Rittenhouse and Verdict Mania

Yet the names Rittenhouse or Derek Chauvin or Amber Guyger or George Zimmerman resonate more than perhaps they should. These people became stand-ins for the system which is unrepentantly racist and where the demonization of Black people’s existence is a feature of law, commerce, education, and even health care. There is no escape from the oppression, and desperation can transform court cases into symbolic referendums on Black existence.

[blackagendareport.com]

{The liberation movement was crushed by COINTELPRO, the deaths and imprisonment of leadership, and cooptation of a Black political class. The reactionary response to the movement included the development of a prison industrial complex and the mass incarceration of one million Black people. These dynamics play a part in creating defeatism, confusion, and wishful thinking.

The solution is a return to Black politics. Black politics are not synonymous with the presence of Black politicians, who more often than not are captives of the same interests which create so much suffering. Politics must be independent of the democrats who continue to be seen as protection against white racism when they are nothing of the sort.}

{Kyle Rittenhouse is obviously a white supremacist, but so is Joe Biden, who received 90% of the Black vote. White supremacy is a job requirement for the presidency and Barack Obama signed on to that agreement just as much as his predecessors did. Biden was seen as a savior who would rescue the nation from Donald Trump, who is portrayed as the only racist who ever served as president when he was one of just 46 who fit the description.}

{The gun toter flashing the white supremacy hand signal is but one part of the problem. Protesters are correct when they say, “The whole damn system is guilty as hell!” There is no way to carve out little bits of justice here and there. We either have it everywhere or we don’t have it at all.}

Stop Confusing the Fight Against Racism with Neoliberalism

The crisis of legitimacy afflicting the U.S. political system has produced a number of contradictions. One of the most glaring from this period is the contradiction between the struggle against racism in the United States and the growth in popular support for Medicare for All and a host of social welfare policies that have the potential of forming a truly class-conscious political program of the working class.

[blackagendareport.com]

{Such a contradiction exists despite assurances from the Bernie Sanders-wing of the Democratic Party that policies such as Medicare for All are anti-racist by definition. The contradiction was readily apparent when the millions who marched in the streets against racist policing in the summer of 2020 were not simultaneously armed with an economic and political program resembling that of the Sanders movement. That said, it was also quite clear that many of the millions who marched against racist policing were young workers and students of all races who overwhelmingly support the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party.}

This economic and political structure was a spoken agenda in 2016 from Sanders. Abandoned in his betrayal to support Clinton, the system, the night of the convention. Those that still believe in him and changing that system from within, indoctrination won. Highly managed by the DSA and Jacobin Magazine within collaborate measures. Along with a few other questionable so called socialist entities.

{The responsibility for the problem falls squarely at the feet of the U.S. ruling class of all political tendencies. More specifically, neoliberal Democrats for the past four decades have capitalized on the historic state repression of the Black liberation movement to sanitize the struggle against racism as part of its counterinsurgency agenda of neutralizing the most progressive force in U.S. history: Black America. The development of a Black political class loyal to capital in every way has been complimented by general lack of political leadership among the entirety of the U.S.-based working class.}

Sanders handed off the ball to Clinton knowing she would be the capitalist she always has been. Knowing the political black elite having fallen in lock step long ago. The introduction of AOC and the squad, newly found popularity of the DSA and Jacobin Magazine, all in 2016, would become the entrapment for this US based working class as a fake leadership. Essentially herding them into supporting a losing cause.

{Any organization or force that claims leadership in the class struggle must take up the responsibility of addressing all of the contradictions standing in the way of a socialist future. Distinctions must be made between the neoliberal race-only politics of the Democratic Party and the revolutionary politics of race required to wage actual class struggle in the United States. These distinctions become even more critical given that the so-called far right has used the Democratic Party’s race-only, anti-worker orientation as an opportunity to merge pro-worker rhetoric with racism.}

This is where I advocate once again for the only socialist organization/party that does that. [wsws.org]

{As the late executive editor of Black Agenda Report, Glen Ford, prophetically pointed out about the 2016 presidential election, “The Democrats wanted to run on race as much as Trump did, because only a race-based campaign allows them to avoid any commitment to bread and butter issues – universal free healthcare, job and income security, free public higher education – that threaten the bi-partisan austerity regime (the Race to the Bottom).”}

You might remember how the DNC and media won that battle for Clinton as it also took pace in that primary, quite easily due to Sanders never addressing it in socialistic terms. Frankly, he virtually let it just blow by in the wind without mentioning it once in 4 debates. Moments of major potential to correlate the issues of all of the working class with African Americans exposing the real sense of democratic socialism. Which Sanders never took advantage of at anytime either. Have you ever heard Sanders mention Marx? Wont happen either. It's always about capitalist socialism from Europe. To mention anything resembling Marx would expose his hypocrisy of supporting the multiple murderous actions in Latin America. And even then he never explains how to integrate it into our capitalist system. Which would produce a major hiccup to the current elite system. They know these programs will never reach any sense of a genuine address to make significant changes. Lip service.

{Even when Democrats speak of institutional racism, rarely is the question of power factored into the equation. Race is separated entirely from class, allowing the Democratic Party to find ample political space to position itself as an anti-racist, pro-capitalist party—a real world impossibility.}

{The condition of Black workers in the United States is a reminder that any form of class struggle that refuses to recognize the National Question is destined to fail. This was the experience of the First and Second International prior to the victory of the Russian Revolution in 1917. The National Question was a leading force in Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ program for socialist construction. It asserted that the struggle of the workers to overthrow capitalism was completely congruent with the struggle of oppressed nations fighting to throw off the shackles of colonialism and imperialism. The National Question’s applicability to the struggle of Black people as a nation within a nation led Lenin himself to declare that “all Communist parties should render direct aid to the revolutionary movements among the dependent and underprivileged nations (for example, Ireland, the American Negroes, etc.) and in the colonies” (emphasis my own).}

{Lenin’s theses on the National and Colonial Questions have been incredibly important to the development of the class struggle both past and present. Understanding of the National Question influenced the Communist Party in the United States to take up the fight against Jim Crow as a crucial component of its political program. Numerous anti-colonial movements took up the cause of socialism as a result of Lenin’s framework on the National Question. This includes the heroic struggles against imperialism from Korea and Vietnam to Ghana and Grenada. Furthermore, U.S. capitalism and its settler colonial roots have entered an acute stage of imperialist decline which only enhances the relevance of the National Question. The condition of Black America and that of countless other oppressed nations demonstrate that the National Question must be applied to the current conditions of class struggle within the U.S.’s colonial borders.}