Message of Solidarity to the 2nd National Congress, Anakbayan-USA
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International League of Peoples’ Struggle
January 16, 2016
We, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, wish to convey our warmest greetings of solidarity to our member-organization Anakbayan-USA on the occasion of its 2nd National Congress.
We congratulate you for having established eleven chapters in cities across the US. We appreciate your determination to boldly expand and consolidate your membership. We wish you to accomplish your objectives under the General Program of Action that you will promulgate and the new National Executive Committee that you shall elect.
We are confident that during your congress you will be able to sum up and analyze your experience, learn both positive and negative lessons, build further on the strength that you have and adopt the tasks and methods of arousing, organizing and mobilizing the youth in order to raise higher the level of your unity, strength and capabilities.
You must know the long-term and immediate issues to take up in the struggle. You must have sessions of political education and learn to improve your skills at propaganda and agitation. From period to period, you must have a plan for recruiting more members and establishing more chapters.
You must avail of the opportunities and means of mobilizing people, including indoor and outdoor meetings, rallies and matches, lecture forums, cultural performances, internet connectivity, community picnics, planned group trips to the motherland and so on. You must act on the burning issues and decide what campaigns to sustain from period to period.
We hope that you will succeed in the next three years in the campaign to defend and save the schools and communities of the Lumad against militarization, repression, mining, logging and plantations and to uphold the human right to education in the US against the onerous student debt, the rising costs of education and other attacks under the neoliberal policy.
We encourage you to develop stronger solidarity relations with non-Filipino youth and communities in the US along the anti-imperialist and democratic line. You must confront the same increasingly oppressive and exploitative conditions in the US and in the world. Such conditions are the result of the unjust character of US monopoly capitalism, its ever worsening crisis and its relentless drive for plunder and aggression.
We welcome the theme of your congress, “Upsurge! Unite the Youth to Fight for our Liberation!” In this connection, we strive to shed light on the global economic and political crisis and urge you to confront the crisis and respond to the need for revolutionary change in the US, in the Philippines and elsewhere in the world.
The US is the chief instigator and enforcer of the neoliberal economic policy. This policy of unbridled greed pushes down wage incomes, gives tax cuts to the monopoly firms, cuts back public funding for social services and benefits, liberalizes trade and investments, privatizes state assets and does away with regulations that protect labor, women, children, the entire society and the environment.
The result is the more frequent recurrence and rapid worsening of the crisis of overproduction. The monopoly bourgeoisie tries to override the crisis and increase its profits by generating financial bubbles which inevitably burst and aggravate both economic and financial crises. There is yet no real and lasting recovery from the economic plunge and global depression that started in 2008.
The imperialist powers individually try to pass the burden of crisis to the people in their respective countries and collectively to the people of the underdeveloped countries through austerity measures, international usury, higher taxes, faster extraction of natural resources and higher rates of profits. The US has led the imperialist powers in war production and unleashing wars of aggression and proxy wars in order to directly profit from war production as well as to impose hegemony on other countries.
But the crisis of global capitalism has become so grave that contradictions among the imperialist powers have become pronounced. They are increasingly engaged in a struggle for a redivision of the world in terms of economic territory and spheres of geopolitical influence.
The US, the EU and Japan still control the traditional summits (G-7 and OECD), multilateral agencies (IMF, World Bank and WTO) and military alliances (NATO and bilateral security alliances). But Russia and China have formed their alliances like the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Because of its own imperialist arrogance, its rapacity and high propensity for aggression, the US has undermined its own position in the world and is on a strategic decline faster than ever before. It has financialized the US economy to the extent of having grave difficulties in reviving manufacturing and employment. It has spent trillions of dollars on bank bailouts and on wars of aggression.
It is a matter of justice to themselves that the American people of various nationalities rise up against the imperialist oppressors and the exploiters. Anakbayan-USA must be united with the rest of the American people in fighting against the rise of state terrorism, white supremacist racism, religious bigotry and other reactionary currents that multiply the harshness of economic exploitation, unemployment and poverty.
Anakbayan-USA must also stand in solidarity with the Filipino people in the motherland and do whatever is possible and necessary to support their struggle. The Filipino people and overseas Filipinos anywhere in the world must be united with all the peoples fighting against US imperialism and all reaction in order to achieve greater freedom, democracy, social justice, all-round development, international solidarity and peace.###
