Happy birthday to Paul Robeson.

On December 17, 1951, he delivered We Charge Genocide—a petition laying out the case that the US had carried out genocide of Black people—to the United Nations in New York.

You can read the opening statement here: https://www.crmvet.org/info/genocide3_opening.pdf

(William Patterson tried delivering copies by mail to a UN delegation in Paris but the US intercepted them, and Du Bois was prevented from delivering petitions in Paris in person because his passport was revoked).

The person who came up with the concept of genocide was shite (see https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/1247177273914122242?s=21), but/and Robeson’s involvement with We Charge Genocide was an act of tremendous courage and one of many reasons the US government wanted Robeson dead. https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/1247177273914122242

One thing I appreciate about Robeson (& other Black leftists' work from the 50s, reflected in We Charge), is the unmistakable clarity that white supremacist violence at home and imperialist violence abroad were inextricably linked. Not rhetorically or conceptually but materially.

Today, int'l lawyers talk about State crimes (like genocide) so serious they concern the whole world, but they usually mean it in a totally different way that has nothing in common with this more radical understanding.

The int'l lawyer version is something like: "instead of all countries having final say about their rights & obligations (left), there are overriding norms that bind everyone (right). These govern things so imptnt that the fabric of int'l society would fall apart if disrespected."

The CRC in We Charge Genocide was saying something different: they were saying vigilante+state violence (screenshot 1) and economic violence (screenshot 2) was *necessarily and always* linked to imperialist expansion (screenshots 3 & 4), here referred to as "exporting" genocide.

This idea that domestic white supremacy was inherently linked to wars of imperial aggression is a super important thread of Du Bois's work (he was an author of We Charge Genocide). He had been developing this since at least his 1915 "The African Roots of the War."

Time for work but the TL;DR is:
Robeson was part of a tradition that has receded in the "healthcare is everything" version of today's US left. I see my anti-imperialist work as inherently linked to decarceral work. I hope others explore internationalist visions of their work too.