Thursday, August 25, 2016
Sunday, August 21, 2016
THE MEANINGS OF FERGUSON AND MILWAUKEE
(Portions of this essay, “The
Meanings of Ferguson,” appeared on August 20, 2014 in Diary of a Heartland
Radical).
Harry Targ
In addressing violence, researchers,
educators, journalists and religious leaders have usually concentrated on its
most visible forms: murder and war. The central features of such violence
include physical assault and killing. In our own day terrorism has joined war
as the most popular common subject for study.
Over the years, peace educators have
developed intellectual tools to uncover more diverse meanings of violence,
their differences and their connections. Structural violence has been
distinguished from direct violence. Researchers continue to analyze direct
violence, physical assault and killing, but also study structural violence, the
various forms of human suffering that take more time; impose pain, sickness,
depression, and death on populations; and are perpetuated by leading
institutions and relationships in society. Structural violence includes economic inequality, low wages and poverty,
inadequate access to health care and education, and the psychological damage
that economic suffering causes. These
injustices, the concept of structural violence suggests, are embedded in
economic, social, and political institutions.
It is possible to disaggregate
further the structural violence that is embedded in institutions. Institutional
violence refers to unequal distribution
of power and influence in major societal institutions: political, criminal justice, and educational, for
example.
Finally, cultural violence refers to the images, symbols, and educational
materials that value some population groups over others. Culture refers to the
public consciousness of history, traditions, and popular narratives that
describe people. Stereotypes are short-hand representations of a culture.
In total then violence is direct,
structural, institutional, and cultural. These kinds of violence may occur
separately but in most cases are inextricably connected. It is this fourfold
conception of violence that is relevant to the crisis that unfolded in
Ferguson, Missouri.
Ferguson, Missouri 2014
The tragedy of Ferguson, Missouri
came to national attention because of direct violence. A Ferguson policeman
shot and killed an unarmed young African American male. In response to the
collective expression of community outrage that followed, the local police
initiated a multi-day barrage of tear gas, strong-arm arrests, and threatening
street protestors with military vehicles and loaded rifles. The images on
television screens nationwide were of a people under assault, parallel to
Israeli bombings in Gaza and United States targeted air strikes in Iraq. The
fear that young African American males in Ferguson have historically felt every
time they stepped into the streets of their city escalated since the killing of
Michael Brown.
Beyond the threat of direct violence
in Ferguson is structural violence, less visible but as important. Brookings
Institute researcher Elizabeth Kneebone (“Ferguson, Mo. Emblematic of Growing
Suburban Poverty,” brookings.edu,
August 15, 2014) reported that the community of Ferguson experienced a qualitative
economic decline over the decade before the shooting. The city’s unemployment
rate increased from 5 percent in 2000 to 13 percent by 2010. Earnings of community
members declined by one-third. One-fourth of the population was living in
poverty.
Kneebone indicated that poverty
rates have doubled in suburban neighborhoods surrounding the 100 largest cities
in the United States. “By 2008-2012, 38 percent of poor residents lived in the
neighborhoods with poverty rates of 20 percent or higher. For poor black
residents in those communities, the figure was 53 percent.” Of course, poverty
is highly related to declining schools, inadequate access to health care,
lessened prospects for jobs, and large-scale youth unemployment.
Institutional violence is reflected
in a 300-year history of slavery and racism. Professor Clarissa Hayward,
Washington University, said: “The St. Louis metropolitan area has been an
extreme example of racial segregation for 100 years.” She pointed out that St.
Louis geographically was at the nexus of the South, the Midwest, and the West
and added: “The practices and politics of St. Louis created the problems that
underlie the tension that boiled out in Ferguson this week.” (Puneet Kollipara,
“Wonkbook: The Social and Economic Story Behind the Unrest in Ferguson,” Wonkblog, The Washington Post, August 18, 2014).
In terms of the Ferguson political
system, two-thirds of the community is Black and the local government has been
almost all white. At the time of the shooting of Michael Brown, five of six
city council members were white, the Mayor was white, and six of seven school
board members were white. And fifty of 53 police officers were white.
Finally, cultural violence addresses
the issue of ideology, consciousness, images of the other, and additional ways
in which whites see African-Americans. Racist culture socializes the dominant
class and race to reflect its superiority. For example, Missouri Lt. Governor
Peter Kinder said shortly after the shooting: “That’s one of the great advances
of Anglo-American civilization, that we do not have politicized trials. We let
the justice system work it out.” The mayor of Ferguson declared that his
community was free of racism.
Since the killing of Michael Brown
in Ferguson, police and politicians organized a campaign to demonize the victim
of the police killing. The tall young man, an African-American, was a robber, a
drug consumer, and violence-prone. Also, the days of protest in Ferguson were
framed to privilege the peaceful, religious, mourning adults and to explain
night-time violence not as police violence but violence perpetrated by outside
agitators from New York, Chicago, and California. The fact that young African
Americans left their houses at their own risk could not, the frame implies,
engender outrage.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 2016
And in August, 2016 Milwaukee, by
many measures the most segregated and racist big city in the United States,
experienced the police shooting of Sylville K. Smith followed by two days of
frustrated rebellion by some residents of the Sherman Park neighborhood. State
violence, poverty, and racial segregation have created a tinderbox of
frustration and anger in that city. According to a 2015 NPR report, the state
of Wisconsin invests more in prisons than education, incarcerating a higher
percentage of Black men than anywhere in the country. “…in Milwaukee County
more than half of all Black men in their 30s and 40s have served time.” In one
zip code alone 62 percent of Black men have been incarcerated for some time by
the age of 34. The prison population of the state has tripled since 1990.
NPR also quoted a study finding that
Milwaukee has the second highest black poverty rate in the country with an unemployment
rate four times higher than whites (Kenay Downs, “Why is Milwaukee So Bad for
Black People?” NPR, March 5, 2015). A Madison, Wisconsin group, the Young, Gifted, and Black Coalition, after
defining the idea of a “neighborhood,” found that 31 of Wisconsin’s 56 Black neighborhoods
are jails and an additional 21 neighborhoods are apartment complexes or section
8 housing or both. Prisons and poverty dominate the life of Black communities
(YGB, “31 of Wisconsin’s 56 Black Neighborhoods are Jails,”
Summing up the situation in Milwaukee, Alderman
Khalif Rainey said: “The Black people of Milwaukee are tired. They’re tired of
living under this oppression. This is their life.” (Tanzina Vega, “Milwaukee’s
Staggering Black-White Economic Divide,” CNN
Money, August 17, 2016, money cnn.com).
So from police violence--killing,
gassing, beating--to economic despair, to lack of political representation to
cultural rationales for state violence, the basic characteristics of American
society are uncovered. And once again, the victimization of people of color, as
well as workers, and women, suggest the following conclusions:
--the root cause of exploitation,
racism, and sexism is structural violence (capitalism).
--physical violence is used to crush
rebellion against class exploitation and racism.
--unrepresentative political
institutions are dominated by the wealthy and powerful.
--dominant cultural stereotypes and
specific narratives about society reinforce the economic system, the political
system, and justify the police violence in the St. Louis area, Milwaukee and
all around the United States.
Black Lives Matter
But between Ferguson and Milwaukee a
new social movement has emerged, Black Lives Matter, led by young women and men
representing over 60 organizations around the country. Recently they issued a
powerful programmatic statement “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for
Black Power, Freedom, and Justice, The Movement for Black Lives
(POLICY.M4BL.org). It presented six demands, each with detailed
recommendations:
-End the War on Black People
-Reparations
-Divest-Invest
-Economic Justice
-Community Control
-Political Power
These demands represent African Americans,
Women, Workers, and all oppressed peoples. They address direct violence—Stop
the Killing—and structural violence—Redistribute Wealth and Income, Political
Power, and Opportunity for Human Development for All. The struggles continue.
Saturday, August 13, 2016
Fidel Castro at 90: US/CUBAN RELATIONS, THE ROAD AHEAD
Harry Targ
And
yet Americans are more ignorant of the nature of the Cuban Revolution and
U.S.-Cuban relations than are the people of almost any other country in the
world. Except for those few Americans with access to a handful of liberal and
radical publications the people of this country have been subjected to an
unrelieved campaign of distortion, or outright slander of Fidel Castro and the
revolution he leads. The determined hostility of American leaders to the Cuban
Revolution, the implementation of a system of economic harassment, and the
threat of military intervention, not only endanger the Cuban Revolution, but
increase the tempo of the cold war at home and abroad (Editors, “The Cuban Revolution: The New Crisis in Cold War
Ideology,” Studies on the Left,
Volume 1, Number, 1960, 1).
This statement was published in the
summer of 1960! Fifty-six years later the same assessment of the Cuban revolution
is still widely believed in the United States, even by those who support the
ending of United States hostility to the island nation.
The story of the Cuban revolution
needs to be retold as we move ahead to establish a new United States/Cuban
relationship.
Cuba was a colony of the Spanish for
400 years, an economic vassal of the British and the United States for more than
100 years, and a slave state from the fifteenth century to the end of the
nineteenth century.
The domination of the island by
foreigners, juxtaposed with a culture enriched by African roots (the indigenous
people were largely obliterated by the Spanish), led to repeated efforts to
resist colonialism before 1898 and neo-colonialism after that. Slaves,
Afro/Cubans, and Spanish born landowners seeking freedom from the Spanish crown
often rose up to overthrow the yoke of imperialism.
Cuban Revolutionaries, inspired by
visionary poet Jose Marti, were on the verge of defeating Spanish colonialism
in the 1890s. The United States sent armies to the island to defeat the Spanish
and establish a puppet government to insure its economic and political control. To secure support for the war at home the
American media and popular music were filled with images of Cuba as the “damsel
in distress” and bungling Afro/Cuban revolutionaries. The dominant ideology of
the United States, manifest destiny and white Christian duty, drove the
argument for war on Spain.
After the 1898 war, the United
States military, with the support of small numbers of compliant Cubans, created
a government that would open the door completely for United States investments,
commercial penetration, an externally-controlled tourist sector, and North
American gangsters. The U.S. neo-colonial regime on the island stimulated
pockets of economic development in a sea of human misery. Responding to
grotesque economic suffering in the 1950s a band of revolutionaries (led by
Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, Celia Sanchez, and Haydee
Santamaria) defeated the U.S. backed military regime of Fulgencio Batista.
The Cuban Revolution of 1959 began
in the nineteenth century and was driven by 400 years of nationalism, a vision
of democracy, and a passion for economic justice. This vision was articulated
in Fidel Castro’s famous “History Will Absolve Me” speech presented before
being sentenced to prison after a failed military action against Batista in 1953.
He spoke of five goals of his revolution: returning power to the people; giving
land to the people who work it; providing workers a significant share of
profits from corporations; granting sugar planters a quota of the value of the
crop they produce; and confiscating lands acquired through fraud. Then he said,
the Revolution would carry out agrarian reform, nationalize key sectors of the
economy, institute educational reforms, and provide a decent livelihood for
manual and intellectual labor.
The
problem of the land, the problem of industrialization, the problem of housing,
the problem of unemployment, the problem of education and the problem of the
people’s health: these are the six problems we would take immediate steps to
solve, along with restoration of civil liberties and political democracy (Fidel Castro, “ History Will Absolve Me,” Castro Internet
Archive, www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953).
Almost immediately the
revolutionaries who had seized power in January, 1959 began to implement the
program envisioned by the Castro speech. Over the next fifty years, with heated
debates inside Cuba, experiments--some successful, some failed--were carried
out. Despite international pressures and the changing global political economy,
much of the program has been institutionalized to the benefit of most
Cubans.
Education and health care are free
to all Cubans. Basic, but modest, nutritional needs have been met. Cubans have
participated in significant political discussion about public policy. And Cuban
society has been a laboratory for experimentation. In the 1960s Cubans
discussed whether there was a need for monetary incentives to motivate work or
whether revolutionary enthusiasm was sufficient to maintain production. Debates
occurred over the years also about whether a state-directed economy, a mixed
one, or some combination would best promote development; how to engage in
international solidarity; and whether there was a need to affiliate with super
powers such as the former Soviet Union. Central to the Cuban model is the
proposition that when policies work they get institutionalized; when they fail
they get changed.
The United States reaction to the
Cuban Revolution has been as the Studies
on the Left article warned in 1960. U.S. policy has included military
invasions, sabotage, assassination attempts on the life of Fidel Castro, an
economic blockade, subversion including beaming propaganda radio and television
broadcasts to the island, efforts to isolate Cuba from the international
system, restrictions on United States travelers to the island, listing Cuba as
a state sponsor of terrorism, and in the long-run most importantly portraying
in government statements and the mass media the image of Cuba as a totalitarian
state that oppresses its people.
On December 17, 2014 President Raul
Castro and Barack Obama announced that the U.S./Cuban relationship would
change. The United States and Cuba,
President Obama said, would begin negotiations to reestablish diplomatic
relations, open embassies, and move to eliminate the U.S. economic blockade and
restrictions on American travel to the island. This announcement was broadly celebrated
by nations everywhere, the Pope who had lobbied Washington for the policy
change, and Americans and Cubans alike. Of course, in both countries there were
skeptics and the strong and vocal Cuban-American lobby immediately condemned
the announced policy changes.
Since December, 2014 the United
States and Cuba have been negotiating the announced normalization of relations
and several steps have been taken by both countries including:
-freeing the last three of the Cuban Five by
the United States and the release by Cuba of U.S. agents Roland Sarraff
Trujillo and Alan Gross from Cuban prisons
-easing restrictions on remittances
from Cuban/American families to relatives on the island
-using executive action in the
United States to loosen restrictions on American travel to Cuba and
reestablishing the capacity for banking connections with the island
-authorizing flights from the United
States to Cuba by multiple airlines
-giving authority to some companies
to invest in small businesses in Cuba and the increase in trade of selected
U.S. commodities, primarily agricultural products and building materials
-taking Cuba off the State
Department list of sponsors of terrorism
And President Obama deliberated with
President Raul Castro at the April, 2015 meeting of the Summit of the Americas
in Panama, communicating the image of the return to normal diplomatic
relations.
Finally, Presidents Obama and Raul
Castro reestablished formal diplomatic relations in the spring, 2016.
However, much needs to be done to
complete the normalization of diplomatic relations. The U.S. economic embargo has not been
lifted. The Helms-Burton Act, which prohibits foreign companies from having
commercial relations with the island and then the United States, has not been
repealed. And in 2015 the House of Representatives passed a resolution that
challenges President Obama’s executive authority to expand the categories of
U.S. citizens who can travel to Cuba without applying for a license from the
Treasury Department. In addition, many issues of relevance to the two countries
such as those involving immigration, control of drug trafficking, and
cooperation on disaster relief are yet to be resolved.
Most Americans, including
Cuban/Americans, support the full normalization of relations. But a small
number of politicians from both political parties who oppose normalization of
relations are using their legislative and public political leverage to reverse
the will of the American and Cuban people. One example is the misrepresentation
of the case of Assata Shakur, who has lived in Cuba for over thirty years.
Shakur, a former member of the Black Panther Party was tried and convicted on
dubious grounds of murdering a police officer in New Jersey and who fled to
Cuba in 1984, is being used by anti-Cuban activists to resist the normalization
of relations, claiming that Cuba is harboring “terrorists.”
The dramatic gestures by Presidents
Obama and Castro have set the stage for the normalization of diplomatic
relations, but more work needs to be done.
First, activists must continue to
pressure their legislators to repeal the Helms-Burton Act and oppose any
efforts by their peers to re-impose legislation that will stop the process of change.
Lobbying should be complemented by rallies and marches. Support should be given
to those organizations which have been in the front lines of Cuba Solidarity
for years such as Pastors for Peace. In addition, people to people exchanges,
community to community outreach, and high school and university study abroad
programs should be encouraged.
Second, those in solidarity with the
Cuban Revolution should support economic reforms being introduced on the island
that reflect the best principles of the Cuban Revolution: independence,
democracy, and human well-being. The clearest manifestation of these principles
is reflected in the development of work place cooperatives in both cities and
the countryside. Cubans are being encouraged to engage in work that produces
goods and services for their communities in ways that empower workers and
decentralize production and decision-making. Educating the American public to
the fact that Cuba is embarking on new economic arrangements that encourage
work place democracy contradict the media image that the people are embracing
entrepreneurial capitalism.
Third, the solidarity movement
should continue the process of public education about Cuba, explaining the
realities of Cuban history, celebrating Cuban accomplishments in health care
and education, and recognizing the richness and diversity of Cuban culture.
Ironically, despite the long and often painful relationship the Cuban people
have had with the United States, the diversity of the two nation’s cultures are
inextricably connected. That shared experience should be celebrated.
Finally, solidarity with the Cuban
people provides an opportunity to educate Americans to the reality that the
United States is not “the indispensable nation,” but one among many with
virtues and flaws. Cubans have celebrated their own history and culture but
have done so without disrespecting the experiences of other nations and
peoples. We in the United States could learn from that perspective.
(Revised from a June
19, 2015 essay to celebrate the 90th birthday of Fidel Castro).
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
"AMERICA NEVER WAS AMERICA TO ME": From the Black Panther Party to Black Lives Matter
Harry Targ
O,
yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!
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)
Fifty years ago, 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. And with growing violence against
the community by the police the BPP advocated collective self-defense.
Fifty years later a new movement, Black Lives
Matter, has emerged to address the unfulfilled dreams articulated in the BPP
vision. The immediate impetus for BLM, as with the BPP, was defense against
state violence. Mass incarceration, criminalization, indiscriminant police
killings, creating police occupation armies with high technology weapons, and
growing economic devastation of whole communities in 2016 very much parallels
the racism that motivated Newton and Seale to pick up the pen and the gun in
1966. Economic inequality; massive poverty; lack of access to quality
education, healthcare, housing, transportation; and political marginalization
plague African Americans today almost as much as was the case fifty years ago.
Black Lives Matter issued a detailed platform on
August 1, 2016 resulting from the deliberations of at least 50 organizations whose
membership includes thousands of Black people around the country. It comes at a
time when the visible incidences of police violence have been experienced
everywhere and young women and men have been hitting the streets expressing
their outrage. The capsule summary of “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands
for Black Power, Freedom, and Justice” includes six core demands (The Movement
for Black Lives, Portside, August 4,
2016; the BLM website is policy.m4bl.org):
End
the war on Black people
Reparations
Invest-Divest
Economic
Justice
Community
Control
Political
Power
Since so many of the problems that animated the rise
of the Black Panther Party unfortunately still exist, the core demands of Black
Lives Matter remain all too familiar. But, in addition to the remaining core
problems of racism, white supremacy, capitalist exploitation, and police
violence the more recent statement wisely expands its vision and agenda. For
example, the introduction to the document declares that “We believe in
elevating the experiences and leadership of the most marginalized Black people,
including but not limited to those who are women, queer, trans, femmes, gender
nonconforming, Muslim, formerly and currently incarcerated, cash poor and
working class, differently-abled, undocumented, and immigrant. We are
intentional about amplifying the particular experience of state and gendered
violence that Black queer, trans, gender nonconforming women and intersex
people face.”
The statement acknowledges its domestic focus but
declares that “Patriarchy, exploitative capitalism, militarism, and white
supremacy know no borders. We stand in solidarity with our international family
against the ravages of global capitalism and anti-Black racism, human-made
climate change, war, and exploitation.”
Perhaps the greatest contribution that the BLM
platform makes is in its detailed 40 demands for change, each of which comes
with an explanation and policy proposals. Whereas the BPP platform concentrates
on a critique and demands for revolutionary changes, the BLM platform adds
doable intermediate changes in public policy. “We recognize that not all of our
collective needs and visions can be translated into policy, but we understand
that policy change is one of many tactics necessary to move us toward the world
we envision….We are dreamers and doers.”
And the BLM movement recognizes that it is linked to
the long history of struggle for liberation. “This agenda continues the legacy
of our ancestors who pushed for reparations, Black self-determination, and community
control, and also propels new iterations of movements such as efforts for
reproductive justice, holistic healing and reconciliation…” (A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for
Black Power, Freedom and Justice, policy.m4bl.org).
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