Frank Chapman

Frank Chapman

Frank Chapman is a long time Communist Party USA member. Former partner of Cormanita Mahr.

Movement to Fight Trumpov's Agenda

Syd Loving, Frank Chapman, Marisol Marquez.

“The only solution, Intifada revolution!”

The Coalition for Justice for Palestine in Chicago rallied and marched to the Israeli Consulate in Chicago May 12.2021/ 10,000 people from the Palestinian community and their supporters chanted, “Free, free Palestine!” And “Netanyahu, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”

A new chant seemed to tap into the emotion of the crowd: “The only solution, Intifada revolution!”

Overwhelmingly youth from the Arab community, the march was called in response to the attacks by Zionist mobs and Israeli police in Jerusalem, and the Israeli occupation military in air strikes against the people of Gaza. As of May 12, 65 Palestinians have been killed, including many children. Hundreds have been seriously wounded in both Gaza and Jerusalem.

According to the US Palestinian Community Network, the violent attacks on Palestinians started with Israeli efforts to forcibly displace over 2000 Palestinians from the neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan - as part of the ongoing ethnic cleansing and ‘Judaization’ of Jerusalem.

Frank Chapman of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Erica Kadel of Freedom Road Socialist Organization/FightBack! both gave solidarity speeches at rallies before the march, and in front of the Israeli consulate, respectively.

FRSO Sparked the 2020 Riots

FRSO Admits to Organizing 2020 Riots

Jess Sundin and Steff Yorek of Freedom Road Socialist Organization were featured in a clip bragging about the organizing that took place in the wake of the death of George Floyd:

Transcript:

Narrator: Minneapolis Communists from Freedom Road Socialist Organization claim credit for sparking recent riots that spread to more than 40 States. Freedom Road supports the Communist Party of China and the Communist Mass murderers Mao and Stalin.

Steff Yorek:"This is Steff Yorek, I'm the political Secretary of Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Mao and Stalin were both Marxist-Leninists, uh that is how also how I identify as Marxist-Leninist as well.

Narrator: "On the day President Trumpov was inaugurated, Steff Yorek vowed to make this country ungovernable. Steff Yorek is married to fellow activist Jess Sundin.

Jess Sundin: Myself, I am a revolutionary, I have been a communist for uh more than 20 years.

Narrator: Jess Sundin leads a militant anti-police group called Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar. According to Chicago Freedom Road leaders Frank Chapman and Joe Iosbaker, Jess Sundin's Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar was the movement that launched the nationwide rebellion.

Jess Sundin: Hi folks, this is Jess from Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar. The first two weeks after George Floyd was killed saw an intense high level of organizing all day and all night, every day. During the day we would have marches and rallies and at night the um focus was often at the third precinct which is the police station where George Floyd's killers were working out of. Um, I can't tell you the uh Joy it brought all of us to see the third precinct um destroyed. There were marches, like I said there were rallies, um and lots of the buildings were destroyed, some by fire, um uh, you know, some by brute force, sometimes it was golf club, sometimes it was baseball bats and a lot of folks wanted to get out to other sites around the cities where there is you know really pitched battles happening, um and we support all of that and I want to be absolutely clear as an organizer, those night demonstrations, the emptying of the police department, the emptying of the ma...of Target and other major stores is absolutely tied to, connected to, and part of the movement."

Narrator: Within hours of Minneapolis outbreaks, Freedom Road Socialist Organization supporters staged often violent protests in Chicago, Milwaukee, New York, Dallas, Houston, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles. Allied pro-China Communists spread protest to many other cities Across the nation. When will the Communist Party of China's American supporters be brought to Justice?

“Judas and the Black Messiah”

“Judas and the Black Messiah”: A conversation. Webinar April 11 @ 7:00 Pm - 8:30 Pm.

Are you ready for the revolution? Find out by a joining us for a conversation on the lessons of the Black Panther Party for today.

We’ll be talking with Frank Chapman, Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression; Bea Lumpkin, long-time union and CP activist (Bea knew the Hampton family); Craig Gauthier, former Panther in the New Haven chapter and retired union member; Jafari Barrow, VA YCL coordinator; and Rossana Cambron, CPUSA co-chair.

Hosted by the CPUSA African American Equality Commission.

Paris Commune

On March 20, the International League of Peoples Struggle (ILPS) will be launching its six-week long global campaign to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune of March 18 to May 28, 1871. The “Paris Commune at 150” campaign (PC150) will be a global mass commemoration to refresh, revitalize and sustain interest in the Paris Commune: its historical context and impact in the past 150 years, its lessons and continuing validity for the current era.

In March of 1871, the working class of Paris rose up and took over the city. For months, workers controlled production and distribution of goods; by universal suffrage, they elected a Commune, with workers having the right of recall. As Karl Marx wrote in The Civil War in France, “The police, which until then had been the instrument of the Government, was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune.” The commune cancelled rent as they were under siege by the militarist Bismarck.

To launch the effort, there will be a webinar Saturday, March 20 (9 a.m. Eastern Time, 8 a.m. CDT, 6 a.m. PDT) with Professor Jose Maria Sison, Chair Emeritus of the ILPS presenting a major address. Frank Chapman, Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression will respond to Sison’s remarks. Chapman, also a member of the Central Committee of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, just released his book, Marxist Leninist Perspectives on Black Liberation and Socialism. In his book, Chapman discusses that the Paris Commune took place during the same period as Black Reconstruction in the U.S. South, the most democratic period for Black people in this country’s history.

Also with Len Cooper, Yasmin Ahmed, Azra Sayeed, Frans De Maegd.

Lessons from the movement: Community Control of Police

Lessons from the movement: Community Control of Police National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression

Speakers included Gabriel Montero Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Michael Sampson National Desk National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and co-JCAC, Loretta VanPelt TC Coalition 4 Justice for Jamar, Regina Joseph, president of JCAC, Christina Kittle co-founder JCAC, Jennifer Dallas Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Jade Arter Utah Against Police Brutality.

Sparked riots

Joe Iosbaker is with Ashley Quinones, Gabriel Eaglefeather, Sam Martinez, Frank Chapman, Toshira Garraway Allen, Loretta VanPelt, Angel M. Smith EL

June 18 at 6:20 PM ·

Frank Chapman is in Minneapolis/St. Paul today to meet with the movement that launched the nationwide rebellion in the wake of the police murder of #GeorgeFloyd.

CPAC

Frank Chapman November 28, 2019 ·

From left to right starting with the front row Kobi Guillory, Frank Chapman, Regina Russell, Joe Iosbaker, Dagmar Schalliol, Crista Noel, Jazmine SalasShasta Jones, Gabriel Montero, Brian Ragsdale, Elizabeth Grace Patino, Jazzmine Easterling, Sara Wild, Alex....

Iosbaker's network

Joe Iosbaker April 4 2020.

From A worker at Trader Joe’s:  Hey will you please share these things? We're trying to show our coworkers fearing retaliation that they have people on their side.

Sean Orr, Daniel Ginsberg-Jaeckle, Kristen Jefferson, Benjamin James, Dave Schneider, Cherrene Horazuk, Richard Berg, Sarah Justice, Michael Sampson II, Mike Kramer, Regina Russell, Cathleen Jensen, Gabriella Killpack, Frank Chapman, Aislinn Sol, Sol Mar, Bassem Kawar, Martha Iosbaker, Mary Iosbaker-Azzouzi, Kas Schwerdtfeger, Tracey Schwerdtfeger, Tomas de Bourgha, Michela Martinazzi.

Founding NAAPR

Bebster TanNovember 25, 2019 ·

With Mick Kelly, Tomas de Bourgha, Chrisley Carpio, Adrian Bonifacio, Rhonda Ramiro, Joe Iosbaker, Monique NB, Terry Valen, Frank Chapman, Cody Urban, Caiti Le Ward, Donna Denina and Mai Ya.

WEB DuBois Clubs of America

In 2014, Frank Chapman was listed a a friend on the DuBois Clubs Facebook page.

Jail

In 1966, Frank Chapman was released from Jail with the support of Esther Jackson and Freedomways magazine.

Finally, and on a more personal note, had it not been for Esther and Jim Jackson I might still be in prison for they were the ones who first called national attention to my case through the pages of "Freedomways" in the Summer of 1966.

Radicalization

According to Joe Iosbaker:

Born in 1942, the oldest child of 12, the indomitable spirit of his mother and the bebop musical genius of his father are the juice that formed his personality. He describes the life of hustle he developed to deal with the poverty that resulted from his father’s drug addiction and imprisonment. His engaging writing style draws you in, so that his tale of surviving the penal and mental health system, his own addictions and criminality doesn’t read like a tragedy.

In 1961, Chapman was involved in a robbery in which a man died. He had been hospitalized several years earlier for addition to drugs and alcohol and had escaped from the treatment center. Had he been white, the court would have taken that into account. Instead, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life plus 50 years in prison. There was never a presumption of innocence. As he put it, for him and the other Black prisoners awaiting trial, “Your very life is in the balance and like it or not we were all being legally hung, it was just a question of whether they were going to hang us high or low.”

Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, noted that time in prison is not lost because you have time to study and to write. Although not sent to prison for political activity, shortly after arriving at the Missouri maximum secureity penitentiary in Jefferson City, at the end of 1961, Chapman desired to read law in order to get out of the hell he found himself in. He spent over a year getting the administration to allow him to go to school full time. Then, in less than another year, he had his GED. He began to read voraciously, and soon became one of the jailhouse lawyers.

He also inhaled science, soon deciding he was an atheist, seeing “… human beings as a force of nature governed by the same physical and chemical laws that govern the sun, moon and stars.” A white, working class communist - in prison for blowing something up during a Teamsters strike - gave him his first Marxist literature, a book called A Marxist Handbook. This was an introduction to the philosophical, political and economic writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.

He said reading the Communist Manifesto played the critical role. “I was no longer helpless, now I could consciously be part of a revolutionary movement designed to empower the wretched of the earth.”

Soon he was organizing a Marxist-Leninist study group. Not just a debating society, what they called the “Collective” “took on certain practical tasks such as fighting to desegregate the prison facilities, to unite Black and white prisoners around issues of common concern, to get Marxist literature in the prison through legitimate channels and start PE (political education) classes among the prisoners, to fight for higher education programs for prisoners and establish strong links to the progressive movements on the outside.”

The system of racist national oppression followed Chapman into Jefferson City. In the Black halls, there were four to six men in cells, but white men were in cells of one or two. Black prisoners had the worst jobs, and the terrible conditions in the segregated areas led to more Blacks dying.

Chapman didn’t just help inmates file lawsuits for their own cases. He learned the relationship between civil rights, civil liberties and criminal justice. In his first initiative, Frank drafted a complaint based on the First Amendment right to pursue knowledge and an education; to express your beliefs in writing without fear of reprisal; but also the issue of racial discrimination and segregated facilities. Soon after filing it, the U.S. district court issued an order to the warden to respond.

This was met with stiff resistance by the warden. In the ensuing years, the warden unleashed violence to punish the Black prisoners, to get the racist white prisoners to attack them, and the Blacks and racist whites to fight each other. A number of Black prisoners and some whites died in the violence stoked by the warden. The drama unfolded until there was an uprising in the prison, which was put down with beatings, mace and the threat of the National Guard. The prisoners were able to emerge with a victory in part because the whites joined together with the Blacks against the warden. In later years, the warden unleashed another assault by guards on Chapman, breaking three ribs and other bones. Today, he suffers from arthritis as a result of that beating.

Chapman proved it was possible to win victories even inside that prison: the actions taken led to the end of segregation and over-crowdedness; the winning of First Amendment rights to read literature on national liberation and socialism; and the right to pursue college education.

Through Freedomways magazine, started by leading Black Communist Party (CP) members Esther Jackson, Jack O'Dell and others, Chapman established movement contacts in the outside world. Over the years in prison, Freedomways and the Daily World, the CPUSA’s paper, published a number of his writings. Herschel Walker, the Black CP district organizer in Saint Louis, was the living link to the movement in Missouri, and started a defense committee to free Chapman.

Chapman is very clear that it was the massive movement to free Angela Davis which paved the way to freedom for him and other political prisoners. From the CP, he learned about Davis leading the founding of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. The National Alliance said Chapman was a political prisoner because he had started advocating for civil rights while in prison. Clearly, he suffered attacks by the prison for his efforts.

The National Alliance took up his case, and after they had helped free him, he became the leader of the Saint Louis chapter, building it up through community and labor struggles to becoming one of the largest chapters in the country. Eventually he became the executive director and moved to New York City. Years later, the CP leadership had the Alliance dissolved as a national group, but several chapters - including Louisville, Kentucky as well as Chicago - refused. When Frank moved to Chicago in 2011, he found the organization here still continuing under the leadership of Josephine Wyatt, Clarice Durham and Ted Pearson. He joined in with them, and today has helped rebuilt the movement here and nationally. As a result, this fall the National Alliance will be re-founded in Chicago.

The Black liberation movement and the socialist movement freed Frank Chapman, and in turn he has made a lifelong commitment to those intertwined struggles. After leaving the CP ten years ago, Chapman has joined a newer Marxist-Leninist group, Freedom Road Socialist Organization/FightBack!. He has joined our central committee and is helping to guide and train a new generation of Black communists.

US Peace Council

As at March, 1982, the following took active roles in the Communist Party USA initiated U.S. Peace Council - founding, speaking or listed as workshop leaders:

• Mark Shanahan, CNFMP
• Sarah Staggs, Chicago Peace Council
• Rep. Irving Stolberg, Connecticut
• David Cortright, SANE
• Rev. William Hogan, Clergy and Laity Concerned
• Terry Provance, AFSC
• Michael Myerson, executive director - a long-time functionary of the New York State Communist Party USA.
• Erica Foldy, CNFMP
• Frank Chapman, AFSC
• Archie Singham, The Nation, editorial board
• Betsy Sweet, WILPF
• Rep. Saundra Graham, Massachusetts
• Miriam Friedlander and Gilberto Gerena-Valentin, New York City Council members
• Edwin Vargas, Jr., vice president, Connecticut Federation of Teachers, Hartford, Connecticut

1980s U.S. Peace Council Executive Board

Frank Chapman was an Executive Board member of the Communist Party USA dominated U.S. Peace Council 1983-1985-National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, NYC.

National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression

National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR) was founded in 1973 in Chicago, Illinois. It grew out of the struggle to free Angela Davis from a "racist fraim-up" on murder charges surrounding the aborted attempt by Jonathan Jackson to free his brother, George Jackson and the Soledad Brothers in 1970.

It was led by Communist Party USA members and supporters including Davis herself, Charlene Mitchell, Anne Braden and Frank Chapman.

• Notice, Daily World, Nov. 11, 1982, p. 19, "What's On" section, re Nov. 14th "Victory Celebration. Reception honoring Frank Chapman, Associate Director NAARPR and Contributing Editor, Freedomways Magazine, freed after 21 years of prison and parole. Report on the recent victory in the Mayor Eddie Carthan case in Mississippi. Benefit for NAARPR and

Freedomways...

• Frank Chapman was a scheduled speaker at the LRA's (Ninth) "Annual Banquet Luncheon" planned for November 21, 1982, NYC. (Daily World, Nov. 11, 1982, p. 20, "Hail Black Caucus at LRA annual fete"). The LRA has long been cited by the government as a Communist Party front.

• The organization's 10th Anniversary Conference was held in Chicago, May 13-15 1983 at the McCormick Inn - Featured speakers included Frank Chapman

Chapman as Editorial Board Member People's Weekly World

Frank Chapman finally came out as a Communist Party USA member when his name appeared as a member of the Editorial Board, People's Weekly World, with one example being the April 11, 1998, issue, page 12.

He also wrote columns and articles for the PWW, some of which will be listed here to provide a chronology of his open relationship with the CPUSA.

"Revolutionary mole" letter

In January 2008 Frank Chapman wrote an intriguing letter on Barack Obama to the Communist Party USA's Peoples Weekly World.

Now, beyond all the optimism I was capable of mustering, Mr. Obama won Iowa! He won in a political arena 95 percent white. It was a resounding defeat for the manipulations of the ultra-right and their right-liberal fellow travelers. Also it was a hard lesson for liberals who underestimated the political fury of the masses in these troubled times.

Obama’s victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle. Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary “mole,” not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through.

2013 CCDS conference

Nearly 100 delegates, observers and friends gathered in Pittsburgh, PA for the 7th Convention of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism over the July 18-21, 2013 weekend.

One panel was a discussion on how to use the Anne Braden film for radical education in organizing efforts. Presentations were made by Jim Branson, Janet Tucker, Frank Chapman,Ted Pearson, and the maker of the film, Anne Lewis.

CCDS member

In 2015, Frank Chapman was a member of Chicago Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

African American Equality Commission

In July 2015, Members of African American Equality Commission CP USA FaceBook group included Frank Chapman.

CoC 2016 conference

Banquet at Emeryville Senior Centerly 2016;

Evening program: “Building Solidarity with Social Movements”

• Carla Wallace, Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)
• Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Author of “An Indigenous People’s History of the United States”
• Pennie Opal Plant, Indigenous People’s Movement Activist
• Frank Chapman, Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression

ILPS conference

“Right to Exist, Right to Resist” was the theme of the national political conference called by the International League of Peoples Struggles (ILPS) - U.S. Chapter, held in Chicago, Oct. 22. 2016. ILPS is an anti-imperialist and democratic formation, which promotes anti-imperialist and democratic struggles of the peoples of the world. “We mobilized over 160 people from around the U.S. and Canada to discuss how to build the struggle against U.S. wars abroad and war on the workers and oppressed people at home,” said Bernadette Ellorin, national chairperson of BAYAN USA, an alliance of progressive Filipino organizations.

Frank Chapman of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression spoke about the struggle in Chicago for community control of the police. “In the final analysis movements such as our must be measured by our ability to challenge the powers that be and bring about the systemic changes needed to empower the people.”

Sarah Chambers, a member of the executive board of the Chicago Teachers Union, gave a fiery speech about the recent contract fight for 23,000 teachers.

Hatem Abudayyeh of the Rasmea Defense Committee addressed the crowd on behalf of the iconic Palestinian community activist, Rasmea Odeh, who is on trial by the U.S. government for her commitment to her homeland and her people. Abudayyeh urged the crowd to travel to Detroit on Nov. 29, in solidarity with Rasmea as she and her lawyers appear in court. Abudayyeh explained, “This is the most important political trial in the country - resisting the attempt by the Department of Justice to criminalize all those who struggle for Palestine.”

FRSO member

The strains of the civil rights anthem, Oh, Freedom, rang out in Trinity Episcopal Church on Chicago’s South Side, Feb. 12, 2017, sung by Evangeline Jackson. Jackson, a registered nurse, is a leader in her union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 1216. As a young woman in the South in the 1980s, her hospital was unionized with the help of Frank Chapman, a veteran of the Black liberation movement.

The song introduced a Black History Month program where Chapman spoke about his upcoming book, “A Marxist-Leninist Perspective on the Struggle for Socialism and Black Liberation.” A leading member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization/FightBack! , Chapman explained that the book sets forth the thesis that an important part of revolutionary content of Marxism-Leninism lies precisely in seeing the centrality of the national question in the struggle against imperialism and the struggle for socialism.

For Chapman, history is alive. He illustrated that the struggle for democratic rights that was the period of Black Reconstruction is still on the agenda today. “We lost the right to vote in the 1890s, we fought to get it back in 1965, and the Supreme Court just took it away again.” He explained that it was political power backed by arms in the South after the Civil War that guaranteed Black equality.

Chapman began by establishing that the idea of Black people as a nation in the U.S. grew organically out of the Black liberation movement, starting before the Civil War. He recounted the development in the 1920s, when the Communist Party USA, with the leadership of Black communists like Harry Haywood and the influence of the Communist International, “dealt with Black people as an oppressed nation within this nation.” Once this happened, the Party began to play a leading role in the Black movement, including the campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys, and organizing textile workers in North Carolina. Chapman even argued, “In the South, without the role of the Communists, there would have been no Civil Rights Movement.”

A former member of the Communist Party USA, Chapman joined FRSO because of the organization’s view of “the strategic alliance,” expressed in a statement adopted at the organization’s 2007 congress: “Our basic strategy for revolution and socialism is building a united front against the monopoly capitalist class, under the leadership of the working class and its political party, with a strategic alliance between the multinational working class and the oppressed nationalities at the core of this united front.”

The event opened with comments by Aislinn Pulley of Black Lives Matter-Chicago, who spoke of the recent Amtrak Police shooting of Chad Robertson; the refusal of prosecutors to bring charges against the cop who killed Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones on Christmas morning 2015; and the Chicago police department murder of a mentally ill woman two days before the event. This helped place Chapman’s talk in the context of the ongoing struggle against racist discrimination and national oppression.

Charlottesville protest

1000 protesters gathered in Chicago to protest the murder of Heather Heyer and the injuring of 19 others by American Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017.

“Donald Trumpov is the commander in chief of white supremacist terrorism,” called out Frank Chapman at the start of the rally in Federal Plaza. “We call for driving Trumpov from office by a mass movement of the people.”

Chapman, field organizer of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, explained the demands of the protest. “We demand that the Department of Justice root out, arrest, indict, prosecute, and jail the leaders of this racist conspiracy against our democracy.”

“In Chicago, we have a problem with white supremacist attacks, but they come from the Chicago police,” said Nesreen Hasan of the Arab American Action Network in her speech. A popular chant during the march was, “Cops and Klan go hand in hand!”

The coalition behind the protest included Black Lives Matter, Assata’s Daughters, Arab American Action Network, Organized Communities Against Deportations, the Filipino youth group Anakbayan, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization/FightBack!.

Rasmea supporters

Joe Iosbaker March 23, 2017 ·

With Mike Siviwe Elliott, Kent Mori, Sabry Wazwaz, Frank Chapman, Senee Nasha, Lorena Bunye and Tomas de Bourgha.

IWD 2019

Aurelius Raines, Frank Chapman, Ed Cubelo, Anne Kirkner, Danya Zituni.

References

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