Chris Rock – Crackers (Outkast’s Hey Ya Spoof )

A fitting message to the white settler nation.

This is not your land, white man

The Anti-Kolumbus Day Manifesto

The Anti-Kolumbus Day Manifesto

(www.raimd.wordpress.com)

Every year in October, in cities throughout the US and occupied America, celebrations and parades are held on Kolumbus Day, in honor of Khristopher Kolumbus. And every year, though in fewer cities, these celebrations are met with resistance by those concerned with indigenous sovereignty and colonialism. This year, the protests continue.

We oppose Kolumbus Day because it is a de facto celebration of conquest, including the genocide and land theft waged against First Nations. Upon arriving in modern-day Haiti/Dominican Republic and viewing the native Tainos, Kolumbus remarked, “with fifty men, we could subjugate them all.” Thirty years after his arrival, the island’s Native population had declined by 90%. This pattern would be recreated across the Americas, particularly in the United States, where a campaign of genocide was waged against First Nation peoples by White settlers. Kolumbus would also pioneer slavery in the Americas, a phenomenon that would officially last nearly 400 years yet remains in the form of exploitation of the masses south of the militarily-imposed US-Mexico border and throughout the Third World.

We oppose Kolumbus Day because it is a de facto celebration of imperialism, the exploitation of subjugation of many peoples by a handful. Kolumbus’s original voyage was a landmark of Spanish imperialism, yet Kolumbus Day transcends this original meaning. Today, the United States stands above the rest of the world, dominating various peoples, in part by operating over 700 military bases around the globe. Today, over a billion people are faced with undernourishment, yet virtually every Amerikan is part of the world’s richest 15%. Kolumbus Day is a celebration of this ongoing imperial legacy.

We oppose Kolumbus Day because it is a celebration of parasitism and imperialist decadence. The ritualistic Kolumbus Day parade, usually consisting of closing roads for slow-moving processions of large vehicles filled with flags-waving crackers, is one made possible only through the exploitation of various countries, including their oil resources, for benefit of a decadent First World population. We protest Kolumbus Day in solidarity with those who suffer for the luxuries Amerikans receive 365 days a year, not just on this or that imperialist holiday.

Though a good start, ending Kolumbus Day alone doesn’t cut deep enough into the problem. Therefore, The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement presents the following program:

1) The end of all US territorial claims; national liberation for oppressed nations. Return of land to First Nations throughout the US and Klanada. National liberation for Mexicanos on both sides of the militarily-imposed border and reunification. National liberation and sovereignty for Puerto Rico and for the Kanaka Maoli of Hawai’i. National liberation and self-determination for the Black nation. The surrender of all US-controlled land throughout the world.

2) The imposition of a globalized democracy of the world’s oppressed and exploited masses upon the United States and First World. The creation of zones throughout the current US and elsewhere to be used as the global proletariat sees fit.

3) The massive payment of reparations from Amerikans to the Third World, to be accomplished through the redistribution of land, capital and through labor.

4) Relocation of many Whites, including to the Third World, and reeducation for all Amerikans, resulting in the liquidation of much of the White nation and eradication of their parasite culture.

These are the demands of a world that suffers from deep problems and requires truly revolutionary solutions. Until these demands are met, resistance will continue.

The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement-Denver

The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement-Seattle

October 1st, 2010

Report Back on Anti-Police Demo

Report Back on Anti-Police Demo

(raimd.wordpress.com)

On August 28th, a march against police brutality was held in Denver, Colorado.  The march was held in response to a series of police brutality cases coming to light.

The march was organized by members of Aurora Copwatch, West Denver Copwatch and the All Nations Alliance.  Though the pig media lied and initially reported only “dozens” of protesters, at its height on the 16th Street Mall there were well over 200 participants, including not only much of the more ‘radical’ of the Denver activist scene but also people who had joined in as the march passed by.

The recent cases of police brutality and the reaction they sparked have been unprecedented.  They have led to Mayor John Hickenlooper, who is running for governor this year,  to bring in the FBI to investigate certain cases.  It has also led to city public safety manager Ron Perea resigning,
and the city council settling many cases with millions of city dollars.(1)

The public anger of these cases, and many others not as known, set the mood for this march.  Days before the march a group of religious leaders denounced plans for a march, and instead called for talks with the pigs to reform themselves.(2)  But one cannot negotiate with pigs, and many people outraged about the incidents came out to show it that day.  In the press release announcing the march the organizers announced:  “It is anticipated that Denver police will be present during the march. We want to be clear in our position that due to the actions of its officers, we no longer trust DPD with its ability to protect our community.  We request for the safety of the community members present at the march and rally, and that law enforcement officials keep a reasonable distance from the participants. We are engaging in a peaceful, non-violent exercise of our federally protected First Amendment rights and DPD interference is not welcome.”(3)

The march began by the downtown skatepark, next to where Mark Ashford was beat up by two Denver pigs. He was beaten after speaking with the driver of a vehicle the police had pulled over wrongly, offering to be a witness for the driver in court. The next stop of the march was at 15th St. and Larimer, where Micheal DeHerrera was assaulted by Denver’s grimiest as he was was talking on the phone outside of a club while police were arresting his friend. These two incidents of police brutality were videotaped by H.A.L.O., a network of video surveillance cameras in the downtown area monitored by the Denver Pig Department. The march and protest ended at  Denver’s new $158 million, 1500 prisoner capacity “Justice” Center. There, Marvin Booker, a Black street preacher arrested on drug paraphenalia charges, was killed by the pigs running the detention center. He was beaten to death after he reached to get his shoes, his only possessions of value.  The pigs have refused to release a video tape of the death citing ongoing investigations, but with the similarities to a previous death in police custody, many see an ongoing cover up that has been typical of DPD.

The protesters carried signs and banners. One read, “All Cops are Murderers.”  Others listed the names of recent police victims. RAIM brought signs that read : “Fuck Pigs (And Snitches),” “Self Defense Makes Sense, Defeat Nazi Pigs,” and “Revolution is Good! Resist Amerikkkan Occupation.” Unlike other activist marches in the city, the militancy of this march was evident from the beginning.  The march started with a chant “No Justice No Peace, Fuck the Police.”  Other chants that echoed through the march were “Oink Oink, Bang Bang, Everyday the Same Old Thing,” “Cops, Pigs, Murderers,” and “When Our Communities Are Under Attack, What Do We Do? Stand Up, Fight Back!”  RAIM also did its modest part to raise the militancy of the march, helping lead and initiate such chants through a megaphone.

Overall, like most marches in the First World, the message was mixed to the effect of confusing friends and enemies and in the process miscalculating the actual strength of each.

One positive thing was the rhetorical refutation of pacifism. When the crowd began chanting emotionally-charged slogans, one person put up a peace sign with their fingers. One pacifist type berated a RAIMer for leading slogans against the pigs through a megaphone, saying to us some metaphysical tripe about love conquering hate and peace overcoming violence.  We politely brushed the person off and continued to assist in leading chants. Beyond the inane idea that RAIM-Denver was acting violently with no more power than a megaphone is the ideological wrecking-ball that is pacifism. While ultimately the degree of militancy in a single march in Denver is inconsequential, the idea itself, spread by well-to-do cracker-liberals from places like Boulder and Denver, is poisonous to the struggles of oppressed and exploited peoples globally. In a sense, pacifism is much like Christianity in that it is promoted to Third World peoples by Amerikans and various organizations they support, to the effect of diverting the proletarian from actual strategies for liberation. (We suggest everyone read Pacifism as Pathology by Ward Churchill and Negroes With Guns by Robert F. Williams for arguments against pacifism.)

With the presence and influence of pacifists and deescalaters limited, the march soon took parts of the streets, which isn’t usual for Denver protests. The pigs themselves stayed out of sight the whole time. This was a PR tactic as their presence would have surely escalated the toned of the march further and perhaps created even more instances of brutality. But we are sure that they were observing the march from a distance.

At the end of the march, in front of the Injustice Center, the crowd chanted “Fire to the Prisons” and Asesinos, Spanish for “Assassins.”  There were speeches by activists highlighting the above pig terror cases and by victims of pig brutality telling the crowd their experiences.  A coffin symbolizing the death of Marvin Booker was brought by the marchers and left there at the jail.

Common with virtually all protests in Denver and occupied North America was the great number of stares from people not participating. At times, the march walked past restaurants in affluent neighborhoods. Some protesters expressed affinity with the diners, encouraging them to join the march. Allusions were made that even the rich ‘liberal’ Denverite gawkers would “stand up” against the police.

We ask, why muddy up the picture with outright First Worldism? Rather, these people should be identified, albeit not merely in an agitational manner, for what they are: parasite reactionaries who more often than not support the pigs and the system they represent. Needless to say, the ‘militant’ pleas to shoppers and diners were fruitless.  Ultimately, it was chants of ‘Fuck the Police!’ which got large numbers of passer-by youth to join the demonstration, not pacifism or First Worldism.

At another point in the march, the protesters paused to repeat a chant part of which said that they themselves had “…nothing to lose but our chains” (origanally said by Marx, but of course not attributed to him in the chant).  RAIM didn’t participate in the contrived bit of self-delusion. We ask those who did to compare themselves to the average person from Latin America, Africa or Asia and take an honest account of the many things they could in fact lose. Though such slogans might give oneself a short-lived sense of self-importance, they do little in the long run to advance the revolutionary struggle. It is only by taking a realistic account of the world that one can hope to meaningfully advance the revolutionary struggle.

The contradiction between the police (or more accurately the system they represent) and the majority of Amerikans is not antagonistic, i.e. it will not lead to sustained revolutionary struggle. Not to say that we do not support reform efforts to reduce police terror, but only see the limitations that these reform efforts will do.  There will be attempts by the city to appease the public outrage with more “accountability”, but police brutality is but a symptom of an unjust social order.  Thus it will continue, as in these cases against non-white oppressed nationality peoples and others outside of mainstream society.  Thus RAIM sees any effective revolutionary strategy inside imperialist Amerika as minoritarian, one that effectively repudiates the majority of Amerikans while seeking to work in alliance with the broad masses of the Third World, whom do in fact constitute majorities in their respective homelands. So-called radicals should promote an independent identity and culture of resistance amongst the oppressed in Amerika as well as a spirit of affinity and solidarity with the Third World masses, not a fallacious, reformist and First Worldist ‘unity’ between the oppressed and White activists as a stand in for a non-existent White proletarian.

More actions on these cases will come up, as they have been so publicized they will stay in the spotlight.

==============

Here is a video of the march from West Denver Copwatch.  Check out their website for more information about these cases and their interactive database of Denver pig activity.

Sources:

1.  http://cbs4denver.com/investigates/excessive.force.denver.2.1878320.html

2. http://cbs4denver.com/news/ministers.chief.talk.2.1877579.html

3. http://westdenvercopwatch.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/press-release-for-saturday-march-and-rally/

Killer of Oscar Grant Gets Off: No Justice in Amerikkka

Killer of Oscar Grant Gets Off: No Justice in Amerikkka

(raimd.wordpress.com)

Justice did not materialize in Oakland for Oscar Grant, just as it is delayed and denied for millions of victims of Amerikkka.

The BART pig who killed Grant, Johannes Mehserle, was given the lightest sentence possible short of acquittal, involuntary manslaughter, and the jury rejected the more serious charge of second degree murder. This despite the fact that the shooting was caught on camera and the pig had claimed he was reaching for his taser and not his gun when he shot Grant, who was unarmed.

The people were justifiably angry. There were protests and rebellions in Oakland following, and self-proclaimed community leaders attempted to keep the people calm for the benefit of the system. 78 people were reported arrested in Oakland.(1) Solidarity protests happened across the country, as people all over were outraged.  In Denver a solidarity protest turned out 50 people, organized by the local Anarchist Black Cross chapter at the last minute.(2)

The claim of mistaking a Taser for a gun is so dubious in and of itself. Local author and indigenous rights activist Ben Whitmer, who is also a concealed carry holder, tears apart the ridiculousness of that defense here: http://benjaminwhitmer.com/index.php/2010/07/looking-at-johannes-mehserles-defense-from-the-vantage-point-of-an-amateur-gun-nut/

Of the twelve jurors on the trial, held in Los Angeles, not one of them was Black, and several of the jurors admitted to being friends or relatives of cops.(3) Attorney John Burris, representing the Grant family, said at a press conference, “In my long history being involved in police matters since 1979 and well over 30 homicides with police, never have I had a case when a police officer was convicted of any crime against an African American male.”(4)

Oscar Grant is one of several non-white people killed or brutalized by cops, almost all of whom never get convicted. The fact that the pig got even manslaughter is surprising, only after going to trial following much publicity from being filmed.  Amerikans supposedly pride themselves on being a nation of laws, but look the other way when the law attempts to bring Amerika accountable. There was no convictions with the Rodney King beating in the 1990’s. Recently pigs killed Aiyana Jones with no one being brought to trial. The cases of pig brutality in Amerika are endless. Abroad military troops commit vast atrocities and are never brought to justice. Despite the photographic evidence at Abu Gharib hardly any of the perpetrators were brought to trial. And recently a video of a massacre by Amerikan troops was brought to light throught the Wikileaks site, with no one hurrying to prosecute.

Often in these cases the Amerikan populace comes to support these pig cops and troops. It is considered sacrilege to question the police and military. Even Barack Obama came under heat for saying that the pig who arrested Henry Louis Gates “acted stupidly.” He was forced to apologize and invited the pig to the White House for a beer.  No matter how much mass murder Obama does for the empire, criticizing cops no matter how mildly is frowned upon.

Mao Zedong once observed that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The Amerikan power that its citizenry wallows in comes from the vast weapons it has and uses. The police and the military of Amerikkka are the shock troops that keep that imperialist system of exploitation running. They bring terror to the populations they oppress, and millions fall victim to the system they enforce. Justice in turn will come to Amerikkka by the oppressed people of the world bringing it to them in turn. It is right to rebel against all reactionaries!

(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/us/10oakland.html?_r=1

(2)http://denverabc.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/oscar-grant-denver-stands-in-solidarity-with-oakland/

(3)http://racerelations.about.com/b/2010/06/14/no-black-jurors-in-oscar-grant-murder-trial.htm

(4)http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/07/oscar_grant_verdict_whats_inside_the_jurys_ruling.html

Pigs kill Aiyana Jones while being recorded for a police reality TV show

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

One of the latest victims of the pig brutality is Aiyana Jones, a 7 year old girl who was living in Detroit who was murdered by gunfire earlier this month. (1) The assailant responsible for her death, Officer Joe Weekley, has recently been put on paid leave. (2) Blacks who are murdered in this way will sometimes receive media attention, but in general life goes on as usual for Amerikans, who have displayed little interest in Jones’ death. Rather than being the object of widespread outrage or condemnation, the brutality and murder of oppressed peoples cause most Amerikans to end up siding with the pigs no matter how blatant the their aggression. Jones’ death is not an aberration on an otherwise just police system. Rather, it is part of the systematic violence aimed at Blacks living in the United $nakes.

In a display of absurdity, one of the most incriminating pieces of evidence is an unreleased recording for a television series called “Detroit Police Tech: SWAT Team,” a show meant to glorify the pigs. There is currently some disagreement about what exactly is depicted in the recording. Geoffrey Fieger, the lawyer representing the victim’s family, claims that the video shows that the shooting was intentional. In contrast, the pigs claim that the gun was accidentally fired while they fought with Aiyana Jones’ grandmother. Even if the pigs are telling the truth and Jones’ death was an accident, her death was preventable and a direct result of the pigs’ inclination towards using excessive force. These types of shows that aim to glorify the pigs as heroes add cultural fuel to the fire of gross police violence. These shows are a dime a dozen. Among the worst are shows like “Border Wars” and “Detroit Police Tech: SWAT Team,” which glorify subduing oppressed nations by force.

Such shows are popular with many Amerikans. However, Mayor Dave Bing of Detroit, who claims to have no knowledge of what his police were doing, has since banned reality TV from accompanying Detroit police officers. (4) However, capitalist culture dishes up so much reactionary slop that whether or not this particular show continues to air matters little. If this show is banned, there are a hundred copycat, or even worse, shows to take its place. Like so much trashy pig culture, such a television program has no place in socialism, except, perhaps, to make known the failings of past culture. As a rule, such shows will be condemned to the dustbin of history.

Still, in our current environment there is a pattern where recordings that were not intentional on the part of the state end up exposing the state’s actions. This was the case during the public execution of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, and was similarly the case when Saeed Chmagh and the other Iraqis around him were gunned down in Baghdad. If the state possesses such videos itself, it consistently fails to release them. It would not be unreasonable if, instead, all actions undertaken outside of Amerikan society by its police and military were recorded by an impartial third party, and the videos placed in a publicly viewable archive online. Of course, this will never happen under capitalism.

In “Detroit Police: SWAT Team,” the intended message very clearly is that Detroit needs a White overseer. In a promotional video for the show, a pig representative proudly explains the SWAT team’s special role in enforcing state oppression, thus giving a backdrop for the series. (5) When most Amerikan viewers see the show, they will accept without question that Detroit, a city with an 84% black population, needs a White overseer armed with tanks and submachine guns to keep Blacks in line. (6)(7) So entrenched is imperialist culture that the idea of subduing Blacks with tanks makes perfect sense to Amerikans, who are increasingly fascist in their mentality. After all, the United States is a country that was founded upon conquest, murder, and genocide. Frighteningly, fascist-styled organizations such as the Minuteman Project have already begun to develop and take root in U$ society. Fascism has a strong social base of support in Amerikan the labor aristocracy. This reactionary class, which comprises the vast majority of the Amerikan population, is dependent on imperialism for its survival. The labor aristocracy will fight tooth-and-nail for imperialism to protect its privileges.

Virtually all Amerikans are thoroughly reactionary. Amerikans consistently align with imperialism against the Third World. Only a tiny minority of Amerikans are willing to stand with the vast majority of humanity against imperialism. Imperialism is a beast that demands constant sacrifices. Aiyana Jones’s was one of its latest victims. Until imperialism is destroyed along with Amerika itself, more and more people will continue to be sacrificed to the beast. Imperialism’s appetite for blood is unrelenting. Even more people will be killed indirectly through starvation, lack of medical treatment, or other problems created by unnecessary poverty. This way of things does not advance humanity in any meaningful way, but instead only exists to transport stolen wealth from the Third World to a global minority in the First World. To move forward, the beast must be slain and all the world’s people set free.

Notes.

1. http://detnews.com/article/20100516/METRO/5160325/Detroit-Police-shoot-7-year-old-girl-in-house-search#ixzz0p1pAUJTY
2. http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2010/05/officer_whose_bullet_killed_ai.html
3. http://www.newser.com/article/d9fp3utg0/reality-series-crew-was-with-Detroit-police-during-search-where-7-year-old-g irl-was-killed.html
4. http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/25/1646828/detroit-mayor-bans-tv-crews-from.html
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWvgo17dHik
6. http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ADPTable?_bm=y&-context=adp&-qr_name=ACS_2007_3YR_G00_DP3YR5&-ds_name=ACS_2007_ 3YR_G00_&-tree_id=3307&-redoLog=true&-_caller=geoselect&-geo_id=16000US2622000&-format=&-_lang=en
7. “Black” is not capitalized here to signify that the US census is not talking about nations, but simply “ethnic” qualities such as skin color. Rather than focusing on “race” or “ethnicity,” Marxists tend to focus on the more scientific concept of nations. Even though the US census thus does not divide people in a scientific way, the qualities that lead one to be labelled as “ethnically black” still correlate roughly to membership of the Black Nation, so this percent offers a good picture of Detroit practically speaking.

May Day 2010 Denver

May Day 2010 Denver

(raimd.wordpress.com)

This year the May Day events in Denver, as elsewhere in occupied Amerika, were about migrant rights and were influenced by the recent passage in Arizona of SB1070 that would further criminalize migrants without documents.  There were two different events in Denver, each illustrating the different politics around the most recent struggle for migrant rights.

The first event was one RAIM participated in and helped organize.  The May Day March for Social Justice, Human Dignity, and Self-Determination was made up of a loose coalition of more radical and independent tendencies.  RAIM Denver marched with our allies Resistencia Mexicana, with banners featuring Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata.  At least 500 people participated in this march, which went from the State Capitol through downtown, ending in Skyline Park for a rally.  A Mexica/Aztec dance group performed a ceremony and led the march.

photo by Shareef

This particular march was unique with respect to the diverse makeup of the participants, who had a more clearer understanding of the repressive character of the state’s response to the “immigrant rights” movement.  It showed that there is a progressive sector in Denver that is against reform oriented liberal politics and for more radical change.  There were many beautiful banners and signs, good chants, and a more liberatory attitude. The rally included music, food, tables of the participating groups, and speakers.

photo by Resistencia Mexicana

photo by Resistencia Mexicana

photo by Shareef

The first speaker was Ricardo Romero, a long time Chicano/Mexicano human rights organizer and a leader in the Mexican National Liberation Movement, who brought up the ongoing war against the Mexican people exemplified by the anti-migrant movement.  Romero pointed out that there is a coming fascist offensive against the Mexicano peoples on their own occupied homeland, and highlighted the need to get educated, organized, and prepared for self-defense and national liberation.

Antonio spoke on behalf of RAIMD, stating that the recent struggle in Arizona is only one of many that has happened since 1848 when the U.S. settler empire invaded Mexico and imposed a border on its northern half. Today, the fight continues on many fronts with Third World peoples fighting against the exploiter countries of the First World. Antonio pointed out that it is important to support the struggles against imperialism everywhere.

RAIMD also brought a pinata for the festivities, in the form of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer as a pig.  The elementary school-aged children at the rally enjoyed participating in the beating of the pig Brewer, and tore it open for the candy and toys inside.

Kids getting candy and toys from "Jan Brewer" pinata. Photo by Resistencia Mexicana

At the rally at Skyline RAIMD and other organizations had tables and distributed information.  Here many groups handed out a wide range of literature outside of mainstream discourse.  Our own materials were well received by the participants there.  We distributed: over two hundred of our program in support of Mexican nation liberation; around 75 new and old RAIM Global Digests; dozens of Troublemaker DVDs; copies of chapter eight from Lin Biao’s ‘Long Live the Victory of People’s War’ and some interviews with J. Sakai, author of ‘Settlers, the Mythology of the White Proletariat;’ even some child-sized t-shirts. Our material sparked many conversations and drew both nods of approval and skeptical looks.

The rally ended later that afternoon with some good music and on a positive note.  Despite our real political differences with many of the groups there, overall it showed that there is an organized progressive sector in Denver that is nominally against reform oriented liberal politics and for more radical social change, no matter how small that sector is.

The Other Rally

We should note the other event that went on that day, which was much larger for many reasons.  It was organized by Reform Immigration for America, a liberal reformist group that steers the migrant rights struggle into the safe hands of the Democratic Party realm.  To illustrate their strategy, at their massive immigration reform rally in Washington back in March of this year, they ended it with a televised speech by President Obama promising reform.

While the coalition that did the May Day March for Social Justice was planning this march months in advance, the liberal groups did not want a march at all.  Their last minute changes in response to our organizing and to a changing public opinion show their opportunistic nature.  Their original event for May 1st was going to be a “Grade Your Senators” event at Sunken Gardens Park, where participants would fill out faux report cards on legislators.  Basically directing people into electoral work, using Latinos as another interest group to gain leverage on the legislative level.  The response to Arizona changed this.  The days before there were many school walkouts organized in protest of the law in Arizona.  In Denver on April 30th many schools walked out and ended at a rally at the Capitol that day.  The energy level on May 1st was high, people wanted to march.  Also, the legislative campaign would not appeal to the mostly youth and non-citizens that were mobilized.  So the liberal non-profits changed plans at the last minute and tailed where the mass movement was going in order to regain leadership.

This is what awaited marchers at the reformist event at Sunken Gardens Park

The resulting march that went from Sunken Gardens through downtown and back to the park turned out about 10,000 people at its height.  Their larger turnout was due to the liberal groups larger resource base.  They purchased advertising on Spanish television and radio the day before.  The organizers brought several pre-printed signs and Amerikan flags to promote “We Are America.”  The crowd was encouraged to chant “USA, USA.”

The liberals did what they are expected to do, channel discontent into safe and controllable arenas.  In this case promoting assimilationist and reformist messages.  Their hope is that mainstream Amerika will see that immigrants are “Americans” too.  In the end this strategy, which denies the people the right to their identity, culture, and land, will weaken the necessary independent struggle that is needed to build power to fight against repression.  The non-profit industrial complex serves those that use it to continue to get grant funding and patronage, not the people itself.

Our comrades at Monkey Smashes Heaven said this of May Day:

“May Day, May First, or International Workers Day, originally was a day to commemorate the victims of the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1886.  Chicago workers had called a general strike for the eight-hour workday.  The peaceful strikers were fired on by police. A bomb exploded.

Several deaths of strikers and police occurred. Some of the police deaths were a result of their own hand, “friendly fire.”  [Eight organizers were tried and wrongfully convicted, with some getting the death penalty before they all were exonerated (RAIM)].  Since then May Day has been embraced by revolutionaries and reformists in the labor movement alike.  However, May Day means nothing to the vast majority of First World peoples who have no interest in building socialism or ending imperialism. May Day when celebrated by First Worldists is nothing but a parody.”

This march we participated in gave some mixed messages too,  but created a space where RAIM, Resistencia Mexicana, and others presented alternatives to Amerikan assimilation and to build real power to bring national liberation.

Event: Author Jeffrey Haas On His Book on the Fred Hampton Assassination

¡BEYOND CHICANISMO PRESENTS!

The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police
Murdered a Black Panther.

FEATURING: Author Jeffrey Haas.

WHAT:    A discussion by Jeffrey Haas, author of The Assassination of Fred
Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther.

WHERE:    AURARIA CAMPUS, TIVOLI ROOM 640.

DATE & TIME:    THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 2010. 1:00 P.M.

WHO:    Haas was born to German Jewish parents in Atlanta, Ga. in 1942.  His grandfather was one of the lawyers for Leo Frank, the Jewish businessman, who was lynched outside Atlanta in 1915 in a wave of anti-Semitic fervor led by many of Atlanta’s elite. Jeff’s father worked with John Lewis of SNCC to set up the Voter Education Project, which registered hundreds of thousands of Black voters in the South. His mother founded the Atlanta Committee for International Visitors and she played a critical role in convincing Atlanta Hotels to integrate.

Jeff graduated from the University of Michigan as an English Major in 1963 and obtained his Juris Doctor Degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1967. He worked for the Legal Assistance Foundation in Chicago from 1967 to 1969.

In August of 1969 Jeff, three other lawyers and two law students started the People’s Law Office, (PLO) setting up the law collective in a former sausage shop in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. PLO’s first clients were Black Panthers, Young Lords, SDS, and demonstrators against the Vietnam War.  In the month after PLO started, the trial of the Conspiracy 8 (charged with disrupting the 1968 Democratic National convention) began. National Panther Chairman Bobby Seale was bound and gagged inside the courtroom. Fred Hampton, the young charismatic leader of the Chicago Black Panthers led large nationally viewed demonstrations outside the Federal Courthouse protesting Seale’s treatment. Two months later the Chicago Police under the direction of then Cook County  State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan, raided Hampton’s apartment at 4:00 am. Fred Hampton was executed as he lay sleeping in his bed and the police killed another Panther Mark Clark. Four other Panther occupants were shot, and no policeman was injured.

For the next thirteen years Jeff and his partners at PLO represented the families of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and the Panther survivors in a civil suit against the raiders and Hanrahan. In 1973 they joined three FBI Agents and an FBI informant as defendants after learning that the FBI initiated the raid as part of its Cointelpro Program to destroy and neutralize the Black Movement.
In addition to the Hampton case, Jeff worked at PLO as a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer for thirty-five years until 2004. During that time he and his partners represented the Attica Brothers, Lolita Lebron and the Puerto Rican nationalists who invaded Congress, as well as the entire spectrum of the Movement including Iranian students, Act-Up, and protesters against US supported death squads in Central America. Jeff was one of the lead counsel in defending the seventeen Pontiac prisoners charged with the capital offense of murder following the Pontiac prison rebellion in 1978 in which three guards were killed.  In 1981, after a six-month trial, all were acquitted.

In 1994, Jeff and his PLO partners together with other lawyers represented the Ford Heights 4; four young Black men framed up for the murder of two whites. The four spent 18 years in prison, two on death row, before their convictions were reversed. The evidence showed that the sheriffs were sitting on documents that proved the Ford Heights Four were innocent and that in fact four other people were the killers. In 1997 the Plaintiffs obtained a $38 million dollar settlement.
In 1989 Jeff and fellow PLOers Flint Taylor, John Stainthorp sued Jon Burge, a Chicago Police Commander for torturing Andrew Wilson to extract a confession. In the course of the trial they discovered Burge and his cohorts had regularly used electroshock and asphyxiation, putting typewriter bags over suspects’ heads until they passed out, a technique known as dry submarino, to obtain confessions from Black suspects. What followed the disclosures was twenty years of litigation, public protests, and constant pressure from the Black community. Eventually not only was Burge fired, but everyone’s sentence on Illinois’ death row was commuted by Governor Ryan, in large part due to the exposure of Burge’s techniques for obtaining death penalty convictions.  PLO’s has led the litigation resulting in millions of dollars being paid to Burge’s victims. Most recently Burge US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald indicted Burge for perjury for denying under oath at depositions that he tortured Black suspects. For more on the People’s Law Office go to http://www.peopleslawoffice.com

In 2002 Jeff and his family moved to Taos New Mexico, where he and his wife Mariel Nanasi passed the New Mexico Bar. They settled a large civil rights law suit on behalf of two Native American children, whose father was denied medical and psychological treatment in custody in the Santa Fe Jail. Also, in Taos they, began the Action Coalition of Taos, (ACT)  which organized a 3000-person protest at the home of then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Taos. Most recently Jeff’s family moved to Santa Fe where Jeff is again representing victims of police abuse. Jeff is also a founder of Another Jewish Voice of Santa Fe, which seeks to offer alternatives to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict acknowledging and respecting the rights of Palestinians as well as Israeli Jews.
Jeff is currently the Chair of the Foundation for Self Sufficiency in Central America, which provides support to La Coordinadora, an organization in El Salvador representing 12,000 people in 85 communities.  La Coordinadora provides the structure for communities to build and control their future through sustainable agriculture, youth development programs, protecting the environment, providing food and water security and promoting grass roots leadership. See http://www.fssca.net/.

The author has four children, Roger Haas-Roche, who lives in Chicago, Andrew Hampton Haas-Roche, who is a third year student at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, and Justin and Rosa Haas, who are at Santa Fe Prep High School in Santa Fe.

In 2004, Jeff began writing about the intersection of his life with the life and death of Fred Hampton, the young Panther leader killed by the Chicago Police. Chicago in 1969 was a microcosm of the forces in conflict in the world. The book attempts to capture the mood and political tensions of that moment and how they led to Hampton’s murder.

To enrich his writing, Jeff enrolled in Bennington College’s MFA program in creative non-fiction, where he obtained his master’s degree in 2007. The first part of The Assassination of Fred Hampton served as his master’s thesis. Chicago Review Press/Lawrence Hill Books will release Jeff’s book in the fall of 2009 on the fortieth anniversary of Hampton’s death. The launch event includes a reading, panel discussion and reception. It will be in Chicago at Thorne Hall at Northwestern Law School on November 5, 2009. Fred Hampton spoke at Northwestern Law School forty years ago in Novmeber, 1969.

This event is FREE and open to the public.
Sponsored by: The MSCD Department of Chicana/o Studies, Los Herederos of Change & Esperanza, and Conscious Journey.

All Out to Oppose the ‘Tea Party Against Amnesty’

On April 15th, the Tea Party Movement is planning major rallies throughout the country, including one in Denver. Part of this year’s convergence is a blatantly anti-Mexican ‘Tea Party Against Amnesty.’

The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement is calling on all radicals – anarchists and communists, Mexican and Black nationalists, Third Worldists and Indigenists, students, social critics and anti-racists – to come out and oppose this vile, hateful message in the midst of the Tea Party Movement. Bring signs, bullhorns, props, a hat and sunglasses, etc. Cut loose and let these racist crackers know they are opposed.

What: Oppose the racist ‘Tea Party Against Amnesty’
When: Thursday, April 15th; 10am-1pm
Where: Across the street from the Capitol building

Steve Struggle discusses Black liberation history

Steve Struggle, a Denver RAIMer and veteran of the black liberation struggle, answers some pressing questions about the history of the movement

In part 1, Steve discusses the Black Panthers, the cult around Huey Newton and the party’s degeneration.

In part 2, Steve discusses places the Black Panther Party’s degeneration in the context of international struggles.

In part 3, Steve discusses the role of COINTELPRO in the demise of the Black revolutionary movement.

In part 4, Steve talks about the revolutionary politics of the Black Panther Party and what black liberation means.

In part 5, Steve talks about the nature of the White labor aristocracy and places the struggle for reparations and national liberation in the context of Third World anti-imperialist struggle.

In part 6, Steve talks about Obama and US imperialism.

In part 7, Steve offers advice to young revolutionaries.

Solidarity Event for Mutulu Shakur

On Saturday, November 28th, there will be a solidarity event for Mutulu Shakur. Shakur, a one time supporter of the Republic of New Afrika movement, was arrested in 1986 on charges of bank robbery and helping his sister, Assata Shakur, escape prison. Today, he sits in Amerikkka’s dungeons, awaiting an appeal scheduled for Nov. 30th.

The event will feature live music from Debajito and Ietif and a teach-in by Ward Churchill. RAIM will be there with the latest issue of the RAIM Global Digest, representing a revolutionary anti-imperialist perspective.

Here’s more details:

An Evening of Solidarity for Mutulu Shakur

Presented by Denver and Aurora CopWatch, Sisters of Color United for Education, and Denver ABC

[when] Saturday, November 28th: 7:30pm-12ish
[where]Sisters of Color 2895 8th Ave, Denver, CO (8th and federal across the street from the bus yard)

Sliding Scale 1-5$ (if you ain’t got it don’t let it stop you from coming)

Teach-in by Professor Ward Churchill

Live Music by:
Mike Wird
Ietef
Debajito (of Debajo Del Agua)

Hosted by Shareef Aleem

Please join us on Saturday, November 28th to stand in solidarity with Dr Mutulu Shakur before his appeals hearing on Monday, November 30th at the super-maximum Federal prison in Florence, CO…

John Brown Led Raid on Harpers Ferry, 150 Years Ago Today

October 16 is the 150th anniversary of the raid of Harpers Ferry in 1859.  Led by abolitionist, nation traitor, and revolutionary John Brown, this failed raid was intended to arm Black slaves in a rebellion against white Amerika and for freedom for the Black Nation.  Democracy Now shows a reading of John Brown’s last words at his trial, as well as a reading by Frederick Douglas on John Brown:

Maoist-Thirdworldist agitation artist Shubelmorgan (named after an alias taken by John Brown) presents a video introduction to John Brown:

Anti-imperialists from oppressor nations should take on the example of John Brown.  As the video states, though, John Browns will be a minuscule minority of members of oppressor nations, so oppressed peoples and their allies should have no illusions.

40th anniversary of “Whitey” on the Moon.

On this day, 40 years ago, two Amerikan settlers landed on the moon. In typical settler fashion, they even placed an Amerikan flag on the surface of the moon.

We at RAIMD look to this moment with great hope. One day, we hope to send all Amerikan settlers to the moon. Those oppressors called their moowalk , “one giant leap for man-kind.” However, the real leap will come when humanity must no longer suffer the oppression bestowed on it by the United Snakes.

Pigs On a Rampage in Denver Area

Pigs On a Rampage in Denver Area

https://raimd.wordpress.com

Over the past few months three men have been shot by the police in the Denver Metro area. The events behind the multiple shootings are sketchy.

The latest was Darius Murray, shot on Saturday May 9th. The Aurora Pig Department originally claimed that 18-year old Darius Murray shot himself in the forehead after already being wounded by their officers (1). Later they backtracked and admitted that all of Murray’s wounds were caused by the officers. He remains in critical condition at University of Colorado Hospital.

According to the family’s lawyer, Derek Cole, the story the police are giving on the incident has constantly changed. The pigs say they were called out on an attempted burglary and when they tried to question Murray he “fired first” and “fired multiple times” before himself being shot in the leg, shoulder and head. He is being charged with attempted murder.(2)

The pigs refused to identify Murray as the shooting victim for two days after he was shot. The Murray family said the police never contacted them to let them know what happened. The family is not confident of police investigating police. The Aurora police chief, after saying he would not respond to the family’s concerns, issued a statement saying the shooting of Murray was justified(3).

Darius grew up in south Aurora and graduated from Colorado High School last year. While the details of the case are hazy, one thing is clear: he is another young Black male struck down through police terrorism.

This latest shooting follows two other shootings the month prior. In what sounds like an execution-style killing, the pigs killed an unarmed, un-named man on East Fifth Avenue and Lafayette St. on February 27th (4). And, in Arvada, police shot an unarmed, unnamed male on Feb.16, 2009 (5). Both shootings followed traffic stops.

Police terror is a mark of national oppression in the cities of Amerika. With oppression comes resistance. For oppressed nations within Amerika, this resistance is rightfully directed against the occupying army of violent, oppressive pigs. The Black Nation has the right of self-defense against police terror. For Blacks and oppressed nations the world over, freedom will come when it throws off the oppression that comes with Amerika.

Sources

(1). “Family wants answers after teen shot by officers.” 9News. http://www.9news.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=115606&catid=346

(2). “Colorado Crimes: Suspect in officer-involved shooting didn’t shoot himself.” Tuesday, May 12, 2009. http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2009/05/colorado_crimes_suspect_in_off.php

(3). “Aurora chief calls police shooting justified.” Denver Post. May 13, 2009. http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_12359557 ;
“Aurora police chief defends officers’ shooting of suspect.” Denver Post. May 14, 2009. http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_12364347

(4). “Police Shooting Murky.” Mike McPhee. Denver Post. February 28, 2009. http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_11804532

(5).“Suspect Shot After Assaulting Arvada Officer.” http://arvadapd.org/about-arvadapd/suspect-shot-after-assaulting-arvada-officer

May 19th: Happy Birthday, Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh

On this day, May 19th, two great revolutionary leaders were born.

Ho Chi Minh
May 19, 1890 – September 2, 1969

Malcolm X
May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965

Remember Oscar Grant: The Struggle Is Not Over

This New Years Day 2009 in Oakland, California another tragic incident of police terror against a young Black man occurred.  Oscar Grant III, 22 years old, father of a 4 year old daughter, was shot execution-style by a transit cop.  Videos of the incident clearly show he was shot in the back while face-down on a subway platform, unarmed and posing no threat.

The incident was filmed by bystanders, and police attempted to confiscate most of the videos.  But a few made it to Youtube and were viewed around the world.  Outrage at this incident spread, with protests and rebellions happening in response to this atrocity in the Bay Area and elsewhere.

John Burris, a civil rights lawyer for the Grant family, called this murder one of the worst cases of police terrorism he ever witnessed.  Recently Johannes Nehserle, the pig shown on the video shooting Grant, was charged with murder after he quit the BART police force and fled the state to avoid questioning.  Along with calling for criminal charges against the cop, Burris is helping file a 25 million lawsuit for Grant’s family.

Although this case may be one of a few where justice is brought against a killer cop, it will be too little too late.  Terrorism and injustice are nothing new for Black people in Amerikkka.  It enslaved and killed millions of African people in one of the most brutal slavery systems known to man.  It subsequently lynched thousands of Blacks in its long history of colonial and neo-colonial oppression.  Other non-white peoples have been victims of Amerikkka in its long history of exploitation, land theft, and genocide.

With oppression comes resistance.  The Black Liberation struggle and the leaders it produced have long been an inspiration to oppressed peoples in every corner of the globe.  We take this time on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to remember that spirit of resistance.

This year’s celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day coincides with the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first “Black” president of the United States.  While objectively historic, it should be seen as it is, a reinvention of U.S. imperialism as a multicultural empire with a Black figurehead.  As seen by the murder of Oscar Grant, the Obama presidency will not end the police killings of non-white youth.  It will not end the huge incarceration rates of non-white peoples inside the United States.  It will not free Mumia Abu-Jamal and the hundreds of other political prisoners who are continually denied freedom and justice.  It will not end the U.S. instigated bloodbaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. support for Israel’s aggression against Palestine, or U.S. harassment against independent nations like Venezuela and Bolivia.  And it will not end the parasitic capitalism that steals resources and labor from the Third World to fuel Amerika’s opulent consumerism.

Even Martin Luther King Jr. saw the realities of the political, economic, and military imperialism the United States was inflicting not only to oppressed nations inside the country but all around the world:

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just’” (“Beyond Vietnam”).

The investments they continue to use to take profits from poor nations were received from previous thefts the U.S. committed throughout its history.  This cycle must stop.

At the same time Oscar Grant was killed, over 1000 Palestinians lost their lives in Gaza by the settler occupation of Israel, funded by the United States.  True freedom and justice will not come by accepting a bigger part of U.S. imperialism but by rejecting and abolishing it outright.  Oppressed nations everywhere must gain their freedom and determine their own destinies.  These freedom struggles are in solidarity with all oppressed peoples in the world, in bringing about a truly just world where an end to oppression with no concessions is more than just a dream.

PDF Flier

Oakland Pigs Execute a Young Black Man

Oscar Grant, a black youth in Oakland, became another victim of police terror as BART police shot and killed him execution style.  It was captured on video, and sparked many rebellions in the Bay Area.  No word yet on whether the pig who executed him will stand trial, but we’re not holding our breath for Amerikkkan (in)justice.

RAIM-D Commemorates the Legacy of Fred Hampton

The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement- Denver commemorates the legacy of Black Panther members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, who made the ultimate sacrifice, being murdered by the Chicago Police and the FBI, on December 4, 1969, in Chicago Illinois.

The Black Panther Party was a revolutionary organization which advanced a line of Black Liberation and anti-imperialism in the mid 1960’s through the 1970’s. Fred Hampton was a Chicago Panther leader. Mark Clark was a Panther leader from Peoria, Illinois. Both were members of this militant Maoist Black organization which opposed capitalist imperialism and fought for socialism and the liberation of all of the oppressed. Because of the oppression of the Black nation by white settler U.S. imperialism and because the Black Panther Party operated within the “belly of of the beast,” they were targeted by the U.S. government through infiltration and eventually a plot to destroy the organization by killing and jailing its leaders.

As can be seen in the video, The Murder of Fred Hampton, Hampton was killed as part of a conspiracy by a Black undercover traitor, William O’Neal, the Chicago Pig Department, and the FBI’s counter-intelligence units. Hampton’s assassination demonstrates the depraved character of U.S. imperialist, racist police: the Black Uncle Tom traitor, O’Neal, placed drugs in the juice that Hampton drank on the eve of his murder. The drugs, supplied by the FBI, were designed to sedate Hampton heavily, so that he would not awaken during the police raid later that evening. During the raid, pigs murdered Mark Clark upon entry into the West Chicago apartment where many Panthers from Chicago and Illinois slept. Hampton’s bedroom had been marked on a hand-made map delivered to the FBI by O’Neal with an X. The cops murdered Hampton after killing Clark, allowing the blood from Hampton’s point blank head shooting to flow onto the mattress and bedding upon which he lay. After assassinating Hampton, the other Panthers in the same apartment were also shot and wounded by the killer cops of the Chicago police.

From the murders of Hampton and Clark, decades later there is not a functioning Black Liberation Movement or large anti-capitalist, anti-racist, revolutionary internationalist movement in the U.S.A. This is no doubt partly due to the murder of ‘Chairman’ Fred Hampton.

The enemy U.S. imperialist state does not want the masses of the Black nation to emulate the actions and program of its most advanced revolutionary elements, such as the Panthers. Revolutionary ideals and deeds are consistently and repeatedly denounced by Uncle Tom misleaders in the Black community, such as U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama. In revving up his program for the continuation of oppression of the Black masses and terroristic violence directed towards the people of the world, Obama, from Chicago, has the blood of Hampton clearly on his hands. The FBI all the way down to local racist police departments will not be touched by Obama and his administration.

But what will be done to oppose this? This writer proposes that revolutionaries of all persuasions every year commemorate the Black Liberation Movement with celebrations of Black revolutionary struggle on the day of the assassination of Black Panther’s Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Additionally, from these yearly struggles, political education and action campaigns must be built nationally and internationally that fight for a revolutionary movement and liberation for the oppressed. A movement supporting the political line of Fred Hampton must be rebuilt. This is clearly what Comrades Fred Hampton and Mark Clark would demand of us. In a often quoted speech, Hampton said as much. ” I might be anywhere , but when I leave you can remember I said with the last words on my lips, that I am a revolutionary, and you are going to have to keep on saying that. You are going to have to say ‘I am the proletariat, I am the people, I am not the pigs.’ You’ve got to make a distinction, and the people are going to have to stand up against the pigs. That ’s what the Panthers are doing all over the world.”

Long Live the Revolutionary Legacy of Chairman Fred Hampton!

Forward with the Revolution!

History of Amerikkka – Rev. Wright is Right!

Huey P. Newton: “In Defense of Self-Defense”

(In light of ongoing and continuing debates and discussion of nonviolence, and the principle of self-defense, we present an essay written by Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, the most influential revolutionary national liberation organization of recent times. The essay was overly optimistic in terms of the potential of revolution by the Black masses, as the U.$. has since this time bought off much of the Black nation into the labor aristocracy. Nevertheless, Newton gives an uncompromising statement for the right of self-defense of oppressed peoples, and shows the opposition to this is rooted in hypocrisy and white privilege by “progressives” who de-facto support the status quo. – RAIMD).

==============================================================

“In Defense of Self-Defense”

Huey P. Newton

June 20, 1967

Men were not created in order to obey laws. Laws are created to obey men. They are established by men and should serve men. The laws and rules which officials inflict upon poor people prevent them from functioning harmoniously in society.   There is no disagreement about this function of law in any circle the disagreement arises from the question of which men laws are to serve.  Such lawmakers ignore the fact that it is the duty of the poor and unrepresented to construct rules and laws that serve their interests better. Rewriting unjust laws is a basic human right and fundamental obligation.

Before 1776 America was a British colony. The British Government had certain laws and rules that the colonized Americans rejected as not being in their best interests. In spite of the British conviction that Americans had no right to establish their own laws to promote the general welfare of the people living here in America, the colonized immigrant felt he had no choice but to raise the gun to defend his welfare. Simultaneously he made certain laws to ensure his protection from external and internal aggressions, from other governments, and his own agencies. One such form of protection was the Declaration of Independence, which states: “. . . whenever any government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

Now these same colonized White people, these bondsmen, paupers, and thieves deny the colonized Black man not only the right to abolish this oppressive system, but to even speak of abolishing it. Having carried this madness and cruelty to the four corners of the earth, there is now universal rebellion against their continued rule and power. But as long as the wheels of the imperialistic war machine are turning, there is no country that can defeat this monster of the West. It is our belief that the Black people in America are the only people who can free the world, loosen the yoke of colonialism, and destroy the war machine. Black people who are within the machine can cause it to malfunction. They can, because of their intimacy with the mechanism, destroy the engine that is enslaving the world. America will not be able to fight every Black country in the world and fight a civil war at the same time. It is militarily impossible to do both of these things at once.

The slavery of Blacks in this country provides the oil for the machinery of war that America uses to enslave the peoples of the world. Without this oil the machinery cannot function. We are the driving shaft; we are in such a strategic position in this machinery that, once we become dislocated, the functioning of the remainder of the machinery breaks down.

Penned up in the ghettos of America, surrounded by his factories and all the physical components of his economic system, we have been made into “the wretched of the earth,” relegated to the position of spectators while the White racists run their international con game on the suffering peoples. We have been brainwashed to believe that we are powerless and that there is nothing we can do for ourselves to bring about a speedy liberation for our people. We have been taught that we must please our oppressors, that we are only ten percent of the population, and therefore must confine our tactics to categories calculated not to disturb the sleep of our tormentors.

The power structure inflicts pain and brutality upon the peoples and then provides controlled outlets for the pain in ways least likely to upset them, or interfere with the process of exploitation. The people must repudiate the established channels as tricks and deceitful snares of the exploiting oppressors. The people must oppose everything the oppressor supports, and support everything that he opposes. If Black people go about their struggle for liberation in the way that the oppressor dictates and sponsors, then we will have degenerated to the level of groveling flunkies for the oppressor himself. When the oppressor makes a vicious attack against freedom-fighters because of the way that such freedom-fighters choose to go about their liberation, then we know we are moving in the direction of our liberation. The racist dog oppressors have no rights which oppressed Black people are bound to respect. As long as the racist dogs pollute the earth with the evil of their actions, they do not deserve any respect at all, and the “rules” of their game,
written in the people’s blood, are beneath contempt.

The oppressor must be harassed until his doom. He must have no peace by day or by night. The slaves have always outnumbered the slavemasters. The power of the oppressor rests upon the submission of the people. When Black people really unite and rise up in all their splendid millions, they will have the strength to smash injustice. We do not understand the power in our numbers. We are millions and millions of Black people scattered across the continent and throughout the Western Hemisphere. There are more Black people in America than the total population of many countries now enjoying full membership in the United Nations. They have power and their power is based primarily on the fact that they are organized and united with each other. They are recognized by the powers of the world.

We, with all our numbers, are recognized by no one. In fact, we do not even recognize our own selves. We are unaware of the potential power latent in our numbers. In 1967, in the midst of a hostile racist nation whose hidden racism is rising to the surface at a phenomenal speed, we are still so blind to our critical fight for our very survival that we are continuing to function in petty, futile ways. Divided, confused, fighting among ourselves, we are still in the elementary stage of throwing rocks, sticks, empty wine bottles and beer cans at racist police who lie in wait for a chance to murder unarmed Black people. The racist police have worked out a system for suppressing these spontaneous rebellions that flare up from the anger, frustration, and desperation of the masses of Black people. We can no longer afford the dubious luxury of the terrible casualties wantonly inflicted upon us by the police during these rebellions.

Black people must now move, from the grass roots up through the perfumed circles of the Black bourgeoisie, to seize by any means necessary a proportionate share of the power vested and collected in the structure of America. We must organize and unite to combat by long resistance the brutal force used against us daily. The power structure depends upon the use of force within retaliation. This is why they have made it a felony to teach guerrilla warfare. This is why they want the people unarmed.

The racist dog oppressors fear the armed people; they fear most of all Black people armed with weapons and the ideology of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. An unarmed people are slaves or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If a government is not afraid of the people it will arm the people against foreign aggression. Black people are held captive in the midst of their oppressors. There is a world of difference between thirty million unarmed submissive Black people and thirty million Black people armed with freedom, guns, and the strategic methods of liberation.

When a mechanic wants to fix a broken-down car engine, he must have the necessary tools to do the job. When the people move for liberation they must have the basic tool of liberation: the gun. Only with the power of the gun can the Black masses halt the terror and brutality directed against them by the armed racist power structure; and in one sense only by the power of the gun can the whole world be transformed into the earthly paradise dreamed of by the people from time immemorial. One successful practitioner of the art and science of national liberation and self-defense, Brother Mao Tse-tung, put it this way: “We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.”

The blood, sweat, tears and suffering of Black people are the foundations of the wealth and power of the United States of America. We were forced to build America, and if forced to, we will tear it down. The immediate result of this destruction will be suffering and bloodshed. But the end result will be the perpetual peace for all mankind.

Newton, Huey. “From “In Defense of Self Defense” I: June, 20 1967″ The Huey Newton Reader.

Ed. Hilliard, David., and Donald Weise. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002. 134-37

Upcoming Dead Prez Shows

Dead Prez has two shows coming up. Proceeds from both are going to Tent State University and Recreate 68 to support the ‘Festival of Democracy’ and other peaceful protests against the Democratic National Convention.

Tuesday, May 6, 8 pm at the Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder
Wednesday, May 7, 8 pm at Cervantes, 2637 Welton St., Denver

As it turns out, last February Dead Prez played at show at Evergreen College. What began as a peaceful protest when campus police arrested a concert-goer, turned into a “riot” only after the Olympia Pig Department ran in brutalizing the growing crowd.

Here’s a short documentary on it.

Here’s more footage, doesn’t include any “riot” footage

Part 1

Part 2

Fuck the Pigs

Dead Prez: They School

National Liberation and Anti-Imperialism

By Nick Brown

The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement- Denver is a movement for global equality. We stand for the end of the imperialist system: the system whereby a handful of powerful nations exploit the peoples of the world. We see the termination of imperialism as a necessary first step to a world of lasting peace and real equality.

Anti-imperialism is foremost a fight for national liberation. Most broadly construed, national liberation is the struggle to not be exploited by outside oppressors, but to exist as a self-determining, free nation.

National liberation struggles happen throughout the world on a variety of levels. Venezuela is an example where a progressive section of the ruling class is now leading a campaign for national salvation; providing much needed reforms for the masses while challenging U.S. supremacy on a regional level. There are the numerous armed groups in Mexico, numbering in the mid-teens (not just the Zapatistas), who are fighting a comprador government. Hezbollah, the patriotic Islamic party in Lebanon, has challenged Western influence in the country, provided social welfare for the people and aligned with various Lebanese parties [including Christian ones] in their struggle against Amerikan/Zionist aggression. And we cannot forget the heroic Iraqi resistance.

These forces, taken together, form a worldwide movement against Western imperialism. These diverse individual movements, insofar as they are challenging imperialism, should be supported by freedom and peace loving peoples everywhere.

If Third World anti-imperialist struggles are capable of cutting vital lifelines [of wealth and resources] to imperialism, national liberation struggles internal to the U.S. are capable of delivering blows from within. In the grand scheme of things, within the worldwide movement towards anti-imperialism, these national liberation movements represent a mighty ally, behind enemy lines, within what is geographically called the United States. Because of this, and because these struggles are so close to home, national liberation for internally oppressed nations hold a special significance for us.

While national liberation is not currently the dominant trend amongst oppressed nations within Amerika, national struggles themselves are part of the dialect of everyday life. These struggles manifest in a variety of ways but carry common themes.

For Mexicanos, Indigenous Peoples and Blacks, theirs is the struggle not to be criminalized and disproportionately held captive in White-Amerika’s prison system. It is the struggle to not have their cultures mocked, repressed, co-opted and whitewashed. It is the struggle to not have the lowest life expectancies within the United States. It is a struggle to practice one’s national culture with pride; to be treated as equal members of society; to exist free from the oppression leveled on them by Amerika.

Typically, national struggles take one of two routes: one, the route of liberation as a nation, and the other, integration into the imperialistic, Amerikan oppressor society.

The latter, integration into the Amerikan oppressor society, is the main trend today. This is the path favored by poverty pimps, white chauvinists and the state. The integration route was made widely available through the widening and deepening of exploitation abroad while given impetus by the explosive successes of national liberation struggles during the 1960s and 70s. The reformist integrationist route, while also a national struggle, is antithetical to revolutionary national liberation. Ending oppression through integration means being absorbed into Amerika’s “multi-cultural” oppressor society. It is the democratization of imperialist privilege and the diversification of the labor aristocracy. Integrationism is not revolutionary and is not in the least bit anti-imperialist.

For oppressed nations inside Amerika, the struggle for national liberation is mainly tied to the struggle for a territory on which a free nation can exist. Without such a land, oppressed nations are doomed to live within White-Amerika–forced to suffer oppression while at the same time being lured by trickle-down imperialist privilege. While the goal of national liberation struggles is the creation of sovereign national territories, the planting of seeds for such political power is a necessary first step.

While full-blown national power will not develop quickly or easily, national liberation movements themselves are of utmost importance today. The strengthening of national liberation movements, the expansion of networks and the creation of independent spaces from which these networks and broader movements can operate is a task for which the outcome will weigh heavily on the future.

As success for peoples of the Third World build up, national liberation struggles inside the U.S. can become a destabilizing force within the heart of imperialism. This will make the prospects of revolution greater. At the same time, national liberation struggles will be a focal point of revolutionary gravity within the First World. In the long term, successes made today in creating the basis for independent national power [for oppressed nations within the U.S.] will translate into much wider successes for all people oppressed by U.S. imperialism further down the road.

It is with these considerations in mind that we champion national liberation struggles within United States. We do so not to advance ourselves or to look edgy. We do so from our general anti-imperialist perspective. For us, any single movement for national liberation here is part of the broader international revolutionary struggle to end oppression once and for all.

Slave Farm “Marade” “hijacked” … about fucking time

Slave Farm “Marade” “hijacked” … about fucking time
by a RAIMer

Okay, here’s the deal. Denver has a farce MLK celebration every year: The Marade, brought to you by State Farm insurance. Of course, local “good neighbor” corporate insurance company doesn’t give a shit about Black people. In the Marade mix are many sell-outs, reformists and city officials. The Marade is a photo-op for these greedy bastards.

[State Farm Safety Patrol]

Now, we are not fans of King’s politics. We lean more toward Robert Williams and the Black Panther Party in its revolutionary years. But, the Marade should be opposed, if merely on the grounds of historical accuracy. The only thing the Maraders know of King’s politics is the “I have a dream” speech, incidentally, so does State Farm according to their signs: “We share the dream — State Farm.” Another irony is that King Soopers was the other major Marade sponsor. It was King Soopers security guard Deshazer, an off duty pig, who called a Black disabled elderly woman and her daughter “niggers” in 2006. When Loree McCormick Rice and her 12 year old daughter Cassidy complained, Deshazer called the pigs. (1) This led to a beat down of McCormick and her daughter behind the store. Both suffered injuries, the daughter’s collarbone was broken. Some of the images were caught on the store security tape.

In 1967, King was a critic of the Vietnam War and correctly called the U$ “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” The City banned overt political banners, so this King quote would, ironically, not be permitted in the Marade. King’s politics, which were not good to begin with, have been made worse, sanitized by liberals and reformists.

It was cold as fuck.

[Shareef speaks at the anti-Marade]

The Marade gathered at City Park around 9AM. There was a counter gathering that attempted to draw people away from the Marade (brought to you by State Farm). A small crowd gathered to listen to anti-Marade speeches calling out the bullshit version of history spewing from the main fountain area where the Marade had gathered. A couple hours later, the Marade headed for the Capitol, Civic Center park. Several long-term stalwarts of the Denver activist scene decided to attempt to take the front of the Marade with anti-war and anti-police banners.

[Local rebels, Daniel and Glenn, make trouble.]

Because of city security, it was not possible to take the very front of the Marade. The Marade was led by a marching band. Between the band and the bulk of Marade marchers, the local activists pushed through security with anti-war and anti-police banners. Security continued to threaten the activists, but eventually pulled back and allowed the anti-war activists to occupy a wide area of space between the leading marching band and the bulk of the Marade. The pigs followed the anti-war activists in several unmarked black blazer-type trucks the whole time of the march.

(Larry, who was recently assaulted by the pigs, on the left.)

This action was a good example of how groups with widely different politics and approaches can work together tactically.

1. http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_4534061

[Please credit RAIM-Denver when using photos]

LET IT BURN. Interview with Robert F. Williams, 1968

This is a pretty long interview. It’s so long that we wouldn’t have posted it had we not thought that it was worth watching through the end. Here are a few good quotes from the interview.

[Williams explains his reasons for leaving Cuba as-] If I wanted to carry on my struggle for the liberation of the black people in Amerika.. if I could live true to what I believed, I had to leave Cuba -but I wasn’t forced out of Cuba. I had a choice to remain in there. I could have remained in Cuba as a socialist Uncle Tom. But I didn’t see any difference in being a socialist Uncle Tom and in being an Uncle Tom in capitivist and racist Amerika. And I’m not cut out to be an Uncle Tom no matter who it’s for.

[Here Williams explains why he doesn’t pay any mind to how white amerika perceives him or his cause] Look, I am a refugee. I am a victim of all kinds of racial [national-ed.] oppression and tyranny and terrorism in the United States. So why should I be concerned with what they think about or what they call me. My first concern is liberation. My first concern is justice and freedom. And it makes no difference what they call me and it makes no difference with what they think, because in the final analysis they are going to have to face reality. And the reality is that Amerika is not god, Amerika is not the end of the earth and it doesn’t matter what the Amerikans think.

[Referring to Black troops fighting in the Vietnam War] I’m not asking them to commit treason. I’m asking them to stop betraying humynity I’m asking them not to commit treason against humynity. Man’s first duty is to his brother [sic]. Man’s first duty is to humynity, not to governments- not to brutal savage governments and oppressors.

[Referring the recently killed Dr. Martin Luther King] Because here is a pacifist, one of the great followers of Ghandi, and here is a man who advocated love and non-violence who has been shot down in the streets of racist amerikkka and killed like a common street dog. Now- and then I’m supposed to be moderate in my outlook? I’m supposed to be merciful? This is asking more of me, as a victim, than has been asked of the oppressor.

The German people allowed Hitler to lead them down the drain. They allowed Hitler to rage and act like a maniac. And they didn’t take any position. They supported Germany, they supported their government. And as a result of this we can see what happened. Now the Amerikan people can’t hide behind the excuse that they are not doing it, that they are not committing these crimes.

When Race Burns Class: Interview with J. Sakai

WHEN RACE BURNS CLASS

“Settlers” Revisited

An Interview With J. Sakai

EC: In the early eighties you wrote Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat, a book which had a major impact on many North American anti-imperialists. How did this book come about, and what was so new about its way of looking at things?

JS: Settlers completely came about by accident, not design. And what was so “new” about it was that it wasn’t “inspiring” propaganda, but took up the experience of colonial workers to question how class really worked. It wasn’t about race, but about class. Although people still have a hard time getting used to that–it isn’t race or sex that’s the taboo subject in this culture, but class. Like many radicals who struggle as organizers, i had wondered why our very logical “class unity” theories always seemed to get smashed up around the exit ramp of race? At the time i’d quit my fairly isolated job on the night shift as a mechanic on the railroad, and was running a cut-off lathe in an auto parts plant. The young white guys in our department were pretty good. In fact, rebellious counter-culture dope smoking Nam vets. After months of hanging & talking, one night one of them came up to me and said that all the guys were driving down to the Kentucky Derby together, to spend the weekend getting drunk and partying. They were inviting me, an Asian, as a way of my joining the crew. Only, he said, “You got to stop talking to those Blacks. You got to choose. White or Black.” Every lunch hour i dropped in on a scene on the loading dock, where a dozen brothers munched sandwiches and had an on-going discussion. About everything from the latest sex scandal to whether it was good or not for Third World nations to be getting A-bombs (some said it was good ending the white monopoly on nuclear weapons, while others said not at the price of endangering our asses!). Plus the guy from the League of Black Revolutionary Workers in our plant area had recruited me to help out, since he was facing heavy going from the older, more established Black political tendencies ( various nationalists, the CPUSA–who had great veterans, good shop floor militants –etc). And, why would i go along with some apartheid agenda anyway? Needless to say, the white young guys cut me dead after that (though they later came out for me as shop steward, which shows you how much b.s. they thought the union was). That kind of stuff, familiar to us all, kept piling up in my mind and got me started trying to figure out how this had come about in the u.s. working class. So for years after this i read labor history and asked older trade union radicals questions whenever i could. Finally, an anarchist veteran of the autoworkers’ historic 1937 Flint Sit-Down strike told me that the strike had been Jim Crow, that one of the unpublicized demands had been to keep Black workers down as only janitors….or out of the plants altogether. This blew my mind. That’s when it hit me that the wonderful working class history that the movement had taught us was a lie. So i decided to write an article (famous writer’s delusion) on how this white supremacy started in the u.s. working class. i didn’t know–maybe it was in the 1920s?, i thought. So Settlers was researched backwards. i knew what the conclusion was in the mid-1970s, that white supremacy ruled the white working class except in the self delusions of the Left. “No politician can ever be too racist to be popular in white amerikkka”, is an amazingly true saying. Settlers was researched going back in time, trying to find that event, that turning point when working class unity by whites had dissolved into racial supremacy. 1930s, 1920s, pre-World War I, Black Reconstruction, Civil War, 1700s, 1600s, i kept going back and back, treading water, trying to touch non-white supremacist ground. Only, there wasn’t any!