him. After we shared some ideas about a few other political issues he gave me his contact information.
Now the protesters filed out of the plaza and down the street. Most of those who remained were organizers and event staff who mingled from table to table. Many were activists and non-profit workers who recognized each other from their time spent on the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign in 2016. One commented to me that facial recognition technology was in use today as he pointed to a tower about ten feet high with a camera on top positioned toward the lawn in front of the stage.
A few minutes later I was chatting with a college professor who claimed she was from Australia, but was now living in the US She gave me the rundown on her political activities against the local Republicans in office, but she was not a fan of Bernie. We discussed his weakness on foreign policy and support of the religious state of Israel in the Middle East. She also said she was disappointed in many policies during the Obama Administration, but she remained committed to reforming the Democratic Party. She gave me her email address and disappeared. I didn’t see her again for about an hour.
Sometime after 12 pm the crowd began to return to the Capitol and a large group engaged with the counter-protesters. It was at this moment that an event organizer took the stage and instructed the crowd to not confront them. No one listened. I saw the Australian woman again, but this time she was carrying a megaphone as she was leading the crowd in chants against the pro-gun group. They moved away but by 1 pm more pleas came from the stage. Eventually the rally was dispersed with one organizer blaming a small group of protesters for not behaving very well, but most of the attendees had already left by then.
As I walked back to my car I ran into the Australian professor. She made another reference about the number of events she has participated in at the capitol, but she said she doesn’t vote. When she began lecturing me on intersectionality and white feminist privilege I walked away.
Progressive politics was the word of the day in Phoenix. Let’s hope the movement isn’t co-opted completely.
April 5, 2018
These reports from the US website Facts for Working People, at www.weknowwhatsup.blogspot.co.uk/
