July is the Month of Revolutions

Don't you think it's been long enough without one?

By James R Smith

July is the month of revolutions. The American colonists did it on July 4. The French did it on Bastille Day, July 14. Many more nations celebrate their revolution, or liberation from an occupying power, in July. They include Algeria, Argentina, Belarus, Belgium, Mozambique, Peru, Venezuela, to name a few.

A gathering of rich, white men in Philadelphia received a draft of a declaration of independence from a Virginia slaveowner, Thomas Jefferson, and approved it on July 2, 1776. The Articles of Conferation, which set up the machinery of government wasn’t adopted until Nov. 15, 1777.

It would surprise most Americans today to know that our holy war of independence from a despotic king was not welcomed by many more than just those who had recently immigrated from England, and mostly opposed it.

Slaves had a very good reason for opposing a new regime run by slaveholders and emerging capitalists. By 1776, most of the English and Wales legal community held the view that slavery was a violation of Habeas Corpus, and therefore had no standing in English courts. It was clear to many slaves that their path to freedom lay with the English. By 1800, slavery had mostly died out in the mother country, and without a war. In 1833, Parliament extended the ban on slavery to all its colonies.

While white men in Parliament were debating the anti-slavery act, white men in the new United States were hunting down Nat Turner and brutally putting down numerous slave rebellions while they drove native peoples from their ago-old homes. Because white men won their independence from the British Empire, Black men had to endure another 42 years of slavery.

Native Americans also had a problem with the war for independence. After the English got over their fad of putting small pox inside blankets and giving them out as gifts for native people, the Brits settled down and became the voice of civilization in the late 18th Century.

The native peoples and the English had negotiated boundary agreements, which also applied to their colonial subjects. The boundary ran roughly down the middle of the Appalachian mountain chain. White settler encroachment was a constant problem, in spite of a 1763 edict against it. Once the war was over, settlers could go wherever they wanted to, with the law on their side.

The Impact of the loss of freedom on Black slaves

How did it feel to the slaves who took up arms for their family’s and their people’s freedom and then to have it snatched away because of British incompetence, and racist white colonists.

According to Historian Gerald Horne, it hurt a lot. He writes about this in The Counter-Revolution of 1776, New York Univ. Press, 2014:

… racism is necessary but insufficient in explaining the past and present plight of those who are now designated as “African-American.” More to the point, this beleaguered grouping has endured the misfortune of fighting and losing a struggle that led to the formation of a slaveholding republic, then a Jim Crow regime, and then becoming enmeshed in the inevitable structural inequality that flowed from the indecisive victories over powerful antagonists determined to implant bondage and apartheid.

Happy Independence Day! or not.

The 2nd American Revolution

The Civil War freed the slaves, and focused the entire economic might on the backs of industrial workers. This was a system change and a revolution for the United States. The 2nd Revolution did not outlast President Grant and the program of Reconstruction. Even under Reconstruction, federal troops occupied the states of the Confederacy, but there were not enough of them to ensure fair treatment throughout the territory.

The newly-freed Black people had to deal with attempts to reenslave them, and the outright terrorism of the Klu Klux Klan. With the compromise of 1877, an unwritten document, the Democrats, may have slightly outpolled the Republicans in the 1876 presidental election.

However, they agreed to allow the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, to assume the presidency over their candidate, Samuel Tilden. That is how much they longed for the rule of white supremacy. One of the provisions of the Compromise was “The right to deal with blacks without northern interference.” We are still protesting because of betrayals like this one that took place 143 years ago, and set back the struggle for human dignity and freedom until today.

The 3nd American Revolution

It was 89 years from the first revolution in 1776 to the second one in 1865. Move forward another 80 years to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. During the New Deal, unions were made legal to join, there were stirrings of civil rights and feminism. Most of the changes brought about during Roosevelt’s four terms in office were due to the large numbers of people who had joined left organizations.

These organizations, in turn, promoted civil rights, labor rights, women’s rights, old age pensions, etc. They included the newly formed, but millions strong, CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations), the Communist Party, faternal organizations for recent immigrants and a variety of socialist parties. Unfortunately, Roosevelt did not recommend a successor to carry on his work. During his third term, Henry Wallace was his Vice President. Wallace was at least as much a man of the left as was the President. However, Roosevelt, who wanted Wallace to succeed him, didn’t have the energy to fight the moderate to conservative party bosses, who pushed for Harry Truman, a “nobody” from Missouri, that they could manipulate.

During Truman’s regime, two atom bombs were dropped on Japanese civilians, the National Security State was created with the CIA leading the way. Labor unions were severely restricted with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act. Human rights to a beating with the McCarthy reign of terror against communists, or anyone that someone didn’t like. The 3rd American Revolution ended with Roosevelt. That’s when the counter-revolution began, and we’ve been suffering through it under a parade of southern Democrats and right-wing Republicans.

The Coming 4th American Revolution

It’s now been 75 years since the last revolution that came to an end in the1940s. Did you think we were done with revolutions? Not by a long shot. We have to keep doing them until we get it right. That means when there are no more aggrieved people to start another revolution.

We all knew the tables were turning. In 1999, we kicked off the new century early with a monster demostration in Seattle against the WTO, World Trade Organization, (a stand-in for world capitalism). Then we were hit with the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and then the invasion of Afghanistan. That set us back a few years. Then George Bush and the oil barons started an invasion of Iraq (after successive attacks by his father, George HW Bush and Bill Clinton), whose bombings and sanctions killed about a million Iraqis.

Onward to the Occupy Movement, which showed that hungry people were fighting back. Then Black Lives Matter wouldn’t let us forget the horrific toll of murders, without justice. And in 2020, Black Lives Matter is still leading the way to get us moving all across this country. It’s a matter of avoiding the enemy’s strength, which is violence. Our strength is speaking up, putting our bodies on the line, and forcing those in power to give in because of our overwhelming numbers and our tenacity. As that great Venice philosopher, Jim Morrison said, “They’ve Got the Guns, We’ve Got the Numbers.”

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A Short History of our Times

This new century struggles so
to overcome inglorious debris
from a past that gifted us
a deadly new climate

In the labyrinth of the Vatican
the miter has been stripped away
and given to a more worthy pontiff
while the bishops pray that thoughts
of abuse will leave the public mind.

The past is the present
in the Holy Land
where the oppressed
have become the oppressors,
and squander the world’s good will
that was bought too dearly to say.

In our Empire, the Queen Pretender
has been overthrown by the Usurper
who rampages through the palace.
Her loyal retainers rule the streets.
Just as before, the Masters of War cry out
for enemies, weapons and pillage.

Does anyone remember why
the Levant was destroyed?
Sown with bombs and ruins,
creating refugees and hatred
that will never die.

It is the time of the rising of Asia
and the eclipse of the past.
Even now, Los Chinos are surging
down the silk road to Africa
following Admiral Zheng He
and his giant trading ships.

Their ally, the clever ruler
of the third Rome
– and half of Asia –
brings his frozen land
back from the dead
as the neocons curse
and stamp their feet.

Oblivious to the mighty changes,
the Empire bombs and kills
on the bloody desert sands
and nurtures the homeless jihad
that will sweep across the world
until the Empire is no more.

Even the climate conspires
with the oil barons and the greedy
to make extinct the old
and make way for the new.

Meanwhile, all across the land
disappearing messages
lead to disappearing homes
and swarming developers
with their well-fed pols
and ghostly techies.

Together without a care or
—————-understanding
they blithely destroy our world
Will the people wake in time?
Will their minds join together
and banish power-mad egos
to a dusty page in history?
Or will this epoch turn
dust to dust?

(from The Dinner Party Before The Revolution, by Jim Smith - Venice West Publishers, 2020)

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