Unleash the Human Factor/Social Consciousness
War and “Security” Measures
Are Not Solutions
The shock and tragedy of the Virginia Tech shooting, alongside the brutal government crime of daily massacres, torture and mass detentions in Iraq, bring sharply to the fore that war and government “security” measures are not solutions. Since September 11 and before, they serve only to further terrorize and repress the people, here and abroad, while solving nothing.
This past year in Iraq has seen the highest level of civilian deaths since the war started, the large majority inflicted by U.S. forces and those under their command. Almost half of all violent civilian deaths have taken place in the past year. Many of those killed were young men, youth with families no different than those at Virginia Tech. There are not a few who, in stopping to mourn and think about the 33 deaths in Virginia, also immediately thought of all the Iraqis who have been killed and mourned them just as deeply..
If there is to be a moment of silence nationwide, the ringing of church bells, the placing of flowers, why not have it done everyday, for all those killed at the hands of the U.S. government — in Iraq, worldwide and here at home. Why not more than a minute for thought?
The government does not want thinking, does not want informed discussion about how to turn things around. It is organizing to keep the people out of the equation, whether it is on the issue of deciding questions of war and peace, or on the issue of contending with school shootings, or any other social problem. War abroad and “security” measures at home are meant to impose the violence of the ruling circles and their system and to keep the working class and people from solving the problems society faces. They are meant to block the American people from making their contribution to world peace by bringing forward a government of their own making, one that represents their will, their demand for the elimination of imperialist wars and use of force against the peoples.
Look even at the measures in response to Virginia Tech. Two main actions are lockdowns and drills. Lockdowns of schools mean all doors inside and outside the building are locked. Then drills are conducted where youth are instructed to “Keep away from the doors and windows, keep your heads down and the blinds drawn.” Then police command centers are set-up, with police agencies in charge of communications.
Why should the youth and students be left out of the equation? Why not mobilize youth and teachers to be prepared to defend themselves and to stop a shooter, especially when it is a single person? Why not put mechanisms in place among youth and teachers for communication, medics, barricades, defense and so forth? This has been successfully done among the youth who have collectively organized as part of preparations for mass demonstrations forced to contend with the police attacks and violence. Preparations are made beforehand, with different collectives having responsibilities, like medics or communication. Spokescouncils, bringing together the different collectives, are organized to make rapid decisions and work out tactics on the spot, consistent with the immediate situation, with providing safety, and so forth. Why not use of this positive experience more broadly and discuss and develop such preparedness mechanisms? This would contribute to people’s sense of security as it provides a collective, organized response where people have a role in deciding.
The ruling circles block such action because they do not want the human factor to play any role. They are systematically organizing, through these drills, through daily life in the high schools that are more like prisons than schools, to eliminate the human factor. They want everyone to “keep your head down and the blinds drawn” in order to keep people passive and submissive to the violence of the ruling class, to their violence of wars, their violence of poverty, their violence of mass incarceration of our youth, their violence of eliminating any government social responsibility for meeting the needs of society.
Solutions can be found by unleashing the human factor/social consciousness. Youth and teachers must be a part of the equation, organizing in their interests and that of society, just as the Iraqis are showing that it is their organized resistance that is bringing change.
No solutions can come by “keeping your head down” and submitting to a government that has repeatedly shown its failure to solve any problem. Discussing together, being informed, working as collectives that take up social responsibility for solving the problems we face — this can bring about solutions. It is our society, let us each take responsibility for it, make our contribution to changing it and encourage all to do the same. Let us be guided by principles that serve humanity. Let us organize together for change and in so doing unleash the human factor/social consciousness.
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U.S. Surge
Greatly Increases Iraqi Civilian Deaths
The U.S. surge, both in violent attacks and massacres of the people and in sending more troops into this criminal war, has greatly increased the number of war-related civilian deaths. The year from March 2006 to March 2007 has been the worst 12 months for civilian fatalities since the invasion began. Almost 50 per cent of all war-related civilian deaths occurred in this period according to figures compiled by Iraq Body Count. Researchers for the organization have documented these deaths but think the total is actually far higher as not all the deaths can be verified.
When the U.S. first launched its invasion, with its brutal “Shock and Awe,” bombing, at least 7,400 civilians were killed. Since then the annual death toll figures among civilians have risen markedly. There were 6,332 reported civilian deaths in the months following the invasion in year one, or 20 per day; 11,312 in year two, 55 per cent up on year one’s daily rate; 14,910 in year three (32 per cent up on year two); and a staggering 26,540 in year four (78 per cent more than year three, and averaging 74 per day). These are minimum figures. Additional estimates from Iraq put civilian war-related deaths, including those caused by destruction of hospitals, water and electrical facilities, at one million Iraqis. One of the problems is that no accurate figures are being compiled by military forces in Iraq, as required by international law. This means that not only is the count low, but that issues like compensation to the families can not be dealt with.
Even by the lowest estimates, by the end of year four, about 1 person for every 160 of Baghdad’s 6.5 million residents will have been violently killed by the U.S. war. Adult males are the most at risk. The majority of casualties throughout the nation are among young men, who are both the most frequently targeted and, since the invasion, the most exposed. The overall national breakdown of deaths shows that around a third of the civilian population (adult men) has borne about 90 per cent of direct war deaths. Women and children suffer more from the devastation to families, healthcare, and the environment.
Despite this brutal effort to smash the Iraqi resistance through death and destruction, the Iraqi people have succeeded in strengthening their forces and bringing failure to the U.S. occupation
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“Security” Measures Imposed on Schools
Following the Virginia Tech tragedy, where 33 youth and faculty died, college campuses and high schools across the country instituted various “security” measures. Some acted to arm campus police. Others demanded everyone show university ID before entering any campus buildings, even when students and faculty had other forms of ID proving their right to be on campus and use the facilities. In at least one case, this demand for ID was used to prevent students from protesting at a military recruiting office on their campus. “Counter-terrorism” firms are being consulted on how to control the youth and “secure” campuses.
In addition, lockdowns are being utilized. Lockdowns are taken from prison security methods, where all prisoners are locked into their cells, humiliated and blocked from using their numbers to overpower the guards. For schools all outside and inside doors are locked, although some schools do not yet have inside locks. The purpose is said to be keeping someone out of the schools. But in actual experience, like in prisons, lockdowns in the schools are also meant to frighten, humiliate and keep students and faculty out of the equation. They have been used to keep youth from walking out in protest. This was particularly widespread last May Day, when schools attempted to block thousands of youth from protesting on May Day.
More generally, the lockdowns are a means to keep youth and teachers from organizing to defend themselves. They are instead to accept control by armed police forces. The role of teachers and students, in these emergencies, as one school official put it, is “Keep away from the doors, keep your heads down.”
All the evidence, including that from Virginia Tech, shows that waiting passively with your head down does not provide security. These types of “security” measures have not brought security. On the contrary, the evidence is that they serve to further increase insecurity and anxiety, while not solving any problem, anywhere.
Coupled with lockdowns, the government “security” measures also include blocking people from discussing how to turn things around and expressing their views. A professor, for example, who re-enacted the shooting in his classroom and initiated discussion on why gun control was no solution, was immediately fired. A 14 year old in Florida was immediately jailed, on a felony charge, simply for reportedly saying, in an email, that he would top the Virginia Tech tragedy by killing 100 people.
Simply saying things and voicing views is being turned into a crime. The professor, like youth and teachers and all concerned across the country, have a right to discuss these problems, including whether government actions contribute to solutions. A fourteen year old expressing thoughts about killing others needs assistance, not jail. Certainly parents and teachers are asking why Bush can openly talk about “taking out” people he considers “threats,” can be responsible for the bombing and massacres of countless civilians in Iraq, Senators can talk and joke about bombing Iran, and they are applauded while a 14 year old is jailed?
What is needed is opening the space for youth and teachers to discuss and decide how to meet their rights, including their right to a safe learning and teaching environment.
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Threats by McKinley Officials Are Illegal
Students Have the Right to Wear Armbands
Many students at McKinley [High School in Buffalo, New York] have been organizing for our rights and we all have the right to do so. Every student has the right to wear the blue armbands defending free speech and to read and distribute the Declaration of Student Rights or any other flyer criticizing school policy and demanding our rights. The administrators and teachers have no right to ask us to remove them or to threaten any of us if we refuse.
Any effort by McKinley officials to force students to remove the armbands or to threaten those wearing or distributing them with suspension or expulsion is against the law. If any administrator or teacher demands that any youth, whether one student or many, stop wearing the armbands in school, here is what to do:
1) Inform the administrator or teacher that according to the Supreme Court, in a well-known case (Tinker vs. Des Moines, 1969), students have the right to wear armbands to class. The Supreme Court ruled that students can wear armbands as an expression of free speech and that they are not disruptive to the learning process. The court said students and teachers do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” The case involved Mary Beth Tinker, then 13, who wore a black armband to her school in Des Moines, Iowa, to protest the war in Vietnam. Much like what is happening today at McKinley, Tinker’s principal told her to remove the armband. She refused. She was suspended and the lawsuit was filed against the school, with Mary Beth Tinker eventually winning. So ask our teachers and administrators to support us in defending free speech!
2) Remind administrators and teachers that students across the country are wearing black armbands to mourn the 33 youth who died at Virginia Tech and no one is asking them to remove them and they are not being called disruptive. So blue armbands defending free speech are not disruptive either. Every student has the right to wear them and administrators and teachers have no right to ask us to remove them.
3) If you are called into the office, try and bring a friend with you as a witness and for support. Then call the New York American Civil Liberties Union (716-852-4033) and report that the school administration is threatening you and violating your rights and ask them for assistance. They have been informed about the situation and are ready to help defend anyone harassed or suspended.
It is also the right of all students to associate with political organizations and to read and distribute political publications, leaflets or similar material while in school. This includes the Declaration of Student Rights being distributed as well as this leaflet!
And while a rumor has been spread that the Declaration of Rights calls for anarchy, we urge everyone to read it for themselves. We want a good situation for learning and teaching. School is not a prison and we are not prisoners. What we are calling for is an end to collective punishment and to humiliation. We want an end to arbitrary actions by administrators, where different punishments are given for the same infractions, depending on the whim of the person at that time. We want our education taken seriously!
(Distributed by students at McKinley as part of their struggle to defend their rights in the face of threatened suspensions and even expulsion. The youth are persisting in demanding discussion about their concerns and that school officials take education of the youth seriously. They are also mobilizing for May Day and have been told that simply having a demonstration will cause anarchy and violence! The youth refuse to be intimidated. See VOR April 13 & 27 for more)
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Free Speech of Students Affirmed by Supreme Court
Key Excerpts from Tinker vs. Des Moines, 1969
The Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 in Tinker v. Des Moines, 1969. Justice Fortas delivered the majority opinion of the Court. Five justices agreed with the majority opinion. Two justices concurred, meaning that they agreed with the Court’s decision that the school policy was unconstitutional, but they wrote separately to explain their reasoning. Two justices dissented. Justice Fortas delivered the majority opinion of the Court.
“. . . First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. . . .”
“. . . The Fourteenth Amendment, as now applied to the States, protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creatures - Boards of Education not excepted. These have, of course, important, delicate, and highly discretionary functions, but none that they may not perform within the limits of the Bill of Rights. That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes. . . .”
“. . . On the other hand, the Court has repeatedly emphasized the need for affirming the comprehensive authority of the States and of school officials, consistent with fundamental constitutional safeguards, to prescribe and control conduct in the schools. Our problem involves direct, primary First Amendment rights akin to ‘pure speech’”
“. . . In order for the State in the person of school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, it must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint. Certainly where there is no finding and no showing that engaging in the forbidden conduct would ‘materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school,’ the prohibition cannot be sustained . . .”
“. . . the record fails to yield evidence that the school authorities had reason to anticipate that the wearing of the armbands would substantially interfere with the work of the school or impinge upon the rights of other students . . . [and] the school officials banned and sought to punish petitioners for a silent, passive expression of opinion, unaccompanied by any disorder or disturbance on the part of petitioners. . . .”
“It is also relevant that the school authorities did not purport to prohibit the wearing of all symbols of political or controversial significance . . . Instead, a particular symbol — black armbands worn to exhibit opposition to this Nation’s involvement in Vietnam — was singled out for prohibition. Clearly, the prohibition of expression of one particular opinion, at least without evidence that it is necessary to avoid material and substantial interference with schoolwork or discipline, is not constitutionally permissible. In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students. Students in school as well as out of school are ‘persons’ under our Constitution. In the absence of a specific showing of constitutionally valid reasons to regulate their speech, students are entitled to freedom of expression of their views. . . .”
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Virginia Tech Tragedy Is Not a Security Problem
Oppose Lockdowns and So-Called Security Measures, Demand Social Responsibility
The recent tragedy at Virginia Tech has raised in me a profound desire to act so as to stop things from “going from bad to worse.” In hearing the news of the tragic events at Virginia Tech, I knew that schools, colleges and public agencies across the U.S. would immediately institute more so-called security measures. And following the government example, I knew we would see more of the misguided reactions to the shootings among concerned teachers and parents that we have seen in the past.
Sure enough, my son returned home with a note indicating that his school — like thousands across the country — would institute “lockdowns.” After reading the note I explained to my son my opposition to the growing policing and surveillance of our children and youth (for their own security, of course!). I shared with him my understanding that such policies only serve to reinforce in the youth a sense of powerlessness, a sense of criminality that is completely unjust. I told him there is absolutely no evidence that the typical security measures adopted by our schools have assisted the youth, teachers or administrators in contending with the growing social breakdown that is evidenced in mass killings of youth by youth.
School “lockdowns” are among the commonly adopted measures. Interestingly enough, the memo my son brought home contends that “instruction” will continue while all the doors, windows and entrances to the school are locked, with no entry or exit from the building during the lockdown ‘drill.’ All window blinds will be pulled down. Sounds like the plastic and duct tape recommended by the government for potential “chemical and biological warfare.” Talk about denial of reality!
How is quality instruction possible under conditions of lockdown? Such a practice sends a confused message to students and teachers: you are potentially under attack, but you should proceed as normal. How is this helpful? The notorious nuclear drills of the 1960s come to mind, where students were terrorized with the drills in the event of a nuclear annihilation, then told to hide under their desks and passively await their doom. These exercises had a profoundly negative impact on the socialization of Americans.
The young men and women at Virginia Tech were similarly instructed to duck and hide, as they or their friends were shot one by one. How is training our youth to be passive in the face of attack helpful? Can we do nothing but pull down the blinds? The thousands of youth who have organized demonstrations and faced police violence know well that it is possible to prepare, to collectively resist, to breakdown barricades, to use numbers to overwhelm and more. The logic of a lockdown in prisons is precisely to prevent the prisoners from using their numbers to overwhelm the guards. But why turn youth into prisoners in these situations, robbed of any role to play?
President George W. Bush remarked that the events of April 16 are “impossible to understand.” If such events are “impossible to understand,” how is it that so many officials move so quickly to propose solutions — such as closed campuses, more surveillance, more ID cards, more lockdowns, more police, more restriction of movement, more restrictions on rights. These “answers” are given while officials admit no understanding of the cause of the violent acts of nearly two dozen young people against their peers and instructors over the past decades.
The fact is, violent acts of this type have only increased amidst all the so-called security measures. I say so-called because the reputation of our schools as prisons speaks to the fact that these efforts have not made our youth safe — but they have made the youth out to be criminals, and imposed a kind of fear on the population that serves to strangle its ability to contend with the deepening crisis facing society.
This is of the utmost concern to me as a parent. Our youth are made to silently walk in lines, like inmates. Our youth are denied the right to talk during lunch, like inmates. Our youth are ruled using the means of collective punishment, like inmates. Now they are locked inside their schools. Can we call it anything but imprisonment? This is unacceptable and I encourage all school employees and parents to discuss alternatives to these strategies for addressing the issues of violence that our schools do face.
One of the most important thing that has been avoided in discussions about Virginia Tech is social responsibility. We are called upon by the big media to compulsively debate the role of guns, technology, movies and video games. Yet, when the FBI interviewed living perpetrators of school violence, all said the same thing: they were ignored, ostracized, and medicated. It is now evident that officials at Virginia Tech (as well as mental health officials) ignored faculty and student efforts to secure assistance for Mr. Cho. This is not a security problem. It is a problem of our social institutions refusing to take up their responsibility. Mr. Cho was at once forced into a mental hospital only to be released to fend for himself despite evidence that this was in no one’s best interest. This is a problem that will not be solved by lockdowns, ID tags or cameras. Discussion is need on the role of the absence of government responsibility to guarantee the right to healthcare in these cases.
Instead of lock-downs, arming school police, more metal detectors, why not organize forums at schools and colleges that involve all concerned in deciding how we can best intervene? It is clear that at Virginia Tech, the students and faculty had taken the lead in identifying Mr. Cho as in need of help and had begun to organize to provide it. Some also took action during the shooting to assist wounded and inform classmates. There is no reason an organized response to armed interventions against the youth of any kind, cannot be prepared for. Activating the initiative and developing mechanisms for organized discussion and response of students and faculty is key for addressing the current crisis we face.
In closing, I also think we should reject the notion that we should get back to “normal.” There is nothing normal about what happened, and there is nothing normal about the conditions that are the genesis of the tragedy. There is nothing normal about a government that daily inflicts massacres, torture, collective punishment, mass detentions and incarceration of our youth and more — and that responds to tragedies by calling for more of the same. We need an open discussion about how we relate to one another, about our social relations, about our very humanity, and not more failure in the form of “security” drills.
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Government War-mongers and Virginia Tech Shooting
Seung-Hi Cho and John McCain
“Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” - Senator John McCain
“You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.” - Seung-Hi Cho
Senator John McCain, a man who would be president, thinks it is funny to joke about bombing Iranians. McCain shares a moral sickness with many others in positions of power — most notably, President George W. Bush. Yet the relative silence surrounding McCain’s macabre behavior is also an indictment of a society that casually contemplates mass murders of others, while holding days of national mourning for their own dead. Seung-Hi Cho [who carried out the Virginia Tech shooting] was a sick man, in excruciating psychic pain. McCain and his ilk treat truly mass murder as comical.
We usually hear little about shooting deaths unless enough people die in the same place at the same time. Every day 32 Americans are killed by gun violence. It is the act of terror most likely to be inflicted upon us all. Ironically, 32 was the number of fatalities inflicted by a gunman at Virginia Tech University.
Just as they did eight years ago at Columbine High School, the media descended upon Blacksburg, Virginia. They spoke to students about their dead classmates, about desperate efforts to save lives, and the horror of the bloodshed they witnessed. They spoke lovingly of their friends who died and painstakingly enumerated their special qualities.
The corporate media have never profiled Iraqis killed by American bombs, gunfire and prisons. We never know how much they were loved and how they fought to stay alive while violent people sought to take their lives. We never hear the story of the destruction of Iraq’s medical system, infrastructure and water supply. Iraqis are not Americans, they are not white and they were killed by our government. Those factors add up to a ho-hum attitude surrounding their deaths.
As the week wore on the enormity of America’s addiction to violence against the rest of the world became painfully clear. Senator John McCain is a presidential candidate, an allegedly sane man and an influential politician. He and many other respectable Americans are also worse than Seung-Hi Cho. McCain sang his horrific little ditty about killing Iranians among a group of like-minded folks, who think they have a right to bomb human beings into oblivion and to laugh while they do it.
Cho came by his murderous rage somewhat honestly. He was certifiably psychotic, a one time patient in a psychiatric hospital. What is McCain’s excuse for openly expressing his murderous fantasies in song? The silence surrounding the McCain call to bloodlust was deafening. The big campaign news that day was the cost of John Edwards’ haircuts, not a psychotic call to kill from another candidate.
The pundits and the politicians all agreed that Cho was evil, demonic, diabolical. If so, he was no worse than George W. Bush. What is the occupation of Iraq if not evil? Four years ago, Uncle Sam began a violent spree that resulted in more than 600,000 dead. As the American people make it clear that they want the U.S. out, politicians like McCain are more determined than ever to stay and keep up the body count. [….]
The Virginia Tech killing spree revealed other evils as well. Before Cho was even identified, one openly racist pundit declared that the gunman was probably a Muslim, a “Paki.” According to her equally deranged counterparts, the dead students and professors were wimps who deserved to be killed. Chicken hawks think that shootings are like movies, where an unarmed hero can take down a gunman. Why didn’t they just rush the guy? Why don’t we just take out Saddam? Why not bomb Iran? The sick mind set that has already killed many thousands was on full display. Apparently the right wing will not be happy until all of us are dead.
John McCain may be the only presidential candidate who thinks it is funny to sing about killing Iranians. The others might not sing about it, but they are all willing to do the same thing. Hillary Clinton has already declared that she would keep American troops in Iraq.
That is the true horror revealed at Virginia Tech. Seung-Hi Cho is not alone in his willingness to take many lives. The other psychotic would-be killers have the power to kill many, many more than Cho could ever dream about.
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Violence in Virginia: A Brief History
“The present is also history.” - José Carlos Mariátegui
While Seung Hui Cho was purchasing the two Glock 9 mm handguns as well as fifty hollow point bullets he would use a few months later on his classmates and professors at Virginia Tech, the state of Virginia was into its third month of spirited quadricentennial festivities dubbed by the state “America’s 400th Anniversary.”
There is certainly a great deal of distance between the two events, and Seung Hui Cho himself appears to have been either oblivious or completely indifferent to the fact that he was carrying out single-handedly one of the worst massacres in Virginia history at the exact same time the state was proudly remembering its historical beginning.
All the same, Seung Hui Cho’s elaborately planned act of gruesome revenge against Virginia Tech is now having the effect of a sudden paradigm shift, from romantic and windy invocations of Jamestown’s iron-willed Captain John Smith and his enabling and admiring Indian mistress Pocahontas, to Virginia’s totally unregulated gun weapon market: in a word, to America’s culture of blood-curdling violence.
In this spirit, let us review Virginia’s history of violence, for it’s truly second to none. Before that though it should be noted that so-called “Pocahontas” and the precious legend of her passed down for the past three centuries is pure fiction. As many American Indian historians have pointed out, “Pocahontas” was entirely the invention of Captain Smith. In fact, as Jill Lepore points out in recent article (“Jamestown at four hundred,” New Yorker, April 2, 2007), American historian Henry Adams had already proved in 1867 that Smith made it all up. Smith’s story, wrote Adams, is nothing more than a collection of “falsehoods of an effrontery seldom equaled in modern times.”
Virginian violence is by now a many-headed hydra, yet it has a singular historical origin. Because of the necessarily schematic presentation here, I’ve reduced violence in Virginia to three salient characteristics: (1) the preference for mass murder along ethnic lines or genocide; (2) capitalist barbarism aimed at workers; and (3) racial terror of the kind that in the late 1930s had an envious Hitler sending Nazi scouts to the US to closely study. This distinctly Anglo-American style of violence is intimately familiar to most of the world’s poor and oppressed, but unfortunately it continues to be barely recognizable by most Americans themselves.
In terms of the first, the systematic slaughter of the Powhatan Indians by Governor Berkeley’s colonial militiamen reached its apogee in Virginia during the 1650s, yet it proceeded without interruption until the entire Chesapeake had been ethnically cleansed of its diverse indigenous peoples. Estimates vary on the number of Chesapeake Indians dispossessed and massacred for their rich tidewater lands, but whatever figure to which historians eventually agree is beside the point. All acknowledge it was conscious and deliberate genocide. By the end of the seventeenth century only charred remains were left of Chesapeake Indian society. Virginia colony administrators referred to the genocide as “land improvement.”
The second is the massacre of Virginia’s tenantry. While massacring the Chesapeake Indians, colony elites were also seeing to the massacre of Virginia’s laboring classes. Here they didn’t use long smooth bore-iron guns, for the aim of course was not to murder the new emigrants but rather to reduce them to chattel. Between 1607 and 1625 only one of out every six of the immigrants who came during that period was still breathing by the end of it. The death rate was seven times that of England, around 80 percent. It takes no genius to understand why. The English emigrants arrived in Virginia in the midst of the English imperialists’ rapid and aggressive encroachment upon the land. The new immigrants from England were mere cannon fodder. The Anglo-American plantation bourgeoisie achieved the massacre of the tenantry by attacking the social status of the laboring people in the colony. They used two tactics.
First, every share of Virginia stock entitled each capitalist investor a free title to 100 acres of land. The four incorporators of Berkeley Hundred, for example, purchased forty-five shares of the company and were given a patent for 4,500 acres of Virginia’s finest soil. That is, the newly arrived laborers had no rights that a wealthy planter was bound to respect: unless they were capitalist investors, they had no legal claim to either land or civil rights.
Second, the wealthy planters devised a “headright” system whereunder each laborer they brought to the colony earned them fifty acres of free land. This is how America’s slave trade began, not along the coast of West Africa (that would come next) but rather from London and Liverpool, where tens of thousands of poor English were “spirited away,” as they called the practice of legal kidnapping, to Virginia by slave traders. Consequently, by the end of the seventeenth century Virginia’s laboring people consisted mostly of bond laborers, 70 percent from England, Scotland, and Ireland and the other 30 percent from Africa via Barbados colony.
A traveling London merchant to the area in the late seventeenth century recorded his impressions. Those in bondage, comprising more than sixty percent of the people in Virginia colony, endure conditions “far worse than the poorest gypsy in England,” he noted. “Their usual food is maize bread to eat, and water to drink, which sometimes is not very good and scarcely enough for life, yet they are compelled to work hard. Thus they are by hundreds of thousands compelled to spend their lives in Virginia in planting that vile tobacco, which all vanishes into smoke, and is for the most part miserably abused. The servants and negroes after they have worn themselves down the whole day, and gone home to rest, have yet to grind and pound the grain, which is generally maize, for their masters and all their families as well as themselves” (see James Horn, Adapting to a New World, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1994, p. 275).
The third component of Virginian violence is racial slavery. As seen in components one and two, the English capitalists that founded Virginia colony in 1607 possessed a singular vision of America, in which all the indigenous were violently disappeared, all the laborers violently reduced to chattel, and gargantuan profits accumulated instantly without the annoying presence of parliaments and other such regulatory bodies. They were corrupt and scheming right-wing royalists recently forced out of England by Cromwell’s army, their sights set solely on fertile Virginia tidewater land and how they might exploit it to the fullest.
“The English capitalists that founded Virginia colony in 1607 possessed a singular vision of America, in which all the indigenous were violently disappeared, all the laborers violently reduced to chattel, and gargantuan profits accumulated instantly.”
Thus it comes as no surprise that these particular men were eager to get in on the African slave trade. Yet they soon found themselves in a very difficult dilemma, for the newly transported Africans entered an already chattelized labor force. It’s true that the kidnapped Africans were sold into lifetime hereditary slavery whereas the kidnapped English, Scots, and Irish had been sold into limited-term slavery. Yet in the oligarchic plantation monoculture of seventeenth-century Virginia, the two groups of bond laborers found themselves in exactly the same boat. They lived together in the same slave quarters, fell in love together, escaped together, revolted together. Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676-77 was the outcome of their common chattelization under Virginia’s plantation bourgeoisie in which thousands of African slaves and thousands of European slaves took up arms together (15,000 in total), seized control of Virginia colony, murdered slave-owners, and drove the entire ruling class of capitalist planters into exile for more than eight months straight.
This third component of Virginian violence, racial slavery, is the most barbarous for obvious reasons and it’s not necessary to delve into it here. Suffice it to say that Virginia’s planter elite responded to Bacon’s Rebellion by masterminding a system of racial slavery through which they could continue the chattelization of Virginia’s laboring people by now imposing it exclusively on African Americans.
Bacon’s Rebellion had forced the capitalist planters’ hand: to continue with chattel slavery in Virginia they had, from now on, to prevent such bond-labor uprisings in advance, preemptively. This they achieved by passing laws in the early eighteenth century prohibiting the enslavement of European Americans (now called “whites,” for the first time incidentally). In return, that is to say the condition on which they had the right of non-enslavement conferred on them, these poor and propertyless European Americans were to make certain that African American bond laborers stayed under the lash and had their labor exploited by capitalist planters as efficiently as possible; thus the birth of the “poor whites” as overseers, patrollers, slave-catchers, county sheriffs, and lynch mobs.
The scarcely comprehensible scale of violence in Virginia that followed the imposition of racial slavery and racial oppression, the hundreds of thousands of nameless African Americans starved, raped, lashed, kicked and beaten, tortured, and murdered, which then spread like a cancer everywhere else in America, is really just beginning to be felt and understood by Americans, thanks largely to our greatest writers, beginning with the antislavery activists and authors of the nineteenth century (Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Fred Douglass, Ida B. Wells), down to Charles Chesnutt (his 1901 masterpiece The Marrow of Tradition is one of the fullest descriptions of it) and W.E.B. Du Bois. Then Mark Twain, Richard Wright, Sinclair Lewis, Langston Hughes, William Faulkner, John O. Killens, Margaret Walker (Jubilee), William Styron (The Confessions of Nat Turner), August Wilson, Toni Morrison (Beloved of course, but it’s in all her novels). There are many others. It is difficult to come up with a good American writer who hasn’t been preoccupied with this society’s most dominant tendency, that of violence on a mass scale.
Yet and still, we can expect the corporate media to go on calling Seung Hui Cho an unfathomably bizarre lunatic and all that. He was clearly a sociopath, but compared to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who said she felt the mass murder of 500,000 Iraqi children, through starvation, under her and Clinton’s sanctions policy was “worth it,” he’s small fry. And with the so-called US Left, we are already seeing their predictable response: they blame it all on non-existent gun laws in Virginia and are barking again for tighter restrictions.
In a country whose origin is so deeply drenched in the blood of workers, Indian, European, and African, and that has never for a moment strayed from this origin but rather expanded and systemized it in the most horrific and catastrophic ways imaginable, including against the nation of Korea where between 1950 and 1953, the US military murdered more than a million civilians, through death squads and napalm, tighter gun laws are at best a political diversion and at worst a transparent means to keep America’s laboring people in the same defenseless position they have always been, where the sociopaths above have all the guns and everyone below is at their mercy. American violence and mass murder, which began in Virginia, will not be prevented by gun control laws in Virginia today or any time in the future. This kind of violence can only be ended by putting a stop to the law superceding it and every other one, the law of rich eat the poor and the use of imperialist war to keep the rule of money continuously functioning.
In communiqués to NBC that the network aired and that the authorities are now trying to suppress, Seung Hui Cho returned again and again to the class character of his violent rage. While the comparison of himself with Jesus Christ seems outrageous and beneath contempt, it was after all Jesus who said, “Woe unto the rich! For ye have received your fill.” He was also known to violently attack loan sharks doing business in the temple of God.
Only the faint-hearted and delusional will try to twist Seung Hui Cho’s massacre at Virginia Tech and his explicitly stated reasons for doing it into the work of an isolated psycho. Had we only acted more decisively on his obvious cries for help, so they say, he could have been heavily medicated and then properly disposed of in some local lunatic asylum.
What he did was barbaric, and this barbarism is what made Seung Hui Cho finally into the true American he always wanted to be.
Jonathan Scott is the author of Socialist Joy in the Writing of Langston Hughes. He can be reached at jonascott15@aol.com
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Using Documentation to Impose Civil Death
Oppose REAL ID Act
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is holding a single national Town Hall meeting from 10-2pm, Tuesday, May 1, 2007 on the federal REAL ID Act, on the campus of the University of California, Davis. The meeting is being facilitated by the state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) at DHS’ request. It is scheduled to be the nation’s only open meeting on REAL ID. The government’s refusal to broadly hold public meetings is its way of keeping the full impact of the law from the public.
The REAL ID Act was signed by President Bush in 2005 and sets national standards for driver’s licenses and identification cards, including biometric identifiers and some form of bar code for computer scanning. It essentially establishes a national ID card. Once established the government will no doubt move to require everyone to always carry such ID, to have it to enter federal buildings, banks, perhaps even schools. The law also requires very strict certification for issuing drivers’ licenses and requires everyone already with a license to be re-certified. The certification requires, for example, that the person come to the DMV and bring a certified birth certificate, or a current U.S. passport, and proof of social security numbers and proof of address documents. No other forms of ID will be accepted.
The meeting is supposed to seek input from public and private officials on REAL ID regulations. According to DHS, public comments will be taken in five specific areas: Consumer/Personal Impact; Privacy/Security; Electronic Verification Systems; Funding/Implementation/Time Frames and Cost; and Law Enforcement.
Many states are objecting to the requirements, saying they will force many citizens to give up their drivers’ license as they lack the documentation needed. The reality of this concern can be seen in the millions of people now being kicked off Medicare because they cannot provide the same documentation. REAL ID also serves to block state efforts to provide licenses to undocumented immigrants as well as anyone who may not have the required ID.
The Department of Homeland Security officially released the proposed REAL ID regulations on March 9, 2007, which began a 60-day public comment period that concludes on May 8. Final regulations could be released at any time after August , 2007. REAL ID is scheduled to take effect May 11, 2008.
Activists in California are angry that DHS has chosen May 1 as the day for the only public hearing. Broad demonstrations in defense of rights, including those of undocumented workers are taking place that day. Even so, people are organizing to be at the hearing and denounce REAL ID. As a spokesperson for the National Immigrant Solidarity Network put it, “It is clear that DHS is not interested in public opinion, since they are holding the meeting on campus, during the day to avoid community and public participation, as most people can not attend at that time. And just like other past government-sponsored meetings, they just want to see a small group of pre-selected anti-immigrant groups speak and testify, so it can appear that the majority of public opinion “supports” the government’s racist anti-immigrant legislation. We encourage community activists from Davis and surrounding areas to mobilize to attend the meeting at UC Davis, and raise our loud and strong voice to say No To The Racist REAL ID, at the meeting and at the May Day immigrants’ mobilization!”
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May Day 2007: Madison, Wisconsin
Dane County Board Supports May Day Actions
On April 19th, the Dane County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to support the resolution recognizing May Day and encouraging employers in Dane County to respect the rights of workers to take part in the May 1st activities without punishment. It was presented by Board member Ashok Kumar, of the Green Party, elected in 2006. We reprint the resolution below.
Resolution Recognizing May 1st as International Worker’s Day
WHEREAS May 1st is recognized and celebrated around the world as International Worker’s Day, commemorating the historic struggle of working people throughout the world, and is recognized in every country except the United States, Canada, and South Africa despite the fact that the holiday began in the 1880s in the United States, with the fight for an eight-hour workday; and
WHEREAS In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions passed a resolution stating that eight hours would constitute a legal day’s work after May 1, 1886; the resolution called for a general strike to achieve the goal, since legislative methods had already failed; and
WHEREAS with workers being forced to work ten, twelve, and fourteen hours a day, rank-and-file support for the eight-hour movement grew rapidly, despite the indifference and hostility of many union leaders; and
WHEREAS by April 1886, 250,000 workers were involved in the May Day movement, and on April 10 and May 1st of 2006 tens of thousands of students and workers marched in Madison and millions across the country in support of the struggles of immigrants and working people, more than 25,000 workers gathered at the capitol to protest for immigrant’ rights and for better working conditions and ironically, many workers who participated in the rallies were retaliated against harshly by their employers, including widespread reports of dismissals and suspensions even in Dane County.
WHEREAS in 2006 many Dane County employees took part in the activities and currently, Dane County respects the right of all county employees who wish to partake in events and activities celebrating May 1st within the benefits of their employment.
NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Dane County Board of Supervisors does hereby recognize May 1st as “International Workers’ Day” (El dia del trabajo) to recognize their right to work, their right to a living wage, their right to humane and safe working conditions and their right to be protected from abuse; and
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that the Dane County Board of Supervisors encourages employers in Dane County to respect the rights to take part in the May 1st activities without a punitive resource.” (Res. No. 384. 2006-2007)
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FBI & ICE Raid “Little Village” with Machine Guns
Chicago Community Demands End to Raids
The Latino Union in Chicago reports that FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents, armed with machine guns, sealed off a popular shopping center at 26th and Albany St. in Chicago. More than 160 shoppers were temporarily detained by ICE.
The ICE agents claimed that they came to execute warrants but according to a youth activist with Sin Fronteras (Without Borders) “They tried to execute the heart of our community and warn us not to march” on May Day. He added, “Their actions are clearly to disrespect our community and children and to intimidate us.” He said he and many others will be marching May 1.
The raids disrupted activities within the entire community. As news spread, people feared to leave their homes. A spokesperson for the Illinois Coalition from Immigrant and Refugee Rights said that intimidation was the goal of the agencies’ action. The community immediately responded by demonstrating for hours after the raid. They also organized a protest at the Federal Building the following day, denouncing ICE and the FBI. They affirmed their commitment to march on Tuesday, May 1st from Union Park to downtown, demanding an end to the raids and legalization for all.[TOP]
Berkshire, Massachusetts
May Day Immigrants’ Vigil
Berkshire County organizations Manos Unidas and the Berkshire Immigrant Center, together with other local immigrant advocacy groups, will hold a vigil on Tuesday, May 1st at Park Square in Pittsfield, MA from 4:00pm to 6:00pm. The event is part of the May Day National Mobilization to Support Immigrant Workers’ Rights and the “Day Without Immigrants.”
This is a planned day of action by numerous youth, labor, peace and advocacy groups across America to show solidarity and support for immigrant workers’ rights. Marches, teach-ins, and vigils will be held across the country in order to focus attention on the contributions made by our immigrant communities, to combat anti-immigrant sentiment, and to advocate for much-needed comprehensive immigration reform.
The second annual Pittsfield vigil will include petition signing, dissemination of information on immigrants’ rights, planning and brainstorming for future actions, as well as street theater, kids’ activities, and tasty treats! Participants are encouraged to wear white t-shirts as a sign of participation and solidarity.
The event aims to mobilize a strong contingent of supporters to show that the Berkshires is a diverse community that respects and appreciates peoples from all races, classes, and cultures.
Manos Unidas is a grassroots, multicultural community empowerment organization founded in 2001 by local Latino and supporting community members. The organization works alongside Latino, immigrant, and other underrepresented community members to build a culture of “beloved community” that crosses borders of race, class, culture, gender, language, and geography. For more information, contact Anaelisa Vanegas, Manos Unidas/Hands United at 413-243-9121, manosunidasorg@gmail.com, www.unitedmanos.blogspot.com
The Berkshire Immigrant Center provides citizenship assistance, immigration information, advocacy, referrals, and counseling to the growing immigrant communities in Berkshire County. The Center also sponsors monthly walk-in clinics for local residents to get free consultations with a qualified immigration attorney. Contact Diego Gutierrez, 860-248-0901
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