Rallies demand: ‘Not one more deportation!’

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(Above) From Montana to North Carolina and throughout the United States, immigration activists marched and rallied on April 5 in an effort to pressure the Obama administration to put a freeze on deportations. In fiscal 2013, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau (ICE)

“Not one more deportation!” demanded protesters gathered in front of Los Angeles City Hall. Many signs denounced Obama as the “Deportador en Jefe” (“Deporter in Chief). More than 100 people rallied in front of the ICE detention center in Elroy, Ariz. Dozens marched to the center from Phoenix—some 70 miles away. In Hartford, Conn., people came from around the state to protest in front of the federal building. San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., and some 50 other cities and towns also saw demonstrations on this “Day of Action.”

... 4th International debates revolutionary strategy (continued from page 12: “12 Years a Slave: What happened to slave rebellion?”)

ters, that the slave does not understand the term— does not comprehend the idea of freedom.”

Despite Northup’s counsel against insurrection, he fought back when he had no choice. The movie graph­ ically portrays a fight with a white carpenter, John Tibeats. As graphic as it is, the beating Northup gave Tibeats was even more brutal than shown in the film.

“I placed my boot upon his neck. He was completely in my power. My blood was up. It seemed to course through my veins like fire. … “I snatched the whip from his hand … I cannot tell how many times I struck him. Blow after blow fell fast and heavy upon his wriggling form. At length he screamed—cried murder—and at last the blasphe­ mous tyrant called on God for mercy. But he who had never shown mercy did not receive it. The stiff stock of the whip warped round his cringing body until my right arm ached.”

In reality, but not in the movie, Northup had a second fight with Tibeats, in which he once again overpowers the carpenter. This time Northup flees, eludes a pur­ suing party of hounds and takes refuge in the swamp.

Eventually, as after the first fight, Northup is saved from deadly retaliation from Tibeats by the interven­ tion of his first master, William Ford, avoiding that “certain defeat.”

Not just victims I don’t know how the movie “12 Years a Slave” came to downplay the specter of slave revolt, despite its prominent place in Northup’s autobiography. But there is a current among some who call themselves progressive to see exploited people as mere victims, unwilling or unable to fight back, meekly waiting for deliverance from some savior. It appeases the con­ science of some liberals, but it is not a true story.

People fight back against their oppressors. It is part of human nature. Sometimes we fight back smart, and sometimes we just fight back. Sometimes we are or­ ganized, and sometimes we are disorganized. But his­ tory is in fact the story of rebellion after rebellion.

Last year, another Oscar-award winning movie about slavery, “Lincoln,” told the story of the passage of the 13th Amendment and the end of slavery in the United States. Yet slaves were barely present in this story of slave liberation.

Daniel Day-Lewis won praise for his stunning por­ trayal of Abraham Lincoln, but where was the incom­ parable, escaped slave leader Frederick Douglass?

What mention was made of the slave revolts that had terrorized the South prior to the Civil War?

Where were the 180,000 or more Black men who fought in the Union army, as portrayed in another great Civil War movie, “Glory”? Where were the thou­ sands upon thousands of slaves who had deserted the plantations during the war?

This year, the movie “42,” the story of Jackie Rob­ (continued from page 8: “Protesters in southern”)

period of relative capitalist stability ever. As with Lenin’s party, in periods of such stability and/or working-class defeats and retreats, prospects for transforming “small propaganda parties” into mass revolutionary parties are difficult, if not impossible.

This is qualitatively different for reformist parties that have a stake in the capitalist system and that are often called on to help “manage” it.

No serious revolutionary party enjoys being compelled by circumstances beyond its control to be relegated to a small propaganda group lacking broad influence in the working class and oppressed. But every revolutionary has faced this unavoidable dilemma, from Marx and En­ gels to Lenin and Trotsky, and all others, everywhere. How to continue to exist, to fight, to grow, to gain signif­ icant influence, to prepare for the future when the mass forces for change in the broad working class remain relatively passive, is the question of questions.

But we are not without instruction. The method of the united front has proven invaluable for major sections of the Fourth International in uniting major currents of the left, and often in the broader workers movement, in common struggle. It is an essential tactic in the trans­ formative process of advancing the class struggle and winning at first small numbers of dedicated cadre and then broad forces to the revolutionary party—and it is properly stressed as such in the Bureau text.

In its essence, the tactic of the united front is aimed at achieving two objectives: (1) the mobilization of our class to fight in its own interests, thereby increasing its confidence, power, and capacity to win; and (2) distin­ deported 368,644—over 1000 a day! inson, who courageously challenged segregation in baseball, did not win a single Oscar nomination, de­ spite Chadwick Boseman’s powerful portrayal. Why not?

Contrast “12 Years a Slave” and “Lincoln” with “Djan­ go Unchained,” last year’s epic spaghetti Western de­ piction of slavery, where Black hero and bounty hunter Django says without regret, “Kill white people and get paid for it? What’s not to like?” “Django Unchained” won Oscars, including Best Writing for Quentin Taran­ tino’s screenplay. It appears that stereotypical comedy is easier for Hollywood to take than real Black heroes.

Back in 1997, Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays Northup in “12 Years a Slave,” had an important role in “Amistad.” “Amistad” was based on a true story of slave revolt, the mutiny on a slave ship. That movie, like “12 Years a Slave,” did not flinch in its portrayal of the bestiality of slavery, in particular of the slave trade. “Amistad” starred Djimon Hounsou as Cinque, the leader of the mutiny. The defiance and rebelliousness of Cinque and the mutineers was on full display in that film. We guishing ourselves in the process from those currents who stand aside from such struggles for sectarian or re­ formist reasons. Of course, to the extent that other cur­ rents in the socialist left join with us in common action and democratic planning, important differences are less magnified, while trust and confidence is advanced that can lay the basis for future collaboration and eventually principled fusions.

We must stress that the central purpose of the united-front tactic is to build the revolutionary socialist party. History has tragically and repeatedly demonstrated that the absence of such a party and the leadership it has forged in struggle guarantees defeats of major propor­ tions. We need not review its consequences in the Arab Spring, in Syria, Libya, Egypt and, indeed, throughout the modern era.

The united-front tactic, as with all others, is not with­ out its limitations. It is not a magic formula, especially today when the world capitalist system is in a crisis of historic proportions and the important but still limited struggles have yet to score, with few exceptions, signifi­ cant victories.

Such victories, that we are confident will emerge from the present crisis and the fight against it, will lay the ba­ sis for deeper and united-front mobilizations that open the door wider to the revolutionary transformation of the state. Need we repeat that these are highly improb­ able without a deeply rooted mass revolutionary party with that single-minded objective?

Having recognized the “problematic” of so-called anticapitalist parties too often subordinating united front mobilizations to electoral politics, the Bureau is com­ pelled to remind us that the direct engagement of the need more such films.

Greg Grandin, in a recent Nation article, “Slavery & Freedom,” talks of the “falsehood on which the whole ideological edifice of slavery rested: the idea that slaves were loyal and simple-minded, in possession of neither independent lives nor thoughts.”

It is not just the history of slavery that matters. It is the history that exploited and oppressed people make every day by fighting back that matters. We are not just victims. There is some Solomon Northup, and some Nat Turner, in all of us. We must be the agents of our own liberation. n Copyright © 2014 Marc Norton. This article first ap­ peared in SF Bayview; it is printed here with permission of the author.

Marc Norton has been a rank-and-file member of UNITE HERE Local 2, the San Francisco hotel, restau­ rant and culinary workers union, since 1976. He is also a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). His website is www. MarcNorton.us. masses in action in the streets remains essential. Never­ theless, immediately following this section, the Bureau reaffirms its major “strategic” objective: “At the same time, the experiences of the last ten years make it nec­ essary to maintain the problematic of the last Congress of building broad anti-capitalist parties.” These “useful” parties have more often than not been more electoral/ parliamentary in nature than parties aimed at mass mobilizations to exercise working-class power in the streets, hence the Bureau’s need to essentially caution comrades against electoralism.

In recent years the FI majority leadership has rushed headlong toward the subordination, if not substitution, of building Leninist parties to vaguely defined parties with electoralist illusions—including some that violate our principles of class independence. If this project is carried much further, it will necessarily mean the aban­ donment of our historic program.

Tragically, if we were to draw a balance sheet of our ex­ periences with such formations, not only in the past “ten years” as the Bureau states, but for decades before, we would be compelled to come to largely negative conclu­ sions. Many of these groupings have already faced dis­ solution or are in rapid decline.

Were we discussing a mere tactic regarding a combi­ nation of electoral and united-front mobilizations to advance the class struggle, a tactic centered on building disciplined FI sections based on our historic program and that maintained an organizational expression inside and outside any formation that we chose to build and/ or enter, we would be on solid ground. The test of time and the measure of the lack of success of these projects, however, warns us that the above is not the case. n SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 2014 11

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SOCIALIST ACTION