Hello friends and comrades!
In the past month, since our regular June episode, we put out two short tracks, including an extra of Olive O'Reilly speaking truth to power. In the clip, O’Reilly is speaking to the Atlanta City Council in opposition to the building of Cop City as part of a 16-hour-long session of testimony with everyone speaking against Cop City. O’Reilly’s testimony ended with a standing ovation.
The second short track we released was From The Archive. In that track, John Peterson spoke on the book Ted Grant - The Permanent Revolutionary by Alan Woods. John Peterson says “if you look at the material at that time only Ted Grant, it is not an exaggeration, had a real understanding of what the situation was.” Specifically, he talks about the post war boom and how capitalism and the ruling class was able to save itself after WWII ultimately as a result of destruction of infrastructure and human life during the war. Grant says that the death and decay of war ultimately leads to “breathing space” for capitalism.
My first special in the past month was called SNV Special Interview: Report Back From Cuba Brigade - Lift The Blockade! I spoke with Tania about her recent trip to Cuba and her solidarity with countries “under the boot of American imperialism.” She went with a brigade that was able to spend time with the Cuban people and attend educational meetings. Tania said, as a leftist, you imagine a system that caters to human need, but you almost don’t believe it can exist, but she said, in Cuba, “that did exist, but I feel it is crumbling under the [US] blockade.” We discussed Cuba's new family code as well as two amazing vaccines created in Cuba. Unfortunately, the US blockade on Cuba hurts medical patients in both countries as Cuba is cutoff from supplies and capital, and US patients can’t access a lung cancer or anti-amputation vaccine from Cuba.
We spoke also about the Minnesota governor selling out working people and taking the side of the ruling class against nurses and drivers. Imperialism is used to crush resistance internationally, but ultimately it comes home to roost. Tania said she felt strong solidarity from Cuban people who said, “it is your government who is doing this to us, but your government also does things to you and lies to you, and we have a common oppressor.” She said she went in thinking that Americans were worthy of “disdain by Cubans,” but people in the country were always willing to share, even though the country has a tiered economy, which is at least partially due to the blockade.
I spoke with Edwin Fruit for the next special. He is running for Minneapolis City Council in Ward 1 as the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) candidate. Fruit (as well as the other SWP candidate for Ward 11 Gabrielle Prosser) is also involved in defense of the Cuban Revolution. Fruit said the US “is one of the few major industrialized countries in the world where the working class has no political voice of its own — there is no working class political party in this country.” Fruit says that is a weakness that needs to be overcome, saying the unions need to break from the democratic party and create a new labor party. Biden’s undermining of the rail workers strike was also outlined.
“That’s the Democratic Party” said Fruit, the party that says they are for working people, but “when push comes to shove they take the side of the bosses.” Starting from the recent raids by the FBI on the African People’s Socialist Party, we discussed how the FBI is currently controlled by a Democratic Party administration, which shows that, under either party, the illegal and unethical attacks by the ruling class continue. This includes historical attacks on the SWP itself, as well as undermining the Black Panther Party. Ultimately the political police (FBI) and the Minneapolis Police Department “represent the ruling rich, that’s what they do,” said Fruit.
We Were Lied To About 9/11 is the name of my last special for the month, where I speak with Jon Gold. He said, “for the past 20 years I have been an advocate for 9/11 justice.” Gold continued on to say that he had supported 9/11 and families and first responders who were sick and dying to get healthcare, and “bring the fact that we were lied to about 9/11 to public light.” Gold’s book, also called We Were Lied to About 9/11 (which is available online), is a series of interviews with numerous important figures to expose all the lies about that day in September 2001.
In this interview, it was imperative to discuss intelligence services, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which is the militaries intelligence service that Gold says “has a larger budget than the CIA”. Many whistleblowers came forward after September 11, 2001 to say the government had lied about what they new in the days prior to the attack. This included the Twin Cities’ own Colleen Rowley, who became Time’s person of the year, along with other whistleblowers.
Some suggest that what Gold first identified as, “a 9/11 Truther”, is something akin to a conspiracy theorist, because our own government would never be involved in murdering thousands of Americans, or covering up that murder. But we already have evidence that Christine Todd Whitman, who was the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, told New Yorkers that air around ground zero was safe. A judge later blasted Whitman saying, "No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws.” Gold was even surprised to remember that the number of first responders who have died from disease now outnumbers those who died on September 11, 2001 in the initial attack. The Mesothelioma Center says of those numbers “Although 2,974 people lost their lives that day, 4,343 survivors and first responders have died in the years since, according to the World Trade Center Health Program.” We end by saying if the ruling class would be complicit in the deaths of 4,343 by disease in order to get the economy running in the wake of 9/11, is it inconceivable that their actions and inactions, based on what they knew at the time, could make them complicit in 2,974 deaths on that day? We also discussed the hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced in US invasions, supposedly in response to 9/11, that were also based on lies! Gold quotes George Carlin saying the owners of this country “don’t care about you at all! At all! At all!”
Our regular episode for July was called Comedy Is Torture, and this 48th episode also included a quote from George Carlin. In the news section, we discussed working class responses to the ongoing ruling class attacks, including organizing by Teamsters, Amazon workers, and The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) striking during the writers strike. But the attacks from the ruling class and their institutions continue, as we saw with the undermining of the rent control vote in Minneapolis and the ongoing destruction of our planet.
I won’t give away too much about the comedy routine from the show, which was written and recorded by Emperor Saturn. But I’ll link to the show again and say, “check it out!” Emperor Saturn says:
“There’s a technical difference between oppression and repression. They’re both when you crack down on somebody, but oppression is when it’s morally wrong and undeserved. Repression is morally neutral, it could be right or wrong.”
The ruling class has oppressed us, and continues to oppress us, through both known and unknown means. The only option we have is to repress the ruling class once and for all, and build a sustainable society that will allow humanity and the planet to survive.
Our first step must be to show solidarity with each other’s movements. The second step must be to organize mass discussions to hash out the best tactics to beat back the ruling class attacks and carry forward a revolution that can repress the ruling class and deliver political power to working people to control our own lives.
Until next month…
Solidarity,
Nick Shillingford - Host - Socialist News and Views
P.S. Everything Crash