July 14 is Bastille Day. On that date in 1789 tens of thousands of poor people in Paris attacked a hated prison called the Bastille and began the French Revolution. The continual intervention of poor people in the cities and countryside — particularly in Paris — drove the revolution forward.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels — the founders of communism — lived in that revolution’s afterglow. Lenin and the other leaders of the Russian Revolution studied the French Revolution. Lenin became chairperson of the Council of People’s Commissars, a term derived from the French “commissaire.”

Even the terms “left” and “right” derive from the French upheaval. When the National Assembly met in 1789, the supporters of the king seized the right portion of the chamber and forced revolutionaries to sit on the left. They did this because of an ancient prejudice against left-handed people.

The French Revolution started in Europe, but it belongs to the world. And there would have been no French Revolution without Haiti.

Capitalist riches from enslaved workers

The French Revolution was a capitalist, or bourgeois, revolution. It swept away all the old feudal rubbish, like the remnants of serfdom, that oppressed people. Even the formation of a national market, a necessity for capitalism, had to be fought for.

The capitalist class or bourgeoisie was not a new class. It began its rise centuries earlier in merchant trading. Its earliest attempts to challenge the old feudal order, usually under the guise of religious differences, were thrown back with bloody reprisals.

The Bourbon kings and the big nobles of France were aristocratic parasites who feasted while millions lived in rags. They were symbolized by Queen Marie Antoinette, who, when informed that people had no bread, exclaimed “Let them eat cake!” referring to the burnt remnants of bread caked inside communal ovens.

During the 1700s, the Bourbon monarchy was increasingly challenged by the bourgeoisie. Its ideologues, led by Voltaire, questioned everything and led the great intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment. Voltaire campaigned against executing people on “the wheel,” a torture device to which people were tied while their bodies were broken, sometimes just for allegedly mocking a religious procession.

But what gave the bourgeoisie its newfound confidence to oppose the monarchy were the profits flowing into its coffers from the labor of people held in slavery.

As C.L.R. James pointed out in his classic book “The Black Jacobins”: “Nearly all the industries which developed in France during the eighteenth century had their origin in goods or commodities destined either for the coast of Guinea or for America. The capital from the slave-trade fertilized them; though the bourgeoisie traded in other things than slaves, upon the success or failure of the traffic everything else depended.”

The livelihood of 2 to 6 million people in France — out of a total population of 25 million — depended on slavery and products grown by enslaved people. French possession of Haiti meant it owned the richest colony in the world. Its trade employed 24,000 French sailors on 750 ships.

While Britain had an export trade of 27 million British pounds, the French were close behind with 17 million. The wealth produced by the Haitian people in slavery accounted for nearly 11 million pounds alone.

Liberty seized by enslaved people

The French bourgeoisie declared “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” as the watchwords of their revolution. This is still the motto of France today.

But most French capitalists never wanted to abolish slavery or grant liberty to Black people kidnapped from Africa who were worked to death in Haiti, Guadeloupe and Martinique.

At that time, conditions were such in Haiti that the average life expectancy for a Black person on the island was 21 years. Then, news of the French Revolution reached Haiti and created a political ferment as it became known to people in slavery.

Dutty Boukman, an African originally enslaved in Jamaica, started a revolt in August 1791. Over 1,800 plantations were burned. Boukman was eventually killed, bravely fighting. But new leaders like Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines arose. The rising of Haiti’s enslaved people could not be stopped, and it found support among the French poor.

“The Blacks were taking their part in the destruction of European feudalism begun by the French Revolution,” James wrote, “and liberty and equality, the slogans of the revolution, meant far more to them than to any Frenchman.”

‘The aristocracy of the skin’

While the French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, it was poor people in the cities and countryside who fought for it. In Europe, there was as yet no modern working class because there were no big industries. The Industrial Revolution had just started in Britain a few years before with the first cotton spinning machines.

Haiti was different. As James pointed out, “Working and living together in gangs of hundreds on the huge sugar-factories which covered the North Plain, they were closer to a modern proletariat than any group of workers in existence at the time.”

The French poor hated aristocrats and royalty like Marie Antoinette. But it was the “aristocracy of the skin,” as it became known, that became the most hated. Poor people in Paris found it detestable that people could be enslaved, branded and sold like cattle just because of their skin color.

James wrote: “In these few months of their nearest approach to power [the French poor] did not forget the Blacks. They felt towards them as brothers, and the old slave-owners, whom they knew to be supporters of the counterrevolution, they hated as if Frenchmen themselves had suffered under the whip.

“It was not Paris alone but all revolutionary France. ‘Servants, peasants, workers, the laborers by the day in the fields all over France were filled with a virulent hatred against the ‘aristocracy of the skin’ [James was quoting a supporter of slavery]. There were many so moved by the sufferings of the slaves that they had long ceased to drink coffee, thinking of it as drenched with the blood and sweat of men turned into brutes.”

As the French Revolution went forward, those bourgeois political leaders who opposed radical measures became known as Girondists. They were named for the region surrounding the French port of Bordeaux. Like Liverpool in England, Bordeaux’s economic life depended on the slave trade.

The opponents of the Girondists were known as Jacobins. Most schoolbooks slander Jacobins like Maximilien Robespierre or other radicals like Jean-Paul Marat as bloodthirsty “terrorists.”

But most of the Girondist leaders who talked so grandly about liberty didn’t want to abolish slavery. It was only when Robespierre and the radical Jacobins were in power that slavery was formally ended in all French possessions by the decree of Feb. 4, 1794.

This was a historic measure by France’s National Convention, but it only confirmed the freedom that had already been seized by the enslaved people themselves.

Defending the revolutions

The French Revolution was opposed by all of feudal Europe and by Britain, its commercial rival. Like the Russian Revolution more than a century later, France was invaded on a dozen fronts. The Duke of Brunswick, commander of the Allied Army (principally Austrian and Prussian), issued a manifesto threatening the destruction of Paris.

Although Britain bankrolled some of the armies invading France, its own army was absent. That’s because it was invading Haiti. This move was a disaster for the British ruling class. “By the end of 1796, after three years of war, the British had lost in the West Indies 80,000 soldiers including 40,000 actually dead,” wrote James.

If the British army that invaded Haiti had marched on Paris along with other European powers, the French Revolution might have been crushed. By defending their own freedom in a battle with British invaders, the Haitian people also defended the freedom of 25 million people in France.

“It was the decree of abolition, the bravery of the Black [people], and the ability of their leaders, that had done it,” wrote James. “The great gesture of the French working people towards the Black slaves, against their own white ruling class, had helped to save their revolution from reactionary Europe. Held by Toussaint and his raw levies, singing the Marseillaise and the Ça Ira [two revolutionary songs], Britain, the most powerful country in Europe, could not attack the revolution in France.”

In “A History of the British Army,” J.W. Fortescue concluded that people who had been enslaved “had practically destroyed the British Army.” He admitted that “the secret of England’s impotence for the first six years of the war may be said to lie in the two fatal words, St. Domingo [the old name for Haiti].”

Two centuries of revenge

After the French Revolution, the radical Jacobins were overthrown and many were executed. Napoleon Bonaparte eventually seized power and became a military dictator.

Napoleon defeated one European feudal army after another. But he couldn’t conquer Haiti. Napoleon sent an army to Haiti commanded by his brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc, and Toussaint Louverture was kidnapped and died in a French prison.

But as Leclerc wrote to a French government minister: “It is not enough to have taken away Toussaint, there are 2,000 leaders to be taken away.” Leclerc died in Haiti knowing he was defeated. (Aldon Lynn Nielsen, “C.L.R. James: A Critical Introduction”)

Despite massacres that included drowning a thousand Black people at a time, as well as public burnings and hangings, the French army suffered a worse defeat than the British. Out of 34,000 French troops, 24,000 died.

Dessalines declared Haiti’s independence on Jan. 1, 1804. But the world capitalist class has never forgiven Haiti for its revolution. U.S. slave masters had nightmares about leaders in the mold of Dessalines, like Nat Turner who led an 1831 uprising of enslaved people in Virginia. Haiti is still deliberately kept the poorest country in this hemisphere by the United States and other capitalist countries.

But the Haitian Revolution changed history forever.

Tear down the walls

French capitalists use Bastille Day to glorify French colonialism. But socialist revolutionaries should celebrate Bastille Day by demanding that the more than 2 million prisoners locked up in U.S. bastilles be freed, starting with Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and Simón Trinidad.

Bastille Day should also be celebrated because of the Iraqi Revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed and British-backed monarchy on Bastille Day: July 14, 1958. Capitalists never forgave Haiti’s revolution and haven’t forgiven Iraq’s people for taking over their own oil. The Pentagon has invaded Iraq twice and still occupies it.

The U.S. capitalist class is as obsolete and useless as the French aristocracy was 228 years ago. Capitalists want to take away health care, privatize Social Security and cut wages even further. A socialist revolution is needed just to stop capitalism from cooking the earth.

The multinational working class in the U.S. will be forced to rise, as the French and Haitian masses did. An absolutely necessary requirement for success is that millions of white workers, part of this multinational class, break with racism. They need to see, and will see, that they are being used as political cattle by the wealthy and powerful, like Donald Trump, who actually despise them.

Tear down the Bastilles! Down with the aristocracy of the skin! Reparations for Haiti!

Source: C.L.R. James, “The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution.”

In mid-June, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency disclosed documents revealing that former prime minister of Spain, Felipe González, was the head of a terrorist paramilitary group. 

According to the CIA, González, prime minister of Spain from 1982 to 1996, was the head of GAL (Antiterrorist Liberation Groups), an organization dedicated to killing Basque citizens.

Now that the CIA has declassified this piece of information, you would think that Spain would want to do justice. Think again. 

The in-name-only Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), the right-wing People’s Party (PP) and the openly fascist VOX party united to vote against a proposal by the Basque socialist party Bildu to investigate this accusation of terrorism committed by a former head of state.

Some Spanish ministers were prosecuted and convicted for terrorism in relation to GAL in 1998: José Barrionuevo, interior minister from 1982 to 1988; José Luis Corcuera, interior minister from 1988-1993; Juan Alberto Belloch, interior and justice minister from 1994-1996; and Rafael Vera, secretary of state securiity, among other military men.

These high-ranking Spanish politicians convicted of terrorism spent less time in prison than the Altsasu 8. 

And who are the Altsasu 8, you may ask? They are eight young Basques who were accused of terrorism after two members of the Guardia Civil (Civil Guard, the Spanish military occupation force) and their girlfriends, all wearing civilian clothes, entered a bar in the Basque village of Altsasu and started a fight in October 2016. Since then, the young Basques that they targeted have been incarcerated on charges of terrorism.

And why would the Spanish occupation forces start a fight in a bar in the Basque Country in 2016? The answer is that the Spanish occupation forces working in the Basque Country get paid a bonus for “fighting terrorism.” 

Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the Basque armed resistance group that carried out attacks on Spanish occupation forces and politicians, had declared its end in 2011. But the Spanish occupation forces were still getting paid more money and had to justify getting paid the extra amount they were so used to enjoying. 

Spain, after a lengthy fascist dictatorship from 1939 to 1975, made the appearance of a sudden and magical turn to democracy, even though the same politicians, military and police forces remained in charge. Obviously, it was only pretending. The CIA had been involved in all these steps of the so-called “Spanish Transition” from dictatorship to democracy.

Another little piece of news that is being conveniently hidden amidst the coronavirus pandemic is the discovery that former king of Spain, Juan Carlos I, signatory to and collaborator with Francisco Franco’s fascist dictatorship, had been stealing hundreds of millions of euros and putting them in an offshore account.

That is another crime that I am pretty sure the Spanish government will want to investigate. Just kidding!

“The Basque Country? How come I’ve never heard of it?”

Someone in this country asked me that question several years ago after she detected my foreign accent and I told her where I came from. 

I answered, “Maybe because we don’t have oil.” It was 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq.

The Basque Country (“Euskal Herria” in the Basque language) is a land occupied by two colonialist states: France and Spain. Geographically, the Basque Country is where the Pyrenees mountain range meets the Bay of Biscay.

We have many political prisoners as a consequence of a long struggle for freedom and socialism. Basque political prisoners are sent by the Spanish and French prison systems as far as possible from the Basque Country, to the farthest corners of Spain and France. Since the coronavirus hit Europe, our prisoners, like all prisoners everywhere, have been mistreated. The Spanish prison system made it an objective to punish them even further.

In the case of Basque political prisoner Patxi Ruiz, there were some altercations and threats to his life from guards and the director of the prison in Murcia, where he is incarcerated. This was because he asked for the proper personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep the prisoners safe from COVID-19. Not only did they not listen to him, but they continued to threaten his life. 

So a month ago he started a hunger and thirst strike. After the first 12 days, he is continuing only the hunger strike, but his health is deteriorating rapidly. And, of course, Spain and its prison system could not care less if he dies. 

Nevertheless, there is a strong feeling of solidarity with Patxi Ruiz among other Basque political prisoners who followed his hunger strike, and outside the prison, in the Basque Country, where people are on hunger strikes in solidarity. On Ahotsa.info’s YouTube channel, you can see some of the actions in solidarity with Patxi Ruiz.

Justice for George Floyd and Elhadji Ndiaye

People in the Basque city of Iruñea (also known by the Spanish name Pamplona) have been holding solidarity actions with George Floyd and Elhadji Ndiaye, who was killed by Spanish occupation forces in October 2016 in a very similar manner. Iruñea is the capital city of Nafarroa, also the birthplace of Patxi Ruiz.

The Spanish police never answered the popular demand to explain why the young Senegalese Elhadji Ndiaye was first arrested for no reason and soon afterwards was dead in police headquarters in Iruñea. To this day, nobody knows the true facts and people are demanding answers.

As Basque activist Ainhoa Urrutia said: “We are prepared to defend them [oppressed peoples and prisoners] and fight for them against the oligarchical powers that pull the strings of fascism to perpetuate their privilege at the expense of our lives.” And the truth is that Spain remains a fascist state under a monarchy that signed the principles of a fascist dictator in 1975.  

From the Basque Country, we have always demonstrated our solidarity with the Black community in the U.S., the Palestinian people, the Saharawi people and all people worldwide living under occupation. And that solidarity is stronger than ever these days.

I happened to hear comedian and activist Lee Camp say something like this: “As long as you hate other people and other countries, you are distracted from placing your anger in what your government is doing to you.” That is how governments use racism to divide people. We need to do the opposite and show solidarity with each other. We are many. They are few.

Free Patxi Ruiz and all political prisoners!

Free them all!

Put killer cops in prison!

Message of solidarity for African Liberation Day 2020: A Virtual Event from May 23 to May 25, called by the Maryland Council of Elders, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party and others. This year’s African Liberation Day theme is “Imperialist Sanctions on Zimbabwe, Cuba and Venezuela are Acts of War: Africans Everywhere Must Fight!” 

My name is Andre Powell and I am representing the Peoples Power Assembly in Baltimore and the Socialist Unity Party nationally.

The United States and the Pentagon continue their policy of brutal sanctions in an effort to control and destroy sovereign nations. The majority of sanctioned countries represent the oppressed world, whether former colonies fighting for their independence, those who are building socialism or those still battling against imperialism.

After the end of World War II, the U.S. and its Western European allies competed among each other to gain control over the countries of South America, Africa and Asia. Liberation struggles broke out as they tried to break free from decades of colonialism. The struggle for true independence was still out of reach for those countries, as the U.S. and European powers were able to assert neocolonial control over every aspect of life. In other words, they were independent in name only. 

Western European powers and the U.S. colluded with each other as they chose those who would head the new governments of each country. If a particular leader would not do their master’s bidding, they were removed from power, many by covert means or direct murder, only to be replaced by another puppet. Additional methods of control included the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, whose financial assistance is often tied to the implementation of austerity measures.

Currently, the U.S. has imposed sanctions against 39 countries around the world. The strongest sanctions are against the countries of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, China and Nicaragua. On the African continent, the U.S. has imposed sanctions on Sudan, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, Mauritania, Somalia, South Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia and Rwanda, in addition to Zimbabwe. A total of 14 countries.

These sanctions are an act of war, just as if the U.S. were dropping bombs. All of these countries have a right to their own self-determination and national sovereignty. The Peoples Power Assembly and the Socialist Unity Party stand in solidarity with these countries as they fight against U.S. imperialism and its allies.

At this time, here in the U.S., another war rages against oppressed people and workers within our own borders. 

This war on the working class is waged by bankers, billionaires, courts, police and other parts of the state apparatus of the capitalist system. The coronavirus pandemic shows how ineffective capitalism is in providing for the people during a major health crisis. They ignored the early warnings from the World Health Organization. They made no plans to prevent the spread and instead let it fester until the death toll climbed to numbers where it could not be ignored. 

Now they put forth a feeble attempt to implement measures to prevent the further spread. They try to appease the country by buying us off with a measly emergency check while once again giving away billions of dollars to big business. The failure to manufacture personal protective equipment has resulted in the deaths of so many health care workers, just as the lack of ventilators has resulted in many patients dying in intensive care units. 

Initially, it was kept hidden from the news media and public that Black and Brown people were dying in disproportionately higher numbers. The nation’s prison population, which is 80 percent Black, are sitting ducks trapped in what are literal death camps. The same can be said about immigrant detention camps.

While we fight for our lives on one front, the fight against police terror and white supremacy continues. The Ahmaud Arbery case, reminiscent of the murder of Trayvon Martin, has illustrated that racist violence is deeply embedded in the system.

Unity against the capitalist onslaught of sanctions against the countries of Africa will lead to the ultimate victory of their right to self-determination, free from imperialist control. That same unity will beat back the racist atrocities in this country, whether they are from the barrel of a gun or institutionalized in written policies of the government. 

The Peoples Power Assembly and the Socialist Unity Party support the demands of African Liberation Day for both the continent and here in the U.S. Solidarity is the key to people’s victory.

Struggle-La Lucha is sharing this statement from the banned Ukrainian Marxist organization Borotba (Struggle). 

May 14 — Before our eyes, we are witnessing an unequal confrontation between the Turkish state and our comrades, the communist political prisoners. This standoff began in 2016, when a state of emergency was introduced in Turkey, launching a new wave of repression against oppositionists. Its edge is aimed at those who fight for social justice — the communists. 

The opposition musicians of Grup Yorum fell into the gears of the repressive machine. The artists do not hide their political engagement and ties with the communist movement. It was for their views that dozens of left-wing activists, musicians and human rights activists were thrown behind bars. In prison, in protest against political repression, they went on a hunger strike, demanding the release of all political prisoners and that they be allowed to speak and perform publicly.

On April 3, 2020, Grup Yorum singer Helin Bölek died during the hunger strike, and left-wing activist Mustafa Koçak died on April 24. On May 7, the heart of Grup Yorum bassist Ibrahim Gökçek stopped beating. …

The Turkish state has also arrested more than a dozen lawyers from the People’s Law Office, an organization dedicated to defending the rights of political prisoners. Many of them also joined the mass hunger strike organized by the imprisoned musicians Grup Yorum.

Starving human rights defenders Aytaç Ünsal and Ebru Timtik are in serious condition.

The Turkish state does not respond in any way to the death of its opponents, continuing its repressive practices. During the recent funeral of Ibrahim Gökçek, Turkish police attacked the funeral procession, arresting more than two dozen participants, including the father of the deceased hero.

The so-called international community, including a host of human-rights organizations that shed crocodile tears at “starving” Ukrainian politicians like Oleg Sentsov and Nadiya Savchenko, turns a blind eye to the deaths in Turkish dungeons.

Borotba demands that the Turkish state release the political prisoners and stop repression against communists and other dissenters!

Everyone — to the defense of our Turkish comrades!

Translated by Greg Butterfield. Source: Borotba.su.

On May 7, activists from the Lampedusa Group in Hamburg, Germany, gathered in front of the city hall to demand basic human rights that have been denied them since their arrival in the city in 2013. Comprised mainly of refugees who arrived in Hamburg after fleeing the NATO-backed war in Libya, the group represents one of the demographics most severely affected by Germany’s COVID-19 crisis policies.

Demonstrators were masked and kept distance from one another. During the city’s half-hearted lockdown, permission to demonstrate has been largely restricted on grounds of public health and safety, with left-wing demonstrations being threatened by police intervention as recently as May 1.

The Lampedusa activists’ demands could be read on the signs that they carried and had written on the pavement in chalk: “Housing and health care for all!”; “Close the camps in Moria now!”; “Solidarity should not end at the borders of the EU!” 

Refugees without access to legal residency documents are refused state-covered health insurance and the means to be tested and treated for COVID-19 symptoms. They are also barred from seeking legal employment, thus making it impossible to finance their own accommodations. 

Like so many of the most vulnerable in the “developed” world, many of Lampedusa Group’s members are officially homeless. Their one publicly accessible refuge was the “Lampedusa Tent,” which served both as a base where members could receive shelter, food and medicine, and as a symbol of resistance, as it was officially registered and acknowledged by city authorities as a “permanent demonstration.” 

This act of resistance was literally dismantled by the state, as the Hamburg city police confiscated the tent on March 26, citing the newly mandated health and safety protocols instituted to battle the pandemic as grounds for prohibiting public gatherings.

‘How can we go home when we’re homeless?’

That the state has weaponized protocols that should be used to ensure public safety during the current crisis to attack those most vulnerable was not lost on those gathered at this demonstration. Lampedusa activists and supporters spoke via microphone, reminding bystanders and demonstrators that since their arrival in 2013, the Lampedusa Group has received little more than slogans and empty promises from politicians, who have repeatedly sought to affiliate themselves with the group’s cause to promote a progressive image for election campaigns — most recently the Greens. 

These same political parties have stood idle over the past seven years as members of the Lampedusa Group and the Black community in Hamburg have been victimised by violent racial profiling, police brutality and maltreatment resulting in death. Last year, William Tonou-Mbobda was murdered by a security guard while he was seeking medical treatment at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf. 

The perpetrators of these crimes, who go unpunished by the “justice” system, are the embodiment of both Hamburg city and German national politics: those of a white supremacist state which profits off of the exploitation and destruction of workers and oppressed peoples both domestically and abroad.

Since the turn of the century, Germany has increased its participation in military conflicts throughout the world, starting with its role as the staging ground for the NATO-led terror campaign against Yugoslavia at the turn of the century to the ongoing war in Syria, where German weapon exports led directly to the deaths of thousands, whether through the Turkish armed forces or their extremist proxy organisations. 

These policies of the German state have contributed to the dire straits in which those assembled in front of the city hall find themselves: forced from their homes through wars of imperialist aggression and plunder, the refugees of the Lampedusa Group are now victims of the inability of the capitalist system to provide the basic human essentials of food, health care and housing to all. 

These necessities are now more crucial than ever, as the German government has shown itself unable to combat the COVID-19 virus. In the name of “personal freedom” it has decided to loosen safety protocols while calling on individuals to take personal responsibility for both their health and the health of those around them. As always, the most vulnerable will be left to fend for themselves. 

However, the Lampedusa Group is determined to carry on their pursuit of justice, and they will not let their voices go unheard nor let their demands go unmet. As one activist put it, “[The capitalist countries] came to our countries for our resources … and now we are here. We are here to stay.”

A statement by one of the demonstrators:

“Hello. I stand here as a German citizen, the daughter of an immigrant and as a doctor.

“I think we can all remember that four weeks ago our politicians like [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel and others were talking about “solidarity.” Their solidarity means: to leave enough of us alive to produce and consume for their profit. Their freedom means the freedom to go shopping or to have a haircut. It does not mean the freedom to have a place to sleep, to have a safe home, to have enough food, to have access to health care, to be safe.

“This new disease does not affect people equally [as some speakers said before]. It affects people more who are poor. It affects people more who have no housing, who cannot provide healthy food for themselves, who have chronic diseases.

“What has also been discussed was our hospitals. Our health care minister said, ‘We are well prepared,’ which is just nonsense. And they say they want to flatten the curve, but they don‘t mention the people in the nursing homes, old, sick people, who are just dying and dying; and at the same time, there are people locked up with hundreds in concentration camps without possibility to keep a distance, where the infection inevitably must spread. 

“They don‘t care; and it is such a shame, that such a wealthy country does not give anything to people — but we people are worth nothing to them but the profit they can gain out of us.

“This coronavirus crisis shows us problems which are not new, which were there before. But this crisis has also made clear that it must be us. It must be us people who have nothing but ourselves, our labor power, our communities — it must be us who dictate the rules of how we live, how we run our economy, how we build up our lives!“

For updates, visit No Pasarán Hamburg.

Michael Lucas, editor of Northstar Compass and leader of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with the Soviet People, died in Toronto on May 4. He was 94.

Lucas was a fixture of the Canadian left for decades, especially among communities of progressive immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia. He was the longtime head of the Society of Carpatho-Russian Canadians. A musician, Lucas was deeply committed to preserving and sharing the culture and traditions of his people. Throughout his long life, he was a staunch supporter of socialism and the anti-fascist traditions of the Soviet Union.

“He worked tirelessly for international worker rights across the world, in support of trade unions and civil rights in North America and beyond,” according to his family’s commemorative statement.

Outside Canada, many first got to know Lucas through his work producing Northstar Compass. This print journal provided news and translations from the communist movement in the former Soviet Union following the capitalist counterrevolution of the early 1990s, as well as reports of solidarity actions in other parts of the world. At a time before the wide availability of the internet, smart phones and translation apps, this material would otherwise have been unavailable to most activists.

In the difficult years after the USSR’s destruction, Northstar Compass played a crucial role connecting socialists and communists worldwide with the re-emerging working-class movement in the post-Soviet states. After Lucas launched the Canadian Friends of the Soviet People in 1991, branches sprang up in the U.S. and many other countries, helping to bring together socialists of different views who had weathered the storm with their revolutionary commitment intact. 

The national chapters of the Friends of the Soviet People sponsored commemorative events for socialist holidays like International Working Women’s Day and the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, helping to preserve those working-class traditions until they could be revived by new generations of activists.

Northstar Compass was one of the few English-language sources for truthful information on the repression under the Boris Yeltsin regime. It published reports on the role of U.S. and Canadian imperialism in the October 1993 shelling of the Congress of Soviets and the subsequent massacre of leftists in Moscow, news which the corporate media refused to print.

The final print edition of Northstar Compass appeared in 2017. 

‘Held the red flag high’

Lucas’ passing has already been taken notice of in several countries — an indication of the lasting significance and respect for his dedicated work. As his longtime collaborator on the International Council, George Gruenthal wrote, Lucas “not only wrote most of the material [for Northstar Compass], but also did the layout, stuffing the envelopes and mailing of the journal. He kept up this work until he was in his 90s, with help from his wife Helen and other comrades from Toronto and around the world.”

The announcement of his death was immediately translated into Russian and published on communist websites, including the Workers’ University in Moscow. In Nepal, the front page of the daily Majdoor newspaper (“The Workers’ Daily”) was devoted to Lucas on May 8. The same day, the Nepal Journalists’ Association held a virtual meeting to pay tribute to him.

“We shall ever remember comrade Lucas as an anti-imperialist fighter, tireless activist for socialism, author and artist,” said Rohit, chair of the Nepal Workers and Peasants Party, in a condolence message to his family. “The Northstar Compass brought us together. … We highly appreciate the initiatives he took and the great efforts he made to hold the red flag high as the founder-editor of the magazine for a few decades and as a chair of the International Council of Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People. His contributions to raise the voice against imperialism and to spread the rays of socialism in different corners of the world, even during most difficult days, will long be cherished.”

Bill Dores, New York-based organizer of the Campaign for Solidarity with Labor in Russia in the 1990s, knew Lucas. Dores said: “Michael was Carpatho-Russian [a nationality from the region that is today part of eastern Slovakia and southwestern Ukraine] and grew up under Hungarian occupation. The Hungarian fascist regime didn’t allow them to speak their language. If soldiers heard children speaking the language, they would beat them.  

“His father went to Canada to work in the nickel mines, hoping to bring his family over as soon as he made some money. But he got involved in union organizing and was jailed. It was several years before his family could join him in 1938.”

Dores explained: “As head of the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society, the Society of Carpatho-Russian Canadians, and later International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People, he was frequently threatened and sometimes attacked physically by right-wing Eastern European emigres. He also struggled to keep the Carpatho-Russian Society Hall out of the hands of greedy real estate interests, who also threatened him.

“He was banned from the United States after he took part in a railroad construction project in Yugoslavia after World War II, kind of like the Venceremos Brigade that does volunteer work in Cuba,” said Dores. “But he was able to get in a couple of times during the 1990s.”

Lucas is survived by his partner and fellow organizer Helen Lucas, his children Michael Jr. and Mary Ann, and comrades around the world who share his lifelong commitment to the socialist future.

May 9, 2020, is the 75th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II in Europe. At least 80 million people died in the Second World War, 3 percent of the world’s population. Among them were millions of Jewish, Roma, disabled, LGBTQ2S and other people gassed, shot or starved to death because the Nazis deemed them “unfit to live.” 

World War II and the rise of fascism that preceded it were the products of monopoly capitalist rivalry and a capitalist economic crisis not unlike the one we see today. The Soviet Union, the world’s first socialist state, played the decisive role in ending it.

Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the USSR, was the biggest military operation in history. The Nazis controlled all the resources of occupied Europe.  Italy, Finland, Hungary, Romania and Spain joined Germany in the invasion.

Twenty-seven million Soviet soldiers and civilians lost their lives. Seventy thousand Soviet cities, towns and villages were destroyed. In the hero city of Leningrad alone, 1.5  million people died from hunger, artillery and bombs during an 837-day siege. 

But in brutal battles in Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad and Kursk, the multinational Soviet Red Army broke the back of the Nazi war machine, fought its way west to Germany  and ended the Nazi dream of a “Thousand-Year Reich.” 

On the night of April 30, 1945, Soviet soldiers first raised the red Soviet flag atop the Reichstag, high over Berlin. A few hours earlier, below the streets of the German capital, Adolf Hitler shot himself in his underground bunker. 

Fighting continued for two more days. On May 2, German forces in Berlin surrendered and this famous picture was taken by Soviet war photographer Yevgeny Khaldei. On May 9, the German high command surrendered. The war raged for three more months in Asia until the surrender of Imperial Japan on Aug. 15. 

Four hundred and twenty thousand U.S. soldiers and sailors died in the war, but for the U.S. capitalist ruling class, many of whom had supported Hitler before the war, World War II was the best thing that ever happened. The global devastation put U.S. banks and corporations at the center of the world capitalist economy and gave birth to the U.S. military-industrial complex and the permanent war economy that is still with us today.  

The bodies of the dead were not buried, and ruined cities still smoldered when the U.S., Britain and West European capitalist powers turned on their World War II allies — the Soviet Union and anti-fascist partisan movements in Europe and Asia. They launched the nuclear arms race and the “Cold War,” which was in reality a bloody onslaught against the rising forces of socialism and national liberation all over the world. These events will be the topic of an upcoming series in Struggle-La Lucha. 

May 7 — Today, musician and political prisoner Ibrahim Gökçek died in Istanbul, Turkey, after a nearly yearlong hunger strike against the repressive NATO government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Two days earlier, Gökçek had called a temporary pause to his fast, but it was too late.

“We weren’t palace clowns. We didn’t kill people. We sang songs. Damn this system,” said Gökçek shortly before his death.

Bass player Gökçek was the second member of socialist music group Grup Yorum to die in just over a month. His bandmate and fellow hunger-striker Helin Bölek died on April 3. Another political prisoner who joined their “hunger strike to the death,” Mustafa Koçak, died in prison on April 24.

Both Gökçek and Bölek were released from prison earlier this year on medical grounds, as a result of a massive international pressure campaign. But Erdoğan’s regime still refused to meet their demands, which include the unbanning of Grup Yorum concerts and the release of other band members, and so the two continued their hunger strike. In March, the government briefly kidnapped them from their beds and attempted to force feed them, but failed.

In a May Day appeal to fellow musicians and artists, Gökçek wrote: “I want to live, of course. So, friends, how do I leave the resistance when the resistance has come to this stage, when there is no concrete gain?

“Now, with all our strength, we must put pressure on the powers to meet our demands. Intellectuals and our musician friends should now meet with the relevant ministry and the presidency by establishing delegations among themselves without delay, and ensure that our demands are met. I greet you all with the warmth of Helin and Mustafa and the enthusiasm of our resistance.”

Support hunger strikers’ demands

Four years ago, at a May 2016 anti-fascist conference in Krasnodon, Lugansk People’s Republic, Ukrainian activist Alexey Albu introduced me to Aytaç Ünsal from the People’s Law Office in Turkey. Today, Ünsal and many other attorneys who represent political movements, including Grup Yorum, have themselves become political prisoners in Turkey.

Ünsal and his colleague Ebru Timtik are now on a hunger strike to the death, following the example of Ibrahim Gökçek and Helin Bölek. Aytac is on day 96 of his death fast. Ebru is on day 127 of hers.

The blood of the Group Yorum musicians is on the hands of Erdoğan. It is also on the hands of U.S. President Donald Trump and the leaders of the NATO imperialist powers who allow the fascist regime in Turkey to run rampant against the working class and peasants, leftist and Kurdish movements at home, while carrying out genocidal wars on NATO’s behalf against neighboring Syria and in faraway Libya.

It is urgent for leftist and workers’ movements in the U.S. to join the international campaign to save Turkey’s hunger strikers and support their demands. These include:

• Lift the ban on Grup Yorum concerts.
• Release imprisoned members of Grup Yorum. Five Grup Yorum musicians are still in detention. All are charged with being members of a “terrorist organization” — the communist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP-C). A sign of goodwill by the government would be the release of Sultan Gökcek and Ali Araci, who have their trial on May 20.
• Stop raiding the Idil Cultural Centre.
• A fair trial for all political prisoners.
• Reversal of unjust judgments against hundreds of political prisoners, especially against the people’s lawyers for up to 18 years in prison as a result of statements by “secret witnesses” and statements by police informant Cavit Yilmaz.
• A fair trial for all accused!

Free the people’s lawyers, Grup Yorum members and all political prisoners! Tell Trump and Erdogan to meet their demands now!

For updates, follow Free Grup Yorum on Twitter and People’s Law Office on Facebook.

On April 18, 1980, the people of Zimbabwe declared their independence from British colonizers after many years of armed struggle. Their struggle to maintain their independence continues today. Africans on the continent and in the diaspora look to Zimbabwe for its leadership and fearlessness in our collective struggle for self-determination and development.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa, a former combatant and guerrilla commander in Zimbabwe’s war for independence, made a nationally televised 40th anniversary address acknowledging the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in Zimbabwe, which has been limited to 24 cases and three deaths. The long planned 40th anniversary celebrations throughout the country have been postponed at this time.

“We celebrate our milestone 40th Independence Anniversary in the context of unprecedented times, that of the threat brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. I would like to once again thank the nation for the collective response to our appeal towards our preparedness to fight the pandemic within our jurisdiction. I further commend the nation as a whole for the manner we have carried ourselves during this national lockdown. Although we are physically separated, we are united in spirit. The time to celebrate together shall come,” said President Mnangagwa.

President Mnangagwa also addressed the impact of sanctions on Zimbabwe: “Our situation is compounded by the continuing illegal economic sanctions, which we have endured for close to half of our years of independence. These sanctions have limited our options and constricted our possibilities of freely interacting in the global economy.

“I thank the European Union for softening its stance towards us. I implore Washington to promptly lift these illegal sanctions against us without any preconditions. They are illegal and hurtful to our people; Zimbabwe does not deserve them.”

Zimbabwe is still on the revolutionary path to consolidate land, resources and development against all odds. Mnangagwa pointed out the importance of the land issue: “Our Land Reform Program remains a fundamental cog to our independence and sovereignty. The land shall forever remain united with the people, and the people to their land. To this, there is no wavering or going back.”

The December 12th Movement and the Friends of Zimbabwe have led the U.S. Hands off Zimbabwe actions and campaigns to lift the illegal sanctions for decades nationally and internationally. D12 spokesman Frank Brown stated, “We work in Pan-African solidarity to lift the U.S. sanctions on Zimbabwe because sanctions kill. They are lethal weapons used to destabilize and exploit nations. We want people to contact their congressional representatives and the Congressional Black Caucus and demand an end to the illegal U.S. economic sanctions.”

For more information call 718-398-1766 or visit D12M.com.

Source: New York Amsterdam News