First Published: People’s Voice, August 22, 1966.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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AUGUST 23 marks the first anniversary of the PEOPLES VOICE. The first edition was published and printed in Watts – Los Angeles Calif., twelve days after the beginning of the Watts Uprising of 1965. PEOPLES VOICE was published by the West Coast Region of the Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Communist Party U.S.A. (P.O.C.) which had rejected the capitulationist leadership of A. Roman (General Secretary of P.O.C.) who had ordered all members of the P.O.C. out of the Watts district during the uprising thus refusing to spread Marxist-Leninist ideology.
M. Laski and A. Hoffman, who represented the revolutionary section of the P.O.C. led the split and a group which was later to play a decisive role in the formation of the C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.) (founding conference September, 1965).
The head-line of the first edition of the PEOPLES VOICE read, “We Call On All The People Of The World To Support The Heroic Struggle Of The People Of Los Angeles.” The article that followed described the nature of the August Uprising, as a rejection of the integration hoax of the capitalist class by the most oppressed and exploited sections of the working class, the proletariat. The first issue of the P.V. described the August events not as a race riot but as a proletarian uprising caused by the oppressive conditions under which the proletariat must live particularly those sections of the national minorities that are proletarians. The first issue clearly and correctly analyzed the Watts Uprising as the rejection of non-violence as a means of struggle and it signifies the adoption of revolutionary violence of the people as a means of struggle to oppose counter-revolutionary violence of U.S. Imperialism. It was further stated that we must organize into Peoples Defense Groups to defend the people against the brutality of U.S. imperialism and their police.
The character of the uprising reveals in part the role to be played by the oppressed national minorities especially the Negro National Minority in the forthcoming American Proletarian Revolution. It would be a grave error to disregard the class character of the uprising in Watts and an equally grave error to disregard, the fact that it was the proletarian section of the Negro National minority who were the main participants.
Other section of the proletariat also participated, for example the Mexican Americans of East L.A. A new stage in the struggle of the proletariat was reached and U.S. imperialism quickly changed its tactics in order to cope with this new stage of struggle. The imperialists dropped their integrationist, hoax which had been pursued by Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson (until August 1965) when they began the pro-fascist line of building reactionary nationalism (which complements imperialist racist policies.)
Since August 1965 U.S. imperialist front-men Adam Clayton Powell, M. King, Stokley Carmichael and the rest of the so-called militants and Black Nationalists, have been paraded as the spokesmen for the Negro Masses. The reactionary front-men and their organizations (SNCC, CORE, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Hall-Healy clique, the Progressive Labor Party and the Trotskyites) are U.S. imperialisms poor attempt to pass off bourgeois democracy, justice and freedom in the disguise of Black Power. The flunkeys of U.S. imperialism are now dancing to the tune of Black Power as they danced to the tune of integration; the piper is LBJ. Black Power is the other side of the coin of integration. Integration was an attempt to level or absorb the Negro People and the Negro National Minority. Black Power is an attempt to protect, by separating, the Negro workers from the rest of the working class. The outcome of both tactics is increased hostility between the oppressed and oppressor nations (Negro and American Nations). Both policies were initiated in order to preserve the capitalist class as the ruling class. The solution to the problem is the overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism, and the right of self-determination for the Negro Nation in the South.
The P.V. has continuously exposed U.S. imperialism headed by LBJ and their flunkeys the revisionists and the conciliators of revisionism who are attempting to cover for the ruling class. The PEOPLES VOICE fully supports the formation of Peoples Armed Defense Groups as a means of lighting reactionary violence of the ruling class with the revolutionary violence of the working people. PEOPLES VOICE fully condemns U.S. imperialism and its lackeys, Uncle Toms, revisionist Hall clique, petty bourgeois radicals, P.L.P. and the Trotskyites. These same freaks and toadies supported the reactionary policy of integration and are now supporting Johnsons reactionary policy of Black Power which is used as a divisive tool of the U.S. imperialists in an attempt to divide and conquer the proletariat.
The P.V. fully supports the slogan Workers of the World Unite for the Thorough and Complete Overthrow of the World Imperialist System headed by U.S. imperialism. P.V. continuously fights for the union of all the oppressed and exploited under the banner of Marxism-Leninism.
The P.V. has properly stressed the importance of the newspaper as the collective organizer. The pursuit of the policy of emphasis on the P.V. as a tool in the hands of the Party of the Proletariat, the C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.), in building a revolutionary all-American Communist Party, has proven this to be correct on numerous occasions.
PEOPLES VOICE has continuously fought against modern revisionism and has exposed on numerous occasions pro-imperialist anti-working class lines of the modern revisionists headed by the Khrushchevite revisionists internationally and the Hall-Healey clique and their conciliators the Progressive Labor Party at home. The PEOPLES VOICE upholds Marxism-Leninism, Proletarian Internationalism and anti-imperialist national liberation struggles. Internationally the P.V. acknowledges the leadership of the C.P.C. and Chairman Mao Tse-tung. P.V. supports the correct Marxist-Leninist stand of the Albanian Party of Labor and the stand taken internationally by the C.P.N.Z.
The PEOPLES VOICE fully supports the heroic struggle of the people of Vietnam and the March 22 statement of the National Liberation Front against the U.S. aggressors. The PEOPLES VOICE opposes the modern revisionist attempt to betray the people of Vietnam and their collaboration with U.S. imperialism both at home and abroad.
The people of South Vietnam will surely win.