To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
December 15, 2019
RE: tried for helping migrants in Arizona; re-enacting the slave rebellion of 1811
by Pete Brown, Detroit Workers' Voice
On November 20th, Dr. Scott Warren, a professor at Arizona State University, was found not guilty of harboring charges based on his providing aid to two men at a gathering place for migrants crossing the border in southern Arizona. After hearing the men had arrived there and were in bad shape, Warren took some food and blankets to them. For this “crime” Warren was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents and charged with multiple felonies of aiding “criminal aliens”. Warren was forced to stand trial and was facing a sentence of 20 years in a federal penitentiary if found guilty.
Warren’s first trial last summer resulted in a hung jury. But the
government insisted on retrying the case, though this time they dropped
the charge of “conspiracy”. But they charged him with two counts of
“felony harboring”, which could have resulted in 10 years in prison.
Warren’s second trial, in November, lasted six days. At the trial’s
beginning, the presiding judge ruled for the prosecution that the
defense would not be allowed to make any mention of the Trump
administration or its immigration policies. But he also allowed the
defense to clarify an important legal point, that no one is legally
required to report illegal immigrants to the Border Patrol.
The second day of trial was taken up by testimony from the two
arresting Border Patrol agents. This revealed racist anti-immigrant
texts from their cell phones. It also revealed their racial bias and
stereotyping of immigrants: they originally followed the two men Warren
helped because they were wearing clothes “that looked like they came
from a thrift store,” according to the agents. Also, they knew that
Warren was a leading activist with the organization No More Deaths!,
which does humanitarian work in the border area and has publicized the
Border Patrol’s barbaric sabotage of efforts to save lives.
Further testimony on other days showed the two men Warren helped were from Central America, and they were trying to avoid Border Patrol agents. The verdict seemed to turn on the question of whether Warren simply helped the two migrants or whether he helped them to evade the Border Patrol, the former being considered OK, the latter considered a felony by the prosecution. Warren freely admitted he helped “orient” the two men, showing them landmarks so they could remain on track as they crossed the desert. But the defense argued that “orienting” someone does not constitute helping them evade patrols. And the defense emphasized that no one has a legal obligation to help the Border Patrol.
On the sixth day of the trial, after two hours of deliberations, the
jury came back with “not guilty” on both counts. This is a big victory
for people of conscience who are concerned about immigrants crossing
the border by walking across the desert. These people should not be
persecuted as “illegal aliens” but instead should be given every
assistance. This trial is also a smack in the face to the Trumpist and
racist agents and prosecutors who tried to make an example of Scott
Warren. The result of this trial will not be a dampening of attempts to
help immigrants but the opposite.
For more information, readers are referred to the website http://www.nomoredeaths.org. <>
by Pete Brown, Detroit Workers' Voice
The second weekend of this past November there was a re-enactment of the 1811 slave rebellion in the German Coast area outside New Orleans. The original event was the largest slave rebellion ever in the United States, with some hundreds of black slaves participating. The leaders of this rebellion had a strategy to rouse slaves from plantations along the German Coast, where sugar plantations lined the Mississippi River, then to march into New Orleans, take over the armory and declare an independent black republic like revolutionaries in Haiti had done. The rebels did manage to arouse many slaves who burned a number of plantations, killed some white planters, and seized weapons, uniforms and horses belonging to the local planters’ militia. But before they could be trained thoroughly the troop of slaves was confronted by a force of planter militia that defeated them in a short battle, killing some of the rebels and then capturing many, while some managed to escape by fleeing into nearby swamps. Those captured were mostly executed after mock trials, and those who fled to the swamps were mostly hunted down and killed. In a grisly illustration of slave-owners’ “justice”, those executed had their bodies displayed in public. Their heads were cut off and stuck on pikes that lined the road from New Orleans to the plantations. As Louisiana was admitted to the American union as a new state, this ghastly display was a reminder to everyone what the new system would be like.
The re-enactment of this rebellion was a celebration of the spirit of the original rebels. Participants marched and yelled chants of the 1811 rebels: “On to New Orleans!” and “Freedom or death!” A website devoted to the re-enactment (see www.slave-revolt.com) publicizes the event and discusses its significance, making the point that raising “What if?” questions about the past also raises “What if?” questions about the future. What if the rebels of 1811 had succeeded and Louisiana had become an independent black republic? And do their actions and tactics have applications for today?
Questions like this are raised more thoroughly by a recent book
about the 1811 rebellion, *American Uprising: The Untold Story of
America’s Largest Slave Revolt* by Daniel Rasmussen. Rasmussen does a
good job setting the revolt in the political context of its day, when
the Louisiana Territory had just recently been acquired by the U.S.
from France, and the U.S. and Spain were feuding over control of nearby
Florida. American slave owners in the South were worried about loosely
governed Florida being a haven for runaway slaves. The territorial
governor of Louisiana organized a covert action in West Florida for
slave owners to first declare themselves an independent nation and then
ask to be taken into the United States. Meanwhile the slaves in
Louisiana were busy organizing a covert action of their own. Inspired
by the Haitian revolution, some of them secretly planned a rebellion
they hoped would overthrow slavery completely. One interesting
fact about this time period: many of the slaves at this time were
native Africans just recently arrived in America. Many of them were
veterans of civil wars in Africa and were sold into slavery after being
captured in war. So they knew about military fighting, and they were
not at all used to being enslaved. They knew a rebellion might not
succeed, and they were taking a desperate chance, but they were
determined to see it through. When the U.S. Army sent its local force
into West Florida to oppose the Spanish, the slave rebels thought they
had a chance, and they moved quickly. But the local planters’ militia
was able to mobilize and defeat them.
In the last few chapters of his book Rasmussen brings some of his
historical thoughts up to date. He gives credit to Leon Waters, a
former activist of Black Workers Congress, for writing up the history
of the 1811 revolt and thus bringing it to the attention of more
people. Waters now runs Hidden History Tours in New Orleans and gives
tours to little-known historical sites. And in an epilogue to the book
Rasmussen discusses the heritage of Robert Williams, a black activist
who practiced armed self-defense against the Klan in the 1960s.
Rasmussen makes the point that it’s all very well for youth and
students to learn about Martin Luther King and his Gandhian approach to
the civil rights movement, but they should also learn about fighters
like Robert Williams who made courageous stands and faced down the
reactionaries. <>
* In the seventh paragraph of "Half a million climate protesters seek to pressure the 25th annual UN climate summit in Madrid":
"...The elimination of greenhouse gas emissions, on the other hand, requires major [not "magic"] change in, and strictly-enforced regulation of, many spheres of production. It not only requires a radical [not "radial"] change in the production of energy, which goes against some of the richest and most powerful capitalist corporations in the world, but also changes in industrial and agricultural production as a whole. ..."
* In the 3rd paragraph of "Sources of background on the Paris Agreement, UN climate summits, and the failure of carbon markets":
the last sentence should read: "COP15 was also [not "was also
marked"] a highpoint of the protest movement of those times, and the
article has an overview of the different trends in the movement.
http://www.communistvoice.org/44cCopenhagen.html." <>
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Posted December 15,
2019
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