This is yet another important public meeting on the fight for justice
against the banks and corporations along with their surrogates in the
state apparatus.
and the prison-industrial-complex related to the growth of militarization
of the police, the crises inthe current system is laid bare for all conscious
people to witness.
United States capitalism and imperialism is the primary source of the
wars of regime-change which are designed to perpetuate the dominate
role of Washington and Wall Street globally. In order to maintain this
position of hegemony internationally it is also necessary for the
ruling class to wage a war against the working class, nationally
oppressed and the poor on the domestic front as well.
However, before I discuss various aspects of the current crisis in
Detroit and its broader significance and implications, I want to pay
tribute to a leading fighter in the struggle for African Liberation
and Socialism and that is Jorge Risquet of the Communist Party of Cuba
who passed away just last week on September 28.
Risquet joined the revolutionary movement in Cuba in the early 1950s
and traveled to Guatemala during the period of the siege engineered by
the Eisenhower administration in 1954. He would serve in the youth
wing of the nationalist and anti-imperialist movement aimed at
overthrowing the neo-colonial regime of Batista who served as an agent
of Washington.
The Communist Party of Cuba was formed through the merger of
revolutionary nationalist and socialist forces in 1965. Risquet held
leading positions in the Party where he participated as a volunteer in
the Congo campaign of 1965 that was headed by Che Guevara. Although
the Congo effort was not successful, a decade later Cuba?s role in
Angola, beginning four decades ago, was critical in the total
liberation of that oil-rich former Portuguese colony as well as the
independence of the entire Southern Africa region.
Cuba sent over 300,000 of its own citizens to fight in Angola
alongside the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and
its military FAPLA in addition to the South West Africa People?s
Organization (SWAPO) and its military arm of the People?s Liberation
Army of Namibia (PLAN). Risquet served in Angola and would lead the
negotiating team in coalition with the MPLA Government against the
racist apartheid regime in South Africa which was supported by U.S.
imperialism under the Reagan and Bush administrations.
These negotiations backed up by the armed and organized masses of
Southern Africa won the right of national independence in Namibia and
the release of political prisoners in both Namibia and South Africa.
Namibia received its independence on March 21, 1990 just over a month
after Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa.
The African National Congress (ANC) embarked upon negotiations with
the apartheid regime, a process that lasted for over three years. In
1994, the ANC took power in South Africa after winning a solid
majority in the first non-racial elections in April of that year.
Nelson Mandela, who served over 27 years in the dungeon of the racist
regime in South Africa, became president of South Africa. All of these
monumental developments occurred with the interventions of peoples
throughout the world in conjunction with the role of revolutionary
Cuba.
U.S. Continues to Be on the Wrong Side of History
U.S. imperialism was on the wrong side of the Angolan and Southern
African liberation movements and the African Revolution overall. As it
was true then, it is so as well today.
The situation in Syria is a stark illustration of imperialism?s role
in the contemporary period. Russian air and cruise missile strikes can
only be viewed as defensive deployments aimed at strengthening the
government of President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. The U.S. and its
allies in NATO have been doing everything in their power to bring down
the Assad administration.
This was the same policy as what transpired in the North African state
of Libya where in 2015, after four years of neo-colonial war and
destabilization, the once proud nation bears very little resemblance
to its former self. Libya has gone from the most prosperous state in
Africa to the one that is in complete chaos and a source of
instability throughout the region.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants are being trafficked through Libya
across the Mediterranean into Southern and Eastern Europe in a manner
which some European Union leaders have described as being analogous to
the Atlantic Slave Trade. Under the unchecked militarized foreign
policy of Washington, this is the fate that awaits much of Africa, the
Middle East and the Asia-Pacific. Syria has four million displaced
persons and refugees scattered from inside the embattled country into
Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and other states.
In Yemen, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is
engineering another war that is almost completely hidden from the
American people. Thousands of Yemenis have been killed and tens of
thousands are wounded and injured. Millions more are without adequate
supplies of food, water, medical care and social services while Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) coalition continues to
bomb and conduct ground operations daily.
We must also mention recent developments in the West African state of
Burkina Faso where a coup by military elites was defeated through the
mass mobilization of the workers and youth along with pressure from
the regional and international communities. Burkina Faso under Capt.
Thomas Sankara, underwent a brief revolution during 1983-1987. Sankara
was assassinated by Blaise Compaore with the assistance of other
military figures that were leading figures in the presidential
security regiment (RSP) that staged the recent coup.
The people of Burkina Faso are committed to holding their national
elections and to disbanding the dreaded RSP.
Finally on the international scene, the National Union of Mineworkers
(NUM) in South Africa went out on strike in the coal industry two
weeks ago. A national strike in solidarity with NUM involved hundreds
of thousands of workers from broader sectors of the working class.
Consequently, the class struggle continues in Africa and the Middle
East and other parts of the world. These movements have a direct
impact on the situation in Detroit and throughout the U.S.
Detroit: The Political Economy of Post-Bankruptcy
In Detroit we have been shinning the light on the massive tax
foreclosures, auctions and eminent evictions facing tens of thousands
more residents who will be forced out of the city. The magnitude of
the crisis is unprecedented in the history of Wayne County and the
banks are at the source of the problem.
Our campaign earlier this year was successful in not only placing the
housing crisis within a political context but also winning an
extension of over two-and-a-half months allowing thousands to make
arrangements to pay their property taxes. Nonetheless, this is a
crisis that is totally unnecessary since the federal government had
sent $500 million to Michigan as part of a purported ?bailout program?
in the aftermath of the worse financial downturn since the Great
Depression.
These funds have been grossly misallocated and underspent. There is
still another $200 million sitting in Lansing that could wipe out the
entire delinquent tax bills in the city of Detroit. Yet the capitalist
politicians will not raise the issue because their banker bosses would
not appreciate them making such a suggestion.
These funds are being used to tear down homes rather than rehabilitate
structures keeping neighborhoods intact and rebuilding them. A rare
corporate media report this week pointed out that there is blatant
corruption taking place in the demolition process where the costs are
constantly rising through a rigged bidding process while the Duggan
administration, working on behalf of Dan Gilbert, who chairs the
Detroit Blight Removal Task Force, serves as front men for the
so-called ?developers and investors.?
This set of circumstances is proving deadly for the people of Detroit
and Wayne County. The County is facing emergency management and
possible bankruptcy like Detroit. Consequently, there is no reason for
anyone to be thrown out of their houses particularly with federal
funds at the disposal of the Snyder administration.
Obviously there is an agenda of forced removals for Detroit and other
majority African American cities. This program is decades-old and is
implemented through job losses, predatory lending, utility and water
shut-offs, the closing of schools and community centers, the
escalation of police terrorism, the denial of quality healthcare,
adequate public transportation, social and public services.
The city cannot be rebuilt without its people. The capitalist system
remains fragile some eight years after the collapse of 2007-2008.
Major corporations are still announcing massive lay-offs and scandals
within the auto industry have shaken the confidence in the capacity of
the manufacturing sector to provide the quality and safety that they
spend billions to advertise on a daily basis.
Although the federal government has found various banks engaging in
deliberate misrepresentation and fraud, very few of the bankers have
gone to prison. Moreover, these entities are still given a license to
do business and to set the terms for the availability of capital in
the U.S. and globally.
Every year the banks are handed over hundreds of billions of dollars
by the Federal Reserve Bank, which is our money. The bailout of the
banks continue through the appropriation of public tax dollars and
public assets as is being done in Detroit and other cities for
?prestige projects? such as sports arenas, housing gentrification
projects, where the raising of rents is championed by the corporate
media and the forced removal of African Americans and the poor is
characterized as ?progress.?
The police and the courts serve the interests of the banks and
corporations. A recent spike in police killings of residents is
reflective of the escalating levels of state repression. Every week
there are reports on television, radio and the print media which hails
the arrests of ?gang members? for drug trafficking and other
activities. Nevertheless, the real criminals in the ruling class who
systematically deny the people the fruits of their labor are not
arrested and shut down by law-enforcement and the courts.
Such a scenario is not unique to Detroit. It is endemic within the
U.S. capitalist system itself. However, Detroit and the state of
Michigan is bearing the brunt of the economic crisis and
re-structuring due to the legacy of labor and national struggles over
the last century-and-a-half.
Detroit was a major base for the Underground Railroad during the
period of slavery in the 19th century. The Great Migration brought
hundreds of thousands of African Americans into the city and state
during the early to middle decades of the 20th century. The
recognition of the UAW and other trade unions between the 1930s and
the 1960s forced concessions from the bosses to the workers. All of
these gains are being taken away in the 21st century through attacks
on the right to vote, the eight-hour day, equal pay for equal work,
local control of government and housing rights.
I do not believe that we can vote our way out of this crisis. We
defend the right of working people to exercise their democratic
prerogatives. Nonetheless, history will show that labor recognition,
African American and women? rights, to the extent that they still
exist, were not won at the ballot box but within the arena of mass and
working class struggle in the streets, workplaces, schools and the
communities where people live.
This is why we place great emphasis on the indispensable role of the
workers and the oppressed organized and mobilized independently of the
capitalist two-party system. This is what the ruling class fears and
seeks to prevent.
What Should Be Done at This Time?
Therefore, we need your help and assistance in this heroic effort to
transform the exploitative system into one that recognizes the worth
of every human being. We cannot do this alone because it will take
millions organized, mobilized and imbued with justice to topple the
existing social order.
Frantz Fanon of the Caribbean island of Martinique, who participated
in the Algerian liberation movement (FLN), an integral part of the
overall African Revolution of the 20th century, pointed out in his
classic book ?The Wretched of the Earth?, that each generation out of
relative obscurity must define its mission and choose to fulfill or
betray it. Fanon died a revolutionary communist putting his life on
the line, sacrificing his professional career, in the service of the
liberation of humanity.
Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, the leading strategist and tactician of the
African Revolution emphasized in his ?Handbook of Revolutionary
Warfare: A Guide to the Armed Phase of the African Revolution?, that
the first step in the process of change is to ?know the enemy.? Our
enemy is capitalism and imperialism and it is against these
exploitative systems that we focus our attention.
V.I. Lenin, the leader and visionary of the Russian Revolution and the
founder of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) noted that
in order for the working class and oppressed to be fully liberated
that there must be a revolutionary organization built upon scientific
principles and guided by the historical and dialectical materialist
theory of Marxism-Leninism.
We must build the revolutionary party of the present period in the
U.S. Let us move forward in our mission to advance humanity towards
genuine national liberation, socialism and ultimately communism. This
is the only solution to the plight of the majority of the peoples of
the world today.
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
