Foreign Correspondent-- The Rest Of The World Sees Uprisings, Not Riots

The United States is paying the price for denying people what Malcolm X called "the right to be a human being."

-by Reese Erlich

One of Germany's largest dailies ran the headline “This killer cop set America ablaze,” with a photo of the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd. Protests in the United States, the article reported, looked like “scenes out of a civil war.”

Bettina Gaus, political correspondent for the Berlin daily Die Tagezeitung, tells me that everybody in Germany, “regardless of political affiliations, is appalled by the murder of George Floyd and sees it as just another example for racism in the U.S. And nobody thinks Donald Trump is helpful.”

In another part of the world, Palestinians and some Israelis recognize that both U.S. and Israeli security forces regularly shoot unarmed civilians. On May 30, Iyad Halak, a Palestinian student with autism, was murdered by Israeli soldiers claiming he had a gun. No weapons were found, and former general Benny Gantz later apologized.

As victims of America’s long history of supporting violence, Palestinians have expressed solidarity with U.S. demonstrators. “The growing protests... against police brutality in the U.S. are fundamentally an uprising against an entire system of racist exploitation and oppression,” read a statement issued by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement in Palestine.

Uprisings not riots

While President Donald Trump’s White House, many U.S. politicians, and the corporate media condemn the protests as riots, much of the rest of the world sees them as uprisings. Ajamu Baraka, founder of the Black Alliance for Peace and 2016 Green Party vice presidential candidate, says U.S. officials are hypocrites when it comes to criticizing violence.

The U.S. government and corporate media “cheer on demonstrators in Hong Kong, regardless of the level of violence and property damage,” Baraka tells me. He adds that the worst looting took place when the U.S. government “transferred billions of public resources into banks and corporations under guise of helping the economy during the COVID-19 crisis.”

Bill Fletcher, executive editor of GlobalAfricanWorker.com and former president of TransAfrica Forum, notes that the vast majority of protests against police killings have not engaged in violence or looting.

“I’m sure there are opportunists out there who just loot and provoke,” he says. “But there are also very frustrated people.”

Spontaneous demonstrations have broken out in more than 140 American cities in the largest U.S. uprising since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. But this time African Americans have been joined by white, Asian, and Latinx protesters.

The black liberation movement has a long history of solidarity with the Third World. Some of today’s protesters, particularly whites, may not be familiar with that history and its lessons for today.

Solidarity with the colonized

African American historian and political activist W.E.B. Du Bois travelled to the Versailles peace talks after World War I in order to express solidarity with colonized Africans. Britain, France, and the United States had promised democracy and self determination following the war. Instead, the victorious imperialist powers carved up Africa, Asia, and the Middle East into colonies under their control.

“Self determination didn’t apply in the colonial world,” says Fletcher.

During the 1920s and 1930s, leftist and nationalist movements developed in the black community. Marcus Garvey led a massive Back to Africa movement. The Communist Party and other leftists gathered considerable support by organizing non-segregated trade unions and defending African Americans against police brutality.

African Americans strongly opposed Italy’s 1935 invasion and occupation of Ethiopia, and joined the fight against fascism.

Activists from that era came to understand that African Americans are “not only exploited as workers but are a colonized people,” Baraka says. “The source of their oppression was the colonialist, capitalist system. So they had a common interest with other anti-colonial struggles.”

Malcolm X

By the 1950s, African Americans and liberal whites had joined together in the civil rights movement demanding an end to segregation in education, housing, and employment. But leaders such as Malcolm X, particularly in the last year of his life, said demanding civil rights was not enough.

“We believe that our problem is not one of civil rights but a violation of human rights,” he said in 1965. “Not only are we denied the right to be a citizen in the United States, we are denied the right to be a human being.”

By calling for human rights, says Fletcher, Malcolm X “meant that our struggle was not simply a struggle for constitutional rights but for political power and self-determination. It was a struggle for other people in the Global South. U.S. blacks are fighting the same system.”

Malcolm X questioned the way U.S. society was organized, according to Baraka, “not just what’s in the heads of individual white people, but the structure and logic of white supremacist domination.”

It was an analysis that would prove prescient.

Human rights

U.S. officials, whether Democrat or Republican, pretend that only other countries violate human rights. Every year, the State Department issues a report on worldwide human rights with the heaviest criticism aimed at enemies du jour such as China, Russia, and Iran.

Human rights, as defined by U.S. officials, include freedom of the press, maintaining an independent judiciary, and civil rights. But most of the world, the United Nations included, goes further, saying human rights include the right to a job, health care, and housing, among other things.

Not surprisingly, U.S. leaders never mention authoritative international reports detailing U.S. human rights violations. In 2017, the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights issued a report sharply criticizing U.S. human rights abuses. It noted that the United States has the highest rate of income inequality among Western countries.

“The persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power,” the report stated. “With political will, it could readily be eliminated.”

Dangerous times ahead

The Trump Administration finds itself increasingly isolated at home and abroad. The United States has the world's highest death count from COVID-19 and faces a massive recession.

But Trump is not deterred. He uses the issue of “violent demonstrators” to proclaim himself “the President of law and order.”

Progressives see large demonstrations in front of the White House as a call for freedom and democracy. Trump supporters see radicals and anarchists attacking the U.S. government.

I worry that Trump could mobilize his supporters to provoke a race war. Or these multiple crises could lead to Trump's removal from power.

Baraka, for his part, does not foresee a return to normal in the months ahead.

“There’s never been a period like this,” he says. “This is one of the most serious and dangerous moments in the history of this country.”

Why Is Steve Israel Lying To His Own Colleagues About What Jennifer Garrison Is?

Malcolm and Jennifer

My grandfather was a Socialist. He told me to always be wary of anyone from the Democratic Party. Funny because Malcolm X and he had similar views of the Democrats back them. Mal: "We won't organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more racist than the Republican Party… What is a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise."

There were many professional Democrats, careerists and so-called leaders, who were not breaking a sweat on behalf of racial equality. Left to Democratic Party leaders, Jim Crow would still be in place today. A grassroots, bottoms-up movement led the way; some Democratic Party leaders followed… reluctantly, as did some Republican Party leaders. That's very similar to the fight for LGBT equality-- albeit without the Republican Party leaders for the most part. No one should discount the tremendous and effective support from certain sources, and Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi's role has been crucial, but there is still plenty of hostility-- much of it from conservative-leaning males in Congress.

As we saw last week, no one would ever put up with the DCCC making up some bullshit excuse about a Big Tent to recruit some blatant racist from Mississippi to run for Congress as a Democrat. But that's exactly what Steve Israel has been doing in terms of homophobes. He's a strange guy-- got caught cheating on his first wife, Randi, and then married again and got caught cheating on his second wife with a congressional staffer half his age. Then his second wife, NY Family Court Judge Marlene Budd, kicked him out of the house and then divorced him-- and has been threatening to spill the corruption beans on him to the House Ethics Committee ever since.

He doesn't understand why recruiting blatantly homophobic candidates to run for Congress as Democrats isn't acceptable. And Jennifer Garrison-- who some say looks a lot like his last mistress-- is stinking up the whole basket of Israel recruits. I spoke to a congress member from Ohio who was sickened by Israel's tone deaf recruitment of such a thoroughly disliked and distrusted figure like Garrison. "When she ran for the Ohio House, she ran to the right of her opponent. As I recall, she attacked the Republican female incumbent for not supporting the marriage ban that was on the ballot and I think perhaps on choice issues. [State Senator] Lou Gentile may not be a progressive candidate, but he would have had the support of Ted Strickland, who formerly represented that district. Washington County is not as conservative as the DCCC would have it. The Marietta Times in the county seat was the first paper to endorse our marriage equality campaign-- unsolicited. All of the judges are Democrats. There is a working class base there.

"I remember when the powers that be at the Ohio Democratic Party were searching for a secretary of state candidate to replace Jennifer Brunner, who was abandoning her post to run an ill-fated primary for the U.S. Senate, they promoted Garrison as the lawyer who would be able to win. Everyone knew that her colleagues in the Democratic caucus of the Ohio House were overjoyed-- they wanted her to leave. However, the Democratic base would not accept her and there was a vocal backlash about her proposed secretary of state run. She eventually dropped out of the race.

The local blog Plunderbund wrote about an incident where she told Subodh Chandra, a former city law director for Cleveland (I think that was his title, he is now in private practice) and attorney on voting rights cases in Ohio, among other things, who was tentatively looking at an Attorney General race. Subodh met with Garrison who opposed having him on the ticket, saying, 'no one where I'm from would ever vote for someone who looked like you.' Plunderbund noted when she dropped out that the Democratic coalition of 'gays, women, minorities, simply would not accept a candidacy from central casting' (I think the quote ends with something like central casting for a Republican.) The final blow came when labor opposed her as well."

Odd that the LGBT community, women's organizations anti-racist organizations and unions are all letting Israel get away with this now. Several unions have even contributed to Garrison's campaign at Israel's urging-- despite the fact that she voted against increasing the minimum wage, something Democrats and unions are supposed to be for.

Did You Hear The One About The Deranged Lesbian Who Voted Against Marriage Equality?

Sad, pathetic person

"Truth is on the side of the oppressed… If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

-Malcolm X

A couple of years ago, when uber corrupt, very conservative and somewhat homophobic state Senator Colleen Hanabusa decided to try once again to get into the U.S. House of Representatives-- having been defeated several times previously-- she resigned from her state Senate seat. Governor Neil Abercrombie appointed state Rep. Maile Shimabukuro to her old seat and then appointed Jo (Georgette) Jordan to Shimabukuro's old state House seat just northwest of Honolulu (Wai‘anae, Mākaha, Makua, and Māʻili). Not many people had heard of her until this week when she made history-- the first openly gay legislator anywhere to vote against marriage equality. (So this is different from closet cases like Aaron Schock (R-IL), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Miss McConnell (R-KY), Larry Craig (R-ID) or any of the endless parade of hypocritical Republican closet cases who routinely vote against equality for the LGBT community their fears and careerism alienate them from. Georgette is an out lesbian-- a shockingly stupid one, but still an out one. How do I know she's stupid? That wasn't a gratuitous slam against someone I disagree with; this is one extremely stupid person. Read her pathetic, incoherent and moronic interview in the new Honolulu Magazine about… how no mainlanders are going to tell her what to do! She even admits she's intellectually out of her depth in the state legislature and still hasn't figured out what's going on. This was supposed to be an interview about why she voted against the LGBT community.

Friends in the legislature have told me she's a petty, vindictive little shit who's angry at the world for being dealt a bad hand and angry at Democrats, embittered after having her side lost a leadership fight at the start of the current term. She voted against marriage equality even while admitting that 75% of her constituents favored it. I hope they remember when she's up for reelection.

What we do know about her is that she takes campaign money from shady donors like the NRA and Big Tobacco and that she identifies with religionist bigots who think they are entitled to force gay people into second class citizenship because of their primitive beliefs. She would be Malcolm X's worst nightmare… if he could even stop laughing. Meanwhile, religious right hate mongers are calling her a hero and using her to cast aspersions on the LGBT community fighting off the bigots. From Tony Perkin's own personal hate group, he Family Research Council:

During the hearings, when she hadn’t stated her position, Jordan says that she expected “to get blasted by the religious community.” Instead, pastors and faith leaders stunned her with their outpouring of thanks just for listening. The people who were truly hostile, Jordan says, were her own LGBT community.

…It doesn’t matter who you are, homosexual activists will harass anyone who isn’t one hundred percent sold out to their radical agenda to remake society. Unfortunately, Jo Jordan found that out the hard way. Hopefully, her story will help dissuade others from trying to appease the extreme Left on marriage.