Fabian Sneevliet

Fabian Sneevliet

Fabian Sneevliet aka Fabian Van Onzin is a Houston, Texas activist. He is from The Hague, Netherlands.

Member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization/FightBack!.

Supporting janitors strike

In a June 2012 strike SEIU janitors in Houston received much support from the local progressive, as well as from their fellow janitors across the U.S. According to Houston Communist Party USA activist Fabian Sneevliet, at a rally on June 12, Texas Rep. Al Green, D., gave an inspirational speech in support of the striking workers. At this rally, Richard Shaw, head of the Texas AFL-CIO, was there in solidarity with the janitors, as well as the Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston.

Protestors support professor

Michael Leone, left, and Fabian Sneevliet show their support for professor David Michael Smith outside the College of the Mainland administration building Nov. 2013, . The school’s administration has recommended Smith’s employment be terminated.

Convention discussion

In 2014, Allison Hubbard, Bernard Sampson, Fabian Sneevliet, from Houston, contributed a pre-conference discussion paper, to the Communist Party USA.

Anti-Trump protest

Donald Trump faced a spirited protest outside the Omni Hotel in Houston on Sept. 17. 2016 Trump was speaking to a group called the Remembrance Project.

Protest organizer David Smith of Houston Socialist Movement said, “Donald Trump is a racist and a bigot, and his sole purpose is to spread fear and divide the working class. We want Trump and his message out of our city.” Smith is with the Houston Socialist Movement.

“Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both represent the interests of Wall Street, only the the top 1%. Therefore SDS doesn’t see change coming from the elections, but rather from grassroots movements like Black Lives Matter and the Native resistance to the North Dakota pipeline,” said Fabian Sneevliet of Students for a Democratic Society at UH.

Ian Cox of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization/FightBack! said, “We don’t need Trump and his hate, we need a revolution.”

International Women’s Day, 2017

In Houston the IWD celebration, organized by Freedom Road Socialist Organization/FightBack!, educated and motivated activists and students as well as some new to the struggle. Kinsey Tamsin, a trans woman and FRSO activist, spoke about daily obstacles trans people face. She praised socialist Cuba for the tremendous progress made through CENESEX, the Cuban National Center for Sex Education, on LGBTQ+ rights, including free sex-affirmation operations for trans people. Tamsin also praised Workers World Party member Leslie Feinberg as a trailblazer for trans liberation.

Nikki Luellen, who works against police brutality, spoke eloquently about the horror that continues after people are murdered by the police. She cited the struggle of the spouse of Alva Braziel, who was shot and killed by Houston cops in the summer of 2016. Not a single cop has been charged, and the family is still fighting for justice. Luellen, a FRSO member and Texas Southern University student, works with Black Movement Media.

Speaking about several revolutionary women, Sabrina Smith, also with FRSO, focused on Yuri Kochiyama, a U.S. citizen who survived the U.S. internment of Japanese people in camps during World War II. Kochiyama became a strong advocate for Black, Latinx, Native American and Asian-American liberation. Her friend, Malcolm X, died in her arms at the Audubon Ballroom in 1965.

FRSO leader Fabian Sneevliet updated the struggle of Rasmea Odeh, the Palestinian activist and former political prisoner in Israel facing a new U.S. trial for “immigration irregularities.” Odeh’s sentence was vacated, and experts will be allowed to testify on the role of torture in relation to her conviction.

SDS

According to Dan Sullivan in 2016 Fabian Van Onzin was a leader of of Students for a Democratic Society at UH.

FRSO connection

According to Fabian Van Onzin, in Houston, Texas, over 30 students at the University of Houston participated in a protest against police brutality on Sept. 16. They began with a rally in front of the MD Anderson library on campus, with signs reading, “Black lives matter,” “End police brutality” and “Stop racist killer cops.”

After a few speeches from students, community activists and faculty members, they marched around the campus, chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, these killer cops have got to go,” and “Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail, the whole damn system is guilty as hell.”

“The police in the U.S. continue to kill Black people each day and get away with it. Every week, there is another killing, and each time the police walk away without being indicted,” said Angelica Hernandez.

Hernandez continued, “From Alton Sterling to Philando Castile, from Sandra Bland to Alva Braziel, the police are murdering African Americans in every city in this country. Students for a Democratic Society demands an end to the killings, and justice for all victims of police brutality. We want to see all these racist killer cops be indicted for their crimes.”

“The cops claim to make communities safer, but they are a safety hazard. They continue to murder Black people and create an environment of fear and terror in the Black community. We demand community control of the police. Black lives matter!” said Ian Cox, of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization/FightBack!.

References

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