2019 Cuba May Day Brigade

U.S. contingent of the 2019 Cuba May Day Brigade

Recently I was privileged spend two weeks as a member of the 2019 Cuba May Day Brigade. This was my second time as a member of this international Brigade where 328 members from 21 countries came to Cuba to give their solidarity. This blog will look at the reasons why I found that time in Cuba so inspiring.

In order to appreciate this perspective, perhaps it is best to look at a few facts about my life. I have been a communist in the United States for about forty-six years. During that time, the press, the government, as well as the corporate world have labeled communism as the worst affliction humanity has ever suffered.

These powerful forces haven’t just made this argument, they have gone to war, supposedly to stop communism in Korea and Vietnam. These wars cost the lives of millions of people. They have had people arrested, fired from their jobs, and blacklisted all for arguing that human needs should be a priority over profits.

Saying this, being a communist in this country hasn’t been easy, but no leader of the communist movement ever argued that this would be an easy perspective to advance. So, allow me to take a look at what it means to live under the yoke of the capitalist system in the United States of America.

I believe that most people in the capitalist world need to dedicate themselves to the day-to-day crusade of “making a living.” This means adopting your life to the needs of en employer. You might be asked to work any hour of the day or night. You might need one, two, or even three jobs just to “make a living.” As much work as you do, there is a foreman who routinely demands that you do more. What are the results of this state of affairs?

I am presently retired. Judi and I have a home to live in, enough food to eat, a car, and access to health care. Saying this, I pay money for health care insurance. A representative of the insurance company informed me that our savings could be wiped out if either of us needs to be treated for cancer.

I can also say that there are tens of millions of people in the United States who do not have the advantages that we do. There are millions in the U.S. who do not have enough food to eat, or who lack housing or a car, or are functionally illiterate. People who live under these conditions typically work at horrendous jobs, with grossly repressive and dangerous environments, so the most affluent people in the world can maximize profits on their investments.

I can also say that there are tens of millions of people who have more financial resources than I do. Most of these people took a chance and either obtained degrees from universities or managed to run their own business. These people might have larger homes, more than one car, more time for vacations, more time to eat out at restaurants or travel, and possibly even a vacation home.

Having these things means that these people managed to circumvent the terrible “D’s”. These are: divorce, driving accidents, drug addiction, discrimination, and disease. Clearly people who have more resources are better able to deal with the terrible D’s than people with fewer resources. Jeffery Bezos, CEO of Amazon, recently divorced his former wife. He and his wife were each awarded tens of billions of dollars. I don’t believe that this was an unbearable hardship. 

I mentioned that people in the capitalist world, need to take a chance with their lives. This is because capitalist governments always make it their priority to advance the interests of corporations and not workers. This explains the fact that seven out of every ten workers in the world live on ten dollars per day or less. So, our standard of living depends, to a large extent, on the luck of the draw.

Because of this state of affairs, capitalist politicians need to promise all kinds of things. However, every worker who has any experience knows that all capitalist politicians give us an iron-clad guarantee, that as long as we live in the capitalist world, there will be war, poverty, destruction of the environment, as well as discrimination. Most people have tolerated all of this because they have been able to make a living, as well as raise a family.

Human History

Understanding this reality, we might take a brief look at our history. For most of human history our ancestors lived in communal societies where the idea of private property was unknown. Humanity needed to work collectively in order to survive.

Under those conditions, men were usually the hunters. Women did most of the other work that included: carrying heavy loads of water and wood from the forest, planting and harvesting the crops, providing medical care, and even building the homes. Because women were so important to these societies, they had real political power. Men needed the approval of women to become leaders.

Then, because of a combination of circumstances, the slave empires of Greece and Rome came into being. These slave empires lasted for hundreds of years. The Roman Empire went through many years of decline and eventually was overthrown.

Feudal regimes of kings and queens came to power. Craft guilds emerged and technology advanced. Serfs were not slaves and they had a right to farm the land where they lived. However, the feudal laws required peasants to never leave the manors where they worked.

Then, the revolutions against feudalism erupted. The revolution of the thirteen colonies was the first to make a clean break from feudalism in the world. However, the revolutionaries who created the United States also advanced the genocidal war against Native Americans, and gave support to the system of chattel slavery.

The Civil War removed slave owners from the positions of political power they held in the United States. However, after the defeat of radical reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan took political power in the former slave states and made Jim Crow segregation the law. The federal government supported these measures even though Jim Crow was a flagrant violation of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution.

In the year 1929 the stock market collapsed and the United States experienced about nine years of depression. During those years, the labor movement erupted and millions of workers began to join unions. So, while corporations claimed they had no money, they found the money to pay workers when they faced determined strikes by unions.

The two world wars were cash cows for corporations, and the United States became the world’s superpower. While workers risked their lives to fight in these wars, they saw no improvement in their standard of living.

So, after the Second World War hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike demanding union recognition, improved salaries, and working conditions. Corporations responded by granting many of the demands of unions. They also arrested and blacklisted union leaders who identified themselves as communists. It was in this climate that the United States government ordered the military to carry out holocausts in Korea and then Vietnam.           

I graduated from high school in the year 1971. This was a time of upheaval in the United States. During the late 1960s the National Guard invaded many cities in order to suppress rebellions in the Black community that were erupting in protest to police brutality. In my hometown of Newark, New Jersey, the National Guard murdered about 20 people including three children.

During these same years, the government ordered soldiers in the armed forces to go to war against the people of Vietnam, as well as Southeast Asia. Millions died in that war, including close to 60,000 U.S. soldiers. Yet, the U.S. government never actually declared war against Vietnam, making that so-called war an international crime.

Working people began to see the reality of the horrors of that war every evening on the nightly news. A student movement erupted and universities went on strike across the United States. The government responded by murdering protesters at Kent State University, at Jackson State, and in Los Angeles.

The combined effort of the Vietnamese resistance and the international anti-war movement forced the United States government to withdraw from Vietnam. Many people in Vietnam viewed the time after the war as the good years when they no longer were confronted with the day-to-day horrors of war. There was a delegation from Vietnam in our Cuba May Day Brigade.

In the United States, the early 1970s were the zenith of the standard of living for workers. I remember working a factory job at that time. I was young and wanted a job with fewer hours. So, I took a day off of work and looked for another job. In one day I was offered six jobs merely by walking into a factory and asking if they needed any help. Today someone looking for work usually needs to apply with a resume on a computer and rejections for those applications are routine.

In those days, tuition for a New Jersey resident at Rutgers University was $200 per semester. Today it is $10,000 per semester. Most employers offered health care insurance, and health care costs were largely affordable. At that time a high school graduate, who was willing to work, could afford a place to live, a car, and raise a family.

So many of those who were active in the labor, civil rights, or anti-war movements decided to take a step back, raise a family, and adopt to the reality of capitalism in those years. The standard of living in the United States has deteriorated sharply since those years.    

I’m writing about this history to show that, while there have been clear advances from the past, today we are in real danger of seeing our standard of living continue to plummet. Placing this history in context, I found that Cuba has given the world a clear example of how the world can be transformed.

The History of Cuba and the United States

During our two weeks in Cuba our Cuban representative gave us a talk about the history of his country. He argued that the revolutionary government that came to power in 1959 was a culmination of the revolutionary movements that had been erupting on the island since the year 1868.

The 1800s

In the year, 1868 the Civil War in the United States was over and slavery was abolished in this country. However, slavery continued to be a routine way of life in Cuba.

Trinidad, Cuba

Our Brigade visited the beautiful town of Trinidad on the southern coast of Cuba. During the 1800s Trinidad was a center for the slave trade on the island. Our Brigade felt the hot afternoon sun in this town. When slavery was the law, slaves worked under that same hot sun from sun-up until sun-down.

Before the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the United States, there was a revolution in Cuba’s neighboring island of Haiti. A government of former slaves took power away from the former slave owners. So, the anti-slavery sentiment, as well as the demand for independence from Spain, became irresistible in Cuba.

For thirty years the Cubans battled the heavily armed Spanish military under the leadership of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Maximo Gomez, Jose Martí, and Antonio Maceo. When the revolutionary forces were about to become victorious, the United States entered the conflict.

Antonio Maceo

The Black Cuban Major General Antonio Maceo led an army known by the African word mambi. These were Black, caucasian, as well as Chinese Cubans who defeated the heavily armed Spanish forces in battle after battle.

During the same years as the first Cuban Revolution, the United States government made a decision to ignore the equal rights provision in the Constitution and give political power to the terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan. At the same time as Cubans fought for their liberation, racists murdered thousands of Black people and the federal government made no effort to prosecute the murderers. 

After fighting in two battles in Cuba, the United States declared victory. They completely ignored the thirty years of revolutionary ferment in Cuba, and demanded that the U.S. government have veto power over the new Cuban government. This veto power became known as the Platt Amendment.

The 1900s

During the intervening years between 1898 and 1959 the revolutionary sentiment continued in Cuba. As in all nations where dire poverty is the norm, ruthless dictatorships became the ruling power on the island. One of the few ways to achieve a better economic life in those years was to support corrupt and ruthless dictatorships.

Because there was mass opposition to the government and because legal opposition to the regime of Fulgencio Batista became impossible, Cuban revolutionaries, led by Fidel Castro engaged in an armed struggle. Their plan was to raid the Moncada military barracks in Santiago and take the arms in those barracks to the surrounding Sierra Maestra Mountains, where they would carry out a guerrilla war.

We might think about the fact that there was a battle before the American Revolution known as the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The idea of this battle was to defend an arms depot used to supply those who were advancing a revolutionary war for independence.

Then, in 1859 John Brown led his raid on the military garrison in Harpers Ferry, in what was then the state of Virginia. His idea was to capture weapons and retreat to the Allegheny Mountains where his forces would carry out a guerilla war against slave owners.

We might conclude that the battles of Lexington and Concord, Harpers Ferry, and Moncada all ended in defeat. We might also conclude that these battles led to revolutionary movements that eventually achieved victory.

So, on July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro and other revolutionaries raided the Moncada Barracks in Santiago. The armed forces that defended the regime of Batista murdered most of the revolutionaries. Fidel and others served time in prison.

Then, in August of 1955 racists in Mississippi murdered fourteen-year-old Emmett Till allegedly for whistling at a white woman. Till’s mother took his mutilated body to be viewed in Chicago, so people would know the barbarity her son suffered.

The murder of Emmett Till was the spark that ignited the civil rights movement. By December of 1955, the police of Montgomery, Alabama arrested Rosa Parks for refusing to sit in the back of a segregated bus. The NAACP responded to this arrest by organizing the 385-day Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Then, on January 1, 1959 the victorious Cuban revolutionary armed forces marched into Havana and established a new government. The decades of ruthless dictatorships were over. Enthusiastic crowds greeted Fidel and the revolutionaries as they entered Havana.

One of the first measures of the revolutionary government was to organize a literacy drive. At that time there was a large percentage of the population that didn’t know how to read. Because there weren’t enough teachers for this task, the government recruited young people who knew how to read.

They lived in the countryside teaching people who worked the land how to read. While the Cubans learned to read, they also began to understand that the only reason why they experienced poverty was to enrich some of the most affluent people in the world.

At the same time as this literacy drive was taking place, the legal system of Jim Crow segregation was the law in the United States. The government barred Black people from having access to the same public facilities caucasians used.

The murder of Emmett Till was clear evidence that even the lives of Black children were not safe where Jim Crow segregation was the law. By 1965 the U.S. government bowed to the demands of the Civil Rights movement and outlawed Jim Crow segregation.

However by 1966 through 1968 rebellions erupted in cities and towns across the United States. The cause of these rebellions had to do with the fact that even though segregation had been outlawed, police brutality was a routine reality in the Black community.

During these years, Fidel Castro came to New York City to speak at the United Nations. He had difficulty finding a room at a hotel, and Malcolm X arranged for Fidel to stay at the Teresa Hotel in Harlem. While the U.S. government was doing everything in it’s power to overthrow the Cuban government, Malcolm X and the residents of Harlem gave the Cuban revolutionaries a warm welcome.

Cuba continued to defend itself during the Bay of Pigs (Playa Girón) invasion, as well as being threatened with atomic bombs during the so-called Cuban missile crisis.

Then, in 1976 Cuba mobilized its military forces to prevent the South African backed invasion of Angola from seizing power. Thousands of Cubans died in that war, but by 1991 the forces backed by the South African apartheid regime were defeated. This defeat was one of the reasons why the government of Pretoria released Nelson Mandela from 27 years in prison. Mandela then became the president of South Africa.

Anyone interested in the history of this war can read about it in Piero Gleijeses book: Visions of Freedom – Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991. My review of this book can be seen at: Visions of Freedom

While Cuba was battling against apartheid in Angola, the United States government was in the midst of greatly increasing the prison population. Today the United States has more prisoners in its dungeons than any other nation in the world. These facts can be seen in Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow – Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.      

Today we can see the effects of sixty years of revolutionary policies by the Cuban government. Clearly the Cubans would acknowledge that they have made mistakes. However, today everyone in Cuba knows how to read. The educational system in Cuba has also created an atmosphere where today, there are three times more doctors per-capita in Cuba than in the United States.

In the January 18, 2019 issue of the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof compared the Cuban Health care system to health care in the United States He argued that because the infant mortality rate in Cuba is lower than in the United States, perhaps 7,500 children die every year in this country because we don’t have Cuban health care. Why is this the reality?

Cuban doctors live in the same neighborhoods as their patients. Pregnant women and children receive regular checkups from their neighborhood doctors. This is not the case in the United States, especially for people who don’t have a lot of money.

Kristof had this to say about the difference between the health care systems in Cuba and the United States: “In many ways, Cuban and United States health care systems are mirror opposites. Cuban health care is dilapidated, low-tech and free, and it is very good at ensuring that no one slips through the cracks. American medicine is high-tech and expensive, achieving some extraordinary results while stumbling at the basics: a lower percentage of children are vaccinated in the United States than in Cuba.”

When we begin to understand the tremendous change in Cuba that came about because of the revolution, we can also begin to appreciate the enthusiastic support the Cuban people have for their government. Our May Day Brigade witnessed this support when we viewed over one million Cubans celebrating their government on May Day of this year.

So, when we look at this long history, we see two different perspectives. One vision comes from Cuba. The other from Washington. In Cuba they use their limited resources to advance the interests of everyone. In the United States, resources are used to dominate the world, maintain conditions of dire poverty, and to tighten the sixty-year embargo against Cuba.

Our Brigade witnessed over one million Cubans in Havana enthusiastically supporting their government. Imagine women, and men, who were Black, white, and Chinese all marching together not to protest, but to support their government. In the United States this would only be a dream. In Cuba it is the reality.

Returning to the United States we learned that the embargo against Cuba is becoming even more aggressive. This will mean that life for the Cuban people will become more difficult. However, Cuban resistance to this criminal embargo will teach the world what humanity is capable of. Cuba has resisted the hostility of the United States government for over sixty years. Together with the solidarity of people throughout the world, Cuba will continue to inspire the support of everyone who feels that working people deserve to be treated with dignity.

The Life of Malcolm X

Malcolm X and The Road to Liberation

He was born in a nation

that claimed to represent

liberty and justice for all.

But there were a few exceptions.

Young Malcolm Little was Black.

The Jim Crow laws effectively said,

that Black people had no rights.

They also claimed that this system was a democracy.

Malcolm’s parents supported

the ideas of Marcus Mosiah Garvey

who argued that Black people

have a rich history to be proud of.

Garvey looked at the world he lived in

and felt that Black people

would only gain control of their lives

on the mother continent; Africa.

Malcolm’s parents moved to Nebraska and Michigan

to spread the message Garvey promoted.

But those in power liked things as they were,

and a mob lynched Malcolm’s father, Earl Little.

Earl Little was one of thousands

of Black people who were lynched in this country.

The government was not interested in prosecuting the murderers,

because Black people, effectively, had no rights in this country.

The insurance company ruled the lynching of

Earl Little to be a suicide.

So, both the government and the insurance company

became accomplices in the murder of Earl Little.

Malcolm and his seven brothers and sisters

were placed in foster homes.

Eventually Malcolm went to Boston

to live with a relative.

Malcolm was the smartest student in his class

and had dreams of becoming a lawyer.

But his teacher said he needed to be “realistic”

about being the n—word, and a lawyer wasn’t a job for an n—word.

Malcolm gravitated to what was known as the “ghetto” section of Roxbury.

He said, “That world of grocery stores, walk-up flats,

cheap restaurants, poolrooms, bars, storefront churches, and pawnshops

seemed to hold a natural lure for me. 

Not only was this part of Roxbury much more exciting,

but I felt more relaxed among Negroes

who were being their natural selves and not putting on airs.”

Since he was denied equal rights, he became something similar

to a corporate lawyer, he became a thief.

When the police arrested him,

Malcolm was seeing a white woman.

The judge didn’t like this,

and gave Malcolm a harsher sentence.

While in prison Malcolm began to educate himself

and read all the books he could get his hands on.

His family introduced Malcolm

to the ideas of Elijah Mohammed.

Elijah Mohammed said: “As long as we are not allowed

to establish a state or territory of our own,

we demand not only equal justice under the laws of the United States,

but equal employment opportunities—NOW!

“We do not believe that after 400 years of free or nearly free labor, sweat and blood, which has helped America become rich and powerful,

that so many thousands of black people

should have to subsist on relief, charity, or live in poor houses.”   

Those ideas were similar to the teachings of Marcus Garvey,

and Malcolm became a member of the Nation of Islam.

After his release from prison,

Malcolm became a leader of the NOA.

At that time there were many Black people

who became enraged by the system

that refused to give them the equal rights

of human beings.

Malcolm X understood this attitude well and argued:

“Being here in America doesn’t make you an American.

Why, if birth made you an American, you wouldn’t need any legislation,

you wouldn’t need any amendments to the Constitution.”

“Don’t let anybody tell you that the odds are against you.

If they draft you, they send you to Korea

and make you face 800 million Chinese.

If you can be brave over there, you can be brave right here.”

“Expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights,

take it to the United Nations, where our African brothers

can throw their weight on our side, where our Asian brothers

can throw their weight on our side.

Malcolm supported the second amendment of the Constitution and said:

“where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable

to defend the lives and property of Negros,

its time for Negros to defend themselves.”

When the police beat two members of the Nation of Islam

Malcolm organized the Fruit of Islam and the Harlem community.

This demonstration forced the police to send Johnson Hinton to the hospital.

He would receive $70,000 as a result of a lawsuit.

When the press asked Malcolm about the assassination of

President John F. Kennedy, he said:

“that the hate in white men

had not stopped with the killing of defenseless black people,

but that hate, allowed to spread unchecked,

finally struck down this country’s Chief of State. 

I said it was the same thing as had happened with

Medgar Evers, with Patrice Lummumba.”

This statement along with other issues

caused Malcolm to split from Elijah Mohammed,

and he formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity

This was one of the activities the organization proposed.

“We propose to support rent strikes. 

Yes, not little, small rent strikes in one block. 

We’ll make Harlem a rent strike. 

We’ll get every black man in this city;

the Organization of Afro-American Unity

won’t stop until there’s not a black man in the city not on strike. 

Nobody will pay rent.  The whole city will come to a halt. 

And they can’t put all of us in jail because they’ve already got the jails full of us.”

Malcolm viewed the struggle for the liberation of Black people

to be a part of an international struggle.

At that time there were revolutionary struggles erupting around the world.

This is what Malcolm had to say about the Vietnamese revolution:

“The French were deeply entrenched for a hundred years or so. 

They had the best weapons of warfare, a highly mechanized army,

everything that you would need, 

and the guerrillas came out of the rice paddies

with nothing but sneakers on and a rifle and a bowl of rice,

nothing but gym shoes—tennis shoes—and a rifle and a bowl of rice, 

And you know what they did in Dien Bien Phu.  They ran the French out of there.  And if the French were deeply entrenched and couldn’t stay there, then how do you think someone else is going to stay there, who isn’t even there yet?”

When the Cuban revolutionaries came to New York,

Malcolm arranged for them to stay at Harlem’s Theresa Hotel.

There he met with Fidel Castro

and they discussed the prospects for liberation.

Malcolm visited nations throughout Africa

and met with leaders who had years of experience

fighting against colonialism.

They discussed how the struggles in Africa and America were intertwined.

He argued that he wasn’t about teaching people about their oppression.

“No, but when you teach people about

their heritage, their humanity, and their worth as human beings,

then you’ll get action.”

People have learned much from the life of Malcolm X.

We have a lot more that we can learn.

He will forever be the light that shows us how we can achieve liberation

“By any means necessary.”

Reconstruction – America After the Civil War

Produced by PBS television network

Narrated by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

I recently viewed the four-hour, four part, PBS documentary on Reconstruction. This documentary corrects many of the misconceptions that have been promoted by the government, the media, as well as the educational system in this country. What are those misconceptions, that we are all familiar with?

From and early age, teachers told me a story that in spite of a few problems, the United States of America is a great and wonderful nation. They asked me at the beginning of every day to stand up, place my hand on my heart, and pledge allegiance to a flag that claimed to represent, liberty and justice for all. All that is required is for people to apply themselves and take responsibility. For those who meet this modest criterion, the so-called “American Dream” can become a reality.

This documentary shows that before the election of Abraham Lincoln, during the 1800s, the supporters of slave owners ran the government in this country. Their rule made torture, murder, as well as slavery routine legal practices in this country. The political organization that ran this horrendous system was the Democratic Party.

Frederick Douglass, who spent his first 19 years of life as a slave, had this to say about the Democratic Party. He argued that they were, “fiendish hell-hounds, at war with history and humanity.”

After the Civil War and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson worked with former leaders of the confederacy to continue the disenfranchisement of former slaves. However, there was a mass sentiment in favor of repressing the interests of the former slave owners.

So, the republican dominated government worked against the President, and passed the 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution. These Amendments prevented soldiers of the confederacy from voting. They also gave full and equal rights to all men in this country, including the millions of former slaves. In order to enforce these new laws, the federal government ordered the military to occupy the former slave states.

As a result, there was a flowering of culture for all races during the years known as Reconstruction. Blacks and caucasians learned to read for the first time. Black people were elected to government office and advanced the interests of the majority of people they represented. As a result, there was a transformation in the thinking of people throughout the Southern states. People began to believe there was a real possibility for the masses to begin to have much better lives.

I believe that it is accurate to say that a revolution had erupted in this country because of the Civil War and it’s aftermath. Former slaves were members of state, as well as the federal government. This meant that everyone in these states was becoming enfranchised. This was a complete change from the reality of slavery that existed before the Civil War.

However, with all revolutions, there are counter-revolutions. The war of 1812 was aimed at re-imposing British rule of the thirteen colonies. The rise of Napoleon signaled a betrayal of the French Revolution. The civil war after the Russian Revolution, as well as the rise of Joseph Stalin, were both betrayals of the Russian Revolution.

After the Civil War, the counter revolutionary movement was led by the terrorist organization the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK understood that they would not be able to re-impose slavery, so their goal was to do away with citizenship rights of African Americans.

In order to begin to understand what happened, we need to look at why the union army was able to defeat the confederacy in the Civil War. This happened because of a united front that included northern capitalists, workers, small farmers, and escaped slaves. This coalition began to understand that they would need to carry out a tenacious struggle to free this country from slavery.

After the Civil War the northern capitalists worked to consolidate their interests. The kind of genuine democracy that existed in reconstruction was not the kind of government structure these capitalists needed to advance their drive to maximize profits. However, the capitalist drive for profits was not mentioned in this documentary as one of the reasons for the defeat of reconstruction.

For these reasons, the Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes made a deal to withdraw federal troops from the former slave states. This decision made it clear that the federal government was willing to ignore the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution that gave full citizenship rights to former slaves. This was the signal for the Ku Klux Klan to mobilize to militarily over-through the reconstruction governments.

We might consider that President Abraham Lincoln acknowledged that he needed to draft his Emancipation Proclamation because he needed African American soldiers to win the Civil War. While these soldiers played an indispensable role in winning the war, the federal government abandoned them, when their constitutional rights were being threatened by terrorists.

Today, there is a memorial to about 4,000 victims of lynchings in Montgomery, Alabama. We can say that this is also a memorial to the fact that the United States government refused to enforce the 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution for decades. The Jim Crow laws that denied Black people citizenship rights in this country were open and flagrant violations of the Constitution. Today, we know that the government paid federal and state officials to flagrantly violate the Constitution. This aspect of our history was not included in the documentary on reconstruction.

One positive aspect of this documentary was that it showed how Black people worked to advance their interests in spite of a government that wasn’t interested in enforcing the law. We see the campaign against lynching organized by Ida Wells. We see the example of W.E.B. DuBois and the formation of the NAACP as well as the publication of it’s journal The Crisis. We see how Black people organized entire neighborhoods where they learned how to become self-reliant.

We also know that many of these Black neighborhoods became targets of racists who resented the fact that Black people were becoming independent. There was a mass murder in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1920 as well as in many other cities. Clearly, the federal government continued to refuse to enforce the Constitution and arrest and prosecute those who were routinely murdering Black people.     

The horrendous history of the so-called entertainment industry

While the Jim Crow laws stripped Black people of their citizenship rights, the so-called entertainment industry promoted horrendous stereotypical images of Black people for decades. Caucasians routinely wore blackface in minstrel shows.

The film Birth of a Nation portrayed Reconstruction as a time when caucasians needed to be protected from imagined horrors of Black people. As we have seen, the true horrors that followed Reconstruction were carried out by supporters of the Ku Klux Klan. Yet, President Woodrow Wilson had a private screening of Birth of the Nation in the White House.

It was out of this apparent madness, that Black people developed the arts that have inspired people from around the world. To break from the stereotypical images of the past, today we see the genuine humanity of Black people portrayed in the arts. However, understanding the facts presented in this documentary, we shouldn’t forget the roots of what we call the entertainment industry.

The government continued it’s repression against Native Americans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, and child factory workers

While this documentary was about Reconstruction and it’s aftermath, I believe it is useful to look at other repressive policies carried out by the United States government during these same years. We can start with the genocidal wars against Native Americans.

Native Americans have been struggling to defend their culture for literally hundreds of years. Military commanders of the revolution of the thirteen colonies went to war against Native Americans before, during, and after that revolution.

The three most prestigious Generals of the Union Army during the Civil War were Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Phillip Henry Sheridan. All three of these generals were also commanders of the war against Native Americans. General Sheridan made his famous quotation: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” This was a typical point of view in government circles at that time. Ironically. General Sherman was named for the outstanding Shawnee leader, Tecumseh.

Another Union General in the Civil war General Nelson A. Miles. Miles headed a military detachment to prevent the Nez Perce from escaping from the United States. As with hundreds of Native American nations, the Nez Perce discovered that the government of this country had no intention of enforcing a treaty it had agreed to.

So, the Nez Perce, under the leadership of Chief Joseph attempted to escape from this country and attempt to live in Canada. General Miles’ forces prevented most of the Nez Perce from escaping. General Miles also participated in the wars against the Kiowa, the Comanche, the Cheyenne, and the Lakota.

After the genocidal wars against Native Americans, General Miles commanded a force that invaded Puerto Rico at the town of Guánica. While this invasion was aimed at the Spanish colonization of the island, General Miles’ forces also suppressed those who were struggling for Puerto Rican independence. Puerto Rico became a colony of the United States, and this was also the beginning of the international corporation known as Domino Sugar.

The U.S. armed forces carried out a similar action against the nation of Cuba. The Cubans had been fighting for their independence for about thirty years under the outstanding leadership of José Martí, Antonio Maceo, and Maximo Gomez. Then, the U.S. military entered the conflict and declared victory after two battles. The U.S. corporate interests dominated the Cuban economy until the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

After the U.S. forces defeated the Spanish in the Philippines, the Philippine independence movement continued it’s struggle for liberation. In all about 250,000 Filipinos were murdered because of the U.S. occupation of that nation.

The withdrawal of the federal armed forces from the former slave states during reconstruction coincided with the repression of the Nez Perce in the year 1877. Also in the year 1877 the government ordered the military to suppress a rail workers strike, so the Vanderbilt family would be able to maximize profits on their investments.

Today, it is difficult to even imagine what the industrial conditions were like during those years. We might get a glimmer of this by looking at a garment workers strike in the year 1903 in Philadelphia.

The labor leader known as Mother Jones came to Philadelphia to support this strike. The principal demand of the 65,000 strikers was not to be forced to work more than 65 hours per week. This strike failed to achieve that demand.

However, Mother Jones discovered that about 15,000 of these workers were children who were as young as ten years old. Mother Jones was horrified at the conditions these children faced and learned that they needed to carry heavy loads for long hours every day. Some of these children lost their fingers on the job.

So, Mother Jones organized her March of the Children. This was a 125 mile march to the summer home of the then President Theodore Roosevelt in Long Island. On this march Mother Jones stopped at Princeton University where she explained to the students that their education was being paid for by the horrendous toil of these children. She felt that this kind of information would give the Princeton students a better education.

Conclusion

Clearly the documentary on Reconstruction gives us invaluable information about our past. It shows that while the government initially supported Reconstruction, ultimately it abandoned every attempt to grant Black people their Constitutional rights in this country. The facts are that the government of the United States of America, that claims to represent, liberty and justice for all, gave political power to the terrorist organization of the Ku Klux Klan.

When we see how this same government carried out genocidal wars against Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, and even children, we get a completely different picture from the idea presented in the press and on the university campuses.

However, the repressive nature of the U.S. government is only one part of this documentary. We also see the resistance of the people against seemingly impossible odds. This resistance continued through decades and culminated in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Next week I will be travelling to Cuba. I will be a member of a 300 person international May Day Brigade. One of the events that I will witness will be the May Day celebration in Havana. Over one million Cubans will demonstrate and celebrate the support of their government.

While Cuba doesn’t have many of the conveniences we have in this country, they have three times more doctors than the United States. As a result, the infant mortality rate in Cuba is lower than it is in this country. This is a clear example for me, that if we dare to struggle, we can indeed dare to win.