[Fdu] 4 statements on Charlottesville: CUPE-O; DSA, IWW, ISO

[Cynthia Wright]

  An Injury to One is an Injury to All!

------------------------------------------------------------------------


  We Will Not Let the Virus of Hate Spread


      CUPE Ontario

Hate crawled up from the sewers of Charlottesville, Virginia on Friday 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Unite_the_Right_rally> and flooded 
the streets with thousands of white men baring torches and chanting 
unbelievable hatred.

Many thought we were past such horrors, that the days of torches and 
pitch forks held high by angry white men screaming hate were gone for 
good. We might have hoped that the racist haters that still exist 
understand that this kind of venom just won’t be tolerated by most 
people in our society.

The ‘Proud Boys’ confronted in Halifax

The ‘Proud Boys’ confronted in Halifax.

With Friday’s rally of violent white supremacists this hope died. What 
happened in Charlottesville was an overt manifestation of what is 
experienced by millions of First Nations, Black, south Asian, Hispanic 
and most non-white people everyday. What is exceptional about this 
moment, is that there is a President in the U.S. who has been fanning 
the flames of racist hatred.

None of us can afford to stay silent. The future of our society is at 
stake. And we cannot be fooled into believing this is a problem only 
south of the border.


      In Canada Too

We have already seen branches of the so called “Proud Boys 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOAgNxp2_7U>,” attack a First Nations’ 
rally in Canada. Affiliates of the white supremacists behind 
Charlottesville are organizing in Canada. Their propaganda has been 
found postered in neighbourhoods all across the country.

It is true that we are living through difficult times because of 
increasing economic inequality. Many working people here and in the 
United States are losing their jobs, being forced to take low-paid and 
precarious work, struggling to make ends meet. It is this vulnerability 
that racist haters, white supremacists and neo-nazis are trying to 
exploit to pit us against each other.

We cannot let this happen.

Let’s be clear, it is not racialized people that are taking jobs away 
from working people or responsible for the increase in part-time, 
temporary low-wage jobs. It is the largely white corporate elite who 
keep shipping jobs off shore so they can exploit other racialized 
workers in sweatshops. They are the ones who rake in hundreds of 
billions in profits while cutting jobs, privatizing the things we all 
own in common and refusing to pay a living wage.

We must all rise together against racism and hate. It is only together 
that we can truly address the inequalities in our society. •

CUPE Ontario is the political wing of the Canadian Union of Public 
Employees – Canada’s largest union – in the country’s largest province. 
This statement was first published on their website cupe.on.ca 
<https://cupe.on.ca/will-not-let-virus-hate-spread/>.


  Statement on Nazi Violence in Charlottesville


      Democratic Socialists of America

Yesterday's events in Charlottesville, Virginia are a stark reminder 
that we must fight for socialism or succumb to the barbarism of white 
supremacy.

We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the white supremacist, 
racist, anti-Semitic terrorist attack on our comrades in the DSA, the 
ISO, IWW, Antifa and all others who joined forces in the streets of 
Charlottesville, VA yesterday.

The final number remains unknown. However, latest reports suggest that 
at least one person has lost their life and at least 19 injured. Two DSA 
members were hospitalized and have since been discharged. There are 
reports that an ISO comrade was also injured. A comrade reportedly from 
the Industrial Workers of the World lost their life on the front line of 
the battle against fascism.

In the face of growing racist, anti-Semitic, white supremacist violence, 
comrades from across the left came together in an incredible display of 
left unity. They came from many different organizations but spoke with 
one voice, chanting “Black Lives Matter” and other pro-solidarity 
slogans. Undaunted, they held the line and showed the fascists that they 
shall not pass. The day ended with the streets of Charlottesville free 
of Nazi scum.


      Build a Strong United Front

We call on the left to build a strong united front against this 
emboldened right wing. We need to be clear and recognize that white 
supremacist terrorism will not simply go away if it's ignored. This 
violent and dangerous movement should never be allowed to have a 
platform. It should always be fought against by the strength of our 
united front.

It is important to acknowledge the differing responses of the police to 
white supremacist marches and terrorism and their reactions to Black 
Lives Matter protests and marches. Black Lives Matter protests are 
always met with the worst police brutality and suppression while white 
supremacist marches are allowed to freely attack counter-protesters on 
many occasions.

In this way, we plainly see whose side the police are on. From the days 
of the creation of the modern day police in the 1800s, they were used as 
a violent force for the physical suppression of a resistant working 
class, of Black slaves, and indigenous people. Today, their role of 
social control and oppression remains largely the same.

Trump delivered a meandering and at times incoherent statement Saturday 
afternoon. During the statement, where at one point he even talked about 
totally unrelated “record employment,” he predictably blamed “all sides” 
for the violence, as if the left has a centuries-long history of state, 
systemic, and societal violence against oppressed groups. This is a 
tired line that the right wing uses to justify its terror. Trump also 
spoke of the need for “law and order,” but we know that this is a signal 
for more police and vigilante terrorism against Black and Brown 
communities and the left.

We believe that the terror unleashed on our comrades can be defeated. We 
also believe that the wider system of racist oppression can be defeated, 
but only with the ending of the capitalist system which birthed it.

We encourage you to donate to help with the medical costs 
<https://www.gofundme.com/medical-fund-for-comrades-in-cville> of 
comrades injured in the attack. As we mourn for the dead, we must also 
fight like hell for the living. DSA members across the country are 
turning out for solidarity actions in their communities. Get in touch 
with your local chapter <http://www.dsausa.org/chapters> to find ways to 
participate.

Together, we will fight fascism and build the better world we know is 
possible. Solidarity forever. •


  After the Murder in Charlottesville, We Must All Unite to Defend
  Ourselves and Each Other


      General Defense Committee (GDC) of the Industrial Workers of the World

We are horrified but not surprised at the rise of political violence and 
murder from the alt-right and other fascist groups across the country. 
Today's murder was not an isolated incident, but is the latest in a 
string of violent attacks and murders from fascists. These include the 
shooting of an IWW/GDC member in Seattle, the stabbing double murder on 
the Portland MAX train, and the recent bombing of Dar Al Farooq mosque 
in Minnesota, among many others.

Fascism is a deadly threat to all of us. There is no escape from the 
demand that we confront it. Politicians, the police, and the university 
will not save us. We cannot vote our way to safety. As always, police 
aided and protected the fascists, while permitting and assisting 
wholesale violence against counter-protesters. University officials 
refused to use campus security to protect students and others from a 
gang of hundreds of fascists.

The General Defense Committee calls upon all people who value human 
life, freedom, and dignity, to enter the struggle against fascism in 
every way they can. Give to the fundraisers for survivors and surviving 
family members of today's fascist murder. Talk to your family and 
friends, your coworkers and neighbors, and determine a way to directly 
and concretely confront fascist hate wherever it appears. If you can, 
join your local General Defense Committee <https://www.iww.org/> or 
another local antifascist group.

We may be entering a new stage of struggle. We are determined to meet 
the challenges ahead of us. We will beat back and defeat the fascists. 
We must defend each other. That means all of us.

An injury to one is an injury to all! •


  This Is the Time to Unite
  and Fight Far-Right Terror


      International Socialist Organization

The mask has been ripped off the supposedly new ‘alt-right’ movement to 
reveal the familiar and horrifying face of fascism that most people 
thought was a relic of history.

Last weekend's “Unite the Right” rally 
<https://socialistworker.org/node/36678> in Charlottesville, Virginia, 
wasn't about some fake defense of ‘free speech’, but championing a 
Confederate statue. It welcomed open Nazis into its ranks, who roamed 
the streets looking for people to assault – and ultimately committed a 
vehicle-terror attack against a crowd of peaceful protesters, killing 
32-year-old local activist Heather Heyer and injuring several dozen 
others, many seriously.

The outraged response to Nazi terror in Charlottesville was immediate 
and powerful, with protests and vigils in hundreds of cities and 
denunciations of the violent racists coming from everywhere. Everywhere 
but Donald Trump's White House, that is.

This is a decisive moment. “Will the overt displays of racism return the 
extreme right-wing to the margins of politics, or will they serve to 
normalize the movement, allowing it to weave itself deeper into the 
national conversation?” asked the New York Times 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/far-right-groups-blaze-into-national-view-in-charlottesville.html>.

The answer depends on what the millions of people who despise Donald 
Trump and want to stand against him and the right do in the coming weeks 
and months.

Now is the time to overcome the fear that the fascists want us to feel 
and organize demonstrations with overwhelming numbers – to stop this 
cancer now, before it can grow into something far more threatening. That 
means organizing broad protests open to everyone affected by this threat 
– which is just about everyone – to prove the far right is a tiny minority.

After the sickening violence of the storm troopers in Charlottesville, 
we know that the far right isn't looking to gain power through winning 
votes, and they don't care about approval ratings. We can't defeat them 
by following the liberal advice to ‘just ignore them’.

If we don't stop the far right today, they will stop us from organizing 
tomorrow – it's that simple. This isn't a battle that we chose, but it's 
one we have to win.

Let's also be clear that we can't rely on the police to protect us from 
fascists or on the government to deny them permits. It's up to all of us 
to defend our communities and our movements from the right.

If we're successful, Charlottesville could be remembered as a turning 
point, not only in our fight against the right, but in our ability to 
organize for our own demands.


      A United Fight to Confront and Defeat Fascism

The International Socialist Organization is wholly committed to this 
urgent struggle, and we join with the call that has come from so many 
organizations and individuals since Charlottesville: for a united fight 
to confront and defeat fascism.

There will be flash points in the coming weeks, from Boston to Berkeley, 
but this fight needs to be taken into every city and town, into every 
community, onto every campus, and into every workplace. We appeal to all 
our supporters and the whole left to take this stand: Now is the time to 
unite and fight.

The most horrifying incident from Charlottesville last weekend was, of 
course, neo-Nazi James Fields' terror attack, in which the Vanguard 
America member plowed his car into a contingent of marchers that 
included members of the International Socialist Organization, Democratic 
Socialists of America and Industrial Workers of the World, among others.

But the project of fascism is a lot larger than solitary terror strikes. 
They want to build an organization of disciplined thugs to 
systematically brutalize and intimidate the oppressed – a program that, 
as history shows, inevitably involves murder.

In this instance, it was James Fields who was the killer. But the Nazis 
and far-right ‘peacekeepers’ who came heavily armed to Charlottesville 
were prepared to inflict violence on people of color, Jews and the left. 
They are more than willing to kill individuals in order to pave the way 
for their real aim – mass murder and genocide.

The real face of fascism was apparent throughout the weekend in 
Charlottesville: Hundreds of torch-wielding men 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/12/charlottesville-far-right-crowd-with-torches-encircles-counter-protest-group>, 
chanting “Blood and soil!” and assaulting counter-protesters; groups 
roaming the streets with weapons and shields, looking out especially for 
people of color like 20-year-old Deandre Harris 
<http://www.theroot.com/interview-20-year-old-deandre-harris-speaks-out-about-1797796038> 
to brutalize.

As ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson wrote 
<https://www.propublica.org/article/a-new-generation-of-white-supremacists-emerges-in-charlottesville>, 
the far right in Charlottesville:

“exhibited unprecedented organization and tactical savvy. Hundreds of 
racist activists converged on a park on Friday night, striding through 
the darkness in groups of five to 20 people. A handful of leaders with 
headsets and handheld radios gave orders as a pickup truck full of 
torches pulled up nearby. Within minutes, their numbers had swelled well 
into the hundreds. They quickly and efficiently formed a lengthy 
procession and begun marching, torches alight, through the campus of the 
University of Virginia.”

The fascists in Charlottesville were confident. One smug little Nazi 
named Sean Patrick Nielsen bragged to the Washington Post 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/state-of-emergency-declared-after-white-nationalists-gathering-in-charlottesville/2017/08/12/7c67cb72-7fb1-11e7-b2b1-aeba62854dfa_video.html>, 
“I'm here because our republican values are, number one, standing up for 
local white identity, our identity is under threat, number two, free 
market, and number three, killing Jews.”

All of which made Donald Trump's initial statement condemning violence 
“on many sides” all the more sickening to millions of people – and a 
cause for celebration for the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/08/13/one-group-loved-trumps-remarks-about-charlottesville-white-supremacists/>.

This is another warning sign of the dangers of the current moment – with 
a Trump administration infested with far-right racists, from alt-right 
promoter Steve Bannon to Euro-fascist ally Sebastian Gorka to 
Confederacy enthusiast Jeff Sessions.

We shouldn't have any illusions: The toxic combination of a far right 
that spans the range from open Nazis to people with access to key White 
House personnel produced the biggest show of force for American fascism 
in generations in Charlottesville.


      Solidary Demonstrations

Our side has a powerful potential weapon to use against this growing 
threat: overwhelming numbers. The events of Charlottesville – not only 
the terror attack, but the Nazi flags, the torch-wielding march and the 
thuggish violence – horrified the vast majority of U.S. society.

 From Saturday night through Monday, solidarity demonstrations were 
called in more than 400 cities 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/counter-protests-across-country-charlottesville-rally_us_598fdd95e4b090964297846f> 
across the country – an explosion of protest that recalled the days 
after Trump's election last November.

Jason Kessler, the Charlottesville resident who initially called the 
Unite the Right rally, was chased from his own press conference 
<http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/jason-kessler-blames-charlottesville-clashes-local-cops-article-1.3408166> 
by furious local residents. Statements poured in from across the country 
condemning white supremacy, domestic terrorism – and Trump's weak 
response. The corporate media suddenly stopped referring to Richard 
Spencer and his pals as ‘alt-right’ and called them the more accurate 
‘white supremacists’.

Dozens of Republicans in Congress, who made their careers out of 
pandering to racism and reaction, rushed to condemn the Nazis and 
distance themselves from Trump – who was finally forced on Monday to 
explicitly condemn white supremacists.

Even then, though, it should be noted that Trump's response to 
Charlottesville is to call for more “law and order” – a racist buzzword 
that means giving police and immigration authorities more unchecked 
power to detain and brutalize people of color.

The forces of ‘law and order’ were all over the streets of 
Charlottesville – and they stood by as the orgy of right-wing violence 
took place 
<https://www.propublica.org/article/police-stood-by-as-mayhem-mounted-in-charlottesville>.

Instead of appealing to the government to defend us, we have to build 
mass protests to defend ourselves and one another. The strategy of 
relying on small groups of anti-fascists to fight on behalf of the 
oppressed was shown to be insufficient in Charlottesville by the bigots' 
large mobilization.

This is the moment to build united fronts with as many organizations as 
possible to confront the right – not only left-wing groups, but unions 
and civil rights organizations, down to every possible club on campuses.

In Portland, Oregon, this type of coalition brought out more than 1,000 
people in June to confront hate groups 
<https://socialistworker.org/2017/06/12/how-did-portland-stand-united-against-hate> 
that celebrated the racist murders of Ricky John Best and Taliesin 
Myrddin Namkai-Meche.

We need more of this kind of organizing in the coming weeks when the far 
right descends on Boston on August 19, and throughout the school year as 
fascists like Richard Spencer attempt a provocative tour of campuses. 
The Movement for Black Lives has called a national day of action for 
August 19.

On August 27, the far right is planning an all-out mobilization in 
Berkeley, California, for a “No to a Marxist America” rally, where they 
will try to repeat their racist rampages of last spring. But 
anti-fascists have been preparing for weeks to send the message 
<http://august27berkeley.com> that we will not retreat in the face of 
their violence and hate.


      Fighting Back Against Racist Terror

Amid the many condemnations of the far right in Charlottesville, there 
has been one distinctly false note coming from many political leaders: 
that these fascists are somehow ‘un-American’.

Back Seat Drivers - by Mike Constable

Violent racism has deep roots in this country, and terrorism in defense 
of the right's twisted ideals is as American as white sheets and a 
swinging rope.

But fighting back against racist terror is also very much a part of U.S. 
history. Those who tell us to ignore the racists and they'll go away are 
either ignorant of that – or they don't want us to build movements 
against the far right because they instinctively sense that our 
movements won't stop there.

This is the time to learn the history of previous generations who fought 
the KKK and the courageous struggle against fascism in Europe. And it's 
time to come together in action to give ourselves the courage to 
confront the forces that want us to stay home.

Just as we've taken strength from the bravery shown by the residents of 
Ferguson, Missouri, we can take strength from the words of Heather 
Heyer's mother 
<http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-heather-heyer-profile/index.html> 
about her daughter: “She would never back down from what she believed 
in. And that's what she died doing, she died fighting for what she 
believed in.”

The threat of the right is growing, but it has to be faced and overcome 
in order to fight for any of our demands. One organizer in Columbus, 
Ohio, gave voice to the instinct for solidarity and struggle that has 
been felt around the country since Charlottesville:

“When we started planning the Columbus airport protest [against Trump's 
Muslim travel ban] in January, several right-wingers and Islamophobic 
scum started posting graphic photos of animals and people being run over 
by cars.

“Their aim was clear: to bully and threaten, and make people scared to 
come out. For several hours late at night, we just kept taking those 
photos down. Hundreds and hundreds of people showed up anyway to fight 
the ban. We kept a look out for errant cars, but they didn't show up. 
And so we became part of the historic airport actions that beat back the 
first version of the Muslim ban.

“These fascists will try to silence us, they will try to intimidate us, 
they will try to make us feel afraid. But we are many, they are few.” •

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