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nightmare of war and austerity pressing down on the 99% around the globe. CANG8, the Coalition Against NATO/G8 Wars and Austerity, and UNAC (United Na­ tional Antiwar Coalition) are moving ahead with the organization of a large national permitted mass action on the opening day of the summit, May 19, and a Peo­ ple’s Summit to build for that march on the previous weekend. The UNAC national conference to be held in Stamford, Conn., March 23-25, is planned to be a ma­ jor effort to build East Coast participation in the May 19 demonstration.

CANG8 won a major victory on Jan. 12 when the city of Chicago, after a five-month period of uncertainty, granted permits for the May 19 march and rally. The permits were granted only after a series of protests that involved not only the antiwar and Occupy move­ ments, but labor, religious, and community organiza­ tions as well. The victory was tempered by the con­ tents of a cover letter attached to the permits, how­ ever, that said that these permits could be abrogated by the Secret Service and Homeland Security as the demonstration date nears. In addition, the Chicago city administration, in collaboration with the federal government, is clearly planning to use the NATO/G8 summit to set new national norms for restricting the right to protest through onerous ordinances, massive surveillance, and an extraordinary police and military presence.

Throughout the month of January, Chicago activists mobilized repeatedly to stop the city from passing a package of terrible restrictions on those who would organize demonstrations in the city. While there was much fanfare about Mayor Rahm Emmanuel backing away from fines of up to $1000 for a violation of one of the parade ordinances, from the requirement that any demonstrating group provide a peace marshal for every 100 protesters, and from restricting the time there is some guarantee that they cannot be deployed without reasonable suspicion of a crime. The ordi­ nances also allow the mayor to hire almost anyone to function as part of a police force made up of public and private groups, to interfere with peaceful protest during the summit. Since September the city police chief has been spreading fear that those protesting the summit will be “violent” and boasting of the force of 13,000 officers of the law that he would be deploying.

Coming as they do in the wake of revelations about the involvement of Homeland Security in coordinating the violent police crackdown on the Occupy Move­ ment, the threat to use drones and other military hard­ ware in local law enforcement, and the plan to use the militarized U.S. Coast Guard to herd a scab ship to the Port of Longview, Mayor Rob Emmanuel’s ordinances and the federal threat to shut down protest in Chicago must be addressed as one of the major challenges be­ fore the movements for social change in the U.S. They should not be seen as a Chicago aberration but as a national test of the ability of the antiwar and social justice movement to hold the space for legal protest.

The movement cannot afford to let the precedent (continued on page 4, in “Austerity tightens in Greece”)

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For a Revolutionary Black History Month hunger for freedom was greater than anything. ANY­ 5) Reduce the workweek to 30 hours with no cut in pay, and cut the retirement age to 55. Provide unemployment and retirement payments at We propose an EMERGENCY CONGRESS OF LABOR to discuss and 6) To combat inflation: A sliding scale of wages and pensions that match­ 1) Bail out the people, not the bankers! Open the account books of the es the rises in comsumer prices. To combat high medical costs: A free, banks to full public inspection. Nationalize the banks to be supervised by 7) Immediate citizenship for all undocumented workers. No job discrimi­ 2) No foreclosures! No forced evictions! Cancel usurious debt payments, nation; equal pay for equal work — regardless of gender, sexual orienta­ and reduce mortgage payments in proportion to their capitalist-caused 8) Nationalize manufacturing, big agribusiness, energy, and transporta­ 3) Full employment at union wages! An emergency public works program tion corporations and place them under the control of elected committees to employ all jobless workers and youth! Employ people to build what we need — low-cost quality housing, efficient mass transportation, cheap and 9) To mobilize support for the demands it adopts, the EMERGENCY renewable sources of power, schools, clinics — and to conserve our water, CONGRESS should organize ACTION COMMITTEES in every workplace and neighborhood threatened by the crisis. These committees can draw up 4) Immediate and full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq & Afghanistan!

Close all U.S. bases abroad! No money for the military — use funds 10) To put all these measures into effect, we need a LABOR PARTY — instead for public works! Convert the war industries to making products based on a fighting union movement and all people who are oppressed Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly by Socialist Action Publishing Association, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610.

Postmaster: Send address changes to: Socialist Action, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610. RATES: For one year (12 issues, 1st-class mail): U.S., Canada, Mexico — $20. All other countries — $30. Money orders and checks should be in U.S. dollars.

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City State Zip s we once again approach February, the papers and more Black faces than usual. Some will show movies, some documentaries and some will feature history in celebration of Black History Month.

Undoubtedly, Martin Luther King Jr.’s epic “March on Washington” speech will be samples, its grainy, black and white videotape the very symbol of a bygone era, and it’s key catchphrase, “Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!”—a haunting and ironic mockery of the real state of most of Black America. One tape that in­ variably will not be shown is one of the final press con­ ferences of the nation’s first (and perhaps only) Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, aged and ill, yet with the presence of mind to announce, “I’m still not free.”

For millions of Black Americans, this Black History Month, while perhaps rich in symbol, comes amidst the greatest loss of collective assets in our history, crippling joblessness, haunting home foreclosures, public schools that perform more mis-education than education, rabid police terrorism, and perhaps the highest Black incarceration rates in U.S. history, and all that entails.

That we have Black History Month at all is due to the Black Freedom Movements of the ’60s, and the dogged persistence of Black historian Carter G. Woodson, who began his efforts with Negro History Week, back in the 1920s! Yet, it begins, as do all struggles for progress, with the Movement. If Black mothers and grandmoth­ ers, and later Black schoolchildren, didn’t follow King, we wouldn’t know his name, except perhaps as an historical footnote. For, without followers, there is no movement—and thus no progress.

The late, great Marxist revolutionary historian, C.L.R.

Editor: Michael Schreiber Canada Editor: Barry Weisleder — $20 for 12 months — $37 for 24 months Name Address Phone E-mail James, in his finest work, “Black Jacobins,” a history of the Haitian Revolution, illustrates how the leadership, including Gen. Toussaint L’Ouverture, tried repeatedly to betray the Revolution, on to face two immovable forces—the racist recalcitrance of the French govern­ ment of Napoleon (who wanted to restore slavery), and the militancy of the Black soldiers, who pushed onward to Revolution.

The point? People make history, by mass movements, often ones which go faster and further than the lead­ ers want. And masses make and sustain revolutions— often against “leaders” whose every instinct is to be­ tray them.

In a forward to one of the many editions of Black Ja­ cobins, James reminds us, “... that it was the slaves who had made the Revolution. Many of the slave leaders to the end were unable to read or write” (James, xvi). But they sure knew how to fight.

Africans, by the tens of thousands, broke their chains, and though penniless, hungry, and scarred by the rav­ ages of bondage, found weapons and the will to fight for freedom against the defenders of slavery: France, Britain, and Spain. They beat them all, because their more concrete demands than the ones outlined above.

and exploited. For a workers’ government! • Ashland, Ore.: [email protected] • Boston: [email protected] (781) 630-0250 • Carrboro, N.C.: (919) 967-2866, [email protected] • Chicago: P.O. Box 578428 Chicago, IL 60657, [email protected] • Connecticut: (860) 478-5300 • Duluth, Minn.: [email protected]. www.thenorthernworker.blogspot.com • Florida: [email protected] • GRAND RAPIDS, MICH.:

[email protected] • Kansas City: [email protected] (816) 221-3638 • LOUISVILLE / LEXINGTON, KY.: [email protected], (502) 451-2193 THING.

And by so doing they changed world history. They shattered French dreams of an American Empire; and enabled the U.S. to double in size after its purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon. They also did what no “slave” army had ever done in modern or ancient his­ tory. They defeated an empire. That is Revolutionary Black History—and it deserves to be remembered during Black History Month. © MAJ 2012 Mumia freed from solitary It took a petition with 5000 signatures, gath­ ered in a few days, to the Philadelphia District Attorney and prison officials to compel the war­ den at SCI Mahanoy to release Mumia Abu-Jamal from his “worse than death row” solidarity-con­ finement “hole.” The excuse? Mumia refused to cut off his dreadlocks! While on death row at SCI Greene, Mumia waged the same fight for seven years until his jailors relented. As of Jan. 27 Mu­ mia has been in the General Prison Population.

On Jan. 30, he had his first visit with his wife Wadiya—the first time in 27 years that he was allowed to touch another human being. Here’s Mumia’s message to the freedom movement, sent via Wadiya: “My dear friends, brothers and sis­ ters—I want to thank you for your real hard work and support. I am no longer on death row, no lon­ ger in the hole, I’m in population. This is only part one and I thank you all for the work you’ve done.

But the struggle is for freedom! From Mumia and Wadiya, Ona Move. Long Live John Africa!”

A week later, Mumia had more visitors (see Jo­ hanna Fernandez’s letter, next page). Write Mu­ mia at: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335 SCI Maha­ noy 301, Morea Road, Frackville, PA 17932. n For info about Socialist Action and how to join: Socialist Action National Office, P.O.

Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610, [email protected], (510) 268-9429 Socialist Action newspaper editorial offices: [email protected] Website: www.socialistaction.org WHERE TO FIND SOCIALIST ACTION • New York City: (212) 781-5157 • Philadelphia: [email protected] • Portland, Ore.: (503) 233-1629 [email protected] • Providence: [email protected] (401) 419-1706 • Salem, Ore.: [email protected] • San Francisco Bay Area:

P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, Ca 94610 (510) 268-9429, [email protected] • WASHINGTON, DC: [email protected], (202) 286-5493 Socialist Action National Office

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