Marxism and the right to self-determination
From a talk by Gloria Verdieu at the Nov. 13-14 National
Fightback Conference.
Why is it the duty of a Marxist party to defend the right of
self-determination for oppressed nationalities?
Since Workers World Party's founding in 1959, it has
supported the struggles of all oppressed peoples. It has
recognized the right of nations to self-determination,
including the nationally oppressed peoples inside the United
States.
Self-determination means recognizing that the people of
oppressed nationalities must have the power to decide for
themselves what is best for them. We cannot go into an
oppressed community and tell it what to do.
Forty percent of nationally oppressed working families in
the U.S. are low income, compared to 20 percent of white
working families.
These statistics come from a report that defines low income
as a family of four earning less than $37,000 a year. It
defines poverty as a family of four earning less than $18,000 a
year.
In California, almost 40 percent of nationally oppressed
working families are low income, compared to less than 14
percent of white families. Forty-two percent of low-income
working families have one or both parents without health
insurance.
We support and defend affirmative action as a step toward
addressing the problem of inequality. Let's look at education
in California.
In October, the California Department of Education released
its 2004 Stan dardized Testing and Reporting Program Data and
Accountability Progress Report.
In the category of English Language Arts, 25 percent of
African American and 21 percent of Latin@ students were at the
proficient or advanced level, compared to 61 percent of white
students.
In mathematics, 18 percent of African American and 21
percent of Latin@ students were at the proficient or advanced
level, compared to 46 percent of white students.
What is the composition of the public school population in
California? The ethnic breakdown is 67 percent non-white, 48
percent economically disadvantaged, 25 percent
non-native-English speakers, and 10 percent Special Education
students.
Looking at this breakdown, the overwhelming majority of the
students in the public schools come from nationally oppressed
families. Many of these children have special needs.
We support organizations in oppressed communities that call
for creating programs that address the specific educational
needs of these communities. These communities need more
doctors, more teachers, more scientists, more engineers,
etc.
Shouldn't the schools that train young people in these
professions be located in these communities for the convenience
of the people? Shouldn't these communities decide how the
schools are run, what is taught and who does the teaching? This
is all part of national self-determination for oppressed
people.
Racism & Three Strikes Law
Let's move on to the so-called justice system.
In 2003, 44 percent of state and federal prisoners were
Black, 19 percent were Latin@, 2 percent were other
nationalities of color, and 35 percent were white. When
prisoners of all nationally oppressed groups are combined, we
constitute 65 percent of the state and federal prison
population. Yet we are less than 30 percent of the total
population of the country.
In California, nationally oppressed communities constitute
39 percent of the total population. But nationally oppressed
prisoners constitute 66 percent of the state prison
population.
California's prison population is escalating. A lot of it is
due to the Three Strikes Law that has been in effect for 10
years now. A report examining the effect of the Three Strikes
Law on African Americans and Latin@s was released last month.
It revealed that African Americans and Latin@s are imprisoned
under Three Strikes at a far higher rate than whites.
Black people account for 22 percent of first-strike felony
arrests, compared with almost 36 percent for whites. With
second strike arrests, however, the percentages are almost
reversed. Thirty-six percent of second strike arrests are of
Black people, compared with 26 percent for whites.
With third strike arrests, the percentage for Blacks
increases to almost 45 percent. For whites, the percentage
decreases to 25. So who does the Three Strikes law target?
The statistics make it very clear that this is a racist law.
People of oppressed nationalities make up 70 percent of third
strikers.
In the last election, there was a Cali fornia ballot
proposition that purported to "fix" the Three Strikes Law. If
passed, Prop. 66 might have meant the re-sentencing and
possible release of up to 4,000 out of more than 7,000 third
strike prisoners, including many Black and Latin@ prisoners.
The measure was defeated.
But who would have benefited most from the revision of the
law? Who would have qualified for re-sentencing? Who would have
been able to come up with the money for a new trial?
We support the struggles of prisoners and their families for
justice. We didn't discourage anyone from voting for Prop. 66.
But we went to the Prop. 66 meetings and presented the facts.
Three Strikes is a brutal, inhuman, racist and unjust law. It
cannot be amended or fixed to make it right. The only fix for
Three Strikes is to abolish it.
Twenty-one other states have similar laws. Abolishing Three
Strikes in Cali fornia could set the stage for similar
movements elsewhere. All these laws need to be abolished.
Instead, the capitalist government is determined to convince
the public that the only solution is to continue to lock people
up. The big-business media offer the same solution.
A different view
We have a different view. We support the struggle to shut
down the prison-industrial complex and release all political
prisoners.
We believe that in an important sense, all prisoners in the
U.S. are political prisoners. When the power to imprison is in
the hands of the working class and the oppressed communities,
the people may decide that crimes of survival and crimes driven
by oppressive conditions are not really crimes at all.
The people of these communities are perfectly capable of
deciding what constitutes a danger to society. We think they
may conclude that greedy landlords, racist bosses and lazy
capitalists are much more deserving of incarceration than
people who steal to eat or use drugs to ease the pain of
poverty.
And what about killer cops? We support the struggles of
oppressed people against police brutality and police terror.
The tremendous revolutionary potential of the oppressed
communities in this country haunts the ruling class. It uses
the cops in a non-stop war of terror to try to keep these
communities unorganized, beaten down and in constant fear.
We need class unity if we are to win the struggle for social
and economic justice. White workers need to understand that the
racism that divides our class is the bosses' most powerful
weapon against us all.
When white workers stand shoulder to shoulder with workers
of oppressed nationalities and take up the struggles of
oppressed workers as their own, the victory of our class is
assured.
Reprinted from the Dec. 2, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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