KANSAS CITY: Anti-Revisionist Confrontation of DSA Event Ends in Bloodshed
By Daniel Reed
On October 12, a contingent of anti-revisionist combatants confronted a public meeting of the Kansas City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Online propaganda from the DSA and their supporters has tried to portray the event as a brutal attack on the elderly, but in reality, a DSA member who attacked a woman combatant was repelled, taking multiple blows that left him bloodied and sent to the hospital.
Upon entry, a speech was read by one of the revolutionaries detailing the rotten nature of DSA’s practices locally and nationally, as well as how the struggle against fascism must include confronting social-fascism, as revisionism is the enemy of genuine socialism.
The charges made against DSA were that nationally they have had police union organizers in elected positions of leadership, that they act as foot soldiers for the imperialist Democratic Party, and that they are a revisionist formation that is aiming to corral the working class under the wing of the bourgeoisie in the name of socialism by encouraging participation in the bourgeois electoral farce.
Propaganda materials and the projector were confiscated by the revolutionaries, DSA leadership making no attempt to stop them. “Revolution’s not for play, down with the DSA!” and “DSA will never win, social democracy is fascism’s twin!” were chanted as the event supplies were taken.
It was at this point that a local activist, Carl, who has been kicked out of other organizations for defending sexual abusers and is known for trying to publicly expose the identities of communists, rushed at the combatants attempting to reclaim his propaganda yelling, “This is a safe space!” He threw the first punch, targeting one of the woman revolutionaries, but was immediately beaten back, while one DSA leader tried to defend him. The brawl broke out again when Carl grabbed another revolutionary and tackled him to the ground. The revolutionaries rallied and freed their comrade, and Carl was left bloodied along with the remnants of his propaganda strewn on the floor.
Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
PHILADELPHIA: Community Members Resist School Relocation Plan
By Alberto Rosse
Parents, students, teachers, and other community members of Benjamin Franklin High School and Science Leadership Academy (SLA) confronted Philadelphia School District Superintendent William Hite, over the proposed plan to relocate their schools and the handling of their schools’ closure at a community meeting last week.
The North Philadelphia building that housed both Benjamin Franklin High School, the alma mater of well-known political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, and SLA was shuttered after exposed asbestos was discovered during renovation work in late September. The building has been undergoing construction since the school district decided to split the building between SLA, a magnet school, and Ben Franklin, a neighborhood public high school which originally had sole use of the 60 year old building.
Many parents feel that the district only was willing to renovate the dilapidated building once magnet school students were involved. One former teacher said that “prior to SLA coming in, there was really no concern about the health of the children at Ben Franklin.” As a testament to this, after the school was shuttered SLA students were provided with laptops to continue their education at home while Ben Franklin students have been left effectively without schooling since the closure on October 1.
In Philadelphia, the poorest working-class families are relegated to attending underfunded and neglected neighborhood public schools. These children are mostly Black, but also include Philly’s sizeable working-class immigrant communities. According to district enrollment data from the 2016-2017 school year, 99% of students who attend Ben Franklin qualify for free lunches, and 86% are black.
When Strawberry Mansion High School, a campus contaminated with lead, mold, and asbestos, was floated as a possible relocation site by Superintendent Hite, community members were in disbelief at the district’s continued disregard for the student’s safety and well-being. Shouts of “Hell no!” and calls for the superintendent to resign were heard.
Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
#philadelphia
DFW: Police Officer Kills Woman After Non-Emergency Call
By Jennifer Kelly
On Tuesday, Interim Fort Worth Police Chief Ed Kraus publicly distanced the department from the latest police killing in Texas, the October 12 murder of Atatiana Jefferson, a young black woman, by police officer Aaron Dean, who currently walks free after posting the $200,000 bail Monday evening. The incident provoked mass protests last weekend, with the unified call that “enough is enough.” Around 2:30 am last Saturday, Dean shot Jefferson through her window after sneaking into her backyard. Dean and another officer had been dispatched in response to a non-emergency call from a neighbor, James Smith, who saw that her front door was open. This man made a horrible mistake that cost Jefferson her life by believing the myth that police serve the people. Dean shot Jefferson in front of her 8-year-old nephew, with whom she had been playing video games. “I’m shaken, I’m mad, I’m upset. And I feel it’s partly my fault,” Smith said. “It makes you not want to call the police department.” Activists, religious leaders, and hundreds of community members, some of them armed, gathered Sunday night for what started as a candle vigil for Jefferson outside of her home, but which quickly became a protest and later a march.
Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
#FortWorth #DFW
AUSTIN: Final Domain On Riverside Vote Looms, Protesters Visit Home of Developer’s Lawyer
By David Martinez
Austin City Council may take a final vote on Thursday for the “Domain On Riverside” luxury development, after months of delays and facing a fierce people’s struggle against the project. The vote has been postponed multiple times as the council has wavered on their willingness to go against the community’s militant resistance to the project, which will displace thousands of people and reshape the working class neighborhood of East Riverside.
On Tuesday night, revolutionary organization Defend Our Hoodz (DOH) and Riverside residents took their resistance to homes of those attempting to displace them, and protested in the wealthy hills of West Austin, where the lawyer representing the Presidium Group, Michael Whellan, lives. Whellan has been the development’s primary representative throughout the rezoning process, who gained infamy at the very first community meeting for the project when he was asked, “Do you know what the minimum wage is?” to which he answered, “No, I don’t.” Protesters assembled in front of Whellan’s home, chanting “Michael Whellan, Capitalist Snake, We Resist When You Displace,” as one of Whellan’s irritated neighbors threatened protesters and called the police. The same neighbor swatted at the signs of protesters who were standing in the street, but was pulled back by his neighbors who recognized that the protesters were ready to defend themselves.
Whellan, who remained inside through the protest, was seen peeking through his windows with his wife. He eventually turned off the lights after protesters told him, “We see you!” and chanted, “Developer Lawyer, Sits on His Ass, Leeching off the Working Class!” One Riverside resident on a megaphone told Whellan and his neighbors how they should be glad they only have one loud night of chanting while her neighborhood was facing total displacement.
Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
#Austin #NoDomainOnRiverside #gentrification #ATX
MEXICO: Chiapas Mayor is Dragged from Truck by Peasants for Deceitful Campaign
By Nélida Tello
On October 8, peasants from Santa Rita Invernadero confronted the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) Mayor Jorge Luis Escandón Hernández in Las Margaritas, Chiapas. Armed with bats and stones, peasants forced Escandón out of City Hall, tying him to a pickup truck and dragging him throughout Las Margaritas as a consequence for failing to fulfill his campaign promises.
The peasants demanded that Escandón begin the construction of a road to Santa Rita Invernadero, which was a campaign promise he used to win the position of mayor of Las Margaritas. Among their demands was access to potable water and electricity.
The police stopped the truck shortly after Escandón was tied and dragged, and made eleven arrests. The attorney general’s office charged the eleven peasants with abduction and attempted murder. In a press conference Escandón stated “we aren’t going to give into blackmail, pressure […]” making no comment about demands of the peasants.
Read the full story @ incendiarynews.com
#mexico #chiapas #peasantry
The DSA is a Grease Trap
By Ed Dalton
Those who would liquidate the question of revolutionary communism, whether they do it under a black flag or a red one, all rush to the defense of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) whenever it is attacked, safeguarding one of the largest social-fascist political parties which is part of the bourgeois state.
While the DSA relies on good old-fashioned US imperialist liberal “common sense” to push its phony politics, what lurks underneath this veneer is the old state’s best bet for rebranding itself among the people and liquidating the revolutionary potential of the people, especially the youth.
The state must not be understood in the abstract, as this monolithic, omnipotent, and inhuman specter. The state is made up of people, all serving as different ideological and physical representatives of imperialism, all carrying out the armed and administrative rule of the imperialist class.
The US imperialist state and the culture which the US imperialist ruling class produces and controls are the worst in the world. The US is the world’s main influencer, main warmonger, main profiteer, and of course the main force behind exploitation and oppression at the global scale. In the world of police, the US is the biggest cop, a cannibal among the people.
The world’s most advanced and most accomplished monster is US imperialism. The US state rests on a pile of corpses; anyone entering it has to climb that pile—adding to it. The DSA, as the grease trap of the so-called left in the US, has one primary function: getting others to discard their scruples in the same way that they have, to better serve the imperialist state.
From police officers and police union officials, to informants, to active imperialist military, to so-called anarchists, to radical-liberals, to edgy teenagers, to self-proclaimed “communists” (revisionists), the DSA has them all as card-carrying members and at the same time boasts above all left-unity. The DSA must be understood as an apparatus to unite the “left” with the imperialists themselves.
Read the full op-ed @ incendiarynews.com
#dsa #imperialism #democraticsocialistsofamerica #usimperialism
