Fusion Politics from the Poor People’s Campaign to the Rainbow Coalition to the New Poor People’s Campaign

Valeria Sinclair-Chapman

Department of Political Science

Purdue University

101 N. University Street

West Lafayette, IN 47907

 

Harry Targ

Department of Political Science

Purdue University

 Paper prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the Global Studies Association, June 6-8, 2018, Howard University School of Law, Washington, D.C..

Abstract

This paper examines a model of fusion politics that connects activism to end poverty and address a constellation of social injustices across more than a half century in the United States.  We consider an articulation of fusion politics that highlights the actions of disparate groups and individuals, including youth, racial and ethnic minorities, women, LGBT activists, teachers, and union members who have joined in a cooperative effort to address independent but linked concerns such as quality public schools, livable wages, affordable healthcare, environmental justice, immigrant rights, women’s reproductive rights, fair elections, and criminal justice.  Our analysis points out the historical links between the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, the Rainbow Coalition of the 1980s, and the new Poor People’s Campaign launched in 2018.  It draws heavily on the words and writings of King and the Reverend William Barber, II in understanding the organizing, objectives, and transformative potential of these movements.

 Introduction

The new Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) launched with rallies and demonstrations across the country on Mother’s Day 2018.  It is not coincidental that 2018 marks the 50^th anniversary of the original 1968 PPC organized by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  After the gains of the civil rights movement evidenced in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, King was struck by limited effect that these monumental changes to American law had on the everyday lives of black people across the U.S., and particularly in America’s urban slums.  In the period following the 1965 Watts riot, King moved with his family to a Chicago tenement to help coordinate new efforts challenging discriminatory housing and hiring practices outside the south.  

Following the long, hot summer of 1967, a period during which young people and others took to the streets in an angry response to black unemployment, racial discrimination, and police brutality in more than 150 American cities, King began to recognize the limits of a series of isolated campaigns to address a constellation of problems plaguing black Americans.  What was required was a nationally coordinated response, a national response to the conditions confronting black people whose hopes had been raised by the successes of the civil rights movement, but whose everyday circumstances had largely remained unchanged.  It is in this arena that King began to articulate a framework uncovering the mutually constitutive –isms of racism, materialism, and militarism. 

King’s assassination in April of 1968 makes it impossible to know what might have come of the PPC had its charismatic and visionary lived.  As it stands, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, King’s wife Coretta Scott King, Jesse Jackson and others continued to organize the PPC’s March on Washington and the Resurrection City encampment on the National Mall.  As King and others pointed out, poverty knew no color, nor age, nor state or regional boundary.  Resurrection City was to remain encamped on the National Mall until the federal government redirected attention and federal resources to alleviate poverty, provide an income floor, and expand public sector employment in a jobs program.  What Barber refers to as “fusion politics” is a three-pronged notion about the connectedness of people, organizations, and issues that can drive change on a national scale in the United States. Then, as is the case now, fusion politics, or the idea that a sustained multiracial coalition of antipoverty, antiracist, and antiwar activists could help refocus American policy and redirect resources to address a concern that affected our common well-being, was a central tenet of the PPC.  Our paper aims to discuss the development of a fusion-based approach to organizing, why and how fusion is viewed by organizers as an important factor, and under what circumstances fusion is likely to contribute to the success of a movement.   

 In what follows, we describe various incarnations of fusion politics, first using King’s famous speech at Riverside Church in Harlem, NY in 1967 as a framing device.  We then apply this vision to organizing across groups, individuals, issues, and time from sanitation workers, to the Black Power Movement, to the Fight for $15.  We conclude with a discussion of the constraints and opportunities that confront the modern PPC. 

 Dr. King and the Three Evils: The Articulation of a Fusion Politics Vision

     Dr. Martin Luther King, in his famous speech at Riverside Church in New York City, spoke of the devastating consequences of the Vietnam War on the Vietnamese people and the poor and oppressed at home. To him, the carnage of war not only destroyed the targets of war (their economies, their land, their cultures) but the costs also misallocated the resources of the nation-states which initiated wars.

 Every health and welfare provision of the government, local, state, and federal, was limited by resources allocated for the war system. Health care, education, transportation, jobs, wages, campaigns to address enduring problems of racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental revitalization, and non-war related scientific and technological research were reduced almost in direct proportion to rising military expenditures. Over half the US federal budget goes to military spending past and current.  And the irony is that the money that is extracted from the vast majority of the population of the United States goes to military budgets that enhance the profits of the less than one percent of the population who profit from the war system as it exists.

“I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam.” Since 1967 when he made that speech, Dr. King would surely have added a long list of other wars to the Vietnam case: wars in Central America and South America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. and the more than 1,000 bases and outposts where US troops or hired contractors are fighting wars on behalf of capitalist expansion. Meanwhile the gaps between rich and poor people on a worldwide basis have increased dramatically with some twenty percent of the world’s population living below World Bank defined poverty lines.

Dr. King Building Fusion: A Labor/Civil Rights Alliance

     Dr. King arrived in Memphis on March 18, 1968 to support the sanitation workers of that city who had been on strike for five weeks. These workers had many grievances that forced them to protest. Garbage workers had no access to bathroom or shower facilities. They were not issued any protective clothing for their job. There were no eating areas separate from garbage. Sanitation workers had no pension or retirement program and no entitlement to workers compensation. Their wages were very low. Shortly before the strike began two workers died on the job and the families of the deceased received only $500 in compensation from the city. Finally, after Black workers were sent home for the day because of bad weather and received only two hours pay they walked off the job.

 On March 28, ten days after King arrived, violence disrupted a march led by him. He left the city but returned on April 4 to lead a second march. On that fateful April day, King told Jerry Wurf, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees or AFSCME: "What is going on here in Memphis is important to every poor working man, black or white, in the South." That evening Martin Luther King was killed by a sniper's bullet.

 It was logical for King to be in Memphis to support garbage workers. Despite a sometimes rocky relationship between the civil rights and labor movements, King knew that black and white workers' struggles for economic justice were indivisible; that civil rights could not be realized in a society where great differences in wealth and income existed, and where life expectancies, educational opportunities, and the quality of jobs varied by class, by race, and by gender. The more progressive and far-sighted leaders and rank-and-file union members in the AFL-CIO knew it too. At the time of King's death working people were coming together to struggle for positive social change around the banner of the Poor People's Campaign.

 Dr. King's thinking on the need for an alliance between the civil rights and labor movements was expressed many times. As far back as 1957 at a convention of the United Packinghouse Workers of American (UPWA) he asserted that "organized labor can be one of the most powerful instruments in putting an end to discrimination and segregation."

 During an organizing effort of the Hospital Workers Local 1199 in the fall of 1964, King was a featured speaker at a fundraising rally. He said of the 1199 struggle," Your great organizing crusade to win union and human rights for New Jersey hospital workers is part and parcel of the struggle we are conducting in the Deep South. I want to congratulate your union for charting a road for all labor to follow-dedication to the cause of the underpaid and exploited workers in our nation." Shortly after, Dr. King left a picket line of Newark hospital workers on strike to fly to Oslo, Norway to receive the Nobel Prize.

Upon his return from Norway, King returned to the picket line; this time in support of Black women workers of the Chemical Workers union at the Scripto Pen Plant in Atlanta. He said there: "Along with the struggle to desegregate, we must engage in the struggle for better jobs. The same system that exploits the Negro exploits the poor white..."

At the Negro American Labor Council convention of June, 1965 King called for a new movement to achieve "a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God's children." In February 1966, King spoke to Chicago labor leaders during his crusade for the end to racism and poverty in that city. He called on the labor movement which had provided techniques and methods, and financial support crucial to civil rights victories to join in the war on poverty and slums in Chicago. Such an effort in Chicago, he said, would show that a Black and labor alliance could be of relevance to solving nationwide problems of unemployment, poverty, and automation.

 One year before his death, King spoke at another meeting of Hospital Workers 1199. He said a closer alliance was needed between labor and civil rights activists to achieve the "more difficult" task of economic equality. The civil rights movement and its allies were moving into a new phase to achieve economic justice, he announced. This would be a more formidable struggle since it was in his words "much more difficult to eradicate a slum than it is to integrate a bus."

 In early 1968, Dr. King incorporated his opposition to the Vietnam War with his commitment to economic justice. He called for an end to the War and the utilization of societal resources to eliminate poverty. To those ends the Poor People's Campaign was launched. It demanded jobs, a guaranteed annual income for those who could not find work, the construction of 6 million new homes, support for employment in rural areas, new schools to train jobless youth for skilled work, and other measures to end poverty.

 While preparing the Poor People's Campaign, King got a call to go to Memphis. Before leaving he sent a message to be read at the seventh annual convention of the Negro American Labor Council. He wrote that the Council represented "the embodiment of two great traditions in our nation's history: the best tradition of the organized labor movement and the finest tradition of the Negro Freedom Movement." He urged a black-labor alliance to unite the Black masses and organized labor in a campaign to help solve the "deteriorating economic and social conditions of the Negro community... heavily burdened with both unemployment and underemployment, flagrant job discrimination, and the injustice of unequal education opportunity."

 Michael Honey demonstrates that Dr. King’s vision of fundamental change evolved over his long career of political activism. But Honey suggests, King always saw the struggle for desegregation and voter rights as just part of a historic battle to achieve full economic and social equality. He refers to King’s vision of building “civil rights unionism,” an alliance of Black and white workers to achieve the twin pillars of a just society: racial justice and worker rights. The SCLC had long and close ties with the sleeping car porters, packinghouse workers, public sector workers, autoworkers, and steel workers. His ties to socialist currents were strong.

 Memphis represented the culmination of the civil rights unionism, demands to end poverty, and the effort to fuse the interests of trade unionists, poor and marginalized men and women, and people of color in one struggle. With the weakening of the organized labor movement by 1968, the rise of racism inspired by politicians like George Wallace, a renewed and virulent anti-communism, a fusion politics was required that would organize millions of people struggling against racism, poverty, and war. As Honey described it:

     “These conditions undermined fhe unions and King’s power base, as we so well know today. That is why King moved on to the Poor People’s Campaign framework, which was to organize the unemployed poor and the working poor in a multi-racial coalition to demand the government spend money for jobs, health care, education and housing instead of spending for war and to benefit the wealthy and white.” Michael Honey interview, “MLK: To the Promised Land,” Solidarity, (http://solidarity-us.org/atc)

    Fifty years later the social and economic injustices of which Dr. King spoke continue. But so does his vision of a working class movement united in struggle to survive, a movement of Blacks, whites and Latinos, men and women, young and old, and organized and unorganized workers. The times have changed but the importance of Dr King's political vision remains.

 Another Kind of Fusion: The Black Panther Party and Rainbow Coalitions

 O, yes,

I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

(From Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again,” 1938)

             In 1966, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. The Party inspired African American and white leftists who were beginning to see capitalist exploitation and racism as central to the American experience. The BPP saw the need for Black people to organize to defend their communities; to develop a theory that would help Black people understand their subordinate condition; to construct institutions, particularly health care, education, and food distribution, to serve the people; and to act in solidarity with liberation struggles on a worldwide basis. To articulate its goals the BPP wrote a 10-point program that would serve as a guide to programs and action for party members (collectiveliberation.org).

 The BPP program included demands for community control, access to “land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace,” and an end to police violence and mass incarceration of Black people. In each issue of The Black Panther newspaper, all 537 of them, the platform was printed. The dramatic escalation of state violence against the BPP and the Black community in general by the FBI and local law enforcement agencies testified to the fact that the Panther program resonated in urban communities around the country, particularly among the young. 

 The Party encouraged grassroots activism and community control basing its appeal on the idea that it would serve the needs of the people. Establishing free breakfast programs for children, health clinics, and education, had enormous appeal. With growing violence against the community by the police the BPP advocated collective self-defense.

 After the police dispersed Resurrection City, the Poor People’s lodging on the Mall in Washington D.C. and the police riot at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, a group of Black, Brown, and White youth organized what would become the first Rainbow Coalition. The campaign was initiated by young leader of the Illinois Black Panther Party Fred Hampton.

 Jakobi E. Williams, (“The Original Rainbow Coalition: An Example of Universal Identity Politics,” Tikkun, 2003, https://www.tikkun .org/nextgen/the-original-rainbow-coalition-an-example-of-univeersal-identity-politics) describes the coming together of Black, Brown, white youth, men and women around an anti-poverty agenda, that was avowedly anti-capitalist. He argues that the Panthers, the Young Lords, The Young Patriotism, and other groups came together maintaining their identities and at the same time recognizing what interests they had in common. While police repression defused the Original Rainbow Coalition, Williams suggests that the idea of the Rainbow was appropriated by the mayoral candidacy of Harold Washington and the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson. Williams believes that while the idea of the Rainbow resonated with politicians and constituents, its vision and ideology was not quite as radical as the original. Even so, Rev. Jackson and later Senator Bernie Sanders used the idea of the Rainbow to build large, movements for social change in the electoral area in the 1980s and beyond.

 For the purpose of suggesting continuities in the idea of fusion over time, the recognition of the Original Rainbow Coalition is important. As Williams writes:

“The original Rainbow Coalition embodied the intersectionality of the critical issues of race, class, gender, anti-war, student, labor, and sexuality. It fused these various forms of identity politics into one group with one ideal form of identity—an identity that transcends differences and focuses on commonalities. The most common unifier was poverty.”

 

The Emergence of Moral Mondays in the South

         Moral Mondays refers to a burgeoning mass movement that had its roots in efforts to defend voter rights in North Carolina. Thousands of activists have been mobilizing across the South over the last year inspired by Moral Mondays. They are fighting back against draconian efforts to destroy the right of people to vote, workers’ and women’s rights, and for progressive policies in general. Paradoxically, many progressives in the South and elsewhere have not heard of this budding movement.

         Moral Mondays began as the annual Historic Thousands on Jones Street People's Assembly (HKonJ) in 2006 to promote progressive politics in North Carolina. Originally a coalition of 16 organizations, initiated by the state’s NAACP, it has grown to include 150 organizations today promoting a multi-issue agenda. In 2006, its task was to pressure the state’s Democratic politicians to expand voting rights and support progressive legislation on a variety of fronts. 

With the election of a tea-party government in that state in 2012, the thrust of Moral Mondays shifted to challenging the draconian policies threatening to turn back gains made by people of color, workers, women, environmentalists and others. Public protests at the state house weekly in the spring of 2013 during the state legislative session led to over 1,000 arrests for civil disobedience and hundreds of thousands of hits on MM websites. Similar movements have spread throughout the South (Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida) and in some states in the Midwest and Southwest (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Missouri). 

To kick off the spring 2014 protests, MM organizers called a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina on February 8 which brought out at least 80,000 protestors. Rev. William Barber, a key organizer of the movement, has grounded this new movement in history, suggesting that the South is in the midst of the “third reconstruction.” The first reconstruction, after the Civil War, consisted of Black and white workers struggling to create a democratic South (which would have impacted on the North as well). They elected legislators who wrote new state constitutions to create democratic institutions in that region for the first time. This first reconstruction was destroyed by white racism and the establishment of Jim Crow segregation. 

 The second reconstruction occurred between Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 and President Nixon’s 1968 “Southern Strategy.” During this period formal segregation was overturned, Medicare and Medicaid were established, and Social Security was expanded. Blacks and whites benefited. Dr. King’s 1968 Poor People’s Campaign envisioned a defense and expansion of the Second Reconstruction.

 Now we are in the midst of a third reconstruction, according to Barber. Political mobilizations today, like those of the first reconstruction, are based on what was called in the 1860s “fusion” politics; that is bringing all activists—Black, Brown, white, gay/straight, workers, environmentalists—together. Fusion politics assumes that only a mass movement built on everyone’s issues can challenge the billionaire economic elites such as the Koch brothers and their Wall Street collaborators with masses of people (the 99 percent). Fusion politics, he says, requires an understanding of the fact that every issue is interconnected causally with every other issue. Therefore, democracy, civil rights, labor, women’s, gay/lesbian, and environmental movements must act together (http://youtu.be/sOMn8jLjVLE).

 At the February action in Raleigh, five general demands were articulated as guides for their spring activism. While economic, political, and historical forces vary from state to state the demands can serve as a model for action elsewhere as well. The North Carolina demands are:

• Secure pro-labor, anti-poverty policies that insure economic sustainability;
• Provide well-funded, quality public education for all;
• Stand up for the health of every North Carolinian by promoting health care access and environmental justice across all the state's communities;
• Address the continuing inequalities in the criminal justice system and ensure equality under the law for every person, regardless of race, class, creed, documentation or sexual preference;
• Protect and expand voting rights for people of color, women, immigrants, the elderly and students to safeguard fair democratic representation.

The Twenty-First Century Poor People’s Campaign

        The twenty-first century Poor People’s Campaign, around which Barber and Liz Theoharis of the Kairos Center are organizing, takes the Moral Mondays campaign to another level. Moral Mondays was about state level issues. It concentrated on domestic policy. It awakened progressives to the critical idea that most of the anti-people policies of the last decade supported by reactionary billionaires like the Koch Brothers, were instituted at the state level. Therefore, Moral Mondays began, appropriately, as a series of state campaigns. Now, Barber suggests, there is a need to take the struggle to the entire nation. Local, national, and international issues are connected. Anti-racist, antisexist, anti-worker policies at the state level are connected to similar developments at the national level. AND, all these issues have global dimensions as well.

         This new necessity led naturally to reflections on the last project initiated by Dr. Martin Luther King in the spring of 1968, a Poor People’s Campaign. This was a national campaign organized by and for the poor in America, today representing about 40 percent of the population. The specific program was to organize a march/rally/occupation of Washington D.C. to demand an end to poverty in America. Dr. King, in his famous speech at Riverside Church one year earlier articulated the fundamental interconnections, the fusion, of three primary structural problems in America: poverty, racism, and militarism.

 Sixty years later, Reverend Barber is calling on progressives to join in a common struggle, led by the poor and oppressed, to challenge these three evils. Rev. Barber, therefore, has been traveling across the United States beginning a conversation about and training for a 2018 Poor People’s Campaign. He is calling upon 1,000 people from each of 25 states and the District of Columbia to commit to train for and engage in civil disobedience to bring the triad of evils to the attention of the public. And he emphasizes repeatedly that the campaign is not just about changing attitudes but changing institutions and policies.

 The optics of the rally at the Saint Gabriel’s Church of God reflected the movement Reverend Barber is building. Attendees were Black and white, young and old, women and men, and religious and secular. As to the latter point Barber cited scripture for the religious and the better parts of the US constitution for the secularists.

 Finally, Reverend Barber's speech on August 28 emphasized that there cannot be freedom without equality. There cannot be human rights without access to health care and education. And there cannot be economic justice at home while there is militarism overseas.

 The twenty-first century Poor People’s Campaign grounds today’s struggles in history; links democracy to economic change; connects social and economic justice; and connects a humane future in the United States to an end to war and the preparation for war. As Barber has written:

The fights for racial and economic equality are as inseparable today as they were half a century ago. Make no mistake about it: We face a crisis in America. The twin forces of white supremacy and unchecked corporate greed have gained newfound power and influence, both in statehouses across this nation and at the highest levels of our federal government. Sixty-four million Americans make less than a living wage, while millions of children and adults continue to live without access to healthcare, even as extremist Republicans in Congress threaten to strip access away from millions more. As our social fabric is stretched thin by widening income inequality, politicians criminalize the poor, fan the flames of racism and xenophobia to divide the poor, and steal from the poor to give tax breaks to our richest neighbors and budget increases to a bloated military. (William J. Barber II, “Rev. Barber: America Needs a New Poor People’s Campaign,” ThinkProgress, May 15, 2017.)

 

Assessing Fusion Politics and Multiracial Unity:  Critical Reflections and Hopes for the Future

 

If history is any guide, the prospects for success of a fusion politics model of organizing to end poverty, racism, and war are promising, but mixed.  America’s history of racism and racial distrust is a consistent threat to the potential of a sustained multiracial coalition.  As was the case more than 100 years ago in 1890s North Carolina, coalitions of poor whites and blacks, and now poor and marginalized people from myriad backgrounds, are at risk of coalition-raiding strategies that promise rewards to one group at the expense of others, making multiracial coalitions fragile and short-lived (Hamilton and Ture 1967). 

Scalability is another challenge confronting the new PPC.  Can 1,000 people in every state scale up into a movement of thousands or millions as would be necessary to capture the attention of the nation, particularly in Trump’s America?  The constant threat of state repression and violence that comes with the mobilization of what Jesse Jackson called the “locked-out” people during the height of the Rainbow Coalition could fracture and undermine the movement, scatter activists, and dampen momentum. The new PPC depends upon what appears to be a long-term strategy of organization building in states and across the nation.  History demonstrates that such a process could take years, decades, or even generations to build. In the absence of short-term policy or electoral wins, maintaining coalitions may very well become difficult. Finally, if governments at various levels simply ignore the actions of fusion organizers in favor of wealthy interests (see MacLean 2017), the effects of grassroots organizing may be very limited or nonexistent. 

 

That Americans seem to return to fusion organizing over and over across time signals a hopefulness about movements that extol us to “move forward together,” as did Barber’s Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina.  A mass movement built on the fusion of people from diverse backgrounds, organizations with varied missions and constituencies, and interconnected issues may be the only practical approach to counter the vast material resources of conservative wealthy elites.  The viability and sustainability of such an approach against such a well-resourced and entrenched opposition remain to be seen.

And Reverend Barber remembers Jesse Jackson.

https://www.democracynow.org/2026/2/18/jesse_jackson_william_barber_tribute_death

 

 

 

NELSON MANDELA RELEASED FROM PRISON ON FEBRUARY 11, 1990

Harry Targ

                                Al Jazeera

One of the ironies of 21^st century historical discourse is that despite significantly increased access to information, historical narratives are shaped by economic and political interest and ideology more than ever before. Widely distributed accounts about iconic political figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King stun those of us who are knowledgeable about the times in which these figures lived. Real historic figures get lionized, sanitized and most importantly redefined as defenders of the ongoing order rather than activists who committed their lives to revolutionary changes in the economic and political structures that exploit and oppress people. Most of the media reviews of the life and achievements of Nelson Mandela fit this model.

However, most of my remembrances of Nelson Mandela are different.

First, he committed his life to the cause of creating an economic and political system in his homeland that would provide justice for all people.

Second, Nelson Mandela was part of the great wave of revolutionary anti-colonial leaders who participated in the mass movements for change in the Global South in the 20^th century. These movements for independence led to the achievement of liberation for two-thirds of the world’s population from harsh, inhumane white minority rule. The campaign against apartheid in South Africa was part of this anti-colonial struggle. Mandela shared the vision of such figures as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharial Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah, Amical Cabral, Franz Fanon, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. These leaders were spokespersons for mass struggles that transformed the world in the 20^th century.

Third, Nelson Mandela gave voice and inspiration to young people in the Global North who sought peace and justice in their own societies. Mandela inspired movements that went beyond the struggle against racism and imperialism to address sexism and homophobia as well.

Fourth, Mandela made it clear to many of us (despite sanitized media frames) that he saw himself as part of the movements of people who themselves make history. He worked with all those who shared his vision of a just society: grassroots movements, the South African Communist Party (SACP), the South African labor movement (COSATU), the Black Consciousness Movement, and progressives from faith communities. To quote from Mandela’s first speech upon release from prison on February 11, 1990:

On this day of my release, I extend my sincere and warmest gratitude to the millions of my compatriots and those in every corner of the globe who have campaigned tirelessly for my release.

I send special greetings to the people of Cape Town, this city which has been my home for three decades. Your mass marches and other forms of struggle have served as a constant source of strength to all political prisoners.

I salute the African National Congress. It has fulfilled our every expectation in its role as leader of the great march to freedom.

I salute our President, Comrade Oliver Tambo, for leading the ANC even under the most difficult circumstances.

I salute the rank and file members of the ANC. You have sacrificed life and limb in the pursuit of the noble cause of our struggle.

I salute combatants of Umkhonto we Sizwe….who have paid the ultimate price for the freedom of all South Africans.

I salute the South African Communist Party for its sterling contribution to the struggle for democracy. You have survived 40 years of unrelenting persecution. 

I salute General Secretary Joe Slovo, one of our finest patriots. We are heartened by the fact that the alliance between ourselves and the Party remains as strong as it always was.

I salute the United Democratic Front, the National Education Crisis Committee, the South African Youth Congress, the Transvaal and Natal Indian Congresses and COSATU and the many other formations of the Mass Democratic Movement.

I also salute the Black Sash and the National Union of South African Students. We note with pride that you have acted as the conscience of white South Africa. Even during the darkest days in the history of our struggle you held the flag of liberty high. The large-scale mass mobilisation of the past few years is one of the key factors which led to the opening of the final chapter of our struggle.

I extend my greetings to the working class of our country. Your organised strength is the pride of our movement. You remain the most dependable force in the struggle to end exploitation and oppression…. 

I pay tribute to the many religious communities who carried the campaign for justice forward when the organisations for our people were silenced….

I pay tribute to the endless heroism of youth, you, the young lions. You, the young lions, have energised our entire struggle.

I pay tribute to the mothers and wives and sisters of our nation. You are the rock-hard foundation of our struggle. Apartheid has inflicted more pain on you than on anyone else.

On this occasion, we thank the world community for their great contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle. Without your support our struggle would not have reached this advanced stage. The sacrifice of the frontline states will be remembered by South Africans forever.

Finally, Nelson Mandela inspired many of us in our own ways to commit to the historical march of people to make a better world. 

CUBA SOLIDARITY ACTIVISTS CONTINUE TO DEMAND AN END TO THE ECONOMIC BLOCKADE AND THREATS OF WAR

 Harry Targ

 

        Wisconsin Coalition to Normalize Relations with Cuba (July, 2022)

 From an Internal Memorandum Circulated in the Eisenhower Administration Recommending Policies to Undermine the Popularity of the Cuban Revolution:

… every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d499

Sixty-six years after this memorandum was distributed in the Eisenhower Administration the policy now referred to as a “hybrid war” strategy against Cuba continues. The concept of hybrid wars suggests that while traditional warfare between nations has declined, warfare within countries has increased. Internal wars, the hybrid wars theorists suggest, are encouraged and supported by covert interventions, employing private armies, spies, and other operatives financed by outside nations like the United States. Also, the hybrid wars concept refers to the use of economic warfare, embargoes, and blockades, to bring down adversarial states and movements. The economic blockades of Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran are examples as are the US economic sanctions in place against over 30 additional countries. In short, the hybrid war concept suggests the carrying out of wars by other, less visible, means.

Despite the unending United States policy that is committed to undermining and overthrowing Cuba’s socialist revolution (and defeating a Hemisphere-wide growing resistance to United States domination), Cuban solidarity activists continue to organize in opposition to United States foreign policy. One enduring movement, Pastors for Peace (organized by the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization or IFCO), founded in 1967, has orchestrated campaigns of economic and political solidarity with peoples in the Global South. IFCO, led by people of color, connects religious and secular organizations that seek radical change in United States foreign policy.

Preeminent in IFCOs work has been the organization of caravans to bring material aid to Cuba from US communities and at the same time educating activists about the long, painful economic blockade enshrined in US policy since the Eisenhower Administration. “These caravans have delivered countless tons of humanitarian aid to the Cuban people” and have facilitated Cuba tours, construction brigades, speaking tours, and recruiting US citizens to study medicine at the Cuban international medical school, The Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM). And IFCO is one among many North American organizations in solidarity with Cuba.

 While the blockade continues, with its worsening impacts on the people,  Cuba continues to resist including providing medical personnel to peoples in danger all around the world. Comparative indicators of physical health of the entire Cuban population exceed those of lower income US citizens. All   Cubans have free health care (while the blockade has made medicines and equipment scarce) and education and modest but livable jobs and income.  But United States foreign policy remains what it was in 1960; starve the Cuban people into submission.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/intejcubastud.7.1.0016?seq=1

 

 

 

 

OPEN BORDERS: A PROGRESSIVE RESPONSE TO THE IMMIGRATION CRISIS: An Update

 Harry Targ

(Taking a modified "world system perspective,'" we are led to view human migration as a global process that is intimately connected to the global political economy, particularly the mobility of capital and war (now hybrid). This requires us to understand that millions of people yearly flee violence and starvation. This migration, really as integral to global reality as the nation-state system is intimately connected to the US and the global political economy. In sum, migration is a foreign policy issue and a political economy issue, Vijay Prashad updates the story as follows:  
https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/migration-underdevelopment/)

Why Migration

People migrate from one place to another for a variety of reasons. A good part of that migration has to do with international relations, national economies, and the increasingly globalized economy. Literally millions of people have moved from one geographic space to another in the twenty-first century, in most cases for reasons of physical fear or economic need. Two prominent causes that “push” people to leave their communities and homeland relate to “hybrid wars” and neoliberal globalization.

Hybrid wars refer to the long-term policies of imperial powers to systematically undermine political regimes that pursue policies and goals that challenge their global hegemony. Over long periods of time imperial powers have used force, covert operations, supporting pliant local elites, and funneling money to disrupt local political processes. If targeted countries still reject outside interference the imperial power uses force to overthrow recalcitrant governments. In the 1980s all these tactics were used by the United States to crush revolutionary ferment in Central America. Of course, the US hybrid war strategy has been a staple of United States policy in the region ever since President Franklin Roosevelt declared the policy of “The Good Neighbor.”

 Neoliberalism  refers to the variety of policies that rich capitalist countries and international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization have imposed on debt-ridden poor countries. These policies require poor countries to cut back on public services, deregulate their economies, reduce tariffs that protect their own industries and agriculture, and in other ways insist that poor countries open their economies to foreign investment and trade penetration. The impacts of neoliberalism have been to impose austerity on largely marginalized populations. Their agriculture and industries have been undermined by subsidized agribusinesses from the Global North and global investors. Since the initiation of neoliberal policies in the 1970s gaps between rich and poor nations and rich and poor people within nations have grown all across the world, with a few exceptions such as China.

In sum, peoples everywhere have experienced the creation of repressive regimes and economic policies that have shifted vast majorities from modest survival to deep poverty. (Susan Jonas once wrote that the Guatemalan people lived more secure lives before the arrival of Spanish colonizers in the fifteenth century than ever since). The globalization of the economy, increased violence and repression within countries (largely involving United States interference), increasing income and wealth inequality and poverty, and the rise of repressive regimes everywhere, has led to massive emigration. Some estimates indicate that 37 million people left their home countries (some 45 countries) between 2010 and 2015 for humanitarian reasons.

One of the ironies of world history is that capital in the form of investments, trade, the purchase of natural resources, the globalization of production, and military interventions have been common and necessary features of capitalism since its emergence in the sixteenth century. But, paradoxically, and except for the global slave trade and selected periods of history, the movement of people has been illegal. (Sometimes branding migrants as “illegal” has been a device to cheapen their labor). The idea of national sovereignty has been used to justify categorizing some human migrants as “illegal.” If capital is and has been legal, the movement of people should be legal as well. It makes no sense, nor is it humane, to brand any human beings as “illegal.”

The Concept of Open Borders

This sketchy analysis of the “root causes” of emigration suggest the need to oppose imperialism, both in the form of hybrid wars and promotion of neoliberal economic policies. This traditional task of peace and anti-imperialist campaigns is ongoing and needs to continue. And the analyses of the deleterious effects of hybrid wars and neoliberalism should be linked to movements fighting against  cruel and inhumane immigration policies in recipient countries, such as the United States. In addition, drawing on history, law, ethics, and a humane and socialist vision of the universality of humankind, progressives should expand on a conversation raised by some about the concept of “open borders.”

The idea of open borders has not been sufficiently discussed as the immigration crisis in the United States and Europe has unfolded. The core concept, with much room for discussion of implementation, suggests that, as a recently endorsed Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) statement calls for, there should be an “uninhibited transnational free movement of people….and a pathway to citizenship for all non-citizen residents.”  The idea of open borders implies that no human being by virtue of her/his presence in any geographic space can be defined as “illegal” and that the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights apply to everyone, everywhere.

In a 2017 article Aisha Dodwell, Global Justice Now, wrote in defense of open borders (Aisha Dodwell, “7 Reasons Why We should Have Open Borders,”   New Internationalist, November 29, 2017, https://newint.org/blog/2017/11/29/why-open-borders) . Among her arguments are the following:

-Borders are tools to separate the rich and powerful from the poor.

-Borders do not stop efforts to emigrate but exacerbate violence against already victimized people.

-Immigrants are erroneously blamed for declining employment and jobs when, in fact, it is the demonization of immigrants that divides workers from each other.

-Open borders would allow for emigres to return home when the brutal repressive and economic conditions that led them to flee were reduced.

-Open borders would lead to greater employment, increased earnings, rising demand for goods and services, and through income repatriation, more money sent back to families in countries the emigres fled. In short, open borders would be a stimulus for economic growth in both the country of origin and the host country of emigres.

-Open borders would mean the equalization of the rights of people to emigrate; thus avoiding the current policies that allow for immigration of certain populations (such as skilled workers) and not others.

-Historically, open borders have always existed for corporations, banks, the super-rich, tourists and other select populations who are beneficiaries of the global capitalist system.

Earlier Roque Planes, Latino Voices, (“16 Reasons Why Opening Our Borders Makes More Sense Than Militarizing Them,” Huffpost, September 2, 2014, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/open-borders_n_5737722?guccounter ) adds to the list of reasons justifying open borders. Planes quotes an immigration expert who has argued that, with glaring exceptions such as Asians, open borders existed until the 1920s. “‘Legally’ meant something very different then than it does now. At the time, the United States accepted practically everyone who showed up with few restrictions other than the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and a brief health examination. The foreign-born share of the population, 12.9 percent, is lower today than it was during the entire period from 1860 to 1920, according to data published by the Brookings institution.”

Planes posited arguments pertaining to open borders:

-Today capital and goods flow across borders but not always labor.

-Rich people have the privilege of open borders.

-the US immigration system is broken.

-Open borders within the European Union, while increasingly volatile politically, did not lead to the collapse of European economies.

-‘Illegal’ immigration is a direct resultant of US policies. Planes sites overthrowing governments, financing militaries in poor countries, promoting policies that destroy domestic agriculture in poor countries, and, he could have added, the war on drugs.

-Open borders increase the possibility of immigrants returning to their homelands.

-Immigrants, in the main, are not the cause of stagnant wages in the United States. Using anti-immigrant and racist policies divert attention from the primary causes of economic exploitation.

-The broken immigration system has provided huge profits for the prison/industrial complex and large budgets for law enforcement agencies.

As to the last point, Todd Miller, Empire of Borders: The Expansion if the U.S. Border Around the World,  Verso Books, 2019, argues that United States policy is “pushing out the border,” such that allies tighten their own borders to serve the needs of expanding imperial control. In addition, by pressuring other countries to tighten their own border security, the U.S. is expanding its border security apparatus, to include new special forces and expansion of State Department and other agency activities. 

A reviewer of Miller’s book, (Cora Currier, Pushing out the Border: How the U.S. is Waging a Global War on Migration,”  Portside, August 4, 2019, https://portside.org/2019-08-04/pushing-out-border-now-us-waging-global-war-migration) quotes Miller who writes that U.S. Customs and Border Protection “has trained new patrol and homeland security units for Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan borders.” The reviewer points out from Miller’s study that “…the U.S. Department of Homeland Security can be found assisting border projects in the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, India, Poland, Turkey, and Vietnam.” In addition the Border Patrol has offices in Mexico and Canada and a presence in Puerto Rico to oversee the Caribbean. Quoting Miller: “Hundreds of millions in U.S. funds have flowed to Central American borders to turn them into U.S.-style defensible zones.” And soldiers from around the world are flown to the U.S. southwest to gain experience in border control. Clearly, Miller is describing a growing military/corporate/immigration complex. The ideological glue justifying this massive enterprise are claims about national sovereignty and presumed racist threats that people fleeing repression and starvation represent.

What To Do?

Along with the panoply of proposals for immigration reform, campaigns to combat racism, and the movements to provide sanctuary to desperate migrant peoples, progressives need to look at the history/ theory/ and practice of anti-immigrant policies. A central conclusion that needs to be raised is to call and work for open borders as suggested by the DSA resolution on open borders.

In sum central elements of a truly radical and humane response to the immigration crisis in the United States and the world should include:

-Increased efforts to challenge imperialism everywhere in both its political/military dimensions and its intrusive neoliberal economic policies

-Rejection of the idea that people can be deemed “illegal.”

-Mobilizing around the concept of opening borders to people fleeing repression and economic deprivation, similar to the U.S immigration policies of the early part of the twentieth century.

-Using the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a guide to law and practice all across the globe.

-Revitalizing programs of humanitarian assistance on a global basis including revisiting the possible value of instituting economic regulations of global capitalism that were once proposed in the United Nations, referred to as “The   New International Economic Order.”

-Work to dismantle the military/corporate/immigration complex.

While these larger demands will be difficult to achieve, working for them and articulating a vision of the world where human beings are not deemed illegal will add clarity to the reasons behind more modest demands for reform.