My partner has been pushing me to do TikTok lately. I personally hate TikTok, Vine and all other similar platforms. I think they represent humanity at its absolute worst, but I also have been pushing her to make our lives into a reality show, so that could be a bit hypocritical of me. I want to be seen and understood though. Or at least to have someone like me seen and understood. So I feel like celebrity is the only way to become normalized in this day and age.

If you can’t understand why it’s so important to see someone like yourself featured in the media and pop culture, then you should really start by checking your privilege, and then read on while I break it down for you.

Name your favorite married cishet white mom. It’s difficult because there are so many you know and you can turn your TV to any channel and find dozens more telling their stories. Now, name your favorite Black transgender mom raising babies with her partner and her partner’s husband. Take as much time as you want, but the answer is me by default because I’m the only one you can think of and that’s exactly my issue.

There aren’t any families like mine on TV even though it’s the perfect show already. We’ve got a transgender parent like the Kardasians, a trans child like Jazz, and the most parents you’ll find in a family outside of the Sister Wives (without their weird religious baggage). We’re a trust fund and a beauty pageant away from being a full TLC primetime lineup.

We have all the makings of a reality show without any of the benefits, so instead of people coming up and saying “Oh my god. You’re the woman from that show!” they talk mad shit behind my back and tell CPS I’m forcing my kids to be trans (because obviously after being suicidal for years due to my own gender dysphoria, I thought it’d be fun if my kid had to deal with it too.) Without any celebrity to normalize our life, we remain an oddity and people still think it’s fine to look at us like a circus sideshow. We’re still a joke, a cry for attention, or a perversion because that’s the only way anyone like us is portrayed in the media.

Worse still though is that we aren’t protected. In most states you can be fired, denied housing, and even denied medical treatment if you are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Many of those states are pushing to take away even more rights from us. Around the country, bills outlawing life saving medical care for trans youth are being pushed through the state legislatures. Parents of trans youth could soon be charged with child abuse for following the advice of the medical community. There are only nine states where a cishet man can’t receive a more lenient sentence for murder if he claims his attraction to the victim made him question his fragile sexuality.

I’m lucky enough to live in a state where LGBTQIA+ rights are protected by law. However, this same state has some archaic bigamy laws, essentially banning committed poly partners from cohabiting. Polyamory has yet to be given any real consideration by mainstream America. (When it is, it’s often centered around religious and misogynist bigamy practices.) When people hear about polyamorous relationships, their thoughts go to oppressive cults, or hedonistic sexual deviance and debauchery. The reality is much more mundane for many of us. My day looks very similar to that of most stay-at-home moms. With seven-year-old twins and an extremely active two-year-old, I don’t really have much time for cults or hedonistic sexual debauchery (at least not until my toddler is in daycare.)

I think by the time my kids are my age, our family won’t seem so weird. Multiracial families become more common every year. More people are becoming aware of transgender experiences. Most people believe that discrimination based on someone’s sexuality is wrong. Polyamory is becoming less of a taboo as people realize there can be options other than monogamy. I truly believe that families like mine won’t always be looked at as outsiders and freaks. It would be nice though if we had a celebrity spokesperson for families like mine.

This article first appeared Jan. 29, 1971, headlined “The year of the pig: Should workers support police strikes?” On the Chinese calendar, 1971 was a Year of the Pig.

Are strikes by the police to be regarded approximately the same way as strikes by ordinary workers? A reading of the treatment accorded to the New York police strike by the Daily World (the paper of the Communist Party which professes to be Marxist-Leninist) clearly conveys this impression. A column by George Morris, the Daily World’s labor analyst, waxes eloquent about the cops’ strike and says “it is in the spirit of rebellion we see everywhere today as in unions against the long entrenched bureaucracy.” He further says that the cops are “beginning to see themselves as in much the same position as other city employees and workers.” Finally, he admonishes his readers that “fire should not be blunderbussed against all on the police force.”

You see, the way to look at it is that there are good cops and bad cops, just like there are good capitalists and bad ones. We must assume then, that there are good storm troopers and bad ones if we use the logic of George Morris. In this way, Morris substitutes bourgeois morality for Marxist analysis of class antagonisms and contradictions between class groupings.

The cops’ strike is not an isolated phenomenon. There is one in progress right now in Milwaukee. Earlier there were strikes or stoppages in Detroit and Youngstown, Ohio. Strike preparations are underway in perhaps a dozen other cities throughout the country. It is therefore necessary and in the vital interests of the working class to restate the fundamental position of revolutionary Marxism on this crucial question. Should strikes of cops be treated on an equal level with workers’ strikes?

Emphatically, no! A striking worker and a striking police officer may on the surface appear to have the same immediate aims — to get higher pay and better conditions for themselves. But this is to take an extremely narrow and superficial view of their apparently similar situations. The truth, however, is that there is objectively speaking not a shred of class identity between workers and the police. The fundamental interests of the workers are diametrically opposed to those of the police and are absolutely irreconcilable with them.

Producers or parasites?

A worker is, above all, a producer. The police officer is a parasite who lives off what the worker produces. No truer words could be said! All the material wealth which is now in the possession of the capitalist class was produced by the workers. When a worker goes out on strike she [or he] is merely trying to retrieve a portion of the wealth which her [or his] labor power produced. The worker gets back in the form of wages only a portion of what he [or she] produces. The rest is what the capitalist class retains in the form of profit (really the unpaid labor of the workers).

The gross national income of the U.S. last year reached the astronomical sum of one trillion dollars. It was all produced by workers: Black, Brown, white, men and women and even children. The struggles of all the workers, insofar as their immediate demands are concerned, are merely to retrieve a larger portion of this wealth which they produced for the bosses and which the bosses keep for themselves.

Contribute nothing to social wealth

What have the cops contributed to the production of this unprecedented amount of wealth? Nothing at all. In fact, their principal function is to guard the wealth for the capitalists, protect their monopolist profits from the demands of the workers. Even as the New York cops were out on strike, their emergency crews were busily clubbing the heads of striking telephone workers. That’s the very essence of a cop: to crack the heads of strikers and practice the most inhuman brutality against the Black, Puerto Rican and Chicano/a communities.

A cop is a mercenary hired by the capitalist class through their agent (the city government) to keep the mass of the workers and the oppressed in complete subjection. They utilize all the forces and violence at their disposal whenever the masses rise up in rebellion against the unendurable conditions imposed by the master class.

The police are the most parasitic social grouping in society. When they work — if that’s what it can possibly be called — their labor is directed against the workers and oppressed. Graft, corruption, intimate collaboration with all sorts of underworld figures and enterprises such as gambling, narcotics and a thousand other shady businesses — that’s what cops are really engaged in.

They are utterly inseparable from crime and corruption itself. One could not exist without the other. Both are nourished and supported by the nature of the capitalist system itself. To put the police on a par with the workers is to erase the difference between the persecutors and their victims.

Such incidental operations of the police as traffic control and other related useful functions for society are deliberately tacked on by the government to police control when they in reality should be separate and independent activities of workers apart from the parasitic regular police functions.

What about German ‘Social Democrat’ cops?

The police in every capitalist country are trained in the spirit of civil war against the workers and the popular masses in general. This is so even in the rare cases, like pre-war Austria and Germany, where substantial sections of the police considered themselves “socialists” or “social democrats” because a large section of the populations of these countries were either socialists or communists.

However, at the critical moment when Hitler made ready to seize power by a fascist coup, the police unanimously and cheerfully lined up with him and opened up a civil war against the workers of Austria. In Germany proper, they joined the storm troopers. They played a prime role in Hitler’s attempt to ferret out every militant worker and every progressive person and haul them off to the concentration camps. These same police systematically carried out the torture of hundreds of thousands of socialists and communists, not to speak of the unbelievable atrocities against the Jews.

In this country, who does not know that the Klan and the John Birch Society are the most intimate collaborators with the police and in some cities actually control the police?

Who does not know that almost all the strike-breaking agencies in the country work hand in glove with the police? Both are in the service of the industrialists as soon as the workers make an independent move of their own.

Army of occupation in oppressed communities

In the Black and Brown communities, the police play the role of a foreign occupation army and practice a form of cruelty and brutality which differs only in degree from the U.S. occupation army in Vietnam and Cambodia. As a token of the high esteem and affection in which these communities hold the police, they have coined the word “pig” as synonym for cop and this word has passed into the universal language of the oppressed.

It is utterly false to compare the rebellion of the cops with that of the workers and oppressed people, as does Daily World columnist George Morris. Only one who has renounced Marxism would do that.

The police strikes, if they can be called that, are in the nature of pro-slavery rebellions whose ultimate effect is to strengthen the capitalist state against the masses everywhere. A victory for the cops means extra privileges for these parasites. This will embolden them and encourage them in the use of violence in future struggles against the workers. Every cent paid to the police comes out of the hides of the workers. Every cent they get is at the expense of welfare, housing, schools, and other facilities and services that are needed by the people. And the police are now the biggest item in New York City’s budget!

Unlike workers, when police go out on strike they are not trying to retrieve money withheld from them for useful work done on behalf of society. Their services are solely and exclusively in the interests of one class of society only: the ruling class. Clarity on this point is absolutely indispensable. If the police find themselves in a controversy with the ruling class over the amount of money they should get as mercenaries, the workers should treat this as an internal struggle in the camp of the enemy and not confuse it with a struggle of their own class.

But that’s exactly what George Morris does! His article is an affront to every worker who has ever felt the brunt of a police club.

The Boston police strike of 1919

Of course, there are exceptional cases where police strikers, in a struggle with the capitalist state, have no alternative but to turn for support to the workers. These cases are rare indeed, such as the Boston police strike of 1919, which Calvin Coolidge, then governor of Massachusetts, broke. In such cases it is the duty of the workers’ leaders to adroitly intervene in the struggle.

In doing so, they must make clear that their intervention is not motivated by any class solidarity with the police (who on the morrow of their victory will again proceed to club the heads of striking workers) but out of motives of working-class expedience — that is, to help the police undermine the capitalist state structure. The longer a police strike lasts, the more it undermines capitalist law and order. In that task, a revolutionary worker should help, while helping even more to build workers’ self-defense groups.

The various parasitic elements which constitute the capitalist state are always in conflict with each other on how to divide among themselves the juiciest portions of the city, state and federal treasuries. Like thieves, they are invariably at each other’s throats, each seeking a greater share of the loot. These parasitic elements comprise the police, detectives, prison officials, executioners, various state and local anti-subversive squads, and the judicial bureaucracies. These are not to be compared to firefighters, sanitation workers or other workers who have been co-opted by the government into the capitalist state apparatus so as to keep their wages in check. These workers perform useful tasks and will continue to do so even in the highest form of socialist society. Morris deliberately confuses the issue when he compares police to workers.

Will there be cops when classes are gone?

One way for a Marxist to judge whether a specific social group in the present capitalist state setup is parasitic or really performs socially necessary and useful work is to ask whether such groupings would be needed in a socialist system after the abolition of all class rule. Clearly police will not be needed. With the abolition and disappearance of all vestiges of class privilege, the need for a coercive special force, even a workers’ militia, becomes superfluous.

However, men and women who work to make a more sanitary social environment and make it free from all sorts of hazards, such as fire, will of course be needed. If even in a socialist society the need for a coercive force such as police continually diminishes as the socialist system develops to a higher and higher form, then all the less do we need police in a capitalist society. Here its fundamental function is to suppress the working class and in particular use the most brutal violence against the Black, Chicano/a and Puerto Rican people.

It is to be noted that the current wave of police insurgency comes after a considerable period when they have been engaged in actual civil war against the Black and Brown communities. The ruling class has felt itself more and more indebted to the police precisely because of this. Having been highly flattered for their brutal role in the recent period, the police are now demanding extra privileges and remuneration for their storm trooper role in those communities and on the college campuses as well as in the recent strike struggles throughout the whole country.

The police have also become more vociferous in denouncing the so-called lenient judges and demanding that the government “take the handcuffs off the police.” This cry is nothing but a fascist demand for the right to unrestricted use of force and violence against the civil population. It is in this context that we must view the police strikes as well as the general historical role that they play in the class struggle.

Paris Commune dispelled cops — and crime

That the working class needs no capitalist police to secure and defend them was never more clearly demonstrated than in the first great proletarian revolution more than a hundred years ago — during the Paris Commune. Scarcely had the Paris Commune been established (the first truly working class government had just begun to survey the tasks ahead of it) when the world had its first vision since the dawn of class society of what would happen to the entire capitalist police establishment on the day of the proletarian revolution.

“No more corpses at the morgue, no nocturnal burglaries, scarcely any robberies,” says Karl Marx about the Paris Commune in his celebrated book, “The Civil War in France.”

“In fact, for the first time since the days of February 1848,” he remarks, “the streets of Paris were safe and without police of any kind.”

Is there a capitalist government anywhere in the world that can make such a boast even for one day? Is there any large city anywhere in the capitalist world which is free even for a single day of any crime and could do without any police of any kind as was the case with the Paris Commune? Merely to ask the question is to answer it. To put an end to crime it is first of all necessary to put an end to the thoroughly criminal rule of the bourgeoisie. It is their very existence which breeds not only crime and corruption but virulent racism, imperialist war and genocide.

To infuse the working class with a revolutionary attitude toward the police is at the same time ideological preparation for the overthrow of the capitalist class.

“How bad is unemployment?” headlined the May 8 edition of the New York Times. “Literally off the charts.”

Axios reports as of May 30 that the real unemployment rate was at least 24 percent and likely above 30 percent.

It’s not getting better. “Unemployment rate expected to hit highest since Great Depression,” Yahoo Finance reported June 4, as nearly 2 million more workers applied for unemployment benefits. 

“Nearly 43 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits during the pandemic,” says CNN. That’s not counting the many laidoff workers who’ve been unable to file their claims through overwhelmed state unemployment offices.

The long-brewing crash of the for-profit capitalist economy, sped up by the global COVID-19 pandemic, has left millions of working-class families hanging on by a thread. 

Now Donald Trump, Wall Street and governors from both the Democratic and Republican parties are rushing to “reopen” while serious health risks continue. That means emergency measures to protect people from eviction and additional benefits for the unemployed will soon end. Many, if not most, of the jobs lost are not coming back.

“As people across the United States are told to return to work, employees who balk at the health risks say they are being confronted with painful reprisals,” reports the New York Times. “Some are losing their jobs if they try to stay home, and thousands more are being reported to the state to have their unemployment benefits cut off.”

You need a job to keep a roof over your head, feed yourself and your family, and pay the bills. Everyone needs a job or other source of income to survive.

Having a job is a basic necessity. It’s a simple human right.

In fact, the right to a job is a matter of law — and has been for 74 years!

The 1946 Employment Act and the 1978 Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act legally obligate the president and Congress to use all available means to achieve full employment.

Also adopted in 1946, the United Nations Charter on Human Rights declares, “Everyone has the right to work … and to protection against unemployment,” as well as the right to housing, education and health care.

The 1978 Full Employment Act provides for convening a National Employment Conference to discuss enforcement.

Yet no administration — neither Republican nor Democrat — has ever attempted to fulfill these obligations.

It’s high time the government was made to enforce these laws.

Gov’t power to ban layoffs and create jobs

Even before the usurpation of greater executive powers by George W. Bush after 9/11, the president was fully empowered to end unemployment and create jobs in response to an economic crisis.

The 1978 law allows the government to create “a reservoir of public employment” if private corporations are unable to provide enough jobs.

Every governor, mayor and county executive also has full authority to order an end to layoffs in an economic emergency.

New York state, for example, empowers the governor to take any action necessary to prevent or stop the suffering of people as a result of “a natural or man-made disaster.”

The same law requires “a joint effort” of public and private spheres to mobilize the resources of business, labor, agriculture and government at every level to prepare for and meet disasters of all kinds.

The boom-and-bust system of capitalism, which always seeks the highest rate of profit with the least number of workers, is the ultimate “human-made” disaster.

First comes the struggle, then comes the law

Worker unrest during the Great Depression of the 1930s, again following World War II, again during the Civil Rights era, and again during the recession of the 1970s forced the capitalist government to put these laws on the books.

The legal precedent goes back to 1937. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins stated then that workers had a property right to their jobs when she defended the right of sit-down strikers to occupy factories.

Perkins, appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was no revolutionary. She was putting into legal terms what the workers had already achieved by seizing the plants, establishing workers’ control and putting capitalist property rights into question.

It will take further struggle — a united campaign of mass action — to turn these words on paper into reality. The point is, there already exists a legal framework to do so.

How to begin

“The right to a job is a property right,” explained socialist leader Sam Marcy in his 1986 book, “High Tech, Low Pay.” “The right to seize and occupy the plants [which includes stores, hospitals, schools, etc.] is an accompanying right. Doing it will make it lawful if carried out in earnest and on a mass scale.”

What if labor unions, together with immigrant workers’ organizations, the movement against racist killer cops, community groups, the anti-war, women’s and LGBTQ2S movements, made these demands of 2020 presidential candidates Trump and Joe Biden:

• Issue an executive order halting layoffs and forcing the Fortune 500 companies to rehire;
• Call a special joint session of Congress to deal exclusively with creating a jobs program that will put 10 million people to work right away with union wages and benefits, with special attention to oppressed communities devastated by the coronavirus;
• End the raids against undocumented workers, ban foreclosures and evictions, make quality health care available to everyone and pass a big increase in the minimum wage.

What if we called upon the unemployed and underemployed to come and occupy Washington until the president and Congress meet their demands?

For a start, they can tax the rich, defund the police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Pentagon to provide jobs and income for all.

Here is Chapter 30 from “The Social Evolution of Humanity: Marx and Engels Were Right!” by Bob McCubbin, a study of the evolution of humanity focused on human social/sexual relations (including “marriage”) and, in particular, the changing social status of women. McCubbin is the author of “Roots of Lesbian and Gay Oppression: A Marxist View.” First published in 1976, during the first flush of the modern LGBTQ2S movement, McCubbin’s unparalleled achievement was to offer a historical analysis of when, where, why and how LGBTQ2S oppression developed. “The Social Evolution of Humanity” is available at Amazon.

In her book “Trans Liberation,” author, communist activist and transgender warrior Leslie Feinberg writes:

We are a movement of masculine females and feminine males, crossdressers, transsexual men and women, intersexuals born on the anatomical sweep between female and male, gender-blenders, many other sex and gender-variant people, and our significant others.

In this listing of gender-variant folk, and in the thousands of reports of sex and gender diversity found among the populations of the world’s cultures, we find a type of human being and a manifestation of human culture unaddressed by the founders of Marxism.

Feinberg’s important contribution to Marxist theory was to contextualize this part of the human family within the framework of the unfolding of the global class struggle. With convincing anthropological and historical evidence, she demonstrated how gender expression, like sexual expression, came to be manipulated, restricted and repressed by ruling-class forces with the onset of patriarchy.

In “Transgender Warriors,” a stunningly attractive book whose beautiful page layouts complement Feinberg’s rich prose, she outlines her historical materialist analysis of gender expression, opening with a question:

But did these cooperative [foraging and hunting] societies only have room for two sexes, fixed at birth? It has become common for social scientists to conclude that the earliest human division of labor between women and men in communal societies formed the basis for modern sex and gender boundaries. But the more I studied, the more I believed that the assumption that every society, in every corner of the world, in every period of human history, recognized only men and women as two immutable social categories is a modern Western conclusion. …

Our earliest ancestors do not appear to have been biological determinists. There are societies all over the world that allowed for more than two sexes, as well as respecting the right of individuals to reassign their sex. And transsexuality, transgender, intersexuality, and bigender appear as themes in creation stories, legends, parables, and oral history.

As I’ve already documented, many Native nations on the North American continent made room for more than two sexes, and there appeared to have been a fluidity between them. Reports by military expeditions, missionaries, ethnographers, anthropologists, explorers, and other harbingers of colonialism cited numerous forms of sex-change, transgender, and intersexuality in matrilineal societies — societies where men were not in a dominant position. In these accounts — no matter how racist or angrily distorted by the colonial narrative voice — it is clear that transsexual priestesses and other trans spiritual leaders, or medicine people, have existed in many ancient cultures. (43-44)

‘Gender and sex diversity are global in character’

In the following several pages, Feinberg provides examples of trans spiritual leaders in Asian, African and South American cultures. She concludes:

I’m not arguing that all of these examples from diverse cultures are identical to modern Western trans identities. Nor am I trying to unravel the matrix of attitudes and beliefs around trans expression in these societies. The importance for me is the depth and breadth of evidence underscoring that gender and sex diversity are global in character, and that trans people were once revered, not reviled. How else could a trans person be a sacred shaman? In communal societies, where respect could not be bought or sold or stolen, being a shaman, or medicine person, was a position of honor. (47)

“So how and why,” Feinberg asks, “did attitudes towards trans people plummet so drastically?” Guided by Engels, she finds the answer in the development of early class societies in the Middle Eastern Fertile Crescent. She remarks that, as a Jewish person, the anti-trans passages in Deuteronomy and the anti-homosexual passages in Leviticus bothered her. But they, like the campaigns against cross-dressing deities (e.g., the Syrian goddess Atargatis) and rulers (e.g., Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut and Assyrian King Ashurbanipal), were co-existent with the development of private property and the amassment of private wealth in the hands of men, as Engels so masterfully elucidates in Origin.

Hostility to transgender, sex-change, intersexuality, women, and same-sex love became a pattern wherever class antagonisms deepened. As a Jewish, transgender, working-class revolutionary, I can’t stress enough that Judaism was not the root of the oppression of women and the outlawing of trans expression and same-sex love. The rise of patriarchal class divisions were to blame.

And I found that wherever the ruling classes became stronger, the laws grew increasingly more fierce and more relentlessly enforced. (Feinberg’s italics; 53)

This writer would only caution that Judaism, like the other patriarchal religions of the world, has been a powerful ideological force since the overthrow of mother right and continues to be presently. The patriarchal religions exist most fundamentally as reflections of existing class relations, which, as Feinberg notes, are based on existing property relations: the private property relations of slave and feudal societies in the past, and presently, the global dominance of capitalist private property.

The existence of sex and gender variation among Indigenous people, especially among Native North American peoples, has received much attention, perhaps because of the stark division posed by their clear acceptance among tribal people in contrast to the prevalent homophobia and transphobia of capitalist society that is only now being challenged by a movement of the people who have been traditionally targeted and their allies.

Resolving an important issue involving word choice

Walter Williams’ “The Spirit and the Flesh” offers a vast array of material highlighting the existence and importance of sex and gender-variant folk among Indigenous peoples. Criticism of his work by Native writers focuses on his uncritical use of the word “berdache,” his importation of the word “amazon” to refer to both lesbian and two-spirit women in Indigenous cultures and his assumption that homosexuality was an essential ingredient of the berdache/amazon experience. These criticisms are raised by a number of the contributors to the book “Two-Spirit People,” most of whom, however, also acknowledge the trailblazing importance of Williams’ research.

In the Preface to “Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology,” Randy Burns of the Northern Paiute people and co-founder of Gay American Indians writes:

French explorers used the word berdache to describe male Indians who specialized in the work of women and formed emotional and sexual relationships with other men. Many tribes had female berdaches, too — women who took on men’s work and married other women. The History Project of Gay American Indians (GAI) has documented these alternative roles in over 135 North American tribes. …

As artists, providers, and healers, our traditional gay ancestors had important responsibilities.

Women hunters and warriors brought food for their families and defended their communities, like the famous Kutenai woman warrior who became an intertribal courier and a prophet in the early 1800s, or Woman Chief of the Crow Indians, who achieved the third highest rank in her tribe. Among the Mohave [sic], lesbian women became powerful shamans and medicine people.

Male berdaches specialized in the arts and crafts of their tribes and performed important social and religious roles. In California, we were often called upon to bury and mourn the dead, because such close contact with the spiritual world was considered too dangerous for others. Among the Navajo, berdaches were healers and artists, while among the Plains Indians, we were famous for the valuable crafts we made. 

However, it’s important to take seriously the controversy that has arisen over the use of the word “berdache.” In the Introduction to the book “Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality,” editors Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas and Sabine Lang write:

“Berdache” is now considered to be an inappropriate and insulting term by a number of Native Americans as well as by anthropologists. 

In its place:

 The term two-spirit (or two-spirited) was coined in 1990 by Native American individuals during the third Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian conference in Winnipeg. … Originating as a term for contemporary Native American gays and lesbians as well as people who have been referred to as “berdache” by anthropologists and other scholars, it has come to refer to a number of Native American roles and identities past and present, including contemporary Native Americans/First Nations individuals who are gay or lesbian; contemporary Native American/First Nations gender categories; the traditions wherein multiple gender categories and sexualities are institutionalized in Native American/First Nations tribal cultures; traditions of gender diversity in other, non-Native American cultures; transvestites, transsexuals, and transgendered people; and drag queens and butches. (the editors’ italics; 2)

A relatively new term, an ancient concept

M. Tiahui, a Native activist and co-leader of United American Indians of New England, offered a very precise explanation of “Two Spirit” in her contribution to the 2019 Pride edition of Struggle-La Lucha newspaper:

Perhaps you have heard the term “Two Spirit” used along with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other terms. If you are not Indigenous, this may have made you think that “Two Spirit” refers to Indigenous people who are lesbian, gay or bi. But being Two Spirit does not necessarily mean that someone is lesbian or gay since it does not refer to sexual preference.

 “Two Spirit” is a pan-Indian umbrella term that describes Indigenous people who have mixed or nonbinary gender roles. …

While the term is relatively new, the concept has existed among hundreds of Indigenous Nations for thousands of years. Some Native Nations have terms for up to 4 or 5 different genders, for instance. Two Spirit people are considered to be nonbinary and to hold sacred elements of both feminine and masculine within them. …

 A Two Spirit person may be lesbian or gay, but being lesbian or gay does not necessarily make someone Two Spirit. …

Traditionally, in many tribal nations, Two Spirit people were held in high esteem. They were leaders, warriors, medicine (spiritual) people. They often played a special role with youth, including adopting children and giving special sacred names to babies. (2019: 2)

Many people who have seriously considered the evidence, hold the opinion that LGBTQ2S, gender nonconforming, gender fluid and gender nonbinary folk have always been an essential part of the human family exactly because of the unique contributions they have made to our species’ survival and well-being.

The present writer remembers, in a long past moment, reading a passage (but lacking memory of its source … a book? a journal article?) that highlights the crucial role that two-spirit people have played in Indigenous societies. The cited dialog between a young anthropologist and an elderly Native matriarch went something like this. The young investigator asks the woman, “Did there used to be special people in your tribe, people who married their own sex and perhaps dressed differently than other members of their gender?” The matriarch’s face lights up. “Of course there were people like that. They were our problem solvers. They were the glue of our tribe.”

Abolición del sistema policial racista

Defensa de nuestro movimiento

Organizarse para empoderar al pueblo

Exigimos:

• ¡La Abolición del sistema policial racista!
• ¡La retirada de la Policía y Guardia Nacional ahora!
• ¡Liberar a todos los arrestados y retirar todos los cargos!
• ¡Alto a los toques de queda y la escalada de violencia policial!

Las comunidades negras, latinas e indígenas deben tener el derecho y los recursos para crear y controlar sus propias organizaciones y así mantenerse a salvo.

Desde Minneapolis hasta Los Ángeles, Atlanta, Nueva York, Chicago, Filadelfia, Dallas, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. e incluso internacionalmente, las personas en ciudades y pueblos han salido a las calles indignadas por la inhumanidad del terror policial racista.

La policía y los vigilantes de EE. UU. han recibido una licencia para asesinar a negros, latinos, indígenas y pobres.  Las víctimas del terror policial deben tener derecho a defenderse a sí mismas, a sus familias y a sus hijos.

Si bien los atroces asesinatos de George Floyd, Breonna Taylor y Ahmaud Arbery han provocado ira y dolor masivos a nivel nacional, es el racismo y la supremacía blanca integrales al sistema del capitalismo la causa subyacente de la rebelión.

El capitalismo y el imperialismo le han fallado al pueblo

El movimiento masivo en las calles de cada pueblo y ciudad también tiene lugar en el contexto del fracaso masivo del capitalismo para proteger a las personas del mortal coronavirus y su promoción imperialista de la pobreza y la guerra.

La falta de atención médica, vivienda, alimentos e ingresos, ha profundizado el sufrimiento de la gran mayoría de los trabajadores.  Las personas negras, latinas y pobres han sufrido de manera desproporcionada, especialmente porque como trabajadores esenciales que son, se ven obligados a trabajar en condiciones inseguras sin el equipo de protección personal (EPP) adecuado.  La disparidad de las tasas de mortalidad es evidente.  El rechazo a abordar lo que es una sentencia cercana a la muerte para millones de prisioneros y trabajadores inmigrantes y sus familias encerrados en campos de detención y el desprecio insensible a los trabajadores de primera línea que están siendo sacrificados por ganancias, ha impulsado este nuevo movimiento.

La comunidad no posee corporaciones, ni bancos, ni recintos policiales

Surgen argumentos inútiles destinados a distorsionar y nublar los acontecimientos que rodean las rebeliones e insurrecciones para engañar, dividir y confundir a la gente.  Argumentos como “La gente está destruyendo sus propios barrios” son un ejemplo.

Target, una cadena multimillonaria de tiendas cuyos trabajadores están mal pagados y explotados sin piedad, no es propiedad de la comunidad ni tampoco los bancos ni una docena de otros negocios.  Y los recintos policiales en las ciudades no son más que los puestos avanzados de un ejército de ocupación en comunidades negras y marrones.

¿Quién realmente saquea nuestras comunidades?

Son los banqueros y los multimillonarios los responsables de las medidas de austeridad que han retirado la subvención de la educación, la atención médica y la vivienda en todas las ciudades importantes.  La crisis hipotecaria creada por estos mismos bancos estafó y robó millones a familias trabajadoras negras y latinas que perdieron sus hogares.  Las familias negras perdieron la mitad de su riqueza en esta crisis, según la Coalición Nacional de Vivienda de Bajos Ingresos.

¿Cuál es la verdadera fuente de violencia?

¿Cómo pueden los medios de comunicación y los políticos igualar la ruptura de ventanas, la quema de autos de policía y lo que describen como “saqueo”, con la profunda violencia supremacista blanca que es una parte cotidiana de la vida de las personas negras y oprimidas en este país?  ¿Qué pasa con la violencia de la pobreza que amenaza a los trabajadores y las personas pobres los 365 días del año?  ¿Qué pasa con las terribles condiciones que enfrentan los trabajadores inmigrantes y sus hijos en los campos de detención?

No se puede comparar una ventana rota con las vidas perdidas a manos de la policía o los asesinatos racistas.  Una ventana puede ser reparada.  La vida del hijo o la hija de una madre no puede ser devuelta.  Y sin protestas esos asesinatos continuarán.

Es una hipocresía que los funcionarios del gobierno finjan estar preocupados por las pequeñas empresas o enfrentarlas contra los manifestantes y el movimiento.  El reciente paquete de estímulo fue un obsequio gigante para los multimillonarios, mientras que las pequeñas empresas comunitarias, particularmente las empresas negras, fueron francamente estafadas.  Nada se ha hecho durante la pandemia para ayudar a estas empresas.

¡Solidaridad contra la represión policial y militar!

A medida que las personas arriesgan sus vidas tanto por la pandemia viral como por la pandemia del terror estatal racista que se ha intensificado con el despliegue de tropas militares, tanques y armas químicas, es de suma importancia que las organizaciones se unan para defender el derecho de la comunidad negra a protestar contra el terror amenazante por parte de la policía—una entidad creada originalmente con el objetivo de capturar esclavos fugitivos.

Trump ha promovido el genocidio y ha pedido a los militares que eliminen el movimiento popular.  El Movimiento por las Vidas Negras ha abogado por la remoción inmediata de Trump.  El Partido Demócrata ha sido cómplice con su silencio, y peor aún, impuso toques de queda y ordenó a las tropas de la Guardia Nacional ingresar a nuestros vecindarios.

Lo que se necesita es que nuestro movimiento se una fuerte y ​​solidariamente para defenderse y convertirse en una fuerza que pueda ganar estas demandas y abolir la causa raíz del asesinato policial y la represión estatal: el capitalismo, las guerras y el imperialismo.

Contacto: Struggle for Socialism/ La Lucha por el Socialismo

Socialist Unity Party/Partido de Socialismo Unido

Struggle-La-Lucha.org

Contacto nacional: info@struggle-la-lucha.com

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Abolish the racist police system

Defend our movement 

Organize for people’s power

We demand:

• Abolish the racist police system
• Police and National Guard withdraw now
• Release all arrestees — Drop all charges
• End the curfews and escalation of violence by police
• Black, Brown and Indigenous communities must have the right and resources to create and control their own entities to keep them safe

From Minneapolis to Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and even internationally, people in cities and towns have taken to the streets in outrage over the inhumanity of racist police terror. U.S. police and vigilantes have been given a license to murder Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor people. The victims of police terror must have the right to defend themselves, their families and their children.

While the egregious murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery have ignited mass anger and pain nationally, it is the racism and white supremacy integral to the system of capitalism that is the underlying cause of the rebellion.

Capitalism and imperialism have failed the people

The massive movement in the streets in every town and city also takes place in the context of the massive failure of capitalism to protect people from the deadly coronavirus and its imperialist promotion of poverty and war.

The lack of health care, housing, food and income has deepened suffering for the vast majority of workers. Black, Latinx and poor people have suffered disproportionately, especially as essential workers are forced to work in unsafe conditions without the proper personal protective equipment (PPE). The disparity of death rates is glaring. The refusal to address what is a near-death sentence for millions of prisoners and immigrant workers and their families locked up in detention camps and the callous disregard of frontline workers who are being sacrificed for profits has fueled this new movement.

The community doesn’t own corporations, banks and police precincts

Useless arguments emerge aimed at distorting and clouding the events surrounding rebellions and insurrections to both mislead, divide and confuse the people. Arguments like “People are destroying their own neighborhoods” are one example.

Target — a billion dollar chain store whose workers are low paid and mercilessly exploited — is not owned by the community any more than the banks or a dozen other businesses. And the police precincts in cities are nothing more than outposts of an occupation army in Black and Brown communities.

Who really looted our communities? 

It is the bankers and billionaires who are responsible for the austerity measures that have defunded education, health care and housing in every major city. The mortgage crisis created by these same banks ripped off and stole millions from Black and Latinx working-class families who lost their homes. Black families lost half their wealth in this crisis, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

What is the real source of violence?

How can the media and politicians equate the breaking of windows, the burning of police cars and what they describe as “looting” with the deep white supremacist violence that is a daily part of the lives of Black and oppressed people in this country. What about the violence of poverty threatening workers and poor people 365 days of the year? What about the horrific conditions that immigrant workers and their children face in detention camps?

You cannot compare a broken window with the lives lost to police or racist murders. A window can be repaired. A mother’s son or daughter’s life cannot be brought back. And without protests those murders will continue.

It is hypocrisy for government officials to pretend to be concerned about small businesses or to pit them against protesters and the movement. The recent stimulus package was a giant giveaway to billionaires while small community businesses, particularly Black businesses, were frankly ripped off. Nothing has been done during the pandemic to assist these businesses.

Solidarity against police and military repression!

As people are risking their lives from both the viral pandemic and the pandemic of racist state terror that has escalated to military troops, tanks and chemical weapons, it is of utmost importance that organizations unite to defend the Black community’s right to protest the life-threatening terror by the police — an entity originally created for the purpose of capturing runaway slaves. 

Trump has encouraged genocide and called for the military to put down the people’s movement. The Movement for Black Lives has advocated for Trump’s immediate removal. The Democratic Party has been complicit with its silence, or worse, imposed curfews and ordered National Guard troops into our neighborhoods. 

Let our movement unite in strength and solidarity to defend itself and become a force that can win these demands and abolish the root cause of police murder and state repression: capitalism, war and imperialism. 

Contact: Struggle for Socialism/La Lucha por el Socialismo
Socialist Unity Party/ Partido de Socialismo Unido

Struggle-La-Lucha.org

National Contact: info@struggle-la-lucha.com

PDF flyer

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The following statement from the influential Greek labor organization, the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME), was sent to AFSCME Local 3800 in Minneapolis.

PAME, a member of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), expresses its solidarity with the workers and the people of the United States who are on the streets in rage against barbarism and misery.

The assassination of George Floyd was another in the death toll of those murdered either by racism or poverty in the world’s richest country. The pain and misery of millions of poor Americans is shared by that of the thousands of Greek immigrants in the USA, as well as the thousands of refugees and immigrants in Greece today who have experienced and continue to experience racism.

We salute with pride and class solidarity the unions, trade unionists and workers who, in multiform and organized manner, stand by the protesters during these difficult and critical times and oppose the repression and arrests of militants.

The exploitation of developments by bourgeois political parties, both in the United States and in Greece, shows their hypocrisy and opportunism, so as to disorient the people from the fact that their policy nourishes and cultivates nationalism, racism and xenophobia, wars and massacre of peoples abroad, poverty and oppression at home.

Racism and repression against the poor, people of color, or immigrants and refugees, is a manifestation of the rottenness of a system that murders and oppresses the many for the profits of the few. The virus is capitalism and it kills either by violence or poverty.

PAME, the class unions of Greece, express their solidarity and support in the struggle of the peoples, the workers of the whole world who unite their voices against injustice and racism, for a world where workers will live in brotherhood, without exploitation.

Source: Fight Back News

The following editorial appeared on the front page of the June 3 edition of Workers’ Daily, newspaper of the Nepal Workers and Peasants Party. NWPP provided Struggle-La Lucha with an English translation, which has been edited for clarity.

The U.S. government never tires of proclaiming itself the global policeman and protector of human rights. But to its dismay, today the U.S. is on fire. Today, people in the U.S., enraged by state oppression, are demonstrating in the streets. 

In Minneapolis, a white police officer inhumanly and illegally murdered an African American citizen, George Floyd, on May 25. The ruling class in the U.S. turned their faces from punishing the murdering police officers. So enraged people came out on the street, ignoring lockdown decrees issued by the state. Demonstrations spread like wildfire throughout the U.S. and beyond. More than 20 U.S. states have issued curfews to control the angry demonstrations. People have been killed by the police and National Guard and many were injured during demonstrations last week. Thousands of demonstrators were arrested.

After the killing of George Floyd, the spread of mass demonstrations all over the U.S. beyond Minneapolis has exposed the age-old social and economic disparity and repression embedded in U.S. society. In the U.S., the killing and brutalizing of African Americans, Latinx people and immigrants from other countries by government officials and police officers, including wealthy white people, is not a new matter. Guilty officers in many such incidents do not even receive mandatory legal punishment. 

African Americans are the descendants of people who were brought to the U.S. as slaves from Africa. White supremacists behave toward them today even as they did to their ancestors. Racism is still prominent in the U.S. ruling class.

Against the frequent and ongoing illegal killings and brutalizing of Black people, the Black Lives Matter movement started several years ago. Many demonstrations were organized under that banner. But no radical changes have been made yet. After the election of Donald Trump — a staunch racist and rightwing leader — as president of the U.S., the number of racist, xenophobic and anti-immigrant offenses increased exponentially. The demonstrations now seen in the streets are an outburst of anger against the age-old oppression on the vast majority of U.S. people. But U.S. chieftain Trump is pointing his finger at Antifa, a left movement he blames for the ongoing demonstrations. He labeled it a terrorist organization.

Large numbers of people have died of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., largely because of the reluctant efforts and negligence of the Trump administration. People in the U.S. are thus angry with the Trump administration. A country which claims itself the authority on human rights and justice fails to deliver “the right to breathe” and “right to live” to its own citizens. Therefore it is unfitting to proclaim itself the world power. It indicates the coming downfall of the U.S. Empire in the world order.

Source: Online Majdoor

Abolish the racist police system

Defend our movement 

Organize for people’s power

We demand:

• Abolish the racist police system
• Police and National Guard withdraw now
• Release all arrestees — Drop all charges
• End the curfews and escalation of violence by police
• Black, Brown and Indigenous communities must have the right and resources to create and control their own entities to keep them safe

From Minneapolis to Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and even internationally, people in cities and towns have taken to the streets in outrage over the inhumanity of racist police terror. U.S. police and vigilantes have been given a license to murder Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor people. The victims of police terror must have the right to defend themselves, their families and their children.

While the egregious murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery have ignited mass anger and pain nationally, it is the racism and white supremacy integral to the system of capitalism that is the underlying cause of the rebellion.

Capitalism and imperialism have failed the people

The massive movement in the streets in every town and city also takes place in the context of the massive failure of capitalism to protect people from the deadly coronavirus and its imperialist promotion of poverty and war.

The lack of health care, housing, food and income has deepened suffering for the vast majority of workers. Black, Latinx and poor people have suffered disproportionately, especially as essential workers are forced to work in unsafe conditions without the proper personal protective equipment (PPE). The disparity of death rates is glaring. The refusal to address what is a near-death sentence for millions of prisoners and immigrant workers and their families locked up in detention camps and the callous disregard of frontline workers who are being sacrificed for profits has fueled this new movement.

The community doesn’t own corporations, banks and police precincts

Useless arguments emerge aimed at distorting and clouding the events surrounding rebellions and insurrections to both mislead, divide and confuse the people. Arguments like “People are destroying their own neighborhoods” are one example.

Target — a billion dollar chain store whose workers are low paid and mercilessly exploited — is not owned by the community any more than the banks or a dozen other businesses. And the police precincts in cities are nothing more than outposts of an occupation army in Black and Brown communities.

Who really looted our communities? 

It is the bankers and billionaires who are responsible for the austerity measures that have defunded education, health care and housing in every major city. The mortgage crisis created by these same banks ripped off and stole millions from Black and Latinx working-class families who lost their homes. Black families lost half their wealth in this crisis, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

What is the real source of violence?

How can the media and politicians equate the breaking of windows, the burning of police cars and what they describe as “looting” with the deep white supremacist violence that is a daily part of the lives of Black and oppressed people in this country. What about the violence of poverty threatening workers and poor people 365 days of the year? What about the horrific conditions that immigrant workers and their children face in detention camps?

You cannot compare a broken window with the lives lost to police or racist murders. A window can be repaired. A mother’s son or daughter’s life cannot be brought back. And without protests those murders will continue.

It is hypocrisy for government officials to pretend to be concerned about small businesses or to pit them against protesters and the movement. The recent stimulus package was a giant giveaway to billionaires while small community businesses, particularly Black businesses, were frankly ripped off. Nothing has been done during the pandemic to assist these businesses.

Solidarity against police and military repression!

As people are risking their lives from both the viral pandemic and the pandemic of racist state terror that has escalated to military troops, tanks and chemical weapons, it is of utmost importance that organizations unite to defend the Black community’s right to protest the life-threatening terror by the police — an entity originally created for the purpose of capturing runaway slaves. 

Trump has encouraged genocide and called for the military to put down the people’s movement. The Movement for Black Lives has advocated for Trump’s immediate removal. The Democratic Party has been complicit with its silence, or worse, imposed curfews and ordered National Guard troops into our neighborhoods. 

Let our movement unite in strength and solidarity to defend itself and become a force that can win these demands and abolish the root cause of police murder and state repression: capitalism, war and imperialism. 

Contact: Struggle for Socialism/La Lucha por el Socialismo
Socialist Unity Party/ Partido de Socialismo Unido

Struggle-La-Lucha.org

National Contact: info@struggle-la-lucha.com

PDF flyer

[embeddoc url=”https://struggle-la-lucha.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/SSLstatement60430.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”]

Dear comrades!

The whole world is now watching as protests unfold in the United States. And we agree with the idea that rebellion against racist police terror is a class struggle. The anger of the working class, especially its most oppressed, frightens those in power. They seek scapegoats, inventing conspiracy theories to hide the vices of capitalist society, which have become even more apparent.

Capitalism, entering a phase of deep crisis, aggravated by the pandemic, has exacerbated inequality, including racial inequality. The U.S. working class is plunging into poverty and unemployment, while North American capitalists continue to pursue imperialist policies around the world. The police protect only the rich, and for the poor, especially Black and Latinx people, they are the worst enemy. We remember the names of the unarmed Black brothers and sisters killed by racist cops. They cannot get away with all these crimes!

The United States was built on the blood and inhuman exploitation of Blacks and migrants, constant war against the working class, and the robbery and oppression of Native Americans. True working-class solidarity is also the relentless struggle against racism and other forms of oppression.

We, the people of Donbass, perfectly understand what constant terror is. For six years we have been living under fire from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, among which there are frankly neofascist battalions. This terror, unleashed against the people of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) and all those who disagree with this state of affairs in Ukraine, is openly supported by the U.S. capitalist class. The war in the Donbass has also become a training ground for the U.S. far right. And the echoes of our situation can be felt in your protests. For example, a former Ukrainian army soldier tried to ram protesters in Minneapolis.

We understand the grief of Black families who are losing their loved ones, relatives and friends — because of police terror, because of poverty, because of unemployment, and because basic medical care is not available to them. We must put an end to racism and neofascism around the world. These are links in the same chain. To remain neutral now means to be on the side of our common class enemy.

We express our solidarity with your struggle.

Down with racism! Down with capitalism!

Red Carnation Antifascist Community of Donbass
Aurora Women’s Club

Translated by Greg Butterfield