Liberation Audio

Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara was born December 21, 1949 in Upper Volta (today Burkina Faso), which, at the time, was a West African French colony. Sankara, a fierce enemy of the global system of neocolonial, imperialist capitalism (as well as all forms of bigotry and oppression), was assassinated on October 15, 1987, just four years after the people lifted him up as the president of their new revolutionary nation-state.

Like other influential socialists of the twentieth century Sankara’s life and anti-colonial and decolonial legacy continue to inspire anti-imperialist and Pan-African youth movements across Africa and beyond. A charismatic yet notably humble figure, Sankara is often referred to as the Ché Guevara of Africa [1]. Sankara is considered to have been one of the world’s most notable pan-African socialist revolutionaries.

However, unlike most of his peers Sankara wrote no major works for revolutionaries to study and learn from. What is available is a handful of speeches laying out the basic contours of his radical analysis and non-dogmatic revolutionary vision crafted for a popular audience. Sankara’s major contributions today are not only the historical example he set and the part he payed in the liberation of his own country and others, but also to the way he primarily expressed his political practice pedagogically.

Read the full article:

https://liberationschool.org/thomas-sankara-71-years-later/

More than any other revolution before the 1917 Russian Revolution, the French Revolution of 1789 inspired people across the globe to look beyond the societies in which they lived and see the possibility for social change.

Of course, the rights guaranteed after the French Revolution were bourgeois democratic rights. The French Revolution secured the political rule of the capitalist class. It cleared the way for the capitalist economy to develop freely, overpowering the restrictions of the feudal regime with its big landowning estates.

Nevertheless, later revolutionists including Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and many others studied carefully the many lessons of the French Revolution. Like any great social upheaval, all the social classes sought to influence the course of the revolution, even though the great social changes ultimately replaced one form of exploitation with another.

Read the full article:

https://liberationschool.org/ch-4-how-the-french-democratic-revolution-was-won/

On the day before his inauguration, President-elect Joe Biden announced that he would propose that comprehensive legalization be proposed in Congress for undocumented immigrants. To explain this important issue, longtime Los Angeles-based immigrant rights leader and attorney Juan José Gutiérrez was interviewed by Gloria La Riva on January 20.

2020 was a year of unprecedented crisis and mass movement. The impact of the pandemic, and massive loss of jobs, income, health care, housing and education has been greatly worsened by the capitalist system. The racist police murders of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor and so many others were met with the most massive wave of sustained protest in U.S. history.

Now, with tens of millions faced with foreclosure and eviction, and the criminal failure of the government to provide needed relief, it is clear that the only means of achieving real justice in 2021 will be by building a powerful, grassroots people’s movement.

Feat. Nathalie Hrizi, public school teacher and union organizer.

This talk was recorded live on Jan 4, 2021.

All revolutionary politics are predicated on revolutionary optimism: the belief, rooted in experiences in the struggle, that workers and the oppressed can and will win. Yet revolutionary optimism doesn’t just apply to the masses as a whole. Revolutionary organizers believe not just in the potential of the masses as a whole, but as individuals as well.

Read the full article: https://liberationschool.org/comrades-made-not-born/

What was Trump trying to accomplish on Jan. 6 by organizing a massive march on the Capitol just as Congress was preparing to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory?

Trump was desperate to overturn the election outcome. He lost the popular vote by more than 7 million but only narrowly lost several battleground states, which allowed Biden to win the electoral college. Trump’s team had filed hundreds of lawsuits at the federal and state level to overturn the election outcome in those states. Every one of those lawsuits has failed even though many of them were heard by conservative and right-wing justices, including the Supreme Court.

Trump’s main fear in losing the White House was that his immunity from criminal charges and other legal actions that he thought were likely to be brought against him and his family at the state level would be removed. Trump fears that once having left the White House he and his family would be subject to criminal prosecutions for financial crimes, fraud and the like similar to the offenses that Paul Manafort was convicted of and for which he is now in prison. The Trump Organization, like many corporate entities especially in the real estate industry, is being investigated for a litany of financial crimes over the course of its existence that Trump and his family is potentially liable for. Trump is (arguably) able to pardon himself for federal crimes before leaving office, but not for state crimes.

The Jan. 6 march was alternatively billed as a “March to Save America” or a “March for Trump” and Trump was hoping to delay or stop the certification process. There can be no other explanation for why he called this particular protest, this particular action, this particular rally and march in the middle of the day and in the middle of a work week and just two hours prior to the certification vote in Congress.

Contesting the election result — and asserting his win — also allowed him to retain control of the Republican Party in a way that a loss would not and provided him with a significant fundraising opportunity and slush fund. But it turned out to not just be a ploy. He spent the days up until Jan. 6 browbeating Pence, who presides over the certification process, to overturn the election results.

Was this a coup attempt?

This was an attempt to overturn the 2020 election outcome at the moment Congress was in session to certify the election results, as is mandated by federal law. The election took place on Nov. 3rd. Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million. He won the electoral college vote by 306-232. The Electoral College vote was certified on December 14, 2020. Congress was in session on January 6, 2021 to formally certify that Biden won the election so that he could be inaugurated, in accordance with federal law, on January 20, 2021.

The violent takeover of the Capitol Building was designed to stop the election certification. Congress was dispersed. The president of the Senate, Mike Pence, was rushed out of the Senate Chamber and into hiding just moments before he would have been captured by a violent mob that was chanting “Hang Mike Pence, Hang Mike Pence.” This prevented the certification of the election outcome. Only after the mob was cleared from the Capitol Building was Congress able to reconvene to do this. While the Congress was dispersed and in hiding Trump made calls to members of the Congress to pressure them to help stop the certification. More than half the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted no on the certification when Congress was eventually able to reconvene later that night.

Listen to this special recorded forum on what is -- and isn't -- in the stimulus bill. Recorded live on 9 Jan 2021.

On April 30, 2005, Vietnam celebrated the 30th anniversary of liberation and reunification after a war that itself lasted more than 30 years. In Ho Chi Minh City—formerly known as Saigon—and all over the country, mass events saluted the millions who fought and died to free their country from foreign domination.

How did the Vietnamese Revolution emerge victorious? How did the national liberation movement in a relatively small country manage to defeat not one but two of the major imperialist powers—France and the United States?

In many respects, Vietnam’s triumph stands among the most remarkable feats in human history. It required a fierce determination and willingness to sacrifice on the part of millions of people. It involved economic and military support from the Soviet Union, China and other socialist countries, as well as solidarity from a worldwide movement.

The most fundamental and irreplaceable element, though, was the existence of a highly organized revolutionary party, deeply rooted in the oppressed classes of Vietnamese society both in the north and south. That party was the Vietnam Workers Party, today known as the Communist Party of Vietnam.

The party was led by a dedicated group of revolutionaries, many of whom had organized together, fought together and been imprisoned together in the struggle against French colonialism between 1930 and 1954. The primary leader of the party from its formation in 1930 until his death in 1969 was the renowned Ho Chi Minh. Other outstanding leaders included Truong Chinh, Le Duan, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, Pham Van Dong, Nguyen Thi Binh and Le Duc Tho. The fact that the party possessed a truly collective leadership was proved by the fact that the victory over U.S. imperialism came six years after its principal leader’s death.

The Party was the central organizer of the Vietnamese struggle in every sphere of activity. It led the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) in the north since the liberation of that part of the country from French domination in 1954. It also led the National Liberation Front (NLF) and its People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) in the south.

After 1954, the Workers Party became the ruling party in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, north of the 17th parallel, in what was supposed to be a temporary division of the country. In the south, the party continued to lead the revolutionary movement against the United States and its newly installed puppet regime under Ngo Dinh Diem.

Read the full article:

https://www.liberationnews.org/how-vietnam-defeated-u-s-imperialism/

On Jan. 1, the 62nd anniversary of Cuba’s revolutionary victory, the government is implementing a sweeping economic policy with reorganization of the monetary system to promote more efficiency and greater production. It comes at a crucial time when the U.S. blockade and the impacts of COVID-19 are creating deeper difficulties for the Cuban people.

Cuba’s socialist system enabled the people and government to weather the storm of 2020 and save lives in a way that U.S. capitalism could not and did not do. The most telling example is Cuba’s unified effort to overcome COVID. Only 145 people have died from the virus, just 1.2 percent of the per capita COVID death rate in the United States. And Cuba’s outstanding internationalist medical workers went to dozens of countries to help beleaguered peoples in their crisis.

The “Economic Ordering Task,” approved by the National Assembly of People’s Power with 110 resolutions and detailed in 1,021 pages, was published on Dec. 10 in Cuba’s Official Gazette. Its general outline was presented in the media weeks preceding its publication.

The central feature of the monetary overhaul is the elimination of the dual-currency model that has been active for years.

The plan includes a significant and much-needed increase for all state workers’ incomes and retirees’ pensions. At the same time, it establishes higher retail and wholesale prices, including for goods, services and utility rates, due to devaluation of the peso and as a truer reflection of costs to ensure financial stability.

A return to one sole currency and unified exchange rate of the Cuban national peso will favor national production like agriculture over imports, especially since imports will become more expensive. But certain imports like fuel for electricity and transport cannot be replaced with sufficient national production. Therefore, the increase in electricity rates for the public.

The complexity of the plan — in the midst of constant recalculations of the damage done to the economy by the blockade — requires a careful balance between raising salaries and prices without causing inflation, and motivating the workforce with higher salaries, to then generate enough production, wealth and development. It is a greater challenge with the lack of spare parts and raw materials.

The plan offers favorable terms to foreign investors, like majority participation in tourism, biotechnology and wholesale trade, but not in mining and public service.

Read the full article:

https://www.liberationnews.org/cuba-welcomes-2021-in-victory-introduces-new-monetary-policy/

Statement by the Party for Socialism and Liberation

The paralysis that gripped the U.S. capitalist establishment in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Trump-instigated, fascist-led assault on the U.S. Congress and the continuing threats from armed fascist organizations came to an abrupt halt on Jan. 12 with the public letter sent to all members of the U.S. military signed by the eight generals who comprise the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. The statement read: “The violent riot in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 was a direct assault on the U.S. Congress, the Capitol Building and our constitutional process … [and was the result of] sedition and insurrection.”

The letter sent to more than 1.3 million members of the armed forces by the Pentagon top brass is a clear sign that they are worried that military forces were being drawn into or participated in the seditious conspiracy. This letter comes after the extraordinary Jan. 3 statement from all ten living Secretaries of Defense warning the officials in the Pentagon to not allow the military to be used to alter the 2020 election outcome.

Also on Jan. 12, leaders of the Republican Party began to defect from Trump. Rep. Liz Cheney, the 3rd ranking House Republican, announced that she would vote for impeachment and Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell let it be known to the media that he thought Trump had committed impeachable offenses. This constitutes the first real break within the Republican leadership against Trump. Cheney said, “The President of the United States summoned the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” adding, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of his oath of office and to the Constitution.” House Republican Rep. John Katko, the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, said, “To allow the president of the United States to incite this attack without consequences is a direct threat to the future of our democracy.”

Also on Jan. 12, the FBI organized the first press conference where Acting United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin declared they had initiated “a significant international counterintelligence or counterterrorism operation” whose “only marching orders from me are to build seditious and conspiracy charges”. Sherwin announced that 70 had already been charged, charges against 100 more people were being prepared, and noted “That number, I suspect, is going to grow into the hundreds”. Steven D’Antuono, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, stated, “The brutality the American people watched with shock and disbelief on the 6th will not be tolerated by the FBI,” adding that “The FBI has a long memory and a broad reach”.

Powerful tech companies have also come together to ban Trump from using social media platforms on the basis that he used these same networks to incite a violent assault against the seat of government. Trump is banned from Twitter, Facebook and now YouTube as well as many others.

On the same day, a large number of capitalist corporations, banks and other institutions took action to break from any association with Trump or his family-owned company. Deutsche Bank, which has been Trump’s primary lender for decades, announced their decision not to do business with Trump or his company in the future. The Trump Organization owes Deutsche Bank more than $400 million. The PGA said it would no longer hold the PGA Championship at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey which had been set for May 2022. Universities stripped Trump of honorary degrees. Shopify, the company that serves e-commerce sites, closed to online stores tied to Trump. The online payment platform Stripe will no longer process payments for Trump’s campaign website.

Read the full statement here:

https://www.liberationnews.org/the-paralysis-ends-trump-fascism-and-the-capitalist-state/