RY Interviews David Jacks Part 1

This is part one of a very extensive interview done last September by Rebel Youth Magazine.

We are posting it here on the blog to supplement the print edition's publication of RY's interview with a spokesperson for ASSE, a student union federation in the nation of Quebec.

Note that the grammar is not up to par. This is due to trying to keep the transcription as close as possible to the audio recording.

We entered the Lo Pub. It was dimly lit and not too many patrons were in it at that hour. Seemed cozy enough. Some rock and top 40 music played in the background. We ordered a round of draft beer and sat in the corner. “Help yourself to some cheese bread” David Jacks says. All I had brought with me was a red Lloyds tape recorder, masking tape holding the batteries in. I'll point out now that for a man who is smiling and cheerful every time I see him, a columnist at the Winnipeg Sun has labeled him “Mr. Grumpy Pants” last autumn. WTF is up with that !?

Statement of WFDY On the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada

The opening of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games has been met with a wide-range of protest in the streets of Vancouver, Canada. The World Federation of Democratic Youth expresses its solidarity with the popular opposition to this corporate circus.

The Olympic Games are supposed to be about peace and friendship. The Canadian government has no mandate to host the Games. It is implicated in operations to destabilize African countries like of the coast of Somalia. It has deployed thousands of police and troops into Haiti. It is providing vocal diplomatic support to the Apartheid regime of Israeli. It is engaged in an imperialist war in Afghanistan. In a reactionary affront to democracy, Canada’s Conservative government dissolved the current parliamentary session because of the Olympics - although in reality parliament was shut down to avoid a growing torture scandal involving Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

The 2010 Olympics are racist and dishonorable towards Aboriginal nations. For example, the symbol of the games is an Inuit sculpture, a people whose territory is thousands of kilometers away. But “branding” can not hide the long genocidal history of the Canadian state and ruling class towards the Aboriginal nations. Despite public pressure, the Canadian state refuses to sign the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Games will be held on unsurrendered Aboriginal land where no treaties have been signed and resistance continues. Today, one-in-two Aboriginal children, including First Nations and Metis people, live in poverty. On many Indian Reserves there is no clean drinking water. The opening of the Games coincides with a Canada-wide day of action for the over 3000 Aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered since 1980. As aboriginal peoples and their allies have said, big business and the government have no respect for aboriginal sovereignty and self-determination, no money to ‘pay the rent.’ But there are billions of dollars to spend on Olympics.

In fact, just the ‘security’ bill for the Olympics - involving US and Canadian military, as well as thousands of para-military police - is $1 billion. This is an attempt to prevent people’s democratic right to protest, free speech and association. Striking workers have been legislated back to work for the Olympics. Thousands of poor people made homeless and criminalized. Environments and ecosystems have been destroyed. The recent border interrogation of progressive US radio host Amy Goodman has brought into the public spotlight the aggressive police harassment and repression of anti-Olympic activists.

The Olympic Games have transferred billions of dollars from the working people to corporate coffers. The immense public debt generated by the Olympics represents money that should have been spent on people’s needs, like job creation, more accessible education, housing, health care, libraries, child care, and affordable transit. The WFDY salutes those who opposed this injustice, particularly sister Harriet Nahannee who died from pneumonia afflicted while unjustly jailed for protesting. WFDY calls for sports to cherish fair-play and cooperation and promote peace, internationalism and solidarity - not militarism, elitism and consumerism.

No Olympics on Stolen Native Land!
Sports for people, not profit!

New issue of Rebel Youth!

Celebrate the legacy of Nelson Mandela

Celebrate the legacy of Nelson Mandela: Intensify the class struggles on all fronts!

Blade Nzimande, General Secretary

Over the last two weeks, South Africa, especially the progressive forces, celebrated two very important events. On 2nd 2010 February we celebrated 20 years of the unbanning of the ANC, SACP and other components of the national liberation movement, and on the 11th February the release of Nelson Mandela from the apartheid prisons. The celebration of the unbanning of our organizations and Nelson Mandela was not a tribute to the 'generosity' of the apartheid regime, but honouring the massive sacrifices of millions of South Africans in their selfless struggles against the apartheid regime. The release of Mandela marked a high point in the determined struggles of our people dislodge the apartheid regime as an important step towards the creation of a democratic South Africa.

The celebration of the release of Nelson Mandela from prison also marked one of the most important victories for the international anti-apartheid movement and, to a large extent, also marked the victory of anti-imperialist forces against tyranny and oppression worldwide. The South African Communist Party (SACP) also wishes to use this occasion to salute all our people and the international(ist) progressive forces in their role towards the defeat of one of the most evil forces on earth, which was bent on promoting and consolidating a neo-fascist project of racial oppression and class exploitation of a white minority over a black majority in the latter's country of birth and origin.

Remnants of the elements of the beneficiaries of the apartheid order, including elements of the current opposition forces in the current democratic dispensation and their backers in mainstream bourgeois media, have tried very hard to try and present these two major developments as an outcome of the generosity of the leaders of the apartheid regime. Having dismally failed in this exercise, including their attempts to rubbish President Zuma's State of the Nation Address, these forces are now resorting to some of the worst tactics of trying to discredit and undermine the very democratic institutions they claim to be defending. Yesterday's walkout from parliament by the Democratic Alliance and Cope is actually an expression of how these forces have lost their strategic sense of direction and expression of their frustrations in the failure of their attempts to exploit our democratic institutions for their narrow party political gains.

The walk-out by both Cope and the Democratic Alliance in parliament is also an expression of how these forces seek to use parliament for their narrow and highly sectarian interests, and thus their failure to do so exposing their political bankruptcy and some of the worst forms of political opportunism. It is in this desperation that Cope has also exposed itself as a parasite and political extension of the narrow right-wing and often racist interests of the Democratic Alliance.

The more the frustrations of the DA and COPE are exposed, the more the naked class interests of these forces are exposed.

The opportunism of the opposition parties also manifest themselves in their attempts to praise Nelson Mandela, not out of genuine recognitition of his role in the liberation struggle, but in order to try and opportunistically use his image and legacy to condemn the ANC, its alliance partners and the national liberation struggle as a whole. It is an attempt to try and appropriate the image of Madiba to advance their narrow class interests.

It is for all the above reasons that as the SACP we have correctly and consistently argued that the global 'iconic' status of Madiba must never, ever be allowed to bury Madiba the revolutionary - whose principled commitment to the liberation of the black majority and his fight against all forms of colonialism, discrimination and chauvinism must be at all times highlighted and defended.

In our tribute to Madiba, the SACP also highlighted the fact that Madiba was not only a leader of the ANC and its alliance partners, but that he at all times genuinely remained a loyal friend of South African communists. It is on his consistent and principled defence of the ANC alliance with the communists that Madiba will stand out as a true friend of South African communists. For instance, shortly after his meeting with PW Botha in prison on 5 July 1989, in which the latter sought to offer Mandela his freedom if he distanced himself from the communists, that he had the following profound statement to make:

"No dedicated ANC member will ever heed the call to break with the SACP. We regard such a demand (from PW Botha) as a purely divisive (apartheid's) government strategy. It is in fact a call on us to commit suicide. Which man of honour will ever desert a life-long friend among his people? Which opponent will ever trust such a treacherous freedom fighter? Yet this is what the (apartheid) government is in effect asking us to do; to desert our faithful allies. We will not fall into that trap".

This is also a pointed lesson to those within our own ranks whose sole mission is to try and attempt to push the communists out of the ANC.

For us as South African communists, we need to, at all times, defend Madiba the revolutionary! In practice this requires that we also intensify working class struggles in all key sites of power as part of winning our key strategic objectives as contained in our medium term vision; to build working class hegemony in all key sites of power.

It is therefore of utmost importance that much as we celebrate the iconic Madiba, we consistently push for preserving, honouring and integrity of Madiba as a revolutionary. It is for this reason that for the SACP Madiba shall always remain a revolutionary, whose making was shaped by the revolutionary struggles as led by the ANC. This requires the intensification of class struggles on all fronts of terrains of struggle. The intensification of such class struggles must also mean that, in memory of Madiba, we intensify our class struggle on all fronts, including the confrontation of those within our own ranks, who are using access to state power to advance their narrow economic class interests.

We must also deepen the class struggle in order to celebrate true values of what Madiba stood for; selflessness and commitment to people as a with a view of rolling back the capitalist system and its corrupting values of dog eat dog. To us this is the only way we can protect the legacy of someone like Madiba and the integrity of our revolution.

Long live Madiba long live!

Asikhulume!!

Protest is not a crime! The 2010 Games are!

Young Communist League, BC Committee, February 14th 2010.

The Young Communist League, BC Committee, condemns police violence and harassment of anti-Olympic demonstrators and demands the immediate release of imprisoned activists.

While demonstrations against the Olympics have been largely peaceful, it is clear that it is the desire of VANOC and the police to shut down peoples democratic rights to freedom of speech and assembly by whatever means possible. Particularly on February 13th aggressive tactics were used by police in riot gear. Reports indicate that there were thirteen arrests and that more protesters were rounded up by police after the demonstration had ended. No serious injuries were reported.

We also condemn the attempts of the corporate media to paint anti-Olympic protesters and activists as violent thugs and to dismiss the legitimacy of peoples grievances against the Olympics. Implicit in this is an attempt to create a rationale for the removal of the peoples rights to protest during the Olympic period. While it is true that a minority of protesters have engaged in the destruction of corporate property, it has been police who have resorted to physical violence.

Protest and opposition to the Olympics is not a crime. The theft of the peoples tax dollars, homes, rights, and sustainable environment in the interests of the rich is. Resist the 2010 corporate circus! Whose streets? OUR STREETS!