------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the July 5, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- FIGHTING RACISM AND HOMOPHOBIA: "AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL" [The following is excerpted from a talk by Bob McCubbin at a June 9 Workers World meeting in Buffalo celebrating lesbian, gay, bi and trans Pride month. McCubbin is the author of "The Roots of Lesbian and Gay Oppression," a Marxist analysis that blazed the trail for other researchers and theorists. Today McCubbin is a leading organizer of the San Diego chapter of the International Action Center.] I was an anti-racist and anti-war activist here in Buffalo, N.Y., in the 1960s. In fact, Youth Against War and Fascism, the youth group of Workers World Party at that time, used my apartment as an organizing center for several years. The U.S. Secret Service broke into the office the night before presidential candidate George Wallace brought his racist campaign to Buffalo in 1968. All they found were anti- racist and anti-Vietnam War signs and banners. It was probably in that apartment, or in the corner restaurant across the street, that one morning in late June 1969 I opened up the New York Times and saw the headline, "Homosexuals Riot in Greenwich Village." To me this article represented news of the birth of a new political movement, and it filled me with hope and fear at the same time. I knew my own life was going to be changed in some fundamental and profound ways. But that's what struggle always does. It opens up new possibilities. It touches and changes even those not directly involved. It inspires us to believe in the possibility of a better, more just world. It inspires us to get involved. Frederick Douglass said it best: "Without struggle there is no progress." I was going to focus tonight on some of the theoretical insights birthed by the Stonewall Rebellion and the truly global movement that it sparked. But when I got into Buffalo, I heard about the racial targeting here, and so I decided to shift the focus of my presentation somewhat. I want to talk a little bit about what's been happening with the movements for social justice in southern California and especially San Diego, where I've lived for the past 12 years. There are some strong parallels with developments here, both in terms of the increase in repression and in the response. FRESH WINDS OF STRUGGLE There's a fresh spirit of struggle among lesbian, gay, bi and trans youth in southern California. I'm involved with a coalition called the Stonewall Initiative for Equal Rights that has been organizing in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego. This coalition had its origins several years ago when a number of Los Angeles groups and activists got together to discuss the mounting police harassment of gay men in the Sunset Junction area of Los Angeles. The police were targeting men in front of gay bars and on streets. The police message was clear: "We want the gays out of this community." A strong, defiant rally organized by the Stonewall Initiative on a busy street corner at the very center of the community gave our answer: "We know the police are acting at the behest of the real estate interests that want to gentrify this community. We know the police don't serve us. We will organize larger and larger protests until the police stop targeting us." But this one powerful rally did the trick. At least for the present, the police have pulled back. This past February in San Diego, the ultra-right-wing Changing Gays movement called a conference for teachers and parents of lesbian, gay, bi and trans youth. The idea was to spread the homophobic and homo-hating idea that these youth can and should become straight. Well, a spirited six-hour picket line and rally outside the conference sent a very different message--a message of pride and resistance. This Stonewall Initiative action drew youth from Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego. In April, an outpouring of about three times as many lesbian, gay, bi and trans activists--mostly youth-- descended on Newport Beach, a very conservative town in Orange County. They came to protest another right-wing, racist, sexist, anti-gay conference. The impetus for the action was the homophobia and homo- hatred of the ultra-right conference organizers and attendees. But many of the rally speakers addressed the need to fight racism, the prison-industrial complex and the racist death penalty. There were many youths of color in attendance at this demonstration. And when an announcement was made about an upcoming West Coast mobilization in San Francisco in support of death-row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, many of the lesbian, gay, bi and trans youth expressed an interest in going to show support for this brave and uncompromising revolutionary. This kind of solidarity--this instinctive understanding by the youth that an injury to one is an injury to all--is exactly what's needed to advance our struggle. It is the key to victory for all the struggles of working and oppressed people. RACIST POLICE KILLINGS IN SAN DIEGO In San Diego, the Committee Against Police Brutality began several years ago as an ad hoc coalition following the police killing of unarmed Black athlete Deme trius DuBois. The police were called in response to a minor misunderstanding among neighbors that was completely resolved prior to their arrival. But in a typically racist manner, the cops saw a young, muscular African American man and immediately assumed he was the problem. A minute later Demetrius DuBois was dead of 12 bullet wounds, six of them in his back. Hundreds of people immediately pro tested at the site of the murder. And for 12 weeks running, those of us who had actively worked to build the first protest gathered downtown outside the county courthouse every Friday afternoon for an angry picket line denouncing the police. But the killing spree of the San Diego police didn't begin with Demetrius DuBois and it didn't end with him. In the two years since his death at least 12 other unarmed people have been gunned down by San Diego law enforcement agencies. And this pattern is being repeated in city after city all across the U.S. What has been unleashed is a nationwide campaign of terror that targets the most oppressed, especially people of color. Its purpose is to instill fear and hopelessness. It complements another instrument of repression, the new growth industry: the prison-industrial complex. With over 2 million people in prison--more and more of them women--and another 3 million people awaiting trial, on parole or on probation, the U.S. has a larger percentage of its population entangled in the so-called justice system than any other country in the world. Racial profiling and three-strikes laws help to feed this monster. And there's the racist death penalty. Almost 4,000 people are on death row, disproportionately people of color. And all of them are poor. You don't get put on death row if you can afford a decent lawyer. UNITED WE STAND Could all this repression have anything to do with the obscene disparity of wealth in this country? How could it not? While most of us, gay and straight alike, scramble to pay higher and higher utility bills and rent, the Congress-- with Democrats and Republicans basically united on this-- pass a tax cut bill that will hand over billions and billions more to the already immensely rich. While the cities decay, hospitals close and other urban problems mount, the municipal governments can find nothing better to do with our tax money than finance new stadiums and hire more police. In the last 10 years California has built 22 new prisons, but only one new university. Yes, the rich are in control, now more than ever. They expropriate the wealth that our work produces. While millions are forced to forego health care in order to pay the rent, the big banks, oil companies, military-industrial corporations and other corporate giants ravage the planet in constant search of ever-greater profits. We are faced with a system based on unbridled greed, a system that has total disregard for the needs of this and future generations. A system that, in truth, is destroying the very basis for the continuation of life on this planet. The class that rules finds homophobia, sexism and especially racism indispensable weapons in its ongoing war against the overwhelming majority of humanity: the working people and oppressed of the world. And as long as the capitalists can keep us divided, their system of profits before human needs will continue to function unchallenged. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people need equality. Women and people of color need equality. Workers need equality. And to get there, we need solidarity with each other's struggles. Together, we can build a powerful movement. Together, we can win a better world. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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