Voices From The Frontlines

Eric Mann and Channing Martinez explore The Black Movement with this week’s Voices guests, Justin Blake, Tanya McLean, and Gregory Bennett Jr.

As an uncle, a family friend, and an organizer of Peace in the Streets Kenosha, our guests are primary sources for understanding Jacob’s situation. Throughout the interview, these activists emphasize Kenosha’s organizing actions, like the upcoming 30-mile protest, Walk for Justice, and how we all can help support Jacob, his family, and The Cause.

You can support Jacob Blake via

Cashapp: $AERFoundation

PayPal: [email protected]

Justice for Jacob's demands include District Attorney Michael D. Graveley pressing charges of Rusten Sheskey, as well as his arrest, indictment, and firing. They also demand Kyle Rittenhouse be tried in adult court, and that his mother be arrested.

Contact Erica Ness, Gregory Bennett Jr., and Tanya McLean for more information about how you can lend your support.

Listen to Voices from the Frontlines LIVE every Tuesday, 3PM PST on KPFK, 90.7FM, kpfk.org.

Support KPFK: https://www.kpfk.org/support-kpfk/

This week on Voices From the Frontlines, Eric Mann reads over 2020 Voting tips written by Lian Hurst Mann. Lian had has written a Make A Plan Today to Make Sure your vote counts paper explaining the multiple ways to get you vote to the elections office. In the second half of the show Channing Martinez and Eric Mann are joined in conversation with Veronica Carrizales, Policy and Campaign Director of California Calls, on Proposition 15, that would tax corporate real estate at higher levels while keeping home property tax the same. The Strategy Center urges "Yes!" on Proposition 15.

Veronica ends with three ways to jump in the fight to pass prop 15. This Thursday October 8th join a Prop 15 Virtual Ballot Party: https://www.prop15forthefuture.com/

This Saturday October 10, 2020 Join Community Coalition at their Power Fest to support Prop 15: https://www.southlapowerfest.com/

Visit: https://www.mobilize.us/millionvotersproject/ to see all future Prop 15 related events including virtual phone banking

This afternoon, Eric Mann will speak on the terror of the new Supreme Court, the daily terror that Black people face, the challenges of the 2020 election, and the struggle for countervailing power on Voices from the Frontlines.

Eric will be in conversation with Alan Minsky, long-time great Program Director at KPFK and a representative of the Progressive Democrats of America.

Today's show serves as an organizers introduction to the progressive anti-Trump organizations. Together, we will examine the Progressive Democrats of America, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, the Sunrise Movement, Democratic Socialists of America, and the Working Families Party. We will also highlight important Senate and Congressional races.

Eric Mann in Conversation with Reese Erlich

The 2020 elections -- What is at stake for those who want peace and non-U.S. intervention with China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and the Third World

September 29, 2020 | 3PM PST

September 29th at 6pm is the debate between Joseph Biden and Donald Trump. Much is at stake for the movement, and the country. But for those who support a Biden presidency, and those who care about the lives of people in the Third World (and some are both), this conversation is important as to what we can hope for, and what we can expect.

This afternoon, Eric Mann and Reese Erlich will examine the 2020 elections, specifically: what is at stake for those who want peace, and non-U.S. intervention with China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and the Third World?

Reese Erlich is a long-time activist/organizer/writer whose work goes back to the 1965 Stop the Draft Week in Oakland, and continues to this day. In 1968, he went to the Republic of Cuba, and has been a friend of their democratic, socialist, and anti-imperialist revolution ever since. This is reflected in his important book Dateline Havana: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Future of Cuba that Reese wrote with Stephen Kinzer.

Voices from the Frontlines is Excited to Feature

State Senator Maria Elena Durazo in Conversation about the bill she introduced

SB 1257 that grants Occupational and Safety Rights to Domestic Workers. Right now the bill

Is in front of Governor Gavin Newsome who has to sign it into law. While he may be predisposed to do the right thing we need every Voices listener to

Call Governor Newsome: 916-445-2841 to Sign SB 1257!

We will also be in conversation with an organizer and member of the National Domestic Workers Alliance who are providing great leadership on this campaign.

Let’s get 100+Voices listeners to call the Governor, “I support health and safety rights for domestic workers. Please sign Senate Bill 1257!”

Chisme Alert—Back in the day in 1989, four friends worked together— Maria Elena Durazo, in an historic fight, was elected president of Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union Local 11, now City Councilman Gil Cedillo was a staff person at Local 660 SEIU, Antonio Villaraigosa was an organizer for UTLA and Eric Mann was the director of the just formed Labor/Community Strategy Center.

Channing gives us an in-depth review of the film LoveCraft Country; a film about the racist 1950's in Chicago. Moreover, the show speaks to imperialist nature and culture of the United States through the lens of black people, echoed in the words of James Baldwin. Please take a look at this film and let us know what you think.

Eric talks to us about the Republican and Democratic parties and all of their false claims about and solutions to climate change, racism, and the United States' nefarious involvement in China and Taiwan.

Eric and Channing host a conversation on the national conversation around the upcoming elections. Trump, Joe Biden and his the newly announced Vice Presidential running mate, Kamala Harris, and the Democrats have all put out clear and dangerous agenda's for the country, where is the movements national agenda.

We think the upcoming August 28th Black National Convention hosted by Movement for Black Lives will be an important milestone.

In light of the president's private police force storming into cities, Biden not defending the national surge of energy around defending the police, and the Democrat's ambivalence, we'll speak about the importance of bringing demands for Black people to the national level to challenge Biden and the Democrats.

Tune in to hear the full show!

An amazing conversation with an amazing man who has lived an amazing life and written 2 amazing books.

In 1952, a Communist, a Jew, and a U.S. soldier stationed in Germany, fearing imprisonment under the McCarren Act if he returned, decided to defect to East Germany. Not as the dancers or athletes from the Soviet Union whose defection, orchestrated by the CIA, are made into front page news in praise of U.S. imperialism, but simply as a man swimming across the Danube River to an uncertain future in a nation and system he had only imagined. He lived, loved, and built East Germany from 1952 until its final defeat by the capitalist west in 1990, and even now, 30 years later, he is able to discuss, dissect, and defend, not without a critical eye, The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was the anti-Fascist Germany that was finally defeated by the Fascist U.S. and West Germany. Grossman’s brilliant exposure of how almost all the anti-fascists went to East Germany and almost all the German fascists went to West Germany and the U.S. is almost too painful to read.

I met Victor Grossman (born Stephen Wechsler) through my dear friend Victor Wallis, long-time editor of Socialism and Democracy who introduces me to a lot of great people. When Lian Hurst Mann and I were in Berlin as guests of the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation that had invited her to speak I was able to visit Victor Grossman in his modest but more than ample apartment in which he has lived for decades—now on Karl Marx Allee. Victor puts out a monthly political commentary on Germany and the world that is brilliant. He is 92, goes for long walks, has a sharp mind and wit, and I am honored to know him. He will be up at midnight Berlin time so he can speak to Voices Listeners. I strongly urge you to get his book: A Socialist Defector: from Harvard to Karl Marx Alle (thanks to Monthly Review Press) online, as I hope it will also be in our Strategy and Soul bookstore very soon.

My main takeaway from reading his brilliant history is that East Germany, with only 1/3 of Germany, the least wealthy part of the nation, surrounded by the U.S., the West Germany economy propped up by U.S. imperialism right after the war at the same time it tried to destroy the Soviet Union, really had no chance to breathe and was fortunate, through its own courage, to last 45 years! As the U.S. now moves to war with China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and any other country that simply wants to live in peace without U.S. intervention, we need to listen to Victor’s dire warnings about U.S. plans to start another world war if needed to destroy any semblance of opposition to its objectives.

In 2014, after the 25th anniversary of the Strategy Center, Eric Mann went to Jackson Mississippi, along with Julian Lamb

This week on Voices From the Frontlines, I had a wonderful reunion with some Voices listeners, and as we celebrate the life and mourn the death of civil rights giant John Lewis, I choose to also celebrate the life and mourn the death of Julian bond, as the two of their lives were deeply intertwined. John Lewis died on July 17, 2020. Julian Bond died on August 15, 2015.

John Lewis, along with Julian, was a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was an influential member of Congress and the subject of many books and films—including the excellent just-produced John Lewis, Good Trouble. The film recounts the historic race for the U.S. Congress in 1986 in which John Lewis defeated Julian Bond.

Bond had won a seat in the Georgia state legislature in 1965% but the racist body refused to seat him because of his endorsement of SNCC’s statement opposing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The voters in his district reelected him in both a special election and a regular election in 1966, but the legislature barred him each time. Finally, in December 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the exclusion unconstitutional, and Bond was sworn in on January 9, 1967. In the film, it brings back the historic race for Congress between two old friends and comrades, Bond and Lewis, and explains, painfully, some of the conflicts between them. Also, Lewis makes clear he rejected the teachings of Malcolm X, rejected Black nationalism, and also rejected the concept of Black Power put forth at the time by Stokely Carmichael and Willie Ricks at the time. It also makes it clear that Bond, who had been elected to the Georgia State Legislature, was favored by Black voters by a 60% to 40% margin over Lewis. But Lewis received 80% of the white vote and Bond only 20% that created Lewis’ margin of victory.

Tune in, listen to the show and tell us what you think; [email protected]!