People Before Profit blog

Gerald Horne: Fighting Paradise: Labor Unions, Racism, and Communists in the Making of Modern Hawaii

Norman Markowitz — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:21:00 -0400

Gerald Horne, Fighting Paradise: Labor Unions, Racism, and Communists in the Making of Modern Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press: 2011) 459 pp
First let me apologize to Gerry Horne, since I promised to review this massively researched , absorbing, and important history months ago.

I was unable to get to it because of my own political and trade union battles and my teaching responsibilities. When I did get to read it, I could not put it down, reading it on trains and busses and even sneaking a few pages at the Rutgers graduation when I was sitting win cap and gown.

Horne has written a history of an American state whose own history resembles that of an Afro-Asian colony struggling for liberation in the post WWII era---a sort of parallel universe to the cold war consensus abroad and the permanent consumer capitalist installment plan utopia at home proclaimed by American capitalists and their government on the mainland. As a brief introduction, let me set the stage. American planters, already a dominant force in the Hawaiian economy, launched "a revolution" at the beginning of the 1890s to protect their access to the American market-an access threatened by the McKinley tariff of 1890, with the support of the Republican Harrison administration(their political connections were with the Republican party). When McKinley gained the presidency, he gave Hawaii the territorial status that the Cleveland Democrats, connected to Southern plantation interests had refused, and the planters established complete control of the islands and their diverse population. Given the rise of the Japanese empire(Japanese agricultural laborers were of growing importance in the late Kingdom) the planters began to important Filipino and Puerto Rican laborers from the new colonies the U.S. had established in the aftermath of the Spanish American war.

Chinese and Portuguese laborers were also part of the working class along with indigenous Polynesians and the planters, with the "big five" family based companies at their pinnacle, established what was a textbook example of racism's relationship to capitalism-large wage differentials between "haole" (white) workers, and the other groups, who were separated by smaller wage differentials among themselves to keep them divided.

In this "paradise" built on the export of Sugar and Pineapples, the high "haole" families lived like feudal lords while the predominantly Asian work force worked and lived in great privation.

AJA (Americans of Japanese Ancestry) workers were among the most militant and class conscious. Although the Japanese empire was pursuing relentless anti-Communist policies in China and Korea and allying itself with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the 1930s, Japan at the end of the 19th and early 20th century had been the center in Asia for the study and dissemination of Marxist ideas and also in the struggle to establish a class conscious labor movement. Some who would become AJA activists brought these ideas with them to the islands.

AJA activists in the islands were to play a major role in the founding and development of the Communist Party in the islands and also in the rise of a left and Communist led union, the International Longshoreman's and Warehouseman's Union(ILWU) led by Harry Bridges nationally to a position of influence that no union, not even the UAW in Michigan, ever gained at the state level.

In Hawaii, there was essentially a one party non union situation until the ILWU began to mobilize both dock workers and agricultural workers on a non racist basis before WWII.

Ethno cultural divisions were very complicated, involving not only different groups of Asian-Americans among themselves and Portuguese(who in this parallel universe were not considered "haole") but also African-Americans were first came to islands after the Spanish-American war and found themselves in the years during and after WWII in a kind of surreal tropical Dixie---with segregation and brutal forms of ideological and institutional racism directed against them in a"multi-racial" context different than anything that existed on the mainland. Overcoming these contradictions was very difficult;but, the relatively simple nature of the dominant class relations made it possible not only to overcome them in building a powerful union but to make rapid and major advances for the working class.

In 1945, Henry Wallace as outgoing Vice President said that a great people's revolution was advancing in the world and the U.S. could not move to the right while the rest of the world was moving to the left, without a great collision. The cold war of course was that collision, but the territory of Hawaii was moving sharply to the left after the war while the U.S. mainland was moving to the right, producing dynamic and sometimes comic social struggles that Horne narrates clearly and effectively

First, in spite of the attacks and restrictions directed against AJA activists after Pearl Harbor, the ILWU not only grew but developed its own press and even radio broadcasts (similar in some respects to socialist and Communist movements and parties abroad).

All of the weapons used in the U.S. to destroy both the Communist party and the labor movement were trotted out---even a cartoon of Stalin in a grass skirt, portrayals of AJA activists as "Red" agents of a Japanese "yellow peril"(a variation on the "Communist control" of African American activists and groups as part of a political "racial" conspiracy). But the ILWU continued to advance. In the U.S. red baiters like Richard Nixon and a legion of others pointed absurdly to "Communist influence "in the Democratic party as a major those in winning elections in 1946 and afterwards as the cold war developed.

In Hawaii, as Horne shows, ILWU activists and Communist Party members did play a leading role in the development of what had been a paper Democratic party, holding positions in some cases in both the Communist and Democratic parties, and propelling that party to major victories that would end a half century of Republican rule. Although it was the "haoles"(whites) who really constituted a bloc vote, the mainland postwar cold war consensus campaign connecting anti-Communism, a general anti-labor outlook, with racism was very hard to sell to an electorate with a "non white" working class majority.

In Hawaii, for example, there was also Smith Act show trials of CPUSA/ILWU leaders, the longest trials, in the islands history, with some of the same "professional witnesses" expounding on the evils of defendants they never met. But here, because of the influence of left labor , the mayor of Honolulu and territorial representatives came forward as "character witnesses" for the defense.

When the predictable guilty verdicts were issued, 20,000 ILWU workers left their jobs in protest. Here, the ruling groups realized that there were great risks in carrying forward the persecutions and eventually accepted the fact that they could not destroy the ILWU, whatever their friends in both mainland parties and the mainland AFL-CI0 would do.

Eventually, the long postwar persecutions took their toll, but Hawaii's labor and social institutions took a different and far more progressive course then the postwar mainland because of the struggles of Communists and ILWU militants, many of AJA background, along with "haoles" African-Americans, Filipinos and Chinese.

There are no simple heroes and villains in Gerry Horne's rich narrative. The personal foibles, egos, and internal conflicts that existed among Communist/ILWU activists are portrayed extensively, along with searching questions about the question of statehood, responses to racism, etc.

But the relentless racism of both Hawaiian ruling groups and their U.S. supporters is shown with massive documentation . Horne for example has a field day with such figures as Mississippi's Senator James O.Eastland, leader of the "Senate Internal Security Committee" and featured speaker at White Citizens Council rallies through the South, ineffectually seeking to bring the McCarthyite road show to a Hawaii where thousands of ILWU members and others were waiting to stick it to him. The statements of legions of racists, from Strom Thurmond to those saw the "Japanese invasion" of the islands as worse than a Soviet invasion of San Francisco, is documented with skill and beyond any reasonable doubt.

While it was to become an issue more than half a century later, another important achievement of Fighting in Paradise is Gerry Horne's portrayal of Frank Marshall Davis, the African American writer, poet, and intellectual (friend of Paul Robeson and others) who left Chicago to settle in Hawaii in the late 1940s, only to face racist harassment and assault because of his continued militancy in the struggle against racism and reaction. Marshall's insights into what was happening in the islands are cogent and he himself emerges as a multi-faceted and very sympathetic personality.

Although the narrative ends long before Marshall befriended the teen-age Barack Obama, one can understand why he would be able to play such a positive role in the life of a young man like Obama, from a multi-ethnic background that made him a member of two minorities, "haole" and African, in Hawaii---since Marshall represented much of the best in an African-American tradition that Obama, up to that time, had little connection to, but would subsequently be so important to his development when he came in the 1980s to the Chicago that Marshall left in the 1940s.

Gerry Horne in conclusion has made another important contribution to the history of labor and the left and the tangled history of racism in America in Fighting in Paradise. Those who read it, whatever their background will find it enlightening and fascinating, as they would of his many other fine works, examples of what Charles Beard once called a "usable past" and what I like to call "use value history."

a sentence

Kevin Simmonds — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:57:00 -0400

a sentence

needs

at least one subject

and one verb

(though sometimes the subject

is unnamed it's understood

nevertheless

objects must be named)

...........Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant III.

subject: Johannes Mehserle

verb: shot

object: Oscar Grant III

a sentence becomes sophisticated

when it includes complexity and detail

...........Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant III who was...........restrained faced down

on the ground surrounded by three police officers.

subject: Johannes Mehserle

verb: shot

object: Oscar Grant III

...........A white police officer shot a black man faced down...........on the ground

and will spend less than two years in jail for his...........criminal conviction.

what is the object

of that sentence?

object? anyone?

-Kevin Simmonds

Used by permission.

Kevin Simmonds is a San Francisco-based writer, musician and filmmaker originally from New Orleans. His books include the poetry collection Mad for Meat and two edited works: the poetry anthology Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality and the late poet Carrie Allen McCray's Ota Benga under My Mother's Roof. He wrote the music for the Emmy Award-winning documentary Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica and Voices of Haiti: A Post-Quake Odyssey in Verse, both commissioned by the Pulitzer Center. His genre-defying films, including feti(sh)ameand Singing Whitman, have screened internationally.

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Review of To Be an Indian: An Oral History

Kent A. Halliburton — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:45:00 -0400

Cash, Joseph H. and Herbert T. Hoover, eds. To Be an Indian: An Oral History. St. Paul, Minnesota: The Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1995.

From the very first time that Europeans set foot in the Americas, the Native American people have faced constant violence, oppression, and disgrace. Entire populations were wiped out by disease, which was sometimes done intentionally. Towns were burned to the ground, resources were stolen, and whole civilizations were destroyed. What is worse is that the history of these events has rarely been presented from the perspective of the victims. The stories of the European's exploits in the Americas have always been about God, Glory, and Gold in an untamed raw wilderness. Those stories never mention the despair that must have been and was felt by the millions of people in the advanced civilizations that called that 'untamed raw wilderness' home, and whose lives were forever altered.

In these histories, the United States of America played a prominent and extremely guilty role. From Pontiac's Rebellion, in the early days, to the Trail of Tears during Andrew Jackson's presidency, to the theft of the Black Hills from the Sioux, the oppression has been real and lasting. One must, however, not forget that the United States has, in its own words, since the early twentieth century, begun work to slowly reverse this trend, and Native American's living conditions have improved. However, from whose perspective has the story of all of this drama been told, especially from the early days? It has always been from the perspective of American historians or the US Government. These were people who were rarely, if ever, involved in Native American affairs and who were academically detached and people who were more interested in numbers than in people's lives. The perspective of the Native Americans themselves has largely been ignored. This needs to be remedied.

To Be an Indian: An Oral History, edited by Joseph H. Cash and Herbert T. Hoover, is a step in the right direction to begin telling the story of how Native Americans have viewed their lives in the United States of America, from the perspective of the Native Americans themselves. The book was originally published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc. in 1971, but it was later republished with a new introduction from Donald L. Fixico, by the Minnesota Historical Society Press in 1995. The main primary sources for this book are oral history interviews conducted with Native Americans from Idaho to Minnesota and from Nebraska through the Dakotas Region. The authors interviewed young people, old people, unemployed workers, employed workers, political leaders, common folk, uneducated persons, college graduates, full-blood Native Americans, and mix-blood Native Americans. The stated intent of this approach to Native American History was to give these people the voice they have long been without.

The book was divided into four sections: Things that Guide the People, Reservation Life, Depression, War, and a Revival of Self Government, and Today and Tomorrow. The first section addressed how Native Americans viewed their deep faith, culture, and ancient folklore. It opened with a pictorial presentation of Noah White, who lived on the Prairie Island Reservation and was an expert on the culture of the Winnebago people. The second section discussed how Native Americans viewed the history, present conditions, and the future of reservation life. It opened with a pictorial presentation of the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, home to the Lakota Sioux and Webster Two Hawk, the Tribal Chairman of the Lakota Sioux.

The third section discussed how Native Americans viewed their lives during the Great Depression and World War II. It opened with a pictorial presentation of Cato Valandra, a member of the Lakota Branch of the Sioux and a local political and business leader on the Rosebud Reservation. The fourth section addressed how Native Americans viewed their lives in the fifties and sixties, as the US Economy was peaking and social activism was at a high, and how they saw their future developing. It opened with a pictorial presentation of Merri Pat Cuney, a member of the Sioux tribe who, at the time, was a volunteer teacher to Native American students across the state of South Dakota at places like the Pierre Indian School and St. Paul's Indian Mission in the town of Marty. She was also a senior, majoring in Criminology, at the University of South Dakota and planned to pursue graduate level course work in History.

Were the authors right to use Oral History methods to gather their sources? Did they achieve their stated goal? Did the pictorials that opened each section help to augment the oral history interviews? They most certainly were, and they most certainly did, on both accounts. The interviews in the first section showed several things. One can see how rich Native American folklore is by reading over the interview of Jonas Keeble who recounted 'The Story of the Creation of Man,' a myth that existed among the Sisseton Sioux long before the arrival of western colonizers. One can see evidence of the existence of a deep religious faith among the Native Americans by reading George Smith's interview. He, a member of the Winnebago tribe, told the story of 'The Happy Hunting Ground," evidence that Native Americans believe in an afterlife. Both of these interviews also serve as good examples of the vibrancy of Native American culture.

The second section made it clear how many Native Americans felt about life on the reservation. Felix White, of the Winnebago people, expressed his despair about how much their ancient hunting grounds have shrunk to the point of being unusable, as a result of people buying up all of the land for farming. If one read the interview of Paul Robertson, a Santee Sioux, one would find out how Native Americans viewed many government assistance programs as patronizing. He spoke of the in and out nature of the doctors on the reservation. "The experience is what the young doctor wants," he said, hinting that he did not believe that the doctors were really there because it was where they sought to make their livings. One can also read the interview of Neola Walker, a Winnebago, to get a picture of the almost perpetually difficult economic life that Native Americans faced on the reservation.#
The interviews in Section three did a real good job of showing how Native Americans lived through the depression and WWII. If one read the interview of Ben Riefel, a US Congressman and member of the Brule Sioux, one would quickly find out how difficult it was for Native Americans during the Depression. They needed help and were suffering hard times just like everyone else. Many took help from the government but many also did not. One can see how the programs of the depression benefitted the natives by reading the interview of Harold Schunk. He spoke very highly of programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps. One can read of Steve Spotted Tail to get a picture of how Native Americans that fought for their country felt about everything. One can read of Frank McKenzie to look into Native American politics more closely. One can also read the interview of Mabel Trudell to get a sense of the difficulties faced by Native Americans during the depression. She spoke of the sparseness of employment for Native Americans during that era, in that it was much worse than normal.

Section four really did a great job of showing how Native Americans felt about the social upheaval of the fifties and sixties. Two competing images are presented in this section of the text. If one read the interviews of Cato Valandra and Merri Pat Cuney, both Sioux, there would be seen an interested local business man and a bright young activist, both of whom took the approach of working with what their fellow Native Americans had been left with, in order to create better employment and educational opportunities, and social stability for their people. With the interviews of Lehman Brightman, an Oglala Sioux, one would find a bit of a different attitude. He was more aggressive in his approach. He wanted to work to resolve the problems that he saw facing the Native Americans, but he, instead of being inclined to work within the system established by the government, sought to make the government conform to the Native American's ways. He wanted to revive the old Native American traditions rather than attempting to adapt to the present system, something that he felt had already been tried and proven unsuccessful.

What these interviews all show together is much broader. They show a people who, despite years of colonialist oppression, racism, political interference, and pushes to assimilate into white culture, have managed to retain a sense of identity within themselves, with regards to who they are as Native Americans. One can see that it is on the brink for some, but on the whole Native Americans are taking control of who they are and what they can be. They also show that, Native Americans, at the time this book was written, were really beginning to be able to gain greater successes in this country. Consider the interview of Lucille Childs, a Mdewaknton Sioux, who had a daughter in the Ph.D. program at a university in Chicago. The pictures in the text do a great deal augment these interviews, as well, in that they put faces to the people being interviewed. They show that the Native Americans are real people, who have real lives and real problems. They can really be helpful, in that, many people are moved more when they have a face to attach to the stories they read.#
This book and its methods have also not been in vain, as far as their contributions to the academic world. Since this book's initial publication, several additional positive texts on Native Americans have been published, many by Native Americans themselves. Some of these newer texts were, The Search for an American Indian Identity: Modern Pan-Indian Movements, a history that discussed the vitality of modern Native Americans, which was written by Hazel W. Hertzberg and published by the Syracuse University Press in 1971, and Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, which was a protest book written by Vine Deloria, Jr. and published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1988. This book was also followed by another oral history text, Wolf That I Am: In Search of the Red Earth People, put together by Fred McTaggert. This was a look into the lives of the Sac and Fox people of the Great Lakes Region.

It is quite obvious that To Be An Indian: An Oral History has had an effect, as it is still in print and used in classrooms, despite being a relatively old text; a lot can change in forty years. This is also shown by the role that the text has played in inspiring new works. It has also helped to begin a process in which the story of the Native Americans is one that has seen a much more inclusive vision of Native Americans develop that includes not just the words of scholars but also the words of Native Americans themselves. It is likely that if it were not for oral history interviews like these ones, many of these people's memories would be lost to time.

What Must Be Said

Gunter Grass, Victor Grossman — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:27:00 -0400

What must be said

Why have I been silent, silent for so long?,
Our generals have gamed it out,
Confident the west will survive.
We people have not even been considered.

What is this right to “preventive war”?
A war that could erase the Iranian people.
Dominated by it’s neighbor, pulsing with righteousness
Smug in the fact that it is they, not Iran,
Who have the Bomb.

Why have I so far avoided to identify Israel by it’s name?,
Israel and it’s ever increasing nuclear arsenal,
Beyond reproach, Uncontrolled, uninspected.

We all know these things
Yet we all remain silent, fearful of being labeled:
anti-Semitic
hateful
worse

Considering Germany’s past these labels stick
So we call is “business”, “reparation” take your pick,
As we deliver yet another submarine.
As we provide to Israel the means to deliver annihilation.

I say what must be said.
What Must Be Said

Why did I stay silent until now?
Because I’m German, of course.
I’m tainted by a stain I cannot wash out
I’m silent because I want so badly to make it right
To put my sins in the past and leave them silently there.

Why did I wait to say it until now?
And write these words with the last of my ink?
Declaring that Israel threatens world peace?
Because it is true and it must be said,
Tomorrow will be too late.

We Germans now carry a new burden of sin on our shoulders
Through the weapons we have sold
We are helping to carry out this foreseeable tragedy
No excuse will remove our stain of complicity.

It must be said. I won’t be silent
I’ve had enough of the hypocrisy;

Please shed the silence with me,
The consequences are all too predictable.
It’s time to demand free and permanent control
of BOTH Israel’s nuclear arsenal
AND Iran’s nuclear facilities
enforced with international supervision.

It’s the only way, in a land convulsed with insanity,
Israelis, Palestinians, everybody, will survive.
And we too, will survive.

Gunter Grass

_______________________________________________________________

Germany - Aggrieved about Grass

Victor Grossman, Berlin Bulletin No. 41, April 11th, 2012

It’s rare that poems cause such anger and excitement. The only other case I can recall was Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” which once “awoke a perfect storm of derision and abuse”. That was a century and a half ago, but somehow Grass still awakens “derision and abuse”. But this time it’s Günter Grass, a Nobel Literature Prize winner, with his poem “What Must Be Said”. And the subject matter is war and peace.

Grass denies the right of any country – and he is courageous enough to name Israel openly– to wage a heavily-armed first strike against Iran based on the possibility that Iran might also acquire atomic weapons. He neither praises the Iran government in any way nor does he speak in any way against the people of Israel, for whom he stresses his lasting sympathy, but he does indeed warn of the terrifying imminence of war and points out that Israel already has atomic bombs, while Iran does not. He also denounces Germany’s sales of potentially atomic-armed submarines, one after the other, to Israel and calls for international inspection and control of all atomic weapons in the area, whether present Israeli ones or possible future Iranian ones, in the hopes of saving the entire region – or far more – from catastrophe. In a personal note, he admits his hesitance in issuing this warning earlier because of his own biography and because of the danger of being accused of anti-Semitism. But in his waning years, with his “last ink”, as he puts it, he finds it impossible to keep silent in the light of so much hypocrisy – and such a menacing situation.

Immediately after the poem was published, virtually the entire German media jumped on him - seemingly before some critics even bothered to read it. This ignorance of its contents or, more likely, an unwillingness to discuss them with a shred of open-mindedness or even fairness, led to attacks on both the poem and the poet for three main reasons.

Reason one: Grass is an old man. His last best-seller was some years ago; he now putters about with arts and crafts. He should sit by his hearth and mind his own business. His best days are past. A response to this is obviously difficult; he is undeniably 84.

Reason two (which recalled the old attacks against Walt Whitman): The poem was not really poetry; without either rhyme or meter it was really disguised prose. As if lyric quality really mattered – it was the content which counted. After all, Grass had already received the Nobel Prize and many other prizes (mostly for his prose) and was seeking no additional laurels for timeless literature. But he had something to say!

Reason three, constantly alluded to, was his participation during World War Two in a unit of the Waffen-SS, a particularly nasty section of Hitler’s military forces. Most critics disregarded or dismissed the fact that he was only 17 when he was assigned to this military unit and was in it only from November 1944 until he was wounded in April 1945. He claims that he never fired a shot himself but did help load artillery shells. Frequently mentioned is the fact that he kept this secret until late in life, most probably due to shame. But it must be asked: Did this past secret disqualify him from uttering any political view for the rest of his life? Or didn’t his writings, most notably his famous novel “The Tin Drum” (filmed by Volker Schlöndorf), a dramatic, deeply engaged attack on the entire fascist structure and crimes of the Nazis, make good for those juvenile five months?

Then too, during all the decades since 1945 the very same media now attacking him so self-righteously almost totally “neglected” the fact that all West Germany was dominated to an amazing extent by former Nazi bigwigs - up until they finally died out. And not by such young recruits but by the bloodiest of generals who completely built and commanded the new army. A host of incriminated ex-Nazi diplomats represented the Bonn government abroad, the police departments, secret services, courtrooms, academic lecture rooms and government positions up to the topmost heights were heavily laden with truly guilty men. Indeed, the mighty giants behind the swastika flags, those who profited from the conquests and the slave labor, not the individuals but banks and corporations with names like Krupp, Siemens, Bayer, BASF and Deutsche Bank, still dominate the scene today. And not a few newspapers currently attacking Grass were built up after 1945 by editors who won their spurs as propagandists for Hitler. Unlike Grass, few of all these men ever confessed their former sins – or publicly regretted them.

Except in one question. The new ruling powers in West Germany found very quickly that all those sins, not just those of the past but present and future ones, were mildly overlooked if they loudly and stoutly rejected open anti-Semitism while embracing any and all policies of the Israeli government. This rule, carefully watched over, provided the entrance ticket for an ascent into the so rewarding ranks of the “western democracies”. And this strategy, at first more a mask than anything else, soon developed into a close bond between all ruling parties in Germany and the far right forces in Israel, up to and including the openly racist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Premier Benjamin Netanyahu.

This largely one-legged posture explains why any questioning of the top-level German-Israeli alliance represents an earnest threat and must immediately be squelched. Over the years the taboo was rarely violated; this explains the malevolence of the attacks against Grass.

But there is now a new worrisome element explaining the vigor of such attacks against anyone undermining this status quo. In the face of recent Israeli actions - the terrible civilian casualties in the attack on Gaza, the fearful attack on the Mavi Marmara in the Mediterranean, a seepage of information about the oppression of Palestinian villages in the occupied areas, the refusal to suspend the expansion of Jewish settlement in these areas and, indeed, the construction of a Wall reminiscent of Berlin, have been having an effect on public opinion and, much delayed, even on a few public figures eager to win votes - or becoming simply honest.

Shortly before the Grass poem Sigmar Gabriel, head of the Social Democratic Party, wrote in Facebook after a visit to the West Bank city of Hebron that there was no justice for Palestinians there, that it was an “apartheid regime” for which there could be no justification. He, too, was immediately attacked but at least partially stood his ground. No, he had not meant to equate Israel and its government with the old apartheid regime in South Africa, he wrote, he was a friend of Israel, but he considered the Israeli settlement policy to be wrong. “The humiliating treatment of Palestinians in Hebron …is a cause of really great anger, even with someone like myself who supports Israel. This is what I tried to express.”

Such sentiments are undeniably on the increase. What makes this issue so much more complicated here is of course Germany’s unparalleled guilt against the Jewish people. This demands that any criticism of Israeli policy must scrupulously avoid any implied equation of the Netanyahus with the Jewish people, in Israel or anywhere else, especially since there is a numerically small but potentially dangerous pro-Nazi element eager to take advantage of any feelings against Israel to rationalize Hitler’s genocide. At the same time the present leaders of the Jewish community (or the official ones, in any case), while necessarily opposing real anti-Semitism, also use that same label in attacking any and every form of criticism of Israeli policy, especially if it comes from the left – or from even mildly leftish people like Günter Grass. (Strangely enough, some far-right Netanyahu fans suddenly find themselves on the same wagon with some neo-Nazis, who are down-playing anti-Semitism in order to attack the much larger, more vulnerable and far more easily identifiable target, the allegedly common enemy, the Muslims.)

At least one important Israeli fueled the fires in such an arrogant manner that they soon backfired. Interior Minister Eli Yishai proclaimed Günter Grass persona non grata and said he would not be welcome in Israel. This riled many in both countries who otherwise denigrated the Grass poem. Some journalists noted that Grass had no such travel plans anyway. Others, in Israel, pointed out that the very same views, the rejection of any “pre-emptive” military strike against Iran, have been stated over and over by many Israelis, including Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad espionage organization. Others worried that while someone like Grass or Noam Chomsky is barred from the country, vicious racists like the Dutch rabble-rouser Geert Wilders or the French neo-fascist presidential candidate Marie Le Pen are welcomed. And for German leaders, who have always demanded freedom of speech and press in Russia, East Germany and currently in Syria or Iran, such a ban because of a poem is embarrassing to say the least.

While some noted personalities, especially those who have been waving the anti-Muslim banner most fervently, continue with their attacks, the effects of his clear and – for many – quite moving words have undoubtedly had an effect. His books, though usually best-sellers, were not too easily digestible except for intellectuals, but a recent poll showed that well over 50 percent of the population now support him, with a large number stating that they do not consider his words to be anti-Semitic. It seems undeniable: his poem has led not only to much controversy but with it to wide-spread thinking and re-thinking.

+++

Postscript. Although they tend to stress local issues, elections in May in Schleswig-Holstein and the key state of North-Rhine-Westphalia are already affected to a degree by the poem. Social Democratic leaders, with a few notable exceptions, have said they no longer wish any support from Grass, who in earlier years was a favored campaign speaker on their behalf. The other big party, the Christian Democrats, certainly will have nothing to do with him. But, aside from such leaves – or sharp blades – connected with Grass, both elections will be of special importance to the four smaller parties for other reasons. The Free Democrats, still members of Angela Merkel’s national coalition but internally split, are virtually fighting for their political survival. The Greens, though certain of remaining in the legislatures in both states, face the possibility that they will be shoved under the table at a wedding of the two main parties, as in Saarland after a recent election there. They may even be overtaken by the young new party, the Pirates, which hopes to break its way into both state legislatures and has good chances of becoming a new political factor nationally, although - aside from free internet use and political transparency - it remains vague on almost all major issues, national or international.

The Left Party, which has some seats in both legislatures, may well miss the 5 percent hurdle and lose them all due in great measure to its difficult internal situation in the past year – now complicated by the decision of Gesine Loetzsch to resign as co-president because of the illness of her husband and remain only as Bundestag delegate from her East Berlin election district. The Left too is affected by the Grass poem, for some leading members are basically pro-Netanyahu, while others active support secular and democratic Palestinian positions. But, as one drama follows the other, in Germany as elsewhere, I must leave these matters to future articles.

Sones del Zócalo

Arnoldo García — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:21:00 -0400

Mexico City sones terremoto blues
A Mexican Johnny Depp look-a-like
is condemned to play Edward Scissorhands on a street-corner
Another Mexican, with the square jaw of Michael Keaton
in full Batman regalia
poses for photographs with tourists and other passerby's

Unemployment is down by two.

We are all assigned to play a part in this great drama
Indian women at the bottom

They sit with plastic baskets
asking for spare change
everywhere it's the same
Indians at the bottom
Whites at the top
even if they're Mexicans who can pass for Hollywood stars.
Two young men with a boom-box
breakdance with fury
The polluted, thin air doesn't deter their hip-hopping
to techno
A man his skin rubbed in green
a verdant mime,
Plays an Indian
moves in synch to Bach symphony
He starts screaming platitudes every time he gets a donation
Another indian woman sprawled on the sidewalk her hand held upward
waiting for money to fall down
There is a hierarchy of skin color
The indian woman cannot play a hollywood
she's condemned to beg
Marcos was right
We are being condemned to become products in the shop windows of malls.
Who's playing Che? Who's playing Ramona? Who's playing Frida?

I noticed that all the white mannequins pose defiantly
they stand with the power pose of a chola
Except the real cholas who stand and walk defiantly
get arrested, criminalized.
Here the mannequin cholas display the latest fashions
that they'll never wear.

Who is playing the migrant?
Who is playing the drug dealer?
Who's playing the narcotraficante?
Who's playing the Mexican?
A jarocho strums and plucks a harp
playing the opening plucking notes of La bamba
He starts wailing "Para bailer la bamba ...."
I keep walking on
Mexico City sones to tell our history of survival.
Does anyone want a real change?
Graffitti proclaims: it's time for a real change
AMLO = +educación -muerte
MORENA
Where are the Indians?
Where are the Zapatistas?
Who's electing who?
What role will the new president play?
War on drugs or war on drug-users or candidates to drug use
to escape the drudgery of neoliberalism
The Zócalo is built over the Templo Mayor.
The metropolitan cathedral is tilting
the temple of Aztecs below are pushing their way up.
What will they see? Hollywood or Mexicans being Mexicans?

Arthritis is one thing, the hurting another

Camille Dungy — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:16:00 -0400

.............................for Adrienne Rich in 2006

The poet's hands degenerate until her cup is too heavy.

You are not required to understand.

This is not the year for understanding.

This is the year of burning women in schoolyards

and raided homes, of tarped bodies on runways and in restaurants.

The architecture of the poet's hands has turned upon itself.

This is not the year for palliatives. It is not the year for knowing what to do.

This is the year the planet grew smaller

and no country would consent to its defeat.

The poet's cup is filled too full, a weight she cannot carry

from the table to her mouth, her lips, her tongue.

The poet's hands are congenitally spoiled.

This is not one thing standing for another.

Listen, this year three ancient cities met their ruin, maybe more,

and many profited, but this is not news for the readers here.

Should I speak indirectly?

I am not the poet. Those are not my hands.

This is the year of deportations and mothers bereaved

of all of their sons. The year of third and fourth tours,

of cutting-edge weaponry and old-fashioned guns.

Last year was no better, and this year only lays the groundwork

for the years that are to come. Listen, this is a year like no other.

This is the year the doctors struck for want of aid

and schoolchildren were sent home in the morning

and lights and gas were unreliable

and, harvesters suspect, fruit had no recourse but rot.

Many are dying for want of a cure, and the poet is patient

and her hands cause the least of her pain.

-Camille Dungy

From Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press, 2011)

Used by permission.

Camille T. Dungy is the author of Smith Blue and two other collections and has edited three anthologies. Her honors include the 2011 American Book Award, two Northern California Book Awards, an NEA and two NAACP Image Award nominations. She is a professor in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University. www.camilledungy.com

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202-787-5210

London and Orwell

Gary Hicks — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:13:00 -0400

london and orwell

london and orwell
revolution on the rise
and beating retreat

london and orwell
intellectuals engaged
and then in despair

london and orwell
fanon's question of our tasks
fulfill or betray?

berkeley ca 3-8-2012

Reading Tranströmer in Bangladesh

Tarfia Faizullah — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:03:00 -0400

.......for Meherunnessa Chowdhury, 1924-2010

In Grandmother's house,

we are each a room that

must remain locked. Inside

it, a prayer mat carelessly

folded on a low table, as

though hands that once

pressed down on it are not

below ground. Who has

stripped bare the white

walls of the black velvet

tapestry depicting Ka'bah,

house of God? I let in

the netherworld. Something

rose from underneath. I sit,

wait through my cousin's

sobs. This morning, another

sudden loss: a classmate's

death, she says. Sordid

details flare out like sails

of a ship: mother trapped

in an asylum, father weeping,

son's warm body cradled

in his arms, bone still lodged

in his young throat. To whom

would this not be an inelegant

death--a caught bone, too

much like one of our own?

ii.

We leave the city as

we entered it: cloaked

in fog, lightbulbs,

lanterns, blurred gold--

the rumbling traffic

on the highways,

and the silent traffic

of ghosts. I reach

for my mother's

hand like a child.

Here hang the years . . .

they sleep with folded

wings. Already my

body begins to shed

each jagged dirt road,

bodies jostled inside each

swerving car, trains draped

with bodies dangling

like writhing vines--

iii.

The cars, packed tight,

do not move. I saw

the image of an image

of a man coming

forward . . . sudden

as starlight, he lifts

an arm: mere bone,

wrapped in brown

skin, stem of an iris

rotting in water. He

taps the glass. I close

my eyes, see his arm

trapped in a young

boy's throat. It is still

beautiful to hear the heart,

but often the shadow

seems more real than

the body. How small

the distance between

the world and the world:

a few layers of muscle

and fat, a sheet wrapped

around a corpse: glass

so easily ground into sand.

-Tarfia Faizullah

Used by permission.

Originally appeared in The Missouri Review.

Tarfia Faizullah's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Passages North, New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. A Kundiman fellow and a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University's creative writing program, she is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a Bread Loaf Margaret Bridgman scholarship, a Kenyon Writers Workshop Peter Taylor fellowship, and other honors. She lives in Washington, DC, where she helps edit the Asian American Literary Review and Trans-Portal.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Weekwidely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
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202-787-5210

Poem of the Week - Trayvon

Joel Dias-Porter — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:56:00 -0400

TRAYVON

is a story of steam,
rising like
a swarm of hornets,
singeing sight from eyes.
a parable of lava
moldering down a mountain
igniting all green to ash,
the song of a hit recorded,
number 1 with a bullet.

Is not a story
about "fucking coons"
that "always get away."

This is not a poem
about Emmet Till,
Amadou Diallo,
or James Byrd Jr.

It is not the tale of
a "suspicious" hoodie
in the wrong neighborhood
or a trigger finger with
a "squeaky clean record."
Is not a fable of a corpse
with a bullet hole
that was tested for drugs
or a hand freshly coated
with the back flash of phosphorus
that was not.
This is a story
that checks out,
so the only charges
will be on a credit card
for funeral services.

I did not write this poem
in anger,
I did not write this poem
in "Self-Defense."
I did not write this poem.
Because my pen is empty from
having already written & written this poem.

These words can be heard
only because
while facedown
on the concrete
of the righthand lane
at 10:37 AM
on April 15th, 1987
at 19067 Greenbelt Road
my name was not Gregory Habib,
my sternum
could stand the weight
of the knee between
my shoulder blades,
and the monomaniacal eye
at the back of my head
was a .38 revolver
with a 15 lb. trigger pull
and not the 8 lb pull
of a Glock 9mm.
Because it was all just

a misunderstanding
and have a nice day, Sir.

It is not true that
my eyes are red
as a bag of Skittles
as I write this,
and if my page is dotted
with drops, it is only
Arizona iced tea that is spilled.

This poem pertains to no crime,
contains no trees
with branches strong enough
to bear the weight of a black boy,
contains no rope (of any length),
contains not even a single slipknot.

But it does loop,
like a wandering moose,
a homeward goose,
or a four hundred year old
ruse.

-Joel Dias-Porter

Used by permission.

Joel Dias-Porter (aka DJ Renegade) was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, and is a former professional DJ. From 1994-1999 he competed in the National Poetry Slam, and was the 1998 and 1999 Haiku Slam Champion. His poems have been published in Time Magazine, The Washington Post, Callaloo,Ploughshares, Antioch Review, Red Brick Review, Asheville Review, Beltway Quarterly and the anthologies Gathering Ground, Love Poetry Out Loud, Meow: Spoken Word from the Black Cat, Short Fuse, Role Call, Def Poetry Jam, 360 Degrees of Black Poetry, Slam (The Book), Revival: Spoken Word from Lollapallooza, Poetry Nation, Beyond the Frontier,Spoken Word Revolution, Catch a Fire, and The Black Rooster Social Inn. In 1995, he received the Furious Flower "Emerging Poet Award." Performances include the Today Show, the documentary SlamNation, on BET, and in the feature film Slam. A Cave Canem fellow and the father of a young son, He has a CD of jazz and poetry entitled 'LibationSong'.

IT

Chris Butters — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:14:00 -0400

IT (originally published in Pemmican)

The U.S. government should
balance its budget ...
just like the Coppolla family does,"
Eddie the custodian says.

The Republicans in the election
seek to win popular support
for destroying the gains of the New Deal
by raising the banner of a "Contract With America."

"There is no free lunch
in industry...
why should there be one
in government,"
says the Jamal the clerical.

The real aim of their campaign
against "Big Government"
is to institute taxcuts
and other government handouts
to big business and the rich.

I argue with my coworkers,
I throw everything I have into it.
If I can't convince those
whom I work with,

whom can I win,
I ask myself
as we tumble on.

I try.

But as the Republicans bang
the drum steadily,
as the Democrats march
along,

as the schools fall apart
as the cities implode,

something tells me
it is a stone dead end.

If the argument remains
within this context,
all is lost.

"What if I told you,"
I ask them,
"of a country which can do
anything it wants to
in the dazzling New World Order--

unless,of course, it flouts
the International Monetary Fund.

Then the gunships go on red alert,
the most fearsome propaganda machine
on the face of the earth
having sprung into furious action."

"l.) FREE TRADE.
A SHIRT MADE BY SOMEONE
AT l6 CENTS AN HOUR
MUST COMPETE AGAINST A SHIRT
MADE BY SOMEONE
AT $8 AN HOUR.

2.) SLOW GROWTH AND LOW WAGES.
IF TOO MANY PEOPLE GET A JOB
WALL STREET STOCKS GO DOWN.
A COMPANY THAT LAYS OFF WORKERS
HAS PROVEN ITSELF TO BE A GOOD COMPANY.

3.) SHRINK THE PUBLIC SECTOR.
ALL GOVERNMENT IS BAD.
PUT THE WEALTH BACK IN THE JAWS
OF THE MARKETPLACE.

DEREGULATE THE LABOR MARKET.

THERE WILL BE NO RULES OR MINIMUM STANDARDS
AND ANYBODY WHO GETS TOGETHER
WI LL BE BEATEN DOWN."

"I would say it's awful,"
says the custodian.

"I would say it stinks,"
says the clerical.

"In this country a cabal attacks
the gains of the workers
in the name of fighting
"big government".

A movement for democracy and human rights
discovers it must fight
the banks and corporations
if it is to triumph."

"What if I told you all this
about a certain country?
"What people would you say
it was?"

"ARGENTINA ,"
says Eddie.

"RUSSIA , definitely,"
says Jamal.

"Wrong,"
I say.
"Wrong --
and again wrong."

"Where have you guys been
all these years?" I ask.

"In an ivory tower?
On a tropical island?"

"It is the same country
that downsizes its workers
so the stock market
can skyrocket."

"It is the same country
that balances its budget
on the backs
of the poor. "

It is the country
where racism is a scissors
that slices people
hourly from power.

It is the country
where cities fall apart
to pay for
Wall Street's wars.

"It is the country
where health care is a prayer
and the middle class
becomes fiction.

"It is the country
where every day
the rich grow richer
and the poor grow
poorer. "

"It is..."

American Marxist

Chris Butters — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 03:12:00 -0400

Originally published with Pemmican

AMERICAN MARXIST

"What are you,

some kind of Marxist?"

he asks me,

after I tell him that

working people didn't create the crisis,

we shouldn't have to pay

for it.

What is more,

we should nationalize

the banks and oil companies.

"You could call me that,"

I reply.

"That is funny,"

he replies,

"You don't look like

a Marxist".

Maybe that is my problem

I later think,

suit and tie

and briefcase

for my job

as a computer programmer

a month after the national conference,

a year after the split

with the LOC.

Maybe that is my problem.

I don't look like a Marxist,

making my way

not through Russia

or Germany or France,

but America,

crazy America,

juggling marriage, children

mortgage, union,

even as I seek

a working class revolution

in the belly

of the beast.

I get in the car

and drive down Route 23,

Route 23, where the nurses struck

at the hospital

to keep their pensions

last summer,

some called the settlement a victory

in a town where a company

last year moved

its production overseas,

some called it

because they did not win

a cost of living increase

a defeat,

Route 23, past the broken schools

and abandoned factories,

where all roads seem to lead

to the shopping mall,

where the conditions

for revolution

are so ripe

they are somewhat rotten,

where Lenin said,

there is a class war

going on

even in peace,

at the 7-11 I stop for a snowcone,

look up at the stars,

my car drinking thirstily

from the lip of the gas pump,

at the stand nearby a newspaper

says we must bomb another country

if we are to defend the cause

of freedom and democracy,

our capitalist way of life

which is on the blink.

I look up at the stars,

shining in the night sky,

I am in New Jersey,

and I have to get to a meeting

about the fightback

in New York City,

but I stop for a moment and look up

at the stars tonight,

as the car drinks thirstily

from the lip of the gas pump,

the theme is not since the robber barons

have so many

been exploited

by so few,

the theme is not since the thirties

has there been such

an opportunity

to unite the many,

I look up

at the constellations

twinkling

in the night sky,

Big Dipper,

Seven Sisters,

Orion,

Cassiopeia,

I look up at the stars,

twinkling in the night sky,

though I have to be

in New York City

and I have miles

to go before I sleep.

What does

an American Marxist

look like,

I wonder.

prologue to an updated i have a dream speech

Gary Hicks — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 06:11:00 -0500

i have heard stories of another time places
and circumstances i am told of
hundreds, even thousands
of blocked evictions and blocked auctions
of times when the first cry upon seeing the
sheriff in the neighborhood or territory....
"where are the reds?", those unemployed
organized and led by communists, many
of them veterans of that first great war
the latest to date and not the last to come
of veterans without food, clothing, shelter
many others with black skin and seeing
white folks for the first time joining the club
traditionally thought to be the territory
of "the colored" and rather than saying
in bitterness and sarcasm "welcome to the
club" simply joined in with the veterans
often led the veterans often were the reds
to restore the furniture back into the apartment
or farmhouse or ozzie-and-harriet and cleaver
family homes and of auctioneers being offered
a quarter "two bits" by one of the many farmers
surrounding him and the deputies. "two bits....sold
to the highest bidder" as the neighbors began
placing the furniture back where it belonged
and often it started with a question of supplication
"where are the reds" this question was asked
and answered thousands of times in the troubled
cities of heroic people in that day.

now is a different time with different jobs
housing arrangements education and other
things not available then and becoming
increasingly less available now and driving
us all back to then poverty always racism
all the time warfare of which of course
is fought out of necessity for the security
of the rich [ you haven't seen much of
that lately].

and i too have a dream of being sleepless
thinking about these things
and replacing the counting of sheep
with visions of one red army marching
in our land......two red armies.....three

and when i awake it's to a voice asking
sometimes softly, other times harsh
"where are the reds?"

december 2010
berkeley ca

gary hicks

Excerpts from Henry Winston Writing

Henry Winston — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:01:00 -0500

Excerpts from
Strategy for a Black Agenda
by Henry Winston
International Publishers, 1973

"Racism is not a biological characteristic. It is a social phenomenon with a class origin and role. Racism has its source in a ruling class that, in modern times, has added the twin weapon of anti-Communism to keep the working class in the U.S. from waging a united class struggle against its monopolist enemy.

There is no way out for white workers without recognizing that their common class
interests with Black workers demand that they themselves take the initiative in the fight
to oust racism from the class struggle. And Black workers must also understand that they
cannot put an end to their triple oppression by going it alone.

There are no substitutes for the class unity of the working class as a whole. This requires
the equality of joint Black and white leadership of the working class, of Black workers in
the leadership of the Black liberation movement, and all components of the working class
leading all the oppressed and exploited against corporate monopoly." (Page 33)

"There are other consequences of cultural nationalism equally detrimental to the Black
struggle for equality. Throughout the 110 years since the Emancipation Proclamation, Afro-
Americans have struggled against segregation, recognizing it as a means of setting them
apart from the rest of the population, isolating them from the mainstream of developments,
and subjecting them to special forms of super-exploitation and oppression." (Page 42)
"Even the U.S. monopolists claim they are for ‘equitable distribution.' But when auto or
steel workers strike for higher wages, the bosses do everything in their power to defeat
them. ‘Equitable distribution' is impossible as long as the capitalist class controls the
means of production, thereby exercising the dictatorship of capital over the working class
and the people in general." (Page 67)

"...at a certain point in its development, the rising U.S. capitalist class required the
destruction of the slave system to make way for the supremacy of capital. But in order to
but a brake on the sharpening class struggle, the capitalists betrayed Reconstruction,

re-enslaving the Blacks with a U.S. variant of serfdom.

This laid the basis for perpetuating differentials in the status of Blacks as compared to
whites, thus representing a double advantage for capital: it provided a source for vast
super-profits, and also intensified racist ideology-postponing the day when a united Black
and non-Black working class would emerge to challenge monopoly.

U.S. capitalism still seeks to use the past against the future, against the working class
whose mission is not merely to change the form of oppression and exploitation-as in the
past, with the rise to power of new exploiting classes-but to put an end to oppression
and exploitation. This cannot be done on the basis of ‘traditional' economics. It can
be done only through united class and national liberation struggles moving toward the
establishment of socialism." (Page 73)

"There is an alternative to hunger, racism and oppression in this country.... The only
possible alternative for Blacks is within a program of Black unity that will not be dissipated
by separatist detours, but will play an independent role in forging a great movement
of Black and non-Black of all colors against the corporate 2% dominating 98% of the
population." (Page 75)

"As a region, the South remains the most decisive area for a liberation strategy. But
Blacks in the South-along with Blacks in other great population centers from New
York to Los Angeles-can move toward unified national power only by asserting their
strength within a broad anti-monopoly movement uniting Black and non-Black against the
common corporate enemy. To achieve this, the Black workers must become the main base
of leadership in a Black liberation strategy that recognizes the decisive role of the South,
but does not lose sight of the fact that the great strategic liberating battleground is national
in scope and direction." (Page 83)

"It is in such basic industries as steel, rubber and auto that the class unity of Black and
non-Black workers can become the main strength and develop the main leadership for
organizing the millions of unorganized Black and white Southern workers, and for a new
national political combination strong enough to defeat reaction and the danger of fascism."
(Page 83)

"Because the ‘great strategic ground' for smashing the last survivals of slavery, for ending
racism, poverty and inequality is national is scope, each regional struggle can be meaningful
only to the degree that it is linked with a national strategy. Struggle in the South ... must
be viewed ... as a unified Black struggle, a mighty tide of independent Black action within
a wider national challenge to monopoly's control of the total U.S. economy." (Page 84)

"There can be no doubt that monopoly aims at replacing ‘benign neglect' with the iron
boot. The threat of this ominous national strategy is so great as to overshadow the betrayal
of Reconstruction, the rise of the Klan, of lynch law and jim crow. As Lenin said of
this earlier betrayal, reaction in the U.S. today is prepared to ‘do everything possible and
impossible for the most shameful and despicable oppressions.'

While these new oppressions would first be unleashed against Black people, they would
not end there. They threaten labor and the oppressed and exploited of all colors with
something worse even than a return to the days when it was a crime to organize. What is
involved now is the threat of the ‘despicable oppressions' of fascism." (Page 89)

"The degree of exploitation of Black workers is clearly much greater than that of white workers.

Nevertheless, the collective form of exploitation in the decisive mass production industries is suffered by all workers.

This creates the objective basis for solidarity, for their unity and leadership in the struggle against the monopolist ruling class.

At the same time, history has assigned a doubly significant role to Black workers-as the
leaders and backbone of the Black liberation movement, and as a decisive component of
the working class leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle as a whole.

It is the monopolists' fear of Black, white, Brown, Yellow, Red and working class unity,
which in turn can form the basis for still broader people's unity, that is behind racism and
anti-Communism, the main ideological weapons of the ruling class.

Leninism, the Marxism of the imperialist epoch, is the ideological weapon of the working
class. It is the scientific guide that enables the working class to combine its struggle with
national liberation movements against imperialism. No other theory has served to free a

single working class, a single people, from imperialism anywhere in the world. Beginning with the October revolution, only those guided by Marxism-Leninism have been able to free themselves from class and national oppression and take the road of socialist construction." (Page 216)

"Black Americans have a first and equal claim on the total economy of the country-
which they helped build with 400 years of slave and near-slave labor-for billions for
jobs, housing, medical care, education, etc. They want the total economy turned around
to meet the people's needs, instead of operating for the wars and the profits of a handful of
corporate monopolists." (Page 220)

"Black people are in a unique position. On top of more than 200 years of chattel slavery,
operated by the slave-owner partners if emergent capitalism, they have had over 100 years
of capitalist exploitation, racism, war and poverty." (Page 225)

"And it is particularly ironic that the ‘invitation' to Black people to become capitalists
should come from the very same corporate monopolists who have already destroyed most
of the nation's small businesses. Those that still remain, whether white- or Black-owned,
can operate only under the impossible conditions of monopoly domination.

Not only have the mass production industries come under the control of corporate monopoly.
Through their control of the banks, chains, franchising operations, insurance and real estate
companies, etc., these same monopolists dominate all sectors of the economy, including
that in the Black community.

Now in an effort to recruit a sector of Blacks to support the ruling class against their own
people, the monopolists have offered a tiny minority the illusion of Black capitalism. This
is another variation of the tokenism rejected by the Black masses." (Page 225)

"Strength cannot be ‘transferred' to the working class. Strength emerges only from the
unity and consciousness of the workers and all the oppressed in their struggle for a better
life. As the Program of the Communist Party states:

We Communists, motivated by the elemental human needs of our class and our people,
fight the evils of capitalism. Ours is the fate of our class and our people. The trials of their
existence are ours. We strive for improvement of their condition here and now. Often
this is a life-and-death question. At the same time, we are convinced that socialism, and
beyond it communism, offers the only fundamental, lasting solution to the problems of
exploitation and oppression, that it opens the only door to an immeasurable improvement
in the quality of man's life. Thus the struggle for revolution is the logical continuation of
the struggle for a better life." (Page 259)

"But ... self-unity will come about only as a part of the revolutionary process in which the
struggle for the racial and class unity of the oppressed and exploited is an aim and result of
every battle against the racist oppressor. Those who do not understand the role of coalition
in the people's fight to improve their condition fail the see the relationship between reforms
and revolution.

Long ago, Douglas answered those who persist in the illusion that the destiny of oppressed
Black people is separate and unrelated to the destiny of exploited whites. ‘We deem it a
settled point,' wrote Douglass, ‘that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with the
white people of this country...and the question ought to be...what principle should dictate
policy...' (The North Star, November 16, 1849.)" (p. 282.)

"...it must be recognized that the main obstacle to Black and white unity against the common
enemy is the influence of racism on white workers. And it is the primary responsibility of
white revolutionaries to lead the fight against racist ideology and to mobilize white workers
in the struggle against racism and in support of Black liberation as indispensable to the
advance of their class interests.

The aim of monopoly is to force a reversal of every aspect of bourgeois democracy, limited
as it is, in order to open the way for fascism. The aim of the anti-monopoly program, as
advocated by the Communist Party, is to bring about a strategic breakthrough to a deeper
and wider degree of democracy, one that would powerfully accelerate the revolutionary
process, opening the way to Black liberation and socialism.

Once this anti-monopoly strategy succeeds in breaking the control of state monopoly
capital over Congress and the government, the forces exist, internally and internationally-
in contrast to the anti-slavery period-that can prevent the betrayal of the struggle. There
is such a perspective, and this is so, first of all, because the forces of class and national
liberation ... have changed the world balance of power." (Page 285)

"During every upsurge in the people's struggles, especially those of the mainly workingclass
Black people, there is a more extensive activation of counter-measures designed to
sustain disunity and block alliance between Black and white workers, together with the
Black people as a whole, against corporate monopoly." (Page 289)

"Black business has always been marginal even within the ghetto. And capitalism in its
present stage takes the form of giant conglomerates that increasingly devour all small
business. Any possible ‘enrichment' for Black business lies not within monopoly's strategy
of perpetuating the ghettos but within a broad all-encompassing people's strategy-an antimonopoly movement in which the primary force is the working class, Black, white, Brown,
Yellow and Red, together with the organized Black liberation movement as a whole."
(Page 304)

"When we talk about power, we are talking about political power-the shift of power
from one class to another. The Civil War resulted in the change of power from the slaveowners
to the rising capitalist class. Today the monopoly capitalist class controls the total
economy of the United States. Therefore, all talk of self-determination in the ghetto is a
fraud." (Page 307)

"Of course, the oppressed and exploited within the U.S. do not have the objective of even
becoming ‘partners' in a joint enterprise with U.S. imperialism! The task of the majority of the people of all races and backgrounds, under the leadership of Black and white workers,
is to break the power of monopoly over the government and the economy. It is this antimonopoly
struggle-which cannot be waged by the Black minority alone, but only in unity
with the non-Black majority-that alone can bring about joint power to the people and
control of the economy.

U.S. imperialism uses and has always used its economic and military power to oppose
self-determination in Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Chile and the other countries throughout
Asia, Africa and Latin America where the people have in some degree their own separate
economies. Ironically, it is this same U.S. imperialism that deliberately fosters every form
of separatist fantasy for Black people, including ‘self-determination' for a people who
have no common territory or separate economy but whose population on the contrary
is dispersed in more than 160 major urban ghettos around the country. The same U.S.
monopolists who propose ‘joint control' of Puerto Rico with the Puerto Ricans offer Black
people the trap of ‘self-determination' in ghettos where that is impossible...

Black liberation in the U.S. calls for a strategy the exact opposite of Puerto Rican and other
liberation movements outside the U.S. In colonial and dependent countries, the people's aim
is to break the links that artificially tie their economies to imperialism. A liberating strategy
for Black Americans does not involve a break with the U.S. economy, but instead must aim
at overcoming forcible exclusion of Black people from their rightful participation in the U.S.
economy: The goal here is for full equality within the total economy." (Pages 312-313)

"However, the reality of the matter is that the shift of national power from the monopoly
oppressors to the people calls for a wider strategy in which the self-action of the Black
minority becomes a vital, independent part of the total struggle in alliance with the non-
Black majority against the common enemy." (Page 317)

Excerpts from
Class, Race and Black
Liberation by Henry Winston
International Publishers, 1977

"By picturing the Black condition of inequality as arising within the Black ‘family structure,'
[the Moynihan Report] identified the results of oppression as the cause of oppression. Thus,
it runs head on into the fact that Black family life-despite the ‘distortions' caused by 200
years on the auction blocks of Northern slave traders and Southern slave owners, followed
by more than 100 years of racist economic, social and political pressures of genocidal
proportions-has shown a matchless capacity for survival through struggle!" (Page 3)

"[Robert Lubar] cites the following statement from an interview in the same issue [of
Fortune Magazine] with the President [Gerald Ford]: ‘...by the year 2000, 50 percent of
the people will be living off the other 50 percent.' In this remark Ford asserts that, on one
hand, monopoly will have no jobs for 50 percent of the people while, on the other, it aims
at drastically cutting back on social services." (Page 7)

"It is ironic that he [Daniel Moynihan] equates ‘productive economies' with capitalism at
a time when even the most obviously conservative ideologues of U.S. monopoly have long
since retired the phrase ‘people's capitalism.'

What kind of ‘productive' and ‘creative' prospect is Moynihan holding out for the ‘third
world' nations when he tells them to ties their future to capitalism? How ‘productive' is a
system that in the United States, even in its ascendant stage, could develop its productive
capacity only by reinforcing wage labor with chattel slavery?

And how ‘creative' is this system in its present stage of decline? What do its multinational
corporations ‘create' except ever greater inequality and poverty for the majority of the
earth's population?

How productive for ‘third world' countries is a system whose multinational corporations
have never operated at anywhere near productive capacity except in war time? What
‘creative' solution does U.S. imperialism offer the ‘third world' when at home its economy
is geared to the non-productive pile-up of armaments and profits for monopoly, and
oppression, unemployment and inflation for the people?" (Page 23)

"'Ethnicity' has, of course, two hands. Its ‘left' hand tells Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos,
Asian Americans and Native American Indians that the ‘militant' approach is for each
group to ‘go-it-alone.' In this way ‘ethnicity' lures the oppressed away from asserting their
special claims alongside of and as part of the working class as a whole.

At the same time ‘ethnicity's' right hand makes the traditional racist appeal to the white
majority-telling them that the oppressed minorities have no special needs and are not
their allies but their competitors.

According to the ‘ethnicity' concept, if separate groups ‘assert claims,' they will ‘elicit a
very satisfactory response' from the ruling class. But if claims are advanced as part of a
united working-class struggle, ‘the benefits are necessarily diffuse and often evanescent,'-
and everyone will be left ‘about as he was.'

How this strategy operates was effectively demonstrated in the recent period by the
government's handling of the ‘anti-poverty' programs. The ‘ethnicity' spokesmen told
Blacks that the Puerto Ricans were getting ‘too much,' while Puerto Ricans were told
‘everything' was going to the Blacks. At the same time, white ‘ethnics' were informed
nothing much was left for them because it all went to the Blacks and Puerto Ricans. This
strategy helped ‘disaggregate' the working class and its allies to the point where job
training programs, adult education programs, child care and senior citizens' centers are
‘bottoming out' for everyone. And the ‘racism in reverse' concept which denied the need
for affirmative action for jobs and education for the oppressed minorities ‘disaggregated'
the masses to the point where educational opportunities for all low- and middle-income
people are being slashed away. ‘Ethnicity' is particularly destructive to the oppressed
minorities, but it also does increasing violence to the needs of the white masses.
The history of this country proves that the ‘ethnicity' strategy-adjusted by Moynihan
and his colleagues to meet monopoly's even sharper requirements in the present period of
general crisis and decline of capitalism-produces results not for the exploited but for the
exploiters. This strategy has a long record of leaving everyone not ‘about where he was'
but behind ‘where he was.' The Black people, for example, find themselves today not
‘about' where they were ten years ago, but worse off. The Black economic gains of the
sixties encompassed only a small minority of the Black people, and yet even these gains
proved ‘evanescent.'" (Pages 60-61)

"To be anti-capitalist in the Marxist-Leninist sense is to understand that the oppressed
and exploited strengthen their unity, and progress toward more advanced goals, through
step-by-step struggles. Policies and demands must be based on the issues confronting the
masses, their level of consciousness and degree of readiness to unite around a particular
issue. Slogans must be geared to mobilizing the people. Slogans that fail to involve them in
struggle around their crucial needs are worse than meaningless, since they leave the masses
disunited in the face of monopoly's onslaughts." (Page 96)

"To speak of a ‘white society' fits in with the ‘two societies' concept projected in the
sixties. This idea was promoted from both a ‘radical' and a ‘liberal' (via the ‘Kerner
Report') standpoint, which portrayed Blacks as forming an internal colony in the United
States. But Black people are discriminated against and suffer de facto segregation within
the single U. S. capitalist economy. Both Black and white are locked into one society
dominated by corporate monopoly. To imply the division of this country into two societies
obscures its real division into two basic classes, the white monopolist minority and the
multi-racial working class." (Page 102)

"Of course, U.S. capitalism through all stages of its development has perpetuated
inequality between Black and white masses. But in order to do so it has had to perpetuate
the illusion, from slavery to the present, that the white exploited have a ‘material stake'
in Black oppression. And the survivals of racist ‘advantages,'-originating in the slave
system-still lend credibility to the racist-fostered illusion that white workers on the
assembly lines and in the unemployed lines have a ‘material stake' in the different degree
to which monopoly exploits them as compared to Black workers.

In reality, white as well as Black workers have a ‘material stake' in eradicating racism.
To assert that white workers have a ‘material stake' in racism is to profoundly exaggerate
monopoly's ability to sustain this illusion-particularly in the face of the deepening
general crisis of capitalism. Such a concept is based on an overestimation of the strength of
imperialism, and consequently an underestimation-in fact, a denial-of the intensifying
contradiction between monopoly and the working class as a whole-Black, white, Chicano,
Puerto Rican, Asian and Native American Indian.

To argue that whites have a ‘material stake' in racism is to say that 180 million whites, the
overwhelming majority, have no ‘material stake' in economic and social progress, which
would mean there is no perspective for fundamental change.

The Black minority alone could not defeat the slave power. That was achieved via a
strategy combining the interests of those forces and classes with a stake in victory over the
slavocracy. And today the Black minority cannot by itself defeat the monopoly oppressors.
What is required is not a go-it-alone policy for Blacks but an independent strategy for
Black liberation as part of a wider anti-monopoly strategy-combining all those with
a stake in the defeat of corporate monopoly into a great people's coalition. And in the
perspective for such a coalition, one cannot overlook the revolutionary implications of the
proletarianization of the majority of the multi-racial masses." (Pages 104-105)

"What is required to achieve class unity is a fight to wipe out every form of material and social
inequality. And white workers have a heavy, special responsibility in this struggle because it is
they who have been infected by racism and are consequently its ‘bearers' within the multi-racial
working class. Marxism-Leninism is a guide to, not a substitute for, the anti-racist struggle
and therefore a guide also to the ‘fraternity' of the working class. And as this struggle for class
unity advances, ‘enlightenment' begins to replace racism in the minds of those who have been
its ‘bearers.' Further, the Communist Party is the only organization requiring, as a condition of
membership, that whites accept and act in accordance with the Marxist-Leninist principle of the
special responsibility of white workers in the anti-racist struggle." (Page 105)

"The United States was born in anti-colonial struggle, and its present course of development
is today in sharper contrast than ever to that of its birth. Today's racism and inequality
mock this country's birth cries of ‘liberty' and ‘equality.'" (Page 108)

"Of course, it is true that behavior can be ‘shaped' by society. But scientific social
analysis-Marxism-Leninism-shows that racist ‘behavior' is not ‘shaped' by ‘classless'
psychological factors but by the monopoly ruling class." (Page 108)

"Under capitalism, the dominant culture does not originate with the class operating the
means of production. This dominant culture is determined by the class that owns the
means of production, and it is generated by the superstructure through which this class
controls the state and its agencies, and the mass media.

Today, when racism is widely recognized as institutional, it seems strangely out-of-date to
attribute to it either an independent existence or assert that it can be perpetuated outside of
the rule of monopoly-controlled institutions." (Page 109)

"Those who say white workers have a ‘material stake' in racism draw this conclusion from
the premise that the interests of white capitalists and the white workers are identical.
The miniscule white corporate minority controlling the social means of production cannot
compete with a unified working class. In this period of the general crisis and decline of
capitalism, monopoly's power is only as great as the divisions in the working class-the
result of racism and anti-Communism." (Page 110)

"But Marx, Engels and Lenin revealed that the workers of an oppressor nation can win their
liberation only if they recognize their stake in supporting the liberation struggles of every
people oppressed by their ‘own' ruling class. This is why Marxist-Leninists recognize the
struggle against opportunism-and racism and anti-Communism are its sharpest forms-
as the pre-condition for the unity of the multi-racial U.S. working class and its allies at
home and internationally.

Once when Lenin was asked what he would ‘add' to Marx, he replied that in the context of
the imperialist stage of capitalism, he would apply the essence of Marxism in Marx's slogan
‘Workers of the World Unite' and the resulting slogan would then proclaim, ‘Workers and
Oppressed Peoples of the World Unite.' Unite against what? Lenin urges unity against
imperialism. Therefore Lenin asserts that it is not the workers but the imperialists who
have a stake in oppression." (Pages 111-112)

"Reaction, of course, realized only too well that ‘labor in a white skin' had to be prevented
from learning it could ‘never be free so long as labor in a black skin is branded.' In 1877
reactionary forces, North and South, defeated Reconstruction. And in the 1890's, during
the period of emerging imperialism, these forces ‘legalized' the restoration of institutional
racism-doing everything possible to enforce the separation of white from Black in order
to prevent labor in a white skin and labor in a black skin from emerging as a national force.

The Marxist principle of Black and white labor unity has always been at the core of
Communist Party policy. In the 1930's, this unswerving approach helped create the
greatest degree of white and Black unity in the history of U.S. Labor, and consequently,
the greatest advances for both Black and white workers. The class struggle policies of the
thirties-which led to the organization of the great mass production industries and the rise
of the CIO-gained momentum only to the extent this principle was fought for.

It was to break this advancing unity of the multi-racial working class that monopoly
intensified anti-Communism, institutionalizing it alongside of racism. It was the massive
linking of anti-Communism with racism that enabled monopoly to set back the advances of
the thirties..." (Page 116)

"The only independent policy for Black liberation is the facing up to the fact that the
transformation accompanying urbanization and proletarianization of the Black condition carried
with it an unchallengeable demand: an equal share for Black people in the control of the total
U.S. economy, built with so many centuries of Black chattel and wage slavery." (Page 122)

"It is of course true that Black people, after being ‘ripped from their homeland,' were
oppressed by the social organization in the land to which they were forcibly brought. But
that oppression was not and is not the result of ‘the social organization of white America':
Black people were first oppressed by the tiny white slave-owning class; now that they have
been ‘ripped from' the land in the South, they are oppressed by the tiny white monopoly
capitalist class. Today they are part of a single multi-racial working class which suffers
varying levels of exploitation by a single monopoly-controlled economy." (Page 123)

"If the possibility ever existed for a separate economy in this country for Black people, it
was before the transformation of Southern agriculture into large-scale capitalist agriculture.
Such a possibility vanished with monopoly's massive penetration of the entire south. The
area in the south that formerly held a Black majority became an inseparable part of the total
national economy-with Wall Street, not cotton, as king.

In the decades between the betrayal of Reconstruction and the end of World War II,
the majority of former slaves were sharecroppers and tenant farmers-a serflike status
somewhere between chattel slavery and wage labor. At that time the South's economy was
undergoing a process of dual development: Although it was coming increasingly within
the national economy's orbit, the South-particularly in the area of continuing Black
majority-still retained features differentiating it from the rest of the country's economy.
Until recently, in fact, the pattern of economic development in the area of former Black
majority was neither completely separate nor identical with the total economy." (Page 126)

"Today, with the U.S. economy fully unified under the control of monopoly capital, the
central, all-pervasive fact of the Black condition is triple oppression: racial oppression,
oppression as workers, and oppression as a people. This is the reality, a reality that did not
evolve within a separate or even potentially detachable ‘colonial appendage'-but within
a historic process which has locked Black people, along with the white masses, into the
single society of U.S. state monopoly capitalism." (Page 137)

"Here in the United States, abolition took the fugitive slave law off the books, and the
Civil Rights struggles brought an end to legal segregation, making legal movement for
Black people possible in certain previously forbidden areas. Nevertheless, control of the
Black population's movements still continues, with the job primarily done by the laws of
capitalist economics buttressed by the all-pervasive racist practices of this country... In
the United States police violence is carried out illegally-but in ‘the name of the law,' with
the sanction of the racist government and judicial agencies-against the inhabitants of the
ghettos and barrios." (Page 147)

"To determine their destiny, it is essential for Black people to control every possible
instrumentality and institution for self-organization in the ghetto, and to fight for change
through trade unions and every other possible type of organization outside the ghetto to
‘redistribute power proportionally and to redefine the social relationship' between Blacks
and non-Blacks. This ghetto-based power of Black people must simultaneously be used to
exert maximum pressure at every level or government, industry, politics, education, etc.,
and to engage in joint action with allies at every point of mutual interest." (Pages 155-156)

"Even during the period when U.S. economic and political power was divided and shared
between the slave owners and the rising capitalist class, two separate independent societies
did not exist. The slavocracy could not survive as a separate society, but only so long as
chattel slavery served the accumulation and expansion of capital in non-slave areas of the
economy. The economy in the chattel slavery areas and that in the ‘free' labor areas were
never fully separate; on the contrary, they were interconnected and interdependent, each
evolving with an interrelated process of capital accumulation based on the unpaid labor of
Black slaves and cheap labor of white workers.

Today, when the U.S. economy continues to be ever more completely consolidated under the
control of state monopoly capital, it becomes increasingly apparent that the triple oppression
of Black people has not evolved within a separate, detachable ‘internal colony'-but that the
reality of an historic process has locked Black people and the oppressed minorities, along with
the white masses, into the single society of state monopoly capitalism." (Pages 198-199)

"When workers take on even one major corporation, they are met with the collective power
of monopoly-backed up by government-against their demands. This is the reality of state
monopoly capitalism whose consolidated power is decisive in the lives of the working masses,
whatever their color or origin. If no stratum of the workers-not even the white majority-
can effectively challenge even one corporate monopoly, how can the Black minority take on
the collective power of all the monopolists, state monopoly capitalism?" (Page 200)

"It is certainly necessary to ‘realistically project the possibilities' of ‘electoral struggles and
victories' at a particular point in time. But to simultaneously project ‘limitations' on the
outcome of future struggles in either the electoral or non-electoral arena weakens the fight
around urgent immediate issues while in no way clarifying the form or content of future
struggles." (Page 206)

"Certainly, most of those who sell their labor power of hand or brain have common interests
in opposing the monopolist exploiters. But this is only one of the many material and social
factors relevant to a strategy for waging the class struggle.

Class consciousness must be expanded from its minimum form-the recognition of
the common interest of the majority who sell their labor power-to a higher level: the
recognition that all who have a common interest in fighting monopoly do not have a
common place within the capitalist system from which to carry on that fight. Only by
identifying the specific differences within the ‘diversity of positions' of wage workers
is it possible to transform ‘diversity' under monopoly to unity against monopoly. Too
many radicals fail to understand the interrelation between the struggle for unity within the
working class and the working class's mission of uniting and leading its allies." (Page 231)

Editors' Note --
Henry Winston wrote in the two books of the strategy of the Communist Party, namely to
defeat the whole of the monopoly capitalists through an anti-monopoly coalition. In 1980
the CPUSA concluded that there was another stage of struggle that needed to be completed
before that of the general anti-monopoly stage. That was the need to defeat the ultra right,
headed by the most reactionary sector of monopoly capital through the building of an all
people's front against it. Henry Winston contributed to reaching this conclusion and he
strongly supported it the rest of his life.

Henry Winston -- A Man of and for the People -- Biographical Notes

Jarvis Tyner, Danny Ruibin, Tina Nannarone, Mary A — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:43:00 -0500

Henry Winston:
Man of the People & for the People

Biographical Notes

The remarkable and heroic life of Henry Winston began in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in 1911, in the heart of the Jim Crow South at the height of its repressive character. His father,
Joseph, worked in a small unorganized saw mill at very low wages. His mother, Lucille, did domestic work as she could, while bringing up six children, the second of whom was
Henry. Henry Winston's grandparents had all been slaves.

Young Henry went to a Jim Crow elementary school. Just after World War I, the family moved up the Mississippi River to Kansas City, Mo., in search of better living conditions.
Winston completed his formal education in a Jim Crow Junior High School. Henry Winston then had to go to work, which consisted of temporary pick-up jobs to help the family
survive. In these early years Henry was a good student and an avid reader of good literature and of anything he could find dealing with social conditions. He was also a good athlete.
The Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression hit Kansas City and the Winston family hard. No one in the family was able to keep a steady job. As all over the country, in Kansas City
an unemployed council was being built on the initiative of the Communist Party and the Young Communist League(YCL). Henry Winston joined the Council and participated in
its demonstrations and other activities, including a nation-wide demonstration in cities all over the country on March 6, 1930. This was a demonstration participated in by 1
million people, including 100,000 in New York. It was led by the Communist Leader, Carl Winter, who later was to become a co-worker of Winston's in the national leadership of the
Communist Party.

In March of 1931 the arrest of the 9 Scottsboro, Ala. Youth took place on framed up charges of rape of two white women. Henry soon became involved in the defense committee in
Kansas City which was part of a national defense campaign led by Communists Joseph Brodsky, their attorney, and William L. Patterson, the head of the International Labor
Defense (ILD)

At this time two most important events took place which were to shape the rest of Henry Winston's life. In the Unemployed Council, he met members of the YCL with whom he
became friends, received materials that he read avidly, went to meetings, became a member and not long after a leader of the Kansas City YCL. At the same time he met Fern Pierce,
the love of his life. She grew up on a poor tenant farm in Oklahoma. She also moved to Kansas City to find a better life, became involved in the activities of the Unemployed
Council, the Scottsboro Defense and then the YCL.

Henry Winston possessed notable abilities to analyze, theorize and organize and to work with people. This was recognized and as a result he was invited to New York to attend
a national school of the YCL. At that time such schools lasted for two or three months. Fern Winston was similarly recognized for her evident capacity and was invited at the
same time to the YCL national school. The result of the school was not only a grasp of Marxism but conviction of the need for the YCL and the Communist Party and a lifetime
commitment to the movement. But it also permitted the blossoming of the relationship between Henry and Fern that led to their marriage in 1933 and the birth of a son in 1934 It
was not long after this that the family traveled to the Soviet Union for the first time. What they saw there confirmed their commitment to socialism as the necessary alternative to
capitalism and they were especially impressed with the treatment of the formerly nationally oppressed peoples. Winston maintained a firm confidence for the rest of his life that the
Soviet Union would overcome all difficulties and mistakes and would continue to make major contributions to the progressive forces of the world.

Henry and Fern Winston moved to New York and both became active in the YCL leadership there, with activity centering on unemployment and the Scottsboro case. They participated
in the Hunger Marches to Washington, DC at the end of 1932.

Henry Winston soon moved up into the national leadership of the YCL through several posts including National Organizational Secretary (1936) and then National Secretary, when Gil Green left that post to assume major duties in the Communist Party. In this period the YCL was growing rapidly and had become an important force in the country. It helped build and lead the American Youth Congress(AYC), that had all the democratic-minded youth organizations among its three million members. The YCL and the AYC fought for jobs, for a national youth act and Administration. The latter was won by Executive Order of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The WPA and the CCC provided important job and recreation and cultural programs for youth. The YCL led the way in resisting the attempts of fascism to win a foothold in our country, especially among the youth. It led the solidarity effort with the Spanish Republic against the attempt of German and Italian fascism in support of Franco to take over Spain. Of the 3000 volunteers who went to fight as part of the Lincoln Brigade more than half were YCL and/or Communist Party members. Half of the volunteers did not return. Winston was particularly active in the solidarity with Spain effort not only during the years of the Civil War but for the rest of his life.

Not only was the YCL very active in building the unemployed Councils, it played a major role in supplying organizers to John L Lewis, Philip Murray and the other Congress of
Industrial Organization(CIO) leaders in building the mass production industrial unions.

Henry Winston played a leading role in this effort. Another area of Winston's concern as a national leader of the YCL was the building of the Southern Negro Youth Congress(SNYC)
from 1937-1946. At its height it involved 100,000 Southern youth, primarily African Americans. Among its leaders were YCLers Ed and Augusta Strong, Esther Cooper and
James E. Jackson, Louis and Dorothy Burnham and Grace Bassett. Whenever they needed help they reached Henry Winston and help was forthcoming. This also began a lifetime
close friendship between the Winstons and the Jacksons.

Among the leaders of the YCL, co-workers of Winston who fought in Spain, were BobThompson, who was a Captain in Spain, Carl Ross, Steve Nelson, Joe Brandt. While in the National Leadership of the YCL, Henry Winston worked closely with Gil Green, Betty Gannett, Claudia Jones, Bob Thompson, and Carl Ross. Henry Winston as well as all these other YCL leaders gradually moved on from YCL leadership to Communist Party leadership. In 1939, Henry Winston attended a national school of the Communist Party and began to move on into national party leadership. Soon the US entered the war against fascism after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Henry Winston was always a believer in leadership by example and he never asked anyone else to do anything he was not prepared to do. With the agreement of the Party leadership collective, he and other national leaders such as Bob Thompson volunteered to fight fascism, while others were drafted a few days after the start of the war. It is estimated that at least 15,000 members of the YCL and/or the Communist Party fought in World War II.

The military did not have a uniform policy with respect to the YCL and Communist Party members in the military. Some were sent to the most dangerous fronts, Guadalcanal and
the South Pacific, Omaha Beach and the opening up of the second front in France. Many others were kept out of the fighting and away from the soldiers so they would not "infect"
them with radical ideas. Henry Winston was in this second category and spent the war in Britain. His friend and comrade, James Jackson, spent the war in Burma and others spent it
at the end of the Aleutian Islands. Those who were permitted to fight the fascists acquitted themselves very well. Capt. Herman Boettcher won the Distinguished Service Cross
posthumously, fighting in the Philippines. Sgt. Bob Thompson also won the Distinguished Service Cross, while fighting in the South Pacific. Lou Diskin, a co-worker from the YCL,
won two Bronze medals for bravery under fire and fought his way from Omaha Beach to the meeting with the Soviet Army at the Elbe River and received a battlefield commission.

When Winston returned from the army to the Party leadership, he found a difficult situation of internal differences and fighting. He had followed these events while still in the army. On the one hand he appreciated the effort of the Party to pay more attention to the democratic history of the U.S. its anti-colonial history, the history of the labor movement, of the
struggle against slavery and against imperialism. its culture and traditions. He opposed Earl Browder's American exceptionalism, that discounted the danger of a postwar anti-
Soviet campaign and repression of civil liberties at home and his steps toward dissolution of a Communist Party. He supported the full restoration of the Party at the 13th Emergency
Convention, July 1945, at which Eugene Dennis was named General Secretary and Henry Winston was elected National Organizational Secretary. As National Organizational Secretary, Henry Winston was responsible for leading the effort to carry out the mass political policies of the Party and for building the Party. He was considered an expert on the theory and practice of organization of the Communist Party. The Party was known widely for its ability to get things done and to carry out its commitments. The period from the end of the war until the indictment of the 12 National Board members, including Henry Winston, in July 1948, were difficult years. US reaction resumed its efforts to reverse the New Deal, to weaken the labor movement to threaten a big increase in international tensions, including even atomic war with the Soviet Union, to hold back the national liberation movement and other progressive movements in the world, and to undermine democratic liberties in the US, and escalate racist violence. In Fulton, MO in 1947, Winston Churchill, together with President Harry Truman launched the Cold War. It was not long before there were headlines about Communists being spies for the Soviet Union and then the House Un-American Activities Committee attacking progressives and democrats in Hollywood. As we approached the1948 Presidential Elections, the Progressive Party was launched with the candidacy of former Vice President Henry Wallace and Senator Glen Taylor(D, Idaho) as its candidates. The Communist Party supported this effort for a peace alternative. But on the eve of the Progressive
Party founding Convention, the Truman Administration indicted the National Board of the Communist Party under the long dormant, thought control Smith Act legislation. This
threw a pall over the large progressive community in the country at that time and was one of the reasons for an election vote of 1 million for Wallace, instead of the 10 million
once expected. The Smith Act indictment stimulated many additional forms of attack on not only the Communist Party but the entire progressive and much of the democratic
community in the country. McCarthyism went into full swing.

The Smith Act indictment against Henry Winston, William Z. Foster, Benjamin J. Davis, Eugene Dennis, Bob Thompson, Gus Hall, Gil Green and the others and then against Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Claudia Jones, Betty Gannett, James Jackson and over another hundred across the country, charged that they had conspired to teach and advocate the violent overthrow of the government. In other words they had no evidence that the Communists had done anything to overthrow the government by force and violence, nor that they had taught that the government should be so overthrown in the future. They were charged with conspiring that they were going to teach that the government should be thus overthrown. The only evidence was distorted interpretations of the classics of Marxism. Winston was one of the defendants who spoke in the court exposing the undemocratic nature of the trial and the whole assault on democratic rights.

It took a few years before court appeals including to the Supreme Court had been exhausted and the defendants were sentenced and ordered to surrender for their jail terms - 5 years
for most. It had been agreed that four defendants would not surrender but would go underground and lead the Party from there, which meant complete separation from loved ones. The four were Gus Hall, Bob Thompson, Gil Green and Henry Winston. It was not long before Hall and Thompson were found by the authorities and imprisoned with 2 more years tacked on their sentences. In the case of Gil Green, based on collective decision, he walked in after four years and surrendered. The same took place with Henry Wisdom after 5 years. He then went to Terre Haute Penitentiary in Indiana to serve out a seven year sentence. Well into the sentence, Winston began having severe pain in the head, loss of control over balance and difficulty walking until he finally keeled over. At first the guards and the prison authorities did nothing for him. They treated him in a racist manner, as a malingering African American. When the prison authorities finally paid attention, Winston had lost all of his sight due to the growth of a non-malignant brain tumor. They had transferred him to a prison hospital on Staten Island considered a dungeon by the prisoners. John Abt, the general counsel for the Party, led the fight in courts to get him out of prison and out of the prison hospital without completely fulfilling his sentence. The mass fight domestically and internationally finally succeeded. Internationally his continued imprisonment became an embarrassment. Fidel Castro offered to trade all of the prisoners, from the Bay of Pigs aggression, for Henry Winston. Throughout the Soviet Union there were protest actions and constant news of the struggle. Finally, in 1961 President John F. Kennedy granted executive clemency. Upon his release and return from Soviet medical treatment, which could not reverse the blindness, Winston re-entered political life in the US.

At a press conference in July 1961, Winston said: "Despite my handicap, I intend to resume my part in the fight for an America and a world of peace and security, free of poverty,
disease and race discrimination...I return from prison with the unshaken conviction that the people of our great land, Negro and white, need a Communist Party fighting for the
unity of the people for peace, democracy, security and socialism. I take my place in it again with deep pride. They robbed me of my sight but not of my vision." When Winston
returned to political work with the leadership of the Communist Party, it had been 16 years since the start of the Smith Act trials in July 1948 And when he returned, the Party was still
under attack, this time under the McCarran Act. Most of the McCarran Act was declared unconstitutional in 1967.

Henry Winston was elected National Chair of the Party, confirmed by the 18th Convention in 1966 and from then until the end of his life shared leading the Party with Gus Hall, its
General Secretary. To perform his duties, he had to have help walking around his offices and traveling. To continue his lifetime habit of wide reading, others had to read to him.
With assistance, he was able to write reports, articles, pamphlets and two major books, as well as keep up a substantial correspondence domestically and internationally. First
and foremost in all this assistance was his wife, Fern Winston, who at the same time at first worked in a hospital and then worked for the Party as Chair of its Women's Equality
Commission and a member of the National Committee.

Henry Winston played a major role in the Party's work in relation to all the most significant struggles for peace and international solidarity, for jobs, equality and against racism, for
democracy, progress and socialism, and for the building of the Party, the League and its press and media. He returned to activity during the last years of the Civil Rights Revolution
of the 60s and to the first serious efforts of an African American to win the Presidency in the candidacy of Jesse Jackson in 1984, which he welcomed. Among the struggles he was
most involved in were the fight to get out of Vietnam and for nuclear disarmament. He also headed the effort within the party for the freedom of Angela Davis who the Reagan
Governorship in California was trying to imprison for life or even execute in a frame-up. Every day, the freedom of Angela Davis was the first thing on his agenda, working with
Charlene Mitchell who headed the mass defense movement, with the attorneys for Angela Davis - Margaret Burnham and John Abt. The Party as a whole, as a result of Winston's
role was involved in this victorious struggle, which had become a major international effort and cause.

Henry Winston was also very centrally involved in the solidarity effort in the U.S. with the people of South Africa - The Communist Party of South Africa and African National
Congress. This included close work with Oliver Tambo, the head of the ANC after Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, Moses Mobida, the General Secretary of the Communist Party
of South Africa and with leaders of other liberation movements in Africa. At the same time, Henry Winston maintained ties with many prominent figures in the progressive
community and in the African American community in particular. At his 70th birthday celebration in a major New York hotel, Ossie Davis was the Master-of-Ceremonies. Pete
Seeger performed. Winston kept in touch with sections of the labor movement through such figures as Cleveland Robinson, the African American Secretary Treasurer of District
65, leaders of 1199.

In 1986, Winston returned to a Soviet Hospital with a recurrence of the brain tumor and they were unable to save his life. During this last period of his life, the Soviet Union was undergoing big reforms under the leadership of Gorbachev. According to CPUSA comrades who were in the hospital with Winston, following Soviet developments, Winston
welcomed the reform efforts and was hopeful they would succeed without causing any upheaval, while pointing a new way forward for socialism.

The many comrades who worked with Henry Winston, all marveled at his ability to give leadership on theoretical and political policy questions, as well as to be such a master
of organization and getting things done. His absolute commitment to the interests of the working class - Black ,Brown, white, red, yellow - men, women, old , young, etc. to the
interests of the African American and all other nationally oppressed peoples as a whole to women and youth - was undeniable. Winston was in no way a sectarian and worked well
with all kinds of democratic forces.

Nothing could shake Henry Winston's conviction and confidence and nothing could deter him from doing his utmost to further these causes and the fight for socialism. He was
always undaunted by difficulties and setbacks. Yet he was always warm, friendly and human, with a hearty laugh. He was always interested in the lives, successes and hardships
of co-workers and friends. If Winston heard of someone he knew in the leadership, or not, anywhere in the country was sick, they would get a phone call from him. Henry
Winston was certainly one of the most respected and beloved of anyone who has served in the leadership of the Party. He was always a unifying force, though he always took a
principled position on issues. Everyone who knew him realized they knew a very special person - a mentor to us all.

Henry Winston is survived by his daughter Judith, and her children.

Books by Henry Winston
Strategy for a Black Agenda, IP, 1973
Class, Race and Black Liberation, IP, 1977
Prepared by the Henry Winston Centenary Tribute Committee Executive
Jarvis Tyner
Danny Rubin
Mary Arnold
Tina Nannarone

Henry Winston is IN THE HOUSE!

Jarvis Tyner — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:16:00 -0500

Henry Winston PRESENTE!
Henry Winston is IN THE HOUSE!

It is a great honor to take part in this historic program.

Comrade Henry Winston, or as we affectionately called him, Winnie, would be very pleased that his centennial celebration has brought together a full house in the hall that bears his name. Henry Winston is in the house. Winnie would be very pleased that Charlene Mitchell is part of the program this afternoon. Charlene was very close to Comrade Winnie, and a powerful leader of our party for many decades. Comrade Charlene's strong personal friendship with Winnie was built on a rich history of unity in struggle and great mutual respect and affection.

And Comrade Winston would be very happy that Angela is part of this celebration today. Angela Davis holds a special place in all our hearts because of the historic struggle for her freedom. Many of us here today were active in the broad united movement that defeated the criminal conspiracy of Governor Reagan and President Nixon to frame Angela and ultimately to take her life. That struggle was won because a multiracial coalition of people of diverse political beliefs here and around the world united around the basic truth that Angela was innocent. They knew that to free Angela would be a powerful blow against racism, anti-communism and reaction in general. And it was a powerful victory.

Comrades Henry Winston and Gus Hall, both political prisoners during the McCarthy era, contributed much to the basic tactics and political approaches that won Angela's freedom. And in the first place, the battle was won because of the tremendous courage and confidence of Angela Yvonne Davis. As Winston wrote:

"Angela's unflinching courage during the long months of imprisonment, her unyielding defense of her socialist convictions: her dignity and pride in her Black womanhood, her charisma-all gave the lie to the frame-up and inspired and won the love of millions."
(Strategy for a Black Agenda, pg. 264, International Publishers, 1973)

It is important to recall the tremendous struggles Henry Winston went through that made him what he was and enabled him to make such a huge contribution to freeing Angela. Winnie was just 19 when he joined the Young Communist League after cutting his political teeth in the unemployed movement, where he not only met the YCL but also his future wife, Fern.

He was a leader in the movement to save the Scottsboro youth. He worked in the Southern Negro Youth Congress with such brilliant fighters as Esther and James Jackson, Augusta and Ed Strong, Dorothy and Louis Burnham He also worked with William L. and Louise Patterson and Claude and Geraldine Lightfoot. All were Winnie's lifelong comrades and dear friends. Winnie was a top YCL leader when the YCL helped organize the American Youth Congress, which at its height had over 4 million members. Winston played a major role in mobilizing youth to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that fought fascism in Spain. He was a key organizer in the fight to integrate major league baseball.

Winnie also helped build the party's work in the movement against U.S. aggression in Vietnam. And he did seminal work in the African solidarity movement. Long before they became well-known names in the U.S. left, Winnie knew Amilcar Cabral, Alfred Nzo, Oliver Tambo, Bram Fisher and Moses Mabida. He was the first to call for the freedom of Nelson Mandela, and for a boycott of the South African racists.

Over decades of brilliant leadership, Winston developed into a organizational genius who taught hundreds of comrades how it was done. I remember the meetings where he would ask those concrete questions and insist on concrete answers. And how he would say, "We have only six weeks to do this. We need to plan for every week and every day."

It is important to mention the comrades who made it possible for Winnie to function: His drivers, his secretary, those who read for him, took him to the doctor and helped him shop and write. But above all there was his wife, Fern. Fern Pierce met Winnie on a unemployed march. They fell in love, married, but were later divorced and married others.

Winnie became blind while in prison, because the authorities would not treat a brain tumor that was pressing on his optic nerves. They gave him aspirin and left him in excruciating pain. The party's outstanding attorney, John Abt, visited him and raised the alarm. "Save Henry Winston" became a worldwide movement which forced President Kennedy to quickly release him. When he left prison he uttered those immortal words, "They have robbed me of my sight, but not my vision".

Now he needed someone to help him in his day-to-day life. Winnie and his second wife had divorced. Who would help him so he could continue his valuable leadership? Fern, who had also divorced her second husband, stepped forward. They married again and she was by his side for the rest of his life. Fern was a health care worker, a member of SEIU Local 1199. She was a member of the party's National Committee and later its National Board. I remember many delicious meals and good times at their apartment in East Harlem. Fern and Henry Winston were a wonderful communist couple.

I met Winnie in Philadelphia in the early 1960s, not long after his release from prison. He stood erect and spoke brilliantly, with such pride, confidence-and yes, with optimism-about the Communist Party and the movement. He showed no signs of bitterness or
pessimism. He made us laugh and he gave us confidence.

I said to myself, this brother/comrade has just gone through what has to have been the worst ordeal of his life and he did not lose his dignity, he did not lose his political perspective and he did not lose his fighting spirit. I was just 20 years old at the time. As I listened, I told myself, "I need to get to know this man. I have found my role model."

In 1966 Henry Winston was elected the national chairman of the party, with Gus Hall as general secretary. They worked together as a team for 20 years. What was Henry Winston's vision?

He and the other Smith Act victims were imprisoned because of their vision, and because they knew how to organize to realize that vision. Through the Smith Act, the 1 percent, the imperialist ruling class was out to destroy the party because it working class party that stood for black-brown-white unity and an end to ideological and structural racism; because it was an active, organized force in building the labor movement and stood against fascism, anti-Semitism, anti-immigrant bigotry and full equality for women.

Because the Communist Party advocated Socialism and an end to exploitation of workers here and world wide, and saw working people as decisive force for transforming society. Because they worked for an end to war and imperialist aggression at the height of the US anti Soviet cold war hysteria they were jailed. Because they fought in Spain and helped to build the world wide anti fascist front build industrial unionism and fought for the full equality for women they were jailed.

Because the party showed that it could not only talk the talk but could also build a mass base for those politics in the largest imperialist country in the world they were jailed. Winnie and his comrades were on the frontline defending the right to dissent in our country. They were jailed for their ideas but they were not criminals, they were patriots. Winston understood and wrote extensively about the fight for unity and progress. He understood that victory is not possible without a multifaceted fight against racism. He understood the politics of the popular front and why the left and center needed unity if the people were to win.

His thinking built confidence in the possibility of winning masses of white working people away from the self-defeating ideologies of racism and anticommunism. Some 38 years ago this magnificent Marxist, this working-class son of the African American people whose grandfather was a slave, who was raised under the yoke of Jim Crow apartheid and had every reason to be pessimistic about race relations, wrote the following:

"In reality, white as well as black workers have a material stake in the eradication of racism. To assert that white workers have a ‘material stake' in racism is to profoundly exaggerate monopoly's ability to sustain this illusion-particularly in the face of the deepening general crisis of capitalism."

He said that concept is based on an overestimation of the strength of imperialism and consequently a "denial of the intensifying contradiction between monopoly and the working class as a whole-black, white, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Asian and Native American Indian." (Strategy for a Black Agenda)

Winnie would have been very enthused by the election of Barack Obama. It was a watershed in the fight against racism even though the majority of white voters did not vote for him. Despite the Republicans' relentless daily firestorm of racist and anti- communist attacks, Obama did better among white voters than had Al Gore or John Kerry. And of course, overall, Obama defeated McCain by 10 million votes and became the nation's first African American president. That was a vote of the anti-racist majority and a refutation of the racist policies that remain the cornerstone of the Republican-Tea Party- Libertarian axis of evil today.

This year's election could turn on the issue of race. The real purpose of the Republican opposition to deficits and big government is to destroy the social safety net for working people. They aim is to divert the mass anger from manipulators on Wall Street to workers on Main Street; from millionaires to minorities and immigrants; from tax-dodging rich folks to unemployed and poor folks; from wealthy bankers to the foreclosed-upon; from Wall Street hustlers to the hungry and the homeless.

Basically the idea is to divert the mass anger of voters from the 1 percent to the 99 percent. The Republican opposition needs racism and its partner-in-crime, anticommunism, to carry out this political shell game. If they get away with this, working people, minorities, women, LGBT people, youth and seniors will have hell to pay. And so will the left. We have strong differences with a number of the president's policies, especially his foreign policy and many of his "national security" measures. These must be reversed. That said, if Romney or Gingrich or whatever surprise Republican may be waiting in the wings gets elected, does anybody doubt we will be in a qualitatively more dangerous situation? President Obama has done some very good things that have opened the doors to more profound progressive changes on major fronts of struggle. When led by Democrats before the 2010 Republican Tea Party majority takeover, the House passed over 200 pieces of legislation, most of which moved in a good direction.

Obama has created millions of jobs. He got a health care bill passed, he's fighting for the American Jobs Act, he passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the "stimulus bill') and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He won several extensions of unemployment compensation, and cut taxes on working people several times. He eliminated "Don't Ask Don't Tell," supports higher taxes on the wealthy, identifies with the fight-back of workers in Wisconsin and Ohio and the Occupy Wall Street movement. He passed new regulations on Wall St. And he raised our Social Security benefits.

Obama's 2008 speech on racism was a breakthrough for a presidential front-runner, Democrat or Republican. It was perhaps the most profound speech on race ever to come from a major capitalist party. These things have enraged the extreme right and big sections of the 1 percent because they challenge their basic beliefs.

Winnie would ask, "How do we move forward?" Twenty-five million people are unemployed in this country. Some 49 million people - one in six - live in poverty, 14 million are underwater and/or facing foreclosure, and 48 million are hungry. Schools, housing, health care and infrastructure are all in crisis.

If you are a progressive and think defeating Obama will move things forward, you are mistaken. Electoral struggles are not the only arena of struggle but in our country and in most countries today they are a basic part of the struggle for change, including towards socialism. Winston was a dialectician. He understood that. The Communist Party understand this. We must go forward!

Henry Winston was recognized worldwide as a great Marxist Leninist thinker and a master polemicist. His writings on the national question and on African liberation broke new ground and strengthened the struggle for liberation and freedom.

When I was in Vietnam on a peace delegation in 1972, I meet with a leading scholar there who was writing a biography of Winston. He told me that in Vietnam they knew about Comrade Henry Winston as a political prisoner and a fighter against racism and for
socialism. We talked for two hours about Winnie. He repeated many times that Henry Winston is a great hero to the Vietnamese people.

When Winnie's "Strategy for a Black Agenda" came out, the South African Communist Party's publication, The African Communist, called it "a fighting book, written at white heat by someone who is by no means an academic onlooker but a front-line participant in
a main battlefield against imperialism." They called the book "an indispensable weapon for every fighter for the liberation of Africa and her sons and daughters in the USA and Africa."

Finally, let me share a wonderful experience I had with Comrade Winston. In February, 1968 "Freedomways" magazine sponsored a celebration of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois' centennial, at Carnegie Hall. Before the event began, Winnie asked a small group of comrades, myself included, to come with him to a waiting room backstage. Soon, in walked Dr. Martin Luther King. He immediately walked over to Winnie and said "Mr. Winston, it is an honor to meet you. How are you?"

Of course Winnie, and all of us, expressed how honored we were to meet Dr. King. Then Dr. King and Henry Winston had a very pleasant and mutually respectful 10-minute talk about the struggle in general. These two African American leaders - both sons of the deep south - hit it off very well.

Dr. King then addressed a packed house with a history-making speech about Dr. DuBois' legacy. In that speech he did a courageous thing: he took on the issue of anticommunism, saying, "Our irrational, obsessive anticommunism has led us into too many quagmires to be retained as if it were a mode of scientific thinking."

At the time no U.S. mass leader, certainly none with anywhere near Dr. King's standing, was willing to acknowledge the problem and forthrightly, publicly speak out against anticommunism. That was a great moment for Dr. King, for Freedomways, and for all
democratic minded people.

From some things Dr. King said during the brief meeting, I think he was familiar with some of Winnie's writings. But even if he had never read a word, he knew about the great Henry Winston. And at that point it hit me that even if we were banned from the mass media and almost never mentioned in a positive light, what we were doing was known about. And it was so very, very important that we were and are a part of the struggle, advocating socialism and defending the interest of the working class. That we were and continue to build unity, build mass confidence and shining light on many complex, seemingly intractable problems.

Our theoretical and practical political work is appreciated and respected. Even under conditions of semi-legality at the time, we had a real impact.

So as we gather here today, we must celebrate Henry Winston for all that he did. I am in awe of Comrade Winnie for what he did, for his incredible contribution to our party and the working-class movement worldwide. We must continue the struggle as Winnie would have wanted us to. Always for the people, with the people, until the people win.

Henry Winston is in the house today. This is Henry Winston's house. Henry Winston, Presente today, tomorrow and always.

In Tribute to Henry Winston

Charlene Mitchell — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:27:00 -0500

Editor's note: These remarks were delivered at the memorial for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Henry Winston. Charlene Mitchell is a long time labor and political activist, a former candidate for President of the US, and a founder of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

Good Afternoon. It is an honor to be present at an event to honor the life, work, and thought of Henry Winston. I count myself as among the lucky ones who had the privilege of working with Comrade Winston over a number of years and in a number of struggles. Marx wrote that: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." Henry Winston made history, but his contribution to history was not based on his unique genius - although he was a genius. The history he made was grounded in the world he lived in. Growing up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi and Kansas City he experienced first hand the brutal oppression of the African American people and the callous exploitation of the working class. In Hattiesburg, in the early 1900's more then one-half of the town
was African American, yet only one percent of them were registered to vote due to the disenfranchisement of the African American people in the South. His father was a laborer
in a local saw mill, who struggled to feed, clothe and house his young family on the meager wages of the mill. Thus, from birth Winston's life was intertwined with the two social
forces that would mark his future life - a member of the working class, viciously exploited by the capitalist system; and an African American, subjected to the base degradations of
national oppression.

As a fighter, Winston grew to adulthood organizing against these twin forms of oppression. He was a leader of the Young Communist League, the Unemployed Councils, and the
Scottsboro Defense Committee. In the midst of these struggles he honed the theoretical and organizational abilities that would serve him so well later as a leading member of the
Communist Party.

Many of Winston's most lasting theoretical contributions are in the areas of the anticolonial and independence struggles of Africa and the movement for African American equality. Although his personal life experiences certainly gave him important insights into these issues; it was not a sense of nationalism that drove his analysis. Instead, it was a firm
belief in the future of socialism and the historic role of the working class in bringing about that future. Winston was fully aware of Lenin's admonition that Marxism cannot be mixed with even the most refined forms of nationalism.

In a 1964 pamphlet entitled, "Negro Liberation: a goal for all Americans," Winston referred to the African American question as "the touchstone in the struggle for democracy in this
country" - adding that "...the achievement of equality for the Negro people is the key in the struggle to defend and extend democracy for all."

Winston was an advocate of the centrality of the struggle for African American equality. He understood that the fight against African American oppression was "central" to the
uniting of the working class. He understood that this "centrality" could not be posed against the class struggle - as some social democrats attempted to do by insisting that only
the class struggle is "central." Instead, Winston understood the interconnection between the class struggle and the struggle against national oppression. He also understood that no
movement would lead the U.S. working class towards the fundamental transformation of this system without a correct understanding of the centrality of the fight against African
American oppression. The white sector of the U.S. working class will never break with bourgeois ideology without cleansing itself of the odious ideology of racial superiority - in
whatever form it takes.

These ideas, the struggle for a correct line in the African American and African support movement, are the centerpiece of Winston's "Strategy for a Black Agenda." In that work,
which was a major intervention in the ideological struggle within the African American movement and among those in solidarity with African liberation and independence,
Winston pulled the covers off of the Maoists, who under the guise of "anti-revisionism" sided with the imperialists in the struggle for the liberation of Angola. More importantly,
Winston's analysis demonstrated that these positions were not merely mistakes or errors in judgment by the Maoists, but were the logical outcome of an anti-Leninist, anti-working
class philosophy.

In that book and in his "Class, Race and Black Liberation," Winston also dissected the then-current Pan-Africanist movement. He demonstrated that the nationalism and lack of anti-imperialist grounding in that movement reflected that it owed more of an intellectual debt to George Padmore and Marcus Garvey than to DuBois' conception of Pan-Afrcanism.
He noted that they were quick to base their analysis on Dubois' famous quote that "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line." However, Winston added
that "Dubois said it was the problem, Dubois did not say it was the solution." Winston went on to write that, "As Lenin demonstrated, the solution lies in a strategy to overcome the
disunity of the oppressed and exploited at the line of differences in color and nationality."

Comrade Winston's leadership on these issues was not limited to the theoretical sphere. He played an active role in guiding mass movements in these areas. Winston was the
organizational brains behind the formation of NAIMSAL - the National Anti-Imperialist Movement in Solidarity with African Liberation. Under his guidance, and through his
connections with African leaders throughout the continent, NAIMSAL succeeded in injecting a consistent anti-imperialist content to the then-developing movements in
solidarity with African liberation. NAIMSAL was one of the first organizations in this country to campaign for the freedom of Nelson Mandela and, with the National Alliance,
launched a petition drive that helped make Mandela's freedom a national issue. Much of NAIMSAL's work laid the basis for the larger African liberation support movement that
developed in the 1980's.

And under Winston's guidance, the Party helped build the largest political defense movement this country had seen since the Scottsboro defendants. I can still remember receiving a call from my brother, Franklin Alexander, in the summer of 1970 informing me that Angela Davis was facing arrest on trumped up charges stemming from a shootout at a courthouse in San Rafael, California.

I immediately went to discus this development with Winston and Gus Hall. Both had no hesitation in throwing the weight of the entire Party behind the movement to defend Angela and both immediately saw this threat as an attack against the Communist Party, the African American movement, and the entire progressive movement. Winston, especially, demonstrated a particular sensitivity to the role of gender. It was an advanced attitude I had seen displayed by him over the years. In his work in defense of Angela, he consistently expressed the importance of the role of women in the movement's leadership and in the broader society. This may have partially been due to the influence of Claudia Jones, one of his closest comrades from the "old days" and at one time chair of the Party's Women's Commission.

With Winston's assistance we rallied the Party to build an international movement demanding the release of Angela and all political prisoners. This movement, more than any other single motion, helped rebuild the Party's image in the African American community and in the broad Left. There are still many activists around who "cut their political teeth"
in that movement. And in the process of building that movement the Party made many valuable contacts with activists across the country. It was this movement that positioned us
to launch the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

In Winston's last years he had developed a particular concern for the plight of African American youth. He recognized that the general crisis of capitalism and the national oppression of the African American people were combining to stigmatize African American youth as, in Winston's words, "social pariahs." More than twenty-five years later we see Winston's concerns manifested in astronomical youth unemployment rates, collapsing public education, and mass incarceration as a method of control of African American youth.

Yet Winston was full of optimism about the long-range future. I believe he would have welcomed the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. And he would have been the first to point out the importance of the 2012 elections for the future of our country. Just think about Winston's notion about the African American question being the "touchstone in the struggle for democracy" while listening to the racist "dog whistles" - some would say "foghorns" - of every single one of the Republican Party candidates. And lined up opposed to those dog whistlers is -- albeit, with Obama at the head -- a united African American community; the organized sector of the working class, which is newly energized; and nearly all organized sections of the progressive movement. How could one be neutral in this fight and consider oneself a progressive - or even a (small "d") democrat? And make no mistake, to support a third party candidate in this election is to be neutral -- the definition of neutrality being that of having little to no impact.

It's like being in a car. Your material reality presents limited options for movement. You can't go sideways. You either hit "drive," and go forward; or you hit "reverse," and go backward; or you stay in neutral, and go nowhere. We can't afford to backwards - we have to move forward. Now, some of you all might think you're in "park" - like that's a viable option. But that's even worse since it's harder to push forward when you're in "park." We all have our criticisms of the President. But we make a fatal mistake if we see Obama as the end and not as the beginning. We make a fatal mistake if we see that entire social motion that coalesced to elect Obama as being complete and finished and not see it as an arena of struggle. Now, many forces in that coalition won't make it down to the goal line of fundamentally transforming our society. Some will drop out. Many will be pushed out. But, if we are to fundamentally transform this society, who will we transform it with if not the progressive forces that are currently behind the re-election of Obama. And, I'm sure Winston would remember Lenin, who wrote, "...bear in mind that the struggle for the main thing may blaze up even though it has begun with the struggle for something partial." Does the phrase "Bread, Peace, and Land" sound familiar?

In a 1951 pamphlet entitled "What it means to be a Communist," Winston wrote, "Those who see only backwardness, immobility and disunity in the working class, are bound to ignore the essential truth that it is the working class that possesses all the necessary qualities to bring about the transformation of society, and build socialism." Embedded in the movement to re-elect Obama are those forces - the only forces - that can bring about the fundamental transformation of this society.

Finally, it is important that we honor the life and legacy of Henry Winston. But we must also recognize that Henry Winston was not a great man in spite of being a Marxist-Leninist.
He became a great man because he was a Marxist-Leninist. He was not a great man in spite of being a member of the Communist Party. He became a great man because he was
a member of the Communist Party. Nothing in his contributions makes sense if separated from the Party and its ideology. And yet his legacy belongs not just to the Marxist-Leninists
or to the Communist Party. His legacy belongs to the African American people, to the working class, and to the oppressed people all across this world, who all strive for a better
society and a better future.

Charlene Mitchell

Danny Rubin Henry Winston Tribute

Danny Rubin — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:19:00 -0500

It is hard to overstate the importance of the contributions of Henry Winston to the Party and to me personally. My mother, my wife of 58 years, Dorothy, and Winnie were the most important adults in my life. When Winston returned to political life, it was consciously decided he would mentor me. I had just graduated from youth work and had become Organizational Secretary. We spent hours together every day for ten years. And we remained close in my succeeding assignments. I happened to be in the Soviet hospital along with John Pittman the last weeks of Winnie's life, reading to the two of them and discussing developments under the new Gorbachev leadership.

Winston was one of the most remarkable human beings and political leaders I ever knew and had the privilege of working with. He had a very strong grasp of Marxist theory, of politics and was a master of the theory and practice of Party organization. He knew a life of hardship from childhood and throughout his life which he faced with great fortitude, steadfastness, and humanity. For a man blinded in prison, who was not able to go to school beyond junior high and yet write two masterful volumes, and do everything else he did on a daily basis, is quite remarkable. His devotion to his class, his people, his Party and to his family, friends and co-workers was unshakeable. His concern for people, their lives, their families, their jobs and health was just part of his nature. And he was a great mentor and teacher to all around him, a teacher by example, in the first place.
What he taught us stands in great stead today when the people of our country face so sharp a choice of direction, when they face an extreme right that wants to take everything severely backward, versus the Obama Administration, with all its limitations, is open to moving forward from where we are in the interests of the great bulk of the people. What does Winston teach us? To recognize the sharpness of the danger, that a major section of monopoly wants to reverse everything and together with the most backward political trends and organizations to enrich big monopoly at the expense of all working people. He teaches us to recognize whose self-interest runs in the opposite direction, the need for the widest unity of major sections of the population, starting with the multi-racial working class, the racially and nationally oppressed as a whole, women, youth, seniors and many more. He teaches us that racist ideology and practice and anti-communism are the greatest weapons of reaction to divide the people. The labor movement and working class as a whole needs to lead the way. The Communist Party needs to show this strategic course and play a special role in uniting the necessary forces and defeating the attempts at division. These are lessons for today even more than they were when Henry Winston wrote his two books and lived the remarkable and heroic life he did.

I believe Henry Winston is one of the heroes of our people for all time. We have gone through periods when new movements for social progress felt they needed to start afresh, that there was little in our history to draw from. We are in such a period. I believe, as did Winnie, that a mass sustained working people's movement for democracy, progress and then socialism must learn from history. It must draw on all that is positive in our history. It must have men and women who remain heroes, to be a truly popular movement. To Marx, Engels, and Lenin heroes were people who made outstanding contributions in leading and moving with masses of people in a forward direction. They were not without weaknesses or faults, nor did they always win.

In our history the heroes include Crispus Attucks, Tom Paine, Samuel Adams, Hariet Tubman, Chief Joseph, Wendell Philipps, Abaham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Parsons, William Z Foster, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood, Sen Katayama, Jesus Colon, W.E.B. Dubois, Paul Robeson, Martin Luther King,Jr. Lorenzo Torrez, Henry Winston and many more . Internationally, they include Marx, Engels, Lenin, Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxembourg, Georgi Dimitrov, Dolores Ibarruri, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela, and many more.

Winnie sought to teach me and others many things. You will have to be the judge of how well we learned. He taught me about the centrality of the struggle for full equality and against racism in relation to the class struggle and the entire front of struggle for democracy, peace, jobs, progress and socialism. He taught me and corrected me on many things that have to do with the sensitivity of whites to national oppression and that white Communist leaders have to fulfill a high level of responsibility in fighting racism among white working people. But he also taught me much in every area of Marxist theory and practice, including on the necessity for the Communist Party to exist and grow.

Winnie was a teacher up to the last few days of his life. Just before he passed away in the Soviet hospital I read to Winnie and John Pittman, who also was nearly blind, from the Soviet press translations about the state visit of Gorbachev to India where he met with Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister, son of Indira Gandhi and grandson of Nehru. The last sentence of the joint communiqué sounded to me like a pacifist position and I commented, that it must have been placed there by Gandhi. Winston said, "No, that last sentence was not Gandhi, it was Lenin." I was startled, but since Winston said it I acceptedd it. When I returned to the States, I found the quote in the Lenin Collected Works. This was Winnie's last gift to me, his last lesson, which I shall forever treasure. Lenin wrote in The Question of Peace, July 1915, LCW, V.21, p.293, "An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence - such is our ideal..." Thank you so much Winnie for that final lesson.

Tribute to Henry Winston

Angela Y. Davis — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:28:00 -0500

Editor: These remarks were delivered February 19, 2012 at Winston Unity Center in NYC, at a memorial on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Henry Winston.

It is an honor to have been invited to participate in this tribute to Henry Winston on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of his birth. Over the last twenty-five years I have often thought about Winnie and how much I miss his brilliant analyses and his warmth and compassion. I think he had the most genuinely expressive smile of anyone I have ever known. Communists are often accused of giving so much of their love and affection to the revolutionary struggle that they have little left to devote to one-on-one relationships. Winnie was certainly the most convincing refutation of that assumption. His love for the struggle was always matched by his love for all of the individuals in his life, both those in his intimate life and those in his political life.

I cannot reflect on the life of Henry Winston without also remembering Kendra and Franklin Alexander, who loved Winnie with all their hearts. It was the two of them, along with Charlene Mitchell, who recruited me into the Communist Party. A constant theme our many discussions back then was the life and work of Henry Winston. In fact I would not be exaggerating if I said that it was Winnie, channeled through Kendra, Franklin and Charlene, who persuaded me to join the Communist Party.

When I think back on that period I find it hard to believe that so much happened within a relatively short period of time. What stands out most in my memory of the events that unfolded after I became a Communist was the presidential campaign during which Charlene Mitchell and Mike Zagarell were the Party's candidates for president and vice-president. At the same time I was working on a Marxist-Leninist political education program for the Black Panther Party. I was a graduate student during this time and had been a member of the Communist Party for less than a year when I accepted a position at UCLA. During the summer prior to the semester I was scheduled to teach, Kendra Alexander and I joined a delegation to Cuba and after an amazing time in revolutionary Cuba, we returned to discover that I had been made the target of a raging anti-communist attack headed by Governor Ronald Reagan.

I mention the details of this period not only because this was when I met Henry Winston for the first time, but also because he was a constant inspiration to me, especially when it came to garnering the courage to stand up to attacks I had never imagined would be directed individually at me. In my own mind, as I compared my journey as a black girl from the deep South to Winnie's migration up from Mississippi to Kansas City, it helped me create the resolve to confront the racism, sexism, and anti-communism that shaped the attacks that were directed against me.

In Strategy for a Black Agenda, Winston wrote a postscript to his pamphlet "The Meaning of San Rafael" in which he acknowledged all of those who played a major role in the struggle for my freedom. He failed, however, to point out that he himself played a critical role in the development of the international campaign. As Chair of the CPUSA he appealed to Communist Parties throughout the world -- from South Africa to France to Australia to India. In the postscript he wrote that "[t]he growing strength and prestige of the socialist world made it much more difficult for U.S. Imperialism to exploit anti-communism in this case, as was done so successfully in the Rosenberg, Smith Act, and other political cases of the 1950's." But characteristically, he did not acknowledge that it was his own organizing efforts-his, Charlene's, and many others-which helped to persuade Communist Parties everywhere to encourage their members to support a young and relatively unknown member of the CPUSA.

Henry Winston helped to imbue an important internationalism into the Black Liberation Movement of that period. Through his writings and his speeches, he helped Communist and progressive activists to develop a conceptualization of solidarity with African freedom struggles that was grounded in anti-imperialist unity. At a time when W.E.B. DuBois' work had been long marginalized both in academia and in popular discourse, Winnie introduced DuBois to young activists and scholar/activists.

Winston's role in the creation of NAIMSAL, the National Anti-Imperialist Movement in Solidarity with African Liberation, helped to further popularize DuBois' notion of an anti-imperialist Pan Africanism, which emphasized unity with the socialist countries against settler colonialism and against the neocolonialist strategies that attempted to bring "free" African countries into the orbit of capitalism. Inspired by Henry Winston, NAIMSAL generated support against the Apartheid regime in South Africa that foreshadowed the important U.S. role in the global Anti-Apartheid movement in the 1980s that helped to eventually bring down the racist government and usher in a new era of democracy in South Africa.

Through NAIMSAL, support was generated in black communities, in the labor movement, and on campuses, not only for the African National Congress, but for SWAPO, the MPLA, FRELIMO, and other progressive African Liberation organizations. In 1973, I was able to bring greetings from Henry Winston and indeed from the entire party when I visited Congo-Brazzaville, Guinea, and Tanzania. The highlight of my trip to Africa was a meeting with Augostino Neto at the MPLA headquarters in Tanzania. I remember that he specifically asked me to convey his regards to Winnie.

Henry Winston was indeed revered throughout the world. Communists and those who were not deterred by anti-communism had no problems openly declaring their admiration for him. In my many travels in the socialist, capitalist and non-aligned countries, I had the opportunity to hear vast numbers of people express their profound respect for Winnie. But also, on many occasions I encountered actors, musicians and public figures (whose careers might have been placed in jeopardy had they openly declared their admiration for a communist), who secretly assured me that Winnie was a major source of inspiration in their lives.

Comrade Jarvis Tyner has described in very moving terms a meeting that took place between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Henry Winston on the occasion of Freedomways' centennial celebration of W.E.B. DuBois. It was an auspicious meeting, occurring just two months before Dr. King was assassinated and during the period when Dr. King was deeply involved in the first stages of organizing the Poor People's Campaign. If Dr. King was at all familiar with Henry Winston's writings, he would have known that Winnie always emphasized the inextricable connections between racial oppression, capitalist exploitation, and imperialist war. King's insistence during that period on our understanding the dangers associated with what he called the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism brought him closer to Henry Winston and other Communists who always contended that these three modes of oppression created a field on which each helped to sustain and reproduce the other.

In November of last year I had the opportunity to participate in a major Occupy mobilization in Oakland, California, which was represented as a general strike opposing the police violence with which the Occupy encampment was attacked. This march was multiracial, multigenerational, multigender, and it emphasized the centrality of working class struggles. As many as forty thousand people participated in that march and it was a wonderful moment to experience. The sense that we constituted a powerful community of resistance was palpable and many people of my generation felt that finally there was some possibility of fulfilling the promise of the struggles of the 1960s.
But what has been most important about the upsurge in activism over the last period, including in Wisconsin, Cairo, and New York-and the reason why I evoke these developments in my tribute to Henry Winston-is that for the first time since the 1930s, the era of Winnie's own youthful activism, we can speak openly and honestly about the perils of capitalism. This fulfills a great legacy we associate with Henry Winston's enduring opposition to corporate capitalism and to the racism and militarism that has always sustained human history's most rapacious form of economic production.

Three years ago when we enjoyed the planetary euphoria occasioned by the election of Barack Obama, I remember thinking that this was a moment I wished Winnie (as well as Kendra and Franklin and all those who had given their lives over to the cause of social justice) could have experienced. And while the euphoria has subsided, and some people allow their often valid criticisms to render them oblivious to what these last three years might have been like had the Republican candidate been elected, there can be no doubt that the current upsurge in labor and social justice activism is related to the political climate produced by the election of Obama.

As we work in multiple arenas with the aim of further expanding the possibilities of socialism, the spirit of Henry Winston will always be with us. Our words and our actions can help to create a future that reflects Winnie's enduring commitment, his incisive vision, and his beautiful smile.

THE GATES OF HELL

Steven Gray — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 18:18:00 -0500

Steven Gray is the editor of San Francisco- based literary publication, Outofour. He is also a member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade and has spent many a day in support of Occupy San Francisco.

(a sculpture by Rodin at Stanford University)

Standing at the Gates of Hell,
it feels like a rehearsal,
it’s a heavy metal representation,
a reversal

of the elevating. Here
the human beings fall
away from the divine, the
theology appalling,

but consider the location:
maybe it’s about
the suffering students who are damned
if they are dropping out.

The man-hours that went into this
metallic metaphor,
the figures are gesticulating,
there is room for more.

They’re going from the pan into
the fire, I’m resisting
the behavioral engineering,
hell does not exist.

The horrifying does, and it is
seeing through your clothes,
are these the people who have learned
their homes have been foreclosed?

The concept and the execution
were a tour de force,
evoking every kind of pain
from gravity to divorce.

The sculptor was an opportunist
jumping at the chance
to show the human figure from
all angles at a glance,

and that requires chaos, there are
people upside down.
I thought about the burning towers
in another town.

We’re haunted by a fall from grace,
historically a mass grave
is an awful classroom, you are
learning to behave,

but it’s a sunny afternoon,
if it’s the Gates of Hell
the vertigo would have us by
the hair. I lived to tell

about it, but I have to admit
a subway is more hellish
with a cold wind underground,
the echo of a death-wish.

Blacks Chicken feet’s vs. Whites Roasted Lambs!

Castro Ntobeko’ Ngobese — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:37:00 -0500

The author is a member of the South African Communist Party

Staying in apartheid Bantu rotten slums like pigs;
Squeezed into deadly minibuses to work like chickens;
Sniffing dustbins for a decent meal like scavengers;
Cheaply exploited in factories like slaves;

Working under hazardous conditions as if we are mosquitoes;
Shouting for our weekly wages like barking dogs;
Spewing derogatory names to my fellow workers as if we are not from a women’s womb;
Strip-searching us naked after work as if we are carrying a bomb;

We eat chicken feet for lunch, whilst you and your fellow’s enjoy a roasted lamb;
Enjoying fun with family at luxurious hotels;
Whilst our families shack of 17 years are hopeless;
Coming to work in designer wear like fashionistas;

We have to endure the pain of wearing greasy smelly clothes like hobos;
You have the luxury at your air-conditioned office to read a newspaper over a cup of Irish coffee;
Whilst our adorable mothers are forced to drink urine;
You are celebrated for living a better life in opulent Sandton;

We have to scramble for crumbs with my neighbors goats in impecunious Standerton;
You flatter your white wealth and reckless consumption with pride;
We despise Capitalist greed and barbarity with rage!