Fighting racism and homophobia
'An injury to one is an injury to all'
The following is excerpted from a talk by Bob McCubbin at
a June 9 Workers World meeting in Buffalo celebrating lesbian,
gay, bi and trans Pride month. McCubbin is the author of "The
Roots of Lesbian and Gay Oppression," a Marxist analysis that
blazed the trail for other researchers and theorists. Today
McCubbin is a leading organizer of the San Diego chapter of the
International Action Center.
I was an anti-racist and anti-war activist here in Buffalo,
N.Y., in the 1960s. In fact, Youth Against War and Fascism, the
youth group of Workers World Party at that time, used my
apartment as an organizing center for several years.
The U.S. Secret Service broke into the office the night
before presidential candidate George Wallace brought his racist
campaign to Buffalo in 1968. All they found were anti-racist
and anti-Vietnam War signs and banners. It was probably in that
apartment, or in the corner restaurant across the street, that
one morning in late June 1969 I opened up the New York Times
and saw the headline, "Homosexuals Riot in Greenwich
Village."
To me this article represented news of the birth of a new
political movement, and it filled me with hope and fear at the
same time. I knew my own life was going to be changed in some
fundamental and profound ways. But that's what struggle always
does. It opens up new possibilities. It touches and changes
even those not directly involved. It inspires us to believe in
the possibility of a better, more just world. It inspires us to
get involved. Frederick Douglass said it best: "Without
struggle there is no progress."
I was going to focus tonight on some of the theoretical
insights birthed by the Stonewall Rebellion and the truly
global movement that it sparked. But when I got into Buffalo, I
heard about the racial targeting here, and so I decided to
shift the focus of my presentation somewhat.
I want to talk a little bit about what's been happening with
the movements for social justice in southern California and
especially San Diego, where I've lived for the past 12 years.
There are some strong parallels with developments here, both in
terms of the increase in repression and in the response.
Fresh winds of struggle
There's a fresh spirit of struggle among lesbian, gay, bi
and trans youth in southern California. I'm involved with a
coalition called the Stonewall Initiative for Equal Rights that
has been organizing in Los Angeles, Orange County and San
Diego.
This coalition had its origins several years ago when a
number of Los Angeles groups and activists got together to
discuss the mounting police harassment of gay men in the Sunset
Junction area of Los Angeles. The police were targeting men in
front of gay bars and on streets. The police message was clear:
"We want the gays out of this community."
A strong, defiant rally organized by the Stonewall
Initiative on a busy street corner at the very center of the
community gave our answer: "We know the police are acting at
the behest of the real estate interests that want to gentrify
this community. We know the police don't serve us. We will
organize larger and larger protests until the police stop
targeting us."
But this one powerful rally did the trick. At least for the
present, the police have pulled back.
This past February in San Diego, the ultra-right-wing
Changing Gays movement called a conference for teachers and
parents of lesbian, gay, bi and trans youth. The idea was to
spread the homophobic and homo-hating idea that these youth can
and should become straight.
Well, a spirited six-hour picket line and rally outside the
conference sent a very different message--a message of pride
and resistance. This Stonewall Initiative action drew youth
from Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego.
In April, an outpouring of about three times as many
lesbian, gay, bi and trans activists--mostly youth--descended
on Newport Beach, a very conservative town in Orange County.
They came to protest another right-wing, racist, sexist,
anti-gay conference.
The impetus for the action was the homophobia and
homo-hatred of the ultra-right conference organizers and
attendees. But many of the rally speakers addressed the need to
fight racism, the prison-industrial complex and the racist
death penalty. There were many youths of color in attendance at
this demonstration.
And when an announcement was made about an upcoming West
Coast mobilization in San Francisco in support of death-row
political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, many of the lesbian, gay,
bi and trans youth expressed an interest in going to show
support for this brave and uncompromising revolutionary.
This kind of solidarity--this instinctive understanding by
the youth that an injury to one is an injury to all--is exactly
what's needed to advance our struggle. It is the key to victory
for all the struggles of working and oppressed people.
Racist police killings in San Diego
In San Diego, the Committee Against Police Brutality began
several years ago as an ad hoc coalition following the police
killing of unarmed Black athlete Deme trius DuBois. The police
were called in response to a minor misunderstanding among
neighbors that was completely resolved prior to their arrival.
But in a typically racist manner, the cops saw a young,
muscular African American man and immediately assumed he was
the problem.
A minute later Demetrius DuBois was dead of 12 bullet
wounds, six of them in his back.
Hundreds of people immediately pro tested at the site of the
murder. And for 12 weeks running, those of us who had actively
worked to build the first protest gathered downtown outside the
county courthouse every Friday afternoon for an angry picket
line denouncing the police.
But the killing spree of the San Diego police didn't begin
with Demetrius DuBois and it didn't end with him. In the two
years since his death at least 12 other unarmed people have
been gunned down by San Diego law enforcement agencies. And
this pattern is being repeated in city after city all across
the U.S.
What has been unleashed is a nationwide campaign of terror
that targets the most oppressed, especially people of color.
Its purpose is to instill fear and hopelessness. It complements
another instrument of repression, the new growth industry: the
prison-industrial complex.
With over 2 million people in prison--more and more of them
women--and another 3 million people awaiting trial, on parole
or on probation, the U.S. has a larger percentage of its
population entangled in the so-called justice system than any
other country in the world. Racial profiling and three-strikes
laws help to feed this monster.
And there's the racist death penalty. Almost 4,000 people
are on death row, disproportionately people of color. And all
of them are poor. You don't get put on death row if you can
afford a decent lawyer.
United we stand
Could all this repression have anything to do with the
obscene disparity of wealth in this country? How could it not?
While most of us, gay and straight alike, scramble to pay
higher and higher utility bills and rent, the Congress--with
Democrats and Republicans basically united on this--pass a tax
cut bill that will hand over billions and billions more to the
already immensely rich.
While the cities decay, hospitals close and other urban
problems mount, the municipal governments can find nothing
better to do with our tax money than finance new stadiums and
hire more police. In the last 10 years California has built 22
new prisons, but only one new university.
Yes, the rich are in control, now more than ever. They
expropriate the wealth that our work produces. While millions
are forced to forego health care in order to pay the rent, the
big banks, oil companies, military-industrial corporations and
other corporate giants ravage the planet in constant search of
ever-greater profits.
We are faced with a system based on unbridled greed, a
system that has total disregard for the needs of this and
future generations. A system that, in truth, is destroying the
very basis for the continuation of life on this planet.
The class that rules finds homophobia, sexism and especially
racism indispensable weapons in its ongoing war against the
overwhelming majority of humanity: the working people and
oppressed of the world. And as long as the capitalists can keep
us divided, their system of profits before human needs will
continue to function unchallenged.
Lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people need
equality. Women and people of color need equality. Workers need
equality. And to get there, we need solidarity with each
other's struggles. Together, we can build a powerful movement.
Together, we can win a better world.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
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