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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 5, 2012)
September S. 2012______________________________ ^ o rtlatth ©bsCVUCr Page 7 Black Youth! Are Join us in the fight for justice We are also very com m itted to increasing peace in our com m uni ties and elim inating police terror ism against our people. BY A h JA M L U m I The purpose of this letter S om e o f you to the com m unity is to make a know m ay know direct and open appeal to our about our work in young people. the Black W orking Personally, I am still rela Group and some of tively new to Portland, but you may not be fa it’s already clear to me that m iliar with us. the vibe is very different than the For those who haven’t heard of energy I’ve experienced coming us, we are a group of A frican/ from the Bay Area, and traveling Black people who fight to defend often to Africa, etc. our people’s homes from predator My point is many people here banks. We have been in the news are telling me it’s impossible to here quite a bit over the last three get A frican/Black people to re or four months due to our direct spond to any call to action and actions. that people here aren’t going to do anything to stand up for our com m unity. I think those people are wrong. Do you? We intend to expand the capac ity of the Black W orking Group to engage in more action around housing justice. We also want to be able to contribute to efforts to initiate and m aintain Black and Brown com m unity patrols to em pow er our com m unities to work together to solve our problem s so that we can stop being fodder for the prison industrial complex. The Black W orking Group is organizing a youth caucus. We are looking for A frican/B lack youth who want to make a differ ence. We don’t care what country or Ready? neighborhood you come from. We don’t care what school you went to or w hether you even went to school. We want young women and men. We don’t care if you have been incarcerated because like M alcolm X taught us “if your Black, you were born in ja il!” If you are willing to study and learn our history and our situa tion right now than we want you. If you are willing to become a well- trained organizer, than we want you. If you understand that ev erything we have today is because of a sacrifice our people made yesterday and therefore it’s time now for you to make your contri bution, then we want you. Are you ready? Are you willing to get the real education you have been deprived? Are you willing to work and become stronger as a result of it? Do you want to work with our youth and make a strong contribution to stopping the prob lems instead of ju st talking about them? If y o u ’ve read this far and you agree with these points. We want you! I’d love to speak with you! I’ve included my direct contact inform ation. It’s your time to step up to the plate and build for the future. Forward ever, backwards never! Ahjamu Umi is a volunteer with The Black Working Group. He can be reached at 360-980-1409 or umifarn@gmail.com Republican ‘Small Government’ Fraud Actual policies don’t match up L awrence S. W ittner One of the most widely a d v e r tis e d , bu t fa ls e s t claim s in A m erican politics is that the modern R epubli can Party stands for “small governm ent.” In the distant past, leading Re publicans were indeed sharp crit ics of statism . And even today a few m arginal party activists, like U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, have cham pi oned lim ited governm ent -- even libertarian — policies. But this is not at all the norm for the contem porary GOP. For exam ple, the Republican Party has stood up with rem ark able consistency for the post-9/ 11 U.S. governm ent policies of w idespread surveillance, indefi nite detention without trial, tor ture, and extraordinary rendition. It has also supported govern ment subsidies for religious insti tutions, governm ent restrictions on im m igration and free passage across international boundaries, by governm ent denial of collective bargaining rights for public sec tor workers, governm ent attacks on public use of public space (for exam ple, the violent po lice assaults on the O c cupy m ovem ent), and government interference with w om en’s right to abortion and d o c to rs’ right to perform it. And this barely scratches the surface of the Republican Party’s “big governm ent” policies. The GOP has rallied fervently around governm ent interference with the right of same-sex couples to marry, governm ent provision of extraordinarily lengthy im pris onm ent for drug possession (for exam ple, in the “war on drugs”) and num erous other nonviolent offenses, such as governm ent in terference with voting rights (for exam ple, “v o ter su p p re ssio n ” laws), and governm ent restric tions on freedom of information. W here, one wonders, is the Re p u b lican o u trag e at the U.S. g o v e rn m e n t’s c ra c k d o w n on people like Bradley M anning who expose governm ent m isconduct. ^^lartlanh (Dbseruer Established 1970 Charles H. Washington EmroR.Michael L eighton A ssistant to P ublisher , P ublic R elations : M ark W ashington C reative D irector : P aul N e u feld t A ssistant to P ublisher , O ffice M anager /C lassifieds : Lucinda Baldwin A ssistant P ublisher : Leonard Latin A dvertising M anager , P ublic R elations : Tony Washington S taff W ritf . r /P hotographer : Mindy Cooper E ditor - in -C h ief , P ublisher : or on w histle-blow ing operations like WikiLeaks and its leading light, Julian Assange? If the Republican Party were a zealous defender of civil liberties, as it claim s to be, it would laud civil liberties organizations. But, in fact, the GOP has kept its dis tance from them. During the 1988 presidential cam paign, George H. W. Bush, the Republican presi dential candidate, publicly and repeatedly ridiculed his Dem o cratic opponent as a “card-carry ing m em ber o f the A CLU .” O f course, the biggest arena of U.S. government action is the mili tary. Here is where 57 percent of U.S. tax dollars currently go, thereby creating the largest na tional m ilitary m achine in world history. A Republican Party that wanted to lim it governm ent would be ea ger to cut funding for this bloated giant. But the reality is that the m odern G O P has consistently supported a vast U.S. m ilitary buildup. Today, its presidential candidate, Mitt Rom ney, assails his Democratic competitor for mili tary weakness and cham pions a $2 trillion increase in U.S. military spending over the next decade. M o re o v e r, the R e p u b lic a n Party is an avid proponent o f the most violent, abusive, and intru sive kind o f governm ent action — war. In recent decades, as U.S. m ili tary intervention or outright war raged in Nicaragua, El Salvador, G renada, Panama, Kuwait, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and other nations, the GOP was a leading source of flag-waving jin goism, as it is today in the U.S. governm ent’s confrontation with Iran. This is not a prescription for creating lim ited governm ent. As the journalist Randolph Bourne remarked in the midst of U.S. gov ernm ent m obilization for W orld W ar I: “W ar is the health of the State.” Yes, adm ittedly, there is plenty of GOP support for small govern ment when it com es to cutting taxes on the wealthy, limiting regu lation o f big business, gutting en vironmental regulations, w eaken ing legal protections for workers and racial m inorities, and slash USPS 959-680 --------------------- ing governm ent funding for pub lic education, public health, and social welfare services. But there is a com m on denom i nator to this kind o f small govern ment action. It is all designed to serve the interests o f the wealthy and powerful at the expense of everyone else. Thus, the Repub lican Party opposes governm ent alleviation o f hunger through the distribution of food stamps, but supports governm ent subsidies to corporations. Just take a look at the platform that emerged from last week’s GOP national convention. There was plenty of rhetoric about freedom and lim ited governm ent. But the p arty ’s actual policies reflect a very different agenda. For those people who can see beyond the deluge of slick cam paign advertisements, it should be clear enough that the Republican Party’s claim to support “small gov ernment” is a fraud. That claim is only an attractive mask, designed to disguise a party of privilege. Lawrence S. Wittner is profes sor o f history emeritus at State University o f New York/Albany. 4747 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Portland, OR 97211 The Portland Observer welcomes freelance submissions. 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