Workers Voice

By Shera Phillips

Black women have been amongst the most outspoken, dedicated, revolutionary fighters against racial injustices. From refusing to give up a seat on a train, to registering voters, to coordinating and monitoring lunch counter sit-ins and freedom rides, to being bold, loud and refusing to back down. Tiana Smalls embodied the black female warrior last month as she traveled via Greyhound from Bakersfield, California to Las Vegas, Nevada. While stopping at a checkpoint, the bus driver announced, ‘We are being boarded by Border Patrol. Please be prepared to show your documentation upon request”. Tiana immediately sensed the white supremacist, capitalism at work as she thought to herself, wait, what the f***? Smalls promptly began to “act an ass” as she vehemently spoke, “THIS IS A VIOLATION OF YOUR 4TH AMENDMENT RIGHTS. YOU DON’T HAVE TO SHOW THEM SH*T! This is illegal. We are not within 100 miles of an international border so they have NO authority to ask you for ANYTHING. TELL THEM TO F*** OFF!!”

Then, realizing that many of the terrified travelers didn’t speak English, she used Google Translate to read her message in Spanish. She assured her horrified neighbor that she “had her back”. As the agents proceeded to ask for documentation, she responded, ““I’m not showing you shit! I’m not driving this bus, so you have NO RIGHT to ask me for anything! And the rest of you guys don’t have to show them anything, either! This is harassment and racial profiling! Don’t show them a gotdamn thing! We are not within 100 miles of a border so they have NO LEGAL RIGHT or jurisdiction here! GOOGLE IT!” The agents responded with, “Fine. We can see that you’re a citizen because of your filthy mouth”. And then they just said “go ahead” to the bus driver and got o . Smalls continues, “Point is: These border patrol officers act like they do because they EXPECT people to be afraid of them and just comply. The lady next to me spoke NO ENGLISH, but she was a very kind woman. She looked TERRIFIED when they boarded. I felt it was my duty to defend her. We DO NOT LIVE in Nazi Germany. No one should be asked to present “papers” for interstate travel. I defended her, and I defended myself. We DO NOT have to just take this shit LYING down. What those officers did is WRONG and completely illegal. All it took was ONE LOUD ass Black woman to let them know WE ARE NOT WITH THE SH*TS. F*** Y’ALL. And they backed off. Use your voice. Take a risk. Act an ASS. Because if you let them intimidate the poor Spanish speaking woman next to you, who do you think they’re coming for next?” I say THANK YOU Tiana Smalls for your exemplary demonstration of courage, love and resourcefulness. You have IT!”

by Margaret Maloney

On July 14th water protectors with The L’eau Est La Vie (Water is Life) camp, locked themselves into a van blocking the only access road to a Bayou Bridge Pipeline construction sight, successfully shutting down construction and drilling for six hours before being extracted by police. The Bayou Bridge Pipeline is the tail end of the Dakota Access Pipeline system, being pushed forward by Energy Transfer Partners.

The L’eau Est La Vie camp has carried out nearly 50 worksite actions that have caused delays in construction. Water protectors are continuously arrested during peaceful actions. The state apparatus that allows these companies to go unchecked is arresting community members who simply want to protect clean water from corporate negligence. BBP is set to end in St. James Parish (also known as cancer alley) threatening a mainly black community located along the Mississippi river, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. St. James is surrounded by fossil fuel infrastructure that releases pollution into the community, causing many residents to suffer from cancer and other health issues associated with the inhalation of toxic fumes. From Flint, Michigan to St. James, those in power continue to have no regard for black, brown, or white working class communities.

Louisiana’s wetlands are eroding at an alarming rate of a football field worth of land an hour. The wetlands are a vital protection against flooding, acting as a sponge during storm surges. With this knowledge the state government should be investing in coastal restoration, not continuing to allow companies like ETP (who have a record of breaking environmental regulation) to bring more harm to communities and the already disappearing coast. Monday July 17th, water protectors kicked off the #risetogether week of action.

In the precious Atchafalaya Basin, water protectors are occupying multiple tree-sits along the pipeline route. Stand in solidarity with those on the front lines: water protectors are asking folks to target banks that nance Energy Transfer Partners and other major pipeline companies:

Bank of America
Citi Bank
JP Morgan Chase
Wells Fargo
Bank of Tokyo
Credit Suisse
Royal Bank of Canada

Organize a solidarity demonstration, letter delivery, disruption, close your accounts at these banks, donate, or sign up to camp! Learn more at nobbp.org

By Sanashihla

Even after the victory of seeing four symbols to white supremacy come down in our lifetime, Take Em Down NOLA continues to elevate awareness about the hundreds of more symbols to white supremacy that litter the landscape of New Orleans. They too need to come DOWN!

Take Em Down NOLA hosted a “Talk About It” Panel Discussion on June 28th, followed up by a “Be About It” Rally and March Demonstration on July 5th, to continue the work to remove symbols to white supremacy.

Take Em Down NOLA is pushing its ordinance forward to remove ALL symbols to white supremacy from New Orleans, as a call to “FINISH THE JOB”, because four was never enough!

Despite billions of dollars that comes to New Orleans, because of this city being the biggest tourist attraction in the world, the reality is most residents are suffering in poverty due to intentional economic exploitation anchored in racial oppression.

This is evident even with the city budget. Out of $647 million dollars approved for the 2018, 63% of it goes to cops, jails, and repressive measures. ONLY 3% goes to children and families, and a measly 1% goes to job development. This is a city where the budget needs to be FLIPPED. New Orleans needs to invest 63% into children, families, and job development proactively. This is not simply something that Mayor Cantrell inherited; she voted in favor of this budget as a councilperson. We need to organize to demand the budget is flipped in 2019 to prioritize children, families and job development.

So why does Take Em Down NOLA focus on removing all symbols to white supremacy from the landscape of our city? They have consistently explained this demand allows the residents of the city to get at the root of the problem. Beyond the symbols are SYSTEMS that keep these racist symbols up and working- class people down. This only happens because elected officials, who have decision making power to control public funds, tax dollars, and policies deny the rights of the people by intentionally compromising with white supremacy, using local and state resources to accommodate and placate the rich ruling class of New Orleans. Take Em Down NOLA exposes this, as the work goes on!

And now, after 300 years of having mayors, even with the first elected Black woman, the residents of New Orleans are seeing how oppression and exploitation maintains its stronghold over a city that brings in at least $8.7 billion dollars in tourism. Oppression and exploitation continue to happen regardless of the gender or race of the mayor. The Mayor should draw a line that says she will not endorse anything that does not bene t the mental, emotional, or physical well being of working class people. Therefore, if the white supremacists are for it, that should be a sign that the majority of the people of New Orleans will lose, symbolically and systematically. So, for the people to win, the people must continue to educate, agitate, and organize our way into the city we want to see, into the world we want to see!

Join Take Em Down NOLA on Thursday, August 23 at 6:00pm for the next RALLY and March demonstration. The rally and march will begin at Lafayette Square, and head to Jackson Square. Join Take Em Down NOLA, as they take it to the streets, and be a part of this next wave of the movement to #TakeEmDownNOLA & #TakeEmDownEverywhere

The Southern Youth Commission is a new organization on the Mississippi gulf coast fighting to take down symbols of white supremacy. On July 28, they held their first rally and march, with support from the Mississippi Rising Coalition, and the Jackson and Hancock County branches of the NAACP. These organizers – some still in high school – brought out progressive community members who braved the heat and rain, marching across the bridge from Biloxi to City Hall in Ocean Springs. The SYC demands that Ocean Springs mayor, Shea Dobson, and the Board of Aldermen remove the racist state flag from all public buildings. Dobson recently caused outrage by flying these flags, despite objections from the community. But the march of July 28 showed that the movement to remove all symbols of white supremacy is building strength.

“Greetings brothers and sisters, I am a revolutionary, social change organizer, and freedom fighter currently incarcerated behind enemy lines at the Louisiana state prison in Angola.

I want to explain to you what Decarcerate Louisiana… Decarcerate Louisiana is a human rights movement, advocating for human rights and human dignity of people inside and outside the prison system.

In order for any of us to be productive and prosper as a people, poverty must go, slavery must go, all conditions and practices, laws and policies that would deny or interfere with our higher development and growth and progress must go. Poverty level wages that make us poor, keep us in debt, make us beggars, make us desperate must go.

Laws like the 13th amendment that abolish slavery but then turn around and make an excuse to impose slavery if a person is convicted of a crime must go. We believe that federal and state constitutions that impose slavery if a person is convicted of a crime is a dirty scheme, an evil plan put forward by modern-day slave traffickers disguised as public officials and big businesses to re-enslave the 2.4 million americans currently being warehoused and forced to work on prison farms across the united states of america.

This is why we are anti-ghetto, anti-slavery, anti-oppression. If you can relate, and you can see the relationship between unjust laws and policies, crooked public officials, corporate greed, unsustainable development practices, ghettos, domestic violence and crime, and how each weaves together as a plan to segregate, marginalize, criminalize, and imprison us, you are awakened to the truth and the true state of affairs in this country. Decarcerate Louisiana is an organization for the people. Please join us in our organizing to change the laws to abolish slavery, and the jails and prisons and to tear down ghettos that serve as a pipeline to prison.

Starting on August 21 and going through September 9, we are calling on prisoners in Angola and throughout the state of Louisiana to go on hunger strike and/or refuse to go to work as slaves in the field, in the kitchen, in the various work factories on the prison farm plantation system. For the whole period from August 21 through September 9, we will conduct a hunger strike and work stoppage in solidarity with the Nationwide Prison Strike and in protest of the 13th Amendment, racist and bigoted courts of law, racist and bigoted parole boards, racist and corrupt prison guards and prison officials, overcrowding in dorms and cellblocks, inadequate medical care, inadequate food, inadequate classification, inadequate shelter, lack of educational opportunities for rehabilitation and reentry, and all the unfair, inhuman and barbaric treatment that characterizes the new system and institution of slavery.

In protest of the exploitation carried out by the corporations that contract with the state to provide us commissary, telephone services, medicine, food and drink through visitation, clubs inside the prison and rodeo twice a year, we will boycott the prison canteen, prison rodeo, and prison phone system.

To become a member or supporter of our organizing work, contact decarceratelouisiana@gmail.com, follow at facebook.com/decarceratelouisiana, or visit decarceratelouisiana.com

All power to the people.”

By Malcolm Suber

Creating a revolutionary culture that highlights the sacrifices and achievements of freedom fighters is a vital part of the working class struggle for complete emancipation. These commemorative dates allow us to remember as well as to plan for a future free of capitalist oppression and exploitation. Black August is such a commemoration that deserves the support of the working class. This commemoration was created by revolutionary fighters incarcerated in California.

Each year since 1979, organizers from the Black liberation movement (BLM) have used the month of August to focus on the oppressive conditions inside the state run gulags and concentration camps America calls prisons. We concentrate our efforts on the fight to free all political prisoners and to abolish the capitalist prison industrial complex. We struggle to expose the forced slavery conditions that our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and other loved ones who are held captive by the racist legal system. We also celebrate Black August to educate each other about the revolutionaries who have been held in isolation decade after decade.

The historical roots of Black August can be traced to the actions of Jonathan Jackson who was gunned down outside the Marin County courthouse on August 7, 1970 as he attempted to liberate three imprisoned Black Liberation Fighters: James McClain, William Christmas, and Ruchell Magee.

George Jackson was assassinated on August 21, 1971 by San Quentin prison guards. The assassination was a deliberate move on behalf of the US government to eliminate the revolutionary leadership of George Jackson.

Khatari Gaulden was murdered by San Quentin prison guards on August 1, 1978. Khatari was one of the key intellectual architects of the Black August tradition and a prominent leader of the Black Guerilla Family after comrade George was assassinated. He was murdered to eliminate his leadership and destroy the growing prison resistance movement.

In 1979 the first official Black August took place. Supporters wore black armbands on their left arms and studied revolutionary books, particularly those of George Jackson. During the month the brothers did not watch TV or listen to the radio. The use of drugs and alcohol was prohibited, and they held daily exercises to sharpen their minds, bodies and spirits. They honored the collective principles of self-sacrifice and revolutionary discipline needed to advance the struggle for freedom and self-determination of the Black nation. Black August therefore became a commemorative event urging on the BLM to fight for complete freedom.

A sampling of the racist oppression and righteous rebellion and resistance to oppression that defines this commemorative month include:

August 1619 – arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown, VA

August 1791 – start of the great Haitian revolution

August 30, 1800 – Gabriel Prosser’s Rebellion in Richmond , VA

August 21, 1831 – Nat Turner Rebellion, Southampton County, VA

August, 1963 – March on Washington, DC

August, 1965 – Watts rebellion

August 18, 1971 – Republic of New Africa shootout with FBI, Jackson, MS

August 8, 1978 – Philadelphia police attack MOVE family

August 9, 2014 – Mike Brown murdered by police in Ferguson, MO

It is important that we continue on the revolutionary path set by freedom fighters who made August a month of righteous rebellion. Reaffirm your resolve to struggle until the white supremacist billionaire ruling class is overthrown and the African American Nation is free!

The Supreme Court has only supported progress when a mass movement of the people has forced it to. Their decisions uphold what was won in the street and are mainly an effort to stop the struggle from continuing. The Supreme Court was forced to uphold the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, despite the fact that more than one of the “honorable” justices—what a joke— were members of the KKK. This decision was not made out of respect for the law, or because the Democratic Party had any say in it, but because the mass movement and sacrifice of the people willed it. The entire American court system is one of the most racist, undemocratic, reactionary, anti-worker, capitalist institutions in the country.

The retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy has recently brought concerns over the makeup of the Supreme Court back into the media. The careful balance of justices is often argued about, and worry over who will choose the replacements and who will replace which justices drives election campaigns across the United States. The truth is, no matter which capitalist party chooses the successor to Justice Kennedy, the Court will still be an institution that upholds the interests of the 1%.

As a lifetime-appointed, unelected body of only nine people with nearly absolute power to decide on the laws and policies that a ect our lives, the Court’s decisions cannot be disregarded. People live or die because of Supreme Court decisions. Policies that deny people basic needs have been upheld by the Supreme Court. When they can get away with it, they rule on cases like Citizens United, for which Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, defending the buying and selling of politicians by the super-rich. They overturn the will of the people. Regulations that protect workers have been sold o piece by piece by the courts. With a stroke of their pens, they wipe out civil and economic rights for the people and uphold growing repression, white supremacy and bigotry.

On the other hand, some cases have signaled major victories for the people. Roe V. Wade was won by decades of struggle in the women’s liberation movement; Lawrence V. Texas (which effectively legalized homosexuality) was won because LGBTQ people fought back against horrifying oppression. Each of these victories were fought for in the streets and in the courts. Without the power of the people to counter the arbitrary power of the Court, we would have won nothing from them. Yet after every major Court decision, the mainstream media touts the power of the Courts and ignores the power of the people. They declare the victory of the law, of the lawyers, of the ruling class, but not of the people.

The Supreme Court is not about upholding the constitution (inadequate as it is). The Court is a political institution. Both major parties squabble over the right to pick the next Justice, not because they care about the people, the law, or the Constitution, but because of the power it grants them to look out for their own capitalist benefactors. Cries of “Save the Supreme Court” merely deceive the people. We can expect even more decisions that attack the working majority but this should only make the Court’s illegitimacy more obvious.

Clearly, the capitalist class is determined to destroy every last shred of the limited rights we have won. Whether they’re attacking us with sexism or racism, they will go to any length to push workers further into poverty. But by organizing, by mounting mass resistance, we can push back against these attacks. At the same time, we will create new organizers with a true understanding of our enemy. The will of the people should not be overruled by the whims of nine unelected people who represent the worst of the capitalist class. We call for a Peoples’ Tribunal, elected and recallable by and from the working majority. We call to abolish the Supreme Court, not enhance their authority to commit crimes against the people.

By Quest Riggs

Since the revelation about the government’s separation of immigrant children from their families in mid- June, the struggle for the rights of undocumented workers and the struggle against ICE has exploded and reached new heights. The scale and spirit of this wave of resistance has highlighted the amount of solidarity with undocumented communities that already exists in the U.S. and the possibilities for a broader and stronger movement for justice.

Demonstrations swept the country on June 30, meeting the call for a national day of action. In every major city and in many small cities, the call to abolish ICE was heard around the country. In all there were over 700 actions on that one hot summer day, including a march in New Orleans from Congo Sqr. to Jackson Sqr. with 3,000 participants.

600 protesters were arrested in Washington D.C. as they occupied the Senate Office building. 100,000 marched in New York City along with tens of thousands more throughout the northeast. In Philadelphia an encampment in front of the ICE offce there from July 2 until July 5, when they were aggressively raided by the police. They then set up a new encampment with the same demands in front of City Hall.

The turnout was also good in other Southern cities, with thousands protesting in Raleigh and Atlanta. In Atlanta an encampment was held for a week at an ICE o ce until it was raided on July 9, with 39 arrested in the raid. Over 60,000 marched in Chicago calling for the abolition of ICE.

On the West Coast, large protest encampments were set up in both Portland and San Francisco, and 10,000 protesters rallied at the Seattle-Tacoma Federal Prison where hundreds of migrants are detained. The San Francisco encampment, like the Atlanta one, was held for a week before 39 were arrested when it was swept.

It is worth noting that federal police with the Department of Homeland Security, not just local police, were used against the protesters in many of the above cases. The repression of the movement against ICE is part of the total lack of democracy in capitalist society, just like the repression of the Black Lives Matter movement and the Standing Rock solidarity movement during the Obama presidency. The police at the local, state and federal levels are all controlled by the industries who pro t o of oppression. In the case of the Abolish ICE movement, the people pulling the strings are the profiteers of the prison-industrial complex, one of the most brutal white supremacist groupings in the U.S. ruling class.

But despite their commitment to mass-incarceration and genocide, our movement is getting stronger and solidarity is growing. It is important that we resist the attempts to misdirect this movement into legalistic and electoral directions. The Democratic party and its lackeys will never lead movements towards liberation or real change. If we blindly follow them just because they can pay lip service to justice, then the fascists in ICE and in the white house will only get stronger. Following the liberals means handing over all of our weapons of struggle to our oppressors.

In these barbarous times of capitalist hellfire all around us, the need to educate, agitate, and organize working class and oppressed people for a revolutionary struggle has never been greater.

On June 30, in over 100 degree heat, our communities united in a massive demonstration against the unjust policies of the Trump administration. Specifically, we marched against the construction of concentration camps for immigrant families, the separation of children from their families and the murderous behavior of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrols.

The demonstration was organized by a coalition of local working class organizations including the Congress of Day Laborers, Stand with Dignity, the Workers Center for Racial Justice and the New Orleans Peoples Assembly. Despite the extreme heat, over 3,000 people from New Orleans and the surrounding area rallied and marched behind this radical working class leadership.

This demonstration coincided with other massive marches in all major cities across the country against Trump’s inhumane attacks on immigrant and refugee communities. But unlike most of the other demonstrations, ours in New Orleans was not lead by any Democratic Party forces. There were no empty promises of reform or misguided calls to vote away our oppression. There were no two-faced politicians trying to put out the flame of the people’s rage.

Instead, the speakers at our demonstration were black and latinx workers and activists– day laborers, students, hospitality workers and those directly targeted by ICE. We in New Orleans recognize and made clear that ICE will be abolished and change will come only from the united and organized strength of revolutionary working class communities. Until then we workers must unite in solidarity to defend latinx families from Trump and his racist minions in ICE.

Ruby. Rosa. Bree. Takiyah. And now Therese. Black women have always been on the forefront of resistance, putting our physical bodies on the line to demand justice in highly visible ways. Therese Patricia Okoumou joined these revolutionary Black women on July 4th when she scaled the base of the Statue of Liberty. Therese, a migrant of the Republic of Congo, has made her home in New York for the last 10 years, and she has taken an active role in the struggle since 2009. Okoumou has been a part of Rise and Resist, the group that organized a banner drop at the statue earlier that day. Okoumou took a step further on the revolutionary road and climbed the statue saying that “…when they go low, we go high. And I went as high as I could.” Therese demanded that ICE be abolished, that the thousands of migrant children be released from detainment centers around the country and that she would not come down until “all the children are released.” Okoumou was arrested and charged with trespassing, interference with government agency functions, and disorderly conduct. At a press conference after her release, Okoumou said “Trump has ripped this country apart. It is depressing. It is outrageous. His Draconian zero-tolerance policy on immigration has got to go.”