To My Comrades of the Former Incendiary Editorial Board, the Tribune of the People, Incendiary Support Committees and the Revolutionary Movement
By Ruben Ruiz
I was a guiding leading figure in Incendiary and therefore take ultimate responsibility over its deterioration into right opportunism – specifically in the form of populism/tailism. We live in revolutionary times, and Incendiary has failed in its role to act as a revolutionary voice for the masses when it is most necessary.
Leadership is key in any organization. In the final analysis, my poor leadership made the wrong calls, allowed rightist errors to go unchallenged while I also pushed rightist positions. I was too bogged down in resolving two-line struggle though administrative means. Something Chairman Mao rejected in “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People” where he said, “All attempts to use administrative orders or coercive measures to settle ideological questions or questions of right and wrong are not only ineffective but harmful.”
Additionally, I operated from an incorrect understanding of democratic centralism, not understanding that the two-line struggle that had been occurring within the board was democratic, even before I joined its leadership. After exhausting the internal democratic centralism of Incendiary the time had come to take the struggle outside of the organization. This isn’t something counter to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism. Chairman Mao in guiding the revolutionary Chinese masses to power and advancing the construction of socialism to its highest development, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, called for a bombardment of the rightist headquarters within the Party. Chairman Mao firmly upheld democratic centralism, with an unshakable faith in the masses. His call for cultural revolution was a necessary step in the development of the Party, the development of Marxism and the development of socialism, bringing the world one step closer to the luminous Communism. To negate line struggle is to negate Chairman Mao’s contributions to Marxism.
Read the full article @ incendiarynews.com
World Economy Heads Towards Recession as Coronavirus Declared Pandemic
By the Incendiary Editorial Board
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared that the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) that originated in Wuhan, China has become a pandemic, meaning that it has spread worldwide. The economic impact on Chinese manufacturing, shipping, and other industries has also reached global proportions, with US stock indexes falling at a pace not seen since the Great Depression. “In the past two weeks the number of cases outside China has increased thirteenfold and the number of affected countries has tripled,” said WHO Director Dr. Tedros Adhanom last week. “In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths and the number of affected countries to climb even higher.” This pandemic has been weaponized by the ruling class to obscure the deepening general crisis of imperialism. COVID-19 is not causing an economic crisis as much as it is exposing the internal contradictions of capitalism that make crises inevitable. “This is not a financial crisis. This is just a temporary moment of time that we will overcome together as a nation,” US President Donald Trump said during an oval office address last week.
Despite Trump’s reassurances, the recent extreme measures taken by the US government, like suspending travel between the US and Europe as well as injecting $1.5 trillion into the economy to mitigate the panic of the stock exchange, demonstrate the lengths the ruling class is willing to go to postpone the next economic crisis. Trump has never been interested in telling the truth; he only wants to sustain his reelection chances by ignoring the signs of an economy rapidly approaching disaster.
Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
#covid_19 #coronavirus #international #pandemic #health
BRAZIL: Favela Residents Fight Police to Resist Displacement
By Thomas Lambert
On the morning of March 10 in west Rio de Janeiro, residents of the Rio das Pedras favela barricaded streets and fought police in defense of their homes and businesses.
Just five days earlier, the city government instituted a “Zero Tolerance” program, which targets the unpermitted structures common among the poorest working-class neighborhoods in Brazil for demolition.
These structures have typically been home to families for generations and are constructed, improved, and maintained through the hard work of occupants and their communities.
The city’s new policy uses a rhetoric of ‘improving safety standards and conditions’, but in truth its goal is to clear space for valuable real estate. As the city destroys entire neighborhoods, the residents are displaced and forced into worse conditions in the farthest outskirts of the city.
Early Tuesday morning, in preparation for the planned eviction, residents of Rio das Pedras erected flaming barricades of wood and tires. The barricades blocked Avenida Souza Filho, the main street which connects Rio das Pedras to adjacent neighborhoods. Police and demolition crews were effectively barred from entry for about an hour.
Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
#Brazil #newdemocracy #CombatAndResist #riodejaneiro #favelas #displacement
NORTH CAROLINA: Protesters Denounce Rapist Chef and Political Opportunist
By Laura Byron with contributions from Maria Perez
On March 11, protesters entered Azalea Bistro in Saluda, North Carolina to denounce its founder and former head chef, Garrett Peter Tallent. On March 3, Tallent was arrested for raping one of his female employees on charges that include second degree kidnapping, assault by strangulation, assault on a female, three counts of forcible sex offense, and second degree forcible rape.
The protesters entered Azalea Bistro twenty minutes before closing on Wednesday night, chanting, “Run this rapist out of town, Azalea Bistro must shut down!” A woman activist read a speech condemning Tallent over a megaphone, while a banner held in front of her read, “Garrett Tallent: Rapist and Abuser.” Tallent is also a founder of the now-defunct Charlotte Revolutionary Collective (CRC), which activists involved in the action recognize as his failed opportunist and revisionist project.
In a video provided to Incendiary, Emma Tallent, Garrett’s wife, can be heard trying to loudly talk over and mock the protesters as the speaker on the megaphone describes Tallent’s sexual assault of his employee. The speaker pointed out that the restaurant profited a violent rapist, and appealed for solidarity from the employees. Soon after this, music was raised to a loud volume in the kitchen, and a high-pitched alarm was set off.
Tallent was officially removed as head chef last week after his arrest, but his family still owns the restaurant and maintains his innocence. Tallent was not present in the restaurant at the time of the protest and is currently free on bond.
Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
#northcarolina
LOS ANGELES: Former City Councilman Arrested on Corruption Charges
By Ulrike Salazar
On Monday, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested former Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander. The arrest comes over a year after federal agents raided the city office and home of conniving City Councilman José Huizar as part of an ongoing federal investigation into political corruption.
Englander, former Council Member in District 12 covering part of the San Fernando Valley, was not originally named in the federal warrant made public in January 2019, and is the first to be charged and arrested since its release. He resigned from City Council a month before the raids on Huizar in November 2018.
The investigation is focused around big real estate deals, tracing them back to the Los Angeles City Council’s Planning Land Use and Management Committee (PLUMC), which oversees major redevelopment projects throughout the city. Huizar sat as the chairman of the PLUMC, at the time making him one of the most powerful city officials directly responsible for gentrification and displacement in working-class neighborhoods like South Central, Boyle Heights, Northeast Los Angeles, and Chinatown.
The disgraced Englander has been charged with seven counts of obstruction of a federal investigation. He accepted money and gifts from real estate developers and attempted to convince colluding private capitalists (currently not named by investigators and reports) to not cooperate with the investigation. Reports indicate that Englander spent the money (approximately $50,000) on prostitution, lavish meals, gambling, and other bourgeois decadence.
Although it has been popularly understood that the state, from the local to federal level, has long-since worked in service of private capitalists including developers, Englander comes as a clear-cut example of collusion in what is known as “pay-to-play” politics, where private capitalists directly pay government officials in exchange for green-lighting their projects.
Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
#la #LosAngeles #california #corruption
COLOMBIA: Students Rebel Against Police and Politicians in Support of Education Strike
By Thomas Lambert
Throughout the past several weeks, students across Colombia have taken to the streets in support of striking teachers, clashing with riot police known as the Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron (ESMAD) in a continuation of the two-day education strike that began on February 20.
In Soacha, an industrial working-class suburb of Bogotá, students from the University of Cundinamarca and University Minuto de Dios blocked roads with burning debris to support the education strike. At the Universidad Distrital in Bogotá, students blocked a major road and successfully defended it against ESMAD for three hours. The Universidad Distral students had been fighting with the police since February 21, blocking the street on several occasions. In Popayán students blocked roads near the University of Cauca, followed by additional skirmishes with ESMAD.
In attempt to disperse the student ongoing student protests, ESMAD has used tear gas and concussion grenades, as well as armored vehicles armed with water cannons. To defend against the attacks, students have utilized debris, Molotov cocktails, and homemade bombs at the police and their vehicles.
Claudia Lopez, mayor of Bogota, was quick to reveal herself as an enemy of the people despite her fake progressive rhetoric. In order to control the people’s mobilization, Lopez attempted to collaborate with reformist elements of the mass protest, while sending the ESMAD after any protesters identified as ‘violent agitators.’ This demarcation between ‘peaceful’ and ‘violent’ protesters served to draw sections of the people into cooperation with the ruling class and crush those that might pose a real threat to the reactionary old state. Most students, however, saw through her scheme and continued to fight against state repression.
Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
#Bogota #Colombia
