www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, November-December 2005EditorialCelebrating the life of Rosa ParksThe death of Rosa Parks on Oct. 31 immediately pulled the story of the momentous Montgomery Bus Boycott she had set in motion 50 years ago off the dusty shelves of history and put it on the front pages of newspapers. So great was the outpouring of recognition for the historic importance of her act of defiance, when she refused to give up her seat to a white man, went to jail for it, and triggered the Civil Rights Movement that changed the face of America, that it forced Congress to approve nothing less than a resolution allowing her remains to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda, the first woman ever to be so honored. THOUSANDS POUR INTO THE FUNERAL The real measure of the recognition of Rosa Parks' importance, however, was not this formal honor, so much as the seven hour funeral filled with songs and passionate eulogies in Detroit, where thousands poured into the Greater Grace Temple for the service, many having spent the cold night on the sidewalks outside hoping to ensure they could get in. That President Bush failed to so much as send a representative was duly noted as a sign of his complete disregard for how deep is the respect of the American people for Rosa Parks and what she represented. The importance of the Montgomery Bus Boycott that remained in the consciousness of Americans across the whole land 50 years later, was caught and recorded as it erupted by NEWS & LETTERS, which had been founded that same year. Raya Dunayevskaya, the founder of Marxist-Humanism, put it on the same level as the Hungarian Revolution against Communism that erupted less than a year later. What both events manifested was the simultaneity of the spontaneity of action and the organization of thought that marked each of them. She saw this as signaling a movement from practice that was itself a form of theory. N&L was created that year so that the voices of revolt from below could be heard unseparated from the articulation of a philosophy of revolution for our age. (See John Alan's "Black/Red View") Yet it is the very greatness of the movement Rosa Parks set in motion that demands a look at where we are, 50 years later. None of those, preachers and politicians alike, who gave her such justifiable praise at her funeral in Detroit, failed to note how far we still must go to end racism and achieve true freedom. What is needed for that, however, is to recognize the persistence of racism for what it is--a social manifestation of capitalism. Nothing more exposed how deep and permanent is the racism deeply embedded in American capitalism than the way Hurricane Katrina tore the veil off of the racial and class divides that forever continue to put American "civilization" on trial. It showed us the breadth and depth of the social crises ready to erupt in all the many other "New Orleans" across the land. STATE OF BLACK AMERICA 50 YEARS LATER * The brutal beating of a 64-year-old man by police in New Orleans little more than a month later, in the aftermath of Katrina, could have happened anywhere. All that its being caught on videotape meant was a flashback to Rodney King's beating as the police pleaded "not guilty" and asked for "understanding" of the "trying times." * The uprising that erupted in Toledo, Ohio, about the same time in mid-October, broke out in anger at police who had come to protect a neo-Nazi group that planned a march in a neighborhood whose residents were deadset against allowing it. It immediately evoked memories of a rebellion that broke out in Benton Harbor, Michigan against police abuse two years ago--and Cincinnati two years before that--and Los Angeles a decade before that. All of them were signs of the anger that exists in African-American communities across the U.S., ready to explode at any time. There can be few Americans looking at the pictures of burning cars in Paris who do not recognize in them the same kind of angry youth ready to lash out at the police brutality, discrimination, unemployment and poverty they suffer daily right here. * The percentage of Black unemployment has consistently been double that of white workers for decades. A new report has now indicated even more shocking figures concerning the steep decline in Black union membership over the past five years. While white union membership is down 5.4 %, the number of African Americans in unions, which crucially means better-paying jobs, has fallen by 14.4%--and the trend promises to accelerate as the auto and parts suppliers cut their heavily Black work force to the bone. (see "Workers pick up tab for GM and Delphi bailouts"). At the same time, the past 20 years have seen the incredible buildup of the prison industrial complex in which no less than two million men and women are held in jails and prisons, turning them into what many see as warehouses for our unemployed youth, heavily Black and brown. There is no question that we have a very long way to go to win a new human society and end the racism that is so deeply imbedded in American capitalism. What becomes important is to see that this does not mean that the courage and reason of the African-American freedom fighters who refused to accept segregation and opened a new stage in the struggle for freedom 50 years ago has meant nothing. What it does mean is that the struggles that are sure to continue cannot be separated from a philosophy of liberation. Without that we are left with one more "unfinished revolution" such as has characterized the U.S. from its birth. What is demanded to uproot the permanence of the racism we continue to suffer is nothing less than the concept of "absolute negativity" that Marx called "revolution in permanence." |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
