September S. 2012______________________________
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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
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