Posts from the “News” Category

Thousands Of Students Walk Out Of Classes In Philly

Posted on May 21, 2013

On May 17th thousands of high school students from various schools across the city walked out of their classes and took the streets of Philadelphia. This walk-out was organized by the students themselves in direct opposition to impending budget cuts which will close dozens of schools, lay off thousands of teachers and school employees, cut funding for school libraries, sports, after- school programs, summer school, counselling services, and other services that students rely on. Unlike the first walk-out which took place on May 9th, this walk-out occurred during school hours and without permission from school administrations. West Philly High locked its doors so that students couldn’t leave, but the students figured out how to get out of the school anyway. Some students even organized sit-down occupations of the schools. It is clear that the students are becoming more willing to break the rules and that this is scaring the school administrations. At the same time, the students have a very long way to go if they want to stop the budget cuts and take control of their lives–sending petitions and letters to Mayor Nutter and Governor Corbet wont do this. Below is a flyer that members of FNT distributed to hundreds of students during the walk-outs to encourage them to consider a revolutionary strategy.

Congratulations to the Students Who Walked Out of School Today!!!

The students who walked out of classes today have the power to change the future of Philadelphia. Today they defied a system that sees them as nothing but disposable. The city and state government are closing schools, cutting funding, but they have money for a Youth Jail at 48th and Haverford and $200 million has been set aside for a new Police Roundhouse at 46th and Market. They are replacing schools and libraries with more prisons and police! They are throwing a whole generation into the trash!

The question is: Are you going to let them get away with this? Sending letters and emails to the mayor and the governor wont change this situation. We will still be trapped in poor neighborhoods and in bullshit schools, stuck with no jobs or bullshit jobs, and constantly threatened by the police. Crews will continue fighting each other over petty beef. You have our full support, but it is going to take much more than voting and signing petitions to change this situation. We need to build a united revolutionary movement against the forces that keep us all down: the government, the police, the rich. Will you work with us to build this movement?

There will be a Meeting in the center of Malcolm X Park on Saturday May 25th at 5pm

Check us out @ facebook.com/FREETHASTREETS

Thoughts on Mental-Health and Revolution

Posted on March 29, 2013

The following dialogue explores the exploitation and alienation of youth within the mental health industry.

…

Arturo: Based on conversations we’ve had, it seems like you place a lot of value on the role of mental-health work within radical struggle. You are also a behavioral therapist. Can you describe what that job entails?

Iresha: I work for a behavioral health company in Philadelphia. My job is two fold. I’m a lead clinician in the therapeutic treatment program of a school. I work there from 8 to 3. 5 days a week. The other part is family therapy, or what is called “mobile therapy,” where I leave the school and go into the homes of the kids and their parents to work around issues that have been identified in the home. I do that after school, 4 days a week. At the school the students I work with are identified as having “behavioral problems.” The school refers the child to the company I work for. We assess the child’s behavior and recommend what level of services they need, like if they should see a psychologist. As a lead clinician, I do direct observations in class settings, group therapy, and one-on-one therapy.

Arturo: How old are your clients?

Iresha: They’re in K through 4th in the school. But in the community they’re anywhere from 5 to 18.

Arturo: That’s a big range of people. What’s the area like where you work?

Iresha: When I go to the student’s homes, they’re all in the proximity of the school. Its in the Frankford, Juniata, Kensington area of the city. It’s a very poverty stricken area. Most of all the parents of the kids I’ve worked with are single mothers, single heads of households, or there’s no parent in the household and it’s the grandmother or auntie raising the kids. I’d say that in roughly 90 percent of all the clients that I’ve had, the father is incarcerated. Or if the father is around, he is back and forth into prison. Some of the kids are going in and out of different foster homes too.

Arturo: What are some of the problems you see in your job?

Iresha: One, they refer a child for one or two incidents of what is deemed “aggressive behavior.” So if a child comes to school and throws a chair or curses out the teacher, he’s labeled as a behavioral problem. He or she could easily be labeled for ADHD or Autism, which follows the kids around for the rest of their lives—

Arturo: Like a criminal record…

Iresha: Yea. Thats fucked up. The child gets refereed to us and seen by the psychologist where a diagnosis is made. Even though there are home problems, problems from society—like a lot of my kids are displaced or homeless—the school and the company I work for doesn’t consider those factors. They just see a child having effects of trauma, some of it physical, sexual or take for instance; I have many children whose parents work all the time, so the child comes to school and engages in attention seeking behaviors. The system just sees the child as a problem. They don’t investigate what is happening to the child.

Arturo: Does money get made off the child with “behavioral problems”?

Iresha: The school actually gets money for the diagnosis. I’ve heard it’s in the thousands per child. The mental institutions that many students are sent to get money too. Those who provide the medication also get paid. So do the parents. If their child has a diagnosis, the parents can receive 700 to 800 dollars from SSI. Do I think some parents exploit this? Yes. But is that their fault? No. If I am a single mother with children, and I have no income, and SSI is telling me that they will give me 700 to 800 dollars if my child has this diagnosis, I might take it. I see it all the time. And parents will ask me if I can evaluate their other children too, and the question following this one is always, “will I get an increase in my SSI?” Its a fucked up situation, because in the end it hurts the child, but I blame the system for putting parents in that position.

East Flatbush Rebellion: Jocelyn and James Respond

Posted on March 17, 2013

The following piece by Jocelyn Cohn and James Frey was recently published by Unity and Struggle, in response to Will’s account of events in East Flatbush in “The Rebellion Contained: The Empire Strikes Back”.

This past Thursday in Flatbush Brooklyn we witnessed the events which Will describes in his excellent piece, and find his account to be consistent and the analysis superb. We have a few assorted thoughts to add and will try not to overlap Will’s account. Our piece assumes familiarity’s with Will’s, and the latter should be read first.

First, although this is absolutely implicit in Will’s piece, we wanted to point out that the activities of FAITH (Fathers Alive In The Hood) and Williams were the result of the loss of the ideological battle by Williams and by the peace-loving non-profits in general. Because Williams so clearly lost the ideological battle against anti-cop militancy, he had to resort to physical force, distraction, and intimidation to disrupt the activity–and still he was not successful in getting people to stop marching. Since they were defeated in the ideological battle, FAITH and Williams used their enormous bodies, bull horns, and aggression to literally drown out the voices of anti-cop militants, primarily women. FAITH aggressively tried to get people to stop the march to the precinct and literally commanded people to get into the church. Jumaane and FAITH were there to give the white media something to cling to, NOT to support the black militants and everyday people who are pursuing freedom.

This somewhat successful use of tactical force seems like a defeat for us but really it is a victory. Finally the non profits and politicians cannot hide their structural role and their relationship to the cops. Jumaane Williams had to resort to using physical force to try to stop people from fighting the cops. He has forever showed his role, and the hope is the antagonism between politicians/non profits and the working class has shown itself strongly enough to spread to other arenas of struggle. As Will so eloquently said, the enemy is bigger than the NYPD.

What this belies is a much larger break with the forms of organization that have held back militant political activity, especially among black and brown militants, for the last few decades. There is an emerging coalition around this issue and general anti-NYPD and hopefully anti-capitalist themes, with which many of our comrades desire to link up. How last night played out is forcing us to confront our obvious deficiencies in organizing, and our more general racial homogeneity. Many were frustrated by this experience because of the obstacles it presented, but these obstacles of course didn’t arise last week, and they point to concrete tasks facing NYC revolutionaries.

Though by no means a monolithic white crowd, the anarchists/communists Will describes were very much “the white people”. This is due in part to the severe segregation in Southeast Brooklyn, under which any white faces are very remarkable. By the time the story was written on the event’s Facebook page, all the non-black participants had just become “Occupy Wall St” and we were being lambasted for a variety of idiotic things said and done at Zuccotti Park. But it is also due to the literally centuries worth of work that has gone into creating the myth that the revolutionary class struggle and the black struggle are divergent.

Despite the numbers of both black and non-black revolutionaries who have made it their work to undo this myth and to instead reveal the intrinsic nature of the class struggle and struggle against white supremacy, the history and remnants of slavery and Jim Crow; the institutionalism of radicalism in the mostly white and white-washed university; the billions of dollars spent on incarceration and harassment of mostly black and immigrant men; and the enormous pressure to work several jobs AND work at home for black, latina, asian, and poor white women has done much to serve the still present divide. On top of the institutional forces that attempt to create a separation between the struggle against white supremacy, the struggle against patriarchy, and the struggle against capitalism, these objective elements of the capitalist state take on subjective and interpersonal expressions, which make unity and class-wide struggle all the more difficult and at times downright awkward.

Along these lines, Will’s denunciation of Sgt Thomas and FAITH is spot on and much-deserved. One important element missing is a gender analysis. FAITH was spouting rhetoric akin to the Promise Keepers, smuggling patriarchy into a discussion of male responsibility. The way they engaged with women, including a prominent organizer of the event, was horrendously sexist and condescending. They had one woman, their “PR rep”, running around trying to talk to talk to women on their behalf, who they were silencing with a megaphone they alone were allowed to use. This was hidden under a discourse of who’s “from the neighborhood”.

Additionally, in a tantrum that seemed to be staged in advance, Sgt Thomas was incredibly physical with a small woman who allegedly yelled “kill the pigs” (which, if she even said it, she was hardly introducing this fantasy into anyone’s mind for the first time). When a white man came to her aid, Thomas instantly made it a racial issue, making for what you can imagine to be a very uncomfortable situation for white militants trying to walk softly but nonetheless intercede in a violent act against a woman comrade. The gender dynamic was completely obscured by the race-baiting discourse which Jumaane Williams had been setting in place all day regarding “outsiders”, and the aggressive men he brought in only reinforced this. This is the kind of thing we have to be more prepared for, uncomfortable though it may be.

Another issue we must point out, and which we feel is related to the minor success FAITH and Thomas had in distracting from political issues through race-baiting, is the casual homophobia and misogyny among organizers and participants. It was “faggot” this and “bitch” that, especially with regards to those who they most hated: the cops in general, but primarily Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. (We find this objectionable for a number of reasons, never mind that of the two lines we heard, “Ray Kelly, you’re a racist, and your son is a rapist!” flows much more naturally than “Ray Kelly you’re a faggot and your son is a rapist!”)

We are not shocked or morally outraged to hear this kind of talk from young working class people of any color. However it represents a serious practical issue which the struggle has to face. Instead of being able to confront the patriarchy inherent in the city government and police, organizers passively contributed to this atmosphere. Instead of being able to call out FAITH for being patriarchal and very homophobic as well as heteronormative (their m.o. is preserving “family values” and the male head of household), organizers are left with only calling them out for being not militant enough. Non-profits such as FAITH are then able to strike back by saying “we’re from the neighborhood, these (both white and non-white anarchists/communists) are not (regardless of whether they are)”. A more powerful analysis, and also basis for bringing together the class, would be to show how patriarchy, white supremacy, the institution of the police, capitalism, and heteronormativity are in fact deeply connected.

We are not trying to simply be language police; the reality is equating the most hated individuals in the city with “faggots” in an otherwise militant speech itself can cause unnecessary division. Queer people and women, especially black and latinx, face intense police harassment based on gender and gender expression and furthermore have literally been leading the battle against the police not just in the last week, but historically. Therefore, the attitudes described above are not inherent to the working class but represent a division under capitalism which must be overcome in our praxis.

These are a few thoughts toward what will hopefully be a dialogue in the coming weeks. A few comrades are trying to set up a discussion forum about last night, and we’re reaching out to the organizers to engage on questions of strategy, ideology, finding common ground, etc. If you’re local and you’re interested, get in touch.

-Jocelyn Cohn and James Frey

The Rebellion Contained: The Empire Strikes Back

Posted on March 15, 2013

Last night the Empire struck back. It is too simple to say that the NYPD is what I am referring to. No doubt the NYPD came out in greater force and presence than the night of the rebellion. Cops were not only in the air, on horse, but on top of the buildings. There was virtually no escaping the eyes of the law last night. Rebellion in this situation could have only occurred if the size of the crowd was possibly nearing in the thousands. Instead less than one hundred came out. Most noticeably the number of young Black militants was much smaller, although still very noticeable.

However the Empire is not only the NYPD. The different tentacles of the Empire made a powerful appearance, revealing the complexities of the moment. The Black establishment of the likes of Council Member Jumanee Williams made an appearance. A group called Fathers Alive in the Hood (FAITH) made an appearance and Shamar Thomas [1] who made a name for himself during Occupy Wall Street’s heyday. While other players were involved, these were the most obvious.

Jumanee Williams has been at the forefront of attacking the rebellion which occurred on March 13^th. I wrote earlier that it was a Black led rebellion with no outside agitation. Williams made an appearance again on March 14^th , playing a two faced game. Do the young Black militants know that this man has been running around New York City saying that the brave struggles waged by Black militants have actually been controlled by white outsiders? I can only wonder what the Black militants would say to Williams if they knew of his treachery.

As the night opened up FAITH and Shamar Thomas stood across the street. The class divide could not have been clearer. Across the street were mostly older, well dressed Black people and an occasional youngster. On the other side were the Black militants from the neighborhood, sections of the Black left, and large sections of the Brooklyn anarchist and (ultra-left) communist scene. Also on this side was white and Black protesters standing together in one sense, but still internally divided, which I will explain later.

Eventually Thomas and FAITH crossed the street and came over to the vigil. While bull horns are illegal without a permit, somehow they managed to have a bullhorn. How did this happen? The three points made by this crew of reformists were: a) Black on Black violence needs to be our focus b) We need to keep things peaceful c) We should go to the church to have a dialogue.

This was challenged by a section of the Black left, most prominently, Fatimah Shakur [2]. As soon as she raised the idea of marching to the precinct the standard attacks on her came: she is not from the community; she is putting young people at risk; she is playing into outside agitators. Eventually, the crowd started moving in the direction of the precinct.

Thank God for the Failing Public Education System

While one of the great disasters of America today is the failure of public education, perhaps last night one of its failures turned out to be the reason for the small victories which did occur. To survive in school one of the great skills students develop is to ignore what teachers have to say. Sometimes the best defense against the stupidity of public education is to shut yourself down and create a mental barrier against the filth spewed by teachers. This skill was crucial last night as far as I could tell. What seems clear from last night is that regardless of skin color or politics, the young Black militants from East Flatbush seemed not to listen to anyone.

Great amounts of time were spent by Shamar Thomas, Jumanee Williams, and FAITH in convincing the young militants of their failure. Great time was spent discussing the need to go to church that very night and have a dialogue. The young militants just stared at the misleaders. No one knows what was going through their minds. Perhaps for now what they did is more important than what they thought. Sister Fatimah Shakur and others eventually helped spur a march towards the precinct. Through all of this, the question was: where would the young Black militants go? Into the church or with the white crowd of anarchists and (ultra-left) communists?

When we finally reached the church, after much yelling and shouting, the crowd filtered past the church. It was not clear what was occurring. It was clear that the anarchist and (ultra-left) communists were not going to the church. It was unclear, besides a few Black militants, what they were doing. Would the march be split along racial lines?

For obvious reasons I decided to go to the precinct. But walking a couple blocks, curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to check out what was going on at the church. I ran back and went into the church. I went inside and found a church that was empty. Instead of the presence of God, the fifteen senior citizens inside were sitting in the presence of awkwardness. There were no young Black militants inside. Instead Shamar Thomas was awkwardly commenting that those in the church did not reflect the community—dare I say that those in the church were the outside agitators! Of course, Thomas’s comment caused the group to be rather upset. I did not stay any longer. The next question on my mind was, where are the militants from East Flatbush? That now became the important question of the night.

A Window into the Black Vanguard

For a few minutes last night, it was possible to see what the Black revolution, what the Black vanguard might look like. Ultimately what last night was about was the following: for FAITH, Jumannee Williams, and Shamar Thomas it was about containing the insurgency and channeling it into reformist circles; for the revolutionary left, it was about seeing how they can interact with the Black militants to foment a healthy rebellion and collaboration. Many times the crowd moved in the direction of the Black militants through the streets. Where they went, the rest of the crowd had to go. There was no choice. It was clear who the potential leadership was.

Understanding the situation we face is crucial. Since The LA Rebellion of 1992, countless rebellions have occurred across the United States. Virtually all of them led by Black or Latino militants, but occasionally including Asians and whites as well. What is important to understand is why these cycles of rebellions have not regenerated a new revolutionary Black left or left in general. This is in contrast to the rebellions of the 1960s, which radicalized Black militants and were directly tied to the formation of the Black Panther Party, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and many other groups. What explains the lack of a Black revolutionary left in this day and age?

There are many complex reasons for this, ranging from de-industrialization, to mass incarceration, to the formation of a powerful Black middle class. However, one that needs to be understood is the immense powers brought forth to contain and limit the imagination of young Black people by those like Shamar Thomas, Jumanee Williams, and FAITH. Instead of congratulating the young Black militants, instead of saying that now it is time to read “Wretched of the Earth” or “Mass Strike” or “Black Boy” and to plan and expand the rebellion, the only solutions offered were crumbs off the scraps from our Black and white masters in New York City. Community centers, play grounds, etc. is what is offered. That is nothing short of a bribe to fix a gigantic problem looming in America. When millions are in prisons, basketball courts and community centers are the solution according to these people.

The question remains. The rebellions have occurred under immense anger and frustration. But will organic leaders from the militants in East Flatbush emerge who cannot be baited for being an outsider, who cannot be baited for being white, and who have the connections to the poor and working classes of East Flatbush? The politics of Shamar, Williams, and FAITH are about making sure this never happens. The task of anarchists and (ultra-left) communists of all colors is to help this development occur. This is a gigantic task worth much study, conversations, and actual practice.

The Ending of the Night

What eventually came together was that larger groups of Black militants from Flatbush came to the march at the precinct. One could hear and see some of the debates occurring amongst the militants. While at its height maybe 50% of the protest was Black from East Flatbush, at times there were questions raised by some of the militants. They made fun of their friends for marching with white people.

At another more serious moment, I cannot exactly remember when, Shamar Thomas punched a white anarchist and started yelling that nobody was going to kill anybody. He claimed that he saw/heard an anarchist whisper into the ear of a young Black militant, that cops should be killed. Seconds later, one or two young Black militants started asking Thomas why he hit “the white nigga”. In that small moment, normalized categories of race were blurred. The white man who was hit became a “white nigga” and Shamar Thomas’s loyalty was under question. However, Thomas is a powerful speaker with a commanding presence that can rival anyone in the movement. He quickly turned the point into white people telling young Black people to do something illegal. Whether this is true or not, I will admit this is poor advice to be giving anyone at this moment. Individual hit jobs are not the answer.

More important is what Shamar Thomas did. I do not know Shamar Thomas. But after what I have seen, I cannot, with good conscious have any working relationship with this person. I saw him hit another protester. When this happened we were at the back end of the protest with maybe ten people around. Most of the people were white and physically much smaller than Thomas. Thomas is a well built Black soldier. It would have taken many of us to physically confront Thomas. However, with most of the other people being white, the racial situation contained everyone from reacting. A couple people of color communists had to be held back from confronting Shamar.

Nor can Shamar Thomas ever imagine that there were Black and Brown communists who were talking about the need for armed struggle. Is he going to sock them too? Perhaps Thomas is not aware about the Maoist tradition of People’s Liberation Army which, no matter what disagreements I have with it, has been an inspiration to tens of millions of people of color across the world, and thousands of people of color in the United States. What world is Thomas living in? I can take a small guess. Thomas sees the Black militants from Flatbush only as victims who can never take the great risks that their brothers in sisters in Haiti, South Africa, and/or Watts have taken. For Thomas, his viewpoint is not necessarily of the white man any longer, but of the Black middle class which tries to manage the Black working class and poor.

While I do not think we should have fought back at that moment, anarchists and (ultra-left) communists need to prepare for the next engagement, in larger settings. There is no point in fighting Thomas when no one is looking. However, anarchists and (ultra-left) communists cannot let racial pimps like Thomas bully them with reformists politics. As long as that occurs, non-Black militants will never get respect in the hood (it should be pointed out that Thomas clearly has no respect in the hood either). Anarchist and (ultra-left) communists have a proud tradition of being against all middle classes and rulers, regardless of color. We need to figure out how to put that into practice in such difficult situations as Thomas will present. This will not be the last time.

Thomas has used his Iraq war Veteran status for a long time in the movement. It is time he is called out for this. Ironically, he is against outside agitators, but has he ever thought that he was an outside agitator in Iraq, putting down righteous insurgencies against US Empire? Has anyone questioned him on what he has done in Iraq? Was he a glorified toilet cleaner in the country or was he hunting down Iraqi militants and killing them? The hypocrisy and opportunism of Thomas could not be more glaring. He preaches non-violence and I could only imagine what he has done in Iraq. He hit another protester.

Anarchists, (ultra-left) communists, and left-nationalists of all colors need to wage a serious political struggle against the likes of Shamar Thomas. Thomas has existed inside the movement for too long. But no white militants are willing to stand up to Shamar because of the race question. Thomas hides behind the color of his skin. And no Black militant is willing to stand up to Thomas because of betraying ranks or just calling out another Black person. I am not white or Black. I am a South Asian Muslim immigrant. And for now, I will stand up to this clown who pimps his US military experience, hides behind the color of his skin, and intimidates people with violence while advocating non-violence. I look forward to meeting Shamar Thomas. I believe he should not be seen as part of the movement under any circumstances.

Questions Which Remain

I passed out a flyer to maybe 30-40 young militants. I usually said to them, “Congratulations on whoever took part in last night’s rebellion. Victory to East Flatbush,” or some variation of that. I usually got a smile and an acknowledgement of thanks and that was it. But that is exactly the point. I saw no conversations of worth taking place between the young militants from East Flatbush and anyone. They were not talking to politicians, not talking to the Black left, not talking to mostly white anarchists or ultra left communists. The point is that it is not clear what the young militants think.

What did they make of all the white people in the protest? Did they know that most of the white people in the protest were anarchists and (ultra-left) communists? Did they know that there were Black and Brown anarchists and (ultra-left) communists?

Do the militants from East Flatbush know that Williams, Thomas and FAITH are saying their rebellion was caused by Machiavellian white people from the outside?

Why did the militants decide not to go to church and instead march with the white crowd, turning it into a clearly multi-racial march? Do the militants think that the white people are soft? Do the militants know that some of the white militants have fought very bravely in rebellions and in many other parts of the world?

Ironically, why has the presence of “outside agitators” actually led to peaceful demonstrations. The two nights of rebellions were when no “outside agitators” were present. What does this mean? When the revolutionary left shows up, nothing happens. This is something to think about.

Concluding Thoughts…

It is clear that Thomas, Williams, and FAITH are just as scared of the young Black militants as the police and white racists are. This is something which has to be said loud and clear. However, that analysis leaves little for serious revolutionaries to act upon other than calling them out.

I often hear from all kinds of revolutionaries and liberals that our youth today are misguided and have low consciousness. I am well aware of the many political problems in the community. However, young people are trying under the most difficult of circumstances to figure the way out of capitalism’s mess. The problem remains that a fundamentally different vision does not exist at this moment even with the young Black militants. How an anti-capitalist and liberatory vision emerges is a serious question. To simply say it will emerge or already exists does not explain precisely the lack of such a vision.

In a period when capitalism and racialism knows no categories of outside agitators, when they send Shamar Thomas to Iraq to kill Iraqis, we should not recognize the category of outside agitator. Everyone knows the anti-communist and racist origins of that argument. There is no need to go into the history of it here. It only exposes what side Thomas is on. Furthermore, the outside agitator argument hides the makers of history and politics today: poor and working class people. Another question which remains is, does the outside agitator argument help build multi-racial struggle? Are white workers, are transit workers, are nurses, are Latino poor and working class people from the Bronx, or Bangladeshi in Jackson Heights who have gone through deportations, arrests, stop and frisks and much more, outside agitators if they show up at these protests? What the outside agitator argument fears is what will happen when oppressed people who often distrust each other realize that their freedom lies in common liberation against the middle classes and rulers of their respective communities. Those who make the outside agitator argument fear the masses. After all, think of all the great revolutionaries in our past in the USA: Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Ricardo Flores Magon, or Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Were these people not outside agitators at some point in their lives?

-By WILL

Footnotes:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmEHcOc0Sys

[2] Not clear if she is in a group, but certainly has well defined Black nationalist politics.

East Flatbush Rebellion, Not “Outside Agitators”

Posted on March 14, 2013

The following is a brief reportback from Will, a member of FNT who witnessed two of the last three nights of protests in East Flatbush following the police killing of 16-year old Kimani “Kiki” Gray.

The “outside agitators” are back!

The legend of the outside agitator has returned. Clowns like city councilman Jumanee Williams and the leadership of Occupy the Hood are fueling the myth that last night’s rebellions was led / caused by white people or outside agitators. I was there at last night’s rebellion, and let me tell you: there were fewer then 10 white people involved in a rebellion of hundreds of young Black militants. Last night was led by young Black militants. Period.

For hours, Black politicians and activists–many of them veterans of, or influenced by, the 1968 generation–yelled and berated the young people to keep the “peace” and “respect.” The NYC Black establishment brought its best efforts to bear in hopes of keeping the affair civil. Crowds of Black men and women listened for almost two hours. They were told that the keepers of the peace felt their pain, that they understood. There was silence from the crowd of angry faces. The tension could be felt. The crowd had selected no spokesperson to respond, and none emerged organically in the moment. Will one emerge tonight?

At some point at night, the Black militants decided to march. No white people told them to march. As the march moved through the streets of Flatbush, it was Black militants who picked up bricks, cinder blocks, and beer bottles and threw them at the police. There were almost no white and Latino or African American faces involved in this. It was largely a Jamaican and Afro-Caribbean rebellion.

Outside agitators?

And perhaps that is the problem. We need to flip the script of the outside agigator. Are brothers and sisters from the Bronx outside agitators? The same people who are stopped and frisked in the Bronx become outside agitators to Jumanee Williams and his friends. It is time for the rest of the NYC working class to jump in and get involved. If the divisions of racialization are going to be broken down, white, Brown, and Black working class people must face the cops and go to jail together. New solidarities must be built. Now is the time for everyone who has felt the pain of the police to converge in Flatbush. Bring presents, bring your anger, and bring your running shoes.

The target has been the 67th Precinct all week, but we have not had enough forces to take it on. All the crews across New York should converge in Flatbush and then march towards the 67th precinct.

Outside agitators?

Clowns like Jumanee Williams and Charles Barron are part of the system. They are spreading lies about who led the rebellion. Soon Williams and Barron will say the Haitian Revolution was caused by outside agitators, that Watts in 1965 was cuz of outside agitators, and the Montgommery Bus Boycott was orchestrated by white outside agitators. These clowns are in the way of revolution.

During Occupy, hundreds of people joined up with Occupy the Hood in hopes of building movement in working class black and brown neighborhoods. Now the opportunity is here. Will those who identify with these goals come down on the side of the people in the streets, or toe the line of the politicians? Only they can decide.

Outside agitators?

On Liberal Racism: A Response to ‘Being White In Philly’

Posted on March 12, 2013

Ron, a member of FNT, as well as of Free the Streets (Philadelphia based radical group), picks apart an article recently published by Philadelphia Magazine entitled ‘Being White In Philly.’ Ron argues that the liberal racism in the article is not exceptional but is instead reflective of the overall white supremacist configuration.

Robert Huber’s front page Philadelphia Magazine article entitled ‘Being White In Philly’ says a lot about the values and sensibilities of the bourgeois press in this city. Some might wonder how such a spiteful and ugly article made its way not only through the editing process but onto the very front page of a “prestigious” Philadelphia magazine. We should, however, not be surprised by this. We must recognize that this article fits perfectly into a pattern of color-blind racism which has become the dominant form of racism in our so-called post racial society.

Huber claims that “white people never talk about it” – the “it” being race. Will simply talking about race solve deeply entrenched social problems? Of course not, but in actuality, white people are in fact already engaging in tough and necessary conversations about race amongst themselves and with people of color as well. Those who are having these conversations usually understand that the issues often attributed to culture and superficial physical characteristics have more to do with class and power dynamics, something Huber totally fails to grasp. Despite his claim, thoughtful discussions on this topic are taking place all the time, but because they do not seem to be occurring in his social circles we’re meant to believe that these conversations are not happening at all.

‘Being White In Philly’ begins on a decidedly sour note which sets the tone for the entire piece. Huber uses the opening paragraph to bemoan the “dangerous” and “predominantly African-American” neighborhood near his son’s campus. He notices that there are “a lot of men milling around doing absolutely nothing” but he never asks the important question – “why?” What is being implied is that black people “milling around” is scary. In reality, Huber has no idea what those people were doing. White people socializing in groups is fine, but when black people living in poor neighborhoods do it, it’s scary. Granted, crime may be a problem in that neighborhood, but it’s all to easy to see the surface manifestations of problems and assign blame; if we’re serious about addressing problems we will look for their root causes.

The reasons for high levels of unemployment in poor and working class black neighborhoods are multifaceted, but let’s take a look at one explanation for the current situation that directly involves Temple university, the school Huber’s son goes to.

Temple university is rapidly expanding its campus; as of February 2012 planned construction projects were estimated to be at least $400 million. Most of these construction jobs are going to out of state unions comprised mostly of white men. Regular protests have been held by women union organizers and union members of various ethnic groups in an attempt to pressure Temple University to end its unfair labor practices. I’m sure many of the men Huber saw “milling around” near his son’s apartment building would love to have one of those construction jobs. Unfortunately, the system has been set up to exclude them while favoring men like Huber.

Not too far from Temple University we have the Fairmount section of Philadelphia. Huber’s decision to conduct the bulk of the interviews in this area of the city was an interesting one given its current struggle with the forces of gentrification. For people living in urban centers with substantial populations of people of color, gentrification is one of the most pressing, complex and contentious issues of our day – but not for Huber.

Gentrification is presented as the de facto solution to the damage poor blacks have inflicted upon themselves and their own communities. To drive home the point of how poor blacks brought it all upon themselves Huber enlists the help of an elderly racist man who refers to an alleged home intruder as a “nigger boy”. Shocking, yes, but Huber’s extremely unflattering portrait of poor black people up until that point basically legitimizes the words of the man he’s interviewing. According to the N-word dropping old man, “blacks from the South with chips on their shoulders…moved North.” Huber continues: “They moved into great brownstones above Girard [avenue] and trashed them, using banisters and doors to stoke their furnaces instead of buying coal. Before long it looked like Berlin after the war. Whites moved out.”

So there you have it. Angry black people moved north, trashed a once beautiful neighborhood and forced whites to move out.

By the time Huber declares that “the inner city needs to get its act together” naïve readers would probably wholeheartedly agree after being barraged with one unflattering stereotype after another. A Russian immigrant going to law school here in Philadelphia comes to the brink of basically calling black people porch monkey’s with no comment from Huber except remarks about how physically attractive he finds her.

Near the end of his article, in what may be an effort at mitigating some of the earlier damage, there’s a clumsy attempt at showing a neighborhood’s racial harmony. Instead what happens is Huber accidentally gives us a chilling glimpse into how gentrification works. A middle class couple decides to send their child to a majority black school in their neighborhood despite the fact that their neighbors send their children to a more prestigious school in the nearby money drenched Rittenhouse section of Philadelphia. Ignoring reservations about their choice, these trail blazers pressed ahead and insisted on keeping their child at the mostly black school; eventually they convinced ten other families to take a chance and enroll their kids there as well. Heartwarming.

We learn a bit later on the real reason for the sudden interest in the mostly black neighborhood school: the prestigious school in Rittenhouse is in fact becoming crowded; spots are limited. As Huber explains, “the city is naturally expanding outward”. Jen, the woman being held up as a sort of reverse Harriet Tubman admits, “People in the neighborhood are now getting nervous whether there’s a spot for them here.” Who exactly these nervous people are is not made clear, but it’s fair to assume that Jen, her architect husband and their fellow well to do neighbors are not one of them.

In a city with so many social issues that need resolving, one wonders why the feelings and emotions of white people warrant a front page spread on the cover of Philadelphia Magazine. Or, too be more clear, the thoughts and feelings of specifically middle to upper middle class white people. From the article it appears that white people in Philadelphia are overall doing quite well, though this could be misleading since Huber did not bother to interview people living in predominantly white poor and working class neighborhoods.

The dynamics between whites and non-black ethnic groups were not even important enough to merit a passing mention. An article about race where only middle class white people and police officers are interviewed leaves much to be desired. The truly frightening thing is that perhaps Philadelphia Magazine knows its audience; perhaps they are telling their privileged, bourgeois readers exactly what they want to hear.

One cannot talk about race without addressing the realities of class, privilege and white supremacy, things Huber barely mentions in his article. This is unfortunately not very surprising. Liberals often view attitudes and beliefs as sources of oppression rather than taking the radical view which tends to focus much more on dismantling concrete systems of power. Financial assets and easy access to opportunities have accrued disproportionately to those populations who have historically been closest to systems of power. We cannot talk about race relations in an urban environment like Philadelphia without acknowledging and exploring the implications of this imbalance.

Easy access to centers of power and material resources allow the privileged to create their own realities, and as Huber shows us, those with privilege often resist having their carefully constructed world views threatened by pesky little things like facts. Huber essentially does what many people of his class do all the time: he enables a process of selective blindness by choosing to downplay history and the enduring historical structures of white supremacy. He eschews historical context and essentially tells his readers that white people need to muster the gumption to “tell it like it is”, i.e., tell poor black people that the problems they face are all their own fault. This is one of the main reasons why his article is at its core quite troubling and why it needs to be addressed and strongly denounced.
Huber’s claim that middle class white people in Philadelphia need to be more outspoken about their grievances with poor black people is utterly ridiculous. Unless gentrifiers are calling for abolishing capitalism and reparations to long neglected communities, I’m not sure what they could have to say that poor blacks would need to hear.

Liberal solutions to social problems often involve personal lifestyle changes, dialogue for the sake of dialogue and copious amounts of soul searching, but rarely do they strike at the structural core of the issues they claim to want to address. Huber’s analysis of the white person’s dilemma in Philadelphia is no different. Institutional racism and the effects of capitalism on vulnerable populations received very little and no mention respectively. At no point does Huber suggest that his readers question a system that fosters and promotes criminal behavior, poverty and inequality within certain populations. Instead, his presumably white audience is called upon to be more vocal in expressing their moral outrage, and to not shrink from giving those wayward Negroes a good tongue lashing if necessary. Liberal racism may be less virulent than the Rush Limbaugh/Glen Beck variety, but at their core lies one major theme: the oppressed are always to blame, and it’s up to white people to somehow save the day.

We should, however, perhaps thank Huber for putting on display what many of us have known all along to be true: to get beyond race we must work harder towards building a classless society. The bourgeois, capitalist classes created and sustained our current (scientifically debunked) notion of race and they continue to perpetuate these fantasies. For the privileged classes, worrying about the color of someone’s skin is much easier than questioning the very foundations of a system that benefits them.

Reflecting on #F23 – Time to Break with Routine

Posted on March 1, 2013

Below is a critique of a recent anti-police march held in the South Bronx and Harlem; written by FNT members Madeleine and Nat Winn.

By Madeleine and Nat Winn

Last Sunday just over 100 activists gathered in the South Bronx to participate in an anti-police brutality march that eventually crossed over into Manhattan and later ended on 125th street in Harlem. We were told that this march, which was organized mainly by the The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), was supposed to be a more militant alternative to Al Sharpton’s “silent march” through Manhattan’s East Side last fall.