Saying Goodbye to Julian Bond

http://billfletcherjr.com/2015/saying-good-bye-and-thank-you-to-julian-bond/

I did not expect to awaken this morning to news that renowned social justice activist Julian Bond had passed away.  I had not known that he had been ill.  The reference in the announcement was that there had been a “brief illness.”

Bill Fletcher Jr. 

When I first met Julian Bond , sometime within the last fifteen years, I still had in my mind’s eye the picture of a young, audacious electoral activist from the 1960s.  Although he was still very good looking and very sharp, he had by that point reached the stage of an “elder” in the movement.  Yet being an elder did not mean disappearing or retiring from the movement for Julian.  Whether through teaching, writing or serving as the chairman of the NAACP’s Board of Directors during crucial moments in that organization’s life, Julian Bond was far from a disappearing figure.

The Charleston Massacre:

We Must Respond to the Right-wing Attempt to Reframe the Charleston Massacre

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.

June 18, 2015
BillFletcherJr.com [10]

I never cease to be amazed by the speed and the ability of the political Right to distort the truth.

The attempt by the political Right to reconstruct the Charleston massacre as an attack on Christianity defies belief.  Yet it is something that we cannot simply sit back and allow to play out.  This is a moment when we must connect the Charleston massacre with the lynchings that are regularly taking place against people of color generally and African Americans in particular.  The Charleston massacre, allegedly carried out by someone comfortable wearing the flags of apartheid South Africa and white supremacist Rhodesia, is a continuation in the line of assaults on Black America.

The fact of the matter is that there is no basis to believe that this white man walking into a Black church and murdering Black people had anything to do with any antipathy to Christianity,  It has to do with an antipathy to Black people.  It also has the markings of someone who probably wished to ignite a race war.

The political Right will do whatever it can to move the eyes of reasonable people away from analyzing race.   When African Americans, Native Americans or Latinos are attacked by the police, the Right-wing moves quickly to question the motives, not of the police but of the victims.  When acts of violence after acts of violence against African Americans are held up for the entire world to see, the political Right does its best to question each incident and try to demonstrate how any ambiguity in one case should somehow compromise the integrity of any suggestion of a demonstrable pattern.

The fact that the Charleston massacre took place in a church should, however, demonstrate one fact about religion.  White supremacists are not restrained or constrained by the fact that the targets of their hatred may be people of faith.  As far as the white supremacists are concerned, those murdered in Charleston are not worshiping the same Creator of All Things as are the white supremacists.

One thing that can be done immediately is to contact right-wing media outlets and politicians and convey, in no uncertain terms, that we do not appreciate their commentary on the Charleston massacre.   The `analyses' offered by these right-wing pundits remind me of something that my father used to say:  "It is better to keep one's mouth quiet and to be thought of as a fool than to open one's mouth and prove it."  Oh, how I wish that Fox News would appreciate that point.

[Bill Fletcher Jr has been an activist since his teen years. Upon graduating from college he went to work as a welder in a shipyard, thereby entering the labor movement. Over the years he has been active in workplace and community struggles as well as electoral campaigns. He has worked for several labor unions in addition to serving as a senior staffperson in the national AFL-CIO.

Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; an editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com [11]; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of "The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941"; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of "Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice"; and the author of "`They're Bankrupting Us' - And Twenty other myths about unions." Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web.]

Confederate Flag Raises Renewed Ire Following Charleston Church Killings

Protesters call for symbol of racial division to be removed from the grounds of the South Carolina state building in Columbia

Reposted from Portside. 

- See more at: http://portside.org/print/2015-06-19/charleston-massacre-hate-crime#sthash.ptAkXUz0.dpuf

Bill Fletcher: A few quick notes on the election

(1)There is almost always a low turnout during a midterm election and the party which controls the White House tends to lose.  This is definitely true but should not let us off the hook.

(2)The Democratic base largely stayed home except in certain important races, such as in North Carolina.  I think that we have to face the reality that the base that would be expected to vote Democratic was dis-spirited.  It is not just the ads that the Republicans ran.  The Obama administration has not led in a progressive direction.  There are certainly some major accomplishments, but there had been great expectations by many that after the 2012 election he would come out swinging.  I never had such expectations, but many people did.  Instead the administration continued to be stuck in various crises but also was not articulating a clear direction.  The Republicans were able to make Obama out to be the problem despite certain important facts, e.g., the economy has improved; troops had been pulled out of Iraq.

(3)Though the economy has improved, the condition for the average working person has not.  Yes, unemployment is down but we are still dealing with structural unemployment that is weighing on everyone.  The damage from the foreclosure crisis is far from over.  And the rich are the ones who are benefiting from the improved economy.   To turn any of this around masses of working people need to be organized to fight for a division of the wealth.  Yes, that means building and supporting labor unions.  But when the President does not make that a clarion call–except when speaking with union members–he has no answer to the public that is asking for their share.

Responding to the Supreme Court on Affirmative Action

	Bill Fletcher, Jr. June 24, 2013 Class Action The problem that people of color face... is that the advantages are never in our corner.
	My first response to the Supreme Court's decision in the University of Texas case was to breathe a sigh of relief.  I had been expecting affirmative action to be ruled illegal.  Instead the Court, in effect, said that the University had to prove that non-racial methods were ineffective in creating greater diversity. We should, however, not be truly relieved by the decision.  Affirmative action has been under attack since the 1970s.  And since then, the objective of the political Right has been to steadily weaken it, in part through an ideological assault suggesting that it is really not necessary.  The results of that ideological assault can be seen in the opinion polls that suggest that only 45% of respondents believe that affirmative action is any longer necessary. To conclude that affirmative action is no longer necessary one must be looking at a different United States of America.  One must be looking at a country that possesses no racial differential in treatment; one must be looking at a USA that has no dead cities with large concentrations of people of color; one must be looking at a USA where funding for schools is not disproportionately biased against communities of color; one must be looking at a USA that has not witnessed the  evaporation of land owned by African American and Latino independent farmers.  To conclude that affirmative action is no longer necessary, therefore, one must have decided to focus more on the fact that there is an African American in the White House rather than looking at the realities facing people of color in the USA on a daily basis.

Obama's speech - Bill Fletcher

Bill Fletcher, Jr., LA Progressive,
	Obama is definitely a great and compelling speaker, certainly by mainstream political standards. But that is not what I was pondering in listening to the Inaugural Address on January 21st. Rather, what struck me was that this was both a proclamation of the existence of a bloc of forces in this country that made it possible for him to win re-election, and at the same time, it was an unusual call to action. Listening to Obama, he named names. He spoke of different segments of the population that have been historically oppressed and marginalized. African Americans, immigrants, women, LGBTQ, etc., were all named. He spoke of inequality and the growing gap between the haves and have-nots. He spoke of climate change, as well as the need to end perpetual war. In other words, he spoke about and to those who constitute a bloc for progress in this country. He also challenged his listeners with what I believe was a call to action, a call to action that includes taking on the irrationalism and anti-governmental fervent of the political Right. So, it was quite a speech. But what does it mean? Obama's speeches have a tendency to confuse the listener, not at the moment, but in the aftermath. On the one hand, he regularly delivers powerful and thoughtful oration that is quite progressive. This takes place while he is also conducting the affairs of government in a manner that runs counter to those words. For those reasons, it is critical that we reiterate that there is Obama-the-individual and Obama-the-administration. The first is interesting, but not so important. The second is of critical importance.

How the Left Can Become a True Political Force

AlterNet [1] / By Bill Fletcher, Jr. [2], Carl Davidson [3]

November 13, 2012   

The 2012 elections may prove to have been a watershed in several different respects.  Despite the efforts by the political Right to suppress the Democratic electorate, something very strange happened:  voters, angered by the attacks on their rights, turned out in even greater force in favor of Democratic candidates.  The deeper phenomenon is that the changing demographics of the USA also became more evident—45% of Obama voters were people of color, and young voters turned out in large numbers in key counties.
Unfortunately for the political Left, these events unfolded with the Left having limited visibility and a limited impact—except indirectly through certain mass organizations—on the outcome.
The setting
On one level it is easy to understand why many Republicans found it difficult to believe that Mitt Romney did not win the election.  First, the US remains in the grip of an economic crisis with an official unemployment rate of 7.9%.  In some communities, the unemployment is closer to 20%.  While the Obama administration had taken certain steps to address the economic crisis, the steps have been insufficient in light of the global nature of the crisis.  The steps were also limited by the political orientation of the Obama administration, i.e., corporate liberal, and the general support by many in the administration for neo-liberal economics.

Why we will be voting for Obama

 By Bill Fletcher, Jr., Carl Davidson 

The 2012 Elections Have Little To Do With Obama's Record … Which Is Why We Are Voting For Him  August 9, 2012  |  

Let’s cut to the chase. The November 2012 elections will be unlike anything that any of us can remember.  It is not just that this will be a close election.  It is also not just that the direction of Congress hangs in the balance.   Rather, this will be one of the most polarized and critical elections in recent history.  

Unfortunately what too few leftists and progressives have been prepared to accept is that the polarization is to a great extent centered on a revenge-seeking white supremacy; on race and the racial implications of the moves to the right in the US political system. It is also focused on a re-subjugation of women, harsh burdens on youth and the elderly, increased war dangers, and reaction all along the line for labor and the working class. No one on the left with any good sense should remain indifferent or stand idly by in the critical need to defeat Republicans this year.

U.S. Presidential elections are not what progressives want them to be

A large segment  of what we will call the ‘progressive forces’ in US politics approach US elections generally, and Presidential elections in particular, as if: (1) we have more power on the ground than we actually possess, and (2) the elections are about expressing our political outrage at the system. Both get us off on the wrong foot.

The US electoral system is among the most undemocratic on the planet.