January 28, 2010 

1.  Book 1 with Accompanying Document by This Writer:

Richard S. Fraser was a lifelong labor socialist, and a lifelong champion of black freedom, black equality, and black liberation.  He studied the question for 40 years.  Here is a key book containing some of his most important writings on the question.

--Allan Greene

***

In Memoriam:  Richard S. Fraser, An Appreciation and Selection of His Work  (Transcribed by John Heckman for the Prometheus Research Library, Archival Library of the International Communist League-Fourth Internationalist/Spartacist League of the U.S. [www.icl-fi.org] and for the Marxist Internet Archive [www.marxists.org] [Incorporating Previously Excluded 1955 Document, For the Materialist Conception of the Negro Struggle]), by Richard S. Fraser:

Prometheus Research Series No. 3:  In Memoriam:  Richard S. Fraser; An Appreciation and Selection of His Work:

Title and Index/Contents Page:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/index.htm

Dedication:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/Dedication.html

I.  Introductory Materials:

Richard S. Fraser, 1913-1988:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/01obit.html

Memorial Meeting for Richard S. Fraser, 8 January 1989:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/02memorial.html

Introductory Note by the Prometheus Research Library:  Revolutionary Integration:  Program for Black Liberation, Written 1990:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/03introduction.html

Fraser and American Scholarship on the Black Question, by David Dreiser, Written 1990:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/04dreiser.html

Some of Fraser’s Writings on the Question of Black Liberation:

The Negro Struggle and the Proletarian Revolution:  Two Lectures Given at the Friday Night Forum [of the Los Angeles Local of the Socialist Workers Party], Los Angeles, November 1953:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/08negrostruggle.html

For the Materialist Conception of the Negro Struggle, by R. S. Fraser, Reprinted from SWP [Socialist Workers Party] Discussion Bulletin A-30, August 1955:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/08aMaterialistconception.html

Contribution to the Discussion on the Slogan “Send Federal Troops to Mississippi,” 10 March 1956:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/09Mississippi.html

Communist Party Internal Discussion:  Report to the District Negro Commission, 1956:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/10reptnegroquest.html

Resolution on the Negro Struggle, 25 May 1957:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/11resolutionnegrostruggle.html

Summary Remarks on Negro Discussion, June 1957:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/12remarksnegrodisc.html

On Federal Troops in Little Rock, 10 October 1957:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/13LittleRock.html

On “Color-Caste,” 15 January 1984:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/19Colorcaste.html

III.  Appendix:

Bibliography of Works by Richard S. Fraser:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs3-fraser/index.htm

*** 

The following document on Richard S. Fraser's approach to understanding the oppression of black people in America by Al (Allan) Greene was distributed by Allan Greene at the 2004 University of South Florida-St. Petersburg Florida Studies Center-Based Conference on the History of the Civil Rights Movement in Florida:

RICHARD S. FRASER, AND THE REVOLUTIONARY MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HOW TO SMASH RACISM IN THE U.S.A.            

Richard S. Fraser -- author of the essay, "For the Materialist Conception of the Negro Struggle," author of "The Negro Struggle and the Proletarian Revolution," author of "The Dialectics of Black Liberation," author of "A Letter to American Trotskyists:  Too Little, Too Late," and author of many other articles on the American black question, which he studied continuously for 40 years until his death at 75 in 1988 -- was a long-time Marxist who had concluded that American Marxists did not understand the American black question.

Fraser was an active member of the Socialist Workers Party, including for 20 years a member of its National Committee, for almost 30 years. 

He was subsequently a founder and leader of the Seattle-based Freedom Socialist Party.

He eventually went through the New American Movement, the Democratic Socialists of America, and, near the end of his life, the Spartacist League of the U.S.

While he was in the Socialist Workers Party, between 1942 and 1948, Fraser recruited literally hundreds of black workers to the party.  Around 1948, most of these people ended up leaving the Socialist Workers Party.

This seriously troubled Fraser, and he decided to look at the history of American Marxism, and the black question.

Fraser concluded that the source of American Marxism's misunderstanding of the black question lay partially in the fact that the early Communist International (the Third International in its early congresses, 1919-1922) had addressed the issue of the American black question by placing it under the national and colonial question.

Fraser got ahold of virtually every significant book from virtually every single significant black scholar, writer, or literary figure, written in U.S. history from the pre-Civil War period, through the Civil War, through Reconstruction, through the end of Reconstruction, through the rise of "Jim Crow," through the early 20th Century, through the mid-20th Century, and read them all.

Additionally, he consulted over many years with his innumerable black friends and acquaintances on this question.  Fraser had many.  Many were blue-collar proletarian friends he'd met in his many years of labor and trade union activity, and during his recruitment of these workers to the socialist movement.

Over time, Fraser also acquired an enormous group of friends from among eminent American black writers and intellectuals of the 1940s and 1950s.  Many black people from other parts of the country would come through Seattle, and stay at Fraser's apartment.  And they could always be assured that this man, a self-made scholar in this key question without much formal schooling, would pick their brains, share his views with them, get their opinions of his views.

Fraser basically concluded, as said, that there was a two-sided nature to Marxism's approach to the black question.  One side was right.  The other side, however, was terribly wrong.

Fraser, like black nationalists and like black separatists and like liberal integrationists of the Martin Luther King Southern Christian Leadership Conference variety, or of the NAACP variety, held that there was a democratic aspect to the black question -- for it was so obvious that democratic rights were withheld from black people at every turn that the achievement of democratic tasks for black people was still something to be accomplished.  The Communist International also held this.

But liberal integrationists, black nationalists, black separatists, and the Communist International, all basically addressed the issue in one way or another which, Fraser felt, missed a key point here or a key point there.

Fraser looked at the history of American black people, first of all, and, most importantly, the history of what the enormous mass of black people had actually really fought for over a relatively continuous period of 200 years -- from at least 1800 onwards.  Fraser, in other words, did not approach the study of history from the standpoint of the philosophy of idealism -- the standpoint that consciousness determines being -- but, instead, from the standpoint of materialism -- the standpoint that being determines consciousness and that matter and existence precede consciousness and spirit.  This was a scientific approach to history, not a mythological approach to history, and not a superstitious approach to history, and not a notion of history as being informed by forces outside the real, material, here-and-now world of material fact.  Fraser looked at actual black struggles for freedom of the actual great enormous bulk of black people throughout history, and asked himself, what did these people actually fight for and what were their goals and what did they actually want?

Fraser concluded, from his lifelong studies, that the American black question was not a national and colonial question of an oppressed nationality or oppressed colony separate and apart from the American people as a whole.  And he also concluded that very much unlike the struggles for national self-determination of the oppressed nations and peoples oppressed by the Russian czarist empire, or the Eastern European nations, which said struggles came and went, the American black struggle was the oldest continuous struggle for freedom in world history -- predating, even, the American labor movement's history.

Fraser concluded that the American black question was not the struggle of an oppressed nationality because historically, struggles for distinctively national self-determination -- struggles of oppressed nations to form their own nation-state -- had been struggles to separate out from some other power or dominating country.  This was characteristic, for instance, of the national independence struggles of the Eastern European peoples and nations in their own struggles against the Russian czarist empire, and of the various nationalities and peoples of the empire itself in their own national struggles.

But, Fraser found, the long struggle of black people for freedom in America was, in terms of its actual material real goals and aims, not a struggle to separate out from America, but a struggle for integration on the basis of uncompromising and irreconcilable equality into America.  And this material and social fact of the history of black struggles for freedom in America meant, the very hard material fact of the actual nature of the long struggle of the enormous mass of black people here in America flew in the face of any efforts to turn this into some kind of national separatist struggle, or to see black people not as Americans.  By the way, in this, Fraser was very much in line with the great 19th Century American black abolitionist and freedom fighter, Frederick Douglass.

However, Fraser also concluded that it was impossible, within the framework of capitalist class relationships in American society, for this struggle for integration on a basis of full equality to succeed, because capitalism as a social system of class exploitation of labor by employers -- capitalists -- required as its bedrock principle the racial segregation of black people as the source of the ideology of white supremacy, the fundamental method by which the capitalist employers and, in the period leading up to the Civil War, the slaveholders, kept black and white labor separated, and, therefore, divided and conquered.  American capitalism in its development arose on the basis of enslavement of black people, but unlike every other kind of slavery in world history, U.S. slavery was, peculiarly, sanctioned by this peculiarly American invention of white supremacy and skin-color-based subjugation.  Other forms of slavery, and even other forms of colonialist domination, had not been of this type, and even to the degree that British and French and German imperialisms and colonialisms ended up being racist, their racism was derivative from the "teaching" they got from the Americans.

Consequently, Fraser argued, it was, indeed, necessary -- as, for instance, black separatists and black nationalists argued, and even as some liberal integrationists implicitly recognized -- to fight for special organizations of struggle specifically addressed to the issue of black oppression in this very viciously racist society.

In this sense, Fraser argued, the black question had what might be called a democratic, or democratic rights, component or axis to it.

However, the very fact that full integration on a basis of uncompromised and uncompromising and irreconcilable equality could not be met within the framework of capitalist class relations of exploitation due to the entire peculiar history of an American slavery which, unlike the history of every other slavery on earth, found its sanction in the peculiar and weird and absurdist and irrationalist superstitions and mythologies of white supremacy and skin-color separation, also implied, as revolutionary Marxists said, that the smashing of the racist oppression, racist segregation, and "Jim Crow" system that kept blacks forcibly racially segregated at the bottom of U.S. society while being mixed and assimilated with white and other workers in key strategic sectors of industry at the bottom would require the smashing of the exploitative class exploitation of labor by capital -- of labor by employers -- and the establishment of an egalitarian, socialist, multiracial workers' America.

Fraser called the perspective he had created revolutionary integration -- the integration on the basis of uncompromised and irreconcilable equality of black people into a socialist, egalitarian America.  He called it revolutionary integration to distinguish it both from the black nationalist, black separatist, and Pan-Africanist conceptions which saw blacks as inherently not American, and from, on the other hand, those liberal integrationist conceptions which argued that black freedom, black equality, and real integration on a basis of full equality could somehow be achieved by accepting the framework of capitalism's exploitative class relationships.

The writings of Richard Fraser are published by a number of different sources to which I refer readers.

The main publisher of Fraser's writings is the American Marxist party, the Spartacist League of the U.S., and the website of the international party of which they are a part, International Communist League.  If you go to their website, www.icl-fi.org, and click on "International Communist League directory," and then, if you scroll down to the bottom to the U.S. Spartacist League, their address is:  Spartacist League, Box 1377 G.P.O., New York, N.Y.  10116.  I would recommend writing to them and requesting two booklets from them.  One is called, Prometheus Research Series Booklet Number 3, In Memoriam:  Richard S. Fraser, An Appreciation and Selection of His Work.  The other is called, Marxist Bulletin Number 5, What Strategy for Black Liberation?  Trotskyism or Black Nationalism?  Key documents 1955-1978.  In that second bulletin, you will find Richard Fraser's key document, "For the Materialist Conception of the Negro Struggle."  In the Prometheus Research Booklet Number 3, you will find Fraser's document, "The Negro Struggle and the Proletarian Revolution," as well as "Too Little, Too Late."

By the way, for scholars studying this question, the Prometheus Research Library address is also at this website, and this library is an archive of primary sources -- original writings -- from the Marxist movement on many issues over many years that have been addressed by that movement, including the black question, the labor question, and many other questions.  This archive is open for use to legitimate scholars, and if you communicate with the Prometheus Research Library directly, you may find out more information from them.

I would also recommend going to www.redletterpress.org.  When you get to their site, click on "On Line Catalog," and notice the title, "Coming soon:  Revolutionary Integration:  A Marxist Analysis of African-American Liberation."  This book is written by Richard Fraser and also by Tom Boot.  The document in it by Fraser is entitled, "The Dialectics of Black Liberation," another of his important documents published in the 1970s by Revolutionary Age magazine.

I have long felt that Richard S. Fraser had a unique approach to looking at the black question and black freedom struggles which deserved a hearing among black, and other, freedom fighters, as well as black, and other, scholars interested in the question of black history and black freedom struggles.

I urge people reading this to investigate further Richard Fraser's work.  I believe you will learn a lot.

Thank you.

--Allan Greene

PS:  If you wish to contact or communicate with me further, you may do so by writing me at tompaine1917@yahoo.com.

Labor donated                                      June 4, 2004 

***

Books Explaining Socialism:

Book 2:

Index/Contents:

http://www.marx.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/index.htm

Introduction:

http://www.marx.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/index.htm#intro

Part 1, Verbatim Trial Testimony of James P. Cannon, National Secretary, Socialist Workers Party:

http://www.marx.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/ch01.htm

Part 2, Verbatim Trial Testimony of James P. Cannon, National Secretary, Socialist Workers Party:

http://www.marx.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/ch02.htm

Part 3, Verbatim Trial Testimony of James P. Cannon, National Secretary, Socialist Workers Party:

http://www.marx.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/ch03.htm

Part 4, Verbatim Trial Testimony of James P. Cannon, National Secretary, Socialist Workers Party, Plus “Defense Policy in the Minneapolis Trial:  A Criticism,” by Grandizo Munis:

http://www.marx.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/ch04.htm

Part 5, Political Principles and Propaganda Methods:  Defense Policy in the Minneapolis Trial, by James P. Cannon, National Secretary, Socialist Workers Party:

http://www.marx.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/ch05.htm

Part 6, Political Principles and Propaganda Methods:  Defense Policy in the Minneapolis Trial, by James P. Cannon, National Secretary, Socialist Workers Party, Continued from Part 5:

http://www.marx.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/ch06.htm

Part 7, Traditions and Guiding Ideas of the Socialist Workers Party in Defense Activities, by George Novack:

http://www.marx.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/ch07.htm

***

Book 3:

The Fight for Socialism, by Max Shachtman (1946) (American Workers Party Leader Max Shachtman’s 1946 Exposition of the Principles and Program of the Workers Party):

Index/Contents:

http://www.marx.org/archive/shachtma/1946/ffs/index.htm

Preface:

http://www.marx.org/archive/shachtma/1946/ffs/ffs00.htm

Chapter 1, What Are You?:

http://www.marx.org/archive/shachtma/1946/ffs/ffs01.htm

Chapter 2, The World We Live In:

http://www.marx.org/archive/shachtma/1946/ffs/ffs02.htm

Chapter 3, How The World We Live In Operates:

http://www.marx.org/archive/shachtma/1946/ffs/ffs03.htm

Chapter 4, A World of Imperialism and War:

http://www.marx.org/archive/shachtma/1946/ffs/ffs04.htm

Chapter 5, The Government and Democracy:

http://www.marx.org/archive/shachtma/1946/ffs/ffs05.htm

Chapter 6, The Labor Unions and the Class Struggle:

http://www.marx.org/archive/shachtma/1946/ffs/ffs06.htm

Chapter 7, A Workers’ Government and Socialism:

http://www.marx.org/archive/shachtma/1946/ffs/ffs07.htm

Chapter 8, The Need for a Revolutionary Party:

http://www.marx.org/archive/shachtma/1946/ffs/ffs08.htm

Chapter 9, Socialism:  The Alternative to Barbarism:

http://www.marx.org/archive/shachtma/1946/ffs/ffs09.htm

***

Book 4, Explaining What Fascism Is and How to Fight It:

Fascism:  What It Is and How to Fight It, by Leon Trotsky: http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm

1969 Introduction by George Lavan Weissman: http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p0

Fascism:  What Is It?: http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p1

How Mussolini Triumphed: http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p2

The Fascist Danger Looms in Germany: http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p3

An Aesop Fable: http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p4

The German Cops and Army: http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p5

Bourgeoisie, Petty-bourgeoisie, and Proletariat: http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p6

The Collapse of Bourgeois Democracy: http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p7

Does the Petty-bourgeoisie Fear Revolution?: http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p8

The Workers’ Militia and Its Opponents: http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p9

The Perspective in the United States: http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p10

Build the Revolutionary Party!: http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p11  

***

Book 5:  A Program for How to Fight for a socialist, workers' America and a socialist, workers' governed world:

The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International:  The Mobilization of the Masses Around Transitional Demands to Prepare the Conquest of Power:  The Transitional Program, by Leon Trotsky (1938):

Contents:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm

Part 1, The Objective Prerequisites for a Socialist Revolution:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm#op

Part 2, The Proletariat and Its Leaderships:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm#pl

Part 3, The Minimum Program and the Transitional Program:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm#mt

Part 4, Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm#ss

Part 5, Trade Unions in the Transitional Epoch:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm#tu

Part 6, Factory Committees:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm#fc

Part 7, “Business Secrets” and Workers’ Control of Industry:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm#bs

Part 8, Expropriation of Separate Groups of Capitalists:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm#sg

Part 9, Expropriation of the Private Banks and State-ization of the Credit System:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm#pb

Part 10, The Alliance of the Workers and Farmers:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm#wf

Part 11, The Struggle Against Imperialism and War:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm#iw

Part 12, Workers’ and Farmers’ Government:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text2.htm#wg

Part 13, Soviets:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text2.htm#so

Part 14, Backward Countries and the Program of Transitional Demands:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text2.htm#bc

Part 15, The Program of Transitional Demands in Fascist Countries:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text2.htm#fc

Part 16, The USSR and Problems of the Transitional Epoch:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text2.htm#ussr

Part 17, Against Opportunism and Unprincipled Revisionism:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text2.htm#or

Part 18, Against Sectarianism:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text2.htm#as

Part 19, Open the Road to the Woman Worker!  Open the Road to the Youth!:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text2.htm#wy

Part 20, Under the Banner of the Fourth International!:

http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text2.htm#fi

PROFESSIONAL CHARACTER ASSASSIN.

If HNIC comes with a great pay and benefit package I'm interested. I was Supreme Commander the last place I worked.

I will not vote for either Bill Foster or Kathleen Ford.  I will sit out the mayoralty election in St. Petersburg.

But I know something about Cornel West.

Cornel West is a black, brilliant, Princeton University professor and scholar, author of a number of books, one of which I read entitled, Race Matters, an insightful book.  West has been a professor at both Harvard and now, at Princeton.

West is no right-winger, by the way.  He is a passionate liberal, even a left-liberal, although within the framework of the Democratic Party, although he is on the party's more or less liberal "left" wing.  He attended the Democratic Party convention and has sometimes been called upon to give his views on various issues in this country when a strong liberal was wanted to talk about that person's views.

Cornel West is also not, as I am, atheist.  He is religious.

But he is not a fundamentalist.  He is not in the right-wing religious camp.

I would loosely characterize his kind of religiosity as being more a sort of liberal-leftish "social gospel" religiosity.  He tends to take from the passages of the Christian bible the aspects of Christianity, but also Judaism, and of other religions, which teach brotherhood and sisterhood, compassion, treating others kindly, doing unto others as we would have others do unto us. 

West, in fact, is, if my memory serves me right, a professor of religions and of diverse religions and their diverse interpretations and viewpoints.  So he is well-versed in this issue of diverse religions and their interpretations.

It seems from listening to some of his lectures on various cable television outlets to also be true that the guy is a very movingly and passionately and eloquently leftish-liberal voice for a kind of religiosity or Christianity which is not the kind advocated by fundamentalists.

When I first read of the controversy over the Kathleen Ford comment, my first inclination was simply to dismiss her as some kind of white racist, and I had more or less bought into what I'd read about her in various media outlets since the brief time she had been on the St. Pete City Council in the later 1990s.

And when I first read of the people getting up on the St. Pete steps, the African-American people getting up, and denouncing her, I was first inclined to think, yeah, they're probably right about her.

But then, I read that she had quoted Cornel West.

And then, I read she had not only quoted Cornel West, but in her statement quoting Cornel West, she had indicated she agreed with Cornel West's point.

The point she said Cornel West had made about the HNIC phrase was, Cornel West had written, it is dead.

And, Ford said, she agreed with that.

I had for a long time come to realize Ford had been, apparently, friendly to gay peoples' rights, and had in the recent campaign been making fun of Bill Foster's notion that dinosaurs and people resided on the earth at the same time.

Those positions of hers struck me as, at least, pretty enlightened.

But when I first heard about the HNIC remark, I figured, oh, she's on the race issue a white racist redneck.

But after I read she had quoted Cornel West, whose book, Race Matters, I had been given as a gift by another family member, and had read years ago, and with which I'd been impressed, I started changing my viewpoint on this matter.

I noted that Seville Brown was part of the local Southern Christian Leadership Conference, although it seems to me they may have changed their name to the National Christian Leadership Conference.

I remembered reading some weeks ago of a black Los Angeles, California, preacher who was the leader of the Los Angeles chapter of the National, or Southern, Christian Leadership Conference, and who had signed onto the campaign of California gay rights-defending people opposing a bigoted and discriminatory campaign there to deprive gay people of their civil rights.  And I remembered reading that this Los Angeles African-American preacher had himself been telephoned on several occasions by the national office of the Southern or National Christian Leadership Conference trying to pressure him to not keep involved in support of the gay rights side in the California controversy.  They had effectively even tried to remove him from his post of leader of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern or National Christian Leadership Conference.

I remembered that the late slain civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Junior, had originally organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  And I remembered from my own political activism in the 1960s that, irrespective of my political differences with Dr. King over his pacifism after I had gone from being a pacifist to becoming a supporter of the right of black people to armed self-defense against racist terror still having some respect for King's use of his Christian pastorship to advocate both on behalf of equality for black people, integration, and subsequently, on behalf of an end to the war in Vietnam, and then, just before he was murdered, on behalf of a labor strike of Memphis, Tennessee, striking sanitation workers in 1968, which is where he was when he was murdered in 1968.  I also remembered that Dr. King had organized the Poor Peoples' Campaign trying to bring national attention  to the plight of impoverished poor people in this country, and he did not draw a "color line" or "race line," but brought attention to the plight of all poor people in this country, black, white, and other poor people in this country, and again, despite my socialist political views which were and are quite far to the left of the liberal views of Dr. King, I respected the guy for having done that.

I also remembered that one of Dr. King's assistants, former Democratic Party presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, who was also deeply involved in the original Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had, despite the efforts of the Democrats to cowtow and capitulate to anti-gay bigotry, taken reasonably decent positions in support of equality of gay people and transgender people and lesbian people, doing so under the rubric of the essential liberal Christian social gospel notion that all are god's children.  Even though I am atheist, I do respect that perspective of Jesse Jackson's.

And I looked at the mayoralty campaign here in St. Pete.  Bill Foster, I realized, is a right-wing Republican.  He is logically and rationally considered by most who know something about St. Petersburg politics the logical inheritor of the legacy of right-wing Republican Rick Baker. 

I realized that The St. Petersburg Times has sought in the two mayoralty campaigns of Baker to prettify him and present him as a "rational" "leadership" alternative for the city.  But, of course, I remembered the slashing of the tents and personal possessions of homeless people here in St. Pete in 2007 by the police and city officials under the Baker administration.  I remembered the entire incitement by hardline Constitution-trashing and Bill of Rights-trashing St. Pete police chief Chuck Harmon against the Constitutional and Bill of Rights and allegedly First Amendment-protected rights of peaceably vigiling anti-war protesters from the St. Pete for Peace organization in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008.  I remembered watching Harmon at a city council subcommittee meeting in 2005 hardline it against the Constitutional and Bill of Rights liberties of St. Pete for Peace peaceable vigilers and protesters and I remembered watching Rick Baker at that meeting defer quite openly and demonstratively to what Harmon, a bonapartist authoritarian police statist and opponent of the First Amendment and Constitution and Bill of Rights, was saying. 

I remembered participating in 2007 in some peaceable protests here in St. Pete with Bruce Wright's homeless advocacy organization, the Refuge, and I remembered at one entirely peaceable vigil outside Tent City here in St. Pete finding out Bruce, a Christian pastor, and a couple of his colleagues from his homeless advocacy organization, had been taken away by the St. Pete cops.  I remembered how Bruce and Eric Rubin, another decent guy, and homeless advocate, and himself a Unitarian church member, while Bruce is a Baptist pastor, had gotten up after the police and St. Pete city officials' tent slashing and destruction of the personal property of homeless people here in St. Pete in 2007 and spoken on local television about the city's having essentially betrayed all kinds of promises they had made.  And I remembered the national and international publicity the city government got from that tent slashing of homeless people's tents and from the city government's destruction of their personal property.

I also remembered the completely peaceable and nonviolent way in which both Bruce and Eric acted, as I remembered the completely peaceable and nonviolent way in which the members of the St. Pete for Peace organization had acted at Bay Walk.  I remembered how the cops had apparently arrested the St. Pete for Peace leader, Chris Ernesto, and how Chris had a history of preaching a nonviolent and essentially pacifist view to others.  I remembered witnessing the police at some demonstrations here in St. Pete during the course of both the lead-up to the Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq in 2003, and during the immediate aftermath, acted.  I remembered seeing the police deliberately target for ticketing car motorists who honked their horns in solidarity with those of us in the assembled sidewalk protests against the invasion of Iraq.  I remembered watching how the police deliberately arrested some of the protesters for doing nothing but vigorously chanting chants against Bush and Cheney and the invasion of Iraq.  And I remembered seeing Chuck Harmon at the 2005 city council subcommittee meeting defending those kinds of police tactics.

I also remembered seeing on the afternoon of Thursday, October 15, 2009, on channel 615, cable, how one of the city council people who HATED the protesters presented distorted video moving picture footage of one previous anti-war protest at Bay Walk which showed the protesters behind police barricades at that time, and this city council person -- I believe it was Karl Nurse who was rabid and foam-flecked on this issue -- tried to convey the impression that because the police had put up barricades to keep the protesters on the sidewalk, the protesters were at fault.  Nurse basically said it was the protesters who caused this -- what he called, blockade or blockage -- of the entrance of Bay Walk.  But I remembered my sitting in at the 2005 city council subcommittee hearing and there witnessing St. Pete Police chief Chuck Harmon vigorously advocate precisely those kinds of police barricades.  I remembered that.

And I remembered campaigning against the gay-hating and gay-bashing amendment 2 last year in 2008.  And I remember reading and hearing that the Christian Coalition here in Florida had mobilized both black and white religious pastors to support the bigoted, discriminatory, equality-bashing, gay-bashing, amendment 2 last year, an amendment I campaigned against on election day and also a few days before election day.

I remembered seeing after the passing of that amendment last year and reading about the passing of similar gay-bashing and discriminatory amendments in other states reading that both black and white religious pastors had mobilized in support of these gay-bashing and discriminatory amendments.

And I thought of what the young black lesbian woman at the demonstration on behalf of gay peoples' rights in front of the St. Pete Unitarian Church which occurred after passage of amendment 2 said last year.  I remembered her saying that she could not even say who or what she was among people in her own church.  She was a young lesbian and African-American woman who spoke before the assembled defenders of gay peoples' rights in front of the St. Pete Unitarian Church on a Saturday later last year after the amendment 2 went through and a protest against its passage was held.  And I listened to this young woman and remembered what she said at that protest and assembly in St. Pete.

I thought of all this in terms of Ford's history of support for rational positions, like her defense of evolution, which is entirely confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt and which, moreover, all the religious fundamentalist crap to the contrary notwithstanding, is historically hated by white racist rednecks precisely because the theory of life emerging from life and of species having common origins smashes the basis for racism to smithereens.  I thought of Ford's defense of gay peoples' rights or, at least, her seeming to be friendly to their rights.  I thought of her making fun of Foster's view that dinosaurs and people lived at the same time, a view which deserves to be made fun of.  And I thought of the overwhelmingly held view that Foster is Rick Baker's logical successor.

Finally, I thought of how Baker and the real estate developers in my town of St. Pete, and Baker and the big corporations like Progress Energy here in St. Pete, have been hand in glove in this town.  And I thought of how Baker supported giving the sidewalk of Bay Walk to the private Bay Walk corporate owners and developers there, and how it seems Foster also favors that.

I thought of these things.

Did that mean I thought any better of those Democrats on the city council who voted for the land giveaway?

No.

I'm a socialist, and I won't vote for either Ford or Foster or either Democrat or Republican this coming election day.

But I gained a lot of perspective thinking of this.

And when I saw the people who got up, the African-American people who got up, to denounce Ford for her quoting of a distinguished and, moreover, passionately liberal, black Princeton University professor, and for her saying she agreed, moreover, with a statement he had made, it was clear to me that the people who got up to scream she was some kind of "racist" were simply hacks, shills, flacks, and basically probably right-wing Republicans who feel they would be better if Foster got in than if Ford got in.

I thought, moreover, of the fact the Tampa NAACP head had said the whole thing was kind of a tempest in a teapot, and I thought of the fact that even the formerly long-time black Republican, turned Democrat, Darryl Rousson, himself a hardline faith-based fundamentalist who once emailed me he "prayed" for me because of my atheism, had come out and said he, Rousson, didn't think much of this alleged controversy.

I also thought of how The St. Petersburg Times, whose rabid and foam-flecked editor of editorials, Tim Nickens, went apoplectic after the original 4-4 vote denying the original giveaway of the Bay Walk sidewalk to the private corporate interests of Bay Walk, and that he subsequently put out there an unsigned editorial after the second 5-3 vote giving the land away a statement approving the giveaway.  And it is also The St. Petersburg Times who have really pushed to the forefront this get-together of these African-American shills and African-American flacks for Bill Foster and their screaming that Ford is some kind of "racist" for her quoting, of all things, a brilliant black and, moreover, liberal, Princeton University professor, and even agreeing with that professor's statement!  I thought of that, and the entire social hypocrisy of this.

I also remembered what the great black revolutionary, Malcolm X, in his Autobiography had written about the kinds of people who got up recently and screamed "racist" about what Ford said.

Malcolm called such people "so-called Negro leaders," and this was Malcolm X, one of the fieriest advocates on behalf of black freedom, black emancipation, black equality, who ever lived, and an uncompromising champion of his peoples' rights and liberties.  Malcolm called such people "black bourgeois" and "black petit-bourgeois" misleaders.  He had contempt for their type.  I remembered that from my reading of Malcolm X's Autobiography.

I also remembered from my political activism in the 1960s reading what the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense said about the kinds of people who got up just a few days ago and denounced Ford as a "racist" for her publicly agreeing with Cornel West's statement said about such types of people.  The Black Panther Party denounced such types of people as these phoney-baloney black preachers and black Republican Party shills and flacks and hacks as black capitalists seeking to find a niche on the basis of which to exploit and suck blood from the black masses, or else as politicians representing such sorts of black capitalists seeking to suck blood from the exploited and oppressed black masses.

Even though I will not vote either for Ford or Foster, after reading more on this fictional and invented and made-up controversy, I have come to view the people who got up -- Deveron Gibbons, Seville Brown, and the others -- as the kinds of people denounced by Malcolm X, and the kinds of people denounced by the Black Panther Party, in the 1960s, as either black capitalists or huckster politicians for black capitalists sucking dry the black masses.

I think they're phony-baloney.

I have never seen their names on any petitions endorsing, for instance, the fight of long-time framed up political prisoner and genuine champion of black peoples' rights and long-time anti-racist, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who's been rotting on  death row since 1982 for a crime of which he's innocent and to which someone else has confessed.  I've never seen Deveron Gibbons' name on any petition on behalf of saving the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal.  I've never seen Seville Brown's name on any petition on behalf of saving Mumia's life.  I've not seen any of the names of any of the people who got up and called Ford a "racist" for no reason except that she quoted from Cornel West's quote and, moreover, agreed with what West said.  I think they're frauds.

And I think both Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, if they were around today, would call them frauds, exactly as I have.

That's my view on this issue.

--Allan