Robin D. G. Kelley will deliver the 13th Annual Robert Fitch Memorial lecture at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY on Monday, March 18th at 1 pm. Introduced by Doug Henwood.
0:03hi thank you so much for coming um I want to welcome you to this the 13th
0:10annual Robert Fitch Memorial lecture my name is Karen Miller I’m a professor here in the social science department
0:17and I’ve been organizing this lecture since its Inception um it’s this this it’s this
0:24event is also being live streamed by Boston Review and we’re really grateful um for them putting it up on the web so
0:31thank you and hello everyone out there um thank you to everyone who came to
0:38what promises to be an excellent talk one that honors Bob fit’s Legacy by
0:43connecting some of his ideas to questions about Palestine solidarity and
0:49working-class democracy I am so honored that Robin G Kelly who I first met in
0:551992 when I was a fifth year undergrad at the University of Michigan agreed to be our speaker this year Robin joins
1:03what has become a long line of inspiring Scholars and thinkers um who’ve given this talk and
1:10they include Doug Henwood who I’m about to introduce um John Hy Ruth Wilson
1:16Gilmore Sharon zuken Peter Quang Peter maruza kianga yamat Taylor Richard
1:23Walker Terry hum suku Meha Kim Phillips fine and Cindy cats
1:31after this talk please join us for a name reading memorializing those who have been killed by the Israeli Siege
1:38and bombardment of Gaza organized by the faculty and staff for justice in
1:43Palestine at cuni this vigil will be will begin at 2:15 it will be held in
1:50the E Atrium which is on the first floor just outside of our library um and people will be walking
1:57there um Doug Henwood will do the honors of talking more about Bob and introducing Robin um but I’m going to
2:04tell you who he is Bob is a Brooklyn based or Doug is a Brooklyn based journalist and broadcaster who
2:10specializes in economics and politics he published the left business Observer
2:15from 19 1986 to 2013 he’s the host of behind the news a
2:21fantastic weekly radio show which I highly recommend that that um originates in at kpfa in Berkeley and it’s
2:29syndicated across the country and the web presence across the world um his work has appeared in Harper’s jackan
2:37book Forum Grand Street and the nation where he’s also a contributing editor um among other Publications and
2:44his books include Wall Street how it works and for whom still really great um
2:50from the late ’90s after the new economy an analysis of the boom and bust of the
2:5590s and my turn Hillary Clinton targets the presidency he is currently working
3:00on a book about the American ruling class thank [Applause]
3:10you uh thank you Karen and thanks for all the organizing work you and your colleagues do for this uh it’s become a
3:16regular um event in my spring calendar uh welcome to the 13th annual Robert
3:21Fitch Memorial lecture I hope that number doesn’t Tri trigger anyone suffering from
3:27triskaphobia as I’ve said every year introducing these when I gave the first Fitch lecture in 2012 I was worried
3:34there wouldn’t be a second I never could have imagined there would be a dozen more and featuring so many distinguished
3:39speakers we feel very honored that Robin Kelly is doing today’s Bob taught at LaGuardia from
3:451993 until his death in 2011 he is deeply devoted to the college and his students here and there is no better
3:52place to honor him a few words about Bob I met him in the late 80s when we were
3:57both writing for the Village Voice he just come out of hiding a few years earlier a publisher gave him an advance
4:03for a book he never wrote and the publisher wanted the money back Bob never had any money to speak of so that
4:10Advance was long gone and of course he couldn’t repay it just after meeting him I read his essay planning New York a
4:17look at the 1929 Master scheme by the regional plan Association I’d lived in New York for about a decade by then I
4:23still didn’t really get how the place was run after reading Bob’s essay I began to by Bob’s tell telling the rpa’s
4:31plan uh laid out a vision of the metropolitan area with Manhattan as an Office hub and a network of Highways
4:37moving people in and out of the city and the suburbs that’s pretty much what had happened in the ensuing decades more
4:44recent Plans by the RPA the city and the real estate industry have extended the development of Manhattan out to downtown
4:50Brooklyn and to this neighborhood Long Island City the high rises that have sprouted in this once lowrise
4:56neighborhood are the visible fruits of those plants but now with so many Office Buildings empty and unlikely ever to be
5:02filled to capacity anytime soon the planning apparatus has a problem there’s
5:07talk of converting them to Apartments but progress if that’s what you want to call it has been slow will it happen
5:14will it work sad to say there are a few people writing critically on these matters with the Insight Insight that
5:20Bob brought to them Bob’s analysis of New York City is exemplified by his 19 uh 96 book the
5:27assassination of New York whose covered picture depicts David Rockefeller driving a bulldozer flattening the
5:33buildings whose profit potential didn’t please him but that’s not all Bob wrote about he was a real he wrote a book
5:40about Ghana in the late 1960s he studied Chinese language and literature he wrote
5:45very critically about the miserable office oifc of American unions a critique that didn’t win him many
5:50friends and who’s an extremely warm and generous person I miss him terribly as a
5:56friend and as a thinker much of our uh friendship was conducted Ed in Long phone conversations about the miserable
6:02state of things sad to say they were mostly miserable alas I wish I could hear his analysis of Eric Adams the cop
6:09and austerity mayor but who despite his love of law enforcement seems to keep some shady company at a time when the
6:16city could use some energetic leadership given the slowness of our recovery from the covid shock we have a vain demagogue
6:22who wants to blame desperate migrants for our troubles instead with the New York Post whipping
6:27up invented Tales of a crime wave Amplified by Donald Trump who bellowed at his truth social platform a few
6:34months ago murders and violent crime hit unimaginable records all in caps with an exclamation point to top it off um in
6:41the city we could use a mayor who could calm things down with a little truth-telling but that’s not the Adam
6:46Style just to set the record straight let’s look at murders these are the best measure to look at according to criminal
6:52justice conosur murder isn’t only the most serious crime around the stats on
6:58them are the most reliable because other types is subject to reporting and classification errors last year there were 391 murders
7:05down 11% from 20122 20% from 2021 and 83% from the all-time high in 1990 so
7:14far this year murders are down 25% from the same period last year if that is rate if that rate is sustained through
7:202024 we’ll be back to preco rates of murder there is no crime wave but
7:26reactionaries like Trump and Adams want you to think so you can almost understand Trump’s motivation he wants
7:32to ride fear into a second term a terrifying concept and to distract
7:37attention from his troubles with the prosecutor he mysteriously calls peekaboo James but Adams has no excuse so I guess
7:45it’s easier for the cops and landlord’s mayor to give into a manufactured Panic than it is to talk about the cost of
7:51housing or adapting to climate change on those things at least Bill DeBlasio could talk of good games Adams can’t
7:57even do that better to sto fears of our neighbors and of refugees enough local news it’s time to
8:04introduce our today’s speaker Robin DG Kelly distinguished professor and Gary B Nash endowed chair in US history at UCLA
8:12among his books are hammer and ho Alabama communist during the Great Depression Freedom dreams the black
8:17radical imagination and thonus monk The Life and Times of an American original I read some of Robin’s recent
8:24writing on Palestine and was very interested in his history of how black intellectuals and activists in the US
8:30supported the founding of Israel at first seeing it as a Homeland for people who have been persecuted for centuries
8:35but then that view evolved into seeing as the settler colonial state of A Sort they were all too familiar with at home
8:41that began a long history of solidarity between Palestinians and black Americans with the solidarity running in both
8:47directions reinforced over the last decade with Israel’s repeated assaults on Gaza and Rising protests in the US
8:54against police murders of black people I’m told that Robin Kelly will draw on Bob Fitch’s critique of the labor left
8:59focus on Union democracy at the expense of working-class democracy a system of representation that offers workers a
9:06choice of political ends and promote solidarity from that Robin we’ll discuss divisions in the US Labor movement over
9:12Palestine though we’ve never seen anything like the uaw’s recent endorsement of a ceasefire I say on toll
9:18because you never know what a speaker will say until they say it looking forward to hearing more Robin
9:28Kelly [Applause]
9:38okay good afternoon I just got off a red eye from
9:45La I was just in Hawaii before that I had about 5 hours between
9:52flights um so um I’m tired but I will do the best I can this
9:58is so great this is so important and I’m very nervous because this is a very important lecture and this lecture this
10:04talk uh which by the way is about 35 minutes and just keep just notice the
10:10time it is 1:18 so if I go to to um 2 o’
10:17don’t be mad at me right um because I do want to have some time for Q&A but it’s
10:22very important because I what I’m going to talk about really is thinking with
10:28Bob fit who I knew a little bit met a few times here in New York in those days but
10:34before I do that let me just first of all thank my my dear friend Karen Miller who I’ve known many many years uh for
10:40the impromptu invitation I think was on a plane um for the students and the
10:45faculty and staff at the Guardia Community College who kind of put this together and especially uh Doug Henwood
10:53who’s work I’ve been reading for many many years and I keep learning from and of course for my friends who who came
10:58out uh this afternoon so I want to uh honor Bob by
11:05talking about what I think he would be talking about in the situation in
11:10Palestine and more importantly how he might be thinking about the genocide in
11:16ways that would be attentive to political economy in history things that
11:21he was really really care careful about now I don’t have a clue what he would say um in fact I don’t have a clue what
11:28I would say uh but and even if I do even if I did know what he’d say I wouldn’t want to
11:33repeat it however I do think there are lessons that could be drawn out from his
11:39work by looking at Palestine and Palestinian solidarity through a labor
11:45or workingclass lens um and of course you know I just want to open up by
11:50saying by sort of acknowledging the UAW making history uh by being uh the
11:57largest Union in the country to call for ceasefire and I think that’s very very
12:02important of course new leadership under sha Fain is pretty spectacular um I was
12:08rooting for him when he was running uh for the position um and of course we
12:14should ask the harder question was where was Labor
12:19overall in 2006 and 2008 and 2012 and 2014 and 2019 and
12:262021 in fact especially 2021 because on May 18th 2021 Palestinian workers inside
12:3448 borders um inside Israel and inside the West Bank and East Jerusalem and
12:39Gaza organized a daylong general strike to protest the assault on Palestinians
12:45and shik gerar neighborhood uh at the alaxa mosque and also uh the protest of
12:51Sian Gaza they called it a dignity strike mostly workers in construction
12:56sanitation hotel and restaurant uh work Transportation like taxi and bus drivers and hundreds of workers were fired for
13:04participating in that general strike in 2021 so imagine if us labor unions had
13:10come out in solidarity with that general strike in May 18 2021 how the landscape
13:16would look different of course you didn’t have a Shan Fain uh in those days um all things considered the uaw’s new
13:24leadership was ahead and is ahead of most US Labor leaders um even the AFL C
13:31which you know opposed any statement in support of ceasefire quite recently kind of came around um and you know of course
13:39there were always the left Le unions that launched the National Labor Network for ceasefire uh headed by The Usual
13:46Suspects national nurses United which is one of the greatest unions on the planet
13:51um American uh postal workers union the association of flight attendance the
13:56Chicago Teachers Union the international un of ofes the national educational
14:02Association International Longshore uh and of course UE United Electrical
14:08Workers so in this case a ceasefire is the minimum Palestinian labor unions had
14:16actually issued a statement on October 16th calling for more than the ceasefire
14:21they called for uh organized labor to literally stop the flow of weapons to
14:27Israel by any means that their disposal they specifically asked workers to refuse to manufacture weapons earmarked
14:34for Israel to refuse to transport weapons to Israel to take action against
14:39firms complicit in The Siege on Gaza and to press their governments to end
14:45military and financial support for Israel so ceasefire is minimum um but even Shan fain’s position you know was
14:53compromised in some ways after he endorsed President Biden who Bears much of the responsibility for the ongoing
14:59genocide and I understand why but you know we all know that air dropping
15:0638,000 single meal packs to half a million Gins on the brink of famine as
15:12children literally die of starvation and dehydration is a kind of cruel
15:19performance we also know that Biden can easily change the situation by simply
15:24cutting off the supply of us uh weapons but instead he sends more arms through
15:29secret back channels while Congress votes to send Israel a whopping $14 billion to finish the job Biden’s
15:37obligation in accordance with icj’s uh finding of plausible risk of genocide is
15:42to act decisively to stop genocide that’s international law um findes
15:48endorsement of Biden for some uh Rank and file members particularly those uh
15:54who represent Michigan’s Arab American Community were seen as a slap in the face um and that’s why you have so many
16:01workingclass voters voting uh uncommitted which brings me back to Bob Fitch in a talk he gave in 2010 he
16:10argued that the labor left should focus Less on Union democracy and instead
16:15fight for what he’s calling workingclass democracy the genuine left he argued uh
16:22seeks not to democratize the machines from within but to defeat them by
16:27extending the scope of conflict and this is okay um Bob speaking breaking down
16:33local boundaries nationalizing and even internationalizing class action and
16:39Union representation and he goes on to say quote the first step in the
16:45transformation of American unionism in the 21st century is to get Beyond exclusion a labor left that breaks with
16:52the old Playbook will bypass the autonomous Local Union it will fight to end Monopoly unionism
16:59creating a system of representation that offers workers a choice of political ends transforming finally a culture that
17:06breed sectionalism into one that promotes solidarity so what does this
17:12mean for Palestine first of all internationalizing class action means
17:18recognizing the people of Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem as part of a class an especially exploited
17:27oppressed and vulnerable segment of the global working class there is no way
17:33that stopping genocide and demanding Justice for Palestinians should divide
17:38the class right and there’s nothing Democratic about union leaders speaking
17:44for the class investing its dues in support in supporting actions that
17:49contribute to the subjugation of Palestinian workers or setting Labor’s International political agenda as a
17:56consequence Union leadership has a essentially foreclosed Avenues of
18:01solidarity with Palestinian workers despite pressure from below and there
18:06are too many examples to site but I suggest checking out um Jeff sh uh sher’s um excellent writing on the
18:13subject in jacoban but I do recall in my lifetime in fact living
18:19here in New York uh the shameful position taken by national union leaders
18:25in the aftermath of 9/11 uh during the second inter F and in in 2002 Israel
18:32destroyed the offices of the Palestinian General uh General fed Federation of
18:38trade unions in Napolis and US Labor leaders you know were basically Silent
18:44One exception of course was the San Francisco labor Council which passed a
18:50resolution condemning Israel for quote the bombing of Civilian and political
18:55targets and upholding um Palestinians to self-determination in in the resolution
19:01but Zionist within the afci pressured the council to resin the resolution and
19:07this was during the era of uh Labor’s quote unquote left turn when the
19:14triumphant of John Sweeney Richard trumka Linda Chavez uh Chavez Thompson
19:20had taken over the AFL CIO Sweeny especially was out of step with a growing Rank and file increasingly
19:27critical of Israel he addressed the national rally for Israel in Washington DC just a month
19:34after the San Francisco labor Council had passed a resolution and and here’s
19:39Sweeny on the steps um near the capital joining uh Netanyahu joining Rudy
19:47Giuliani in declaring that quote working men I’m sorry working women and men of
19:52the AFL CIO stand with you to express our support for the people of Israel in the darkest hours
19:59angry Rank and file members responded swiftly with a petition condemning
20:05Sweeney Israel’s invasion of the West Bank in the name of Labor so my basic
20:10intention is that had the labor left developed the kind of boundless
20:17borderless worker democracy workingclass democracy that
20:22Bob fit proposed the political landscape with respect to US policy toward Israel
20:28might look very different today indeed it would be it would probably more closely
20:33resemble organized Labor’s position Visa a parted in South Africa in the 1980s in
20:39fact I would say uh resemble much of the working class organizing around the world outside the United States uh and
20:47this is the time when you know boycott was considered a legitimate nonviolent
20:52tactic and not a malicious Act of anti-Semitism this is when doc workers
20:58um which they still do use their power to refuse to unload cargo headed to
21:04Durban imagine how workingclass democracy workingclass power and
21:11internationalism might have inspired a general strike in solidarity calling for an end to genocide why not a general
21:17strike to end genocide why not but to understand the obstacles to
21:23this scenario requires some explaining um and for those of you who may know this history for me I’m I’m not assuming
21:30that you know this history because some people don’t but part of the issue is that for
21:35much of its history Israel was regarded as a kind of worker State and Zionism
21:42was associated with the labor party the ruling party the mapai party and some equated Zionism with socialism initially
21:49Labor zionists uh were in fact the minority especially in the early 20th century I we could talk about that but
21:56Zionism grew in popularity during the rise of Nazism in the
22:01Holocaust and for survivors of Thea uh Israel became a safe haven for Jewish
22:08resettlement and a vehicle through which Germany uh could pay reparations labor zionists look to
22:15Palestine as a potential socialist promised land so therefore it’s no
22:21surprise that us labor unions gave millions of dollars to support Israel
22:26they bought Israeli bonds they donated money uh to Zionist labor organizations
22:32uh specifically the hisp um in fact labor and the international
22:40communist movement support for Zionism obscures uh uh Israel’s formation as a
22:46settler colonial state now I’m guessing you probably know
22:53what happened next but it Bears repeating so Zionist accept the UN
22:58partition plan in 1947 dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states with the former receiving
23:0656% of the land uh in theory and Palestinians getting the other 44% of
23:12course uh the Arab population did not agree to the settlement Palestinians argued that the
23:18partition was illegal and in fact requested that the matter be referred to the international court of justice uh
23:25for an advisory opinion but pressure from the US blocked it now publicly uh the mapai
23:33party the labor party accepted the terms of the partition but then waged the war
23:39to expel Palestinians and seize additional territory it was a plan under
23:44David benguan leadership Israeli mil militias Z Haag uron the stern gang the
23:50palmach waged a deliberate campaign to terrorize kill or injured and
23:57dispossessed pal Palestinians raise their Villages take or destroy their property and above all take the land so
24:05from December 1947 to July 1949 Zionist militias drove 3/4 of a million people
24:12off of the land 80% of the Palestinian population um destroyed or emptied 500
24:20Villages demolished homes sometimes setting them a blaze or blowing them up knowing that there families inside men
24:27were lined up been shot women killed uh children shot wholesale massacres in the
24:34village of uh Derek Yassin and tantura are etched in Palestinian Collective
24:40memory in hia the militias rolled barrels of explosives and large steel
24:45balls into Palestinian neighborhoods followed by a generous stream of oil and gasoline which they then set Al light
24:53David benguan used fear to mobilize Jewish support in World opinion by
24:59making public statements comparing Arabs to Nazis in warning of a second Holocaust in private he used language
25:07similar to that of colonial officers preparing for a campaign and this is from a man who fashioned himself he
25:14called himself a Zionist Lenin okay not you know the other Lenin
25:20just so you know um and he wrote in his in his diary January 1st
25:251948 quote there is a need now now for strong and brutal reaction we need to be
25:32accurate about timing place and those we hit if we accuse a family we need to
25:39harm them without Mercy women and children included otherwise this is not
25:44an effective reaction during the operation there’s no need to distinguish between guilty and not guilty okay so by
25:52the armus of 1949 the state of Israel occupied 78% not to 56%
25:59allotted of Palestine and passed laws denying those expelled the right to
26:05return or to retrieve their property the 160,000 Palestinians remaining within
26:12Israel’s borders were placed under the military Administration until 1966 Egypt Jordan Syria Lebanon
26:19ultimately and reluctantly absorbed tens of thousands of nakba survivors the the
26:26responsibility for providing food shelter education and initially jobs
26:32that’s another story um and other necessities fell on the UN relief uh and
26:37works agencies UNR now the UN Bears some responsibility
26:44for the nakba in the absence of accountability because similar to the League of Nations the UN never declared
26:52at least at that’s in the early stages declared colonialism a crime against humanity Gandhi
26:58WB de boys member states like Haiti tried but failed why one in
27:061945 uh the UN made a distinction between civilized Nations and the
27:12rest secondly the UN was designed to recognize Nations and not peoples only
27:20Nations had rights therefore an attack on colonialism was interpreted as an
27:26assault on the sovereignty of colonizing Nations and Debo put it clearly in his
27:33book The World in Africa when he wrote quote there will be at least 750 million
27:39colored and black folk inhabiting colonies owned by white Nations who will
27:45have no rights that the white people of the world are bound to respect revolt on
27:50their part can be put down by military force they will have no right of appeal to the council or the assembly they will
27:58have no standing before the international court of justice and that was the context for the
28:05nakba in any case the birth of Israel was widely celebrated in left and labor
28:10circles including by people like Paul Robinson not just in the US but again
28:16around the world and it was bizarrely seen as a war of National Liberation against the British and Arab armies um
28:23and note you know we don’t always talk about this but Israel guided weapons
28:29from where Soviet Union Czechoslovakia and of course the Communist Party back
28:34Zionism even as Israel continued to dispossess Palestinians in Gaza for
28:40example in 1956 there were at least two massacres um and Israel actually tried to hold Gaza at that point and uh
28:47couldn’t but end up getting it’ 67 it nevertheless portrayed itself as a friend of the third world a
28:56friend of the non- allign movement and offered Aid to African nations
29:01especially military aid but then this changes in 1967 after the Arab Israeli War or what Palestinians call the noxa
29:09or setback so Israel
29:14represented itself as the David against the Goliath of uh Egypt Syria and the
29:20Arab Nations um and you know but that that self-representation did not
29:26persuade a new generation of leftists including anti-zionist Jews and black radicals who regarded Israel’s
29:33occupation of the West Bank East Jerusalem Gaza the Golan Heights as further proof that Zionism was a form of
29:41settler colonialism akin to American racism in South African apartate so in
29:46Detroit for example where black students and black workers were very were closely
29:52aligned we see more strident examples of solidarity with Palestine in fact in the
29:58months after the war in 1967 the Arab student organization uh as well as the
30:04staff of the inner city voice which is a black uh left black publication members of Snick uh and members of uh people
30:12Against Racism picketed a speech by ABA iban uh Israel’s representative in the
30:18UN um and and in that uh protest it called Israel a race a state that quote
30:23practices a parted far more ruthlessly than the Union of South Africa this is
30:301967 that ibom was actually from uh South Africa uh prompted many the
30:35protesters to draw direct links between the two countries in fact they held signs that
30:42read Israel used Napal mon Arabs why or another sign it read South Africa and
30:48Israel both race supremacist John Watson who’s one of the founders of the league
30:54of revolutionary black workers and editor of the South End at Wayne State University which is a student paper that
31:01Watson and his comrades just took over and made it into a radical Community labor publication ran articles
31:08supporting the PLO as early as 19669 and the league and the Dodge
31:14revolutionary union movement drum also organized uh Arab American Auto Workers
31:21and printed some of the leaflets in Arabic in 1973 time of the Y uh ker War Arab
31:30workers counted accounted for about 2,000 of the 35,000 workers at the forge
31:36Ford uh Rouge Plant in Dearborn in the union was uh there was predominantly
31:42black those Local 600 very famous Union um and in fact uaw’s largest local
31:49so when word got out that the local had purchased $300,000 in Israeli bonds without
31:56approval from the rank and file again this a promly black Union the UAW um as a whole by the way bought like
32:02750,000 bonds across the country but Arab workers mobilized against uh Local
32:08600 leadership and led a mass March uh in October 1973 uh from the streets of South End
32:16which is largely um Arab American community in Dearborn to the offices of Local 600 and there they protested uh
32:24UAW purchase of these Israeli bonds and in fact challenged black leaders um
32:29asking them uh how would you you know how would you feel if if the UAW bought
32:35like South African bonds for example and it really kind of um disrupted the
32:41politics within the UAW then and in fact uh November 28th this is like a month
32:48and a half later Leonard Woodcock uh was leader Local 600 was
32:53being presented a humanitarian award of uh from Bai Brit at this you know dinner and 2,000 mostly
33:02Arab workers demonstrated outside of the dinner and some of them had actually waged a wildcat strike at the Dodge main
33:08plant earlier that afternoon which of course pissed off UAW leadership who denounced a protest as communist
33:15inspired so you could see underneath the Circ surface bubbling up is this Pro
33:22Palestinian position but 1967 is important for other reasons which I think we can draw from uh by reading uh
33:30Bob fit’s work on Ghana so let me just take a little detour here so I think Bob
33:36fit’s core ideas about workingclass democracy uh grow partly out of his research on
33:43Ghana’s Independence Movement which was published in 1966 so he was at UC Berkeley doing a
33:50master’s degree in history uh and he was working on the thesis which he completed
33:56in ‘ 66 titled um opposition movements in Ghana 1954 to
34:021958 and so what he did was he sent three chapters of the thesis to a monthly
34:07review uh and to see if they’re interested in a book and of course you know Paul Sweezy Paul Baron they were
34:14like the major figures behind monthly review press uh they received the thesis
34:20or parts of it like literally days before the coup that overthrew quami
34:25Kuma so the timing was perfect like like that’s the best time to submit a book manuscript um and so Paul Sweezy and
34:33Paul Baran they’re like this is great and they wrote him they said drop everything else and bring the story up
34:39to date and we’re going to publish it in the summer issue of monthly review um and so the he recruited Mary
34:46Oppenheimer who’s also a fellow graduate student and together they wrote this book uh publish in 66 called Ghana end
34:53of an illusion now I’m not going to repeat the full argument here but see they were interested in understanding
35:00why in Kuma then considered by the left as a
35:06Visionary uh and by the right as a megalomaniac whose radical delusions drove Ghana’s economy into the ground
35:13was overthrown but not just overthrown by the CIA we know that part but overthrown
35:19uh you know with basically no opposition in other words it was a popular support for his for his aler um and so they
35:27reject the easy arguments that blame his personality or the minations of the CIA and instead place the coup within a
35:34broader International framework um they place it within the context of algeria’s
35:40counterrevolution the counterrevolution in Nigeria a Brazil Indonesia Congo and
35:46I would add Dominican Republic so fit and Oppenheimer offer an
35:52elaborate analysis of the political economy class forces Etc but the key in
35:57the peace um to to in Kuma’s defeat is a suppression of working-class democracy
36:04the energies of the mass is in motion and they note how in 1949 50
36:10inuma kind of rode uh the mass Rebellion until they called a general strike and
36:17then he suddenly you know distanced himself from the working class and fit and opheim called This Moment quote the
36:23nater the nater of the Gold Coast Independence Movement uh so the first four years uh Ghana took
36:31the course of kind of neocolonial development then in 1961 after the overthrow of of Patrice lumba in the
36:38Congo inuma announced a turn towards socialism and he established ties with
36:44the Soviet Union meanwhile as he’s making the shift uh the the conditions
36:50of workers in Ghana just are deteriorating so they organized a general strike which includea crushed he
36:57rest of the leaders of the strike um and and just you know undermine Labor’s you
37:03know democracy and uh I think you know Fitch and Oppenheimer make this really
37:09important observation they write uh the convention of people’s party’s government this is kumman government
37:15rationalizes police measures against the organized working class by equating
37:21independence with socialism did not the same thing so the book closes with an
37:27argument for revolutionary Warfare against neoc Colonial Elites and
37:32Colonial forces now in their conclusion what is to be done okay you know it’s written in
37:391966 so it’s kind of romantic it reflects the era’s Marx’s dedication to
37:45growth and industrialization which actually when you read Walter Rodney’s how Europe underdeveloped Africa it’s the same argument you know there’s this
37:51kind of fascination with growth and industrialization nevertheless they conclude that the experience of guilla
37:58War not the violence per se but the the experience prepares a masses to seize
38:04the future and they right peasants proletarians and revolutionary
38:10intellectuals develop into a homogeneous disciplin Force learning at the same
38:16time the technical skills in the inventiveness needed for industrialization and then they continue
38:23if as the evidence of recent history suggests this is the road forward for the exploited Colonial and neoc Colonial
38:30peoples of the world then it will be in the forests in the savanas with the
38:36roads turn into paths and the Sun beats down on thatch roof Shacks that Ghana’s
38:43working classes would join together to prepare the future
38:48okay so now this excursion into Ghana into the the Ghana book is more than a
38:54detour I would argue that the Arab Israeli War in ‘ 67 reflects this
39:00counterrevolutionary trend and the Revolutionary hope that they’re talking
39:06about in a different way the PLO was that gorilla Army right that they
39:11described that they imagin but there was no Revolution if anything fata became
39:17Israel’s police force after the AIL Accords the problem with Palestine comes
39:24back then to fit’s insistence on what workingclass democracy labor had little
39:30or no say in the leadership and direction of The Liberation struggle France Fon made this
39:36point and it’s no accent the first epigraph in the book is from Fon um so
39:43there was a Trade union movement in Palestine before the Naka uh you know the Society of of Arab
39:51workers um some Arab workers were organized by the Communist Party of Palestine the Federation of Arab trade
39:57unions and labor societies Arab workers Congress so forth in
40:031948 Israel banned the Arab workers Congress in
40:081952 Palestinian workers uh were allowed to join the Zionist hute but many of
40:15them were actually excluded from membership denied work and few Arab workers were even allowed to stay um in
40:24the his those who were allowed to stay couldn’t vote uh in the union elections until 1965 so basically organized labor
40:33in Palestine was kind of forced on the ground during the Israeli occupation union leaders were harassed jailed
40:40deported throughout the 1970s and yet unions grew nonetheless and in the late ’70s there
40:47were some 12,000 Palestinians who claimed union membership in part because
40:53they were working inside of Israel they were crossing green line and
40:58in some ways that labor you know kind of drove organization but they were also a
41:05pages of The Liberation movement which also reflected the kind of factional divides uh so for example um there’s
41:13some unions that identified with the PLO and the pflp the popular front for liberation of Palestine and there’s
41:20another faction of unions that identified with the Democratic front for the liberation of Palestine so they were
41:25organized less along lines of um occupation and more along lines of
41:31politics um and then of course when the general Trade union Federation uh was
41:37formed the political division still prevailed either way unions were
41:42subordinated to The Liberation movement labor leaders agreed arguing that the
41:48class struggle had to take a backseat to ending the occupation but there were extraordinary moments of General strikes
41:54for example land day which we know to today kind of as the the march of return
42:00but lande was a general strike on March 30th 1976 organized across Palestine to
42:06protest the Galilee development plan which would have created uh Jewish settlements out of confiscated land that
42:11was owned by Palestinians um and you know there’s uh
42:17subsequent to to land strikes you know was really it was very bloody as we’ve
42:23seen with the March return now it’s axiomatic almost to claim that Israeli
42:29settlers wanted nothing more than to eliminate the indigenous population however like I said
42:36Palestinians crossed the green line to work and when they did Israel
42:42imposed a workers Tax Plus welfare deductions on their checks plus uh hrud
42:51um collected 1% of their pay as dues but did nothing to address their low wag
42:57poor health and safety standards or provide services um even as their
43:02leaders complain that Palestinians from the occupied territories were undermining employment opportunities for
43:08Israeli Nationals so um the Palestine um General Federation trade
43:14unions estimated that uh the hist rout uh pocketed something like 400 million
43:21shekels or about $110 million out of the 1% dues which they never paid back the
43:28Palestinians this between 1970 and 1994 at the time of the oo cords Israel
43:33continued to exploit Palestinian labor in both the West Bank and Gaza and in
43:38Gaza tens of thousands of Palestinian workers gathered at the arids uh checkpoint in what really was called um
43:47a modern slave market to take construction jobs they get up at 3:00 in the morning and take these construction
43:52jobs inside of Israel and come back wages were on average 13 less than the
43:58prevailing wages for Jewish workers in the same industry um but pay as poultry as it was still nevertheless made up 30%
44:06of gaza’s GMP and then the number started to shrink uh before the Gulf War about
44:13180,000 Palestinians from the occupied territories uh worked in Israel about
44:1880,000 from Gaza after the war about 100,000 with 35,000 from Gaza by 199
44:27about 45,000 uh you know Palestinian workers from from occupied territories with
44:3316,000 coming in from Gaza and this is due in large uh part due to um rabine
44:39separation policy um and of course how did they make up for the shortfall well
44:46we know they began importing workers from Southeast Asia right 59,000 workers
44:51from Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe um once the the Palestinian Authority assumed government Gover
44:57responsibilities in 1994 the cost of living went up 25% unemployment in Gaza
45:03Rose 50% and the Palestinian authorities uh basically subordination
45:09of unions right which is the absence of working-class democracy kind of explains
45:15why unions were so weak uh in in in post Oslo um Palestine so just a couple final
45:23things leftists within the labor movement like baruti of the Democrat
45:29democracy and workers rights Center in rala hope that Palestinian workers would
45:35lead a broad Democratic Coalition made up of Palestinian Civil Society
45:40organizations women’s groups and Palestinian political factions and in 1995 he observed which is really a
45:47parallel to Bob fitcher’s Vision of the workingclass of working-class democracy he said our struggle is not going to be
45:54confined solely to economic issues will also include law democracy human
46:00rights social provision and education ens short development the next stage
46:06requires a new kind of struggle in which workers should take a main responsibility for the welfare of the
46:12Palestinian Nations um nation of course that didn’t happen uh for various reasons um and in
46:22fact I’m going to skip over this but the Palestinian Authority actually played a a role in kind of undermining uh
46:29independent labor organizing so for example there’s no social contract no minimum wage laws uh wages were were not
46:36tied to cost of living and no right to strike so when teachers went on strike in
46:411997 independent of of the
46:47pgf um and they were just looking for they were making like $300 a month and they’re trying to
46:53double their salary um the Ministry of Education offered 10 % increase so they
46:59struck and what did the state do I mean when I say the state the kind of fake state of the Palestinian Authority the
47:05Ministry of Education suspended 19 members without salary Arafat himself
47:10had 15 members of the strike Committee in Jericho jailed okay um and while all
47:16this is happening by the way something we don’t talk about there was a kind of neoliberal move to create um industrial
47:25zones right Enterprise zones uh moded off of Taiwan and after the Maki adoras
47:31and in Mexico that were adjacent to Gaza for example um they were used to attract
47:37Israeli and Palestinian foreign Capital they had food processing textiles
47:42furniture making inside of Gaza but at on the border of Israel Israel would was
47:48the sole recipient of tax revenue us investors got tax breaks but firms would
47:54be located again inside Gaza which save money in terms of not investing in heavy security infrastructure and these zones
48:01of course were demolished in 2004 with the withraw withdrawal of sellers but
48:07the idea is not dead in 2021 there plans a foot although now they’re probably um
48:14scuttled to create these new industrial zones in Gaza on the ruins of the old
48:21and if you pay attention to like these free trade agreements uh between Israel and Jordan
48:27Israel and UAE they’re all building these industrial zones to exploit Palestinian labor so don’t tell me that
48:34no one wants Palestinian labor you know they want them under the conditions of the macador right in any case in closing
48:44clearly Israel is not nor has ever been the worker state that labor Zion is
48:50dreamed it would be it is a settler colonial state built on dispossession
48:56and Military occupation and it is clearly a part of the global capitalist
49:01system Bob Fitch understood the class struggle he knew from his work on Ghana
49:07that crushing workingclass democracy arrests class struggle or at least weakens workingclass power he asked us
49:16to imagine the working class not as an interest group not as a sector but as a
49:23movement the movement to recognize that a gen working-class democracy is not
49:28constrained by nation and to also recognize that you
49:34know you can’t have a workingclass democracy that oversees an ethn State
49:39that’s impossible workingclass democracy is what the Communist International was supposed to be and what some dreamers
49:47thought the UN could be if it had declared colonialism a crime against humanity and recognized peoples the
49:53proletariat rather than nation states it’s kind of like that song pinned by Eugene Patia in 1871 the French
50:02Anarchist poet and transport worker and wrote the song during the Paris commune the song that can never fit comfortably
50:09Over The Melody of uh La Mar since the national anthem never made good
50:15internationalist music song the song whose melody was composed by the Belgian
50:21socialist Pierre Deer uh and first performed in the summer of 18 1988 5
50:27years after Marx’s death it is that song that song dedicated to workingclass
50:33democracy to the inexorable Rise Of The Wretched of the Earth the promise of a
50:39free world the promise that a better world’s in birth free the Land free
50:45Palestine thank
50:53you
