"Good morning, Revolution:" Big stick-Past and present
1984 1984-05Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 15 →
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transformed into reactionary anticommunism; any opposition the editors may have had to Senator McCarthy was token and innocuous.
In fact, starting in 1950 Phillips became active in the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, the U.S. affiliate of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an international organization of Cold War intellectuals that was later shown to have received CIA subsidies.
In the 1960s Phillips and Rahv moved left again, but Phillips' main interest was the radical new cultural sensibility. This provoked Rahy, who was always more politically oriented, to break with Partisan in 1970 on the grounds that it had become too trendy, overadapting to the fashions of the counter-culture. After the failure of his own magazine, Modern Occasions, Rahv died in 1973.
When Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz reacted against the "excesses" of the New Left of the 1960s by attempting to lead intellectuals back to the right, first supporting Nixon's presidential bid and then Reagan's, Phillips refused to co-operate. In fact, part of the reason that he wrote A Partisan View was to counter the version of New York intellectual life that the neo-conservative Podhoretz depicted in his own memoir, Breaking Ranks (1979).
But whatever value Phillips' memoir has as an antidote to Podhoretz's, it significantly misrepresents the political history of himself and his circle. Most noticeably, he downplays the depth of their radical involvement in order to minimize the extent to which they have reneged on their youthful ideals. The impression is given that he and his friends were always more or less liberal socialists who were deceived and manipulated by dishonest Leninists.
For example, in describing his association with the Communist Party, Phillips By KWAME M. A. SOMBURU In October 1983, armed forces of the United States invaded and occupied the independent Black nation of Grenada. The purpose of the invasion was to open Grenada to domination by U.S. economic and military interests.
The revolution had brought immediate benetits to the people of Grenada. Unemployment was reduced by two-thirds. Free healthcare was made available. Every inhabitant of the island could now learn to read and write.
The current rulers of Grenada, supported by the presence of several hundred U.S. troops, are attempting to dismantle many of these social programs. The Center for Popular Education (responsible for carrying out the literacy campaign) has been discontinued. The new government has also dissolved the National Women's Organization, a coalition that developed women's craft Albert Huie-Jamaica /ournal cooperatives, implemented primary healthcare, pushed for maternity leave and equal pay legislation, and worked to repair schools. Last December, U.S. soldiers were used to disperse the Windsor Forest branch of the National Women's Organization after its members had defied the ban.
This is not the first time that U.S. troops have occupied a Black nation in the Caribbean. The people of Haiti have suffered likewise from U.S. polices.
Haiti declared its independence from France in 1804, the first and only time that former slaves defeated their masters. It was not until 1862, however, that Abraham Lincoln's government grudgingly recognized Haitian independence. For the next 50 years, North American warships regularly visited Haitian ports "fly Proteel American lives and propIn 1914 the United States directly intervened to assist in the overthrow of the Haitian government. U.S. Marines stole $500,000 in gold from the National Bank of Haiti, and brought it to the vaults of the National City Bank in New York.
The following year, the Marines invaded Haiti and "pacified" the country by killing thousands of its people. The racist U.S. occupation (by all-white, mainly Southern troops) lasted until 1934. During that time the United States took control of Haitian finances, and rewrote the constitution to allow North Americans to own property there.
The legacy of U.S. domination is the poverty and oppression that Haiti bears today. Grenada will suffer in a similar manner, unless the policies of the U.S. government are curtailed by the combined activity of Grenadians and all of us who reside in the "belly of the beast."
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