Charla pronunciada en “Pushback Against Empire”, una fiesta navideña y recaudación de fondos para la revista CovertAction en la ciudad de Nueva York el 1 de diciembre.

Si le gustan las historias de terror,  aquí tiene una. Es el documento de la Estrategia de Defensa Nacional 2022 del Secretario de Defensa de los Estados Unidos. Este  fue bendecido por el presidente Biden, a quien se cita en la introducción.

Desde el principio, cataloga a China, Rusia, Irán y la República Popular Democrática de Corea como amenazas a la seguridad nacional de los EUA. Y esta amenaza dice, debe enfrentarse haciendo que la OTAN sea aún más poderosa y tenga capacidad nuclear, especialmente en lo que respecta a Rusia.

Pero en términos de prioridades, establece que China es el objetivo número uno. Esto se hará, declara el documento, provocando altercados en la región del Indo-Pacífico utilizando a Japón, Corea del Sur, Australia y cualquier país del sudeste asiático que Washington pueda reclutar para lanzar una guerra desde el Mar de China Meridional hasta el Mar de China Oriental. Esta semana hubo un altercado muy serio en el Mar de China Meridional entre EUA y China debido a los ejercicios de guerra estadounidenses allí.

Como si eso no fuera suficiente, el documento dice que EUA debería comenzar a entrenar y armar a Taiwán en una guerra asimétrica (o guerra de guerrillas) contra China. Así que prepárese para que sus impuestos financien otra guerra que cueste esta vez, cientos de miles de millones de dólares. Y desafortunadamente, es posible que tengamos  que contrarrestar a un movimiento contra la guerra en los EUA que probablemente culpará a China cuando ese país se vea obligado a responder a las provocaciones y amenazas a su seguridad y soberanía. Eso es lo que pasó con Rusia.

¿Qué debemos aprender de este documento y la estrategia de Rand Corporation publicada hace tres años que planea las provocaciones contra Rusia? No importaba lo que hiciera Rusia; los imperialistas tenían un plan de acción que estaba decidido a causar la guerra por cualquier medio, independientemente de las acciones de Rusia.

El problema nazi de Ucrania

Mientras investigaba la guerra en Ucrania en la región de Donbass en mayo pasado, visité un hospital para pacientes con tuberculosis en Krymskoye que había sido acondicionado para la guerra por el ejército ucraniano. Fueron obligados a irse una semana antes por la Milicia Popular de Lugansk y los soldados rusos.

Observé proyectiles de 122 mm utilizadas por Kiev para destruir las casas a solo una milla de distancia en Solkinyki. Estos proyectiles también se utilizaron para atacar a las familias que entrevisté en el norte de Rubizhne, en un refugio que había albergado a 350 personas que huían del asalto militar ucraniano a sus edificios de apartamentos.

Aunque el ruido fuerte que escuchaba a menudo por los continuos bombardeos de las fuerzas ucranianas era perturbador, las personas en ese refugio me dijeron que se sentían mucho más seguras que antes ahora que las tropas rusas los protegían y les proporcionaban agua, alimentos y otros elementos esenciales para sobrevivir.

Debo mencionar que en ese hospital de tuberculosis, había una esvástica gigante pintada en la pared, y junto a ella, el sonnenrad,  un símbolo apropiado por los nazis en la Segunda Guerra Mundial y utilizado hoy por el Batallón Azov de Ucrania.

Cuando algunas personas dicen que el problema nazi de Ucrania es “menor”, ignoran cruelmente a las 10 personas negras asesinados en el supermercado Tops en Buffalo, Nueva York, por un supremacista blanco de 18 años, llevaba el emblema del Batallón Azov, el mismo sonnenrad que vi en la pared de Krymskoye.

Este joven dijo que se inspiró en el neozelandés Brenton Tarrant, quien mató a 51 musulmanes en una mezquita. En su manifiesto, Tarrant escribió que estaba en contacto directo con el Batallón Azov y planeaba ir a Ucrania para recibir entrenamiento militar.

En 2019, la revista Time entrevistó a un ex-agente del FBI que admitió que 17.000 supremacistas blancos habían ido a Ucrania para recibir entrenamiento militar. Azov y sus socios han utilizado parte de los miles de millones de dólares que Ucrania ha recibido en financiamiento y capacitación de los EUA desde 2014, para construir una presencia muy exitosa en las redes sociales dirigida a los jóvenes marginados.

Borrando a la gente del Donbass

La narrativa de Rusia como invasor, solo la pueden mantener mediante la desaparición de las más de 6 millones de personas en la región de Donbass que han sido objetivo durante más de ocho años por un ejército dirigido abiertamente por neonazis. Para el 22 de febrero del 2022, el bombardeo de la región se había multiplicado por 20 en siete días, a 1.400 bombardeos por día. Kiev acumuló 150.000 soldados en la frontera, preparándose para una masacre genocida.

Por eso, el 23 de febrero, las Repúblicas Populares de Lugansk y Donetsk solicitaron formalmente la protección de Rusia.

Si quiere saber cómo es realmente el imperialismo, considere esto: según el Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo, la congelación de los activos de Afganistán por parte de Estados Unidos está provocando la hambruna de 1 millón de niñas y niños. Con solo un gesto, Biden podría detener eso hoy, pero no lo hará. Ahí se ve el verdadero poder imperialista, la verdadera maldad.

Sin cuestionar las principales justificaciones de esta guerra, simplemente estamos permitiendo que se arraiguen mentiras que, en el peor de los casos, obtendrán apoyo popular para las estrategias imperialistas de EUA y en el mejor de los casos, alentarán la resignación y la apatía.

Es toda la verdad lo que finalmente inspirará a nuestra clase trabajadora a actuar. Y cualquier movimiento por la paz efectivo debe estar conformado abrumadoramente por nuestra clase obrera multinacional y los movimientos populares que luchan contra el racismo, por los derechos sindicales y los derechos de los inquilinos, por los derechos de las mujeres y LGBTQ2S, por el derecho a la autodeterminación de haitianos, palestinos, indígenas, y pueblos negros, latinos y oprimidos.

Todos estos componentes son necesarios para que un movimiento por la paz tenga algún poder real porque estas son las fuerzas más atacadas por el imperialismo estadounidense a nivel nacional e internacional. Son estas fuerzas las que más tienen que ganar al detener las guerras imperialistas que roban los recursos necesarios para la supervivencia de sus hijos. Y estas son las fuerzas de cuya explotación depende esta bestia económica para sobrevivir.

Por lo tanto, contienen poder potencial real.

As 2023 begins, it’s undeniable that a dangerous, virulent fascist movement is spreading through U.S. society.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said in 1967, “The bombs dropped on Vietnam explode at home.” Malcolm X expressed something similar when he said, “Chickens come home to roost.”

Feeding the U.S. war machine boomerangs by increasing repression, decreasing rights, and robbing people of desperately needed resources here at home. Promoting fascism abroad facilitates its growth here.

It’s seen in the spread of hate-ridden protests against drag story hours, sometimes attended by armed neo-Nazis, who threaten children, parents, and LGBTQ+ communities, and in the bomb threats targeting medical facilities that provide gender-affirming care to trans children and abortion services to people who can become pregnant. 

It takes the form of mass shootings, like the massacre of 10 Black people at Tops grocery in Buffalo, New York, five queer people at Club Q in Colorado Springs, and 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. We recognize it in the targeting of electrical grids from North Carolina to Washington state to sow fear.  

At the local level, the fascist influence is evident in the rash of attempts by astroturfed “parents’ groups” to ban books that expose the racist history of the U.S. or validate the lives and experiences of LGBTQ+ people.

At the state level, we see it in the efforts by officials in Texas, Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere to eradicate trans health care, criminalize parents who support trans children, and create a lynch-mob atmosphere against women and others who choose to get an abortion.

At the national level, there is the far-right-controlled U.S. Supreme Court, which gutted voting rights, struck down the constitutional right to abortion, and seems poised to do the same to same-sex marriage. 

Looming over it all is the shadow of Jan. 6, 2021, when an organized fascist mob attempted a coup d’etat at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., to keep Donald Trump in power – aided and abetted by a faction of the Pentagon.

Fascist tendencies have existed in the U.S. since it began its rise as an imperialist power in the late 19th century – from the Ku Klux Klan to the John Birch Society to today’s Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Sometimes the ruling class of bosses, bankers, and landlords keep them on a tight leash.

But when times are tough, when they fear the masses of poor and working people could unite and fight back against their unjust capitalist system, the fascists are let off their leash to spread division and, if necessary, physically exterminate those the rich and powerful fear most.

U.S. spread fascism in Ukraine

As top dog of the world imperialist powers – including Britain, Japan, and the European Union – the U.S. has long upheld fascists in its efforts to wring the maximum profits out of the world’s people.

Washington has abetted fascist dictatorships or those with strong fascist aspects, from the Shah of Iran to Suharto in Indonesia, from Pinochet in Chile to Áñez in Bolivia.

During the Cold War against the USSR, the U.S. encouraged the growth of violent fascist movements like the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its post-World War II successors. The U.S. and Canada harbored its leaders, gave them money and weapons, and encouraged their hate propaganda against multinational Soviet socialism.

The many neo-Nazi movements in Ukraine today, like Right Sector and Azov Brigade, are descendants of this lineage.

But that’s not all. The destruction of the USSR and European socialist camp 30 years ago brought economic devastation and plummeting life expectancies. Washington stepped into the ideological vacuum to spread division and prevent a revolutionary response to the cataclysm. 

One way it did this was by spreading U.S.-style white supremacy through the capitalist media. Another was to encourage far-right U.S. evangelical movements to spread anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-woman hate. 

This happened under both Democratic and Republican administrations and prepared the ground for the growth of fascist movements and reactionary government policies in Eastern Europe that plague the region today.

Donbass resists fascism

I’ve been writing about Ukraine since the U.S.-backed Maidan coup toppled the elected government in early 2014. Fascist groups were at the heart of this “revolution of dignity.” They hobnobbed with the likes of the late Republican Senator John McCain and Democrat Victoria Nuland, who today is Joe Biden’s Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

I’ve interviewed, spoken to, and visited courageous Ukrainian anti-fascists who resisted. Many were forced to flee east to avoid death. Others were imprisoned and later traded in exchanges for captured Ukrainian soldiers. Today many of them are fighting on the side of the Donbass and Russia.

The neo-Nazis who provided the backbone of Maidan went on to massacre 48 unarmed activists at the Odessa House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014. None of the perpetrators have been punished. Many survivors, however, were jailed or driven into exile.

Washington preferred its new puppet regime in Kiev to be fronted by more media-friendly faces like oligarch Petro Poroshenko or TV comedian Volodymyr Zelensky. But it made sure the fascists became integral to the repressive bodies of the state, including the Armed Forces of Ukraine, providing them extensive training in the use of Western-supplied weapons.

These neo-Nazis, under various names, also set the tone for the new regime’s virulently anti-Russia and anti-communist ideology. One of the government’s first acts was to ban the use of the Russian language – the daily language of those living in eastern Ukraine. They spoke of working-class residents of the east – especially in the Donbass mining region – as “insects” and “subhumans” to be cleansed.

The writing was on the wall. People in the east – and antifascists throughout the whole of Ukraine – rose up. In most places, they were violently suppressed. But in the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, the people seized power and declared themselves independent anti-fascist republics.

Ukraine – with the backing of the U.S. and the NATO military alliance – then waged war on the people of Donbass for eight years, killing more than 14,000 people and setting the stage for the escalation of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in early 2022.

Fascism must be fought

For a few years in the late 2010s, articles sometimes appeared in the U.S. corporate media highlighting Ukraine’s “Nazi problem.” Some even exposed links between the Ukrainian far right and white supremacist groups in the U.S., like the Rise Against Movement, which participated in the white supremacist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, where anti-racist protester Heather Heyer was murdered in 2017.

This is not surprising. It’s common practice for U.S. media to be used to keep dependent regimes in line, to remind them that “we made you, and we can break you.”

But when Washington, Wall Street, and Big Oil decided in 2021 that it was time to go full-speed ahead with a proxy war against Russia, those kinds of exposés vanished. Once Russia was backed into a corner and forced to intervene militarily to prevent a genocidal slaughter in Donbass, any discussion of Ukraine’s “Nazi problem” became an unspeakable heresy for the media and liberal mouthpieces on social media.

Today it is common to see Ukrainian soldiers in the media sporting fascist symbols. But the media ignore the symbols, and anyone who dares to point them out is labeled an agent of Vladimir Putin.

The people of Donbass don’t have that luxury. They had to fight, arms in hand, to protect themselves from the fascist threat, and today they must continue to do so as Ukraine rains bombs, mines, and artillery on civilian targets in Donetsk and other cities.

Unite against fascism and imperialism

It’s a tragedy of history that those fighting the rise of fascism in the U.S. and Ukraine are mostly unable to recognize one another. 

Just as imperialism spread hate propaganda in the former Soviet countries to sow division, so has it co-opted the language of protest movements, the tactics of anarchism and social democracy, and used nonprofits to confuse people in the West and turn natural allies against each other.

A growing grassroots movement in the U.S. is resisting fascist threats on the lives of the most marginalized communities. This is a great reason for hope. 

However, if this movement cannot recognize other genuine anti-fascist struggles and learn from them, if it does not learn about the class nature of imperialist war, it will remain isolated and unable to respond to the underlying causes of fascism.

What’s lacking is not only a basic, class-conscious understanding of what fascism is and how to fight it. The fundamental Marxist understanding of imperialism and war, as explained by Lenin, has been lost to many movements that have emerged in the 21st century. 

Opposition to imperialist war and support for its military defeat is not based on political agreement with the non-imperialist countries under attack but an understanding that imperialism’s defeat is a fundamental prerequisite to liberation. 

Those who claim to want liberation for LGBTQ+ people in Russia and women in Iran, freedom for Palestine, or a socialist future for Ukraine and Venezuela but who do not do everything in their power to facilitate the defeat of U.S. imperialism internally and externally are misguided at best.

There’s a fundamental commonality between the anti-fascists who fight arms in hand in Donetsk and Lugansk and the armed anti-fascists who defend queer spaces in Texas. 

Those who held mass protests in Ukraine against the Maidan coup and those who came out in the streets to defend drag story hour in Queens, New York, are part of the same fight – even if those on both sides cannot see it at the moment.

It’s the job of communist revolutionaries to build bridges of understanding and mutual struggle.

Marxists have revolutionary optimism because we know history never presents people with a task without the means to carry it out. The knowledge, tactics, and forces to defeat imperialism and fascism exist. The numbers who understand them are small for now. 

But circumstances demand that knowledge be shared, studied, and put into practice. We must prepare to do so, even if we have to fight to get a hearing.

Puerto Rican political prisoner Ana Belén Montes is set to be released from a federal prison in Texas on January 8, 2023. This upcoming release marks a victory for the movement to free Puerto Rican prisoners of conscience. Belén Montes is a former U.S. intelligence analyst who was sentenced to 25 years in prison on October 16, 2002, for espionage on behalf of the Cuban state. She pleaded guilty to the charges levied against her, testifying before the court, “I obeyed my conscience rather than the law. I believe our government’s policy toward Cuba is cruel and unfair, profoundly unneighborly, and I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it.”

Ana Belén Montes was one of the top Cuba analysts working for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) before she was arrested on September 21, 2001, ten days after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. According to the U.S. government, her arrest was motivated by a fear that she could leak information about the U.S.’s planned invasion of Afghanistan the following month.

Belén Montes used her influential position within the U.S. government to influence policy toward Cuba. One example was in 1998 when she wrote policy that softened the Pentagon’s assessment of the threat posed by Fidel Castro, at a time when Cuba was on the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (the U.S. removed Cuba from this list in 2015, only to re-add the nation in 2021).

“An Italian proverb perhaps best describes the fundamental truth I believe in: ‘All the world is one country,’” Belén Montes testified at her sentencing. “This principle urges tolerance and understanding for the different ways of others. It asks that we treat other nations the way we wish to be treated—with respect and compassion. It is a principle that, tragically, I believe we have never applied to Cuba.”

According to ProLibertad, an organization fighting for the release of Puerto Rican political prisoners in the U.S., Belén Montes has had to endure near-complete isolation for the two decades of her incarceration. When she was initially incarcerated, she was restricted to a degree in which she did not have access to television or newspapers and could not interact with any other inmates. As of the past few years, her visits and correspondence are limited to a list of only 20 people who she knew before incarceration.

“[Belén Montes] understood that the Cuban people have been and continue to be victims of constant attacks by an atrocious, inhuman, unjust imperialism that should not be,” Puerto Rican journalist Luis De Jesús told Peoples Dispatch.

“And she took the side that she understood was the most correct. And this, no matter what you think of Ana Belén Montes, is to be admired.”

“It is a gratifying moment to know that she is finally going to be out of prison, but not quite an achievement, because we know that the causes that led Ana Belén to do what she did and to defend the Cuban people as she defended them, still exist, because the Cuban people are still victims of those attacks,” De Jesús continued. “I wish that we didn’t have to have more figures like Ana Belén Montes in the future. That the relationship between Cuba and the United States could be one of brotherhood and solidarity, based on internationalism, as all bilateral relations should be.”

On December 15, 2022, while helicopters flew overhead, members of Peru’s national army shot down civilians with live bullets in the outskirts of the city of Ayacucho. This action was in response to a national strike and mobilization to protest the coup d’état that deposed President Pedro Castillo on December 7.

On December 15, hundreds of university students, shopkeepers, street vendors, agricultural workers, and activists gathered at the center of Ayacucho to express their discontent over the removal of Castillo and continued their mobilization toward the airport. Similar action was witnessed in several other cities across the southern Andean region of the country.

As protesters approached the airport, members of the armed forces opened fire and shot tear gas canisters directly at them. The firing by the army from the helicopters proved to be the most lethal. As the hundreds of unarmed people ran for their lives, the shooting continued.

Ten people were killed as a result of this violence inflicted by the army, and dozens more were injured, according to official numbers provided by the ombudsman’s office. At least six people are still fighting for their lives in hospitals in Peru’s capital Lima and in Ayacucho. Autopsies of 10 of those who died in Ayacucho show that six of the victims died from gunshot wounds to the chest. The youngest was just 15 years old.

On December 27, Reuters reported how one of these fatal victims in Ayacucho, 51-year-old Edgar Prado, was shot and killed while attempting to help someone else who had been shot down during the protests.

The exceedingly violent response of the security forces to the anti-coup protests across Peru was widely condemned. A delegation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) visited the country from December 20 to 22 to receive testimonies from local human rights organizations and victims about the violent repression suffered by protesters and also spoke to families of the 28 fatal victims. The delegation traveled to Ayacucho on December 22.

More than a dozen other family members, Ayacucho inhabitants, organizers, and a couple of independent journalists, including myself, waited on the sidewalk of one of the city’s narrow and colorful streets as the meeting was underway. As people came and went, much of the events and tragedies of December 15 were recounted.

The massacre

“They won’t show you this on the news here,” Carmen (name changed) told me as she showed me a video on her phone of a young boy with blood all over his shirt being dragged to safety by fellow protesters. “That’s her nephew,” she said, pointing to a woman sitting on the ground.

Pedro Huamani, a 70-year-old man who is a member of the Front in Defense of the People of Ayacucho (FREDEPA), was accompanying the victims waiting outside the IACHR meeting. “We have suffered a terrible loss,” he told me, “I was present that day in a peaceful march toward the airport.”

“When they began to shoot tear gas grenades and bullets at us, I started to choke, I almost died there,” Huamani said. “I escaped and went down to the cemetery, but it was the same, we were trying to enter and they started to shoot at us from behind. Helicopters were flying overhead and from there they shot tear gas grenades at us, trying to kill us.”

Carmen brought over some of her friends and one of them, who was wearing a gray sweatsuit, told me, “We all live near the airport, and saw everything happen. You should’ve seen how they shot them down like animals. We tried to help some of the injured, but it was hard.”

The massacre in Ayacucho, as well as the violent repression across the country, has only intensified people’s demand that Dina Boluarte step down. Boluarte was sworn in on December 7 immediately following the coup against Castillo. In interviews and public addresses, she has justified the use of force by police against protesters calling their actions as acts of “terrorism” and “vandalism.”

Huamani, while shaking and holding back tears, said: “She is a murderous president and in Huamanga, we do not want her, nor do we recognize her as president because this woman ordered the police and the army to shoot at us Peruvians. And these bullets, these weapons, are really bought by us, not by the army, nor the soldiers, but by the people. And for them to kill us is really horrible.”

The anger felt by Ayacucho residents is also linked to the historical undermining of Peruvian democracy and the economic exclusion suffered by the regions outside of Lima. Huamani explained: “They took out our president [Castillo] so this is not a democracy. We are not a democracy, we are in [state of] war, but not just in Ayacucho and Huamanga, but also in Arequipa, Apurímac, Cusco. In these regions, we are suffering from poverty, we can no longer survive, we are dying of hunger… and these right wingers want to make us their slaves, but we won’t permit this because we are responding and resisting.”

Old wounds ripped open

December 15 was not the first time civilians in Ayacucho were massacred by the Peruvian armed forces. Many who were present on December 15 said that the warlike treatment received by the peaceful protesters was reminiscent of the days of the two-decades-long internal armed conflict that Peruvians suffered through more than 20 years ago.

“They still treat us as if we were all terrorists,” a family member of one of the victims of the protests pointed out.

As part of the state’s campaign against the guerrilla insurgency, it tortured, detained, disappeared, and murdered tens of thousands of innocent peasants and Indigenous people, accusing them of supporting or being part of the insurgency.

The population of Ayacucho was one of the hardest hit. According to reports by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up to look into the human rights violations, of the estimated 69,280 fatal victims of the internal armed conflict in Peru from 1980-2000, 26,000 were killed or disappeared by state actors or insurgent groups in Ayacucho. Thousands of people that fled their towns for the city of Ayacucho during the conflict continue to search for their loved ones and demand justice.

One of them is Paula Aguilar Yucra, who I met outside the IACHR meeting. Like more than 60 percent of people in Ayacucho, Indigenous Quechua is her first language. The 63-year-old is a member of the Ayacucho-based National Association of Relatives of Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared of Peru (ANFASEP). She fled her rural community in Usmay for Ayacucho in 1984 after her mother was killed and her brother was taken by soldiers and never seen again.

Nearly 40 years later, she mourns again. Her grandson, 20-year-old José Luis Aguilar Yucra, father of a two-year-old boy, was killed on December 15 by a bullet to the head as he attempted to make his way home from work.

In a vigil held on the afternoon of December 22, Paula stood tall with the other members of ANFASEP and held a sign reading: “Fighting today does not mean dying tomorrow.

This article was produced by Globetrotter. Zoe Alexandra is a journalist and co-editor of Peoples Dispatch.

Join us on January 7th to pay tribute to Jose Maria “Ka Joma” Sison, a lifelong revolutionary who diligently served the people of the Philippines and the world. Ka Joma dedicated his life to advancing the national Democratic Revolution of the Philippines, and uplifting the struggles of all oppressed peoples & workers fighting back against imperialism.

This tribute, “Ka Joma Lives!”, is the National U.S. Tribute, co-hosted by ILPS-US, BAYAN-USA, and Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle. It will take place on Zoom, and will highlight the life and contributions of Ka Joma with solidarity messages, videos of Ka Joma, and cultural performances. It will begin on Saturday, January 7th, at 1pm PST / 2pm MST / 3pm CST / 4pm EST and is programmed for 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Let us honor his legacy of organizing and his revolutionary spirit together!

Please RSVP here to receive the Zoom link: tinyurl.com/kajomalives-us

SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 2023, AT 3 PM
Public Forum & Discussion: Say NO to World War Three – Say NO to Nuclear War
301 Cedar Ave S, Minneapolis

Is the world on the brink?
Forum & Discussion

Say NO to World War Three
Say NO to Nuclear War

Speakers include:

• Mike Madden – Member, Twin Cities Assange Defense and Veterans for Peace
• JoAnn Blatchley – Convener of the Hiroshima Nagasaki Commemoration Committee for 20 years; visited both Hiroshima and Nagasaki; coordinated Hiroshima Nagasaki Peace Exhibition at Landmark Center in 2015; retired Edina Public Schools teacher; member of End War Committee.
• Melinda Butterfield – Co-editor of Struggle-La Lucha newspaper. She’s a longtime antiwar activist who’s traveled twice to the region of Ukraine’s war on Donbass.

Sponsored by Mayday Books.
For more information 612 333-4719

SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2023 AT 1 PM – 3 PM
6th Annual Virginia Prison Justice Rally
Monroe Park – 620 W. Main St., Richmond, VA 23220

Every January since 2018, the Virginia Prison Justice Network holds a rally in Richmond, the state capital, to raise public awareness about the key concerns of Virginia’s incarcerated people. The rally takes place on a Saturday near the opening of the General Assembly.

This year, the rally will take place at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 14, at Richmond’s Monroe Park.

2023 RALLY DEMANDS:
* BRING BACK PAROLE!
* REINSTATE THE ENHANCED EARNED SENTENCE CREDIT – FOR EVERYONE!
* END SOLITARY CONFINEMENT!
* INDEPENDENT OUTSIDE OVERSIGHT to end inhumane conditions in Virginia’s prisons, including:
* Shut down prisons with no AC: Augusta, Buckingham & Nottoway!
* Close Lawrenceville, Virginia’s only privately owned, for-profit prison!
* Raise the wages for prison labor, and make it voluntary for all jobs!
* Allow calls from personal tablets to end violence at prison phones!
* End guard brutality!
* Seriously deal with the drug overdose crisis in prisons!
* Prompt and efficient medical care for all prisoners!

NOTE: All suggestions submitted to the VAPJN will be raised at the Jan.14 rally.

We are asking incarcerated people, formerly incarcerated, family members and supporters to send us suggestions for which issues should be spotlighted at the 2023 rally.

Please send the suggestions to: DefendersFJE@hotmail.com or call or text 804.644.5834.

And please help spread the word about the rally! The bigger it is, the more pressure it will put on the General Assembly. You can help by marking yourself “going” on this page, by inviting your Facebook friends, by sharing the information on social media and by sharing this Facebook page.

And let us know if you’d like to help at the rally itself. Together, we are strong!

The radical new defense strategy announced on Dec. 16 by Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida doubles military spending — a five-year, $320-billion military buildup to secure offensive strike capacity, which is forbidden in Japan’s 1947 U.S.-created constitution.

The constitution says that Japan renounces war as a sovereign right and declares that “land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.”

The new defense strategy, intended to counter this constitutional provision directly, was initiated at the urging of Washington. The U.S. is actively militarizing the Pacific region – especially Japan – to target China. 

The New York Times praised Japan’s remilitarization, saying it met the need for a “more muscular military” aimed at China.

The U.S. ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, said in a statement that “the Prime Minister is making a clear, unambiguous strategic statement about Japan’s role as a security provider in the Indo-Pacific.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said, “We welcome the release of Japan’s updated strategy documents … which reflect Japan’s staunch commitment to upholding the international rules-based order and a free and open Indo-Pacific,” adding that “we support Japan’s decision to acquire new capabilities that strengthen regional deterrence, including counterstrike capabilities.”

Japan’s Minister of Defense Nobuo Kishi, younger brother of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, declared last year that Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) should have the right and capability to launch a “preemptive strike” against areas of some neighboring countries.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, a professor of politics at Lahore University in Pakistan, noted that the U.S. empire has instructed both of its two former World War II enemies, Germany and Japan, to rearm:

“Japan’s drive to arm itself has an interesting parallel in Europe, where Germany, too, has decided to massively increase its total defense spending to 100 billion euros. With Washington actively supporting these critical changes to establish powerful militaries around its core rival states – Russia and China in Europe and Asia – new forms of conflict are likely to emerge, with prospects of major counter alliances on the horizon, too.”

Salman Rafi Sheikh continues: “Japan’s increasing defense budget comes on top of the full possibility of ‘interoperability’ between the U.S. and Japanese units, allowing the latter to ‘practice its forward-deployed attack capabilities.’ What is extremely important to note here is that the core purpose of the ‘interoperability’ is not defensive; it is offensive, which means that Japan’s so-called ‘pacifism’ is nothing more than a rhetoric that Tokyo uses – and will continue to use – to mask its rapidly growing military preparedness against Russia and China.

“That this process is being actively supported by the U.S. is evident from Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s announcement, on the sidelines of Biden’s Tokyo visit, to ‘drastically strengthen’ its military capabilities.

“According to a new economic policy draft released by the Kishida administration, the decision is a response to ‘attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by forces in East Asia, making regional security increasingly severe.’ If this assessment sounds vague, it is by design to camouflage Japan’s rise as a new military power that can rival Russia and China as a U.S. ally.

“In fact, it is already acting as a U.S. ally against Russia in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In April, Japanese officials announced that they will send defense equipment – drones and protective gear – to Ukraine to help the Ukrainian military fight the Russian forces. 

“While Japan’s Self-Defense Forces rules prohibit the transfer of defense products to other countries, Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi justified this transfer as ‘commercial’ and ‘disused items.’ More self-serving justifications will be invented to mask Japan’s so-called ‘pacifist militarization.’”

Charlene Mitchell, an extraordinary African American leader, died on Dec. 14 in New York City. She was 92 years old. The story of her life’s achievements evokes profound respect.

The daughter of a trade unionist, Mitchell joined the Communist Party USA in 1946 when she was only 16 years old. She quickly rose to leadership while the party was under attack by the McCarthy witch hunt, becoming the youngest member of the party’s national committee in 1958.

In the 1960s, she founded the all-Black chapter of the Che-Lumumba Club in Los Angeles. They chose the names of Che Guevara and Patrice Lumumba to show their internationalist view. She was among the first in the U.S. to initiate a movement against apartheid and to fight for the freedom of Nelson Mandela.

Charlene Mitchell became the first Black woman to run for president of the U.S. when she was 38. She was nominated at a Communist Party convention in 1968 under a banner that read: “Black and White Unite to Fight Racism – Poverty – War!”

When Angela Davis was arrested in 1970, Mitchell led her defense committee with the demand, “Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners.”

Mitchell went on to create the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR). She said, “Lead our people not in their frustration, but lead them out of it.”

In a tribute, Frank Chapman — the current executive director of NAARPR — wrote in Fight Back News: “Every time we organize the fight to free a political prisoner; every time we organize a fight against police crimes and police brutality and murder; every time we work with families who have lost loved ones; with families who still have loved ones that are languishing in prison; every time we do this here and now, we pay tribute to Charlene Mitchell, who started this fight for us almost five decades ago.”

Charlene, her parents, and her seven siblings were part of the great migration of Black southerners who moved north in the first part of the 20th century. When she was 9 years old, they moved to Chicago, where her father, a labor activist, worked as a Pullman porter and a hod carrier.

An estimated 16,000 unionized nurses from private hospitals across the New York City metropolitan area announced strike authorizations on Friday as current contracts are set to expire and the region continues to experience a “tridemic” health crisis that includes Covid-19, flu, and the respiratory illness known as RSV.

The New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) issued ten-day notices on Friday for strikes to begin on January 9 if contract agreements are not reached at eight hospitals, including NewYork-Presbyterian, Montefiore, Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside and West, Maimonides, BronxCare, Richmond University Medical Center, and Flushing Hospital Medical Center.

Nurses at each of the hospitals voted separately on whether their union members would go on strike as they called for better caregiver-to-patient ratios, increased benefits, and a sustainable and fair solution to chronic staffing shortages.

In a statement, the NYSNA said the notices “give hospitals time to plan care for patients while nurses are on strike. But the best way for management to protect patients is to listen to nurses and settle fair contracts that protect patient care in the next 10 days.”

“We are truly struggling,” Michelle Gonzalez, a registered nurse and NYSNA member, told local NBC affiliate News 4 outside a hospital in Yonkers on Friday. “We have been telling the institution that there is not enough of us, that we can not split ourselves into two people—if we could, we would easily have done that already.”

“This is about our communities,” added Vanessa Weldon, another nurse and member of the union. “This is about providing the best patient care to our community.”

Weldon said the message to management “is that we need a fair contract.” According to Gonzalez, the strike authorizations at the various hospitals are about making sure the voices of nurses are being heard.

“Somebody has to hear us,” she said. “Somebody needs to understand that we are struggling. This is not going to be sustainable for much longer and we’re only continuing to lose more healthcare workers” if action is not taking to improve working conditions and benefits for the nursing staff.

Ahead of the vote and Friday’s announcement, NYSNA president Nancy Hagans, BSN, RN, said the union does not take the strike threat “lightly.”

“Striking is always a last resort,” Hagans said. “But we are prepared to strike if our bosses give us no other option. Nurses have been to hell and back, risking our lives to save our patients throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, sometimes without the PPE we needed to keep ourselves safe, and too often without enough staff for safe patient care.”

“Instead of supporting us and acknowledging our work,” she added, “hospital executives have been fighting against Covid nurse heroes. They’ve left us with no other choice but to move forward with voting to authorize a strike for better patient care.”

Source: Common Dreams