Pretending the U.S. is not under siege from all quarters, when Biden questions "whether our democracy will long endure," he pathetically tries to rescue the situation by resorting to quoting from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address at the time of the Civil War. He does so not only to perpetuate the perversion that it was Lincoln who emancipated the enslaved people, not the enslaved people themselves, but to promote the phrase "government of, by and for the people" to clothe his democracy in colors it simply does not have. Lincoln's Address in 1863 begins by referring to the Declaration of Independence, saying "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

When Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address he was battling the slave power and thus had difficulty referring to the Constitution with its endorsement of and compromise with the slave power. Note that he says "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," rather than how it is stated in the Declaration as a "self-evident truth" meaning that no proof is necessary, it is self-evident that all men are created equal. Turning it into a proposition makes it an aspiration for that "more perfect union" that presidents regularly refer to as a means to dismiss crimes and injustice. As an aspiration, it is also used to justify the continued existence of government structures of inequality which are guaranteed by the Constitution. 

When Lincoln speaks he goes on to say: "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." He concludes that the task is to ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." The phrasing, like Biden's and the Constitution's, craftily separates the people from government. This is also readily seen in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." The wording separates the government and the people, just as the expression "we the people" is taken to mean the government. The separation is necessary to enable the structures of inequality established throughout the Constitution, with government being superior to the people, the multitude, the majority.

For Lincoln, the Civil War was not about eliminating the compromise with slavery enshrined in the Constitution. The system of slave labor had de facto become incompatible with the system of wage labor. Through Civil War, the industrial power sought to vanquish the slave power, with both existing north and south. Thus, for Lincoln, the issue was who would wield the national power and how this was to be determined and achieved.

Lincoln talks about ensuring that government of, by and for the people "shall not perish from this earth." But a problem the rulers cannot overcome is that the Civil War and Reconstruction afterwards, where the striving of the people for emancipation was decisive in both, served to advance the democratic revolution stemming from the anti-colonial struggle against the British. The advance meant one form of private property ownership, the system of slave labor, had in fact perished, to be replaced by a system of wage slavery, with sharecropping being one of the forms it took on. This accomplishment proved historically that private ownership of property can be abolished. While the people's striving for power was defeated in 1877 through use of force and terrorism, the Civil War is irrefutable proof that private property can be abolished -- it happened. Nonetheless, the oligarchy as a class remained and the fight over who wields political power, the decision-making power, was raging. For the rich, the challenge was to perpetuate the compromise between the ruling factions so as to effectively rule over the multitude. This Covenant to rule over the people and the need to conciliate interests is at the heart of all the theories of constitution and constitutional rule in the U.S. But that compromise is what is incompatible with the striving of the people for empowerment.

Another problem with referring to the phrase "government of, by and for the people," as a reference point today is that the reference is to the U.S. Constitution, with its compromises with oligarchy and structures of inequality. The needs of the times reject both. A modern constitution must of necessity reject both. A vantage point which advantages the interests of the people requires vesting sovereignty, decision-making power, in the people and finding the ways to do this which are not based on a reshuffle of current structures of inequality. For advancing democracy today, the reference point is not the U.S. Constitution and the mantra that it can be made better. It is a completely new reference point where power emanates from the people and the claims they are entitled to make on the society into which they are born or where they permanently reside. As the people persist in taking their place, they give birth to political processes which of necessity provide structures of equality. The question of political supremacy and defining it requires that the people define who "the people" are by virtue of their act of laying the claims they see fit to make. The rulers, by defining the people as the government and separating the governing from the governed, are acting to block the people from vesting the supreme power in themselves. Using the Constitution and government "of, by and for the people," as a reference point to define a modern democracy falls into many traps which the people striving for empowerment are eager to avoid.

In a people's democracy, the people using their own agency decide what is to be done under specific conditions and circumstances. The power to remove those who block the implementation of their decisions or who commit crimes against the peoples, like aggressive war or planning and instigating such wars, or participating in acts the people deem constitute violence, like killer cops or killer drones, will be held to account. The issue is one of who wields the decision-making power in the service of what rule.

This is what is at stake on this July 4 in the United States.

Protest in Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 19, the day before the verdict was reached in Derek Chauvin's trial.

Following the court's sentencing of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd to only 22.5 years -- which means he is eligible for parole in 15 years -- many community members were angry, saying such a sentence did not fulfill their demands for justice and accountability. Many had demanded charges of first degree murder for which, in Minnesota, conviction means life in prison. Chauvin's charge of second degree murder has a maximum of 40 years but even that was not given. He was also found guilty of second-degree manslaughter and third-degree murder. The judge has discretion to provide sentencing for each, to be served consecutively. For Minnesota, the maximum for second degree manslaughter is 10 years and for third degree murder nine years, or 59 years in total.

Many compare Chauvin's sentence of 22.5 years for murdering George Floyd to longer sentences commonly served for similar or lesser offences, especially when African Americans and Puerto Ricans are being sentenced. One in seven people in U.S. prisons are serving a life sentence, commonly for lesser violent crimes than murder. This includes 3,972 people serving life sentences for a drug-related offence. More than two-thirds of those serving life sentences are people of colour with one in five Black men in prison serving a life sentence, again usually for lesser crimes than Chauvin's.

Puerto Rican political prisoners got 60-75 year sentences just for conspiracy, with no actual act of violence having been committed. Leonard Peltier, an Indigenous leader charged with murder, which even the government now admits he did not commit, remains in prison after 46 years. He is now 77, yet the government refuses to release him.

The sentence given Derek Chauvin will not act as a deterrent to more racist killings by police either. So long as the U.S. state and its policing agencies at all levels refuse to assume ownership of their own actions, such killings will continue until the people themselves succeed in bringing them to an end. The rulers take no responsibility because they believe they will not face any consequences. That is where they are wrong.

Minneapolis rally on April 20, 2021, the day the guilty verdict was returned against Chauvin.

In a letter dated June 30, 105 organizations wrote to President Joe Biden demanding an end to the expulsions of refugees under Title 42 of the United States Code. Title 42 expulsions are removals by the U.S. government of persons who have recently been in a country where a communicable disease was present. They were implemented in the name of COVID-19. The letter explains the plight of the refugees today and the state of human rights violations at the hands of the U.S. administration. The text of the letter follows.

Dear President Biden:

We, the 105 undersigned organizations, write to express our alarm and disappointment that your administration is reportedly considering plans to continue to use the unlawful Title 42 expulsion policy to block and expel adult asylum seekers for at least two more months and may use punitive measures such as ankle monitors and expedited removal in processing families. Not only does the Title 42 policy violate U.S. refugee law and treaties, but it also endangers people seeking U.S. protection, with over 3,250 kidnappings, rapes, and other attacks on people expelled or blocked at the U.S.-Mexico border since you took office. This number rises every day your administration fails to end this policy. We urge your administration to fully rescind this policy for all populations, comply with U.S. refugee law, and ensure that Black, LGBTQ and other adult asylum seekers, many of whom have been turned back or expelled at ports of entry, as well as families and children, have swift access to the U.S. asylum system.

Many of our organizations have repeatedly called on your administration to end the Title 42 expulsion policy and restart asylum processing for people seeking refuge. Rational, science-based measures, recommended by public health experts exist to mitigate COVID-19 concerns and safely process asylum seekers at the border. The use of Title 42 -- described as a "Stephen Miller special" by a former Trump administration official -- was implemented over the objections of senior Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) experts and has been widely discredited by epidemiologists and public health experts who have confirmed it has "no scientific basis as a public health measure." These experts provided detailed recommendations for the safe processing of asylum seekers to your transition team, the CDC, and other officials in your administration. In May 2021, medical experts for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) filed a whistleblower disclosure condemning the policy for lacking a public health justification and for fueling widespread family separation and detention of children. Medical professionals providing care in encampments and shelters in Tijuana have also decried the expulsion policy as threatening the health and safety of migrants.

Human rights organizations and the media have documented the escalating dangers faced by asylum seekers and migrants subjected to the Title 42 policy, many of whom have been forced into squalid and dangerous conditions in several new camps near the border. Legal and humanitarian staff who work with migrants subjected to the policy have also faced serious risks to their safety. The Title 42 policy has also driven family separations as it presents families with the impossible choice of keeping children in danger or sending them alone across the border for their safety. As a result, many of the single adults who are now stuck in Mexico are desperately trying to reunite with their children in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody or with family in the United States.

The expulsion policy has disproportionately affected asylum seekers from Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere, who were not placed in the Migrant Protection Protocols and are not eligible for processing into the United States under Phase 1 or Phase 2 of its wind-down. Black and LGBTQ asylum seekers blocked in Mexico under the expulsion policy and unable to request protection at a port of entry continue to experience targeted discrimination and violence. Recent reports indicate that while your administration may end the policy in July for families, it may continue to subject adult asylum seekers to the policy for at least two months -- an unacceptable delay that would prolong disparities in access to protection and disproportionately impact Black asylum seekers from African and Caribbean countries, as well as LGBTQ refugees and others who are not travelling with children. Such an approach would be completely indefensible. Public health safeguards in no way require or justify disparate treatment between families and adults arriving alone. Moreover, such an approach is contrary to U.S. asylum law and the non-discrimination provisions of the Refugee Convention.

We are concerned that this administration continues to look to deterrence as a strategy to address processing of asylum seekers at the border. Ankle monitors, budget requests for expansive detention, and expedited removal are part of a deterrence strategy that is inhumane and ineffective. Such a cruel strategy is the physical manifestation of the statement "Don't come." Electronic monitoring devices are a particularly intrusive measure that causes physical and emotional harm without a positive impact on appearance rates as compared to appropriate, community-based case management services. With respect to expedited removal, many of our organizations, as well as the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, have long noted failures by Customs and Border Protection officers and Border Patrol agents to follow basic required procedures to identify individuals who must be referred for credible fear interviews, as well as intimidation and coercion of asylum seekers to withdraw requests for protection.

While we greatly appreciate your administration's ongoing efforts to process into safety certain asylum seekers subjected to Migrant protection Protocols, we remain gravely concerned that the Biden administration continues to block and expel asylum seekers to the same dangers under the Title 42 policy. In a rare public statement calling on this country to uphold its legal obligations, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees recently urged the United States to swiftly end this policy and "restore access to asylum for the people whose lives depend on it, in line with international legal and human rights obligations."

With the 70th anniversary of the Refugee Convention approaching in July, we urge your administration to end its misuse of Title 42 public health authority immediately, restore asylum processing in line with U.S. refugee laws and treaties for all asylum seekers -- including at U.S. ports of entry -- and set an example for the rest of the world by welcoming refugees with dignity.

Respectfully,

[Signed]

For list of signatories, click here.

We provide below a portion of the executive summary of a recent report by Physicians for Human Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union concerning resistance by detained refugees using hunger strikes, many of them women, and violations of their human rights by the U.S. 

While the report speaks to forced feeding, use of freezing cold rooms and solitary confinement, the women hunger strikers have also brought out that threats are made against them using their children. Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) threaten to remove children or prevent the mothers from seeing them, for example, as a means to coerce them into ending the strikes. To date, most of the detention centres involved remain open.

Mr. Otieno (a pseudonym) an asylum seeker from East Africa, is one of the many people in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention who began a hunger strike to protest poor conditions and seek release during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than listen to his pleas, ICE retaliated by locking him in a freezing cold room, force-feeding him through a nasogastric tube against his will, and transferring him to three different facilities. Only after subjecting him to all of this did ICE finally release him from detention in late 2020. Mr. Otieno, who lost 28 pounds and now takes medication for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, described it as "an experience that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy." He said, "They put me on a bed and handcuffed me to an emergency medical stretcher. ... [They] strap you on the chest, waist, legs, [with] hard restraints ... there is no point in fighting back because you are there with six male, strong officers, and three nurses, and there is nothing you can do." The doctor claimed to have a judicial order but declined to show it to him. Mr. Otieno saw two other hunger strikers who were also force-fed.

The decision to begin a hunger strike in immigration detention is not taken lightly. A detained person's refusal to eat may be the last option available to voice complaint, after all other methods of petition have failed. Detained and imprisoned people worldwide have engaged in hunger strikes to plead for humane conditions of confinement or release from captivity and to bring attention to broader calls for justice.

Each day, the United States government unnecessarily locks up thousands of people in civil immigration detention, including children, in over two hundred immigration detention centres around the country.

People may be locked up for many months -- even years -- as they await final adjudication of their cases or deportation. Trapped in a system marked by mistreatment and abuse, medical neglect, and the denial of due process, hundreds of people in immigration detention engage in hunger strikes as a means of protest each year. ICE's failure to provide safe and humane conditions in detention during the COVID-19 pandemic has only raised the stakes for detained people. Although some detained people, on occasion, are able to bring outside attention to their hunger strikes, very little is known of ICE's systemic response to hunger striking detainees.

This report provides for the first time an in-depth, nationwide examination of what happens to people who engage in hunger strikes while detained by ICE. 

For the full Executive Summary, click here. 

Tulsa following 1921 massacre

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the brutal massacre carried out in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. People across the U.S. commemorated the massacre, decried the racist legacy which the United States continues to enforce, and saluted the spirit and determination of the African Americans who built and rebuilt Greenwood. U.S. President Biden made a point of visiting Tulsa to spread deliberate disinformation according to which "mobs" of "white supremacists" was responsible for the massacre. The claim is that the "hate" of these "mobs" were responsible, not the federal government, not police and government forces which, like the Tulsa mayor, were always part of or protection for government-organized racist and terrorist gangs such as the KKK. It was the government at all levels, backed by the military and a state-organized force specifically targeting the African American community of Greenwood that was responsible.

In 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma like many U.S. cities was segregated by law. Greenwood, the African American community, was thriving at the time. The attack was no accident. It was in part a land-grab by the mayor and city officials and also a means to suppress the growing success and independence of Greenwood and provide an example to all those striving for equality and opposing government racism.

The government was directly involved, not only through the imposition of racist segregation laws, or because it backed a mayor who was a member of the KKK, but because police forces were involved, including by deputizing and arming their organized force of white men. Machine guns and planes were used to bomb the area. A review of the photos shows brick buildings were turned into rubble, confirming that the level of destruction could not have been accomplished by fires alone. National Guard troops were called in by the Governor. The land grab is evident in the fact that the very day following the massacre, Tulsa passed zoning laws to prevent Greenwood from being re-built. Governments at all levels acted to ensure the crimes were covered up and the African American community was blamed. The crimes include mass graves only now being discovered, 27 so far, along with mass injuries and homelessness for thousands and brutal violence against the entire community.

Tulsa was not an isolated incident. It follows the major rebellions that occurred in African American communities across the country in 1919, also violently suppressed by the government. African American troops were returning home from World War I and were angered by the organized racism and discrimination they faced, including from laws enforcing unequal schools, housing and more. Indeed dozens of African American soldiers in Tulsa rallied and armed themselves to support and defend Greenwood, including from a planned lynching.

Tulsa also takes place in the context of the Russian Revolution of 1917 that influenced people worldwide as the new government recognized the human rights of all and affirmed every person was legitimate and there would be no second class citizens. Organizing was occurring among workers that united Black and white, all of which frightened the rulers, bringing forth brutal repression, use of KKK terror and more. This is the context for the massacre.

When President Biden visited the site on the 100th anniversary, an evident aim of his visit was to cover up the role of the U.S. government of the day and since then in committing such crimes. He even claimed "private planes" were used despite the fact that many survivors have affirmed that the military was involved with various law enforcement on board, firing at people in the streets who were trying to protect themselves and their children from the many fires.

Biden mentions that there were governors and Congressional representatives at the time who were members of the KKK, but does not hold government then and now accountable. He describes some of the events, including government use of "red-lining" and "eminent domain" to target and destroy Greenwood a second time, after the massacre, after people joined together to rebuild it. But still, he holds to the mantra that the United States is the greatest defender of human rights as if all the crimes it commits are just aberrations which do not really count.

"Redlining" was codified racism that shaped cities in the U.S. and continues to do so today. Maps from nearly a century ago created by the federal government's Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), are based on deeming immigrant populations "hazardous." The presence of Black people was a "detrimental influence" or an "infiltration." Stark red lines on the maps outlined neighbourhoods made up of people of colour, hence the term red-lining. Green lines mark the "safe" areas of mostly white families.

In the 1930s, these "residential security" maps served as guidelines for real estate professionals and loan officers. The maps categorized regions across the country that supposedly deserved investment and others that were considered too "risky" for mortgage lenders. The "risk" was based solely on the racial makeup of a community.

The maps were codified racism. Though eventually made illegal, red-lining continues in various forms. For example, a study released in 2018 found that 64 per cent of the neighbourhoods graded "hazardous" by HOLC remain segregated minority neighbourhoods, most commonly African American. Seventy-four per cent of neighbourhoods branded "hazardous" also remain low-to-moderate income neighbourhoods. A 2017 study found that areas classified as high-risk on HOLC maps became increasingly segregated during the next 30-35 years, and suffered long-run declines in home ownership and house values. The federal government and financial agencies it runs have long been and remain responsible for imposing and maintaining segregation.

The blatantly racist practice has barred Black Americans and targeted communities for generations, ensuring unequal schools while blocking access to capital, government financing for home ownership and all the basic tenets for what is called wealth-building. Created under the New Deal, the HOLC program was meant to ease the effects of the Great Depression. Yet, these policies destined red-lined regions for disinvestment and concentrated poverty.

Redlining was followed by other detrimental efforts such as "urban renewal," which cleared neighbourhoods to construct housing projects and highways, in turn displacing communities of colour, once again changing the urban geographical landscape. To this day minorities are constantly forced out of areas considered "prime real estate," or people are restricted to segregated neighbourhoods.

The role President Biden is playing is to either defend the crimes the U.S. is committing or make no mention of them or of reparations. This is because the crimes continue today and everything is done to divert attention away from the demand for accountability. Biden does not address continuing government structures of inequality that not only maintain inequality but make sure social and political problems are exacerbated manifold. Proof of this is seen in the racist police killings, lack of treatment for COVID-19 and lack of health care more generally, and job and housing discrimination. Biden does not address the lack of any mechanism for the people to hold the government accountable. Addressing that problem is in the forefront of many current battles for justice.

(Voice of Revolution, U.S. Marxist-Leninist Organization)