To Honor Odessa Anti-Fascists, Stop Weapons to Ukraine!

11 May 2022

John Parker (center) receives award from Chairman of the Government of the Lugansk People’s Republic Sergey Kozlov (right), May 5. Photo: Lugansk Information Center

Statement by John Parker, Socialist Unity Party candidate for U.S. Senate in California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. Parker is on a fact-finding trip observing the U.S./NATO proxy war on Donbass and Russia.

This statement was originally published in Struggle La Lucha.

Now more than ever, we must raise the reality of the nature of the Ukrainian government, to alert our class to the danger of U.S.-led NATO expansion, the greatest danger to humanity today.

The massacre at the Odessa House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014, was a war crime by proxy, with Nazi and other fascist gangsters following the script written for them by U.S. imperialism before 2014.

But instead of being tried in the International Criminal Court – because they were doing the bidding of U.S. and European imperialists – they received the de facto immunity for war crimes enjoyed by all U.S. forces committing murder and genocide spread across the globe.

Instead of being tried in Ukraine, the Nazi forces were emboldened by the fact that the evil that was done was rewarded with the jailing of the anti-fascist victims of the terror.

Following President Petrenko before him, President Zelensky not only rewarded the perpetrators by not charging them, he appointed a fascist as governor of Odessa to put salt in the wound.

That refusal to act in the name of justice and that most unjust appointment of a Nazi sealed the historical designation of Zelensky as not only a traitor to the working class but also a traitor to Jewish people around the world.

Is this the person, is this the regime of serial killers, that deserves the sophisticated weapons of mass destruction the U.S. has been sending to Ukraine?

People should not dismiss Zelensky’s suggestion that he should now be allowed to accept nuclear weapons in Ukraine. No one should underestimate U.S. imperialism’s willingness to commit any murder, genocide or war crime. The over 200,000 civilians killed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima by atomic bombs, used even on children, makes that clear.

The best way to honor the martyrs, the anti-fascists and courageous comrades who were willing to risk their lives to defeat the fascists, who risked their lives to protect humanity from that scourge, is to ensure that the fascist movement in Ukraine receive no more weapons, money or political support from the imperialist powers, who hypocritically talk about imaginary war crimes while excusing the elephant in the room with blood on its tusks.

How can we do this? By raising and highlighting the events on May 2, 2014, so every individual in the working class in every imperialist country knows what their governments did in enabling the rise of fascism in Ukraine.

In various U.S. cities, our comrades are holding picket lines and vigils to honor this anniversary.

We must speak louder than the corporate media – we can and we shall. They may have the propaganda apparatus, but we have the people, whose potential, if organized, could easily overwhelm them.

We have the truth – whose containment is not sustainable – and most important, like our comrades who died knowing they were on the right side of history, we have the moral fiber, integrity and love for humanity that resists fire, resists bullets and keeps coming back until every last vestige of fascism is finally thrown into the dustbin of history.

John Parker is the coordinator of the Harriet Tubman Center For Social Justice In Los Angeles and leading member of the Socialist Unity Party. He accompanied former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark on many anti-war delegations abroad. Parker was only 18 when he organized his first union election--at a small steel plant in New Jersey. Having authored a $15 minimum wage ballot initiative in 2014, his organizing efforts helped to push the city to act on the minimum wage increase proposals in Los Angeles. Parker recently attended the inauguration of socialist President Xiomara Castro at the invitation of her Libre Party, due to his solidarity work with Honduras.

Ukraine

Russia

Donbas

Russia; Ukraine; NATO; regime change

NATO

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