to Defeat Trump’s Plan to Steal the Election

A Call to Organize People’s Committees to Defend Democratic Rights

to Defeat Trump’s Plan to Steal the Election

Call issued September 30, 2020

Donald Trump is making it clearer every day that he will not peacefully give up the office of president. Trump may claim victory after instigating massive voter suppression, post office sabotage and attacks on absentee ballots. His right-wing supporters are being encouraged to prevent fair voting from proceeding. If Trump overturns the election, if he refuses to accept the will of the electorate or if his criminal interference is unacceptable to the people, how can he be removed from the Oval Office?

To expect the United States military to intervene should not be our plan. And the Supreme Court of the United States cannot be relied upon to deliver even a semblance of justice. To wait upon the military or the courts to act would be foolish and disastrous. Only the broadest mass movement of the working class and oppressed peoples can protect basic democracy in this period.

What is needed is to organize broad based People’s Committees to Defend Democratic Rights. This must be done very quickly. To be truly representative these committees must extend invitations to any and every progressive groups and labor organization in their locality. These must include churches, women’s groups, the LGBTQ community, immigrant rights groups, people with disabilities organizations, Black Lives Matter groups as well as traditional Civil Rights organizations, Native nations, Latinx associations, Asian & Pacific Islanders groups and all other progressive associations. Local labor unions must take this up as well as central labor councils and labor allies.

The aim of People’s Committees should be very clear. They must prepare to shut the entire country down if Trump tries to steal the election. They must popularize the idea of, and prepare for, a General Strike.

The largest labor organization in the country is the American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) with 12.5 million members. The AFL-CIO should play an important role. The Constitution of the AFL-CIO mandates that it respond to the dangerous situation that is looming. The Preamble says in part:

“We will assemble a broad progressive coalition for social and economic justice. We will create a political force within the labor movement that will speak forcefully and persuasively on the public issues that affect our lives.”
Article II, Objects and Principles, Section 12 instructs the federation:

“To protect the labor movement from any and all corrupt influences and from the undermining efforts of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, terrorism and all other forces that suppress individual liberties and freedom of association and oppose the basic principles of our democracy and of free and democratic unionism.”

This gives the AFL-CIO Executive Council, state and local central labor bodies and individual local unions the duty to assist in the formation of People’s Committees to Defend Democratic Rights. A general strike cannot just be called out of the blue. People’s Committees could call upon every union local, every organization and progressive group to discuss the idea and to conduct a vote of their membership asking them to authorize the calling of a general strike if and when it is deemed necessary.

Just imagine the terror felt on Wall Street among the big bankers and corporate bosses as word comes out of one union after another, one community group after another, one church after another, weighing in with a YES vote in favor of a general strike. Every day billionaire support for Donald Trump’s provocations would dry up and his mass right-wing base would become more and more isolated. It might very well be so effective that no actual work stoppage would even be needed.

How to Begin?

1. Circulate this call as widely as possible.
2. Take this call to your organization for discussion and endorsement.
3. Have your organization contact other local groups forming a People’s Committee to Defend Democratic Rights and participate in its meetings.
4. Plan to have your organization’s membership vote on authorizing and participating in a General Strike to stop Trump from stealing the election.

Initiated by:    Moratorium Now Coalition – Detroit; Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement; Peoples Alliance – Bay Area

Michigan contact:     Facebook – MoratoriumNowCoalition

Email endorsement or questions to – defenddemocraticrights@peoples-mail.net

SAMPLE UNION RESOLUTION (other organizations delete paragraph 3):

Whereas Donald Trump is threatening to ignore or undermine the results of the November 3 presidential election with attacks on mail-in balloting, sabotage of the postal service, voter suppression and encouraging right-wing groups to interfere in the democratic rights of the people across this country, and

Whereas we should take action ourselves to defend our democratic rights and not simply rely on the Supreme Court or the U.S. military to do so,

Whereas Article II of the AFL-CIO Constitution, Objects and Principles, Section 12 instructs the federation:

“To protect the labor movement from any and all corrupt influences and from the undermining efforts of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, terrorism and all other forces that suppress individual liberties and freedom of association and oppose the basic principles of our democracy and of free and democratic unionism.”,

Therefore be it resolved that {insert your organization} will join in the formation of People’s Committees to Defend Democratic Rights and will take steps to prepare for a General Strike if it is necessary to stop Trump from stealing the election.

Wednesday, October 7, 2020 at 3 P.M. – 821 W State Street, Milwaukee (Safety Building)

On October 7 Milwaukee County D.A. John Chisholm will announce the decision on Alvin Cole’s case, 2020, The families of the victims are requesting your presence and support when Chisholm announces his decision. Bring your signs and announce your support! All power to the people!

AND

Call 414-278-4646 to demand Chisholm indict Officer Joseph Mensah be fired, arrested, indicted and convicted for the murders of Alvin Cole, Antonio Gonzales and Jay Anderson.

Join the Freedom Youth Squad in celebrating the Dignity in Schools National Week of Action Against School Pushout. Our youth delivered a historic victory and forced MMSD to unanimously end the contract with the Madison police department.

We won, but we aint done fighting to end violence against Black youth and youth of color We are demanding:

• the in addition to completely removing police from our schools, we are demanding
• Create a youth and community led accountability process for school personnel who use police to harm children.
• Invest in the leadership, wellness, and creativity of Black youth and youth of color,
• Use transformative justice instead on punishing youth
• Give youth, parents, and trusted adults real decision making power over schools

Freedom Inc

CALL TO ACTION: Capitol Budget Hearing Tuesday 10/6/2020

We need your help and we want you prepared for Capital Budget Hearings. Below is a Video with a breakdown of what is in the budget, key dates, as well as other helpful information. The hearing on 10/6/20 is an opportunity for us to stand up for our community and interrupt the space of the Common Council Capital Budget Discussion.

We need to bring attention to the forced hysterectomies of detained refugee women in ICE detention centers, acts of violence and murders of countless Black Trans Women and the persistent assault of state violence on black life.

We are asking community members to speak out against these atrocities.Please sign up to speak the names of our fallen comrades and to demand the city defund the police and invest in community.

This is the link to WATCH the meeting: bit.ly/watchMB.We will provide the link to REGISTER for public comment when it becomes available.Also HANG OUT with us in the Zoom room during the session while we learn about why Defund The Police is a critical gender justice issue: bit.ly/MadSafe

We have to put up a fight all the way up to the November 10th and 12th budget adoption meeting!

“It’s something students are definitely going to want to talk about when they come back to school,” Samantha Garrett told me while schools were closed for the summer in Milwaukee, and the community was grappling with the uncertainty of how the district would reopen amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the “it” Garrett referred to in this case was not the disease. It was the other big story that continued to dominate news throughout the summer—the wave after wave of protests for Black lives that have drawn an estimated 15-26 million Americans out into streets across the country.

“Thousands of high school students have participated in demonstrations against police killings of unarmed Black people,” Education Week reports. “Some students are demanding that their school districts adopt anti-racist curricula.” Consequently, educators, from policymakers to practitioners, are scrambling to reinvent curricula and instruction to be more culturally relevant to nonwhite students….

“People always want to start the conversation about community schools with the wraparound services,” Ingrid Walker-Henry told me. Walker-Henry is an organizer for the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association and is on temporary release to work for the union after teaching in Milwaukee since 2000.

“Those things are huge,” she said, but what matters more are the model’s reliance on shared leadership, equity, and culturally relevant practice.“Those tenets force us to ask, ‘What does equity look like? How do we address the opportunity gaps in society?’” she said.

MAC, for instance, did not always have a Youth Council or an ethnic studies program, much less any kind of protocol allowing Black students to influence curricula. But it was the school’s fidelity to the community schools model that brought those things about.”

Voces de la Frontera Action

733 Historic W Mitchell Street, Milwaukee, WI – 10 A.M. – 5 P.M.

(Español Abajo) We are excited to announce an all day art and outreach event happening this Saturday, October 10th, in Milwaukee from 10am-5pm. We are shutting down Mitchell Street from 7th & 8th to host our community block party.

The main event will be painting the message, “Voting is Power. Black and Brown Lives Matter” on the street, but we will also be hosting other voter engagement activities. Feel free to drop by when you can, and there is no obligation to stay the entire day.Don’t worry, permits and plans are all taken care of. We just need you! This is an event you don’t want to miss! Bring your mask, bring a friend, and bring your energy!Voting is Power! Black and Brown Lives Matter!

—-

Estamos emocionados anunciar un evento muy especial planeado este sábado, el 10 de octubre en Milwaukee entre 10am a 5pm. Cerraremos la calles Mitchell entre las calles 7 al 8 para una una kermés comunitaria.El evento principal estará pintando el mensaje, “Votar es poder. Las Vidas Negras y Inmigrantes Importan (en ingles)” por la calle.

También organizaremos otras actividades de participación para correr la voz sobre el voto. Puede unirse cuando puedas, y no hay una obligación quedarse todo el día.No se preocupe, los permisos y los planes están arreglados. ¡Solo falta la comunidad y usted! ¡Este es un evento que no se quiere perder! Por favor, use cubrebocas.

October 2, 2020

By David Sole

On September 23 Detroit’s Police Chief James Craig went on TV’s Fox & Friends to denounce the demonstrations against police brutality and terror that have continued almost daily since May 29 after the murder of George Floyd. “They have another agenda and we know what that agenda is” explained the Chief. “I believe it’s a Marxist ideology.”

Black Lives Matter protesters are being funded by communist outsiders intent on undermining the government’ was another claim spouted without any evidence. “They embed themselves in peaceful protests.” [WDET.com].

Of course the political persuasion of the hundreds and thousands of Detroit protesters, indeed the millions who have marched and rallied across the nation, are of all stripes and varieties. No one is polling the demonstrators and no surveys are distributed.

What is clear, however, is that very real and disturbing issues like police terror, wanton murder of African American people, unjust courts and police immunity are the real driving force wherever these protest are found.

This Marxist who has been out in the streets many of the days in the past three plus months feels compelled to answer the garbage coming from the mouth of Detroit’s top police official.

Leaflet from David Sole’s first demonstration.

I have been an activist protester since 1964 when I was just 15 years old. I didn’t know much about Marx, socialism or communism and was more hostile to them than favorable. I joined a New York City-wide boycott of the public schools in February of that year to protest the reports of unequal funding of Black versus mostly white schools. My mom was afraid that they would put my name on a list – a fear generated by the fanatic Senator Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade in the 1950s.

The Civil Rights movement was sweeping the country, especially drawing in the youth who were less set in our ways and had less fear than our cautious elders. I was working as a waiter for the summer at Camp Equinunk located north of Honesdale, PA. Our bunk house had no screens on the windows and I helped organize a strike which quickly won us modest improvements in working conditions.

I can’t say that I was much of an activist until it became clear that the U.S. government was carrying out genocide in Vietnam. I joined the March on the Pentagon on October 21, 1967 and helped found the Queens Anti-Draft Union at Queens College, City University of New York where I was studying biology and chemistry. The issues of racism and imperialist war had drawn me into action not any abstract theory.

Here is where Marxist ideology comes in, Chief Craig. In the thick of one protest after another something was missing. Black people were denied the right to vote and were victims of segregation and racism and U.S. foreign policy led to wars in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic (1965). What connected these seemingly separate issues? Not to mention the mistreatment of Native peoples, Latinx minorities, women and LGBTQ+ folks?

There was all of this injustice, lots of facts of history, but nothing to make sense of it all. As a student of biology there was the theory of Darwinian evolution and modern DNA science that made that field wonderfully understandable. Chemistry made sense once the discovery of quantum mechanics unified that field.

In the same way scientific socialism, what you called Marxist ideology, made sense of history and politics. Marxism, simply put, focused on the economic underpinnings of society so one could begin to explain the political world around us. It allowed us to connect the dots, so to speak.

But in addition to having a theory, one also needs a will to change things. Those who have both want to participate in one or many of the struggles that inevitably break out in an unjust society. We don’t “embed” ourselves in a movement for some nefarious, secret goal. We are organically part of every and all fights for justice. Our theory allows us to understand that fundamental, structural changes must take place for serious improvements to be won and secured. And we don’t hide our ideology. Rather we look for platforms to explain to others caught up in the immediate struggle that racism, police terror, economic hardship, etc. are, at root, caused by the capitalist system.

Sometimes we talk about the Wall Street bankers and corporate bosses as the problem. When we organized against the phony Detroit bankruptcy we said from the start that it was only a scam to steal the pension money from 30,000 city retirees. That’s exactly what happened. The big banks paid nothing while the retirees (myself included) lost up to 40% of our pensions.

But, Chief Craig, you chose the path in life that makes you a paid agent of the capitalist system. You may not think so, but that is precisely what you are. And please don’t deny that you have a secret agenda. Didn’t you meet on August 18 with Trump’s Attorney General William Barr? Are we to believe that Barr’s influence had nothing to do when only four days later you launched your riot police against peaceful protesters on Woodward Avenue. Those cops clearly had orders to cause injury, more so than to arrest people. Trump and Barr had publicly announced on June 1 they wanted officials to overwhelmingly “dominate the streets” and to target “professional activists” and “leaders of protest groups.”

You were willing to do this work. And you glowed with pride when the White Supremacist in Chief, Donald Trump, publicly praised you. But a Federal judge saw it differently and has ordered your police force to stop using violent crowd control weapons.

Just like me over 50 years ago, young people are coming out into the streets to march, rally and protest one injustice after another. They know things are messed up. Perhaps some of us “elders” can help them understand the system. Or maybe they will be able to figure it all out on their own with the help of the internet.

But your anti-communist ranting, just like that of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover against the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is disgraceful and will never stop a struggle for justice.

You need to resign.

Rockford Youth Abolitionists

Rockford police officers shot yet another fleeing, unarmed Black man in the back!

Kamila Ahmed

619 W Walnut St, Milwaukee, WI 53212-3839 – 3 P.M.

More than ever we see a need to PROTECT BLACK WOMEN !
This protest is in honor of Breonna Taylor and all our other sisters who have died by police brutality..domestic violence..and medical malpractice.
This will be a healing space for BLACK WOMEN. Be ready to amplify the voices of black women!
We are tired of the injustice…we are tired of being undervalued! WE DEMAND JUSTICE..AND WE DEMAND IT NOW!
All are welcome and invited. Please wear a mask and practice social distancing.
NO JUSTICE NO PEACE!

Hosted by Tyler Skenandore, Nikolas Magallón and 2 others

Saturday, October 10th, 2020 at 10am beginning at the Capitol on the State St. side (The Battlefield) to march 26.2 miles across the city of Madison together as one community to…

#FundTheCommunity so that we can start our rehabilitation programs, youth programs and direct services that are created and led by our people and primarily s so that we can start our rehabilitation programs, youth programs and direct services that are created and led by our people and primarily s#fundthecommunityerving our people

#CommunityControlOfThePolice: Defund MPD, and protect the integrity and power of the new Civilian Oversight Board and Independent Police Monitor as necessary steps to increased community control of police.

#JusticeForTony: Fire MPD Officer Matt Kenny and address Dane County District Attorney Ozanne’s support of MPD in the biased and unjust case of the murder of Tony RobinsonThe current “BIPOC Demands for the University of Wisconsin-Madison” (see link below this message) to combat the performative and inadequate actions of university administration, and to instead center the issues that BIPOC face on campus

To the extent that you and/or other people you know are interested and available to participate in the Marathon March on 10/10 in any capacity, we ask that you please fill out the following form, which doubles as both an RSVP and as a Volunteer Sign-Up sheet. Your interest/help in supporting the safety and successful facilitation of this event is very much appreciated and honored:https://linktr.ee/MarathonMarch

Thank you and see you out there!