Portrait of Mao and Selected quotes from Mao’s Red Book, The Quotations of Chairman Mao TseTung, ed. by Kiilu Nyasha

Note:   Mao suffered from Parkinson’s disease prior to his death in 1976 at 82.  Since then, the Communist Party has taken the capitalist road and is no longer communist or socialist in practice.  So I rarely use the word “communist” anymore, but replace it with “revolutionary,” because its meaning has been so distorted over the decades. In any case, Mao was the greatest revolutionary leader of the 20^th Century, having liberated women and nearly a billion peasants in China, declaring victory after the incredible Long March in 1949.  Mao also gave active support to the independence struggles in Africa.  He gave Africans the first and only interest-free loan, and provided Chinese workers to work along side African workers at the same pay building the Tan-Zam railway linking the landlocked Zambia to the Port of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Revolutionary culture is a powerful revolutionary weapon for the broad masses of the people. It prepares the ground ideologically before the revolution comes and is an important, indeed essential, fighting front in the general revolutionary front during the revolution.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! George Lester Jackson, September 23, 1941-August 21, 1971 Ed. by Kiilu Nyasha

“I have a plan, I will give, and give, and give of myself until it proves our making or my end.”

As we honor the birthday of our beloved, Comrade George Jackson, Field Marshall of the Black Panther Party behind prison walls, may we remember his revolutionary ideas and practice, his mentors and his sacrifice.

Author of two books, Soledad Brother: the Prison Letters of George Jackson, a 1970 bestseller reprinted three times and translated into several languages, and Blood In My Eye, published posthumously and recently reprinted.  In a New York Times editorial titled, Death of a Brother, Tom Wicker described George as a “talented writer, a sensitive man, a potential leader, and a political thinker of great persuasiveness.”

Archived Commentary on Haiti

https://archive.org/details/FreedomIsAConstantStruggle20130919_201309

In perusing my files re Haiti, I found this commentary and decided to put it online since it has good information on recent Haitian history.  Here is the link to the show, Freedom Is A Constant Struggle, 9/19/13 on Haiti with an update from guests recently returned from the neighboring Caribbean island- Ayana Labossiere, Aimee Riechel and Ruth Beyene of Haiti Solidarity Club at Mission High School.
http://www.bavc.org. Freedom Is A Constant Struggle. 

Commentary on Haiti for KPFA, Berkeley, 3/14/1992, by Kiilu Nyasha.

Thousands of Haitian boat people picked up by Coast Guard cutters have been detained at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  After fleeing Haiti’s newest military dictatorship, the Caribbean refugees are being imprisoned in tents on a hot airfield fenced in by barbed wire and fed army rations.  Only a small percentage has been granted political asylum.  They’ve been held virtually incommunicado with no access to lawyers, telephones or postal services.  To date, nearly 9,000 men, women and children have been sent back to Haiti where they face arrest, torture and even death. 

       

U.S. Involvement in Haiti has a long history.  In 1915, it was invaded by U.S. Marines and occupied for 19 years during which the U.S. trained a joint military-police guard that evolved into today’s Haitian army.  For nearly 30 years, the U.S.–backed military dictatorship of Francois Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, succeeded by his son Jean-Claude, or Baby Doc, looted the national treasury, trafficked in cocaine, and terrorized Haitians with their Tonton Macoute (Creole for bogeymen).  Yet the dauntless Haitians ran Baby Doc and his entourage out of the country in 1986, when the U.S. had to airlift them to France for safety.