| Appeal to the Black Reparations Movement: Part 2 |
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| by the Black Workers League Reconstruction Commission | |
| Tuesday, 22 January 2008 | |
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 Though this Dec. 15 demonstration outside the St. Bernard public housing development was spirited but lawful, several locked-out residents were arrested. Five days later, as the City Council voted unanimously to demolish more than 4,500 families’ homes at a meeting that locked out most public housing residents, police attacked and the war was on. Photo: Evan Casper-Futterman Key battleground of the Black Liberation struggle The struggle for reconstruction in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast represents both a response to the system of Black national oppression that continuously subjects Black people to the harshest conditions of capitalist exploitation and social oppression, and it is also part of the growing resistance of the U.S. working class to the domestic changes corresponding to the U.S. imperialist global strategy. The struggle for Reconstruction in the Gulf Coast must be viewed as an emerging and leading zone of the struggle against African American national oppression and for self-determination. The struggle in New Orleans to defend and insure affordable housing is the leading flank. It is one of the keys for the right of return of the Black majority to New Orleans. It can contribute to the development of a greater level of independent Black and working class led political and social organization in the Gulf Coast and nationally forged through this struggle. This could represent an important zone of contending power for the wider struggle for African American self-determination and against U.S. imperialism. A national Black Liberation Movement framework is needed to organize nationally and internationally to weaken the capacity of the U.S. government and corporate forces to contain, divide, isolate and set back this struggle. National support is needed to help broaden the space for political activity in New Orleans and throughout the country through a combination of mass mobilizations, independent political action and international pressure. The struggle in New Orleans must be seen as a key and strategic battleground of the struggle for national Black democratic and human rights and self-determination and against the increasing implementation and consolidation of anti-working class and fascist government and corporate policies carried out by agencies of the Department of Homeland Security like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The struggles in Montgomery and Birmingham, Ala., the Mississippi Delta and Memphis, Tenn., in the 1950s and ‘60s for access to public accommodations, Black voting rights and trade union rights represented key Civil Rights and Black Power Movement battlegrounds. They also helped to break the fears and paralyses of the broader left that were created by the McCarthy Period. These struggles needed national support and were critical to winning national democratic reforms. They also enabled the Black left that was helping to organize and lead some of these struggles in the South to launch the beginnings of the Black Power that spread throughout the U.S. These struggles were decisive for strengthening the national will and confidence of Black people and their allies to struggle against the Jim Crow terror that was being unleashed and to oppose the U.S. war Vietnam. This period saw the emergence of the 1960s national Black Liberation Movement and the formation of hundreds of local and national Black Liberation organizations. This period produced new, younger, more working class and militant political leadership. National Black Power Conferences and Congresses were organized to serve as national venues for Black Liberation organizations and activists to hammer out main political demands and campaigns. Power concedes nothing without a struggle The demand for affordable housing in New Orleans shows that the U.S. government will not grant basic human rights reforms or reparations to the Black masses without a mass and revolutionary struggle. New Orleans also helps to bring the struggle against African American national oppression into the international arena as a human rights struggle against violations that help to further raise the demand for reparations and that gives international forces and bodies a point of focus to call for U.S. accountability to international standards. The reparations movement must help to organize and give political direction to Black people in the daily struggles against national oppression, helping to build mass based power to win reparations along the way of our protracted struggle for self-determination, national liberation and revolutionary social transformation of U.S. society.
If Black Liberation organizations, networks and activists can't organize Black people nationally to build support for the struggle for Reconstruction in the Gulf Coast, the demand for reparations and self-determination loses its concrete meaning. It departs from the self-determination slogan that "We are our own liberators!"
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