In a New York Times op-ed this week, the novelist Richard Powers wrote about the recent murder of the protester Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, nicknamed Tortuguita, in Atlanta.
Tortuguita was a 26-year-old environmental activist killed by Georgia State Troopers on January 18 during a violent raid by police in Atlanta's Weelaunee People's Park, an 85-acre forest in South Atlanta. Tortuguita (who went by they/them pronouns) was taking part in a protest, now in its second year, to stop a planned $90 million police “training facility”—nicknamed “Cop City” by those fighting to stop it.
In the raid, police say Tortuguita shot first, injuring a state trooper. But there are huge holes in the police's “official story.”
Last week, revcom.us wrote: “The GBI [Georgia Bureau of Investigation] did not report any guns being found after searching the campsites after the raid. Yet they claim they were returning fire on Tortuguita after a state trooper was shot and injured 'without warning.' They say there is no bodycam footage of the killing. Now they have made public the photo of a gun they claim they found near Tortuguita's body.” It has since come out that Tortuguita was shot at least 13 times by police from multiple agencies! This adds weight to what other protesters who were in the forest at the time have argued. They heard a single series of shots and believe the state trooper could have been shot by another officer, or by his own firearm.
Powers raises none of these questions, accepting the official story of the GBI and treating the whole situation as a terrible bind for both sides, who he paints as equally responsible. While he mourns the loss of the forest, he raises no criticism of the idea that what's needed is a multi-million dollar training facility for more murdering and murderous police.
In his novels The Overstory and Bewilderment, Powers writes beautifully and tenderly about the natural world—with love and humanity. But in those books—and in this article—he is painfully and dangerously locked into thinking and acting within the confines of the very system that is destroying the ecosystems that he so clearly loves. Now, entering into a serious political struggle, instead of using his voice to support the heroic protesters and calling on others to join them—he has gone badly off course.
Powers frames all this as a complex morass mirroring our “national crisis in microcosm.” In doing so he completely obfuscates the basic and urgent reality: Capitalism-imperialism is destroying the planet. Every day and all over there are fires, floods, glaciers melting and sea levels rising—because of the blind and profit-driven use of fossil fuels to provide the energy for the factories, mines, global shipping networks and military that this system requires. And at the same time, the police in the U.S. are murdering people at an increased rate, with Biden backing them up with calls to “fund the police, fund the police, fund the police.”
Powers’ “Solution” Is a Dangerous Illusion
But there's an even more fundamental problem in Powers' approach. He argues that the solution to the crisis in Atlanta is to put the issue of whether to build this training center up for a citywide vote. “In the short term, a referendum would allow both sides to cool the conflict. In the long term, it offers the best hope for restoring trust in the city. Those who breathe Atlanta’s air and walk its public spaces must decide whether the southeast of their city should remain a living greenbelt or become a state-of-the-art training center.”
Powers says that “in a city divided by fatal confrontation, only the will of the majority has the moral force to resolve the showdown.”
Let's walk this argument through: A referendum is when you put a question or proposition to a direct vote of everyone in a particular region. What happens in this society when you have a referendum? The political parties pour huge sums of money into advertising, lobbying, and canvassing. The Republicans mobilize their organized base of fascists—through churches, militias and online. They spread disinformation and call into question the legitimacy of the election itself. The Democrats mobilize people throughout society while working hard to contain and confine the resistance and anger of those who desperately want and need change to what are usually narrow terms of the particular ballot initiative.
Take the example of Kansas recently where, in August 2022 after the overturning of the right to abortion on a federal level, there was a referendum on the ballot as to whether the State Constitution should or should not guarantee the right to abortion. If passed, it would've given the Kansas state government power to prosecute individuals involved in abortions—doctors, people helping women, or the women themselves. In total, $22 million was spent by both sides and thousands of people who care about the right to abortion were mobilized around this vote in Kansas. Almost a million people voted and the initiative was overwhelmingly rejected in Kansas, protecting the right to abortion—temporarily. This was celebrated across the country as a great victory—and as a model in the fight to protect abortion rights.
But two things that need to be said about this:
1. The fascists are still on the offensive nationally, and in Kansas. They are moving quickly to curtail, ban and criminalize the right to abortion—on a federal level. They are fighting in the courts, legislatures and on the streets to stop medication abortions, to terrorize pharmacies and criminalize doctors. This referendum was not an answer to STOP the attack on the right to abortion.
2. Instead of sounding the alarm about the fact that forced motherhood equals female enslavement... instead of mobilizing people to refuse to accept a society where any woman was forced to bear a child against her will... people were normalized to the idea that fundamental constitutional rights could be repealed by a fascist Supreme Court and that the basic humanity of women should be put up to a vote!
Or you can look at the example in Florida where, in 2018, people overwhelmingly voted to restore voting rights to convicted felons, a total of 1.4 million people. One year later, lawmakers moved to restrict this, passing a law that, in order to vote, people who'd been convicted in a felony case had to pay all the fees that they owed as part of their original conviction, which prevented nearly 775,000 ex-felons from voting. This was fought out in the courts, going all the way up to the Supreme Court, and this unjust law—which guts much of that original referendum vote—stands. But even that was too much for the fascists. In the last election, 10 people—eight of them Black men—were arrested in Florida and charged with “illegal voting.” The fascist governor DeSantis even set up an “Office of Election Crimes and Security,” including 20 sworn police officers, to “investigate, detect, apprehend, and arrest anyone for an alleged violation” of election laws.
In both these recent referendums, “the moral force” of the “will of the majority” did nothing fundamental for abortion or voting rights. Because “the will of the majority” is not how things are, or can be, decided. They are decided by the dictates of this system—with a repressive dictatorship to enforce this. And this is especially so in the absence of mass determined struggle by the people. Instead of confronting this, Powers is stuck in an illusion of some imaginary and contentless “democracy” as the solution which only serves to reinforce the horrors that Powers is moved to speak out against.
Beyond that, there is nothing sacred about the “will of the majority.” The “will of the majority” would have backed slavery for many many years in this country. Should the slaves have waited before rising up, or running away? The “will of the majority” right now might mean that most people—relentlessly conditioned as they are by the schools, media and other institutions of society—would probably support the U.S. if it cooked up some pretext go to war with China. So does that mean we should wait until there is a majority before taking bold action to wake people up to the danger of nuclear devastation? Hitler had referendum after referendum—did that give his annexations and laws some kind of “moral force”? The “will of the majority” in capitalist society is molded by the institutions of that society and, especially in the absence of determined struggle from below, will reflect that molding.
What's the REAL Problem and Solution?
The environmental destruction which Tortuguita heroically put his life on the line to STOP is driven by this system of capitalism-imperialism. A system where a small handful own and control not just the wealth but the means to create wealth—the mines, factories, land, and technology—competing over control of the raw materials and resources of the Earth for the greatest profit based on that exploitation of humanity and the planet. From Honduras to Brazil, Europe to Atlanta, this is enforced by a repressive state apparatus of armies, vigilante squads, and surveillance networks carrying out murder, brutality and terror against people who stand up to protest this global destruction.
Ask yourself: what kind of “democracy” does this... brings down domestic terrorism charges against people protesting to stop the pillaging and bulldozing of our forests, while considering it perfectly legal to carry out that pillaging and bulldozing? It's a “democracy” that rests on the violent arm of dictatorship—serving this system of capitalism-imperialism with its inherent exploitative drive.
Why is there a plan for a “Cop City” to begin with? In September 2021, the Atlanta City Council approved the leasing and funding required to build this major new police training center. This was one year after millions filled the streets to demand an END to murder by police. They were met with mass arrests, pepper spray, rubber bullets and the National Guard. And now, this militarization is being ramped up. Because in order to maintain this system of capitalism with white supremacy poured into its foundation, they require their more and more militarized police forces to enforce this—murdering, terrorizing and brutalizing Black and Brown people they have no future for... and violently containing protest and resistance.
In an important article from last year, “Once Again on Why All Dictatorships Are Not Bad, and Why We Should Want, and Fight for, a Socialist Dictatorship,” the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian quoted from the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which he authored: “Any democracy which is practiced in this situation is democracy on the terms of, and fundamentally serving the interests of, the ruling class and its exercise of dictatorship.” He went on,
This is why in this country today—in this so-called “greatest of all democracies”—no matter what “rights” people seek to exercise, and no matter which politicians people vote for, nothing fundamental changes—horrific oppression and exploitation, and vicious state violence against masses of people continue. And wherever people pose a threat (or are seen as posing a threat) to the rule—the dictatorship—of the capitalist-imperialist class, the violent power of its dictatorship is brought down on them with a vengeance. One very clear and sharp example of this is the continuing murders of Black people, as well as Latinos and Native Americans, by police—an exercise of what is declared the “legitimate” armed force and violence of this system, for which the police are almost never punished, with this brutal violence repeatedly ruled “justifiable.”
The painful, and easily avoidable, death of Tortuguita is only the latest example of this truth.
What's required is an actual revolution to overthrow this system, replacing it with a radically different and far better system aiming for the emancipation of humanity—a socialist state, and economic and political system that is not just working to meet people's basic needs and uproot oppression and exploitation, but enabling humanity to become fit caretakers of the Earth while appreciating and fostering the need for awe and wonder, the creative spirit and critical thinking. This requires a socialist dictatorship—and democracy—exercised by the masses of people with a government that represents their highest interests of breaking all oppressive chains all over the world. Very importantly, in the new communism developed by BA, the government and political institutions will not just protect, but encourage and fund dissent and intellectual and cultural ferment. Society overall must unleash a multi-faceted struggle involving all kinds of ways for people to debate, and thrash out right and wrong, what's true and not true as part of what's needed to abolish all exploitation and oppression. The full vision and concrete blueprint for this is laid out in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.
As BA speaks to, “A government and leaders that enable [the masses of people] to gain and apply a scientific understanding of what the conditions and relations are that cause people to be exploited and oppressed, and to transform those conditions and relations in bringing a radically new society and world into being, defeating attempts to bring back the old, oppressive system and carrying forward the struggle to put an end to all exploitation and oppression, to get to the point where humanity is no longer divided into masters and slaves, where finally there is no need and no basis for dictatorship—no one with the interests and power to dictate to others, and no one in a position to be dictated over—which is precisely the point and the goal of communism.”
Powers ends his piece, “As with America at large, the only way forward is into that tangled woods we call democracy. It’s still alive. Use it.”
As we've shown here, this is dead wrong. As with America at large, the only way forward is to wipe the tangles from your eyes—scientifically confront the actual nature of this system, raise your sights to the radically different system that is urgently necessary—and profoundly possible—and be part of building up the organized forces for revolution to bring this whole new world into being.