We have new snow here in Wisconsin for the New Year. Closing my eyes, I can remember back eighty years and I see the red blood on the new white snow. That image of the past will never go away; but I now see that there will be red blood on new white snow in the near future.
In 1934, the police were driven from the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota by coal-drivers on strike. All the drivers wanted were a few pennies more and a union, and they were willing to strike and fight for a living wage. The police tried to stop them, but they were defeated and driven from the streets of Minneapolis by the strikers.
Minneapolis was a medium size, Midwestern city, and New York is the financial capital of the United States and the empire city of the world.
Yet on December 5, 2014 the people of New York, crying out for justice, were able to take back the streets from the police. It was for just a few hours, but still a major defeat for the police of New York City.
New York has, according to its past mayor, Bloomberg, the seventh largest army in the world in its police. An army equipped with airplanes, heavy machine guns, etc.” a police army, given billions by the Defense Department and constantly being improved in military equipment.
They are organized like an army with a ladder of authority. The ranks march and obey the ones above. Their organization is clearly patterned after the Roman Legion.
Josephus1, the Jewish historian, gave reasons why the Roman Legions were able to win against larger armies. He pointed out that the Roman soldiers were trained in obedience, were in the army for life, did not go home to plant in the spring and fought and died for The Empire, which was their religion; not for money.
Bloomberg was wrong. His police are paid mercenaries because they cost much more than an army and they do much less. They are extremely subject to corruption, both the lower rung ranks and the higher officers, including the very highest. They are a destructive force that costs billions, and when the people rebel and fight back the cost of the police doubles and redoubles.
As long as the people are divided, have faith and trust in the government and corruption is not too deep in the police, they can do their job of occupying and controlling the city. But when the people become united they blow the police away. The police must have back up now of a real army!
This winter we will see changes made in the police throughout the United States. First there will be a short period when the police will shoot to kill and try to break the people by killing and terror.
If the people do not break, the police will. The police are not an army and they have no staying power. Even now, the police are quietly quitting; getting jobs with businesses as private guards, some for more money, some for less, but all with greater security and less chance of being killed.
If you look closely you can see the changing nature of the U.S. police force. It is becoming more and more like the Mexican police force” corrupt, degenerated, decadent, dishonest and weak. The higher police officers with political connections are even now carving out territory for themselves. This was the situation in Ferguson, Missouri and is now the situation in Detroit, Michigan. When this happens the ruling class cannot depend on their police force to do their bidding of occupying the cities.
As of now the capitalists do not understand how weak the police are. They are to some extent captives of their own propaganda. At this time they feel that a few reforms will be able to both take some pressure off the police and strengthen them.
The Democratic Party section of the capitalist class will be called on to do the job, for that is what they’re good at. They will have the help of the Black leaders in the Democratic Party, plus the academic liberals. Some of them will have some understanding, but it will be difficult for them to help the capitalists, as they want to. Events are moving too swiftly for them to educate their supporters.
So what is to be done? The police need to be completely defeated, politically and militarily. This can only be done if we are united and consciously do the job of defeating them. We need to understand how corrupt and disjointed they are, that they are over centralized, with people in the Military ultimately in control.
Depending on the federal government or the court system will not defeat the police” they can only be defeated by our own organizations.
We must remain in the streets actively fighting the police, but we need to also be developing our own organizations of deliberation and planning” our peoples assemblies, town meetings, etc. These must be our own working-class organizations, independent of the Democrat or Republican parties, or any parties representing the capitalist class” they are uninvited.
But all groups fighting the police and government are invited. The corruption and weakness of capitalism that is becoming apparent in the police is but a reflection of the corruption and weakness of capitalism as a whole.
I am confident we will win. And if we fight in a unified and organized way, there will be less blood on the snow!
With warm comradely greetings,
Joe Johnson
Dear Editors,
A popular song in the 1950s by the Andrew Sisters was, Drinking Rum and Coca Cola” Both Mother and Daughter Working for the Yankee Dollar. At that time it described the situation in Cuba; for the women of Cuba. The men were mostly unemployed except when cutting sugarcane.
The women of Cuba didn’t get much for their Yankee Dollar. At the time, Cuba had one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world and almost no education for the children who did live.
Living in a shack with no running water, plumbing, etc., a shack that would be blown over come the next hurricane. They got little for their work except a sip of Rum and Coca Cola.
Now, after the revolution, they are not working for the Yankee Dollar but, in large numbers, are in the Cuban parliament and are leaders in the nation.
Currently Cuba’s infant mortality rate is one of the lowest in the world, lower than in the U.S. The Cuban population” including the women” is extremely literate. They have free education including university. It is not likely they will want to go back to working for the Yankee Dollar and a sip of Rum and Coca Cola!
Rather, with more travel to Cuba, the women of the U.S. will want to have what the Cuban women have.
I was talking to a young nurse who said she was thinking of going to Cuba. She said she was having a hard time paying for her daughter’s education” she also wants to become a nurse. In Cuba, it would be quite possible for her daughter to get her education, and as good a one, if not better, than here in the U.S.
It’s very likely that Cuba will influence people in the U.S. very positively.
With warmest comradely greetings in the spirit of Crazy Horse,
Joe Johnson, Chippewa Falls, WI
Dear Editors,
On Friday evening, December 5, 2014, I attended a vigil in Fountain Square in the center of my community of Chestertown, Maryland. The meeting, to pay respect and raise awareness of the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, was organized by the local Diversity Dialog Group.
I have to admit I went more out of curiosity than actual conviction. Even so, there were nearly a hundred people at the beginning which slowly whittled down to a hard core of about seventy, who stood outside in the cool, damp darkness for almost an hour” lighting candles, listening to prayers, motions of solidarity, and calls for justice and dialog between the races.
For a December evening spotting with rain and nothing special on the television I guess it wasn’t a bad turnout for a town of little more than 5,000. The usual suspects were there” about a quarter were Black, another quarter looked like students from the local college, and the rest were like me” geriatric former hippies, lefties, Pinkos, etc., with a scattering of the religious. Many were leftovers from a bygone age when conviction meant something more than being determined to get a bargain on Cyber Monday.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s wonderful that even this small group turned up but the reality is that dialog is actually only part of the process. As someone who lived in South Africa under the brutal apartheid state in the early 1970’s I know this for a fact. Nelson Mandela didn’t later negotiate the dismantling of this oppressive system in a vacuum. A lot of people who went before him and protested whilst he was in jail had to get their hands dirty, not to say even bloody, in order for him to ultimately succeed.
People who think that the normal default reaction to a crisis will work as usual, by keeping their heads down and hoping the problem goes away, are deluding themselves. We have reached a tipping point.
There are calls to blame the police and retrain them. Considering the police are entirely recruited from the wider population, which they must naturally reflect, means such panaceas are somewhat naïve and unlikely to succeed.
Racism and the killing of young Black men and youth by the police is only the tip of the criminal justice ice-berg which has been deliberately ignored by our useless lamestream media, President, Congress, and other so-called national leaders who have betrayed their constituents for a quiet life under their true paymasters” corporate America.
The criminal justice system is an oxymoron, much like the United States of America” it isn’t and we aren’t! The USA now has more people its prison system than Stalin had at the zenith of the Soviet Gulags. We only have about five percent of the planet’s population but hold about 25 percent of the earth’s prisoners and a disproportionate number of those are non-white. This either means Americans are the most criminally minded of all nations or there is something terribly wrong with our criminal justice system.
We all know the answer to this question and it doesn’t matter where you stand on the political spectrum. Where is the justice when a youth’s life can be destroyed and sent to jail for years for dealing in a little dope, or lose their homes through foreclosures, but a bankster can loot the economy for billions, make millions, destroy companies, and gamble with workers’ life savings and yet only receive a slap on the wrist and a fine” all preceded by a tax-payer funded bailout? A nation where corporations can pollute the environment, destroy habitats, and poison water but only get fined money which they are then allowed to write off against their taxes?
This isn’t justice” it’s a corporate criminal racket perpetuated by an economic system that sees the planet as a huge refuse dump and prisoners as a cash crop to be farmed” all for the benefit of a small minority.
Police killings and racism are not the cause of our problems they are only symptoms of a dysfunctional and unsustainable economic system.
” Ted Newcomen, Chestertown, MD
1 Josephus recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the first century AD and the First Jewish“Roman War, including the Siege of Masada. His most important works were The Jewish War (c. 75) and Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94). The Jewish War recounts the Jewish revolt against Roman occupation (66“70). Antiquities of the Jews recounts the history of the world from a Jewish perspective for an ostensibly Roman audience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus