Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

Today is Emancipation Day, and millions of Afro-Caribbean people within the Region and across the diaspora will be celebrating the abolition of slavery across the British Empire. We have come a far way since this first Emancipation Day, but there are still many ingrained colonialist systems and thought processes that we are battling to overcome today.

While there are many books, both fiction and non-fiction, that detail the horrors of slavery, I wanted to focus on a post-emancipation narrative from within the Region for this months review. Emancipation was not clean and easy, and many of the newly liberated found themselves facing entirely new struggles, or systems that were just thinly disguised plantation throwbacks.

So, for my August reading, I have chosen The Rainmakers Mistake by Erna Brodber. Although this is a slim volume, Brodbers use of speculative elements makes this story richly dense, and in an abstract way she shows how the emancipated struggle to uncover the truth of their histories, while simultaneously trying to hold onto their individual and communal identities as the world changes rapidly around them.

Founders Day is our day to celebrate [Mr Charlie] lifting us from beneath the earth and placing us on top of the earth to realise our creativity. Look at what I have brought you here to build, he adds. Clearly, this section of the programme is about appreciation and not just of Woodville, but also of us. With our new cloth rolled up like mats, we dig into the animals prepared in appreciation of us. -p.6

The Rainmakers Mistake opens with a story within a story, recounted by a five-year-old girl named Queenie. In the beginning, she says, plantation owner Mr Charlie was granted a patent on a thousand acres of land. He tried and failed to work the land by himself and decided that he needed labour. He makes himself a workforce by ejaculating into holes in the earth. These holes grow yams, which he reaps at various stages to create babies, children, teenagers, and adults, all of whom are assigned various tasks throughout the plantation according to their age set. He also has an overseer, called Woodville, who helps him to manage the plantation.

However, when Queenie and her age mates are just one year shy of entering the pickney gang, one of the adults a woman named I-sis gives birth to a pale-skinned, non-yam baby named Sallywater, which seems to upset Woodville. Soon after, Mr Charlie summons the pre-pickney gang children and declares that it is 1834 and they are free. Confused, they wait under Mr Charlies veranda for further instructions. Later, Mr Charlie returns, summons those who are over six, and makes a similar declaration: its 1838 and everyone on the plantation is now free. Emancipation and the non-yam baby reveal enrage Woodville. While the plantation workers struggle to find out what free means and how it will affect their yearly routine, Woodville starts yelling accusations at Mr Charlie, which no one seems to understand. When he overhears one of the final questions, he starts to laugh so hard, that he makes a tornado that uproots Mr Charlies great house and sends it flying away with him still inside.

In the confusion that follows, the group of plantation workers splits and so does the land. I-sis and her non-yam baby go one way and Woodville goes another. The rest of the population settles between them on a newly formed island they call Cabarita. The Future and The Norm lie in front of Cabarita island, and The Past lays behind it. The adults take land from The Past to extend the island and to make homes and farms to sustain themselves, and to trade with people from The Future. Life is peaceful for them, and they are thriving in their independence, even though they still maintain a plantation like work segregation and organisation, and still long for Mr Charlies return.

Then things start to go wrong. Queenie goes over to I-sis plot of land and discovers a startling truth: an entire century has passed on the island and neither she nor the other islanders have aged, while I-sis is long dead, and Sallywater is now an old woman on deaths door. Things escalate further when a decrepit Woodville washes up on the island, and begins digging into the islanders time, forcing them to age and grow in ways they had never before.

Curious about why this is happening, Queenie sets off to the Future to study and find answers, while her brothers Essex and Little Congo set up farms in The Past and on Woodvilles place to help support the community. Together, these three start to uncover the truth about themselves, Mr Charlie, and the Cabarita islanders, while also navigating resistance from their elders.

Post-Emancipation Stagnation

It is a fact of life that hardworking people become their work.- p. 40

There are so many themes that Brodber explores throughout this novella, but one of the most important is the way the plantation system conditions the older inhabitants of Cabarita island, leading to a century-long stagnation. Mr Charlies plantation system rigidly divided labour according to ones age-set. Since the people on the island dont age, they may have been doing the same task for well over a century by the time they were finally freed. After their emancipation, because of this robotic, infinite repetition of tasks, all they can do is keep on maintaining a plantation-like system of living and thinking, even when confronted with other problems. In doing so, Brodber shows how dehumanising the plantation system really was. She doesnt focus on the brutality of it, but rather on the way continued repetitive tasks with no space for personal creativity helps to stagnate generations of the newly emancipated.

However, the people who break away from this stagnation are the youngest of the Cabarita islanders: Queenie and her agemates. Queenie, Essex, Little Congo, and Jupiter break away from their elders and journey into The Future, The Norm and The Past. Using their childhood curiosity, they begin to learn about the world and to bring back both knowledge and remittances in food and money. Queenie notably gets medical and archaeological degrees so that she could investigate their living bodies, and the bodies and artifacts left behind by their few dead to figure out the truth of their bodies and their history.

Sadly, we see that some of her elders resist her probing, particularly one man named London. London seems upset that Queenie refuses to stop investigating the mystery of their immortality. He is upset with Jupiter as well once he goes off to have his own experiences in the future to solve his own personal problems. According to him, he was satisfied with not thinking and having to make decisions for himself or anyone else, and he thinks that others should be happy with the simplicity of the by-gone systems. It is truly uncomfortable to see London seeming to revel in his own stagnation.

Catching up with the world or foreign interference?

Another fascinating issue in the book is the effect Woodvilles return has on the islanders. Woodville acts as a catalyst for two things. Firstly, he forces the islanders into a future that they are not ready for. Secondly, he starts a wave of migration and remigration among the youth.

Woodvilles presence mysteriously forces the islanders to age, and in turn nudges them into a maturity they are not prepared for and forces them to acknowledge the existence of systems they cannot properly navigate. London is the person responsible for selling the islanders surplus goods in The Future. Once, he came back and reported that children go to school in The Future, and therefore he says that the Cabarita islanders have to go to school, too. But, to enter school, you need a birth certificate. To get a birth certificate, you need Mr Charlies signature, since he is the Father of all the islanders. But Mr Charlie is gone, so the children must sit and stagnate on the island. In summary, they are educationally disadvantaged by a legal and record-keeping system that they do not understand because of their isolation and immortality.

The elders try to navigate these systems on the island themselves, but the youngest islanders feel the need to migrate and go investigate The Past, The Future and The Norm. In doing so, they learn how to navigate these systems better than their elders and can support their fellow islanders with their remittances. Queenie and Essex even collaborate in one of these foreign spaces to piece together the truth of their bodies and their past to solve the mystery of their immortality.

Criticism

While I loved this book and its portrayal of how the legacy of the plantation system led to stagnation in the Caribbean, I have one criticism. I was very confused by the final two chapters of the book and had to do some external research to understand it. On Episode 4 of the SF Crossing the Gulf podcast, hosted by Karen Lord and Karen Burnham, I made a surprising discovery. The Rainmakers Mistake was more than a Caribbean post-emancipation narrative. It was actually science fiction. This book is Brodbers way of mocking the re-write of history that has been floating around by people who deny the brutality of slavery and the plantation system. She shows that even if there were an ideal and kind plantation environment, where slaves are apparently happy and content and cared for by benevolent masters and overseers, they are still a commodity for someone else and their conditioning ultimately denies the part of their humanity steeped in culture and community.

While this revelation helped me understand and love the book more, the ending still felt rushed and jumbled, and I do believe that it could have been a bit smoother. However, if it was Brodbers intention was to force her readers to do several re-reads, then she was very successful indeed.

Conclusion

I enjoyed The Rainmakers Mistake. It made me hungry for more of these post-emancipation narratives that show that the abolition of slavery wasnt an automatic cultural and social reset. While I initially felt some dissonance and felt personally uncomfortable reading the portrayal of the Cabarita islanders and their social and economic stagnation, by the end of the book I understood Brodbers message. The plantation systems conditioning was an insidious way of decimating peoples cultures, personalities and creativity, and those who champion the belief that it could be somehow humane and safe completely overlook how it obliterates peoples dignity and humanity.

Freed Black people still had to struggle hard to break out of the plantation-like system that they were conditioned into, both physically and mentally. Generations later, we are still not completely free of slaverys legacy. But, as Brodber shows, there is hope in young people, particularly those who are both curious enough to find out their personal and communal truths, and who are willing to continuously challenge the systems trying to keep them in that plantation state of mind. This, I think, is an ongoing form of post-emancipation resistance that will follow us into many future Emancipation Days.

My rating:

I want to give special thanks to Karen Lord, who pointed me toward Episode 4 of the SF Crossing the Gulf Podcast. This review would not have been possible without the analyses and explanations presented in her joint analysis with Karen Burnham.

Want to read more books about slavery, emancipation and thereafter? Try

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Overcoming post-Emancipation stagnation in Erna Brodbers The Rainmakers Mistake - Stabroek News

This article first appeared on Prism Reports.

While the 13th Amendment abolished chattel slavery, an often ignored clause still allows for slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. This slavery clause is now the target of #EndTheException, a new campaign launched this year on Juneteenth weekend. #EndTheException is pushing for the passage of theAbolition Amendment, a joint resolution cosponsored by Sen. Jeff Merkley and Rep. Nikema Williams, which would strike the slavery clause from the 13th Amendment making it so that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude may be imposed as a punishment for a crime.

On Saturday, June 19, as communities across the country celebrated Juneteentha long celebrated holiday by Black Americans, particularly Black TexansMerkley and Williams joined advocates from groups including WorthRises, LatinoJustice PRLDF, JustLeadershipUSA, and the Anti-Recidivism Coalition for an online discussion about the #EndTheException campaign and to explain how the promise of freedom has yet to be unfulfilled.

The average incarcerated worker earns 86 cents per hour, and yet in five statesAlabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texaslaborers inside earn nothing. Jorge Renaud, the national criminal justice director for LatinoJustice PRLDF, was incarcerated in Texas for 27 years. For 13 years, he experienced not just the painful labor of fieldworkchopping trees and picking cotton, sorghum, and cornbut also retaliation when refusing to work.

[It was] two years into my last sentenceI had a 60-year sentence, Renaud said, I thought I was going to die in prison and I drew a line. I said, There are some things Im not going to do for you all. I dont care what you do to me. So Im working out in the fields and I threw my aggy [grubbing hoe] up in the air and I was lucky they didnt shoot me. They said, Youre not going to work? and I said, Im not going out in the fields for yall, and they put me in solitary for a couple of years.

Renaud spoke of how prisons force incarcerated laborers to work any type of job assigned to them, and how protesting such work will inevitably lead to being assigned more brutal jobs, more degrading jobs until you finally end up in solitary confinement. [Then] you dont have to work but now youre in there with nothing: no privileges, no commissary, no visitation, no nothing.

The inclusion of the slavery clause made the passage of restrictions targeting Black people like theBlack Codespossible as well as convict leasing of the late 19th century. Its important not to erase the unique horrors faced by those who were enslaved and those who are currently or formerly incarcerated, but the fact is that the slavery clause helped enable the current system of prison labor where incarcerated people are forced to work for both the state as well as private companies for little to no pay.

Recent years have brought more attention to how private companies make up a small portion of those who benefit from incarcerated laboronly roughly 1% of incarcerated laborers are employed by private companies and about 6% of imprisoned workers are employed by state agencies who task them with jobs including manufacturing furniture for public colleges, making hand sanitizer, or washing scrubs and linens for state hospitals. In truth, the overwhelming majority of work performed by incarcerated laborers involves facility maintenancea fact that panelist Deanna Hoskins, president and CEO of JustLeadership USA, came to understand years after her own incarceration in Ohio where she was not paid at all for her labor.

I thought it was an incentive, Hoskins said. We take these jobs thinking, Ill work in the kitchen to get extra food, or Ill work in the laundry to get out of the current pod and not be in the chaos.

It wasnt until Hoskins went to work for a Department of Corrections that she understood whose labor was actually keeping the facilities operating. The state was effectively undercutting their employee budget by having incarcerated individuals staff services like laundry, landscaping, working in the kitchen, custodial work, janitorial work, gardening, and so on.

Even down to state departments actually used womens prisons as their call centers to alleviate them from having to pay for that, Hoskins said.

In Texas, Renaud pointed out, the type of work provided to those inside also varies tremendously based on race. Black and Latinx people are often assigned to these more custodial positions while their white peers are more likely to get jobs that enable them to acquire more technical skills.

I once took a tour about five years ago, Renaud said. I took some legislators down to a prison in TDCJ where they [offered] computer refurbishing. They had some 47 people in there [working on computers] and there were two Black individuals and like three Latinos. That job at least could give you some technical expertise [so that] when you got out there would be a prestigious job or maybe a well-paid job, [but it] was reserved still for white people.

The phenomenon reminded Renaud of the separation between enslaved people working in the house versus the field. It also serves as a reminder that in addition to the loss of wages and the strain that places on families who are now tasked with financially supporting their incarcerated loved ones, prison labor also fails to provide jobs that can translate into careers upon release.

Even jobs that could lead to fruitful careers, such as positions in Californias Conservation Camps where incarcerated people fight fires alongside local and state fire departments, are rife with inequity. In addition to not earning anything close to the wages enjoyed by their free world counterparts, incarcerated firefighters are often barred from continuing this work upon their release because of restrictions in getting their license due to their past conviction. For Michael Mendoza, director of national advocacy for the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, this profoundly stifles peoples ability to reshape their lives.

When we talk about jobs in prison, Mendoza said, Were talking about jobs that dont lead to actual careers because of these exceptions and these laws that we desperately need to change.

In addition to advocating for The Abolition Amendment at the federal level, movements to end prison slavery are being made on the state level as well. Thus far, Colorado, Utah, and Nebraska have abolished prison slavery in their state constitutions and groups like the Abolish Slavery National Network are working with grassroots organizers in 24 other states to help works towards the same goal.

Writers, historians, and activists have warned about the dangers of overconflating chattel slavery and mass incarcerationarguing that doing so ignores the unique horrors faced by those who were enslaved and those who are currently or formerly incarceratedbut the slavery clause is an important tie between the two oppressive systems that must be addressed. As the country winds down Juneteenth celebrations for the yearthe first in which the day was commemorated as a federal holiday#EndTheException organizers are tasking the public with not just memorializing the past but also considering our responsibility in the present to create a more free future.

This fight is deeply important to the soul of our nation, said Kamau Allen, lead organizer with the Abolish Slavery National Network. We find ourselves at a crossroads to decide who we want to be as a society moving forward. We must win and we can win because weve done this before.

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Proposed 'Abolition Amendment' would close the 13th Amendment's loophole allowing slavery as punishment for a crime - Workday Minnesota

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. Im Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzlez, as we look now at a new Abolition Amendment that was reintroduced after President Biden signed legislation this month to create a federal holiday commemorating June 19th as Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned of their freedom more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Some human rights advocates say Juneteenth didnt actually mark the end of slavery in the United States, because of a clause in the 13th Amendment that bans the enslavement of people with the exception of involuntary servitude as punishment for being convicted of a crime. Now Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and Georgia Congressmember Nikema Williams have reintroduced legislation to amend the 13th Amendment.

For more, were joined by Jorge Renaud, the national criminal justice director for LatinoJustice. He was previously incarcerated for over 27 years in Texas, where he picked cotton, chopped trees and did road work. Hes joining us from Austin. And joining us from Washington, D.C., is the sponsor of this amendment to the amendment, Congressmember Nikema Williams.

Its great to have you with us for the first time, as you replace John Lewis in Congress. Well talk about voting in a bit. But lets start with this. Can you talk about your whats called the Abolition Amendment?

REP. NIKEMA WILLIAMS: Absolutely, Amy. Thank you for having me.

I think we need to look at exactly where we are in our country right now. Were in a period of reckoning with our countrys history. Just yesterday on the House floor, we voted to remove statues of people who voluntarily served the Confederacy in this country. We saw what happened on January 6th. We came together as a country and voted in a very bipartisan because people like to use that word so much bipartisan fashion to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. But yet we still have our countrys founding document; our Constitution has an exception for slavery. And the history of this country is marked with racism and white supremacy and oppression, and its up to us to do something about it.

So, eliminating the loophole in the 13th Amendment, that still allows for slavery if people have been convicted of a crime, is one way to continue to move forward with addressing the problems of our past and building for the future. I think I hear a lot people say, But its not really happening, and theres no slavery, like, really happening in the country. Then whats the problem with removing it, Amy? What I know and what Ive seen from history is, some laws are put on the books and some things are in place just so that they can be used in certain instances, for certain people.

So I am working with my colleague in the Senate to make sure that we get this done. Weve seen that there are some states that have already removed this from their state constitutions. Very red states, like Nebraska and Utah, they had constitutional amendments and took it to the voters, and the voters in their states agreed that this loophole was unacceptable. And its time that we do that on the federal level.

JUAN GONZLEZ: And, Congresswoman, a lot of people are not familiar with this history of this enslavement provision, especially in penal facilities. The state of Alabama, by the turn of the century, about a third of its revenue came from contracting out prison labor?

REP. NIKEMA WILLIAMS: Yeah. I mean, if you go just back to the history of this country when Black Codes were put in place and thats why the exception was initially there, so that these Black Codes that were put in place, for the same people that were just freed, you could arrest them for loitering, you could arrest them for minor infractions, and then put them right back in the fields that they were just freed from. And this has continued to play into this mass incarceration system that we have in this country, that we all know disproportionately impacts Black and Brown people.

JUAN GONZLEZ: And, Jorge Renaud, from the national criminal justice director for LatinoJustice, welcome to Democracy Now! Could you talk about the Abolition Amendment, what you hope it might achieve?

JORGE RENAUD: Yeah. Thank you. Good morning. First, I want to say its an honor to be here with the congresswoman from Georgia.

Yeah, first, I want to say a couple of things. And I think that one of the ways that were going to have to begin this is with how we frame it and how we talk about this. In introducing this segment, the comment was made that some activists say that this is happening the way it is. I think, objectively speaking, that is actually part of the Constitution. And right now there are some like 2.3 million people incarcerated in American cages right? 1.8 million of them in prisons across the country who own nothing, who are told to go to work whenever the administration wants them to go to work, whose work and labor benefit 96% of the work that is done by individuals who are incarcerated in American prisons benefits a local government and doesnt benefit private corporations, right?

So I think that what we have to do first is we have to recognize that American prisons are run by incarcerated labor. Right? The only thing that guards do in this country is pass out mail, turn keys and count individuals. Everything else, from cutting the grass, from doing the electrical work, from doing the maintenance work, from cooking and cleaning and washing dirty underwear everything is done by incarcerated individuals, who, in five states, dont get anything at all for their labor, which means that this country is built upon the concept right? of upon the idea that ambition and initiative is something good, that you could pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right? However, you can go into an American prison and come out 25 years later and not have a penny to your name. And I think even worse than the enforced poverty right? that is inflicted upon those individuals is the idea that their labor, that themselves, is not worthy at all right? that they have no input into what they do while theyre incarcerated right? and that theyre not and that none of their work is beneficial to when they get out.

AMY GOODMAN: Jorge, one of the reasons we call Democracy Now! news with a heart is we go to the people who are closest to a story.

JORGE RENAUD: Right. Thank you for that.

AMY GOODMAN: You are not just an armchair commentator on this issue; you experienced it. You were in prison for 27 years in Texas, where you picked cotton, chopped trees, did road work. Can you talk about how this amendment would affect you?

JORGE RENAUD: OK. I just would

AMY GOODMAN: If you had if this were passed while you were in prison.

JORGE RENAUD: Yeah, yeah. But the thing is, it would still affect me, in a way, because I am still I just went to New York for three days, right? And I had to go down to the Board of Pardons and Paroles and get permission in order to travel, and I had to show it to law enforcement. And thats kind of analogous to the slave papers right? that when slaves were allowed to travel right? back over a hundred years ago, they had to get permission from their masters.

So, while I was incarcerated, I think, one, it would have allowed me, in a way, to pursue employment or educational or vocational work while I was incarcerated that was meaningful to me right? something that I could build upon for when I got out. It would have allowed me to say, You know what? This specific job that has to be done in prison right? that you may or may not pay me for, however, is one thats going to be conducive to my skill set. It would allow me to say the work that I am doing while Im incarcerated is meaningful to the community around me, which are the other individuals who also are incarcerated, right? It would have allowed me to think, I matter. I mean something.

As it was, I was put in solitary confinement because I told the people the last time that I was incarcerated, two years in, when I was working out in the fields, that I was tired of doing slave work and fieldwork, and they put me in solitary. And they told me, You are going to do what we tell you to do, when we tell you to do it. They beat me, and they carried me in the building, and they locked me up in solitary confinement. So, I think it would have put a stop to some of that, right? Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: How many very quickly, did you get paid? And how many states pay no wages at all?

JORGE RENAUD: Five states right now pay no wages at all. I was given $50 when I was released. And I was given a bus ticket to Austin, which was where I had told the parole board I was paroling to. So, no, I was not paid not one penny for all the labor that I did.

JUAN GONZLEZ: And Id like to get back to Congresswoman Nikema Williams. I wanted to ask you: What do you see as the prospects for this legislation, especially given the very close division in the Senate and in the House, as well, but especially in the Senate?

REP. NIKEMA WILLIAMS: So, this was this is something that I think could pass on a bipartisan level. Weve seen a willingness of some Republicans to come to grips with our nations history and stand on the side of what is right. This was a bipartisan bill when it was introduced in the last Congress, and we are working through this. So, I am hopeful that we will see people standing up to say that, once and for all, were going to end the exception for slavery in our Constitution.

Were still working on it. It was just introduced recently, so theres still so much more work to do. We need people to be calling their members of Congress and calling their senators and voicing their concerns. A lot of members dont even know this exists. When I introduced it, I started talking to some of my Democratic colleagues, and they didnt realize that there was still an exception in the U.S. Constitution for slavery.

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How the Abolition Amendment Would End Constitutional Loophole That Allows Forced Labor in Prisons - Democracy Now!

However, in calculating a persons income for the CSHC income test, a reference tax year is used usually the tax year immediately preceding the current tax year.

If a persons income for the reference tax year is above the CSHC income limits and they can show that the source of the increased income is of a one-off nature then, subject to certain conditions, they may give an estimate of their income for the current tax year.

Services Australia would consider a range of factors on a case-by-case basis when determining what income estimate can be used for eligibility purposes.

The spokesperson suggests that you test your eligibility for the CSHC by making a claim.

If the abolition of the work test for non-concessional superannuation contributions becomes effective from July 1, 2022, and I turn 72 in that financial year, can I use the bring-forward rule and deposit $330,000 into my Self-Managed Super Fund that year and another $330,000 in the 2025-2026 financial year?

John Perri, of AMP Technical Services, says there is an expectation that the bring-forward rule would be available to individuals aged 67-74 when the federal government amends the legislation to abolish the work test for non-concessional contributions from July, 2022.

If that is the case and as you will be aged 71 at July 1, 2022, (though you are turning 72 in that financial year) then, assuming your total super balance at June 30, 2022, is less than $1.48 million, you could use the bring-forward rules to make a non-concessional contribution of $330,000. This would mean you could not make any further non-concessional contributions till July 1, 2025, at which point you would be 74.

It would be necessary to see the legislation in detail before answering the second part of your question. The ability to use three years of bring-forward contributions at age 74 may not be available, given no non-concessional contributions could be made at age 75 and 76.

I receive a full age pension as I have no assets. If I won a house in a lottery, would I lose my pension?

When you say you have no assets, I assume that means you do not own a house. Therefore, if you won a house in a lottery and live in that house, it would be an exempt asset and would not affect your pension.

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If you sold the property and bought a cheaper house to live in, you would need to seek financial advice, as the capital released on the sale could be sufficient to have an effect on your pension.

A single pensioner homeowner can have assessable assets of up to $268,000 with no effect on their pension. However, the income test cut-off point is $178 a fortnight. If you had deemed assets of $260,000 this could just take you over the bottom threshold.

Noel Whittaker is the author of Making Money Made Simple and numerous other books on personal finance. noel@noelwhittaker.com.au

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The implications of going guarantor on a mortgage - Sydney Morning Herald

The British actor Giles Terera has appeared in many critically acclaimed stage productions, including The Tempest, The Book of Mormon and Ma Raineys Black Bottom, but is best known for his portrayal of Aaron Burr in the London production of Lin-Manuel Mirandas musical Hamilton, which won Terera an Olivier award. Last year, he was appointed an MBE for services to theatre; his book, Hamilton and Me: An Actors Journal, has just been published.

You found out on your 40th birthday that youd got the role of Aaron Burr in Hamilton. How did you feel?I felt a strong connection to him, like I knew the character. Like when you meet someone and you just click it felt like that.

Your book, Hamilton and Me, is essentially a diary documenting the audition, rehearsal and performance process. What was your aim in writing it?I read a couple of really influential books when I was starting out Peter Brooks The Empty Space and Antony Shers Year of the King. I found those two really freeing in terms of following your instinct and connecting with your imagination. My diary looks at the process not the pop cultural phenomenon, but the day-to-day work; the nuts and bolts. My hope is that other young actors will be able to look at it and apply it. Whether theyre doing their second year performance at drama school or about to make their debut on stage.

How did Lin-Manuel Miranda react to it?I sent the manuscript to him, and about two hours later he emailed saying that he had read the entire thing and was quite emotional as he was writing. He was very grateful that Id been taking notes and had documented the experience. So that was a good day.

You say not only was I playing this character, I was being taught by him. What did you mean by that?Burr is someone who is quite brittle, emotionally and spiritually. Hes all or nothing. In many ways Im quite similar to Burr, and in many ways Im not. I have never actually shot someone. But something I learned was that you cant be brittle or else you have to be prepared for the consequences. The character has such an intense journey, and as an actor you have to find a way to not be completely taken over by it. Otherwise you go crazy.

What are your thoughts on the historical inaccuracy of Hamilton, and the fact that the founding fathers being slave owners was not mentioned much throughout the play?It didnt take me very long in my research to find out about Thomas Jeffersons slave-owning history, which is very well documented. At the same time I found research that Burr was on very good terms with African Americans. He entertained them in his house for dinner. Theyre all very contradictory characters. My hope is that people are at least being brought to the subject. They can then find out more.

In your speech at the Olivier awards, you praised being a part of such a diverse cast and said that Hamilton wasnt a box-ticking exercise. What compelled you to make that statement?Because it was true. I didnt really think a lot about what I was going to say, but once I was there, I just said what I had always felt. In Hamilton, it wasnt just black actors and white actors we had people from all different backgrounds. I was just really grateful to be in that environment.

Your debut play, The Meaning of Zong, is premiering at Bristol Old Vic in September. Whats it about?Its based on a historical event, a massacre [of 130 enslaved Africans] on board a Liverpool-owned ship and the trial which took place as a result of it. It looks at two figures at the time, Granville Sharp and Olaudah Equiano, who used that story to bring awareness to the public. It was one of the events that succeeded in bringing together like-minded peopleto oppose the slave trade.

Why is now the right time to tell that story?The legacy of that event is still being played out today. There was a huge bailout [after the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, the British government paid 20m in compensation to registered owners of freed slaves for the loss of business assets], which contributed [to] setting up some of Britains biggest families. A lot of the companies that are a part of our lives have their origins in that time period. What the slave trade meant to the British economy is vast. The statue of Edward Colston was chucked into the water in Bristol because were walking past this legacy every day. We have to be accountable if were going to move forward in any kind of meaningful way, and so I really wanted to explore this particular story as a way of contributing to that conversation.

Your jazz, blues and funk-inspired recent song cycle, Black Matter, explores living in Soho. How did that work come about?Soho was completely empty during the lockdown. Id never seen that before. When things started to ease, people were out in the streets and protesting. I just found myself looking out of the window and writing. After about two weeks, I had a collection [of songs]. A friend of mine runs [music and cabaret venue] the Crazy Coqs and he called me up. We were going to do it with a live audience. When that was no longer an option, we filmed it instead.

How do you see the arts sector recovering in the aftermath of the pandemic and Brexit?We are very durable and adaptable, and in two years time we will know about what happened because of the people that will create art about it and compose about it. But it is an industry and it needs forward planning. When the rug is pulled, or no provisions are there, its very difficult to sustain.

What message do you have for our politicians?We have to acknowledge what the creative arts bring to our society and to our economy. The industry is in huge need of help, so I would like to see action. What would last year have been like if you couldnt listen to music?

You have a twin sister who you have thanked in speeches. As your career has soared, what has that relationship meant to you?Her name is Nicola, shell want that in! Were really different. She always says: I cant think of anything worse than getting on stage! This month Ive got to go to the investiture for my MBE. Im taking her with me because shes the most encouraging. She comes to all of my shows. Though with Hamilton she said: I liked Obioma [Ugoala] as Washington. He was great. Shell talk about everyone else but me! She wants to keep my feet on the ground. I have to give her props. In London, its all very insular. Its good to have someone who has nothing to do with the industry and who doesnt really give a shit about the things that I do.

Hamilton and Me: An Actors Journal by Giles Terera is published by Nick Hern Books, 16.99. To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. Tereras debut play, The Meaning of Zong, will be at Bristol Old Vic from 11 September to 2 October

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Actor Giles Terera: Lin-Manuel read my manuscript, Hamilton and Me, and was quite emotional - The Guardian

Emory is one of many organizations across the country that embarked on self-reflective looks last year in the wake of nationwide protests demanding social justice and racial reconciliation. The University System of Georgia created an advisory group last summer to explore whether any of its buildings should be renamed. Their work is ongoing.

Emorys recommendations came from groups of faculty, staff, students, trustees, and alumni created last year to review ways to address the universitys history. Emory has about 15,000 students, but its racial diversity is not reflective of the statewide population. About 8% of its students are Black. By contrast 32% of Georgias residents are Black.

Emory earlier this month held a Juneteenth ceremony in which it apologized to a Black medical school applicant who was denied admission in 1959 because of his race.

The university said Monday it will rename Language Hall on its Oxford College in Newton County in honor of Horace J. Johnson Jr., who helped integrate the countys public school system as a fourth grader in the late 1960s and became the first Black Superior Court judge to serve in the Alcovy Judicial Circuit (comprised of Newton and Walton counties) in 2002. Johnson died last year.

Superior Court Judge Horace J. Johnson Jr., of Newton County, died July 1.

Emorys Longstreet-Means residence hall will be renamed Eagle Hall. Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, president of Emory College from 1839 to 1848, opposed abolition and strongly defended slavery and secession.

It is inappropriate for his name to continue to be memorialized in a place of honor on our campus, Fenves said in the email.

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Emory University to rename buildings to address legacy of racism - Atlanta Journal Constitution

As we head toward the 245th anniversary of American independence, critical race theory has emerged as the dominant subject gripping and dividing the nation. The threshold question, itself the subject of rancorous and oftentimes disingenuous debate, is what the term critical race theory even refers to. When this semantic debate surfaces, proponents usually attempt two things at once.

First, they accuse their CRT-skeptical interlocutors of being bigots, white supremacists or apologists who want to deliberately muddle and whitewash Americas complex and at times tragic history of race relations. This first step involves CRT proponents grilling CRT critics as to why they are so scared to discuss racism or discuss slavery, as if that applied to anyone other than a truly infinitesimal and politically powerless fringe subset.

Second, while publicly seizing the moral high ground, CRT proponents simultaneously work behind the scenes to advance what it is that they actually believe. Consider this forthright (and harrowing) admission from Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, a 2001 book from Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic: Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law.

CRT proponents, in line with the anti-racism movement and vogue notions of equity, candidly advocate for discrimination as long as it is anti-white, anti-Asian, anti-Christian or anti-Jewish. As leading CRT anti-racist intellectual Ibram X. Kendi wrote in 2019s How to Be an Antiracist: The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

In practice, as courageous investigative journalists such as the Manhattan Institutes Chris Rufo have laid bare for all to see, CRT takes the form of crass racial indoctrination that ascribes collective and historical guilt to white Americans, urging white parents of schoolchildren to seek white abolition and accusing schools of wantonly spirit murdering black children. The two-step CRT apologia described is thus willfully dishonest. It is a bad-faith argument, pure and simple. In formal logic, we would recognize it as a prototypical motte-and-bailey fallacy.

It is, furthermore, a logical fallacy committed to advancing profoundly un-American notions of collectivized and racially hierarchical guilt and innocence. This weekend, as we recall the most famous exhortation in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, we should consider just how antithetical CRT is to that most foundational American principle. That principle of real, genuine human equality, subsequently woven into our legal and social fabric via the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, sits in an irreconcilable state of tension with the crass and overt anti-white bigotry embodied by CRT.

CRT in most forms is already illegal under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, but many Republican-governed states have gone further, crafting and passing new legislation to specifically ban CRT pedagogy from corrupting their impressionable youth. While every piece of legislation or regulatory rule is distinct and must be legally assessed on its own merits, these states are absolutely correct to ban CRT indoctrination against the protestations of both left-liberal and right-liberal critics.

Many arguing against the states CRT bans resort to trite First Amendment appeals. Youre infringing on teachers speech! they risibly claim. Nonsense. A public school classroom is not a utopian marketplace of ideas derived from an Enlightenment-era political pamphlet. On the contrary, states in our constitutional order retain near-plenary power to craft their educational curricula. If the First Amendment-appealing crowd were intellectually consistent, they would similarly object to a state education bureaucracy banning the teaching of Holocaust denial. And if the secular leftists among this cohort were consistent, they would presumably object to a states ban on teaching the Book of Genesis creation story. They wont.

More generally, any society that takes the bare minimum amount of pride required to wish to sustain itself for its progeny must understand that instilling racially divisive poison in the minds of impressionable students is a recipe for disaster. No nation will long endure if its youngest generation is full of disdain, disgust and self-hatred. The traditional goal of education, as the Founders conceived it, was to help inculcate the sound republican habits of mind and civic virtues necessary for a flourishing polity. Suffice it to say we have deviated far from that, but surely we can at least ban pedagogies that are often outright deceitful such as The New York Times much-criticized 1619 Project and are always dedicated to collective self-immolation.

Banning CRT is neither coercive nor liberty-infringing. Rather, it is a prudent and necessary first step to salvaging a fractious nation teetering on the brink of collapse.

http://www.creators.com.

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Yes, we should ban critical race theory from our schools - Johnson City Press (subscription)

AMSTERDAM (AP) The mayor of Amsterdam apologized Thursday for the extensive involvement of the Dutch capitals former governors in the global slave trade, saying the moment had come for the city to confront its grim history.

Debate about the role of Amsterdams city fathers in the slave trade has been going on for years, but it has gained more attention amid the global reckoning with racial injustice that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

It is time to engrave the great injustice of colonial slavery into our citys identity. With big-hearted and unconditional recognition, Mayor Femke Halsema said. Because we want to be a government for those for whom the past is painful and its legacy a burden.

While apologizing, she also stressed that not a single Amsterdammer alive today is to blame for the past.

The Dutch government has in the past expressed deep regret for the nations historic role in slavery, but has stopped short of a formal apology. Prime Minister Mark Rutte said last year that such an apology could polarize society.

An independent commission that discussed the issue in recent months issued a report Thursday advising the central government to apologize, saying it would help heal historic suffering.

Interior Minister Kajsa Ollongren attended the ceremony in Amsterdam but did not comment directly on the call for a government apology.

Black activist and actor Patrick Mathurin said some in the Netherlands try to ignore the countrys colonial past, but through our activism, we forced them to look at it. And also what happened, of course, with George Floyd made it all evolve faster.

Halsema said history casts a shadow that reaches into the present day.

The city officials and the ruling elite who, in their hunger for profit and power, participated in the trade in enslaved people, in doing so entrenched a system of oppression based on skin color and race, she said. The past from which our city still draws its distinctive commercial spirit is therefore indivisible from the persistent racism that still festers.

She closed her speech with the words: On behalf of the College of Mayor and Alderpersons, I apologize. Cheers and applause erupted from the small group of invited guests sitting on socially distanced white chairs.

The apology came during an annual ceremony marking the abolition of slavery in Dutch colonies in Suriname and the Dutch Antilles on July 1, 1863. The anniversary is now known as Keti Koti, which means Chains Broken.

Activists say many people who had been enslaved were forced to work without pay for their former masters for a further decade.

Research into the involvement of Amsterdams city fathers in the slave trade and slavery was commissioned by the municipality in 2019.

Halsema said it showed that from the end of the 16th century until well into the 19th century, Amsterdams involvement was direct, worldwide, large-scale, multifaceted and protracted.

Amsterdam municipality is not alone in apologizing for its role in slavery. In 2007, then-London Mayor Ken Livingstone made an emotional speech apologizing for the citys involvement. And a year ago the Bank of England apologizedfor the links some of its past governors had with slavery.

Halsema doesnt have to leave her official residence on one of Amsterdams mansion-lined canals to be reminded of the citys deeply rooted ties to slavery.

The residence was formerly the home of Paulus Godin, who was a board member of the West-India Company and director of the Society of Suriname that were both heavily involved in slavery in the 17th century.

A stone plaque outside the house recalls that history and calls the slave trade and slavery crimes against humanity.

Amsterdam municipality says that former city fathers in the time that slavery was rife in Dutch colonies were deeply involved in the trade.

Mayors were also owners of plantations or traded in people. They helped, through their public office, to maintain slavery because they profited from it, the city says on its website.

The Dutch national museum, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, is currently staging a major exhibition entitled simply Slavery examining the countrys role in the global slave trade.

Thursdays anniversary is the Dutch equivalent of Juneteenth in the United States, which President Joe Biden made a federal holiday earlier this month. There are calls to make the Dutch day of commemoration a national holiday.

The U.S. federal government has not apologized for slavery. The U.S. House and Senate both have passed resolutions apologizing for slavery and racial segregation laws.

During a press conference in 2007, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was sorry for Britains role in slavery, which he called entirely unacceptable. But eight years later during a trip to Jamaica, Prime Minister David Cameron sidestepped calls for an apology and ruled out paying reparations.

____

Corder reported from The Hague. Associated Press writer Danica Kirka in London and AP researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed.

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Amsterdam mayor apologizes for city fathers role in slavery - KXAN.com

The Liberty Bell, reforged from a broken bell and distinguished by a gaping crack that was purposefully widened in hopes of repairing a much smaller crack, is [the] perfect symbol for Philadelphia, says Senator Nikil Saval.

My District gives NCSL members a chance to tell us about life in the places they represent, from the high-profile events to the fun facts only locals know.

Commissioned by the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1751, the Liberty Bell called legislators to session up until the 1840s, when a final crack put it out of commission. No one knows exactly when it first cracked, but a 19th century repair job that involved widening the fissure precipitated a second crack that became a death knell: The Liberty Bell rang no more.

The loss of the bells acoustics, however, marked the beginning of its fame. Journalist George Lippards 1847 story Ring, Grandfather, Ring described the ringing of the Liberty Bell after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This fictious story captured the publics imagination and immortalized the Liberty Bell as a symbol of independence. From the 1880s to 1915, the bell went on multiple tours across America, awing the public and reaching nearly one-third of the U.S. population. Along the way, the bell and its inscription, Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof, became a powerful emblem of hope for people fighting for freedom, including abolitionists, suffragists and civil rights activists.

No one alive today has ever heard the bell ring freely, but we still feel the reverberations of its tolls, says Senator Nikil Saval (D), left, whose 1st District includes the Liberty Bell site. The Liberty Bell has become a symbol of the power of the people, and we gather to its clarion call to stand together against injustice.

The Liberty Bell is now on permanent display at the Liberty Bell Center, which is managed by the National Park Service and visited by millions of tourists every year.

We recently caught up with Saval and Representative Mary-Louise Isaacson (D), right, of the 175th District to ask about the bells impact on their constituents and the nation.

What does it mean to you and your community to be home to a beacon of freedom and independence?

Isaacson: The many symbols of freedom and independence in my district are constant reminders of the founding principles of this country, the dreams and vision that our Founding Fathers had, and the just system were working towards to correct the grave injustices and missteps made along the way. To truly honor history, you must recognize the parts that youre not proud to build a better future. Every time I walk past historical sites such as Independence Hall, the Betsy Ross House, the Museum of the American Revolution and Carpenters Hall, I am reminded of the immense progress weve made thus far, and the long way we still have to go. I carry this with me when I vote on the House floor on behalf of all Pennsylvanians with fairness, equality and justice in mind.

Saval: The 1st District is home to people whose families have lived here for generations, and those who are newly arrived, brought by the same hopes and dreams that have inspired people to put down their roots here for centuries. Our district is one of the most racially, ethnically and linguistically diverse in Pennsylvania.

Those who visit our district, especially around the Liberty Bell, come from all over the country and all around the world. The bells toll has always been used to bring people together. The Liberty Bell was first known as the State House bell. In its original use, the bell was rung as a signal for townspeople to gather for news, and lawmakers to gather for their meetings. While its import was always in bringing people together, it did not become a symbol of liberty until the 19th century. The inscription on the bell became a rallying cry for abolitionists in their fight to end slavery. The bell was first referred to as the Liberty Bell in 1835 in the Anti-Slavery Record, an abolitionist publication, and the name was adopted gradually over the following years. The Liberty Bell has since inspired the womens suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, and many others who have fought against an unjust status quo.

How has the Liberty Bell shaped your district and its values?

Isaacson: The Liberty Bell inscription, a reminder of freedom and inclusivity, accurately reflects the progressive values of the 175th district. We value environmental conservation, quality public education, equitable access to health care, racial justice, and equality for all peoples.

Saval: The Liberty Bell was ordered from England and shipped to Philadelphia. But on the very first test ring, the bell cracked. The metal that it was made from was too brittle to withstand the task for which it was created. Local metalworkers melted down the original bell and recast it here, in Philadelphia, where it would ring for nearly 100 years.

In this origin story, I see Philadelphias roots as a city in which working people save the day. We value our trades, our labor. I see the importance of building structures that are strong but not rigid. My city knows that things will break, that things will fall apart; and when that happens, we must come together and try again. We cannot build structures that cant withstand the blows of our times.

What does the Liberty Bell mean to you personally?

Isaacson: I live in Northern Liberties, so my daughter and I regularly take walks through the Historic District and past the Liberty Bell. The streets are always filled with people, both tourists and residents alike, either there to admire and learn about the Liberty Bell or just passing by on their way to work, lunch, or to visit friends. And while living down the street from sites of such historic importance may make some people forget, the Liberty Bell is a constant visual reminder to me that our liberties and rights today have been hard fought forand unfortunately, are still often under attack by not only systemic oppression and racism, but by special interest groups and lobbyists. The Liberty Bell is a constant reminder to me to keep fighting so that its inscription finally rings true for all people in our great country.

Saval: Philadelphia has a reputation for being a scrappy city, rough around the edges. The Liberty Bell, reforged from a broken bell and distinguished by a gaping crack that was purposefully widened in hopes of repairing a much smaller crack, is its perfect symbol. The Liberty Bell presents as a force of chaotic good, showing Philadelphias free spirit and its good heart, while maintaining its propensity for disruption of an unjust status quo. We must always take our symbols of freedom and liberty and bring them with us into unchartered territories. It is right that the bell became a symbol of abolition, of womens suffrage, of civil rights. We keep its spirit alive by bringing it with us in our current struggles to dismantle racism, to end poverty and to build a world in which everyone can truly thrive.

What else is great about your district? What other attractions should people see?

Isaacson: One of my favorite facts about the 175th Legislative District and the seat that I currently serve in as the elected representative, is that it was, in fact, Benjamin Franklins seat when he was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. So, in a way, I carry the torch that he first lit, which is frankly an honor. Other attractions, historic sites and museums people should see in the district are Penn Treaty Park, the Chinatown Friendship Arch, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the National Museum of American Jewish History, Christ Church, Reading Terminal Market, and so many others!

Saval: Our district is home to some of the countrys greatest arts institutions and museums. We have the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Rodin Museum, the Franklin Institute and the Academy of Natural Sciences, to name just a few! We have the Avenue of the Arts, with its dance and theater companies, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. All of Philadelphias sports teams play in our district! And we have some of Philadelphias most iconic neighborhoods and some of its most beautiful and widely used parksRittenhouse Square, Penn Treaty Park, Fairmount Park, the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, and FDR Park, along with dozens of smaller community parks, where farmers markets set up to offer local food and produce, friends sit and enjoy each others company, and families bring their children to play on hot summer nights. Our architecture includes some of Phillys newest structures and some of its oldest houses.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Ben Mathios is an intern for NCSL.

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My District: Is Home to the Liberty Bell - National Conference of State Legislatures

This month marks 100 years since the founding congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) opened in a Shanghai girls school in July 1921. Inspired by the 1917 Russian Revolution, it was an event of world historical significance, marking a critical turning point in the protracted struggle of the Chinese people against class oppression and imperialist domination.

The revolutionary conceptions that guided the founding of the CCP 100 years ago stand in stark contradiction to the hypocrisy and falsifications that characterise the official centenary celebrations, which are designed to boost the partys public standing and that of President Xi Jinping in particular.

Chinese television is being inundated with dramas depicting the history of the party. Seminars are being held in local neighbourhoods in cities and towns across the country. Red tourism is being pushed, with party branches, work units and local clubs encouraged to visit sites associated with the CCPs history, including the birthplace of Mao Zedong. Cinemas are required to screen, twice weekly, films glorifying the CCP, and theatres are staging so-called revolutionary operas. Eighty new slogans, such as Follow the Party Forever and No Force Can Stop the March of the Chinese People, are plastered everywhere.

And the list continues, all trumpeting Chinese nationalism and the role of the CCP in ending the humiliating subordination of China in the 19th and 20th centuries to the imperialist powers and in building the Chinese nation. Schoolchildren are required to write essays on Xis Chinese Dream to transform China into a great power on the international stage. Adult education classes offer discounts for essays praising Maoist ideology and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.

Behind this nationalist extravaganza lies a distinct nervousness in the CCP apparatus that the centenary will lead to a critical questioning of the litany of falsehoods that comprises the official party history. On April 9, the Reporting Centre for Illegal and Unhealthy Information, a division of Chinas internet policing apparatus, added a new layer to its already extensive censorship by announcing a new facility to fight historical nihilism. Citizens are encouraged to report online posts that allegedly distort the CCPs history, attack its leadership or ideology, or slander heroic martyrs.

There is good reason for the concern, particularly under conditions where there is widespread disgust with the corrupt CCP bureaucracy, which nakedly represents the interests of the wealthiest layers of the population. The whole official celebration is built on the transparent lie that the party has remained true to its founding principles. In reality, the CCP long ago renounced the program of socialist internationalism on which it was established.

On July 23, 1921not July 1, an anomaly the CCP has never correctedthe founding congress of the Chinese Communist Party opened in a dormitory of the Bowen Womens Lycee in the French Concession of Shanghai, later shifting to a private house. Present were 12 delegatestwo each from Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan, Changsha and Jinanas well as two representatives of the Third International or CominternHenk Sneevliet, known as Maring, and Vladimir Neiman, known in China as Nikolsky. Also present was a special representative of Chen Duxiu who could not attend but was elected as the CCPs founding chairman.

While the current CCP propaganda presents the congress as a Chinese affair, the founding of the Communist Party in China, as in other countries, reflected the enormous international impact of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 and the establishment of the first workers state by the Communist Party led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. The manifesto of the founding congress of the Third International in March 1919 made a direct appeal to the masses in the colonial countries, declaring: Colonial slaves of Africa and Asia: the hour of proletarian dictatorship will also be the hour of your liberation.

Intellectuals and youth in China seeking a means to fight the countrys semi-colonial oppression found the message immensely attractive. The Chinese revolution of 1911 made Sun Yat-sen, who had formed the bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), provisional president of a Republic of China but failed to unify the country or end imperialist domination. Moreover, in the aftermath of World War I, the major victorious powers at the Versailles Peace conference in 1919 endorsed the claims of Japan to Shandong Province, seized from Germany. When the decision became public, it provoked widespread protests and strikes beginning on May 4, 1919. What became known as the May 4 movement sprang from anti-imperialist sentiment but led to far broader intellectual and political ferment, in which Chen Duxiu and his close collaborator Li Dazhao played leading roles.

A recent article published by the state-owned Xinhua news agency in its Lessons of the centenary of the CCP series declares that the partys founding goal in 1921 was the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. It continues: [The CCP] shoulders the historic tasks of saving the country, revitalizing it, enriching it and empowering it; will always be the vanguard of the Chinese nation and the Chinese people; will forge a historical monument, upon which its great achievements will be marked for thousands of years.

This glorification of Chinese nationalism is utterly alien to the conceptions that guided the founding of the CCP, which was bound up with the Russian Revolution and the intervention of the Third International in China. Those youth and intellectuals who emerged from the May 4 movement to form the party were won to the understanding that the fight against imperialism was inseparable from the international struggle to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. Its goal was world socialist revolution, not the reactionary nationalist conceptionthe rejuvenation of the Chinese nationthat is the central element of Xis dream.

The documents of the first congress in 1921 elaborated the partys basic principles: the overthrow of capitalism by the working class and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, leading to the abolition of classes, an end to the private ownership of the means of production, and unity with the Third International.

Any objective examination of the CCP today exposes the claim that it continues to fight for these goals. The CCP is not a party of the proletariat but of the bureaucratic apparatus that rules China. Even according to its own official figures, workers make up only 7 percent of party membership, which is overwhelmingly dominated by state functionaries and includes some of Chinas wealthiest billionaires. The state-run trade unions police the working class and suppress any opposition by workers to their oppressive conditions.

The claim that China, with its huge private corporations, stock markets and wealthy multi-billionaires, where private profit and the market dominate every aspect of life, represents socialism with Chinese characteristics, is farcical. Xis dream of a powerful Chinese nation has nothing to do with socialism or communism. It represents the ambitions of the super-rich oligarchs and wealthy elites that emerged with the restoration of capitalism in China under Deng Xiaoping from 1978 onward.

In the present policy of the Chinese government, there is not a trace of the internationalism that animated the founding of the CCP in 1921. The aim of the CCP today is not the overthrow of imperialism but for a prominent place in the world capitalist order. It does not advocate or support socialist revolution anywhere in the world, including above all in China, where it uses its huge police-state apparatus to suppress any, even limited, opposition.

The critical question facing workers, youth and intellectuals in China today wanting to fight for genuine socialism is what perspective will guide this struggle. To answer this question requires coming to grips with how and why the CCP was transformed from a revolutionary party fighting to overthrow capitalism into its diametrical opposite.

Three key turning points stand out in the partys lengthy and complex history.

The first is the Second Chinese Revolution of 192527 and its tragic defeat. The chief political responsibility for the crushing of this vast revolutionary movement lay with the emerging bureaucracy in Moscow under Stalin, which, under conditions of the defeat of revolutions in Europe and the continuing isolation of the workers state, abandoned the socialist internationalism that underpinned the Russian Revolution and advanced the reactionary perspective of Socialism in One Country.

In doing so, the Stalinist apparatus transformed the Third International from the means for advancing world socialist revolution into an instrument of Soviet foreign policy in which the working class in country after country was subordinated to opportunist alliances with so-called left parties and organisations.

The impact on the young and inexperienced Chinese Communist Party was immediate. In 1923, the Comintern insisted, against the opposition of CCP leaders, that the party dissolve itself and individually enter the bourgeois KMT, claiming that it represented the only serious national revolutionary group in China.

This instruction negated the entire experience of the Russian Revolution, which was carried out in irreconcilable opposition to the liberal bourgeoisie. It was a reversion to the two-stage theory of the Mensheviks who maintained that in the struggle against the Czarist autocracy in Russia the working class could only assist the liberal Cadets in establishing a bourgeois republic, putting off the fight for socialismthe second stageto the indefinite future.

When the issue was discussed in the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in early 1923, Leon Trotsky was the only member to oppose and vote against entry into the KMT. Lenin had been incapacitated by a series of strokesthe first in May 1922. In his Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Questions written in 1920, Lenin had insisted that the proletariat, while supporting anti-imperialist movements, had to maintain its political independence from all factions of the national bourgeoisie.

In his Theory of Permanent Revolution, which guided the Russian Revolution, Trotsky demonstrated the organic incapacity of the national bourgeoisie to carry out basic democratic tasks, which could therefore be achieved only by the proletariat, as part of the struggle for socialism. He formed the Left Opposition later in 1923 to defend the principles of socialist internationalism against their renunciation by the Stalinist bureaucracy.

The subordination of the CCP, and thus the Chinese working class, to the KMT was to have devastating consequences for the mass revolutionary movement of strikes and protests that erupted in 1925, triggered by the shooting of protestors in Shanghai by British municipal police on May 30. Despite the imposition of increasingly stringent restrictions on the political activities of CCP members inside the KMTnow led by Chiang Kai-shekStalin opposed any break from the KMT and continued to paint this bourgeois party in bright revolutionary colours.

In 1927, Trotsky exposed the falsity of Stalins claim that the struggle against imperialism would compel the Chinese bourgeoisie to play a revolutionary role, explaining:

The revolutionary struggle against imperialism does not weaken, but rather strengthens the political differentiation of the classes To really arouse the workers and peasants against imperialism is possible only by connecting their basic and most profound life interests with the cause of the countrys liberation But everything that brings the oppressed and exploited masses of the toilers to their feet inevitably pushes the national bourgeoisie into an open bloc with the imperialists. The class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the masses of workers and peasants is not weakened, but, on the contrary, is sharpened by imperialist oppression, to the point of bloody civil war at every serious conflict.

This warning was tragically confirmed. By subordinating the CCP to the KMT, Stalin became the gravedigger of the revolution, facilitating the April 1927 massacre of thousands of workers and CCP members in Shanghai by Chiang Kai-shek and his armies and the subsequent slaughter of workers and peasants by the so-called left Kuomintang in May 1927. Stalin then did an abrupt about-face and, amid the waning revolutionary tide, flung the battered Chinese Communist Party into a series of disastrous adventures.

These catastrophic defeats, which were to have such a far-reaching impact on the history of the 20th century, effectively marked the end of the CCP as a mass party of the Chinese working class.

Far from drawing the necessary political lessons from this tragic experience, Stalin insisted that his policies had been correct and made CCP leader Chen Duxiu the scapegoat for the defeats. Chen and other prominent CCP leaders, seeking answers to the questions posed by the Second Chinese Revolution, were drawn to Trotskys writings and formed the Chinese Left Opposition and then a section of the Fourth International, which was established by Trotsky in 1938 in opposition to the monstrous betrayals of Stalinism in China and internationally.

Those that remained in the CCP defended Stalin and his crimes to the hilt, including the Menshevik two-stage theory, and retreated to the countryside. Mao Zedong, who was to eventually assume unchallenged CCP leadership in 1935, drew the anti-Marxist conclusion from the defeats of the 1920s that it was the peasantry, not the proletariat, that was the principal force in the Chinese revolution.

This was to have far-reaching consequences for the Third Chinese Revolution of 1949the second major turning point in the CCPs history.

While Trotsky was keenly aware of the immense revolutionary-democratic significance of the struggles of the peasantry in China and of the necessity of the working class winning the support of the peasant masses, he delivered an acutely prescient warning over the implications of the attempt to substitute the peasantry for the proletariat as the social foundation of the revolutionary socialist movement.

In a 1932 letter to Chinese supporters of the Left Opposition, Trotsky wrote:

The peasant movement is a mighty revolutionary factor insofar as it is directed against the large landowners, militarists, feudalists, and usurers. But in the peasant movement itself are very powerful proprietary and reactionary tendencies, and at a certain stage it can become hostile to the workers and sustain that hostility already equipped with arms. He who forgets about the dual nature of the peasantry is not a Marxist. The advanced workers must be taught to distinguish from among communist labels and banners the actual social processes.

The peasant armies led by Mao, Trotsky warned, could be transformed into an open enemy of the proletariat, inciting the peasantry against the workers and their Marxist vanguard represented by the Chinese Trotskyists.

The defeat of the KMT, the CCPs seizure of power and its proclamation of the Peoples Republic of China in October 1949 was the outcome of a momentous revolutionary upheaval in the worlds most populous nation. It was part of the revolutionary movements and anti-colonial struggles that erupted around the world in the aftermath of World War II, reflecting the determination of working people to put an end to the capitalist system that had produced two world wars and the Great Depression.

As a result of the CCPs political domination, the Chinese Revolution was a contradictory phenomenon that is poorly understood. Following the line dictated by Stalin that resulted in defeats of the post-war revolutionary movements in Europe in particular, Mao and the CCP maintained the opportunist alliance with the KMT, forged in 1937 against the Japanese invasion of China, and attempted to form a coalition government. Only when Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT launched military action against the CCP did Mao finally call for its overthrow in October 1947 and for the building of a New China.

The rapid collapse of the KMT regime over the subsequent two years testified to its internal rot and the bankruptcy of Chinese capitalism, which spawned widespread opposition, including a wave of strikes in the working class. The CCP, however, made no orientation to the working class and insisted that it passively wait for the entry of Maos peasant-based armies into the cities. Following the Menshevik-Stalinist two-stage theory, Maos perspective of a New China was for a bourgeois republic in which the CCP would maintain capitalist property relations and alliances with remnants of the Chinese capitalist class, which for the most part had fled with the KMT to Taiwan.

Maos program led to the deformation of the revolution. To maintain capitalist property relations meant the bureaucratic suppression of workers demands and struggles. The Stalinist state apparatus that emerged out of the leadership of the peasant armies, and rested on them, was profoundly hostile to the working class. Workers were recruited to the CCP not to provide the working class with a political voice but to tighten its control over the working class.

Mao had claimed that the revolutions supposed democratic stage would last many years. However, in less than a year the CCP faced the threat of military attack by US imperialism, which launched the Korean War in 1950. As the war proceeded and China was compelled to intervene, it faced internal sabotage from layers of the capitalist class that regarded the US-led armies in Korea as their potential liberators. Confronting a possible US invasion, the Maoist regime was compelled to rapidly make inroads into private enterprise and to institute bureaucratic Soviet-style economic planning.

At the same time, fearing a movement of the working class, the Maoist regime cracked down on the Chinese Trotskyists, arresting hundreds of members, their families and supporters in nationwide dragnets on December 22, 1952 and January 8, 1953. Many of the most prominent Trotskyists remained imprisoned without charge for decades.

In a 1955 resolution, the American Trotskyists of the Socialist Workers Party [1] characterised China as a deformed workers state. The nationalisation of industry and the banks, along with bureaucratic economic planning, had laid the foundations for a workers state, but it was deformed from birth by Stalinism. The Fourth International unconditionally defended the nationalised property relations established in China. At the same time, however, it recognised the bureaucratically deformed origins of the Maoist regime as its dominant feature, making its overthrow through political revolution the only way forward for the construction of socialism in China, as an integral part of the struggle for socialism internationally.

The 1949 Chinese revolution is justifiably regarded by Chinese workers and youth as an enormous advance. It ended direct imperialist domination and exploitation, and, in response to social aspirations of the revolutionary movement of workers and peasants, the CCP was compelled to eliminate much of what was socially and culturally backward in Chinese society, including polygamy, child betrothal, foot binding and concubinage. Illiteracy was largely abolished, and life expectancy increased significantly.

Nevertheless, the CCPs Stalinist perspective of Socialism in One Country led in a very short space of time to an economic dead-end and Chinas international isolation after the Sino-Soviet split of 196163. Within the framework of national autarchy, the Maoist leadership was incapable of finding a solution to the problems of China and its development.

The result was a series of bitter and destructive internal factional disputes as the CCP thrashed around for a way out of its dilemmas. This led to one disaster after another that was bound up with the partys nationalist perspective and Maos attempts to overcome the problems of Chinas development by means of subjective and pragmatic manoeuvres.

These included Maos catastrophic Great Leap Forward, which produced mass famine, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which was neither great, proletarian nor revolutionary. Maos attempt to mobilise students, elements of the lumpen proletariat and peasants into the Red Guards as a means of settling accounts with his rivals proved an unmitigated disaster. It was brought to an end with the use of the army to suppress workers who went on strike.

Chinese workers must draw a sharp distinction between the necessary and justified revolution of 1949 and the reactionary character of the Cultural Revolution, whose turmoil only set the stage for the third major historic turning pointcapitalist restoration and the systematic dismantling of the gains of the 1949 Chinese Revolution.

Various neo-Maoist tendencies falsely seek to portray Mao as a genuine socialist and Marxist revolutionary, whose ideas were betrayed by others, particularly Deng Xiaoping, who introduced initial pro-market reforms in 1978.

In reality, it was Mao himself who opened the road to capitalist restoration. Facing mounting economic and social problems and the threat of war with the Soviet Union, Beijing forged an anti-Soviet alliance with US imperialism that laid the basis for Chinas integration into global capitalism. Maos rapprochement with US President Richard Nixon in 1972 was the essential pre-condition for foreign investment and increased trade with the West. In foreign policy, the Maoist regime lined up with some of the most reactionary US-based dictatorships, including those of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile and the Shah in Iran.

Without the relations with the US providing access to foreign capital and markets, Deng would have been unable to launch his sweeping reform and opening agenda in 1978 that included special economic zones for foreign investors, private enterprise instead of communes in the countryside, and the replacement of economic planning with the market. The result was a vast expansion of private enterprise, especially in the countryside, the rapid rise of social inequality, looting and corruption by party bureaucrats, growing joblessness, and soaring inflation that led to the national wave of protests and strikes in 1989. Dengs brutal suppression of the protests, not only in Tiananmen Square but in cities throughout China, opened the door for a flood of foreign investors, who understood that the CCP could be relied on to police the working class.

The reactionary role of Maoism finds its sharpest expression in the horrific consequences internationally of its Stalinist ideology of Socialism in One Country and bloc of four classes, subordinating the working class to the national bourgeoisie. In Indonesia, these politics left the working class politically disarmed in the face of a military coup that led to the extermination of an estimated one million workers. Maoism has led to similar defeats and betrayals in South Asia, the Philippines and Latin America.

Xi and other Chinese leaders boast of the economic achievements of what is absurdly called Socialism with Chinese characteristics.

That they are compelled to still speak of socialism and even proclaim that their capitalist policies are guided by Marxism is testament to the enduring identification of the Chinese masses with gains of the 1949 revolution. Chinas staggering economic development over the past three decades reflect in a contradictory way the impact of the Chinese revolution. It would not have been possible without the far-reaching social reforms introduced by that revolution.

To understand the significance of the Chinese revolution, one only has to ask the question: Why has such development not taken place in India? The contrast between the two countries has found sharp expression in the COVID-19 pandemic, which was contained by China early on, even as it spreads uncontrollably in India, pushing its death toll past the 400,000 mark.

Chinas undeniable economic development has vastly expanded the ranks of the working class, while boosting the social conditions of significant segments of the working population.

This development notwithstanding, China today faces all the contradictions and consequences of the turn to capitalism that cannot be resolved within the framework of either Maoism or the current policies of the ruling CCP.

China faces a terrible price for its integration into the world capitalist economy and the massive influx of foreign capital and technology to exploit cheap Chinese labour. Economic growth has only exacerbated the contradictions of Chinese capitalism, generating immense social tensions and fuelling a profound political crisis.

While Chinas per capita GDP has risen, it is still well behind many other nations and is ranked only 78 in the world. This year, as the centenary celebrations loomed, Xi boasted that China had abolished absolute poverty, but the statistics, based on a very austere measure, are highly questionable and poverty remains widespread. Moreover, the gulf between rich and poor is higher than ever, with the staggering wealth of Chinas multi-billionaires continuing to grow amid the COVID-19 pandemic that has heavily impacted on the broader population.

In the final analysis, the historical questions that motivated the Chinese revolutionindependence from imperialism, national unification and breaking the grip of the comprador capitalistsremain unresolved.

Indeed, they are posed today in an even more acute form, with Chinas capitalist economy dependent upon a global capitalist market and facing military encirclement by imperialism, led by the United States. Taiwan, which is developing as an increasingly hostile national state, has emerged as the flashpoint for a potential global war. The entire perspective advanced by Maoism of independent national development is thoroughly exhausted.

Within China itself, the CCP promotes nationalism based on the Han majority. While imperialisms reactionary propaganda about a Uyghur genocide is deserving of contempt, the CCPs appeal to nationalist sentiments plays no progressive role whatsoever in what is a vast, multi-lingual and multi-ethnic society.

In all its contradictions and complexity, Chinas history has confirmed the thesis of Trotskys Theory of Permanent Revolution that in countries with a belated capitalist development, subjected to imperialist oppression, the basic democratic and national tasks can be accomplished only by means of a socialist revolution, led by the working class and supported by the peasantry, as part of the fight for world socialism.

This path of world socialist revolution is anathema to the CCP and the capitalist layers it represents.

The CCP has no solution to the sharpening social tensions and growing signs of opposition other than the repressive methods of Stalinismblanket censorship, arbitrary arrests and the violent crushing of protests and strikes. The CCP itself is riven with corruption and factional feuding that threaten to tear it apart. Xi has emerged as a Bonapartist figure, balancing between rival factions that rely on him to hold the party together. The glorification of Xi, who is routinely referred to as the centre and hailed as second only to Mao, does not stem from personal political strength, but rather reflects the deep crisis wracking the party.

All this is compounded by US imperialisms increasingly aggressive confrontation with China over the past decade, initiated by President Obama and accelerated under Trump and now Biden. Having helped fuel Chinas decades of economic growth, all factions of the American ruling class now regard China as the chief threat to US global hegemony and are preparing to use all methods, including war, to subordinate China to the international rules-based systemthat is, the post-World War II order established by Washington.

The CCPs perspective of peaceful coexistence with imperialism and Chinas peaceful rise to assume its place within the world capitalist order is in tatters. Biden, backed by both Democrats and Republicans, is marshalling US allies and pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into arming for war against China. At the same time, Washington is seeking to exploit tensions within China, fuelled by the CCPs heavy-handed suppression of ethnic separatist tendencies, in a bid to weaken and fracture the country.

Confronted with the looming danger of a catastrophic war, the CCP leadership conceives of Chinas defence in military and foreign policy terms, building up its armed forces and promoting its Belt and Road Initiative. On the one hand, it attempts to appease US imperialism and strike a new deal. On the other, it seeks to engage in a futile arms race and the whipping up of nationalism and chauvinism that can only end in disaster. Having long ago renounced the socialist internationalism on which it was founded, the CCP is organically incapable of making any appeal to the international working class to build a unified anti-war movement based on the fight for socialism.

None of the huge problems confronting humanitywar, ecological disaster, social crises or the COVID-19 pandemiccan be resolved within the framework of capitalism and its outmoded division of the world into competing nation-states. The challenge confronting workers, intellectuals and youth in China who are seeking a progressive solution is to reject the foul nationalism whipped up by the CCP apparatus and return to the path of socialist internationalism that formed the basis of the partys founding in 1921.

That means reforging the link between the Chinese working class and the world Trotskyist movement, embodied in the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). We urge workers and youth to turn to a study of the history of the Fourth International and the political lessons of its decades-long struggle for Marxist principles in opposition to Stalinism and its lies and historical falsifications. Above all, we call on you to contact the ICFI and begin the process of establishing a Chinese section to fight for its revolutionary perspective.

Endnotes:

[1] The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the United States led the fight to form the International Committee of the Fourth International in 1953 against an opportunist tendency led by Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel that rejected Trotskys characterisation of Stalinism as a counter-revolutionary tendency and claimed that the Stalinist bureaucracies in Moscow and Beijing could be pressured to project a revolutionary orientation. In 1963, the SWP abandoned the struggle against opportunism, broke from the ICFI and unified with the Pabloites on an unprincipled basis without any discussion of the political differences that had emerged in 1953.

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100 years since the founding of the Chinese Communist Party - WSWS