Self-Determination

Defending Radical Black Self-Determination

November 10, 2017 Ajamu Baraka, counterpunch.org Strategize! Black Nationalism, Nationalism, Race, Self-Determination

By Ajamu Baraka for Counter Punch - It is absurd and an insult to argue that Russian propaganda efforts “deepen political and racial tensions in the United States,” as proposed by Julia Ioffe in a recent article in the Atlantic. But the linking of the legitimate struggle of African/Black people in the United States against systemic oppression with “foreign” influences has been a recurrent feature of the ideological and military containment strategy of the U.S. state ever since the Soviet Union emerged as an international competitor to the four hundred-year-old colonial/capitalist Pan-European project. From the early twentieth-century activism of the Pan-African Conferences through the Garvey movement, the socialist African Blood Brotherhood and the International African Service Bureau born out of the rise of fascism in Europe and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in the 30s, Black radicals formulated a theoretical understanding of and practical response to the realities of colonial and capitalist racist oppression throughout the African world. And with the taking of state power by the Bolsheviks and the establishment of the Soviet Union and the Third International (COMINTERN), many black radicals gravitated to revolutionary Marxism, as both a critique of the Western capitalist dominance and a theory for disrupting that dominance.

Catalonia: One Million Demonstrate For Self-Determination Vote

September 23, 2017 Esquerra Revolucionària, www.socialistalternative.org Resist! Barcelona, Nationalism, Self-Determination, Spain

By Esquerra Revolucionària for Socialist Alternative - On the 11th September one million people spilled onto the streets of Barcelona shouting loud and clear their intention to vote during the 1st October referendum, making it clear that they were not going to let the ruling Partido Popular (People’s Party/PP) deny them this right. Yet again, as has happened on each Diada [‘National Day of Catalonia’] since 2012, the Catalan people have demanded their right to democratically decide what links they wish to maintain with the rest of the Spanish state, including their legitimate right to independence. Against this protest in support of the right to decide, which the Catalan people are overwhelmingly in favour of (as confirmed by all the polls) backed up by increasing support from the those who live in the Spanish state, as a whole, the PP government and the Spanish bourgeois are using repressive measures not seen since the Francoist dictatorship; police raids and continual harassment against the press; judicial intervention to prevent a political event from taking place in Madrid concerning the right of self-determination; news censorship preventing the Catalan TV channel 3 from showing content on the referendum. The offensive has taken unprecedented steps and not just against freedom of expression and association.

How US Legal System Prevents Community Self-Governance

January 3, 2017 Staff, www.celdf.org Create! Governance, Legal System, Self-Determination

By Staff of CELDF - In 2015, residents of several rural Ohio counties watched in shock as Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted unilaterally removed citizen-sponsored initiatives from county ballots. The initiatives, which had already qualified for the ballot, would have banned oil and gas drilling and fracking in those communities. The Ohio Supreme Court sharply rapped Husted’s knuckles for using authority he didn’t have. However, a year later, the people of those same counties watched in disbelief as Husted again blocked their initiatives. This time, the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed his actions.

The Mapuche’s Cross-Border Struggle For Freedom And Autonomy

October 11, 2016 Alejandra Gaitan Barrera and Fionuala Cregan, www.intercontinentalcry.org Resist! Autonomy, Indigenous Peoples, Land Rights, Latin America, Self-Determination

By Alejandra Gaitan Barrera and Fionuala Cregan for IC Magazine - Ever since the incursion of rampant neoliberalism in Chile and Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s, the Mapuche territory or Wallmapu, located south of the Bio Bio River, has been subjected to immeasurable domination and constant exploitation at the hands of a diverse range of foreign and national economic interests. Megaprojects like hydroelectric dams, mining operations, oil extraction and forestry plantations embody some of the main threats to Mapuche self-determination and autonomy.

Coalition Declares Black Self-Determination Back On The Agenda

August 3, 2016 Glen Ford, www.blackagendareport.com Educate! Black Liberation, Self-Determination

By Glen Ford for the Black Agenda Report - After two generations of “Black social disintegration, economic retrogression and political confusion” ushered in through the collaboration of the Black Misleadership Class, “Black people have rediscovered and revived the Black Radical Tradition, with self-determination at the core.” The Black is Back Coalition is promulgating a groundbreaking 19-point Black political agenda entirely “formulated through the prism of Black self-determination.”

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