Liberation Audio

The following solidarity statement was issued by the International Relations Department of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP)

Dear comrades,

On behalf of the Communist Party of Turkey, we express our heartfelt support for the working people of the United States who took to the streets protesting the brutal murder of George Floyd by racist policemen. In the past weeks, people’s anger has already grown because of the devastating social effects of the pandemic. The Trump administration’s failure in containing the spread of the disease and its outcomes has deepened the vast social inequalities in the United States, marked by unemployment, poverty and homelessness.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation is struggling at the forefront of the manifestations. With their creative efforts and efficient campaigns, comrades of the PSL reveal the bonds between racism and exploitation, which is as we all know in its essence a problem of labour. We are witnessing how powerful the working people can become, when they are united and organized against the dominant classes, regardless of which bourgeois party they are represented by.

Communists in Turkey are and will remain in solidarity with communists of the USA and with the great struggle of the working people there, aiming for justice for Floyd and equality for all.

With comradely greetings,

Communist Party of Turkey

International Relations

https://www.liberationnews.org/communist-party-of-turkey-justice-for-george-floyd-solidarity-with-the-uprising/

For the 70th anniversary of the official beginning of the Korean War, Liberation School interviewed the People’s Democracy Party, a revolutionary workers’ party in South Korea, to get their perspective on the war and the prospects for peace. The voices of the South Korean left are excluded from mainstream and even many progressive media outlets, and it’s crucial that the U.S. peace movement hear first-hand the ideas and activities of organizers on the Korean peninsula.

The PDP was formed in November 2016, although its founders were active in previous political parties and struggles. They are fighting for national independence, which they view as a prerequisite for building a people’s democratic regime and achieving reunification. Their program calls for a “re-appropriation welfare policy,” which is distinct from a “taxation welfare policy” pushed by social democrats. They are organizing to re-appropriate “the corrupted property of forces against people,” including the Chaebols (large family-controlled capitalist enterprises), foreign capital, and all foreign military basis. They would use this wealth to “resolve the issue of unemployment and precarious workers, realize in practice the policy of free and common education, medical service, and inhabitation, and write off debts for farmers and families.” The “PDP has presented the strict and scientific program for resolving the problems in Corea as specifying the withdrawal of all foreign military personnel and for federated reunification.”

Read the full article: https://liberationschool.org/korean-war-70-years/

On the evening of July 3, thousands of community members in Aurora, Colorado, gathered to demand justice for Elijah McClain and to call on the Aurora Police Department to immediately fire the officers involved in his killing. Protesters also demanded murder charges for the killers.

The action was organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Frontline Party for Revolutionary Action, organizers who have been in the fight for justice for Elijah McClain since he was attacked and then died in August of 2019, and who led the organized takeover of Interstate Highway 225 by three thousand people the Saturday before.

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/thousands-march-for-elijah-mcclain-massive-community-blockade-of-police-station-ensues-in-aurora-co/

Journalists in the mainstream Western media often show surprise even as they report on governments in the Global South navigating the COVID-19 pandemic with relative success compared to the chaos in the U.S. and UK. But the success story that they narrate is typically one of individual leadership or culture, as if individuals and cultures are not embedded in political spaces. This article is about Kerala, a state in the southern part of India that elected the world’s second democratically elected communist government in 1957. Kerala is currently governed by the Left Democratic Front led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Kerala has rightfully received many accolades in the past few months for its relative success in handling the pandemic. K.K. Shailaja, lovingly addressed as Shailaja Teacher, is minister of health and social welfare in Kerala. Many news outlets have called Shailaja Teacher the ”rock star health minister“ and “corona slayer“ for her leadership in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. This communist woman’s press conferences will not get the same kind of adulation that Andrew Cuomo receives even though the New York governor did not take the pandemic seriously enough during the critical period at the beginning of the outbreak. But for those who understand Malayalam (the regional language of Kerala), Shailaja Teacher and her team’s press conferences exude confidence and trust among Kerala’s citizens.

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/how-a-communist-led-government-in-kerala-responded-to-the-covid-19-pandemic/

It’s probably safe to say the year 2020 has been unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes, even for people who marched against Jim Crow segregation and the U.S. war on Vietnam . We’re witnessing – and part of – a militant, multinational uprising in cities around the world. The police lynching of George Floyd and so many before him may have been triggering event, but fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly fueled the fire.

Tens of millions of people are out of work in this country, with no clear future, and government ineptitude or indifference is exposed for all to see. “American exceptionalism” has taken on a new meaning as European countries ban travelers from the U.S. in order to safeguard their own people. The whole world is watching as people die and “the greatest country on earth” appears paralyzed in the grip of a pandemic it should have seen coming.

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/what-do-6-months-of-pandemic-tell-about-usa/

In a country as wealthy as the U.S., you would think ensuring that students have access to quality education and services would not be an issue. You would think that in a country as wealthy as ours, it would be a priority that students and their families remain in good health and have access to health care, as well as mental health care during a global pandemic. You would think that national COVID-19 testing would be required before opening up the doors of schools to students, educators, and staff.

In this country, the people expect these basic public health needs to be met considering the wealth we have generated. Instead, our reality is we continue to see our public schools defunded, and the funds invested into a brutal, repressive, militarized police force whose purpose is to exercise lethal force on all, irrespective of age, race, gender, or supposed criminality. To reverse this inequity, we should defund the police – not our public education system.

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/defund-the-police-not-education/

A profound rebellion against racism has been sweeping the country for a month. Millions have taken to the streets in every part of the country, shaking public opinion. Elite institutions, individuals and corporate brands are scrambling to offer symbolic sacrifices at the altar of racial justice in the hopes they will be spared from the righteous wrath in the streets.

At the same time the police are wantonly attacking protestors and continuing to murder Black people, making a mockery of all the “official” declarations of “anti-racism.”

Hidden in just this fact is the most important lesson: The capitalist system grants concessions only in defense of its own stability. None of the grisly facts of racism was unknown or undocumented prior to the assasination of George Floyd. The only thing that has changed is people are willing to burn down buildings and confront the “shoot-to-maim” riot brigades.

Stability has not been restored. Massive crowds continue to come out into the streets; unions are taking strike action for Black Liberation; and a big cultural moment featured a Black Communist as the hero.

Various attempts to extinguish the flames of resistance–through force or flattery–have had the opposite effect. For the authorities this begs the question of what will get people out of the streets? Those in the streets meanwhile grapple with what it takes to make substantive changes and what would even constitute “real change.”

There are many rebellions, fewer revolutions. Rebellions are usually associated with fighting the good fight, revolutions with winning it. We remember many slave rebellions across the Americas, but only one slave revolution. We celebrate the heroism of Nat Turner and Dessalines equally but recognize that their achievements are of different orders.

Rebellions express the inability of the current system to resolve its own contradictions using the existing political framework. Revolutions resolve those contradictions: a new framework, a new system.

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/from-rebellion-to-revolution/

Since the murder of George Floyd on May 26, protests in Minneapolis have ignited a global uprising not only in major cities across the United States and globally, but also in small towns from coast to coast. These small towns — some that have not seen any kind of protest in years or even decades —have become activated, now mobilizing to hold marches, vigils, sit-ins and other forms of direct action. Some of these protests, though small and peaceful, have also been harassed and brutalized by the police. Some were called by Black organizers in majority white towns, many were organized by teenagers and students, some brought out dozens while others brought out thousands — but all of them demonstrate the power of this growing movement.

Liberation News reporters have been on the ground in both the big cities and the small towns across the United States, finding a history of police terror and violence in all of them and getting the people’s side of the story.

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/small-towns-across-the-united-states-see-unprecedented-protests/

On June 3, the main tenants’ advocacy group in the small city of Ithaca, New York secured a key legislative victory in their fight to cancel rent payments due during the pandemic. The Ithaca Tenants’ Union submitted a resolution to the Ithaca city council which would have the city request that the New York State Department of Health grant the city the power to forgive all outstanding rent payments accumulated since March. The proposal passed six to four, and the next day the city sent an official letter to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Department of Health asking for the authority to forgive rent and urging the pursuit of mortgage payment cancellations on the state level. This development makes Ithaca the first city in the country to formally request the power to cancel rents due during the coronavirus pandemic.

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/ithaca-tenants-win-major-canceltherents-victory/

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union shut down 29 west coast ports on June 19 in remembrance of George Floyd and to mark Juneteenth. All along 2,000 miles of coastline, in 29 ports from Seattle to San Diego, not one container was loaded or unloaded.

The ILWU has a long history of anti-racist and international solidarity. It shut down these ports in 1968 after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. Union members refused to unload a ship from apartheid South Africa. The union shut the ports to oppose the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and earlier this month, held an 8-minute work stoppage to demand for justice for George Floyd.

This tradition of solidarity came from a historic union struggle in 1934, when dock workers struck for 83 days, culminating in a 4-day general strike in San Francisco. Building anti-racist solidarity was key to their win, and to ending some of the worst working conditions in the country.

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/anti-racist-solidarity-brought-victory-for-all-dock-workers-in-1934-san-francisco-general-strike/