“Instead of walking up to the giant wrong and demanding its utter overthrow, we are talking of limiting it, circumscribing it…” Frederick Douglass 1855



“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.” Frederick Douglass 1857



The strategy of permanent defense is the political equivalent of surrender. While it is vital to defend against imperialist aggression--to protest, petition, monitor & expose--none of these challenges the power behind these attacks & gets to the question of Who controls our communities & the institutions that affect them? To exclusively defend/advocate is to betray the people & actually represent the interests of they enemies.



We are in a defensive stage operating on interior lines & not prepared to launch strategic counter-offensives, however we can & must conduct tactical offensives within the strategic defensive until inertia is reversed. These tactics, determined by time/place/condition of u.s. fake democracy, have greatest effect in the cultural & democratic arenas: cultural is the battle for control of the superstructure—the ideas & institutions that dominate our communities; the democratic, the question of majority rule, is the minimum level of revolutionary struggle, at the mass level.



The question of democracy is the fundamental u.s. political contradiction. As W.E.B. Dubois sd, America has never been a democracy! But it is the veil that conceals capitalist/imperialist dictatorship, that gives leverage to claims of citizenship & national identity which are the basis for immigrant- & oppressed nation-directed state hostility. Folk tricked to thinking this they country, like they own somethin besides debt, then they turn blind eye to immigration raids, or ghetto injunctions, or hospital closures,,, But nobody voted to be poor. This bluff need to be called & the relations of u.s. politics made clear. We need to get power now where it can be got!



Think internationally/act locally-- There is currently no u.s. peoples’ organization capable of conducting national campaigns, but at grassroots levels, especially in the 27 major cities where consciousness is highest and opportunity greatest, peoples’ democratic coalitions need to seize every office and resource available and convert them into tools & weapons in the service of the struggle. Like Amiri Baraka say How you claim revolution & caint elect the dogcatcher?



8 of L.A.’s 15 council seats had elections in March. 3 were contested. The highest winning vote total of these was 3,695. In the 2nd largest city in the nation! More people than this regularly participate in local marches & protests, but have no mechanism to convert their complaint into a fight for power. L.A. govt operates on a national (& internat’l) platform, governing a city of millions with a budget of $billions. What happens to e.g. Homeland Security/ICE when LAPD is instructed to protect the human rights of all city residents? What happens to the entire question of immigration when city govt grants local voting rights to all residents? These shd be among the program of a revolutionary democratic Los Angeles Peoples’ Campaign, along w/ community control over all city institutions &c.



Jubilee Shine