We Want Freedom

In The Spirit Of Crazy Horse

John Trudell

February 15, 1946 – December 8, 2015

"We have power... Our power isn’t in a political system, or a religious system, or in an economic system, or in a military system; these are authoritarian systems... they have power... but it’s not reality. The power of our intelligence, individually or collectively IS the power; this is the power that any industrial ruling class truly fears: clear coherent human beings."

We Must Bear Witness

Why do we remember this day? Why do we continue to teach about the Holocaust? How can we possibly expect people to understand what happened in this organized genocide, seeking to "purify" the world and wipe Jews off the face of the Earth?

We remember the anniversaries of the Holocaust and we teach about it because the Holocaust is the possible. How can we expect people to learn from history if we don't teach it? How can we ensure such evil never again rears its head if we don't know about it?

Text excerpted from Why We Must Remember Kristallnacht by Hannah Rosenthal

It Can Be Done!

During the 20th century, all kinds of revolutionary processes took place. Some of these revolutions were triumphant while others were defeated. The most important of these revolutionary processes was the Russian Revolution on October 25 - November in the Gregorian calendar during the Tsarist Empire.  Among some of the main topics of discussion amongst fighters and revolutionaries around the world are the characteristics, lessons and further development of the Russian Revolution.

In 1917, Russia was ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship of the Tsars. As a result of the feudal system under existence, millions of peasants lived in poverty, backwardness and ignorance. However, in some cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow, there was a young industrial working class. Meanwhile, the tsarist empire was fighting in the First World War on the side of England and France.

During the war years, an untenable hardship affected the whole population in Russia in particular the masses of peasants and workers in the army who suffered the brunt of food scarcity and misery. In St. Petersburg, a growing discontent led to a successful insurrection which overthrew the Tsar. Afterwards, a weak provisional government led by Kerensky in an alliance formed  by the party of the Russian bourgeoisie and the conciliatory parties that led the workers and peasants such as the Mensheviks (reformist social democrats) and the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries. At the same time, democratic bodies of the masses, workers, soldiers and peasants in struggle (Soviets) which had first appeared in the 1905 Revolution, reemerged. By then, Bolshevik Party under the direction of Lenin and Trotsky was no longer in the minority and began to grow.

The Insurrection

The Provisional Government led by Kerensky did not address any of the serious problems that affected workers and peasants. In fact, Russia continued its involvement in the war, land was not being distributed to the peasantry, there was no bread in the cities and the government did not fulfill its election promises. Within the Soviets, popular discontent with the conciliatory parties was on the rise. Thus, the Bolshevik Party was becoming increasingly influential. By late September, the Bolshevik Party had among its ranks almost all of the Soviet delegates in St. Petersburg and Moscow and directed the main army regiments. In early October, the Bolshevik Party leadership came to the conclusion that the political conditions were ripe for the Soviets to overthrow Kerensky and take power. A section of the Social Revolutionary Party joined the insurrectionary plan. Lenin, living in an underground refuge in Finland, followed the events step by step while Trotsky led the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.

On October 25, the Soviets took power. For the first time in history, a revolutionary government of workers and peasants which proclaimed the struggle for international socialism emerged out of the mobilization of the masses and workers’ democracy.

Early Years and Bureaucratization

Among some of the first actions taken by the Soviet government was the distribution of land, implementation of workers control in the factories and the creation of a long-delayed Constituent Assembly as well as Russia’s withdrawal from the imperialist war.

The Revolution was consolidating itself among those oppressed and exploited under the Tsarist regime. To crush the young Soviet republic, both the landed aristocracy and Russian bourgeoisie in alliance with imperialist powers started a bloody civil war. But the bourgeois counter-revolution was crushed thanks to the undaunted heroism of workers and peasants and the guidance of the Bolshevik Party by a principled leadership.

No other country produced a victory similar to the Russian Revolution in spite of a revolutionary wave that swept the rest of Europe. According to Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks, a Soviet Russia could only be maintained if it was part of a triumph of European and world socialist revolution.

However, the civil war weakened and isolated Russia, leading to a new political development when Stalin led a bureaucracy who had abandoned socialism and world revolution and destroyed workers’ democracy.

Lessons Of October

After Lenin’s death on January 1924, Trotsky continued to lead the resistance against Stalin while defending the program and the party of the world socialist revolution. In 1935, in 18th anniversary of the Revolution, Trotsky wrote that even though that first victory of socialism was completely swept and the Soviet Union (USSR) under Stalin was "almost unrecognizable" compared to the early years, the Revolution left invaluable experiences. "Loyalty to the revolutionary program, relentless hostility to the bourgeoisie, decisive break with the social patriots [the reformists of all kinds], and deep trust in the revolutionary force of the masses, these are the main lessons of October."

Are these lessons still valid today? Experience shows that they are indeed. The bourgeoisie sink the masses further into misery while conciliatory and reformist leaders betray workers and workers, peasants and all the oppressed are fighting and struggling all over the world. To end capitalism, and even to prevent it from returning in the hands of bureaucrats, it is necessary to defend the program and build the revolutionary party that allows for the definite triumph of socialism in every country and around the world, an internationalist and democratic socialism like the one that began to take its first steps in October 1917.

Article by Mercedes Petit

It Isn't Working

"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun."

Quote from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965

The S Word

Oxi Means Oxi!

"Solidarity from others oppressed by austerity policies everywhere is Greece's greatest need now. Real solidarity will also help to mobilize the forces everywhere that are coming to realize the deepening costs and injustices of accepting capitalism's continuation." -Richard D. Wolff

From Greece Needs Our Solidarity in Its Struggle Against Austerity (TurthOut, July 2015)

Lest We Forget

July 17th, 2015 marks the one-year anniversary of Eric Garner’s death after an NYPD chokehold. As of now, not a single person has been held responsible. On Saturday, July 18th, join the NYCLU and other civil rights groups to demand accountability and justice for Eric Garner’s family and all the other New Yorkers who have suffered from police abuse.

This Is A Working System!

"There’s this misguided myth that unions and management don’t get along. It’s a business bottom-line issue. Right-to-work is going to compromise my quality, my competitiveness. The unions are my partner. They’re almost like a screening agency. This is a working system. I have never understood this right-to-work agenda." -Bill Kennedy, Rock Road Companies

From Fate Of The Union (NY Times, June 2015)

Independence is my happiness

“When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government."

From Rights Of Man, 1791

Victory In LA

"Tuesday’s vote to raise Los Angeles’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020 is being called “the most significant victory so far” in the push to increase the minimum wage nationally. The City Council passed the ordinance 14-1, which will boost the current minimum of $9 in roughly $1 increments annually over the next five years. The first increase would happen in July 2016, boosting minimum wage to $10.50 an hour."

From The Atlantic, May 19th

Rocking The System

"At a time when 99 percent of all new income is going to the top one percent, and when the top one-tenth of the one percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, maybe its time for a political shakeup in this country and to go beyond establishment politics."

Quote from an interview with Bernie Sanders for ABC This Week, May 2015

Rise With Workers, Not Rise From Them

"Ten thousand times the labor movement has stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and deceived by politicians. But not withstanding all this and all these, labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun."

Never Forget The 145

"On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burned, killing 145 workers. It is remembered as one of the most infamous incidents in American industrial history, as the deaths were largely preventable — most of the victims died as a result of neglected safety features and locked doors within the factory building. The tragedy brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories, and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of workers."

Quote excerpted from History.com

Embrace The Alternative

"We must convince people that we need an alternative and we must convince them about what that alternative is. We need to stand up for the hundreds of millions of lives devastated by global capitalism. The abuses we saw in 2008 will happen over and over again as long as capitalism survives. And it is our job to break the cycle of capitalist exploitation of people and the ecosystem and save ourselves. This will only come about if we organize mass movements, if we build a radical political party and if we refuse to accept a system designed to subject the immense majority to misery so that a minority can pile up untold wealth." -Kshama Sawant

From The Most Dangerous Woman In America (TruthDig, March 2015)

This Makes Sense

"From the time I was kid, I saw the broader context of how we live here in the U.S. When I was twelve, I saw Edward R. Murrow’s Harvest Of Shame and that was it. It led me to uncover the image versus the reality of how people live. I then learned to pronounce "apartheid" and saw the treatment of blacks here in this country as they struggled for civil rights. It made me question deeply and ask myself: How can people like migrant workers who are helping us eat not have a pot to piss in? I started learning about countries that have a "share-the-wealth" system and I said to myself, There is nothing wrong with that. This makes sense.

Capitalism’s problem is that it has nothing to say about how to combat greed. For all the moralizing this country does, people don’t get it: They’re greedy. And it's gotten worse in my lifetime. You don’t even have to have socialism. I am talking about minimal things. Put money aside to fund playgrounds and high school football teams. Are you kidding me? The Grammy Awards has to make a plea to keep music in schools? I mean, what planet are we on? I guess I am asking another question in my work as well: What happened?"

From Lewis Black's interview in The Progressive, April 2007

Forever Night

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as god himself. Never."