New York — More than 60 people came to Iglesia Santa Cruz/Holyrood Church in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan on June 7 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the coup in Honduras.

On June 28, 2009, soldiers stormed the office of democratically elected Honduran President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, kidnapped him and sent him to Costa Rica. Behind the soldiers was the CIA. The coup d’état was denounced throughout Latin America but was blessed by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The Rev. Dr. Luis Barrios helped conduct the mass to honor the victims of the coup and the struggle for justice. Barrios served a two-month jail sentence for protesting the U.S. School of Assassins (known officially, but untruthfully, as the School of the Americas).

Lucy Pagoada-Quesada, coordinator of Department 19 of the Frente Nacional  de Resistencia Popular (FNRP), was a main organizer of this event. While Honduras has 18 provinces, the Honduran Diaspora is the 19th department.

In a video message, President Zelaya urged that the people’s struggle continue.

Since the coup, hundreds of people have been murdered by the Honduran army, police and private mercenaries. Among those assassinated was Indigenous and environmental leader Berta Cáceres. Her “crime” was trying to stop a dam that would have destroyed peasant land.

The names of 50 martyrs were read at the service. Among the youngest was Dara Gudiel, a teenager. Her blood is on Hillary Clinton’s hands.

Long live the resistance! U.S. out of Honduras!

SLL photos: Bill Cecil

“My battle is a ‘homeland or death’ battle, of gratitude to life; a battle in order to uphold dignity. Only cowards surrender and betray. When the difficulties get worse, the real revolutionaries fight to the death.”
— Jesús Santrich, April 11, 2018

The safety and well-being of a leading and respected figure in the Colombian revolutionary movement — Jesús Santrich — is now surrounded in mystery. After a year in prison, Santrich was released from jail in a semi-conscious state on May 17 and then rearrested within minutes. His health is said to have worsened after being put back in jail.

Explanations vary. His jailers first reported his condition to be the result of a suicide attempt, but there are reports that he suffered beatings before his release and again after his rearrest, and still others indicating a heart attack, or perhaps even poisoning by his captors.

Santrich had been sent to La Picota prison in Bogotá in April 2018 based on sham charges from the Southern District Court of New York that he had tried to traffic cocaine into the U.S.

In 2016, as part of an agreement between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) and the Colombian government, signed after long negotiations in Havana, a tribunal called the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) was set up.

Among the many components of the agreement, there was to be broad immunity for those who participated in the 50 years of civil war, and no extraditions would be allowed as punishment for anything that occurred before the agreement was signed.

It was this tribunal, the JEP, that rejected the bogus charges by the U.S. and finally ordered Santrich released more than a year after his arrest. His immediate rearrest was most certainly at the behest of Washington.

Colombian President Iván Duque and former President Álvaro Uribe are both close allies of the U.S. and are leading a right-wing campaign against the 2016 agreement, which they view as being too soft on the former guerrilla fighters.  

U.S. war on Colombian people

Santrich was one of the leading negotiators who represented the FARC in talks that led to the agreement with the Colombian regime.

He fought hard in the negotiating sessions for improvements in the rural areas where the FARC’s 20,000 fighters had driven out the military and death squads and defended campesinas and campesinos from right-wing paramilitaries. For a long time, the FARC held territory equal to the size of Switzerland.

The FARC’s goal was to build a socialist society in the South American nation of 38 million. But from 1999 until the agreement was signed, the reality that their struggle was, in fact, a war with U.S. imperialism was more clear than ever.

Under “Plan Colombia,” initiated by the Clinton administration, the U.S. and allies sent billions of dollars, mostly used to train and equip the Colombian military. Its stated goals were to end violence on all sides, and promote economic development in order to stem the flow of cocaine.

But while the war against the FARC and a second Colombian guerrilla organization, the National Liberation Army (ELN), was stepped up, when it came to paramilitaries and death squads funded by U.S. corporations like Coca-Cola, the Colombian military and its U.S. backers looked the other way.

Deaths squads assassinated homeless people and targeted LGBTQ people in the cities. Paramilitary forces as well as the official military launched murderous campaigns against campesinas and campesinos that they saw as sympathetic to the guerrilla fighters, along with rural Afro-Colombian and Indigneous communities.

Since 1992, 51 journalists have been assassinated in Colombia, with 39 of those murders carried out with impunity. Colombia has also earned the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists.

Government promises unfulfilled

Under the 2016 agreement, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) dissolved as an army and refounded itself as FARC (Alternative Revolutionary Force for the Common People), a civilian electoral party.

In exchange for the rebels disarming, the government agreed to the institution of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP,) and what was supposed to be a broad immunity or amnesty. The former guerrillas were guaranteed 10 seats in parliament, and Jesús Santrich was to have one of them. They were also able to run candidates like any electoral party.

Santrich and others at the Havana talks also wrested commitments from the government for a variety of rural development projects, including universal education from preschool through secondary school, access to clean drinking water and extensive infrastructure projects. Since the agreement was signed, none of these promises has been fulfilled and violence against progressives has increased — particularly against progressive candidates, many of whom are former guerrilla fighters from the FARC.

It’s no wonder that Santrich has been targeted by imperialism. His roots in the communist movement are deep and go back decades. He was a member of the Central Staff of FARC’s army, considered one of its most important leaders, led their communications and propaganda efforts, and was a proud admirer and close ally of President Hugo Chávez while the U.S. fumed at Chávez’s popularity in neighboring Venezuela.

Solidarity messages and demands for Santrich’s release have come from the leadership of the ELN, from Cuba, from organizations throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, from Sinn Fein of Ireland and many others.

It is time for progressive people — especially in the United States — to close ranks with the Colombian people’s struggle and call for freedom for Jesús Santrich!

Struggle-La Lucha’s John Parker appeared on the “Liberated Sisters” webcast hosted by Sister Charlene Muhammad May 28 to talk about the crisis in Venezuela and the need for solidarity against U.S. war and sanctions.

https://www.facebook.com/charlene.muhammad/videos/10205864161119511

More than a hundred people demonstrated in Washington, D.C., on May 25 — African Liberation Day — to demand justice for Zimbabwe. They marched from the African American Civil War Memorial to the White House, which was built by enslaved Africans.

Their message to Donald Trump was “Lift the sanctions on Zimbabwe!”

As Omowale Clay, a member of the International Secretariat of the December 12th Movement, noted at an earlier news conference: “Nearly two decades ago, the U.S. passed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 [ZIDERA] to punish Zimbabwe for having had the audacity to return to the people the land stolen by white colonial settlers.

“The goals of the sanctions imposed by ZIDERA were to make the Zimbabwean economy ‘scream’ — to make conditions so bad for the masses of the people that they would overthrow the ZANU-PF-led government and stop the confiscation of land from white settlers. President Trump has just renewed the sanctions for another year.”

‘Sanctions are an act of war’

The December 12th Movement and the Friends of Zimbabwe initiated this action. As people marched down 14th Street in military order, drivers honked their horns in support.

Viola Plummer, chairperson of the December 12th Movement, chaired the rally in front of Trump’s White House. Dr. James McIntosh from the Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive to African People (CEMOTAP) opened the speakout.

Dr. Frenk Guni, chairperson of ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front) USA, described how neighboring African countries also suffer from the sanctions on Zimbabwe.

Dr. Guni also paid tribute to Coltrane Chimurenga, field marshal of the December 12th Movement, who passed away on May 13. Field Marshall Chimurenga was considered a national hero in Zimbabwe because of his support of the liberation struggle there.

Tohouri Toutoukpeu, from African Diaspora for Democracy and Development, voiced support for Zimbabwe and described how his country — Côte d’Ivoire — was still a French colony despite formal independence.

Pam Africa and Razakhan Shaheed from the MOVE organization and the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal came to support Zimbabwe.

Spokespeople from the National Black United Front and the United Negro Improvement Association, which was founded by the Honorable Marcus Garvey, denounced the sanctions on Zimbabwe. So did Monica Moorehead from Workers World Party.

Andre Powell, from Struggle-La Lucha and the Socialist Unity Party, declared that “Sanctions are an act of war. … The United States and European imperialists have committed acts of war against so many governments in the continent of Africa. …

“When you sanction a country, you interfere with that country’s ability to give food and medicine to its people so that they die,” continued Powell.

In just the last 13 years, sanctions have cost Zimbabwe $42 billion. The struggle against the HIV-AIDS pandemic has been harmed.

Powell pointed out that Venezuela, Iran and Cuba were also victimized by U.S. sanctions but refuse to surrender their sovereignty. He declared, “We stand with Zimbabwe! To hell with Trump!”  

‘The United States is indeed a gangster country that does not care at all about international laws’

The U.S. has seized the second largest bulk carrier cargo ship owned by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Having failed at the bargaining table in a February summit held in Hanoi, the Trump administration is now veering once again toward hostility and pressure as opposed to negotiations.

The announcement of the ship’s seizure seems to have been held back until it was useful as a way of applying more pressure in their efforts to disarm the socialist country. The ship, named Wise Honest, was seized by Indonesia in April 2018. The U.S. presented a warrant to take possession in July 2018. None of this was public until May 2019.

The announcement followed a test-firing of two short-range missiles by the DPRK’s military. Even though the tests were long planned and routine, they still were a signal that the DPRK is not about to surrender its military preparedness nor its national dignity.

To date, Trump has held two summits with DPRK leader Kim Jong Un. The first summit was in June 2018, when Trump traveled to Singapore, where he promised a new peaceful relationship, announced an end to the U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises that have long been a blatant military threat to the DPRK and expressed a vague wish to see the presence of U.S. troops in South Korea end someday.

At the second summit, Trump underestimated the resolve of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and demanded that the North “denuclearize” before any sanctions would be lifted. The summit was called off and Trump flew back to Washington early with no agreement.

Seizure unlawful, outrageous

The seizure of the ship is a blow to the DPRK. The 581-foot vessel is not easily replaced. The Foreign Ministry of the DPRK denounced the seizure as “an unlawful and outrageous act” and “an outright denial of the underlying spirit of the June 12 DPRK-U.S. Joint Statement.”

In a letter sent to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on May 18, the DPRK demanded that the United Nations take “urgent measures” to help return a cargo ship taken by the United States, calling the seizure a “heinous” act.

“This act of dispossession has clearly indicated that the United States is indeed a gangster country that does not care at all about international laws,” the North Korean ambassador to the UN said in a letter sent to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres dated Friday, according to North Korea’s KCNA news agency.

The DPRK has never known a moment’s peace. Since the revolutionary guerilla army, led by its founder and first president, Kim Il Sung, defeated the U.S. military and secured the northern half of the peninsula in the 1950-1953 war, North Korea has been under grave military threat by the Pentagon. During the years when the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China both gave political support and trade, the DPRK recovered from what had been one of the most devastating wars ever carried out by U.S. imperialism.

The war took the lives of 5 to 6 million people and destroyed their infrastructure. By the mid-1970s, North Korea’s industrial progress outpaced that of South Korea, and living standards improved under socialist planning. But the U.S. military threat, which has always included a nuclear threat, forced the DPRK to institute a “military-first” policy. It meant that strong defense had to be prioritized over other needs.

Coupled with the U.S. sanctions, the military-first policy has meant sacrifice on the part of the North Korean people. But it was a willing sacrifice. The development of a nuclear defense program now means more resources for other important national needs because it costs less in resources than conventional military spending and yet reduces the risk of a first-strike by the U.S. military.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the DPRK had difficult times. In addition to losing a giant trading partner, there were natural disasters that devastated North Korea’s agriculture. The loss of oil imports from the USSR cut their supply of fuel for industry, fertilizer and home heating.

Clinton threatened attack

Unable to purchase oil on the world market, scientists and engineers redoubled efforts to build nuclear reactors for energy. But they were not at that point pursuing nuclear weapons, and in fact had signed on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985. Nonetheless, by 1994, just five years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Bill Clinton administration gathered military leadership in the war room to prepare an attack, based on the false accusations of the DPRK pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

At the last minute, an agreement was reached separately by former President Jimmy Carter, who was representative of a section of the U.S. ruling class that preferred an agreement that would disarm the DPRK without a costly war. The agreement called for the abandonment of the existing nuclear energy reactors that were under construction and their replacement with two light-water reactors whose nuclear waste is not nuclear-weapons grade.

The DPRK agreed to forgo pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for the new reactors as well as deliveries of heating fuel, deliveries of rice and the gradual easing of sanctions. But imperialist strategists never had any intention of fulfilling their end of the agreement. They thought that, in the absence of the USSR, the DPRK would collapse. From their point of view, the agreement was only to prevent the DPRK from obtaining nuclear weapons capability until regime change came about in whatever way it would. The reactors were never built and the heating oil deliveries were always sent late — after the people had suffered through harsh winters.

The people of socialist North Korea understand the character of U.S. imperialism and have witnessed what happened to Libya and Iraq. They will not trade their security for false promises by a dangerous imperialist empire. Yet, even with their consciousness, unity and confidence in their military, they still need international support and our never-ending solidarity.

U.S. Hands Off North Korea!

Why is the Trump regime threatening war against both Iran and Venezuela? For the only reason capitalists ever do anything: Money, lots of it. Trillions of dollars are at stake.

It’s not just greed. It’s need, from the capitalist point of view. The need to protect the massive capital investments “Corporate America” has made in energy production since the Iraq war. Much of this investment has been in the expensive and destructive practice of hydraulic fracturing — extracting oil and gas from shale rock — popularly known as fracking.

Speaking at a Liquefied Natural Gas export facility in Louisiana’s “cancer alley” on May 14, Donald Trump touted the United States’ “energy independence.” Thanks to fracking, he bragged, the U.S. is now ‘the energy superpower of the world.” He claimed the U.S. would replace Russia as Europe’s energy supplier.

As the president bragged, two U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups and a squadron of B-52 strategic bombers headed toward Iran. The administration said it was considering sending 120,000 more troops to the region and accused Iran, without evidence, of sabotaging Saudi oil tankers.

On May 15, Trump’s acting defense secretary and former Boeing executive, Patrick Shanahan, laid out options for war in a meeting at the Pentagon. These included massive guided missile strikes on Iran.

The threats from Washington have caused concern in Europe, especially in those countries without oil. Spain pulled a frigate from the U.S. naval armada.

A war in the Persian-Arab Gulf would disrupt Europe’s energy supply and China’s as well. The U.S. military’s Central Command publicly denounced British Gen. Christopher Ghika, who said the “Iranian threat” was a fabrication. However, British Tory Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt rushed to show support for Washington. Britain controls considerable oil reserves in the North Sea, and British Petroleum is the county’s largest corporation.

Trump a creature of fracking

The Trump regime is a creature of the poisonous U.S. fracking industry.  Among its first acts was to unleash federal forces against Native water protectors in North Dakota. It rammed through the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines and  has worked day and night to expand fracking on Native land and public land. On May 12, the regime announced it would open nearly 1 million acres in California’s Central Valley and Central Coast to destruction by fracking.

A few years ago, Wall Street looked at fracking as a $26 trillion gold mine (see “Big Fracking Deal,” Foreign Affairs magazine, March/April 2014). Today, that highly leveraged industry is in deep trouble.

“The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground,” said a 2018 New York Times op-ed piece about the fracking industry by financial journalist Bethany McLean.

“Could Fracking Debt Set off Big Financial Tremors?” McLean and Times business editor Jyotti Thottam asked in a Sept. 18 podcast.

“Can Fracking Survive at $50 a Barrel?” asked Investopedia last Oct. 18. Oil prices were down that low last December. They began to rise with the U.S.-backed coup attempt in Venezuela on Jan. 25 and the new sanctions that followed. Not high enough for Wall Street, however.

“Money-losing fracking industry struggling to attract new investment,” reported the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis on Feb. 25.

“Low Prices Hit Oil Giants” was the lead headline in the April 27 Wall Street Journal. “Heard on the Street: Is Big Oil’s Shale Bet a Mistake?’ read an inside headline in the same issue.

A week later, on May 5, U.S. National Security adviser John Bolton announced that U.S. warships were headed to the region, targeting Iran. Like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Bolton’s political career has been funded by the multibillionaire Koch brothers, who are major investors in the U.S. fracking industry.

Bolton claimed the U.S. was acting on “credible evidence” of an Iranian threat. The alleged source of the evidence was the bloody Israeli apartheid state, which regularly uses U.S.-suppled weaponry to murder unarmed Palestinian women, children and men in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Israel is the world’s No. 1 recipient of U.S. military aid. It also claims ownership of large natural gas reserves in the Mediterranean that rightfully belong to the people of Palestine. The main U.S. investor in stolen Palestinian gas is Texas-based Noble Energy. Trump’s incoming Interior secretary, David Bernhardt, was a lobbyist for Noble.

The Israeli settler state also illegally granted U.S.-owned Genie Energy Ltd. oil exploration rights in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. The company’s board includes former Vice President Dick Cheney, former CIA chief James Woolsey, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summer, former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and fascist media mogul Rupert Murdoch. In March, Donald Trump signed a proclamation recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel.

War profits

Politicians, both Republican and Democrat, claim that increased U.S. energy production will mean less U.S. military intervention abroad. This is a transparent lie. The rapid growth of the U.S. fracking industry would not have been possible without the asset-price bubble created by the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In 2002, before U.S. invaders destroyed Iraq’s state-owned oil industry, the price of oil hovered around $20 a barrel. By April 2003, when U.S. tanks rolled into Baghdad, it was over $40. By mid-2008, it had risen to $147 a barrel. ExxonMobil and Chevron, the two biggest U.S. oil companies, saw their profits rise by 300 percent.

Sanctions and threats against Iran and Venezuela, the bombing of Libya, proxy wars in Syria, Ukraine and now Yemen prolonged the bubble.  Now it has collapsed.

And now corporate flunkies in Washington are contemplating another war. The people can stop them.

Trump’s tariffs on goods made in the People’s Republic of China could cost an average four-person family $2,300 per year. That’s a $192 monthly pay cut.

That’s because so much of the imports from China are consumer goods. Take shoes. Just because children regularly need new shoes doesn’t mean working class familes can afford them. Ninety-eight percent of the shoes worn in the U.S. are imported with about 70 percent of them coming from China.

That’s $11.7 billion worth of footwear whose price will be jacked up. Other leading imports from China last year were clothing and textiles ($43.8 billion); furniture and household goods ($22.7 billion); plates and utensils ($7.9 billion); appliances ($16 billion); cell phones ($71.8 billion); toys and games ($28.2 billion); and televisions and video equipment ($11.7 billion).

It’s working-class families that buy and need the vast majority of these products. Now they’ll have to pay more for them.

What happened to the shoe factories?

Over 200,000 workers were once employed in U.S. shoe factories, many of them in St. Louis, Mo., and Lynn, Mass. It was Black inventor Jan Metzinger who devised the automatic shoe laster that connected the upper shoe to the sole.

These jobs weren’t destroyed by China, Vietnam or Italy. It was profit-hungry shoe capitalists that moved their plants abroad.

Nike owner Phil Knight’s $34 billion fortune comes from ripping off consumers in the U.S. and workers throughout Asia.

Trump’s tariffs are not going to bring back the shoe factories or New York City’s Garment District, which once employed over 200,000 unionized workers.

Capitalists are always looking for lesser-paid and more vulnerable labor. Long before they opened any plants in Asia or Mexico, U.S. factory owners shut down Northern plants and moved them to overwhelmingly nonunion Southern states. That happened 90 years ago to New England’s textile industry.

Who’s ripping off whom?

Trump complains that the U.S. imported $539 billion worth of stuff from China but exported just $120 billion to China. That’s because the capitalist class has deindustrialized the U.S.

General Motors isn’t interested in shipping cars to China or Japan. GM built auto plants in China instead.

It’s actually China that’s being ripped off by exporting over a half-trillion dollars in real economic values to the U.S. while getting back only $120 billion in return. Real values include manufacturing, agriculture, mining and construction or services like medical care and passenger transportation.

Items like sales of stock, interest on loans or rent — which also appear in foreign trade statistics — are not values. Nobody can eat them, wear them or use them. These items don’t produce any value.

U.S. capitalists have so relatively little to sell to China that China has been forced to invest over a trillion dollars in U.S. Treasury bonds.  

Never forget Vincent Chin

The People’s Republic of China has responded to Trump’s tariffs with tariffs of its own. Chinese people know all about capitalist “free trade.”

In the 19th century, the Opium Wars were waged against China so British and U.S. drug pushers could peddle their poison there. The Chinese Revolution led by the country’s Communist Party ended this humiliation and misery.

It’s disgraceful that Chuck Schumer — the Democratic Party leader in the U.S. Senate — supports Trump against China. The senator from New York should be fighting for rent control in the state capital of Albany instead.

Union members shouldn’t fall for Trump’s poison, either. Anti-China campaigns will lead to violence against Asian-Americans. Never forget Vincent Chin, who was murdered by bigots near Detroit in June, 1982.

Economic wars can lead to shooting wars. We need a war against the rich instead.

The People’s Republic of China is standing behind Venezuela and its elected President Nicolás Maduro. That’s the solidarity that U.S. workers should show with the People’s Republic of China and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, is not only a dangerous warmongering liar who wants to invade Venezuela, bomb Iran and overthrow the Cuban Revolution.

He’s also a first-class bigot who was chair of the Gatestone Institute, an anti-Muslim think tank. One of his publications there was “The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First.”  Preemptive war is a war crime.

Bolton even wrote a forward to a book by the notorious Islamophobe Pamela Gellar, who fought against a mosque being established in lower Manhattan.

In 2018, the Gatestone Institute published “Tyranny of Shaming, American Race Wars as Seen by an Immigrant.” The book claims, “That many Democrats seem to be planning ‘fundamentally to change America’ by making white people the minority and replacing them with immigrants — both legal and illegal — is no longer a secret.”

This is the stuff of fascism. Remember, it was Nazis and Klansmen who chanted, “They shall not replace us!” in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.

Bolton appointed Fred Fleitz as his chief of staff at the National Security Council. Fleitz, who served in this position from April to October in 2018, had been a “senior fellow” at the Center for Security Policy. This outfit — run by the anti-Muslim bigot Frank Gaffney — was called a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Opposed civil rights laws

Bolton started his career of hate early. As a 13-year-old he was admitted to the private McDonogh School in Owings Mill, Md., just outside Baltimore.

The school is named after the slavemaster John McDonogh. It didn’t have any African-American students until 1959.

Bolton is proud that he was head of Students for Goldwater at McDonough when he was 15 years old.

Maryland was then a thoroughly segregated state. Black customers couldn’t shop at Baltimore’s department stores or watch movies in downtown theaters.

Black and white protesters fought this apartheid. Three hundred people were arrested at the old Gwynn Oak amusement park on July 4, 1963, just seven miles from the McDonough School.

John Bolton wasn’t one of them. Being for Barry Goldwater in Maryland meant first and foremost being against any civil rights laws that would make this apartheid illegal.  

Bolton later interned with Vice President Spiro Agnew. Nixon picked Agnew to be his running mate in order to appeal to racist supporters of George Wallace.

So it’s no wonder that Bolton met with Kallie Kriel and his sidekick Ernst Roets. Trump’s National Security Adviser met with the two white farmers from South Africa who are screaming “White genocide!” —- a lie repeated by Fox News — because Africans are reclaiming some of the land that was stolen from them.

Kriel declared that he doesn’t “think apartheid was a crime against humanity.”

What does John Bolton think?

Part 1: “Voice of Donbass residents must be heard”

Struggle-La Lucha spoke to Donetsk-based communist organizers Svetlana Licht and Denis Levin in conjunction with the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine and the beginning of the war against the Donbass republics. This is the second part of the interview.

Struggle-La Lucha: What impact does the Ukrainian-Western economic blockade have on workers in Donbass?

Denis Levin: We don’t view the economic blockade as a separate, exclusively economic measure. For the residents of Donbass, the economic blockade is also the war. It is inextricably linked with direct military hostilities.

Any attempt to restore what has been destroyed faces the problem of restoring the economy and providing it with at least minimal material resources, which would be directed, in part, toward restoring trade with Ukraine. Cutting off trade is another measure of the criminal Ukrainian authorities to deprive the people of Donbass of even minimal means of subsistence.

The market for goods produced in the republics is significantly limited by the blockade, which means that it is impossible to produce a large income, which could be used both to eliminate the effects of the shelling and to launch new industries. In addition, many parts of the restored infrastructure are attacked over and over again.

I work in the public sector. As a welder, the enterprise I work for is trying to create comfortable working conditions for me, trying to provide adequate materials, timely tool repair, and so on. But it’s obvious that due to the economic situation in Donbass, this is quite a difficult task. Plus, there are simply not enough workers. This situation has forced many specialists to leave for Russia to find work.

The economic blockade also results in rising prices for many goods. But over the years, a fairly reliable system of price containment and preservation of social guarantees has been developed. We still have free health care, unlike Ukraine. Even many people from Russia come to be treated by our doctors, because many doctors, good specialists, have not abandoned Donbass. We have the cheapest fare on public municipal transport in the post-Soviet space, and benefits for old people, students and schoolchildren are preserved. And the cost of utilities doesn’t destroy the family budget. But war and blockade are still a pervasive destructive factor.

SLL: In the past year, there were big changes in the leadership of the Donbass republics. The Minsk peace negotiations have been stalled for a long time. How do you view the political situation inside the republics today?

Denis: While the war goes on and the blockade continues, nothing fundamentally changes. In many ways, Ukraine uses the tense situation at the front for its internal political goals. Ukrainian politicians continue to use patriotic hysteria and fake news around the war to divert attention from neoliberal reforms, to create a patriotic image or to accuse their rivals of collaborating with the enemies of the Ukrainian nation. It may be possible to talk about some changes after the elections, but it seems to me that whoever they choose won’t change anything fundamentally for us. After all, none of the candidates said anything radically new with regard to the issue of peace, the status of Donbass and its residents, or on the issue of the Minsk talks.

It’s equally difficult to speak about the politics of the republics, and in particular, the position of the left movement. It is problematic to engage in politics in the conditions of war and terrorist attacks against the life and health of the people of the republic. And it’s difficult to speak about the Communist Party of the Donetsk People’s Republic (KPDPR), because they are also in a difficult position.

Several times we’ve tried to make some unifying steps with their organization, offered to hold a Donbass left forum on the issues of modern anti-fascism, to organize some kind of common association that would meet jointly and deal on a regular basis with some issues of both an ideological and practical nature. But the KPDPR works on a different principle. It is more difficult for them to make such decisions.

Therefore, we cooperate more with several Komsomol [Communist Youth League] cells, which are able to quickly make decisions and are always ready to join any united endeavor.

Svetlana Licht: I agree in many respects with Denis, but he forgot to say that many Donetsk workers are quite responsive to the left agenda. They share our views on social justice, not just out of nostalgia for the Soviet past, but also as it concerns their lives now, their working conditions, which call into question the conditions of war and blockade, and make them think about capitalism and exploitation.

What’s happening here today makes asking difficult questions unavoidable, and more and more people are dissatisfied with how the right-wingers answer these questions. After all, the right always finds one primitive answer to the most difficult questions. Why was there a crisis in Ukraine, which led to a coup that led to the war? It’s impossible to explain this only by some nonexistent national conspiracy.

On social media, I see interest in left-wing information sources, and at May Day demonstrations in Donetsk, more and more workers are genuinely interested in our answers to all sorts of questions. Of course, in many ways they have conservative misconceptions in different areas of life, but then we must also be able to persuade them.

SLL: How would you compare what happened in Ukraine with the current U.S.-attempted counterrevolution in Venezuela?

Denis: I think the difference between Ukraine five years ago and Venezuela today is that Venezuela, like many other Latin American countries, has already had the experience of economic subordination to Washington and puppet governments with all their attendant consequences: complete impoverishment, destruction of the social sphere, and paramilitary gangs guarding the local bourgeoisie and capitalism. Hugo Chávez tried to eliminate many of the consequences of the postcolonial position of his people, and the enemies of the popular forces that he mobilized are now trying to destroy these social transformations.

In Ukraine, until 2014, many neoliberal processes were much slower compared with other post-Soviet countries, and the far-right turn significantly accelerated these processes. I don’t like the comparison which many critics of the current Ukrainian regime like to use, but it’s hard not to notice that Ukraine today is very similar to the Latin American dictatorships of the mid-20th century, and less and less resembles the post-Soviet bourgeois democracy that it was until 2014.

Sveta: I can only add that the experience of the Latin American countries, of the left movement, the working class and students against the ultraright and neoliberalism, is very rich. This is especially noticeable in relation to the combativeness of the women’s movement and other Venezuelans who defend the Bolivarian Republic, while in Ukraine the progressive movements are demoralized and intimidated. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were not in the best condition, could not properly renew themselves and unite. But in the conditions in which they have to survive today, organizing a more mass left movement seems impossible.

We are simultaneously looking with fear and hope at what is happening in Venezuela. If the Bolivarian people succeed in resisting the coup, then they will be able to break the political strategy of coups.

SLL: The rise of neo-Nazi groups in Europe and the U.S. has surged in the years since the Maidan coup. How do you view the relationship between what happened in Ukraine and the spread of neofascist movements in the West?

Denis: I think what took place in Ukraine was a classical scheme which the bourgeoisie often used in the 20th century. It’s customary for them to use the ultraright to protect their capital and profits during a crisis, when the poor and robbed masses are more likely to succumb to right-wing propaganda. But don’t forget that after every rise comes a fall. So the right wing is awaiting a decline in popularity of its rhetoric, which is already happening in some countries.

Sveta: I think that the rise of the ultraright in Ukraine is a consequence of both internal and global processes. After all, today, toleration of the far-right agenda is noticeable in many countries of the world, and the number of supporters of right-wing ideas has been growing for several years already. We see this in the victory of such politicians as Trump and Bolsonaro. I think that we will again and again encounter the horrendous consequences of turning Ukraine into an international training ground for the far right.

But on the other hand, we shouldn’t forget that there is opposition to everything they do. The number of our supporters — Marxists, socialists, anti-fascists and advocates of other progressive ideas — does not decline. Yes, it’s difficult for us, and in some countries there is a question of the survival of left-wing ideas. But if neo-Nazism and the general right-wing turn have a beginning, then there will be an end.

SLL: How can working people and the left in the U.S. aid the struggle of people in Ukraine and Donbass?

Sveta: I think that leftist projects like Red Star Over Donbass do a great job for international solidarity by spreading the truth about what is happening in the Donbass. So you can help us by not giving up on your endeavors and we will continue our cooperation.

Denis: Continue the struggle in your country, because when we see your resistance and solidarity, it gives us strength and we do not give up.

Washington, D.C. — On May 2, five years after the massacre of 48 anti-fascists at the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, Ukraine, Struggle-La Lucha activists joined the Odessa Solidarity Campaign (OSC) for a vigil outside the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

In 2014, shortly after a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the government of Ukraine, neo-Nazis were bused into the city of Odessa. They attacked a protest encampment on Kulikovo Field. When anti-fascists sought refuge in the nearby trade union building, the fascists set fire to the structure, shooting and beating to death those who tried to escape the inferno.

Many videos and photographs document the massacre and identify those responsible. But none of the perpetrators have been punished.

In Washington, OSC coordinator Phil Wilayto handed a letter to the embassy staff addressed to Ukraine’s president-elect, Vladimir Zelensky, calling for a real investigation into the massacre.

It said in part: “We appeal to you to break with the practices of your predecessor and allow an objective investigation by a reputable international body into the events of May 2, 2014, in order to bring those responsible for the deaths and suffering to justice.

“We further appeal to you to take steps to end the ongoing repression of the victims’ relatives and of members of the media attempting to investigate the massacre.”

Afterward, protesters went to the nearby Bolivarian Venezuelan Embassy to support the ongoing anti-fascist campaign of the Embassy Protection Collective, which is defending the embassy from takeover by the U.S. government and ultraright supporters of Juan Guaidó.

Significantly, in Odessa itself, thousands of people came to a memorial event organized by victims’ families. They laid flowers at the House of Trade Unions and released black balloons representing those who had died. A delegation of U.S. antiwar activists from the United National Antiwar Coalition attended the memorial.

A fascist counter mobilization in the city drew fewer people and was unable to disrupt the commemoration.

Events honoring the fallen activists were held in many cities, including Budapest, London, Moscow, Prague, Vancouver and Vienna. In the Donetsk People’s Republic, which has been subject to five years of war by Ukraine with Washington’s support, anti-fascists marked the anniversary with a vigil at Lenin Square, where a permanent memorial to the Odessa martyrs has been erected. They issued a call to organize an international movement against the modern resurgence of fascism — one that clearly identifies capitalism as the source of the problem.

Big business media have long kept silent about the Odessa massacre and the persecution of family and survivors. So it was noteworthy that the Associated Press reported May 2 on the findings of the United Nations human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine that “authorities have not done what it takes to ensure prompt, independent and impartial investigations and prosecutions.”

Alexey Albu, a coordinator of the banned Ukrainian Marxist organization Borotba (Struggle) and survivor of the Odessa massacre, told SLL: “Give thanks to all the participants of the action and all good people who could not come, but who understand the threat of neofascism.

“We have a saying: a drop wears away a stone. This means that as long as we do not stop our struggle, we will eventually break the back of Ukrainian neofascism!”