A view of the Villarrica volcano from the Huerquehue National Park in the contested Araucanía region of Chile / credit: Josefina Hepp
Chile’s population rejecting a proposed constitution on September 4 will hit hard one group: Indigenous people, who are socially and economically disadvantaged, thanks to generations of land dispossession and invisibility in Chile’s political landscape.
Chileans voted against enacting a new constitution that would have replaced the one installed by U.S.-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1980. The document—drafted by an elected body—was defeated with 62 percent voting against (“rechazo” in Spanish) and 38 percent in favor (“apruebo”).
Since 78 percent of Chileans had voted in favor of a new charter in 2020—shortly after a period of social unrest in 2019—the September 4 rejection shocked many. The defeat has halted the newly elected government’s progressive agenda, which would have granted greater gender parity, ecological and human rights.
“I’m sure all this effort won’t have been in vain because this is how countries advance best: Learning from experience and, when necessary, turning back on their tracks to find a new route forward,” said President Gabriel Boric, shortly after conceding defeat.
However, some have accused Boric of double talk.
Chilean Constitutional Assembly President Elisa Loncón / credit: Instagram/ElisaLoncon
The Death of Plurinationality
The new constitution would have recognized Indigenous people for the first time, which would have designated Chile a plurinational nation. Chile is the only country in Latin America that does not recognize the Indigenous population.
Cheers followed when the government declared Indigenous representatives would be included in drafting the constitutional document. Shortly afterward, Mapuche academic Elisa Loncon was elected to oversee the process.
The constitution would have also guaranteed ecological protections. Indigenous communities depend on natural resources to maintain their livelihoods and cultures. Their ancestral lands have been sites of conflict as multinationals plunder Chile’s natural resources for profit.
The Araucanía region, the site of conflict between autonomist Mapuche groups and forestry companies, had the largest proportion of rechazo votes at 78 percent.
The rejection serves the interests of big business in the region, and the forestry industry in particular. The Matte group (owners of CMPC), one of the wealthiest economic groups in Chile, funded the rechazo campaign along with the Angelini group that own Forestal Arauco (granted 1 million hectares by the Pinochet regime, expropriated from Mapuche and peasant landowners). The move has been profitable as shares in both companies have gone up by 20.88 percent and 5.82 percent, respectively. One of the top 10 donors to the Rechazo campaign was Italo Zunino Besier, owner of forestry company Virutas de Madera S.A. He gave 10 million pesos ($10,690).
Racist Narratives in the Reject Campaign
The othering of the Mapuche was instrumental for the Rechazo campaign, which capitalized on racist populism and encouraged anti-plurinational sentiment. Rechazo slogans such as “Chile es uno solo” (Chile is one) spread the idea that plurinationality would fragment the nation, while “We want peace” were direct references to the Mapuche struggle for autonomy and the troubles in Araucanía.
Chile’s Aracaunía region is highlighted / credit: NordNordWest, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-sa-3.0 de
The neo-conservative think tank Instituto Res Publica warned, for example, that giving Indigenous communities a say would hurt the economy.
“An argument used by the right was that the constitution would create ‘Indigenous nations,’” Reynaldo Mariqueo, a spokesperson from Mapuche International Link, a non-governmental organization, told Toward Freedom. “According to them, the Mapuche do not constitute a nation and, therefore, should not be recognized as such. However, we maintain that the Mapuche are not just a nation, but a state.”
The Double Discourse of the State
In the run-up to the presidential election, Boric vowed to heal the rift between Mapuche people and the Chilean state.
“Militarization is the wrong path,” he told the Chilean press. “We must seek dialogue within a historical perspective. This conflict won’t be solved within the remit of ‘public order.’ We must restore confidence and talk about the territorial restoration of the Mapuche Nation.”
But, in July, he placed Araucanía under a military state of emergency. Then, on August 24, Chilean Investigations Police arrested radical Mapuche leader Hector Llaitul. He is leader and spokesperson of Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM), which seeks autonomy from the Chilean state and the right to live on ancestral land in the southern territories of the region of Araucanía.
His son and other members of the CAM have also since been arrested. The detentions have outraged Mapuche leaders.
“For us in the Mapuche world and communities in resistance, the detention of Hector represents a maneuver by the Chilean right-wing supported by the government of Boric,” Richard Curinao, a Mapuche activist and Werken journalist told Toward Freedom. “This is evidently a strategy to curb the advance and control that these leaders and organizations, such as the CAM, whom Hector represents, and halt their expansion in Mapuche communities. And the success they have had in recovering territories, territories that have been usurped by the forestries.”
Juana Calfunao, chief of the Juan Pallileo community in the Aracuania region, is a founder of the Chilean non-governmental organization, Comisión Ética Contra la Tortura (Ethical Commission Against Torture). She accused the police of a “set-up.”
“For us, this is very painful,” Calfunao told the press. “We will defend [Llaitul] until the final consequences. We will defend our weichafe (warrior). We will defend anyone detained in this manner. There have been 140 years of the Chilean State and we will continue to defend ourselves and continue to survive and struggle and confront whatever lies ahead.”
A Mapuche protest in Chile / credit: Jubileu Sul
‘Mapuche Convinced Only Way Out Is Emancipation’
Since the outcome of the referendum, Chile has been plagued with political uncertainty.
Gabriel Boric has shuffled his cabinet lurching towards the political center, and there has been talk of another attempt to write the constitution. But this time, Indigenous leaders have not been called to meetings.
Toward Freedom contacted press offices for Chile’s national government and for the Araucanía government, but did not receive a reply.
The majority of Chileans voted to maintain the status quo because they didn’t want to share a state with Indigenous people, Mariqueo said. Similarly, the Mapuche feel neither Chilean nor Argentinian, making plurinationality appear pointless.
“’Reject’ leaves things the way they are,” he added. “Except that, today, most Mapuche are convinced that the only way out (of the conflict) is emancipation from Chilean dominance, which includes—as a tool—the treaties agreed to by the Chilean and Spanish states and international norms, which preclude the creation of the Chilean state.”
Carole Concha Bell is an Anglo-Chilean writer and Ph.D. student at King’s College London.
Attendees of the January 28 launch event held at the People’s Forum in New York City for the International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, and Economic Coercive Measures
If you had missed it, don’t worry.
On January 28, the International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, and Coercive Economic Measures launched at the People’s Forum in New York City.
In the two-and-a-half months since then, the tribunal has held four virtual hearings across multiple time zones. Each hearing has zoomed in on a country that has faced Western sanctions. Experts provide testimony in a couple of hours’ time. So far, the impact of sanctions has been examined in hearings held on Zimbabwe, Syria, Korea and Libya.
Not only do the hearings intend to expose the effects of U.S. sanctions and blockades on targeted countries. The goal is to create strategies for legal accountability. Hearings will take place until June on a total of 15 countries in the Americas, Africa and Asia.
The tribunal’s website states:
People’s Tribunals capture the ethos of self-determination and internationalism that was expressed through twentieth century anti-colonial struggles and was institutionalized in the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Cuba. They bring together movement lawyers, scholars, and organizers from around the world and are designed by and accountable to the social movements and communities in which they are rooted. Operating outside of the logics and institutions of capitalist and imperialist law, People’s Tribunals make decisions that may not be binding and do not have the force of law, but their achievements in a political and discursive register inspire and provide the tools necessary for present and future organizing. People’s Tribunals allow the oppressed to judge the powerful, defining the content as well as the scope of the procedures, which reverses the norm of the powerful creating and implementing the law.
There is a long tradition of radical organizers and lawyers using the law to put capitalism and imperialism on trial. Organized by the Civil Rights Congress, and supported by the Communist Party as well as a host of Black leftist luminaries, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Claudia Jones, and Paul Robeson, We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief of a Crime of the United States against the Negro People, indicted the political-economic system of capitalism and white supremacy for inflicting numerous forms of structural and physical violence on Black people in the U.S. as well as drawing parallels to U.S. imperialist violence abroad. The Russell Tribunal was set up in 1966 to judge U.S. military intervention and war crimes in Vietnam. The same format reemerged in later Russell Tribunals dealing with the U.S.-backed Brazilian and Argentinian military dictatorships (1964 and 1976, respectively), the U.S.-backed coup in Chile (1973), and the U.S.-European interventions against Iraq (1990, 2003). The 2016 International Tribunal for Democracy in Brazil critically examined the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and the role of the U.S. government. Organized in Brussels by both Philippine and international groups, the 2018 International People’s Tribunal on the Philippines exposed and condemned the multiple forms of state violence visited on the people of the Philippines since Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016. And finally, the U.S. government was put directly on trial by a pair of innovative People’s Tribunals, including the 2007 International Tribunal on Katrina and Rita and the 2018 International Tribunal on U.S. Colonial Crimes Against Puerto Rico.
Check out the video of the tribunal’s launch.
The launch event featured jurists, scholars and activists, including:
Nina Farnia, Co-chair of the Tribunal Steering Committee & Professor of Law, Albany Law School
Niloufer Bhagwat, Confederation of Lawyers of Asia and the Pacific
Brian Becker, ANSWER Coalition
Mireille Fanon Mendès-France, The Frantz Fanon Foundation
Booker Omole, Communist Party of Kenya
Carlos Ron, Vice Minister of Foreign Relations for North America
Suzanne Adely, President National Lawyers Guild & Tribunal Steering Committee
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Former United Nations Independent Expert
Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Historian & Scholar
Claudia De La Cruz, People’s Forum
Sara Flounders, Sanctions Kill
Helyeh Doutaghi, Co-chair of the Tribunal Steering Committee & Adjunct Professor, Carleton University
The practice of “thengapalli” has helped one forest in India.
Groups of 4 or 5 women have taken turns carrying wooden sticks to guard their community forest against theft and poaching. This practice has helped the once-devastated forest in the state of Odisha to regenerate.
“Nature is the source of identity, culture, language, tradition and livelihood for an Indigenous community and, thus, they have been protecting it,” said Archana Soreng, an Indigenous activist and researcher from Odisha. “Unlike how the contemporary development framework sees nature as a commercial entity.”
A new report more than 20 Asian Indigenous organizations have authored warns Western conservation models governments and organizations worldwide have adopted threaten the rights of Indigenous communities and local people.
Posang Dolma Sherpa said such spatial targets are simplistic and do not translate into actual progress.
“For many of the Indigenous peoples and local communities already safeguarding the planet’s natural resources and biodiversity without outside help, the catchphrase ‘30 by 30’ belies the many complex considerations required to ensure truly sustainable conservation,” said Sherpa, executive director of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples and Research and Development (CIPRED), based in Kathmandu, Nepal.
As an example, she explained that in Nepal, generations of Indigenous customary institutions and self-governance systems that contributed to sustainable management of biodiversity and ecosystem were ignored. Instead, new land and forest management processes were superimposed, causing injustices and marginalization that exacerbated the issues that were meant to be rectified.
“When countries gather in Kunming in April to finalize the post-2020 Biodiversity Framework, it is imperative that the draft targets are modified to explicitly recognize human rights-based approaches to conservation on a global scale,” she added.
Sherpa said this can be done by:
Changing Target 2 in the framework to include the appropriate territories of Indigenous Peoples and local communities and their right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC);
changing Target 3 to include the appropriate territories of Indigenous peoples and local communities, the equitable governance of these territories and resources, and their appropriate legal recognition within the target;
including the “devolution of authority and broad-based alliances with Indigenous peoples and local communities” within the GBF’s enabling conditions, paragraph 17; and
ensuring a due diligence mechanism and an accountability process.
A view in Rachakonda in the Indian state of Telangana / credit: Sravan Kumar on Unsplash
Living In Constant Fear of Evictions
A huge gap exists in the recognition and legal status of tenure rights. Between 1.65 billion to 1.87 billion Indigenous peoples and local communities live in important biodiversity conservation areas globally, but legally own only 10 percent of the lands they customarily manage.
Sherpa said for the GBF to achieve its goals for a better and harmonious future, it must support and initiate drastic transformations that facilitate environmental and social justice. “Failing to uphold international standards of human rights or erect due diligence mechanisms to ensure human rights are being implemented will only enable the continuation of the same processes that are destroying the environment and causing human rights violations at the same time.”
A 2020 map of Indian states and neighboring countries, including Nepal / credit: Maps of India
Already, several communities have lost access to local, ecological and cultural resources, and have undergone trauma due to eviction. In many areas, their rights are still not recognized. Even when legal rights are afforded, such as India’s 2006 Forest Rights Act, many of these rights are subverted. During the 2020 lockdown, land belonging to tribes in the states of Telangana and Odisha were reportedly grabbed under the pretext of afforestation.
Neither the forest departments of the Indian government nor the Odisha state responded to this reporter, as of press time. The Indian Ministry of Tribal Affairs also did not reply.
Prudhviraj Rupavath, researcher with New Delhi-based data research agency Land Conflict Watch, who contributed to the report, said many Indian states have neglected to implement the Forest Rights Act. “Awaiting legal titles for their cultivating land, indigenous people are constantly living with the fear of evictions.” He added that though Indigenous communities help protect and restore forests, Indian state governments are prioritizing displacing people rather than securing tenure rights.
Aside from being an Indigenous activist and researcher, Soreng is a member of the UN Secretary General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change. She said when an Indigenous community is displaced, they lose their identity, culture, language, and traditional knowledge and practices of forest conservation. That makes not only the humans, but the ecosystem, vulnerable to the climate crisis.
Soreng added Indigenous communities have been using twigs to brush teeth, and building dining plates, mats, chairs, and small tables using leaves.
A mountain in Deomali, Barakutni, in the Indian state of Odisha / credit: Mohan Vamsi on Unsplash
Moving Toward Collective Ownership
The increasing focus on commodity-driven development threatens one-quarter of Indigenous peoples’ land, according to the report.
“Due to a systemic lack of formal legal recognition, the lands customarily occupied and owned by Indigenous peoples and local communities are seen as ‘available’ or property of the government,” said Thomas Worsdell, editor of the report.
In India, several large areas are classified as wastelands although they customarily belong to tribal communities. This opens them to environmentally destructive industries and human rights abuses, he said.
“Examples are the coal sector in India and the fossil fuel industry, more broadly, agricultural expansion (e.g., palm oil), mining, renewable energy (hydroelectric dams and wind turbines) and even the carbon offsets market,” Worsdell told Toward Freedom. “These industries are expanding into the lands and territories of Indigenous peoples and local communities who do not have collective ownership.”
These threats on territories are often encouraged and even enabled by the state, he added. In Indonesia, the recent Omnibus bill was enacted to attract business investments, but weakened both environmental and human rights protections.
To prevent these threats, the report states governments should embrace human rights-based strategies, and recognize the land, forest, water, and territorial rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.
Worsdell said supporting Indigenous and local movements is key to creating legal transformations at the national level that support capacity and funds. Capacity in this instance can include trainings, workshops, supporting knowledge sharing, participatory mapping, among other steps to ensure the human rights of Indigenous and local peoples are upheld.
Indigenous and local community organizations are already providing solutions for human rights-based approaches. They have proposed laws and amendments, created the frameworks for nationally recognized Indigenous institutions and agencies, and are conducting research that proves the environmental benefits of human rights-based conservation.
For example, the Tsumba and Nubriba Indigenous groups in Nepal renewed in 2012 the practice of a Shagya (non-violence) customary institution to protect nature, biodiversity and their cultures. This practice involves the establishment of a committee made up of representatives from 10 villages to ensure no killing, hunting, harvesting of wild honey, forest fires, flesh trading, trapping and sale of animals, and trading of domestic animals take place during various timeframes.
Worsdell said, however, this practice lacks legal recognition, which is often the case in many Asian countries, where the legal climate does not favor human rights-based approaches to conservation.
“Governments must first recognize Indigenous identities, bring an immediate end to criminalizing and killing of Indigenous peoples and local communities defending their lands, and put in place a national accountability and reparation mechanism for past and present human rights violations,” Worsdell explained.
He said Indigenous peoples must have a seat at the decision-making table as leaders instead of as symbolic representations. He added governments must endorse and commit to the ‘Land Rights Standard,’ a set of emerging best practices for recognizing Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ land and resource rights in landscape restoration, management, conservation, climate action, and development projects.
A song created by groups of Indigenous people aptly captures the essence of the report:
“…Nature was taken from Indigenous people again and again, betrayed, they lost their forest wealth. We had knowledge of the forest then, why have we lost the knowledge now. Indigenous people lived with freedom in the forests, today we are oppressed by the ruling class. We used to have everything, Now, why have we lost what was ours…”
Deepa Padmanaban is a Bangalore, India-based freelance journalist, who writes about the environment, conservation and climate change. She can be followed on Twitter at @deepa_padma.
Editor’s Note: This interview was originally heard on Radio Sputnik’s afternoon program, “By Any Means Necessary.”
SPEAKERS
James Early, Sean Blackmon, Jacqueline Luqman (Toward Freedom board member)
Sean Blackmon: We’re very happy to be joined for the hour today by Mr. James Early, former director of Cultural Heritage Policy at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Smithsonian Institution and board member of the Institute for Policy Studies. Mr. Early, thanks so much for joining us.
James Early: It’s good to be with you again.
Sean Blackmon: Absolutely. And Mr. Early. We’ve been seeing some mass protests happening inside Peru following the detention of President Pedro Castillo, which some are sort of pointing to as a kind of legislative coup carried out by the country’s right wing. And Castillo’s vice president, Dina Boluarte, is currently serving as the new president or sort of the interim president, if you will. And I’m just sort of wondering what you’re making of all this at this point. Mr. Early, I mean, you know, on the show, we’ve been sort of following Castillo’s presidency from his candidacy period up until this moment. And it seems that almost from the moment he got elected, that there were sort of issues that were really facing his administration. That seems like it’s maybe part of leading up to this point. And so what do you make of what we’re seeing inside to Peru at the moment? And what do you think it says about what’s happening inside the country?
James Early: Well, we’ve seen these kind of parliamentary maneuvers before I think. Fundamentally, what it says is that there is a deep, deep class divide in Peru, recognizing that it Pedro Castillo won the popular vote by only about 40,000 to 44,000 votes from a right-wing psycho Fujimori, whose father was also a right winger and can’t recall if he’s still in prison. We have these deep class divides. And we… it also says something about these bourgeois democratic elections, and which, not withstanding the fact that Pedro Castillo received the majority of the votes and was voted in, he was really unable to set up an apparatus to deliver the kinds of policies that he had promised. And he also faced tremendous racism and classism, and that fact that he was from a rural community… traditional were just a racist barrage against them. But the bigger question here is, how is it that the election of an individual then is overturned by a parliamentary coup? We saw it with [former Brazilian President] Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. After [Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio da Silva] Lula’s second term, she followed him. We saw it first in Paraguay some decades ago, now a decade or so ago now. We saw that attempt here in United States of America, just a few months ago, January, not quite a year ago. And so there’s some deeper questions here that we have got to analyze that it’s not enough to bring just an individual to power. What kind of cabinet is brought? Is that reflective of the direction of the vote for president? Or is it a reflection of the provincial elements of the country, and where, as in the case we will see soon in Brazil, with the inauguration of Lula coming up this January 2023, that he does not hold the majority in the parliament. And so that cross-class alliance has got to be set up. And while the ratings for Pedro Castillo was very low, those… the ratings of the Congress are even lower. So, this is a crisis of the democratic system itself. What do we take away from it? We take away from it that the voters who vote in particularly someone from another class, who is promising to speak to the welfare of the majority of the marginalized and oppressed citizens, particularly indigenous citizens in the case of Peru, that we’ve got to have a standing organized citizens’ movement 24/7 that reinforces people’s power, and not just what happens in government structures. So, these are just some very general kinds of propositions. I’m trying to… still trying to read more and learn more and the particular case of Peru, but we’ve seen a similar events in other arenas and I think we can anticipate that we will see more of these bourgeois corporate class-oriented try to overturn the popular vote and the popular will through these parliamentary procedures.
Jacqueline Luqman: You know, Mr. Early, what I think I find curious in this situation in Peru is that the left-wing parties seem to have abandoned Castillo also, after he decreed the temporary dissolution of Congress, which was kind of the thing that that prompted all of this, called for fresh parliamentarian elections in nine months, and installed an emergency government to rule the country until the legislative powers were renewed. He called for the reorganization of the judiciary, the public ministry, you know, because of the I suppose, because of the right wing elements within, but even in him doing those things, I guess, to recognize that the right wing would be a problem for him to be able to govern with them, which I’m not sure if that’s the right way to handle that. I think I’m just recognizing that may have been why he tried to do things the way he did. Even the left-wing Free Peru Party, which sponsored his presidential candidacy, rejected his actions and basically abandoned him. So, I’m not sure what to make of that. And I’m wondering what you think about that particular aspect of this issue.
James Early: Well, my my thoughts or reflections are purely speculative here, because I’ve not had time to do sufficient investigation to have a more solid working thesis on this. But it does appear to me that Pedro Castillo was focused on as an individual and got himself isolated as an individual, not having roots in a cabinet or a party that could reinforce his policies by being his bridge directly with the organized working-class people that voted him into the steward ship of governance. And so, once he stepped beyond the standard parliamentary procedures and collapsed Congress, that sort of, it seems to me to have intensified, his being isolated as as an individual. Having said that, and having said it in a very speculative way, still, the focus on an individual… this is one of the problems with progressive and left movement is our tendency to focus on the individual and not on the state structure apparatus that that individual is a part of. Individuals really cannot and do not make change by themselves. They need a governance structure to fall in place behind them and it’s clear that Pedro Castillo did not have that and the Left Party did not… do not seem to have sufficient influence, and did not seem to rally around him soon enough. This just didn’t come out as thin air, what has been percolating over the months and what has been the relationship of the left parties with Pedro Castillo and those around him are outstanding questions that I think we have to examine.
Sean Blackmon: Definitely. And you know, you’re right, Mr. Early, when you talk about how we’ve seen this sort of thing before, definitely within Latin America, I feel like we’ve seen it play out in Brazil, in Bolivia. And I feel like we’re seeing it play out in Argentina, as well as vice president and former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was recently sentenced to six years in prison and also disqualified from holding public office for life, on charges of corruption, and fraud. And so, I mean, it feels like a similar situation based on my understanding of it in terms of basically the right wing of the country, there will be elements of the country going after a progressive leader. And you know, I’m definitely curious Mr. Early, how you’re seeing the Argentina situation as well, particularly within the context, not just of what we know about Peru, but also with the backdrop of what some might consider a resurgent Pink Tide of progressive and left leaning governments in the Latin America region.
James Early: Well, in the case of Argentina, I was just there a few years ago, and actually, we were trying to meet with Christina de Kirchner, she had just come in from Cuba, where her daughter was being attended for a serious illness. And we were leaving, so later on… so we were unable to actually sit down with her. In the case of Argentina, and in the case of Peru one of the things that we see in the context of the powerful metaphor, the Pink Tide, but can be an obscuring metaphor at the same time, is that these are often alliances within government so that the President of Argentina does not share the same ideological grounding as Cristina and her former husband, I mean, her husband, who was also former president, and so this is not really a consolidated Progressive governance, or consolidated left balance of government, as in the case, let’s say, Cuba. Of course, that’s the single party state, or in many ways, as in the case of Peru. And I mean, in the case of Venezuela, where there are multiple parties, but that there seems to be a lot of coherency between the structures of governance in terms of the presidency, in terms of elected officials throughout the various provinces, within the parliamentary system, and within the military. And this is where we have to examine the metaphor of the Pink Tide, important as it is, in its struggle against neoliberalism for trying to achieve more democracy for many in the context of the capitalist system, and for few of them trying to not only achieve more democracy and material development within the system, but also looking to defeat and overthrow that system when they plant the pole of socialism. So that the Pink Tide is a broad alliance of ideological policies against the most brutal aspects of neoliberalism. But they don’t all share the ultimate goals or the ultimate immediate possibility of uprooting neoliberalism, as in the case of [Colombian President Gustavo] Petro, recently elected along with his Afro-Colombian Vice President Francia Marquez. Petro has stated that he is doing nothing that the U.S. is not aware of. Francia Marquez, when running for the vice presidency, came to United States and met with the State Department. We see that Lula da Silva, who will be inaugurated the first week of January 2023, will also come to Washington to sit down with [U.S. President Joe] Biden. That’s not to come and bow down to Biden. But it is to suggest that the Pink Tide is a really an interim step against the crudest aspects of neoliberal capitalism, and only in a few instances, building bridges towards a radical socialist transformation. But the significance of the Pink Tide also is that in that spread of ideologies and political policies, both domestic, regional and international, there is a lot of alliance of mutual benefits, as we see with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean nations. In Africa. None of them are small, neoliberal capitalist countries, but they line up in the inter capitalist rivalry against Western Europe and the United States while maintaining relations with them, but looking for regional integration, in which Cuba is a major participant, along with Nicaragua, along with Venezuela. So these are some of the complexities that we have to unravel in our analysis and our political education and our public engagement of what people are voting for such that they don’t get … they’re not deceived that somehow Pedro Castillo is going to be the total opposite of [former Peruvian President Alberto] Fujimori and the capitalist system, or that Lula who is a declared democratic socialist is going to be the total opposite of capital in a country like Brazil, which is around the eighth largest economy in the world or so, in which he had to build a broad alliance, including middle classes and some corporate interests, who stood against [outgoing Brazilian President Jair] Bolsonaro, because Bolsonaro, like [former U.S. President] Donald Trump, is unpredictable, and too intent to be the steward of governance, that they can actually make a stable projected plan. So, these are some of the complexities behind these terms and behind these individuals, which boils down to what is the correlation of forces that brings a particular stewardship in the name of a personality to state governance?
Sean Blackmon: Yeah, and Mr. Early, I’m also curious just from a standpoint of analysis, because you mentioned in passing about somehow about how sometimes the, this you know, this phrase or concept of the Pink Tide, as it’s often term can obscure certain dynamics as well. I was hoping you could say more about that, too.
James Early: Well, the Pink Tide is juxtaposed against the notion of a Red Tide. And a Red Tide would be a socialist, slash communist ideological outlook with an immediate intent to make a transformation of who owns the modes of production, to socialize the most important life-defining elements like food and shelter, education, health, to make sure that all people have full access to that, and limiting private enterprise. In some instances, people have tried to abandon it. But other instances, as we’ve seen in Vietnam, as we’re seeing, and Cuba to adjust, for there is a limited space for private initiative that does not gorge the public, does that takes away from the public well-being. And so that the Pink Tide is really sort of interim, social, democratic policies. And in a more formal ideological point would be Democratic Socialists. Now in the case of Cuba, in the context of Pink Tide in Latin America as a socialist society, socialist governance system, one party etc., they are part of that mix. But one has to be careful of looking for some [enmity?], they are not equal, they’re not the same. There’s a lot of different interplay. If you raise that to a larger level of the notion of multipolarity, in which the Pink Tide in South-South relations also plays a part, there is a tendency of a kind of bipolarism, to say, we juxtapose the Pink Tide against capitalism in its most rigid form. But then we failed to explain… the President of China was just in Saudi Arabia, with this bloody dictator, this little family clan that controls all this oil. How do we explain that contradiction? I think it’s explainable, it means it’s a complex world, in which the correlation of forces is all not ever really neatly aligned, or simply a and b. There’s always these little strings of attachment here and there. And one has to make a daily calibration on where you really set your main paths, and how you live with some of these contradictions. So, the Pink Tide is a very important development and representing a democratic…social democratic policies, the welfare state, trying to uplift the poor and the marginalized. But far too often, they think type governments are not rooted in organized social movements, staying agile, and engaged rather than waiting for the delivery from the state, that actually holding the state accountable, accountable, and participating in the policymaking and in the implementation of those policies. And therein increasing the whole notion of people’s power not as some abstract romantic principle, but as a day-to-day practical movement, where trade unions are really running factories and community. People are really involved with security and public safety with the police. Where they are involved in the military, not just as a professional force, but also as a citizen force. And so these again are some of the complexities that I observed in the context of the significance of the Pink Tide, but to make sure that we don’t over value where we are in the struggle against these really vulgar, deadly aspects of neoliberal capitalism one, by the NATO powers in Western Europe, which are expanding into Latin America and the Caribbean, on the continent of Africa, and of course, with the behemoth of the United States bipartisan backing and the military backing; or that bipartisanship is seldom questioned they might struggle with each other on other things or in the U.S. bipartisan system, Democrats and Republicans, but not so much as we’ve just seen, that they just passed a huge military budget adding 45 more billion dollars than was requested. So, these, again, are some of the complexities that I think we have got to be able to talk about, and to engage everyday citizens that they become active and making those same kinds of analysis and being able to negotiate these contradictions when they emerge.
Sean Blackmon: Definitely. we’re gonna move to our first break of the hour on that note here on “By No Means Necessary” on Radio Sputnik in Washington, D.C. We’ll be right back. So please stay with us by any means necessary. Myself and Jacquie Luqman continue to be joined by Mr. James Early. And you know, Mr. Early, I was thinking over the break, because, you know, I appreciate how you know, you’re always keen to remind us about how you know, democracy is this collective process and can only be sustained by a collective process and that we shouldn’t fall into the trap of celebrity rising individual leaders. And I was thinking about this in the U.S. context, particularly as the issue of Moore V. Harper. That case continues to be a relevant here in the U.S., as we on the show continue to hold that, you know, this is part of all far right attempt to basically go after people’s fundamental democratic rights in this case, basically, the issue of one person, one vote itself, seemingly at stake, at least to some extent, with not a lot of response or fight back from the Democrats or the liberal wing of the ruling class. And so we’re looking at a situation where, you know, if the far right gets its way, then we could be under threat of basically like a permanent, like right wing government here in the United States, if these different bodies have the ability to have that kind of power over the vote when they take place. And so I’m just wondering how you sort of conceive of that kind of democratic project in a place like the United States, which is fundamentally undemocratic by its very nature, and from the very root and you know, we put this out in the show all the time, is that, you know, from the very beginning, it was a very purposeful effort to ensure that, you know, real participatory democracy was not what governed the United States, and that instead, it was basically the whims of the wealthy minority, that would always rule. And so you know, this, this may also be a somewhat speculative, because it’s certainly not a moment that we’re in right now. But But how do you see those kinds of principles at the very least being useful or relevant as we begin to think seriously about a new kind of society, a new system here in the West.
James Early: But I think we have to start with where you concluded, and that is that we have to open up a broad and consistent public debate, again, public education discourse about the fact that democracy does not exist as it describes itself officially here in United States. There is not a one person one vote calculus that delivers stewardship either at local, state or federal level. There is the Electoral College, which is fundamentally a racist, historical and contemporary tool. And there are within the dominant duopoly that two-party system have Republicans and Democrats. They’re the special electorate who because of individuals’ status that they inhabit within the governance structure, their votes outweigh that of the popular will. We see this resulting in a paralyzed, dysfunctional federal system in particular, that fights as though it was a basketball or football game of which team will win. It is not a question of which policies will win, except for the right wing with the so-called … liberals, they are just holding the status quo. And this is what Joe Biden was very clear about in “return to normal order.” So if you turn on [MSNBC host] Joe Scarborough, MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC or any of these stations, what do you see, you see your traditional liberal democratic pundit sitting next to moderate… the so called moderate Republicans who have left the party or who have been thrown out of the party, who now band together to really try to reestablish that duopoly dominance such that they will be the only two parties that will compete for the stewardship of government, perennially at local, state and federal level. And in effect, we have a dictatorship of the duopoly, it’s like a one party with two wings, if you will, who fight to oust democratic… social democratic policymakers and certainly fight against any valid democratic socialist. So, in the case of the Republican move, it is really your right to establish and effect a record of one-party governance mechanism with this regard, the more formally, the popular will. Right now, the Democrats will argue we can’t get anything done because the Republicans stand in the way. And the Republicans basic line is let’s get rid of these Democrats, they’re socialists or communists. And so, this is a tragedy comedy that goes on. And the popular will, is thought it’s not just that it’s not recognized, but life circumstances continue to deteriorate. We see the resurgence now COVID, and, of course, we know what it will reveal once again, is that the most vulnerable people will be Black and Brown women, working class, LGBTQ, running the class race line, through the LGBT category, the trade union line going… running the race and gender, the horizontal profile through the trade unions, and we will see the same thing. So that then this question of democracy, that the discourse that goes on is “We must protect the U.S. is democratic system.” It is important to protect the rights and freedom and facilitation of people to express their will, but let us not deceive ourselves or continue to deceive ourselves that that will is being responded to and the content of democracy. That is, what are the policy issues that peoplecan work with to improve their lives to protect their lives, to reach for legitimate dream? That’s where the content of democracy question is not being discussed. And what is being discussed that we’re being diverted into is this pro forma situation as though we’re
protecting something ultimately precious, and it is not ultimately precious in the sense that it does not deliver to the most to the historically most marginalized, oppressed and exploited people, including those class sectors of the white community, who for reasons of delusion of skin color, and some of it is just socialized, outright hatred, it is not biologically inbred, it is socialized its educated, or mis educated as we’re seeing what’s going on in the school systems really turned him away from any obvious underpinnings of history to really uphold this structure that continues to immiserate them with amphetamine addictions running across the country, a sign that people are un-rooted, people whose lives are unstable. So, we have to question the very nature of this democracy in addition to fighting against this new maneuver by Republicans, but not let Democrats become the stalwart for the protection of the philosophical abstraction that continued to be paralyzed in the practical elements of delivering. We can’t… look at the situation in California… [former U.S. Representative of California’s 37th District and now Los Angeles Mayor] Karen Bass is just declaring a state of emergency… I was out in Los Angeles recently. It is unbelievable. When you walk downtown and other areas of Los Angeles, to see the sort of human infestation if you will, of people living on the sidewalk in camps, and you know, just block after block after block. And then you got these monumental state buildings, glowing towers to so-called development. And that contrast is right there. That is not democracy, the public policies are not being delivered. And so, this is how I think we have to approach this, by really holding the Democrats accountable. That they are not the stalwarts to protect us from this Republican surge, that we have to have organized citizens demanding that democracy really be delivered and content. Let me stop on this point: That is that is not a petition to the Democratic Party; it is organized citizens, identifying, maturing, nurturing, and voting in the stewards of governance that are accountable to them, that they hold accountable. Right now, we have the professional politicians, and we, the people, we the demos, the ordinary people with our [unintelligible] with our power of ordinary people are sidelined for voting for the side show as though we were going to a boxing match or something.
Jacqueline Luqman: You know, Mr. Early, what do you say to people who would respond to everything you just said about, you know, needing to hold the Democrats accountable for what they don’t do legislatively? For the people who they keep telling, have to vote for them to save us from the evil Republicans? What do you say to people who respond to you by saying, “Well, look, there are people like [U.S. Representative of Georgia’s 14th District] Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress, who was saying things like, if they organized January 6, we would have won,” meaning, you know, the Trump errs would have won, and they would have gotten what they wanted. And they point to, you know, the Republican extremists, the extremists in the GOP, the Trump errs in the GOP, which that’s what the GOP is now, as as proof that the problem is not the Democrats, we need to not focus on the Democrats, we really need to do something about those other guys.
James Early: Here’s the issue. We’re talking about a question of power. When I say politics, I mean, power, the power to improve one’s lives, to protect one slice, to envision new possibilities, to allot public resources, in projects in collaboration with everyday citizens to do that. Neither one of these parties deliver to us, but in their tactical difference, which almost is raised to a level of strategy around their common upholding of this system, there, there are the spaces that we have to recognize. And that is, there are certain policies that people have been able to push for that its citizens have been able to push for, the way that it comes out and it’s propagated is that an individual Congresswoman, or Congressperson did it, but no organized citizens I often use the example of the Democratic Socialists most recently, [U.S. Senator representing Vermont who twice ran for U.S. president] Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders did not build a movement, he intersected organized movements. Those nurses, those trade unions, were already there. We’ve seen new developments, like the Working Families Party and the like, but there were existing organized citizens movements that have been fighting in sectoral areas, or areas for women’s rights, LGBT rights, anti-racism, right to health rights. How do we draw the horizontal line, the node of node, the network of network to build an integrated force, some of that may be reflected in a new party. But initially, it’s reflected and citizens looking to the right in their left and saying, “Yes, I share those same objectives, although I’m focused on this particular sector.” How do we identify people that we vote to be stewards of governance, because 340 some odd million people divided in half, when you look at half the voters are voting for right wing stuff for various reasons, and the other half for relatively progressive arenas. You cannot run the country as individuals, you do need an apparatus, the state apparatus, and you need capable stewards of governance to do that. And so, this is what I say to those folks is that we have to get in the fight, not just describe the fight. And yes, the Democratic Party is not our ally. But in its battle with the Republican Party, we have to find those spaces in the governance structure, where we can force onto the agenda the things that will help us improve our lives and strengthen our ability to at some point, “trump,” if you will, transition both of the duopoly parties which are not set up in the interests of the masses of ordinary citizens.
Sean Blackmon: Definitely, definitely. And you know, a sort of sticking with this idea that this building of radical popular democracy, this participatory democracy, and how we’ve seen that built… develop over the world, but specifically within parts of Latin America in different ways. Recently Venezuela marked, it’s a day of loyalty and love for a [former Venezuelan President] Hugo Chavez. And of course, Chavez was, you know, a beloved and admired a leader, but he is also someone who would stress the collective nature of democracy within a specific context of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, and someone who often emphasized the importance of the communes. And so I’m wondering how do you see that sort of playing out within the Venezuelan context? And how do we situate someone like a Hugo Chavez, who is an individual but who really only existed in that way because of the efforts and support of the masses of his countrymen?
James Early: Well, as much as I have, in recent occasions on this program, and other programs have done, steered people towards emphasizing the importance of social movements, social organization, trade unions sector, specific groups, uniting with one another. I don’t want to dismiss the role of the individual because the role of the individual in history and certainly in current circumstances, and in different instances is very important. The role of the individual runs across the spectrum from the far right to the left, so that Mussolini and Hitler were extraordinarily powerful, compelling individuals in the public space to convince people to do some of the most horrendous things that we’ve seen in human history, the Holocaust being one of those issues, among others. And the case of a [former South African President Nelson] Mandela who is not to be confused with the case of [former Cuban President] Fidel Castro. We see… or [former Indian Prime Minister] Indira Gandhi… we see again, the role of strong individuals and relationship to organize movements. Therein, setting up the people power, governance kinds of situations in communes and others. I think it’s important principle, but here’s the problem that we’re wanting to do: how to get that to a level of scale. How to get government resources, and government expertise to really build that at some level of scale. And here are some of the objective contradictions to be faced, including that Hugo Chavez had to face. Venezuela sits on the largest oil resources as far as we know in the world. Under Hugo Chavez, who did some extraordinary things in building regional institutions like [Union of South American Nations] UNASUR, the Community of Latin American Caribbean nations, the production of massive numbers of doctors that he and Fidel Castro sent out through the Latin American medical school (ELAM) in [Santiago de] Los Banos and those outside of Havana in Cuba but could not get off oil! We see no evidence where when oil was being sold that was $100 a barrel or more, we see little evidence of where that surplus was being putting in large scale solar. So, we find ourselves still tethered to extractive industries. The case of [former Bolivian President] Evo Morales, and… help me here in in Bolivia, Bolivia, one of the countries, here’s the Native American president socialist, a socialist party, a governance structure that did survive … the individual did survive the coup, and did inherit the state. But one of the immediate contradictions that he ran into with the progressive indigenous population was maintaining these extractive industries. These are difficult questions, they’re easily ideologically to say, “Let’s just take over the mode of production and get and move to something else.” But in the practical arena, they are very complex and very difficult. So, I’ve heard a lot about you know, that local development foodstuff, communities, providing wholesome food in Detroit and Oakland and other areas. These are important developments that signal where the future must go. But we have to be able to get the collective resources which generally reside in the local, the state and the federal state budget. We have to get them out to levels of scale to involve many, many more people. And then the case of Venezuela. Now, there’s a big and interesting and I think important debate that goes on with the Communist Party of Venezuela in relationship to the [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro Socialist Party, which was really set up by the late President Hugo Chavez, of arguing about these issues about how workers are being treated, about how commands are being developed. So yes, that is a direction, but we have to get it to a level of scale that that people’s power is institutionalized it’s not just an aspect of the ideological, romantic kind of view but it has implementation.
Sean Blackmon: Definitely we’re gonna move to another quick break on that note here on “By Any Means Necessary” on Radio Sputnik, Washington, D.C., we’ll be right back, so please stay with us.
Sean Blackmon: Mr. Early. I was looking at a reports about some conversations that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been having with different governments, namely, the United States with President Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron of France and Recep Erdoğan of Turkey, of course. Now, they’ve been, you know, in contact before, but reportedly, these latest slew of conversations have taken place over a single day. And he was quoted saying “We are constantly working with our partners…” And he added that he expects some “important results in the coming week” around a number of events that have to do, of course, with the ongoing war in Ukraine. Now, it’s not clear on just what that means, or what the substance of these meetings really were. But, I mean, it does seem that we’ve reached a serious point in the Ukraine conflict as things continue to escalate. And it seems the more time goes on, the more dangerous the situation becomes not just for the countries involved, but for the whole world. I mean, I’m sure people remember a couple weeks ago when that those missiles struck up Poland killing two people. And it was asserted both in on platforms in the mainstream media and by Zelenskyy himself, that those were, in fact, Russian missiles, even though Ukrainian government officials and even Joe Biden himself basically pointed to how it wasn’t really clear what the origins of those missiles were just yet. And I’m just I’m wondering how you’re considering the conflict at this point, because I don’t think it can be overstated, the dangerous potential of an open conflict between the nuclear powers of the United States and Russia. I mean, it’s somewhat of a relief, at least for me to know that there are people within the Biden administration who are advocating for negotiations. Now what will ultimately happen, I think, remains to be seen, but just wondering how you’re considering it?
James Early: Well, I think what we are witnessing is that the Western Europe and the United States and Australia and Japan, have put a lot of their marbles on the table in Ukraine, and they would argue from this vantage point that they wouldn’t fight argue a stalemate, they all want to argue that Ukraine is winning. But let’s assume for sake of argument that Ukraine is winning, but at what cost? Of a totally destroyed country that will still be balkanized by Russian-speaking populations, that the only way that they would have to impose the governance over those populations rather than to recognize perhaps some element of national minority rights, and those countries are now aligned politically[?], whether one believes in what the referendum was or not they are tied to Russia, as is Crimea. And so that these are things that now we’re beginning to hear some people in the West say, well, there’s going to have to be a negotiated settlement because this could bring us closer to a nuclear conflict. At the same time playing this game of chicken in Poland, for example, sitting right on the Russian border, and the military, the U.S. military bases going up so there’s still this game of chicken being played. But there’s a bigger circle of political global engagement that’s going on that they really want to give attention to dating back more formally…now in the Obama administration, of turning their eyes to the Pacific, which means China. And so that while they’re going down this rabbit hole, and you’re paying billions and billions of dollars exhausting their military hardware, both here in the United States and in Western Europe, putting that into Ukraine, seeing winter come about seeing this fluctuation in oil prices, we don’t know what’s going to happen with this cap on Russian oil. And as I was watching debate, the price of oil has dropped. But there are a lot of machinations that they put on the table. And they’ve concentrated into this one area of the world, including it’s the breadbasket of the world, so it’s having a waterbed wave effect negatively, particularly to southern countries, African countries, in particular. And so I think now they have to really figure out how to recalibrate that, that they can give some of this attention that they want to give to China. The Canadians have just put billions of dollars into setting up military operations in the Pacific on some of these islands. The Australians are going full bore on China. So, they’re they’re really concentrated right now in Ukraine in a way that is making a lot of Western Europe [unintelligible]. We see the Germans walking slightly sideways, as they watch the president China move around the globe, just in Saudi Arabia, you know, went to a very contradictory situation with Saudi Arabia, but in the real politic, this is one of these contradictions that you have to figure out how much value to give it versus the positive roles and China and self-determination and sovereignty and independence in Latin America is its largest, second largest trading partner, the flexibility that they’re dealing with African countries and building infrastructure, in contrast to the exploitive ways that the U.S. is moving. The rise of the Caribbean Mia Motley, [unintelligible] and Barbados taking on the Bretton Woods institutions again, which taking up the historical mantle of Fidel Castro who was talking about debt, you know, two decades or more before anybody started, and was talking about climate as well, Fidel Castro was. So this contradiction of being overly concentrated now, all of these powerful Western neoliberal capitalist forces are going down the rabbit hole of Ukraine. And I think some of them are getting to say,“Whoa, wait a minute, how are we going to deal with China, the alliance of China and India and Indonesia and all these countries in the Silk Road, and the south-south relation to the revitalization of the BRIC countries Brazil, Russia, India, China.” So, I think this is a contradiction that they are facing and they’re trying to leverage … Zelensky that he’s got to come to the negotiating table. And what it means at the bottom line is that they’re going to have to give up some land. Is that right or wrong? I don’t think it’s an argument that when considered around the living room, and has been in terms of real power relationships, this is what it’s going to add up. It’s not going to be a simple either-or situation. Crimea is not going to be on the table, I think, from the vantage point of the Russians, and the Donetsk area where these Russian speaking populations are, they are going to have to be able to execute some form of autonomy, perhaps in the context of a Ukrainian state, or they will say appended to Russia. So that’s where I think we are. And I think that’s what we’re hearing these grumblings about. What has not been dealt with sufficiently, and here is where public education needs to be more, there is a fascist element in Ukraine. And what is the role of that element? Is it just a handful of people? Where do they really play? Because this is one part of the internal contradictions. And finally, I would say that this war is not in the interests of working-class people either in Ukraine are in Russia, and they are the ones who are dying on the battlefield it is not the political elite. I don’t have any book for Putin, the Russian government system, although I recognize the importance of Putin’s policies with Russia and supporting Cuba or, what they were, how they may be supporting sovereignty in Latin America. But these are the complexities of contradictions. And one has to sort out which contradictions can you live with and which ones are absolutely must be suppressed and defeated?
Sean Blackmon: Now we’re gonna squeeze in a caller here, Michael, tell us what’s on your mind.
Caller: Hi, yeah, I agree with much of what you say. But when we talk about the EU, being a democracy, I want to be clear that we are not we are a republic. Our founding fathers were very suspicious of democracies and mob rule. That’s why we have the bill have rights, which is very anti-democratic is to protect minorities from majorities. And so, I’d like to, you know, make that correction there. And the reason we have a Senate again, and think is because the small states were very suspicious of the large states, they didn’t want to be ruled, specifically by large states to go to that historical context. And so when people always say, Well, we are a democracy, we are not, and we were never intended to be a democracy. So I’m happy to, you know, hear your comments.
Sean Blackmon: Thanks a lot for calling I hope to hear from you again soon. But I mean, I gotta tell you, as a republic, the U.S. doesn’t really work either. Because I mean, my understanding of a republic is that a situation where power is held by people in their elected representatives, well, even if we look at how, you know, Congress plays out, I mean, the largest state in the country and the smallest states in the country, may have the same number of representatives and things like that. So it’s not actually representative, the representatives don’t actually represent the people of their state, or where it is that they’re from. And of course, we know, under capitalism, they don’t represent their economic interests either. So this is really the point that that we’re trying to make, we’re not necessarily just talking about electoral processes and things like that the whole of how this country operates, is fundamentally undemocratic, and unequal on purpose, to protect the interest of the capitalist class, and their property. And indeed, it’s to protect the capitalist system in itself. And so what is needed then, is a real kind of democracy, like we’ve been discussing the projects that happen in different parts of the Latin America region in different ways, a participatory kind of democracy, or real representative democracy, you know, this, if representatives really held the power in this country, then we should have the power to recall them and all of these sorts of things, which we don’t actually have the ability to do. So I just feel like in just about every way, and you know, people can quibble about democracy, republic and things like that. But the real relevant question is, for whom is this society actually designed to benefit and it isn’t the working class here. But it’s an important thing to consider Jacquie, when we talk about sort of a bourgeois democracy under a capitalist system, and what that looks like, under a socialist structure, and what that could look like here in the United States. I mean, it would have to be completely unlike how this country has operated over the last several centuries of its existence, in the sense of actually having a say in what happens in their communities in their lives, how they deal with issues like food and labor, and all of these very basic things that we don’t have control of. And I’m saying as of this moment here.
Jacqueline Luqman: I mean, exactly. And to, you know, the caller’s point about, you know, we have a bill of rights to protect the interests of minorities. Well, when you look at the people who wrote the Bill of Rights, and the people who wrote the Constitution, and the people who set up this republic, the minorities that they were protecting were not, you know, landless poor people. And it certainly wasn’t our ancestors. So, we see the legacy of the minority that those people were protecting, which were the small number of wealthy white, landowning mostly slaveholders in this country, these documents existed to protect their power. So, because if it if it were not true, if if this republic actually worked, then this this idea of minorities being protected under the law, well, we wouldn’t have to fight for the rights that we allegedly have under the Constitution. But we do. But this is why we are fighting for a system that allows for the true representation, one person, one vote and the actual representative democracy that will allow participation of all people in government and the influence that government has on our lives. And this is, I mean, to understand the difference between the two systems, I think goes very far, far deeper than, you know, quibbling between whether this country is a democracy or a republic, whatever it is, it doesn’t work, Mr. Early.
James Early: So, first of all, thank you caller and, tonight, I’m gonna go on my Google and and re-examine some of these questions. I think you have helped bring a very important question to the table and I hope perhaps the next time that I’m on this program that we can look at the question of democracy. I will leave you with a convolution I was just reading the other day that physicists now believe that there are no laws of physics. There are only mathematical models that help us to understand some things in life that we can do practical things. But the bigger answers are still out there. I think the question of democracy, even bourgeois democracy work this way. If you are a Jew, a Black person, a homosexual, let’s say, 1920s, 1930s, and you were being lynched, spit on, burned out, pogroms, lynched, etc., and you argued the case of the principles of bourgeois democracy, and you are able to push law enforcement push the public, not to stop hating you not to stop despising you, but to stop lynching you, at least at the level of the programs against Jews and so forth and so on, that is a sense of the People’s Power using those principles. And so, I think this is a complex matter. It is one, not one of absolutes. It’s a living proposition, but I do hope that we could revisit and that the caller, who has prompted us to examine these questions would come back on perhaps maybe be one of the participants. And we can look at this question of democracy under capitalism and socialism. Look at how it is historically evolved. And even under socialism and Cuba, the question of democracy is and question that is still being pushed forward and debated in concrete ways. Not the abstract principles are there, but the practical implications are not so easily elucidated, and they don’t just pop up automatically. So, I know we’re probably run out of time but thank you caller for waiting that with us and I think we should revisit this issue.
Sean Blackmon: Absolutely a worthwhile topic for sure. Well, we thank you so much, Mr. Early, for joining us today.
