Rochester League Of Marxists

03/26/2023

(oc)

03/17/2023

This Saint Patrick’s Day, we remember the Hunger Strike of 1981.

Under Margaret Thatcher, the English government chose to take a hardline stance against the fight for Irish independence. Instead of working towards peace with members of resistance groups, they instead refused to negotiate and cracked down further on the Irish right to freedom and sovereignty.

The history of English repression of Ireland goes back many hundreds of years, with the English forcing events such as the Irish Potato Famine to occur.

Thatcher heavily controlled who could participate in politics, even banning elected officials of the Sinn Féin party from coming to England.

The British also used the Force Research Unit to sow chaos and murder prominent figures. This office would recruit local counterrevolutionaries, and worked out of the same office as MI5.

In response to the level of oppression, Irish revolutionaries and political figures who were imprisoned in Northern Ireland went on hunger strike in 1981.

Bobby Sands died after 66 days at the age of 27.

Francis Hughes died after 58 days at the age of 25.

Raymond McCreesh died after 61 days at the age of 24.

Patsy O’Hara died after 61 days at the age of 23.

Joe McDonnell died after 61 days at the age of 29.

Martin Hurson died after 46 days at the age of 24.

Kevin Lynch died after 71 days at the age of 25.

Kieran Doherty died after 73 days at the age of 25.

Thomas McElwee died after 62 days at the age of 23.

Michael Devine died after 60 days at the age of 27.

Thirteen others took part in the strike and survived, many with long-term health problems due to the strike. They are:

Brendan McLaughlan, Paddy Quinn, Laurence McKeown, Pat McGeown, Matt Devlin, LIam McCloskey, Patrick Sheehan, Jackie McMullan, Bernard Fox, Hugh Carville, John Pickering, Gerard Hodgins, and James Devine.

Margaret Thatcher’s response was:
“Let me make one point about the hunger strike in the Maze prison. I want this to be utterly clear. There can be no political justification for murder or any other crime. The Government will never concede political status to the hunger strikers, or to any others convicted of criminal offences in the Province.”

The goals of the strike were as follows:

the right not to wear a prison uniform;
the right not to do prison work;
the right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;
the right to one visit, one letter, and one parcel per week;
full restoration of remission lost through the protest

Thatcher’s inhumane mindset led to 10 people dying of hunger, and stoked the fuels of unrest again in Ireland, leading to some of the bloodiest years of The Troubles. All these revolutionaries wanted was fair treatment, and instead they were let to starve to death by the Thatcher regime.

We remember their fight for freedom.

03/09/2023

Today March 9th 2023 University of Buffalo is allowing YAF (Young American’s Front) to host Fascist talking head Micheal Knowles, who recently called for the eradication of transgenderism. University of Buffalo's response to this is to allow this event to continue under the guise of inclusivity.

This in turn is a direct stab in the back to the student body that would be harmed by Fascist rhetoric. UB is portraying a clear case of societal enabling by allowing the American mystification of “free speech”. This is a direct cause of capitalism and neoliberalism, we see it more apparent every day that those who should be the ones to better our lives stab our brothers, sisters, and non binary comrades in the back. To allow a fascist speaker into a space that is meant for education and diversity is putting the loaded gun into the hands of our neighbors, co workers, and classmates. When that gun is shot it will be not the one who put that gun into the hand of the operator, our true oppressor; the capitalist, but it will be us the working class that will be harmed the most. Stated by Anthony Dimaggio, a political science professor at Lehigh University,

“Put simply, any effective antifascist movement will not be won with fists in the streets, but by reaching millions of American minds in classrooms and through public political dialogue and discourse. In a country suffering from the sort of mass fascist denial that is pervasive in the United States, and considering the severity of the threat from this rising neofascistic movement, the commitment from antifascists must be even greater and involve a critical mass of educators operating across primary, secondary and collegiate educational institutions, stressing the dangers of rising rightwing extremism to democracy in America.”

What is to be done?

This show of blatant contradiction of allowing fascist to speak at public events, but not defending the community they are there to demonize is the monopolist form of capital increasing developments of parasitical degeneration, decay, and decline of capitalism. Allowing a Fascist speaker is allowing a parasite to infect the minds of others. How do we stop this parasitic hydra from spreading? By cutting it off and not allowing it to spread further.

These actions can look like organizing protests to these events, mucking up their call lines and way of doing business via telephone. Outing known fascist to the public and letting their place of work know of their ideology. Performing sit in at town hall meetings or similar public gatherings of campuses. The most important element is organizing and getting out there, meeting your community and fighting for not just your rights and safety but all of our comrades rights and safety.

“You can kill a revolutionary, but you can never kill the revolution”
Fred Hampton

03/09/2023

*Sat. March 18 -- National March on Washington: Peace in Ukraine – Stop NATO*

Peace in Ukraine – Say NO to Endless U.S. Wars!

Saturday, March 18 at 1:00 p.m.
Washington, D.C.
The White House

Other actions being organized nationwide March 18-19

Initiated by ANSWER Coalition, The People's Forum and CodePink

Endorse the march here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf-F9E-jwUOV5BlQu-dP6YwHPTLG5GKiRwv_Yhpolt4nsvG9g/viewform

Coinciding with the 20th anniversary weekend of the U.S.-invasion of Iraq, the ANSWER Coalition is initiating a major set of actions including a major demonstration at the White House in Washington, D.C. on Saturday March 18 demanding "Peace in Ukraine – Say NO to Endless U.S. Wars” and “Fund People's Needs, Not the War Machine.”

The Biden administration seems determined to escalate the Ukraine war. The danger of a catastrophic global war – including nuclear war – is real. A U.S. General commanding 50,000 troops in the Pacific also issued a letter to his sub-commanders in recent days informing them that he believes that the United States will be at war with China within two years. The danger of global war is growing! The people must act!

The demonstrations will make connections between the human and financial toll of U.S. militarism at home and abroad. Key demands include:

--End the $100 Billion in arms shipments to Ukraine
--End NATO
--Stop the permanent war economy that funnels trillions of dollars away from jobs, education and health care
--Negotiations now! The people of the U.S. are not interested in the possibility of nuclear war nor the Pentagon’s policy of “weakening Russia.”
--No to war with China!

https://www.answercoalition.org/protest_march_18_19_peace_in_ukraine_say_no_to_endless_u_s_wars

02/05/2023

We could talk about a little balloon, or we could talk about the gigantic fu***ng elephant in the room.

12/29/2022

Hello comrades, for todays theory thursday I’d like to discuss some criticism organizations involved in our supply drive received in late November. It reads..

“Homeless people prefer folks organize to get them housing than we do handouts we can find at dollar tree. These supply lists largely serve to make givers feel good while we continue to suffer under homelessness. Most of those supplies won’t keep us alive or are accessible through social services… for the most part we’d rather have that energy put into housing initiatives”

Let’s dissect this shall we? I honestly believe this is a fair criticism! To an extent, they have a point. Meeting the peoples current needs doesn’t fix the issues that cause them to have the needs in the first place. There will just continue to be hungry and homeless people regardless of how much we can do unless we end capitalism!

However we can’t end capitalism in one day. We CAN meet people’s real time needs with efforts like ours. This person does offer some alternatives, such as organizing housing initiatives. Of course this is significantly easier said than done. Sustainable housing initiatives require either building ownership, or the ability to rent a building, both of which require a huge influx of cash. This route also contains a bureaucratic component which is difficult in its own right. It’s not that it’s impossible, but rather extremely nuanced and a process that requires time. Rochester is lucky enough to have an incredible organizations like the Roc Tenant Union, who we plan on supporting in a larger capacity as we grow in size. But even with all of that said, their suggestion still does not address the core root of the issue. Housing initiatives and similar social programs are band-aids on the bullet wounds of capitalism. It’s time to stop the bleeding.
�What this person is failing to realize in their analysis is that this type of work IS laying the groundwork to stop that bleed. The removal of capitalism requires a complete systemic overhaul. As Marxist Leninists, we believe that revolution is the only thing that will materialize that extreme rapid change. However, people aren’t going to fight in a revolution for a side that doesn’t actually offer them any help or prove to them that they will go to bat for them.

Lenin, Mao, and Fidel have all credited their successful revolutions to the support of the peasantry and working class. They spoke of the importance of garnering their support, and as Marxists we know that what’s needed to garner the support of the working class is going to look different in each revolution depending on one’s material reality. Developing strong mutual aid networks builds trust with your local community and creates a platform where left politics can be spread.

There’s also the component of propaganda. Doing this work as a public and open communist helps to destigmatize the communities negative view of socialism and communism that is fed to them by the bourgeois state. These individuals are already disenfranchised by and likely unsupportive of capitalism, they just may not have the language to or historical analysis to come to that conclusion on their own.

Our main intention for doing this event of course was to provide for our community that’s neglected by the bourgeois state. One does not become a communist without an extreme empathy for those who struggle under capitalism and simultaneously a need to put revolutionary theory to praxis. As with any good deed done, there is an argument to be made of selfish motivation. If there was an argument to be made for us, it would have nothing to do with making ourselves feel good, but rather an attempt to build the material reality that moves society toward socialism. To create more people who are comfortable with socialism, who understand that the communist party has the proletariats best interest in mind, and who are potentially interested in being socialists themselves.

It’s going to take a collective mass movement to end capitalism and with it, strike a death blow to mass homelessness and starvation. Mutual aid networks lay the groundwork for a mass movement that is collective minded. A better future is possible comrades, as Rosa Luxembourg once said it’s “socialism or barbarism”!

12/28/2022

PLEASE SUBMIT A NEW REQUEST EACH TIME YOU NEED ASSISTANCE! Sign up below to let us know you need assistance shoveling your walkways or sidewalks! If you need assistance, someone from BMAN will contact you to link you with someone who can assist you. We would like to prioritize assistance for seniors...

12/28/2022

Information on how to help our Buffalo Neighbors with the snowstorm.

12/06/2022

The west is obsessed with writing Anti-Chinese propaganda.

In this article, the author references the zero- Covid policy as “draconian”, but then immediately goes on to scold China for lifting them, insisting that it going to cause a massive outbreak of infections.

Silly liberal media can’t pick a side.

The end result could be “hundreds of millions” of infected Chinese, Dr. Ali Mokdad, a professor at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said.

12/06/2022

China once again proving socialism > everything.

Chinas communist government tried a zero Covid policy because its #1 goal is to meet the needs of their citizens. They believed to do that they must keep their population safe and healthy.

After years of this policy, people have had enough. The people realized Covid isn’t going anywhere and that they just can’t lockdown every time someone in town gets sick.

So, the people decide to protest. The protests express their frustration to the communist government. The government, now learns that they are not meeting the needs of of their people.

The government responds by lifting zero-Covid policies and going back to the drawing board to come up with a solution that still keeps the immunocompromised and elderly populations safe, but doesn’t decline the quality of life for the rest of the population. That is what democracy looks like, inherit to the system in place.

This is a great example of how a socialist government or as Lenin would say a “dictatorship of the proletariat” should work. Not a perfect example, because ideally the communication is clear enough between government and proletariat to not require protests, but trending in the right direction.

China is not evil. China is less authoritarian than the USA has ever been. Please explain to me what concessions the US government made to us after the 2020 protests.

The USA is not a democracy, your vote doesn’t matter, your voice doesn’t matter. When the frustration from those realizations sets in and we use our “first amendment right” to express that, our assembly is deemed “unlawful” by the police and we are brutalized.

12/05/2022

Perfectly said

What’s The Alternative To Capitalism? | feat. Richard Wolff |