The results of this weekend in Boston were much different from those in
Charlottesville, Virginia. The reason was the behavior of law enforcement. In
Virginia, the cops, reportedly, stood by giggling and grinning while racist
Trump supporters beat up the non-violent counter-portestors; and by many
accounts the cops joined in on the beatings. For the most part that didn't
happen here in Boston. It reminds me of the days back in NYC where we protested
Giuliani's racist police agenda. I still have a bump on the right side of my
head where the but of an NYPD AR15 did me in. During the occupy wall st.
movement people in Oakland were gunned down. It is the same situation time and
time again with "protect and serve" being protect the far right masters and
serve their interests, not ours.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 11:34 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Tens of thousands join Boston march against fascism
and bigotry
https://socialistaction.org/2017/08/20/tens-of-thousands-join-boston-march-against-fascism-and-bigotry/
Tens of thousands join Boston march against fascism and bigotry
/ 21 hours ago
Sept. 2017 Boston 8-19 Stephanie Keith-Reuters
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER
In the week following the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in
Charlottesville, which ended with the murder of Heather Heyer, anti-racist and
anti-fascist protests erupted in hundreds of cities and towns across the United
States. About 3000 marched in Philadelphia on Aug. 16, and 1000 rallied in
Portland, Ore., two days later.
The largest mobilization of the week took place on Aug. 19, when tens of
thousands of demonstrators filled Boston Common and marched through the streets
to say, “No Nazis, no KKK, no fascists in the USA!” The huge outpouring of
protesters dwarfed a simultaneous rally of right-wingers in Boston Common.
The Boston Herald reported that upwards of 30,000 joined the counter-protest,
and city officials said that 40,000 were there. They marched to the Common
behind banners proclaiming, “Black Lives Matter,”
and the song refrain of the militant labor movement, “Which Side Are You On?”
One counter-protester told Yahoo News: “I’m here because I stand against hate;
I stand against bigotry; I stand against ignorance. A fire is being lit on that
side [of the racists], and we need to squash it—we need to squash it soon. We
need to show them how small a segment of our society they really are.”
The right-wing organizers had planned their so-called “Free Speech”
rally for weeks, and predicted that several hundred people would participate.
And although the organizers avowed that their event had nothing to do with
racism, they encouraged the participation of outspoken racists and other
leading figures from the far right.
Thomas Robb, national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, assured the
media that KKK members from Massachusetts would be there.
But in the end, the Klansmen never showed up.
Also scheduled to speak were Joe Biggs, a former writer on the Infowars
conspiracy website, and Kyle Chapman, former director of the New Zealand
National Front, a white-supremacist party. Chapman is facing charges of
attacking anti-Trump demonstrators with a lead-filled stick in Berkeley,
Calif., in March. However, it does not appear that either man attended the
Boston event.
News reports said that only about 20 people participated in the right-wing
event. The participants were forced to pack up early, without any of the
scheduled major speakers having addressed the rally. As police escorted the
right-wingers into police vans to make their getaway, the counter-protesters
sang, “Hey, hey, goodbye!” and chanted, “White supremacy has got to go!” It was
an important victory for the anti-racist and anti-fascist movement.
Trump gave a fresh wind to the far right
Following the election of Trump to the presidency, white supremacists and
fascist forces felt that they had a fresh wind in their sails. The KKK’s
official newspaper, The Crusader, and David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the
Klan, had endorsed Trump’s candidacy and were outspoken in their support once
he was in office.
A range of far-right ideologues gleefully donned the Trump campaign caps that
read, “Make America Great Again.” And in Charlottesville, once again, the red
caps served as a kind of uniform for many of the rightist marchers. No doubt
the wearers were emboldened by Trump’s stance against Muslims and other
immigrants, and more recent declarations such as his ban on transgender people
in the armed forces, his call for police to “rough up” people that they
apprehend, and his speech in Poland on increased militarization in order to
uphold the values of “Western civilization.”
Racist violence and other acts of bigotry, such as the desecration of
synagogues and mosques, have increased since Trump’s election. In May, a KKK
chapter announced it would hold a cross burning in Asheboro, N.C.; the event
went on, but in private, while anti-racist counter-demonstrators took over the
space in front of the local monument to the Confederacy.
Trump’s remarks following the terrorism in Charlottesville, in which he
insisted on placing blame for the violence on “all sides,” further lifted the
spirits of the racists, fascists, and the “alt-right.” But the huge outpouring
of protesters around the country, and especially in Boston, gave evidence that
mass counter-mobilizations are the surest way to deflate and deflect these
reactionary forces. It underscored that masses of people are determined to join
the fight against racist intolerance and the ultra-right.
Moreover, Boston showed that truly massive counter-protests are effective in
helping to avoid the sort of violence that took place in Charlottesville. The
huge demonstration of people who declared, “Hate has no home in Boston,” was
able to scare away the Klan and other violence-prone thugs who had hoped to
attend the rightist rally.
White supremacists planned at least nine rallies nationwide for the weekend of
Aug. 19-20 alone. But in virtually every case, protesters came out in even
greater numbers to counter the racist events.
Some of the rightists’ rallies, as in Dallas, were called ostensibly to
denounce plans to dismantle the statues celebrating the slave-holding
Confederacy, which were set up throughout the South during the days of Jim Crow
segregation. The Dallas anti-racist counter-mobilization drew over 2000
participants, who chanted, “This is not Charlottesville!”
Unfortunately, towards the end, non-violent protesters were dispersed by police
in riot gear and on horses.
Hundreds marched to Martin Luther King’s tomb in Atlanta on Aug. 19 in a
protest against white supremacy organized by a new coalition of civil and human
rights groups, Georgia Resists. Also on Aug. 19, at least 4000 protested a
right-wing event in Vancouver, B.C. The right-wingers, some of whom carried
Confederate flags, said that they were opposing Islam and the Canadian
government’s immigration policies.
Right-wingers have planned events in San Francisco and Berkeley on the weekend
of Aug. 26-27, and broad coalitions have been formed to organize large
counter-mobilizations. The Rally Against Hate scheduled for Sunday, Aug. 27, in
Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Park, has won the endorsement of some 40 groups,
including the Alameda County Central Labor Council and several unions, as well
as socialist and community groups.
ILWU Local 10 has voted to stop work on Aug. 26, and to march to Crissy Field
in San Francisco to counter the rally of neo-Nazis that is planned there (see
the union’s statement below). Hopefully, the statement of the longshore union
will serve as a wake-up call to the labor movement as a whole to involve itself
fully in the fight against white supremacy and the fascists. It is a matter of
self-survival that they do so.
Will the ruling class obtain a more “moderate” Trump?
The fact that the fascists have met resistance around the country has
reinforced the understanding by the major sector of the U.S. ruling class that
now is not the time to lift its mask of “tolerance” and “democracy.”
Accordingly, a host of politicians and corporate CEOs have seized the
opportunity to proclaim their abhorrence of racism, their anger over the events
in Charlottesville, and their horror over the resurgence of overt fascist
groupings—although not long ago they were happy enough to work with the
fascists in the Ukraine.
And many of them have wept over the fact that Trump, by speaking his mind, has
not displayed what they consider to be a “proper” sensitivity to these issues.
This is one more indication, according to some politicians—including
Republicans—that the impetuous Trump is proving to be a liability, both
domestically and in foreign policy, and that he must be reined in.
This was revealed by Stephen Bannon, who after stepping down as Trump’s top
advisor, announced that he would return to a position at the “alt-right”
Breitbart News in order to “cover for Trump.” In an interview with the Weekly
Standard, Bannon said of Trump, “I just think his ability to get anything
done—particularly the bigger things, like the Wall, the bigger, broader things
that we fought for, it’s just going to be that much harder.”
And how will the remaining White House advisers affect Trump? “I think they’re
going to try to moderate him,” Bannon said. “I think he’ll sign a clean debt
ceiling; I think you’ll see all this stuff. His natural tendency—and I think
you saw it this week on Charlottesville—his actual default position is the
position of his base, the position that got him elected. I think you’re going
to see a lot of constraints on that. I think it’ll be much more conventional.”
But whether Trump can be reined in or not will hardly matter in the long term.
As the crisis of world capitalism deepens, the ruling class will ultimately
seek a change in tactics. At that time, reactionary policies such as the ones
that Trump currently espouses will not go far enough to suit the needs of the
capitalists. They will then perceive the “horror”
of fascism as their only hope, and they will attempt to unleash the fascist
thugs in order to decisively crush the labor movement and its allies.
Now is the time to act! A mobilization of organized labor, as well as all
people of social conscience, is necessary to give notice that “Fascism Has No
Home Here.”
INTERNATIONAL LONGSHORE WORKERS UNION LOCAL 10 TAKES LEAD IN FIGHT AGAINST
FASCISM
ILWU Local 10 Motion to Stop the Fascists With Stop Work Action and March in
San Francisco. Passed on Aug. 17, 2017.
Whereas, the fascists, the KKK, Nazis and other white supremacists rallied and
marched by torchlight in Charlottesville, whipping up lynch mob terror with
racist, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic slogans, and
Whereas, that attack resulted in one anti-racist counter demonstrator murdered
and many others injured when one of the fascist bullies ran them down with a
car, and
Whereas, President Trump’s whitewashing this violent, deadly fascist and racist
attack saying “both sides are to blame”, and his attacking anti-racists for
opposing Confederate statues that honor slavery adds fuel to the fire of racist
violence, and
Whereas, the Klan, Nazis and other racist terrorists represent a deadly threat
to African Americans, Latinos and immigrants, as well as Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ
people among many others, and directly to members of our union and the labor
movement as a whole, and
Whereas, the fascist “Patriot Prayer” group that staged violent racist
provocations in Portland, Oregon and elsewhere, attracting Nazi and other
violent white supremacists, has announced it will rally on Crissy Field on
Saturday August 26, and
Whereas, far from a matter of “free speech”, the racist and fascist
provocations are a deadly menace as shown in Portland on May 26 when a Nazi
murdered two men and almost killed a third for defending two young African
American women he was menacing; and our sisters and brothers in the Portland
labor movement answered racist terror with the power of workers solidarity,
mobilizing members of 14 unions against the fascist/racist rally there on June
4, and
Whereas, ILWU Local 10 has a long and proud history of standing up against
racism, fascism and bigotry and using our union power to do so; on May Day 2015
we shut down Bay Area ports and marched followed by thousands to Oscar Grant
Plaza demanding an end to police terror against African Americans and others;
the San Francisco Bay Area is a union stronghold and we will not allow
labor-hating white supremacists to bring their lynch mob terror here,
Therefore, ILWU Local 10 in the best tradition of our union that fought these
rightwingers in the Big Strike of 1934, will not work on that day and instead
march to Crissy Field to stop the racist, fascist intimidation in our hometown
and invite all unions and antiracist and antifascist organizations to join us
defending unions, racial minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ people, women and all
the oppressed.
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August 20, 2017 in Fascism / Far Right, Trump / U.S. Government.
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